We have heard much of a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. We
know that he was perfect and upright, feared God, and eschewed evil; and
we are told how, on a disastrous afternoon, messenger after messenger
came to him to announce one calamity after the other, culminating in the
annihilation of his entire family, and how the final scorbutic
affliction came shortly afterwards, the anti-climax, it must be
confessed, of his woes, which drove the patient man to open his mouth
and curse his day. Between Job and Dr. Quixtus I doubt whether the like
avalanche of disasters, Pelion on Ossa and Kinchinjunga on Pelion of
misfortunes, ever came thundering down on the head of an upright and
evil-eschewing human creature.
The tale of these successive misfortunes can only be briefly narrated;
for to examine in detail the train of circumstances which led up to
them, and the intricate nexus of human motive in which they were
complicated would be foreign to the purpose of this chronicle. Except
passively or negatively, perhaps, Quixtus had no hand in their
happening. As in the case of Job the thunderbolts fell from a cloudless
sky. His moral character was blameless, his position as assured, his
life as happy as the patriarch’s. He had done no man harm all his days,
and he had no cause to fear evil from any quarter. A tithe or more of
his goods he gave in generous charity; and not only did he not proclaim
the fact aloud like the Pharisee, but never mentioned the matter to
himself—for the simple reason that keeping no accounts of his
expenditure he had not the remotest notion of the amount of his
eleemosynary expenses. You would have far to go to meet a man more free
from petty-mindedness or vanity than Ephraim Quixtus. He was mild,
urbane, and for all his scholarly reading, palæolithic knowledge, and
wide travel, singularly modest. If you contradicted him, instead of
asserting himself, as most men do, with increased vigour, he forthwith
put back to find, if possible, the flaw in his own argument. When
complimented on his undoubted attainments, he always sought to
depreciate them. The achievement of others, even in his own special
department of learning, moved his generous admiration. Yet he had one
extraordinary vanity—which made him fall short of the perfection of his
prototype in the land of Uz—the doctorial title which he possessed by
virtue of his Ph.D. degree from the University of Heidelberg. Through
signing his articles in learned publications “Ephraim Quixtus, Ph.D.,”
his brethren among the learned who rent him respectfully to pieces in
other learned publications, invariably alluded to him as Dr. Quixtus.
Through being thus styled by his brethren both in print and
conversation, he began to give his name as Dr. Quixtus to the stentorian
functionary at the doors of banquets and receptions of the learned, and
derived infinite gratification from hearing it loudly proclaimed to all
assembled. From that to announcing himself as “Dr. Quixtus” to the
parlour-maid or butler in the homes of the worldly was but a step.
Now it may be questioned whether on the rolls kept by the Incorporated
Law Society there is a solicitor who would style himself Doctor. It
would be as foreign to the ordinary solicitor’s notions of professional
propriety as to interview his clients in a surplice. The title does not
suggest a solicitor—any more than Quixtus himself did in person. He was
a stranger, an anomaly, a changeling in the Corporation. He ought never
to have been a solicitor. He was a very bad solicitor—and that was what
the judge said, among other things of a devastating nature, when he was
giving evidence at a certain memorable trial, which took place not long
after he had re-entered the stormy horizon of Clementina Wing, and his
portrait had been hung above the presidential chair of the
Anthropological Society.
It is but justice to say that Quixtus was a solicitor not by choice but
by inheritance and filial affection. His father had an old-fashioned
lucrative family practice, into which, as it was his father’s earnest
desire, his kindly nature allowed him to drift. When his father died
suddenly, almost as soon as his articles were completed and he was
admitted into partnership, he stared in dismay at the prospect before
him. He could no more draw up a conveyance of land, or administer a
bankrupt estate, or prepare a brief for a barrister, than he could have
steered an Atlantic liner into New York Harbour. And he had not the
faintest desire to know how to draw up a conveyance or administer an
estate. Beyond acquiring from text-books the bare information requisite
for the passing of his examinations, he had never attempted to probe
deeper into the machinery of the law. His mind attributed far greater
importance to the sharp flint instruments wherewith primitive men
settled their quarrels by whanging each other over the head than to the
miserable instruments on parchment which adjusted the sordid wrangles of
the present generation. By entering the profession he had merely
gratified a paternal whim. There had been a “Quixtus and Son” in
Lincoln’s Inn for a hundred years, and it was the dearest wish of the
old man’s heart that “Quixtus and Son” should remain there _in sæcula
sæculorum_. While his father was alive Ephraim had scarcely thought of
this desirable continuity. But his father dead, it behoved him to see
piously to its establishment.
