Chapter II
The Two Curates; or, the Burglary Charge
Arthur Inglewood handed the document he had just read to the leadersof the prosecution, who examined it with their heads together.Both the Jew and the American were of sensitive and excitable stocks,and they revealed by the jumpings and bumpings of the black head and theyellow that nothing could be done in the way of denial of the document.The letter from the Warden was as authentic as the letter from theSub-Warden, however regrettably different in dignity and social tone.
"Very few words," said Inglewood, "are required to concludeour case in this matter. Surely it is now plain that our clientcarried his pistol about with the eccentric but innocentpurpose of giving a wholesome scare to those whom he regardedas blasphemers. In each case the scare was so wholesomethat the victim himself has dated from it as from a new birth.Smith, so far from being a madman, is rather a mad doctor--he walks the world curing frenzies and not distributing them.That is the answer to the two unanswerable questions which Iput to the prosecutors. That is why they dared not producea line by any one who had actually confronted the pistol.All who had actually confronted the pistol confessed that theyhad profited by it. That was why Smith, though a good shot,never hit anybody. He never hit anybody because he was a good shot.His mind was as clear of murder as his hands are of blood.This, I say, is the only possible explanation of these factsand of all the other facts. No one can possibly explainthe Warden's conduct except by believing the Warden's story.Even Dr. Pym, who is a very factory of ingenious theories,could find no other theory to cover the case."
"There are promising per-spectives in hypnotism and dual personality,"said Dr. Cyrus Pym dreamily; "the science of criminology is inits infancy, and--"
"Infancy!" cried Moon, jerking his red pencil in the air with a gestureof enlightenment; "why, that explains it!"
"I repeat," proceeded Inglewood, "that neither Dr. Pym nor any one elsecan account on any other theory but ours for the Warden's signature,for the shots missed and the witnesses missing."
The little Yankee had slipped to his feet with some returnof a cock-fighting coolness. "The defence," he said,"omits a coldly colossal fact. They say we produce none ofthe actual victims. Wal, here is one victim--England's celebratedand stricken Warner. I reckon he is pretty well produced.And they suggest that all the outrages were followedby reconciliation. Wal, there's no flies on England's Warner;and he isn't reconciliated much."
"My learned friend," said Moon, getting elaborately to his feet,"must remember that the science of shooting Dr. Warner is in its infancy.Dr. Warner would strike the idlest eye as one specially difficult to startleinto any recognition of the glory of God. We admit that our client,in this one instance, failed, and that the operation was not successful.But I am empowered to offer, on behalf of my client, a proposalfor operating on Dr. Warner again, at his earliest convenience,and without further fees."
"'Ang it all, Michael," cried Gould, quite serious for the first timein his life, "you might give us a bit of bally sense for a chinge."
"What was Dr. Warner talking about just before the first shot?"asked Moon sharply.
"The creature," said Dr. Warner superciliously, "asked me,with characteristic rationality, whether it was my birthday."
"And you answered, with characteristic swank," cried Moon, shooting outa long lean finger, as rigid and arresting as the pistol of Smith,"that you didn't keep your birthday."
"Something like that," assented the doctor.
"Then," continued Moon, "he asked you why not, and you said it was because youdidn't see that birth was anything to rejoice over. Agreed? Now is thereany one who doubts that our tale is true?"
There was a cold crash of stillness in the room; and Moon said, "Pax populivox Dei; it is the silence of the people that is the voice of God. Or inDr. Pym's more civilized language, it is up to him to open the next charge.On this we claim an acquittal."
It was about an hour later. Dr. Cyrus Pym had remained for an unprecedentedtime with his eyes closed and his thumb and finger in the air.It almost seemed as if he had been "struck so," as the nurses say;and in the deathly silence Michael Moon felt forced to relievethe strain with some remark. For the last half-hour or so the eminentcriminologist had been explaining that science took the same viewof offences against property as it did of offences against life."Most murder," he had said, "is a variation of homicidal mania,and in the same way most theft is a version of kleptomania.I cannot entertain any doubt that my learned friends oppositeadequately con-ceive how this must involve a scheme of punishmentmore tol'rant and humane than the cruel methods of ancient codes.They will doubtless exhibit consciousness of a chasm so eminently yawning,so thought-arresting, so--" It was here that he paused and indulgedin the delicate gesture to which allusion has been made; and Michaelcould bear it no longer.
"Yes, yes," he said impatiently, "we admit the chasm.The old cruel codes accuse a man of theft and send himto prison for ten years. The tolerant and humane ticketaccuses him of nothing and sends him to prison for ever.We pass the chasm."
It was characteristic of the eminent Pym, in one of his trancesof verbal fastidiousness, that he went on, unconscious not onlyof his opponent's interruption, but even of his own pause.
"So stock-improving," continued Dr. Cyrus Pym, "so fraughtwith real high hopes of the future. Science thereforeregards thieves, in the abstract, just as it regards murderers.It regards them not as sinners to be punished for an arbitrary period,but as patients to be detained and cared for," (his first two digitsclosed again as he hesitated)--"in short, for the required period.But there is something special in the case we investigate here.Kleptomania commonly con-joins itself--"
"I beg pardon," said Michael; "I did not ask just now because,to tell the truth, I really thought Dr. Pym, though seemingly vertical,was enjoying well-earned slumber, with a pinch in his fingersof scentless and delicate dust. But now that things are movinga little more, there is something I should really like to know.I have hung on Dr. Pym's lips, of course, with an interest that itwere weak to call rapture, but I have so far been unable to formany conjecture about what the accused, in the present instance,is supposed to have been and gone and done."
