“I can give you your friend’s name—in a single guess. He’s Diedrich Hoffendahl!” They had been strolling more and more slowly the next morning, and as she made this announcement the Princess stopped altogether, standing there under a great beech with her eyes on Hyacinth’s and her hands full of primroses. He had breakfasted at noon with his hostess and Madame Grandoni, but the old lady had fortunately not joined them when the Princess afterwards proposed he should accompany her on her walk in the park. She told him how her venerable friend had, while the day was still very young, pronounced it in the worst possible taste that she shouldn’t let their companion yet depart in peace; to which she had replied that about tastes there was no disputing and that they had disagreed on such matters before without any one’s being the worse. Hyacinth expressed the hope that they wouldn’t dispute abouthim—of all thankless subjects in the world; and the Princess assured him that she never disputed about anything. She held that there were other ways than this of arranging one’s relations with people; and he guessed how thoroughly she meant that when a difference became sharp she broke off altogether. On her side then there was as little possibility as on his that they should ever quarrel: their acquaintance would be a grand friendshipor would be nothing at all. The Princess gave it from hour to hour more of this quality, and it may be figured how safe her guest felt by the time he began to tell her that something had happened to him in London three months before, one night, or rather in the small hours of the morning, that had altered his life altogether—had indeed as he might say changed the terms on which he held it. He was aware that he didn’t know exactly what he meant by this last phrase; but it expressed sufficiently well the new feeling that had come over him since that interminable, tantalising cab-drive in the rain.
The Princess had led to this almost as soon as they left the house; making up for her avoidance of such topics the day before by saying suddenly: “Now tell me what’s going on among your friends. I don’t mean your worldly acquaintances, but your colleagues, your brothers.Où en êtes-vousat the present time? Is there anything new, is anything going to be done? I’m afraid you’re always simply dawdling and muddling.” Hyacinth felt as if of late he had by no means either dawdled or muddled; but before he had committed himself so far as to refute the imputation she broke out with a different effect: “How annoying it is that I can’t ask you anything without giving you the right to say to yourself, ‘After all what do I know? Mayn’t she be in the pay of the police—?’”
“Oh that doesn’t occur to me,” Hyacinth gallantly protested.
“It might at all events; by which I mean it may at any moment. Indeed I think it ought.”
“If you were in the pay of the police you wouldn’t trouble your head about me.”
“I should make you think that certainly! That would be my first care. However, if you’ve no tiresome suspicions so much the better,” said thePrincess; and she pressed him again for some news from behind the scenes.
In spite of his absence of doubt on the subject of her honesty—he was sure he should never again entertain any such trumpery idea as that she might be an agent on the wrong side—he didn’t open himself immediately; but at the end of half an hour he let her know that the most important event of his life had taken place, scarcely more than the other day, in the most unexpected manner. And to explain in what it had consisted he said: “I pledged myself by everything that’s sacred.”
“To what did you pledge yourself?”
“I took a vow—a tremendous solemn vow—in the presence of four witnesses,” Hyacinth went on.
“And what was it about, your vow?”
“I gave my life away,” he consciously smiled.
She looked at him askance as if to see how he would indeed carry off such a statement as that; but she betrayed no levity of criticism—her face was politely grave. They moved together a moment, exchanging a glance in silence, and then she said: “Ah well then I’m all the more glad you stayed!”
“That was one of the reasons.”
“I wish you had waited—till after you had been here,” it occurred to her, however, to remark.
“Why till after I had been here?”
“Perhaps then you wouldn’t have given away your life. You might have seen reasons for keeping it.” With which, like Hyacinth, she sacrificed to the brighter bravery. He replied that he had not the least doubt that on the whole her influence was relaxing; but without heeding this she went on: “Be so good as to tell me what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not afraid of you, but I’ll give you no names,” said Hyacinth; and he related what hadhappened at the place known to him in Bloomsbury and during that night of which I have given some account. The Princess listened intently while they strolled under the budding trees with a more interrupted step. Never had the old oaks and beeches, renewing themselves in the sunshine as they did to-day or naked in some grey November, witnessed such an extraordinary series of confidences since the first pair that sought isolation wandered over the grassy slopes and ferny dells beneath them. Among other things our young man mentioned that he didn’t go to the “Sun and Moon” any more; he now perceived, what he ought to have perceived long before, that this particular temple of their faith, with everything that pretended to get hatched there, was a hopeless sham. He had been a rare muff from the first to take it seriously. He had done so mainly because a friend of his in whom he had confidence appeared to set him the example; but now it turned out that this friend (it was Paul Muniment again by the way) had always thought the men who went there a pack of shufflers and was trying them only to try everything. There was nobody you could begin to call a first-rate man, putting aside another friend of his, a Frenchman named Poupin—and Poupin was magnificent but wasn’t first-rate. Hyacinth had a standard now that he had seen a man who was the very incarnation of a strong plan. You felthima big chap the very moment you came into his presence.
“Into whose presence, Mr. Robinson?” the Princess demanded.
“I don’t know that I ought to tell you, much as I believe in you! I’m speaking of the extraordinary man with whom I entered into that engagement.”
“To give away your life?”
“To do something that in a certain contingencyhe’ll require of me. He’ll require my poor little carcass.”
“Those ‘strong’ plans have a way of failing—unfortunately,” the Princess murmured, adding the last word more quickly.
“Is that a consolation or a regret?” Hyacinth asked. “This one shan’t fail—so far as depends on me. They wanted an obliging young man. Well, the place was vacant and I stepped in.”
“I’ve no doubt you’re right. We must pay for all we do.” She noted this hard law calmly and coldly and then said: “I think I know the person in whose power you’ve placed yourself.”
“Possibly, but I doubt it.”
“You can’t believe I’ve already gone so far? Why not? I’ve given you a certain amount of proof that I don’t hang back.”
“Well, if you know my friend you’ve gone very far indeed.”
The Princess appeared on the point of pronouncing a name; but she checked herself and said instead, suddenly eager: “Don’t they also want by chance an obliging young woman?”
“I happen to know he doesn’t think much of women, my first-rate man. He doesn’t trust them.”
“Is that why you call him first-rate? You’ve very nearly betrayed him to me.”
“Do you imagine there’s only one of that opinion?” Hyacinth returned.
