Paul Muniment had fits of silence while the others were talking; but
on this occasion he had not opened his lips for half an hour. When he
talked Hyacinth listened almost to the retention of breath, and when he
said nothing watched him fixedly, listening to the others only through
the medium of his candid countenance. At the “Sun and Moon” Muniment
paid very little attention to his young friend, doing nothing that
should cause it to be perceived they were particular pals; and Hyacinth
even divined him at moments bored or irritated by the serious manner
in which his small worrying bookbinder couldn’t conceal from the world
that he regarded him. He wondered if this were a system, a calculated
prudence, on Muniment’s part, or only a manifestation of the superior
brutality latent in his composition and which, without an intention of
direct harshness, was naturally impatient of palaver. There was plenty
of palaver at the “Sun and Moon”; there were nights when a blast of
imbecility seemed to blow over the place and one felt ashamed to be
associated with so much crude fatuity and flat-faced vanity. Then every
one, with two or three exceptions, made an ass of himself, thumping
the table and repeating over some inane phrase which appeared for the
hour to constitute the whole furniture of his mind. There were men who
kept saying, “Them was my words in the month of February last, and what
I say I stick to—what I say I stick to”; and others who perpetually
inquired of the company, “And what the plague am I to do with seventeen
bob—with seventeen bloody bob? What am I to do with them—will ye tell
me that?” an interrogation which in truth usually ended by producing
a ribald reply. There were still others who remarked to satiety that
if it was not done to-day it would have to be done to-morrow, and
several who constantly proclaimed their opinion that the only way
was to pull up the Park rails again, just to haul ’em straight up. A
little shoemaker with red eyes and a greyish face, whose appearance
Hyacinth deplored, scarcely ever expressed himself but in the same form
of words: “Well, are we in earnest or ain’t we in earnest?—that’s the
thing _I_ want to know.” He was terribly in earnest himself, but this
was almost the only way he had of showing it; and he had much in common
(though they were always squabbling) with a large red-faced man, of
uncertain attributes and stertorous breathing, who was understood to
know a good deal about dogs, had fat hands and wore on his forefinger
a big silver ring containing some one’s hair—Hyacinth believed it to
be that of a terrier snappish in life. He had always the same refrain:
“Well now are we just starving or ain’t we just starving? I should like
the v’ice of the company on that question.”
When the tone fell as low as this Paul Muniment held his peace save for
whistling a little and leaning back with his hands in his pockets and
his eyes on the table. Hyacinth often supposed him to be on the point
of breaking out and letting the company know what he thought of them—he
had a perfectly clear vision of what he must think: but Muniment never
compromised his popularity to that degree; he judged it—this he once
told his young comrade—too valuable a weapon, so that he cultivated the
faculty of patience, which had the advantage of showing one more and
more that one must do one’s thinking for one’s self. His popularity
indeed struck Hyacinth as rather an uncertain amount, and the only
mistake he had seen a symptom of on his friend’s part was a tendency
to overestimate it. Muniment thought many of their colleagues asinine,
but it was Hyacinth’s belief that he himself knew still better how
asinine they were; and this inadequate conception supported in some
degree on Paul’s part his theory of his influence—an influence that
would be stronger than any other on the day he should choose to exert
it. Hyacinth only wished that day would come; it wouldn’t be till
then, he was sure, that they would all know where they were and that
the good they were striving for, blindly, obstructedly, in a kind of
eternal dirty intellectual fog, would pass from the stage of crude
discussion and mere sore, sharp, tantalising desirableness into that
of solid, seated reality. Muniment was listened to unanimously when
he spoke and much talked about, usually with a knowing, implicit
allusiveness, when he was absent; it was generally admitted he could
