Part 22

The old woman left her place. She had promised Christina, who detested the sense of being under the same roof with her husband, that the latter’s visit should be kept within narrow limits; and this movement was intended to signify as kindly as possible that it had better terminate. “It’s the common people who please her,” she returned with her hands folded on her crumpled satin stomach and her ancient eyes, still keen for all comedy, raised to his face. “It’s the lower orders, the _basso popolo_.”

“The _basso popolo_?” The Prince stared at this fantastic announcement.

“The _povera gente_,” pursued his friend, amused at his dismay.

“The London mob—the most horrible, the most brutal—?”

“Oh, she wishes to raise them.”

“After all, something like that’s no more than I had heard,” said the Prince gravely.

“_Che vuole?_ Don’t trouble yourself; it won’t be for long!”

Madame Grandoni saw this comforting assurance lost upon him; his face was turned to the door of the room, which had been thrown open, and all his attention given to the person who crossed the threshold. She transferred her own to the same quarter and recognised the little artisan whom Christina had, in a manner so extraordinary and so profoundly characteristic, drawn into her box that night at the theatre—afterwards informing her old friend that she had sent for him to come and see her.

“Mr. Robinson!” the butler, who had had a lesson, announced in a loud colourless tone.

“It won’t be for long,” Madame Grandoni repeated for the Prince’s benefit; but it was to Mr. Robinson the words had the air of being addressed.

Hyacinth stood, while she signalled to the servant to leave the door open and wait, looking from the queer old lady, who was as queer as before, to the tall foreign gentleman (he recognised his foreignness at a glance) whose eyes seemed to challenge him, to devour him; wondering if he had made some mistake and needing to remind himself that he had the Princess’s note in his pocket, with the day and hour as clear as her magnificent script could make them.

“Good-morning, good-morning. I hope you’re well,” said Madame Grandoni with quick friendliness, but turning her back upon him at the same time in order to ask of their companion, in the other idiom, as she extended her hand: “And don’t you leave London soon—in a day or two?”

The Prince made no answer; he still scanned the little bookbinder from head to foot, as if wondering who the deuce he could be. His eyes seemed to Hyacinth to search for the small neat bundle he ought to have had under his arm and without which he was incomplete. To the reader, however, it may be confided that, dressed more carefully than he had ever been in his life before, stamped with that extraordinary transformation which the British Sunday often operates in the person of the wage-earning cockney, with his handsome head uncovered and the heat of wonder in his fine face, the young man from Lomax Place might have passed for anything rather than a carrier of parcels. “The Princess wrote to me, madam, to come and see her,” he said as a prompt precaution; in case he should have incurred the reproach of undue precipitation.

“Oh yes, I daresay.” And Madame Grandoni guided the Prince to the door with an expression of the desire he might have a comfortable journey back to Italy.

But he stood stiff there; he appeared to have jumped to a dark conclusion about Mr. Robinson. “I must see you once more. I must. It’s impossible—!”

“Ah well, not in this house, you know.”

“Will you do me the honour to meet me then?” And as the old lady hesitated he added with sudden intensity: “Dearest friend, I beg you on my knees!” After she had agreed that if he would write to her proposing a day and place she would see him were it possible, he raised her ancient knuckles to his lips and, without further notice of Hyacinth, turned away. She bade the servant announce the other visitor to the Princess, and then approached Mr. Robinson, rubbing her hands and smiling, her head very much to one side. He smiled back at her vaguely; he didn’t know what she might be going to say. What she said was, to his surprise—

“My poor young man, may I take the liberty of asking your age?”

“Certainly, madam; I’m twenty-four.”

“And I hope you’re industrious, and temperate in all ways and—what do you call it in English?—steady.”

“I don’t think I’m very wild,” said Hyacinth without offence. He thought the old woman patronising, but he forgave her.

“I don’t know how one speaks in this country to young men like you. Perhaps one’s considered meddling or impertinent.”

“I like the way you speak,” Hyacinth hastened to profess.

She stared, and then with a comical affectation of dignity: “You’re very good. I’m glad it amuses you. You’re evidently intelligent and clever,” she went on, “and if you’re disappointed it will be a pity.”

“How do you mean if I’m disappointed?”

