Kitabı oku: «The Ivory Gate, a new edition», sayfa 23

'You think it would be impossible' – by this time a small crowd had got round them, but the speaker still addressed his disciple as if no one else at all was listening – 'for the State to take over the great producing and distributing companies. But it has been done already. The State has the Post and the Telegraph Services. They will deal with railways, steamers, coaches, cabs, omnibuses, trams, canals, water, gas, electric light, breweries, bakeries, factories, shops, just as they have dealt with these two. The State can take it all. The State will take the management of all. But, you say, the shares of the company will become Funds. They will, and the Funds will pay interest – but the interest will become rapidly lower and lower, so that what was once five per cent. is now but two and a half, and before long shall be two – one and a half – one – and nothing at all. There will be no cry of spoliation, because the holders of stock will be forced gradually into looking more and more to their own efforts, and because widows and sick people and old people, to whom the stocks were once so useful, will be all provided for by the State as a matter of right, and without any of the old humiliation of pauperdom. Pauper! Oh, heavenly word! Child, in the world of the future – the world which you will help to mould, we shall all be paupers, – every one.'

He spoke with fine enthusiasm, his face lit up, his eyes bright. The girl was almost carried away, until the other Voice began coldly and judicially:

'Nothing is so good for man as to be ruled and kept in discipline, service, and subjection. It is a foolish and a mischievous dream which supposes all men eager for advance. The mass of mankind asks for no advancement. It loves nothing and desires nothing but the gratification of the animal. Give it plenty of animalism and it is satisfied. That condition of society which keeps the mass down and provides for the rise of the ambitious few is the only condition which is reasonable and stable. Base your social order on the inertness of the mass. Make the workman do a good day's work: pay him enough, so that he shall have some of the comforts he desires: educate the clever boy and make him foreman, headman, manager, or artist, journalist, dramatist, novelist. Give him the taste for wealth. Let him have some. Then he, too, will be ready to fight if necessary in the army of order.'

While the other Voice was speaking, there came slouching around the corner into the street where he held the fifth – perhaps the tenth part of a room, a really excellent specimen of the common or London thief, the habitual criminal. He was a young man – the habitual criminal is generally young, because in middle and elderly life he is doing long sentences – he had a furtive look, such as that with which the jackal sallies forth on nocturnal adventures: he had a short slight figure, a stooping and slouching gait, and narrow shoulders. His eyes were bright, but too close together: his mouth was too large and his jowl too heavy: his face was pale, his hair was still short, though growing rapidly: his hands were pendulous: his round hat was too big for his little head: he wore a long loose overcoat. His face, his figure, his look proclaimed aloud what he was.

He stopped at the corner and looked at the little crowd. Everybody, for different reasons, is attracted by a crowd. Professionals sometimes find in crowds golden opportunities. This crowd, however, was already dispersing. The speaker had stopped. Perhaps they had heard other and more fervid orators on the Socialist side. Perhaps they were not in the least interested in the subject. You see, it is very difficult to get the hand-to-mouth class interested in anything except those two organs.

'This street,' said the Master, observing him with professional interest, 'is full – really full – of wealth for the observer. Here is a case now – an instructive though a common case.' The fellow was turning away disappointed, perhaps, at the melting of the crowd and any little hope he might have based upon their pockets. 'My friend' – he heard himself called, and looked round suspiciously – 'you would like, perhaps, to earn a shilling honestly, for once.'

He turned slowly: at the sight of the coin held up before him, his sharp eyes darted right and left to see what chance there might be of a grab and a bolt. Apparently, he decided against this method of earning the shilling. 'What for?' he asked.

'By answering a few questions. Where were you born?'

'I dunno.'

'Where were you brought up? Here? – In this street? Very well. You went to school with the other children: you were taught certain subjects up to a certain standard. What trade were you taught?'

'I wasn't taught no trade.'

'Your father was, I believe, a thief?' – The lad nodded – 'And your mother, too?' – He nodded again, and grinned. – 'And you yourself and your brothers and sisters are all in the same line, I suppose?' – He nodded and grinned again. – 'Here is your shilling.' The fellow took it, and shambled away.

'Father – mother – the whole family, live by stealing. Where there is no Property there can be no theft. In our world, such a creature would be impossible. He could not be born: such parents as his could not exist with us: he could not be developed: there would be no surroundings that would make such a development possible. He would be what, I believe, men of science call a Sport: he would be a deformity. We should put him in a hospital and keep him there until he died.'

