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

“Never for an instant,” said Fanny with her head very high.

Maggie took it again, yet again as wanting more. “Pardon my being so horrid. But by all you hold sacred?”

Mrs. Assingham faced her. “Ah, my dear, upon my positive word as an honest woman.”

“Thank you then,” said the Princess.

So they remained a little; after which, “But do you believe it, love?” Fanny inquired.

“I believe you.”

“Well, as I’ve faith in them, it comes to the same thing.”

Maggie, at this last, appeared for a moment to think again; but she embraced the proposition. “The same thing.”

“Then you’re no longer unhappy?” her guest urged, coming more gaily toward her.

“I doubtless shan’t be a great while.”

But it was now Mrs. Assingham’s turn to want more. “I’ve convinced you it’s impossible?”

She had held out her arms, and Maggie, after a moment, meeting her, threw herself into them with a sound that had its oddity as a sign of relief. “Impossible, impossible,” she emphatically, more than emphatically, replied; yet the next minute she had burst into tears over the impossibility, and a few seconds later, pressing, clinging, sobbing, had even caused them to flow, audibly, sympathetically and perversely, from her friend.

The understanding appeared to have come to be that the Colonel and his wife were to present themselves toward the middle of July for the “good long visit” at Fawns on which Maggie had obtained from her father that he should genially insist; as well as that the couple from Eaton Square should welcome there earlier in the month, and less than a week after their own arrival, the advent of the couple from Portland Place. “Oh, we shall give you time to breathe!” Fanny remarked, in reference to the general prospect, with a gaiety that announced itself as heedless of criticism, to each member of the party in turn; sustaining and bracing herself by her emphasis, pushed even to an amiable cynicism, of the confident view of these punctualities of the Assinghams. The ground she could best occupy, to her sense, was that of her being moved, as in this connection she had always been moved, by the admitted grossness of her avidity, the way the hospitality of the Ververs met her convenience and ministered to her ease, destitute as the Colonel had kept her, from the first, of any rustic retreat, any leafy bower of her own, any fixed base for the stale season now at hand. She had explained at home, she had repeatedly reexplained, the terms of her dilemma, the real difficulty of her, or⁠—as she now put it⁠—of their position. When the pair could do nothing else, in Cadogan Place, they could still talk of marvellous little Maggie, and of the charm, the sinister charm, of their having to hold their breath to watch her; a topic the momentous midnight discussion at which we have been present was so far from having exhausted. It came up, irrepressibly, at all private hours; they had planted it there between them, and it grew, from day to day, in a manner to make their sense of responsibility almost yield to their sense of fascination. Mrs. Assingham declared at such moments that in the interest of this admirable young thing⁠—to whom, she also declared, she had quite “come over”⁠—she was ready to pass with all the world else, even with the Prince himself, the object, inconsequently, as well, of her continued, her explicitly shameless appreciation, for a vulgar, indelicate, pestilential woman, showing her true character in an abandoned old age. The Colonel’s confessed attention had been enlisted, we have seen, as never yet, under pressure from his wife, by any guaranteed imbroglio; but this, she could assure him she perfectly knew, was not a bit because he was sorry for her, or touched by what she had let herself in for, but because, when once they had been opened, he couldn’t keep his eyes from resting complacently, resting almost intelligently, on the Princess. If he was in love with her now, however, so much the better; it would help them both not to wince at what they would have to do for her. Mrs. Assingham had come back to that, whenever he groaned or grunted; she had at no beguiled moment⁠—since Maggie’s little march was positively beguiling⁠—let him lose sight of the grim necessity awaiting them. “We shall have, as I’ve again and again told you, to lie for her⁠—to lie till we’re black in the face.”

“To lie ‘for’ her?” The Colonel often, at these hours, as from a vague vision of old chivalry in a new form, wandered into apparent lapses from lucidity.

“To lie to her, up and down, and in and out⁠—it comes to the same thing. It will consist just as much of lying to the others too: to the Prince about one’s belief in him; to Charlotte about one’s belief in her; to Mr. Verver, dear sweet man, about one’s belief in everyone. So we’ve work cut out⁠—with the biggest lie, on top of all, being that we like to be there for such a purpose. We hate it unspeakably⁠—I’m more ready to be a coward before it, to let the whole thing, to let everyone, selfishly and pusillanimously slide, than before any social duty, any felt human call, that has ever forced me to be decent. I speak at least for myself. For you,” she had added, “as I’ve given you so perfect an opportunity to fall in love with Maggie, you’ll doubtless find your account in being so much nearer to her.”

“And what do you make,” the Colonel could, at this, always imperturbably enough ask, “of the account you yourself will find in being so much nearer to the Prince; of your confirmed, if not exasperated, infatuation with whom⁠—to say nothing of my weak good-nature about it⁠—you give such a pretty picture?”

To the picture in question she had been always, in fact, able contemplatively to return. “The difficulty of my enjoyment of that is, don’t you see? that I’m making,