CHAPTER XXI

IN WHICH WE WATCH AN IMPULSIVE GOOD SAMARITAN'S DEEDS AND HEAR HIS SELF-REPROACHES

Lacey and I walked back together, and in Kingsway we were overtaken by Spanton, who had been to a debate at Essex Hall. I observed at once that he and Lacey were antipathetic. It was quite natural, for both are vigorous in their beliefs or impulses, and they look at life from totally different points of view. Lacey is a sentimentalist with roots in the past; Spanton is a scientific state-builder with his eyes on the future. Lacey is disillusioned and tired, content to get through each day as well as he can, expecting little. Spanton is confident and resolute.

On our way through Russell Square we passed a girl leaning against the railing of a house, crying. She was dressed in tawdry finery and her left hand was bound in a handkerchief. Lacey was at her side in a moment.

"What's it all about?" he asked, in his hearty, kind voice.

Amid her sobs she told the story. She had had a quarrel with her man; he had struck her; the table fell with the things on it and she fell too, on a broken glass. He had turned her out.

Lacey examined her hand, which was badly cut and still bleeding.

"We must get this bound up," he said, and we found a cab and drove to a chemist's in New Oxford Street which is open all night, as, of course, Lacey knew.

"And what is the next thing?" he said. "Where do you live?"

"I couldn't go back there," the girl said, clinging to him.

She was a fine girl, rather on the coarse side, with a dull red complexion, thick lips, and blunt nose; but her large, dark-brown eyes were really splendid.

Lacey comforted her and reassured her, stroking her other hand.

Spanton said nothing.

There had been quarrels before, she explained, and the man's brutality had been increasing. This was the last. Nothing would get her there again.

"Very well, then," said Lacey, "we must find you a bedroom, and to-morrow I will see what I can do. It is too late now to talk."

He thought a while and then told the cabman to drive to a street off the Hampstead Road.

"When I was in business," he said, "I had an old carpenter named Dimmage. I dare say he's got a room empty; we shall just catch him coming home after the 'Time, gentlemen, please.'"

Lacey was right. Mr. Dimmage had just returned and was locking up. His delight--rendered a shade more exuberant by his evening's libations--at recognizing his old employer was a joy to watch.

The story was soon told, and Mrs. Dimmage, extricated from bed, appeared, dishevelled and testy, at the head of the narrow stairs. She descended for the purpose of scrutinizing the girl a little more closely under the candle-light, and then retreated again.

"We've no room here," she said.

(It is an open question whether women are not _au fond_ women's worst enemy.)

"But what about that truckle-bed where Jim used to be?" said the tactless but hero-worshipping Dimmage.

"There's no room in this house for stray women at this time of night," said Mrs. Dimmage.

Mr. Dimmage looked at us blankly.

"But, I say," he said, "it's a favour Mr. Lacey's asking. You wouldn't deny Mr. Lacey anything? After all he's done for us, too;" and he went upstairs and engaged in whispered conversation.

"You are good to me," said the girl, who still clung to Lacey's arm. "You'll come round in the morning, won't you? You're one of those that do keep their promises, aren't you?"

"Yes, worse luck," said Lacey. "But you've not got your room yet."

"Oh yes, I have," she said. "She's getting it ready now."

The girl was right. Mrs. Dimmage was conquered, as Mr. Dimmage informed us with many winks and grimaces.

"She's a good old soul," he said confidentially, "but damned partickler. But it'll be all right now."

And so we left, Mr. Lacey promising to be there at half-past nine.

"I call that a triumph for alcohol," he said, as we walked on. "If Dimmage had been a teetotaller we should never have got in. He would have been asleep, for one thing, and for another he would have had no courage to stand up to his wife. Alcohol is always called the friend of vice, but I have often found it the friend of virtue too."

All this while Spanton had been looking grimly on; and when we came away he at last spoke.

