IX

“She lives in Belgrave Square; she has ever so many brothers and

sisters; one of her sisters is married to Lord Warmington,” Rose

Muniment instantly began, not apparently in the least discomposed at

being left alone with a strange young man in a room which was now half

dark again, thanks to her brother’s having carried off the second and

more brilliant candle. She was so interested for the time in telling

Hyacinth the history of Lady Aurora that she appeared not to remember

how little she knew about himself. Her ladyship had dedicated her

life and her pocket-money to the poor and sick; she cared nothing for

parties and races and dances and picnics and cards and life in great

houses, the usual amusements of the aristocracy: she was like one of

the saints of old come to life again out of a legend. She had made

their acquaintance, Paul’s and hers, about a year before, through

a friend of theirs, such a fine brave young woman, who was in Saint

Thomas’s Hospital for a surgical operation. She had been laid up there

for weeks during which Lady Aurora, always looking out for those who

couldn’t help themselves, used to come and talk to her and read to her,

till the end of her time in the ward, when the poor girl, parting with

her kind friend, told her how she knew of another unfortunate creature

(for whom there was no place there, because she was incurable) who

would be mighty thankful for any little attention of that sort. She

had given Lady Aurora the address in Audley Court and the very next

day her ladyship had knocked at their door. It wasn’t because she was

poor—though in all conscience they were pinched enough—but because

she had so little satisfaction in her limbs. Lady Aurora came very

often, for several months, without meeting Paul, because he was always

at his work; but one day he came home early on purpose to find her,

to thank her for her goodness, and also to see (Miss Muniment rather

shyly intimated) if she were really so good as his extravagant little

sister made her out. Rosy had a triumph after that: Paul had to admit

that her ladyship was beyond anything that any one in his waking senses

would believe. She seemed to want to give up everything to those who

were below her and never to expect any thanks at all. And she wasn’t

always preaching and showing you your duty; she wanted to talk to

you sociable-like, as if you were just her own sister. And _her_ own

sisters were the highest in the land, and you might see her name in

the newspapers the day they were presented to the Queen. Lady Aurora

had been presented too, with feathers in her head and a long tail to

her gown; but she had turned her back on it all with a kind of terror—a

sort of shivering sinking state which she had often described to Miss

Muniment. The day she had first seen Paul was the day they became so

intimate, the three of them together—if she might apply such a word as

that to such a peculiar connexion. The little woman, the little girl,

as she lay there (Hyacinth scarce knew how to characterise her) told

our young man a very great secret, in which he found himself too much

interested to think of criticising so precipitate a confidence. The

secret was that, of all the people she had ever seen in the world, her

ladyship thought Rosy’s Paul the very cleverest. And she had seen the

greatest, the most famous, the brightest of every kind, for they all

came to stay at Inglefield, thirty and forty of them at once. She had

talked with them all and heard them say their best (and you could fancy

how they would try to give it out at such a place as that, where there

was nearly a mile of conservatories and a hundred wax candles were

lighted at a time) and at the end of it all she had made the remark to

herself—and she had made it to Rosy too—that there was none of them

had such a head on his shoulders as the young man in Audley Court.

Rosy wouldn’t spread such a rumour as that in the court itself, but

she wanted every friend of her brother’s (and she could see Hyacinth

was a real one by the way he listened) to know what was thought of

him by them that had an experience of intellect. She didn’t wish to

give it out that her ladyship had lowered herself in any manner to

a person that earned his bread in a dirty shop (clever as he _might_

be), but it was easy to see she minded what he said as if he had been

a bishop—or more indeed, for she didn’t think much of bishops, any

more than Paul himself, and that was an idea she had got from him.

