The Green Overcoat/Chapter 5

Philosopher cursed gently, and then listened.

The steps of his tormentors grew fainter as they reached the lower part of the house. Then he heard, or thought he heard, the distant crunching of boots on gravel. After that came a complete silence.

It occurred to the ill-used gentleman that he was free. He pulled savagely at the loose cords: got one leg to move and then the other; gradually unrolled the cord and attempted to stand.

At first he could not. Nine hours of such confinement had numbed him. He felt also an acute pain, which luckily did not last long, where his circulation had been partially arrested at the ankles. In a few minutes he could stand up and walk. It was then that he began to observe his new surroundings.

He found himself in a large and very high room, with a steep-pitched roof, soaring and sombre, quite twenty feet above him. The walls were bare of ornament, but still covered with a rich dark red paper, darker, cleaner patches on which marked places where pictures had hung. On the height of the roof, looking north, was a large skylight which lit the whole apartment. There was a good writing-table with pigeon-holes and two rows of drawers on either side. Upon this writing table stood a little kettle, a spirit stove, a bottle of methylated spirit, a tin of milk cocoa, three large loaves, a chicken, tinned meats, a box of biscuits, and, what was not at all to be despised, an excellent piece of Old Stilton Cheese. The thoughtful provider of these had even added a salt-cellar full of salt. There stood also upon the floor beside these provisions a large stone jar, which upon uncorking and smelling it he discovered to contain sherry.

The room had also a fireplace with a fire laid, a full coal-scuttle, an excellent arm-chair, a few books on a shelf—and that was all.

The Professor having taken stock of these things, did the foolish thing that we should all do under the circumstances. He went to the big oak door, banged it, rattled it, kicked it, and abused it. It stood firm.

The next thing he did was also a thing which any of us would have done, though it had more sense in it—he shouted at the top of his voice. He kept up that shouting in a number of incongruous forms in which the word "Help" occurred with a frequency that would have been irritating to a hearer had there been one, but audience he had none.

He knocked furiously at either wall of the long room. He turned at last exhausted, and perceived with delight a low door, which he had failed at first to notice; it was in the gloom of the far corner. He made for this door. To his delight it opened easily, and revealed beyond it nothing but darkness. There were matches upon the mantelpiece; he struck one and peered within. He saw a neat little bed, not made by expert women, rather (he thought) by these jailers of his, and through a farther door he saw what might be a bathroom, fairly comfortably appointed.

Such was Professor Higginson's prison. It might have been worse, and to the pure in heart prison can be no confinement for the soul. But either Professor Higginson's heart was not pure or something else was wrong with him, for when he had taken stock of his little luxuries he treated them to a long malediction, the scope and elaboration of which would have surprised him in other days.

Necessity, which is stronger than the Gods, knows no law, and is also the mother of invention. She is fruitful in stirring the pontifical instinct, the soul of the builder, of the contriver, in man.

Necessity awoke that primal power in the starved Higginsonian soul. When the Professor of Subliminal Consciousness had prowled round and round the room like a caged carnivorous thing some twenty times, seeking an outlet, harbouring disordered schemes, a clear idea suddenly lit up his cloudy mind.

It was glass again! The skylight was made of glass, and glass is a fragile thing!

He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets looking up to that large, slanting window in the roof and taking stock. It was made to open, but the iron rod which raised and lowered it had been disconnected and taken away. He thought he could perceive in certain small dots far above him the heads of screws recently driven in to secure the outer edge of the skylight and make it fast. He estimated the height. Now your Professor of Subliminal Consciousness in general is no dab at this; but that great Governess of the Gods, Necessity, to whom I have already paid eight well-merited compliments, threw him back in this matter also upon the primitive foundations of society, and the Philosopher was astonished to find himself applying the most ancient of measures. He reckoned by his own height taken against the wall. He was a man of six feet. The lowest part of the window was about twice his own height from the floor—a matter of twelve feet; its summit another six or eight.

Then Professor Higginson, having for the first time in his life measured, began the ancient and painful but absorbing task of building next.

It is the noblest of man's handicrafts! He had heard somewhere that the stretch of a man's arms is about his own height, and in this spread-eagle fashion he measured the bed, the desk, the chairs, the bookshelves.

He carefully put the food down upon the floor, tipped the desk up lengthways on one end. He did this at a terrible strain—and was annoyed to see ink flowing out suddenly and barely missing his trouser leg.

