Читать книгу The Evil That Men Do - M.P. Shiel - Страница 5

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We left Hartwell where the road crosses a bridge in the Bure Valley, and he has tramped on to the second encounter with the motor, wondering how much bitterer the weather will become, and if the world is a place designed to torture and oppress the poor. All the time he is on the look-out for some barn or hollow tree, in which to rest his frame.

He is a big man, about the size of Drayton, the same age—two months' younger—the same black beard, a longish oblong of hair; on his left temple the same raspberry mark; his moustache flows sidewards in the same way, showing the pressure of rather thick lips, and a definite point in the middle of the upper. They have the same straight noses, freckle-splashed faces, glossy hair. Hartwell's photograph would do very well for a photograph of Denner, captain of the S.S. Africa, dead thirty-eight years since. So would Drayton's.

Only Hartwell's hands are different from Drayton's. He is not, however, a working-man of common type; his father was a nail manufacturer; he himself has spent three years at Rugby School, though Rugby has receded many a thousand miles from Hartwell now.

When he was seventeen, his father failed, and died. Then for three years he maintained his mother by hard work as an under-clerk in an electrical machine-makers. He was steady—at one time even religious—had abilities and rose higher in his firm. But his mother died and, alone in the world, he fell in love with a pretty work-girl, who induced him to marry. She was worthless, and drank. One day she appeared at the office and made a scene. He was dismissed. Falling now into misery, he took work at the factory in whose office he had been a clerk. He has been a working-man ever since.

But, an excellent specimen of his class, his remarkable mind has not rusted. He has been a student, a keen watcher of the world's march in science, thought, invention, social changes. He knows a great lot about chemistry and biology, reads German, has filled a pile of note-books with notes at science classes, knows Darwin, Haeckel, by heart. He has been a sober, sagacious workman, bringing up his son, Bobbie, as respectably as he could, ever since his wife died ten years ago.

But he has had misfortunes—disaster after disaster just lately, and the iron has entered into his soul. He has seen Bobbie hungry and one memorable night Bobbie has seen him drunk.

Electricity makes such progress in these days!—it flies. The workman can hardly keep pace with the bewildering changes. What is new to-day will be ancient history to-morrow, and the older types of craftsmen, their pursuits and habits of mind, already fixed, see younger men step in and take their place.

Hartwell has made two inventions from each of which he hoped for wealth, but he lacked the few pounds to patent either. One was patented for him by a manufacturer, who has given him £20, making thousands himself by it. The other is still in the air.

He has seen door after door close in his face, and hope has pined. Too many people seem to be born! something is wrong with the scheme of things, and there's a "fault" in the Machine. His thick firm lips pressed together on that Norwich Road, hisses are on his breath, and now is the winter of his discontent.

Partly by train, partly tramping, he has come from Birmingham to Cromer, allured by the hope of getting employment in a gentleman's stable, for an acquaintance had written him of a vacancy there. But it was filled when he arrived. He is now tramping for London with the vaguest hopes though, certainly, his boots will never outlast that length of road. Already his feet are soaked and congealed. The foxes have holes, but he nowhere to lay his head. His vitals scream for food.

He does not blame himself—he knows that he is little to blame; he does not blame man, nor the devil; his rage is against the nature of the world. But it does not break out—he is not of that sort. Till, just as he comes to that lane leading to "The Anchor," where Drayton has turned in, some rain, as we said before, begins to be mixed with the winds and this little thing, though his mind is of the strongest, irritates Hartwell to fury, and now he breaks out.

"Curse the rain," he mutters, looking up.

And as on he plods, taunting words come to him, mockeries of Nature. "A metal-worker's apprentice would have conceived it better!" he laughs. But the rain only gets worse; there grows a sound of thunder somewhere in the dark; he breathes a wish that lightning may strike him dead—if it can. The lightning can, but is busy.

During the next two miles, his lips are never silent; and while he goes muttering James Drayton is doing what we know to Letty Barnes.

Then again Drayton passes Hartwell on the road and, this time, that motor-car has upon the usually cold mind of Hartwell an effect like madness. How brazen a power the thing is! domineering in its approach, obtrusive in its passage, triumphant in its swift translation from sight. It has the eyes, the smell, the wings, the mutter and meditation of an Ogre. It is like a daughter of Mammon.

Wealth! Hartwell knows what it is, he has stood in mansions. He knows poverty. As the proud chariot of iron flashes past him, he has in his consciousness at one and the same moment both houselessness and the palace, rags and furred robes, the crust and the fat of turtles. It is a double vision almost, which he has, and a lust for wealth, more crass and ugly than he has ever felt, arises and boils in his breast. To shoot in motor cars, anon crushing some wretch on the road—to roll in luxury, while multitude's starve—how good, he thinks!

"Give me that!" he says, and now he is down on his knees, frowning, his hands clutched in his hair, for though his fires are slow to kindle they burn hot and strong, like hard anthracite and he is praying, but not looking up, looking down, not praying to heaven.

"Whatever your name Mammon—Power of the world—give me that! Say ten years, five! I will serve you gladly—say five years—from to-night. Will you? Can you? Are you there? No, you are not there, but if you were—I offer myself: only cloy me—"

His head is bowed right down, frowning, but he rises hastily, ashamed of himself, muttering:

"No! let it not be said that I have entered my second childhood at the age of thirty-seven."

But he goes on his way a worse man. Between Blickling and Aylsham a thought comes into his head of his son, Bobbie, whom he has left at Birmingham with an old friend. He has tenderly loved the lad: but he mutters now:

"Selfishness is the law, my friend, I must not care for you."

Presently, near eight o'clock, he is passing through Aylsham, his fires burned out now, or only sullenly smouldering within him. And again in Aylsham he has overtaken James Drayton, and sees him. It is at the old coaching-house, the "Black Boys;" the motor is before the door, and since the thunderstorm is over, and hardly any rain left for the wind to play with, half-a-dozen admiring boys and girls are gathered round the motor, and Hartwell, too, stops to admire. In the room behind that window, Drayton and McCalmont are dining, and there is a space under the blind by which Hartwell, stooping, spies Drayton, full face.

"Well, certainly," he breathes, "this is odd! there is the same man again, my own twin brother, as I live. It is said that everyone has a double. Ah, lucky person, lucky person!"

Five minutes he stoops there, peering, absorbed in the contemplation of this marvel. Then, with a sigh he straightens himself, and goes his dreary way—through Aylsham—down the railed footway by the lych-gate and down the hill beyond.