Part 9

I did not know that I could hate any inanimate thing so much as I hated that pillow and that bolster. I did not know that such oceans of blind anger were bottled up within me. I banged them against each other with savage joy. I threw them on the floor and danced and stamped on them. I knelt on them; I sat on them; finally I kicked them, not in the hope of doing them any good (hope had by this time died within me), but for the simple delight of kicking the abominations.

Then, warmed with these various exercises, I put the things back and got into bed. It was as I expected. The mattress was a fit companion for the pillow and bolster. It lay like a newly ploughed field, every furrow deeply graven, every ridge with the edge of a dulled razor. It was not a field of warm loam or generous greensand that yielded to the touch. It was a field of stubborn Essex clay, cold and dank and merciless. The expanse was enormous. It seemed that during that measureless night I travelled miles to and fro across the field in search of a furrow into which I could wedge myself. I tried it on the east side, and I tried it on the west, and I tried it all between. I tried it longitudinally; I tried it latitudinally; I tried it diagonally. The way with a bed like this, I said to myself, is not to get in the furrows, but to lie across the ridges. But when I did that I felt like a toad under the harrow, when "ilka tooth gies him a tig," and I resumed my search for a furrow that would give me a welcome.

In the intervals I slept and had wild dreams in which I met Apollyon straddling across my path. He came at me with fire belching from his nostrils, but I gave him a mighty thwack with a bolster I happened to be carrying, and he fell with an awful thud and split his head open on a ridge of the ploughed field where the combat occurred. I daresay I slept more than I imagined, for I share Lord Granville's view on the subject. Believing that he was a victim of insomnia, he took a house in Carlton House Terrace, within sound of Big Ben, and was comforted to find that, in spite of nights which seemed to pass without a wink of sleep, he only heard the great bell once or twice.

I did not do so well as that. As I fought with the furrows I heard all the night sounds of the strange city without--the ringing of tram bells, the jolting of wagons, the songs of revellers, and so on--die down until all was quiet. I dozed and wakened and wakened and dozed, praying for the dawn as fervently as ever Wellington prayed for Blücher. Once I dreamed that I had gone into Hell, and heard the cries of the souls in torment, and waking I found that the strange city without was coming to life again with a jangle of hoots and whistles and screams. Perhaps, I felt, my dream was not very far wrong. I lay and listened to the mad chorus. I had never imagined that there could be so many whistles whistling with such different notes, high notes and low notes, clear notes and foggy notes, shrieking and growling like a whole menagerie of wild beasts hungering for blood. Intermittent noises began to be heard in the corridor. People were moving about. There was a swishing sound from the next room. A church clock outside began to strike, and I counted the strokes as a miser counts his money--one, two three, four, five, six, SEVEN. It seemed too good to be true. I punched the pillow to make certain I was awake, and, under the comfortable assurance that release was at hand, fell to sleep again in my furrowed field. When I woke next, the room was light. I leapt from bed and kicked the pillow joyfully across the room. But the bolster I subjected to no such indignity. After all, it had done me a good turn with Apollyon, and I called the account square.

Two hours later I am in the train fleeing from the strange city. I had never been to it before, and I daresay I shall never go to it again. But I shall always remember it as the City of Dreadful Night. I feel now that I, too, have been with Æneas into Hell. Perhaps it is unfair to the strange city. I daresay love and peace and beauty dwell there as abundantly as in most places. But I am content to leave the discovery of them to others.

THOSE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR

The case which has occupied the courts recently of the man who beat a tin can as a way of retaliating upon a neighbour who strummed the piano touches one of the most difficult problems of urban life. We who live in the cities all have neighbours, and for the most part "thin partitions do our realms divide." It is true that, however thin the walls, we seldom know our neighbours. If the man who has lived next door to me in a northern suburb for the last half-dozen years stopped me in the Strand or came and sat down beside me in a restaurant I should not, as the saying is, know him from Adam. In this vast whirlpool of London he goes his way and I go mine, and I daresay our paths will not cross though we go on living beside each other until one or other of us takes up a more permanent abode.

I do not know whether he is short or tall, old or young, or anything about him, and I daresay he is in the same state of contented ignorance about me. I hear him when he pokes the fire on his side late at night, and I suppose he hears me when I poke the fire on my side. Our intercourse is limited to the respective noises we make with the fire-irons, the piano, and so on. When he has friends to visit him we learn something about him from the sounds they make, the music they affect, and the time they go away (often unconscionably late). But apart from that vague intimation, my neighbour might be living in Mars and I might be living in Sirius, for all we know, or care, about each other. Perhaps some day his house (or mine) will be on fire, and then I daresay we shall become acquainted. But apart from some such catastrophe as this there seems no reason why we should ever exchange a word on this side of the grave.

