【有声英语文学名著】螺丝在拧紧（8）

 The Turn of the Screw

by Henry James
VIII
 
What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in the matter I had put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked resolution to sound; so that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of a common mind about the duty of resistance to extravagant 1 fancies. We were to keep our heads if we should keep nothing else — difficult indeed as that might be in the face of what, in our prodigious 2 experience, was least to be questioned. Late that night, while the house slept, we had another talk in my room, when she went all the way with me as to its being beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold her perfectly 3 in the pinch of that, I found I had only to ask her how, if I had “made it up,” I came to be able to give, of each of the persons appearing to me, a picture disclosing, to the last detail, their special marks — a portrait on the exhibition of which she had instantly recognized and named them. She wished of course — small blame to her! — to sink the whole subject; and I was quick to assure her that my own interest in it had now violently taken the form of a search for the way to escape from it. I encountered her on the ground of a probability that with recurrence 4 — for recurrence we took for granted — I should get used to my danger, distinctly professing 5 that my personal exposure had suddenly become the least of my discomforts 6. It was my new suspicion that was intolerable; and yet even to this complication the later hours of the day had brought a little ease.
On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned to my pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with that sense of their charm which I had already found to be a thing I could positively 7 cultivate and which had never failed me yet. I had simply, in other words, plunged 8 afresh into Flora 9’s special society and there become aware — it was almost a luxury! — that she could put her little conscious hand straight upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet speculation 10 and then had accused me to my face of having “cried.” I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I could literally 11 — for the time, at all events — rejoice, under this fathomless 12 charity, that they had not entirely 13 disappeared. To gaze into the depths of blue of the child’s eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature 14 cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure 15 my judgment 16 and, so far as might be, my agitation 17. I couldn’t abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose — as I did there, over and over, in the small hours — that with their voices in the air, their pressure on one’s heart, and their fragrant 18 faces against one’s cheek, everything fell to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty. It was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for all, I had equally to re-enumerate the signs of subtlety 19 that, in the afternoon, by the lake had made a miracle of my show of self-possession. It was a pity to be obliged to reinvestigate the certitude of the moment itself and repeat how it had come to me as a revelation that the inconceivable communion I then surprised was a matter, for either party, of habit. It was a pity that I should have had to quaver out again the reasons for my not having, in my delusion 20, so much as questioned that the little girl saw our visitant even as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much as she did thus see, to make me suppose she didn’t, and at the same time, without showing anything, arrive at a guess as to whether I myself did! It was a pity that I needed once more to describe the portentous 21 little activity by which she sought to divert my attention — the perceptible increase of movement, the greater intensity 22 of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp 23.
Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort that still remained to me. I should not for instance have been able to asseverate 24 to my friend that I was certain — which was so much to the good — that Iat least had not betrayed myself. I should not have been prompted, by stress of need, by desperation of mind — I scarce know what to call it — to invoke 25 such further aid to intelligence as might spring from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. She had told me, bit by bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a bat; and I remember how on this occasion — for the sleeping house and the concentration alike of our danger and our watch seemed to help — I felt the importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. “I don’t believe anything so horrible,” I recollect 26 saying; “no, let us put it definitely, my dear, that I don’t. But if I did, you know, there’s a thing I should require now, just without sparing you the least bit more — oh, not a scrap 27, come! — to get out of you. What was it you had in mind when, in our distress 28, before Miles came back, over the letter from his school, you said, under my insistence 29, that you didn’t pretend for him that he had not literally EVER been ‘bad’? He has NOT literally ‘ever,’ in these weeks that I myself have lived with him and so closely watched him; he has been an imperturbable 30 little prodigy 31 of delightful 32, lovable goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have made the claim for him if you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to take. What was your exception, and to what passage in your personal observation of him did you refer?”
It was a dreadfully austere 33 inquiry 34, but levity 35 was not our note, and, at any rate, before the gray dawn admonished 36 us to separate I had got my answer. What my friend had had in mind proved to be immensely to the purpose. It was neither more nor less than the circumstance that for a period of several months Quint and the boy had been perpetually together. It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she had ventured to criticize the propriety 37, to hint at the incongruity 38, of so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank overture 39 to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, requested her to mind her business, and the good woman had, on this, directly approached little Miles. What she had said to him, since I pressed, was that SHE liked to see young gentlemen not forget their station.
I pressed again, of course, at this. “You reminded him that Quint was only a base menial?”
“As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, that was bad.”
“And for another thing?” I waited. “He repeated your words to Quint?”
“No, not that. It’s just what he WOULDN’T!” she could still impress upon me. “I was sure, at any rate,” she added, “that he didn’t. But he denied certain occasions.”
“What occasions?”
“When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his tutor — and a very grand one — and Miss Jessel only for the little lady. When he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours with him.”
“He then prevaricated 40 about it — he said he hadn’t?” Her assent 41 was clear enough to cause me to add in a moment: “I see. He lied.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Grose mumbled 42. This was a suggestion that it didn’t matter; which indeed she backed up by a further remark. “You see, after all, Miss Jessel didn’t mind. She didn’t forbid him.”
I considered. “Did he put that to you as a justification 43?”
At this she dropped again. “No, he never spoke 44 of it.”
“Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?”
She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. “Well, he didn’t show anything. He denied,” she repeated; “he denied.”
Lord, how I pressed her now! “So that you could see he knew what was between the two wretches 45?”
“I don’t know — I don’t know!” the poor woman groaned 46.
“You do know, you dear thing,” I replied; “only you haven’t my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty 47 and delicacy 48, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable 49. But I shall get it out of you yet! There was something in the boy that suggested to you,” I continued, “that he covered and concealed 50 their relation.”
“Oh, he couldn’t prevent — ”
“Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens,” I fell, with vehemence 51, athinking, “what it shows that they must, to that extent, have succeeded in making of him!”
“Ah, nothing that’s not nice NOW!” Mrs. Grose lugubriously 52 pleaded.
“I don’t wonder you looked queer,” I persisted, “when I mentioned to you the letter from his school!”
“I doubt if I looked as queer as you!” she retorted with homely 53 force. “And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an angel now?”
“Yes, indeed — and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how? Well,” I said in my torment 54, “you must put it to me again, but I shall not be able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me again!” I cried in a way that made my friend stare. “There are directions in which I must not for the present let myself go.” Meanwhile I returned to her first example — the one to which she had just previously 55 referred — of the boy’s happy capacity for an occasional slip. “If Quint — on your remonstrance 56 at the time you speak of — was a base menial, one of the things Miles said to you, I find myself guessing, was that you were another.” Again her admission was so adequate that I continued: “And you forgave him that?”
“Wouldn’t YOU?”
“Oh, yes!” And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the oddest amusement. Then I went on: “At all events, while he was with the man — ”
“Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!”
It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it suited exactly the particularly deadly view I was in the very act of forbidding myself to entertain. But I so far succeeded in checking the expression of this view that I will throw, just here, no further light on it than may be offered by the mention of my final observation to Mrs. Grose. “His having lied and been impudent 57 are, I confess, less engaging specimens 58 than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him of the little natural man. Still,” I mused 59, “They must do, for they make me feel more than ever that I must watch.”
It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend’s face how much more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote 60 struck me as presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came out when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. “Surely you don’t accuse HIM— ”
“Of carrying on an intercourse 61 that he conceals 62 from me? Ah, remember that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody.” Then, before shutting her out to go, by another passage, to her own place, “I must just wait,” I wound up.