“I have received a letter from your husband,” Paul Muniment said to the
Princess, the next evening, as soon as he came into the room. He
announced this fact with a kind of bald promptitude and with a
familiarity of manner which showed that his visit was one of a
closely-connected series. The Princess was evidently not a little
surprised by it, and immediately asked how in the world the Prince
could know his address. “Couldn’t it have been by your old lady?”
Muniment inquired. “He must have met her in Paris. It is from Paris
that he writes.”
“What an incorrigible cad!” the Princess exclaimed.
“I don’t see that—for writing to me. I have his letter in my pocket,
and I will show it to you if you like.”
“Thank you, nothing would induce me to touch anything he has touched,”
the Princess replied.
“You touch his money, my dear lady,” Muniment remarked, with the quiet
smile of a man who sees things as they are.
The Princess hesitated a little. “Yes, I make an exception for that,
because it hurts him, it makes him suffer.”
“I should think, on the contrary, it would gratify him by showing you
in a condition of weakness and dependence.”
“Not when he knows I don’t use it for myself. What exasperates him is
that it is devoted to ends that he hates almost as much as he hates me
and yet which he can’t call selfish.”
“He doesn’t hate you,” said Muniment, with that tone of pleasant
reasonableness that he used when he was most imperturbable. “His letter
satisfies me of that.” The Princess stared, at this, and asked him what
he was coming to—whether he was leading up to advising her to go back
and live with her husband. “I don’t know that I would go so far as to
advise,” he replied; “when I have so much benefit from seeing you here,
on your present footing, that wouldn’t sound well. But I’ll just make
bold to prophesy that you will go before very long.”
“And on what does that extraordinary prediction rest?”
“On this plain fact—that you will have nothing to live upon. You
decline to read the Prince’s letter, but if you were to look at it it
would give you evidence of what I mean. He informs me that I need count
upon no more supplies from your hands, as you yourself will receive no
more.”
“He addresses you that way, in plain terms?”
“I can’t call them very plain, because the letter is written in French,
and I naturally have had a certain difficulty in making it out, in
spite of my persevering study of the tongue and the fine example set me
by poor Robinson. But that appears to be the gist of the matter.”
“And you can repeat such an insult to me without the smallest apparent
discomposure? You’re the most remarkable man!” the Princess broke out.
“Why is it an insult? It is the simple truth. I do take your money,”
said Paul Muniment.
“You take it for a sacred cause; you don’t take it for yourself.”
“The Prince isn’t obliged to look at that,” Muniment rejoined,
laughing.
His companion was silent for a moment; then, “I didn’t know you were on
his side,” she replied, gently.
“Oh, you know on what side I am!”
“What does he know? What business has he to address you so?”
“I suppose he knows from Madame Grandoni. She has told him that I have
great influence upon you.”
“She was welcome to tell him that!” the Princess exclaimed.
“His reasoning, therefore, has been that when I find you have nothing
more to give to the cause I will let you go.”
“Nothing more? And does he count _me_, myself, and every pulse of my
being, every capacity of my nature, as nothing?” the Princess cried,
with shining eyes.
“Apparently he thinks that I do.”
“Oh, as for that, after all, I have known that you care far more for my
money than for me. But it has made no difference to me,” said the
Princess.
“Then you see that by your own calculation the Prince is right.”
“My dear sir,” Muniment’s hostess replied, “my interest in you never
depended on your interest in me. It depended wholly on a sense of your
great destinies. I suppose that what you began to tell me is that he
stops my allowance.”
“From the first of next month. He has taken legal advice. It is now
clear—so he tells me—that you forfeit your settlements.”
“Can I not take legal advice, too?” the Princess asked. “Surely I can
contest that. I can forfeit my settlements only by an act of my own.
The act that led to our separation was _his_ act; he turned me out of
his house by physical violence.”
“Certainly,” said Muniment, displaying even in this simple discussion
his easy aptitude for argument; “but since then there have been acts of
your own—” He stopped a moment, smiling; then he went on: “Your whole
connection with a secret society constitutes an act, and so does your
exercise of the pleasure, which you appreciate so highly, of feeding it
with money extorted from an old Catholic and princely family. You know
how little it is to be desired that these matters should come to
light.”
