Conscience (Galsworthy)

by John Galsworthy

 

Conscience

By

John Galsworthy

TAGGART sat up. The hollow just outside the ranger’s fence, cannily selected for his sleeping-place, was overhung by branches, and the birds of Hyde Park were at matins already. His watch had gone the way of his other belongings during the last three months, and he could only assume from the meager light that it was but little after dawn. He was not grateful to the birds; it meant more hours in which to feel hungry before a breakfast coming from he hardly knew where. But he listened to them with interest. This was the first night he had passed in the open, and like all amateurs, he felt a kind of triumph at having achieved vagrancy in spite of the law, the ranger, and the dew. He was, moreover, a Northumbrian, and his “tail still up,” as he expressed it Born in a town, Taggart had not much country lore—at sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, his knowledge stopped; but he enjoyed the bobbery the little beggars were kicking up, and except for a trifle of stiffness, he felt “fine.” Anyway, it was useless to try and sleep again, now that his brain had begun to revolve the daily problem of how to get a job, and of why he had lost the one he had....

Walking, three months ago, burly, upright, and with a secure sense of jollity into the room of his chief in the offices of Conglomerated Journals, Ltd., he had been greeted with:

“Morning, Taggart. Georgie Grebe is to give us an article for The Lighthouse. He wont have time to write it, of course, and if he had, well—! I want you just to do us a column he could sign—something Grebeish. I’m anxious for a feature of that sort every week now in The Lighthouse; got half a dozen really good names. We must get it on its legs with the big public.”

Taggart smiled. Georgie Grebe! The name was a household word—tophole idea to get him!

“Did he ever write a line in his life, sir?”

“Don’t suppose so—but you know the sort of thing he would write; he gets nothing for it but the ad. The week after, I’ve got Sir Cutman Kane—you’ll want to be a bit careful there; but you can get his manner from that book of his on murder trials. He hasn’t got a minute—must have it deviled; but he’ll sign anything decently done. I’m going to make ’em buy The Lighthouse, Taggart. Get on to the Grebe article at once, will you?”

Taggart nodded, and producing from his pocket some typewritten sheets of paper, laid them on the bureau.

“Here’s your signed leader; I’ve gingered it a bit too much, perhaps.”

“Haven’t time to look at it; got to catch the boat-train.”

“Shall I tone it down a little?”

“Better, perhaps; use your judgment. Sit down here, and do it right now. Good-by; back on Friday.”

Reaching for his soft hat, assisted into his coat by Taggart, the chief was gone.

Taggart sat in his chair, penciling the signed leader.

“It’s a good leader,” he thought. “Pity nobody knows I write ’em!”

This deviling was quite an art, and not unlike art, poorly enough paid—still, not bad fun, feeling you were the pea and the chief only the shell—the chief, with his name and his controlling influence. He finished penciling, O.K.’d the sheets, thought, “Georgie Grebe. What the deuce shall I write about?” and went back to his room.

It was not much of a room, and there was not much in it except Jimmy Counter, smoking a pipe and writing furiously.

Taggart sat down too, lit his own pipe, took a sheet of paper and scrawled the words “Georgie Grebe Article” across the top.

Georgie Grebe! It was a scoop. The chief had a wonderful flair for just the names that got the public. There was something very trustful—when there was such evidence supplied them? Besides, Grebe would read his thoughts and cross out those that weren’t really his—wouldn’t he? Would there be anything fraudulent in what was left? Fraudulent! What the deuce made him think of a word like—fraudulent? This was just deviling; there was nothing fraudulent about deviling—every body did it. Fraudulent! You might as well say those signed leaders which he wrote for the chief were fraudulent. Of course they weren’t—they were only deviled. The public paid for the thoughts of the chief, and they were the thoughts of the chief, since he signed them. And yet! Would the public pay if those leaders were signed A. P. R. Taggart? The thoughts would be the same—very good thoughts. They ought to pay, but would they? He struck another match, and wrote:

“In coming before the public with these few reflections I fear that I usurp the province of others. I am not a writer; I am—you wouldn’t believe it, ladies and gentlemen—a simple clown. In balancing this new pole upon my nose I am conscious of a certain sense of fraud—”

