The Golden Bowl - Henry James [104]
Later on, in a corner to which, at sight of an empty sofa, Mrs Assingham had, after a single attentive arrest, led her with a certain earnestness, this vision of the critical was much more sharpened than blurred. Fanny had taken it from her: yes, she was there with Amerigo alone, Maggie having come with them and then, within ten minutes, changed her mind, repented and departed. ‘So you’re staying on together without her?’ the elder woman had asked; and it was Charlotte’s answer to this that had determined for them, quite indeed according to the latter’s expectation, the need of some seclusion and her companion’s pounce at the sofa. They were staying on together alone, and – oh distinctly! – it was alone that Maggie had driven away, her father, as usual, not having managed to come. ‘ “As usual” –?’ Mrs Assingham had seemed to wonder; Mr Verver’s reluctances not having, she in fact quite intimated, hitherto struck her. Charlotte responded at any rate that his indisposition to go out had lately much increased – even though to-night, as she admitted, he had pleaded his not feeling well. Maggie had wished to stay with him – for the Prince and she, dining out, had afterwards called in Portland Place, whence, in the event, they had brought her, Charlotte, on. Maggie had come but to oblige her father – she had urged the two others to go without her; then she had yielded for the time to Mr Verver’s persuasion. But here, when they had, after the long wait in the carriage, fairly got in; here, once up the stairs and with the rooms before them, remorse had ended by seizing her: she had listened to no other remonstrance, and at present therefore, as Charlotte put it, the two were doubtless making together a little party at home. But it was all right – so Charlotte also put it: there was nothing in the world they liked better than these snatched felicities, little parties, long talks, with ‘I’ll come to you to-morrow,’ and ‘No, I’ll come to you,’ make-believe renewals of their old life. They were fairly at times, the dear things, like children playing at paying visits, playing at ‘Mr Thompson and Mrs Fane’, each hoping that the other would really stay to tea. Charlotte was sure she should find Maggie there on getting home – a remark in which Mrs Verver’s immediate response to her friend’s enquiry had culminated. She had thus on the spot the sense of having given her plenty to think about, and that moreover of liking to see it even better than she had expected. She had plenty to think about herself, and there was already something in Fanny that made it seem still more.
‘You say your husband’s ill? He felt too ill to come?’
‘No, my dear – I think not. If he had been too ill I wouldn’t have left him.’
‘And yet Maggie was worried?’ Mrs Assingham asked.
‘She worries easily, you know. She’s afraid of influenza – of which he has had at different times several attacks, though never with the least gravity.’
‘But you’re not afraid of it?’
Charlotte had for a moment a pause; it had continued to come to her that really to have her case ‘out’, as they said, with the person in the world to whom her most intimate difficulties had oftenest referred themselves, would help her on the whole more than hinder; and under that feeling all her opportunity, with nothing kept back, with a thing or two perhaps even thrust forward, seemed temptingly to open. Besides, didn