Wings of the Dove (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (75 page)

“It’s very good of you, my dear,” she nervously laughed, “to put me so thoroughly up to it!”

“I put you up to nothing. I didn’t even put you up to the chance that, as I said a few moments ago, I saw for you in forwarding that thing. Your liberty is therefore in every way complete.”

It had come to the point really that they showed each other pale faces, and that all the unspoken between them looked out of their eyes in a dim terror of their further conflict. Something even rose between them in one of their short silences- something that was like an appeal from each to the other not to be too true. Their necessity was somehow before them, but which of them must meet it first? “Thank you!” Kate said for his word about her freedom, but taking for the minute no further action on it. It was blest at least that all ironies failed them, and during another slow moment their very sense of it cleared the air.

There was an effect of this in the way he soon went on. “You must intensely feel that it’s the thing for which we worked together.”

She took up the remark, however, no more than if it were commonplace ; she was already again occupied with a point of her own. “Is it absolutely true—for if it is, you know, it’s tremendously interesting- that you haven’t so much as a curiosity about what she has done for you?”

“Would you like,” he asked, “my formal oath on it?”

“No—but I don’t understand. It seems to me in your place—!”

“Ah,” he couldn’t help breaking in, “what do you know of my place? Pardon me,” he at once added; “my preference is the one I express.

She had in an instant nevertheless a curious thought. “But won’t the facts be published.”

“‘Published’?”—he winced

“I mean won’t you see them in the papers?”

“Ah never! I shall know how to escape that.”

It seemed to settle the subject, but she had the next minute another insistence. “Your desire is to escape everything?”

“Everything.”

“And do you need no more definite sense of what it is you ask me to help you to renounce?”

“My sense is sufficient without being definite. I’m willing to believe that the amount of money’s not small.”

“Ah there you are!” she exclaimed.

“If she was to leave me a remembrance,” he quietly pursued, “it would inevitably not be meagre.”

Kate waited as for how to say it. “It’s worthy of her. It’s what she was herself—if you remember what we once said
that
was.”

He hesitated-as if there had been many things. But he remembered one of them. “Stupendous?”

“Stupendous.” A faint smile for it—ever so small—had flickered in her face, but had vanished before the omen of tears, a little less uncertain, had shown themselves in his own. His eyes filled—but that made her continue. She continued gently. “I think that what it really is must be that you’re afraid. I mean,” she explained, “that you’re afraid of
all
the truth. If you’re in love with her without it, what indeed can you be more? And you’re afraid—it’s wonderful! —to be in love with her.”

“I never was in love with her,” said Densher.

She took it, but after a little she met it. “I believe that now—for the time she lived. I believe it at least for the time you were there. But your change came—as it might well—the day you last saw her; she died for you then that you might understand her. From that hour you did.” With which Kate slowly rose. “And I do now. She did it
for us.”
Densher rose to face her, and she went on with her thought. “I used to call her, in my stupidity—for want of anything better—a dove. Well she stretched out her wings, and it was to
that
they reached. They cover us.”

“They cover us,” Densher said.

“That’s what I give you,” Kate gravely wound up. “That’s what I’ve done for you.”

His look at her had a slow strangeness that had dried on the moment, his tears. “Do I understand then—?”

“That I do consent?” She gravely shook her head. “No—for I see. You’ll marry me without the money; you won’t marry me with it. If I don’t consent
you
don’t.”

“You lose me?” He showed, though naming it frankly, a sort of awe of her high grasp. “Well, you lose nothing else. I make over to you every penny.”

Prompt was his own clearness, but she had no smile this time to spare. “Precisely—so that I must choose.”

“You must choose.”

Strange it was for him then that she stood in his own rooms doing it, while, with an intensity now beyond any that had ever made his breath come slow, he waited for her act. “There’s but one thing that can save you from my choice.”

“From your choice of my surrender to you?”

“Yes”—and she gave a nod at the long envelope on the table—“your surrender of that.”

“What is it then?”

“Your word of honour that you’re not in love with her memory.”

“Oh—her memory!”

“Ah”—she made a high gesture—“don’t speak of it as if you couldn’t be. I could in your place; and you’re one for whom it will do. Her memory’s your love. You want no other.”

He heard her out in stillness, watching her face but not moving. Then he only said: “I’ll marry you, mind you, in an hour.”

“As we were?”

“As we were. ”

But she turned to the door, and her headshake was now the end. “We shall never be again as we were!”

THE END

1
(p. 3)
Long had I turned it over ... seeing the theme as formidable:
Henry James is writing the preface in 1909, years after he first sketched out his ideas for the story in his notebooks (1894), and after the actual writing of the novel (1901-1902). In
The Ambassadors,
he worked from a lengthy and very detailed outline that he had submitted to his publishers; this outline survives, and is now in the Widener Library at Harvard University. James prepared a similar but shorter and less detailed outline for
Wings
at some point and submitted it to his publishers, but it has been lost.

2
(p. 4)
the poet essentially can’t be concerned with the act of dying.... it is still by the act of living that [the sick] appeal to him, and appeal the more as the conditions plot against them and prescribe the battle:
This is as clear a statement as one finds in the novel summing up James’s negative attitude toward the death scene of the nineteenth-century novelistic tradition. Characters in James’s novels are not depicted on a death bed, surrounded by mourning relatives and gasping out final words. Death is more of a disappearance. Characters die offstage and out of sight, and the focus is on the impact of the death on the living.

3
(p. 13)
There is no economy of treatment without an adopted, a related point of view:
James’s conception of the well-made novel stressed the importance of the point of view from which the story is told or narrated, an idea that has been influential in modern literary criticism. See R. P. Blackmur, “Introduction,” in James’s
The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces,
pp. vii-xxxix (see “For Further Reading”).

