"I'll do anything you like," she said to her husband on one of
the last days of the month, "if our being here, this way at this
time, seems to you too absurd, or too uncomfortable, or too
impossible. We'll either take leave of them now, without
waiting--or we'll come back in time, three days before they
start. I'll go abroad with you, if you but say the word; to
Switzerland, the Tyrol, the Italian Alps, to whichever of your
old high places you would like most to see again--those beautiful
ones that used to do you good after Rome and that you so often
told me about."
Where they were, in the conditions that prompted this offer, and
where it might indeed appear ridiculous that, with the stale
London September close at hand, they should content themselves
with remaining, was where the desert of Portland Place looked
blank as it had never looked, and where a drowsy cabman, scanning
the horizon for a fare, could sink to oblivion of the risks of
immobility. But Amerigo was of the odd opinion, day after day,
that their situation couldn't be bettered; and he even went at no
moment through the form of replying that, should their ordeal
strike her as exceeding their patience, any step they might take
would be for her own relief. This was, no doubt, partly because
he stood out so wonderfully, to the end, against admitting, by a
weak word at least, that any element of their existence WAS, or
ever had been, an ordeal; no trap of circumstance, no lapse of
"form," no accident of irritation, had landed him in that
inconsequence. His wife might verily have suggested that he was
consequent--consequent with the admirable appearance he had from
the first so undertaken, and so continued, to present--rather too
rigidly at HER expense; only, as it happened, she was not the
little person to do anything of the sort, and the strange tacit
compact actually in operation between them might have been
founded on an intelligent comparison, a definite collation
positively, of the kinds of patience proper to each. She was
seeing him through--he had engaged to come out at the right end
if she WOULD see him: this understanding, tacitly renewed from
week to week, had fairly received, with the procession of the
weeks, the consecration of time; but it scarce needed to be
insisted on that she was seeing him on HIS terms, not all on
hers, or that, in other words, she must allow him his unexplained
and uncharted, his one practicably workable way. If that way, by
one of the intimate felicities the liability to which was so far
from having even yet completely fallen from him, happened
handsomely to show him as more bored than boring (with advantages
of his own freely to surrender, but none to be persuadedly
indebted to others for,) what did such a false face of the matter
represent but the fact itself that she was pledged? If she had
questioned or challenged or interfered--if she had reserved
herself that right--she wouldn't have been pledged; whereas there
were still, and evidently would be yet a while, long, tense
stretches during which their case might have been hanging, for
every eye, on her possible, her impossible defection. She must
keep it up to the last, mustn't absent herself for three minutes
from her post: only on those lines, assuredly, would she show
herself as with him and not against him.
It was extraordinary how scant a series of signs she had invited
him to make of being, of truly having been at any time, "with"
his wife: that reflection she was not exempt from as they now, in
their suspense, supremely waited--a reflection under the brush of
which she recognised her having had, in respect to him as well,
to "do all," to go the whole way over, to move, indefatigably,
while he stood as fixed in his place as some statue of one of his
forefathers. The meaning of it would seem to be, she reasoned in
sequestered hours, that he HAD a place, and that this was an
attribute somehow indefeasible, unquenchable, which laid upon
others--from the moment they definitely wanted anything of him--
the necessity of taking more of the steps that he could, of
circling round him, of remembering for his benefit the famous
relation of the mountain to Mahomet. It was strange, if one had
gone into it, but such a place as Amerigo's was like something
made for him beforehand by innumerable facts, facts largely of
the sort known as historical, made by ancestors, examples,
traditions, habits; while Maggie's own had come to show simply as
that improvised "post"--a post of the kind spoken of as
advanced--with which she was to have found herself connected in
the fashion of a settler or a trader in a new country; in the
likeness even of some Indian squaw with a papoose on her back and
barbarous bead-work to sell. Maggie's own, in short, would have
been sought in vain in the most rudimentary map of the social
relations as such. The only geography marking it would be
doubtless that of the fundamental passions. The "end" that the
Prince was at all events holding out for was represented to
expectation by his father-in-law's announced departure for
America with Mrs. Verver; just as that prospective event had
originally figured as advising, for discretion, the flight of the
younger couple, to say nothing of the withdrawal of whatever
other importunate company, before the great upheaval of Fawns.
This residence was to be peopled for a month by porters, packers
and hammerers, at whose operations it had become peculiarly
public--public that is for Portland Place--that Charlotte was to
preside in force; operations the quite awful appointed scale and
style of which had at no moment loomed so large to Maggie's mind
as one day when the dear Assinghams swam back into her ken
besprinkled with sawdust and looking as pale as if they had seen
Samson pull down the temple. They had seen at least what she was
not seeing, rich dim things under the impression of which they
had retired; she having eyes at present but for the clock by
which she timed her husband, or for the glass--the image perhaps
would be truer--in which he was reflected to her as HE timed the
pair in the country. The accession of their friends from Cadogan
Place contributed to all their intermissions, at any rate, a
certain effect of resonance; an effect especially marked by the
upshot of a prompt exchange of inquiries between Mrs. Assingham
and the Princess. It was noted, on the occasion of that anxious
lady's last approach to her young friend at Fawns, that her
sympathy had ventured, after much accepted privation, again to
become inquisitive, and it had perhaps never so yielded to that
need as on this question of the present odd "line" of the
distinguished eccentrics.
"You mean to say really that you're going to stick here?" And
then before Maggie could answer: "What on earth will you do with
your evenings?"
Maggie waited a moment--Maggie could still tentatively smile.
"When people learn we're here--and of course the papers will be
full of it!--they'll flock back in their hundreds, from wherever
they are, to catch us. You see you and the Colonel have
yourselves done it. As for our evenings, they won't, I dare say,
be particularly different from anything else that's ours. They
won't be different from our mornings or our afternoons--except
perhaps that you two dears will sometimes help us to get through
them. I've offered to go anywhere," she added; "to take a house
if he will. But THIS--just this and nothing else--is Amerigo's
idea. He gave it yesterday" she went on, "a name that, as, he
said, described and fitted it. So you see"--and the Princess
indulged again in her smile that didn't play, but that only, as
might have been said, worked--"so you see there's a method in our
madness."