The Sunday following this occasion Hyacinth spent almost entirely with
the Muniments, with whom, since his return to his work, he had been
able to have no long, fraternising talk, of the kind that had marked
their earlier relations. The present, however, was a happy day; it
refreshed exceedingly the sentiments with which he now regarded the
inscrutable Paul. The warm, bright September weather gilded even the
dinginess of Audley Court, and while, in the morning, Rosy’s brother
and their visitor sat beside her sofa, the trio amused themselves with
discussing a dozen different plans for giving a festive turn to the
day. There had been moments, in the last six months, when Hyacinth had
the sense that he should never again be able to enter into such ideas
as that, and these moments had been connected with the strange
perversion taking place in his mental image of the man whose hardness
(of course he was obliged to be hard) he had never expected to see
turned upon a passionate admirer. But now, for the hour at least, the
darkness had cleared away, and Paul’s company was in itself a
comfortable, inspiring influence. He had never been kinder, jollier,
safer, as it were; it had never appeared more desirable to hold fast to
him and trust him. Less than ever would an observer have guessed there
was a reason why the two young men might have winced as they looked at
each other. Rosy naturally took part in the question debated between
her companions—the question whether they should limit their excursion
to a walk in Hyde Park; should embark at Lambeth pier on the penny
steamer, which would convey them to Greenwich; or should start
presently for Waterloo station and go thence by train to Hampton Court.
Miss Muniment had visited none of these places, but she contributed
largely to the discussion, for which she seemed perfectly qualified;
talked about the crowd on the steamer, and the inconvenience arising
from drunken persons on the return, quite as if she had suffered from
these drawbacks; said that the view from the hill at Greenwich was
terribly smoky, and at that season the fashionable world—half the
attraction, of course—was wholly absent from Hyde Park; and expressed
strong views in favour of Wolsey’s old palace, with whose history she
appeared intimately acquainted. She threw herself into her brother’s
holiday with eagerness and glee, and Hyacinth marvelled again at the
stoicism of the hard, bright creature, polished, as it were, by pain,
whose imagination appeared never to concern itself with her own
privations, so that she could lie in her close little room the whole
golden afternoon, without bursting into sobs as she saw the western
sunbeams slant upon the shabby, ugly, familiar paper of her wall and
thought of the far-off fields and gardens which she should never see.
She talked immensely of the Princess, for whose beauty, grace and
benevolence she could find no sufficient praise; declaring that of all
the fair faces that had ever hung over her couch (and Rosy spoke as
from immense opportunities for comparison) she had far the noblest and
most refreshing. She seemed to make a kind of light in the room and to
leave it behind her after she had gone. Rosy could call up her image as
she could hum a tune she had heard, and she expressed in her quaint,
particular way how, as she lay there in the quiet hours, she repeated
over to herself the beautiful air. The Princess might be anything, she
might be royal or imperial, and Rosy was well aware how little _she_
should complain of the dullness of her life when such apparitions as
that could pop in any day. She made a difference in the place—it gave
it a kind of finish for her to have come there; if it was good enough
for a princess, it was good enough for _her_, and she hoped she
shouldn’t hear again of Paul’s wishing her to move out of a room with
which she should have henceforth such delightful associations. The
Princess had found her way to Audley Court, and perhaps she wouldn’t
find it to another lodging—they couldn’t expect her to follow them
about London at their pleasure; and at any rate she had evidently been
very much struck with the little room, so that if they were quiet and
patient who could say but the fancy would take her to send them a bit
of carpet, or a picture, or even a mirror with a gilt frame, to make it
a bit more tasteful? Rosy’s transitions from pure enthusiasm to the
imaginative calculation of benefit were performed with a serenity
peculiar to herself. Her chatter had so much spirit and point that it
always commanded attention, but to-day Hyacinth was less tolerant of it
than usual, because so long as it lasted Muniment held his tongue, and
what he had been anxious about was much more Paul’s impression of the
Princess. Rosy made no remark to him on the monopoly he had so long
enjoyed of this wonderful lady; she had always had the manner of a kind
of indulgent incredulity about Hyacinth’s social adventures, and he saw
the day might easily come when she would begin to talk of the Princess
as if she herself had been the first to discover her. She had much to
say, however, about the nature of the acquaintance Lady Aurora had
formed with her, and she was mainly occupied with the glory she had
drawn upon herself by bringing two such exalted persons together. She
fancied them alluding, in the great world, to the occasion on which ‘we
first met, at Miss Muniment’s, you know’; and she related how Lady
Aurora, who had been in Audley Court the day before, had declared that
she owed her a debt she could never repay. The two ladies had liked
each other more, almost, than they liked any one; and wasn’t it a rare
picture to think of them moving hand in hand, like twin roses, through
the bright upper air? Muniment inquired, in rather a coarse,
unsympathetic way, what the mischief she ever wanted of _her;_ which
led Hyacinth to demand in return, “What do you mean? What does who want
of whom?”
