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LBERT HIGGS was beleaguered by all the circumstances of his life. He even found a word for his condition. "I'm beset," he thought, as he travelled home in a third-class compartment of the North London Railway; six a side.
The discovery brought him a momentary relief. Since four o'clock in the afternoon, more than two hours before he had left the office, he had been increasingly harassed by the necessity to find some word for his condition. The trouble and strain of it came between him and his work. As he almost automatically copied figures into the ledger, some part of his mind had been wearily, perpetually engaged in a hopeless struggle to find this word. He had visualised it quite distinctly as an enormously active beetle that traversed complicated figures with a horrid vivacity. If only he could have held it still, for one moment. … And, now, he had it. It was no longer a beetle—although the resemblance was quite obvious but a plain line of black sans-serif capitals—BESET.
He knew that he was in for another attack of influenza. That knowledge was the latest ally to join the beleaguering forces. Some men in Albert Higgs's position might have raised the siege, have laid down their arms and weakly submitted to the inevitable. Higgs was not that sort of man. He meant to flap impotent hands in the face of Fate until he was too weak to lift his arms; after that he would put his tongue out.
For ten years he had been braced to the struggle, and resistance had become a habit with him.
Nothing had ever gone right. He was the most conscientious worker in the office, but other clerks had been promoted over his head. The manager was always finding fault with him for being so slow. Perhaps he was slow. He liked to be absolutely certain about every detail connected with his work.
Then he was the only tenant in Golden Oak Road who appeared to have trouble with his landlord. He liked a house to be sound; and he was at considerable pains to see that defects did not go too far before they were remedied. He often wished that he had never taken No. 69. It was without doubt the worst house in the road; and an altogether disproportionate amount of his spare time was occupied in looking after it.
Worst of all, his marriage could hardly be counted a success. Emily was a good wife in many ways, but she was so abominably careless about vital details. She could not realise the importance of method and accuracy either in housework or cooking. He was always being forced to remonstrate with her, but she never improved.
And all these worries seemed to be steadily accumulating. He never had a moment, now, that was not filled by the necessity to counter some new difficulty. He was in no way daunted; he had no intention of relaxing his immense fight with adverse circumstance for a single instant; but he felt that it was very hard that he of all men should have been thus singled out for perpetual persecution. …
"I've got a temperature," he announced, as his wife came out of the kitchen to meet him.
"Then you'd better get off to bed at once," she said, with her usual disregard of the practicalities.
"How can I get off to bed?" he asked patiently. "You know there's that pipe in the kitchen to be seen to, and the loose board in the spare bedroom; and I'm going round to catch the landlord if I can. Being a Jew, he's sure to be in on a Friday night."
"Oh! them things can wait," Emily said.
"You'd let the house fall down if you had your way," he replied, without temper.
"No fear of that yet awhile," she said, with a laugh. "Now, you get off to your bed, and I'll make you some nice hot gruel."
"I've got them things to see to first," replied Albert Higgs.
But even as he was struggling to investigate an imaginary leakage in the waste-pipe of the kitchen sink, his influenza that had seemed so much better as he was on his way home, began to attack him again. He had forgotten his splendid key-word, and there was the beetle come back, gyrating in the flicker of the candle-end he was holding.
His wife found him squatting on the floor. She took the candle-end from him and helped him to his feet. She was cheerful but very determined.
"Now, my lord, you come along with me," she said, "or I'll be having you on me hands next."
He did not resist her, then. He was intent on renaming the beetle, and everything else had temporarily lost importance. But when he had eaten the hot gruel his wife brought him, he remembered the word.
"I'm beset, Emily," he said.
"You won't be in the morning," she replied foolishly. " You have a good sleep and you'll be as right as rain by to-morrow."