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 holding his breath; and when he said
nothing Hyacinth 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 thought, at moments, that he was bored or irritated by
the serious manner in which the little bookbinder could not conceal
from the world that he regarded him. He wondered whether this were a
system, a calculated prudence, on Muniment’s part, or only a
manifestation of that superior brutality, latent in his composition,
which never had an intention of unkindness but was naturally intolerant
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 insistent ignorance
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 shillings—with seventeen
shillings? What am I to do with them—will ye tell me that?” an
interrogation which, in truth, usually ended by eliciting 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 pluck them straight up. A little
shoemaker, with red eyes and a grayish 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 ’vice of the company on that question.”
When the tone fell as low as this Paul Muniment held his peace, except
that he whistled a little, 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 Hyacinth—too valuable an instrument, and
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 quantity,
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 would not 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 sharp, tantalising
desirableness into that of irresistible reality. Muniment was listened
to unanimously, when he spoke, and was much talked about, usually with
a knowing, implicit allusiveness, when he was absent; it was generally
admitted that he could see further than most. But it was suspected that
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 chuck a brick, that was far enough. There was an
idea that he had nothing particular to complain of, personally, or that
if he had he didn’t complain of it—an attitude which perhaps contained
the germs of a latent disaffection. Hyacinth could easily see that he
himself was 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 announcing that he had not had a pennyworth 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 cruelest 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 had in his hand a bread-winning tool
on which he might absolutely count. He was also aware, however, that
his position in this little band of malcontents (it was little only if
measured by the numbers that were gathered together on any one
occasion; he liked to think it was large in its latent possibilities,
its mysterious ramifications and affiliations) was peculiar and
distinguished; it would be favourable if he had 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 upon
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 Crookenden’s had said to him, as if
to anticipate such an impugnment of his discretion, “Remember, my
child, that I am 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 is a mystic language which dispenses with
proofs—a freemasonry, a reciprocal divination; they understand each
other with half a word.” It was with half a word, then, in Bloomsbury,
that Hyacinth had been understood; but there was a certain delicacy
within him that forbade him to push his advantage, to treat
implications of sympathy, none the less definite for being roundabout,
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 suggested
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—at these hours,
some of them thrilling enough, Hyacinth waited for the voice that
should allot to 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 Hyacinth waited for a 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 came into
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 seemed to him wiser then, and more 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 plague am I to do with
seventeen shillings?” 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 he 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, after all, even in their most concentrated hours, were
very good-natured—appeared never to have made the subtle reflection,
though they made many others, that there was a want of tact in his
calling upon 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 France one was nowhere worth speaking of, and
ended by producing an impression that that country had an almost
supernatural charm. Muniment had once said to Hyacinth that he was sure
Poupin would be very sorry if he should be enabled to go home again (as
he 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
was miserable there.
“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 are 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 a kind of untidy bandage round his neck, as if for a local
ailment. “You remind us—that is very well; but we shall forget it in
half an hour. We are not serious.”
“_Pardon, pardon;_ for myself, I do not admit that!” Poupin replied,
striking the table with his finger-tips several times, very fast. “If I
am not serious, I am nothing.”
“Oh no, you are something,” said the German, smoking his monumental
pipe with a contemplative air. “We are all something; but I am not sure
it is anything very useful.”
“Well, things would be worse without us. I’d rather be in here, in
_this_ kind of muck, than outside,” remarked the fat man who understood
dogs.
“Certainly, it is very pleasant, especially if you have your beer; but
not so pleasant in the east, where fifty thousand people starve. It is
a very unpleasant night,” the cabinet-maker went on.
“How can it be worse?” Eustache Poupin inquired, looking defiantly at
the German, as if to make him responsible for the fat man’s reflection.
“It is 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 gray-faced shoemaker
demanded. “I dare say 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 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 is 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 is too much to expect. Mr Muniment is very
serious; he looks as if he were waiting for the signal; but he doesn’t
speak—he never speaks, if I want particularly to hear him. He only
considers, very deeply, I am sure. But it is 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 towards 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 who were collected at the ‘Sun and Moon’, looked at him, or
listened to him, 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 very embarrassing in twenty.
Muniment smiled, for 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 moment, to look at him. “If I keep quiet for
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 have seen him I shall be perfectly satisfied.”
“Upon my word, I should hope so! Do you think he’s the kind of party 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, and resumed
his muffled whistle again.
“Take care—take care; you will 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 dare say
it is 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 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 is useful,” the German remarked, philosophically,
among his yellow clouds.
“Do you mean to say you are not prepared for that, yourself?” Muniment
inquired 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 will smash best, those who have been inside,” the German
declared; “unless, perhaps, they are broken, enervated. But Hoffendahl
is not enervated.”
“Ah, no; no smashing, no smashing,” Muniment went on. “We want to keep
them standing, and even to build a few more; but the difference will be
that we shall put the correct sort in.”
“I take your idea—that Griffin is 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 declared, protesting; 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 them the
names they wanted to have. Was it possible they didn’t remember that
great combined attempt, 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 him 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.
“_C’aurait été d’un bel exemple!_” said the Frenchman, with an
impressive moderation of statement which made even those who could not
understand him see that he was saying something fine; while the
cabinet-maker remarked 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 dare say 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 is 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 is 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!” said Muniment, laughing.
