THE ENVIRONMENT FINALLY TRIUMPHS.
Winter had come, and on a bitter cold winter's night, Ernest
Le Breton once more received an unexpected telegram asking him to
hurry down without a moment's delay on important business to the
'Morning Intelligence' office. The telegram didn't state at all
what the business was; it merely said it was urgent and immediate
without in any way specifying its nature. Ernest sallied forth
in some perturbation, for his memories of the last occasion when
the 'Morning Intelligence' required his aid on important business
were far from pleasant ones; but for Edie's sake he felt he must
go, and so he went without a murmur.
'Sit down, Le Breton,' Mr. Lancaster said slowly when Ernest
entered. 'The matter I want to see you about's a very peculiar one.
I understand from some of my friends that you're a son of Sir Owen
Le Breton, the Indian general.'
'Yes, I am,' Ernest answered, wondering within himself to what
end this curious preamble could possibly be leading up. If there's
any one profession, he thought, which is absolutely free from the
slightest genealogical interest in the persons of its professors,
surely that particular calling ought to be the profession of
journalism.
'Well, so I hear, Le Breton. Now, I believe I'm right in saying,
am I not, that it was your father who first subdued and organised
a certain refractory hill-tribe on the Tibetan frontier, known as
the Bodahls, wasn't it?'
'Quite right,' Ernest replied, with a glimmering idea slowly rising
in his mind as to what Mr. Lancaster was now driving at.
'Ah, that's good, very good indeed, certainly. Well, tell me,
Le Breton, do you yourself happen to know anything on earth about
these precious insignificant people?'
'I know all about them,' Ernest answered quickly. 'I've read all
my father's papers and despatches, and seen his maps and plans and
reports in our house at home from my boyhood upward. I know as much
about the Bodahls, in fact, as I know about Bayswater, or Holborn,
or Fleet Street.'
'Capital, capital,' the editor said, fondling his big hands softly;
'that'll exactly suit us. And could you get at these plans and papers
now, this very evening, just to refresh the gaps in your memory?'
'I could have them all down here,' Ernest answered, 'at an hour's
notice.'
'Good,' the editor said again. 'I'll send a boy for them with a
cab. Meanwhile, you'd better be perpending this telegram from our
Simla correspondent, just received. It's going to be the question
of the moment, and we should very much like you to give us a leader
of a full column about the matter.'
Ernest took the telegram and read it over carefully. It ran in the
usual very abbreviated newspaper fashion: 'Russian agents revolted
Bodahls Tibetan frontier. Advices Peshawur state Russian army
marching on Merv. Bodahls attacked Commissioner, declared independence
British raj.'
'Will you write us a leader?' the editor asked, simply.
Ernest drew a long breath. Three guineas! Edie, Dot, an empty
exchequer! If he could only have five minutes to make his mind up!
But he couldn't. After all, what did it matter what he said about
these poor unknown Bodahls? If HE didn't write the leader, somebody
else who knew far less about the subject than he did would be sure
to do it. He wasn't responsible for that impalpable entity 'the
policy of the paper.' Beside the great social power of the 'Morning
Intelligence,' of the united English people, what was he, Ernest
Le Breton, but a miserable solitary misplaced unit? One way or the
other, he could do very little indeed, for good or for evil. After
half a minute's internal struggle, he answered back the editor
faintly, 'Yes, I will.' 'For Edie,' he muttered half audibly to
himself; 'I must do it for dear Edie.'
'And you'll allow me to make whatever alterations I think necessary
in the article to suit the policy of the paper?' the editor asked
once more, looking through him with his sleepy keen grey eyes.
'You see, Le Breton, I don't want to annoy you, and I know your
own principles are rather peculiar; but of course all we want you
for is just to give us the correct statement of facts about these
outlandish people. All that concerns our own attitude towards them
as a nation falls naturally under the head of editorial matter.
You must see yourself that it's quite impossible for us to let any
one single contributor dictate from his own standpoint the policy
of the paper.'
Ernest bent his head slowly. 'You're very kind to argue out the
matter with me so, Mr. Lancaster,' he said, trembling with excitement.
'Yes, I suppose I must bury my scruples. I'll write a leader about
these Bodahls, and let you deal with it afterwards as you think
proper.'
