I
Do you know that fiction, without side-tracking interest, can often
teach a man what he will never learn in a class-room or from a
text-book? It can, and the lesson sticks, because the human mind is so
constituted that it will retain and assimilate a moral wrapped up in a
story, whereas the moral naked and unadorned would be forgotten in
fifteen minutes or rejected at once.
I wonder how many men have been saved from selling old lamps for new
by the story of Aladdin!
I, like hosts of other men, am a nervy and imaginative individual, and
the devil of the thing is that with us our imagination is our worst
enemy, keeps us awake at night counting up our losses instead of our
profits, fills us with fantastic fears of the future, and, should any
of us ever find ourselves in an incriminating position—which God
forbid—would, were we innocent, ten to one make us look or act like
criminals.
Here is the story of a man who acted like an ass, a highly moral
married man whose imagination betrayed him, the story of Billy Broke
of Los Angeles, told me by Brent.
Brent had a little fishing boat he kept at a slip near Circular Wharf
and he and I used often to go out fishing in Sydney Harbour. One day
we were out late, fishing off Farm Cove, so late that on our return a
huge moon was rising, flooding the harbour and city with its light. We
left the boat tied up in charge of the wharf keeper and tramped off
with our fish. Coming up along Halkin Street we saw something like a
bundle of old clothes lying in the moonlight right before us, and when
we got to it we found it was a dead Chink.
It was a narrow street of tenement houses and not a soul to be seen.
There was a big Labour demonstration on that night, so I suppose the
inhabitants were all off demonstrating and that accounted for the
desolation of the place.
Brent knelt down to inspect. Then he rose up:
“Stabbed,” said he, “and as dead as mutton.”
“What are we to do?” I asked.
“Well,” said Brent, “we can’t be of any use to him, and we don’t want
to be mixed up in the business—come along.”
He took me by the arm and led me off. He was a practical man and right
enough, I suppose, we could give no clue, the murderer, whoever he
might be, was well away, a thousand to one he was a brother Chink and
we knew all the bother there would be over the inquest,—still I felt
a qualm, but it was so slight I easily drowned it in a whisky and soda
at a bar we stopped at. Then I went home and went to bed and put out
the light, and with the darkness the moonlit street showed up before
my mind’s eye—and the Chink.
“Suppose,” I thought, “suppose someone saw us leaving that street,
suppose by any chance we got connected with the business—what would
people say? Might they say we had committed the murder?” Absolute
nonsense, but there you are, my imagination had got away with me. I
couldn’t sleep, and next morning when I met Brent he asked me what was
wrong with me and I told him. He took me out for a sail in the harbour
where we spent the day cruising about, and after luncheon Brent
tackled me over the stupidity of “fancying things.”
“What’s the use of fancying things?” said Brent, “ain’t there enough
troubles in the world without breeding them. Suppose you _were_ had
over that Chink, where’s the damage, you didn’t kill him—and you
ain’t going to be. Forget it. Lord o’ mercy, I’ve seen more guys
fooled by their fancies than I can remember the names of. Did I ever
tell you of Billy Broke? Brooke was the real name, only some fool of
an English ancestor or another left out one of the o’s, so the poor
chap was saddled with a nameplate only fit for a hoodoo. Nature not to
be behind in the business, fitted him with a set of nerves and an
imagination worse than yours and then turned him out into the cold
world to make his living. On top of everything he was pious beyond the
ordinary, bashful beyond believing and trusting in every man, which
isn’t a quality which makes for success in American business circles.
“He’d gone bankrupt four or five times when the Almighty, thinking
maybe it was a shame that one of his creatures should be used like
that, married him to a common-sense woman with a bit of money and they
started a dry goods store in Los Angeles and would have done well
enough only for Billy’s nerves and imagination.
“He wouldn’t speculate a bit in his business for fear of ruining
himself, an’ his fear of what was going to happen in the future took
all the pep and energy out of him. Worst of it was he would be boss of
the show and not leave things to his wife. I’m not meaning anything
personal, but chaps with high-geared nerves and X-ray imaginations
generally have a pretty good opinion of themselves in private. Billy
had, and the result was that he’d near brought the dry goods store to
bankruptcy when one day a wholesale firm in ’Frisco began to give
trouble over a bill that was owing and Billy determined to go and
interview them.
“Mrs. B. wanted to go, but he wouldn’t let her, and the unfortunate
woman, knowing the fool he was, got in such a temper, she wouldn’t
even pack his grip. The hired girl did the packing. She was Irish and
given to mistakes, one of them dreamy, acushla sort of red-headed
Irishwomen with her heart on her sleeve and her head in the clouds,
regular at attending mass and smashing china and dependable to shove
anything that came handy into the pie she was making or the bag she
was packing.
“The Irish girl did the packing and Billy with the grip in his hand
kissed the back of his wife’s neck, for she wouldn’t give him her
lips, and started off for the station. He got to ’Frisco without
losing himself and put up at the ‘Paris.’
“Now that day me and Slane were at Long Wharf, ’Frisco, on board the
_Greyhound_ ready to put out. We’d got five thousand dollars’ worth of
trade under the hatch, and we were bound for Nanuti in the Gilberts,
that’s to say right under the Line.
“We were due out next morning at sun up, and that night, under a
blazing big moon we were sitting on deck having a smoke and talking
things over. Long Wharf was pretty quiet and you couldn’t more’n hear
the drunks and such yelling in Third and Fourth Streets. There was a
timber schooner outside of us and we could hear a fellow snoring in
her cabin and a big clock somewhere striking eleven. The strokes were
all equally loud, which showed there was no wind to speak of, and Buck
was wondering if we’d get enough in the morning to take us out when
along the wharfside comes running a chap, and, seeing us there on deck
in the moonlight and the sparks of our cigars, he comes bounding down
the gang plank and lands on the deck on his hands and knees without
losing grip of a parcel he was carrying.
“‘Save me,’ cries the chap. ‘Get me out of ’Frisco, the police are
after me.’ Then he goes limp and Buck bends down and stirs him up.
“‘Drunk,’ says Buck.
“He was, and battered at that. His coat was torn up the back, he was
mud all over and his hat was gone, and yet, for all that, he looked to
have been respectable. You can’t batter the respectability out of a
man in five minutes, not even if you roll him in the gutter and fill
him with drink, this chap’s hands were clean where they weren’t dirty,
and I could see his nails had been attended to, his pants were muddy
and had a tear in them, but they weren’t frayed at the heels and the
cloth was good.
“‘What are we going to do with him?’ I asks.
“Buck scratches his head for a minute, then he says:
“‘Get him below.’
“I was none too anxious for extra cargo of that sort, but I knew by
Buck’s voice he wasn’t in the humour for arguing, and, fearing that
maybe the police might come along and find the chap and hold us up
maybe next morning as witnesses of Lord knows what, I grabbed the guy
by the heels whilst Buck took the head and between us we slithered him
down below and shoved him in a spare bunk, putting his parcel beside
him.
“We reckoned that maybe he’d have slept his liquor off before morning,
and we could give him a wash up and shove him ashore.