Part 19

“Yes, very likely, but you must hit her back and give it to her badly. That’s your line, you know—to go in for what’s going, to live your life, to gratify the ‘sex.’ I’m an ugly, grimy brute, I’ve got to watch the fires and mind the shop; but you’re one of those taking little beggars who _must_ run about and see the world. You ought to be an ornament to society, like a young man in an illustrated storybook. Only you know,” Muniment added in a moment, “if she should hurt you very much I _would_ have a go at her!”

Hyacinth had been intending for some time to take Pinnie to call on the prostrate damsel in Audley Court, to whom he had promised that his benefactress (he had told Rose Muniment she was his godmother—it sounded so right) should pay this civility; but the affair had been delayed by wan hesitations on the part of the dressmaker, the poor woman having hard work to imagine to-day that there were people in London forlorn enough for her countenance to be of value to them. Her social curiosity had quite died out and she knew she no longer made the same figure in public as when her command of the fashions enabled her to illustrate them in her own little person by the aid of a good deal of whalebone. Moreover she felt that Hyacinth had strange friends and still stranger opinions; she suspected him of taking an unnatural interest in politics and of being somehow not on the right side, little as she knew about parties or causes; and she had a vague conviction that this kind of perversity only multiplied the troubles of the poor, who, according to theories which Pinnie had never reasoned out but which in her breast were as deep as religion, ought always to be of the same way of thinking as the rich. They were unlike them enough in their poverty without trying to add other differences. When at last she accompanied Hyacinth to Camberwell one Saturday evening at midsummer it was in a sighing, sceptical, second-best manner; but if he had told her he wished it she would have gone with him to a soiree at a scavenger’s. There was no more danger of Rose Muniment’s being out than that one of the bronze couchant lions in Trafalgar Square should have walked down Whitehall; but he had let her know in advance and he perceived, as he opened her door in obedience to a quick, shrill summons, that she had had the happy thought of inviting Lady Aurora to help her entertain Miss Pynsent. Such at least was the inference he drew from seeing her ladyship’s memorable figure rise before him for the first time since their meeting there. He presented his companion to their reclining hostess, and Rosy immediately repeated her name to the representative of Belgrave Square. Pinnie curtseyed down to the ground as Lady Aurora put out her hand to her, and then slipped noiselessly into a chair beside the bed. Lady Aurora laughed and fidgeted in a friendly, cheerful, yet at the same time rather pointless manner, and Hyacinth gathered that she had no recollection of having seen him. His attention, however, was mainly given to Pinnie: he watched her jealously, to see if on this important occasion she wouldn’t put forth a certain stiff, quaint, polished politeness of which she possessed the secret and which made him liken her extraction of the sense of things to the nip of a pair of old-fashioned silver sugar-tongs. Not only for Pinnie’s sake but for his own as well he wished her to figure as a superior little woman; so he hoped she wouldn’t lose her head if Rosy should begin to talk about Inglefield. She was evidently much impressed by Rosy and kept repeating “Dear, dear!” under her breath while the small strange person in the bed rapidly explained to her that there was nothing in the world she would have liked so much as to follow _her_ delightful profession, but that she couldn’t sit up to it, and had never had a needle in her hand but once, when at the end of three minutes it had dropped into the sheets and got into the mattress, so that she had always been afraid it would work out again and stick into her: which it hadn’t done yet and perhaps never would—she lay so quiet, pushing it about so little. “Perhaps you’d think it’s me that trimmed the little handkerchief I wear round my neck,” Miss Muniment said; “perhaps you’d think I couldn’t do less, lying here all day long with complete command of my time. Not a stitch of it. I’m the finest lady in London; I never lift my finger for myself. It’s a present from her ladyship—it’s her ladyship’s own beautiful needlework. What do you think of that? Have you ever met any one so favoured before? And the work—just look at the work and tell me how it strikes you.” The girl pulled off the bit of muslin from her neck and thrust it at Pinnie, who looked at it confusedly and gasped “Dear, dear, dear!” partly in sympathy, partly as if, in spite of the consideration she owed every one, those were very odd proceedings.

“It’s very badly done; surely you see that,” said Lady Aurora. “It was only a joke.”

“Oh yes, everything’s a joke!” cried the irrepressible invalid—“everything except my state of health; that’s admitted to be serious. When her ladyship sends me five shillings’ worth of coals it’s only a joke; and when she brings me a bottle of the finest port, that’s another; and when she climbs up seventy-seven stairs (there are seventy-seven, I know perfectly, though I never go up or down) to spend the evening with me at the height of the London season, that’s the best of all. I know all about the London season though I never go out, and I appreciate what her ladyship gives up. She’s very jocular indeed, but fortunately I know how to take it. You can see it wouldn’t do for me to be touchy, can’t you, Miss Pynsent?”

