BOOK SIXTH

XLIII

“My child, you are always welcome,” said Eustache Poupin, taking Hyacinth’s hand in both his own and holding it for some moments. An impression had come to our young man, immediately, that they were talking about him before he appeared and that they would rather have been left to talk at their ease. He even thought he saw in Poupin’s face the kind of consciousness that comes from detection, or at least interruption, in a nefarious act. With Poupin, however, it was difficult to tell; he always looked so heated and exalted, so like a conspirator defying the approach of justice. Hyacinth contemplated the others: they were standing as if they had shuffled something on the table out of sight, as if they had been engaged in the manufacture of counterfeit coin. Poupin kept hold of his hand; the Frenchman’s ardent eyes, fixed, unwinking, always expressive of the greatness of the occasion, whatever the occasion was, had never seemed to him to protrude so far from his head. “Ah, my dear friend, nous causions justement de vous,” Eustache remarked, as if this were a very extraordinary fact.

“Oh, nous causions—nous causions!” his wife exclaimed, as if to deprecate an indiscreet exaggeration. “One may mention a friend, I suppose, in the way of conversation, without taking such a liberty.”

“A cat may look at a king, as your English proverb says,” added Schinkel, jocosely. He smiled so hard at his own pleasantry that his eyes closed up and vanished—an effect which Hyacinth, who had observed it before, thought particularly unbecoming to him, appearing as it did to administer the last perfection to his ugliness. He would have consulted his interests by cultivating immobility of feature.

“Oh, a king, a king!” murmured Poupin, shaking his head up and down. “That’s what it’s not good to be, au point où nous en sommes.”

“I just came in to wish you good-night,” said Hyacinth. “I’m afraid it’s rather late for a call, though Schinkel is here.”

“It’s always too late, my very dear, when you come,” the Frenchman rejoined. “You know if you have a place at our fireside.”

“I esteem it too much to disturb it,” said Hyacinth, smiling and looking round at the three.

“We can easily sit down again; we are a comfortable party. Put yourself beside me.” And the Frenchman drew a chair close to the one, at the table, that he had just quitted.

“He has had a long walk, he is tired—he will certainly accept a little glass,” Madame Poupin announced with decision, moving toward the tray containing the small gilded liqueur service.

“We will each accept one, ma bonne; it is a very good occasion for a drop of fine,” her husband interposed, while Hyacinth seated himself in the chair his host had designated. Schinkel resumed his place, which was opposite; he looked across at Hyacinth without speaking, but his long face continued to flatten itself into a representation of mirth. He had on a green coat, which Hyacinth had seen before; it was a garment of ceremony, such as our young man judged it would have been impossible to procure in London or in any modern time. It was eminently German and of high antiquity, and had a tall, stiff, clumsy collar, which came up to the wearer’s ears and almost concealed his perpetual bandage. When Hyacinth had sat down Eustache Poupin did not take possession of his own chair, but stood beside him, resting his hand on his head. At that touch something came over Hyacinth, and his heart sprang into his throat. The idea that occurred to him, conveyed in Poupin’s whole manner as well as in the reassuring intention of that caress and in his wife’s uneasy, instant offer of refreshment, explained the embarrassment of the circle and reminded our young man of the engagement he had taken with himself to exhibit an extraordinary quietness when a certain crisis in his life should have arrived. It seemed to him that this crisis was in the air, very near—that he should touch it if he made another movement; the pressure of the Frenchman’s hand, which was meant as a solvent, only operated as a warning. As he looked across at Schinkel he felt dizzy and a little sick; for a moment, to his senses, the room whirled round. His resolution to be quiet appeared only too easy to keep; he couldn’t break it even to the extent of speaking. He knew that his voice would tremble, and that is why he made no answer to Schinkel’s rather honeyed words, uttered after an hesitation: “Also, my dear Robinson, have you passed your Sunday well—have you had an ’appy day?” Why was every one so endearing? His eyes questioned the table, but encountered nothing but its well-wiped surface, polished for so many years by the gustatory elbows of the Frenchman and his wife, and the lady’s dirty pack of cards for ‘patience’ (she had apparently been engaged in this exercise when Schinkel came in), which indeed gave a little the impression of gamblers surprised, who might have shuffled away the stakes. Madame Poupin, who had dived into a cupboard, came back with a bottle of green chartreuse, an apparition which led the German to exclaim, “Lieber Gott, you Vrench, you Vrench, how well you manage! What would you have more?”

The hostess distributed the liquor, but Hyacinth was scarcely able to swallow it, though it was highly appreciated by his companions. His indifference to this luxury excited much discussion and conjecture, the others bandying theories and contradictions, and even ineffectual jokes, about him, over his head, with a volubility which seemed to him unnatural. Poupin and Schinkel professed the belief that there must be something very curious the matter with a man who couldn’t smack his lips over a drop of that tap; he must either be in love or have some still more insidious complaint. It was true that Hyacinth was always in love—that was no secret to his friends—and it had never been observed to stop his thirst. The Frenchwoman poured scorn on this view of the case, declaring that the effect of the tender passion was to make one enjoy one’s victual (when everything went straight, bien entendu; and how could an ear be deaf to the whisperings of such a dear little bonhomme as Hyacinth?), in proof of which she deposed that she had never eaten and drunk with such relish as at the time—oh, it was far away now—when she had a soft spot in her heart for her rascal of a husband. For Madame Poupin to allude to her husband as a rascal indicated a high degree of conviviality. Hyacinth sat staring at the empty table with the feeling that he was, somehow, a detached, irresponsible witness of the evolution of his fate. Finally he looked up and said to his friends, collectively, “What on earth’s the matter with you all?” And he followed this inquiry by an invitation that they should tell him what it was they had been saying about him, since they admitted that he had been the subject of their conversation. Madame Poupin answered for them that they had simply been saying how much they loved him, but that they wouldn’t love him any more if he became suspicious and grincheux. She had been telling Mr Schinkel’s fortune on the cards, and she would tell Hyacinth’s if he liked. There was nothing much for Mr Schinkel, only that he would find something, some day, that he had lost, but would probably lose it again, and serve him right if he did! He objected that he had never had anything to lose, and never expected to have; but that was a vain remark, inasmuch as the time was fast coming when every one would have something—though indeed it was to be hoped that he would keep it when he had got it. Eustache rebuked his wife for her levity, reminded her that their young friend cared nothing for old women’s tricks, and said he was sure Hyacinth had come to talk over a very different matter—the question (he was so good as to take an interest in it, as he had done in everything that related to them) of the terms which M. Poupin might owe it to himself, to his dignity, to a just though not exaggerated sentiment of his value, to make in accepting Mr Crookenden’s offer of the foremanship of the establishment in Soho; an offer not yet formally enunciated but visibly in the air and destined—it would seem, at least—to arrive within a day or two. The old foreman was going to set up for himself. The Frenchman intimated that before accepting any such proposal he must have the most substantial guarantees. “Il me faudrait des conditions très-particulières.” It was singular to Hyacinth to hear M. Poupin talk so comfortably about these high contingencies, the chasm by which he himself was divided from the future having suddenly doubled its width. His host and hostess sat down on either side of him, and Poupin gave a sketch, in somewhat sombre tints, of the situation in Soho, enumerating certain elements of decomposition which he perceived to be at work there and which he would not undertake to deal with unless he should be given a completely free hand. Did Schinkel understand, and was that what Schinkel was grinning at? Did Schinkel understand that poor Eustache was the victim of an absurd hallucination and that there was not the smallest chance of his being invited to assume a lieutenancy? He had less capacity for tackling the British workman to-day than when he began to rub shoulders with him, and Mr Crookenden had never in his life made a mistake, at least in the use of his tools. Hyacinth’s responses were few and mechanical, and he presently ceased to try to look as if he were entering into the Frenchman’s ideas.

“You have some news—you have some news about me,” he remarked, abruptly, to Schinkel. “You don’t like it, you don’t like to have to give it to me, and you came to ask our friends here whether they wouldn’t help you out with it. But I don’t think they will assist you particularly, poor dears! Why do you mind? You oughtn’t to mind more than I do. That isn’t the way.”

“Qu’est-ce qu’il dit—qu’est-ce qu’il dit, le pauvre chéri?” Madame Poupin demanded, eagerly; while Schinkel looked very hard at her husband, as if to ask for direction.

“My dear child, vous vous faites des idées!” the latter exclaimed, laying his hand on him remonstrantly.

But Hyacinth pushed away his chair and got up. “If you have anything to tell me, it is cruel of you to let me see it, as you have done, and yet not to satisfy me.”

“Why should I have anything to tell you?” Schinkel asked.

“I don’t know that, but I believe you have. I perceive things, I guess things, quickly. That’s my nature at all times, and I do it much more now.”

“You do it indeed; it is very wonderful,” said Schinkel.

“Mr Schinkel, will you do me the pleasure to go away—I don’t care where—out of this house?” Madame Poupin broke out, in French.

“Yes, that will be the best thing, and I will go with you,” said Hyacinth.

“If you would retire, my child, I think it would be a service that you would render us,” Poupin returned, appealing to his young friend. “Won’t you do us the justice to believe that you may leave your interests in our hands?”

