The Crock of Gold (17 page)

By this time they could not see each other and all their operations were conducted by the sense of touch alone. They laid themselves down on the beds and a terrible, dark silence brooded over
the room.

But the Philosopher could not sleep, he kept his eyes shut, for the darkness under his eyelids was not so dense as that which surrounded him; indeed, he could at will illuminate his own darkness
and order around him the sunny roads or the sparkling sky. While his eyes were closed he had the mastery of all pictures of light and colour and warmth, but an irresistible fascination compelled
him every few minutes to reopen them, and in the sad space around he could not create any happiness. The darkness weighed very sadly upon him so that in a short time it did creep under his eyelids
and drowned his happy pictures until a blackness possessed him both within and without—

"Can one's mind go to prison as well as one's body?" said he.

He strove desperately to regain his intellectual freedom, but he could not. He could conjure up no visions but those of fear. The creatures of the dark invaded him, fantastic terrors were
thronging on every side: they came from the darkness into his eyes and beyond into himself, so that his mind as well as his fancy was captured, and he knew he was, indeed, in gaol.

It was with a great start that he heard a voice speaking from the silence—a harsh, yet cultivated voice, but he could not imagine which of his companions was speaking. He had a vision of
that man tormented by the mental imprisonment of the darkness, trying to get away from his ghosts and slimy enemies, goaded into speech in his own despite lest he should be submerged and finally
possessed by the abysmal demons. For a while the voice spoke of the strangeness of life and the cruelty of men to each other—disconnected sentences, odd words of self-pity and
self-encouragement, and then the matter became more connected and a story grew in the dark cell—

"I knew a man," said the voice, "and he was a clerk. He had thirty shillings a week, and for five years he had never missed a day going to his work. He was a careful man, but a person with a
wife and four children cannot save much out of thirty shillings a week. The rent of a house is high, a wife and children must be fed, and they have to get boots and clothes, so that at the end of
each week that man's thirty shillings used to be all gone. But they managed to get along somehow—the man and his wife and the four children were fed and clothed and educated, and the man
often wondered how so much could be done with so little money; but the reason was that his wife was a careful woman . . . and then the man got sick. A poor person cannot afford to get sick, and a
married man cannot leave his work. If he is sick he has to be sick; but he must go to his work all the same, for if he stayed away who would pay the wages and feed his family? and when he went back
to work he might find that there was nothing for him to do. This man fell sick, but he made no change in his way of life: he got up at the same time and went to the office as usual, and he got
through the day somehow without attracting his employer's attention. He didn't know what was wrong with him: he only knew that he was sick. Sometimes he had sharp, swift pains in his head, and
again there would be long hours of languor when he could scarcely bear to change his position or lift a pen. He would commence a letter with the words "Dear Sir," forming the letter "D" with
painful, accurate slowness, elaborating and thickening the up and down strokes, and being troubled when he had to leave that letter for the next one; he built the next letter by hair strokes and
would start on the third with hatred. The end of a word seemed to that man like the conclusion of an event—it was a surprising, isolated, individual thing, having no reference to anything
else in the world, and on starting a new word he seemed bound, in order to preserve its individuality, to write it in a different handwriting. He would sit with his shoulders hunched up and his pen
resting on the paper, staring at a letter until he was nearly mesmerised, and then come to himself with a sense of fear, which started him working like a madman, so that he might not be behind with
his business. The day seemed to be so long. It rolled on rusty hinges that could scarcely move. Each hour was like a great circle swollen with heavy air, and it droned and buzzed into an eternity.
It seemed to the man that his hand in particular wanted to rest. It was luxury not to work with it. It was good to lay it down on a sheet of paper with the pen sloping against his finger, and then
watch his hand going to sleep—it seemed to the man that it was his hand and not himself wanted to sleep, but it always awakened when the pen slipped. There was an instinct in him somewhere
not to let the pen slip, and every time the pen moved his hand awakened, and began to work languidly. When he went home at night he lay down at once and stared for hours at a fly on the wall or a
crack on the ceiling. When his wife spoke to him he heard her speaking as from a great distance, and he answered her dully as though he was replying through a cloud. He only wanted to be let alone,
to be allowed to stare at the fly on the wall, or the crack on the ceiling.

