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

been time enough for that if they had seemed to be near you. But they haven’t⁠—if that’s what you want to know.”

“You’ve only believed me contented then because you’ve believed me stupid?”

Mrs. Assingham had a free smile, now, for the length of this stride, dissimulated though it might be in a graceful little frisk. “If I had believed you stupid I shouldn’t have thought you interesting, and if I hadn’t thought you interesting I shouldn’t have noted whether I ‘knew’ you, as I’ve called it, or not. What I’ve always been conscious of is your having concealed about you somewhere no small amount of character; quite as much in fact,” Fanny smiled, “as one could suppose a person of your size able to carry. The only thing was,” she explained, “that thanks to your never calling one’s attention to it, I hadn’t made out much more about it, and should have been vague, above all, as to where you carried it or kept it. Somewhere under, I should simply have said⁠—like that little silver cross you once showed me, blest by the Holy Father, that you always wear, out of sight, next your skin. That relic I’ve had a glimpse of”⁠—with which she continued to invoke the privilege of humour. “But the precious little innermost, say this time little golden, personal nature of you⁠—blest by a greater power, I think, even than the Pope⁠—that you’ve never consentingly shown me. I’m not sure you’ve ever consentingly shown it to anyone. You’ve been in general too modest.”

Maggie, trying to follow, almost achieved a little fold of her forehead. “I strike you as modest today⁠—modest when I stand here and scream at you?”

“Oh, your screaming, I’ve granted you, is something new. I must fit it on somewhere. The question is, however,” Mrs. Assingham further proceeded, “of what the deuce I can fit it on to. Do you mean,” she asked, “to the fact of our friends’ being, from yesterday to tomorrow, at a place where they may more or less irresponsibly meet?” She spoke with the air of putting it as badly for them as possible. “Are you thinking of their being there alone⁠—of their having consented to be?” And then as she had waited without result for her companion to say: “But isn’t it true that⁠—after you had this time again, at the eleventh hour, said you wouldn’t⁠—they would really much rather not have gone?”

“Yes⁠—they would certainly much rather not have gone. But I wanted them to go.”

“Then, my dear child, what in the world is the matter?”

“I wanted to see if they would. And they’ve had to,” Maggie added. “It was the only thing.”

Her friend appeared to wonder. “From the moment you and your father backed out?”

“Oh, I don’t mean go for those people; I mean go for us. For father and me,” Maggie went on. “Because now they know.”

“They ‘know’?” Fanny Assingham quavered.

“That I’ve been for some time past taking more notice. Notice of the queer things in our life.”

Maggie saw her companion for an instant on the point of asking her what these queer things might be; but Mrs. Assingham had the next minute brushed by that ambiguous opening and taken, as she evidently felt, a better one. “And is it for that you did it? I mean gave up the visit.”

“It’s for that I did it. To leave them to themselves⁠—as they less and less want, or at any rate less and less venture to appear to want, to be left. As they had for so long arranged things,” the Princess went on, “you see they sometimes have to be.” And then, as if baffled by the lucidity of this, Mrs. Assingham for a little said nothing: “Now do you think I’m modest?”

With time, however; Fanny could brilliantly think anything that would serve. “I think you’re wrong. That, my dear, is my answer to your question. It demands assuredly the straightest I can make. I see no ‘awfulness’⁠—I suspect none. I’m deeply distressed,” she added, “that you should do anything else.” It drew again from Maggie a long look. “You’ve never even imagined anything?”

“Ah, God forbid!⁠—for it’s exactly as a woman of imagination that I speak. There’s no moment of my life at which I’m not imagining something; and it’s thanks to that, darling,” Mrs. Assingham pursued, “that I figure the sincerity with which your husband, whom you see as viciously occupied with your stepmother, is interested, is tenderly interested, in his admirable, adorable wife.” She paused a minute as to give her friend the full benefit of this⁠—as to Maggie’s measure of which, however, no sign came; and then, poor woman, haplessly, she crowned her effort.⁠—“He wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head.”

It had produced in Maggie, at once, and apparently in the intended form of a smile, the most extraordinary expression. “Ah, there it is!”

But her guest had already gone on. “And I’m absolutely certain that Charlotte wouldn’t either.”

It kept the Princess, with her strange grimace, standing there. “No⁠—Charlotte wouldn’t either. That’s how they’ve had again to go off together. They’ve been afraid not to⁠—lest it should disturb me, aggravate me, somehow work upon me. As I insisted that they must, that we couldn’t all fail⁠—though father and Charlotte hadn’t really accepted; as I did this they had to yield to the fear that their showing as afraid to move together would count for them as the greater danger: which would be the danger, you see, of my feeling myself wronged. Their least danger, they know, is in going on with all the things that I’ve seemed to accept and that I’ve given no indication, at any moment, of not accepting. Everything that has come up for them has come up, in an extraordinary manner, without my having by a sound or a sign given myself away⁠—so that it’s all as wonderful as you may conceive. They move at any rate among the dangers I speak of⁠—between that of their doing too much and that of their not having any longer