The Golden Bowl - Henry James [210]
‘To lie “for” her?’ The Colonel often, at these hours, as from a vague vision of old chivalry in a new form, wandered into apparent lapses from lucidity.
‘To lie to her, up and down, and in and out – it comes to the same thing. It will consist just as much of lying to the others too: to the Prince about one’s belief in him; to Charlotte about one’s belief in her; to Mr Verver, dear sweet man, about one’s belief in every one. So we’ve work cut out – with the biggest lie, on top of all, being that we like to be there for such a purpose. We hate it unspeakably – I’m more ready to be a coward before it, to let the whole thing, to let every one, selfishly and pusillanimously slide, than before any social duty, any felt human call, that has ever forced me to be decent. I speak at least for myself. For you,’ she had added, ‘as I’ve given you so perfect an opportunity to fall in love with Maggie, you’ll doubtless find your account in being so much nearer to her.’
‘And what do you make,’ the Colonel could, at this, always imperturbably enough ask, ‘of the account you yourself will find in being so much nearer to the Prince; of your confirmed, if not exasperated, infatuation with whom – to say nothing of my weak good nature about it – you give such a pretty picture?’
To the picture in question she had in fact been always able contemplatively to return. ‘The difficulty of my enjoyment of that is, don’t you see? that I’m making, in my loyalty to Maggie, a sad hash of his affection for me.’
‘You find means to call it then, this whitewashing of his crime, being “loyal” to Maggie?’
‘Oh about that particular crime there’s always much to say. It’s always more interesting to us than any other crime – it has at least that for it. But of course I call everything I have in mind at all being loyal to Maggie. Being loyal to her is more than anything else helping her with her father – which is what she most wants and needs.’
The Colonel had had it before, but he could apparently never have too much of it. ‘Helping her “with” him –?’
‘Helping her against him then. Against what we’ve already so fully talked of – its having to be recognised between them that he doubts. That’s where my part is so plain – to see her through, to see her through to the end.’ Exaltation, for the moment, always lighted Mrs Assingham’s reference to this plainness; yet she at the same time seldom failed, the next instant, to qualify her view of it. ‘When I talk of my obligation as clear I mean that it’s absolute; for just how, from day to day and through thick and thin, to keep the thing up is, I grant you, another matter. There’s one way, luckily, nevertheless, in which I’m strong. I can so perfectly count on her.’
The Colonel seldom failed here, as from the insidious growth of an excitement, to wonder, to encourage. ‘Not to see you’re lying?’
‘To stick to me fast, whatever she sees. If I stick to her – that is to my own poor struggling way, under providence, of watching over them all – she’ll stand by me to the death. She won’t give me away. For you know she easily can.’
This, regularly, was the most lurid turn of their road; but Bob Assingham, with each journey, met it as for the first time. ‘Easily?’
‘She can utterly dishonour me with her father. She can let him know that I was aware at the time of his marriage – as I had been aware at the time of her own – of the relations that had pre-existed between his wife and her