BOOK SIXTH

XLIII

“My child, you’re 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 took in 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 the 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 a loose overstatement. “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 facial interests by cultivating blankness.

“Oh a king, a king——!” Poupin demurred, 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 doesn’t seem to think so.”

“It’s always too late, mon très-cher, when you come,” the Frenchman returned. “You know if you’ve 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’re 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’s tired—he’ll certainly accept a little glass,” Madame Poupin pronounced with decision as she moved toward the tray containing the small gilded service of liqueurs.

“We’ll each accept one, ma bonne; it’s a very good occasion for a drop of fine,” her husband interposed while Hyacinth seated himself in the chair marked by his host. Schinkel resumed his place, which was opposite; he looked across at the new visitor 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; this 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 remained out of his own chair and stood beside him resting a hand on his head. At this touch something came over Hyacinth that brought his heart into his throat. The possibility that occurred to him, conveyed in Poupin’s whole manner as well as in the reassuring intention of his caress and in his wife’s instant, uneasy offer of refreshment, explained the confusion of the circle and reminded our hero of the engagement he had taken with himself to live up to a grand conception of the quiet when a certain crisis in his fate should have arrived. It struck him 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 an attenuation, only worked 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 his voice would tremble, and this was 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 treacherously mild? His eyes questioned the table, but encountered only 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 startled gamblers who might have shuffled away the stakes. Madam Poupin, diving 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 always arrange! What on earth would you have more?”

The hostess distributed the liquor, but our youth could take none of it down, leaving it to the high appreciation of his friends. His indifference to this luxury excited discussion and conjecture, the others bandying theories and contradictions and even ineffectual jokes about him over his head—all with a volubility that seemed to him unnatural. For Poupin and Schinkel there was something all wrong 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 Hyacinth was always in love—that was no secret to his friends; but 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 wily words of a person so taking?—in proof of which she deposed that she had never eaten and drunk with such relish as at the time (oh far away now) when she had a soft spot in her heart for her rascal of a husband. For Madame Poupin to allude to the companion of her trials 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 doom. Finally he looked up and said to his mates collectively: “What’s up and what the deuce is the matter with you all?” He followed this inquiry by a request they would tell him what it was they had been saying about him, since they admitted he had been the subject of their talk. 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 had 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 Schinkel 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. “Crook’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 actual old titulary was going, late in the day, 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 strange 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 if so what was he 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 on originally beginning to rub shoulders with him, and old Crook 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 and look as if he were entering into his host’s ideas.

“You’ve some news—you’ve some news about me,” he brought out 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 if they wouldn’t help you out with it. But I don’t think they’ll 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 and as to ask for wise direction.

“My dear child, vous vous faites des idées!” the latter exclaimed, again laying his hand on his young friend all soothingly.

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

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

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

“You do it indeed; it’s very wonderful,” Schinkel feebly conceded.

“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’ll go with you,” said Hyacinth.

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

Hyacinth earnestly debated; 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’m surprised at your weakness,” he observed as sternly as he could manage it to Poupin.

The Frenchman stared at him and then fell on his neck. “You’re sublime, my young friend—you’re truly sublime!”

“Will you be so good as to tell me what you’re going to do with that young man?” demanded Madame Poupin with a glare at Schinkel.

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

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

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

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

“My wife, you’re bien sotte!” Poupin groaned, lifting his hands and shoulders and turning away.

“I may be anything you like, but I won’t be a party—no, God help me, not to that!” the good woman protested, planted before Schinkel as to prevent his moving.

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

“I’ll bring it to you in your house, my good friend,” Schinkel replied with a vain, public wink which seemed to urge how Madame Poupin must be considered.

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

“It’s you who are making it an occasion. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hyacinth. He had been questioning Schinkel’s face and believed he found in it a queer, convulsed but honest appeal to depend on him. “I’ve disturbed you and I think I had better go away.”

Poupin had turned round again; he seized the young man’s arm eagerly, as to prevent his retiring without taking in his false position. “How can you care when you know everything’s changed?”

“What do you mean—everything’s changed?”

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

“If we didn’t love you we should say you had madly betrayed us!”—she quickly took her husband’s idea.

“Oh I shall never madly betray you,” Hyacinth rather languidly smiled.

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

“You’ll give up all thoughts of acting for me—je ne permets pas ça!” grandly added his wife.

“The thing’s probably not of importance—only a little word of consideration,” Schinkel suggested soothingly.

“We repudiate you, we deny you, we denounce you!” shouted Poupin with magnificent heat.

