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THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA
“You have got such a speaking eye. Any one can tell, to look at
you, that you have become a nihilist, that you’re a member of a secret society. You seem to say to every one, ‘Slow torture won’t induce
me to tell where it meets!’”
“You won’t get me an order, then?” Hyacinth said, in a moment.
“My dear boy, I offer you a box. I take the greatest interest in
you.”
They smoked together a while, and at last Hyacinth remarked,
“It has nothing to do with the International.”
“Is it more terrible – more deadly secret?” his companion inquired, looking at him with extreme seriousness.
“I thought you pretended to be a radical,” answered Hyacinth.
“Well, so I am – of the old-fashioned, constitutional, milk-andwater, jog-trot sort. I’m not an exterminator.”
“We don’t know what we may be when the time comes,” Hyacinth rejoined, more sententiously than he intended.
“Is the time coming, then, my dear boy?”
“I don’t think I have a right to give you any more of a warning
than that,” said our hero, smiling.
“It’s very kind of you to do so much, I’m sure, and to rush in here
at the small hours for the purpose. Meanwhile, in the few weeks, or
months, or years, or whatever they are, that are left, you wish to put
in as much enjoyment as you can squeeze, with the young ladies:
that’s a very natural inclination.” Then, irrelevantly, Mr Vetch inquired, “Do you see many foreigners?”
“Yes, I see a good many.”
“And what do you think of them?”
“Oh, all sorts of things. I rather like Englishmen better.”
“Mr Muniment, for example?”
“I say, what do you know about him?” Hyacinth asked.
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HENRY JAMES
“I’ve seen him at Eustace’s. I know that you and he are as thick
as thieves.”
“He will distinguish himself some day, very much,” said Hyacinth, who was perfectly willing, and indeed very proud, to be
thought a close ally of the chemist’s assistant.
“Very likely – very likely. And what will he do with you?” the
fi ddler inquired.
Hyacinth got up; the two men looked at each other for an instant.
“Do get me two good places in the second balcony,” said Hyacinth.
Mr Vetch replied that he would do what he could, and three
days afterwards he gave the coveted order to his young friend. As he
placed it in his hands he said, “You had better put in all the fun you
can, you know!”
BOOK
SECOND
XII
Hyacinth and his companion took their seats with extreme
promptitude before the curtain rose upon the Pearl of Paraguay.
Thanks to Millicent’s eagerness not to be late they encountered the
discomfort which had constituted her main objection to going into
the pit: they waited for twenty minutes at the door of the theatre, in
a tight, stolid crowd, before the offi cial hour of opening. Millicent,
bareheaded and very tightly laced, presented a most splendid appearance and, on Hyacinth’s part, gratifi ed a certain youthful, ingenuous pride of possession in every respect save a tendency, while
ingress was denied them, to make her neighbours feel her elbows
and to comment, loudly and sarcastically, on the situation. It was
more clear to him even than it had been before that she was a young
lady who in public places might easily need a champion or an apologist. Hyacinth knew there was only one way to apologise for a ‘female’, when the female was attached very closely and heavily to
one’s arm, and was reminded afresh how little constitutional aversion Miss Henning had to a row. He had an idea she might think
his own taste ran even too little in that direction, and had visions
of violent, confused scenes, in which he should in some way distinguish himself : he scarcely knew in what way, and imagined himself
more easily routing some hulking adversary by an exquisite application of the retort courteous than by fl ying at him with a pair of very
small fi sts.
