The Golden Bowl - Henry James [41]
Mrs Assingham denied, as we know, that her husband had a play of mind; so that she could, on her side, treat these remarks only as if they had been senseless physical gestures or nervous facial movements. She overlooked them as from habit and kindness; yet there was no one to whom she talked so persistently of such intimate things. ‘It’s her friendship with Maggie that’s the immense complication. Because that,’ she audibly mused, ‘is so natural.’
‘Then why can’t she have come out for it?’
‘She came out,’ Mrs Assingham continued to meditate, ‘because she hates America. There was no place for her there – she didn’t fit in. She wasn’t in sympathy – no more were the people she saw. Then it’s hideously dear; she can’t, on her means, begin to live there. Not at all she can, in a way, here.’
‘In the way, you mean, of living with us?’
‘Of living with any one. She can’t live by visits alone – and she doesn’t want to. She’s too good for it even if she could. But she will – she must, sooner or later – stay with them. Maggie will want her – Maggie will make her. Besides, she’ll want to herself.’
‘Then why won’t that do,’ the Colonel asked, ‘for you to think it’s what she has come for?’
‘How will it do, how?’ – she went on as without hearing him. ‘That’s what one keeps feeling.’
‘Why shouldn’t it do beautifully?’
‘That anything of the past,’ she brooded, ‘should come back now? How will it do, how will it do?’
‘It will do, I dare say, without your wringing your hands over it. When, my dear,’ the Colonel pursued as he smoked, ‘have you ever seen anything of yours – anything that you’ve done – not do?’
‘Ah I didn’t do this!’ It brought her answer straight. ‘I didn’t bring her back.’
‘Did you expect her to stay over there all her days to oblige you?’
‘Not a bit – for I shouldn’t have minded her coming after their marriage. It’s her coming this way before.’ To which she added with inconsequence: ‘I’m too sorry for her – of course she can’t enjoy it. But I don’t see what perversity rides her. She needn’t have looked it all so in the face – as she doesn’t do it, I suppose, simply for discipline. It’s almost – that’s the bore of it – discipline to me.’
‘Perhaps then,’ said Bob Assingham, ‘that’s what has been her idea. Take it, for God’s sake, as discipline to you and have done with it. It will do,’ he added, ‘for discipline to me as well.’
She was far, however, from having done with it; it was a situation with such different sides, as she said, and to none of which one could, in justice, be blind. ‘It isn’t in the least, you know, for instance, that I believe she’s bad. Never, never,’ Mrs Assingham declared. ‘I don’t think that of her.’
‘Then why isn’t that enough?’
Nothing was enough, Mrs Assingham signified, but that she should develop her thought. ‘She doesn’t deliberately intend, she doesn’t consciously wish, the least complication. It’s perfectly true that she thinks Maggie a dear – as who doesn’t? She’s incapable of any plan to hurt a hair of her head. Yet here she is – and there they are,’ she wound up.
Her husband again for a little smoked in silence. ‘What in the world, between them, ever took place?’
‘Between Charlotte and the Prince? Why nothing – except their having to recognise that nothing could. That was their little romance – it was even their little tragedy.’
‘But what the deuce did they do?’
‘Do? They fell in love with each other – but, seeing it wasn’t possible, gave each other up.’
‘Then where was the romance?’
‘Why in their frustration, in their having the courage to look the facts in the face.’
‘What facts?’ the Colonel went on.
‘Well, to begin with, that of their neither of them having the means to marry. If she had had even a little – a little, I mean, for two – I believe he would bravely have done it.’ After which, as her husband but emitted an odd vague sound, she corrected herself. ‘I mean if he himself had had only a little