The Princess Casamassima (Volume 2 of 2)

by Henry James

XLIV

Hyacinth had hurried down and got out of the house, but without the least intention of losing sight of Schinkel. The odd behaviour of the Poupins was a surprise and annoyance, and he had wished to shake himself free from it. He was candidly astonished at the alarm they were so good as to feel for him, since he had never taken in their having really gone round to the faith that the note he had signed to Hoffendahl would fail to be presented. What had he said, what had he done, after all, to give them the right to fasten on him the charge of apostasy? He had always been a free critic of everything, and it was natural that on certain occasions in the little parlour at Lisson Grove he should have spoken in accordance with that freedom; but it was with the Princess alone that he had permitted himself really to rail at their grimy “inferiors” and give the full measure of his scepticism. He would have thought it indelicate to express contempt for the opinions of his old foreign friends, to whom associations that made them venerable were attached; and, moreover, for Hyacinth a change of heart was in the nature of things much more an occasion for a hush of publicity and a kind of retrospective reserve: it couldn’t prompt one to aggression or jubilation. When one had but lately discovered what could be said on the opposite side one didn’t want to boast of one’s sharpness—not even when one’s new convictions cast shadows that looked like the ghosts of the old.

He lingered in the street a certain distance from the house, watching for Schinkel’s exit and prepared to remain there if necessary till the dawn of another day. He had said to the agitated trio just before that the manner in which the communication they looked so askance at should reach him was none of his business—it might reach him as it either smoothly or clumsily could. This was true enough in theory, but in fact his desire was overwhelming to know what Madame Poupin had meant by her allusion to a sealed letter, destined for him, in Schinkel’s possession—an allusion confirmed by Schinkel’s own virtual acknowledgment. It was indeed this eagerness that had driven him out of the house, for he had reason to believe the German wouldn’t fail him, and it galled his suspense to see the foolish Poupins try to interpose, to divert the missive from its course. He waited and waited in the faith that Schinkel was dealing with them in his slow, categorical, Germanic way, and only reprehended him for having in the first place paltered with his sacred trust. Why hadn’t he come straight to him—whatever the mysterious document was—instead of talking it over with French featherheads? Passers were rare at this hour in Lisson Grove and lights mainly extinguished; there was nothing to look at but the vista of the low black houses, the dim interspaced street-lamps, the prowling cats who darted occasionally across the road and the terrible mysterious far-off stars, which appeared to him more than ever to see everything of our helplessness and tell nothing of help. A policeman creaked along on the opposite side of the way, looking across at him as he passed, and stood for some minutes on the corner as to keep an eye on him. Hyacinth had leisure to reflect that the day was perhaps not far off when a policeman might have an eye on him for a very good reason—might walk up and down, pass and repass as he mounted guard on him.

It seemed horribly long before Schinkel came out of the house, but it was probably only half an hour. In the stillness of the street he heard Poupin let his visitor out, and at the sound he stepped back into the recess of a doorway on the same side, so that in looking out the Frenchman shouldn’t see him waiting. There was another delay, for the two stood talking together interminably and without seizable sounds on the doorstep. At last, however, Poupin went in again, and then Schinkel came down the street toward Hyacinth, who had felt sure he would proceed to that quarter, it being, as our young friend happened to know, that of his habitation. After he had heard Poupin go in he stopped and looked up and down; it was evidently his idea that Hyacinth would be awaiting him. Our hero stepped out of the shallow recess in which he had flattened himself, and came straight to him, and the two men stood there face to face in the dusky, empty, sordid street.

“You didn’t let them have the letter?”

“Oh no, I retained it,” said Schinkel with his eyes more than ever like invisible points.

“Then hadn’t you better give it to me?”

“We’ll talk of that—we’ll talk.” Schinkel made no motion to satisfy him; having his hands in the pockets of his trousers and an appearance marked by the exasperating assumption that they had the whole night before them. As one of the “dangerous” he was too intolerably for order.

“Why should we talk? Haven’t you talked enough with those people all the evening? What have they to say about it? What right have you to detain a letter that belongs to me?”