Hyacinth hesitated a moment; it was now perfectly clear to him that Schinkel had some sort of message for him, and his curiosity as to what it might be had become nearly intolerable. “I am surprised at your weakness,” he observed, as sternly as he could manage it, to Poupin.

The Frenchman stared at him an instant, and then fell on his neck. “You are sublime, my young friend—you are sublime!”

“Will you be so good as to tell me what you are going to do with that young man?” demanded Madame Poupin, glaring at Schinkel.

“It’s none of your business, my poor lady,” Hyacinth replied, disengaging himself from her husband. “Schinkel, I wish you would walk away with me.”

“Calmons-nous, entendons-nous, expliquons-nous! The situation is very simple,” Poupin went on.

“I will go with you, if it will give you pleasure,” said Schinkel, very obligingly, to Hyacinth.

“Then you will give me that letter first!” Madame Poupin, erecting herself, declared to the German.

“My wife, you are an imbecile!” Poupin groaned, lifting his hands and shoulders and turning away.

“I may be an imbecile, but I won’t be a party—no, God help me, not to that!” protested the Frenchwoman, planted before Schinkel as if to prevent his moving.

“If you have a letter for me, you ought to give it to me,” said Hyacinth to Schinkel. “You have no right to give it to any one else.”

“I will bring it to you in your house, my good friend,” Schinkel replied, with a little wink that seemed to say that Madame Poupin would have to be considered.

“Oh, in his house—I’ll go to his house!” cried the lady. “I regard you, I have always regarded you, as my child,” she declared to Hyacinth, “and if this isn’t an occasion for a mother!”

“It’s you that are making it an occasion. I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Hyacinth. He had been questioning Schinkel’s eye, and he thought he saw there a little twinkle of assurance that he might really depend upon him. “I have disturbed you, and I think I had better go away.”

Poupin had turned round again; he seized the young man’s arm eagerly, as if to prevent his retiring before he had given a certain satisfaction. “How can you care, when you know everything is changed?”

“What do you mean—everything is changed?”

“Your opinions, your sympathies, your whole attitude. I don’t approve of it—je le constate. You have withdrawn your confidence from the people; you have said things in this spot, where you stand now, that have given pain to my wife and me.”

“If we didn’t love you, we should say that you had betrayed us!” cried Madame Poupin, quickly, taking her husband’s idea.

“Oh, I shall never betray you,” said Hyacinth, smiling.

“You will never betray us—of course you think so. But you have no right to act for the people when you have ceased to believe in the people. Il faut être conséquent, nom de Dieu!” Poupin went on.

“You will give up all thoughts of acting for me—je ne permets pas ça!” exclaimed his wife.

“It is probably not of importance—only a little fraternal greeting,” Schinkel suggested, soothingly.

“We repudiate you, we deny you, we denounce you!” shouted Poupin, more and more excited.

“My poor friends, it is you who have broken down, not I,” said Hyacinth. “I am much obliged to you for your solicitude, but the inconsequence is yours. At all events, good-night.”

He turned away from them, and was leaving the room, when Madame Poupin threw herself upon him, as her husband had done a moment before, but in silence and with an extraordinary force of passion and distress. Being stout and powerful she quickly got the better of him, and pressed him to her ample bosom in a long, dumb embrace.

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” said Hyacinth, as soon as he could speak. “It’s for me to judge of my convictions.”

“We want you to do nothing, because we know you have changed,” Poupin replied. “Doesn’t it stick out of you, in every glance of your eye and every breath of your lips? It’s only for that, because that alters everything.”

“Does it alter my engagement? There are some things in which one can’t change. I didn’t promise to believe; I promised to obey.”

“We want you to be sincere—that is the great thing,” said Poupin, edifyingly. “I will go to see them—I will make them understand.”

“Ah, you should have done that before!” Madame Poupin groaned.

“I don’t know whom you are talking about, but I will allow no one to meddle in my affairs.” Hyacinth spoke with sudden vehemence; the scene was cruel to his nerves, which were not in a condition to bear it.

“When it is Hoffendahl, it is no good to meddle,” Schinkel remarked, smiling.

“And pray, who is Hoffendahl, and what authority has he got?” demanded Madame Poupin, who had caught his meaning. “Who has put him over us all, and is there nothing to do but to lie down in the dust before him? Let him attend to his little affairs himself, and not put them off on innocent children, no matter whether they are with us or against us.”

This protest went so far that, evidently, Poupin felt a little ashamed of his wife. “He has no authority but what we give him; but you know that we respect him, that he is one of the pure, ma bonne. Hyacinth can do exactly as he likes; he knows that as well as we do. He knows there is not a feather’s weight of compulsion; he knows that, for my part, I long since ceased to expect anything from him.”

“Certainly, there is no compulsion,” said Schinkel. “It’s to take or to leave. Only they keep the books.”

Hyacinth stood there before the three, with his eyes on the floor. “Of course I can do as I like, and what I like is what I shall do. Besides, what are we talking about, with such sudden passion?” he asked, looking up. “I have no summons, I have no sign. When the call reaches me, it will be time to discuss it. Let it come or not come: it’s not my affair.”

“Certainly, it is not your affair,” said Schinkel.

“I can’t think why M. Paul has never done anything, all this time, knowing that everything is different now!” Madame Poupin exclaimed.

“Yes, my dear boy, I don’t understand our friend,” her husband remarked, watching Hyacinth with suspicious, contentious eyes.

“It’s none of his business, any more than ours; it’s none of any one’s business!” Schinkel declared.

“Muniment walks straight; the best thing you can do is to imitate him,” said Hyacinth, trying to pass Poupin, who had placed himself before the door.

“Promise me only this—not to do anything till I have seen you first,” the Frenchman begged, almost piteously.

“My poor old friend, you are very weak.” And Hyacinth opened the door, in spite of him, and passed out.

“Ah, well, if you are with us, that’s all I want to know!” the young man heard him say, behind him, at the top of the stairs, in a different voice, a tone of sudden, exaggerated fortitude.

XLIV

Hyacinth hurried down and got out of the house, but he had not the least intention of losing sight of Schinkel. The odd behaviour of the Poupins was a surprise and annoyance, and he had wished to shake himself free from it. He was candidly astonished at the alarm they were so good as to feel for him, for he had never perceived that they had gone round to the hope that the note he had signed (as it were) to Hoffendahl would not be presented. What had he said, what had he done, after all, to give them the right to fasten on him the charge of apostasy? He had always been a free critic of everything, and it was natural that, on certain occasions, in the little parlour in Lisson Grove, he should have spoken in accordance with that freedom; but it was only with the Princess that he had permitted himself really to rail at the democracy and given the full measure of his scepticism. He would have thought it indelicate to express contempt for the opinions of his old foreign friends, to whom associations that made them venerable were attached; and, moreover, for Hyacinth, a change of heart was, in the nature of things, much more an occasion for a hush of publicity and a kind of retrospective reserve; it couldn’t prompt one to aggression or jubilation. When one had but lately discovered what could be said on the opposite side one didn’t want to boast of one’s sharpness—not even when one’s new convictions cast shadows that looked like the ghosts of the old.

Hyacinth lingered in the street, a certain distance from the house, watching for Schinkel’s exit and prepared to remain there if necessary till the dawn of another day. He had said to his friends, just before, that the manner in which the communication they looked so askance at should reach him was none of his business—it might reach him as it could. This was true enough in theory, but in fact his desire was overwhelming to know what Madame Poupin had meant by her allusion to a letter, destined for him, in Schinkel’s possession—an allusion confirmed by Schinkel’s own virtual acknowledgment. It was indeed this eagerness that had driven him out of the house, for he had reason to believe that the German would not fail him, and it galled his suspense to see the foolish Poupins try to interpose, to divert the missive from its course. He waited and waited, in the faith that Schinkel was dealing with them in his slow, categorical Teutonic way, and only objurgated the cabinet-maker for having in the first place paltered with his sacred trust. Why hadn’t he come straight to him—whatever the mysterious document was—instead of talking it over with French featherheads? Passers were rare, at this hour, in Lisson Grove, and lights were mainly extinguished; there was nothing to look at but the vista of the low black houses, the dim, interspaced street-lamps, the prowling cats who darted occasionally across the road, and the terrible, mysterious, far-off stars, which appeared to him more than ever to see everything and to tell nothing. A policeman creaked along on the opposite side of the way, looking across at him as he passed, and stood for some minutes on the corner, as if to keep an eye on him. Hyacinth had leisure to reflect that the day was perhaps not far off when a policeman might have his eye on him for a very good reason—might walk up and down, pass and repass, as he mounted guard over him.

It seemed horribly long before Schinkel came out of the house, but it was probably only half an hour. In the stillness of the street he heard Poupin let his visitor out, and at the sound he stepped back into the recess of a doorway on the same side, so that, in looking out, the Frenchman should not see him waiting. There was another delay, for the two stood talking together interminably and in a low tone on the doorstep. At last, however, Poupin went in again, and then Schinkel came down the street towards Hyacinth, who had calculated that he would proceed in that direction, it being, as Hyacinth happened to know, that of his own lodging. After he had heard Poupin go in he stopped and looked up and down; it was evidently his idea that Hyacinth would be waiting for him. Our hero stepped out of the shallow recess in which he had been flattening himself, and came straight to him, and the two men stood there face to face, in the dusky, empty, sordid street.

