Barrie, J M - Better Dead Page 3

  "But," said Andrew, "had the gentleman in the Thames consented to go?"

  "No, that was a case where assistance had to be given. He had been sounded, though."

  "And do you find," asked Andrew, "that many of them are--agreeable?"

  "I admit," said the stranger, "that so far that has been our chief difficulty. Even the men we looked upon as certainties have fallen short of our expectations. There is Mallock, now, who said that life was not worth living. I called on him only last week, fully expecting him to meet me half-way."

  "And he didn't?"

  "Mallock was a great disappointment," said the stranger, with genuine pain in his voice.

  He liked Mallock.

  "However," he added, brightening, "his case comes up for hearing at the next meeting. If I have two-thirds of the vote we proceed with it."

  "But how do the authorities take it?" asked Andrew.

  "Pooh!" said the stranger.

  Andrew, however, could not think so.

  "It is against the law, you know," he said.

  "The law winks at it," the stranger said. "Law has its feelings as well as we. We have two London magistrates and a minister on the executive, and the Lord Chief Justice is an honorary member."

  Andrew raised his eyes.

  "This, of course, is private," continued the stranger. "These men join on the understanding that if anything comes out they deny all connection with us. But they have the thing at heart. I have here a very kind letter from Gladstone--"

  He felt in his pockets.

  "I seem to have left it at home. However, its purport was that he hoped we would not admit Lord Salisbury an honorary member."

  "Why not?"

  "Well, the Society has power to take from its numbers, so far as ordinary members are concerned, but it is considered discourteous to reduce the honorary list."

  "Then why have honorary members?" asked Andrew in a burst of enthusiasm.

  "It is a necessary precaution. They subscribe largely too. Indeed, the association is now established on a sound commercial basis. We are paying six per cent."

  "None of these American preachers who come over to this country are honorary members?" asked Andrew, anxiously.

  "No; one of them made overtures to us, but we would not listen to him. Why?"

  "Oh, nothing," said Andrew.

  "To do the honorary list justice," said his companion, "it gave us one fine fellow in our honorary president. He is dead now."

  Andrew looked up.

  "No, we had nothing to do with it. It was Thomas Carlyle."

  Andrew raised his hat.

  "Though he was over eighty years of age," continued the stranger. "Carlyle would hardly rest content with merely giving us his countenance. He wanted to be a working member. It was he who mentioned Froude's name to us."

  "For honorary membership?"

  "Not at all. Froude would hardly have completed the 'Reminiscences' had it not been that we could never make up our minds between him and Freeman."

  Youth is subject to sudden fits of despondency. Its hopes go up and down like a bucket in a draw-well.

  "They'll never let me join," cried Andrew, sorrowfully.

  His companion pressed his hand.

  "Three black balls exclude," he said, "but you have the president on your side. With my introduction you will be admitted a probationer, and after that everything depends on yourself."

  "I thought you must be the president from the first," said Andrew, reverently.

  He had not felt so humble since the first day he went to the University and walked past and repast it, frightened to go in.

  "How long," he asked, "does the period of probation last?"

  "Three months. Then you send in a thesis, and if it is considered satisfactory you become a member."

  "And if it isn't?"

  The president did not say.

  "A thesis," he said, "is generally a paper with a statement of the line of action you propose to adopt, subject to the Society's approval. Each member has his specialty--as law, art, divinity, literature, and the like."

  "Does the probationer devote himself exclusively during these three months to his thesis?"

  "On the contrary, he never has so much liberty as at this period. He is expected to be practising."

  "Practising?"

  "Well, experimenting, getting his hand in, so to speak. The member acts under instructions only, but the probationer just does what he thinks best."

  "There is a man on my stair," said Andrew, after a moment's consideration, "who asks his friends in every Friday night, and recites to them with his door open. I think I should like to begin with him."

  "As a society we do not recognise these private cases. The public gain is so infinitesimal. We had one probationer who constructed a very ingenious water-butt for boys. Another had a scheme for clearing the streets of the people who get in the way. He got into trouble about some perambulators. Let me see your hands."

  They stopped at a lamp-post.

  "They are large, which is an advantage," said the president, fingering Andrew's palms; "but are they supple?"

  Andrew had thought very little about it, and he did not quite comprehend.

  "The hands," explained the president, "are perhaps the best natural weapon; but, of course, there are different ways of doing it."

  The young Scotchman's brain, however, could not keep pace with his companion's words, and the president looked about him for an illustration.

  They stopped at Gower Street station and glanced at the people coming out.

  None of them was of much importance, but the president left them alone.

  Andrew saw what he meant now, and could not but admire his forbearance.

