This made indeed a scant difference, for though he had during the last month done few things so much as attend his future wife on her making of purchases, the antiquarii as he called them with Charlotte, had n't been the great affair. Except in Bond Street, really, Maggie had had no use for them: her situation indeed in connexion with that order of traffic was full of consequences produced by her father's. Mr. Verver, one of the great collectors of the world, had n't left his daughter to prowl for herself; he had little to do with shops and was mostly, as a purchaser, approached privately and from afar. Great people, all over Europe, sought introductions to him; high personages, incredibly high, and more of them than would ever be known, solemnly sworn as every one was, in such cases, to discretion, high personages made up to him as the one man on the short authentic list likely to give the price. It had therefore been easy to settle, as they walked, that the tracks of the Ververs, daughter's as well as father's, were to be avoided; the importance only was that their talk about it led for a moment to the first words they had as yet exchanged on the subject of Maggie. Charlotte, still in the Park, proceeded to them--for it was she who began--with a serenity of appreciation that was odd, certainly, as a sequel to her words of ten minutes before. This was another note (101) on her--what he would have called another light--to her companion, who, though without giving a sign, admired, for what it was, the simplicity of her transition, a transition that took no trouble either to trace or to explain itself. She paused again an instant on the grass to make it; she stopped before him with a sudden "Anything of course, dear as she is, WILL do for her. I mean if I were to give her a pin-cushion from the Baker-Street Bazaar."
"That's exactly what I mean"--the Prince laughed out this allusion to their snatch of talk in Portland Place. "It's just what I suggested."
She took, however, no notice of the reminder; she went on in her own way. "But it is n't a reason. In that case one would never do anything for her. I mean," Charlotte explained, "if one took advantage of her character."
"Of her character?"
"We must n't take advantage of her character," the girl, again unheeding, pursued. "One must n't, if not for HER, at least for one's self. She saves one such trouble."
She had spoken thoughtfully, her eyes on her friend's; she might have been talking, preoccupied and practical, of some one with whom he was comparatively unconnected. "She certainly GIVES one no trouble," said the Prince. And then as if this were perhaps ambiguous or inadequate: "She's not selfish--God forgive her!--enough."
"That's what I mean," Charlotte instantly said. "She's not selfish enough.
There's nothing, absolutely, that one NEED do for her. She's so modest," she (102) developed--"she does n't miss things. I mean if you love her--or rather, I should say, if she loves you. She lets it go."
The Prince frowned a little--as a tribute after all to seriousness.
"She lets what--?"
"Anything--anything that you might do and that you don't. She lets everything go but her own disposition to be kind to you. It's of herself that she asks efforts--so far as she ever HAS to ask them. She has n't, much. She does everything herself. And that's terrible."
The Prince had listened; but, always with propriety, did n't commit himself. "Terrible?"
"Well, unless one's almost as good as she. It makes too easy terms for one. It takes stuff within one, so far as one's decency is concerned, to stand it. And nobody," Charlotte continued in the same manner, "is decent enough, good enough, to stand it--not without help from religion or something of that kind. Not without prayer and fasting--that is without taking great care. Certainly," she said, "such people as you and I are not."
The Prince, obligingly, thought an instant. "Not good enough to stand it?"
"Well, not good enough not rather to feel the strain. We happen each, I think, to be of the kind that are easily spoiled."
Her friend again, for propriety, followed the argument. "Oh I don't know. May not one's affection for her do something more for one's decency, as you call it, than her own generosity--her own affection, HER ''decency'--has the unfortunate virtue to undo?
(103) "Ah of course it must be all in that."
But she had made her question, all the same, interesting to him. "What it comes to--one can see what you mean--is the way she believes in one.
That is if she believes at all."
"Yes, that's what it comes to," said Charlotte Stant.
"And why," he asked almost soothingly, "should it be terrible?" He could n't at the worst see that.
"Because it's always so--the idea of having to pity people."
"Not when there's also with it the idea of helping them."
"Yes, but if we can't help them?"
"We CAN--we always can. That is," he competently added, "if we care for them. And that's what we're talking about."
"Yes"--she on the whole assented. "It comes back then to our absolutely refusing to be spoiled."
"Certainly. But everything," the Prince laughed as they went on--"all your 'decency,' I mean--comes back to that."
She walked beside him a moment. "It's just what I meant," she then reasonably said.