CHAPTER LXXIX
Wherein the Honourable Rupert Greppel shows Hidalgic
Ina large shed in the workmen’s quarter, on a platform, under the flare of gas-jets high hung in the dim rafters of the great place, there sat three men at a table; and before them, languid and self-possessed, his frock-coat close-buttoned and his scented being attired in the general air and pose of the dandy, stood a man of pale countenance, who, with the calm measured accents that are the habit of self-possession, spoke to the upturned faces of a dark mass of men that swept in a vast attentive hush from before his feet.
He spoke with facile precision of thought and accent, holding himself easily, airily, and with picturesque insolence. There was in the air with which he spoke a quiet indifference as to whether he pleased his hearers or not which had something of that strange distinction that marked everything this man did or said—for Rupert Greppel, whatever his faults, had a conspicuous and sincere belief in his own dignity. He stood there calmly hidalgic, swaggering, self-reliant. He never forgot, nor allowed others to forget, that his mother was a French countess, and of the oldest of the old noblesse.
He was speaking the last words of an academic appeal to aristocratic anarchy as the solution of the great human problem. He treated with contempt the aspirations and the beliefs in all socialistic ideals, laughed at the good of the largest number. The masses did not even believe in themselves, said he. The strong man, strong in himself and of the breed of those that had belief in themselves through the habit of generations of tyranny and of rule, was alone fit to govern——
“Down with all aristocrats!” cried an ugly-looking fellow at the back of the great seething mass of listening humanity.
Rupert Greppel never so much as frowned. A little smile played about his eye-pits and lips. And he was greeted with a storm of counter-cheers from a group of students and friends, amongst whom sat Myre and Noll and others.
“You cannot put out the aristocrat with the breath of a mere shout,” said he calmly. “What does the State know of justice or of equity? There is one law for the strong and one for the weak—and there always will be.”
There was some laughter; and again counter-cheers.
“The State is the triumph of the individual over his fellows, rank by rank, until the poorer spirits labour for the free spirits. Tush! when you have a strike in this so-called Republic, the troops are used for those that are in the right, hein?” He laughed. “I tell you they are drawn up to strike for those that are in power. And they are right. The commonweal demands the public good. I am not for it. I demand rather to play gaily with this life that is mine, as if it were mine, not this one’s, nor another’s—I demand to play it like a gentleman, with dignity, elegantly, artistically, free to serve my own sweet will, lusting when I will, with whom I will, reading pleasant literature when I would rest my body, sleeping when I would, strutting it abroad with my clothes well-fitting, enjoying life, and looking well-dressed for the part—I am aristocrat. As for the people let them be as happy as they may, consistently with toil—let them have bread and amusement on occasion—let them prate of the humanities—but do not rack their grey minds with books. Shut the muddling schools to them. Do not harass their vague minds and make them pale with thinking. We can do all that for them. Let them be industrious and well-behaved. Thought and the riot of living are only for the aristocrat. These things but give the people a gross headache. The peasant has stolen our acres; the burgess has bought our strongholds. And is the world gayer? Is it cleaner in conduct? Is it stronger in men? I say the world is for the aristocrat—and the aristocrat has fallen from the days when, the stag being long in the finding, we hunted a lean peasant instead. The aristocrat being dethroned, the Jew holds all France in his fat and grubbing hands. Is France more splendid than it was? But one thing they have not been able to buy—our countenance. They still have our contempt. And we yet hold the reins of the glorious lordship of war. We still know how to die. And until we die, when we walk abroad let the people see to it that they give us the cleanest place if we condescend to walk the same pavement.... But the dirty rogues encroach. The dirty rabble ape our very vices. The people to-day have even the impertinence to be bored—boredom is the privilege of the aristocrat. They would leave us nothing.”
Amidst the laughter and the applause that rose above the swell of the ugly growl which was the sullen voice of the great crowd before him, he descended from the platform.
A restless silence fell upon the place.
But the massed crowd burst into a roar as a man leaped on to the platform and stepped forward before the people—a rough workman, energetic, vigorous, alert, dirty. This was one of those half-educated men of action, bred by the academic unrest of the literary anarchists—bred by the egoists, Nietzsche and other dainty-fingered gentlemanly persons enough, who would have been alarmed to think that their theories were breeding such volcanoes. Into his blood had eaten their academic trifling with extreme individualism—his fanatic eyes glowed at the verythought of his fingers about the throat of the rich—and, innately criminal by every instinct, his nerves leaped at the murderous impulse when he found logic was with him in his histrionic dreams of killing.
The picture-loving eyes of the world are caught by the theatric glamour of the unflinching courage that sent out the debonnair and scented gentlemen of Versailles, beribboned and careless, to face, with clouded canes for sole weapon, the blood-dripping and weaponed mob of the Revolution—the romantic pulse of the grey world is thrilled at the grim tale of the exquisites who continued their games of cards and dice, regardless of the interruption of rude history and with all the elaborate etiquette and fantastic ceremony of their accustomed habit, until the command came from rough lips that it was the turn of each to step into the jolting tumbrils that lumbered to the scaffold and the guillotine. And indeed theirs was a splendid feminine defensive courage, that dreaded only the indecencies. But courage is not the privilege of a class—the sombre garb of the workman holds often enough habitual acts of courage, persistent and grim as that which on occasion sets the poets rhyming if it be shown by a prince of the blood; and it covers thereby a more virile danger, if roused to it, of turning aggressive hands to the rectifying of its grievances, injustices, and years of sullenly borne insolences. And if the rousing be done by a master wit, what vast significance may be there? or what ghastly catastrophe?
