Barrie, J M - Better Dead Page 2

  Let us do no one an injustice.

  As it turned out, the Cabinet and Press were but being used in this case as the means to an end.

  A grand work lay ready for Andrew's hand when he was fit to perform it, but he had to learn Naked Truth first. It was ordained that they should teach it him. Providence sometimes makes use of strange instruments.

  Riach had two pounds with him when he came to London, and in a month they had almost gone.

  Now and again he made an odd five shillings.

  Do you know how men in his position live in London?

  He could not afford the profession of not having any.

  At one time he was a phrasemonger for politicians, especially for the Irish members, who were the only ones that paid.

  Some of his phrases have become Parliamentary. Thus "Buckshot" was his. "Mend them--End them," "Grand Old Man," and "Legislation by Picnic" may all be traced to the struggling young man from Wheens.[1]

  He supplied the material for obituary notices.

  When the newspaper placards announced the serious illness of a distinguished man, he made up characteristic anecdotes about his childhood, his reputation at school, his first love, and sent them as the reminiscences of a friend to the great London dailies. These were the only things of his they used. As often as not the invalid got better, and then Andrew went without a dinner.

  Once he offered his services to a Conservative statesman; at another time h e shot himself in the coat in Northumberland Street, Strand, to oblige an evening paper (five shillings).

  He fainted in the pit of a theatre to the bribe of an emotional tragedian (a guinea).

  He assaulted a young lady and her aunt with a view to robbery, in a quiet thoroughfare, by arrangement with a young gentleman, who rescued them and made him run (ten shillings).

  It got into the papers that he had fled from the wax policeman at Tussaud's (half-a-crown).

  More than once he sold his body in advance to the doctors, and was never able to buy it out.[2]

  It would be a labour, thankless as impossible, to recover now all the devices by which Andrew disgraced his manhood during these weeks rather than die. As well count the "drinks" an actor has in a day.

  It is not our part to climb down into the depths after him. He re-appeared eventually, or this record would never have been written.

  During this period of gloom, Clarrie wrote him frequently long and tender epistles.

  More strictly, the minister wrote them, for he had the gift of beautiful sentiment in letters, which had been denied to her.

  She copied them, however, and signed them, and they were a great consolation.

  The love of a good girl is a priceless possession, or rather, in this case, of a good minister.

  So long as you do not know which, it does not make much difference.

  At times Andrew's reason may have been unhinged, less on account of his reverses than because no one spoke to him.

  There were days and nights when he rushed all over London.

  In the principal streets the stolid-faced Scotchman in a straw hat became a familiar figure.

  Strange fancies held him. He stood for an hour at a time looking at his face in a shop-window.

  The boot-blacks pointed at him and he disappeared down passages.

  He shook his fist at the 'bus-conductors, who would not leave him alone.

  In the yellow night policemen drew back scared, as he hurried past them on his way to nowhere.

  In the day-time Oxford Street was his favourite thoroughfare. He was very irritable at this time, and could not leave his fellow wayfarers alone.

  More than once he poked his walking-stick through the eyeglass of a brave young gentleman.

  He would turn swiftly round to catch people looking at him.

  When a small boy came in his way, he took him by the neck and planted him on the curb-stone.

  If a man approached simpering, Andrew stopped and gazed at him. The smile went from the stranger's face; he blushed or looked fierce. When he turned round, Andrew still had his eye on him. Sometimes he came bouncing back.

  "What are you so confoundedly happy about?" Andrew asked.

  When he found a crowd gazing in at a "while you wait" shop-window, or entranced over the paving of a street--

  "Splendid, isn't it?" he said to the person nearest him.

  He dropped a penny, which he could ill spare, into the hat of an exquisite who annoyed him by his way of lifting it to a lady.

  When he saw a man crossing the street too daintily, he ran after him and hit him over the legs.

  Even on his worst days his reasoning powers never left him. Once a mother let her child slip from her arms to the pavement.

  She gave a shriek.

  "My good woman," said Andrew, testily, "what difference can one infant in the world more or less make?"

