The Princess Casamassima (Volume 2 of 2)

by Henry James

XXXII

The landing at the top of the stairs in Audley Court was always dark; but it seemed darker than ever to Hyacinth while he fumbled for the door-latch after he had heard Rose Muniment’s penetrating voice bid him come in. During that instant his ear caught the sound, if it could trust itself, of another voice, which prepared him a little for the spectacle fully presented as soon as the door—his attempt to reach the handle in his sudden agitation proving fruitless—was opened to him by Paul. His friend stood there tall and hospitable, saying something loud and jovial that he didn’t distinguish. His eyes had crossed the threshold in a flash, but his step faltered a moment, only to obey, however, the vigour of Muniment’s outstretched hand. Hyacinth’s glance had gone straight, and though with four persons in it Rosy’s little apartment looked crowded he saw no one but the object of his quick preconception—no one but the Princess Casamassima seated beside the low sofa, the grand feature introduced during his absence from London, on which, arrayed in the famous pink dressing-gown, Miss Muniment now received her visitors. He wondered afterwards why he should have been so startled; for he had said often enough both to himself and to his wonderful lady that so far as she was concerned he was proof against astonishment: it was so evident that the note of her conduct would always be a sort of splendour of freedom. In fact now that he perceived she had made her way to Camberwell without his assistance the feeling in possession of him was a refined embarrassment; he blushed a little as he entered the circle, the fourth member of which was inevitably Lady Aurora Langrish. Was it that his intimacy with the Princess gave him a certain sense of responsibility for her course in respect to people who knew her as yet so scantly, and that there was something too little explained in the confidence with which she had practised a descent upon them? It indeed came over our young man that by this time perhaps they knew her a good deal; and moreover a woman’s behaviour spoke for itself when she could sit looking in that fashion like a radiant angel dressed in a simple bonnet and mantle and immensely interested in an appealing corner of the earth. It took Hyacinth but an instant to infer that her character was in a different phase from any yet exhibited to him. There had been a glory of gentleness about her the night he made her acquaintance, and she had never ceased at any moment since to strike him as full of the imagination of sympathy and pity, unless perforce in relation to her husband, against whom—for reasons after all doubtless very sufficient—her heart appeared absolutely steeled. Now at any rate this high mildness had deepened to a rapture of active, ministering charity. She had put off her splendour, but her beauty was unquenchably bright; she had made herself humble for her pious excursion; she had, beside Rosy (who in the pink dressing-gown looked much the more luxurious of the two), almost the attitude of an hospital nurse; and it was easy to see from the meagre line of her garments that she was tremendously in earnest. If Hyacinth was flurried her own countenance expressed no confusion; for her evidently this queer little bower of poverty and pain was a place in which it was perfectly natural that he should turn up. The sweet, still greeting her eyes offered him might exquisitely have conveyed that she had been waiting for him, that she knew he would come and that there had been a tacit appointment for that very moment. They said other things besides in their beautiful friendliness; they said: “Don’t notice me too much or make any kind of scene. I’ve an immense deal to say to you, but remember that I’ve the rest of our life before me to say it in. Consider only what will be easiest and kindest to these people, these delightful people, whom I find enchanting (why didn’t you ever tell me more—I mean really more—about them?). It won’t be particularly complimentary to them if you’ve the air of seeing a miracle in my presence here. I’m very glad of your return. The quavering, fidgety ‘ladyship’ is as striking as the others.”

