XXXVII
Half an hour after the departure of the young chemical expert she heard another rat-tat-tat at her door; but this was a briefer, discreeter peal and was accompanied by a faint tintinnabulation. The person who had produced it was presently ushered in, without, however, causing Madame Grandoni to look round, or rather to look up, from an armchair as low as a sitz-bath and of very much the shape of such a receptacle, in which, near the fire, she had been immersed. She left this care to the Princess, who rose on hearing the name of the visitor pronounced inadequately by her maid. “Mr. Fetch,” Assunta called it; but that functionary’s mistress recognised without difficulty the little fat “reduced” fiddler of whom Hyacinth had talked to her, who, as Pinnie’s most intimate friend, had been so mixed up with his existence, and whom she herself had always had a curiosity to see. Hyacinth had not told her he was coming, and the unexpectedness of the apparition added to its interest. Much as she liked seeing queer types and exploring out-of-the-way social corners, she never engaged in a fresh encounter nor formed a new relation of this kind without a fit of nervousness, a fear she might herself be wanting, might fail to hit the right tone. She perceived in a moment, however, that Mr. Vetch would take her as she was and require no special adjustments; he was a gentleman and a man of experience and she should only have to leave the tone to him. He stood there with his large polished hat in his two hands, a hat of the fashion of ten years before, with a rusty sheen and an undulating brim—stood there without a salutation or a speech, but with a small fixed, acute, tentative smile which seemed half to interrogate and half to explain. What he explained, at all events, was that he was clever enough to be trusted and that if he had called this way, without ceremony and without an invitation, he had a reason which she would be sure to think good enough when she should hear it. There was even a certain jauntiness in his confidence—an insinuation that he knew how to present himself to a lady; and though it quickly appeared that he really did, this was the only thing about him that was inferior. It suggested a long experience of actresses at rehearsal, with whom he had formed habits of advice and compliment.
“I know who you are—I know who you are,” said the Princess, though she could easily see he knew she did.
“I wonder if you also know why I’ve come to see you,” Mr. Vetch replied, presenting the top of his hat to her as if it were a looking-glass.
“No, but it doesn’t matter. I’m very glad. You might even have come before.” Then she added with her characteristic honesty: “Aren’t you aware of the great interest I’ve taken in your nephew?”
“In my nephew? Yes, my young friend Robinson. It’s for his sake I’ve ventured to intrude on you.”
She had been on the point of pushing a chair toward him, but she stopped in the act, staring with a smile. “Ah I hope you haven’t come to ask me to give him up!”
“On the contrary—on the contrary!” the old man returned, lifting his hand expressively and with his head on one side as if he were holding his fiddle.
“How do you mean, on the contrary?” she asked after he had seated himself and she had sunk into her former place. As if that might sound contradictious she went on: “Surely he hasn’t any fear that I shall cease to be a good friend to him?”
“I don’t know what he fears; I don’t know what he hopes,” said Mr. Vetch, looking at her now with a face in which she could see there was something more tonic than old-fashioned politeness. “It will be difficult to tell you, but at least I must try. Properly speaking, I suppose, it’s no business of mine, as I’m not a blood-relation to the boy; but I’ve known him since he was a mite—he’s not much more even now—and I can’t help saying that I thank you for your great kindness to him.”
“All the same I don’t think you like it,” the Princess declared. “To me it oughtn’t to be difficult to say anything.”
“He has told me very little about you; he doesn’t know I’ve taken this step,” the fiddler said, turning his eyes about the room and letting them rest on Madame Grandoni.
“Why do you speak of it as a ‘step’? That’s what people say when they’ve to do something disagreeable.”
“I call very seldom on ladies. It’s a long time since I’ve been in the house of a person like the Princess Casamassima. I remember the last time,” said the old man. “It was to get my money from a lady at whose party I had been playing—for a dance.”
“You must bring your fiddle some time and play to us. Of course I don’t mean for money,” the Princess added.