  We come now to an eccentricity, engendered of loneliness, that altered the whole course of his life. Want had battered down his door. Truth had been evolved from despair. He was at last to have a flash into salvation.

  To give an object to his walks abroad he would fasten upon a wayfarer and follow him till he ran him to his destination. Chance led to his selecting one quarry rather than another. He would dog a man's footsteps, struck by the glossiness of his boots, or to discover what he was in such a hurry about, or merely because he had a good back to follow. Probably he seldom knew what attracted him, and sometimes when he realised the pursuit he gave it up.

  On these occasions there was one person only who really interested him. This was a man, somewhat over middle age, of singularly noble and distinguished bearing. His brow was furrowed with lines, but they spoke of cares of the past. Benevolence had settled on his face. It was as if, after a weary struggle, the sun had broken through the heavy clouds. He was attired in the ordinary dress of an English gentleman; but once, when he raised his head to see if it rained, Andrew noticed that he only wore a woollen shirt, without a necktie. As a rule, his well-trimmed, venerable beard hid this from view.

  He seemed a man of unostentatious means. Andrew lost him in Drury Lane and found him again in Piccadilly. He was generally alone, never twice with the same person. His business was scattered, or it was his pleasure that kept him busy. He struck the observer as always being on the outlook for someone who did not come.

  Why attempt to account for the nameless fascination he exercised over the young Scotchman? We speak lightly of mesmeric influence, but, after all, there is only one mesmerist for youth--a good woman or a good man. Depend upon it, that is why so many "mesmerists" have mistaken their vocation. Andrew took to prowling about the streets looking for this man, like a dog that has lost its master.

  The day came when they met.

  Andrew was returning from the Crystal Palace, which he had been viewing from the outside. He had walked both ways. Just as he rounded the upper end of Chancery Lane, a man walking rapidly struck against him, whirled him aside, and hurried on.

  The day was done, but as yet the lamps only dimmed the streets.

  Andrew had been dreaming, and the jerk woke him to the roar of London.

  It was as if he had taken his fingers from his ears.

  He staggered, dazed, against a 'bus-horse, but the next moment he was in pursuit of the stranger. It was but a continuation of his dream. He felt that something was about to happen. He had never seen this man disturbed before.

  Chancery Lane swarmed with lawyers, but if they had not made way Andrew would have walked over them.

  He clove his way between those walking abreast, and struck down an arm extended to point out the Law Courts. When he neared the stranger, he slightly slackened his pace, but it was a stampede even then.

  Suddenly the pursued came to a dead stop and gazed for twenty minutes in at a pastry-cook's window. Andrew waited for him. Then they started off again, much more leisurely.

  They turned Chancery Lane almost together. All this time Andrew had failed to catch sight of t
he other's face.

  He stopped twice in the Strand for a few minutes.

  At Charing Cross he seemed for a moment at a loss. Then he sprang across the street, and went back the way he came.

  It was now for the first time that a strange notion illumined Andrew's brain. It bewildered him, and left him in darkness the next moment. But his blood was running hot now, and his eyes were glassy.

  They turned down Arundel Street.

  It was getting dark. There were not a dozen people in the narrow thoroughfare.

  His former thought leapt back into Andrew's mind--not a fancy now, but a fact. The stranger was following someone too.

  For what purpose? His own?

  Andrew did not put the question to himself.

  There were not twenty yards between the three of them.

  What Riach saw in front was a short stout man proceeding cheerfully down the street. He delayed in a doorway to light a cigar, and the stranger stopped as if turned to stone.

  Andrew stopped too.

  They were like the wheels of a watch. The first wheel moved on, and set the others going again.

  For a hundred yards or more they walked in procession in a westerly direction without meeting a human being. At last the first of the trio half turned on his heel and leant over the Embankment.

  Riach drew back into the shade, just before the stranger took a lightning glance behind him.

  The young man saw his face now. It was never fuller of noble purpose; yet why did Andrew cry out?

