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