“I’ll do it with pleasure, or anything else that will gratify you. But my ability’s very small. I only know vulgar music—things that are played at theatres.”
“I don’t believe that. There must be things you play for yourself—in your room alone.”
Mr. Vetch had a pause. “Now that I see you, that I hear you, it helps me to understand.”
“I don’t think you do see me!” his hostess freely laughed; on which he desired to know if there were danger of Hyacinth’s coming in while he was there. She replied that he only came, unless by prearrangement, in the evening, and her visitor made a request that she wouldn’t let their young friend imagine he himself had been with her. “It doesn’t matter; he’ll guess it, he’ll know it by instinct, as soon as he comes in. He’s terribly subtle,” she said; and she added that she had never been able to hide anything from him. Perhaps this served her right—for attempting to make a mystery of things not worth it.
“How well you know him!” the fiddler commented while his eyes wandered again to Madame Grandoni, who paid no attention to him as she sat staring at the fire. He delayed visibly to say what he had come for, and his hesitation could only be connected with the presence of the old lady. He considered that the Princess might have divined this from his manner; he had an idea he could trust himself to convey such an intimation with clearness and yet with delicacy. But the most she appeared to apprehend was that he desired to be presented to her companion. “You must know the most delightful of women. She also takes a particular interest in Mr. Robinson: of a different kind from mine—much more sentimental!” And then she explained to her friend, who seemed absorbed in other ideas, that Mr. Vetch was a distinguished musician, a person whom she, who had known so many in her day and was so fond of that kind of thing, would like to talk with. The Princess spoke of “that kind of thing” quite as if she herself had given it up, though Madame Grandoni often heard her by the hour together improvising at the piano revolutionary battle-songs and pæans.
“I think you’re laughing at me,” Mr. Vetch said to her while the other figure twisted itself slowly round in its chair and regarded him. It looked at him conveniently, up and down, and then sighed out:
“Strange people—strange people!”
“It’s indeed a strange world, madam,” the fiddler replied; after which he inquired of the Princess if he might have a little conversation with her in private.
She looked about her, embarrassed and smiling. “My dear sir, I’ve only this one room to receive in. We live in a very small way.”
“Yes, your excellency is laughing at me. Your ideas are very large too. However, I’d gladly come at any other time that might suit you.”
“You impute to me higher spirits than I possess. Why should I be so gay?” the Princess asked. “I should be delighted to see you again. I’m extremely curious as to what you may have to say to me. I’d even meet you anywhere—in Kensington Gardens or the British Museum.”
He took her deeply in before replying, and then, his white old face flushing a little, exclaimed: “Poor dear little Hyacinth!”
Madame Grandoni made an effort to rise from her chair, but she had sunk so low that at first it was not successful. Mr. Vetch gave her a hand of help, and she slowly erected herself, keeping hold of him for a moment after she stood there. “What did she tell me? That you’re a great musician? Isn’t that enough for any man? You ought to be content, my dear gentleman. It has sufficed for people whom I don’t believe you surpass.”
“I don’t surpass any one,” said poor Mr. Vetch. “I don’t know what you take me for.”
“You’re not a wicked revolutionary then? You’re not a conspirator nor an assassin? It surprises me, but so much the better. In this house one can never know. It’s not a good house, and if you’re a respectable person it’s a pity you should come here. Yes, she’s very gay and I’m very sad. I don’t know how it will end. After me, I hope. The world’s not good, certainly; but God alone can make it better.” And as the fiddler expressed the hope that he was not the cause of her leaving the room she went on: “Doch, doch, you’re the cause; but why not you as well as another? I’m always leaving it for some one or for something, and I’d sooner do so for an honest man, if you are one—but, as I say, who can tell?—than for a destroyer. I wander about. I’ve no rest. I have, however, a very nice room, the best in the house. Me at least she doesn’t treat ill. It looks to-day like the end of all things. If you’d turn your climate the other side up the rest would do well enough. Good-night to you, whoever you are.”
