by Henry James
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?"
"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."
&
nbsp; 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."
"Ah, there you are then! It's exactly what I wanted from you."
"You're welcome to it!" Mrs. Assingham breathed.
"You never HAVE entertained it?" Maggie pursued.
"Never for an instant," said Fanny with her head very high.
Maggie took it again, yet again as wanting more. "Pardon my being so horrid. But by all you hold sacred?"
Mrs. Assingham faced her. "Ah, my dear, upon my positive word as an honest woman."
"Thank-you then," said the Princess.
So they remained a little; after which, "But do you believe it, love?" Fanny inquired.
"I believe YOU."
"Well, as I've faith in THEM, it comes to the same thing."
Maggie, at this last, appeared for a moment to think again; but she embraced the proposition. "The same thing."
"Then you're no longer unhappy?" her guest urged, coming more gaily toward her.
"I doubtless shan't be a great while."
But it was now Mrs. Assingham's turn to want more. "I've convinced you it's impossible?"
She had held out her arms, and Maggie, after a moment, meeting her, threw herself into them with a sound that had its oddity as a sign of relief. "Impossible, impossible," she emphatically, more than emphatically, replied; yet the next minute she had burst into tears over the impossibility, and a few seconds later, pressing, clinging, sobbing, had even caused them to flow, audibly, sympathetically and perversely, from her friend.
XXXI
The understanding appeared to have come to be that the Colonel and his wife were to present themselves toward the middle of July for the "good long visit" at Fawns on which Maggie had obtained from her father that he should genially insist; as well as that the couple from Eaton Square should welcome there earlier in the month, and less than a week after their own arrival, the advent of the couple from Portland Place. "Oh, we shall give you time to breathe!" Fanny remarked, in reference to the general prospect, with a gaiety that announced itself as heedless of criticism, to each member of the party in turn; sustaining and bracing herself by her emphasis, pushed even to an amiable cynicism, of the confident view of these punctualities of the Assinghams. The ground she could best occupy, to her sense, was that of her being moved, as in this connexion she had always been moved, by the admitted grossness of her avidity, the way the hospitality of the Ververs met her convenience and ministered to her ease, destitute as the Colonel had kept her, from the first, of any rustic retreat, any leafy bower of her own, any fixed base for the stale season now at hand. She had explained at home, she had repeatedly reexplained, the terms of her dilemma, the real difficulty of her, or—as she now put it—of their position. When the pair could do nothing else, in Cadogan Place, they could still talk of marvellous little Maggie, and of the charm, the sinister charm, of their having to hold their breath to watch her; a topic the momentous midnight discussion at which we have been present was so far from having exhausted. It came up, irrepressibly, at all private hours; they had planted it there between them, and it grew, from day to day, in a manner to make their sense of responsibility almost yield to their sense of fascination. Mrs. Assingham declared at such moments that in the interest of this admirable young thing—to whom, she also declared, she had quite "come over"—she was ready to pass with all the world else, even with the Prince himself, the object, inconsequently, as well, of her continued, her explicitly shameless appreciation, for a vulgar, indelicate, pestilential woman, showing her true character in an abandoned old age. The Colonel's confessed attention had been enlisted, we have seen, as never yet, under pressure from his wife, by any guaranteed imbroglio; but this, she could assur
e him she perfectly knew, was not a bit because he was sorry for her, or touched by what she had let herself in for, but because, when once they had been opened, he couldn't keep his eyes from resting complacently, resting almost intelligently, on the Princess. If he was in love with HER now, however, so much the better; it would help them both not to wince at what they would have to do for her. Mrs. Assingham had come back to that, whenever he groaned or grunted; she had at no beguiled moment—since Maggie's little march WAS positively beguiling—let him lose sight of the grim necessity awaiting them. "We shall have, as I've again and again told you, to lie for her—to lie till we're black in the face."
"To lie 'for' her?" The Colonel often, at these hours, as from a vague vision of old chivalry in a new form, wandered into apparent lapses from lucidity.
"To lie TO her, up and down, and in and out—it comes to the same thing. It will consist just as much of lying to the others too: to the Prince about one's belief in HIM; to Charlotte about one's belief in HER; to Mr. Verver, dear sweet man, about one's belief in everyone. So we've work cut out—with the biggest lie, on top of all, being that we LIKE to be there for such a purpose. We hate it unspeakably—I'm more ready to be a coward before it, to let the whole thing, to let everyone, selfishly and pusillanimously slide, than before any social duty, any felt human call, that has ever forced me to be decent. I speak at least for myself. For you," she had added, "as I've given you so perfect an opportunity to fall in love with Maggie, you'll doubtless find your account in being so much nearer to her."
"And what do you make," the Colonel could, at this, always imperturbably enough ask, "of the account you yourself will find in being so much nearer to the Prince; of your confirmed, if not exasperated, infatuation with whom—to say nothing of my weak good-nature about it—you give such a pretty picture?"