I rushed out without a hat, without a coat. I flew along the street,
calling out for a cab like a madman.... At last I got one. I told the
driver to drive like the furies to the address I gave him in Kensington.
In the cab I stamped my feet and rocked the dress in my arms as though
it were a fevered child. I don’t know how we got there. It seemed an
eternity. I flung into the house, calling out, ‘Lucy! Lucy!’ I found
her in the drawing-room. She was dressed in a flaming orange and silver
dress, with a sparkling tiara in her hair. She was looking in a mirror
and putting finishing touches to her hair. She cried out when she saw
me: ‘Hullo! I thought Aunt Sophie had forgotten me. I’ve hired a frock
from Roco’s.’ ‘Child,’ I said, ‘your Aunt Sophie has been working out her
life’s blood for you. Here is the frock.’ She grabbed it and examined it.
‘Frock!’ she said. ‘It looks more like a nightdress. I don’t want the
beastly old thing’; and she threw it across the room. I believe at that
moment I could have struck the child. I was blind with fury. Fortunately,
I remembered in time that she was my old friend Terry O’Bane’s daughter.
I picked up the frock. ‘Ungrateful child!’ I exclaimed. ‘You don’t know
what you’re doing. You’re murdering an ideal. You’re killing your aunt.’
She tossed her insolent head and actually pressed the bell for the butler
to see me out. Just like a grown-up person. Dazed and baffled, I clutched
the little white frock and staggered out into the street. The night was
dark, and the snow was still falling. Christmas bells were beginning to
peal.... I plunged on and on, my heart beating against my ribs. People
stared at me, but I was too distressed to care. How could I go back to
Sophie with the insulting message? Suddenly, at the corner of Hyde Park,
a most appalling realization flashed through my mind. _I had made no
note of the address of the lodgings where Sophie and I were staying!..._
God in heaven! What was I to do? The only man who could help me, my old
friend, Joe Gadgers, had gone to Hastings. What could I do? Could I go
to the police and say, ‘Will you help me to find the address of some
lodgings where an actress is staying? I think it’s somewhere round
about Clapham. I don’t know the name of the landlady, or the name of the
street, or the number?’ They would have thought I was mad. Perhaps I was
mad. Should I go back to Lucy? The child wouldn’t know.... And all this
time Sophie was dying. Ah! merciful God! perhaps she would die. If she
died before I found her, she would die in the happy belief that the frock
had been worn. Her last hours would be blessed with dreams, visions of
purity and joy ... whilst I ... I should have no place in them, perhaps
... but I, too, after all, I’d suffered for her sake. Who knows?... Who
know...?”
His voice broke off in a low sob. I leant forward watching his face,
racked with anguish. The room was extraordinarily still.... I dared not
look at Alice, but I was conscious of the pearly sheen of her frock under
the lamp. Away in the distance one could hear the rumble of the traffic
on the High-road. The remorseless tick of the clock was the only sound in
the room. Once I thought it ticked louder, and then I realized that it
was some one tapping gently at the door. The door opened a little way,
and against the dim light in the passage appeared the gaunt face of the
old serving-woman, phantom-like, unreal....
“Excuse me, sir.” She peered into the room. The old actor gazed at her
with unseeing eyes. He stood with one hand on the back of the chair, and
across the other arm lay the white frock; a dignified and pathetic figure.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, sir.”
“Yes, Mrs. Windsor?”
“My little niece ’as just called. I can’t find it anywhere—that little
frock I made for ’er last week. I put it in the chest. I thought perhaps
you might ’ave.... Oh! there it is, sir. Do you mind—? Thank you very
much, sir. I’m sorry to have disturbed the company.”
In the sanctuary of our bedroom that night, my wife said:
“Did you really believe that that writing on the photograph was by Henry
Irving?”
“My dear,” I answered, “when their careers are finished, the painter,
the author, the architect or the sculptor may point to this or that,
and say, ‘Lo! this is my handiwork.’ But to the actor nothing remains
but—memories. Their permanence lies in the memories of those who loved
them. Are we to begrudge them all the riches of imagination? After all,
what is the line of demarcation between what we call reality and what we
call imagination? Is not the imagery invoked by Shelley when he sings of
dubious myths as real a fact as the steel rivets in the Forth Bridge?