  The next moment the stranger had darted forward, slipped his arms round the little man's legs, and toppled him into the river.

  There was a splash but no shriek.

  Andrew bounded forward, but the stranger held him by one hand. His clear blue eyes looked down a little wistfully upon the young Scotchman, who never felt the fascination of a master-mind more than at that moment. As if feeling his power, the elder man relaxed his hold and pointed to the spot where his victim had disappeared.

  "He was a good man," he said, more to himself than to Andrew, "and the world has lost a great philanthropist; but he is better as he is."

  Then he lifted a paving-stone, and peered long and earnestly into the waters.

  The short stout man, however, did not rise again.

  [1] Some time afterwards Lord Rosebery convulsed an audience by a story about a friend of his who complained that you get "no forrarder" on claret. Andrew was that friend.

  [2] He had fine ideas, but no money to work them out. One was to start a serious "Spectator," on the lines of the present one, but not so flippant and frivolous.

  CHAPTER III

  Lost in reverie, the stranger stood motionless on the Embankment. The racket of the city was behind him. At his feet lay a drowned world, its lights choking in the Thames. It was London, as it will be on the last day.

  With an effort he roused himself and took Andrew's arm.

  "The body will soon be recovered," he said, in a voice of great dejection, "and people will talk. Let us go."

  They retraced their steps up Arundel Street.

  "Now," said Andrew's companion, "tell me who you are."

  Andrew would have preferred to hear who the stranger was. In the circumstances he felt that he had almost a right to know. B ut this was not a man to brook interference.

  "If you will answer me one question," the young Scotchman said humbly, "I shall tell you everything."

  His reveries had made Andrew quick-witted, and he had the judicial mind which prevents one's judging another rashly. Besides, his hankering after this man had already suggested an exculpation for him.

  "You are a Radical?" he asked eagerly.

  The stranger's brows contracted. "Young man," he said, "though all the Radicals, and Liberals, and Conservatives who ever addressed the House of Commons were in ----, I would not stoop to pick them up, though I could gather them by the gross."

  He said this without an Irish accent, and Andrew felt that he had better begin his story at once.

  He told everything.

  As his tale neared its conclusion his companion scanned him narrowly.

  If the stranger's magnanimous countenance did not beam down in sympathy upon the speaker, it was because surprise and gratification filled it.

  Only once an ugly look came into his eyes. That was when Andrew had reached the middle of his second testimonial.

  The young man saw the look, and at the same time felt the hold on his arm become a grip.

  His heart came into his mouth. He gulped it down, and, with what was perhaps a judicious sacrifice, jumped the remainder of his testimonials.

  When the stranger heard how he had been tracked through the streets, he put his head to the side to think.

  It was a remarkable compliment to his abstraction that Andrew paused involuntarily in his story and waited.

  He felt that his future was in the balance. Those sons of peers may faintly realise his position whose parents have hesitated whether to make statesmen or cattle-dealers of them.

  "I don't mind telling you," the stranger said at last, "that your case has been under consideration. When we left the Embankment my intention was to dispose of you in a doorway. But your story moves me strangely. Could I be certain that you felt the sacredness of human life--as I fear no boy can feel it--I should be tempted to ask you instead to become one of us."

  There was something in this remark about the sacredness of human life that was not what Andrew expected, and his answer died unspoken.

  "Youth," continued the stranger, "is enthusiasm, but not enthusiasm in a straight line. We are impotent in directing it, like a boy with a toy engine. How carefully the child sets it off, how soon it goes off the rails! So youth is wrecked. The slightest obstacle sends it off at a tangent. The vital force expended in a wrong direction does evil instead of good. You know the story of Atalanta. It has always been misread. She was the type not of woman but of youth, and Hippomenes personated age. He was the slower runner, but he won the race; and yet how beautiful, even where it run to riot, must enthusiasm be in such a cause as ours!"

  "If Atalanta had been Scotch," said Andrew "she would not have lost that race for a pound of apples."

  The stranger regarded him longingly, like a father only prevented by state reasons from embracing his son.

