The Princess Casamassima (Classics)

  ‘It’s hot here, too,’ Millicent’s companion murmured. He had suddenly become much more conscious of the high temperature, of his proximity to the fierce chandelier,113 and he added that the plot of the play certainly was unnatural, though he thought the piece rather well acted.

  ‘Oh, it’s the good old stodgy British tradition. This is the only place where you find it still, and even here it can’t last much longer; it can’t survive old Baskerville and Mrs Ruffler. ‘Gad, how old they are! I remember her, long past her prime, when I used to be taken to the play, as a boy, in the Christmas holidays. Between them, they must be something like a hundred and eighty, eh? I believe one is supposed to cry a good deal about the middle,’ Captain Sholto continued, in the same friendly, familiar, encouraging way, addressing himself to Millicent, upon whom, indeed, his eyes had rested almost uninterruptedly from the first. She sustained his glance with composure, but with just enough of an expression of reserve to intimate (what was perfectly true) that she was not in the habit of conversing with gentlemen with whom she was not acquainted. She turned away her face at this (she had already given the visitor the benefit of a good deal of it), and left him, as in the little passage he leaned against the parapet of the balcony with his back to the stage, confronted with Hyacinth, who was now wondering, with rather more vivid a sense of the relations of things, what he had come for. He wanted to do him honour, in return for his civility, but he did not know what one could talk about, at such short notice, to a person whom he immediately perceived to be, in a most extensive, a really transcendent sense of the term, a man of the world. He instantly saw Captain Sholto did not take the play seriously, so that he felt himself warned off that topic, on which, otherwise, he might have had much to say. On the other hand he could not, in the presence of a third person, allude to the matters they had discussed at the ‘Sun and Moon’; nor could he suppose his visitor would expect this, though indeed he impressed him as a man of humours and whims, who was amusing himself with everything, including esoteric socialism and a little bookbinder who had so much more of the gentleman about him than one would expect. Captain Sholto may have been a little embarrassed, now that he was completely launched in his attempt at fraternisation, especially after failing to elicit a smile from Millicent’s respectability; but he left to Hyacinth the burden of no initiative, and went on to say that it was just this prospect of the dying-out of the old British tradition that had brought him to-night. He was with a friend, a lady who had lived much abroad, who had never seen anything of the kind, and who liked everything that was characteristic. ‘You know the foreign school of acting is a very different affair,’ he said again to Millicent, who this time replied, ‘Oh yes, of course,’ and considering afresh the old lady in the box, reflected that she looked as if there were nothing in the world that she, at least, hadn’t seen.

  ‘We have never been abroad,’ said Hyacinth, candidly, looking into his friend’s curious light-coloured eyes, the palest in tint he had ever encountered.

  ‘Oh, well, there’s a lot of nonsense talked about that!’ Captain Sholto replied; while Hyacinth remained uncertain as to exactly what he referred to, and Millicent decided to volunteer a remark.

  ‘They are making a tremendous row on the stage. I should think it would be very bad in those boxes.’ There was a banging and thumping behind the curtain, the sound of heavy scenery pushed about.

  ‘Oh yes; it’s much better here, every way. I think you have the best seats in the house,’ said Captain Sholto. ‘I should like very much to finish my evening beside you. The trouble is I have ladies – a pair of them,’ he went on, as if he were seriously considering this possibility. Then, laying his hand again on Hyacinth’s shoulder, he smiled at him a moment and indulged in a still greater burst of frankness. ‘My dear fellow, that is just what, as a partial reason, has brought me up here to see you. One of my ladies has a great desire to make your acquaintance!’

  ‘To make my acquaintance?’ Hyacinth felt himself turning pale; the first impulse he could have, in connection with such an announcement as that – and it lay far down, in the depths of the unspeakable – was a conjecture that it had something to do with his parentage on his father’s side. Captain Sholto’s smooth, bright face, irradiating such unexpected advances, seemed for an instant to swim before him. The Captain went on to say that he had told the lady of the talks they had had, that she was immensely interested in such matters – ‘You know what I mean, she really is’ – and that as a consequence of what he had said she had begged him to come and ask his – a – his young friend (Hyacinth saw in a moment that the Captain had forgotten his name) to descend into her box for a little while.

