XXXIV
How right had been her prevision that Lady Aurora would be fascinated at first was proved as soon as Hyacinth went to Belgrave Square—a visit he was promptly led to pay by a deep sense of the obligations under which her ladyship had placed him at the time of Pinnie’s death. The conditions in which he found her were quite the same as those of his visit the year before; she was spending the unfashionable season in her father’s empty house and amid a desert of brown holland and the dormant echoes of heavy conversation. He had seen so much of her during Pinnie’s illness that he felt—or had felt then—that he knew her almost intimately, that they had become real friends, almost comrades, and might meet henceforth without reserves or ceremonies. She was in spite of this as fluttered and awkward as she had been on the other occasion: not distant, but entangled in new coils of shyness and apparently unmindful of what had happened to draw them closer. Hyacinth, however, always liked extremely to be with her, for she was the person in the world who quietly, delicately and as a matter of course treated him most as a gentleman and appeared most naturally to take him for one. She had never addressed him the handsome flattering freedoms that had fallen from the lips of the Princess, and never explained at all her view of him; but her timid, cursory, receptive manner, which took all sorts of equalities and communities for granted, was a homage to the idea of his fine essence. It was in this manner that she now conversed with him on the subject of his foreign travels; he found himself discussing the political indications of Paris and the Ruskinian theories of Venice in Belgravia after the fashion of the cosmopolites bred by those wastes. It took him none the less but a few minutes to be sure Lady Aurora’s heart was not in these considerations; the deferential smile she bent upon him while she sat with her head thrust forward and her long hands clasped in her lap was slightly mechanical, her attitude all perfunctory. When he gave her his views of some of the arrière-pensées of M. Gambetta—for he had views not altogether, as he thought, deficient in originality—she didn’t interrupt, for she never interrupted; but she took advantage of his first pause to say quickly and irrelevantly: “Will the Princess Casamassima come again to Audley Court?”
“I’ve no doubt she’d come again if they’d particularly like her to.”
“I do hope she will. She’s very wonderful,” Lady Aurora richly breathed.
“Oh yes, she’s very wonderful. I think she gave Rosy pleasure.”
“Rosy can talk of nothing else. It would really do her great good to have such an experience again. Don’t you think her quite different from anybody one has ever seen?” But her ladyship added before waiting for an answer to this: “I liked her quite extraordinarily.”
“She liked you just as much. I know it would give her great pleasure if you could go to see her,” Hyacinth said.
“Fancy that!” his companion gasped; and she instantly obtained the Princess’s address from him and made a note of it in a small shabby pocket-book. She mentioned that the card the Princess had given her in Camberwell exhibited in fact no address, and he recognised that vagary—the Princess was so off-hand. Then she said, hesitating a little: “Does she really care for the poor?”
“If she doesn’t,” the young man replied, “I can’t imagine what interest she has in pretending to.”
“If she does she’s very remarkable—she deserves great honour.”
“You really care—so why is she more remarkable than you?” Hyacinth demanded.
“Oh it’s very different—she’s so wonderfully attractive!” Lady Aurora replied, making recklessly the one allusion to the oddity of her own appearance in which he was destined to hear her indulge. She became conscious of it the moment she had spoken, and said quickly, to turn it off: “I should like to talk with her, but I’m rather afraid. She’s tremendously clever.”
“Ah what she is—‘tremendously’—you’ll find out when you know her!” he could but all portentously sigh.
His hostess looked at him a little and then vaguely returned: “How very interesting!” The next moment she continued: “She might do so many other things. She might charm the world.”
“She does that, whatever she does,” Hyacinth smiled. “It’s all by the way; it needn’t interfere.”
“That’s what I mean, that most other people would be content—beautiful as she is. There’s great merit when you give up something.”
“She has known a great many bad people and she wants to know some good,” he explained. “Therefore be sure to go to her soon.”
“She looks as if she had known nothing bad since she was born,” said Lady Aurora rapturously. “I can’t imagine her going into all the dreadful places she’d have to.”
“You’ve gone into them, and it hasn’t hurt you,” he suggested.
“How do you know that? My family think it has.”
“You make me glad then that I haven’t a family,” said the young man.
“And the Princess—has she no one?”
“Ah yes, she has a husband. But she doesn’t live with him.”
“Is he one of the bad persons?” asked Lady Aurora as earnestly as a child listening to a tale.
“Well, I don’t like to abuse him—he’s down.”
“If I were a man I should be in love with her,” said Lady Aurora. Then she added: “I wonder if we might work together.”
“That’s exactly what she hopes.”
“I won’t show her the worst places,” her ladyship maliciously protested.
To which her visitor returned: “I expect you’ll do what every one else has done—which is exactly what she wants!” Before he took leave he said to her: “Do you know if Paul Muniment also liked the Princess?”
She meditated a moment, apparently with some intensity. “I think she struck him as extraordinarily beautiful—as the most beautiful person he had ever seen.”
“Does he still believe her a humbug?”
“Still?” asked Lady Aurora as if she didn’t understand.