“What does the beauty want of _our_ poor lady? She has a totally
different stamp. I don’t know much about women, but I can see that.”
“How do you mean—a different stamp? They both have the stamp of their
rank!” cried Rosy.
“Who can ever tell what women want, at any time?” Hyacinth said, with
the off-handedness of a man of the world.
“Well, my boy, if you don’t know any more than I, you disappoint me!
Perhaps if we wait long enough she will tell us some day herself.”
“Tell you what she wants of Lady Aurora?”
“I don’t mind about Lady Aurora so much; but what in the name of long
journeys does she want with _us?_”
“Don’t you think you’re worth a long journey?” Rosy asked, gaily. “If
you were not my brother, which is handy for seeing you, and I were not
confined to my sofa, I would go from one end of England to the other to
make your acquaintance! He’s in love with the Princess,” she went on,
to Hyacinth, “and he asks those senseless questions to cover it up.
What does any one want of anything?”
It was decided, at last, that the two young men should go down to
Greenwich, and after they had partaken of bread and cheese with Rosy
they embarked on a penny steamer. The boat was densely crowded, and
they leaned, rather squeezed together, in the fore part of it, against
the rail of the deck, and watched the big black fringe of the yellow
stream. The river was always fascinating to Hyacinth. The mystified
entertainment which, as a child, he had found in all the aspects of
London came back to him from the murky scenery of its banks and the
sordid agitation of its bosom: the great arches and pillars of the
bridges, where the water rushed, and the funnels tipped, and sounds
made an echo, and there seemed an overhanging of interminable
processions; the miles of ugly wharves and warehouses; the lean
protrusions of chimney, mast, and crane; the painted signs of grimy
industries, staring from shore to shore; the strange, flat, obstructive
barges, straining and bumping on some business as to which everything
was vague but that it was remarkably dirty; the clumsy coasters and
colliers, which thickened as one went down; the small, loafing boats,
whose occupants, somehow, looking up from their oars at the steamer, as
they rocked in the oily undulations of its wake, appeared profane and
sarcastic; in short, all the grinding, puffing, smoking, splashing
activity of the turbid flood. In the good-natured crowd, amid the fumes
of vile tobacco, beneath the shower of sooty particles, and to the
accompaniment of a bagpipe of a dingy Highlander, who sketched
occasionally a smothered reel, Hyacinth forbore to speak to his
companion of what he had most at heart; but later, as they lay on the
brown, crushed grass, on one of the slopes of Greenwich Park, and saw
the river stretch away and shine beyond the pompous colonnades of the
hospital, he asked him whether there was any truth in what Rosy had
said about his being sweet on their friend the Princess. He said ‘their
friend’ on purpose, speaking as if, now that she had been twice to
Audley Court, Muniment might be regarded as knowing her almost as well
as he himself did. He wished to conjure away the idea that he was
jealous of Paul, and if he desired information on the point I have
mentioned this was because it still made him almost as uncomfortable as
it had done at first that his comrade should take the scoffing view. He
didn’t easily see such a fellow as Muniment wheel about from one day to
the other, but he had been present at the most exquisite exhibition he
had ever observed the Princess make of that divine power of
conciliation which was not perhaps in social intercourse the art she
chiefly exercised but was certainly the most wonderful of her secrets,
and it would be remarkable indeed that a sane young man should not have
been affected by it. It was familiar to Hyacinth that Muniment was not
easily touched by women, but this might perfectly have been the case
without detriment to the Princess’s ability to work a miracle. The
companions had wandered through the great halls and courts of the
hospital; had gazed up at the glories of the famous painted chamber and
admired the long and lurid series of the naval victories of
England—Muniment remarking to his friend that he supposed he had seen
the match to all that in foreign parts, offensive little travelled
beggar that he was. They had not ordered a fish-dinner either at the
‘Trafalgar’ or the ‘Ship’ (having a frugal vision of tea and shrimps
with Rosy, on their return), but they had laboured up and down the
steep undulations of the shabby, charming park; made advances to the
tame deer and seen them amble foolishly away; watched the young of both
sexes, hilarious and red in the face, roll in promiscuous entanglement
over the slopes; gazed at the little brick observatory, perched on one
of the knolls, which sets the time of English history and in which
Hyacinth could see that his companion took a kind of technical
interest; wandered out of one of the upper gates and admired the
trimness of the little villas at Blackheath, where Muniment declared
that it was his idea of supreme social success to be able to live. He
pointed out two or three small, semi-detached houses, faced with
stucco, and with ‘Mortimer Lodge’ or ‘The Sycamores’ inscribed upon the
gate-posts, and Hyacinth guessed that these were the sort of place
where he would like to end his days—in high, pure air, with a genteel
window for Rosy’s couch and a cheerful view of suburban excursions. It
was when they came back into the park that, being rather hot and a
little satiated, they stretched themselves under a tree and Hyacinth
yielded to his curiosity.