  ‘She has a tremendous desire to talk with some one who looks at the whole business from your standpoint, don’t you see? And in her position she scarcely ever has a chance, she doesn’t come across them – to her great annoyance. So when I spotted you to-night she immediately said that I must introduce you at any cost. I hope you don’t mind, for a quarter of an hour. I ought perhaps to tell you that she is a person who is used to having nothing refused her. “Go up and bring him down,” you know, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. She is really very much in earnest: I don’t mean about wishing to see you – that goes without saying – but about the whole matter that you and I care for. Then I should add – it doesn’t spoil anything – that she is the most charming woman in the world, simply! Honestly, my dear boy, she is perhaps the most remarkable woman in Europe.’

  So Captain Sholto delivered himself, with the highest naturalness and plausibility, and Hyacinth, listening, felt that he himself ought perhaps to resent the idea of being served up for the entertainment of imperious triflers, but that somehow he didn’t, and that it was more worthy of the part he aspired to play in life to meet such occasions calmly and urbanely than to take the trouble of dodging and going roundabout. Of course the lady in the box couldn’t be sincere; she might think she was, though even that was questionable; but you couldn’t really care for the cause that was exemplified in the little back room in Bloomsbury if you came to the theatre in that style. It was Captain Sholto’s style as well, but it had been by no means clear to Hyacinth hitherto that he really cared. All the same, this was no time for going into the question of the lady’s sincerity, and at the end of sixty seconds our young man had made up his mind that he could afford to humour her. None the less, I must add, the whole proposal continued to make things dance, to appear fictive, delusive; so that it sounded, in comparison, like a note of reality when Millicent, who had been looking from one of the men to the other, exclaimed –

  ‘That’s all very well, but who is to look after me?’ Her assumption of the majestic had broken down, and this was the cry of nature.

  Nothing could have been pleasanter and more indulgent of her alarm than the manner in which Captain Sholto reassured her. ‘My dear young lady, can you suppose I have been unmindful of that? I have been hoping that after I have taken down our friend and introduced him you would allow me to come back and, in his absence, occupy his seat.’

  Hyacinth was preoccupied with the idea of meeting the most remarkable woman in Europe; but at this juncture he looked at Millicent Henning with some curiosity. She rose to the situation, and replied, ‘I am much obliged to you, but I don’t know who you are.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll tell you all about that!’ the Captain exclaimed, benevolently.

  ‘Of course I should introduce you,’ said Hyacinth, and he mentioned to Miss Henning the name of his distinguished acquaintance.

  ‘In the army?’ the young lady inquired, as if she must have every guarantee of social position.

  ‘Yes – not in the navy! I have left the army, but it always sticks to one.’

  ‘Mr Robinson, is it your intention to leave me?’ Millicent asked, in a tone of the highest propriety.

  Hyacinth’s imagination had taken such a flight that the idea of what he owed to the beautiful girl who had placed herself under his
care for the evening had somehow effaced itself. Her words put it before him in a manner that threw him quickly and consciously back upon his honour; yet there was something in the way she uttered them that made him look at her harder still before he replied, ‘Oh dear, no, of course it would never do. I must defer to some other occasion the honour of making the acquaintance of your friend,’ he added, to Captain Sholto.

  ‘Ah, my dear fellow, we might manage it so easily now,’ this gentleman murmured, with evident disappointment. ‘It is not as if Miss – a – Miss – a – were to be alone.’

  It flashed upon Hyacinth that the root of the project might be a desire of Captain Sholto to insinuate himself into Millicent’s graces; then he asked himself why the most remarkable woman in Europe should lend herself to that design, consenting even to receive a visit from a little bookbinder for the sake of furthering it. Perhaps, after all, she was not the most remarkable; still, even at a lower estimate, of what advantage could such a complication be to her? To Hyacinth’s surprise, Millicent’s eye made acknowledgment of his implied renunciation; and she said to Captain Sholto, as if she were considering the matter very impartially, ‘Might one know the name of the lady who sent you?’

  ‘The Princess Casamassima.’

