I LIFTED UP MY VOICE AND CALLED FOR A POLICEMAN“I LIFTED UP MY VOICE AND CALLED FOR A POLICEMAN”
“I LIFTED UP MY VOICE AND CALLED FOR A POLICEMAN”
“I LIFTED UP MY VOICE AND CALLED FOR A POLICEMAN”
The miserable boys took entire credit to themselves for discovering me perched aloft. They pointed me out and called attention to the Jubbulpore rope dangling from the lamp, and elaborated their own theories.
Very properly the constable paid no attention to them, but addressed all his remarks to me.
“You up there,” he asked—“what d’you think you’re plyin’ at?”
There was no sympathy in his voice. He appeared to be a tall, harsh officer—a mere machine, with none of the milk of human kindness in him; or perhaps a beat in Seven Dials had long since turned it sour. Moreover, he felt that the crowd was on his side—a circumstance that always renders a constable over-confident and aggressive.
I felt unstrung, as I say—distracted and more or less emotional—or I should have approached the situation differently; but I was not my own master. I sat there, a mere parcel of throbbing nerves escaped from a hideous death. So, instead of being lucid, which is a vital necessity in all communion with the police, I uttered obscure sayings, went out of my way to be cryptical, and even spoke in spasmodic parables. But of coursethere exists no member of the body politic upon whom parables are wasted more utterly than a constable.
“You are surprised, and naturally so, to see me here,” I said. “There are, however, more things in heaven and earth, policeman, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I am the creature of circumstances—in fact, of a series of circumstances probably unparalleled. A colleague of your own—it may be a personal friend—is responsible for my position on this arch. Yonder wretched boy has not erred; I had seriously thought to destroy myself. I was driven to the very threshold of that rash act.A fronte præcipitium, a tergo lupi, policeman. I am here perched between the devil and the deep sea, a precipice in front, a pack of wolves in the immediate rear. Now, be frank with me. I place myself entirely in your hands. I desire your honest and dispassionate advice.”
But this is not the way to talk to a policeman; perhaps it is not the way to talk to anybody.
The deplorable boy had another theory.
He said, “The blighter’s off his onion!”
Then somebody else, dimly conscious that I had used a foreign language, suspected that Imight be an anarchist. The policeman merely told me to come down, and I obeyed without hesitation, and gave myself up to him. I felt that, situated thus, at least I was safe enough, if he would only do his duty; but he appeared to believe in the opinion that I was a foreigner.
“Where do you come from?” he asked. “If you’re not English, it’s a case for your bloomin’ Consul.”
“I come from South Kensington,” I answered, “and I am English to the backbone, and it’s your duty to convey me to the police-station, which I’ll thank you to do.”
Here again I made a mistake. No man likes being told his duty, whether owing to the natural human aversion from thinking of it or doing it, or for other reasons connected with pride I know not; but the constable, upon this speech of mine, displayed annoyance, and even some idea of leaving me to my own devices. Seeing that he showed an inclination to let me escape into the fog without even a word of advice, I spurred him to his office. I said:—
“If you don’t arrest me, I shall persuade some other member of the force to do so, and, as I have already made a note of your number, it will be the worse for you.”
Upon this he started as if a serpent had stung him; the crowd cheered me, and my object was attained. He felt his popularity was slipping away, and so set about regaining it.
“All right, all right, my bold ’ero!” he said. Then he blew a whistle, and summoned two colleagues.
“Dangerous lunatic—wants to be took up,” he explained. “Clean off his chump. Tryin’ to ’ang ’imself.”
Then he turned to me, and adopted a conciliatory tone.
“Now, then, uncle, come along quiet,” he said.
I suggested a cab, and offered to pay for it, but the constable held such a thing unnecessary extravagance.
“Won’t hurt you to walk,” he said. “And we’ll go quicker than a four-wheeler in this fog.”
