“You here, too,” said the demagogue; “I thought this was a time when all
you fine folks were enjoying yourselves, and London was left to the
toilers and moilers.”
“Am I one of the fine folks? I am afraid that proves how little you know
of them, Spears.”
“Well, I don’t pretend to know much,” said Spears. “Markham’s here, too.
And what is all this about Markham? I don’t understand a word of it.”
“What is about him?”
Fairfax was determined to breathe no word of Paul’s altered
circumstances to any one, sheltering himself under the fact that he
himself knew nothing definite. The orator looked at him with a gaze
which it was difficult to elude.
“I thought you had been with the family at that grand house of theirs?
However! Paul was hot upon our emigration scheme, you know; he would
hear no reason on that subject. I warned him that it was not a thing for
men like him, with soft hands and muscles unstrung; but he paid me no
attention. There was another thing, I believe, a secondary motive,” said
Spears, with a wave of his hand, “a thing that never would have come
into my head, which his mother found out--the kind of business that
women do find out. Well! His father is dead, and I suppose he has come
into the title and all that. But here’s the rub. We are within a
fortnight of our start, and never another word from Paul. What does he
mean by it? has he been persuaded by the women? has he thrown us
overboard and gone in for the old business of landlord and aristocrat? I
have told him many a time it was in his blood; but never was there one
more hot for better principles. Now look here, Fairfax, you’re not the
man to pretend ignorance. What do you know?”
“Nothing but that Sir William is dead.”
“Sir William is dead, that means, long live Sir Paul: _lay roy est
mortt, veeve lay roy_,” said Spears, with honest English pronunciation.
“Yes, the papers would tell you that. If he’s going to give it all up,”
he went on, a deep colour coming over his face, “I sha’n’t be surprised.
I don’t say that I’ll like it, but I sha’n’t be surprised. A large
property--and a title--may be a temptation: but in that case it’s his
duty to let us know. I suppose you and he see each other sometimes?”
“By chance we have met to-day.”
“By chance? I thought you were always meeting. Well, what does he mean?
I acknowledge,” said Spears, with very conscious satire, “that a Sir
Paul in our band will be an oddity. It wouldn’t be much more wonderful
if it was St. Paul,” he added, with a laugh; “but one way or other I
must know. And I don’t mind confessing to you,” he said, turning into
the way by which Fairfax seemed to be walking, and suddenly striking him
on the shoulder with an amicable but not slight blow, “that it will be a
disappointment. I had rather committed the folly of setting my heart on
that lad. He was the kind of thing, you know, that we mean in our class
when we say a gentleman. There’s you, now, you’re a gentleman, too; but
I make little account of you. You might just as well have been brought
up in my shop or in trade. But there’s something about Paul, mind
you--that’s where it is; he’s got that grand air, and that hot-headed
way. I hate social distinctions, but he’s above them. The power of money
is to me like a horrible monster, but he scorns it. Do you see what I
mean? A man like me reasons it all out, and sees the harm of it, and the
devilry of it, and it fires his blood. But Paul, he holds his head in
the air, and treats it like the dirt below his feet. That’s fine, that
takes hold of the imagination. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings,
Fairfax,” said Spears, giving him another friendly tap on the shoulder,
“but you’re just a careless fellow, one thing doesn’t matter more than
another to you.”
“Quite true. I am not offended,” said Fairfax, laughing. “You
discriminate very well, Spears, as you always do.”
“Yes, I suppose I have a knack that way,” said the demagogue, simply. “I
shouldn’t wonder,” he added, “though it is not a subject that a man can
question his daughter about, that it was just the same thing that
attracted my girl.”
Fairfax turned round upon him with quick surprise; he had not heard
anything about Janet. “What!” he said, “has Markham----” and then
paused; for Spears, though indulgent to freedom of speech, was in this
one point a dangerous person to meddle with. He turned round, with all
the force of his rugged features and broad shoulders, and looked the
questioner in the face.
“Yes,” he said, “Markham has--a fancy for my Janet. There is nothing
very wonderful in that. His mother tried to persuade me that this was
the entire cause of his devotion to my principles and me. But that is a
way women have. They think nothing comparable to their own influence. He
satisfied me as to that. Yes,” said Spears, with a softened, meditative
tone, “that is the secondary motive I spoke of; and, to tell the truth,
when I heard of the old fellow’s death I was sorry. I said to myself,
the girl will never be able to resist the temptation of being ‘my
lady.’”
