QUITE OUT OF THE COMMON
I WASN’T even thinking of the fool. It is enough to be in the same market on ’Change with Norton Bellamy, and outside my office or the House I like to forget him.
But long ago he joined the City of London Club, to my great regret, and now, in the smoking-room after lunch, during my cup of coffee, cigar, and game of dominoes, he will too often hurl himself uninvited into a conversation that he is neither asked to join nor desired to enlighten.
Upon a day in January last my friend George Mathers had a chill on the liver, and was suffering under sustained professional ill-fortune. From his standpoint, therefore, in the Kaffir Market, he looked out at the world and agreed with Carlyle’s unreasonable estimate of mankind. As a jobber in a large way he came to this conclusion; while I,who am a broker and a member of the Committee, could by no means agree with him.
“The spirit of common-sense must be reckoned with,” I explained to Mathers. “This nation stands where it does by right of that virtue. Take the giving and receiving of advice. You may draw a line through that. There is a rare, a notable genius for giving advice in this country. The war illustrates my point. You will find every journal full of advice given by civilians to soldiers, by soldiers to civilians, by the man in the street to the man in the Cabinet, and by the man in the Cabinet to the man in the street. We think for ourselves, develop abnormal common-sense, and as a consequence, I maintain that much more good advice is given than bad.”
But Mathers, what with his chilled liver and business depression, was unreasonable. He derided my contention. He flouted it. He raised his voice in hard, simulated laughter, and attracted other men from their coffee and cigars. When he had won their attention, he tried to crush me publicly. He said:
“My dear chap, out of your own mouth I will confute you. If more good advice isgiven than bad, every man will get more good than harm by following advice. That’s logical; but you won’t pretend to maintain such a ridiculous position, surely?”
I like a war of words after luncheon. It sharpens the wits and assists digestion. So, without being particularly in earnest, I supported my contention.
“Assuredly,” I said. “We don’t take enough advice, in my opinion—just as we don’t take enough exercise or wholesome food. It is too much the fashion to ask advice and not take it. But if we modelled our lives on the disinterested opinion of other people, and availed ourselves of the combined judgment of our fellows, the world would be both happier and wiser in many directions. And if men knew when they were invited to express an opinion that it was no mere conventional piece of civility or empty compliment which prompted us to ask their criticism, consider how they would put their best powers forward. Yes, one who consistently followed the advice of his fellow-creatures would be paying a compliment to humanity and——”
“Qualifying himself for a lunatic asylum!” Here burst in the blatant Bellamy from hisseat by the fire. He put down a financial journal, and then turned to me. “If there’s more good advice flying about than bad, old man, why don’t you take some?” he said. “I could give you plenty of excellent advice at this moment, Honeybun. For instance, I could tell you to play the fool only in your own house; but you wouldn’t thank me. You’d say it was uncalled-for and impertinent; you know you would.”
Bellamy is the only man who has any power to annoy me after my lunch; and knowing it, he exercises that power. He can shake me at a word, can reach my nerve-centres quicker than a tintack. Seen superficially, he appears to be nothing more than the mere, common stockbroker, but his voice it is that makes him so hated—his voice, and his manners, and his sense of humour. I turned upon him and did a foolish thing, as one often does foolish things when suddenly maddened into them by some bigger fool than oneself. I answered:
“There’s bad advice—idiotic advice—given as well as good. When I’ve exhausted creation, and wantyouropinion, my dear Bellamy, I’ll trouble you for it; and as to playing the fool, why,nemo mortalium omnibushoris sapit—not even Norton Bellamy. You’ll admit that?”
Bellamy has no education, and nothing irritates him quicker than a quotation in a foreign language, though any other quotation he’s more than a match for. He scowled and meant mischief from the moment the laugh went with me. He ignored the Latin, but stuck to the English of my remark.
“Bad as well as good,” he answered. “Just what I say. Only you assert ‘more good than bad,’ and I declare ‘more bad than good,’ which means that the more advice I refuse the better for me in the long run.”
“You judge human nature from an intimate knowledge of your own lack of judgment, my dear fellow,” I said, in a bantering voice.
“Well, I’ll back my judgment all the same,” he answered hotly, “which is a good deal more than you will. You talk of common-sense, and lay down vague, not to say inane rules for other people to follow, and pose as a sort of Book of Wisdom thrown open to the public every afternoon in this smoking-room; but anybody can talk. Now, I’ll bet you a thousand pounds that you’ll not take the advice of your fellow-man for twelve consecutive hours. And, what is more, I’ll bet you anotherthousand that I’ll do the other thing and go distinctly contrary to every request, suggestion, or scrap of advice offered me in the same space of time. And then we’ll see about your knowledge of human nature, and who looks the biggest fool at the end of the day.”
