That the Princess had done with him, done with him for ever, remained
the most vivid impression that Hyacinth had carried away from Madeira
Crescent the night before. He went home, and he flung himself on his
narrow bed, where the consolation of sleep again descended upon him.
But he woke up with the earliest dawn, and the beginning of a new day
was a quick revival of pain. He was over-past, he had become vague, he
was extinct. The things that Sholto had said to him came back to him,
and the compassion of foreknowledge that Madame Grandoni had shown him
from the first. Of Paul Muniment he only thought to wonder whether he
knew. An insurmountable desire to do justice to him, for the very
reason that there might be a temptation to oblique thoughts, forbade
him to challenge his friend even in imagination. He vaguely wondered
whether _he_ would ever be superseded; but this possibility faded away
in a stronger light—a kind of dazzling vision of some great
tribuneship, which swept before him now and again and in which the
figure of the Princess herself seemed merged and extinguished. When
full morning came at last, and he got up, it brought with it, in the
restlessness which made it impossible to him to remain in his room, a
return of that beginning of an answerless question, ‘After all—after
all—?’ which the Princess had planted there the night before when she
spoke so bravely in the name of the Revolution. ‘After all—after all,
since nothing else was tried, or would, apparently, ever be tried—’ He
had a sense of his mind, which had been made up, falling to pieces
again; but that sense in turn lost itself in a shudder which was
already familiar—the horror of the reappearance, on his part, of the
imbrued hands of his mother. This loathing of the idea of a
_repetition_ had not been sharp, strangely enough, till his summons
came; in all his previous meditations the growth of his reluctance to
act for the ‘party of action’ had not been the fear of a personal
stain, but the simple extension of his observation. Yet now the idea of
the personal stain made him horribly sick; it seemed by itself to make
service impossible. It rose before him like a kind of backward
accusation of his mother; to suffer it to start out in the life of her
son was in a manner to place her own forgotten, redeemed pollution
again in the eye of the world. The thought that was most of all with
him was that he had time—he had time; he was grateful for that, and saw
a kind of delicacy in their having given him a margin—not condemned him
to be pressed by the hours. He had another day, he had two days, he
might take three, he might take several. He knew he should be terribly
weary of them before they were over; but for that matter they would be
over whenever he liked. Anyhow, he went forth again into the streets,
into the squares, into the parks, solicited by an aimless desire to
steep himself yet once again in the great indifferent city which he
knew and loved and which had had so many of his smiles and tears and
confidences. The day was gray and damp, though no rain fell, and London
had never appeared to him to wear more proudly and publicly the stamp
of her imperial history. He passed slowly to and fro over Westminster
bridge and watched the black barges drift on the great brown river, and
looked up at the huge fretted palace that rose there as a fortress of
the social order which he, like the young David, had been commissioned
to attack with a sling and a pebble. At last he made his way to St
James’s Park, and he strolled about a long time. He revolved around it,
and he went a considerable distance up the thoroughfare that
communicates with Pimlico. He stopped at a certain point and came back
again, and then he retraced his steps in the former direction. He
looked in the windows of shops, and he looked in particular into the
long, glazed expanse of that establishment in which, at that hour of
the day, Millicent Henning discharged superior functions. Millicent’s
image had descended upon him after he came out, and now it moved before
him as he went, it clung to him, it refused to quit him. He made, in
truth, no effort to drive it away; he held fast to it in return, and it
murmured strange things in his ear. She had been so jolly to him on
Sunday; she was such a strong, obvious, simple nature, with such a
generous breast and such a freedom from the sophistries of
civilisation. All that he had ever liked in her came back to him now
with a finer air, and there was a moment, during which he hung over the
rail of the bridge that spans the lake in St James’s Park and
mechanically followed the movement of the swans, when he asked himself
whether, at bottom, he hadn’t liked her better, almost, than any one.
He tried to think he had, he wanted to think he had, and he seemed to
see the look her eyes would have if he should tell her that he had.
Something of that sort had really passed between them on Sunday; only
the business that had come up since had superseded it. Now the taste of
the vague, primitive comfort that his Sunday had given him came back to
him, and he asked himself whether he mightn’t know it a second time.
