He didn’t mention to Pinnie or Mr. Vetch that he had been taken up by
a great lady; but he mentioned it to Paul Muniment, to whom he now
confided a great many things. He had at first been in considerable
fear of his straight loud north-country friend, who showed signs of
cultivating logic and criticism in a degree that was hostile to fine
loose talk; but he discovered in him later a man to whom one could
say anything in the world if one didn’t think it of more importance
to be sympathised with than to be understood. For a revolutionist
he was strangely unexasperated, was indulgent even to contempt. The
sight of all the things he wanted to change had seemingly no power to
irritate him, and if he joked about questions that lay very near his
heart his humour had no ferocity—the fault Hyacinth sometimes found
with it rather was that it was innocent to puerility. Our hero envied
his power of combining a care for the wide misery of mankind with the
apparent state of mind of the cheerful and virtuous young workman who
of a Sunday morning has put on a clean shirt and, not having taken the
gilt off his wages the night before, weighs against each other, for a
happy day, the respective attractions of Epping Forest and Gravesend.
He never dragged in with the least snarl his personal lot and his daily
life; it had not seemed to occur to him for instance that “society”
was really responsible for the condition of his sister’s spinal column,
though Eustache Poupin and his wife (who practically, however, were as
patient as he) did everything they could to make him say so, believing
evidently that it would relieve him. Apparently he cared nothing for
women, talked of them rarely and always decently, and had never a sign
of a sweetheart save in so far as Lady Aurora Langrish might pass for
one. He never drank a drop of beer nor touched a pipe; he always had a
clear tone, a fresh cheek and a merely, an imperturbably intelligent
eye, and once excited on Hyacinth’s part a kind of elder-brotherly
indulgence by the open-mouthed glee and credulity with which, when
the pair were present, in the sixpenny gallery, at Astley’s, at an
equestrian pantomime, he followed the tawdry spectacle. He once
pronounced the young bookbinder a suggestive little beggar, and
Hyacinth’s opinion of him was by this time so exalted that the remark
had almost the value of a patent of nobility. Our hero treated himself
to a high unlimited faith in him; he had always dreamed of some grand
friendship and this was the best opening he had yet encountered. No one
could entertain a sentiment of that sort more nobly, more ingeniously
than Hyacinth, or cultivate with more art the intimate personal
relation. It disappointed him sometimes that his confidence was not
more unreservedly repaid; that on certain important points of the
socialistic programme Muniment would never commit himself and had not
yet shown the _fond du sac_, as Eustache Poupin called it, to so ardent
an admirer. He answered particular appeals freely enough, and answered
them occasionally in a manner that made Hyacinth jump, as when in reply
to a question about his attitude on capital punishment he said that
so far from wishing it abolished he should go in for extending it much
further—he should impose it on those who habitually lied or got drunk;
but his friend had always a feeling that he kept back his best card and
that even in the listening circle in Bloomsbury, when only the right
men were present, there were unspoken conclusions in his mind which
he didn’t as yet think any one good enough to be favoured with. So far
therefore from suspecting him of any real poverty of programme Hyacinth
was sure he had extraordinary things in his head; that he was thinking
them out to the logical end, wherever it might land him; and that the
night he should produce them with the door of the club-room guarded and
the company bound by a tremendous oath the others would look at each
other, gasp and turn pale.
“She wants to see you; she asked me to bring you; she was very
serious,” our young man meanwhile said, reporting his interview with
the ladies in the box at the play; which, however, now that he looked
back upon it, seemed as queer as a dream and not much more likely than
that sort of experience to have a continuation in one’s waking hours.
“To bring me—to bring me where?” asked Muniment. “You talk as if I were
a sample out of your shop or a little dog you had for sale. Has she
ever seen me? Does she think I’m smaller than you? What does she know
about me?”
“Well, principally that you’re a friend of mine—that’s enough for her.”
“Do you mean it ought to be enough for me that she’s a friend of
yours? I’ve a notion you’ll have some queer ones before you’ve done;
a good many more than I have time to talk to. And how can I go to see
a delicate female with those paws?” Muniment said as he exhibited ten
work-stained fingers.
“Buy a pair of gloves—” Hyacinth recognised the serious character of
this obstacle. But after a moment he added: “No, you oughtn’t to do
that. She wants to see dirty hands.”
