The Golden Bowl - Henry James [205]
‘Anything there shouldn’t be, there shouldn’t have been – all this time. Do you believe there is – or what’s your idea?’
Fanny’s idea was clearly, to begin with, that her young friend had taken her breath away; but she looked at her very straight and very hard. ‘Do you speak from a suspicion of your own?’
‘I speak at last from a torment. Forgive me if it comes out. I’ve been thinking for months and months, and I’ve no one to turn to, no one to help me to make things out; no impression but my own, don’t you see? to go by.’
‘You’ve been thinking for months and months?’ – Mrs Assingham took it in. ‘But what then, dear Maggie, have you been thinking?’
‘Well, horrible things – like a little beast that I perhaps am. That there may be something – something wrong and dreadful, some thing they cover up.’
The elder woman’s colour had begun to come back; she was able, though with a visible effort, to face the question less amazedly. ‘You imagine, poor child, that the wretches are in love? Is that it?’
But Maggie for a minute only stared back at her. ‘Help me to find out what I imagine. I don’t know – I’ve nothing but my perpetual anxiety. Have you any? – do you see what I mean? If you’ll tell me truly, that at least, one way or the other, will do something for me.’
Fanny’s look had taken a peculiar gravity – a fulness with which it seemed to shine. ‘Is what it comes to that you’re jealous of Charlotte?’
‘Do you mean whether I hate her?’ – and Maggie thought. ‘No; not on account of father.’
‘Ah,’ Mrs Assingham returned, ‘that isn’t what one would suppose. What I ask is if you’re jealous on account of your husband.’
‘Well,’ said Maggie presently, ‘perhaps that may be all. If I’m unhappy I’m jealous; it must come to the same thing; and with you at least I’m not afraid of the word. If I’m jealous, don’t you see? I’m tormented,’ she went on – ‘and all the more if I’m helpless. And if I’m both helpless and tormented I stuff my pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, I keep it there, for the most part, night and day, so as not to be heard too indecently moaning. Only now, with you, at last, I can’t keep it longer; I’ve pulled it out and here I am fairly screaming at you. They’re away,’ she wound up, ‘so they can’t hear; and I’m by a miracle of arrangement not at luncheon with father at home. I live in the midst of miracles of arrangement, half of which I admit are my own; I go about on tiptoe, I watch for every sound, I feel every breath, and yet I try all the while to seem as smooth as old satin dyed rose-colour. Have you ever thought of me,’ she asked, ‘as really feeling as I do?’
Her companion, conspicuously, required to be clear. ‘Jealous, unhappy, tormented –? No,’ said Mrs Assingham; ‘but at the same time – and though you may laugh at me for it! – I’m bound to confess I’ve never been so awfully sure of what I may call knowing you. Here you are indeed, as you say – such a deep little person! I’ve never imagined your existence poisoned, and since you wish to know if I consider it need be I’ve not the least difficulty in speaking on the spot. Nothing decidedly strikes me as more unnecessary.’
For a minute after this they remained face to face; Maggie had sprung up while her friend sat enthroned, and, after moving to and fro in her intensity, now paused to receive the