“Only one who, having it, still remains a superior man. That’s a very difficult opinion to reconcile with others it’s important to have.”
“Schopenhauer did so, successfully,” said Hyacinth.
“How delightful you should know old Schopenhauer!” the Princess exclaimed. “The gentleman I have in my eye is also German.” Hyacinth let thispass, not challenging her, because he wished not to be challenged in return, and she went on: “Of course such an engagement as you speak of must make a tremendous difference in everything.”
“It has made this difference, that I’ve now a far other sense from any I had before of the reality, the solidity, of what’s being prepared. I was hanging about outside, on the steps of the temple, among the loafers and the gossips, but now I’ve been in the innermost sanctuary. Yes, I’ve seen the holy of holies.”
“And it’s very dazzling?”
“Ah Princess!” the young man strangely sighed.
“Then itisreal, itissolid?” she pursued. “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to make up my mind about so long.”
“It’s beyond anything I can say. Nothing of it appears above the surface; but there’s an immense underworld peopled with a thousand forms of revolutionary passion and devotion. The manner in which it’s organised is what astonished me. I knew that, or thought I knew it, in a general way, but the reality was a revelation. And on top of it all society lives. People go and come, and buy and sell, and drink and dance, and make money and make love, and seem to know nothing and suspect nothing and think of nothing; and iniquities flourish, and the misery of half the world is prated about as a ‘necessary evil,’ and generations rot away and starve in the midst of it, and day follows day, and everything is for the best in the best of possible worlds. All that’s one half of it; the other half is that everything’s doomed! In silence, in darkness, but under the feet of each one of us, the revolution lives and works. It’s a wonderful, immeasurable trap, on the lid of which society performs its antics. When once the machinery is complete there will be a great rehearsal. Thatrehearsal is what they want me for. The invisible, impalpable wires are everywhere, passing through everything, attaching themselves to objects in which one would never think of looking for them. What could be more strange and incredible for instance than that they should exist just here?”
“You make me believe it,” said the Princess thoughtfully.
“It matters little whether one believes it or not!”
“You’ve had a vision,” she continued.
“Pardieu, I’ve had a vision! So would you, if you had been there.”
“I wish I had!” she declared in a tone charged with such ambiguous implications that Hyacinth, catching them a moment after she had spoken, rejoined with a quick, incongruous laugh—
“No, you’d have spoiled everything. He made me see, he made me feel, he made me do, everything he wanted.”
“And why should he have wanted you in particular?”
“Simply because I struck him as the right person. That’s his affair: I can’t tell you. When he meets the right person he chalks him. I sat on the bed. There were only two chairs in the dirty little room and by way of curtain his overcoat was hung up before the window. He himself didn’t sit; he leaned against the wall straight in front of me, his hands behind him. He told me certain things and his manner was extraordinarily quiet. So was mine, I think I may say; and indeed it was only poor Poupin who made a row. It was for my sake somehow: he didn’t think we were all conscious enough; he wanted to call attention to my sublimity. There was no sublimity about it—I simply couldn’t help myself. He and the other German had the two chairs and Muniment sat on a queer old, battered, hair-coveredtrunk, a most foreign-looking article.” Hyacinth had taken no notice of the little ejaculation with which his companion greeted in this last sentence the word “other.”
“And what did Mr. Muniment say?” she presently asked.
“Oh he said it was all right. Of course he thought so from the moment he determined to bring me. He knew what the other fellow was looking for.”
“I see.” Then the Princess added: “We’ve a curious way of being fond of you.”
“Whom do you mean by ‘we’?”
“Your friends. Mr. Muniment and I for instance.”
“I like it as well as any other. But you don’t feel alike. I’ve an idea you yourself are sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“That I’ve put my head into a noose.”
“Ah you’re rather snubby—I thought I concealed it so well!” the Princess cried. He recognised that his discrimination had been invidious, as there might have been for an instant a hint of tears in her voice. She looked away from him, and it was after this that, stopping short, she remarked as I have related: “Your man’s Diedrich Hoffendahl.”
Hyacinth took it with a stare and parted lips. “Well, youarein it—more than I supposed!”
“You know he doesn’t trust women,” his companion smiled.
“Why in the world should you have cared for any lightIcan throw if you’ve ever been in relation with him?”
She hesitated a little. “Oh you’re very different. I like you better,” she added.
“Ah if it’s for that!” murmured Hyacinth.
The Princess coloured as he had seen her colour before, and in this liability on her part there was even after repetition an unexpectedness, somethingall too touching. “Don’t try to fix my inconsistencies on me,” she said with a humility that matched her blush. “Of course there are plenty of them, but it will always be kinder of you to let them pass. Besides, in this case they’re not so serious as they seem. As a product of the ‘people’ and of that strange fermenting underworld (what you say of it’s so true!) you interest me more and have more to say to me even than Hoffendahl—wonderful creature as he assuredly is.”
“Would you object to telling me how and where you came to know him?” her visitor asked.
“Through a couple of friends of mine in Vienna, two of the affiliated, both passionate revolutionists and clever men. They’re Neapolitans, originallypoverettilike yourself, who emigrated years ago to seek their fortune. One of them’s a teacher of singing, the wisest, most accomplished person in his line I’ve ever known. The other, if you please, is a confectioner! He makes the most deliciouspâtisserie fine. It would take long to tell you how I madetheiracquaintance and how they put me into relation with the Maestro, as they called him, of whom they spoke with bated breath. It’s not from yesterday—though you don’t seem able to believe it—that I’ve had a care for these interests. I wrote to Hoffendahl and had several letters from him; the singing-master and the pastry-cook went bail for my sincerity. The next year I had an interview with him at Wiesbaden; but I can’t tell you the circumstances of our meeting in that place without implicating another person to whom just now at least I’ve no right to give you a clue. Of course Hoffendahl made an immense impression on me; he struck me as the Master indeed, the very genius of a new social order, and I fully understand the manner in which you were affected by him. When he was in Londonthree months ago I knew it and knew where to write to him. I did so and asked him if he wouldn’t see me somewhere. I said I’d meet him anywhere, in any darkness, if it should have to be, that he might designate. He answered by a charming letter which I’ll show you—it has nothing in the least compromising—but declined my offer, pleading his short stay and a press of engagements. He’ll write to me but won’t trust me. However, he shall some day!”
