The Princess Casamassima: Book Fifth

XL1V.

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

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

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

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

“ Is it possible ? ” exclaimed Hyacinth, disappointedly.

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright, 1886, by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Go.

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

“ Ah, that other one — quel’ grande — yes. But you are better.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, indeed, how should you ? ”

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

“ Then why did you come at last? ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ To snatch me away ? ”

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

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

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

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

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

“ May I inquire how you know it ? ”

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

“ And how does he know it ? ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XLV.

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

“ What an incorrigible cad ! ” the Princess exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ And on what does that extraordinary prediction rest ? ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ Oh, you know on what side I am ! ”

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

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

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

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

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

“ Apparently he thinks that I do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ What has that to do with it ? ” the Princess demanded. “ If you mean that that is a circumstance which would put me in the wrong as against the Prince, is there not. on the other side, this circumstance, that while our young friend was staying with me Madame Grandoni herself, a person of the highest and most conspicuous respectability, never saw fit to withdraw from me her countenance and protection ? Besides, why should n’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 1 not your chaplain ? ” said Muniment, with a laugh. “ And does the bookbinder usually dine at the princess’s table ? ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ I did n’t say you were weary of me” said Muniment, blushing again.

You can never live poor — you don’t begin to know the meaning of it.”

“ Oh, no, I am not tired of you,” the Princess returned, in a strange tone.

“ In a moment you will make me cry with passion, and no man has done that for years. I was very poor when I was a girl,” she added, in a different manner. “You yourself recognized it just now, in speaking of the insignificant character of my fortune.”

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

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

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

“ And may one know what it is ? ”

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

“ A communication ? ”

“ To Hyacinth Robinson.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ And when will it be over ? ”

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

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

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

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

“ If he does n’t like it, he need n’t do if.”

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

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

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

Muniment appeared to consider her suggestion a moment, as if it were practical and interesting ; but presently he answered, smiling, “ 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 bad institution.”

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

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

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

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

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

XLVI.

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

That evening, about nine o’clock, the Princess Casamassima drove in a hansom to Hyacinth’s lodgings in Westminster. The door of the house was a little open, and a man stood on the step, smoking his big pipe, and looking up and down. The Princess, seeing him while she was still at some distance, had hoped he was Hyacinth, but he proved to be a very different figure indeed from her devoted young friend. He had not a forbidding countenance, but he looked very hard at her as she descended from her hansom and approached the door. She was used to being looked at hard, and she did n’t mind this ; she supposed he was one of the lodgers in the house. He edged away to let her pass, and watched her while she endeavored to impart an elasticity of movement to the limp bell-pull beside the door. It gave no audible response, so that she said to him, “ I wish to ask for Mr. Hyacinth Robinson. Perhaps you can tell me — a ” —

“ Yes, I too,” the man replied, smiling. “ I have come also for that.”

The Princess hesitated a moment. “ I think you must be Mr. Schinkel. I have heard of you.”

“ You know me by my bad English,” her interlocutor remarked, with a sort of benevolent coquetry.

“ Your English is remarkably good — I wish I spoke German as well. Only just a hint of an accent, and, evidently, an excellent vocabulary.”

“ I think I have heard, also, of you,” said Schinkel, appreciatively.

“Yes, we know each other, in our circle, don’t we? We are all brothers and sisters.” The Princess was anxious, she was in a fever ; but she could still relish the romance of standing in a species of back-slum and fraternizing with a personage looking like a very taine horse whose collar galled him. “ Then he’s at home, I hope ; he is coming down to you?” she went on.

“ That’s what I don’t know. I am waiting.”

“ Have they gone to call him ? ”

Schinkel looked at her, while he puffed his pipe. “ I have called him myself, but he will not say.”

“ How do you mean — he will not say ? ”

“ His door is locked. I have knocked many times.”

“ I suppose he is out,” said the Princess.

