THE INVENTORY
All this had happened more than a year ago, and the sense of shame,
accompanying that first confession, had been worn to the dull surface,
incapable of reflecting the finer feelings of the mind. Under the very
nose of that editor who was considering his last short story, John would
have stepped boldly into the suspicious-looking little passage;
returning the smile of the girl who sold him stamps in the post-office,
he would have entered shamelessly the chapel of unredemption. Such is
the reward of the perpetual sin of poverty. It brings with it the
soothing narcotic of callousness, of indifference--and that perhaps is
the saddest sin of all.
The watch-chain went that morning with the ease of a transaction
constantly performed. There was no need to haggle over the price this
time. The same price had been paid many times before. It came last but
one on the list of things to be pawned. Last of all was the little brass
man--the last to be pledged, the first to be redeemed. There is always
an order in these things and it never varies. When pledging, you go
from top to bottom of the list; when redeeming, it is just the reverse.
And the order itself depends entirely upon that degree of sentiment with
which each object is regarded.
The following was the list, in its correct order, of those things which
from time to time left the world of John's possession, and were hidden
in the seclusion of pledged retreat:--
FUR COAT.
CUFF LINKS.
CIGARETTE CASE.
TIE PIN.
MATCH BOX.
WATCH.
CHAIN.
LITTLE BRASS MAN.
Reverse the order of this and you arrive at the sequence in which they
returned. And here follows a detailed account of the history of each
object--detailed, where details are possible and of interest.
_Fur Coat_. This pretentious-looking article was bought by John as a
bargain. One day, when paying his rent to the landlord--a man who
smelted and refined the gold that has an acquaintance with false
teeth--he was asked if he would like to buy something very cheap.
Well--you know what a temptation that is. So great a temptation is it,
that you ask first "How much?" and only when you have heard the price,
do you inquire the nature of the article. Four pounds ten, he was told.
Then what was it? A fur-lined overcoat with astrachan collar and cuffs!
There must be a presumption on the part of the seller that you know
nothing of fur coats, or he will not talk to you like this. Certainly it
was cheap, but even then, it would not have been bought had John not
overheard the former possessor offering to buy it back at four pounds
five. Such a circumstance as this doubles the temptation. So seldom is
it that one comes across a bargain when one has any money in one's
pocket, that it is impossible, when one does, to let it go to another
man. John bought it. It would be a useful thing to visit editors in
when he had no money.
But you would scarcely credit the treachery of a fur-lined coat with
astrachan collar and cuffs. John had no idea of it. It played fiendish
tricks upon him. Just as he determined to mount upon a 'bus, it
whispered in his ear--"You can't do this--you really can't. If you want
to drive, you'd better get a hansom. If not, then you'd better walk."
It was of no avail that he complained of not being able to afford a
hansom and of being in too great a hurry to walk. That heavy astrachan
collar whispered again:
"You can't ride on a 'bus anyway--look at that man laughing at you
already----"
And with a fiendish joy, it gave him sudden and magical insight into the
jeering minds of all those people in the 'bus. He relinquished the 'bus
then. He called a hansom; he was in a hurry and he drove away, while the
astrachan collar preens itself with pride and delight as it looks in the
little oblong mirror.
And this is not the only treachery which the fur coat played upon him.
As he descended from the cab, a man rushed out of nowhere to protect
that coat from the wheels, and overcome with pleasure, the fur coat
whispered in his ear once more--"Give him twopence--you can't ignore
him."
"I could have kept my coat off the wheel quite easily myself," John
replied--"He was really only in the way."
"Never mind," exclaimed the astrachan collar--"If you're going to be
seen about with me, you'll have to give him twopence."
Reluctantly John took the twopence out.
And then, all the while that he was fumbling in his pocket for the
shilling which should have been more than his legal fare, seeing the
distance he had come, only that it cannot be less, the astrachan collar
was still at him.
"Can't you hear," it says suggestively--"can't you hear what the cabman
is going to say when you only give him a shilling!"
Then it imitated his voice, just in the very way John knew he would say
it, and he felt the blood tingling to the roots of his hair. Of course,
he gave him one and six, for by this time he was the slave of that
fur-lined coat. It dominated his life. It ran up bills in his name and
he had to pay them. For myself, I would sooner live with an extravagant
wife than with a fur-lined coat.
And so was it with John. That bargain he had purchased with the
astrachan collar and cuffs treated him shamefully. It was insatiable in
its demands, and all under false pretences; for there came one terrible
day when John, who knew nothing about these things, learnt that it was
only imitation astrachan. Then he asserted himself. He refused to take
it out, and one freezing day in the month of February pawned it for two
pounds five. Some three months later, on a blazing day in May, he
received a notice from the pawnbroker, who said that he must redeem it
immediately, for he could not hold himself responsible for the fur.
Now, even an extravagant wife would have more consideration for you,
more idea of the true fitness of things than that. Eventually that fur
coat was pawned in order to save a lady from the last, the most extreme
sentence that the law can pass upon the sin of poverty. There comes a
time when the sin of poverty can be dealt no longer with by the high
priest in the chapel of unredemption. Then it comes into the hands of
the law. To save her from this, was a debt of honour and perhaps the
most generous action that that fur coat ever did in its life, was to pay
that debt: for the three months went by, and on one of the coldest days
in winter, it passed silently and unwept into the possession of the high
priest.
_Cuff Links_. No history is attached to these. They realised ten
shillings many times, till the ticket was lost, and then, since, under
these circumstances, an affidavit must be made, and cuff links not being
worth the swearing about, they were lost sight of.
_The Watch_. For this is the next article on the inventory, of which
any substance can be written, and its history is practically known
already. John's mother had given it to him. It represented the many
times those two bright eyes were tired with counting the stitches of the
white lace shawls. It represented the thousands of times that those
slender, sensitive fingers had rested in weariness from their ceaseless
passing to and fro. It represented almost the last lace-work she had
done, before those fingers had at length been held motionless in the
cold grip of paralysis. But, above all, it stood for the love of that
gentle heart that beat with so much pride and so much pleasure, to see
the little boy, whose head her breast had fondled, come to the stern and
mighty age of twenty-one. And two pounds five was the value they put
upon it all.
_The Little Brass Man_,--the _Chevalier d'honneur_. His story has
already been told--his life, so far as it concerns this history. But of
what he had lived through in the hundred years that had gone
before--nobody knows. One can only assume, without fear of inaccuracy,
that it was the life of a gentleman.