“But if you go away you’ll have seen nothing,” the Prince objected.
“Ah plenty as it is—more than I ever expected to!”
He clasped his hands as in strenuous suppliance but at the same time smiled as to conciliate, to corrupt. “Dearest friend, you torment my curiosity. If you’ll tell me this I’ll never ask you anything more. Where did they go? For the love of God, what is that house?”
“I know nothing of their houses,” she returned with an impatient shrug.
“Then there are others? there are many?” She made no answer but to sit intent, her chin in her bulging kerchief. Her visitor presently continued with his pressure of pain and his beautiful Italian distinctness, as if his lips cut and carved the sound, while his fine fingers quivered into quick, emphasising gestures: “The street’s small and black, but it’s like all the dreadful streets. It has no importance; it’s at the end of a long imbroglio. They drove for twenty minutes, then stopped their cab and got out. They went together on foot some minutes more. There were many turns; they seemed to know them well. For me it was very difficult—of course I also got out; I had to stay so far behind—close against the houses. Chiffinch Street, N.E.—that was the name,” the Prince continued, pronouncing the word with difficulty; “and the house is number 32—I looked at that after they went in. It’s a very bad house—worse than this; but it has no sign of a chemist and there are no shops in the street. They rang the bell—only once, though they waited a long time; it seemed to me at least that they didn’t touch it again. It was several minutes before the door was opened, and that was a bad time for me, because as they stood there they looked up and down. Fortunately you know the air of this place! I saw no light in the house—not even after they went in. Who opened to them I couldn’t tell. I waited nearly half an hour, to see how long they mightstay and what they would do on coming out; then at last my impatience brought me here, for to know she was absent made me hope I might see you. While I was there two persons went in: two men together, both smoking, who looked likeartisti—I saw them badly—but no one came out. I could see they took their cigars—and you can fancy what tobacco!—into the presence of the Princess. Formerly,” pursued Madame Grandoni’s visitor with a touching attempt at pleasantry on this point, “she never tolerated smoking—never mine at least. The street’s very quiet—very few people pass. Now what’s the house? Is it where that man lives?” he almost panted.
He had been encouraged by her consenting, in spite of her first protests, to listen to him—he could see shewaslistening; and he was still more encouraged when after a moment she answered his question by a question of her own. “Did you cross the river to go there? I know he lives over the water!”
“Ah no, it was not in that part. I tried to ask the cabman who brought me back to explain to me what it’s called; but I couldn’t make him understand. They’ve heavy minds,” the Prince declared. Then he pursued, drawing a little closer to his hostess: “But what were they doing there? Why did she go with him?”
“They think they’re conspiring. Ecco!” said Madame Grandoni.
“You mean they’ve joined a secret society, a band of revolutionists and murderers?Capisco bene—that’s not new to me. But perhaps they only pretend it’s for that,” added the Prince.
“Only pretend? Why should they pretend? That’s not Christina’s way.”
“There are other possibilities,” he portentously observed.
“Oh of course when your wife goes off with strange, low men in the dark, goes off todes maisons louches, you can think anything you like and I’ve nothing to say to your thoughts. I’ve my own, but they’re my affair, and I shall not undertake to defend Christina, who’s indefensible. When she commits these follies she provokes, she invites, the worst construction; there let it rest save for this one remark which I will content myself with making. That is that if she were a real wretch, capable ofall, she wouldn’t behave as she does now, she wouldn’t expose herself tothesupposition; the appearance of everything would be good and proper. I simply tell you what I believe. If I believed that what she’s doing concerned you alone I should say nothing about it—at least sitting here. But it concerns others, it concerns every one, so I open my mouth at last. She has gone to that house to break up society.”
“To break it up, yes, as she has wanted before?”
“Oh more than ever before! She’s very much entangled. She has relations with people who are watched by the police. She hasn’t told me, but I’ve grown sure of it by simply living with her.”
The poor Prince stared. “And isshewatched by the police?”
“I can’t tell you; it’s very possible—except that the police here isn’t like that of other countries.”
“It’s more stupid.” He gazed at his cold comforter with a flush of shame on his face. “Will she bring us tothatscandal? It would be the worst of all.”
“There’s one chance—the chance she’ll get tired of it,” the old lady remarked. “Only the scandal may come before that.”
“Dear friend, she’s the Devil in person,” said the Prince woefully.
“No, she’s not the Devil, because she wishes to do good.”
“What good did she ever wish to do to me?” he asked with glowing eyes.
She shook her head with a gloom that matched his own. “You can do no good of any kind to each other. Each on your own side you must be quiet.”
“How can I be quiet when I hear of such infamies?” He got up in his violence and, after a fashion that caused his companion to burst into a short, incongruous laugh as soon as she heard the words, pronounced: “She shallnotbreak up society!”
“No, she’ll bore herself to death before thecoupis ripe. Make up your mind to that.”
“That’s what I expected to find—that the caprice was over. She has passed through so many madnesses.”
“Give her time—give her time,” replied Madame Grandoni.
“Time to drag my name into an assize-court? Those people are robbers, incendiaries, murderers!”
“You can say nothing to me about them that I haven’t said to her.”
“And how does she defend herself?”
“Defend herself? Did you ever hear Christina do that?” the old woman asked. “The only thing she says to me is: ‘Don’t be afraid; I promise you by all that’s sacred you personally shan’t suffer.’ She speaks as if she had it all in her hands. That’s very well. No doubt I’m a selfish old pig, but after all one has a heart for others.”
“And so have I, I think I may pretend,” said the Prince. “You tell me to give her time, and it’s certain she’ll take it whether I give it or no. But I can at least stop giving her money. By heaven it’s my duty as an honest man.”
“She tells me that as it is you don’t give her much.”
“Much, dear lady? It depends on what you call so. It’s enough to make all these scoundrels flock round her.”
“They’re not all scoundrels any more than she’s all one. That’s the tiresome part of it!” she wearily sighed.
“But this fellow, the chemist—to-night—what do you callhim?”
