The Golden Bowl - Henry James [284]
It drew Mrs Assingham’s wonder. ‘And what then is the name?’
‘ “The reduction to its simplest expression of what we are doing” – that’s what he called it. Therefore as we’re doing nothing, we’re doing it in the most aggravated way – which is the way he desires.’ With which Maggie further said: ‘Of course I understand.’
‘So do I!’ her visitor after a moment breathed. ‘You’ve had to vacate the house – that was inevitable. But at least here he doesn’t funk.’
Our young woman accepted the expression. ‘He doesn’t funk.’
It only however half-contented Fanny, who thoughtfully raised her eyebrows. ‘He’s prodigious; but what is there – as you’ve “fixed” it – to dodge? Unless,’ she pursued, ‘it’s her getting near him; it’s – if you’ll pardon my vulgarity – her getting at him. That,’ she suggested, ‘may count with him.’
But it found the Princess prepared. ‘She can get near him here. She can get “at” him. She can come up.’
‘Can she?’ Fanny Assingham questioned.
‘Can’t she?’ Maggie returned.
Their eyes for a minute intimately met on it; after which the elder woman said: ‘I mean for seeing him alone.’
‘So do I,’ said the Princess.
At which Fanny, for her reasons couldn’t help smiling. ‘Oh if it’s for that he’s staying –!’
‘He’s staying – I’ve made it out – to take anything that comes or calls upon him. To take,’ Maggie went on, ‘even that.’ Then she put it as she had at last put it to herself. ‘He’s staying for high decency.’
‘Decency?’ Mrs Assingham gravely echoed.
‘Decency. If she should try –!’
‘Well –?’ Mrs Assingham urged.
‘Well, I hope –!’
‘Hope he’ll see her?’
Maggie hesitated, however; she made no direct reply. ‘It’s useless hoping,’ she presently said. ‘She won’t. But he ought to.’ Her friend’s expression of a moment before, which had been apologised for as vulgar, prolonged its sharpness to her ear – that of an electric bell under continued pressure. Stated so simply, what was it but dreadful, truly, that the feasibility of Charlotte’s ‘getting at’ the man who for so long had loved her should now be in question? Strangest of all things doubtless this care of Maggie’s as to what might make for it or make against it; stranger still her fairly lapsing at moments into a vague calculation of the conceivability, on her own part, with her husband, of some direct sounding of the subject. Would it be too monstrous, her suddenly breaking out to him as in alarm at the lapse of the weeks: ‘Wouldn’t it really seem that you’re bound in honour to do something for her privately before they go?’ Maggie was capable of weighing the risk of this adventure for her own spirit, capable of sinking to intense little absences, even while conversing as now with the person who had most of her confidence, during which she followed up the possibilities. It was true that Mrs Assingham could at such times somewhat restore the balance by not wholly failing to guess her thought. Her thought however just at present had more than one face – had a series that it successively presented. These were indeed the possibilities involved in the adventure of her concerning herself for the quantity of compensation Mrs Verver might still look to. There was always the possibility that she was after all sufficiently to get at him – there was in fact that of her having again and again done so. Against this stood nothing but Fanny Assingham’s apparent belief in her privation – more mercilessly imposed or more hopelessly felt in the actual relation of the parties; over and beyond everything that from more than three months back of course had fostered in the Princess a like conviction. These assumptions might certainly be baseless – inasmuch as