it was utterly unexpected--the fact that Hopkins was a mere myth. There
possibly was a Hopkins, that absent man, reputed to be abroad, whose
name had been painted up on the right-hand set, who had, so I’d heard,
been in the habit of sending regularly every quarter day the rent for
his empty rooms. But Orchard’s Hopkins--the man who played the violin,
who was a crank on early Italian art--simply didn’t exist. It was then
I remembered that when Orchard had said casually, “There’s his violin,”
I had not noticed one, that I had never heard a violin, or a strange
voice, or a second pair of feet in the set immediately above my own. I
remembered, too, that when Orchard had said, with annoyance, “Hopkins
is an untidy chap; he leaves his things about,” the room had been in
perfect order. I had never seen the collection of books on Italian
art--the man was a delusion, the product of an excited brain. Orchard
was in a bad way. I repeated, “Come up to No. 2 and see Harrowsmith.”
He dragged his arm away, gave another keen look across the square, and
said impatiently:
“I shall do nothing of the sort. Don’t believe in doctors. When I’m
hard up for a chronic disease I’ll consult one, not before. Hundreds of
men have been killed by going to a specialist or by trying to get their
lives insured. The specialist shakes his head, the insurance doctor
looks grave, and you’re done. No! It’s a preliminary to going to the
undertaker.”
This had been one of his many eccentricities in the old extravagant
days. I simply said soothingly:
“But you don’t go to the undertaker. Someone else has to go--when the
time comes. So the bottom’s knocked out of your argument. Come on.”
He twitched himself away, quite petulantly, like a child, and said:
“I’m off to the country for the day; that will do me more good than
doctors’ stuff. I shall take train from Baker Street and get down to
the valley of the Chess.”
I was out late that night. When I came home I noticed a light in
Orchard’s window. So he was back! I decided not to go up to him. I was
half undressed when I heard his oak slam violently, heard heavy,
hurried feet coming downstairs. They seemed to come, those feet, half a
flight at a time. I knew at once that something was up. My doors were
open in a moment. Orchard came toppling into my passage, shutting the
oak behind him.
“I’ve murdered him,” he said. “My God! Murdered him. Hopkins!”
“Keep cool. It’s all a delusion. There isn’t any Hopkins. Your nerves
are unstrung----”
“No Hopkins!” the poor fellow interrupted, with a derisive laugh. “You
shall hear all about it. No Hopkins! Haven’t I lived with him? Hasn’t
he been tempting me to every devilry? It was Hopkins who made me steal
the picture, the book, the bicycle money; he gave me the bad sovereign
for Mackary, he’s got a bag full. The man was bothering me. I made a
mistake at first to pay him anything on account--you lose their respect
directly you make a cash payment. Hopkins! And he was egging me on
to--what do you think? To murder you, old man. To murder you, because
you’ve got Rogers’ “Italy,” with plates after Turner, and he wanted it.
The very word Italy is enough for him.”
This was startling. I had reason to be grateful that I had pricked the
Hopkins bubble in time. Orchard continued, dropping his voice and
looking up now and then at the ceiling, and putting his head aside in a
listening attitude:
“I dodged him this morning. I went off to Chesham alone, meaning to
think the thing out quietly. I’d made up my mind to emigrate, if I
could raise the passage money without his suspecting it. And
then--well, I might have known--there were steps behind me; his face
over my shoulder. He said,--he knows my very thoughts,--
“‘Emigration would be the worst thing in the world for us, dear boy.
They want muscles, not art, in a new country.’
“It was more than I could stand. I shoved him into the Chess when he
was off his guard. It gave me positive honest enjoyment to see the
water eddying over him.”
I took his hand and shook it heartily.
“Shoved him into the Chess! You are sure he sank? It is the best
bit of news I’ve heard for a long time. The fellow was a bad lot
evidently--what is worse, he was a confounded nuisance. You haven’t
been the same man since he shared your rooms.”
I thought it wiser, just at the moment, not to irritate and excite
him by again disputing Hopkins. It was really a remarkable business.
The delusion was so perfect, so realistic. From the moment Orchard
complained that he could hear Hopkins taking off his boots through the
wall, I had never doubted the man’s existence--no one had doubted. Yet
it was all a delusion. There was no Hopkins. Consequently, Orchard had
not cheated at nap, had not betrayed Mackary by a bad sovereign, had
not stolen the book with the fine plates nor the picture that he
believed to be a Simms, had not spent his nephew’s ten pounds. But
he might have murdered me if the delusion had gone on long enough.
