"On entre, on crie,
C'est la vie.
On crie, on sort,
C'est la mort."
On the paths of self-interest the grass is seldom allowed to grow under
the feet. Colonel Tempest hurried. It would be tedious to follow the
various steps feverishly taken which led to his finally unearthing the
home address of Mr. Swayne. He procured it at last, not without expense,
from an impoverished client of that gentleman who had lately been in
correspondence with him. Mr. Swayne had always shown a decided reticence
with regard to the locality of his domestic roof. Colonel Tempest was
of course in possession of several addresses where letters would find
him, but his experience of such addresses had been that, unless strictly
connected with pecuniary advantage to Mr. Swayne, the letters did not
seem to reach their destination. But now, even when Colonel Tempest
wrote to say he would pay up, no answer came. Swayne did not rise even
to that bait. Colonel Tempest, who was aware that Mr. Swayne's faith in
human nature had in the course of his career sustained several severe
shocks, came to the conclusion that Mr. Swayne did not attach importance
to his statement--that indeed he regarded it only as a "blind" in order
to obtain another interview.
It was on a burning day in June that Colonel Tempest set forth to search
out his tempter at Rosemont Villa, Iron Ferry, in the manufacturing town
of Bilgewater. The dirty smudged address was in his pocket-book, as was
also the notice of his banker that ten thousand pounds had been placed
to his credit a few days before.
The London train took him to Worcester, and from thence the local line,
after meandering through a desert of grime and chimneys, and after
innumerable stoppages at one hideous nigger station after another,
finally deposited him on the platform of Bilgewater Junction. Colonel
Tempest got out and looked about him. It was not a rural scene. Heaps of
refuse and slag lay upon the blistered land thick as the good
resolutions that pave a certain road. Low cottages crowded each other in
knots near the high smoking factories. Black wheels turned slowly
against the grey of the sky, which whitened upwards towards the ghost of
the midsummer sun high in heaven. We are told that the sun shines
equally on the just and on the unjust; but that was said before the
first factory was built. At Bilgewater it is no longer so.
Colonel Tempest inquired his way to Iron Ferry, and, vaguely surprised
at Mr. Swayne's choice of locality for his country residence, set out
along the baked wrinkles of the black high-road, winding between wastes
of cottages, some inhabited and showing dreary signs of life, some empty
and decrepit, some fallen down dead. The heat was intense. The steam and
the smoke rose together into the air like some evil sacrifice. The
pulses of the factories throbbed feverishly as he passed. The steam
curled upwards from the surface of the livid pools and canals at their
base. The very water seemed to sweat.
Colonel Tempest reached Iron Ferry, being guided thither by the spire of
the little tin church, which pointed unheeded towards the low steel
sky, shut down over the battered convulsed country like a coffin lid
over one who has died in torment.
At Iron Ferry, which had a bridge and a wharf and a canal, and was
everything except a ferry, he inquired again concerning Rosemont Villa,
and was presently picking his way across a little patch of common
towards a string of what had once been red brick houses, but which had
long since embraced the universal colour of their surroundings. They
were rather better looking houses if a sort of shabby gentility can be
called anything except the worst. They were semi-detached. From out of
one of them the strains were issuing faintly and continuously of the
inevitable accordion, which for some occult reason is always found to
consort with poverty and oyster-shells.
At the open door of another a girl was standing tearing pieces with her
teeth out of a chunk of something she held in her hand. She was
surrounded by a meagre family of poultry who fought and pecked and trod
each other down with almost human eagerness for the occasional morsels
she threw to them. Something in her appearance and in the way she seemed
to enjoy the greed and mutual revilings of her little dependents
reminded Colonel Tempest--he hardly knew why--of Mr. Swayne.
Another glance made the supposition a certainty. There were the small
boot-buttons of eyes, the heavy mottled expressionless face, which
Colonel Tempest had until now considered to be the exclusive property of
Mr. Swayne. This slouching, tawdry down-at-heel arrow was no doubt one
of that gentleman's quiverful.
Mr. Swayne had always worn such very unmarried waistcoats and button
holes that it was a shock to Colonel Tempest to regard him as a
domestic character.
"Is Mr. Swayne at home?" he asked, amid the cackling and flouncing of
the poultry.
