The Golden Bowl - Henry James [31]
The Prince, with immediate gaiety, threw back his head. ‘What do you mean by “properly”? I somehow see volumes in it. It’s the way people put a thing when they put it – well, wrong. I put things right. What is it that has happened for me?’
His hostess had the next moment drawn spirit from his tone. ‘Oh I shall be delighted if you’ll take your share of it. Charlotte Stan’s in London. She has just been here.’
‘Miss Stant? Oh really?’ The Prince expressed clear surprise – a transparency through which his eyes met his friend’s with a certain hardness of concussion. ‘She has arrived from America?’ he then quickly asked.
‘She appears to have arrived this noon – coming up from Southampton – at an hotel. She dropped upon me after luncheon and was here for more than an hour.’
The young man heard with interest, though not with an interest too great for his gaiety. ‘You think then I’ve a share in it? What is my share?’
‘Why any you like – the one you seemed just now eager to take. It was you yourself who insisted.’
He looked at her on this with conscious inconsistency, and she could now see that he had changed colour. But he was always easy. ‘I didn’t know then what the matter was.’
‘You didn’t think it could be so bad?’
‘Do you call it very bad?’ the young man asked.
‘Only,’ she smiled, ‘because that’s the way it seems to affect you.’
He hesitated, still with the trace of his quickened colour, still looking at her, still adjusting his manner. ‘But you allowed you were upset.’
‘To the extent – yes – of not having in the least looked for her. Any more,’ said Mrs Assingham, ‘than I judge Maggie to have done.’
The Prince thought; then as if glad to be able to say something very natural and true: ‘No – quite right. Maggie hasn’t looked for her. But I’m sure,’ he added, ‘she’ll be delighted to see her.’
‘That certainly’ – and his hostess spoke with a different shade of gravity.
‘She’ll be quite overjoyed,’ the Prince went on. ‘Has Miss Stant now gone to her?’
‘She has gone back to her hotel, to bring her things here. I can’t have her,’ said Mrs Assingham, ‘alone at an hotel.’
‘No; I see.’
‘If she’s here at all she must stay with me.’
He quite took it in. ‘So she’s coming now?’
‘I expect her at any moment. If you wait you’ll see her.’
‘Oh,’ he promptly declared – ‘charming!’ But this word came out as if a little in sudden substitution for some other. It sounded accidental, whereas he wished to be firm. That accordingly was what he next showed himself. ‘If it wasn’t for what’s going on these next days Maggie would certainly want to have her. In fact,’ he lucidly continued, ‘isn’t what’s happening just a reason to make her want to?’ Mrs Assingham, for answer, only looked at him, and this the next instant had apparently had more effect than if she had spoken. For he asked a question that seemed incongruous. ‘What has she come for?’
It made his companion laugh. ‘Why, for just what you say. For your marriage.’
‘Mine?’ – He wondered.
‘Maggie’s – it’s the same thing. It’s “for” your great event. And then,’ said Mrs Assingham, ‘she’s so lonely.’
‘Has she given you that as a reason?’
‘I scarcely remember – she gave me so many. She abounds, poor dear, in reasons. But there’s one that, whatever she does, I always remember for myself.’
‘And which is that?’ He looked as if he ought to guess but couldn’t.
‘Why the fact that she has no home – absolutely none whatever. She’s extraordinarily alone.’
Again he took it in. ‘And also has no great means.’
‘Very small ones. Which is not however, with the expense of railways and hotels, a reason for her running to and fro.’
‘On the contrary. But she doesn’t like her country.’
‘Hers, my dear man? – it’s little enough “hers”.’ The attribution for the moment amused his hostess. ‘She has rebounded now – but she has had little enough else to do with it.’
‘Oh I say hers,’ the Prince pleasantly explained, ‘very much as at this time of day I might say mine.