Hyacinth was thrown quite off his balance by this representation of the ground the Princess had already traversed, and the explanation was still but half restorative when, on his asking her why she hadn’t exhibited her titles before, she replied: “Well, I thought my being quiet was the better way to draw you out.” There was but little difficulty in drawing him out now, and before their walk was over he had told her more definitely what Hoffendahl demanded. This was simply that he should hold himself ready for the next five years to do at a given moment an act which would in all probability cost him his life. The act was as yet indefinite, but one might get an idea of it from the penalty involved, which would certainly be capital. The only thing settled was that it was to be done instantly and absolutely, without a question, a condition or a scruple, in the manner that should be prescribed at the moment from headquarters. Very likely it would be to shoot some one—some blatant humbug in a high place; but whether the individual should deserve it or shouldn’t deserve it was not to be one’s affair. If he recognised generally Hoffendahl’s wisdom—and the other night it had seemed to shine like a great cold, splendid, northern aurora—it was not in order that he might challenge it in the particular case. He had taken a vow of blind obedience, the vow as of the Jesuit fathers to thehead of their order. It was because the Jesuits had carried out their vows (having in the first place great administrators) that their organisation had been mighty, and this sort of mightiness was what people who felt as Hyacinth and the Princess felt should go in for. It was not certain sure he should be bagged after hiscoupany more than it was certain sure he should bring down his man; but it was much to be looked for and was what he counted on and indeed preferred. He should probably take little trouble to save his skin, and he should never enjoy the idea of dodging or hiding or disavowing. If it were a question of really placing his bullet he himself should naturally deserve what would come to him. If one did that sort of thing there was an indelicacy in not being ready to pay for it, and he at least was perfectly willing. He shouldn’t judge, he should simply execute. He didn’t pretend to say what good his little job might do or whatportéeit might have; he hadn’t the data for appreciating it and simply took upon himself to believe that at headquarters they knew what they were about. The thing was to be part of a very large plan, of which he couldn’t measure the scope—something that was to be done simultaneously in a dozen different countries. The impression was to be very much in this immense coincidence. It was to be hoped it wouldn’t be spoiled by any muffing. At all eventshewouldn’t hang fire, whatever the other fellows might do. He didn’t say it because Hoffendahl had done him the honour of giving him the business to do, but he believed the Master knew how to pick out his men. To be sure they had known nothing about him in advance; he had only been suggested from one day to the other by those who were always looking out. The fact remained, however, that when Hyacinth stood before him he recognised him as the sort oflittle chap he had in his eye—one who could pass through a very small opening. Humanity, in his scheme, was classified and subdivided with a truly German thoroughness and altogether of course from the point of view of the revolution—as it might forward or obstruct that cause. Hyacinth’s little job was a very small part of what Hoffendahl had come to England for; he had in his hand innumerable other threads. Hyacinth knew nothing of these and didn’t much want to know, except for the portentous wonder of the way Hoffendahl kept them apart. He had exactly the same mastery of them that a great musician—that the Princess herself—had of the keyboard of the piano; he treated all things, persons, institutions, ideas, as so many notes in his great symphonic massacre. The day would come when—far down in the treble—one would feel one’s self touched by the little finger of the composer, would grow generally audible (with a small sharp crack) for a second.
It was impossible that our young man shouldn’t become aware at the end of ten minutes that he had charmed the Princess into the deepest, most genuine attention: she was listening to him as she had never listened before. He enjoyed that high effect on her, and his sense of the tenuity of the thread by which his future hung, renewed by his hearing himself talk about it, made him reflect that at present anything in the line of enjoyment, any scrap filched from the feast of life, was so much gained for eager young experience. The reader may judge if he had held his breath and felt his heart-beats after placing himself on his new footing of utility in the world; but that emotion had finally spent itself, through a hundred forms of restlessness, of vain conjecture—through an exaltation which alternated with despair and which, equally with the despair, he concealed moresuccessfully than he supposed. He would have detested the idea that his companion might have heard his voice tremble while he told his story; but though to-day he had really grown used to his danger and resigned, as it were, to his consecration, and though it couldn’t fail to be agreeable to him to perceive that, like some famous novel, he was thrilling, he still couldn’t guess how very remarkable, in such a connexion, the Princess thought his composure, his lucidity, his good humour. It is true she tried to hide her wonder, for she owed it to her self-respect to let it still appear that even such a one as she was prepared for a personal sacrifice as complete. She had the air—or she endeavoured to have it—of accepting for him everything that he accepted for himself; nevertheless there was something rather forced in the smile (lovely as it might be) with which she covered him while she said after a little: “It’s very serious—it’s very serious indeed, isn’t it?” He replied that the serious part was to come—there was no particular grimness for him (comparatively) in strolling in that fine park and gossiping with her about the matter; and it occurred to her presently to suggest to him that perhaps Hoffendahl would never give him any sign at all, so that he might wait, all the whilesur les dents, in a false suspense. He admitted that this would be a sell, but declared that either way he should be sold, though differently; and that at any rate he would have conformed to the great religious rule—to live each hour as if it were to be one’s last.
“In holiness, you mean—in greatrecueillement?” the Princess asked.
“Oh dear no; simply in extreme thankfulness for every good minute that’s added.”
“Ah well, there will probably be a great many good minutes,” she returned.
“The more the better—if they’re as good as this one.”
“That won’t be the case with many of them in Lomax Place.”
“I assure you that since that night Lomax Place has improved.” Hyacinth stood there smiling, his hands in his pockets and his hat pushed back.
The Princess appeared to consider this quaint truth, as well as the charming facts of his appearance and attitude, with an extreme intellectual curiosity. “If after all then you’re not called you’ll have been positively happy.”
“I shall have had some fine moments. Perhaps Hoffendahl’s plot is simply for that: Muniment may have put him up to it!”
“Who knows? However, with me you must go on as if nothing were changed.”
“Changed from what?”
“From the time of our first meeting at the theatre.”
“I’ll go on in any way you like,” said Hyacinth. “Only the real difference will be there, you know.”
“The real difference?”
“That I shall have ceased to care for what you care for.”
“I don’t understand,” she confessed with all the candour of her beauty.
