The Golden Bowl - Henry James (top fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

the world, Mr. Verver and Maggie were. It began to come over me, in the watches of the night, that Charlotte was a person who could keep off ravening women⁠—without being one herself, either, in the vulgar way of the others; and that this service to Mr. Verver would be a sweet employment for her future. There was something, of course, that might have stopped me: you know, you know what I mean⁠—it looks at me,” she veritably moaned, “out of your face! But all I can say is that it didn’t; the reason largely being⁠—once I had fallen in love with the beautiful symmetry of my plan⁠—that I seemed to feel sure Maggie would accept Charlotte, whereas I didn’t quite make out either what other woman, or what other kind of woman, one could think of her accepting.”

“I see⁠—I see.” She had paused, meeting all the while his listening look, and the fever of her retrospect had so risen with her talk that the desire was visibly strong in him to meet her, on his side, but with cooling breath. “One quite understands, my dear.”

It only, however, kept her there sombre. “I naturally see, love, what you understand; which sits again, perfectly, in your eyes. You see that I saw that Maggie would accept her in helpless ignorance. Yes, dearest”⁠—and the grimness of her dreariness suddenly once more possessed her: “you’ve only to tell me that that knowledge was my reason for what I did. How, when you do, can I stand up to you? You see,” she said with an ineffable headshake, “that I don’t stand up! I’m down, down, down,” she declared; “yet” she as quickly added⁠—“there’s just one little thing that helps to save my life.” And she kept him waiting but an instant. “They might easily⁠—they would perhaps even certainly⁠—have done something worse.”

He thought. “Worse than that Charlotte⁠—?”

“Ah, don’t tell me,” she cried, “that there could have been nothing worse. There might, as they were, have been many things. Charlotte, in her way, is extraordinary.”

He was almost simultaneous. “Extraordinary!”

“She observes the forms,” said Fanny Assingham.

He hesitated. “With the Prince⁠—?”

“For the Prince. And with the others,” she went on. “With Mr. Verver⁠—wonderfully. But above all with Maggie. And the forms”⁠—she had to do even them justice⁠—“are two-thirds of conduct. Say he had married a woman who would have made a hash of them.”

But he jerked back. “Ah, my dear, I wouldn’t say it for the world!”

“Say,” she none the less pursued, “he had married a woman the Prince would really have cared for.”

“You mean then he doesn’t care for Charlotte⁠—?” This was still a new view to jump to, and the Colonel, perceptibly, wished to make sure of the necessity of the effort. For that, while he stared, his wife allowed him time; at the end of which she simply said: “No!”

“Then what on earth are they up to?” Still, however, she only looked at him; so that, standing there before her with his hands in his pockets, he had time, further, to risk, soothingly, another question. “Are the ‘forms’ you speak of⁠—that are two-thirds of conduct⁠—what will be keeping her now, by your hypothesis, from coming home with him till morning?”

“Yes⁠—absolutely. Their forms.”

“ ‘Theirs’⁠—?”

“Maggie’s and Mr. Verver’s⁠—those they impose on Charlotte and the Prince. Those,” she developed, “that, so perversely, as I say, have succeeded in setting themselves up as the right ones.”

He considered⁠—but only now, at last, really to relapse into woe. “Your ‘perversity,’ my dear, is exactly what I don’t understand. The state of things existing hasn’t grown, like a field of mushrooms, in a night. Whatever they, all round, may be in for now is at least the consequence of what they’ve done. Are they mere helpless victims of fate?”

Well, Fanny at last had the courage of it, “Yes⁠—they are. To be so abjectly innocent⁠—that is to be victims of fate.”

“And Charlotte and the Prince are abjectly innocent⁠—?”

It took her another minute, but she rose to the full height. “Yes. That is they were⁠—as much so in their way as the others. There were beautiful intentions all round. The Prince’s and Charlotte’s were beautiful⁠—of that I had my faith. They were⁠—I’d go to the stake. Otherwise,” she added, “I should have been a wretch. And I’ve not been a wretch. I’ve only been a double-dyed donkey.”

“Ah then,” he asked, “what does our muddle make them to have been?”

“Well, too much taken up with considering each other. You may call such a mistake as that by what ever name you please; it at any rate means, all round, their case. It illustrates the misfortune,” said Mrs. Assingham gravely, “of being too, too charming.”

This was another matter that took some following, but the Colonel again did his best. “Yes, but to whom?⁠—doesn’t it rather depend on that? To whom have the Prince and Charlotte then been too charming?”

“To each other, in the first place⁠—obviously. And then both of them together to Maggie.”

“To Maggie?” he wonderingly echoed.

“To Maggie.” She was now crystalline. “By having accepted, from the first, so guilelessly⁠—yes, so guilelessly, themselves⁠—her guileless idea of still having her father, of keeping him fast, in her life.”

“Then isn’t one supposed, in common humanity, and if one hasn’t quarrelled with him, and one has the means, and he, on his side, doesn’t drink or kick up rows⁠—isn’t one supposed to keep one’s aged parent in one’s life?”

“Certainly⁠—when there aren’t particular reasons against it. That there may be others than his getting drunk is exactly the moral of what is before us. In the first place Mr. Verver isn’t aged.”

The Colonel just hung fire⁠—but it came. “Then why the deuce does he⁠—oh, poor dear man!⁠—behave as if he were?”

She took a moment to meet it. “How do you know how he behaves?”

“Well, my own love, we see how Charlotte does!” Again, at this, she faltered; but again she rose. “Ah, isn’t my whole point that he’s charming to her?”

“Doesn’t it depend a bit on what she regards as charming?”

She faced the question as if