The Golden Bowl - Henry James [33]
He deferred for her to this account of herself. ‘But still,’ he said, ‘if we’re not in the presence of a complication.’
She debated. ‘A handsome clever odd girl staying with one is always a complication.’
The young man weighed it almost as if the question were new to him. ‘And will she stay very long?’
His friend gave a laugh. ‘How in the world can I know? I’ve scarcely asked her.’
‘Ah yes. You can’t.’
But something in the tone of it amused her afresh. ‘Do you think you could?’
‘I?’ He wondered.
‘Do you think you could get it out of her for me – the probable length of her stay?’
He rose bravely enough to the occasion and the challenge. ‘I dare say if you were to give me the chance.’
‘Here it is then for you,’ she answered; for she had heard, within the minute, the stop of a cab at her door. ‘She’s back.’
3
It had been said as a joke, but as after this they awaited their friend in silence the effect of the silence was to turn the time to gravity – a gravity not dissipated even when the Prince next spoke. He had been thinking the case over and making up his mind. A handsome clever odd girl staying with one was a complication. Mrs Assingham so far was right. But there were the facts – the good relations, from schooldays, of the two young women, and the clear confidence with which one of them had arrived. ‘She can come, you know, at any time, to us.’
Mrs Assingham took it up with an irony beyond laughter. ‘You’d like her for your honeymoon?’
‘Oh no, you must keep her for that. But why not after?’
She had looked at him a minute; then at the sound of a voice in the corridor they had got up. ‘Why not? You’re splendid!’
Charlotte Stant, the next minute, was with them, ushered in as she had alighted from her cab and prepared for not finding Mrs Assingham alone – this would have been to be noticed – by the butler’s answer, on the stairs, to a question put to him. She could have looked at that lady with such straightness and brightness only from knowing that the Prince was also there – the discrimination of but a moment, yet which let him take her in still better than if she had instantly faced him. He availed himself of the chance thus given him, for he was conscious of all these things. What he accordingly saw for some seconds with intensity was a tall strong charming girl who wore for him at first exactly the air of her adventurous situation, a reference in all her person, in motion and gesture, in free vivid yet altogether happy indications of dress, from the becoming compactness of her hat to the shade of tan in her shoes, to winds and waves and custom-houses, to far countries and long journeys, the knowledge of how and where and the habit, founded on experience, of not being afraid. He was aware at the same time that of this combination the ‘strong-minded’ note was not, as might have been apprehended, the basis; he was now sufficiently familiar with English-speaking types, he had sounded attentively enough such possibilities, for a quick vision of differences. He had besides his own view of this young lady’s strength of mind. It was great, he had ground to believe, but it would never interfere with the play of her extremely personal, her always amusing taste. This last was the thing in her – for she threw it out positively on the spot like a light – that she might have reappeared, during these moments, just to cool his worried eyes with. He saw her in her light: that immediate exclusive address to their friend was like a lamp she was holding aloft for his benefit and for his pleasure. It showed him everything – above all her presence in the world, so closely, so irretrievably contemporaneous with his own: a sharp, sharp fact, sharper during these instants than any other at all, even