“My child, you are always welcome,” said Eustache Poupin, taking
Hyacinth’s hand in both his own and holding it for some moments. An
impression had come to our young man, immediately, that they were
talking about him before he appeared and that they would rather have
been left to talk at their ease. He even thought he saw in Poupin’s
face the kind of consciousness that comes from detection, or at least
interruption, in a nefarious act. With Poupin, however, it was
difficult to tell; he always looked so heated and exalted, so like a
conspirator defying the approach of justice. Hyacinth contemplated the
others: they were standing as if they had shuffled something on the
table out of sight, as if they had been engaged in the manufacture of
counterfeit coin. Poupin kept hold of his hand; the Frenchman’s ardent
eyes, fixed, unwinking, always expressive of the greatness of the
occasion, whatever the occasion was, had never seemed to him to
protrude so far from his head. “Ah, my dear friend, _nous causions
justement de vous_,” Eustache remarked, as if this were a very
extraordinary fact.
“Oh, _nous causions—nous causions!_” his wife exclaimed, as if to
deprecate an indiscreet exaggeration. “One may mention a friend, I
suppose, in the way of conversation, without taking such a liberty.”
“A cat may look at a king, as your English proverb says,” added
Schinkel, jocosely. He smiled so hard at his own pleasantry that his
eyes closed up and vanished—an effect which Hyacinth, who had observed
it before, thought particularly unbecoming to him, appearing as it did
to administer the last perfection to his ugliness. He would have
consulted his interests by cultivating immobility of feature.
“Oh, a king, a king!” murmured Poupin, shaking his head up and down.
“That’s what it’s not good to be, _au point où nous en sommes_.”
“I just came in to wish you good-night,” said Hyacinth. “I’m afraid
it’s rather late for a call, though Schinkel is here.”
“It’s always too late, my very dear, when you come,” the Frenchman
rejoined. “You know if you have a place at our fireside.”
“I esteem it too much to disturb it,” said Hyacinth, smiling and
looking round at the three.
“We can easily sit down again; we are a comfortable party. Put yourself
beside me.” And the Frenchman drew a chair close to the one, at the
table, that he had just quitted.
“He has had a long walk, he is tired—he will certainly accept a little
glass,” Madame Poupin announced with decision, moving toward the tray
containing the small gilded _liqueur_ service.
“We will each accept one, _ma bonne;_ it is a very good occasion for a
drop of _fine_,” her husband interposed, while Hyacinth seated himself
in the chair his host had designated. Schinkel resumed his place, which
was opposite; he looked across at Hyacinth without speaking, but his
long face continued to flatten itself into a representation of mirth.
He had on a green coat, which Hyacinth had seen before; it was a
garment of ceremony, such as our young man judged it would have been
impossible to procure in London or in any modern time. It was eminently
German and of high antiquity, and had a tall, stiff, clumsy collar,
which came up to the wearer’s ears and almost concealed his perpetual
bandage. When Hyacinth had sat down Eustache Poupin did not take
possession of his own chair, but stood beside him, resting his hand on
his head. At that touch something came over Hyacinth, and his heart
sprang into his throat. The idea that occurred to him, conveyed in
Poupin’s whole manner as well as in the reassuring intention of that
caress and in his wife’s uneasy, instant offer of refreshment,
explained the embarrassment of the circle and reminded our young man of
the engagement he had taken with himself to exhibit an extraordinary
quietness when a certain crisis in his life should have arrived. It
seemed to him that this crisis was in the air, very near—that he should
touch it if he made another movement; the pressure of the Frenchman’s
hand, which was meant as a solvent, only operated as a warning. As he
looked across at Schinkel he felt dizzy and a little sick; for a
moment, to his senses, the room whirled round. His resolution to be
quiet appeared only too easy to keep; he couldn’t break it even to the
extent of speaking. He knew that his voice would tremble, and that is
why he made no answer to Schinkel’s rather honeyed words, uttered after
an hesitation: “_Also_, my dear Robinson, have you passed your Sunday
well—have you had an ’appy day?” Why was every one so endearing? His
eyes questioned the table, but encountered nothing but its well-wiped
surface, polished for so many years by the gustatory elbows of the
Frenchman and his wife, and the lady’s dirty pack of cards for
‘patience’ (she had apparently been engaged in this exercise when
Schinkel came in), which indeed gave a little the impression of
gamblers surprised, who might have shuffled away the stakes. Madame
Poupin, who had dived into a cupboard, came back with a bottle of green
chartreuse, an apparition which led the German to exclaim, “_Lieber
Gott_, you Vrench, you Vrench, how well you manage! What would you have
more?”
