Furze the Cruel

by John Trevena

Certain objects were against the railings of the church, objects neither beautiful nor necessary; Brightly and his mongrel, hungry and business-like as ever. They occupied very little space, and yet they were in the way, principally because they were not pleasant to look upon, being rather like heaps of refuse which the street-cleaners had overlooked. Brightly was not there for the fun of the thing. He did not know the meaning of such words as holiday and pleasure. Had any one given him five shillings, and told him to go and enjoy himself, he would not have known what to do. Both he and Ju were thinner, though that was only interesting as a physiological fact. Brightly held up his ridiculous head and sniffed continually. Ju did the same. The atmosphere was redolent of sage and onions; and they were trying to feed upon it.

"Trade be cruel dull," muttered Brightly.

Ju did not acknowledge the remark. She had heard it so often, or words to the same effect, that she deemed it unnecessary to respond with a tail-wag. Besides, that sort of thing required energy, and Ju had none to spare. She was wondering, if she followed up that wonderful odour, whether she would obtain gratuitous goose at the other end.

"Tie-clips, penny each. Dree for duppence. Butiful pipes, two a penny," sang Brightly; but his miserable voice was drowned by the roundabouts and megaphones.

Brightly was celebrating the general holiday by exchanging one form of labour for another. It would have been useless to follow his usual calling of purveyor of rabbit-skins that day, so he had become for the time being a general merchant. He had obtained a trayful of small goods on credit. Brightly had one fault, a grave one in business; he was honest. So far he had sold nothing. He was merely demonstrating the marvellous purchasing powers of a penny. It never occurred to him that he was opposing his miserable little trayful of rubbish to all the booths and pleasures of the great fair. Tie-clips and clay-pipes were all he had to offer in competition with attractions which had delighted kings and princes, if the honesty of the showmen could be accepted as advertised. Even the fat woman admitted that royal personages had pinched her legs. If Brightly had followed the fat lady's example, and declared in a loud enough voice that autocrats smoked nothing but his clay-pipes, and kept their decorations in place with his tie-clips, he might have acquired many pennies.

Above the town, where the cattle-fair was in full swing, various hawkers had established themselves; men who looked as if they had been made out of metal, with faces of copper and tongues of brass. One man was giving away gold rings, and if a recipient was not satisfied he threw in a silver watch as well. He couldn't explain why he did such things. It was his evil fate to have been born a philanthropist. He owned he had come to the fair with the idea of selling his goods; but when he found himself among so many happy, smiling people, fine young men, beautiful girls, dear old folks who reminded him of his own parents, all making holiday and enjoying themselves, with the sun shining and Nature at her best, he felt totally unable to restrain his benevolence. He couldn't take their money. It was weak and foolish of him, he knew, but he had to give them the rings and watches, which, as they could see for themselves, had cost him pounds, shillings, and pence, because he wanted to send them home happy. His only idea was to give them a little present so that they would remember him, and tell their friends what a simple and generous creature they had encountered at the fair. So he flowed on, with an eloquence which any missionary would have envied. And then he produced a black bag, and said he wished to draw their attention to something which he must really ask them to buy, not because he wanted their money, but because he knew that people never really valued a thing unless they gave something for it. It was a fatal thing, this philanthropy, but it made him happy to be kind to others. Out of the bag came some more rubbish, and the rascal was soon doing a roaring trade. What chance had Brightly against a metallic creature like that?

Higher up the road another gentleman established himself. He was well dressed, his mottled hands were gleaming with immense rings, and his clean-shaven face was as red as rhubarb. He assumed an academic cap and gown, casually informing those who gathered around that he was entitled to do so, as he was not only a man of gentle birth, but a graduate of "one of our oldest universities," and a duly qualified physician also. He stated with emphasis, and a slight touch of cynicism, that he was no philanthropist. He belonged to an overcrowded profession; he had no settled practice; and knowing how unwilling country-people were to come to a medical man until they had to, when it was usually too late, and knowing also how grievously afflicted many of them were with divers diseases, he had decided to come out by the wayside and heal them. It was entirely a matter of business. He was going to cure them of a number of ailments which they were harbouring unawares, and they would pay him a trifling sum in return. He wasn't going to give anything away. He couldn't afford to be generous. He begged the people not to crowd about him so closely, as there was plenty of time, and he would undertake to attend to every one.

This man ought to have been a genius, if he hadn't been a rogue. He went on to warn his listeners against quack doctors and patent medicines. They were all frauds, he assured them, and he described in homely language how he had often restored some poor sufferer whose health had been undermined by the mischievous attentions of unqualified impostors. He took a small boy, set him in the midst, and in flowing phrase explained his internal structure. It was the liver which was the origin of disease among men; liver, which caused women to faint, and men to feel run down. Heart disease, consumption, eczema, cold feet, red nose, and a craving for liquor were all caused by an unhealthy liver, and were so many different names for the same disease. So far nobody but himself had discovered any safe cure for the liver. There were a thousand remedies mentioned in the British Encyclopædia—possibly he meant pharmacopoeia—but not a genuine medicine among them. He had devoted his life and fortune to discovering a remedy, and he had discovered it; and his listeners should be allowed to benefit by it; for it needed but a glance at their faces to convince him that the liver of every man and woman in that circle was grievously out of order.

At that moment Peter and Mary came up, considerably elevated, and gazed with immense satisfaction at the figure in cap and gown, Mary exclaiming in her noisy way: "Aw, Peter! 'Tis a preacher."

The quack wiped his hands and face with a silk handkerchief, opened a bag, and producing a small green bottle half full of grimy pellets, continued solemnly; "The result of a life devoted to medical studies, my friends. The one and only liver cure. The triumph of the human intellect; more wonderful than the Pyramids of America; long life and happiness in a small bottle; and the price only one shilling."