“I’m sure there’s nothing _I_ should like to part with,” Pinnie
returned; and while she surveyed the scene Lady Aurora, with
discretion, to lighten Amanda’s responsibility, got up and turned to
the window, which was open to the summer evening and admitted still
the last rays of the long day. Hyacinth, after a moment, placed
himself beside her, looking out with her at the dusky multitude of
chimney-pots and the small black houses roofed with grimy tiles. The
thick warm air of a London July floated beneath them, suffused with
the everlasting uproar of the town, which appeared to have sunk into
quietness but again became a mighty voice as soon as one listened for
it; here and there, in poor windows, glimmered a turbid light, and high
above, in a clearer smokeless zone, a sky still fair and luminous, a
faint silver star looked down. The sky was the same that bent far away
in the country over golden fields and purple hills and gardens where
nightingales sang; but from this point of view everything that covered
the earth was ugly and sordid and seemed to express or to represent the
weariness of toil. Presently, to Hyacinth’s astonishment, Lady Aurora
said to him: “You never came after to get the books.”
“Those you kindly offered to lend me? I didn’t know it was an
understanding.”
She gave an uneasy laugh. “I’ve picked them out; they’re quite ready.”
“It’s awfully kind of you,” the young man hastened to say. “I’ll come
and get them some day with pleasure.” He wasn’t very sure he would, but
it was the least he could profess.
“She’ll tell you where I live, you know,” Lady Aurora went on with a
movement of her head in the direction of the bed, as if she were too
shy to mention it herself.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt she knows the way—she could tell me every street and
every turn!” Hyacinth laughed.
“She has made me describe to her very often how I come and go,” his
companion concurred. “I think few people know more about London than
she. She never forgets anything.”
“She’s a wonderful little witch—she terrifies me!” he acknowledged.
Lady Aurora turned her modest eyes on him. “Oh, she’s so good, she’s so
patient!”
“Yes, and so preternaturally wise and so awfully all there.”
“Ah, she’s immensely clever,” said her ladyship. “Which do you think
the cleverer?”
“The cleverer?”
“Of the girl or her brother.”
“Oh, I think he’ll be some day prime minister of England.”
“Do you really? I’m so glad!” she cried with a flush of colour. “I do
rejoice if you think that will be possible. You know it ought to be if
things were right.”
Hyacinth had not professed this high faith for the purpose of playing
on her ladyship’s feelings, but when he felt her intense agreement
it was as if he had been making sport of her. Still he said no more
than he believed when he observed in a moment that he had the greatest
expectations of Paul Muniment’s future: he was sure the world would
hear of him, that England would need him, that the public some day
would acclaim him. It was impossible to know him without feeling he was
very strong and must play some important part.
“Yes, people wouldn’t believe—they wouldn’t believe.” She abounded in
his sense and he could measure the good he did her. It was moreover
a pleasure to himself to place on record his opinion of his friend;
it seemed to make that opinion more clear, to give it the force of an
invocation or a prophecy. This was especially the case when he asked
why on earth nature had endowed Paul Muniment with such extraordinary
powers of mind, and powers of body too—because he was as strong as a
horse—if it hadn’t been intended he should do something supreme for
his fellow-men. Hyacinth confided to her ladyship that he thought the
people in his own class generally very stupid—distinctly what he should
call third-rate minds. He wished it hadn’t been so, for heaven knew he
felt kindly to them and only asked to cast his lot with theirs; but he
was obliged to confess that centuries of poverty, of ill-paid toil, of
bad insufficient food and wretched housing hadn’t a favourable effect
on the higher faculties. All the more reason that when there was a
splendid exception like their friend it should count for a tremendous
force—it had so much to make up for, so many to act for. And then
Hyacinth repeated that in his own low walk of life people had really
not the faculty of thought; their minds had been simplified—reduced
to two or three elements. He saw that such judgements made his
fellow-guest very uncomfortable; she turned about, she twisted herself
vaguely as if she wished to protest, but she was far too considerate
to interrupt him. He had no wish to worry her, but there were times
when he couldn’t withstand the perverse satisfaction of insisting on
his lowliness of station, of turning the knife in the wound inflicted
by such explicit reference, and of letting it be seen that if his
place in the world was immeasurably small he at least had no illusions
about either himself or his species. Lady Aurora replied as quickly as
possible that she knew a great deal about the poor—not the poor after
the fashion of Rosy, but the terribly, hopelessly poor, with whom she
was more familiar than Hyacinth would perhaps believe—and that she
was often struck with their great talents and their quick wit, with
their command of conversation really of much more interest to her than
most of what one usually heard in drawing-rooms. She often found them
immensely clever.