A smile began to creep about the corners of his mouth. For himself, it
is very likely that Spears would have had virtue enough to carry out his
own principles and resist all bribes of rank had they been thrown in his
way; but he contemplated the possible elevation of his child with a
tender sense of the wonderful, and the ludicrous, and incredible which
melted all sterner feelings. The idea that Janet might be “my lady”
filled him with a subdued pleasure and amusement, and a subtle pride
which veiled itself in the humour of the notion. It made him smile in
spite of himself. As for Fairfax, this had so completely taken his
breath away that he seemed beyond the power of speech, and Spears went
on musingly for a minute or two walking beside him, his active thoughts
lulled by the fantastic pleasure of that vision, and the smile still
lingered about his closely-shut lips. At last he started from the
weakness of this reverie.
“There is to be a meeting to-night,” he said, “down in one of these
streets--and I’m going to give them an address. I’ve got the name of the
street here in my pocket and the house and all that--if you like to
come.”
“Certainly I will come,” said Fairfax with alacrity. He had not much to
occupy his evenings, and he took a kind of careless speculative
interest, not like Paul’s impassioned adoption of the scheme and all its
issues, in Spears’s political crusade. The demagogue patted him on the
shoulders once more as he left him. He had always half-patronised, half
stood in awe of Fairfax, whose careless humour sometimes threw a
passing light of ridicule even on the cause. “If you see Markham, bring
him along with you; and tell him I must understand what he means,” he
said.
But Fairfax did not see Paul again. He did not indeed put himself in the
way of Paul, though his mind was full of him, for the rest of the day.
Janet Spears was a new complication in Paul’s way. The whole situation
was dreary and hopeless enough. His position as head in his house and
family, the importance, his wealth, his power of influencing others, all
taken from him in a day, and Spears’s daughter--Janet Spears--hung round
his neck like a millstone. Paul! of all men in the world to get into
such a vulgar complication, Paul was about the last. And yet there could
be no mistake about it. Fairfax, who honestly felt himself Paul’s
inferior in everything, heard this news with the wondering dismay of one
whose own thoughts had taken a direction as much above him (he thought)
as the other’s was beneath him. With a painful flush of bewilderment, he
thought of himself floated up into regions above himself into a
different atmosphere, another world, by means of the woman who had been
Paul’s companion all his life, while Paul---- He had heard of such
things; of men falling into the mire out of the purest places, of
rebellions from the best to the worst. They were common enough. But that
it should be _Paul_!
When evening came he took his way to the crowded quarter where he had
met Spears, and to the meeting, which was held in a back room in an
unsavoury street. It had begun to rain, the air was wet and warm, the
streets muddy, the floor of the room black and stained with many
footsteps. There was a number of men packed together in a comparatively
small space, which soon became almost insupportable with the flaring
gaslights, the odour from their damp clothes, and their breath. At one
end of it were a few men seated round a table, Spears among them.
Fairfax could only get in at the other end, and close to the door, which
was the saving of him. He exercised politeness at a cheap cost by
letting everybody who came penetrate further than he. Some of the men
looked at him with suspicion. He had kept on his morning dress, but even
that was very different from the clothes they wore. They were not very
penetrating in respect to looks, and some of them thought him a
policeman in plain clothes. This was not a comfortable notion among a
number of hot-blooded men. Fairfax, however, soon became too much
interested in the proceedings to observe the looks that were directed to
himself. There was a good deal of commonplace business to be gone
through first--small subscriptions to pay, some of which were weekly;
little books to produce, with little sums marked; reports to be given
in, on here and there a wavering member, a falling back into the world,
a new convert. It looked to Fairfax at first like a parochial meeting
about the little charities of the parish, the schools, and the
almshouses. Perhaps organisation of every kind has its inherent
vulgarities. This movement felt grand, heroic, to the men engaged in it,
how much above the curate and his pennies who could say; but it seemed
inevitable that it should begin in the same way.
The walls were roughly plastered and washed with a dingy tone of colour.
The men sat on benches which were very uncomfortable, and showed all the
independent curves of backs which toil had not straightened, the rough
heads and dingy clothes. Over all this the gas flickered, unmitigated
even by the usual glass globe. There was a constant shuffling of feet,
a murmur of conversation, sometimes the joke of a privileged wit
whispered about with earthquakes of suppressed laughter. For the men, on
the whole, suppressed themselves with the sense of the dignity of a
meeting and the expectation of Spears’s address. “He’s a fellow from the
North, ain’t he?” Fairfax heard one man say. “No, he’s a miner fellow.”
“He’s one of the cotton spinners.” While another added authoritatively,
“None of you know anything about it. It’s Spears the delegate. He’s been
sent about all over the place. There’s been some talk of sending him to
Parliament.” “Parliament! I put no faith in Parliament.” “No more do I.”
