Part 4 (1/2)

I picked myself up from the edge of the causeway, aching and sore from head to foot, scarcely able to move, yet conscious that if I did not get myself out of the way, one or other of the vehicles which were das.h.i.+ng along would run over me. It would be impossible to describe the miserable sensations, both of body and mind, with which I dragged myself across the crowded pavement, not without curses and even kicks from the pa.s.sers-by, and avoiding the shop from which I still heard those shrieks of devilish laughter, gathered myself up in the shelter of a little projection of a wall, where I was for the moment safe. The pain which I felt was as nothing to the sense of humiliation, the mortification, the rage with which I was possessed. There is nothing in existence more dreadful than rage which is impotent, which cannot punish or avenge, which has to restrain itself and put up with insults showered upon it. I had never known before what that helpless, hideous exasperation was; and I was humiliated beyond description, brought down--I, whose inclination it was to make more of myself than was justifiable--to the aspect of a miserable ruffian beaten in a brawl, soiled, covered with mud and dust, my clothes torn, my face bruised and disfigured,--all this within half an hour or there about of my arrival in a strange place where n.o.body knew me or could do me justice! I kept looking out feverishly for some one with an air of authority to whom I could appeal. Sooner or later somebody must go by, who, seeing me in such a plight, must inquire how it came about, must help me and vindicate me. I sat there for I cannot tell how long, expecting every moment that were it but a policeman, somebody would notice and help me; but no one came. Crowds seemed to sweep by without a pause,--all hurrying, restless; some with anxious faces, as if any delay would be mortal; some in noisy groups intercepting the pa.s.sage of the others. Sometimes one would pause to point me out to his comrades with a shout of derision at my miserable plight, or if by a change of posture I got outside the protection of my wall, would kick me back with a coa.r.s.e injunction to keep out of the way. No one was sorry for me; not a look of compa.s.sion, not a word of inquiry was wasted upon me; no representative of authority appeared. I saw a dozen quarrels while I lay there, cries of the weak, and triumphant shouts of the strong; but that was all.

I was drawn after a while from the fierce and burning sense of my own grievances by a querulous voice quite close to me. 'This is my corner,'

it said. 'I've sat here for years, and I have a right to it. And here you come, you big ruffian, because you know I haven't got the strength to push you away.'

'Who are you?' I said, turning round horror-stricken; for close beside me was a miserable man, apparently in the last stage of disease. He was pale as death, yet eaten up with sores. His body was agitated by a nervous trembling. He seemed to shuffle along on hands and feet, as though the ordinary mode of locomotion was impossible to him, and yet was in possession of all his limbs. Pain was written in his face. I drew away to leave him room, with mingled pity and horror that this poor wretch should be the partner of the only shelter I could find within so short a time of my arrival. I who--It was horrible, shameful, humiliating; and yet the suffering in his wretched face was so evident that I could not but feel a pang of pity too. 'I have nowhere to go,' I said. 'I am--a stranger. I have been badly used, and n.o.body seems to care.'

'No,' he said, 'n.o.body cares; don't you look for that. Why should they?

Why, you look as if you were sorry for _me!_ What a joke!' he murmured to himself,--'what a joke! Sorry for some one else! What a fool the fellow must be!'

'You look,' I said, 'as if you were suffering horribly; and you say you have come here for years.'

'Suffering! I should think I was,' said the sick man; 'but what is that to you? Yes; I've been here for years,--oh, years! that means nothing,--for longer than can be counted. Suffering is not the word. It's torture; it's agony! But who cares? Take your leg out of my way.'

I drew myself out of his way from a sort of habit, though against my will, and asked, from habit too, 'Are you never any better than now?'

He looked at me more closely, and an air of astonishment came over his face. 'What d'ye want here,' he said, 'pitying a man? That's something new here. No; I'm not always so bad, if you want to know. I get better, and then I go and do what makes me bad again, and that's how it will go on; and I choose it to be so, and you needn't bring any of your d----d pity here.'

'I may ask, at least, why aren't you looked after? Why don't you get into some hospital?' I said.

'Hospital!' cried the sick man, and then he too burst out into that furious laugh, the most awful sound I ever had heard. Some of the pa.s.sers-by stopped to hear what the joke was, and surrounded me with once more a circle of mockers.

'Hospitals! perhaps you would like a whole Red Cross Society, with ambulances and all arranged?' cried one. 'Or the _Misericordia_!' shouted another. I sprang up to my feet, crying, 'Why not?' with an impulse of rage which gave me strength. Was I never to meet with anything but this fiendish laughter? 'There's some authority, I suppose,' I cried in my fury. 'It is not the rabble that is the only master here, I hope.' But n.o.body took the least trouble to hear what I had to say for myself. The last speaker struck me on the mouth, and called me an accursed fool for talking of what I did not understand; and finally they all swept on and pa.s.sed away.