The hostess distributed the liquor, but Hyacinth was scarcely able to
swallow it, though it was highly appreciated by his companions. His
indifference to this luxury excited much discussion and conjecture, the
others bandying theories and contradictions, and even ineffectual
jokes, about him, over his head, with a volubility which seemed to him
unnatural. Poupin and Schinkel professed the belief that there must be
something very curious the matter with a man who couldn’t smack his
lips over a drop of that tap; he must either be in love or have some
still more insidious complaint. It was true that Hyacinth was always in
love—that was no secret to his friends—and it had never been observed
to stop his thirst. The Frenchwoman poured scorn on this view of the
case, declaring that the effect of the tender passion was to make one
enjoy one’s victual (when everything went straight, _bien entendu;_ and
how could an ear be deaf to the whisperings of such a dear little
_bonhomme_ as Hyacinth?), in proof of which she deposed that she had
never eaten and drunk with such relish as at the time—oh, it was far
away now—when she had a soft spot in her heart for her rascal of a
husband. For Madame Poupin to allude to her husband as a rascal
indicated a high degree of conviviality. Hyacinth sat staring at the
empty table with the feeling that he was, somehow, a detached,
irresponsible witness of the evolution of his fate. Finally he looked
up and said to his friends, collectively, “What on earth’s the matter
with you all?” And he followed this inquiry by an invitation that they
should tell him what it was they had been saying about him, since they
admitted that he had been the subject of their conversation. Madame
Poupin answered for them that they had simply been saying how much they
loved him, but that they wouldn’t love him any more if he became
suspicious and _grincheux_. She had been telling Mr Schinkel’s fortune
on the cards, and she would tell Hyacinth’s if he liked. There was
nothing much for Mr Schinkel, only that he would find something, some
day, that he had lost, but would probably lose it again, and serve him
right if he did! He objected that he had never had anything to lose,
and never expected to have; but that was a vain remark, inasmuch as the
time was fast coming when every one would have something—though indeed
it was to be hoped that he would keep it when he had got it. Eustache
rebuked his wife for her levity, reminded her that their young friend
cared nothing for old women’s tricks, and said he was sure Hyacinth had
come to talk over a very different matter—the question (he was so good
as to take an interest in it, as he had done in everything that related
to them) of the terms which M. Poupin might owe it to himself, to his
dignity, to a just though not exaggerated sentiment of his value, to
make in accepting Mr Crookenden’s offer of the foremanship of the
establishment in Soho; an offer not yet formally enunciated but visibly
in the air and destined—it would seem, at least—to arrive within a day
or two. The old foreman was going to set up for himself. The Frenchman
intimated that before accepting any such proposal he must have the most
substantial guarantees. “_Il me faudrait des conditions
très-particulières_.” It was singular to Hyacinth to hear M. Poupin
talk so comfortably about these high contingencies, the chasm by which
he himself was divided from the future having suddenly doubled its
width. His host and hostess sat down on either side of him, and Poupin
gave a sketch, in somewhat sombre tints, of the situation in Soho,
enumerating certain elements of decomposition which he perceived to be
at work there and which he would not undertake to deal with unless he
should be given a completely free hand. Did Schinkel understand, and
was that what Schinkel was grinning at? Did Schinkel understand that
poor Eustache was the victim of an absurd hallucination and that there
was not the smallest chance of his being invited to assume a
lieutenancy? He had less capacity for tackling the British workman
to-day than when he began to rub shoulders with him, and Mr Crookenden
had never in his life made a mistake, at least in the use of his tools.
