“She lives in Belgrave Square; she has ever so many brothers and
sisters; one of her sisters is married to Lord Warmington,” Rose
Muniment instantly began, not apparently in the least discomposed at
being left alone with a strange young man in a room which was now half
dark again, thanks to her brother’s having carried off the second and
more brilliant candle. She was so interested, for the time, in telling
Hyacinth the history of Lady Aurora, that she appeared not to remember
how little she knew about himself. Her ladyship had dedicated her life
and her pocket-money to the poor and sick; she cared nothing for
parties, and races, and dances, and picnics, and life in great houses,
the usual amusements of the aristocracy; she was like one of the saints
of old come to life again out of a legend. She had made their
acquaintance, Paul’s and hers, about a year before, through a friend of
theirs, such a fine, brave, young woman, who was in St Thomas’s
Hospital for a surgical operation. She had been laid up there for
weeks, during which Lady Aurora, always looking out for those who
couldn’t help themselves, used to come and talk to her and read to her,
till the end of her time in the ward, when the poor girl, parting with
her kind friend, told her how she knew of another unfortunate creature
(for whom there was no place there, because she was incurable) who
would be mighty thankful for any little attention of that sort. She had
given Lady Aurora the address in Audley Court, and the very next day
her ladyship had knocked at their door. It wasn’t because she was
poor—though in all conscience they were pinched enough—but because she
had so little satisfaction in her limbs. Lady Aurora came very often,
for several months, without meeting Paul, because he was always at his
work; but one day he came home early, on purpose to find her, to thank
her for her goodness, and also to see (Miss Muniment rather shyly
intimated) whether she were really so good as his extravagant little
sister made her out. Rosy had a triumph after that: Paul had to admit
that her ladyship was beyond anything that any one in his waking senses
would believe. She seemed to want to give up everything to those who
were below her, and never to expect any thanks at all. And she wasn’t
always preaching and showing you your duty; she wanted to talk to you
sociable-like, as if you were just her own sister. And _her_ own
sisters were the highest in the land, and you might see her name in the
newspapers the day they were presented to the Queen. Lady Aurora had
been presented too, with feathers in her head and a long tail to her
gown; but she had turned her back upon it all with a kind of terror—a
sort of shivering, sinking feeling, which she had often described to
Miss Muniment. The day she had first seen Paul was the day they became
so intimate (the three of them together), if she might apply such a
word as that to such a peculiar connection. The little woman, the
little girl, as she lay there (Hyacinth scarcely knew how to
characterise her), told our young man a very great secret, in which he
found himself too much interested to think of criticising so headlong a
burst of confidence. The secret was that, of all the people she had
ever seen in the world, her ladyship thought Rosy’s Paul the very
cleverest. And she had seen the greatest, the most famous, the
brightest of every kind, for they all came to stay at Inglefield,
thirty and forty of them at once. She had talked with them all and
heard them say their best (and you could fancy how they would try to
give it out at such a place as that, where there was nearly a mile of
conservatories and a hundred wax candles were lighted at time), and at
the end of it all she had made the remark to herself—and she had made
it to Rosy too—that there was none of them had such a head on his
shoulders as the young man in Audley Court. Rosy wouldn’t spread such a
rumour as that in the court itself, but she wanted every friend of her
brother’s (and she could see Hyacinth was that, by the way he listened)
to know what was thought of him by them that had an experience of
talent. She didn’t wish to give it out that her ladyship had lowered
herself in any manner to a person that earned his bread in a dirty shop
(clever as he _might_ be), but it was easy to see she minded what he
said as if he had been a bishop—or more, indeed, for she didn’t think
much of bishops, any more than Paul himself, and that was an idea she
had got from him. Oh, she took it none so ill if he came back from his
work before she had gone; and to-night Hyacinth could see for himself
how she had lingered. This evening, she was sure, her ladyship would
let him walk home with her half the way. This announcement gave
Hyacinth the prospect of a considerable session with his communicative
hostess; but he was very glad to wait, for he was vaguely, strangely
excited by her talk, fascinated by the little queer-smelling,
high-perched interior, encumbered with relics, treasured and polished,
of a poor north-country home, bedecked with penny ornaments and related
in so unexpected a manner to Belgrave Square and the great landed
estates. He spent half an hour with Paul Muniment’s small, odd,
crippled, chattering, clever, trenchant sister, who gave him an
impression of education and native wit (she expressed herself far
better than Pinnie, or than Millicent Henning), and who startled,
puzzled, and at the same time rather distressed, him by the manner in
which she referred herself to the most abject class—the class that
prostrated itself, that was in a fever and flutter in the presence of
its betters. That was Pinnie’s attitude, of course; but Hyacinth had
long ago perceived that his adoptive mother had generations of plebeian
patience in her blood, and that though she had a tender soul she had
not a great one. He was more entertained than afflicted, however, by
Miss Muniment’s tone, and he was thrilled by the frequency and
familiarity of her allusions to a kind of life he had often wondered
about; this was the first time he had heard it described with that
degree of authority. By the nature of his mind he was perpetually,
almost morbidly, conscious that the circle in which he lived was an
infinitesimally small, shallow eddy in the roaring vortex of London,
and his imagination plunged again and again into the waves that whirled
past it and round it, in the hope of being carried to some brighter,
happier vision—the vision of societies in which, in splendid rooms,
with smiles and soft voices, distinguished men, with women who were
both proud and gentle, talked about art, literature and history. When
Rosy had delivered herself to her complete satisfaction on the subject
of Lady Aurora, she became more quiet, asking, as yet, however, no
questions about Hyacinth, whom she seemed to take very much for
granted. He presently remarked that she must let him come very soon
again, and he added, to explain this wish, “You know you seem to me
very curious people.”