Hyacinth smiled at her and said: “Ah when you get to the lowest depths
of poverty they may become rich and rare again. But I’m afraid I
haven’t gone so far down. In spite of my opportunities I don’t know
many absolute paupers.”
“I know a great many.” Lady Aurora hesitated as if she didn’t like
to swagger, but she brought it out. “I daresay I know more than any
one.” There was something touching and beautiful to Hyacinth in this
simple and diffident claim: it confirmed his impression that she was
in some mysterious, incongruous and even slightly ludicrous manner a
true heroine, a creature of a noble ideal. She perhaps guessed he was
indulging in reflexions that might be favourable to her, for she said
precipitately the next minute, as if there were nothing she dreaded
so much as the danger of a compliment: “I think your aunt’s so very
attractive—and I’m sure dear Rosy thinks so.” No sooner had she spoken
than she blushed again; it appeared to have occurred to her that he
might suppose she wished to contradict him by presenting this case of
his aunt as a proof that the baser sort, even in a prosaic upper layer,
were not without redeeming points. There was no reason why she should
not have had this intention; so without sparing her he replied:
“You mean she’s an exception to what I was saying?”
She stammered a little; then at last, as if, since he wouldn’t spare
her, she wouldn’t spare him either: “Yes, and you’re an exception
too; you’ll not make me believe you’re wanting in intelligence. The
Muniments don’t think so,” she added.
“No more do I myself; but that doesn’t prove that exceptions are not
frequent. I’ve blood in my veins that’s not the blood of the people.”
“Oh, I see,” said Lady Aurora sympathetically. And with a smile she
went on: “Then you’re all the more of an exception—in the upper class!”
Her way of taking it was the kindest in the world, but it didn’t
blind Hyacinth to the fact that from his own point of view he had been
extraordinarily indiscreet. He had believed a moment before that he
would have been proof against the strongest temptation to refer to the
mysteries of his lineage, inasmuch as if made in a boastful spirit (and
he had no desire as yet to treat it as an exercise in humility) any
such reference would inevitably contain an element of the grotesque. He
had never opened his lips to any one about his birth since the dreadful
days when the question was discussed with Mr. Vetch’s assistance in
Lomax Place; never even to Paul Muniment, never to Millicent Henning
nor to Eustache Poupin. He had his impression that people had ideas
about him, and with some of Miss Henning’s he had been made acquainted:
these were of such a nature that he sometimes wondered if the tie
uniting him to her were not on her own side a secret determination
to satisfy her utmost curiosity before she had done with him. But
he flattered himself he was impenetrable, and none the less he had
begun to swagger idiotically the first time a temptation (really to
call a temptation) presented itself. He turned crimson as soon as
he had spoken, partly at the sudden image of what he had to swagger
about and partly at the absurdity of a challenge from the model of
civility before him. He hoped she didn’t particularly regard what he
had said—and indeed she gave no sign whatever of being startled by
his claim to a pedigree, she had too much quick delicacy for that; she
appeared to notice only the symptoms of confusion that followed. But
as soon as possible he gave himself a lesson in humility by remarking:
“I gather you spend most of your time among the poor and I’m sure you
carry blessings with you. But I frankly confess I don’t understand a
lady’s giving herself up to people like us when there’s no obligation.
Wretched company we must be when there’s so much better to be had.”
“I like it very much—you don’t understand.”
“Precisely—that’s what I say. Our little friend on the bed is
perpetually talking about your house, your family, your splendours,
your gardens and greenhouses. They must be magnificent of course—”
“Oh, I wish she wouldn’t; really I wish she wouldn’t. It makes one feel
dreadfully!” Lady Aurora interposed with vehemence.