  He murmured something that Andrew hardly caught.

  It sounded like:

  "Atalanta would have been better dead."

  "Your nationality is in your favour," he said, "and you have served your apprenticeship to our calling. You have been tending towards us ever since you came to London. You are an apple ripe for plucking, and if you are not plucked now you will fall. I would fain take you by the hand, and yet--"

  "And yet?"

  "And yet I hesitate. You seem a youth of the fairest promise; but how often have I let these impulses deceive me! You talk of logic, but is it more than talk? Man, they say, is a reasonable being. They are wrong. He is only a being capable of reason."

  "Try me," said Andrew.

  The stranger resumed in a lower key:

  "You do not understand what you ask as yet," he said; "still less what we would ask in return of you."

  "I have seen something to-day," said Andrew.

  "But you are mistaken in its application. You think I followed the man lately deceased as pertinaciously as you followed me. You are wrong. When you met me in Chancery Lane I was in pursuit of a gentleman to whose case I have devoted myself for several days. It has interested me much. There is no reason why I should conceal his name. It is one honoured in this country, Sir Wilfrid Lawson. He looked in on his man of business, which delayed me at the shop-window of which you have spoken. I waited for him, and I thought I had him this time. But you see I lost him in the Strand, after all."

  "But the other, then," Andrew asked, "who was he?"

  "Oh, I picked him up at Charing Cross. He was better dead."

  "I think," said Andrew, hopefully, "that my es
timate of the sacredness of human life is sufficiently high for your purpose. If that is the only point--"

  "Ah, they all say that until they join. I remember an excellent young man who came among us for a time. He seemed discreet beyond his years, and we expected great things of him. But it was the old story. For young men the cause is as demoralizing as boarding schools are for girls."

  "What did he do?"

  "It went to his head. He took a bedroom in Pall Mall and sat at the window with an electric rifle picking them off on the door-steps of the clubs. It was a noble idea, but of course it imperilled the very existence of the society. He was a curate."

  "What became of him?" asked Andrew.

  "He is better dead," said the stranger, softly.

  "And the Society you speak of, what is it?"

  "The S. D. W. S. P."

  "The S. D. W. S. P.?"

  "Yes, the Society for Doing Without Some People."

  They were in Holborn, but turned up Southampton Row for quiet.

  "You have told me," said the stranger, now speaking rapidly, "that at times you have felt tempted to take your life, that life for which you will one day have to account. Suicide is the coward's refuge. You are miserable? When a young man knows that, he is happy. Misery is but preparing for an old age of delightful reminiscence. You say that London has no work for you, that the functions to which you looked forward are everywhere discharged by another. That need not drive you to despair. If it proves that someone should die, does it necessarily follow that the someone is you?"

  "But is not the other's life as sacred as mine?"

  "That is his concern."

  "Then you would have me--"

  "Certainly not. You are a boxer without employment, whom I am showing what to hit. In such a case as yours the Society would be represented by a third party, whose decision would be final. As an interested person you would have to stand aside."

  "I don't understand."

  "The arbitrator would settle if you should go."

  Andrew looked blank.

  "Go?" he repeated.

  "It is a euphemism for die," said his companion a little impatiently. "This is a trivial matter, and hardly worth going into at any length. It shows our process, however, and the process reveals the true character of the organization. As I have already mentioned, the Society takes for its first principle the sanctity of human life. Everyone who has mixed much among his fellow-creatures must be aware that this is adulterated, so to speak, by numbers of spurious existences. Many of these are a nuisance to themselves. Others may at an earlier period have been lives of great promise and fulfilment. In the case of the latter, how sad to think that they should be dragged out into worthlessness or dishonour, all for want of a friendly hand to snap them short! In the lower form of life the process of preying upon animals whose work is accomplished--that is, of weeding--goes on continually. Man must, of course, be more cautious. The grand function of the Society is to find out the persons who have a claim on it, and in the interests of humanity to lay their condition before them. After that it is in the majority of cases for themselves to decide whether they will go or stay on."