Hopkins! Whiffin! I began to wonder whether Whiffin really existed or
whether he also was a myth. It did not matter much. Orchard said
tremulously:
“You haven’t heard the worst. I knocked him over into the Chess. I
walked into Chesham and had a feed--never enjoyed anything so much in
my life, never felt so free and hopeful. I got back to the Inn about
ten. As I crossed the square I saw a light move across my window. It
struck me as rather odd, but then I remembered that Mrs. Neaves had
told me she was coming back to fetch her apron, or a bundle of
newspapers she was going to sell at the butcher’s, I forget which. It
does not matter--nothing matters. I went upstairs. I let myself in with
the latchkey. The passage was dark, but there was a steady light under
the sitting-room door. No sound. Only the steady yellow light. I went
in. As I live, he was sitting there. Hopkins! the man I had drowned. I
staggered to the first chair and sat like a fool, staring at him. He
was cutting a portrait out of a ragged pamphlet he bought yesterday at
the shop near Tottenham Court Road; he’s making an illustrated copy of
some book or the other. I forget the title; I forget everything. When
he had done he turned round deliberately and looked at me. He didn’t
seem annoyed in the least. He actually didn’t seem conscious of that
dip in the Chess. I wanted to ask him how he got out, but I couldn’t,
to save my soul, speak one word. He was sitting there calmly cutting
pictures out of a book. The man I had drowned! I saw him drown. I took
devilish good care not to leave the river until I was sure. Yet there
he sat. He said:
“‘Which train did you come back by? I took the 8.05.’
“I couldn’t bear it any more. I came down to you. What am I to do? How
am I to get rid of him? You see, I am absolutely in his power. He owns
me. He could hang me if he liked.”
“I’ll come up and have a talk with him.”
We went up to his set together. The sitting room was perfectly dark.
“I expect he’s gone to bed,” said Orchard.
We looked into the bedroom. It was the only bedroom, but Orchard had
put up a second bed, a camp. The sheets on it were dingy, but
absolutely unruffled. The bed had never been slept in. He had provided
a second washstand--one of those skeleton, brightly painted metal
things. It was covered with dust.
“He’s gone out,” I said encouragingly. “You get to bed and I’ll sit up
and wait for him to come back.”
Orchard undressed as docilely as a child, and stretched himself with a
groan of fatigue beneath the sheets. His eyes were wide open--on the
empty camp bedstead with the smoothly turned down sheet and the gayly
striped blanket which served as a quilt.
“You’d better go back to your own place, old man,” he said suddenly.
“I shall be all right. Head’s been a bit queer, but a sleep will make
me all right. I’m very sleepy. It would bother me to know you were
waiting, and there is no necessity. Good-night.”
His eyes closed drowsily, then opened, and fixed themselves on that
empty bed.
“I want you to go,” he said more positively. “I shan’t get to sleep
until you do.”
I went. I thought that he would sleep, and after a good night’s rest he
would be reasonable. I’d take him to the doctor in the morning. I slept
myself. It was past nine next morning when I woke. There was an
envelope in the letter box. It was from Orchard. He inclosed the key of
his set, and a little note in pencil. So far as I can remember, this is
pretty much how it ran:
“Not a bit of good, old fellow. Hopkins won’t leave me alone. He was
in bed all the time--his own bed, under the window. I wonder you didn’t
see him. He looked hard at me, and I knew he meant me to send you away.
Not a bit of good trying to resist a man like that--a fellow who won’t
drown! He’s making me hang myself; says he’s a firm believer in capital
punishment. I murdered him, and I must swing for it. You’ll find me,
if he leaves me alone, behind the kitchen door. I’m going to bring
this note down, with the key, and put it in your letter box. Hope
Hopkins won’t get it. I should like you to know the truth. Suicide is
vulgar--hanging the most popular form of self-effacement. I dislike
popularity, as you know. Hopkins reassures me; he says it’s only
justice. He’s reading every word I write. Sell the sticks--if he’ll let
you--and square up Mackary. Poor Miss M----, she was a little sweet on
me. Clever girl! Wasted on a ‘good family trade.’”
That was all. I know that the reference to Miss Mackary came last.
She’s still at the shop in Bernard Street; you must come and have a
couple of Queen Charlotte cakes.
I went up. He was hanging, as he said he would be, behind the kitchen
door. The door is half glass. As I pushed it back. I saw him gently
swinging. You won’t believe it--I’m not sure that I believe it
myself--but I’ll swear that as I put the key in the outer door I heard
the long, wailing cry of a violin.
* * * * *
A good year afterward I was dining with the Prays at Kensington. There
was another man there--a tiresome fool. The second Mrs. Pray has a
knack of collecting stupid people--the sort of stupid people who are
small somebodies in their particular line. This man had been abroad
collecting rare orchids. His name was Hopkins. It is such a common name
that, although I remembered poor Orchard at once, I never thought of
asking him if he knew the Inn. Still, I brought the conversation round
to it. After dinner, when Mrs. Pray had left us, I said to Pray:
“There is a man called Jackson in your old set. And Kinsman’s gone--to
the bad some say.”
Hopkins pricked up his ears.
“You are talking of the Inn,” he said, and mentioned my number. “Odd
thing! I have a set in that very house. Top floor, right-hand side as
you go up the stairs. Of course you’ve seen my name--Hopkins.”