The irksome part of the matter was that he had no financial reason for
proceeding with an abominated profession. As hunger drives the wolves
abroad, according to François Villon, so might hunger have driven him
from his palæolithic forest. But there was no chance of his being
hungry. Not only did his father and his mother each leave him a
comfortable fortune, but he was the declared heir of an uncle, his
father’s elder brother, who possessed large estates in Devonshire, and
had impressed Ephraim from his boyhood up as one in advanced and palsied
old age.
Yet “Quixtus and Son” had to be carried on. How? He consulted the
confidential clerk, Marrable, who had been in the office since boyhood.
Marrable at once suggested a solution of the difficulty which almost
caused Ephraim to throw himself into his arms for joy. It was wonderful!
It was immense! Quixtus welcomed it as Henry VIII. welcomed Cromwell’s
suggestion for getting rid of Queen Katherine. The solution was nothing
less than that Ephraim should take him into partnership on generous
terms. The deed of partnership was drawn up and signed, and Quixtus
entered upon a series of happy and prosperous years. He attended the
office occasionally, signed letters and interviewed old family clients,
whom he entertained with instructive though irrelevant gossip until they
went away comforted. When they insisted on business advice instead of
comfort, he rang the bell, and Marrable appeared like a djinn out of a
bottle. Nothing could be simpler, nothing could work more
satisfactorily. Not only did clients find their affairs thoroughly
looked after, but they were flattered at having bestowed upon them the
concentrated legal acumen and experience of the firm. You may say that,
as a solicitor, Quixtus was a humbug; that he ought never to have
accepted the position. But show me a man who has never done that which
he ought not to have done, and you will show me either an irresponsible
idiot or an angel masquerading in mortal vesture. I have my doubts
whether Job himself before his trials was quite as perfect as he is made
out to be. Quixtus was neither idiot nor angel. At the most he was a
scholarly ineffectual gentleman of comfortable means, forced by filial
tenderness into a distasteful and bewildering pursuit. He had neither
the hard-heartedness to kill the one, nor the strength of will to devote
himself to the mastery of the other. He compromised, you may say, with
the devil. Well, the devil is notoriously insidious, and Quixtus was
entirely unconscious of subscribing to a bargain. At any rate, the devil
had a hand in his undoing and appointed a zealous agent of iniquity in
the person of Mr. Samuel Marrable.
When Quixtus went to Lincoln’s Inn Fields one morning and found, instead
of his partner, a letter from him stating that he had gone abroad and
would remain there without an address for an indefinite time, Quixtus
was surprised. When he had summoned the managing clerk and together they
had opened Marrable’s safe, both he and the clerk were bewildered; and
after he had spent an hour or two with a chartered accountant, for whom
he had hurriedly telephoned, he grew sick from horror and amazement.
Later in the day he heard through the police that a warrant was out for
Samuel Marrable’s arrest. In the course of time he learned that Samuel
Marrable had done everything that a solicitor should not do. He had
misappropriated trust-funds; he had made away with bearer-bonds; he had
falsified accounts; he had forged transfers; he had speculated in
wild-cat concerns; he had become the dupe of a gang of company promoters
known throughout the City as “Gehenna Unlimited.” He had robbed the
widow; he had robbed the orphan; he had robbed the firm; he had robbed
with impunity for many years; but when, in desperation, he had tried to
rob “Gehenna Unlimited,” they were too much for him. So Samuel Marrable
had fled the country.
Thus fell the first thunderbolt. Quixtus saw the fair repute of “Quixtus
and Son” shattered in an instant, his own name tarnished, himself—and
this was the most cruel part of the matter—betrayed and fooled by the
man in whom he had placed his boundless trust. Marrable, whom he had
known since he was a child of five; with whom he had gone to pantomimes,
exhibitions, and such like junketings when he was a boy; who had first
guided his reluctant feet through the mazes of the law; who had stood
with him by his father’s death-bed; who was bound to him by all the
intimacies of a lifetime; on whose devotion he had counted as
unquestioningly as a child on his mother’s love—Marrable to be a rogue
and a rascal, not a man at his wits’ end yielding to a sudden
temptation, but a deliberate, systematic villain—it was all but
unthinkable. Yet here were irrefragable proofs, as the law took its
course. And all through the nightmare time that followed until the
trial—for the poor fugitive was soon hunted down and haled back to
London—when his days were spent in helpless examination of confusing
figures and bewildering transactions, the insoluble human problem was
uppermost in his mind. How could the man have done these things?
Marrable had sobbed over his father’s grave and had put his arm
affectionately round his shoulders and led him away to the mourning
coach. Marrable had stood with him by another open grave, that of his
dead wife, and had comforted him with affectionate sympathy. To the very
end not a sinister look had appeared in his honest, capable eyes. On the
very day of his flight he had lunched with Quixtus in the Savoy
grill-room. He had laughed and jested and told Quixtus a funny story or
two. When they parted:
“Shall I see you at the office this afternoon? No? Well good-bye,
Ephraim. God bless you.”
