ALL MEN ARE LIARS.

Evening Star, Issue 9772, 31 July 1895, Page 2 (Supplement)

ALL MEN ARE LIARS.

BY JOSEPH HOCKING (Author of ‘The Story of Andrew Fairfax,’ ‘lshmael Pengelly : An Outcast,’and 1 The Monk of Mar Saba’).

PART IL—ORDEAL.

CHAPTER 11. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. Ami constancy lives in realms above ; Anil life is thorny ; and youth is vain. —Coleriuce's ‘ (Jhnstanel.

“I have known that this smash was inevitable about a year and a-half,” remarked Luke quietly ; “ I thought it might come years ago.” “ A year and a-half!” roared the Colonel; “ a year and a-half ! Before the wedding ! Why did you not let us know then ?”

“Because—well, I didn’t choose." “ You scheming villain I” gasped the Colonel.

“ Yes, I knew jwhat you wanted,” replied Luke. “ and 1 was in two minds about letting the boy make a fool of himself. But I wasn’t quite prepared to let the world know my position then, and I knew that all of you wanted the matter to he settled quickly, and I decided that on the whole I had better let you have your own way. Steve will be none the worse for this eyeopener in a year or two ; while as for you and your precious daughter, Tempest, you are not worth thinking about.” “Not worth thinking about!” gasped the Colonel.

“No; and for this reason. You have no feelings of honor to hurt, while a thousand or two will always cool your anger.” Brutal as was this reply, the Colonel, to Stephen’s surprise, looked less furious. “ What are you going to do he said, after musing a minute or t,wo. “ Look here, Edgcumbe, consider my position, and then think how I must feel. In a big smash such as yours—and, after all, it im’t a petty bankruptcy —yon must have saved a good deal from the general ruin. Such fellows as you always do.” He spoke as though a new idea had struck him, and as though he wanted to be conciliatory. “I am not in a position to enter into my affairs,” replied Luke ; “ but I will say this ; I see no reason why Steve can’t have an allowance as before, not quite so large perhaps, but nearly ; at any rate, enough to keep the wolf from the door.” ‘ 1 Edgcumbe,” said Colonel Tempest, “ forgive the rash words of a fond father ; I might have known that you would do right. Bella, my dear, you'll be saved from disgrace, after all, and you and Stephen Temple can live on here as before. I was wrong to be so rash and hasty ; I was wrong to speak so without considering what such a man as Edgcumbe would do.”

A smile curled Luke Edgcumbe’s lips as lie spoke, and lie looked towards Stephen curiously. “You see, things are not so very bad, after all, Steve,” said Luke, “ and this little affair of yours can be patched up easily.” “ Might I ask what sum you intend paying your creditors?” asked Stephen. “ A very creditable bankruptcy, my boy ; 1 think we shall manage over a third, say seven and sixpence in the pound.” “And yet you can afford to give me nearly a thousand a year ?” “ Well, you see, my boy, as the Colonel said, this is not a small atl'air. My business connections were very numerous, and so I have been aide to manage better than if it iiad been one little trumpery business.” The Colonel nodded his head with a great deal of satisfaction.

“Personally,” said .Stephen quietly, “I must decline'to take one' farthing of such money ; and as the one largely responsible for my wife’s transactions, 1 must insist that she also refuse to receive anything from vou.”

“ What do you mean ?” gasped the Colonel.

“Just that,” replied Stephen. “What right have I to take nearly a thousand a year from my nude when lie is paying his creditors only seven and sixpence in the pound ?” “ And do you mean that you’ll reduce my daughter to poverty rather than take nearly a thousand a year when it comes in your wav ?”

“ Certainly. ” “ What what —do you intend doing then ?"

“ The best 1 can. We can go to a part of the city where rents are low, and I can manage to do fairly well. Bella must give up her luxuries, but we can live in comparative comfort. - ’ The Colonel’s face grew purple, while Luke Edgcumbe remained as cynical and watchful as ever. He was evidently enjoying the situation.

•‘She shall never do it!" roared the Colonel at length; “never! This is your idea of loving and honoring my daughter, is it V This the outcome of all the love you have professed !” “Yes"; then, turning to his wife, he said ; “ Von see that this is right, don’t vou, Bella'.' You have been led to see differently and think differently since last night. What you said then was without meaning. It is all well, Bella; we’ll conquer the world yet, for we love each other in spite of alf, don’t we ?” and there was a vearuing look in his eyes. But she never moved from the Colonel’s side. “1 say what my father says,” was her answer.

