“Well, how can you leave all those beautiful things, to come and breathe this beastly air, surround yourself with hideous images, and associate with people whose smallest fault is that they are ignorant, brutal and dirty? I don’t speak of the ladies here present,” Hyacinth added, with the manner which most made Millicent Henning (who at once admired and hated it) wonder where on earth he had got it.
“Oh, I wish I could make you understand!” cried Lady Aurora, looking at him with troubled, appealing eyes, as if he were unexpectedly discouraging.
“After all, I do understand! Charity exists in your nature as a kind of passion.”
“Yes, yes, it’s a kind of passion!” her ladyship repeated, eagerly, very thankful for the word. “I don’t know whether it’s charity—I don’t mean that. But whatever it is, it’s a passion—it’s my life—it’s all I care for.” She hesitated a moment, as if there might be something indecent in the confession, or dangerous in the recipient; and then, evidently, she was mastered by the comfort of being able to justify herself for an eccentricity that had excited notice, as well as by the luxury of discharging her soul of a long accumulation of timid, sacred sentiment. “Already, when I was fifteen years old, I wanted to sell all I had and give to the poor. And ever since, I have wanted to do something; it has seemed as if my heart would break if I shouldn’t be able!”
Hyacinth was struck with a great respect, which, however, did not prevent him (the words sounded patronising, even to himself) from saying in a moment, “I suppose you are very religious.”
Lady Aurora looked away, into the thickening dusk, at the smutty housetops, the blurred emanation, above the streets, of lamp-light. “I don’t know—one has one’s ideas—some of them may be strange. I think a great many clergymen do good, but there are others I don’t like at all. I dare say we had too many, always, at home; my father likes them so much. I think I have known too many bishops; I have had the church too much on my back. I dare say they wouldn’t think at home, you know, that one was quite what one ought to be; but of course they consider me very odd, in every way, as there’s no doubt I am. I should tell you that I don’t tell them everything; for what’s the use, when people don’t understand? We are twelve at home, and eight of us are girls; and if you think it’s so very splendid, and she thinks so, I should like you both to try it for a little! My father isn’t rich, and there is only one of us married, and we are not at all handsome, and—oh, there are all kinds of things,” the young woman went on, looking round at him an instant, shyly but excitedly. “I don’t like society; and neither would you if you were to see the kind there is in London—at least in some parts,” Lady Aurora added, considerately. “I dare say you wouldn’t believe all the humbuggery and the tiresomeness that one has to go through. But I’ve got out of it; I do as I like, though it has been rather a struggle. I have my liberty, and that is the greatest blessing in life, except the reputation of being queer, and even a little mad, which is a greater advantage still. I’m a little mad, you know; you needn’t be surprised if you hear it. That’s because I stop in town when they go into the country; all the autumn, all the winter, when there’s no one here (except three or four millions), and the rain drips, drips, drips, from the trees in the big, dull park, where my people live. I dare say I oughtn’t to say such things to you, but, as I tell you, I’m a little mad, and I might as well keep up my character. When one is one of eight daughters, and there’s very little money (for any of us, at least), and there’s nothing to do but to go out with three or four others in a mackintosh, one can easily go off one’s head. Of course there’s the village, and it’s not at all a nice one, and there are the people to look after, and heaven knows they’re in want of it; but one must work with the vicarage, and at the vicarage there are four more daughters, all old maids, and it’s dreary, and it’s dreadful, and one has too much of it, and they don’t understand what one thinks or feels, or a single word one says to them! Besides they are stupid, I admit—the country poor; they are very, very dense. I like Camberwell better,” said Lady Aurora, smiling and taking breath, at the end of her nervous, hurried, almost incoherent speech, of which she had delivered herself pantingly, with strange intonations and grotesque movements of her neck, as if she were afraid from one moment to the other that she would repent, not of her confidence, but of her egotism.
It placed her, for Hyacinth, in an unexpected light, and made him feel that her awkward, aristocratic spinsterhood was the cover of tumultuous passions. No one could have less the appearance of being animated by a vengeful irony; but he saw that this delicate, shy, generous, and evidently most tender creature was not a person to spare, wherever she could prick them, the institutions among which she had been brought up and against which she had violently reacted. Hyacinth had always supposed that a reactionary meant a backslider from the liberal faith, but Rosy’s devotee gave a new value to the term; she appeared to have been driven to her present excesses by the squire and the parson and the conservative influences of that upper-class British home which our young man had always supposed to be the highest fruit of civilisation. It was clear that her ladyship was an original, and an original with force; but it gave Hyacinth a real pang to hear her make light of Inglefield (especially the park), and of the opportunities that must have abounded in Belgrave Square. It had been his belief that in a world of suffering and injustice these things were, if not the most righteous, at least the most fascinating. If they didn’t give one the finest sensations, where were such sensations to be had? He looked at Lady Aurora with a face which was a tribute to her sudden vividness, and said, “I can easily understand your wanting to do some good in the world, because you’re a kind of saint.”
“A very curious kind!” laughed her ladyship.
“But I don’t understand your not liking what your position gives you.”
“I don’t know anything about my position. I want to live!”