The old lady shuffled away in spite of Mr. Vetch’s renewed apologies, and the subject of her criticism stood before the fire watching the pair while he opened the door. “She goes away, she comes back; it doesn’t matter. She thinks it a bad house, but she knows it would be worse without her. I remember about you now,” the Princess added. “Mr. Robinson told me you had been a great democrat in old days, but that at present you’d ceased to care for the people.”
“The people—the people? That’s a silly term. Whom do you mean?”
She hesitated. “Those you used to care for, to plead for; those who are underneath every one, underneath everything, and have the whole social mass crushing them.”
“I see you think I’m a renegade. The way certain classes arrogate to themselves the title of the people has never pleased me. Why are some human beings the people, the people only, and others not? I’m of the people myself, I’ve worked all my days like a knife-grinder and I’ve really never changed.”
“You mustn’t let me make you angry,” she laughed as she sat down again. “I’m sometimes very provoking, but you must stop me off. You wouldn’t think it perhaps, but no one takes a snub better than I.”
Mr. Vetch dropped his eyes a minute; he appeared to wish to show that he regarded such a speech as that as one of this great, perverse lady’s characteristic humours and knew he should be wanting in respect to her if he took it seriously or made a personal application of it. “What I want is this,” he began after a moment: “that you’ll, that you’ll——” But he stopped before he had got further. She was watching him, listening to him; she waited while he paused. It was a long pause and she said nothing. “Princess,” the old man broke out at last, “I’d give my own life many times for that boy’s!”
“I always told him you must have been fond of him!” she cried with bright exultation.
“Fond of him? Pray who can doubt it? I made him, I invented him!”
“He knows it, moreover,” the Princess smiled. “It’s an exquisite organisation.” And as the old man gazed at her, not knowing apparently what to make of her tone, she kept it up: “It’s a very interesting opportunity for me to learn certain things. Speak to me of his early years. How was he as a child? When I like people I like them altogether and want to know everything about them.”
“I shouldn’t have supposed there was much left for you to learn about our young friend. You’ve taken possession of his life,” Mr. Vetch added gravely.
“Yes, but as I understand you, you don’t complain of it? Sometimes one does so much more than one has intended. One must use one’s influence for good,” she went on with the noble, gentle air of accessibility to reason that sometimes lighted up her face. And then irrelevantly: “I know the terrible story of his mother. He told it me himself when he was staying with me. In the course of my life I think I’ve never been more affected.”
“That was my fault—that he ever learnt it. I suppose he also told you that.”
“Yes, but I think he understood your idea. If you had the question to determine again would you judge differently?”
“I thought it would do him good,” said the old man simply and rather wearily.
“Well, I daresay it has,” she returned with the manner of wishing to encourage him.
“I don’t know what was in my head. I wanted him to quarrel with society. Now I want him to be reconciled to it,” Mr. Vetch remarked earnestly. He appeared to desire her to understand how great a point he made of this.
“Ah, but he is!” she immediately said. “We often talk about that; he’s not like me, who see all kinds of abominations. He’s a bloated little aristocrat. What more would you have?”
“Those are not the opinions he expresses to me”—and Mr. Vetch shook his head sadly. “I’m greatly distressed and I don’t make out——! I’ve not come here with the presumptuous wish to cross-examine you, but I should like very much to know if I am wrong in believing that he has gone about with you in the bad quarters—in Saint Giles’s and Whitechapel.”
“We’ve certainly inquired and explored together,” the Princess admitted, “and in the depths of this huge, luxurious, wanton, wasteful city we’ve seen sights of unspeakable misery and horror. But we’ve been not only in the slums; we’ve been to a music hall and a penny-reading.”
