Part 6

It was on the outskirts of the infirmary she had been hovering, and it was into certain dismal chambers dedicated to sick criminals she presently ushered her guests. These chambers were naked and grated, like all the rest of the place, and caused Miss Pynsent to say to herself that it must be a blessing to be ill in such a hole, because you couldn’t possibly pick up again, whereby your case was simple. Such simplification, nevertheless, had for the moment been offered to very few of Florentine’s fellow-sufferers, for only three of the small stiff beds were occupied—occupied by white-faced women in tight, sordid caps, on whom, in the stale ugly room, the sallow light itself seemed to rest without pity. Mrs. Bowerbank discreetly paid no attention whatever to Hyacinth; she only said to Miss Pynsent with her hoarse distinctness: “You’ll find her very low; she wouldn’t have waited another day.” And she guided them, through a still further door, to the smallest room of all, where there were but three beds placed in a row. Miss Pynsent’s frightened eyes rather faltered than inquired, but she became aware that a woman was lying on the middle bed and that her face was turned toward the door. Mrs. Bowerbank led the way straight up to her and, giving a businesslike pat to her pillow, signed invitation and encouragement to the visitors, who clung together not far within the threshold. Their conductress reminded them that very few minutes were allowed them and that they had better not dawdle them away; whereupon, as the boy still hung back, the little dressmaker advanced alone, looking at the sick woman with what courage she could muster. It seemed to her she was approaching a perfect stranger, so completely had nine years of prison transformed Florentine. She felt it immediately to have been a mercy she hadn’t told Hyacinth she was pretty (as she used to be) since there was no beauty left in the hollow bloodless mask that presented itself without a movement. She _had_ told him the poor woman was good, but she didn’t look so, nor evidently was he struck with it as he returned her gaze across the interval he declined to traverse, though kept at the same time from retreating by this appeal of her strange, fixed eyes, the only part of all her wasted person in which was still any appearance of life. She looked unnatural to Amanda Pynsent, and terribly old; a speechless, motionless creature, dazed and stupid, whereas Florentine Vivier, in the obliterated past, had been her idea of personal as distinguished from social brilliancy. Above all she seemed disfigured and ugly, cruelly misrepresented by her coarse cap and short rough hair. Amanda, as she stood beside her, thought with a degree of scared elation that Hyacinth would never guess that a person in whom there was so little trace of smartness, or of cleverness of any kind, was his mother, which would be quite another matter. At the very most it might occur to him, as Mrs. Bowerbank had suggested, that she was his grandmother. Mrs. Bowerbank seated herself on the further bed with folded hands, a monumental timekeeper, and remarked, in the manner of one speaking from a sense of duty, that the poor thing wouldn’t get much good of the child unless he showed more confidence. This observation was evidently lost on the boy; he was too intensely absorbed in watching the prisoner. A chair had been placed near her pillow, and Miss Pynsent sat down without her appearing to notice it. In a moment, however, she lifted her hand a little, pushing it out from under the coverlet, and the dressmaker laid her own hand softly on it. This gesture elicited no response, but after a little, still gazing at the boy, Florentine murmured in words no one present was in a position to understand—

“_Dieu de Dieu, qu’il est donc beau!_”

“She won’t speak nothing but French since she has been so bad—you can’t get a natural word out of her,” Mrs. Bowerbank said.

“It used to be so pretty when she spoke her odd English—and so very amusing,” Miss Pynsent ventured to mention with a feeble attempt to brighten up the scene. “I suppose she has forgotten it all.”

“She may well have forgotten it—she never gave her tongue much exercise. There was little enough trouble to keep _her_ from chattering,” Mrs. Bowerbank rejoined, giving a twitch to the prisoner’s counterpane. Miss Pynsent settled it a little on the other side and considered, in the same train, that this separation of language was indeed a mercy; for how could it ever come into her small companion’s head that he was the offspring of a person who couldn’t so much as say good-morning to him? She felt at the same time that the scene might have been somewhat less painful if they had been able to communicate with the object of their compassion. As it was they had too much the air of having been brought together simply to look at each other, and there was a gruesome awkwardness in that, considering the delicacy of Florentine’s position. Not indeed that she looked much at her old comrade; it was as if she were conscious of Miss Pynsent’s being there and would have been glad to thank her for it—glad even to examine her for her own sake and see what change for her too the horrible years had brought, yet felt, more than this, how she had but the thinnest pulse of energy left and how not a moment that could still be of use to her was too much to take in her child. She took him in with all the glazed entreaty of her eyes, quite giving up his substituted guardian, who evidently would have to take her gratitude for granted. Hyacinth, on his side, after some moments of embarrassing silence—there was nothing audible but Mrs. Bowerbank’s breathing—had satisfied himself, and he turned about to look for a place of patience while Miss Pynsent should finish her business, which as yet made so little show. He appeared to wish not to leave the room altogether, as that would be the confession of a broken spirit, but to take some attitude that should express his complete disapproval of the unpleasant situation. He was not in sympathy, and he could not have made it more clear than by the way he presently went and placed himself on a low stool in a corner near the door by which they had entered.