“Sweet on her—sweet on her, my boy!” said Muniment. “I might as well be
sweet on the dome of St Paul’s, which I just make out off there.”
“The dome of St Paul’s doesn’t come to see you, and doesn’t ask you to
return the visit.”
“Oh, I don’t return visits—I’ve got a lot of jobs of my own to do. If I
don’t put myself out for the Princess, isn’t that a sufficient answer
to your question?”
“I’m by no means sure,” said Hyacinth. “If you went to see her, simply
and civilly, because she asked you, I shouldn’t regard it as a proof
that you had taken a fancy to her. Your hanging off is more suspicious;
it may mean that you don’t trust yourself—that you are in danger of
falling in love if you go in for a more intimate acquaintance.”
“It’s a rum job, your wanting me to make up to her. I shouldn’t think
it would suit your book,” Muniment rejoined, staring at the sky, with
his hands clasped under his head.
“Do you suppose I’m afraid of you?” his companion asked. “Besides,”
Hyacinth added in a moment, “why the devil should I care, now?”
Muniment, for a little, made no rejoinder; he turned over on his side,
and with his arm resting on the ground leaned his head on his hand.
Hyacinth felt his eyes on his face, but he also felt himself colouring,
and didn’t meet them. He had taken a private vow never to indulge, to
Muniment, in certain inauspicious references, and the words he had just
spoken had slipped out of his mouth too easily. “What do you mean by
that?” Paul demanded, at last; and when Hyacinth looked at him he saw
nothing but his companion’s strong, fresh, irresponsible face.
Muniment, before speaking, had had time to guess what he meant by it.
Suddenly, an impulse that he had never known before, or rather that he
had always resisted, took possession of him. There was a mystery which
it concerned his happiness to clear up, and he became unconscious of
his scruples, of his pride, of the strength that he had believed to be
in him—the strength for going through his work and passing away without
a look behind. He sat forward on the grass, with his arms round his
knees, and bent upon Muniment a face lighted up by his difficulties.
For a minute the two men’s eyes met with extreme clearness, and then
Hyacinth exclaimed, “What an extraordinary fellow you are!”
“You’ve hit it there!” said Muniment, smiling.
“I don’t want to make a scene, or work on your feelings, but how will
you like it when I’m strung up on the gallows?”
“You mean for Hoffendahl’s job? That’s what you were alluding to just
now?” Muniment lay there, in the same attitude, chewing a long blade of
dry grass, which he held to his lips with his free hand.
“I didn’t mean to speak of it; but after all, why shouldn’t it come up?
Naturally, I have thought of it a good deal.”
“What good does that do?” Muniment returned. “I hoped you didn’t, and I
noticed you never spoke of it. You don’t like it; you would rather
throw it up,” he added.
There was not in his voice the faintest note of irony or contempt, no
sign whatever that he passed judgment on such a tendency. He spoke in a
quiet, human, memorising manner, as if it had originally quite entered
into his thought to allow for weak regrets. Nevertheless the complete
reasonableness of his tone itself cast a chill on his companion’s
spirit; it was like the touch of a hand at once very firm and very
soft, but strangely cold.
“I don’t want in the least to throw the business up, but did you
suppose I liked it?” Hyacinth asked, with rather a forced laugh.
“My dear fellow, how could I tell? You like a lot of things I don’t.
You like excitement and emotion and change, you like remarkable
sensations, whereas I go in for a holy calm, for sweet repose.”
“If you object, for yourself, to change, and are so fond of still
waters, why have you associated yourself with a revolutionary
movement?” Hyacinth demanded, with a little air of making rather a good
point.
