On Saturday afternoons Paul Muniment was able to leave his work at four
o’clock, and on one of these occasions, some time after his visit to
Madeira Crescent, he came into Rosy’s room at about five, carefully
dressed and brushed, and ruddy with the freshness of an abundant
washing. He stood at the foot of her sofa, with a conscious smile,
knowing how she chaffed him when his necktie was new; and after a
moment, during which she ceased singing to herself as she twisted the
strands of her long black hair together and let her eyes travel over
his whole person, inspecting every detail, she said to him, “My dear Mr
Muniment, you are going to see the Princess.”
“Well, have you anything to say against it?” Mr Muniment asked.
“Not a word; you know I like princesses. But you have.”
“Well, my girl, I’ll not speak it to you,” the young man rejoined.
“There’s something to be said against everything, if you’ll give
yourself trouble enough.”
“I should be very sorry if ever anything was said against you.”
“The man’s a sneak who is only and always praised,” Muniment remarked.
“If you didn’t hope to be finely abused, where would be the
encouragement?”
“Ay, but not with reason,” said Rosy, who always brightened to an
argument.
“The better the reason, the greater the incentive to expose one’s self.
However, you won’t hear it, if people do heave bricks at me.”
“I won’t hear it? Pray, don’t I hear everything? I should like any one
to keep anything from _me!_” And Miss Muniment gave a toss of her
recumbent head.
“There’s a good deal I keep from you, my dear,” said Paul, rather
dryly.
“You mean there are things I don’t want, I don’t take any trouble, to
know. Indeed and indeed there are: things that I wouldn’t know for the
world—that no amount of persuasion would induce me, not if you was to
go down on your knees. But if I did—if I did, I promise you that just
as I lie here I should have them all in my pocket. Now there are
others,” the young woman went on—“there are others that you will just
be so good as to tell me. When the Princess asked you to come and see
her you refused, and you wanted to know what good it would do. I hoped
you would go, then; I should have liked you to go, because I wanted to
know how she lived, and whether she had things handsome, or only in the
poor way she said. But I didn’t push you, because I couldn’t have told
you what good it _would_ do you: that was only the good it would have
done me. At present I have heard everything from Lady Aurora, and I
know that it’s all quite decent and tidy (though not really like a
princess a bit), and that she knows how to turn everything about and
put it best end foremost, just as I do, like, though _I_ oughtn’t to
say it, no doubt. Well, you have been, and more than once, and I have
had nothing to do with it; of which I am very glad now, for reasons
that you perfectly know—you’re too honest a man to pretend you don’t.
Therefore, when I see you going again, I just inquire of you, as you
inquired of her, what good _does_ it do you?”
“I like it—I like it, my dear,” said Paul, with his fresh,
unembarrassed smile.
“I dare say you do. So should I, in your place. But it’s the first time
I have heard you express the idea that we ought to do everything we
like.”
“Why not, when it doesn’t hurt any one else?”
“Oh, Mr Muniment, Mr Muniment!” Rosy exclaimed, with exaggerated
solemnity, holding up a straight, attenuated forefinger at him. Then
she added, “No, she doesn’t do you good, that beautiful, brilliant
woman.”
“Give her time, my dear—give her time,” said Paul, looking at his
watch.
“Of course you are impatient, but you _must_ hear me. I have no doubt
she’ll wait for you; you won’t lose your turn. Please, what would you
do if any one was to break down altogether?”
“My bonny lassie,” the young man rejoined, “if _you_ only keep going, I
don’t care who fails.”
“Oh, I shall keep going, if it’s only to look after my friends and get
justice for them,” said Miss Muniment—“the delicate, sensitive
creatures who require support and protection. Have you really forgotten
that we have such a one as that?”
The young man walked to the window, with his hands in his pockets, and
looked out at the fading light. “Why does she go herself, then, if she
doesn’t like her?”
Rose Muniment hesitated a moment. “Well, I’m glad I’m not a man!” she
broke out. “I think a woman on her back is cleverer than a man on his
two legs. And you such a wonderful one, too!”
“You are all too clever for me, my dear. If she goes—and twenty times a
week, too—why shouldn’t I go, once in ever so long? Especially as I
like her, and Lady Aurora doesn’t.”
