The Princess Casamassima (Classics) by Henry James
‘I shouldn’t think you would find the least difficulty in that,’ Hyacinth replied.
‘Oh, if one wants anything very much, it’s sure to be difficult. Every one isn’t as obliging as you.’
Hyacinth could think, immediately, of no proper rejoinder to this; but the old lady saved him the trouble by declaring, with a foreign accent, ‘I think you were most extraordinarily good-natured. I had no idea you would come – to two strange women.’
‘Yes, we are strange women,’ said the Princess, musingly.
‘It’s not true that she finds things difficult; she makes every one do everything,’ her companion went on.
The Princess glanced at her; then remarked to Hyacinth, ‘Her name is Madame Grandoni.’ Her tone was not familiar, but there was a friendly softness in it, as if he had really taken so much trouble for them that it was only just he should be entertained a little at their expense. It seemed to imply, also, that Madame Grandoni’s fitness for supplying such entertainment was obvious.
‘But I am not Italian – ah no!’ the old lady cried. ‘In spite of my name, I am an honest, ugly, unfortunate German. But it doesn’t matter. She, also, with such a name, isn’t Italian, either. It’s an accident; the world is full of accidents. But she isn’t German, poor lady, any more.’ Madame Grandoni appeared to have entered into the Princess’s view, and Hyacinth thought her exceedingly amusing. In a moment she added, ‘That was a very charming person you were with.’
‘Yes, she is very charming,’ Hyacinth replied, not sorry to have a chance to say it.
The Princess made no remark on this subject, and Hyacinth perceived not only that from her position in the box she could have had no glimpse of Millicent, but that she would never take up such an allusion as that. It was as if she had not heard it that she asked, ‘Do you consider the play very interesting?’
Hyacinth hesitated a moment, and then told the simple truth. ‘I must confess that I have lost the whole of this last act.’
‘Ah, poor bothered young man!’ cried Madame Grandoni. ‘You see – you see!’
‘What do I see?’ the Princess inquired. ‘If you are annoyed at being here now, you will like us later; probably, at least. We take a great interest in the things you care for. We take a great interest in the people,’ the Princess went on.
‘Oh, allow me, allow me, and speak only for yourself!’ the elder lady interposed. ‘I take no interest in the people; I don’t understand them, and I know nothing about them. An honourable nature, of any class, I always respect it; but I will not pretend to a passion for the ignorant masses, because I have it not. Moreover, that doesn’t touch the gentleman.’
The Princess Casamassima had, evidently, a faculty of completely ignoring things of which she wished to take no account; it was not in the least the air of contempt, but a kind of thoughtful, tranquil absence, after which she came back to the point where she wished to be. She made no protest against her companion’s speech, but said to Hyacinth, as if she were only vaguely conscious that the old lady had been committing herself in some absurd way, ‘She lives with me; she is everything to me; she is the best woman in the world.’
‘Yes, fortunately, with many superficial defects, I am very good,’ Madame Grandoni remarked.
Hyacinth, by this time, was less embarrassed than when he presented himself to the Princess Casamassima, but he was not less mystified; he wondered afresh whether he were not being practised upon for some inconceivable end; so strange did it seem to him that two such fine ladies should, of their own movement, take the trouble to explain each other to a miserable little bookbinder. This idea made him flush; it was as if it had come over him that he had fallen into a trap. He was conscious that he looked frightened, and he was conscious the moment afterwards that the Princess noticed it. This was, apparently, what made her say, ‘If you have lost so much of the play I ought to tell you what has happened.’
‘Do you think he would follow that any more?’ Madame Grandoni exclaimed.
‘If you would tell me – if you would tell me –’ And then Hyacinth stopped. He had been going to say, ‘If you would tell me what all this means and what you want of me, it would be more to the point!’ but the words died on his lips, and he sat staring, for the woman at his right hand was simply too beautiful. She was too beautiful to question, to judge by common logic; and how could he know, moreover, what was natural to a person in that exaltation of grace and splendour? Perhaps it was her habit to send out every evening for some naïf stranger, to amuse her; perhaps that was the way the foreign aristocracy lived. There was no sharpness in her face, at the present moment at least; there was nothing but luminous sweetness, yet she looked as if she knew what was going on in his mind. She made no eager attempt to reassure him, but there was a world of delicate consideration in the tone in which she said, ‘Do you know, I am afraid I have already forgotten what they have been doing in the play? It’s terribly complicated; some one or other was hurled over a precipice.’
