The aspect of South Street, Mayfair, on a Sunday afternoon in August,
is not enlivening, yet the Prince had stood for ten minutes gazing
out of the window at the genteel vacancy of the scene; at the closed
blinds of the opposite houses, the lonely policeman on the corner,
covering a yawn with a white cotton hand, the low-pitched light itself,
which seemed conscious of an obligation to observe the decency of the
British Sabbath. Our personage, however, had a talent for that kind
of attitude: it was one of the things by which he had exasperated his
wife; he could remain motionless, with the aid of some casual support
for his high, lean person, considering serenely and inexpressively any
object that might lie before him and presenting his aristocratic head
at a favourable angle, for periods of extraordinary length. On first
coming into the room he had given some attention to its furniture and
decorations, perceiving at a glance that they were rich and varied;
some of the things he recognised as old friends, odds and ends the
Princess was fond of, which had accompanied her in her remarkable
wanderings, while others were unfamiliar and suggested vividly that she
had not ceased to “collect.” He made two reflexions: one was that she
was living as expensively as ever; the other that, however this might
be, no one had such a feeling as she for the _mise-en-scène_ of life,
such a talent for arranging a room. She had always, wherever she was,
the most charming room in Europe.
It was his impression that she had taken the house in South Street
but for three months; yet, gracious heaven, what had she not put into
it? The Prince asked himself this question without violence, for that
was not to be his line to-day. He could be angry to a point at which
he himself was often frightened, but he honestly believed this to be
only when he had been baited past endurance, so that as a usual thing
he was really as mild and accommodating as the extreme urbanity of his
manner appeared to announce. There was indeed nothing to suggest to the
world in general that he was an impracticable or vindictive nobleman:
his features were not regular and his complexion had a bilious tone;
but his dark brown eye, which was at once salient and dull, expressed
benevolence and melancholy; his head drooped from his long neck in
a considerate, attentive style; and his close-cropped black hair,
combined with a short, fine, pointed beard, completed his resemblance
to some old portrait of a personage of distinction under the Spanish
dominion at Naples. To-day at any rate he had come in conciliation,
almost in humility, and that is why he didn’t permit himself even
to murmur at the long delay he had to accept. He knew very well that
if his wife should consent to take him back it would be only after a
probation to which this little wait in her drawing-room was a trifle.
It was a quarter of an hour before the door opened, and even then it
was not the Princess who appeared, but only Madame Grandoni.
Their greeting was at first all a renouncement of words. She came to
him with both hands outstretched, and took his own and held them a
while, looking up at him with full benignity. She had elongated her
florid, humorous face to a degree that was almost comical, and the
pair might have passed, in their silent solemnity, for acquaintances
meeting in a house in which last obsequies were about to take place.
It was indeed a house on which death had descended, as he very soon
learned from Madame Grandoni’s expression; something had perished
there for ever and he might proceed to bury it as soon as he liked. His
wife’s ancient German friend, however, was not a person to sustain that
note very long, and when, after she had made him sit down on the sofa
beside her, she shook her head slowly and definitely several times, it
was with a brow on which a more genial appreciation of the facts had
already begun to appear.
“Never—never—never?” said the Prince in a deep hoarse voice, a voice
at variance with his attenuated capacity. He had much of the complexion
which in late-coming members of long-descended races we qualify to-day
as effete; but his tone might have served for the battle-cry of some
deep-chested fighting ancestor.
“Surely you know your wife as well as I,” she replied in Italian,
which she evidently spoke with facility, though with a strong guttural
accent. “I’ve been talking with her: that’s what has made me keep you.
I’ve urged her to see you. I’ve told her that this could do no harm and
would pledge her to nothing. But you know your wife,” Madame Grandoni
repeated with an intensity now much relaxed.
Prince Casamassima looked down at his boots. “How can one ever know a
person like that? I hoped she’d see me five little minutes.”
“For what purpose? Have you anything to propose?”
“For what purpose? To rest my eyes on her beautiful face.”
“Did you come to England for that?”
