XXVI
“Of course he may come, and may stay as long as he likes!” the Princess exclaimed when Hyacinth, that afternoon, told her of his encounter: she spoke with the sweet, bright surprise her face always wore when people went through the form (supererogatory she apparently meant to declare it) of asking her leave. From the manner in which she granted Sholto’s petition—with a facility that made light of it, as if the question were not worth talking of one way or the other—the account he had given Hyacinth of their relations might have passed for an elaborate but none the less foolish hoax. She sent a messenger with a note over to Bonchester, and the Captain arrived just in time to dress for dinner. The Princess was always late, and Hyacinth’s toilet on these occasions occupied him considerably (he was acutely conscious of its deficiencies, and yet tried to persuade himself that they were positively honourable and that the only garb of dignity for him was the costume, as it were, of his profession); therefore when the fourth member of the little party descended to the drawing-room Madame Grandoni was the only person he found there.
“Santissima Vergine! I’m glad to see you! What good wind has sent you?” she exclaimed as soon as Sholto came into the room.
“Didn’t you know I was coming?” he asked. “Has the idea of my arrival produced so little agitation?”
“I know nothing of the affairs of this house. I’ve given them up at last, and it was time. I remain in my room.” There was nothing at present in the old lady’s countenance of her usual spirit of cheer; it expressed anxiety and even a certain sternness, and the excellent woman had perhaps at this moment more than she had ever had in her life of the air of a duenna who took her duties seriously. She looked almost august. “From the moment you come it’s a little better. But it’s very bad.”
“Very bad, dear madam?”
“Perhaps you’ll be able to tell me where Christina veut en venir. I’ve always been faithful to her—I’ve always been loyal. But to-day I’ve lost patience. It has no sense.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” Sholto said; “but if I understand you I must tell you I think it all magnificent.”
“Yes, I know your tone; you’re worse than she, because you’re cynical. It passes all bounds. It’s very serious. I’ve been thinking what I should do.”
“Precisely. I know what you’ll probably do.”
“Oh this time I shouldn’t come back!” the old lady declared. “The scandal’s too great. It’s intolerable. But my danger’s of making it worse.”
“Dear Madame Grandoni, you can’t make it worse and you can’t make it better,” Sholto returned as he seated himself on the sofa beside her. “In point of fact no idea of scandal can possibly attach itself to our friend. She’s above and outside all such considerations, such dangers. She carries everything off; she heeds so little, she cares so little. Besides, she has one great strength—she does no wrong.”
“Pray what do you call it when a lady sends for a bookbinder to come and live with her?”
“Why not for a bookbinder as well as for a bishop? It all depends upon who the lady is and what she is.”
“She had better take care of one thing first,” cried Madame Grandoni—“that she shall not have been separated, with a hundred stories, from her husband!”
“The Princess can carry off even that. It’s unusual, it’s eccentric, it’s fantastic if you will, but it isn’t necessarily wicked. From her own point of view our friend goes straight. Besides, she has her opinions.”
“Her opinions are perversity itself.”
“What does it matter,” asked Sholto, “if they keep her quiet?”
“Quiet! Do you call this quiet?”
“Surely, if you’ll only be so yourself. Putting the case at the worst, moreover, who’s to know he’s her bookbinder? It’s the last thing you’d take him for.”
“Yes, for that she chose him carefully,” the old woman murmured, still with a ruffled eyebrow.
“She chose him? It was I who chose him, dear lady!” the Captain cried with a laugh that showed how little he shared her solicitude.
“Yes, I had forgotten. At the theatre,” said Madame Grandoni, gazing at him as if her ideas were confused, yet as if a certain repulsion from her interlocutor nevertheless disengaged itself. “It was a fine turn you did him there, poor young man!”
“Certainly he’ll have to be sacrificed. But why was I bound to consider him so much? Haven’t I been sacrificed myself?”
“Oh if he bears it like you!”—and she almost snorted with derision.
“How do you know how I bear it? One does what one can,” said the Captain while he settled his shirt-front. “At any rate remember this: she won’t tell people who he is for his own sake, and he won’t tell them for hers. So, as he looks much more like a poet or a pianist or a painter, there won’t be that sensation you fear.”
“Even so it’s bad enough,” said Madame Grandoni. “And he’s capable of bringing it out suddenly himself.”
“Ah if he doesn’t mind it she won’t! But that’s his affair.”
“It’s too terrible to spoil him for his station,” the old lady went on. “How can he ever go back?”
“If you want him kept then indefinitely you’re inconsistent. Besides, if he pays for it he deserves to pay. He’s an abominable little conspirator against society.”
Madame Grandoni was silent a time; then she looked at the Captain with a gravity which might have been impressive to him had not his accomplished jauntiness suggested an insensibility to that sort of influence. “What then does Christina deserve?” she asked with solemnity.
“Whatever she may get; whatever in the future may make her suffer. But it won’t be the loss of her reputation. She’s too distinguished.”
“You English are strange. Is it because she’s a princess?” Madame Grandoni reflected audibly.
“Oh dear no, her princedom’s nothing here. We can easily beat that. But we can’t beat——!” And he had a pause.
“What then?” his companion asked.
“Well, the perfection of her indifference to public opinion and the unaffectedness of her originality; the sort of thing by which she has bedevilled me.”
“Oh you!” Madame Grandoni tossed off.
“If you think so poorly of me why did you say just now that you were glad to see me?” Sholto demanded in a moment.
