“You ought to know my aunt Pinnie — she’s just such another benighted idolater!” Hyacinth exclaimed.
“Oh, you are making me like you very fast! And pray, who is your aunt Pinnie?”
“She’s a dressmaker, and a charming little woman. I should like her to come and see you.”
“I’m afraid I’m not in her line — I never had on a dress in my life. But, as a charming woman, I should be delighted to see her.”
“I will bring her some day,” said Hyacinth. And then he added, rather incongruously, for he was irritated by the girl’s optimism, thinking it a shame that her sharpness should be enlisted on the wrong side, “Don’t you want, for yourself, a better place to live in?”
She jerked herself up, and for a moment he thought she would jump out of her bed at him. “A better place than this? Pray, how could there be a better place? Every one thinks it’s lovely; you should see our view by daylight — you should see everything I’ve got. Perhaps you are used to something very fine, but Lady Aurora says that in all Belgrave Square there isn’t such a cosy little room. If you think I’m not perfectly content, you are very much mistaken.”
Such a sentiment as that could only exasperate Hyacinth,-and his exasperation made him indifferent to the fact that he had appeared to cast discredit on Miss Muniment’s apartment. Pinnie herself, submissive as she was, had spared him that sort of displeasure; she groaned over the dinginess of Lomax Place sufficiently to remind him that she had not been absolutely stultified by misery. “Don’t you sometimes make your brother very angry?” he asked, smiling, of Rose Muniment.
“Angry? I don’t know what you take us for! I never saw him lose his temper in his life.”
“He must be a rum customer! Doesn’t he really care for — for what we were talking about?”
For a moment .Rosy was silent; then she replied, “What my brother really cares for — well, one of these days, when you know, you’ll tell me.”
Hyacinth stared. “But isn’t he tremendously deep in” — He hesitated.
“Deep in what?”
“Well, in what’s going on, beneath the surface. Doesn’t he belong to things?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what he belongs to — you may ask him!” cried Rosy, laughing gayly again, as the opening door readmitted the subject of their conversation. “You must have crossed the water with her ladyship,” she went on. “I wonder who enjoyed their walk most.”
“She’s a tidy old girl, and she has a goodish stride,” said the young man.
“I think she’s in love with you, simply, Mr. Muniment.”
“Really, my dear, for an admirer of the aristocracy you allow yourself a license,” Paul murmured, smiling at Hyacinth.
Hyacinth got up, feeling that really he had paid a long visit; his curiosity was far from satisfied, but there was a limit to the time one should spend in a young lady’s sleeping apartment. “Perhaps she is; why not?” he remarked.
“Perhaps she is, then; she’s daft enough for anything.”
“There have been fine folks before who have patted the people on the back and pretended to enter into their life,” Hyacinth said. “Is she only playing with that idea, or is she in earnest?”
“In earnest — in terrible earnest, my dear fellow. I think she must be rather crowded out at home.”
“Crowded out of Inglefield? Why there’s room for three hundred!” Rosy broke in.
“Well, if that’s the kind of mob that’s in possession, no wonder she prefers Lambeth. We must be kind to the poor lady,” Paul added, in a tone which Hyacinth noticed. He attributed a remarkable meaning to it; it seemed to say that people such as he were now so sure of their game that they could afford to be magnanimous; or be it expressed a prevision of the doom which hung over her ladyship’s head. Muniment asked if Hyacinth and Rosy had made friends, and the girl replied that Mr. Robinson had made himself very agreeable. “Then you must tell me all about him after he goes, for you know I don’t know him much myself,” said her brother.
“Oh, yes, I’ll tell you everything; you know how I like describing.”
Hyacinth was laughing to himself at the young lady’s account of his efforts to please her, the fact being that he had only listened to her own eager discourse, without opening his mouth; but Paul, whether or no he guessed the truth, said to him, very pertinently, “It’s very wonderful: she can describe things she has never seen. And they are just like the reality.”
“There’s nothing I’ve never seen,” Rosy rejoined. “That’s the advantage of my lying here in such a manner. I see everything in the world.”
“You don’t seem to see your brother’s meetings — his secret societies and clubs. You put that aside when I asked you.”
“Oh, you mustn’t ask her that sort of thing,” said Paul, lowering at Hyacinth with a fierce frown — an expression which he perceived in a moment to be humorously assumed.
“What am I to do, then, since you won’t tell me anything definite yourself?”
“It will be definite enough when you get hanged for it!” Rosy exclaimed, mockingly.
“Why do you want to poke your head into black holes?” Muniment asked, laying his hand on Hyacinth’s shoulder, and shaking it gently.
“Don’t you belong to the party of action?” said Hyacinth, solemnly.
“Look at the way he has picked up all the silly bits of catchwords!” Paul cried, laughing, to his sister. “You must have got that precious phrase out of the newspapers, out of some driveling leader. Is that the party you want to belong to?” he went on, with his clear eyes ranging up and down our hero’s few inches.
“If you’ll show me the thing itself I shall have no more occasion to mind the newspapers,” Hyacinth pleaded. It was his view of himself, and it was not an unfair one, that his was a character that would never beg for a favor; but now he felt that in any relation he might have with Paul Muniment such a law would be suspended. This man he could entreat, pray to, go on his knees to, without a sense of humiliation.
“What thing do you mean, infatuated, deluded youth?” Paul went on, refusing to be serious.
“Well, you know you do go to places you had far better keep out of, and that often when I lie here and listen to steps on the stairs I’m sure they are coming in to make a search for your papers,” Miss Muniment lucidly interposed.
“The day they find my papers, my dear, will be the day you’ll get up and dance.”
“What did you ask me to come home with you for?” Hyacinth demanded, twirling his hat. It was an effort for him, for a moment, to keep the tears out of his eyes; he found himself forced to put such a different construction on his new friend’s hospitality. He had had a happy impression that Muniment perceived in him a possible associate, of a high type, in a subterranean crusade against the existing order of things, and now it came over him that the real use he had been put to was to beguile an hour for a pert invalid.