The spectator of whom they would thus well have been worthy might have read meanings of his own into the intensity of their communionor indeed, even without meanings, have found his account, aesthetically, in some gratified play of our modern sense of type, so scantly to be distinguished from our modern sense of beauty. Type was there, at the worst, in Mrs. Assinghams dark, neat head, on which the crisp black hair made waves so fine and so numerous that she looked even more in the fashion of the hour than she desired. Full of discriminations against the obvious, she had yet to accept a flagrant appearance and to make the best of misleading signs. Her richness of hue, her generous nose, her eyebrows marked like those of an actressthese things, with an added amplitude of person on which middle age had set its seal, seemed to present her insistently as a daughter of the south, or still more of the east, a creature formed by hammocks and divans, fed upon sherbets and waited upon by slaves. She looked as if her most active effort might be to take up, as she lay back, her mandolin, or to share a sugared fruit with a pet gazelle. She was in fact, however, neither a pampered Jewess nor a lazy Creole; New York had been, recordedly, her birthplace and Europe punctually her discipline. She wore yellow and purple because she thought it better, as she said, while one was about it, to look like the Queen of Sheba than like a revendeuse; she put pearls in her hair and crimson and gold in her tea-gown for the same reason: it was her theory that nature itself had overdressed her and that her only course was to drown, as it was hopeless to try to chasten, the overdressing. So she was covered and surrounded with things, which were frankly toys and shams, a part of the amusement with which she rejoiced to supply her friends. These friends were in the game that of playing with the disparity between her aspect and her character. Her character was attested by the second movement of her face, which convinced the beholder that her vision of the humours of the world was not supine, not passive. She enjoyed, she needed the warm air of friendship, but the eyes of the American city looked out, somehow, for the opportunity of it, from under the lids of Jerusalem. With her false indolence, in short, her false leisure, her false pearls and palms and courts and fountains, she was a person for whom life was multitudinous detail, detail that left her, as it at any moment found her, unappalled and unwearied.
Sophisticated as I may appearit was her frequent phraseshe had found sympathy her best resource. It gave her plenty to do; it made her, as she also said, sit up. She had in her life two great holes to fill, and she described herself as dropping social scraps into them as she had known old ladies, in her early American time, drop morsels of silk into the baskets in which they collected the material for some eventual patchwork quilt.
One of these gaps in Mrs. Assinghams completeness was her want of children; the other was her want of wealth. It was wonderful how little either, in the fulness of time, came to show; sympathy and curiosity could render their objects practically filial, just as an English husband who in his military years had run everything in his regiment could make economy blossom like the rose. Colonel Bob had, a few years after his marriage, left the army, which had clearly, by that time, done its laudable all for the enrichment of his personal experience, and he could thus give his whole time to the gardening in question. There reigned among the younger friends of this couple a legend, almost too venerable for historical criticism, that the marriage itself, the happiest of its class, dated from the far twilight of the age, a primitive period when such thingssuch things as American girls accepted as good enoughhad not begun to be;so that the pleasant pair had been, as to the risk taken on either side, bold and original, honourably marked, for the evening of life, as discoverers of a kind of hymeneal Northwest Passage. Mrs. Assingham knew better, knew there had been no historic hour, from that of Pocahontas down, when some young Englishman hadnt precipitately believed and some American girl hadnt, with a few more gradations, availed herself to the full of her incapacity to doubt; but she accepted resignedly the laurel of the founder, since she was in fact pretty well the doyenne, above ground, of her transplanted tribe, and since, above all, she HAD invented combinations, though she had not invented Bobs own. It was he who had done that, absolutely puzzled it out, by himself, from his first odd glimmer-resting upon it moreover, through the years to come, as proof enough, in him, by itself, of the higher cleverness. If she kept her own cleverness up it was largely that he should have full credit. There were moments in truth when she privately felt how littlestriking out as he had donehe could have afforded that she should show the common limits. But Mrs. Assinghams cleverness was in truth tested when her present visitor at last said to her: I dont think, you know, that youre treating me quite right. Youve something on your mind that you dont tell me.
It was positive too that her smile, in reply, was a trifle dim. Am I obliged to tell you everything I have on my mind?
It isnt a question of everything, but its a question of anything that may particularly concern me. Then you shouldnt keep it back. You know with what care I desire to proceed, taking everything into account and making no mistake that may possibly injure HER.
Mrs. Assingham, at this, had after an instant an odd interrogation. Her?
Her and him. Both our friends. Either Maggie or her father.
I have something on my mind, Mrs. Assingham presently returned; something has happened for which I hadnt been prepared. But it isnt anything that properly concerns you.
The Prince, with immediate gaiety, threw back his head. What do you mean by properly? I somehow see volumes in it. Its the way people put a thing when they put itwell, wrong. I put things right. What is it that has happened for me?
His hostess, the next moment, had drawn spirit from his tone.
Oh, I shall be delighted if youll take your share of it. Charlotte Stant is in London. She has just been here.
Miss Stant? Oh really? The Prince expressed clear surprisea transparency through which his eyes met his friends with a certain hardness of concussion. She has arrived from America? he then quickly asked.
She appears to have arrived this nooncoming up from Southampton; at an hotel. She dropped upon me after luncheon and was here for more than an hour.
The young man heard with interest, though not with an interest too great for his gaiety. You think then Ive a share in it? What IS my share?
Why, any you likethe one you seemed just now eager to take. It was you yourself who insisted.
He looked at her on this with conscious inconsistency, and she could now see that he had changed colour. But he was always easy.
I didnt know then what the matter was.
You didnt think it could be so bad?
Do you call it very bad? the young man asked. Only, she smiled, because thats the way it seems to affect YOU.
He hesitated, still with the trace of his quickened colour, still looking at her, still adjusting his manner. But you allowed you were upset.
To the extentyesof not having in the least looked for her. Any more, said Mrs. Assingham, than I judge Maggie to have done.