The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  “Anything there shouldn’t be, there shouldn’t have BEEN—all this time. Do you believe there is—or what’s your idea?”

  Fanny’s idea was clearly, to begin with, that her young friend had taken her breath away; but she looked at her very straight and very hard. “Do you speak from a suspicion of your own?”

  “I speak, at last, from a torment. Forgive me if it comes out. I’ve been thinking for months and months, and I’ve no one to turn to, no one to help me to make things out; no impression but my own, don’t you see? to go by.”

  “You’ve been thinking for months and months?” Mrs. Assingham took it in. “But WHAT then, dear Maggie, have you been thinking?”

  “Well, horrible things—like a little beast that I perhaps am. That there may be something—something wrong and dreadful, something they cover up.”

  The elder woman’s colour had begun to come back; she was able, though with a visible effort, to face the question less amazedly. “You imagine, poor child, that the wretches are in love? Is that it?”

  But Maggie for a minute only stared back at her. “Help me to find out WHAT I imagine. I don’t know—I’ve nothing but my perpetual anxiety. Have you any?—do you see what I mean? If you’ll tell me truly, that at least, one way or the other, will do something for me.”

  Fanny’s look had taken a peculiar gravity—a fulness with which it seemed to shine. “Is what it comes to that you’re jealous of Charlotte?”

  “Do you mean whether I hate her?”—and Maggie thought. “No; not on account of father.”

  “Ah,” Mrs. Assingham returned, “that isn’t what one would suppose. What I ask is if you’re jealous on account of your husband.”

  “Well,” said Maggie presently, “perhaps that may be all. If I’m unhappy I’m jealous; it must come to the same thing; and with you, at least, I’m not afraid of the word. If I’m jealous, don’t you see? I’m tormented,” she went on—”and all the more if I’m helpless. And if I’m both helpless AND tormented I stuff my pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, I keep it there, for the most part, night and day, so as not to be heard too indecently moaning. Only now, with you, at last, I can’t keep it longer; I’ve pulled it out, and here I am fairly screaming at you. They’re away,” she wound up, “so they can’t hear; and I’m, by a miracle of arrangement, not at luncheon with father at home. I live in the midst of miracles of arrangement, half of which I admit, are my own; I go about on tiptoe, I watch for every sound, I feel every breath, and yet I try all the while to seem as smooth as old satin dyed rose-colour. Have you ever thought of me,” she asked, “as really feeling as I do?”

  Her companion, conspicuously, required to be clear. “Jealous, unhappy, tormented—? No,” said Mrs. Assingham; “but at the same time—and though you may laugh at me for it!—I’m bound to confess that I’ve never been so awfully sure of what I may call knowing you. Here you are indeed, as you say—such a deep little person! I’ve never imagined your existence poisoned, and, since you wish to know if I consider that it need be, I’ve not the least difficulty in speaking on the spot. Nothing, decidedly, strikes me as more unnecessary.”

  For a minute after this they remained face to face; Maggie had sprung up while her friend sat enthroned, and, after moving to and fro in her intensity, now paused to receive the light she had invoked. It had accumulated, considerably, by this time, round Mrs. Assingham’s ample presence, and it made, even to our young woman’s own sense, a medium in which she could at last take a deeper breath. “I’ve affected you, these months—and these last weeks in especial—as quiet and natural and easy?”

  But it was a question that took, not imperceptibly, some answering. “You’ve never affected me, from the first hour I beheld you, as anything but—in a way all your own—absolutely good and sweet and beautiful. In a way, as I say,” Mrs. Assingham almost caressingly repeated, “just all your very own—nobody else’s at all. I’ve never thought of you but as OUTSIDE of ugly things, so ignorant of any falsity or cruelty or vulgarity as never to have to be touched by them or to touch them. I’ve never mixed you up with them; there would have been time enough for that if they had seemed to be near you. But they haven’t—if that’s what you want to know.”

  “You’ve only believed me contented then because you’ve believed me stupid?”

  Mrs. Assingham had a free smile, now, for the length of this stride, dissimulated though it might be in a graceful little frisk. “If I had believed you stupid I shouldn’t have thought you interesting, and if I hadn’t thought you interesting I shouldn’t have noted whether I ‘knew’ you, as I’ve called it, or not. What I’ve always been conscious of is your having concealed about you somewhere no small amount of character; quite as much in fact,” Fanny smiled, “as one could suppose a person of your size able to carry. The only thing was,” she explained, “that thanks to your never calling one’s attention to it, I hadn’t made out much more about it, and should have been vague, above all, as to WHERE you carried it or kept it. Somewhere UNDER, I should simply have said—like that little silver cross you once showed me, blest by the Holy Father, that you always wear, out of sight, next your skin. That relic I’ve had a glimpse of”—with which she continued to invoke the privilege of humour. “But the precious little innermost, say this time little golden, personal nature of you— blest by a greater power, I think, even than the Pope—that you’ve never consentingly shown me. I’m not sure you’ve ever consentingly shown it to anyone. You’ve been in general too modest.”

