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

every way, a great attitude. She has above all a great conscience.” More perhaps than ever in her life before Maggie addressed her father at this moment with a shade of the absolute in her tone. She had never come so near telling him what he should take it from her to believe. “She has only twopence in the world⁠—but that has nothing to do with it. Or rather indeed”⁠—she quickly corrected herself⁠—“it has everything. For she doesn’t care. I never saw her do anything but laugh at her poverty. Her life has been harder than anyone knows.”

It was moreover as if, thus unprecedentedly positive, his child had an effect upon him that Mr. Verver really felt as a new thing. “Why then haven’t you told me about her before?”

“Well, haven’t we always known⁠—?”

“I should have thought,” he submitted, “that we had already pretty well sized her up.”

“Certainly⁠—we long ago quite took her for granted. But things change, with time, and I seem to know that, after this interval, I’m going to like her better than ever. I’ve lived more myself, I’m older, and one judges better. Yes, I’m going to see in Charlotte,” said the Princess⁠—and speaking now as with high and free expectation⁠—“more than I’ve ever seen.”

“Then I’ll try to do so too. She was”⁠—it came back to Mr. Verver more⁠—“the one of your friends I thought the best for you.”

His companion, however, was so launched in her permitted liberty of appreciation that she for the moment scarce heard him. She was lost in the case she made out, the vision of the different ways in which Charlotte had distinguished herself.

“She would have liked for instance⁠—I’m sure she would have liked extremely⁠—to marry; and nothing in general is more ridiculous, even when it has been pathetic, than a woman who has tried and has not been able.”

It had all Mr. Verver’s attention. “She has ‘tried’⁠—?”

“She has seen cases where she would have liked to.”

“But she has not been able?”

“Well, there are more cases, in Europe, in which it doesn’t come to girls who are poor than in which it does come to them. Especially,” said Maggie with her continued competence, “when they’re Americans.”

Well, her father now met her, and met her cheerfully, on all sides. “Unless you mean,” he suggested, “that when the girls are American there are more cases in which it comes to the rich than to the poor.”

She looked at him good-humouredly. “That may be⁠—but I’m not going to be smothered in my case. It ought to make me⁠—if I were in danger of being a fool⁠—all the nicer to people like Charlotte. It’s not hard for me,” she practically explained, “not to be ridiculous⁠—unless in a very different way. I might easily be ridiculous, I suppose, by behaving as if I thought I had done a great thing. Charlotte, at any rate, has done nothing, and anyone can see it, and see also that it’s rather strange; and yet no one⁠—no one not awfully presumptuous or offensive would like, or would dare, to treat her, just as she is, as anything but quite right. That’s what it is to have something about you that carries things off.”

Mr. Verver’s silence, on this, could only be a sign that she had caused her story to interest him; though the sign when he spoke was perhaps even sharper. “And is it also what you mean by Charlotte’s being ‘great’?”

“Well,” said Maggie, “it’s one of her ways. But she has many.”

Again for a little her father considered. “And who is it she has tried to marry?”

Maggie, on her side as well, waited as if to bring it out with effect; but she after a minute either renounced or encountered an obstacle. “I’m afraid I’m not sure.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Well, I don’t know”⁠—and, qualifying again, she was earnestly emphatic. “I only make it out for myself.”

“But you must make it out about someone in particular.”

She had another pause. “I don’t think I want even for myself to put names and times, to pull away any veil. I’ve an idea there has been, more than once, somebody I’m not acquainted with⁠—and needn’t be or want to be. In any case it’s all over, and, beyond giving her credit for everything, it’s none of my business.”

Mr. Verver deferred, yet he discriminated. “I don’t see how you can give credit without knowing the facts.”

“Can’t I give it⁠—generally⁠—for dignity? Dignity, I mean, in misfortune.”

“You’ve got to postulate the misfortune first.”

“Well,” said Maggie, “I can do that. Isn’t it always a misfortune to be⁠—when you’re so fine⁠—so wasted? And yet,” she went on, “not to wail about it, not to look even as if you knew it?”

Mr. Verver seemed at first to face this as a large question, and then, after a little, solicited by another view, to let the appeal drop. “Well, she mustn’t be wasted. We won’t at least have waste.”

It produced in Maggie’s face another gratitude. “Then, dear sir, that’s all I want.”

And it would apparently have settled their question and ended their talk if her father had not, after a little, shown the disposition to revert. “How many times are you supposing that she has tried?”

Once more, at this, and as if she hadn’t been, couldn’t be, hated to be, in such delicate matters, literal, she was moved to attenuate. “Oh, I don’t say she absolutely ever tried⁠—!”

He looked perplexed. “But if she has so absolutely failed, what then had she done?”

“She has suffered⁠—she has done that.” And the Princess added: “She has loved⁠—and she has lost.”

Mr. Verver, however, still wondered. “But how many times.”

Maggie hesitated, but it cleared up. “Once is enough. Enough, that is, for one to be kind to her.”

Her father listened, yet not challenging⁠—only as with a need of some basis on which, under these new lights, his bounty could be firm. “But has she told you nothing?”

“Ah, thank goodness, no!”

He stared. “Then don’t young women tell?”

“Because, you mean, it’s just what they’re supposed to do?” She looked at him, flushed again