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