“My poor friends, it’s you who have broken down, not I,” said Hyacinth. “I’m 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,” he said 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’ve changed,” Poupin insisted. “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 sacred vow? 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’s the great thing,” Poupin all edifyingly urged. “I’ll go to see them—I’ll make them understand.”

“Ah you should have done that before!” his poor wife flashed.

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

“When it’s a case of Hoffendahl it’s no good to meddle,” Schinkel gravely contributed.

“And pray who’s 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 the poor dears are with us or against us.”

This protest went so far that Poupin clearly felt bound to recover a dignity. “He has no authority but what we give him; but you know how we respect him and that he’s one of the pure, ma bonne. Hyacinth can do exactly as he likes; he knows that as well as we do. He knows there’s not a feather’s weight of compulsion; he knows that for my part I long ago ceased to expect anything of him.”

“Certainly there’s 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’ve no summons, I’ve no sign, I’ve no order. When the call reaches me it will be time to discuss it. Let it come or not come: it’s not my affair.”

“Ganz gewiss, it’s not your affair,” said Schinkel.

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

“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 earnestly opined.

“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’ve seen you first,” the Frenchman almost piteously begged.

“My poor old friend, you’re 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 call from the top of the stairs in a different voice, a tone of sudden, extravagant fortitude.

XLIV

Hyacinth had hurried down and got out of the house, but without 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, since he had never taken in their having really gone round to the faith that the note he had signed to Hoffendahl would fail to 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 at Lisson Grove he should have spoken in accordance with that freedom; but it was with the Princess alone that he had permitted himself really to rail at their grimy “inferiors” and give 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.

He 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 the agitated trio 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 either smoothly or clumsily 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 sealed 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 the German wouldn’t 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, Germanic way, and only reprehended him 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 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 of our helplessness and tell nothing of help. 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 to keep an eye on him. Hyacinth had leisure to reflect that the day was perhaps not far off when a policeman might have an eye on him for a very good reason—might walk up and down, pass and repass as he mounted guard on 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 shouldn’t see him waiting. There was another delay, for the two stood talking together interminably and without seizable sounds on the doorstep. At last, however, Poupin went in again, and then Schinkel came down the street toward Hyacinth, who had felt sure he would proceed to that quarter, it being, as our young friend happened to know, that of his habitation. After he had heard Poupin go in he stopped and looked up and down; it was evidently his idea that Hyacinth would be awaiting him. Our hero stepped out of the shallow recess in which he had flattened 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’ll talk of that—we’ll talk.” Schinkel made no motion to satisfy him; having his hands in the pockets of his trousers and an appearance marked by the exasperating assumption that they had the whole night before them. As one of the “dangerous” he was too intolerably for order.

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

“Is she mad? I don’t recognise them”—and Hyacinth spoke as one scandalised.

“No, but they lofe you.”

“Why then do they try to disgrace me?”

“They think it no disgrace if you’ve changed.”

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

“Oh he came round—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 pronounced.

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

“Lord, how shaky you all are!” He was more and more aware now of all the superiority still left him to cling to.

“You take it well. I’m very sorry. But it is a fine chance,” Schinkel went on, smoking away.

His pipe seemed for the moment to absorb him, so that after a silence Hyacinth resumed:

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

“Well, it was this morning, early,” said the German. “You know in my country we don’t lie in bett late, and what they do in my country I try to do everywhere. I think it’s 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 picture 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’s nothing to see there—you English are so slow to leave the bett. Not much, however, at any time; it’s not important, my bad little street. But my first pipe’s 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’s not very fresh—and I think it’s the beginning of another day. I wonder what such a day will bring—if it will bring anything good to us poor devils. But I’ve seen a great many pass and nothing has come. This morning, doch, brought something—something at least to you. On the other side of the way I saw a young man who stood just opposite my house and 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 neat 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 at him to let him know I’d 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 him to be a very neat young man indeed—very young and with a very nice friendly face. He was also very clean 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 that 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 this 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 pleasant young man. But what he wanted was simply to put a letter in my hand; as he said himself he was only a good 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’s 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’s true he looked as if he had plenty to do—as if he was in some very good occupation. I should tell you he spoke to me always in English, but he was not English; he sounded his words only as if he had learnt them very well. I could see he has learnt everything very well. I suppose he’s not German—so he’d 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 good postman on his rounds, without giving me any more information.”

