A certain Sunday in November, more than three months after she had gone to live in Madeira Crescent, was so important an occasion for the Princess as to require reporting with a certain fulness. Early in the afternoon a loud peal from her door-knocker came to her ear; it had a sound of resolution, almost of defiance, which made her look up from her book and listen. She was sitting alone by the fire, over a heavy volume on Labour and Capital. It was not yet four o’clock, but she had had candles this hour; a dense brown fog made the daylight impure without suggesting an answer to the question of whether the scheme of nature had been to veil or to deepen the sabbatical dreariness. She was not tired of Madeira Crescent, such an idea she would indignantly have repudiated; but the prospect of a visitor had a happy application—the possibility even of his being an ambassador or a cabinet minister or another of the eminent personages with whom she had conversed before embracing the ascetic life. They had not knocked at her present door hitherto in any great numbers, for more reasons than one; they were out of town and she had taken pains to diffuse the belief that she had left England. If the impression prevailed it was exactly the impression she had desired; she forgot this fact whenever she felt a certain surprise—even, it may be, a certain irritation—inperceiving that people were not taking the way to Madeira Crescent. She was making the discovery, in which she had had many predecessors, that to hide in London is only too easy a game. It was very much in that fashion that Godfrey Sholto was in the habit of announcing himself when he reappeared after the intervals she explicitly imposed on him; there was a witless grace, for so world-worn a personage, in the point he made of showing that he knocked with confidence, that he had as good a right as any other. This afternoon she would have accepted his visit: she was perfectly detached from the shallow, frivolous world in which he lived, but there was still a freshness in her renunciation which coveted reminders and enjoyed comparisons—he would prove to her how right she had been to do exactly what she was doing. It didn’t occur to her that Hyacinth Robinson might be at her door, for it had been understood between them that save by special appointment he was to come to her only in the evening. She heard in the hall, when the servant arrived, a voice she failed to recognise; but in a moment the door of the room was thrown open and the name of Mr. Muniment pronounced. It may be noted at once that she took pleasure in the sound, for she had both wished to see more of Hyacinth’s extraordinary friend and had given him up—so little likely had it begun to appear that he would put himself out for her. She had been glad he wouldn’t come, as she had told Hyacinth three months before; but now that he had come she was still more glad.
Presently he was sitting before her on the other side of the fire, his big foot crossed over his big knee, his large, gloved hands fumbling with each other, drawing and smoothing in places the gloves of very red, new-looking dogskin that appeared to hurt him. So far as the size of his extremities and evenhis attitude and movement went he might have belonged to her former circle. With the details of his dress remaining vague in the lamplight, which threw into relief mainly his powerful, important head, he might have been one of the most considerable men she had ever known. The first thing she said to him was that she wondered extremely what had brought him at last to present himself: the idea, when she proposed it, had clearly so little attracted him. She had only seen him once since then—the day she met him coming into Audley Court when she was leaving it after a visit to his sister—and, as he probably remembered, she had not on that occasion repeated her invitation.
“It wouldn’t have done any good, at the time, if you had,” Muniment returned with his natural laugh.
“Oh I felt that; my silence wasn’t accidental!” the Princess declared with due gaiety.
“I’ve only come now—since you’ve asked me the reason—because my sister has hammered at me, week after week, dinning it into me that I ought to. Oh I’ve been under the lash! If she had left me alone I wouldn’t have come.”
The Princess blushed on hearing these words, but neither with shame nor with pain; rather with the happy excitement of being spoken to in a manner so fresh and original. She had never before had a visitor who practised so racy a frankness or who indeed had so curious a story to tell. She had never before so completely failed, and her failure greatly interested her, especially as it seemed now to be turning a little to success. She had succeeded promptly with every one, and the sign of it was that every one had rendered her a monotony of homage. Even poor little Hyacinth had tried, in the beginning, to say grand things to her. This very different type of man appeared to have his thoughts fixed on anything but flowers ofspeech; she felt the liveliest hope that he would move further and further away from that delusion. “I remember what you asked me—what good it would do you. I couldn’t tell you then; and though I now have had a long time to turn it over I haven’t thought of it yet.”
“Oh but I hope it will do me some,” the young man said. “A fellow wants a reward when he has made a great effort.”
“It doesmesome,” the Princess freely answered.
“Naturally the awkward things I say amuse you. But I don’t say them for that, but just to give you an idea.”
“You give me a great many ideas. Besides, I know you already a good deal.”
“From little Robinson, I suppose,” said Muniment.
She had a pause. “More particularly from Lady Aurora.”
“Oh she doesn’t know much about me!” he protested.
“It’s a pity you say that, because she likes you.”
“Yes, she likes me,” he serenely admitted.
Again his hostess hesitated. “And I hope you like her.”
“Aye, she’s a dear old girl!”
The Princess reflected that her visitor was not a gentleman, like Hyacinth; but this made no difference in her present attitude. The expectation that he would be a gentleman had had nothing to do with her interest in him; that had in fact rested largely on his probably finding felicity in a deep indifference to the character. “I don’t know that there’s any one in the world I envy so much,” she observed; a statement that her visitor received in silence. “Better than any one I’ve ever met she has solved the problem—which if we are wise we all try to solve, don’twe?—of getting out of herself. She has got out of herself more perfectly than any one I’ve ever known. She has merged herself in the passion of doing something for others. That’s why I envy her,” she concluded with an explanatory smile, as if perhaps he didn’t understand her.
“It’s an amusement like any other,” said Paul Muniment.
“Ah not like any other! It carries light into dark places; it makes a great many wretched people considerably less wretched.”
“How many, eh?” asked the young man, not exactly as if he wished to dispute but as if it were always in him to enjoy discussing.
The Princess wondered why he should wish to argue at Lady Aurora’s expense. “Well, one who’s very near to you, to begin with.”
“Oh she’s kind, most kind; it’s altogether wonderful. But Rosy makesherconsiderably less wretched,” Muniment added.
“Very likely, of course; and so she does me.”
“May I inquire what you’re wretched about?” he went on.
“About nothing at all. That’s the worst of it. But I’m much happier now than I’ve ever been.”
“Is that also about nothing?”
“No, about a sort of change that has taken place in my life. I’ve been able to do some little things.”
“For the poor, I suppose you mean. Do you refer to the presents you’ve made to Rosy?” the young man asked.
“The presents?” She appeared not to remember. “Oh those are trifles. It isn’t anything one has been able to give. It’s some talks one has had, some convictions one has arrived at.”
“Convictions are a source of very innocentpleasure,” said the young man, smiling at his interlocutress with his bold, pleasant eyes, which seemed to project their glance further and drive it harder than any she had seen.
