“I’m sure there’s nothingIshould like to part with,” Pinnie returned; and while she surveyed the scene Lady Aurora, with discretion, to lighten Amanda’s responsibility, got up and turned to the window, which was open to the summer evening and admitted still the last rays of the long day. Hyacinth, after a moment, placed himself beside her, looking out with her at the dusky multitude of chimney-pots and the small black houses roofed with grimy tiles. The thick warm air of a London July floated beneath them, suffused with the everlasting uproar of the town, which appeared to have sunk into quietness but again became a mighty voice as soon as one listened for it; here and there, in poor windows, glimmered a turbid light, and high above, in a clearer smokeless zone, a sky still fair and luminous, a faint silver star looked down. The sky was the same that bent far away in the country over golden fields and purple hills and gardens where nightingales sang; but from this point of view everything that covered the earth was ugly and sordid and seemed to express or to represent the weariness of toil. Presently, to Hyacinth’s astonishment, Lady Aurora said to him: “You never came after to get the books.”
“Those you kindly offered to lend me? I didn’t know it was an understanding.”
She gave an uneasy laugh. “I’ve picked them out; they’re quite ready.”
“It’s awfully kind of you,” the young man hastened to say. “I’ll come and get them some day with pleasure.” He wasn’t very sure he would, but it was the least he could profess.
“She’ll tell you where I live, you know,” Lady Aurora went on with a movement of her head in the direction of the bed, as if she were too shy to mention it herself.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt she knows the way—she could tell me every street and every turn!” Hyacinth laughed.
“She has made me describe to her very often how I come and go,” his companion concurred. “I think few people know more about London than she. She never forgets anything.”
“She’s a wonderful little witch—she terrifies me!” he acknowledged.
Lady Aurora turned her modest eyes on him. “Oh, she’s so good, she’s so patient!”
“Yes, and so preternaturally wise and so awfully all there.”
“Ah, she’s immensely clever,” said her ladyship. “Which do you think the cleverer?”
“The cleverer?”
“Of the girl or her brother.”
“Oh, I think he’ll be some day prime minister of England.”
“Do you really? I’m so glad!” she cried with a flush of colour. “I do rejoice if you think that will be possible. You know it ought to be if things were right.”
Hyacinth had not professed this high faith for the purpose of playing on her ladyship’s feelings, but when he felt her intense agreement it was as if he had been making sport of her. Still he said no morethan he believed when he observed in a moment that he had the greatest expectations of Paul Muniment’s future: he was sure the world would hear of him, that England would need him, that the public some day would acclaim him. It was impossible to know him without feeling he was very strong and must play some important part.
“Yes, people wouldn’t believe—they wouldn’t believe.” She abounded in his sense and he could measure the good he did her. It was moreover a pleasure to himself to place on record his opinion of his friend; it seemed to make that opinion more clear, to give it the force of an invocation or a prophecy. This was especially the case when he asked why on earth nature had endowed Paul Muniment with such extraordinary powers of mind, and powers of body too—because he was as strong as a horse—if it hadn’t been intended he should do something supreme for his fellow-men. Hyacinth confided to her ladyship that he thought the people in his own class generally very stupid—distinctly what he should call third-rate minds. He wished it hadn’t been so, for heaven knew he felt kindly to them and only asked to cast his lot with theirs; but he was obliged to confess that centuries of poverty, of ill-paid toil, of bad insufficient food and wretched housing hadn’t a favourable effect on the higher faculties. All the more reason that when there was a splendid exception like their friend it should count for a tremendous force—it had so much to make up for, so many to act for. And then Hyacinth repeated that in his own low walk of life people had really not the faculty of thought; their minds had been simplified—reduced to two or three elements. He saw that such judgements made his fellow-guest very uncomfortable; she turned about, she twisted herself vaguely as if she wished to protest, but shewas far too considerate to interrupt him. He had no wish to worry her, but there were times when he couldn’t withstand the perverse satisfaction of insisting on his lowliness of station, of turning the knife in the wound inflicted by such explicit reference, and of letting it be seen that if his place in the world was immeasurably small he at least had no illusions about either himself or his species. Lady Aurora replied as quickly as possible that she knew a great deal about the poor—not the poor after the fashion of Rosy, but the terribly, hopelessly poor, with whom she was more familiar than Hyacinth would perhaps believe—and that she was often struck with their great talents and their quick wit, with their command of conversation really of much more interest to her than most of what one usually heard in drawing-rooms. She often found them immensely clever.
Hyacinth smiled at her and said: “Ah when you get to the lowest depths of poverty they may become rich and rare again. But I’m afraid I haven’t gone so far down. In spite of my opportunities I don’t know many absolute paupers.”
“I know a great many.” Lady Aurora hesitated as if she didn’t like to swagger, but she brought it out. “I daresay I know more than any one.” There was something touching and beautiful to Hyacinth in this simple and diffident claim: it confirmed his impression that she was in some mysterious, incongruous and even slightly ludicrous manner a true heroine, a creature of a noble ideal. She perhaps guessed he was indulging in reflexions that might be favourable to her, for she said precipitately the next minute, as if there were nothing she dreaded so much as the danger of a compliment: “I think your aunt’s so very attractive—and I’m sure dear Rosy thinks so.” No sooner had shespoken than she blushed again; it appeared to have occurred to her that he might suppose she wished to contradict him by presenting this case of his aunt as a proof that the baser sort, even in a prosaic upper layer, were not without redeeming points. There was no reason why she should not have had this intention; so without sparing her he replied:
“You mean she’s an exception to what I was saying?”
She stammered a little; then at last, as if, since he wouldn’t spare her, she wouldn’t spare him either: “Yes, and you’re an exception too; you’ll not make me believe you’re wanting in intelligence. The Muniments don’t think so,” she added.
“No more do I myself; but that doesn’t prove that exceptions are not frequent. I’ve blood in my veins that’s not the blood of the people.”
“Oh, I see,” said Lady Aurora sympathetically. And with a smile she went on: “Then you’re all the more of an exception—in the upper class!”