They showed him into the bare little back room, and sent a boy
up with a hastily written note to Ronald for the maps and papers.
There Ernest sat for an hour or two, writing away for very life,
and putting on paper everything that he knew about the poor Bodahls.
By two o'clock, the proofs had all come up to him, and he took
his hat in a shamefaced manner to sally out into the cold street,
where he hoped to hide his rising remorse and agony under cover of
the solitary night. He knew too well what 'the policy of the paper'
would be, to venture upon asking any questions about it. As he
left the office, a boy brought him down a sealed envelope from Mr.
Lancaster. With his usual kindly thoughtfulness the editor had sent
him at once the customary cheque for three guineas. Ernest folded
it up with quivering fingers, and felt the blood burn in his cheeks
as he put it away in his waistcoat pocket. That accursed money!
For it he had that night sold his dearest principles! And yet, not
for it, not for it, not for it--oh, no, not for it, but for Dot
and Edie!
The boy had a duplicate proof in his other hand, and Ernest saw at
once that it was his own leader, as altered and corrected by Mr.
Lancaster. He asked the boy whether he might see it; and the boy,
knowing it was Ernest's own writing, handed it to him at once
without further question. Ernest did not dare to look at it then
and there for fear he should break down utterly before the boy; he
put it for the moment into his inner pocket, and buttoned his thin
overcoat tightly around him. It was colder still in the frosty air
of early morning, and the contrast to the heated atmosphere of the
printing house struck him with ominous chill as he issued slowly
forth into the silent precincts of unpeopled Fleet Street.
It was a terrible memorable night, that awful Tuesday; the coldest
night known for many years in any English winter. Snow lay deep upon
the ground, and a few flakes were falling still from the cloudy
sky, for it was in the second week of January. The wind was drifting
it in gusty eddies down the long streets, and driving the drifts
before it like whirling dust in an August storm. Not a cab was to
be seen anywhere, not even a stray hansom crawling home from clubs
or theatres; and Ernest set out with a rueful countenance to walk
as best he might alone through the snow all the way to Holloway.
It is a long and dreary trudge at any time; it seemed very long
and dreary indeed to Ernest Le Breton, with his delicate frame and
weak chest, battling against the fierce wind on a dark and snowy
winter's night, and with the fever of a great anxiety and a great
remorse silently torturing his distracted bosom. At each step he
took through the snow, he almost fancied himself a hunted Bodahl.
Would British soldiers drive those poor savage women and children
to die so of cold and hunger on their snowy hilltops? Would English
fathers and mothers, at home at their ease, applaud the act with
careless thoughtlessness as a piece of our famous spirited foreign
policy? And would his own article, written with his own poor thin
cold fingers in that day's 'Morning Intelligence,' help to spur
them on upon that wicked and unnecessary war? What right had we to
conquer the Bodahls? What right had we to hold them in subjection
or to punish them for revolting? And above all, what right had
he, Ernest Le Breton, upon whose head the hereditary guilt of the
first conquest ought properly to have weighed with such personal
heaviness--what right had he, of all men, directly or indirectly,
to aid or abet the English people in their immoral and inhuman
resolve? Oh, God, his sin was worse than theirs; for they sinned,
thinking they did justly; but as for him, he sinned against the
light; he knew the better, and, bribed by gold, he did the worse.
At that moment, the little slip of printed paper in his waistcoat
pocket seemed to burn through all the frosts of that awful evening
like a chain of molten steel into his very marrow!
Trudging on slowly through the white stainless snow, step by
step,--snow that cast a sheet of pure white even over the narrow
lanes behind the Farringdon Road,--cold at foot and hot at heart,
he reached at last the wide corner by the Angel at Islington. The
lights in the windows were all out long ago, of course, but the
lamps outside were still flaring brightly, and a solitary policeman
was standing under one of them, trying to warm his frozen hands by
breathing rapidly on the curved and distorted fingers. Ernest was
very tired of his tramp by that time, and emboldened by companionship
he stopped awhile to rest himself in the snow and wind under the
opposite lamplight. Putting his back against the post, he drew the
altered proof of his article slowly out of his inner pocket. It
had a strange fascination for him, and yet he dreaded to look at
it. With an effort, he unfolded it in his stiff fingers, and held
the paper up to the light, regardless of the fact that the policeman
was watching his proceedings with the interest naturally due from
a man of his profession to a suspicious-looking character who
was probably a convicted pickpocket. The first sentence once more
told him the worst. There was no doubt at all about it. The three
guineas in his pocket were the price of blood!