“She has spoken to me of him as a fine young man.”
“But she thinks it fine to blow us all up,” the Prince returned. “Doesn’thetake her money?”
“I don’t know what he takes. But there are some things—heaven forbid one should forget them! The misery of London’s fearful.”
“Che vuole?There’s misery everywhere,” our personage opined. “It’s the will of God.Ci vuol pazienza!And in this country does no one give alms?”
“Every one, I believe. But it appears that that’s not enough.”
He said nothing for a moment; this statement of Madame Grandoni’s seemed to present difficulties. The solution, however, soon suggested itself; it was expressed in the inquiry: “What will you have in a country that hasn’t the true faith?”
“Ah the true faith’s a great thing, but there’s suffering even in countries that have it.”
“Evidentemente.But it helps suffering to be borne and, later, makes it up; whereas here——!” said the visitor with a sad if inconclusive smile. “If I may speak of myself it’s to me, in my circumstances, a support.”
“That’s good,” she returned a little curtly.
He stood before her, resting his eyes for a momenton the floor. “And the famous Cholto—Godfrey Gerald—does he come no more?”
“I haven’t seen him for months. I know nothing about him.”
“He doesn’t like the chemists and the bookbinders, eh?” asked the Prince.
“Ah it was he who first brought them—to gratify your wife.”
“If they’ve turned him out then that’s very well. Now if only some one could turnthemout!”
“Aspetta, aspetta!” said the old woman.
“That’s very good advice, but to follow it isn’t amusing.” Then the Prince added: “You alluded, just now, as to something particular, toquel giovane, the young artisan whom I met in the other house. Is he also still proposed to our admiration, or has he paid the penalty of his crimes?”
“He has paid the penalty, but I don’t know of what. I’ve nothing bad to tell you of him except that I think his star’s on the wane.”
“Poverino!” the Prince exclaimed.
“That’s exactly the manner in which I addressed him the first time I saw him. I didn’t know how it would happen, but I felt it would happen somehow. It has happened through his changing his opinions. He has now the same idea as you—ci vuol pazienza.”
Her friend listened with the same expression of wounded eagerness, the same parted lips and excited eyes, to every added fact that dropped from Madame Grandoni’s lips. “That at least is more honest. Thenhedoesn’t go to Chiffinch Street?”
“I don’t know about Chiffinch Street, though it would be my impression that he doesn’t go to any place visited by Christina and the other one, by the Scotchman, together. But these are delicate matters,” the old woman pursued.
They seemed much to impress her interlocutor.“Do you mean that the Scotchman is—what shall I call it?—his successor?”
For a time she made no reply. “I imagine this case different. But I don’t understand; it was the other, the little one, who helped her to know the Scotchman.”
“And now they’ve quarrelled—about my wife? It’s all tremendously edifying!” the Prince wailed.
“I can’t tell you, and shouldn’t have attempted it, only that Assunta talks to me.”
“I wish she would talk to me,” he said wistfully.
“Ah my friend, if Christina were to find you getting at her servants——!”
“How could it be worse for me than it is now? However, I don’t know why I speak as if I cared, for I don’t care any more. I’ve given her up. It’s finished.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Madame Grandoni gravely.
“You yourself made the distinction perfectly. So long as she endeavoured only to injureme, and in my private capacity, I could condone, I could wait, I could hope. But since she has so shamelessly thrown herself into criminal undertakings, since she lifts her hand with a determined purpose, as you tell me, against the most sacred institutions—it’s too much; ah yes, it’s too much! She may go her way; she’s no wife of mine. Not another penny of mine shall go into her pocket and into that of the wretches who prey upon her, who have corrupted her.”
“Dear Prince, I think you’re right. And yet I’m sorry!” sighed his hostess, extending her hand for assistance to rise from her chair. “If she becomes really poor it will be much more difficult for me to leave her.Thisis not poverty, and not even a good imitation of it, as she would like it to be. But what will be said of me if, having remained with her throughso much of her splendour, I turn away from her the moment she begins to want?”
“Dear lady, do you ask that to make me relent?” the Prince uneasily quavered.
“Not in the least; for whatever’s said and whatever you do there’s nothing for me in decency at present but to pack my trunk. Judge by the way I’ve tattled.”
“If you’ll stay on she shall have everything.” He spoke in a very low tone, with a manner that betrayed the shame he felt for his attempt at bribery.
Madame Grandoni gave him an astonished glance and moved away from him. “What does that mean? I thought you didn’t care.”
I know not what explanation of his inconsequence her guest would have given her if at that moment the door of the room hadn’t been pushed open to permit the entrance of Hyacinth Robinson. He stopped short on finding a stranger in the field, but before he had time to say anything the old lady addressed him rather shortly. “Ah you don’t fall well; the Princess isn’t at home.”
“That was mentioned to me, but I ventured to come in to see you as I’ve done before,” our young man replied. Then he added as to accommodate: “I beg many pardons. I was not told you were not alone.”
“My visitor’s going, but I’m going too,” said Madame Grandoni. “I must take myself to my room—I’m all falling to pieces. Therefore kindly excuse me.”
Hyacinth had had time to recognise the Prince, and this nobleman paid him the same compliment, as was proved by his asking of their companion in a rapid Italian aside: “Isn’t it the bookbinder?”
“Sicuro,” said the old lady; while Hyacinth, murmuring a regret that he should find her indisposed, turned back to the door.
“One moment—one moment, I pray!” the Prince interposed, raising his hand persuasively and looking at Mr. Robinson with an unexpected, exaggerated smile. “Please introduce me to the gentleman,” he added in English to Madame Grandoni.
She manifested no surprise at the request—she had none left for anything—but pronounced the name of Prince Casamassima and then added for Hyacinth’s benefit: “He knows who you are.”
“Will you permit me to keep you a very little minute?” The Prince appealed to his fellow-visitor, after which he remarked to Madame Grandoni: “I’ll talk with him a little. It’s perhaps not necessary we should incommode you if you don’t wish to stay.”
