The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Robert Tressell
say good night properly, now, Mum,’ remarked the boy, ‘because Dad can carry me into your room before he puts me into bed.’
A little later, as Owen was undressing Frankie, the latter remarked as he looked affectionately at the kitten, which was sitting on the hearthrug watching the child’s every movement under the impression that it was part of some game:
‘What name do you think we ought to call it, Dad?’
‘You may give him any name you like,’ replied Owen, absently.
‘I know a dog that lives down the road,’ said the boy, ‘his name is Major. How would that do? Or we might call him Sergeant.’
The kitten, observing that he was the subject of their conversation, purred loudly and winked as if to intimate that he did not care what rank was conferred upon him so long as the commissariat department was properly attended to.
‘I don’t know, though,’ continued Frankie, thoughtfully. ‘They’re all right names for dogs, but I think they’re too big for a kitten, don’t you, Dad?’
‘Yes, p’raps they are,’ said Owen.
‘Most cats are called Tom or Kitty, but I don’t want a common name for him.’
‘Well, can’t you call him after someone you know?’
‘I know; I’ll call him after a little girl that comes to our school; a fine name, Maud! That’ll be a good one, won’t it Dad?’
‘Yes,’ said Owen.
‘I say, Dad,’ said Frankie, suddenly realizing the awful fact that he was being put to bed. ‘You’re forgetting all about my story, and you promised that you’d have a game of trains with me tonight.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten, but I was hoping that you had, because I’m very tired and it’s very late, long past your usual bedtime, you know. You can take the kitten to bed with you tonight and I’ll tell you two stories tomorrow, because it’s Saturday.’
‘All right, then,’ said the boy, contentedly; ‘and I’ll get the railway station built and I’ll have the lines chalked on the floor, and the signals put up before you come home, so that there’ll be no time wasted. And I’ll put one chair at one end of the room and another chair at the other end, and tie some string across for telegraph wires. That’ll be a very good idea, won’t it, Dad?’ and Owen agreed.
‘But of course I’ll come to meet you just the same as other Saturdays, because I’m going to buy a ha’porth of milk for the kitten out of my penny.’
After the child was in bed, Owen sat alone by the table in the draughty sitting-room, thinking. Although there was a bright fire, the room was very cold, being so close to the roof. The wind roared loudly round the gables, shaking the house in a way that threatened every moment to hurl it to the ground. The lamp on the table had a green glass reservoir which was half full of oil. Owen watched this with unconscious fascination. Every time a gust of wind struck the house the oil in the lamp was agitated and rippled against the glass like the waves of a miniature sea. Staring abstractedly at the lamp, he thought of the future.
A few years ago the future had seemed a region of wonderful and mysterious possibilities of good, but tonight the thought brought no such illusions, for he knew that the story of the future was to be much the same as the story of the past.
The story of the past would continue to repeat itself for a few years longer. He would continue to work and they would all three continue to do without most of the necessaries of life. When there was no work they would starve.
For himself he did not care much because he knew that at the best – or worst – it would only be a very few years. Even if he were to have proper food and clothing and be able to take reasonable care of himself, he could not live much longer; but when that time came, what was to become of them?
There would be some hope for the boy if he were more robust and if his character were less gentle and more selfish. Under the present system it was impossible for anyone to succeed in life without injuring other people and treating them and making use of them as one would not like to be treated and made use of oneself.
In order to succeed in the world it was necessary to be brutal, selfish and unfeeling: to push others aside and to take advantage of their misfortunes: to undersell and crush out one’s competitors by fair means or foul: to consider one’s own interests first in every case, absolutely regardless of the wellbeing of others.
That was the ideal character. Owen knew that Frankie’s character did not come up to this lofty ideal. Then there was Nora, how would she fare?
Owen stood up and began walking about the room, oppressed with a kind of terror. Presently he returned to the fire and began rearranging the clothes that were drying. He found that the boots, having been placed too near the fire, had dried too quickly and consequently the sole of one of them had begun to split away from the upper: he remedied this as well as he was able and then turned the wetter parts of the clothing to the fire. Whilst doing this he noticed the newspaper, which he had forgotten, in the coat pocket. He drew it out with an exclamation of pleasure. Here was something to distract his thoughts: if not instructive or comforting, it would at any rate be interesting and even amusing to read the reports of the self-satisfied, futile talk of the profound statesmen who with comical gravity presided over the working of the Great System which their combined wisdom pronounced to be the best that could possibly be devised. But tonight Owen was not to read of those things, for as soon as he opened the paper his attention was riveted by the staring headlines of one of the principal columns:
TERRIBLE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY
WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN KILLED SUICIDE OF THE MURDERER
It was one of the ordinary poverty crimes. The man had been without employment for many weeks and they had been living by pawning or selling their furniture and other possessions. But even this resource must have failed at last, and when one day the neighbours noticed that the blinds remained down and that there was a strange silence about the house, no one coming out or going in, suspicions that something was wrong were quickly aroused. When the police entered the house, they found, in one of the upper rooms, the dead bodies of the woman and the two children, with their throats severed, laid out side by side upon the bed, which was saturated with their blood.
There was no bedstead and no furniture in the room except the straw mattress and the ragged clothes and blankets which formed the bed upon the floor.
The man’s body was found in the kitchen, lying with outstretched arms face downwards on the floor, surrounded by the blood that had poured from the wound in his throat which had evidently been inflicted by the razor that was grasped in his right hand.
No particle of food was found in the house, and on a nail in the wall in the kitchen was hung a piece of blood-smeared paper on which was written in pencil:
‘This is not my crime, but society’s.’
The report went on to explain that the deed must have been perpetrated during a fit of temporary insanity brought on by the sufferings the man had endured.
‘Insanity!’ muttered Owen, as he read this glib theory. ‘Insanity! It seems to me that he would have been insane if he had not killed them.’
Surely it was wiser and better and kinder to send them all to sleep, than to let them continue to suffer.
At the same time he thought it very strange that the man should have chosen to do it that way, when there were so many other cleaner, easier and more painless ways of accomplishing the same object. He wondered why it was that most of these killings were done in more or less the same crude, cruel messy way. No; he would set about it in a different fashion. He would get some charcoal, then he would paste strips of paper over the joinings of the door and windows of the room and close the register of the grate. Then he would kindle the charcoal on a tray or something in the middle of the room, and then they would all three just lie down together