The fiddler received this information at first in silence, so that his hostess went on to mention some of the phases of life they had observed; describing with great vividness, but at the same time with a kind of argumentative moderation, several scenes which did little honour to “our boasted civilisation.” “What wonder is it then that he should tell me things can’t go on any longer as they are?” he asked when she had finished. “He said only the other day that he should regard himself as one of the most contemptible of human beings if he should do nothing to alter them, to better them.”
“What wonder indeed? But if he said that he was in one of his bad days,” the Princess replied. “He changes constantly and his impressions change. The misery of the people is by no means always on his heart. You tell me what he has told you; well, he has told me that the people may perish over and over rather than the conquests of civilisation shall be sacrificed to them. He declares at such moments that they’ll be sacrificed—sacrificed utterly—if the ignorant masses get the upper hand.”
“He needn’t be afraid. That will never happen.”
“I don’t know. We can at least try,” she said.
“Try what you like, madam, but for God’s sake get the boy out of his muddle!”
The Princess had suddenly grown excited in speaking of the cause she believed in, and she gave for the moment no heed to this appeal, which broke from Mr. Vetch’s lips with a sudden passion of anxiety. Her beautiful head raised itself higher and the constant light of her fine eyes became an extraordinary radiance. “Do you know what I say to Mr. Robinson when he makes such remarks as that to me? I ask him what he means by civilisation. Let civilisation come a little, first, and then we’ll talk about it. For the present, face to face with those horrors, I scorn it, I deny it!” And she laughed ineffable things, she might have been some splendid siren of the Revolution.
“The world’s very sad and very hideous, and I’m happy to say that I soon shall have done with it. But before I go I want to save Hyacinth,” Mr. Vetch insisted. “If he’s a bloated little aristocrat, as you say, there’s so much the less fitness in his being ground in your mill. If he doesn’t even believe in what he pretends to do, that’s a pretty situation! What’s he in for, madam? What devilish folly has he undertaken?”
“He’s a strange mixture of contradictory impulses,” said the Princess musingly. Then as if calling herself back to the old man’s question she pursued: “How can I enter into his affairs with you? How can I tell you his secrets? In the first place I don’t know them, and if I did—well, fancy me!”
Her visitor gave a long, low sigh, almost a moan, of discouragement and perplexity. He had told her that now he saw her he understood how their young friend should have become her slave, but he wouldn’t have been able to tell her that he understood her own motives and mysteries, that he embraced the immense anomaly of her behaviour. It came over him that she was fine and perverse, a more complicated form of the feminine mixture than any he had hitherto dealt with, and he felt helpless and baffled, foredoomed to failure. He had come prepared to flatter her without scruple, thinking this would be the expert and effective way of dealing with her; but he now recognised that these primitive arts had, though it was strange, no application to such a nature, while his embarrassment was increased rather than diminished by the fact that the lady at least made the effort to be accommodating. He had put down his hat on the floor beside him and his two hands were clasped on the knob of an umbrella which had long since renounced pretensions to compactness; he collapsed a little and his chin rested on his folded hands. “Why do you take such a line? Why do you believe such things?” he asked; and he was conscious that his tone was weak and his challenge beside the question.
“My dear sir, how do you know what I believe? However, I have my reasons, which it would take too long to tell you and which after all would not particularly interest you. One must see life as one can; it comes no doubt to each of us in different ways. You think me affected of course and my behaviour a fearful pose; but I’m only trying to be natural. Are you not yourself a little inconsequent?” she went on with the bright, hard mildness which assured Mr. Vetch, while it chilled him, that he should extract no pledge of relief from her. “You don’t want our young friend to pry into the wretchedness of London, because that excites his sense of justice. It’s a strange thing to wish, for a person of whom one is fond and whom one esteems, that his sense of justice shall not be excited.”
“I don’t care a fig for his sense of justice—I don’t care a fig for the wretchedness of London; and if I were young and beautiful and clever and brilliant and of a noble position, like you, I should care still less. In that case I should have very little to say to a poor mechanic—a youngster who earns his living with a glue-pot and scraps of old leather.”
