The pair pursued the rest of their course for the most part in silence, Hyacinth being considerably struck with something that dropped from his companion in answer to a question he asked as to what Eustache Poupin had said when Schinkel, this evening, first told him what he had come to see him about. “Il vaut du galme—il vaut du galme”: that was the German’s version of the Frenchman’s words; and Hyacinth repeated them over to himself several times and almost with the same accent. They had a certain soothing effect. In fact the good Schinkel was somehow salutary altogether, as our hero felt when they stopped at last at the door of his lodging in Westminster and stood there face to face while Hyacinth waited—just waited. The sharpness of his impatience had passed away and he watched without irritation the loving manner in which his mate shook the ashes out of the big smoked-out—so vehemently smoked-out—pipe and laid it to rest in its coffin. It was only after he had gone through this business with his usual attention to every detail of it that he said “Also, now for the letter” and, putting his hand inside his old waistcoat, drew forth the portentous missive. It passed instantly into Hyacinth’s grasp, and our young man transferred it to his own pocket without looking at it. He thought he saw disappointment in Schinkel’s ugly, kindly face at this indication that he himself should have no knowledge—present and relieving at least—of its contents; but he liked that better than his pretending to attribute to it again some silly comfortable sense. Schinkel had now the shrewdness or the good taste not to repeat that remark, and as the letter pressed against his heart Hyacinth felt it still more distinctly, not as a vain balm to apprehension, but as the very penetration of a fatal knife. What his friend did say in a moment was: “Now you’ve got it I’m very glad. It’s easier for me.” And he effected a poor strained grin.
“I should think so!” Hyacinth exclaimed. “If you hadn’t done your job you’d have paid for it.”
Schinkel mumbled as for accommodation while he lingered, and then as Hyacinth turned away, putting in his door-key, brought out: “And if you don’t do yours so will you.”
“Yes, as you say, they themselves go straight! Good-night.” And our young man let himself in.
The passage and staircase were never lighted and the lodgers either groped their way bedward with the infallibility of practice or scraped the wall with a casual match the effect of which, in the milder gloom of day, was a rude immensity of laceration. Hyacinth’s room was a second floor back, and as he approached it he was startled by seeing a light proceed from the crevice under the door, the imperfect fitting of which figured to him thus as quite squalid. He stopped and considered this new note of his crisis, his first impulse being to connect it with the case just presented by Schinkel—since what could anything that touched him now be but a part of the same business? It was doubtless all in order that some second portent should now await him there. Yet it occurred to him that when he went out to call on Lady Aurora after tea he must simply have left a tallow candle burning, and that it showed a cynical spirit on the part of his landlady, who could be so close-fisted for herself, not to have gone in and put it out. Lastly it came over him that he had had a visitor in his absence and that the visitor had taken possession of his apartment till his return, seeking such poor sources of comfort as were perfectly just. When he opened the door this last prevision proved the correct one, though the figure in occupation was not one of the possible presences that had loomed. Mr. Vetch sat beside the little table at which Hyacinth did his writing; he showed a weary head on a supporting hand and eyes apparently closed. But he looked up when his young man appeared. “Oh I didn’t hear you; you’re very quiet.”
“I come in softly when I’m late, for the sake of the house—though I’m bound to say I’m the only lodger who has that refinement. Besides, you’ve been asleep,” Hyacinth said.
“No, I’ve not been asleep,” the old man returned. “I don’t sleep much nowadays.”
“Then you’ve been plunged in meditation.”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking.” With which Mr. Vetch explained that the woman of the house had begun by refusing him admittance without proper assurances that his intentions were pure and that he was moreover the oldest friend Mr. Robinson had in the world. He had been there an hour; he had thought he might find him by coming late.
Mr. Robinson was very glad he had waited and was delighted to see him and expressed regret that he hadn’t known in advance of his visit, so that he might have something to offer him. He sat down on the bed, vaguely expectant; he wondered what special purpose had brought the fiddler so far at that unnatural hour. Yet he spoke but the truth in saying he was glad to see him. Hyacinth had come upstairs in such a pain of desire to be alone with the revelation carried in his pocket that the sight of a guest had given him positive relief by postponing solitude. The place where he had put his letter seemed to throb against his side, yet he was thankful to his old friend for forcing him still to leave it so. “I’ve been looking at your books,” the fiddler said; “you’ve two or three exquisite specimens of your own. Oh yes, I recognise your work when I see it; there are always certain little finer touches. You’ve a manner, as who should say, like one of the masters. With such a hand and such feeling your future’s assured. You’ll make a fortune and become famous.”