What is reality? Indeed, what is life?”
“I don’t know what life is,” answered my wife, switching off the light.
“But I know what you are. You’re a dear old—perfect old—BOOB!”
“Alice, what do you mean?” I said.
She laughed softly.
“Women are ‘equipped,’ you know,” she replied enigmatically, and insisted
on going to sleep.
A GOOD ACTION
A GOOD ACTION
It is undoubtedly true that the majority of us perform the majority of
our actions through what are commonly known as mixed motives.
It would certainly have been quite impossible for Mr. Edwin Pothecary to
analyze the concrete impulse which eventually prompted him to perform
his good action. It may have been a natural revolt from the somewhat
petty and cramped punctilio of his daily life; his drab home life, the
bickering, wearing, grasping routine of the existence of fish-and-chips
dispenser. A man who earns his livelihood by buying fish and potatoes
in the cheapest market, and selling them in the Waterloo Road cannot
afford to indulge his altruistic fancies to any lavish extent. It is
true that the business of Mr. Edwin Pothecary was a tolerably successful
one—he employed three assistants and a boy named Scales who was not so
much an assistant as an encumbrance and wholesale plate-smasher. Mr.
Pothecary engaged him because he thought his name seemed appropriate to
the fish-trade. In a weak moment he pandered to this sentimental whim,
another ingredient in the strange composition which influences us to do
this, that, and the other. But it was not by pandering to whims of this
nature that Mr. Pothecary had built up this progressive and odoriferous
business with its gay shop front of blue and brown tiles. It was merely
a minor lapse. In the fish-and-chip trade one has to be keen, pushful,
self-reliant, ambidexterous, a student of human nature, forbearing,
far-seeing, imaginative, courageous, something of a controversialist with
a streak of fatalism as pronounced as that of a high-priest in a Brahmin
temple. It is better, moreover, to have an imperfect nasal organism, and
to be religious.
Edwin had all these qualities. Every day he went from Quince Villa at
Buffington to London—forty minutes in the train—and back at night. On
Sunday he took the wife and three children to the Methodist Chapel at the
corner of the street to both morning and evening services. But even this
religious observance does not give us a complete solution for the sudden
prompting of an idea to do a good action. Edwin had attended chapel for
fifty-two years and such an impulse had never occurred to him before. He
may possibly have been influenced by some remark of the preacher, or was
it that twinge of gout which set him thinking of the unwritten future?
Had it anything to do with the Boy-Scout movement? Some one at some time
had told him of an underlying idea—that every day in one’s life one
should do one pure, good and unselfish action.
Perhaps after all it was all due to the gayety of a spring morning.
Certain it is that as he swung out of the garden gate on that morning in
April something stirred in him. His round puffy face blinked heavenwards.
Almond blossoms fluttered in the breeze above the hedgerows. Larks
were singing.... Suddenly his eye alighted upon the roof of the Peels’
hen-house opposite and Mr. Edwin Pothecary scowled. Lord! How he hated
those people! The Peels were Pothecary’s _bêtes-noires_. Snobs! Pirates!
Rotters!
The Peels’ villa was at least three times as big as the Pothecarys’. It
was, in fact, not a villa at all. It was a “Court”—whatever that was. It
was quite detached, with about fourteen rooms in all, a coach-house, a
large garden, and two black sheds containing forty-five fowls, leading an
intensive existence. The Pothecarys had five fowls which sometimes did
and sometimes didn’t supply them with two or three eggs a day, but it was
known that the Peels sent at least two hundred and fifty eggs to market
every week, besides supplying their own table. Mr. Peel was a successful
dealer in quills and bristles. His wife was the daughter of a post office
official and they had three stuck up daughters who would have no truck
at all with the Pothecarys. You may appreciate then the twinge of venom
which marked the face of Edwin as he passed through his front gate and
observed the distant roof of the Peels’ fowl-house. And still the almond
blossoms nodded at him above the hedge. The larks sang.... After all,
was it fair to hate any one because they were better off than oneself?