"If Mr. Moon will have patience," said Pym with dignity, "he will findthat this was the very point to which my exposition was di-rected.Kleptomania, I say, exhibits itself as a kind of physical attractionto certain defined materials; and it has been held (by no less a manthan Harris) that this is the ultimate explanation of the strictspecialism and vurry narrow professional outlook of most criminals.One will have an irresistible physical impulsion towards pearlsleeve-links, while he passes over the most elegant and celebrateddiamond sleeve-links, placed about in the most conspicuous locations.Another will impede his flight with no less than forty-seven buttoned boots,while elastic-sided boots leave him cold, and even sarcastic.The specialism of the criminal, I repeat, is a mark rather of insanitythan of any brightness of business habits; but there is one kindof depredator to whom this principle is at first sight hard to apply.I allude to our fellow-citizen the housebreaker.
"It has been maintained by some of our boldest youngtruth-seekers, that the eye of a burglar beyond the back-gardenwall could hardly be caught and hypnotized by a forkthat is insulated in a locked box under the butler's bed.They have thrown down the gauntlet to American science on this point.They declare that diamond links are not left about in conspicuouslocations in the haunts of the lower classes, as they werein the great test experiment of Calypso College. We hope thisexperiment here will be an answer to that young ringing challenge,and will bring the burglar once more into line and unionwith his fellow criminals."
Moon, whose face had gone through every phase of black bewildermentfor five minutes past, suddenly lifted his hand and struck the tablein explosive enlightenment.
"Oh, I see!" he cried; "you mean that Smith is a burglar."
"I thought I made it quite ad'quately lucid," said Mr. Pym,folding up his eyelids. It was typical of this topsy-turvy privatetrial that all the eloquent extras, all the rhetoric or digressionon either side, was exasperating and unintelligible to the other.Moon could not make head or tail of the solemnity of a new civilization.Pym could not make head or tail of the gaiety of an old one.
"All the cases in which Smith has figured as an expropriator,"continued the American doctor, "are cases of burglary.Pursuing the same course as in the previous case, we selectthe indubitable instance from the rest, and we take the mostcorrect cast-iron evidence. I will now call on my colleague,Mr. Gould, to read a letter we have received from the earnest,unspotted Canon of Durham, Canon Hawkins."
Mr. Moses Gould leapt up with his usual alacrity to read the letter fromthe earnest and unspotted Hawkins. Moses Gould could imitate a farmyard well,Sir Henry Irving not so well, Marie Lloyd to a point of excellence, and thenew motor horns in a manner that put him upon the platform of great artists.But his imitation of a Canon of Durham was not convincing; indeed, the senseof the letter was so much obscured by the extraordinary leaps and gasps of hispronunciation that it is perhaps better to print it here as Moon read it when,a little later, it was handed across the table.
"Dear Sir,--I can scarcely feel surprise that the incidentyou mention, private as it was, should have filtered throughour omnivorous journals to the mere populace; for the positionI have since attained makes me, I conceive, a public character,and this was certainly the most extraordinary incidentin a not uneventful and perhaps not an unimportant career.I am by no means without experience in scenes of civil tumult.I have faced many a political crisis in the old Primrose Leaguedays at Herne Bay, and, before I broke with the wilder set,have spent many a night at the Christian Social Union. But thisother experience was quite inconceivable. I can only describeit as the letting loose of a place which it is not for me,as a clergyman, to mention.
"It occurred in the days when I was, for a short period,a curate at Hoxton; and the other curate, then my colleague,induced me to attend a meeting which he described, I must sayprofanely described, as calculated to promote the kingdomof God. I found, on the contrary, that it consisted entirelyof men in corduroys and greasy clothes whose manners were coarseand their opinions extreme.
"Of my colleague in question I wish to speak with the fullestrespect and friendliness, and I will therefore say little.No one can be more convinced than I of the evil of politicsin the pulpit; and I never offer my congregation any adviceabout voting except in cases in which I feel strongly that theyare likely to make an erroneous selection. But, while I donot mean to touch at all upon political or social problems,I must say that for a clergyman to countenance, even in jest,such discredited nostrums of dissipated demagogues as Socialismor Radicalism partakes of the character of the betrayalof a sacred trust. Far be it from me to say a word againstthe Reverend Raymond Percy, the colleague in question.He was brilliant, I suppose, and to some apparently fascinating;but a clergyman who talks like a Socialist, wears his hairlike a pianist, and behaves like an intoxicated person,will never rise in his profession, or even obtain the admirationof the good and wise. Nor is it for me to utter my personaljudgements of the appearance of the people in the hall.Yet a glance round the room, revealing ranks of debasedand envious faces--"
"Adopting," said Moon explosively, for he was getting restive--"adoptingthe reverend gentleman's favourite figure of logic, may I say thatwhile tortures would not tear from me a whisper about his intellect,he is a blasted old jackass."
"Really!" said Dr. Pym; "I protest."
"You must keep quiet, Michael," said Inglewood; "they have a rightto read their story."
"Chair! Chair! Chair!" cried Gould, rolling about exuberantly in his own;and Pym glanced for a moment towards the canopy which covered allthe authority of the Court of Beacon.
"Oh, don't wake the old lady," said Moon, lowering his voice in a moodygood-humour. "I apologize. I won't interrupt again."
Before the little eddy of interruption was ended the readingof the clergyman's letter was already continuing.
"The proceedings opened with a speech from my colleague, of which Iwill say nothing. It was deplorable. Many of the audiencewere Irish, and showed the weakness of that impetuous people.When gathered together into gangs and conspiracies they seemto lose altogether that lovable good-nature and readiness to acceptanything one tells them which distinguishes them as individuals."
With a slight start, Michael rose to his feet, bowed solemnly,and sat down again.