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HENRY JAMES
By the time they had reached their places in the balcony Millicent was rather fl ushed and a good deal ruffl ed; but she had composed herself in season for the rising of the curtain upon the farce
which preceded the melodrama and which the pair had had no intention of losing. At this stage a more genial agitation took possession of her, and she surrendered her sympathies to the horse-play
of the traditional prelude. Hyacinth found it less amusing, but the
theatre, in any conditions, was full of sweet deception for him. His
imagination projected itself lovingly across the footlights, gilded
and coloured the shabby canvas and battered accessories, and lost itself so effectually in the fi ctive world that the end of the piece, however long, or however short, brought with it a kind of alarm, like
a stoppage of his personal life. It was impossible to be more friendly
to the dramatic illusion. Millicent, as the audience thickened, rejoiced more largely and loudly, held herself as a lady, surveyed the
place as if she knew all about it, leaned back and leaned forward,
fanned herself with majesty, gave her opinion upon the appearance
and coiffure of every woman within sight, abounded in question
and conjecture, and produced, from her pocket, a little paper of peppermint-drops, of which, under cruel threats, she compelled Hyacinth to partake. She followed with attention, though not always
with success, the complicated adventures of the Pearl of Paraguay,
through scenes luxuriantly tropical, in which the male characters
wore sombreros and stilettos, and the ladies either danced the cachucha or fl ed from licentious pursuit; but her eyes wandered, during considerable periods, to the occupants of the boxes and stalls,
concerning several of whom she had theories which she imparted
to Hyacinth while the play went on, greatly to his discomfi ture, he
being unable to conceive of such levity. She had the pretension of
knowing who every one was; not individually and by name, but as
regards their exact social station, the quarter of London in which
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THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA
they lived, and the amount of money they were prepared to spend in
the neighbourhood of Buckingham Palace. She had seen the whole
town pass through her establishment there, and though Hyacinth,
from his infancy, had been watching it from his own point of view,
his companion made him feel that he had missed a thousand characteristic points, so different were most of her interpretations from
his, and so very bold and irreverent. Miss Henning’s observation of
human society had not been of a nature to impress her with its high
moral tone, and she had a free off-hand cynicism which imposed
itself. She thought most ladies were hypocrites, and had, in all ways,
a low opinion of her own sex, which, more then once, before this,
she had justifi ed to Hyacinth by narrating observations of the most
surprising kind, gathered during her career as a shop-girl. There was
a pleasing inconsequence, therefore, in her being moved to tears in
the third act of the play, when the Pearl of Paraguay, dishevelled
and distracted, dragging herself on her knees, implored the stern
hidalgo her father, to believe in her innocence in spite of the circumstances which seemed to condemn her – a midnight meeting
with the wicked hero in the grove of cocoanuts. It was at this crisis, none the less, that she asked Hyacinth who his friends were in
the principal box on the left of the stage, and let him know that
a gentleman seated there had been watching him, at intervals, for
the past half-hour.
“Watching me! I like that!” said the young man. “When I want to
be watched I take you with me.”
“Of course he has looked at me,” Millicent answered, as if she
had no interest in denying that. “But you’re the one he wants to get
hold of.”
“To get hold of!”
“Yes, you ninny: don’t hang back. He may make your fortune.”
157
HENRY JAMES
“Well, if you would like him to come and sit by you I’ll go and
take a walk in the Strand,” said Hyacinth, entering into the humour
of the occasion but not seeing, from where he was placed, any gentleman in the box. Millicent explained that the mysterious observer
had just altered his position; he had gone into the back of the box,
which had considerable depth. There were other persons in it, out
of sight; she and Hyacinth were too much on the same side. One of
them was a lady, concealed by the curtain; her arm, bare save for its
bracelets, was visible at moments on the cushioned ledge. Hyacinth
saw it, in effect, reappear there, and even while the play went on
contemplated it with a certain interest; but until the curtain fell at
the end of the act there was no further symptom that a gentleman
wished to get hold of him.
“Now do you say it’s me he’s after?” Millicent asked abruptly,
giving him a sidelong dig, as the fi ddlers in the orchestra began to
scrape their instruments for the interlude.
“Of course; I am only the pretext,” Hyacinth replied, after he
had looked a moment, in a manner which he fl attered himself was
a proof of quick self-possession. The gentleman designated by his
companion was once more at the front, leaning forward, with his
arms on the edge. Hyacinth saw that he was looking straight at him,
and our young man returned his gaze – an effort not rendered the
more easy by the fact that, after an instant, he recognised him.
