The house in Madeira Crescent was a low, stucco-fronted edifice, in a
shabby, shallow semicircle, and Hyacinth could see, as they approached
it, that the window-place in the parlour (which was on a level with the
street-door) was ornamented by a glass case containing stuffed birds
and surmounted by an alabaster Cupid. He was sufficiently versed in his
London to know that the descent in the scale of the gentility was
almost immeasurable for a person who should have moved into that
quarter from the neighbourhood of Park Lane. The street was not
squalid, and it was strictly residential; but it was mean and meagre
and fourth-rate, and had in the highest degree that paltry, parochial
air, that absence of style and elevation, which is the stamp of whole
districts of London and which Hyacinth had already more than once
mentally compared with the high-piled, important look of the Parisian
perspective. It possessed in combination every quality which should
have made it detestable to the Princess; it was almost as bad as Lomax
Place. As they stopped before the narrow, ill-painted door, on which
the number of the house was marked with a piece of common porcelain,
cut in a fanciful shape, it appeared to Hyacinth that he had felt, in
their long walk, the touch of the passion which led his companion to
divest herself of her superfluities, but that it would take the
romantic out of one’s heroism to settle one’s self in such a _mesquin_,
Philistine row. However, if the Princess had wished to mortify the
flesh she had chosen an effective means of doing so, and of mortifying
the spirit as well. The long light of the gray summer evening was still
in the air, and Madeira Crescent wore a soiled, dusty expression. A
hand-organ droned in front of a neighbouring house, and the cart of the
local washerwoman, to which a donkey was harnessed, was drawn up
opposite. The local children, as well, were dancing on the pavement, to
the music of the organ, and the scene was surveyed, from one of the
windows, by a gentleman in a dirty dressing-gown, smoking a pipe, who
made Hyacinth think of Mr Micawber. The young man gave the Princess a
deep look, before they went into the house, and she smiled, as if she
understood everything that was passing in his mind.
The long, circuitous walk with her, from the far-away south of London,
had been strange and delightful; it reminded Hyacinth, more queerly
than he could have expressed, of some of the rambles he had taken on
summer evenings with Millicent Henning. It was impossible to resemble
this young lady less than the Princess resembled her, but in her
enjoyment of her unwonted situation (she had never before, on a
summer’s evening—to the best of Hyacinth’s belief, at least—lost
herself in the unfashionable districts on the arm of a seedy artisan)
the distinguished personage exhibited certain coincidences with the
shop-girl. She stopped, as Millicent had done, to look into the windows
of vulgar establishments, and amused herself with picking out
abominable objects that she should like to possess; selecting them from
a new point of view, that of a reduced fortune and the domestic
arrangements of the ‘lower middle class’, deriving extreme diversion
from the idea that she now belonged to that aggrieved body. She was in
a state of light, fresh, sociable exhilaration which Hyacinth had
hitherto, in the same degree, not seen in her, and before they reached
Madeira Crescent it had become clear to him that her present phase was
little more than a brilliant _tour de force_, which he could not
imagine her keeping up long, for the simple reason that after the
novelty and strangeness of the affair had passed away she would not be
able to endure the contact of so much that was common and ugly. For the
moment her discoveries in this line diverted her, as all discoveries
did, and she pretended to be sounding, in a scientific spirit—that of
the social philosopher, the student and critic of manners—the depths of
British Philistia. Hyacinth was struck, more than ever, with the fund
of life that was in her, the energy of feeling, the high, free,
reckless spirit. These things expressed themselves, as the couple
proceeded, in a hundred sallies and droll proposals, kindling the young
man’s pulses and making him conscious of the joy with which, in any
extravagance, he would bear her company to the death. She appeared to
him, at this moment, to be playing with life so audaciously and
defiantly that the end of it all would inevitably be some violent
catastrophe.