Miss Muniment did not in the least repudiate the imputation. “Oh yes, I
dare say we seem very curious. I think we are generally thought so;
especially me, being so miserable and yet so lively.” And she laughed
till her bed creaked again.
“Perhaps it’s lucky you are ill; perhaps if you had your health you
would be all over the place,” Hyacinth suggested. And he went on,
candidly, “I can’t make it out, your being so up in everything.”
“I don’t see why you need make it out! But you would, perhaps, if you
had known my father and mother.”
“Were they such a rare lot?”
“I think you would say so if you had ever been in the mines. Yes, in
the mines, where the filthy coal is dug out. That’s where my father
came from—he was working in the pit when he was a child of ten. He
never had a day’s schooling in his life; but he climbed up out of his
black hole into daylight and air, and he invented a machine, and he
married my mother, who came out of Durham, and (by her people) out of
the pits and misery too. My father had no great figure, but _she_ was
magnificent—the finest woman in the country, and the bravest, and the
best. She’s in her grave now, and I couldn’t go to look at it even if
it were in the nearest churchyard. My father was as black as the coal
he worked in: I know I’m just his pattern, barring that _he_ did have
his legs, when the liquor hadn’t got into them. But between him and my
mother, for grand, high intelligence there wasn’t much to choose. But
what’s the use of brains if you haven’t got a backbone? My poor father
had even less of that than I, for with me it’s only the body that can’t
stand up, and with him it was the spirit. He discovered a kind of
wheel, and he sold it, at Bradford, for fifteen pounds: I mean the
whole right of it, and every hope and pride of his family. He was
always straying, and my mother was always bringing him back. She had
plenty to do, with me a puny, ailing brat from the moment I opened my
eyes. Well, one night he strayed so far that he never came back; or
only came back a loose, bloody bundle of clothes. He had fallen into a
gravel-pit; he didn’t know where he was going. That’s the reason my
brother will never touch so much as you could wet your finger with, and
that I only have a drop once a week or so, in the way of a
strengthener. I take what her ladyship brings me, but I take no more.
If she could have come to us before my mother went, that would have
been a saving! I was only nine when my father died, and I’m three years
older than Paul. My mother did for us with all her might, and she kept
us decent—if such a useless little mess as me can be said to be decent.
At any rate, she kept me alive, and that’s a proof she was handy. She
went to the wash-tub, and she might have been a queen, as she stood
there with her bare arms in the foul linen and her long hair braided on
her head. She was terrible handsome, but he would have been a bold man
that would have taken upon himself to tell her so. And it was from her
we got our education—she was determined we should rise above the
common. You might have thought, in her position, that she couldn’t go
into such things; but she was a rare one for keeping you at your book.
She could hold to her idea when my poor father couldn’t; and her idea,
for us, was that Paul should get learning and should look after me. You
can see for yourself that that’s what has come about. How he got it is
more than I can say, as we never had a penny to pay for it; and of
course my mother’s cleverness wouldn’t have been of much use if he
hadn’t been clever himself. Well, it was all in the family. Paul was a
boy that would learn more from a yellow placard pasted on a wall, or a
time-table at a railway station, than many a young fellow from a year
at college. That was his only college, poor lad—picking up what he
could. Mother was taken when she was still needed, nearly five years
ago. There was an epidemic of typhoid, and of course it must pass me
over, the goose of a thing—only that I’d have made a poor feast—and
just lay that gallant creature on her back. Well, she never again made
it ache over her soapsuds, straight and broad as it was. Not having
seen her, you wouldn’t believe,” said Rose Muniment, in conclusion;
“but I just wanted you to understand that our parents had intellect, at
least, to give us.”