  ‘Laws!’114 cried Millicent Henning. And then, quickly, as if to cover up the crudity of this ejaculation, ‘And might one also know what it is, as you say, that she wants to talk to him about?’

  ‘About the lower orders, the rising democracy, the spread of nihilism, and all that.’

  ‘The lower orders? Does she think we belong to them?’ the girl demanded, with a strange, provoking laugh.

  Captain Sholto was certainly the readiest of men. ‘If she could see you, she would think you one of the first ladies in the land.’

  ‘She’ll never see me!’ Millicent replied, in a manner which made it plain that she, at least, was not to be whistled for.

  Being whistled for by a princess presented itself to Hyacinth as an indignity endured gracefully enough by the heroes of several French novels in which he had found a thrilling interest; nevertheless, he said, incorruptibly, to the Captain, who hovered there like a Mephistopheles115 converted to disinterested charity, ‘Having been in the army, you will know that one can’t desert one’s post.’

  The Captain, for the third time, laid his hand on his young friend’s shoulder, and for a minute his smile rested, in silence, on Millicent Henning. ‘If I tell you simply I want to talk with this young lady, that certainly won’t help me, particularly, and there is no reason why it should. Therefore I’ll tell you the whole truth: I want to talk with her about you!’ And he patted Hyacinth in a way which conveyed at once that this idea must surely commend him to the young man’s companion and that he himself liked him infinitely.

  Hyacinth was conscious of the endearment, but he remarked to Millicent that he would do just as she liked; he was determined not to let a member of the bloated upper class suppose that he held any daughter of the people cheap.

  ‘Oh, I don’t care if you go,’ said Miss Henning. ‘You had better hurry – the curtain’s going to rise.’

  ‘That’s charming of you! I’ll rejoin you in three minutes!’ Captain Sholto exclaimed.

  He passed his hand into Hyacinth’s arm, and as our hero lingered still, a little uneasy and questioning Millicent always with his eyes, the girl went on, with her bright boldness, ‘That kind of princess – I should like to hear all about her.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll tell you that, too,’ the Captain rejoined, with his imperturbable pleasantness, as he led his young friend away. It must be confessed that Hyacinth also rather wondered what kind of princess she was, and his suspense on this point made his heart beat fast when, after traversing steep staircases and winding corridors, they reached the small door of the stage-box.

