“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!”