Oh, she took it none so ill if he came back from his work before

she had gone, and to-night Hyacinth could see for himself how she

had lingered. This evening, she was sure, her ladyship would let him

walk home with her half the way. This announcement gave Hyacinth the

prospect of a considerable session with his communicative hostess; but

he was very glad to wait, for he was vaguely, strangely excited by her

talk, fascinated by the little queer-smelling, high-perched interior,

encumbered with relics, treasured and polished, of a poor north-country

home, bedecked with penny ornaments and related in so unexpected a

manner to Belgrave Square and the great landed estates. He spent half

an hour with Paul Muniment’s small, odd, sharp, crippled, chattering

sister, who gave him an impression of education and native wit (she

expressed herself far better than Pinnie or than Milly Henning) and

who startled, puzzled and at the same time rather distressed him by

the manner in which she referred herself to the most abject class—the

class that prostrated itself, that was in a fever and flutter, in

the presence of its betters. That was Pinnie’s attitude of course,

but Hyacinth had long ago perceived that his adoptive mother had

generations of plebeian patience in her blood, and that though she had

a tender soul she had not a truly high spirit. He was more entertained

than afflicted, however, by Miss Muniment’s tone, and he was thrilled

by the frequency and familiarity of her allusions to a kind of life

he had often wondered about; this was the first time he had heard it

described with that degree of authority. By the nature of his mind he

was perpetually, almost morbidly conscious that the circle in which he

lived was an infinitesimally small shallow eddy in the roaring vortex

of London, and his imagination plunged again and again into the flood

that whirled past it and round it, in the hope of being carried to some

brighter, happier vision—the vision of societies where, in splendid

rooms, with smiles and soft voices, distinguished men, with women who

were both proud and gentle, talked of art, literature and history.

When Rosy had delivered herself to her complete satisfaction on the

subject of Lady Aurora she became more quiet, asking as yet, however,

no straight questions of her guest, whom she seemed to take very much

for granted. He presently remarked that she must let him come very soon

again, and he added, to explain this wish: “You know you seem to me

very curious people.”

Miss Muniment didn’t in the least repudiate the imputation. “Oh yes,

I daresay we seem very curious. I think we’re generally thought so;

especially me, being so miserable and yet so lively.” And she laughed

till her bed creaked again.

“Perhaps it’s lucky you’re ill; perhaps if you had your health you’d

be all over the place,” Hyacinth suggested. And he went on candidly: “I

can’t make it out, your being so up in everything.”

“I don’t see why you need make it out! But you would, perhaps, if you

had known my father and mother.”

“Were they such a rare lot?”

“I think you’d say so if you had ever been in the mines. Yes, in the

mines, where the filthy coal’s dug out. That’s where my father came

from—he was working in the pit when he was a child of ten. He never

had a day’s schooling in his life, but he climbed up out of his black

hole into daylight and air, and he invented a machine, and he married

my mother, who came out of Durham, and (by her people) out of the pits

and the awfulness too. My father had no great figure, but _she_ was

magnificent—the finest woman in the country and the bravest and the

best. She’s in her grave now, and I couldn’t go to look at it even if

it were in the nearest churchyard. My father was as black as the coal

he worked in: I know I’m just his pattern, barring that _he_ did have

his legs, when the liquor hadn’t got into them. Yet between him and my

mother, for grand high intelligence, there wasn’t much to choose. But

what’s the use of brains if you haven’t got a backbone? My poor father

had even less of that than I, for with me it’s only the body that can’t

stand up, and with him it was the very nature. He invented, for use

in machine-shops, a mechanical improvement—a new kind of beam-fixing,

whatever that is—and he sold it at Bradford for fifteen pounds: I mean

the whole right and profit of it and every hope and comfort of his

family. He was always straying and my mother was always bringing him

back. She had plenty to do, with me a puny ailing brat from the moment

I opened my eyes. Well, one night he strayed so far that he never came

home, or only came a loose bloody bundle of clothes. He had fallen into

a gravel-pit, he didn’t know where he was going. That’s the reason my

brother won’t ever touch so much as you could wet your finger with, and

that I’ve only a drop once a week or so in the way of a strengthener. I

take what her ladyship brings me, but I take no more. If she could but

have come to us before my mother went—that would have been a saving! I

was only nine when my father died, and I’m three years older than Paul.

My mother did for us with all her might, and she kept us decent—if

such a useless little mess as me can be said to be decent. At any rate

she kept me alive, and that’s a proof she was handy. She went to the

wash-tub, and she might have been a queen as she stood there with her

bare arms in the foul linen and her long hair braided on her head. She

was terrible handsome, but he’d have been a bold man that had taken on

himself to tell her so. And it was from her we got our education—she

was determined we should rise above the common. You might have thought,

in her position, that she couldn’t go into such things, but she was a

rare one for keeping you at your book. She could hold to her idea when

my poor father couldn’t, and her idea for us was that Paul should get

learning and should look after me. You can see for yourself that that’s

what has come of it. How he got it’s more than I can say, as we never

had a penny to pay for it; and of course my mother’s head wouldn’t have

been of much use if he hadn’t had a head himself. Well, it was all in

the family. Paul was a boy that would learn more from a yellow poster

on a wall or a time-table at a railway station than many a young fellow

from a year at college. That was his only college, poor lad—picking

up what he could. Mother was taken when she was still needed, nearly

five years ago. There was an epidemic of typhoid, and of course it

must pass me over, the goose of a thing—only that I’d have made a poor

feast—and just lay that really grand character on her back. Well, she

never again made it ache over her soapsuds, straight and broad as it

was. Not having seen her, you wouldn’t believe,” said Rose Muniment in

conclusion; “but I just wanted you to understand that our parents had

jolly good brains at least to give us.”