I repeat, it was after luncheon, and no man unfamiliar with Norton Bellamy can have any idea of the studied insolence, the offence, the diabolic sneer with which he accompanied this preposterous suggestion. I was, however, silent for the space of three seconds; then he made another remark to Mathers, and that settled it.
“Some of us are like the chap who said he’d take his dying oath the cat was grey. Then they asked him to bet a halfpenny that it was, and he wouldn’t. So bang goes another wind-bag!”
He was marching out with all the honours when I lost my temper and took the brute at his word.
“Done!” I said. Think of it! A man of five-and-fifty, with some reputation for general mental stability, and a member of the Committee of the Stock Exchange!
“You’ll take me?” he asked, and there was an evil light in the man’s hard blue eyes, whilehis red whiskers actually bristled as he spoke. “You’ll back yourself to follow every scrap of advice given you throughout one whole day for a thousand pounds?”
In my madness I answered, only intent upon arranging miseries for him:
“Yes, if you’ll back yourself to act in an exactly contrary manner.”
“Most certainly. It’s my ordinary rule of life,” he replied. “I never do take advice. I’m not a congenital idiot. Let us say to-morrow.”
Now, upon the Stock Exchange we have a universal system by which honour stands for security. In our peculiar business relations this principle is absolutely necessary. And it seldom fails. There is a simple, pathetic trust amongst us unknown in other walks of life. It can only be compared to that universal spirit said to have existed in King Alfred’s days, when we are invited to believe that people left their jewellery about on the hedges with impunity, and crime practically ceased out of the land. One’s only assumption can be that the jewellery of those benighted days was not worth the risk—though, understand me, I am merely speaking of the times, not of King Alfred, who was, without question, the greatestEnglishman of whom we have any record. So when Bellamy and I made this fatuous bet, we trusted each the other. I knew that, with all his faults, the man was absolutely straight-forward and honest; and I felt that, having once taken his wager, I should either win it—at personal inconvenience impossible to estimate before the event—or lose and frankly pay.
“To-morrow,” said Bellamy. “Let us say to-morrow. You don’t want a thing like this hanging over you. We’ll meet here and lunch and compare notes—if you’re free to do so, which is doubtful, for I see a holy chaos opening out before you.”
“To-morrow!” I said. “And, be what it may, I would not change my position for yours.”
I went home that night under a gathering weight of care. To my wife and daughters I said nothing, though they noticed and commented upon my unusual taciturnity. In truth, the more I thought of the programme in store for me, the less I liked it; while Bellamy, on the contrary, so far as I could see, despite my big words at parting from him, had only to be slightly more brutal and aggressive than usual to come well out of his ordeal. I slept ill andwoke depressed. The weather was ominous in itself. I looked out of my dressing-room window and quoted from the classics:
“She is not rosy-fingered, but swoll’n black;Her face is like a water turned to blood,And her sick head is bound about with clouds,As if she threatened night ere noon of day!”
“She is not rosy-fingered, but swoll’n black;Her face is like a water turned to blood,And her sick head is bound about with clouds,As if she threatened night ere noon of day!”
“She is not rosy-fingered, but swoll’n black;
Her face is like a water turned to blood,
And her sick head is bound about with clouds,
As if she threatened night ere noon of day!”
which shows, by-the-by, that Ben Jonson knew a London fog when he saw it, though chemists pretend that the vile phenomenon wasn’t familiar to the Elizabethans.
My breakfast proved a farce, and having wished my dear ones a dreary “good morning,” I crept out into a bilious, fuliginous atmosphere, through which black smuts fell in legions upon the numbed desolation of South Kensington. Only the urban cat stalked here and there, rejoicing, as it seemed, in prolonged night. My chronic cough began at the first gulp of this atrocious atmosphere, and changing my mind about walking to the District Railway Station, I turned, sought my cab-whistle, and summoned a hansom. It came presently, clinking and tinkling out of nothingness—a chariot with watery eyes of flame; a goblin coach to carry me away through the mask of the fog,from home, from wife and children, into the vast unknown of man’s advice.
The cabman began it—a surly, grasping brute who, upon taking my shilling, commented, and added something about the weather.
“Your fare, and you know it very well,” I answered, whereupon he replied:
“Oh, all right. Wish I could give you the cab an’ the hoss in. Don’t you chuck away your money, that’s all. You’re a blimed sight too big-’earted—that’s what’s the matter with you.”
