The White People | Page 4

understand it, and grasp its full significance, then,
indeed, it will fill us with horror and with awe. But this emotion is
widely distinguished from the fear and the disgust with which we
regard the ordinary criminal, since this latter is largely or entirely

founded on the regard which we have for our own skins or purses. We
hate a murder, because we know that we should hate to be murdered, or
to have any one that we like murdered. So, on the 'other side,' we
venerate the saints, but we don't 'like' them as well as our friends. Can
you persuade yourself that you would have 'enjoyed' St. Paul's
company? Do you think that you and I would have 'got on' with Sir
Galahad?
"So with the sinners, as with the saints. If you met a very evil man, and
recognized his evil; he would, no doubt, fill you with horror and awe;
but there is no reason why you should 'dislike' him. On the contrary, it
is quite possible that if you could succeed in putting the sin out of your
mind you might find the sinner capital company, and in a little while
you might have to reason yourself back into horror. Still, how awful it
is. If the roses and the lilies suddenly sang on this coming morning; if
the furniture began to move in procession, as in De Maupassant's tale!"
"I am glad you have come back to that comparison," said Cotgrave,
"because I wanted to ask you what it is that corresponds in humanity to
these imaginary feats of inanimate things. In a word--what is sin? You
have given me, I know, an abstract definition, but I should like a
concrete example."
"I told you it was very rare," said Ambrose, who appeared willing to
avoid the giving of a direct answer. "The materialism of the age, which
has done a good deal to suppress sanctity, has done perhaps more to
suppress evil. We find the earth so very comfortable that we have no
inclination either for ascents or descents. It would seem as if the scholar
who decided to 'specialize' in Tophet, would be reduced to purely
antiquarian researches. No pal¾ontologist could show you a live
pterodactyl."
"And yet you, I think, have 'specialized,' and I believe that your
researches have descended to our modern times."
"You are really interested, I see. Well, I confess, that I have dabbled a
little, and if you like I can show you something that bears on the very
curious subject we have been discussing."

Ambrose took a candle and went away to a far, dim corner of the room.
Cotgrave saw him open a venerable bureau that stood there, and from
some secret recess he drew out a parcel, and came back to the window
where they had been sitting.
Ambrose undid a wrapping of paper, and produced a green
pocket-book.
"You will take care of it?" he said. "Don't leave it lying about. It is one
of the choicer pieces in my collection, and I should be very sorry if it
were lost."
He fondled the faded binding.
"I knew the girl who wrote this," he said. "When you read it, you will
see how it illustrates the talk we have had to-night. There is a sequel,
too, but I won't talk of that.
"There was an odd article in one of the reviews some months ago," he
began again, with the air of a man who changes the subject. "It was
written by a doctor--Dr. Coryn, I think, was the name. He says that a
lady, watching her little girl playing at the drawing-room window,
suddenly saw the heavy sash give way and fall on the child's fingers.
The lady fainted, I think, but at any rate the doctor was summoned, and
when he had dressed the child's wounded and maimed fingers he was
summoned to the mother. She was groaning with pain, and it was found
that three fingers of her hand, corresponding with those that had been
injured on the child's hand, were swollen and inflamed, and later, in the
doctor's language, purulent sloughing set in."
Ambrose still handled delicately the green volume.
"Well, here it is," he said at last, parting with difficulty, it seemed, from
his treasure.
"You will bring it back as soon as you have read it," he said, as they
went out into the hall, into the old garden, faint with the odour of white
lilies.

There was a broad red band in the east as Cotgrave turned to go, and
from the high ground where he stood he saw that awful spectacle of
London in a dream.
THE GREEN BOOK
The morocco binding of the book was faded, and the colour had grown
faint, but there were no stains