Hyacinth listened to this eloquence—the clearest statement of anything

he had ever heard made by a woman—with the deepest interest, and

without being in the least moved to allow for filial exaggeration;

inasmuch as his impression of the brother and sister was such as it

would have taken a much more marvellous tale to account for. The very

way Rose Muniment talked of brains made him feel this; she pronounced

the word as if she were distributing prizes for intellectual eminence

from off a platform. No doubt the weak inventor and the strong worker

had been fine specimens, but that didn’t diminish the merit of their

highly original offspring. The girl’s insistence on her mother’s

virtues (even now that her age had become more definite to him he

thought of her as a girl) touched in his heart a chord that was

always ready to throb—the chord of melancholy aimless wonder as to the

difference it would have made for his life to have had some rich warm

presence like that in it.

“Are you very fond of your brother?” he inquired after a little.

The eyes of his hostess glittered at him. “If you ever quarrel with him

you’ll see whose side I shall take.”

“Ah, before that I shall make you like _me_.”

“That’s very possible, and you’ll see how I shall fling you over!”

“Why then do you object so to his views—his ideas about the way the

people are to come up?”

“Because I think he’ll get over them.”

“Never—never!” cried Hyacinth. “I’ve only known him an hour or two, but

I deny that with all my strength.”

“Is that the way you’re going to make me like you—contradicting me so?”

Miss Muniment asked with familiar archness.

“What’s the use, when you tell me I shall be sacrificed? One might as

well perish for a lamb as for a sheep.”

“I don’t believe you’re a lamb at all. Certainly you’re not if you want

all the great people pulled down and the most dreadful scenes enacted.”

“Don’t you believe in human equality? Don’t you want anything done for

the groaning, toiling millions—those who have been cheated and crushed

and bamboozled from the beginning of time?”

Hyacinth asked this question with considerable heat, but the effect

of it was to send his companion off into a new ring of laughter. “You

say that just like a man my brother described to me three days ago,

a little man at some club whose hair stood up—Paul imitated the way

he raved and stamped. I don’t mean that you do either, but you use

almost the same words as him.” Hyacinth scarce knew what to make of

this allusion or of the picture offered him of Paul Muniment casting

ridicule on those who spoke in the name of the down-trodden. But Rosy

went on before he had time to do more than reflect that there would

evidently be great things to learn about her brother: “I haven’t the

least objection to seeing the people improved, but I don’t want to

see the aristocracy lowered an inch. I like so much to look at it up

there.”

“You ought to know my Aunt Pinnie—she’s just such another benighted

idolater!” Hyacinth returned.

“Oh, you’re making me like you very fast! And pray who’s your Aunt

Pinnie?”

“She’s a dressmaker and a charming little woman. I should like her to

come and see you.”

“I’m afraid I’m not in her line—I never had on a dress in my life. But,

as a charming woman, I should be delighted to see her,” Miss Muniment

hastened to add.

“I’ll bring her some day,” he said; and then he went on rather

incongruously, for he was irritated by the girl’s optimism, thinking it

a shame her sharpness should be enlisted on the wrong side. “Don’t you

want, for yourself, a better place to live in?”

She jerked herself up and for a moment he thought she would jump out

of her bed at him. “A better place than this? Pray how could there be

a better place? Every one thinks it’s lovely; you should see our view

by daylight—you should see everything I’ve got. Perhaps you’re used to

something very fine, but Lady Aurora says that in all Belgrave Square

there isn’t such a cosy little room. If you think I’m not perfectly

content you’re very much mistaken!”

Such an attitude could only exasperate him, and his exasperation made

him indifferent to the mistake of his having appeared to sniff at Miss

Muniment’s quarters. Pinnie herself, submissive as she was, had spared

him that sort of displeasure; she groaned over the dinginess of Lomax

Place sufficiently to remind him that she had not been absolutely

stultified by misery. “Don’t you sometimes make your brother very

cross?” he asked, smiling, of his present entertainer.

“Cross? I don’t know what you take us for! I never saw him lose his

temper in his life.”

“He must be a rum customer! Doesn’t he really care for—for what we were

talking about?”

For a space Rosy was silent; then she replied: “What my brother really

cares for—well, one of these days, when you know, you’ll tell me.”

Hyacinth stared. “But isn’t he tremendously deep in—” What should he

call the mystery?