I felt cheered. Here was practical advice given by a mere toiler from the ranks. I promised the man that I would not waste my money; I reciprocated his caution, beamed upon him, ignored his satire, and went downstairs to the trains. A newspaper boy offered mePunch. I bought it, and with rising spirits lighted a cigar and got into a City train. It happened to come from Ealing, and contained, amongst other people, my dear old friend Tracy Mainwaring—cheeriest, brightest, and best of men. The fog deepened, and somewhere about the Temple a violent fit of coughing caused me to fling away my cigar, and double up in considerable physicaldiscomfort. Mainwaring, with his universal sympathy, was instantly much concerned for me.
“My dear Honeybun, you’ll kill yourself—you will indeed. It’s suicide for you to come to town on days like this. How often have I expostulated! And nobody will pity you, because you need not do it. Why don’t you go to the South of France? You ought to go for all our sakes.”
“Mainwaring,” I said, “you’re right. You always are. Here’s the Temple. I’ll return home at once, and start as soon as I conveniently can—to-morrow at latest.”
The amazement which burst forth upon the face of every man in that carriage was a striking commentary on my original assertion that advice is not taken habitually in this country.
As for Mainwaring himself, I could perceive that he was seriously alarmed. He followed me out of the train, and his face was white, his voice much shaken, as he took my arm.
“Old chap,” he said, “I’ve annoyed you; I’ve bored you with my irresponsible chatter. You’re trying to escape from me. You mustn’t let a friend influence you against your better judgment. Of course, I only thought of your good, but——”
“My dear fellow,” I answered, “nobody ever gave me better advice, and unless circumstances conspire against it, I mean to do as you suggest.”
“Yes, yes—capital,” he said, with the voice we assume when trying to soothe an intoxicated acquaintance or a lunatic. “Youshallgo, dear old fellow, and I’ll see you home.”
Now, here is the effect of taking advice upon the man who gives it! Mainwaring is a genial, uncalculating, kindly soul, who is always tendering counsel and exhortation to everybody, from his shoeblack upwards; yet, in a moment, I had him reduced to a mere bundle of vibrating nerves, simply because I had promptly undertaken to follow one of his suggestions. Of course I knew the thought in his mind: he believed that I was out of mine. So I said:
“Yes, old fellow, I see what you think; but, consider, if I’m a lunatic to take your advice, what must you be to give it?”
This conundrum, if possible, increased his uneasiness. He fussed anxiously around me and begged to be allowed to see me home; whereupon, being weary of his cowardice, I waved Mainwaring off, left the station to befree of him, and hastily ascended Arundel Street.
My object was now an omnibus which should convey me almost to my door; and my heart grew fairly light again, for if by the terms of the wager I could legitimately get back under my own roof, the worst might be well over. I pictured myself packing quietly all day for the Continent. Then, when morning should come, I had merely to change my mind again and the matter would terminate. Any natural disappointment of my wife and the girls, when they heard of my intention to stop in London after all, might be relieved with judicious gifts.
At a corner in the Strand I waited, and others with me, while the fog increased—noisome veil upon veil—and the lurid street seemed full of dim ghosts wandering in a sulphur hell. My omnibus was long in coming, and just as it did so I pressed forward with the rest, and had the misfortune to tread upon the foot of a threadbare and foul-mouthed person who had been waiting beside me. Standing there, the sorry creature had used the vilest language for fifteen minutes, had scattered his complicated imprecations on the ears of all, but especially, I think, for the benefit of his wretched wife. She—a lank andhungry creature—had flashed back looks at him once or twice, but no more. Occasionally, as his coarse words lashed her, she had shivered and glanced at this face and that to see whether any champion of women stood there waiting for the South Kensington omnibus. But apparently none did, though, for my part, at another time I had certainly taken it upon me to reprove the wretch, or even call a constable. But upon this day, and moving as it were for that occasion under a curse, I held silence the better course, and maintained the same while much pitying this down-trodden woman. Now, however, Fate chose me for a sort of Nemesis against my will, and leaping forward to the omnibus, I descended with all my fourteen stone upon the foot of the bully. He hopped in agony, lifted up his voice, and added a darkness to the fog. His profanity increased the ambient gloom, and out of it I saw the white face of his wife, and her teeth gleamed in a savage smile as he hopped in the gutter, like some evil fowl. People laughed at his discomfort, and a vocabulary naturally rich was lifted above itself into absolute opulence. He loosed upon me a chaos of sacred and profane expletives, uttered in the accent of south-west London. His words tumbled about my earslike a nest of angered hornets. The man refused to listen to any apology, and, from natural regret, my mood changed to active annoyance, because he insisted upon hopping between me and the omnibus, and a crowd began to collect.
Then his bitter-hearted wife spoke up and bid me take action, little dreaming of the position in which I stood with respect to all advice.
“Don’t let the swine cheek you like that,” she cried. “He’s all gas, that’s what he is—a carwardly ’ound as only bullies women and children. You’re bigger than him. Hit him over the jaw with your rumberella. Hit him hard, then you’ll see.”