“Having them’s nothing. It’s the acting on them,” the Princess replied.
“Yes; that doubtless too is good.” He continued to look at her patiently, as if he liked to consider that this might be what she had asked him to come for. He said nothing more, and she went on:
“It’s far better of course when one’s a man.”
“I don’t know. Women do pretty well what they like. My sister and you have managed, between you, to bring me to this.”
“It’s more your sister, I suspect, than I. But why, after all, should you have disliked so much to come?”
“Well, since you ask me,” said Paul Muniment, “I’ll tell you frankly, though I don’t mean it uncivilly, that I don’t know what to make of you.”
“Most people don’t,” returned the Princess. “But they usually take the risk.”
“Ah well, I’m the most prudent of men.”
“I was sure of it; that’s one of the reasons I wanted to know you. I know what some of your ideas are—Hyacinth Robinson has told me; and the source of my interest in them is partly the fact that you consider very carefully what you attempt.”
“That I do—I do,” he agreed.
The tone in which he said this would have been almost ignoble, as regards a kind of northern canniness latent in it, had it not been corrected by the character of his face, his youth and strength, his almost military eyes. The Princess recognised both the shrewdness and the natural ease as she rejoined: “To do anything in association with you would be very safe. It would be sure to succeed.”
“That’s what poor Hyacinth thinks,” he said.
She wondered a little that he could allude in that light tone to the faith their young friend had placed in him, considering the consequences such a trustfulness might yet have; but this curious mixture of qualities could only make her visitor, as a tribune of the people, more interesting to her. She abstained for the moment from touching on the subject of Hyacinth’s peculiar position and only pursued: “Hasn’t he told you about me? Hasn’t he explained me a little?”
“Oh his explanations are grand!” Muniment laughed. “He’s fine sport when he talks about you.”
“Don’t betray him,” she said gently.
“There’s nothing to betray. You’d be the first to admire it if you were there. Besides, I don’t betray,” he added.
“I love him very much,” said the Princess; and it would have been impossible for the most impudent cynic to smile at the manner in which she made the declaration.
Her guest accepted it respectfully. “He’s a sweet little lad and, putting her ladyship aside, quite the light of our humble home.”
There was a short pause after this exchange of amenities, which the Princess terminated by inquiring: “Wouldn’t some one else do his work quite as well?”
“His work? Why, I’m told he’s a master-hand.”
“Oh I don’t mean his bookbinding.” Then she added: “I don’t know if you know it, but I’m in correspondence with a certain person. If you understand me at all you’ll know whom I mean. I’m acquainted with many of our most important men.”
“Yes, I know. Hyacinth has told me. Do you mention it as a guarantee, so that I may know you’re sound?”
“Not exactly; that would be weak, wouldn’t it?” the Princess asked. “My soundness must be in myself—a matter for you to appreciate as you know me better; not in my references and vouchers.”
“I shall never know you better. What business is it of mine?”
“I want to help you,” she said; and as she made this earnest appeal her face became transfigured: it wore an expression of the most passionate yet the purest longing. “I want to do something for the cause you represent; for the millions who are rotting under our feet—the millions whose whole life is passed on the brink of starvation, so that the smallest accident pushes them over. Try me, test me; ask me to put my hand to something, to prove that I’m as deeply in earnest as those who have already given proof. I know what I’m talking about—what one must meet and face and count with, the nature and the immensity of your organisation. I’m not trifling. No, I’m not trifling.”
Paul Muniment watched her with his steady smile until this sudden outbreak had spent itself. “I was afraid you’d be like this—that you’d turn on the fountains and let off the fireworks.”
“Permit me to believe you thought nothing about it. There’s no reason my fireworks should disturb you.”
“I have always had a fear of clever women.”
“I see—that’s a part of your prudence,” said the Princess reflectively. “But you’re the sort of man who ought to know how to use them.”
He made no immediate answer to this; the way he appeared to regard her suggested that he was not following closely what she said so much as losing himself in certain matters which were beside that question—her beauty, for instance, her grace, herfragrance, the spectacle of a manner and quality so new to him. After a little, however, he brought out irrelevantly: “I’m afraid I’m awfully rude.”
“Of course you are, but it doesn’t signify. What I mainly object to is that you don’t meet my questions. Wouldn’t some one else do Hyacinth Robinson’s work quite as well? Is it necessary to take a nature so delicate, so intellectual? Oughtn’t we to keep him for something finer?”
“Finer than what?”
“Than what he’ll be called upon to do.”
“And pray what’s that?” the young man demanded. “You know nothing about it; no more do I,” he added in a moment. “It will require whatever it will. Besides, if some one else might have done it no one else volunteered. It happened that Robinson did.”
“Yes, and you nipped him up!” the Princess returned.
This expression made Muniment laugh. “I’ve no doubt you can easily keep him if you want him.”
“I should like to do it in his place—that’s what I should like,” said the Princess.
“As I say, you don’t even know what it is.”
“It may be nothing,” she went on with her grave eyes fixed on her visitor. “I daresay you think that what I wanted to see you for was to beg you to let him off. But it wasn’t. Of course it’s his own affair and you can do nothing. But oughtn’t it to make some difference if his opinions have changed?”
“His opinions? He never had any opinions,” Muniment replied. “He’s not like you and me.”
“Well then, his feelings, his attachments. He hasn’t the passion for the popular triumph that he had when I first knew him. He’s much more tepid.”
“Ah well, he’s quite right.”
The Princess stared. “Do you mean thatyouare giving up——?”
“A fine, stiff conservative’s a thing I perfectly understand,” said Paul Muniment. “If I were on the top I’d stick.”
“I see, you’re not narrow,” she breathed appreciatively.
“I beg your pardon, I am. I don’t call that wide. One must be narrow to penetrate.”
“Whatever you are you’ll succeed,” said the Princess. “Hyacinth won’t, but you will.”
“It depends upon what you call success!” the young man returned. And in a moment, before she could take it up, he added as he looked about the room: “You’ve got a lovely home.”
“Lovely? My dear sir, it’s hideous. That’s what I like it for,” she hastened to explain.
“Well, I like it, but perhaps I don’t know the reason. I thought you had given up everything—pitched your goods out of window for a grand scramble.”
“It’s what Ihavedone. You should have seen me before.”
“I should have liked that,” he quite shamelessly smiled. “I like to see solid wealth.”
“Ah you’re as bad as Hyacinth. I’m the only consistent one!” the Princess sighed.
“You’ve a great deal left, for a person who has given everything away.”
“These are not mine—these abominations—or I would give them too!” Paul’s hostess returned artlessly.
