Tremendous Trifles

The Extraordinary Cabman

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From time to time I have introduced into this newspaper column the

narration of incidents that have really occurred. I do not mean to

insinuate that in this respect it stands alone among newspaper

columns. I mean only that I have found that my meaning was better

expressed by some practical parable out of daily life than by any

other method; therefore I propose to narrate the incident of the

extraordinary cabman, which occurred to me only three days ago, and

which, slight as it apparently is, aroused in me a moment of genuine

emotion bordering upon despair.

On the day that I met the strange cabman I had been lunching

in a little restaurant in Soho in company with three or four

of my best friends. My best friends are all either bottomless

sceptics or quite uncontrollable believers, so our discussion

at luncheon turned upon the most ultimate and terrible ideas.

And the whole argument worked out ultimately to this: that the

question is whether a man can be certain of anything at all.

I think he can be certain, for if (as I said to my friend,

furiously brandishing an empty bottle) it is impossible

intellectually to entertain certainty, what is this certainty

which it is impossible to entertain? If I have never experienced

such a thing as certainty I cannot even say that a thing is not

certain. Similarly, if I have never experienced such a thing as

green I cannot even say that my nose is not green. It may be as

green as possible for all I know, if I have really no experience

of greenness. So we shouted at each other and shook the room;

because metaphysics is the only thoroughly emotional thing.

And the difference between us was very deep, because it

was a difference as to the object of the whole thing

called broad-mindedness or the opening of the intellect.

For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun

opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake,

opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened

my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it

again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment.

And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly

if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.

Now when this argument was over, or at least when it was cut short

(for it will never be over), I went away with one of my companions,

who in the confusion and comparative insanity of a General Election

had somehow become a member of Parliament, and I drove with him in a cab

from the corner of Leicester-square to the members' entrance of the House

of Commons, where the police received me with a quite unusual tolerance.

Whether they thought that he was my keeper or that I was his keeper

is a discussion between us which still continues.

It is necessary in this narrative to preserve the utmost exactitude

of detail. After leaving my friend at the House I took the cab

on a few hundred yards to an office in Victoria-street which I

had to visit. I then got out and offered him more than his fare.

He looked at it, but not with the surly doubt and general

disposition to try it on which is not unknown among normal cabmen.

But this was no normal, perhaps, no human, cabman. He looked at it

with a dull and infantile astonishment, clearly quite genuine.

"Do you know, sir," he said, "you've only given me 1s.8d?"

I remarked, with some surprise, that I did know it. "Now you know,

sir," said he in a kindly, appealing, reasonable way, "you know

that ain't the fare from Euston." "Euston," I repeated vaguely,

for the phrase at that moment sounded to me like China or Arabia.

"What on earth has Euston got to do with it?" "You hailed me just outside

Euston Station," began the man with astonishing precision, "and then

you said----" "What in the name of Tartarus are you talking about?"

I said with Christian forbearance; "I took you at the south-west

corner of Leicester-square." "Leicester-square," he exclaimed,

loosening a kind of cataract of scorn, "why we ain't been near

Leicester-square to-day. You hailed me outside Euston Station,

and you said----" "Are you mad, or am I?" I asked with scientific calm.

I looked at the man. No ordinary dishonest cabman would

think of creating so solid and colossal and creative a lie.

And this man was not a dishonest cabman. If ever a human

face was heavy and simple and humble, and with great big

blue eyes protruding like a frog's, if ever (in short)

a human face was all that a human face should be, it was the

face of that resentful and respectful cabman. I looked up and

down the street; an unusually dark twilight seemed to be coming

on. And for one second the old nightmare of the sceptic put

its finger on my nerve. What was certainty? Was anybody

certain of anything? Heavens! to think of the dull rut of the

sceptics who go on asking whether we possess a future life.

The exciting question for real scepticism is whether we

possess a past life. What is a minute ago, rationalistically

considered, except a tradition and a picture? The darkness grew

deeper from the road. The cabman calmly gave me the most elaborate

details of the gesture, the words, the complex but consistent

course of action which I had adopted since that remarkable

occasion when I had hailed him outside Euston Station. How did I

know (my sceptical friends would say) that I had not hailed him

outside Euston. I was firm about my assertion; he was quite equally

firm about his. He was obviously quite as honest a man as I, and a

member of a much more respectable profession. In that moment

the universe and the stars swung just a hair's breadth from

their balance, and the foundations of the earth were moved.

But for the same reason that I believe in Democracy, for the same

reason that I believe in free will, for the same reason that I

believe in fixed character of virtue, the reason that could

only be expressed by saying that I do not choose to be a lunatic,

I continued to believe that this honest cabman was wrong,

and I repeated to him that I had really taken him at the corner

of Leicester-square. He began with the same evident and

ponderous sincerity, "You hailed me outside Euston Station,

and you said----"

And at this moment there came over his features a kind

of frightful transfiguration of living astonishment,

as if he had been lit up like a lamp from the inside.

"Why, I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "I beg your pardon.

I beg your pardon. You took me from Leicester-square. I remember now.

I beg your pardon." And with that this astonishing man let out

his whip with a sharp crack at his horse and went trundling away.

The whole of which interview, before the banner of St. George I swear,

is strictly true.

I looked at the strange cabman as he lessened in the distance

and the mists. I do not know whether I was right in fancying

that although his face had seemed so honest there was something

unearthly and demoniac about him when seen from behind.

Perhaps he had been sent to tempt me from my adherence to those

sanities and certainties which I had defended earlier in the day.

In any case it gave me pleasure to remember that my sense of reality,

though it had rocked for an instant, had remained erect.

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