“Well, I daresay you expect great things when you come into a house like this. You must tell me if I upset you. I’m very old-fashioned and I’m not of this country. I speak as one speaks to young men like you in other places.”

“I’m not so easily upset!” Hyacinth assured her with a flight of imagination. “To expect anything one must know something, one must understand: isn’t it so? And I’m here without knowing, without understanding. I’ve come only because a lady who seems to me very beautiful and very kind has done me the honour to send for me.”

Madame Grandoni examined him a moment as if struck by his good looks, by something delicate stamped on him everywhere. “I can see you’re very clever, very intelligent; no, you’re not like the young men I mean. All the more reason—!” And she paused, giving a short sigh. Her case might have been all too difficult. “I want to warn you a little, and I don’t know how. If you were a young Roman it would be different.”

“A young Roman?”

“That’s where I live properly, in the Eternal City. If I hurt you, you can explain it that way. No, you’re not like them.”

“You don’t hurt me—please believe that; you interest me very much,” said Hyacinth, to whom it didn’t occur that he himself might seem patronising. “Of what do you want to warn me?”

“Well—only to advise you a little. Don’t give up anything.”

“What can I give up?”

“Don’t give up _yourself_. I say that to you in your interest. I think you’ve some honest little trade—I forget what. But whatever it may be remember that to do it well is the best thing; better than paying extraordinary visits, better even than being liked by Princesses!”

“Ah yes, I see what you mean!” Hyacinth returned, exaggerating a little. “I’m very fond of my trade indeed, I assure you.”

“I’m delighted to hear it. Hold fast to it then and be quiet; be diligent and good and get on. I gathered the other night that you’re one of the young men who want everything changed—I believe there are a great many in Italy and also in my own dear old Deutschland, and who even think it useful to throw bombs into innocent crowds and shoot pistols at their rulers or at any one. I won’t go into that. I might seem to be speaking for myself, and the fact is that for myself I don’t care; I’m so old that I may hope to spend the few days that are left me without receiving a bullet. But before you go any further please think a little whether you’re right.”

“It isn’t just that you should impute to me ideas which I may not have,” said Hyacinth, turning very red but taking more and more of a fancy, all the same, to Madame Grandoni. “You talk at your ease about our ways and means, but if we were only to make use of those that you would like to see—!” And while he blushed, smiling, the young man shook his head two or three times with great significance.

“I shouldn’t like to see any!” the old lady cried. “I like people to bear their troubles as one has done one’s self. And as for injustice, you see how kind I am to you when I say to you again, Don’t, don’t, give anything up. I’ll tell them to send you some tea,” she added as she took her way out of the room, presenting to him her round, low, aged back and dragging over the carpet a scanty and lustreless train.

XVII

He had been warned by Mr. Vetch as to what brilliant women might do with him—it was only a word on the old fiddler’s lips, but the word had had a point; he had been warned by Paul Muniment, and now he was admonished by a person supremely well placed for knowing: a fact that couldn’t fail to deepen the emotion which, any time these three days, had made him draw his breath more quickly. That emotion, nevertheless, didn’t actually make him fear remote consequences; as he looked over the Princess Casamassima’s drawing-room and inhaled an air that seemed to him inexpressibly delicate and sweet he hoped his adventure would throw him on his mettle only half as much as the old lady had wished to intimate. He considered, one after the other, the different chairs, couches and ottomans the room contained—he wished to treat himself to the most sumptuous—and then for reasons he knew best sank into a seat covered with rose-coloured brocade and of which the legs and frame appeared of pure gold. Here he sat perfectly still, only with his heart beating very sensibly and his eyes coursing again and again from one object to another. The splendours and suggestions of Captain Sholto’s apartment were thrown completely into the shade by the scene before him, and as the Princess didn’t scruple to keep him waiting twenty minutes (during which the butler came in and set out on a small table a glittering tea-service) Hyacinth had time to count over the innumerable _bibelots_ (most of which he had never dreamed of) involved in the character of a woman of high fashion and to feel that their beauty and oddity revealed not only whole provinces of art, but refinements of choice on the part of their owner, complications of mind and—almost—terrible depths of temperament.