“Lady Aurora doesn’t? Do you think she’d be guilty of hypocrisy? Lady
Aurora delights in her; she won’t let me say that she herself is fit to
dust the Princess’s shoes. I needn’t tell _you_ how she goes down
before them she likes. And I don’t believe you care a button; you have
got something in your head, some wicked game or other, that you think
she can hatch for you.”
At this Paul Muniment turned round and looked at his sister a moment,
smiling still and whistling just audibly. “Why shouldn’t I care? Ain’t
I soft, ain’t I susceptible?”
“I never thought I should hear you ask that, after what I have seen
these four years. For four years she has come, and it’s all for you, as
well it might be, and you never showing any more sense of what she’d be
willing to do for you than if you had been that woollen cat on the
hearth-rug!”
“What would you like me to do? Would you like me to hang round her neck
and hold her hand, the same as you do?” Muniment asked.
“Yes, it would do me good, I can tell you. It’s better than what I
see—the poor lady getting spotted and dim, like a mirror that wants
rubbing.”
“You know a good deal, Rosy, but you don’t know everything,” Muniment
remarked in a moment, with a face that gave no sign of seeing a reason
in what she said. “Your mind is too poetical. There’s nothing that I
should care for that her ladyship would be willing to do for me.”
“She would marry you at a day’s notice—she’d do that.”
“I shouldn’t care for that. Besides, if I was to ask her she would
never come into the place again. And I shouldn’t care for that, for
you.”
“Never mind me; I’ll take the risk!” cried Rosy, gaily.
“But what’s to be gained, if I can have her, for you, without any
risk?”
“You won’t have her for me, or for any one, when she’s dead of a broken
heart.”
“Dead of a broken tea-cup!” said the young man. “And, pray, what should
we live on, when you had got us set up?—the three of us, without
counting the kids.”
He evidently was arguing from pure good-nature, and not in the least
from curiosity; but his sister replied as eagerly as if he would be
floored by her answer: “Hasn’t she got two hundred a year of her own?
Don’t I know every penny of her affairs?”
Paul Muniment gave no sign of any mental criticism he may have made on
Rosy’s conception of the delicate course, or of a superior policy;
perhaps, indeed, for it is perfectly possible, her inquiry did not
strike him as having a mixture of motives. He only rejoined, with a
little pleasant, patient sigh, “I don’t want the dear old girl’s
money.”
His sister, in spite of her eagerness, waited twenty seconds; then she
flashed at him, “Pray, do you like the Princess’s better?”
“If I did, there would be more of it,” he answered, quietly.
“How can she marry you? Hasn’t she got a husband?” Rosy cried.
“Lord, how you give me away!” laughed her brother. “Daughters of earls,
wives of princes—I have only to pick.”
“I don’t speak of the Princess, so long as there’s a prince. But if you
haven’t seen that Lady Aurora is a beautiful, wonderful exception, and
quite unlike any one else in all the wide world—well, all I can say is
that _I_ have.”
“I thought it was your opinion,” Paul objected, “that the swells should
remain swells, and the high ones keep their place.”
“And, pray, would she lose hers if she were to marry you?”
“Her place at Inglefield, certainly,” said Paul, as patiently as if his
sister could never tire him with any insistence or any minuteness.
“Hasn’t she lost that already? Does she ever go there?”
“Surely you appear to think so, from the way you always question her
about it,” replied Paul.
“Well, they think her so mad already that they can’t think her any
madder,” his sister continued. “They have given her up, and if she were
to marry you—”
“If she were to marry me, they wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot
pole,” Paul broke in.
Rosy flinched a moment; then she said, serenely, “Oh, I don’t care for
that!”
“You ought to, to be consistent, though, possibly, she shouldn’t,
admitting that she wouldn’t. You have more imagination than logic—which
of course, for a woman, is quite right. That’s what makes you say that
her ladyship is in affliction because I go to a place that she herself
goes to without the least compulsion.”
“She goes to keep you off,” said Rosy, with decision.
“To keep me off?”
“To interpose, with the Princess; to be nice to her and conciliate her,
so that she may not take you.”
“Did she tell you any such rigmarole as that?” Paul inquired, this time
staring a little.
“Do I need to be told things, to know them? I am not a fine, strong,
superior male; therefore I can discover them for myself,” answered
Rosy, with a dauntless little laugh and a light in her eyes which might
indeed have made it appear that she was capable of wizardry.