Stephen buried Ids face in his hands, and for a minute lie was incapable of thinking. “ Steve, are you sure you kuow what you are doing ? ’asked Luke. “Come, what is the use of these high-fangled notions '.' You see, the Colonel lias no scruples, and you know what a religious man he is ; why, then, should vou bother ?" “ Uncle,” said Stephen, “you may act as you please. Vou do not profess a code of honor, but I’ll starve before I’ll do as you ask me. My only pain is that 1 have been educated by money which really belongs to others." “Sad, isn’t it,” replied Luke, half sneeringly, half pathetically. “My lad, the world’s all alike, and civilisation is built up on a system of robbery, and all the money is tilthv with what you call injustice. Your father's salary, which paid for your schooling years ago, was contributed by people who had to be dishonest in getting it. All men are dishonest, only some meri manage it without being brought into public notoriety. The truth is, I have been beaten by a man who got the whip hand of me, but I’ll be even with him yet. Meanwhile, I, and you, must take the world as we find it. Honestv and honor are matters of degree, matters of opinion, and I should be a fool if I swallowed a quixotic code of honor, a code which nobody practises, although so many profess it, if thereby I lose my all, and am dragged in the dust. There now, Steve, this is not sentimental talk, but it’s common sense. Be comfortable, lad, and let fools wag their

tongues. No ; I shall not touch one penny. I will not further describe what took place; enough to say that, in spite of Stephen’s pleadings, his wife left him with scornful and angry reproaches, declaring that she would never see him or communicate with him again ; while the Colonel, purple with passion, continued to pour out reproaches upon him, and to threaten him with all sorts of calamities.

1 Daniel Roberts, was at this time an assistant to a medical practitioner in Battersea, Loudon, S.W. I had taken my degree at Edinburgh, and had engaged to place my learning and ability at the services of Dr Blunt in particular, and the Battersea people in general, for a sum which many of the assistant masters under the London School Board would have despised. Still, I was able to engage a couple of rooms, for which I paid twelve shillings a week, and to live with some degree of comfort. It is true, 1 saw but little possibility of becoming a renowned physician by staying in Battersea ; but I saw the possibility of bread and cheese, and there was also a chance, if I were patient, of succeeding Dr Blunt when he should be pleased to retire. I had not been invited to Stephen’s house during his married life, owing, I was afterwards told, to his wife’s unwillingness to receive me. I constantly received letters from my friend, however; and so, on the morning following the episode I have just related, when I saw an envelope addressed in his handwriting I opened it without any presentimeut of coming evil. When I had read it, however, I was for a time almost Stunned with astonishment and grief. Bad

Os my fears might have been, 1 had never dreamed that his wife would leave him for any cause whatever ; and although he tried in his letter to shield her, I could not help seeing how things stood. For a time 1 knew not what step to take. 1 could not go and see him, as my duties just then prohibited it, but I decided to write him, and ask him to share a bachelor’s hospitality. By return of post I received a reply from him, saying that as soon as he had arrauged his affairs ho would come and stay a few days with me. I must confess to a shock when he at length came. 1 did not imagine that he could look so haggard and pale; but ho assured me that he was very well, and that he should not seek my professional advice. It was a long time before he would talk at all; but by-and-bye, when the roar of the traffic had ceased, and the clocks were striking midnight, he became more communicative.

“Dan,” he said, “would you mind my being a fellow lodger with you ?” “ Nothing would delight me more, old fellow ; but how can you manage it v” “ I have sold the furniture of the—the other house,” lie said, without seeming to heed my question. “ Yes ?” I said interrogatively. “ I was obliged to, you know ; besides, I had—no right to it.” I did not apeak. “ I am afraid, too, that my sun has gone down at the Bar.” “ Why?”

“ I bear an unfortunate name. My uncle’s smash is such a big affair that everybody fights shy of me.” “ It’s a shame,” I said. “I suppose it’s natural,” was his somewhat bitter reply ; “ still, I can manage to pick up a living. I write a little for the papers, you know ; and I daresay I shall be able to pick up a few oases. Battersea is a long way from Lincoln’s Inn Fields, but not out of reach altogether; besides, I want your friendship badly—l mean your society and your sympathy.” “I shall be only too glad for you to remain with me ; you know I shall be always your friend, and my landlady will be pleased to let you have a bedroom ; but you’ll be out of the swim for everything. No one of note lives in Battersea.”

“ At any rate, I’ll stay a month or so ; and I shall see how it works by that time,” he said wearily. And so it was settled. We were, for a few weeks, to share the sitting room I had rented, while a bedroom adjoining my own was set apart for his use. During the day I saw little or nothing of him, but when our work was over we were much together. He scarcely ever spoke of his year of married life ; indeed, as the days went by, he became less and less of a talker, while his face became more careworn and sad.

