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.
Then why arent you quiet?
I AM quiet, said Fanny Assingham.
He looked at her, with his colourless candour, still in his place; she moved about again, a little, emphasising by her unrest her declaration of her tranquillity. He was as silent, at first, as if he had taken her answer, but he was not to keep it long. What do you make of it that, by your own show, Charlotte couldnt tell her all? What do you make of it that the Prince didnt tell her anything? Say one understands that there are things she cant be toldsince, as you put it, she is so easily scared and shocked. He produced these objections slowly, giving her time, by his pauses, to stop roaming and come back to him. But she was roaming still when he concluded his inquiry. If there hadnt been anything there shouldnt have been between the pair before Charlotte boltedin order, precisely, as you say, that there SHOULDNT be: why in the world was what there HAD been too bad to be spoken of?
Mrs. Assingham, after this question, continued still to circulatenot directly meeting it even when at last she stopped.
I thought you wanted me to be quiet.
So I doand Im trying to make you so much so that you wont worry more. Cant you be quiet on THAT?
She thought a momentthen seemed to try. To relate that she had to bolt for the reasons we speak of, even though the bolting had done for her what she wishedTHAT I can perfectly feel Charlottes not wanting to do.
Ah then, if it HAS done for her what she wished-! But the Colonels conclusion hung by the if which his wife didnt take up. So it hung but the longer when he presently spoke again. All one wonders, in that case, is why then she has come back to him.
Say she hasnt come back to him. Not really to HIM.
Ill say anything you like. But that wont do me the same good as your saying it.
Nothing, my dear, will do you good, Mrs. Assingham returned. You dont care for anything in itself; you care for nothing but to be grossly amused because I dont keep washing my hands!
I thought your whole argument was that everything is so right that this is precisely what you do.
But his wife, as it was a point she had often made, could go on as she had gone on before. Youre perfectly indifferent, really; youre perfectly immoral. Youve taken part in the sack of cities, and Im sure youve done dreadful things yourself. But I DONT trouble my head, if you like. So now there! she laughed.
He accepted her laugh, but he kept his way. Well, I back poor Charlotte.
Back her?
To know what she wants.
Ah then, so do I. She does know what she wants. And Mrs. Assingham produced this quantity, at last, on the girls behalf, as the ripe result of her late wanderings and musings. She had groped through their talk, for the thread, and now she had got it. She wants to be magnificent.
She is, said the Colonel almost cynically.
She wantshis wife now had it fast to be thoroughly superior, and shes capable of that.
Of wanting to?
Of carrying out her idea.
And what IS her idea?
To see Maggie through.
Bob Assingham wondered. Through what?
Through everything. She KNOWS the Prince.
And Maggie doesnt. No, dear thingMrs. Assingham had to recognise itshe doesnt.
So that Charlotte has come out to give her lessons?
She continued, Fanny Assingham, to work out her thought. She has done this great thing for him. That is, a year ago, she practically did it. She practically, at any rate, helped him to do it himselfand helped me to help him. She kept off, she stayed away, she left him free; and what, moreover, were her silences to Maggie but a direct aid to him? If she had spoken in Florence; if she had told her own poor story; if she had, come back at any timetill within a few weeks ago; if she hadnt gone to New York and hadnt held out there: if she hadnt done these things all that has happened since would certainly have been different. Therefore shes in a position to be consistent now. She knows the Prince, Mrs. Assingham repeated. It involved even again her former recognition. And Maggie, dear thing, doesnt.
She was high, she was lucid, she was almost inspired; and it was but the deeper drop therefore to her husbands flat common sense. In other words Maggie is, by her ignorance, in danger? Then if shes in danger, there IS danger.
There WONT bewith Charlottes understanding of it. Thats where she has had her conception of being able to be heroic, of being able in fact to be sublime. She is, she will bethe good lady by this time glowed. So she sees itto become, for her best friend, an element of POSITIVE safety.
Bob Assingham looked at it hard. Which of them do you call her best friend?
She gave a toss of impatience. Ill leave you to discover! But the grand truth thus made out she had now completely adopted. Its for US, therefore, to be hers.
Hers?
You and I. Its for us to be Charlottes. Its for us, on our side, to see HER through.
Through her sublimity?
Through her noble, lonely life. Onlythats essentialit mustnt be lonely. It will be all right if she marries.
So were to marry her?
Were to marry her. It will be, Mrs. Assingham continued, the great thing I can do. She made it out more and more. It will make up.
Make up for what? As she said nothing, however, his desire for lucidity renewed itself. If everythings so all right what is there to make up for?
Why, if I did do either of them, by any chance, a wrong. If I made a mistake.
Youll make up for it by making another? And then as she again took her time: I thought your whole point is just that youre sure.
One can never be ideally sure of anything. There are always possibilities.
Then, if we can but strike so wild, why keep meddling?
It made her again look at him. Where would you have been, my dear, if I hadnt meddled with YOU?
