The Glory of Clementina Wing. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

      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, СКАЧАТЬ