•‘Come, Steve,” I. said to him one day, “ you must not yield to sad feelings in this way ; there’s nothing gained by showing the white feather. Fight the matter, old boy, to the death.”

“What's the use of fighting?” was his query. “ Every use,” 1 replied. “ You are young, and the years to come will make all things right.” “Do you think so?” he asked, with a show of interest.

“ I do, indeed.” “ 1 wish I could think so.” He paused a minute, and then continued; “Dan, when you lose trust in what is dearest to you—when the thing you thought pure and spotless is revealed to you as sordid and—and unlike what you thought—when your trust has been betrayed—when you look round and find (hat men everywhere are alike, that everybody is selfish and poor—when you see nothing before you but dreariness—what then ?”

“ 1 should say that you haven’t seen the whole of life,” I replied. “ That is my one ray of light at present,” he said ; “sometimes it disappears and I am wdiolly in the dark, but it comes back again, and then I try to hope. But what is the light ? Is it a reality, or do I create it myself ?” He was terribly in earnest, and I saw that no conventional words of comfort would have any effect upon him. “ ' Cod’s in Hia heaven. All's right with the world,’ ” I said, remembering Browning’s I’ippa Passes. “It sounds all right,” he said. “I’ve been trying to comtort myself with the thought during the last fortnight, since—since—she’s left me. For nights I did not sleep, because I felt no place on which 1 could rest. I tried to get down on solid rock, and in doing so everything went. All the orthodox theories of life became false as lies. The world's moralities, the world’s hopes and aims, appeared to me to contain only the quintessence of selfishness. The religions of the world became only feeble efforts to manufacture hopes to take away the pain of the black logic of life. But I won’t tell you all I’ve gone through during the last fortnight; only, Dan, the future offers nothing to me, life offers nothing worth the grasping, while it seems to me that the cynicism of my uncle and my old tutor is the only reasonable solution of life.” “ Solution ?”

“ Yes : you put your finger on the weakness. There is no solution. At present, everything seems a muddle, worse than a muddle. Life is black, hopeless—worse than hopeless. Everywhere it is pain, misery, woe, and afterwards nothing. Everybody comes into the world with desire. In nine cases out of every ten the desire is never satisfied; and when the one in ten does get the object of his desires he is disappointed, for it yields him nothing of what he expected. Indeed, the one is about as happy as the other. You remember what my uncle and Ilford used to say about illusions ; well, it seems that my time of disillusionment has come, and I see things in all their ghastliness and nakedness.” “ May not your pain and sorrow have blinded you to the truth?” I suggested. “I have thought of that,” he replied; “but somehow it brings no comfort. Before my trouble I just shut my eyes. I was happy, or at least I persuaded myself that I was, which was just the same. When I saw pain, misery, crime, I would not seek to understand their meaning ; I thought of my own happiness, I saw my own bright prospects, 1 believed that my wife loved me. My own circumstances made me look at life through rose-colored glasses—that is, when I looked at life at all. When Uncle Luke’s failure became known, the glasses were taken away, and I was obliged to look at life as it is.”

“We look at everything through a medium,” I said. “ What is your medium now? Is it not disappointment and misplaced love? Wait for time to do its work before you come to conclusions.” “ You are right, Dan; I intend to do that. Indeed, 1 have been trying to get a working theory of life. I can’t look at life as some do ; mine is an earnest nature ; and although I have been living in a fool’s paradise, now that I am driven out from it, I am going to try and get at some little grain of truth amidst the heaps of lies.” “But how are you doing to get this truth? And what is your object?” I said curiously. He looked at me strangely and earnestly, as though he were studying me, but he did not speak for some minutes. After a while he said slowly:

“This Battersea contains a little world of itself, doesn’t it ? ” “ The poor are here,” I said, “ the poor and the needy, the hard-worked, the sorrowing. The rich are very few ; they don’t come here, the life doesn’t suit them. The bad are here; aye, and the good too.” “ You have a great many patients, Dan ?" “Scarlet fever is pretty prevalent just now,” I replied ; “and most oif Dr Blunt’s cases are left to me.”

“And the people among whom you go are poor “ Very poor, mostly. “ The poorest?” “No; the poorest can’t afford a doctor, except the parish doctor; but lam afraid they find it very difficult to get him.” “Ah!” He mused a second, then he said: “Dan, I should like to accompany you on your rounds to-morrow.” “Very well,” I said; “ I shall he glad to have you.” I had scarcely spoken when I heard the door-bell ring ; and a minute later my landlady entered, saying that a woman wanted to see me. “Show her in,” I said.