It will not, I trust, be necessary for me to say that never before that moment had I struck a fellow-creature, either in the heat of anger or with calculated intention. Indeed, even a thousand pounds would seem a small price to expend if for that outlay one might escape such a crime; yet now, dazed by the noise, by the fog, by emotions beyond analysis, by the grinning teeth and eyes of the crowd shining wolfish out of the gloom around me, by the woman’s weird, tigerish face almost thrust into mine, and by the fact that the man had askedme why the blank blank I didn’t let my blank self out at so much a blank hour for a blank steam-roller—I let go. If Bellamy could have seen me then! My umbrella whistled through the fog, and appeared to strike the man almost exactly where his wife had suggested. He was gone like a dream, and everybody seemed pleased excepting the unfortunate creature himself. There were yells and cat-calls and wild London sounds in my ears. Somebody rose out of the pandemonium and patted me on the back, and told me to ‘hook it before the bloke got up again.’ Somebody else whispered earnestly in my ear that I had done the community a good turn. The omnibus proceeded without me, for I was now separated from it by a crowd. The fog thickened, lurid lights flashed in it, my head whirled, the man who had whispered congratulations in my ear endeavoured to take my watch, and I was just going to cry for the police, when my recumbent victim, assisted, to my amazement, by the tigerish woman, rose, clothed in mud as with a garment, and advanced upon me.
There are times and seasons when argument and even frank apology is useless. There are very rare occasions when coin of the realm itself is vain to heal a misunderstanding orsoothe a wounded spirit. I felt that the man now drawn up in battle array before me was reduced for the moment to a mere pre-Adamite person or cave-dweller, first cousin to, and but slightly removed from, the unreasoning and ferocious dinosaur or vindictive megatherium. This poor, bruised, muddy Londoner, now dancing with clenched fists, and exuding a sort of language which rendered him almost incandescent, obviously thirsted to do me physical hurt. No mere wounding of my tenderest feeling, no shaming of me, no touching of my pride or my pocket would suffice for him. Indeed, he explained openly that he was going to break every bone in my body and stamp my remains into London mud, even if it spoilt his boots. Hearing which prophecy, one of those inspirations that repay a studious man for his study came in the nick of time, and I remembered a happy saying of the judicious Hooker, how that many perils can best be conquered by flying from them. I had not run for thirty years, but I ran then, and dashing past a church, a cheap book-shop, and the Globe Theatre, darted into the friendly shelter of a populous neighbourhood that extends beyond. So sudden was my action, and so dense the fog, that I escaped without loss, and within threeminutes from that moment, all sorrow past, sat in a hansom, had the window lowered, and drove off with joy and thankfulness for my home.
So far I had done, or set about doing, everything my fellow-man or woman deemed well for me. As it was now past eleven o’clock, I felt that the day would soon slip away, and all might yet be well.
Then the Father of Fog, who is one with the Prince of this world, took arms against me. There was a crash, a smash, loud words, a breath of cold air, a tinkle of broken glass, a stinging lash across my face, an alteration abrupt and painful in my position. My horse had collided with another and come down heavily, the window was broken, and my face had a nasty cut across the cheekbone within a fractional distance of my right eye.
The driver was one of that chicken-hearted sort of cabmen rare in London, but common in provincial towns. He had fallen from his box-seat, it is true, and had undoubtedly hurt himself here and there on the outside, but I doubt if any serious injury had overtaken him; yet now he stood at the horse’s head, and pulled at its bridle, and gasped and gurgled, and explained how a railway van had run intohim, knocked over his horse, and then darted off into the fog. I told the man not to cry about it, and people began collecting as usual, like evil gnomes from the gloom. The air soon hummed with advice, and personally, knowing myself to be worse than useless where a horse in difficulties is concerned, I acted upon the earliest suggestion that called for departure from the scene. Ignoring directions about harness, cutting of straps, backing the vehicle, and sitting on the horse’s head, I fell in with one thoughtful individual who gave it as his opinion that the beast was dying, and hurried away at my best speed to seek a veterinary surgeon. My face was much injured, my nerves were shaken, I had a violent stitch in my side and a buzzing in the head; but I did my duty, and finding a small corner hostelry, that threw beams of red and yellow light across the fog, I entered, gave myself a few moments to recover breath, then asked the young woman behind the bar whether she knew where I might most quickly find a horse doctor.
“There has been an accident,” I explained, “and a man on the spot gives it as his opinion that the horse is seriously unwell, and should be seen to at once. Personally, I suspect itcould get up if it liked, but I am not an expert and may be mistaken.”
“’Fraid you’ve hurted yourself, too, sir,” answered the girl. “Iamsorry. Sit down and have something to drink, sir. Sure you want it.”