see further than most. But it was suspected he wanted to see further
than was necessary; as one of the most inveterate frequenters of
the club remarked one evening, if a man could see as far as he could
’eave a brick this was far enough. There was an idea he had nothing
particular to complain of personally, or perhaps that if he had he
didn’t complain of it—an attitude which could only contain the germs
of a latent disaffection. Hyacinth was aware of being himself exposed
to the same imputation; but he couldn’t help it—it would have been
impossible to him to keep up his character for sincerity by revealing
at the “Sun and Moon” the condition of his wardrobe or by announcing
that he hadn’t had a penn’orth of bacon for six months. There were
members of the club who were apparently always in the enjoyment of
involuntary leisure—narrating the vainest peregrinations in search of a
job, the cruellest rebuffs, the most vivid anecdotes of the insolence
of office. They made Hyacinth uncomfortably conscious at times that
if _he_ should be out of work it would be wholly by his own fault;
that he held in his hand a fine bread-winning tool on which he might
absolutely count. He was also not unadvised, however, that his position
in this little band of malcontents (it was small only if measured
by the numbers gathered on any one occasion; he liked to think it
large in its latent possibilities, its mysterious ramifications and
affiliations) was peculiar and distinguished: it would be favourable
if he should develop the kind of energy and assurance that would help
him to make use of it. He had an intimate conviction—the proof of it
was in the air, in the sensible facility of his footing at the “Sun
and Moon”—that Eustache Poupin had taken on himself to disseminate the
anecdote of his origin, of his mother’s disaster; in consequence of
which, as the victim of social infamy, of heinous laws, it was conceded
to him that he had a larger account to settle even than most. He was
_ab ovo_ a revolutionist, and that balanced against his smart neckties,
a certain suspicious security that was perceived in him as to the _h_
(he had had from his earliest years a natural command of it) and the
fact that he possessed the sort of hand on which there is always a
premium—an accident somehow to be guarded against in a thorough-going
system of equality. He never challenged Poupin on the subject, for he
owed the Frenchman too much to reproach him with any officious step
that was meant in kindness; and, moreover, his fellow-labourer at old
Crook’s had said to him, as if to anticipate such an impugnment of
his discretion: “Remember, my child, that I’m incapable of drawing
aside any veil that you may have preferred to drop over your lacerated
personality. Your moral dignity will always be safe with me. But
remember at the same time that among the disinherited there’s a mystic
language which dispenses with proofs—a freemasonry, a reciprocal
divination: they understand each other at half a word.” It was at half
a word then in Bloomsbury that Hyacinth had been understood; but there
was a certain delicacy in him that forbade him to push his advantage,
to treat implications of sympathy, none the less definite for being
awkward and obscure, as steps in the ladder of success. He had no wish
to be a leader because his mother had murdered her lover and died
in penal servitude: these circumstances recommended intentness, but
they also imposed modesty. When the gathering at the “Sun and Moon”
was at its best and its temper seemed really an earnest of what was
the basis of all its calculations—that the people was only a sleeping
lion, already breathing shorter and beginning to stretch its limbs
and stiffen its claws—at these hours, some of them thrilling enough,
Hyacinth waited for the voice that should allot him the particular part
he was to play. His ambition was to play it with brilliancy, to offer
an example—an example even that might survive him—of pure youthful,
almost juvenile, consecration. He was conscious of no commission to
give the promises, to assume the responsibilities, of a redeemer, and
he had no envy of the man on whom this burden should rest. Muniment
indeed might carry it, and it was the first article of his faith
that to help him to carry it the better he himself was ready for any
sacrifice. Then it was—on these nights of intenser vibration—that he
waited for the sacred sign.
