His first consciousness after his companion had opened it was of his
proximity to the stage, on which the curtain had now again risen. The
play was in progress, the actors’ voices came straight into the box,
and it was impossible to speak without disturbing them. This at least
was his inference from the noiseless way his conductor drew him in and,
without announcing or introducing him, simply pointed to a chair and
whispered: “Just drop into that; you’ll see and hear beautifully.” He
heard the door close behind him and became aware that Captain Sholto
had already retreated. Millicent would at any rate not be left long
to languish in solitude. Two ladies were seated in the front of the
box, which was so large that there was a considerable space between
them; and as he stood there, where Captain Sholto had planted him—they
appeared not to have noticed the opening of the door—they turned their
heads and looked at him. The one on whom his eyes first rested was the
odd party he had already viewed at a distance; she looked queerer still
on a closer view and gave him a little friendly gratified nod. The
other was partly overshadowed by the curtain of the box, drawn forward
with the intention of shielding her from the observation of the house;
she had still the air of youth, and the simplest way to express the
instant effect upon Hyacinth of her fair face of welcome is to say that
she dazzled him. He remained as Sholto had left him, staring rather
confusedly and not moving an inch; whereupon the younger lady put out
her hand—it was her left, the other rested on the ledge of the box—with
the expectation, as he perceived, to his extreme mortification, too
late, that he would give her his own. She converted the gesture into
a sign of invitation and beckoned him silently but graciously to move
his chair forward. He did so and seated himself between the two; then
for ten minutes he stared straight before him at the stage, not turning
his eyes sufficiently even to glance up at Millicent in the balcony.
He looked at the play, but was far from seeing it; he had no sense
of anything but the woman who sat there, close to him, on his right,
with a fragrance in her garments and a light about her which he seemed
to see even while his head was averted. The vision had been only of
a moment, but it hung before him, threw a vague white mist over the
proceedings on the stage. He was consciously embarrassed, overturned
and bewildered; he made a great effort to collect himself, to consider
the situation lucidly. He wondered if he ought to speak, to look at
her again, to behave differently in some way; if she would take him
for a clown, for an idiot; if she were really as beautiful as she had
seemed or it were only a superficial glamour which a renewed inspection
would dissipate. While he so pondered the minutes lapsed and neither
of his hostesses spoke; they watched the play in perfect stillness, so
that he divined this to be the proper thing and that he himself must
remain dumb until a word should be addressed him. Little by little
he recovered himself, took possession of his predicament and at last
transferred his eyes to the Princess. She immediately perceived this
and returned his glance with a bright benevolence. She might well be a
princess—it was impossible to conform more to the finest evocations of
that romantic word. She was fair, shining, slender, with an effortless
majesty. Her beauty had an air of perfection; it astonished and
lifted one up, the sight of it seemed a privilege, a reward. If the
first impression it had given Hyacinth was to make him feel strangely
transported he need still not have set that down to his simplicity,
for this was the effect the Princess Casamassima produced on persons
of a wider experience and greater pretensions. Her dark eyes, blue or
grey, something that was not brown, were as kind as they were splendid,
and there was an extraordinary light nobleness in the way she held her
head. That head, where two or three diamond stars glittered in the
thick, delicate hair which defined its shape, suggested to Hyacinth
something antique and celebrated, something he had admired of old—the
memory was vague—in a statue, in a picture, in a museum. Purity of line
and form, of cheek and chin and lip and brow, a colour that seemed
to live and glow, a radiance of grace and eminence and success—these
things were seated in triumph in the face of the Princess, and her
visitor, as he held himself in his chair trembling with the revelation,
questioned if she were really of the same substance with the humanity
he had hitherto known. She might be divine, but he could see she
understood human needs—that she wished him to be at his ease and happy;
there was something familiar in her benignity, as if she had seen
him many times before. Her dress was dark and rich; she had pearls
round her neck and an old rococo fan in her hand. He took in all these
things and finally said to himself that if she wanted nothing more of
him he was content, he would like it to go on; so pleasant was it to
be enthroned with fine ladies in a dusky, spacious receptacle which
framed the bright picture of the stage and made one’s own situation
seem a play within the play. The act was a long one, and the repose in
which his companions left him might have been a calculated charity,
to enable him to get used to them, to see how harmless they were. He
looked at Millicent in the course of time and saw that Captain Sholto,
seated beside her, had not the same standard of propriety, inasmuch as
he made a remark to her every few minutes. Like himself the young lady
in the balcony was losing the play, thanks to her so keeping her eyes
on her friend from Lomax Place, whose position she thus endeavoured
to gauge. He had quite given up the Paraguayan complications; by the
end of the half-hour his attention might have come back to them had
he not then been engaged in wondering what the Princess would say to
him after the descent of the curtain—or if she would say anything. The
consideration of this problem as the moment of the solution drew nearer
made his heart again beat fast. He watched the old lady on his left
and supposed it was natural a princess should have an attendant—he took
for granted she was an attendant—as different as possible from herself.