It took Schinkel a long time to tell this story—his calm and conscientious thoroughness made no allowance for any painful acuteness of curiosity his auditor might feel. He went from step to step, treating all his points with lucidity and as if each would have exactly the same interest for his companion. The latter made no attempt to hurry him, and indeed listened now with a rare intensity of patience; for he was interested and it was moreover clear to him that he was safe with Schinkel, who would satisfy him in time—wouldn’t worry him with attaching conditions to their business in spite of the mistake, creditable after all to his conscience, he had made in going for discussion 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 the neat fist—neatest in its very flourishes—of Diedrich Hoffendahl. “Good, good,” he said, bearing as to soothe on Hyacinth’s arm. “I’ll walk with you to your door and I’ll give it to you there; unless you like better 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 unpleasant to you. But it’s probably nothing; it’s probably only a word to say you need think no more about your undertaking.”

“Why should it be that?” Hyacinth asked.

“Probably he has heard that you’ve cooled off.”

“That I’ve cooled off?” Our hero 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’d 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 only said 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 backers?”

“Yes, but not the principal one. The principal one was Paul Muniment. Why wasn’t any communication made me through Paul Muniment?” And this now struck him as a question that would reverberate the more one thought of it.

“My dear Robinson, you want to know too many things. Depend on it there are always good reasons. I should have preferred—yes—it had been Muniment. But if they didn’t send to him——!” With which Schinkel’s lucidity dropped and lost itself in a thick 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 him askance and caught an ambiguous, an evasive roll in his companion’s small, mild eye. “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 they’re 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. They’re like the great God of the believers: they’re searchers of hearts; and not only of hearts, but of all a man’s life—his days, his nights, his spoken, his unspoken words. Oh they go deep and 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, this 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 and almost with the same accent. They had a certain soothing effect. In fact the good Schinkel was somehow salutary 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—just waited. The sharpness of his impatience had passed away and he watched without irritation the loving manner in which his mate shook the ashes out of the big smoked-out—so vehemently smoked-out—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 his old waistcoat, drew forth the portentous missive. 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 disappointment in Schinkel’s ugly, kindly face at this indication that he himself should have no knowledge—present and relieving at least—of its contents; but he liked that better than his pretending to attribute to it again some silly comfortable sense. Schinkel had now the shrewdness or the good taste not to repeat that remark, and as the letter pressed against his heart Hyacinth felt it still more distinctly, not as a vain balm to apprehension, but as the very penetration of a fatal knife. What his friend did say in a moment was: “Now you’ve got it I’m very glad. It’s easier for me.” And he effected a poor strained grin.

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

Schinkel mumbled as for accommodation while he lingered, and then as Hyacinth turned away, putting in his door-key, brought out: “And if you don’t do yours so will you.”

“Yes, as you say, they themselves 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 the effect of which, in the milder gloom of day, was a rude immensity of laceration. Hyacinth’s room was a second floor back, and as he approached it he was startled by seeing a light proceed from the crevice under the door, the imperfect fitting of which figured to him thus as quite squalid. He stopped and considered this new note of his crisis, his first impulse being to connect it with the case just presented by Schinkel—since what could anything that touched him now be but a part of the same business? It was doubtless all in order that some second portent should now await him there. Yet it occurred to him that when he went out to call on Lady Aurora after tea he must simply have 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 such poor sources of comfort as were perfectly just. When he opened the door this last prevision proved the correct one, though the figure in occupation was not one of the possible presences that had loomed. Mr. Vetch sat beside the little table at which Hyacinth did his writing; he showed a weary head on a supporting hand and eyes apparently closed. But he looked up when his young man appeared. “Oh I didn’t hear you; you’re very quiet.”

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

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

“Then you’ve been plunged in meditation.”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking.” With which Mr. Vetch explained that the woman of the house had begun by refusing him admittance without 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 an hour; he had thought he might find him by coming late.

Mr. Robinson was very glad he had waited and 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 the bed, vaguely expectant; he wondered what special purpose had brought the fiddler so far at that unnatural hour. Yet he spoke but the truth in saying he was glad to see him. Hyacinth had come upstairs in such a pain of desire to be alone with the revelation carried in his pocket that the sight of a guest had given him positive 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’ve been looking at your books,” the fiddler said; “you’ve 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’ve a manner, as who should say, like one of the masters. With such a hand and such feeling your future’s assured. You’ll make a fortune and become famous.”