They came oftener this second winter, for the season was terribly
hard; and as in that lower world one walked with one’s ear nearer the
ground the deep perpetual groan of London misery seemed to swell and
swell and form the whole undertone of life. The filthy air reached
the place in the damp coats of silent men and hung there till it was
brewed to a nauseous warmth, and ugly serious faces squared themselves
through it, and strong-smelling pipes contributed their element in a
fierce dogged manner which appeared to say that it now had to stand
for everything—for bread and meat and beer, for shoes and blankets
and the poor things at the pawnbroker’s and the smokeless chimney at
home. Hyacinth’s colleagues affected him as wiser then, as more richly
permeated with intentions boding ill to the satisfied classes; and
though the note of popularity was still most effectively struck by
the man who could demand oftenest, unpractically, “What the hell am I
to do with half a quid?” it was brought home to our hero on more than
one occasion that revolution was ripe at last. This was especially
the case on the evening I began by referring to, when Eustache Poupin
squeezed in and announced, as if it were a great piece of news, that
in the east of London that night there were forty thousand men out of
work. He looked round the circle with his dilated foreign eye as he
took his place: he seemed to address the company individually as well
as collectively and to make each man responsible for hearing him. He
owed his position at the “Sun and Moon” to the brilliancy with which
he represented the political exile, the magnanimous immaculate citizen
wrenched out of bed at dead of night, torn from his hearthstone, his
loved ones and his profession and hurried across the frontier with only
the coat on his back. Poupin had performed in this character now for
many years, but had never lost the bloom of the outraged proscript,
and the passionate pictures he had often drawn of the bitterness of
exile were moving even to those who knew with what success he had set
up his household gods in Lisson Grove. He was recognised as suffering
everything for his opinions; and his hearers in Bloomsbury, who even
in their most infuriated hours felt as Britons, appeared never to have
made the subtle reflexion, though they made many others, that there
was a want of tact in his calling on them to sympathise with him for
being one of themselves. He imposed himself by the eloquence of his
assumption that if one were not in the beautiful supreme France one was
nowhere worth speaking of, and ended by producing an impression that
that country had a quite supernatural charm. Muniment had once said
to Hyacinth that he was sure Poupin would be very sorry to be enabled
to go home again (as he really might from one week to the other,
the Republic being so indulgent and the amnesty to the Communards
constantly extended) for over there he couldn’t be a refugee; and
however this might be he certainly flourished a good deal in London on
the basis of this very fact that he so suffered from it.
“Why do you tell us that as if it was so very striking? Don’t we know
it and haven’t we known it always? But you’re right; we behave as if
we knew nothing at all,” said Mr. Schinkel, the German cabinet-maker
who had originally introduced Captain Sholto to the “Sun and Moon.” He
had a long, unhealthy, benevolent face and greasy hair, and constantly
wore an untidy bandage round his neck, as if for a local ailment. “You
remind us—that’s very well; but we shall forget it in half an hour.
We’re not serious.”
“_Pardon, pardon_; for myself I don’t admit that!” Poupin replied,
striking the table with his finger-tips several times, very fast. “If
I’m not serious I’m nothing.”
“Oh no, you’re something,” said the German, smoking his monumental pipe
with a contemplative air. “We’re all something, but I’m not sure it’s
anything very useful.”
“Well, things would be worse without us. I’d jolly rather be in
here, in _this_ kind of muck, than outside,” remarked the fat man who
understood dogs.
“Certainly, it’s very pleasant, especially if you’ve your beer; but
not so pleasant over there at the Docks, where fifty thousand people
starve. It’s a very unpleasant night,” the cabinet-maker went on.
“How can it be worse?” Eustache Poupin asked while he looked at the
German as to make him responsible for the fat man’s reflexion. “It’s so
bad that the imagination recoils, refuses—!”
“Oh, we don’t care for the imagination!” the fat man declared. “We want
a compact body in marching order.”
“What do you call a compact body?” the little grey-faced shoemaker
demanded. “I daresay you don’t mean your kind of body.”
“Well, I know what I mean,” said the fat man severely.
“That’s a grand thing. Perhaps one of these days you’ll tell us.”
“You’ll see it for yourself perhaps, before that day comes,” the
gentleman with the silver ring rejoined. “Perhaps when you do you’ll
remember.”
“Well, you know, Schinkel says we don’t,” said the shoemaker, nodding
at the cloud-compelling German.
“I don’t care a bloody rap what no man says!” the dog-fancier
exclaimed, gazing straight before him.
“They say it’s a bad year—the blockheads in the newspapers,” Mr.
Schinkel went on, addressing himself to the company at large. “They say
that on purpose—to convey the impression that there are such things as
good years. I ask the company, has any gentleman present ever happened
to notice that article? The good year’s yet to come: it might begin
to-night, if we like: it all depends on our being able to be serious
for a few hours. But that’s too much to expect. Mr. Muniment’s very
serious; he looks as if he was waiting for the signal, but he doesn’t
speak—he never speaks if I want particularly to hear him. He only
deliberates very deeply—oh I’m sure. But it’s almost as bad to think
without speaking as to speak without thinking.”
