Quixtus was still bowing his head over the dishonoured grave of “Quixtus
and Son” when the second thunderbolt fell. The public disgrace drove a
temperamentally hermit-like nature into more rigid seclusion. He
resigned his presidency of the Anthropological Society. The Council met
and unanimously refused to accept his resignation. They wrote in such
terms that he could not do otherwise than yield. But he gave up his
attendance at their meetings. To a man, his friends among the learned
professed their sympathy. It hurt rather than healed. Those who wrote
received courteous and formal replies. Those who knocked at his door
were refused admittance. Even Clementina, repenting of her harshness and
pitying the lonely and helpless man, pinned on a shameless thing that
had once resembled a hat, and went up by omnibus to Russell Square, only
to find the door closed against her. The woman thus scorned became the
fury which, according to the poet, is unknown in Hades. She expressed
her opinion of Quixtus pretty freely. But Quixtus shrank from her as he
shrank from every one, as he even shrank from his own servants. These he
dismissed, with the exception of Mrs. Pennycook, his housekeeper, who,
since the death of his wife had held a high position of trust in his
household, and a vague female of humble and heterogeneous appearance who
lived out, and had the air of apologising for inability to squeeze
through the wall when he passed by. In view of he knew not what changes
in his immediate financial circumstances, economy, he said, was
desirable. He also shut up the greater part of the big house, finding a
dim sort of pleasure in such retrenchment. He lived in his museum at the
back, ate his meals in the little dark room at the head of the kitchen
stairs, and changed his luxurious bedroom for a murky, cheerless little
chamber adjoining the museum. When a man takes misery for a bride he may
be forgiven for exaggeration in his early transports.
Only on Tuesday nights did he throw open dining-room and drawing-room,
where he received Huckaby, Vandermeer, and Billiter as in the past. To
them his smile and his old self were given. Indeed he found a newer
sympathy with them. He, even as they, had been the victim of outrageous
fortune. He, too, had suffered from the treachery of man and the
insolence of office. The three found an extra guerdon in their
great-coat pockets.
There were times, however, when the museum grew wearisome through
familiarity, when he found no novelty in the Quaternary skull from
Silesia, or the engraved reindeers on the neolithic axe-heads, or the
necklet of the lady of the bronze age; when he craved things nearer to
his own time which could give him some message of modernity. On such
occasions he would either walk abroad, or if the weather were foul, take
a childish pleasure in exploring the sealed chambers of the house. For,
shut up a room, exclude from it the light of day, cover the furniture
with dust-sheets till you get the semblance of a morgue of strange
beasts, forget it for a while, and, on re-entering it, you will have all
the elements of mystery which gradually and agreeably give place to
little pleasant shocks of discovery of the familiar. The neglected
pictures that have hung on the walls, the huddled knick-knacks on a
table, the heap of books on the floor, all have messages of gentle
reproach. A newspaper of years ago, wrapped round a cushion, once opened
by eager hands and containing in its headlines world-shaking news (now
so stale and forgotten) is a pathetic object. In drawers are garments
out of date, preserved heaven knows why, keepsakes worked by fair hands,
unused but negligently treasured, faded curtains which will never be
rehung—a thousand old stimulating things, down to ends of sealing-wax
and carefully rolled bits of twine. And some drawers are empty, and from
them rises the odour of lavender poignant with memories of the things
that are no more.
It was a large, old-fashioned house which had been his father’s before
him, in which he had been born; and it was full of memories. In the
recess of a dark cupboard in one of the attics he found a glass jar,
which had escaped the vigilance or commanded the respect of generations
of housemaids, covered with a parchment on which was written in his
mother’s hand, “Damson Jam.” His mother had died a quarter of a century
ago.
An old hair-trunk in the corner of the box-room, such a hair trunk as
the boldest man during Quixtus’s lifetime would have shrunk from having
attached to him on his travels, contained correspondence of his
grandfather’s and old daguerreotypes and photographs of stiff, staring,
faded people long since gone to a (let us hope) more becomingly attired
world. There was a miniature on ivory, villainously painted, of a chubby
red-cheeked child, and on the back was written “My Son Mathew, aged two
years and six months.” Could the shrivelled, myriad-wrinkled, palsied
old man whom Ephraim had visited but a short while since ever have
remotely resembled this? The hair-trunk also contained a pistol with a
label “Carried by my father at Waterloo.” That was the old gentleman who
had lived to a hundred and four. Why had this relic of family honour
remained hidden all his life?
