The Golden Bowl Henry James (spicy books to read txt) đ
- Author: Henry James
Book online «The Golden Bowl Henry James (spicy books to read txt) đ». Author Henry James
She had given it, Maggie, straight back, and again it had not missed. Charlotte, for another moment, only looked at her; then broke into the wordsâ âMaggie had known they would comeâ âof which she had pressed the spring. âHow I see that you loathed our marriage!â
âDo you ask me?â Maggie after an instant demanded.
Charlotte had looked about her, picked up the parasol she had laid on a bench, possessed herself mechanically of one of the volumes of the relegated novel and then, more consciously, flung it down again: she was in presence, visibly, of her last word. She opened her sunshade with a click; she twirled it on her shoulder in her pride. âââAskâ you? Do I need? How I see,â she broke out, âthat youâve worked against me!â
âOh, oh, oh!â the Princess exclaimed.
Her companion, leaving her, had reached one of the archways, but on this turned round with a flare. âYou havenât worked against me?â
Maggie took it and for a moment kept it; held it, with closed eyes, as if it had been some captured fluttering bird pressed by both hands to her breast. Then she opened her eyes to speak. âWhat does it matterâ âif Iâve failed?â
âYou recognise then that youâve failed?â asked Charlotte from the threshold.
Maggie waited; she looked, as her companion had done a moment before, at the two books on the seat; she put them together and laid them down; then she made up her mind. âIâve failed!â she sounded out before Charlotte, having given her time, walked away. She watched her, splendid and erect, float down the long vista; then she sank upon a seat. Yes, she had done all.
Part Sixth XLâIâll do anything you like,â she said to her husband on one of the last days of the month, âif our being here, this way at this time, seems to you too absurd, or too uncomfortable, or too impossible. Weâll either take leave of them now, without waitingâ âor weâll come back in time, three days before they start. Iâll go abroad with you, if you but say the word; to Switzerland, the Tyrol, the Italian Alps, to whichever of your old high places you would like most to see againâ âthose beautiful ones that used to do you good after Rome and that you so often told me about.â
Where they were, in the conditions that prompted this offer, and where it might indeed appear ridiculous that, with the stale London September close at hand, they should content themselves with remaining, was where the desert of Portland Place looked blank as it had never looked, and where a drowsy cabman, scanning the horizon for a fare, could sink to oblivion of the risks of immobility. But Amerigo was of the odd opinion, day after day, that their situation couldnât be bettered; and he even went at no moment through the form of replying that, should their ordeal strike her as exceeding their patience, any step they might take would be for her own relief. This was, no doubt, partly because he stood out so wonderfully, to the end, against admitting, by a weak word at least, that any element of their existence was, or ever had been, an ordeal; no trap of circumstance, no lapse of âform,â no accident of irritation, had landed him in that inconsequence. His wife might verily have suggested that he was consequentâ âconsequent with the admirable appearance he had from the first so undertaken, and so continued, to presentâ ârather too rigidly at her expense; only, as it happened, she was not the little person to do anything of the sort, and the strange tacit compact actually in operation between them might have been founded on an intelligent comparison, a definite collation positively, of the kinds of patience proper to each. She was seeing him throughâ âhe had engaged to come out at the right end if she would see him: this understanding, tacitly renewed from week to week, had fairly received, with the procession of the weeks, the consecration of time; but it scarce needed to be insisted on that she was seeing him on his terms, not all on hers, or that, in other words, she must allow him his unexplained and uncharted, his one practicably workable way. If that way, by one of the intimate felicities the liability to which was so far from having even yet completely fallen from him, happened handsomely to show him as more bored than boring (with advantages of his own freely to surrender, but none to be persuadedly indebted to others for,) what did such a false face of the matter represent but the fact itself that she was pledged? If she had questioned or challenged or interferedâ âif she had reserved herself that rightâ âshe wouldnât have been pledged; whereas there were still, and evidently would be yet a while, long, tense stretches during which their case might have been hanging, for every eye, on her possible, her impossible defection. She must keep it up to the last, mustnât absent herself for three minutes from her post: only on those lines, assuredly, would she show herself as with him and not against him.
It was extraordinary how scant a series of signs she had invited him to make of being, of truly having been at any time, âwithâ his wife: that reflection she was not exempt from as they now, in their suspense, supremely waitedâ âa reflection under the brush of which she recognised her having had, in respect to him as well, to âdo all,â to go the whole way over, to move, indefatigably, while he stood as fixed in his place as some statue of one of his forefathers. The meaning of it would seem to be, she reasoned in sequestered hours, that he had a place, and that this was an attribute somehow indefeasible, unquenchable, which laid upon othersâ âfrom the moment they definitely wanted anything of himâ âthe necessity of
Comments (0)