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

“Would make me have to speak of him. And I can’t,” said Maggie, “speak of him.”

“You ‘can’t’⁠—?”

“I can’t.” She said it as for definite notice, not to be repeated. “There are too many things,” she nevertheless added. “He’s too great.”

The Prince looked at his cigar-tip, and then as he put back the weed: “Too great for whom?” Upon which as she hesitated, “Not, my dear, too great for you,” he declared. “For me⁠—oh, as much as you like.”

“Too great for me is what I mean. I know why I think it,” Maggie said. “That’s enough.”

He looked at her yet again as if she but fanned his wonder; he was on the very point, she judged, of asking her why she thought it. But her own eyes maintained their warning, and at the end of a minute he had uttered other words. “What’s of importance is that you’re his daughter. That at least we’ve got. And I suppose that, if I may say nothing else, I may say at least that I value it.”

“Oh yes, you may say that you value it. I myself make the most of it.”

This again he took in, letting it presently put forth for him a striking connection. “She ought to have known you. That’s what’s present to me. She ought to have understood you better.”

“Better than you did?”

“Yes,” he gravely maintained, “better than I did. And she didn’t really know you at all. She doesn’t know you now.”

“Ah, yes she does!” said Maggie.

But he shook his head⁠—he knew what he meant. “She not only doesn’t understand you more than I, she understands you ever so much less. Though even I⁠—!”

“Well, even you?” Maggie pressed as he paused. “Even I, even I even yet⁠—!” Again he paused and the silence held them.

But Maggie at last broke it. “If Charlotte doesn’t understand me, it is that I’ve prevented her. I’ve chosen to deceive her and to lie to her.”

The Prince kept his eyes on her. “I know what you’ve chosen to do. But I’ve chosen to do the same.”

“Yes,” said Maggie after an instant⁠—“my choice was made when I had guessed yours. But you mean,” she asked, “that she understands you?”

“It presents small difficulty!”

“Are you so sure?” Maggie went on.

“Sure enough. But it doesn’t matter.” He waited an instant; then looking up through the fumes of his smoke, “She’s stupid,” he abruptly opined.

“O⁠—oh!” Maggie protested in a long wail.

It had made him in fact quickly change colour. “What I mean is that she’s not, as you pronounce her, unhappy.” And he recovered, with this, all his logic. “Why is she unhappy if she doesn’t know?”

“Doesn’t know⁠—?” She tried to make his logic difficult.

“Doesn’t know that you know.”

It came from him in such a way that she was conscious, instantly, of three or four things to answer. But what she said first was: “Do you think that’s all it need take?” And before he could reply, “She knows, she knows!” Maggie proclaimed.

“Well then, what?”

But she threw back her head, she turned impatiently away from him. “Oh, I needn’t tell you! She knows enough. Besides,” she went on, “she doesn’t believe us.”

It made the Prince stare a little. “Ah, she asks too much!” That drew, however, from his wife another moan of objection, which determined in him a judgment. “She won’t let you take her for unhappy.”

“Oh, I know better than anyone else what she won’t let me take her for!”

“Very well,” said Amerigo, “you’ll see.”

“I shall see wonders, I know. I’ve already seen them, and I’m prepared for them.” Maggie recalled⁠—she had memories enough. “It’s terrible”⁠—her memories prompted her to speak. “I see it’s always terrible for women.”

The Prince looked down in his gravity. “Everything’s terrible, cara, in the heart of man. She’s making her life,” he said. “She’ll make it.”

His wife turned back upon him; she had wandered to a table, vaguely setting objects straight. “A little by the way then too, while she’s about it, she’s making ours.” At this he raised his eyes, which met her own, and she held him while she delivered herself of some thing that had been with her these last minutes.

“You spoke just now of Charlotte’s not having learned from you that I ‘know.’ Am I to take from you then that you accept and recognise my knowledge?”

He did the inquiry all the honours⁠—visibly weighed its importance and weighed his response. “You think I might have been showing you that a little more handsomely?”

“It isn’t a question of any beauty,” said Maggie; “it’s only a question of the quantity of truth.”

“Oh, the quantity of truth!” the Prince richly, though ambiguously, murmured.

“That’s a thing by itself, yes. But there are also such things, all the same, as questions of good faith.”

“Of course there are!” the Prince hastened to reply. After which he brought up more slowly: “If ever a man, since the beginning of time, acted in good faith!” But he dropped it, offering it simply for that.

For that then, when it had had time somewhat to settle, like some handful of gold-dust thrown into the air⁠—for that then Maggie showed herself, as deeply and strangely taking it. “I see.” And she even wished this form to be as complete as she could make it. “I see.”

The completeness, clearly, after an instant, had struck him as divine. “Ah, my dear, my dear, my dear⁠—!” It was all he could say.

She wasn’t talking, however, at large. “You’ve kept up for so long a silence⁠—!”

“Yes, yes, I know what I’ve kept up. But will you do,” he asked, “still one thing more for me?”

It was as if, for an instant, with her new exposure, it had made her turn pale. “Is there even one thing left?”

“Ah, my dear, my dear, my dear!”⁠—it had pressed again in him the fine spring of the unspeakable. There was nothing, however, that the Princess herself couldn’t say. “I’ll do anything, if you’ll tell me what.”

“Then wait.” And his raised Italian hand, with its play of admonitory