After he had thought he couldn’t again wish for anything, he found
himself wishing that he might believe there was something Millicent
could do for him. Mightn’t she help him—mightn’t she even extricate
him? He was looking into a window—not that of her own shop—when a
vision rose before him of a quick flight with her, for an undefined
purpose, to an undefined spot; and he was glad, at that moment, to have
his back turned to the people in the street, because his face suddenly
grew red to the tips of his ears. Again and again, all the same, he
indulged in the reflection that spontaneous, uncultivated minds often
have inventions, inspirations. Moreover, whether Millicent should have
any or not, he might at least feel her arms around him. He didn’t
exactly know what good it would do him or what door it would open; but
he should like it. The sensation was not one he could afford to defer,
but the nearest moment at which he could enjoy it would be that
evening. _He_ had thrown over everything, but she would be busy all
day; nevertheless, it would be a gain, it would be a kind of foretaste,
to see her earlier, to have three words with her. He wrestled with the
temptation to go into her haberdasher’s, because he knew she didn’t
like it (he had tried it once, of old); as the visits of gentlemen,
even when ostensible purchasers (there were people watching about who
could tell who was who), compromised her in the eyes of her employers.
This was not an ordinary case, however; and though he hovered about the
place a long time, undecided, embarrassed, half ashamed, at last he
went in, as by an irresistible necessity. He would just make an
appointment with her, and a glance of the eye and a single word would
suffice. He remembered his way through the labyrinth of the shop; he
knew that her department was on the second floor. He walked through the
place, which was crowded, as if he had as good a right as any one else;
and as he had entertained himself, on rising, with putting on his
holiday garments, in which he made such a distinguished little figure,
he was not suspected of any purpose more nefarious than that of looking
for some nice thing to give a lady. He ascended the stairs, and found
himself in a large room where made-up articles were exhibited and
where, though there were twenty people in it, a glance told him he
shouldn’t find Millicent. She was perhaps in the next one, into which
he passed by a wide opening. Here also were numerous purchasers, most
of them ladies; the men were but three or four, and the disposal of the
wares was in the hands of neat young women attired in black dresses
with long trains. At first it appeared to Hyacinth that the young woman
he sought was even here not within sight, and he was turning away, to
look elsewhere, when suddenly he perceived that a tall gentleman,
standing in the middle of the room, was none other than Captain Sholto.
It next became plain to him that the person standing upright before the
Captain, as still as a lay-figure and with her back turned to Hyacinth,
was the object of his own quest. In spite of her averted face he
instantly recognised Millicent; he knew her shop-attitude, the dressing
of her hair behind, and the long, grand lines of her figure, draped in
the last new thing. She was exhibiting this article to the Captain, and
he was lost in contemplation. He had been beforehand with Hyacinth as a
false purchaser, but he imitated a real one better than our young man,
as, with his eyes travelling up and down the front of Millicent’s
person, he frowned, consideringly, and rubbed his lower lip slowly with
his walking-stick. Millicent stood admirably still, and the back-view
of the garment she displayed was magnificent. Hyacinth, for a minute,
stood as still as she. At the end of that minute he perceived that
Sholto saw him, and for an instant he thought he was going to direct
Millicent’s attention to him. But Sholto only looked at him very hard,
for a few seconds, without telling her he was there; to enjoy that
satisfaction he would wait till the interloper was gone. Hyacinth gazed
back at him for the same length of time—what these two pairs of eyes
said to each other requires perhaps no definite mention—and then turned
away.
That evening, about nine o’clock, the Princess Casamassima drove in a
hansom to Hyacinth’s lodgings in Westminster. The door of the house was
a little open, and a man stood on the step, smoking his big pipe and
looking up and down. The Princess, seeing him while she was still at
some distance, had hoped he was Hyacinth, but he proved to be a very
different figure indeed from her devoted young friend. He had not a
forbidding countenance, but he looked very hard at her as she descended
from her hansom and approached the door. She was used to being looked
at hard, and she didn’t mind this; she supposed he was one of the
lodgers in the house. He edged away to let her pass, and watched her
while she endeavoured to impart an elasticity of movement to the limp
bell-pull beside the door. It gave no audible response, so that she
said to him, “I wish to ask for Mr Hyacinth Robinson. Perhaps you can
tell me—”
“Yes, I too,” the man replied, smiling. “I have come also for that.”
The Princess hesitated a moment. “I think you must be Mr Schinkel. I
have heard of you.”
“You know me by my bad English,” her interlocutor remarked, with a sort
of benevolent coquetry.
