Part 29

Something within him protested that he was a hot-headed ass even as he went towards the door again. But he only went on the more resolutely. He crossed the hall, by the bar, and entered the room from which the remark had proceeded. He opened the door abruptly and stood scowling on them in the doorway. “You’ll only make a mess of it,” remarked the internal sceptic. There were five men in the room altogether: a fat person, with a long pipe and a great number of chins, in an armchair by the fireplace, who wished Mr. Hoopdriver a good evening very affably; a young fellow smoking a cutty and displaying crossed legs with gaiters; a little, bearded man with a toothless laugh; a middle-aged, comfortable man with bright eyes, who wore a velveteen jacket; and a fair young man, very genteel in a yellowish-brown ready-made suit and a white tie.

“H’m,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking very stern and harsh. And then in a forbidding tone, as one who consented to no liberties, “Good evening.”

“Very pleasant day we’ve been ’aving,” said the fair young man with the white tie.

“Very,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, slowly; and taking a brown armchair, he planted it with great deliberation where he faced the fireplace, and sat down. Let’s see—how did that speech begin?

“Very pleasant roads about here,” said the fair young man with the white tie.

“Very,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, eyeing him darkly. Have to begin somehow. “The roads about here are all right, and the weather about here is all right, but what I’ve come in here to say is—there’s some damned unpleasant people—damned unpleasant people!”

“Oh!” said the young man with the gaiters, apparently making a mental inventory of his pearl buttons as he spoke. “How’s that?”

Mr. Hoopdriver put his hands on his knees and stuck out his elbows with extreme angularity. In his heart he was raving at his idiotic folly at thus bearding these lions,—indisputably they were lions,—but he had to go through with it now. Heaven send, his breath, which was already getting a trifle spasmodic, did not suddenly give out. He fixed his eye on the face of the fat man with the chins, and spoke in a low, impressive voice. “I came here, sir,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, and paused to inflate his cheeks, “with a lady.”

“Very nice lady,” said the man with the gaiters, putting his head on one side to admire a pearl button that had been hiding behind the curvature of his calf. “Very nice lady indeed.”

“I came here,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “with a lady.”

“We saw you did, bless you,” said the fat man with the chins, in a curious wheezy voice. “I don’t see there’s anything so very extraordinary in that. One ’ud think we hadn’t eyes.”

Mr. Hoopdriver coughed. “I came, here, sir—”

“We’ve ’eard that,” said the little man with the beard, sharply and went off into an amiable chuckle. “We know it by ’art,” said the little man, elaborating the point.

Mr. Hoopdriver temporarily lost his thread. He glared malignantly at the little man with the beard, and tried to recover his discourse. A pause.

“You were saying,” said the fair young man with the white tie, speaking very politely, “that you came here with a lady.”

“A lady,” meditated the gaiter gazer.

The man in velveteen, who was looking from one speaker to another with keen, bright eyes, now laughed as though a point had been scored, and stimulated Mr. Hoopdriver to speak, by fixing him with an expectant regard.

“Some dirty cad,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, proceeding with his discourse, and suddenly growing extremely fierce, “made a remark as we went by this door.”

“Steady on!” said the old gentleman with many chins. “Steady on! Don’t you go a-calling us names, please.”

“One minute!” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “It wasn’t I began calling names.” (“Who did?” said the man with the chins.) “I’m not calling any of you dirty cads. Don’t run away with that impression. Only some person in this room made a remark that showed he wasn’t fit to wipe boots on, and, with all due deference to such gentlemen as are gentlemen” (Mr. Hoopdriver looked round for moral support), “I want to know which it was.”

“Meanin’?” said the fair young man in the white tie.

“That I’m going to wipe my boots on ’im straight away,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, reverting to anger, if with a slight catch in his throat—than which threat of personal violence nothing had been further from his thoughts on entering the room. He said this because he could think of nothing else to say, and stuck out his elbows truculently to hide the sinking of his heart. It is curious how situations run away with us.

“’Ullo, Charlie!” said the little man, and “My eye!” said the owner of the chins. “You’re going to wipe your boots on ’im?” said the fair young man, in a tone of mild surprise.

“I am,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, with emphatic resolution, and glared in the young man’s face.

“That’s fair and reasonable,” said the man in the velveteen jacket; “if you can.”

The interest of the meeting seemed transferred to the young man in the white tie. “Of course, if you can’t find out which it is, I suppose you’re prepared to wipe your boots in a liberal way on everybody in the room,” said this young man, in the same tone of impersonal question. “This gentleman, the champion lightweight—”

“Own up, Charlie,” said the young man with the gaiters, looking up for a moment. “And don’t go a-dragging in your betters. It’s fair and square. You can’t get out of it.”

“Was it this—gent?” began Mr. Hoopdriver.