Mrs. Assingham

“ Now I'm at home again, and I mean," said Fanny Assingham, "to stay here. They're beautiful," she declared.
"The Prince and Charlotte?"
"The Prince and Charlotte. THAT'S how they're so remarkable. And the beauty," she explained, "is that they're afraid for them. Afraid, I mean, for the others."
"For Mr. Verver and Maggie?" It did take some following. "Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of themselves."
The Colonel wondered. "Of THEMSELVES? Of Mr. Verver's and
Maggie's selves?"
Mrs. Assingham remained patient as well as lucid. "Yes—of SUCH blindness too. But most of all of their own danger." ”

“ Assingham's face a mild perception of some finer sense—a sense for his wife's situation, and the very situation she was, oddly enough, about to repudiate—that she had fairly caused to grow in him. But it was a flower to breathe upon gently, and this was very much what she finally did. She knew he needed no telling that she had given herself all the afternoon to her friends in Eaton Square, and that her doing so would have been but the prompt result of impressions gathered, in quantities, in brimming baskets, like the purple grapes of the vintage, at Matcham ”

“ He withheld the tribute of attention from passing faces only to let his impulse accumulate. Youth and beauty made him scarcely turn, but the image of Mrs. Assingham made him presently stop a hansom. Her youth, her beauty were things more or less of the past, but to find her at home, as he possibly might, would be "doing" what he still had time for, would put something of a reason into his restlessness and thereby probably soothe it. ”

“ They're not good days; they're neither one thing nor the other.
I've really got nothing, yet I've everything to lose. One doesn't
know what still may happen."
The way she laughed at him was for an instant almost irritating; it came out, for his fancy, from behind the white curtain. It was a sign, that is, of her deep serenity, which worried instead of soothing him. And to be soothed, after all, to be tided over, in his mystic impatience, to be told what he could understand and believe—that was what he had come for. "Marriage then," said Mrs. Assingham, "is what you call the monster? ”

“ That was the furthest point, somehow, to which Charlotte Stant could be relegated.
Mrs. Assingham treated it freely. "Just the same. The person in the world, to my sense, whose looks are most subject to appreciation. It's all in the way she affects you. One admires her if one doesn't happen not to. So, as well, one criticises her."
"Ah, that's not fair!" said the Prince.
"To criticise her? Then there you are! You're answered."
"I'm answered." He took it, humorously, as his lesson—sank his previous self-consciousness, with excellent effect, in grateful docility. ”

“ Assingham’s whole ample, ornamented person irradiated, with this, the truth that had begun, under so much handling, to glow. “Any idiot can do things for her child. She’ll have a motive more original, and we shall see how it will work her. She’ll have to save HIM.”
“To ‘save’ him—?”
“To keep her father from her own knowledge. THAT”—and she seemed to see it, before her, in her husband’s very eyes—“will be work cut out!” With which, as at the highest conceivable climax, she wound up their colloquy. ”

“ Mrs. Assingham continued, "she'll be extraordinary enough—and that's what I'm thinking of. But I'm not indeed so very sure," she added, "of the person to whom Charlotte ought in decency to be most grateful. I mean I'm not sure if that person is even almost the incredible little idealist who has made her his wife."
"I shouldn't think you would be, love," the Colonel with some promptness responded. "Charlotte as the wife of an incredible little idealist—!" His cigar in short once more could alone express it. ”

“ That was what she was learning to do, to fill out as a matter of course her appointed, her expected, her imposed character; and, though there were latent considerations that somewhat interfered with the lesson, she was having to-night an inordinate quantity of practice, none of it so successful as when, quite wittingly, she directed it at Lady Castledean, who was reduced by it at last to an unprecedented state of passivity. The perception of this high result caused Mrs. Assingham fairly to flush with responsive joy; she glittered at her young friend, from moment to moment, quite feverishly ”

“ They had passed together to that apartment, on rising from table, Charlotte and Mrs. Assingham alike indulgent, always, to tobacco, and in fact practising an emulation which, as Fanny said, would, for herself, had the Colonel not issued an interdict based on the fear of her stealing his cigars, have stopped only at the short pipe. Here cards had with inevitable promptness asserted their rule, the game forming itself, as had often happened before, of Mr. Verver with Mrs. Assingham for partner and of the Prince with Mrs. Verver. ”

“ That's the way it has worked," Mrs. Assingham explained—"and I admit it to have been as 'rum' a way as possible. But it has been working from a 'rum' start. From the moment the dear man married to ease his daughter off and it then happened by an extraordinary perversity that the very opposite effect was produced—!" ”

“ Her father, she knew, was a high adept, one of the greatest—she had been ever, in her stupidity, his small, his sole despair; Amerigo excelled easily, as he understood and practised every art that could beguile large leisure; Mrs. Assingham and Charlotte, moreover, were accounted as “good” as members of a sex incapable of the nobler consistency could be. Therefore, evidently, they were not, all so up to their usual form, merely passing it off, whether for her or for themselves ”

“ She looked at him at first only for answer, and would have appeared to take it with meekness had she not perhaps appeared a little more to take it with gaiety. "Thank you very much," she simply said; but at that moment their friend was with them again. It was undeniable that, as she came in, Mrs. Assingham looked, with a certain smiling sharpness, from one of them to the other; the perception of which was perhaps what led Charlotte, for reassurance, to pass the question on. "The Prince hopes so much I shall still marry some good person." ”

