“I’ve received a letter from your husband,” Paul Muniment said to her
the next evening as soon as he came into the room. He announced this
truth with an unadorned directness as well as with a freedom of manner
that showed his visit to be one of a closely-connected series. The
Princess was evidently not a little surprised and immediately asked how
in the world the Prince could know his address. “Couldn’t it have been
by your old lady?” Muniment returned. “He must have met her in Paris.
It’s from Paris he writes.”
“What an incorrigible cad!” she exclaimed.
“I don’t see that—for writing to me. I’ve his letter in my pocket and
I’ll show it to you if you like.”
“Thank you, nothing would induce me to touch anything he has touched.”
“You touch his money, my dear lady,” Muniment remarked with one of the
easy sequences of a man who sees things as they are.
The Princess considered. “Yes, I make an exception for that, because it
hurts him, it makes him suffer.”
“I should think on the contrary it would gratify him by showing you in
a state of weakness and dependence.”
“Not when he knows I don’t use it for myself. What exasperates him is
that it’s devoted to ends which he hates almost as much as he hates me
and yet which he can’t call selfish.”
“He doesn’t hate you,” said Muniment with the same pleasant
reasonableness—that of a man who has mastered not two or three but all
the possible aspects of a question. “His letter satisfies me of that.”
The Princess stared at this and asked what he was coming to—if he
were leading up to the hint that she should go back and live with her
husband. “I don’t know that I’d go so far as to advise it,” he replied;
“when I’ve so much benefit from seeing you here on your present
footing, that wouldn’t sound well. But I’ll just make bold to prophesy
you’ll go before very long.”
“And on what does that extraordinary prediction rest?”
“On this plain fact—that you’ll have nothing to live upon. You decline
to read the Prince’s letter, but if you were to look at it it would
give you evidence of what I mean. He informs me that I need count on
no more supplies from your hands, since you yourself will receive no
more.”
“He addresses you in those plain terms?”
“I can’t call them very plain, because the letter’s in French and I
naturally have had a certain difficulty in making it out, in spite of
my persevering study of the tongue and the fine example set me by poor
Robinson. But that appears to be the gist of the matter.”
“And you can repeat such an insult to me without the smallest apparent
discomposure? You’re indeed the most extraordinary of men!” the
Princess broke out.
“Why is it an insult? It’s the simple truth. I do take your money,”
Muniment said.
“You take it for a sacred cause. You don’t take it for yourself.”
“The Prince isn’t obliged to look at that,” he answered amusedly.
His companion had a pause. “I didn’t know you were on his side.”
“Oh you know on what side I am!”
“What does _he_ know? What business has he to address you so?”
“I suppose, as I tell you, that he knows from Madame Grandoni. She has
told him I’ve great influence with you.”
“Ah she was welcome to tell him that!” the Princess tossed off.
“His reasoning, therefore, has been that when I find you’ve nothing
more to give to the cause I’ll let you go.”
“Nothing more? And does he count _me_ myself, and every pulse of my
being, every capacity of my nature, as nothing?” the Princess cried
with shining eyes.
“Apparently he thinks _I_ do.”
“Oh as for that, after all, I’ve known you care far more for my money
than for me. But it has made no difference to me,” she finely said.
“Then you see that by your own calculation the Prince is right.”
“My dear sir,” Muniment’s hostess replied, “my interest in you never
depended on your interest in me. It depended wholly on a sense of your
great destinies. I suppose that what you began to tell me,” she went
on, “is that he stops my allowance.”
“From the first of next month. He has taken legal advice. It’s now
clear—so he tells me—that you forfeit your settlements.”
“Can’t I take legal advice too?” she demanded. “I can fight that to the
last inch of ground. I can forfeit my settlements only by an act of my
own. The act that led to our separation was _his_ act; he turned me out
of his house by physical violence.”
“Certainly,” said her visitor, displaying even in this simple
discussion his easy aptitude for argument; “but since then there _have_
been acts of your own——!” He stopped a moment, smiling; then went on:
“Your whole connexion with a league working for as great ends as you
like, but for ends and by courses necessarily averse to the eye of
day and the observation of the police—this constitutes an act; and so
does your exercise of the pleasure, which you appreciate so highly,
of feeding it with money extorted from an old Catholic and princely
family. You know how little it’s to be desired that these matters
should come to light.”