It is not pride or incivility on either side that keeps us remote from each other. It is simply our London way. People are so plentiful that they lose their identity. By the Whitestone Pond at Hampstead not long ago I met my old friend John O'Connor--"Long John," as he was affectionately called in the House of Commons, of which he was for so long one of the most popular members--and he said, in reply to inquiries, that he was living in Frognal, had lived there for years, "next door to Robertson Nicoll--not that I should know him," he added, "for I don't think I have ever set eyes on him." And I should have expected to find that Sir William was no better informed about his neighbour than his neighbour was about him. In London men are as lonely as oysters, each living in his own shell. We go out into the country to find neighbours. If the man next door took a cottage a mile away from me in the country I should probably know all about him, his affairs, his family, his calling, and his habits inside a week, and be intimate enough with him in a fortnight to borrow his garden-shears or his bill-hook. This is not always so idyllic as it seems. Village life can be poisoned by neighbours until the victim pines for the solitude of a London street, where neighbours are so plentiful that you are no more conscious of their individual existence than if they were blackberries on a hedgerow.

On the occasions on which we become acutely conscious of our neighbours, the temptation is to think ill of them. For example, we were all late the other morning, and Matilda, whose function it is to keep us up to time, explained that she had overslept herself because of those people next door. Four o'clock it was, m'm, before the din ended. Some of us had lost count of the hours at two and others at three but Matilda was emphatic. She had heard the last of the revellers go away in a car, and had looked at her watch and it was exactly four. No one disputed her word. It was gratifying to know that the hour was four rather than three. If it had been five we should doubtless have been still more gratified. It would have made the case against those people next door still blacker. And it can never be too black for their deserts. Our neighbours are at once too near to us and too far away from us. If they were under our own roof we might be able to make something of them; if they were only in the next street we could forget all about them. But they are just far enough away to escape our celestial influence and quite close enough to be a nuisance.

They are always in the wrong. Consider the hours they keep--entirely different from our hours and therefore entirely reprehensible. If they do not offend by their extravagant piety they shock you by their levity. Perhaps they play tennis on Sunday, or perhaps they don't, and in either case they are vulnerable to criticism. They always manage to be gay when you are sleepy. They take a delight in going away for more holidays than you can possibly have, or perhaps they don't go away for holidays at all, in which case their inferiority is clearly established. If they are not guilty of criminal waste, they can be convicted of shabby parsimony. They either dress too luxuriously or do not dress luxuriously enough for the decencies of the neighbourhood. We suspect that they are no better than they should be. Observe the frequency with which their servants come and go. Depend upon it, they find those people next door impossible. Their habits and their friends, the music they play, the pets that they keep, the politics they affect, the newspapers they read--all these things confirm our darkest fears.

It is possible to believe anything about them--especially the worst. What are those strange sounds that penetrate the wall in the small hours? Surely that is the chink of coin! And those sudden shrieks and gusts of laughter? Is there not an alcoholic suggestion about such undisciplined hilarity? We know too much about them, and do not know enough. They are revealed to us in fragments, and in putting the fragments together we do not spare them. There is nothing so misleading as half heard and half-understood scraps. And the curious thing about those people next door is that, if you ever come to know them, you find they are not a bit like what you thought they were. You find to your astonishment that they have redeeming features. Perhaps they find that we have redeeming features too. For the chastening truth is that we all play the rôle of those people next door to somebody. We are all being judged, and generally very unfavourably judged, on evidence which, if we knew it, would greatly astonish us. It might help us to be a little more charitable about those people next door if we occasionally remembered that we are those people next door ourselves.

But the St. John's Wood case illustrates the frail terms on which immunity from annoyance by neighbours is enjoyed. Two musicians dwelling in one house gave lessons to pupils on the piano, and the man next door, who objected to his peace being disturbed in this way, took his revenge by banging on tin cans, and otherwise making things unpleasant for the musicians. I do not know what the law said on the subject. It may be admitted that the annoyances were equal in effect, but they were not the same in motive. In the one case the motive was the reasonable one of earning an honest living: there was no deliberate intention of being offensive to the neighbours. In the other case, the motive was admittedly to make a demonstration against the neighbours. What is to be done in such circumstances? It is not an offence to play the piano in one's own house even for a living. On the other hand, it is hard, especially if you don't like music, or perhaps even more if you do, to hear the scales going on the piano next door all day.

