Pawn another man’s property for the sake of a meal, eat and drink one’s self to perdition, brand one’s soul with the first little sear, set the first black mark against one’s honour, call one’s self a blackguard to one’s own face, and needs must cast one’s eyes down before one’s self? Never! never! It could never have been my serious intention—it had really never seriously taken hold of me; in fact, I could not be answerable for every loose, fleeting, desultory thought, particularly with such a headache as I had, and nearly killed carrying a blanket, too, that belonged to another fellow.
There would surely be some way or another of getting help when the right time came! Now, there was the grocer in Groenlandsleret. Had I importuned him every hour in the day since I sent in my application? Had I rung the bell early and late, and been turned away? Why, I had not even applied personally to him or sought an answer! It did not follow, surely, that it must needs be an absolutely vain attempt.
Maybe I had luck with me this time. Luck often took such a devious course, and I started for Groenlandsleret.
The last spasm that had darted through my head had exhausted me a little, and I walked very slowly and thought over what I would say to him.
Perhaps he was a good soul; if the whim seized him he might pay me for my work a shilling in advance, even without my asking for it. People of that sort had sometimes the most capital ideas.
I stole into a doorway and blackened the knees of my trousers with spittle to try and make them look a little respectable, left the parcel behind me in a dark corner at the back of a chest, and entered the little shop.
A man is standing pasting together bags made of old newspaper.
“I would like to see Mr. Christie,” I said.
“That’s me!” replied the man.
“Indeed!” Well my name was so-and-so. I had taken the liberty of sending him an application. I did not know if it had been of any use.
He repeated my name a couple of times and commenced to laugh.
“Well now, you shall see,” he said, taking my letter out of his breast-pocket, “if you will just be good enough to see how you deal with dates, sir. You dated your letter 1848,” and the man roared with laughter.
“Yes, that was rather a mistake,” I said abashed—a distraction, a want of thought; I admitted it.
“You see I must have a man who, as a matter of fact, makes no mistakes in figures,” said he. “I regret it, your handwriting is clear, and I like your letter, too, but—”
I waited a while; this could not possibly be the man’s final say. He busied himself again with the bags.
“Yes, it was a pity,” I said; “really an awful pity, but of course it would not occur again; and, after all, surely this little error could not have rendered me quite unfit to keep books?”
“No, I didn’t say that,” he answered, “but in the meantime it had so much weight with me that I decided at once upon another man.”
“So the place is filled?”
“Yes.”
“A‑h, well, then there’s nothing more to be said about it!”
“No! I’m sorry, but—”
“Good evening!” said I.
Fury welled up in me, blazing with brutal strength. I fetched my parcel from the entry, set my teeth together, jostled against the peaceful folk on the footpath, and never once asked their pardon.
As one man stopped and set me to rights rather sharply for my behaviour, I turned round and screamed a single meaningless word in his ear, clenched my fist right under his nose, and stumbled on, hardened by a blind rage that I could not control.
He called a policeman, and I desired nothing better than to have one between my hands just for one moment. I slackened my pace intentionally in order to give him an opportunity of overtaking me; but he did not come. Was there now any reason whatever that absolutely every one of one’s most earnest and most persevering efforts should fail? Why, too, had I written 1848? In what way did that infernal date concern me? Here I was going about starving, so that my entrails wriggle together in me like worms, and it was, as far as I knew, not decreed in the book of fate that anything in the shape of food would turn up later on in the day.
I was becoming mentally and physically more and more prostrate; I was letting myself down each day to less and less honest actions, so that I lied on each day without blushing, cheated poor people out of their rent, struggled with the meanest thoughts of making away with other men’s blankets—all without remorse or prick of conscience.
Foul places began to gather in my inner being,