“Why in the world need they come to light? Allegations in plenty, of
course, he would have, but not a particle of proof. Even if Madame
Grandoni were to testify against me, which is inconceivable, she would
not be able to produce a definite fact.”
“She would be able to produce the fact that you had a little bookbinder
staying for a month in your house.”
“What has that to do with it?” the Princess demanded. “If you mean that
that is a circumstance which would put me in the wrong as against the
Prince, is there not, on the other side, this circumstance, that while
our young friend was staying with me Madame Grandoni herself, a person
of the highest and most conspicuous respectability, never saw fit to
withdraw from me her countenance and protection? Besides, why shouldn’t
I have my bookbinder, just as I might have (and the Prince should
surely appreciate my consideration in not having) my physician and my
chaplain?”
“Am I not your chaplain?” said Muniment, with a laugh. “And does the
bookbinder usually dine at the Princess’s table?”
“Why not, if he’s an artist? In the old times, I know, artists dined
with the servants; but not to-day.”
“That would be for the court to appreciate,” Muniment remarked. And in
a moment he added, “Allow me to call your attention to the fact that
Madame Grandoni _has_ left you—_has_ withdrawn her countenance and
protection.”
“Ah, but not for Hyacinth!” the Princess returned, in a tone which
would have made the fortune of an actress if an actress could have
caught it.
“For the bookbinder or for the chaplain, it doesn’t matter. But that’s
only a detail,” said Muniment. “In any case, I shouldn’t in the least
care for your going to law.”
The Princess rested her eyes upon him for a while in silence, and at
last she replied, “I was speaking just now of your great destinies, but
every now and then you do something, you say something, that makes me
doubt of them. It’s when you seem afraid. That’s terribly against your
being a first-rate man.”
“Oh, I know you have thought me a coward from the first of your knowing
me. But what does it matter? I haven’t the smallest pretension to being
a first-rate man.”
“Oh, you are deep, and you are provoking!” murmured the Princess, with
a sombre eye.
“Don’t you remember,” Muniment continued, without heeding this somewhat
passionate ejaculation—“don’t you remember how, the other day, you
accused me of being not only a coward but a traitor; of playing false;
of wanting, as you said, to back out?”
“Most distinctly. How can I help its coming over me, at times, that you
have incalculable ulterior views and are only using me—only using us
all? But I don’t care!”
“No, no; I’m genuine,” said Paul Muniment, simply, yet in a tone which
might have implied that the discussion was idle. And he immediately
went on, with a transition too abrupt for perfect civility: “The best
reason in the world for your not having a lawsuit with your husband is
this: that when you haven’t a penny left you will be obliged to go back
and live with him.”
“How do you mean, when I haven’t a penny left? Haven’t I my own
property?” the Princess demanded.
“The Prince tells me that you have drawn upon your own property at such
a rate that the income to be derived from it amounts, to his positive
knowledge, to no more than a thousand francs—forty pounds—a year.
Surely, with your habits and tastes, you can’t live on forty pounds. I
should add that your husband implies that your property, originally,
was but a small affair.”
“You have the most extraordinary tone,” observed the Princess, gravely.
“What you appear to wish to express is simply this: that from the
moment I have no more money to give you I am of no more value than the
skin of an orange.”
Muniment looked down at his shoe awhile. His companion’s words had
brought a flush into his cheek; he appeared to admit to himself and to
her that, at the point at which their conversation had arrived, there
was a natural difficulty in his delivering himself. But presently he
raised his head, showing a face still slightly embarrassed but none the
less bright and frank. “I have no intention whatever of saying anything
harsh or offensive to you, but since you challenge me perhaps it is
well that I should let you know that I _do_ consider that in giving
your money—or, rather, your husband’s—to our business you gave the most
valuable thing you had to contribute.”
“This is the day of plain truths!” the Princess exclaimed, with a laugh
that was not expressive of pleasure. “You don’t count then any
devotion, any intelligence, that I may have placed at your service,
even rating my faculties modestly?”
“I count your intelligence, but I don’t count your devotion, and one is
nothing without the other. You are not trusted at headquarters.”
“Not trusted!” the Princess repeated, with her splendid stare. “Why, I
thought I could be hanged to-morrow!”