She desired exceedingly that Hyacinth should take her to a music-hall
or a coffee-tavern; she even professed a curiosity to see the inside of
a public-house. As she still had self-possession enough to remember
that if she stayed out beyond a certain hour Madame Grandoni would
begin to worry about her, they were obliged to content themselves with
the minor ‘lark’, as the Princess was careful to designate their peep
into an establishment, glittering with polished pewter and brass, which
bore the name of the ‘Happy Land’. Hyacinth had feared that she would
be nervous after the narrow, befingered door had swung behind her, or
that, at all events, she would be disgusted at what she might see and
hear in such a place and would immediately wish to retreat. By good
luck, however, there were only two or three convivial spirits in
occupancy, and the presence of the softer sex was apparently not so
rare as to excite surprise. The softer sex, furthermore, was embodied
in a big, hard, red woman, the publican’s wife, who looked as if she
were in the habit of dealing with all sorts and mainly interested in
seeing whether even the finest put down their money before they were
served. The Princess pretended to ‘have something’, and to admire the
ornamentation of the bar; and when Hyacinth asked her in a low tone
what disposal they should make, when the great changes came, of such an
embarrassing type as that, replied, off-hand, “Oh, drown her in a
barrel of beer!” She professed, when they came out, to have been
immensely interested in the ‘Happy Land’, and was not content until
Hyacinth had fixed an evening on which they might visit a music-hall
together. She talked with him, largely, by fits and starts, about his
adventures abroad and his impressions of France and Italy; breaking
off, suddenly, with some irrelevant but almost extravagantly
appreciative allusion to Rose Muniment and Lady Aurora; then returning
with a question as to what he had seen and done, the answer to which,
however, in many cases, she was not at pains to wait for. Yet it
implied that she had paid considerable attention to what he told her
that she should be able to say, towards the end, with that fraternising
frankness which was always touching because it appeared to place her at
one’s mercy, to show that she counted on one’s having an equal loyalty,
“Well, my dear friend, you have not wasted your time; you know
everything, you have missed nothing; there are lots of things you can
tell me, and we shall have some famous talks in the winter evenings.”
This last reference was apparently to the coming season, and there was
something in the tone of quiet friendship with which it was uttered,
and which seemed to involve so many delightful things, something that,
for Hyacinth, bound them still closer together. To live out of the
world with her that way, lost among the London millions, in a queer
little cockneyfied retreat, was a refinement of intimacy, and better
even than the splendid chance he had enjoyed at Medley.
They found Madame Grandoni sitting alone in the twilight, very patient
and peaceful, and having, after all, it was clear, accepted the
situation too completely to fidget at such a trifle as her companion’s
not coming home at a ladylike hour. She had placed herself in the back
part of the tawdry little drawing-room, which looked into a small,
smutty garden, and from the front window, which was open, the sound of
the hurdy-gurdy and the voices of the children, who were romping to its
music, came in to her through the summer dusk. The influence of London
was there, in a kind of mitigated, far-away hum, and for some reason or
other, at that moment, the place, to Hyacinth, took on the semblance of
the home of an exile—a spot and an hour to be remembered with a throb
of fondness in some danger or sorrow of after years. The old lady never
moved from her chair as she saw the Princess come in with the little
bookbinder, and her eyes rested on Hyacinth as familiarly as if she had
seen him go out with her in the afternoon. The Princess stood before
Madame Grandoni a moment, smiling. “I have done a great thing. What do
you think I have done?” she asked, as she drew off her gloves.
“God knows! I have ceased to think!” said the old woman, staring up,
with her fat, empty hands on the arms of her chair.
“I have come on foot from the far south of London—how many miles? four
or five—and I’m not a particle tired.”
“_Che forza, che forza!_” murmured Madame Grandoni. “She will knock you
up, completely,” she added, turning to Hyacinth with a kind of
customary compassion.
“Poor darling, _she_ misses the carriage,” Christina remarked, passing
out of the room.
Madame Grandoni followed her with her eyes, and Hyacinth thought he
perceived a considerable lassitude, a plaintive bewilderment and
_hébétement_, in the old woman’s face. “Don’t you like to use cabs—I
mean hansoms?” he asked, wishing to say something comforting to her.
“It is not true that I miss anything; my life is only too full,” she
replied. “I lived worse than this—in my bad days.” In a moment she went
on: “It’s because you are here—she doesn’t like Assunta to come.”
“Assunta—because I am here?” Hyacinth did not immediately catch her
meaning.
“You must have seen her Italian maid at Medley. She has kept her, and
she’s ashamed of it. When we are alone Assunta comes for her bonnet.
But she likes you to think she waits on herself.”
“That’s a weakness—when she’s so strong! And what does Assunta think of
it?” Hyacinth asked, looking at the stuffed birds in the window, the
alabaster Cupid, the wax flowers on the chimney-piece, the florid
antimacassars on the chairs, the sentimental engravings on the walls—in
frames of _papier-mâché_ and ‘composition’, some of them enveloped in
pink tissue-paper—and the prismatic glass pendants which seemed
attached to everything.
“She says, ‘What on earth will it matter to-morrow?’”
“Does she mean that to-morrow the Princess will have her luxury back
again? Hasn’t she sold all her beautiful things?”
Madame Grandoni was silent a moment. “She has kept a few. They are put
away.”