I could only look at him and nod my head. He filled his glass and
carefully cut the end of a cigar.
He was the most commonplace, prosperous-looking man you can possibly
imagine. I thought of Orchard’s Hopkins--“Decided stoop, Norfolk
jacket, and soft hat.” This man’s shoulders were well squared back and
ingeniously padded by his tailor. He was the sort of man who would
never wear a Norfolk jacket in town; a man who would go to spend Sunday
in the country in a black diagonal coat, and take his top hat with him
in case of emergency. I looked at him, looked into his dull, bulging
eyes. Eyes without depth, without secrets, without soul--just eyes!
hard, glassy things put for purely practical purposes into his head! It
was clearly superfluous to ask him if he took an interest in Italian
art or played the violin.
“Perhaps you can explain,” he continued. “I went to the Inn the week
before last. They’ve painted my name out on the door of the right-hand
set and stuck it on the left-hand set with another man’s. I took his
name--wait a moment.”
He brought out a fat notebook--he was the kind of accurate dullard who
would be sure to take notes.
“D. B. ORCHARD. That’s it. Now, who is he? _I_ couldn’t find out. I
went and beat up the man who does most of the painting, and he didn’t
know. It was a piece of confounded impudence. It may have done me some
injury--I use the place as a business address. If it was a practical
joke, then it was a very foolish one, and in precious bad taste.”
He began to look swollen and angry; looked at me as if he half
suspected that I’d a hand in it. No doubt I looked guilty.
“Who is D. B. Orchard?” he persisted, in the puffy, thick-throated way
of the pompous man. “How is one to get at the fellow? I hammered at the
door for the best part of half an hour. D. B. Orchard!” He laughed
ironically. “I’d teach him not to play stupid jokes on me. I’d have him
understand, sir, that Geoffrey Hopkins is not a man to be played with.”
Geoffrey Hopkins! I felt my very lips grow white. I must have looked
like some foolish, anæmic girl.
“How is one to get at him? I might claim damages.” He brought his
broad, hairy fist down vigorously on the shining table. Pray, looking
from one to the other--my quivering countenance and the inflamed
features of the man Hopkins--was evidently uncomfortable.
I looked at that man. Geoffrey Hopkins! I could have taken that flabby
body in my grip and shaken it for all that it had made poor Orchard
suffer. And yet! _Was_ this the man? Instinct told me, common sense
told me, that it was not.
“D. B. Orchard is dead,” I said curtly at last; then, with a savage
laugh and a terror-stricken glance at the coarse face, added, “You
can’t get at him. He’s out of your reach, poor devil, at last.”
I didn’t know; I don’t know, now--how can one be sure! Of course he
wasn’t Orchard’s Hopkins. But! What an affair!
Tell him? No. I saw him look at me with disgust and suspicion--no doubt
he thought I was a little drunk. No doubt he went away and told his
friends that I wasn’t quite a gentleman. That sort of man talks like
that.
When we were alone I told the whole story to Pray. But he, with a
pathetic droop of his mouth and a mystic flicker in eyes that were hard
with success, said--glancing at the door--that such subjects didn’t
interest him. He hated to dabble on the edge of the infinite--he’d had
enough. He seemed to sigh as he lighted his pipe.
I haven’t seen Hopkins since. If ever I see him again I shan’t tell
him--he’s too commonplace.
THE END.
Transcriber’s Note
This transcription is based on images made available by the New York
Public Library and Google:
books.google.com/books?id=c2QoAAAAMAAJ
These scans are also available through the HathiTrust Digital Library:
hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433074968516
When there was any question about the text related to image quality or
the condition of the printed original, other scans of the same edition
available through Google Books were checked. These are available at:
books.google.com/books?id=C3sXAAAAYAAJ
The following changes were made to the printed text:
• p. 68: began to be abusive, in the most picturesque language--Added a
period to the end of the sentence.
• p. 80: “Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuck-cuck-cuckoo, cuckoo, Cuck. Cuck.--Changed
the first “Cuck” after “cuckoo” to “cuck”, and added a closing double
quotation mark after the following “Cuck.”
• p. 110: he returned airly that he hadn’t a relative in the
world.--Changed “airly” to “airily”.
• p. 189: “‘I don’t care a bit about the ball,” she said. ‘I’m not
going.’--Changed the closing double quotation mark after “ball” to a
single quotation mark.
• p. 191: “‘We got out of the Park and went along Oxford Street in
silence--Deleted the single quotation mark after the double quotation
mark.
• p. 259: And Murphy’s oak was hospitably back--Changed “back” to
“black” to be consistent with other descriptions of the doors.
• p. 281: “‘Which train did you come back by? I took the
8.05.’”--Deleted the closing double quotation mark at the end of the
paragraph.
In the plain text version of this ebook, italics have been denoted by
underscores, and small capitals have been changed to all capitals.
Except where noted otherwise, inconsistencies of spelling and
hyphenation have been preserved.