“Erlauben Sie: I’ll light my pipe,” the German simply returned. And he proceeded to this business methodically, while Hyacinth’s pale, excited face showed in the glow of the match that ignited on the rusty railing beside them. “It isn’t yours unless I’ve given it you,” Schinkel went on as they walked along. “Be patient and I’ll tell you,” he added, passing his hand into his comrade’s arm. “Your way, not so? We’ll go down toward the Park.” Hyacinth tried to be patient and listened with interest when Schinkel added: “She tried to take it; she attacked me with her hands. But that wasn’t what I went for, to give it up.”

“Is she mad? I don’t recognise them”—and Hyacinth spoke as one scandalised.

“No, but they lofe you.”

“Why then do they try to disgrace me?”

“They think it no disgrace if you’ve changed.”

“That’s very well for her; but it’s pitiful for him, and I declare it surprises me.”

“Oh he came round—he helped me to resist. He pulled his wife off. It was the first shock,” said Schinkel.

“You oughtn’t to have shocked them, my dear fellow,” Hyacinth pronounced.

“I was shocked myself—I couldn’t help it.”

“Lord, how shaky you all are!” He was more and more aware now of all the superiority still left him to cling to.

“You take it well. I’m very sorry. But it is a fine chance,” Schinkel went on, smoking away.

His pipe seemed for the moment to absorb him, so that after a silence Hyacinth resumed:

“Be so good as to remember that all this while I don’t in the least understand what you’re talking about.”

“Well, it was this morning, early,” said the German. “You know in my country we don’t lie in bett late, and what they do in my country I try to do everywhere. I think it’s good enough. In winter I get up of course long before the sun, and in summer I get up almost at the same time. I should see the fine picture of the sunrise if in London you could see. The first thing I do of a Sunday is to smoke a pipe at my window, which is at the front, you remember, and looks into a little dirty street. At that hour there’s nothing to see there—you English are so slow to leave the bett. Not much, however, at any time; it’s not important, my bad little street. But my first pipe’s the one I enjoy most. I want nothing else when I have that pleasure. I look out at the new fresh light—though in London it’s not very fresh—and I think it’s the beginning of another day. I wonder what such a day will bring—if it will bring anything good to us poor devils. But I’ve seen a great many pass and nothing has come. This morning, doch, brought something—something at least to you. On the other side of the way I saw a young man who stood just opposite my house and looking up at my window. He looked at me straight, without any ceremony, and I smoked my pipe and looked at him. I wondered what he wanted, but he made no sign and spoke no word. He was a very neat young man; he had an umbrella and he wore spectacles. We remained that way, face to face, perhaps for a quarter of an hour, and at last he took out his watch—he had a watch too—and held it in his hand, just glancing at it every few minutes, as if to let me know that he would rather not give me the whole day. Then it came over me that he wanted to speak to me! You would have guessed that before, but we good Germans are slow. When we understand, however, we act; so I nodded at him to let him know I’d come down. I put on my coat and my shoes, for I was only in my shirt and stockings—though of course I had on my trousers—and I went down into the street. When he saw me come he walked slowly away, but at the end of a little distance he waited for me. When I came near him I saw him to be a very neat young man indeed—very young and with a very nice friendly face. He was also very clean and he had gloves, and his umbrella was of silk. I liked him very much. He said I should come round the corner, so we went round the corner together. I thought there would be some one there waiting for us; but there was nothing—only the closed shops and the early light and a little spring mist that told that the day would be fine. I didn’t know what he wanted; perhaps it was some of our business—that’s what I first thought—and perhaps it was only a little game. So I was very careful; I didn’t ask him to come into the house. Yet I told him that he must excuse me for not understanding more quickly that he wished to speak with me; and when I said this he said it was not of consequence—he would have waited there, for the chance to see me, all day. I told him I was glad I had spared him that at least, and we had some very polite conversation. He was a very pleasant young man. But what he wanted was simply to put a letter in my hand; as he said himself he was only a good private postman. He gave me the letter—it was not addressed; and when I had taken it I asked him how he knew and if he wouldn’t be sorry if it should turn out that I was not the man for whom the letter was meant. But I didn’t give him a start; he told me he knew all it was necessary for him to know—he knew exactly what to do and how to do it. I think he’s a valuable member. I asked him if the letter required an answer, and he told me he had nothing to do with that; he was only to put it in my hand. He recommended me to wait till I had gone into the house again to read it. We had a little more talk—always very polite; and he mentioned that he had come so early because he thought I might go out if he delayed, and because also he had a great deal to do and had to take his time when he could. It’s true he looked as if he had plenty to do—as if he was in some very good occupation. I should tell you he spoke to me always in English, but he was not English; he sounded his words only as if he had learnt them very well. I could see he has learnt everything very well. I suppose he’s not German—so he’d have spoken to me in German. But there are so many, of all countries! I said if he had so much to do I wouldn’t keep him; I would go to my room and open my letter. He said it wasn’t important; and then I asked him if he wouldn’t come into my room also and rest. I told him it wasn’t very handsome, my room—because he looked like a young man who would have for himself a very neat lodging. Then I found he meant it wasn’t important that we should talk any more, and he went away without even offering to shake hands. I don’t know if he had other letters to give, but he went away, as I have said, like a good postman on his rounds, without giving me any more information.”