“Nor I,” the men said. “And yet,” said the first speaker, “we’ve got no
chance of getting our rights till they’ve got a lot like him there.”
At this moment one of the men at the table rose, and there was instant
silence. The lights flared, the rain rained outside with a persistent
swish upon the pavement, the restless feet shuffled upon the floor, but
otherwise there was not a sound to interrupt the stillness. This was
somewhat tried, however, by the reading of a report, still very like a
missionary report in a parish meeting. There was a good deal about an
S. C. and an L. M. who had been led to think of higher principles of
political morality by the action of the society, and who had now finally
given in their adhesion. The meeting greeted the announcement of these
new members by knocking with their boot-heels upon the floor. Then some
one else got up and said that the prospects of the society were most
hopeful, and that the conversion of L. C. and S. M. were only an earnest
of what was to come. Soon the whole mass of the working classes, as
already its highest intelligence, would be with them. The meeting again
applauded this “highest intelligence.” They felt it in themselves, and
they liked the compliment. “Mr. Spears will now address the meeting,”
the last speaker said, and then this confused part of the proceeding
came to an end, and everything became clear again when Spears spoke.
And yet Fairfax thought, looking on, it was by no means clear what
Spears wanted, or wished to persuade the others that they wanted. Very
soon, however, he secured their attention which was one great point; the
very feet got disciplined into quiet, and when a late member came down
the long passage which led straight into this room, there was a
universal murmur and hush as he bustled in. Spears stood up and looked
round him, his powerful square shoulders and rugged face dominating the
assembly. He took a kind of text for his address, “not from the Bible,”
he said, “which many of you think out of date,” at which there was a
murmur, chiefly of assent; “mind you,” said the orator, “I don’t; that’s
a subject on which I’m free to keep my private opinion; but the other
book you’ll allow is never out of date. It’s from the sayings of a man
that woke up out of the easy thoughts of a lad, the taking everything
for granted as we all do one time or another, to find that he could take
nothing for granted, that all about was false, horrible, mean, and
_sham_. That was the worst of it all--sham. He found the mother that
bore him was a false woman and the girl he loved hid his enemy behind
the door to listen to what he was saying, and his friends, the fellows
he had played with, went off with him on a false errand, with letters to
get him killed, ‘There’s something rotten,’ says he, ‘in this State of
Denmark--’ that was all the poor fellow could get out at first,
‘something rotten;’ ay, ay, Prince Hamlet, a deal that was rotten. We’re
not fond of princes, my friends,” said Spears, stopping short with a
gleam of humour in his face, “but Shakspeare lived a good few years ago,
and hadn’t found that out. We’ve made a great many discoveries since his
day.”
At this the feet applauded again, but there was a little doubtfulness
upon the faces of the audience who did not see what the speaker meant to
be at.
“‘There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark,’ that’s what he
said. He didn’t mean Denmark any more than I mean Clerkenwell. He meant
this life he was living in, where the scum floated to the top, and
nothing was what it seemed. That was Hamlet’s quarrel with the world,
and it’s my quarrel, and yours, and every thinking man’s. It was a grand
idea, my friends, to make a government, to have a king. Yes, wait a bit
till I’ve finished my sentence. I tell you it was a noble idea,” said
the orator, raising his voice, and cowing into silence half a dozen
violent contradictions, “to get hold of the best man and set him up
there to help them that couldn’t help themselves, to make the strong
merciful and the weak brave. That was an idea! I honour the man that
invented it whoever he was; but I’d lay you all a fortune if I had it,
I’d wager all I’m worth (which isn’t much) that whoever the first king
was, that was made after he had found out the notion, it wasn’t he! And
it was a failure, my lads,” said Spears.
At this there was a tumult of applause. “I don’t see anything to stamp
about for my part,” he said shaking his head. “That gives me no
pleasure. It was a grand idea, but as sure as life they took the wrong
man, and it was a failure. And it has always been a failure and always
will be--so now there’s nothing for it but to abolish kings----”
The rest of the sentence was lost in wild applause.
“But the worst is,” continued the speaker, “that we’ve done that
practically for a long time in England, and we’re none the better.
Instead of one bad king we’ve got Parliament, which is a heap of bad
kings. Men that care no more for the people than I care for that fly.