He got up from his chair, still looking over the scene. “I’d give my nose for such a place as this. At any rate, you’re not yet reduced to poverty.”
“I’ve a little left—to help you.”
“I’d lay a wager you’ve a great deal,” he declared with his north-country accent.
“I could get money—I could get money,” she continued gravely. She had also risen and was standing before him.
These two remarkable persons faced each other, their eyes met again, and they exchanged a long, deep glance of mutual scrutiny. Each seemed to drop a plummet into the other’s mind. Then a strange and, to the Princess, unexpected expression passed over the countenance of her guest; his lips compressed themselves as in the strain of a strong effort, his colour rose and in a moment he stood there blushing like a boy. He dropped his eyes and stared at the carpet while he repeated: “I don’t trust women—I don’t trust clever women!”
“I’m sorry, but after all I can understand it,” she said; “therefore I won’t insist on the question of your allowing me to work with you. But this appeal Iwillmake: help me a little yourself—help me!”
“How do you mean, help you?” he asked as he raised his eyes, which had a new, conscious look.
“Advise me; you’ll know how. I’m in trouble—I’ve gone very far.”
“I’ve no doubt of that!” Paul laughed.
“I mean with some of those people abroad. I’m not frightened, but I’m worried. I want to know what to do.”
“No, you’re not frightened,” Muniment returned after a moment.
“I’m, however, in a sad entanglement. I think you can straighten it out. I’ll give you the facts, but not now, for we shall be interrupted—I hear my old lady on the stairs. For this you must come back to me.”
As she spoke the door opened, and Madame Grandoni appeared cautiously, creeping, as if she didn’t know what might be going on in the parlour. “Yes, I’ll come back,” said Paul quietly but clearly enough; with which he walked away, passing Madame Grandoni on the threshold and overlooking the hand-shake of farewell. In the hall he paused an instant, feeling his hostess behind him; whereby he learned that she had not come to exact from him this omitted observance, but to say once more, dropping her voice so that her companion, through the open door, might not catch: “Icouldget money—I could!”
He passed his hand through his hair and, as if he had not heard, observed: “I’ve not after all given you half Rosy’s messages.”
“Oh that doesn’t matter!” she answered as she turned back into the parlour.
Madame Grandoni was in the middle of the room, wrapped in her old shawl, looking vaguely round her, and the two ladies heard the house-door close. “And pray who may that be? Isn’t it a new face?” the elder one inquired.
“He’s the brother of the little person I took you to see over the river—the chattering cripple with the wonderful manners.”
“Ah she had a brother! That then was why you went?”
It was striking, the good humour with which the Princess received this rather coarse thrust, which could have been drawn from Madame Grandoni only by the petulance and weariness of increasing age and the antipathy she now felt to Madeira Crescent and everything it produced. Christina bent a calm, charitable smile on her ancient support and replied: “There could have been no question of our seeing him. He was of course at his work.”
“Ah how do I know, my dear? And is he a successor?”
“A successor?”
“To the little bookbinder.”
“Mia cara,” said the Princess, “you’ll see how absurd that question is when I tell you he’s his greatest friend!”
Half an hour after the departure of the young chemical expert she heard another rat-tat-tat at her door; but this was a briefer, discreeter peal and was accompanied by a faint tintinnabulation. The person who had produced it was presently ushered in, without, however, causing Madame Grandoni to look round, or rather to look up, from an armchair as low as a sitz-bath and of very much the shape of such a receptacle, in which, near the fire, she had been immersed. She left this care to the Princess, who rose on hearing the name of the visitor pronounced inadequately by her maid. “Mr. Fetch,” Assunta called it; but that functionary’s mistress recognised without difficulty the little fat “reduced” fiddler of whom Hyacinth had talked to her, who, as Pinnie’s most intimate friend, had been so mixed up with his existence, and whom she herself had always had a curiosity to see. Hyacinth had not told her he was coming, and the unexpectedness of the apparition added to its interest. Much as she liked seeing queer types and exploring out-of-the-way social corners, she never engaged in a fresh encounter nor formed a new relation of this kind without a fit of nervousness, a fear she might herself be wanting, might fail to hit the right tone. She perceived in a moment, however, that Mr. Vetch would take her as she was and require no special adjustments; he was a gentleman and aman of experience and she should only have to leave the tone to him. He stood there with his large polished hat in his two hands, a hat of the fashion of ten years before, with a rusty sheen and an undulating brim—stood there without a salutation or a speech, but with a small fixed, acute, tentative smile which seemed half to interrogate and half to explain. What he explained, at all events, was that he was clever enough to be trusted and that if he had called this way, without ceremony and without an invitation, he had a reason which she would be sure to think good enough when she should hear it. There was even a certain jauntiness in his confidence—an insinuation that he knew how to present himself to a lady; and though it quickly appeared that he really did, this was the only thing about him that was inferior. It suggested a long experience of actresses at rehearsal, with whom he had formed habits of advice and compliment.
“I know who you are—I know who you are,” said the Princess, though she could easily see he knew she did.
“I wonder if you also know why I’ve come to see you,” Mr. Vetch replied, presenting the top of his hat to her as if it were a looking-glass.
“No, but it doesn’t matter. I’m very glad. You might even have come before.” Then she added with her characteristic honesty: “Aren’t you aware of the great interest I’ve taken in your nephew?”
“In my nephew? Yes, my young friend Robinson. It’s for his sake I’ve ventured to intrude on you.”
She had been on the point of pushing a chair toward him, but she stopped in the act, staring with a smile. “Ah I hope you haven’t come to ask me to give him up!”
“On the contrary—on the contrary!” the old man returned, lifting his hand expressively and withhis head on one side as if he were holding his fiddle.
“How do you mean, on the contrary?” she asked after he had seated himself and she had sunk into her former place. As if that might sound contradictious she went on: “Surely he hasn’t any fear that I shall cease to be a good friend to him?”
“I don’t know what he fears; I don’t know what he hopes,” said Mr. Vetch, looking at her now with a face in which she could see there was something more tonic than old-fashioned politeness. “It will be difficult to tell you, but at least I must try. Properly speaking, I suppose, it’s no business of mine, as I’m not a blood-relation to the boy; but I’ve known him since he was a mite—he’s not much more even now—and I can’t help saying that I thank you for your great kindness to him.”
“All the same I don’t think you like it,” the Princess declared. “To me it oughtn’t to be difficult to say anything.”
“He has told me very little about you; he doesn’t know I’ve taken this step,” the fiddler said, turning his eyes about the room and letting them rest on Madame Grandoni.
“Why do you speak of it as a ‘step’? That’s what people say when they’ve to do something disagreeable.”
