Several months after Hyacinth had made the acquaintance of Paul Muniment, Millicent Henning remarked to him that it was high time he should take her to some place of amusement. He proposed the Canterbury Music Hall; whereupon she tossed her head and affirmed that when a young lady had done for a young man what she had done for him, the least he could do was to take her to some theatre in the Strand. Hyacinth would have been a good deal at a loss to say exactly what she had done for him, but it was familiar to him by this time that she regarded him as under great obligations. From the day she came to look him up in Lomax Place she had taken a position, largely, in his life, and he had seen poor Pinnie’s wan countenance grow several degrees more blank. Amanda Pynsent’s forebodings had been answered to the letter; that bold-faced apparition had become a permanent influence. She never spoke to him about Millicent but once, several weeks after her interview with the girl; and this was not in a tone of rebuke, for she had divested herself for ever of any maternal prerogative. Tearful, tremulous, deferential inquiry was now her only weapon, and nothing could be more humble and circumspect than the manner in which she made use of it. He was never at home of an evening, at present, and he had mysterious ways of spending his Sundays, with which church-going had nothing to do. The time had been when, often, after tea, he sat near the lamp with the dressmaker, and, while her fingers flew, read out to her the works of Dickens and of Scott; happy hours when he appeared to have forgotten the wrong she had done him and she almost forgot it herself. But now he gulped down his tea so fast that he hardly took off his hat while he sat there, and Pinnie, with her quick eye for all matters of costume, noticed that he wore it still more gracefully askew than usual, with a little victorious, exalted air. He hummed to himself; he fingered his moustache; he looked out of the window when there was nothing to look at; he seemed pre-occupied, absorbed in intellectual excursions, half anxious and half delighted. During the whole winter Miss Pynsent explained everything by three words murmured beneath her breath: “That forward jade!” On the single occasion, however, on which she sought relief from her agitation in an appeal to Hyacinth, she did not trust herself to designate the girl by any epithet or title.
“There is only one thing I want to know,” she said to him, in a manner which might have seemed casual if in her silence, knowing her as well as he did, he had not already perceived the implication of her thought. “Does she expect you to marry her, dearest?”
“Does who expect me? I should like to see the woman who does!”
“Of course you know who I mean. The one that came after you – and picked you right up – from the other end of London.” And at the remembrance of that insufferable scene poor Pinnie flamed up for a moment. “Isn’t there plenty of young fellows down in that low part where she lives, without her ravaging over here? Why can’t she stick to her own beat, I should like to know?” Hyacinth had flushed at this inquiry, and she saw something in his face which made her change her tone. “Just promise me this, my precious child: that if you get into any sort of mess with that piece you’ll immediately confide it to your poor old Pinnie.”
“My poor old Pinnie sometimes makes me quite sick,” Hyacinth remarked, for answer. “What sort of a mess do you suppose I’ll get into?”
“Well, suppose she does come it over you that you promised to marry her?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. She doesn’t want to marry any one to-day.”
“Then what does she want to do?”
“Do you imagine I would tell a lady’s secrets?” the young man inquired.
“Dear me, if she was a lady, I shouldn’t be afraid!” said Pinnie.
“Every woman’s a lady when she has placed herself under one’s protection,” Hyacinth rejoined, with his little manner of a man of the world.
“Under your protection? Laws!” cried Pinnie, staring. “And pray, who’s to protect you?”
