I
I wasn’t even thinking of the fool. It is enough to be in the same
market on ’Change with Norton Bellamy, and outside my office or the
House I like to forget him.
But long ago he joined the City of London Club, to my great regret, and
now, in the smoking-room after lunch, during my cup of coffee, cigar,
and game of dominoes, he will too often hurl himself uninvited into a
conversation that he is neither asked to join nor desired to enlighten.
Upon a day in January last my friend George Mathers had a chill on the
liver, and was suffering under sustained professional ill-fortune. From
his standpoint, therefore, in the Kaffir Market, he looked out at the
world and agreed with Carlyle’s unreasonable estimate of mankind. As a
jobber in a large way he came to this conclusion; while I, who am a
broker and a member of the Committee, could by no means agree with him.
“The spirit of common-sense must be reckoned with,” I explained to
Mathers. “This nation stands where it does by right of that virtue.
Take the giving and receiving of advice. You may draw a line through
that. There is a rare, a notable genius for giving advice in this
country. The war illustrates my point. You will find every journal full
of advice given by civilians to soldiers, by soldiers to civilians,
by the man in the street to the man in the Cabinet, and by the man in
the Cabinet to the man in the street. We think for ourselves, develop
abnormal common-sense, and as a consequence, I maintain that much more
good advice is given than bad.”
But Mathers, what with his chilled liver and business depression, was
unreasonable. He derided my contention. He flouted it. He raised his
voice in hard, simulated laughter, and attracted other men from their
coffee and cigars. When he had won their attention, he tried to crush
me publicly. He said:
“My dear chap, out of your own mouth I will confute you. If more good
advice is given than bad, every man will get more good than harm by
following advice. That’s logical; but you won’t pretend to maintain
such a ridiculous position, surely?”
I like a war of words after luncheon. It sharpens the wits and assists
digestion. So, without being particularly in earnest, I supported my
contention.
“Assuredly,” I said. “We don’t take enough advice, in my opinion--just
as we don’t take enough exercise or wholesome food. It is too much the
fashion to ask advice and not take it. But if we modelled our lives on
the disinterested opinion of other people, and availed ourselves of the
combined judgment of our fellows, the world would be both happier and
wiser in many directions. And if men knew when they were invited to
express an opinion that it was no mere conventional piece of civility
or empty compliment which prompted us to ask their criticism, consider
how they would put their best powers forward. Yes, one who consistently
followed the advice of his fellow-creatures would be paying a
compliment to humanity and----”
“Qualifying himself for a lunatic asylum!” Here burst in the blatant
Bellamy from his seat by the fire. He put down a financial journal,
and then turned to me. “If there’s more good advice flying about than
bad, old man, why don’t you take some?” he said. “I could give you
plenty of excellent advice at this moment, Honeybun. For instance,
I could tell you to play the fool only in your own house; but you
wouldn’t thank me. You’d say it was uncalled-for and impertinent; you
know you would.”
Bellamy is the only man who has any power to annoy me after my lunch;
and knowing it, he exercises that power. He can shake me at a word,
can reach my nerve-centres quicker than a tintack. Seen superficially,
he appears to be nothing more than the mere, common stockbroker, but
his voice it is that makes him so hated--his voice, and his manners,
and his sense of humour. I turned upon him and did a foolish thing, as
one often does foolish things when suddenly maddened into them by some
bigger fool than oneself. I answered:
“There’s bad advice--idiotic advice--given as well as good. When I’ve
exhausted creation, and want _your_ opinion, my dear Bellamy, I’ll
trouble you for it; and as to playing the fool, why, _nemo mortalium
omnibus horis sapit_--not even Norton Bellamy. You’ll admit that?”
Bellamy has no education, and nothing irritates him quicker than a
quotation in a foreign language, though any other quotation he’s more
than a match for. He scowled and meant mischief from the moment the
laugh went with me. He ignored the Latin, but stuck to the English of
my remark.
“Bad as well as good,” he answered. “Just what I say. Only you assert
‘more good than bad,’ and I declare ‘more bad than good,’ which means
that the more advice I refuse the better for me in the long run.”
“You judge human nature from an intimate knowledge of your own lack of
judgment, my dear fellow,” I said, in a bantering voice.