Strange how these moods obsess one. The soft air caressed Edwin’s cheek.
Little flecks of cloud scudded gayly into the suburban panorama. Small
green shoots were appearing everywhere. One ought not to hate any one
at all—of course. It is absurd. So bad for oneself, apart from the
others. One ought rather to be kind, forgiving, loving all mankind. Was
that a lark or a thrush? He knew little about birds. Fish now!... A not
entirely unsatisfactory business really the fried fish trade—when things
went well. When customers were numerous and not too cantankerous. Quite
easy to run, profitable. A boy came singing down the road. The villas
clustered together more socially. There was a movement of spring life....
As Edwin turned the corner of the Station Road, the impulse crystallized.
One good action. To-day he would perform one good, kind, unselfish,
unadvertised action. No one should ever know of it. Just one to-day.
Then perhaps one to-morrow. And so on; in time it might become a habit.
That is how one progressed. He took his seat in the crowded third-class
smoker and pretended to read his newspaper, but his mind was too actively
engaged with the problems of his new resolution. How? When? Where? How
does one do a definitely good action? What is the best way to go to work?
One could, of course, just quietly slip some money into a poor-box if one
could be found. But would this be very good and self-sacrificing? Who
gets money put in a poor-box? Surely his own family were poor enough,
as far as that went. But he couldn’t go back home and give his wife a
sovereign. It would be advertising his charity, and he would look silly
doing it. His business? He might turn up and say to his assistants:
“Boys, you shall all have a day’s holiday. We’ll shut up, and here’s
your pay for the day.” Advertising again; besides, what about the
hundreds of poor workers in the neighborhood who relied for their mid-day
sustenance on “Pothecary’s Pride-of-the-Ocean Popular Plaice to Eat?”
It would be cruel, cruel and—bad for business in the future. The public
would lose confidence in that splendid gold-lettered tablet in the window
which said “Cod, brill, halibut, plaice, pilchards always on hand. Eat
them or take them away.”
The latter sentence did not imply that if you took them away you did
_not_ eat them; it simply meant that you could either stand at the
counter and eat them from a plate with the aid of a fork and your
fingers (or at one of the wooden benches if you could find room—an
unlikely contingency), alternatively you could wrap them up in a piece of
newspaper and devour them without a fork at the corner of the street.
No, it would not be a good action in any way to close the Popular
Plaice to eat. Edwin came to the conclusion that to perform this act
satisfactorily it were better to divorce the proceeding entirely from any
connection with home or business. The two things didn’t harmonize. A good
action must be a special and separate effort in an entirely different
setting. He would take the day off himself and do it thoroughly.
Mr. Pothecary was known in the neighborhood of the Waterloo Road as “The
Stinker,” a title easily earned by the peculiar qualities of his business
and the obvious additional fact that a Pothecary was a chemist. He was
a very small man, bald-headed with yellowy-white side whiskers, a blue
chin, a perambulating nostril with a large wart on the port side. He
wore a square bowler hat which seemed to thrust out the protruding flaps
of his large ears. His greeny-black clothes were always too large for
him and ended in a kind of thick spiral above his square-toed boots. He
always wore a flat white collar—more or less clean—and no tie. This minor
defect was easily atoned for by a heavy silver chain on his waistcoat
from which hung gold seals and ribbons connecting with watches, knives,
and all kinds of ingenious appliances in his waistcoat pockets.
The noble intention of his day was a little chilled on his arrival at
the shop. In the first place, although customers were then arriving for
breakfast, the boy Scales was slopping water over the front step. Having
severely castigated the miscreant youth and prophesied that his chances
of happiness in the life to come were about as remote as those of a dead
dog-fish in the upper reaches of the Thames, he made his way through the
customers to the room at the back, and there he met Dolling.