"These persons, if not silent, were at least applausive during the speechof Mr. Percy. He descended to their level with witticisms about rentand a reserve of labour. Confiscation, expropriation, arbitration, and suchwords with which I cannot soil my lips, recurred constantly. Some hoursafterward the storm broke. I had been addressing the meeting for some time,pointing out the lack of thrift in the working classes, their insufficientattendance at evening service, their neglect of the Harvest Festival, and ofmany other things that might materially help them to improve their lot.It was, I think, about this time that an extraordinary interruption occurred.An enormous, powerful man, partly concealed with white plaster,arose in the middle of the hall, and offered (in a loud, roaring voice,like a bull's) some observations which seemed to be in a foreign language.Mr. Raymond Percy, my colleague, descended to his level by entering intoa duel of repartee, in which he appeared to be the victor. The meetingbegan to behave more respectfully for a little; yet before I had said twelvesentences more the rush was made for the platform. The enormous plasterer,in particular, plunged towards us, shaking the earth like an elephant;and I really do not know what would have happened if a man equally large,but not quite so ill-dressed, had not jumped up also and held him away.This other big man shouted a sort of speech to the mob as he was shovingthem back. I don't know what he said, but, what with shouting and shovingand such horseplay, he got us out at a back door, while the wretched peoplewent roaring down another passage.
"Then follows the truly extraordinary part of my story. When he had gotus outside, in a mean backyard of blistered grass leading into a lanewith a very lonely-looking lamp-post, this giant addressed me as follows:`You're well out of that, sir; now you'd better come along with me.I want you to help me in an act of social justice, such as we've allbeen talking about. Come along!' And turning his big back abruptly,he led us down the lean old lane with the one lean old lamp-post,we scarcely knowing what to do but to follow him. He had certainlyhelped us in a most difficult situation, and, as a gentleman, I couldnot treat such a benefactor with suspicion without grave grounds.Such also was the view of my Socialistic colleague, who (with allhis dreadful talk of arbitration) is a gentleman also. In fact,he comes of the Staffordshire Percys, a branch of the old houseand has the black hair and pale, clear-cut face of the whole family.I cannot but refer it to vanity that he should heighten his personaladvantages with black velvet or a red cross of considerable ostentation,and certainly--but I digress.
"A fog was coming up the street, and that last lost lamp-postfaded behind us in a way that certainly depressed the mind.The large man in front of us looked larger and larger in the haze.He did not turn round, but he said with his huge back to us,`All that talking's no good; we want a little practical Socialism.'
"`I quite agree,' said Percy; `but I always like to understand thingsin theory before I put them into practice.'
"`Oh, you just leave that to me,' said the practical Socialist,or whatever he was, with the most terrifying vagueness.`I have a way with me. I'm a Permeator.'
"I could not imagine what he meant, but my companion laughed,so I was sufficiently reassured to continue the unaccountable journeyfor the present. It led us through most singular ways; out of the lane,where we were already rather cramped, into a paved passage,at the end of which we passed through a wooden gate left open.We then found ourselves, in the increasing darkness and vapour,crossing what appeared to be
a beaten path across a kitchen garden.I called out to the enormous person going on in front, but he answeredobscurely that it was a short cut.
"I was just repeating my very natural doubt to my clerical companionwhen I was brought up against a short ladder, apparently leadingto a higher level of road. My thoughtless colleague ran up it soquickly that I could not do otherwise than follow as best I could.The path on which I then planted my feet was quite unprecedentedly narrow.I had never had to walk along a thoroughfare so exiguous.Along one side of it grew what, in the dark and density of air,I first took to be some short, strong thicket of shrubs. Then I sawthat they were not short shrubs; they were the tops of tall trees.I, an English gentleman and clergyman of the Church of England--I waswalking along the top of a garden wall like a tom cat.
"I am glad to say that I stopped within my first five steps,and let loose my just reprobation, balancing myself as best Icould all the time.
"`It's a right-of-way,' declared my indefensible informant.`It's closed to traffic once in a hundred years.'
"`Mr. Percy, Mr. Percy!' I called out; `you are not goingon with this blackguard?'
"`Why, I think so,' answered my unhappy colleague flippantly.`I think you and I are bigger blackguards than he is,whatever he is.'
"`I am a burglar,' explained the big creature quite calmly.`I am a member of the Fabian Society. I take back the wealth stolenby the capitalist, not by sweeping civil war and revolution, but by reformfitted to the special occasion--here a little and there a little.Do you see that fifth house along the terrace with the flat roof?I'm permeating that one to-night.'
"`Whether this is a crime or a joke,' I cried, `I desire to be quit of it.'
"`The ladder is just behind you,' answered the creaturewith horrible courtesy; `and, before you go, do let me giveyou my card.'
"If I had had the presence of mind to show any proper spirit Ishould have flung it away, though any adequate gesture of the kindwould have gravely affected my equilibrium upon the wall.As it was, in the wildness of the moment, I put it in mywaistcoat pocket, and, picking my way back by wall and ladder,landed in the respectable streets once more. Not before, however,I had seen with my own eyes the two awful and lamentable facts--that the burglar was climbing up a slanting roof towardsthe chimneys, and that Raymond Percy (a priest of God and,what was worse, a gentleman) was crawling up after him.I have never seen either of them since that day.
"In consequence of this soul-searching experience I severed myconnection with the wild set. I am far from saying that everymember of the Christian Social Union must necessarily be a burglar.I have no right to bring any such charge. But it gave me a hintof what such courses may lead to in many cases; and I saw them no more.
"I have only to add that the photograph you enclose, taken by aMr. Inglewood, is undoubtedly that of the burglar in question.When I got home that night I looked at his card, and he was inscribedthere under the name of Innocent Smith.--Yours faithfully, "John Clement Hawkins."
