by Henry James
‘Oh, he isn’t the same sort as the Princess. I’m sure he’s in a very different line!’ Hyacinth exclaimed.
‘Different, of course; she’s a handsome woman, I suppose, and he’s an ugly man; but I don’t think that either of them will save us or spoil us. Their curiosity is natural, but I have got other things to do than to show them over; therefore you can tell her serene highness that I’m much obliged.’
Hyacinth reflected a moment, and then he said, ‘You show Lady Aurora over; you seem to wish to give her the information she desires; and what’s the difference? If it’s right for her to take an interest, why isn’t it right for my Princess?’
‘If she’s already yours, what more can she want?’ Muniment asked. ‘All I know of Lady Aurora, and all I look at, is that she comes and sits with Rosy, and brings her tea, and waits upon her. If the Princess will do as much I’ll tell her she’s a woman of genius; but apart from that I shall never take a grain of interest in her interest in the masses – or in this particular mass!’ And Paul Muniment, with his discoloured thumb, designated his own substantial person. His tone was disappointing to Hyacinth, who was surprised at his not appearing to think the episode at the theatre more remarkable and romantic. Muniment seemed to regard his explanation of such a proceeding as all-sufficient; but when, a moment later, he made use, in referring to the mysterious lady, of the expression that she was ‘quaking’, Hyacinth broke out – ‘Never in the world; she’s not afraid of anything!’
‘Ah, my lad, not afraid of you, evidently!’
Hyacinth paid no attention to this coarse sally, but asked in a moment, with a candour that was proof against further ridicule, ‘Do you think she can do me a hurt of any kind, if we follow up our acquaintance?’
‘Yes, very likely, but you must hit her back! That’s your line, you know: to go in for what’s going, to live your life, to gratify the women. I’m an ugly, grimy brute, I’ve got to watch the fires and mind the shop; but you are one of those taking little beggars who ought to run about and see the world; you ought to be an ornament to society, like a young man in an illustrated story-book. Only,’ Muniment added in a moment, ‘you know, if she should hurt you very much, then I would go and see her!’
Hyacinth had been intending for some time to take Pinnie to call on the prostrate damsel in Audley Court, to whom he had promised that his benefactress (he had told Rose Muniment that she was ‘a kind of aunt’) should pay this civility; but the affair had been delayed by wan hesitations on the part of the dressmaker, for the poor woman had hard work to imagine, to-day, that there were poeple in London so forlorn that her countenance could be of value to them. Her social curiosities had become very nearly extinct, and she knew that she no longer made the same figure in public as when her command of the fashions enabled her to illustrate them in her own little person, by the aid of a good deal of whalebone. Moreover she felt that Hyacinth had strange friends and still stranger opinions; she suspected that he took an unnatural interest in politics and was somehow not on the right side, little as she knew about parties or causes; and she had a vague conviction that this kind of perversity only multiplied the troubles of the poor, who, according to theories which Pinnie had never reasoned out, but which, in her bosom, were as deep as religion, ought always to be of the same way of thinking as the rich. They were unlike them enough in their poverty, without trying to add other differences. When at last she accompanied Hyacinth to Camberwell, one Saturday evening at midsummer, it was in a sighing, sceptical, second-best manner; but if he had told her he wished it she would have gone with him to a soirée at a scavenger’s. There was no more danger of Rose Muniment’s being out than of one of the bronze couchant lions in Trafalgar Square having walked down Whitehall; but he had let her know in advance, and he perceived, as he opened her door in obedience to a quick, shrill summons, that she had had the happy thought of inviting Lady Aurora to help her to entertain Miss Pynsent. Such, at least, was the inference he drew from seeing her ladyship’s memorable figure rise before him for the first time since his own visit. He presented his companion to their reclining hostess, and Rosy immediately repeated her name to the representative of Belgrave Square. Pinnie curtsied down to the ground, as Lady Aurora put out her hand to her, and slipped noiselessly into a chair beside the bed. Lady Aurora laughed and fidgeted, in a friendly, cheerful, yet at the same time rather pointless manner, and Hyacinth gathered that she had no recollection of having met him before. His attention, however, was mainly given to Pinnie: he watched her jealously, to see whether, on this important occasion, she would not put forth a certain stiff, quaint, polished politeness, of which she possessed the secret and which made her resemble a pair of old-fashioned sugar-tongs. Not only for Pinnie’s sake, but for his own as well, he wished her to pass for a superior little woman, and he hoped she wouldn’t lose her head if Rosy should begin to talk about Inglefield. She was, evidently, much impressed by Rosy, and kept repeating, ‘Dear, dear!’ under her breath, as the small, strange person in the bed rapidly explained to her that there was nothing in the world she would have liked so much as to follow her delightful profession, but that she couldn’t sit up to it, and had never had a needle in her hand but once, when at the end of three minutes it had dropped into the sheets and got into the mattress, so that she had always been afraid it would work out again and stick into her; but it hadn’t done so yet, and perhaps it never would – she lay so quiet, she didn’t push it about much. ‘Perhaps you would think it’s me that trimmed the little handkerchief I wear round my neck,’ Miss Muniment said; ‘perhaps you would think I couldn’t do less, lying here all day long, with complete command of my time. Not a stitch of it. I’m the finest lady in London; I never lift my finger for myself. It’s a present from her ladyship – it’s her ladyship’s own beautiful needlework. What do you think of that? Have you ever met any one so favoured before? And the work – just look at the work, and tell me what you think of that!’ The girl pulled off the bit of muslin from her neck and thrust it at Pinnie, who looked at it confusedly and exclaimed, ‘Dear, dear, dear!’ partly in sympathy, partly as if, in spite of the consideration she owed every one, those were very strange proceedings.
