Approaching, he saw that the old man was very old. And then memory
stirred. He began to surmise that he had met the wizened face before,
that he knew something about it. And the face brought up a picture of
the shop door and of his father standing beside it, a long time ago. He
recalled his last day at school. Yes, of course! This was the old man
named Shushions, some sort of an acquaintance of his father's. This was
the old man who had wept a surprising tear at sight of him, Edwin. The
incident was so far off that it might have been recorded in history
books. He had never seen Mr Shushions since. And the old man was
changed, nearly out of recognition. The old man had lived too long; he
had survived his dignity; he was now nothing but a bundle of capricious
and obstinate instincts set in motion by ancient souvenirs remembered at
hazard. The front of his face seemed to have given way in general
collapse. The lips were in a hollow; the cheeks were concave; the eyes
had receded; and there were pits in the forehead. The pale silvery
straggling hairs might have been counted. The wrinkled skin was of a
curious brown yellow, and the veins, instead of being blue, were
outlined in Indian red. The impression given was that the flesh would
be unpleasant and uncanny to the touch. The body was bent, and the neck
eternally cricked backward in the effort of the eyes to look up.
Moreover the old man was in a state of neglect. His beard alone proved
that. His clothes were dirty and had the air of concealing dirt. And
he was dressed with striking oddness. He wore boots that were not a
pair. His collar was only fastened by one button, behind; the ends
oscillated like wings; he had forgotten to fasten them in front; he had
forgotten to put on a necktie; he had forgotten the use of buttons on
all his garments. He had grown down into a child again, but Providence
had not provided him with a nurse.
Worse than these merely material phenomena was the mumbling toothless
gibber of his shrill protesting; the glassy look of idiocy from his
fatigued eyes; and the inane smile and impotent frown that alternated on
his features. He was a horrible and offensive old man. He was Time's
obscene victim. Edwin was revolted by the spectacle of the younger men
baiting him. He was astonished that they were so short-sighted as not
to be able to see the image of themselves in the old man, so imprudent
as not to think of their own future, so utterly brutalised. He wanted,
by the simple force of desire, to seclude and shelter the old man, to
protect the old man not only from the insults of stupid and crass
bullies, but from the old man himself, from his own fatuous senility.
He wanted to restore to him, by a benevolent system of pretences, the
dignity and the self-respect which he had innocently lost, and so to
keep him decent to the eye, if not to the ear, until death came to
repair its omission. And it was for his own sake, for the sake of his
own image, as much as for the sake of the old man, that he wanted to do
this.
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