“Isn’t it enough now to give my life to the beastly cause,” the young man broke out, “without giving my sympathy?”
“The beastly cause?” the Princess murmured, opening her deep eyes.
“Of course it’s really just as holy as ever; only the people I find myself pitying now are the rich, the happy.”
“I see. You’re very remarkable. You’re splendid. Perhaps you pity my husband,” she added in a moment.
“Do you call him one of the happy?” Hyacinth inquired as they walked on again.
But she only repeated: “You’re very remarkable. Yes, you’re splendid.”
To which he made answer: “Well, it’s what I want to be!”
I have related the whole of this conversation because it supplies a highly important chapter of Hyacinth’s history, but we may not take time to trace all the stages and reproduce all the passages through which the friendship of the Princess Casamassima with the young man she had constituted her bookbinder was confirmed. By the end of a week the standard of fitness she had set up in the place of exploded proprieties appeared the model of justice and convenience; and during this period, a season of strange revelations for our young man, many other things happened. One of them was that he drove over to Broome with his hostess and called on Lady Marchant and her daughters; an episode that appeared to minister in the Princess to a thorough ironic glee. When they came away he asked her why she hadn’t told the ladies who he was. Otherwise where was the point? And she replied: “Simply because they wouldn’t have believed me. That’s your fault!” This was the same note she had struck when the third day of his stay (the weather had changed for the worse and a rainy afternoon kept them indoors) she remarked to him irrelevantly and abruptly: “Itismost extraordinary, your knowing poor dear old ‘Schop’!” He answered that she really seemed quite unable to accustom herself to his little talents; and this led to a long talk, longer than the one I have already narrated, in which he took her still further into his confidence. Never had the pleasure of conversation, the greatest he knew, been so largely opened to him. The Princess admittedfrankly that he would to her sense take a great deal of accounting for; she observed that he was, no doubt, pretty well used to himself, but must give stupider persons time. “I’ve watched you constantly since you came—in every detail of your behaviour—and I’m more and moreintriguée. You haven’t a vulgar intonation, you haven’t a common gesture, you never make a mistake, you do and say everything exactly in the right way. You come out of the poor cramped hole you’ve described to me, and yet you might have stayed in country-houses all your life. You’re much better than if you had!Jugez donc, from the way I talk to you! I’ve to make no allowances—not one little allowance. I’ve seen Italians with that sort of natural tact and ease, but I didn’t know it was ever to be found in any Anglo-Saxon in whom it hadn’t been cultivated at a vast expense; unless perhaps in certain horribly ‘refined’ little American women.”
“Do you mean I’m a gentleman?” asked Hyacinth in a peculiar tone while he looked out into the wet garden.
She faltered and then said: “It’s I who make the mistakes!” Five minutes later she broke into an exclamation which touched him almost more than anything she had ever done, giving him the highest opinion of her delicacy and sympathy, putting him before himself as vividly as if the words were a little portrait. “Fancy the strange, the bitter fate: to be constituted as you’re constituted, to be conscious of the capacity you must feel, and yet to look at the good things of life only through the glass of the pastry-cook’s window!”
“Every class has its pleasures,” he made answer with perverse sententiousness in spite of his emotion; but the remark didn’t darken their mutual intelligence, which was to expand to still greater wonders,and before they separated that evening he told her the things that had never yet passed his lips—the things to which he had awaked when he made Pinnie explain to him the visit to the prison. He told her in short what he was.
He took several long walks by himself beyond the gates of the park and through the neighbouring country—walks during which, committed as he was to reflexion on the general “rumness” of his destiny, he had still a delighted attention to spare for the green dimness of leafy lanes, the attraction of meadow-paths that led from stile to stile and seemed a clue to some pastoral happiness, some secret of the fields; the hedges thick with flowers, bewilderingly common, for which he knew no names, the picture-making power of thatched cottages, the mystery and sweetness of blue distances, the bloom of rural complexions, the quaintness of little girls bobbing curtsies by waysides (a sort of homage he had never prefigured); the soft sense of the turf under feet that had never ached but from paving-stones. One morning as he had his face turned homeward after a long stroll he heard behind him the sound of a horse’s hoofs and, looking back, perceived a gentleman who would presently pass him advancing up the road which led to the lodge-gates of Medley. He went his way and as the horse overtook him noticed that the rider slackened pace. Then he turned again and recognised in this personage his occasional florid friend Captain Sholto. The Captain pulled up alongside of him, saluting him with a smile and a movement of the whip-handle. Hyacinth stared with surprise, nothaving heard from the Princess that she was expecting him. He gathered, however, in a moment that she was not; and meanwhile he received an impression on Sholto’s part of riding-gear that was “knowing”—of gaiters and spurs and a hunting-crop and a curious waistcoat; perceiving this to be a phase of the Captain’s varied nature that he had not yet had occasion to observe. He struck him as very high in the air, perched on his big lean chestnut, and Hyacinth noticed that if the horse was heated the rider was cool.
“Good-morning, my dear fellow. I thought I should find you here!” the Captain exclaimed. “It’s a good job I’ve met you this way without having to go to the house.”
“Who gave you reason to think I was here?” Hyacinth asked; partly occupied with the appositeness of this inquiry and partly thinking, as his eyes wandered over his handsome friend bestriding so handsome a beast, what a jolly thing it would be to know how to ride. He had already, during the few days he had been at Medley, had time to observe that the knowledge of luxury and the wider range of sensation begot in him a taste for still bolder pleasures.
“Why, I knew the Princess was capable of asking you,” Sholto said; “and I learned at the ‘Sun and Moon’ that you had not been there for a long time. I knew furthermore that as a general thing you go there a good deal, don’t you? So I put this and that together and judged you were out of town.”
