How right she had been to say that Lady Aurora would probably be
fascinated at first was proved the first time Hyacinth went to Belgrave
Square, a visit he was led to pay very promptly, by a deep sense of the
obligations under which her ladyship had placed him at the time of
Pinnie’s death. The circumstances in which he found her were quite the
same as those of his visit the year before; she was spending the
unfashionable season in her father’s empty house, amid a desert of
brown holland and the dormant echoes of heavy conversation. He had seen
so much of her during Pinnie’s illness that he felt (or had felt then)
that he knew her almost intimately—that they had become real friends,
almost comrades, and might meet henceforth without reserves or
ceremonies; yet she was as fluttered and awkward as she had been on the
other occasion: not distant, but entangled in new coils of shyness and
apparently unmindful of what had happened to draw them closer.
Hyacinth, however, always liked extremely to be with her, for she was
the person in the world who quietly, delicately, and as a matter of
course treated him most like a gentleman. She had never said the
handsome, flattering things to him that had fallen from the lips of the
Princess, and never explained to him her view of him; but her timid,
cursory, receptive manner, which took all sorts of equalities for
granted, was a homage to the idea of his refinement. It was in this
manner that she now conversed with him on the subject of his foreign
travels; he found himself discussing the political indications of Paris
and the Ruskinian theories of Venice, in Belgrave Square, quite like
one of the cosmopolites bred in that region. It took him, however, but
a few minutes to perceive that Lady Aurora’s heart was not in these
considerations; the deferential smile she bent upon him, while she sat
with her head thrust forward and her long hands clasped in her lap, was
slightly mechanical, her attitude perfunctory. When he gave her his
views of some of the _arrière-pensées_ of _M. Gambetta_ (for he had
views not altogether, as he thought, deficient in originality), she did
not interrupt, for she never interrupted; but she took advantage of his
first pause to say, quickly, irrelevantly, “Will the Princess
Casamassima come again to Audley Court?”
“I have no doubt she will come again, if they would like her to.”
“I do hope she will. She is very wonderful,” Lady Aurora continued.
“Oh, yes, she is very wonderful. I think she gave Rosy pleasure,” said
Hyacinth.
“Rosy can talk of nothing else. It would really do her great good to
see the Princess again. Don’t you think she is different from anybody
that one has ever seen?” But her ladyship added, before waiting for an
answer to this, “I liked her quite extraordinarily.”
“She liked you just as much. I know it would give her great pleasure if
you should go to see her.”
“Fancy!” exclaimed Lady Aurora; but she instantly obtained the
Princess’s address from Hyacinth, and made a note of it in a small,
shabby book. She mentioned that the card the Princess had given her in
Camberwell proved to contain no address, and Hyacinth recognised that
vagary—the Princess was so off-hand. Then she said, hesitating a
little, “Does she really care for the poor?”
“If she doesn’t,” the young man replied, “I can’t imagine what interest
she has in pretending to.”
“If she does, she’s very remarkable—she deserves great honour.”
“You really care; why is she more remarkable than you?” Hyacinth
demanded.
“Oh, it’s very different—she’s so wonderfully attractive!” Lady Aurora
replied, making, recklessly, the only allusion to the oddity of her own
appearance in which Hyacinth was destined to hear her indulge. She
became conscious of it the moment she had spoken, and said, quickly, to
turn it off, “I should like to talk with her, but I’m rather afraid.
She’s tremendously clever.”
“Ah, what she is you’ll find out when you know her!” Hyacinth sighed,
expressively.
His hostess looked at him a little, and then, vaguely, exclaimed, “How
very interesting!” The next moment she continued, “She might do so many
other things; she might charm the world.”
“She does that, whatever she does,” said Hyacinth, smiling. “It’s all
by the way; it needn’t interfere.”
“That’s what I mean, that most other people would be content—beautiful
as she is. There’s great merit, when you give up something.”
“She has known a great many bad people, and she wants to know some
good,” Hyacinth rejoined. “Therefore be sure to go to her soon.”