Hyacinth always admired the cool, easy way in which Muniment comported
himself when the attention of the public was directed at him. These
manifestations of curiosity or of hostility would have put him out
immensely himself. When a lot of people, especially the kind of people
collected at the “Sun and Moon,” looked at him or listened to him all
at once, he always blushed and stammered, feeling that if he couldn’t
have a million of spectators (which would have been inspiring) he
should prefer to have but two or three; there was something rather
awful in twenty.
Muniment smiled an instant good-humouredly; then after a moment’s
hesitation, looking across at the German and the German only, as if his
remark were worth noticing but it didn’t matter if the others didn’t
understand the reply, he said simply: “Hoffendahl’s in London.”
“Hoffendahl? _Gott in Himmel!_” the cabinet-maker exclaimed, taking the
pipe out of his mouth. And the two men exchanged a longish glance. Then
Mr. Schinkel remarked: “That surprises me, _sehr_. Are you very sure?”
Muniment continued for a little to look at him. “If I keep quiet half
an hour, with so many valuable suggestions flying all round me, you
think I say too little. Then if I open my head to give out three words
you appear to think I say too much.”
“Ah no, on the contrary—I want you to say three more. If you tell me
you’ve seen him I shall be perfectly satisfied.”
“Upon my word I should hope so! Do you think he’s the kind of bloke a
fellow says he has seen?”
“Yes, when he hasn’t!” said Eustache Poupin, who had been listening.
Every one was listening now.
“It depends on the fellow he says it to. Not even here?” the German
asked.
“Oh here!” Paul Muniment exclaimed in a peculiar tone while he resumed
his muffled whistle again.
“Take care—take care; you’ll make me think you haven’t!” cried Poupin
with his excited expression.
“That’s just what I want,” said Muniment.
“_Nun_, I understand,” the cabinet-maker remarked, restoring his pipe
to his lips after an interval almost as momentous as the stoppage of a
steamer in mid-ocean.
“_’Ere_, ’ere?” repeated the small shoemaker indignantly. “I daresay
it’s as good as the place he came from. He might look in and see what
he thinks of it.”
“That’s a place you might tell us a little about now,” the fat man
suggested as if he had been waiting for his chance.
Before the shoemaker had time to notice this challenge some one
inquired with a hoarse petulance who the bloody blazes they were
talking about; and Mr. Schinkel took upon himself to reply that they
were talking about a man who hadn’t done what he had done by simply
exchanging abstract ideas, however valuable, with his friends in a
respectable pot-house.
“What the devil has he done then?” some one else demanded; and Muniment
replied quietly that he had spent twelve years in a Prussian prison
and was consequently still an object of a good deal of interest to the
police.
“Well, if you call that very useful I must say I prefer a pot-house!”
cried the shoemaker, appealing to all the company and looking, as it
appeared to Hyacinth, particularly hideous.
“_Doch, doch_, it’s useful,” the German remarked philosophically among
his yellow clouds.
“Do you mean to say you’re not prepared for that yourself?” Muniment
asked of the shoemaker.
“Prepared for that? I thought we were going to smash that sort of shop
altogether; I thought that was the main part of the job.”
“They’ll smash best who’ve been inside,” the German said; “unless
they’ve only gone bad, like fish too long caught. But Hoffendahl’s all
there yet.”
“Ah no; no smashing, no smashing of any valuable property,” Muniment
went on. “There are no wrong places—there are only wrong uses for them.
We want to keep them standing and even to put up a few more; but the
difference will be that we shall put the correct sort into them.”
“I take your idea—that Griffin’s one of the correct sort,” the fat man
remarked, indicating the shoemaker.
“I thought we was going to ’ave their ’eads—all that bloomin’ lot!”
Mr. Griffin protested; while Eustache Poupin began to enlighten the
company as to the great Hoffendahl, one of the purest martyrs of their
cause, a man who had been through everything—who had been scarred and
branded, tortured, almost flayed, and had never given his would-be
butchers the names they wanted. Was it possible they didn’t remember
that great combined assault, early in the sixties, which took place in
four Continental cities at once and which in spite of every effort to
smother it up—there had been editors and journalists transported even
for hinting at it—had done more for the social question than anything
before or since? “Through ’im being served in the manner you describe?”
some one asked with plainness; to which Poupin replied that it was one
of those failures that are more glorious than any success. Muniment
said that the affair had been only a flash in the pan, but that the
great value of it was this—that whereas some forty persons (and of
both sexes) had been engaged in it, only one had been seized and had
suffered. It had been Hoffendahl himself who was collared. Certainly
he had suffered much, he had suffered for every one; but from that
point of view—that of the economy of material—the thing had been a rare
success.