Eustache Poupin stared at him and his merriment, 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 is he going to do for _us?_—that’s what _I_ want
to know,” remarked 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, and the manner in which
he thrust over his ear, as if it were a barber’s comb, the pencil with
which he was careful to take notes of the discussions carried on 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 were interested in. He had
had a great experience, and they might very well find it useful to
consult. If there was a way for them, then and there, he was sure to
know the way. “I quite agree with the majority of you—as I take it to
be,” Muniment went on, with 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
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 would be glad to see him—perhaps he’d show where the
thumb-screws 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 something, or for some one; to go out
somewhere and smash something, on the spot—why not?—that very night.
While they sat there and talked, there were about half a million of
people in London that didn’t know where the h—— 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, 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 he was sure he was only playing 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; he was seized by an intense desire to stand face to face
with the sublime Hoffendahl, to hear his voice, to touch his mutilated
hand. He was ready for anything: he knew that he himself was safe to
breakfast and dine, poorly but sufficiently, and that his colleagues
were perhaps even more crude and clumsy than usual; but a breath of
popular passion had passed over him, and he seemed to see, immensely
magnified, the monstrosity of the great ulcers and sores of London—the
sick, eternal misery crying, in 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 Hyacinth felt that there was
no need to consider, to reason: the facts themselves were as imperative
as the cry of the drowning; for while pedantry gained time didn’t
starvation gain it too? He knew that 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
chemical friend had given him a more definite warrant than he had ever
done before for numbering him in the party of immediate action, though
indeed he remarked on this occasion, once more, that that particular
formula which the little bookbinder appeared to have taken such a fancy
to was mere gibberish. He hated that 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 that transcended
logic, he would have found it in his recollection 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
the violence of the talk; he had called Schinkel to come round and sit
beside him, and the two appeared to confer together in comfortable
absorption, while the brown atmosphere grew denser, the passing to and
fro of fire-brands 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 certain helpless, patient longing, 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 was something to be silent and devoted about, Hyacinth
ardently hoped that to him a chance would 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 which communicated with
the outer world, he went forth into the street. The air was foul and
sleety, but it 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, in 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
only 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 city, gathering the myriad miserable out
of their slums and burrows, and roll into the selfish squares, and lift
a tremendous hungry voice, and awaken the gorged indifferent to a
terror that would bring them down. Hyacinth lingered a quarter of an
hour, but this grand spectacle 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 that the meeting was breaking up in
disorder, or at all events in confusion, and that, certainly, no
organised attempt at the rescue of the proletariat would take place
that night. All the men were on their feet and were turning away, amid
a shuffling of benches and chairs, a hunching of shaggy shoulders, a
frugal lowering of superfluous 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 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 Hyacinth
found that he had sprung up on a chair, opposite to the barber, and
that at the sight of so rare a phenomenon the commotion had suddenly
checked itself. It was the first time he had asked the ear of the
company, and it was given on the spot. He was sure he looked very
white, and it was even possible they could see him tremble. He could
only hope that 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 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 is
sure one isn’t afraid, and one is accused, why shouldn’t one say so?”
It appeared to Hyacinth that 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 say, “Did ye hear the little 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 emptied itself, not, evidently, to be reconstituted, outside,
in a revolutionary procession. Paul Muniment had taken hold of
Hyacinth, and said, “I’ll trouble you to stay, you little desperado.
I’ll be blowed if I ever expected to see _you_ on the stump!” Muniment
remained, and M. Poupin and Mr Schinkel lingered in their overcoats,
beneath a dim, surviving gasburner, in the unventilated medium in
which, at each renewed gathering, the Bloomsbury club seemed to
recognise itself.
“Upon my word, 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.
“Whom do you mean by ‘we’?” said Muniment.
“All the lot of us. There are plenty of them ready.”
“Ready for what? There is nothing to be done here.”
Hyacinth stared. “Then why the deuce do you come?”
“I dare say I shan’t come much more. This is a place you have always
overestimated.”
“I wonder if I have overestimated you,” Hyacinth murmured, 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 genuine article, Robinson?” Muniment asked,
with the same unusual absence of jocosity in his tone.
“The genuine article?” Hyacinth looked from one of his companions to
the other.
“You have never seen it yet—though you think you have.”
“And why haven’t you shown it to me before?”
“Because I had never seen you on the stump.” This time Muniment smiled.
“Bother the stump! I was trusting you.”
“Exactly so. That gave me time.”
“Don’t come unless your mind is made up, _mon petit_,” said Poupin.
“Are you going now—to see Hoffendahl?” Hyacinth cried.
“Don’t shout it all over the place. He wants a genteel little customer
like you,” Muniment went on.
“Is it true? Are we all going?” Hyacinth demanded eagerly.
“Yes, these two are in it; they are not very artful, but they are
safe,” said Muniment, looking at Poupin and Schinkel.
“Are _you_ the genuine article, Muniment?” asked Hyacinth, catching
this look.
Muniment dropped his eyes on him; then he said, “Yes, you’re the boy he
wants. It’s at the other end of London; we must have a growler.”
“Be calm, my child; _me voici!_” And Eustache Poupin led Hyacinth 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 deepened
so the solemnity of their expedition. After they were seated in it,
Hyacinth learned that Hoffendahl 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 to Muniment, who passed his arm round him, as if by way of
tacit expression of indebtedness. They all ended by sitting silent, as
the cab jogged along murky miles, and by the time it stopped Hyacinth
had wholly lost, in the drizzling gloom, a sense of their whereabouts.