Hyacinth’s responses were few and mechanical, and he presently ceased
to try to look as if he were entering into the Frenchman’s ideas.
“You have some news—you have some news about me,” he remarked,
abruptly, to Schinkel. “You don’t like it, you don’t like to have to
give it to me, and you came to ask our friends here whether they
wouldn’t help you out with it. But I don’t think they will assist you
particularly, poor dears! Why do you mind? You oughtn’t to mind more
than I do. That isn’t the way.”
“_Qu’est-ce qu’il dit—qu’est-ce qu’il dit, le pauvre chéri?_” Madame
Poupin demanded, eagerly; while Schinkel looked very hard at her
husband, as if to ask for direction.
“My dear child, _vous vous faites des idées!_” the latter exclaimed,
laying his hand on him remonstrantly.
But Hyacinth pushed away his chair and got up. “If you have anything to
tell me, it is cruel of you to let me see it, as you have done, and yet
not to satisfy me.”
“Why should I have anything to tell you?” Schinkel asked.
“I don’t know that, but I believe you have. I perceive things, I guess
things, quickly. That’s my nature at all times, and I do it much more
now.”
“You do it indeed; it is very wonderful,” said Schinkel.
“Mr Schinkel, will you do me the pleasure to go away—I don’t care
where—out of this house?” Madame Poupin broke out, in French.
“Yes, that will be the best thing, and I will go with you,” said
Hyacinth.
“If you would retire, my child, I think it would be a service that you
would render us,” Poupin returned, appealing to his young friend.
“Won’t you do us the justice to believe that you may leave your
interests in our hands?”
Hyacinth hesitated a moment; it was now perfectly clear to him that
Schinkel had some sort of message for him, and his curiosity as to what
it might be had become nearly intolerable. “I am surprised at your
weakness,” he observed, as sternly as he could manage it, to Poupin.
The Frenchman stared at him an instant, and then fell on his neck. “You
are sublime, my young friend—you are sublime!”
“Will you be so good as to tell me what you are going to do with that
young man?” demanded Madame Poupin, glaring at Schinkel.
“It’s none of your business, my poor lady,” Hyacinth replied,
disengaging himself from her husband. “Schinkel, I wish you would walk
away with me.”
“_Calmons-nous, entendons-nous, expliquons-nous!_ The situation is very
simple,” Poupin went on.
“I will go with you, if it will give you pleasure,” said Schinkel, very
obligingly, to Hyacinth.
“Then you will give me that letter first!” Madame Poupin, erecting
herself, declared to the German.
“My wife, you are an imbecile!” Poupin groaned, lifting his hands and
shoulders and turning away.
“I may be an imbecile, but I won’t be a party—no, God help me, not to
that!” protested the Frenchwoman, planted before Schinkel as if to
prevent his moving.
“If you have a letter for me, you ought to give it to me,” said
Hyacinth to Schinkel. “You have no right to give it to any one else.”
“I will bring it to you in your house, my good friend,” Schinkel
replied, with a little wink that seemed to say that Madame Poupin would
have to be considered.
“Oh, in his house—I’ll go to his house!” cried the lady. “I regard you,
I have always regarded you, as my child,” she declared to Hyacinth,
“and if this isn’t an occasion for a mother!”
“It’s you that are making it an occasion. I don’t know what you are
talking about,” said Hyacinth. He had been questioning Schinkel’s eye,
and he thought he saw there a little twinkle of assurance that he might
really depend upon him. “I have disturbed you, and I think I had better
go away.”
Poupin had turned round again; he seized the young man’s arm eagerly,
as if to prevent his retiring before he had given a certain
satisfaction. “How can you care, when you know everything is changed?”
“What do you mean—everything is changed?”
“Your opinions, your sympathies, your whole attitude. I don’t approve
of it—_je le constate_. You have withdrawn your confidence from the
people; you have said things in this spot, where you stand now, that
have given pain to my wife and me.”