“Because you make another person in the house, and that’s more regular; the situation is by so much less—what did you call it?—eccentric. Nun,” she presently went on, “so long as you’re here I won’t go off.”
“Depend upon it I shall hang on tight till I’m turned out.”
She rested her small troubled eyes on him, but they betrayed no particular enthusiasm at this announcement. “I don’t understand how for yourself on such an occasion you should like it.”
“Dear Madame Grandoni, the heart of man, without being such a hopeless labyrinth as the heart of woman, is still sufficiently complicated. Don’t I know what will become of the little beggar?”
“You’re very horrible,” said the old woman. Then she added in a different tone: “He’s much too good for his fate.”
“And pray wasn’t I for mine?” the Captain asked.
“By no manner of means!” Madame Grandoni returned as she rose and moved away from him.
The Princess had come into the room accompanied by Hyacinth. As it was now considerably past the dinner-hour the old lady judged that this couple, on their side, had met in the hall and had prolonged their conversation there. Hyacinth watched with extreme interest the way the Princess greeted the Captain—taking it for very simple, easy and friendly. At dinner she made no stranger of him, including him in everything as if he had been a useful familiar like Madame Grandoni, only a little less venerable, yet not giving him any attention that might cause their eyes to meet. She had told Hyacinth she didn’t like his eyes, nor indeed very much any part of him. Of course any admiration from almost any source couldn’t fail to be in some degree grateful to an amiable woman, but of any unintended effect one might ever have produced the impression made on Godfrey Sholto in an evil hour ministered least to her vanity. He had been useful undoubtedly at times, but at others had been as a droning in her ears. He was so uninteresting in himself, so shallow, so unoccupied and futile, and really so frivolous in spite of his pretension (of which she was unspeakably weary) of being all wrapped up in a single idea. It had never by itself been sufficient to interest her in any man, the fact that he was in love with her; but indeed she could honestly say that most of the people who had liked her had had on their own side something, something in their character or conditions, that she could trouble her head about. Not so far as would do any harm save perhaps in one or two cases; but still some personal mark.
Sholto was a curious and not particularly edifying English type, as the Princess further described him; one of those odd figures produced by old societies that have run to seed, corrupt and exhausted civilisations. He was a cumberer of the earth—purely selfish for all his devoted, disinterested airs. He was nothing whatever in himself and had no character or merit save by tradition, reflexion, imitation, superstition. He had a longish pedigree—he came of some musty, mouldy “county family,” people with a local reputation and an immense lack of general importance; he had taken the greatest care of his little fortune. He had travelled all over the globe several times, “for the shooting,” in that murdering, ravaging way of the English, the destruction, the extirpation of creatures more beautiful, more soaring and more nimble than themselves. He had a little taste, a little cleverness, a little reading, a little good furniture, a little French and Italian (he exaggerated these latter quantities), an immense deal of assurance and unmitigated leisure. That, at bottom, was all he represented—idle, trifling, luxurious, yet at the same time pretentious leisure, the sort of thing that led people to invent false, humbugging duties because they had no real ones. Sholto’s great idea of himself, after his profession of being her slave, was that he was a cosmopolite and exempt from every prejudice. About the prejudices the Princess couldn’t say and didn’t care; but she had seen him in foreign countries, she had seen him in Italy, and she was bound to say he understood nothing of those people. It was several years before, shortly after her marriage, that she had first encountered him. He had not begun immediately to go in for adoring her—it had come little by little. It was only after she had separated from her husband that he had taken so to hanging about her—since when she had suffered much from him. She would do him one justice, however: he had never, so far as she knew, had the impudence to represent himself as anything but hopeless and helpless. It was on this he took his stand—he wanted to pass for the great model of unrewarded constancy. She couldn’t imagine what he was waiting for—perhaps it was for the death of the Prince. But the Prince would never die, nor had she the least desire he should. She had no wish to be harsh, for of course that sort of thing was from any one very flattering; but really, whatever feeling poor Sholto might have, four-fifths of it were purely theatrical. He was not in the least a natural, quiet person, and had only a hundred affectations and attitudes, the result of never having been obliged to put his hand to anything, of having no serious tastes and yet being born to a little position. The Princess remarked that she was so glad Hyacinth had no position, had been forced to do something else in life but amuse himself; that was the way she liked her friends now. She had said to Sholto again and again: “There are plenty of others who will be much more pleased with you; why not go to them? It’s such a waste of time.” She was sure indeed he had in some degree taken her advice, was by no means, as regards herself, the absorbed, annihilated creature he endeavoured to pass for. He had told her once he was trying to take an interest in other women—though indeed he had added that it was of no use. Of what use did he expect anything he could possibly do to be? Hyacinth, at this, didn’t tell the Princess he had reason to believe the Captain’s effort in that direction had not been absolutely vain; but he made the reflexion privately and with increased confidence. He recognised a further truth even when his companion said at the end that with all she had touched upon poor Sholto was a queer combination. Trifler as he was there was something sinister in him too; and she confessed she had had a vague feeling at times that some day he might do her a hurt. It was a remark that caused our young man to stop short on the threshold of the drawing-room and ask in a low voice: “Are you afraid of him?”
The Princess smiled as he had not yet seen her. “Dio mio, how you say that! Should you like to kill him for me?”
“I shall have to kill some one, you know. Why not him while I’m about it if he troubles you?”
“Ah my friend, if you should begin to kill every one who has troubled me!” she wonderfully wailed as they went into the room.