“That’s easy enough, good Lord! She needn’t send for me for the
purpose. But isn’t she making game of you?”
“It’s very possible, but I don’t see what good it can do her.”
“You’re not obliged to find excuses for the pampered classes. Their
bloated luxury begets evil, impudent desires; they’re capable of doing
harm for the sake of harm. Besides, is she genuine?”
“If she isn’t, what becomes of your explanation?” Hyacinth asked.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter; at night all cats are grey. Whatever she
is, she’s an idle, bedizened trifler; perhaps even a real profligate
female.”
“If you had seen her you wouldn’t talk of her that way.”
“God forbid I should see her then, if she’s going to corrupt me!”
“Do you suppose she’ll corrupt _me_?” Hyacinth demanded with an
expression of face and a tone of voice which produced on his friend’s
part an explosion of mirth.
“How can she, after all, when you’re already such a little mass of
corruption?”
“You don’t think that—?” and Hyacinth looked very grave.
“Do you mean that if I did I wouldn’t say it? Haven’t you noticed that
I say what I think?”
“No, you don’t, not half of it: you’re as dark as a fish.”
Paul Muniment glanced at his friend as if rather struck with the
penetration of that remark; then he said: “Well then, if I should give
you the other half of my opinion of you do you think you’d fancy it?”
“I’ll save you the trouble. I’m a very clever, conscientious, promising
young chap, and any one would be proud to claim me as a friend.”
“Is that what your Princess told you? She must be a precious piece of
goods!” Paul exclaimed. “Did she pick your pocket meanwhile?”
“Oh yes; a few minutes later I missed a silver cigar-case engraved with
the arms of the Robinsons. Seriously,” Hyacinth continued, “don’t you
consider it possible that a woman of that class should want to know
what’s going on among the like of us?”
“It depends on what class you mean.”
“Well, a woman with a lot of wonderful jewels and wonderful scents
and the manners of an angel. I wonder if even the young ladies in the
perfumery shops have such manners—they can’t have such pearls. It’s
queer of course, that sort of interest, but it’s conceivable; why not?
There may be unselfish natures; there may be disinterested feelings.”
“And there may be fine ladies in an awful funk about their jewels
and even about their manners. Seriously, as you say, it’s perfectly
conceivable. I’m not in the least surprised at the aristocracy being
curious to know what we’re up to and wanting very much to look into
it. In their place I should be very uneasy, and if I were a woman
with angelic manners very likely I too should be glad to get hold of a
soft susceptible little bookbinder and pump him dry, bless his tender
heart!”
“Are you afraid I’ll tell her secrets?” cried Hyacinth, flushing with
virtuous indignation.
“Secrets? What secrets could you tell her, my pretty lad?”
Hyacinth turned away. “You don’t trust me—you never have.”
“We will, some day—don’t be afraid,” said Muniment, who evidently had
no intention of harshness, at least in respect to Hyacinth, a thing
that appeared impossible to him. “And when we do you’ll cry with
disappointment.”
“Well, _you_ won’t,” Hyacinth returned. And then he asked if his friend
thought the Princess Casamassima a spy of spies—the devil she’d have
to be!—and why, if she were in that line, Sholto was not, since it
must be supposed he was not when they had seen fit to let him walk in
and out, at any rate, at the place in Bloomsbury. Muniment didn’t even
know whom he meant, not having had any relations with the gentleman;
but he summoned a sufficient image after his companion had described
the Captain’s appearance. He then remarked with his usual geniality
that he didn’t take him for anything worse than a jackass; but even
if he had edged himself into the place with every intention to betray
them what handle could he possibly get—what use against them could he
make of anything he had seen or heard? If he had a fancy to dip into
workingmen’s clubs (Paul remembered now the first night he came; he
had been brought by that German cabinet-maker who always had a bandaged
neck and smoked a pipe with a bowl as big as a stove); if it amused him
to put on a bad hat and inhale foul tobacco and call his “inferiors”
“my dear fellow”; if he thought that in doing so he was getting an
insight into the people and going halfway to meet them and preparing
for what was coming—all this was his own affair and he was very
welcome, though a man must be a flat who would spend his evening in a
hole like that when he might enjoy his comfort in one of those flaming
big shops, full of armchairs and flunkies, in Pall Mall. And what did
he see after all in Bloomsbury? Nothing but a remarkably stupid “social
gathering” where there were clay pipes and a sanded floor and not half
enough gas and the principal papers; and where the men, as any one
would know, were advanced radicals and mostly advanced idiots. He could
pat as many of them on the back as he liked and say the House of Lords
wouldn’t last till midsummer; but what discoveries would he make? He
was simply on the same lay as Hyacinth’s Princess; he was nervous and
scared and thought he would see for himself.