‘It’s very badly done; surely you see that,’ said Lady Aurora. ‘It was only a joke.’
‘Oh yes, everything’s a joke!’ cried the irrepressible invalid – ‘everything except my state of health; that’s admitted to be serious. When her ladyship sends me five shillings’ worth of coals it’s only a joke; and when she brings me a bottle of the finest port, that’s another; and when she climbs up seventy-seven stairs (there are seventy-seven, I know perfectly, though I never go up or down), at the height of the London season,122 to spend the evening with me, that’s the best of all. I know all about the London season, though I never go out, and I appreciate what her ladyship gives up. She is very jocular indeed, but, fortunately, I know how to take it. You can see that it wouldn’t do for me to be touchy, can’t you, Miss Pynsent?’
‘Dear, dear, I should be so glad to make you anything myself; it would be better – it would be better –’ Pinnie murmured, hesitating.
‘It would be better than my poor work. I don’t know how to do that sort of thing, in the least,’ said Lady Aurora.
‘I’m sure I didn’t mean that, my lady – I only meant it would be more convenient. Anything in the world she might fancy,’ the dressmaker went on, as if it were a question of the invalid’s appetite.
‘Ah, you see I don’t wear things – only a flannel jacket, to be a bit tidy,’ Miss Muniment rejoined. ‘I go in only for smart counterpanes, as you can see for yourself’; and she spread her white hands complacently over her coverlet of brilliant patch-work. ‘Now doesn’t that look to you, Miss Pynsent, as if it might be one of her ladyship’s jokes?’
‘Oh, my good friend, how can you? I never went so far as that!’ Lady Aurora interposed, with visible anxiety.
‘Well, you’ve given me almost everything; I sometimes forg
et. This only cost me sixpence; so it comes to the same thing as if it had been a present. Yes, only sixpence, in a raffle in a bazaar at Hackney, for the benefit of the Wesleyan Chapel, three years ago. A young man who works with my brother, and lives in that part, offered him a couple of tickets; and he took one, and I took one. When I say “I”, of course I mean that he took the two; for how should I find (by which I mean, of course, how should he find) a sixpence in that little cup on the chimney-piece unless he had put it there first? Of course my ticket took a prize, and of course, as my bed is my dwelling-place, the prize was a beautiful counterpane, of every colour of the rainbow. Oh, there never was such luck as mine!’ Rosy exclaimed, flashing her gay, strange eyes at Hyacinth, as if on purpose to irritate him with her contradictious optimism.
‘It’s very lovely; but if you would like another, for a change, I’ve got a great many pieces,’ Pinnie remarked, with a generosity which made the young man feel that she was acquitting herself finely.
Rose Muniment laid her little hand on the dressmaker’s arm, and responded, quickly, ‘No, not a change, not a change. How can there be a change when there’s already everything? There’s everything here – every colour that was ever seen, or composed, or dreamed of, since the world began.’ And with her other hand she stroked, affectionately, her variegated quilt. ‘You have a great many pieces, but you haven’t as many as there are here; and the more you should patch them together the more the whole thing would resemble this dear, dazzling old friend. I have another idea, very, very charming, and perhaps her ladyship can guess what it is.’ Rosy kept her fingers on Pinnie’s arm, and, smiling, turned her brilliant eyes from one of her female companions to the other, as if she wished to associate them as much as possible in their interest in her. ‘In connection with what we were talking about a few minutes ago – couldn’t your ladyship just go a little further, in the same line?’ Then, as Lady Aurora looked troubled and embarrassed, blushing at being called upon to answer a conundrum, as it were, so publicly, her infirm friend came to her assistance. ‘It will surprise you at first, but it won’t when I have explained it: my idea is just simply a pink dressing-gown!’
‘A pink dressing-gown!’ Lady Aurora repeated.
‘With a neat black trimming! Don’t you see the connection with what we were talking of before our good visitors came in?’
‘That would be very pretty,’ said Pinnie. ‘I have made them like that, in my time. Or blue, trimmed with white.’
‘No, pink and black, pink and black – to suit my complexion. Perhaps you didn’t know I have a complexion; but there are very few things I haven’t got! Anything at all I should fancy, you were so good as to say. Well now, I fancy that! Your ladyship does see the connection by this time, doesn’t she?’