Mr. Vetch sat forward to sketch this vision; he rested his hands on his knees and looked very hard at his young host, as if to challenge him to dispute a statement so cheering and above all so authoritative. The effect of what Hyacinth saw in his face was to produce immediately the idea that the fiddler knew something, though there was no guessing how he could know it. The Poupins, for instance, had had no time to communicate with him, even granting them capable of that baseness—all inconceivable 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 his mind an intense determination to dissemble before his visitor to the last: he might imagine what he liked, but he should have no grain of satisfaction—or rather should have only that of being led to believe if possible that his suspicions were “rot.” Hyacinth glanced over the books he had taken down from the shelf and admitted that they were pleasing efforts 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 our hero took the aggressive and asked him boldly if 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’ve 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 under some impulse you don’t or can’t name. 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.”

He heard himself say these things as if he were listening to another person; the impudence of them in the grim conditions seemed to him somehow so rare. But he believed himself to be on the edge of a form of action 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 looked out might have indicated that he too was able to take the measure of his perversity—judged him false to sit there declaring there was nothing the matter while a brand-new revolutionary commission burned in his pocket. But in a moment Mr. Vetch said very mildly and 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’ve resisted my fears—how I’ve 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’ll have me always under your eyes,” Hyacinth smiled.

The old man got up eagerly and, as Hyacinth did the same, laid firm hands on 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, in signs or messages from the dead, 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 if I thought it important—I took a cab.”

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

“Will you come to-night?” said his companion for rejoinder, holding him still.

“Surely it would be simpler for you to stay here. I see perfectly you’re 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’re very bad; your reason totters on its throne,” said Hyacinth with excellent gaiety.

“Very good, we’ll get a room to-morrow. I’ll move into another house where there are two side by side.” His “boy’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’ve to give a fortnight’s notice.”

“Ah you’re backing out!” Mr. Vetch lamented, dropping his hands.

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

“Believed you? Believed what? What’s there to believe? If you’ll make me a promise I’ll 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 proof—and that’s really what I came here for to-night. It came over me that I’ve been an ass all this time never to have got it out of you before. Give it to me now and I’ll go home quietly and leave you in peace.” Hyacinth, assenting in advance, requested again that he would formulate his demand, and then Mr. Vetch said: “Well, make me a promise—on your honour and as from the man you are, God help you, to the man I am—that you’ll never, under any circumstances whatever, ‘do’ anything.”

“‘Do’ anything——?”

“Anything those people expect of you.”

“Those people?” Hyacinth repeated.

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

Hyacinth had no desire to torment him, 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’ve in mind,” he said in a moment; “but I’m afraid I don’t grasp the need of such solemnities.”

“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; he stared as if this assurance were too fair for nature. “Do you take your oath to 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’ve been speaking and whom we both loved?”

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

Mr. Vetch 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 he got into it he asked his young friend to kiss him. The young friend did so with a fine accolade and in the frank foreign manner, on both cheeks, and then watched the vehicle get itself into motion and rattle away. He saw it turn a neighbouring corner and then approached the nearest gas-lamp to draw from his breast-pocket the sealed letter Schinkel had given him.

XLV

“And Madame Grandoni then?” he asked, all loth to turn away. He felt pretty sure 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, afflicted, titular “companion” of the Princess, whom he had always liked. She had struck him as ever in the slightly ridiculous position of a confidant of tragedy in whom the heroine, stricken with reserves unfavourable to the dramatic progression, should have ceased to confide.

“È andata via, caro signorino,” said Assunta, smiling at him as she held the door open.

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

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

“Is it possible?” He felt it somehow as a personal loss.

“È possibilissimo!” Then Assunta added: “There were many times when she almost went; but this time, capisce——!” And without finishing her sentence this most exiled of Romans and expertest of tire-women indulged in a subtle, suggestive, indefinable play of expression to which hands and shoulders contributed as well as lips and eyebrows.

Hyacinth looked at her long enough to catch any meaning she might have wished to convey, but gave no sign of apprehending it. He only remarked gravely: “In short she’s off!”

“Eh, and the worst is she’ll probably never come back. She didn’t move, as she kept threatening, for a long time; but when at last she decided——!” And Assunta’s flattened hand, sweeping the air sidewise, figured the straightness of the old lady’s course. “Peccato!” she ended with a sigh.

“I should have liked to see her again—I should have liked to bid her good-bye.” He lingered, suddenly helpless, though, informed of the Princess’s own more temporary absence, he had no reason for remaining save the possibility she might reappear before he turned away. This possibility, however, was small, since it was only nine o’clock, the middle of the evening—too early an hour for her return if, as Assunta said, she had gone out after tea. He looked up and down the Crescent, gently swinging his stick, and became aware in a moment of some tender interest on the part of his humbler friend.

