“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 &ndas............