This ancient dame was without majesty or grace; huddled together with
her hands folded on her stomach and her lips protruding, she solemnly
followed the performance. Several times, however, she turned her head
to Hyacinth, and then her expression changed; she repeated the jovial,
encouraging, almost motherly nod with which she had greeted him on
his making his bow and by which she appeared to wish to intimate that,
better than the serene beauty on the other side, she could enter into
the full anomaly of his situation. She seemed to argue that he must
keep his head and that if the worst should come to the worst she was
there to look after him. Even when at last the curtain descended it
was some moments before the Princess spoke, though she rested her
smile on her guest as if she were considering what he would best like
her to say. He might at that instant have guessed what he discovered
later—that among this lady’s faults (he was destined to learn they
were numerous) not the least eminent was an exaggerated fear of the
commonplace. He expected she would make some remark about the play, but
what she said was, very gently and kindly, “I like to know all sorts of
people.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d find the least difficulty in that,” Hyacinth
replied.
“Oh, if one wants anything very much it’s sure to be difficult. Every
one isn’t so obliging as you.”
Hyacinth could think immediately of no proper answer to this, but the
old lady saved him the trouble by declaring with a foreign accent: “I
think you were most extraordinarily good-natured. I had no idea you’d
come—to two strange women.”
“Yes, we’re strange women,” said the Princess musingly.
“It’s not true she finds things difficult; she makes every one do
everything,” her companion went on.
The Princess glanced at her and then remarked to Hyacinth: “Her name
is Madame Grandoni.” The tone was not familiar, but there was a happy
shade in it, as if he had really taken so much trouble for them that
it was but just he should be entertained a little at their expense. It
seemed to imply also that Madame Grandoni’s fitness for supplying such
entertainment was obvious.
“But I’m not Italian—ah no!” the old lady cried. “In spite of my
name I’m an honest, ugly, unfortunate German. But _cela n’a pas
d’importance_. She also, with such a name, isn’t Italian either. It’s
an accident; the world’s full of accidents. But she isn’t German,
poor lady, any more.” Madame Grandoni appeared to have entered into
the Princess’s view, and Hyacinth thought her exceedingly droll. In a
moment she added: “That was a very charming person you were with.”
“Yes, she’s very charming,” Hyacinth replied, not sorry to have a
chance to say it.
The Princess made no remark on this subject, and Hyacinth saw not only
that from her position in the box she could have had no glimpse of
Millicent, but that she would never take up such an allusion as that.
It was as if she had not heard it that she asked: “Do you find the play
very interesting?”
He hesitated, then told the simple truth. “I must confess I’ve lost the
whole of this last act.”
“Ah, poor bothered young man!” cried Madame Grandoni. “You see—you see!”
“What do I see?” the Princess inquired. “If you’re annoyed at being
here now you’ll like us later; probably at least. We take a great
interest in the things you care for. We take a great interest in the
people,” the Princess went on.