“Dear, dear, I should be so glad to make you anything myself; it would be better—it would be better—!” poor Pinnie floundered.

“It would be better than my poor work. I don’t know how to do that sort of thing in the least,” said Lady Aurora.

“I’m sure I didn’t mean that, my lady—I only meant it would be more convenient. Anything in the world she might fancy,” the dressmaker went on as if it were a question of the invalid’s appetite.

“Ah, you see I don’t wear things—only a flannel jacket to be a bit tidy,” Miss Muniment returned. “I go in only for smart counterpanes, as you can see for yourself”; and she spread her white hands complacently over her coverlet of brilliant patchwork. “Now doesn’t that look to you, Miss Pynsent, as if it might be one of her ladyship’s jokes?”

“Oh my good friend, how can you? I never went so far as that!” Lady Aurora interposed with visible anxiety.

“Well, you’ve given me almost everything; I sometimes forget. This only cost me sixpence; so it comes to the same thing as if it had been a present. Yes, only sixpence in a raffle in a bazaar at Hackney, for the benefit of the Wesleyan Chapel three years ago. A young man who works with my brother and lives in that part offered him a couple of tickets; and he took one and I took one. When I say ‘I’ of course I mean he took the two; for how should I find (by which I naturally mean how should _he_ find) a sixpence in that little cup on the chimney-piece unless he had put it there first? Of course my ticket took a prize, and of course, as my bed’s my dwelling-place, the prize was a beautiful counterpane of every colour of the rainbow. Oh there never was such luck as mine!” Rosy chattered, flashing her gay demented eyes at Hyacinth as if to irritate him with her contradictious optimism.

“It’s very lovely, but if you’d like another for a change I’ve got a great many pieces,” Pinnie remarked with a generosity which made the young man feel she was acquitting herself finely.

Rose Muniment laid her little hand on the dressmaker’s arm and responded straight: “No, not a change, not a change. How can there be a change when there’s already everything? There’s everything here—every colour that was ever seen or invented or dreamed of since the world began.” And with her other hand she stroked affectionately her variegated quilt. “You’ve a great many pieces, but you haven’t as many as there are here; and the more you should patch them together the more the whole thing would resemble this dear dazzling old friend. I’ve another idea, very very charming, and perhaps her ladyship can guess what it is.” Rosy kept her fingers on Pinnie’s arm and, smiling, turned her brilliant eyes from one of her female companions to the other as to associate and blend them as closely as possible in their interest in her. “In connexion with what we were talking about a few minutes ago—couldn’t your ladyship just go a little further in the same line?” Then as Lady Aurora looked troubled and embarrassed, blushing at being called upon to answer a conundrum, as it were, so publicly, her infirm friend came to her assistance. “It will surprise you at first, but it won’t when I’ve explained it: my idea is just simply a sweet pink dressing-gown!”

“A sweet pink dressing-gown!” Lady Aurora repeated.

“With a neat black trimming! Don’t you see the connexion with what we were talking of before our good visitors came in?”

“That would be very pretty,” said Pinnie. “I’ve made them like that in my time. Or a carefully-selected blue trimmed with white.”

“No, pink and black, pink and black—to suit my complexion. Perhaps you didn’t know I _have_ a complexion; but there are very few things I lack! Anything at all I should fancy, you were so good as to say. Well now, I fancy that! Your ladyship does see the connexion by this time, doesn’t she?”