With a strength he had not believed to be in him, he wheeled the iron bed out of the inner room, and managed to get it hoisted by degrees on top of the desk thus inverted. He next hoisted up the arm-chair, getting his head under the seat of it, suffering some pain in his crown before he got it on to the bed. He passed up the three wooden chairs to keep it company, and then with trembling heart but firm will he began to climb.

It is a pity that too profound a study of Subliminal Consciousness destroys Faith, for if the Professor had but believed in God this would have been an admirable opportunity for prayer. Twice in the long ascent he thought the bed was down on the top of him; twice he felt a trembling that shook his unhappy soul—the floor seemed so far below! At last he stood triumphant like the first men who conquered the Matterhorn; he was ready to erect upon so firm a base the last structure he had planned.

Quaint memories of his childhood returned to him as he fixed the wooden chairs one upon the other, and jammed the lowest of them in between the arms of the padded easy-chair, which was to support the whole.

If the first part of the ascent had proved perilous, this last section—the gingerly mounting of a ladder of chair rungs and legs uneasily poised upon a cushioned seat—was as hazardous as ever human experiment had been. The frail structure creaked and trembled beneath him, as, with infinite caution and testing, he swung one long leg after the other up the frail scaffolding. An unworthy eagerness made his heart beat when he was within the last rung of the top chair seat. The glass of the skylight was all but within his reach … he could almost touch it with his outstretched hand as he tried the last step.

But already ominously the wooden child of his fancy, the engine he had made, was beginning to betray him. He felt an uneasy swinging in the tower of chairs. He tried to compensate it by too sudden a movement of his body, and then—!—and in the tenth of a second all was ruin.

He felt his head striking a rung of wood, a cushion, an iron bar, his hands clutching at a chaotic and cascading ruin of furniture, and he completed his adventure sitting hard upon the floor with the legs of the wooden chairs about him, the stuffed arm-chair upside down within a foot of his head, the iron bedstead hanging at a dangerous slant above the end of the desk, and the wood of this last gaping in a great gash. He had certainly failed.

There is no soul so strong but defeat will check it for a moment. All the long hours remaining of that day, even when he had eaten food and drunk wine, he despaired of any issue.

As darkness closed in on him he raised the energy to get the bed down on to the floor again. He made it up as best he could (the sheets were clean, the pillows comfortable), and he slept.

Upon the Wednesday morning he woke—but now I must play a trick upon the reader, lest worse should befall him. I must beg him to allow the lapse of that Wednesday, and to consider the Professor rising with the first faint dawn of Thursday. Why they should keep him thus confined, how long they intended to do so, whether those fiendish youngsters were determined upon his slow starvation and death, what was happening to that miserable cheque and therefore to his future peace of mind through the whole term of his life, where he was, by what means, if any, he might be restored to the companionship of his kind—all these things did the Professor ruminate one hundred times, and upon none could he come to any conclusion. Such an occupation were monotonous for the reader to follow, and even if he desires to follow it I cannot be at the pains of writing it out; so here we are on Thursday morning, the 5th of May, forty-eight hours after he, the Philosopher, had Done the Deed and handed that sad forgery to his captors.

If the truth must be told, repose and isolation had done Professor Higginson good.

In the first place, he had read right through the few books he had found set out for him, and thus became thoroughly acquainted for the first time in his life with the poet Milton, the New Testament, and Goschen on Foreign Exchanges, for such was the library which had been provided for him.

As he rose and stretched himself in that disappointing dawn, he found the energy to go through his empty ceremony of howling for aid, but it soon palled and his throat began to hurt him.

He looked up again at that skylight showing clear above the half darkness of the room, and was struck quite suddenly with a really brilliant scheme. He remembered bitterly the painful misfortune of his first attempt, rubbed a sore place, and wished to Heaven that his present revelation had come first.

He proceeded to execute at once the promptings of his new scheme. He took the sheets of his bed and tied them one to another, the pillow cases he linked up upon the tail of these, and, to make certain of the whole matter, he ended by tying on the counterpane as well. He tied them all securely together, for he intended the rope so made to bear his whole weight. Taking one of the broken chairs, he secured it stoutly to one end of the line; he chose his position carefully beneath the skylight, he swung the chair, and at the end of the third swing hurled it up into the air at the glass above him. It was his plan to break that glass. The chair would catch upon the ridge of the roof outside, and he would manage in his desperation to swarm up the tied sheets and win his way through the broken pane to the roof. The chair was heavy, and he failed some twenty times. Twice the chair had struck him heavily on the head as it fell back, but he persevered.