“You should have come back sooner; then perhaps Madama wouldn’t have gone, povera vecchia,” she rejoined in a moment. “It’s too many days since you’ve 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 keep coming?”

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

“The Princess doesn’t think so, and she’s the right judge,” Hyacinth smiled.

“Eh, who knows what she thinks? It’s not for me to say. But you had better come in and wait. I daresay she won’t be long, and she’ll be content to find you.”

Hyacinth wondered. “I’m not sure of that.” Then he asked: “Did she go out alone?”

“Sola, sola. Oh don’t be afraid; you were the first!” And Assunta, delightfully, frankly insidious, flung open the door of the little drawing-room.

He sat there nearly an hour, in the chair the Princess habitually used, under her shaded lamp, with a dozen objects round 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 rattled like the broken ice of a drink he had once wistfully seen mixed at an “American Bar,” but he was too tired for unrest; he had not been to work and had walked about all day to fill the time; so that he simply lay back 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 as quick as that of a man in sharp suspense. He was agitated beneath his fatigue, yet 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 mere “nervous” intensity than he had known at other 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 reflexion had descended on him and the range of his imagination been wide. It whirled him through circles of immeasurable compass; and this is the reason for which, thinking of many things while he sat in the Princess’s place, he wondered why, after all, he had come to Madeira Crescent and what interest he could have in seeing the lady of the house. Wasn’t everything over between them and the link snapped which had for its brief hour bound them so closely together? And this 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; not even because he had seen her go in and out with Paul Muniment and it had suited Prince Casamassima to point to him the moral of her doing so; nor still 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 ground of his approach, 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 when, after his separation from Mr. Vetch, he stood under the lamp in the paltry Westminster street. That had swallowed up all familiar feelings, and yet out of the ruin had sprung the impulse of which this vigil was the result.

The solution of his difficulty—he flattered himself he had arrived at it—involved a winding-up of his affairs; and though, even had no solution been required, he would have felt clearly that he had been dropped, yet since 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 if they looked better for her. There rose in his mind all perversely, yet all humanly, a yearning need to pity her. These were odd feelings enough, and by the time half an hour had elapsed they had throbbed themselves into the stupor of exhaustion. While it came to him in how different a frame he was waiting now from that of his first visit in South Street he closed his eyes and lost himself. His unconsciousness lasted, he afterwards supposed, nearly half an hour; it ended in his feeling the lady of the house stand there before him. Assunta was behind and as he opened his eyes took from her the bonnet and mantle of which she divested herself. “It’s charming of you to have waited,” the Princess said, smiling down at him with all her old kindness. “You’re 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 she wasn’t 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 where he ailed—what he had done to use himself up; adding that she must begin to look after him again, since while she had had the care of him that kind of thing didn’t happen. In response to this Hyacinth made a great confession: he admitted he had stayed away from work and simply amused himself—amused himself by loafing about London all day. This didn’t pay—he had arrived at that wisdom as he grew older; it was doubtless a sign of increasing years when one felt one’s self finding wanton pleasures 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 rather a sell. Meanwhile, when he hadn’t seen her for some time he always on meeting the Princess again had a renewed, formidable sense of her beauty, and he had it to-night in an extraordinary degree. Splendid as that beauty had ever been it shone on this occasion, like a trimmed lamp, clearer and further, so that—if what was already supremely fine could be capable of greater refinement—it might have worked itself free of all earthly grossness and been purified and consecrated by her new life. Her gentleness, when she turned it on, 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 on 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 sprang from both causes—at all events the sight of each great, easy, natural, yet all so coercive, fact of her seemed no poorer a privilege than when, the other year, he had gone into her box at the play. She affected him as raising and upholding the weight that rested on him very much after the form of some high, bland caryatid crowned with a crushing cornice. 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 these were on the Princess’s part inexpensive gifts. She had sent Assunta to bring them tea, and when the tray arrived she gave him cup after cup with every grace of hospitality; but he had not sat with her a quarter of an hour before he was sure she scarcely measured a word he said to her or a word she herself uttered. If she had the best intention of being “balmy” by way of making up, she was still rather vague about what she was to make up for. Two points became perfectly clear: first that she was thinking of something quite other than her present, her past, or her future relations with Hyacinth Robinson; second that he was superseded indeed. This was so completely the case that it didn’t even occur to her, evidently, how cruel the sense of supersession might be to one who was sick and sore. If she was charming to such weakness wasn’t it 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 it might be no great loss of comfort to any shuffler not to constitute part of her intimate life to-day. It was manifest from things in her face, from her every movement and tone, and indeed from all the irradiation of her beauty, that this life was involving intimacies and efforts arduous all round. If he had called from curiosity about her success it was sufficiently implied for him that her success was good: she was living more than ever on high hopes and bold plans and far-reaching combinations. These things, from his own point of view, were not now so quite the secret of joy, and to be mixed up with them was perhaps not so much greater a sign that one hadn’t lived for nothing than the grim understanding he had in the interest of peace just arrived at with himself. She asked why he hadn’t been to her for so long, much as if this failure were only a vulgar form of social neglect; and she scarce seemed to note it either as a good or as a poor excuse when he said he had stayed away because he knew her to be deep in business. But she didn’t deny the impeachment; she admitted she had been busier than ever in her life before. She looked at him as if he would know what that meant, and he said he was very sorry for her.

