Читать книгу The Green Overcoat - Hilaire Belloc - Страница 9

In the smoking-room of Sir John Perkin's house upon the same evening of Monday, the 2nd of May, sat together in conversation a merchant and a friend of his, no younger, a man whose name was Charles Kirby, whose profession was that of a solicitor. The name of the merchant who had retired apart to enjoy with this friend a reasonable and useful conversation, was Mr. John Brassington. He was wealthy, he dealt in leather; he was a pillar of the town of Ormeston, he had been its mayor. He was an honest man, which is no less than to say the noblest work of God.

Mr. John Brassington was, in this month of May, sixty years of age. He was tall, but broad in shoulder though not stout. He carried the square grey whiskers of a forgotten period in social history. He had inherited from his father, also a mayor of Ormeston, that good business in the leather trade; it was a business he had vastly increased. He had not been guilty in the whole of his life of any act of meanness or of treachery where a competitor was concerned, nor of any act of harshness in the relations between himself and any of his subordinates. His expression was in one way determined, in another rather troubled and uncertain; by which I mean that there were strong lines round the mouth which displayed a habit of decision in business affairs, some power of self-control, and a well ordered life; but his lips were mobile and betrayed not a little experience of suffering, to which we must attribute certain extremes which his friends thought amiable, but which his critics (for he had no enemies) detested.

Mr. Brassington had married at thirty-one years of age a woman quiet in demeanour, and in no way remarkable for any special talent or charm. She was the daughter of a clergyman in the town. She brought him a complete happiness lasting for four years. She bore him one child, and shortly after the birth of that child, a son, she died.

Now Mr. Brassington, like most of his kind, was a man of strong and secret emotions. He loved his country, he was attached to the pictures which the public press afforded him of his political leader, and he adored his wife. Her death was so sudden, the habit of his married life, though short, had struck so deep a root in him, that from the moment of losing her he changed inwardly, and there began to appear in him those little exaggerations of which I have spoken. The best of these was too anxious an attachment to the son who must inherit his wealth. The next best a habit of giving rather too large and unexpected sums of money to objects which rather too suddenly struck him as worthy. To these habits of mind he had added excursions into particular fields of morals. In one phase he had been a teetotaller. He escaped from this only to fall into the Anti-Foreign-Atrocities fever. He read Tolstoy for one year, and then passed from that emotion into a curious fit of land nationalisation. Finally, he settled down for good into the Anti-Gambling groove.

By the time this last spiritual adventure had befallen Mr. Brassington he was nearer fifty than forty years of age, and the detestation of games of hazard was to provide him for the rest of his life with such moral occupation as his temperament demanded.

Certain insignificant but marked idiosyncrasies in his dress accompanied this violence of moral emotion. For some reason best known to himself, he never carried an umbrella or a walking-stick. He wore driving gloves upon every possible occasion, suitable and unsuitable, and he affected in particular, in all weathers not intolerably warm, a remarkable type of Green Overcoat with which the reader is already sufficiently acquainted. The irreverent youth of his acquaintance had given it a number of nicknames, and had established a series in the lineage of this garment, for as each overcoat grew old it was regularly replaced by a new one of precisely the same cloth and dye, and lined with the same expensive fur.

He told not a soul—only his chief friend and (of course) his servants had divined it—but Mr. Brassington lent to that Green Overcoat such private worship as the benighted give their gods. It was a secret and strange foible. He gave to it in its recurrent and successive births power of fortune and misfortune. Without it, he would have dreaded bankruptcy or disease. In the hands of others, he thought it capable of carrying a curse.

The son to whom his affections were so deeply devoted bore the three names of Algernon Sawby Leonidas (Sawby had been his mother's family name), and was now grown up to manhood. He had been at Cambridge, had taken his degree the year before, but had lingered off and on for his rowing, and "kept his fifth year." He divided his time between London lodgings and the last requirements of his college.

On that day in May with which I am dealing it was to consult upon this son of his that Mr. Brassington had left the crowd at Sir John Perkin's and had shut himself with Charles Kirby into the smoking-room.

Mr. Kirby was listening, for the fifteenth or twentieth time, to his friend's views upon Algernon Sawby Leonidas, which lad, in distant Cambridge, was at that moment doing precisely what his father and his father's lawyer were about, drinking port, but with no such long and honest life behind him as theirs.

It was Mr. Kirby's way to listen to anything his friends might have to say—it relieved them and did not hurt him. In the ordinary way he cared nothing whether he was hearing a friend's tale for the first or for the hundredth time; he had no nerves where friendship was concerned, and friendship was his hobby. But in this late evening he did feel a movement of irritation at hearing once again in full detail the plans for Algernon's life spun out in their regular order, as though they were matter for novel advice.