I sat down, sighed, wiped my face, and ordered a little brandy. This she prepared with kindly solicitude, then advised a second glass, and I, feeling the opinion practical enough, obeyed her gladly.
She knew nothing of a veterinary surgeon, but there chanced to be a person in the bar who said that he did. He evidently felt tempted to proclaim himself such a man, for I could see the idea in his shifty eyes; but he thought better of this, and admitted that he was only a dog-fancier himself, though he knew a colleague in the next street who enjoyed a wide experience of horses. Now, my idea of a dog-fancier is one who habitually fancies somebody else’s dog. I told the man this while I finished my brandy-and-water, and he admitted that it was a general weakness in the profession, but explained that he had, so far, fought successfully against it. Then we started to find the veterinary surgeon, and soon passed into a region that I suspected to be Seven Dials.
“’Ullo, Jaggers! Who’s your friend?” said a man in a doorway.
“Gent wants a vet,” answered my companion.
“Gent wants a new fice, more like!”
I asked the meaning of this phrase, suspecting that some bit of homely and perhaps valuable advice lay under it, but Jaggers thought not.
“Only Barny Bosher’s sauce,” he said. “He’s a fightin’ man—pick of the basket at nine-stone, five—so he thinks he can sye what he likes; but he’s got a good ’eart.”
We pushed on until a small shop appeared, framed in bird-cages. Spiritless fowls of different sorts and colours sat and drooped in them—parrots, cockatoos, budgerigars, and other foreigners of a kind unfamiliar to me.
“Come in,” said Jaggers. “This is Muggridge’s shop; and what he don’t know about ’osses, an’ all livin’ things for that matter, ain’t worth knowin’.”
Mr. Muggridge was at his counter, busy about a large wooden crate bored with many holes. From these proceeded strange squeaks and grunts.
“’Alf a mo,” he said. “It’s a consignment of prize guinea-pigs, and they wants attentionpartickler urgent; for they’ve been on the South Eastern Railway, in a luggage train, pretty near since last Christmas by all accounts, and a luggage train on that line’s a tidy sample of eternity, I’m told.”
Mr. Muggridge was a little, bright, cheerful person, who framed his life on the philosophy of his own canaries. The shop was warm, even stuffy, perhaps—still warm; so I said one or two kind things about the beasts and birds, then took a chair and looked at my watch.
“I can wait,” I told him.
“Can the ’oss? That’s the question,” asked Jaggers, and he began to murmur something about being kept away from his work, and hard times; so I gave him a shilling, and he thanked me, though not warmly, and instantly vanished into the fog—to go on dog-fancying, no doubt.
Mr. Muggridge complimented me on my love for animals. He then began to pull strange, rough bundles of white, black, and yellow fur from his wooden crate. The things looked like a sort of animated blend between a penwiper and a Japanese chrysanthemum. Indeed, I told him so, and he retorted by advising me to take a couple home for my young people.
With a sigh, I agreed to do so, and Mr. Muggridge, evidently surprised at such ready acquiescence, grew excited, and suggested two more.
“You try a pair o’ them Hangoras, and a pair o’ them tortoiseshells,” he said, “and before you can look round you’ll be breedin’ guinea-pigs as’ll take prizes all over Europe—pedigree pigs, pigs with a world-wide reputation!”
“Very well, two pairs,” I answered, “since you wish it.”
And then I observed that Muggridge was thinking very hard. I fancy he realised that the opportunity of a lifetime lay before him.
“Yes,” he said suddenly, answering his own reflections, “to a gentleman like you, Iwillpart with it, though it’s dead against the grain. But you ought to have it—my last mongoose—a lady’s pet—a little hangel in the ’ouse! Five guineas!”
“There’s a large brown horse fallen down in the next street; that’s what I’m here for,” I cried aloud, ignoring the mongoose.
“Ah! they will go down; and I’ve got a lion-monkey, and while youarebuying animals, I strongly advise you to have it. Not another in England to my knowledge. To be honest, he’s not very well, but the hair will come againwith kindness and my mange lotion. Peaceful as a lamb, too. I wish I could send them, but I’m run off my legs just now. Never remember such a rush or such competition. So if you’ll let me suggest, you’ll take your little lot right away with you. My cages are specially commended at the Crystal Palace and elsewhere, and I have a few left by me still. I suppose you couldn’t do with a water-snake or two? Yes? Here, Sam! Come down here. A large horder!”
He shouted to a boy, who appeared and began putting strange beasts and reptiles into cages with lightning rapidity, while I stood and watched—a man gripped, tranced, turned to stone by the deadly incubus of a dream. All the time Mr. Muggridge chattered like the lid of a kettle on the boil, put up horrid-looking foreign birds in cashes, fastened a string to a poodle, and incarcerated various other specimens of tropical or sub-tropical fauna that he wanted to be rid of. Then he made out an account, pressed it into my hand, rushed to the door, and whistled for a four-wheeler.
