第143章 Chapter 3(4)

"Yes, and of my having wanted to let it act for him quietly--I mean without my insistence." She had, in her compressed state, another pause, and it made her feel as if she were immensely resisting. Strange enough was this sense for her, and altogether new, the sense of possessing, by miraculous help, some advantage that, absolutely then and there, in the carriage, as they rolled, she might either give up or keep. Strange, inexpressibly strange--so distinctly she saw that if she did give it up she should somehow give up everything for ever. And what her husband's grasp really meant, as her very bones registered, was that she SHOULD give it up: it was exactly for this that he had resorted to unfailing magic. He KNEW HOW to resort to it--he could be on occasion, as she had lately more than ever learned, so munificent a lover: all of which was precisely a part (57) of the character she had never ceased to regard in him as princely, a part of his large and beautiful ease, his genius for charm, for intercourse, for expression, for life. She should have but to lay her head back on his shoulder with a certain movement to make it definite for him that she did n't resist.

To this as they went every throb of her consciousness prompted her--every throb, that is, but one, the throb of her deeper need to know where she "really" was. By the time she had uttered the rest of her idea therefore she was still keeping her head and intending to keep it; though she was also staring out of the carriage-window with eyes into which the tears of suffered pain had risen, happily perhaps indistinguishable in the dusk.

She was making an effort that horribly hurt her, and as she could n't cry out her eyes swam in her silence. With them, all the same, through the square opening beside her, through the grey panorama of the London night, she achieved the feat of not losing sight of what she wanted; and her lips helped and protected her by being able to be gay. "It's not to leave you, my dear--for that he'll give up anything; just as he would go off anywhere, I think, you know, if you would go with him. I mean you and he alone,"

Maggie pursued with her gaze out of her window.

For which Amerigo's answer again took him a moment. "Ah the dear old boy! You'd like me to propose him something--?"

"Well, if you think you could bear it."

"And leave," the Prince asked, "you and Charlotte alone?"

"Why not?" Maggie had also to wait a minute, (58) but when she spoke it came clear. "Why should n't Charlotte be just one of MY reasons--my not liking to leave her? She has always been so good, so perfect, to me--but never so wonderfully as just now. We have somehow been more together--thinking for the time almost only of each other; it has been quite as in old days."

And she proceeded consummately, for she felt it as consummate: "It's as if we had been missing each other, had got a little apart--though going on so side by side. But the good moments, if one only waits for them," she hastened to add, "come round of themselves. Moreover you've seen for yourself, since you've made it up so to father; feeling for yourself in your beautiful way every difference, every air that blows; not having to be told or pushed, only being perfect to live with, through your habit of kindness and your exquisite instincts. But of course you've seen, all the while, that both he and I have deeply felt how you've managed; managed that he has n't been too much alone and that I on my side have n't appeared to--what you might call--neglect him. This is always," she continued, "what I can never bless you enough for; of all the good things you've done for me you've never done anything better." She went on explaining as for the pleasure of explaining--even though knowing he must recognise, as a part of his easy way too, her description of his large liberality. "Your taking the child down yourself, those days, and your coming each time to bring him away--nothing in the world, nothing you could have invented, would have kept father more under the charm. Besides, you know how you've (59) always suited him and how you've always so beautifully let it seem to him that he suits you. Only it has been these last weeks as if you wished--just in order to please him--to remind him of it afresh. So there it is," she wound up; "it's your doing. You've produced your effect--that of his wanting not to be, even for a month or two, where you're not. He does n't want to bother or bore you--THAT, I think, you know, he never has done; and if you'll only give me time I'll come round again to making it my care, as always, that he shan't. But he can't bear you out of his sight."

She had kept it up and up, filling it out, crowding it in; and all really without difficulty, for it was, every word of it, thanks to a long evolution of feeling, what she had been primed to the brim with. She made the picture, forced it upon him, hung it before him; remembering happily how he had gone so far, one day, supported by the Principino, as to propose the Zoo in Eaton Square, to carry with him there, on the spot, under this pleasant inspiration, both his elder and his younger companion, with the latter of whom he had taken the tone that they were introducing Granddaddy, Granddaddy nervous and rather funking it, to lions and tigers more or less at large.