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

of her mind that I feel she has abandoned me.”

Interest certainly now was what he had kindled in her face, but it was all the more honourable to her, as he had just called it that she should want to see each of the steps of his conviction. “If you’ve been driven to the ‘likes’ of me, mayn’t it show that you’ve felt truly forsaken?”

“Well, I’m willing to suggest that, if I can show at the same time that I feel consoled.”

“But have you,” she demanded, “really felt so?” He hesitated.

“Consoled?”

“Forsaken.”

“No⁠—I haven’t. But if it’s her idea⁠—!” If it was her idea, in short, that was enough. This enunciation of motive, the next moment, however, sounded to him perhaps slightly thin, so that he gave it another touch. “That is if it’s my idea. I happen, you see, to like my idea.”

“Well, it’s beautiful and wonderful. But isn’t it, possibly,” Charlotte asked, “not quite enough to marry me for?”

“Why so, my dear child? Isn’t a man’s idea usually what he does marry for?”

Charlotte, considering, looked as if this might perhaps be a large question, or at all events something of an extension of one they were immediately concerned with. “Doesn’t that a good deal depend on the sort of thing it may be?” She suggested that, about marriage, ideas, as he called them, might differ; with which, however, giving no more time to it, she sounded another question. “Don’t you appear rather to put it to me that I may accept your offer for Maggie’s sake? Somehow”⁠—she turned it over⁠—“I don’t so clearly see her quite so much finding reassurance, or even quite so much needing it.”

“Do you then make nothing at all of her having been so ready to leave us?”

Ah, Charlotte on the contrary made much! “She was ready to leave us because she had to be. From the moment the Prince wanted it she could only go with him.”

“Perfectly⁠—so that, if you see your way, she will be able to ‘go with him’ in future as much as she likes.”

Charlotte appeared to examine for a minute, in Maggie’s interest, this privilege⁠—the result of which was a limited concession. “You’ve certainly worked it out!”

“Of course I’ve worked it out⁠—that’s exactly what I have done. She hadn’t for a long time been so happy about anything as at your being there with me.”

“I was to be with you,” said Charlotte, “for her security.”

“Well,” Adam Verver rang out, “this is her security. You’ve only, if you can’t see it, to ask her.”

“ ‘Ask’ her?”⁠—the girl echoed it in wonder. “Certainly⁠—in so many words. Telling her you don’t believe me.”

Still she debated. “Do you mean write it to her?”

“Quite so. Immediately. Tomorrow.”

“Oh, I don’t think I can write it,” said Charlotte Stant. “When I write to her”⁠—and she looked amused for so different a shade⁠—“it’s about the Principino’s appetite and Dr. Brady’s visits.”

“Very good then⁠—put it to her face to face. We’ll go straight to Paris to meet them.”

Charlotte, at this, rose with a movement that was like a small cry; but her unspoken sense lost itself while she stood with her eyes on him⁠—he keeping his seat as for the help it gave him, a little, to make his appeal go up. Presently, however, a new sense had come to her, and she covered him, kindly, with the expression of it. “I do think, you know, you must rather ‘like’ me.”

“Thank you,” said Adam Verver. “You will put it to her yourself then?”

She had another hesitation. “We go over, you say, to meet them?”

“As soon as we can get back to Fawns. And wait there for them, if necessary, till they come.”

“Wait⁠—a⁠—at Fawns?”

“Wait in Paris. That will be charming in itself.”

“You take me to pleasant places.” She turned it over. “You propose to me beautiful things.”

“It rests but with you to make them beautiful and pleasant. You’ve made Brighton⁠—!”

“Ah!”⁠—she almost tenderly protested. “With what I’m doing now?”

“You’re promising me now what I want. Aren’t you promising me,” he pressed, getting up, “aren’t you promising me to abide by what Maggie says?”

Oh, she wanted to be sure she was. “Do you mean she’ll ask it of me?”

It gave him indeed, as by communication, a sense of the propriety of being himself certain. Yet what was he but certain? “She’ll speak to you. She’ll speak to you for me.”

This at last then seemed to satisfy her. “Very good. May we wait again to talk of it till she has done so?” He showed, with his hands down in his pockets and his shoulders expressively up, a certain disappointment. Soon enough, none the less, his gentleness was all back and his patience once more exemplary. “Of course I give you time. Especially,” he smiled, “as it’s time that I shall be spending with you. Our keeping on together will help you perhaps to see. To see, I mean, how I need you.”

“I already see,” said Charlotte, “how you’ve persuaded yourself you do.” But she had to repeat it. “That isn’t, unfortunately, all.”

“Well then, how you’ll make Maggie right.”

“ ‘Right’?” She echoed it as if the word went far. And “O⁠—oh!” she still critically murmured as they moved together away.

XIII

He had talked to her of their waiting in Paris, a week later, but on the spot there this period of patience suffered no great strain. He had written to his daughter, not indeed from Brighton, but directly after their return to Fawns, where they spent only forty-eight hours before resuming their journey; and Maggie’s reply to his news was a telegram from Rome, delivered to him at noon of their fourth day and which he brought out to Charlotte, who was seated at that moment in the court of the hotel, where they had agreed that he should join her for their proceeding together to the noontide meal. His letter, at Fawns⁠—a letter of several pages and intended lucidly, unreservedly, in fact all but triumphantly, to inform⁠—had proved, on his sitting down to