Physical reaction following my interview with Mrs. Chrysostom. Reception
of a wreath from the Maidstones. Moving excerpt from Simeon’s diary.
I decide to marry one of Ezekiel’s sisters. Interview with Ezekiel
and his deplorable language. Tact is selected to become my bride.
Tragic return to Mon Repos. I fall unconscious, parallel to my
father.
GLAD as I was, however, and indeed, as a Xtian gentleman, glad as I was
compelled to be that Mrs. Chrysostom had repented, it was nevertheless a
penitence that in respect of myself was little short of disastrous. And
even now it is with the utmost difficulty that I can look back upon the
weeks that followed. Deprived of my living; already nearing thirty; and
the subject, as I soon found, of the grossest misjudgment—such was my
prostration that for nearly three weeks, I was confined to my bedroom,
if not to my bed. For two or three days, in fact, I doubted if I could
recover, a doubt that was shared by my dear father; while a small
wreath, sent by the Maidstones, was actually delivered at the house.
Whether this was despatched under a misapprehension; whether it was the
symbol of a genuine contrition; or whether it was merely a sop to an
uneasy conscience, will probably never be determined. And I refrained
from acknowledging it until I had come to a decision as to the
possibilities of legal action. After a prolonged interview, however,
with Mr. Balfour Whey, and in view of my poor father’s unhappy
experiences, it was regretfully decided that the British judiciary was
too uncertain to be relied upon; and in a brief sentence, therefore, at
the beginning of a letter, I informed Miss Maidstone of its safe
arrival. The remainder of the letter, of which I still have a copy, was
perhaps the severest exposure of a female character that has ever been
penned, with the possible exception of certain passages in the Book of
Revelation.
Another document, of which I have a copy, and which was also indited by
me, while in bed, was rendered necessary by the widespread local
confusion between acute port-poisoning and ordinary inebriation—a
confusion accentuated, and indeed never wholly dispersed, owing to the
despicable attitude of Mr. Chrysostom. Thanks to the generosity,
however, of my kind friend Simeon Whey, who had not been present at the
meeting, I was enabled to print several hundreds of these for personal
and vicarious distribution, agents being posted, upon the following
Sunday, at the doors of St. Nicholas, Newington Butts, and, during the
ensuing week, at the exits and entrances of all my habitual haunts of
prayer. In so far as I knew their addresses, too, the pamphlet was sent
by post to the members of the _A.D.S.U._ and _S.P.S.D.T._, and to such
other persons as might reasonably have been presumed to have been
present at the Porter Street Drill Hall.
For the most part, however, I lay for long hours either comatose or
actually asleep, all my meals being brought to my bedside and consumed
in a semi-recumbent posture. Nor, had they come, should I have been able
to receive visitors, although I made an exception in favour of Simeon
Whey, who bicycled from Balham every Wednesday and Saturday, not only as
a friend but also as a clergyman. Indeed in many ways I found his
ministrations more soothing than those of my father, who had transferred
both his bible and the harmonium from the parlour downstairs to my
bedroom. His voice, however, though still very powerful, was much more
uncertain than it used to be, and I was usually obliged, after about
three-quarters of an hour, to ask him to desist from further
vocalization.
So the days passed, one after another, and each a little longer than the
one before; and although I endeavoured to summon, and I trust not
unsuccessfully, the whole of my accumulated spiritual reserves, it was
only by an effort that many would have judged superhuman that I began
almost imperceptibly to regain my strength. Indeed, to at least one
observer the spectacle I was now presenting was so fractionally short of
a miracle that, as he wrote in his diary (for it was none other than
Simeon) it “will never cease to be an inspiration to me.” But let me
quote the whole passage, written after I had been in bed for about a
fortnight.
“To-day,” he wrote, “I have again visited my poor friend, Augustus Carp,
who is still laid aside on the bed of complete exhaustion as the result
of the deception that I have already described; and more than ever, as I
perceived him lying there, did I regret my absence from the meeting in
question. Visibly flushed, although this may perhaps have been due to
the imperfect absorption of a recent meal, his eyes were focussed upon a
point in the ceiling with an almost tragic intensity, and the mute
endurance with which he awaits the future will never cease to be an
inspiration to me. Nor will he fail, as it seems to me, to need it. For
with his chief means of sustenance rent away from him, it will probably
become obligatory for him, as he has faintly whispered to me, to marry
one of the sisters of Ezekiel Stool.”