He had smiled and waved a cheery hand. How could a man shower upon
another his tears, his sympathy, his laughter, his implied loyalty, his
blessings, and all the time be a treacherous scoundrel working his ruin?
All his knowledge of Prehistoric Man would not answer the question.
“I wonder whether there are many people in the world like Marrable?” he
questioned.
And from that moment he began to look at all clear-eyed honest folk and
speculate, in a dreary way, whether they were like Marrable.
The family honour being imperilled, duty summoned him to an interview
with Matthew Quixtus, his father’s elder brother, the head of the
family, and owner of a large estate at Croxton, in Devonshire, and other
vast possessions. He paid him a week-end visit. The old man, nearly
ninety, received him with every mark of courtesy. He went out of his way
to pay deference to him as a man of high position in the learned world.
Instead of the “Mr. Ephraim,” which had been his designation in the
house ever since the “Master Ephraim” had been dropped in the dim past,
it was pointedly as “Dr. Quixtus” that butler and coachman and the rest
of the household heard him referred to. Quixtus, who had always regarded
his uncle as a fiery ancient, hot with family pride and quick to quarrel
on the point of honour, was greatly relieved by his unexpected suavity
of demeanour. He listened to his nephew’s account of the great betrayal
with a kindly smile, and wasted upon him bottles of the precious ‘54
port which the butler, with appropriate ritual, only brought up for the
Inner Brotherhood of Dionysus. On all previous occasions, Ephraim, at
whose deplorably uncultivated palate the old man had shrugged pitying
shoulders, had been treated to an unconsidered vintage put upon the
table after dinner rather as a convention than (in the host’s opinion)
as a liquid fit for human throttle. He was sympathetic over the disaster
and alluded to Marrable in picturesquely old-world terms of
depreciation.
“It’ll cost you a pretty penny, one way or the other,” said he.
“I shall have to make good the losses. I dare say I can make
arrangements extending over a period of years.”
“Fly kites, eh? Well, I shan’t live for ever. But I’m not dead yet. By
George, sir, no!” and his poor old hand shook pitifully as he raised his
glass to his lips. “My grandfather—your great grandfather lived to be a
hundred and four.”
“It will be a matter of pride and delight to all who know you,” said
Quixtus smiling and bowing, glass in hand, across the table, “if you
champion the modern world and surpass him in longevity.”
“The property will come in very handy though, won’t it?” asked the old
man.
“I confess,” said Quixtus, “that, if I pay the liabilities out of my own
resources, I may be somewhat embarrassed.”
“And what will you do with yourself when you’ve shut up the shop?”
“I shall devote myself more closely to my favourite pursuits.”
The old man nodded and finished his glass of port.
“A damned gentlemanly occupation,” said he, “without any confounded
modern commercialism about it.”
Quixtus was pleased. Hitherto his uncle had not regarded his
anthropological studies with too sympathetic an eye. He had lived, all
his life, a country gentleman, looking shrewdly after his estates,
building cottages, draining fields, riding to hounds and shooting all
things that were to be shot in their season. In science and scholarship
he took no interest. It was therefore all the more gratifying to Quixtus
to hear his studious scheme of life so heartily commended. The end of
the visit was marked by the same amenity as the beginning, and Quixtus
returned to town somewhat strengthened for the ordeal that lay before
him.
Up to the time of the trial he had met with nothing but the kindly
sympathy of friends and the courteous addressing of those with whom he
came into business relations. His first battering against the sharp and
merciless edges of the world took place in open court. He stood in the
witness-box a lone, piteous spectacle, a Saint Sebastian among
witnesses, unsaved by miraculous interposition, like the lucky
Sebastian, from personal discomfort. That he was an upright sensitive
gentleman mattered nothing to judge and counsel; just as the fact of
Sebastian’s being a goodly and gallant youth did not affect his would-be
executioners. At every barb shot at him by judge and counsel he quivered
visibly. They were within their rights. In their opinion, he deserved to
quiver. At the back of their legal minds they were all kindly gentlemen,
and out of court had human minds like yours and mine—but in their legal
minds, Judge, Counsel for the Prosecution, Counsel for the Defence, all
considered Quixtus a fortunate man in being in the witness-box at all;
he ought to have been in the dock. There had never been such
fantastically culpable negligence. He did not know this; he had not
inquired into that; such a transaction he had just been aware of but
never understood; he had not examined the documents in question.
