He had no intention of going in the evening to Madeira Crescent, and
that is why he asked his companion, before they separated, if he might
not see her again, after tea. The evenings were bitter to him now, and
he feared them in advance. The darkness had become a haunted element;
it had visions for him that passed even before his closed eyes—sharp
doubts and fears and suspicions, suggestions of evil, revelations of
suffering. He wanted company, to light up his gloom, and this had
driven him back to Millicent, in a manner not altogether consistent
with the respect which it was still his theory that he owed to his
nobler part. He felt no longer free to drop in at the Crescent, and
tried to persuade himself, in case his mistrust should be overdone,
that his reasons were reasons of magnanimity. If Paul Muniment were
seriously occupied with the Princess, if they had work in hand for
which their most earnest attention was required (and Sunday was very
likely to be the day they would take: they had spent so much of the
previous Sunday together), it would be delicate on his part to stay
away, to leave his friend a clear field. There was something
inexpressibly representative to him in the way that friend had abruptly
decided to re-enter the house, after pausing outside with its mistress,
at the moment he himself stood peering through the fog with the Prince.
The movement repeated itself innumerable times, to his moral
perception, suggesting to him things that he couldn’t bear to learn.
Hyacinth was afraid of being jealous, even after he had become so, and
to prove to himself that he was not he had gone to see the Princess one
evening in the middle of the week. Hadn’t he wanted Paul to know her,
months and months before, and now was he to entertain a vile feeling at
the first manifestation of an intimacy which rested, in each party to
it, upon aspirations that he respected? The Princess had not been at
home, and he had turned away from the door without asking for Madame
Grandoni; he had not forgotten that on the occasion of his previous
visit she had excused herself from remaining in the drawing-room. After
the little maid in the Crescent had told him the Princess was out he
walked away with a quick curiosity—a curiosity which, if he had
listened to it, would have led him to mount upon the first omnibus that
travelled in the direction of Camberwell. Was Paul Muniment, who was
such a rare one, in general, for stopping at home of an evening—was he
also out, and would Rosy, in this case, be in the humour to mention
(for of course she would know) where he had gone? Hyacinth let the
omnibus pass, for he suddenly became aware, with a throb of horror,
that he was in danger of playing the spy. He had not been near Muniment
since, on purpose to leave his curiosity unsatisfied. He allowed
himself however to notice that the Princess had now not written him a
word of consolation, as she had been so kind as to do once or twice
before when he had knocked at her door without finding her. At present
he had missed her twice in succession, and yet she had given no sign of
regret—regret even on his own behalf. This determined him to stay away
awhile longer; it was such a proof that she was absorbingly occupied.
Hyacinth’s glimpse of the Princess in earnest conversation with
Muniment as they returned from the excursion described by the Prince,
his memory of Paul’s relenting figure crossing the threshold once more,
could leave him no doubt as to the degree of that absorption.
Millicent hesitated when Hyacinth proposed to her that they should
finish the day together. She smiled, and her splendid eyes rested on
his with an air of indulgent interrogation; they seemed to ask whether
it were worth her while, in face of his probable incredulity, to
mention the _real_ reason why she could not have the pleasure of
acceding to his delightful suggestion. Since he would be sure to deride
her explanation, would not some trumped-up excuse do as well, since he
could knock that about without hurting her? I know not exactly in what
sense Miss Henning decided; but she confessed at last that there _was_
an odious obstacle to their meeting again later—a promise she had made
to go and see a young lady, the forewoman of her department, who was
kept in-doors with a bad face, and nothing in life to help her pass the
time. She was under a pledge to spend the evening with her, and it was
not her way to disappoint an expectation. Hyacinth made no comment on
this speech; he received it in silence, looking at the girl gloomily.
“I know what’s passing in your mind!” Millicent suddenly broke out.
“Why don’t you say it at once, and give me a chance to contradict it? I
oughtn’t to care, but I do care!”
“Stop, stop—don’t let us fight!” Hyacinth spoke in a tone of pleading
weariness; she had never heard just that accent before.
Millicent considered a moment. “I’ve a mind to play her false. She is a
real lady, highly connected, and the best friend I have—I don’t count
men,” the girl interpolated, smiling—“and there isn’t one in the world
I’d do such a thing for but you.”
“No, keep your promise; don’t play any one false,” said Hyacinth.
“Well, you _are_ a gentleman!” Miss Henning murmured, with a sweetness
that her voice occasionally took.
“Especially—” Hyacinth began; but he suddenly stopped.