That is the whole passage, and I have thought well to include it not
only as an encouragement to the afflicted but also as an indication of
the poignant decision to which I was now slowly being forced, for, as I
had instantly feared on leaving Mrs. Chrysostom, and as I had since
perceived, alas, only too distinctly, I was face to face with just such
a catastrophe as marriage with a Stool had been kept in reserve for. Nor
had I been able to discern, bitterly though I had sought for it, any
practicable alternative—or none that would preserve me from the personal
indignity of applying for fresh employment without adequate references.
[Illustration:
_The twin sisters of Ezekiel Stool. The right-hand one became my wife_
]
Any such employment, too, even if I were to obtain it, would inevitably
be associated with a loss of income that would seriously cripple me in
those fuller religious duties for which I was so evidently being
prepared. For this at any rate had become abundantly clear to me—and
indeed it was the sheet anchor by which I clung to life—that I could not
but emerge from such an abyss of suffering enormously the richer in
strength of character. More than ever, therefore, would it be desirable
in future not only that I should be immune from financial anxiety but
that I should have at my disposal a larger amount of leisure for my more
sacred avocations. Indeed, if this were possible, I felt that
henceforward I should be entirely freed from the necessity for
money-making, and thereby liberated for the completer uplifting of all
with whom I might be brought into contact.
Such then were the conclusions to which I had been driven, and which I
would already have communicated to Ezekiel, had the latter visited me on
what Simeon has so well described as the bed of complete exhaustion.
Since I had been carried from the meeting, however, to Miss Maidstone’s
vehicle—it was her two brothers who had borne me home—I had neither
looked upon Ezekiel’s face nor received a message from his lips; and
this in spite of the fact that I had sent him six of my pamphlets for
his own use and that of his sisters. I therefore decided, when I had
accumulated sufficient strength—and this was not for another
fortnight—to visit him in my own person, though naturally I did so with
considerable reluctance.
Nor can I say that I was agreeably impressed either by his reception of
me or his subsequent attitude, in which I could not but detect a good
deal of that arrogance lately so manifest in his character. It was quite
clear, however, that the subject of my errand did not take him by
surprise, and indeed he assured me, almost at once, that he had been
expecting it for some days. He then remained silent with his back to his
fire and continued to stare at me rather offensively.
“Do you mind,” I said, “if I sit down?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “You can do as you please.”
I therefore did so, but so distant was his manner that it was difficult
to reconcile it, as I immediately pointed out to him, either with his
duty as a Xtian or his privileges as an host.
“In fact, you appear to have forgotten,” I said, “though I pray I may be
wrong, that I was once the means of saving your life.”
He breathed unpleasantly through his right nostril.
“Very possibly,” he said. “But to what end? To the deliberate ruination
of the _A.D.S.U._ and all my prospects of marrying Miss Moonbeam.”
“But, my dear Ezekiel,” I began.
He interrupted me coldly.
“I must beg you in future,” he said, “to call me Mr. Stool.”
I stared at him.
“Call you Mr. Stool,” I gasped, “after all these years of impassioned
friendship?”
He waved his hand.
“I repudiate them,” he said. “I repudiate them in their entirety.”
I drew myself up to a right angle with my lap.
“But, Mr. Stool,” I said, “surely you must realize the enormous
magnitude of your escape?”
“Escape?” he said. “Escape from what?”
“Why, from the wickedness,” I replied, “that I have been the means of
revealing to you in the bottomless depths of Miss Moonbeam’s heart.”
He blew away the hair from before his lips.
“But I shouldn’t have been marrying her wickedness,” he said. “I should
have been marrying herself.”
“Herself?” I cried. “But you don’t mean to tell me that you were
attached to her as a female?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “Intensely. I was intensely attached to her as a
female.”