Perseverance is the one virtue which the Gods reward, and at long last the Professor saw and heard his missile crashing clean through the skylight. He was as good as free, save that—such is the academic temper!—he had forgotten to catch hold of the other end of the line.

He heard the chair rattle loudly down the roof outside, he saw its long tail of knotted sheets swiftly drawn up through the broken skylight, he leapt up to clutch it just too late, and marked in despair the last of his bedclothes flashing up past and above him like a white snake, to disappear through the broken window from his gaze. Two seconds afterwards he heard the chair fall into the garden some fifty feet below, and he noted with some disgust that a quantity of broken glass had come down upon his food.

It was, as I have said, in the first grey light of the third day—the Thursday—that he had thus gratuitously shed his bedding. For some moments after that failure he sat down and despaired. He also felt his head where the chair had struck it.

As he turned round helplessly to discover whether some object might not suggest a further plan, he was astonished to see the great oaken door standing ajar. He pulled it open to its widest extent; the green baize door beyond swung to his touch, and he was a free man.

Someone had slipped those bolts in the night, and if that someone were Jimmy, Jimmy had kept his word.

It was with no gratitude that Professor Higginson cautiously and fearfully descended the stairs. He knew so little of men, that he dreaded further capture and some vigorous young scoundrel leaping upon him from an unexpected door. He passed three flights, each untenanted, furnitureless and quite silent, until he reached the hall.

The front door stood wide open. The delicious breath of the early summer morning came in, mixed with the twittering of birds. Still wondering and half doubting his good fortune, Professor Higginson was about to step out, when he remembered—what?—the Green Overcoat. He must face the ordeal of those stairs again. It was the bravest thing he had ever done in his life. It was the only brave thing he had ever done in his life. But fear of worse things compelled him. If that Green Overcoat were found and he were traced—he dared not think of the consequences.

His recent experience was far too vivid for him to dream of putting it on. He carried the great weight of it over his arm, and in the first steps he took in the open air towards the lodge, under that pure sky in which the sun had not yet risen, it was his honest and his firm intention to take it straight to Crampton Park, to discover "Lauderdale," to restore it to its owner and to explain all.

The lodge he found to be empty and even ruinous. A mouldy gate stood with one of its bars broken, hanging by a single hinge, ajar. He passed out upon a lonely country lane. He was glad it was lonely. An elderly don in an exceedingly dirty shirt, clad in evening clothes which had been through something worse than a prize fight, his collar crumpled and vile, no tie, and boots half buttonless, would be foolish to desire any general companionship of human strangers upon a May-day morning. It was up to him to find his whereabouts, and to make the best of his way to his lodgings and to proper clothing. Then, he hoped, by six at the latest, he could do what the voice of duty bade him do. He felt in his pocket, and was glad to find his latch-key and his money safe, for with these two a man commands the world; but as he felt in his pockets he missed something familiar. What it was he could not recollect—only, he knew vaguely something he expected was not there, a memorandum or what not. He set it down for nervousness, and went his way.

The rolling landscape of the Midlands was to his left and right. The lane ran along a ridge that commanded some little view upon either side. It led him northwards, and he could see in the clear air, for the moment smokeless, the tall chimneys of Ormeston. They were perhaps five miles away, and the Professor prepared to cover that distance. His heart was shot with a varied emotion, of exultation at his morning freedom, of terror that his evil deeds might have gone before him. But he was determined upon his duty under that cold dawn. He went swinging forward.

The east put on its passing cloudless colours, and beyond the rim of fields, far outward beyond the world, Phæbus Apollo rose unheralded and shone with his first level beams upon the misguided man.

Now almost as Apollo rose whether proceeding from Apollo's influence or from that of some Darker Power, hesitation and scheming entered once more into the heart of Professor Higginson.

First, he found that he was getting a little tired of the way. Five miles was a long distance. Then he remembered his determination to give up the Coat. It was heavy. Why carry it five miles and make a fool of himself at the end of them?