Hyacinth listened to this recital with the deepest interest, and
without being in the least moved to allow for filial exaggeration;
inasmuch as his impression of the brother and sister was such as it
would have taken a much more marvellous tale to account for. The very
way Rose Muniment sounded the word ‘intellect’ made him feel this; she
pronounced it as if she were distributing prizes for a high degree of
it. No doubt the tipsy inventor and the regal laundress had been fine
specimens, but that didn’t diminish the merit of their highly original
offspring. The girl’s insistence upon her mother’s virtues (even now
that her age had become more definite to him he thought of her as a
girl) touched in his heart a chord that was always ready to throb—the
chord of melancholy, bitter, aimless wonder as to the difference it
would have made in _his_ spirit if there had been some pure, honourable
figure like that to shed her influence over it.
“Are you very fond of your brother?” he inquired, after a little.
The eyes of his hostess glittered at him for a moment. “If you ever
quarrel with him, you’ll see whose side I’ll take.”
“Ah, before that I shall make you like _me_.”
“That’s very possible, and you’ll see how I’ll fling you over!”
“Why, then, do you object so to his views—his ideas about the way the
people will come up?”
“Because I think he’ll get over them.”
“Never—never!” cried Hyacinth. “I have only known him an hour or two,
but I deny that, with all my strength.”
“Is that the way you are going to make me like you—contradicting me
so?” Miss Muniment inquired, with familiar archness.
“What’s the use, when you tell me I shall be sacrificed? One might as
well perish for a lamb as for a sheep.”
“I don’t believe you’re a lamb at all. Certainly you are not, if you
want all the great people pulled down, and the most dreadful scenes
enacted.”
“Don’t you believe in human equality? Don’t you want anything done for
the groaning, toiling millions—those who have been cheated and crushed
and bamboozled from the beginning of time?”
Hyacinth asked this question with considerable heat, but the effect of
it was to send his companion off into a new fit of laughter. “You say
that just like a man that my brother described to me three days ago; a
little man at some club, whose hair stood up—Paul imitated the way he
glowered and screamed. I don’t mean that you scream, you know; but you
use almost the same words that he did.” Hyacinth scarcely knew what to
make of this allusion, or of the picture offered to him of Paul
Muniment casting ridicule upon those who spoke in the name of the
down-trodden. But Rosy went on, before he had time to do more than
reflect that there would evidently be a great deal more to learn about
her brother: “I haven’t the least objection to seeing the people
improved, but I don’t want to see the aristocracy lowered an inch. I
like so much to look at it up there.”
“You ought to know my aunt Pinnie—she’s just such another benighted
idolater!” Hyacinth exclaimed.
“Oh, you are making me like you very fast! And pray, who is your aunt
Pinnie?”
“She’s a dressmaker, and a charming little woman. I should like her to
come and see you.”
“I’m afraid I’m not in her line—I never had on a dress in my life. But,
as a charming woman, I should be delighted to see her.”
“I will bring her some day,” said Hyacinth. And then he added, rather
incongruously, for he was irritated by the girl’s optimism, thinking it
a shame that her sharpness should be enlisted on the wrong side, “Don’t
you want, for yourself, a better place to live in?”
She jerked herself up, and for a moment he thought she would jump out
of her bed at him. “A better place than this? Pray, how could there be
a better place? Every one thinks it’s lovely; you should see our view
by daylight—you should see everything I’ve got. Perhaps you are used to
something very fine, but Lady Aurora says that in all Belgrave Square
there isn’t such a cosy little room. If you think I’m not perfectly
content, you are very much mistaken!”
Such a sentiment as that could only exasperate Hyacinth, and his
exasperation made him indifferent to the fact that he had appeared to
cast discredit on Miss Muniment’s apartment. Pinnie herself, submissive
as she was, had spared him that sort of displeasure; she groaned over
the dinginess of Lomax Place sufficiently to remind him that she had
not been absolutely stultified by misery. “Don’t you sometimes make
your brother very angry?” he asked, smiling, of Rose Muniment.
“Angry? I don’t know what you take us for! I never saw him lose his
temper in his life.”
“He must be a rum customer! Doesn’t he really care for—for what we were
talking about?”
For a moment Rosy was silent; then she replied, “What my brother really
cares for—well, one of these days, when you know, you’ll tell me.”
