They were like the cherubs of the anecdote, who had-- morally, at any rate--nothing to whack! I remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, no history.
We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, yet extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age I have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day.
He had never for a second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really been chastised.
If he had been wicked he would have "caught" it, and I should have caught it by the rebound--I should have found the trace.
I found nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel.
He never spoke of his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part, was quite too much disgusted to allude to them.
Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was.
But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days of disturbing letters from home, where things were not going well.
But with my children, what things in the world mattered?
That was the question I used to put to my scrappy retirements.
I was dazzled by their loveliness.
There was a Sunday--to get on--when it rained with such force and for so many hours that there could be no procession to church; in consequence of which, as the day declined, I had arranged with Mrs. Grose that, should the evening show improvement, we would attend together the late service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared for our walk, which, through the park and by the good road to the village, would be a matter of twenty minutes.
Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, I remembered a pair of gloves that had required three stitches and that had received them-- with a publicity perhaps not edifying--while I sat with the children at their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in that cold, clean temple of mahogany and brass, the "grown-up" dining room.
The gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover them.
The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, and it enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize, on a chair near the wide window, then closed, the articles I wanted, but to become aware of a person on the other side of the window and looking straight in. One step into the room had sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; it was all there. The person looking straight in was the person who had already appeared to me.
He appeared thus again with I won't say greater distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness that represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as I met him, catch my breath and turn cold. He was the same--he was the same, and seen, this time, as he had been seen before, from the waist up, the window, though the dining room was on the ground floor, not going down to the terrace on which he stood. His face was close to the glass, yet the effect of this better view was, strangely, only to show me how intense the former had been. He remained but a few seconds-- long enough to convince me he also saw and recognized; but it was as if I had been looking at him for years and had known him always.
Something, however, happened this time that had not happened before; his stare into my face, through the glass and across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but it quitted me for a moment during which I could still watch it, see it fix successively several other things. On the spot there came to me the added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there.
He had come for someone else.
The flash of this knowledge--for it was knowledge in the midst of dread--produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started as I stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage.
I say courage because I was beyond all doubt already far gone.
I bounded straight out of the door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant, upon the drive, and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned a corner and came full in sight.
But it was in sight of nothing now--my visitor had vanished.
I stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief of this; but I took in the whole scene--I gave him time to reappear.
I call it time, but how long was it? I can't speak to the purpose today of the duration of these things.
That kind of measure must have left me: they couldn't have lasted as they actually appeared to me to last.
The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness.
There were shrubberies and big trees, but I remember the clear assurance I felt that none of them concealed him.
He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him.
I got hold of this; then, instinctively, instead of returning as I had come, went to the window. It was confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where he had stood.
I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, came in from the hall.
With this I had the full image of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her something of the shock that I had received. She turned white, and this made me ask myself if I had blanched as much.
She stared, in short, and retreated on just MY lines, and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me and that I should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I waited I thought of more things than one.
But there's only one I take space to mention. I wondered why SHE should be scared.