“Don’t misrepresent him; don’t make him out what you know he’s not!” the Princess retorted with her baffling smile. “You know he’s one of the most civilised of little men.”
The fiddler sat breathing unhappily. “I only want to keep him—to get him free.” Then he added: “I don’t understand you very well. If you like him because he’s one of the lower orders, how can you like him because he’s a swell?”
She turned her eyes on the fire as if this little problem might be worth considering, and presently she answered: “Dear Mr. Vetch, I’m very sure you don’t mean to be impertinent, but some things you say have that effect. Nothing’s more annoying than when one’s sincerity is doubted. I’m not bound to explain myself to you. I ask of my friends to trust me and of the others to leave me alone. Moreover, anything not very nice you may have said to me—out of inevitable awkwardness—is nothing to the insults I’m perfectly prepared to see showered upon me before long. I shall do things which will produce a fine crop of them—oh I shall do things, my dear sir! But I’m determined not to mind them. Come therefore, pull yourself together. We both take such an interest in young Robinson that I can’t see why in the world we should quarrel about him.”
“My dear lady,” the old man pleaded, “I’ve indeed not the least intention of failing in respect or patience, and you must excuse me if I don’t look after my manners. How can I when I’m so worried, so haunted? God knows I don’t want to quarrel. As I tell you, I only want to get Hyacinth free.”
“Free from what?” the Princess asked.
“From some abominable secret brotherhood or international league that he belongs to, the thought of which keeps me awake at night. He’s just the sort of youngster to be made a catspaw.”
“Your fears seem very vague.”
“I hoped you would give me chapter and verse.”
“On what do your suspicions rest? What grounds have you?” she insisted.
“Well, a great many; none of them very definite, but all contributing something—his appearance, his manner, the way he strikes me. Dear lady, one feels those things, one guesses. Do you know that poor infatuated phrasemonger Eustache Poupin, who works at the same place as Hyacinth? He’s a very old friend of mine and he’s an honest man, as phrasemongers go. But he’s always conspiring and corresponding and pulling strings that make a tinkle which he takes for the death-knell of society. He has nothing in life to complain of and drives a roaring trade. But he wants folk to be equal, heaven help him; and when he has made them so I suppose he’s going to start a society for making the stars in the sky all of the same size. He isn’t serious, though he imagines he’s the only human being who never trifles; and his machinations, which I believe are for the most part very innocent, are a matter of habit and tradition with him, like his theory that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America, was a Frenchman, and his hot foot-bath on Saturday nights. He has not confessed to me that Hyacinth has taken some intensely private engagement to do something for the cause which may have nasty consequences, but the way he turns off the idea makes me almost as uncomfortable as if he had. He and his wife are very sweet on their young friend, but they can’t make up their minds to interfere; perhaps for them indeed, as for me, there’s no way in which interference can be effective. Only I didn’t put him up to those devil’s tricks—or rather I did originally! The finer the work, I suppose, the higher the privilege of doing it; yet the Poupins heave socialistic sighs over the boy, and their peace of mind evidently isn’t all that it ought to be if they’ve given him a noble opportunity. I’ve appealed to them in good round terms, and they’ve assured me every hair of his head is as precious to them as if he were their own child. That doesn’t comfort me much, however, for the simple reason that I believe the old woman (whose grandmother, in Paris, in the Revolution, must certainly have carried bloody heads on a pike) would be quite capable of chopping up her own child if it would do any harm to proprietors. Besides, they say, what influence have they on Hyacinth any more? He’s a deplorable little backslider; he worships false gods. In short they’ll give me no information, and I daresay they themselves are tied up by some unholy vow. They may be afraid of a vengeance if they tell tales. It’s all sad rubbish, but rubbish may be a strong motive.”
The Princess listened attentively, following her visitor with patience. “Don’t speak to me of the French; I’ve never cared for them.”
“That’s awkward if you’re a socialist. You’re likely to meet them.”