“_Est-il possible, mon Dieu, qu’il soit gentil comme ça?_” his mother moaned just above her breath.

“We’re very glad you should have cared—that they look after you so well,” said Miss Pynsent confusedly and at random; feeling first that Hyacinth’s coldness was perhaps excessive and his scepticism too marked, and then that allusions to the way the poor woman was looked after were not exactly happy. These didn’t matter, however, for she evidently heard nothing, giving no sign of interest even when Mrs. Bowerbank, in a tone between a desire to make the interview more lively and an idea of showing she know how to treat the young, referred herself to the little boy.

“Is there nothing the little gentleman would like to say, now, to the unfortunate? Hasn’t he any pleasant remark to make to her about his coming so far to see her when she’s so sunk? It isn’t often that children are shown over the place (as the little man has been) and there’s many that’d think themselves lucky if they could see what he has seen.”

“_Mon pauvre joujou, mon pauvre chéri_,” the prisoner went on in her tender, tragic whisper.

“He only wants to be very good; he always sits that way at home,” said Miss Pynsent, alarmed at Mrs. Bowerbank’s address and hoping there wouldn’t be a scene.

“He might have stayed at home then—with this wretched person taking on so over him,” Mrs. Bowerbank remarked with some sternness. She plainly felt the occasion threaten to be wanting in brilliancy, and wished to intimate that though she was to be trusted for discipline she thought they were all getting off too easily.

“I came because Pinnie brought me,” Hyacinth spoke up from his low perch. “I thought at first it would be pleasant. But it ain’t pleasant—I don’t like prisons.” And he placed his little feet on the crosspiece of the stool as if to touch the institution at as few points as possible.

The woman in bed continued her strange, almost whining plaint. “_Il ne veut pas s’approcher, il a honte de moi._”

“There’s a many who begin like that!” laughed Mrs. Bowerbank, irritated by the boy’s contempt for one of Her Majesty’s finest establishments.

Hyacinth’s little white face exhibited no confusion; he only turned it to the prisoner again, and Miss Pynsent felt that some extraordinary dumb exchange of meanings was taking place between them. “She used to be so elegant; she _was_ a fine woman,” she observed gently and helplessly.

“_Il a honte de moi—il a honte, Dieu le pardonne!_” Florentine Vivier went on, never moving her eyes.

“She’s asking for something, in her language. I used to know a few words,” said Miss Pynsent, stroking down the bed very nervously.

“Who is that woman? what does she want?” Hyacinth broke out again, his small, clear voice ringing over the dreary room.

“She wants you to come near her, she wants to kiss you, sir,” said Mrs. Bowerbank, as if it were more than he deserved.

“I won’t kiss her; Pinnie says she stole a watch!” the child answered with resolution.

“Oh, you dreadful—how could you ever?” cried Pinnie, blushing all over and starting out of her chair.

It was partly Amanda’s agitation perhaps, which by the jolt it administered gave an impulse to the sick woman, and partly the penetrating and expressive tone in which Hyacinth announced his repugnance: at any rate Florentine, in the most unexpected and violent manner, jerked herself up from her pillow and, with dilated eyes and protesting hands, shrieked out, “_Ah quelle infamie!_ I never stole a watch, I never stole anything—anything! _Ah par exemple!_” Then she fell back sobbing with the passion that had given her a moment’s strength.

“I’m sure you needn’t put more on her than she has by rights,” said Mrs. Bowerbank with dignity to the dressmaker, and laid a large red hand on the patient to keep her in her place.

“Mercy, more? I thought it so much less!” cried Miss Pynsent, convulsed with confusion and jerking herself in a wild tremor from the mother to the child, as if she wished to fling herself on the one for contrition and the other for revenge.

“_Il a honte de moi—il a honte de moi!_” Florentine repeated in the misery of her sobs. “_Dieu de bonté, quelle horreur!_”

Miss Pynsent dropped on her knees beside the bed and, trying to possess herself of the unfortunate’s hand again, protested with an almost equal passion (she felt that her nerves had been screwed up to the snapping-point, and now they were all in shreds) that she hadn’t meant what she had told the child, that he hadn’t understood, that Florentine herself hadn’t understood, that she had only said she had been accused and meant that no one had ever believed it. The Frenchwoman paid no attention to her whatever, and Amanda buried her face and her embarrassment in the side of the hard little prison-bed, while, above the sound of their common lamentation, she heard the judicial tones of Mrs. Bowerbank.