“Deep in what?”

“Well, in what’s going on beneath the surface. Doesn’t he belong to

important things?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what he belongs to—you may ask him!” cried Rosy,

who laughed gaily again as the opening door re-admitted the subject

of their conversation. “You must have crossed the water with her

ladyship,” she pursued. “I wonder who enjoyed their walk most.”

“She’s a handy old girl and she has a goodish stride,” said the young

man.

“I think she’s in love with you simply, Mr. Muniment.”

“Really, my dear, for an admirer of the aristocracy you allow yourself

a licence,” Paul scoffed, smiling at Hyacinth.

Hyacinth got up, feeling that really he had paid a long visit; his

curiosity was far from satisfied, but there was a limit to the time one

should spend in a young lady’s sleeping apartment. “Perhaps she is; why

not?” he struck out.

“Perhaps she is then; she’s daft enough for anything.”

“There have been fine folks before who have patted the people on the

back and pretended to enter into their life,” Hyacinth said. “Is she

only playing with that idea or is she in earnest?”

“In earnest—in terrible deadly earnest, my dear fellow! I think she

must be rather crowded out at home.”

“Crowded out of Inglefield? Why, there’s room for three hundred!” Rosy

broke in.

“Well, if that’s the kind of mob that’s in possession, no wonder she

prefers Camberwell. We must be kind to the poor lady,” Paul added in

a tone that Hyacinth noticed. He attributed a remarkable meaning to

it; it seemed to say that people such as he were now so sure of their

game that they could afford to be magnanimous; or else it expressed

a prevision of the doom that hung over her ladyship’s head. Muniment

asked if Hyacinth and Rosy had got on together, and the girl replied

that Mr. Robinson had made himself most agreeable. “Then you must tell

me all about him after he goes, for you know I don’t know him much

myself,” said her brother.

“Oh yes, I’ll tell you everything—you know how I like describing.”

Hyacinth found himself amused at the young lady’s account of his

efforts to please her, the fact being that he had only listened to

her own eager discourse without opening his mouth; but Paul, whether

or no guessing the truth, said to him all pertinently: “It’s very

wonderful—she can describe things she has never seen. And they’re just

like the reality.”

“There’s nothing I’ve never seen,” Rosy declared. “That’s the advantage

of my lying here in such a manner. I see everything in the world.”

“You don’t seem to see your brother’s meetings—his secret societies and

his revolutionary clubs. You put that aside when I asked you.”

“Oh, you mustn’t ask her that sort of thing,” said Paul, lowering at

Hyacinth with a fierce frown—an expression he perceived in a moment to

be facetiously assumed.

“What am I to do then, since you won’t tell me anything definite

yourself?”

“It will be definite enough when you get hanged for it!” Rosy exclaimed

mockingly.

“Why do you want to poke your head into ugly black holes?” Muniment

asked, laying his hand on Hyacinth’s shoulder and shaking it gently.

“Don’t you belong to the party of action?” our young man gravely

demanded.

“Look at the way he has picked up all the silly bits of catchwords!”

Paul cried in not unkindly derision to his sister. “You must have got

that precious phrase out of the newspapers, out of some drivelling

leader. Is that the party you want to belong to?” he went on with his

clear eyes ranging over his diminutive friend.

“If you’ll show me the thing itself I shall have no more occasion to

mind the newspapers,” Hyacinth candidly pleaded, rejoicing all the

while to feel himself in such a relation. It was his view of himself,

and not an unfair one, that his was a character that would never sue

for a favour; but now he felt that in any connexion with Paul Muniment

such a law would be suspended. This rare man he could go on his knees

to without a sense of humiliation.

“What thing do you mean, infatuated, deluded youth?” Paul pursued,

refusing to be serious.

“Well, you know you do go to places you had far better keep out of, and

that often when I lie here and listen to steps on the stairs I’m sure

they are coming in to make a search for your papers,” Miss Muniment

lucidly interposed.

“The day they find my papers, my dear, will be the day you’ll get up

and dance.”

“What did you ask me to come home with you for?” Hyacinth demanded

as he twirled his hat. It was an effort for a moment to keep the

tears from his eyes; he saw himself forced to put such a different

construction on his new friend’s hospitality. He had had a happy

impression that Muniment had divined in him a possible associate of

a high type in a subterranean crusade against the existing order of

things, whereas it now came over him that the real use he had been put

to was to beguile an hour for a pert invalid. That was all very well,

and he would sit by Miss Rosy’s bedside, were it a part of his service,

every day in the week; only in such a case it should be his reward to

enjoy the confidence of her brother. This young man justified at the

present juncture the high estimate Lady Aurora Langrish had formed of

his intelligence: whatever his natural reply to Hyacinth’s question

would have been he invented straight off a better one and said at

random, smiling and not knowing exactly what his visitor had meant:

“What did I ask you to come with me for? To see if you’d be afraid.”