“Ah, you had better give her her way; it’s such a pleasure to her.”
“Yes, more than to any of us!” sighed her ladyship helplessly.
“Well, how can you leave all those beautiful things to come and breathe
this beastly air, surround yourself with hideous images and associate
with people whose smallest fault is that they’re ignorant, brutal and
dirty? I don’t speak of the ladies here present,” Hyacinth added with
the manner which most made Millicent Henning (who at once admired and
hated it) wonder where on earth he had got it.
“Oh, I wish I could make you understand!” cried Lady Aurora, looking
at him with troubled, appealing eyes and as if he were unexpectedly
discouraging.
“But when all’s said I think I do understand! Charity exists in your
nature as a kind of passion.”
“Yes, yes, it’s a kind of passion!” her ladyship repeated eagerly, all
thankful for the word. “I don’t know if it’s charity—I don’t mean that.
But whatever it is it’s a passion—it’s my life—it’s all I care for.”
She faltered as if there might be something indecent in the confession
or uncertain in the recipient; and then evidently was mastered by the
comfort of being able to justify herself for an eccentricity that had
excited notice, as well as by the luxury of discharging her soul of a
long accumulation of intense things. “Already when I was fifteen years
old I wanted to sell all I had and give to the poor. And ever since
I’ve wanted to do something: it has seemed as if my heart would break
if I shouldn’t be able!”
Hyacinth was struck with a great respect, which however didn’t prevent
his presently saying, though in words that sounded patronising even to
himself: “I suppose you’re very religious.”
She looked away into the thickening dusk, at the smutty housetops,
the blurred emanation of lamp-light above the streets. “I don’t know.
One has one’s ideas. Some of them may be strange. I think a great many
clergymen do good, but there are others I don’t like at all. I daresay
we had too many always at home; my father likes them so particularly.
I think I’ve known too many bishops, I’ve had the church too much on
my back. I daresay they wouldn’t think at home, you know, that one was
quite what one ought to be; but of course they consider me very odd
in every way, as there’s no doubt I am. I should tell you that I don’t
tell them everything; for what’s the use when people don’t understand?
We’re twelve at home and eight of us girls; and if you think it’s so
very splendid, and _she_ thinks so, I should like you both to try it
for a little! My father isn’t rich and there’s only one of us, Eva,
married, and we’re not at all handsome, and—oh there are all kinds
of things,” the young woman went on, looking round at him an instant
through her sense of being launched. “I don’t like society, and neither
would you if you were to see the kind there is in London—at least in
some parts,” Lady Aurora added considerately. “I daresay you wouldn’t
believe all the humbuggery and the tiresomeness that one has to go
through. But I’ve got out of it; I do as I like, though it has been
rather a struggle. I have my liberty, and that’s the greatest blessing
in life except the reputation of being queer, and even a little mad,
which is a greater advantage still. I’m a little mad, you know; you
needn’t be surprised if you hear it. That’s because I stop in town
when they go into the country; all the autumn, all the winter, when
there’s no one here (except three or four millions) and the rain drips,
drips, drips from the trees in the big dull park where my people live.
I daresay I oughtn’t to say such things to you, but, as I tell you,
I’m quite a proper lunatic and I might as well keep up the character.
When one’s one of eight daughters and there’s very little money (for
any of _us_ at least) and nothing to do but to go out with three or
four others in mackintoshes, one can easily go off one’s head. Of
course there’s the village, and it’s not at all a nice one, and there
are the people to look after, and goodness knows they’re in want of
it; but one must work with the vicarage, and at the vicarage are four
more daughters, all old maids, and it’s dreary and dreadful and one has
too much of it, for they don’t understand what one thinks or feels or
a single word one says to them. Besides, they _are_ stupid, I admit,
the country poor; they’re very very dense. I like Camberwell better,”
said Lady Aurora, smiling and taking breath at the end of her nervous,
hurried, almost incoherent speech, of which she had delivered herself
pantingly, with strange intonations and contortions, as if afraid that
from one moment to the other she would repent, not of her confidence
but of her egotism.