“You’re a ready-money gen’leman like me. Seen it in your eye the minute you come into my shop,” said Muggridge. “Twenty guineasand my book, on theInsect Pests of Household Pets, thrown in.”
I rallied myself here—in the last ditch, so to speak; I made my effort, and while the horrible boy was converting a four-wheeler into a menagerie of screaming, snapping curiosities, I explained to Muggridge that I only had five pounds upon me. He put out his hand, and said something about a cheque for the balance, but, seeing my advantage, I declared that I had ordered nothing beyond the four guinea-pigs, needed nothing else, and should pay for nothing else.
Then he asserted that I might have the lot for ten pounds, as it was a pity to take them out of the cab again.
Still I refused, and he tried to get sentiment into the argument.
He said, “It’s a reg’lar ’appy family. I should ’most call it cruelty to animals to separate them things again.”
But I was firm, and he became desperate. He said: “Gimme the fiver, then, and clear out. It’s robbery—that’s what it is, an’ I’m sure the beasts won’t do you no good. But gimme the money, an’ I’ll fling in a tortoise to show there’s no ill-feeling, if you’ll go at once.”
I said, “Listen to me; I do not want your tortoise. I’m a married man, with two grown-up daughters. We all detest wild animals of every sort, especially tortoises. I shall send your guinea-pigs to a children’s hospital, where they may or may not be welcomed. For the rest of these creatures I have no earthly use, and I refuse to take them a yard.”
“That’s not good enough for me,” declared Mr. Muggridge. “I’ve wasted a whole morning upon you”—I’d been in the shop a bare quarter of an hour—“and time is money, if birds and animals ain’t. Besides, you hordered ’em.”
He advanced threateningly, and I stepped forward with no less indignation; but as I did so, my arm knocked over a cage containing two long, black, red-beaked birds, which turned out to be Cornish choughs. These now uttered wild, west-country exclamations, flapped and fluttered and screamed, upset other cages in their downfall, and angered a badger (or some kindred brute) that dwelt beneath them in a box covered with corrugated iron wire.
Then, while I gathered myself from the ruins, ill-luck cast me against a bowl of goldfish, a sea-water aquarium, the guinea-pigs,and a consignment of large green lizards that suddenly appeared, without visible cause, in the full possession of their liberty. These things fell in an avalanche, and Muggridge’s shop instantly resembled the dark scene that preludes a pantomime. It is not strange, therefore, when you consider what I had already been through, that I was among the first of the intelligent animals present to lose my nerve and my temper.
Frankly I aimed a blow at Muggridge in an unchristian spirit, but missed him, and fetched down a case of birds’ eggs.
Suspecting the emporium to be on fire, chance passers-by, always ready to thrust themselves into the misfortunes of other people, now rushed amongst us. A policeman entered also, and Mr. Muggridge, evidently disappointed to find his plans thus shattered and his scheme foiled, endeavoured to give me in charge. I explained the true position, however, or attempted to do so; but my self-respect deserted me. I raised my voice as Muggridge raised his; I even used language that will always be a sorrow to me in moments of retrospection. We raved each at the other and danced round the policeman, while goldfish flapped about our feet and green lizards tried to ascend our trouser-legs.The constable himself turned round and round, licking a pencil and trying to make notes in a little book. Presently I think he began to grow giddy and faint-hearted. At any rate, he realised the futility of working up an effective case, so he shut his book, showed anger, and took certain definite measures.
First he swept a few promiscuous spectators out of the shop, then he thrust the infuriated Muggridge back behind his counter, and finally turned to me.
“I’ll have no more of this tommy rot, or the pair of you’ll have to come along to the station,” he said. “As for you, Muggridge, it’s your old game, plantin’ your rubbishy, stinkin’ varmints on unoffendin’ characters before they can open their mouths. I’m up to your hanky-panky; and you”—now he addressed me—“if you’re not old enough to know better than come buyin’ these ’ere hanimals, an’ loadin’ a cab with ’em, just because this man asks you to, you ought to be shut up. If you take my tip, you’ll go and ’ang yourself—that’s about the best thing you can do. Anyway, clear out of this ’ere shop.”
I was deeply agitated, hysterical, not master of my words or actions; I had reached a physical and mental condition upon which the policeman’s words fell as a fitting climax.
“Thank you,” I said; “I’ve had some unequal advice to-day—good, bad, and indifferent. But there’s no doubt that yours is the best, the soundest, the most suited to my case that I’m likely to get anywhere. Iwillgo and hang myself. Nothing shall become my life like the leaving of it. Shake hands, constable; you at least have counselled well.”
