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

the Princess went on⁠—“up to within two or three days of our marriage. That, that, you know⁠—!” And she broke down for strangely smiling.

“Yes, as I say, it was while she was with me. But I didn’t know it. That is,” said Fanny Assingham, “I didn’t know of anything in particular.” It sounded weak⁠—that she felt; but she had really her point to make. “What I mean is that I don’t know, for knowledge, now, anything I didn’t then. That’s how I am.” She still, however, floundered. “I mean it’s how I was.”

“But don’t they, how you were and how you are,” Maggie asked, “come practically to the same thing?” The elder woman’s words had struck her own ear as in the tone, now mistimed, of their recent, but all too factitious understanding, arrived at in hours when, as there was nothing susceptible of proof, there was nothing definitely to disprove. The situation had changed by⁠—well, by whatever there was, by the outbreak of the definite; and this could keep Maggie at least firm. She was firm enough as she pursued. “It was on the whole thing that Amerigo married me.” With which her eyes had their turn again at her damnatory piece. “And it was on that⁠—it was on that!” But they came back to her visitor. “And it was on it all that father married her.”

Her visitor took it as might be. “They both married⁠—ah, that you must believe!⁠—with the highest intentions.”

“Father did certainly!” And then, at the renewal of this consciousness, it all rolled over her. “Ah, to thrust such things on us, to do them here between us and with us, day after day, and in return, in return⁠—! To do it to him⁠—to him, to him!”

Fanny hesitated. “You mean it’s for him you most suffer?” And then as the Princess, after a look, but turned away, moving about the room⁠—which made the question somehow seem a blunder⁠—“I ask,” she continued, “because I think everything, everything we now speak of, may be for him, really may be made for him, quite as if it hadn’t been.”

But Maggie had, the next moment faced about as if without hearing her. “Father did it for me⁠—did it all and only for me.”

Mrs. Assingham, with a certain promptness, threw up her head; but she faltered again before she spoke. “Well⁠—!”

It was only an intended word, but Maggie showed after an instant that it had reached her. “Do you mean that that’s the reason, that that’s A reason⁠—?”

Fanny at first, however, feeling the response in this, didn’t say all she meant; she said for the moment something else instead. “He did it for you⁠—largely at least for you. And it was for you that I did, in my smaller, interested way⁠—well, what I could do. For I could do something,” she continued; “I thought I saw your interest as he himself saw it. And I thought I saw Charlotte’s. I believed in her.”

“And I believed in her,” said Maggie.

Mrs. Assingham waited again; but she presently pushed on. “She believed then in herself.”

“Ah?” Maggie murmured.

Something exquisite, faintly eager, in the prompt simplicity of it, supported her friend further. “And the Prince believed. His belief was real. Just as he believed in himself.”

Maggie spent a minute in taking it from her. “He believed in himself?”

“Just as I too believed in him. For I absolutely did, Maggie.” To which Fanny then added: “And I believe in him yet. I mean,” she subjoined⁠—“well, I mean I do.”

Maggie again took it from her; after which she was again, restlessly, set afloat. Then when this had come to an end: “And do you believe in Charlotte yet?”

Mrs. Assingham had a demur that she felt she could now afford. “We’ll talk of Charlotte some other day. They both, at any rate, thought themselves safe at the time.”

“Then why did they keep from me everything I might have known?”

Her friend bent upon her the mildest eyes. “Why did I myself keep it from you?”

“Oh, you weren’t, for honour, obliged.”

“Dearest Maggie,” the poor woman broke out on this, “you are divine!”

“They pretended to love me,” the Princess went on. “And they pretended to love him.”

“And pray what was there that I didn’t pretend?”

“Not, at any rate, to care for me as you cared for Amerigo and for Charlotte. They were much more interesting⁠—it was perfectly natural. How couldn’t you like Amerigo?” Maggie continued.

Mrs. Assingham gave it up. “How couldn’t I, how couldn’t I?” Then, with a fine freedom, she went all her way. “How can’t I, how can’t I?”

It fixed afresh Maggie’s wide eyes on her. “I see⁠—I see. Well, it’s beautiful for you to be able to. And of course,” she added, “you wanted to help Charlotte.”

“Yes”⁠—Fanny considered it⁠—“I wanted to help Charlotte. But I wanted also, you see, to help you⁠—by not digging up a past that I believed, with so much on top of it, solidly buried. I wanted, as I still want,” she richly declared, “to help everyone.”

It set Maggie once more in movement⁠—movement which, however, spent itself again with a quick emphasis. “Then it’s a good deal my fault⁠—if everything really began so well?”

Fanny Assingham met it as she could. “You’ve been only too perfect. You’ve thought only too much.”

But the Princess had already caught at the words. “Yes⁠—I’ve thought only too much!” Yet she appeared to continue, for the minute, full of that fault. She had it in fact, by this prompted thought, all before her. “Of him, dear man, of him⁠—!”

Her friend, able to take in thus directly her vision of her father, watched her with a new suspense. That way might safety lie⁠—it was like a wider chink of light. “He believed⁠—with a beauty!⁠—in Charlotte.”

“Yes, and it was I who had made him believe. I didn’t mean to, at the time, so much; for I had no idea then of what was coming. But I did it, I did it!” the Princess declared.

“With a beauty⁠—ah, with a beauty, you too!” Mrs. Assingham insisted.

Maggie, however, was seeing for