What there was to be afraid of was to Hyacinth a quantity equally

vague; but he answered quickly enough: “I think you’ve only to try me

to see.”

“I’m sure that if you introduce him to some of your low wicked friends

he’ll be quite satisfied after he has looked round a bit,” Miss

Muniment remarked irrepressibly.

“Those are just the kind of people I want to know,” Hyacinth rang out.

His sincerity appeared to touch his friend. “Well, I see you’re a good

’un. Just meet me some night.”

“Where, where?” asked Hyacinth eagerly.

“Oh, I’ll tell you where when we get away from _her_.” And Muniment led

him good-humouredly out.

X

Several months after Hyacinth had made his acquaintance, Millicent

Henning remarked that it was high time our hero should take her to some

first-class place of amusement. He proposed hereupon the Canterbury

Music Hall; at which she tossed her head and affirmed that when a young

lady had done for a young man what she had done for him the least he

could do was to give her an evening at some theatre in the Strand.

Hyacinth would have been a good deal at a loss to say exactly what she

had done for him, but it was familiar to him by this time that she

regarded him as under great obligations. From the day she had come

to look him up in Lomax Place she had taken a position, largely, in

his life, and he had seen poor Pinnie’s wan countenance grow several

degrees more blank. Amanda Pynsent’s forebodings had been answered to

the letter; the flaring cometary creature had become a fixed star. She

had never spoken to him of Millicent but once, several weeks after her

interview with the girl; and this had not been in a tone of rebuke, for

she had divested herself for ever of any maternal prerogative. Tearful,

tremulous, deferential inquiry was now her only weapon, and nothing

could be more humble and circumspect than the manner in which she made

use of it. He was never at home of an evening, at present, and he had

mysterious ways of spending his Sundays, with which church-going had

nothing to do. The time had been when often, after tea, he sat near

the lamp with the dressmaker and, while her fingers flew, read out to

her the works of Dickens and of Scott; happy hours of vain semblance

that he had forgotten the wrong she had done him, so that she could

almost forget it herself. But now he gulped down his tea so fast that

he hardly took off his hat while he sat there, and Pinnie, with her

quick eye for all matters of costume, noticed that he wore it still

more gracefully askew than usual, cocking it with a victorious exalted

air. He hummed to himself; he fingered his moustache; he looked out

of window when there was nothing to look at; he seemed preoccupied,

launched in intellectual excursions, half anxious and half in spirits.

During the whole winter Miss Pynsent explained everything by four words

murmured beneath her breath: “That beastly forward jade!” On the single

occasion, however, on which she had sought relief from her agitation in

an appeal to Hyacinth she didn’t trust herself to designate the girl by

epithet or title.

“There’s only one thing I want to know,” she said to him in a manner

which might have seemed casual if in her silence, knowing her as well

as he did, he had not already perceived the implication of her thought.

“Does she expect you to marry her, dearest?”

“Does who expect me? I should like to see the woman who does!”

“Of course you know who I mean. The one that came after you—and picked

you right up—from the other end of London.” And at the remembrance

of that insufferable scene poor Pinnie flamed for a moment. “Aren’t

there plenty of vulgar fellows in that low part where she lives without

her ravaging over here? Why can’t she stick to her own beat, I should

like to know?” Hyacinth had flushed at the question, and she had seen

something in his face to make her change her tone. “Just promise me

this, my precious child: that if you get into any sort of mess with

that piece you’ll immediately confide it to your poor old Pinnie.”

“My poor old Pinnie sometimes makes me quite sick,” he remarked for

answer. “What sort of a mess do you suppose I shall get into?”

“Well, suppose she does come it over you that you promised to marry

her?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. She doesn’t want to marry

any one—the way she sees it.”

“Then how the dickens does she see it?”

“Do you imagine I’d tell a lady’s secrets?” the young man returned.

“Oh laws, if she was a lady I shouldn’t be afraid!” said Pinnie.

“Every woman’s a lady when she has placed herself under one’s

protection,” Hyacinth declared with his little manner of a man of the

great world.

“Under your protection? Oh I say!” cried Pinnie, staring. “And pray

who’s to protect you?”

As soon as she had said this she repented, because it seemed just the

sort of exclamation that would have made Hyacinth bite her head off.

