“Of course he may come, and stay as long as he likes!” the Princess
exclaimed, when Hyacinth, that afternoon, told her of his encounter,
with the sweet, bright surprise her face always wore when people went
through the form (supererogatory she apparently meant to declare it) of
asking her leave. From the manner in which she granted Sholto’s
petition—with a geniality that made light of it, as if the question
were not worth talking of, one way or the other—it might have been
supposed that the account he had given Hyacinth of their relations was
an elaborate but none the less foolish hoax. She sent a messenger with
a note over to Bonchester, and the Captain arrived just in time to
dress for dinner. The Princess was always late, and Hyacinth’s toilet,
on these occasions, occupied him considerably (he was acutely conscious
of its deficiencies, and yet tried to persuade himself that they were
positively honourable and that the only garb of dignity, for him, was
the costume, as it were, of his profession); therefore, when the fourth
member of the little party descended to the drawing-room Madame
Grandoni was the only person he found there.
“_Santissima Vergine!_ I’m glad to see you! What good wind has sent
you?” she exclaimed, as soon as Sholto came into the room.
“Didn’t you know I was coming?” he asked. “Has the idea of my arrival
produced so little agitation?”
“I know nothing of the affairs of this house. I have given them up at
last, and it was time. I remain in my room.” There was nothing at
present in the old lady’s countenance of her usual spirit of cheer; it
expressed anxiety, and even a certain sternness, and the excellent
woman had perhaps at this moment more than she had ever had in her life
of the air of a duenna who took her duties seriously. She looked almost
august. “From the moment you come it’s a little better. But it is very
bad.”
“Very bad, dear madam?”
“Perhaps you will be able to tell me where Christina _veut en venir_. I
have always been faithful to her—I have always been loyal. But to-day I
have lost patience. It has no sense.”
“I am not sure I know what you are talking about,” Sholto said; “but if
I understand you I must tell you I think it’s magnificent.”
“Yes, I know your tone; you are worse than she, because you are
cynical. It passes all bounds. It is very serious. I have been thinking
what I should do.”
“Precisely; I know what you would do.”
“Oh, this time I shouldn’t come back!” the old lady declared. “The
scandal is too great; it is intolerable. My only fear is to make it
worse.”
“Dear Madame Grandoni, you can’t make it worse, and you can’t make it
better,” Sholto rejoined, seating himself on the sofa beside her. “In
point of fact, no idea of scandal can possibly attach itself to our
friend. She is above and outside of all such considerations, such
dangers. She carries everything off; she heeds so little, she cares so
little. Besides, she has one great strength—she does no wrong.”
“Pray, what do you call it when a lady sends for a bookbinder to come
and live with her?”
“Why not for a bookbinder as well as for a bishop? It all depends upon
who the lady is, and what she is.”
“She had better take care of one thing first,” cried Madame
Grandoni—“that she shall not have been separated from her husband!”
“The Princess can carry off even that. It’s unusual, it’s eccentric,
it’s fantastic, if you will, but it isn’t necessarily wicked. From her
own point of view our friend goes straight. Besides, she has her
opinions.”
“Her opinions are perversity itself.”
“What does it matter,” asked Sholto, “if they keep her quiet?”
“Quiet! Do you call this quiet?”
“Surely, if you’ll only be so yourself. Putting the case at the worst,
moreover, who is to know he’s her bookbinder? It’s the last thing you’d
take him for.”
“Yes, for that she chose him carefully,” the old lady murmured, still
with a discontented eyebrow.
“_She_ chose him? It was I who chose him, dear lady!” the Captain
exclaimed, with a laugh which showed how little he shared her
solicitude.
“Yes, I had forgotten; at the theatre,” said Madame Grandoni, gazing at
him as if her ideas were confused but a certain repulsion from her
interlocutor nevertheless disengaged itself. “It was a fine turn you
did him there, poor young man!”
“Certainly, he will have to be sacrificed. But why was I bound to
consider him so much? Haven’t I been sacrificed myself?”
“Oh, if he bears it like you!” cried the old lady, with a short laugh.
“How do you know how I bear it? One does what one can,” said the
Captain, settling his shirt-front. “At any rate, remember this: she
won’t tell people who he is, for his own sake; and he won’t tell them,
for hers. So, as he looks much more like a poet, or a pianist, or a
painter, there won’t be that sensation you fear.”
“Even so it’s bad enough,” said Madame Grandoni. “And he’s capable of
bringing it out, suddenly, himself.”
“Ah, if he doesn’t mind it, she won’t! But that’s his affair.”
“It’s too terrible, to spoil him for his station,” the old lady went
on. “How can he ever go back?”
“If you want him kept, then, indefinitely, you are inconsistent.
Besides, if he pays for it, he deserves to pay. He’s an abominable
little conspirator against society.”
Madame Grandoni was silent a moment; then she looked at the Captain
with a gravity which might have been impressive to him, had not his
accomplished jauntiness suggested an insensibility to that sort of
influence. “What, then, does Christina deserve?” she asked, with
solemnity.
“Whatever she may get; whatever, in the future, may make her suffer.
But it won’t be the loss of her reputation. She is too distinguished.”
“You English are strange. Is it because she’s a princess?” Madame
Grandoni reflected, audibly.
“Oh, dear, no, her princedom is nothing here. We can easily beat that.
But we can’t beat—” And Sholto paused a moment.
“What then?” his companion asked.
“Well, the perfection of her indifference to public opinion and the
unaffectedness of her originality; the sort of thing by which she has
bedeviled me.”
“Oh, _you!_” murmured Madame Grandoni.
“If you think so poorly of me why did you say just now that you were
glad to see me?” Sholto demanded, in a moment.
