“I think it right to say that I myself am perfectly satisfied on all those points,” said Semphill. “I’ve read the calumnies—and I call them dastardly calumnies—in the light of my own knowledge of the facts; and I can only say that the worst thing which they’ve alleged against you is that you’ve been used to go-about bilking landlords. All the rest is excusable, not to say harmless.”
“Gracious Heavens!” George exclaimed in a rictus of rage. “Do you suppose that a man of my description goes-about bilking landlords for the sake of the fun of the thing? It’s no such deliriously jolly work, I can tell you. However, I’ve never bilked any landlords if that’s what you want to know. Never. They saw that I worked like nineteen galley-slaves; and they offered to trust me. I voluminously explained my exact position and prospects to them. I was foolish enough to believe that you Catholics would keep your promises and pay me for the work which I did at your orders. So I accepted credit. I wish I had died. When at length I was defrauded, legally, mind!—for, as my employers were Catholics and sometimes priests, I trusted to their honour, and obtained no stamped agreement:—when I was defrauded of my wages, my landlords lost patience (poor things—I don’t blame them,) harried me, reproached me, at length turned me out, and so prevented me from paying them. I dug myself out of the gutter with these bare hands again and again; and started anew to earn enough to pay my debts. Debts! They never were off my chest for twenty years, no matter what these vile liars say. Debts! They say that I incurred them for luxurious living, unjustifiably—”
His passionate voice subsided: he became frightfully cool and tense and terse, analytical, quite merciless to himself. Their Eminencies never before had seen a surgical knife at work in a human heart and brain. They sat all vigilant and attentive, as self-dissection proceeded. “They say that I gorged myself with sumptuous banquets at grand hotels. Once, after several days’ absolute starvation, I got a long earned guinea; and I went and had an omelette and a bed at a place which called itself a grand hotel. It wasn’t particularly grand in the ordinary sense of the term; and my entertainment there cost me no more than it would have cost me elsewhere, and it was infinitely cleaner and tastier. They say that I ate daintily, and had elaborate dishes made from a cookery book of my own. The recipes, (there may have been a score of them,) were cut out of a penny weekly, current among the working classes. The dishes were lentils, carrots, anything that was cheapest, cleanest, easiest, and most filling—nourishing—at the price. Each dish cost something under a penny; and I sometimes had one each day. As I was living on credit, I tried to injure no one but myself. That’s the story of my luxurious living. Let me add though that I was extravagant, in proportion to my means, in one thing. Whenever I earned a little bit, I reserved some of it for apparatus conducing to personal cleanliness, soap, baths, tooth-things, and so on. I’m not a bit ashamed of that. Why did I use credit? Because it was offered: because I hoped: because—That I did not abuse it you may see, actually see, by my style of living—here are the receipted bills;—and by the number and quantity and quality of the works of my hands. I never was idle. I worked at one thing after another. The Catholic Hour admits my skill; and mispresents that as a crime. At the same time, I myself don’t claim my indefatigability as a virtue. Nothing of the kind. It’s something lower than that. It’s comical to say it: but my indefatigability was nothing but a purely selfish pose, put-on solely to make philanthropists look unspeakably silly, to give the lie direct to all their idiotic iniquitous shibboleths. It wasn’t that I couldn’t stop working: but that I wouldn’t. The fact is that I long, I burn, I yearn, I thirst, I most earnestly desire, to do absolutely nothing. I am so tired. I have such a genius for elaborate repose. But convention always alleges idleness, or drunkenness, or lechery, or luxury, to be the causa causans of scoundrelism and of poverty. That’s a specimen of the ‘Eidola Specus,’ the systematizing spirit which damns half the world. People never stop to think that there may be other causes—that men of parts become rakes, or scoundrels, or paupers, for lack of opportunity to live decently and cleanly. Look at François Villon, and Christopher Marlowe, and Sir Richard Steele, and Leo di Giovanni, and heaps of others. Well: I resolutely determined that you never righteously should allege those things of me. Simply to deprive you of that excuse for your failure to do your duty to your neighbour—simply to deprive you of the chance of classifying me among the ruck which your neglect has made—I courted semi-starvation and starvation, I scrupulously avoided drink, I hardly ever even spoke civilly to a woman; and I laboured like a driven slave. No: I never was idle. But I was a most abject fool. I used to think that this diligent ascetic life eventually would pay me best. I made the mistake of omitting to give its due importance to the word ‘own’ in the adage ‘Virtue is its own reward.’ I had no other reward, except my unwillingly cultivated but altogether undeniable virtue. A diabolic brute once said to me ‘If I had your brains I would be earning a thousand a year.’ I replied ‘Take them: tell me what to do: give me orders, and I implicitly will
