The Golden Bowl - Henry James [80]
‘She’s in Brittany, at a little bathing-place, with some people I don’t know. She’s always with people, poor dear – she rather has to be; even when, as is sometimes the case, they’re people she doesn’t immensely like.’
‘Well, I guess she likes us,’ said Adam Verver.
‘Yes – fortunately she likes us. And if I wasn’t afraid of spoiling it for you,’ Maggie added, ‘I’d even mention that you’re not the one of our number she likes least.’
‘Why should that spoil it for me?’
‘Oh my dear, you know. What else have we been talking about? It costs you so much to be liked. That’s why I hesitated to tell you of my letter.’
He stared a moment – as if the subject had suddenly grown out of recognition. ‘But Charlotte – on other visits – never used to cost me anything.’
‘No – only her “keep”,’ Maggie smiled.
‘Then I don’t think I mind her keep – if that’s all.’
The Princess, however, it was clear, wished to be thoroughly conscientious. ‘Well, it may not be quite all. If I think of its being pleasant to have her, it’s because she will make a difference.’
‘Well, what’s the harm in that if it’s but a difference for the better?’
‘Ah then – there you are!’ And the Princess showed in her smile her small triumphant wisdom. ‘If you acknowledge a possible difference for the better we’re not, after all, so tremendously right as we are. I mean we’re not – as a family – so intensely satisfied and amused. We do see there are ways of being grander.’
‘But will Charlotte Stant,’ her father asked with surprise, ‘make us grander?’
Maggie, on this, looking at him well, had a remarkable reply. ‘Yes, I think. Really grander.’
He thought; for if here was a sudden opening he wished but the more to meet it. ‘Because she’s so handsome?’
‘No, father.’ And the Princess was almost solemn. ‘Because she’s so great.’
‘ “Great” –?’
‘Great in nature, in character, in spirit. Great in life.’
‘So?’ Mr Verver echoed. ‘What has she done – in life?’
‘Well, she has been brave and bright,’ said Maggie. ‘That mayn’t sound like much, but she has been so in the face of things that might well have made it too difficult for many other girls. She hasn’t a creature in the world really – that is nearly – belonging to her. Only acquaintances who, in all sorts of ways, make use of her, and distant relations who are so afraid she’ll make use of them that they seldom let her look at them.’
Mr Verver was struck – and, as usual, to some purpose. ‘If we get her here to improve us don’t we too then make use of her?’
It pulled the Princess up, however, but an instant. ‘We’re old, old friends – we do her good too. I should always, even at the worst – speaking for myself – admire her still more than I used her.’
‘I see. That always does good.’
Maggie seemed to consider his way of putting it. ‘Certainly then – she knows it. She knows, I mean, how great I think her courage and her cleverness. She’s not afraid – not of anything; and yet she no more ever takes a liberty with you than if she trembled for her life. And then she’s interesting – which plenty of other people with plenty of other merits never are a bit.’ In which fine flicker of vision the truth widened to the Princess’s view. ‘I myself of course don’t take liberties, but then I do always by nature tremble for my life. That’s the way I live.’
‘Oh I say, love!’ her father vaguely murmured.
‘Yes, I live in terror,’ she insisted. ‘I’m a small creeping thing.’
‘You’ll not persuade me that you’re not so good as Charlotte Stant,’ he still placidly enough remarked.
‘I may be as good, but I’m not so great – and that’s what we’re talking about. She has a great imagination. She has, in every way, a great attitude. She has above all a great conscience.’ More perhaps than ever in her life before Maggie addressed her father at this moment with a shade of the absolute in her tone. She had never come so near telling him what he should take it from her to believe. ‘She has only twopence in the world – but that has nothing to do with it. Or rather indeed’ – she quickly corrected herself – ‘it has everything. For she doesn’t care. I never saw her do anything but laugh at her poverty. Her life has been harder than any one knows.