Mrs. Assingham and the Colonel, quitting Fawns before the end of September, had come back later on; and now, a couple of weeks after, they were again interrupting their stay, but this time with the question of their return left to depend on matters that were rather hinted at than importunately named. The Lutches and Mrs. Rance had also, by the action of Charlotte Stant's arrival, ceased to linger, though with hopes and theories, as to some promptitude of renewal, of which the lively expression, awaking the echoes of the great stone-paved, oak-panelled, galleried hall that was not the least interesting feature of the place, seemed still a property of the air. It was on this admirable spot that, before her October afternoon had waned, Fanny Assingham spent with her easy host a few moments which led to her announcing her own and her husband's final secession, at the same time as they tempted her to point the moral of all vain reverberations.
The double door of the house stood open to an effect of hazy autumn sunshine, a wonderful windless waiting golden hour under the influence of which Adam Verver met his genial friend as she came to drop into the post-box with her own hand a thick sheaf of letters. They presently thereafter left the house together and drew out half an hour on the terrace in a manner they were to revert to in thought, later on, as that of persons who really had been taking (192) leave of each other at a parting of the ways. He traced his impression, on coming to consider, back to a mere three words she had begun by using about Charlotte Stant. Charlotte simply "cleared them out"--those had been the three words, thrown off in reference to the general golden peace that the Kentish October had gradually ushered in, the "halcyon" days the full beauty of which had appeared to shine out for them after that young lady's arrival. For it was during these days that Mrs. Rance and the Miss Lutches had been observed to be gathering themselves for departure, and it was with that difference made that the sense of the whole situation showed most fair--the sense of how right they had been to engage for so ample a residence, and of all the pleasure so fruity an autumn there could hold in its lap. This was what had occurred, that their lesson had been learned; and what Mrs. Assingham had dwelt upon was that without Charlotte it would have been learned but half. It would certainly not have been taught by Mrs. Rance and the Miss Lutches if these ladies had remained with them as long as at one time seemed probable. Charlotte's light intervention had thus become a cause, operating covertly but none the less actively, and Fanny Assingham's speech, which she had followed up a little, echoed within him, fairly to startle him, as the indication of something irresistible.
He could see now how this superior force had worked, and he fairly liked to recover the sight--little harm as he dreamed of doing, little ill as he dreamed of wishing, the three ladies, whom he had after all entertained for a stiffish series of days. She had been so vague and quiet about (193) it, wonderful Charlotte, that he had n't known what was happening--happening, that is, as a result of her influence. "Their fires, as they felt her, turned to smoke," Mrs. Assingham remarked; which he was to reflect on indeed even while they strolled. He had retained, since his long talk with Maggie--the talk that had settled the matter of his own direct invitation to her friend--an odd little taste, as he would have described it, for hearing things said about this young woman, hearing, so to speak, what COULD be said about her: almost as if her portrait, by some eminent hand, were going on, so that he watched it grow under the multiplication of touches. Mrs. Assingham, it struck him, applied two or three of the finest in their discussion of their young friend--so different a figure now from that early playmate of Maggie's as to whom he could almost recall from of old the definite occasions of his having paternally lumped the two children together in the recommendation that they should n't make too much noise nor eat too much jam. His companion professed that in the light of Charlotte's prompt influence she had n't been a stranger to a pang of pity for their recent visitors. "I felt in fact privately so sorry for them that I kept my impression to myself while they were here--wishing not to put the rest of you on the scent; neither Maggie, nor the Prince, nor yourself, nor even Charlotte herself, if you did n't happen to notice. Since you did n't, apparently, I perhaps now strike you as extravagant. But I'm not--I followed it all.
One SAW the consciousness I speak of come over the poor things, very much as I suppose people at the court of the Borgias may have watched each (194) other begin to look queer after having had the honour of taking wine with the heads of the family. My comparison's only a little awkward, for I don't in the least mean that Charlotte was consciously dropping poison into their cup. She was just herself their poison, in the sense of mortally disagreeing with them--but she did n't know it."
"Ah she did n't know it?" Mr. Verver had asked with interest.
"Well, I THINK she did n't"--Mrs. Assingham had to admit that she had n't pressingly sounded her. "I don't pretend to be sure in every connexion of what Charlotte knows. She does n't certainly like to make people suffer--not, in general, as is the case with so many of us, even other women: she likes much rather to put them at their ease with her. She likes, that is--as all pleasant people do--to be liked."
"Ah she likes to be liked?" her companion had gone on.
"She did at the same time, no doubt, want to help us--to put us at our ease. That is she wanted to put you--and to put Maggie about you. So far as that went she had a plan. But it was only AFTER--it was not before, I really believe--that she saw how effectively she could work."
Again, as Mr. Verver felt, he must have taken it up. "Ah she wanted to help us?--wanted to help ME?"