The Golden Bowl - Henry James [281]
‘O-oh!’ Maggie protested in a long wail.
It had made him in fact quickly change colour. ‘What I mean is that she’s not, as you pronounce her, unhappy.’ And he recovered with this all his logic. ‘Why is she unhappy if she doesn’t know?’
‘Doesn’t know –?’ She tried to make his logic difficult.
‘Doesn’t know that you know.’
It came from him in such a way that she was conscious instantly of three or four things to answer. But what she said first was: ‘Do you think that’s all it need take?’ And before he could reply, ‘She knows, she knows!’ Maggie proclaimed.
‘Well then what?’
But she threw back her head, she turned impatiently away from him. ‘Oh I needn’t tell you! She knows enough. Besides,’ she went on, ‘she doesn’t believe us.’
It made the Prince stare a little. ‘Ah she asks too much!’ That drew however from his wife another moan of objection, which determined in him a judgement. ‘She won’t let you take her for unhappy.’
‘Oh I know better than any one else what she won’t let me take her for!’
‘Very well,’ said Amerigo, ‘you’ll see.’
‘I shall see wonders, I know. I’ve already seen them and am prepared for them.’ Maggie recalled – she had memories enough. ‘It’s terrible’ – her memories prompted her to speak. ‘I see it’s always terrible for women.’
The Prince looked down in his gravity. ‘Everything’s terrible, cara – in the heart of man. She’s making her life,’ he said. ‘She’ll make it.’
His wife turned back upon him; she had wandered to a table, vaguely setting objects straight. ‘A little by the way then too, while she’s about it, she’s making ours.’ At this he raised his eyes, which met her own, and she held him while she delivered herself of something that had been with her these last minutes. ‘You spoke just now of Charlotte’s not having learned from you that I “know”. Am I to take from you then that you accept and recognise my knowledge?’
He did the enquiry all the honours – visibly weighed its importance and weighed his response. ‘You think I might have been showing you that a little more handsomely?’
‘It isn’t a question of any beauty,’ said Maggie; ‘it’s only a question of the quantity of truth.’
‘Oh the quantity of truth!’ the Prince richly though ambiguously murmured.
‘That’s a thing by itself, yes. But there are also such things all the same as questions of good faith.’
‘Of course there are!’ the Prince hastened to reply. After which he brought up more slowly: ‘If ever a man since the beginning of time acted in good faith –!’ But he dropped it, offering it simply for that.
For that then when it had had time somewhat to settle like some handful of gold-dust thrown into the air, for that then Maggie showed herself as deeply and strangely taking it. ‘I see.’ And she even wished this form to be as complete as she could make it. ‘I see.’
The completeness had clearly after an instant struck him as divine. ‘Ah my dear, my dear, my dear –!’ It was all he could say.
She wasn’t talking however at large. ‘You’ve kept up for so long a silence –!’
‘Yes, yes, I know what I’ve kept up. But will you do,’ he asked, ‘still one thing more for me?’
It was as if for an instant it had with her new exposure made her turn pale. ‘Is there even one thing left?’
‘Ah my dear, my dear, my dear!’ – it had pressed again in him the fine spring of the unspeakable.
There was nothing however that the Princess herself couldn’t say. ‘I’ll do anything if you’ll tell me what.’
‘Then wait.’ And his raised Italian hand, with its play of admonitory fingers, had never made gesture more expressive. His voice dropped to a tone –! ‘Wait,’ he repeated. ‘Wait.’
She understood, but it was as if she wished to have it from him. ‘Till they’ve been here, you mean?’
‘Yes, till they’ve gone. Till they’re away.’
She kept it up. ‘Till they’ve left the country?’
She had her eyes on him for clearness; these were the conditions of a promise – so that he put the promise practically into his response. ‘Till we’ve ceased to see them