Moon merely went through the form of glancing at the paper. He knew thatthe prosecutors could not have invented so heavy a document; that Moses Gould(for one) could no more write like a canon than he could read like one.After handing it back he rose to open the defence on the burglary charge.
"We wish," said Michael, "to give all reasonable facilities tothe prosecution; especially as it will save the time of the whole court.The latter object I shall once again pursue by passing over allthose points of theory which are so dear to Dr. Pym. I know how theyare made. Perjury is a variety of aphasia, leading a man to sayone thing instead of another. Forgery is a kind of writer's cramp,forcing a man to write his uncle's name instead of his own.Piracy on the high seas is probably a form of sea-sickness. But it isunnecessary for us to inquire into the causes of a fact which we deny.Innocent Smith never did commit burglary at all.
"I should like to claim the power permitted by our previous arrangement,and ask the prosecution two or three questions."
Dr. Cyrus Pym closed his eyes to indicate a courteous assent.
"In the first place," continued Moon, "have you the date of Canon Hawkins'slast glimpse of Smith and Percy climbing up the walls and roofs?"
"Ho, yus!" called out Gould smartly. "November thirteen, eighteen ninety-one."
"Have you," continued Moon, "identified the houses in Hoxton upwhich they climbed?"
"Must have been Ladysmith Terrace out of the highroad,"answered Gould with the same clockwork readiness.
"Well," said Michael, cocking an eyebrow at him, "was there any burglaryin that terrace that night? Surely you could find that out."
"There may well have been," said the doctor primly, after a pause,"an unsuccessful one that led to no legalities."
"Another question," proceeded Michael. "Canon Hawkins, in hisblood-and-thunder boyish way, left off at the exciting moment.Why don't you produce the evidence of the other clergyman,who actually followed the burglar and presumably was presentat the crime?"
Dr. Pym rose and planted the points of his fingers on the table,as he did when he was specially confident of the clearnessof his reply.
"We have entirely failed," he said, "to track the other clergyman,who seems to have melted into the ether after Canon Hawkins hadseen him as-cending the gutters and the leads. I am fully awarethat this may strike many as sing'lar; yet, upon reflection,I think it will appear pretty natural to a bright thinker.This Mr. Raymond Percy is admittedly, by the canon's evidence,a minister of eccentric ways. His con-nection with England's proudestand fairest does not seemingly prevent a taste for the societyof the real low-down. On the other hand, the prisoner Smith is,by general agreement, a man of irr'sistible fascination.I entertain no doubt that Smith led the Revered Percy into the crimeand forced him to hide his head in the real crim'nal class.That would fully account for his non-appearance, and the failureof all attempts to trace him."
"It is impossible, then, to trace him?" asked Moon.
"Impossible," repeated the specialist, shutting his eyes.
"You are sure it's impossible?"
"Oh dry up, Michael," cried Gould, irritably. "We'd 'ave found'im if we could, for you bet 'e saw the burglary. Don't YOUstart looking for 'im. Look for your own 'ead in the dustbin.You'll find that--after a bit," and his voice died away in grumbling.
"Arthur," directed Michael Moon, sitting down, "kindly readMr. Raymond Percy's letter to the court."
"Wishing, as Mr. Moon has said, to shorten the proceedings as muchas possible," began Inglewood, "I will not read the first partof the letter sent to us. It is only fair to the prosecutionto admit the account given by the second clergyman fully ratifies,as far as facts are concerned, that given by the first clergyman.We concede, then, the canon's story so far as it goes.This must necessarily be valuable to the prosecutor and also convenientto the court. I begin Mr. Percy's letter, then, at the pointwhen all three men were standing on the garden wall:--
"As I watched Hawkins wavering on the wall, I made up my own mindnot to waver. A cloud of wrath was on my brain, like the cloudof copper fog on the houses and gardens round. My decision wasviolent and simple; yet the thoughts that led up to it were socomplicated and contradictory that I could not retrace them now.I knew Hawkins was a kind, innocent gentleman; and I would havegiven ten pounds for the pleasure of kicking him down the road.That God should allow good people to be as bestially stupid as that--rose against me like a towering blasphemy.
"At Oxford, I fear, I had the artistic temperament rather badly;and artists love to be limited. I liked the church as a pretty pattern;discipline was mere decoration. I delighted in mere divisions of time;I liked eating fish on Friday. But then I like fish; and the fastwas made for men who like meat. Then I came to Hoxton and found menwho had fasted for five hundred years; men who had to gnaw fish becausethey could not get meat--and fish-bones when they could not get fish.As too many British officers treat the army as a review, so I had treatedthe Church Militant
as if it were the Church Pageant. Hoxton cures that.Then I realized that for eighteen hundred years the Church Militanthad not been a pageant, but a riot--and a suppressed riot.There, still living patiently in Hoxton, were the people to whomthe tremendous promises had been made. In the face of that I hadto become a revolutionary if I was to continue to be religious.In Hoxton one cannot be a conservative without being also an atheist--and a pessimist. Nobody but the devil could want to conserve Hoxton.
"On the top of all this comes Hawkins. If he had cursed all the Hoxton men,excommunicated them, and told them they were going to hell, I shouldhave rather admired him. If he had ordered them all to be burnedin the market-place, I should still have had that patience that allgood Christians have with the wrongs inflicted on other people.But there is no priestcraft about Hawkins--nor any other kind of craft.He is as perfectly incapable of being a priest as he is of being a carpenteror a cabman or a gardener or a plasterer. He is a perfect gentleman;that is his complaint. He does not impose his creed, but simply his class.He never said a word of religion in the whole of his damnable address.He simply said all the things his brother, the major, would have said.A voice from heaven assures me that he has a brother, and that thisbrother is a major.
