Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  Luke Hoddy gulped and gasped. This was tremendous. He had been thinking of fifties and hundreds, and here were thousands — and thousands over and over again, indefinitely. It was wonderful — too good to believe all at once. Perhaps it would turn out a swindle after alla trick to rob him of the precious hate he had cherished so long, and which now seemed a more valuable possession than ever. Old Hoddy did not understand the acceptance of bills, and he resolved to question a little more.

  “It seems a pretty good deal o’ money,” he admitted grudgingly. “Anyhow, a good deal for you to want to pay as can pick the stuff up. I should count there was plenty of hate about, too. It aint’ a rare stuff.”

  “No, it isn’t. But, considering the plenteousness of the commodity, it’s wonderful how little I get of it. People seem to want it for each other, you see. People talk a deal about hating me, but they hate each other so much more that it’s very rarely I can get anybody’s hatred without paying for it. And that is why I am here for yours.”

  “Gr-r-r-umph! Well, I’ll sell. But none o’ yer bills an’ ‘ceptances an’ that. I want money down. See?”

  “You shall have the money before I receive the goods. Will that suit you?”

  Luke thought that would do, and growled to indicate as much.

  The devil stooped in the shadow of the fence, and produced a box, which old Hoddy had not noticed before. It was a chest of some hard wood, bound and cornered with iron, and as soon as it rested on the fence-rail Hoddy grabbed it eagerly. As a box, it was heavy, but not so heavy as it should have been if it were full of money. In fact old Hoddy judged it empty.

  “There ain’t no five thousand pun’ in that!” he snarled.

  “Quite so; I never thought of pretending it. This is a little arrangement of my own invention, which I will explain.” The night was full dark by now, but a dull red light fell on the chest wherever the devil pointed, and so Luke understood all he said.

  “You perceive that the box is locked. I shall keep the key, and I advise you, for your own sake, not to meddle. It is a dangerous thing to open, if you don’t understand it. The lid, you see, is a deep one. That is because it contains a separate chamber, into which you slip your bills for acceptance. There is a narrow slot, you perceive, just under the upper edge. Whenever you wish to do business, you will fill in one of the forms I shall leave you, with the amount of hate you wish to sell in money, up to five thousand pounds, and sign it. Then you will slip the paper in at the slot, and go to bed. That is all. In the morning you will receive the money. But, meantime, you must sleep; otherwise the sale cannot be completed. Take the box, and remember what I say. I shall not call again till I want some of the goods. Then I shall take away the box and leave a fresh one. Do you know, I’m rather proud of the invention of that box. Some day, if I have time, I intend to adapt the idea to other purposes. It might be made to work with pennies, for matches and lollipops and such things. Good notion, eh? But here are your bill-forms; if you want more you can copy one of them. And remember, no more than five thousand pounds at one time, if you please. That is the price of the largest quantity of hate the machine is able to compress in a day. That is all, I think. Good evening, Mr. Hoddy!”

  And with that he was gone, vanishing in a very low and courtly bow, which somehow slid away backward into the shadows; leaving Luke Hoddy standing there with a bunch of papers in his right hand while he balanced the box on the fence with his left.

  Old Hoddy stared for a minute and a quarter, and then, convinced that he really was alone, he picked up the box and carried it indoors. He lit a candle, put on his spectacles, and began to spell out one of the papers. Thus it read: —

  Date ——

  On presentation pay to me the sum of £ for hate received.

  That seemed simple enough. Luke Hoddy sat in a chair, and stared, now, at the box. Having done that for a little while he turned to the paper again, and stared at that. And at last, when he found his faculties shaking down into their proper places, he got ink and pen, and filled in the topmost form. He filled it in for the full five thousand pounds, having a natural desire for as much as he could get. Then he signed it, slipped it into the slot, and went to bed.

  In the morning he woke feeling particularly well — uncommonly well. As he got out of bed he caught sight of his face in the jaggy piece of looking-glass that stood on the mantel-piece and saw a positive smile on it. He sat for a moment to wonder at this, and presently broke into a laugh. He remembered a ridiculous dream about the devil and a chest.

