The Golden Bowl - Henry James [27]
‘How can you be sure,’ she asked, ‘where I should take you?’
‘Why from your having brought me safely thus far. I should never have got here without you. You’ve provided the ship itself, and if you’ve not quite seen me aboard you’ve attended me ever so kindly to the dock. Your own vessel is all conveniently in the next berth, and you can’t desert me now.’
She showed him again her amusement, which struck him even as excessive, as if, to his surprise, he made her also a little nervous; she treated him in fine as if he were not uttering truths but making pretty figures for her diversion. ‘My vessel, dear Prince?’ she smiled. ‘What vessel in the world have I? This little house is all our ship, Bob’s and mine – and thankful we are now to have it. We’ve wandered far, living, as you may say, from hand to mouth, without rest for the soles of our feet. But the time has come for us at last to draw in.’
He made at this, the young man, an indignant protest. ‘You talk about rest – it’s too selfish! – when you’re just launching me on adventures?’
She shook her head with her kind lucidity. ‘Not adventures – heaven forbid! You’ve had yours – as I’ve had mine; and my idea has been all along that we should neither of us begin again. My own last, precisely, has been doing for you all you so prettily mention. But it consists simply in having conducted you to rest. You talk about ships, but they’re not the comparison. Your tossings are over – you’re practically in port. The port,’ she concluded, ‘of the Golden Isles.’4
He looked about, to put himself more in relation with the place; then after an hesitation seemed to speak certain words instead of certain others. ‘Oh I know where I am –! I do decline to be left, but what I came for of course was to thank you. If to-day has seemed for the first time the end of preliminaries, I feel how little there would have been any at all without you. The first were wholly yours.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Assingham, ‘they were remarkably easy. I’ve seen them, I’ve had them,’ she smiled, ‘more difficult. Everything, you must feel, went of itself. So, you must feel, everything still goes.’
The Prince quickly agreed. ‘Oh beautifully! But you had the conception.’
‘Ah Prince, so had you!’
He looked at her harder a moment. ‘You had it first. You had it most.’
She returned his look as if it had made her wonder. ‘I liked it, if that’s what you mean. But you liked it surely yourself. I protest that I had easy work with you. I had only at last – when I thought it was time – to speak for you.’
‘All that’s quite true. But you’re leaving me all the same, you’re leaving me – you’re washing your hands of me,’ he went on. ‘However, that won’t be easy; I won’t be left.’ And he had turned his eyes about again, taking in the pretty room that she had just described as her final refuge, the place of peace for a world-worn couple, to which she had lately retired with ‘Bob’. ‘I shall keep this spot in sight. Say what you will I shall need you. I’m not, you know,’ he declared, ‘going to give you up for anybody.’
‘If you’re afraid – which of course you’re not – are you trying to make me the same?’ she asked after a moment.
He waited a minute too, then answered her with a question. ‘You say you “liked” it, your undertaking to make my engagement possible. It remains beautiful for me that you did; it’s charming and unforgettable. But still more it’s mysterious and wonderful. Why, you dear delightful woman, did you like it?’
‘I scarce know what to make,’ she said, ‘of such an enquiry. If you haven’t by this time found out yourself, what meaning can anything I say have for you? Don’t you really after all feel,’ she added while nothing came from him – ‘aren’t you conscious every minute of the perfection of the creature of whom I’ve put you into possession?’
‘Every minute – gratefully conscious. But that