one afternoon there landed from an american liner, at a liverpool wharf, a tall, bony, haggard-looking man, roughly and shabbily dressed, with a long, tangled, grey beard, and dark, wide-open, wistful eyes; he had lost his left arm. he had been a steerage passenger of the poorest class, and had been moody and silent on the voyage, giving no offence, but making no friends or acquaintances, and saying nothing of whence he came or of whither he was bound; others talked of the little village they were going to return to, of the old parents who were longing to welcome them, of the graves left behind them or the health and youth lost for ever, of their cheated hopes and broken fortunes or their modest gains and longed-for rest; but he said nothing whatever; he had interested no one as he had offended no one; no one noticed or cared where he went when he landed.
he did not stop to eat or drink, but took his third-class ticket for london, and when that was paid had only two dollars remaining in his pocket as his share of the goods of this earth.
he was wedged up between rough navvies in an overfilled compartment, and had a slow, tedious, uncomfortable journey in the parliamentary train. but he did not heed these minor troubles; his mind was engrossed in one overwhelming, all-engrossing thought which sat on his breast and gnawed at his vitals like a vampire.
“i guess i’ll find him soon, even in that great city, if he’s as big a man as they say,” he muttered to himself as he got out of the train and passed into the mirk and noise and hurry of the london streets.
he looked at his little bit of money, hesitated, walked through several streets, then entered a modest eating-house, which proclaimed its calling by eggs and cheese and rounds of beef ticketed with their prices in the window.
he ordered a cup of coffee and a fried rasher of bacon,[369] and when he had drunken and eaten these paid his small reckoning and said to the person who had served him:
“can you tell me where a rich man called william massarene, who came over from the states some years ago, lives in this city of yours?”
“no, i can’t,” said the woman. “there’s no rich folks in these here parts. but next door at the wine shop they’ve got a ‘directory’; i’ll go and get it for you.”
in a few minutes she returned with the huge red volume under her arm and laid it open on the table.
“what trade’s your ameriky man?” she asked.
airley smiled grimly.
“a gentleman. money makes gentlefolks.”
“here you are, then,” she said, turning over the leaves to the west-end division of the book. “you can look out the name yourself.”
“no, i can’t,” he answered. “i can’t read.”
“lord, man, you are behind the time o’ day!” said the woman. “well, tell me the name agen and i’ll look it out for you.”
he repeated it slowly three times over:
“massarene—massarene—william massarene.”
she whirled the leaves about for a few minutes, and then she said triumphantly:
“here you are!
“william massarene, m. p.; harrenden house, gloucester gate; carlton club; vale royal, south woldshire cottesdale grange, salop; blair airon, caithness, n. b.
“that’s your friend, isn’t it? my, he must be a swell!”
“which of all them places is in this city?” asked the man.
“why, carlton club and gloucester gate, of course, you gaby!”
“where’s gloucester gate?” said airley heavily, without resenting her epithet.
she told him how to get to it. he bade her good-day, murmured a hoarse and tardy “thank ye,” and went out of her doorway.
[370]the woman looked after him with some misgiving in her mind.
“i wish i hadn’t give him the address,” she thought; “he looks like an anarchist, he do.”
she was tempted for the moment to go and tell the policeman at the corner to keep an eye on this stranger, but there were no serious grounds for doing so, and the police were not beloved by those who work for their living in great cities.
so robert airley went on his way unnoticed, one of the many ill-fed, ill-clad, gaunt, and weary-looking men who may be counted by tens of thousands in the london streets, and who sometimes are ill-bred and disrespectful enough to die on their pavements. he was not an anarchist, but had been always a strictly law-abiding and long-suffering man, and was by nature very patient and tender-hearted. but a direful purpose had entered into him now, and worked havoc in his gentle breast, and changed his very nature. he walked on through the maze of many streets which divided the humble eating-house from the precincts of hyde park. it was four in the afternoon, and the traffic was great and the carriages were countless. but he scarcely noticed them except to get out of their way, and he went on steadily down piccadilly with its close-packed throngs, and onward past apsley house and the french embassy, until he approached what a cabman standing on the curbstone told him were gloucester gate and harrenden house. when he saw its magnificent frontage, its gilded gates, its stately portals, he looked up at them all, and a bitter fleeting smile crossed his face for an instant.
blasted blizzard dwelt there!
he rang in his ignorance at the grand gateway’s bell. a magnificent functionary bade him begone without even deigning to ask why he had come. he realized that those gilded gates did not open to the like of him. he did not insist or entreat; he shrank away like a starved dog which is refused admittance and dreads a kick, and went into the opposite park and mingled with the pedestrians, feeling giddy for a moment as the great stream of horses and[371] carriages and persons swept past him in the pale london sunset light.
he was a poor, unnoticeable, humble figure, with his battered hat pulled down to shade his eyes and his red bundle under his one arm. every now and then he put his hand in his breast-pocket to make sure that something which he carried there was safe.
he went onward till he found a secluded part of the park where he could smoke his pipe in peace, and as he smoked could meditate how best to do that which he had come across the atlantic to accomplish: wild justice, of which the fascination held him fast in its hypnotism.
he took his pipe out of his pocket and lighted it, where he sat on a bench under a tree. his tobacco was strong and vulgar in its smell. a young lady, probably a governess, who sat on the same bench with two well-dressed small children, put her handkerchief to her nostrils and looked appealingly at a constable who stood near. the policeman touched him on the shoulder.