“I call very seldom on ladies. It’s a long time since I’ve been in the house of a person like the Princess Casamassima. I remember the last time,” said the old man. “It was to get my money from a lady at whose party I had been playing—for a dance.”
“You must bring your fiddle some time and play to us. Of course I don’t mean for money,” the Princess added.
“I’ll do it with pleasure, or anything else that willgratify you. But my ability’s very small. I only know vulgar music—things that are played at theatres.”
“I don’t believe that. There must be things you play for yourself—in your room alone.”
Mr. Vetch had a pause. “Now that I see you, that I hear you, it helps me to understand.”
“I don’t think you do see me!” his hostess freely laughed; on which he desired to know if there were danger of Hyacinth’s coming in while he was there. She replied that he only came, unless by prearrangement, in the evening, and her visitor made a request that she wouldn’t let their young friend imagine he himself had been with her. “It doesn’t matter; he’ll guess it, he’ll know it by instinct, as soon as he comes in. He’s terribly subtle,” she said; and she added that she had never been able to hide anything from him. Perhaps this served her right—for attempting to make a mystery of things not worth it.
“How well you know him!” the fiddler commented while his eyes wandered again to Madame Grandoni, who paid no attention to him as she sat staring at the fire. He delayed visibly to say what he had come for, and his hesitation could only be connected with the presence of the old lady. He considered that the Princess might have divined this from his manner; he had an idea he could trust himself to convey such an intimation with clearness and yet with delicacy. But the most she appeared to apprehend was that he desired to be presented to her companion. “You must know the most delightful of women. She also takes a particular interest in Mr. Robinson: of a different kind from mine—much more sentimental!” And then she explained to her friend, who seemed absorbed in other ideas, that Mr. Vetch was a distinguished musician, a person whom she, who had known so many in her day andwas so fond of that kind of thing, would like to talk with. The Princess spoke of “that kind of thing” quite as if she herself had given it up, though Madame Grandoni often heard her by the hour together improvising at the piano revolutionary battle-songs and pæans.
“I think you’re laughing at me,” Mr. Vetch said to her while the other figure twisted itself slowly round in its chair and regarded him. It looked at him conveniently, up and down, and then sighed out:
“Strange people—strange people!”
“It’s indeed a strange world, madam,” the fiddler replied; after which he inquired of the Princess if he might have a little conversation with her in private.
She looked about her, embarrassed and smiling. “My dear sir, I’ve only this one room to receive in. We live in a very small way.”
“Yes, your excellency is laughing at me. Your ideas are very large too. However, I’d gladly come at any other time that might suit you.”
“You impute to me higher spirits than I possess. Why should I be so gay?” the Princess asked. “I should be delighted to see you again. I’m extremely curious as to what you may have to say to me. I’d even meet you anywhere—in Kensington Gardens or the British Museum.”
He took her deeply in before replying, and then, his white old face flushing a little, exclaimed: “Poor dear little Hyacinth!”
Madame Grandoni made an effort to rise from her chair, but she had sunk so low that at first it was not successful. Mr. Vetch gave her a hand of help, and she slowly erected herself, keeping hold of him for a moment after she stood there. “What did she tell me? That you’re a great musician? Isn’t that enough for any man? You ought to be content, mydear gentleman. It has sufficed for people whom I don’t believe you surpass.”
“I don’t surpass any one,” said poor Mr. Vetch. “I don’t know what you take me for.”
“You’re not a wicked revolutionary then? You’re not a conspirator nor an assassin? It surprises me, but so much the better. In this house one can never know. It’s not a good house, and if you’re a respectable person it’s a pity you should come here. Yes, she’s very gay and I’m very sad. I don’t know how it will end. After me, I hope. The world’s not good, certainly; but God alone can make it better.” And as the fiddler expressed the hope that he was not the cause of her leaving the room she went on: “Doch, doch, you’re the cause; but why not you as well as another? I’m always leaving it for some one or for something, and I’d sooner do so for an honest man, if youareone—but, as I say, who can tell?—than for a destroyer. I wander about. I’ve no rest. I have, however, a very nice room, the best in the house. Me at least she doesn’t treat ill. It looks to-day like the end of all things. If you’d turn your climate the other side up the rest would do well enough. Good-night to you, whoever you are.”
The old lady shuffled away in spite of Mr. Vetch’s renewed apologies, and the subject of her criticism stood before the fire watching the pair while he opened the door. “She goes away, she comes back; it doesn’t matter. She thinks it a bad house, but she knows it would be worse without her. I remember about you now,” the Princess added. “Mr. Robinson told me you had been a great democrat in old days, but that at present you’d ceased to care for the people.”
“The people—the people? That’s a silly term. Whom do you mean?”
She hesitated. “Those you used to care for, to plead for; those who are underneath every one,underneath everything, and have the whole social mass crushing them.”
“I see you think I’m a renegade. The way certain classes arrogate to themselves the title of the people has never pleased me. Why are some human beings the people, the people only, and others not? I’m of the people myself, I’ve worked all my days like a knife-grinder and I’ve really never changed.”
“You mustn’t let me make you angry,” she laughed as she sat down again. “I’m sometimes very provoking, but you must stop me off. You wouldn’t think it perhaps, but no one takes a snub better than I.”
Mr. Vetch dropped his eyes a minute; he appeared to wish to show that he regarded such a speech as that as one of this great, perverse lady’s characteristic humours and knew he should be wanting in respect to her if he took it seriously or made a personal application of it. “What I want is this,” he began after a moment: “that you’ll, that you’ll——” But he stopped before he had got further. She was watching him, listening to him; she waited while he paused. It was a long pause and she said nothing. “Princess,” the old man broke out at last, “I’d give my own life many times for that boy’s!”
“I always told him you must have been fond of him!” she cried with bright exultation.
“Fond of him? Pray who can doubt it? I made him, I invented him!”
“He knows it, moreover,” the Princess smiled. “It’s an exquisite organisation.” And as the old man gazed at her, not knowing apparently what to make of her tone, she kept it up: “It’s a very interesting opportunity for me to learn certain things. Speak to me of his early years. How was he as a child? When I like people I like them altogether and want to know everything about them.”
“I shouldn’t have supposed there was much left for you to learn about our young friend. You’ve taken possession of his life,” Mr. Vetch added gravely.
“Yes, but as I understand you, you don’t complain of it? Sometimes one does so much more than one has intended. One must use one’s influence for good,” she went on with the noble, gentle air of accessibility to reason that sometimes lighted up her face. And then irrelevantly: “I know the terrible story of his mother. He told it me himself when he was staying with me. In the course of my life I think I’ve never been more affected.”
“That was my fault—that he ever learnt it. I suppose he also told you that.”
