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

his slow steps from behind his secure pince-nez. The thing that never failed now as an item in the picture was that gleam of the silken noose, his wife’s immaterial tether, so marked to Maggie’s sense during her last month in the country. Mrs. Verver’s straight neck had certainly not slipped it; nor had the other end of the long cord⁠—oh, quite conveniently long!⁠—disengaged its smaller loop from the hooked thumb that, with his fingers closed upon it, her husband kept out of sight. To have recognised, for all its tenuity, the play of this gathered lasso might inevitably be to wonder with what magic it was twisted, to what tension subjected, but could never be to doubt either of its adequacy to its office or of its perfect durability. These reminded states for the Princess were in fact states of renewed gaping. So many things her father knew that she even yet didn’t!

All this, at present, with Mrs. Assingham, passed through her in quick vibrations. She had expressed, while the revolution of her thought was incomplete, the idea of what Amerigo “ought,” on his side, in the premises, to be capable of, and then had felt her companion’s answering stare. But she insisted on what she had meant. “He ought to wish to see her⁠—and I mean in some protected and independent way, as he used to⁠—in case of her being herself able to manage it. That,” said Maggie with the courage of her conviction, “he ought to be ready, he ought to be happy, he ought to feel himself sworn⁠—little as it is for the end of such a history!⁠—to take from her. It’s as if he wished to get off without taking anything.”

Mrs. Assingham deferentially mused. “But for what purpose is it your idea that they should again so intimately meet?”

“For any purpose they like. That’s their affair.”

Fanny Assingham sharply laughed, then irrepressibly fell back to her constant position. “You’re splendid⁠—perfectly splendid.” To which, as the Princess, shaking an impatient head, wouldn’t have it again at all, she subjoined: “Or if you’re not it’s because you’re so sure. I mean sure of him.”

“Ah, I’m exactly not sure of him. If I were sure of him I shouldn’t doubt⁠—!” But Maggie cast about her.

“Doubt what?” Fanny pressed as she waited.

“Well, that he must feel how much less than she he pays⁠—and how that ought to keep her present to him.”

This, in its turn, after an instant, Mrs. Assingham could meet with a smile. “Trust him, my dear, to keep her present! But trust him also to keep himself absent. Leave him his own way.”

“I’ll leave him everything,” said Maggie. “Only⁠—you know it’s my nature⁠—I think.”

“It’s your nature to think too much,” Fanny Assingham a trifle coarsely risked.

This but quickened, however, in the Princess the act she reprobated. “That may be. But if I hadn’t thought⁠—!”

“You wouldn’t, you mean, have been where you are?”

“Yes, because they, on their side, thought of everything but that. They thought of everything but that I might think.”

“Or even,” her friend too superficially concurred, “that your father might!”

As to this, at all events, Maggie discriminated. “No, that wouldn’t have prevented them; for they knew that his first care would be not to make me do so. As it is,” Maggie added, “that has had to become his last.”

Fanny Assingham took it in deeper⁠—for what it immediately made her give out louder. “He’s splendid then.” She sounded it almost aggressively; it was what she was reduced to⁠—she had positively to place it.

“Ah, that as much as you please!”

Maggie said this and left it, but the tone of it had the next moment determined in her friend a fresh reaction. “You think, both of you, so abysmally and yet so quietly. But it’s what will have saved you.”

“Oh,” Maggie returned, “it’s what⁠—from the moment they discovered we could think at all⁠—will have saved them. For they’re the ones who are saved,” she went on. “We’re the ones who are lost.”

“Lost⁠—?”

“Lost to each other⁠—father and I.” And then as her friend appeared to demur, “Oh yes,” Maggie quite lucidly declared, “lost to each other much more, really, than Amerigo and Charlotte are; since for them it’s just, it’s right, it’s deserved, while for us it’s only sad and strange and not caused by our fault. But I don’t know,” she went on, “why I talk about myself, for it’s on father it really comes. I let him go,” said Maggie.

“You let him, but you don’t make him.”

“I take it from him,” she answered.

“But what else can you do?”

“I take it from him,” the Princess repeated. “I do what I knew from the first I should do. I get off by giving him up.”

“But if he gives you?” Mrs. Assingham presumed to object. “Doesn’t it moreover then,” she asked, “complete the very purpose with which he married⁠—that of making you and leaving you more free?”

Maggie looked at her long. “Yes⁠—I help him to do that.”

Mrs. Assingham hesitated, but at last her bravery flared. “Why not call it then frankly his complete success?”

“Well,” said Maggie, “that’s all that’s left me to do.”

“It’s a success,” her friend ingeniously developed, “with which you’ve simply not interfered.” And as if to show that she spoke without levity Mrs. Assingham went further. “He has made it a success for them⁠—!”

“Ah, there you are!” Maggie responsively mused. “Yes,” she said the next moment, “that’s why Amerigo stays.”

“Let alone it’s why Charlotte goes.” that Mrs. Assingham, and emboldened, smiled “So he knows⁠—?”

But Maggie hung back. “Amerigo⁠—?” After which, however, she blushed⁠—to her companion’s recognition.

“Your father. He knows what you know? I mean,” Fanny faltered⁠—“well, how much does he know?” Maggie’s silence and Maggie’s eyes had in fact arrested the push of the question⁠—which, for a decent consistency, she couldn’t yet quite abandon. “What I should rather say is does he know how much?” She found it still awkward. “How much, I mean, they did. How far”⁠—she touched it up⁠—“they went.”

Maggie had waited, but only with a question. “Do you think he does?”

“Know at