“Oh, he isn’t the same sort as the Princess. I’m sure he’s in a very
different line!” Hyacinth objected.
“Different of course; she’s a handsome woman, I suppose, and he’s an
ugly man; but I don’t think that either of them will save us or spoil
us. Their curiosity’s natural, but I’ve other things to do than to show
them over: therefore you can tell her Serene Highness that I’m much
obliged.”
Hyacinth reflected a moment and then said: “You show Lady Aurora over;
you seem to wish to give her the information she desires; therefore
what’s the difference? If it’s right for her to take an interest why
isn’t it right for my Princess?”
“If she’s already yours what more can she want?” Muniment asked. “All
I know of Lady Aurora and all I look at is that she comes and sits
with Rosy and brings her tea and waits on her. If the Princess will do
as much I’ll see what _I_ can do; but apart from that I shall never
take a grain of interest in her interest in the masses—or in this
particular mass!” And Paul, with his discoloured thumb, designated
his own substantial person. His tone was disappointing to Hyacinth,
who was surprised at his not appearing to think the incident at the
theatre more remarkable and romantic. He seemed to regard his mate’s
explanation of the passage as all-sufficient; but when a moment later
he made use, in referring to the mysterious lady, of the expression
that she was “quaking” that critic broke out: “Never in the world;
she’s not afraid of anything!”
“Ah, my lad, not afraid of you, evidently!” Hyacinth paid no attention
to this coarse sally, but resumed with a candour that was proof against
further ridicule: “Do you think she can do me a hurt of any kind if we
follow up our acquaintance?”
“Yes, very likely, but you must hit her back and give it to her badly.
That’s your line, you know—to go in for what’s going, to live your
life, to gratify the ‘sex.’ I’m an ugly, grimy brute, I’ve got to watch
the fires and mind the shop; but you’re one of those taking little
beggars who _must_ run about and see the world. You ought to be an
ornament to society, like a young man in an illustrated storybook. Only
you know,” Muniment added in a moment, “if she should hurt you very
much I _would_ have a go at her!”
Hyacinth had been intending for some time to take Pinnie to call on
the prostrate damsel in Audley Court, to whom he had promised that
his benefactress (he had told Rose Muniment she was his godmother—it
sounded so right) should pay this civility; but the affair had been
delayed by wan hesitations on the part of the dressmaker, the poor
woman having hard work to imagine to-day that there were people in
London forlorn enough for her countenance to be of value to them.
Her social curiosity had quite died out and she knew she no longer
made the same figure in public as when her command of the fashions
enabled her to illustrate them in her own little person by the aid of
a good deal of whalebone. Moreover she felt that Hyacinth had strange
friends and still stranger opinions; she suspected him of taking an
unnatural interest in politics and of being somehow not on the right
side, little as she knew about parties or causes; and she had a vague
conviction that this kind of perversity only multiplied the troubles of
the poor, who, according to theories which Pinnie had never reasoned
out but which in her breast were as deep as religion, ought always
to be of the same way of thinking as the rich. They were unlike them
enough in their poverty without trying to add other differences. When
at last she accompanied Hyacinth to Camberwell one Saturday evening at
midsummer it was in a sighing, sceptical, second-best manner; but if
he had told her he wished it she would have gone with him to a soiree
at a scavenger’s. There was no more danger of Rose Muniment’s being
out than that one of the bronze couchant lions in Trafalgar Square
should have walked down Whitehall; but he had let her know in advance
and he perceived, as he opened her door in obedience to a quick, shrill
summons, that she had had the happy thought of inviting Lady Aurora to
help her entertain Miss Pynsent. Such at least was the inference he
drew from seeing her ladyship’s memorable figure rise before him for
the first time since their meeting there. He presented his companion to
their reclining hostess, and Rosy immediately repeated her name to the
representative of Belgrave Square. Pinnie curtseyed down to the ground
as Lady Aurora put out her hand to her, and then slipped noiselessly
into a chair beside the bed. Lady Aurora laughed and fidgeted in a
friendly, cheerful, yet at the same time rather pointless manner, and
Hyacinth gathered that she had no recollection of having seen him.