“Yes, but I think he understood your idea. If you had the question to determine again would you judge differently?”
“I thought it would do him good,” said the old man simply and rather wearily.
“Well, I daresay it has,” she returned with the manner of wishing to encourage him.
“I don’t know what was in my head. I wanted him to quarrel with society. Now I want him to be reconciled to it,” Mr. Vetch remarked earnestly. He appeared to desire her to understand how great a point he made of this.
“Ah, but he is!” she immediately said. “We often talk about that; he’s not like me, who see all kinds of abominations. He’s a bloated little aristocrat. What more would you have?”
“Those are not the opinions he expresses tome”—and Mr. Vetch shook his head sadly. “I’m greatly distressed and I don’t make out——! I’ve not come here with the presumptuous wish to cross-examine you, but I should like very much to know if Iamwrong in believing that he has gone about with you in the bad quarters—in Saint Giles’s and Whitechapel.”
“We’ve certainly inquired and explored together,” the Princess admitted, “and in the depths of this huge, luxurious, wanton, wasteful city we’ve seen sights of unspeakable misery and horror. But we’ve been not only in the slums; we’ve been to a music hall and a penny-reading.”
The fiddler received this information at first in silence, so that his hostess went on to mention some of the phases of life they had observed; describing with great vividness, but at the same time with a kind of argumentative moderation, several scenes which did little honour to “our boasted civilisation.” “What wonder is it then that he should tell me things can’t go on any longer as they are?” he asked when she had finished. “He said only the other day that he should regard himself as one of the most contemptible of human beings if he should do nothing to alter them, to better them.”
“What wonder indeed? But if he said that he was in one of his bad days,” the Princess replied. “He changes constantly and his impressions change. The misery of the people is by no means always on his heart. You tell me what he has told you; well, he has told me that the people may perish over and over rather than the conquests of civilisation shall be sacrificed to them. He declares at such moments that they’ll be sacrificed—sacrificed utterly—if the ignorant masses get the upper hand.”
“He needn’t be afraid. That will never happen.”
“I don’t know. We can at least try,” she said.
“Try what you like, madam, but for God’s sake get the boy out of his muddle!”
The Princess had suddenly grown excited in speaking of the cause she believed in, and she gave for the moment no heed to this appeal, which broke from Mr. Vetch’s lips with a sudden passion of anxiety. Her beautiful head raised itself higher andthe constant light of her fine eyes became an extraordinary radiance. “Do you know what I say to Mr. Robinson when he makes such remarks as that to me? I ask him what he means by civilisation. Let civilisation come a little, first, and then we’ll talk about it. For the present, face to face with those horrors, I scorn it, I deny it!” And she laughed ineffable things, she might have been some splendid siren of the Revolution.
“The world’s very sad and very hideous, and I’m happy to say that I soon shall have done with it. But before I go I want to save Hyacinth,” Mr. Vetch insisted. “If he’s a bloated little aristocrat, as you say, there’s so much the less fitness in his being ground in your mill. If he doesn’t even believe in what he pretends to do, that’s a pretty situation! What’s he in for, madam? What devilish folly has he undertaken?”
“He’s a strange mixture of contradictory impulses,” said the Princess musingly. Then as if calling herself back to the old man’s question she pursued: “How can I enter into his affairs with you? How can I tell you his secrets? In the first place I don’t know them, and if I did—well, fancy me!”
Her visitor gave a long, low sigh, almost a moan, of discouragement and perplexity. He had told her that now he saw her he understood how their young friend should have become her slave, but he wouldn’t have been able to tell her that he understood her own motives and mysteries, that he embraced the immense anomaly of her behaviour. It came over him that she was fine and perverse, a more complicated form of the feminine mixture than any he had hitherto dealt with, and he felt helpless and baffled, foredoomed to failure. He had come prepared to flatter her without scruple, thinking this would be the expert and effective way of dealing with her; but he now recognised that theseprimitive arts had, though it was strange, no application to such a nature, while his embarrassment was increased rather than diminished by the fact that the lady at least made the effort to be accommodating. He had put down his hat on the floor beside him and his two hands were clasped on the knob of an umbrella which had long since renounced pretensions to compactness; he collapsed a little and his chin rested on his folded hands. “Why do you take such a line? Why do you believe such things?” he asked; and he was conscious that his tone was weak and his challenge beside the question.
“My dear sir, how do you know what I believe? However, I have my reasons, which it would take too long to tell you and which after all would not particularly interest you. One must see life as one can; it comes no doubt to each of us in different ways. You think me affected of course and my behaviour a fearfulpose; but I’m only trying to be natural. Are you not yourself a little inconsequent?” she went on with the bright, hard mildness which assured Mr. Vetch, while it chilled him, that he should extract no pledge of relief from her. “You don’t want our young friend to pry into the wretchedness of London, because that excites his sense of justice. It’s a strange thing to wish, for a person of whom one is fond and whom one esteems, that his sense of justice shall not be excited.”
“I don’t care a fig for his sense of justice—I don’t care a fig for the wretchedness of London; and if I were young and beautiful and clever and brilliant and of a noble position, like you, I should care still less. In that case I should have very little to say to a poor mechanic—a youngster who earns his living with a glue-pot and scraps of old leather.”
“Don’t misrepresent him; don’t make him out what you know he’s not!” the Princess retortedwith her baffling smile. “You know he’s one of the most civilised of little men.”
The fiddler sat breathing unhappily. “I only want to keep him—to get him free.” Then he added: “I don’t understand you very well. If you like him because he’s one of the lower orders, how can you like him because he’s a swell?”
She turned her eyes on the fire as if this little problem might be worth considering, and presently she answered: “Dear Mr. Vetch, I’m very sure you don’t mean to be impertinent, but some things you say have that effect. Nothing’s more annoying than when one’s sincerity is doubted. I’m not bound to explain myself to you. I ask of my friends to trust me and of the others to leave me alone. Moreover, anything not very nice you may have said to me—out of inevitable awkwardness—is nothing to the insults I’m perfectly prepared to see showered upon me before long. I shall do things which will produce a fine crop of them—oh I shall do things, my dear sir! But I’m determined not to mind them. Come therefore, pull yourself together. We both take such an interest in young Robinson that I can’t see why in the world we should quarrel about him.”
“My dear lady,” the old man pleaded, “I’ve indeed not the least intention of failing in respect or patience, and you must excuse me if I don’t look after my manners. How can I when I’m so worried, so haunted? God knows I don’t want to quarrel. As I tell you, I only want to get Hyacinth free.”
“Free from what?” the Princess asked.
“From some abominable secret brotherhood or international league that he belongs to, the thought of which keeps me awake at night. He’s just the sort of youngster to be made a catspaw.”