The "arrow," her cheek "bulged with the unchewed piece," looked at him
doubtfully for a moment, and then called over her shoulder--
"Mother!"
The voice as of a female who had never been held in subjection answered
shrilly from within--"Well?"
"Here's a gent as wants to see father."
There was a sound of some heavy vessel being set down, and a woman,
large and swarthy, came to the door. She might have been good-looking
once. She might perhaps have been "a fine figure of a woman" in the days
when Swayne wooed and won her, and no doubt her savings, for his own.
But possibly the society of Mr. Swayne may not in the long run have
exerted an ennobling or even a soothing influence upon her. Her
complexion was a fiery red, and her whole appearance bespoke a
temperament to which the artificial stimulus of alcohol, though
evidently unnecessary, was evidently not denied.
"Swayne's sick," she said, eyeing Colonel Tempest with distrust. "He
can't see no one, and if he could, there's not a shilling in the house
if you was to scrape the walls with a knife--so that's all about it.
It's no manner of use coming pestering here for money."
"I don't want money," said Colonel Tempest. "I want to pay, not to be
paid."
The woman shook her head incredulously, and put out her under lip,
uttering the mystic word, "Walker!" It did not seem to bear upon the
subject, but somebody, probably the accordion next door, laughed.
"I must see him!" said Colonel Tempest, vehemently. "I've had dealings
with him which I want to settle and have done with. It's my own interest
to pay up. He would see me directly if he knew I was here."
The woman hesitated.
"Swayne is uncommon sick," she said, slowly. "If it's business I doubt
he could scarce fettle at it now."
"Do you mean he is not sober?"
"He's sober enough, poor fellow," said Mrs. Swayne, with momentary
sympathy; "but he's mortal bad. He hasn't done nobbut but dithered with
a bit of toast since Tuesday, and taking it out of hisself all the time
with flouncing and swearing like a brute beast."
"Is he--do you mean to say he is _dying_?" demanded Colonel Tempest in
sudden panic.
"Doctor says he won't hang on above a day or two," said the girl
nonchalantly. "Doctor says his works is clean wore out."
"Let me go to him at once," said Colonel Tempest. "It is of great
importance; I must see him at once."
The women stared at each other undecidedly, and the girl nudged her
mother.
"Lor, mother, what does it signify? If the gentleman 'ull make it worth
while, show him up."
Colonel Tempest hastily produced a sovereign, and in a few minutes was
stumbling up the rickety stairs behind Mrs. Swayne. She pushed open a
half-closed door, and noisily pulled back a bit of curtain which shaded
the light--what poor dim light there was--from the bed, knocking over as
she did so a tallow candle in the window-sill bent double by the heat.
Colonel Tempest had followed her into the room and into an atmosphere
resembling that of the monkey-house at the Zoo, stiffened with brandy.
"Oh, good gracious!" he ejaculated, as Mrs. Swayne drew back the
curtain. "Oh dear, Mrs. Swayne! I ought to have been prepared. I had no
idea---- What's the matter with him? What is he writing on the wall?"
For Mr. Swayne was changed. He was within a measurable distance of being
unrecognizable. That evidently would be the next alteration not for the
better in him. Already he was slow to recognize others. He was sitting
up in bed, swearing and scratching tearfully at the wall-paper. He
looked stouter than ever, but as if he might collapse altogether at a
pin prick, and shrivel down to a wrinkled nothing among the creases of
his tumbled bedding.
Mrs. Swayne regarded her prostrate lord with arms akimbo. Possibly she
considered that her part of the agreement, to love and to cherish Mr.
Swayne, and honour and obey Mr. Swayne, was now at an end, as death was
so plainly about to part them. At any rate, she appeared indisposed to
add any finishing touches to her part of the contract. Mr. Swayne had,
in all probability, put in his finishing touches with such vigour, that
possibly a remembrance of them accounted for a certain absence of
solicitude on the part of his helpmeet.
"Who's this? Who's this? Who's this?" said Mr. Swayne in a rapid
whisper, perceiving his visitor, and peering out of the gloom with a
bloodshot furtive eye. "Dear, dear, dear! ... Mary ... I'm busy ... I'm
pressed for time. Take him away. Quite away; quite away."
Mr. Swayne had been a man of few and evil words when in health. His
recording angel would now need a knowledge of shorthand. This sudden
flow of language fairly staggered Colonel Tempest.