“You make her out at once too passionate and too calculating,” the
young man rejoined. “She has no personal feelings, she wants nothing
for herself. She only wants one thing in the world—to make the poor a
little less poor.”
“Precisely; and she regards you, a helpless, blundering bachelor, as
one of them.”
“She knows I am not helpless so long as you are about the place, and
that my blunders don’t matter so long as you correct them.”
“She wants to assist me to assist you, then!” the girl exclaimed, with
the levity with which her earnestness was always interfused; it was a
spirit that seemed, at moments, in argument, to mock at her own
contention. “Besides, isn’t that the very thing you want to bring
about?” she went on. “Isn’t that what you are plotting and working and
waiting for? She wants to throw herself into it—to work with you.”
“My dear girl, she doesn’t understand a pennyworth of what I think. She
couldn’t if she would.”
“And no more do I, I suppose you mean.”
“No more do you; but with you it’s different. If you would, you could.
However, it matters little who understands and who doesn’t, for there’s
mighty little of it. I’m not doing much, you know.”
Rosy lay there looking up at him. “It must be pretty thick, when you
talk that way. However, I don’t care what happens, for I know I shall
be looked after.”
“Nothing will happen—nothing will happen,” Paul remarked, simply.
The girl’s rejoinder to this was to say in a moment, “You have a
different tone since you have taken up the Princess.”
She spoke with a certain severity, but he broke out, as if he had not
heard her, “I like your idea of the female aristocracy quarrelling over
a dirty brute like me.”
“I don’t know how dirty you are, but I know you smell of soap,” said
Rosy, with serenity. “They won’t quarrel; that’s not the way they do
it. Yes, you are taking a different tone, for some purpose that I can’t
discover just yet.”
“What do you mean by that? When did I ever take a tone?” her brother
asked.
“Why then do you speak as if you were not remarkable, immensely
remarkable—more remarkable than anything any one, male or female, good
or bad, of the aristocracy or of the vulgar sort, can ever do for you?”
“What on earth have I ever done to show it?” Paul demanded.
“Oh, I don’t know your secrets, and that’s one of them. But we’re out
of the common beyond any one, you and I, and, between ourselves, with
the door fastened, we might as well admit it.”
“I admit it for you, with all my heart,” said the young man, laughing.
“Well, then, if I admit it for you, that’s all that’s required.”
The brother and sister considered each other a while in silence, as if
each were tasting, agreeably, the distinction the other conferred; then
Muniment said, “If I’m such an awfully superior chap, why shouldn’t I
behave in keeping?”
“Oh, you do, you do!”
“All the same, you don’t like it.”
“It isn’t so much what you do; it’s what _she_ does.”
“How do you mean, what she does?”
“She makes Lady Aurora suffer.”
“Oh, I can’t go into that,” said Paul. “A man feels like a muff,
talking about the women that ‘suffer’ for him.”
“Well, if they do it, I think _you_ might bear it!” Rosy exclaimed.
“That’s what a man is. When it comes to being sorry, oh, that’s too
ridiculous!”
“There are plenty of things in the world I’m sorry for,” Paul rejoined,
smiling. “One of them is that you should keep me gossiping here when I
want to go out.”
“Oh, I don’t care if I worry her a little. Does she do it on purpose?”
Rosy continued.
“You ladies must settle all that together,” Muniment answered, rubbing
his hat with the cuff of his coat. It was a new one, the bravest he had
ever possessed, and in a moment he put it on his head, as if to
reinforce his reminder to his sister that it was time she should
release him.
“Well, you do look genteel,” she remarked, complacently, gazing up at
him. “No wonder she has lost her head! I mean the Princess,” she
explained. “You never went to any such expense for her ladyship.”
“My dear, the Princess is worth it—she’s worth it,” said the young man,
speaking seriously now, and reflectively.
“Will she help you very much?” Rosy demanded, with a strange, sudden
transition to eagerness.
“Well,” said Paul, “that’s rather what I look for.”
She threw herself forward on her sofa, with a movement that was rare
with her, and shaking her clasped hands she exclaimed, “Then go off, go
off quickly!”
He came round and kissed her, as if he were not more struck than usual
with her freakish inconsequence. “It’s not bad to have a little person
at home who wants a fellow to succeed.”
