The Sunday following this occasion he spent almost entirely with the
Muniments, with whom, since his return to his work, he had been able
to have no long, fraternising talk of the kind that had marked their
earlier relations. The present, however, was a happy day; it added its
large measure to the esteem in which he now held the inscrutable Paul.
The warm, bright, September weather enriched even the dinginess of
Audley Court, and while in the morning Rosy’s brother and their visitor
sat beside her sofa the trio amused themselves with discussing a dozen
different plans for giving a festive turn to the day. There had been
moments in the last six months when Hyacinth had the conviction he
should never again be able to enter into such ideas as that, and these
moments had been connected with the strange conversion taking place in
his mental image of the man whose hardness—of course he was obliged to
be hard—he had never expected to see turned upon a passionate admirer.
At present, for the hour at least, the darkness had cleared away and
Paul’s company become a sustaining, inspiring influence. He had never
been kinder, jollier, safer, as it were; it had never appeared more
desirable to hold fast to him and trust him. Less than ever would an
observer have guessed at a good reason why the two young men might
have winced as they looked at each other. Rosy naturally took part in
the question debated between her companions—the question whether they
should limit their excursion to a walk in Hyde Park; should embark at
Lambeth Pier on the penny steamer which would convey them to Greenwich;
or should start presently for Waterloo Station and go thence by train
to Hampton Court. Miss Muniment had visited none of these scenes,
but she contributed largely to the discussion, for which she seemed
perfectly qualified; talked about the crowd on the steamer and the
inconvenience arising from drunken persons on the return quite as if
she had suffered from such drawbacks; reminded the others that the
view from the hill at Greenwich was terribly smoky and at that season
the fashionable world—half the attraction of course—altogether absent
from Hyde Park; and expressed strong views in favour of Wolsey’s old
palace, with whose history she appeared intimately acquainted. She
threw herself into her brother’s holiday with eagerness and glee, and
Hyacinth marvelled again at the stoicism of the hard, bright creature,
polished, as it were, by pain, whose imagination appeared never to
concern itself with her own privations, so that she could lie in her
close little room the whole golden afternoon without bursting into sobs
as she saw the western sunbeams slant upon the shabby, ugly, familiar
paper of her wall and thought of the far-off fields and gardens she
should never see. She talked immensely of the Princess, for whose
beauty, grace and benevolence she could find no sufficient praise;
declaring that of all the fair faces that had ever hung over her
couch—and Rosy spoke as from immense opportunities for comparison—she
had far the noblest and most refreshing. She seemed to make a kind
of light in the room and to leave it behind after she had gone. Rosy
could call up her image as she could hum a tune she had heard, and
she expressed in her quaint, particular way how, as she lay there in
the quiet hours, she repeated over to herself the beautiful air. The
Princess might be anything, she might be royal or imperial, and Rosy
was well aware how little _she_ should complain of the dulness of a
life in which such apparitions as that could pop in any day. She made
a difference in the place—it gave it a regular finish for her to have
come there; if it was good enough for a princess it was good enough
for the likes of _her_, and she hoped she shouldn’t hear again of
Paul’s wishing her to move out of a room with which she should have
henceforth such delightful associations. The Princess had found her
way to Audley Court and perhaps wouldn’t find it to another lodging,
for they couldn’t expect her to follow them about London at their
pleasure; and at any rate she had evidently been altogether struck
with the little room, so that if they were quiet and canny who could
say but the fancy would take her to send them a bit of carpet or a
picture, or even a mirror with a gilt frame, to make it a bit more
tasteful? Rosy’s transitions from pure enthusiasm to the imaginative
calculation of benefits were performed with a serenity peculiar to
herself. Her chatter had so much spirit and point that it always
commanded attention, but to-day Hyacinth was less tolerant of it than
usual, because so long as it lasted Muniment held his tongue, and
what he had been anxious about was much more Paul’s impression of the
Princess. Rosy made no remark to him on the monopoly he had so long
enjoyed of this wonderful lady: she had always had the manner of an
indulgent incredulity about Hyacinth’s social adventures, and he saw
the hour might easily come when she would begin to talk of their grand
acquaintance as if she herself had been the first to discover her. She
had much to say, however, about the nature of the connexion Lady Aurora
had formed with her, and she was mainly occupied with the glory she
had drawn upon herself by bringing two such exalted persons together.