I pressed his palm and was gone. I forgot wife, children, business, honour, and Heaven in that awful moment. I, a member of the Committee of the Stock Exchange, passed through the streets of London like a mere escaped lunatic. My shattered, lacerated nerve-centres cried for peace and oblivion; I longed to be dead and out of it all. My self-respect was already dead, and what is life without that? I thought of the future after this nightmare-day, and felt that there could be no future for me. So I vanished into the fog—a palpitating pariah with one frantic, overmastering resolution—to destroy myself, and that at once.
“Norton Bellamy has murdered me,” I said aloud.
But a man cannot forget the training of his youth, the practice of his adult years, and the support of his middle age in one demonian hour. As I passed wildly through dim, bilious abysses of filth-laden atmosphere, though my body was soon lost, and hopelessly lost, in the fog, my mind became a trifle clearer and the steadfast principles of a lifetime reasserted themselves. I determined to go on with my shattered existence; indeed I felt tolerably sure that my fellow-man, who had kept me thus busily employed, would presently prevent me from carrying my purpose to its bitter end. I grew a little calmer, recollected the terms of my wager, and so proceeded with the directions delivered by the police constable, doubting nothing but that my next meeting with a human being would divert the catastrophe, and once more set me forward upon a new road.
Presently a little shop loomed alongside me, and I perceived that here might be procured an essential in the matter of destruction by hanging. A mean and humble establishmentit was, lighted by one paraffin lamp. The stock-in-trade apparently consisted of ropes and door-pegs—in fact, the complete equipment proper to my undertaking. Time and place agreed. It was indeed just such a gloomy, lonesome, and sequestered hole as a suicide might select to make his final purchases. From a door behind the counter there came to me a bald and mournful little man with weak eyes, a subdued manner, and the facial inanity of the rabbit. Hints of a fish dinner followed him from his dwelling-room, and through the door I could catch a glimpse of his family, four in number, partaking of that meal.
“What might you want?” he asked, but in a despondent tone, implying, to my ear, that it was rarely his good fortune to have anything in stock a would-be customer desired to purchase.
“I want a rope to hang a man,” I answered, and waited with some interest to see the result.
The small shopkeeper’s eyes grew round; a mixture of admiration and creeping fear lighted them.
“My gracious! You’rehim, then! To think as ever I should——”
Here he broke off, and in a frenzy ofexcitement opened the door behind him and spoke to his wife. I overheard, for he could not subdue his voice. I think he felt confronted by the supreme business transaction of his career.
“Jane, Jane! Creep in the shop quiet and look at this here man! By ’Eaven! it’s the public executioner! To think as ever I should sell a rope to him! Hush!”
He turned, and while he addressed me with dreadful humility, the woman, Jane, crept into the shop, and stared morbidly upon my harrowed countenance.
Then she whispered to her husband—
“That’s not him, for I seed his picture in thePolice Newslast week. It’s a new one, or else his assistant!”
Meantime I was being served, and it seemed that the little man suddenly awakened to the dignity of his calling before my sensational order. He began handling a wilderness of rope ends and discoursing upon them with the air of an expert as he rose to the great occasion.
“A nice twisted cordage you’ll be wanting, and if you’ll leave the choice to me, nobody shall be none the worse. I’ve been in rope since I was seventeen. Now, Manila hempwon’t do—too stiff and woody, too lacking in suppleness. That’s what you want: suppleness. The sisal hemps, from South America, are very pretty things, and the New Zealand hemp is hard to beat; but there’s another still more beautiful cordage. Only it’s very rarely used because it comes rather expensive. Still, when a fellow-creature’s life’s at stake, I suppose you won’t count the cost. Besides, the Government pays, don’t it? That’s a Jubbulpore hemp—best of all—or bowstring hemp, as I’m told they use in the harems of the East, though what for I couldn’t say. I’ve got a very nice piece—ten foot long and supple as silk—just try it—and any strain up to two hundred pound. Hand-spun, of course—a lovely thing, though I say so. But it’s a terrible thought. Jute’s cheaper, only I won’t guarantee it; I won’t indeed. You want a reliable article, if only for your own reputation. And one more thing; I suppose there’s no objection to my using this as an advertisement? People in these parts is all so fond of horrors; and as it’s Government I ought to be allowed the lion and unicorn perhaps?”
I bought the Jubbulpore hemp as the man advised. It cost thirty shillings, and the vendor wrestled between pleasure at the successof his extortion and horror at the future of his rope. But I told him he must neither advertise the circumstance, nor dare to assume the lion and unicorn on the strength of it. This discouraged him, and he lost heart and took a gloomy view of the matter.
