And their reason is what you call their romance?
She looked at him a moment. What do you want more?
Didnt HE, the Colonel inquired, want anything more? Or didnt, 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 wasnt, said the Colonel very smokingly.
She wasnt, 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 wasnt 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 hadnt 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?
Im not speaking, his wife returned, of what she has told me. Thats one thing. Im speaking of what I know by myself. Thats 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. Its he then who has told you?
She after a moment admitted it. Its he.
And he doesnt lie?
Noto do him justice. I believe he absolutely doesnt. If I hadnt believed it, Mrs. Assingham declared, for her general justification, I would have had nothing to do with himthat is in this connection. Hes 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 its grave, said the Colonel.
She hesitated. Do you mean grave for me?
Oh, that everythings grave for you is what we take for granted and are fundamentally talking about. Its graveit WASfor Charlotte. And its grave for Maggie. That is it WASwhen he did see her. Or when she did see HIM.
You dont torment me as much as you would like, she presently went on, because you think of nothing that I havent a thousand times thought of, and because I think of everything that you never will. It would all, she recognised, have been grave if it hadnt all been right. You cant make out, she contended, that we got to Rome before the end of February.
He more than agreed. Theres nothing in life, my dear, that I CAN make out.
Well, there was nothing in life, apparently, that she, at real need, couldnt. Charlotte, who had been there, that year, from early, quite from November, left suddenly, youll quite remember, about the 10th of April. She was to have stayed onshe was to have stayed, naturally, more or less, for us; and she was to have stayed all the more that the Ververs, due all winter, but delayed, week after week, in Paris, were at last really coming. They were comingthat is Maggie waslargely to see her, and above all to be with her THERE. It was all alteredby Charlottes going to Florence. She went from one day to the otheryou forget everything. She gave her reasons, but I thought it odd, at the time; I had a sense that something must have happened. The difficulty was that, though I knew a little, I didnt know enough. I didnt know her relation with him had been, as you say, a near thingthat is I didnt know HOW near. The poor girls departure was a flightshe went to save herself.
He had listened more than he showedas came out in his tone. To save herself?
Well, also, really, I think, to save HIM too. I saw it afterwardsI see it all now. He would have been sorryhe didnt want to hurt her.
Oh, I daresay, the Colonel laughed. They generally dont!
At all events, his wife pursued, she escapedthey both did; for they had had simply to face it. Their marriage couldnt be, and, if that was so, the sooner they put the Apennines between them the better. It had taken them, it is true, some time to feel this and to find it out. They had met constantly, and not always publicly, all that winter; they had met more than was knownthough it was a good deal known. More, certainly, she said, than I then imaginedthough I dont know what difference it would after all have made with me. I liked him, I thought him charming, from the first of our knowing him; and now, after more than a year, he has done nothing to spoil it. And there are things he might have donethings that many men easily would. Therefore I believe in him, and I was right, at first, in knowing I was going to. So I haventand she stated it as she might have quoted from a slate, after adding up the items, the sum of a column of figuresso I havent, I say to myself, been a fool.
Well, are you trying to make out that Ive said you have? All their case wants, at any rate, Bob Assingham declared, is that you should leave it well alone. Its theirs now; theyve bought it, over the counter, and paid for it. It has ceased to be yours.
Of which case, she asked, are you speaking?
He smoked a minute: then with a groan: Lord, are there so many?
Theres Maggies and the Princes, and theres the Princes and Charlottes.
Oh yes; and then, the Colonel scoffed, theres Charlottes and the Princes.
Theres Maggies and Charlottes, she went onand theres also Maggies and mine. I think too that theres Charlottes and mine. Yes, she mused, Charlottes and mine is certainly a case. In short, you see, there are plenty. But I mean, she said, to keep my head.
Are we to settle them all, he inquired, to-night?
I should lose it if things had happened otherwiseif I had acted with any folly. She had gone on in her earnestness, unheeding of his question. I shouldnt be able to bear that now. But my good conscience is my strength; no one can accuse me. The Ververs came on to Rome aloneCharlotte, after their days with her in Florence, had decided about America. Maggie, I daresay, had helped her; she must have made her a present, and a handsome one, so that many things were easy. Charlotte left them, came to England, joined somebody or other, sailed for New York. I have still her letter from Milan, telling me; I didnt know at the moment all that was behind it, but I felt in it nevertheless the undertaking of a new life. Certainly, in any case, it cleared THAT airI mean the dear old Roman, in which we were steeped. It left the field freeit gave me a free hand. There was no question for me of anybody else when I brought the two others together. More than that, there was no question for them. So you see, she concluded, where that puts me. She got up, on the words, very much as if they were the blue daylight towards which, through a darksome tunnel, she had been pushing her way, and the elation in her voice, combined with her recovered alertness, might have signified the sharp whistle of the train that shoots at last into the open. She turned about the room; she looked out a moment into the August night; she stopped, here and there, before the flowers in bowls and vases. Yes, it was distinctly as if she had proved what was needing proof, as if the issue of her operation had been, almost unexpectedly, a success. Old arithmetic had perhaps been fallacious, but the new settled the question. Her husband, oddly, however, kept his place without apparently measuring these results. As he had been amused at her intensity, so he was not uplifted by her relief; his interest might in fact have been more enlisted than he allowed. Do you mean, he presently asked, that he had already forgot about Charlotte?
She faced round as if he had touched a spring. He WANTED to, naturallyand it was much the best thing he could do. She was in possession of the main case, as it truly seemed; she had it all now. He was capable of the effort, and he took the best way. Remember too what Maggie then seemed to us.