“we can’t have that stench ’ere, my good man. leddies don’t like it!”
“aren’t this a public park?” said airley.
“don’t cheek me, or i’ll run you in as if you was a dawg,” said the guardian of law and order.
airley put out his pipe. his mind was filled with one memory, one intention, one desire; these left no room in it for resentment at petty annoyances. he got up and moved away amongst the well-dressed sauntering people. “thanks,” said the pretty governess who sat beside the children, with a smile to the constable.
robert airley walked along slowly with his felt hat drawn down over his eyes. the policeman looked after him suspiciously.
“one of the unemployed?” said the governess, with another smile.
“calls himself so, mum, i dessay,” replied the policeman with impatient contempt. “them wagabonds ought to be took up like dawgs,” he added; he had just beaten a little terrier to death with his truncheon.
robert airley’s mind was filled with one memory—that of the day on which he had first showed william[372] massarene the shining bits of “sparkles” at the roots of the long grass. “it’s silver, ain’t it?” he had said to the keeper of that house of entertainment where margaret massarene fried sausages for the rough men who drank her husband’s strong waters and hot brews.
william massarene had looked at the shining particles on the grass-roots and had known immediately what it was. “’tis a rubbishy slate there is in these parts,” he said, with great presence of mind. “where that slate’s found ground’s always poor and no good for man or beasts.”
robert airley had believed him; he was a young man of good faith and weak brain.
in the winter which followed on that conversation all things went ill with him: his cow died, his two pigs strayed into the scrub and were never recovered, his young wife was pregnant and ill; the violent blasts of those parts unroofed his shingle house and terrified her almost out of her wits. he took her down into the township of kerosene and timidly asked massarene to lend him a little money on his ground.
“i won’t lend on it,” said massarene. “i told you ’tis all shale and slate. i’ll buy it for thirty dollars. not a cent more nor less. the slate’s the only good thing on it, and that must be quarried, and you haven’t means to quarry.”
robert airley knew that this was the truth as regarded his fortunes, he had not a cent in his pocket; he had nothing to get food or lodging; his young wife in her first labor pains was moaning that she would never go back to that wilderness. he was so tormented and worried and out of heart that he closed with massarene’s offer and sold his claim to the bit of land out and out, and settled in the township as a mechanic, which he had been at home.
three years later he heard that mining had been begun on his old claim and that a fine vein of tin had been found.
“you cheated me,” he said to william massarene.
“not i,” said the fortunate speculator. “i bought your waste land on spec.; i’ve a right to what i find[373] there. and,” he added, with his blackest scowl, stepping close to airley’s ear, “if you dare say a word o’ that sort ever again in all your years, i’ll put two bullets in your numskull of a noddle sure as my name’s massarene. i aren’t a good un to rouse.”
robert airley was not a coward, but he was miserably poor, and poverty is apt to be cowardice when it is not desperation.
he held his tongue while the ore of the penamunic mine was being brought to the surface. he loved his young wife, who was miserable away from the friendly faces and merry little shops of her native town, and he adored the rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed, noisy boy to whom she had given birth; life was sweet to him despite his poverty; he did not dare provoke william massarene, who was already lord of kerosene township and of much else besides. it was bitter to him to think that had he only possessed enough wit to know what that shining dust on the grass-roots had meant he would have been a rich and fortunate man. but he could not retrieve his foolish unhappy error; and when william massarene made the main trunk line from kerosene by way of issouri to chicago, over four thousand miles of swamp and scrub, he meekly accepted the place of platelayer on the new railway which was offered him at the great man’s instigation.
