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 a
man 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 with his 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 will gratify 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 and was
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,
my dear 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 you _are_ one—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 to _me_”—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 I _am_ wrong 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 and the 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 these primitive 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 fearful _pose_; 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 retorted with 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 has _not_ confessed 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. Only _I_ didn’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 noble opportunity. 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 he _must_ be
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, though also 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.