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

her second volume, she perhaps found less clever than she expected; when she had let Maggie approach sufficiently closer to lay, untouched, the tribute in question on a bench and take up obligingly its superfluous mate: when she had done these things she sat down in another place, more or less visibly in possession of her part. Our young woman was to have passed, in all her adventure, no stranger moments; for she not only now saw her companion fairly agree to take her then for the poor little person she was finding it so easy to appear, but fell, in a secret, responsive ecstasy, to wondering if there were not some supreme abjection with which she might be inspired. Vague, but increasingly brighter, this possibility glimmered on her. It at last hung there adequately plain to Charlotte that she had presented herself once more to (as they said) grovel; and that, truly, made the stage large. It had absolutely, within the time, taken on the dazzling merit of being large for each of them alike.

“I’m glad to see you alone⁠—there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you. I’m tired,” said Mrs. Verver, “I’m tired⁠—!”

“Tired⁠—?” It had dropped the next thing; it couldn’t all come at once; but Maggie had already guessed what it was, and the flush of recognition was in her face.

“Tired of this life⁠—the one we’ve been leading. You like it, I know, but I’ve dreamed another dream.” She held up her head now; her lighted eyes more triumphantly rested; she was finding, she was following her way. Maggie, by the same influence, sat in sight of it; there was something she was saving, some quantity of which she herself was judge; and it was for a long moment, even with the sacrifice the Princess had come to make, a good deal like watching her, from the solid shore, plunge into uncertain, into possibly treacherous depths. “I see something else,” she went on; “I’ve an idea that greatly appeals to me⁠—I’ve had it for a long time. It has come over me that we’re wrong. Our real life isn’t here.”

Maggie held her breath. “ ‘Ours’⁠—?”

“My husband’s and mine. I’m not speaking for you.”

“Oh!” said Maggie, only praying not to be, not even to appear, stupid.

“I’m speaking for ourselves. I’m speaking,” Charlotte brought out, “for him.”

“I see. For my father.”

“For your father. For whom else?” They looked at each other hard now, but Maggie’s face took refuge in the intensity of her interest. She was not at all even so stupid as to treat her companion’s question as requiring an answer; a discretion that her controlled stillness had after an instant justified. “I must risk your thinking me selfish⁠—for of course you know what it involves. Let me admit it⁠—I am selfish. I place my husband first.”

“Well,” said Maggie smiling and smiling, “since that’s where I place mine⁠—!”

“You mean you’ll have no quarrel with me? So much the better then; for,” Charlotte went on with a higher and higher flight, “my plan is completely formed.”

Maggie waited⁠—her glimmer had deepened; her chance somehow was at hand. The only danger was her spoiling it; she felt herself skirting an abyss. “What then, may I ask is your plan?”

It hung fire but ten seconds; it came out sharp. “To take him home⁠—to his real position. And not to wait.”

“Do you mean⁠—a⁠—this season?”

“I mean immediately. And⁠—I may as well tell you now⁠—I mean for my own time. I want,” Charlotte said, “to have him at last a little to myself; I want, strange as it may seem to you”⁠—and she gave it all its weight “to keep the man I’ve married. And to do so, I see, I must act.”

Maggie, with the effort still to follow the right line, felt herself colour to the eyes. “Immediately?” she thoughtfully echoed.

“As soon as we can get off. The removal of everything is, after all, but a detail. That can always be done; with money, as he spends it, everything can. What I ask for,” Charlotte declared, “is the definite break. And I wish it now.” With which her head, like her voice rose higher. “Oh,” she added, “I know my difficulty!”

Far down below the level of attention, in she could scarce have said what sacred depths, Maggie’s inspiration had come, and it had trembled the next moment into sound. “Do you mean I’m your difficulty?”

“You and he together⁠—since it’s always with you that I’ve had to see him. But it’s a difficulty that I’m facing, if you wish to know; that I’ve already faced; that I propose to myself to surmount. The struggle with it⁠—none too pleasant⁠—hasn’t been for me, as you may imagine, in itself charming; I’ve felt in it at times, if I must tell you all, too great and too strange, an ugliness. Yet I believe it may succeed.”

She had risen, with this, Mrs. Verver, and had moved, for the emphasis of it, a few steps away; while Maggie, motionless at first, but sat and looked at her. “You want to take my father from me?”

The sharp, successful, almost primitive wail in it made Charlotte turn, and this movement attested for the Princess the felicity of her deceit. Something in her throbbed as it had throbbed the night she stood in the drawing-room and denied that she had suffered. She was ready to lie again if her companion would but give her the opening. Then she should know she had done all. Charlotte looked at her hard, as if to compare her face with her note of resentment; and Maggie, feeling this, met it with the signs of an impression that might pass for the impression of defeat. “I want really to possess him,” said Mrs. Verver. “I happen also to feel that he’s worth it.”

Maggie rose as if to receive her. “Oh⁠—worth it!” she wonderfully threw off.

The tone, she instantly saw, again had its effect: Charlotte flamed aloft⁠—might truly have been believing in her passionate parade. “You’ve thought you’ve known what he’s worth?”

“Indeed