"When this helpless aristocrat had praised cleanliness in the bodyand convention in the soul to people who could hardly keep bodyand soul together, the stampede against our platform began.I took part in his undeserved rescue, I followed hisobscure deliverer, until (as I have said) we stood togetheron the wall above the dim gardens, already clouding with fog.Then I looked at the curate and at the burglar, and decided, in a spasmof inspiration, that the burglar was the better man of the two.The burglar seemed quite as kind and human as the curate was--and he was also brave and self-reliant, which the curate was not.I knew there was no virtue in the upper class, for I belong toit myself; I knew there was not so very much in the lower class,for I had lived with it a long time. Many old texts aboutthe despised and persecuted came back to my mind, and I thoughtthat the saints might well be hidden in the criminal class.About the time Hawkins let himself down the ladder I was crawlingup a low, sloping, blue-slate roof after the large man, who wentleaping in front of me like a gorilla.
"This upward scramble was short, and we soon foundourselves tramping along a broad road of flat roofs,broader than many big thoroughfares, with chimney-pots hereand there that seemed in the haze as bulky as small forts.The asphyxiation of the fog seemed to increase the somewhatswollen and morbid anger under which my brain and body laboured.The sky and all those things that are commonly clear seemedoverpowered by sinister spirits. Tall spectres with turbans of vapourseemed to stand higher than the sun or moon, eclipsing both.I thought dimly of illustrations to the `Arabian Nights'on brown paper with rich but sombre tints, showing geniigathering round the Seal of Solomon. By the way, what wasthe Seal of Solomon? Nothing to do with sealing-wax really,I suppose; but my muddled fancy felt the thick clouds as beingof that heavy and clinging substance, of strong opaque colour,poured out of boiling pots and stamped into monstrous emblems.
"The first effect of the tall turbaned vapours was that discolouredlook of pea-soup or coffee brown of which Londoners commonly speak.But the scene grew subtler with familiarity. We stood above the averageof the housetops and saw something of that thing called smoke, which ingreat cities creates the strange thing called fog. Beneath us rosea forest of chimney-pots. And there stood in every chimney-pot, as if itwere a flower-pot, a brief shrub or a tall tree of coloured vapour.The colours of the smoke were various; for some chimneys were fromfiresides and some from factories, and some again from mere rubbish heaps.And yet, though the tints were all varied, they all seemed unnatural,like fumes from a witch's pot. It was as if the shameful and uglyshapes growing shapeless in the cauldron sent up each its separatespurt of steam, coloured according to the fish or flesh consumed.Here, aglow from underneath, were dark red clouds, such as might driftfrom dark jars of sacrificial blood; there the vapour was dark indigo gray,like the long hair of witches steeped in the hell-broth. In anotherplace the smoke was of an awful opaque ivory yellow, such as mightbe the disembodiment of one of their old, leprous waxen images.But right across it ran a line of bright, sinister, sulphurous green,as clear and crooked as Arabic--"
Mr. Moses Gould once more attempted the arrest of the 'bus.He was understood to suggest that the reader should shortenthe proceedings by leaving out all the adjectives. Mrs. Duke,who had woken up, observed that she was sure it was all very nice,and the decision was duly noted down by Moses with a blue,and by Michael with a red pencil. Inglewood then resumedthe reading of the document.
"Then I read the writing of the smoke. Smoke was like the moderncity that makes it; it is not always dull or ugly, but it is alwayswicked and vain.
"Modern England was like a cloud of smoke; it could carryall colours, but it could leave nothing but a stain. It was ourweakness and not our strength that put a rich refuse in the sky.These were the rivers of our vanity pouring into the void.We had taken the sacred circle of the whirlwind, and looked down on it,and seen it as a whirlpool. And then we had used it as a sink.It was a good symbol of the mutiny in my own mind.Only our worst things were going to heaven. Only our criminalscould still ascend like angels.
"As my brain was blinded with such emotions, my guide stoppedby one of the big chimney-pots that stood at the regular intervalslike lamp-posts along that uplifted and aerial highway.He put his heavy hand upon it, and for the moment I thought he wasmerely leaning on it, tired with his steep scramble along the terrace.So far as I could guess from the abysses, full of fog on either side,and the veiled lights of red brown and old gold glowing throughthem now and again, we were on the top of one of those long,consecutive, and genteel rows of houses which are still to befound lifting their heads above poorer districts, the remainsof some rage of optimism in earlier speculative builders.Probably enough, they were entirely untenanted, or tenantedonly by such small clans of the poor as gather also in the oldemptied palaces of Italy. Indeed, some little time later,when the fog had lifted a little, I discovered that wewere walking round a semi-circle of crescent which fell awaybelow us into one flat square or wide street below another,like a giant stairway, in a manner not unknown in the eccentricbuilding of London, and looking like the last ledges of the land.But a cloud sealed the giant stairway as yet.
"My speculations about the sullen skyscape, however, were interruptedby something as unexpected as the moon falling from the sky.Instead of my burglar lifting his hand from the chimneyhe leaned on, he leaned on it a little more heavily, and the wholechimney-pot turned over like the opening top of an inkstand.I remembered the short ladder leaning against the low wall and feltsure he had arranged his criminal approach long before.
