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Margret Howth - "A Story of To day"

Oliver Optic - "Poor and Proud, or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn"

Charles Dickens - ""

Gene Stratton Porter - "The Song of the Cardinal"

The Club of Queer Trades

G >> G.K.Chesterton >> The Club of Queer Trades




"And now, Mr Burrows," he said, settling himself sociably in the
chair, "there's no reason why we shouldn't go on with that amusing
argument. I'm sorry that you have to express yourself lying on your
back on the floor, and, as I told you before, I've no more notion
why you are there than the man in the moon. A conversationalist
like yourself, however, can scarcely be seriously handicapped by
any bodily posture. You were saying, if I remember right, when this
incidental fracas occurred, that the rudiments of science might
with advantage be made public."

"Precisely," said the large man on the floor in an easy tone. "I
hold that nothing more than a rough sketch of the universe as seen
by science can be. . ."

And here the voices died away as we descended into the basement. I
noticed that Mr Greenwood did not join in the amicable controversy.
Strange as it may appear, I think he looked back upon our
proceedings with a slight degree of resentment. Mr Burrows,
however, was all philosophy and chattiness. We left them, as I say,
together, and sank deeper and deeper into the under-world of that
mysterious house, which, perhaps, appeared to us somewhat more
Tartarean than it really was, owing to our knowledge of its
semi-criminal mystery and of the human secret locked below.

The basement floor had several doors, as is usual in such a house;
doors that would naturally lead to the kitchen, the scullery, the
pantry, the servants' hall, and so on. Rupert flung open all the
doors with indescribable rapidity. Four out of the five opened on
entirely empty apartments. The fifth was locked. Rupert broke the
door in like a bandbox, and we fell into the sudden blackness of
the sealed, unlighted room.

Rupert stood on the threshold, and called out like a man calling
into an abyss:

"Whoever you are, come out. You are free. The people who held you
captive are captives themselves. We heard you crying and we came to
deliver you. We have bound your enemies upstairs hand and foot. You
are free."

For some seconds after he had spoken into the darkness there was
a dead silence in it. Then there came a kind of muttering and
moaning. We might easily have taken it for the wind or rats if we
had not happened to have heard it before. It was unmistakably the
voice of the imprisoned woman, drearily demanding liberty, just as
we had heard her demand it.

"Has anybody got a match?" said Rupert grimly. "I fancy we have
come pretty near the end of this business."

I struck a match and held it up. It revealed a large, bare,
yellow-papered apartment with a dark-clad figure at the other end
of it near the window. An instant after it burned my fingers and
dropped, leaving darkness. It had, however, revealed something
more practical--an iron gas bracket just above my head. I struck
another match and lit the gas. And we found ourselves suddenly and
seriously in the presence of the captive.

At a sort of workbox in the window of this subterranean
breakfast-room sat an elderly lady with a singularly high colour
and almost startling silver hair. She had, as if designedly to
relieve these effects, a pair of Mephistophelian black eyebrows
and a very neat black dress. The glare of the gas lit up her
piquant hair and face perfectly against the brown background of
the shutters. The background was blue and not brown in one place;
at the place where Rupert's knife had torn a great opening in the
wood about an hour before.

"Madam," said he, advancing with a gesture of the hat, "permit me
to have the pleasure of announcing to you that you are free. Your
complaints happened to strike our ears as we passed down the
street, and we have therefore ventured to come to your rescue."

The old lady with the red face and the black eyebrows looked at us
for a moment with something of the apoplectic stare of a parrot.
Then she said, with a sudden gust or breathing of relief:

"Rescue? Where is Mr Greenwood? Where is Mr Burrows? Did you say
you had rescued me?"

"Yes, madam," said Rupert, with a beaming condescension. "We have
very satisfactorily dealt with Mr Greenwood and Mr Burrows. We have
settled affairs with them very satisfactorily."

The old lady rose from her chair and came very quickly towards us.

"What did you say to them? How did you persuade them?" she cried.

"We persuaded them, my dear madam," said Rupert, laughing, "by
knocking them down and tying them up. But what is the matter?"

To the surprise of every one the old lady walked slowly back to
her seat by the window.

"Do I understand," she said, with the air of a person about to
begin knitting, "that you have knocked down Mr Burrows and tied
him up?"

"We have," said Rupert proudly; "we have resisted their oppression
and conquered it."