“Well, I’ll back my judgment all the same,” he answered hotly, “which
is a good deal more than you will. You talk of common-sense, and lay
down vague, not to say inane rules for other people to follow, and
pose as a sort of Book of Wisdom thrown open to the public every
afternoon in this smoking-room; but anybody can talk. Now, I’ll bet you
a thousand pounds that you’ll not take the advice of your fellow-man
for twelve consecutive hours. And, what is more, I’ll bet you another
thousand that I’ll do the other thing and go distinctly contrary to
every request, suggestion, or scrap of advice offered me in the same
space of time. And then we’ll see about your knowledge of human nature,
and who looks the biggest fool at the end of the day.”
I repeat, it was after luncheon, and no man unfamiliar with Norton
Bellamy can have any idea of the studied insolence, the offence, the
diabolic sneer with which he accompanied this preposterous suggestion.
I was, however, silent for the space of three seconds; then he made
another remark to Mathers, and that settled it.
“Some of us are like the chap who said he’d take his dying oath the cat
was grey. Then they asked him to bet a halfpenny that it was, and he
wouldn’t. So bang goes another wind-bag!”
He was marching out with all the honours when I lost my temper and took
the brute at his word.
“Done!” I said. Think of it! A man of five-and-fifty, with some
reputation for general mental stability, and a member of the Committee
of the Stock Exchange!
“You’ll take me?” he asked, and there was an evil light in the man’s
hard blue eyes, while his red whiskers actually bristled as he spoke.
“You’ll back yourself to follow every scrap of advice given you
throughout one whole day for a thousand pounds?”
In my madness I answered, only intent upon arranging miseries for him:
“Yes, if you’ll back yourself to act in an exactly contrary manner.”
“Most certainly. It’s my ordinary rule of life,” he replied. “I never
do take advice. I’m not a congenital idiot. Let us say to-morrow.”
Now, upon the Stock Exchange we have a universal system by which honour
stands for security. In our peculiar business relations this principle
is absolutely necessary. And it seldom fails. There is a simple,
pathetic trust amongst us unknown in other walks of life. It can only
be compared to that universal spirit said to have existed in King
Alfred’s days, when we are invited to believe that people left their
jewellery about on the hedges with impunity, and crime practically
ceased out of the land. One’s only assumption can be that the jewellery
of those benighted days was not worth the risk--though, understand me,
I am merely speaking of the times, not of King Alfred, who was, without
question, the greatest Englishman of whom we have any record. So when
Bellamy and I made this fatuous bet, we trusted each the other. I knew
that, with all his faults, the man was absolutely straight-forward and
honest; and I felt that, having once taken his wager, I should either
win it--at personal inconvenience impossible to estimate before the
event--or lose and frankly pay.
“To-morrow,” said Bellamy. “Let us say to-morrow. You don’t want a
thing like this hanging over you. We’ll meet here and lunch and compare
notes--if you’re free to do so, which is doubtful, for I see a holy
chaos opening out before you.”
“To-morrow!” I said. “And, be what it may, I would not change my
position for yours.”
I went home that night under a gathering weight of care. To my wife and
daughters I said nothing, though they noticed and commented upon my
unusual taciturnity. In truth, the more I thought of the programme in
store for me, the less I liked it; while Bellamy, on the contrary, so
far as I could see, despite my big words at parting from him, had only
to be slightly more brutal and aggressive than usual to come well out
of his ordeal. I slept ill and woke depressed. The weather was ominous
in itself. I looked out of my dressing-room window and quoted from the
classics:
“She is not rosy-fingered, but swoll’n black;
Her face is like a water turned to blood,
And her sick head is bound about with clouds,
As if she threatened night ere noon of day!”
which shows, by-the-by, that Ben Jonson knew a London fog when he saw
it, though chemists pretend that the vile phenomenon wasn’t familiar to
the Elizabethans.
My breakfast proved a farce, and having wished my dear ones a dreary
“good morning,” I crept out into a bilious, fuliginous atmosphere,
through which black smuts fell in legions upon the numbed desolation of
South Kensington. Only the urban cat stalked here and there, rejoicing,
as it seemed, in prolonged night. My chronic cough began at the first
gulp of this atrocious atmosphere, and changing my mind about walking
to the District Railway Station, I turned, sought my cab-whistle, and
summoned a hansom. It came presently, clinking and tinkling out of
nothingness--a chariot with watery eyes of flame; a goblin coach to
carry me away through the mask of the fog, from home, from wife and
children, into the vast unknown of man’s advice.