It took Schinkel a long time to tell this story—his calm and conscientious thoroughness made no allowance for any painful acuteness of curiosity his auditor might feel. He went from step to step, treating all his points with lucidity and as if each would have exactly the same interest for his companion. The latter made no attempt to hurry him, and indeed listened now with a rare intensity of patience; for he was interested and it was moreover clear to him that he was safe with Schinkel, who would satisfy him in time—wouldn’t worry him with attaching conditions to their business in spite of the mistake, creditable after all to his conscience, he had made in going for discussion to Lisson Grove. Hyacinth learned in due course that on returning to his apartment and opening the little packet of which he had been put into possession, Mr. Schinkel had found himself confronted with two separate articles: one a sealed letter superscribed with our young man’s name, the other a sheet of paper containing in three lines a request that within two days of receiving it he would hand the letter to the “young Robinson.” The three lines in question were signed D. H., and the letter was addressed in the same hand. Schinkel professed that he already knew the writing; it was the neat fist—neatest in its very flourishes—of Diedrich Hoffendahl. “Good, good,” he said, bearing as to soothe on Hyacinth’s arm. “I’ll walk with you to your door and I’ll give it to you there; unless you like better I should keep it till to-morrow morning, so that you may have a quiet sleep—I mean in case it might contain anything that will be unpleasant to you. But it’s probably nothing; it’s probably only a word to say you need think no more about your undertaking.”

“Why should it be that?” Hyacinth asked.

“Probably he has heard that you’ve cooled off.”

“That I’ve cooled off?” Our hero stopped him short; they had just reached the top of Park Lane. “To whom have I given a right to say that?”

“Ah well, if you haven’t, so much the better. It may be then for some other reason.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Schinkel,” Hyacinth returned as they walked along. And in a moment he went on: “What the devil did you go and tattle to the Poupins for?”

“Because I thought they’d like to know. Besides, I felt my responsibility; I thought I should carry it better if they knew it. And then I’m like them—I lofe you.”

Hyacinth made no answer to this profession; he only said the next instant: “Why didn’t your young man bring the letter directly to me?”

“Ah I didn’t ask him that! The reason was probably not complicated, but simple—that those who wrote it knew my address and didn’t know yours. And wasn’t I one of your backers?”

“Yes, but not the principal one. The principal one was Paul Muniment. Why wasn’t any communication made me through Paul Muniment?” And this now struck him as a question that would reverberate the more one thought of it.

“My dear Robinson, you want to know too many things. Depend on it there are always good reasons. I should have preferred—yes—it had been Muniment. But if they didn’t send to him——!” With which Schinkel’s lucidity dropped and lost itself in a thick cloud of smoke.

“Well, if they didn’t send to him——?” Hyacinth persisted.

“You’re a great friend of his—how can I tell you?”

At this Hyacinth looked up at him askance and caught an ambiguous, an evasive roll in his companion’s small, mild eye. “If it’s anything against him my being his friend makes me just the man to hear it. I can defend him.”

