第29章 Chapter 4(3)

"Not a bit--for I shouldn't have minded her coming after their marriage.

It's her coming this way before." To which she added with inconsequence "I'm too sorry for her--of course she can't enjoy it But I don't see what perversity rides her. She need n't have looked it all so in the face--as she does n't do it, I suppose, simply for discipline. It's almost--that's the bore of it--discipline to ME."

(70) "Perhaps then," said Bob Assingham, "that's what has been her idea.

Take it, for God's sake, as discipline to you and have done with it. It will do," he added, "for discipline to me as well."

She was far, however, from having done with it; it was a situation with such different sides, as she said, and to none of which one could, in justice, be blind. "It is n't in the least, you know, for instance, that I believe she's bad. Never, never," Mrs. Assingham declared. "I don't think that of her."

"Then why is n't that enough?"

Nothing was enough, Mrs. Assingham signified, but that she should develop her thought. "She does n't deliberately intend, she does n't consciously wish, the least complication. It's perfectly true that she thinks Maggie a dear--as who does n't? She's incapable of any PLAN to hurt a hair of her head. Yet here she is--and there THEY are," she wound up.

Her husband again for a little smoked in silence. "What in the world, between them, ever took place?"

"Between Charlotte and the Prince? Why nothing--except their having to recognise that nothing COULD. That was their little romance--it was even their little tragedy."

"But what the deuce did they DO?"

"Do? They fell in love with each other--but, seeing it was n't possible, gave each other up."

"Then where was the romance?"

"Why in their frustration, in their having the courage to look the-facts in the face."

"What facts?" the Colonel went on.

"Well, to begin with, that of their neither of them (71) having the means to marry. If she had had even a little--a little, I mean, for two--I believe he would bravely have done it." After which, as her husband but emitted an odd vague sound, she corrected herself. "I mean if he himself had had only a little--or a little more than a little, a little for a prince.

They would have done what they could"--she did them justice--"if there had been a way. But there was n't a way, and Charlotte, quite to her honour, I consider, understood it. He HAD to have money--it was a question of life and death. It would n't have been a bit amusing, either, to marry him as a pauper--I mean leaving him one. That was what she had--as HE had--the reason to see."

"And their reason is what you call their romance?"

She looked at him a moment. "What do you want more?"

"Did n't HE," the Colonel enquired, "want anything more? Or did n't, for that matter, poor Charlotte herself?"

She kept her eyes on him; there was a manner in it that half answered.

"They were thoroughly in love. She might have been his--" She checked herself; she even for a minute lost herself. "She might have been anything she liked--except his wife."

"But she was n't," said the Colonel very smokingly.

"She was n't," Mrs. Assingham echoed.

The echo, not loud but deep, filled for a little the room. He seemed to listen to it die away; then he began again. "How are you sure?"

She waited before saying, but when she spoke it was definite. "There was n't time." (72) He had a small laugh for her reason; he might have expected some other. "Does it take so much time?"

She herself, however, remained serious. "It takes more than they had."

He was detached, but he wondered. "What was the matter with their time?"

After which, as, remembering it all, living it over and piecing it together, she only considered, "You mean that you came in with YOUR idea?" he demanded.

It brought her quickly to the point, and as if also in a measure to answer herself. "Not a bit of it--THEN. But you surely recall," she went on, "the way, a year ago, everything took place. They had parted before he had ever heard of Maggie."

"Why had n't he heard of her from Charlotte herself?"

"Because she had never spoken of her."

"Is that also," the Colonel enquired, "what she has told you?"

"I'm not speaking," his wife returned, "of what she has told me. That's one thing. I'm speaking of what I know by myself. That's another."

"You feel in other words that she lies to you?" Bob Assingham more sociably asked.

She neglected the question, treating it as gross. "She never so much, at the time, as named Maggie."

It was so positive that it appeared to strike him. ' It's he then who has told you?"

She after a moment admitted it. "It's he."

"And he does n't lie?"

"No--to do him justice. I believe he absolutely does n't. If I had n't believed it," Mrs. Assingham (73) declared for her general justification, "I'd have had nothing to do with him--that is in this connexion. He's a gentleman--I mean ALL as much of one as he ought to be. And he had nothing to gain. That helps," she added, "even a gentleman. It was I who named Maggie to him--a year from last May. He had never heard of her before."

"Then it's grave," said the Colonel.

She briefly weighed it. "Do you mean grave for me?"

"Oh that everything's grave for 'you' is what we take for granted and are fundamentally talking about. It's grave--it WAS--for Charlotte. And it's grave for Maggie. That is it WAS--when he did see her. Or when she did see him."

"You don't torment me as much as you would like," she presently went on, "because you think of nothing that I have n't a thousand times thought of, and because I think of everything that you never will. It would all," she recognised, "have been grave if it had n't all been right. You can't make out," she contended, "that we got to Rome before the end of February."

He more than agreed. "There's nothing in life, my dear, that I CAN make out."

Well, there was apparently nothing in life that she at real need couldn't.