The cabman began it--a surly, grasping brute who, upon taking my
shilling, commented, and added something about the weather.
“Your fare, and you know it very well,” I answered, whereupon he
replied:
“Oh, all right. Wish I could give you the cab an’ the hoss in. Don’t
you chuck away your money, that’s all. You’re a blimed sight too
big-’earted--that’s what’s the matter with you.”
I felt cheered. Here was practical advice given by a mere toiler
from the ranks. I promised the man that I would not waste my money;
I reciprocated his caution, beamed upon him, ignored his satire, and
went downstairs to the trains. A newspaper boy offered me _Punch_. I
bought it, and with rising spirits lighted a cigar and got into a City
train. It happened to come from Ealing, and contained, amongst other
people, my dear old friend Tracy Mainwaring--cheeriest, brightest,
and best of men. The fog deepened, and somewhere about the Temple a
violent fit of coughing caused me to fling away my cigar, and double up
in considerable physical discomfort. Mainwaring, with his universal
sympathy, was instantly much concerned for me.
“My dear Honeybun, you’ll kill yourself--you will indeed. It’s
suicide for you to come to town on days like this. How often have I
expostulated! And nobody will pity you, because you need not do it. Why
don’t you go to the South of France? You ought to go for all our sakes.”
“Mainwaring,” I said, “you’re right. You always are. Here’s the
Temple. I’ll return home at once, and start as soon as I conveniently
can--to-morrow at latest.”
The amazement which burst forth upon the face of every man in that
carriage was a striking commentary on my original assertion that advice
is not taken habitually in this country.
As for Mainwaring himself, I could perceive that he was seriously
alarmed. He followed me out of the train, and his face was white, his
voice much shaken, as he took my arm.
“Old chap,” he said, “I’ve annoyed you; I’ve bored you with my
irresponsible chatter. You’re trying to escape from me. You mustn’t let
a friend influence you against your better judgment. Of course, I only
thought of your good, but----”
“My dear fellow,” I answered, “nobody ever gave me better advice, and
unless circumstances conspire against it, I mean to do as you suggest.”
“Yes, yes--capital,” he said, with the voice we assume when trying to
soothe an intoxicated acquaintance or a lunatic. “You _shall_ go, dear
old fellow, and I’ll see you home.”
Now, here is the effect of taking advice upon the man who gives it!
Mainwaring is a genial, uncalculating, kindly soul, who is always
tendering counsel and exhortation to everybody, from his shoeblack
upwards; yet, in a moment, I had him reduced to a mere bundle of
vibrating nerves, simply because I had promptly undertaken to follow
one of his suggestions. Of course I knew the thought in his mind: he
believed that I was out of mine. So I said:
“Yes, old fellow, I see what you think; but, consider, if I’m a lunatic
to take your advice, what must you be to give it?”
This conundrum, if possible, increased his uneasiness. He fussed
anxiously around me and begged to be allowed to see me home; whereupon,
being weary of his cowardice, I waved Mainwaring off, left the station
to be free of him, and hastily ascended Arundel Street.
My object was now an omnibus which should convey me almost to my door;
and my heart grew fairly light again, for if by the terms of the wager
I could legitimately get back under my own roof, the worst might be
well over. I pictured myself packing quietly all day for the Continent.
Then, when morning should come, I had merely to change my mind again
and the matter would terminate. Any natural disappointment of my wife
and the girls, when they heard of my intention to stop in London after
all, might be relieved with judicious gifts.