“Just for that reason!” Muniment answered, with a smile. “Isn’t our
revolutionary movement as quiet as the grave? Who knows, who suspects,
anything like the full extent of it?”
“I see—you take only the quiet parts!”
In speaking these words Hyacinth had had no derisive intention, but a
moment later he flushed with the sense that they had a sufficiently
petty sound. Muniment, however, appeared to see no offence in them, and
it was in the gentlest, most suggestive way, as if he had been thinking
over what might comfort his comrade, that he replied, “There’s one
thing you ought to remember—that it’s quite on the cards it may never
come off.”
“I don’t desire that reminder,” Hyacinth said; “and, moreover, you must
let me say that, somehow, I don’t easily fancy _you_ mixed up with
things that don’t come off. Anything you have to do with will come off,
I think.”
Muniment reflected a moment, as if his little companion were charmingly
ingenious. “Surely, I have nothing to do with this idea of
Hoffendahl’s.”
“With the execution, perhaps not; but how about the conception? You
seemed to me to have a great deal to do with it the night you took me
to see him.”
Muniment changed his position, raising himself, and in a moment he was
seated, Turk-fashion, beside his mate. He put his arm over his shoulder
and held him, studying his face; and then, in the kindest manner in the
world, he remarked, “There are three or four definite chances in your
favour.”
“I don’t want comfort, you know,” said Hyacinth, with his eyes on the
distant atmospheric mixture that represented London.
“What the devil _do_ you want?” Muniment asked, still holding him, and
with perfect good-humour.
“Well, to get inside of _you_ a little; to know how a chap feels when
he’s going to part with his best friend.”
“To part with him?” Muniment repeated.
“I mean, putting it at the worst.”
“I should think you would know by yourself, if you’re going to part
with me!”
At this Hyacinth prostrated himself, tumbled over on the grass, on his
face, which he buried in his arms. He remained in this attitude, saying
nothing, for a long time; and while he lay there he thought, with a
sudden, quick flood of association, of many strange things. Most of
all, he had the sense of the brilliant, charming day; the warm
stillness, touched with cries of amusement; the sweetness of loafing
there, in an interval of work, with a friend who was a tremendously
fine fellow, even if he didn’t understand the inexpressible. Muniment
also kept silent, and Hyacinth perceived that he was unaffectedly
puzzled. He wanted now to relieve him, so that he pulled himself
together again and turned round, saying the first thing he could think
of, in relation to the general subject of their conversation, that
would carry them away from the personal question: “I have asked you
before, and you have told me, but somehow I have never quite grasped it
(so I just touch on the matter again), exactly what good you think it
will do.”
“This idea of Hoffendahl’s? You must remember that as yet we know only
very vaguely what it is. It is difficult, therefore, to measure closely
the importance it may have, and I don’t think I have ever, in talking
with you, pretended to fix that importance. I don’t suppose it will
matter immensely whether your own engagement is carried out or not; but
if it is it will have been a detail in a scheme of which the general
effect will be decidedly useful. I believe, and you pretend to believe,
though I am not sure you do, in the advent of the democracy. It will
help the democracy to get possession that the classes that keep them
down shall be admonished from time to time that they have a very
definite and very determined intention of doing so. An immense deal
will depend upon that. Hoffendahl is a capital admonisher.”
Hyacinth listened to this explanation with an expression of interest
that was not feigned; and after a moment he rejoined, “When you say you
believe in the democracy, I take for granted you mean you positively
wish for their coming into power, as I have always supposed. Now what I
really have never understood is this—why you should desire to put
forward a lot of people whom you regard, almost without exception, as
donkeys.”
“Ah, my dear lad,” laughed Muniment, “when one undertakes to meddle in
human affairs one must deal with human material. The upper classes have
the longest ears.”
“I have heard you say that you were working for an equality in human
conditions, to abolish the immemorial inequality. What you want, then,
for all mankind is a similar _nuance_ of asininity.”
“That’s very clever; did you pick it up in France? The low tone of our
fellow-mortals is a result of bad conditions; it is the conditions I
want to alter. When those that have no start to speak of have a good
one, it is but fair to infer that they will go further. I want to try
them, you know.”
“But why equality?” Hyacinth asked. “Somehow, that word doesn’t say so
much to me as it used to. Inequality—inequality! I don’t know whether
it’s by dint of repeating it over to myself, but _that_ doesn’t shock
me as it used.”
“They didn’t put you up to that in France, I’m sure!” Muniment
exclaimed. “Your point of view has changed; you have risen in the
world.”
