The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  “It ought, really, if it should be a thing of this sort, to take its little value from having belonged to one’s self.”

  “Ecco!” said the Prince—just triumphantly enough. “There you are.”

  Behind the dealer were sundry small cupboards in the wall. Two or three of these Charlotte had seen him open, so that her eyes found themselves resting on those he had not visited. But she completed her admission. “There’s nothing here she could wear.”

  It was only after a moment that her companion rejoined. “Is there anything—do you think—that you could?”

  It made her just start. She didn’t, at all events, look at the objects; she but looked for an instant very directly at him. “No.”

  “Ah!” the Prince quietly exclaimed.

  “Would it be,” Charlotte asked, “your idea to offer me something?”

  “Well, why not—as a small ricordo.”

  “But a ricordo of what?”

  “Why, of ‘this’—as you yourself say. Of this little hunt.”

  “Oh, I say it—but hasn’t my whole point been that I don’t ask you to. Therefore,” she demanded—but smiling at him now— “where’s the logic?”

  “Oh, the logic—!” he laughed.

  “But logic’s everything. That, at least, is how I feel it. A ricordo from you—from you to me—is a ricordo of nothing. It has no reference.”

  “Ah, my dear!” he vaguely protested. Their entertainer, meanwhile, stood there with his eyes on them, and the girl, though at this minute more interested in her passage with her friend than in anything else, again met his gaze. It was a comfort to her that their foreign tongue covered what they said— and they might have appeared of course, as the Prince now had one of the snuffboxes in his hand, to be discussing a purchase.

  “You don’t refer,” she went on to her companion. “I refer.”

  He had lifted the lid of his little box and he looked into it hard. “Do you mean by that then that you would be free—?”

  “‘Free’—?”

  “To offer me something?”

  This gave her a longer pause, and when she spoke again she might have seemed, oddly, to be addressing the dealer. “Would you allow me—?”

  “No,” said the Prince into his little box.

  “You wouldn’t accept it from me?”

  “No,” he repeated in the same way.

  She exhaled a long breath that was like a guarded sigh. “But you’ve touched an idea that HAS been mine. It’s what I’ve wanted.” Then she added: “It was what I hoped.”

  He put down his box—this had drawn his eyes. He made nothing, clearly, of the little man’s attention. “It’s what you brought me out for?”

  “Well, that’s, at any rate,” she returned, “my own affair. But it won’t do?”

  “It won’t do, cara mia.”

  “It’s impossible?”

  “It’s impossible.” And he took up one of the brooches.

  She had another pause, while the shopman only waited. “If I were to accept from you one of these charming little ornaments as you suggest, what should I do with it?”

  He was perhaps at last a little irritated; he even—as if HE might understand—looked vaguely across at their host. “Wear it, per Bacco!”

  “Where then, please? Under my clothes?”

  “Wherever you like. But it isn’t then, if you will,” he added, “worth talking about.”

  “It’s only worth talking about, mio caro,” she smiled, “from your having begun it. My question is only reasonable—so that your idea may stand or fall by your answer to it. If I should pin one of these things on for you would it be, to your mind, that I might go home and show it to Maggie as your present?”

  They had had between them often in talk the refrain, jocosely, descriptively applied, of “old Roman.” It had been, as a pleasantry, in the other time, his explanation to her of everything; but nothing, truly, had even seemed so old-Roman as the shrug in which he now indulged. “Why in the world not?”

  “Because—on our basis—it would be impossible to give her an account of the pretext.”

  “The pretext—?” He wondered.

  “The occasion. This ramble that we shall have had together and that we’re not to speak of.”

  “Oh yes,” he said after a moment “I remember we’re not to speak of it.”

  “That of course you’re pledged to. And the one thing, you see, goes with the other. So you don’t insist.”

  He had again, at random, laid back his trinket; with which he quite turned to her, a little wearily at last—even a little impatiently. “I don’t insist.”