Her way of taking it was the kindest in the world, but it didn’t blind Hyacinth to the fact that from his own point of view he had been extraordinarily indiscreet. He had believed a moment before that he would have been proof against the strongest temptation to refer to the mysteries of his lineage, inasmuch as if made in a boastful spirit (and he had no desire as yet to treat it as an exercise in humility) any such reference would inevitably contain an element of the grotesque. He had never opened his lips to any one about his birth since the dreadful days when the question was discussed with Mr. Vetch’s assistance in Lomax Place; never even to Paul Muniment, never to Millicent Henning nor to Eustache Poupin. He had his impression that people had ideas about him, and with some of Miss Henning’s he had been made acquainted: these were of such a nature thathe sometimes wondered if the tie uniting him to her were not on her own side a secret determination to satisfy her utmost curiosity before she had done with him. But he flattered himself he was impenetrable, and none the less he had begun to swagger idiotically the first time a temptation (really to call a temptation) presented itself. He turned crimson as soon as he had spoken, partly at the sudden image of what he had to swagger about and partly at the absurdity of a challenge from the model of civility before him. He hoped she didn’t particularly regard what he had said—and indeed she gave no sign whatever of being startled by his claim to a pedigree, she had too much quick delicacy for that; she appeared to notice only the symptoms of confusion that followed. But as soon as possible he gave himself a lesson in humility by remarking: “I gather you spend most of your time among the poor and I’m sure you carry blessings with you. But I frankly confess I don’t understand a lady’s giving herself up to people like us when there’s no obligation. Wretched company we must be when there’s so much better to be had.”
“I like it very much—you don’t understand.”
“Precisely—that’s what I say. Our little friend on the bed is perpetually talking about your house, your family, your splendours, your gardens and greenhouses. They must be magnificent of course—”
“Oh, I wish she wouldn’t; really I wish she wouldn’t. It makes one feel dreadfully!” Lady Aurora interposed with vehemence.
“Ah, you had better give her her way; it’s such a pleasure to her.”
“Yes, more than to any of us!” sighed her ladyship helplessly.
“Well, how can you leave all those beautiful things to come and breathe this beastly air, surroundyourself with hideous images and associate with people whose smallest fault is that they’re ignorant, brutal and dirty? I don’t speak of the ladies here present,” Hyacinth added with the manner which most made Millicent Henning (who at once admired and hated it) wonder where on earth he had got it.
“Oh, I wish I could make you understand!” cried Lady Aurora, looking at him with troubled, appealing eyes and as if he were unexpectedly discouraging.
“But when all’s said I think I do understand! Charity exists in your nature as a kind of passion.”
“Yes, yes, it’s a kind of passion!” her ladyship repeated eagerly, all thankful for the word. “I don’t know if it’s charity—I don’t mean that. But whatever it is it’s a passion—it’s my life—it’s all I care for.” She faltered as if there might be something indecent in the confession or uncertain in the recipient; and then evidently was mastered by the comfort of being able to justify herself for an eccentricity that had excited notice, as well as by the luxury of discharging her soul of a long accumulation of intense things. “Already when I was fifteen years old I wanted to sell all I had and give to the poor. And ever since I’ve wanted to do something: it has seemed as if my heart would break if I shouldn’t be able!”
Hyacinth was struck with a great respect, which however didn’t prevent his presently saying, though in words that sounded patronising even to himself: “I suppose you’re very religious.”
She looked away into the thickening dusk, at the smutty housetops, the blurred emanation of lamp-light above the streets. “I don’t know. One has one’s ideas. Some of them may be strange. I think a great many clergymen do good, but there are others I don’t like at all. I daresay we had toomany always at home; my father likes them so particularly. I think I’ve known too many bishops, I’ve had the church too much on my back. I daresay they wouldn’t think at home, you know, that one was quite what one ought to be; but of course they consider me very odd in every way, as there’s no doubt I am. I should tell you that I don’t tell them everything; for what’s the use when people don’t understand? We’re twelve at home and eight of us girls; and if you think it’s so very splendid, andshethinks so, I should like you both to try it for a little! My father isn’t rich and there’s only one of us, Eva, married, and we’re not at all handsome, and—oh there are all kinds of things,” the young woman went on, looking round at him an instant through her sense of being launched. “I don’t like society, and neither would you if you were to see the kind there is in London—at least in some parts,” Lady Aurora added considerately. “I daresay you wouldn’t believe all the humbuggery and the tiresomeness that one has to go through. But I’ve got out of it; I do as I like, though it has been rather a struggle. I have my liberty, and that’s the greatest blessing in life except the reputation of being queer, and even a little mad, which is a greater advantage still. I’m a little mad, you know; you needn’t be surprised if you hear it. That’s because I stop in town when they go into the country; all the autumn, all the winter, when there’s no one here (except three or four millions) and the rain drips, drips, drips from the trees in the big dull park where my people live. I daresay I oughtn’t to say such things to you, but, as I tell you, I’m quite a proper lunatic and I might as well keep up the character. When one’s one of eight daughters and there’s very little money (for any ofusat least) and nothing to do but to go out with three or four others in mackintoshes,one can easily go off one’s head. Of course there’s the village, and it’s not at all a nice one, and there are the people to look after, and goodness knows they’re in want of it; but one must work with the vicarage, and at the vicarage are four more daughters, all old maids, and it’s dreary and dreadful and one has too much of it, for they don’t understand what one thinks or feels or a single word one says to them. Besides, theyarestupid, I admit, the country poor; they’re very very dense. I like Camberwell better,” said Lady Aurora, smiling and taking breath at the end of her nervous, hurried, almost incoherent speech, of which she had delivered herself pantingly, with strange intonations and contortions, as if afraid that from one moment to the other she would repent, not of her confidence but of her egotism.
It placed her for Hyacinth in an unexpected light, making him feel that her awkward aristocratic spinsterhood was the cover of tumultuous passions. No one could have less the appearance of being animated by a vengeful irony; but he saw this timorous, scrupulous, though clearly all generous, creature to be evidently most a person not to spare, wherever she could prick them, the institutions among which she had been brought up and against which she had violently reacted. He had always supposed a reactionary to mean a backslider from the liberal faith, but Rosy’s devotee gave a new value to the term; she appeared to have been driven to her present excesses by the squire and the parson and the conservative influences of that upper-class British home which our young man had always held the highest fruit of civilisation. It was clear that her ladyship was an original, and an original with force; but it gave Hyacinth a real pang to hear her make light of Inglefield (especially the park) and of the opportunities that must have abounded in BelgraveSquare. It had been his belief that in a world of suffering and injustice these things were if not the most righteous at least the most fascinating. If they didn’t give one the finest sensations where were such sensations to be had? He looked at Lady Aurora with a face that was a tribute to her sudden vividness while he said: “I can easily understand your wanting to do some good in the world, because you’re a kind of saint.”