‘Ah, you’re a brilliant pair,’ Madame Grandoni remarked, with a laugh of long experience. ‘I could describe everything. The person who was hurled over the precipice was the virtuous hero, and you will see, in the next act, that he was only slightly bruised.’
‘Don’t describe anything; I have so much to ask.’ Hyacinth had looked away, in tacit deprecation, at hearing himself ‘paired’ with the Princess, and he felt that she was watching him. ‘What do you think of Captain Sholto?’ she went on, suddenly, to his surprise, if anything, in his position, could excite that sentiment more than anything else; and as he hesitated, not knowing what to say, she added, ‘Isn’t he a very curious type?’
‘I know him very little,’ Hyacinth replied; and he had no sooner uttered the words than it struck him they were far from brilliant – they were poor and flat, and very little calculated to satisfy the Princess. Indeed, he reflected that he had said nothing at all that could place him in a favourable light; so he continued, at a venture: ‘I mean I have never seen him at home.’ That sounded still more silly.
‘At home? Oh, he is never at home; he is all over the world. To-night he was as likely to have been in Paraguay, for instance, as here. He is what they call a cosmopolite. I don’t know whether you know that species; very modern, more and more frequent, and exceedingly tiresome. I prefer the Chinese! He had told me he had had a great deal of interesting talk with you. That was what made me say to him, “Oh, do ask him to come in and see me. A little interesting talk, that would be a change!” ’
‘She is very complimentary to me!’ said Madame Grandoni.
‘Ah, my dear, you and I, you know, we never talk: we understand each other without that!’ Then the Princess pursued, addressing herself to Hyacinth, ‘Do you never admit women?’
‘Admit women?’
‘Into those séances – what do you call them? – those little meetings that Captain Sholto described to me. I should like so much to be present. Why not?’
‘I haven’t seen any ladies,’ Hyacinth said. ‘I don’t know whether it’s a rule, but I have seen nothing but men’; and he added, smiling, though he thought the dereliction rather serious, and couldn’t understand the part Captain Sholto was playing, nor, considering the grand company he kept, how he had originally secured admittance into the subversive little circle in Bloomsbury, ‘You know I’m not sure Captain Sholto ought to go about reporting our proceedings.’
‘I see. Perhaps you think he’s a spy, or something of that sort.’
‘No,’ said Hyacinth, after a moment. ‘I think a spy would be more careful – would disguise himself more. Besides, after all, he has heard very little.’ And Hyacinth smiled again.
‘You mean he hasn’t really been behind the scenes?’ the Princess asked, bending forward a little, and now covering the young man steadily with her deep, soft eyes, as if by this time he must have got used to her and wouldn’t flinch from such attention. ‘Of course he hasn’t, and he never will be; he knows that, and that
‘I am afraid that’s rather easy,’ said Hyacinth, with perfect candour, as it came over him that he had chattered, with a vengeance, in Bloomsbury, and had thought it natural enough then that his sociable fellow-visitor should offer him cigars and attach importance to the views of a clever and original young artisan.
‘I am not sure that I find it so! However, I ought to tell you that you needn’t have the least fear of Captain Sholto. He’s a perfectly honest man, so far as he goes; and even if you had trusted him much more than you appear to have done, he would be incapable of betraying you. However, don’t trust him: not because he’s not safe, but because – No matter, you will see for yourself. He has gone into that sort of thing simply to please me. I should tell you, merely to make you understand, that he would do anything for that. That’s his own affair. I wanted to know something, to learn something, to ascertain what really is going on; and for a woman everything of that sort is so difficult, especially for a woman in my position, who is known, and to whom every sort of bad faith is sure to be imputed. So Sholto said he would look into the subject for me; poor man, he has had to look into so many subjects! What I particularly wanted was that he should make friends with some of the leading spirits, really characteristic types.’ The Princess’s voice was low and rather deep, and her tone very quick; her manner of speaking was altogether new to her listener, for whom the pronunciation of her words and the very punctuation of her sentences were a kind of revelation of ‘society’.
‘Surely Captain Sholto doesn’t suppose that I am a leading spirit!’ Hyacinth exclaimed, with the determination not to be laughed at any more than he could help.
The Princess hesitated a moment; then she said, ‘He told me you were very original.’