This was very clear and straightforward and might have satisfied just exactions save for that irritating reference to the Princess’s being “capable of asking him.” He knew as well as the Captain that it had been tremendously eccentric in her to do so, but somehow a transformation had lately taken place in him which made it unpleasant he should receive thatview from another, and particularly from a gentleman of whom at a certain juncture several months before he had had strong grounds for thinking unfavourably. He had not seen Sholto since the evening when a queer combination of circumstances caused him to sit more queerly still and listen to comic songs in the company of Millicent Henning and this admirer. The Captain had not concealed his admiration; Hyacinth had his own ideas about his taking that line in order to look more innocent. When he accompanied Millicent that evening to her lodgings (they parted with Sholto on coming out of the Pavilion) the situation was tense between the young lady and her childhood’s friend. She let him have it, as she said; she gave him a dressing which she evidently intended should be memorable for having suspected her, for having insulted her before one of the military. The tone she took and the magnificent audacity with which she took it reduced him to an odd, gratified helplessness; he watched her at last with something of the excitement with which he would have watched a clever but uncultivated actress while she worked herself into a passion that he believed to be fictitious. He gave more credence to his jealousy and to the whole air of the case than to her loud rebuttals, enlivened though these were by tremendous head-tossings and skirt-shakings. But he felt baffled and outfaced, and had recourse to sarcasms which after all proved no more than her high gibes; seeking a final solution in one of those beastly little French shrugs, as Millicent called them, with which she had already denounced him for interlarding his conversation.
The air was never cleared, though the subject of their dispute was afterwards dropped, Hyacinth promising himself to watch his playmate as he had never done before. She let him know, as may wellbe supposed, that she had her eye onhim, and it must be confessed that as regards the exercise of a right of supervision he had felt himself at a disadvantage ever since the night at the theatre. It scantly mattered that she had pushed him into the Princess’s box (for she herself had not been jealous beforehand; she had wanted too much to know what such a person could be “up to,” desiring perhaps to borrow a hint) and it signified as little also that his relations with the great lady were all for the sake of suffering humanity. The atmosphere, however these things might be, was full of thunder for many weeks, and of what importance was the quarter from which the flash and the explosion should proceed? Hyacinth was a good deal surprised to find he could care whether Millicent deceived him or not, and even tried to persuade himself that he didn’t; but it was as if he yet felt between them a personal affinity deeper than any difference, so that it would torment him more never to see her at all than to see her go into tantrums in order to cover her tracks. An inner sense told him that her mingled beauty and grossness, her vulgar vitality, the spirit of contradiction yet at the same time of attachment that was in her, had ended by making her indispensable to him. She bored as much as she irritated; but if she was full of excruciating taste she was also full of life, and her rustlings and chatterings, her wonderful stories, her bad grammar and good health, her insatiable thirst, her shrewd perceptions and grotesque opinions, her blunders and her felicities, were now all part of the familiar human sound of his little world. He could say to himself that she made up to him far more than he to her, and it helped him a little to believe, though the logic was but lame, that she was not “larking” at his expense. If she were really in with a swell he didn’t see why she wishedto retain a bookbinder. Of late, it must be added, he had ceased to devote much consideration to Millicent’s ambiguities; for although he was lingering on at Medley for the sake of suffering humanity he was quite aware that to say so (should she ask him for a reason) would have almost as low a value as some of the girl’s own speeches. As regards Sholto he was in the awkward position of having let him off, as it were, by accepting his hospitality, his bounty; thus he couldn’t quarrel with him save on a fresh pretext. This pretext the Captain had apparently been careful not to give, and Millicent had told him after the triple encounter in the street that he had driven him out of England, the poor gentleman he insulted by his vulgar insinuations even more (why ‘even more’ Hyacinth hardly could think) than he outraged herself. When he asked her what she knew about the Captain’s movements she made no scruple to announce to him that the latter had come to her great shop to make a little purchase (it was a pair of silk braces, if she remembered rightly, and she acknowledged unreservedly the thinness of the pretext) and had asked her with much concern whether his gifted young friend (that’s what he called him—Hyacinth could see he meant well) was still in a huff. Millicent had replied that she was afraid he was—the more shame to him; and then the Captain had declared it didn’t matter, as he himself was on the point of leaving England for several weeks (Hyacinth—he called him Hyacinth this time—couldn’t have ideas about a man in a foreign country, could he?) and hoped that by the time he returned the little cloud would have blown over. Sholto had added that she had better tell him frankly—recommending her at the same time to be gentle with their morbid friend—about his visit to the shop. Their candour, their humaneprecautions, were all very well; but after this, two or three evenings, Hyacinth passed and repassed the Captain’s chambers in Queen Anne Street to see if there were signs at the window of his being in London. Darkness in fact prevailed and he was forced to comfort himself a little when, at last making up his mind to ring at the door and inquire, as a test, for the occupant, he was informed by the superior valet whose acquaintance he had already made and whose air of wearing a jacket left behind by his master confirmed the statement, that the gentleman in question was at Monte Carlo.
“Have you still got your back up a little?” the Captain now demanded without rancour; and in a moment he had swung a long leg over the saddle and dismounted, walking beside his young friend and leading his horse by the bridle. Hyacinth pretended not to know what he meant, for it came over him that after all, even if he had not condoned at the time the Captain’s suspected treachery, he was in no position, sitting at the feet of the Princess, to sound the note of jealousy in relation to another woman. He reflected that the Princess had originally been in a manner Sholto’s property, and if he diden fin de comptewish to quarrel with him about Millicent he would have to cease to appear to poach on the Captain’s preserves. It now occurred to him for the first time that the latter might have intended a practical exchange; though it must be added that the Princess, who on a couple of occasions had alluded slightingly to her military friend, had given him no sign of recognising this gentleman’s claim. Sholto let him know at present that he was staying at Bonchester, seven miles off; he had come down from London and put up at the inn. That morning he had ridden over on a hired horse (Hyacinth had supposed this steed to be a very fine animal, butSholto spoke of it as an infernal screw); he had felt a sudden prompting to see how his young friend was coming on.
“I’m coming on very well, thank you,” said Hyacinth with some shortness, not knowing exactly what business it was of the Captain’s.
“Of course you understand my interest in you, don’t you? I’m responsible for you—I put you forward.”
“There are a great many things in the world I don’t understand, but I think the thing I understand least is your interest in me. Why the devil——?” And Hyacinth paused, breathless with the force of his inquiry. Then he went on: “If I were you I shouldn’t care tuppence for the sort of person I happen to be.”
“That proves how different my nature is from yours! But I don’t believe it, my dear boy; you’re too generous for that.” Sholto’s imperturbability always appeared to grow with the irritation it produced, and it was proof even against the just resentment excited by his deficiency of tact. That deficiency was marked when he went on to say: “I wanted to see you here with my own eyes. I wanted to see how it looked, your domesticated state—and itisa rum sight! Of course you know what I mean, though you’re always trying to make a fellow explain. I don’t explain well in any sense, and that’s why I go in only for clever people who can do without it. It’s very grand, her having brought you down.”
