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

she had turned back to the chimney-place, where, in honour of a damp day and a chill night, the piled logs had turned to flame and sunk to embers; and the evident intensity of her vision for the fact she imparted made Fanny Assingham wait upon her words. It explained, this striking fact, more indeed than her companion, though conscious of fairly gaping with goodwill, could swallow at once. The Princess, however, as for indulgence and confidence, quickly filled up the measure. “He hasn’t let her know that I know⁠—and, clearly, doesn’t mean to. He has made up his mind; he’ll say nothing about it. Therefore, as she’s quite unable to arrive at the knowledge by herself, she has no idea how much I’m really in possession. She believes,” said Maggie, “and, so far as her own conviction goes, she knows, that I’m not in possession of anything. And that, somehow, for my own help seems to me immense.”

“Immense, my dear!” Mrs. Assingham applausively murmured, though not quite, even as yet, seeing all the way. “He’s keeping quiet then on purpose?”

“On purpose.” Maggie’s lighted eyes, at least, looked further than they had ever looked. “He’ll never tell her now.”

Fanny wondered; she cast about her; most of all she admired her little friend, in whom this announcement was evidently animated by an heroic lucidity. She stood there, in her full uniform, like some small erect commander of a siege, an anxious captain who has suddenly got news, replete with importance for him, of agitation, of division within the place. This importance breathed upon her comrade. “So you’re all right?”

“Oh, all right’s a good deal to say. But I seem at least to see, as I haven’t before, where I am with it.”

Fanny bountifully brooded; there was a point left vague. “And you have it from him?⁠—your husband himself has told you?”

“ ‘Told’ me⁠—?”

“Why, what you speak of. It isn’t of an assurance received from him then that you do speak?”

At which Maggie had continued to stare. “Dear me, no. Do you suppose I’ve asked him for an assurance?”

“Ah, you haven’t?” Her companion smiled. “That’s what I supposed you might mean. Then, darling, what have you⁠—?”

“Asked him for? I’ve asked him for nothing.”

But this, in turn, made Fanny stare. “Then nothing, that evening of the Embassy dinner, passed between you?”

“On the contrary, everything passed.”

“Everything⁠—?”

“Everything. I told him what I knew⁠—and I told him how I knew it.”

Mrs. Assingham waited. “And that was all?”

“Wasn’t it quite enough?”

“Oh, love,” she bridled, “that’s for you to have judged!”

“Then I have judged,” said Maggie⁠—“I did judge. I made sure he understood⁠—then I let him alone.”

Mrs. Assingham wondered. “But he didn’t explain⁠—?”

“Explain? Thank God, no!” Maggie threw back her head as with horror at the thought, then the next moment added: “And I didn’t, either.”

The decency of pride in it shed a cold little light⁠—yet as from heights at the base of which her companion rather panted. “But if he neither denies nor confesses⁠—?”

“He does what’s a thousand times better⁠—he lets it alone. He does,” Maggie went on, “as he would do; as I see now that I was sure he would. He lets me alone.”

Fanny Assingham turned it over. “Then how do you know so where, as you say, you ‘are’?”

“Why, just by that. I put him in possession of the difference; the difference made, about me, by the fact that I hadn’t been, after all⁠—though with a wonderful chance, I admitted, helping me⁠—too stupid to have arrived at knowledge. He had to see that I’m changed for him⁠—quite changed from the idea of me that he had so long been going on with. It became a question then of his really taking in the change⁠—and what I now see is that he is doing so.”

Fanny followed as she could. “Which he shows by letting you, as you say, alone?”

Maggie looked at her a minute. “And by letting her.”

Mrs. Assingham did what she might to embrace it⁠—checked a little, however, by a thought that was the nearest approach she could have, in this almost too large air, to an inspiration. “Ah, but does Charlotte let him?”

“Oh, that’s another affair⁠—with which I’ve practically nothing to do. I dare say, however, she doesn’t.” And the Princess had a more distant gaze for the image evoked by the question. “I don’t in fact well see how she can. But the point for me is that he understands.”

“Yes,” Fanny Assingham cooed, “understands⁠—?”

“Well, what I want. I want a happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger.”

“A brilliant, perfect surface⁠—to begin with at least. I see.”

“The golden bowl⁠—as it was to have been.” And Maggie dwelt musingly on this obscured figure. “The bowl with all our happiness in it. The bowl without the crack.”

For Mrs. Assingham too the image had its force, and the precious object shone before her again, reconstituted, plausible, presentable. But wasn’t there still a piece missing? “Yet if he lets you alone and you only let him⁠—?”

“Mayn’t our doing so, you mean, be noticed?⁠—mayn’t it give us away? Well, we hope not⁠—we try not⁠—we take such care. We alone know what’s between us⁠—we and you; and haven’t you precisely been struck, since you’ve been here,” Maggie asked, “with our making so good a show?”

Her friend hesitated. “To your father?”

But it made her hesitate too; she wouldn’t speak of her father directly. “To everyone. To her⁠—now that you understand.”

It held poor Fanny again in wonder. “To Charlotte⁠—yes: if there’s so much beneath it, for you, and if it’s all such a plan. That makes it hang together it makes you hang together.” She fairly exhaled her admiration. “You’re like nobody else⁠—you’re extraordinary.”

Maggie met it with appreciation, but with a reserve. “No, I’m not extraordinary⁠—but I am, for everyone, quiet.”

“Well, that’s just what is extraordinary. ‘Quiet’ is more than I am, and you leave me far behind.” With which, again, for an instant, Mrs. Assingham frankly brooded. “ ‘Now that I understand,’ you say⁠—but there’s one thing I don’t understand.”