The Golden Bowl - Henry James [86]
He had spoken with cheer, but it appeared to drop before this reassurance, as if the latter overdid his alarm, and that should be corrected. ‘Oh my dear, I’ve always thought of her as a little girl.’
‘Ah she’s not a little girl,’ said the Princess.
‘Then I’ll write to her as a brilliant woman.’
‘It’s exactly what she is.’
Mr Verver had got up as he spoke, and for a little, before retracing their steps, they stood looking at each other as if they had really arranged something. They had come out together for themselves, but it had produced something more. What it had produced was in fact expressed by the words with which he met his companion’s last emphasis. ‘Well, she has a famous friend in you, Princess.’
Maggie took this in – it was too plain for a protest. ‘Do you know what I’m really thinking of?’ she asked.
He wondered, with her eyes on him – eyes of contentment at her freedom now to talk; and he wasn’t such a fool, he presently showed, as not, suddenly, to arrive at it. ‘Why of your finding her at last yourself a husband.’
‘Good for you!’ Maggie smiled. ‘But it will take,’ she added, ‘some looking.’
‘Then let me look right here with you,’ her father said as they walked on.
5
Mrs Assingham and the Colonel, quitting Fawns before the end of September, had come back later on; and now, a couple of weeks after, they were again interrupting their stay, but this time with the question of their return left to depend on matters that were rather hinted at than importunately named. The Lutches and Mrs Rance had also, by the action of Charlotte Stant’s arrival, ceased to linger, though with hopes and theories, as to some promptitude of renewal, of which the lively expression, awaking the echoes of the great stone-paved, oak-panelled, galleried hall that was not the least interesting feature of the place, seemed still a property of the air. It was on this admirable spot that, before her October afternoon had waned, Fanny Assingham spent with her easy host a few moments which led to her announcing her own and her husband’s final secession, at the same time as they tempted her to point the moral of all vain reverberations. The double door of the house stood open to an effect of hazy autumn sunshine, a wonderful windless waiting golden hour under the influence of which Adam Verver met his genial friend as she came to drop into the post-box with her own hand a thick sheaf of letters. They presently thereafter left the house together and drew out half an hour on the terrace in a manner they were to revert to in thought, later on, as that of persons who really had been taking leave of each other at a parting of the ways. He traced his impression, on coming to consider, back to a mere three words she had begun by using about Charlotte Stant. Charlotte simply ‘cleared them out’ – those had been the three words, thrown off in reference to the general golden peace that the Kentish October had gradually ushered in, the ‘halcyon’ days the full beauty of which had appeared to shine out for them after that young lady’s arrival. For it was during these days that Mrs Rance and the Miss Lutches had been observed to be gathering themselves for departure, and it was with that difference made that the sense of the whole situation showed most fair – the sense of how right they had been to engage for so ample a residence, and of all the pleasure so fruity an autumn there could hold in its lap. This was what had occurred, that their lesson had been learned; and what Mrs Assingham had dwelt upon was that without Charlotte it would have been learned but half. It would certainly not have been taught by Mrs Rance and the Miss Lutches if these ladies had remained with them as long as at one time seemed probable. Charlotte’s light intervention had thus become a cause, operating covertly but none the less actively, and Fanny Assingham’s speech, which she had followed up a little, echoed within him, fairly to startle him, as the indication of something irresistible. He could see now how this superior force had worked, and he