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

showed humour, “in fact, you know, I want to be married. It’s⁠—well, it’s the condition.”

“The condition⁠—?” He was just vague.

“It’s the state, I mean. I don’t like my own. ‘Miss,’ among us all, is too dreadful⁠—except for a shopgirl. I don’t want to be a horrible English old-maid.”

“Oh, you want to be taken care of. Very well then, I’ll do it.”

“I dare say it’s very much that. Only I don’t see why, for what I speak of,” she smiled⁠—“for a mere escape from my state⁠—I need do quite so much.”

“So much as marry me in particular?”

Her smile was as for true directness. “I might get what I want for less.”

“You think it so much for you to do?”

“Yes,” she presently said, “I think it’s a great deal.”

Then it was that, though she was so gentle, so quite perfect with him, and he felt he had come on far⁠—then it was that of a sudden something seemed to fail and he didn’t quite know where they were. There rose for him, with this, the fact, to be sure, of their disparity, deny it as mercifully and perversely as she would. He might have been her father. “Of course, yes⁠—that’s my disadvantage: I’m not the natural, I’m so far from being the ideal match to your youth and your beauty. I’ve the drawback that you’ve seen me always, so inevitably, in such another light.”

But she gave a slow headshake that made contradiction soft⁠—made it almost sad, in fact, as from having to be so complete; and he had already, before she spoke, the dim vision of some objection in her mind beside which the one he had named was light, and which therefore must be strangely deep. “You don’t understand me. It’s of all that it is for you to do⁠—it’s of that I’m thinking.”

Oh, with this, for him, the thing was clearer! “Then you needn’t think. I know enough what it is for me to do.”

But she shook her head again. “I doubt if you know. I doubt if you can.”

“And why not, please⁠—when I’ve had you so before me? That I’m old has at least that fact about it to the good⁠—that I’ve known you long and from far back.”

“Do you think you’ve ‘known’ me?” asked Charlotte Stant. He hesitated⁠—for the tone of it, and her look with it might have made him doubt. Just these things in themselves, however, with all the rest, with his fixed purpose now, his committed deed, the fine pink glow, projected forward, of his ships, behind him, definitely blazing and crackling⁠—this quantity was to push him harder than any word of her own could warn him. All that she was herself, moreover, was so lighted, to its advantage, by the pink glow. He wasn’t rabid, but he wasn’t either, as a man of a proper spirit, to be frightened. “What is that then⁠—if I accept it⁠—but as strong a reason as I can want for just learning to know you?”

She faced him always⁠—kept it up as for honesty, and yet at the same time, in her odd way, as for mercy. “How can you tell whether if you did you would?”

It was ambiguous for an instant, as she showed she felt. “I mean when it’s a question of learning, one learns sometimes too late.”

“I think it’s a question,” he promptly enough made answer, “of liking you the more just for your saying these things. You should make something,” he added, “of my liking you.”

“I make everything. But are you sure of having exhausted all other ways?”

This, of a truth, enlarged his gaze. “But what other ways?”

“Why, you’ve more ways of being kind than anyone I ever knew.”

“Take it then,” he answered, “that I’m simply putting them all together for you.” She looked at him, on this, long again⁠—still as if it shouldn’t be said she hadn’t given him time or had withdrawn from his view, so to speak, a single inch of her surface. This at least she was fully to have exposed. It represented her as oddly conscientious, and he scarce knew in what sense it affected him. On the whole, however, with admiration. “You’re very, very honourable.”

“It’s just what I want to be. I don’t see,” she added, “why you’re not right, I don’t see why you’re not happy, as you are. I can not ask myself, I can not ask you,” she went on, “if you’re really as much at liberty as your universal generosity leads you to assume. Oughtn’t we,” she asked, “to think a little of others? Oughtn’t I, at least, in loyalty⁠—at any rate in delicacy⁠—to think of Maggie?” With which, intensely gentle, so as not to appear too much to teach him his duty, she explained. “She’s everything to you⁠—she has always been. Are you so certain that there’s room in your life⁠—?”

“For another daughter?⁠—is that what you mean?” She had not hung upon it long, but he had quickly taken her up.

He had not, however, disconcerted her. “For another young woman⁠—very much of her age, and whose relation to her has always been so different from what our marrying would make it. For another companion,” said Charlotte Stant.

“Can’t a man be, all his life then,” he almost fiercely asked, “anything but a father?” But he went on before she could answer. “You talk about differences, but they’ve been already made⁠—as no one knows better than Maggie. She feels the one she made herself by her own marriage⁠—made, I mean, for me. She constantly thinks of it⁠—it allows her no rest. To put her at peace is therefore,” he explained, “what I’m trying, with you, to do. I can’t do it alone, but I can do it with your help. You can make her,” he said, “positively happy about me.”

“About you?” she thoughtfully echoed. “But what can I make her about herself?”

“Oh, if she’s at ease about me the rest will take care of itself. The case,” he declared, “is in your hands. You’ll effectually put out