“Oh, I know they will look after me,” she said, sinking back upon her
pillow with an air of agreeable security.
He was aware that whenever she said ‘they’, without further
elucidation, she meant the populace surging up in his rear, and he
rejoined, always hilarious, “I don’t think we’ll leave it much to
‘them’.”
“No, it’s not much you’ll leave to them, I’ll be bound.”
He gave a louder laugh at this, and said, “You’re the deepest of the
lot, Miss Muniment.”
Her eyes kindled at his praise, and as she rested them on her brother’s
she murmured, “Well, I pity the poor Princess, too, you know.”
“Well, now, I’m not conceited, but I don’t,” Paul returned, passing in
front of the little mirror on the mantel-shelf.
“Yes, you’ll succeed, and so shall I—but _she_ won’t,” Rosy went on.
Muniment stopped a moment, with his hand on the latch of the door, and
said, gravely, almost sententiously, “She is not only beautiful, as
beautiful as a picture, but she is uncommon sharp, and she has taking
ways, beyond anything that ever was known.”
“I know her ways,” his sister replied. Then, as he left the room, she
called after him, “But I don’t care for anything, so long as you become
prime minister of England!”
Three quarters of an hour after this Muniment knocked at the door in
Madeira Crescent, and was immediately ushered into the parlour, where
the Princess, in her bonnet and mantle, sat alone. She made no movement
as he came in; she only looked up at him with a smile.
“You are braver than I gave you credit for,” she said, in her rich
voice.
“I shall learn to be brave, if I associate a while longer with you. But
I shall never cease to be shy,” Muniment added, standing there and
looking tall in the middle of the small room. He cast his eyes about
him for a place to sit down, but the Princess gave him no help to
choose; she only watched him, in silence, from her own place, with her
hands quietly folded in her lap. At last, when, without remonstrance
from her, he had selected the most uncomfortable chair in the room, she
replied—
“That’s only another name for desperate courage. I put on my bonnet, on
the chance, but I didn’t expect you.”
“Well, here I am—that’s the great thing,” Muniment said,
good-humouredly.
“Yes, no doubt it’s a very great thing. But it will be a still greater
thing when you are there.”
“I am afraid you hope too much,” the young man observed. “Where is it?
I don’t think you told me.”
The Princess drew a small folded letter from her pocket, and, without
saying anything, held it out to him. He got up to take it from her,
opened it, and, as he read it, remained standing in front of her. Then
he went straight to the fire and thrust the paper into it. At this
movement she rose quickly, as if to save the document, but the
expression of his face, as he turned round to her, made her stop. The
smile that came into her own was a little forced. “What are you afraid
of?” she asked. “I take it the house is known. If we go, I suppose we
may admit that we go.”
Muniment’s face showed that he had been annoyed, but he answered,
quietly enough, “No writing—no writing.”
“You are terribly careful,” said the Princess.
“Careful of you—yes.”
She sank down upon her sofa again, asking her companion to ring for
tea; they would do much better to have some before going out. When the
order had been given, she remarked, “I see I shall have much less keen
emotion than when I acted by myself.”
“Is that what you go in for—keen emotion?”
“Surely, Mr Muniment. Don’t you?”
“God forbid! I hope to have as little of it as possible.”
“Of course one doesn’t want any vague rodomontade; one wants to do
something. But it would be hard if one couldn’t have a little pleasure
by the way.”
“My pleasure is in quietness,” said Paul Muniment, smiling.
“So is mine. But it depends on how you understand it. Quietness, I
mean, in the midst of a tumult.”
“You have rare ideas about tumults. They are not good in themselves.”
The Princess considered this a moment; then she remarked, “I wonder if
you are too prudent. I shouldn’t like that. If it is made an accusation
against you that you have been—where we are going—shall you deny it?”
“With that prospect it would be simpler not to go at all, wouldn’t it?”
Muniment inquired.
“Which prospect do you mean? That of being found out, or that of having
to lie?”
“I suppose that if you lie you are not found out,” Muniment replied,
humorously.
“You won’t take me seriously,” said the Princess. She spoke without
irritation, without resentment, with a kind of resigned sadness. But
there was a certain fineness of reproach in the tone in which she
added, “I don’t believe you want to go at all.”
“Why else should I have come, especially if I don’t take you
seriously?”
“That has never been a reason for a man’s not going to see a woman,”
said the Princess. “It’s usually a reason in favour of it.”