Hyacinth stared. “But isn’t he tremendously deep in—” He hesitated.
“Deep in what?”
“Well, in what’s going on, beneath the surface. Doesn’t he belong to
things?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what he belongs to—you may ask him!” cried Rosy,
laughing gaily again, as the opening door readmitted the subject of
their conversation. “You must have crossed the water with her
ladyship,” she went on. “I wonder who enjoyed their walk most.”
“She’s a handy old girl, and she has a goodish stride,” said the young
man.
“I think she’s in love with you, simply, Mr Muniment.”
“Really, my dear, for an admirer of the aristocracy you allow yourself
a license,” Paul murmured, smiling at Hyacinth.
Hyacinth got up, feeling that really he had paid a long visit; his
curiosity was far from satisfied, but there was a limit to the time one
should spend in a young lady’s sleeping apartment. “Perhaps she is; why
not?” he remarked.
“Perhaps she is, then; she’s daft enough for anything.”
“There have been fine folks before who have patted the people on the
back and pretended to enter into their life,” Hyacinth said. “Is she
only playing with that idea, or is she in earnest?”
“In earnest—in terrible earnest, my dear fellow. I think she must be
rather crowded out at home.”
“Crowded out of Inglefield? Why, there’s room for three hundred!” Rosy
broke in.
“Well, if that’s the kind of mob that’s in possession, no wonder she
prefers Camberwell. We must be kind to the poor lady,” Paul added, in a
tone which Hyacinth noticed. He attributed a remarkable meaning to it;
it seemed to say that people such as he were now so sure of their game
that they could afford to be magnanimous; or else it expressed a
prevision of the doom which hung over her ladyship’s head. Muniment
asked if Hyacinth and Rosy had made friends, and the girl replied that
Mr Robinson had made himself very agreeable. “Then you must tell me all
about him after he goes, for you know I don’t know him much myself,”
said her brother.
“Oh yes, I’ll tell you everything; you know how I like describing.”
Hyacinth was laughing to himself at the young lady’s account of his
efforts to please her, the fact being that he had only listened to her
own eager discourse, without opening his mouth; but Paul, whether or no
he guessed the truth, said to him very pertinently, “It’s very
wonderful: she can describe things she has never seen. And they are
just like the reality.”
“There’s nothing I’ve never seen,” Rosy rejoined. “That’s the advantage
of my lying here in such a manner. I see everything in the world.”
“You don’t seem to see your brother’s meetings—his secret societies and
clubs. You put that aside when I asked you.”
“Oh, you mustn’t ask her that sort of thing,” said Paul, lowering at
Hyacinth with a fierce frown—an expression which he perceived in a
moment to be humorously assumed.
“What am I to do, then, since you won’t tell me anything definite
yourself?”
“It will be definite enough when you get hanged for it!” Rosy
exclaimed, mockingly.
“Why do you want to poke your head into black holes?” Muniment asked,
laying his hand on Hyacinth’s shoulder, and shaking it gently.
“Don’t you belong to the party of action?” said Hyacinth, solemnly.
“Look at the way he has picked up all the silly bits of catchwords!”
Paul cried, laughing, to his sister. “You must have got that precious
phrase out of the newspapers, out of some drivelling leader. Is that
the party you want to belong to?” he went on, with his clear eyes
ranging over his diminutive friend.
“If you’ll show me the thing itself I shall have no more occasion to
mind the newspapers,” Hyacinth pleaded. It was his view of himself, and
it was not an unfair one, that his was a character that would never beg
for a favour; but now he felt that in any relation he might have with
Paul Muniment such a law would be suspended. This man he could entreat,
pray to, go on his knees to, without a sense of humiliation.
“What thing do you mean, infatuated, deluded youth?” Paul went on,
refusing to be serious.
“Well, you know you do go to places you had far better keep out of, and
that often when I lie here and listen to steps on the stairs I’m sure
they are coming in to make a search for your papers,” Miss Muniment
lucidly interposed.
“The day they find my papers, my dear, will be the day you’ll get up
and dance.”
“What did you ask me to come home with you for?” Hyacinth demanded,
twirling his hat. It was an effort for him, for a moment, to keep the
tears out of his eyes; he found himself forced to put such a different
construction on his new friend’s hospitality. He had had a happy
impression that Muniment perceived in him a possible associate, of a
high type, in a subterranean crusade against the existing order of
things, and now it came over him that the real use he had been put to
was to beguile an hour for a pert invalid. That was all very well, and
he would sit by Miss Rosy’s bedside, were it a part of his service,
every day in the week; only in such a case it should be his reward to
enjoy the confidence of her brother. This young man, at the present
juncture, justified the high estimate that Lady Aurora Langrish had
formed of his intelligence: whatever his natural reply to Hyacinth’s
question would have been, he invented, at the moment, a better one, and
said, at random, smiling, and not knowing exactly what his visitor had
meant—
“What did I ask you to come with me for? To see if you would be
afraid.”