His attention, however, was mainly given to Pinnie: he watched her
jealously, to see if on this important occasion she wouldn’t put forth
a certain stiff, quaint, polished politeness of which she possessed
the secret and which made him liken her extraction of the sense of
things to the nip of a pair of old-fashioned silver sugar-tongs. Not
only for Pinnie’s sake but for his own as well he wished her to figure
as a superior little woman; so he hoped she wouldn’t lose her head if
Rosy should begin to talk about Inglefield. She was evidently much
impressed by Rosy and kept repeating “Dear, dear!” under her breath
while the small strange person in the bed rapidly explained to her
that there was nothing in the world she would have liked so much as
to follow _her_ delightful profession, but that she couldn’t sit up to
it, and had never had a needle in her hand but once, when at the end of
three minutes it had dropped into the sheets and got into the mattress,
so that she had always been afraid it would work out again and stick
into her: which it hadn’t done yet and perhaps never would—she lay so
quiet, pushing it about so little. “Perhaps you’d think it’s me that
trimmed the little handkerchief I wear round my neck,” Miss Muniment
said; “perhaps you’d think I couldn’t do less, lying here all day long
with complete command of my time. Not a stitch of it. I’m the finest
lady in London; I never lift my finger for myself. It’s a present from
her ladyship—it’s her ladyship’s own beautiful needlework. What do you
think of that? Have you ever met any one so favoured before? And the
work—just look at the work and tell me how it strikes you.” The girl
pulled off the bit of muslin from her neck and thrust it at Pinnie,
who looked at it confusedly and gasped “Dear, dear, dear!” partly in
sympathy, partly as if, in spite of the consideration she owed every
one, those were very odd proceedings.
“It’s very badly done; surely you see that,” said Lady Aurora. “It was
only a joke.”
“Oh yes, everything’s a joke!” cried the irrepressible
invalid—“everything except my state of health; that’s admitted to be
serious. When her ladyship sends me five shillings’ worth of coals
it’s only a joke; and when she brings me a bottle of the finest port,
that’s another; and when she climbs up seventy-seven stairs (there are
seventy-seven, I know perfectly, though I never go up or down) to spend
the evening with me at the height of the London season, that’s the best
of all. I know all about the London season though I never go out, and
I appreciate what her ladyship gives up. She’s very jocular indeed, but
fortunately I know how to take it. You can see it wouldn’t do for me to
be touchy, can’t you, Miss Pynsent?”
“Dear, dear, I should be so glad to make you anything myself; it would
be better—it would be better—!” poor Pinnie floundered.
“It would be better than my poor work. I don’t know how to do that sort
of thing in the least,” said Lady Aurora.
“I’m sure I didn’t mean that, my lady—I only meant it would be more
convenient. Anything in the world she might fancy,” the dressmaker went
on as if it were a question of the invalid’s appetite.
“Ah, you see I don’t wear things—only a flannel jacket to be a bit
tidy,” Miss Muniment returned. “I go in only for smart counterpanes, as
you can see for yourself”; and she spread her white hands complacently
over her coverlet of brilliant patchwork. “Now doesn’t that look to
you, Miss Pynsent, as if it might be one of her ladyship’s jokes?”
“Oh my good friend, how can you? I never went so far as that!” Lady
Aurora interposed with visible anxiety.
“Well, you’ve given me almost everything; I sometimes forget. This only
cost me sixpence; so it comes to the same thing as if it had been a
present. Yes, only sixpence in a raffle in a bazaar at Hackney, for the
benefit of the Wesleyan Chapel three years ago. A young man who works
with my brother and lives in that part offered him a couple of tickets;
and he took one and I took one. When I say ‘I’ of course I mean he
took the two; for how should I find (by which I naturally mean how
should _he_ find) a sixpence in that little cup on the chimney-piece
unless he had put it there first? Of course my ticket took a prize, and
of course, as my bed’s my dwelling-place, the prize was a beautiful
counterpane of every colour of the rainbow. Oh there never was such
luck as mine!” Rosy chattered, flashing her gay demented eyes at
Hyacinth as if to irritate him with her contradictious optimism.
