第134章 Chapter 2(3)

Blint; after which she had once more broken ground on the matter of the "type" of Gloucester. It brought her, as he came round the table to join her, yet another of his kind conscious stares, one of the looks, visibly beguiled but at the same time not invisibly puzzled, with which he had already shown his sense of this charming grace of her curiosity. It was as if he might for a moment be going to say: "You need n't PRETEND, dearest, quite so hard, need n't think it necessary to care quite so much!"--it was as if he stood there before her with some such easy intelligence, some such intimate reassurance, on his lips. Her answer would have been all ready--that she was n't in the least pretending; and she looked up at him, while he took her hand, with the maintenance, the real persistence, of her lucid little plan in her eyes. She wanted him to understand from that very moment that she was going to be WITH him again, quite with THEM, together, as she doubtless had n't been since the "funny" changes--that was really all one could call them--into which they had each, as for the sake of the others, too easily and too obligingly slipped. They had taken too much for granted that their life together required, as people in London said, a special "form"--which was very well so long as the form was kept only for the outside world and was made no more of among themselves than the pretty mould of an iced pudding, or something of that sort, into which, to help yourself, you (28) did n't hesitate to break with the spoon. So much as THAT she would, with an opening, have allowed herself furthermore to observe; she wanted him to understand how her scheme embraced Charlotte too; so that if he had but uttered the acknowledgement she judged him on the point of making--the acknowledgement of his catching at her brave little idea for their case--she would have found herself, as distinctly, voluble almost to eloquence.

What befell however was that even while she thus waited she felt herself present at a process taking place rather deeper within him than the occasion, on the whole, appeared to require--a process of weighing something in the balance, of considering, deciding, dismissing. He had guessed that she was there with an idea, there in fact by reason of her idea; only this, oddly enough, was what at the last stayed his words. She was helped to these perceptions by his now looking at her still harder than he had yet done--which really brought it to the turn of a hair for her that she did n't make sure his notion of her idea was the right one. It was the turn of a hair because he had possession of her hands and was bending toward her, ever so kindly, as if to see, to understand more, or possibly give more--she did n't know which; and that had the effect of simply putting her, as she would have said, in his power. She gave up, let her idea go, let everything go; her one consciousness was that he was taking her again into his arms. It was not till afterwards that she discriminated as to this; felt how the act operated with him INSTEAD of the words he had n't uttered--operated in his view as probably better (29) than any words, as always better in fact at any time than anything. Her acceptance of it, her response to it, inevitable, foredoomed, came back to her later on as a virtual assent to the assumption he had thus made that there was really nothing such a demonstration did n't anticipate and did n't dispose of, and also that the spring acting within herself might well have been beyond any other the impulse legitimately to provoke it. It made, for any issue, the third time since his return that he had drawn her to his breast- and at present, holding her to his side as they left the room, he kept her close for their moving into the hall and across it, kept her for their slow return together to the apartments above. He had been right, overwhelmingly right, as to the felicity of his tenderness and the degree of her sensibility, but even while she felt these things sweep all others away she tasted of a sort of terror of the weakness they produced in her. It was still for her that she had positively something to do, and that she must n't be weak for this, must much rather be strong. For many hours after, none the less, she remained weak--if weak it was; though holding fast indeed to the theory of her success, since her agitated overture had been after all so unmistakeably met.

She recovered soon enough on the whole the sense that this left her Charlotte always to deal with--Charlotte who at any rate, however SHE might meet overtures, must meet them at the worst more or less differently. Of that inevitability, of such other ranges of response as were open to Charlotte, Maggie took the measure in approaching her, on the morrow of her (30) return from Matcham, with the same show of desire to hear all her story. She wanted the whole picture from her, as she had wanted it from her companion, and, promptly, in Eaton Square, whither, without the Prince, she repaired almost ostentatiously for the purpose, this purpose only, she brought her repeatedly back to the subject, both in her husband's presence and during several scraps of independent colloquy. Before her father, instinctively, Maggie took the ground that his wish for interesting echoes would be not less than her own--allowing, that is, for everything his wife would already have had to tell him, for such passages between them as might have occurred since the evening before. Joining them after luncheon, reaching them, in her desire to proceed with the application of her idea, before they had quitted the breakfast-room, the scene of their midday meal, she referred, in her parent's presence, to what she might have lost by delay, she expressed the hope that there would be an anecdote or two left for her to pick up.