“I mean that that was the impression apparently made upon him last winter by my description of her.”
“Oh I’m sure he thinks her tremendously plucky!” Which was all the satisfaction Hyacinth got just then as to Muniment’s estimate of the Princess.
A few days later he returned to Madeira Crescent in the evening, the only time he was free, the Princess having given him a general invitation to take tea with her. He felt he ought to be discreet in acting on it, though he was not without reasons that would have warranted him in going early and often. He had a peculiar dread of her growing used to him and tired of him—boring herself in his society; yet at the same time he had rather a sharp vision of her boring herself without him during the dull summer evenings when even Paddington was out of town. He wondered what she did, what visitors dropped in, what pastimes she cultivated, what saved her from the sudden vagary of throwing up the whole of her present game. He remembered that there was a complete side of her life with which he was almost unacquainted—Lady Marchant and her daughters, at Medley, and three or four other persons who had called while he was there being, in his experience, the only illustrations of it—and didn’t know, by the same token, to what extent she had in spite of her transformation preserved relations with her old friends; but he made out as looming the day she would discover that what she found in Madeira Crescent was less striking than what she missed. Going thither a second time he noted, for all this, that he had done her great injustice: she was full of resources, she had never been so happy, she found time to read, to write, to commune with her piano and above all to think—a delightful detachment from the invasive, vulgar, gossiping, distracting world she had known hitherto. The only interruption to her felicity was that she received quantities of notes from her former acquaintance, endless appeals to give some account of herself, to say what had become of her, to come and stay with them in the country. With these survivals of her past she took a very short way, she simply burned them without answering. She told Hyacinth immediately that Lady Aurora had called two days before, at an hour when she was not in, and that she had straightway addressed her in return an invitation to come to tea any evening at eight o’clock. That was the way the people in Madeira Crescent entertained each other—the Princess knew everything about them now and was eager to impart her knowledge; and the evening, she was sure, would be much more convenient to Lady Aurora, whose days were filled with good works, with peregrinations of charity. Her ladyship arrived ten minutes after Hyacinth; she assured the Princess her invitation had been expressed in a manner so flattering that she was unwilling to wait more than a day to respond. She was introduced to Madame Grandoni and tea all bustlingly served; Hyacinth being gratefully conscious the while of the “considerate” way in which Lady Aurora forbore to appear bewildered at meeting him in such society. She knew he frequented it, having been witness of his encounter with their high personage in Audley Court; but it might have startled her to have ocular evidence of the footing on which he stood. Everything the Princess did or said at this time had for effect, whatever its purpose, to make her seem more rare and fine; and she had seldom given him greater pleasure than by the exquisite art she put forth to win Lady Aurora’s confidence, to place herself under the pure and elevating influence of the noble spinster. She made herself small and simple; she spoke of her own little aspirations and efforts; she appealed and persuaded; she laid her white hand on her gentle guest’s, gazing at her with an interest all visibly sincere but which yet derived half its effect from the contrast between the quality of her beauty, the whole air of her person, and the hard, dreary problems of misery and crime. It was touching and Lady Aurora was touched; that was quite clear as they sat together on the sofa after tea and the Princess protested that she only wanted to know what her new friend was doing—what she had done for years—in order that she might go and do likewise. She asked personal questions with a directness that was sometimes embarrassing to the subject—he had seen that habit in her from the first—and her yearning guest, though charmed and excited, was not quite comfortable at being so publicly probed and sounded. The public was formed of Madame Grandoni and Hyacinth; but the old lady—whose intercourse with the visitor had consisted almost wholly of watching her with a deep, speculative anxiety—presently shuffled away and was heard, through the thin partitions that prevailed in Madeira Crescent, to ascend to her own apartment. It seemed to Hyacinth that he ought also in delicacy to retire, and this was his intention from one moment to the other; to him certainly—and the very second time she met him—Lady Aurora had made as much of her confession as he had a right to look for. After that one little flash of egotism he had never again heard her refer to her own feelings or conditions.