“Because you make another person in the house, and that is more
regular; the situation is by so much less—what did you call
it?—eccentric. _Nun_,” the old lady went on, in a moment, “so long as
you are here I won’t go off.”
“Depend upon it that I shall be here until I’m turned out.”
She rested her small, troubled eyes upon him, but they betrayed no
particular enthusiasm at this announcement, “I don’t understand how,
for yourself, on such an occasion, you should like it.”
“Dear Madame Grandoni, the heart of man, without being such a hopeless
labyrinth as the heart of woman, is still sufficiently complicated.
Don’t I know what will become of the little beggar?”
“You are very horrible,” said the ancient woman. Then she added, in a
different tone, “He is much too good for his fate.”
“And pray wasn’t I, for mine?” the Captain asked.
“By no manner of means!” Madame Grandoni answered, rising and moving
away from him.
The Princess had come into the room, accompanied by Hyacinth. As it was
now considerably past the dinner-hour the old lady judged that this
couple, on their side, had met in the hall and had prolonged their
conversation there. Hyacinth watched with extreme interest the way the
Princess greeted the Captain—observed that it was very simple, easy and
friendly. At dinner she made no stranger of him, including him in
everything, as if he had been a useful familiar, like Madame Grandoni,
only a little less venerable, yet not giving him any attention that
might cause their eyes to meet. She had told Hyacinth that she didn’t
like his eyes, nor indeed, very much, any part of him. Of course any
admiration, from almost any source, could not fail to be in some degree
agreeable to a woman, but of any little impression that one might ever
have produced the mark she had made on Godfrey Sholto was the one that
ministered least to her vanity. He had been useful, undoubtedly, at
times, but at others he had been an intolerable bore. He was so
uninteresting in himself, so shallow, so unoccupied and superfluous,
and really so frivolous, in spite of his pretension (of which she was
unspeakably weary) of being all wrapped up in a single idea. It had
never, by itself, been sufficient to interest her in any man, the fact
that he was in love with her; but indeed she could honestly say that
most of the people who had liked her had had, on their own side,
something—something in their character or circumstances—that one could
care a little about. Not so far as would do any harm, save perhaps in
one or two cases; but still, something.
Sholto was a curious and not particularly edifying English type (as the
Princess further described him); one of those strange beings produced
by old societies that have run to seed, corrupt, exhausted
civilisations. He was a cumberer of the earth, and purely selfish, in
spite of his devoted, disinterested airs. He was nothing whatever in
himself, and had no character or merit save by tradition, reflection,
imitation, superstition. He had a longish pedigree—he came of some
musty, mouldy ‘county family’, people with a local reputation and an
immense lack of general importance; he had taken the greatest care of
his little fortune. He had travelled all over the globe several times,
‘for the shooting’, in that brutal way of the English. That was a
pursuit which was compatible with the greatest stupidity. He had a
little taste, a little cleverness, a little reading, a little good
furniture, a little French and Italian (he exaggerated these latter
quantities), an immense deal of assurance, and complete leisure. That,
at bottom, was all he represented—idle, trifling, luxurious, yet at the
same time pretentious leisure, the sort of thing that led people to
invent false, humbugging duties, because they had no real ones.
Sholto’s great idea of himself (after his profession of being her
slave) was that he was a cosmopolite—exempt from every prejudice. About
the prejudices the Princess couldn’t say and didn’t care; but she had
seen him in foreign countries, she had seen him in Italy, and she was
bound to say he understood nothing about those people. It was several
years before, shortly after her marriage, that she had first
encountered him. He had not begun immediately to take the adoring line,
but it had come little by little. It was only after she had separated
from her husband that he had begun really to hang about her; since when
she had suffered much from him. She would do him one justice, however:
he had never, so far as she knew, had the impudence to represent
himself as anything but hopeless and helpless. It was on this that he
took his stand; he wished to pass for the great model of unrewarded
constancy. She couldn’t imagine what he was waiting for; perhaps it was
for the death of the Prince. But the Prince would never die, nor had
she the least desire that he should. She had no wish to be harsh, for
of course that sort of thing, from any one, was very flattering; but
really, whatever feeling poor Sholto might have, four-fifths of it were
purely theatrical. He was not in the least a natural human being, but
had a hundred affectations and attitudes, the result of never having
been obliged to put his hand to anything; having no serious tastes and
yet being born to a little ‘position’. The Princess remarked that she
was so glad Hyacinth had no position, and had been forced to do
something in life but amuse himself; that was the way she liked her
friends now. She had said to Sholto again and again, “There are plenty
of others who will be much more pleased; why not go to _them?_ It’s
such a waste of time:” and she was sure he had taken her advice, and
was by no means, as regards herself, the absorbed, annihilated creature
he endeavoured to appear. He had told her once that he tried to take an
interest in other women—though indeed he had added that it was of no
use. Of what use did he expect anything he could possibly do to be?
Hyacinth did not tell the Princess that he had reason to believe the
Captain’s effort in this direction had not been absolutely vain; but he
made that reflection, privately, with increased confidence. He
recognised a further truth even when his companion said, at the end,
that, with all she had touched upon, he was a queer combination.
Trifler as he was, there was something sinister in him too; and she
confessed she had had a vague feeling, at times, that some day he might
do her a hurt. Hyacinth, at this, stopped short, on the threshold of
the drawing-room, and asked in a low voice, “Are you afraid of him?”
The Princess looked at him a moment; then smiling, “_Dio mio_, how you
say that! Should you like to kill him for me?”
“I shall have to kill some one, you know. Why not him, while I’m about
it, if he troubles you?”
“Ah, my friend, if you should begin to kill every one who had troubled
me!” the Princess murmured, as they went into the room.