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

“Fortunately I don’t know anything,” he said.

“No indeed. How should you?”

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

“Then why did you come at last?”

“Well, out of the most illogical of curiosities.”

“I suppose then you’d like me to tell you where I’ve been to-night, eh?” she asked.

“No, my curiosity’s satisfied. I’ve learnt something—what I mainly wanted to know—without your telling me.”

She stared an instant. “Ah you mean whether Madame Grandoni had 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 awkward affair. “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 I’m more and more of a scandal—and it was written!” On Hyacinth’s asking what the old lady would do she said: “I suppose she’ll go and live with my husband. Funny, isn’t it? that it should have always to be with one of us and that it should matter so little which.” Five minutes later she inquired of him if the same reason he had mentioned just before was the explanation of his absence from Audley Court. Mr. Muniment had told her he hadn’t been near him and the 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 because in the second, if it were, he never lets one see anything—of any effect or impression on him. It’s simply the general sense of real divergence of view. When that divergence becomes sharp there are forms and lame pretences——”

“It’s best not to try to keep up? I see what you mean—when you’re grimly sincere. But you might go and see the sister.”

“I don’t like the sister,” Hyacinth frankly averred.

“Ah neither do I!” the Princess said; while her visitor remained conscious of the perfect composure, the absence of false shame, with which she had named their common friend. But she was silent after this, and he judged he had stayed long enough and sufficiently taxed a preoccupied attention. He got up and was bidding her good-night when she suddenly brought out: “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’ll be in an awkward fix, with your disapprovals, the hour you’re called upon to serve the cause according to your vow.”

“Oh of course I’ve thought of that,” Hyacinth smiled.

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

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

“I’ve never talked to you of 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’ve been to have a right to meddle with it. But I’ve wondered much, seeing you take all the while less and less interest—in the real business, I mean, less and less—how you’d reconcile your change of heart with your meeting your engagement. I pity you, my poor friend,” she went on with a noble benignity, “for I can imagine nothing more terrible than to find yourself face to face with your obligation and to feel at the same time the spirit originally prompting it dead within you.”

“Terrible, terrible, most terrible.” And he looked at her gravely.

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

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

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

“Away from what?”

“From the danger that hangs over you. He was most touching.”

“Oh yes, he has talked to me about it,” our young man said. “He has picked up the idea, but is utterly at sea. And how did he expect you’d be able to snatch me?”

“He left that to me; he had only a general—and such a flattering—belief in my possible effect on you.”

“And he thought you’d set it in motion to make me back out? He does you injustice. You wouldn’t!” Hyacinth finely laughed. “In that case, taking one false position with another, yours would be no better than mine.”

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

“May I be told how you know it?”

She waited but an instant. “Mr. Muniment keeps me informed.”

“And how does he know?”

“We’ve information. My poor dear friend,” the Princess went on, “you’re so much out of it now that if I were to tell you I fear you wouldn’t understand.”

“Yes, no doubt I’m out of it; but I still have a right to say, all the same, in contradiction to your charge of a moment ago, that I take interest in the ‘real business’ exactly as much as I ever did.”

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

“It was enough, and it’s still enough, to make me willing to lay down my life for anything that will clearly help.”

“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 abide by the decision of others,” Hyacinth answered.

“Well, you said just now that in relation to this business of yours you had thought of many things,” his friend pursued. “Have you ever by chance thought of anything that will do their work?”

“Their work?”

“The people’s.”

“Ah you call me fantastic names, but I’m one of them myself!” he cried.

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

The tone in which she spoke made his heart beat fast, and there was something so inspiring in the great union of her beauty, her sincerity and her energy that the image of a heroism not less great 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 an hour, one who could shine like silver and ring like crystal, made every scruple a poor prudence and every compunction a cowardice. “I wish to God I could see it as you see it!” he wailed after he had looked at her some seconds in silent admiration.