  Sunlight came in at the poky little window, and the sound of a thousand birds. The light fell on the corner of a deal table, and there lay a little bundle of papers. There was no mistake — they were the blank bills. Luke Hoddy rubbed his fist over his head to clear his thoughts. The thing would seem to have been no dream after all. But as he pulled on his clothes he remembered the attorney at Witham. No doubt this was some joke of his — Luke had noticed the extraordinary likeness from the first. But why should he take all this trouble to put a sell on a stranger? Luke Hoddy floundered into the only other room of his cottage, and there saw the iron-strapped box standing against the wall. Truly it was no dream. There, along the slot in the lid, lay the white edge of the paper, which he had thought he had pushed well in. Or at any rate it was some paper, or papers. What was it? He reached and pulled out — not one paper, but five; and each was a thousand-pound bank-note!

  It was true then — quite true; neither dream nor sell, but simple fact. Here was the actual, indubitable money. Luke Hoddy sat for a while in the blankest of brown studies and then began to chuckle. Chuckling, he went out into the open and looked across the fields, lusty and sparkling in the fresh morning. A little child, carrying a basin in a blue handkerchief, stood in amaze to see old Hoddy so merry: whereupon he gave the child an apple for nothing, and sat down to laugh at the strangeness of things.

  He sobered down after a little, and wondered at the impulse that had led to the gift. That apple was the first thing he had ever given away in his life, and it seemed a foolish thing to do. Especially — and the thought came like a grip at the throat — especially if the thing was a sell after all, and the notes spurious.

  This was a matter that must be settled at once. So he watched for the carrier’s cart that morning, and went by it to Witham, to the bank. Here his spirits rose again, for the cashier made no difficulty about the notes, but opened an account with them, and old Hoddy left the premises with a pass-book of his own, containing an entry of five thousand pounds to his credit.

  He resolved to see about Paigles’s farm without delay, and to that end called on the attorney. Hoddy observed the lawyer pretty closely, and was relieved to find that although he was smartly enough dressed, he was not so very much like the visitor of last night, after all. The lawyer promised to make discreet inquires as to the price of the farm, and Luke Hoddy left him.

  That night he filled in another bill for the full five thousand, and in the morning drew out another bunch of notes. Then he went out and caught the children going to school and distributed apples among them, till nothing remained on the tree but leaves; laughing so much at the fun that rumors arose that old Hoddy was gone mad. The bank-cashier was a little surprised to see him again with precisely the same amount, and the lawyer was also a little surprised to have another visit, and instructions to look out for a few more freehold investments, in addition to Paigles’s farm. But that mattered nothing, and the next day old Luke Hoddy banked five thousand more.

  Paigles’s farm was for sale, and at a moderate price; also there was a deal of other eligible property to be had in the neighborhood, and as the money rolled in Hoddy took the first steps toward becoming a landed proprietor of no small consideration.

  But lawyers have their fees to earn, and between the first steps and the last there are a great many more, and in those days there were more than there are now; and every step took time. So that it came to pass that, before the last seal was pressed an
d the last fee earned, old Hoddy, rising one morning very merry, turned to pull out his customary notes from the box, but instead of five, found only one piece of paper, and that not a bank-note. It was, in fact, his own bill of exchange, just as he had drawn it the night before; except that there now appeared across it, in the blurred capitals of a roughly-inked stamp, the words REFERRED TO DRAWER.

  Luke Hoddy had grown so used to drawing his money regularly and making his daily trip to Witham, that he went through some minutes of dumb amazement before he realized that his stock of hate was at last absolutely exhausted, and no more bank-notes were to be expected from the box. At first his smile faded and his face lengthened; but it was not for long. Indeed he was a very rich man, and he had of late begun to wonder what he should do with all his money. For the credit of human nature I shall not tell the precise figure of old Hoddy’s riches; and very few would believe in the existence of such a stock of hate as it would imply, if I did. But he was a very rich man, and was putting money into other securities beside land. So his face soon broadened again into the grin it had worn since he had stripped his apple-tree. He would not need to go to Witham to-day, and he would have leisure to think things over.