'In that world,' said the other Voice, 'there would be deformities of even a worse kind than this – the deformities of hypocrisy and shams. By a thousand shifts and lies and dishonesties the work of the world would be shifted on the shoulders of the weak. The strong man has always used his strength to make the weak man work for him, and he always will. The destruction of Property would be followed by the birth of Property on the very self-same day. There is the power of creation – of invention – which is also a kind of Property. Laws cannot destroy that power. Laws cannot make men industrious. Laws cannot make the strong man work for the weak. Laws cannot prevent the clever man from taking advantage of the stupid man. When all the failures – all the deformities – have been killed off, the able man will still prey upon the dull-witted. Better let the poor wretch live out his miserable life, driven from prison to prison, an example for all the world to see.'

It was at this point that Elsie discovered the loss of her purse. Her pocket had been picked by one of the intelligent listeners in the crowd. She cried out on finding what had happened, in the unphilosophic surprise and indignation with which this quite common accident is always received.

'Child,' said the Master, 'when there is no longer any Property, money will vanish: there will be no purses; even the pocket will disappear, because there will no longer be any use for a pocket. – Did the purse contain much? Suppose you had nothing to lose and nothing to gain. Think of the lightness of heart, the sunshine on all faces, which would follow. I fear you are rich, child. I have observed little signs about you which denote riches. Your gloves are neat and good; your dress seems costly. Better far if you had nothing.'

'Master, if I were like that girl on the other side, would you like me better? Could I be more useful to the cause if I dressed like her?'

The girl was of the common type – they really do seem, at first, all alike – who had on an ulster and a hat with a feather and broken boots.

'If I were like her,' Elsie went on, 'I should be ignorant – and obliged to give the whole day to work, so that I should be useless to you – and my manners would be rough and my language coarse. It is because I am not poor that I am what I am. The day for poverty is not come yet, dear Master.'

'In the future, dear child, there shall be no poverty and no riches. To have nothing will be the common lot. To have all will be the common inheritance. Oh! there will be differences: men shall be as unlike then as now: we shall not all desire the same things. You and such as you will desire Art of every kind. You shall have what you desire. In our world, as in this, like will to like. You shall have the use for yourselves of pictures, of musical instruments, of everything that you want. The rest of the world will not want these things. If they do, more can be made. You shall have dainty food – the rest of the world will always like coarse and common fare. Think not that we shall level up or level down. All will be left to rise or to sink. Only they shall not starve, they shall not thieve, they shall not be sweated. Oh! I know they paint our society as attempts to make all equal. And they think that we expect men no longer to desire the good things in the world. They will desire them – they will hunger after them – but there will be enough for all. The man who is contented with a dinner of herbs may go to a Carthusian convent, which is his place, for we shall have no place for him in a world which recognises all good gifts and assigns to every man his share.'

Then spoke the other Voice, but sadly: 'Dreams! Dreams! There are not enough of the good things to go round – good things would become less instead of more. Without the spur there is no work. Without the desire of creating Property, all that is worth anything in life will perish – all but the things that are lowest and the meanest and the commonest. Men will not work unless they must. By necessity alone can the finest work be ordered and executed. As men have been, so will men always be. The thing that hath been, that shall be again.'

'You have learned some of the lessons of Poverty Lane, Scholar,' said the Master. – 'Let us now go home.'

CHAPTER XXVII
'I KNOW THE MAN'

'Another evening of mystery, Elsie?' said Athelstan.

'Yes. Another, and perhaps another. But we are getting to an end. I shall be able to tell you all to-day or to-morrow. The thing is becoming too great for me alone.'

'You shall tell us when you please. Meantime, nothing new has been found out, I believe. Checkley still glares, George tells me. But the opinion of the clerks seems on the whole more favourable, he believes, than it was. Of that, however, he is not perhaps a good judge.'

'They shall all be turned out,' cried Elsie. 'How dare they so much as to discuss – '

'My sister, it is a very remarkable thing, and a thing little understood, but it is a true thing. People, people – clerks and le Service generally – are distinctly a branch of the great human tribe. They are anthropoid. Therefore, they are curious and prying and suspicious. They have our own faults, my dear.'

All day Elsie felt drawn as with ropes to Mr. Dering's office. Was it possible that after that long evening among the lessons of Poverty Lane he should remember nothing? How was she to get at him – how was she to make him understand or believe what he had done? Could she make the sane man remember the actions and words of the insane man? Could she make the insane man do something which would absolutely identify him with the sane man? She could always array her witnesses: but she wanted more: she wanted to bring Mr. Dering himself to understand that he was Mr. Edmund Gray.