“I see simply this: that what we’re doing is at least worth trying, and that as none of those who have the power, the place, the means, will bethink themselves of 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——!” But 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’s no one in the world and has never been any one in the world like you.”

“Oh thank you!” said the Princess impatiently. And she turned from him as with a beat of great white wings that raised her straight out of the bad air of the personal. It took her up too high, it put an end to their talk; expressing an indifference to what it might interest him to think of 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 low over the hand he had taken to kiss; after which he left the room without looking at her.

XLVI

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

“What an incorrigible cad!” she exclaimed.

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

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

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

The Princess considered. “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 state of weakness and dependence.”

“Not when he knows I don’t use it for myself. What exasperates him is that it’s devoted to ends which 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 the same pleasant reasonableness—that of a man who has mastered not two or three but all the possible aspects of a question. “His letter satisfies me of that.” The Princess stared at this and asked what he was coming to—if he were leading up to the hint that she should go back and live with her husband. “I don’t know that I’d go so far as to advise it,” he replied; “when I’ve so much benefit from seeing you here on your present footing, that wouldn’t sound well. But I’ll just make bold to prophesy you’ll go before very long.”

“And on what does that extraordinary prediction rest?”

“On this plain fact—that you’ll 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 on no more supplies from your hands, since you yourself will receive no more.”

“He addresses you in those plain terms?”

“I can’t call them very plain, because the letter’s 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 indeed the most extraordinary of men!” the Princess broke out.

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

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

“The Prince isn’t obliged to look at that,” he answered amusedly.

His companion had a pause. “I didn’t know you were on his side.”

“Oh you know on what side I am!”

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

“I suppose, as I tell you, that he knows from Madame Grandoni. She has told him I’ve great influence with you.”

“Ah she was welcome to tell him that!” the Princess tossed off.

“His reasoning, therefore, has been that when I find you’ve nothing more to give to the cause I’ll 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 I do.”

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

“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,” she went on, “is that he stops my allowance.”

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

“Can’t I take legal advice too?” she demanded. “I can fight that to the last inch of ground. 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 her visitor, 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 went on: “Your whole connexion with a league working for as great ends as you like, but for ends and by courses necessarily averse to the eye of day and the observation of the police—this 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’s 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’d have, but not a particle of proof. Even if Madame Grandoni were to testify against me, which is inconceivable, she wouldn’t be able to produce a definite fact.”

“She’d 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?” she promptly asked. “If you mean that that’s a circumstance which would put me in the wrong as against the Prince, is there not on the other side this marked detail 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?” Muniment again amusedly inquired. “And does the bookbinder usually dine at the Princess’s table?”

“Why not—when 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,” he said. 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. In any case,” he noted, “I shouldn’t in the least care for your going to law.”

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

“Ah I know you’ve thought me little better than a smooth sneak 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’re deep and you’re provoking!” she said with sombre eyes.

“Don’t you remember,” he went on without heeding this rich comment, “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’ve incalculable ulterior views and are but consummately using me—but consummately using us all? Well, I don’t care!”

“No, no; I’m genuine,” said Muniment simply, yet in a tone which might have implied that their discussion was idle. And he made a transition doubtless too abrupt for perfect civility. “The best reason in the world for your not going to law with your husband is this: that when you haven’t a penny left you’ll 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 assures me you’ve drawn on 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 rather a small affair.”

“You’ve the most extraordinary tone,” she answered gravely. “What you appear to wish to express is simply this: that from the moment I’ve no more money to give you I’m of no more value than the washed-out tea-leaves in that pot.”

Muniment looked down a while at his substantial boot. His companion’s words had brought a flush to his cheek; he appeared to admit to himself and to her that at the point their conversation had reached there was a natural difficulty in his delivering himself. But presently he raised his head, showing a face still slightly embarrassed, but more for her than for himself. “I’ve no intention whatever of saying anything harsh or offensive to you, but since you challenge me perhaps it’s well that I should let you know how inevitably 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!” she rang out with a high mildness. “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’s nothing without the other. You’re not trusted—well, where it makes the difference.”

“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’re liable to be weary of us,” he went on; “and indeed I think you’re weary even now.”

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

“I didn’t say you were weary of me,” he said with a certain awkwardness. “But you can never live poor—you don’t begin to know the meaning of it.”

“Oh no, I’m not tired of you,” she declared as if she wished she were. “In a moment you’ll make me cry with rage, 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,” Muniment smiled. “You’ll go back to your husband!”

