The City of Beautiful Nonsense

by E. Temple Thurston

John left her doing them. They mainly consisted of putting the brass polish and the rags back again in the cupboard from which she had taken them.

It is here that you will see this quality interesting in John, this ability to anticipate possibilities. It was not really the victory of Mrs. Rowse that had impelled him to the sacrifice of his watch-chain. It is not consistent with human nature for any man to pawn an article of value--far less one which implies the possession of another--in order to pay his washing bill. Washing, like the income tax, is one of those indemnities in life which appear to have no justice in their existence. It would always seem that your integrity were still preserved, that you were still a man of honour if you could avoid paying them.

I know a man, who has eluded the income tax authorities for seven years, and he is held in the highest esteem as a man of acumen, ability, and the soul of honour. I admit that this opinion is only held of him by those who are endeavouring to do the same as he. A man, for instance, who belongs to the same club and pays his income tax to the last shilling, thinks him to be a hopelessly immoral citizen and would believe him capable of anything. But this is not fair. It would be far more just to say that the man who pays his income tax to the uttermost farthing is capable of nothing--invertebrate.

It was not, then, alone to pay his washing bill that John decided to part with the gold watch-chain. He had, in a moment of inspiration, conjured before him the possibility of asking Jill to lunch, and these two motives, uniting from opposite quarters of the compass of suggestion to one and the same end, he sacrificed the last pretentions he might have claimed to the opulence conveyed by a gold watch-chain and repaired to Payne and Welcome's.

With a bold and unconscious step, he strode into the little side entrance, which is a feature of all these jeweller's shops displaying the mystical sign of the three brass balls. Without the slightest sense of shame, he pushed open one of the small doors that give admittance to the little boxes--those little boxes where the confession of one's poverty is made. And to no sympathetic ear of a gentle priest are those terrible confessions to be whispered--the most terrible confession you can make in this world. The man to whom you tell your story of shame is greedy and willing to listen, eager and inexorable to make your penance as heavy as he may. A bailiff is, perhaps, more stony of heart than a pawnbroker; yet both are brothers in trade. The dearest things in the life of anyone are their possessions, and both these tradesmen deal in their heartless confiscation. The woman out at elbow, hollow-eyed, who comes to pawn her wedding ring, the man--shabby--genteel--wearing, until the nap is gone and the sleeves are frayed, the garment of his self-respect, who comes to put away his best and Sunday coat; they are all one to the pawnbroker. He beats them down to the last farthing, well knowing that, having once determined to part with their possessions, they will not willingly go away again without that for which they came. He has them utterly at his mercy. They are all one to him. The story in their faces is nothing to his eyes. He signs a hundred death warrants in the tickets that he writes every day--death warrants to possessions well-nigh as dear as life; but it means nothing to him.

The awful thought about it all, is to consider the ease with which one loses the sense of shame which, upon a first transaction of the kind, is a hot wind blowing on the face, burning the cheeks to scarlet.

On the first occasion that John was driven to such dealing, he passed that guilty side entrance many times before he finally summoned courage to enter. Every time that he essayed the fatal step, the street became full of people whom he knew. There was that editor who was considering his last short story! He turned swiftly, his heel a sudden pivot, and scrutinised the objects in the jeweller's window, then harried away up the street, as though he were ashamed of wasting his time. A glance over the shoulder, satisfied him that the editor was out of sight and back he slowly came. This time he had got within a foot of the door--a foot of it. One step more and he would have been in the sheltering seclusion of that narrow little passage! There was the girl who sold him stamps in the post-office--the girl who smiled at him and said she had read a beautiful story of his in one of the magazines! He had looked up quickly as though he had mistaken the number on the door, then marched into the next shop on the left, as if that were the one he had been looking for. When he had got in, he realised that it was a butcher's.

The butcher, in a blithe voice, had said:

"And what this morning, sir?"

"I want--can you tell me the time?" said John.