“Risen? Good God, what have I risen to?”
“True enough; you were always a bloated little swell!” And Muniment
gave his young friend a sociable slap on the back. There was a
momentary bitterness in its being imputed to such a one as Hyacinth,
even in joke, that he had taken sides with the fortunate ones of the
earth, and he had it on his tongue’s end to ask his friend if he had
never guessed what his proud titles were—the bastard of a murderess,
spawned in a gutter, out of which he had been picked by a sewing-girl.
But his life-long reserve on this point was a habit not easily broken,
and before such an inquiry could flash through it Muniment had gone on:
“If you’ve ceased to believe we can do anything, it will be rather
awkward, you know.”
“I don’t know what I believe, God help me!” Hyacinth remarked, in a
tone of an effect so lugubrious that Paul gave one of his longest, most
boyish-sounding laughs. And he added, “I don’t want you to think I have
ceased to care for the people. What am I but one of the poorest and
meanest of them?”
“You, my boy? You’re a duke in disguise, and so I thought the first
time I ever saw you. That night I took you to Hoffendahl you had a
little way with you that made me forget it; I mean that your disguise
happened to be better than usual. As regards caring for the people,
there’s surely no obligation at all,” Muniment continued. “I wouldn’t
if I could help it—I promise you that. It all depends on what you see.
The way _I_’ve used my eyes in this abominable metropolis has led to my
seeing that present arrangements won’t do. They won’t do,” he repeated,
placidly.
“Yes, I see that, too,” said Hyacinth, with the same dolefulness that
had marked his tone a moment before—a dolefulness begotten of the
rather helpless sense that, whatever he saw, he saw (and this was
always the case) so many other things beside. He saw the immeasurable
misery of the people, and yet he saw all that had been, as it were,
rescued and redeemed from it: the treasures, the felicities, the
splendours, the successes, of the world. All this took the form,
sometimes, to his imagination, of a vast, vague, dazzling presence, an
irradiation of light from objects undefined, mixed with the atmosphere
of Paris and of Venice. He presently added that a hundred things
Muniment had told him about the foul horrors of the worst districts of
London, pictures of incredible shame and suffering that he had put
before him, came back to him now, with the memory of the passion they
had kindled at the time.
“Oh, I don’t want you to go by what I have told you; I want you to go
by what you have seen yourself. I remember there were things you told
me that weren’t bad in their way.” And at this Paul Muniment sprang to
his feet, as if their conversation had drawn to an end, or they must at
all events be thinking of their homeward way. Hyacinth got up, too,
while his companion stood there. Muniment was looking off toward
London, with a face that expressed all the healthy singleness of his
vision. Suddenly Paul remarked, as if it occurred to him to complete,
or at any rate confirm, the declaration he had made a short time
before, “Yes, I don’t believe in the millennium, but I do believe in
the democracy.”
The young man, as he spoke these words, struck his comrade as such a
fine embodiment of the spirit of the people; he stood there, in his
powerful, sturdy newness, with such an air of having learnt what he had
learnt and of good-nature that had purposes in it, that our hero felt
the simple inrush of his old, frequent pride at having a person of that
promise, a nature of that capacity, for a friend. He passed his hand
into Muniment’s arm and said, with an imperceptible tremor in his
voice, “It’s no use your saying I’m not to go by what you tell me. I
would go by what you tell me, anywhere. There’s no awkwardness to speak
of. I don’t know that I believe exactly what you believe, but I believe
in you, and doesn’t that come to the same thing?”
Muniment evidently appreciated the cordiality and candour of this
little tribute, and the way he showed it was by a movement of his arm,
to check his companion, before they started to leave the spot, and by
looking down at him with a certain anxiety of friendliness. “I should
never have taken you to Hoffendahl if I hadn’t thought you would jump
at the job. It was that flaring little oration of yours, at the club,
when you floored Delancey for saying you were afraid, that put me up to
it.”
“I did jump at it—upon my word I did; and it was just what I was
looking for. That’s all correct!” said Hyacinth, cheerfully, as they
went forward. There was a strain of heroism in these words—of heroism
of which the sense was not conveyed to Muniment by a vibration in their
interlocked arms. Hyacinth did not make the reflection that he was
infernally literal; he dismissed the sentimental problem that had
bothered him; he condoned, excused, admired—he merged himself, resting
happy for the time in the consciousness that Paul was a grand fellow,
that friendship was a purer feeling than love, and that there was an
immense deal of affection between them. He did not even observe at that
moment that it was preponderantly on his own side.