The Golden Bowl

rival, "I don't quite see, I'm bound to say, why you take it, even at the worst, so ferociou

before dinner, only in time to dress, he had not till this moment really been summoned to meet his companion over the situation that, as he was now to learn, their visitor's advent had created for them. It was actually more than midnight, the servants had been sent to bed, the rattle of the wheels had ceased to come in through a window still open to the August air, and Robert Assingham had been steadily learning, all the while, what it thus behoved him to know. But the words just quoted from him presented themselves, for the moment, as the essence of his spirit and his attitude. He disengaged, he would be damned if he didn't - they were both phrases he repeatedly used - his responsibility. The simplest, the sanest, the most obliging of men, he habitually indulged in extravagant language. His wife had o

eir ease, after all; there always being, when they had too much of any, some man, as they were well aware, to get them out. He wouldn't at any price, have one, of any sort whatever, of his own, or even be in one along with her. He watched her, accordingly, in her favourite element, very much as he had sometimes watched, at the Aquarium, the celebrated lady who, in a slight, though tight, bathing-suit, turned somersaults and did tricks in the tank of water which looked so cold and uncomfortable to the non-amphibious

and I see no sign at all of her becoming so. What's certain is that she didn't come for nothing. She wants"- she worked it out at her leisure -"to

his friends mostly knew, yet remained hungrily thin, with facial, with abdominal cavities quite grim in their effect, and with a consequent looseness of apparel that, combined with a choice of queer light shades and of strange straw-like textures, of the aspect of Chinese mats, provocative of wonder at his sources of supply, suggested the habit of tropic islands, a continual cane-bottomed chair, a governorship exercised on wide verandahs. His smooth round head, with the particular shade of its white hair, was like a silver pot reversed; his cheekbones and the bristle of his moustache were worthy of Attila the Hun. The hollows of his eyes were deep and darksome, but the eyes within them, were like little blue flowers plucked that morning. He knew everything that could be known about life, which he regarded as, for far the greater part, a matter of pecuniary arrangement. His wife accused him of a want, alike, of moral and of intellectua

This was in fact, to come back, very much the process he might have been proposing to apply to Mrs. Assingham's view of what was now before them; that is to their connection with Charlotte Stant's possibilities. They wouldn't lavish on them all their little fortune of curiosity and alarm; certainly they wouldn't spend their cherished savings so early in the day. He liked Charlotte, moreover, who was a smooth and compact inmate, and whom he felt as, with her instincts that made against w

enseless physical gestures or nervous facial movements. She overlooked them as from habit and kindness; yet there was no one to whom she talked so per

t she have com

for her there - she didn't fit in. She wasn't in sympathy - no more were the people she saw. Then it'

ou mean, of li

s too good for it even if she could. But she will - she MUST, sooner or later - stay w

Colonel asked, "for you to thi

W?"- she went on as

at one kee

n't it do b

brooded, "should come back NOW?

. When, my dear," the Colonel pursued as he smoked, "have you ev

brought her answer straight

stay over there all h

nconsequence: "I'm too sorry for her - of course she can't enjoy it. But I don't see what perversity rides her. She needn't have looked

dea. Take it, for God's sake, as discipline to you and have don

said, and to none of which one could, in justice, be blind. "It isn't in the least, you know, for ins

isn't th

nd, she doesn't consciously wish, the least complication. It's perfectly true that she thinks Maggie a dear - as who

moked in silence. "What in the wor

their having to recognise that nothing COULD. That was

he deuce di

h other - but, seeing it wasn't

re was th

n their having the courage to

?" the Colo

cted herself. "I mean if he himself had had only a little - or a little more than a little, a little for a prince. They would have done what they could"- she did them justice"- if there had been a way. But there wasn't a way, and Charlotte, quite to

n is what you ca

a moment. "What

want anything more? Or didn't, for t

thoroughly in love. She might have been his -" She checked herself; she even for

" said the Colon

" Mrs. Assin

tle the room. He seemed to listen to it die a

ut when she spoke it was de

on; he might have expected some o

emained serious. "It ta

ter which, as, remembering it all, living it over and piecing it together,

f. "Not a bit of it - THEN. But you surely recall," she went on, "the way, a year

ard of her from C

had never s

Colonel inquired, "w

t she has told me. That's one thing. I'm speak

hat she lies to you?" Bob As

ing it as gross. "She never so mu

appeared to strike him. "It

ment admitted

doesn'

uld have had nothing to do with him - that is in this connection. He's a gentleman - I mean ALL as much of one as he ought to be. And he had noth

rave," said

"Do you mean

undamentally talking about. It's grave - it WAS- for Charlotte. And it's gra

housand times thought of, and because I think of everything that you never will. It would all," she recognised, "have bee

re's nothing in life, my

he more that the Ververs, due all winter, but delayed, week after week, in Paris, were at last really coming. They were coming - that is Maggie was - largely to see her, and above all to be with her THERE. It was all altered - by Charlotte's going to Florence. She went from one day to the other - you forget everything. She gave her r

e showed - as came out in h

I saw it afterwards - I see it all now. He woul

Colonel laughed. "T

at winter; they had met more than was known - though it was a good deal known. More, certainly," she said, "than I then imagined - though I don't know what difference it would after all have made with me. I liked him, I thought him charming, from the first of our knowing him; and now, after more than a year, he has done nothing to spoil

y rate," Bob Assingham declared, "is that you should leave it well alone. It's theirs