“For what else should I have come?” the Prince asked as he turned his
blighted gaze to the opposite side of South Street.
“In London, such a day as this, _già_,” said the old lady
sympathetically. “I’m very sorry for you; but if I had known you were
coming I’d have written to you that you might spare yourself the pain.”
He gave a deep interminable sigh. “You ask me what I wish to propose.
What I wish to propose is that my wife shouldn’t kill me inch by inch.”
“She’d be much more likely to do that if you lived with her!” Madame
Grandoni cried.
“_Cara amica_, she doesn’t appear to have killed you,” the melancholy
nobleman returned.
“Oh, me? I’m past killing. I’m as hard as a stone. I went through my
miseries long ago; I suffered what you’ve not had to suffer; I wished
for death many times and I survived it all. Our troubles don’t kill
us, _Principe mio_; it’s we who must try to kill them. I’ve buried not
a few. Besides, Christina’s fond of me, the devil knows why!” Madame
Grandoni added.
“And you’re so good to her,” said the Prince, who laid his hand on her
fat wrinkled fist.
“_Che vuole?_ I’ve known her so long. And she has some such great
qualities.”
“Ah, to whom do you say it?” And he gazed at his boots again, for some
moments, in silence. Suddenly he resumed: “How does she look to-day?”
“She always looks the same: like an angel who came down from heaven
yesterday and has been rather disappointed in her first day on earth!”
The Prince was evidently a man of a simple nature, and Madame
Grandoni’s rather violent metaphor took his fancy. His face lighted up
a little and he replied with eagerness: “Ah, she’s the only woman I’ve
ever seen whose beauty never for a moment falls below itself. She has
no bad days. She’s so handsome when she’s angry!”
“She’s very handsome to-day, but she’s not angry,” said the old lady.
“Not when my name was announced?”
“I was not with her then; but when she sent for me and asked me to see
you it was quite without passion. And even when I argued with her and
tried to persuade her (and she doesn’t like that, you know) she was
still perfectly quiet.”
“She hates me, she despises me too much, eh?”
“How can I tell, dear Prince, when she never mentions you?”
“Never, never?”
“That’s much better than if she railed at you and abused you.”
“You mean it should give me more hope for the future?” the young man
asked quickly.
His old friend had a pause. “I mean it’s better for _me_,” she answered
with a laugh of which the friendly ring covered as much as possible her
equivocation.
“Ah, you like me enough to care,” he murmured as he turned on her his
sad grateful eyes.
“I’m very sorry for you. _Ma che vuole?_”
The Prince had apparently nothing to suggest and only exhaled in reply
another gloomy groan. Then he inquired if his wife pleased herself in
that country and if she intended to pass the summer in London. Would
she remain long in England and—might he take the liberty to ask?—what
were her plans? Madame Grandoni explained that the Princess had
found the English capital much more to her taste than one might have
expected, and that as for plans she had as many or as few as she had
always had. Had he ever known her to carry out any arrangement or to
do anything of any kind she had prepared or promised? She always at
the last moment did the other thing, the one that had been out of the
question; and it was for this Madame Grandoni herself privately made
her preparations. Christina, now that everything was over, would leave
London from one day to the other; but they shouldn’t know where they
were going till they arrived. The old lady concluded by asking if the
Prince himself liked England. He thrust forward his full lips. “How can
I like anything? Besides, I’ve been here before; I’ve many friends.”
His companion saw he had more to say to her, to extract from her,
but that he was hesitating nervously because he feared to incur some
warning, some rebuff with which his dignity—in spite of his position
of discomfiture, really very great—might find it difficult to square
itself. He looked vaguely round the room and presently remarked: “I
wanted to see for myself how she’s living.”
“Yes, that’s very natural.”
“I’ve heard—I’ve heard—” And Prince Casamassima stopped.
“You’ve heard great rubbish, I’ve no doubt.” Madame Grandoni watched
him as if she foresaw what was coming.
“She spends a terrible deal of money,” said the young man.
