"Charlotte, who had been there that year from early, early in November, left suddenly, you'll quite remember, about the tenth of April. She was to have stayed on--she was to have stayed, naturally, more or less, for us; and she was to have stayed all the more that the Ververs. due all winter, (74) but delayed, week after week, in Paris, were at last really coming.
They were coming--that is Maggie was--largely to see her, and above all to be with her THERE. It was all altered--by Charlotte's going to Florence.
She went from one day to the other--you forget everything. She gave her reasons, but I thought It odd at the time; I had a sense that something must have happened. The difficulty was that though I knew a little I did n't know enough. I did n't know her relation with him had been, as you say, a 'near' thing--that is I did n't know HOW near. The poor girl's departure was a flight--she went to save herself."
He had listened more than he showed--as came out in his tone. "To save herself?"
"Well, also really I think to save him too. I saw it afterwards--I see it all now. He'd have been sorry--he did n't want to hurt her."
"Oh I dare say," the Colonel laughed. "They generally don't!"
"At all events," his wife pursued, "she escaped--they both did; for they had had simply to face it. Their marriage could n't be, and, if that was so, the sooner they put the Apennines between them the better. It had taken them, it's true, some time to feel this and to find it out. They had met constantly, and not always publicly, all that winter; they had met more than was known--though it was a good deal known. More, certainly," she said, "than I then imagined--though I don't know what difference it would after all have made with me. I liked him, I thought him charming, from the first of our knowing (75) him; and now, after more than a year, he has done nothing to spoil it. And there are things he might have done--things that many men easily would. Therefore I believe in him, and I was right, at first, in knowing I was going to. So I have n't"--and she stated it as she might have quoted from a slate, after adding up the items, the sum of a column of figures--"so I have n't, I say to myself, been, fool."
"Well, are you trying to make out that I've said you have? All their case wants, at any rate," Bob Assingham declared, "is that you should leave it well alone. It's theirs now; they've bought it, over the counter, and paid for it. It has ceased to be yours."
"Of which case," she asked, " are you speaking?"
He smoked a minute: then with a groan: "Lord, are there so many?"
"There's Maggie's and the Prince's, and there's the Prince's and Charlotte's."
"Oh yes; and then," the Colonel scoffed, "there's Charlotte's and the Prince's."
"There's Maggie's and Charlotte's," she went on--"and there's also Maggie's and mine. I think too that there's Charlotte's and mine. Yes," she mused, "Charlotte's and mine is certainly a case. In short, you see, there are plenty. But I mean," she said, "to keep my head."
"Are we to settle them all," he enquired, " to-night?"
"I should lose it if things had happened otherwise--if I had acted with any folly." She had gone on in her earnestness, unheeding of his question.
"I should n't be able to bear that now. But my good conscience is my strength;
no one can accuse me. The (76) Ververs came on to Rome alone--Charlotte, after heir days with her in Florence, had decided about America. Maggie, I dare say, had helped her; she must have made her a present, and a handsome one, so that many things were easy. Charlotte left them, came to England, ' joined ' somebody or other, sailed or New York. I have still her letter from Milan, telling me; I did n't know at the moment all that was behind it, but I felt in it nevertheless the undertaking of a new life. Certainly, in any case, it cleared THAT air--I mean the dear old Roman, in which we were steeped. It left the field free--it gave me a free hand. There was no question for me of anybody else when [ brought the two others together.
More than that, here was no question for THEM. So you see," she concluded, "where that puts me."
She got up, on the words, very much as if they were the blue daylight towards which, through a darksome tunnel, she had been pushing her way, and the elation in her voice, combined with her recovered alertness, night have signified the sharp whistle of the train that shoots at last into the open. She turned about the room; she looked out a moment into the August night; she stopped here and there before the flowers in bowls and vases.
Yes, it was distinctly as if she had proved what was needing proof, as if the issue of her operation lad been almost unexpectedly a success. Old arithmetic had perhaps been fallacious, but the new settled the question.
Her husband oddly, however, kept his place without apparently measuring these results. As he had been amused at her intensity, so he was n't uplifted by her relief; his interest might in fact have (77) been more enlisted than he allowed. "Do you mean," he presently asked, "that he had already forgot about Charlotte?"
She faced round as if he had touched a spring. "He WANTED to, naturally--and it was much the best thing he could do." She was in possession of the main case, as it truly seemed; she had it all now. "He was capable of the effort, and he took the best way. Remember too what Maggie then seemed to us."
"She's very nice, but she always seems to me more than anything else the young woman who has a million a year. If you mean that that's what she especially seemed to him you of course place the thing in your light.
The effort to forget Charlotte could n't, I grant you, have been so difficult."
This pulled her up but for an instant. "I never said he did n't from the first--I never said that he does n't more and more--like Maggie's money."
"I never said I should n't have liked it myself," Bob Assingham returned.
He made no movement; he smoked another minute. "How much did Maggie know?"