She fancied them alluding, in the great world, to the occasion on which
“we first met—at Miss Muniment’s, you know”; and she related how Lady
Aurora, who had been in Audley Court the day before, had declared she
owed her a debt she could never repay. The two ladies had liked each
other more, almost, than they liked any one; and wasn’t it a rare
picture to think of them moving hand in hand, like great twin lilies,
through the bright upper air? Muniment inquired in rather a coarse,
unsympathetic way what the mischief she ever wanted of _her_; which led
Hyacinth to demand in return: “What do you mean? What does who want of
whom?”
“What does the beauty of beauties want of _our_ poor plain lady? She
has a totally different stamp. I don’t know much about women, but I can
see that.”
“Where do you see a different stamp? They both have the stamp of their
rank!” cried Rosy.
“Who can ever tell what women want, at any time?” Hyacinth asked with
the off-handedness of a man of the world.
“Well, my boy, if you don’t know any more than I you disappoint me!
Perhaps if we wait long enough she’ll tell us some day herself.”
“Tell you what she wants of Lady Aurora?”
“I don’t mind about Lady Aurora so much; but what in the name of long
journeys she wants with _us_!”
“Don’t you think you’re worth a long journey?” Rosy cried gaily. “If
you weren’t my brother, which is handy for seeing you, and I weren’t
confined to my sofa, I’d go from one end of England to the other to
make your acquaintance! He’s in love with the Princess,” she went on to
Hyacinth, “and he asks those senseless questions to cover it up. What
does any one want of anything?”
It was decided at last that the two young men should go down to
Greenwich, and after they had partaken of bread and cheese with Rosy
they embarked on a penny steamer. The boat was densely crowded, and
they leaned, rather squeezed together, in the fore part of it, against
the rail of the deck, and watched the big black fringe of the yellow
stream. The river had always for Hyacinth a deep beguilement. The
ambiguous appeal he had felt as a child in all the aspects of London
came back to him from the dark detail of its banks and the sordid
agitation of its bosom: the great arches and pillars of the bridges,
where the water rushed and the funnels tipped and sounds made an echo
and there seemed an overhanging of interminable processions; the miles
of ugly wharves and warehouses; the lean protrusions of chimney, mast
and crane; the painted signs of grimy industries staring from shore to
shore; the strange, flat, obstructive barges, straining and bumping
on some business as to which everything was vague but that it was
remarkably dirty; the clumsy coasters and colliers which thickened
as one went down; the small loafing boats whose occupants, somehow,
looking up from their oars at the steamer, as they rocked in the oily
undulations of its wake, appeared profane and sarcastic; in short all
the grinding, puffing, smoking, splashing activity of the turbid flood.
In the good-natured crowd, amid the fumes of vile tobacco, beneath
the shower of sooty particles and to the accompaniment of the bagpipe
of a dingy Highlander who sketched occasionally an unconvincing reel,
Hyacinth forbore to speak to his companion of what he had most at
heart; but later, as they lay in the brown, crushed grass on one of
the slopes of Greenwich Park and saw the river stretch away and shine
beyond the pompous colonnades of the Hospital, he asked him if there
were any truth in what Rosy had said about his being sweet on their
friend the Princess. He said “their friend” on purpose, speaking as
if, now that she had been twice to Audley Court, Muniment might be
regarded as knowing her almost as well as he himself did. He wished to
conjure away the idea that he was jealous of Paul, and if he desired
information on the point I have mentioned this was because it still
made him almost as uncomfortable as it had done at first that his
comrade should take the scoffing view. He didn’t easily see such a
fellow as Muniment wheel about from one day to the other, but he had
been present at the most exquisite exhibition he had ever observed
the Princess make of that divine power of conciliation which was not
perhaps in social intercourse the art she chiefly exercised but was
certainly the most wonderful of her secrets, and it would be remarkable
indeed that a sane young man shouldn’t have been affected by it. It
was familiar to Hyacinth that Muniment wasn’t easily reached or rubbed
up by women, but this might perfectly have been the case without
detriment to the Princess’s ability to work a miracle. The companions
had wandered through the great halls and courts of the Hospital; had
gazed up at the glories of the famous painted chamber and admired
the long and lurid series of the naval victories of England—Muniment
remarking to his friend that he supposed he had seen the match to all
that in foreign parts, offensive little travelled beggar that he was.