“Your fears seem very vague.”
“I hoped you would give me chapter and verse.”
“On what do your suspicions rest? What grounds have you?” she insisted.
“Well, a great many; none of them very definite, but all contributing something—his appearance, his manner, the way he strikes me. Dear lady, one feels those things, one guesses. Do you know that poor infatuated phrasemonger Eustache Poupin, who works at the same place as Hyacinth? He’s a very old friend of mine and he’s an honest man, as phrasemongers go. But he’s always conspiring and corresponding and pulling strings that make a tinkle which he takes for the death-knell of society. He has nothing in life to complain of and drives a roaring trade. But he wants folk to be equal, heaven help him; and when he has made them so I suppose he’s going to start a society for making the stars in the sky all of the same size. He isn’t serious, though he imagines he’s the only human being who never trifles; and his machinations, which I believe are for the most part very innocent, are a matter of habit and tradition with him, like his theory that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America, was a Frenchman, and his hot foot-bath on Saturday nights. He hasnotconfessed to me that Hyacinth has taken some intensely private engagement to do something for the cause which may have nasty consequences, but the way he turns off the idea makes me almost as uncomfortable as if he had. He and his wife are very sweet on their young friend, but they can’t make up their minds to interfere; perhaps for them indeed, as for me, there’s no way in which interference can be effective. OnlyIdidn’t put him up to those devil’s tricks—or rather I did originally! The finer the work, I suppose, the higher the privilege of doing it; yet the Poupins heave socialistic sighs over the boy, and their peace of mind evidently isn’t all that it ought to be if they’ve given him a nobleopportunity. I’ve appealed to them in good round terms, and they’ve assured me every hair of his head is as precious to them as if he were their own child. That doesn’t comfort me much, however, for the simple reason that I believe the old woman (whose grandmother, in Paris, in the Revolution, must certainly have carried bloody heads on a pike) would be quite capable of chopping up her own child if it would do any harm to proprietors. Besides, they say, what influence have they on Hyacinth any more? He’s a deplorable little backslider; he worships false gods. In short they’ll give me no information, and I daresay they themselves are tied up by some unholy vow. They may be afraid of a vengeance if they tell tales. It’s all sad rubbish, but rubbish may be a strong motive.”
The Princess listened attentively, following her visitor with patience. “Don’t speak to me of the French; I’ve never cared for them.”
“That’s awkward if you’re a socialist. You’re likely to meet them.”
“Why do you call me a socialist? I hate tenth-rate labels and flags,” she declared. Then she added: “What is it you suppose on Mr. Robinson’s part?—for you must suppose something.”
“Well, that he may have drawn some accursed lot to do some idiotic thing—something in which even he himself doesn’t believe.”
“I haven’t an idea of what sort of thing you mean. But if he doesn’t believe in it he can easily let it alone.”
“Do you think he’s a customer who will back out of a real vow?” the fiddler asked.
The Princess freely wondered. “One can never judge of people in that way till they’re tested.” And the next thing: “Haven’t you even taken the trouble to question him?”
“What would be the use? He’d tell me nothing. It would be like a man giving notice when he’s going to fight a duel.”
She sat for some seconds in thought; she looked up at Mr. Vetch with a pitying, indulgent smile. “I’m sure you’re worrying about a mere shadow; but that never prevents, does it? I still don’t see exactly how I can help you.”
“Do you want him to commit some atrocity, some mad infamy?” the old man appealed.
“My dear sir, I don’t want him to do anything in all the wide world. I’ve not had the smallest connexion with any engagement of any kind that he may have entered into. Do me the honour to trust me,” the Princess went on with a certain high dryness of tone. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deprive myself of your confidence. Trust the young man a little too. He’s a gentleman and will behave as a gentleman.”
The fiddler rose from his chair, smoothing his hat silently with the cuff of his coat. He stood there, whimsical and piteous, as if the sense he had still something to urge mingled with that of his having received his dismissal and as if indeed both were tinged with the oddity of another idea. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of!” he returned. Then he added, continuing to look at her: “But hemustbe very fond of life.”
The Princess took no notice of the insinuation contained in these words. “Leave him to me—leave him to me. I’m sorry for your anxiety, but it was very good of you to come to see me. That has been interesting, because you’ve been one of our friend’s influences.”
“Unfortunately yes! If it hadn’t been for me he wouldn’t have known Poupin, and if he hadn’t known Poupin he wouldn’t have known his chemical friend—what’s his name?—Muniment.”
“And has that done him harm, do you think?” the Princess asked. She had risen to her feet.
“Surely: that deep fellow has been the main source of his infection.”
“I lose patience with you!” she made answer, turning away.
And indeed her visitor’s persistence was irritating. He went on, lingering, his head thrust forward and his short arms, out at his sides, terminating in his hat and umbrella, which he held grotesquely and as if intended for emphasis or illustration: “I’ve supposed for a long time that it was either Muniment or you who had got him into his scrape. It was you I suspected most—much most; but if it isn’t you it must be he.”
“You had better go to him then!”
“Of course I’ll go to him. I scarcely know him—I’ve seen him but once—but I’ll speak my mind.”
The Princess rang for her maid to usher Mr. Vetch out, but at the moment he laid his hand on the door of the room she checked him with a quick gesture. “Now that I think of it don’t go, please, to Mr. Muniment. It will be better to leave him quiet. Leave him to me,” she added with a softer smile.
“Why not, why not?” he pleaded. And as she couldn’t tell him on the instant why not he asked: “Doesn’t he know?”
“No, he doesn’t know; he has nothing to do with it.” She suddenly found herself desiring to protect Paul Muniment from the imputation that was in Mr. Vetch’s mind—the imputation of an ugly responsibility; and though she was not a person who took the trouble to tell fibs this repudiation on his behalf issued from her lips before she could stay it. It was a result of the same desire, thoughalso an inconsequence, that she added: “Don’t do that—you’ll spoil everything!” She went to him suddenly eager, she herself opened the door for him. “Leave him to me—leave him to me,” she continued persuasively, while the fiddler, gazing at her, dazzled and submissive, allowed himself to be wafted away. A thought that excited her had come to her with a bound, and after she had heard the house-door close behind Mr. Vetch she walked up and down the room half an hour, all restlessly, under possession of it.