Hyacinth’s reception at the hands of his old friends was cordial enough quite to obliterate the element of irony that had lurked, fifteen weeks before, in their godspeed; their welcome was not boisterous, but it seemed to express the idea that the occasion, already so rare and agreeable, needed but his arrival to make it perfect. By the time he had been three minutes in the room he was able to measure the impression produced by the Princess, who, it was clear, had cast the charm of the worshipful over the little company. This was in the air, in the face of each, in their smiling, their excited eyes and heightened colour; even Rosy’s wan grimace, at all times screwed up to ecstasy, had the supreme glitter of great occasions. Lady Aurora looked more than ever dishevelled with interest and wonder; the long strands of her silky hair floated like gossamer while, in her extraordinary, religious attention, with her hands raised and clasped to her bosom as if she were praying, her respiration rose and fell. She had never seen any one like the Princess; but Hyacinth’s apprehension of some months before had been groundless—she evidently didn’t think her “flashy.” She thought her divine and a revelation of beauty and benignity; and the illuminated, amplified room could contain no dissentient opinion. It was her beauty primarily that “fetched” them, Hyacinth could easily see, and it was not hidden from him that the impression had been made as much on Paul Muniment as on his companions. It was not in Paul’s nature to be jerkily demonstrative and he had not lost his head on the present occasion; but he had already appreciated the difference between a plain, suspicious man’s preconception of a meretricious, factitious, fine lady and the actual influence of such a personage. She was gentler, fairer, wiser than even a chemical expert could have guessed in advance. In short she held the trio in her hand, having reduced Lady Aurora to exactly the same simplicity as the others, and she performed admirably and artistically for their benefit. Almost before Hyacinth had had time to wonder how she had found the Muniments out—he had no recollection of giving her specific directions—she mentioned that Captain Sholto had been so good as to introduce her; doing so as if she owed him that explanation and were a woman who would be scrupulous in such a case. It was rather a blow to him to learn she had been accepting the Captain’s mediation, and this was not softened by her saying she was too impatient to wait for his own return: he was apparently so pleased with the roving life that one couldn’t be sure it would ever take place. The Princess might at least have been sure that to see her again very soon was still more necessary to his happiness than anything the roving life could offer. No adventure was so prodigious as sticking as fast as possible to her.

It came out in the conversation he had with her, to which the others listened with respectful curiosity, that Captain Sholto had brought her a week before, but that she had then seen only Miss Muniment. “I took the liberty of coming again by myself to-day, because I wanted to see the whole family,” she developed, looking from Paul to Lady Aurora with a bright blandness which purified the statement (as regarded her ladyship) of impertinence. The Princess added frankly that she had now been careful to arrive at an hour when she thought Mr. Muniment might be at home. “When I come to see gentlemen I like at least to find them,” she continued, and she was so great a lady that there was no dowdy diffidence in her attitude: it was a simple matter for her to call on a young man employed at large chemical works if she had a reason. Hyacinth could see that the reason had already been brought forward—her immense interest in problems that Mr. Muniment had completely mastered and in particular their common acquaintance with the extraordinary man whose mission it was to solve them. He learned later that she had pronounced the name of the great, patient, powerful Hoffendahl. A part of the lustre in Rosy’s eye came no doubt from the declaration she had inevitably been moved to make in respect to any sympathy with wicked theories that might be imputed to her; and of course the effect of this intensely individual little protest—such was always its effect—emanating from the sofa and the pink dressing-gown was to render the home of the Muniments still more quaint and original. In that spot Paul always gave the pleasantest go-by to any attempt to draw out his views; so you would have thought, to hear him, that he allowed himself the reputation of having them only in order to get a “rise” out of his sister and let their visitors see with what wit and spirit she could repudiate them. This, however, would only be a reason the more for the Princess’s following up her scent. She would doubtless not expect to get at the bottom of his ideas in Audley Court: the opportunity would occur rather in case of his having the civility—on which surely she might count—to come and talk them over with her in her own house.

Hyacinth mentioned to her the disappointment he had had in South Street and she replied: “Oh, I’ve given up that house and taken quite a different one.” But she didn’t say where it was, and in spite of her having given him so much the right to expect she would communicate to him a matter so nearly touching them both as a change of address he felt a great shyness about asking.