Lady Aurora looked distressed, as if she felt she certainly ought to see it but was not sure that even yet it didn’t escape her, and as if at the same time she were struck with the fact that this sudden evocation might result in a strain on the small dressmaker’s resources. “A pink dressing-gown would certainly be very becoming and Miss Pynsent would be very kind,” she said; while Hyacinth made the mental comment that it was a largeish order, since Pinnie would have obviously to furnish the materials as well as the labour. The amiable coolness with which the invalid laid her under contribution was, however, to his sense, quite in character, and he reflected that after all when you were flat on your back like that you had the right to reach out your hands (it wasn’t far you could reach at best) and grab what you could get. Pinnie declared she knew just the article Miss Muniment wanted and that she would undertake to make a perfect duck of it; and Rosy went on to say that she must explain of what use such an article would be, but for this purpose there must be another guess. She would give it to Miss Pynsent and Hyacinth—as many times as they liked: what _had_ she and Lady Aurora been talking about before they came in? She clasped her hands and her eyes shone with her eagerness while she continued to turn them from Lady Aurora to the dressmaker. What would they imagine? What would they think natural, delightful, magnificent—if one could only end at last by making out the right place to put it? Hyacinth suggested successively a cage of Java sparrows, a music-box and a shower-bath—or perhaps even a full-length portrait of her ladyship; and Pinnie looked at him askance in a frightened way, as if perchance he were joking too broadly. Rosy at last relieved their suspense and announced: “A sofa, just a sofa now! What do you say to that? Do you suppose that idea could have come from any one but her ladyship? She must have all the credit of it; she came out with it in the course of conversation. I believe we were talking of the peculiar feeling that comes just under the shoulder-blades if one never has a change. She mentioned it as she might have mentioned just the right sort of rub—there _are_ such wrong sorts!—or another spoonful of that American stuff. We’re thinking it over and one of these days, if we give plenty of time to the question, we shall find the place, the very nicest and snuggest of all and no other. I hope _you_ see the connexion with the pink dressing-gown,” she pursued to Pinnie, “and I hope you see the importance of the question, ‘Shall anything go?’ I should like you to look round a bit and tell me what you would answer if I were to say to you, ‘_Can_ anything go?’”

XV

“I’m sure there’s nothing _I_ should like to part with,” Pinnie returned; and while she surveyed the scene Lady Aurora, with discretion, to lighten Amanda’s responsibility, got up and turned to the window, which was open to the summer evening and admitted still the last rays of the long day. Hyacinth, after a moment, placed himself beside her, looking out with her at the dusky multitude of chimney-pots and the small black houses roofed with grimy tiles. The thick warm air of a London July floated beneath them, suffused with the everlasting uproar of the town, which appeared to have sunk into quietness but again became a mighty voice as soon as one listened for it; here and there, in poor windows, glimmered a turbid light, and high above, in a clearer smokeless zone, a sky still fair and luminous, a faint silver star looked down. The sky was the same that bent far away in the country over golden fields and purple hills and gardens where nightingales sang; but from this point of view everything that covered the earth was ugly and sordid and seemed to express or to represent the weariness of toil. Presently, to Hyacinth’s astonishment, Lady Aurora said to him: “You never came after to get the books.”

“Those you kindly offered to lend me? I didn’t know it was an understanding.”

She gave an uneasy laugh. “I’ve picked them out; they’re quite ready.”

“It’s awfully kind of you,” the young man hastened to say. “I’ll come and get them some day with pleasure.” He wasn’t very sure he would, but it was the least he could profess.

“She’ll tell you where I live, you know,” Lady Aurora went on with a movement of her head in the direction of the bed, as if she were too shy to mention it herself.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt she knows the way—she could tell me every street and every turn!” Hyacinth laughed.

“She has made me describe to her very often how I come and go,” his companion concurred. “I think few people know more about London than she. She never forgets anything.”

“She’s a wonderful little witch—she terrifies me!” he acknowledged.

Lady Aurora turned her modest eyes on him. “Oh, she’s so good, she’s so patient!”

“Yes, and so preternaturally wise and so awfully all there.”

“Ah, she’s immensely clever,” said her ladyship. “Which do you think the cleverer?”

“The cleverer?”

“Of the girl or her brother.”

“Oh, I think he’ll be some day prime minister of England.”

“Do you really? I’m so glad!” she cried with a flush of colour. “I do rejoice if you think that will be possible. You know it ought to be if things were right.”

Hyacinth had not professed this high faith for the purpose of playing on her ladyship’s feelings, but when he felt her intense agreement it was as if he had been making sport of her. Still he said no more than he believed when he observed in a moment that he had the greatest expectations of Paul Muniment’s future: he was sure the world would hear of him, that England would need him, that the public some day would acclaim him. It was impossible to know him without feeling he was very strong and must play some important part.