“It’s very lovely, but if you’d like another for a change I’ve got a
great many pieces,” Pinnie remarked with a generosity which made the
young man feel she was acquitting herself finely.
Rose Muniment laid her little hand on the dressmaker’s arm and
responded straight: “No, not a change, not a change. How can there
be a change when there’s already everything? There’s everything
here—every colour that was ever seen or invented or dreamed of since
the world began.” And with her other hand she stroked affectionately
her variegated quilt. “You’ve a great many pieces, but you haven’t as
many as there are here; and the more you should patch them together the
more the whole thing would resemble this dear dazzling old friend. I’ve
another idea, very very charming, and perhaps her ladyship can guess
what it is.” Rosy kept her fingers on Pinnie’s arm and, smiling, turned
her brilliant eyes from one of her female companions to the other as
to associate and blend them as closely as possible in their interest
in her. “In connexion with what we were talking about a few minutes
ago—couldn’t your ladyship just go a little further in the same line?”
Then as Lady Aurora looked troubled and embarrassed, blushing at being
called upon to answer a conundrum, as it were, so publicly, her infirm
friend came to her assistance. “It will surprise you at first, but
it won’t when I’ve explained it: my idea is just simply a sweet pink
dressing-gown!”
“A sweet pink dressing-gown!” Lady Aurora repeated.
“With a neat black trimming! Don’t you see the connexion with what we
were talking of before our good visitors came in?”
“That would be very pretty,” said Pinnie. “I’ve made them like that in
my time. Or a carefully-selected blue trimmed with white.”
“No, pink and black, pink and black—to suit my complexion. Perhaps
you didn’t know I _have_ a complexion; but there are very few things I
lack! Anything at all I should fancy, you were so good as to say. Well
now, I fancy that! Your ladyship does see the connexion by this time,
doesn’t she?”
Lady Aurora looked distressed, as if she felt she certainly ought to
see it but was not sure that even yet it didn’t escape her, and as
if at the same time she were struck with the fact that this sudden
evocation might result in a strain on the small dressmaker’s resources.
“A pink dressing-gown would certainly be very becoming and Miss Pynsent
would be very kind,” she said; while Hyacinth made the mental comment
that it was a largeish order, since Pinnie would have obviously to
furnish the materials as well as the labour. The amiable coolness with
which the invalid laid her under contribution was, however, to his
sense, quite in character, and he reflected that after all when you
were flat on your back like that you had the right to reach out your
hands (it wasn’t far you could reach at best) and grab what you could
get. Pinnie declared she knew just the article Miss Muniment wanted and
that she would undertake to make a perfect duck of it; and Rosy went
on to say that she must explain of what use such an article would be,
but for this purpose there must be another guess. She would give it to
Miss Pynsent and Hyacinth—as many times as they liked: what _had_ she
and Lady Aurora been talking about before they came in? She clasped her
hands and her eyes shone with her eagerness while she continued to turn
them from Lady Aurora to the dressmaker. What would they imagine? What
would they think natural, delightful, magnificent—if one could only
end at last by making out the right place to put it? Hyacinth suggested
successively a cage of Java sparrows, a music-box and a shower-bath—or
perhaps even a full-length portrait of her ladyship; and Pinnie looked
at him askance in a frightened way, as if perchance he were joking too
broadly. Rosy at last relieved their suspense and announced: “A sofa,
just a sofa now! What do you say to that? Do you suppose that idea
could have come from any one but her ladyship? She must have all the
credit of it; she came out with it in the course of conversation. I
believe we were talking of the peculiar feeling that comes just under
the shoulder-blades if one never has a change. She mentioned it as she
might have mentioned just the right sort of rub—there _are_ such wrong
sorts!—or another spoonful of that American stuff. We’re thinking it
over and one of these days, if we give plenty of time to the question,
we shall find the place, the very nicest and snuggest of all and no
other. I hope _you_ see the connexion with the pink dressing-gown,” she
pursued to Pinnie, “and I hope you see the importance of the question,
‘Shall anything go?’ I should like you to look round a bit and tell me
what you would answer if I were to say to you, ‘_Can_ anything go?’”