4
(p. 33)
He put the question with a charming air of sudden spiritual heat.... “what’s called in the business world, I believe, an ‘asset’
”: James seems to have originally projected a larger role for Lionel Croy in the story, but Croy disappears after book first. Croy’s comments on the business world, as well as subsequent references by Lord Mark, display a hostility to all things commercial that was probably close to what James himself felt. James never had much direct experience with or knowledge of industry and commerce, but he was keenly aware of the business details of publishing. He did not like the tendencies that were evident even in his own time for publishers to push the popular “blockbuster” over serious fiction. Some of these issues are explored in James’s short story “The Figure in the Carpet” (1896); see Peter Rawlings, ed.,
Henry james’ Shorter Masterpieces,
vol. 2, pp. 46-88.

5
(p. 53)
the present winter’s end:
James does not tell us exactly when the novel takes place. We infer that it is set at the end of the Victorian era—around the turn of the century. The 1997 lain Softley movie version of
The Wings of the Dove
assigns a later date (1910), perhaps to bring the setting closer to World War I and heighten the sense of foreboding that hovers over the action.

6
(p. 55)
all the high dim things she lumped together as of the mind:
James does not tell us in detail what education Kate Croy has received. We learn that she has attended schools on the Continent and has become attracted to all things foreign. In post-Victorian England, women were not yet “in business” or in “the professions.” While young Victorian women of any social standing usually received enough education to become governesses if they were not able to marry, the general intent was to have one’s daughters exposed to art, music, and modern languages with a view to finding a desirable partner in marriage. Kate Croy felt shortchanged in the life of the mind and was attracted to Densher in part because he filled this need. His eclectic knowledge, along with his schooling on the continent, impressed her deeply.

7
(p. 72)
he asked himself what was to be expected of a person who could treat one like that:
This passage and the several long paragraphs that follow are good examples of how James enters into the minds of his protagonists and reveals to us what they are thinking. Nothing much is actually happening here. Densher is waiting and is pacing the room. But his mind wanders as he ponders his situation. James summarizes and paraphrases Densher’s thoughts, a literary device that critics refer to as “the first person attached” point of view. James does this more with Densher, who is a reflective and intellectual type, and with Milly Theale, whose consciousness is more important to us than her frail body, than he does with Kate Croy. We get to know Kate more by what she says and does or by a look or gesture, a shake of the head, than by James telling us what she is thinking. Kate is a less cerebral and a more forceful person than Densher, so the device of exploring her thoughts is less necessary.

8
(p. 100)
we shall really ourselves scarce otherwise come closer to her than by feeling their impression and sharing, if need be, their confusion
: James’s use of this expression and his reference a few sentences later to “our young woman” illustrate the way in which he departs occasionally from the use of the unseen omniscient author and appears to inject himself into the narrative. He “shares” the confusion of the characters and “feels” their impressions.

9
(p. 105)
I hasten to add:
Although James’s narrator uses the personal pronoun “I” here, he never becomes an actual character in the story. Joseph Conrad in his short story
The Nigger of the “Narcissus”
(1897) employs a similar device. The omniscient narrator knows all; he is, in fact, on board the
Narcissus
when it capsizes. But the narrator never actually appears in the story. His apparently invisible presence on-board becomes known to us only when he tells us at the end of the story that he was so frightened he will never again go to sea.

10
(p. 138) of
Thackerayan character:
Kate presumably reminds Mrs. Stringham a little of Becky Sharp, the captivating but unscrupulous heroine of William Makepeace Thackeray’s
Vanity Fair
(1848).

11
(p. 150)
but it was clear Mrs. Condrip was ... in quite another geography:
This is a good illustration of Milly’s increasing sophistication and awareness of the complexities she is encountering in London. Book fourth in its entirety is an example of the growth of Milly’s consciousness. She understands that she is in a “labyrinth,” that she teeters on the edge of an “abyss.” She revels in it, however, even though she is frightened, because this is what she understands as being more fully aware and more truly alive. She is not interested in tourism but in people and in the complexity of social circumstance.

12
(p. 169)
“but mine’s several shades greener”:
This scene is one of a number of memorable passages in the very rich and complex fifth book. Milly is here trying to make light of the emotional experience she has just undergone in viewing the Bronzino portrait that resembles her. She has had intimations of mortality; she feels that she will be, like the lady in the portrait, “dead, dead, dead.” Critics and literary scholars have seen Milly’s reaction as a critical turning point, a sign that she can no longer keep up a brave front.

13
(p. 177)
“I shan’t trouble you again”:
Milly makes a critical decision here. She adores Kate, values her friendship, and enjoys her company. But she is bothered by the fact that Kate has avoided mentioning Densher, which, to Milly, seems to suggest a degree of dissembling on Kate’s part. So Milly decides to set some limits on her friendship with Kate, not to trust her fully. This small choice propels Milly toward the isolation she will ultimately face in her struggle with her illness. Only Susan Stringham and hired servants will be with her in the end.

14
(p. 185)
“you ought of course ... to get out of London”:
Why does Sir Luke advise Milly to get out of London? Is it merely because London is hot and uncomfortable in August? Sir Luke is perhaps too subtle for that. Presumably he feels Milly’s privacy might be jeopardized if word got around London that she was seeing him. She could feel freer somewhere else. Besides, he might have felt she had already “done” London and might want to experience something new.

15
(p. 192)
Gibbon and Froude and Saint-Simon: Edward Gibbon
(1737-1794) wrote
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
; James Froude (1818-1894) was a historian and disciple of Carlyle; Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) was a French social reformer and founder of “positivist” philosophy.