“Yes, very likely, but you must hit her back and give it to her badly. That’s your line, you know—to go in for what’s going, to live your life, to gratify the ‘sex.’ I’m an ugly, grimy brute, I’ve got to watch the fires and mind the shop; but you’re one of those taking little beggars who must run about and see the world. You ought to be an ornament to society, like a young man in an illustrated storybook. Only you know,” Muniment added in a moment, “if she should hurt you very much I would have a go at her!”
Hyacinth had been intending for some time to take Pinnie to call on the prostrate damsel in Audley Court, to whom he had promised that his benefactress (he had told Rose Muniment she was his godmother—it sounded so right) should pay this civility; but the affair had been delayed by wan hesitations on the part of the dressmaker, the poor woman having hard work to imagine to-day that there were people in London forlorn enough for her countenance to be of value to them. Her social curiosity had quite died out and she knew she no longer made the same figure in public as when her command of the fashions enabled her to illustrate them in her own little person by the aid of a good deal of whalebone. Moreover she felt that Hyacinth had strange friends and still stranger opinions; she suspected him of taking an unnatural interest in politics and of being somehow not on the right side, little as she knew about parties or causes; and she had a vague conviction that this kind of perversity only multiplied the troubles of the poor, who, according to theories which Pinnie had never reasoned out but which in her breast were as deep as religion, ought always to be of the same way of thinking as the rich. They were unlike them enough in their poverty without trying to add other differences. When at last she accompanied Hyacinth to Camberwell one Saturday evening at midsummer it was in a sighing, sceptical, second-best manner; but if he had told her he wished it she would have gone with him to a soiree at a scavenger’s. There was no more danger of Rose Muniment’s being out than that one of the bronze couchant lions in Trafalgar Square should have walked down Whitehall; but he had let her know in advance and he perceived, as he opened her door in obedience to a quick, shrill summons, that she had had the happy thought of inviting Lady Aurora to help her entertain Miss Pynsent. Such at least was the inference he drew from seeing her ladyship’s memorable figure rise before him for the first time since their meeting there. He presented his companion to their reclining hostess, and Rosy immediately repeated her name to the representative of Belgrave Square. Pinnie curtseyed down to the ground as Lady Aurora put out her hand to her, and then slipped noiselessly into a chair beside the bed. Lady Aurora laughed and fidgeted in a friendly, cheerful, yet at the same time rather pointless manner, and Hyacinth gathered that she had no recollection of having seen him. His attention, however, was mainly given to Pinnie: he watched her jealously, to see if on this important occasion she wouldn’t put forth a certain stiff, quaint, polished politeness of which she possessed the secret and which made him liken her extraction of the sense of things to the nip of a pair of old-fashioned silver sugar-tongs. Not only for Pinnie’s sake but for his own as well he wished her to figure as a superior little woman; so he hoped she wouldn’t lose her head if Rosy should begin to talk about Inglefield. She was evidently much impressed by Rosy and kept repeating “Dear, dear!” under her breath while the small strange person in the bed rapidly explained to her that there was nothing in the world she would have liked so much as to follow her delightful profession, but that she couldn’t sit up to it, and had never had a needle in her hand but once, when at the end of three minutes it had dropped into the sheets and got into the mattress, so that she had always been afraid it would work out again and stick into her: which it hadn’t done yet and perhaps never would—she lay so quiet, pushing it about so little. “Perhaps you’d think it’s me that trimmed the little handkerchief I wear round my neck,” Miss Muniment said; “perhaps you’d think I couldn’t do less, lying here all day long with complete command of my time. Not a stitch of it. I’m the finest lady in London; I never lift my finger for myself. It’s a present from her ladyship—it’s her ladyship’s own beautiful needlework. What do you think of that? Have you ever met any one so favoured before? And the work—just look at the work and tell me how it strikes you.” The girl pulled off the bit of muslin from her neck and thrust it at Pinnie, who looked at it confusedly and gasped “Dear, dear, dear!” partly in sympathy, partly as if, in spite of the consideration she owed every one, those were very odd proceedings.
“It’s very badly done; surely you see that,” said Lady Aurora. “It was only a joke.”
“Oh yes, everything’s a joke!” cried the irrepressible invalid—“everything except my state of health; that’s admitted to be serious. When her ladyship sends me five shillings’ worth of coals it’s only a joke; and when she brings me a bottle of the finest port, that’s another; and when she climbs up seventy-seven stairs (there are seventy-seven, I know perfectly, though I never go up or down) to spend the evening with me at the height of the London season, that’s the best of all. I know all about the London season though I never go out, and I appreciate what her ladyship gives up. She’s very jocular indeed, but fortunately I know how to take it. You can see it wouldn’t do for me to be touchy, can’t you, Miss Pynsent?”
“Dear, dear, I should be so glad to make you anything myself; it would be better—it would be better—!” poor Pinnie floundered.
“It would be better than my poor work. I don’t know how to do that sort of thing in the least,” said Lady Aurora.
“I’m sure I didn’t mean that, my lady—I only meant it would be more convenient. Anything in the world she might fancy,” the dressmaker went on as if it were a question of the invalid’s appetite.
“Ah, you see I don’t wear things—only a flannel jacket to be a bit tidy,” Miss Muniment returned. “I go in only for smart counterpanes, as you can see for yourself”; and she spread her white hands complacently over her coverlet of brilliant patchwork. “Now doesn’t that look to you, Miss Pynsent, as if it might be one of her ladyship’s jokes?”
“Oh my good friend, how can you? I never went so far as that!” Lady Aurora interposed with visible anxiety.
“Well, you’ve given me almost everything; I sometimes forget. This only cost me sixpence; so it comes to the same thing as if it had been a present. Yes, only sixpence in a raffle in a bazaar at Hackney, for the benefit of the Wesleyan Chapel three years ago. A young man who works with my brother and lives in that part offered him a couple of tickets; and he took one and I took one. When I say ‘I’ of course I mean he took the two; for how should I find (by which I naturally mean how should he find) a sixpence in that little cup on the chimney-piece unless he had put it there first? Of course my ticket took a prize, and of course, as my bed’s my dwelling-place, the prize was a beautiful counterpane of every colour of the rainbow. Oh there never was such luck as mine!” Rosy chattered, flashing her gay demented eyes at Hyacinth as if to irritate him with her contradictious optimism.