Ah, that wasnt meddlingI was your own. I was your own, said the Colonel, from the moment I didnt object.
Well, these people wont object. They are my own tooin the sense that Im awfully fond of them. Also in the sense, she continued, that I think theyre not so very much less fond of me. Our relation, all round, existsits a reality, and a very good one; were mixed up, so to speak, and its too late to change it. We must live IN it and with it. Therefore to see that Charlotte gets a good husband as soon as possiblethat, as I say, will be one of my ways of living. It will cover, she said with conviction, all the ground. And then as his own conviction appeared to continue as little to match: The ground, I mean, of any nervousness I may ever feel. It will be in fact my duty and I shant rest till my dutys performed. She had arrived by this time at something like exaltation. I shall give, for the next year or two if necessary, my life to it. I shall have done in that case what I can.
He took it at last as it came. You hold theres no limit to what you can?
I dont say theres no limit, or anything of the sort. I say there are good chancesenough of them for hope. Why shouldnt there be when a girl is, after all, all that she is?
By after all you mean after shes in love with somebody else?
The Colonel put his question with a quietude doubtless designed to be fatal; but it scarcely pulled her up. Shes not too much in love not herself to want to marry. She would now particularly like to.
Has she told you so?
Not yet. Its too soon. But she will. Meanwhile, however, I dont require the information. Her marrying will prove the truth.
And what truth?
The truth of everything I say.
Prove it to whom?
Well, to myself, to begin with. That will be enough for meto work for her. What it will prove, Mrs. Assingham presently went on, will be that shes cured. That she accepts the situation.
He paid this the tribute of a long pull at his pipe. The situation of doing the one thing she can that will really seem to cover her tracks?
His wife looked at him, the good dry man, as if now at last he was merely vulgar. The one thing she can do that will really make new tracks altogether. The thing that, before any other, will be wise and right. The thing that will best give her her chance to be magnificent.
He slowly emitted his smoke. And best give you, by the same token, yours to be magnificent with her?
I shall be as magnificent, at least, as I can.
Bob Assingham got up. And you call ME immoral?
She hesitated. Ill call you stupid if you prefer. But stupidity pushed to a certain point IS, you know, immorality. Just so what is morality but high intelligence? This he was unable to tell her; which left her more definitely to conclude. Besides, its all, at the worst, great fun.
Oh, if you simply put it at THAT!
His implication was that in this case they had a common ground; yet even thus he couldnt catch her by it. Oh, I dont mean, she said from the threshold, the fun that you mean. Good-night. In answer to which, as he turned out the electric light, he gave an odd, short groan, almost a grunt. He HAD apparently meant some particular kind.
V
Well, now I must tell you, for I want to be absolutely honest. So Charlotte spoke, a little ominously, after they had got into the Park. I dont want to pretend, and I cant pretend a moment longer. You may think of me what you will, but I dont care. I knew I shouldnt and I find now how little. I came back for this. Not really for anything else. For this, she repeated as, under the influence of her tone, the Prince had already come to a pause.
For this? He spoke as if the particular thing she indicated were vague to himor were, rather, a quantity that couldnt, at the most, be much.
It would be as much, however, as she should be able to make it. To have one hour alone with you. It had rained heavily in the night, and though the pavements were now dry, thanks to a cleansing breeze, the August morning, with its hovering, thick-drifting clouds and freshened air, was cool and grey. The multitudinous green of the Park had been deepened, and a wholesome smell of irrigation, purging the place of dust and of odours less acceptable, rose from the earth. Charlotte had looked about her, with expression, from the first of their coming in, quite as if for a deep greeting, for general recognition: the day was, even in the heart of London, of a rich, low-browed, weatherwashed English type. It was as if it had been waiting for her, as if she knew it, placed it, loved it, as if it were in fact a part of what she had come back for. So far as this was the case the impression of course could only be lost on a mere vague Italian; it was one of those for which you had to be, blessedly, an Americanas indeed you had to be, blessedly, an American for all sorts of things: so long as you hadnt, blessedly or not, to remain in America. The Prince had, by half-past tenas also by definite appointmentcalled in Cadogan Place for Mrs. Assinghams visitor, and then, after brief delay, the two had walked together up Sloane Street and got straight into the Park from Knightsbridge. The understanding to this end had taken its place, after a couple of days, as inevitably consequent on the appeal made by the girl during those first moments in Mrs. Assinghams drawing-room. It was an appeal the couple of days had done nothing to invalidateeverything, much rather, to place in a light, and as to which, obviously, it wouldnt have fitted that anyone should raise an objection. Who was there, for that matter, to raise one, from the moment Mrs. Assingham, informed and apparently not disapproving, didnt intervene? This the young man had asked himselfwith a very sufficient sense of what would have made him ridiculous. He wasnt going to beginthat at least was certainby showing a fear. Even had fear at first been sharp in him, moreover, it would already, not a little, have dropped; so happy, all round, so propitious, he quite might have called it, had been the effect of this rapid interval.