It placed her for Hyacinth in an unexpected light, making him feel
that her awkward aristocratic spinsterhood was the cover of tumultuous
passions. No one could have less the appearance of being animated by a
vengeful irony; but he saw this timorous, scrupulous, though clearly
all generous, creature to be evidently most a person not to spare,
wherever she could prick them, the institutions among which she had
been brought up and against which she had violently reacted. He had
always supposed a reactionary to mean a backslider from the liberal
faith, but Rosy’s devotee gave a new value to the term; she appeared to
have been driven to her present excesses by the squire and the parson
and the conservative influences of that upper-class British home which
our young man had always held the highest fruit of civilisation. It was
clear that her ladyship was an original, and an original with force;
but it gave Hyacinth a real pang to hear her make light of Inglefield
(especially the park) and of the opportunities that must have abounded
in Belgrave Square. It had been his belief that in a world of suffering
and injustice these things were if not the most righteous at least the
most fascinating. If they didn’t give one the finest sensations where
were such sensations to be had? He looked at Lady Aurora with a face
that was a tribute to her sudden vividness while he said: “I can easily
understand your wanting to do some good in the world, because you’re a
kind of saint.”
“A very curious kind!” laughed her ladyship.
“But I don’t understand your not liking what your position gives you.”
“I don’t know anything about my position. I want to live!”
“And do you call _this_ life?”
“I’ll tell you what my position is if you want to know: it’s the
deadness of the grave!”
Hyacinth was startled by her tone, but he nevertheless laughed back
at her: “Ah, as I say, you’re a regular saint!” She made no reply,
for at that moment the door opened and Paul Muniment’s tall figure
emerged from the blackness of the staircase into the twilight, now very
faint, of the room. Lady Aurora’s eyes as they rested on him seemed to
declare that such a vision as that at least was life. Another person
as tall as himself appeared behind him, and Hyacinth recognised with
astonishment their insinuating friend Captain Sholto. Paul had brought
him up for Rosy’s entertainment, being ready, and more than ready,
always to introduce any one in the world, from the prime minister to
the common hangman, who might give that young lady a sensation. They
must have met at the “Sun and Moon,” and if the Captain, some accident
smoothing the way, had made him half as many advances as he had made
some other people, Hyacinth could see that it wouldn’t take long for
Paul to lay him under contribution. But what the mischief was the
Captain up to? It can’t be said that our young man arrived this evening
at an answer to that question. The occasion proved highly festal and
the hostess rose to it without lifting her head from the pillow. Her
brother introduced Captain Sholto as a gentleman who had a great desire
to know extraordinary people, and she made him take possession of the
chair at her bedside, out of which Miss Pynsent quickly edged herself,
and asked him who he was and where he came from and how Paul had made
his acquaintance and whether he had many friends in Camberwell. Sholto
had not the same grand air that hovered about him at the theatre;
he was dressed with ingenious cheapness, to an effect coinciding,
however different the cause, with poor Hyacinth’s own; but his disguise
prompted our young man to wonder what made him so unmistakably a
gentleman in spite of it—in spite too of his rather overdoing the
manner of being appreciative even to rapture and thinking everything
and every one most charming and curious. He stood out, in poor Rosy’s
tawdry little room, among her hideous attempts at decoration, and
looked to Hyacinth a being from another sphere, playing over the
place and company a smile (one couldn’t call it false or unpleasant,
yet it was distinctly not natural) of which he had got the habit in
camps and courts. It became intense when it rested on our hero, whom
he greeted as he might have done a dear young friend from whom he had
been long and painfully separated. He was easy, he was familiar, he was
exquisitely benevolent and bland—he was altogether a problem.
Rosy was a match for him, however; he evidently didn’t puzzle her
in the least and she thought his visit the most natural thing in
the world. She expressed all the gratitude decency required, but
appeared to assume that people who climbed her stairs would always
find themselves repaid. She remarked that her brother must have
met him for the first time that day, since the way he sealed a new
acquaintance was usually by bringing the person immediately to call
on her. And when the Captain said that if she didn’t like them he
supposed the poor wretches were dropped on the spot she admitted
that this would be true if it ever happened she disapproved: as yet,
however, she had not been obliged to draw the line. This was perhaps
partly because he hadn’t brought up any of his awful firebrands, the
people he knew for unmentionable reasons. Of such in general she had
a very small opinion, and she wouldn’t conceal from Captain Sholto
that she hoped he wasn’t one of them. Rosy spoke as if her brother
represented the Camberwell district in the House of Commons and she
had discovered that a parliamentary career lowered the moral tone.