“You didn’t let them have the letter?”

“Oh no, I retained it,” said Schinkel, with his eyes more than ever like invisible points.

“Then hadn’t you better give it to me?”

“We will talk of that—we will talk.” Schinkel made no motion to satisfy his friend; he had his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and his appearance was characterised by an exasperating assumption that they had the whole night before them. He was intolerably methodical.

“Why should we talk? Haven’t you talked enough with those people, all the evening? What have they to say about it? What right have you to detain a letter that belongs to me?”

“Erlauben Sie: I will light my pipe,” the German remarked. And he proceeded to this business, methodically, while Hyacinth’s pale, excited face showed in the glow of the match that he ignited on the rusty railing beside them. “It is not yours unless I have given it to you,” Schinkel went on, as they walked along. “Be patient, and I will tell you,” he added, passing his hand into his companion’s arm. “Your way, not so? We will go down toward the Park.” Hyacinth tried to be patient, and he listened with interest when Schinkel said, “She tried to take it; she attacked me with her hands. But that was not what I went for, to give it up.”

“Is she mad? I don’t recognise them,” Hyacinth murmured.

“No, but they lofe you.”

“Why, then, do they try to disgrace me?”

“They think it is no disgrace, if you have changed.”

“That’s very well for her; but it’s pitiful for him, and I declare it surprises me.”

“Oh, he came round, and he helped me to resist. He pulled his wife off. It was the first shock,” said Schinkel.

“You oughtn’t to have shocked them, my dear fellow,” Hyacinth replied.

“I was shocked myself—I couldn’t help it.”

“Lord, how shaky you all are!”

“You take it well. I am very sorry. But it is a fine chance,” Schinkel went on, smoking away. His pipe, for the moment, seemed to absorb him, so that after a silence Hyacinth resumed—

“Be so good as to reflect that all this while I don’t in the least understand what you are talking about.”

“Well, it was this morning, early,” said the German. “You know in my country we don’t lie in bed late, and what they do in my country I try to do everywhere. I think it is good enough. In winter I get up, of course, long before the sun, and in summer I get up almost at the same time. I should see the fine spectacle of the sunrise, if in London you could see. The first thing I do of a Sunday is to smoke a pipe at my window, which is at the front, you remember, and looks into a little dirty street. At that hour there is nothing to see there—you English are so slow to leave the bed. Not much, however, at any time; it is not important, my little street. But my first pipe is the one I enjoy most. I want nothing else when I have that pleasure. I look out at the new, fresh light—though in London it is not very fresh—and I think it is the beginning of another day. I wonder what such a day will bring; whether it will bring anything good to us poor devils. But I have seen a great many pass, and nothing has come. This morning, however, brought something—something, at least, to you. On the other side of the way I saw a young man, who stood just opposite to my house, looking up at my window. He looked at me straight, without any ceremony, and I smoked my pipe and looked at him. I wondered what he wanted, but he made no sign and spoke no word. He was a very nice young man; he had an umbrella, and he wore spectacles. We remained that way, face to face, perhaps for a quarter of an hour, and at last he took out his watch—he had a watch, too—and held it in his hand, just glancing at it every few minutes, as if to let me know that he would rather not give me the whole day. Then it came over me that he wanted to speak to me! You would have guessed that before, but we good Germans are slow. When we understand, however, we act; so I nodded to him, to let him know I would come down. I put on my coat and my shoes, for I was only in my shirt and stockings (though of course I had on my trousers), and I went down into the street. When he saw me come he walked slowly away, but at the end of a little distance he waited for me. When I came near him I saw that he was a very nice young man indeed—very young, with a very pleasant, friendly face. He was also very neat, and he had gloves, and his umbrella was of silk. I liked him very much. He said I should come round the corner, so we went round the corner together. I thought there would be some one there waiting for us; but there was nothing—only the closed shops and the early light and a little spring mist which told that the day would be fine. I didn’t know what he wanted; perhaps it was some of our business—that’s what I first thought—and perhaps it was only a little game. So I was very careful; I didn’t ask him to come into the house. Yet I told him that he must excuse me for not understanding more quickly that he wished to speak with me; and when I said that, he said it was not of consequence—he would have waited there, for the chance to see me all day. I told him I was glad I had spared him that, at least, and we had some very polite conversation. He was a very nice young man. But what he wanted was simply to put a letter in my hand; as he said himself, he was only a kind of private postman. He gave me the letter—it was not addressed; and when I had taken it I asked him how he knew, and if he wouldn’t be sorry if it should turn out that I was not the man for whom the letter was meant. But I didn’t give him a start; he told me he knew all it was necessary for him to know—he knew exactly what to do and how to do it. I think he is a valuable member. I asked him if the letter required an answer, and he told me he had nothing to do with that; he was only to put it in my hand. He recommended me to wait till I had gone into the house again to read it. We had a little more talk—always very polite; and he mentioned that he had come so early because he thought I might go out, if he delayed, and because, also, he had a great deal to do and had to take his time when he could. It is true that he looked as if he had plenty to do—as if he was in some very good occupation. I should tell you that he spoke to me always in English, but he is not English; he sounded his words like some kind of foreigner. I suppose he is not German, or he would have spoken to me in German. But there are so many, of all countries! I said if he had so much to do I wouldn’t keep him; I would go to my room and open my letter. He said it wasn’t important; and then I asked him if he wouldn’t come into my room, also, and rest. I told him it wasn’t very handsome, my room—because he looked like a young man who would have, for himself, a very neat lodging. Then I found he meant it wasn’t important that we should talk any more, and he went away without even offering to shake hands. I don’t know if he had other letters to give, but he went away, as I have said, like a postman on his rounds, without giving me any more information.”

It took Schinkel a long time to unfold this story—his calm and conscientious thoroughness made no allowance for any painful acuteness of curiosity that Hyacinth might feel. He went from step to step, and treated his different points with friendly explicitness, as if each would have exactly the same interest for his companion. The latter made no attempt to hurry him, and indeed he listened, now, with a kind of intense patience; for he was interested, and, moreover, it was clear to him that he was safe with Schinkel; the German would satisfy him in time—wouldn’t worry him with attaching conditions to their transaction, in spite of the mistake he had made in going for guidance to Lisson Grove. Hyacinth learned in due course that on returning to his apartment and opening the little packet of which he had been put into possession, Mr Schinkel had found himself confronted with two separate articles: one a sealed letter superscribed with our young man’s name, the other a sheet of paper containing in three lines a request that within two days of receiving it he would hand the letter to the ‘young Robinson’. The three lines in question were signed D. H., and the letter was addressed in the same hand. Schinkel professed that he already knew the writing; it was that of Diedrich Hoffendahl. “Good, good,” he said, exerting a soothing pressure upon Hyacinth’s arm. “I will walk with you to your door, and I will give it to you there; unless you like better that I should keep it till to-morrow morning, so that you may have a quiet sleep—I mean in case it might contain anything that will be disagreeable to you. But it is probably nothing; it is probably only a word to say that you need think no more about your engagement.”

“Why should it be that?” Hyacinth asked.

“Probably he has heard that you repent.”

“That I repent?” Hyacinth stopped him short; they had just reached the top of Park Lane. “To whom have I given a right to say that?”

“Ah well, if you haven’t, so much the better. It may be, then, for some other reason.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Schinkel,” Hyacinth returned, as they walked along. And in a moment he went on, “What the devil did you go and tattle to the Poupins for?”

“Because I thought they would like to know. Besides, I felt my responsibility; I thought I should carry it better if they knew it. And then, I’m like them—I lofe you.”

Hyacinth made no answer to this profession; he asked the next instant, “Why didn’t your young man bring the letter directly to me?”

“Ah, I didn’t ask him that! The reason was probably not complicated, but simple—that those who wrote it knew my address and didn’t know yours. And wasn’t I one of your guarantors?”

“Yes, but not the principal one. The principal one was Muniment. Why was the letter not sent to me through him?”

“My dear Robinson, you want to know too many things. Depend upon it, there are always good reasons. I should have liked it better if it had been Muniment. But if they didn’t send to him—” Schinkel interrupted himself; the remainder of his sentence was lost in a cloud of smoke.

“Well, if they didn’t send to him,”—Hyacinth persisted.

“You’re a great friend of his—how can I tell you?”

At this Hyacinth looked up at his companion askance, and caught an odd glance, accompanied with a smile, which the mild, circumspect German directed toward him. “If it’s anything against him, my being his friend makes me just the man to hear it. I can defend him.”

“Well, it’s a possibility that they are not satisfied.”

“How do you mean it—not satisfied?”

“How shall I say it?—that they don’t trust him.”

“Don’t trust him? And yet they trust me!”

“Ah, my boy, depend upon it, there are reasons,” Schinkel replied; and in a moment he added, “They know everything—everything. Oh, they go straight!”