“A very curious kind!” laughed her ladyship.
“But I don’t understand your not liking what your position gives you.”
“I don’t know anything about my position. I want to live!”
“And do you callthislife?”
“I’ll tell you what my position is if you want to know: it’s the deadness of the grave!”
Hyacinth was startled by her tone, but he nevertheless laughed back at her: “Ah, as I say, you’re a regular saint!” She made no reply, for at that moment the door opened and Paul Muniment’s tall figure emerged from the blackness of the staircase into the twilight, now very faint, of the room. Lady Aurora’s eyes as they rested on him seemed to declare that such a vision as that at least was life. Another person as tall as himself appeared behind him, and Hyacinth recognised with astonishment their insinuating friend Captain Sholto. Paul had brought him up for Rosy’s entertainment, being ready, and more than ready, always to introduce any one in the world, from the prime minister to the common hangman, who might give that young lady a sensation. They must have met at the “Sun and Moon,” and if the Captain, some accident smoothing the way, had made him half as many advances as he had made some other people, Hyacinth could see that it wouldn’t take long for Paul to lay himunder contribution. But what the mischief was the Captain up to? It can’t be said that our young man arrived this evening at an answer to that question. The occasion proved highly festal and the hostess rose to it without lifting her head from the pillow. Her brother introduced Captain Sholto as a gentleman who had a great desire to know extraordinary people, and she made him take possession of the chair at her bedside, out of which Miss Pynsent quickly edged herself, and asked him who he was and where he came from and how Paul had made his acquaintance and whether he had many friends in Camberwell. Sholto had not the same grand air that hovered about him at the theatre; he was dressed with ingenious cheapness, to an effect coinciding, however different the cause, with poor Hyacinth’s own; but his disguise prompted our young man to wonder what made him so unmistakably a gentleman in spite of it—in spite too of his rather overdoing the manner of being appreciative even to rapture and thinking everything and every one most charming and curious. He stood out, in poor Rosy’s tawdry little room, among her hideous attempts at decoration, and looked to Hyacinth a being from another sphere, playing over the place and company a smile (one couldn’t call it false or unpleasant, yet it was distinctly not natural) of which he had got the habit in camps and courts. It became intense when it rested on our hero, whom he greeted as he might have done a dear young friend from whom he had been long and painfully separated. He was easy, he was familiar, he was exquisitely benevolent and bland—he was altogether a problem.
Rosy was a match for him, however; he evidently didn’t puzzle her in the least and she thought his visit the most natural thing in the world. Sheexpressed all the gratitude decency required, but appeared to assume that people who climbed her stairs would always find themselves repaid. She remarked that her brother must have met him for the first time that day, since the way he sealed a new acquaintance was usually by bringing the person immediately to call on her. And when the Captain said that if she didn’t like them he supposed the poor wretches were dropped on the spot she admitted that this would be true if it ever happened she disapproved: as yet, however, she had not been obliged to draw the line. This was perhaps partly because he hadn’t brought up any of his awful firebrands, the people he knew for unmentionable reasons. Of such in general she had a very small opinion, and she wouldn’t conceal from Captain Sholto that she hoped he wasn’t one of them. Rosy spoke as if her brother represented the Camberwell district in the House of Commons and she had discovered that a parliamentary career lowered the moral tone. The Captain nevertheless entered quite into her views and told her that it was as common friends of Mr. Hyacinth Robinson Mr. Muniment and he had come together; they were both so fond of him that this had immediately constituted a kind of tie. On hearing himself commemorated in such a brilliant way Mr. Hyacinth Robinson averted his head; he saw Captain Sholto might be trusted to make as great an effort for Rosy’s entertainment as he gathered he had made for Milly Henning’s that evening at the theatre. There were not chairs enough to go round, and Paul fetched a three-legged stool from his own apartment, after which he undertook to make tea for the company with the aid of a tin kettle and a spirit-lamp—these implements having been set out, flanked by half-a-dozen cups, in honour, presumably, of the little dressmaker, who had comesuch a distance. The little dressmaker, Hyacinth observed with pleasure, fell into earnest conversation with Lady Aurora, who bent over her, flushed, smiling, stammering and apparently so nervous that Pinnie, in comparison, was majestic and serene. They communicated presently to Hyacinth a plan they had arrived at as by a quick freemasonry, the idea that Miss Pynsent should go home to Belgrave Square with her ladyship and settle certain preliminaries in regard to the pink dressing-gown, toward which, if Miss Pynsent assented, her ladyship hoped to be able to contribute sundry brown “breadths” that had proved their quality in honourable service and might be dyed to the proper hue. Pinnie, Hyacinth could see, was in a state of religious exaltation; the visit to Belgrave Square and the idea of co-operating in such a manner with the nobility were privileges she couldn’t take solemnly enough. The latter luxury indeed she began to enjoy without delay, Lady Aurora suggesting that Mr. Muniment might be rather awkward about making tea and that they should take the business off his hands. Paul gave it up to them with a pretence of compassion for their conceit and the observation that at any rate it took two women to supplant one man; and Hyacinth drew him to the window to ask where he had encountered Sholto and how he liked him.
They had met in Bloomsbury, as Hyacinth supposed, and Sholto had made up to him very much as a country curate might make up to an archbishop. He wanted to know what he thought of this and that: of the state of the labour market at the East End, of the terrible case of the old woman who had starved to death at Walham Green, of the practicability of more systematic out-of-door agitation and of the prospect of their getting one of their own men—one of the Bloomsbury lot—into the House.“He was mighty civil,” Muniment said, “and I don’t find that he has yet picked my pocket. He looked as if he would like me to suggest thatheshould stand as one of our own men, one of the Bloomsbury lot. He asks too many questions, but makes up for it by not paying any attention to the answers. He told me he’d give the world to see a really superior workingman’s ‘interior.’ I didn’t know at first just where he proposed to cut me open: he wanted a favourable specimen, one of the best; he had seen one or two that he didn’t believe to be up to the average. I suppose he meant Schinkel’s, the cabinetmaker’s, neat home, and he wanted to compare. I told him I didn’t know what sort of a specimen my place would be, but that he was welcome to look in and that it contained at any rate one or two original features. I expect he has found that’s the case—with Rosy and the noble lady. I wanted to show him off to Rosy; he’s good for that if he isn’t good for anything else. I told him we expected a little company this evening, so it might be a good time; and he assured me that to mingle in such an occasion as that was the dream of his existence. He seemed in a rare hurry, as if I were going to show him a hidden treasure, and insisted on driving me over in a hansom. Perhaps his idea is to introduce the use of cabs among the working-classes; certainly I’ll work to return him if that’s to be his platform. On our way over he talked to me about you; told me you were an intimate friend of his.”