Muniment turned his smiling eyes over the room, looking from one
article of furniture to another: this was a way he had when he was
engaged in a discussion, and it suggested not so much that he was
reflecting on what his interlocutor said as that his thoughts were
pursuing a cheerfully independent course. Presently he observed, “I
don’t know that I quite understand what you mean by that question of
taking a woman seriously.”
“Ah, you are very perfect,” murmured the Princess. “Don’t you consider
that the changes you look for will be also for our benefit?”
“I don’t think they will alter your position.”
“If I didn’t hope for that, I wouldn’t do anything,” said the Princess.
“Oh, I have no doubt you’ll do a great deal.”
The young man’s companion was silent for some minutes, during which he
also was content to say nothing. “I wonder you can find it in your
conscience to work with me,” she observed at last.
“It isn’t in my conscience I find it,” said Muniment, laughing.
The maid-servant brought in the tea, and while the Princess was making
a place for it on a little table beside her she exclaimed, “Well, I
don’t care, for I think I have you in my power!”
“You have every one in your power,” returned Muniment.
“Every one is no one,” the Princess replied, rather dryly; and a moment
later she said to him, “That extraordinary little sister of
yours—surely you take _her_ seriously?”
“I’m wonderful fond of her, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t think
her position will ever be altered.”
“Are you alluding to her position in bed? If you consider that she will
never recover her health,” the Princess said, “I am very sorry to hear
it.”
“Oh, her health will do. I mean that she will continue to be, like all
the most amiable women, just a kind of ornament to life.”
The Princess had already perceived that he pronounced amiable
‘emiable’; but she had accepted this peculiarity of her visitor in the
spirit of imaginative transfigurement in which she had accepted several
others. “To your life, of course. She can hardly be said to be an
ornament to her own.”
“Her life and mine are all one.”
“She is certainly magnificent,” said the Princess. While he was
drinking his tea she remarked to him that for a revolutionist he was
certainly most extraordinary; and he inquired, in answer, whether it
were not rather in keeping for revolutionists to be extraordinary. He
drank three cups, declaring that his hostess’s decoction was fine; it
was better, even, than Lady Aurora’s. This led him to observe, as he
put down his third cup, looking round the room again, lovingly, almost
covetously, “You’ve got everything so handy, I don’t see what interest
you can have.”
“How do you mean, what interest?”
“In getting in so uncommon deep.”
On the instant the Princess’s expression flashed into pure passion. “Do
you consider that I am in—really far?”
“Up to your neck, ma’am.”
“And do you think that _il y va_ of my neck—I mean that it’s in
danger?” she translated, eagerly.
“Oh, I understand your French. Well, I’ll look after you,” Muniment
said.
“Remember, then, definitely, that I expect not to lie.”
“Not even for me?” Then Muniment added, in the same familiar tone,
which was not rough nor wanting in respect, but only homely and direct,
suggestive of growing acquaintance, “If I was your husband I would come
and take you away.”
“Please don’t speak of my husband,” said the Princess, gravely. “You
have no qualification for doing so; you know nothing whatever about
him.”
“I know what Hyacinth has told me.”
“Oh, Hyacinth!” the Princess murmured, impatiently. There was another
silence of some minutes, not disconnected, apparently, from this
reference to the little bookbinder; but when Muniment spoke, after the
interval, it was not to carry on the allusion—
“Of course you think me very plain, very rude.”
“Certainly, you have not such a nice address as Hyacinth,” the Princess
rejoined, not desiring, on her side, to evade the topic. “But that is
given to very few,” she added; “and I don’t know that pretty manners
are exactly what we are working for.”
“Ay, it won’t be very endearing when we cut down a few allowances,”
said Muniment. “But I want to please you; I want to be as much as
possible like Hyacinth,” he went on.
“That is not the way to please me. I don’t forgive him; he’s very
silly.”
“Ah, don’t say that; he’s a little brick!” Muniment exclaimed.
“He’s a dear fellow, with extraordinary qualities, but so deplorably
conventional.”
“Yes, talking about taking things seriously—_he_ takes them seriously,”
remarked Muniment.
“Has he ever told you his life?” asked the Princess.
“He hasn’t required to tell me. I’ve seen a good bit of it.”
“Yes, but I mean before you knew him.”
