by Henry James
‘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 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 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 was 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 im Himmel!’159 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.160 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,161 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 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,162 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,163 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!’164 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 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 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’ arithmétique165 – 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 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 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 bookbin
der 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 were 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, omi nously, 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.