The Golden Bowl - Henry James [215]
‘Yes – we thought you so gay and so brilliant.’ Fanny felt it feeble, but she went on. ‘We were so glad you were happy.’
Maggie stood a moment, at first only looking at her. ‘You thought me all right, eh?’
‘Surely, dearest; we thought you all right.’
‘Well, I dare say it was natural; but in point of fact I never was more wrong in my life. For all the while if you please this was brewing.’
Mrs Assingham indulged, as nearly as possible to luxury, her vagueness. ‘ “This” –?’
‘That!’ replied the Princess, whose eyes, her companion now saw, had turned to an object on the chimney-piece of the room, of which, among so many precious objects – the Ververs, wherever they might be, always revelled peculiarly in matchless old mantel ornaments – her visitor hadn’t taken heed.
‘Do you mean the gilt cup?’
‘I mean the gilt cup.’
The piece now recognised by Fanny as new to her own vision was a capacious bowl, of old-looking, rather strikingly yellow gold, mounted by a short stem on an ample foot which held a central position above the fireplace, where, to allow it the better to show, a clearance had been made of other objects, notably of the Louis-Seize clock that accompanied the candelabra. This latter trophy ticked at present on the marble slab of a commode that exactly matched it in splendour and style. Mrs Assingham took it, the bowl, as a fine thing; but the question was obviously not of its intrinsic value, and she kept off from it, admiring it at a distance. ‘But what has that to do –?’
‘It has everything. You’ll see.’ With which again however for the moment Maggie attached to her strange wide eyes. ‘He knew her before – before I had ever seen him.’
‘ “He” knew –?’ But Fanny, while she cast about her for the links she missed, could only echo it.
‘Amerigo knew Charlotte – more than I ever dreamed.’
Fanny felt then it was stare for stare. ‘But surely you always knew they had met.’
‘I didn’t understand. I knew too little. Don’t you see what I mean?’ the Princess asked.
Mrs Assingham wondered during these instants how much she even now knew; it had taken a minute to perceive how gently she was speaking. With that perception of its being no challenge of wrath, no heat of the deceived soul, but only a free exposure of the completeness of past ignorance, inviting derision even if it must, the elder woman felt first a strange barely credible relief: she drew in, as if it had been the warm summer scent of a flower, the sweet certainty of not meeting, any way she should turn, any consequence of judgement. She shouldn’t be judged – save by herself; which was her own wretched business. The next moment however at all events she inwardly blushed not for her immediate cowardice: she had thought of herself, thought of ‘getting off’, before so much as thinking – that is of pitifully seeing – that she was in presence of an appeal that was all an appeal, that utterly accepted its necessity. ‘In a general way, dear child, yes. But not – a – in connexion with what you’ve been telling me.’
‘They were intimate, you see. Intimate,’ said the Princess.
Fanny continued to face her, taking from her excited eyes this history, so dim and faint for all her anxious emphasis, of the far-away other time. ‘There’s always the question of what one considers –!’
‘What one considers intimate? Well, I know what I consider intimate now. Too intimate,’ said Maggie, ‘to let me know anything about it.’
It was quiet – yes; but not too quiet for Fanny Assingham’s capacity to wince. ‘Only compatible with letting me, you mean?’ She had asked it after a pause, but turning again to the new ornament of the chimney and wondering even while she took relief from it at this gap in her experience. ‘But here are things, my dear, of which my ignorance is perfect.’
‘They went about together – they’re known to have done it. And I don’t mean only before – I mean after.’
‘After?’ said Fanny Assingham.
‘Before we were married – yes; but after we were engaged.’
‘Ah I’ve known nothing about that!’ And she said it with a braver assurance – clutching with comfort at something that was apparently new to her.