“Do you stay in town like this, at such a season, on purpose to attend to your work?” the Princess asked; and there was something archly rueful in the tone in which she made this inquiry—as if it cost her just a pang to find that in taking such a line she herself had not been so original as she hoped. “Mr. Robinson has told me about your big house in Belgrave Square—you must let me come and see you there. Nothing would make me so happy as that you should allow me to help you a little—how little soever. Do you like to be helped or do you like to go quite alone? Are you very independent or do you need to look up, to cling, to lean on some one? Pardon me if I ask impertinent questions; we speak that way—rather, you know—in Rome, where I’ve spent a large part of my life. That idea of your being there by yourself, in your great dull home, with all your charities and devotions, makes a kind of picture in my mind; it’s quaint and touching, it’s like something in some English novel. Englishwomen are so awfully accomplished, are they not? I’m really a foreigner, you know, and though I’ve lived here a while it takes one some time to find those things out au juste. Is your work for the people therefore only one of your occupations or is it everything, does it absorb your whole life? That’s what I should like it to be for me. Do your family like you to throw yourself into all this or have you had to brave a certain amount of ridicule? I daresay you have; that’s where you English are strong, in braving ridicule. They have to do it so often, haven’t they? I don’t know whether I could do it. I never tried—but with you I think I would brave anything. Are your family clever and sympathetic? No? the kind of thing that one’s family generally is? Ah well, dear lady, we must make a little family together. Are you encouraged or disgusted? Do you go on doggedly or have you some faith, some great idea, that lifts you up? Are you actively religious now, par exemple? Do you do your work in connexion with any pious foundation or earnest movement, any missions or priests or sisters? I’m a Catholic, you know—but so little by my own doing! I shouldn’t mind in the least joining hands with any one who’s really producing results. I express myself awkwardly, but perhaps you know what I mean. Possibly you don’t know that I’m one of those who believe that a great new deal is destined to take place and that it can’t make things worse than they are already. I believe, in a word, in the action of the people for themselves—the others will never act for them; and I’m all ready to act with them—in any intelligent or intelligible way. If that shocks you I shall be immensely disappointed, because there’s something in the impression you make on me that seems to suggest you haven’t the usual prejudices, so that if certain things were to happen you wouldn’t be afraid. You’re beautifully shy, are you not?—but you’re not craven. I suppose that if you thought the inequalities and oppressions and miseries now universal were a necessary part of life and were going on for ever you wouldn’t be interested in those people over the river (the bedridden girl and her brother I mean); because Mr. Robinson tells me they’re advanced socialists—or at least the brother is. Perhaps you’ll say you don’t care for him—the sister, to your mind, being the remarkable one. She’s indeed a perfect little femme du monde—she talks so much better than most of the people in society. I hope you don’t mind my saying that, because I’ve an idea you’re not in society. You can imagine whether I am! Haven’t you judged it like me, condemned it and given it up? Aren’t you sick of the egotism, the snobbery, the meanness, the frivolity, the immorality, the hypocrisy? Isn’t there a great resemblance in our situations? I don’t mean in our natures, for you’re far better than I shall ever be. Aren’t you quite divinely good? When I see a woman of your sort—not that I often do—I try to be a little less bad. You’ve helped hundreds, thousands of people: you must help me!”
These remarks, which I have strung together, didn’t of course fall from the Princess’s lips in an uninterrupted stream; they were arrested and interspersed by frequent, inarticulate responses and embarrassed protests. Lady Aurora shrank from them even while they gratified her, blinking and fidgeting in the dazzling, direct light of her hostess’s sympathy. I needn’t repeat her answers, the more so as they none of them arrived at completion but passed away into nervous laughter and averted looks, the latter directed at the ceiling, the floor, the windows, and appearing to project a form of entreaty to some occult or supernatural power that the conversation should become more impersonal. In reply to the Princess’s allusion to the convictions prevailing in the Muniment family she said that the brother and sister thought differently about public questions but were of the same mind with regard to the interest taken by persons of the upper class in the working people, the attempt on the part of their so-called superiors to enter into their life: they pronounced it a great mistake. At this information the Princess looked much disappointed; she wished to know if the Muniments deemed it so impossible to do them any good. “Oh I mean a mistake from our point of view,” said Lady Aurora. “They wouldn’t do it in our place; they think we had much better occupy ourselves with our own pleasures.” And as her new friend stared, not comprehending, she went on: “Rosy thinks we’ve a right to our own pleasures under all circumstances, no matter how badly off the poor may be; and her brother takes the ground that we’re not likely to have them much longer and that in view of what may happen we’re great fools not to make the most of them.”
“I see, I see. That’s very strong,” the Princess murmured in a tone of high appreciation.
“I daresay. But, all the same, whatever’s going to come one must do something.”
“You do think then that something’s going to come?” said the Princess.
“Oh immense changes, I daresay. But I don’t belong to anything, you know.”
The Princess thought this over. “No more do I. But many people do. Mr. Robinson for instance.” And she turned her golden light on Hyacinth.
“Oh if the changes depend on me——!” Mr. Robinson exclaimed with a blush.
“They won’t set the Thames on fire—I quite agree to that!”
Lady Aurora had the manner of not considering she had a warrant for going into the question of Hyacinth’s affiliations; so she stared abstractedly at the piano and in a moment remarked to her hostess: “I’m sure you play awfully well. I should like so much to hear you.”
Hyacinth could see their friend thought this banal. She had not asked Lady Aurora to spend the evening with her simply that they should fall back on the resources of the vulgar. Nevertheless she replied with perfect good nature that she should be delighted to play; only there was a thing she should like much better—which was that Lady Aurora should narrate her life.
“Oh don’t talk about mine; yours, yours!” her ladyship cried, colouring with eagerness and for the first time since her arrival indulging in the free gesture of laying her hand on that of the Princess.
“With so many grand confidences in the air I certainly had better take myself off,” said Hyacinth; and the Princess offered no opposition to his departure. She and Lady Aurora were evidently on the point of striking up a tremendous intimacy, and as he turned this idea over walking away it made him sad for strange vague reasons that he couldn’t have expressed.