“What did he say about me?” Hyacinth asked with promptness.
“Vain little beggar!”
“Did he call me that?” said Hyacinth ingenuously.
“He said you were simply astonishing.”
“Simply astonishing?” Hyacinth repeated.
“For a person of your low extraction.”
“Well, I may be rum, but he is certainly rummer. Don’t you think so now you know him?”
Paul eyed his young friend. “Do you want to know what he is? He’s a tout.”
“A tout? What do you mean?”
“Well, a cat’s-paw, if you like better.”
Hyacinth stared. “For whom, pray?”
“Or a deep-sea fisherman, if you like better still. I give you your choice of comparisons. I made them up as we came along in the hansom. He throws his nets and hauls in the little fishes—the pretty little shining, wriggling fishes. They are all forher; she swallows ’em down.”
“For her? Do you mean the Princess?”
“Who else should I mean? Take care, my tadpole!”
“Why should I take care? The other day you told me not to.”
“Yes, I remember. But now I see more.”
“Did he speak of her? What did he say?” Hyacinth eagerly asked.
“I can’t tell you now what he said, but I’ll tell you what I guessed.”
“And what’s that?”
They had been talking of course in a very low tone, and their voices were covered by Rosy’s chatter in the corner, by the liberal laughter with which Captain Sholto accompanied it, and by the much more discreet, though earnest, intermingled accents of Lady Aurora and Miss Pynsent. But Muniment spoke more softly still—Hyacinth felt a kind of suspense—as he replied in a moment: “Why, she’s a monster!”
“A monster?” repeated our young man, from whom, this evening, his friend was destined to draw ejaculations and echoes.
Paul glanced toward the Captain, who was apparentlymore and more engaged by Rosy. “In him I think there’s no great harm. He’s only a patient angler.”
It must be admitted that Captain Sholto justified to a certain extent this definition by the manner in which he baited his hook for such little facts as might help him to a more intimate knowledge of his host and hostess. When the tea was made Rosy asked Miss Pynsent to be so good as to hand it about. They must let her poor ladyship rest a little, mustn’t they?—and Hyacinth could see that in her innocent but inveterate self-complacency she wished to reward and encourage the dressmaker, draw her out and present her still more by offering her this graceful exercise. Sholto sprang up, however, and begged Pinnie to let him relieve her, taking a cup from her hand; and poor Pinnie, who noted in a moment that he was some kind of uncanny masquerader, who was bewildered by the strange mixture of elements that surrounded her and unused to being treated like a duchess (for the Captain’s manner was a triumph of respectful gallantry), collapsed on the instant into a chair, appealing to Lady Aurora with a frightened smile and conscious that, deeply versed as she might be in the theory of decorum, she had no precedent that could meet such an occasion. “Now how many families would there be in such a house as this, and what should you say about the sanitary arrangements? Would there be others on this floor—what is it, the third, the fourth?—beside yourselves, you know, and should you call it a fair example of a tenement of its class?” It was with such inquiries as this that the good gentleman beguiled their tea-drinking, while Hyacinth made the reflexion that, though he evidently meant them very well, they were characterised by a want of fine tact, by too patronising a curiosity. The Captain invited information asto the position in life, the avocations and habits of the other lodgers, the rent they paid, their relations with each other, both in and out of the family. “Now would there be a good deal of close packing, do you suppose, and any perceptible want of—a—sobriety?”
Paul Muniment, who had swallowed his cup of tea at a single gulp—there was no offer of a second—gazed out of the window into the dark, which had now come on, with his hands in his pockets, whistling, impolitely, no doubt, but with extreme animation. He had the manner of having made over their visitor altogether to Rosy and of thinking that whatever that personage said or did was all so much grist to her indefatigable little mill. Lady Aurora writhed in her pain, and it is a proof of the degree to which our slight hero had the instincts of a man of the world that he guessed exactly how vulgar she thought this new acquaintance. She was doubtless rather vexed also—Hyacinth had learned this evening that Lady Aurora could be vexed—at the alacrity of Rosy’s responses: the little person in the bed gave the Captain every satisfaction, considered his questions as a proper tribute to humble respectability and supplied him, as regards the population of Audley Court, with statistics and anecdotes picked up by mysterious processes of her own. At last her ladyship, on whom Paul Muniment had not been at pains to bestow much conversation, took leave of her, signifying to Hyacinth that for the rest of the evening she would assume the care of Miss Pynsent. Pinnie might have been consciously laid bare for monstrous rites now that she was really about to be transported to Belgrave Square, but Hyacinth was sure she would acquit herself only the more honourably; and when he offered to call for her there later on she reminded him under her breath and with a small sad smile of the many years during which, after nightfall,she carried her work, pinned up in a cloth, about London.
Paul Muniment, according to his habit, lighted Lady Aurora downstairs, and Captain Sholto and Hyacinth were alone for some minutes with Rosy; which gave the former, taking up his hat and stick, an opportunity to say to his young friend: “Which way are you going? Not my way, by chance?” Hyacinth saw that he hoped for his company, and he became conscious that, strangely as Paul had indulged him and too promiscuously investigating as he had just shown himself, this ingratiating character was not more easy to resist than he had been the other night at the theatre. The Captain bent over Rosy’s bed as if she had been a fine lady on a satin sofa, promising to come back very soon and very often, and the two men went downstairs. On their way they met their host coming up, and Hyacinth felt rather ashamed, he could scarce tell why, that his friend should see him marching off with the “tout.” After all, if Paul had brought him to see his sister might not Paul’s pupil and devotee at least walk with him? “I’m coming again, you know, very often. I daresay you’ll find me a great bore!” the Captain announced as he bade good-night to Muniment. “Your sister’s a most interesting creature, one of the most interesting creatures I’ve ever seen, and the whole thing, you know, exactly the type of place I wanted to get at, only much more—really much more—original and curious. It has been a jolly glimpse—a grand success!”
