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

colour, still looking at her, still adjusting his manner. “But you allowed you were upset.”

“To the extent⁠—yes⁠—of not having in the least looked for her. Any more,” said Mrs. Assingham, “than I judge Maggie to have done.”

The Prince thought; then as if glad to be able to say something very natural and true: “No⁠—quite right. Maggie hasn’t looked for her. But I’m sure,” he added, “she’ll be delighted to see her.”

“That, certainly”⁠—and his hostess spoke with a different shade of gravity.

“She’ll be quite overjoyed,” the Prince went on. “Has Miss Stant now gone to her?”

“She has gone back to her hotel, to bring her things here. I can’t have her,” said Mrs. Assingham, “alone at an hotel.”

“No; I see.”

“If she’s here at all she must stay with me.” He quite took it in. “So she’s coming now?”

“I expect her at any moment. If you wait you’ll see her.”

“Oh,” he promptly declared⁠—“charming!” But this word came out as if, a little, in sudden substitution for some other. It sounded accidental, whereas he wished to be firm. That accordingly was what he next showed himself. “If it wasn’t for what’s going on these next days Maggie would certainly want to have her. In fact,” he lucidly continued, “isn’t what’s happening just a reason to make her want to?” Mrs. Assingham, for answer, only looked at him, and this, the next instant, had apparently had more effect than if she had spoken. For he asked a question that seemed incongruous. “What has she come for!”

It made his companion laugh. “Why, for just what you say. For your marriage.”

“Mine?”⁠—he wondered.

“Maggie’s⁠—it’s the same thing. It’s ‘for’ your great event. And then,” said Mrs. Assingham, “she’s so lonely.”

“Has she given you that as a reason?”

“I scarcely remember⁠—she gave me so many. She abounds, poor dear, in reasons. But there’s one that, whatever she does, I always remember for myself.”

“And which is that?” He looked as if he ought to guess but couldn’t.

“Why, the fact that she has no home⁠—absolutely none whatever. She’s extraordinarily alone.”

Again he took it in. “And also has no great means.”

“Very small ones. Which is not, however, with the expense of railways and hotels, a reason for her running to and fro.”

“On the contrary. But she doesn’t like her country.”

“Hers, my dear man?⁠—it’s little enough ‘hers.’ ” The attribution, for the moment, amused his hostess. “She has rebounded now⁠—but she has had little enough else to do with it.”

“Oh, I say hers,” the Prince pleasantly explained, “very much as, at this time of day, I might say mine. I quite feel, I assure you, as if the great place already more or less belonged to me.”

“That’s your good fortune and your point of view. You own⁠—or you soon practically will own⁠—so much of it. Charlotte owns almost nothing in the world, she tells me, but two colossal trunks-only one of which I have given her leave to introduce into this house. She’ll depreciate to you,” Mrs. Assingham added, “your property.”

He thought of these things, he thought of everything; but he had always his resource at hand of turning all to the easy. “Has she come with designs upon me?” And then in a moment, as if even this were almost too grave, he sounded the note that had least to do with himself. “Est-elle toujours aussi belle?” That was the furthest point, somehow, to which Charlotte Stant could be relegated.

Mrs. Assingham treated it freely. “Just the same. The person in the world, to my sense, whose looks are most subject to appreciation. It’s all in the way she affects you. One admires her if one doesn’t happen not to. So, as well, one criticises her.”

“Ah, that’s not fair!” said the Prince.

“To criticise her? Then there you are! You’re answered.”

“I’m answered.” He took it, humorously, as his lesson⁠—sank his previous self-consciousness, with excellent effect, in grateful docility. “I only meant that there are perhaps better things to be done with Miss Stant than to criticise her. When once you begin that, with anyone⁠—!” He was vague and kind.

“I quite agree that it’s better to keep out of it as long as one can. But when one must do it⁠—”

“Yes?” he asked as she paused. “Then know what you mean.”

“I see. Perhaps,” he smiled, “I don’t know what I mean.”

“Well, it’s what, just now, in all ways, you particularly should know.” Mrs. Assingham, however, made no more of this, having, before anything else, apparently, a scruple about the tone she had just used. “I quite understand, of course, that, given her great friendship with Maggie, she should have wanted to be present. She has acted impulsively⁠—but she has acted generously.”

“She has acted beautifully,” said the Prince.

“I say ‘generously’ because I mean she hasn’t, in any way, counted the cost. She’ll have it to count, in a manner, now,” his hostess continued. “But that doesn’t matter.”

He could see how little. “You’ll look after her.”

“I’ll look after her.”

“So it’s all right.”

“It’s all right,” said Mrs. Assingham. “Then why are you troubled?”

It pulled her up⁠—but only for a minute. “I’m not⁠—any more than you.”

The Prince’s dark blue eyes were of the finest, and, on occasion, precisely, resembled nothing so much as the high windows of a Roman palace, of an historic front by one of the great old designers, thrown open on a feast-day to the golden air. His look itself, at such times, suggested an image⁠—that of some very noble personage who, expected, acclaimed by the crowd in the street and with old precious stuffs falling over the sill for his support, had gaily and gallantly come to show himself: always moreover less in his own interest than in that of spectators and subjects whose need to admire, even to gape, was periodically to be considered. The young man’s expression became, after this fashion, something vivid and concrete⁠—a beautiful personal presence, that of a prince in very truth, a ruler, warrior, patron, lighting up brave architecture and diffusing the sense of a function. It had been happily said of his face that the figure thus appearing