Their companions watched them as if they considered that something rather witty and showy now would be likely to come off between them; but Hyacinth was too full of regard for his beautiful friend’s tacit notification to him that they must not appear too thick, which was after all more flattering than the most pressing inquiries or the most liberal announcements about herself could have been. She never asked him when he had come back; and indeed it was not long before Rose Muniment took that business on herself. Hyacinth, however, ventured to assure himself if Madame Grandoni were still at her post and even to remark—when his fellow-visitor had replied, “Oh yes, still, still. The great refusal, as Dante calls it, has not yet come off”—“You ought to bring her to see Miss Rosy. She’s a person Miss Rosy would particularly appreciate.”

“I’m sure I should be most happy to receive any friend of the Princess Casamassima,” said this young lady from the sofa; and when the Princess answered that she certainly would not fail to produce Madame Grandoni some day, Hyacinth—though he doubted if the presentation would really take place—guessed how much she wished her old friend might have heard the strange, bedizened little invalid make that speech.

There were only three other seats, for the introduction of the sofa—the question profoundly studied in advance—had rendered necessary the elimination of certain articles; so that Muniment, on his feet, hovered round the little circle with his hands in his pockets, laughing freely and sociably but not looking at the Princess; even if, as Hyacinth was sure, none the less agitated by her presence.

“You ought to tell us about foreign parts and the grand things you’ve seen; except that our distinguished visitor must know all about them,” Muniment threw out to him. Then he added: “Surely, at any rate, you’ve seen nothing more worthy of your respect than Camberwell.”

“Is this the worst part?” the Princess asked, looking up with her noble, interested face.

“The worst, madam? What grand ideas you must have! We admire Camberwell immensely.”

“It’s my brother’s ideas that are grand!” cried Rose Muniment, betraying him conscientiously. “He does want everything changed, no less than you, Princess; though he’s more cunning than you and won’t give one a handle where one can take him up. He thinks all this part most objectionable—as if dirty people won’t always make everything dirty where they live! I daresay he thinks there ought to be no dirty people, and it may be so; only if every one was clean where would be the merit? You’d get no credit for keeping yourself tidy. If it’s a question of soap and water, at any rate, every one can begin by himself. My brother thinks the whole place ought to be as handsome as Brompton.”

“Ah yes, that’s where the artists and literary people live, isn’t it?” the Princess asked attentively.

“I’ve never seen it, but it’s very well laid out,” Rosy returned with her competent manner.

“Oh I like Camberwell better than that,” Muniment said with due amusement.

The Princess turned to Lady Aurora and, with the air of appealing to her for her opinion, gave her a glance that travelled in a flash from the topmost bow of her large misfitting hat to the crumpled points of her substantial shoes. “I must get you to tell me the truth,” she breathed. “I want so much to know London—the real London. It seems so difficult!”

Lady Aurora looked a little frightened, but at the same time gratified, and after a moment responded: “I believe a great many artists live in Saint John’s Wood.”

“I don’t care about the artists!” said the Princess, shaking her head slowly and with the sad smile that sometimes made her beauty so inexpressibly touching.

“Not when they’ve painted you such beautiful pictures?” Rosy demanded. “We know about your pictures—we’ve admired them so much. Mr. Hyacinth has described to us your precious possessions.”

The Princess transferred her smile to Rosy and rested it on that young lady’s shrunken countenance with the same ineffable head-shake. “You do me too much honour. I’ve no possessions.”

“Gracious, was it all a make-believe?” Rosy cried, flashing at Hyacinth an eye that was never so eloquent as when it demanded an explanation.

“I’ve nothing in the world—nothing but the clothes on my back!” the Princess repeated very gravely and without looking at their indiscreet friend.

The words struck Hyacinth as an admonition, so that, though much puzzled, he made no attempt for the moment to reconcile the contradiction. He only replied: “I meant the things in the house. Of course I didn’t know to whom they belonged.”

“There are no things in my house now,” the Princess went on; and there was a touch of pure, high resignation in the words.

“Laws, I shouldn’t like that!” Rose Muniment declared, glancing with complacency over her own decorated walls. “Everything here belongs to me.”