"Oh, thanks," answered the old lady, and sat down by the window.

A considerable pause followed.

"The road is quite clear for you, madam," said Rupert pleasantly.

The old lady rose, cocking her black eyebrows and her silver crest
at us for an instant.

"But what about Greenwood and Burrows?" she said. "What did I
understand you to say had become of them?"

"They are lying on the floor upstairs," said Rupert, chuckling.
"Tied hand and foot."

"Well, that settles it," said the old lady, coming with a kind of
bang into her seat again, "I must stop where I am."

Rupert looked bewildered.

"Stop where you are?" he said. "Why should you stop any longer
where you are? What power can force you now to stop in this
miserable cell?"

"The question rather is," said the old lady, with composure, "what
power can force me to go anywhere else?"

We both stared wildly at her and she stared tranquilly at us both.

At last I said, "Do you really mean to say that we are to leave
you here?"

"I suppose you don't intend to tie me up," she said, "and carry me
off? I certainly shall not go otherwise."

"But, my dear madam," cried out Rupert, in a radiant exasperation,
"we heard you with our own ears crying because you could not get
out."

"Eavesdroppers often hear rather misleading things," replied the
captive grimly. "I suppose I did break down a bit and lose my
temper and talk to myself. But I have some sense of honour for all
that."

"Some sense of honour?" repeated Rupert, and the last light of
intelligence died out of his face, leaving it the face of an idiot
with rolling eyes.

He moved vaguely towards the door and I followed. But I turned yet
once more in the toils of my conscience and curiosity. "Can we do
nothing for you, madam?" I said forlornly.

"Why," said the lady, "if you are particularly anxious to do me a
little favour you might untie the gentlemen upstairs."

Rupert plunged heavily up the kitchen staircase, shaking it with
his vague violence. With mouth open to speak he stumbled to the
door of the sitting-room and scene of battle.

"Theoretically speaking, that is no doubt true," Mr Burrows was
saying, lying on his back and arguing easily with Basil; "but we
must consider the matter as it appears to our sense. The origin
of morality. . ."

"Basil," cried Rupert, gasping, "she won't come out."

"Who won't come out?" asked Basil, a little cross at being
interrupted in an argument.

"The lady downstairs," replied Rupert. "The lady who was locked up.
She won't come out. And she says that all she wants is for us to
let these fellows loose."

"And a jolly sensible suggestion," cried Basil, and with a bound he
was on top of the prostrate Burrows once more and was unknotting
his bonds with hands and teeth.

"A brilliant idea. Swinburne, just undo Mr Greenwood."

In a dazed and automatic way I released the little gentleman in the
purple jacket, who did not seem to regard any of the proceedings as
particularly sensible or brilliant. The gigantic Burrows, on the
other hand, was heaving with herculean laughter.

"Well," said Basil, in his cheeriest way, "I think we must be
getting away. We've so much enjoyed our evening. Far too much
regard for you to stand on ceremony. If I may so express myself,
we've made ourselves at home. Good night. Thanks so much. Come
along, Rupert."

"Basil," said Rupert desperately, "for God's sake come and see what
you can make of the woman downstairs. I can't get the discomfort
out of my mind. I admit that things look as if we had made a
mistake. But these gentlemen won't mind perhaps. . ."

"No, no," cried Burrows, with a sort of Rabelaisian uproariousness.
"No, no, look in the pantry, gentlemen. Examine the coal-hole. Make
a tour of the chimneys. There are corpses all over the house, I
assure you."

This adventure of ours was destined to differ in one respect from
others which I have narrated. I had been through many wild days
with Basil Grant, days for the first half of which the sun and the
moon seemed to have gone mad. But it had almost invariably happened
that towards the end of the day and its adventure things had
cleared themselves like the sky after rain, and a luminous and
quiet meaning had gradually dawned upon me. But this day's work was
destined to end in confusion worse confounded. Before we left that
house, ten minutes afterwards, one half-witted touch was added
which rolled all our minds in cloud. If Rupert's head had suddenly
fallen off on the floor, if wings had begun to sprout out of
Greenwood's shoulders, we could scarcely have been more suddenly
stricken. And yet of this we had no explanation. We had to go to
bed that night with the prodigy and get up next morning with it and
let it stand in our memories for weeks and months. As will be seen,
it was not until months afterwards that by another accident and in
another way it was explained. For the present I only state what
happened.