She had for an instant, as she tossed off a small satirical laugh, a return of her ancient drollery. “Remember that if you talk long she may come back! Yes, yes, I’ll go upstairs.Felicissima notte, signori!” She took her way to the door, which Hyacinth, considerably bewildered, held open for her.
The reasons for which Prince Casamassima wished to converse with him were mysterious; nevertheless he was about to close the door behind their friend as a sign that he was at the service of the greater personage. At this moment the latter raised again a courteous, remonstrant hand. “After all, as my visit is finished and as yours comes to nothing, might we not go out?”
“Certainly I’ll go with you,” said Hyacinth. He spoke with an instinctive stiffness in spite of the Prince’s queer affability, and in spite also of the fact that he felt sorry for the nobleman to whose countenance Madame Grandoni’s last injunction, uttered in English, could bring a deep and painful blush. It is forbidden us to try the question of what Hyacinth, face to face with an aggrieved husband, may have had on his conscience, but he assumed, naturallyenough, that the situation might be grave, though indeed the Prince’s manner was for the moment incongruously bland. He invited his new, his grand acquaintance to pass, and in a minute they were in the street together.
“Do you go here—do you go there?” the Prince inquired as they stood a moment before the house. “If you permit I’ll take the same direction.” On Hyacinth’s answering that it was indifferent to him he said, turning to the right: “Well then here, butadagio, if that pleases you, and only a little way.” His English was far from perfect, but his errors were like artificial flowers of accent: Hyacinth was struck with his effort to express himself very distinctly, so that in intercourse with a small untutored Briton his foreignness should not put him at a disadvantage. Quick to perceive and appreciate, our hero noted how the quality of breeding in him just enabled him to compass that coolness, and he mentally applauded the success of a difficult feat. Difficult he judged it because it seemed to him that the purpose for which the Prince wished to speak to him was one requiring an immensity of explanation, and it was a sign of training to explain adequately, in a strange tongue, especially if one were agitated, to a person in a social position very different from one’s own. Hyacinth knew what the Prince’s estimate ofhisimportance must be—he could have no illusions as to the character of the people his wife received; but while he heard him carefully put one word after the other he was able to smile to himself at his needless precautions. Our young man reflected that at a pinch he could have encountered him in his own tongue: during his stay at Venice he had picked up an Italian vocabulary. “With Madame Grandoni I spoke of you,” the Prince announced dispassionately as they walked along. “She told me a thing thatinterested me,” he added; “that’s why I walk with you.” Hyacinth said nothing, deeming that better by silence than in any other fashion he held himself at the disposal of his interlocutor. “She told me you’ve changed—you’ve no more the same opinions.”
“The same opinions?”
“About the arrangement of society. You desire no more the assassination of the rich.”
“I never desired any such thing!” said Hyacinth indignantly.
“Oh if you’ve changed you can confess,” his friend declared in an encouraging tone. “It’s very good for some people to be rich. It wouldn’t be right for all to be poor.”
“It would be pleasant if all could be rich,” Hyacinth more mildly suggested.
“Yes, but not by stealing and shooting.”
“No, not by stealing and shooting. I never desired that.”
“Ah no doubt she was mistaken. But to-day you think we must have patience?” the Prince went on as if greatly hoping Hyacinth would allow this valuable conviction to be attributed to him. “That’s also my view.”
“Oh yes, we must have patience,” said his companion, who was now smiling to himself in the dark.
They had by this time reached the end of the little Crescent, where the Prince paused under the street-lamp. He considered the small bookbinder’s countenance for a moment by its help and then pronounced: “If I’m not mistaken you know very well the Princess.”
Hyacinth hung back: “She has been very kind to me.”
“She’s my wife—perhaps you know.”
Again Mr. Robinson faltered, but after a moment he replied: “She has told me that she’s married.”As soon as he had spoken these words he thought them idiotic.
“You mean you wouldn’t know if she hadn’t told you, I suppose. Evidently there’s nothing to show it. You can think if that’s agreeable to me.”
“Oh I can’t think, I can’t judge.”
“You’re right—that’s impossible.” The Prince stood before his companion, and in the pale gaslight the latter saw more of his face. It had an unnatural expression, a look of wasted anxiety; the eyes seemed to glitter, and our fond observer conceived the unfortunate nobleman to be feverish and ill. He pursued in a moment: “Of course you think it strange—my conversation. I want you to tell me something.”
“I’m afraid you’re very unwell,” said Hyacinth.
“Yes, I’m very unwell; but I shall be better if you’ll tell me. It’s because you’ve come back to good ideas—that’s why I ask you.”
A sense that the situation of the Princess’s husband was really pitiful, that at any rate he suffered and was helpless, that he was a gentleman and even a person who would never have done any great harm—a perception of these appealing truths came into Hyacinth’s heart and stirred there a desire to be kind to him, to render him any service that in reason he might ask. It struck him he must be pretty sick to ask any at all, but that was his own affair. “If you’d like me to see you safely home I’ll do that,” our young friend brought out; and even while he spoke he was struck with the oddity of his being already on such friendly terms with a person whom he had hitherto supposed to be the worst enemy of the rarest of women. He found himself unable to consider the Prince with resentment.
This personage acknowledged the civility of the offer with a slight inclination of his high slimness.
“I’m very much obliged to you, but I don’t go home. I don’t go home till I know this—to what house she has gone. Will you tell me that?”
“To what house?” Hyacinth repeated.
“She has gone with a person whom you know. Madame Grandoni told me that. He’s a Scotch chemist.”
“A Scotch chemist?” Hyacinth stared.
“I saw them myself—an hour, two hours, ago. Listen, listen; I’ll be very clear,” said the Prince, laying his forefinger on the other hand with a pleading emphasis. “He came to that house—this one, where we’ve been, I mean—and stayed there a long time. I was here in the street—I’ve passed my day in the street! They came out together and I watched them—I followed them.”
Hyacinth had listened with wonder and even with suspense; the Prince’s manner gave an air of such importance and such mystery to what he had to relate. But at this he broke out: “This’s not my business—I can’t hear it!Idon’t watch,Idon’t follow.”