What there was to be afraid of was to Hyacinth a quantity equally
vague; but he rejoined, quickly enough, “I think you have only to try
me to see.”
“I’m sure if you introduce him to some of your low, wicked friends,
he’ll be quite satisfied after he has looked round a bit,” Miss
Muniment remarked, irrepressibly.
“Those are just the kind of people I want to know,” said Hyacinth,
ingenuously.
His ingenuousness appeared to touch Paul Muniment. “Well, I see you’re
a good ’un. Just meet me some night.”
“Where, where?” asked Hyacinth, eagerly.
“Oh, I’ll tell you where when we get away from _her_,” said his friend,
laughing, but leading him out of the room again.
X
Several months after Hyacinth had made the acquaintance of Paul
Muniment, Millicent Henning remarked to him that it was high time he
should take her to some place of amusement. He proposed the Canterbury
Music Hall; whereupon she tossed her head and affirmed that when a
young lady had done for a young man what she had done for him, the
least he could do was to take her to some theatre in the Strand.
Hyacinth would have been a good deal at a loss to say exactly what she
had done for him, but it was familiar to him by this time that she
regarded him as under great obligations. From the day she came to look
him up in Lomax Place she had taken a position, largely, in his life,
and he had seen poor Pinnie’s wan countenance grow several degrees more
blank. Amanda Pynsent’s forebodings had been answered to the letter;
that bold-faced apparition had become a permanent influence. She never
spoke to him about Millicent but once, several weeks after her
interview with the girl; and this was not in a tone of rebuke, for she
had divested herself for ever of any maternal prerogative. Tearful,
tremulous, deferential inquiry was now her only weapon, and nothing
could be more humble and circumspect than the manner in which she made
use of it. He was never at home of an evening, at present, and he had
mysterious ways of spending his Sundays, with which church-going had
nothing to do. The time had been when, often, after tea, he sat near
the lamp with the dressmaker, and, while her fingers flew, read out to
her the works of Dickens and of Scott; happy hours when he appeared to
have forgotten the wrong she had done him and she almost forgot it
herself. But now he gulped down his tea so fast that he hardly took off
his hat while he sat there, and Pinnie, with her quick eye for all
matters of costume, noticed that he wore it still more gracefully askew
than usual, with a little victorious, exalted air. He hummed to
himself; he fingered his moustache; he looked out of the window when
there was nothing to look at; he seemed pre-occupied, absorbed in
intellectual excursions, half anxious and half delighted. During the
whole winter Miss Pynsent explained everything by three words murmured
beneath her breath: “That forward jade!” On the single occasion,
however, on which she sought relief from her agitation in an appeal to
Hyacinth, she did not trust herself to designate the girl by any
epithet or title.
“There is only one thing I want to know,” she said to him, in a manner
which might have seemed casual if in her silence, knowing her as well
as he did, he had not already perceived the implication of her thought.
“Does she expect you to marry her, dearest?”
“Does who expect me? I should like to see the woman who does!”
“Of course you know who I mean. The one that came after you—and picked
you right up—from the other end of London.” And at the remembrance of
that insufferable scene poor Pinnie flamed up for a moment. “Isn’t
there plenty of young fellows down in that low part where she lives,
without her ravaging over here? Why can’t she stick to her own beat, I
should like to know?” Hyacinth had flushed at this inquiry, and she saw
something in his face which made her change her tone. “Just promise me
this, my precious child: that if you get into any sort of mess with
that piece you’ll immediately confide it to your poor old Pinnie.”
“My poor old Pinnie sometimes makes me quite sick,” Hyacinth remarked,
for answer. “What sort of a mess do you suppose I’ll get into?”
“Well, suppose she does come it over you that you promised to marry
her?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. She doesn’t want to marry
any one to-day.”
“Then what does she want to do?”
“Do you imagine I would tell a lady’s secrets?” the young man inquired.
“Dear me, if she was a lady, I shouldn’t be afraid!” said Pinnie.
“Every woman’s a lady when she has placed herself under one’s
protection,” Hyacinth rejoined, with his little manner of a man of the
world.
“Under your protection? Laws!” cried Pinnie, staring. “And pray, who’s
to protect _you?_”
As soon as she had said this she repented, because it seemed just the
sort of exclamation that would have made Hyacinth bite her head off.
