There was always, to cover all ambiguities, to constitute a fund of explanation for the divisions of Mrs. Verver's day, the circumstance that, at the point they had all reached together, Mrs. Verver was definitely and by general acclamation in charge of the "social relations" of the family, literally of those of the two households; as to her genius for representing which in the great world and in the grand style vivid evidence had more and more accumulated. It had been established in the two households at an early stage and with the highest good humour that Charlotte was a, was THE, "social success," whereas the Princess, though kind, though punctilious, though charming, though in fact the dearest little creature in the world AND the Princess into the bargain, was distinctly not, would distinctly never be, and might as well give it up altogether; whether through being above it or below it, too much outside of it or too much lost in it, too unequipped or too indisposed, did n't especially matter. What sufficed was that the whole thing, call it appetite or call it patience, the act of representation at large and the daily business of intercourse, fell (317) in with Charlotte's tested facility and, not much less visibly, with her accommodating, her generous view of her domestic use. She had come, frankly, into the connexion, to do and to be what she could, "no questions asked," and she had taken over accordingly as it stood, and in the finest practical spirit, the burden of a visiting-list that Maggie, originally, left to herself, and left even more to the Principino, had suffered to get inordinately out of hand.
She had in a word not only mounted cheerfully the London treadmill--she had handsomely professed herself, for the further comfort of the three others, sustained in the effort by a "frivolous side," if that were not too harsh a name for a pleasant constitutional curiosity. There were possibilities of dulness, ponderosities of practice, arid social sands, the bad quarters of an hour that turned up like false pieces in a debased currency, of which she made, on principle, very nearly as light as if she had n't been clever enough to distinguish. The Prince had, on this score, paid her his compliment soon after her return from her wedding-tour in America, where, by all accounts, she had wondrously borne the brunt; facing brightly, at her husband's side, everything that came up--and what had come, often, was beyond words: just as, precisely, with her own interest only at stake, she had thrown up the game during the visit paid before her marriage. The discussion of the American world, the comparison of notes, impressions and adventures, had been all at hand, as a ground of meeting for Mrs. Verver and her husband's son-in-law, from the hour of the reunion of the two couples. Thus it had been in (318) short that Charlotte could, for her friend's appreciation, so promptly make her point; even using expressions from which he let her see, at the hour, that he drew amusement of his own. "What could be more simple than one's going through with everything," she had asked, "when it's so plain a part of one's contract? I've got so much, by my marriage"--for she had never for a moment concealed from him how "much" she had felt it and was finding it--"that I should deserve no charity if I stinted my return. Not to do that, to give back on the contrary all one can, are just one's decency and one's honour and one's virtue. These things, henceforth, if you're interested to know, are my rule of life, the absolute little gods of my worship, the holy images set up on the wall. Oh yes, since I'm not a brute," she had wound up, "you shall see me as I AM!" Which was therefore as he had seen her--dealing always, from month to month, from day to day and from one occasion to the other, with the duties of a remunerated office.
Her perfect, her brilliant efficiency had doubtless all the while contributed immensely to the pleasant ease in which her husband and her husband's daughter were lapped. It had in fact probably done something more than this--it had given them a finer and sweeter view of the possible scope of that ease.
They had brought her in--on the crudest expression of it--to do the "worldly" for them, and she had done it with such genius that they had themselves in consequence renounced it even more than they had originally intended.
In proportion as she did it moreover was she to be relieved of other and humbler doings; which minor matters, (319) by the properest logic, devolved therefore upon Maggie, in whose chords and whose province they more naturally lay. Not less naturally, by the same token, they included the repair, at the hands of the latter young woman, of every stitch conceivably dropped by Charlotte in Eaton Square. This was homely work, but that was just what made it Maggie's. Bearing in mind dear Amerigo, who was so much of her own great mundane feather, and whom the homeliness in question did n't, no doubt, quite equally provide for--that would be, to balance, just in a manner Charlotte's very most charming function, from the moment Charlotte could be got adequately to recognise it.
Well, that Charlotte might be appraised as at last not ineffectually recognising it was a reflexion that, during the days with which we are actually engaged, completed in the Prince's breast these others, these images and ruminations of his leisure, these gropings and fittings of his conscience and his experience, that we have attempted to set in order there.
They bore him company, not insufficiently--considering in especial his fuller resources in that line--while he worked out to the last lucidity the principle on which he forbore either to follow up Fanny in Cadogan Place or to perpetrate the error of too marked an assiduity in Eaton Square.
