Hyacinth had been warned by Mr Vetch as to what brilliant women might do with him (it was only a word on the old fiddler’s lips, but the word had had a point), he had been warned by Paul Muniment, and now he was admonished by a person supremely well placed for knowing – a fact that could not fail to deepen the emotion which, any time these three days, had made him draw his breath more quickly. That emotion, however, was now not of a kind to make him fear remote consequences; as he looked over the Princess Casamassima’s drawing-room and inhaled an air that seemed to him inexpressibly delicate and sweet, he hoped that his adventure would throw him upon his mettle only half as much as the old lady had wished to intimate. He considered, one after the other, the different chairs, couches and ottomans the room contained – he wished to treat himself to the most sumptuous – and then, for reasons he knew best, sank into a seat covered with rose-coloured brocade, of which the legs and frame appeared to be of pure gold. Here he sat perfectly still, with only his heart beating very sensibly and his eyes coursing again and again from one object to another. The splendours and suggestions of Captain Sholto’s apartment were thrown completely into the shade by the scene before him, and as the Princess did not scruple to keep him waiting for twenty minutes (during which the butler came in and set out, on a small table, a glittering tea-service), Hyacinth had time to count over the innumerable bibelots (most of which he had never dreamed of) involved in the personality of a woman of high fashion, and to feel that their beauty and oddity revealed not only whole provinces of art, but refinements of choice, on the part of their owner, complications of mind, and – almost – terrible depths of character.
When at last the door opened and the servant, reappearing, threw it far back, as if to make a wide passage for a person of the importance of his mistress, Hyacinth’s suspense became very acute; it was much the same feeling with which, at the theatre, he had sometimes awaited the entrance of a celebrated actress. In this case the actress was to perform for him alone. There was still a moment before she came on, and when she did so she was so simply dressed – besides his seeing her now on her feet – that she looked like a different person. She approached him rapidly, and a little stiffly and shyly, but in the manner in which she shook hands with him there was an evident desire to be frank, and even fraternal. She looked like a different person, but that person had a beauty even more radiant; the fairness of her face shone forth at our young man as if to dissipate any doubts that might have crept over him as to the reality of the vision bequeathed to him by his former interview. And in this brightness and richness of her presence he could not have told you whether she struck him as more proud or more kind.
“I have kept you a long time, but it’s supposed not, usually, to be a bad place, my salon; there are various things to look at, and perhaps you have noticed them. Over on that side, for instance, there is rather a curious collection of miniatures.” She spoke abruptly, quickly, as if she were conscious that their communion might be awkward and she were trying to strike, instantly (to conjure that element away), the sort of note that would make them both most comfortable. Quickly, too, she sat down before her tea-tray and poured him out a cup, which she handed him without asking whether he would have it. He accepted it with a trembling hand, though he had no desire for it; he was too nervous to swallow the tea, but it would not have occurred to him that it was possible to decline. When he had murmured that he had indeed looked at all her things but that it would take hours to do justice to such treasures, she asked if he were fond of works of art; adding, however, immediately, that she was afraid he had not many opportunities of seeing them, though of course there were the public collections, open to all. Hyacinth said, with perfect veracity, that some of the happiest moments of his life had been spent at the British Museum and the National Gallery, and this reply appeared to interest her greatly, so that she immediately begged him to tell her what he thought of certain pictures and antiques. In this way it was that in an incredibly short space of time, as it appeared to him, he found himself discussing the Bacchus and Ariadne and the Elgin marbles with one of the most remarkable woman in Europe. It is true that she herself talked most, passing precipitately from one point to another, asking him questions and not waiting for answers; describing and qualifying things, expressing feelings, by the aid of phrases that he had never heard before but which seemed to him illuminating and happy – as when, for instance, she asked what art was, after all, but a synthesis made in the interest of pleasure, or said that she didn’t like England at all, but loved it. It did not occur to him to think these discriminations pedantic. Suddenly she remarked, “Madame Grandoni told me you saw my husband.”
“Ah, was the gentleman your husband?”
“Unfortunately! What do you think of him?”
“Oh, I can’t think —” Hyacinth murmured.
“I wish I couldn’t, either! I haven’t seen him for nearly three years. He wanted to see me to-day, but I refused.”
“Ah!” said Hyacinth, staring and not knowing how he ought to receive so unexpected a confidence. Then, as the suggestions of inexperience are sometimes the happiest of all, he spoke simply what was in his mind and said, gently, “It has made you very nervous.” Afterwards, when he had left the house, he wondered how, at that stage, he could have ventured on such a familiar remark.
The Princess took it with a quick, surprised laugh. “How do you know that?” But before he had time to tell how, she added, “Your saying that – that way – shows me how right I was to ask you to come to see me. You know, I hesitated. It shows me you have perceptions; I guessed as much the other night at the theatre. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have asked you. I may be wrong, but I like people who understand what one says to them, and also what one doesn’t say.”
“Don’t think I understand too much. You might easily exaggerate that,” Hyacinth declared, conscientiously.