And the Captain felt his way down the dusky shaft, while Paul Muniment, above, gave him the benefit of rather a wavering candlestick and answered his civil speech with an “Oh well, you take us as you find us, you know!” and an outburst of frank but not unfriendly laughter.
Half an hour later Hyacinth found himself in Captain Sholto’s chambers, seated on a big divan covered with Persian rugs and cushions and smoking the most expensive cigar that had ever touched his lips. As they left Audley Court the Captain had taken his arm and they had walked along together in a desultory, colloquial manner, till on Westminster Bridge (they had followed the embankment beneath Saint Thomas’s Hospital) Sholto brought out: “By the way, why shouldn’t you come home with me and see my little place? I’ve a few things that might amuse you—some pictures, some odds and ends I’ve picked up, and a few bindings; you might tell me what you think of them.” Hyacinth assented without demur; he had still in his ear the reverberation of the Captain’s inquiries in Rosy’s room, and he saw no reason why he on his side shouldn’t embrace an occasion of ascertaining how, as his companion would have said, a man of fashion would live now.
This particular specimen lived in a large old-fashioned house in Queen Anne Street, of which he occupied the upper floors, where he had filled the high wainscoted rooms with the spoils of travel and the ingenuities of modern taste. There was not a country in the world he appeared not to have ransacked, and to Hyacinth his trophies represented a wonderfully long purse. The whole establishment, from the low-voiced inexpressive valet who, after he had poured brandy into tall tumblers, solemnised the very popping of soda-water corks, to the quaint little silver receptacle in which he was invited to deposit the ashes of his cigar, was such a revelation for our appreciative youth that he felt himself hushed and depressed, so poignant was the thought that it took thousands of things he then should never possess nor know to make a civilised being. He had often in evening walks wondered what was behind the wallsof certain ample bright-windowed houses in the West End, and now he got an idea. The first effect of the idea was to lay him rather flat.
“Well now, tell me what you thought of our friend the Princess,” the Captain said, thrusting out the loose yellow slippers his servant had helped to exchange for his shoes. He spoke as if he had been waiting impatiently for the proper moment to ask that question, so much might depend on the answer.
“She’s beautiful—beautiful,” Hyacinth answered almost dreamily while his eyes wandered all over the room.
“She was so interested in all you said to her; she’d like so much to see you again. She means to write to you—I suppose she can address to the ‘Sun and Moon’?—and I hope you’ll go to her house if she proposes a day.”
“I don’t know—I don’t know. It seems so strange.”
“What seems strange, my dear chap?”
“Everything! My sitting here with you; my introduction to that lady; the idea of her wanting, as you say, to see me again and of her writing to me; and this whole place of yours, with all its dim rich curiosities hanging on the walls and glinting in the light of that rose-coloured lamp. You yourself too—you’re strangest of all.”
The Captain looked at him so silently and so fixedly, through the fumes of their tobacco, after he had made this last charge that Hyacinth thought he was perhaps offended; but this impression was presently dissipated by further signs of sociability and hospitality, and Sholto took occasion later to let him know how important it was, in the days they were living in, not to have too small a measure of the usual, destined as they certainly were—“in the whole matter of the relations of class with classand all that sort of thing, you know”—to witness some very startling developments. The Captain spoke as if, for his part, he were a child of his age (so that he only wanted to see all it could show him) down to the points of his yellow slippers. Hyacinth felt that he himself had not been very satisfactory about the Princess; but as his nerves began to tremble a little more into tune with the situation he repeated to his host what Milly had said about her at the theatre—asked if this young lady had correctly understood him in believing she had been turned out of the house by her husband.
“Yes, he literally pushed her into the street—or into the garden; I believe the scene took place in the country. But perhaps Miss Henning didn’t mention, or perhaps I didn’t, that the Prince would at the present hour give everything he owns in the world to get her back. Fancy such an absurd scene!” said the Captain, laughing in a manner that struck Hyacinth as rather profane.
He stared with dilated eyes at this picture, which seemed to demand a comparison with the only incident of the sort that had come within his experience—the forcible ejection of intoxicated females from public-houses. “That magnificent being—what had she done?”
“Oh, she had made him feel he was an ass!” the Captain answered promptly. He turned the conversation to Miss Henning; said he was so glad Hyacinth gave him an opportunity to speak of her. He got on with her famously; perhaps she had told him. They became immense friends—en tout bien tout honneur, s’entend. Now,therewas another London type, plebeian but brilliant; and how little justice one usually did it, how magnificent it was! But she of course was a wonderful specimen. “My dear fellow, I’ve seen many women, and the womenof many countries,” the Captain went on, “and I’ve seen them as intimately as you like, and I know what I’m talking about; and when I tell you that that one—that one—!” Then he suddenly paused, laughing in his democratic way. “But perhaps I’m going too far: you must always pull me up, you know, when I do. At any rate I congratulate you; I do right heartily. Have another cigar. Now what sort of—a—salary would she receive at her big shop, you know? I know where it is; I mean to go there and buy some pocket-handkerchiefs.”
Hyacinth knew neither how far Captain Sholto had been going, nor exactly on what he congratulated him; and he pretended at least an equal ignorance on the subject of Millicent’s pecuniary gains. He didn’t want to talk about her, moreover, nor about his own life; he wanted to talk about the Captain’s and to elicit information that would be in harmony with his romantic chambers, which reminded one somehow of certain of Bulwer’s novels. His host gratified this pretension most liberally and told him twenty stories of things of interest, often of amazement, that had happened to him in Albania, in Madagascar and even in Paris. Hyacinth induced him easily to talk about Paris (from a different point of view from M. Poupin’s) and sat there drinking in enchantments. The only thing that fell below the high level of his entertainment was the bindings of his friend’s books, which he told him frankly, with the conscience of an artist, were not up to the mark. After he left Queen Anne Street he was quite too excited to go straight home; he walked about with his mind full of images and strange speculations till the grey London streets began to clear with the summer dawn.