So, with a large accompaniment of those who win entertainment from the misfortunes of their betters, I started to some sheltering haven, where it was my hope that the remainder of the day might be spent in security and seclusion behind bolts and bars. In this desire lurked no taste of shame or humiliation. I was far past anything of that kind. My soleunuttered prayer was to be saved from all further human counsel whatsoever. If an angel from heaven had fluttered down beside me, and uttered celestial opinions to brighten that dark hour, I should have rejected his advice, very likely with rudeness.
I thought of the cynical sagacity of Norton Bellamy. How wise he had been! And what a fool was I! I pictured his face when my story came to be told. I heard his horrid laughter, and my self-respect oozed away, and I almost wished I was back with the Jubbulpore hemp upon the arch.
Then, in the moment of my self-abasement, at the supreme climax of my downfall, I looked out through a yellow rift in the accursed fog, and saw Norton Bellamy himself.
At first, indeed, I did not credit this. The fog had lifted somewhat, livid patches and streaks of daylight relieved the gloom, and a dingy metropolis peeped and blinked through it, fungus-coloured and foul; but suddenly, painted upon the murky air, there took shape and substance a moving concourse of figures—of heads under helmets—and I, remembering the spectre of the Brocken, for a moment suspected that what I saw was but the shadows of myself, my policemen and my crowd projectedover against us upon the dusky atmosphere.
Yet as that other company approached the splendid truth burst upon me. Vagrants, policemen, and rioting boys mainly composed it; but in the place of chief dishonour walked Norton Bellamy. He, too, it would seem, had violated the laws of his country. He too, by devious and probably painful ways, had drifted into Seven Dials, and there lost his freedom. An even-handed Nemesis, whose operations yet remained hidden from me, had clearly punished Bellamy for rejecting the advice of his fellow-man, even as she had chastened me for accepting it. And from cursory appearances it looked as though Bellamy had endured even more varied torments than my own. One might have thought that attempts had been made to clean the highway with him. He was dripping with mud, he lacked a hat, his white waistcoat awoke even a passing pity in my heart, and yet the large placidity, the awful calm of a fallen spirit, sat on Bellamy. He had doubtless exploded, detonated, boiled over, fumed, foamed, fretted, and thundered to his utmost limit. His bolt was shot, his venom was gone; he stood before me reduced to the potency of a mere empty cartridge-case.
We met each other’s glance simultaneously, and a sort of savage and foggy beam of joy flitted across his muddy face; while for my part I doubt not that some passing expression of pleasure, which tact and humanity instantly extinguished, also illuminated my features. Our retinues mingled, and for a moment we had speech together.
Needless to say, the discovery that we were acquainted proved a source of much gratification to the crowd.
“Great Scott! You!” gasped out Bellamy. “What have you done?”
“Practically nothing,” I answered; “but what I have suffered no tongue can tell and no human being will ever know. It is sufficient to say that I am here because I was deliberately advised by a fellow-creature to go and hang myself.”
“They told you to do that?” he asked, with keen but suppressed excitement.
“They did.”
He was silent for an instant, pondering this thing, while joy and sorrow mingled on his countenance. Then he answered me.
“I’ll write your cheque the first moment I get back to the office. You were right. There is more good advice given than bad. I’veproved it too. If I’d done half what I was told to-day, I——”
Here our respective guardians separated us, and we marched to our destination in silence; but about five or six minutes later we sat side by side in a police-station, and were permitted to renew our conversation.
“You’ve had a stirring day, no doubt,” Bellamy began, while he scraped mud off himself. “Tell me your yarn, then I’ll tell you mine. But how is it, if somebody advised you to go and hang yourself, that you are here now? You’ll have to explain that first as a matter of honour.”
I explained, and it must be confessed that my words sounded weak. It is certain, at any rate, that they did not convince Bellamy.
“I withdraw the promise to write a cheque,” he said shortly. “On your own showing you dallied and dawdled and fooled about upon the top of that arch. You temporised. If you had followed that advice with promptitude and like a man, you wouldn’t be here. This is paltry and dishonest. I certainly shan’t pay you a farthing.”
