The Golden Bowl - Henry James [154]
He was almost simultaneous. ‘Extraordinary!’
‘She observes the forms,’ said Fanny Assingham.
‘With the Prince –?’
‘For the Prince. And with the others,’ she went on. ‘With Mr Verver – wonderfully. But above all with Maggie. And the forms’ – she had to do even them justice – ‘are two thirds of conduct. Say he had married a woman who would have made a hash of them.’
But he jerked back. ‘Ah my dear, I wouldn’t say it for the world!’
‘Say,’ she none the less pursued, ‘he had married a woman the Prince would really have cared for.’
‘You mean then he doesn’t care for Charlotte –?’
This was still a new view to jump to, and the Colonel, perceptibly, wished to make sure of the necessity of the effort. For that, while he stared, his wife allowed him time; at the end of which she simply said: ‘No!’
‘Then what on earth are they up to?’ Still however she only looked at him; so that, standing there before her with his hands in his pockets, he had time to risk soothingly another question. ‘Are the “forms” you speak of – that are two thirds of conduct – what will be keeping her now, by your hypothesis, from coming home with him till morning?’
‘Yes – absolutely. Their forms.’
‘ “Theirs” –?’
‘Maggie’s and Mr Verver’s – those they impose on Charlotte and the Prince. Those,’ she developed, ‘that so perversely, as I say, have succeeded in setting themselves up as the right ones.’
He considered – but only now at last really to relapse into woe. ‘Your “perversity”, my dear, is exactly what I don’t understand. The state of things existing hasn’t grown, like a field of mushrooms, in a night. Whatever they, all round, may be in for now is at least the consequence of what they’ve done. Are they mere helpless victims of fate?’
Well, Fanny at last had the courage of it. ‘Yes – they are. To be so abjectly innocent – that is to be victims of fate.’
‘And Charlotte and the Prince are abjectly innocent –?’
It took her another minute, but she rose to the full height. ‘Yes. That is they were – as much so in their way as the others. There were beautiful intentions all round. The Prince’s and Charlotte’s were beautiful – of that I had my faith. They were – I’d go to the stake. Otherwise,’ she added, ‘I should have been a wretch. And I’ve not been a wretch. I’ve only been a double-dyed donkey.’
‘Ah then,’ he asked, ‘what does our muddle make them to have been?’
‘Well, too much taken up with considering each other. You may call such a mistake as that by whatever name you please; it at any rate means, all round, their case. It illustrates the misfortune,’ said Mrs Assingham gravely, ‘of being too, too charming.’
This was another matter that took some following, but the Colonel again did his best. ‘Yes, but to whom? – doesn’t it rather depend on that? To whom have the Prince and Charlotte then been too charming?’
‘To each other in the first place – obviously. And then both of them together to Maggie.’
‘To Maggie?’ he wonderingly echoed.
‘To Maggie.’ She was now crystalline. ‘By having accepted, from the first, so guilelessly – yes, so guilelessly themselves – her guileless idea of still having her father, of keeping him fast, in her life.’
‘Then isn’t one supposed, in common humanity, and if one hasn’t quarrelled with him, and one has the means, and he, on his side, doesn’t drink or kick up rows – isn’t one supposed to keep one’s aged parent in one’s life?’
‘Certainly – when there aren’t particular reasons against it. That there may be others than his getting drunk is exactly the moral of what’s before us. In the first place Mr Verver isn’t aged.’
The Colonel just hung fire – but it came. ‘Then why the deuce does he – oh poor dear man! – behave as if he were?’
She took a moment to meet it. ‘How do you know how he behaves?’
‘Well, my own love, we see how Charlotte does!’
Again, at this, she faltered; but again she rose. ‘Ah isn’t my whole point that he’s charming to her?’
‘Doesn’t it depend a bit on what she regards as charming?’
She faced the question as if it were flippant, then with a headshake of dignity she brushed it away.