One of the things she loved him for, however, was that he gave you

touching surprises in this line, had sudden inconsistencies of temper

that were all for your advantage. He was by no means always mild when

he ought to have been, but he was sometimes heavenly when he needn’t

have been at all. At such moments Pinnie wanted to kiss him and had

often tried to make Mr. Vetch understand what fascinating traits of

character she was always noting in their young friend. This particular

one was rather difficult to describe, and Mr. Vetch never would admit

that he understood, or that he had observed anything that seemed to

correspond to the dressmaker’s somewhat confused psychological sketch.

It was a comfort to her in these days, and almost the only one she had,

that she was sure Anastasius Vetch understood a good deal more than he

felt bound to acknowledge. He was always up to his old game of being

a great deal cleverer than cleverness itself required; and it consoled

her present weak, pinched feeling to know that, though he still talked

of the boy as if it would be a pity to take him too seriously, that

wasn’t the way he thought of him. He also took him seriously and had

even a certain sense of duty in regard to him. Miss Pynsent went so far

as to say to herself that the fiddler probably had savings and that no

one had ever known of any one else belonging to him. She wouldn’t have

mentioned it to Hyacinth for the world, for fear of leading up to a

disappointment; but she had visions of a foolscap sheet folded away in

some queer little bachelor’s box (she couldn’t fancy what men kept in

such places) on which the youth’s name would have been written down in

very big letters before a solicitor.

“Oh, I’m unprotected in the nature of things,” he replied, smiling at

his too scrupulous companion. Then he added: “At any rate, it isn’t

from that girl any danger will come to me.”

“I can’t think why you like her,” Pinnie remarked as if she had spent

on the question treasures of impartiality.

“It’s jolly to hear one woman on the subject of another,” Hyacinth

said. “You’re kind and good and yet you’re ready—!” He gave a sigh as

for long experience.

“Well, what am I ready to do? I’m not ready to see you gobbled up

before my eyes!”

“You needn’t be afraid. She won’t drag me to the altar.”

“And pray doesn’t she think you good enough—for one of the beautiful

’Ennings?”

“You don’t understand, my poor Pinnie,” he wearily pleaded. “I

sometimes think there isn’t a single thing in life that you understand.

One of these days she’ll marry an alderman.”

“An alderman—that creature?”

“An alderman or a banker or a bishop or some of that bloated kind. She

doesn’t want to end her career to-day—she wants to begin it.”

“Well, I wish she’d take you later!” the dressmaker returned.

Hyacinth said nothing for a little, but then broke out: “What are you

afraid of? Look here, we had better clear this up once for all. Are you

afraid of my marrying a girl out of a shop?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t, would you?” cried Pinnie with conciliatory

eagerness. “That’s the way I like to hear you talk!”

“Do you think I’d marry any one who would marry me?” Hyacinth went

on. “The kind of girl who’d look at me is the kind of girl I’d never

look at.” He struck Pinnie as having thought it all out; which didn’t

surprise her, as she had been familiar from his youth with his way

of following things up. But she was always delighted when he made a

remark that showed he was conscious of being of fine clay—flashed out

an allusion to his not being what he seemed. He was not what he seemed,

but even with Pinnie’s valuable assistance he had not succeeded in

representing to himself very definitely what he was. She had placed

at his disposal for this purpose a passionate idealism which, employed

in some case where it could have consequences, might have been termed

profligate and which yet never cost her a scruple or a compunction.

“I’m sure a princess might look at you and be none the worse!” she

declared in her delight at this assurance, more positive than any she

had yet received, that he was safe from the worse danger. This the

dressmaker considered to be the chance of his marrying some person

of her own base order. Still it came over her that his taste might be

lowered, and before the subject was dropped, on the present occasion,

she said that of course he must be quite aware of all that was wanting

to such a girl as Millicent ’Enning—who visibly wasn’t worth any

struggle for her aspirate.

“Oh, I don’t bother about what’s wanting to her. I’m content with what

she has.”

“Content, dearest—how do you mean?” the little dressmaker quavered.

“Content to make an intimate friend of her?”

“It’s impossible I should discuss these matters with you,” Hyacinth

grandly enough replied.

“Of course I see that. But I should think she’d bore you sometimes,”

Miss Pynsent threw off cunningly.

“She does, I assure you, to extinction!”

“Then why do you spend every evening with her?”