“They may let you hang, perfectly, without letting you act. You are
liable to be weary of us,” Paul Muniment went on; “and, indeed, I think
you are weary of us already.”
“Ah, you _must_ be a first-rate man—you are such a brute!” replied the
Princess, who noticed, as she had noticed before, that he pronounced
‘weary’ _weery_.
“I didn’t say you were weary of _me_,” said Muniment, blushing again.
“You can never live poor—you don’t begin to know the meaning of it.”
“Oh, no, I am not tired of you,” the Princess returned, in a strange
tone. “In a moment you will make me cry with passion, and no man has
done that for years. I was very poor when I was a girl,” she added, in
a different manner. “You yourself recognised it just now, in speaking
of the insignificant character of my fortune.”
“It had to be a fortune, to be insignificant,” said Muniment, smiling.
“You will go back to your husband!”
To this declaration she made no answer whatever; she only sat looking
at him in a sort of desperate calmness. “I don’t see, after all, why
they trust you more than they trust me,” she remarked.
“I am not sure that they do,” said Muniment. “I have heard something
this evening which suggests that.”
“And may one know what it is?”
“A communication which I should have expected to be made through me has
been made through another person.”
“A communication?”
“To Hyacinth Robinson.”
“To Hyacinth—” The Princess sprang up; she had turned pale in a moment.
“He has got his ticket; but they didn’t send it through me.”
“Do you mean his orders? He was here last night,” the Princess said.
“A fellow named Schinkel, a German—whom you don’t know, I think, but
who was a sort of witness, with me and another, of his undertaking—came
to see me this evening. It was through him the summons came, and he put
Hyacinth up to it on Sunday night.”
“On Sunday night?” The Princess stared. “Why, he was here yesterday,
and he talked of it, and he told me nothing.”
“That was quite right of him, bless him!” Muniment exclaimed.
The Princess closed her eyes a moment, and when she opened them again
Muniment had risen and was standing before her. “What do they want him
to do?” she asked.
“I am like Hyacinth; I think I had better not tell you—at least till
it’s over.”
“And when will it be over?”
“They give him several days and, I believe, minute instructions,” said
Muniment, “with, however, considerable discretion in respect to seizing
his chance. The thing is made remarkably easy for him. All this I know
from Schinkel, who himself knew nothing on Sunday, being a mere medium
of transmission, but who saw Hyacinth yesterday morning.”
“Schinkel trusts you, then?” the Princess remarked.
Muniment looked at her steadily a moment. “Yes, but he won’t trust you.
Hyacinth is to receive a card of invitation to a certain big house,” he
went on, “a card with the name left in blank, so that he may fill it
out himself. It is to be good for each of two grand parties which are
to be given at a few days’ interval. That’s why they give him the
job—because at a grand party he’ll look in his place.”
“He will like that,” said the Princess, musingly—“repaying hospitality
with a pistol-shot.”
“If he doesn’t like it he needn’t do it.”
The Princess made no rejoinder to this, but in a moment she said, “I
can easily find out the place you mean—the big house where two parties
are to be given at a few days’ interval and where the master is worth
your powder.”
“Easily, no doubt. And do you want to warn him?”
“No, I want to do the business first, so that it won’t be left for
another. If Hyacinth will look in his place at a grand party, should
not I look still more in mine? And as I know the individual I should be
able to approach him without exciting the smallest suspicion.”
Muniment appeared to consider her suggestion a moment, as if it were
practical and interesting; but presently he answered, placidly, “To
fall by your hand would be too good for him.”
“However he falls, will it be useful, valuable?” the Princess asked.
“It’s worth trying. He’s a very bad institution.”
“And don’t you mean to go near Hyacinth?”
“No, I wish to leave him free,” Muniment answered.
“Ah, Paul Muniment,” murmured the Princess, “you _are_ a first-rate
man!” She sank down upon the sofa and sat looking up at him. “In God’s
name, why have you told me this?” she broke out.
“So that you should not be able to throw it up at me, later, that I had
not.”
She threw herself over, burying her face in the cushions, and remained
so for some minutes, in silence. Muniment watched her awhile, without
speaking; but at last he remarked, “I don’t want to aggravate you, but
you _will_ go back!” The words failed to cause her even to raise her
head, and after a moment he quietly went out.