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

rest of the spectators pour grossly through the exits, falls in with the overworked little trapezist girl⁠—the acrobatic support presumably of embarrassed and exacting parents⁠—and gives her, as an obscure and meritorious artist, assurance of benevolent interest. What was clearest, always, in our young woman’s imaginings, was the sense of being herself left, for any occasion, in the breach. She was essentially there to bear the burden, in the last resort, of surrounding omissions and evasions, and it was eminently to that office she had been today abandoned⁠—with this one alleviation, as appeared, of Mrs. Assingham’s keeping up with her. Mrs. Assingham suggested that she too was still on the ramparts⁠—though her gallantry proved indeed after a moment to consist not a little of her curiosity. She had looked about and seen their companions beyond earshot.

“Don’t you really want us to go⁠—?”

Maggie found a faint smile. “Do you really want to⁠—?”

It made her friend colour. “Well then⁠—no. But we would, you know, at a look from you. We’d pack up and be off⁠—as a sacrifice.”

“Ah, make no sacrifice,” said Maggie. “See me through.”

“That’s it⁠—that’s all I want. I should be too base⁠—! Besides,” Fanny went on, “you’re too splendid.”

“Splendid?”

“Splendid. Also, you know, you are all but ‘through.’ You’ve done it,” said Mrs. Assingham. But Maggie only half took it from her.

“What does it strike you that I’ve done?”

“What you wanted. They’re going.”

Maggie continued to look at her. “Is that what I wanted?”

“Oh, it wasn’t for you to say. That was his business.”

“My father’s?” Maggie asked after an hesitation.

“Your father’s. He has chosen⁠—and now she knows. She sees it all before her⁠—and she can’t speak, or resist, or move a little finger. That’s what’s the matter with her,” said Fanny Assingham.

It made a picture, somehow, for the Princess, as they stood there⁠—the picture that the words of others, whatever they might be, always made for her, even when her vision was already charged, better than any words of her own. She saw, round about her, through the chinks of the shutters, the hard glare of nature⁠—saw Charlotte, somewhere in it, virtually at bay, and yet denied the last grace of any protecting truth. She saw her off somewhere all unaided, pale in her silence and taking in her fate. “Has she told you?” she then asked.

Her companion smiled superior. “I don’t need to be told⁠—either! I see something, thank God, every day.” And then as Maggie might appear to be wondering what, for instance: “I see the long miles of ocean and the dreadful great country, State after State⁠—which have never seemed to me so big or so terrible. I see them at last, day by day and step by step, at the far end⁠—and I see them never come back. But never⁠—simply. I see the extraordinary ‘interesting’ place⁠—which I’ve never been to, you know, and you have⁠—and the exact degree in which she will be expected to be interested.”

“She will be,” Maggie presently replied. “Expected?”

“Interested.”

For a little, after this, their eyes met on it; at the end of which Fanny said: “She’ll be⁠—yes⁠—what she’ll have to be. And it will be⁠—won’t it? for ever and ever.” She spoke as abounding in her friend’s sense, but it made Maggie still only look at her.

These were large words and large visions⁠—all the more that now, really, they spread and spread. In the midst of them, however, Mrs. Assingham had soon enough continued. “When I talk of ‘knowing,’ indeed, I don’t mean it as you would have a right to do. You know because you see⁠—and I don’t see him. I don’t make him out,” she almost crudely confessed.

Maggie again hesitated. “You mean you don’t make out Amerigo?”

But Fanny shook her head, and it was quite as if, as an appeal to one’s intelligence, the making out of Amerigo had, in spite of everything, long been superseded. Then Maggie measured the reach of her allusion, and how what she next said gave her meaning a richness. No other name was to be spoken, and Mrs. Assingham had taken that, without delay, from her eyes⁠—with a discretion, still, that fell short but by an inch. “You know how he feels.”

Maggie at this then slowly matched her headshake. “I know nothing.”

“You know how you feel.”

But again she denied it. “I know nothing. If I did⁠—!”

“Well, if you did?” Fanny asked as she faltered.

She had had enough, however. “I should die,” she said as she turned away.

She went to her room, through the quiet house; she roamed there a moment, picking up, pointlessly, a different fan, and then took her way to the shaded apartments in which, at this hour, the Principino would be enjoying his nap. She passed through the first empty room, the day nursery, and paused at an open door. The inner room, large, dim and cool, was equally calm; her boy’s ample, antique, historical, royal crib, consecrated, reputedly, by the guarded rest of heirs-apparent, and a gift, early in his career, from his grandfather, ruled the scene from the centre, in the stillness of which she could almost hear the child’s soft breathing. The prime protector of his dreams was installed beside him; her father sat there with as little motion⁠—with head thrown back and supported, with eyes apparently closed, with the fine foot that was so apt to betray nervousness at peace upon the other knee, with the unfathomable heart folded in the constant flawless freshness of the white waistcoat that could always receive in its armholes the firm prehensile thumbs. Mrs. Noble had majestically melted, and the whole place signed her temporary abdication; yet the actual situation was regular, and Maggie lingered but to look. She looked over her fan, the top of which was pressed against her face, long enough to wonder if her father really slept or if, aware of her, he only kept consciously quiet. Did his eyes truly fix her between lids partly open, and was she to take this⁠—his forebearance from any question⁠—only as a sign again that everything was left