“Grand, no doubt, but hardly surprising, considering that, as you say, I was put forward by you.”
“Oh that’s a great thing for me, but it doesn’t make any difference to her!” Sholto returned. “She may care for certain things for themselves, but it will never signify a jot to her what I may havethought about them. One good turn deserves another. I wish you’d putmeforward!”
“I don’t understand you and I don’t think I want to,” said Hyacinth as his companion strolled beside him.
The latter put a hand on his arm, stopping him, and they stood face to face a moment. “I say, my dear Robinson, you’re not spoiled already, at the end of a week—how long is it? It isn’t possible you’re jealous!”
“Jealous of whom?” asked Hyacinth, whose measure of the allusion was, amid the strangeness of everything, imperfect.
Sholto looked at him a moment; then with a laugh: “I don’t mean Miss Henning.” Hyacinth turned away and the Captain resumed his walk, now taking the young man’s arm and passing his own through the bridle of the horse. “The courage of it, the insolence, thecrânerie! There isn’t another woman in Europe who could carry it off.”
Hyacinth was silent a little; after which he remarked: “This is nothing, here. You should have seen me the other day over at Broome, at Lady Marchant’s.”
“Gad, did she take you there? I’d have given ten pounds to see it. There’s no one like her!” cried the Captain gaily, enthusiastically.
“There’s no one like me, I think—for going.”
“Why, didn’t you enjoy it?”
“Too much—too much. Such excesses are dangerous.”
“Oh. I’ll back you,” said the Captain; then checking their pace, “Is there any chance of our meeting her?” he asked. “I won’t go into the park.”
“You won’t go to the house?” Hyacinth demanded in wonder.
“Oh dear no, not while you’re there.”
“Well, I shall ask the Princess about you, and so have done with it once for all.”
“Lucky little beggar, with your fireside talks!” the Captain lamented. “Where does she sit now in the evening? She won’t tell you anything except that I’m a beastly nuisance; but even if she were willing to take the trouble to throw some light on me it wouldn’t be of much use, because she doesn’t understand me herself.”
“You’re the only thing in the world then of which that can be said,” Hyacinth returned.
“I daresay I am, and I’m rather proud of it. So far as the head’s concerned the Princess is all there. I told you when I presented you that she was the cleverest woman in Europe, and that’s still my opinion. But there are some mysteries you can’t see into unless you happen to have a little decent human feeling, what’s commonly called a bit of heart. The Princess isn’t troubled with that sort of thing, though doubtless just now you may think it her strong point. One of these days you’ll see. I don’t care a rap myself about her quantity of heart. She has hurt me already so much that she can’t hurt me any more, and my interest in her is quite independent of it. To watch her, to adore her, to see her lead her life and act out her extraordinary nature, all the while she pays me no more attention than if I were the postman’s knock several doors on, that’s absolutely the only thing that appeals to me. It doesn’t do me a scrap of good, but all the same it’s my principal occupation. You may believe me or not—it doesn’t in the least matter; but I’m the most disinterested human being alive. She’ll tell you one’s the biggest kind of donkey, and so of course one is. But that isn’t all.”
It was Hyacinth who stopped this time, arrestedby something new and natural in the tone of his companion, a simplicity of emotion he had not hitherto associated with him. He stood there a moment looking up at him and thinking again what improbable confidences it decidedly appeared to be his lot to receive from gentlefolk. To what quality in himself were they a tribute? The honour was one he could easily dispense with; though as he scrutinised Sholto he found something in his odd light eyes—a sort of wasted flatness of fidelity—which made of an accepted relation with him a less fantastic adventure. “Please go on,” he said in a moment.
“Well, what I mentioned just now is my real and only motive in anything. The rest’s the mere gabble of the juggler to cover up his trick and help himself do it.”
“What do you mean by the rest?” asked Hyacinth, thinking of Millicent Henning.
“Oh all the straw one chews to cheat one’s appetite; all the rot one dabbles in because it may lead to something which it never does lead to; all the beastly buncombe (you know) that you and I have heard together in Bloomsbury and that I myself have poured out, damme, with an assurance worthy of a better cause. Don’t you remember what I’ve said to you—all as my own opinion—about the impending change of the relations of class with class? Impending collapse of the crust of the earth! I believe those on top of the heap are better than those under it, that they mean to stay there, and that if they’re not a pack of poltroons they will.”
“You don’t care for the social question then?” Hyacinth inquired with an aspect of the blankness of which he was conscious.
“I only took it up because she did. It hasn’thelped me,” Sholto smiled. “My dear Robinson,” he went on, “there’s only one thing I care for in life: to have a look at that woman when I can—and when I can’t to approach her in the sort of way I’m doing now.”
“It’s a very funny sort of way.”
“Indeed it is; but if it’s good enough for me it ought to be good enough for you. What I want you to do is this—to induce her to ask me over to dine.”
“To induce her——?” Hyacinth echoed.
“Tell her I’m staying at Bonchester and it would be an act of common humanity.”
They proceeded till they reached the gates and in a moment Hyacinth said: “You took up the social question then because she did. But do you happen to know whyshetook it up?”
“Ah my dear fellow, you must worry that out for yourself. I found you the place, but I can’t do your work for you!”
“I see—I see. But perhaps you’ll tell me this: if you had free access to her a year ago, taking her to the theatre and that sort of thing, why shouldn’t you have it now?”
This time Sholto’s yellow eyes were strange again. “Youhave it now, my dear chap, but I’m afraid it doesn’t follow that you’ll have it a year hence. She was tired of me then, and of course she’s still more tired of me now, for the simple reason that I’m more tiresome. She has sent me to Coventry and I want to come out for a few hours. See how awfully decent I am—I won’t pass the gates.”
“I’ll tell her I met you,” said Hyacinth. Then, irrelevantly, he added: “Is that what you mean by her having no heart?”
“Her treating me as she treats me? Oh dear no. Her treatingyou!”
