The Golden Bowl - Henry James [187]
‘Do you mean he thinks of proposing it?’ the Prince after a moment sounded.
‘Oh no – he doesn’t ask, as you must so often have seen. But I believe he’d go “like a shot”, as you say, if you were to suggest it.’
It had the air, she knew, of a kind of condition made, and she had asked herself while she spoke if it wouldn’t cause his arm to let her go. The fact that it didn’t suggested to her that she had made him of a sudden still more intensely think, think with such concentration that he could do but one thing at once. And it was precisely as if the concentration had the next moment been proved in him. He took a turn inconsistent with the superficial impression – a jump that made light of their approach to gravity and represented for her the need in him to gain time. This she made out was his drawback – that the warning from her had come to him and had come to Charlotte after all too suddenly. That they were in face of it rearranging, that they had to rearrange, was all before her again; yet to do as they would like they must enjoy a snatch, longer or shorter, of recovered independence. Amerigo was for the instant but doing as he didn’t like, and it was as if she were watching his effort without disguise. ‘What’s your father’s idea this year then about Fawns? Will he go at Whitsuntide and will he then stay on?’
Maggie went through the form of thought. ‘He’ll really do, I imagine, as he has in so many ways so often done before; do whatever may seem most agreeable to yourself. And there’s of course always Charlotte to be considered. Only their going early to Fawns, if they do go,’ she said, ‘needn’t in the least entail your and my going.’
‘Ah,’ Amerigo echoed, ‘it needn’t in the least entail your and my going?’
‘We can do as we like. What they may do needn’t trouble us, since they’re by good fortune perfectly happy together.’
‘Oh,’ the Prince returned, ‘your father’s never so happy as with you near him to enjoy his being so.’
‘Well, I may enjoy it,’ said Maggie, ‘but I’m not the cause of it.’
‘You’re the cause,’ her husband declared, ‘of the greater part of everything that’s good among us.’ But she received this tribute in silence, and the next moment he pursued: ‘If Mrs Verver has arrears of time with you to make up, as you say, she’ll scarcely do it – or you scarcely will – by our cutting, your and my cutting, too loose.’
‘I see what you mean,’ Maggie mused.
He let her for a little give her attention to it; after which, ‘Shall I just quite of a sudden,’ he asked, ‘propose him a journey?’
Maggie cast about her, but she brought forth the fruit of reflexion. ‘It would have the merit that Charlotte then would be with me – with me I mean so much more. Also that I shouldn’t, by choosing such a time for going away, seem unconscious and ungrateful, seem not to respond, seem in fact rather to wish to shake her off. I should respond on the contrary most markedly – by being here alone with her for a month.’
‘And would you like to be here alone with her for a month?’
‘I could do with it beautifully. Or we might even,’ she said quite gaily, ‘go together down to Fawns.’
‘You could be so very content without me?’ the Prince presently threw out.
‘Yes, my own dear – if you could be content for a while with father. That would keep me up. I might for the time,’ she went on, ‘go to stay there with Charlotte; or, better still, she might come to Portland Place.’
‘Oho!’ said the Prince with cheerful vagueness.
‘I should feel, you see,’ she continued, ‘that the two of us were showing the same sort of kindness.’
Amerigo thought. ‘The two of us? Charlotte and I?’
Maggie again took a moment. ‘You and I, darling.’
‘I see, I see’ – he promptly understood. ‘And what reason shall I give – give I mean your father?’
‘For asking him to go off? Why the very simplest – if you conscientiously can.