“Do you know what I call the others? I call ’em bloody sneaks!” the
fat man cried; and Eustache Poupin, turning to Muniment, expressed
the hope that he didn’t really approve of such a solution—didn’t
consider that an economy of heroism was an advantage to any cause.
He himself esteemed Hoffendahl’s attempt because it had shaken, more
than anything—except of course the Commune—had shaken it since the
French Revolution, the rotten fabric of the actual social order, and
because that very fact of the impunity, the invisibility of the persons
concerned in it had given the predatory classes, had given all Europe,
a shudder that had not yet subsided; but for his part, he must regret
that some of the associates of the devoted victim had not come forward
and insisted on sharing with him his tortures and his captivity.
“_Ç’aurait été d’un bel exemple!_” said the Frenchman with an
impressive moderation of statement which made even those who
couldn’t understand him see he was saying something fine; while the
cabinet-maker observed that in Hoffendahl’s place any of them would
have stood out just the same. He didn’t care if they set it down to
self-love (Mr. Schinkel called it “loaf”) but he might say that he
himself would have done so if he had been trusted and had been bagged.
“I want to have it all drawn up clear first; then I’ll go in,” said the
fat man, who seemed to think it was expected of him to be reassuring.
“Well, who the dickens is to draw it up, eh? That’s what we happen to
be talking about,” returned his antagonist the shoemaker.
“A fine example, old man? Is that your idea of a fine example?”
Muniment, with his amused face, asked of Poupin. “A fine example of
asininity! Are there capable people, in such plenty, about the place?”
“Capable of greatness of soul, I grant you not.”
“Your greatness of soul is usually greatness of blundering. A man’s
foremost duty is not to get collared. If you want to show you’re
capable, that’s the way.”
At this Hyacinth suddenly felt himself moved to speak. “But some one
must be caught always, must he not? Hasn’t some one always been?”
“Oh, I daresay you’ll be if you like it!” Muniment replied without
looking at him. “If they succeed in potting you, do as Hoffendahl
did, and do it as a matter of course; but if they don’t, make it your
supreme duty, make it your religion, to lie close and keep yourself for
another go. The world’s full of unclean beasts whom I shall be glad to
see shovelled away by the thousand; but when it’s a question of honest
men and men of courage I protest against the idea that two should be
sacrificed where one will serve.”
“_Trop d’arithmétique—trop d’arithmétique!_—That’s fearfully English!”
Poupin cried.
“No doubt, no doubt; what else should it be? You shall never share my
fate if I have a fate and I can prevent it!” Muniment laughed.
Poupin stared at him and his coarse mirth, as if he thought the English
frivolous as well as calculating; then he rejoined: “If I suffer I
trust it may be for suffering humanity, but I trust it may also be for
France.”
“Oh, I hope you ain’t going to suffer any more for France,” said Mr.
Griffin. “Hasn’t it done that insatiable old country of yours some good
by this time, all you’ve had to put up with?”
“Well, I want to know what Hoffendahl has come over for; it’s very
kind of him, I’m sure. What’s he going to do for _us_?—that’s what _I_
want to know,” brought out in a loud argumentative tone a personage at
the end of the table most distant from Muniment’s place. His name was
Delancey and he gave himself out as holding a position in a manufactory
of soda-water; but Hyacinth had a secret belief that he was really a
hairdresser—a belief connected with a high lustrous curl or crest which
he wore on the summit of his large head, as well as with the manner in
which he thrust over his ear, as if it were a barber’s comb, the pencil
addressed to his careful note-taking on the discussions conducted
at the “Sun and Moon.” His opinions were distinct and frequently
expressed; he had a watery (Muniment had once called it a soda-watery)
eye and a personal aversion to a lord. He desired to change everything
except religion, of which he approved.
