_In which a Pole is less scrupulous._
The name of the lounger was James. That was his Christian name. What
his family name might be it is impossible to discover at this distance
of time, for he had been born in 1868, brought up in the workhouse,
apprenticed to a ropemaker, passed various terms in jail under various
_aliases_, gone to sea, naturalised as an American citizen, returned
to England as valet in the service of a tourist, been dismissed a few
years before for theft, and was at this moment a member of the New
Bureaucracy, to wit, a Watcher and Checker under the Ormeston Labour
Exchange. He was paid (by results, 2_s._ 6_d._ for each conviction) to
see that the poor did not cheat the higher officials of that invaluable
Public office, to worm out the true history of applicants at the
Exchange and to provide secret evidence against them, that they might
be imprisoned and black-listed if they concealed their past from the
Secretary—a Valued Servant of the State.
James, then, wandered out into God’s great world upon that happy
morning with a bundle under his arm. Two conflicting thoughts disturbed
him. First, where he might sell the content at the highest price, and,
secondly, where he might sell it with the greatest security. Such
divergent issues disturb the great men of our time as well as wandering
men bearing alien coats; they are at the root of modern affairs.
The more he thought of it the more did James determine by the feel
that the bundle was _clothes_; why, then, his market was a shop in the
Lydgate, an old quarter of the town, now full of slums, wherein dwelt
a certain Pole of the name of Lipsky. This man, by common repute, was
well with the police, and in our English towns that, with the poor, is
everything. Lippy would not give him full value, but he could give him
full security. He would give him perhaps but a quarter of the value,
but he would at least give him a free run with the money and no awkward
questions for the men in blue.
Such an advantage is it to have assured the police of one’s integrity.
Nevertheless, he thought it of advantage to discover of what value the
bundle might be. Even if he was to get but a quarter of its value from
the Pole, he would like to know _what_ it was that he was to get a
quarter of.
He lollopped lazily down the street. His time was his own. He peered
through a neglected doorway into an empty yard, stepped into it, behind
the screen of a hoarding, looking first up and down to see whether any
of the tyrants were about. Seeing no helmet and therefore no tyrant,
he untied the parcel and pulled out the coat within. He was agreeably
surprised. He had expected slops, but this was not slops. He was no
valuer, but he would imperil for ever the true end of man’s soul and
suffer the companionship of demons for eternity (such were the rash
hazards he took) if it were not two quid, and played properly it might
be three.
Wait a moment, there might be something in the pockets. He felt in the
left-hand pocket—nothing; in the right-hand pocket, there nothing but
that solid, oblong cheque book with four cheques torn out. At first
he thought of throwing it away, for it identified the owner of the
garment. Then he remembered things called “clues,” and threw far from
him the very idea instead of the cheque book. He tried to decipher
the name, but could not. James could read and write when he had left
school, but that was a long time ago. He had done more useful work
since then.
Next he remembered the suspicious haste of Mr. Montague. He began to
wonder whether the bundle was quite _safe_. He determined to hurry; and
as for the price, why, he would take what he could get.
He fastened up the parcel again, and in a sobriety of mind which
was new to him and not altogether pleasant, he took the road to the
Lydgate. Mr. Montague might have spared his fears. The day was early,
James had as yet no pence, he could not board a tram. But somehow or
other the bundle was unnaturally clumsy or unnaturally heavy.
He felt a distaste for it. The distaste enlarged, something had gone
wrong. As he went down that morning street alone, resolutely trudging,
he heard within him the echoes of a voice he did not wish to hear. It
was the voice of a woman, not sober, but holding to him. He thought he
could not have remembered such a thing after ten years, and of a summer
morning. It is odd that even the poor should mislike such memories;
James misliked them abominably. Perhaps he was more sensitive for the
moment than are most of the poor....
Yes! How she did drink, damn her.... Why the Hell was he thinking of
such things? And how clear her voice was.... Then he saw the name
“Lipsky” over the way. He was at the Lydgate already. Could a man be
drunk in the flush of morning and without liquor? Nay, drink dulled
such things, and he had heard that voice awfully clear within him.
He trudged into the shop, shaking his mind free, and thinking of the
sovereign—or two sovereigns at least.
The gentleman in charge—there was but one—exchanged mutual recognitions
with James. The one was a Pole and the other an Englishman; but both
were human, and therefore brethren. Then James untied the parcel. But
when James had untied the parcel it was apparent that though both
were human, Lipsky was a Pole and not a man of the Midlands, for he
thrust it from him with his palms outward, sliding his wrists upon the
counter, and moving his fingers like small snakes in the air. Lippy was
not taking any. James looked at him, and did not understand.
“I got it straight, I did!” he said.
Lippy didn’t want to look at it.