“If we didn’t love you, we should say that you had betrayed us!” cried
Madame Poupin, quickly, taking her husband’s idea.
“Oh, I shall never betray you,” said Hyacinth, smiling.
“You will never betray us—of course you think so. But you have no right
to act for the people when you have ceased to believe in the people.
_Il faut être conséquent, nom de Dieu!_” Poupin went on.
“You will give up all thoughts of acting for me—_je ne permets pas
ça!_” exclaimed his wife.
“It is probably not of importance—only a little fraternal greeting,”
Schinkel suggested, soothingly.
“We repudiate you, we deny you, we denounce you!” shouted Poupin, more
and more excited.
“My poor friends, it is you who have broken down, not I,” said
Hyacinth. “I am much obliged to you for your solicitude, but the
inconsequence is yours. At all events, good-night.”
He turned away from them, and was leaving the room, when Madame Poupin
threw herself upon him, as her husband had done a moment before, but in
silence and with an extraordinary force of passion and distress. Being
stout and powerful she quickly got the better of him, and pressed him
to her ample bosom in a long, dumb embrace.
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” said Hyacinth, as soon as he
could speak. “It’s for me to judge of my convictions.”
“We want you to do nothing, because we _know_ you have changed,” Poupin
replied. “Doesn’t it stick out of you, in every glance of your eye and
every breath of your lips? It’s only for that, because that alters
everything.”
“Does it alter my engagement? There are some things in which one can’t
change. I didn’t promise to believe; I promised to obey.”
“We want you to be sincere—that is the great thing,” said Poupin,
edifyingly. “I will go to see them—I will make them understand.”
“Ah, you should have done that before!” Madame Poupin groaned.
“I don’t know whom you are talking about, but I will allow no one to
meddle in my affairs.” Hyacinth spoke with sudden vehemence; the scene
was cruel to his nerves, which were not in a condition to bear it.
“When it is Hoffendahl, it is no good to meddle,” Schinkel remarked,
smiling.
“And pray, who is Hoffendahl, and what authority has he got?” demanded
Madame Poupin, who had caught his meaning. “Who has put him over us
all, and is there nothing to do but to lie down in the dust before him?
Let him attend to his little affairs himself, and not put them off on
innocent children, no matter whether they are with us or against us.”
This protest went so far that, evidently, Poupin felt a little ashamed
of his wife. “He has no authority but what we give him; but you know
that we respect him, that he is one of the pure, _ma bonne_. Hyacinth
can do exactly as he likes; he knows that as well as we do. He knows
there is not a feather’s weight of compulsion; he knows that, for my
part, I long since ceased to expect anything from him.”
“Certainly, there is no compulsion,” said Schinkel. “It’s to take or to
leave. Only _they_ keep the books.”
Hyacinth stood there before the three, with his eyes on the floor. “Of
course I can do as I like, and what I like is what I _shall_ do.
Besides, what are we talking about, with such sudden passion?” he
asked, looking up. “I have no summons, I have no sign. When the call
reaches me, it will be time to discuss it. Let it come or not come:
it’s not my affair.”
“Certainly, it is not your affair,” said Schinkel.
“I can’t think why M. Paul has never done anything, all this time,
knowing that everything is different now!” Madame Poupin exclaimed.
“Yes, my dear boy, I don’t understand our friend,” her husband
remarked, watching Hyacinth with suspicious, contentious eyes.
“It’s none of his business, any more than ours; it’s none of any one’s
business!” Schinkel declared.
“Muniment walks straight; the best thing you can do is to imitate him,”
said Hyacinth, trying to pass Poupin, who had placed himself before the
door.
“Promise me only this—not to do anything till I have seen you first,”
the Frenchman begged, almost piteously.
“My poor old friend, you are very weak.” And Hyacinth opened the door,
in spite of him, and passed out.
“Ah, well, if you _are_ with us, that’s all I want to know!” the young
man heard him say, behind him, at the top of the stairs, in a different
voice, a tone of sudden, exaggerated fortitude.