“Why in the world need they come to light? Allegations in plenty of
course he’d have, but not a particle of proof. Even if Madame Grandoni
were to testify against me, which is inconceivable, she wouldn’t be
able to produce a definite fact.”
“She’d be able to produce the fact that you had a little bookbinder
staying for a month in your house.”
“What has that to do with it?” she promptly asked. “If you mean that
that’s a circumstance which would put me in the wrong as against the
Prince, is there not on the other side this marked detail that while
our young friend was staying with me Madame Grandoni herself, a person
of the highest and most conspicuous respectability, never saw fit to
withdraw from me her countenance and protection? Besides, why shouldn’t
I have my bookbinder just as I might have—and the Prince should
surely appreciate my consideration in not having—my physician and my
chaplain?”
“Am I not your chaplain?” Muniment again amusedly inquired. “And does
the bookbinder usually dine at the Princess’s table?”
“Why not—when he’s an artist? In the old times, I know, artists dined
with the servants; but not to-day.”
“That would be for the court to appreciate,” he said. And in a
moment he added: “Allow me to call your attention to the fact that
Madame Grandoni _has_ left you—_has_ withdrawn her countenance and
protection.”
“Ah but not for Hyacinth!” the Princess returned in a tone which would
have made the fortune of an actress if an actress could have caught it.
“For the bookbinder or for the chaplain, it doesn’t matter. But that’s
only a detail. In any case,” he noted, “I shouldn’t in the least care
for your going to law.”
The Princess rested her eyes on him a while in silence and at last
replied: “I was speaking just now of your great future, but every now
and then you do something, you say something, that makes me really
doubt you. It’s when you seem afraid. That’s terribly against your
being a first-rate man.”
“Ah I know you’ve thought me little better than a smooth sneak from
the first of your knowing me. But what does it matter? I haven’t the
smallest pretension to being a first-rate man.”
“Oh you’re deep and you’re provoking!” she said with sombre eyes.
“Don’t you remember,” he went on without heeding this rich comment,
“don’t you remember how the other day you accused me of being not only
a coward but a traitor; of playing false, of wanting, as you said, to
back out?”
“Most distinctly. How can I help its coming over me at times that
you’ve incalculable ulterior views and are but consummately using
me—but consummately using us all? Well, I don’t care!”
“No, no; I’m genuine,” said Muniment simply, yet in a tone which might
have implied that their discussion was idle. And he made a transition
doubtless too abrupt for perfect civility. “The best reason in the
world for your not going to law with your husband is this: that when
you haven’t a penny left you’ll be obliged to go back and live with
him.”
“How do you mean, when I haven’t a penny left? Haven’t I my own
property?” the Princess demanded.
“The Prince assures me you’ve drawn on your own property at such a
rate that the income to be derived from it amounts, to his positive
knowledge, to no more than a thousand francs—forty pounds—a year.
Surely with your habits and tastes you can’t live on forty pounds. I
should add that your husband implies that your property originally was
rather a small affair.”
“You’ve the most extraordinary tone,” she answered gravely. “What you
appear to wish to express is simply this: that from the moment I’ve
no more money to give you I’m of no more value than the washed-out
tea-leaves in that pot.”
Muniment looked down a while at his substantial boot. His companion’s
words had brought a flush to his cheek; he appeared to admit to himself
and to her that at the point their conversation had reached there was a
natural difficulty in his delivering himself. But presently he raised
his head, showing a face still slightly embarrassed, but more for her
than for himself. “I’ve no intention whatever of saying anything harsh
or offensive to you, but since you challenge me perhaps it’s well that
I should let you know how inevitably I _do_ consider that in giving
your money—or rather your husband’s—to our business you gave the most
valuable thing you had to contribute.”
“This is the day of plain truths!” she rang out with a high mildness.
“You don’t count then any devotion, any intelligence that I may have
placed at your service—even rating my faculties modestly?”
“I count your intelligence, but I don’t count your devotion, and one’s
nothing without the other. You’re not trusted—well, where it makes the
difference.”
“Not trusted!” the Princess repeated with her splendid stare. “Why I
thought I could be hanged to-morrow!”
