The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw, Covering EndJames, Henry
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The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw, Covering End
James, Henry
Children -- Fiction; Country homes -- Fiction; Courtship -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Governesses -- Fiction; Mortgages -- Fiction
But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection
with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl,
the vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything
else to do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several
times rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and
prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look
at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to
listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter,
for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not
without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a
moment when I believed I recognised, faint and far, the cry of a child;
there had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as
at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies
were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the
light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent
matters that they now come back to me. To watch, teach, “form”
little Flora would too evidently be the making of a happy and useful
life. It had been agreed between us downstairs that after this first
occasion I should have her as a matter of course at night, her small
white bed being already arranged, to that end, in my room. What I had
undertaken was the whole care of her, and she had remained, just this
last time, with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our consideration for
my inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this
timidity--which the child herself, in the oddest way in the world,
had been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing it, without a sign
of uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed
of one of Raphael’s holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to
her and to determine us--I felt quite sure she would presently like
me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the
pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at
supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and a
bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. There were
naturally things that in Flora’s presence could pass between us only
as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and roundabout allusions.
“And the little boy--does he look like her? Is he too so very
remarkable?”
One wouldn’t flatter a child. “Oh, Miss, _most_ remarkable. If you
think well of this one!”--and she stood there with a plate in her
hand, beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other
with placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us.
“Yes; if I do----?”
“You _will_ be carried away by the little gentleman!”
“Well, that, I think, is what I came for--to be carried away. I’m
afraid, however,” I remember feeling the impulse to add, “I’m
rather easily carried away. I was carried away in London!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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