第34章 Chapter 5(1)

"Well, now I must tell you, for I want to be absolutely honest." So Charlotte spoke, a little ominously, after they had got into the Park.

"I don't want to pretend, and I can't pretend a moment longer. You may think of me what you will, but I don't care. I knew I should n't and I find now how little. I came back for this. Not really for anything else.

For this," she repeated as under the influence of her tone the Prince had already come to a pause.

"For 'this'?" He spoke as if the particular thing she indicated were vague to him--or were, rather, a quantity that could n't at the most be much.

It would be as much however as she should be able to make it. "To have one hour alone with you."

It had rained heavily in the night, and though the pavements were now dry, thanks to a cleansing breeze, the August morning, with its hovering thick-drifting clouds and freshened air, was cool and grey. The multitudinous green of the Park had been deepened, and a wholesome smell of irrigation, purging the place of dust and of odours less acceptable, rose from the earth. Charlotte had looked about her with expression from the first of their coming in, quite as if for a deep greeting, for general recognition: the day was, even in the heart of London, of a rich low-browed weather-washed English type. It was as if it had been waiting for her, as if she knew it, placed it, loved it, as (90) if it were in fact a part of what she had come back for. So far as this was the case the impression of course could only be lost on a mere vague Italian; it was one of those for which you had to be blessedly an American--as indeed you had to be blessedly an American for all sorts of things: so long as you had n't, blessedly or not, to remain in America. The Prince had by half-past ten--as also by definite appointment--called in Cadogan Place for Mrs. Assingham's visitor, and then after brief delay the two had walked together up Sloane Street and got straight into the Park from Knightsbridge. The understanding to this end had taken its place, after a couple of days, as inevitably consequent on the appeal made by the girl during those first moments in Mrs. Assingham's drawing-room. It was an appeal the couple of days had done nothing to invalidate--everything much rather to place in a light, and as to which it obviously would n't have fitted that any one should raise an objection. Who was there for that matter to raise one from the moment Mrs. Assingham, informed and apparently not disapproving, did n't intervene? This the young man had asked himself--with a very sufficient sense of what would have made HIM ridiculous. He was n't going to begin--that at least was certain--by showing a fear. Even had fear at first been sharp in him, moreover, it would already, not a little, have dropped; so happy, all round, so propitious, he quite might have called it, had been the effect of this rapid interval.

The time had been taken up largely by his active reception of his own wedding-guests and by Maggie's scarce less absorbed entertainment of her friend, (91) whom she had kept for hours together in Portland Place; whom she had n't, as would n't have been convenient, invited altogether as yet to migrate, but who had been present with other persons, HIS contingent, at luncheon, at tea, at dinner, at perpetual repasts--he had never in his life, it struck him, had to reckon with so much eating--whenever he had looked in. If he had n't again till this hour, save for a minute, seen Charlotte alone, so, positively, all the while, he had n't seen even Maggie; and if therefore he had n't seen even Maggie nothing was more natural than that he should n't have seen Charlotte. The exceptional minute, a mere snatch, at the tail of the others, on the huge Portland Place staircase, had sufficiently enabled the girl to remind him--so ready she assumed him to be--of what they were to do. Time pressed if they were to do it at all.

Every one had brought gifts; his relations had brought wonders--how did they still have, where did they still find, such treasures? She only had brought nothing, and she was ashamed; yet even by the sight of the rest of the tribute she would n't be put off. She would do what she could, and he was, unknown to Maggie, he must remember, to give her his aid. He had prolonged the minute so far as to take time to hesitate for a reason, and then to risk bringing his reason out. The risk was because he might hurt her--hurt her pride, if she had that particular sort. But she might as well be hurt one way as another; and, besides, that particular sort of pride was just what she had n't. So his slight resistance while they lingered had been just easy enough not to be impossible.

(92) "I hate to encourage you--and for such a purpose, after all--to spend your money."

She had stood a stair or two below him; where, while she looked up at him beneath the high domed light of the hall, she rubbed with her palm the polished mahogany of the balustrade, which was mounted on fine ironwork, eighteenth-century English. "Because you think I must have so little? I've enough, at any rate--enough for us to take our hour. Enough," she had smiled, "is as good as a feast! And then," she had said, "it is n't of course a question of anything expensive, gorged with treasure as Maggie is; it is n't a question of competing or outshining. What, naturally, in the way of the priceless, HAS N'T she got? Mine is to be the offering of the poor--something precisely that no rich person COULD ever give her, and that, being herself too rich ever to buy it, she would therefore never have." Charlotte had spoken as if after so much thought. "Only as it can't be fine it ought to be funny--and that's the sort of thing to hunt for. Hunting in London, besides, is amusing in itself."

He recalled even how he had been struck with her word. "'Funny'?"

"Oh I don't mean a comic toy--I mean some little thing with a charm.