He crossed out the paragraph. That word again—must keep it from buzzing senselessly round his brain like that. He was only deviling; hold on to the word deviling; it was his living to devil—more or less. He was just earning his living—getting nothing out of it. Neither was Georgie Grebe—only the ad! Then who was getting something out of it? Well, The Lighthouse would get a good deal out of Georgie Grebe’s name, just as Conglomerated Journals got a good deal out of the chief’s name below the deviled leaders. Well, was there any harm in making the most of a big name? A frown came between Taggart’s brows. Suppose a man went into a shop and bought a box of pills marked “Holloway” and they had been made up from a recipe of Tompkins—did it matter that the man thought they were Holloway’s, supposing they were just as good pills, perhaps better? Taggart laid down his pen and took his pipe out of his mouth; something had risen in his soul. “Gosh!” he thought. “Never looked at it that way before! I believe it does matter—goes to the roots of commercial honesty. A man ought to get the exact article he pays for—it’s beside the point that he never finds out that it isn’t the exact article. Why, on such lines any fraud is possible. New Zealand mutton can be sold as English. Woolen stuffs can have cotton in them. This Grebe article’s a fraud.”

He relit his pipe. With the first puff his English hatred of a moral attitude, or “swank” of any sort beset him. Who was he to take stand against a custom? Didn’t secretaries write the speeches of Parliamentary “big-bugs?” Weren’t the opinions of eminent lawyers often written by their juniors, read over and signed? Weren’t briefs and pleadings deviled? Yes; but to be honest, all that was different. In such cases the public weren’t paying for expression; they were paying for knowledge; the big lawyer put his imprimatur on the knowledge, not on the expression of it; the Cabinet minister indorsed his views, whether he had written them out or not, and it was his views the public paid for, not the expression of them. But in this Grebe article the public would not be paying for any knowledge it contained, nor for any serious views; it would pay for a peep into the mind of their idol. “And his mind will be mine!” thought Taggart. “But not one of them would spend his money to peep into my mind, if he knew it was my mind.” He kicked the leg of his chair, got up, and sat down again.

With a public so gullible—what did it matter? They lapped up anything and asked for more. They would probably be the first to despise -him for having such scruples. Yes! But because a man was gullible and easy-going, wasn’t he all the more entitled to protection? He rose again, and made a tour of the disheveled room. The man at the other table raised his head and said:

“You seem a bit on your toes.”

Taggart put his elbows on the mantelpiece behind him, and stared down at his stable-companion.

“I’ve got to write some drivel in The Lighthouse for Georgie Grebe to sign. It’s just struck me that it’s a fraud on the public. What do you say, Counter?”

“In a way, so’s nearly everything else. What about it?”

“If it’s a fraud, I don’t want to do it—that’s all.”

His colleague whistled.

“My dear chap, here am I writing an article ‘From the Man on the Course’—I haven’t been on a course for years.”

“Oh! Well—that’s venial.”

“It’s all venial in our game. Shut your eyes, and swallow. You’re only deviling.”

“Ah!” said Taggart. “Give a thing a decent label, and it’s decent.”

“I say, old man, what did you have for breakfast?”

“Look here, Counter, I’m inclined to think I’ve struck a snag. It never occurred to me before.”

“Well, don’t let it occur to you again. Think of old Dumas; I’ve heard he put his name to sixty volumes in one year. Has that done him any harm?”

Taggart rumpled his hair, reddish and rather stiff.

“Damn!” he said.

Counter laughed.

“You get a fixed screw for doing what you’re told. I can’t see that you need worry. Papers must be sold. Georgie Grebe—that’s some stunt.”

“Blast Georgie Grebe!”

He had said it with such energy as to deprive himself of the power of continuing either argument or article. Everything now would be in the nature of a climb-down, or anti-climax. He took his hat and went out, conscious of a prolonged whistle following. He spent the next day doing other jobs, trying to persuade himself that he was a crank, and gingerly feeling the mouths of journalists. He got nothing from those mouths but the opinion that he was making a fuss about nothing. What was the matter with deviling? With life at such pressure, what else could you have? And yet for the life of him he could not persuade himself to go on with the thoughts of Georgie Grebe. He remembered suddenly that his father had changed the dogmas of his religion at forty-five, and thereby lost a cure of souls. He was very unhappy; it was like discovering that he had inherited tuberculosis.

ON Friday Taggart was sent for by the chief.

“Morning, Taggart; I’m just back. Look here, this leader for tomorrow—it’s nothing but a string of statements. Where’s my style?”

