The Golden Bowl - Henry James [184]
She had never never treated them in any such way – not even just now, when she had plied her art upon the Matcham band; her present manner was an intenser exclusion, and the air was charged with their silence while she talked with her other companion as if she had nothing but him to consider. He had given her the note, amazingly, by his allusion to the pleasantness – that of such an occasion as his successful dinner – which might figure as their bribe for renouncing; so that it was all as if they were speaking selfishly, counting on a repetition of just such extensions of experience. Maggie achieved accordingly an act of unprecedented energy, threw herself into her father’s presence as by the absolute consistency with which she held his eyes; saying to herself, at the same time that she smiled and talked and inaugurated her system, ‘What does he mean by it? That’s the question – what does he mean?’ but studying again all the signs in him that recent anxiety had made familiar and counting the stricken minutes on the part of the others. It was in their silence that the others loomed, as she felt; she had had no measure, she afterwards knew, of this duration, but it drew out and out – really to what would have been called in simpler conditions awkwardness – as if she herself were stretching the cord. Ten minutes later, however, in the homeward carriage, to which her husband, cutting delay short, had proceeded at the first announcement, ten minutes later she was to stretch it almost to breaking. The Prince had permitted her to linger much less, before his move to the door, than they usually lingered at the gossiping close of such evenings; which she, all responsive, took as a sign of his impatience to modify for her the odd effect of his not having, and of Charlotte’s not having, instantly acclaimed the issue of the question debated or, more exactly, settled before them. He had had time to become aware of this possible impression in her, and his virtually urging her into the carriage was connected with his feeling that he must take action on the new ground. A certain ambiguity in her would absolutely have tormented him; but he had already found something to soothe and correct – as to which she had on her side a shrewd notion of what it would be. She was herself for that matter prepared, and was also, of a truth, as she took her seat in the brougham, amazed at her preparation. It allowed her scarce an interval; she brought it straight out.
‘I was certain that was what father would say if I should leave him alone. I have been leaving him alone, and you see the effect. He hates now to move – he likes too much to be with us. But if you see the effect’ – she felt herself magnificently keeping it up – ‘perhaps you don’t see the cause. The cause, my dear, is too lovely.’
Her husband, on taking his place beside her, had, during a minute or two, for her watching sense, neither said nor done anything; he had been, for that sense, as if thinking, waiting, deciding: yet it was still before he spoke that he, as she felt it to be, definitely acted. He put his arm round her and drew her close – indulged in the demonstration, the long firm embrace by his single arm, the infinite pressure of her whole person to his own, that such opportunities had so often suggested and prescribed. Held accordingly and, as she could but too intimately feel, exquisitely solicited, she had said the thing she was intending and desiring to say and as to which she felt, even more than she felt anything