The Golden Bowl by Henry James (free ebook reader for android TXT) 📕

had been expecting. She had been watching it come, come from afar, and now that it was there, after all, and the first convulsion over, they would doubtless soon find themselves in a more real relation. It was there because of the Sunday luncheon they had partaken of alone together; it was there, as strangely as one would, because of the bad weather, the cold perverse June rain, that was making the day wrong; it was there because it stood for the whole sum of the perplexities and duplicities among which our young woman felt herself lately to have picked her steps; it was there because Amerigo and Charlotte were again paying together alone a “week end” visit which it had been Maggie’s plan infernally to promote⁠—just to see if, this time, they really would; it was there because she had kept Fanny, on her side, from paying one she would manifestly have been glad to pay, and had made her come instead, stupidly, vacantly, boringly, to luncheon: all in the spirit of celebrating the fact that the Prince and Mrs. Verver had thus put it into her own power to describe them exactly as they were. It had abruptly occurred, in truth, that Maggie required the preliminary help of determining how they were; though, on the other hand, before her guest had answered her question everything in the hour and the place, everything in all the conditions, affected her as crying it out. Her guest’s stare of ignorance, above all⁠—that of itself at first cried it out. “ ‘Between them?’ What do you mean?”

“Anything there shouldn’t be, there shouldn’t have been⁠—all this time. Do you believe there is⁠—or what’s your idea?”

Fanny’s idea was clearly, to begin with, that her young friend had taken her breath away; but she looked at her very straight and very hard. “Do you speak from a suspicion of your own?”

“I speak, at last, from a torment. Forgive me if it comes out. I’ve been thinking for months and months, and I’ve no one to turn to, no one to help me to make things out; no impression but my own, don’t you see? to go by.”

“You’ve been thinking for months and months?” Mrs. Assingham took it in. “But what then, dear Maggie, have you been thinking?”

“Well, horrible things⁠—like a little beast that I perhaps am. That there may be something⁠—something wrong and dreadful, something they cover up.”

The elder woman’s colour had begun to come back; she was able, though with a visible effort, to face the question less amazedly. “You imagine, poor child, that the wretches are in love? Is that it?”

But Maggie for a minute only stared back at her. “Help me to find out what I imagine. I don’t know⁠—I’ve nothing but my perpetual anxiety. Have you any?⁠—do you see what I mean? If you’ll tell me truly, that at least, one way or the other, will do something for me.”

Fanny’s look had taken a peculiar gravity⁠—a fullness with which it seemed to shine. “Is what it comes to that you’re jealous of Charlotte?”

“Do you mean whether I hate her?”⁠—and Maggie thought. “No; not on account of father.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Assingham returned, “that isn’t what one would suppose. What I ask is if you’re jealous on account of your husband.”

“Well,” said Maggie presently, “perhaps that may be all. If I’m unhappy I’m jealous; it must come to the same thing; and with you, at least, I’m not afraid of the word. If I’m jealous, don’t you see? I’m tormented,” she went on⁠—“and all the more if I’m helpless. And if I’m both helpless and tormented I stuff my pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, I keep it there, for the most part, night and day, so as not to be heard too indecently moaning. Only now, with you, at last, I can’t keep it longer; I’ve pulled it out, and here I am fairly screaming at you. They’re away,” she wound up, “so they can’t hear; and I’m, by a miracle of arrangement, not at luncheon with father at home. I live in the midst of miracles of arrangement, half of which I admit, are my own; I go about on tiptoe, I watch for every sound, I feel every breath, and yet I try all the while to seem as smooth as old satin dyed rose-colour. Have you ever thought of me,” she asked, “as really feeling as I do?”

Her companion, conspicuously, required to be clear. “Jealous, unhappy, tormented⁠—? No,” said Mrs. Assingham; “but at the same time⁠—and though you may laugh at me for it!⁠—I’m bound to confess that I’ve never been so awfully sure of what I may call knowing you. Here you are indeed, as you say⁠—such a deep little person! I’ve never imagined your existence poisoned, and, since you wish to know if I consider that it need be, I’ve not the least difficulty in speaking on the spot. Nothing, decidedly, strikes me as more unnecessary.”

For a minute after this they remained face to face; Maggie had sprung up while her friend sat enthroned, and, after moving to and fro in her intensity, now paused to receive the light she had invoked. It had accumulated, considerably, by this time, round Mrs. Assingham’s ample presence, and it made, even to our young woman’s own sense, a medium in which she could at last take a deeper breath. “I’ve affected you, these months⁠—and these last weeks in especial⁠—as quiet and natural and easy?”

But it was a question that took, not imperceptibly, some answering. “You’ve never affected me, from the first hour I beheld you, as anything but⁠—in a way all your own⁠—absolutely good and sweet and beautiful. In a way, as I say,” Mrs. Assingham almost caressingly repeated, “just all your very own⁠—nobody else’s at all. I’ve never thought of you but as outside of ugly things, so ignorant of any falsity or cruelty or vulgarity as never to have to be touched by them or to touch them. I’ve never mixed you up with them; there would have