Men that will grind you, and tax you, and make merchandise of you, and
neglect your interest and tread you down to the ground. Many is the
cheat they’ve passed upon you. At this moment you cheer me when I say
down with the kings, but you look at one another and you raise your
eyebrows when I say down with the parliament. You’ve got the suffrage
and you think that’s all right. The suffrage! what does the suffrage do
for you? It’s another sham, a little stronger than all the rest. They’ll
give more of you, and more of you the suffrage, till they let in the
women (I don’t say a word against that. Some of the women have more
sense than you have, and the rest you can always whop them) and the
babies next for anything I can tell. And it will all be rotten, rotten,
rotten to the core. And then a great cry will rise out of this poor
country, and it will be Hamlet again,” cried the orator, pouring out the
full force of his great melodious voice from his broad chest--“‘Oh,
cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!’”
There was a feeble stamp or two upon the floor; but the audience, though
curious and impressed, were not up to the level of the speaker, and did
not know what to make of him. He saw this, and he changed his tone.
“I read the other day of the kind of parliament that was a real
parliament of the people. Once every two months the whole population met
in a great square; and there they were asked to choose the men that were
to govern them. They voted all by word of mouth--no ballot tickets in
those days--for there was not one of them that was afraid to give his
opinion. They chose their men for two months, no more. They were men
that were known to all the place that had been known from their cradles;
no strangers there, but men they could lay their hands on if they went
wrong. It was for two months only, as I tell you, and then the
parliament came together again, and the men they had chosen gave an
account of what they had done. In my opinion--I don’t know what you may
think--that was as perfect a plan of government, and as true a rule of
the people as ever existed on this globe. Who is that grumbling behind
there? If it is you, Paul Markham, stand up like a man and say what
you’ve got to say.”
There was a pause for a moment, and everybody looked round; but as no
reply was made, the hearers drowned all attempts at opposition in a
tumult of stamping feet and approving exclamations. “That was something
like,” they cried. And “Go on. Go on! Bravo, Spears!”
“Ah, yes. You say ‘Bravo, Spears!’ because I humour you. But that young
fellow there at the back, I know what he meant to say. It was all
rotten, rotten, rotten to the core; that peoples’ parliament was the
greatest humbug that ever was seen; it was the instrument of tyrants; it
was the murderer of freedom; there was nothing too silly, nothing too
wicked for it; its vote was a sham, and its wisdom was a sham. Ah! you
don’t cry ‘Bravo, Spears!’ any more. The reason of all this is that we
never get hold of the right men. I don’t know what there is in human
nature that makes it so. I have studied it a deal, but I’ve never found
that out. The scum gets uppermost, boils up and sticks on the top.
That’s my experience. The less honest a man is, the more sure he is to
get up to the top. I don’t speak of being born equal like some folks;
but I think every man has a right to his share of the place he’s born
in--a right to have his portion wherever he is. One man with another,
our wants are about the same. One eats a little more, one drinks a
little more (and we all do more of that than is good for us), than the
rest. But what we’ve got a right to is our share of what’s going.
Instead of great estates, great parks, grand palaces where those who
call themselves our masters live and starve us, we have a right, every
man, to enough of it to live on, to enough----”
Here the speaker was interrupted by the clamour of the cheering. The
men rose up and shouted; they drowned his voice in the enthusiasm of
their delight. Paul had come in behind after Spears began to speak.
Though there had been in him a momentary movement of offence when he saw
Fairfax, yet he had ended by remaining close to him, not seated,
however, by leaning against the doorway in the sight of all. And it was
likewise apparent in the sight of all that he was dressed, not like
Fairfax in morning clothes, which offered a less visible contrast with
the men surrounding him, but in evening dress, only partially covered by
his light overcoat. He had come indeed to this assembly met to denounce
all rights of the aristocrat, in the very livery of social superiority.
Fairfax, who was anxious about the issue, could not understand what it
meant. Paul’s eyes were fixed upon Spears, and there was a half smile
and air of something that might be taken for contempt on his face.
The applause went to the orator’s head. He plunged into violent
illustrations of his theory, by the common instances of riot, impurity,
extravagance, debt, and general wickedness which were to be found in
what were called the higher classes. Perhaps Spears himself was aware
that his arguments would not bear a very close examination: and the face
of his disciple there before him, the face which had hitherto glowed
with acquiescence, flushed with indignation, answered every appeal he
made, but which was now set, pale, and impassive, without any response
at all, with indeed an evident determination to withstand him--filled
him with a curious passion. He could not understand it, and he could not
endure to see Paul standing there, Paul, his son in the faith, his
disciple of whom he was unconsciously more proud than of all the other
converts he had made, with that air of contradiction and defiance. The
applause excited him and this tacit opposition excited him still more.
