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, Bobs and mineand thankful we are, now, to have it. Weve 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 restits too selfish!when youre just launching me on adventures?
She shook her head with her kind lucidity. Not adventuresheaven forbid! Youve had yoursas Ive 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 theyre not the comparison. Your tossings are overyoure practically IN port. The port, she concluded, of the Golden Isles.
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. Ive seen them, Ive 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 thats what you mean. But you liked it surely yourself. I protest, that I had easy work with you. I had only at lastwhen I thought it was timeto speak for you.
All that is quite true. But youre leaving me, all the same, youre leaving meyoure washing your hands of me, he went on. However, that wont be easy; I wont 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. Im not, you know, he declared, going to give you up for anybody.
If youre afraidwhich of course youre notare you trying to make me the same? she asked after a moment.
He waited a minute too, then answered her with a question. You say you liked it, your undertaking to make my engagement possible. It remains beautiful for me that you did; its charming and unforgettable. But, still more, its mysterious and wonderful. WHY, you dear delightful woman, did you like it?
I scarce know what to make, she said, of such an inquiry. If you havent by this time found out yourself, what meaning can anything I say have for you? Dont you really after all feel, she added while nothing came from himarent you conscious every minute, of the perfection of the creature of whom Ive put you into possession?
Every minutegratefully conscious. But thats exactly the ground of my question. It wasnt only a matter of your handing me overit was a matter of your handing her. It was a matter of HER fate still more than of mine. You thought all the good of her that one woman can think of another, and yet, by your account, you enjoyed assisting at her risk.
She had kept her eyes on him while he spoke, and this was what, visibly, determined a repetition for her. Are you trying to frighten me?
Ah, thats a foolish viewI should be too vulgar. You apparently cant understand either my good faith or my humility. Im awfully humble, the young man insisted; thats the way Ive been feeling to-day, with everything so finished and ready. And you wont take me for serious.
She continued to face him as if he really troubled her a little. Oh, you deep old Italians!
There you are, he returnedits what I wanted you to come to. Thats the responsible note.
Yes, she went onif youre humble you MUST be dangerous.
She had a pause while he only smiled; then she said: I dont in the least want to lose sight of you. But even if I did I shouldnt think it right.
Thank you for thatits what I needed of you. Im sure, after all, that the more youre with me the more I shall understand. Its the only thing in the world I want. Im excellent, I really think, all roundexcept that Im stupid. I can do pretty well anything I SEE. But Ive got to see it first. And he pursued his demonstration. I dont in the least mind its having to be shown mein fact I like that better. Therefore it is that I want, that I shall always want, your eyes. Through THEM I wish to lookeven at any risk of their showing me what I maynt like. For then, he wound up, I shall know. And of that I shall never be afraid.
She might quite have been waiting to see what he would come to, but she spoke with a certain impatience. What on earth are you talking about?
But he could perfectly say: Of my real, honest fear of being off some day, of being wrong, WITHOUT knowing it. Thats what I shall always trust you forto tell me when I am. Nowith you people its a sense. We havent got itnot as you have. Therefore! But he had said enough. Ecco! he simply smiled.
It was not to be concealed that he worked upon her, but of course she had always liked him. I should be interested, she presently remarked, to see some sense you dont possess.
Well, he produced one on the spot. The moral, dear Mrs. Assingham. I mean, always, as you others consider it. Ive of course something that in our poor dear backward old Rome sufficiently passes for it. But its no more like yours than the tortuous stone staircasehalf-ruined into the bargain!in some castle of our quattrocento is like the `lightning elevator in one of Mr. Ververs fifteen-storey buildings. Your moral sense works by steamit sends you up like a rocket. Ours is slow and steep and unlighted, with so many of the steps missing thatwell, that its as short, in almost any case, to turn round and come down again.
Trusting, Mrs. Assingham smiled, to get up some other way?
Yesor not to have to get up at all. However, he added, I told you that at the beginning.
Machiavelli! she simply exclaimed.
You do me too much honour. I wish indeed I had his genius. However, if you really believe I have his perversity you wouldnt say it. But its all right, he gaily enough concluded; I shall always have you to come to.
On this, for a little, they sat face to face; after which, without comment, she asked him if he would have more tea. All she would give him, he promptly signified; and he developed, making her laugh, his idea that the tea of the English race was somehow their morality, made, with boiling water, in a little pot, so that the more of it one drank the more moral one would become. His drollery served as a transition, and she put to him several questions about his sister and the others, questions as to what Bob, in particular, Colonel Assingham, her husband, could do for the arriving gentlemen, whom, by the Princes leave, he would immediately go to see. He was funny, while they talked, about his own people too, whom he described, with anecdotes of their habits, imitations of their manners and prophecies of their conduct, as more rococo than anything Cadogan Place would ever have known. This, Mrs. Assingham professed, was exactly what would endear them to her, and that, in turn, drew from her visitor a fresh declaration of all the comfort of his being able so to depend on her. He had been with her, at this point, some twenty minutes; but he had paid her much longer visits, and he stayed now as if to make his attitude prove his appreciation. He stayed moreoverTHAT was really the sign of the hourin spite of the nervous unrest that had brought him and that had in truth much rather fed on the scepticism by which she had apparently meant to soothe it. She had not soothed him, and there arrived, remarkably, a moment when the cause of her failure gleamed out. He had not frightened her, as she called ithe felt that; yet she was herself not at ease. She had been nervous, though trying to disguise it; the sight of him, following on the announcement of his name, had shown her as disconcerted. This conviction, for the young man, deepened and sharpened; yet with the effect, too, of making him glad in spite of it. It was as if, in calling, he had done even better than he intended. For it was somehow IMPORTANTthat was what it wasthat there should be at this hour something the matter with Mrs. Assingham, with whom, in all their acquaintance, so considerable now, there had never been the least little thing the matter. To wait thus and watch for it was to know, of a truth, that there was something the matter with HIM; since strangely, with so little to go uponhis heart had positively begun to beat to the tune of suspense. It fairly befell at last, for a climax, that they almost ceased to pretendto pretend, that is, to cheat each other with forms. The unspoken had come up, and there was a crisisneither could have said how long it lastedduring which they were reduced, for all interchange, to looking at each other on quite an inordinate scale. They might at this moment, in their positively portentous stillness, have been keeping it up for a wager, sitting for their photograph or even enacting a tableau-vivant.