"The collapse of the big chimney-pot ought to have been the culminationof my chaotic feelings; but, to tell the truth, it produced a sudden senseof comedy and even of comfort. I could not recall what connected thisabrupt bit of housebreaking with some quaint but still kindly fancies.Then I remembered the delightful and uproarious scenes of roofs and chimneysin the harlequinades of my childhood, and was darkly and quite irrationallycomforted by a sense of unsubstantiality in the scene, as if the houseswere of lath and paint and pasteboard, and were only meant to be tumbledin and out of by policemen and pantaloons. The law-breaking of my companionseemed not only seriously excusable, but even comically excusable.Who were all these pompous preposterous people with their footmen and theirfoot-scrapers, their chimney-pots and their chimney-pot hats, that theyshould prevent a poor clown from getting sausages if he wanted them?One would suppose that property was a serious thing. I had reached,as it were, a higher level of that mountainous and vapourous visions,the heaven of a higher levity.
"My guide had jumped down into the dark cavity revealed by the displacedchimney-pot. He must have landed at a level considerably lower, for,tall as he was, nothing but his weirdly tousled head remained visible.Something again far off, a
nd yet familiar, pleased me about this wayof invading the houses of men. I thought of little chimney-sweeps,and `The Water Babies;' but I decided that it was not that.Then I remembered what it was that made me connect such topsy-turvytrespass with ideas quite opposite to the idea of crime.Christmas Eve, of course, and Santa Claus coming down the chimney.
"Almost at the same instant the hairy head disappeared into the black hole;but I heard a voice calling to me from below. A second or two afterwards,the hairy head reappeared; it was dark against the more fiery part of the fog,and nothing could be spelt of its expression, but its voice called on meto follow with that enthusiastic impatience proper only among old friends.I jumped into the gulf, and as blindly as Curtius, for I was still thinkingof Santa Claus and the traditional virtue of such vertical entrance.
"In every well-appointed gentleman's house, I reflected, there wasthe front door for the gentlemen, and the side door for the tradesmen;but there was also the top door for the gods. The chimney is,so to speak, the underground passage between earth and heaven.By this starry tunnel Santa Claus manages--like the skylark--to be true to the kindred points of heaven and home.Nay, owing to certain conventions, and a widely distributed lackof courage for climbing, this door was, perhaps, little used.But Santa Claus's door was really the front door:it was the door fronting the universe.
"I thought this as I groped my way across the black garret, or loft belowthe roof, and scrambled down the squat ladder that let us down into a yetlarger loft below. Yet it was not till I was half-way down the ladder that Isuddenly stood still, and thought for an instant of retracing all my steps,as my companion had retraced them from the beginning of the garden wall.The name of Santa Claus had suddenly brought me back to my senses.I remembered why Santa Clause came, and why he was welcome.
"I was brought up in the propertied classes, and with alltheir horror of offences against property. I had heard allthe regular denunciations of robbery, both right and wrong;I had read the Ten Commandments in church a thousand times.And then and there, at the age of thirty-four, half-waydown a ladder in a dark room in the bodily act of burglar,I saw suddenly for the first time that theft, after all,is really wrong.
"It was too late to turn back, however, and I followedthe strangely soft footsteps of my huge companion acrossthe lower and larger loft, till he knelt down on a partof the bare flooring and, after a few fumbling efforts,lifted a sort of trapdoor. This released a light from below,and we found ourselves looking down into a lamp-lit sitting room,of the sort that in large houses often leads out of a bedroom,and is an adjunct to it. Light thus breaking from beneathour feet like a soundless explosion, showed that the trapdoorjust lifted was clogged with dust and rust, and had doubtlessbeen long disused until the advent of my enterprising friend.But I did not look at this long, for the sight of the shiningroom underneath us had an almost unnatural attractiveness.To enter a modern interior at so strange an angle,by so forgotten a door, was an epoch in one's psychology.It was like having found a fourth dimension.
"My companion dropped from the aperture into the room so suddenlyand soundlessly, that I could do nothing but follow him;though, for lack of practice in crime, I was by no means soundless.Before the echo of my boots had died away, the big burglarhad gone quickly to the door, half opened it, and stood lookingdown the staircase and listening. Then, leaving the doorstill half open, he came back into the middle of the room,and ran his roving blue eye round its furniture and ornament.The room was comfortably lined with books in that rich and humanway that makes the walls seem alive; it was a deep and full,but slovenly, bookcase, of the sort that is constantly ransackedfor the purposes of reading in bed. One of those stuntedGerman stoves that look like red goblins stood in a corner,and a sideboard of walnut wood with closed doors in its lower part.There were three windows, high but narrow. After another glance round,my housebreaker plucked the walnut doors open and rummaged inside.He found nothing there, apparently, except an extremelyhandsome cut-glass decanter, containing what looked like port.Somehow the sight of the thief returning with this ridiculous littleluxury in his hand woke within me once more all the revelationand revulsion I had felt above.
"`Don't do it!' I cried quite incoherently, `Santa Claus--'
"`Ah,' said the burglar, as he put the decanter on the tableand stood looking at me, `you've thought about that, too.'
"`I can't express a millionth part of what I've thought of,' I cried,`but it's something like this... oh, can't you see it? Why are childrennot afraid of Santa Claus, though he comes like a thief in the night?He is permitted secrecy, trespass, almost treachery--because there aremore toys where he has been. What should we feel if there were less?Down what chimney from hell would come the goblin that should takeaway the children's balls and dolls while they slept? Could a Greektragedy be more gray and cruel than that daybreak and awakening?Dog-stealer, horse-stealer, man-stealer--can you think of anythingso base as a toy-stealer?'
"The burglar, as if absently, took a large revolver from his pocket and laidit on the table beside the decanter, but still kept his blue reflective eyesfixed on my face.
"`Man!' I said, `all stealing is toy-stealing. That's whyit's really wrong. The goods of the unhappy children of menshould be really respected because of their worthlessness.I know Naboth's vineyard is as painted as Noah's Ark. I knowNathan's ewe-lamb is really a woolly baa-lamb on a wooden stand.That is why I could not take them away. I did not mind so much,as long as I thought of men's things as their valuables;but I dare not put a hand upon their vanities.'