The more he searched into odd corners the more did his discoveries
stimulate his interest. Of his own life he found records in unexpected
places. A bundle of school-reports. He opened it at random, and his eye
fell upon the Headmaster’s Report at the foot of a sheet; “Studious but
unpractical. It seems impossible to arouse in him a sense of ambition,
or even of the responsibilities of life.” He smiled somewhat wistfully
and put the bundle in his pocket with a view to the further acquisition
of self-knowledge. A set of Cambridge college bills tied with red tape,
a broken microscope, a case of geometrical drawing instruments, a
manuscript book of early poems, mimetic echoes of Keats, Tennyson,
Shelley, Swinburne, who were all clamouring together in his brain, his
college blazer, much moth-eaten, his Heidelberg student’s cap,
ditto. . . . _Ah! qu’ils sont loin ces jours si regrettés!_ . . .
Of his wife, too, there were almost forgotten relics. An oak chest
opened unexpectedly disclosed a pair of little pink satin slippers
standing wistfully on the top of the tissue paper that protected the
dresses beneath. The key was in the lock. He closed the lid reverently,
locked the chest, and put the key in his pocket. They had had together
five years of placid happiness. She was a sweet, white-winged soul—
Angela. Her little boudoir on the second floor had not been used since
her death, and was much as she had left it. Only the dust-sheets and the
gloom invested it in a more ghostly atmosphere than other less sacred
chambers. Her work-basket stood by the window. He opened it and found it
still contained a reel of thread and a needle-case stuck full of rusty
needles. On the wall hung an enlarged portrait of himself at the age of
thirty—he was not quite so lantern-jawed then, and his hair was thicker
on the top. A water-colour sketch of Angela hung over the oak bureau, at
which she used to write her dinner-notes and puzzle her pretty head over
household accounts. He drew up the blind so as to see the picture more
clearly. Yes. It was like her. Dark-haired, fragile, with liquid brown
eyes. There was just that dimple in her chin. . . . He remembered it so
well; but, strangely, it had played no part in his customary mental
picture of her. In the rediscovery of the dimple he found a vague
melancholy pleasure. . . . Idly he drew down the slanting lids of the
bureau, and pulled out the long narrow drawers that supported it
underneath. The interior was empty. He recollected now that he had
cleared it of its contents when settling Angela’s affairs after her
death. He thrust up the slanting lid, pushed back the long right-hand
drawer, pushed the left hand one. It stuck. He tried to ease it in, but
it was jammed. He pulled it out with a jerk, and found that the cause of
the jam was a letter flat against the end of the drawer with a corner
turned over the edge. He took out the letter, closed the drawers, and
smiled sadly, glad to have discovered a new relic of Angela in the
bureau—probably a gossiping note from a friend, perhaps one from
himself. He went to the light of the window.
“_My adored heart’s dearest and most beloved angel_”—so the letter
began. He scanned the words bewildered. Certainly in his wildest dreams
he had never imagined such a form of address. Besides, the handwriting
was not his. He turned the sheet rapidly and glanced at the end; “_God!
How I love you._ Will.”
Will? Will Hammersley. It was Will Hammersley’s handwriting. What did it
mean? He paused for a few moments, breathing hard, looking with blind
eyes through the window over the square. At last he read the letter.
Then he thrust it, a crumpled ball, into his pocket and reeled out of
the room like a drunken man, down the stairs of the lonely house, and
flung himself into a chair in his museum, where he sat for hours staring
before him, paralysed with an awful dismay.
At five o’clock his housekeeper entered with the tea-things. He did not
want tea. At seven she came again into the large dark room lit only by
the red glow of the fire.
“The gentlemen are here, sir.”
It was a Tuesday evening. He had forgotten.
He stumbled to his feet.
“All right,” he said.
Then he shivered, feeling a deadly sickness of soul. No, he could not
meet his fellow creatures to-night.