Fairfax had produced no such effect upon the demagogue; he had been but
a half believer at the best, a critic more interested than convinced. He
was one of those whom other men can permit to look on, from whom they
can accept sympathy without concurrence, and tolerate dissent. But with
Paul the case was very different. Every glance at him inflamed the mind
of Spears. Was it possible (the idea flashed across his mind in full
torrent of his speech) that this beloved disciple was lost to him? He
would not believe it, he would not permit it to be; and with this
impulse he flung forth his burning accusations, piled up sham and
scandal upon the heads of aristocrats, represented them as standing in
the way of every good undertaking, of treading down the poor on every
side, of riding roughshod everywhere over liberties and charities alike,
robbers of their brethren, destroyers of their fellow-creatures. And as
every burning period poured forth, the noise, the enthusiasm became
indescribable. The men who listened were no more murderous rebels than
English landlords and millionaires are sanguinary oppressors, but they
shouted and stamped, and rent their throats with applause, all the more
that they were well acquainted with these arguments. Hamlet and “the
cursed spite” of his position were of doubtful interest; but here was
something which they understood. Thus they went on together, mutually
exciting each other, the speaker and the listeners--until suddenly in
the midst of the hubbub a strange note, a new voice, struck in, and
caught them all in full uproar.
“What’s that?” cried Spears, with the quick hearing of offended
affection. “You behind there--some one spoke.”
The men all turned round--the entire assembly--to see what the
interruption was. Then they saw, leaning carelessly against the wall,
his grey overcoat open, showing the expanse of fine linen, the silk
lapels of the evening coat in which Paul had chosen to array himself,
the young aristocrat, looking his part to the fullest perfection, with
scorn on his face, and proud indifference, careless of them and their
opinions. The mere sight of him brought an impulse of fierce hostility.
“I said, that’s not so,” said Paul, distinctly, throwing his defiance
over all their heads at his old instructor. Spears was almost beside
himself with pain and passion.
“Do you give me the lie,” he said, “to my face--you, Paul? Oh, you shall
have your title--that’s the meaning of the change! you, Sir Paul
Markham, baronet,--Do you give me the lie?”
“If you like to take it so, Spears. You know as well as I do that men
are not monsters like that in one rank and heroes in another. Title or
no title, that’s the truth, and you know it--whatever those men that
take in everything you are saying may think. You know that’s not so.”
The excited listeners saw Spears grow pale and wince. Then he shouted
out with an excited voice--
“And that’s a lie whoever said it. I! say one thing and mean another!
The time has been when a man that said that to me would have rued it. He
would have rued it----”
“And he shall rue it!” said a voice in the crowd. The people turned
round with a common impulse. Fairfax, when he saw what was coming, had
risen too, and thrown himself in front of Paul. He was not so tall a
man, and Paul’s dark hair towered over his light locks. He tried to push
him out into the narrow-flagged passage, and called to him to go--to go!
But Paul’s blood was up; he stood and faced them all, holding his arm
before him in defence against the raised fists and threatening looks.
“I’m one against a hundred,” he said, perfectly calm. “You can do what
you please. I will not give in, whatever you do. I tell you what Spears
says is not true.”
And then the uproar got up again and raged round them. There was a
hesitation about striking the first blow. Nobody liked to begin the
onslaught upon one single man, or a man with but one supporter. Fairfax
got his arm into his, and did his best to push and drag him away into
the paved passage. But it was not till Spears himself, breaking through
the angry crowd, gave him a thrust with his powerful arm that he
yielded. What might have happened even then, Fairfax did not know; for
the passage was narrow, and the two or three people hanging about the
door sufficed to make another angry crowd in their way. While, however,
he was pushing his way along by the wall, doing all he could to impel
before him Paul’s reluctant figure, a door suddenly opened behind them,
a light flashed out, and some one called to them to come in. Paul
stumbled backwards, fortunately, over the step, and was thus got at a
disadvantage; and in two minutes more Fairfax had struggled in, bringing
his companion with him. The place into which they were admitted was a
narrow passage, quite dark--and the contrast from the noise and crowd
without to this silence bewildered the young men. Even then, however,
the voice of Spears reached them over the murmur of the crowd.
“There’s a specimen for you!” cried the orator, with a harsh laugh. “The
scum come uppermost! What did I tell you? that, take what pains you
like, you never get the right man. I loved that lad like my son; and
all I said was gospel to him. But he has come into his title, he has
come into the land he swore he never would take from the people, and
there’s the end. Would you like a better proof of what I said? Oh,
rotten, rotten, rotten to the core!”