‘He doesn’t know, and – if you will allow me to say so – I don’t think you know. How should you? I am one of many thousands of young men of my class – you know, I suppose, what that is – in whose brains certain ideas are fermenting. There is nothing original about me at all. I am very young and very ignorant; it’s only a few months since I began to talk of the possibility of a social revolution with men who have considered the whole ground much more than I have done. I’m a mere particle in the immensity of the people. All I pretend to is my good faith, and a great desire that justice shall be done.’
The Princess listened to him intently, and her attitude made him feel how little he, in comparison, expressed himself like a person who had the habit of conversation; he seemed to himself to stammer and emit common sounds. For a moment she said nothing, only looking at him with her pure smile. ‘I do draw you out!’ she exclaimed, at last. ‘You are much more interesting to me than if you were an exception.’ At these last words Hyacinth flinched a hair’s breadth; the movement was shown by his dropping his eyes. We know to what extent he really regarded himself as of the stuff of the common herd. The Princess doubtless guessed it as well, for she quickly added, ‘At the same time, I can see that you are remarkable enough.’
‘What do you think I am remarkable for?’
‘Well, you have general ideas.’
‘Every one has them to-day. They have them in Bloomsbury to a terrible degree. I have a friend (who understands the matter much better than I) who has no patience with them: he declares they are our danger and our bane. A few very special ideas – if they are the right ones – are what we want.’
‘Who is your friend?’ the Princess asked, abruptly.
‘Ah, Christina, Christina,’ Madame Grandoni murmured from the other side of the box.
Christina took no notice of her, and Hyacinth, not understanding the warning, and only remembering how personal women always are, replied, ‘A young man who lives in Camberwell, an assistant at a wholesale chemist’s.’
If he had expected that this description of his friend was a bigger dose than his hostess would be able to digest, he was greatly mistaken. She seemed to look tenderly at the picture suggested by his words, and she immediately inquired whether the young man were also clever, and whether she might not hope to know him. Hadn’t Captain Sholto seen him; and if so, why hadn’t he spoken of him, too? When Hyacinth had replied that Captain Sholto had probably seen him, but that he believed he had had no particular conversation with him, the Princess inquired, with startling frankness, whether her visitor wouldn’t bring his friend, some day, to see her.
Hyacinth glanced at Madame Grandoni, but that worthy woman was engaged in a survey of the house, through an old-fashioned eye-glass with a long gilt handle. He had perceived, long before this, that the Princess Casamassima had no desire for vain phrases, and he had the good taste to feel that, from himself to such a personage, compliments, even if he had wished to pay them, would have had no suitability. ‘I don’t know whether he would be willing to come. He’s the sort of man that, in such a case, you can’t answer for.’
‘That makes me want to know him all the more. But you’ll come yourself, at all events, eh?’
Poor Hyacinth murmured something about the unexpected honour; for, after all, he had a French heredity, and it was not so easy for him to make unadorned speeches. But Madame Grandoni, laying down her eye-glass, almost took the words out of his mouth, with the cheerful exhortation, ‘Go and see her – go and see her once or twice. She will treat you like an angel.’
‘You must think me very peculiar,’ the Princess remarked, sadly.
‘I don’t know what I think. It will take a good while.’
‘I wish I could make you trust me – inspire you with confidence,’ she went on. ‘I don’t mean only you, personally, but others who think as you do. You would find I would go with you – pretty far. I was answering just now for Captain Sholto; but who in the world is to answer for me?’ And her sadness merged itself in a smile which appeared to Hyacinth extraordinarily magnanimous and touching.
‘Not I, my dear, I promise you!’ her ancient companion ejaculated, with a laugh which made the people in the stalls look up at the box.
Her mirth was contagious; it gave Hyacinth the audacity to say to her, ‘I would trust you, if you did!’ though he felt, the next minute, that this was even a more familiar speech than if he had said he wouldn’t trust her.
‘It comes, then, to the same thing,’ the Princess went on. ‘She would not show herself with me in public if I were not respectable. If you knew more about me you would understand what has led me to turn my attention to the great social question. It is a long story, and the details wouldn’t interest you; but perhaps some day, if we have more talk, you will put yourself a little in my place. I am very serious, you know; I am not amusing myself with peeping and running away. I am convinced that we are living in a fool’s paradise, that the ground is heaving under our feet.’