  Maggie, trying to follow, almost achieved a little fold of her forehead. “I strike you as modest to-day—modest when I stand here and scream at you?”

  “Oh, your screaming, I’ve granted you, is something new. I must fit it on somewhere. The question is, however,” Mrs. Assingham further proceeded, “of what the deuce I can fit it on TO. Do you mean,” she asked, “to the fact of our friends’ being, from yesterday to to-morrow, at a place where they may more or less irresponsibly meet?” She spoke with the air of putting it as badly for them as possible. “Are you thinking of their being there alone—of their having consented to be?” And then as she had waited without result for her companion to say: “But isn’t it true that—after you had this time again, at the eleventh hour, said YOU wouldn’t—they would really much rather not have gone?”

  “Yes—they would certainly much rather not have gone. But I wanted them to go.”

  “Then, my dear child, what in the world is the matter?”

  “I wanted to see if they WOULD. And they’ve had to,” Maggie added. “It was the only thing.”

  Her friend appeared to wonder. “From the moment you and your father backed out?”

  “Oh, I don’t mean go for those people; I mean go for us. For father and me,” Maggie went on. “Because now they know.”

  “They ‘know’?” Fanny Assingham quavered.

  “That I’ve been for some time past taking more notice. Notice of the queer things in our life.”

  Maggie saw her companion for an instant on the point of asking her what these queer things might be; but Mrs. Assingham had the next minute brushed by that ambiguous opening and taken, as she evidently felt, a better one. “And is it for that you did it? I mean gave up the visit.”

  “It’s for that I did it. To leave them to themselves—as they less and less want, or at any rate less and less venture to appear to want, to be left. As they had for so long arranged things,” the Princess went on, “you see they sometimes have to be.” And then, as if baffled by the lucidity of this, Mrs. Assingham for a little said nothing: “Now do you think I’m modest?”

  With time, however; Fanny could brilliantly think anything that would serve. “I think you’re wrong. That, my dear, is my answer to your question. It demands assuredly the straightest I can make. I see no “awfulness’—I suspect none. I’m deeply distressed,” she added, “that you should do anything else.” It drew again from Maggie a long look. “You’ve never even imagined anything?”
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  “Ah, God forbid!—for it’s exactly as a woman of imagination that I speak. There’s no moment of my life at which I’m not imagining something; and it’s thanks to that, darling,” Mrs. Assingham pursued, “that I figure the sincerity with which your husband, whom you see as viciously occupied with your stepmother, is interested, is tenderly interested, in his admirable, adorable wife.” She paused a minute as to give her friend the full benefit of this—as to Maggie’s measure of which, however, no sign came; and then, poor woman, haplessly, she crowned her effort.—”He wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head.”

  It had produced in Maggie, at once, and apparently in the intended form of a smile, the most extraordinary expression. “Ah, there it is!”

  But her guest had already gone on. “And I’m absolutely certain that Charlotte wouldn’t either.”

  It kept the Princess, with her strange grimace, standing there. “No—Charlotte wouldn’t either. That’s how they’ve had again to go off together. They’ve been afraid not to—lest it should disturb me, aggravate me, somehow work upon me. As I insisted that they must, that we couldn’t all fail—though father and Charlotte hadn’t really accepted; as I did this they had to yield to the fear that their showing as afraid to move together would count for them as the greater danger: which would be the danger, you see, of my feeling myself wronged. Their least danger, they know, is in going on with all the things that I’ve seemed to accept and that I’ve given no indication, at any moment, of not accepting. Everything that has come up for them has come up, in an extraordinary manner, without my having by a sound or a sign given myself away—so that it’s all as wonderful as you may conceive. They move at any rate among the dangers I speak of— between that of their doing too much and that of their not having any longer the confidence, or the nerve, or whatever you may call it, to do enough.” Her tone, by this time, might have shown a strangeness to match her smile; which was still more marked as she wound up. “And that’s how I make them do what I like!”

  It had an effect on Mrs. Assingham, who rose with the deliberation that, from point to point, marked the widening of her grasp. “My dear child, you’re amazing.”

  “Amazing—?”

  “You’re terrible.”

  Maggie thoughtfully shook her head. “No; I’m not terrible, and you don’t think me so. I do strike you as surprising, no doubt— but surprisingly mild. Because—don’t you see?—I AM mild. I can bear anything.”

  “Oh, ‘bear’!” Mrs. Assingham fluted.

  “For love,” said the Princess.

