第63章 Chapter 4(6)

She had got up with these last words; she stood there before him with that particular suggestion in her aspect to which even the long habit of their life together had n't closed his sense, kept sharp, year after year, by the collation of types and signs, the comparison of fine object with fine object, of one degree of finish, of one form of the exquisite with another--the appearance of some slight slim draped "antique" of Vatican or Capitoline halls, late and refined, rare as a note and immortal as a link, set in motion by the miraculous infusion of a modern impulse and yet, for all the sudden freedom of folds and footsteps forsaken after centuries by their pedestal, keeping still the quality, the perfect felicity, of the statue; the blurred absent eyes, the smoothed elegant nameless head, the impersonal flit of a creature lost in an alien age and passing as an image in worn relief round and round a precious vase. She had always had odd moments of striking him, daughter of his very own though she was, as a figure thus simplified, "generalised" in its grace, a figure with which his human connexion was (188) fairly interrupted by some vague analogy of turn and attitude, something shyly mythological and nymph-like. The trick, he was n't uncomplacently aware, was mainly of his own mind; it came from his caring for precious vases only less than for precious daughters.

And what was more to the point still, it often operated while he was quite at the same time conscious that Maggie had been described, even in her prettiness, as "prim"--Mrs. Rance herself had enthusiastically used the word for her; while he remembered that when once she had been told before him familiarly that she resembled a nun she had replied that she was delighted to hear it and would certainly try to; while also, finally, it was present to him that, discreetly heedless, through her long association with nobleness in art, to the leaps and bounds of fashion, she brought her hair down very straight and flat over her temples, in the constant manner of her mother, who had n't been a bit mythological. Nymphs and nuns were certainly separate types, but Mr. Verver, when he really amused himself, let consistency go.

The play of vision was at all events so rooted in him that he could receive impressions of sense even while positively thinking. He was positively thinking while Maggie stood there, and it led for him to yet another question--which in its turn led to others still. "Do you regard the condition as hers then that you spoke of a minute ago?"

"The condition--?"

"Why that of having loved so intensely that she's, as you say, 'beyond everything'?"

Maggie had scarcely to reflect--her answer was so (189) prompt. "Oh no. She's beyond nothing. For she has had nothing."

"I see. You must have had things to be beyond them. It's a kind of law of perspective."

Maggie did n't know about the law, but continued definite. "She's not, for example, beyond help."

"Oh well then she shall have all we can give her. I'll write to her," he said, "with pleasure."

"Angel!" she answered as she gaily and tenderly looked at him.

True as this might be, however, there was one thing more--he was an angel with a human curiosity. "Has she told you she likes me much?"

"Certainly she has told me--but I won't pamper you. Let it be enough for you it has always been one of my reasons for liking HER."

"Then she's indeed not beyond everything," Mr. Verver more or less humorously observed.

"Oh it is n't, thank goodness, that she's in love with you. It's not, as I told you at first, the sort of thing for you to fear."

He had spoken with cheer, but it appeared to drop before this reassurance, as if the latter overdid his alarm, and that should be corrected. "Oh my dear, I've always thought of her as a little girl."

"Ah she's not a little girl," said the Princess.

"Then I'll write to her as a brilliant woman."

"It's exactly what she is."

Mr. Verver had got up as he spoke, and for a little, before retracing their steps, they stood looking at each other as if they had really arranged something. They (190) had come out together for themselves, but it had produced something more. What it had produced was in fact expressed by the words with which he met his companion's last emphasis. "Well, she has a famous friend in you, Princess."

Maggie took this in--it was too plain for a protest. "Do you know what I'm really thinking of?" she asked.

He wondered, with her eyes on him--eyes of contentment at her freedom now to talk; and he was n't such a fool, he presently showed, as not, suddenly, to arrive at it. "Why of your finding her at last yourself a husband."

"Good for YOU!" Maggie smiled. "But it will take," she added, "some looking."

"Then let me look right here with you," her father said as they walked on.