His friend stared in surprise, but then rejoined, more quickly than he had spoken yet: “Do you understand that they went to a house where they conspire, where they prepare horrible acts? How can you like that?”
“How do you know it, sir?” Hyacinth gravely asked.
“It’s Madame Grandoni who has told me.”
“Why then do you question me?”
“Because I’m not sure, I don’t think she knows. I want to know more, to be sure of what’s the truth. Does she go to such a place only for the revolution, or does she go to be alone with him?”
“Withhim?” The Prince’s tone and his excited eyes had somehow made the suggestion live.
“With the tall man—the chemist. They got intoa hansom together; the house is far away, in the lost quarters.”
Hyacinth drew himself together. “I know nothing about the matter and I don’t care. If that’s all you wish to ask me we had better separate.”
The Prince’s high face grew long; it seemed to grow paler. “Then it’s not true that you hate those abominations!”
Hyacinth frankly wondered. “How can you know about my opinions? How can they interest you?”
The Prince looked at him with sick eyes; he raised his arms a certain distance and then let them drop at his sides. “I hoped you’d help me.”
“When we’re in trouble we can’t help each other much!” our young man exclaimed. But this austere reflexion was lost on the Prince, who at the moment it was uttered had already turned to look in the direction from which they had moved, the other end of the Crescent, his attention suddenly jerked round by the sound of a rapid hansom. The place was still and empty and the wheels of this vehicle reverberated. He glowered at it through the darkness and in an instant cried, under his breath, excitedly: “They’ve come back—they’ve come back! Now you can see—yes, the two!” The hansom had slackened pace and pulled up; the house before which it stopped was clearly the house the two men had lately quitted. Hyacinth felt his arm seized by his strange confidant, who hastily, with a strong effort, drew him forward several yards. At this moment a part of the agitation that possessed the Princess’s unhappy husband seemed to pass into his own blood; a wave of anxiety rushed through him—anxiety as to the relations of the two persons who had descended from the cab: he had in short for several instants a very exact revelation of the state of feeling of those who love in the rage of jealousy. If he had been told half an hour beforethat he was capable of surreptitious peepings in the interest of that passion he would have resented the insult; yet he allowed himself to be checked by his companion just at the nearest point at which they might safely consider the proceedings of the couple who alighted. It was in fact the Princess accompanied by Paul Muniment. Hyacinth noticed that the latter paid the cabman, who immediately drove away, from his own pocket. He stood with the Princess for some minutes at the door of the house—minutes during which Mr. Robinson felt his heart beat insanely, ignobly. He couldn’t tell why.
“What does he say? what doesshesay?” hissed the Prince; and when he went on the next moment, “Will he go in again or will he go away?” our stricken youth felt a voice given to his own sharpest thought. The pair were talking together with rapid sequences, and as the door had not yet been opened it was clear that, to prolong the conversation on the steps, the Princess delayed to ring. “It will make three, four hours he has been with her,” moaned the Prince.
“He may be with her fifty hours!” Hyacinth laughed as he turned away ashamed of himself.
“He has gone in—sangue di Dio!” cried the Prince, catching his companion again by the arm and making him look. All our friend saw was the door just closing; Paul and the Princess were on the other side of it. “Isthatfor the revolution?” the trembling nobleman panted. But Mr. Robinson made no answer; he only gazed at the closed door an instant and then, disengaging himself, walked straight away, leaving the victim of the wrong he could even then feel as deeper than his own to shake, in the dark, a helpless, foolish, gold-headed stick at the indifferent house where Madame Grandoni’s bedroom light glimmered aloft.
Hyacinth waited a long time, but when at last Millicent came to the door the splendour of her appearance did much to justify her delay. He heard an immense rustling on the staircase, accompanied by a creaking of that inexpensive structure, and then she brushed forward into the narrow, dusky passage where he had been standing a quarter of an hour. Highly flushed, she exhaled a strong, cheap perfume, and she instantly thrust her muff, a tight, fat, beribboned receptacle, at him to be held while she adjusted her gloves to her large, vulgar hands. He opened the door—it was so natural an assumption that they shouldn’t be able to talk properly in the passage—and they came out to the low steps, lingering there in the yellow Sunday sunshine. A loud ejaculation on the beauty of the day broke from Millicent, though, as we know, she was not addicted to facile admirations. Winter was not over but spring had begun, and the smoky London air allowed the baffled vision, by way of a change, to pierce it almost through. The town could refresh its recollections of the sky, and the sky could ascertain the geographical position of the town. The essential dimness of the low perspectives had by no means disappeared, but it had loosened its folds; it lingered as a blur of mist interwoven with pretty sun-tints and faint transparencies. There was warmth andiridescence and a view of the shutters of shops, and the church-bells were ringing. Miss Henning remarked that it was a “shime” she couldn’t have a place to ask a gentleman to sit down; but what were you to do when you had such a grind for your living and a room, to keep yourself tidy, no bigger than a pill-box? She couldn’t herself abide waiting outside; she knew something about it when she took things home to ladies to choose—the time they spent was long enough to choose a husband!—and it always made her feel quite wicked. It was something “croo’l.” If she could have what she liked she knew what she’d have; and she hinted at a mystic bower where a visitor could sit and enjoy himself—with the morning paper or a nice view out of the window or even a glass of sherry—so that, close at hand but perfectly private, she could dress without getting in a fidget, which always made her red in the face.