“Where should you like me to spend my evenings? At some beastly

public-house—or at the Italian opera?” His association with Miss

Henning was not so close as that, but nevertheless he wouldn’t take

the trouble to prove to poor Pinnie that he enjoyed her society only

two or three times a week; that on other evenings he simply strolled

about the streets (this boyish habit clung to him) and that he had even

occasionally the resource of going to the Poupins’ or of gossiping and

smoking a pipe at some open house-door, when the night was not cold,

with a fellow-mechanic. Later in the winter, after he had made Paul

Muniment’s acquaintance, the aspect of his life changed considerably,

though Millicent continued to be exceedingly mixed up with it. He hated

the taste of liquor and still more the taste of the places where it was

sold; besides which the types of misery and vice that one was liable

to see collected in them frightened and harrowed him, made him ask

himself questions that pierced the deeper because they were met by no

answer. It was both a blessing and a drawback to him that the delicate,

charming character of the work he did at old Crook’s, under Eustache

Poupin’s influence, was a kind of education of the taste, trained him

in the finest discriminations, in the recognition of the rare and the

hatred of the cheap. This made the brutal, garish, stodgy decoration

of public-houses, with their deluge of gaslight, their glittering

brass and pewter, their lumpish woodwork and false colours, detestable

to him. He had been still very young when the “gin-palace” ceased to

convey to him an idea of the palatial.

For this unfortunate but remarkably-organised youth every displeasure

or gratification of the visual sense coloured his whole mind, and

though he lived in Pentonville and worked in Soho, though he was poor

and obscure and cramped and full of unattainable desires, nothing in

life had such an interest or such a price for him as his impressions

and reflexions. They came from everything he touched, they made him

vibrate, kept him thrilled and throbbing, for most of his waking

consciousness, and they constituted as yet the principal events

and stages of his career. Fortunately they were often an immense

amusement. Everything in the field of observation suggested this or

that; everything struck him, penetrated, stirred; he had in a word

more news of life, as he might have called it, than he knew what to

do with—felt sometimes as he could have imagined an overwhelmed man of

business to whom the post brought too many letters. The man of business

indeed could keep a secretary, but what secretary could have cleared

up for Hyacinth some of the strange communications of life? He liked

to talk about these things, but it was only a few here and there he

could discuss with Milly. He allowed Miss Pynsent to imagine that his

hours of leisure were almost exclusively dedicated to this young lady,

because, as he said to himself, if he were to account to her for every

evening in the week it would make no difference—she would stick to her

suspicion; and he referred this perversity to the general weight of

misconception under which he at this crude period of his growth held

it was his lot to languish. It didn’t matter if one was a little more

or a little less misunderstood. He might indeed have remembered it

mattered to Pinnie, who, after her first relief at hearing him express

himself so properly on the subject of a matrimonial connexion with

Miss Henning, allowed her faded, kind, weak face little by little to

lengthen out to its old solemnity. This came back as the days went

on, for it wasn’t much comfort that he didn’t want to marry the young

woman in Pimlico when he allowed himself to be held as tight as if he

did. For the present, however, she simply said, “Oh well, if you see

her as she is I don’t care what you do”—a sentiment implying a certain

moral recklessness on the part of the good little dressmaker. She was

irreproachable herself, but she had lived more than fifty years in a

world of wickedness; like so many London women of her class and kind

she had little sentimental softness for her own sex, whose general

“paying” seemed the simplest and most natural arrangement; and she

judged it quite a minor evil that Millicent should be left lamenting

if only Hyacinth might get out of the scrape. Between a young person

who had taken a gross risk and a premature, lowering marriage for her

beloved little boy she very well knew which she preferred. It should be

added that her view of Millicent’s power to look after herself was such

as to make it absurd to pity her in advance. Pinnie thought Hyacinth

the cleverest young man in the, or at least in their, world, but her

state of mind implied that the young lady in Pimlico was cleverer. Her

ability, at any rate, was of a kind that precluded the knowledge of

suffering, whereas Hyacinth’s was somehow fairly founded on it.