"After a moment I added abruptly, `Only saints and sages ought to be robbed.They may be stripped and pillaged; but not the poor little worldly peopleof the things that are their poor little pride.'
"He set out two wineglasses from the cupboard, filled them both,and lifted one of them with a salutation towards his lips.
"`Don't do it!' I cried. `It might be the last bottle of some rottenvintage or other. The master of this house may be quite proud of it.Don't you see there's something sacred in the silliness of such things?'
"`It's not the last bottle,' answered my criminal calmly;`there's plenty more in the cellar.'
"`You know the house, then?' I said.
"`Too well,' he answered, with a sadness so strange as to havesomething eerie about it. `I am always trying to forget what I know--and to find what I don't know.' He drained his glass.`Besides,' he added, `it will do him good.'
"`What will do him good?'
"`The wine I'm drinking,' said the strange person.
"`Does he drink too much, then?' I inquired.
"`No,' he answered, `not unless I do.'
"`Do you mean,' I demanded, `that the owner of this house approvesof all you do?'
"`God forbid,' he answered; `but he has to do the same.'
"The dead face of the fog looking in at all three windowsunreasonable increased a sense of riddle, and even terror,about this tall, narrow house we had entered out of the sky.I had once more the notion about the gigantic genii--I fancied that enormous Egyptian faces, of the dead redsand yellows of Egypt, were staring in at each window of ourlittle lamp-lit room as at a lighted stage of marionettes.My companion went on playing with the pistol in front of him,and talking with the same rather creepy confidentialness.
"`I am always trying to find him--to catch him unawares.I come in through skylights and trapdoors to find him;but whenever I find him--he is doing what I am doing.'
"I sprang to my feet with a thrill of fear. `There is some one coming,'I cried, and my cry had something of a shriek in it. Not fromthe stairs below, but along the passage from the inner bedchamber(which seemed somehow to make it more alarming), footsteps werecoming nearer. I am quite unable to say what mystery, or monster,or double, I expected to see when the door was pushed open from within.I am only quite certain that I did not expect to see what I did see.
"Framed in the open doorway stood, with an air of great serenity,a rather tall young woman, definitely though i
ndefinably artistic--her dress the colour of spring and her hair of autumn leaves,with a face which, though still comparatively young,conveyed experience as well as intelligence. All she said was,`I didn't hear you come in.'
"`I came in another way,' said the Permeator, somewhat vaguely.`I'd left my latchkey at home.'
"I got to my feet in a mixture of politeness and mania.`I'm really very sorry,' I cried. `I know my position is irregular.Would you be so obliging as to tell me whose house this is?'
"`Mine,' said the burglar, `May I present you to my wife?'
"I doubtfully, and somewhat slowly, resumed my seat;and I did not get out of it till nearly morning. Mrs. Smith(such was the prosaic name of this far from prosaic household)lingered a little, talking slightly and pleasantly.She left on my mind the impression of a certain odd mixtureof shyness and sharpness; as if she knew the world well,but was still a little harmlessly afraid of it.Perhaps the possession of so jumpy and incalculable a husbandhad left her a little nervous. Anyhow, when she had retiredto the inner chamber once more, that extraordinary man pouredforth his apologia and autobiography over the dwindling wine.
"He had been sent to Cambridge with a view to a mathematicaland scientific, rather than a classical or literary, career.A starless nihilism was then the philosophy of the schools;and it bred in him a war between the members and the spirit,but one in which the members were right. While his brainaccepted the black creed, his very body rebelled against it.As he put it, his right hand taught him terrible things.As the authorities of Cambridge University put it, unfortunately,it had taken the form of his right hand flourishing a loadedfirearm in the very face of a distinguished don, and drivinghim to climb out of the window and cling to a waterspout.He had done it solely because the poor don had professedin theory a preference for non-existence. For thisvery unacademic type of argument he had been sent down.Vomiting as he was with revulsion, from the pessimism that hadquailed under his pistol, he made himself a kind of fanaticof the joy of life. He cut across all the associationsof serious-minded men. He was gay, but by no means careless.His practical jokes were more in earnest than verbal ones.Though not an optimist in the absurd sense of maintaining thatlife is all beer and skittles, he did really seem to maintainthat beer and skittles are the most serious part of it.`What is more immortal,' he would cry, `than love and war?Type of all desire and joy--beer. Type of all battleand conquest--skittles.'
"There was something in him of what the old world calledthe solemnity of revels--when they spoke of `solemnizing'a mere masquerade or wedding banquet. Nevertheless he was nota mere pagan any more than he was a mere practical joker.His eccentricities sprang from a static fact of faith,in itself mystical, and even childlike and Christian.
"`I don't deny,' he said, `that there should be priests to remindmen that they will one day die. I only say that at certainstrange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests,called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.The intellectuals among whom I moved were not even alive enoughto fear death. They hadn't enough blood in them to be cowards.Until a pistol barrel was poked under their very noses they nevereven knew they had been born. For ages looking up an eternalperspective it might be true that life is a learning to die.But for these little white rats it was just as true that deathwas their only chance of learning to live.'
"His creed of wonder was Christian by this absolute test; that he feltit continually slipping from himself as much as from others.He had the same pistol for himself, as Brutus said of the dagger.He continually ran preposterous risks of high precipice or headlongspeed to keep alive the mere conviction that he was alive.He treasured up trivial and yet insane details that had oncereminded him of the awful subconscious reality. When the donhad hung on the stone gutter, the sight of his long dangling legs,vibrating in the void like wings, somehow awoke the naked satireof the old definition of man as a two-legged animal without feathers.The wretched professor had been brought into peril by his head,which he had so elaborately cultivated, and only savedby his legs, which he had treated with coldness and neglect.Smith could think of no other way of announcing or recording this,except to send a telegram to an old friend (by this time atotal stranger) to say that he had just seen a man with two legs;and that the man was alive.