“The child’s delicate—you might well say! I’m disappointed in the effect—I was in hopes you’d hearten her up. The doctor’ll be down on _me_ of course for putting her in such a state, so we’ll just pass out again.”

“I’m very sorry I made you cry. And you must pardon Pinnie—I asked her so many questions.”

These words came from close beside the prostrate dressmaker, who, lifting herself quickly, found the little boy had advanced to her elbow and was taking a nearer view of the mysterious captive. They produced on the latter an effect even more powerful than his misguided speech of a moment before; for she found strength partly to raise herself in her bed again and to hold out her arms to him with the same thrilling sobs. She was talking still, but had become quite inarticulate, and Miss Pynsent had but a glimpse of her white ravaged face and the hollows of its eyes and the rude crop of her hair. Amanda caught the child with an eagerness almost as great as Florentine’s and, drawing him to the head of the bed, pushed him into his mother’s arms. “Kiss her—kiss her well, and we’ll go home!” she whispered desperately while they closed about him and the poor dishonoured head pressed itself against his young cheek. It was a terrible, irresistible embrace, to which Hyacinth submitted with instant patience. Mrs. Bowerbank had tried at first to keep her sad charge from rising, evidently wishing to abbreviate the scene; then as the child was enfolded she accepted the situation and gave judicious support from behind, with an eye to clearing the room as soon as this effort should have spent itself. She propped up her patient with a vigorous arm; Miss Pynsent rose from her knees and turned away, and there was a minute’s stillness during which the boy accommodated himself as he might to his strange ordeal. What thoughts were begotten at that moment in his wondering little mind his protectress was destined to learn at another time. Before she had faced round to the bed again she was swept out of the room by Mrs. Bowerbank, who had lowered the prisoner, exhausted and with closed eyes, to her pillow and given Hyacinth a businesslike little push which sent him on in advance. Miss Pynsent went home in a cab—she was so shaken; though she reflected very nervously, getting into it, on the opportunities it would give Hyacinth for the exercise of inquisitorial rights. To her surprise, however, he completely neglected them; he sat looking out of the window in silence till they re-entered Lomax Place.

IV

“Well, you’ll have to guess my name before I’ll tell you,” the girl said with a free laugh, pushing her way into the narrow hall and leaning against the tattered wall-paper which, representing blocks of marble with bevelled edges, in streaks and speckles of black and grey, had not been renewed for years and came back to her out of the past. As Miss Pynsent closed the door, seeing her visitor so resolute, the light filtered in from the street through the narrow dusty glass above, and then the very smell and sense of the place returned to Millicent: the impression of a musty dimness with a small steep staircase at the end, covered with the very strip of oilcloth she could recognise and made a little less dark by a window in the turn (you could see it from the hall) where you might almost bump your head against the house behind. Nothing was changed but Miss Pynsent and of course the girl herself. She had noticed outside how the sign between the windows had not even been touched up; there was still the same preposterous announcement of “fashionable bonnets”—as if the poor little dressmaker had the slightest acquaintance with that style of head-dress, of which Miss Henning’s own knowledge was now so complete. She could see this artist was looking at her hat, a wonderful composition of flowers and ribbons; her eyes had travelled up and down Millicent’s whole person, but they rested in fascination on that grandest ornament. The girl had forgotten how small the dressmaker was; she barely came up to her shoulder. She had lost her hair and wore a cap which Millicent noticed in return, wondering if it were a specimen of what she thought the fashion. Miss Pynsent stared up at her as if she had been six feet high; but she was used to that sort of surprised admiration, being perfectly conscious she was a magnificent young woman.

“Won’t you take me into your shop?” she asked. “I don’t want to order anything; I only want to inquire after your ’ealth. Isn’t this rather an awkward place to talk?” She made her way further in without waiting for permission, seeing that her startled hostess had not yet guessed.

“The show-room’s on the right hand,” said Miss Pynsent with her professional manner, which was intended evidently to mark a difference. She spoke as if on the other side, where the horizon was bounded by the partition of the next house, there were labyrinths of apartments. Passing in after her guest she found the young lady already spread out upon the sofa, the everlasting sofa in the right-hand corner as you faced the window, a piece of furniture covered with a tight shrunken shroud of strange yellow stuff, the tinge of which revealed years of washing, and surmounted by a coloured print of Rebekah at the Well, balancing, in the opposite quarter, against a portrait of the Empress of the French taken from an illustrated newspaper and framed and glazed in the manner of 1853. Millicent looked about, asking herself what Miss Pynsent had to show and acting perfectly the part of the most brilliant figure the place had ever contained. The old implements were there on the table: the pincushions and needle-books, the pink measuring-tape with which, as children, she and Hyacinth used to take each other’s height; and the same collection of fashion-plates (she could see in a minute) crumpled, sallow and fly-blown. The little dressmaker bristled, as she used to do, with needles and pins stuck all over the front of her dress—they might almost have figured the stiff sparse fur of a sick animal; but there were no rustling fabrics tossed in heaps over the room—nothing but the skirt of a shabby dress (it might have been her own) which she was evidently repairing and had flung upon the table when she came to the door. Miss Henning speedily arrived at the conclusion that her old friend’s business had not increased, and felt some safe luxurious scorn of a person who knew so little what was to be got out of London. It was Millicent’s belief that she herself was already perfectly acquainted with the resources of the capital.