At a corner in the Strand I waited, and others with me, while the
fog increased--noisome veil upon veil--and the lurid street seemed
full of dim ghosts wandering in a sulphur hell. My omnibus was long
in coming, and just as it did so I pressed forward with the rest,
and had the misfortune to tread upon the foot of a threadbare and
foul-mouthed person who had been waiting beside me. Standing there,
the sorry creature had used the vilest language for fifteen minutes,
had scattered his complicated imprecations on the ears of all, but
especially, I think, for the benefit of his wretched wife. She--a lank
and hungry creature--had flashed back looks at him once or twice, but
no more. Occasionally, as his coarse words lashed her, she had shivered
and glanced at this face and that to see whether any champion of women
stood there waiting for the South Kensington omnibus. But apparently
none did, though, for my part, at another time I had certainly taken
it upon me to reprove the wretch, or even call a constable. But upon
this day, and moving as it were for that occasion under a curse, I
held silence the better course, and maintained the same while much
pitying this down-trodden woman. Now, however, Fate chose me for a
sort of Nemesis against my will, and leaping forward to the omnibus,
I descended with all my fourteen stone upon the foot of the bully.
He hopped in agony, lifted up his voice, and added a darkness to the
fog. His profanity increased the ambient gloom, and out of it I saw
the white face of his wife, and her teeth gleamed in a savage smile as
he hopped in the gutter, like some evil fowl. People laughed at his
discomfort, and a vocabulary naturally rich was lifted above itself
into absolute opulence. He loosed upon me a chaos of sacred and profane
expletives, uttered in the accent of south-west London. His words
tumbled about my ears like a nest of angered hornets. The man refused
to listen to any apology, and, from natural regret, my mood changed to
active annoyance, because he insisted upon hopping between me and the
omnibus, and a crowd began to collect.
Then his bitter-hearted wife spoke up and bid me take action, little
dreaming of the position in which I stood with respect to all advice.
“Don’t let the swine cheek you like that,” she cried. “He’s all
gas, that’s what he is--a carwardly ’ound as only bullies women and
children. You’re bigger than him. Hit him over the jaw with your
rumberella. Hit him hard, then you’ll see.”
It will not, I trust, be necessary for me to say that never before that
moment had I struck a fellow-creature, either in the heat of anger or
with calculated intention. Indeed, even a thousand pounds would seem a
small price to expend if for that outlay one might escape such a crime;
yet now, dazed by the noise, by the fog, by emotions beyond analysis,
by the grinning teeth and eyes of the crowd shining wolfish out of the
gloom around me, by the woman’s weird, tigerish face almost thrust into
mine, and by the fact that the man had asked me why the blank blank
I didn’t let my blank self out at so much a blank hour for a blank
steam-roller--I let go. If Bellamy could have seen me then! My umbrella
whistled through the fog, and appeared to strike the man almost exactly
where his wife had suggested. He was gone like a dream, and everybody
seemed pleased excepting the unfortunate creature himself. There were
yells and cat-calls and wild London sounds in my ears. Somebody rose
out of the pandemonium and patted me on the back, and told me to ‘hook
it before the bloke got up again.’ Somebody else whispered earnestly
in my ear that I had done the community a good turn. The omnibus
proceeded without me, for I was now separated from it by a crowd. The
fog thickened, lurid lights flashed in it, my head whirled, the man who
had whispered congratulations in my ear endeavoured to take my watch,
and I was just going to cry for the police, when my recumbent victim,
assisted, to my amazement, by the tigerish woman, rose, clothed in mud
as with a garment, and advanced upon me.
There are times and seasons when argument and even frank apology is
useless. There are very rare occasions when coin of the realm itself
is vain to heal a misunderstanding or soothe a wounded spirit. I felt
that the man now drawn up in battle array before me was reduced for the
moment to a mere pre-Adamite person or cave-dweller, first cousin to,
and but slightly removed from, the unreasoning and ferocious dinosaur
or vindictive megatherium. This poor, bruised, muddy Londoner, now
dancing with clenched fists, and exuding a sort of language which
rendered him almost incandescent, obviously thirsted to do me physical
hurt. No mere wounding of my tenderest feeling, no shaming of me, no
touching of my pride or my pocket would suffice for him. Indeed, he
explained openly that he was going to break every bone in my body and
stamp my remains into London mud, even if it spoilt his boots. Hearing
which prophecy, one of those inspirations that repay a studious man for
his study came in the nick of time, and I remembered a happy saying of
the judicious Hooker, how that many perils can best be conquered by
flying from them. I had not run for thirty years, but I ran then, and
dashing past a church, a cheap book-shop, and the Globe Theatre, darted
into the friendly shelter of a populous neighbourhood that extends
beyond. So sudden was my action, and so dense the fog, that I escaped
without loss, and within three minutes from that moment, all sorrow
past, sat in a hansom, had the window lowered, and drove off with joy
and thankfulness for my home.