The Captain nevertheless entered quite into her views and told her
that it was as common friends of Mr. Hyacinth Robinson Mr. Muniment
and he had come together; they were both so fond of him that this had
immediately constituted a kind of tie. On hearing himself commemorated
in such a brilliant way Mr. Hyacinth Robinson averted his head; he
saw Captain Sholto might be trusted to make as great an effort for
Rosy’s entertainment as he gathered he had made for Milly Henning’s
that evening at the theatre. There were not chairs enough to go round,
and Paul fetched a three-legged stool from his own apartment, after
which he undertook to make tea for the company with the aid of a tin
kettle and a spirit-lamp—these implements having been set out, flanked
by half-a-dozen cups, in honour, presumably, of the little dressmaker,
who had come such a distance. The little dressmaker, Hyacinth observed
with pleasure, fell into earnest conversation with Lady Aurora, who
bent over her, flushed, smiling, stammering and apparently so nervous
that Pinnie, in comparison, was majestic and serene. They communicated
presently to Hyacinth a plan they had arrived at as by a quick
freemasonry, the idea that Miss Pynsent should go home to Belgrave
Square with her ladyship and settle certain preliminaries in regard to
the pink dressing-gown, toward which, if Miss Pynsent assented, her
ladyship hoped to be able to contribute sundry brown “breadths” that
had proved their quality in honourable service and might be dyed to
the proper hue. Pinnie, Hyacinth could see, was in a state of religious
exaltation; the visit to Belgrave Square and the idea of co-operating
in such a manner with the nobility were privileges she couldn’t take
solemnly enough. The latter luxury indeed she began to enjoy without
delay, Lady Aurora suggesting that Mr. Muniment might be rather awkward
about making tea and that they should take the business off his hands.
Paul gave it up to them with a pretence of compassion for their conceit
and the observation that at any rate it took two women to supplant
one man; and Hyacinth drew him to the window to ask where he had
encountered Sholto and how he liked him.
They had met in Bloomsbury, as Hyacinth supposed, and Sholto had made
up to him very much as a country curate might make up to an archbishop.
He wanted to know what he thought of this and that: of the state of
the labour market at the East End, of the terrible case of the old
woman who had starved to death at Walham Green, of the practicability
of more systematic out-of-door agitation and of the prospect of their
getting one of their own men—one of the Bloomsbury lot—into the House.
“He was mighty civil,” Muniment said, “and I don’t find that he has yet
picked my pocket. He looked as if he would like me to suggest that _he_
should stand as one of our own men, one of the Bloomsbury lot. He asks
too many questions, but makes up for it by not paying any attention to
the answers. He told me he’d give the world to see a really superior
workingman’s ‘interior.’ I didn’t know at first just where he proposed
to cut me open: he wanted a favourable specimen, one of the best; he
had seen one or two that he didn’t believe to be up to the average.
I suppose he meant Schinkel’s, the cabinetmaker’s, neat home, and he
wanted to compare. I told him I didn’t know what sort of a specimen
my place would be, but that he was welcome to look in and that it
contained at any rate one or two original features. I expect he has
found that’s the case—with Rosy and the noble lady. I wanted to show
him off to Rosy; he’s good for that if he isn’t good for anything else.
I told him we expected a little company this evening, so it might be a
good time; and he assured me that to mingle in such an occasion as that
was the dream of his existence. He seemed in a rare hurry, as if I were
going to show him a hidden treasure, and insisted on driving me over
in a hansom. Perhaps his idea is to introduce the use of cabs among the
working-classes; certainly I’ll work to return him if that’s to be his
platform. On our way over he talked to me about you; told me you were
an intimate friend of his.”
