It is astounding how slowly the mind works in times of crisis, when you might suppose it would be more than normally alert. I found myself staring aimlessly round the room with no fixed idea in my mind, except a rigid intention to escape somehow the consequences of what I had done. Not that I underrate murder as a crime; I am even prepared to admit it is the worst of all crimes, since it involves robbing your neighbour of the one thing worth possessing—physical life. Though what value life could have had to such a man as my father I don’t know, particularly as, if accounts are true, he was on the verge of losing even the wretched things he did care for. It was then that I saw the cheque-book lying among the other papers on his desk.
3
There is a great deal of nonsense talked by men who are neither artists nor poor about the advantages of poverty, of the freedom engendered by small incomes and a corresponding lack of responsibility. Poets who don’t have to earn a weekly wage, but write as they will, sing blithely in praise of our Lady Poverty, and hark back to St. Francis and various other saints, who don’t appear to have had families to support. In any case, they’d be the first to blame us if we tried to shift our burdens and live on the community. And begging wasn’t an offence in those old days. Besides, it’s all wrong. I only wish these lunatics could experience poverty for themselves, real poverty, that would teach them what responsibilities mean when there are insufficient means to cope with them. Life doesn’t send the greatest responsibilities to the men with the most comfortable incomes. They get visited on rich and poor alike. And poverty in the twentieth century means, as I have ample reason to know, cracked ceilings, undignified shifts and excuses, damp-speckled walls, peeling paper, inferior food, the persistent whine of dissatisfied or sickly children, a general crowding together and lack of leisure and privacy both, and all the kindred humiliations of the dispirited poor. I don’t pretend that everyone else feels the lack of space both to move and think and create that I do. I know my father and brother call them luxury, but to me they’re as essential as bread. And so, when I saw the cheque-book, I thought I saw also my opportunity.
Since I had killed a man, I might surely take full advantage of the fact. Later it might return to haunt me; but at least it should not deride my futility, cowardice, lack of enterprise, call it what you like, as well as my crime. I knew my father well enough to realise that, of his estate, not a penny would come to me; nor could I appeal to any of my relatives. But from childhood I have had a certain dexterity in copying signatures. I tried it seriously for the first time when I was a schoolboy of thirteen, and wished to be excused certain work I had decided was useless to me. I forged a letter in my father’s hand, signing it with his usual crabbed scrawl, and handed it in. By pure ill-luck I was found out, some weeks later, by my father encountering the master in question, who raised the point with him. My father’s rage was indescribable. He had a criminal for a son, he declared, a base, prospective (no, actual) felon. I was unfit to mix with decent people, and certainly not with my own family. I had my meals apart, and in addition was thrashed till I could hardly stand. He even suggested that Green should repeat the performance. Luckily the fellow had some sense of humour, and he mildly suggested that the affair had probably begun as a joke, and he was convinced I had had a sufficiently serious lesson. He was right, in so far as I didn’t repeat the experiment while I remained at home, but some months ago, at Higginsons, I became a forger for the second time. There was an older man in our department, a fellow called Wright, a pursy, strutting nonentity, with a great conceit of himself and an intolerable manner. At length he became so disagreeable that a number of us got together and drew up a letter, that I signed with the name of the head of the firm, warning Wright that disquieting rumours had been received concerning his work, and also his attitude towards his juniors. Unless he showed considerable improvement in both respects, the letter continued, he could seek employment elsewhere. There was no need to mention this letter, which was intended for a confidential warning.
The results were stupefying. Wright took the letter in dead earnest; his nerve, his conceit, the foundations of his security were shaken. He had a wife and several children and no private means. Within twenty-four hours his manner had completely