She made an excuse for calling upon him. It was in the afternoon, about four, that she called. She found him looking aged, his face lined, his cheek pale, his eyes anxious.

'This business worries me,' he said. 'Day and night it is with me. I am persecuted and haunted with this Edmund Gray. His tracts are put into my pockets; his papers into my safe: he laughs at me: he defies me to find him. And they do nothing. They only accuse each other. They find nothing.'

'Patience,' said Elsie softly. 'Only a few days – a day or two – then – with your help – we will unravel all this trouble. You shall lose nothing.'

'Shall I escape this mocking devil – this Edmund Gray?'

'I cannot promise. Perhaps. – Now, my dear guardian, I am to be married next Wednesday. I want you to be present at my wedding.'

'Why not?'

'Because things have been said about George: and because your presence will effectually prove that you do not believe them.'

'Oh! Believe them? I believe nothing. It is, however, my experience that there is no act, however base, that any man may not be tempted to do.'

'Happily, it is my experience,' said the girl of twenty-one, 'that there is no act of baseness, however small, that certain men could possibly commit. You will come to my wedding, then. Athelstan will give me away.'

'Athelstan? Yes; I remember. We found those notes, didn't we? I wonder who put them into the safe? Athelstan! Yes. He has been living in low company, I heard – Camberwell. – Rags and tatters.'

'Oh!' Elsie stamped impatiently. 'You will believe anything – anything, and you a lawyer! Athelstan is in the service of a great American journal. – Rags and tatters!'

'American? Oh! yes.' Mr. Dering sat up and looked interested. 'Why, of course. How could I forget it? Had it been yesterday evening, I should have forgot. But it is four years ago. He wrote to me from somewhere in America. Where was it? I've got the letter. It is in the safe. Bring me the bottom right-hand drawer. It is there, I know.' He took the drawer which Elsie brought him, and turned over the papers. 'Here it is among the papers of that forgery. Here is the letter.' He gave it to Elsie. 'Read it. He writes from America, you see. He was in the States four years ago – and – and – What is it?'

'Oh!' cried Elsie, suddenly springing from her chair – 'Oh! Do you know what you have given me? Oh! do you know what you have told me? It is the secret – the secret – of my fortune. Oh! Athelstan gave it to me – Athelstan – my brother!'

Mr. Dering took the letter from her and glanced at the contents. 'I ought not to have shown you the letter,' he said. 'I have violated confidence. I forgot. I was thinking of the trouble – I forgot. I forget everything now – the things of yesterday as well as the things of to-day. Yes; it is true, child: your little fortune came to you from your brother. But it was a secret that he alone had the right to reveal.'

'And now I know it – I know it. Oh! what shall I say to him?' The tears came in her eyes. 'He gave me all he had – all he had – because – oh! for such a simple thing – because I would not believe him to be a villain. Oh! my brother – my poor brother! He went back into poverty again. He gave me all because – oh! for such a little thing! – Mr. Dering!' She turned almost fiercely upon him. 'After such a letter, could you believe that man to be a villain? Could you? Tell me! After such a deed and such a letter!'

'I believe nothing. My experience, however, tells me that any man, whoever he is, may be led to commit – '

'NO! I won't have it said again. – Now, listen, Mr. Dering. These suspicions must cease. There must be an end. Athelstan returned six weeks ago – or thereabouts. That can be proved. Before that time, he was working in San Francisco on the journal. That can be proved. While these forgeries, with which he is now so freely charged, were carried on here, he was abroad. I don't ask you to believe or to disbelieve or to bring up your experience – oh! such experience – one would think you had been a police magistrate all your life.'

'No, Elsie.' Mr. Dering smiled grimly. 'There was no need to sit upon the bench; the police magistrate does not hear so much as the family solicitor. My dear, prove your brother's innocence by finding out who did the thing. That is, after all, the only thing. It matters nothing what I believe – he is not proved innocent – all the world may be suspected of it – until the criminal is found. Remove the suspicions which have gathered about your lover by finding the criminal. There is no other way.'

'Very well, then. I will find the criminal, since no one else can.'

Mr. Dering went on without heeding her words.

'They want to get out a warrant against Edmund Gray. I think, for my own part, that the man Edmund Gray has nothing to do with the business. He is said to be an elderly man and a respectable man – a gentleman – who has held his Chambers for ten years.'

'They need not worry about a warrant,' Elsie replied. 'Tell your brother, Mr. Dering, that it will be perfectly useless. Meantime – I doubt if it is any good asking you – but – if we want your help, will you give me all the help you can?'

