The Golden Bowl Henry James (spicy books to read txt) š
- Author: Henry James
Book online Ā«The Golden Bowl Henry James (spicy books to read txt) šĀ». Author Henry James
The extent to which they enjoyed their indifference to any judgment of their want of ceremony, what did that of itself speak but for the way that, as a rule, they almost equally had others on their mind? They each knew that both were full of the superstition of not āhurting,ā but might precisely have been asking themselves, asking in fact each other, at this moment, whether that was to be, after all, the last word of their conscientious development. Certain it was, at all events, that, in addition to the Assinghams and the Lutches and Mrs. Rance, the attendance at tea, just in the right place on the west terrace, might perfectly comprise the four or five personsā āamong them the very pretty, the typically Irish Miss Maddock, vaunted, announced and now broughtā āfrom the couple of other houses near enough, one of these the minor residence of their proprietor, established, thriftily, while he hired out his ancestral home, within sight and sense of his profit. It was not less certain, either, that, for once in a way, the group in question must all take the case as they found it. Fanny Assingham, at any time, for that matter, might perfectly be trusted to see Mr. Verver and his daughter, to see their reputation for a decent friendliness, through any momentary danger; might be trusted even to carry off their absence for Amerigo, for Amerigoās possible funny Italian anxiety; Amerigo always being, as the Princess was well aware, conveniently amenable to this friendās explanations, beguilements, reassurances, and perhaps in fact rather more than less dependent on them as his new lifeā āsince that was his own name for itā āopened out. It was no secret to Maggieā āit was indeed positively a public joke for herā āthat she couldnāt explain as Mrs. Assingham did, and that, the Prince liking explanations, liking them almost as if he collected them, in the manner of bookplates or postage-stamps, for themselves, his requisition of this luxury had to be met. He didnāt seem to want them as yet for useā ārather for ornament and amusement, innocent amusement of the kind he most fancied and that was so characteristic of his blessed, beautiful, general, slightly indolent lack of more dissipated, or even just of more sophisticated, tastes.
However that might be, the dear woman had come to be frankly and gaily recognisedā āand not least by herselfā āas filling in the intimate little circle an office that was not always a sinecure. It was almost as if she had taken, with her kind, melancholy Colonel at her heels, a responsible engagement; to be within call, as it were, for all those appeals that sprang out of talk, that sprang not a little, doubtless too, out of leisure. It naturally led her position in the household, as, she called it, to considerable frequency of presence, to visits, from the good couple, freely repeated and prolonged, and not so much as under form of protest. She was there to keep him quietā āit was Amerigoās own description of her influence; and it would only have needed a more visible disposition to unrest in him to make the account perfectly fit. Fanny herself limited indeed, she minimised, her office; you didnāt need a jailor, she contended, for a domesticated lamb tied up with pink ribbon. This was not an animal to be controlledā āit was an animal to be, at the most, educated. She admitted accordingly that she was educativeā āwhich Maggie was so aware that she herself, inevitably, wasnāt; so it came round to being true that what she was most in charge of was his mere intelligence. This left, goodness knew, plenty of different calls for Maggie to meetā āin a case in which so much pink ribbon, as it might be symbolically named, was lavished on the creature. What it all amounted to, at any rate, was that Mrs. Assingham would be keeping him quiet now, while his wife and his father-in-law carried out their own little frugal picnic; quite moreover, doubtless, not much less neededly in respect to the members of the circle that were with them there than in respect to the pair they were missing almost for the first time. It was present to Maggie that the Prince could bear, when he was with his wife, almost any queerness on the part of people, strange English types, who bored him, beyond convenience, by being so little as he himself was; for this was one of the ways in which a wife was practically sustaining. But she was as positively aware that she hadnāt yet learned to
Comments (0)