“Well, it’s a possibility they’re not satisfied.”

“How do you mean it—not satisfied?”

“How shall I say it?—that they don’t trust him.”

“Don’t trust him? And yet they trust me!”

“Ah my boy, depend upon it there are reasons,” Schinkel replied; and in a moment he added: “They know everything—everything. They’re like the great God of the believers: they’re searchers of hearts; and not only of hearts, but of all a man’s life—his days, his nights, his spoken, his unspoken words. Oh they go deep and they go straight!”

The pair pursued the rest of their course for the most part in silence, Hyacinth being considerably struck with something that dropped from his companion in answer to a question he asked as to what Eustache Poupin had said when Schinkel, this evening, first told him what he had come to see him about. “Il vaut du galme—il vaut du galme”: that was the German’s version of the Frenchman’s words; and Hyacinth repeated them over to himself several times and almost with the same accent. They had a certain soothing effect. In fact the good Schinkel was somehow salutary altogether, as our hero felt when they stopped at last at the door of his lodging in Westminster and stood there face to face while Hyacinth waited—just waited. The sharpness of his impatience had passed away and he watched without irritation the loving manner in which his mate shook the ashes out of the big smoked-out—so vehemently smoked-out—pipe and laid it to rest in its coffin. It was only after he had gone through this business with his usual attention to every detail of it that he said “Also, now for the letter” and, putting his hand inside his old waistcoat, drew forth the portentous missive. It passed instantly into Hyacinth’s grasp, and our young man transferred it to his own pocket without looking at it. He thought he saw disappointment in Schinkel’s ugly, kindly face at this indication that he himself should have no knowledge—present and relieving at least—of its contents; but he liked that better than his pretending to attribute to it again some silly comfortable sense. Schinkel had now the shrewdness or the good taste not to repeat that remark, and as the letter pressed against his heart Hyacinth felt it still more distinctly, not as a vain balm to apprehension, but as the very penetration of a fatal knife. What his friend did say in a moment was: “Now you’ve got it I’m very glad. It’s easier for me.” And he effected a poor strained grin.

“I should think so!” Hyacinth exclaimed. “If you hadn’t done your job you’d have paid for it.”

Schinkel mumbled as for accommodation while he lingered, and then as Hyacinth turned away, putting in his door-key, brought out: “And if you don’t do yours so will you.”

“Yes, as you say, they themselves go straight! Good-night.” And our young man let himself in.

The passage and staircase were never lighted and the lodgers either groped their way bedward with the infallibility of practice or scraped the wall with a casual match the effect of which, in the milder gloom of day, was a rude immensity of laceration. Hyacinth’s room was a second floor back, and as he approached it he was startled by seeing a light proceed from the crevice under the door, the imperfect fitting of which figured to him thus as quite squalid. He stopped and considered this new note of his crisis, his first impulse being to connect it with the case just presented by Schinkel—since what could anything that touched him now be but a part of the same business? It was doubtless all in order that some second portent should now await him there. Yet it occurred to him that when he went out to call on Lady Aurora after tea he must simply have left a tallow candle burning, and that it showed a cynical spirit on the part of his landlady, who could be so close-fisted for herself, not to have gone in and put it out. Lastly it came over him that he had had a visitor in his absence and that the visitor had taken possession of his apartment till his return, seeking such poor sources of comfort as were perfectly just. When he opened the door this last prevision proved the correct one, though the figure in occupation was not one of the possible presences that had loomed. Mr. Vetch sat beside the little table at which Hyacinth did his writing; he showed a weary head on a supporting hand and eyes apparently closed. But he looked up when his young man appeared. “Oh I didn’t hear you; you’re very quiet.”

“I come in softly when I’m late, for the sake of the house—though I’m bound to say I’m the only lodger who has that refinement. Besides, you’ve been asleep,” Hyacinth said.

“No, I’ve not been asleep,” the old man returned. “I don’t sleep much nowadays.”