They had not ordered a fish-dinner either at the “Trafalgar” or the
“Ship”—having a frugal vision of tea and shrimps with Rosy on their
return—but they had laboured up and down the steep undulations of the
shabby, charming park; made advances to the tame deer and seen them
amble foolishly away; watched the young of both sexes, hilarious and
red in the face, roll in promiscuous accouplement over the slopes;
gazed at the little brick observatory, perched on one of the knolls,
which sets the time to English history and in which Hyacinth could see
that his companion took an expert, a technical interest; wandered out
of one of the upper gates and admired the trimness of the little villas
at Blackheath, where Muniment declared it his conception of supreme
social success to be able to live. He pointed out two or three small
semi-detached houses, faced with stucco and with “Mortimer Lodge” or
“The Sycamores” inscribed on the gate-posts, and Hyacinth guessed these
to be the sort of place where he would like to end his days—in high
pure air, with a genteel window for Rosy’s couch and a cheerful view
of suburban excursions. It was when they came back into the Park that,
being rather hot and a little sated, they stretched themselves under a
tree and Hyacinth yielded to his curiosity.
“Sweet on her—sweet on her, my boy!” said Muniment. “I might as well be
sweet on the dome of Saint Paul’s, which I just make out off there.”
“The dome of Saint Paul’s doesn’t come to see you and doesn’t ask you
to return the visit.”
“Oh I don’t return visits—I’ve got plenty of jobs of my own to attend
to. If I don’t put myself out for the Princess isn’t that a sufficient
answer to your question?”
“I’m by no means sure,” said Hyacinth. “If you went to see her, simply
and civilly, because she asked you, I shouldn’t regard it as a proof
you had taken a fancy to her. Your hanging off is more suspicious; it
may mean that you don’t trust yourself—that you’re in danger of falling
in love if you go in for a more intimate acquaintance.”
“It’s a rum go, your wanting me to make up to her. I shouldn’t think
it would suit your book,” Muniment returned while he stared at the sky
with his hands clasped under his head.
“Do you suppose I’m afraid of you?” his comrade asked. “Besides,”
Hyacinth added in a moment, “why the devil should I care now?”
Paul made for a little no rejoinder; he turned over on his side and,
with his arm resting on the ground, leaned his head on his hand.
Hyacinth felt his eyes on his own face, but he also felt himself
colouring and didn’t meet them. He had taken a private vow never to
indulge, to this companion, in certain inauspicious references, and the
words just spoken had slipped out of his mouth too easily. “What do you
mean by that?” Paul demanded at last; and when Hyacinth looked at him
he saw nothing but the strong, fresh, irresponsible, the all so manly
and sturdy face. Its owner had had time before speaking to prefigure a
meaning.
Suddenly an impulse he had never known before, or rather that he
had always resisted, took possession of our young man. There was a
mystery which it concerned his happiness to clear up, and he became
unconscious of his scruples, of his pride, of the strength he had
ever believed to be in him—the strength for going through his work and
passing away without a look behind. He sat forward on the grass with
his arms round his knees and offered his friend a presence quickened by
his difficulties. For a minute the two pairs of eyes met with extreme
clearness, and then Hyacinth brought out: “What an extraordinary chap
you are!”
“You’ve hit it there!” Paul smiled.
“I don’t want to make a scene or work on your feelings, but how will
you like it when I’m strung up on the gallows?”
“You mean for Hoffendahl’s job? That’s what you were alluding to just
now?” Muniment lay there in the same position, chewing a long blade of
dry grass which he held to his lips with his free hand.
“I didn’t mean to speak of it; but after all why shouldn’t it come up?
Naturally I’ve thought of it a good deal.”
“What good does that do?” Muniment returned. “I hoped you didn’t—I
noticed you never spoke of it. You don’t like it. You’d rather chuck it
up,” he added.
There was not in his voice the faintest note of irony or contempt, no
sign whatever that he passed judgement on such an attitude. He spoke
in a quiet, human, memorising manner, as if it had originally quite
entered into his thought to allow for weak regrets. Nevertheless the
complete reasonableness of his tone itself cast a chill on Hyacinth’s
spirit; it was like the touch of a hand at once very firm and very
soft, yet strangely cold. “I don’t want in the least to repudiate
business, but did you suppose I liked it?” our hero asked with rather
a forced laugh.
“My dear fellow, how could I tell? You like a lot of things I don’t.
You like excitement and emotion and change, you like remarkable
sensations—whereas I go in for a holy calm, for sweet repose.”
“If you object, for yourself, to change, and are so fond of still
waters, why have you associated yourself with a revolutionary
movement?” Hyacinth demanded with a little air of making rather a good
point.
“Just for that reason!” Paul blandly said. “Isn’t our revolutionary
movement as quiet as the grave? Who knows, who suspects anything like
the full extent of it?”