“Why do you call me a socialist? I hate tenth-rate labels and flags,” she declared. Then she added: “What is it you suppose on Mr. Robinson’s part?—for you must suppose something.”
“Well, that he may have drawn some accursed lot to do some idiotic thing—something in which even he himself doesn’t believe.”
“I haven’t an idea of what sort of thing you mean. But if he doesn’t believe in it he can easily let it alone.”
“Do you think he’s a customer who will back out of a real vow?” the fiddler asked.
The Princess freely wondered. “One can never judge of people in that way till they’re tested.” And the next thing: “Haven’t you even taken the trouble to question him?”
“What would be the use? He’d tell me nothing. It would be like a man giving notice when he’s going to fight a duel.”
She sat for some seconds in thought; she looked up at Mr. Vetch with a pitying, indulgent smile. “I’m sure you’re worrying about a mere shadow; but that never prevents, does it? I still don’t see exactly how I can help you.”
“Do you want him to commit some atrocity, some mad infamy?” the old man appealed.
“My dear sir, I don’t want him to do anything in all the wide world. I’ve not had the smallest connexion with any engagement of any kind that he may have entered into. Do me the honour to trust me,” the Princess went on with a certain high dryness of tone. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deprive myself of your confidence. Trust the young man a little too. He’s a gentleman and will behave as a gentleman.”
The fiddler rose from his chair, smoothing his hat silently with the cuff of his coat. He stood there, whimsical and piteous, as if the sense he had still something to urge mingled with that of his having received his dismissal and as if indeed both were tinged with the oddity of another idea. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of!” he returned. Then he added, continuing to look at her: “But he must be very fond of life.”
The Princess took no notice of the insinuation contained in these words. “Leave him to me—leave him to me. I’m sorry for your anxiety, but it was very good of you to come to see me. That has been interesting, because you’ve been one of our friend’s influences.”
“Unfortunately yes! If it hadn’t been for me he wouldn’t have known Poupin, and if he hadn’t known Poupin he wouldn’t have known his chemical friend—what’s his name?—Muniment.”
“And has that done him harm, do you think?” the Princess asked. She had risen to her feet.
“Surely: that deep fellow has been the main source of his infection.”
“I lose patience with you!” she made answer, turning away.
And indeed her visitor’s persistence was irritating. He went on, lingering, his head thrust forward and his short arms, out at his sides, terminating in his hat and umbrella, which he held grotesquely and as if intended for emphasis or illustration: “I’ve supposed for a long time that it was either Muniment or you who had got him into his scrape. It was you I suspected most—much most; but if it isn’t you it must be he.”
“You had better go to him then!”
“Of course I’ll go to him. I scarcely know him—I’ve seen him but once—but I’ll speak my mind.”
The Princess rang for her maid to usher Mr. Vetch out, but at the moment he laid his hand on the door of the room she checked him with a quick gesture. “Now that I think of it don’t go, please, to Mr. Muniment. It will be better to leave him quiet. Leave him to me,” she added with a softer smile.
“Why not, why not?” he pleaded. And as she couldn’t tell him on the instant why not he asked: “Doesn’t he know?”
“No, he doesn’t know; he has nothing to do with it.” She suddenly found herself desiring to protect Paul Muniment from the imputation that was in Mr. Vetch’s mind—the imputation of an ugly responsibility; and though she was not a person who took the trouble to tell fibs this repudiation on his behalf issued from her lips before she could stay it. It was a result of the same desire, though also an inconsequence, that she added: “Don’t do that—you’ll spoil everything!” She went to him suddenly eager, she herself opened the door for him. “Leave him to me—leave him to me,” she continued persuasively, while the fiddler, gazing at her, dazzled and submissive, allowed himself to be wafted away. A thought that excited her had come to her with a bound, and after she had heard the house-door close behind Mr. Vetch she walked up and down the room half an hour, all restlessly, under possession of it.