The question of motive does not seem to be relevant. If my neighbour makes noises which render my life intolerable, it is no answer to say that he makes them for a living and without intending to destroy my peace. He does destroy my peace, and it is no comfort to be assured that he does not mean to. Hazlitt insisted that a man might play the trombone in his own house all day if he took reasonable measures to limit the annoyance to his neighbours; but Hazlitt had probably never lived beside a trombone. I find the argument is leading me on to the side of the tin-can gentleman, and I don't want it to do that, for my sympathies are with the musicians. And yet----

Well, let us avoid a definite conclusion altogether and leave the incident to make us generally a little more sensitive about the feelings of our neighbours. They cannot expect us never to play the piano, never to sit up late, never to be a little hilarious, any more than we can expect never to be disturbed by them. But the amenities of neighbourliness require that we should mutually avoid being a nuisance to each other as much as we can. And if our calling compels us to be a little noisy, we should bear that in mind when we choose a house and when we choose the room in which we make our noises. The perfect neighbour is one whom we never see and whom we never hear except when he pokes the fire.

HOW WE SPEND OUR TIME

I read an entertaining article in the _Observer_ the other Sunday, which set me to the unusual task of making a calculation. Figures are not my strong point, and sums I abhor. But this article launched me on the unfamiliar task of making a sum. I hope I have done it correctly, but any schoolboy who cares to audit the account will be able to convict me if I am wrong. The article was the record of a gentleman who had, in the course of the past twelve years, played twenty thousand rubbers of auction bridge, and had kept a careful account of his experiences, the proportions of games he had won and lost, the average of "hundred aces" and "yarboroughs" he had had, how he had fared with "honours," with many curious points which had arisen, and which were no doubt illuminating to the student of the game.

But it was not these things which set me adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. My knowledge of bridge is as contemptible as my handicap at golf. The author of the article would not sit down at the same table, probably not in the same room, with such a 'prentice hand as I am at the game. Nor was it the financial aspect of the matter that interested me. That side of the story was not without its attractions. The player, on the analysis of his own and his opponents' "hands" over the twelve years showed, had had distinctly the worse of the luck, but he was obviously a good player, for he had won at fifty-five per cent. of his sittings and, playing generally for half-crown rubbers, had won in the twelve years £2750 of the £5000 that had changed hands in the games, each year having shown a profit on his labours.

There was, however, one item which was missing from this elaborate stocktaking, and it was this item that started my sum. I began to be interested in this gentleman from the point of view of the time he had devoted to the game over a period of years, which had not been without their anxieties. This consideration touched a wider question about which I have often thought vaguely and idly--the question, that is, of how the average man passes his time. Here was an average man of a certain class who had incidentally given me a hint to build up his time-sheet form. Taking an hour as the average time occupied by a rubber--which, with intervals and interruptions, seems a moderate estimate--I found that during the twelve years he had spent twenty thousand hours at the card-table--that is, two years and rather more than three months, day and night.

That was a substantial chunk of the twelve years to start with. I came next to the item of sleep, and assuming that, having made up his nightly account of the day's play, our author indulged in the normal eight hours of repose, I found that in the twelve years he had accounted for 34,840 hours in this way, and my schoolboy will, I hope, agree with me that this amounts in sum to approximately four years of sleep, day and night. I came next to meals. A man who can spend five hours a day at cards as an amusement will, I am sure, not hurry over his meals. He will take his lunch at his club, and his coffee and gossip after lunch, and he will dine well and leisurely before turning to the solid work of the card-table, for no doubt most of his card-playing will be done after dinner. Three hours a day is a reasonable allowance for the meal intervals, which, on this basis, account for 12,140 hours, or one year and three-eighths, during the twelve years. Holidays and Sundays (with due deduction on items already accounted for, cards, sleep, meals) account for a further half-year over the twelve years. For all the odds and ends of things, the outdoor recreations, golf, motoring, the daily journeys to and from town, theatres, visits to church, the occasional day at Lord's, the reading of newspapers, parties, public meetings, novel-reading, and so on, an average of two hours a day must be allowed, giving 8760 hours in the twelve years, or, roughly, a year of time. These items make up 75,680 hours out of the 105,120 hours into which the twelve years are divided. There remain 25,060 hours, or two years and seven-eighths, which I will charitably assume are devoted to work. On this basis my sum is as follows:

Sleep 4 years Work 2 7/8 years Cards 2 1/3 years Meals 1 3/8 years Odds and ends 1 year Holidays 1/2 year ______ Approximately 12 years

I present the result to the _Observer_ gentleman as a footnote to his entertaining article. Far be it from me to moralise about it. If the misuse of time were a hanging matter, few of us would escape the scaffold. I daresay I have wasted as much time in the twelve years as our bridge-player has done, though in different ways. But I think he will agree that the sum is worth doing and worth thinking about, and that when next he says that he has not time for this, that, or the other, he will know he is not telling the truth.