“I see. You take only the quiet parts!”
In speaking these words Hyacinth had had no derisive intention, but a
moment later he flushed with the sense that they had a sufficiently low
sound. Paul, however, appeared to see no offence in them, and it was
in the gentlest, most suggestive way, as if he had been thinking over
what might comfort his little mate, that he replied: “There’s one thing
you ought to remember—that it’s quite on the cards the beastly call may
never be made.”
“I don’t desire that reminder,” Hyacinth said; “and moreover you must
let me tell you I somehow don’t easily fancy _you_ mixed up with things
that don’t come off. Anything you have to do with will come off, I
think.”
Muniment reflected a moment, as if his little mate were charmingly
ingenious. “Surely I’ve nothing to do with the particular job——!”
“With the execution, perhaps not; but how about the idea of it? You
seemed to me to have a great deal to do with it the night you took me
to see him.”
Paul changed his posture, raising himself, and in a moment was seated
Turk-fashion beside his friend. He put his arm over his shoulder and
drew him, studying his face; and then in the kindest manner in the
world he brought out: “There are three or four definite chances in your
favour.”
“I don’t want second-rate comfort, you know,” said Hyacinth with his
eyes on the distant atmospheric mixture that represented London.
“What the devil _do_ you want?” Paul asked, still holding him and with
perfect good humour.
“Well, to get inside of _you_ a little; to know how a chap feels when
he’s going to part with his particular pal.”
“To part with him?” this character repeated.
“I mean putting it at the worst.”
“I should think you’d know by yourself—if you’re going to part with
_me_.”
At this Hyacinth prostrated himself, tumbled over to the grass on
his face, which he buried in his hands. He remained in this attitude,
saying nothing, a long time; and while he lay there he thought, with
a sudden, quick flood of association, of many strange things. Most of
all he had the sense of the brilliant charming day; the warm stillness,
touched with cries of amusement; the sweetness of loafing there in an
interval of work with a chum who was a tremendously fine fellow even if
he didn’t understand the inexpressible. Paul also kept the peace, and
Hyacinth felt him all unaffectedly puzzled. He wanted now to relieve
him, so that he pulled himself together again and turned round, saying
the first thing he could think of, in relation to the general subject
of their talk, that would carry them away from the personal question.
“I’ve asked you before, and you’ve told me, but somehow I’ve never
quite grasped it—so I just touch on the matter again—exactly what good
you think it will do.”
“The stroke of work, eh? Well, you must remember that as yet we know
only very vaguely what it is. It’s difficult therefore to measure
closely the importance it may have, and I don’t think I’ve ever, in
talking with you, pretended to fix that importance. I don’t suppose
it will matter immensely whether your own engagement’s carried out or
not; but if it is it will have been a detail in a scheme of which the
general effect will be decidedly useful. I believe, and you pretend to
believe, though I’m not sure you do, in the advent of the democracy. It
will help the democracy to get possession that the classes that keep
them down shall be admonished from time to time that they’ve a very
definite and very determined intention of doing so. An immense deal
will depend upon that. Hoffendahl’s a jolly admonisher.”
Hyacinth listened to this explanation with an expression of interest
that was not feigned; and after a moment he returned: “When you say you
believe in the democracy I take for granted you mean you positively
wish for their coming into power, as I’ve always supposed. Now what
I really have never understood is this—why you should desire to put
forward a lot of people whom you regard almost without exception as
rather dismal donkeys.”
“Ah my dear lad,” Paul laughed, “when one undertakes to meddle in human
affairs one must deal with human material. The upper classes have the
longest ears.”
“I’ve heard you say you were working for an equality in human
conditions—to abolish the immemorial inequality. What you want then for
all mankind is the selfsame shade of asininity.”
“That’s very neat; did you pick it up in France? Damn the too-neat, you
know; it’s as bad as the too-rotten. The low tone of our fellow-mortals
is a result of bad conditions; it’s the conditions I want to alter.
When those who have no start to speak of have a good one it’s but fair
to infer they’ll go further. I want to try them, you know.”
“But why equality?” Hyacinth asked. “Somehow that word doesn’t say so
much to me as it used to. Inequality—inequality! I don’t know whether
it’s by dint of repeating it over to myself, but _that_ doesn’t shock
me as it used.”
“They didn’t put you up to that in France, I’m sure!” Paul exclaimed.
“Your point of view’s changed. You’ve risen in the world.”
“Risen? Good God, what have I risen to?”