  They turned away, but just as they emerged into the blaze of Tottenham Court Road they ran into two men, warmly shaking hands with each other before they parted. One of them wore an eye-glass.

  "Chamberlain!" exclaimed the president, rushing after him.

  "Did you recognise the other?" said Andrew, panting at his heels.

  "No! who was it?"

  "Stead, of the 'Pall Mall Gazette.'"

  "Great God," cried the president, "two at a time!"

  He turned and ran back. Then he stopped irresolutely. He could not follow the one for thought of the other.

  CHAPTER IV

  The London cabman's occupation consists in dodging thoroughfares under repair.

  Numbers of dingy streets have been flung about to help him. There is one of these in Bloomsbury, which was originally discovered by a student while looking for the British Museum. It runs a hundred yards in a straight line, then stops, like a stranger who has lost his way, and hurries by another route out of the neighbourhood.

  The houses are dull, except one, just where it doubles, which is gloomy.

  This house is divided into sets of chambers and has a new frontage, but it no longer lets well. A few years ago there were two funerals from it within a fortnight, and soon afterward another of the tenants was found at the foot of the stair with his neck broken. These fatalities gave the house a bad name, as such things do in London.

  It was here that Andrew's patron, the president, lived.

  To the outcast from work to get an object in life is to be born again. Andrew bustled to the president's chambers on the Saturday night following the events already described, with his chest well set.

  His springy step echoed of wages in the hearts of the unemployed. Envious eyes, following his swaggering staff, could not see that but a few days before he had been as the thirteenth person at a dinner-party.

  Such a change does society bring about when it empties a chair for the superfluous man.

  It may be wondered that he felt so sure of himself, for the night had still to decide his claims.

  Andrew, however, had thought it all out in his solitary lodgings, and had put fear from him. He felt his failings and allowed for every one of them, but he knew his merits too, and his testimonials w
ere in his pocket. Strength of purpose was his weak point, and, though the good of humanity was his loadstar, it did not make him quite forget self.

  It may not be possible to serve both God and mammon, but since Adam the world has been at it. We ought to know by this time.

  The Society for Doing Without was as immoral as it certainly was illegal. The president's motives were not more disinterested than his actions were defensible. He even deserved punishment.

  All these things may be. The great social question is not to be solved in a day. It never will be solved if those who take it by the beard are not given an unbiassed hearing.

  Those were the young Scotchman's views when the president opened the door to him, and what he saw and heard that night strengthened them.

  It was characteristic of Andrew's host that at such a time he could put himself in the young man's place.

  He took his hand and looked him in the face more like a physician than a mere acquaintance. Then he drew him aside into an empty room.

  "Let me be the first to congratulate you," he said; "you are admitted."

  Andrew took a long breath, and the president considerately turned away his head until the young probationer had regained his composure. Then he proceeded:

  "The society only asks from its probationers the faith which it has in them. They take no oath. We speak in deeds. The Brotherhood do not recognise the possibility of treachery; but they are prepared to cope with it if it comes. Better far, Andrew Riach, to be in your grave, dead and rotten and forgotten, than a traitor to the cause."

  The president's voice trembled with solemnity.

  He stretched forth his hands, slowly repeating the words, "dead and rotten and forgotten," until his wandering eyes came to rest on the young man's neck.

  Andrew drew back a step and bowed silently, as he had seen many a father do at a christening in the kirk at Wheens.

  "You will shortly," continued the president, with a return to his ordinary manner, "hear an address on female suffrage from one of the noblest women in the land. It will be your part to listen. To-night you will both hear and see strange things. Say nothing. Evince no surprise. Some members are irritable. Come!"

  Once more he took Andrew by the hand, and led him into the meeting-room; and still his eyes were fixed on the probationer's neck. There seemed to be something about it that he liked.

  It was not then, with the committee all around him, but long afterwards at Wheens, that Andrew was struck by the bareness of the chambers.

  Without the president's presence they had no character.

  The trifles were absent that are to a room what expression is to the face.

  The tenant might have been a medical student who knew that it was not worth while to unpack his boxes.

  The only ornament on the walls was an elaborate sketch by a member, showing the arrangement of the cellars beneath the premises of the Young Men's Christian Association.

  There were a dozen men in the room, including the president of the Birmingham branch association and two members who had just returned from a visit to Edinburgh. These latter had already submitted their report.

  The president introduced Andrew to the committee, but not the committee to him. Several of them he recognized from the portraits in the shop windows.

  They stood or sat in groups looking over a probationer's thesis. It consisted of diagrams of machinery.

  Andrew did not see the sketches, though they were handed round separately for inspection, but he listened eagerly to the president's explanations.