“Now tell me, how’s old Hyacinth? I should like so much to see him,” she remarked while she extended a pair of large protrusive feet and supported herself on the sofa by her hands.

“Old Hyacinth?” Miss Pynsent repeated with majestic blankness and as if she had never heard of such a person. She felt the girl to be cruelly, scathingly well dressed and couldn’t imagine who she was nor with what design she might have presented herself.

“Perhaps you call him Mr. Robinson to-day—you always wanted him to hold himself so high. But to his face at any rate I’ll call him as I used to: you just see if I don’t!”

“Bless my soul, you must be the awful little ’Enning!” Miss Pynsent exclaimed, planted before her and going now into every detail.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve made up your mind. I thought you’d know me directly and I daresay I _was_ awful. But I ain’t so bad now, hey?” the young woman went on with confidence. “I had a call to make in this part, and it came into my ’ead to look you up. I don’t like to lose sight of old friends.”

“I never knew you—you’ve improved as I couldn’t have believed,” Miss Pynsent returned with a candour justified by her age and her consciousness of respectability.

“Well, _you_ haven’t changed; you were always calling me something horrid.”

“I daresay it doesn’t matter to you now, does it?” said the dressmaker, seating herself but quite unable to take up her work, blank as she was before the greatness of her visitor.

“Oh, I’m all right now,” Miss Henning declared with the air of one who had nothing to fear from human judgements.

“You were a pretty child—I never said the contrary to that; but I had no idea you’d turn out like this. You’re too tall for a woman,” Miss Pynsent added, much divided between an old prejudice and a new appreciation.

“Well, I enjoy beautiful ’ealth,” said the young lady; “every one thinks I’m at least twenty-two.” She spoke with a certain artless pride in her bigness and her bloom and as if, to show her development, she would have taken off her jacket or let you feel her upper arm. She was certainly handsome, with a shining, bold, good-natured eye, a fine, free, physiognomic oval, an abundance of brown hair and a smile that fairly flaunted the whiteness of her teeth. Her head was set on a fair strong neck and her robust young figure was rich in feminine curves. Her gloves, covering her wrists insufficiently, showed the redness of those parts in the interstices of the numerous silver bracelets that encircled them, and Miss Pynsent made the observation that her hands were not more delicate than her feet. She was not graceful, and even the little dressmaker, whose preference for distinguished forms never deserted her, indulged in the mental reflexion that she was common, despite her magnificence; but there was something about her indescribably fresh, successful and satisfying. She was to her blunt, expanded finger-tips a daughter of London, of the crowded streets and bustling traffic of the great city; she had drawn her health and strength from its dingy courts and foggy thoroughfares and peopled its parks and squares and crescents with her ambitions; it had entered into her blood and her bone, the sound of her voice and the carriage of her head; she understood it by instinct and loved it with passion; she represented its immense vulgarities and curiosities, its brutality and its knowingness, its good-nature and its impudence, and might have figured, in an allegorical procession, as a kind of glorified townswoman, a nymph of the wilderness of Middlesex, a flower of the clustered parishes, the genius of urban civilisation, the muse of cockneyism. The restrictions under which Miss Pynsent regarded her would have cost the dressmaker some fewer scruples if she had guessed the impression she herself made on Millicent, and how the whole place seemed to that prosperous young lady to smell of poverty and failure. Her childish image of its mistress had shown her as neat, fine, superior, with round loops of hair fastened on the temples by combs and associations of brilliancy arising from the constant manipulation of precious stuffs—tissues at least that Millicent regarded with envy. But the little woman before her was bald and white and pinched; she looked shrunken and sickly and insufficiently nourished; her small eyes were sharp and suspicious and her hideous cap didn’t disguise the way everything had gone. Miss Henning thanked her stars, as she had often done before, that she hadn’t been obliged to get _her_ living by drudging over needlework year after year in that undiscoverable street, in a dismal little room where nothing had been changed for ages; the absence of change had such an exasperating effect upon her vigorous young nature. She reflected with complacency on her good fortune in being attached to a more exciting, a more dramatic department of the great drapery interest, and noticed that though it was already November there was no fire in the neatly-kept grate beneath the chimney-piece, on which a design, partly architectural, partly botanical, executed in the hair of Miss Pynsent’s parents, was flanked by a pair of vases, under glass, containing muslin flowers.