The pair pursued the rest of their course for the most part in silence, Hyacinth being considerably struck with something that dropped from his companion in answer to a question he asked as to what Eustache Poupin had said when Schinkel, that evening, first told him what he had come to see him about. “Il vaut du galme—il vaut du galme:” that was the German’s version of the Frenchman’s words; and Hyacinth repeated them over to himself several times, almost with the same accent. They had a certain soothing effect. In fact the good Schinkel was soothing altogether, as our hero felt when they stopped at last at the door of his lodging in Westminster and stood there face to face, while Hyacinth waited—waited. The sharpness of his impatience had passed away, and he watched without irritation the loving manner in which the German shook the ashes out of his big pipe and laid it to rest in its coffin. It was only after he had gone through this business with his usual attention to every detail of it that he said, “Also, now for the letter,” and, putting his hand inside of his waistcoat, drew forth the important document. It passed instantly into Hyacinth’s grasp, and our young man transferred it to his own pocket without looking at it. He thought he saw a shade of disappointment in Schinkel’s ugly, kindly face, at this indication that he should have no present knowledge of its contents; but he liked that better than his pretending to say again that it was nothing—that it was only a release. Schinkel had now the good sense, or the good taste, not to repeat that remark, and as the letter pressed against his heart Hyacinth felt still more distinctly that it was something—that it was a command. What Schinkel did say, in a moment, was: “Now that you have got it, I am very glad. It is more comfortable for me.”

“I should think so!” Hyacinth exclaimed. “If you hadn’t done your job you would have paid for it.”

Schinkel hesitated a moment while he lingered; then, as Hyacinth turned away, putting in his door-key, he replied, “And if you don’t do yours, so will you.”

“Yes, as you say, they go straight! Good-night.” And our young man let himself in.

The passage and staircase were never lighted, and the lodgers either groped their way bedward with the infallibility of practice or scraped the wall with a casual match which, in the milder gloom of day, was visible in a hundred rich streaks. Hyacinth’s room was on the second floor, behind, and as he approached it he was startled by seeing a light proceed from the crevice under the door, the imperfect fitting of which was in this manner vividly illustrated. He stopped and considered this mysterious brightness, and his first impulse was to connect it with the incident just ushered in by Schinkel; for what could anything that touched him now be but a part of the same business? It was natural that some punctual emissary should be awaiting him. Then it occurred to him that when he went out to call on Lady Aurora, after tea, he had simply left a tallow candle burning, and that it showed a cynical spirit on the part of his landlady, who could be so close-fisted for herself, not to have gone in and put it out. Lastly, it came over him that he had had a visitor, in his absence, and that the visitor had taken possession of his apartment till his return, seeking sources of comfort, as was perfectly just. When he opened the door he found that this last prevision was the right one, though his visitor was not one of the figures that had risen before him. Mr Vetch sat there, beside the little table at which Hyacinth did his writing, with his head resting on his hand and his eyes bent on the floor. He looked up when Hyacinth appeared, and said, “Oh, I didn’t hear you; you are very quiet.”

“I come in softly, when I’m late, for the sake of the house—though I am bound to say I am the only lodger who has that refinement. Besides, you have been asleep,” Hyacinth said.

“No, I have not been asleep,” returned the old man. “I don’t sleep much nowadays.”

“Then you have been plunged in meditation.”

“Yes, I have been thinking.” Then Mr Vetch explained that the woman of the house wouldn’t let him come in, at first, till he had given proper assurances that his intentions were pure and that he was moreover the oldest friend Mr Robinson had in the world. He had been there for an hour; he thought he might find him, coming so late.

Hyacinth answered that he was very glad he had waited and that he was delighted to see him, and expressed regret that he hadn’t known in advance of his visit, so that he might have something to offer him. He sat down on his bed, vaguely expectant; he wondered what special purpose had brought the fiddler so far at that unnatural hour. But he only spoke the truth in saying that he was glad to see him. Hyacinth had come upstairs in a tremor of desire to be alone with the revelation that he carried in his pocket, yet the sight of Anastasius Vetch gave him a sudden relief by postponing solitude. The place where he had put his letter seemed to throb against his side, yet he was thankful to his old friend for forcing him still to leave it so. “I have been looking at your books,” the fiddler said; “you have two or three exquisite specimens of your own. Oh yes, I recognise your work when I see it; there are always certain little finer touches. You have a manner, like a master. With such a talent, such a taste, your future leaves nothing to be desired. You will make a fortune and become a great celebrity.”

Mr Vetch sat forward, to sketch this vision; he rested his hands on his knees and looked very hard at his young friend, as if to challenge him to dispute his flattering views. The effect of what Hyacinth saw in his face was to give him immediately the idea that the fiddler knew something, though it was impossible to guess how he could know it. The Poupins, for instance, had had no time to communicate with him, even granting that they were capable of that baseness; an unwarrantable supposition, in spite of Hyacinth’s having seen them, less than an hour before, fall so much below their own standard. With this suspicion there rushed into Hyacinth’s mind an intense determination to dissemble before his visitor to the last; he might imagine what he liked, but he should not have a grain of satisfaction—or rather he should have that of being led to believe, if possible, that his suspicions were positively vain and idle. Hyacinth rested his eyes on the books that Mr Vetch had taken down from the shelf, and admitted that they were very pretty work and that so long as one didn’t become blind or maimed the ability to produce that sort of thing was a legitimate source of confidence. Then suddenly, as they continued simply to look at each other, the pressure of the old man’s curiosity, the expression of his probing, beseeching eyes, which had become strange and tragic in these latter times and completely changed their character, grew so intolerable that to defend himself Hyacinth took the aggressive and asked him boldly whether it were simply to look at his work, of which he had half a dozen specimens in Lomax Place, that he had made a nocturnal pilgrimage. “My dear old friend, you have something on your mind—some fantastic fear, some extremely erroneous idée fixe. Why has it taken you to-night, in particular? Whatever it is, it has brought you here, at an unnatural hour, you don’t know why. I ought of course to be thankful to anything that brings you here; and so I am, in so far as that it makes me happy. But I can’t like it if it makes you miserable. You’re like a nervous mother whose baby’s in bed upstairs; she goes up every five minutes to see if he’s all right—if he isn’t uncovered or hasn’t tumbled out of bed. Dear Mr Vetch, don’t, don’t worry; the blanket’s up to my chin, and I haven’t tumbled yet.”

Hyacinth heard himself say these things as if he were listening to another person; the impudence of them, under the circumstances, seemed to him, somehow, so rare. But he believed himself to be on the edge of an episode in which impudence, evidently, must play a considerable part, and he might as well try his hand at it without delay. The way the old man gazed at him might have indicated that he too was able to take the measure of his perversity—that he knew he was false as he sat there declaring that there was nothing the matter, while a brand-new revolutionary commission burned in his pocket. But in a moment Mr Vetch said, very mildly, as if he had really been reassured, “It’s wonderful how you read my thoughts. I don’t trust you; I think there are beastly possibilities. It’s not true, at any rate, that I come to look at you every five minutes. You don’t know how often I have resisted my fears—how I have forced myself to let you alone.”

“You had better let me come and live with you, as I proposed after Pinnie’s death. Then you will have me always under your eyes,” said Hyacinth, smiling.

The old man got up eagerly, and, as Hyacinth did the same, laid his hands upon his shoulders, holding him close. “Will you now, really, my boy? Will you come to-night?”

“To-night, Mr Vetch?”

“To-night has worried me more than any other, I don’t know why. After my tea I had my pipe and a glass, but I couldn’t keep quiet; I was very, very bad. I got to thinking of Pinnie—she seemed to be in the room. I felt as if I could put out my hand and touch her. If I believed in ghosts I should believe I had seen her. She wasn’t there for nothing; she was there to add her fears to mine—to talk to me about you. I tried to hush her up, but it was no use—she drove me out of the house. About ten o’clock I took my hat and stick and came down here. You may judge whether I thought it important, as I took a cab.”

“Ah, why do you spend your money so foolishly?” asked Hyacinth, in a tone of the most affectionate remonstrance.

“Will you come to-night?” said the old man, for all rejoinder, holding him still.

“Surely, it would be simpler for you to stay here. I see perfectly that you are ill and nervous. You can take the bed, and I’ll spend the night in the chair.”

The fiddler thought a moment. “No, you’ll hate me if I subject you to such discomfort as that; and that’s just what I don’t want.”

“It won’t be a bit different in your room; there, as here, I shall have to sleep in a chair.”

“I’ll get another room; we shall be close together,” the fiddler went on.

“Do you mean you’ll get another room at this hour of the night, with your little house stuffed full and your people all in bed? My poor Anastasius, you are very bad; your reason totters on its throne,” said Hyacinth, humorously and indulgently.

“Very good, we’ll get a room to-morrow. I’ll move into another house, where there are two, side by side.” Hyacinth’s tone was evidently soothing to him.

“Comme vous y allez!” the young man continued. “Excuse me if I remind you that in case of my leaving this place I have to give a fortnight’s notice.”

“Ah, you’re backing out!” the old man exclaimed, dropping his hands.

“Pinnie wouldn’t have said that,” Hyacinth returned. “If you are acting, if you are speaking, at the prompting of her pure spirit, you had better act and speak exactly as she would have done. She would have believed me.”

“Believed you? Believed what? What is there to believe? If you’ll make me a promise, I will believe that.”

“I’ll make you any promise you like,” said Hyacinth.