Muniment reflected a moment. “His birth, and his poor mother? I think
it was Rosy told me about that.”
“And, pray, how did _she_ know?”
“Ah, when you come to the way Rosy knows!” said Muniment, laughing.
“She doesn’t like people in that predicament. She thinks we ought all
to be finely born.”
“Then they agree, for so does poor Hyacinth.” The Princess hesitated an
instant; then she said, as if with a quick effort, “I want to ask you
something. Have you had a visit from Mr Vetch?”
“The old gentleman who fiddles? No, he has never done me that honour.”
“It was because I prevented him, then. I told him to leave it to me.”
“To leave what, now?” Muniment looked at her in placid perplexity.
“He is in great distress about Hyacinth—about the danger he runs. You
know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know what you mean,” Muniment replied, slowly. “But what does
_he_ know about it? I thought it was supposed to be a deadly secret.”
“So it is. He doesn’t know anything; he only suspects.”
“How do you know, then?”
The Princess hesitated again. “Oh, I’m like Rosy—I find out. Mr Vetch,
as I suppose you are aware, has known Hyacinth all his life; he takes a
most affectionate interest in him. He believes there is something
hanging over him, and he wants it to be turned off, to be stopped.” The
Princess paused at this, but her visitor made no response, and she
continued: “He was going to see you, to beg you to do something, to
interfere; he seemed to think that your power, in such a matter, would
be very great; but, as I tell you, I requested him, as a particular
favour to me, to let you alone.”
“What favour would it be to you?” Muniment asked.
“It would give me the satisfaction of feeling that you were not
worried.”
Muniment appeared struck with the curious inadequacy of this
explanation, considering what was at stake; he broke into a laugh and
remarked, “That was considerate of you, beyond everything.”
“It was not meant as consideration for you; it was a piece of
calculation.” The Princess, having made this announcement, gathered up
her gloves and turned away, walking to the chimney-piece, where she
stood a moment arranging her bonnet-ribbons in the mirror with which it
was decorated. Muniment watched her with evident curiosity; in spite
both of his inaccessibility to nervous agitation and of the sceptical
theories he entertained about her, he was not proof against her general
faculty of creating a feeling of suspense, a tension of interest, on
the part of those who associated with her. He followed her movements,
but plainly he didn’t follow her calculations, so that he could only
listen more attentively when she inquired suddenly, “Do you know why I
asked you to come and see me? Do you know why I went to see your
sister? It was all a plan,” said the Princess.
“We hoped it was just an ordinary humane, social impulse,” the young
man returned.
“It was humane, it was even social, but it was not ordinary. I wanted
to save Hyacinth.”
“To save him?”
“I wanted to be able to talk with you just as I am talking now.”
“That was a fine idea!” Muniment exclaimed, ingenuously.
“I have an exceeding, a quite inexpressible, regard for him. I have no
patience with some of his opinions, and that is why I permitted myself
to say just now that he is silly. But, after all, the opinions of our
friends are not what we love them for, and therefore I don’t see why
they should be what we hate them for. Hyacinth Robinson’s nature is
singularly generous and his intelligence very fine, though there _are_
some things that he muddles up. You just now expressed strongly your
own regard for him; therefore we ought to be perfectly agreed. Agreed,
I mean, about getting him out of his scrape.”
Muniment had the air of a man who felt that he must consider a little
before he assented to these successive propositions; it being a
limitation of his intellect that he could not respond without
understanding. After a moment he answered, referring to the Princess’s
last remark, in which the others appeared to culminate, and at the same
time shaking his head a little and smiling, “His scrape isn’t
important.”
“You thought it was when you got him into it.”
“I thought it would give him pleasure,” said Muniment.
“That’s not a reason for letting people do what isn’t good for them.”
“I wasn’t thinking so much about what would be good for him as about
what would be bad for some others. He can do as he likes.”
“That’s easy to say. They must be persuaded not to call upon him.”
“Persuade them, then, dear madam.”
“How can I persuade them? If I could, I wouldn’t have approached you. I
have no influence, and even if I had my motives would be suspected. You
are the one to interpose.”
“Shall I tell them he funks it?” Muniment asked.
“He doesn’t—he doesn’t!” exclaimed the Princess.
“On what ground, then, shall I put it?”
“Tell them he has changed his opinions.”