“Your English is remarkably good—I wish I spoke German as well. Only
just a hint of an accent, and evidently an excellent vocabulary.”
“I think I have heard, also, of you,” said Schinkel, appreciatively.
“Yes, we know each other, in our circle, don’t we? We are all brothers
and sisters.” The Princess was anxious, she was in a fever; but she
could still relish the romance of standing in a species of back-slum
and fraternising with a personage looking like a very tame horse whose
collar galled him. “Then he’s at home, I hope; he is coming down to
you?” she went on.
“That’s what I don’t know. I am waiting.”
“Have they gone to call him?”
Schinkel looked at her, while he puffed his pipe. “I have called him
myself, but he will not say.”
“How do you mean—he will not say?”
“His door is locked. I have knocked many times.”
“I suppose he is out,” said the Princess.
“Yes, he may be out,” Schinkel remarked, judicially.
He and the Princess stood a moment looking at each other, and then she
asked, “Have you any doubt of it?”
“Oh, _es kann sein_. Only the woman of the house told me five minutes
ago that he came in.”
“Well, then, he probably went out again,” the Princess remarked.
“Yes, but she didn’t hear him.”
The Princess reflected, and was conscious that she was flushing. She
knew what Schinkel knew about their young friend’s actual situation,
and she wished to be very clear with him, and to induce him to be the
same with her. She was rather baffled, however, by the sense that he
was cautious, and justly cautious. He was polite and inscrutable, quite
like some of the high personages—ambassadors and cabinet-ministers—whom
she used to meet in the great world. “Has the woman been here, in the
house, ever since?” she asked in a moment.
“No, she went out for ten minutes, half an hour ago.”
“Surely, then, he may have gone out again in that time!” the Princess
exclaimed.
“That is what I have thought. It is also why I have waited here,” said
Schinkel. “I have nothing to do,” he added, serenely.
“Neither have I,” the Princess rejoined. “We can wait together.”
“It’s a pity you haven’t got some room,” the German suggested.
“No, indeed; this will do very well. We shall see him the sooner when
he comes back.”
“Yes, but perhaps it won’t be for long.”
“I don’t care for that; I will wait. I hope you don’t object to my
company,” she went on, smiling.
“It is good, it is good,” Schinkel responded, through his smoke.
“Then I will send away my cab.” She returned to the vehicle and paid
the driver, who said, “Thank you, my lady,” with expression, and drove
off.
“You gave him too much,” observed Schinkel, when she came back.
“Oh, he looked like a nice man. I am sure he deserved it.”
“It is very expensive,” Schinkel went on, sociably.
“Yes, and I have no money, but it’s done. Was there no one else in the
house while the woman was away?” the Princess asked.
“No, the people are out; she only has single men. I asked her that. She
has a daughter, but the daughter has gone to see her cousin. The mother
went only a hundred yards, round the corner there, to buy a pennyworth
of milk. She locked this door, and put the key in her pocket; she
stayed at the grocer’s, where she got the milk, to have a little
conversation with a friend she met there. You know ladies always stop
like that—_nicht wahr?_ It was half an hour later that I came. She told
me that he was at home, and I went up to his room. I got no sound, as I
have told you. I came down and spoke to her again, and she told me what
I say.”
“Then you determined to wait, as I have done,” said the Princess.
“Oh, yes, I want to see him.”
“So do I, very much.” The Princess said nothing more, for a minute;
then she added, “I think we want to see him for the same reason.”
“_Das kann sein—das kann sein_.”
The two continued to stand there in the brown evening, and they had
some further conversation, of a desultory and irrelevant kind. At the
end of ten minutes the Princess broke out, in a low tone, laying her
hand on her companion’s arm, “Mr Schinkel, this won’t do. I’m
intolerably nervous.”
“Yes, that is the nature of ladies,” the German replied, imperturbably.
“I wish to go up to his room,” the Princess pursued. “You will be so
good as to show me where it is.”
“It will do you no good, if he is not there.”
The Princess hesitated. “I am not sure he is not there.”
“Well, if he won’t speak, it shows he likes better not to have
visitors.”
“Oh, he may like to have me better than he does you!” the Princess
exclaimed.
“_Das kann sein—das kann sein_.” But Schinkel made no movement to
introduce her into the house.
