It had been impossible to interrupt Johnson before, without the most impolitic rudeness. Jermyn was not sorry that he should talk, even if he made a fool of himself; for in that solid shape, exhibiting the average amount of human foibles, he seemed less of the alias which Harold had insinuated him to be, and had all the additional plausibility of a lie with a circumstance.
Harold had thrown himself with contemptuous resignation into a chair, had drawn off one of his buff gloves, and was looking at his hand. But when Johnson gave his iteration with a slightly slackened pace, Harold looked up at him and broke in—
"Well then, Mr. Johnson, I shall be glad if you will use your care and judgment in putting an end, as well as you can, to this Sproxton affair; else it may turn out an ugly business."
"Excuse me, sir; I must beg you to look at the matter a little more closely. You will see that it is impossible to take a single step backward at Sproxton. It was a matter of necessity to get the Sproxton men; else I know to a certainty the other side would have laid hold of them first, and now I've undermined Garstin's people. They'll use their authority, and give a little shabby treating, but I've taken all the wind out of their sails. But if, by your orders, I or Mr. Jermyn here were to break promise with the honest fellows, and offend Chubb the publican, what would come of it? Chubb would leave no stone unturned against you, sir; he would egg on his customers against you; the colliers and navvies would be at the nomination and the election all the same, or rather not all the same, for they would be there against us; and instead of hustling people good-humoredly by way of a joke, and counterbalancing Debarry's cheers, they'd help to kick the cheering and voting out of our men, and instead of being, let us say, half-a-dozen ahead of Garstin, you'd be half-a-dozen behind him, that's all. I speak plain English to you, Mr. Transome, though I've the highest respect for you as a gentleman of first-rate talents and position. But, sir, to judge of these things a man must know the English voter and the English publican; and it would be a poor tale indeed"—here Mr. Johnson's mouth took an expression at once bitter and pathetic—"that a gentleman like you, to say nothing of the good of the country, should have gone to the expense and trouble of a canvass for nothing but to find himself out of Parliament at the end of it. I've seen it again and again; it looks bad in the cleverest man to have to sing small."
Mr. Johnson's argument was not the less stringent because his idioms were vulgar. It requires a conviction and resolution amounting to heroism not to wince at phrases that class our foreshadowed endurance among those common and ignominious troubles which the world is more likely to sneer at than to pity. Harold remained a few minutes in angry silence looking at the floor, with one hand on his knee and the other on his hat, as if he were preparing to start up.
"As to undoing anything that's been done down there," said Johnson, throwing in this observation as something into the bargain, "I must wash my hands of it, sir. I couldn't work knowingly against your interest. And that young man who is just gone out,—you don't believe that he need be listened to, I hope? Chubb, the publican, hates him. Chubb would guess he was at the bottom of your having the treating stopped, and he'd set half-a-dozen of the colliers to duck him in the canal, or break his head by mistake. I'm an experienced man, sir. I hope I've put it clear enough."
"Certainly, the exposition befits the subject," said Harold, scornfully, his dislike of the man Johnson's personality being stimulated by causes which Jermyn more than conjectured. "It's a damned, unpleasant, ravelled business that you and Mr. Jermyn have knit up between you. I've no more to say."
"Then, sir, if you've no more commands, I don't wish to intrude. I shall wish you good-morning, sir," said Johnson, passing out quickly.
Harold knew that he was indulging his temper, and he would probably have restrained it as a foolish move if he had thought there was great danger in it. But he was beginning to drop much of his caution and self-mastery where Jermyn was concerned, under the growing conviction that the attorney had very strong reasons for being afraid of him; reasons which would only be reinforced by any action hostile to the Transome interest. As for a sneak like this Johnson, a gentleman had to pay him, not to please him. Harold had smiles at command in the right place, but he was not going to smile when it was neither necessary nor agreeable. He was one of those good-humored, yet energetic men, who have the gift of anger, hatred, and scorn upon occasion, though they are too healthy and self-contented for such feelings to get generated in them without external occasion. And in relation to Jermyn the gift was coming into fine exercise.
"A—pardon me, Mr. Harold," said Jermyn, speaking as soon as Johnson went out, "but I am sorry—a—you should behave disobligingly to a man who has it in his power to do much service—who, in fact, holds many threads in his hands. I admit that—a—nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit, as we say—a——"