When at last the door opened and the servant, reappearing, threw it far back as to make a wide passage for a person of the importance of his mistress, Hyacinth’s suspense became very acute; it was much the same feeling with which, at the theatre, he had sometimes awaited the entrance of a celebrated actress. In this case the actress was to perform for him alone. There was still a moment before she came on, and when she arrived she was so simply dressed—besides his seeing her now on her feet—that she looked quite a different figure. She approached him rapidly and a little stiffly and shyly, but in the prompt manner in which she shook hands was an evident desire to be very direct and perfectly easy. She might have been another person, but that person had a beauty even more radiant; the fairness of her face shone forth at our young man as if to dissipate any doubts assailing and bewildering him as to the reality of the vision bequeathed to him by his former interview. And in this peculiar high grace of her presence he couldn’t have told you if she struck him as more proud or more kind.

“I’ve kept you a long time, but it’s supposed not usually to be a bad place, my salon; there are various things to look at and perhaps you’ve noticed some of them. Over on that side for instance is rather a curious collection of miniatures.” She spoke abruptly, quickly, as if conscious that their communion might be awkward and she were trying to strike instantly (to conjure that element away) the sort of note that would make them both most comfortable. Quickly too she sat down before her tea-tray and poured him out a cup, which she handed him without asking if he would have it. He accepted it with a trembling hand, though he had no desire for it; he was too nervous to swallow the tea, but it wouldn’t have appeared to him possible to decline. When he had murmured that he had indeed looked at all her things, but that it would take hours to do justice to such treasures, she asked if he were fond of works of art; immediately adding, however, that she was afraid he had not many opportunities of seeing them, though of course there were the public collections, open to all. He replied with perfect veracity that some of the happiest moments of his life had been spent at the British Museum and the National Gallery, and this fact appeared to interest her greatly, so that she straightway begged him to tell her what he thought of certain pictures and antiques. In this way it was that in an incredibly short time, as appeared to him, he found himself discussing the Bacchus and Ariadne and the Elgin Marbles with one of the most remarkable women in Europe. It was true that she herself talked most, passing precipitately from one point to another, putting questions and not waiting for answers, describing and qualifying things, expressing feelings, by the aid of phrases that he had never heard before but which seemed to him illuminating and happy—as when for instance she asked what art was, after all, but a synthesis made in the interest of pleasure, or said that she didn’t like England in the least, but absurdly loved it. It didn’t occur to him to think these discriminations pedantic. Suddenly she threw off, “Madame Grandoni told me you saw my husband.”

“Ah, was the gentleman your husband?”

“Unfortunately! What do you think of him?”

“Oh, I can’t think—!” Hyacinth decently pleaded.

“I wish I couldn’t either! I haven’t seen him for nearly three years. He wanted to see me to-day, but I refused.”

“Ah!”—and the young man stared, not knowing how he ought to receive so unexpected a confidence. Then as the suggestions of inexperience are sometimes the happiest of all he spoke simply what was in his mind and said gently: “It has made you—naturally—nervous.” Later on, when he had left the house, he wondered how at that stage he could have ventured on such a familiar remark.

But she had taken it with a quick, surprised laugh. “How do you know that?” Before he had time to tell she added: “Your saying that—that way—shows me how right I was to ask you to come to see me. You know I hesitated. It shows me you’ve perceptions; I guessed as much the other night at the theatre. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have asked you. I may be wrong, but I like people who understand what one says to them, and also what one doesn’t say.”

“Don’t think I understand too much. You might easily exaggerate that,” Hyacinth declared conscientiously.

“You confirm completely my first impression,” the Princess returned, smiling in a way that showed him he really amused her. “We shall discover the limits of your comprehension! I am atrociously nervous. But it will pass. How’s your cousin the dressmaker?” she inquired abruptly. And when Hyacinth had briefly given some account of poor Pinnie—described her as tolerably well for her, but old and tired and sad and not very successful—she exclaimed impatiently, “Ah, well, she’s not the only one!” and came back with irrelevance to the former question. “It’s not only my husband’s visit—absolutely unexpected!—that has made me fidgety, but the idea that now you’ve been so kind as to come here you may wonder why, after all, I made such a point of it, and even think any explanation I might be able to give you entirely insufficient.”

“I don’t want any explanation,” said Hyacinth with a sense of great presence of mind.

“It’s charming of you to say that, and I shall take you at your word. Explanations usually make things worse. All the same I don’t want you to think (as you might have done so easily the other evening) that I wish only to treat you as a curious animal.”