Dolling was Edwin’s manager, and he cannot be overlooked. In the first
place, he was remarkably like a fish himself. He had the same dull
expressionless eyes and the drooping mouth and drooping mustache.
Everything about him drooped and dripped. He was always wet. He wore a
gray flannel shirt and no collar or tie. His braces, trousers, and hair
all seemed the same color. He hovered in the background with a knife, and
did the cutting up and dressing. He had, moreover, all the taciturnity
of a fish, and its peculiar ability for getting out of a difficulty. He
never spoke. He simply looked lugubrious, and pointed at things with
his knife. And yet Edwin knew that he was an excellent manager. For it
must be observed that in spite of the gold-lettered board outside with
its fanfare of cod, brill, halibut, plaice and pilchards, whatever the
customer asked for, by the time it had passed through Dolling’s hand it
was just _fish_. No nonsense about it at all. Just plain fish leveled
with a uniform brown crust. If you asked for cod you got _fish_. If you
asked for halibut you also got _fish_. Dolling was something of an artist.
On this particular morning, as Edward entered the back room, Dolling
was scratching the side of his head with the knife he used to cut up
the fish; a sure sign that he was perplexed about something. It was not
customary to exchange greetings in this business, and when he observed
“the guv’nor” enter he just withdrew the knife from his hair and pointed
it at a packing case on the side table. Edwin knew what this meant. He
went up and pressed his flat nose against the chest of what looked like
an over-worked amphibian that had been turned down by its own Trades
Union. Edwin sneezed before he had had time to withdraw his nose.
“Yes, that’s a dud lot,” he said. And then suddenly an inspirational
moment nearly overwhelmed him. Here was a chance. He would turn to
Dolling and say:
“Dolling, this fish is slightly tainted. We must throw it away. We
bought it at our risk. Yesterday morning when it arrived it was just all
right, but keeping it in that hot room downstairs where you and your wife
sleep has probably finished it. We mustn’t give it to our customers. It
might poison them—ptomaine poison, you know ... eh, Dolling?” It would
be a good action, a self-sacrificing action, eh? But when he glanced at
the face of Dolling he knew that such an explosion would be unthinkable.
It would be like telling a duck it mustn’t swim, or an artist that he
mustn’t paint, or a boy on a beach that he mustn’t throw stones in the
sea. It was the kind of job that Dolling enjoyed. In the course of a
few hours he knew quite well that whatever he said, the mysterious and
evil-smelling monster would be served out in dainty parcels of halibut,
cod, brill, plaice, etc.
Business was no place for a good action. Too many others depended on it,
were involved in it. Edwin went up to Dolling and shouted in his ear—he
was rather deaf:
“I’m going out. I may not be back to-day.”
Dolling stared at the wall. He appeared about as interested in the
statement as a cod might be that had just been informed that a Chinese
coolie had won the Calcutta sweep-stake. Edwin crept out of the shop
abashed. He felt horribly uncomfortable. He heard some one mutter:
“Where’s The Stinker off to?” and he realized how impossible it would be
to explain to any one there present that he was off to do a good action.
“I will go to some outlying suburb,” he thought.
Once outside in the sunshine he tried to get back into the benign mood.
He traveled right across London and made for Golders Green and Hendon, a
part of the world foreign to him. By the time he had boarded the Golders
Green ’bus he had quite recovered himself. It was still a brilliant day.
“The better the day the better the deed,” he thought aptly. He hummed
inaudibly; that is to say, he made curious crooning noises somewhere
behind his silver chain and signets; the sound was happily suppressed by
the noise of the ’bus.
It seemed a very long journey. It was just as they were going through a
rather squalid district near Cricklewood that the golden chance occurred
to him. The fares had somewhat thinned. There were scarcely a dozen
people in the ’bus. Next to him barely a yard away he observed a poor
woman with a baby in her arms. She had a thin, angular, wasted face,
and her clothes were threadbare but neat. A poor, thoroughly honest and
deserving creature, making a bitter fight of it against the buffets of a
cruel world. Edwin’s heart was touched. Here was his chance. He noticed
that from her wrist was suspended a shabby black bag, and the bag was
open. He would slip up near her and drop in a half-crown. What joy and
rapture when she arrived home and found the unexpected treasure! An
unknown benefactor! Edwin chuckled and wormed his way surreptitiously
along the seat. Stealthily he fingered his half-crown and hugged it in
the palm of his left hand. His heart beat with the excitement of his
exploit. He looked out of the window opposite and fumbled his hand
towards the opening in the bag. He touched it. Suddenly a sharp voice
rang out:
“That man’s picking your pocket!”