So far I had done, or set about doing, everything my fellow-man or
woman deemed well for me. As it was now past eleven o’clock, I felt
that the day would soon slip away, and all might yet be well.
Then the Father of Fog, who is one with the Prince of this world, took
arms against me. There was a crash, a smash, loud words, a breath of
cold air, a tinkle of broken glass, a stinging lash across my face, an
alteration abrupt and painful in my position. My horse had collided
with another and come down heavily, the window was broken, and my face
had a nasty cut across the cheekbone within a fractional distance of my
right eye.
The driver was one of that chicken-hearted sort of cabmen rare in
London, but common in provincial towns. He had fallen from his
box-seat, it is true, and had undoubtedly hurt himself here and there
on the outside, but I doubt if any serious injury had overtaken him;
yet now he stood at the horse’s head, and pulled at its bridle, and
gasped and gurgled, and explained how a railway van had run into
him, knocked over his horse, and then darted off into the fog. I told
the man not to cry about it, and people began collecting as usual,
like evil gnomes from the gloom. The air soon hummed with advice, and
personally, knowing myself to be worse than useless where a horse in
difficulties is concerned, I acted upon the earliest suggestion that
called for departure from the scene. Ignoring directions about harness,
cutting of straps, backing the vehicle, and sitting on the horse’s
head, I fell in with one thoughtful individual who gave it as his
opinion that the beast was dying, and hurried away at my best speed to
seek a veterinary surgeon. My face was much injured, my nerves were
shaken, I had a violent stitch in my side and a buzzing in the head;
but I did my duty, and finding a small corner hostelry, that threw
beams of red and yellow light across the fog, I entered, gave myself a
few moments to recover breath, then asked the young woman behind the
bar whether she knew where I might most quickly find a horse doctor.
“There has been an accident,” I explained, “and a man on the spot gives
it as his opinion that the horse is seriously unwell, and should be
seen to at once. Personally, I suspect it could get up if it liked,
but I am not an expert and may be mistaken.”
“’Fraid you’ve hurted yourself, too, sir,” answered the girl. “I _am_
sorry. Sit down and have something to drink, sir. Sure you want it.”
I sat down, sighed, wiped my face, and ordered a little brandy. This
she prepared with kindly solicitude, then advised a second glass, and
I, feeling the opinion practical enough, obeyed her gladly.
She knew nothing of a veterinary surgeon, but there chanced to be a
person in the bar who said that he did. He evidently felt tempted to
proclaim himself such a man, for I could see the idea in his shifty
eyes; but he thought better of this, and admitted that he was only a
dog-fancier himself, though he knew a colleague in the next street who
enjoyed a wide experience of horses. Now, my idea of a dog-fancier is
one who habitually fancies somebody else’s dog. I told the man this
while I finished my brandy-and-water, and he admitted that it was a
general weakness in the profession, but explained that he had, so far,
fought successfully against it. Then we started to find the veterinary
surgeon, and soon passed into a region that I suspected to be Seven
Dials.
“’Ullo, Jaggers! Who’s your friend?” said a man in a doorway.
“Gent wants a vet,” answered my companion.
“Gent wants a new fice, more like!”
I asked the meaning of this phrase, suspecting that some bit of homely
and perhaps valuable advice lay under it, but Jaggers thought not.
“Only Barny Bosher’s sauce,” he said. “He’s a fightin’ man--pick of the
basket at nine-stone, five--so he thinks he can sye what he likes; but
he’s got a good ’eart.”
We pushed on until a small shop appeared, framed in bird-cages.
Spiritless fowls of different sorts and colours sat and drooped in
them--parrots, cockatoos, budgerigars, and other foreigners of a kind
unfamiliar to me.
“Come in,” said Jaggers. “This is Muggridge’s shop; and what he don’t
know about ’osses, an’ all livin’ things for that matter, ain’t worth
knowin’.”
Mr. Muggridge was at his counter, busy about a large wooden crate bored
with many holes. From these proceeded strange squeaks and grunts.