"I must have out those bonds," he went on, forgetting his visitor again
instantly. "I can't lay my hand on 'em, but I've got 'em somewhere. Top
left-hand drawer of the walnut escritoire. I know I have 'em. I'll make
him bleed. Top left-hand. No, no, no. Where was it, then? Lock's
stiff;----the lock. Break it. I say I will have 'em."
As he spoke he tore from under the pillow a little footstool, having the
remnant of a frayed dog, in blue beads, worked upon it, a conjugal
attention no doubt on the part of Mrs. Swayne, to raise the sick man's
head.
And Mr. Swayne, after endeavouring to unlock the dog's tail, smote
savagely upon it, and sank back with chattering teeth.
"That's the way he goes on," said Mrs. Swayne. "Mornin', noon, and
night. Never a bit of peace, except when he gets into his prayin' fits.
I expect he'll go off in one of them tantrums."
It did not appear unlikely that he would "go off" then and there, but
after a few moments a sort of ghastly life seemed to return. Even death
did not appear to take to him. He opened his eyes, and looked round
bewildered. Then his head fell forward.
"Now's yer time," said the woman. "Before he gets up steam for another
of them rages. Parson comes and twitters a bit when he's in this way;
and he'll pray very heavy while he recollects hisself, until he goes off
again. He'll be better now for a spell," and she left the room, and
creaked ponderously downstairs again. Colonel Tempest advanced a step
nearer the lair on which poor Swayne was taking his last rest but one,
and said faintly:
"Swayne. I say, Swayne. Rouse up."
The only things that roused up were Swayne's eyelids. These certainly
trembled a little.
In the next house the accordion was beginning a new tune, was
designating Jerusalem as its ha-appy home.
Apprehensive terror for himself as usual overcame other feelings. It
overcame in this instance the unspeakable repugnance Colonel Tempest
felt to approaching any nearer. He touched the prostrate man on the
shoulder with the slender white hand which had served him so exclusively
from boyhood upwards, which had never wavered in its fidelity to him to
do a hand's turn for others, which shrinkingly did his bidding now.
"Wake up, Swayne," repeated Colonel Tempest, actually stooping over him.
"Wake up, for----," he was going to add "heaven's sake;" but the thought
of heaven in connection with Swayne seemed inappropriate; and he
altered it to "for mercy's sake," which sounded just as well.
"Is it the parson?" asked Swayne feebly, in a more natural voice.
"No, no," said Colonel Tempest reassuringly. "It's only me, a friend.
It's Colonel Tempest."
"I wish it _was_ the parson," repeated Swayne, seeming to emerge
somewhat from his torpor. "He might have come and let off a few more
prayers for me. He says it's all right if I repent, and I suppose he
knows; but it don't seem likely. Don't seem as if God _could_ be greened
quite as easy as parson makes out. I should have liked to throw off a
few more prayers so as to be on the safe side," and he began to mutter
incoherently.
As a man lives so, it is said, he generally dies. Swayne seemed to
remain true to his own interests, only his aspect of those interests
had altered. He felt the awkwardness of going into court absolutely
unprepared. Prayer was cheap if it could do what he wanted, and he had
had professional advice as to its efficacy. A man who all his life can
grovel before his fellow-creatures, may as well do a little grovelling
before his Creator at the last, if anything is to be got by it.
It is to the credit of human nature that, as a rule, men even of the
lowest type feel the uselessness, the degradation, of trying to annul
their past on their deathbeds. But to Swayne, who had never shone as a
credit to human nature, a chance remained a chance. He was a gambler and
a swindler, a man who had risked long odds, and had been made rich and
poor by the drugging of a horse, or the forcing of a card. If, in his
strict attention to never losing a chance, he had inadvertently mislaid
his soul, he was not likely to be aware of it. But a _chance_ was a
thing he had never so far failed to take advantage of. He was taking his
last now.
Colonel Tempest looked at him in horror. The interests of the two men
clashed, and at a vital moment.
"For God's sake don't pray now, Swayne," said Colonel Tempest,
appealingly, as Swayne began to mutter something more. "I've come to set
wrong right, and that will be a great deal better than any prayers; do
you more good in the end."
Swayne did not seem to understand. He looked in a perplexed manner at
Colonel Tempest.