“Then you’ve been plunged in meditation.”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking.” With which Mr. Vetch explained that the woman of the house had begun by refusing him admittance without proper assurances that his intentions were pure and that he was moreover the oldest friend Mr. Robinson had in the world. He had been there an hour; he had thought he might find him by coming late.

Mr. Robinson was very glad he had waited and was delighted to see him and expressed regret that he hadn’t known in advance of his visit, so that he might have something to offer him. He sat down on the bed, vaguely expectant; he wondered what special purpose had brought the fiddler so far at that unnatural hour. Yet he spoke but the truth in saying he was glad to see him. Hyacinth had come upstairs in such a pain of desire to be alone with the revelation carried in his pocket that the sight of a guest had given him positive relief by postponing solitude. The place where he had put his letter seemed to throb against his side, yet he was thankful to his old friend for forcing him still to leave it so. “I’ve been looking at your books,” the fiddler said; “you’ve two or three exquisite specimens of your own. Oh yes, I recognise your work when I see it; there are always certain little finer touches. You’ve a manner, as who should say, like one of the masters. With such a hand and such feeling your future’s assured. You’ll make a fortune and become famous.”

Mr. Vetch sat forward to sketch this vision; he rested his hands on his knees and looked very hard at his young host, as if to challenge him to dispute a statement so cheering and above all so authoritative. The effect of what Hyacinth saw in his face was to produce immediately the idea that the fiddler knew something, though there was no guessing how he could know it. The Poupins, for instance, had had no time to communicate with him, even granting them capable of that baseness—all inconceivable in spite of Hyacinth’s having seen them, less than an hour before, fall so much below their own standard. With this suspicion there rushed into his mind an intense determination to dissemble before his visitor to the last: he might imagine what he liked, but he should have no grain of satisfaction—or rather should have only that of being led to believe if possible that his suspicions were “rot.” Hyacinth glanced over the books he had taken down from the shelf and admitted that they were pleasing efforts and that so long as one didn’t become blind or maimed the ability to produce that sort of thing was a legitimate source of confidence. Then suddenly, as they continued simply to look at each other, the pressure of the old man’s curiosity, the expression of his probing, beseeching eyes, which had become strange and tragic in these latter times and completely changed their character, grew so intolerable that to defend himself our hero took the aggressive and asked him boldly if it were simply to look at his work, of which he had half-a-dozen specimens in Lomax Place, that he had made a nocturnal pilgrimage. “My dear old friend, you’ve something on your mind—some fantastic fear, some extremely erroneous idée fixe. Why has it taken you to-night in particular? Whatever it is it has brought you here at an unnatural hour under some impulse you don’t or can’t name. I ought of course to be thankful to anything that brings you here; and so I am in so far as that it makes me happy. But I can’t like it if it makes you miserable. You’re like a nervous mother whose baby’s in bed upstairs; she goes up every five minutes to see if he’s all right—if he isn’t uncovered or hasn’t tumbled out of bed. Dear Mr. Vetch, don’t, don’t worry; the blanket’s up to my chin and I haven’t tumbled yet.”

He heard himself say these things as if he were listening to another person; the impudence of them in the grim conditions seemed to him somehow so rare. But he believed himself to be on the edge of a form of action in which impudence evidently must play a considerable part, and he might as well try his hand at it without delay. The way the old man looked out might have indicated that he too was able to take the measure of his perversity—judged him false to sit there declaring there was nothing the matter while a brand-new revolutionary commission burned in his pocket. But in a moment Mr. Vetch said very mildly and as if he had really been reassured: “It’s wonderful how you read my thoughts. I don’t trust you; I think there are beastly possibilities. It’s not true at any rate that I come to look at you every five minutes. You don’t know how often I’ve resisted my fears—how I’ve forced myself to let you alone.”

“You had better let me come and live with you as I proposed after Pinnie’s death. Then you’ll have me always under your eyes,” Hyacinth smiled.

The old man got up eagerly and, as Hyacinth did the same, laid firm hands on his shoulders, holding him close. “Will you now really, my boy? Will you come to-night?”

“To-night, Mr. Vetch?”