“ Yes, he may be out,” Schinkel remarked, considerately.

He and the Princess stood a moment looking at each other, and then she asked, “ Have you any doubt of it?”

“ Oh. es kann sein. Only the woman of the house told me five minutes ago that he came in.”

“Well, then, he probably went out again,” the Princess remarked.

“Yes, but she did n’t hear him.”

The Princess reflected, and was conscious that she was flushing. .She knew what Schinkel knew about their young friend’s actual situation, and she wished to be very clear with him, and to induce him to be the same with her. She was rather baffled, however, by the sense that he was cautious, and justly cautious. He was polite and inscrutable, quite like some of the high personages — ambassadors and cabinet ministers — whom she used to meet in the great world. “ Has the woman been here, in the house, ever since ? ” she asked in a moment.

“ No, she went out for ten minutes, half an hour ago.”

“ Surely, then, he may have gone out again in that time ! ” the Princess exclaimed.

“ That is what I have thought. It is also why I have waited here,” said Schinkel. “ I have nothing to do,” he added, serenely.

“ Neither have I,” the Princess rejoined. “ We can wait together.”

“It’s a pity you haven’t got some room,” the German suggested.

“ No, indeed ; this will do very well. We shall see him the sooner when he comes back.”

“ Yes, but perhaps it won’t be for long.”

“ I don’t care for that ; I will wait. I hope you don’t object to my company,” she went on. smiling.

“ It is good, it is good,” Schinkel responded. through his smoke.

“ Then I will send away my cab.” Site returned to the vehicle and paid the driver, who said, “ Thank you, my lady,” with expression, and drove off.

“ You gave him too much,” said Schinkel, when she came back.

“ Oh, he looked like a nice man. I am sure he deserved it.”

“ It is very expensive.” Schinkel went on, sociably.

“ Yes, and I have no money, but it’s done. Was there no one else in the house while the woman was away ? ” the Princess asked.

“ No, the people are out; she only has single men. I asked her that. She has a daughter, but the daughter has gone to see her cousin. The mother went only a hundred yards, round the corner there, to buy a pennyworth of milk. She locked this door, and put the key in her pocket; she stayed at the grocer’s, where she got the milk, to have a little conversation with a friend that she met there. You know ladies always stop like that — nicht wahr ? It was half an hour later that I came. She told me that he was at home, and I went up to his room. I got no sound, as I have told you. I came down and spoke to her again, and she told me what I say.”

“ Then you determined to wait, as I have done,” said the Princess.

“ Oh, yes, I want to see him.”

“ So do I, very much.” The Princess said nothing more, for a minute ; then she added, “ I think we want to see him for the same reason.”

“ Das kann sein — das kann sein.”

The two continued to stand there in the brown evening, and they had some further conversation, of a desultory and irrelevant kind. At the end of ten minutes the Princess broke out, in a low tone, laying her hand on her companion’s arm, “ Mr. Schinkel, this won’t do. I ’m intolerably nervous.”

“ Yes, that is the nature of ladies,” the German replied, imperturbably.

“ I wish to go up to his room,” the Princess pursued. “ You will be so good as to show me where it is.”

“ It will do you no good, if he is not there.”

The Princess hesitated. “ I am not sure he is not there.”

“ Well, if he won’t speak, it shows he likes better not to have visitors.”

“ Oh, he may like to have me better than he does you! ” the Princess exclaimed.

“ Das kann sein — das kann sein.” But Schinkel made no movement to introduce her into the house.

“ There is nothing to-night — you know what I mean,” the Princess remarked, after looking at him a moment.

“Nothing to-night ? ”

“ At the duke’s. The first party is on Thursday, the other is next Tuesday.”

“ Schön. I never go to parties,” said Schinkel.

“ Neither do I.”

“ Except that this is a kind of party — you and me,” suggested Schinkel.

