No less remarkable than his skill and daring were his means of evasion.Even without a formal disguise he could elude pursuit.At an instant's warning,his loose,plastic features would assume another shape;out shot his lower jaw,and,as if by magic,the blood flew into his face until you might take him for a mulatto.Or,if he chose,he would strap his arm to his side,and let the police be baffled by a wooden mechanism,decently finished with a hook.Thus he roamed London up and down unsuspected,and even after his last failure at Blackheath,none would have discovered Charles Peace in John Ward,the SingleHanded Burglar,had not woman's treachery prompted detection.
Indeed,he was an epitome of his craft,the Complete Burglar made manifest.
Not only did he plan his victories with previous ingenuity,but he sacrificed to his success both taste and sentiment.His dress was always of the most sombre;his only wear was the decent black of everyday godliness.The least spice of dandyism might have distinguished him from his fellows,and Peace's whole vanity lay in his craft.Nor did the paltry sentiment of friendship deter him from his just course.When the panic aroused by the silent burglar was uncontrolled,a neighbour consulted Peace concerning the safety of his house.The robber,having duly noted the villa's imperfections,and having discovered the hidingplace of jewellery and plate,complacently rifled it the next night.
Though his selfesteem sustained a shock,though henceforth his friend thought meanly of his judgment,he was rewarded with the solid pudding of plunder,and the world whispered of the mysterious marauder with a yet colder horror.In truth,the large simplicity and solitude of his style sets him among the Classics,and though others have surpassed him at single points of the game,he practised the art with such universal breadth and courage as were then a revolution,and are still unsurpassed.
But the burglar ever fights an unequal battle.One false step,and defeat o'erwhelms him.For two years had John Ward intimidated the middleclass seclusion of South London;for two years had he hidden from a curious world the ugly,furrowed visage of Charles Peace.The bald head,the broadrimmed spectacles,the squat,thick figurehe stood but five feet four in his stockings,and adds yet another to the list of littlegreat menshould have ensured detection,but the quick change and the persuasive gesture were omnipotent,and until the autumn of 1878Peace was comfortably at large.And then an encounter at Blackheath put him within the clutch of justice.His revolver failed in its duty,and,valiant as he was,at last he met his match.In prison he was alternately insolent and aggrieved.He blustered for justice,proclaimed himself the victim of sudden temptation,and insisted that his intention had been ever innocent.
But,none the less,he was sentenced to a lifer,and,the mask of John Ward being torn from him,he was sent to Sheffield to stand his trial as Charles Peace.The leap from the train is already recorded;and at his last appearance in the dock he rolled upon the floor,a petulant and broken man.When once the last doom was pronounced,he forgot both fiddle and crowbar;he surrendered himself to those exercises of piety from which he had never wavered.The foolish have denounced him for a hypocrite,not knowing that the artist may have a life apart from his art,and that to Peace religion was an essential pursuit.So he died,having released from an unjust sentence the poor wretch who at Whalley Range had suffered for his crime,and offering up a consolatory prayer for all mankind.In truth,there was no enemy for whom he did not intercede.He prayed for his gaolers,for his executioner,for the Ordinary,for his wife,for Mrs.
Thompson,his drunken doxy,and he went to his death with the sure step of one who,having done his duty,is reconciled with the world.The mob testified its affectionate admiration by dubbing him `Charley,'and remembered with effusion his last grim pleasantry.`What is the scaffold?'he asked with sublime earnestness.And the answer came quick and sanctimonious:`Ashort cut to Heaven!'
III
A PARALLEL
(DEACON BRODIE AND CHARLES PEACE)
NOT a parallel,but a contrast,since at all points Peace is Brodie's antithesis.The one is the austerest of Classics,caring only for the ultimate perfection of his work.The other is the gayest of Romantics,happiest when by the way he produces a glittering effect,or dazzles the ear by a vain impertinence.