Muniment answered that he was unable to say as yet what the German
revolutionist had come to England for, but that he hoped to be able to
give some information on the matter the next time they should meet.
It was very certain Hoffendahl hadn’t come for nothing, and he would
undertake to declare that they would all feel within a short time that
he had given a lift to the cause they had at heart. He had had a great
experience, which they might very well find it useful to appeal to.
If there was a way for them then and there he would be sure to know
the way. “I quite agree with the majority of you—as I take it to be,”
Muniment went on in his fresh, cheerful, reasonable manner—“I quite
agree with you that the time has come to settle upon it and to follow
it. I quite agree with you that the actual state of things is”—he
paused a moment and then went on in the same pleasant tone—“is infamous
and hellish.”
These remarks were received with a differing demonstration: some of
the company declaring that if the Dutchman cared to come round and
smoke a pipe they’d be glad to see him—perhaps he’d show where the
thumbscrews had been put on; others being strongly of the opinion that
they didn’t want any more advice—they had already had advice enough
to turn a donkey’s stomach. What they wanted was to put forth their
might without any more palaver; to do for something or for some one;
to go out somewhere and smash something on the spot—why not?—smash
it that very night. While they sat still and talked there were about
half a million of people in London that didn’t know where the hell the
morrow’s meal was to come from; what they wanted to do, unless they
were just a collection of pettifogging old women, was to show them
where to get it, to take it to them with heaped-up hands. Hyacinth
listened, with a divided attention, to interlaced iterations, while the
talk blew hot and cold; there was a genuine emotion, a quick pulse of
high fever, to-night in the rear of the “Sun and Moon,” and he felt the
contagion of excited purpose. But he was following a train of his own;
he was wondering what Muniment had in reserve (for certainly Paul but
played with the company), and his imagination, quickened by the sense
of impending relations with the heroic Hoffendahl and the discussion
as to the alternative duty of escaping or of facing one’s fate, had
launched itself into possible perils—into the idea of how he might in a
given case settle for himself that question of paying for the lot. The
loud, contradictory, vain, unpractical babble went on about him, but
he was definitely conscious only that the project of breaking into the
bakers’ shops was well before the assembly and was receiving a vigorous
treatment, and that there was likewise a good deal of reference to
the butchers and grocers and even to the fishmongers. He was in a
state of inward exaltation, possessed by an intense desire to stand
face to face with the sublime Hoffendahl, to hear his voice and touch
his mutilated hand. He was ready for anything: he knew he was himself
safe to breakfast and dine, if poorly still sufficiently, and that his
colleagues were perhaps even more crude and clumsy than usual; but a
breath of popular passion had warmed his cheek and his heart, and he
seemed to see, immensely magnified, the monstrosity of the great ulcers
and sores of London—the sick, eternal misery crying out of the darkness
in vain, confronted with granaries and treasure-houses and places of
delight where shameless satiety kept guard. In such a mood as this he
felt there was no need to consider, to reason: the facts themselves
were as imperative as the cry of the drowning, since while pedantry
gained time didn’t starvation and anguish gain it too? He knew Muniment
disapproved of delay, that he held the day had come for a forcible
rectification of horrible inequalities. In the last conversation they
had had together his judicious friend had given him a more definite
warrant than ever before for numbering him in the party of immediate
action, though indeed he remarked on this occasion, once more, that
that particular formula the little bookbinder appeared to have taken
such a fancy to was mere gibberish. He hated this sort of pretentious
label; it was fit only for politicians and amateurs. None the less he
had been as plain as possible on the point that their game must be now
to frighten society, and frighten it effectually; to make it believe
that the swindled classes were at last fairly in league—had really
grasped the idea that, closely combined, they would be irresistible.
They were not in league and they hadn’t in their totality grasped
any idea at all—Muniment was not slow to make that equally plain.