“I shall bring Madame Grandoni to see you,” said the Princess irrelevantly but kindly.

“Do you think it’s not right to have a lot of things about?” Lady Aurora, with sudden courage, inquired of her distinguished companion, pointing a vague chin at her but looking into one of the upper angles of the room.

“I suppose one must always settle that for one’s self. I don’t like to be surrounded with objects I don’t care for, and I can care only for one thing—that is for one class of things—at a time. Dear lady,” the Princess pursued, “I fear I must confess to you that my heart’s not in bibelots. When thousands and tens of thousands haven’t bread to put in their mouths I can dispense with tapestry and old china.” And her fair face, bent charmingly, conciliatingly, on Lady Aurora, appeared to argue that if she was narrow at least she was honest.

Hyacinth wondered, rather vulgarly, what strange turn she had taken and whether this singular picture of her denuded personality were not one of her famous caprices, a whimsical joke, a nervous perversity. Meanwhile he heard Lady Aurora urge anxiously: “But don’t you think we ought to make the world more beautiful?”

“Doesn’t the Princess make it so by the mere fact of her existence?” Hyacinth interposed, his perplexity escaping in a harmless manner through this graceful hyperbole. He had observed that though the lady in question could dispense with old china and tapestry she couldn’t dispense with a pair of immaculate gloves which fitted her to a charm.

“My people have a mass of things, you know, but I’ve really nothing myself,” said Lady Aurora, as if she owed this assurance to such a representative of suffering humanity.

“The world will be beautiful enough when it becomes good enough,” the Princess resumed. “Is there anything so ugly as unjust distinctions, as the privileges of the few contrasted with the degradation of the many? When we want to beautify we must begin at the right end.”

“Surely there are none of us but what have our privileges!” Rose Muniment exclaimed with eagerness. “What do you say to mine, lying here between two members of the aristocracy and with Mr. Hyacinth thrown in?”

“You’re certainly lucky—with Lady Aurora Langrish. I wish she would come and see me,” the Princess genially sighed as she rose.

“Do go, my lady, and tell me if it’s so poor!” Rosy went on gaily.

“I think there can’t be too many pictures and statues and works of art,” Hyacinth broke out. “The more the better, whether people are hungry or not. In the way of ameliorating influences are not those the most definite?”

“A piece of bread and butter’s more to the purpose if your stomach’s empty,” the Princess declared.

“Robinson has been corrupted by foreign influences,” Paul Muniment suggested. “He doesn’t care for bread and butter now; he likes French cookery.”

“Yes, but I don’t get it. And have you sent away the little man, the Italian, with the white cap and apron?” Hyacinth asked of the Princess.

She hesitated a moment but presently replied laughing and not in the least offended at his question, though it was an attempt to put her in the wrong from which Hyacinth had not been able to refrain in his astonishment at these ascetic pretensions: “I’ve sent him away many times!”

Lady Aurora had also got up; she stood there gazing at her beautiful fellow-visitor with a timidity that made her wonder only more apparent. “Your servants must be awfully fond of you.”

“Oh my servants!” said the Princess as if it were only by a stretch of the meaning of the word that she could be said to enjoy the ministrations of menials. Her manner seemed to imply that she had a charwoman for an hour a day. Hyacinth caught the tone and determined that since she was going, as it appeared, he would break off his own visit and accompany her. He had flattered himself at the end of three weeks of Medley that he knew her in every phase, but here was a field of freshness. She turned to Paul Muniment and put out her hand to him, and while he took it in his own his face was visited by the most beautiful eyes that had ever rested there. “Will you come and see me one of these days?” she asked with a voice as pure as her glance.

