The Glory of Clementina Wing. William John Locke

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      “It was at poor Angela’s funeral, five years ago.”

      “So it was,” said Clementina.

      There was a short silence. Angela was his dead wife and her distant relation.

      “What has become of Will Hammersley?” she asked suddenly. “He has given up writing to me.”

      “Still in Shanghai, I think. He went out, you know, to take over the China branch of his firm—just before Angela’s death, wasn’t it? It’s a couple of years or more since I have heard from him.”

      “That’s strange; he was an intimate friend of yours,” said Clementina.

      “The only intimate friend I’ve ever had in my life. We were at school and at Cambridge together. Somehow, although I have many acquaintances and, so to speak, friends, yet I’ve never formed the intimacies that most men have. I suppose,” he added, with a sweet smile, “it’s because I’m rather a dry stick.”

      “You’re ten years older than your age,” said Clementina, frankly. “You want shaking up. It’s a pity Will Hammersley isn’t here. He used to do you a lot of good.”

      “I’m glad you think so much of Hammersley,” said Quixtus.

      “I don’t think much of most people, do I?” she said. “But Hammersley was a friend in need. He was to me, at any rate.”

      “Are you still fond of Sterne?” he asked. “I think you are the only woman who ever was.”

      She nodded. “Why do you ask?”

      “I was thinking,” he said, in his quiet, courtly way, “that we have many bonds of sympathy, after all; Angela, Hammersley, Sterne, and my scapegrace nephew, Tommy.”

      “Tommy is a good boy,” said Clementina, “and he’ll learn to paint some day.”

      “I must thank you for your very great kindness to him.”

      “Bosh!” said Clementina.

      “It’s a great thing for a young fellow—wild and impulsive like Tommy—to have a good friend in a woman older than himself.”

      “If you think, my good man,” snapped Clementina, reverting to her ordinary manner, “that I look after his morals, you are very much mistaken. What has it got to do with me if he kisses models and takes them out to dinner in Soho?”

      The lingering Eve in her resented the suggestion of a maternal attitude towards the boy. After all, she was not five-and-fifty; she was younger, five years younger than the stick of an uncle who was talking to her as if he had stepped out of the pages of a Sunday-school prize.

      “He never tells me of the models,” replied Quixtus, “and I’m very glad he tells you. It shows there is no harm in it.”

      “Let us talk sense,” said Clementina, “and not waste time. You’ve come to me to have your portrait painted. I’ve been looking at you. I think a half-length, sitting down, would be the best—unless you want to stand up in evening-dress behind a table, with presidential gold chains and badges of office and hammers and water-bottles——”

      “Heaven forbid!” cried Quixtus, who was as modest a man as ever stepped. “What you suggest will quite do.”

      “I suppose you will wear that frock-coat and turn-down collar? Don’t you ever wear a narrow black tie?”

      “My dear Clementina,” he cried horrified, “I may not be the latest thing in dandyism, but I’ve no desire to look like a Scotch deacon in his Sunday clothes.”

      “Vanity again,” said Clementina. “I could have got something much better out of you in a narrow black tie. Still, I daresay I’ll manage—though what your bone-digging friends want with a portrait of you at all for, I’m blest if I can understand.”

      With which gracious remark she dismissed him, after having arranged a date for the first sitting.

      “A poor creature,” muttered Clementina, when the door closed behind him.

      The poor creature, however, walked smartly homewards through the murky November evening, perfectly contented with God and man—even with Clementina herself. In this well-ordered world, even the tongue of an eccentric woman must serve some divine purpose. He mused whimsically on the purpose. Well, at any rate, she belonged to a dear and regretted past, which without throwing an absolute glamour around Clementina still shed upon her its softening rays. His thoughts were peculiarly retrospective this evening. It was a Tuesday, and his Tuesday nights for some years had been devoted to a secret and sacred gathering of pale ghosts. His Tuesday nights were mysteries to all his friends. When pressed for the reason of this perennial weekly engagement, he would say vaguely; “It’s a club to which I belong.” But what was the nature of the club, what the grim and ghastly penalty if he skipped a meeting, those were questions which he left, with a certain innocent mirth, to the conjecture of the curious.

      The evening was fine, with a touch of shrewdness in the air. He found himself in the exhilarated frame of mind which is consonant with brisk walking. He looked at his watch. He could easily reach Russell Square by seven o’clock. He timed his walk exactly. It was five minutes to seven when he let himself in by his latchkey. The parlour-maid, emerging from the dining-room, met him in the hall and helped him off with his coat.

      “The gentlemen have come, sir.”

      “Dear, dear,” said Quixtus, self-reproachfully.

      “They’re before their time. It isn’t seven yet, sir,” said the parlour-maid, flinging the blame upon the gentlemen. In speaking of them she had just the slightest little supercilious tilt of the nose.

      Quixtus waited until she had retired, then, drawing something from his own pocket, he put something into the pocket of each of three greatcoats that hung in the hall. After that he ran upstairs into the drawing-room. Three men rose to receive him.

      “How do you do, Huckaby? So glad to see you, Vandermeer. My dear Billiter.”

      He apologised for being late. They murmured excuses for being early. Quixtus asked leave to wash his hands, went out and returned rubbing them, as though in anticipation of enjoyment. Two of the men standing in front of the fire made way for him. He thrust them back courteously.

      “No, no, I’m warm. Been walking for miles. I’ve not seen an evening paper. What’s the news?”

      Quixtus never saw an evening paper on Tuesdays. The question was a time-honoured opening to the kindly game he played with his guests.

      Now there is a reason for most things, even for a parlour-maid’s tilt of the nose. The personal appearance of the guests would have tilted the nose of any self-respecting parlour-maid in Russell Square. They were a strange trio. All were shabby and out-at-elbows. All wore the insecure, apologetic collar which is one of the most curious badges of the down-at-heel. All bore on their faces the signs of privation and suffering; Huckaby, lantern-jawed, black-bearded and watery-eyed; Vandermeer, small, decrepit, pinched of feature, with crisp, sparse red hair and the bright eyes of a hungry wolf; Billiter, the flabby remains of a heavily built florid man, with a black moustache СКАЧАТЬ