The eyes of Polyhistor--as he sat before the fire at night--took in the
tawdry surroundings of his lodging-house room with nothing of that apathy
of resignation to his personal [Greek: anankê] which of all moods is to
Fortune, the goddess of spontaneity, the most antipathetic. Indeed,
he felt his wit, like Romeo's, to be of cheveril; and his conviction that
it needed only the pull of circumstance to stretch it "from an inch
narrow to an ell broad" expressed but the very wooing quality of a
constitutional optimism.
Now this inherent optimism is at least a serviceable weapon when it takes
the form of self-reliance. It is always at hand in an emergency--a guard
of honour to the soul. The loneliness of individual life must learn
self-respect from within, not without; and were all creeds to be mixed,
that truism should be found their precipitate.
Therefore Polyhistor was content to draw grass-green rep curtains
across window-panes sloughed with wintry sleet; to place his feet upon a
rug flayed of colour to it dusty sinews; to admit to his close
fellowship--and find a familiar comfort in them, too--three separate
lithographs of affected babies inviting any canine confidences but the
bite one desired for them, and a dismal daguerreotype of his landlady's
deceased husband, slowly perishing in pegtops and a yellow fog of
despondency, out of which only his boots and a very tall hat frowned
insistent, the tabernacles of enduring respectability:--he was content,
because he knew these were only incidents in his career--the slums to be
first traversed on a journey before the rounding breadths of open country
were reached,--and the station in life he purposed stopping at eventually
was the terminus of prosperity, intellectual and material.
With no present good fortune but the capacity for desiring it; with the
right to affix a letter or so--like grace after skilly--to his name; with
the consciousness that, having overcome theoretical pharmaceutics
masterfully, he was now combatting practical dispensing slavishly; with
full confidence in his social position (he stood under the shadow of
"high connections," like the little winged "Victory" in a conqueror's
hand, he chose to think) to help him to eventual distinction, he toasted
his toes that sour winter evening and reviewed in comfort an army of
prospects.
Also his thoughts reverted indulgently to the incidents and experiences
of the previous night.
He had had the pleasure of an invitation to one of those reunions or
séances at the house, in a fashionable quarter, of his distant
connection, Lady Barbara Grille, whereat it was his hostess's humour
to gather together those many birds of alien feather and incongruous
habit that will flock from the hedgerows to the least little flattering
crumb of attention. And scarce one of them but thinks the simple feast is
spread for him alone. And with so cheap a bait may a title lure.
Lady Barbara, to do her justice, trades upon her position only in so far
as it shapes itself the straight road to her desires. She is a carpet
adventurer--an explorer amongst the nerves of moral sensation, to whom
the discovery of an untrodden mental tract is a pure delight, and the
more delightful the more ephemeral. She flits from guest to guest,
shooting out to each a little proboscis, as it were, and happy if its
point touches a speck of honey. She gathers from all, and stores the
sweet agglomerate, let us hope, to feed upon it in the winter of her
life, when the hive of her busy brain shall be thatched with snow.
That reference to so charming a personality should be in this place a
digression is Polyhistor's unhappiness. She affects his narrative only
inasmuch as he happened to meet at her house a gentleman who for a time
exerted a considerable influence over his fortunes.
* * * * *
Here Polyhistor's narrative must give place to certain editorial
marginalia by Miss Lucy ----, who "runs" the ---- Family Magazine:--
"Polyhistor, indeed!" she writes. "The conceit of some people! He seems
to take himself for a sort of _Admirable Crichton_, and all because his
chance meeting with the gentleman referred to (a very _interesting_
person, who is, I understand, reforming our prisons) brought him the
offer of an appointment quite beyond his deserts. I was very glad to hear
of it, however, and I asked the creature to contribute a paper recording
his first impressions of _this notable man_; instead of which he begins
with an opinionated rigmarole about himself, and goes on from bad to
worse by describing a long conversation he had about prison reform with
that horrid, masculine Mrs. C----, whom all the officers call 'Charlie,'
and who thinks that for men to grow humane is a sign of their
_decadence_. _Of course_ I shall 'cut' the whole of their talk together
(it is a blessed privilege to be an editor), and jump to the part where
_Polyhistor_ (!) describes the _notable person's_ visit to him, which was
due to his (the N.P.'s) having the night before overheard some of the
conversation _between those two_."