Taggart shifted his as yet inconsiderable weight from foot to foot.

“Well, sir,” he said, “I thought perhaps you’d like to put that in yourself, for a change. The facts are all right.” The chief stared.

“My good fellow, do you suppose I’ve got time for that? Anybody could have written this; I can’t sign it as it stands. Tone it up.”

Taggart took the article from the chief’s hand.

“I don’t know that I can,” he said; “I’m—” and stopped in confusion.

The chief said kindly:

“Aren’t you well?”

Taggart disclaimed.

“Private trouble?”

“No.”

“Well, get on with it, then. How’s the Grebe article turned out?”

“It hasn’t.”

“How d’you mean?”

Taggart felt his body stiffening, and wondered if his hair were standing up more than usual.

“The fact is I can’t write it.”

“Good gracious, man, any drivel will do, so long as it’s got a flavor of some sort to carry the name.”

Taggart swallowed.

“That’s it. Is it quite playing the game with the public, sir?”

The chief seemed to loom larger suddenly.

“Really!” he said. “I don’t follow you, Mr. Taggart.”

Taggart blurted out: “I don’t want to write anyone else’s stuff in the future, unless it’s just news or facts.”

The chief’s face grew very red.

“I pay you to do certain work. If you don’t care to carry out instructions, we can dispense with your services. What’s the matter with you, Taggart?”

Taggart replied with a wry smile:

“I’m afraid I’m suffering from a fit of conscience, sir. Isn’t it a matter of commercial honesty?”

The chief sat back -in his swivel chair and gazed at him for quite twenty seconds.

“Well,” he said at last in an icy voice, “I have never been so insulted. Good morning! You are at liberty.”

Taggart laid down the sheets of paper, walked stiffly to the door, and turned.

“Awfully sorry, sir,” he said. “Can’t help it.”

The chief bowed distantly, and Taggart went out to his liberty....

For three months he had enjoyed it. Journalism was overstocked, his name not well known. He was too shy and too proud to ask for any recommendation from Conglomerated Journals—nor could he ever bring himself to explain the reason for which he had “got the hoof.” To do so would be to claim a higher standard of morality than his fellows, and he couldn’t bear the thought. He had carried on well enough for two months, but the last few weeks had brought him very low. To save every penny, he had been obliged at last to send his wife and little girl down to a country cottage; he could still pay their scot there for a week or two, so long as he practically did not pay his own. Hence the Park, for yesterday he had given up his room. If he didn’t get a journalistic job this week, he would give up trying, and take to road-sweeping, or any mortal thing he could get. But the more he brooded over his conduct, the more he thought that he was right, and the less inclined he was to speak of it.

Loyalty to the chief he had insulted by taking such an attitude, dislike of being thought a fool, beyond all, the dread of “swanking,” kept him silent. When asked why he had left Conglomerated Journals, he returned the answer always, “Disagreement on a matter of principle,” and refused to enter into details. But a feeling had got about that he was a bit of a crank; for though no one else at Conglomerated Journals knew exactly why he had vanished, Counter had spread the news that he had blasted Georgie Grebe, and refused to write his article. Some one else had done it, and been glad of the job.

TAGGART read the production with the irritated thought: “I could have done it a lot better.” Inefficient deviling still hurt one who had deviled long and efficiently without a qualm. When the article which had not been written by Sir Cutman Kane appeared—he swore aloud. It was muck, no more like the one Sir Cutman would have signed if Taggart had written it, than the boots of Taggart were like the boots of the chief, who seemed to wear a fresh pair every day, with cloth tops. He read the chief’s new leaders with melancholy, spotting the innumerable deficiencies of style supplied to the chief by whoever it was now wrote them. His square, red, cheerful face had a bitter look while he was reading; and when he had finished, he would rumple his stiff hair.

But he was sturdy, and never got so far as calling himself a fool for his pains, though week by week he felt more and more that his protest had been vain and and void; it was the custom, decently garbed in a word-cloak through which most people could not, or would not see.

Sitting against the ranger’s paling, listening to the birds, he had a rather dreamy feeling about it all. Queer things, human beings! So damned uncritical! Had he not been just like that himself for years and years? The power of a label—that was what struck him, sitting there. Label a thing decently, and it was decent! Ah, but, “Rue by any other name would smell as sour!” Conscience—it was the devil!

Taggart was becoming a philosopher.