Hyacinth found, that winter, considerable occupation for his odd hours, his evenings and holidays and scraps of leisure, in putting in hand the books he had promised himself at Medley to enclose in covers worthy of the high station and splendour of the lady of his life—these brilliant attributes had not then been shuffled out of sight—and of the confidence and generosity she showed him. He had determined she should receive from him something of value, and took pleasure in thinking that after he was gone they would be passed from hand to hand as specimens of rare work, connoisseurs bending charmed heads over them, smiling and murmuring, handling them delicately. His invention stirred itself and he had a hundred admirable ideas, many of which he sat up late at night to execute. He used all his skill, and by this time his skill was of a very high order. Old Crook recognised it by raising the rates at which he was paid; and though it was not among the traditions of the proprietor of the establishment in Soho, who to the end wore the apron with his workmen, to scatter sweet speeches, our young man learned accidentally that several books he had given him to do had been carried off and placed on a shelf of treasures at the villa, where they were exhibited to the members of the Crookenden circle who came to tea on Sundays. Hyacinth himselfindeed was included in this company on a great occasion—invited to a musical party where he made the acquaintance of half-a-dozen Miss Crookendens, an acquaintance which consisted in his standing in a corner behind several broad-backed old ladies and watching the rotation, at the piano and the harp, of three or four of his employer’s thick-fingered daughters. “You know it’s a tremendously musical house,” said one of the old ladies to another (she called it “’ouse”); but the principal impression made upon him by the performance of the Miss Crookendens was that it was wonderfully different from the Princess’s playing.
He knew he was the only young man from the shop who had been invited, not counting the foreman, who was sixty years old and wore a wig which constituted in itself a kind of social position, besides being accompanied by a little, frightened, furtive wife who closed her eyes, as if in the presence of a blinding splendour, when Mrs. Crookenden spoke to her. The Poupins were not there; which, however, was not a surprise to Hyacinth, who knew that—even if they had been asked, which they were not—they had objections of principle to putting their feetchez les bourgeois. They were not asked because, in spite of the place Eustache had made for himself in the prosperity of the business, it had come to be known that his wife was somehow not his wife—though she was certainly no one’s else; and the evidence of this irregularity was conceived to reside vaguely in the fact that she had never been seen save in the laxity of a camisole. There had doubtless been an apprehension that if she had come to the villa she would not have come with the proper number of hooks and eyes—albeit Hyacinth, on two or three occasions, notably the night he took the pair to Mr. Vetch’s theatre, had been witness of the proportionsto which she could reduce her figure when wishing to give the impression of a lawful tie.
It was not clear to him how the distinction conferred on him became known in Soho, where, however, it excited no sharpness of jealousy—Grugan, Roker and Hotchkin being hardly more likely to envy a person condemned to spend a genteel evening than they were to envy a monkey performing antics on a barrel-organ: both forms of effort indicated an urbanity painfully acquired. But Roker took his young comrade’s breath half away with his elbow while remarking that he supposed he saw the old man had spotted him for one of the darlings at home—and while inquiring furthermore what would become in that case of the little thing he took to France, the one to whom he had stood champagne and lobster. This was the first allusion Hyacinth had heard made to the idea that he might some day marry his master’s daughter, like the virtuous apprentice of tradition; but the suggestion somehow was not inspiring even when he had thought of an incident or two which gave colour to it. None of the Miss Crookendens spoke to him—they all had large faces and short legs and a comical resemblance to that elderly male with wide nostrils their father, and, unlike the Miss Marchants at Medley, they knew who he was; but their mother, who had on her head the plumage of a cockatoo mingled with a structure of glass beads, looked at him with an almost awful fixedness of charity and asked him three distinct times if he would have a glass of negus.
He had much difficulty in getting his books from the Princess; for when he reminded her of the promise she had given at Medley to make over to him as many volumes as he should require she answered that everything was changed since then,that she was completelydépouillée, that she had now no pretension to have a library, and that in fine he had much better leave the matter alone. He was welcome to any books in the house, but, as he could see for himself, these were cheap editions, on which it would be foolish to expend such work as his. He asked Madame Grandoni to help him—to tell him at least if there were not some good volumes among the things the Princess had sent to be warehoused; it being known to him, through casual admissions of her own, that she had allowed her maid to save certain articles from the wreck and pack them away at the Pantechnicon. This had all been Assunta’s work—the woman had begged so hard for a few reservations, a loaf of bread for their old days; but the Princess herself had washed her hands of the job. “Che, che, there are boxes, I’m sure, in that place, with a little of everything,” the old lady had said in answer to his inquiry; and Hyacinth had conferred with Assunta, who took a sympathetic, talkative, Italian interest in his undertaking and promised to fish out for him any block of printed matter that should remain. She arrived at his lodging one evening, in a cab, with an armful of pretty books, and when he asked her where they had come from waved her forefinger in front of her nose after a fashion at once evasive and expressive. He brought each volume to the Princess as it was finished, but her manner of receiving it was to shake her head over it with a kind, sad smile. “It’s beautiful, I’m sure, but I’ve lost my sense for such things. Besides, you must always remember what you once told me, that a woman, even the most cultivated, is incapable of feeling the difference between a bad binding and a good. I remember your once saying that fine ladies had brought cobbled leather to your shop and wished it imitated. Certainly those arenot the differences I most feel. My dear fellow, such things have ceased to speak to me; they’re doubtless charming, but they leave me cold. What will you have? One can’t serve God and Mammon.” Her thoughts were fixed on far other things than the delight of dainty covers, and she evidently considered that in caring so much for them Hyacinth resembled the mad emperor who fiddled in the flames of Rome. European society, to her mind, was in flames, and no frivolous occupation could give the measure of the emotion with which she watched them. It produced occasionally demonstrations of hilarity, of joy and hope, but these always took some form connected with the life of the people. It was the people she had gone to see when she accompanied Hyacinth to a music hall in the Edgeware Road, and all her excursions and pastimes this winter were prompted by her interest in the classes on whose behalf the fundamental change was to be wrought.
To ask himself if she were in earnest was now an old story to him, and indeed the conviction he might arrive at on this head had ceased to have any high importance. It was just as she was, superficial or profound, that she held him, and she was at any rate sufficiently animated by a purpose for her doings to have consequences actual and possible. Some of these might be serious even if she herself were shallow, and there were times when he was much visited by the apprehension of them. On the Sundays when she had gone with him into the darkest places, the most fetid holes in London, she had always taken money with her in considerable quantities and had always left it behind. She said very naturally that one couldn’t go and stare at people for an impression without paying them, and she gave alms right and left, indiscriminately, without inquiry or judgement, as simply as the abbess ofsome beggar-haunted convent or a lady-bountiful of the superstitious unscientific ages who should have hoped to be assisted to heaven by her doles. Hyacinth never said to her, though he sometimes thought it, that since she was so full of the modern spirit her charity should be administered according to the modern lights, the principles of economic science: partly because she wasn’t a woman to be directed and regulated—she could take other people’s meanings but could never take their forms. Besides, what did it matter? To himself what did it matter to-day whether he were drawn into right methods or into wrong ones, his time being too short for regret or for cheer? The Princess was an embodied passion—she was not a system: and her behaviour, after all, was more addressed to relieving herself than to relieving others. And then misery was sown so thick in her path that wherever her money was dropped it fell into some clutching palm. He wondered she should still have so much cash to dispose of till she explained that she came by it through putting her personal expenditure on a rigid footing. What she gave away was her savings, the margin she had succeeded in creating; and now that she had tasted of the satisfaction of making little hoards for such a purpose she regarded her other years, with their idleness and waste, their merely personal motives, as a long, stupid sleep of the conscience. To do something for others was not only so much more human—it was so much more amusing!