A woman of about fifty entered, whom I immediately recognised.

“It’s my Lize,” she said without hesitation. “I went down to the old 'un’s surgery, and he told me to come to you.” “ Is she worse ?” I asked.

“ Been spittin’ a lot of blood, so I jist gives Jim the dish to hold, while I runs off for the doctor. I runs for the parish one, same as 1 did yesterday, but he wouldn’t come; he said it wern’t reg’lar, and so I’ve come to you again.” “ Very well,” I said; “ I’ll come in a few minutes.”

She went away, while I began to pull on my boots. “ I should like to go with you, if I may, Dan,” said Steve. “Certainly, old man; but I am afraid you’ll not be exhilarated by what you see and hear.”

“ Nevertheless, I’ll go,” he replied. After a few minutes’ walk we found ourselves in Battersea Park road, along which we walked for a little way, and then turned down one of the streets which branch from it. All these streets are occupied by working people; in one or two of them the houses are fairly well built, most of them are squalid and comfortless, all of them are “ long lines of ugliness.” A large number of these dwellings is occupied by several families, some having one, a few having two rooms, wherein to cook, wash, eat, drink, and sleep.

The street we entered was rather worse than most of those I have mentioned. The houses were older, lower, and worse built. It was miserably lighted, and it was some little time before I could find the house in which the sick girl lay; but I discovered it at length, arid we entered. The family to which she belonged occupied two rooms on the ground floor. In passing through the living room we saw a man sitting at the end of a table in a half-drunken sleep ; near him were a girl of fourteen and a boy of twelve. The atmosphere was sickly in the extreme, so much so that fora little time we found it difficult to breathe. There was not a single article in the whole place which denoted comfort; but I need not enlarge on that. The room was a specimen of hundreds of others within three minutes’ walk, and perhaps the people living in them were so unused to comfort that they did not feel the need of what many regard as essential to existence.

“ She’s in there,” said the girl, pointing to the back room; “mother’s there too, so’s Jim.”

We entered the bedroom, and were more than ever impressed with the impurity of the atmosphere and the squalor of the surroundings. The apartment could nob have been more than twelve feet square, yet three beds were placed in it, on which eight people had to sleep ; and one of them w’as sick, dying of consumption. In one corner of the room, on a miserable heap of dirt, with two children lying by her side, I found my patient. She had just recovered from a fit of coughing and blood-spitting, and was now breathing with difficulty. She might have been twenty years of age, and was of the usual type of street girl. Marks of an evil life were stamped on her face, and between her gasps she uttered language which I will not write here.

“Will she get better?’’said the mother to me after a while.

“ She is very ill,” I replied ; “ both lungs are badly affected, and the disease has evidently been hastened on by the life she has been living.” “Onr Liza was allays a bit flighty,” she replied. “ What has she been doing these last few years ?” asked Stephen. The woman, thinking him an assistant doctor, answered readily : “ She ran the streets like the others till she was thirteen, an’ was out of the school officer’s clutches, then I gits ’er a place to take care o’ children. But our Liza wouldn’t, you know; site w’as that wantin’ her liberty, she was—and so she couldu’ keep her places. Then after a bit she gits into a laundry, but ’twa? very hard work, and she hooked that. Then she stops out late at night and took to drinkin’, so that she couldn’t git no work at all.” “ And then? ’

“ Well, then she went wild." ‘ ‘ And you knew of this ?” “ How could I ’elp knowiu’ ?” “ But why didn’t you stop her?” “ Liza was allays strong-willed,” said the woman, with a whine ; “and she wouldn’t take no notice of me. I says to her, ‘ Lize,’ Isays, ‘you’ll he better off in service,’ I says; but ’twere no use. Besides, she couldn’t git service jiat then, so I lets her go till she could get a place. That’s all.” We left soon after, Steve’s face hard and his teeth set. We walked a few steps aide by side in silence, then he broke out. “ Dan, I’ve shut myself away from this kind of life, and I don’t know much about it; but—but surely there can’t be many such cases as that.”

“ I am afraid they arc not uncommon,” I said sadty. “ No, no, Dan ; a mother to talk like that! ”

Wo passed by half a dozen girls from fifteen to seventeen years of age, who were shrieking with laughter and making coarse jokes. “I’m afraid there are many mothers who care very little for their children,” I said ; “ some have drunk away all affection, all moral sense.”

“Stop!” cried my friend; “listen to that. No, no ; ’tis 100 horrible ! ”

I stopped and listened. (To he continued next Wednesday.)