“You confirm, completely, my first impression,” the Princess returned, smiling in a way that showed him he really amused her. “We shall discover the limits of your comprehension! I am atrociously nervous. But it will pass. How is your friend the dressmaker?” she inquired, abruptly. And when Hyacinth had briefly given some account of poor Pinnie – told her that she was tolerably well for her, but old and tired and sad, and not very successful – she exclaimed, impatiently, “Ah, well, she’s not the only one!” and came back, with irrelevance, to the former question. “It’s not only my husband’s visit – absolutely unexpected! – that has made me fidgety, but the idea that now you have been so kind as to come here you may wonder why, after all, I made such a point of it, and even think any explanation I might be able to give you entirely insufficient.”
“I don’t want any explanation,” said Hyacinth.
“It’s very nice of you to say that, and I shall take you at your word. Explanations usually make things worse. All the same, I don’t want you to think (as you might have done so easily the other evening) that I wish only to treat you as a curious animal.”
“I don’t care how you treat me!” said Hyacinth, smiling.
There was a considerable silence, after which the Princess remarked, “All I ask of my husband is to let me alone. But he won’t. He won’t reciprocate my indifference.”
Hyacinth asked himself what reply he ought to make to such an announcement as that, and it seemed to him that the least civility demanded was that he should say – as he could with such conviction – “It can’t be easy to be indifferent to you.”
“Why not, if I am odious? I can be – oh, there is no doubt of that! However, I can honestly say that with the Prince I have been exceedingly reasonable, and that most of the wrongs – the big ones, those that settled the question – have been on his side. You may tell me of course that that’s the pretension of every woman who has made a mess of her marriage. But ask Madame Grandoni.”
“She will tell me it’s none of my business.”
“Very true – she might!” the Princess admitted, laughing. “And I don’t know, either, why I should talk to you about my domestic affairs; except that I have been wondering what I could do to show confidence in you, in return for your showing so much in me. As this matter of my separation from my husband happens to have been turned uppermost by his sudden descent upon me, I just mention it, though the subject is tiresome enough. Moreover I ought to let you know that I have very little respect for distinctions of class – the sort of thing they make so much of in this country. They are doubtless convenient in some ways, but when one has a reason – a reason of feeling – for overstepping them, and one allows one’s self to be deterred by some dreary superstition about one’s place, or some one else’s place, then I think it’s ignoble. It always belongs to one’s place not to be a poor creature. I take it that if you are a socialist you think about this as I do; but lest, by chance, as the sense of those differences is the English religion, it may have rubbed off even on you, though I am more and more impressed with the fact that you are scarcely more British than I am; lest you should, in spite of your theoretic democracy, be shocked at some of the applications that I, who cherish the creed, am capable of making of it, let me assure you without delay that in that case we shouldn’t get on together at all, and had better part company before we go further.” She paused, long enough for Hyacinth to declare, with a great deal of emphasis, that he was not easily shocked; and then, restlessly, eagerly, as if it relieved her to talk, and made their queer interview less abnormal that she should talk most, she arrived at the point that she wanted to know the people, and know them intimately – the toilers and strugglers and sufferers – because she was convinced they were the most interesting portion of society, and at the inquiry, “What could possibly be in worse taste than for me to carry into such an undertaking a pretension of greater delicacy and finer manners? If I must do that,” she continued, “it’s simpler to leave them alone. But I can’t leave them alone; they press upon me, they haunt me, they fascinate me. There it is (after all, it’s very simple): I want to know them, and I want you to help me!”
“I will help you with pleasure, to the best of my humble ability. But you will be awfully disappointed,” Hyacinth said. Very strange it seemed to him that within so few days two ladies of rank should have found occasion to express to him the same mysterious longing. A breeze from a thoroughly unexpected quarter was indeed blowing over the aristocracy. Nevertheless, though there was much of the accent of passion in the Princess Casamassima’s communication that there had been in Lady Aurora’s, and though he felt bound to discourage his present interlocutress as he had done the other, the force that pushed her struck him as a very different mixture from the shy, conscientious, anxious heresies of Rose Muniment’s friend. The temper varied in the two women as much as the face and the manner, and that perhaps made their curiosity the more significant.
“I haven’t the least doubt of it: there is nothing in life in which I have not been awfully disappointed. But disappointment for disappointment I shall like it better than some others. You’ll not persuade me, either, that among the people I speak of, characters and passions and motives are not more natural, more complete, more na?f. The upper classes are so insipid! My husband traces his descent from the fifth century, and he’s the greatest bore on earth. That is the kind of people I was condemned to live with after my marriage. Oh, if you knew what I have been through, you would allow that intelligent mechanics (of course I don’t want to know idiots) would be a pleasant change. I must begin with some one – mustn’t I? – so I began, the other night, with you!” As soon as she had uttered these words the Princess added a correction, with the consciousness of her mistake in her face. It made that face, to Hyacinth, more nobly, tenderly pure. “The only objection to you, individually, is that you have nothing of the people about you – to-day not even the dress.” Her eyes wandered over him from head to foot, and their friendly beauty made him ashamed. “I wish you had come in the clothes you wear at your work!”
“You see you do regard me as a curious animal,” he answered.
It was perhaps to contradict this that, after a moment, she began to tell him more about her domestic affairs. He............