'The insult to British prestige in the East,' ran that terrible
opening paragraph, 'implied in the brief telegram which we publish
this morning from our own Correspondent at Simla, calls for a speedy
and a severe retribution. It must be washed out in blood.' Blood,
blood, blood! The letters swam before his eyes. It was this, then,
that he, the disciple of peace-loving Max Schurz, the hater of war
and conquest, the foe of unjust British domination over inferior
races--it was this that he had helped to make plausible with his
special knowledge and his ready pen! Oh, heaven, what reparation
could he make for this horrid crime he had knowingly and wilfully
committed? What could he do to avoid the guilt of those poor
savages' blood upon his devoted head? In one moment he thought out
a hundred scenes of massacre and pillage--scenes such as he knew
only too well always precede and accompany the blessings of British
rule in distant dependencies. The temptation had been strong--the
money had been sorely wanted--there was very little food in
the house; but how could he ever have yielded to such a depth of
premeditated wickedness! He folded the piece of paper into his
pocket once more, and buried his face in his hands for a whole
minute. The policeman now began to suspect that he was not so much
a pickpocket as an escaped lunatic.
And so he was, no doubt. Of course we who are practical men of
the world know very well that all this foolish feeling on Ernest
Le Breton's part was very womanish and weak and overwrought; that
he ought to have done the work that was set before him, asking no
questions for conscience' sake; and that he might honestly have
pocketed the three guineas, letting his supposed duty to a few
naked brown people somewhere up in the Indian hill-country take
care of itself, as all the rest of us always do. But some allowance
must naturally be made for his peculiar temperament and for his
particular state of health. Consumptive people are apt to take a
somewhat hectic view of life in every way; they lack the common-sense
ballast that makes most of us able to value the lives of a few
hundred poor distant savages at their proper infinitesimal figure.
At any rate, Ernest Le Breton, as a matter of fact, rightly or
wrongly, did take this curious standpoint about things in general;
and did then and there turn back through the deep snow, all his
soul burning within him, fired with dire remorse, and filled only
with one idea--how to prevent this wicked article to which he had
contributed so many facts and opinions from getting printed in
to-morrow's paper. True, it was not he who had put in the usual
newspaper platitudes about the might of England, and the insult to
the British flag, and the immediate necessity for a stern retaliation;
but all that vapouring wicked talk (as he thought it) would go
forth to the world fortified by the value of his special facts and
his obviously intimate acquaintance with the whole past history of
the Bodahl people. So he turned back and battled once more with the
wind and snow as far as Fleet Street; and then he rushed excitedly
into the 'Morning Intelligence' office, and asked with the wildness
of despair to see the editor.
Mr. Lancaster had gone home an hour since, the porter said; but
Mr. Wilks, the sub-editor, was still there, superintending the
printing of the paper, and if Ernest liked, Mr. Wilks would see
him immediately.
Ernest nodded assent at once, and was forthwith ushered up into Mr.
Wilks's private sanctum. The sub-editor was a dry, grizzly-bearded
man, with a prevailing wolfish greyness of demeanour about his whole
person; and he shook Ernest's proffered hand solemnly, in the dreary
fashion that is always begotten of the systematic transposition of
night and day.
'For heaven's sake, Mr. Wilks,' Ernest cried imploringly, 'I want
to know whether you can possibly suppress or at least alter my
leader on the Bodahl insurrection!'
Mr. Wilks looked at him curiously, as one might look at a person
who had suddenly developed violent symptoms of dangerous insanity.
'Suppress the Bodahl leader,' he said slowly like one dreaming.
'Suppress the Bodahl leader! Impossible! Why, it's the largest type
heading in the whole of to-day's paper, is this Bodahl business.
"Shocking Outrage upon a British Commissioner on the Indian
Frontier. Revolt of the Entire Bodahl Tribe. Russian Intrigue
in Central Asia. Dangerous Position of the Viceroy at Simla." Oh,
dear me, no; not to have a leader upon THAT, my dear sir, would be
simply suicidal!'
