A significant look passed between two or three of the more advanced party. A peaceful solution would have ill suited their plans and schemes; and had William Holl’s wishes been carried into effect, he would have found, as his predecessors, the Girondists, had done, another Mountain to oppose him, and perhaps met with such a fate as them in the end.
“I should say,” another man said, “that the whole of the working classes in London—every man—should be agreed to meet at three or four centres, such as Primrose Hill, Hyde Park, and Kennington Common, and that they should go in procession to Westminster to present our petition, and should call upon the House to name an early day for its consideration. That on that day we should again assemble, and march to the House; that we should fill the galleries, and sit there till it had passed. That we should have everything prepared in case of refusal; the men all told off in companies under officers, and their work given to each; so many to the gunsmiths’ shops, so many to the Tower; the rest to throw up barricades. That an agreement should be made with the northern towns to rise simultaneously; and that we should then as a people declare Parliament dissolved, and proclaim a Republic. That we should disarm the troops when they did not resist us, annihilate them when they did, and then proceed all over the country to elect a house of representatives by universal suffrage.”
The speech was received with loud applause, and they proceeded to discuss the details of the undertaking. Many of the speeches were really brilliant, and the assembly was perfectly in accord on the main points. It was nearly one o’clock when they separated. As they were breaking up, Thornton spoke aside to a small malignant-looking man, who had taken a very prominent part in the debates. This man was the editor of an obscure paper, which pandered to the passions of its readers, by pouring out the foulest abuse on all who were above them,—
“Everything goes on well, Hausford; don’t forget your part of the work. We depend greatly upon you, you know. Be sure you keep them up to boiling point.”
The man replied by a meaning nod, and then quietly one by one, to avoid attracting attention, the council took their departure.
CHAPTER IX.
WHAT WILL IT LEAD TO.
At about seven o’clock on the next evening, Arthur Prescott was sitting smoking in his friend’s room, which was immediately under his own. The two apartments were similar in size, but this was the only resemblance that existed between them. Arthur’s was strictly a student’s room, plain and neat, half office, half sitting room, with a few bookshelves filled with plain, legal-looking volumes. Stiff dining-room chairs with leather-covered seats, a horsehair sofa at the hardness of which Frank was constantly grumbling, and two easy chairs of questionable comfort, nearly made up the inventory of the contents. Frank’s room was in strong contrast to this; it was handsomely, indeed luxuriously, furnished. The walls were wainscoted with dark, or rather black oak, on the panels of which hung a few really good pictures, which Frank had purchased during his rambles in Spain. The curtains were green, and the floor covered with a rich Turkey carpet, in which the same colour predominated. In the centre of the mantelpiece stood a bronze statue from Herculaneum, flanked by two real Etruscan vases, and a pair of magnificent Venetian goblets. Crossed above these upon the wall were two long Turkish jasmine pipe-stems, with their red bowls and amber mouth-pieces; and higher still, two swords, Toledo and Damascene, bought in the countries where they were manufactured. On brackets round the room were a few Parian marble statuettes. On a small round table stood a large Turkish narghile, with its long tube of green and gold coiled round it like a glistening snake. In the recess on one side of the fire-place was a really good library of choice standard works; in the other was a perfect confusion of boxing-gloves, single-sticks, foils, masks, heavy clubs, and dumb-bells, with which, as Frank said, he kept his hand in for a quarter of an hour before breakfast. The chairs were covered with furniture to match the hangings, but this was their only point of mutual resemblance. They were all of different shapes; most of them being of the sort coming under the general term of easy, while the two large ones by the fire, in which the occupants of the room were seated, were of a particularly comfortable and luxurious appearance. It was about these very chairs that the young men were speaking.
“It is quite a treat to sit in them,” Prescott said.
“Yes,” Frank answered, puffing out his smoke with an air of extreme contentment. “I flatter myself that they approach as nearly to perfect comfort as it is possible for anything earthly to do. I do love an easy chair. I remember when I was a child I used to be tortured, not as a punishment, mind, but as a regular thing—tortured by having to sit on a high-legged, straight-backed chair, with a seat no bigger than a cheese-plate, so that you could neither lean forward nor backward. How my unfortunate little back used to ache! I really wonder that my spine ever grew straight. At other times, when not in that terrible little chair, I had to sit bolt upright, and it was a penal offence to loll, as my grandmother called it, or in any way to approach a comfortable attitude.”
“It was nearly as bad in my case, Frank,” Prescott said. “I believe our fathers had a vague idea that unless we sat perfectly upright, our spine would become irretrievably crooked, whereas I really believe the reverse to be nearer the fact. I feel certain that many a man and woman with a curved spine and broken health has nothing but those atrocious chairs and the miserable stiff attitudes they had to sit in as children to thank for their misfortunes.”