"Well, about your having it and about what you consider that it
represents."
"Oh, I don't know that I shall speak--if he doesn't. But his
keeping away from me because of that--what will that be but to
speak? He can't say or do more. It won't be for me to speak,"
Maggie added in a different tone, one of the tones that had
already so penetrated her guest. "It will be for me to listen."
Mrs. Assingham turned it over. "Then it all depends on that
object that you regard, for your reasons, as evidence?"
"I think I may say that _I_ depend on it. I can't," said Maggie,
"treat it as nothing now."
Mrs. Assingham, at this, went closer to the cup on the chimney--
quite liking to feel that she did so, moreover, without going
closer to her companion's vision. She looked at the precious
thing--if precious it was--found herself in fact eyeing it as if,
by her dim solicitation, to draw its secret from it rather than
suffer the imposition of Maggie's knowledge. It was brave and
rich and firm, with its bold deep hollow; and, without this queer
torment about it, would, thanks to her love of plenty of yellow,
figure to her as an enviable ornament, a possession really
desirable. She didn't touch it, but if after a minute she turned
away from it the reason was, rather oddly and suddenly, in her
fear of doing so. "Then it all depends on the bowl? I mean your
future does? For that's what it comes to, I judge."
"What it comes to," Maggie presently returned, "is what that
thing has put me, so almost miraculously, in the way of learning:
how far they had originally gone together. If there was so much
between them before, there can't--with all the other
appearances--not be a great deal more now." And she went on and
on; she steadily made her points. "If such things were already
then between them they make all the difference for possible doubt
of what may have been between them since. If there had been
nothing before there might be explanations. But it makes to-day
too much to explain. I mean to explain away," she said.
Fanny Assingham was there to explain away--of this she was duly
conscious; for that at least had been true up to now. In the
light, however, of Maggie's demonstration the quantity, even
without her taking as yet a more exact measure, might well seem
larger than ever. Besides which, with or without exactness, the
effect of each successive minute in the place was to put her more
in presence of what Maggie herself saw. Maggie herself saw the
truth, and that was really, while they remained there together,
enough for Mrs. Assingham's relation to it. There was a force in
the Princess's mere manner about it that made the detail of what
she knew a matter of minor importance. Fanny had in fact
something like a momentary shame over her own need of asking for
this detail. "I don't pretend to repudiate," she said after a
little, "my own impressions of the different times I suppose you
speak of; any more," she added, "than I can forget what
difficulties and, as it constantly seemed to me, what dangers,
every course of action--whatever I should decide upon--made for
me. I tried, I tried hard, to act for the best. And, you know,"
she next pursued, while, at the sound of her own statement, a
slow courage and even a faint warmth of conviction came back to
her--"and, you know, I believe it's what I shall turn out to have
done."
This produced a minute during which their interchange, though
quickened and deepened, was that of silence only, and the long,
charged look; all of which found virtual consecration when Maggie
at last spoke. "I'm sure you tried to act for the best."
It kept Fanny Assingham again a minute in silence. "I never
thought, dearest, you weren't an angel."
Not, however, that this alone was much help! "It was up to the
very eve, you see," the Princess went on--"up to within two or
three days of our marriage. That, THAT, you know--!" And she
broke down for strangely smiling.
"Yes, as I say, it was while she was with me. But I didn't know
it. That is," said Fanny Assingham, "I didn't know of anything in
particular." It sounded weak--that she felt; but she had really
her point to make. "What I mean is that I don't know, for
knowledge, now, anything I didn't then. That's how I am." She
still, however, floundered. "I mean it's how I WAS."
"But don't they, how you were and how you are," Maggie asked,
"come practically to the same thing?" The elder woman's words had
struck her own ear as in the tone, now mistimed, of their recent,
but all too factitious understanding, arrived at in hours when,
as there was nothing susceptible of proof, there was nothing
definitely to disprove. The situation had changed by--well, by
whatever there was, by the outbreak of the definite; and this
could keep Maggie at least firm. She was firm enough as she
pursued. "It was ON the whole thing that Amerigo married me."