“Oh, any promise I like—that isn’t what I want! I want just one very particular little pledge; and that is really what I came here for to-night. It came over me that I’ve been an ass, all this time, never to have demanded it of you before. Give it to me now, and I will go home quietly and leave you in peace.” Hyacinth, assenting in advance, requested again that he would formulate his demand, and then the old man said, “Well, promise me that you will never, under any circumstances whatever, do anything.”

“Do anything?”

“Anything that those people expect of you.”

“Those people?” Hyacinth repeated.

“Ah, don’t torment me with pretending not to understand!” the old man begged. “You know the people I mean. I can’t call them by their names, because I don’t know them. But you do, and they know you.”

Hyacinth had no desire to torment Mr Vetch, but he was capable of reflecting that to enter into his thought too easily would be tantamount to betraying himself. “I suppose I know the people you have in mind,” he said, in a moment; “but I’m afraid I don’t grasp the idea of the promise.”

“Don’t they want to make use of you?”

“I see what you mean,” said Hyacinth. “You think they want me to touch off some train for them. Well, if that’s what troubles you, you may sleep sound. I shall never do any of their work.”

A radiant light came into the fiddler’s face, and he stared, as if this assurance were too fair for nature. “Do you take your oath on that? Never anything, anything, anything?”

“Never anything at all.”

“Will you swear it to me by the memory of that good woman of whom we have been speaking and whom we both loved?”

“My dear old Pinnie’s memory? Willingly.”

The old man sank down in his chair and buried his face in his hands; the next moment his companion heard him sobbing. Ten minutes later he was content to take his departure, and Hyacinth went out with him to look for another cab. They found an ancient four-wheeler stationed languidly at a crossing of the ways, and before Mr Vetch got into it he asked his young friend to kiss him. That young friend watched the vehicle get itself into motion and rattle away; he saw it turn a neighbouring corner. Then he approached the nearest gas-lamp and drew from his breast-pocket the letter that Schinkel had given him.

XLV

“And Madame Grandoni, then?” asked Hyacinth, reluctant to turn away. He felt pretty sure that he should never knock at that door again, and the desire was strong in him to see once more, for the last time, the ancient, troubled suivante of the Princess, whom he had always liked. She had seemed to him ever to be in the slightly ridiculous position of a confidant of tragedy in whom the heroine should have ceased to confide.

“E andata via, caro signorino,” said Assunta, smiling at him as she stood there holding the door open.

“She has gone away? Bless me, when did she go?”

“It is now five days, dear young sir. She has returned to our country.”

“Is it possible?” exclaimed Hyacinth, disappointedly.

“E possibilissimo!” said Assunta. Then she added, “There were many times when she almost went; but this time—capisce—” And without finishing her sentence the Princess’s Roman tirewoman indulged in a subtle, suggestive, indefinable play of expression, to which her hands and shoulders contributed, as well as her lips and eyebrows.

Hyacinth looked at her long enough to catch any meaning that she might have wished to convey, but gave no sign of apprehending it. He only remarked, gravely, “In short she is here no more.”

“And the worst is that she will probably never come back. She didn’t go for a long time, but when she decided herself it was finished,” Assunta declared. “Peccato!” she added, with a sigh.

“I should have liked to see her again—I should have liked to bid her good-bye.” Hyacinth lingered there in strange, melancholy vagueness; since he had been told the Princess was not at home he had no reason for remaining, save the possibility that she might return before he turned away. This possibility, however, was small, for it was only nine o’clock, the middle of the evening—too early an hour for her to reappear, if, as Assunta said, she had gone out after tea. He looked up and down the Crescent, gently swinging his stick, and became conscious in a moment that Assunta was regarding him with tender interest.

“You should have come back sooner; then perhaps she wouldn’t have gone, povera vecchia,” she rejoined in a moment. “It is too many days since you have been here. She liked you—I know that.”

“She liked me, but she didn’t like me to come,” said Hyacinth. “Wasn’t that why she went, because we came?”

“Ah, that other one—with the long legs—yes. But you are better.”

“The Princess doesn’t think so, and she is the right judge,” Hyacinth replied, smiling.

“Eh, who knows what she thinks? It is not for me to say. But you had better come in and wait. I dare say she won’t be long, and it would gratify her to find you.”

Hyacinth hesitated. “I am not sure of that.” Then he asked, “Did she go out alone?”

“Sola, sola,” said Assunta, smiling. “Oh, don’t be afraid; you were the first!” And she flung open the door of the little drawing-room, with an air of irresistible solicitation and sympathy.

He sat there nearly an hour, in the chair the Princess habitually used, under her shaded lamp, with a dozen objects around him which seemed as much a part of herself as if they had been folds of her dress or even tones of her voice. His thoughts were tremendously active, but his body was too tired for restlessness; he had not been at work, and had been walking about all day, to fill the time; so that he simply reclined there, with his head on one of the Princess’s cushions, his feet on one of her little stools—one of the ugly ones, that belonged to the house—and his respiration coming quickly, like that of a man in a state of acute agitation. Hyacinth was agitated now, but it was not because he was waiting for the Princess; a deeper source of emotion had been opened to him, and he had not on the present occasion more sharpness of impatience than had already visited him at certain moments of the past twenty hours. He had not closed his eyes the night before, and the day had not made up for that torment. A fever of reflection had descended upon him, and the range of his imagination had been wide. It whirled him through circles of immeasurable compass; and this is the reason that, thinking of many things while he sat in the Princess’s chair, he wondered why, after all, he had come to Madeira Crescent, and what interest he could have in seeing the lady of the house. He had a very complete sense that everything was over between them; that the link had snapped which bound them so closely together for a while. And this was not simply because for a long time now he had received no sign nor communication from her, no invitation to come back, no inquiry as to why his visits had stopped. It was not because he had seen her go in and out with Paul Muniment, nor because it had suited Prince Casamassima to point the moral of her doing so, nor even because, quite independently of the Prince, he believed her to be more deeply absorbed in her acquaintance with that superior young man than she had ever been in her relations with himself. The reason, so far as he became conscious of it in his fitful meditations, could only be a strange, detached curiosity—strange and detached because everything else of his past had been engulfed in the abyss that opened before him as, after Mr Vetch had left him, he stood under the lamp in a paltry Westminster street. That had swallowed up all familiar feelings, and yet out of the ruin had sprung the impulse which brought him to where he sat.

The solution of his difficulty—he flattered himself he had arrived at it—involved a winding-up of his affairs; and though, even if no solution had been required, he would have felt clearly that he had been dropped, yet as even in that case it would have been sweet to him to bid her good-bye, so, at present, the desire for some last vision of her own hurrying fate could still appeal to him. If things had not gone well for him he was still capable of wondering whether they looked better for her. It is a singular fact, but there rose in his mind a sort of incongruous desire to pity her. All these were odd feelings enough, and by the time half an hour had elapsed they had throbbed themselves into weariness and into slumber. While he remembered that he was waiting now in a very different frame from that in which he waited for her in South Street the first time he went to see her, he closed his eyes and lost himself. His unconsciousness lasted, he afterwards perceived, nearly half an hour; it terminated in his becoming aware that the lady of the house was standing before him. Assunta was behind her, and as he opened his eyes she took from her mistress the bonnet and mantle of which the Princess divested herself. “It’s charming of you to have waited,” the latter said, smiling down at him with all her old kindness. “You are very tired—don’t get up; that’s the best chair, and you must keep it.” She made him remain where he was; she placed herself near him on a smaller seat; she declared that she was not tired herself, that she didn’t know what was the matter with her—nothing tired her now; she exclaimed on the time that had elapsed since he had last called, as if she were reminded of it simply by seeing him again; and she insisted that he should have some tea—he looked so much as if he needed it. She considered him with deeper attention, and wished to know what was the matter with him—what he had done to use himself up; adding that she must begin and look after him again, for while she had the care of him that kind of thing didn’t happen. In response to this Hyacinth made a great confession: he admitted that he had stayed away from work and simply amused himself—amused himself by loafing about London all day. This didn’t pay—he was beginning to discover it as he grew older; it was doubtless a sign of increasing years when one began to perceive that wanton pleasures were hollow and that to stick to one’s tools was not only more profitable but more refreshing. However, he did stick to them, as a general thing; that was no doubt partly why, from the absence of the habit of it, a day off turned out to be rather a grind. When Hyacinth had not seen the Princess for some time he always, on meeting her again, had a renewed, tremendous sense of her beauty, and he had it to-night in an extraordinary degree. Splendid as that beauty had ever been, it seemed clothed at present in transcendent glory, and (if that which was already supremely fine could be capable of greater refinement) to have worked itself free of all earthly grossness and been purified and consecrated by her new life. Her gentleness, when she was in the mood for it, was quite divine (it had always the irresistible charm that it was the humility of a high spirit), and on this occasion she gave herself up to it. Whether it was because he had the consciousness of resting his eyes upon her for the last time, or because she wished to be particularly pleasant to him in order to make up for having, amid other preoccupations, rather dropped him of late (it was probable the effect was a product of both causes), at all events the sight of her loveliness seemed none the less a privilege than it had done the night he went into her box, at the play, and her presence lifted the weight from his soul. He suffered himself to be coddled and absently, even if radiantly, smiled at, and his state of mind was such that it could produce no alteration of his pain to see that on the Princess’s part these were inexpensive gifts. She had sent Assunta to bring them tea, and when the tray arrived she gave him cup after cup, with every restorative demonstration; but he had not sat with her a quarter of an hour before he perceived that she scarcely measured a word he said to her or a word that she herself uttered. If she had the best intention of being nice to him, by way of compensation, this compensation was for a wrong that was far from vividly present to her mind. Two points became perfectly clear: one was that she was thinking of something very different from her present, her past, or her future relations with Hyacinth Robinson; the other was that he was superseded indeed. This was so completely the case that it did not even occur to her, it was evident, that the sense of supersession might be cruel to the young man. If she was charming to him it was because she was good-natured and he had been hanging off, and not because she had done him an injury. Perhaps, after all, she hadn’t, for he got the impression that it might be no great loss of comfort not to constitute part of her life to-day. It was manifest from her eye, from her smile, from every movement and tone, and indeed from all the irradiation of her beauty, that that life to-day was tremendously wound up. If he had come to Madeira Crescent because he was curious to see how she was getting on, it was sufficiently intimated to him that she was getting on well; that is that she was living more than ever on high hopes and bold plans and far-reaching combinations. These things, from his own point of view, ministered less to happiness, and to be mixed up with them was perhaps not so much greater a sign that one had not lived for nothing, than the grim arrangement which, in the interest of peace, he had just arrived at with himself. She asked him why he had not been to see her for so long, quite as if this failure were only a vulgar form of social neglect; and she scarcely seemed to notice whether it were a good or a poor excuse when he said he had stayed away because he knew her to be extremely busy. But she did not deny the impeachment; she admitted that she had been busier than ever in her life before. She looked at him as if he would know what that meant, and he remarked that he was very sorry for her.