“I don’t know how I’avepitched on my things,” she remarked as she offered her magnificence to Hyacinth, who became aware she had put a small plump book into her muff. He explained that, the day being so fine, he had come to propose to her a walk in the manner of ancient times. They might spend an hour or two in the Park and stroll beside the Serpentine, or even paddle about on it if she liked; they might watch the lambkins or feed the ducks if she would put a crust in her pocket. The privilege of paddling Millicent entirely declined; she had no idea of wetting her flounces and she left those rough pleasures, especially of a Sunday, to a lower class of young woman. But she didn’t mind if she did go a turn, though he didn’t deserve any such favour after the way he hadn’t been near her, not if she had died in her garret. She wasn’t one that was to be dropped and taken up at any man’s convenience—she didn’tkeep one of those offices for servants out of place. Her conviction was strong that if the day hadn’t been so grand she would have sent her friend about his business; it was lucky for him she was always forgiving—such was her sensitive, generous nature—when the sun was out. Only there was one thing—she couldn’t abide making no difference for Sunday; it was her personal habit to go to church and she should have it on her conscience if she gave that up for a lark. Hyacinth had already been impressed, more than once, by the manner in which his old playmate stickled for the religious observance: of all the queer disparities of her nature her devotional turn struck him as perhaps the queerest. She held her head erect through the longest and dullest sermon and quitted the sacred edifice with her fine face embellished by the publicity of her virtue. She was exasperated by the general secularity of Hyacinth’s behaviour, especially taken in conjunction with his general straightness, and was only consoled a little by the fact that if he didn’t drink or fight or steal he at least dabbled in unlimited wickedness of opinion—theories as bad as anything people often got ten years for. He had not yet revealed to her that his theories had somehow lately come to be held with less of a clutch; an instinct of kindness had forbidden him to deprive her of a grievance doing so much for sociability. He had not reflected that she would have been more aggrieved, and consequently more delightful, if her condemnation of his godlessness had missed corroborative signs.
On the present occasion she let him know he might have his pleasure if he would first accompany her to church; and it was in vain he represented to her that this proceeding would deprive them of their morning, inasmuch as after church she would have to dine and in the interval there would be no timeleft. She replied with a toss of her head that she dined when she liked; besides, on Sundays she had cold fare—it was left out for her: an argument to which Hyacinth had to assent, his ignorance of her domestic economy being complete, thanks to the maidenly mystery, the vagueness of reference and explanation in which, despite great freedom of complaint, perpetual announcements of intended change, of impending promotion and of high bids for her services in other quarters, she had always enshrouded her private affairs. He walked by her side to the place of worship she preferred—her choice was made apparently from a large experience; and as they went he observed that it was a good job he wasn’t married to her. Lord, how she would bully him, how she would “squeeze” him, in such a case! The worst of it would be that—such was his amiable, peace-loving nature—he should obey like a showman’s poodle. And pray whowasa man to obey, asked Millicent, if he wasn’t to obey his own wife? She sat up in her pew with a majesty that carried out this idea; she seemed to answer in her proper person for creeds and communions and sacraments; she was more than devotional, she was individually almost pontifical. Hyacinth had never felt himself under such distinguished protection; the Princess Casamassima came back to him in comparison as a loose Bohemian, a shabby adventuress. He had sought her out to-day not for the sake of her austerity—he had had too gloomy a week for that—but for that of her genial side; yet now that she treated him to the severer spectacle it struck him for the moment as really grand sport, a kind of magnification of her rich vitality. She had her phases and caprices like the Princess herself, and if they were not the same as those of the lady of Madeira Crescent they proved at least that she was as brave a woman. No one buta really big creature could give herself such airs; she would have a consciousness of the large reserve of pliancy required to make up for them. The Princess wanted to destroy society and Millicent to uphold it; and as Hyacinth, by the side of his childhood’s friend, listened to practised intonings and felt the brush of a rich unction, he was obliged to recognise the liberality of a fate that had sometimes appeared invidious. He had been provided with the best opportunities for choosing between the beauty of the original and the beauty of the conventional.
On this particular Sunday there was by luck no sermon—by the luck, I mean, of his heretical impatience—so that after the congregation dispersed there was still plenty of time for a walk in the Park. Our friends traversed that barely-interrupted expanse of irrepressible herbage which stretches from the Birdcage Walk to Hyde Park Corner and took their way to Kensington Gardens beside the Serpentine. Once her religious exercises were over for the day—she as rigidly forbore to repeat them in the afternoon as she made a point of the first service—once she had lifted her voice in prayer and praise Millicent changed her carriage; moving to a different measure, uttering her sentiments in a high, free manner and not minding if it was noticed she had on her very best gown and was out if need be for the day. She was mainly engaged at first in overhauling Hyacinth for his long absence and demanding as usual some account of what he had been up to. He listened at his ease, liking and enjoying her chaff, which seemed to him, oddly enough, wholesome and refreshing, and amusedly and absolutely declining to satisfy her. He alleged, as he had had occasion to do before, that if he asked no explanations of her the least he had a right to expect in return was that she should let him off as easily; and even the indignation withwhich she received this plea didn’t make him feel that a clearing-up between them could be a serious thing. There was nothing to clear up and nothing to forgive; they were a pair of very fallible creatures, united much more by their weaknesses than by any consistency or fidelity they might pretend to practise toward each other. It was an old acquaintance—the oldest thing to-day, except Mr. Vetch’s friendship, in Hyacinth’s life; and, oddly enough, it inspired our young man with a positive indulgent piety. The probability that the girl “kept company” with other men had quite ceased to torment his imagination; it was no longer necessary to his happiness to be so certain about it that he might dismiss her from his mind. He could be as happy without it as with it, and he felt a new modesty over prying into her affairs. He was so little in a position to be stern with her that her assumption of his recognising a right in her to pull him to pieces seemed but a part of her perpetual clumsiness—a clumsiness that was not soothing, yet was nevertheless, in its rich spontaneity, one of the things he liked her for.
“If you’ve come to see me only to make low jokes at my expense you had better have stayed away altogether,” she said with dignity as they came out of the Green Park. “In the first place it’s rude, in the second place it’s silly, and in the third place I see through you.”
“My dear Milly, the motions you go through, the resentment you profess, are all a kicking up of dust which I blow away with a breath,” her companion replied. “But it doesn’t matter; go on—say anything you like. I came to see you for recreation, to enjoy myself without effort of my own. I scarcely ventured to hope, however, that you’d make me laugh—I’ve been so dismal for a long time. In fact I’m dismal still. I wish Ihad your disposition. My mirth, as you see, is a bit feverish.”