When all five of us went down the kitchen stairs again, Rupert
leading, the two hosts bringing up the rear, we found the door of
the prison again closed. Throwing it open we found the place again
as black as pitch. The old lady, if she was still there, had turned
out the gas: she seemed to have a weird preference for sitting in
the dark.

Without another word Rupert lit the gas again. The little old lady
turned her bird-like head as we all stumbled forward in the strong
gaslight. Then, with a quickness that almost made me jump, she
sprang up and swept a sort of old-fashioned curtsey or reverence. I
looked quickly at Greenwood and Burrows, to whom it was natural to
suppose this subservience had been offered. I felt irritated at
what was implied in this subservience, and desired to see the faces
of the tyrants as they received it. To my surprise they did not
seem to have seen it at all: Burrows was paring his nails with a
small penknife. Greenwood was at the back of the group and had
hardly entered the room. And then an amazing fact became apparent.
It was Basil Grant who stood foremost of the group, the golden
gaslight lighting up his strong face and figure. His face wore an
expression indescribably conscious, with the suspicion of a very
grave smile. His head was slightly bent with a restrained bow. It
was he who had acknowledged the lady's obeisance. And it was he,
beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt, to whom it had really been
directed.

"So I hear," he said, in a kindly yet somehow formal voice, "I
hear, madam, that my friends have been trying to rescue you. But
without success."

"No one, naturally, knows my faults better than you," answered the
lady with a high colour. "But you have not found me guilty of
treachery."

"I willingly attest it, madam," replied Basil, in the same level
tones, "and the fact is that I am so much gratified with your
exhibition of loyalty that I permit myself the pleasure of
exercising some very large discretionary powers. You would not
leave this room at the request of these gentlemen. But you know
that you can safely leave it at mine."

The captive made another reverence. "I have never complained of
your injustice," she said. "I need scarcely say what I think of
your generosity."

And before our staring eyes could blink she had passed out of the
room, Basil holding the door open for her.

He turned to Greenwood with a relapse into joviality. "This will
be a relief to you," he said.

"Yes, it will," replied that immovable young gentleman with a face
like a sphinx.

We found ourselves outside in the dark blue night, shaken and dazed
as if we had fallen into it from some high tower.

"Basil," said Rupert at last, in a weak voice, "I always thought
you were my brother. But are you a man? I mean--are you only a
man?"

"At present," replied Basil, "my mere humanity is proved by one
of the most unmistakable symbols--hunger. We are too late for
the theatre in Sloane Square. But we are not too late for the
restaurant. Here comes the green omnibus!" and he had leaped on
it before we could speak.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As I said, it was months after that Rupert Grant suddenly entered
my room, swinging a satchel in his hand and with a general air of
having jumped over the garden wall, and implored me to go with him
upon the latest and wildest of his expeditions. He proposed to
himself no less a thing than the discovery of the actual origin,
whereabouts, and headquarters of the source of all our joys and
sorrows--the Club of Queer Trades. I should expand this story for
ever if I explained how ultimately we ran this strange entity to
its lair. The process meant a hundred interesting things. The
tracking of a member, the bribing of a cabman, the fighting of
roughs, the lifting of a paving stone, the finding of a cellar,
the finding of a cellar below the cellar, the finding of the
subterranean passage, the finding of the Club of Queer Trades.

I have had many strange experiences in my life, but never a
stranger one than that I felt when I came out of those rambling,
sightless, and seemingly hopeless passages into the sudden
splendour of a sumptuous and hospitable dining-room, surrounded
upon almost every side by faces that I knew. There was Mr
Montmorency, the Arboreal House-Agent, seated between the two brisk
young men who were occasionally vicars, and always Professional
Detainers. There was Mr P. G. Northover, founder of the Adventure
and Romance Agency. There was Professor Chadd, who invented the
dancing Language.

As we entered, all the members seemed to sink suddenly into their
chairs, and with the very action the vacancy of the presidential
seat gaped at us like a missing tooth.

"The president's not here," said Mr P. G. Northover, turning
suddenly to Professor Chadd.

"N--no," said the philosopher, with more than his ordinary
vagueness. "I can't imagine where he is."

"Good heavens," said Mr Montmorency, jumping up, "I really feel a
little nervous. I'll go and see." And he ran out of the room.