“She looks as if she had known nothing bad since she was born,” said
Lady Aurora, rapturously. “I can’t imagine her going into all the
dreadful places that she would have to.”
“You have gone into them, and it hasn’t hurt you,” Hyacinth suggested.
“How do you know that? My family think it has.”
“You make me glad that I haven’t a family,” said the young man.
“And the Princess—has she no one?”
“Ah, yes, she has a husband. But she doesn’t live with him.”
“Is he one of the bad persons?” asked Lady Aurora, as earnestly as a
child listening to a tale.
“Well, I don’t like to abuse him, because he is down.”
“If I were a man, I should be in love with her,” said Lady Aurora. Then
she pursued, “I wonder whether we might work together.”
“That’s exactly what she hopes.”
“I won’t show her the worst places,” said her ladyship, smiling.
To which Hyacinth replied, “I suspect you will do what every one else
has done, namely, exactly what she wants!” Before he took leave he said
to her, “Do you know whether Paul Muniment liked the Princess?”
Lady Aurora meditated a moment, apparently with some intensity. “I
think he considered her extraordinarily beautiful—the most beautiful
person he had ever seen.”
“Does he still believe her to be a humbug?”
“Still?” asked Lady Aurora, as if she didn’t understand.
“I mean that that was the impression apparently made upon him last
winter by my description of her.”
“Oh, I’m sure he thinks her tremendously plucky!” That was all the
satisfaction Hyacinth got just then as to Muniment’s estimate of the
Princess.
A few days afterward he returned to Madeira Crescent, in the evening,
the only time he was free, the Princess having given him a general
invitation to take tea with her. He felt that he ought to be discreet
in acting upon it, though he was not without reasons that would have
warranted him in going early and often. He had a peculiar dread of her
growing tired of him—boring herself in his society; yet at the same
time he had rather a sharp vision of her boring herself without him, in
the dull summer evenings, when even Paddington was out of town. He
wondered what she did, what visitors dropped in, what pastimes she
cultivated, what saved her from the sudden vagary of throwing up the
whole of her present game. He remembered that there was a complete side
of her life with which he was almost unacquainted (Lady Marchant and
her daughters, at Medley, and three or four other persons who had
called while he was there, being, in his experience, the only
illustrations of it), and knew not to what extent she had, in spite of
her transformation, preserved relations with her old friends; but he
could easily imagine a day when she should discover that what she found
in Madeira Crescent was less striking than what she missed. Going
thither a second time Hyacinth perceived that he had done her great
injustice; she was full of resources, she had never been so happy, she
found time to read, to write, to commune with her piano, and above all
to think—a delightful detachment from the invasive, vulgar, gossiping,
distracting world she had known hitherto. The only interruption to her
felicity was that she received quantities of notes from her former
acquaintance, challenging her to give some account of herself, to say
what had become of her, to come and stay with them in the country; but
with these importunate missives she took a very short way—she simply
burned them, without answering. She told Hyacinth immediately that Lady
Aurora had called on her, two days before, at an hour when she was not
in, and she had straightway addressed her, in return, an invitation to
come to tea, any evening, at eight o’clock. That was the way the people
in Madeira Crescent entertained each other (the Princess knew
everything about them now, and was eager to impart her knowledge); and
the evening, she was sure, would be much more convenient to Lady
Aurora, whose days were filled with good works, peregrinations of
charity. Her ladyship arrived ten minutes after Hyacinth; she told the
Princess that her invitation had been expressed in a manner so
irresistible that she was unwilling to wait more than a day to respond.
She was introduced to Madame Grandoni, and tea was immediately served;
Hyacinth being gratefully conscious the while of the super-subtle way
in which Lady Aurora forbore to appear bewildered at meeting him in
such society. She knew he frequented it, and she had been witness of
his encounter with the Princess in Audley Court; but it might have
startled her to have ocular evidence of the footing on which he stood.