Mr. Brassington was at it again—the old, familiar story! How, properly speaking, the Queen should have knighted him when she came to Ormeston during his mayoralty; how, anyhow, King Edward might have given him a baronetcy, considering all he had done during the war. How he didn't want it for himself, but he thought it would steady his son. How he would have nothing to do with paying for such things; how he had heard that the usual price was £25,000; how that was robbing his son! Robbing his son, sir! Robbing his son of a thousand pounds a year, sir! How Mr. Brassington would have that baronetcy given him for the sake of his son, of hearty goodwill, or not at all.

Mr. Kirby listened, more and more bored.

"I 've told you, Brassington, twenty times! They came to me about it and you lost your temper. They came to me about it again the other day, and it 's yours for the asking, only hang it all! you must do something public again, they must have a peg to hang it on."

Whereat Mr. Kirby's closest and oldest friend went at him again, recited the baronetcy grievance at full length once more, and concluded once more with his views upon Algernon Sawby Leonidas.

When Mr. Brassington had come to the end of a sentence and made something of a pause, Mr. Kirby said—

"I thought you were going to Belgium?"

Mr. Brassington was a little pained.

"I have arranged to take the night mail," he said gravely. "I shall walk down. Will you come to the station with me?"

"Oh, yes!" said Mr. Kirby briskly. "It 'll give me a nice walk back again all through the rain. If you think all that about Algernon you shouldn't have sent him to Cambridge."

"I sent him to Cambridge by your advice, Kirby," said Mr. Brassington with dignity.

"I would give it again," said Mr. Kirby, crossing his legs. "It's an extraordinary thing that a rich man like Perkin has good port one day and bad port another. … He ought to go to Cambridge. I have a theory that everyone should go to Cambridge who can afford it, south-east of a line drawn from——"

"Don't, Charles, don't," said Mr. Brassington, a little pained, "it 's very serious!"

Mr. Kirby looked more chirpy than ever.

"I didn't say your ideas were right; I don't think they are. I said that if you had those ideas it was nonsense to send him to Cambridge. Why shouldn't he drink? Why shouldn't he gamble? What 's the harm?"

"What 's the——?" began John Brassington, with a flash in his eyes.

"Well, well," said Kirby soothingly, "I don't say it 's the best thing in the world. What I mean is you emphasise too much. You know you do. Anyhow, John, it doesn't much matter; it 'll all come right."

He stared at the fire, then added—

"Now, why can't I get coals to burn like that? Nothing but pure white ash!"

He leant forward with a grunt, stirred the fire deliberately, and watched the ash with admiration as it fell.

"Kirby," said John Brassington, "it will break my heart!"

"No it won't!" said Mr. Kirby cheerfully.

"I tell you it will!" replied the other with irritation, as though the breaking of the heart were an exasperating matter. "And one thing I am determined on—determined——" The merchant hesitated, and then broke out abruptly in a loud voice, "Do you know that I have paid his gambling debts four times regularly? Regularly with every summer term?"

"It does you honour, John," said Mr. Kirby.

"Ah, then," said Mr. Brassington, with a sudden curious mixture of cunning and firmness in his voice, "I haven't paid the last, though!"

"Oh, you haven't?" said Mr. Kirby, looking up. He smelt complications.

"No, I haven't …! I gave him fair warning," said the elderly merchant, setting his mouth as squarely as possible, but almost sobbing in his heart. "Besides which it 's ruinous."

"I wonder if he gave the young bloods fair warning?" mused Mr. Kirby. "Last Grand National——"

"Oh, Lord, Charles!" burst out Mr. Brassington, uncontrollable. "D'ye know what, what that cub shot me for? Curse it all, Kirby, two thousand pounds!"

"The devil!" said Charles Kirby.

"It is the Devil," said John Brassington emphatically.

And it was, though he little knew it, for it was in that very moment that the Enemy of Mankind was at work outside in the hall upon the easy material of Professor Higginson. It was in that very moment that the Green Overcoat was enclosing the body of the Philosopher, and was setting out on its adventures from Sir John Perkin's roof. Even as Mr, Brassington spoke these words the outer door slammed. Kirby, looking up, suddenly said—

"I say, they 're going! What about your train?"

"There 's plenty of time," said Brassington wearily, "it 's only twelve. Do listen to what I am saying."

"I 'm listening," said Kirby respectfully.

"Well," went on Mr. Brassington, "there 's the long and the short of it, I won't pay."

Mr. Kirby poked the fire.

"The thing to do," he said at last in a meditative sort of tone, "is to go down and give the young cubs Hell!"

"I don't understand you, Charles," said Mr. Brassington quietly; "I simply don't understand you. I was written to and I hope I replied with dignity. I was written to again, and I answered in a final manner. I will not pay."