An instant after he ran back again, twittering with a timid
ecstasy.

"He's there, gentlemen--he's there all right--he's coming in now,"
he cried, and sat down. Rupert and I could hardly help feeling the
beginnings of a sort of wonder as to who this person might be who
was the first member of this insane brotherhood. Who, we thought
indistinctly, could be maddest in this world of madmen: what
fantastic was it whose shadow filled all these fantastics with so
loyal an expectation?

Suddenly we were answered. The door flew open and the room was
filled and shaken with a shout, in the midst of which Basil Grant,
smiling and in evening dress, took his seat at the head of the
table.

How we ate that dinner I have no idea. In the common way I am a
person particularly prone to enjoy the long luxuriance of the club
dinner. But on this occasion it seemed a hopeless and endless
string of courses. Hors-d'oeuvre sardines seemed as big as
herrings, soup seemed a sort of ocean, larks were ducks, ducks
were ostriches until that dinner was over. The cheese course was
maddening. I had often heard of the moon being made of green
cheese. That night I thought the green cheese was made of the
moon. And all the time Basil Grant went on laughing and eating and
drinking, and never threw one glance at us to tell us why he was
there, the king of these capering idiots.

At last came the moment which I knew must in some way enlighten us,
the time of the club speeches and the club toasts. Basil Grant rose
to his feet amid a surge of songs and cheers.

"Gentlemen," he said, "it is a custom in this society that the
president for the year opens the proceedings not by any general
toast of sentiment, but by calling upon each member to give a brief
account of his trade. We then drink to that calling and to all who
follow it. It is my business, as the senior member, to open by
stating my claim to membership of this club. Years ago, gentlemen,
I was a judge; I did my best in that capacity to do justice and to
administer the law. But it gradually dawned on me that in my work,
as it was, I was not touching even the fringe of justice. I was
seated in the seat of the mighty, I was robed in scarlet and
ermine; nevertheless, I held a small and lowly and futile post. I
had to go by a mean rule as much as a postman, and my red and gold
was worth no more than his. Daily there passed before me taut and
passionate problems, the stringency of which I had to pretend to
relieve by silly imprisonments or silly damages, while I knew all
the time, by the light of my living common sense, that they would
have been far better relieved by a kiss or a thrashing, or a few
words of explanation, or a duel, or a tour in the West Highlands.
Then, as this grew on me, there grew on me continuously the sense
of a mountainous frivolity. Every word said in the court, a whisper
or an oath, seemed more connected with life than the words I had to
say. Then came the time when I publicly blasphemed the whole bosh,
was classed as a madman and melted from public life."

Something in the atmosphere told me that it was not only Rupert and
I who were listening with intensity to this statement.

"Well, I discovered that I could be of no real use. I offered
myself privately as a purely moral judge to settle purely moral
differences. Before very long these unofficial courts of honour
(kept strictly secret) had spread over the whole of society. People
were tried before me not for the practical trifles for which nobody
cares, such as committing a murder, or keeping a dog without a
licence. My criminals were tried for the faults which really make
social life impossible. They were tried before me for selfishness,
or for an impossible vanity, or for scandalmongering, or for
stinginess to guests or dependents. Of course these courts had no
sort of real coercive powers. The fulfilment of their punishments
rested entirely on the honour of the ladies and gentlemen involved,
including the honour of the culprits. But you would be amazed to
know how completely our orders were always obeyed. Only lately I
had a most pleasing example. A maiden lady in South Kensington whom
I had condemned to solitary confinement for being the means of
breaking off an engagement through backbiting, absolutely refused
to leave her prison, although some well-meaning persons had been
inopportune enough to rescue her."

Rupert Grant was staring at his brother, his mouth fallen agape.
So, for the matter of that, I expect, was I. This, then, was the
explanation of the old lady's strange discontent and her still
stranger content with her lot. She was one of the culprits of his
Voluntary Criminal Court. She was one of the clients of his Queer
Trade.

We were still dazed when we drank, amid a crash of glasses, the
health of Basil's new judiciary. We had only a confused sense of
everything having been put right, the sense men will have when
they come into the presence of God. We dimly heard Basil say:

"Mr P. G. Northover will now explain the Adventure and Romance
Agency."

And we heard equally dimly Northover beginning the statement he
had made long ago to Major Brown. Thus our epic ended where it
had begun, like a true cycle.

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