The Turn of the Screw | Page 4

I adjured him to write by the first post and to agree
with us for an early hearing; then I asked him if the experience in
question had been his own. To this his answer was prompt. "Oh, thank
God, no!"
"And is the record yours? You took the thing down?"
"Nothing but the impression. I took that HERE"--he tapped his heart.
"I've never lost it."
"Then your manuscript--?"
"Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand." He hung fire
again. "A woman's. She has been dead these twenty years. She sent me
the pages in question before she died." They were all listening now, and
of course there was somebody to be arch, or at any rate to draw the
inference. But if he put the inference by without a smile it was also
without irritation. "She was a most charming person, but she was ten
years older than I. She was my sister's governess," he quietly said. "She
was the most agreeable woman I've ever known in her position; she
would have been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, and this
episode was long before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at home on
my coming down the second summer. I was much there that year--it
was a beautiful one; and we had, in her off-hours, some strolls and talks
in the garden-- talks in which she struck me as awfully clever and nice.
Oh yes; don't grin: I liked her extremely and am glad to this day to
think she liked me, too. If she hadn't she wouldn't have told me. She
had never told anyone. It wasn't simply that she said so, but that I knew
she hadn't. I was sure; I could see. You'll easily judge why when you
hear."
"Because the thing had been such a scare?"
He continued to fix me. "You'll easily judge," he repeated: "YOU will."
I fixed him, too. "I see. She was in love."
He laughed for the first time. "You ARE acute. Yes, she was in love.

That is, she had been. That came out-- she couldn't tell her story
without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of us
spoke of it. I remember the time and the place--the corner of the lawn,
the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot summer afternoon. It
wasn't a scene for a shudder; but oh--!" He quitted the fire and dropped
back into his chair.
"You'll receive the packet Thursday morning?" I inquired.
"Probably not till the second post."
"Well then; after dinner--"
"You'll all meet me here?" He looked us round again. "Isn't anybody
going?" It was almost the tone of hope.
"Everybody will stay!"
"I will" --and "I will!" cried the ladies whose departure had been fixed.
Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more light. "Who
was it she was in love with?"
"The story will tell," I took upon myself to reply.
"Oh, I can't wait for the story!"
"The story WON'T tell," said Douglas; "not in any literal, vulgar way."
"More's the pity, then. That's the only way I ever understand."
"Won't YOU tell, Douglas?" somebody else inquired.
He sprang to his feet again. "Yes--tomorrow. Now I must go to bed.
Good night." And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us slightly
bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his step on
the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. "Well, if I don't know who she
was in love with, I know who HE was."
"She was ten years older," said her husband.
"Raison de plus--at that age! But it's rather nice, his long reticence."
"Forty years!" Griffin put in.
"With this outbreak at last."
"The outbreak," I returned, "will make a tremendous occasion of
Thursday night;" and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of it,
we lost all attention for everything else. The last story, however
incomplete and like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we
handshook and "candlestuck," as somebody said, and went to bed.
I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first post,
gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of--or perhaps just on
account of--the eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite let him

alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in fact, as might
best accord with the kind of emotion on which our hopes were fixed.
Then he became as communicative as we could desire and indeed gave
us his best reason for being so. We had it from him again before the fire
in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of the previous night. It
appeared