"The uprush of his released optimism burst into stars like a rocketwhen he suddenly fell in love. He happened to be shooting a highand very headlong weir in a canoe, by way of proving to himselfthat he was alive; and he soon found himself involved in some doubtabout the continuance of the fact. What was worse, he found he hadequally jeopardized a harmless lady alone in a rowing-boat, and onewho had provoked death by no professions of philosophic negation.He apologized in wild gasps through all his wild wet labours to bringher to the shore, and when he had done so at last, he seems to haveproposed to her on the bank. Anyhow, with the same impetuositywith which he had nearly murdered her, he completely married her;and she was the lady in green to whom I had recently said `good-night.'
"They had settled down in these high narrow housesnear Highbury. Perhaps, indeed, that is hardly the word.One could strictly say that Smith was married, that he was veryhappily married, that he not only did not care for any womanbut his wife, but did not seem to care for any place but his home;but perhaps one could hardly say that he had settled down.`I am a very domestic fellow,' he explained with gravity,`and have often come in through a broken window rather than belate for tea.'
"He lashed his soul with laughter to prevent it falling asleep.He lost his wife a series of excellent servants by knocking atthe door as a total stranger, and asking if Mr. Smith lived thereand what kind of a man he was. The London general servant is notused to the master indulging in such transcendental ironies.And it was found impossible to explain to her that he did it in orderto feel the same interest in his own affairs that he always feltin other people's.
"`I know there's a fellow called Smith,' he said in his ratherweird way, `living in one of the tall houses in this terrace.I know he is really happy, and yet I can never catch him at it.'
"Sometimes he would, of a sudden, treat his wife with a kind of paralyzedpoliteness, like a young stranger struck with love at first sight.Sometimes he would extend this poetic fear to the very furniture;would seem to apologize to the chair he sat on, and climb the staircaseas cautiously as a cragsman, to renew in himself the sense of their skeletonof reality. Every stair is a ladder and every stool a leg, he said.And at other times he would play the stranger exactly in the opposite sense,and would enter by another way, so as to feel like a thief and a robber.He would break and violate his own home, as he had done with me that night.It was near morning before I could tear myself from this queer confidenceof the Man Who Would Not Die, and as I shook hands with him on the doorstepthe last load of fog was lifting, and rifts of daylight revealed the stairwayof irregular street levels that looked like the end of the world.
"It will be enough for many to say that I had passed a night with a maniac.What other term, it will be said, could be applied to such a being?A man who reminds himself that he is married by pretending not to be married!A man who tries to covet his own goods instead of his neighbor's! Onthis I have but one word to say, and I feel it of my honour to say it,though no one understands. I believe the maniac was one of those whodo not merely come, but are sent; sent like a great gale upon shipsby Him who made His angels winds and His messengers a flaming fire.This, at least, I know for certain. Whether such men have laughedor wept, we have laughed at their laughter as much as at their weeping.Whether they cursed or blessed the world, they have never fitted it.It is true that men have shrunk from the sting of a great satiristas if from the sting of an adder. But it is equally true that men fleefrom the embrace of a great optimist as from the embrace of a bear.Nothing brings down more curses than a real benediction.For the goodness of good things, like the badness of bad things,is a prodigy past speech; it is to be pictured rather than spoken.We shall have gone deeper than the deeps of
heaven and grown older thanthe oldest angels before we feel, even in its first faint vibrations,the everlasting violence of that double passion with which God hatesand loves the world.--I am, yours faithfully, "Raymond Percy."
"Oh, 'oly, 'oly, 'oly!" said Mr. Moses Gould.
The instant he had spoken all the rest knew they had beenin an almost religious state of submission and assent.Something had bound them together; something in the sacred traditionof the last two words of the letter; something also in the touchingand boyish embarrassment with which Inglewood had read them--for he had all the thin-skinned reverence of the agnostic.Moses Gould was as good a fellow in his way as ever lived;far kinder to his family than more refined men of pleasure,simple and steadfast in his admiration, a thoroughly wholesomeanimal and a thoroughly genuine character. But wherever thereis conflict, crises come in which any soul, personal or racial,unconsciously turns on the world the most hateful of its hundred faces.English reverence, Irish mysticism, American idealism,looked up and saw on the face of Moses a certain smile.It was that smile of the Cynic Triumphant, which has been the tocsinfor many a cruel riot in Russian villages or mediaeval towns.
"Oh, 'oly, 'oly, 'oly!" said Moses Gould.
Finding that this was not well received, he explained further,exuberance deepening on his dark exuberant features.
"Always fun to see a bloke swallow a wasp when 'e's corfin' up a fly,"he said pleasantly. "Don't you see you've bunged up old Smith anyhow.If this parson's tale's O.K.--why, Smith is 'ot. 'E's pretty 'ot.We find him elopin' with Miss Gray (best respects!) in a cab.Well, what abart this Mrs. Smith the curate talks of, with herblarsted shyness--transmigogrified into a blighted sharpness?Miss Gray ain't been very sharp, but I reckon she'll be pretty shy."
"Don't be a brute," growled Michael Moon.
None could lift their eyes to look at Mary; but Inglewood sent a glancealong the table at Innocent Smith. He was still bowed above his paper toys,and a wrinkle was on his forehead that might have been worry or shame.He carefully plucked out one corner of a complicated paper and tucked itin elsewhere; then the wrinkle vanished and he looked relieved.