“ 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 the 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. ”

“ Mrs. Assingham, rather wearily housed again, ascended to the first floor, there to sink overburdened, on the landing outside the drawing-room, into a great gilded Venetian chair—of which at first however she but made, with her brooding face, a sort of throne of meditation. She would thus have recalled a little, with her so free orientalism of type, the immemorially speechless Sphinx about at last to become articulate. The Colonel, not unlike, on his side, some old pilgrim of the desert camping at the foot of that monument, went by way of reconnoissance into the drawing-room. ”

“ You've taken part in the sack of cities, and I'm sure you've done dreadful things yourself. But I don't 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 girl's behalf, as the ripe result of her late wanderings and musings. She had groped through their talk for the thread and now had got it. "She wants to be magnificent." ”

“ The Prince had by half-past ten—as also by definite appointment—called in Cadogan Place for Mrs. Assingham's 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. Assingham's drawing-room. ”

“ Assingham might in a manner mitigate the intensity of her consciousness of Charlotte. It was as if the two would balance, one against the other; as if it came round again in that fashion to her idea of the equilibrium. It would be like putting this friend into her scale to make weight—into the scale with her father and herself. Amerigo and Charlotte would be in the other; therefore it would take the three of them to keep that one straight. ”

“ Mrs. Assingham, on quick deliberation, dressed, though not perhaps with full lucidity, and by seven o'clock was in Portland Place, where her friend, "upstairs" and described to her on her arrival as herself engaged in dressing, instantly received her. ”

“ No," said Charlotte; "the only thing I can imagine myself minding is what you yourself, if you don't look out, may let HER see." To which she added: "You may let her see, you know, that you're afraid."
"I'm only afraid of you, a little, at moments," he presently returned. "But I shan't let Fanny see that."
It was clear, however, that neither the limits nor the extent of Mrs. Assingham's vision were now a real concern to her, and she gave expression to this as she had not even yet done. "What in the world can she do against us? ”

“ Assingham's almost imprudently interested expression of face, positively acquired such a price for her that she may for ourselves, while the intensity lasted, rather resemble a person holding out a small mirror at arm's length and consulting it with a special turn of the head. ”

“ It won't do!"
"Not," said Charlotte, "if you're going in for 'omens.' Should you like me stay away?"
"Dear no—we'll manage. We'll make the round number—we'll have in some old woman. They must keep them there for that, don't they?" Mrs. Assingham's return had at last indicated for him his departure; he had possessed himself again of his hat and approached her to take leave. But he had another word for Charlotte. "I dine to-night with Mr. Verver. Have you any message?"
The girl seemed to wonder a little. "For Mr. Verver?"
"For Maggie—about her seeing you early. ”

“ It made her companion in truth slightly gape. "An incredible little idealist—Charlotte herself?"
"And she was sincere," his wife simply proceeded—"she was unmistakeably sincere. The question is only how much is left of it."
"And that—I see—happens to be another of the questions you can't ask her. You have to do it all," said Bob Assingham, "as if you were playing some game with its rules drawn up—though who's to come down on you if you break them I don't quite see. ”

“ Her face however so met the question as if it were but a flicker of the old tone that their trouble had now become too real for—her charged eyes so betrayed the condition of her nerves that he stepped back alertly enough to firmer ground. He had spoken before in this light of a plain man's vision, but he must be something more than a plain man now. "Hasn't she then, Charlotte, always her husband—?"
"To complain to? She'd rather die."
"Oh!"—and Bob Assingham's face, at the vision of such extremities, lengthened for very docility. "Hasn't she the Prince then?" ”

“ What had just happened—it pieced itself together for Charlotte—was that the Assingham pair, drifting like everyone else, had had somewhere in the gallery, in the rooms, an accidental concussion; had it after the Colonel, over his balustrade, had observed, in the favouring high light, her public junction with the Prince. ”

“ Assingham had a little to explain her original manner, and she came to this before they dropped the question. "My first impulse is always to behave about everything as if I feared complications. But I don't fear them—I really like them. They're quite my element."
He deferred for her to this account of herself. "But still," he said, "if we're not in the presence of a complication."
She debated. "A handsome clever odd girl staying with one is always a complication."
The young man weighed it almost as if the question were new to him. "And will she stay very long?" ”

“ Conspicuous beyond any wish they could entertain was what, poor wonderful man, he couldn't help making it; and when she raised her eyes again, on the ascent, to Bob Assingham, still aloft in his gallery and still looking down at her, she was aware that, in spite of hovering and warning inward voices, she even enjoyed the testimony rendered by his lonely vigil to the lustre she reflected. ”

“ Fanny Assingham met it as she could. “You’ve been only too perfect. You’ve thought only too much.”
But the Princess had already caught at the words. “Yes—I’ve thought only too much!” Yet she appeared to continue, for the minute, full of that fault. She had it in fact, by this prompted thought, all before her. “Of him, dear man, of HIM—!”
Her friend, able to take in thus directly her vision of her father, watched her with a new suspense. THAT way might safety lie—it was like a wider chink of light. “He believed—with a beauty!—in Charlotte.” ”

“ 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 ”