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

With which she produced, as it were, her explanation. “I’ve simply to see the truth of the matter⁠—see that Maggie thinks more, on the whole, of fathers than of husbands. And my situation is such,” she went on, “that this becomes immediately, don’t you understand? a thing I have to count with.”

Mrs. Assingham, vaguely heaving, panting a little but trying not to show it, turned about, from some inward spring, in her seat. “If you mean such a thing as that she doesn’t adore the Prince⁠—!”

“I don’t say she doesn’t adore him. What I say is that she doesn’t think of him. One of those conditions doesn’t always, at all stages, involve the other. This is just how she adores him,” Charlotte said. “And what reason is there, in the world, after all, why he and I shouldn’t, as you say, show together? We’ve shown together, my dear,” she smiled, “before.”

Her friend, for a little, only looked at her⁠—speaking then with abruptness. “You ought to be absolutely happy. You live with such good people.”

The effect of it, as well, was an arrest for Charlotte; whose face, however, all of whose fine and slightly hard radiance, it had caused, the next instant, further to brighten. “Does one ever put into words anything so fatuously rash? It’s a thing that must be said, in prudence, for one⁠—by somebody who’s so good as to take the responsibility: the more that it gives one always a chance to show one’s best manners by not contradicting it. Certainly, you’ll never have the distress, or whatever, of hearing me complain.”

“Truly, my dear, I hope in all conscience not!” and the elder woman’s spirit found relief in a laugh more resonant than was quite advised by their pursuit of privacy.

To this demonstration her friend gave no heed. “With all our absence after marriage, and with the separation from her produced in particular by our so many months in America, Maggie has still arrears, still losses to make up⁠—still the need of showing how, for so long, she simply kept missing him. She missed his company⁠—a large allowance of which is, in spite of everything else, of the first necessity to her. So she puts it in when she can⁠—a little here, a little there, and it ends by making up a considerable amount. The fact of our distinct establishments⁠—which has, all the same, everything in its favour,” Charlotte hastened to declare, “makes her really see more of him than when they had the same house. To make sure she doesn’t fail of it she’s always arranging for it⁠—which she didn’t have to do while they lived together. But she likes to arrange,” Charlotte steadily proceeded; “it peculiarly suits her; and the result of our separate households is really, for them, more contact and more intimacy. Tonight, for instance, has been practically an arrangement. She likes him best alone. And it’s the way,” said our young woman, “in which he best likes her. It’s what I mean therefore by being ‘placed.’ And the great thing is, as they say, to ‘know’ one’s place. Doesn’t it all strike you,” she wound up, “as rather placing the Prince too?”

Fanny Assingham had at this moment the sense as of a large heaped dish presented to her intelligence and inviting it to a feast⁠—so thick were the notes of intention in this remarkable speech. But she also felt that to plunge at random, to help herself too freely, would⁠—apart from there not being at such a moment time for it⁠—tend to jostle the ministering hand, confound the array and, more vulgarly speaking, make a mess. So she picked out, after consideration, a solitary plum. “So placed that you have to arrange?”

“Certainly I have to arrange.”

“And the Prince also⁠—if the effect for him is the same?”

“Really, I think, not less.”

“And does he arrange,” Mrs. Assingham asked, “to make up his arrears?” The question had risen to her lips⁠—it was as if another morsel, on the dish, had tempted her. The sound of it struck her own ear, immediately, as giving out more of her thought than she had as yet intended; but she quickly saw that she must follow it up, at any risk, with simplicity, and that what was simplest was the ease of boldness. “Make them up, I mean, by coming to see you?”

Charlotte replied, however, without, as her friend would have phrased it, turning a hair. She shook her head, but it was beautifully gentle. “He never comes.”

“Oh!” said Fanny Assingham: with which she felt a little stupid. “There it is. He might so well, you know, otherwise.”

“ ‘Otherwise’?”⁠—and Fanny was still vague.

It passed, this time, over her companion, whose eyes, wandering, to a distance, found themselves held. The Prince was at hand again; the Ambassador was still at his side; they were stopped a moment by a uniformed personage, a little old man, of apparently the highest military character, bristling with medals and orders. This gave Charlotte time to go on. “He has not been for three months.” And then as with her friend’s last word in her ear: “ ‘Otherwise’⁠—yes. He arranges otherwise. And in my position,” she added, “I might too. It’s too absurd we shouldn’t meet.”

“You’ve met, I gather,” said Fanny Assingham, “tonight.”

“Yes⁠—as far as that goes. But what I mean is that I might⁠—placed for it as we both are⁠—go to see him.”

“And do you?” Fanny asked with almost mistaken solemnity.

The perception of this excess made Charlotte, whether for gravity or for irony, hang fire a minute. “I have been. But that’s nothing,” she said, “in itself, and I tell you of it only to show you how our situation works. It essentially becomes one, a situation, for both of us. The Prince’s, however, is his own affair⁠—I meant but to speak of mine.”

“Your situation’s perfect,” Mrs. Assingham presently declared.

“I don’t say it isn’t. Taken, in fact, all round, I think it is. And I don’t, as I tell you, complain of it. The only thing is that I have