Mrs. Assingham and the Colonel, quitting Fawns before the end of
September, had come back later on; and now, a couple of weeks
after, they were again interrupting their stay, but this time
with the question of their return left to depend, on matters that
were rather hinted at than importunately named. The Lutches and
Mrs. Rance had also, by the action of Charlotte Stant's arrival,
ceased to linger, though with hopes and theories, as to some
promptitude of renewal, of which the lively expression, awakening
the echoes of the great stone-paved, oak-panelled, galleried hall
that was not the least interesting feature of the place, seemed
still a property of the air. It was on this admirable spot that,
before her October afternoon had waned, Fanny Assingham spent
with her easy host a few moments which led to her announcing her
own and her husband's final secession, at the same time as they
tempted her to point the moral of all vain reverberations. The
double door of the house stood open to an effect of hazy autumn
sunshine, a wonderful, windless, waiting, golden hour, under the
influence of which Adam Verver met his genial friend as she came
to drop into the post-box with her own hand a thick sheaf of
letters. They presently thereafter left the house together and
drew out half-an-hour on the terrace in a manner they were to
revert to in thought, later on, as that of persons who really had
been taking leave of each other at a parting of the ways. He
traced his impression, on coming to consider, back to a mere
three words she had begun by using about Charlotte Stant. She
simply "cleared them out"--those had been the three words, thrown
off in reference to the general golden peace that the Kentish
October had gradually ushered in, the "halcyon" days the full
beauty of which had appeared to shine out for them after
Charlotte's arrival. For it was during these days that Mrs. Rance
and the Miss Lutches had been observed to be gathering themselves
for departure, and it was with that difference made that the
sense of the whole situation showed most fair--the sense of how
right they had been to engage for so ample a residence, and of
all the pleasure so fruity an autumn there could hold in its lap.
This was what had occurred, that their lesson had been learned;
and what Mrs. Assingham had dwelt upon was that without Charlotte
it would have been learned but half. It would certainly not have
been taught by Mrs. Rance and the Miss Lutches if these ladies
had remained with them as long as at one time seemed probable.
Charlotte's light intervention had thus become a cause, operating
covertly but none the less actively, and Fanny Assingham's
speech, which she had followed up a little, echoed within him,
fairly to startle him, as the indication of something
irresistible. He could see now how this superior force had
worked, and he fairly liked to recover the sight--little harm as
he dreamed of doing, little ill as he dreamed of wishing, the
three ladies, whom he had after all entertained for a stiffish
series of days. She had been so vague and quiet about it,
wonderful Charlotte, that he hadn't known what was happening--
happening, that is, as a result of her influence. "Their fires,
as they felt her, turned to smoke," Mrs. Assingham remarked;
which he was to reflect on indeed even while they strolled. He
had retained, since his long talk with Maggie--the talk that had
settled the matter of his own direct invitation to her friend--an
odd little taste, as he would have described it, for hearing
things said about this young woman, hearing, so to speak, what
COULD be said about her: almost as it her portrait, by some
eminent hand, were going on, so that he watched it grow under the
multiplication of touches. Mrs. Assingham, it struck him, applied
two or three of the finest in their discussion of their young
friend--so different a figure now from that early playmate of
Maggie's as to whom he could almost recall from of old the
definite occasions of his having paternally lumped the two
children together in the recommendation that they shouldn't make
too much noise nor eat too much jam. His companion professed that
in the light of Charlotte's prompt influence she had not been a
stranger to a pang of pity for their recent visitors. "I felt in
fact, privately, so sorry for them, that I kept my impression to
myself while they were here--wishing not to put the rest of you
on the scent; neither Maggie, nor the Prince, nor yourself, nor
even Charlotte HERself, if you didn't happen to notice. Since you
didn't, apparently, I perhaps now strike you as extravagant. But
I'm not--I followed it all. One SAW the consciousness I speak of
come over the poor things, very much as I suppose people at the
court of the Borgias may have watched each other begin to look
queer after having had the honour of taking wine with the heads
of the family. My comparison's only a little awkward, for I don't
in the least mean that Charlotte was consciously dropping poison
into their cup. She was just herself their poison, in the sense
of mortally disagreeing with them--but she didn't know it."
"Ah, she didn't know it?" Mr. Verver had asked with interest.
"Well, I THINK she didn't"--Mrs. Assingham had to admit that she
hadn't pressingly sounded her. "I don't pretend to be sure, in
every connection, of what Charlotte knows. She doesn't,
certainly, like to make people suffer--not, in general, as is the
case with so many of us, even other women: she likes much rather
to put them at their ease with her. She likes, that is--as all
pleasant people do--to be liked."
"Ah, she likes to be liked?" her companion had gone on.
"She did, at the same time, no doubt, want to help us--to put us
at our ease. That is she wanted to put you--and to put Maggie
about you. So far as that went she had a plan. But it was only
AFTER--it was not before, I really believe--that she saw how
effectively she could work."
Again, as Mr. Verver felt, he must have taken it up. "Ah, she
wanted to help us?--wanted to help ME?"
"Why," Mrs. Assingham asked after an instant, "should it surprise
you?"