The Golden Bowl - Henry James [208]
Mrs Assingham, more brightly again, bridled. ‘Is that what you call it when you make them, for terror as you say, do as you like?’
‘Ah there wouldn’t be any terror for them if they had nothing to hide.’
Mrs Assingham faced her – quite steady now. ‘Are you really conscious, love, of what you’re saying?’
‘I’m saying that I’m bewildered and tormented, and that I’ve no one but you to speak to. I’ve thought, I’ve in fact been sure, that you’ve seen for yourself how much this is the case. It’s why I’ve believed you would meet me halfway.’
‘Halfway to what? To denouncing,’ Fanny asked, ‘two persons, friends of years, whom I’ve always immensely admired and liked, and against whom I haven’t the shadow of a charge to make?’
Maggie looked at her with wide eyes. ‘I had much rather you should denounce me than denounce them. Denounce me, denounce me,’ she said, ‘if you can see your way.’ It was exactly what she appeared to have argued out with herself. ‘If conscientiously you can denounce me; if conscientiously you can revile me; if conscientiously you can put me in my place for a low-minded little pig –!’
‘Well?’ said Mrs Assingham consideringly, as she paused for emphasis.
‘I think I shall be saved.’
Her friend took it for a minute however by carrying thoughtful eyes, eyes verily portentous, over her head. ‘You say you’ve no one to speak to, and you make a point of your having so disguised your feelings – not having, as you call it, given yourself away. Have you then never seen it not only as your right, but as your bounden duty, worked up to such a pitch, to speak to your husband?’
‘I’ve spoken to him,’ said Maggie.
Mrs Assingham stared. ‘Ah then it isn’t true that you’ve made no sign.’
Maggie had a silence. ‘I’ve made no trouble. I’ve made no scene. I’ve taken no stand. I’ve neither reproached nor accused him. You’ll say there’s a way in all that of being nasty enough.’
‘Oh!’ dropped from Fanny as if she couldn’t help it.
‘But I don’t think – strangely enough – that he regards me as nasty. I think that at bottom – for that is,’ said the Princess, ‘the strangeness – he’s sorry for me. Yes, I think that deep within he pities me.’
Her companion wondered. ‘For the state you’ve let yourself get into?’
‘For not being happy when I’ve so much to make me so.’
‘You’ve everything,’ said Mrs Assingham with alacrity. Yet she remained for an instant embarrassed as to a further advance. ‘Yet I don’t understand how, if you’ve done nothing –’
An impatience from Maggie had checked her. ‘I’ve not done absolutely “nothing”.’
‘But what then –?’
‘Well,’ she went on after a minute, ‘he knows what I’ve done.’
It produced on Mrs Assingham’s part, her whole tone and manner exquisitely aiding, a hush not less prolonged and the very duration of which inevitably gave it something of the character of an equal recognition. ‘And what then has he done?’
Maggie took again a minute. ‘He has been splendid.’
‘ “Splendid”? Then what more do you want?’
‘Ah what you see!’ said Maggie. ‘Not to be afraid.’
It made her guest again hang fire. ‘Not to be afraid really to speak?’
‘Not to be afraid not to speak.’
Mrs Assingham considered further. ‘You can’t even to Charlotte?’ But as, at this, after a look at her, Maggie turned off with a movement of suppressed despair, she checked herself and might have been watching her, for all the difficulty and the pity of it, vaguely move to the window and the view of the dull street. It was almost as if she had had to give up, from failure of responsive wit in her friend – the last failure she had feared – the hope of the particular relief she had been working for. Mrs Assingham resumed the next instant however in the very tone that seemed most to promise her she should have to give up nothing. ‘I see, I see; you’d have in that case too many things to consider.’ It brought the Princess round again, proving itself thus the note of comprehension she wished most to clutch at. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
Maggie took it where she stood – which she was soon able to signify. ‘Thank you.’
It very properly encouraged her counsellor.