“Oh, allow me, allow me, and speak only for yourself!” the elder
lady interposed. “I take no interest whatever in the people; I don’t
understand them and I know nothing about them. An honourable nature, of
any class, I always respect; but I won’t pretend to a passion for the
ignorant masses, because I have it not. Moreover that doesn’t touch the
gentleman.”
The Princess Casamassima had a clear faculty of completely ignoring
things of which she wished to take no account; it was not in the least
the air of contempt, but thoughtful, tranquil, convenient absence,
after which she came back to the point where she wished to be. She made
no protest against her companion’s speech, but said to Hyacinth, as if
vaguely conscious she had been committing herself in some absurd way:
“She lives with me; she’s everything to me; she’s the best woman in the
world.”
“Yes, fortunately, with many superficial defects I’m as good as good
bread,” Madame Grandoni conceded.
Hyacinth was by this time less embarrassed than when he had presented
himself, but he was not less mystified; he wondered afresh if he were
not being practised on for some inconceivable end: so strangely did
it strike him that two such products of another world than his own
should of their own movement take the trouble to explain each other
to a dire little bookbinder. This idea made him flush; it might have
come over him that he had fallen into a trap. He was conscious he
looked frightened, and he was conscious the moment afterwards that the
Princess noticed it. This was apparently what made her say: “If you’ve
lost so much of the play I ought to tell you what has happened.”
“Do you think he would follow that any more?” Madame Grandoni asked.
“If you would tell me—if you would tell me—!” And then Hyacinth
stopped. He had been going to say “If you would tell me what all this
means and what you want of me it would be more to the point!” but the
words died on his lips and he sat staring, for the woman at his right
hand was simply too beautiful. She was too beautiful to question,
to judge by common logic; and how could he know, moreover, what was
natural to a person in that exaltation of grace and splendour? Perhaps
it was her habit to send out every evening for some witless stranger
to amuse her; perhaps that was the way the foreign aristocracy lived.
There was no sharpness in her face—for the present hour at least: there
was nothing but luminous charity, yet she looked as if she knew what
was going on in his mind. She made no eager attempt to reassure him,
but there was a world almost of direct tenderness in the tone in which
she said: “Do you know I’m afraid I’ve already forgotten what they have
been doing—? It’s terribly complicated; some one or other was hurled
over a precipice.”
“Ah, you’re a brilliant pair,” Madame Grandoni declared with a laugh
of long experience. “I could describe everything. The person who was
hurled over the precipice was the virtuous hero, and you’ll see him in
the next act all the better for it.”
“Don’t describe anything; I’ve so much to ask.” Hyacinth had looked
away in tacit deprecation at hearing himself “paired” with the
Princess, and he felt she was watching him. “What do you think of
Captain Sholto?” she went on suddenly, to his surprise, if anything in
his position could excite surprise more than anything else; and as he
hesitated, not knowing what to say, she added: “Isn’t he a very curious
type?”
“I know him very little.” But he had no sooner uttered the words than
it struck him they were far from brilliant, were poor and flat and very
little calculated to satisfy the Princess. Indeed he had said nothing
at all that could place him in a favourable light; so he continued at a
venture: “I mean I’ve never seen him at home.” That sounded still more
silly.
“At home? Oh, he’s never at home; he’s all over the world. To-night
he was as likely to have been in Paraguay for instance—though what a
place to be!” she smiled—“as here. He is what they call a cosmopolite.
I don’t know if you know that species; very modern, more and more
frequent and exceedingly tiresome. I prefer the Chinese. He had told me
he had had a lot of very interesting talk with you. That was what made
me say: ‘Oh, do ask him to come in and see me. A little interesting
talk, that would be a change!’”
“She’s very complimentary to me!” said Madame Grandoni.
“Ah my dear, you and I, you know, we never talk: we understand each
other without that!” Then the Princess pursued, addressing herself to
Hyacinth: “Do you never admit women?”
“Admit women—?”
“Into those séances—what do you call them?—those little meetings that
Captain Sholto describes to me. I should like so much to be present.