'But can't you cut out my part of it, at least,' Ernest said
anxiously. 'Oh, Mr. Wilks, you don't know what I've suffered to-night
on account of this dreadful unmerited leader. It's wicked, it's
unjust, it's abominable, and I can't bear to think that I have had
anything to do with sending it out into the world to inflame the
passions of unthinking people! Do please try to let my part of it
be left out, and only Mr. Lancaster's, at least, be printed.'
Mr. Wilks looked at him again with the intensest suspicion.
'A sub-editor,' he answered evasively, 'has nothing at all to do with
the politics of a paper. The editor alone manages that department
on his own responsibility. But what on earth would you have me do?
I can't stop the machines for half an hour, can I, just to let you
have the chance of doctoring your leader? If you thought it wrong
to write it, you ought never to have written it; now it's written
it must certainly stand.'
Ernest sank into a chair, and said nothing; but he turned so deadly
pale that Mr. Wilks was fain to have recourse to a little brown
flask he kept stowed away in a corner of his desk, and to administer
a prompt dose of brandy and water.
'There, there,' he said, in the kindest manner of which he was
capable, 'what are you going to do now? You can't be going out
again in this state and in this weather, can you?'
'Yes, I am,' Ernest answered feebly. 'I'm going to walk home at
once to Holloway.'
'To Holloway!' the sub-editor said in a tone of comparative
horror. 'Oh! no, I can't allow that. Wait here an hour or two till
the workmen's trains begin running. Or, stay; Lancaster left his
brougham here for me to-night, as I have to be off early to-morrow
on business; I'll send you home in that, and let Hawkins get me a
cab from the mews by order.'
Ernest made no resistance; and so the sub-editor sent him home at
once in Lancaster's brougham.
When he got home in the early grey of morning, he found Edie still
sitting up for him in her chair, and wondering what could be
detaining him so long at the newspaper office. He threw himself
wildly at her feet, and, in such broken sentences as he was able
to command, he told her all the pitiful story. Edie soothed him
and kissed him as he went along, but never said a word for good or
evil till he had finished.
'It was a terrible temptation, darling,' she said softly: 'a terrible
temptation, indeed, and I don't wonder you gave way to it; but we
mustn't touch the three guineas. As you say rightly, it's blood-money.'
Ernest drew the cheque slowly from his pocket, and held it hesitatingly
a moment in his hand. Edie looked at him curiously.
'What are you going to do with it, darling?' she asked in a low
voice, as he gazed vacantly at the last dying embers in the little
smouldering fireplace.
'Nothing, Edie dearest,' Ernest answered huskily, folding it
up and putting it away in the drawer by the window. They neither
of them dared to look the other in the face, but they had not the
heart to burn it boldly. It was blood-money, to be sure; but three
guineas are really so very useful!
Four days later, little Dot was taken with a sudden illness. Ernest
and Edie sat watching by her little cradle throughout the night,
and saw with heavy hearts that she was rapidly growing feebler. Poor
wee soul, they had nothing to keep her for: it would be better,
perhaps, if she were gone; and yet, the human heart cannot be stifled
by such calm deliverances of practical reason; it WILL let its hot
emotions overcome the cold calculations of better and worse supplied
it by the unbiassed intellect.
All night long they sat there tearfully, fearing she would not
live till morning; and in the early dawn they sent round hastily
for a neighbouring doctor. They had no money to pay him with, to
be sure; but that didn't much matter; they could leave it over for
the present, and perhaps some day before long Ernest might write
another social, and earn an honest three guineas. Anyhow, it was
a question of life and death, and they could not help sending for
the doctor, whatever difficulty they might afterwards find in paying
him.
The doctor came, and looked with the usual professional seriousness
at the baby patient. Did they feed her entirely on London milk? he
asked doubtfully. Yes, entirely. Ah! then that was the sole root
of the entire mischief. She was very dangerously ill, no doubt,
and he didn't know whether he could pull her through anyhow; but
if anything would do it, it was a change to goat's milk. There was
a man who sold goat's milk round the corner. He would show Ernest
where to find him.
Ernest looked doubtfully at Edie, and Edie looked back again
at Ernest. One thought rose at once in both their minds. They had
no money to pay for it with, except--except that dreadful cheque.
