THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA. Генри ДжеймÑ
Mrs. Bowerbank considered this a moment, as if it were rather a supersubtle argument, and then answered, quite in the spirit of her official pessimism, “There is one thing you may be sure of: whatever you decide to do, as soon as ever he grows up he will make you wish you had done the opposite.” Mrs. Bowerbank called it opposite.
“Oh, dear, then, I’m glad it will be a long time.”
“It will be ever so long, if once he gets it into his head! At any rate, you must do as you think best. Only, if you come, you mustn’t come when it’s all over.”
“It’s too impossible to decide.”
“It is, indeed,” said Mrs. Bowerbank, with superior consistency. And she seemed more placidly grim than ever when she remarked, gathering up her loosened shawl, that she was much obliged to Miss Pynsent for her civility, and had been quite freshened up: her visit had so completely deprived her hostess of that sort of calm. Miss Pynsent gave the fullest expression to her perplexity in the supreme exclamation:
“If you could only wait and see the child, I’m sure it would help you to judge!”
“My dear woman, I don’t want to judge — it’s none of our business!” Mrs. Bowerbank exclaimed; and she had no sooner uttered the words than the door of the room creaked open, and a small boy stood there, gazing at her. Her eyes rested on him a moment, and then, most unexpectedly, she gave an inconsequent cry. “Is that the child? Oh, Lord o’ mercy, don’t take him!”
“Now ain’t he shrinking and sensitive?” demanded Miss Pynsent, who had pounced upon him, and, holding him an instant at arm’s length, appealed eagerly to her visitor. “Ain’t he delicate and highbred, and wouldn’t he be thrown into a state?” Delicate as he might be. the little dressmaker shook him smartly for his naughtiness in being out of the way when he was wanted, and brought him to the big, square-faced, deep-voiced lady, who took up, as it were, all that side of the room. But Mrs. Bowerbank laid no hand upon him; she only dropped her gaze from a tremendous height, and her forbearance seemed a tribute to that fragility of constitution on which Miss Pynsent desired to insist; just as her continued gravity was an implication that this scrupulous woman might well not know what to do.
“Speak to the lady, nicely, and tell her you are very sorry to have kept her waiting.”
The child hesitated a moment, while he reciprocated Mrs. Bowerbank’s inspection, and then he said, with a strange, cool, conscious indifference (Miss Pynsent instantly recognized it as his aristocratic manner), “I don’t think she can have been in a very great hurry.”
There was irony in the words, for it is a remarkable fact that, even at the age of ten, Hyacinth Robinson was ironical; but the subject of his allusion, who was not nimble, withal, appeared not to interpret it; and she rejoined only by remarking, over his head, to Miss Pynsent, “It’s the very face of her over again!”
“Of her? But what do you say to Lord Frederick?”
“I have seen lords that wasn’t so dainty!”
Miss Pynsent had seen very few lords, but she entered, with a passionate thrill, into this generalization; controlling herself, however, for she remembered the child was tremendously sharp, sufficiently to declare, in an edifying tone, that he would look more like what he ought to, if his face were a little cleaner.
“It was probably Millicent Henning dirtied my face, when she kissed me,” the boy announced, with slow gravity, looking all the while at Mrs. Bowerbank. He exhibited not a symptom of shyness.
“Millicent Henning is a very bad little girl; she’ll come to no good,” said Miss Pynsent, with familiar decision, and also, considering that the young lady in question had been her effective messenger, with marked ingratitude.
Against this qualification the child instantly protested. “Why is she bad? I don’t think she is bad; I like her very much.” It came over him that he had too hastily shifted to her shoulders the responsibility of his unseemly appearance, and he wished to make up to her for that betrayal. He dimly felt that nothing but that particular accusation could have pushed him to it, for he hated people who were not fresh, who had smutches and streaks. Millicent Henning generally had two or three, which she borrowed from her doll, into whom she was always rubbing her nose, and whose dinginess was contagious. It was quite inevitable she should have left her mark under his own nose, when she claimed her reward for coming to tell him about the lady who wanted him.
Miss Pynsent held the boy against her knee, trying to present him so that Mrs. Bowerbank should agree with her about his having the air of race. He was exceedingly diminutive, even for his years, and though his appearance was not positively sickly, it seemed written in his attenuated little person that he would never be either tall or strong. His dark blue eyes were separated by a wide interval, which increased the fairness and sweetness of his face, and his abundant, curly hair, which grew thick and long, had the golden brownness predestined to elicit exclamations of delight from ladies when they take the inventory of a child. His features were smooth and pretty; his head was set upon a slim little neck; his expression, grave and clear, showed a quick perception as well as a great credulity; and he was altogether, in his innocent smallness, a refined and interesting figure.
“Yes, he’s one that would be sure to remember,” said Mrs. Bowerbank, mentally contrasting him with the undeveloped members of her own brood, who had never been retentive of anything but the halfpence which they occasionally contrived to filch from her. Her eyes descended to the details of his toilet: the careful mending of his short breeches and his long, colored stockings, which she was in a position to appreciate, as well as the knot of bright ribbon which the dressmaker had passed into his collar, slightly crumpled by Miss Henning’s embrace. Of course Miss Pynsent had only one to look after, but her visitor was obliged to recognize that she had the highest standard in respect to buttons. “And you do turn him out so it’s a pleasure,” she went on, noting the ingenious patches in the child’s shoes, which, to her mind, were repaired for all the world like those of a little nobleman.
“I’m sure you ‘re very civil,” said Miss Pynsent, in a state of severe exaltation. “There’s never a needle but mine has come near him. That’s exactly what I think: the impression would go so deep.”
“Do you want to see me only to look at me?” Hyacinth inquired, with a candor which, though unstudied, had again much of the force of satire.
“I’m sure it’s very kind of the lady to notice you at all!” cried his protectress, giving him an ineffectual jerk. “You ‘re no bigger than a flea; there are many that wouldn’t spy you out.”
“You’ll find he’s big enough, I expect, when he begins to go,” Mrs. Bowerbank remarked, tranquilly; and she added that now she saw how he was turned out she couldn’t but feel that the other side was to be considered. In her effort to be discreet, on account of his being present (and so precociously attentive), she became slightly enigmatical; but Miss Pynsent gathered her meaning, which was that it was very true the child would take everything in and keep it: but at the same time it was precisely his being so attractive that made it a kind of sin not to gratify the poor woman, who, if she knew what he looked like to-day, wouldn’t forgive his adoptive mamma for not producing him. “Certainly, in her place, I should go off easier if I had seen them curls,” Mrs. Bowerbank declared, with a flight of maternal imagination which brought her to her feet, while Miss Pynsent felt that she was leaving her dreadfully ploughed up, and without any really fertilizing seed having been sown. The little dressmaker packed the child upstairs to tidy himself for his tea, and while she accompanied her visitor to the door, told her that if she would have a little more patience with her, she would think, a day or two longer, what was best, and write to her when she should have decided. Mrs. Bowerbank continued to move in a realm superior to poor Miss Pynsent’s scruples and timidities, and her impartiality gave her hostess a high idea of her respectability; but the way was a little smoothed when, after Amanda had moaned once more, on the threshold, helplessly and irrelevantly, “Ain’t it a pity she’s so bad?” the ponderous lady from the prison rejoined, in those tones which seemed