I told him that I felt no desire to take his money, and he was going into the question of how far he might be said to have won minewhen we were summoned before the magistrate. Here fate at last befriended me, for the justice proved to be master of my lodge of Freemasons and an old personal friend. Finding that no high crime was laid at the door of Bellamy, and, very properly, refusing to believe that I had been arrested in an attempt on my own life, he rebuked my policeman and restored to us our liberty. Whereupon we departed in a hansom-cab, after putting two guineas apiece into the poor-box. This, I need hardly say, was my idea.
Then, as we drove to a hatter’s at the wish of Norton Bellamy, he threw some light on the sort of morning he himself had spent. The man was reserved and laconic to a ridiculous degree under the circumstances, therefore I shall never know all that he endured; but I gathered enough to guess at the rest, and feel more resigned in the contemplation of my own experiences. He hated to utter his confession, yet the memory of that day rankled so deep within him that he had not the heart to make light of it.
“A foretaste of the hereafter,” began Bellamy—“that’s what I have had. And if such a fiendish morning isn’t enough to drive a man to good works and a better way of life,I’d like to see what is. You say your trouble began in the railway-carriage coming to town. So did mine. But whereas your part was passive, and, by the mere putty-like and plastic virtue of ready obedience to everybody you finally found yourself face to face with death, I reached the same position through a more active and terrible sort of way.”
“Nevertheless,” said I, “taking into consideration the difference between my character and yours—remembering that by nature you are aggressive, I retiring—nothing you can say will make me believe that you have suffered more than I. Physically perhaps, but not mentally.”
“Don’t interrupt. I’ve heard you; now listen to me,” he answered. “It began, as I say, in a train. An infernal inspector desired to see my season-ticket. Of course he was within his rights, and I had a whole carriage-load of fools down on me because I refused to show it. This day has taught me one thing: there’s not a man, woman, or child in the country who minds their own business for choice if a chance offers of poking their vile noses into any other body’s. The people who have interested themselves in me to-day! Well, this railway chap was nasty, of course,and took my name and address; but nothing more worth mentioning happened, except a row with a shoeblack, until I got to my office. There the real trouble began.
“You know Gideon? Who doesn’t, for that matter? I had the luck to do him a good turn a week ago, and he came in this morning with a tip—actually went out of his way to cross Lombard Street and get out of his cab and look in.
“He said ‘Good morning. Buy Diamond Jubilees—all you can get.’ And I didn’t look up from my letters, but thought it was Jones, who’s always dropping in to play the fool, and remembered our loathsome bet. So I merely said, ‘Shan’t! Clear out!’ Then I lifted my head just in time to see Gideon departing, about as angry as a big man can be with a little one, and my clerks all looking as though they’d suddenly heard the last trump.
“I tore after him, but too late; of course he’d gone. Then I dashed to his place of business, but he’d got an appointment somewhere else and didn’t turn up till after twelve, by which time the tip was useless. And he showed me pretty plainly that I may regard myself as nothing to him henceforth. After that I was too sick to work, so went West tosee a man and get some new clothes. Like a fool, I never remembered that with this bet on me I couldn’t lie too low. It was all right at the hairdresser’s, as you may imagine; but I’m accustomed to let my tailor advise me a good deal, and you can see the holy fix I was in after he’d measured me. I got out of that by saying that I’d drop in again and see his stuffs and his pictures by daylight; then I had a glass of port at Long’s, and remembering my youngsters, went to find a shop where I could get masks and wigs and nonsense for them, because they are proposing to do some charades or something to wind up their holiday before they go back to school. Then, in the fog, I got muddled up and lost myself about a quarter of a mile from where we met. First I had a row with a brute from Covent Garden Market, who ran into me with a barrow of brussels-sprouts. We exchanged sentiments for a while, and then the coster said—
“‘I don’t arsk of you to pick ’em up, do I?’
