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

May have done,” Fanny Assingham continued, “God knows what!” She went on, suddenly, with more emotion⁠—which, at the pressure of some spring of her inner vision, broke out in a wail of distress, imperfectly smothered. “Whatever they’ve done I shall never know. Never, never⁠—because I don’t want to, and because nothing will induce me. So they may do as they like. But I’ve worked for them all” She uttered this last with another irrepressible quaver, and the next moment her tears had come, though she had, with the explosion, quitted her husband as if to hide it from him. She passed into the dusky drawing-room, where, during his own prowl, shortly previous, he had drawn up a blind, so that the light of the street-lamps came in a little at the window. She made for this window, against which she leaned her head, while the Colonel, with his lengthened face, looked after her for a minute and hesitated. He might have been wondering what she had really done, to what extent, beyond his knowledge or his conception, in the affairs of these people, she could have committed herself. But to hear her cry, and yet try not to, was, quickly enough, too much for him; he had known her at other times quite not try not to, and that had not been so bad. He went to her and put his arm round her; he drew her head to his breast, where, while she gasped, she let it stay a little⁠—all with a patience that presently stilled her. Yet the effect of this small crisis, oddly enough, was not to close their colloquy, with the natural result of sending them to bed: what was between them had opened out further, had somehow, through the sharp show of her feeling, taken a positive stride, had entered, as it were, without more words, the region of the understood, shutting the door after it and bringing them so still more nearly face to face. They remained for some minutes looking at it through the dim window which opened upon the world of human trouble in general and which let the vague light play here and there upon gilt and crystal and colour, the florid features, looming dimly, of Fanny’s drawing-room. And the beauty of what thus passed between them, passed with her cry of pain, with her burst of tears, with his wonderment and his kindness and his comfort, with the moments of their silence, above all, which might have represented their sinking together, hand in hand, for a time, into the mystic lake where he had begun, as we have hinted, by seeing her paddle alone⁠—the beauty of it was that they now could really talk better than before, because the basis had at last, once for all, defined itself. What was the basis, which Fanny absolutely exacted, but that Charlotte and the Prince must be saved⁠—so far as consistently speaking of them as still safe might save them? It did save them, somehow, for Fanny’s troubled mind⁠—for that was the nature of the mind of women. He conveyed to her now, at all events, by refusing her no gentleness, that he had sufficiently got the tip, and that the tip was all he had wanted. This remained quite clear even when he presently reverted to what she had told him of her recent passage with Maggie. “I don’t altogether see, you know, what you infer from it, or why you infer anything.” When he so expressed himself it was quite as if in possession of what they had brought up from the depths. XXIV

“I can’t say more,” this made his companion reply, “than that something in her face, her voice and her whole manner acted upon me as nothing in her had ever acted before; and just for the reason, above all, that I felt her trying her very best⁠—and her very best, poor duck, is very good⁠—to be quiet and natural. It’s when one sees people who always are natural making little pale, pathetic, blinking efforts for it⁠—then it is that one knows something’s the matter. I can’t describe my impression⁠—you would have had it for yourself. And the only thing that ever can be the matter with Maggie is that. By ‘that’ I mean her beginning to doubt. To doubt, for the first time,” Mrs. Assingham wound up, “of her wonderful little judgment of her wonderful little world.”

It was impressive, Fanny’s vision, and the Colonel, as if himself agitated by it, took another turn of prowling. “To doubt of fidelity⁠—to doubt of friendship! Poor duck indeed! It will go hard with her. But she’ll put it all,” he concluded, “on Charlotte.”

Mrs. Assingham, still darkly contemplative, denied this with a headshake. “She won’t ‘put’ it anywhere. She won’t do with it anything anyone else would. She’ll take it all herself.”

“You mean she’ll make it out her own fault?”

“Yes⁠—she’ll find means, somehow, to arrive at that.”

“Ah then,” the Colonel dutifully declared, “she’s indeed a little brick!”

“Oh,” his wife returned, “you’ll see, in one way or another, to what tune!” And she spoke, of a sudden, with an approach to elation⁠—so that, as if immediately feeling his surprise, she turned round to him. “She’ll see me somehow through!”

“See you⁠—?”

“Yes, me. I’m the worst. For,” said Fanny Assingham, now with a harder exaltation, “I did it all. I recognise that⁠—I accept it. She won’t cast it up at me⁠—she won’t cast up anything. So I throw myself upon her⁠—she’ll bear me up.” She spoke almost volubly⁠—she held him with her sudden sharpness. “She’ll carry the whole weight of us.”

There was still, nevertheless, wonder in it. “You mean she won’t mind? I say, love⁠—!” And he not unkindly stared. “Then where’s the difficulty?”

“There isn’t any!” Fanny declared with the same rich emphasis. It kept him indeed, as by the loss of the thread, looking at her longer. “Ah, you mean there isn’t any for us!”

She met his look for a minute as if