The Golden Bowl - Henry James [99]
‘Well, isn’t Amerigo immensely in love?’
She hesitated but as for the right expression of her sense of the degree – but she after all adopted Mr Verver’s. ‘Immensely.’
‘Then there you are!’
She had another smile, however – she wasn’t there quite yet. ‘That isn’t all that’s wanted.’
‘But what more?’
‘Why that his wife shall have made him really believe that she really believes.’ With which Charlotte became still more lucidly logical. ‘The reality of his belief will depend in such a case on the reality of hers. The Prince may for instance now,’ she went on, ‘have made out to his satisfaction that Maggie may mainly desire to abound in your sense, whatever it is you do. He may remember that he has never seen her do anything else.’
‘Well,’ said Adam Verver, ‘what kind of a warning will he have found in that? To what catastrophe will he have observed such a disposition in her to lead?’
‘Just to this one!’ With which she struck him as rising straighter and clearer before him than she had done even yet.
‘Our little question itself?’ Her appearance had in fact at the moment such an effect on him that he could answer but in marvelling mildness. ‘Hadn’t we better wait a while till we call it a catastrophe?’
Her rejoinder to this was to wait – though by no means so long as he meant. When at the end of her minute she spoke, however, it was mildly too. ‘What would you like, dear friend, to wait for?’ It lingered between them in the air, this demand, and they exchanged for the time a look which might have made each of them seem to have been watching in the other the signs of its overt irony. These were indeed immediately so visible in Mr Verver’s face that, as if a little ashamed of having so markedly produced them – and as if also to bring out at last, under pressure, something she had all the while been keeping back – she took a jump to pure plain reason. ‘You haven’t noticed for yourself, but I can’t quite help noticing, that in spite of what you assume – we assume, if you like – Maggie wires her joy only to you. She makes no sign of its overflow to me.’
It was a point – and, staring a moment, he took account of it. But he had, as before, his presence of mind – to say nothing of his kindly humour. ‘Why you complain of the very thing that’s most charmingly conclusive! She treats us already as one.’
Clearly now for the girl, in spite of lucidity and logic, there was something in the way he said things –! She faced him in all her desire to please him, and then her word quite simply and definitely showed it. ‘I do like you, you know.’
Well, what could this do but stimulate his humour? ‘I see what’s the matter with you. You won’t be quiet till you’ve heard from the Prince himself. I think,’ the happy man added, ‘that I’ll go and secretly wire to him that you’d like, reply paid, a few words for yourself.’
It could apparently but encourage her further to smile. ‘Reply paid for him, you mean – or for me?’
‘Oh I’ll pay with pleasure anything back for you – as many words as you like.’ And he went on, to keep it up. ‘Not requiring either to see your message.’
She could take it, visibly, as he meant it. ‘Should you require to see the Prince’s?’
‘Not a bit. You can keep that also to yourself.’
On his speaking however as if his transmitting the hint were a real question, she appeared to consider – and almost as for good taste – that the joke had gone far enough. ‘It doesn’t matter. Unless he speaks of his own movement –! And why should it be,’ she asked, ‘a thing that would occur to him?’
‘I really think,’ Mr Verver concurred, ‘that it naturally wouldn’t. He doesn’t know you’re morbid.’
She just wondered – but she agreed. ‘No – he hasn’t yet found it out. Perhaps he will, but he hasn’t yet; and I’m willing to give him meanwhile the benefit of the doubt.’ So with this the situation, to her view, would appear to have cleared hadn’t she too quickly had one of her restless relapses. ‘Maggie, however, does know I’m morbid. She hasn’t the benefit.’
‘Well,’ said Adam Verver a little wearily at last, ‘I think I feel that you’ll hear from her yet.