By the time he had enjoyed for three months the acquaintance of

the brother and sister in Audley Court the whole complexion of his

life seemed changed; it was pervaded by an element of romance which

overshadowed, though by no means eclipsing, the brilliant figure of

Miss Henning. It was pitched in a higher key altogether and appeared

to command a view of horizons equally fresh and vast. Millicent

therefore shared her dominion without knowing exactly what it was that

drew her old playfellow off and without indeed demanding of him an

account she was not on her own side prepared to give. Hyacinth was,

in the language of the circle in which she moved, her personal fancy,

and she was content to fill as regards himself the same eminent and

somewhat irresponsible position. She had the assurance that she was a

beneficent friend: fond of him and careful of him as an elder sister

might be; warning him as no one else could do against the dangers of

the town; putting that stiff common sense, of which she was convinced

that she possessed an extraordinary supply, at the service of his

incurable verdancy; looking after him generally as no one, poor child,

had ever done. Millicent made light of the dingy dressmaker in this

view of her friend’s meagre little past (she thought Pinnie no better

than a starved cat) and enjoyed herself immensely in the character of

guide and philosopher. She felt that character never so high as when

she pushed the young man with a robust elbow or said to him, “Well,

you _are_ a sharp ’un, you are!” Her theory of herself, as we know,

was that she was the “best sort” in the world, as well as one of the

greatest beauties and quickest wits, and there could be no better proof

of her kindness of heart than her disinterested affection for a snippet

of a bookbinder. Her sociability was certainly immense, and so were

her vanity, her grossness, her presumption, her appetite for beer, for

buns, for entertainment of every kind. She represented for Hyacinth

during this period the eternal feminine, and his taste, considering

he was fastidious, will be wondered at; the judgement will be that she

didn’t represent it very favourably.

It may easily be believed that he criticised his inclination even while

he gave himself up to it, and that he often wondered he should find so

much to attract in a girl in whom he found so much to condemn. She was

vulgar, clumsy and grotesquely ignorant; her conceit was proportionate

and she hadn’t a grain of tact or of quick perception. And yet there

was something so elementally free in her, by his loose measure,

she carried with such an air the advantages she did possess, that

her figure constantly mingled itself even with those bright visions

hovering before him after Paul Muniment had opened a queerly-placed

but far-reaching window. She was bold and generous and incalculable,

and if she was coarse she was neither false nor cruel. She laughed with

the laugh of the people and if you hit her hard enough would cry with

their tears. When he himself was not letting his imagination wander

among the haunts of the aristocracy and stretching it in the shadow

of an ancestral beech to read the last number of the _Revue des Deux

Mondes_ he was occupied with contemplations of a very different kind;

he was absorbed in the struggles and sufferings of the millions whose

life flowed in the same current as his and who, though they constantly

excited his disgust and made him shrink and turn away, had the power

to chain his sympathy, to raise it to passion, to convince him for the

time at least that real success in the world would be to do something

with them and for them. All this, strange to say, was never so vivid as

in Millicent’s company—which is a proof of his fantastic, erratic way

of seeing things. She had no such ideas about herself; they were almost

the only ideas she didn’t have. She had no theories about redeeming or

uplifting the people; she simply loathed them, for being so dirty, with

the outspoken violence of one who had known poverty and the strange

bedfellows it makes in a very different degree from Hyacinth, brought

up (with Pinnie to put sugar in his tea and let him never want for

neckties) like a regular little swell.

Millicent, to hear her talk, only asked to keep her skirts clear

and marry some respectable tea-merchant. But for our hero she was

magnificently plebeian, in the sense that implied loud recklessness of

danger and the qualities that shine forth in a row. She summed up the

sociable humorous ignorant chatter of the masses, their capacity for

offensive and defensive passion, their instinctive perception of their

strength on the day they should really exercise it; and as much as

any of this their ideal of something smug and prosperous, where washed

hands and oiled hair and plates in rows on dressers and stuffed birds

under glass and family photographs of a quite similar effect would

symbolise success. She was none the less plucky for being at bottom a

shameless Philistine, ambitious of a front garden with rockwork; and

she presented the plebeian character in none the less plastic a form.

Having the history of the French Revolution at his fingers’ ends,

Hyacinth could easily see her (if there should ever be barricades in

the streets of London) with a red cap of liberty on her head and her

white throat bared so that she should be able to shout the louder the

Marseillaise of that hour, whatever it might be. If the festival of

the Goddess of Reason should ever be enacted in the British Capital—and

Hyacinth could consider such possibilities without a smile, so much was

it a part of the little religion he had to remember always that there

was no knowing what might happen—if this solemnity, I say, should be

revived in Hyde Park, who was better designated than Miss Henning to

figure in a grand statuesque manner as the heroine of the occasion?

It was plain she had laid her inconsequent admirer under a peculiar

spell, since he could associate her with such scenes as that while she

consumed beer and buns at his expense. If she had a weakness it was

for prawns; and she had, all winter, a plan for his taking her down to

Gravesend, where this luxury was cheap and abundant, when the fine long

days should arrive. She was never so frank and facetious as when she

dwelt on the details of a project of this kind; and then Hyacinth was

reminded afresh that it was an immense good fortune for him she was so

handsome. If she had been ugly he couldn’t have listened to her; but

the rare bloom and grand style of her person glorified even her accent,

interfused her cockney genius with prismatic hues, gave her a large and

constant impunity.