  13

  Hyacinth’s first consciousness, after his companion had opened it, was of his nearness to the stage, on which the curtain had now risen again. The play was in progress, the actors’ voices came straight into the box, and it was impossible to speak without disturbing them. This at least was his inference from the noiseless way his conductor drew him in, and, without announcing or introducing him, simply pointed to a chair and whispered, ‘Just drop into that; you’ll see and hear beautifully.’ He heard the door close behind him, and became aware that Captain Sholto had already retreated. Millicent, at any rate, would not be left to languish in solitude very long. Two ladies were seated in the front of the box, which was so large that there was a considerable space between them; and as he stood there, where Captain Sholto had planted him – they appeared not to have noticed the opening of the door – they turned their heads and looked at him. The one on whom his eyes first rested was the old lady whom he had already contemplated at a distance; she looked queerer still on a closer view, and gave him a little friendly, jolly nod. Her companion was partly overshadowed by the curtain of the box, which she had drawn forward with the intention of shielding herself from the observation of the house; she had still the air of youth, and the simplest way to express the instant effect upon Hyacinth of her fair face of welcome is to say that she was dazzling. He remained as Sholto had left him, staring rather confusedly and not moving an inch; whereupon the younger lady put out her hand – it was her left, the other rested on the ledge of the box – with the expectation, as he perceived, to his extreme mortification, too late, that he would give her his own. She converted the gesture into a sign of invitation, and beckoned him, silently but graciously, to move his chair forward. He did so, and seated himself between the two ladies; then, for ten minutes, stared straight before him, at the stage, not turning his eyes sufficiently even to glance up at Millicent in the balcony. He looked at the play, but he was far from seeing it; he had no sense of anything but the woman who sat there, close to him, on his right, with a fragrance in her garments and a light about her which he seemed to see even while his head was averted. The vision had been only of a moment, but it hung before him, threw a vague white mist over the proceedings on the stage. He was embarrassed, overturned, bewildered, and he knew it; he made a great effort to collect himself, to consider the situation lucidly. He wondered whether he ought to speak, to look at her again, to behave differently, in some way; whether she would take him for a clown, for an idiot; whether she were really as beautiful as she had seemed or it were only a superficial glamour, which a renewed inspection would dissipate. While he asked himself these questions the minutes went on, and neither of his hostesses spoke; they watched the play in perfect stillness, so that Hyacinth divined that this was the proper thing and that he himself must remain dumb until a word should be bestowed upon him. Little by little he recovered himself, took possession of his predicament, and at last transferred his eyes to the Princess. She immediately perceived this, and returned his glance, with a soft smile. She might well be a princess – it was impossible to conform more to the finest evocations of that romantic word. She was fair, brilliant, slender, with a kind of effortless majesty. Her beauty had an air of perfection; it astonished and lifted one up, the sight of it seemed a privilege, reward. If the first impression it had given Hyacinth was to make him feel strangely transported, he need not have been too much agitated, for this was the effect the Princess Casamassima produced upon persons of a wider experience and greater pretensions. Her dark eyes, blue or gray, something that was not brown, were as sweet as they were splendid, and there was an extraordinary light nobleness in the way she held her head. That head, where two or three diamond stars glittered in the thick, delicate hair which defined its shape, suggested to Hyacinth something antique and celebrated, which he had admired of old – the memory was vague – in a statue, in a picture, in a museum. Purity of line and form, of cheek and chin and lip and brow, a colour that seemed to live and glow, a radiance of grace and eminence and success – these things were seated in triumph in the face of the Princess, and Hyacinth, as he held himself in his chair, trembling with the re
velation, wondered whether she were not altogether of some different substance from the humanity he had hitherto known. She might be divine, but he could see that she understood human needs – that she wished him to be at his ease and happy; there was something familiar in her smile, as if she had seen him many times before. Her dress was dark and rich; she had pearls round her neck, and an old rococo fan in her hand. Hyacinth took in all these things, and finally said to himself that if she wanted nothing more of him than that, he was content, he would like it to go on; so pleasant was it to sit with fine ladies, in a dusky, spacious receptacle which framed the bright picture of the stage and made one’s own situation seem a play within the play. The act was a long one, and the repose in which his companions left him might have been a calculated indulgence, to enable him to get used to them, to see how harmless they were. He looked at Millicent, in the course of time, and saw that Captain Sholto, seated beside her, had not the same standard of propriety, inasmuch as he made a remark to her every few minutes. Like himself, the young lady in the balcony was losing the play, thanks to her eyes being fixed on her friend from Lomax Place, whose position she thus endeavoured to gauge. Hyacinth had quite given up the Paraguayan complications; by the end of the half hour his attention might have come back to them, had he not then been engaged in wondering what the Princess would say to him after the descent of the curtain – or whether she would say anything. The consideration of this problem, as the moment of the solution drew nearer, made his heart again beat faster. He watched the old lady on his left, and supposed it was natural that a princess should have an attendant – he took for granted she was an attendant – as different as possible from herself. This ancient dame was without majesty or grace; huddled together, with her hands folded on her stomach and her lips protruding, she solemnly followed the performance. Several times, however, she turned her head to Hyacinth, and then her expression changed; she repeated the jovial, encouraging, almost motherly nod with which she had greeted him when he had made his bow, and by which she appeared to wish to intimate that, better than the serene beauty on the other side, she could enter into the oddity, the discomfort, of his situation. She seemed to say to him that he must keep his head, and that if the worst should come to the worst she was there to look after him. Even when, at last, the curtain descended, it was some moments before the Princess spoke, though she rested her smile upon Hyacinth as if she were considering what he would best like her to say. He might at that instant have guessed what he discovered later – that among this lady’s faults (he was destined to learn that they were numerous), not the least eminent was an exaggerated fear of the commonplace. He expected she would make some remark about the play, but what she said was, very gently and kindly, ‘I like to know all sorts of people.’