Eeldrop and Appleplex rented two small rooms in a
disreputable part of town. Here they sometimes
came at nightfall, here they sometimes slept, and
after they had slept, they cooked oatmeal and departed
in the morning for destinations unknown to each other.
They sometimes slept, more often they talked, or
looked out of the window.
They had chosen the rooms and the neighborhood with
great care. There are evil neighborhoods of
noise and evil neighborhoods of silence, and Eeldrop
and Appleplex preferred the latter, as being the more
evil. It was a shady street, its windows were
heavily curtained; and over it hung the cloud of a
respectability which has something to conceal.
Yet it had the advantage of more riotous neighborhoods
near by, and Eeldrop and Appleplex commanded from
their windows the entrance of a police station across
the way. This alone possessed an irresistible
appeal in their eyes. From time to time the
silence of the street was broken; whenever a malefactor
was apprehended, a wave of excitement curled into
the street and broke upon the doors of the police station.
Then the inhabitants of the street would linger in
dressing-gowns, upon their doorsteps: then alien
visitors would linger in the street, in caps; long
after the centre of misery had been engulphed in his
cell. Then Eeldrop and Appleplex would break
off their discourse, and rush out to mingle with the
mob. Each pursued his own line of enquiry.
Appleplex, who had the gift of an extraordinary address
with the lower classes of both sexes, questioned the
onlookers, and usually extracted full and inconsistent
histories: Eeldrop preserved a more passive demeanor,
listened to the conversation of the people among themselves,
registered in his mind their oaths, their redundance
of phrase, their various manners of spitting, and
the cries of the victim from the hall of justice within.
When the crowd dispersed, Eeldrop and Appleplex returned
to their rooms: Appleplex entered the results
of his inquiries into large notebooks, filed according
to the nature of the case, from A (adultery) to Y
(yeggmen). Eeldrop smoked reflectively.
It may be added that Eeldrop was a sceptic, with a
taste for mysticism, and Appleplex a materialist with
a leaning toward scepticism; that Eeldrop was learned
in theology, and that Appleplex studied the physical
and biological sciences.
There was a common motive which led Eeldrop and Appleplex
thus to separate themselves from time to time, from
the fields of their daily employments and their ordinarily
social activities. Both were endeavoring to
escape not the commonplace, respectable or even the
domestic, but the too well pigeonholed, too taken-for-granted,
too highly systematized areas, and,—in
the language of those whom they sought to avoid—they
wished “to apprehend the human soul in its concrete
individuality.”
