The Golden Bowl - Henry James [144]
This had become of a sudden the simplest thing in the world – the sense of which moreover seemed really to amount to a portent that he should feel for evermore, on the general head, conveniently at his ease with her. He went in fact a step further than Charlotte – put the latter forward as creating his necessity. She was staying over luncheon to oblige their hostess – as a consequence of which he must also stay to see her decently home. He must deliver her safe and sound, he felt, in Eaton Square. Regret as he might too the difference made by this obligation, he frankly didn’t mind, inasmuch as, over and above the pleasure itself, his scruple would certainly gratify both Mr Verver and Maggie. They never yet had absolutely and entirely learned, he even found deliberation to intimate, how little he really neglected the first – as it seemed nowadays quite to have become – of his domestic duties: therefore he still constantly felt how little he must remit his effort to make them remark it. To which he added with equal lucidity that they would return in time for dinner, and if he didn’t, as a last word, subjoin that it would be ‘lovely’ of Fanny to find, on her own return, a moment to go to Eaton Square and report them as struggling bravely on, this wasn’t because the impulse, down to the very name for the amiable act, altogether failed to rise. His inward assurance, his general plan, had at moments, where she was concerned, its drops of continuity, and nothing would less have pleased him than that she should suspect in him, however tempted, any element of conscious ‘cheek’. But he was always – that was really the upshot – cultivating thanklessly the considerate and the delicate: it was a long lesson, this unlearning, with people of English race, all the little superstitions that accompany friendship. Mrs Assingham herself was the first to say that she would unfailingly ‘report’; she brought it out in fact, he thought, quite wonderfully – having attained the summit of the wonderful during the brief interval that had separated her appeal to Charlotte from this passage with himself. She had taken the five minutes, obviously, amid the rest of the talk and the movement, to retire into her tent for meditation – which showed, among several things, the impression Charlotte had made on her. It was from the tent she emerged as with arms refurbished; though who indeed could say if the manner in which she now met him spoke most, really, of the glitter of battle or of the white waver of the flag of truce? The parley was short either way; the gallantry of her offer was all sufficient.
‘I’ll go to our friends then – I’ll ask for luncheon. I’ll tell them when to expect you.’
‘That will be charming. Say we’re all right.’
‘All right – precisely. I can’t say more,’ Mrs Assingham smiled.
‘No doubt.’ But he considered as for the possible importance of it. ‘Neither can you, by what I seem to feel, say less.’
‘Oh, I won’t say less!’ Fanny laughed; with which the next moment she had turned away. But they had it again, not less bravely, on the morrow, after breakfast, in the thick of the advancing carriages and the exchange of farewells. ‘I think I’ll send home my maid from Euston,’ she was then prepared to amend, ‘and go to Eaton Square straight. So you can be easy.’
‘Oh I think we’re easy,’ the Prince returned. ‘Be sure to say, at any rate, that we’re bearing up.’
‘You’re bearing up – good. And Charlotte returns to dinner?’
‘To dinner. We’re not likely, I think, to make another night away.’
‘Well then I wish you at least a pleasant day.’
‘Oh,’ he laughed as they separated, ‘we shall do our best for it!’ – after which, in due course, with the announcement of their conveyance,