第155章 Chapter 5(5)

He on his side too had waited a little, but then he had taken it from her. "Yes, I guess I do rather like her."

Which she accepted for the first case she could recall of their not being affected by a person in the same (97) way. It came back therefore to his pretending; but she had gone far enough, and to add to her appearance of levity she further observed that though they were so far from a novelty she should also immediately desire at Fawns the presence of the Assinghams.

That put everything on a basis independent of explanations; yet it was extraordinary at the same time how much, once in the country again with the others, she was going, as they used to say at home, to need the presence of the good Fanny. It was the strangest thing in the world, but it was as if Mrs. Assingham might in a manner mitigate the intensity of her consciousness of Charlotte. It was as if the two would balance, one against the other; as if it came round again in that fashion to her idea of the equilibrium.

It would be like putting this friend into her scale to make weight--into the scale with her father and herself. Amerigo and Charlotte would be in the other; therefore it would take the three of them to keep that one straight.

And as this played all duskily in her mind it had received from her father, with a sound of suddenness, a luminous contribution. "Ah rather! DO let's have the Assinghams."

"It would be to have them," she had said, "as we used so much to have them. For a good long stay in the old way and on the old terms: 'as regular boarders' Fanny used to call it. That is if they'll come."

"As regular boarders on the old terms--that's what I should like too.

But I guess they'll come," her companion had added in a tone into which she had read meanings. The main meaning was that he felt he was going to require them quite as much as she (98) was. His recognition of the new terms as different from the old, what was that practically but a confession that something had happened, and a perception that, interested in the situation she had helped to create, Mrs. Assingham would be by so much as this concerned in its inevitable development? It amounted to an intimation, off his guard, that he should be thankful for some one to turn to. If she had wished covertly to sound him he had now in short quite given himself away, and if she had even at the start needed anything more to settle her here assuredly was enough. He had hold of his small grandchild as they retraced their steps, swinging the boy's hand and not bored, as he never was, by his always bristling, like a fat little porcupine, with shrill interrogation-points--so that, secretly, while they went, she had wondered again if the equilibrium might n't have been more real, might n't above all have demanded less strange a study, had it only been on the books that Charlotte should give him a Principino of his own. She had repossessed herself now of his other arm, only this time she was drawing him back, gently, helplessly back to what they had tried for the hour to get away from--just as he was consciously drawing the child and as high Miss Bogle on her left, representing the duties of home, was complacently drawing HER. The duties of home, when the house in Portland Place reappeared, showed even from a distance as vividly there before them. Amerigo and Charlotte had come in--that is Amerigo had, Charlotte rather having come out--and the pair were perched together in the balcony, he bareheaded, she divested of her jacket, her mantle (99) or whatever, but crowned with a brilliant brave hat responsive to the balmy day, which Maggie immediately "spotted" as new, as insuperably original, as worn, in characteristic generous harmony, for the first time; all evidently to watch for the return of the absent, to be there to take them over again as punctually as possible. They were gay, they were amused, in the pleasant morning; they leaned across the rail and called down their greeting, lighting up the front of the great black house with an expression that quite broke the monotony, that might almost have shocked the decency, of Portland Place.

The group on the pavement stared up as at the peopled battlements of a castle; even Miss Bogle, who carried her head most aloft, gaped a little, through the interval of space, as toward truly superior beings. There could scarce have been so much of the open mouth since the dingy waifs on Christmas Eve had so lamentably chanted for pennies--the time when Amerigo, insatiable for English customs, had come out with a gasped "Santissima Vergine!" to marvel at the depositaries of this tradition and purchase a reprieve. Maggie's individual gape was inevitably again for the thought of how the pair would be at work.