The hour was late, and the young lady who had disembarked at Southampton that morning to come up by the "steamer special," and who had then settled herself at an hotel only to re-settle herself a couple of hours later at a private house, was by this time, they might hope, peacefully resting from her exploits. There had been two men at dinner, rather battered brothers-in-arms, of his own period, casually picked up by her host the day before, and when the gentlemen, after the meal, rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room, Charlotte, pleading fatigue, had already excused herself. The beguiled warriors, however, had stayed till after elevenMrs. Assingham, though finally quite without illusions, as she said, about the military character, was always beguiling to old soldiers; and as the Colonel had come in, 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'tthey were both phrases he repeatedly usedhis responsibility. The simplest, the sanest, the most obliging of men, he habitually indulged in extravagant language. His wife had once told him, in relation to his violence of speech; that such excesses, on his part, made her think of a retired General whom she had once seen playing with toy soldiers, fighting and winning battles, carrying on sieges and annihilating enemies with little fortresses of wood and little armies of tin. Her husband's exaggerated emphasis was his box of toy soldiers, his military game. It harmlessly gratified in him, for his declining years, the military instinct; bad words, when sufficiently numerous and arrayed in their might, could represent battalions, squadrons, tremendous cannonades and glorious charges of cavalry. It was natural, it was delightfulthe romance, and for her as well, of camp life and of the perpetual booming of guns. It was fighting to the end, to the death, but no one was ever killed.
Less fortunate than she, nevertheless, in spite of his wealth of expression, he had not yet found the image that described her favourite game; all he could do was practically to leave it to her, emulating her own philosophy. He had again and again sat up late to discuss those situations in which her finer consciousness abounded, but he had never failed to deny that anything in life, anything of hers, could be a situation for himself. She might be in fifty at once if she likedand it was what women did like, at their 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. He listened to his companion to-night, while he smoked his last pipe, he watched her through her demonstration, quite as if he had paid a shilling. But it was true that, this being the case, he desired the value of his money. What was it, in the name of wonder, that she was so bent on being responsible FOR? What did she pretend was going to happen, and what, at the worst, could the poor girl do, even granting she wanted to do anything? What, at the worst, for that matter, could she be conceived to have in her head?
"If she had told me the moment she got here," Mrs. Assingham replied, "I shouldn't have my difficulty in finding out. But she wasn't so obliging, 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 see the Prince again. THAT isn't what troubles me. I mean that such a fact, as a fact, isn't. But what I ask myself is, What does she want it FOR?"
"What's the good of asking yourself if you know you don't know?" The Colonel sat back at his own ease, with an ankle resting on the other knee and his eyes attentive to the good appearance of an extremely slender foot which he kept jerking in its neat integument of fine-spun black silk and patent leather. It seemed to confess, this member, to consciousness of military discipline, everything about it being as polished and perfect, as straight and tight and trim, as a soldier on parade. It went so far as to imply that someone or other would have "got" something or other, confinement to barracks or suppression of pay, if it hadn't been just as it was. Bob Assingham was distinguished altogether by a leanness of person, a leanness quite distinct from physical laxity, which might have been determined, on the part of superior powers, by views of transport and accommodation, and which in fact verged on the abnormal. He "did" himself as well as 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 intellectual reaction, or rather indeed of a complete incapacity for either. He never went even so far as to understand what she meant, and it didn't at all matter, since he could be in spite of the limitation a perfectly social creature. The infirmities, the predicaments of men neither surprised nor shocked him, and indeedwhich was perhaps his only real loss in a thrifty career scarce even amused; he took them for granted without horror, classifying them after their kind and calculating results and chances. He might, in old bewildering climates, in old campaigns of cruelty and license, have had such revelations and known such amazements that he had nothing more to learn. But he was wholly content, in spite of his fondness, in domestic discussion, for the superlative degree; and his kindness, in the oddest way, seemed to have nothing to do with his experience. He could deal with things perfectly, for all his needs, without getting near them.
This was the way he dealt with his wife, a large proportion of whose meanings he knew he could neglect. He edited, for their general economy, the play of her mind, just as he edited, savingly, with the stump of a pencil, her redundant telegrams. The thing in the world that was least of a mystery to him was his Club, which he was accepted as perhaps too completely managing, and which he managed on lines of perfect penetration. His connection with it was really a master-piece of editing. 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 waste, much more of his own sort than his wife. He could talk with her about Fanny almost better than he could talk with Fanny about Charlotte. However, he made at present the best of the latter necessity, even to the pressing of the question he has been noted as having last uttered. "If you can't think what to be afraid of, wait till you can think. Then you'll do it much better. Or otherwise, if that's waiting too long, find out from HER. Don't try to find out from ME. Ask her herself."
Mrs. Assingham denied, as we know, that her husband had a play of mind; so that she could, on her side, treat these remarks only as if they had been senseless physical gestures or nervous facial movements. She overlooked them as from habit and kindness; yet there was no one to whom she talked so persistently of such intimate things. "It's her friendship with Maggie that's the immense complication. Because THAT," she audibly mused, "is so natural."
"Then why can't she have come out for it?"
"She came out," Mrs. Assingham continued to meditate, "because she hates America. There was no place for her thereshe didn't fit in. She wasn't in sympathyno more were the people she saw. Then it's hideously dear; she can't, on her means, begin to live there. Not at all as she can, in a way, here."