“The first thing I require of any friend is that he should respect me,” Miss Henning announced. “You lead a bad life. I know what to think about that,” she continued irrelevantly.
“And is it through respect foryouthat you wish me to lead a better one? To-day then is so much saved out of my wickedness. Let us get on the grass,” Hyacinth pursued; “it’s innocent and pastoral to feel it under one’s feet. It’s jolly to be with you. You understand everything.”
“I don’t understand everything you say, but I understand everything you hide,” the young woman returned as the great central expanse of the Park, looking intensely green and browsable, stretched away before them.
“Then I shall soon become a mystery to you, for I mean from this time forth to cease to seek safety in concealment. You’ll know nothing about me then—for it will be all under your nose.”
“Well, there’s nothing so pretty as nature,” Millicent observed at a venture, surveying the smutty sheep who find pasturage in the fields that extend from Knightsbridge to the Bayswater Road. “What will you do when you’re so bad you can’t go to the shop?” she added with a sudden transition. And when he asked why he should ever be so bad as that she said she could see hewasin a fever: she hadn’t noticed it at first because he never had had any more complexion than a cheese. Was it something he had caught in some of those back slums where he went prying about with his mad ideas? It served him right for taking as little good into such places as ever came out of them. Would his fine friends—a precious lottheywere, that put it off on him to do all the nasty part—would they find the doctor and the portwine and the money and all the rest when he was laid up, perhaps for months, through their putting such rot into his head and his putting it into others that could carry it even less? She stopped on the grass in the watery sunshine and bent on her companion a pair of eyes in which he noted afresh a stirred curiosity, a friendly, reckless ray, a possibility of ardour, a pledge of really closer comradeship. Suddenly she brought out, quitting the tone of exaggerated derision she had employed a moment before: “You precious little rascal, you’ve got something on your heart! Has your Princess given you the sack?”
“My poor girl, your talk’s a queer mixture,” he resignedly sighed. “But it may well be. It’s not queerer than my life.”
“Well, I’m glad you admit that!” Milly cried as she walked on with a flutter of ribbons.
“Your ideas about my ideas!” Hyacinth wailed. “Yes, you should see me in the back slums. I’m a bigger Philistine than you, Miss Henning.”
“You’ve got more ridiculous names, if that’s what you mean. I don’t believe you half the time know what you do mean yourself. I don’t believe you even know with all your thinking what you do think. That’s your disease.”
“It’s astonishing how you sometimes put your finger on the place,” he now returned with interest. “I mean to think no more—I mean to give it up. Avoid it yourself, dear friend—avoid it as you would a baleful vice. It confers no true happiness. Let us live in the world of irreflective contemplation—let us live in the present hour.”
“I don’t care how I live nor where I live,” she cried, “so long as I can do as I like. It’s them that are over you—it’s them that cut it fine! But you never were really satisfactory to me—not as onefriend should be to another,” she pursued, reverting irresistibly to the concrete and turning still upon her companion that fine fairness which had no cause to shrink from a daylight exhibition. “Do you remember that day I came back to the Plice, ever so long ago, and called on poor dear Miss Pynsent—she couldn’t abide me, she never understood my form—and waited till you came in, and then went a walk with you and had tea at a coffee-shop? Well, I don’t mind telling you that you weren’t satisfactory to me even that night, and that I consider myself remarkably good-natured, ever since, to have kept you so little up to the mark. You always tried to carry it off as if you were telling one everything, and you never told one nothing at all.”
“What is it you want me to tell, my dear child?” Hyacinth freely fluted, putting his hand into her arm. “I’ll tell you anything in life you like.”
“I daresay you’ll tell me no end of rot. Certainly I tried kindness on you,” Miss Henning declared.
“Try it again; don’t give it up,” said her friend while he moved with her in close association.
She stopped short, detaching herself, though not with intention. “Well then,hasshe clean chucked you?”
Hyacinth’s eyes turned away; he looked at the green expanse, misty and sunny, dotted with Sunday-keeping figures which made it seem larger; at the wooded boundary of the Park, beyond the grassy moat of the Gardens; at a shining reach of the Serpentine on the one side and the far façades of Bayswater, brightened by the fine weather and the privilege of their view, on the other. “Well, you know, I rather fancy it,” he replied in a moment.
“Ah the vile brute!” she rang out as they resumed their walk.
Upwards of an hour later they were sitting underthe great trees of Kensington, those scattered, in the Gardens, over the slope which rises gently from the side of the water most distant from the old red palace. They had taken possession of a couple of the chairs placed there to the convenience of that superior part of the public for which a penny is not prohibitive, and Millicent, of whom such speculations were highly characteristic, had devoted considerable conjecture to the question of whether the functionary charged with collecting the penny would omit to come and demand his fee. Miss Henning liked to enjoy her pleasuresgratisas well as to see others do so, and even that of sitting in a penny chair could touch her more deeply in proportion as she might feel she was “doing” some vested interest by it. The man came round, however, and after that her pleasure could only take the form of sitting as long as possible, to recover her money. This issue had been met, and two or three others of a much weightier kind had come up. At the moment we again participate in them she was leaning forward, earnest and attentive, her hands clasped in her lap and her multitudinous silver bracelets tumbled forward on her thick wrists. Her face, with its parted lips and eyes clouded to gentleness, wore an expression Hyacinth had never seen there before and which caused him to say to her: “After all, dear Milly, you’re a sweet old boy!”
“Why did you never tell me before—years ago?” she asked.
“It’s always soon enough to make a fool of one’s self! I don’t know why I’ve slobbered over to-day—sitting here in a charming place, in balmy air, amid pleasing suggestions and without any reason or practical end. The story’s hideous and I’ve kept it down so long! It would have been an effort to me, an impossible effort at any time, to do otherwise.Somehow, just now it hasn’t been an effort; and indeed I’ve spoken justbecausethe air’s sweet and the place ornamental and the day a holiday and your person so lovely and your presence so moving. All this has had the effect an object has if you plunge it into a cup of water—the water overflows. Only in my case it’s not water, but a very foul liquid indeed. Pardon the bad odour!”