Everything the Princess did or said, at this time, had for effect,
whatever its purpose, to make her seem more rare and fine; and she had
seldom given him greater pleasure than by the exquisite art she put
forward to win Lady Aurora’s confidence, to place herself under the
pure and elevating influence of the noble spinster. She made herself
small and simple; she spoke of her own little aspirations and efforts;
she appealed and persuaded; she laid her white hand on Lady Aurora’s,
gazing at her with an interest which was evidently deeply sincere, but
which, all the same, derived half its effect from the contrast between
the quality of her beauty, the whole air of her person, and the hard,
dreary problems of misery and crime. It was touching, and Lady Aurora
was touched; that was very evident as they sat together on the sofa,
after tea, and the Princess protested that she only wanted to know what
her new friend was doing—what she had done for years—in order that she
might go and do likewise. She asked personal questions with a
directness that was sometimes embarrassing to the subject—Hyacinth had
seen that habit in her from the first—and Lady Aurora, though she was
charmed and excited, was not quite comfortable at being so publicly
probed and sounded. The public was formed of Madame Grandoni and
Hyacinth; but the old lady (whose intercourse with the visitor had
consisted almost wholly of watching her with a quiet, speculative
anxiety) presently shuffled away, and was heard, through the thin
partitions that prevailed in Madeira Crescent, to ascend to her own
apartment. It seemed to Hyacinth that he ought also, in delicacy, to
retire, and this was his intention, from one moment to the other; to
him, certainly (and the second time she met him), Lady Aurora had made
as much of her confession as he had a right to look for. After that one
little flash of egotism he had never again heard her allude to her own
feelings or circumstances.
“Do you stay in town, like this, at such a season, on purpose to attend
to your work?” the Princess asked; and there was something archly
rueful in the tone in which she made this inquiry, as if it cost her
just a pang to find that in taking such a line she herself had not been
so original as she hoped. “Mr Robinson has told me about your big house
in Belgrave Square—you must let me come and see you there. Nothing
would make me so happy as that you should allow me to help you a
little—how little soever. Do you like to be helped, or do you like to
go alone? Are you very independent, or do you need to look up, to
cling, to lean upon some one? Excuse me if I ask impertinent questions;
we speak that way—rather, you know—in Rome, where I have spent a large
part of my life. That idea of your being there alone in your great dull
house, with all your charities and devotions, makes a kind of picture
in my mind; it’s quaint and touching, like something in some English
novel. Englishwomen are so accomplished, are they not? I am really a
foreigner, you know, and though I have lived here a while it takes one
some time to find those things out _au juste_. Therefore, is your work
for the people only one of your occupations, or is it everything, does
it absorb your whole life? That’s what I should like it to be for me!
Do your family like you to throw yourself into all this, or have you
had to brave a certain amount of ridicule? I dare say you have; that’s
where you English are strong, in braving ridicule. They have to do it
so often, haven’t they? I don’t know whether I could do it. I never
tried; but with you I would brave anything. Are your family clever and
sympathetic? No? the kind of thing that one’s family generally is? Ah,
well, dear lady, we must make a little family together. Are you
encouraged or disgusted? Do you go on doggedly, or have you any faith,
any great idea, that lifts you up? Are you religious, now, _par
exemple?_ Do you do your work in connection with any ecclesiasticism,
any missions, or priests or sisters? I’m a Catholic, you know—but so
little! I shouldn’t mind in the least joining hands with any one who is
really doing anything. I express myself awkwardly, but perhaps you know
what I mean. Possibly you don’t know that I am one of those who believe
that a great social cataclysm is destined to take place, and that it
can’t make things worse than they are already. I believe, in a word, in
the people doing something for themselves (the others will never do
anything for them), and I am quite willing to help them. If that shocks
you I shall be immensely disappointed, because there is something in
the impression you make on me that seems to say that you haven’t the
usual prejudices, and that if certain things were to happen you
wouldn’t be afraid. You are shy, are you not?—but you are not timorous.
