第141章 Chapter 3(2)

What occurred was simply that she became aware, at a stroke, of the quantity of further nourishment required by her own, and of the amount of it she might somehow extract from these people; whereby she rose of a sudden to the desire to possess and use them, even to the extent of braving, of fairly defying, of directly exploiting, or possibly quite enjoying, under cover of an evil duplicity, the felt element of curiosity with which they regarded her. Once she was conscious of the flitting wing of this last impression (50) --the perception, irresistible, that she was something for THEIR queer experience, just as they were something for hers--there was no limit to her conceived design of not letting them escape. She went and went, again, to-night, after her start was taken; went positively as she had felt herself going, three weeks before, on the morning when the vision of her father and his wife awaiting her together in the breakfast-room had been so determinant.

In this other scene it was Lady Castledean who was determinant, who kindled the light, or at all events the heat, and who acted on the nerves; Lady Castledean whom she knew she so oddly did n't like, in spite of reasons upon reasons, the biggest diamonds on the yellowest hair, the longest lashes on the prettiest falsest eyes, the oldest lace on the most violet velvet, the rightest manner on the wrongest assumption. Her ladyship's assumption was that she kept, at every moment of her life, every advantage--it made her beautifully soft, very nearly generous; so she did n't distinguish the little protuberant eyes of smaller social insects, often endowed with such a range, from the other decorative spots on their bodies and wings.

Maggie had liked, in London and in the world at large, so many more people than she had thought it right to fear, right even to so much as judge, that it positively quickened her fever to have to recognise in this case such a lapse of all the sequences. It was only that a charming clever woman wondered about her--that is wondered about her as Amerigo's wife, and wondered moreover with the intention of kindness and the spontaneity almost of surprise.

(51) The point of view--that one--was what she read in their free contemplation, in that of the whole eight; there was something in Amerigo to be explained, and she was passed about, all tenderly and expertly, like a dressed doll held, in the right manner, by its firmly-stuffed middle, for the account she could give. She might have been made to give it by pressure of her stomach; she might have been expected to articulate with a rare imitation of nature, "Oh yes, I'm HERE all the while; I'm also in my way a solid little fact and I cost originally a great deal of money: cost, that is, my father, for my outfit, and let in my husband for an amount of pains--toward my training--that money would scarce represent." Well, she WOULD meet them in some such way, and she translated her idea into action, after dinner, before they dispersed, by engaging them all unconventionally, almost violently, to dine with her in Portland Place just as they were, if they did n't mind the same party, which was the party she wanted. Oh she was going, she was going--she could feel it afresh; it was a good deal as if she had sneezed ten times or had suddenly burst into a comic song. There were breaks in the connexion, as there would be hitches in the process; she did n't yet wholly see what they would do for her, nor quite how herself she should handle them; but she was dancing up and down, beneath her propriety, with the thought that she had at least begun something--she so fairly liked to feel that she was a point for convergence of wonder. It was n't after all either that THEIR wonder so much signified--that of the cornered six whom it glimmered before her that she (52) might still live to drive about like a flock of sheep: the intensity of her consciousness, its sharpest savour, was in the theory of her having diverted, having, as they said, captured, the attention of Amerigo and Charlotte, at neither of whom all the while did she so much as once look. She had pitched them in with the six, for that matter, so far as they themselves were concerned; they had dropped, for the succession of minutes, out of contact with their function--had in short, startled and impressed, abandoned their post. "They're paralysed, they're paralysed!" she commented deep within; so much it helped her own apprehension to hang together that they should suddenly lose their bearings.

Her grasp of appearances was thus out of proportion to her view of causes; but it came to her then and there that if she could only get the facts of appearance straight, only jam them down into their place, the reasons lurking behind them, kept uncertain for the eyes by their wavering and shifting, would n't perhaps be able to help showing. It was n't of course that the Prince and Mrs. Verver marvelled to see her civil to their friends; it was rather precisely that civil was just what she was n't: she had so departed from any such custom of delicate approach--approach by the permitted note, the suggested "if," the accepted vagueness--as would enable the people in question to put her off if they wished. And the profit of her plan, the effect of the violence she was willing to let it go for, was exactly in their BEING the people in question, people she had seemed to be rather shy of before and for whom she suddenly opened her mouth so (53) wide.