“Well, of course, as he didn’t ask me to pick them up, I immediately began to do it. And the man was so astonished that he stopped swearing and called several of his friends to make an audience. So that was all right as far as it went; but just then a bobby appearedout of the din and clatter of the street, and ordered me to move on. Of course I wouldn’t, and while I was arguing with him, and asking for his reason, a fire-engine dashed out of the bowels of the fog and knocked me down in a heap before I knew who’d hit me.
“Everybody thought I was jolly well killed, and I could just see the air thick with blackguard faces, getting their first bit of real fun for the day, when I suppose I must have become unconscious from the shock for the time being. Anyway, on regaining my senses, I found myself in a bed of mud and rotten oranges, with three policemen and about fifty busybodies, all arguing cheerfully over me, as if I was a lost child. Most of them hoped I was dead, and showed their disappointment openly when I recovered again. Two doctors—so they said they were—had also turned up from somewhere, and taken a general survey of me while I was in no condition to prevent them. After that I need hardly tell you I’ve lost my watch.
“The question appeared to be my destination, and now the policeman who had told me to move on explained, at great length, that depended entirely on whether I was physically shattered or still intact. If I was all rightsave for the loss of my hat and the gain of an extra coat or two of mud, the man had arranged to take me to a police-station for interfering with a fire-engine in the execution of its duty, or some rot of that sort; but if, on the other hand, I was broken up and perhaps mortally injured, then it struck him as a case for a stretcher and a hospital.
“They were still arguing about this when I came to. Upon which the constable invited my opinion, and explained the two courses open to him. He seemed indifferent and practically left it to me; so, as I felt the police-station would probably represent the simplest and shortest ordeal, and as, moreover, so far as I could judge at the time, I was little the worse in body for the downfall, I decided in that direction. I told him I was all right and had mercifully escaped. Whereupon he congratulated me in a friendly spirit and took me in charge.”
Thus Bellamy: and when the man had finished, we spoke further for the space of about two minutes and a half, then parted, by mutual understanding, to meet no more.
“I’m sorry for you,” I said. “We were both wrong and both right. The truth is that there’s a golden mean in the matter of advice,as in most things. Probably the proportions of good and bad are about equal, though I am not prepared to allow that our experiments can be regarded as in any sense conclusive.”
“And as to the bet, I suppose we may say it’s off?” asked Norton Bellamy. “I imagine you’ve had enough of this unique tomfoolery, and I know I have. I’m a mass of bruises and may be smashed internally for all I know, not to mention my watch.”
“Yes,” I replied, “the wager must be regarded as no longer existing. We have both suffered sufficiently, and if we proceeded with itquod avertat Deus, some enduring tribulation would probably overtake one or both of us. And a final word, Bellamy. As you know, we have never been friends; our natures and idiosyncrasies always prevented any mutual regard; and this tragedy of to-day must be said to banish even mutual respect.”
“It has,” said Norton Bellamy. “I won’t disguise it. I feel an all-round contempt for you, Honeybun, that is barely equalled by the contempt I feel for myself. I can’t possibly put it more strongly than that.”
“Exactly my own case,” I answered; “and, therefore, in the future it will be better that we cease even to be acquaintances.”
“My own idea,” said Bellamy, “only I felt a delicacy about advancing it, which you evidently didn’t. But I am quite of your opinion all the same. And, of course, this day’s awful work is buried in our own breasts. Consider if it got upon the Stock Exchange! We should be ruined men. Absolute silence must be maintained.”
“So be it,” I replied. “Henceforth we only meet on the neutral ground of Brighton A’s. Indeed, even there it is not necessary, I think, that we should have any personal intercourse. And one final word; if you will take my advice——”
He had now alighted, but turned upon this utterance and gave me a look of such concentrated bitterness, malice, and detestation, that I felt the entire horror of the day was reflected in his eyes.
“Youradvice! Holy angels and Hanwell!”
Those were the last words of Norton Bellamy. He felt this to be the final straw; he turned his back upon me; he tottered away into his hatter’s; and, with a characteristic financial pettiness, raised no question about paying for his share of our cab.