THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA. Генри ДжеймÑ
fear, behind their barrels of wine and their heaps of gold!” cried M. Poupin, rolling terrible eyes.
“And in this country, I hope, in their coal-bins. La, la, we shall find them even there,” his wife remarked.
“‘89 was an irresistible force,” said M. Poupin. “I believe you would have thought so if you had been there.”
“And so was the coup d’etat, which sent you over here, seventeen years ago,” the young man rejoined. He saw that Hyacinth was watching him, and he met his eyes, smiling a little, in a way that added to our hero’s interest.
“Pardon, pardon, I resist!” cried Eustache Poupin, glaring, in his improvised nightcap, out of his sheets; and Madame repeated that they resisted — she believed well that they resisted! The young man burst out laughing; whereupon his host declared, with a dignity which even his recumbent position did not abate, that it was really frivolous of him to ask such questions as that, knowing as he did — what he did know.
“Yes, I know — I know,” said the young man. goodnaturedly, lowering his arms and thrusting his hands into his pockets, while he stretched his long legs a little. “But everything is yet to be tried.”
“Oh, the trial will be on a great scale — soyez tranquille! It will be one of those experiments that constitute a proof.”
Hyacinth wondered what they were talking about, and perceived that it must be something important, for the stranger was not a man who would take an interest in anything else. Hyacinth was immensely struck with him — he could see that he was remarkable — and felt slightly aggrieved that he should be a stranger; that is, that he should be, apparently, a familiar of Lisson Grove, and yet that M. Poupin should not have thought his young friend from Lomax Place worthy, up to this time, to be made acquainted with him. I know not to what degree the visitor in the other chair discovered these reflections in Hyacinth’s face, but after a moment, looking across at him, he said in a friendly yet just slightly diffident way, a way our hero liked, “And do you know, too?”
“Do I know what?” asked Hyacinth, wondering.
“Oh, if you did, you would!” the young man exclaimed, laughing again. Such a rejoinder, from any one else, would have irritated our sensitive hero, but it only made Hyacinth more curious about his interlocutor, whose laugh was loud and extraordinarily gay.
“Man ami, you ought to present ces messieurs,” Madame Poupin remarked.
“Ah pa, is that the way you trifle with state secrets?” her husband cried out, without heeding her. Then he went on, in a different tone: “M. Hyacinthe is a gifted child, un enfant tres-doue, in whom I take a tender interest — a child who has an account to settle. Oh, a thumping big one! Isn’t it so, mon petit?”
This was very well meant, but it made Hyacinth blush, and, without knowing exactly what to say, he murmured, shyly, “Oh, I only want them to let me alone!”
“He is very young,” said Eustache Poupin.
“He is the person we have seen in this country whom we like the best,” his wife added.
“Perhaps you are French,” suggested the strange young man.
The trio seemed to Hyacinth to be waiting for his answer to this; it was as if a listening stillness had fallen upon them. He found it a difficult moment, partly because there was something exciting and embarrassing in the attention of the other visitor, and partly because he had never yet had to decide that important question. He didn’t really know whether he were French or English, or which of the two he should prefer to be. His mother’s blood, her suffering in an alien land, the unspeakable, impenetrable misery that consumed her, in a place, among a people, she must have execrated — all this made him French; yet he was conscious at the same time of qualities that didn’t mix with it. He had evolved, long ago, a legend about his mother, built it up slowly, adding piece to piece, in passionate musings and broodings, when his cheeks burned and his eyes filled; but there were times when it wavered and faded, when it ceased to console him and he ceased to trust it. He had had a father, too, and his father had suffered as well, and had fallen under a blow, and had paid with his life; and him also he felt in his mind and his body, when the effort to think it out did not simply end in darkness and confusion, challenging still even while they baffled, and inevitable freezing horror. At any rate, he seemed rooted in the place where his wretched parents had expiated, and he knew nothing about any other. Moreover, when old Poupin said, “M. Hyacinthe,” as he had often done before, he didn’t altogether enjoy it; he thought it made his name, which he liked well enough in English, sound like the name of a hairdresser. Our young friend was overclouded and stigmatized, but he was not yet prepared to admit that he was ridiculous. “Oh, I dare say I ain’t anything,” he replied in a moment.
“En v’la des betises!” cried Madame Poupin. “Do you mean to say you are not as good as any one in the world? I should like to see!”
“We all have an account to settle, don’t you know?” said the strange young man.
He evidently meant this to be encouraging to Hyacinth, whose quick desire to avert M. Poupin’s allusions had not been lost upon him; but our hero could see that he himself would be sure to be one of the first to be paid. He would make society bankrupt, but he would be paid. He was tall and fair and goodnatured looking, but you couldn’t tell — or at least Hyacinth couldn’t — whether he were handsome or ugly, with his large head and square forehead, his thick, straight hair, his heavy mouth and rather vulgar nose, his admirably clear, bright eye, light-colored and set very deep; for though there was a want of fineness in some of its parts, his face had a marked expression of intelligence and resolution, and denoted a kind of joyous moral health. He was dressed like a workman in his Sunday toggery, having evidently put on his best to call in Lisson Grove, where he was to meet a lady, and wearing in particular a necktie which was both cheap and pretentious, and of which Hyacinth, who noticed everything of that kind, observed the crude, false blue. He had very big shoes — the shoes, almost, of a country laborer — and spoke with a provincial accent, which Hyacinth believed to be that of Lancashire. This didn’t suggest cleverness, but it didn’t prevent Hyacinth from perceiving that he was the reverse of stupid; that he probably, indeed, had a tremendous head. Our little hero had a great desire to know clever people, and he interested himself on the spot in this strong, humorous fellow, who had the complexion of a ploughboy and the glance of a commander-in-chief, and who might have been (Hyacinth thought) a distinguished young savant in the disguise of an artisan. The disguise would have been very complete, for he had several brown stains on his fingers. Hyacinth’s curiosity, on this occasion, was both excited and gratified; for after two or three allusions, which he didn’t understand, had been made to a certain place where Poupin and the stranger had met and expected to meet again, Madame Poupin exclaimed that it was a shame not to take in M. Hyacinthe, who, she would answer for it, had in him the making of one of the pure. “All in good time, in good time, ma bonne” the invalid replied. “M. Hyacinthe knows that I count upon him, whether or no I make him an interne to-day, or wait a while longer.”
“What do you mean by an interne?” Hyacinth asked.
“Mon Dieu, what shall I say?” and Eustache Poupin stared at him solemnly, from his pillow. “You are very sympathetic, but I am afraid you are too young.”
“One is never too young to contribute one’s obole,” said Madame Poupiu.
“Can you keep a secret?” asked the other visitor, smilingly.
“Is it a plot — a conspiracy?” Hyacinth broke out.
“He asks that as if he were asking if it’s a plum-pudding,” said M. Poupin. “It isn’t good to eat, and we don’t do it for our amusement. It’s terribly serious, my child.”
“It’s a kind of society, to which he and I and a good many others belong. There is no harm in telling him that,” the young man went on.
“I advise you not to tell it to Mademoiselle; she is quite in the old ideas,” Madame Poupin suggested