“Especially what? Something impudent, I’ll engage! Especially as you
don’t believe me?”
“Oh, no! Don’t let’s fight!” he repeated.
“Fight, my darling? I’d fight _for_ you!” Miss Henning declared.
Hyacinth offered himself, after tea, the choice between a visit to Lady
Aurora and a pilgrimage to Lisson Grove. He was in a little doubt about
the former experiment, having an idea that her ladyship’s family might
have returned to Belgrave Square. He reflected, however, that he could
not recognise that as a reason for not going to see her; his relations
with her were not clandestine, and she had given him the kindest
general invitation. If her august progenitors were at home she was
probably at dinner with them; he would take that risk. He had taken it
before, without disastrous results. He was determined not to spend the
evening alone, and he would keep the Poupins as a more substantial
alternative, in case her ladyship should not be able to receive him.
As soon as the great portal in Belgrave Square was drawn open before
him, he perceived that the house was occupied and animated—if the
latter term might properly be applied to a place which had hitherto
given Hyacinth the impression of a magnificent mausoleum. It was
pervaded by subdued light and tall domestics; Hyacinth found himself
looking down a kind of colonnade of colossal footmen, an array more
imposing even than the retinue of the Princess at Medley. His inquiry
died away on his lips, and he stood there struggling with dumbness. It
was manifest to him that some high festival was taking place, at which
his presence could only be deeply irrelevant; and when a large
official, out of livery, bending over him for a voice that faltered,
suggested, not unencouragingly, that it might be Lady Aurora he wished
to see, he replied in a low, melancholy accent, “Yes, yes, but it can’t
be possible!” The butler took no pains to controvert this proposition
verbally; he merely turned round, with a majestic air of leading the
way, and as at the same moment two of the footmen closed the wings of
the door behind the visitor, Hyacinth judged that it was his cue to
follow him. In this manner, after traversing a passage where, in the
perfect silence of the servants, he heard the shorter click of his
plebeian shoes upon a marble floor, he found himself ushered into a
small apartment, lighted by a veiled lamp, which, when he had been left
there alone, without further remark on the part of his conductor, he
recognised as the scene—only now more amply decorated—of one of his
former interviews. Lady Aurora kept him waiting a few moments, and then
fluttered in with an anxious, incoherent apology. The same
transformation had taken place in her own appearance as in the aspect
of her parental halls: she had on a light-coloured, crumpled-looking,
faintly-rustling dress; her head was adorned with a kind of languid
plume, terminating in little pink tips; and in her hand she carried a
pair of white gloves. All her repressed eagerness was in her face, and
she smiled as if she wished to anticipate any scruples or
embarrassments on the part of her visitor; frankly recognising the
brilliancy of her attire and the startling implications it might
convey. Hyacinth said to her that, no doubt, on perceiving her family
had returned to town, he ought to have backed out; he knew that must
make a difference in her life. But he had been marched in, in spite of
himself, and now it was clear that he had interrupted her at dinner.
She answered that no one who asked for her at any hour was ever turned
away; she had managed to arrange that, and she was very happy in her
success. She didn’t usually dine—there were so many of them, and it
took so long. Most of her friends couldn’t come at visiting-hours, and
it wouldn’t be right that she shouldn’t ever receive them. On that
occasion she _had_ been dining, but it was all over; she was only
sitting there because she was going to a party. Her parents were dining
out, and she was just in the drawing-room with some of her sisters.