Why not?”
“I haven’t seen any ladies,” Hyacinth said. “I don’t know if it’s a
rule, but I’ve seen nothing but men”; and he subjoined, smiling, though
he thought the dereliction rather serious and couldn’t understand the
part Captain Sholto was playing, nor, considering the grand company
he kept, how he had originally secured admittance into the subversive
little circle in Bloomsbury: “You know I’m not sure he ought to go
about reporting our proceedings.”
“I see. Perhaps you think he’s a spy, an _agent provocateur_ or
something of that sort.”
“No,” said Hyacinth after a moment. “I think a spy would be more
careful—would disguise himself more. Besides, after all, he has heard
very little.” He spoke as with mild amusement.
“You mean he hasn’t really been behind the scenes?” the Princess asked,
bending forward a little and now covering the young man steadily with
her beautiful deep eyes, as if by this time he must have got used to
her and wouldn’t flinch from such attention. “Of course he hasn’t,”
she said of herself, however, “and he never will be. He knows that,
and that it’s quite out of his power to tell any real secrets. What
he repeated to me was interesting, but of course I could see there was
nothing the authorities anywhere could put their hand on. It was mainly
the talk he had had with you which struck him so very much, and which
struck me, as I tell you. Perhaps you didn’t know how he was drawing
you out.”
“I’m afraid that’s rather easy,” said Hyacinth with perfect candour;
for it came over him that he _had_ chattered with a vengeance in
Bloomsbury and had thought it natural enough there that his sociable
fellow-visitor should offer him cigars and attach importance to the
views of a clever and original young artisan.
“I’m not sure that I find it so! However, I ought to tell you that you
needn’t have the least fear of Captain Sholto. He’s a perfectly honest
man, so far as he goes; and even if you had trusted him much more than
you appear to have done he’d be incapable of betraying you. However,
don’t trust him: not because he’s not safe, but because—!” She took
herself up. “No matter, you’ll see for yourself. He has gone into that
sort of thing simply to please me. I should tell you, merely to make
you understand, that he would do anything for that. That’s his own
affair. I wanted to know something, to learn something, to ascertain
what really is going on; and for a woman everything of that sort’s so
difficult, especially for a woman in my position, who’s tiresomely
known and to whom every sort of bad faith is sure to be imputed. So
Sholto said he would look into the subject for me. Poor man, he has
had to look into so many subjects! What I particularly wanted was
that he should make friends with some of the leading spirits, really
characteristic types.” The Princess’s voice was low and rather deep,
but her tone perfectly natural and easy, with a charming assumption—for
you could call it nothing else—of more wonderful things than he
could count. Her manner of speaking was in fact altogether new to
her listener, for whom the pronunciation of her words and the very
punctuation of her sentences were the revelation of what he supposed
to be society—the very Society to the destruction of which he was
dedicated.
“Surely Captain Sholto doesn’t suppose _I’m_ a leading spirit!” he
exclaimed with the resolve not to be laughed at any more than he could
help.
“He told me you were very original.”
“He doesn’t know, and—if you’ll allow me to say so—I don’t think _you_
know. How should you? I’m one of many thousands of young men of my
class—you know, I suppose, what _that_ is—in whose brains certain ideas
are fermenting. There’s nothing original about me at all. I’m very
young and very ignorant; it’s only a few months since I began to talk
of the possibility of a social revolution with men who have considered
the whole ground much more than I could possibly do. I’m a mere
particle,” Hyacinth wound up, “in the grey immensity of the people. All
I pretend to is my good faith and a great desire that justice shall be
done.”
The Princess listened to him intently and her attitude made him feel
how little _he_, in comparison, expressed himself like a person who had
the habit of conversation; he seemed to himself to betray ridiculous
effort, to stammer and emit vulgar sounds. For a moment she said
nothing, only looking at him with her exquisite smile. “I do draw you
out!” she exclaimed at last. “You’re much more interesting to me than
if you were an exception.” At these last words Hyacinth flinched a
hair’s breadth; the movement was shown by his dropping his eyes. We
know to what extent he really regarded himself as of the stuff of the
common herd. The Princess doubtless guessed it as well, for she quickly
added: “At the same time I can see you’re remarkable enough.”