“I don’t care how you treat me!” he smiled.

There was a considerable silence, after which she pursued: “All I ask of my husband is to let me alone. But he won’t. He won’t return my indifference.”

Hyacinth wondered what reply he ought to make to such an announcement as that, and it seemed to him the least civility demanded was that he should say—as he could with such conviction—“It can’t be easy to be indifferent to you.”

“Why not if I’m odious? I _can_ be—oh there’s no doubt of that! However, I can honestly say that with the Prince I’ve been exceedingly reasonable and that most of the wrongs—the big ones, those that settled the question—have been on his side. You may tell me of course that that’s the pretension of every woman who has made a mess of her marriage. But ask Madame Grandoni.”

“She’ll tell me it’s none of my business.”

“Very true—she might!” the Princess inconsequently laughed. “And I don’t know either why I should bore you with my domestic affairs; except that I’ve been wondering what I could do to show you confidence in return for your showing so much in me. As this matter of my separation from my husband happens to have been turned uppermost by his sudden descent on me I just mention it, though the subject’s tiresome enough. Moreover, I ought to let you know that I’ve very little respect for distinctions of class—the sort of thing they make so much of in this country. They’re doubtless convenient in some ways, but when one has a reason—a reason of feeling—for overstepping them, and one allows one’s self to be deterred by some dreary superstition about one’s place or some one else’s place, then I think it’s ignoble. It always belongs to one’s place not to be a poor creature. I take it that if you’re a socialist you think about this as I do; but lest by chance, as the sense of those differences is the English religion, it may have rubbed off even on you (though I’m more and more impressed with the fact that you’re scarcely more British than I am): lest you should in spite of your theoretic democracy be shocked at some of the applications that I, who cherish the creed, am capable of making of it, let me assure you without delay that in that case we shouldn’t get on together at all and had better part company before we go further.” She paused long enough for Hyacinth to declare with a great deal of emphasis that he wasn’t easily shocked; and then restlessly, eagerly, as if it relieved her to talk and made their queer conjunction less abnormal that she should talk most, she arrived at the point that she wanted to know the _people_, and know them intimately—the toilers and strugglers and sufferers—because she was convinced they were the most interesting portion of society, and at the question, “What could really be in worse taste than for me to carry into such an undertaking a pretension of greater delicacy and finer manners? If I must do that,” she continued, “it’s simpler to leave them alone. But I can’t leave them alone; they press on me, they haunt me, they fascinate me. There it is—after all it’s very simple: I want to know them and I want you to help me.”

“I’ll help you with pleasure to the best of my humble ability. But you’ll be awfully disappointed,” Hyacinth said. Very strange it seemed to him that within so few days two ladies of rank should have found occasion to express to him the same mysterious longing. A breeze from a thoroughly unexpected quarter was indeed blowing through the aristocracy. Nevertheless, though there was much of the same accent of passion in the Princess Casamassima’s communication that there had been in Lady Aurora’s, and though he felt bound to discourage his present interlocutress as he had done the other, the force that drove her struck him as a very different mixture from the shy, conscientious, anxious heresies of Rose Muniment’s friend. The temper varied in the two women as much as the aspect and the address, and that perhaps made their curiosity the more significant.

“I haven’t the least doubt of it,” this investigator answered; “there’s nothing in life in which I’ve not been awfully disappointed. But disappointment for disappointment I shall like it better than some others. You’ll not persuade me either that among the people I speak of characters and passions and motives are not more natural, more complete, more _naïfs_. The upper classes are so deadly _banals_. My husband traces his descent from the fifth century, and he’s the greatest bore in Europe. That’s the kind of people I was condemned to by my marriage. Oh, if you knew what I’ve been through you’d allow that intelligent mechanics (of course I don’t want to know idiots) would be a pleasant change. I must begin with some one—mustn’t I?—so I began the other night with you!” As soon as she had uttered these words the Princess added a correction with the consciousness of her mistake in her face. It made that face, to Hyacinth, more nobly, tenderly beautiful. “The only objection to you individually is that you’ve nothing of the people about you—to-day not even the dress.” Her eyes wandered over him from head to foot, and their recognitions made him ashamed. “I wish you had come in the clothes you wear at your work.”

“You see you do regard me as a curious animal,” he returned.