There had been a flush of excitement in Millicent’s face while she listened to what had gone before; it lingered, and as a fine colour still further refined by an access of sensibility is never unbecoming to a handsome woman it enriched her unwonted expression. “I wouldn’t have been so rough with you,” she presently remarked.
“My dear lass,thisisn’t rough!” Hyacinth protested.
“You’re all of a tremble.” She put out her hand and laid it on his own as if she had been a nurse feeling his pulse.
“Very likely. I’m a nervous little beast,” he said.
“Any one would be nervous to think of anything so awful. And when it’s yourself!” The girl’s manner represented the dreadfulness of such a contingency. “You require sympathy,” she added in a tone that made him perversely grin; the words sounded like a medical prescription.
“A tablespoonful every half-hour.” And he kept her hand, which she was about to draw away.
“You’d have been nicer too,” Millicent went on.
“How do you mean, I’d have been nicer?”
“Well, I like you now,” said Miss Henning. And this time she drew away her hand as if, after such a speech, to recover her dignity.
“It’s a pity I’ve always been so terribly under the influence of women,” Hyacinth sighed again as he folded his arms.
He was surprised at the delicacy with which she replied. “You must remember they’ve a great deal to make up to you.”
“Do you mean for my mother? Ahshe’d have made it up if they had let her! But the sex in general have been very nice to me,” he declared. “It’s wonderful the kindness they’ve shown me and the amount of pleasure I’ve derived from their society.”
It would perhaps be inquiring too closely to consider whether this reference to sources of consolation other than those that sprang from her own bosom had an irritating effect on Milly; she at all events answered it by presently saying: “Doessheknow—your trumpery Princess?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t mind it.”
“That’s most uncommonly kind of her!” cried the girl with a scornful laugh.
“It annoys me very much,” he interposed—though still with detachment—“to hear you apply invidious epithets to her. You know nothing about her.”
“How do you know what I know, please?” She asked this question with the habit of her natural pugnacity, but the next instant she dropped her voice as in remembrance of the appeal made by a great misfortune. “Hasn’t she treated you most shamefully, and you such a regular dear?”
“Not in the least. It is I who, as you may say, have rounded on her. She made my acquaintance because I was interested in the same things as herself. Her interest has continued, has increased, but mine, for some reason or other, has declined. She has been consistent and I’ve been beastly fickle.”
“Your interest in the Princess has declined?” Millicent questioned, following imperfectly this somewhat complicated statement.
“Oh dear, no. I mean only in some opinions I used to hold.” And he might have been speaking of “shaky” shares, to a considerable amount, of which he had at a given moment shrewdly directed his broker to relieve him.
“Ay, when you thought everything should go to the lowest! That’s a good job!”—and Miss Henning’s laugh suggested that, after all, Hyacinth’s views and the changes in his views were not what was most important. “And your grand lady still goes in for the costermongers?”
“She wants to take hold of the great question of material misery; she wants to do something to make that misery less. I don’t care for her means, I don’t like her processes. But when I think of what there is to be done, and of the courage and devotion of those who set themselves to do it, it seems to me sometimes that with my reserves and scruples I’m a very poor creature.”
“Youarea poor creature—to sit there and put such accusations on yourself!” the girl flashed out. “If you haven’t a spirit for yourself I promise I’ve got one for you! If she hasn’t kicked you out why in the name of common sense did you say just now she has? And why is your dear old face as white as my stocking?”
Hyacinth looked at her a while without answering and as if he took a placid pleasure in her violence. “I don’t know—I don’t understand.”
She put out her own hand now and took possession of his; for a minute she held it as wishing to check herself, as finding some influence in his touch that would help her. They sat in silence, looking at the ornamental water and the landscape-gardening reflected in it, till Milly turned her eyes again and brought out: “Well, that’s the way I’d have served him too!”
It took him a moment to perceive she was alluding to the vengeance wrought on Lord Frederick. “Don’t speak of that; you’ll never again hear a word about it on my lips. It’s all darkness.”
“I always knew you were a gentleman,” the girl went on with assurance.
“A queer variety,cara mia,” her companion rejoined—not very candidly, as we know the theories he himself had cultivated on this point. “Of course you had heard poor Pinnie’s wild maunderings. They used to exasperate me when she was alive, but I forgive her now. It’s time I should, when I begin to talk myself. I think I’m breaking up.”
“Oh it wasn’t Miss Pynsent; it was just yourself.”
“Pray what did I ever say—in those days?”
“It wasn’t what you said,” she answered with refinement. “I guessed the whole business—except of course what she got her time for and you being taken to that death-bed—the very day I came back to the Plice. Couldn’t you see I was turning it over? And did I ever throw it up at you, whatever high words we might have had? Therefore what I say now is no more than I thought then. It only makes you nicer.”