The aspect of South Street, Mayfair, on a Sunday afternoon in August, is not enlivening, yet the Prince had stood for ten minutes gazing out of the window at the genteel vacancy of the scene; at the closed blinds of the opposite houses, the lonely policeman on the corner, covering a yawn with a white cotton hand, the low-pitched light itself, which seemed conscious of an obligation to observe the decency of the British Sabbath. Our personage, however, had a talent for that kind of attitude: it was one of the things by which he had exasperated his wife; he could remain motionless, with the aid of some casual support for his high, lean person, considering serenely and inexpressively any object that might lie before him and presenting his aristocratic head at a favourable angle, for periods of extraordinary length. On first coming into the room he had given some attention to its furniture and decorations, perceiving at a glance that they were rich and varied; some of the things he recognised as old friends, odds and ends the Princess was fond of, which had accompanied her in her remarkable wanderings, while others were unfamiliar and suggested vividly that she had not ceased to “collect.” He made two reflexions: one was that she was living as expensively as ever; the other that, however this might be, no one had such a feeling as she for themise-en-scèneof life, such atalent for arranging a room. She had always, wherever she was, the most charming room in Europe.
It was his impression that she had taken the house in South Street but for three months; yet, gracious heaven, what had she not put into it? The Prince asked himself this question without violence, for that was not to be his line to-day. He could be angry to a point at which he himself was often frightened, but he honestly believed this to be only when he had been baited past endurance, so that as a usual thing he was really as mild and accommodating as the extreme urbanity of his manner appeared to announce. There was indeed nothing to suggest to the world in general that he was an impracticable or vindictive nobleman: his features were not regular and his complexion had a bilious tone; but his dark brown eye, which was at once salient and dull, expressed benevolence and melancholy; his head drooped from his long neck in a considerate, attentive style; and his close-cropped black hair, combined with a short, fine, pointed beard, completed his resemblance to some old portrait of a personage of distinction under the Spanish dominion at Naples. To-day at any rate he had come in conciliation, almost in humility, and that is why he didn’t permit himself even to murmur at the long delay he had to accept. He knew very well that if his wife should consent to take him back it would be only after a probation to which this little wait in her drawing-room was a trifle. It was a quarter of an hour before the door opened, and even then it was not the Princess who appeared, but only Madame Grandoni.
Their greeting was at first all a renouncement of words. She came to him with both hands outstretched, and took his own and held them a while, looking up at him with full benignity. She had elongated her florid, humorous face to a degree that was almost comical, and the pair might have passed,in their silent solemnity, for acquaintances meeting in a house in which last obsequies were about to take place. It was indeed a house on which death had descended, as he very soon learned from Madame Grandoni’s expression; something had perished there for ever and he might proceed to bury it as soon as he liked. His wife’s ancient German friend, however, was not a person to sustain that note very long, and when, after she had made him sit down on the sofa beside her, she shook her head slowly and definitely several times, it was with a brow on which a more genial appreciation of the facts had already begun to appear.
“Never—never—never?” said the Prince in a deep hoarse voice, a voice at variance with his attenuated capacity. He had much of the complexion which in late-coming members of long-descended races we qualify to-day as effete; but his tone might have served for the battle-cry of some deep-chested fighting ancestor.
“Surely you know your wife as well as I,” she replied in Italian, which she evidently spoke with facility, though with a strong guttural accent. “I’ve been talking with her: that’s what has made me keep you. I’ve urged her to see you. I’ve told her that this could do no harm and would pledge her to nothing. But you know your wife,” Madame Grandoni repeated with an intensity now much relaxed.
Prince Casamassima looked down at his boots. “How can one ever know a person like that? I hoped she’d see me five little minutes.”
“For what purpose? Have you anything to propose?”
“For what purpose? To rest my eyes on her beautiful face.”
“Did you come to England for that?”
“For what else should I have come?” the Prince asked as he turned his blighted gaze to the opposite side of South Street.
“In London, such a day as this,già,” said the old lady sympathetically. “I’m very sorry for you; but if I had known you were coming I’d have written to you that you might spare yourself the pain.”
He gave a deep interminable sigh. “You ask me what I wish to propose. What I wish to propose is that my wife shouldn’t kill me inch by inch.”
“She’d be much more likely to do that if you lived with her!” Madame Grandoni cried.
“Cara amica, she doesn’t appear to have killed you,” the melancholy nobleman returned.
“Oh, me? I’m past killing. I’m as hard as a stone. I went through my miseries long ago; I suffered what you’ve not had to suffer; I wished for death many times and I survived it all. Our troubles don’t kill us,Principe mio; it’s we who must try to kill them. I’ve buried not a few. Besides, Christina’s fond of me, the devil knows why!” Madame Grandoni added.
“And you’re so good to her,” said the Prince, who laid his hand on her fat wrinkled fist.
“Che vuole?I’ve known her so long. And she has some such great qualities.”
“Ah, to whom do you say it?” And he gazed at his boots again, for some moments, in silence. Suddenly he resumed: “How does she look to-day?”
“She always looks the same: like an angel who came down from heaven yesterday and has been rather disappointed in her first day on earth!”
The Prince was evidently a man of a simple nature, and Madame Grandoni’s rather violent metaphor took his fancy. His face lighted up a little and he replied with eagerness: “Ah, she’s the only woman I’ve ever seen whose beauty never for a moment fallsbelow itself. She has no bad days. She’s so handsome when she’s angry!”
“She’s very handsome to-day, but she’s not angry,” said the old lady.
“Not when my name was announced?”
“I was not with her then; but when she sent for me and asked me to see you it was quite without passion. And even when I argued with her and tried to persuade her (and she doesn’t like that, you know) she was still perfectly quiet.”
“She hates me, she despises me too much, eh?”
“How can I tell, dear Prince, when she never mentions you?”
“Never, never?”
“That’s much better than if she railed at you and abused you.”
“You mean it should give me more hope for the future?” the young man asked quickly.
His old friend had a pause. “I mean it’s better forme,” she answered with a laugh of which the friendly ring covered as much as possible her equivocation.
“Ah, you like me enough to care,” he murmured as he turned on her his sad grateful eyes.
“I’m very sorry for you.Ma che vuole?”