“What do you think I’m remarkable for?”
“Well, you’ve general ideas.”
“Every one has them to-day. They have them in Bloomsbury to a terrible
degree. I’ve a friend (who understands the matter much better than
I) who has no patience with them: he declares they’re our folly, our
danger and our bane. A few very special ideas—if they’re the right
ones—are what we want.”
“Who’s your friend?” the Princess asked abruptly.
“Ah, Christina, Christina!” Madame Grandoni murmured from the other
side of the box.
Christina took no notice of her, and Hyacinth, not understanding the
warning and only remembering how personal women always are, replied:
“A young man who lives in Camberwell and who’s in the employ of a big
wholesale chemist.”
If he had designed in this description of his friend a stronger dose
than his hostess would be able to digest he was greatly mistaken.
She seemed to gaze tenderly at the picture suggested by his words,
and she immediately inquired if the young man were also clever and
if she mightn’t hope to know him. Hadn’t Captain Sholto seen him, and
if so why hadn’t he spoken of him too? When Hyacinth had replied that
Captain Sholto had probably seen him, but, as he believed, had had no
particular conversation with him, the Princess asked with startling
frankness if her visitor wouldn’t bring the person so vividly described
some day to see her.
Hyacinth glanced at Madame Grandoni, but that worthy woman was engaged
in a survey of the house through an old-fashioned eyeglass with a
long gilt handle. He had perceived much before this that the Princess
Casamassima had no desire for vain phrases, and he had the good taste
to feel that from himself to such a great lady compliments, even had
he wished to pay them, would have had no suitability. “I don’t know
whether he would be willing to come. He’s the sort of man that in such
a case you can’t answer for.”
“That makes me want to know him all the more. But you’ll come yourself
at all events, eh?”
Poor Hyacinth murmured something about the unexpected honour; after all
he had a French heredity and it wasn’t so easy for him to say things
as ill as his other idiom mainly required. But Madame Grandoni, laying
down her eyeglass, almost took the words out of his mouth with the
cheerful exhortation: “Go and see her—go and see her once or twice.
She’ll treat you like an angel.”
“You must think me very peculiar,” the Princess remarked sadly.
“I don’t know what I think. It will take a good while.”
“I wish I could make you trust me—inspire you with confidence,” she
went on. “I don’t mean only you personally, but others who think as
you do. You’d find I’d go with you—pretty far. I was answering just
now for Captain Sholto; but who in the world’s to answer for _me_?”
And her sadness merged itself in a smile that affected Hyacinth as
indescribably magnanimous and touching.
“Not I, my dear, I promise you!” her ancient companion ejaculated with
a laugh which made the people in the stalls look up at the box.
Her spirit was contagious; it gave Hyacinth the audacity to say to
her, “I’d trust _you_, if you did!” though he felt the next minute that
this was even a more familiar speech than if he had expressed a want of
confidence.
“It comes then to the same thing,” said the Princess. “She wouldn’t
show herself with me in public if I weren’t respectable. If you knew
more about me you’d understand what has led me to turn my attention to
the great social question. It’s a long story and the details wouldn’t
interest you; but perhaps some day, if we have more talk, you’ll put
yourself a little in my place. I’m very serious, you know; I’m not
amusing myself with peeping and running away. I’m convinced that we’re
living in a fool’s paradise, that the ground’s heaving under our feet.”
“It’s not the ground, my dear; it’s you who are turning somersaults,”
Madame Grandoni interposed.
“Ah you, my friend, you’ve the happy faculty of believing what you like
to believe. I have to believe what I see.”
“She wishes to throw herself into the revolution, to guide it, to
enlighten it,” Madame Grandoni said to Hyacinth, speaking now with
imperturbable gravity.
