The Turn of the Screw quotes

He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he saw what he spoke of. “

For general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain.

”

I could write to my man and enclose the key; he could send down the packet as he finds it.” It was to me in particular that he appeared to propound this—appeared almost to appeal for aid not to hesitate.

He had broken a thickness of ice, the formation of many a winter; had had his reasons for a long silence.

The others resented postponement, but it was just his scruples that charmed me. 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.

No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship.

Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!

It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness—that hush in which something gathers or crouches.

The change was actually like the spring of a beast.

In the first weeks the days were long;

I daresay I fancied myself, in short, a remarkable young woman and took comfort in the faith that this would more publicly appear.

Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a front to the remarkable things that presently gave their first sign.

It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: the children were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll.

It was as if, while I took in—what I did take in—all the rest of the scene had been stricken with death.

I can hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the sounds of evening dropped.

The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there was no other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I saw with a stranger sharpness.

It was as if, while I took in—what I did take in—all the rest of the scene had been stricken with death. I can hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the sounds of evening dropped.

The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice.

But there was no other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I saw with a stranger sharpness.

The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there was no other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I saw with a stranger sharpness.

The gold was still in the sky, the clearness in the air, and the man who looked at me over the battlements was as definite as a picture in a frame.

That’s how I thought, with extraordinary quickness, of each person that he might have been and that he was not.

I had not suspected in advance that her comfortable face would pull me up, and I somehow measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus finding myself hesitate to mention it.

Scarce anything in the whole history seems to me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one, as I may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion.

On the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldn’t then have phrased, achieved an inward resolution—offered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea of the beauty of the night and …

There was to be no gray prose, it appeared, and no long grind; so how could work not be charming that presented itself as daily beauty?

It was all the romance of the nursery and the poetry of the schoolroom.

I don’t mean by this, of course, that we studied only fiction and verse; I mean I can express no otherwise the sort of interest my companions inspired.

I found nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. He never spoke of his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part, was quite too much disgusted to allude to them.

Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was.

But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days of disturbing letters from home, where things were not going well.

He had never for a second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really been chastised. If he had been wicked he would have “caught” it, and I should have caught it by the rebound—I should have found the trace.

I found nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel.

He never spoke of his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part, was quite too much disgusted to allude to them.

On the spot there came to me the added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there.

He had come for someone else.

The flash of this knowledge—for it was knowledge in the midst of dread—produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started as I stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage because I was beyond all doubt already far gone.

I remained where I was, and while I waited I thought of more things than one. But there’s only one I take space to mention.

I wondered why she should be scared.

“

I’ve been dying to tell you. But he’s like nobody.

”

“

In somebody’s clothes. They’re smart, but they’re not his own.

”

She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter the wonder of it. “

Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.

”

I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of one’s own committed heart.

We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger.

They had nothing but me, and I—well, I had them. It was in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented itself to me in an image richly material. I was a screen—I was to stand before them. The more I saw, the less they would.

That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude as I was conscious—still even without looking—of its having upon the character and attitude of our visitor.

Nothing was more natural than that these things should be the other things that they absolutely were not.

Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself as soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the right second;

There is a naive side, I suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils practiced upon me, it was surely with the minimum of grossness. It was all in the other quarter that, after a lull, the grossness broke out.

I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge.

In going on with the record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only challenge the most liberal faith—for which I little care; but—and this is another matter—I renew what I myself suffered, I again push my way through it to the end.

In going on with the record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only challenge the most liberal faith—for which I little care; but—and this is another matter—I renew what I myself suffered, I again push my way through it to the end.

There came suddenly an hour after which, as I look back, the affair seems to me to have been all pure suffering; but I have at least reached the heart of it, and the straightest road out is doubtless to advance.

One evening—with nothing to lead up or to prepare it—I felt the cold touch of the impression that had breathed on me the night of my arrival and which, much lighter then, as I have mentioned, I should probably have made little of in memory …

But that was not the wonder of wonders; I reserve this distinction for quite another circumstance: the circumstance that dread had unmistakably quitted me and that there was nothing in me there that didn’t meet and measure him.

I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but I had, thank God, no terror.

And he knew I had not—I found myself at the end of an instant magnificently aware of this.

and during the minute, accordingly, the thing was as human and hideous as a real interview: hideous just because it was human, as human as to have met alone, in the small hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy, some adventurer, some criminal.

It was the dead silence of our long gaze at such close quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only note of the unnatural.

If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such an hour, we still at least would have spoken. Something would have passed, in life, between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved.

It was the dead silence of our long gaze at such close quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only note of the unnatural.

If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such an hour, we still at least would have spoken.

Something would have passed, in life, between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved. The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little more to make me doubt if even I were in life.

It would tax his invention, certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a curious thrill of triumph.

It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable!

He couldn’t play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this question an equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce I should.

“

At midnight. When I’m bad I am bad!

”

There was many a corner round which I expected to come upon Quint, and many a situation that, in a merely sinister way, would have favored the appearance of Miss Jessel.

The summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out half our lights.

The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance—all strewn with crumpled playbills.

There appears to me, moreover, as I look back, no note in all this more extraordinary than the mere fact that, in spite of my tension and of their triumph, I never lost patience with them.

Adorable they must in truth have been, I now reflect, that I didn’t in these days hate them!

Would exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived.

Adorable they must in truth have been, I now reflect, that I didn’t in these days hate them! Would exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived.

I call it relief, though it was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation.

It was at least change, and it came with a rush.

Something or other had brought nearer home to me that I had all but pinned the boy to my shawl and that, in the way our companions were marshaled before me, I might have appeared to provide against some danger of rebellion.

I was like a gaoler with an eye to possible surprises and escapes.

But all this belonged—I mean their magnificent little surrender—just to the special array of the facts that were most abysmal.

I remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see in the beautiful face with which he watched me how ugly and queer I looked. “And always with the same lady?” I returned.

He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out between us.

“Ah, of course, she’s a jolly, ‘perfect’ lady; but, after all, I’m a fellow, don’t you see? that’s—well, getting on.”

to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of what such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty.

Say that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of all evil had been opened up to him: all the justice within me ached for the proof that it could ever have flowered into an act.

He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if I shouldn’t like him, for half an hour, to play to me.

“

She’s not alone, and at such times she’s not a child: she’s an old, old woman.

” I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose took again, into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of submission;

Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof.

She was there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither cruel nor mad.

She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there most for Flora;

I suppose I now read into our situation a clearness it couldn’t have had at the time, for I seem to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision of the anguish that was to come.

So we circled about, with terrors and scruples, like fighters not daring to close.

But it was for each other we feared! That kept us a little longer suspended and unbruised. “I’ll tell you everything,” Miles said—“I mean I’ll tell you anything you like.

So we circled about, with terrors and scruples, like fighters not daring to close.

But it was for each other we feared!

That kept us a little longer suspended and unbruised. “I’ll tell you everything,” Miles said—“I mean I’ll tell you anything you like. You’ll stay on with me, and we shall both be all right, and I will tell you—I will. But not now.”

I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt proportionately ashamed.

But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my truth.

I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. “Well, then, go to Luke, and I’ll wait for what you promise. Only, in return for that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller request.”

The inspiration—I can call it by no other name—was that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I might.

It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul

, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human soul—held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm’s length—had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead.

The appearance was full upon us that I had already had to deal with here:

Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison.

The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his white face of damnation.