Название: The Glory of Clementina Wing
Автор: William John Locke
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4057664096098
isbn:
“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?”
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