  "The first," said the president, "is a beautiful little instrument worked by steam. Having placed his head on the velvet cushion D, the subject can confidently await results.

  "No. 2 is the same model on a larger scale.

  "As yet 3 can be of little use to us. It includes a room 13 feet by 11. X is the windows and other apertures; and these being closed up and the subjects admitted, all that remains to be done is to lock the door from the outside and turn on the gas. E, F, and K are couches, and L is a square inch of glass through which results may be noted.

  "The speciality of 4, which is called the 'water cure,' is that it is only workable on water. It is generally admitted that release by drowning is the pleasantest of all deaths; and, indeed, 4, speaking roughly, is a boat with a hole in the bottom. It is so simple that a child could work it. C is the plug.

  "No. 5 is an intricate instrument. The advantage claimed for it is that it enables a large number of persons to leave together."

  While the thesis was under discussion, the attendance was increased by a few members specially interested in the question of female suffrage. Andrew observed that several of these wrote something on a piece of paper which lay on the table with a pencil beside it, before taking their seats.

  He stretched himself in the direction of this paper, but subsided as he caught the eyes of two of the company riveted on his neck.

  From that time until he left the rooms one member or other was staring at his neck. Andrew looked anxiously in the glass over the mantelpiece but could see nothing wrong.

  The paper on the table merely contained such jottings as these:--

  "Robert Buchanan has written another play."

  "Schnadhoerst is in town."

  "Ashmead Bartlett walks in Temple Gardens 3 to 4."

  "Clement Scott (?)"

  "Query: Is there a dark passage near Hyndman's (Socialist's) house?"

  "Talmage. Address, Midland Hotel."

  "Andrew Lang (?)"

  Andrew was a good deal interested in woman's suffrage, and the debate on this question in the students' society at Edinburgh, when he spoke for an hour and five minutes, is still remembered by the janitor who had to keep the door until the meeting closed.

  Debating societies, like the company of reporters, engender a familiarity of reference to eminent persons, and Andrew had in his time struck down the champions of woman's rights as a boy plays with his ninepins.

  To be brought face to face with a lady whose name is a household word wheresoever a few Scotchmen can meet and resolve themselves into an argument was another matter.

  It was with no ordinary mingling of respect with curiosity that he stood up with the others to greet Mrs. Fawcett as the president led her into the room. The young man's face, as he looked upon her for the first time, was the best book this remarkable woman ever wrote.

  The proceedings were necessarily quiet, and the president had introduced their guest to the meeting without Andrew's hearing a word.

  He was far away in a snow-swept University quadrangle on a windy night, when Mrs. Fawcett rose to her feet.

  Some one flung open the window, for the place was close, and immediately the skirl of a bagpiper broke the silence.

  It might have been the devil that rushed into the room.

  Still Andrew dreamed on.

  The guest paused.

  The members looked at each other, and the president nodded to one of them.

  He left the room, and about two minutes afterwards the music suddenly ceased.

  Andrew woke with a start in time to see him return, write two words in the members' book, and resume his seat. Mrs. Fawcett then began.

  "I have before me," she said, turning over the leaves of a bulky manuscript, "a great deal of matter bearing on the question of woman's rights, which at such a meeting as this may be considered read. It is mainly historical, and while I am prepared to meet with hostile criticism from the society, I assume that the progress our agitation has made, with its disappointments, its trials, and its triumphs, has been followed more or less carefully by you all.

  "Nor shall I, after the manner of speakers on such an occasion, pay you the doubtful compliment of fulsomely extolling your aims before your face.

  "I come at once to the question of woman's rights in so far as the society can affect them, and I ask of you a consideration of my case with as little prejudice as men can be expected to approach it.

  "In the co
nstitution of the society, as it has been explained to me, I notice chiefly two things which would have filled me with indignation twenty years ago, but only remind me how far we are from the goal of our ambition now.

  "The first is a sin of omission, the second one of commission, and the latter is the more to be deprecated in that you made it with your eyes open, after full discussion, while the other came about as a matter of course.

  "I believe I am right in saying that the membership of this society is exclusively male, and also that no absolute veto has been placed on female candidature.

  "As a matter of fact, it never struck the founders that such a veto in black and white was necessary. When they drew up the rules of membership the other sex never fell like a black shadow on the paper; it was forgotten. We owe our eligibility to many other offices (generally disputed at law) to the same accident. In short, the unwritten law of the _argumentum ad crinolinam_ puts us to the side."

  Having paid the society the compliment of believing that, however much it differed from her views, it would not dismiss them with a laugh, Mrs. Fawcett turned to the question of woman's alleged physical limitations.

  She said much on this point that Andrew saw could not be easily refuted, but, interesting though she made it, we need not follow her over beaten ground.