Everything brought him by Marrable for signature, he signed as a matter
of course, without looking at it.
“If Mr. Marrable had brought you a cheque for £20,000 drawn in his
favour on your own private bankers, would you have signed it?” asked
Counsel.
“Certainly,” said Quixtus.
“Why?”
“I should not have looked at it.”
“But supposing the writing on the cheque had, as it were, leaped to your
eyes?”
“I should have taken it for granted that it had to do with the
legitimate business of the firm.”
“If that is the case,” remarked the judge, “I don’t think that men like
you ought to be allowed to go about loose.”
Whereat there arose laughter in court, and sudden, hellish hatred of
judges in the heart of Quixtus.
“Can you give the court any reason why you drifted into such criminal
carelessness?” asked Counsel.
“It never entered my head to doubt my partner’s integrity.”
“Do you carry this childlike faith in human nature into all departments
of life?”
“Up to now I have had no reason to distrust my fellow creatures.”
“I congratulate you as a solicitor on having had a unique experience,”
said the judge acidly.
Counsel continued. “I put it to you—suppose two or three plausible
strangers told you a glittering tale, and one asked you to entrust him
with a hundred pounds to show your confidence in him—would you do it?”
“I am not in the habit of consorting with vulgar strangers,” retorted
Quixtus, with twitching lip.
“Which means that you are too learned and lofty a person to deal with
the common clay of this low world?”
“I cannot deal with you,” said Quixtus.
Counsel grew red and angry, as there was laughter in which the judge
joined.
“The witness,” said the latter, “is not quite such a fool as he would
give us to imagine, Mr. Smithers.”
Thus the only blow that Quixtus could give was turned against him. Also,
Counsel, smarting under the hit, mishandled him severely, so that at the
end of his examination he stepped down from the witness-box, less a man
than a sentient bruise. He remained in court till the very end, deathly
pale, pain in his eyes, and his mouth drawn into the lines of that of a
child about to cry. The trial proceeded. There was no doubt of the guilt
of the miserable wretch in the dock. The judge summed up, and it was
then that he said the devastating things about Quixtus that inflamed his
newly born hatred of judges to such an extent that it thenceforth
blackened his candid and benevolent soul. The jury gave their verdict
without retiring, and Marrable, at the age of sixty, was condemned to
seven years’ penal servitude.
Quixtus left the court dazed and broken. He was met in the corridor by
Tommy, who gripped him by the arm, led him down into the street and put
him into a cab. He had not been in court, being a boy of delicate
feelings.
“You must buck up, you know,” he said to the silent, grey-faced man
beside him. “It will all come right. What you want now is a jolly stiff
brandy-and-soda.”
Quixtus smiled faintly. “I think I do,” said he.
A few minutes later Tommy superintended the taking of his prescription
in the dining-room in Russell Square, and eyed Quixtus triumphantly as
he set down the empty glass.
“There! That’ll set you straight. There’s nothing like it.”
Quixtus held out his hand. “You’re a good boy, Tommy. Thanks for taking
care of me. I’ll be all right now.”
“Don’t you think I might be of some use if I stayed? It’s a bit lonesome
here.”
“I have a big box of stuff from the valley of the Dordogne, which I
haven’t opened yet,” said Quixtus. “I was saving it up for this evening,
so I shan’t be lonesome.”
“Well be sure to have a good dinner and a bottle of fizz,” said Tommy.
After which sage counsel he went reluctantly away.
Just as Clementina was sitting down to dinner Tommy rushed in with a
crumpled evening newspaper in his hand, incoherent with rage. Had she
seen the full report? What did she think of it? How dared they say such
things of a high-minded honourable gentleman? Counsel on both sides were
a disgrace to the bar, the judge a blot on the bench. They ought not to
be allowed to cumber the earth. They ought to be shot on sight. Out West
they would never have left the court alive. Had he lived in a simpler
age, or in a more primitive society, the young Paladin would have gone
forth and slaughtered them in the bosom of their families. Fortunately,
all he could do by way of wreaking his vengeance was to tear the
newspaper in half, throw it on the floor, and stamp on it.
“Feel better?” asked Clementina, who had listened to his heroics rather
sourly. “If so, sit down and have some food.”
But Tommy declined nourishment. He was too sore to eat. His young spirit
revolted against the injustice of the world. It clamoured for sympathy.
“Say you think it damnable.”
“Anything to do with the law is always damnable,” said Clementina. “You
shouldn’t put yourself within its clutches. Please pass me the
potatoes.”
Tommy handed her the dish. “I believe you’re as hard as nails,
Clementina.”
“All right, believe it,” she replied grimly. And she would not say more,
for in what she thought was her heart she agreed with the judge.