. . . . . . . .
The cabman perched upon the ancient cab was a patient character and had need to be. He had been waiting outside the house of the Hendrys for some time, when something happened which was certainly more calculated to entertain his leisure than anything that had happened yet.
It consisted of a gentleman apparently falling out of the sky on to the top of the cab, and righting himself with some difficulty in the act of nearly rolling off it. This unexpected visitor, when eventually he came the right way up, revealed to the astonished cabman the face and form of the gentleman with whom he had had a chat recently a little further down the road. A prolonged stare at the newcomer, followed by a prolonged stare at the window just above revealed to the driver that the former had not actually dropped from heaven, but only from the window-sill. But though the incident was not by definition a miracle, it was certainly something of a marvel. Those privileged to see Murrel fall off the window-sill on to the top of the hansom cab might have formed a theory about why he had originally been called Monkey.
The cabman was still more surprised when his new companion smiled across at him in an agreeable manner and said, like one resuming a conversation: “As I was saying–”
It is unnecessary to go back after all these years, and the adventurous consequences they brought forth, to record what he was saying. But it is of some direct importance to the story to record what he said. After a few friendly flourishes he sat himself down firmly with his legs astraddle on the top of the cab, and took out his pocket book. He leaned across at the considerable peril of pitching over, and said, confidentially: “Look here, old fellow, I want to buy your cab.”
Murrel was not entirely unacquainted with the scientific regulation, under which was being enacted the last act of the tragedy of Hendry’s Illumination Colours. He remembered having had an argument a long time ago with Julian Archer who was great on the subject. It was a part of that quality in Julian Archer which fitted him so specially and supremely to be a public man. He could become suddenly and quite sincerely hot on any subject, so long as it was the subject filling the newspapers at the moment. If the King of Albania (whose private life, alas, leaves so much to be desired) were at that moment on bad terms with the sixth German princess who had married into his family, Mr. Julian Archer was instantly transformed into a knight-errant ready to cross Europe on her behalf, without any reference to the other five princesses who were not for the moment in the public eye. The type and the individual will be completely misunderstood, however, if we suppose that there was anything obviously unctuous or pharisaical in his way of urging these mutable enthusiasms. In each case in turn, Archer’s handsome and heated face had always been thrust across the table with the same air of uncontrollable protest and gushing indignation. And Murrel would sit up opposite him and reflect that this was what made a public man; the power of being excited at the same moment as the public press. He would also reflect that he himself was a hopelessly private man. He always felt like a private man, though his family and friends had considerable power in the state; but he never felt so hopelessly and almost pitiably private as when he thus remained like one small frozen object, still moist and chilly in the blast of a furnace.
“You can’t be against it; nobody can be against it,” Archer had cried. “It’s simply a Bill to introduce a little more humanity into asylums.”
“I know it is,” his friend had replied, with some gloom. “It introduces a lot more humanity into asylums. That’s exactly what it does do. You’ll hardly believe it, but there’s quite a lot of humanity still that doesn’t want to be introduced into asylums.” But he recalled the story chiefly because Archer and the newspapers had congratulated each other on another new feature rather relevant to the present case. This was the greater privacy of the proceedings. A special sort of magistrate would settle all such cases in an interview as private as a visit to a physician.
“We’re getting more civilized about these things,” said Archer. “It’s just like public executions. Why we used to hang a man before a huge crowd of people; but now the thing is done more decently.”
“All the same,” grumbled Murrel. “We should be rather annoyed if our friends and relatives began disappearing quietly; and whenever we’d mislaid a mother or couldn’t put our hands on a favourite niece, we heard that our poor relation had been taken away and hanged with perfect delicacy.”