“What did he say about me?” Hyacinth asked with promptness.
“Vain little beggar!”
“Did he call me that?” said Hyacinth ingenuously.
“He said you were simply astonishing.”
“Simply astonishing?” Hyacinth repeated.
“For a person of your low extraction.”
“Well, I may be rum, but he is certainly rummer. Don’t you think so now
you know him?”
Paul eyed his young friend. “Do you want to know what he is? He’s a
tout.”
“A tout? What do you mean?”
“Well, a cat’s-paw, if you like better.”
Hyacinth stared. “For whom, pray?”
“Or a deep-sea fisherman, if you like better still. I give you your
choice of comparisons. I made them up as we came along in the hansom.
He throws his nets and hauls in the little fishes—the pretty little
shining, wriggling fishes. They are all for _her_; she swallows ’em
down.”
“For her? Do you mean the Princess?”
“Who else should I mean? Take care, my tadpole!”
“Why should I take care? The other day you told me not to.”
“Yes, I remember. But now I see more.”
“Did he speak of her? What did he say?” Hyacinth eagerly asked.
“I can’t tell you now what he said, but I’ll tell you what I guessed.”
“And what’s that?”
They had been talking of course in a very low tone, and their voices
were covered by Rosy’s chatter in the corner, by the liberal laughter
with which Captain Sholto accompanied it, and by the much more
discreet, though earnest, intermingled accents of Lady Aurora and Miss
Pynsent. But Muniment spoke more softly still—Hyacinth felt a kind of
suspense—as he replied in a moment: “Why, she’s a monster!”
“A monster?” repeated our young man, from whom, this evening, his
friend was destined to draw ejaculations and echoes.
Paul glanced toward the Captain, who was apparently more and more
engaged by Rosy. “In him I think there’s no great harm. He’s only a
patient angler.”
It must be admitted that Captain Sholto justified to a certain extent
this definition by the manner in which he baited his hook for such
little facts as might help him to a more intimate knowledge of his
host and hostess. When the tea was made Rosy asked Miss Pynsent to be
so good as to hand it about. They must let her poor ladyship rest a
little, mustn’t they?—and Hyacinth could see that in her innocent but
inveterate self-complacency she wished to reward and encourage the
dressmaker, draw her out and present her still more by offering her
this graceful exercise. Sholto sprang up, however, and begged Pinnie
to let him relieve her, taking a cup from her hand; and poor Pinnie,
who noted in a moment that he was some kind of uncanny masquerader, who
was bewildered by the strange mixture of elements that surrounded her
and unused to being treated like a duchess (for the Captain’s manner
was a triumph of respectful gallantry), collapsed on the instant into a
chair, appealing to Lady Aurora with a frightened smile and conscious
that, deeply versed as she might be in the theory of decorum, she had
no precedent that could meet such an occasion. “Now how many families
would there be in such a house as this, and what should you say about
the sanitary arrangements? Would there be others on this floor—what is
it, the third, the fourth?—beside yourselves, you know, and should you
call it a fair example of a tenement of its class?” It was with such
inquiries as this that the good gentleman beguiled their tea-drinking,
while Hyacinth made the reflexion that, though he evidently meant
them very well, they were characterised by a want of fine tact, by
too patronising a curiosity. The Captain invited information as to the
position in life, the avocations and habits of the other lodgers, the
rent they paid, their relations with each other, both in and out of
the family. “Now would there be a good deal of close packing, do you
suppose, and any perceptible want of—a—sobriety?”
Paul Muniment, who had swallowed his cup of tea at a single gulp—there
was no offer of a second—gazed out of the window into the dark, which
had now come on, with his hands in his pockets, whistling, impolitely,
no doubt, but with extreme animation. He had the manner of having made
over their visitor altogether to Rosy and of thinking that whatever
that personage said or did was all so much grist to her indefatigable
little mill. Lady Aurora writhed in her pain, and it is a proof of the
degree to which our slight hero had the instincts of a man of the world
that he guessed exactly how vulgar she thought this new acquaintance.