“A hawful tride, if I may say so without offence,” he ventured. “Would it be the Peckham Rye murderer as you’re buying this rope for, or that poor soul who lost his temper with his wife’s mother down Forest Hill wye?”
“Neither,” I answered. “It is a man called Honeybun.”
“Honeybun! Ah! A ugly, crool nime! What’s he done?”
“Made a fool of himself.”
“Lord! if we was hung for that, there wouldn’t be much more talk of over-population—eh? Well, well, I s’pose he’ll be as ’appy with you and that bit of Jubbulpore as we can hope for him. A iron nerve it must want. Yet Mr. Ketch was quite the Christian at ’ome, I b’lieve. Not your first case, of course?”
I picked up the rope and prepared to depart.
“My very first experience,” I said.
“Pore soul!” exclaimed the feeling tradesman, but he referred to the criminal, not to me.
“For Gord’s sake don’t bungle it!” were thelast husky words I heard from him; and then I set forth to hang Arthur Honeybun, who deserved hanging if ever a man did. I told myself this, and made a quotation which I forget.
And now arose one of the most sinister concatenations easily to be conceived in the life of a respectable citizen. Here was I on the brink of self-destruction; I only waited for some fellow-creature to restrain me.But nobody attempted to do so!My folly in disguising the truth from the little rope-merchant now appeared. Had he known, he had doubtless shown me my dreadful error in time; now it was too late; his only advice—sound undoubtedly—had been not to bungle it. The world pursued its own business quite regardless of me and my black secret and my hidden rope. Apparently there was really nothing for me to do but to lose my wager or hang myself—an alternative which I well knew would represent for my family a total pecuniary loss considerably greater than the sum involved.
I wandered down a lonely court and found an archway at the bottom. One sickly gas-lamp gleamed above this spot, and the silence of death reigned within it. Had I been in sober earnest, no nook hidden away under thehuge pall of the fog could have suited me better. Some evil fiend had apparently taken charge of my volition and designed to see the matter through, for I pursued this business of hanging with a callous deliberation that amazed me. I even smiled as I climbed up the arch and made the rope fast upon the lamp above it. Not a soul came to interrupt. The lamp blinked lazily, the fog crowded closer to see the sight, the fiend busied himself with my Jubbulpore rope and arranged all preliminaries, while I sat and grinned over the sooty desolation. I felt my pulse calmly, critically; I indulged in mental analysis, endeavoured to estimate my frame of mind, and wondered if I could throw the experience into literary form for a scientific journal. I remember being particularly surprised that the attitude of my intellect towards this performance was untinctured by any religious feeling whatsoever.
Then came a psychological moment when the fiend had done everything that he could for me. My task was merely to tie the loose end of the Jubbulpore masterpiece round my neck and cast forth into the void. How strange a thing is memory! For some extraordinary reason a famous definition of fishingflashed into my mind. I could not recall it exactly at that terrible moment, but I remembered how it had to do with a fool at one end of a piece of string.
Still not a footstep, but only the rumble and roar of all selfish London some twenty yards off, and never a hand to save me from a coward’s doom. I grew much annoyed with London; I reminded London of the chief incidents in my own career; I asked myself if this was justice; I also asked myself why I had been weak enough to turn into a blind alley, evidently an unpopular, undesirable spot, habitually ignored. And then I grew melancholy, even maudlin. I saw my faults staring at me—my negligences and ignorances; and chiefly my crass idiotcy in not undertaking this matter at Piccadilly Circus, or some main junction of our metropolitan system, where such enterprises are not tolerated. It is, of course, a free country, and the rights of the subject are fairly sacred, speaking generally; but we draw the line here and there, and I knew that any attempt to annihilate myself upon some lamp-post amid the busy hum of men must have resulted as I desired. Interference would have prevented complete suspension there, but here the seclusion was absolute, and simply invitedcrime. The fog had now reached its crowning triumph, and promised to deprive my trusty Jubbulpore hemp of its prey, for I was suffocating, and asphyxia threatened to overwhelm me at any moment.
“Where the deuce are the police?” I asked myself at this eleventh hour. It was a policeman who had placed me in my present pitiable fix, and—blessed inspiration!—why should not another of the tribe extricate me from it? When in danger or imminent peril it is our custom to shout for the help of the law, and surely if ever a poor, overwrought soul stood in personal need of the State’s assistance, it was Arthur Honeybun at that moment. So, with nerves strung to concert pitch, I lifted up my voice and called for a policeman. In these cases, however, one does not specify or limit, so my summons was couched generally to the force at large.
There followed no immediate response, then three boys assembled under my arch, and they formed a nucleus or focus about which a small crowd of the roughest possible persons, male and female, collected. Last of all a policeman also came.
“Now, then,” he said, “what’s all this, then?”