This fellow swung back his head to speak—and a shout greeted him from the back of the great hall, where some ugly-looking fellows stood:
“Gavroche!” cried they—“silence for Gavroche!”
The greeting touched the man’s conceit, and he smiled. He laughed:
“That scented fellow is not without eyes,” said he; and a shout of laughter greeted him.
His eyes settled on his theme; and when the silence came he burst roughly into his harangue:
“Nietzsche has spoken the last word,” said he. “Man has arrived above the world’s shambles by struggle alone—he is the fittest to survive. There is no other law. The strongest shall succeed. Existence is an anarchy; and they alone have rights who make them. Yet man, forsooth, arriving at the top of things by mastery, decides Nature to be brutal, forgets that he is where he is by the ruthless selection of the fittest, and being arrived at supremacy in Nature, he thinks to hold Nature back by overthrowing her supreme law—he refuses to let the weak go to the wall, refuses to leave the sick to die, hangs the strong man who slays the weakling, and flouts the very nature which put him a-top of the brutalities to bestride the world! But Nature is not to be flouted. She proceeds, with contempt of all opposition, to evolve the ultimate over-man, the Beyond-Man—the healthy, strong, ruthless, vigorous overlord. Man is the most splendid brute—at the base of him is the scarlet lust of war. The cultured and theeffete and the timid quake, frightened at the vision of the Beyond-Man, not daring to acknowledge that the ruthless survive. And to what do they appeal? to art and civilization and religion. Well! these be pleasant toys—but in what manner have these things been of use to make man stronger, better equipped for the ruthless struggle for mastery, and to produce a more ruthless breed? The day and life of the whole modern state is a lie—it swarms with churches, mouths its creed of loving your neighbour as yourself. But what are itsacts? I tell you it is moved by an aristocratic morality—a code which has no slightest intention of loving his neighbour. There is no democracy—men are not equal, but wholly unequal. But there is cheer for you, my comrades of the corduroy breeches—you of the hard hands and the vigorous life. The Beyond-Man is not of the nerveless race of puppet kings, indeed what hath a king to-day but his robes and his fal-lals and his fineries? The Beyond-Man is not of the enervated crowd of hereditary nobles—like that scented apparition that has just spoken. He is not the fat-bellied flabby burgess, grown soft behind a counter. He is of the master-wits amongst the workers—men whose bodies are hardened by toil, whose vigour is a live thing from the habit of a strenuous life. It is our turn.” He paused, and added hoarsely: “Up, then, and change the face of the world! Up and seize the good things the gods dangle before your eyes for the seizing. Take them as these others have taken them—by sinew and strength of arm. Pluck from kings their magnificence—not to give it to the aristocracy whom feudalism created lords paramount to usurp kingship—not to the smug burgess whom you enfranchised with your blood at the Revolution—nay, the nobles were more picturesque and not a whit more brutal than the trader, for the sweating-dens are many and each hath a thousand victims for one that knew the rack, each den more populous than the Bastille! Pluck their riches from the burgess and hang him where he hanged the nobles—the lamp-post is still an emblem of civilization. And if you fail a time or so, do the prison and the frozen road of winter leave your belly more empty than the humanitarian State? Has the felon’s cell a harder task than such as many a worker lives in thefree air—God help us—the free air of this Rien-publique! Danger is the strong man’s plaything—the whetstone of mastery. Vive l’Anarchie!”
He stepped forward as he ended his fierce apostrophe, and shouted it hoarsely:
“Vive l’Anarchie!”
The great throats of the workmen flung back the cry with a mighty shout; and the students cried applause, setting their canes rapping upon the floor.
The cheers set Gavroche’s conceit jigging. He stood, his heavy face glowing in the down-flung light. The shadows played about his eye-pits and high cheek-bones and broad nostrils and heavy chin, and ran down the deep throat; and the light revealed the strong jaw of the man who carries out his contentions.
But even as he stood, a big man arose in the midst of the bohemians and students, and said in loud clear accents:
“Thou fool!”
The students shouted with laughter; and the mood of the workmen changed, as a Frenchman’s quick subtle mind will change at a ridiculous situation. The vast crowd burst into merriment.
Gavroche came down the platform, and suddenly lost the command of himself that had given him a strange dignity during his oration—he gave way to wild gesticulation and his voice rose to a shrill scream, and at once became as the ravings of a maniac to the judgment of the vast multitude. Loss of temper lost him the ear of the house.
The big man, Eustace Lovegood, remained standing in calm self-reliance—a dignity that appeals always to the essential dignity that lies beneath the wits of all workers.
One of the solemn Three at the table leaned forward, rang a bell, and asked the pleasure of the house; and when the din had ceased he called out to the big man to go up and speak—Gavroche, said he, had had his say and must go down.
Gavroche, recovering his calm, shrugged his shoulders and descending from the platform made his way to a group of workmen at the back of the hall—as Lovegood worked his way up to the tribune....
“Come, comrades,” growled Gavroche to his fellows—“pass the word—this fellow will speak for a full hour—he is like to be on the side of the moralities—and they require some explaining. We can be back here soon after. Slip away and meet by the broken river-lamp. The watchword isRien-publique—and the countersignBeyond-man.”
As Lovegood made his huge way to the platform, there also left the hall the engrossed figure of Quogge Myre. A great idea had come to him.