'Assuredly. All the help I can. Why not? I am the principal person concerned.'

'You are, indeed,' said Elsie gravely – 'the principal person concerned. Very well, Mr. Dering – now I will tell you more. I know the – the criminal. I can put my hand upon him at any moment. It is one man who has done the whole, beginning with the cheque for which Athelstan was suspected – one man alone.'

'Why, child, what can you know about it? What can you do?'

'You were never in love, Mr. Dering – else you would understand that a girl will do a great deal – oh! a great deal more than you would think – for her lover. It is not much to think for him and to watch for him – and for her brother – the brother who has stripped himself of everything to give his sister!' She was fain to pause, for the tears which rose again and choked her voice.

'But, Elsie – what does this mean? How can you know what no one else has been able to find out?'

'That is my affair, Mr. Dering. Perhaps I dreamed it.'

'Do you mean that you will get back all the papers – all the transfers – the dividends that have been diverted – everything?'

'Everything is safe. Everything shall be restored. – My dear guardian, it is a long and a sad story. I cannot tell you now. Presently, perhaps. Or to-morrow. I do not know how I shall be able to tell you. But for your property, rest easy. Everything will come back to you – everything – except that which cannot be stored in the vaults of the Bank.'

The last words he heard not, or understood not.

'I shall get back everything!' The eyes of the Individualist lit up and his pale cheek glowed – old age has still some pleasures. 'It is not until one loses Property that one finds out how precious it has become. Elsie, you remember what I told you, a day or two ago. Ah! I don't forget quite everything – a man is not the shivering naked soul only, but the complete figure, equipped and clothed, armed and decorated, bearing with him his skill, his wit, his ingenuity, his learning, his past, and his present, his memories and his rejoicings, his sorrows and his trials, his successes and his failures, and his Property – yes – his Property. Take away from him any of these things, and he is mutilated: he is not the perfect soul. Why, you tell me that my Property is coming back – I awake again. I feel stronger already; the shadows are flying before me: even the terror of that strange forgetfulness recedes: and the haunting of Edmund Gray. I can bear all, if I get my Property back again. As for this forger – this miscreant – this criminal – you will hale him before the judge – '

'Yes – yes. We will see about the miscreant afterwards. The first thing is to find the man and recover your Property, and to dispel the suspicions resting on innocent persons. If I do the former, you must aid me in the latter.'

'Assuredly. I shall not shrink from that duty.'

'Very well. – Now tell me about yourself. Sometimes it does good to talk about our own troubles. Tell me more about these forgetful fits. Do they trouble you still?' Her eyes and her voice were soft and winning. One must be of granite to resist such a voice and such eyes.

'My dear' – Mr. Dering softened. 'You are good to interest yourself in an old man's ailments. It is Anno Domini that is the matter with me. The forgetful fits are only symptoms – and the disease is incurable. Ask the oak why the leaves are yellow. – It is the hand of winter. That is my complaint. First the hand of winter, then the hand of Death. Meantime, the voice of the grasshopper sings loud and shrill.' In presence of the simple things of age and death, even a hard old lawyer grows poetic.

'Tell me the symptoms, then. Do you still forget things?'

'Constantly. More and more. I forget everything.'

'Where were you yesterday evening, for instance?'

'I don't know. I cannot remember. I have left off even trying to remember. At one time I racked my brain for hours, to find out, and failed. Now I remember nothing. I never know when this forgetfulness may fall upon me. At any hour. – For instance – you ask me about yesterday evening. I ordered dinner at home. My housekeeper this morning reminded me that I did not get home last night till eleven. Where was I? Where did I spend the evening?'

'At the Club?'

'No – I took a cab this morning and drove there under pretence of asking for letters. I asked if I was there last night. The hall porter stared. But I was not there. I thought that I might have fallen asleep there. I have done so before. Checkley tells me that I went away before him. Where was I? – Child!' – he leaned forward and whispered, with white cheeks – 'I have read of men going about with disordered brains doing what they afterwards forget. Am I one of these unfortunates? Do I go about with my wits wandering? Oh! horrible! I picture to myself an old man – such as myself – of unblemished reputation and blameless life – wandering about the streets demented – without conscience – without dignity – without self-respect – committing follies – things disgraceful – even things which bring men before the law – ' He shuddered. He turned pale.