“Yes, people wouldn’t believe—they wouldn’t believe.” She abounded in his sense and he could measure the good he did her. It was moreover a pleasure to himself to place on record his opinion of his friend; it seemed to make that opinion more clear, to give it the force of an invocation or a prophecy. This was especially the case when he asked why on earth nature had endowed Paul Muniment with such extraordinary powers of mind, and powers of body too—because he was as strong as a horse—if it hadn’t been intended he should do something supreme for his fellow-men. Hyacinth confided to her ladyship that he thought the people in his own class generally very stupid—distinctly what he should call third-rate minds. He wished it hadn’t been so, for heaven knew he felt kindly to them and only asked to cast his lot with theirs; but he was obliged to confess that centuries of poverty, of ill-paid toil, of bad insufficient food and wretched housing hadn’t a favourable effect on the higher faculties. All the more reason that when there was a splendid exception like their friend it should count for a tremendous force—it had so much to make up for, so many to act for. And then Hyacinth repeated that in his own low walk of life people had really not the faculty of thought; their minds had been simplified—reduced to two or three elements. He saw that such judgements made his fellow-guest very uncomfortable; she turned about, she twisted herself vaguely as if she wished to protest, but she was far too considerate to interrupt him. He had no wish to worry her, but there were times when he couldn’t withstand the perverse satisfaction of insisting on his lowliness of station, of turning the knife in the wound inflicted by such explicit reference, and of letting it be seen that if his place in the world was immeasurably small he at least had no illusions about either himself or his species. Lady Aurora replied as quickly as possible that she knew a great deal about the poor—not the poor after the fashion of Rosy, but the terribly, hopelessly poor, with whom she was more familiar than Hyacinth would perhaps believe—and that she was often struck with their great talents and their quick wit, with their command of conversation really of much more interest to her than most of what one usually heard in drawing-rooms. She often found them immensely clever.

Hyacinth smiled at her and said: “Ah when you get to the lowest depths of poverty they may become rich and rare again. But I’m afraid I haven’t gone so far down. In spite of my opportunities I don’t know many absolute paupers.”

“I know a great many.” Lady Aurora hesitated as if she didn’t like to swagger, but she brought it out. “I daresay I know more than any one.” There was something touching and beautiful to Hyacinth in this simple and diffident claim: it confirmed his impression that she was in some mysterious, incongruous and even slightly ludicrous manner a true heroine, a creature of a noble ideal. She perhaps guessed he was indulging in reflexions that might be favourable to her, for she said precipitately the next minute, as if there were nothing she dreaded so much as the danger of a compliment: “I think your aunt’s so very attractive—and I’m sure dear Rosy thinks so.” No sooner had she spoken than she blushed again; it appeared to have occurred to her that he might suppose she wished to contradict him by presenting this case of his aunt as a proof that the baser sort, even in a prosaic upper layer, were not without redeeming points. There was no reason why she should not have had this intention; so without sparing her he replied:

“You mean she’s an exception to what I was saying?”

She stammered a little; then at last, as if, since he wouldn’t spare her, she wouldn’t spare him either: “Yes, and you’re an exception too; you’ll not make me believe you’re wanting in intelligence. The Muniments don’t think so,” she added.

“No more do I myself; but that doesn’t prove that exceptions are not frequent. I’ve blood in my veins that’s not the blood of the people.”

“Oh, I see,” said Lady Aurora sympathetically. And with a smile she went on: “Then you’re all the more of an exception—in the upper class!”

Her way of taking it was the kindest in the world, but it didn’t blind Hyacinth to the fact that from his own point of view he had been extraordinarily indiscreet. He had believed a moment before that he would have been proof against the strongest temptation to refer to the mysteries of his lineage, inasmuch as if made in a boastful spirit (and he had no desire as yet to treat it as an exercise in humility) any such reference would inevitably contain an element of the grotesque. He had never opened his lips to any one about his birth since the dreadful days when the question was discussed with Mr. Vetch’s assistance in Lomax Place; never even to Paul Muniment, never to Millicent Henning nor to Eustache Poupin. He had his impression that people had ideas about him, and with some of Miss Henning’s he had been made acquainted: these were of such a nature that he sometimes wondered if the tie uniting him to her were not on her own side a secret determination to satisfy her utmost curiosity before she had done with him. But he flattered himself he was impenetrable, and none the less he had begun to swagger idiotically the first time a temptation (really to call a temptation) presented itself. He turned crimson as soon as he had spoken, partly at the sudden image of what he had to swagger about and partly at the absurdity of a challenge from the model of civility before him. He hoped she didn’t particularly regard what he had said—and indeed she gave no sign whatever of being startled by his claim to a pedigree, she had too much quick delicacy for that; she appeared to notice only the symptoms of confusion that followed. But as soon as possible he gave himself a lesson in humility by remarking: “I gather you spend most of your time among the poor and I’m sure you carry blessings with you. But I frankly confess I don’t understand a lady’s giving herself up to people like us when there’s no obligation. Wretched company we must be when there’s so much better to be had.”

“I like it very much—you don’t understand.”

“Precisely—that’s what I say. Our little friend on the bed is perpetually talking about your house, your family, your splendours, your gardens and greenhouses. They must be magnificent of course—”

“Oh, I wish she wouldn’t; really I wish she wouldn’t. It makes one feel dreadfully!” Lady Aurora interposed with vehemence.

“Ah, you had better give her her way; it’s such a pleasure to her.”

“Yes, more than to any of us!” sighed her ladyship helplessly.