"I have no doubt you did," said Mr. Kirby. "It 's a curious thing how eagerly a young man will take to expectations!"

"You simply don't know what you 're saying, Charles," answered Mr. Brassington; "and if I didn't know you as well as I do, I 'd walk out of the room."

"I know what I am saying exactly," riposted Mr. Kirby with as much heat as his quizzical countenance would allow. "I was going to follow it up if you hadn't interrupted me. I say it 's a curious thing how a young man will be moved by expectations. That 's why they gamble. Thank God, I never married! They like to see something and work for it. That 's why they gamble. You won't understand me, John," he said, putting up a hand to save an interruption; "but that 's why when I was a boy my father put me into the office and said that if I worked hard something or other would happen, something general and vague—esteem, good conscience, or some footling thing called success."

"I wish you wouldn't say 'footling,'" interjected John Brassington gravely.

"I didn't," answered Mr. Kirby without changing a muscle, "it 's a horrible word. Anyhow, if my dad had said to me, 'Charles, my boy, there 's £100 for you in March if you keep hours, but if you 're late once not a farthing,' by God, John, I 'd have worked like a nigger!"

Mr. Brassington looked at the fire and thought, without much result.

"I can't pay it, Charles, and I won't," he said at last. "I 've said I wouldn't, and that 's enough. I have written and said I wouldn't, and that 's more. But even if I had said nothing and had written nothing, I wouldn't pay. He must learn his lesson."

"Oh, he 'll learn that all right!" said Mr. Kirby carelessly. "He 's learning it now like the devil. It 's an abominable shame, mind you, and I don't mind telling you so. I 've a good mind to send him the money myself."

"If you do, Charles," said John Brassington, with one of his fierce looks, "I 'll, I 'll——"

"Yes, that's what I was afraid of," said Mr. Kirby thoughtfully. "You 're an exceedingly difficult man to deal with. … I shouldn't have charged him more than five per cent. You 'll lose your train, John."

John Brassington looked at his watch again.

"You haven't been much use to me, Charles," he said, sighing as he rose.

"Yes, I have, John," said Mr. Kirby, rising in his turn. "What do you do with your evening clothes when you run up to town by the night train like this?"

"I change at my rooms in town when I get in, Charles," said Mr. Brassington severely, "you know that as well as I do—and I wear my coat up to town."

"They say you wear it in bed," was Mr. Kirby's genial answer. "I 'll come out and help you on with it, and we 'll start."

The two men came out from the smoking-room into the hall. They found a number of guests crowding for their cloaks and hats. They heard the noise of wheels upon the drive outside.

"I told you how it would be, John," said Mr. Kirby. "You won't be able to get through that crush. You won't get your coat in time, and you 'll miss the train."

"That's where you 're wrong, Charles," said Mr. Brassington, with a look of infinite organising power. "I always leave my coat in the same one place in every house I know."

He made directly for the door, where a large and sleepy servant was mounting guard, stumbled to a peg that stood in the entry, and discovered that the coat was gone.

There followed a very curious scene.

The entry was somewhat dark. It was only lit from the hall beyond. Mr. Kirby, looking at his friend as that friend turned round from noting his loss, was astonished to see his face white—so white that it seemed too clearly visible in the dark corner, and it was filled with a mixture of sudden fear and sudden anger. From that face came a low cry rather than a phrase—

"It's gone, Charles!"

The louty servant started. Luckily none of the guests heard. Mr. Kirby moved up quickly and put his hand on Brassington's arm.

"Now, do manage yourself, John," he said. "What 's gone?"

"My Green Overcoat!" gasped Mr. Brassington in the same low tone passionately.

"Well?"

"Well! You say 'well'—you don't understand!"

"Yes, I do, John," said Mr. Kirby, with a sort of tenderness in his voice. "I understand perfectly. Come back here with me. Be sensible."

"I won't stir!" said Mr. Brassington irresolutely.

My. Kirby put a hand affectionately upon his old friend's shoulder and pushed him to the door of the smoking-room they had just left. He shut that door behind him. None of the guests had noticed. It was so much to the good.

"It 's gone! It 's gone!" said John Brassington twice.

He had his hands together and was interlacing the fingers of them nervously.

Mr. Kirby was paying no attention; he was squatting on his hams at a sideboard, and saying—

"It 's lucky that I do John Perkin's business for him, I 'm being damned familiar."

He brought out a decanter of brandy, chucked the heel of Mr. Brassington's port into the fire, and poured out a glassful of the spirit.

"I always forget your last craze, John," he said; "but if I was a doctor I should tell you to drink that."

It 's gone! It 's gone!" said John Brassington twice.