“True enough; you were always a bloated little swell!” And the so
useful man at the great chemical works gave his young friend a sociable
slap on the back. There was a momentary bitterness in its being imputed
to such a one as Hyacinth, even in joke, that he had taken sides with
the lucky beggars as a class, and he had it on his tongue’s end to
ask his friend if he had never guessed what his proud titles were—the
bastard of a murderess, spawned in a gutter out of which he had been
picked by a poor sewing-girl. But his lifelong reserve on this point
was a habit not easily broken, and before such a challenge could burn
through it Paul had gone on: “If you’ve ceased to believe we can do
anything it will be rather awkward, you know.”
“I don’t know what I believe, God help me!” Hyacinth remarked in a tone
of an effect so lugubrious that his mate indulged in prompt hilarity of
attenuation. But our young man added: “I don’t want you to think I’ve
ceased to care for the people. What am I but one of the poorest and
meanest of them?”
“You, my boy? You’re a duke in disguise, and so I thought the first
time I ever saw you. That night I took you to our precious ‘exchange
of ideas’—I liked the beggar’s name for it—you had a little way with
you that made me forget it; I mean that your disguise happened to be
better than usual. As regards caring for the people there’s surely no
obligation at all,” Muniment continued. “I wouldn’t if I could help
it—you can bet your life on that. It all depends on what you see. The
way _I_’ve used my eyes in that sink of iniquity off there has led
to my seeing that present arrangements won’t do. They won’t do,” he
repeated placidly.
“Yes, I see that too,” said Hyacinth, with the same dolefulness that
had marked his tone a moment before—a dolefulness begotten of the
rather helpless sense that, whatever he saw, he saw—and this was always
the case—so many other things besides. He saw the immeasurable misery
of the people, and yet he saw all that had been, as it were, rescued
and redeemed from it: the treasures, the felicities, the splendours,
the successes of the world. This quantity took the form sometimes, to
his imagination, of a vast, vague, dazzling presence, an irradiation of
light from objects undefined, mixed with the atmosphere of Paris and of
Venice. He presently added that a hundred things Muniment had told him
about the foul horrors of the worst districts of London, pictures of
incredible shame and suffering that he had put before him, came back to
him now with the memory of the passion they had kindled at the time.
“Oh I don’t want you to go by what I’ve told you; I want you to go by
what you’ve seen yourself. I remember there were things you told _me_
that weren’t bad in their way.” And at this Paul Muniment sprang to his
feet, as if their conversation had drawn to an end or they must at all
events be thinking of their homeward way. Hyacinth got up too while his
companion stood there. Paul was looking off toward London with a face
that expressed all the healthy singleness of his vision. Suddenly he
remarked, as if it occurred to him to complete, or at any rate confirm,
the declaration he had made a short time before: “Yes, I don’t believe
in the millennium, but I do believe in the democracy with a _chance_.”
He struck Hyacinth while he spoke these words as such a fine embodiment
of the spirit of the people; he stood there in his powerful, sturdy
newness with such an air of having learnt what he had learnt and of
good nature that had purposes in it, that our hero felt the simple
inrush of his old, frequent pride at having a person of that promise,
a nature of that capacity, for a friend. He passed his hand into the
arm that was so much stronger and longer than his own and said with
an imperceptible tremor of voice: “It’s no use your saying I’m not to
go by what you tell me. I’d go by what you tell me anywhere. There’s
no awkwardness to speak of. I don’t know that I believe exactly what
you believe, but I believe in _you_, and doesn’t that come to the same
thing?”
Paul evidently appreciated the cordiality and candour of this little
tribute, and the way he showed it was by a motion of his elbow, to
check his companion, before they started to leave the spot, and by
looking down at him with a certain anxiety of friendliness. “I should
never have taken you to that shop that night if I hadn’t thought you’d
jump at the job. It was that flaring little oration of yours, at the
club, when you floored Delancey for saying you were afraid, that put me
up to it.”
“I did jump at it—upon my word I did; and it was just what I was
looking for. That’s all correct!” said Hyacinth cheerfully as they
went forward. There was a strain of heroism in these words—of heroism
of which the sense was not conveyed to Muniment by a vibration in
their interlocked arms. Hyacinth didn’t make the reflexion that he
was infernally literal; he dismissed the sentimental problem that had
worried him; he condoned, excused, admired—he merged himself, resting
happy for the time, in the consciousness that Paul was a grand person,
that friendship was a purer feeling than love, and that there was an
immense deal of affection between them. He didn’t even observe at that
moment that it was preponderantly on his own side.