The Prince had apparently nothing to suggest and only exhaled in reply another gloomy groan. Then he inquired if his wife pleased herself in that country and if she intended to pass the summer in London. Would she remain long in England and—might he take the liberty to ask?—what were her plans? Madame Grandoni explained that the Princess had found the English capital much more to her taste than one might have expected, and that as for plans she had as many or as few as she had always had. Had he ever known her to carry out any arrangement or to do anything of any kind she had prepared orpromised? She always at the last moment did the other thing, the one that had been out of the question; and it was for this Madame Grandoni herself privately made her preparations. Christina, now that everything was over, would leave London from one day to the other; but they shouldn’t know where they were going till they arrived. The old lady concluded by asking if the Prince himself liked England. He thrust forward his full lips. “How can I like anything? Besides, I’ve been here before; I’ve many friends.”
His companion saw he had more to say to her, to extract from her, but that he was hesitating nervously because he feared to incur some warning, some rebuff with which his dignity—in spite of his position of discomfiture, really very great—might find it difficult to square itself. He looked vaguely round the room and presently remarked: “I wanted to see for myself how she’s living.”
“Yes, that’s very natural.”
“I’ve heard—I’ve heard—” And Prince Casamassima stopped.
“You’ve heard great rubbish, I’ve no doubt.” Madame Grandoni watched him as if she foresaw what was coming.
“She spends a terrible deal of money,” said the young man.
“Indeed she does.” The old lady knew that, careful as he was of his very considerable property, which at one time had required much nursing, his wife’s prodigality was not what lay heaviest on his mind. She also knew that expensive and luxurious as Christina might be she had never yet exceeded the income settled upon her by the Prince at the time of their separation—an income determined wholly by himself and his estimate of what was required to maintain the social consequence of his name, forwhich he had a boundless reverence. “She thinks she’s a model of thrift—that she counts every shilling,” Madame Grandoni continued. “If there’s a virtue she prides herself upon it’s her economy. Indeed it’s the only thing for which she takes any credit.”
“I wonder if she knows that I”—he just hesitated, then went on—“spend almost nothing at all. But I’d rather live on dry bread than that in a country like this, in this great English society, she shouldn’t make a proper appearance.”
“Her appearance is all you could wish. How can it help being proper with me to set her off?”
“You’re the best thing she has, dear friend. So long as you’re with her I feel a certain degree of security; and one of the things I came for was to extract from you a promise that you won’t leave her.”
“Ah, let us not tangle ourselves up with promises!” Madame Grandoni exclaimed. “You know the value of any engagement one may take with regard to the Princess; it’s like promising you I’ll stay in the bath when the hot water’s on. When I begin to be scalded I’ve to jump out—naked as I may naturally be. I’ll stay while I can, but I shouldn’t stay if she were to do certain things.” Madame Grandoni uttered these last words with a clear emphasis, and for a minute she and her companion looked deep into each other’s eyes.
“What things do you mean?”
“I can’t say what things. It’s utterly impossible to predict on any occasion what Christina will do. She’s capable of giving us great surprises. The things I mean are things I should recognise as soon as I saw them, and they would make me leave the house on the spot.”
“So that if you’ve not left it yet—?” he asked with extreme eagerness.
“It’s because I’ve thought I may do some good by staying.”
He seemed but half content with this answer; nevertheless he said in a moment: “To me it makes all the difference. And if anything of the kind you speak of should happen, that would be only the greater reason for your staying.—You might interpose, you might arrest—” He stopped short before her large Germanic grimace.
“You must have been in Rome more than once when the Tiber had overflowed,è vero? What would you have thought then if you had heard people telling the poor wretches in the Ghetto, on the Ripetta, up to their knees in liquid mud, that they ought to interpose, to arrest?”
“Capisco bene,” said the Prince, dropping his eyes. He appeared to have closed them, for some moments, as if under a slow spasm of pain. “I can’t tell you what torments me most,” he presently went on—“the thought that sometimes makes my heart rise into my mouth. It’s a haunting fear.” And his pale face and disturbed respiration might indeed have been those of a man before whom some horrible spectre had risen.
“You needn’t tell me. I know what you mean, my poor friend.”
“Do you think then thereisa danger—that she’ll drag my name, do what no one has ever dared to do? That I’d never forgive,” he declared almost under his breath; and the hoarseness of his whisper lent it a great effect.
Madame Grandoni hastily wondered if she had not better tell him (as it would prepare him for the worst) that his wife cared about as much for his name as for any old label on her luggage; but after an instant’s reflexion she reserved this information for another hour. Besides, as she said to herself, thePrince ought already to know perfectly to what extent Christina attached the idea of an obligation or an interdict to her ill-starred connexion with an ignorant and superstitious Italian race whom she despised for their provinciality, their parsimony and their futility (she thought their talk the climax of childishness) and whose fatuous conception of their importance in the great modern world she had on various public occasions sufficiently riddled with her derision. She finally contented herself with remarking: “Dear Prince, your wife’s a very proud woman.”
“Ah, how could my wife be anything else? But her pride’s not my pride. And she has such ideas; such opinions! Some of them are monstrous.”
Madame Grandoni smiled. “She doesn’t think it so necessary to have them when you’re not there.”
“Why then do you say that you enter into my fears—that you recognise the stories I’ve heard?”
I know not whether the good lady lost patience with his pressure; at all events she broke out with a certain sharpness. “Understand this, understand this: Christina will never consider you—your name, your illustrious traditions—in any case in which she doesn’t consider herself much more!”
The Prince appeared to study for a moment this somewhat ambiguous yet portentous phrase; then he slowly got up with his hat in his hand and walked about the room softly, solemnly, as if suffering from his long thin feet. He stopped before one of the windows and took another survey of South Street; then turning he suddenly asked in a voice into which he had evidently endeavoured to infuse a colder curiosity: “Is she admired in this place? Does she see many people?”
“She’s thought very strange of course. But shesees whom she likes. And they mostly bore her to death!” Madame Grandoni conscientiously added.
“Why then do you tell me this country pleases her?”
The old woman left her place. She had promised Christina, who detested the sense of being under the same roof with her husband, that the latter’s visit should be kept within narrow limits; and this movement was intended to signify as kindly as possible that it had better terminate. “It’s the common people who please her,” she returned with her hands folded on her crumpled satin stomach and her ancient eyes, still keen for all comedy, raised to his face. “It’s the lower orders, thebasso popolo.”
“Thebasso popolo?” The Prince stared at this fantastic announcement.
“Thepovera gente,” pursued his friend, amused at his dismay.