  He was still in the little cottage on Cock-a-Bevis Hill — indeed there had scarce been time for a change. He used to detest the place, but now that all his hate was sold, he rather liked the situation. He had a design of building a house close by, some day, but meantime the cottage did very well, and he resolved in any event to leave it standing, and use it sometimes.

  He went out into his garden and beyond the fence, whistling. Presently he saw the girl coming, driving her cows out to the meadow, and the brown lad with her, just as they had passed, in the opposite direction, on the evening when Hoddy had received the Owner of the Box. But this time they could not help seeing him, for he called to them gaily, with questions about banns and a wedding-day, and a promise of a silver tea-pot when the day should come. And when they had passed he was reminded to fill a basket with eggs and carry them down to the cottage of the round-faced woman who had so many children. After which, finding his experience in generosity such novel fun, he got five shillingsworth of pennies at the Crown and Cushion and gave one to every child he could catch. Some of them wanted a deal of catching, for it was not easy for people to understand this change in old Hoddy’s habits. The fact was that not only had he got rid of all his old hatred, but when he remembered it he felt a little ashamed, and had a great desire to make amends.

  Paigles’s farm was bought at last, and more than half the parish with it; the last fee was paid and the deeds were locked in the strongroom at the bank. Then, when the time came to sell up Paigles, old Hoddy lowered his rent instead. And as to the other tenants, he discovered a way of grinding their faces against platters and quart pots, giving them and their families the most enormous dinner, in three barns, that Cock-a-Bevis Hill had ever looked down on.

  It was in the merriment that followed this dinner that the transactions began that revealed the sole drawback to Hoddy’s extraordinary bargain. For in his sudden revulsion from misanthropy and misogyny he conceived an almost exaggerated opinion of the attractions of his tenant’s daughters and sisters, and, in some cases, of their aunts and mothers. Nor did it stop there, for as the days went and the news of his wealth and amiability spread and multiplied old Hoddy found himself involved in such a complication of entanglements, that there was nothing for it but once again to call in the aid of the Witham attorney, by whose arts, and the payment of a good deal of money, actions for breach were compromised, bigamy averted, and safety found in the end by marriage with an active and respectable widow.

  But these things came to a head later, and in any case they have little to do with the story. Meantime, the iron-strapped box stood in the corner of Luke Hoddy’s keeping-room, full of compressed hate, waiting for the devil to come and fetch it.

  Now the report of old Hoddy’s sudden wealth went about among the good folk of those parts, and not among the good folk only. It reached also two vagabond thieves, tramping through Witham from Springfield gaol, after a narrow squeak for their necks at the assizes; and this was not the first time they had cheated the gallows. They turned aside from the main road because of the rumors, for a feeble old man of great wealth, living alone in a cottage of two rooms, offered singular attractions to their inquiring natures.

  They came to Cock-a-Bevis Hill, and learned enough to make them very hopeful; and that night they took a lantern and two bludgeons, and lifted old Hoddy’s simple latch with neither noise nor trouble. Old Hoddy was snoring sturdily in the other room, but though they had come willing to stop his snore for ever, they checked at the sight of the iron-bound box in the corner. It stood very notable among the poor furniture about it, and here, they were well assured, was the best the place could yield, the end of their desires — the treasure chest. So they left old Hoddy to his snore, and carried the box quietly out, and up the breezy slope of Cocka-Bevis Hill under the stars. In a sheltered hollow near the top they set it down, and pried it open with a chisel; and that was the end of both of them.

  In the morning Paigles’s horseman found them lying dead in the hollow, contorted and black — something like men struck by lightning; and the box lay by them, plain and empty.

  When Luke Hoddy learned the news in the morning he looked up the hill and at the clouds, and saw that the breeze held steady from the west, as it had done the day before; and he knew that all his hate had been carried away on the winds from off the earth. It had saved the hangman a double turn, and that was all it had done, good or bad; what became of it nobody could ever tell, though since the wind was from the west, some of it may have fallen in Germany.

