The City of Beautiful Nonsense Part 12

"I expect I can find one or two little things to do for a few moments,"

she said.

John left her doing them. They mainly consisted of putting the bra.s.s polish and the rags back again in the cupboard from which she had taken them.

It is here that you will see this quality interesting in John, this ability to antic.i.p.ate possibilities. It was not really the victory of Mrs. Rowse that had impelled him to the sacrifice of his watch-chain.

It is not consistent with human nature for any man to p.a.w.n an article of value--far less one which implies the possession of another--in order to pay his washing bill. Washing, like the income tax, is one of those indemnities in life which appear to have no justice in their existence.

It would always seem that your integrity were still preserved, that you were still a man of honour if you could avoid paying them.

I know a man, who has eluded the income tax authorities for seven years, and he is held in the highest esteem as a man of ac.u.men, ability, and the soul of honour. I admit that this opinion is only held of him by those who are endeavouring to do the same as he. A man, for instance, who belongs to the same club and pays his income tax to the last shilling, thinks him to be a hopelessly immoral citizen and would believe him capable of anything. But this is not fair. It would be far more just to say that the man who pays his income tax to the uttermost farthing is capable of nothing--invertebrate.

It was not, then, alone to pay his washing bill that John decided to part with the gold watch-chain. He had, in a moment of inspiration, conjured before him the possibility of asking Jill to lunch, and these two motives, uniting from opposite quarters of the compa.s.s of suggestion to one and the same end, he sacrificed the last pretentions he might have claimed to the opulence conveyed by a gold watch-chain and repaired to Payne and Welcome's.

With a bold and unconscious step, he strode into the little side entrance, which is a feature of all these jeweller's shops displaying the mystical sign of the three bra.s.s b.a.l.l.s. Without the slightest sense of shame, he pushed open one of the small doors that give admittance to the little boxes--those little boxes where the confession of one's poverty is made. And to no sympathetic ear of a gentle priest are those terrible confessions to be whispered--the most terrible confession you can make in this world. The man to whom you tell your story of shame is greedy and willing to listen, eager and inexorable to make your penance as heavy as he may. A bailiff is, perhaps, more stony of heart than a p.a.w.nbroker; yet both are brothers in trade. The dearest things in the life of anyone are their possessions, and both these tradesmen deal in their heartless confiscation. The woman out at elbow, hollow-eyed, who comes to p.a.w.n her wedding ring, the man--shabby--genteel--wearing, until the nap is gone and the sleeves are frayed, the garment of his self-respect, who comes to put away his best and Sunday coat; they are all one to the p.a.w.nbroker. He beats them down to the last farthing, well knowing that, having once determined to part with their possessions, they will not willingly go away again without that for which they came. He has them utterly at his mercy. They are all one to him. The story in their faces is nothing to his eyes. He signs a hundred death warrants in the tickets that he writes every day--death warrants to possessions well-nigh as dear as life; but it means nothing to him.

The awful thought about it all, is to consider the ease with which one loses the sense of shame which, upon a first transaction of the kind, is a hot wind blowing on the face, burning the cheeks to scarlet.

On the first occasion that John was driven to such dealing, he pa.s.sed that guilty side entrance many times before he finally summoned courage to enter. Every time that he essayed the fatal step, the street became full of people whom he knew. There was that editor who was considering his last short story! He turned swiftly, his heel a sudden pivot, and scrutinised the objects in the jeweller's window, then harried away up the street, as though he were ashamed of wasting his time. A glance over the shoulder, satisfied him that the editor was out of sight and back he slowly came. This time he had got within a foot of the door--a foot of it. One step more and he would have been in the sheltering seclusion of that narrow little pa.s.sage! There was the girl who sold him stamps in the post-office--the girl who smiled at him and said she had read a beautiful story of his in one of the magazines! He had looked up quickly as though he had mistaken the number on the door, then marched into the next shop on the left, as if that were the one he had been looking for. When he had got in, he realised that it was a butcher's.

The butcher, in a blithe voice, had said:

"And what this morning, sir?"

"I want--can you tell me the time?" said John.

In about half an hour there came a moment when the street was empty.

John had seized it and vanished up the little pa.s.sage. But the ordeal was not over then. He had had to face the high priest of poverty--to tell to him the unforgivable, the mortal crime of penury. And there had been someone in the next confessional--someone hardened in sin--who could hear every single word that he said, and even so far over-stepped the bounds of decency as to look round the corner of their part.i.tion.

"How much will you give me for this?" said John, laying his watch upon the counter. It was the watch his mother had given him, the watch for which she had lovingly stinted herself of ten pounds in order to mark, with degree, his twenty-first birthday.

The high priest had picked it up superciliously.

"D'you want to sell it?"

"No--oh, no! Only--p.a.w.n it."

"Well, how much d'you want?"

"I'd rather you said," replied John meekly.

The high priest shrugged his shoulders. It was a wasting of his time, he said, to go on with nonsense like that.

"How much do you want?" he repeated.

"Five pounds," said John, and suddenly, without knowing how, found the watch back again in his possession. The high priest had turned to the hardened sinner in the next confessional, and he was left there looking at it blankly in the palm of his open hand. He scarcely knew how he had come by it again. In the midst of the other transaction, the p.a.w.nbroker presently addressed him over his shoulder--loudly, so that all in the shop could hear:

"I'll give you two pounds," he had said--"And that's about as much as I could sell it for myself."