She was doubtless rather vexed also—Hyacinth had learned this evening
that Lady Aurora could be vexed—at the alacrity of Rosy’s responses:
the little person in the bed gave the Captain every satisfaction,
considered his questions as a proper tribute to humble respectability
and supplied him, as regards the population of Audley Court, with
statistics and anecdotes picked up by mysterious processes of her own.
At last her ladyship, on whom Paul Muniment had not been at pains to
bestow much conversation, took leave of her, signifying to Hyacinth
that for the rest of the evening she would assume the care of Miss
Pynsent. Pinnie might have been consciously laid bare for monstrous
rites now that she was really about to be transported to Belgrave
Square, but Hyacinth was sure she would acquit herself only the more
honourably; and when he offered to call for her there later on she
reminded him under her breath and with a small sad smile of the many
years during which, after nightfall, she carried her work, pinned up in
a cloth, about London.
Paul Muniment, according to his habit, lighted Lady Aurora downstairs,
and Captain Sholto and Hyacinth were alone for some minutes with
Rosy; which gave the former, taking up his hat and stick, an
opportunity to say to his young friend: “Which way are you going?
Not my way, by chance?” Hyacinth saw that he hoped for his company,
and he became conscious that, strangely as Paul had indulged him and
too promiscuously investigating as he had just shown himself, this
ingratiating character was not more easy to resist than he had been
the other night at the theatre. The Captain bent over Rosy’s bed as if
she had been a fine lady on a satin sofa, promising to come back very
soon and very often, and the two men went downstairs. On their way they
met their host coming up, and Hyacinth felt rather ashamed, he could
scarce tell why, that his friend should see him marching off with the
“tout.” After all, if Paul had brought him to see his sister might not
Paul’s pupil and devotee at least walk with him? “I’m coming again, you
know, very often. I daresay you’ll find me a great bore!” the Captain
announced as he bade good-night to Muniment. “Your sister’s a most
interesting creature, one of the most interesting creatures I’ve ever
seen, and the whole thing, you know, exactly the type of place I wanted
to get at, only much more—really much more—original and curious. It has
been a jolly glimpse—a grand success!”
And the Captain felt his way down the dusky shaft, while Paul Muniment,
above, gave him the benefit of rather a wavering candlestick and
answered his civil speech with an “Oh well, you take us as you find us,
you know!” and an outburst of frank but not unfriendly laughter.
Half an hour later Hyacinth found himself in Captain Sholto’s chambers,
seated on a big divan covered with Persian rugs and cushions and
smoking the most expensive cigar that had ever touched his lips. As
they left Audley Court the Captain had taken his arm and they had
walked along together in a desultory, colloquial manner, till on
Westminster Bridge (they had followed the embankment beneath Saint
Thomas’s Hospital) Sholto brought out: “By the way, why shouldn’t
you come home with me and see my little place? I’ve a few things that
might amuse you—some pictures, some odds and ends I’ve picked up, and
a few bindings; you might tell me what you think of them.” Hyacinth
assented without demur; he had still in his ear the reverberation of
the Captain’s inquiries in Rosy’s room, and he saw no reason why he
on his side shouldn’t embrace an occasion of ascertaining how, as his
companion would have said, a man of fashion would live now.
This particular specimen lived in a large old-fashioned house in Queen
Anne Street, of which he occupied the upper floors, where he had filled
the high wainscoted rooms with the spoils of travel and the ingenuities
of modern taste. There was not a country in the world he appeared
not to have ransacked, and to Hyacinth his trophies represented a
wonderfully long purse. The whole establishment, from the low-voiced
inexpressive valet who, after he had poured brandy into tall tumblers,
solemnised the very popping of soda-water corks, to the quaint little
silver receptacle in which he was invited to deposit the ashes of his
cigar, was such a revelation for our appreciative youth that he felt
himself hushed and depressed, so poignant was the thought that it took
thousands of things he then should never possess nor know to make a
civilised being. He had often in evening walks wondered what was behind
the walls of certain ample bright-windowed houses in the West End, and
now he got an idea. The first effect of the idea was to lay him rather
flat.
“Well now, tell me what you thought of our friend the Princess,” the
Captain said, thrusting out the loose yellow slippers his servant had
helped to exchange for his shoes. He spoke as if he had been waiting
impatiently for the proper moment to ask that question, so much might
depend on the answer.