Shes very nice; but she always seems to me, more than anything else, the young woman who has a million a year. If you mean that thats what she especially seemed to him, you of course place the thing in your light. The effort to forget Charlotte couldnt, I grant you, have been so difficult.
This pulled her up but for an instant. I never said he didnt from the firstI never said that he doesnt more and morelike Maggies money.
I never said I shouldnt have liked it myself, Bob Assingham returned. He made no movement; he smoked another minute. How much did Maggie know?
How much? She seemed to consideras if it were between quarts and gallonshow best to express the quantity. She knew what Charlotte, in Florence, had told her.
And what had Charlotte told her?
Very little.
What makes you so sure?
Why, thisthat she couldnt tell her. And she explained a little what she meant. There are things, my dearhavent you felt it yourself, coarse as you are?that no one could tell Maggie. There are things that, upon my word, I shouldnt care to attempt to tell her now.
The Colonel smoked on it. Shed be so scandalised?
Shed be so frightened. Shed be, in her strange little way, so hurt. She wasnt born to know evil. She must never know it. Bob Assingham had a queer grim laugh; the sound of which, in fact, fixed his wife before him. Were taking grand ways to prevent it.
But she stood there to protest. Were not taking any ways. The ways are all taken; they were taken from the moment he came up to our carriage that day in Villa Borghesethe second or third of her days in Rome, when, as you remember, you went off somewhere with Mr. Verver, and the Prince, who had got into the carriage with us, came home with us to tea. They had met; they had seen each other well; they were in relation: the rest was to come of itself and as it could. It began, practically, I recollect, in our drive. Maggie happened to learn, by some other mans greeting of him, in the bright Roman way, from a streetcorner as we passed, that one of the Princes baptismal names, the one always used for him among his relations, was Amerigo: which (as you probably dont know, however, even after a lifetime of ME), was the name, four hundred years ago, or whenever, of the pushing man who followed, across the sea, in the wake of Columbus and succeeded, where Columbus had failed, in becoming godfather, or name-father, to the new Continent; so that the thought of any connection with him can even now thrill our artless breasts.
The Colonels grim placidity could always quite adequately meet his wifes not infrequent imputation of ignorances, on the score of the land of her birth, unperturbed and unashamed; and these dark depths were even at the present moment not directly lighted by an inquiry that managed to be curious without being apologetic. But where does the connection come in?
His wife was prompt. By the womenthat is by some obliging woman, of old, who was a descendant of the pushing man, the make-believe discoverer, and whom the Prince is therefore luckily able to refer to as an ancestress. A branch of the other family had become greatgreat enough, at least, to marry into his; and the name of the navigator, crowned with glory, was, very naturally, to become so the fashion among them that some son, of every generation, was appointed to wear it. My point is, at any rate, that I recall noticing at the time how the Prince was, from the start, helped with the dear Ververs by his wearing it. The connection became romantic for Maggie the moment she took it in; she filled out, in a flash, every link that might be vague. By that sign, I quite said to myself, hell conquerwith his good fortune, of course, of having the other necessary signs too. It really, said Mrs. Assingham, was, practically, the fine side of the wedge. Which struck me as also, she wound up, a lovely note for the candour of the Ververs.
The Colonel took in the tale, but his comment was prosaic. He knew, Amerigo, what he was about. And I dont mean the OLD one.
I know what you mean! his wife bravely threw off.
The old onehe pointed his effect isnt the only discoverer in the family.
Oh, as much as you like! If he discovered Americaor got himself honoured as if he hadhis successors were, in due time, to discover the Americans. And it was one of them in particular, doubtless, who was to discover how patriotic we are.
Wouldnt this be the same one, the Colonel asked, who really discovered what you call the connection?
She gave him a look. The connections a true thingthe connections perfectly historic, Your insinuations recoil upon your cynical mind. Dont you understand, she asked, that the history of such people is known, root and branch, at every moment of its course?
Oh, its all right, said Bob Assingham.
Go to the British Museum, his companion continued with spirit.
And what am I to do there?
Theres a whole immense room, or recess, or department, or whatever, filled with books written about his family alone. You can see for yourself.
Have you seen for YOUR self?
She faltered but an instant. CertainlyI went one day with Maggie. We looked him up, so to say. They were most civil. And she fell again into the current her husband had slightly ruffled. The effect was produced, the charm began to work, at all events, in Rome, from that hour of the Princes drive with us. My only course, afterwards, had to be to make the best of it. It was certainly good enough for that, Mrs. Assingham hastened to add, and I didnt in the least see my duty in making the worst. In the same situation, to-day; I wouldnt act differently. I entered into the case as it then appeared to meand as, for the matter of that, it still does. I LIKED it, I thought all sorts of good of it, and nothing can even now, she said with some intensity, make me think anything else.
Nothing can ever make you think anything you dont want to, the Colonel, still in his chair, remarked over his pipe. Youve got a precious power of thinking whatever you do want. You want also, from moment to moment, to think such desperately different things. What happened, he went on, was that you fell violently in love with the Prince yourself, and that as you couldnt get me out of the way you had to take some roundabout course. You couldnt marry him, any more than Charlotte couldthat is not to yourself. But you could to somebody elseit was always the Prince, it was always marriage. You could to your little friend, to whom there were no objections.
Not only there were no objections, but there were reasons, positive onesand all excellent, all charming. She spoke with an absence of all repudiation of his exposure of the spring of her conduct; and this abstention, clearly and effectively conscious, evidently cost her nothing. It IS always the Prince; and it IS always, thank heaven, marriage. And these are the things, God grant, that it will always be. That I could help, a year ago, most assuredly made me happy, and it continues to make me happy.