One of the things she loved him for, however, was that he gave you
touching surprises in this line, had sudden inconsistencies of temper
that were all for your advantage. He was by no means always mild when
he ought to have been, but he was sometimes so when there was no
obligation. At such moments Pinnie wanted to kiss him, and she had
often tried to make Mr Vetch understand what a fascinating trait of
character this was on the part of their young friend. It was rather
difficult to describe, and Mr Vetch never would admit that he
understood, or that he had observed anything that seemed to correspond
to the dressmaker’s somewhat confused psychological sketch. It was a
comfort to her in these days, and almost the only one she had, that she
was sure Anastasius Vetch understood a good deal more than he felt
bound to acknowledge. He was always up to his old game of being a great
deal cleverer than cleverness itself required; and it consoled her
present weak, pinched feeling to know that, although he still talked of
the boy as if it would be a pity to take him too seriously, that wasn’t
the way he thought of him. He also took him seriously, and he had even
a certain sense of duty in regard to him. Miss Pynsent went so far as
to say to herself that the fiddler probably had savings, and that no
one had ever known of any one else belonging to him. She wouldn’t have
mentioned it to Hyacinth for the world, for fear of leading up to a
disappointment; but she had visions of a foolscap sheet, folded away in
some queer little bachelor’s box (she couldn’t fancy what men kept in
such places), on which Hyacinth’s name would have been written down, in
very big letters, before a solicitor.
“Oh, I’m unprotected, in the nature of things,” he replied, smiling at
his too scrupulous companion. Then he added, “At any rate, it isn’t
from that girl any danger will come to me.”
“I can’t think why you like her,” Pinnie remarked, as if she had spent
on the subject treasures of impartiality.
“It’s jolly to hear one woman on the subject of another,” Hyacinth
said. “You’re kind and good, and yet you’re ready—” He gave a
philosophic sigh.
“Well, what am I ready to do? I’m not ready to see you gobbled up
before my eyes!”
“You needn’t be afraid; she won’t drag me to the altar.”
“And pray, doesn’t she think you good enough—for one of the beautiful
Hennings?”
“You don’t understand, my poor Pinnie,” said Hyacinth, wearily. “I
sometimes think there isn’t a single thing in life that you understand.
One of these days she’ll marry an alderman.”
“An alderman—that creature?”
“An alderman, or a banker, or a bishop, or some one of that kind. She
doesn’t want to end her career to-day; she wants to begin it.”
“Well, I wish she would take you later!” the dressmaker exclaimed.
Hyacinth said nothing for a moment; then he broke out: “What are you
afraid of? Look here, we had better clear this up, once for all. Are
you afraid of my marrying a girl out of a shop?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t, would you?” cried Pinnie, with a kind of
conciliatory eagerness. “That’s the way I like to hear you talk!”
“Do you think I would marry any one who would marry me?” Hyacinth went
on. “The kind of girl who would look at me is the kind of girl I
wouldn’t look at.” He struck Pinnie as having thought it all out; which
did not surprise her, as she had been familiar, from his youth, with
his way of following things up. But she was always delighted when he
made a remark which showed he was conscious of being of fine
clay—flashed out an allusion to his not being what he seemed. He was
not what he seemed, but even with Pinnie’s valuable assistance he had
not succeeded in representing to himself, very definitely, what he was.
She had placed at his disposal, for this purpose, a passionate idealism
which, employed in some case where it could have consequences, might
have been termed profligate, and which never cost her a scruple or a
compunction.
“I’m sure a princess might look at you and be none the worse!” she
declared, in her delight at this assurance, more positive than any she
had yet received, that he was safe from the worst danger. This the
dressmaker considered to be the chance of his marrying some person like
herself. Still it came over her that his taste might be lowered, and
before the subject was dropped, on this occasion, she said to him that
of course he must be quite aware of all that was wanting to such a girl
as Millicent Henning—she pronounced her name at last.
“Oh, I don’t bother about what’s wanting to her; I’m content with what
she has.”
“Content, dearest—how do you mean?” the little dressmaker quavered.
“Content to make an intimate friend of her?”
“It is impossible I should discuss these matters with you,” Hyacinth
replied, grandly.
“Of course I see that. But I should think she would bore you
sometimes,” Miss Pynsent murmured, cunningly.
“She does, I assure you, to extinction!”
“Then why do you spend every evening with her?”
