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.