" she asked, "a

hen with a groan: "Lo

Prince's, and there's the

lonel scoffed, "there's Ch

ink too that there's Charlotte's and mine. Yes," she mused, "Charlotte's and mine is certa

them all," he in

in it nevertheless the undertaking of a new life. Certainly, in any case, it cleared THAT air - I mean the dear old Roman, in which we were steeped. It left the field free - it gave me a free hand. There was no question for me of anybody else when I brought the two others together. More than that, there was no question for them. So you see," she concluded, "where that puts me." She got up, on the words, very much as if they were the blue daylight towards which, through a darksome tunnel, she had been pushing her way, and the elation in her voice, combined with her recovered alertness, might have signified the sharp whistle of the train that shoots at last into the open

hing he could do." She was in possession of the main case, as it truly seemed; she had it all now. "

illion a year. If you mean that that's what she especially seemed to him, you of course place the

said he didn't from the first - I never said tha

Bob Assingham returned. He made no movement; he s

een quarts and gallons - how best to express the quanti

ad Charlott

y li

kes you

are things, my dear - haven't you felt it yourself, coarse as you are?- that no one could te

d on it. "She'd b

to know evil. She must never know it." Bob Assingham had a queer grim laugh; the soun

seen each other well; they were in relation: the rest was to come of itself and as it could. It began, practically, I recollect, in our drive. Maggie happened to learn, by some other man's greeting of him, in the bright Roman way, from a streetcorner as we passed, that one of the Prince's baptismal names, the one always used for him among his relations, was Amerigo: which (as

e score of the land of her birth, unperturbed and unashamed; and these dark depths were even at the present moment not di

with glory, was, very naturally, to become so the fashion among them that some son, of every generation, was appointed to wear it. My point is, at any rate, that I recall noticing at the time how the Prince was, from the start, helped with the dear Ververs by his wearing it. The connection became romantic for Maggie the moment she took it in; she fi

ent was prosaic. "He knew, Amerigo, what h

mean!" his wife b

his effect "isn't the only

f he had - his successors were, in due time, to discover the Americans. And it wa

e Colonel asked, "who really discov

c, Your insinuations recoil upon your cynical mind. Don't you understand," she asked, "t

right," said

seum," his companion

am I to

artment, or whatever, filled with books written

seen for Y

from that hour of the Prince's drive with us. My only course, afterwards, had to be to make the best of it. It was certainly good enough for that," Mrs. Assingham hastened to add, "and I didn't in the least see my duty in making the worst. In the same situation, to

hink such desperately different things. What happened," he went on, "was that you fell violently in love with the Prince yourself, and that as you couldn't get me out of the way you had to take some roundabout course. You co

of the spring of her conduct; and this abstention, clearly and effectively conscious, evidently cost her nothing. "It IS always the Prince; and it IS always, thank heave

aren't y

," said Fan

harlotte couldn't tell her all? What do you make of it that the Prince didn't tell her anything? Say one understands that there are things she can't be told - since, as you put it, she is so easily scared and shocked." He produced these objections slowly, giving her time, by his pauses, to stop roaming

tinued still to circulate - not directly

ou wanted me

you so much so that you won't worr

t' for the reasons we speak of, even though the bolting had done for her w

by the "if" which his wife didn't take up. So it hung but the longer when he present

ome back to him.

. But that won't do me the

"You don't care for anything in itself; you care for nothing bu

s that everything is so right tha

ly indifferent, really; you're perfectly immoral. You've taken part in the sack of cities, and I'm sure yo

ut he kept his way. "Wel

ck'

what sh

t last, on the girl's behalf, as the ripe result of her late wanderings and musings. She had g

the Colonel a

t fast "to be thoroughly superi

antin

ing out h

at IS h

Maggie t

wondered. "T

thing. She KNO

thing"- Mrs. Assingham had t

e has come out to

free; and what, moreover, were her silences to Maggie but a direct aid to him? If she had spoken in Florence; if she had told her own poor story; if she had, come back at any time - till within a few weeks ago; if she hadn't gone to New York and hadn't held out there: if s

per drop therefore to her husband's flat common sense. "In other words Maggi

ing able to be heroic, of being able in fact to be sublime. She is, she will be"- the good lady by

t hard. "Which of them do

over!" But the grand truth thus made out she had now c

ers

Charlotte's. It's for us, on

her sub

that's essential - it mustn't be lonel

e to mar

ham continued, "the great thing I can do." Sh

his desire for lucidity renewed itself. "If everyt

f them, by any chance, a w

nd then as she again took her time: "I thoug

sure of anything. There

ut strike so wild,

Where would you have been, my de

r own. I was your own," said the Colo

late to change it. We must live IN it and with it. Therefore to see that Charlotte gets a good husband as soon as possible - that, as I say, will be one of my ways of living. It will cover," she said with conviction, "all the ground." And then as his own conviction appeared to continue as little to ma

came. "You hold there's n

ay there are good chances - enough of them for hope. Why sh

ean after she's in lo

be fatal; but it scarcely pulled her up. "She's not too much in lov

e told

nwhile, however, I don't require the infor

what

of everyt

it to

work for her. What it will prove," Mrs. Assingham presently wen

pipe. "The situation of doing the one thing she

thing she can do that will really make new tracks altogether. The thing that, before any ot

best give you, by the same token,

agnificent, at l

t up. "And you c

you know, immorality. Just so what is morality but high intelligence?" This he was unable to tel

simply put i

don't mean," she said from the threshold, "the fun that you mean. Good-night." In answer to which, as he turned