All the same society was scareable, and every great scare was a gain
for the people. If Hyacinth had needed warrant to-night for a faith
transcending logic he would have found it in his recall of this quiet
profession; but his friend’s words came back to him mainly to make him
wonder what that friend had in his head just now. He took no part in
any vociferation; he had called Schinkel to come round and sit beside
him, and the two appeared to confer together in honest ease while the
brown atmosphere grew denser, the passing to and fro of firebrands more
lively and the flush of faces more portentous. What Hyacinth would
have liked to know most of all was why Muniment had not mentioned to
him first that Hoffendahl was in London and that he had seen him;
for he _had_ seen him, though he had dodged Schinkel’s question—of
that Hyacinth instantly felt sure. He would ask for more information
later; and meanwhile he wished, without resentment, but with a patient
conscious ache, that Muniment would treat him with a little more
confidence. If there were a secret in regard to Hoffendahl—and there
evidently was: Muniment, quite rightly, though he had dropped the
announcement of his arrival for a certain effect, had no notion of
sharing the rest of what he knew with that raw roomful—if there were
something to be silent and devoted about Hyacinth ardently hoped that
to him in particular would a chance be given to show how he could
practise this superiority. He felt hot and nervous; he got up suddenly
and, through the dark tortuous greasy passage communicating with the
outer world, went forth into the street. The air was foul and sleety
but refreshed him, and he stood in front of the public-house and smoked
another pipe. Bedraggled figures passed in and out and a damp tattered
wretched man with a spongy purple face, who had been thrust suddenly
across the threshold, stood and whimpered in the brutal blaze of the
row of lamps. The puddles glittered roundabout and the silent vista
of the street, bordered with low black houses, stretched away in the
wintry drizzle to right and left, losing itself in the huge tragic city
where unmeasured misery lurked beneath the dirty night, ominously,
monstrously still, only howling, for its pain, in the heated human
cockpit behind him. Ah what could he do? What opportunity would rise?
The blundering divided counsels he had been listening to but made the
helplessness of every one concerned more abject. If he had a definite
wish while he stood there it was that that exalted deluded company
should pour itself forth with Muniment at its head and surge through
the sleeping world and gather the myriad miserable out of their slums
and burrows, should roll into the selfish squares and lift a tremendous
hungry voice and awaken the gorged indifferent to a terror that would
bring them down. He lingered a quarter of an hour, but this grand
treat gave no sign of coming off, and he finally returned to the noisy
club-room in a state of tormented wonder as to what better idea than
this very bad one (which seemed to our young man to have at the least
the merit that it was an idea) Muniment could be revolving in that
too-comprehensive brain of his.
As he re-entered the place he saw the meeting was breaking up in
disorder, or at all events in confusion, and that certainly no
organised attempt at the rescue of any number of victims would take
place that night. All the men were on their feet and were turning away
amid a shuffle of benches and chairs, a hunch of shabby shoulders,
a frugal abatement of flaring gas and a varied vivacity of disgust
and resignation. The moment after Hyacinth came in Mr. Delancey, the
supposititious hairdresser, jumped upon a chair at the far end of the
room and shrieked out an accusation which made every one stop and stare
at him.
“Well, I want you all to know what strikes me before we part company.
There isn’t a man in the blessed lot of you that isn’t afraid of his
bloody skin—afraid, afraid, afraid! I’ll go anywhere with any one,
but there isn’t another, by G—, by what I can make out! There isn’t a
mother’s son of you that’ll risk his precious bones!”
This little oration affected Hyacinth like a quick blow in the face:
it seemed to leap at him personally, as if a three-legged stool or
some hideous hob-nailed boot had been shied at him. The room surged
round, heaving up and down, while he was conscious of a loud explosion
of laughter and scorn, of cries of “Order, order!” of some clear word
of Muniment’s, “I say, Delancey, just step down”; of Eustache Poupin
shouting out, “_Vous insultez le peuple—vous insultez le peuple!_” of
other retorts not remarkable for refinement. The next moment he found
he had himself sprung up on a chair opposite the barber and that at
the sight of so prompt a display the commotion had suddenly turned to
almost amused suspense. It was the first time he had asked the ear of
the company, which was given on the spot. He was sure he looked very
white—it was even possible they could see him tremble. He could only
hope this didn’t make him ridiculous when he said: “I don’t think it’s
right of him to say that. There are others besides him. At all events I
want to speak for myself: it may do some good; I can’t help it. I’m not
afraid; I’m very sure I’m not. I’m ready to do anything that will do
any good; anything, anything—I don’t care a damned rap. In such a cause
I should like the idea of danger. I don’t consider my bones precious
in the least, compared with some other things. If one’s sure one isn’t
afraid, and one’s accused, why shouldn’t one say so?”