  It disposed for the time of the question, but what was next apparent was that it had seen them no further. The shopman, who had not stirred, stood there in his patience—which, his mute intensity helping, had almost the effect of an ironic comment. The Prince moved to the glass door and, his back to the others, as with nothing more to contribute, looked—though not less patiently—into the street. Then the shopman, for Charlotte, momentously broke silence. “You’ve seen, disgraziatamente, signora principessa,” he sadly said, “too much”—and it made the Prince face about. For the effect of the momentous came, if not from the sense, from the sound of his words; which was that of the suddenest, sharpest Italian. Charlotte exchanged with her friend a glance that matched it, and just for the minute they were held in check. But their glance had, after all, by that time, said more than one thing; had both exclaimed on the apprehension, by the wretch, of their intimate conversation, let alone of her possible, her impossible, title, and remarked, for mutual reassurance, that it didn’t, all the same, matter. The Prince remained by the door, but immediately addressing the speaker from where he stood.

  “You’re Italian then, are you?”

  But the reply came in English. “Oh dear no.”

  “You’re English?”

  To which the answer was this time, with a smile, in briefest Italian. “Che!” The dealer waived the question—he practically disposed of it by turning straightway toward a receptacle to which he had not yet resorted and from which, after unlocking it, he extracted a square box, of some twenty inches in height, covered with worn-looking leather. He placed the box on the counter, pushed back a pair of small hooks, lifted the lid and removed from its nest a drinking-vessel larger than a common cup, yet not of exorbitant size, and formed, to appearance, either of old fine gold or of some material once richly gilt. He handled it with tenderness, with ceremony, making a place for it on a small satin mat. “My Golden Bowl,” he observed—and it sounded, on his lips, as if it said everything. He left the important object—for as “important” it did somehow present itself—to produce its certain effect. Simple, but singularly elegant, it stood on a circular foot, a short pedestal with a slightly spreading base, and, though not of signal depth, justified its title by the charm of its shape as well as by the tone of its surface. It might have been a large goblet diminished, to the enhancement of its happy curve, by half its original height. As formed of solid gold it was impressive; it seemed indeed to warn off the prudent admirer. Charlotte, with care, immediately took it up, while the Prince, who had after a minute shifted his position again, regarded it from a distance.

  It was heavier than Charlotte had thought. “Gold, really gold?” she asked of their companion.

  He hesitated. “Look a little, and perhaps you’ll make out.”

  She looked, holding it up in both her fine hands, turning it to the light. “It may be cheap for what it is, but it will be dear, I’m afraid, for me.”

  “Well,” said the man, “I can part with it for less than its value. I got it, you see, for less.”

  “For how much then?”

  Again he waited, always with his serene stare. “Do you like it then?”

  Charlotte turned to her friend. “Do YOU like it?” He came no nearer; he looked at their companion. “cos’e?”

  “Well, signori miei, if you must know, it’s just a p
erfect crystal.”

  “Of course we must know, per Dio!” said the Prince. But he turned away again—he went back to his glass door.

  Charlotte set down the bowl; she was evidently taken. “Do you mean it’s cut out of a single crystal?”

  “If it isn’t I think I can promise you that you’ll never find any joint or any piecing.”

  She wondered. “Even if I were to scrape off the gold?”

  He showed, though with due respect, that she amused him. “You couldn’t scrape it off—it has been too well put on; put on I don’t know when and I don’t know how. But by some very fine old worker and by some beautiful old process.”

  Charlotte, frankly charmed with the cup, smiled back at him now. “A lost art?”

  “Call it a lost art,”

  “But of what time then is the whole thing?”

  “Well, say also of a lost time.”

  The girl considered. “Then if it’s so precious, how comes it to be cheap?”

  Her interlocutor once more hung fire, but by this time the Prince had lost patience. “I’ll wait for you out in the air,” he said to his companion, and, though he spoke without irritation, he pointed his remark by passing immediately into the street, where, during the next minutes, the others saw him, his back to the shopwindow, philosophically enough hover and light a fresh cigarette. Charlotte even took, a little, her time; she was aware of his funny Italian taste for London street-life.

  Her host meanwhile, at any rate, answered her question. “Ah, I’ve had it a long time without selling it. I think I must have been keeping it, madam, for you.”

  “You’ve kept it for me because you’ve thought I mightn’t see what’s the matter with it?”

  He only continued to face her—he only continued to appear to follow the play of her mind. “What IS the matter with it?”

  “Oh, it’s not for me to say; it’s for you honestly to tell me. Of course I know something must be.”

  “But if it’s something you can’t find out, isn’t it as good as if it were nothing?”

  “I probably SHOULD find out as soon as I had paid for it.”

  “Not,” her host lucidly insisted, “if you hadn’t paid too much.”