“I’m sure she could direct it in any sense she would wish!” the young
man responded in his glow. The pure, high dignity with which the
Princess had just spoken and which appeared to cover a suppressed
tremor of passion set his pulses throbbing, and though he scarcely saw
what she meant—her aspirations appearing as yet so vague—her tone, her
voice, her wonderful face showed she had a generous soul.
She answered his eager declaration with a serious smile and a
melancholy head-shake. “I’ve no such pretensions and my good old
friend’s laughing at me. Of course that’s very easy; for what in fact
can be more absurd on the face of it than for a woman with a title,
with diamonds, with a carriage, with servants, with a position, as
they call it, to sympathise with the upward struggles of those who
are below? ‘Give all that up and we’ll believe you,’ you’ve a right
to say. I’m ready to give them up the moment it will help the cause;
I assure you that’s the least difficulty. I don’t want to teach, I
want to learn; and above all I want to know _à quoi m’en tenir_. Are
we on the eve of great changes or are we not? Is everything that’s
gathering force underground, in the dark, in the night, in little
hidden rooms, out of sight of governments and policemen and idiotic
‘statesmen’—heaven save them!—is all this going to burst forth some
fine morning and set the world on fire? Or is it to sputter out and
spend itself in vain conspiracies, be dissipated in sterile heroisms
and abortive isolated movements? I want to know _à quoi m’en tenir_,”
she repeated, fixing her visitor with more brilliant eyes and almost
as if he could tell her on the spot. Then suddenly she added in quite
a different tone: “Pardon me, I’ve an idea you know French. Didn’t
Captain Sholto tell me so?”
“I’ve some little acquaintance with it,” Hyacinth replied. “I’ve French
blood in my veins.”
She considered him as if he had proposed to her some attaching problem.
“Yes, I can see you’re not _le premier venu_. Now your friend, of
whom you were speaking, is a chemist; and you yourself—what’s your
occupation?”
“I’m just a bookbinder.”
“That must be delightful. I wonder if you’d bind me some books.”
“You’d have to bring them to our shop, and I can do there only the work
that’s given out to me. I might manage it by myself at home,” Hyacinth
freely professed.
“I should like that better. And what do you call home?”
“The place I live in, in the north of London: a little street you
certainly never heard of.”
“What is it called?”
“Lomax Place, at your service,” he laughed.
She seemed to reflect his innocent gaiety; she wasn’t a bit afraid
to let him see she liked him. “No, I don’t think I’ve heard of it.
I don’t know London very well; I haven’t lived here long. I’ve spent
most of my life abroad. My husband’s a foreigner, a South Italian. We
don’t live always together. I haven’t the manners of this country—not
of any class, have I, eh? Oh this country—there’s a great deal to be
said about it and a great deal to be done, as you of course understand
better than any one. But I want to know London; it interests me more
than I can say—the huge, swarming, smoky, human city. I mean real
London, the people and all their sufferings and passions; not Park Lane
and Bond Street. Perhaps you can help me—it would be a great kindness:
that’s what I want to know men like you for. You see it isn’t idle, my
having given you so much trouble to-night.”
“I shall be very glad to show you all I know. But it isn’t much and
above all it isn’t pretty,” said Hyacinth.
“Whom do you live with in Lomax Place?” she asked, a little oddly, by
way of allowance for this.
“Captain Sholto’s leaving the young lady—he’s coming back here,” Madame
Grandoni announced, inspecting the balcony with her instrument. The
orchestra had been for some time playing the overture to the following
act.
Hyacinth had just hesitated. “I live with a dressmaker.”
“With a dressmaker? Do you mean—do you mean—?” But the Princess paused.
“Do you mean she’s your wife?” asked Madame Grandoni more bravely.
“Perhaps she gives you rooms,” the Princess suggested.
“How many do you think I have? She gives me everything, or has done
so in the past. She brought me up; she’s the best little woman in the
world.”
“You had better command a dress of her,” Madame Grandoni threw off.
“And your family, where are they?” the Princess continued.
“I have no family.”