“Indeed she does.” The old lady knew that, careful as he was of
his very considerable property, which at one time had required much
nursing, his wife’s prodigality was not what lay heaviest on his mind.
She also knew that expensive and luxurious as Christina might be she
had never yet exceeded the income settled upon her by the Prince at the
time of their separation—an income determined wholly by himself and his
estimate of what was required to maintain the social consequence of his
name, for which he had a boundless reverence. “She thinks she’s a model
of thrift—that she counts every shilling,” Madame Grandoni continued.
“If there’s a virtue she prides herself upon it’s her economy. Indeed
it’s the only thing for which she takes any credit.”
“I wonder if she knows that I”—he just hesitated, then went on—“spend
almost nothing at all. But I’d rather live on dry bread than that in a
country like this, in this great English society, she shouldn’t make a
proper appearance.”
“Her appearance is all you could wish. How can it help being proper
with me to set her off?”
“You’re the best thing she has, dear friend. So long as you’re with her
I feel a certain degree of security; and one of the things I came for
was to extract from you a promise that you won’t leave her.”
“Ah, let us not tangle ourselves up with promises!” Madame Grandoni
exclaimed. “You know the value of any engagement one may take with
regard to the Princess; it’s like promising you I’ll stay in the
bath when the hot water’s on. When I begin to be scalded I’ve to jump
out—naked as I may naturally be. I’ll stay while I can, but I shouldn’t
stay if she were to do certain things.” Madame Grandoni uttered
these last words with a clear emphasis, and for a minute she and her
companion looked deep into each other’s eyes.
“What things do you mean?”
“I can’t say what things. It’s utterly impossible to predict on any
occasion what Christina will do. She’s capable of giving us great
surprises. The things I mean are things I should recognise as soon as
I saw them, and they would make me leave the house on the spot.”
“So that if you’ve not left it yet—?” he asked with extreme eagerness.
“It’s because I’ve thought I may do some good by staying.”
He seemed but half content with this answer; nevertheless he said in a
moment: “To me it makes all the difference. And if anything of the kind
you speak of should happen, that would be only the greater reason for
your staying.—You might interpose, you might arrest—” He stopped short
before her large Germanic grimace.
“You must have been in Rome more than once when the Tiber had
overflowed, _è vero_? What would you have thought then if you had heard
people telling the poor wretches in the Ghetto, on the Ripetta, up to
their knees in liquid mud, that they ought to interpose, to arrest?”
“_Capisco bene_,” said the Prince, dropping his eyes. He appeared to
have closed them, for some moments, as if under a slow spasm of pain.
“I can’t tell you what torments me most,” he presently went on—“the
thought that sometimes makes my heart rise into my mouth. It’s a
haunting fear.” And his pale face and disturbed respiration might
indeed have been those of a man before whom some horrible spectre had
risen.
“You needn’t tell me. I know what you mean, my poor friend.”
“Do you think then there _is_ a danger—that she’ll drag my name, do
what no one has ever dared to do? That I’d never forgive,” he declared
almost under his breath; and the hoarseness of his whisper lent it a
great effect.
Madame Grandoni hastily wondered if she had not better tell him (as it
would prepare him for the worst) that his wife cared about as much for
his name as for any old label on her luggage; but after an instant’s
reflexion she reserved this information for another hour. Besides, as
she said to herself, the Prince ought already to know perfectly to what
extent Christina attached the idea of an obligation or an interdict to
her ill-starred connexion with an ignorant and superstitious Italian
race whom she despised for their provinciality, their parsimony and
their futility (she thought their talk the climax of childishness)
and whose fatuous conception of their importance in the great modern
world she had on various public occasions sufficiently riddled with her
derision. She finally contented herself with remarking: “Dear Prince,
your wife’s a very proud woman.”
“Ah, how could my wife be anything else? But her pride’s not my pride.
And she has such ideas; such opinions! Some of them are monstrous.”
Madame Grandoni smiled. “She doesn’t think it so necessary to have them
when you’re not there.”