"One morning he found that he couldn't get up, or rather, that he didn't want to get up. When his wife called him he made no reply, and she seemed to call him every ten seconds—the words,
'get up, get up,' were crackling all round him; they were bursting like bombs on the right hand and on the left of him; they were scattering from above and all around him, bursting upwards from the
floor, swirling, swaying, and jostling each other. Then the sounds ceased, and one voice only said to him, 'You are late!' He saw these words like a blur hanging in the air, just beyond his
eyelids, and he stared at the blur until he fell asleep."

The voice in the cell ceased speaking for a few minutes, and then it went on again.

"For three weeks the man did not leave his bed—he lived faintly in a kind of trance, wherein great forms moved about slowly and immense words were drumming gently forever. When he began to
take notice again everything in the house was different. Most of the furniture, paid for so hardly, was gone. He missed a thing everywhere—chairs, a mirror, a table: wherever he looked he
missed something; and downstairs was worse—there, everything was gone. His wife had sold all her furniture to pay for doctors, for medicine, for food and rent. And she was changed too: good
things had gone from her face; she was gaunt, sharp-featured, miserable—but she was comforted to think he was going back to work soon.

"There was a flurry in his head when he went to his office. He didn't know what his employer would say for stopping away. He might blame him for being sick—he wondered would his employer
pay him for the weeks he was absent. When he stood at the door he was frightened. Suddenly the thought of his master's eye grew terrible to him: it was a steady, cold, glassy eye; but he opened the
door and went in. His master was there with another man and he tried to say 'Good morning, sir,' in a natural and calm voice: but he knew that the strange man had been engaged instead of himself,
and this knowledge posted itself between his tongue and his thought. He heard himself stammering, he felt that his whole bearing had become drooping and abject. His master was talking swiftly and
the other man was looking at him in an embarrassed, stealthy, and pleading manner: his eyes seemed to be apologising for having supplanted him—so he mumbled 'Good day, sir,' and stumbled
out.

"When he got outside he could not think where to go. After a while he went in the direction of the little park in the centre of the city. It was quite near and he sat down on an iron bench
facing a pond. There were children walking up and down by the water giving pieces of bread to the swans. Now and again a labouring man or a messenger went by quickly; now and again a middle-aged,
slovenly dressed man drooped past aimlessly: sometimes a tattered, self-intent woman with a badgered face flopped by him. When he looked at these dull people the thought came to him that they were
not walking there at all; they were trailing through hell, and their desperate eyes saw none but devils around them. He saw himself joining these battered strollers . . . and he could not think
what he would tell his wife when he went home. He rehearsed to himself the terms of his dismissal a hundred times. How his master looked, what he had said: and then the fine, ironical things he had
said to his master. He sat in the park all day, and when evening fell he went home at his accustomed hour.

"His wife asked him questions as to how he had got on, and wanted to know was there any chance of being paid for the weeks of absence; the man answered her volubly, ate his supper and went to
bed: but he did not tell his wife that he had been dismissed and that there would be no money at the end of the week. He tried to tell her, but when he met her eye he found that he could not say
the words—he was afraid of the look that might come into her face when she heard it—she, standing terrified in those dismantled rooms . . .!

"In the morning he ate his breakfast and went out again—to work, his wife thought. She bid him ask the master about the three weeks' wages, or to try and get an advance on the present
week's wages, for they were hardly put to it to buy food. He said he would do his best, but he went straight to the park and sat looking at the pond, looking at the passers by and dreaming. In the
middle of the day he started up in a panic and went about the city asking for work in offices, shops, warehouses, everywhere, but he could not get any. He trailed back heavy-footed again to the
park and sat down.

"He told his wife more lies about his work that night and what his master had said when he asked for an advance. He couldn't bear the children to touch him. After a little time he sneaked away
to his bed.