“There is nothing to-night—you know what I mean,” the Princess
remarked, after looking at him a moment.
“Nothing to-night?”
“At the Duke’s. The first party is on Thursday, the other is next
Tuesday.”
“_Schön_. I never go to parties,” said Schinkel.
“Neither do I.”
“Except that _this_ is a kind of party—you and me,” suggested Schinkel.
“Yes, and the woman of the house doesn’t approve of it.” The footstep
of the personage in question had been audible in the passage, through
the open door, which was presently closed, from within, with a little
reprehensive bang. Something in this incident appeared to quicken
exceedingly the Princess’s impatience and emotion; the menace of
exclusion from the house made her wish more even than before to enter
it. “For God’s sake, Mr Schinkel, take me up there. If you won’t, I
will go alone,” she pleaded.
Her face was white now, and it need hardly be added that it was
beautiful. The German considered it a moment in silence; then turned
and reopened the door and went in, followed closely by his companion.
There was a light in the lower region, which tempered the gloom of the
staircase—as high, that is, as the first floor; the ascent the rest of
the way was so dusky that the pair went slowly and Schinkel led the
Princess by the hand. She gave a suppressed exclamation as she rounded
a sharp turn in the second flight. “Good God, is that his door, with
the light?”
“Yes, you can see under it. There was a light before,” said Schinkel,
without confusion.
“And why, in heaven’s name, didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I thought it would worry you.”
“And doesn’t it worry _you?_”
“A little, but I don’t mind,” said Schinkel. “Very likely he may have
left it.”
“He doesn’t leave candles!” the Princess returned, with vehemence. She
hurried up the few remaining steps to the door, and paused there with
her ear against it. Her hand grasped the handle, and she turned it, but
the door resisted. Then she murmured, pantingly, to her companion, “We
must go in—we must go in!”
“What will you do, when it’s locked?” he inquired.
“You must break it down.”
“It is very expensive,” said Schinkel.
“Don’t be abject!” cried the Princess. “In a house like this the
fastenings are certainly flimsy; they will easily yield.”
“And if he is not there—if he comes back and finds what we have done?”
She looked at him a moment through the darkness, which was mitigated
only by the small glow proceeding from the chink. “He _is_ there!
Before God, he is there!”
“_Schön, schön_,” said her companion, as if he felt the contagion of
her own dread but was deliberating and meant to remain calm. The
Princess assured him that one or two vigorous thrusts with his shoulder
would burst the bolt—it was sure to be some wretched morsel of tin—and
she made way for him to come close. He did so, he even leaned against
the door, but he gave no violent push, and the Princess waited, with
her hand against her heart. Schinkel apparently was still deliberating.
At last he gave a low sigh. “I know they found him the pistol; it is
only for that,” he murmured; and the next moment Christina saw him sway
sharply to and fro in the gloom. She heard a crack and saw that the
lock had yielded. The door collapsed: they were in the light; they were
in a small room, which looked full of things. The light was that of a
single candle on the mantel; it was so poor that for a moment she made
out nothing definite. Before that moment was over, however, her eyes
had attached themselves to the small bed. There was something on
it—something black, something ambiguous, something outstretched.
Schinkel held her back, but only for an instant; she saw everything,
and with the very act she flung herself beside the bed, upon her knees.
Hyacinth lay there as if he were asleep, but there was a horrible
thing, a mess of blood, on the bed, in his side, in his heart. His arm
hung limp beside him, downwards, off the narrow couch; his face was
white and his eyes were closed. So much Schinkel saw, but only for an
instant; a convulsive movement of the Princess, bending over the body
while a strange low cry came from her lips, covered it up. He looked
about him for the weapon, for the pistol, but the Princess, in her rush
at the bed, had pushed it out of sight with her knees. “It’s a pity
they found it—if he hadn’t had it here!” he exclaimed to her. He had
determined to remain calm, so that, on turning round at the quick
advent of the little woman of the house, who had hurried up, white,
scared, staring, at the sound of the crashing door, he was able to say,
very quietly and gravely, “Mr Robinson has shot himself through the
heart. He must have done it while you were fetching the milk.” The
Princess got up, hearing another person in the room, and then Schinkel
perceived the small revolver lying just under the bed. He picked it up
and carefully placed it on the mantel-shelf, keeping, equally
carefully, to himself the reflection that it would certainly have
served much better for the Duke.