“I don’t want it, there!” burst out James (he could not for his life
have told you why), and Lippy, leaning over familiarly but insolently,
told him (in Polish English) that if he tried to sell it he would not
long be a free man. James thought this treason, and in his heart he
was determined on revenge. What had he done to Lippy to receive such a
threat? The whole air about these men as they met, and as this lump of
cloth lay between them, was unreal and fantastic. Each felt it, each
in his utterly different mind. For such things, if you will excuse me,
happen to the poor also, as we all know they do to the rich, whether
through drink or what-not I can’t tell, whether for drink or what-not
it is for them to determine. There was fate, and there was compulsion,
and there was the profound ill-ease of the soul hovering over that
dirty counter in the slums as they hover over the tables of politicians
when similar bargains are toward in a larger world. James tied his
bundle up again and went out without a word.
One beefy part of him suggested that the coppers were too close on the
trail and that Lippy knew it; but another part of him, more permanent,
more real, deeper, smelt the truth. He himself had suffered dread; he
felt vaguely that Lippy knew the cause of that dread, and that for both
of them there was something strange about the Thing. The Soul was in
trouble.
Oh! James knew it very well. The big bundle under his left arm so
weighed upon that primal part of us, which is within, that all the
things least desired and most carefully forgotten of his life returned
again under its influence and maddened him. With the simplicity of his
class, he thought the evil to be attached to the fact that the coat
was stolen. Unlike his betters, he had never dreamt that stealing was
right. He had always known that it was wrong.... He had a mind to put
the Green Overcoat down in the thoroughfare and leave it there. In
spite of the risk, he would have done so in another moment had he not
heard shuffling footsteps coming up rapidly behind him and felt a soft
Polish hand upon his shoulder. It was Lippy.
The Poles when they enter the Second Hand Clothes Trade prove
themselves commercial. Their ancient chivalry seems to desert them in
this line of business, and something material creeps into their gallant
hearts. Lippy had reproached himself, Lippy had been tortured as he had
seen the lounger’s figure slowly and doubtfully receding burdened with
a thing of so much value.
With the disappearance of the Green Overcoat the supernatural warnings
(for which he despised himself) had disappeared, and he remembered only
its very mundane value. He could not bear the loss, and he had followed.
The lounger James turned round startled, and instinctively thrust the
bundle towards the man who, he instinctively knew, had repented of his
first decision. Lippy seized it, guiltily, furtively, violently, and
without a word he was on his way back to his shop. But as for James,
he went his way noting suddenly the pleasantness of the morning; that
excellent Watcher and Checker under the Labour Exchange of Ormeston,
that Pillar of Free Labour, that Good Servant of the State, that member
of our New Bureaucracy of Social Reform, was himself again. He went
forward whistling, and he found it in a few moments quite easy to
forget the Thing and all the memories that had cropped up with the
Thing. He had passed it on, and Lippy was holding the baby.
In the few steps to his shop the Pole had no time to repent, though his
mind was ill at ease. Mr. Montague was a strange man. He had strange
wisdom. He could read strange books. And if Mr. Montague had come to
warn him, well....
Lippy dismissed the superstitious fear. He opened the bundle, he gazed
on the Sacred Green Thing, he felt the pockets (of course), he saw the
cheque book and the wealthy name. He shuddered—but he gloried. Then he
fastened the whole up again, put the bundle into a great drawer under
his counter, sighed a mechanical sigh of mechanical relief, and began
to busy himself with the arranging and ticketing of his goods for the
day.
But as that day wore on the Pole was not himself. He was too nervous,
too snappy with customers, too much affected by slight sounds when the
evening came, and all that night he lay but dozing, waking continually
in starts from disordered dreams of unaccountable vengeance.
The next day, the Friday, Lippy was very ill. No movement of
conscience disturbed him, he had not wronged his own; yet in his fever
he suffered dreadfully from some unreasoning sense of evil.
The old woman who chared for him was for calling a doctor. All Monday
Lippy, weakening in his sick-bed, fought against the expense. As it
was, he had been compelled to pay a doubtful boy—a non-Pole, and
therefore ill suited to commerce—to mind the shop, and twice he left
his bed, at the risk of his life, and tottered down to see that no harm
was coming to his business. On each occasion as he neared that counter
with its drawer and its secreted bundle a more violent trouble had
returned, and he had had to be helped up dazed and trembling to his
wretched bed and room above.
So Monday passed, and what happened on the Tuesday and why, a return
to others who had meddled with the Green Overcoat will explain: Why on
the morning of Tuesday Lippy woke refreshed in body, but very weak; why
he had an odd feeling that things were mending, how he could not tell;
why it was that in the early afternoon of that day he heard in the shop
below a voice addressing his assistant in an accent very unusual to
such shops; why Lippy listened carefully at the door and thought he
knew the voice.
The voice you will find, Readerkin, was that of Mr. Kirby, and Mr.
Kirby was asking in the most direct fashion possible for the coat, for
the Green Overcoat; he made no bones about it, he put it square. Very
hurriedly did Lippy dress, and very hurriedly, weak as he was, did he
totter down the stairs that Tuesday Morning.