“But then, if you had married her,” I said, “it wouldn’t have been a
sacrifice.”
“How do you know?” he said. “How do you know it wouldn’t?”
“Why, because you’d have liked it,” I said. “You’d have liked marrying
her.”
“Well, of course,” he replied. “And some people like sacrificing.”
“But, my dear Mr. Stool,” I began, “now that her wickedness has been
revealed to you——”
“I don’t care a damn,” he said, “about her wickedness.”
Had I been stronger, I should have leapt to my feet.
“You don’t care a what?” I asked.
“A damn,” he said.
“A damn?” I cried.
“Yes, a damn,” he repeated.
I leaned back, closing my eyes.
“Yes, and I’ve said worse things.”
I opened them again.
“I’ve said bally and hell and blow.”
He paused for a moment.
“And I’ve said blast. That’s the sort of man, Mr. Carp, that you’ve
turned me into.”
“But, my dear Mr. Stool,” I said, “as your future brother-in-law——”
“Yes. But I’m not at all sure,” he said, “that you will be.”
Had I been erect, I should certainly have fallen. And indeed, as it was,
I barely retained consciousness.
“But, Ezekiel,” I cried, “Mr. Stool, surely you haven’t forgotten your
word of honour.”
“No, I haven’t,” he said. “I haven’t. But then you were a man without
moral stain.”
“And am I not now?” I asked. “Am I not now, Mr. Stool? Is the victim
soiled by the criminal’s guilt? Is the pioneer, drawn from the morass,
responsible for his temporary discoloration?”
He was silent for a moment, but in so far as it was visible, his
expression was far from reassuring. Then he rang the bell, and Tact
entered the room. She was the less attractive of the two twins.
“That’s the one,” he said. “I made them draw lots. But you can only
marry her on one condition—that you sign an agreement to live north of
the Thames and make a home for her four sisters.”
He tilted his chin a little and put his hands in his pockets. A distant
dog barked three times. With a supreme effort I clung to my senses.
“Do you mean all,” I whispered, “including Faith?”
Faith was the least attractive of the three triplets.
“All or none,” he said.
He pulled out his watch.
I could hear it ticking.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“I’m giving you a minute,” he said, “in which to decide.”
Faint though I was, I staggered to my feet.
“Then as a Xtian,” I said, “no less than a gentleman——”
“Thirty seconds,” he said.
“I’ll take her.”
He replaced his watch, and I took Tact’s hand. All the female Stools
have poor circulations.
“So we’ll be getting married,” I said, “in due course.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’ll be very nice.”
Then her four sisters, who had evidently been waiting outside, came and
shook hands with me with expressions of delight, and Ezekiel informed me
that his solicitor would be in attendance the next morning.
I bowed a little stiffly.
“I shall be here,” I said, and Ezekiel replied that he had no doubt of
it.
Then I shook hands again with Tact and her sisters, bidding them
good-bye for the present; and they bade me good-bye, also for the
present, adding that they would be seeing me to-morrow.
“Yes, to-morrow,” I said. “I’ll be seeing you to-morrow.”
“Then we’ll say good-bye,” they said, “till to-morrow.”
“Yes, till to-morrow,” I said, “to-morrow morning.”
“Then we’ll say good-bye,” they said, “till to-morrow morning.”
Nor did I fail to keep the appointment, though little did I dream, as I
groped for the door, that not even yet had I been called upon to face
the ultimate temperature of my refining fire. For hardly had I arrived,
somewhat fresher than I expected, at the garden gate of Mon Repos when
there staggered up to it a railway omnibus, congested to the limit of
its legal capacity. Deformed with luggage and distended with females, a
single glance was sufficient to paralyse me, though less on my own
account than on that of my father, who now stood transfixed on the
doorstep. Then he gave a small cry of the extremest pathos, and as my
mother’s eight sisters descended to the pavement, he fell forward upon
the garden path, never to rise again.
But it was too much even for me, shaken as I had been to my very
foundations, and turning my back and covering my eyes from that
hurrying, Welsh-speaking female flood, I fell forward parallel to my
father, though with my head in the opposite direction.
------------------------------------------------------------------------