As soon as she had said this she repented, because it seemed just the sort of exclamation that would have made Hyacinth bite her head off. One of the things she loved him for, however, was that he gave you touching surprises in this line, had sudden inconsistencies of temper that were all for your advantage. He was by no means always mild when he ought to have been, but he was sometimes so when there was no obligation. At such moments Pinnie wanted to kiss him, and she had often tried to make Mr Vetch understand what a fascinating trait of character this was on the part of their young friend. It was rather difficult to describe, and Mr Vetch never would admit that he understood, or that he had observed anything that seemed to correspond to the dressmaker’s somewhat confused psychological sketch. It was a comfort to her in these days, and almost the only one she had, that she was sure Anastasius Vetch understood a good deal more than he felt bound to acknowledge. He was always up to his old game of being a great deal cleverer than cleverness itself required; and it consoled her present weak, pinched feeling to know that, although he still talked of the boy as if it would be a pity to take him too seriously, that wasn’t the way he thought of him. He also took him seriously, and he had even a certain sense of duty in regard to him. Miss Pynsent went so far as to say to herself that the fiddler probably had savings, and that no one had ever known of any one else belonging to him. She wouldn’t have mentioned it to Hyacinth for the world, for fear of leading up to a disappointment; but she had visions of a foolscap sheet, folded away in some queer little bachelor’s box (she couldn’t fancy what men kept in such places), on which Hyacinth’s name would have been written down, in very big letters, before a solicitor.
“Oh, I’m unprotected, in the nature of things,” he replied, smiling at his too scrupulous companion. Then he added, “At any rate, it isn’t from that girl any danger will come to me.”
“I can’t think why you like her,” Pinnie remarked, as if she had spent on the subject treasures of impartiality.
“It’s jolly to hear one woman on the subject of another,” Hyacinth said. “You’re kind and good, and yet you’re ready —” He gave a philosophic sigh.
“Well, what am I ready to do? I’m not ready to see you gobbled up before my eyes!”
“You needn’t be afraid; she won’t drag me to the altar.”
“And pray, doesn’t she think you good enough – for one of the beautiful Hennings?”
“You don’t understand, my poor Pinnie,” said Hyacinth, wearily. “I sometimes think there isn’t a single thing in life that you understand. One of these days she’ll marry an alderman.”
“An alderman – that creature?”
“An alderman, or a banker, or a bishop, or some one of that kind. She doesn’t want to end her career to-day; she wants to begin it.”
“Well, I wish she would take you later!” the dressmaker exclaimed.
Hyacinth said nothing for a moment; then he broke out: “What are you afraid of? Look here, we had better clear this up, once for all. Are you afraid of my marrying a girl out of a shop?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t, would you?” cried Pinnie, with a kind of conciliatory eagerness. “That’s the way I like to hear you talk!”
“Do you think I would marry any one who would marry me?” Hyacinth went on. “The kind of girl who would look at me is the kind of girl I wouldn’t look at.” He struck Pinnie as having thought it all out; which did not surprise her, as she had been familiar, from his youth, with his way of following things up. But she was always delighted when he made a remark which showed he was conscious of being of fine clay – flashed out an allusion to his not being what he seemed. He was not what he seemed, but even with Pinnie’s valuable assistance he had not succeeded in representing to himself, very definitely, what he was. She had placed at his disposal, for this purpose, a passionate idealism which, employed in some case where it could have consequences, might have been termed profligate, and which never cost her a scruple or a compunction.
“I’m sure a princess might look at you and be none the worse!” she declared, in her delight at this assurance, more positive than any she had yet received, that he was safe from the worst danger. This the dressmaker considered to be the chance of his marrying some person like herself. Still it came over her that his taste might be lowered, and before the subject was dropped, on this occasion, she said to him that of course he must be quite aware of all that was wanting to such a girl as Millicent Henning – she pronounced her name at last.
“Oh, I don’t bother about what’s wanting to her; I’m content with what she has.”
“Content, dearest – how do you mean?” the little dressmaker quavered. “Content to make an intimate friend of her?”
“It is impossible I should discuss these matters with you,” Hyacinth replied, grandly.
“Of course I see that. But I should think she would bore you sometimes,” Miss Pynsent murmured, cunningly.
“She does, I assure you, to extinction!”
“Then why do you spend every evening with her?”
“Where should you like me to spend my evenings? At some beastly public-house – or at the Italian opera?” His association with Miss Henning was not so close as that, but nevertheless he wouldn’t take the trouble to prove to poor Pinnie that he enjoyed her society only two or three times a week; that on other evenings he simply strolled about the streets (this boyish habit clung to him), and that he had even occasionally the resource of going to the Poupins’, or of gossiping and............