Two pounds! It was an insult to that dear, little, old, white-haired lady who had sc.r.a.ped and saved to buy him the best she knew.

"It cost ten pounds!" John said boldly.

"Ten pounds!" The laugh he gave was like the breaking of gla.s.s. "The person who gave ten pounds for that must have wanted to get rid of money in a hurry."

Wanted to get rid of money in a hurry! If he could have seen the number of dainty shawls the thin white fingers had knitted and the trembling hands had sold in order to ama.s.s the fortune of that ten pounds, he would not have talked of hurry.

"I'll give you two pounds five," he had added. "Not a farthing more and if you take it away somewhere else and then bring it back here again, I'll only give you two pounds, what I said at first."

When the blood is mounting to your forehead, when it seems you are crushed about by those watching your discomfort till the warmth of their pressing, phantom bodies brings the perspiration out in beads upon your face, you will take anything to get away.

The p.a.w.nbroker had made out the ticket as John mumbled his name and address.

"Got a penny--a penny for the ticket?" said the man.

To be compelled to make this confession--the most unabsolvable of all--that he had nothing in his pocket, was the crisis to his suffering.

The high priest sniffed, smiled and counted out two pounds four and elevenpence. Then John had turned and fled.

Out in the street again, he had breathed once more. The air was purer there. The pa.s.sers-by, hearing the money jingle in his pocket, held him in higher esteem than did those devotees in the chapel of unredemption.

He could even stop and look in the windows of the jeweller's shop--that open, smiling face of a shop window which, beneath its smug and shiny respectability, concealed all the secret, sordid crimes of poverty--the polished pledges unredeemed, that lay deceptively upon the gla.s.s shelves as though they had come just new from the maker's hands.

It was then, gazing in the window, on that memorable day when he had made his first confession, that John had seen the little bra.s.s man. He stood there on a gla.s.s shelf along with dozens of other unredeemed trinkets, his low-crowned top-hat, his long-tailed, slim-waisted, Georgian coat and many-b.u.t.toned vest, giving him an air of distinction which none of the other objects around him possessed. His att.i.tude, his pose, was that of a _Chevalier d'honneur_--a chivalrous, courteous, proud old gentleman. The one hand resting on the hip, was full of dignity. The other stretched out as though to reach something, John came later, on acquaintance, to learn the fuller significance of that. But though all the features of his face were worn away by hands that had held him, gripping him as they pressed him down, a seal upon the molten wax, it had no power to lessen his undeniable dignity. For all his shapelessness of eyes and nose and mouth, there was not an inch thereby detracted from his stature. From the first moment that he had seen him, the little bra.s.s man had taken his stand in John's mind as the figure of all n.o.bility, all honour, and all cleanliness and generosity of heart.

To see that little figure in bra.s.s was to covet him. John walked back without hesitation into the shop; but this time it was through the jeweller's entrance--this time it was with the confidence of one who comes to buy, not to sell, with the self-righteousness of the virtue of two pounds four and eleven-pence, not with the shame of the sin of poverty.

Ah, they treat you differently on this side of the counter. If you were ordering a High Ma.s.s to be sung, the priest of poverty could treat you with no greater deference. They may have thought he was mad--most probably they did. It is not characteristic of the man who comes without a penny to pay for the ticket as he p.a.w.ns his watch, to immediately purchase, haphazard, a little trinket that is of no use to anyone. The high priest of poverty, himself, will tell you that the sin must weigh heavy with need upon the mind before the tongue can bring itself to confess.

They had looked at him in no little surprise as he re-entered; but when he had asked to be shown the little bra.s.s man, they cast glances from one to another, as people do when they think they are in the presence of a wandering mind.

"How much do you want for it?" John had asked.

"Seven and six. It's very good--an old seal, you know, quite an antique."

John considered the one pound fifteen which he owed out of that two pounds four and elevenpence.

"I'm afraid that's too much," said he.

"Ah--it's worth it. Why, that's over a hundred years old--quite unique."

"I'm afraid it's too much," John repeated.

"Well--look here--I'll tell you what we'll do. You can have it for seven shillings, and we'll give you six on it any day you like to bring it back."

They could have offered no greater proof than that of the value in which they held it. If a p.a.w.nbroker will buy back an article at almost the same price that he sells it, he must indeed be letting you have it cheap. This offering to take back the little bra.s.s man at only a shilling less than he was asking for it, was the highest expression of honesty with which he could defend his demands.

John accepted the conditions--paid out his seven shillings and bore the little _Chevalier d'honneur_ in bra.s.s away.

It was three months later, he had only had breakfast for two days--breakfast, which consisted of toast made from a loaf that was ten days old, bloater paste which keeps for ever, and coffee which can--if you know where to get it--be obtained on credit. It was winter-time and the cold had made him hungry. Coals had run out. The last few sc.r.a.pings of dust had been gathered out of that cupboard on the landing.

Then depression set in. Depression is a heartless jade. She always pays you a visit when both stomach and pocket are empty. Putting his face in his hands, John had leant on the mantel-piece. There was nothing to p.a.w.n just then. Everything had gone! Suddenly, he became aware that he was gazing at the little bra.s.s man, and that the little bra.s.s man had got one hand aristocratically upon his hip, whilst the other was holding out something as though secretly to bestow it as a gift. John looked, and looked again. Then he saw what it was. The little bra.s.s man was offering him six shillings and a spasm of hunger creaking through him--he had taken it.