“They may let you hang, perfectly, without letting you act. You’re
liable to be weary of us,” he went on; “and indeed I think you’re weary
even now.”
“Ah you _must_ be a first-rate man—you’re such a brute!” she replied,
noticing, as she had noticed before, that he pronounced “weary”
_weery_.
“I didn’t say you were weary of _me_,” he said with a certain
awkwardness. “But you can never live poor—you don’t begin to know the
meaning of it.”
“Oh no, I’m not tired of you,” she declared as if she wished she
were. “In a moment you’ll make me cry with rage, and no man has done
that for years. I was very poor when I was a girl,” she added in a
different manner. “You yourself recognised it just now in speaking of
the insignificant character of my fortune.”
“It had to be a fortune to be insignificant,” Muniment smiled. “You’ll
go back to your husband!”
To this she made no answer, only looking at him with a high, gradual
clearance of her heat. “I don’t see after all why they trust you more
than they trust me,” she said at last.
“I am not sure they do. I’ve heard something this evening that suggests
that.”
“And may one know what it is?”
“A communication which I should have expected to be made through me has
been made through another person.”
“A communication——?”
“To Hyacinth Robinson.”
“To Hyacinth——?” The Princess sprang up; she had turned pale in a
moment.
“He has got his billet, but they didn’t send it through me.”
“Do you mean his ‘call’? He was here last night,” the Princess said.
“A fellow, a worker, named Schinkel, a German—whom you don’t know, I
think, but who was originally a witness, with me and another, of his
undertaking—came to see me this evening. It was through him the call
came, and he put Hyacinth up to it on Sunday night.”
“On Sunday night?” The Princess stared. “Why he was here yesterday, and
he talked of it and told me nothing.”
“That was quite right of him, bless his pluck!” Muniment returned.
She closed her eyes a moment and when she opened them again he had
risen and was standing before her. “What do they want him to do?” she
asked.
“I’m like Hyacinth; I think I had better not tell you—at least till
it’s over.”
“And when will it be over?”
“They give him several days and, I believe, minute instructions—with,
however,” Paul went on, “considerable discretion in respect to seizing
his chance. The thing’s made remarkably easy for him. All this I know
from Schinkel, who himself knew nothing on Sunday, being merely the
fellow to see he got the thing, and who saw him in fact yesterday
morning.”
“Schinkel trusts you then?” the Princess remarked.
Muniment looked at her steadily. “Yes, but he won’t trust you.
Hyacinth’s to receive a card of invitation to a certain big house,” he
explained, “a card with the name left in blank, so that he may fill
it out himself. It’s to be good for each of two grand parties which
are to be given at a few days’ interval. That’s why they give him the
job—because at a grand party he’ll look in his place.”
“He’ll like that,” she said musingly—“repaying hospitality with a
pistol-shot.”
“If he doesn’t like it he needn’t do it.”
She made no return to this, but in a moment said: “I can easily find
out the place you mean—the big house where two parties are to be
given at a few days’ interval and where the master—or is it to be the
principal guest?—is worth your powder.”
“Easily, no doubt. And do you want to warn him?”
“No, I want to do the business myself first, so that it won’t be left
for another. If Hyacinth will look in his place at a grand party shall
not I look still more in mine? And as I know the individual I should be
able to approach him without exciting the smallest suspicion.”
Muniment appeared for a little to consider her suggestion as if it were
practical and interesting; but presently he answered quietly enough:
“To fall by your hand would be too good for him.”
“However he falls, will it be useful, valuable?” the Princess asked.
“It’s worth trying. He’s a very bad institution.”
“And don’t you mean to go near Hyacinth?”
“No, I wish to leave him free.”
“Ah, Paul Muniment,” she said, “you _are_ a first-rate man!” She sank
down on the sofa and sat looking up at him. “In God’s name, why have
you told me this?”
“So that you shall not be able to throw it up at me later that I
haven’t.”
She flung herself over, burying her face in the cushions, and remained
so for some minutes in silence. He watched her a while without
speaking, then at last brought out: “I don’t want to aggravate you,
but you _will_ go back!” The words failed to cause her even to raise
her head, and after a moment he—as for the best attenuation of any
rudeness—stepped out of the room.