When they were alone it wasn’t so long, though it was rather long
afterwards, when they went up again. It wasn’t time yet: the carriage
wouldn’t come for nearly half an hour. She hadn’t been to an evening
thing for months and months, but—didn’t he know?—one sometimes had to
do it. Lady Aurora expressed the idea that one ought to be fair all
round and that one’s duties were not all of the same species; some of
them would come up from time to time that were quite different from the
others. Of course it wasn’t just, unless one did all, and that was why
she was in for something to-night. It was nothing of consequence; only
the family meeting the family, as they might do of a Sunday, at one of
their houses. It was there that papa and mamma were dining. Since they
had given her that room for any hour she wanted (it was really
tremendously convenient), she had determined to do a party now and
then, like a respectable young woman, because it pleased them—though
why it should, to see _her_ at a place, was more than she could
imagine. She supposed it was because it would perhaps keep some people,
a little, from thinking she was mad and not safe to be at large—which
was of course a sort of thing that people didn’t like to have thought
of their belongings. Lady Aurora explained and expatiated with a kind
of nervous superabundance; she talked more continuously than Hyacinth
had ever heard her do before, and the young man saw that she was not in
her natural equilibrium. He thought it scarcely probable that she was
excited by the simple prospect of again dipping into the great world
she had forsworn, and he presently perceived that he himself had an
agitating effect upon her. His senses were fine enough to make him feel
that he revived certain associations and quickened certain wounds. She
suddenly stopped talking, and the two sat there looking at each other,
in a kind of occult community of suffering. Hyacinth made several
mechanical remarks, explaining, insufficiently, why he had come, and in
the course of a very few moments, quite independently of these
observations, it seemed to him that there was a deeper, a measurelessly
deep, confidence between them. A tacit confession passed and repassed,
and each understood the situation of the other. They wouldn’t speak of
it—it was very definite that they would never do that; for there was
something in their common consciousness that was inconsistent with the
grossness of accusation. Besides, the grievance of each was an
apprehension, an instinct of the soul—not a sharp, definite wrong,
supported by proof. It was in the air and in their restless pulses, and
not in anything that they could exhibit or complain of. Strange enough
it seemed to Hyacinth that the history of each should be the
counterpart of that of the other. What had each done but lose that
which he or she had never had? Things had gone ill with them; but even
if they had gone well, if the Princess had not combined with his friend
in that manner which made his heart sink and produced an effect exactly
corresponding upon that of Lady Aurora—even in this case what would
prosperity, what would success, have amounted to? They would have been
very barren. He was sure the singular creature before him would never
have had a chance to take the unprecedented social step for the sake of
which she was ready to go forth from Belgrave Square for ever; Hyacinth
had judged the smallness of Paul Muniment’s appetite for that
complication sufficiently to have begun really to pity her ladyship
long ago. And now, even when he most felt the sweetness of her
sympathy, he might wonder what she could have imagined for him in the
event of his not having been supplanted—what security, what completer
promotion, what honourable, satisfying sequel. They were unhappy
because they were unhappy, and they were right not to rail about that.
“Oh, I like to see you—I like to talk with you,” said Lady Aurora,
simply. They talked for a quarter of an hour, and he made her such a
visit as any gentleman might have made to any lady. They exchanged
remarks about the lateness of the spring, about the loan-exhibition at
Burlington House—which Hyacinth had paid his shilling to see—about the
question of opening the museums on Sunday, about the danger of too much
coddling legislation on behalf of the working-classes. He declared that
it gave him great pleasure to see any sign of her amusing herself; it
was unnatural never to do that, and he hoped that now she had taken a
turn she would keep it up. At this she looked down, smiling, at her
frugal finery, and then she replied, “I dare say I shall begin to go to
balls—who knows?”
“That’s what our friends in Audley Court think, you know—that it’s the
worst mistake you can make, not to drink deep of the cup while you have
it.”
“Oh, I’ll do it, then—I’ll do it for them!” Lady Aurora exclaimed. “I
dare say that, as regards all that, I haven’t listened to them enough.”
This was the only allusion that passed on the subject of the Muniments.
Hyacinth got up—he had stayed long enough, as she was going out; and as
he held out his hand to her she seemed to him a heroine. She would try
to cultivate the pleasures of her class if the brother and sister in
Camberwell thought it right—try even to be a woman of fashion in order
to console herself. Paul Muniment didn’t care for her, but she was
capable of considering that it might be her duty to regulate her life
by the very advice that made an abyss between them. Hyacinth didn’t
believe in the success of this attempt; there passed before his
imagination a picture of the poor lady coming home and pulling off her
feathers for ever, after an evening spent in watching the agitation of
a ball-room from the outer edge of the circle, with a white,
irresponsive face. “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” he
said, laughing.
“Oh, I don’t mind dying.”
“I think I do,” Hyacinth declared, as he turned away. There had been no
mention whatever of the Princess.
It was early enough in the evening for him to risk a visit to Lisson
Grove; he calculated that the Poupins would still be sitting up. When
he reached their house he found this calculation justified; the
brilliancy of the light in the window appeared to announce that Madame
was holding a salon. He ascended to this apartment without delay (it
was free to a visitor to open the house-door himself), and, having
knocked, obeyed the hostess’s invitation to enter. Poupin and his wife
were seated, with a third person, at a table in the middle of the room,
round a staring kerosene lamp adorned with a globe of clear glass, of
which the transparency was mitigated only by a circular pattern of
bunches of grapes. The third person was his friend Schinkel, who had
been a member of the little party that waited upon Hoffendahl. No one
said anything as Hyacinth came in; but in their silence the three
others got up, looking at him, as he thought, rather strangely.