It appeared to him he was talking a long time and when it was over
he scarcely knew what happened. He felt himself in a moment down
almost under the feet of the other men; stamped upon with intentions
of applause, of familiarity; laughed over and jeered over, hustled
and poked in the ribs. He felt himself also pressed to the bosom of
Eustache Poupin, who apparently was sobbing, while he heard some one
say, “Did ye hear the little bloody beggar, as bold as a lion?” A
trial of personal prowess between him and Mr. Delancey was proposed,
but somehow it didn’t take place, and at the end of five minutes the
club-room had emptied itself, yet clearly not to be reconstituted
outside in a revolutionary procession. Paul Muniment had taken hold of
him and said, “I’ll trouble you to stay, you small desperado: I’ll be
blowed if I ever expected to see _you_ on the stump!” Muniment remained
and M. Poupin and Mr. Schinkel lingered, donning overcoats, beneath a
dim surviving gas-burner in the unventilated medium in which at each
renewed gathering the Bloomsbury club seemed to recognise itself.
“Upon my life I believe you’re game,” said Muniment, looking down at
him with a serious face.
“Of course you think it’s swagger, ‘self-loaf’ as Schinkel says. But it
isn’t.” Then Hyacinth asked: “In God’s name why don’t we do something?”
“Ah my child, to whom do you say it?” Eustache Poupin exclaimed,
folding his arms despairingly.
“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” said Muniment.
“All the lot of us. There are plenty of them ready.”
“Ready for what? There’s nothing to be done here.”
Hyacinth stared. “Then why the deuce do you come?”
“I daresay I shan’t come much more. It’s a place in which you’ve always
seen too much.”
“I wonder if I’ve seen too much in you,” Hyacinth risked, gazing at his
friend.
“Don’t say that—he’s going to introduce us to Hoffendahl!” Schinkel
exclaimed, putting away his pipe in a receptacle almost as large as a
fiddle-case.
“Should you like to see the right man, Robinson, that is the real
thing?” Muniment asked with the same rare grave sound.
“The real thing?” Hyacinth looked from one of his companions to the
other.
“You’ve never seen it yet—though you think you have.”
“And why haven’t you shown it me before?”
“Because I had never seen you on the stump.” This was more lightly said.
“Bother the stump! I was trusting you.”
“Exactly so. That gave me time.”
“Don’t come unless your mind’s made up, _mon petit_,” said Poupin.
“Are you going now—and to see Hoffendahl? Is _he_ the right man?”
Hyacinth cried.
“Don’t shout it all over the place. He wants a perfect little
gentleman, and if you’re not one—!” Muniment went on.
“Is it true? Are we all going?” Hyacinth eagerly went on.
“Yes, these two are in it. They’re not very wise, but they’re decent,”
said Muniment, looking at Poupin and Schinkel.
“Are _you_ the real thing, Muniment?” asked Hyacinth, catching this
look.
Muniment dropped his eyes on him. “Yes, you’re the lamb of sacrifice he
wants. It’s at the other end of London. We must have a growler.”
“Be calm, my child; _me voici_!” And Poupin led their young friend out.
They all walked away from the “Sun and Moon,” and it was not for
some five minutes that they encountered the four-wheeled cab which
so deepened and dignified their purpose. After they were seated in it
Hyacinth learned that the “right man” was in London but for three days,
was liable to hurry away on the morrow, and was accustomed to receive
visits at all kinds of queer hours. It was getting to be midnight; the
drive seemed interminable to Hyacinth’s impatience and curiosity. He
sat next Muniment, who passed a strong arm round him, holding him all
the way as if for a tacit sign of indebtedness. This gave Hyacinth
pleasure till he began to wonder if it mightn’t represent also the
instinct to make sure of him as against possible weak afterthoughts.
They all ended by sitting silent as the cab jogged along murky miles,
and by the time it stopped our young man had wholly lost, in the
drizzling gloom, a sense of their whereabouts.