She made strange acquaintances under Hyacinth’s conduct; she listened to extraordinary stories and formed theories about them, and about the persons who narrated them to her, which were often still more extraordinary. She took romantic fancies to vagabonds of either sex, attempted to establish social relations with them and was the cause of infiniteagitation to the gentleman who lived near her in the Crescent, who was always smoking at the window and who reminded our hero of Mr. Micawber. She received visits that were a scandal to the Crescent, and Hyacinth neglected his affairs, whatever they were, to see what tatterdemalion would next turn up at her door. This intercourse, it is true, took a more fruitful form as her intimacy with Lady Aurora deepened; her ladyship practised discriminations which she brought the Princess to recognise, and before the winter was over Mr. Robinson’s services in the slums were found unnecessary. He gave way with relief, with delight, to Lady Aurora, for he had himself not in the least grasped the principle of his behaviour for the previous four months nor taken himself seriously as acicerone. He had plunged into a sea of barbarism without having any civilising energy to put forth. He was aware the people were direfully wretched—more aware, it often seemed to him, than they themselves were; so frequently was he struck with their brutal insensibility, a grossness proof against the taste of better things and against any desire for them. He knew it so well that the repetition of contact could add no vividness to the conviction; it rather smothered and befogged his impression, peopled it with contradictions and difficulties, a violence of reaction, a sense of the inevitable and insurmountable. In these hours the poverty and ignorance of the multitude seemed so vast and preponderant, and so much the law of life, that those who had managed to escape from the black gulf were only the happy few, spirits of resource as well as children of luck: they inspired in some degree the interest and sympathy that one should feel for survivors and victors, those who have come safely out of a shipwreck or a battle. What was most in Hyacinth’s mind was the idea, of which everypulsation of the general life of his time was a syllable, that the flood of democracy was rising over the world; that it would sweep all the traditions of the past before it; that, whatever it might fail to bring, it would at least carry in its bosom a magnificent energy; and that it might be trusted to look after its own. When this high, healing, uplifting tide should cover the world and float in the new era, it would be its own fault (whose else?) if want and suffering and crime should continue to be ingredients of the human lot. With his mixed, divided nature, his conflicting sympathies, his eternal habit of swinging from one view to another, he regarded the prospect in different moods with different intensities. In spite of the example Eustache Poupin gave him of the reconcilement of disparities, he was afraid the democracy wouldn’t care for perfect bindings or for the finer sorts of conversation. The Princess gave up these things in proportion as she advanced in the direction she had so audaciously chosen; and if the Princess could give them up it would take very transcendent natures to stick to them. At the same time there was joy and exultation in the thought of surrendering one’s self to the wash of the wave, of being carried higher on the sun-touched crests of wild billows than one could ever be by a dry, lonely effort of one’s own. That vision could deepen to ecstasy; make it indifferent if one’s ultimate fate, in such a heaving sea, were not almost certainly to be submerged in bottomless depths or dashed to pieces on immovable rocks. Hyacinth felt that, whether his personal sympathy should rest finally with the victors or the vanquished, the victorious force was potentially infinite and would require no testimony from the irresolute.
The reader will doubtless smile at his mental debates and oscillations, and not understand why alittle bastard bookbinder should attach importance to his conclusions. They were not important for either cause, but they were important for himself—if only because they would rescue him from the torment of his present life, the perpetual, sore shock of the rebound. There was no peace for him between the two currents that flowed in his nature, the blood of his passionate, plebeian mother and that of his long-descended, supercivilised sire. They continued to toss him from one side to the other; they arrayed him in intolerable defiances and revenges against himself. He had a high ambition: he wanted neither more nor less than to get hold of the truth and wear it in his heart. He believed with the candour of youth that it is brilliant and clear-cut, like a royal diamond; but to whatever quarter he turned in the effort to find it he seemed to know that behind him, bent on him in reproach, was a tragic, wounded face. The thought of his mother had filled him with the vague, clumsy fermentation of his first impulses toward social criticism; but since the problem had become more complex by the fact that many things in the world as it was constituted were to grow intensely dear to him he had tried more and more to construct some conceivable and human countenance for his father—some expression of honour, of tenderness and recognition, of unmerited suffering, or at least of adequate expiation. To desert one of these presences for the other—that idea was the source of shame, as an act of treachery would have been; for he could almost hear the voice of his father ask him if it were the conduct of a gentleman to take up the opinions and emulate the crudities of fanatics and cads. He had quite got over holding that it would not have become his father to talk of what was proper to gentlemen, got over making the mental reflexion that from such a worthy’s son at least the biggestcad in London could not have deserved less consideration. He had worked himself round to allowances, to interpretations, to such hypotheses as the evidence in theTimes, read in the British Museum on that never-to-be-forgotten afternoon, did not exclude. Though they had been frequent enough, and too frequent, his hours of hot resentment against the man who had attached to him the stigma he was to carry for ever, he threw himself, in other conditions and with a certain success, into the effort to find filial condonations and excuses. It was comparatively easy for him to accept himself as the son of a terribly light Frenchwoman; there seemed a deeper obloquy even than that in his having for his other parent a nobleman altogether wanting in nobleness. He was absolutely too poor to afford it. Sometimes, in imagination, he sacrificed one of the authors of his being to the other, throwing over Lord Frederick much the oftener; sometimes, when the theory failed that his father would have done great things for him if he had lived, or the assumption broke down that he had been Florentine Vivier’s only lover, he cursed and disowned them alike; sometimes he arrived at conceptions which presented them side by side, looking at him with eyes infinitely sad but quite unashamed—eyes that seemed to tell him they had been surpassingly unfortunate but had not been base. Of course his worst moments now, as they had always been the worst, were those in which his grounds for holding that Lord Frederick had really been his father viciously fell away from him. It must be added that they always passed off, since the mixture in his tormenting, his incorrigible pulses could be accounted for by no other dream.