"I don't appear to fetch it out right," he said. "But it's in the
Prayer-book on the mantelpiece. That's what our parson reads out of. You
get it, colonel; just get it quick, and pray 'em off one after another.
It don't matter much which. They're all good."
"Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, in utter desperation, "I'll do anything;
I'll--pray as much as you like afterwards, if you will only give me up
those papers you have against me--those bets."
"What?" said Swayne, a gleam of the old professional interest flickering
into his face. "You han't got the money?"
"Yes. Here, here!" and Colonel Tempest tore the banker's note out of his
pocket-book, and held it before Swayne's eyes.
"I was to have had twenty-five per cent. commission," said Swayne,
rallying perceptibly at the thought. "Twenty-five per cent. on each. I
wouldn't let 'em go at less. Two thousand five hundred I should have
made. But"--with a sudden restless relapse--"it's no use thinking of
that now. Get down the book, colonel."
But for once Colonel Tempest was firm.
Perhaps his indignation against Swayne's egotism enabled him to be so.
He made Swayne understand that business must in this instance come
first, and prayers afterwards. It was a compact; not the first between
the two.
"The papers," he repeated over and over again, frantic at the speed with
which the last links of Swayne's memory seemed falling from him. "Where
are they? You have them with you, of course? Tell me where they are?"
and he grasped the dying man by the shoulder.
Swayne was frightened back to some semblance of effort.
"I haven't got 'em," he gasped. "The--the--the chaps engaged in the
business have 'em."
"But you know who have got them?"
"Yes, of course. It's all written down somewhere."
"Where?"
But Swayne "did not rightly know." He had the addresses in cipher
somewhere, but he could not put his hand upon them. Half wild with fear,
Colonel Tempest searched the pockets of the clothes that lay about the
room, holding up their contents for Swayne to look at. It was like some
hideous game of hide-and-seek. But the latter only shook his head.
"I have 'em somewhere," he repeated, "and there was a change not so long
ago. When was it? May. There's one of 'em written down in cipher in my
pocket-book in May, I know that."
"Here. This one?" said Colonel Tempest, holding out a greasy
pocket-book.
"That's it," said Swayne. "Some time in May."
Colonel Tempest turned to the month, and actually found a page with a
faint pencil scrawl in cipher across it.
"That's him," said Swayne. "James Larkin," and he read out a complicated
address without difficulty.
"Will that find him?" asked Colonel Tempest, his hand shaking so much
that he could hardly write down Swayne's words.
"If it's to his advantage it will."
"For certain?"
"Certain."
"And the others?"
"There's one dead," said Swayne, his voice waxing feebler and feebler as
the momentary galvanism of Colonel Tempest's terror lost its effect.
"And there's two I had back the papers from; they were sick of it, and
they said he had a charmed life. And one of 'em went to America, and
married, and set up respectable. I have his paper too. And one of 'em's
in quod, but he'll be out soon, I reckon, and he's good for another try.
He precious near brought it off last time. There's a few left that's
still biding their time! There! And now I won't hear nothin' more about
it. Get to the prayers, Colonel, and be quick. Parson might have come
again, damn him."
"Stop a minute. Can I get at the others through Larkin?"
Swayne had sunk back spent and livid. He looked at Colonel Tempest with
fixed and glassy eyes.
"Yes," he said, with the ghost of an oath; "get to the prayers."
Colonel Tempest was still trembling with the relief from that horrible
nightmare of suspense as he opened the shiny new Prayer-book which the
clergyman had left. He held the first link. He had now only to draw the
whole chain through his hand, and break it to atoms; the chain that was
dragging him down to hell. He hastily began to read.
God has heard many prayers, but, perhaps, not many like those which
ascended from that hideous tumbled death-bed, where kneeling
self-interest halted through the supplication, and prostrate
self-interest gasped out Amen.
Oh! did He who first taught us how to pray, did He, raised high upon the
cross of an apparent failure, look down the ages that were yet to come,
and see how we should abuse that gift of prayer? Was that bitter cry
which has echoed through eighteen hundred years wrung from Him even for
our sakes also as well as those who stood around Him--"Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do"?
Colonel Tempest was still on his knees when the door was softly opened,
and a young, a very young, clergyman came in and knelt down beside him,
clasping his thin hands over the collapsed felt _soufflée_ which did
duty for a hat. After stumbling to the end of the prayer he was reading,
Colonel Tempest put the book into his hand and escaped.