“Well, if he knows us he might give some sign, and if he doesn’t
he might leave us alone,” Millicent declared, abandoning the distinction she had made between herself and her companion. She
had no sooner spoken than the gentleman complied with the fi rst
mentioned of these conditions; he smiled at Hyacinth across the
house – he nodded to him with unmistakable friendliness. Millicent, perceiving this, glanced at the young man from Lomax Place
and saw that the demonstration had brought a deep colour to his
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THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA
cheek. He was blushing, fl ushing; whether with pleasure or embarrassment was not immediately apparent to her. “I say, I say – is it
one of your grand relations?” she promptly exclaimed. “Well, I can
stare as well as him;” and she told Hyacinth it was a ‘shime’ to bring
a young lady to the play when you hadn’t so much as an opera-glass
for her to look at the company. “Is he one of those lords your aunt
was always talking about in the Plice? Is he your uncle, or your
grandfather, or your fi rst or second cousin? No, he’s too young for
your grandfather. What a pity I can’t see if he looks like you!”
At any other time Hyacinth would have thought these inquiries in the worst possible taste, but now he was too much given up
to other refl ections. It pleased him that the gentleman in the box
should recognise and notice him, because even so small a fact as this
was an extension of his social existence; but it also surprised and
puzzled him, and it produced, generally, in his easily-excited organism, an agitation of which, in spite of his attempted self-control, the
appearance he presented to Millicent was the sign. They had met
three times, he and his fellow-spectator; but they had met under
circumstances which, to Hyacinth’s mind, would have made a furtive wink, a mere tremor of the eyelid, a more judicious reference
to the fact than so public a salutation. Hyacinth would never have
permitted himself to greet him fi rst; and this was not because the
gentleman in the box belonged – conspicuously as he did so – to
a different walk of society. He was apparently a man of forty, tall and
lean and loose-jointed; he fell into lounging, dawdling attitudes, and
even at a distance he looked lazy. He had a long, smooth, amused,
contented face, unadorned with moustache or whisker, and his
brown hair parted itself evenly over his forehead, and came forward
on either temple in a rich, well-brushed lock which gave his countenance a certain analogy to portraits of English gentlemen about the
year 1820. Millicent Henning had a glance of such range and keen-
159
HENRY JAMES
ness that she was able to make out the details of his evening-dress,
of which she appreciated the ‘form’; to observe the character of his
large hands; and to note that he appeared to be perpetually smiling,
that his eyes were extraordinarily light in colour, and that in spite of
the dark, well-marked brows arching over them, his fi ne skin never
had produced, and never would produce, a beard. Our young lady
pronounced him mentally a ‘swell’ of the fi rst magnitude, and wondered more than ever where he had picked up Hyacinth. Her companion seemed to echo her thought when he exclaimed, with a little
surprised sigh, almost an exhalation of awe, “Well, I had no idea he
was one of that lot!”
“You might at least tell me his name, so that I shall know what
to call him when he comes round to speak to us,” the girl said, provoked at her companion’s incommunicativeness.
“Comes round to speak to us – a chap like that!” Hyacinth exclaimed.
“Well, I’m sure if he had been your own brother he couldn’t
have grinned at you more! He may want to make my acquaintance
after all; he won’t be the fi rst.”
The gentleman had once more retreated from sight, and there
was as much evidence as that of the intention Millicent attributed to
him. “I don’t think I’m at all clear that I have a right to tell his name,”
he remarked, with sincerity, but with a considerable disposition at
the same time to magnify an incident which deepened the brilliancy
of the entertainment he had been able to offer Miss Henning. “I met
him in a place where he may not like to have it known that he goes.”
“Do you go to places that people are ashamed of? Is it one of your
political clubs, as you call them, where that dirty young man from
Camberwell, Mr Monument (what do you call him?), fi lls your head
with ideas that’ll bring you to no good? I’m sure your friend over
there doesn’t look as if he’d be on your side.”
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