THE MAKING OF A CRIMINAL
The philosophy of Lynton Hora had for once given way under the stress
of a deep emotion. There could be no doubt about that, and no doubt
either that the emotion which had strained the philosophy to breaking
point was the emotion of hate.
Never before had Guy seen him so wrought upon. Often he had regretted
that the man he called father should have been of so calm a
temperament--regretted even while he admired. Himself of an impulsive,
even ardent nature, he had longed to express his feelings to the one
being who had been his sole companion from infancy, who had treated
him with unfailing and unvarying kindness, but who chilled, with what
appeared to be temperamental coldness, any expression of affection.
Guy was thrilled with the discovery that a deep sea of passion underlay
Hora's cold exterior. If Hora hated, of necessity he must love.
He must love him, Guy Hora, his son. Did not every action in his life
show it?
The thought awakened Guy's memory actively. His earliest memories
were of the Commandatore. He had no knowledge of a mother, or but
shadowy recollections, and those might merely be the offspring
of his own imagination. Lynton Hora had been father and mother
both. Guy could recall Hora's face bending over his bed in
the days of his babyhood. He had one vivid recollection of being parted
from his father when he himself was about seven years old. He had been
left in the charge of some dark-haired, swarthy-faced people, and they
had neglected him--had beaten him. How he had cried for his father, and
when his father had returned, he remembered running to him and sobbing
out his tale of misery. He remembered how Hora had told him that men
never cried when they were hurt, and that he, stricken with shame,
had answered that it was not the beating but the loneliness which had
brought the tears to his eyes.
Hora had smiled and had left him alone for a few minutes. He had smiled
still more when he had returned. Guy remembered seeing the man who had
beaten him later that same day with a bruised face and an arm hanging
helpless in a sling from his neck.
But that was not his most vivid memory of Hora's return. Chiefly it was
a conversation that took place when Hora had taken the boy's hand and
led him up into the mountains. Often the boy had recalled the words
which had been spoken to him. He could never see a pine tree without
their being fresh spoken to his ear, for they had been uttered beneath
the pine woods, on the edge of a translucent mountain lake, which
mirrored the snowy peaks above it so perfectly that it seemed strange
that the pebbles at the bottom could not be counted.
Hora had taken the boy's tears as his text.
"Women weep when they are hurt," he said. "Men strike back.
Remember that, Guy; remember too that if you cannot strike with the
arm, there are other ways of driving the blow home."
Though Guy had understood the meaning of Hora's words but dimly then,
he had remembered them, and later he understood. Hora had often
given him practical illustration of his precepts. He never forgot an
injury or a slight, and Guy was often allowed to see how Hora avenged
either. Memory has no chronological exactitude, and as Guy allowed
his thoughts to drift, an instance occurred to him which had happened
some years later. They had been travelling in France together and
had been hurrying on to Italy. The one other traveller in the same
compartment had been a blusterous Englishman of the most unpleasantly
self-assertive type. Hora had attempted to engage him in conversation
and had met with a surly repulse. When the frontier was reached, the
assertive person was asleep. Hora had dexterously possessed himself
of the man's watch and when the custom's official made his appearance
had transferred, with equal dexterity, the watch to his pocket,
leaving a portion of the chain visible. When awakened, the Englishman
discovered his loss almost immediately. The official was before him
asking him in a language he did not comprehend, whether he had any
dutiable articles to declare. The visible piece of chain caught the
eye of the excited passenger. He made a grab at the presumed thief.
The official, thinking he was being attacked by a madman, made a wild
dive for the door and reached the platform. The Englishman followed
in pursuit and captured his man. There was a wild melée, from which
the victim did not emerge victorious. When the train moved on, Hora
was gratified by seeing their late companion ineffectually struggling
in the grasp of half-a-dozen stalwart carabinieri.
Guy was fifteen years old when this event had happened, and long before
then he had imbibed from his father ideas of morality which were
directly at variance with those generally accepted. Guy could never
remember a time when Hora had bade him restrain any desire. How well
he recalled a day, he could not have been more than six, when they had
passed a shop wherein a basket of golden oranges were displayed. "Buy
me one," he had cried. Hora had stopped. There was no one in the shop.
"I'll teach you a new game," he said. "Go and fetch a couple, Guy. Mind
you choose the best," he said.
Guy had obeyed and Hora had praised him. As Guy ate the oranges he
thought the game the best he had ever heard of. Next day they had
passed the shop and Guy was about to repeat the foray, but Hora had
restrained him.
"Look, Guy," he said. "There is somebody there now; when you want
oranges or anything else without paying you must be quite sure there is
no one about, or you will lose the game."
Guy remembered the precept and acted upon it. It was a delightful new
game for anyone to play, if you were only clever enough to play it
properly. He used to beg Hora to take him out for a day's stealing,
and sometimes, as a reward for perseverance in his studies, Hora
would accede to the boy's request. He had no notion that he was doing
anything wrong, though he had been taught that there were things he
must not do. He knew that he must not tell his father a lie; he knew
too that he was to be silent when bidden.
Of course a time had eventually arrived when he had become
conscious that there was some lack of harmony between the life he and
his father led and the lives of those upon whom they preyed. Hora had
taken the boy to see a big penal establishment and his curiosity had
been stirred as to the reason of this gathering of men in mud-coloured
garb, marked all over with broad arrows. "Why are they all dressed
alike? Why do their masters carry guns?" he asked.