“Wouldn’t that be rather like denouncing him as a traitor, and doing it
hypocritically?”
“Tell them then it’s simply my wish.”
“That won’t do _you_ much good,” Muniment said, with his natural laugh.
“Will it put me in danger? That’s exactly what I want.”
“Yes; but as I understand you, you want to suffer _for_ the people, not
by them. You are very fond of Robinson; it couldn’t be otherwise,” the
young man went on. “But you ought to remember that, in the line you
have chosen, our affections, our natural ties, our timidities, our
shrinkings—” His voice had become low and grave, and he paused a
little, while the Princess’s deep and lovely eyes, attaching themselves
to his face, showed that in an instant she was affected by this
unwonted adjuration. He spoke now as if he were taking her seriously.
“All those things are as nothing, and must never weigh a feather beside
our service.”
The Princess began to draw on her gloves. “You’re a most extraordinary
man.”
“That’s what Rosy tells me.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Do Hyacinth’s job? Because it’s better to do my own.”
“And, pray, what is your own?”
“I don’t know,” said Paul Muniment, with perfect serenity and
good-nature. “I expect to be instructed.”
“Have you taken an oath, like Hyacinth?”
“Ah, madam, the oaths _I_ take I don’t tell,” said the young man,
gravely.
“Oh, you . . .!” the Princess murmured, with an ambiguous cadence. She
appeared to dismiss the question, but to suggest at the same time that
he was very abnormal. This imputation was further conveyed by the next
words she uttered: “And can you see a dear friend whirled away like
that?”
At this, for the first time, Paul Muniment exhibited a certain
irritation. “You had better leave my dear friend to me.”
The Princess, with her eyes still fixed upon him, gave a long, soft
sigh. “Well, then, shall we go?”
Muniment took up his hat again, but he made no movement toward the
door. “If you did me the honour to seek my acquaintance, to ask me to
come and see you, only in order to say what you have just said about
Hyacinth, perhaps we needn’t carry out the form of going to the place
you proposed. Wasn’t this only your pretext?”
“I believe you _are_ afraid!” the Princess exclaimed; but in spite of
her exclamation the pair presently went out of the house. They quitted
the door together, after having stood on the step for a moment, looking
up and down, apparently for a cab. So far as the darkness, which was
now complete, permitted the prospect to be scanned, there was no such
vehicle within hail. They turned to the left, and after a walk of
several minutes, during which they were engaged in small, dull
by-streets, emerged upon a more populous way, where there were lighted
shops and omnibuses and the evident chance of a hansom. Here they
paused again, and very soon an empty hansom passed, and, at a sign,
pulled up near them. Meanwhile, it should be recorded, they had been
followed, at an interval, by a cautious figure, a person who, in
Madeira Crescent, when they came out of the house, was stationed on the
other side of the street, at a considerable distance. When they
appeared he retreated a little, still however keeping them in sight.
When they moved away he moved in the same direction, watching them but
maintaining his distance. He drew nearer, seemingly because he could
not control his eagerness, as they turned into Westbourne Grove, and
during the minute they stood there he was exposed to recognition by the
Princess if she had happened to turn her head. In the event of her
having felt such an impulse she would have discovered, in the
lamp-light, that her noble husband was hovering in her rear. But the
Princess was otherwise occupied; she failed to see that at one moment
he came so close as to suggest that he had an intention of addressing
himself to the couple. The reader scarcely needs to be informed that
his real intention was to satisfy himself as to the kind of person his
wife was walking with. The time allowed him for this research was
brief, especially as he had perceived, more rapidly than he sometimes
perceived things, that they were looking for a vehicle and that with
its assistance they would pass out of his range—a reflection which
caused him to give half his attention to the business of hailing any
second cab which should come that way. There are parts of London in
which you may never see a cab at all, but there are none in which you
may see only one; in accordance with which fortunate truth Prince
Casamassima was able to wave his stick to good purpose as soon as the
two objects of his pursuit had rattled away. Behind them now, in the
gloom, he had no fear of being seen. In little more than an instant he
had jumped into another hansom, the driver of which accompanied the
usual exclamation of “All right, sir!” with a small, amused grunt,
which the Prince thought eminently British, after he had hissed at him,
over the hood, expressively, and in a manner by no means indicative of
that nationality, the injunction, “Follow, follow, follow!”