“you see i don’t forget old friends,” said massarene with a cynical grin.
but for his wife and his little boy at home dependent on himself for their bread, robert airley would have killed him then and there.
from that day he had never been able to get away from that vile city of kerosene, which spread and spread in its brick and mortar hideousness between him and the country, which multiplied its churches and its counting-houses, which had its gambling hells next door to its methodist chapels, which was black and stinking and smoke-befouled, and filled all day and all night with the oaths of men and the cries of beasts, the throbbing of engines, the shrieking of steam, the bleating of sheep, the screaming of women, the lowing of tortured oxen, the[374] howling of kidnapped dogs—that thrice-accursed cancer on the once fair breast of the dear earth!
what he would have given that he had never pulled up that grass with those shining atoms in the earth at its roots, but had lived, ever so hardly, on his own ground, at penamunic, under the rough winds and the torrid suns and the driving snows, toiling like the oxen, hungering like the swine, chased by forest fires, pursued by rolling floods, but free at least in the untainted air, and away from that infernal curse which men dare to call civilization.
absorbed in his own thoughts, he walked on now along the footpath which runs parallel with the ladies’ mile; jostling the smart people he passed, who drew away from his contact as though he had been a leper. he was wondering if he could trust his nerve, and rely on his hand, to do what he had come to do.
william massarene was at that moment in the lobby of the house of commons conversing with the conservative whip.
he was beginning to be appreciated by the unionist, and he had always been feared. of course they still ridiculed him to themselves for his accent, his ambitions, his antecedents, and his snobbism, but they knew that he was valuable to them, and he had a hard sound grip of certain practical questions which made members, and ministers too, listen when he was on his legs. in public life of any kind he showed always a certain rude power in him which enabled him to hold his own with the men who surrounded him, whoever they might be.
he was grievous and terrible to the patricians of the party, but the patricians have learned in the last twenty years that they must pocket their pride to keep their heads above water; politically and socially, tory democracy has to lie down with strange bed-fellows.
they knew, too, very well that he would exact his full price, that they would have to give him office in some small way at some future time, that they would have to put him on the next batch of new baronets, and that eventually he would have to be hoisted into the lords in company with the brewers and iron-masters, and wool-staplers[375] and chemists, who now adorn the upper chamber.
they knew that if they did not please him to the fullest measure of his demands, he would rat without scruple; and there are so many questions in this immediate day about which it is so easy for a man to have a sudden awakening of conscience if he is not obtaining all he wants in the shape he wishes. they knew that, and they hated the thought of it, but they could not afford to alienate and offend him. he had not only money, he had a sledge-hammer power in him, and in a marvellously short time had got his grasp on the attention of the house. he was a common man, a vulgar man, an uneducated man; but he was a man of great ability and absolute unscrupulousness such as no government or opposition can afford in these days to despise.
all the ambitions which he had brought with him from the northwest were certain of fruition if he lived.
of death he had no fear; his physician told him that his heart was sound, his lungs were sound, and that he had no tendency to gout or any other malady.
at eight o’clock as he drove home to dinner he felt very content with himself as he rested his short squab figure and massive shoulders against the soft cushions of his brougham. the whip had consulted him, the premier had complimented him; the great person who headed a committee of which he was a member had thanked him for his industry and assistance. on the whole, he was on excellent terms with himself. he had done what he had come home to do. he had made himself a power in the land. even with that merciless rodent who had eaten so far into his fortune he was even now; he was her master now. she was horribly, cruelly, unspeakably afraid of him. he kept her nose to the grindstone, in his own phraseology, mercilessly and with brutal relish. he paid her off for every one of her insults, for every one of her jests, for every one of the moments in which she had called him billy. he had no feeling for her left except delight in her humiliation, he gloried in her shrinking hatred of him, in her abject fear. if she wanted to marry again—ah!—he chuckled in his grimmest mirth when he[376] thought of the pull-up he would give to this thoroughbred mare if she tried to cut any capers. she should die in a garret abroad, and whistle for her fine friends and her lovers in vain!
yes, all went well with him. everybody was afraid of him all round. it was the triumph which he had always craved. they might hate him as much as they liked provided only they feared him, and let him go step by step, step by step, over their silly heads up his golden ladder.
“i said i’d do it and i’ve done it,” he said to himself, with his hands clasped on his broad belly and his long tight lips puffed out with a smile of content.
the carriage stopped at that moment before the open gates; he seldom drove through the gates when alone, for he felt some unacknowledged fear of his carriage-horses when driven by such butter-fingered fools as he considered english coachmen to be, and he preferred to alight in the street. the white brilliancy of the electric lamps of the courtyard was streaming out into the dusky misty night.
he got out of the brougham slowly, for he was a heavy man, his figure plainly visible in the bright light from the open portals, his footman obsequiously aiding him, and the wide-open entrance of the great house glowing with light in front of him. a dark figure unperceived came out of the shadow and drew close to him; there was a flash, a report, and the joys and ambitions of william massarene were ended for ever and aye.
he fell forward on the marble steps of his great mansion, stone dead, with a bullet through his heart.
“’tis too good for him, the brute! too short and too sweet!” thought robert airley as he turned away, unseen by anyone, and mingled with the traffic behind the dead man’s house.
the vengeance he had taken seemed to him a poor thing after all.
