"I can't say more," this made his companion reply, "than that
something in her face, her voice and her whole manner acted upon
me as nothing in her had ever acted before; and just for the
reason, above all, that I felt her trying her very best--and her
very best, poor duck, is very good--to be quiet and natural. It's
when one sees people who always ARE natural making little pale,
pathetic, blinking efforts for it--then it is that one knows
something's the matter. I can't describe my impression--you would
have had it for yourself. And the only thing that ever CAN be the
matter with Maggie is that. By 'that' I mean her beginning to
doubt. To doubt, for the first time," Mrs. Assingham wound up,
"of her wonderful little judgment of her wonderful little world."
It was impressive, Fanny's vision, and the Colonel, as if himself
agitated by it, took another turn of prowling. "To doubt of
fidelity--to doubt of friendship! Poor duck indeed! It will go
hard with her. But she'll put it all," he concluded, "on
Charlotte."
Mrs. Assingham, still darkly contemplative, denied this with a
headshake. "She won't 'put' it anywhere. She won't do with it
anything anyone else would. She'll take it all herself."
"You mean she'll make it out her own fault?"
"Yes--she'll find means, somehow, to arrive at that."
"Ah then," the Colonel dutifully declared, "she's indeed a little
brick!"
"Oh," his wife returned, "you'll see, in one way or another, to
what tune!" And she spoke, of a sudden, with an approach to
elation--so that, as if immediately feeling his surprise, she
turned round to him. "She'll see me somehow through!"
"See YOU--?"
"Yes, me. I'm the worst. For," said Fanny Assingham, now with a
harder exaltation, "I did it all. I recognise that--I accept it.
She won't cast it up at me--she won't cast up anything. So I
throw myself upon her--she'll bear me up." She spoke almost
volubly--she held him with her sudden sharpness. "She'll carry
the whole weight of us."
There was still, nevertheless, wonder in it. "You mean she won't
mind? I SAY, love--!" And he not unkindly stared. "Then where's
the difficulty?"
"There isn't any!" Fanny declared with the same rich emphasis.
It kept him indeed, as by the loss of the thread, looking at her
longer. "Ah, you mean there isn't any for US!"
She met his look for a minute as if it perhaps a little too much
imputed a selfishness, a concern, at any cost, for their own
surface. Then she might have been deciding that their own surface
was, after all, what they had most to consider. "Not," she said
with dignity, "if we properly keep our heads." She appeared even
to signify that they would begin by keeping them now. This was
what it was to have at last a constituted basis. "Do you remember
what you said to me that night of my first REAL anxiety--after
the Foreign Office party?"
"In the carriage--as we came home?" Yes--he could recall it.
"Leave them to pull through?"
"Precisely. 'Trust their own wit,' you practically said, 'to save
all appearances.' Well, I've trusted it. I HAVE left them to pull
through."