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 n't 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 enquiries between Mrs. Assingham and the Princess.
It was noted on the occasion (325) 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 this principle had perhaps never so yielded to that need as on the 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 her smile that did n't play, but that only, as might have been said, worked--"so you see there's a method in our madness."
It drew Mrs. Assingham's wonder. "And what then is the name?"
"'The reduction to its simplest expression of what we ARE doing'--that's what he called it. Therefore as we're doing nothing, we're doing it in the most (326) aggravated way--which is the way he desires." With which Maggie further said: "Of course I understand."
"So do I!" her visitor after a moment breathed. "You've had to vacate the house--that was inevitable. But at least here he does n't funk."
Our young woman accepted the expression. "He does n't funk."
It only however half-contented Fanny, who thoughtfully raised her eyebrows.
"He's prodigious; but what is there--as you've 'fixed' it--TO dodge? Unless," she pursued, "it's her getting near him; it's--if you'll pardon my vulgarity--her getting AT him. That," she suggested, "may count with him."
But it found the Princess prepared. "She can get near him here. She can get 'at' him. She can come up."
"CAN she?" Fanny Assingham questioned.
"CAN'T she?" Maggie returned.
Their eyes for a minute intimately met on it; after which the elder woman said: "I mean for seeing him alone."
"So do I," said the Princess.
At which Fanny, for her reasons, could n't help smiling. "Oh if it's for THAT he's staying--!"
"He's staying--I've made it out--to take anything that comes or calls upon him. To take," Maggie went on, "even that." Then she put it as she had at last put it to herself. "He's staying for high decency."
"Decency?" Mrs. Assingham gravely echoed.
"Decency. If she SHOULD try--!"
"Well--?" Mrs. Assingham urged.
(327) "Well, I hope--!"
"Hope he'll see her?"
Maggie hesitated, however; she made no direct reply. "It's useless hoping," she presently said. "She won't. But he ought to." Her friend's expression of a moment before, which had been apologised for as vulgar, prolonged its sharpness to her ear--that of an electric bell under continued pressure.
Stated so simply, what was it but dreadful, truly, that the feasibility of Charlotte's "getting at" the man who for so long had loved her should now be in question? Strangest of all things doubtless this care of Maggie's as to what might make for it or make against it; stranger still her fairly lapsing at moments into a vague calculation of the conceivability, on her own part, with her husband, of some direct sounding of the subject. Would it be too monstrous, her suddenly breaking out to him as in alarm at the lapse of the weeks: "Would n't it really seem that you're bound in honour to do something for her privately before they go?" Maggie was capable of weighing the risk of this adventure for her own spirit, capable of sinking to intense little absences, even while conversing as now with the person who had most of her confidence, during which she followed up the possibilities.