I had been, as I thought, severely injured when I dragged myself into that corner to save myself from the crowd; but I sprang up now as if nothing had happened to me. My wounds had disappeared; my bruises were gone. I was as I had been when I dropped, giddy and amazed, upon the same pavement, how long--an hour?--before? It might have been an hour, it might have been a year, I cannot tell. The light was the same as ever, the thunderous atmosphere unchanged. Day, if it was day, had made no progress; night, if it was evening, had come no nearer,--all was the same.

As I went on again presently, with a vexed and angry spirit, regarding on every side around me the endless surging of the crowd, and feeling a loneliness, a sense of total abandonment and solitude, which I cannot describe, there came up to me a man of remarkable appearance. That he was a person of importance, of great knowledge and information, could not be doubted. He was very pale, and of a worn but commanding aspect. The lines of his face were deeply drawn; his eyes were sunk under high arched brows, from which they looked out as from caves, full of a fiery impatient light. His thin lips were never quite without a smile; but it was not a smile in which any pleasure was. He walked slowly, not hurrying, like most of the pa.s.sengers. He had a reflective look, as if pondering many things. He came up to me suddenly, without introduction or preliminary, and took me by the arm. 'What object had you in talking of these antiquated inst.i.tutions?' he said. And I saw in his mind the gleam of the thought, which seemed to be the first with all, that I was a fool, and that it was the natural thing to wish me harm, just as in the earth above it was the natural thing, professed at least, to wish well,--to say, Good-morning, good-day, by habit and without thought. In this strange country the stranger was received with a curse, and it woke an answer not unlike the hasty 'Curse you, then, also!' which seemed to come without any will of mine through my mind. But this provoked only a smile from my new friend. He took no notice. He was disposed to examine me, to find some amus.e.m.e.nt perhaps--how could I tell?--in what I might say.

'What antiquated things?'

'Are you still so slow of understanding? What were they--hospitals? The pretences of a world that can still deceive itself. Did you expect to find them here?'

'I expected to find--how should I know?' I said, bewildered--'some shelter for a poor wretch where he could be cared for, not to be left there to die in the street. Expected! I never thought. I took it for granted--'

'To die in the street!' he cried with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders. 'You'll learn better by and by. And if he did die in the street, what then? What is that to you?'

'To me!' I turned and looked at him, amazed; but he had somehow shut his soul, so that I could see nothing but the deep eyes in their caves, and the smile upon the close-shut mouth. 'No more to me than to any one. I only spoke for humanity's sake, as--a fellow-creature.'

My new acquaintance gave way to a silent laugh within himself, which was not so offensive as the loud laugh of the crowd, but yet was more exasperating than words can say. 'You think that matters? But it does not hurt you that he should he in pain. It would do you no good if he were to get well. Why should you trouble yourself one way or the other? Let him die--if he can--That makes no difference to you or me.'

'I must be dull indeed,' I cried,--'slow of understanding, as you say.

This is going back to the ideas of times beyond knowledge--before Christianity--' As soon as I had said this I felt somehow--I could not tell how--as if my voice jarred, as if something false and unnatural was in what I said. My companion gave my arm a twist as if with a shock of surprise, then laughed in his inward way again.

'We don't think much of that here, nor of your modern pretences in general. The only thing that touches you and me is what hurts or helps ourselves. To be sure, it all comes to the same thing,--for I suppose it annoys you to see that wretch writhing; it hurts your more delicate, highly-cultivated consciousness.'

'It has nothing to do with my consciousness,' I cried angrily; 'it is a shame to let a fellow-creature suffer if we can prevent it.'

'Why shouldn't he suffer?' said my companion. We pa.s.sed as he spoke some other squalid, wretched creatures shuffling among the crowd, whom he kicked with his foot, calling forth a yell of pain and curses. This he regarded with a supreme contemptuous calm which stupefied me. Nor did any of the pa.s.sers-by show the slightest inclination to take the part of the sufferers. They laughed, or shouted out a gibe, or what was still more wonderful, went on with a complete unaffected indifference, as if all this was natural. I tried to disengage my arm in horror and dismay, but he held me fast with a pressure that hurt me. 'That's the question,' he said. 'What have we to do with it? Your fict.i.tious consciousness makes it painful to you. To me, on the contrary, who take the view of nature, it is a pleasurable feeling. It enhances the amount of ease, whatever that may be, which I enjoy. I am in no pain. That brute who is'--and he flicked with a stick he carried the uncovered wound of a wretch upon the roadside--'makes me more satisfied with my condition. Ah! you think it is I who am the brute? You will change your mind by and by.'

'Never!' I cried, wrenching my arm from his with an effort, 'if I should live a hundred years.'

'A hundred years,--a drop in the bucket!' he said with his silent laugh.

'You will live forever, and you will come to my view; and we shall meet in the course of ages, from time to time, to compare notes. I would say good-by after the old fas.h.i.+on, but you are but newly arrived, and I will not treat you so badly as that.' With which he parted from me, waving his hand, with his everlasting horrible smile.