“Give them my compliments and apologies, and say I am unwell and unable
to dine with them this evening. See that they have all they want, as
usual.”
“Very good, sir—but yourself? I’m sorry you are ill, sir. What can I
bring you?”
“Nothing,” said Quixtus harshly. “Nothing. And please don’t trouble me
any more.”
Mrs. Pennycook regarded him in some astonishment, not having heard him
speak in such a tone before. Probably no one else had, since he had
learned to speak.
“If you’re not better in the morning, sir, I might fetch the doctor.”
He turned in his chair. “Go. I tell you. Go. Leave me alone.”
Later he rose and switched on the light and, mechanically descending to
the hall, like a sleep-walker, deposited his usual largesse in the
pockets of the three seedy, familiar overcoats. Then he went up to his
museum again. The effort, however, had cleared his mind. He reflected.
He had not been very well of late. There were such things as
hallucinations, to which men broken down by mental strain were subject.
Let him read the letter through once more. He took the crumpled paper
from his pocket, smoothed it out and read. No. There was no delusion.
The whole story was there—the treachery, the faithlessness, the guilty
passion that gloried in its repeated consummation. His wife Angela, his
friend Will Hammersley—the only woman and the only man he had ever
loved. A sudden memory smote him. He had entrusted her to Hammersley’s
keeping times out of number.
“My God!” said he, beating his forehead with a clenched fist. “My God!”
And so fell the second thunderbolt.
Towards midnight there came a heavy knocking at his door. Startled by
the unusual sound he cried:
“What’s that? Who’s there?”
The door opened and Eustace Huckaby lurched solemnly into the room. His
ruffled hair stood up on end like a cockatoo’s crest, and his watery
eyes glistened. He pulled his straggling beard.
“Sorry ole’ man to hear you’re seedy. Came to know—how—getting on.”
Quixtus rose, a new sternness on his face, and confronted the intruder.
“Huckaby, you’re drunk.”
Huckaby laughed and waved a protesting hand, thereby nearly losing his
balance.
“No,” said he. “Rid’klous. I’m not drunk. Other fellows are—drunk ash
owls—tha’s why—couldn’t come see you. They’re not qui’ sort of men
been acushtomed to assochate with—I’m—University man—like you,
Quishtus—sometime Fellow Corpus Christi College, Cambridge—I first
gave motto for club—didn’t I? _Procul, O procul este profani_—tha’s
Latin. Other two lobsters don’t know word of Latin—ignorant as
lobsters—lobsters—tha’s wha’ I call ’em.” He lurched heavily into a
chair. “Awful thirsty. Got a drink, old f’la?”
“No,” said Quixtus. “I haven’t. And if I had, I wouldn’t give it to
you.”
The reprobate pondered darkly over the announcement. Then he hiccoughed,
and his face brightened.
“Look here, dear old frien’——”
Quixtus interrupted him.
“Do you mean to tell me those other men are drunk too?”
“As owls—you go down—see ’em.”
He threw back his head and broke out into sudden shrill laughter. Then,
checking himself, he said with an awful gravity;
“I beg your pardon, Quishtus. Their conduc’s disgrace—humanity.”
“You three have dined in this house once a week for years, and no one
has left it the worse for liquor. And now, the first time I leave you to
yourselves—I was really not able to join you to-night—you take
advantage of my absence, and——”
Huckaby staggered to his feet and tried to lay his hand on Quixtus’s
shoulder. Having recovered himself, he put it on top of a case of
prehistoric implements.
“Tha’s just what I want—explain to you. They’re lobsters, dear ole’
friend—just lobsters—all claw and belly and no heart. I’m a University
man like you. Corpush Christi College, Cambridge—They’re not friends of
yours. They’re lobsters. Ruddy lobsters. I’m not drunk you know. I’m all
right. I’m telling you——”
Quixtus took him by the arm. “I think you had better go away, Huckaby.”
“No. Send other fellows away. I’m your frien’,” said he, pointing a
shaky forefinger. “I want to tell you. I’m a University man and so are
you, and I don’t care how much you made out of it. You’re all right,
Quishtus. I’m your frien’. Other lobsters said at dinner that if justice
were done you’d be in quod.”