Hora had silenced him with a sign at the time, but later, when they
were alone, he had explained.
"They are all men who have been trying to play the game of stealing and
have lost," he said. "If you were to get caught, you would be taken
away and shut up at night in a cell all alone, and dressed in ugly
clothes, and when you went out men with guns would be set to watch you
so that they should shoot you if you tried to run away."
"Have you ever been caught, father?" Guy asked.
Hora had never replied to that question. His face had grown so dark
that Guy had forborne to press for an answer, and the memory of the
singular expression which had passed over his countenance had been
sufficient to prevent Guy ever repeating the enquiry.
After the visit to the convict establishment, Guy had been timorous
at playing his new game, but Hora had chaffed him, advised him, stood
beside him, protected him, until he became exceedingly dexterous in a
variety of forms of petty larceny. He was never allowed at this time to
mix with other boys. Hora had him always under his own eye, educating
him according to a system which was a fair sample of the average boy's
education as regards matter, but differing vastly from the average
boy's education as regards the application of the knowledge imparted
to him.
Cæsar was never to him a mere handbook by which the intricacies of
a dead language were revealed, but a wonderful history of a man who
played the game of stealing in a great way. Hora made quite clear to
the boy's mind that there was only a difference in degree between the
stealing of oranges and the stealing of kingdoms, but that if one
wanted to steal kingdoms it was just as well to begin early and learn
the principles of the art by stealing oranges. He explained, too, that
the world looked with very different eyes upon the theft of a crown
and the theft of an orange or an apple. The man who annexed an empire
was an emperor whom men acclaimed and set on a throne in a garb of
purple, while the man who stole a loaf of bread to assuage his hunger
was a petty thief at whom the world hurled opprobrium and thrust into
a prison, garbed in mud-coloured clothes and covered over with broad
arrows.
Guy began to comprehend what Hora intended him to comprehend, that
there was something mean about petty theft, and he no longer found
pleasure in his game, but turned instead to the weaving of romances of
magnificent depredations.
Even the fiction which was supplied by Hora for the boy's
amusement was insidiously utilised for the inculcation of the
same perverted morality. With Robinson Crusoe, for instance, it
was easy for a man of Hora's equipment to make fun of Crusoe's
naïve dependence upon Providence and his exhibition of piety in
moments of stress. Hora pointed out that Crusoe's prayers were
mere expression of the terror of an uneducated mind when
confronted with personal danger--of a mind which had been trained in
youth to rely upon supernatural agencies for relief and comfort. He
pointed out that Crusoe really secured his own safety through the
exercise of his own constructive and observatory powers, and through no
other agency.
As Guy grew older, Hora sedulously built upon the foundation of
disbelief which he laid down as the basis of the boy's education. Guy
was taught that religion was merely the means by which a priestarchy
levied toll upon the body corporate by playing upon inherited
superstitions--while history supplied him with plenty of illustrations.
History supplied him, too, with plenty of examples to point the
arguments with which he supported what was in effect a complete
criminal philosophy. Guy was not taught only that atheism was the hope
of humanity. Hora had read much of Nietzsche, and he skilfully adopted
the Nietzschean philosophy to his purpose. A particular appeal to Guy's
mind was to be found in Hora's definition of virtue, as a thirst for
danger and courage for the forbidden. As translated by Hora, both in
precept and in practice, the highest virtue was to be found in the
breaking of laws. He imbibed the doctrines with avidity, for Hora had a
persuasive tongue. He learned at the same time to keep them to himself,
for, as Hora explained, if sheep knew as much as men, men would have no
mutton.
Until eighteen, Guy's education progressed under his father's tuition,
and then, feeling sure of him, Hora thought it time to launch him on
the world. Guy went to Oxbridge to make acquaintance with his fellows,
to survey the flock of sheep which were to supply him with mutton
in the future. The time then passed pleasantly enough, and plenty of
active exercise supplied him with a vent for his energies. He did
not shear any of the sheep, for Hora had bidden him stay his hand. A
blameless university career would, he knew, be of great value in the
future.
When Guy came down from the University it was with the reputation
of being one of its wildest spirits. Great things were predicted of
him. Others might excel him in individual efforts in the field and
the schools, but none could excel him in fearlessness of demeanour.
Besides, Hora's education had supplied him with a serene belief in
himself, which had been communicated to those with whom he came in
contact. He had been the leader of a set, the model for the freshman,
the autocrat of his time. Like most autocrats, he cherished a profound
contempt for those who bowed down before him. He was to them as his
father was to him, something so much greater than they that their
tribute became merely a thing of no account. He understood why his
father had no affection for him. How could anyone love the thing
beneath; the moth could love the star, but the star could not love the
moth--and----
Guy awoke from the reverie into which he had been betrayed by his
father's emotion on hearing the name of Captain Marven mentioned. He
was quite alone. Myra had left the room after vainly trying to engage
his attention. His hand unconsciously sought his pocket, and, when he
drew it out, he held in his palm the snuff-box he had reserved for
himself from the booty he had brought home on the previous night.
He gazed earnestly at the miniature set in the lid.
"So Captain Marven is father's enemy," he muttered, "and this--this
must be a portrait of Captain Marven's daughter."
His face grew troubled. His brow puckered. He thrust the box back into
his pocket and rose impatiently from his seat.
"Bah!" he said, "what says the Commandatore? Man
is trained for war, and woman for the relaxation
of the warrior; all else is folly."