"They're not good days, you know," he had said to Fanny Assingham after declaring himself grateful for finding her, and then, with his cup of tea, putting her in possession of the latest news--the documents signed an hour ago, de part et d'autre, and the telegram from his backers, who had reached Paris the morning before, and who, pausing there a little, poor dears, seemed to think the whole thing a tremendous lark. "We're very simple folk, mere country cousins compared with you," he had also observed, "and Paris, for my sister and her husband, is the end of the world. London therefore will be more or less another planet. It has always been, as with so many of us, quite their Mecca, but this is their first real caravan; they've mainly known 'old England' as a shop for articles in india-rubber and leather, in which they've dressed themselves as much as possible. Which all means, however, that you'll see them, all of them, wreathed in smiles. We must be very easy with them. Maggie's too wonderful--her preparations are on a scale! She insists on taking in the sposi and my uncle. The others will come to me. I've been engaging their rooms at the hotel, and with all those solemn signatures of an hour ago that brings the case home to me."
"Do you mean you're afraid?" his hostess had amusedly asked.
"Terribly afraid. I've now but to wait to see the (26) monster come.
They're not good days; they're neither one thing nor the other. I've really GOT nothing, yet I've everything to lose. One does n't know what still may happen."
The way she laughed at him was for an instant almost irritating; it came out, for his fancy, from behind the white curtain. It was a sign, that is, of her deep serenity, which worried instead of soothing him. And to be soothed, after all, to be tided over, in his mystic impatience, to be told what he could understand and believe--that was what he had come for. "Marriage then," said Mrs. Assingham, "is what you call the monster?
I admit it's a fearful thing at the best; but, for heaven's sake, if that's what you're thinking of, don't run away from it."
"Ah to run away from it would be to run away from you," the Prince replied;
"and I've already told you often enough how I depend on you to see me through."
He so liked the way she took this, from the corner of her sofa, that he gave his sincerity--for it WAS sincerity--fuller expression. "I'm starting on the great voyage--across the unknown sea; my ship's all rigged and appointed, the cargo's stowed away and the company complete. But what seems the matter with me is that I can't sail alone; my ship must be one of a pair, must have, in the waste of waters, a--what do you call it?--a consort. I don't ask you to stay on board with me, but I must keep your sail in sight for orientation. I don't in the least myself know, I assure you, the points of the compass. But with a lead I can perfectly follow. You MUST be my lead."
(27) How can you be sure," she asked, "where I should take you?"
"Why from your having brought me safely thus far. I should never have got here without you. You've provided the ship itself, and if you've not quite seen me aboard you've attended me ever so kindly to the dock. Your own vessel is all conveniently in the next berth, and you can't desert me now." She showed him again her amusement, which struck him even as excessive, as if, to his surprise, he made her also a little nervous; she treated him in fine as if he were not uttering truths but making pretty figures for her diversion. "My vessel, dear Prince?" she smiled. "What vessel in the world have I? This little house is all our ship, Bob's and mine--and thankful we are now to have it. We've wandered far, living, as you may say, from hand to mouth, without rest for the soles of our feet. But the time has come for us at last to draw in."
He made at this, the young man, an indignant protest. "You talk about rest--it's too selfish!--when you're just launching me on adventures?"
She shook her head with her kind lucidity. "Not adventures--heaven forbid!
You've had yours--as I've had mine; and my idea has been all along that we should neither of us begin again. My own last, precisely, has been doing for you all you so prettily mention. But it consists simply in having conducted you to rest. You talk about ships, but they're not the comparison. Your tossings are over--you're practically in port. The port," she concluded, "of the Golden Isles."
(28) He looked about, to put himself more in relation with the place; then after an hesitation seemed to speak certain words instead of certain others. "Oh I know where I AM--! I do decline to be left, but what I came for of course was to thank you. If to-day has seemed for the first time the end of preliminaries, I feel how little there would have been any at all without you. The first were wholly yours."
"Well," said Mrs. Assingham, "they were remarkably easy. I've seen them, I've HAD them," she smiled, "more difficult. Everything, you must feel, went of itself. So, you must feel, everything still goes."
The Prince quickly agreed. "Oh beautifully! But you had the conception."
"Ah Prince, so had you!"
He looked at her harder a moment. "You had it first. You had it most."
She returned his look as if it had made her wonder. "I LIKED it, if that's what you mean. But you liked it surely yourself. I protest that I had easy work with; you. I had only at last--when I thought it was time--to speak for you."
"All that's quite true. But you're leaving me all the same, you're leaving me--you're washing your hands of me," he went on. "However, that won't be easy; I won't BE left." And he had turned his eyes: about again, taking in the pretty room that she had just described as her final refuge, the place of peace for a world-worn couple, to which she had lately retired with "Bob." "I shall keep this spot in sight. Say what you will I shall need you. I'm not, you (29) know," he declared, "going to give you up for anybody."
"If you're afraid--which of course you're not--are you trying to make me the same?" she asked after a moment.