“_A la bonne heure!_” cried Hyacinth, laughing. He sat down with the
ironical old woman; he spent nearly half an hour in desultory
conversation with her, before candles were brought in, and while
Christina was in Assunta’s hands. He noticed how resolutely the
Princess had withheld herself from any attempt to sweeten the dose she
had taken it into her head to swallow, to mitigate the ugliness of her
vulgar little house. She had respected its horrible idiosyncrasies, and
left, rigidly, in their places the gimcracks which found favour in
Madeira Crescent. She had flung no draperies over the pretentious
furniture and disposed no rugs upon the staring carpet; and it was
plainly her theory that the right way to acquaint one’s self with the
sensations of the wretched was to suffer the anguish of exasperated
taste. Presently a female servant came in—not the sceptical Assunta,
but a stunted young woman of the maid-of-all-work type, the same who
had opened the door to the pair a short time before—and informed
Hyacinth that the Princess wished him to understand that he was
expected to remain to tea. He learned from Madame Grandoni that the
custom of an early dinner, followed in the evening by the frugal repast
of the lower orders, was another of Christina’s mortifications; and
when, shortly afterwards, he saw the table laid in the back parlour,
which was also the dining-room, and observed the nature of the crockery
with which it was decorated, he perceived that whether or no her
earnestness were durable, it was at any rate, for the time, intense.
Madame Grandoni narrated to him, definitely, as the Princess had done
only in scraps, the history of the two ladies since his departure from
Medley, their relinquishment of that fine house and the sudden
arrangements Christina had made to change her mode of life, after they
had been only ten days in South Street. At the climax of the London
season, in a society which only desired to treat her as one of its
brightest ornaments, she had retired to Madeira Crescent, concealing
her address (with only partial success, of course) from every one, and
inviting a celebrated curiosity-monger to come and look at her
_bibelots_ and tell her what he would give her for the lot. In this
manner she had parted with them at a fearful sacrifice. She had wished
to avoid the nine days’ wonder of a public sale; for, to do her
justice, though she liked to be original she didn’t like to be
notorious, an occasion of vulgar chatter. What had precipitated her
determination was a remonstrance received from her husband, just after
she left Medley, on the subject of her excessive expenditure; he had
written to her that it was past a joke (as she had appeared to consider
it), and that she must really pull up. Nothing could gall her more than
an interference on that head (she maintained that she knew the exact
figure of the Prince’s income, and that her allowance was an
insignificant part of it), and she had pulled up with a vengeance, as
Hyacinth perceived. The young man divined on this occasion one of the
Princess’s sharpest anxieties (he had never thought of it before), the
danger of Casamassima’s really putting the screw on—attempting to make
her come back and live with him by withholding supplies altogether. In
this case she would find herself in a very tight place, though she had
a theory that if she should go to law about the matter the courts would
allow her a separate maintenance. This course, however, it would
scarcely be in her character to adopt; she would be more likely to
waive her right and support herself by lessons in music and the foreign
tongues, supplemented by the remnant of property that had come to her
from her mother. That she was capable of returning to the Prince some
day, through not daring to face the loss of luxury, was an idea that
could not occur to Hyacinth, in the midst of her assurances, uttered at
various times, that she positively yearned for a sacrifice; and such an
apprehension was less present to him than ever as he listened to Madame
Grandoni’s account of the manner in which her rupture with the
fashionable world had been effected. It must be added that the old lady
remarked, with a sigh, that she didn’t know how it would all end, as
some of Christina’s economies were very costly; and when Hyacinth
pressed her a little she went on to say that it was not at present the
question of complications arising from the Prince that troubled her
most, but the fear that Christina was seriously compromised by her
reckless, senseless correspondences—letters arriving from foreign
countries, from God knew whom (Christina never told her, nor did she
desire it), all about uprisings and liberations (of so much one could
be sure) and other matters that were no concern of honest folk.
Hyacinth scarcely knew what Madame Grandoni meant by this allusion,
which seemed to show that, during the last few months, the Princess had
considerably extended her revolutionary connection: he only thought of
Hoffendahl, whose name, however, he was careful not to pronounce, and
wondered whether his hostess had been writing to the Master to
intercede for _him_, to beg that he might be let off. His cheeks burned
at the thought, but he contented himself with remarking to Madame
Grandoni that their extraordinary friend enjoyed the sense of danger.
The old lady wished to know how she would enjoy the hangman’s rope
(with which, _du train dont elle allait_, she might easily make
acquaintance); and when he expressed the hope that she didn’t regard
him as a counsellor of imprudence, replied, “You, my poor child? Oh, I
saw into you at Medley. You are a simple _codino!_”
The Princess came in to tea in a very dull gown, with a bunch of keys
at her girdle; and nothing could have suggested the thrifty housewife
better than the manner in which she superintended the laying of the
cloth and the placing on it of a little austere refreshment—a pile of
bread and butter, flanked by a pot of marmalade and a morsel of bacon.