He stole down the stairs and past the little sitting-room unobserved. He
was out again in the open air, the live free air, which seemed freshness
itself after the atmosphere of that sick-room. He held the clue. He had
it, he held it, he was safe. God was on his side now, and was helping
him to make restitution. At one despairing moment when he had been
tearing even the linings out of the pockets of Swayne's check trousers
he had feared that Providence had deserted him. Now that he had the
pocket-book he regretted his want of faith. I do not think his mind
reverted once to Swayne, for Swayne was no longer of any interest to him
now that he was out of Swayne's power. Colonel Tempest did not exactly
forget people, but his mind was so constituted that everything with
which it came in contact was wiped out the moment it had ceased to
affect or group itself round himself. His imagination did not follow his
colleague's last faltering steps upon that steep brink where each must
one day stand. His mind turned instinctively to the most frivolous
subjects, was back in London wondering what he would have had for dinner
if he had dined with Archie as he had intended; was anxious to know how
many cigarettes of that new brand he had put into his case before he
left London that morning. Colonel Tempest stopped, and got out his
cigarette-case and counted them.
Those who had known Colonel Tempest best, those few who had
misunderstood and loved him, had often pondered with grave anxiety, or
with the wistful perplexity of wounded affection, as to what it was in
him that being so impressionable was yet incapable of any real
impression. His wife may or may not have mastered that expensive secret.
At any rate, she had had opportunities of studying it. When first, a few
weeks after her marriage, she had fallen ill, she, poor fool, had
suffered agonies from the fear that because he hardly came into her
sick-room after the first day, he had ceased to care for her. But when
after a few days more she was feeling better and was pretty and
interesting again in a pink wrapper on the sofa, she had found that he
was as devoted to her as ever, and had confided her foolish dread to him
with happy tears. Possibly she discovered at last that the secret lay
not so much in the selfishness and self-indulgence of a character
moth-eaten by idleness, as in the instant and invariable recoil of the
mind from any subject that threatened to prove disagreeable, the
determination to avoid everything irksome, wearisome, or reproachful.
For a moment, while it was quite new, a sentiment might be indulged in.
But as soon as a certain novelty and pleasure in emotion ceased the
feeling itself was shirked, at whatever expense to others. Those who
shirk are ill to live with, and lay up for themselves an increasing
loneliness as life goes on.
Colonel Tempest found it unpleasant to think about Swayne, so he thought
of something else. He could always do that unless he himself was
concerned. Then, indeed, as we have seen, it was a different thing. He
was annoyed when, after slowly picking his way back to the station, he
found the last passenger train had just gone; that even if he drove
fifteen miles in to Worcester he should be too late to catch the last
express to London; in fact, that there was nothing for it but a bed at
the station inn. He found, however, that by making a very early start
from Bilgewater the following morning he could reach London by noon, and
so resigned himself to his lot with composure. He had hardly expected he
should be able to go and return in one day.
It was indeed early when he walked across to the station next morning,
so early that there was a suspicion of freshness in the air, of colour
in the eastern sky.
On a heap of slag a motionless figure was sitting, black against the sky
line, looking towards the east. It was the curate, who when he perceived
Colonel Tempest, came crunching and flapping in his long coat tails down
to the road below, raised his hat from a meagre clerical brow, and held
out his hand. His face was thin and poor, suggestive of a starved mind
and cold mutton and Pearson on the Creed, but the smile redeemed it.
"It is all over," he said; "half an hour ago. Quite quietly at the
last. I stayed with him through the night. I never left him. We prayed
together without ceasing."
Colonel Tempest did not know what to say.
"It was too late to go to bed," continued the young man impulsively, his
face working. "So I came here. I often come and sit on that ash heap to
see the sun rise. I'm so glad just to have seen you again. I longed to
thank you for those prayers by poor Mr. Crosbie's bed. You know the
Scripture: 'Where two or three are gathered together.' I felt it was so
true. I have lost heart so of late. No one seems to care or think about
these things down here. But your coming and praying like that has been
such a help, such a reproach to me for my want of faith when I think
that the seed falls on the rock. I shall take courage again now. Ah! You
are going by this train? Good-bye, God bless you! Thank you again."