To this she made no answer, only looking at him with a high, gradual clearance of her heat. “I don’t see after all why they trust you more than they trust me,” she said at last.

“I am not sure they do. I’ve heard something this evening that 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 billet, but they didn’t send it through me.”

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

“A fellow, a worker, named Schinkel, a German—whom you don’t know, I think, but who was originally a witness, with me and another, of his undertaking—came to see me this evening. It was through him the call 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 told me nothing.”

“That was quite right of him, bless his pluck!” Muniment returned.

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

“I’m 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—with, however,” Paul went on, “considerable discretion in respect to seizing his chance. The thing’s made remarkably easy for him. All this I know from Schinkel, who himself knew nothing on Sunday, being merely the fellow to see he got the thing, and who saw him in fact yesterday morning.”

“Schinkel trusts you then?” the Princess remarked.

Muniment looked at her steadily. “Yes, but he won’t trust you. Hyacinth’s to receive a card of invitation to a certain big house,” he explained, “a card with the name left in blank, so that he may fill it out himself. It’s 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’ll like that,” she said musingly—“repaying hospitality with a pistol-shot.”

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

She made no return to this, but in a moment 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—or is it to be the principal guest?—is worth your powder.”

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

“No, I want to do the business myself first, so that it won’t be left for another. If Hyacinth will look in his place at a grand party shall 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 for a little to consider her suggestion as if it were practical and interesting; but presently he answered quietly enough: “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.”

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

“So that you shall not be able to throw it up at me later that I haven’t.”

She flung herself over, burying her face in the cushions, and remained so for some minutes in silence. He watched her a while without speaking, then at last brought out: “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—as for the best attenuation of any rudeness—stepped out of the room.

XLVII

That she had done with him, done with him for ever, was to remain the most vivid impression Hyacinth had carried away from Madeira Crescent the night before. He went home and threw himself on his narrow bed, where the consolation of sleep again descended on him. But he woke up with the earliest dawn, and the beginning of a new day was a quick revival of pain. He was overpast, he had become vague, he was extinct. Things Sholto had said came back to him, and the compassion of foreknowledge Madame Grandoni had shown him from the first. Of Paul Muniment he only thought to wonder if this great fellow-worker knew. An insurmountable desire to do more than justice to him for the very reason that there might be a temptation to do less forbade him to challenge his friend even in imagination. He vaguely asked himself if he would ever be superseded; but this possibility faded away in a stronger light—a 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 blurred. When full morning came at last and he got up it brought with it in the restlessness making it impossible he should 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 that his mind, made up as he believed, would fall to pieces again; but that sense in turn lost itself in a shudder which was already familiar—the horror of the public reappearance, in his person, of the imbrued hands of his mother. This loathing of the idea of a repetition had not been sharp, strangely enough, till he felt the great, hard hand on his shoulder; 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 growth of yearning observation. Yet now the idea of the personal stain made him horribly sick; it seemed by itself to make service impossible. It passed before him, or rather it stayed, like a blow dealt back at his mother, already so hideously disfigured; 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 delicacy, a mercy, 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 he so knew and so loved and which had had so many of his smiles and tears and confidences. The day was grey 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; 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 pebble. At last he made his way to Saint James’s Park and wandered and pointlessly sat. He watched the swans as from fascination and followed the thoroughfare that communicates with Pimlico. He stopped here presently and came back again; then, over the same pavement, he retraced his steps westward. He looked in the windows of shops—looked especially into the long, glazed expanse of that establishment in which at that hour of the day Millicent Henning discharged superior functions. Her image had descended on 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 he had ever liked in her came back to him now with a finer air, and there was a moment, during which he again made time on the bridge that spans the lake in the Park, seemingly absorbed in the pranks of a young ass in a boat, when he asked himself if 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 swear to her he had. Something of that sort had really passed between them on Sunday, only the business coming up since had brushed it away. Now the taste of the vague, primitive comfort his Sunday had given him revived, and he asked himself if he mightn’t have a second and even a deeper draught of it. After he had thought he couldn’t again wish for anything he found himself wishing 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 reflexion that spontaneous, uncultivated minds often have inventions, inspirations. Moreover, whether Millicent should have any or not, he might at least feel the firm roundness of her arms about him. He didn’t exactly know what good this 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 should be able to enjoy it would be that evening. He had thrown over everything, but she herself 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 a long time, undecided, embarrassed, half-ashamed, at last he went in as by the force of the one, the last, sore personal need left him. He would just make an appointment with her, and a glance of the eye and a single word would suffice.