An excited individual opposite was pointing at him. The woman uttered
an exclamation and snatched at her bag. The baby cried. The conductor
rang the bell. Every one seemed to be closing in on Edwin. Instinctively
he snatched his hand away and thrust it in his pocket (the most foolish
thing he could have done). Every one was talking. A calm muscular-looking
gentleman who had not spoken seized Edwin by the wrist and said calmly:
“Look in your bag, Madam, and see whether he has taken anything.”
The ’bus came to a halt. Edwin muttered:
“I assure you—nothing of the sort—”
How could he possibly explain that he was doing just the opposite? Would
a single person believe a word of his yarn about the half-crown? The
woman whimpered:
“No,’e ain’t taken nothin’, bad luck to ’im. There was only four pennies
and a ’alfpenny anyway. Dirty thief!”
“Are you goin’ to give ’im in charge?” asked the conductor.
“Yer can’t if ’e ain’t actually taken nothin’, can yer? The dirty
thievin’ swine tryin’ to rob a ’ard workin’ ’onest woman!”
“I wasn’t! I wasn’t!” feebly spluttered Edwin, blushing a ripe beetroot
color.
“Shame! Shame! Chuck ’im off the ’bus! Dirty sneak! Call a copper!” were
some of the remarks being hurled about.
The conductor was losing time and patience. He beckoned vigorously to
Edwin and said:
“Come on, off you go!”
There was no appeal. He got up and slunk out. Popular opinion was too
strong against him. As he stepped off the back board, the conductor gave
him a parting kick which sent him flying on to the pavement. It was an
operation received with shrieks of laughter and a round of applause from
the occupants of the vehicle, taken up by a small band of other people
who had been attracted by the disturbance. He darted down a back street
to the accompaniment of boos and jeers.
It says something for Edwin Pothecary that this unfortunate rebuff to
his first attempt to do a good action did not send him helter-skelter
back to the fried fish shop in the Waterloo Road. He felt crumpled,
bruised, mortified, disappointed, discouraged; but is not the path of
all martyrs and reformers strewn with similar débris? Are not all really
disinterested actions liable to misconstruction? He went into a dairy and
partook of a glass of milk and a bun. Then he started out again. He would
see more rural, less sophisticated people. In the country there must be
simple, kindly people, needing his help. He walked for several hours
with but a vague sense of direction. At last he came to a public park. A
group of dirty boys were seated on the grass. They were apparently having
a banquet. They did not seem to require him. He passed on, and came to
an enclosure. Suddenly between some rhododendron bushes he looked into a
small dell. On a seat by himself was an elderly man in a shabby suit. He
looked the picture of misery and distress. His hands were resting on his
knees, and his eyes were fixed in a melancholy scrutiny on the ground.
It was obvious that some great trouble obsessed him. He was as still as
a shadow. It was the figure of a man lost in the past or—contemplating
suicide? Edwin’s breath came quickly. He made his way to him. In order to
do this it was necessary to climb a railing. There was probably another
way round, but was there time? At any minute there might be a sudden
movement, the crack of a revolver. Edwin tore his trousers and scratched
his forearm, but he managed to enter the dell unobserved. He approached
the seat. The man never looked up. Then Edwin said with sympathetic tears
in his voice:
“My poor fellow, may I be of any assistance—?”
There was a disconcerting jar. The melancholy individual started and
turned on him angrily:
“Blast you! I’d nearly got it! What the devil are you doing here?”
And without waiting for an answer he darted away among the trees. At the
same time a voice called over the park railings:
“Ho! you, there, what are you doing over there? You come back the way you
came. I saw yer.”