“Where should you like me to spend my evenings? At some beastly
public-house—or at the Italian opera?” His association with Miss
Henning was not so close as that, but nevertheless he wouldn’t take the
trouble to prove to poor Pinnie that he enjoyed her society only two or
three times a week; that on other evenings he simply strolled about the
streets (this boyish habit clung to him), and that he had even
occasionally the resource of going to the Poupins’, or of gossiping and
smoking a pipe at some open house-door, when the night was not cold,
with a fellow-mechanic. Later in the winter, after he had made Paul
Muniment’s acquaintance, the aspect of his life changed considerably,
though Millicent continued to be exceedingly mixed up with it. He hated
the taste of liquor and still more the taste of the places where it was
sold; besides which the types of misery and vice that one was liable to
see collected in them frightened and harrowed him, made him ask himself
questions that pierced the deeper because they were met by no answer.
It was both a blessing and a drawback to him that the delicate,
charming character of the work he did at Mr Crookenden’s, under
Eustache Poupin’s influence, was a kind of education of the taste,
trained him in the finest discriminations, in the perception of beauty
and the hatred of ugliness. This made the brutal, garish, stodgy
decoration of public-houses, with their deluge of gaslight, their
glittering brass and pewter, their lumpish woodwork and false colours,
detestable to him; he was still very young when the ‘gin-palace’ ceased
to convey to him an idea of the palatial.
For this unfortunate but remarkably organised youth, every displeasure
or gratification of the visual sense coloured his whole mind, and
though he lived in Pentonville and worked in Soho, though he was poor
and obscure and cramped and full of unattainable desires, it may be
said of him that what was most important in life for him was simply his
impressions. They came from everything he touched, they kept him
thrilling and throbbing during a considerable part of his waking
consciousness, and they constituted, as yet, the principal events and
stages of his career. Fortunately, they were sometimes very delightful.
Everything in the field of observation suggested this or that;
everything struck him, penetrated, stirred; he had, in a word, more
impressions than he knew what to do with—felt sometimes as if they
would consume or asphyxiate him. He liked to talk about them, but it
was only a few, here and there, that he could discuss with Millicent
Henning. He let Miss Pynsent imagine that his hours of leisure were
almost exclusively dedicated to this young lady, because, as he said to
himself, if he were to account to her for every evening in the week it
would make no difference—she would stick to her suspicion; and he
referred this perversity to the general weight of misconception under
which (at this crude period of his growth) he held it was his lot to
languish. It didn’t matter to one whether one were a little more or a
little less misunderstood. He might have remembered that it mattered to
Pinnie, who, after her first relief at hearing him express himself so
properly on the subject of a matrimonial connection with Miss Henning,
allowed her faded, kind, weak face, little by little, to lengthen out
to its old solemnity. This came as the days went on, for it wasn’t much
comfort that he didn’t want to marry the young woman in Pimlico, when
he allowed himself to be held as tight as if he did. For the present,
indeed, she simply said, “Oh, well, if you see her as she is, I don’t
care what you do”—a sentiment implying a certain moral recklessness on
the part of the good little dressmaker. She was irreproachable herself,
but she had lived for more than fifty years in a world of wickedness;
like an immense number of London women of her class and kind, she had
acquired a certain innocent cynicism, and she judged it quite a minor
evil that Millicent should be left lamenting, if only Hyacinth might
get out of the scrape. Between a forsaken maiden and a premature,
lowering marriage for her beloved little boy, she very well knew which
she preferred. It should be added that her impression of Millicent’s
power to take care of herself was such as to make it absurd to pity her
in advance. Pinnie thought Hyacinth the cleverest young man in the
world, but her state of mind implied somehow that the young lady in
Pimlico was cleverer. Her ability, at any rate, was of a kind that
precluded the idea of suffering, whereas Hyacinth’s was rather
associated with it.
By the time he had enjoyed for three months the acquaintance of the
brother and sister in Audley Court the whole complexion of his life
seemed changed; it was pervaded by an interest, an excitement, which
overshadowed, though it by no means supplanted, the brilliant figure of
Miss Henning. It was pitched in a higher key, altogether, and appeared
to command a view of horizons equally fresh and vast. Millicent,
therefore, shared her dominion, without knowing exactly what it was
that drew her old play-fellow off, and without indeed demanding of him
an account which, on her own side, she was not prepared to give.