  Fanny hesitated. “Of your father?”

  “For love,” Maggie repeated.

  It kept her friend watching. “Of your husband?”

  “For love,” Maggie said again.

  It was, for the moment, as if the distinctness of this might have determined in her companion a choice between two or three highly different alternatives. Mrs. Assingham’s rejoinder, at all events—however much or however little it was a choice—was presently a triumph. “Speaking with this love of your own then, have you undertaken to convey to me that you believe your husband and your father’s wife to be in act and in fact lovers of each other?” And then as the Princess didn’t at first answer: “Do you call such an allegation as that ‘mild’?”

  “Oh, I’m not pretending to be mild to you. But I’ve told you, and moreover you must have seen for yourself, how much so I’ve been to them.”

  Mrs. Assingham, more brightly again, bridled. “Is that what you call it when you make them, for terror as you say, do as you like?”

  “Ah, there wouldn’t be any terror for them if they had nothing to hide.”

  Mrs. Assingham faced her—quite steady now. “Are you really conscious, love, of what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying that I’m bewildered and tormented, and that I’ve no one but you to speak to. I’ve thought, I’ve in fact been sure, that you’ve seen for yourself how much this is the case. It’s why I’ve believed you would meet me half way.”

  “Half way to what? To denouncing,” Fanny asked, “two persons, friends of years, whom I’ve always immensely admired and liked, and against whom I haven’t the shadow of a charge to make?”

  Maggie looked at her with wide eyes. “I had much rather you should denounce me than denounce them. Denounce me, denounce me,” she said, “if you can see your way.” It was exactly what she appeared to have argued out with herself. “If, conscientiously, you can denounce me; if, conscientiously, you can revile me; if, conscientiously, you can put me in my place for a low-minded little pig—!”

  “Well?” said Mrs. Assingham, consideringly, as she paused for emphasis.

  “I think I shall be saved.”

  Her friend took it, for a minute, however, by carrying thoughtful eyes, eyes verily portentous, over her head. “You say you’ve no one to speak to, and you make a point of your having so disguised your feelings—not having, as you call it, given yourself away. Have you then never seen it not only as your right, but as your bounden duty, worked up to such a pitch, to speak to your husband?”

  “I’ve spoken to him,” said Maggie.

  Mrs. Assingham stared. “Ah, then it isn’t true that you’ve made no sign.”

  Maggie had a silence. “I’ve made no trouble. I’ve made no scene. I’ve taken no stand. I’ve neither reproached nor accused him. You’ll say there’s a way in all that of being nasty enough.”

  “Oh!” dropped from Fanny as if she couldn’t help it.

  “But I don’t think—strangely enough—that he regards me as nasty. I think that at bottom—for that IS,” said the Princess, “the strangeness—he’s sorry for me. Yes, I think that, deep within, he pities me.”

  Her companion wondered. “For the state you’ve let yourself get into?”

  “For not being happy when I’ve so much to make me so.”

  “You’ve everything,” said Mrs. Assingham with alacrity. Yet she remained for an instant embarrassed as to a further advance. “I don’t understand, however, how, if you’ve done nothing—”

  An impatience from Maggie had checked her. “I’ve not done absolutely ‘nothing.’”

  “But what then—?”

  “Well,” she went on after a minute, “he knows what I’ve done.”

  It produced on Mrs. Assingham’s part, her whole tone and manner exquisitely aiding, a hush not less prolonged, and the very duration of which inevitably gave it something of the character of an equal recognition. “And what then has HE done?”

  Maggie took again a minute. “He has been splendid.”

  “‘Splendid’? Then what more do you want?”

  “Ah, what you see!” said Maggie. “Not to be afraid.”

  It made her guest again hang fire. “Not to be afraid really to speak?”

  “Not to be afraid NOT to speak.”

  Mrs. Assingham considered further. “You can’t even to Charlotte?” But as, at this, after a look at her, Maggie turned off with a movement of suppressed despair, she checked herself and might have been watching her, for all the difficulty and the pity of it, vaguely moving to the window and the view of the hill street. It was almost as if she had had to give up, from failure of responsive wit in her friend—the last failure she had feared— the hope of the particular relief she had been working for. Mrs. Assingham resumed the next instant, however, in the very tone that seemed most to promise her she should have to give up nothing. “I see, I see; you would have in that case too many things to consider.” It brought the Princess round again, proving itself thus the note of comprehension she wished most to clutch at. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Maggie took it where she stood—which she was soon able to signify. “Thank-you.”

  It very properly encouraged her counsellor. “What your idea imputes is a criminal intrigue carried on, from day to day, amid perfect trust and sympathy, not only under your eyes, but under your father’s. That’s an idea it’s impossible for me for a. moment to entertain.”
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