The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw, Covering EndJames, Henry
General
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
The child had again got up--this time blowing out the taper, and had
again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind
the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw--as
she had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time--was proved to
me by the fact that she was disturbed neither by my re-illumination
nor by the haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden,
protected, absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill--the casement
opened forward--and gave herself up. There was a great still moon to
help her, and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She was
face to face with the apparition we had met at the lake, and could
now communicate with it as she had not then been able to do. What I,
on my side, had to care for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from
the corridor, some other window in the same quarter. I got to the door
without her hearing me; I got out of it, closed it and listened, from
the other side, for some sound from her. While I stood in the passage
I had my eyes on her brother’s door, which was but ten steps off and
which, indescribably, produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse
that I lately spoke of as my temptation. What if I should go straight
in and march to _his_ window?--what if, by risking to his boyish
bewilderment a revelation of my motive, I should throw across the rest
of the mystery the long halter of my boldness?
This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his threshold
and pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what
might portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he
too were secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the
end of which my impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the
risk was hideous; I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds--a
figure prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged;
but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated
afresh, but on other grounds and only a few seconds; then I had made
my choice. There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question
of choosing the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself
to me as the lower one--though high above the gardens--in the solid
corner of the house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was
a large, square chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the
extravagant size of which made it so inconvenient that it had not for
years, though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I
had often admired it and I knew my way about in it; I had only, after
just faltering at the first chill gloom of its disuse, to pass across
it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of the shutters. Achieving
this transit, I uncovered the glass without a sound and, applying
my face to the pane, was able, the darkness without being much less
than within, to see that I commanded the right direction. Then I saw
something more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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