“She’s beautiful—beautiful,” Hyacinth answered almost dreamily while
his eyes wandered all over the room.
“She was so interested in all you said to her; she’d like so much to
see you again. She means to write to you—I suppose she can address to
the ‘Sun and Moon’?—and I hope you’ll go to her house if she proposes
a day.”
“I don’t know—I don’t know. It seems so strange.”
“What seems strange, my dear chap?”
“Everything! My sitting here with you; my introduction to that lady;
the idea of her wanting, as you say, to see me again and of her writing
to me; and this whole place of yours, with all its dim rich curiosities
hanging on the walls and glinting in the light of that rose-coloured
lamp. You yourself too—you’re strangest of all.”
The Captain looked at him so silently and so fixedly, through the fumes
of their tobacco, after he had made this last charge that Hyacinth
thought he was perhaps offended; but this impression was presently
dissipated by further signs of sociability and hospitality, and Sholto
took occasion later to let him know how important it was, in the days
they were living in, not to have too small a measure of the usual,
destined as they certainly were—“in the whole matter of the relations
of class with class and all that sort of thing, you know”—to witness
some very startling developments. The Captain spoke as if, for his
part, he were a child of his age (so that he only wanted to see all
it could show him) down to the points of his yellow slippers. Hyacinth
felt that he himself had not been very satisfactory about the Princess;
but as his nerves began to tremble a little more into tune with the
situation he repeated to his host what Milly had said about her at
the theatre—asked if this young lady had correctly understood him in
believing she had been turned out of the house by her husband.
“Yes, he literally pushed her into the street—or into the garden; I
believe the scene took place in the country. But perhaps Miss Henning
didn’t mention, or perhaps I didn’t, that the Prince would at the
present hour give everything he owns in the world to get her back.
Fancy such an absurd scene!” said the Captain, laughing in a manner
that struck Hyacinth as rather profane.
He stared with dilated eyes at this picture, which seemed to demand
a comparison with the only incident of the sort that had come within
his experience—the forcible ejection of intoxicated females from
public-houses. “That magnificent being—what had she done?”
“Oh, she had made him feel he was an ass!” the Captain answered
promptly. He turned the conversation to Miss Henning; said he was so
glad Hyacinth gave him an opportunity to speak of her. He got on with
her famously; perhaps she had told him. They became immense friends—_en
tout bien tout honneur, s’entend_. Now, _there_ was another London
type, plebeian but brilliant; and how little justice one usually
did it, how magnificent it was! But she of course was a wonderful
specimen. “My dear fellow, I’ve seen many women, and the women of many
countries,” the Captain went on, “and I’ve seen them as intimately
as you like, and I know what I’m talking about; and when I tell you
that that one—that one—!” Then he suddenly paused, laughing in his
democratic way. “But perhaps I’m going too far: you must always pull
me up, you know, when I do. At any rate I congratulate you; I do right
heartily. Have another cigar. Now what sort of—a—salary would she
receive at her big shop, you know? I know where it is; I mean to go
there and buy some pocket-handkerchiefs.”
Hyacinth knew neither how far Captain Sholto had been going, nor
exactly on what he congratulated him; and he pretended at least an
equal ignorance on the subject of Millicent’s pecuniary gains. He
didn’t want to talk about her, moreover, nor about his own life; he
wanted to talk about the Captain’s and to elicit information that would
be in harmony with his romantic chambers, which reminded one somehow
of certain of Bulwer’s novels. His host gratified this pretension most
liberally and told him twenty stories of things of interest, often
of amazement, that had happened to him in Albania, in Madagascar and
even in Paris. Hyacinth induced him easily to talk about Paris (from
a different point of view from M. Poupin’s) and sat there drinking in
enchantments. The only thing that fell below the high level of his
entertainment was the bindings of his friend’s books, which he told
him frankly, with the conscience of an artist, were not up to the
mark. After he left Queen Anne Street he was quite too excited to go
straight home; he walked about with his mind full of images and strange
speculations till the grey London streets began to clear with the
summer dawn.