This had a portentous sound, but it didn’t prevent Hyacinth from turning round with his visitor—for it was the greatest part of the oddity of the present meeting that the hope of a little conversation with him, if accident were favourable, had been the motive not only of Sholto’s riding over to Medley but of his coming down to stay, in the neighbourhood, at a musty inn in a dull market-town—it didn’t prevent him, I say, from bearing the Captain company for a mile on his backward way. Our young man pursued this particular topic little further, but he discovered still another reason or two for admiring the light, free action with which his companion had unmasked himself, as well as the nature of his interest in the revolutionary idea, after he had asked him abruptly what he had had in his head when he travelled over that evening, the summer before—and he didn’t appear to have come back as often as he promised—to Paul Muniment’s place in Camberwell. What was he looking for, whom was he looking for there?
“I was looking for anything that would turn up, that might take her fancy. Don’t you understand that I’m always looking? There was a time when I went in immensely for illuminated missals, and another when I collected horrible ghost-stories (she wanted to cultivate a belief in ghosts) all for her. The day I saw she was turning her attention to the rising democracy I began to collect little democrats. That’s how I collected you.”
“Muniment made you out exactly then. And what did you find to your purpose in Audley Court?”
“Well, I think the little woman with the popping eyes—she reminded me of a bedridden grasshopper—will do. And I made a note of the other one, the old virgin with the high nose, the aristocratic sister of mercy. I’m keeping them in reserve for my next propitiatory offering.”
Hyacinth had a pause. “And Muniment himself—can’t you do anything with him?”
“Oh my dear fellow, after you he’s poor!”
“That’s the first stupid thing you’ve said. But it doesn’t matter, for he dislikes the Princess—what he knows of her—too much ever to consent to see her.”
“That’s his line, is it? Then he’ll do!” Sholto cried.
“Of course he may come, and may stay as long as he likes!” the Princess exclaimed when Hyacinth, that afternoon, told her of his encounter: she spoke with the sweet, bright surprise her face always wore when people went through the form (supererogatory she apparently meant to declare it) of asking her leave. From the manner in which she granted Sholto’s petition—with a facility that made light of it, as if the question were not worth talking of one way or the other—the account he had given Hyacinth of their relations might have passed for an elaborate but none the less foolish hoax. She sent a messenger with a note over to Bonchester, and the Captain arrived just in time to dress for dinner. The Princess was always late, and Hyacinth’s toilet on these occasions occupied him considerably (he was acutely conscious of its deficiencies, and yet tried to persuade himself that they were positively honourable and that the only garb of dignity for him was the costume, as it were, of his profession); therefore when the fourth member of the little party descended to the drawing-room Madame Grandoni was the only person he found there.
“Santissima Vergine!I’m glad to see you! What good wind has sent you?” she exclaimed as soon as Sholto came into the room.
“Didn’t you know I was coming?” he asked.“Has the idea of my arrival produced so little agitation?”
“I know nothing of the affairs of this house. I’ve given them up at last, and it was time. I remain in my room.” There was nothing at present in the old lady’s countenance of her usual spirit of cheer; it expressed anxiety and even a certain sternness, and the excellent woman had perhaps at this moment more than she had ever had in her life of the air of a duenna who took her duties seriously. She looked almost august. “From the moment you come it’s a little better. But it’s very bad.”
“Very bad, dear madam?”
“Perhaps you’ll be able to tell me where Christinaveut en venir. I’ve always been faithful to her—I’ve always been loyal. But to-day I’ve lost patience. It has no sense.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” Sholto said; “but if I understand you I must tell you I think it all magnificent.”
“Yes, I know your tone; you’re worse than she, because you’re cynical. It passes all bounds. It’s very serious. I’ve been thinking what I should do.”
“Precisely. I know what you’ll probably do.”
“Oh this time I shouldn’t come back!” the old lady declared. “The scandal’s too great. It’s intolerable. But my danger’s of making it worse.”
“Dear Madame Grandoni, you can’t make it worse and you can’t make it better,” Sholto returned as he seated himself on the sofa beside her. “In point of fact no idea of scandal can possibly attach itself to our friend. She’s above and outside all such considerations, such dangers. She carries everything off; she heeds so little, she cares so little. Besides, she has one great strength—she does no wrong.”
“Pray what do you call it when a lady sends for a bookbinder to come and live with her?”
“Why not for a bookbinder as well as for a bishop? It all depends upon who the lady is and what she is.”
“She had better take care of one thing first,” cried Madame Grandoni—“that she shall not have been separated, with a hundred stories, from her husband!”
“The Princess can carry off even that. It’s unusual, it’s eccentric, it’s fantastic if you will, but it isn’t necessarily wicked. From her own point of view our friend goes straight. Besides, she has her opinions.”
“Her opinions are perversity itself.”
“What does it matter,” asked Sholto, “if they keep her quiet?”
“Quiet! Do you call this quiet?”
“Surely, if you’ll only be so yourself. Putting the case at the worst, moreover, who’s to know he’s her bookbinder? It’s the last thing you’d take him for.”
“Yes, for that she chose him carefully,” the old woman murmured, still with a ruffled eyebrow.
“Shechose him? It was I who chose him, dear lady!” the Captain cried with a laugh that showed how little he shared her solicitude.
“Yes, I had forgotten. At the theatre,” said Madame Grandoni, gazing at him as if her ideas were confused, yet as if a certain repulsion from her interlocutor nevertheless disengaged itself. “It was a fine turn you did him there, poor young man!”
“Certainly he’ll have to be sacrificed. But why was I bound to consider him so much? Haven’t I been sacrificed myself?”
“Oh if he bears it like you!”—and she almost snorted with derision.
“How do you know how I bear it? One does what one can,” said the Captain while he settled his shirt-front. “At any rate remember this: she won’t tell people who he is for his own sake, and he won’t tell them for hers. So, as he looks much more like a poet or a pianist or a painter, there won’t be that sensation you fear.”
“Even so it’s bad enough,” said Madame Grandoni. “And he’s capable of bringing it out suddenly himself.”
“Ah if he doesn’t mind itshewon’t! But that’s his affair.”
“It’s too terrible to spoil him for his station,” the old lady went on. “How can he ever go back?”
“If you want him kept then indefinitely you’re inconsistent. Besides, if he pays for it he deserves to pay. He’s an abominable little conspirator against society.”