"In the way, you mean, of living with US?"
"Of living with anyone. She can't live by visits aloneand she doesn't want to. She's too good for it even if she could. But she willshe MUST, sooner or laterstay with THEM. Maggie will want herMaggie will make her. Besides, she'll want to herself."
"Then why won't that do," the Colonel asked, "for you to think it's what she has come for?"
"How will it do, HOW?"she went on as without hearing him.
"That's what one keeps feeling."
"Why shouldn't it do beautifully?"
"That anything of the past," she brooded, "should come back NOW?How will it do, how will it do?"
"It will do, I daresay, without your wringing your hands over it. When, my dear," the Colonel pursued as he smoked, "have you ever seen anything of yoursanything that you've doneNOT do?"
"Ah, I didn't do this!" It brought her answer straight. "I didn't bring her back."
"Did you expect her to stay over there all her days to oblige you?"
"Not a bitfor I shouldn't have minded her coming after their marriage. It's her coming, this way, before." To which she added with inconsequence: "I'm too sorry for herof course she can't enjoy it. But I don't see what perversity rides her. She needn't have looked it all so in the faceas she doesn't do it, I suppose, simply for discipline. It's almostthat's the bore of itdiscipline to ME."
"Perhaps then," said Bob Assingham, "that's what has been her idea. Take it, for God's sake, as discipline to you and have done with it. It will do," he added, "for discipline to me as well."
She was far, however, from having done with it; it was a situation with such different sides, as she said, and to none of which one could, in justice, be blind. "It isn't in the least, you know, for instance, that I believe she's bad. Never, never," Mrs. Assingham declared. "I don't think that of her."
"Then why isn't that enough?"
Nothing was enough, Mrs. Assingham signified, but that she should develop her thought. "She doesn't deliberately intend, she doesn't consciously wish, the least complication. It's perfectly true that she thinks Maggie a dearas who doesn't? She's incapable of any PLAN to hurt a hair of her head. Yet here she isand there THEY are," she wound up.
Her husband again, for a little, smoked in silence. "What in the world, between them, ever took place?"
"Between Charlotte and the Prince? Why, nothingexcept their having to recognise that nothing COULD. That was their little romanceit was even their little tragedy."
"But what the deuce did they DO?"
"Do? They fell in love with each otherbut, seeing it wasn't possible, gave each other up."
"Then where was the romance?"
"Why, in their frustration, in their having the courage to look the facts in the face."
"What facts?" the Colonel went on.
"Well, to begin with, that of their neither of them having the means to marry. If she had had even a littlea little, I mean, for twoI believe he would bravely have done it." After which, as her husband but emitted an odd vague sound, she corrected herself. "I mean if he himself had had only a littleor 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 her honour, I consider, understood it. He HAD to have moneyit was a question of life and death. It wouldn't have been a bit amusing, either, to marry him as a pauperI mean leaving him one. That was what she hadas HE hadthe reason to see."
"And their reason is what you call their romance?"
She looked at him a moment. "What do you want more?"
"Didn't HE," the Colonel inquired, "want anything more? Or didn't, for that matter, poor Charlotte herself?"
She kept her eyes on him; there was a manner in it that half answered. "They were thoroughly in love. She might have been his" She checked herself; she even for a minute lost herself. "She might have been anything she likedexcept his wife."
"But she wasn't," said the Colonel very smokingly.
"She wasn't," Mrs. Assingham echoed.
The echo, not loud but deep, filled for a little the room. He seemed to listen to it die away; then he began again. "How are you sure?"
She waited before saying, but when she spoke it was definite."There wasn't time."
He had a small laugh for her reason; he might have expected some other. "Does it take so much time?"
She herself, however, remained serious. "It takes more than they had."
He was detached, but he wondered. "What was the matter with their time?" After which, as, remembering it all, living it over and piecing it together, she only considered, "You mean that you came in with your idea?" he demanded.
It brought her quickly to the point, and as if also in a measure to answer herself. "Not a bit of itTHEN. But you surely recall," she went on, "the way, a year ago, everything took place. They had parted before he had ever heard of Maggie."
"Why hadn't he heard of her from Charlotte herself?"
"Because she had never spoken of her."
"Is that also," the Colonel inquired, "what she has told you?"
"I'm not speaking," his wife returned, "of what she has told me. That's one thing. I'm speaking of what I know by myself. That's another."
"You feel, in other words, that she lies to you?" Bob Assingham more sociably asked.
She neglected the question, treating it as gross. "She never so much, at the time, as named Maggie."
It was so positive that it appeared to strike him. "It's he then who has told you?"
She after a moment admitted it. "It's he."
"And he doesn't lie?"
"Noto do him justice. I believe he absolutely doesn't. If I hadn't believed it," Mrs. Assingham declared, for her general justification, "I would have had nothing to do with himthat is in this connection. He's a gentlemanI mean ALL as much of one as he ought to be. And he had nothing to gain. That helps," she added, "even a gentleman. It was I who named Maggie to hima year from last May. He had never heard of her before."
"Then it's grave," said the Colonel.
She hesitated. "Do you mean grave for me?"
"Oh, that everything's grave for 'you' is what we take for granted and are fundamentally talking about. It's graveit WAS for Charlotte. And it's grave for Maggie. That is it WASwhen he did see her. Or when she did see HIM."