“Why then do you say that you enter into my fears—that you recognise
the stories I’ve heard?”
I know not whether the good lady lost patience with his pressure;
at all events she broke out with a certain sharpness. “Understand
this, understand this: Christina will never consider you—your name,
your illustrious traditions—in any case in which she doesn’t consider
herself much more!”
The Prince appeared to study for a moment this somewhat ambiguous yet
portentous phrase; then he slowly got up with his hat in his hand and
walked about the room softly, solemnly, as if suffering from his long
thin feet. He stopped before one of the windows and took another survey
of South Street; then turning he suddenly asked in a voice into which
he had evidently endeavoured to infuse a colder curiosity: “Is she
admired in this place? Does she see many people?”
“She’s thought very strange of course. But she sees whom she likes. And
they mostly bore her to death!” Madame Grandoni conscientiously added.
“Why then do you tell me this country pleases her?”
The old woman left her place. She had promised Christina, who detested
the sense of being under the same roof with her husband, that the
latter’s visit should be kept within narrow limits; and this movement
was intended to signify as kindly as possible that it had better
terminate. “It’s the common people who please her,” she returned with
her hands folded on her crumpled satin stomach and her ancient eyes,
still keen for all comedy, raised to his face. “It’s the lower orders,
the _basso popolo_.”
“The _basso popolo_?” The Prince stared at this fantastic announcement.
“The _povera gente_,” pursued his friend, amused at his dismay.
“The London mob—the most horrible, the most brutal—?”
“Oh, she wishes to raise them.”
“After all, something like that’s no more than I had heard,” said the
Prince gravely.
“_Che vuole?_ Don’t trouble yourself; it won’t be for long!”
Madame Grandoni saw this comforting assurance lost upon him; his
face was turned to the door of the room, which had been thrown open,
and all his attention given to the person who crossed the threshold.
She transferred her own to the same quarter and recognised the
little artisan whom Christina had, in a manner so extraordinary and
so profoundly characteristic, drawn into her box that night at the
theatre—afterwards informing her old friend that she had sent for him
to come and see her.
“Mr. Robinson!” the butler, who had had a lesson, announced in a loud
colourless tone.
“It won’t be for long,” Madame Grandoni repeated for the Prince’s
benefit; but it was to Mr. Robinson the words had the air of being
addressed.
Hyacinth stood, while she signalled to the servant to leave the door
open and wait, looking from the queer old lady, who was as queer as
before, to the tall foreign gentleman (he recognised his foreignness at
a glance) whose eyes seemed to challenge him, to devour him; wondering
if he had made some mistake and needing to remind himself that he had
the Princess’s note in his pocket, with the day and hour as clear as
her magnificent script could make them.
“Good-morning, good-morning. I hope you’re well,” said Madame Grandoni
with quick friendliness, but turning her back upon him at the same time
in order to ask of their companion, in the other idiom, as she extended
her hand: “And don’t you leave London soon—in a day or two?”
The Prince made no answer; he still scanned the little bookbinder
from head to foot, as if wondering who the deuce he could be. His
eyes seemed to Hyacinth to search for the small neat bundle he ought
to have had under his arm and without which he was incomplete. To the
reader, however, it may be confided that, dressed more carefully than
he had ever been in his life before, stamped with that extraordinary
transformation which the British Sunday often operates in the person
of the wage-earning cockney, with his handsome head uncovered and
the heat of wonder in his fine face, the young man from Lomax Place
might have passed for anything rather than a carrier of parcels. “The
Princess wrote to me, madam, to come and see her,” he said as a prompt
precaution; in case he should have incurred the reproach of undue
precipitation.
“Oh yes, I daresay.” And Madame Grandoni guided the Prince to the door
with an expression of the desire he might have a comfortable journey
back to Italy.
But he stood stiff there; he appeared to have jumped to a dark
conclusion about Mr. Robinson. “I must see you once more. I must. It’s
impossible—!”
“Ah well, not in this house, you know.”