She was crude, she was common, she even had the vice of pointless exaggeration, for he himself honestly couldn’t understand how the situation he had described could make him nicer. But when the faculty of affection that was in her rose to the surface it diffused a glow of rest, almost of protection, deepening at any rate the luxury of their small cheap pastoral, the interlude in the grind of the week’s work; so that though neither of them had dined he would have been delighted to sit with her there the whole afternoon. It seemed a pause in something harsh that was happening to him, making it all easier, pushing it off to a distance. His thoughtshovered about that with a pertinacity of which they themselves wearied, but they hung there now with an ache of indifference. It would be too much, no doubt, to say that Millicent’s society appeared a compensation, yet he felt it at least a resource. For her too, evidently, the time had a taste; she made no proposal to retrace their steps. She questioned him about his father’s family and as to their letting him go on like that without ever holding out so much as a little finger; and she declared in a manner that was meant to gratify him by the indignation it conveyed, though the awkwardness of the turn made him smile, that if she had been one of such a bloated crew she should never have been able to “abear” the thought of a relation in such a poor way. Hyacinth already knew what Miss Henning thought of his business at old Crook’s and of the feeble show of a young man of his parts contented with a career that was after all a mere getting of one’s living by one’s ’ands. He had to do with books, but so had any shop-boy who should carry such articles to the residence of purchasers; and plainly Millicent had never discovered wherein the art he practised differed from that of a plumber or a saddler. He had not forgotten the shock once administered to her by his letting her know he wore an apron; she looked down on such conditions from her own so much higher range, sinceshewore mantles and jackets and shawls and the long trains of robes exhibited behind plate glass on dummies of wire and drawn forth to be transferred to her own undulating person, and had moreover never a scrap to do with making them up, but just with talking about them and showing them off and persuading people—people too quite gaping with the impression—of their beauty and cheapness. It had been a source of endless comfort to her, in her arduous evolution, that sheherself never worked with her ’ands. Hyacinth answered her inquiries, as she had answered his own of old, by asking her what “his family” owed to the son of a person who had brought murder and mourning into their bright sublimities, and whether she thought he was very highly recommended to them. His question pulled her up a moment; after which she returned with the finest spirit: “Well, if your position was so low ain’t that all the more reason they should give you a lift? Oh it’s something cruel!” she cried; and she added that in his place she would have found a way to bring herself under their notice.Shewouldn’t have drudged out her life in Soho if she had had the blood of half the Peerage in her veins! “If they had noticed you they’d have liked you,” she was so good as to observe; but she immediately remembered also that in that case he would have been carried away quite over her head. She wasn’t prepared to say that she would have given him up, little good as she had ever got of him. In that case he would have been thick with real swells, and she emphasised the “real” by way of a thrust at the fine lady of Madeira Crescent—an artifice wasted, however, inasmuch as Hyacinth was sure she had extracted from Sholto a tolerably detailed history of the Princess. Millicent was tender and tenderly sportive, and he was struck with the fact that his base birth really made little impression on her: she accounted it an accident much less grave than he had been in the habit of doing. She was touched and moved, but what moved her was his story of his mother’s dreadful revenge, her long imprisonment and his childish visit to the jail, with his later discovery of his peculiar footing in the world. These things produced in her a generous agitation—something the same in kind as the emotion she had occasionally owed to the perusal of theFamily Herald. What affected her most and what she came back to was the whole element of Lord Frederick and the mystery of Hyacinth’s having got so little good out of his affiliation to that nobleman. She couldn’t get over his friends’ not having done something, though her imagination was still vague as to what they might have done. It was the queerest thing in the world to find her apparently assuming that if he hadn’t been so inefficient he might have “worked” the whole dark episode as a source of distinction, of glory, of profit.Shewouldn’t have been a nobleman’s daughter for nothing! Oh the left hand was as good as the right; her respectability, for the moment, made nothing of that! His long silence was what most astonished her; it put her out of patience, and there was a strange candour in her wonderment at his not having bragged about his ancestry. The generations representing it were vivid and concrete to her now in comparison with the timid shadows Pinnie had set into spasmodic circulation. Millicent bumped about in his hushed past with the oddest mixture of enthusiasm and criticism, and with good intentions which had the effect of profane voices bawling for sacred echoes.
“Me only—me and her? Certainly I ought to be obliged, even though it’s late in the day. The first time you saw her I suppose you told her—that night you went into her box at the theatre, eh? She’d have worse to tell you, I’m sure, if she could ever bring herself to speak the proper truth. And do you mean to say you never broke it to your big friend in the chemical line?”
“No, we’ve never talked about it.”
“Men are rare creatures!” Millicent cried. “You never so much as mentioned it?”
“It wasn’t necessary. He knew it otherwise—he knew it through his sister.”
“How do you know that if he never spoke?”
“Oh because he was jolly good to me,” said Hyacinth.
“Well, I don’t suppose that ruined him,” Miss Henning rejoined. “And how did his sister know it?”
“Oh I don’t know. She guessed it.”
The girl stared, then fairly snorted. “It was none of her business.” Then she added: “Hewasjolly good to you? Ain’t he good to you now?” She asked this question in her loud free voice, which rang through the bright stillness of the place.
Hyacinth delayed for a minute to meet it, and when at last he did so it was without looking at her. “I don’t know. I can’t make it out.”
“Well, I can then!” And she jerked him round toward her and inspected him with her big bright eyes. “You silly baby, hashebeen serving you?” She pressed her curiosity upon him; she asked if that was what disagreed with him. His lips gave her no answer, but apparently after an instant she found one in his face. “Has he been making up to her Serene Highness—is that his game?” she broke out. “Do you mean to say she’d look at the likes of him?”
“The likes of him? He’s as fine a man as stands!” said Hyacinth. “They’ve the same views, they’re doing the same work.”
“Oh he hasn’t changedhisopinions then—not like you?”
“No, he knows what he wants; he knows what he thinks.”
“Very much the ‘same work,’ I’ll be bound!” cried Millicent in large derision. “He knows what he wants, and I daresay he’ll get it.”
He was now on his feet, turning away from her; but she also rose and passed her hand into his arm.“It’s their own business; they can do as they please.”
“Oh don’t try to be a blamed saint; you put me out of patience!” the girl responded with characteristic energy. “They’re a precious pair, and it would do me good to hear you say so.”
“A man shouldn’t turn against his friends,” he went on with desperate sententiousness.
“That’s for them to remember; there’s no danger ofyourforgetting it.” They had begun to walk but she stopped him; she was suddenly smiling at him and her face was radiant. She went on with caressing inconsequence: “All you’ve terribly told me—ithasmade you nicer.”
“I don’t see that, but it has certainly madeyouso. My dear girl, you’re a comfort,” Hyacinth added as they moved further. Soon after which, the protection offered by the bole of a great tree being sufficiently convenient, he had, on a large look about them, passed his arm round her and drawn her closer and closer—so close that as they again paused together he felt her yield with a fine firmness, as it were, and with the full mass of her interest.