The Golden Bowl Henry James (spicy books to read txt) đ
- Author: Henry James
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âOh, well, Iâm not!â he rang out clear.
âI should like to see you, sir!â she said. âFor you wouldnât have a shadow of excuse.â He showed how he agreed that he would have been at a loss for one, and the fact of their serenity was thus made as important as if some danger of its opposite had directly menaced them. The only thing was that if the evidence of their cheer was so established Mrs. Assingham had a little to explain her original manner, and she came to this before they dropped the question. âMy first impulse is always to behave, about everything, as if I feared complications. But I donât fear themâ âI really like them. Theyâre quite my element.â He deferred, for her, to this account of herself. âBut still,â he said, âif weâre not in the presence of a complication.â
She hesitated. âA handsome, clever, odd girl staying with one is always a complication.â
The young man weighed it almost as if the question were new to him. âAnd will she stay very long?â
His friend gave a laugh. âHow in the world can I know? Iâve scarcely asked her.â
âAh yes. You canât.â
But something in the tone of it amused her afresh. âDo you think you could?â
âI?â he wondered.
âDo you think you could get it out of her for meâ âthe probable length of her stay?â
He rose bravely enough to the occasion and the challenge. âI daresay, if you were to give me the chance.â
âHere it is then for you,â she answered; for she had heard, within the minute, the stop of a cab at her door. âSheâs back.â
IIIIt had been said as a joke, but as, after this, they awaited their friend in silence, the effect of the silence was to turn the time to gravityâ âa gravity not dissipated even when the Prince next spoke. He had been thinking the case over and making up his mind. A handsome, clever, odd girl staying with one was a complication. Mrs. Assingham, so far, was right. But there were the factsâ âthe good relations, from schooldays, of the two young women, and the clear confidence with which one of them had arrived. âShe can come, you know, at any time, to us.â
Mrs. Assingham took it up with an irony beyond laughter. âYouâd like her for your honeymoon?â
âOh no, you must keep her for that. But why not after?â
She had looked at him a minute; then, at the sound of a voice in the corridor, they had got up. âWhy not? Youâre splendid!â Charlotte Stant, the next minute, was with them, ushered in as she had alighted from her cab, and prepared for not finding Mrs. Assingham aloneâ âthis would have been to be noticedâ âby the butlerâs answer, on the stairs, to a question put to him. She could have looked at her hostess with such straightness and brightness only from knowing that the Prince was also thereâ âthe discrimination of but a moment, yet which let him take her in still better than if she had instantly faced him. He availed himself of the chance thus given him, for he was conscious of all these things. What he accordingly saw, for some seconds, with intensity, was a tall, strong, charming girl who wore for him, at first, exactly the look of her adventurous situation, a suggestion, in all her person, in motion and gesture, in free, vivid, yet altogether happy indications of dress, from the becoming compactness of her hat to the shade of tan in her shoes, of winds and waves and customhouses, of far countries and long journeys, the knowledge of how and where and the habit, founded on experience, of not being afraid. He was aware, at the same time, that of this combination the âstrongmindedâ note was not, as might have been apprehended, the basis; he was now sufficiently familiar with English-speaking types, he had sounded attentively enough such possibilities, for a quick vision of differences. He had, besides, his own view of this young ladyâs strength of mind. It was great, he had ground to believe, but it would never interfere with the play of her extremely personal, her always amusing taste. This last was the thing in herâ âfor she threw it out positively, on the spot, like a lightâ âthat she might have reappeared, during these moments, just to cool his worried eyes with. He saw her in her light that immediate, exclusive address to their friend was like a lamp she was holding aloft for his benefit and for his pleasure. It showed him everythingâ âabove all her presence in the world, so closely, so irretrievably contemporaneous with his own: a sharp, sharp fact, sharper during these instants than any other at all, even than that of his marriage, but accompanied, in a subordinate and controlled way, with those others, facial, physiognomic, that Mrs. Assingham had been speaking of as subject to appreciation. So they were, these others, as he met them again, and that was the connection they instantly established with him. If they had to be interpreted, this made at least for intimacy. There was but one way certainly for himâ âto interpret them in the sense of the already known.
Making use then of clumsy terms of excess, the face was too narrow and too long, the eyes not large, and the mouth, on the other hand, by no means small, with substance in its lips and a slight, the very slightest, tendency to protrusion in the solid teeth, otherwise indeed well arrayed and flashingly white. But it was, strangely, as a cluster of possessions of his own that these things, in Charlotte Stant, now affected him; items in a full list, items recognised, each of them, as if,
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