“Will you do me the honour to meet me then?” And as the old lady
hesitated he added with sudden intensity: “Dearest friend, I beg you on
my knees!” After she had agreed that if he would write to her proposing
a day and place she would see him were it possible, he raised her
ancient knuckles to his lips and, without further notice of Hyacinth,
turned away. She bade the servant announce the other visitor to the
Princess, and then approached Mr. Robinson, rubbing her hands and
smiling, her head very much to one side. He smiled back at her vaguely;
he didn’t know what she might be going to say. What she said was, to
his surprise—
“My poor young man, may I take the liberty of asking your age?”
“Certainly, madam; I’m twenty-four.”
“And I hope you’re industrious, and temperate in all ways and—what do
you call it in English?—steady.”
“I don’t think I’m very wild,” said Hyacinth without offence. He
thought the old woman patronising, but he forgave her.
“I don’t know how one speaks in this country to young men like you.
Perhaps one’s considered meddling or impertinent.”
“I like the way you speak,” Hyacinth hastened to profess.
She stared, and then with a comical affectation of dignity: “You’re
very good. I’m glad it amuses you. You’re evidently intelligent and
clever,” she went on, “and if you’re disappointed it will be a pity.”
“How do you mean if I’m disappointed?”
“Well, I daresay you expect great things when you come into a house
like this. You must tell me if I upset you. I’m very old-fashioned and
I’m not of this country. I speak as one speaks to young men like you in
other places.”
“I’m not so easily upset!” Hyacinth assured her with a flight of
imagination. “To expect anything one must know something, one must
understand: isn’t it so? And I’m here without knowing, without
understanding. I’ve come only because a lady who seems to me very
beautiful and very kind has done me the honour to send for me.”
Madame Grandoni examined him a moment as if struck by his good looks,
by something delicate stamped on him everywhere. “I can see you’re very
clever, very intelligent; no, you’re not like the young men I mean. All
the more reason—!” And she paused, giving a short sigh. Her case might
have been all too difficult. “I want to warn you a little, and I don’t
know how. If you were a young Roman it would be different.”
“A young Roman?”
“That’s where I live properly, in the Eternal City. If I hurt you, you
can explain it that way. No, you’re not like them.”
“You don’t hurt me—please believe that; you interest me very much,”
said Hyacinth, to whom it didn’t occur that he himself might seem
patronising. “Of what do you want to warn me?”
“Well—only to advise you a little. Don’t give up anything.”
“What can I give up?”
“Don’t give up _yourself_. I say that to you in your interest. I think
you’ve some honest little trade—I forget what. But whatever it may
be remember that to do it well is the best thing; better than paying
extraordinary visits, better even than being liked by Princesses!”
“Ah yes, I see what you mean!” Hyacinth returned, exaggerating a
little. “I’m very fond of my trade indeed, I assure you.”
“I’m delighted to hear it. Hold fast to it then and be quiet; be
diligent and good and get on. I gathered the other night that you’re
one of the young men who want everything changed—I believe there are a
great many in Italy and also in my own dear old Deutschland, and who
even think it useful to throw bombs into innocent crowds and shoot
pistols at their rulers or at any one. I won’t go into that. I might
seem to be speaking for myself, and the fact is that for myself I don’t
care; I’m so old that I may hope to spend the few days that are left me
without receiving a bullet. But before you go any further please think
a little whether you’re right.”
“It isn’t just that you should impute to me ideas which I may not
have,” said Hyacinth, turning very red but taking more and more of a
fancy, all the same, to Madame Grandoni. “You talk at your ease about
our ways and means, but if we were only to make use of those that you
would like to see—!” And while he blushed, smiling, the young man shook
his head two or three times with great significance.
“I shouldn’t like to see any!” the old lady cried. “I like people to
bear their troubles as one has done one’s self. And as for injustice,
you see how kind I am to you when I say to you again, Don’t, don’t,
give anything up. I’ll tell them to send you some tea,” she added as
she took her way out of the room, presenting to him her round, low,
aged back and dragging over the carpet a scanty and lustreless train.