Madame Grandoni was silent a time; then she looked at the Captain with a gravity which might have been impressive to him had not his accomplished jauntiness suggested an insensibility to that sort of influence. “What then does Christina deserve?” she asked with solemnity.
“Whatever she may get; whatever in the future may make her suffer. But it won’t be the loss of her reputation. She’s too distinguished.”
“You English are strange. Is it because she’s a princess?” Madame Grandoni reflected audibly.
“Oh dear no, her princedom’s nothing here. We can easily beat that. But we can’t beat——!” And he had a pause.
“What then?” his companion asked.
“Well, the perfection of her indifference to public opinion and the unaffectedness of her originality; the sort of thing by which she has bedevilled me.”
“Ohyou!” Madame Grandoni tossed off.
“If you think so poorly of me why did you say just now that you were glad to see me?” Sholto demanded in a moment.
“Because you make another person in the house, and that’s more regular; the situation is by so much less—what did you call it?—eccentric.Nun,” she presently went on, “so long as you’re here I won’t go off.”
“Depend upon it I shall hang on tight till I’m turned out.”
She rested her small troubled eyes on him, but they betrayed no particular enthusiasm at this announcement. “I don’t understand how for yourself on such an occasion you should like it.”
“Dear Madame Grandoni, the heart of man, without being such a hopeless labyrinth as the heart of woman, is still sufficiently complicated. Don’t I know what will become of the little beggar?”
“You’re very horrible,” said the old woman. Then she added in a different tone: “He’s much too good for his fate.”
“And pray wasn’t I for mine?” the Captain asked.
“By no manner of means!” Madame Grandoni returned as she rose and moved away from him.
The Princess had come into the room accompanied by Hyacinth. As it was now considerably past the dinner-hour the old lady judged that this couple, on their side, had met in the hall and had prolonged their conversation there. Hyacinth watched with extreme interest the way the Princess greeted the Captain—taking it for very simple, easy and friendly. At dinner she made no stranger of him, including him in everything as if he had been a useful familiar like Madame Grandoni, only a little less venerable, yet not giving him any attention that might cause their eyes to meet. She had told Hyacinth she didn’tlike his eyes, nor indeed very much any part of him. Of course any admiration from almost any source couldn’t fail to be in some degree grateful to an amiable woman, but of any unintended effect one might ever have produced the impression made on Godfrey Sholto in an evil hour ministered least to her vanity. He had been useful undoubtedly at times, but at others had been as a droning in her ears. He was so uninteresting in himself, so shallow, so unoccupied and futile, and really so frivolous in spite of his pretension (of which she was unspeakably weary) of being all wrapped up in a single idea. It had never by itself been sufficient to interest her in any man, the fact that he was in love with her; but indeed she could honestly say that most of the people who had liked her had had on their own side something, something in their character or conditions, that she could trouble her head about. Not so far as would do any harm save perhaps in one or two cases; but still some personal mark.
Sholto was a curious and not particularly edifying English type, as the Princess further described him; one of those odd figures produced by old societies that have run to seed, corrupt and exhausted civilisations. He was a cumberer of the earth—purely selfish for all his devoted, disinterested airs. He was nothing whatever in himself and had no character or merit save by tradition, reflexion, imitation, superstition. He had a longish pedigree—he came of some musty, mouldy “county family,” people with a local reputation and an immense lack of general importance; he had taken the greatest care of his little fortune. He had travelled all over the globe several times, “for the shooting,” in that murdering, ravaging way of the English, the destruction, the extirpation of creatures more beautiful, more soaring and more nimble than themselves. He had a littletaste, a little cleverness, a little reading, a little good furniture, a little French and Italian (he exaggerated these latter quantities), an immense deal of assurance and unmitigated leisure. That, at bottom, was all he represented—idle, trifling, luxurious, yet at the same time pretentious leisure, the sort of thing that led people to invent false, humbugging duties because they had no real ones. Sholto’s great idea of himself, after his profession of being her slave, was that he was a cosmopolite and exempt from every prejudice. About the prejudices the Princess couldn’t say and didn’t care; but she had seen him in foreign countries, she had seen him in Italy, and she was bound to say he understood nothing of those people. It was several years before, shortly after her marriage, that she had first encountered him. He had not begun immediately to go in for adoring her—it had come little by little. It was only after she had separated from her husband that he had taken so to hanging about her—since when she had suffered much from him. She would do him one justice, however: he had never, so far as she knew, had the impudence to represent himself as anything but hopeless and helpless. It was on this he took his stand—he wanted to pass for the great model of unrewarded constancy. She couldn’t imagine what he was waiting for—perhaps it was for the death of the Prince. But the Prince would never die, nor had she the least desire he should. She had no wish to be harsh, for of course that sort of thing was from any one very flattering; but really, whatever feeling poor Sholto might have, four-fifths of it were purely theatrical. He was not in the least a natural, quiet person, and had only a hundred affectations and attitudes, the result of never having been obliged to put his hand to anything, of having no serious tastes and yet being born to a little position. The Princess remarkedthat she was so glad Hyacinth had no position, had been forced to do something else in life but amuse himself; that was the way she liked her friends now. She had said to Sholto again and again: “There are plenty of others who will be much more pleased with you; why not go tothem? It’s such a waste of time.” She was sure indeed he had in some degree taken her advice, was by no means, as regards herself, the absorbed, annihilated creature he endeavoured to pass for. He had told her once he was trying to take an interest in other women—though indeed he had added that it was of no use. Of what use did he expect anything he could possibly do to be? Hyacinth, at this, didn’t tell the Princess he had reason to believe the Captain’s effort in that direction had not been absolutely vain; but he made the reflexion privately and with increased confidence. He recognised a further truth even when his companion said at the end that with all she had touched upon poor Sholto was a queer combination. Trifler as he was there was something sinister in him too; and she confessed she had had a vague feeling at times that some day he might do her a hurt. It was a remark that caused our young man to stop short on the threshold of the drawing-room and ask in a low voice: “Are you afraid of him?”
The Princess smiled as he had not yet seen her. “Dio mio, how you say that! Should you like to kill him for me?”
“I shall have to kill some one, you know. Why not him while I’m about it if he troubles you?”
“Ah my friend, if you should begin to kill every one who has troubled me!” she wonderfully wailed as they went into the room.