For four days it had lain, burning a hole in Ernest's heart from
its drawer by the window, and he had not dared to change it. Now
he rose without saying a word, and opened the drawer in a solemn,
hesitating fashion. He looked once more at Edie inquiringly; Edie
nodded a faint approval. Ernest, pale as death, put on his hat,
and went out totteringly with the doctor. He stopped on the way
to change the cheque at the baker's where they usually dealt, and
then went on to the goat's milk shop. How that sovereign he flung
upon the counter seemed to ring the knell of his seif-respect! The
man who changed it noticed the strangeness of Ernest's look, and
knew at once he had not come by the money honestly. He rang it twice
to make sure it was good, and then gave the change to Ernest. But
Dot, at least, was saved; that was a great thing. The milk arrived
duly every morning for some weeks, and, after a severe struggle,
Dot grew gradually better. While the danger lasted, neither of
them dared think much of the cheque; but when Dot had got quite
well again, Ernest was conscious of a certain unwonted awkwardness
of manner in talking to Edie. He knew perfectly well what it meant;
they were both accomplices in crime together.
When Ernest wrote his 'social' after Max Schurz's affair, he felt
he had already touched the lowest depths of degradation. He knew
now that he had touched a still lower one. Oh! horrible abyss of
self-abasement!--he had taken the blood-money. And yet, it was to
save Dot's life! Herbert was right, after all: quite right. Yes,
yes, all hope was gone: the environment had finally triumphed.
In the awful self-reproach of that deadly remorse for the acceptance
of the blood-money, Ernest Le Breton felt at last in his heart
that surely the bitterness of death was past. It would be better
for them all to die together than to live on through such a life of
shame and misery. Ah, Peter, Peter, you are not the only one that
has denied his Lord and Master!
And yet, Ernest Le Breton had only written part of a newspaper
leader about a small revolt of the Bodahls. And he suffered more
agony for it than many a sensitive man, even, has suffered for the
commission of some obvious crime.
'I say, Berkeley,' Lancaster droned out in the lobby of their club
one afternoon shortly afterwards, 'what on earth am I ever to do
about that socialistic friend of yours, Le Breton? I can't ever
give him any political work again, you know. Just fancy! first, you
remember, I set him upon the Schurz imprisonment business, and he
nearly went mad then because I didn't back up Schurz for wanting to
murder the Emperor of Russia. After that, just now the other day,
I tried him on the Bodahl business, and hang me if he didn't have
qualms of conscience about it afterwards, and trudge back through
all the snow that awful Tuesday, to see if he couldn't induce Wilks
to stop the press, and let him cut it all out at the last moment!
He's as mad as a March hare, you know, and if it weren't that I'm
really sorry for him I wouldn't go on taking socials from him any
longer. But I will; I'll give him work as long as he'll do it for
me on any terms; though, of course, it's obviously impossible under
the circumstances to let him have another go at politics, isn't
it?'
'You're really awfully kind, Lancaster,' Berkeley answered warmly.
'No other fellow would do as much for Le Breton as you do. I admit
he's absolutely impracticable, but I would give more than I can
tell you if only I thought he could be made to pull through somehow.'
'Impracticable!' the editor said shortly, 'I believe you, indeed.
Why, do you remember that ridiculous Schurz business? Well, I sent
Le Breton a cheque for eight guineas for that lot, and can you
credit it, it's remained uncashed from that day to this. I really
think he must have destroyed it.'
'No doubt,' Arthur answered, with a smile. 'And the Bodahls? What
about them?'
'Oh! he kept that cheque for a few days uncashed--though I'm sure
he wanted money at the time; but in the end, I'm happy to say, he
cashed it.'
Arthur's countenance fell ominously.
'He did!' he said gloomily. 'He cashed it! That's bad news indeed,
then. I must go and see them to-morrow morning early. I'm afraid
they must be at the last pitch of poverty before they'd consent to
do that. And yet, Solomon says, men do not despise a thief if he
steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry. And Le Breton, after
all, has a wife and child to think of.'
Lancaster stared at him blankly, and turned aside to glance at
the telegrams, saying to himself meanwhile, that all these young
fellows of the new school alike were really quite too incomprehensible
for a sensible, practical man like himself to deal with comfortably.