“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 Christina _veut 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.
“_She_ chose 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 it _she_ won’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.”
“Oh _you_!” 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’t
like 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 little taste,
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 remarked that 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 to _them_? 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.