She filled the teapot out of a little tin canister locked up in a
cupboard, of which the key worked with difficulty, and made the tea
with her own superb hands; taking pains, however, to explain to
Hyacinth that she was far from imposing that régime on Madame Grandoni,
who understood that the grocer had a standing order to supply her, for
her private consumption, with any delicacy she might desire. For
herself, she had never been so well as since she had followed a homely
diet. On Sundays they had muffins, and sometimes, for a change, a
smoked haddock, or even a fried sole. Hyacinth was lost in adoration of
the Princess’s housewifely ways and of the exquisite figure that she
made as a little _bourgeoise;_ judging that if her attempt to combine
plain living with high thinking were all a comedy, at least it was the
most finished entertainment she had yet offered him. She talked to
Madame Grandoni about Lady Aurora; described her with much drollery,
even to the details of her dress; declared that she was a delightful
creature and one of the most interesting persons she had seen for an
age; expressed to Hyacinth the conviction that she should like her
exceedingly, if Lady Aurora would only believe a little in _her_. “But
I shall like her, whether she does or not,” said the Princess. “I
always know when that’s going to happen; it isn’t so common. She will
begin very well with me, and be ‘fascinated’—isn’t that the way people
begin with me?—but she won’t understand me at all, or make out in the
least what kind of a queer fish I am, though I shall try to show her.
When she thinks she does, at last, she will give me up in disgust, and
will never know that she has understood me quite wrong. That has been
the way with most of the people I have liked; they have run away from
me _à toutes jambes_. Oh, I have inspired aversions!” laughed the
Princess, handing Hyacinth his cup of tea. He recognised it by the
aroma as a mixture not inferior to that of which he had partaken at
Medley. “I have never succeeded in knowing any one who would do me
good; for by the time I began to improve, under their influence, they
could put up with me no longer.”
“You told me you were going to visit the poor. I don’t understand what
your Gräfin was doing there,” said Madame Grandoni.
“She had come out of charity—in the same way as I. She evidently goes
about immensely over there; I shall entreat her to take me with her.”
“I thought you had promised to let me be your guide, in those
explorations,” Hyacinth remarked.
The Princess looked at him a moment. “Dear Mr Robinson, Lady Aurora
knows more than you.”
“There have been times, surely, when you have complimented me on my
knowledge.”
“Oh, I mean more about the lower classes!” the Princess exclaimed; and,
oddly enough, there was a sense in which Hyacinth was unable to deny
the allegation. He presently returned to something she had said a
moment before, declaring that it had not been the way with Madame
Grandoni and him to take to their heels, and to this she replied, “Oh,
you’ll run away yet; don’t be afraid!”
“I think that if I had been capable of quitting you I should have done
it by this time; I have neglected such opportunities,” the old lady
sighed. Hyacinth now perceived that her eye had quite lost its ancient
twinkle; she was troubled about many things.
“It is true that if you didn’t leave me when I was rich, it wouldn’t
look well for you to leave me at present,” the Princess suggested; and
before Madame Grandoni could reply to this speech she said to Hyacinth,
“I liked the man, your friend Muniment, so much for saying he wouldn’t
come to see me. ‘What good would it do him,’ poor fellow? What good
would it do him, indeed? You were not so difficult: you held off a
little and pleaded obstacles, but one could see you would come down,”
she continued, covering her guest with her mystifying smile. “Besides,
I was smarter then, more splendid; I had on gewgaws and suggested
worldly lures. I must have been more attractive. But I liked him for
refusing,” she repeated; and of the many words she uttered that evening
it was these that made most impression on Hyacinth. He remained for an
hour after tea, for on rising from the table she had gone to the piano
(she had not deprived herself of this resource, and had a humble
instrument, of the so-called ‘cottage’ kind) and begun to play in a
manner that reminded him of her playing the day of his arrival at
Medley. The night had grown close, and as the piano was in the front
room he opened, at her request, the window that looked into Madeira
Crescent. Beneath it assembled the youth of both sexes, the dingy
loiterers who had clustered an hour before around the hurdy-gurdy. But
on this occasion they did not caper about; they remained still, leaning
against the area-rails and listening to the wondrous music. When
Hyacinth told the Princess of the spell she had thrown upon them she
declared that it made her singularly happy; she added that she was
really glad, almost proud, of her day; she felt as if she had begun to
do something for the people. Just before he took leave she encountered
some occasion for saying to him that she was certain the man in Audley
Court wouldn’t come; and Hyacinth forbore contradict her, because he
believed that in fact he wouldn’t.