Quixtus took the gaunt sot by the shoulders and shook him.
“What the devil do you mean?”
“Don’t, don’t—don’t upset good dinner,” said Huckaby wriggling away.
“You won’t believe I’m your friend. Van and Billiter say you were in
with Parable—Paramour—wha’s his name? all the time, and it’s just your
rosy luck that you weren’t doing time too. Now I don’t care if you did
stand in with Parachute—‘tisn’t my business. But I’ll stan’ by you. I,
Eustace Huckaby, Master of Arts, sometime Fellow of Corpush Christi
College, Cambridge. There’sh my hand.”
He extended it, but Quixtus regarded it not.
“The three of you have not contented yourselves with getting drunk, but
you’ve been slandering me behind my back—foully slandering me.”
He went to the door and flung it open.
“I think it’s time, Huckaby, that we joined the others.”
Huckaby shambled down the stairs, murmuring of lobsters and parables,
and turning every now and then to assure his host that adverse
circumstances made no difference to his imperishable affection; and so
they reached the dining-room. Huckaby had spoken truly. Billiter was
sprawling back in his chair, his coat and waistcoat covered with
cigar-ash; his bald head was crowned by the truncated cone of a
candle-shade (a jest of Huckaby’s) which gave him an appearance that
would have been comic to a casual observer, but to Quixtus was
peculiarly obscene. His dazed eyes were fixed stupidly on Vandermeer
who, the picture of woe, was weeping bitterly because he had no one to
love him. At the sight of Quixtus, Billiter made an effort to rise, but
fell back heavily on to his seat, the candle-shade falling likewise. He
muttered hoarsely and incoherently that it was the confounded gout again
in his ankles. Then he expressed a desire to slumber. Vandermeer raised
a maudlin face.
“No one to love me,” he whined, and tried to pour from an empty
decanter; it slipped from his hand and broke a glass. “Not even a drop
of consolation left,” he said.
“Disgrashful, isn’t it?” said Huckaby with a hiccough.
Quixtus eyed them with disgust. Humanity was revolting. He turned to
Huckaby and said with a shudder; “For God’s sake, take them away.”
Huckaby summed them up with an unsteady but practised eye. “Can’t walk.
Ruddy lobsters. Must have cabs.”
Quixtus went to the street-door and whistled up a couple of
four-wheelers from the rank; and eventually, by the aid of Huckaby and
the cabmen whom he had to bribe heavily to drive the wretches home, they
were deposited in some sort of sitting posture each in a separate
vehicle. As soon as the sound of the departing wheels died away, Quixtus
held out Huckaby’s overcoat.
“You’re sober enough to walk,” said he, helping him on with it.
“Good-night.”
Huckaby turned on the doorstep.
“Want you to remember—don’t care damn what a frien’ has done—ever want
help, come to me, sometime Fellow of Corp——”
Quixtus closed the street door in his face and heard no more. These were
his friends; these the men who had lived on his bounty, who, for years,
for what they could get, had controlled their knavery, their hypocrisy.
These were the men for whom he had striven, these sots, these dogs,
these vulgar-hearted, slandering knaves! His very soul was sick. He
paused at the dining-room door and for a moment looked at the scene of
the debauch. Wine and coffee were spilled; glasses broken; a lighted
stump of cigar had burned a great brown hole in the tablecloth. He
grimly imagined the tipsy scene. If he had been with them, there would
have been smug faces, deprecating hands upheld at the second round of
the port, talk on art, literature, religion, and what-not, and, at
parting, whispered blessings and fervent hand-shakes; and all the time
there would have been slanderous venom in their hearts, and the raging
beast of drink within them cursing him for his repressing presence.
“The canting rogues,” he murmured as he went back to his museum. “The
canting rogues!”
He thrust his hands, in a gesture of anger and disgust, deep into his
jacket-pockets. His knuckles came against the crumpled letter. He turned
faint and clung to the newel-post on the landing for support. The
smaller treachery coming close before his eyes had for the time eclipsed
the greater.
“My God,” he said, “is all the world against me?”
Unfortunately there was a thunderbolt or two yet to fall.