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

the right. Just so the punctuality of performance on the part of the other creature was her weakness and her deep misfortune⁠—not less, no doubt, than her beauty. It produced for the man that extraordinary mixture of pity and profit in which his relation with her, when he was not a mere brute, mainly consisted; and gave him in fact his most pertinent ground of being always nice to her, nice about her, nice for her. She always dressed her act up, of course, she muffled and disguised and arranged it, showing in fact in these dissimulations a cleverness equal to but one thing in the world, equal to her abjection: she would let it be known for anything, for everything, but the truth of which it was made. That was what, precisely, Charlotte Stant would be doing now; that was the present motive and support, to a certainty, of each of her looks and motions. She was the twentieth woman, she was possessed by her doom, but her doom was also to arrange appearances, and what now concerned him was to learn how she proposed. He would help her, would arrange with her to any point in reason; the only thing was to know what appearance could best be produced and best be preserved. Produced and preserved on her part of course; since on his own there had been luckily no folly to cover up, nothing but a perfect accord between conduct and obligation.

They stood there together, at all events, when the door had closed behind their friend, with a conscious, strained smile and very much as if each waited for the other to strike the note or give the pitch. The young man held himself, in his silent suspense⁠—only not more afraid because he felt her own fear. She was afraid of herself, however; whereas, to his gain of lucidity, he was afraid only of her. Would she throw herself into his arms, or would she be otherwise wonderful? She would see what he would do⁠—so their queer minute without words told him; and she would act accordingly. But what could he do but just let her see that he would make anything, everything, for her, as honourably easy as possible? Even if she should throw herself into his arms he would make that easy⁠—easy, that is, to overlook, to ignore, not to remember, and not, by the same token, either, to regret. This was not what in fact happened, though it was also not at a single touch, but by the finest gradations, that his tension subsided. “It’s too delightful to be back!” she said at last; and it was all she definitely gave him⁠—being moreover nothing but what anyone else might have said. Yet with two or three other things that, on his response, followed it, it quite pointed the path, while the tone of it, and her whole attitude, were as far removed as need have been from the truth of her situation. The abjection that was present to him as of the essence quite failed to peep out, and he soon enough saw that if she was arranging she could be trusted to arrange. Good⁠—it was all he asked; and all the more that he could admire and like her for it.

The particular appearance she would, as they said, go in for was that of having no account whatever to give him⁠—it would be in fact that of having none to give anybody⁠—of reasons or of motives, of comings or of goings. She was a charming young woman who had met him before, but she was also a charming young woman with a life of her own. She would take it high⁠—up, up, up, ever so high. Well then, he would do the same; no height would be too great for them, not even the dizziest conceivable to a young person so subtle. The dizziest seemed indeed attained when, after another moment, she came as near as she was to come to an apology for her abruptness.

“I’ve been thinking of Maggie, and at last I yearned for her. I wanted to see her happy⁠—and it doesn’t strike me I find you too shy to tell me I shall.”

“Of course she’s happy, thank God! Only it’s almost terrible, you know, the happiness of young, good, generous creatures. It rather frightens one. But the Blessed Virgin and all the Saints,” said the Prince, “have her in their keeping.”

“Certainly they have. She’s the dearest of the dear. But I needn’t tell you,” the girl added.

“Ah,” he returned with gravity, “I feel that I’ve still much to learn about her.” To which he subjoined “She’ll rejoice awfully in your being with us.”

“Oh, you don’t need me!” Charlotte smiled. “It’s her hour. It’s a great hour. One has seen often enough, with girls, what it is. But that,” she said, “is exactly why. Why I’ve wanted, I mean, not to miss it.”

He bent on her a kind, comprehending face. “You mustn’t miss anything.” He had got it, the pitch, and he could keep it now, for all he had needed was to have it given him. The pitch was the happiness of his wife that was to be⁠—the sight of that happiness as a joy for an old friend. It was, yes, magnificent, and not the less so for its coming to him, suddenly, as sincere, as nobly exalted. Something in Charlotte’s eyes seemed to tell him this, seemed to plead with him in advance as to what he was to find in it. He was eager⁠—and he tried to show her that too⁠—to find what she liked; mindful as he easily could be of what the friendship had been for Maggie. It had been armed with the wings of young imagination, young generosity; it had been, he believed⁠—always counting out her intense devotion to her father⁠—the liveliest emotion she had known before the dawn of the sentiment inspired by himself. She had not, to his knowledge, invited the