第115章 Chapter 9(3)

He came along the terrace again, with pauses during which his eyes rested, as they had already often done, on the brave darker wash of far-away water-colour that represented the most distant of the cathedral towns. This place, with its great church and its high accessibility, its towers that distinguishably signalled, its English history, its appealing type, its acknowledged interest, this place had sounded its name to him half the night through, and its name had become but another name, the pronounceable and convenient one, for that supreme sense of things which now throbbed within him. He had kept saying to himself "Glo'ster, Glo'ster, Glo'ster," quite as if the sharpest meaning of all the years just ended were intensely expressed in it. That meaning was really that his situation remained quite sublimely consistent with itself, and that they absolutely, he and Charlotte, stood there together in the very lustre of this truth. Every present circumstance helped to (358) proclaim it; it was blown into their faces as by the lips of the morning. He knew why he had from the first of his marriage tried with such patience for such conformity; he knew why he had given up so much and bored himself so much; he knew why he had at any rate gone in, on the basis of all forms, on the basis of his having in a manner sold himself, for a situation nette. It had all been just in order that his--well, what on earth should he call it but his freedom?--should at present be as perfect and rounded and lustrous as some huge precious pearl. He had n't struggled nor snatched; he was taking but what had been given him; the pearl dropped itself, with its exquisite quality and rarity, straight into his hand. Here precisely it was, incarnate; its size and its value grew as Mrs. Verver appeared, afar off, in one of the smaller doorways.

She came toward him in silence while he moved to meet her; the great scale of this particular front, at Matcham, multiplied thus, in the golden morning, the stages of their meeting and the successions of their consciousness.

It was n't till she had come quite close that he produced for her his "Glo'ster, Glo'ster, Glo'ster," and his "Look at it over there!"

She knew just where to look. "Yes--is n't it one of the best? There are cloisters or towers or something." And her eyes, which, though her lips smiled, were almost grave with their depths of acceptance, came back to him. "Or the tomb of some old king."

"We must see the old king; we must 'do' the cathedral," he said; "we must know all about it. If (359) we could but take," he exhaled, "the full opportunity!" And then while, for all they seemed to give him, he sounded again her eyes: "I feel the day like a great gold cup that we must somehow drain together."

"I feel it, as you always make me feel everything, just as you do; so that I know ten miles off how you feel! But do you remember," she asked, "apropos of great gold cups, the beautiful one, the real one, that I offered you so long ago and that you would n't have? Just before your marriage"--she brought it back to him: "the gilded crystal bowl in the little Bloomsbury shop."

"Oh yes!"--but it took, with a slight surprise on the Prince's part, some small recollecting. "The treacherous cracked thing you wanted to palm off on me, and the little swindling Jew who understood Italian and who backed you up! But I feel this an occasion," he immediately added, "and I hope you don't mean," he smiled, "that AS an occasion it's also cracked."

They spoke, naturally, more low than loud, overlooked as they were, though at a respectful distance, by tiers of windows; but it made each find in the other's voice a taste as of something slowly and deeply absorbed.

"Don't you think too much of 'cracks' and are n't you too afraid of them?

I risk the cracks," said Charlotte, "and I've often recalled the bowl and the little swindling Jew, wondering if they've parted company. He made," she said, "a great impression on me."

"Well, you also, no doubt, made a great impression (360) on him, and I dare say that if you were to go back to him you'd find he has been keeping that treasure for you. But as to cracks," the Prince went on--"what did you tell me the other day you prettily call them in English? 'rifts within the lute'?--risk them as much as you like for yourself, but don't risk them for me." He spoke it in all the gaiety of his just barely tremulous serenity. "I go, as you know, by my superstitions. And that's why," he said, "I know where we are. They're every one to-day on our side."