* * * * *
POLYHISTOR'S NARRATIVE (_continued_).
Now as Polyhistor sat, he humoured his recollection (in the intervals of
scribbling verses to the _beaux yeux_ of a certain Miss L----) with some
of "Charlie's" characteristic last-night utterances.
She had dated man's decadence from the moment when he began to
"poor-fellow" irreclaimable savagery on the score of heredity.
She had repudiated the old humbug of sex superiority because she had seen
it fall on its face to howl over a trodden worm, with the result that
it discovered itself hollow behind, like the elf-maiden.
She had said: "Once you taught us divinely--_argumentum baculinum_," said
she; "(for you are the sons of God, you know). But you have since so
insisted upon the Rights of Humanity that we have learned ourselves in
the phrase, and that the earthy have the best right to precedence on the
earth."
And thereupon Charlie had launched into abuse of what she called the
latest masculine fad--prison reform, to wit--and a heated discussion
between her and Polyhistor had ensued, in the midst of which she had
happened to glance behind her, to find that very notable person who is
the subject of this narrative vouchsafing a silent attention to her
diatribe. And then--
But at this period to his cogitations Polyhistor's landlady entered with
a card, which she presented to his consideration:--
MAJOR JAMES SHRIKE,
H.M. PRISON, D----.
All astonishment, Polyhistor bade his visitor up.
He entered briskly, fur-collared, hat in hand, and bowed as he stood on
the threshold. He was a very short man--snub-nosed; rusty-whiskered;
indubitably and unimpressively a cockney in appearance. He might have
walked out of a Cruikshank etching.
Polyhistor was beginning, "May I inquire--" when the other took him up
with a vehement frankness that he found engaging at once.
"This is a great intrusion. Will you pardon me? I heard some remarks of
yours last night that deeply interested me. I obtained your name and
address of our hostess, and took the liberty of--"
"Oh! pray be seated. Say no more. My kinswoman's introduction is
all-sufficient. I am happy in having caught your attention in so motley
a crowd."
"She doesn't--forgive the impertinence--take herself seriously enough."
"Lady Barbara? Then you've found her out?"
"Ah!--you're not offended?"
"Not in the least."
"Good. It was a motley assemblage, as you say. Yet I'm inclined to think
I found my pearl in the oyster. I'm afraid I interrupted--eh?"
"No, no, not at all. Only some idle scribbling. I'd finished."
"You are a poet?"
"Only a lunatic. I haven't taken my degree."
"Ah! it's a noble gift--the gift of song; precious through its rarity."
Polyhistor caught a note of emotion in his visitor's voice, and glanced
at him curiously.
"Surely," he thought, "that vulgar, ruddy little face is transfigured."
"But," said the stranger, coming to earth, "I am lingering beside the
mark. I must try to justify my solecism in manners by a straight
reference to the object of my visit. That is, in the first instance, a
matter of business."
"Business!"
"I am a man with a purpose, seeking the hopefullest means to an
end. Plainly: if I could procure you the post of resident doctor at
D---- gaol, would you be disposed to accept it?"
Polyhistor looked his utter astonishment.
"I can affect no surprise at yours," said the visitor, attentively
regarding Polyhistor. "It is perfectly natural. Let me forestall some
unnecessary expression of it. My offer seems unaccountable to you, seeing
that we never met until last night. But I don't move entirely in the
dark. I have ventured in the interval to inform myself as to the details
of your career. I was entirely one with much of your expression of
opinion as to the treatment of criminals, in which you controverted the
crude and unpleasant scepticism of the lady you talked with." (Poor New
Charlie!) "Combining the two, I come to the immediate conclusion that you
are the man for my purpose."
"You have dumbfounded me. I don't know what to answer. You have views, I
know, as to prison treatment. Will you sketch them? Will you talk on,
while I try to bring my scattered wits to a focus?"
"Certainly I will. Let me, in the first instance, recall to you a few
words of your own. They ran somewhat in this fashion: Is not the man of
practical genius the man who is most apt at solving the little problems
of resourcefulness in life? Do you remember them?"
"Perhaps I do, in a cruder form."
"They attracted me at once. It is upon such a postulate I base my
practice. Their moral is this: To know the antidote the moment the snake
bites. That is to have the intuition of divinity. We shall rise to it
some day, no doubt, and climb the hither side of the new Olympus. Who
knows? Over the crest the spirit of creation may be ours."