By the second mile he had come to the conclusion that it was ridiculous to knock up what was probably a wealthy merchant's household ("Lauderdale" sounded like that, so did Crampton Park) at such unearthly hours. The man was certainly wealthy—he had seen his name in the papers when he had got his chair a few months before.

In the third mile Mr. Higginson determined not to fulfil his difficult mission until he had groomed himself and could call upon this local bigwig at a reasonable hour. Such men (he remembered) were influential in provincial towns.

In the midst of the fourth mile he saw before him the first of the tall standards which marked the end of an electric tramway, and at that point stood a shelter, very neat, provided by some local philanthropic scoundrel. It sent up a grateful little curl of smoke which promised coffee.

The Professor came to the door of the shelter, timidly turned its handle, and peered in.

Three men were within. Two seemed to be night-watchmen, one of whom was concocting the brew, the other cutting large slices of bread and butter. The third man—short, stubbly, and of an expression wholly dull and vicious—was not in their uniform. He had the appearance of a man whose profession was very vague, and seemed to be lounging there for no better purpose than cadging a cup from pals. He was remarkable for nothing but a Broken Nose.

The Professor smelt the delicious steam. He came in through the doorway and all three men looked up.

It is a beautiful trait in our national character that the poor will ever welcome the wealthier classes, particularly when these betray upon their features that sort of imbecile ignorance of reality and childish trust in rogues which is common to all the liberal professions save that of the law, which is rare in merchants, which is universal in dons.

If the mass of our people love a guileless simplicity in their superiors, when it is accompanied by debauch they positively adore it; and the excellent reception the Professor met with upon his entry was due more than anything else to the conviction of his three inferiors that an elderly man in tattered evening clothes and abominable linen must have spent the night before in getting outrageously drunk.

His offer of no less than a shilling for a piece of bread and a cup of coffee was gratefully accepted. The word "Sir" was used at least eighteen times in the first three minutes of conversation.

The Professor felt that he was with friends, and his self-discipline weakened and weakened by degree after degree. It sank with the coffee and the bread, it sank lower with the respectful tones in which he was addressed; then without warning it vanished, and that soul which had already fallen to forgery and intemperate language went down a further step to Sheol.

The Devil, who had been away during the last two days attending to other business, must have caught the Professor as he passed that lodge-gate and have hastened to his side. At any rate, Mr. Higginson deliberately sized up the three men before him, determined with justice that the lounger, the Man with the Broken Nose, was the most corruptible and at the same time the least dangerous if anything should come to the (dreadful word!) police.

He led up to his subject carefully. He said that Crampton Park was in the neighbourhood, was it not? He had heard that it lay somewhere to the left in a western suburb of the town. He professed to have found the Green Overcoat in the hall of the house where—where he had passed the night, and as he used these words the three toilers discreetly smiled. He professed to have promised to return it. He professed to remember—with grateful unexpectedness—the name of the house to which he had promised to send it. It was "Lauderdale." He professed an ignorance of the name of its owner. The Professor professed far more that morning of sin than his academic professorship entitled him to do.

He found the lounger (with the Broken Nose) somewhat indifferent to his motives, but very much alive to the economics of the situation; and when the bargain was struck it was for half a crown that the bad proletarian man (with the Broken Nose) took the Green Overcoat over his disreputable arm, promising to deliver it at "Lauderdale" in the course of the morning.

An immense weight was lifted from the unworthy mind of Professor Higginson. Must I tell the whole of the shameful tale? The Professor, as he rose to leave the Shelter, positively added to his fellow-citizen of the Broken Nose—

"Oh! And by the way! Of course, he will ask who the Coat is from. … Say it is from Mr. Hitchenbrook." He pretended to feel in his pocket. "No, I haven't got a card; anyhow, say Mr. Hitchenbrook—Mr. Hitchenbrook, of Cashington," he added genially, to round off the wicked lie.

Thus relieved of duty and thus divorced from Heaven, Professor Higginson nodded authoritatively to the Broken Nose, cheerfully to the other two men (who touched their hair with their forefingers in reply), and strode out again to follow the tram lines into the town.

Now here, most upright of readers, you will say that the Philosopher has fallen to his lowest depth, and that no further crime he may commit can entertain you.

You are in error. The depths of evil are infinite, and the Professor, as he walked down the long road which brought him to Ormeston, was but entering that long road of the spirit which leads to full damnation.