  But the Owner of the Box was sadly vexed, as you would guess. Nevertheless he dissembled his anger, and as soon as he heard of his misfortune (which he did by means of which I know nothing) he came to old Hoddy, polite as ever, with the idea of reducing his bad debt as far as possible. He went cautiously to work, being out of confidence with himself in the county of Essex, and remembering his ancient defeat at Barn Hall — of which I may tell another time. “Well, Mr. Hoddy,” he said, “we’ve had a little misfortune. It’s no fault of yours, of course, and I shall make some very special arrangements for the guilty parties. But to prove my perfect and continued confidence in yourself, I’ve come to do business again, on very exceptional terms. I’m ready to enter into that other little transaction at which you hinted during our last interview. As I said then, it’s a thing I rarely do, in spite of vulgar opinion to the contrary; but in your case, on old and respected customer, I’m willing to stretch a point. You’ve found me treat you very well in our first deal, and I don’t want to drop the connection. What do you say?”

  Because, you see, now that all Hoddy’s hate was quite gone, Hoddy himself was such a very different person that he was a very desirable bargain, and the devil was ready to buy him forthwith.

  Old Hoddy chuckled deep and long. “It do seem to me,” he said, “as you’d do better in the shires; I count you make a poor trade in Essex. At Dedham an’ Snoreham they be too wide awake for ‘ee, an’ too clever at Little Witham; you’d starve at Pinchpoles, an’ you can’t fob’em at fobbing. But a shire man allus was a fool, an’ I count you’d do better right over across the Lea, at Much Hadham. What you’re at now is to buy me, eh?”

  “At a great price, Mr. Hoddy; a noble sum!”

  Old Hoddy chuckled again. “Very kind, I’m sure. ‘Fore I lost my hate I’d ha’ talked it over longways, but ready meat’s my victual. D’ye know the stile at the bottom o’ t’ hill?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, if ye go over that an’ keep along by t’ hedge, you come to anoather. Know that?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Other side o’ that there’s a ditch.”

  “Just so.”

  “An’ a meddy with a tree in the middle — oak. D’ye know the oak too?”

  “Yes.”
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  “Well, if you went along down there now, arl alone, an’ ran round that there oak, who’d you be a-chasin’?”

  “Myself.”

  Old Hoddy guffawed loud and long, with his thumb against his nose. “Go on then!” he said. “That’s my opinion, too!”

  THE RODD STREET REVOLUTION

  I

  I HAVE told the tale of the Red Cow Anarchist group in another place, and at another time; indeed I am startled to remember that it was fourteen years ago. As a fact the credit of that tale, if it has any, is due to my disreputable friend, Snorkey Timms, who told it me, as he told me others. He it was who first discovered Sotcher, the founder and victim of the Red Cow Group, and he it was who told me also this other tale of an earlier group of Sotcher’s founding.

  Teddy Mills, it would seem, was a shoemaker, who lived and worked in a very small house in Rodd Street, Bethnal Green — a very small street, which could only be reached by making several turns and twists through and out of other streets nearly as small. The little house had once been one of a row of country cottages, and the row even now carried some vague air of blighted ruralism, because of the muddy strips of front garden, which many tumbling children shared with many lank cats and a few very desperate scarlet runners on strings.

  Teddy Mills, small, bristly and wild of eye, was Sotcher’s newest convert. As a jobbing shoemaker, in accordance with the mysterious laws which make all jobbing shoemakers swarthy and ill-shaved and politically rebellious, Teddy Mills was promising material, and Sotcher, lank, greasy and unwashed, fresh from the Anarchist Club in Berners Street, Shadwell, fastened on him at once. For, indeed, Teddy Mills made good material in other respects than that of his native readiness to join in the abuse and overthrow of whomsoever he might suspect of superiority, in fortune or qualities, over himself; for one thing, he had good work, and consequently money which might be cadged.