“ Yes, and the woman of the house does n’t approve of it.” The footstep of the personage in question had been audible in the passage, through the open door, which was presently closed, from within, with a little reprehensive bang. Something in this incident appeared to quicken exceedingly the Princess’s impatience and emotion; the menace of exclusion from the house made her wish more even than before to enter it. “ For God’s sake, Mr. Schinkel, take me up there. If you won’t, I will go alone,” she pleaded.

Her face was white now, and it need hardly be added that it was beautiful. The German considered it a moment in silence ; then turned and reopened the door and went in, followed closely by his companion.

There was a light in the lower region, which tempered the gloom of the staircase — as high, that is, as the first door ; the ascent the rest of the way was so dusky that the pair went slowly, and Schinkel led the Princess by the hand. She gave a suppressed exclamation as she rounded a sharp turn in the second flight. “ Good God, is that his door, with the light ? ”

“ Yes, you can see under it. There was a light before,” said Schinkel, without confusion.

“ And why, in Heaven’s name, did n’t you tell me ? ”

Because I thought it would worry you.”

“ And does n’t it worry you ? ”

“ A little, but I don’t mind,” said Schinkel. “ Very likely he may have left it.”

“ He does n’t leave candles ! ” the Princess returned, with vehemence. She hurried up the few remaining steps to the door, and paused there with her ear against it. Her hand grasped the handle, and she turned it, but the door resisted. Then she murmured, panting]y, to her companion, “ We must go in — we must go in ! ”

“ What will you do, when it ’s locked ? ” he inquired.

“ You must break it down.”

“ It is very expensive,” said Schinkel.

“Don’t be abject!” cried the Princess. “ In a house like this the fastenings are certainly flimsy; they will easily yield.”

“ And if he is not there — if he comes back and finds what we have done ? ”

She looked at him a moment through the darkness, which was mitigated only by the small glow proceeding from the chink. “ He is there ! Before God, he is there ! ”

“ Schön, schön,” said her companion, as if he felt the contagion of her own dread, but was deliberating and meant to remain calm. The Princess assured him that one or two vigorous thrusts with his shoulder would burst the bolt — it was sure to be some wretched little bolt — and she made way for him to come close. He did so. he even leaned against the door, but he gave no violent push, and the Princess waited, with her hand against her heart. Schinkel, apparently, was still deliberating. At last he gave a low sigh. “ I know they found-him the pistol ; it is only for that,” he murmured ; and the next moment Christina saw him sway sharply to and fro, in the gloom. She heard a crack and saw that the lock had yielded. The door went back : they were in the light; they were in a small room, which looked full of things. The light was that of a single candle on the mantel ; it was so poor that for a moment she made out nothing definite. Before that moment was over, however, her eyes had attached themselves to the small bed. There was something on it — something black, something outstretched. Schinkel held her back, but only for an instant; she saw everything, and with the very act she flung herself beside the bed, upon her knees. Hyacinth lay there as if he were asleep, but there was a horrible thing, a mess of blood, on the bed, in his side, in his heart. His arm hung limp beside him, downwards, off the narrow couch ; his face was white and his eyes were closed. So much Schinkel saw, but only for an instant; a convulsive movement of the Princess, bending over the body, while a strange low cry came from her lips, covered it up. He looked about him for the weapon, for the pistol, but the Princess, in her rush at the bed, had pushed it out of sight. “ It’s a pity they found it — if he had n’t had it here! ” he exclaimed to her. He had determined to remain calm, so that, on turning round at the quick advent of the little woman of the house, who had hurried up, white, scared, staring, at the sound of the crashing door, he was able to say, very quietly and gravely, “ Mr. Robinson has shot himself through the heart, He must have done it while you were getting the milk.” The Princess got up, hearing another person in the room, and then Schinkel perceived the small revolver, lying just under the bed. He picked it up, and carefully placed it on the mantel-shelf, keeping, equally carefully, to himself the reflection that it would certainly have served much better for the duke.

Henry James.