Mrs. Assingham gave it up. "How could n't I, how could n't I?" Then with a fine freedom she went all her way. "How CAN'T I, how can't I?"
It fixed afresh Maggie's wide eyes on her. "I see--I see. Well, it's beautiful for you to be able to. And of course," she added, "you wanted to help Charlotte."
"Yes"--Fanny considered it--"I wanted to help Charlotte. But I wanted also, you see, to help you--by not digging up a past that I believed, with so much on top of it, solidly buried. I wanted, as I still want," she richly declared, "to help everyone."
It set Maggie once more in movement--movement which however spent itself again with a quick emphasis. "Then it's a good deal my fault--if everything really began so well?"
Fanny Assingham met it as she could. "You've been only too perfect.
You've thought only too much--"
But the Princess had already caught at the words. "Yes--I've thought only too much!" Yet she appeared to continue for the minute full of that fault. (173) She had it in fact, by this prompted thought, all before her.
"Of him, dear man, of HIM--!"
Her friend, able to take in thus directly her vision of her father, watched her with a new suspense. THAT way might safety lie--it was like a wider chink of light. "He believed--with a beauty!--in Charlotte."
"Yes, and it was I who had made him believe. I did n't mean to at the time so much, for I had no idea then of what was coming. But I did it, I did it!" the Princess declared.
"With a beauty--ah with a beauty you too!" Mrs. Assingham insisted.
Maggie at all events was seeing for herself--it was another matter.
"The thing was that he made her think it would be so possible."
Fanny again hesitated. "The Prince made her think--?"
Maggie stared--she had meant her father. But her vision seemed to spread.
"They both made her think. She would n't have thought without them."
"Yet Amerigo's good faith," Mrs. Assingham insisted, "was perfect. And there was nothing, all the more," she added, "against your father's."
The remark kept Maggie for a moment still. "Nothing perhaps but his knowing that she knew."
"'Knew'--?"
"That he was doing it so much for me. To what extent," she suddenly asked of her friend, "do you think he was aware she knew?"
"Ah who can say what passes between people in such a relation? The only thing one can be sure of is that he was generous." And Mrs. Assingham (174) conclusively smiled. "He doubtless knew as much as was right for himself."
"As much, that is, as was right for her."
"Yes then--as was right for her. The point is," Fanny declared, "that whatever his knowledge it made all the way it went for his good faith."
Maggie continued to gaze, and her friend now fairly waited on her successive movements. "Is n't the point, very considerably, that his good faith must have been his faith in her taking almost as much interest in me as he himself took?"
Fanny Assingham thought. "He recognised, he adopted, your long friendship.
But he founded on it no selfishness."
"No," said Maggie with still deeper consideration: "he counted her selfishness out almost as he counted his own."
"So you may say."
"Very well," Maggie went on; "if he had none of his own, he invited her, may have expected her, on her side, to have as little. And she may only since have found that out."
Mrs. Assingham looked blank. "Since--?"
"And he may have become aware," Maggie pursued, "that she has found it out. That she has taken the measure, since their marriage," she explained, "of how much he had asked of her--more say than she had understood at the time. He may have made out at last how such a demand was in the long run to affect her."
"He may have done many things," Mrs. Assingham responded; "but there's one thing he certainly (175) won't have done. He'll never have shown that he expected of her a quarter as much as she must have understood he was to give."
"I've often wondered," Maggie mused, "what Charlotte really understood.
But it's one of the things she has never told me."
"Then as it's one of the things she has never told me either we shall probably never know it, and we may regard it as none of our business. There are many things," said Mrs. Assingham, "that we shall never know."
Maggie took it in with a long reflexion. "Never."
"But there are others," her friend went on, "that stare us in the face and that--under whatever difficulty you may feel you labour--may now be enough for us. Your father has been extraordinary."
It had been as if Maggie were feeling her way, but she rallied to this with a rush. "Extraordinary."
"Magnificent," said Fanny Assingham.
Her companion held tight to it. "Magnificent."
"Then he'll do for himself whatever there may be to do. What he undertook for you he'll do to the end. He did n't undertake it to break down; in what--quiet patient exquisite as he is--did he EVER break down? He had never in his life proposed to himself to have failed, and he won't have done it on this occasion."
"Ah this occasion!"--and Maggie's wail showed her of a sudden thrown back on it. "Am I in the least sure that, with everything, he even knows what it is? And yet am I in the least sure he does n't?"
(176) "If he does n't then so much the better. Leave him alone."
"Do you mean give him up?"
"Leave HER," Fanny Assingham went on. "Leave her TO him."
Maggie looked at her darkly. "Do you mean leave him to HER? After this?"
"After everything. Are n't they, for that matter, intimately together now?"
"'Intimately'--? How do I know?"
But Fanny kept it up. "Are n't you and your husband--in spite of everything?"
Maggie's eyes still further if possible dilated. "It remains to be seen!"
"If you're not then where's your faith?"
"In my husband--?"
Mrs. Assingham but for an instant hesitated. "In your father. It all comes back to that. Rest on it."
"On his ignorance?"
Fanny met it again. "On whatever he may offer you. TAKE that."
"Take it--?" Maggie stared.
Mrs. Assingham held up her head. "And be grateful." On which for a minute she let the Princess face her. "Do you see?"
"I see," said Maggie at last.