"It's a waste of time and energy, Mr. Lacey. All that you've done is to keep us out of our beds and reduce our store of vitality. There's no sense in helping a woman like that. She's no good to Society. She's a parasite. If you had an impulse to do something for her the best thing would have been to give her a shilling and leave her."

"Oh, rubbish," said Lacey. "We must do as we're made. I couldn't leave a poor creature like that. Common humanity wouldn't let me."

"That's because you don't reason," said Spanton. "If you had thought for a moment instead of being so impulsive you would have realized that you were doing no good--in fact, only being self-indulgent. We have no right to go about the world squandering our emotions on worthless strangers. We ought to control and direct them, to help those that are worth helping."

"That's a counsel of perfection," said Lacey. "I am not perfect. I am just an ordinary person with a heart not made of logic or stone. If I see anyone in a hole I like to try and get them out. That's not self-indulgence, is it?"

"Almost always," said Spanton.

"Well, it's Christianity," said Lacey, "and that's good enough for me."

"Yes, but Christianity won't work," said Spanton. "It's never worked yet. Look at our army. Look at our navy. Look at our archbishops' salaries. Is there any connection between them and Galilee?"

"Rubbish," said Lacey. "Why, of course, Christianity works. It makes our conduct. And if you don't stop this vile talk I'll punch your head;" and so saying he stood still and began to take off his coat.

"All right," said Spanton, "I'll stop. But just see how true it was, what I said about Christianity not working. You've already forgotten the instruction about the other cheek."

A most irritating young man.

But Lacey was quick enough for him. "Of course I shouldn't do anything so abject as that," he said. "My Christ is he who scourged the money changers out of the Temple. Come on!"

"That girl's an awful nuisance," said Lacey to me a day or so after. "She's fallen in love with me. I was afraid she would. It's my destiny to attract the wrong women. She's just a poor dumb animal full of gratitude, and I haven't a notion what to do about her. Your cold-blooded young Socialist is right: one should repress one's humanitarian impulses."

I asked him what he should do.

"I'm wondering," he said. "She wants to be my servant and work herself to death for me. I can see the twins' faces when they find her cleaning up my room! There's only one phrase with the twins for that kind of girl--'brazen hussy.' What the good women will never understand about these others is that even in brazen hussying there are off moments when ordinary life has to be lived. Fortunately she doesn't know my address and old Dimmage won't tell her. I shall send her five pounds and say I have to go abroad for three months, and so wash my hands of her."

I strongly advised him to do this and offered to contribute to the sum. But he wouldn't have it.

"No," he said, "this is my show. I let myself in for it, and I must get out of it. Poor girl, I'm so sorry for her. Such a nice thing too; but hopeless, of course. When they've once tasted freedom they won't go back. How can they? What has service to offer? Do you remember how in one of Byron's letters he bursts out in disgust, 'Nothing but virtue pays in this damned world.' He was right. Nearly everyone is experimenting with vice, yet nothing but virtue really pays. The difference between virtue and the other thing may be as slight as tissue paper, but there it is, and all our social system is based on virtue. Such a nice girl too. She ought to marry a policeman and beget life-guardsmen.

"There's a poem in that Chinese book you lent me," Lacey continued, "which I have learnt by heart and am trying to obey. It teaches one not to meddle. This wretched girl who is on my mind all comes of meddling, just as Spanton said. The poem--it's hundreds of years old--runs like this--it is quite short--only four lines:

I wander north, I wander south, I rest me where I please... See how the river-banks are nipped beneath the autumn breeze! Yet what care I if autumn's blasts the river-banks lay bare? The loss of hue to river-banks is the river-banks' affair.

That's the way to live. Go your own way and don't care a hang for anyone. I wish I could do it!

"That poem's given me an idea too. To make a little collection of poems all of which are four lines long and no more. You'd get some fine things and it wouldn't tire anyone. Some day, when I've more time, I shall do this."

But, of course, he won't.