"John Brassington drank a little of the brandy, and Mr. Kirby went on—

"Don't bother about Belgium to-night, my boy. In the first place, take my overcoat. I am cleverer than you in these crushes, I don't even hang it on a peg. I leave it" (and here he reached behind a curtain), "I leave it here," and he pulled it out.

It was no more than an easy mackintosh without arms. He put it on his unresisting friend, who simply said—

"What are you going to do, Charles?"

"I am going to take orders," said Charles Kirby, suddenly pulling out from his pocket a square of fine, black silk, and neatly adjusting it over his shirt front. "I haven't got a parsons dog collar on, but a man can walk the streets in this. After all, some of the clergy still wear the old-fashioned collars and white tie, don't they? "

John Brassington smiled palely.

"Oh, it 's in the house!" he said. "It 's sure to be in the house somewhere!"

"Now, John," said Charles Kirby firmly, "don't make a fool of yourself. Don't ask for that coat. It 's the one way not to get it. Stay where you are, and I 'll bring you news."

He went out, and in five minutes he came back with news.

"Fifty people went out before we got up, John. No one knows who they were. The idiot at the door could only remember the Quaker lot and My-lord, and Perkin 's so fussed that he can do nothing but swear, and that 's no use. You 've simply got to come along with me, and we 'll walk home through the rain. Take Belgium at your leisure."

"It isn't Belgium that 's worrying me!" said poor Mr. Brassington.

"No, I know," said Charles Kirby soothingly. "I understand."

The two men went out into the night and the storm. Charles Kirby enjoyed bad weather; it was part of his manifold perversity. He tried to whistle in the teeth of the wind as they went along the main road towards the Crampton Park suburb of the town. Brassington strode at his side.

"You didn't order a carriage," said Kirby after a little while; "you didn't know it was going to rain. I suppose that Green Overcoat of yours has got luck in the lining?"

"It has a cheque-book of mine in the pocket," said John Brassington.

"Yes, but that 's not what you 're bothering about," said Mr. Kirby. "You 're bothering about the luck. For a man who hates cards, John, you 're superstitious."

For some paces Brassington said nothing, then he said—

"Long habit affects men."

"Of course it does," said Mr. Kirby, with the fullest sympathy. "That is why so many people are afraid of death. They 're afraid of the change of habit."

And after that nothing more was said until they came to the lodge gates of that very large, ugly, convenient and modern house, which John Brassington had built and for no reason at all had called "Lauderdale."

"Shall I come up to the door with you, John?" said Mr. Kirby.

"If you don't mind," answered Brassington doubtfully.

"Not a bit," said Mr. Kirby cheerfully. "If I had grounds as big as yours I shouldn't go through them alone."

The two men walked up the short way to the main door. When it was opened for them, the first thing Mr. Brassington said to his servant was—

"Has anyone brought back my overcoat?"

The servant had seen nothing of it.

"It 's not here," said Mr. Brassington, turning round to Mr. Kirby. "Come in."

"No, I won't, John," said Mr. Kirby. "I 'll ring you up in the morning. I 'll do better than come in, I 'll try and find it for you."

"You 're a good friend, Charles," said John Brassington, with meaning and simplicity. He had got a blow.

"Meanwhile, John," said Kirby, standing outside and dripping in the rain, "remember it 's doing some other fellow heaps of good. Heaps and heaps and heaps! I should like a drink."

"Come in," said Brassington again.

"Very well," said Kirby as he came in; "but I won't take off my hat."

Mr. Brassington had wine sent for, and Charles Kirby drank.

"It 's too late to drink wine," he said when he had taken three or four glasses. "It 's a good thing that I don't care about the office, isn't it? Good night."

The servant held the door open for him, and Brassington walked off; but when the master of the house was out of sight and hearing, Mr. Kirby stopped abruptly on the steps, and turning to the servant just before the door was shut upon him, said—

"Who did you speak to to-day about your master's overcoat?"

The man was so startled that he blurted out—

"Lord, sir, I never said a word! It was the coachman who spoke to the young gentleman when the young gentleman saw it. He didn't borrow it, sir. He was a friend of Mr. Algernon's."

"Was he?" said Mr. Kirby. "Well, all right," and he turned to go down the drive. He reflected that it was a mile and a half to his own home; but then, there was the storm still raging and he liked it, and, thank Heaven, he never got up earlier than he could help. He therefore proceeded to whistle, and as he whistled, to consider curiously the soul of that old friend of thirty years, whom he loved with all his heart. Next he made a picture of a young gentleman, a friend of his friend's son, coming and asking to see the Green Overcoat, and learning it by heart. Why? Mr. Kirby didn't know. He stacked the fact up on a shelf and left it there.