The Turn of the Screw | Page 7

my own scant home, and there immediately appeared at the door,
with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who dropped me as decent a
curtsy as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished visitor. I had
received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the place, and that, as I
recalled it, made me think the proprietor still more of a gentleman,
suggested that what I was to enjoy might be something beyond his

promise.
I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly
through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my
pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on
the spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have to
do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I
afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her. I
slept little that night--I was too much excited; and this astonished me,
too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense of the liberality
with which I was treated. The large, impressive room, one of the best in
the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the full, figured
draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time, I could see
myself from head to foot, all struck me--like the extraordinary charm of
my small charge--as so many things thrown in. It was thrown in as well,
from the first moment, that I should get on with Mrs. Grose in a
relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather
brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook might have
made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being so glad
to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so glad--stout,
simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman-- as to be positively on her
guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little why
she should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with suspicion,
might of course have made me uneasy.
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 recognized, 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 feel 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