"A week went that way. He didn't look for work any more. He sat in the park, dreaming, with his head bowed into his hands. The next day would be the day he should have been paid his wages. The
next day! What would his wife say when he told her he had no money? She would stare at him and flush and say—'Didn't you go out every day to work?'—How would he tell her then so that
she could understand quickly and spare him words?

"Morning came and the man ate his breakfast silently. There was no butter on the bread, and his wife seemed to be apologising to him for not having any—She said, 'We'll be able to start
fair from tomorrow,' and when he snapped at her angrily she thought it was because he had to eat dry bread.

"He went to the park and sat there for hours. Now and again he got up and walked into a neighbouring street, but always, after half an hour or so, he came back. Six o'clock in the evening was
his hour for going home. When six o'clock came he did not move, he still sat opposite the pond with his head bowed down into his arms. Seven o'clock passed. At nine o'clock a bell was rung and
every one had to leave. He went also. He stood outside the gates looking on this side and on that. Which way would he go? All roads were alike to him, so he turned at last and walked somewhere. He
did not go home that night. He never went home again. He never was heard of again anywhere in the wide world."

The voice ceased speaking and silence swung down again upon the little cell. The Philosopher had been listening intently to this story, and after a few minutes he spoke—

"When you go up this road there is a turn to the left and all the path along is bordered with trees—there are birds in the trees, Glory be to God! There is only one house on that road, and
the woman in it gave us milk to drink. She has but one son, a good boy, and she said the other children were dead; she was speaking of a husband who went away and left her—'Why should he have
been afraid to come home?' said she—'sure, I loved him.'"

After a little interval the voice spoke again—

"I don't know what became of the man I was speaking of. I am a thief, and I'm well known to the police everywhere. I don't think that man would get a welcome at the house up here, for why should
he?"

Another, a different, querulous kind of voice came from the silence—

"If I knew a place where there was a welcome I'd go there as quickly as I could, but I don't know a place and I never will, for what good would a man of my age be to any person? I am a thief
also. The first thing I stole was a hen out of a little yard. I roasted it in a ditch and ate it, and then I stole another one and ate it, and after that I stole everything I could lay my hands on.
I suppose I will steal as long as I live, and I'll die in a ditch at the heel of the hunt. There was a time, not long ago, and if any one had told me then that I would rob, even for hunger, I'd
have been insulted: but what does it matter now? And the reason I am a thief is because I got old without noticing it. Other people noticed it, but I did not. I suppose age comes on one so
gradually that it is seldom observed. If there are wrinkles on one's face we do not remember when they were not there: we put down all kind of little infirmities to sedentary living, and you will
see plenty of young people bald. If a man has no occasion to tell any one his age, and if he never thinks of it himself, he won't see ten years' difference between his youth and his age, for we
live in slow, quiet times, and nothing ever happens to mark the years as they go by, one after the other, and all the same.

"I lodged In a house for a great many years, and a little girl grew up there, the daughter of my landlady. She used to slide down the bannisters very well, and she used to play the piano very
badly. These two things worried me many a time. She used to bring me my meals in the morning and the evening, and often enough she'd stop to talk with me while I was eating. She was a very chatty
girl and I was a talkative person myself. When she was about eighteen years of age I got so used to her that if her mother came with the food I would be worried for the rest of the day. Her face
was as bright as a sunbeam, and her lazy, careless ways, big, free movements, and girlish chatter were pleasant to a man whose loneliness was only beginning to be apparent to him through her
company. I've thought of it often since, and I suppose that's how it began. She used to listen to all my opinions and she'd agree with them because she had none of her own yet. She was a good girl,
but lazy in her mind and body; childish in fact. Her talk was as involved as her actions: she always seemed to be sliding down mental bannisters; she thought in kinks and spoke in spasms, hopped
mentally from one subject to another without the slightest difficulty, and could use a lot of language in saying nothing at all. I could see all that at the time, but I suppose I was too pleased
with my own sharp business brains, and sick enough, although I did not know it, of my sharp-brained, business companions—dear Lord! I remember them well. It's easy enough to have brains as
they call it, but it is not so easy to have a little gaiety or carelessness or childishness or whatever it was she had. It is good, too, to feel superior to some one, even a girl.