Hyacinth was, in the language of the circle in which she moved, her
fancy, and she was content to occupy, as regards himself, the same
graceful and somewhat irresponsible position. She had an idea that she
was a most beneficent friend: fond of him and careful of him as an
elder sister might be; warning him as no one else could do against the
dangers of the town; putting that stiff common sense, of which she was
convinced that she possessed an extraordinary supply, at the service of
his incurable verdancy; and looking after him, generally, as no one,
poor child, had ever done. Millicent made light of the little
dressmaker, in this view of Hyacinth’s past (she thought Pinnie no
better than a starved cat), and enjoyed herself immensely in the
character of guide and philosopher, while she pushed the young man with
a robust elbow or said to him, “Well, you _are_ a sharp one, you are!”
Her theory of herself, as we know, was that she was the sweetest girl
in the world, as well as the cleverest and handsomest, and there could
be no better proof of her kindness of heart than her disinterested
affection for a snippet of a bookbinder. Her sociability was certainly
great, and so were her vanity, her grossness, her presumption, her
appetite for beer, for buns, for entertainment of every kind. She
represented, for Hyacinth, during this period, the eternal feminine,
and his taste, considering that he was fastidious, will be wondered at;
it will be judged that she did not represent it very favourably.
It may easily be believed that he scrutinised his infatuation even
while he gave himself up to it, and that he often wondered he should
care for a girl in whom he found so much to object to. She was vulgar,
clumsy and grotesquely ignorant; her conceit was proportionate, and she
had not a grain of tact or of quick perception. And yet there was
something so fine about her, to his imagination, and she carried with
such an air the advantages she did possess, that her figure constantly
mingled itself even with those bright visions that hovered before him
after Paul Muniment had opened a mysterious window. She was bold, and
free, and generous, and if she was coarse she was neither false nor
cruel. She laughed with the laugh of the people, and if you hit her
hard enough she would cry with its tears. When Hyacinth was not letting
his imagination wander among the haunts of the aristocracy, and
fancying himself stretched in the shadow of an ancestral beech, reading
the last number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, he was occupied with
contemplations of a very different kind; he was absorbed in the
struggles and sufferings of the millions whose life flowed in the same
current as his, and who, though they constantly excited his disgust,
and made him shrink and turn away, had the power to chain his sympathy,
to make it glow to a kind of ecstasy, to convince him, for the time at
least, that real success in the world would be to do something with
them and for them. All this, strange to say, was never so vivid to him
as when he was in Millicent’s company; which is a proof of his
fantastic, erratic way of seeing things. She had no such ideas about
herself; they were almost the only ideas she didn’t have. She had no
theories about redeeming or uplifting the people; she simply loathed
them, because they were so dirty, with the outspoken violence of one
who had known poverty, and the strange bedfellows it makes, in a very
different degree from Hyacinth, brought up, comparatively, with Pinnie
to put sugar in his tea, and keep him supplied with neckties, like a
little swell.
Millicent, to hear her talk, only wanted to keep her skirts clear and
marry some respectable tea-merchant. But for our hero she was
magnificently plebeian, in the sense that implied a kind of loud
recklessness of danger and the qualities that shine forth in a row. She
summed up the sociable, humorous, ignorant chatter of the masses, their
capacity for offensive and defensive passion, their instinctive
perception of their strength on the day they should really exercise it;
and as much as any of this, their ideal of something smug and
prosperous, where washed hands, and plates in rows on dressers, and
stuffed birds under glass, and family photographs, would symbolise
success. She was none the less plucky for being at bottom a shameless
Philistine, ambitious of a front-garden with rockwork; and she
presented the plebeian character in none the less plastic a form.
Having the history of the French Revolution at his fingers’ ends,
Hyacinth could easily see her (if there should ever be barricades in
the streets of London) with a red cap of liberty on her head and her
white throat bared so that she should be able to shout the louder the
Marseillaise of that hour, whatever it might be. If the festival of the
Goddess of Reason should ever be enacted in the British metropolis (and
Hyacinth could consider such possibilities without a smile, so much was
it a part of the little religion he had to remember, always, that there
was no knowing what might happen)—if this solemnity, I say, should be
revived in Hyde Park, who was better designated than Miss Henning to
figure in a grand statuesque manner, as the heroine of the occasion? It
was plain that she had laid her inconsequent admirer under a peculiar
spell, since he could associate her with such scenes as that while she
consumed beer and buns at his expense. If she had a weakness, it was
for prawns; and she had, all winter, a plan for his taking her down to
Gravesend, where this luxury was cheap and abundant, when the fine long
days should arrive. She was never so frank and facetious as when she
dwelt on the details of a project of this kind; and then Hyacinth was
reminded afresh that it was an immense good fortune for her that she
was handsome. If she had been ugly he couldn’t have listened to her;
but her beauty glorified even her accent, interfused her cockney genius
with prismatic hues, gave her a large and constant impunity.