'No – no,' murmured Elsie. 'You could not. You could never – '

'Such things are on record. They have happened. They may happen again. I have read of such cases. There was a man once – he was like myself – a Solicitor – who would go out and do things, not knowing what he did. They found him out at last doing something so incredibly foolish that there was but one explanation. In another man and a younger man it would have been worse than foolish, it would have been criminal. Then they gave him a companion, and he discovered what he had done. The shame and the shock of it killed him. I have thought of that man of late. Good Heavens! Think, if you can, of any worse disaster. Let me die – let me die, I say, rather than suffer such a fate – such an affliction. I see myself brought before the magistrate – me – myself – at my age, charged with this and with that. What defence? None, save that I did not remember.'

'That could never be,' said Elsie confidently, because she knew the facts. 'If such a thing were to befall, your character would never be changed. You might talk and think differently, but you could never be otherwise than a good man. You to haunt low company? Oh! you could not even in a waking dream. People who dream, I am sure, always remain themselves, however strangely they may act. How could you – you – after such a life as yours, become a haunter of low company? One might perhaps suppose that Athelstan had been living among profligates because he is young and untried – but you? – you? Oh! no. If you had these waking dreams – perhaps you have them – you would become – you would become – I really think you would become' – she watched his face – 'such – such a man as – as – Mr. Edmund Gray, who is so like yourself, and yet so different.'

He started. 'Edmund Gray again? Good Heavens! It is always Edmund Gray!'

'He is now a friend of mine. I have only known him for a week or two. He does not think quite as you do. But he is a good man. Since, in dreams, we do strange things, you might act and speak and think as Edmund Gray.'

'I speak and think as – But – am I dreaming? Am I forgetting again? Am I awake? Edmund Gray is the man whom we want to find.'

'I have found him,' said Elsie quietly.

'The forger – if he is the forger – '

'No – no. Do not make more mistakes. You shall have the truth in a day or two. Would you like to see Edmund Gray? Will you come with me to his Chambers? Whenever you call, you – you, I say – will find him at home.'

'No – no. I know his doctrines – futile doctrines – mischievous doctrines. I do not wish to meet him. What do you mean by mistakes? There are the letters – there are the forgeries. Are there two Edmund Grays?'

'No – only one. He is the man they cannot find. I will show you, if you like, what manner of man he is.'

'No. I do not want to see a Socialist. I should insult him. – You are mysterious, Elsie. You know this man, this mischievous doctrinaire – this leveller – this spoliator. You tell me that he is a good man – you want me to see him. What, I ask, do these things mean?'

'They mean many things, my dear guardian. Chiefly they mean that you shall get back your Property, and that suspicion shall be removed from innocent persons – and all this, I hope, before next Wednesday, when I am to be married. We must all be happy on my wedding day.'

'Will – will Mr. Edmund Gray be there as well?'

'He has promised. – And now, my dear guardian, if you will come round to Gray's Inn with me, I will show you the Chambers of Mr. Edmund Gray.'

'No – no. Thank you, Elsie – I do not wish to make the personal acquaintance of a Socialist.'

'He has Chambers on the second floor. The principal room is large and well furnished. It is a wainscoted room with two windows looking on the Square. It is not a very pretty Square, because they have not made a garden or laid down grass in the middle – and the houses are rather dingy. He sits there in the evening. He writes and meditates. Sometimes he teaches me, but that is a new thing. In the morning he is sometimes there between nine o'clock and twelve. He has an old laundress, who pretends to keep his rooms clean.'

She murmured these words softly, thinking to turn his memory back and make him understand what had happened.

'They are pleasant rooms, are they not?' He made no reply – his eyes betrayed trouble. She thought it was the trouble of struggling memory. – 'He sits here alone and works. He thinks he is working for the advancement of the world. There is no one so good, I think, as Edmund Gray.'

He suddenly pushed back the chair and sprang to his feet.

'My Scholar! You speak of me?'

It was so sudden that Elsie cried out and fell backwards in her chair. She had brought on the thing by her own words, by conjuring up a vision of the Chambers. But – the trouble was not the struggle of the memory getting hold of evasive facts.

'Why, child,' he remonstrated, 'you look pale. Is it the heat? Come, it is cooler outside. Let us go to the Chambers in Gray's Inn. This old fellow – this Dering – here he sits all day long. It is Tom Tiddler's ground. It is paved with gold, which he picks up. The place – let us whisper – because he must be in the outer office – it reeks of Property – reeks of Property.'

He took his hat and gloves. 'My Scholar, let us go.' By force of habit, he shut and locked the safe and dropped the bunch of keys in his pocket.