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

deference of trying to imagine what this might have been. “I agree with you that the coincidence is extraordinary⁠—the sort of thing that happens mainly in novels and plays. But I don’t see, you must let me say, the importance or the connection⁠—”

“Of my having made the purchase where you failed of it?” She had quickly taken him up; but she had, with her eyes on him once more, another drop into the order of her thoughts, to which, through whatever he might say, she was still adhering. “It’s not my having gone into the place, at the end of four years, that makes the strangeness of the coincidence; for don’t such chances as that, in London, easily occur? The strangeness,” she lucidly said, “is in what my purchase was to represent to me after I had got it home; which value came,” she explained, “from the wonder of my having found such a friend.”

“ ‘Such a friend’?” As a wonder, assuredly, her husband could but take it.

“As the little man in the shop. He did for me more than he knew⁠—I owe it to him. He took an interest in me,” Maggie said; “and, taking that interest, he recalled your visit, he remembered you and spoke of you to me.”

On which the Prince passed the comment of a sceptical smile. “Ah but, my dear, if extraordinary things come from people’s taking an interest in you⁠—”

“My life in that case,” she asked, “must be very agitated? Well, he liked me, I mean⁠—very particularly. It’s only so I can account for my afterwards hearing from him⁠—and in fact he gave me that today,” she pursued, “he gave me it frankly as his reason.”

“Today?” the Prince inquiringly echoed.

But she was singularly able⁠—it had been marvellously “given” her, she afterwards said to herself⁠—to abide, for her light, for her clue, by her own order.

“I inspired him with sympathy⁠—there you are! But the miracle is that he should have a sympathy to offer that could be of use to me. That was really the oddity of my chance,” the Princess proceeded⁠—“that I should have been moved, in my ignorance, to go precisely to him.”

He saw her so keep her course that it was as if he could, at the best, but stand aside to watch her and let her pass; he only made a vague demonstration that was like an ineffective gesture. “I’m sorry to say any ill of your friends, and the thing was a long time ago; besides which there was nothing to make me recur to it. But I remember the man’s striking me as a decided little beast.”

She gave a slow headshake⁠—as if, no, after consideration, not that way were an issue. “I can only think of him as kind, for he had nothing to gain. He had in fact only to lose. It was what he came to tell me⁠—that he had asked me too high a price, more than the object was really worth. There was a particular reason, which he hadn’t mentioned, and which had made him consider and repent. He wrote for leave to see me again⁠—wrote in such terms that I saw him here this afternoon.”

“Here?”⁠—it made the Prince look about him.

“Downstairs⁠—in the little red room. While he was waiting he looked at the few photographs that stand about there and recognised two of them. Though it was so long ago, he remembered the visit made him by the lady and the gentleman, and that gave him his connection. It gave me mine, for he remembered everything and told me everything. You see you too had produced your effect; only, unlike you, he had thought of it again⁠—he had recurred to it. He told me of your having wished to make each other presents⁠—but of that’s not having come off. The lady was greatly taken with the piece I had bought of him, but you had your reason against receiving it from her, and you had been right. He would think that of you more than ever now,” Maggie went on; “he would see how wisely you had guessed the flaw and how easily the bowl could be broken. I had bought it myself, you see, for a present⁠—he knew I was doing that. This was what had worked in him⁠—especially after the price I had paid.”

Her story had dropped an instant; she still brought it out in small waves of energy, each of which spent its force; so that he had an opportunity to speak before this force was renewed. But the quaint thing was what he now said. “And what, pray, was the price?”

She paused again a little. “It was high, certainly⁠—for those fragments. I think I feel, as I look at them there, rather ashamed to say.”

The Prince then again looked at them; he might have been growing used to the sight. “But shall you at least get your money back?”

“Oh, I’m far from wanting it back⁠—I feel so that I’m getting its worth.” With which, before he could reply, she had a quick transition. “The great fact about the day we’re talking of seems to me to have been, quite remarkably, that no present was then made me. If your undertaking had been for that, that was not at least what came of it.”

“You received then nothing at all?” The Prince looked vague and grave, almost retrospectively concerned.

“Nothing but an apology for empty hands and empty pockets; which was made me⁠—as if it mattered a mite!⁠—ever so frankly, ever so beautifully and touchingly.”

This Amerigo heard with interest, yet not with confusion. “Ah, of course you couldn’t have minded!” Distinctly, as she went on, he was getting the better of the mere awkwardness of his arrest; quite as if making out that he need suffer arrest from her now⁠—before they should go forth to show themselves in the world together⁠—in no greater quantity than an occasion ill-chosen at the best for a scene might decently make room for. He looked at his watch;