“’Alf a mo,” he said. “It’s a consignment of prize guinea-pigs, and
they wants attention partickler urgent; for they’ve been on the South
Eastern Railway, in a luggage train, pretty near since last Christmas
by all accounts, and a luggage train on that line’s a tidy sample of
eternity, I’m told.”
Mr. Muggridge was a little, bright, cheerful person, who framed his
life on the philosophy of his own canaries. The shop was warm, even
stuffy, perhaps--still warm; so I said one or two kind things about the
beasts and birds, then took a chair and looked at my watch.
“I can wait,” I told him.
“Can the ’oss? That’s the question,” asked Jaggers, and he began to
murmur something about being kept away from his work, and hard times;
so I gave him a shilling, and he thanked me, though not warmly, and
instantly vanished into the fog--to go on dog-fancying, no doubt.
Mr. Muggridge complimented me on my love for animals. He then began to
pull strange, rough bundles of white, black, and yellow fur from his
wooden crate. The things looked like a sort of animated blend between
a penwiper and a Japanese chrysanthemum. Indeed, I told him so, and he
retorted by advising me to take a couple home for my young people.
With a sigh, I agreed to do so, and Mr. Muggridge, evidently surprised
at such ready acquiescence, grew excited, and suggested two more.
“You try a pair o’ them Hangoras, and a pair o’ them tortoiseshells,”
he said, “and before you can look round you’ll be breedin’ guinea-pigs
as’ll take prizes all over Europe--pedigree pigs, pigs with a
world-wide reputation!”
“Very well, two pairs,” I answered, “since you wish it.”
And then I observed that Muggridge was thinking very hard. I fancy he
realised that the opportunity of a lifetime lay before him.
“Yes,” he said suddenly, answering his own reflections, “to a gentleman
like you, I _will_ part with it, though it’s dead against the grain.
But you ought to have it--my last mongoose--a lady’s pet--a little
hangel in the ’ouse! Five guineas!”
“There’s a large brown horse fallen down in the next street; that’s
what I’m here for,” I cried aloud, ignoring the mongoose.
“Ah! they will go down; and I’ve got a lion-monkey, and while you
_are_ buying animals, I strongly advise you to have it. Not another in
England to my knowledge. To be honest, he’s not very well, but the hair
will come again with kindness and my mange lotion. Peaceful as a lamb,
too. I wish I could send them, but I’m run off my legs just now. Never
remember such a rush or such competition. So if you’ll let me suggest,
you’ll take your little lot right away with you. My cages are specially
commended at the Crystal Palace and elsewhere, and I have a few left
by me still. I suppose you couldn’t do with a water-snake or two? Yes?
Here, Sam! Come down here. A large horder!”
He shouted to a boy, who appeared and began putting strange beasts
and reptiles into cages with lightning rapidity, while I stood and
watched--a man gripped, tranced, turned to stone by the deadly incubus
of a dream. All the time Mr. Muggridge chattered like the lid of a
kettle on the boil, put up horrid-looking foreign birds in cashes,
fastened a string to a poodle, and incarcerated various other specimens
of tropical or sub-tropical fauna that he wanted to be rid of. Then he
made out an account, pressed it into my hand, rushed to the door, and
whistled for a four-wheeler.
“You’re a ready-money gen’leman like me. Seen it in your eye the minute
you come into my shop,” said Muggridge. “Twenty guineas and my book,
on the _Insect Pests of Household Pets_, thrown in.”
I rallied myself here--in the last ditch, so to speak; I made my
effort, and while the horrible boy was converting a four-wheeler into a
menagerie of screaming, snapping curiosities, I explained to Muggridge
that I only had five pounds upon me. He put out his hand, and said
something about a cheque for the balance, but, seeing my advantage, I
declared that I had ordered nothing beyond the four guinea-pigs, needed
nothing else, and should pay for nothing else.
Then he asserted that I might have the lot for ten pounds, as it was a
pity to take them out of the cab again.
Still I refused, and he tried to get sentiment into the argument.
He said, “It’s a reg’lar ’appy family. I should ’most call it cruelty
to animals to separate them things again.”
But I was firm, and he became desperate. He said: “Gimme the fiver,
then, and clear out. It’s robbery--that’s what it is, an’ I’m sure the
beasts won’t do you no good. But gimme the money, an’ I’ll fling in a
tortoise to show there’s no ill-feeling, if you’ll go at once.”