Hyacinth waited for Paul’s answer with an emotion that could only be accounted for by his affectionate sympathy, the manner in which he had spoken of him to the Princess and which he wished him to justify, the interest he had in his appearing completely the fine fellow he believed him. Muniment neither stammered nor blushed; he held himself straight and looked back at his interlocutress with eyes at least as open as her own to everything that concerned him. Then by way of answer: “Well madam, pray what good will it do me?” And the tone of the words was so humorous and kindly, and so instinct with a plain manly sense, that though they were not gallant Hyacinth was not ashamed for him. At the same moment he observed that Lady Aurora was watching their friend as if she had at least an equal stake in what he might say.

“Ah none; only me perhaps a little.” With this rejoinder and with a wonderful, sweet, indulgent dignity in which there was none of the stiffness of pride or resentment the Princess quitted him and approached Lady Aurora. She asked if she wouldn’t do her the kindness to come. She should like so much to know her and had an idea there was a great deal they might talk about. Lady Aurora said she should be delighted, and the Princess took one of her cards out of her pocket and gave it to the noble spinster. After she had done so she stood a moment holding her hand and brought out: “It has really been such a happiness to me to meet you. Please don’t think it’s very clumsy if I say I do like you so!” Lady Aurora was evidently exceedingly moved and impressed; but Rosy, when the Princess took leave of her and the irrepressible invalid had assured her of the pleasure with which she should receive her again, uttered the further truth that in spite of this she herself could never conscientiously enter into such theories.

“If every one was equal,” Rosy asked, “where would be the gratification I feel in getting a visit from a grandee? That’s what I have often said to her ladyship, and I consider that I’ve kept her in her place a little. No, no; no equality while I’m about the place!”

The company appeared to comprehend that there was a natural fitness in Hyacinth’s seeing the great lady on her way, and accordingly no effort was made to detain him. He guided her, with the help of an attendant illumination from Muniment, down the dusky staircase, and at the door of the house there was a renewed, brief leave-taking with their host, who, however, showed no signs of relenting or recanting in respect to the Princess’s invitation. The warm evening had by this time grown thick and the population of Audley Court appeared to be passing it for the most part in the open air. As Hyacinth assisted his companion to thread her way through groups of sprawling, chattering children, gossiping women with bare heads and babies at the breast and heavily-planted men smoking very bad pipes, it seemed to him that their project of exploring the slums was already in the way of execution. He said nothing till they gained the outer street, but then, pausing a moment, inquired how she would be conveyed. Had she a carriage somewhere or should he try and get a cab?

“A carriage, my dear fellow? For what do you take me? I won’t trouble you about a cab: I walk everywhere now.”

“But if I had not been here?”

“I should have gone alone”; and she smiled at him through the turbid twilight of Camberwell.

“And where, please, gracious heaven? I may at least have the honour of accompanying you.”

“Certainly, if you can walk so far.”

“So far as what, dear Princess?”

“As Madeira Crescent, Paddington.”

“Madeira Crescent, Paddington?” Hyacinth stared.

“That’s what I call it when I’m with people with whom I wish to be fine, as with you. I’ve taken a small house there.”

“Then it’s really true that you’ve given up your beautiful things?”

“I’ve sold everything to give to the poor.”

“Ah, Princess——!” the young man almost moaned; for the memory of some of her treasures was vivid to him.

She became very grave, even stern, and with an accent of reproach that seemed to show she had been wounded where she was most sensitive demanded: “When I said I was willing to make the last sacrifice did you then believe I was lying?”

“Haven’t you kept anything?” he went on without heeding this challenge.

She looked at him a moment. “I’ve kept you!” Then she passed her hand into his arm and they moved forward. He saw what she had done; she was living in a little ugly, bare, middle-class house and wearing simple gowns; and the energy and good faith of her behaviour, with the abruptness of the transformation, took away his breath. “I thought I should please you so much,” she added after they had gone a few steps. And before he had time to reply, as they came to a part of the street where there were small shops, those of butchers, greengrocers and pork-pie men, with open fronts, flaring lamps and humble purchasers, she broke out joyously: “Ah, this is the way I like to see London!”