“To-night has worried me more than any other, I don’t know why. After my tea I had my pipe and a glass, but I couldn’t keep quiet; I was very, very bad. I got to thinking of Pinnie—she seemed to be in the room. I felt as if I could put out my hand and touch her. If I believed in ghosts, in signs or messages from the dead, I should believe I had seen her. She wasn’t there for nothing; she was there to add her fears to mine—to talk to me about you. I tried to hush her up, but it was no use—she drove me out of the house. About ten o’clock I took my hat and stick and came down here. You may judge if I thought it important—I took a cab.”

“Ah why do you spend your money so foolishly?” Hyacinth asked in a tone of the most affectionate remonstrance.

“Will you come to-night?” said his companion for rejoinder, holding him still.

“Surely it would be simpler for you to stay here. I see perfectly you’re ill and nervous. You can take the bed and I’ll spend the night in the chair.”

The fiddler thought a moment. “No, you’ll hate me if I subject you to such discomfort as that; and that’s just what I don’t want.”

“It won’t be a bit different in your room. There as here I shall have to sleep in a chair.”

“I’ll get another room. We shall be close together,” the fiddler went on.

“Do you mean you’ll get another room at this hour of the night, with your little house stuffed full and your people all in bed? My poor Anastasius, you’re very bad; your reason totters on its throne,” said Hyacinth with excellent gaiety.

“Very good, we’ll get a room to-morrow. I’ll move into another house where there are two side by side.” His “boy’s” tone was evidently soothing to him.

“Comme vous y allez!” the young man continued. “Excuse me if I remind you that in case of my leaving this place I’ve to give a fortnight’s notice.”

“Ah you’re backing out!” Mr. Vetch lamented, dropping his hands.

“Pinnie wouldn’t have said that,” Hyacinth returned. “If you’re acting, if you’re speaking, at the behest of her pure spirit, you had better act and speak exactly as she’d have done. She’d have believed me.”

“Believed you? Believed what? What’s there to believe? If you’ll make me a promise I’ll believe that.”

“I’ll make you any promise you like,” said Hyacinth.

“Oh any promise I like—that isn’t what I want! I want just one very particular little proof—and that’s really what I came here for to-night. It came over me that I’ve been an ass all this time never to have got it out of you before. Give it to me now and I’ll go home quietly and leave you in peace.” Hyacinth, assenting in advance, requested again that he would formulate his demand, and then Mr. Vetch said: “Well, make me a promise—on your honour and as from the man you are, God help you, to the man I am—that you’ll never, under any circumstances whatever, ‘do’ anything.”

“‘Do’ anything——?”

“Anything those people expect of you.”

“Those people?” Hyacinth repeated.

“Ah don’t torment me—worried as I already am—with pretending not to understand!” the old man wailed. “You know the people I mean. I can’t call them by their names, because I don’t know their names. But you do, and they know you.”

Hyacinth had no desire to torment him, but he was capable of reflecting that to enter into his thought too easily would be tantamount to betraying himself. “I suppose I know the people you’ve in mind,” he said in a moment; “but I’m afraid I don’t grasp the need of such solemnities.”

“Don’t they want to make use of you?”

“I see what you mean,” said Hyacinth. “You think they want me to touch off some train for them. Well, if that’s what troubles you, you may sleep sound. I shall never do any of their work.”

A radiant light came into the fiddler’s face; he stared as if this assurance were too fair for nature. “Do you take your oath to that? Never anything, anything, anything?”

“Never anything at all.”

“Will you swear it to me by the memory of that good woman of whom we’ve been speaking and whom we both loved?”

“My dear old Pinnie’s memory? Willingly.”

Mr. Vetch sank down in his chair and buried his face in his hands; the next moment his companion heard him sobbing. Ten minutes later he was content to take his departure and Hyacinth went out with him to look for another cab. They found an ancient four-wheeler stationed languidly at a crossing of the ways, and before he got into it he asked his young friend to kiss him. The young friend did so with a fine accolade and in the frank foreign manner, on both cheeks, and then watched the vehicle get itself into motion and rattle away. He saw it turn a neighbouring corner and then approached the nearest gas-lamp to draw from his breast-pocket the sealed letter Schinkel had given him.