  “What do you call,” she asked, “little enough?”

  “Well, what should you say to fifteen pounds?”

  “I should say,” said Charlotte with the utmost promptitude, “that it’s altogether too much.”

  The dealer shook his head slowly and sadly, but firmly. “It’s my price, madam—and if you admire the thing I think it really might be yours. It’s not too much. It’s too little. It’s almost nothing. I can’t go lower.”

  Charlotte, wondering, but resisting, bent over the bowl again. “Then it’s impossible. It’s more than I can afford.”

  “Ah,” the man returned, “one can sometimes afford for a present more than one can afford for one’s self.” He said it so coaxingly that she found herself going on without, as might be said, putting him in his place. “Oh, of course it would be only for a present—!”

  “Then it would be a lovely one.”

  “Does one make a present,” she asked, “of an object that contains, to one’s knowledge, a flaw?”

  “Well, if one knows of it one has only to mention it. The good faith,” the man smiled, “is always there.”

  “And leave the person to whom one gives the thing, you mean, to discover it?”

  “He wouldn’t discover it—if you’re speaking of a gentleman.”

  “I’m not speaking of anyone in particular,” Charlotte said.

  “Well, whoever it might be. He might know—and he might try. But he wouldn’t find.”

  She kept her eyes on him as if, though unsatisfied, mystified, she yet had a fancy for the bowl. “Not even if the thing should come to pieces?” And then as he was silent: “Not even if he should have to say to me ‘The Golden Bowl is broken’?”

  He was still silent; after which he had his strangest smile. “Ah, if anyone should WANT to smash it—!”

  She laughed; she almost admired the little man’s expression. “You mean one could smash it with a hammer?”

  “Yes; if nothing else would do. Or perhaps even by dashing it with violence—say upon a marble floor.”

  “Oh, marble floors!” But she might have been thinking—for they were a connection, marble floors; a connection with many things: with her old Rome, and with his; with the palaces of his past, and, a little, of hers; with the possibilities of his future, with the sumptuosities of his marriage, with the wealth of the Ververs. All the same, however, there were other things; and they all together held for a moment her fancy. “Does crystal then break—when it IS crystal? I thought its beauty was its hardness.”

  Her friend, in his way, discriminated. “Its beauty is its BEING crystal. But its hardness is certainly, its safety. It doesn’t break,” he went on, “like vile glass. It splits—if there is a split.”

  “Ah!”—Charlotte breathed with interest. “If there is a split.” And she looked down again at the bowl. “There IS a split, eh? Crystal does split, eh?”

  “On lines and by laws of its own.”

  “You mean if there’s a weak place?”

  For all answer, after an hesitation, he took the bowl up again, holding it aloft and tapping it with a key. It rang with the finest, sweetest sound. “Where is the weak place?”

  She then did the question justice. “Well, for ME, only the price. I’m poor, you see—very poor. But I thank you and I’ll think.” The Prince, on the other side of the shop-window, had finally faced about and, as to see if she hadn’t done, was trying to reach, with his eyes, the comparatively dim interior. “I like it,” she said—”I want it. But I must decide what I can do.”

  The man, not ungraciously, resigned himself. “Well, I’ll keep it for you.”

  The small quarter-of-an-hour had had its marked oddity—this she felt even by the time the open air and the Bloomsbury aspects had again, in their protest against the truth of her gathered impression, made her more or less their own. Yet the oddity might have been registered as small as compared to the other effect that, before they had gone much further, she had, with her companion, to take account of. This latter was simply the effect of their having, by some tacit logic, some queer inevitability, quite dropped the idea of a continued pursuit. They didn’t say so, but it was on the line of giving up Maggie’s present that they practically proceeded—the line of giving it up without more reference to it. The Prince’s first reference was in fact quite independently made. “I hope you satisfied yourself, before you had done, of what was the matter with that bowl.”

  “No indeed, I satisfied myself of nothing. Of nothing at least but that the more I looked at it the more I liked it, and that if you weren’t so unaccommodating this would be just the occasion for your giving me the pleasure of accepting it.”

  He looked graver for her, at this, than he had looked all the morning. “Do you propose it seriously—without wishing to play me a trick?”

  She wondered. “What trick would it be?”

  He looked at her harder. “You mean you really don’t know?”

  “But know what?”