“None at all?”
“None at all. I never had.”
“But the French blood you speak of and which I see perfectly in your
face—you haven’t the English expression or want of expression—that must
have come to you through some one.”
“Yes, through my mother.”
“And she’s dead?”
“Long ago.”
“That’s a great loss, because French mothers are usually so much to
their sons.” The Princess looked at her painted fan as she opened and
closed it; after which she said: “Well then, you’ll come some day.
We’ll arrange it.” Hyacinth felt the answer to this could be only a
silent inclination of his utmost stature, and to make it he rose from
his chair. As he stood there, conscious he had stayed long enough and
yet not knowing exactly how to withdraw, the Princess, with her fan
closed, resting upright on her knee, and her hands clasped on the end
of it, turned up her strange lovely eyes at him and said: “Do you think
anything will occur soon?”
“Will occur—?”
“That there’ll be a crisis—that you’ll make yourselves felt?”
In this beautiful woman’s face there was to his bewildered perception
something at once inspiring, tempting and mocking; and the effect
of her expression was to make him say rather clumsily, “I’ll try and
ascertain—” as if she had asked him whether her carriage were at the
door.
“I don’t quite know what you’re talking about; but please don’t have
it for another hour or two. I want to see what becomes of the Pearl!”
Madame Grandoni interposed.
“Remember what I told you: I’d give up everything—everything!” And the
Princess kept looking up at him. Then she held out her hand, and this
time he knew sufficiently what he was about to take it.
When he bade good-night to Madame Grandoni the old lady sounded at him
with a comical sigh, “Well, she is respectable!” and out in the lobby
when he had closed the door of the box behind him he found himself
echoing these words and repeating mechanically, “She _is_ respectable!”
They were on his lips as he stood suddenly face to face with Captain
Sholto, who grasped his shoulder once more and shook him in that free
yet insinuating manner for which this officer appeared remarkable.
“My dear fellow, you were born under a lucky star.”
“I never supposed it,” said Hyacinth, changing colour.
“Why what in the world would you have? You’ve the faculty, the precious
faculty, of inspiring women with an interest—but an interest!”
“Yes, ask them in the box there! I behaved like an awful muff,”
Hyacinth declared, overwhelmed now with a sense of opportunities
missed.
“They won’t tell me that. And the lady upstairs?”
“Well,” said Hyacinth gravely, “what about her?”
“She wouldn’t talk to me of anything but you. You may imagine how I
liked it!”
“I don’t like it either. But I must go up.”
“Oh yes, she counts the minutes. Such a charming person!” Captain
Sholto added with more propriety of tone. As Hyacinth left him he
called out: “Don’t be afraid—you’ll go far.”
When the young man took his place in the balcony beside Millicent she
gave him no greeting nor asked any question about his adventures in the
more privileged part of the house. She only turned her fine complexion
upon him for some minutes, and as he himself was not in the mood to
begin to chatter the silence continued—continued till after the curtain
had risen on the last act of the play. Millicent’s attention was now
evidently not at her disposal for the stage, and in the midst of a
violent scene which included pistol-shots and shrieks she said at last
to her companion: “She’s a tidy lot, your Princess, by what I learn.”
“Pray what do you know about her?”
“I know what that fellow told me.”
“And what may that have been?”
“Well, she’s a bad ’un as ever was. Her own husband has had to turn her
out of the house.”
Hyacinth remembered the allusion the lady herself had made to her
matrimonial situation; in spite of which he would have liked to be
able to reply to Miss Henning that he didn’t believe a word of it. He
withheld the doubt and after a moment simply remarked: “Well, I don’t
care.”
“You don’t care? Well, I do then!” Millicent cried. And as it was
impossible in view of the performance and the jealous attention of
their neighbours to continue the conversation at this pitch, she
contented herself with ejaculating in a somewhat lower key at the
end of five minutes during which she had been watching the stage:
“Gracious, what dreadful common stuff!” Hyacinth then wondered if
Captain Sholto had given her this formula.