第144章 Chapter 3(5)

Touch by touch she thus dropped into her husband's silence the truth about his good nature and his good manners; and it was this demonstration of his virtue precisely that added to the strangeness, even for herself, of her failing as yet to yield to him. It would be a question but of the most trivial act of surrender, the vibration of a nerve, the mere movement of a muscle; but the (60) act grew important between them just through her doing perceptibly nothing, nothing but talk in the very tone that would naturally have swept her into tenderness. She knew more and more--every lapsing minute taught her--how he might by a single rightness make her cease to watch him; that rightness, a million miles removed from the queer actual, falling so short, which would consist of his breaking out to her diviningly, indulgently, with the last happy inconsequence. "Come away with me somewhere, you--and then we need n't think, we need n't even talk, of anything, of any one else ": five words like that would answer her, would break her utterly down. But they were the only ones that would so serve. She waited for them, and there was a supreme instant when by the testimony of all the rest of him she seemed to feel them in his heart and on his lips; only they did n't sound, and as that made her wait again so it made her more intensely watch. This in turn showed her that he too watched and waited, and how much he had expected something that he now felt would n't come. Yes, it would n't come if he did n't answer her, if he but said the wrong things instead of the right. If he could say the right everything would come--it hung by a hair that everything might crystallise for their recovered happiness at his touch. This possibility glowed at her however for fifty seconds only then to turn cold, and as it fell away from her she felt the chill of reality and knew again, all but pressed to his heart and with his breath upon her cheek, the slim rigour of her attitude, a rigour beyond that of her natural being. They at last had silences that were almost (61) crudities of mutual resistance--silences that persisted through his felt effort to treat her recurrence to the part he had lately played, to interpret all the sweetness of her so talking to him, as a manner of making love to him. Ah it was no such manner, heaven knew, for Maggie; she could make love, if this had been in question, better than that! On top of which it came to her presently to say, keeping in with what she had already spoken: "Except of course that, for the question of going off somewhere, he'd go readily, quite delightedly, with you. I verily believe he'd like to have you for a while to himself."

"Do you mean he thinks of proposing it?" the Prince after a moment sounded.

"Oh no--he does n't ask, as you must so often have seen. But I believe he'd go 'like a shot,' as you say, if you were to suggest it."

It had the air, she knew, of a kind of condition made, and she had asked herself while she spoke if it would n't cause his arm to let her go. The fact that it did n't suggested to her that she had made him of a sudden still more intensely think, think with such concentration that he could do but one thing at once. And it was precisely as if the concentration had the next moment been proved in him. He took a turn inconsistent with the superficial impression--a jump that made light of their approach to gravity and represented for her the need in him to gain time. This she made out was his drawback--that the warning from her had come to him and had come to Charlotte after all too suddenly. That they were in face of it rearranging, that they HAD to rearrange, was all before her (62) again; yet to do as they would like they must enjoy a snatch, longer or shorter, of recovered independence. Amerigo was for the instant but doing as he DID N'T like, and it was as if she were watching his effort without disguise.

"What's your father's idea this year then about Fawns? Will he go at Whitsuntide and will he then stay on?"

Maggie went through the form of thought. "He'll really do, I imagine, as he has in so many ways so often done before; do whatever may seem most agreeable to yourself. And there's of course always Charlotte to be considered.

Only their going early to Fawns, if they do go," she said, "need n't in the least entail your and my going."

"Ah," Amerigo echoed, "it need n't in the least entail your and my going?"

"We can do as we like. What they may do need n't trouble us, since they're by good fortune perfectly happy together."

"Oh," the Prince returned, "your father's never so happy as with you near him to enjoy his being so."

"Well, I may enjoy it," said Maggie, "but I'm not the cause of it."

"You're the cause," her husband declared, "of the greater part of everything that's good among us." But she received this tribute in silence, and the next moment he pursued: "If Mrs. Verver has arrears of time with you to make up, as you say, she'll scarcely do it--or you scarcely will--by our cutting, your and my cutting, too loose."

"I see what you mean," Maggie mused.

He let her for a little give her attention to it; after (63) which, "Shall I just quite of a sudden," he asked, "propose him a journey?"

Maggie cast about her, but she brought forth the fruit of reflexion.

"It would have the merit that Charlotte then WOULD be with me--with me I mean so much more. Also that I should n't, by choosing such a time for going away, seem unconscious and ungrateful, seem not to respond, seem in fact rather to wish to shake her off. I should respond on the contrary most markedly--by being here alone with her for a month."