“I don’t know what I believe, God help me!” Hyacinth remarked in a tone of an effect so lugubrious that his mate indulged in prompt hilarity of attenuation. But our young man added: “I don’t want you to think I’ve ceased to care for the people. What am I but one of the poorest and meanest of them?”
“You, my boy? You’re a duke in disguise, and so I thought the first time I ever saw you. That night I took you to our precious ‘exchange of ideas’—I liked the beggar’s name for it—you had a little way with you that made me forget it; I mean that your disguise happened to be better than usual. As regards caring for the people there’s surely no obligation at all,” Muniment continued. “I wouldn’t if I could help it—you can bet your life on that. It all depends on what you see. The way I’ve used my eyes in that sink of iniquity off there has led to my seeing that present arrangements won’t do. They won’t do,” he repeated placidly.
“Yes, I see that too,” said Hyacinth, with the same dolefulness that had marked his tone a moment before—a dolefulness begotten of the rather helpless sense that, whatever he saw, he saw—and this was always the case—so many other things besides. He saw the immeasurable misery of the people, and yet he saw all that had been, as it were, rescued and redeemed from it: the treasures, the felicities, the splendours, the successes of the world. This quantity took the form sometimes, to his imagination, of a vast, vague, dazzling presence, an irradiation of light from objects undefined, mixed with the atmosphere of Paris and of Venice. He presently added that a hundred things Muniment had told him about the foul horrors of the worst districts of London, pictures of incredible shame and suffering that he had put before him, came back to him now with the memory of the passion they had kindled at the time.
“Oh I don’t want you to go by what I’ve told you; I want you to go by what you’ve seen yourself. I remember there were things you told me that weren’t bad in their way.” And at this Paul Muniment sprang to his feet, as if their conversation had drawn to an end or they must at all events be thinking of their homeward way. Hyacinth got up too while his companion stood there. Paul was looking off toward London with a face that expressed all the healthy singleness of his vision. Suddenly he remarked, as if it occurred to him to complete, or at any rate confirm, the declaration he had made a short time before: “Yes, I don’t believe in the millennium, but I do believe in the democracy with a chance.”
He struck Hyacinth while he spoke these words as such a fine embodiment of the spirit of the people; he stood there in his powerful, sturdy newness with such an air of having learnt what he had learnt and of good nature that had purposes in it, that our hero felt the simple inrush of his old, frequent pride at having a person of that promise, a nature of that capacity, for a friend. He passed his hand into the arm that was so much stronger and longer than his own and said with an imperceptible tremor of voice: “It’s no use your saying I’m not to go by what you tell me. I’d go by what you tell me anywhere. There’s no awkwardness to speak of. I don’t know that I believe exactly what you believe, but I believe in you, and doesn’t that come to the same thing?”
Paul evidently appreciated the cordiality and candour of this little tribute, and the way he showed it was by a motion of his elbow, to check his companion, before they started to leave the spot, and by looking down at him with a certain anxiety of friendliness. “I should never have taken you to that shop that night if I hadn’t thought you’d jump at the job. It was that flaring little oration of yours, at the club, when you floored Delancey for saying you were afraid, that put me up to it.”
“I did jump at it—upon my word I did; and it was just what I was looking for. That’s all correct!” said Hyacinth cheerfully as they went forward. There was a strain of heroism in these words—of heroism of which the sense was not conveyed to Muniment by a vibration in their interlocked arms. Hyacinth didn’t make the reflexion that he was infernally literal; he dismissed the sentimental problem that had worried him; he condoned, excused, admired—he merged himself, resting happy for the time, in the consciousness that Paul was a grand person, that friendship was a purer feeling than love, and that there was an immense deal of affection between them. He didn’t even observe at that moment that it was preponderantly on his own side.
XXXVI
A certain Sunday in November, more than three months after she had gone to live in Madeira Crescent, was so important an occasion for the Princess as to require reporting with a certain fulness. Early in the afternoon a loud peal from her door-knocker came to her ear; it had a sound of resolution, almost of defiance, which made her look up from her book and listen. She was sitting alone by the fire, over a heavy volume on Labour and Capital. It was not yet four o’clock, but she had had candles this hour; a dense brown fog made the daylight impure without suggesting an answer to the question of whether the scheme of nature had been to veil or to deepen the sabbatical dreariness. She was not tired of Madeira Crescent, such an idea she would indignantly have repudiated; but the prospect of a visitor had a happy application—the possibility even of his being an ambassador or a cabinet minister or another of the eminent personages with whom she had conversed before embracing the ascetic life. They had not knocked at her present door hitherto in any great numbers, for more reasons than one; they were out of town and she had taken pains to diffuse the belief that she had left England. If the impression prevailed it was exactly the impression she had desired; she forgot this fact whenever she felt a certain surprise—even, it may be, a certain irritation—in perceiving that people were not taking the way to Madeira Crescent. She was making the discovery, in which she had had many predecessors, that to hide in London is only too easy a game. It was very much in that fashion that Godfrey Sholto was in the habit of announcing himself when he reappeared after the intervals she explicitly imposed on him; there was a witless grace, for so world-worn a personage, in the point he made of showing that he knocked with confidence, that he had as good a right as any other. This afternoon she would have accepted his visit: she was perfectly detached from the shallow, frivolous world in which he lived, but there was still a freshness in her renunciation which coveted reminders and enjoyed comparisons—he would prove to her how right she had been to do exactly what she was doing. It didn’t occur to her that Hyacinth Robinson might be at her door, for it had been understood between them that save by special appointment he was to come to her only in the evening. She heard in the hall, when the servant arrived, a voice she failed to recognise; but in a moment the door of the room was thrown open and the name of Mr. Muniment pronounced. It may be noted at once that she took pleasure in the sound, for she had both wished to see more of Hyacinth’s extraordinary friend and had given him up—so little likely had it begun to appear that he would put himself out for her. She had been glad he wouldn’t come, as she had told Hyacinth three months before; but now that he had come she was still more glad.
Presently he was sitting before her on the other side of the fire, his big foot crossed over his big knee, his large, gloved hands fumbling with each other, drawing and smoothing in places the gloves of very red, new-looking dogskin that appeared to hurt him. So far as the size of his extremities and even his attitude and movement went he might have belonged to her former circle. With the details of his dress remaining vague in the lamplight, which threw into relief mainly his powerful, important head, he might have been one of the most considerable men she had ever known. The first thing she said to him was that she wondered extremely what had brought him at last to present himself: the idea, when she proposed it, had clearly so little attracted him. She had only seen him once since then—the day she met him coming into Audley Court when she was leaving it after a visit to his sister—and, as he probably remembered, she had not on that occasion repeated her invitation.