“Because you think it’s all a mistake? Yes, I know that. Perhaps it is; but if it is, it’s a magnificent one. If you were scared about me three or four months ago, I don’t know what you would think to-day—if you knew! I have risked everything.”

“Fortunately I don’t know,” said Hyacinth.

“No, indeed, how should you?”

“And to tell the truth,” he went on, “that is really the reason I haven’t been back here till to-night. I haven’t wanted to know—I have feared and hated to know.”

“Then why did you come at last?”

Hyacinth hesitated a moment. “Out of a kind of inconsistent curiosity.”

“I suppose then you would like me to tell you where I have been to-night, eh?”

“No, my curiosity is satisfied. I have learned something—what I mainly wanted to know—without your telling me.”

She stared an instant. “Ah, you mean whether Madame Grandoni was gone? I suppose Assunta told you.”

“Yes, Assunta told me, and I was sorry to hear it.”

The Princess looked grave, as if her old friend’s departure had been indeed a very serious incident. “You may imagine how I feel it! It leaves me completely alone; it makes, in the eyes of the world, an immense difference in my position. However, I don’t consider the eyes of the world. At any rate, she couldn’t put up with me any more—it appears that I am more and more shocking; and it was written!” On Hyacinth’s asking what the old lady would do, she replied, “I suppose she will go and live with my husband.” Five minutes later she inquired of him whether the same reason that he had mentioned just before was the explanation of his absence from Audley Court. Mr Muniment had told her that he had not been near him and his sister for more than a month.

“No, it isn’t the fear of learning something that would make me uneasy: because, somehow, in the first place it isn’t natural to feel uneasy about Paul, and in the second, if it were, he never lets one see anything. It is simply the general sense of real divergence of view. When that divergence becomes sharp, it is better not to pester each other.”

“I see what you mean. But you might go and see his sister.”

“I don’t like her,” said Hyacinth, simply.

“Ah, neither do I!” the Princess exclaimed; while her visitor remained conscious of the perfect composure, the absence of false shame, with which she had referred to their common friend. But she was silent after this, and he judged that he had stayed long enough and sufficiently taxed a preoccupied attention. He got up, and was bidding her good-night, when she checked him by saying, suddenly, “By the way, your not going to see so good a friend as Mr Muniment, because you disapprove to-day of his work, suggests to me that you will be in an awkward fix, with your disapprovals, the day you are called upon to serve the cause according to your vow.”

“Oh, of course I have thought of that,” said Hyacinth, smiling.

“And would it be indiscreet to ask what you have thought?”

“Ah, so many things, Princess! It would take me a long time to say.”

“I have never talked to you about this, because it seemed to me indelicate, and the whole thing too much a secret of your own breast for even so intimate a friend as I have been to have a right to meddle with it. But I have wondered much—seeing that you cared less and less for the people—how you would reconcile your change of heart with the performance of your engagement. I pity you, my poor friend,” the Princess went on, with a heavenly sweetness, “for I can imagine nothing more terrible than to find yourself face to face with such an engagement, and to feel at the same time that the spirit which prompted it is dead within you.”

“Terrible, terrible, most terrible,” said Hyacinth, gravely, looking at her.

“But I pray God it may never be your fate!” The Princess hesitated a moment; then she added, “I see you feel it. Heaven help us all!” She paused, then went on: “Why shouldn’t I tell you, after all? A short time ago I had a visit from Mr Vetch.”

“It was kind of you to see him,” said Hyacinth.

“He was delightful, I assure you. But do you know what he came for? To beg me, on his knees, to snatch you away.”

“To snatch me away?”

“From the danger that hangs over you. Poor man, he was very pathetic.”

“Oh yes, he has talked to me about it,” Hyacinth said. “He has picked up the idea, but he knows nothing whatever about it. And how did he expect that you would be able to snatch me?”

“He left that to me; he had only a general conviction of my influence with you.”

“And he thought you would exercise it to make me back out? He does you injustice; you wouldn’t!” Hyacinth exclaimed, with a laugh. “In that case, taking one false position with another, yours would be no better than mine.”

“Oh, speaking seriously, I am perfectly quiet about you and about myself. I know you won’t be called,” the Princess returned.

“May I inquire how you know it?”

After a slight hesitation she replied, “Mr Muniment tells me so.”

“And how does he know it?”

“We have information. My dear fellow,” the Princess went on, “you are so much out of it now that if I were to tell you, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Yes, no doubt I am out of it; but I still have a right to say, all the same, in contradiction to your imputation of a moment ago, that I care for the people exactly as much as I ever did.”

“My poor Hyacinth, my dear infatuated little aristocrat, was that ever very much?” the Princess asked.

“It was enough, and it is still enough, to make me willing to lay down my life for anything that will really help them.”

“Yes, and of course you must decide for yourself what that is; or, rather, what it’s not.”

“I didn’t decide when I gave my promise. I agreed to take the decision of others,” Hyacinth said.

“Well, you said just now that in relation to this business of yours you had thought of many things,” the Princess rejoined. “Have you ever, by chance, thought of anything that will help the people?”

“You call me fantastic names, but I’m one of them myself.”

“I know what you are going to say!” the Princess broke in. “You are going to say that it will help them to do what you do—to do their work and earn their wages. That’s beautiful so far as it goes. But what do you propose for the thousands and thousands for whom no work—on the overcrowded earth, under the pitiless heaven—is to be found? There is less and less work in the world, and there are more and more people to do the little that there is. The old ferocious selfishnesses must come down. They won’t come down gracefully, so they must be smashed!”

The tone in which the Princess uttered these words made Hyacinth’s heart beat fast, and there was something so inspiring in her devoted fairness that the vision of a great heroism flashed up again before him, in all the splendour it had lost—the idea of a tremendous risk and an unregarded sacrifice. Such a woman as that, at such a moment, made every scruple seem a prudence and every compunction a cowardice. “I wish to God I could see it as you see it!” he exclaimed, after he had looked at her a minute in silent admiration.

“I see simply this: that what we are doing is at least worth trying, and that as none of those who have the power, the place, the means, will try anything else, on their head be the responsibility, on their head be the blood!”

“Princess,” said Hyacinth, clasping his hands and feeling that he trembled, “dearest Princess, if anything should happen to you—” and his voice fell; the horror of it, a dozen hideous images of her possible perversity and her possible punishment were again before him, as he had already seen them in sinister musings; they seemed to him worse than anything he had imagined for himself.

She threw back her head, looking at him almost in anger. “To me! And pray why not to me? What title have I to exemption, to security, more than any one else? Why am I so sacrosanct and so precious?”

“Simply because there is no one in the world, and there has never been any one in the world, like you.”

“Oh, thank you!” said the Princess, with a kind of dry impatience, turning away.

The manner in which she spoke put an end to their conversation. It expressed an indifference to what it might interest him to think about her to-day, and even a contempt for it, which brought tears to his eyes. His tears, however, were concealed by the fact that he bent his head over her hand, which he had taken to kiss; after which he left the room without looking at her.

XLVI

“I have received a letter from your husband,” Paul Muniment said to the Princess, the next evening, as soon as he came into the room. He announced this fact with a kind of bald promptitude and with a familiarity of manner which showed that his visit was one of a closely-connected series. The Princess was evidently not a little surprised by it, and immediately asked how in the world the Prince could know his address. “Couldn’t it have been by your old lady?” Muniment inquired. “He must have met her in Paris. It is from Paris that he writes.”

“What an incorrigible cad!” the Princess exclaimed.

“I don’t see that—for writing to me. I have his letter in my pocket, and I will show it to you if you like.”

“Thank you, nothing would induce me to touch anything he has touched,” the Princess replied.

