Read Ebook: Lays of Ancient Virginia and Other Poems by Bartley James Avis

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Ebook has 693 lines and 37660 words, and 14 pages

"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 is heart her gentle hibristled 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."

"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.

"My dear fellow," I answered, "nobody ever gave me better advice, and unless circumstances conspire against it, I mean to do as you suggest."

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."

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.

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