CHAPTER XIII

THE INVENTORY

All this had happened more than a year ago, and the sense of shame, accompanying that first confession, had been worn to the dull surface, incapable of reflecting the finer feelings of the mind. Under the very nose of that editor who was considering his last short story, John would have stepped boldly into the suspicious-looking little passage; returning the smile of the girl who sold him stamps in the post-office, he would have entered shamelessly the chapel of unredemption. Such is the reward of the perpetual sin of poverty. It brings with it the soothing narcotic of callousness, of indifference--and that perhaps is the saddest sin of all.

The watch-chain went that morning with the ease of a transaction constantly performed. There was no need to haggle over the price this time. The same price had been paid many times before. It came last but one on the list of things to be pawned. Last of all was the little brass man--the last to be pledged, the first to be redeemed. There is always an order in these things and it never varies. When pledging, you go from top to bottom of the list; when redeeming, it is just the reverse. And the order itself depends entirely upon that degree of sentiment with which each object is regarded.

The following was the list, in its correct order, of those things which from time to time left the world of John's possession, and were hidden in the seclusion of pledged retreat:--

FUR COAT. CUFF LINKS. CIGARETTE CASE. TIE PIN. MATCH BOX. WATCH. CHAIN. LITTLE BRASS MAN.

Reverse the order of this and you arrive at the sequence in which they returned. And here follows a detailed account of the history of each object--detailed, where details are possible and of interest.

_Fur Coat_. This pretentious-looking article was bought by John as a bargain. One day, when paying his rent to the landlord--a man who smelted and refined the gold that has an acquaintance with false teeth--he was asked if he would like to buy something very cheap. Well--you know what a temptation that is. So great a temptation is it, that you ask first "How much?" and only when you have heard the price, do you inquire the nature of the article. Four pounds ten, he was told. Then what was it? A fur-lined overcoat with astrachan collar and cuffs! There must be a presumption on the part of the seller that you know nothing of fur coats, or he will not talk to you like this. Certainly it was cheap, but even then, it would not have been bought had John not overheard the former possessor offering to buy it back at four pounds five. Such a circumstance as this doubles the temptation. So seldom is it that one comes across a bargain when one has any money in one's pocket, that it is impossible, when one does, to let it go to another man. John bought it. It would be a useful thing to visit editors in when he had no money.

But you would scarcely credit the treachery of a fur-lined coat with astrachan collar and cuffs. John had no idea of it. It played fiendish tricks upon him. Just as he determined to mount upon a 'bus, it whispered in his ear--"You can't do this--you really can't. If you want to drive, you'd better get a hansom. If not, then you'd better walk."

It was of no avail that he complained of not being able to afford a hansom and of being in too great a hurry to walk. That heavy astrachan collar whispered again:

"You can't ride on a 'bus anyway--look at that man laughing at you already----"

And with a fiendish joy, it gave him sudden and magical insight into the jeering minds of all those people in the 'bus. He relinquished the 'bus then. He called a hansom; he was in a hurry and he drove away, while the astrachan collar preens itself with pride and delight as it looks in the little oblong mirror.

And this is not the only treachery which the fur coat played upon him. As he descended from the cab, a man rushed out of nowhere to protect that coat from the wheels, and overcome with pleasure, the fur coat whispered in his ear once more--"Give him twopence--you can't ignore him."

"I could have kept my coat off the wheel quite easily myself," John replied--"He was really only in the way."

"Never mind," exclaimed the astrachan collar--"If you're going to be seen about with me, you'll have to give him twopence."

Reluctantly John took the twopence out.

And then, all the while that he was fumbling in his pocket for the shilling which should have been more than his legal fare, seeing the distance he had come, only that it cannot be less, the astrachan collar was still at him.

"Can't you hear," it says suggestively--"can't you hear what the cabman is going to say when you only give him a shilling!"

Then it imitated his voice, just in the very way John knew he would say it, and he felt the blood tingling to the roots of his hair. Of course, he gave him one and six, for by this time he was the slave of that fur-lined coat. It dominated his life. It ran up bills in his name and he had to pay them. For myself, I would sooner live with an extravagant wife than with a fur-lined coat.

And so was it with John. That bargain he had purchased with the astrachan collar and cuffs treated him shamefully. It was insatiable in its demands, and all under false pretences; for there came one terrible day when John, who knew nothing about these things, learnt that it was only imitation astrachan. Then he asserted himself. He refused to take it out, and one freezing day in the month of February pawned it for two pounds five. Some three months later, on a blazing day in May, he received a notice from the pawnbroker, who said that he must redeem it immediately, for he could not hold himself responsible for the fur. Now, even an extravagant wife would have more consideration for you, more idea of the true fitness of things than that. Eventually that fur coat was pawned in order to save a lady from the last, the most extreme sentence that the law can pass upon the sin of poverty. There comes a time when the sin of poverty can be dealt no longer with by the high priest in the chapel of unredemption. Then it comes into the hands of the law. To save her from this, was a debt of honour and perhaps the most generous action that that fur coat ever did in its life, was to pay that debt: for the three months went by, and on one of the coldest days in winter, it passed silently and unwept into the possession of the high priest.

_Cuff Links_. No history is attached to these. They realised ten shillings many times, till the ticket was lost, and then, since, under these circumstances, an affidavit must be made, and cuff links not being worth the swearing about, they were lost sight of.

_The Watch_. For this is the next article on the inventory, of which any substance can be written, and its history is practically known already. John's mother had given it to him. It represented the many times those two bright eyes were tired with counting the stitches of the white lace shawls. It represented the thousands of times that those slender, sensitive fingers had rested in weariness from their ceaseless passing to and fro. It represented almost the last lace-work she had done, before those fingers had at length been held motionless in the cold grip of paralysis. But, above all, it stood for the love of that gentle heart that beat with so much pride and so much pleasure, to see the little boy, whose head her breast had fondled, come to the stern and mighty age of twenty-one. And two pounds five was the value they put upon it all.

_The Little Brass Man_,--the _Chevalier d'honneur_. His story has already been told--his life, so far as it concerns this history. But of what he had lived through in the hundred years that had gone before--nobody knows. One can only assume, without fear of inaccuracy, that it was the life of a gentleman.