“You touch his money, my dear lady,” Muniment remarked, with the quiet smile of a man who sees things as they are.

The Princess hesitated a little. “Yes, I make an exception for that, because it hurts him, it makes him suffer.”

“I should think, on the contrary, it would gratify him by showing you in a condition of weakness and dependence.”

“Not when he knows I don’t use it for myself. What exasperates him is that it is devoted to ends that he hates almost as much as he hates me and yet which he can’t call selfish.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” said Muniment, with that tone of pleasant reasonableness that he used when he was most imperturbable. “His letter satisfies me of that.” The Princess stared, at this, and asked him what he was coming to—whether he was leading up to advising her to go back and live with her husband. “I don’t know that I would go so far as to advise,” he replied; “when I have so much benefit from seeing you here, on your present footing, that wouldn’t sound well. But I’ll just make bold to prophesy that you will go before very long.”

“And on what does that extraordinary prediction rest?”

“On this plain fact—that you will have nothing to live upon. You decline to read the Prince’s letter, but if you were to look at it it would give you evidence of what I mean. He informs me that I need count upon no more supplies from your hands, as you yourself will receive no more.”

“He addresses you that way, in plain terms?”

“I can’t call them very plain, because the letter is written in French, and I naturally have had a certain difficulty in making it out, in spite of my persevering study of the tongue and the fine example set me by poor Robinson. But that appears to be the gist of the matter.”

“And you can repeat such an insult to me without the smallest apparent discomposure? You’re the most remarkable man!” the Princess broke out.

“Why is it an insult? It is the simple truth. I do take your money,” said Paul Muniment.

“You take it for a sacred cause; you don’t take it for yourself.”

“The Prince isn’t obliged to look at that,” Muniment rejoined, laughing.

His companion was silent for a moment; then, “I didn’t know you were on his side,” she replied, gently.

“Oh, you know on what side I am!”

“What does he know? What business has he to address you so?”

“I suppose he knows from Madame Grandoni. She has told him that I have great influence upon you.”

“She was welcome to tell him that!” the Princess exclaimed.

“His reasoning, therefore, has been that when I find you have nothing more to give to the cause I will let you go.”

“Nothing more? And does he count me, myself, and every pulse of my being, every capacity of my nature, as nothing?” the Princess cried, with shining eyes.

“Apparently he thinks that I do.”

“Oh, as for that, after all, I have known that you care far more for my money than for me. But it has made no difference to me,” said the Princess.

“Then you see that by your own calculation the Prince is right.”

“My dear sir,” Muniment’s hostess replied, “my interest in you never depended on your interest in me. It depended wholly on a sense of your great destinies. I suppose that what you began to tell me is that he stops my allowance.”

“From the first of next month. He has taken legal advice. It is now clear—so he tells me—that you forfeit your settlements.”

“Can I not take legal advice, too?” the Princess asked. “Surely I can contest that. I can forfeit my settlements only by an act of my own. The act that led to our separation was his act; he turned me out of his house by physical violence.”

“Certainly,” said Muniment, displaying even in this simple discussion his easy aptitude for argument; “but since then there have been acts of your own—” He stopped a moment, smiling; then he went on: “Your whole connection with a secret society constitutes an act, and so does your exercise of the pleasure, which you appreciate so highly, of feeding it with money extorted from an old Catholic and princely family. You know how little it is to be desired that these matters should come to light.”

“Why in the world need they come to light? Allegations in plenty, of course, he would have, but not a particle of proof. Even if Madame Grandoni were to testify against me, which is inconceivable, she would not be able to produce a definite fact.”

“She would be able to produce the fact that you had a little bookbinder staying for a month in your house.”

“What has that to do with it?” the Princess demanded. “If you mean that that is a circumstance which would put me in the wrong as against the Prince, is there not, on the other side, this circumstance, that while our young friend was staying with me Madame Grandoni herself, a person of the highest and most conspicuous respectability, never saw fit to withdraw from me her countenance and protection? Besides, why shouldn’t I have my bookbinder, just as I might have (and the Prince should surely appreciate my consideration in not having) my physician and my chaplain?”

“Am I not your chaplain?” said Muniment, with a laugh. “And does the bookbinder usually dine at the Princess’s table?”

“Why not, if he’s an artist? In the old times, I know, artists dined with the servants; but not to-day.”

“That would be for the court to appreciate,” Muniment remarked. And in a moment he added, “Allow me to call your attention to the fact that Madame Grandoni has left you—has withdrawn her countenance and protection.”

“Ah, but not for Hyacinth!” the Princess returned, in a tone which would have made the fortune of an actress if an actress could have caught it.

“For the bookbinder or for the chaplain, it doesn’t matter. But that’s only a detail,” said Muniment. “In any case, I shouldn’t in the least care for your going to law.”

The Princess rested her eyes upon him for a while in silence, and at last she replied, “I was speaking just now of your great destinies, but every now and then you do something, you say something, that makes me doubt of them. It’s when you seem afraid. That’s terribly against your being a first-rate man.”

“Oh, I know you have thought me a coward from the first of your knowing me. But what does it matter? I haven’t the smallest pretension to being a first-rate man.”

“Oh, you are deep, and you are provoking!” murmured the Princess, with a sombre eye.

“Don’t you remember,” Muniment continued, without heeding this somewhat passionate ejaculation—“don’t you remember how, the other day, you accused me of being not only a coward but a traitor; of playing false; of wanting, as you said, to back out?”

“Most distinctly. How can I help its coming over me, at times, that you have incalculable ulterior views and are only using me—only using us all? But I don’t care!”

“No, no; I’m genuine,” said Paul Muniment, simply, yet in a tone which might have implied that the discussion was idle. And he immediately went on, with a transition too abrupt for perfect civility: “The best reason in the world for your not having a lawsuit with your husband is this: that when you haven’t a penny left you will be obliged to go back and live with him.”

“How do you mean, when I haven’t a penny left? Haven’t I my own property?” the Princess demanded.

“The Prince tells me that you have drawn upon your own property at such a rate that the income to be derived from it amounts, to his positive knowledge, to no more than a thousand francs—forty pounds—a year. Surely, with your habits and tastes, you can’t live on forty pounds. I should add that your husband implies that your property, originally, was but a small affair.”

“You have the most extraordinary tone,” observed the Princess, gravely. “What you appear to wish to express is simply this: that from the moment I have no more money to give you I am of no more value than the skin of an orange.”

Muniment looked down at his shoe awhile. His companion’s words had brought a flush into his cheek; he appeared to admit to himself and to her that, at the point at which their conversation had arrived, there was a natural difficulty in his delivering himself. But presently he raised his head, showing a face still slightly embarrassed but none the less bright and frank. “I have no intention whatever of saying anything harsh or offensive to you, but since you challenge me perhaps it is well that I should let you know that I do consider that in giving your money—or, rather, your husband’s—to our business you gave the most valuable thing you had to contribute.”

“This is the day of plain truths!” the Princess exclaimed, with a laugh that was not expressive of pleasure. “You don’t count then any devotion, any intelligence, that I may have placed at your service, even rating my faculties modestly?”

“I count your intelligence, but I don’t count your devotion, and one is nothing without the other. You are not trusted at headquarters.”

“Not trusted!” the Princess repeated, with her splendid stare. “Why, I thought I could be hanged to-morrow!”

“They may let you hang, perfectly, without letting you act. You are liable to be weary of us,” Paul Muniment went on; “and, indeed, I think you are weary of us already.”

“Ah, you must be a first-rate man—you are such a brute!” replied the Princess, who noticed, as she had noticed before, that he pronounced ‘weary’ weery.

“I didn’t say you were weary of me,” said Muniment, blushing again. “You can never live poor—you don’t begin to know the meaning of it.”

“Oh, no, I am not tired of you,” the Princess returned, in a strange tone. “In a moment you will make me cry with passion, and no man has done that for years. I was very poor when I was a girl,” she added, in a different manner. “You yourself recognised it just now, in speaking of the insignificant character of my fortune.”

“It had to be a fortune, to be insignificant,” said Muniment, smiling. “You will go back to your husband!”

To this declaration she made no answer whatever; she only sat looking at him in a sort of desperate calmness. “I don’t see, after all, why they trust you more than they trust me,” she remarked.

“I am not sure that they do,” said Muniment. “I have heard something this evening which suggests that.”

“And may one know what it is?”

“A communication which I should have expected to be made through me has been made through another person.”

“A communication?”

“To Hyacinth Robinson.”

“To Hyacinth—” The Princess sprang up; she had turned pale in a moment.

“He has got his ticket; but they didn’t send it through me.”

“Do you mean his orders? He was here last night,” the Princess said.

“A fellow named Schinkel, a German—whom you don’t know, I think, but who was a sort of witness, with me and another, of his undertaking—came to see me this evening. It was through him the summons came, and he put Hyacinth up to it on Sunday night.”

“On Sunday night?” The Princess stared. “Why, he was here yesterday, and he talked of it, and he told me nothing.”

“That was quite right of him, bless him!” Muniment exclaimed.

The Princess closed her eyes a moment, and when she opened them again Muniment had risen and was standing before her. “What do they want him to do?” she asked.

“I am like Hyacinth; I think I had better not tell you—at least till it’s over.”

“And when will it be over?”