I said, “Listen to me; I do not want your tortoise. I’m a married man,
with two grown-up daughters. We all detest wild animals of every sort,
especially tortoises. I shall send your guinea-pigs to a children’s
hospital, where they may or may not be welcomed. For the rest of these
creatures I have no earthly use, and I refuse to take them a yard.”
“That’s not good enough for me,” declared Mr. Muggridge. “I’ve wasted
a whole morning upon you”--I’d been in the shop a bare quarter of an
hour--“and time is money, if birds and animals ain’t. Besides, you
hordered ’em.”
He advanced threateningly, and I stepped forward with no less
indignation; but as I did so, my arm knocked over a cage containing
two long, black, red-beaked birds, which turned out to be Cornish
choughs. These now uttered wild, west-country exclamations, flapped
and fluttered and screamed, upset other cages in their downfall, and
angered a badger (or some kindred brute) that dwelt beneath them in a
box covered with corrugated iron wire.
Then, while I gathered myself from the ruins, ill-luck cast me against
a bowl of goldfish, a sea-water aquarium, the guinea-pigs, and a
consignment of large green lizards that suddenly appeared, without
visible cause, in the full possession of their liberty. These things
fell in an avalanche, and Muggridge’s shop instantly resembled the dark
scene that preludes a pantomime. It is not strange, therefore, when you
consider what I had already been through, that I was among the first of
the intelligent animals present to lose my nerve and my temper.
Frankly I aimed a blow at Muggridge in an unchristian spirit, but
missed him, and fetched down a case of birds’ eggs.
Suspecting the emporium to be on fire, chance passers-by, always ready
to thrust themselves into the misfortunes of other people, now rushed
amongst us. A policeman entered also, and Mr. Muggridge, evidently
disappointed to find his plans thus shattered and his scheme foiled,
endeavoured to give me in charge. I explained the true position,
however, or attempted to do so; but my self-respect deserted me. I
raised my voice as Muggridge raised his; I even used language that will
always be a sorrow to me in moments of retrospection. We raved each
at the other and danced round the policeman, while goldfish flapped
about our feet and green lizards tried to ascend our trouser-legs.
The constable himself turned round and round, licking a pencil and
trying to make notes in a little book. Presently I think he began to
grow giddy and faint-hearted. At any rate, he realised the futility of
working up an effective case, so he shut his book, showed anger, and
took certain definite measures.
First he swept a few promiscuous spectators out of the shop, then he
thrust the infuriated Muggridge back behind his counter, and finally
turned to me.
“I’ll have no more of this tommy rot, or the pair of you’ll have to
come along to the station,” he said. “As for you, Muggridge, it’s your
old game, plantin’ your rubbishy, stinkin’ varmints on unoffendin’
characters before they can open their mouths. I’m up to your
hanky-panky; and you”--now he addressed me--“if you’re not old enough
to know better than come buyin’ these ’ere hanimals, an’ loadin’ a cab
with ’em, just because this man asks you to, you ought to be shut up.
If you take my tip, you’ll go and ’ang yourself--that’s about the best
thing you can do. Anyway, clear out of this ’ere shop.”
I was deeply agitated, hysterical, not master of my words or actions; I
had reached a physical and mental condition upon which the policeman’s
words fell as a fitting climax.
“Thank you,” I said; “I’ve had some unequal advice to-day--good, bad,
and indifferent. But there’s no doubt that yours is the best, the
soundest, the most suited to my case that I’m likely to get anywhere.
I _will_ go and hang myself. Nothing shall become my life like the
leaving of it. Shake hands, constable; you at least have counselled
well.”
I pressed his palm and was gone. I forgot wife, children, business,
honour, and Heaven in that awful moment. I, a member of the Committee
of the Stock Exchange, passed through the streets of London like a mere
escaped lunatic. My shattered, lacerated nerve-centres cried for peace
and oblivion; I longed to be dead and out of it all. My self-respect
was already dead, and what is life without that? I thought of the
future after this nightmare-day, and felt that there could be no future
for me. So I vanished into the fog--a palpitating pariah with one
frantic, overmastering resolution--to destroy myself, and that at once.
“Norton Bellamy has murdered me,” I said aloud.