I suppose that if you thought the inequalities and oppressions and
miseries which now exist were a necessary part of life, and were going
on for ever, you wouldn’t be interested in those people over the river
(the bedridden girl and her brother, I mean); because Mr Robinson tells
me that they are advanced socialists—or at least the brother is.
Perhaps you’ll say that you don’t care for him; the sister, to your
mind, being the remarkable one. She is, indeed, a perfect little _femme
du monde_—she talks so much better than most of the people in society.
I hope you don’t mind my saying that, because I have an idea that you
are not in society. You can imagine whether I am! Haven’t you judged
it, like me, condemned it, and given it up? Are you not sick of the
egotism, the snobbery, the meanness, the frivolity, the immorality, the
hypocrisy? Isn’t there a great resemblance in our situation? I don’t
mean in our nature, for you are far better than I shall ever be. Aren’t
you quite divinely good? When I see a woman of your sort (not that I
often do!) I try to be a little less bad. You have helped hundreds,
thousands, of people; you must help me!”
These remarks, which I have strung together, did not, of course, fall
from the Princess’s lips in an uninterrupted stream; they were arrested
and interspersed by frequent inarticulate responses and embarrassed
protests. Lady Aurora shrank from them even while they gratified her,
blinking and fidgeting in the brilliant, direct light of her hostess’s
attentions. I need not repeat her answers, the more so as they none of
them arrived at completion, but passed away into nervous laughter and
averted looks, the latter directed at the ceiling, the floor, the
windows, and appearing to constitute a kind of entreaty to some occult
or supernatural power that the conversation should become more
impersonal. In reply to the Princess’s allusion to the convictions
prevailing in the Muniment family, she said that the brother and sister
thought differently about public questions, but were of the same mind
with regard to persons of the upper class taking an interest in the
working people, attempting to enter into their life: they held it was a
great mistake. At this information the Princess looked much
disappointed; she wished to know if the Muniments thought it was
impossible to do them any good. “Oh, I mean a mistake from _our_ point
of view,” said Lady Aurora. “They wouldn’t do it in our place; they
think we had much better occupy ourselves with our own pleasures.” And
as the Princess stared, not comprehending, she went on: “Rosy thinks we
have a right to our own pleasures under all circumstances, no matter
how badly off the poor may be; and her brother takes the ground that we
will not have them long, and that in view of what may happen we are
great fools not to make the most of them.”
“I see, I see. That is very strong,” the Princess murmured, in a tone
of high appreciation.
“I dare say. But all the same, whatever is going to come, one _must_ do
something.”
“You do think, then, that something is going to come?” said the
Princess.
“Oh, immense changes, I dare say. But I don’t belong to anything, you
know.”
The Princess hesitated a moment. “No more do I. But many people do. Mr
Robinson, for instance.” And she gave Hyacinth a familiar smile.
“Oh, if the changes depend on me!” the young man exclaimed, blushing.
“They won’t set the Thames on fire—I quite agree to that!”
Lady Aurora had the manner of not considering that she had a warrant
for going into the question of Hyacinth’s affiliations; so she stared
abstractly at the piano and in a moment remarked to the Princess, “I am
sure you play awfully well; I should like so much to hear you.”
Hyacinth felt that their hostess thought this _banal_. She had not
asked Lady Aurora to spend the evening with her simply that they should
fall back on the resources of the vulgar. Nevertheless, she replied
with perfect good-nature that she should be delighted to play; only
there was a thing she should like much better, namely, that Lady Aurora
should narrate her life.
“Oh, don’t talk about mine; yours, yours!” her ladyship cried,
colouring with eagerness and, for the first time since her arrival,
indulging in the free gesture of laying her hand upon that of the
Princess.
“With so many narratives in the air, I certainly had better take myself
off,” said Hyacinth, and the Princess offered no opposition to his
departure. She and Lady Aurora were evidently on the point of striking
up a tremendous intimacy, and as he turned this idea over, walking
away, it made him sad, for strange, vague reasons, which he could not
have expressed.