With which her eyes had their turn again at her damnatory piece.
"And it was on that--it was on that!" But they came back to her
visitor. "And it was on it all that father married HER."
Her visitor took it as might be. "They both married--ah, that you
must believe!--with the highest intentions."
"Father did certainly!" And then, at the renewal of this
consciousness, it all rolled over her. "Ah, to thrust such things
on us, to do them here between us and with us, day after day, and
in return, in return--! To do it to HIM--to him, to him!"
Fanny hesitated. "You mean it's for him you most suffer?" And
then as the Princess, after a look, but turned away, moving about
the room--which made the question somehow seem a blunder--"I
ask," she continued, "because I think everything, everything we
now speak of, may be for him, really may be MADE for him, quite
as if it hadn't been."
But Maggie had, the next moment faced about as if without hearing
her. "Father did it for ME--did it all and only for me."
Mrs. Assingham, with a certain promptness, threw up her head; but
she faltered again before she spoke. "Well--!"
It was only an intended word, but Maggie showed after an instant
that it had reached her. "Do you mean that that's the reason,
that that's A reason--?"
Fanny at first, however, feeling the response in this, didn't say
all she meant; she said for the moment something else instead.
"He did it for you--largely at least for you. And it was for you
that I did, in my smaller, interested way--well, what I could do.
For I could do something," she continued; "I thought I saw your
interest as he himself saw it. And I thought I saw Charlotte's. I
believed in her."
"And _I_ believed in her," said Maggie.
Mrs. Assingham waited again; but she presently pushed on. "She
believed then in herself."
"Ah?" Maggie murmured.
Something exquisite, faintly eager, in the prompt simplicity of
it, supported her friend further. "And the Prince believed. His
belief was real. Just as he believed in himself."
Maggie spent a minute in taking it from her. "He believed in
himself?"
"Just as I too believed in him. For I absolutely did, Maggie."
To which Fanny then added: "And I believe in him yet. I mean,"
she subjoined--"well, I mean I DO."
Maggie again took it from her; after which she was again,
restlessly, set afloat. Then when this had come to an end: "And
do you believe in Charlotte yet?"
Mrs. Assingham had a demur that she felt she could now afford.
"We'll talk of Charlotte some other day. They both, at any rate,
thought themselves safe at the time."
"Then why did they keep from me everything I might have known?"
Her friend bent upon her the mildest eyes. "Why did I myself keep
it from you?"
"Oh, you weren't, for honour, obliged."
"Dearest Maggie," the poor woman broke out on this, "you ARE
divine!"
"They pretended to love me," the Princess went on. "And they
pretended to love HIM."
"And pray what was there that I didn't pretend?"
"Not, at any rate, to care for me as you cared for Amerigo and
for Charlotte. They were much more interesting--it was perfectly
natural. How couldn't you like Amerigo?" Maggie continued.
Mrs. Assingham gave it up. "How couldn't I, how couldn't I?"
Then, with a fine freedom, she went all her way. "How CAN'T I,
how can't I?"
It fixed afresh Maggie's wide eyes on her. "I see--I see. Well,
it's beautiful for you to be able to. And of course," she added,
"you wanted to help Charlotte."
"Yes"--Fanny considered it--"I wanted to help Charlotte. But I
wanted also, you see, to help you--by not digging up a past that
I believed, with so much on top of it, solidly buried. I wanted,
as I still want," she richly declared, "to help every one."
It set Maggie once more in movement--movement which, however,
spent itself again with a quick emphasis. "Then it's a good deal
my fault--if everything really began so well?"
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."
"Yes, and it was I who had made him believe. I didn't mean to, at
the time, so much; for I had no idea then of what was coming. But
I did it, I did it!" the Princess declared.
"With a beauty--ah, with a beauty, you too!" Mrs. Assingham
insisted.
Maggie, however, was seeing for herself--it was another matter,
"The thing was that he made her think it would be so possible."