Lady Aurora looked distressed, as if she felt that she certainly ought to see it but was not sure that even yet it didn’t escape her, and as if, at the same time, she were struck with the fact that this sudden evocation might result in a strain on the little dressmaker’s resources. ‘A pink dressing-gown would certainly be very becoming, and Miss Pynsent would be very kind,’ she said; while Hyacinth made the mental comment that it was a largeish order, as Pinnie would have, obviously, to furnish the materials as well as the labour. The amiable coolness with which the invalid laid her under contribution was, however, to his sense, quite in character, and he reflected that, after all, when you were stretched on your back like that you had the right to reach out your hands (it wasn’t far you could reach at best), and seize what you could get. Pinnie declared that she knew just the article Miss Muniment wanted, and that she would undertake to make a sweet thing of it; and Rosy went on to say that she must explain of what use such an article would be, but for this purpose there must be another guess. She would give it to Miss Pynsent and Hyacinth – as many times as they liked: What had she and Lady Aurora been talking about before they came in? She clasped her hands, and her eyes glittered with her eagerness, while she continued to turn them from Lady Aurora to the dressmaker. What would they imagine? What would they think natural, delightful, magnificent – if one could only end, at last, by making out the right place to put it? Hyacinth suggested, successively, a cage of Java sparrows, a music-box and a shower-bath – or perhaps even a full-length portrait of her ladyship; and Pinnie looked at him askance, in a frightened way, as if perchance he were joking too broadly. Rosy at last relieved their suspense and announced, ‘A sofa, just a sofa, now! What do you say to that? Do you suppose that’s an idea that could have come from any one but her ladyship? She must have all the credit of it; she came out with it in the course of conversation. I believe we were talking of the peculiar feeling that comes just under the shoulder-blades if one never has a change. She mentioned it as she might have mentioned a plaster, or another spoonful of that American stuff. We are thinking it over, and one of these days, if we give plenty of time to the question, we shall find the place, the very nicest and snuggest of all, and no other. I hope you see the connection with the pink dressing-gown,’ she remarked to Pinnie, ‘and I hope you see the importance of the question, Shall anything go? I should like you to look round a bit, and tell me what you would answer if I were to say to you, Can anything go?’
15
‘I’m sure there’s nothing I should like to part with,’ Pinnie returned; and while she surveyed the scene Lady Aurora, with delicacy, to lighten Amanda’s responsibility, got up and turned to the window, which was open to the summer-evening and admitted still the last rays of the long day. Hyacinth, after a moment, placed himself beside her, looking out with her at the dusky multitude of chimney-pots and the small black houses, roofed with grimy tiles. The thick, warm air of a London July floated beneath them, suffused with the everlasting uproar of the town, which appeared to have sunk into quietness but again became a mighty voice as soon as one listened for it; here and there, in poor windows, glimmered a turbid light, and high above, in a clearer, smokeless zone, a sky still fair and luminous, a faint silver star looked down. The sky was the same that, far away in the country, bent over golden fields and purple hills and gardens where nightingales sang; but from this point of view everything that covered the earth was ugly and sordid, and seemed to express, or to represent, the weariness of toil. In an instant, to Hyacinth’s surprise, Lady Aurora said to him, ‘You never came, after all, to get the books.’
‘Those you kindly offered to lend me? I didn’t know it was an understanding.’
Lady Aurora gave an uneasy laugh. ‘I have picked them out; they are quite ready.’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ the young man rejoined. ‘I will come and get them some day, with pleasure.’ He was not very sure that he would; but it was the least he could say.
‘She’ll tell you where I live, you know,’ Lady Aurora went on, with a movement of her head in the direction of the bed, as if she were too shy to mention it herself.
‘Oh, I have no doubt she knows the way – she could tell me every street and every turn!’ Hyacinth exclaimed.
‘She has made me describe to her, very often, how I come and go. I think that few people know more about London than she. She never forgets anything.’
‘She’s a wonderful little witch – she terrifies me!’ said Hyacinth.
Lady Aurora turned her modest eyes upon him. ‘Oh, she’s so good, she’s so patient!’
‘Yes, and so wise, and so self-possessed.’
‘Oh, she’s immensely clever,’ said her ladyship. ‘Which do you think the cleverest?’
‘The cleverest?’
‘I mean of the girl and her brother.’
‘Oh, I think he, some day, will be prime minister of England.’
‘Do you really? I’m so glad!’ cried Lady Aurora, with a flush of colour in her face. ‘I’m so glad you think that will be possible. You know it ought to be, if things were right.’
Hyacinth had not professed this high faith for the purpose of playing upon her ladyship’s feelings, but when he perceive
d her eager responsiveness he felt almost as if he had been making sport of her. Still, he said no more than he believed when he remarked, in a moment, that he had the greatest expectations of Paul Muniment’s future: he was sure that the world would hear of him, that England would feel him, that the public, some day, would acclaim him. It was impossible to associate with him without feeling that he was very strong, that he must play an important part.