“They give him several days and, I believe, minute instructions,” said Muniment, “with, however, considerable discretion in respect to seizing his chance. The thing is made remarkably easy for him. All this I know from Schinkel, who himself knew nothing on Sunday, being a mere medium of transmission, but who saw Hyacinth yesterday morning.”

“Schinkel trusts you, then?” the Princess remarked.

Muniment looked at her steadily a moment. “Yes, but he won’t trust you. Hyacinth is to receive a card of invitation to a certain big house,” he went on, “a card with the name left in blank, so that he may fill it out himself. It is to be good for each of two grand parties which are to be given at a few days’ interval. That’s why they give him the job—because at a grand party he’ll look in his place.”

“He will like that,” said the Princess, musingly—“repaying hospitality with a pistol-shot.”

“If he doesn’t like it he needn’t do it.”

The Princess made no rejoinder to this, but in a moment she said, “I can easily find out the place you mean—the big house where two parties are to be given at a few days’ interval and where the master is worth your powder.”

“Easily, no doubt. And do you want to warn him?”

“No, I want to do the business first, so that it won’t be left for another. If Hyacinth will look in his place at a grand party, should not I look still more in mine? And as I know the individual I should be able to approach him without exciting the smallest suspicion.”

Muniment appeared to consider her suggestion a moment, as if it were practical and interesting; but presently he answered, placidly, “To fall by your hand would be too good for him.”

“However he falls, will it be useful, valuable?” the Princess asked.

“It’s worth trying. He’s a very bad institution.”

“And don’t you mean to go near Hyacinth?”

“No, I wish to leave him free,” Muniment answered.

“Ah, Paul Muniment,” murmured the Princess, “you are a first-rate man!” She sank down upon the sofa and sat looking up at him. “In God’s name, why have you told me this?” she broke out.

“So that you should not be able to throw it up at me, later, that I had not.”

She threw herself over, burying her face in the cushions, and remained so for some minutes, in silence. Muniment watched her awhile, without speaking; but at last he remarked, “I don’t want to aggravate you, but you will go back!” The words failed to cause her even to raise her head, and after a moment he quietly went out.

XLVII

That the Princess had done with him, done with him for ever, remained the most vivid impression that Hyacinth had carried away from Madeira Crescent the night before. He went home, and he flung himself on his narrow bed, where the consolation of sleep again descended upon him. But he woke up with the earliest dawn, and the beginning of a new day was a quick revival of pain. He was over-past, he had become vague, he was extinct. The things that Sholto had said to him came back to him, and the compassion of foreknowledge that Madame Grandoni had shown him from the first. Of Paul Muniment he only thought to wonder whether he knew. An insurmountable desire to do justice to him, for the very reason that there might be a temptation to oblique thoughts, forbade him to challenge his friend even in imagination. He vaguely wondered whether he would ever be superseded; but this possibility faded away in a stronger light—a kind of dazzling vision of some great tribuneship, which swept before him now and again and in which the figure of the Princess herself seemed merged and extinguished. When full morning came at last, and he got up, it brought with it, in the restlessness which made it impossible to him to remain in his room, a return of that beginning of an answerless question, ‘After all—after all—?’ which the Princess had planted there the night before when she spoke so bravely in the name of the Revolution. ‘After all—after all, since nothing else was tried, or would, apparently, ever be tried—’ He had a sense of his mind, which had been made up, falling to pieces again; but that sense in turn lost itself in a shudder which was already familiar—the horror of the reappearance, on his part, of the imbrued hands of his mother. This loathing of the idea of a repetition had not been sharp, strangely enough, till his summons came; in all his previous meditations the growth of his reluctance to act for the ‘party of action’ had not been the fear of a personal stain, but the simple extension of his observation. Yet now the idea of the personal stain made him horribly sick; it seemed by itself to make service impossible. It rose before him like a kind of backward accusation of his mother; to suffer it to start out in the life of her son was in a manner to place her own forgotten, redeemed pollution again in the eye of the world. The thought that was most of all with him was that he had time—he had time; he was grateful for that, and saw a kind of delicacy in their having given him a margin—not condemned him to be pressed by the hours. He had another day, he had two days, he might take three, he might take several. He knew he should be terribly weary of them before they were over; but for that matter they would be over whenever he liked. Anyhow, he went forth again into the streets, into the squares, into the parks, solicited by an aimless desire to steep himself yet once again in the great indifferent city which he knew and loved and which had had so many of his smiles and tears and confidences. The day was gray and damp, though no rain fell, and London had never appeared to him to wear more proudly and publicly the stamp of her imperial history. He passed slowly to and fro over Westminster bridge and watched the black barges drift on the great brown river, and looked up at the huge fretted palace that rose there as a fortress of the social order which he, like the young David, had been commissioned to attack with a sling and a pebble. At last he made his way to St James’s Park, and he strolled about a long time. He revolved around it, and he went a considerable distance up the thoroughfare that communicates with Pimlico. He stopped at a certain point and came back again, and then he retraced his steps in the former direction. He looked in the windows of shops, and he looked in particular into the long, glazed expanse of that establishment in which, at that hour of the day, Millicent Henning discharged superior functions. Millicent’s image had descended upon him after he came out, and now it moved before him as he went, it clung to him, it refused to quit him. He made, in truth, no effort to drive it away; he held fast to it in return, and it murmured strange things in his ear. She had been so jolly to him on Sunday; she was such a strong, obvious, simple nature, with such a generous breast and such a freedom from the sophistries of civilisation. All that he had ever liked in her came back to him now with a finer air, and there was a moment, during which he hung over the rail of the bridge that spans the lake in St James’s Park and mechanically followed the movement of the swans, when he asked himself whether, at bottom, he hadn’t liked her better, almost, than any one. He tried to think he had, he wanted to think he had, and he seemed to see the look her eyes would have if he should tell her that he had. Something of that sort had really passed between them on Sunday; only the business that had come up since had superseded it. Now the taste of the vague, primitive comfort that his Sunday had given him came back to him, and he asked himself whether he mightn’t know it a second time. After he had thought he couldn’t again wish for anything, he found himself wishing that he might believe there was something Millicent could do for him. Mightn’t she help him—mightn’t she even extricate him? He was looking into a window—not that of her own shop—when a vision rose before him of a quick flight with her, for an undefined purpose, to an undefined spot; and he was glad, at that moment, to have his back turned to the people in the street, because his face suddenly grew red to the tips of his ears. Again and again, all the same, he indulged in the reflection that spontaneous, uncultivated minds often have inventions, inspirations. Moreover, whether Millicent should have any or not, he might at least feel her arms around him. He didn’t exactly know what good it would do him or what door it would open; but he should like it. The sensation was not one he could afford to defer, but the nearest moment at which he could enjoy it would be that evening. He had thrown over everything, but she would be busy all day; nevertheless, it would be a gain, it would be a kind of foretaste, to see her earlier, to have three words with her. He wrestled with the temptation to go into her haberdasher’s, because he knew she didn’t like it (he had tried it once, of old); as the visits of gentlemen, even when ostensible purchasers (there were people watching about who could tell who was who), compromised her in the eyes of her employers. This was not an ordinary case, however; and though he hovered about the place a long time, undecided, embarrassed, half ashamed, at last he went in, as by an irresistible necessity. He would just make an appointment with her, and a glance of the eye and a single word would suffice. He remembered his way through the labyrinth of the shop; he knew that her department was on the second floor. He walked through the place, which was crowded, as if he had as good a right as any one else; and as he had entertained himself, on rising, with putting on his holiday garments, in which he made such a distinguished little figure, he was not suspected of any purpose more nefarious than that of looking for some nice thing to give a lady. He ascended the stairs, and found himself in a large room where made-up articles were exhibited and where, though there were twenty people in it, a glance told him he shouldn’t find Millicent. She was perhaps in the next one, into which he passed by a wide opening. Here also were numerous purchasers, most of them ladies; the men were but three or four, and the disposal of the wares was in the hands of neat young women attired in black dresses with long trains. At first it appeared to Hyacinth that the young woman he sought was even here not within sight, and he was turning away, to look elsewhere, when suddenly he perceived that a tall gentleman, standing in the middle of the room, was none other than Captain Sholto. It next became plain to him that the person standing upright before the Captain, as still as a lay-figure and with her back turned to Hyacinth, was the object of his own quest. In spite of her averted face he instantly recognised Millicent; he knew her shop-attitude, the dressing of her hair behind, and the long, grand lines of her figure, draped in the last new thing. She was exhibiting this article to the Captain, and he was lost in contemplation. He had been beforehand with Hyacinth as a false purchaser, but he imitated a real one better than our young man, as, with his eyes travelling up and down the front of Millicent’s person, he frowned, consideringly, and rubbed his lower lip slowly with his walking-stick. Millicent stood admirably still, and the back-view of the garment she displayed was magnificent. Hyacinth, for a minute, stood as still as she. At the end of that minute he perceived that Sholto saw him, and for an instant he thought he was going to direct Millicent’s attention to him. But Sholto only looked at him very hard, for a few seconds, without telling her he was there; to enjoy that satisfaction he would wait till the interloper was gone. Hyacinth gazed back at him for the same length of time—what these two pairs of eyes said to each other requires perhaps no definite mention—and then turned away.