And while he is thinking about it, I will venture to recall for him an old story which he may have heard, but which is worth telling on the chance that he has not. Herbert Spencer was once staying at an hotel and, being fond of billiards, strolled into the billiard-room where he saw a young man who invited him to play a game. Spencer agreed and "broke," unfortunately leaving his ball on the baulk line, but playable. It was in the days when the "feather" stroke was allowed (I fancy it is now barred) and the young man took his cue and ran out by means of that delicate device. When he had reached his "100," the philosopher, putting up his cue with which he had not scored a point, addressed him thus: "A certain degree of facility in games of skill is a pleasant and desirable accomplishment; but, young man, such facility as you have displayed this evening is evidence of a misspent youth."

A SENTENCE OF DEATH

"The most dramatic thing I remember? I need not pause to answer that question," said my companion. "Do you recall the Lipski case? Ah, well, you will know what a sensation it created. It occurred in the hey-day of the great Stead at the _Pall Mall_. What a flair the fellow had for a sensation, and what a frenzy he could communicate to the public mind. Lipski had been sentenced to death for the murder of his paramour, and doubtless would have been hanged quite quietly but for the fact that Stead became interested in the case and convinced that the man was innocent. There was enough ground for the belief to warrant what would now be called a 'stunt,' and Stead seized his opportunity in his own incomparable fashion, and a raging, tearing propaganda followed in the Press. The public mind was lashed into a fury of indignation. Petitions poured in for the reprieve of the condemned man; demonstrations took place in the streets; crowds assembled in front of Buckingham Palace to wring the Royal prerogative out of the Queen.

"Day succeeded day, and still the storm rose, and still the Home Secretary held his hand. The right of criminal appeal did not exist in those days, and Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary, had no guidance to rely on except that of the judge who had tried the case, Fitzjames Stephen, and Stephen would commit himself to neither 'yea' nor 'nay,' but took refuge behind the jury's verdict, and left the matter there. The Home Secretary was in despair. Daily he saw himself held up to execration as a murderer, daily the petitions poured in, and the crowds gathered in the streets.

"Saturday came, and on Monday the execution was to take place. Appeals to Stephen were in vain, and every detail of the evidence had been examined again and again without a ray of new light. It was not only the condemned man whose fate was involved. If he was guilty and Matthews reprieved him, the latter would have yielded to an ignorant clamour and disgraced his office; if he was not guilty, and Matthews did not reprieve him, he would have executed an innocent man in the face of an unprecedented public warning. The day passed in anxious and ceaseless inquiry. In the afternoon he sent word to Stephen. He must see him once more. They could meet at the Home Office the following (Sunday) evening at five o'clock.

"I was then on the Home Office staff, and it was my duty to be in attendance while this critical conference was in progress. Time passed without a sound or sign coming from the room where the argument of life or death was proceeding. In the quiet of the late Sunday afternoon the chimes of Big Ben sounded the quarters from the Clock Tower. Six o'clock struck. I was tired of sitting alone, and opening the door of the Secretary's room quietly I entered and took a seat in the shadow.

"It was a strange scene that I had broken in on. Absolute silence prevailed; but both men were so engrossed in thought that my entrance passed quite unnoticed. Matthews was seated in his chair, his elbows on his knees, his head buried in his hands. Stephen, his eyes fixed on the carpet before him, strode to and fro across the room.

"I sat and waited. Outside, the church bells had begun ringing for the evening service, and their music alone broke the heavy silence of the room. Then Matthews spoke briefly, raising a point that had been hammered to weariness before. There was a brief answer from Stephen, and the silence was resumed, Matthews with his head still resting in his hands, Stephen still pacing the floor. Time passed. The bells ceased ringing, seven o'clock struck, and we passed into a soundless quiet. Now and then a question was put and an answer given, but there was no discussion. It seemed that the strange scene might continue until the hangman slipped his bolt next morning. I counted the quarters--one--two--three--eight o'clock. Three hours had gone by and no light had broken on the silent struggle.