“The London mob—the most horrible, the most brutal—?”
“Oh, she wishes to raise them.”
“After all, something like that’s no more than I had heard,” said the Prince gravely.
“Che vuole?Don’t trouble yourself; it won’t be for long!”
Madame Grandoni saw this comforting assurance lost upon him; his face was turned to the door of the room, which had been thrown open, and all his attention given to the person who crossed the threshold. She transferred her own to the same quarter and recognised the little artisan whom Christina had, in a manner so extraordinary and so profoundly characteristic, drawn into her box that night at the theatre—afterwards informing her old friend that she had sent for him to come and see her.
“Mr. Robinson!” the butler, who had had a lesson, announced in a loud colourless tone.
“It won’t be for long,” Madame Grandoni repeated for the Prince’s benefit; but it was to Mr. Robinson the words had the air of being addressed.
Hyacinth stood, while she signalled to the servant to leave the door open and wait, looking from the queer old lady, who was as queer as before, to the tall foreign gentleman (he recognised his foreignness at a glance) whose eyes seemed to challenge him, to devour him; wondering if he had made some mistake and needing to remind himself that he had the Princess’s note in his pocket, with the day and hour as clear as her magnificent script could make them.
“Good-morning, good-morning. I hope you’re well,” said Madame Grandoni with quick friendliness, but turning her back upon him at the same time in order to ask of their companion, in the other idiom, as she extended her hand: “And don’t you leave London soon—in a day or two?”
The Prince made no answer; he still scanned the little bookbinder from head to foot, as if wondering who the deuce he could be. His eyes seemed to Hyacinth to search for the small neat bundle he ought to have had under his arm and without which he was incomplete. To the reader, however, it may be confided that, dressed more carefully than he had ever been in his life before, stamped with that extraordinary transformation which the British Sunday often operates in the person of the wage-earning cockney, with his handsome head uncovered and the heat of wonder in his fine face, the young man from Lomax Place might have passed for anything rather than a carrier of parcels. “The Princess wrote to me, madam, to come and see her,” he said as a prompt precaution; in case he should have incurred the reproach of undue precipitation.
“Oh yes, I daresay.” And Madame Grandoniguided the Prince to the door with an expression of the desire he might have a comfortable journey back to Italy.
But he stood stiff there; he appeared to have jumped to a dark conclusion about Mr. Robinson. “I must see you once more. I must. It’s impossible—!”
“Ah well, not in this house, you know.”
“Will you do me the honour to meet me then?” And as the old lady hesitated he added with sudden intensity: “Dearest friend, I beg you on my knees!” After she had agreed that if he would write to her proposing a day and place she would see him were it possible, he raised her ancient knuckles to his lips and, without further notice of Hyacinth, turned away. She bade the servant announce the other visitor to the Princess, and then approached Mr. Robinson, rubbing her hands and smiling, her head very much to one side. He smiled back at her vaguely; he didn’t know what she might be going to say. What she said was, to his surprise—
“My poor young man, may I take the liberty of asking your age?”
“Certainly, madam; I’m twenty-four.”
“And I hope you’re industrious, and temperate in all ways and—what do you call it in English?—steady.”
“I don’t think I’m very wild,” said Hyacinth without offence. He thought the old woman patronising, but he forgave her.
“I don’t know how one speaks in this country to young men like you. Perhaps one’s considered meddling or impertinent.”
“I like the way you speak,” Hyacinth hastened to profess.
She stared, and then with a comical affectation of dignity: “You’re very good. I’m glad it amusesyou. You’re evidently intelligent and clever,” she went on, “and if you’re disappointed it will be a pity.”
“How do you mean if I’m disappointed?”
“Well, I daresay you expect great things when you come into a house like this. You must tell me if I upset you. I’m very old-fashioned and I’m not of this country. I speak as one speaks to young men like you in other places.”
“I’m not so easily upset!” Hyacinth assured her with a flight of imagination. “To expect anything one must know something, one must understand: isn’t it so? And I’m here without knowing, without understanding. I’ve come only because a lady who seems to me very beautiful and very kind has done me the honour to send for me.”
Madame Grandoni examined him a moment as if struck by his good looks, by something delicate stamped on him everywhere. “I can see you’re very clever, very intelligent; no, you’re not like the young men I mean. All the more reason—!” And she paused, giving a short sigh. Her case might have been all too difficult. “I want to warn you a little, and I don’t know how. If you were a young Roman it would be different.”
“A young Roman?”
“That’s where I live properly, in the Eternal City. If I hurt you, you can explain it that way. No, you’re not like them.”
“You don’t hurt me—please believe that; you interest me very much,” said Hyacinth, to whom it didn’t occur that he himself might seem patronising. “Of what do you want to warn me?”
“Well—only to advise you a little. Don’t give up anything.”
“What can I give up?”
“Don’t give upyourself. I say that to you inyour interest. I think you’ve some honest little trade—I forget what. But whatever it may be remember that to do it well is the best thing; better than paying extraordinary visits, better even than being liked by Princesses!”
“Ah yes, I see what you mean!” Hyacinth returned, exaggerating a little. “I’m very fond of my trade indeed, I assure you.”
“I’m delighted to hear it. Hold fast to it then and be quiet; be diligent and good and get on. I gathered the other night that you’re one of the young men who want everything changed—I believe there are a great many in Italy and also in my own dear old Deutschland, and who even think it useful to throw bombs into innocent crowds and shoot pistols at their rulers or at any one. I won’t go into that. I might seem to be speaking for myself, and the fact is that for myself I don’t care; I’m so old that I may hope to spend the few days that are left me without receiving a bullet. But before you go any further please think a little whether you’re right.”
“It isn’t just that you should impute to me ideas which I may not have,” said Hyacinth, turning very red but taking more and more of a fancy, all the same, to Madame Grandoni. “You talk at your ease about our ways and means, but if we were only to make use of those that you would like to see—!” And while he blushed, smiling, the young man shook his head two or three times with great significance.
“I shouldn’t like to see any!” the old lady cried. “I like people to bear their troubles as one has done one’s self. And as for injustice, you see how kind I am to you when I say to you again, Don’t, don’t, give anything up. I’ll tell them to send you some tea,” she added as she took her way out of the room, presenting to him her round, low, aged back and dragging over the carpet a scanty and lustreless train.