The Island Pharisees Part 25

His heart began to beat. "Heavens!" he thought, "what shall I do now?"

His first impulse was to walk away, and think no more about it--to act, indeed, like any averagely decent man who did not care to be concerned in such affairs.

He retraced his steps, however, and halted half a dozen paces from their figures.

"Ask the gentleman! He spoke to me," she was saying in her bra.s.sy voice, through the emphasis of which Shelton could detect her fear.

"That's all right," returned the policeman, "we know all about that."

"You--police!" cried the woman tearfully; "I 've got to get my living, have n't I, the same as you?"

Shelton hesitated, then, catching the expression in her frightened face, stepped forward. The policeman turned, and at the sight of his pale, heavy jowl, cut by the cheek-strap, and the bullying eyes, he felt both hate and fear, as if brought face to face with all that he despised and loathed, yet strangely dreaded. The cold certainty of law and order upholding the strong, treading underfoot the weak, the smug front of meanness that only the purest spirits may attack, seemed to be facing him. And the odd thing was, this man was only carrying out his duty.

Shelton moistened his lips.

"You're not going to charge her?"

"Aren't I?" returned the policeman.

"Look here; constable, you 're making a mistake."

The policeman took out his note-book.

"Oh, I 'm making a mistake? I 'll take your name and address, please; we have to report these things."

"By all means," said Shelton, angrily giving it. "I spoke to her first."

"Perhaps you'll come up to the court tomorrow morning, and repeat that,"

replied the policeman, with incivility.

Shelton looked at him with all the force at his command.

"You had better be careful, constable," he said; but in the act of uttering these words he thought how pitiable they sounded.

"We 're not to be trifled with," returned the policeman in a threatening voice.

Shelton could think of nothing but to repeat:

"You had better be careful, constable."

"You're a gentleman," replied the policeman. "I'm only a policeman.

You've got the riches, I've got the power."

Grasping the woman's arm, he began to move along with her.

Shelton turned, and walked away.

He went to Grinnings' Club, and flung himself down upon a sofa. His feeling was not one of pity for the woman, nor of peculiar anger with the policeman, but rather of dissatisfaction with himself.

"What ought I to have done?" he thought, "the beggar was within his rights."

He stared at the pictures on the wall, and a tide of disgust surged up in him.

"One or other of us," he reflected, "we make these women what they are.

And when we've made them, we can't do without them; we don't want to; but we give them no proper homes, so that they're reduced to prowl about the streets, and then we run them in. Ha! that's good--that's excellent!

We run them in! And here we sit and carp. But what do we do? Nothing!

Our system is the most highly moral known. We get the benefit without soiling even the hem of our phylacteries--the women are the only ones that suffer. And why should n't they--inferior things?"

He lit a cigarette, and ordered the waiter to bring a drink.

"I'll go to the Court," he thought; but suddenly it occurred to him that the case would get into the local papers. The press would never miss so nice a little bit of scandal--"Gentleman v. Policeman!" And he had a vision of Antonia's father, a neighbouring and conscientious magistrate, solemnly reading this. Someone, at all events, was bound to see his name and make a point of mentioning it too good to be missed! And suddenly he saw with horror that to help the woman he would have to a.s.sert again that he had spoken to her first. "I must go to the Court!" he kept thinking, as if to a.s.sure himself that he was not a coward.

He lay awake half the night worrying over this dilemma.

"But I did n't speak to her first," he told himself; "I shall only be telling a lie, and they 'll make me swear it, too!"

He tried to persuade himself that this was against his principles, but at the bottom of his heart he knew that he would not object to telling such a lie if only guaranteed immune from consequences; it appeared to him, indeed, but obvious humanity.

"But why should I suffer?" he thought; "I've done nothing. It's neither reasonable nor just."

He hated the unhappy woman who was causing him these horrors of uncertainty. Whenever he decided one way or other, the policeman's face, with its tyrannical and muddy eyes, rose before him like a nightmare, and forced him to an opposite conviction. He fell asleep at last with the full determination to go and see what happened.

He woke with a sense of odd disturbance. "I can do no good by going," he thought, remembering, aid lying very still; "they 're certain to believe the policeman; I shall only blacken myself for nothing;" and the combat began again within him, but with far less fury. It was not what other people thought, not even the risk of perjury that mattered (all this he made quite clear)--it was Antonia. It was not fair to her to put himself in such a false position; in fact, not decent.

He breakfasted. In the room were some Americans, and the face of one young girl reminded him a little of Antonia. Fainter and fainter grew the incident; it seemed to have its right proportions.

Two hours later, looking at the clock, he found that it was lunch-time.

He had not gone, had not committed perjury; but he wrote to a daily paper, pointing out the danger run by the community from the power which a belief in their infallibility places in the hands of the police--how, since they are the sworn abettors of right and justice, their word is almost necessarily taken to be gospel; how one and all they hang together, from mingled interest and esprit de corps. Was it not, he said, reasonable to suppose that amongst thousands of human beings invested with such opportunities there would be found bullies who would take advantage of them, and rise to distinction in the service upon the helplessness of the unfortunate and the cowardice of people with anything to lose? Those who had in their hands the sacred duties of selecting a practically irresponsible body of men were bound, for the sake of freedom and humanity, to exercise those duties with the utmost care and thoroughness . . . .

However true, none of this helped him to think any better of himself at heart, and he was haunted by the feeling that a stout and honest bit of perjury was worth more than a letter to a daily paper.

He never saw his letter printed, containing, as it did, the germs of an unpalatable truth.

In the afternoon he hired a horse, and galloped on Port Meadow. The strain of his indecision over, he felt like a man recovering from an illness, and he carefully abstained from looking at the local papers.

There was that within him, however, which resented the worsting of his chivalry.

CHAPTER XX

HOLM OAKS

Holm Oaks stood back but little from the road--an old manor-house, not set upon display, but dwelling close to its barns, stables, and walled gardens, like a good mother; long, flat-roofed, red, it had Queen Anne windows, on whose white-framed diamond panes the sunbeams glinted.

In front of it a fringe of elms, of all trees the tree of most established principle, bordered the stretch of turf between the gravel drive and road; and these elms were the homes of rooks of all birds the most conventional. A huge aspen--impressionable creature--s.h.i.+vered and shook beyond, apologising for appearance among such imperturbable surroundings. It was frequented by a cuckoo, who came once a year to hoot at the rules of life, but seldom made long stay; for boys threw stones at it, exasperated by the absence of its morals.

The village which cl.u.s.tered in the dip had not yet lost its dread of motor-cars. About this group of flat-faced cottages with gabled roofs the scent of hay, manure, and roses clung continually; just now the odour of the limes troubled its servile st.u.r.diness. Beyond the dip, again, a square-towered church kept within grey walls the record of the village flock, births, deaths, and marriages--even the births of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, even the deaths of suicides--and seemed to stretch a hand invisible above the heads of common folk to grasp the forgers of the manor-house. Decent and discreet, the two roofs caught the eye to the exclusion of all meaner dwellings, seeming to have joined in a conspiracy to keep them out of sight.

The July sun had burned his face all the way from Oxford, yet pale was Shelton when he walked up the drive and rang the bell.