"For me and Charlotte. Do you know that if we should ship, it
would serve you quite right?" With which he smiled--oh he smiled!
"And if you say much more we WILL ship."
Ah, then it was that the cup of her conviction, full to the brim,
overflowed at a touch! THERE was his idea, the clearness of which
for an instant almost dazzled her. It was a blur of light, in the
midst of which she saw Charlotte like some object marked, by
contrast, in blackness, saw her waver in the field of vision, saw
her removed, transported, doomed. And he had named Charlotte,
named her again, and she had MADE him--which was all she had
needed more: it was as if she had held a blank letter to the fire
and the writing had come out still larger than she hoped. The
recognition of it took her some seconds, but she might when she
spoke have been folding up these precious lines and restoring
them to her pocket. "Well, I shall be as much as ever then the
cause of what you do. I haven't the least doubt of your being up
to that if you should think I might get anything out of it; even
the little pleasure," she laughed, "of having said, as you call
it, 'more.' Let my enjoyment of this therefore, at any price,
continue to represent for you what _I_ call sacrificing you."
She had drawn a long breath; she had made him do it ALL for her,
and had lighted the way to it without his naming her husband.
That silence had been as distinct as the sharp, the inevitable
sound, and something now, in him, followed it up, a sudden air as
of confessing at last fully to where she was and of begging the
particular question. "Don't you think then I can take care of
myself?"
"Ah, it's exactly what I've gone upon. If it wasn't for that--!"
But she broke off, and they remained only another moment face to
face. "I'll let you know, my dear, the day _I_ feel you've begun
to sacrifice me."
"'Begun'?" she extravagantly echoed.
"Well, it will be, for me, the day you've ceased to believe in
me."
With which, his glasses still fixed on her, his hands in his
pockets, his hat pushed back, his legs a little apart, he seemed
to plant or to square himself for a kind of assurance it had
occurred to him he might as well treat her to, in default of
other things, before they changed their subject. It had the
effect, for her, of a reminder--a reminder of all he was, of all
he had done, of all, above and beyond his being her perfect
little father, she might take him as representing, take him as
having, quite eminently, in the eyes of two hemispheres, been
capable of, and as therefore wishing, not--was it?--
illegitimately, to call her attention to. The "successful,"
beneficent person, the beautiful, bountiful, original,
dauntlessly wilful great citizen, the consummate collector and
infallible high authority he had been and still was--these things
struck her, on the spot, as making up for him, in a wonderful
way, a character she must take into account in dealing with him
either for pity or for envy. He positively, under the impression,
seemed to loom larger than life for her, so that she saw him
during these moments in a light of recognition which had had its
brightness for her at many an hour of the past, but which had
never been so intense and so almost admonitory. His very
quietness was part of it now, as always part of everything, of
his success, his originality, his modesty, his exquisite public
perversity, his inscrutable, incalculable energy; and this
quality perhaps it might be--all the more too as the result, for
the present occasion, of an admirable, traceable effort--that
placed him in her eyes as no precious a work of art probably had
ever been placed in his own. There was a long moment, absolutely,
during which her impression rose and rose, even as that of the
typical charmed gazer, in the still museum, before the named and
dated object, the pride of the catalogue, that time has polished
and consecrated. Extraordinary, in particular, was the number of
the different ways in which he thus affected her as showing. He
was strong--that was the great thing. He was sure--sure for
himself, always, whatever his idea: the expression of that in him
had somehow never appeared more identical with his proved taste
for the rare and the true. But what stood out beyond everything
was that he was always, marvellously, young--which couldn't but
crown, at this juncture, his whole appeal to her imagination.
Before she knew it she was lifted aloft by the consciousness that
he was simply a great and deep and high little man, and that to
love him with tenderness was not to be distinguished, a whit,
from loving him with pride. It came to her, all strangely, as a
sudden, an immense relief. The sense that he wasn't a failure,
and could never be, purged their predicament of every meanness--
made it as if they had really emerged, in their transmuted union,
to smile almost without pain. It was like a new confidence, and
after another instant she knew even still better why. Wasn't it
because now, also, on his side, he was thinking of her as his
daughter, was TRYING her, during these mute seconds, as the child
of his blood? Oh then, if she wasn't with her little conscious
passion, the child of any weakness, what was she but strong
enough too? It swelled in her, fairly; it raised her higher,
higher: she wasn't in that case a failure either--hadn't been,
but the contrary; his strength was her strength, her pride was
his, and they were decent and competent together. This was all in
the answer she finally made him.
"I believe in you more than any one."
"Than any one at all?"
She hesitated, for all it might mean; but there was--oh a
thousand times!--no doubt of it. "Than any one at all." She kept
nothing of it back now, met his eyes over it, let him have the
whole of it; after which she went on: "And that's the way, I
think, you believe in me."
He looked at her a minute longer, but his tone at last was right.
"About the way--yes."
"Well then--?" She spoke as for the end and for other matters--
for anything, everything, else there might be. They would never
return to it.
"Well then--!" His hands came out, and while her own took them he
drew her to his breast and held her. He held her hard and kept
her long, and she let herself go; but it was an embrace that,
august and almost stern, produced, for all its intimacy, no
revulsion and broke into no inconsequence of tears.