The burly figure of a park-keeper with gaiters and stout stick beckoned
him. Edwin got up and clambered back again, scratching his arm.
“Now then,” said the keeper. “Name, address, age, and occupation, if
_you_ please.”
“I was only—” began Edwin. But what _was_ he only doing? Could he explain
to a park-keeper that he was only about to do a kind action to a poor
man? He spluttered and gave his name, address, age, and occupation.
“Oh,” exclaimed the keeper. “Fried fish, eh? And what were you trying to
do? Get orders? Or were you begging from his lordship?”
“His lordship?”
“That man you was speaking to was Lord Budleigh-Salterton, the great
scientist. He’s thinkin’ out ’is great invention, otherwise I’d go and
ask ’im if ’e wanted to prosecute yer for being in ’is park on felonious
intent or what.”
“I assure you—” stammered Mr. Pothecary.
The park-keeper saw him well off the premises, and gave him much
gratuitous advice about his future behavior, darkened with melancholy
prophecies regarding the would-be felon’s strength of character to live
up to it.
Leaving the park he struck out towards the more rural neighborhood. He
calculated that he must be somewhere in the neighborhood of Hendon. At
the end of a lane he met a sallow-faced young man walking rapidly. His
eyes were bloodshot and restless. He glanced at Edwin and stopped.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said.
Edwin drew himself to attention. The young man looked up and down
nervously. He was obviously in a great state of distress.
“What can I do for you?”
“I—I—h-hardly like to ask you, sir, I—”
He stammered shockingly. Edwin turned on his most sympathetic manner.
“You are suffering. What is it?”
“Sh-Sh-Shell-shock, shir.”
“Ah!”
At last! Some heroic reflex of the war darted through Edwin’s mind. Here
was his real chance at last. A poor fellow broken by the war and in need,
neglected by an ungrateful country. Almost hidden by his outer coat he
observed one of those little strips of colored ribbon, which implied more
than one campaign.
“Where did you meet your trouble?” he asked.
“P—P—P-Palestine, sir, capturing a T-T-Turkish redoubt. I was
through Gallipoli, too, sir, but I won’t d-d-distress you. I am in
a—in a—hospital at St. Albans, came to see my g-g-g-girl, but she’s
g-g-g-gone—v-v-vanished....”
“You don’t say so!”
“T-t-trouble is I l-l-l-lost my p-pass back. N-not quite enough m-mon—”
“Dear me! How much short are you?”
“S-S-S-Six shill—S-S-S-Six—”
“Six shillings? Well, I’m very sorry. Look here, my good fellow, here’s
seven-and-sixpence and God bless you!”
“T-T-thank you very much, sir. W-will you give me your n-name and—”
“No, no, no, that’s quite all right. I’m very pleased to be of
assistance. Please forget all about it.”
He pressed the soldier’s hand and hurried on. It was done. He had
performed a kind, unselfish action and no one should ever hear of it.
Mr. Pothecary’s eyes glowed with satisfaction. Poor fellow! even if the
story were slightly exaggerated, what did it matter? He was obviously
a discharged soldier, ill, and in need. The seven-and-sixpence would
make an enormous difference. He would always cherish the memory of
his kind, unknown benefactor. It was a glorious sensation! Why had he
never thought of doing a kindly act? It was inspiring, illuminating,
almost intoxicating! He recalled with zest the delirious feeling which
ran through him when he said, “No, no, no!” He would _not_ give his
name. He was the good Samaritan, a ship passing in the night. And now
he would be able to go home, or go back to his business. He swung down
the lane, singing to himself. As he turned the corner he came to a low
bungalow-building. It was in a rather deserted spot. It had a board
outside which announced “Tea, cocoa, light refreshments. Cyclists catered
for.”
It was past mid-day, and although tea and cocoa had never made any great
appeal to the gastronomic fancies of Edwin Pothecary, he felt in his
present spiritually elevated mood that here was a suitable spot for a
well-merited rest and lunch.