Queer Classics – 10 Novels Collection. Radclyffe Hall

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      Churm As Cassandra

       Table of Contents

      We turned from Broadway down Cornwallis Place, parallel to Mannering Place, and entered Chrysalis by the side door upon that street.

      “I have a word to say to the janitor,” said Churm.

      Pretty Dora Locksley admitted us to the snuggery. Lighted up, it was even more cheerful than when I saw it with Stillfleet. The table was set for supper. The bright teapot, the bright plates, the bright knives and forks, had each its own bright reflection of the gas-light to contribute to the general illumination.

      Mrs. Locksley, the bright cause of all this brilliancy, was making the first cut into a pumpkin-pie of her own confection, as we entered. It was the ideal pumpkin-pie. Its varnished surface shone with a rich, mellow glow, and all about its marge a ruffle of paste of fairest complexion lifted, like the rim of delighted hills about a happy valley. As Mrs. Locksley’s knife cleft the oil of this sweet vale, fragrant incense steamed up into the air. What nose would not sniff away all remembrance of the mephitic odors it had inhaled, to entertain this fresh, wholesome emanation? Mine did at once. I felt myself deodorized from the sour souvenirs of Towner’s slum. The moral atmosphere, too, of this honest, cheerful, simple home-scene acted as a moral disinfectant. The healthy picture hung itself up in a good light in my mental gallery. It was well it should be there. Chrysalis owed me this, as a contrast to the serious pictures awaiting me along its dusky halls, as a foil to a sombre tableau hid behind the curtain at the vista’s end.

      Mrs. Locksley offered a quadrant of her pie to Churm.

      “I resign in Mr. Byng’s favor,” said he.

      “Hail Columbia!” cried I, accepting the resignation; and as I eat I felt my Americanism revive.

      “I’ve just seen Towner again,” Churm says, “and am to sit up with him.”

      “Poor fellow!” said Locksley. “Has he any chance?”

      “Poor fellow, indeed!” cried Mrs. Locksley, in wrath, evidently sham. “Don’t waste ‘poors’ on him, William. Didn’t he as much as kill my poor sister, and ruin us?”

      “You don’t look very ruinous, Molly. No; you’re built up fresh by losing money, and not having an Irish Biddy to feed you on mud-pies. We must not bear malice, wife!”

      “We don’t, William. And the proof is this jelly I’ve made for him.”

      “Right!” says Locksley. “But, Mr. Churm,” he continued, and here his bristly aspect intensified, as if a foe were at hand, “Mr. Densdeth is back in the steamer. He’s been here to day, asking for Towner. But he got nothing out of me.”

      “The sight of Densdeth would kill the man. He shivers at the mere thought of his old master. We must keep him hid until he dies or gets some life into him. Good night.”

      “A trusty fellow, the janitor,” said I, as we walked up stairs.

      “Trusty as a steel bolt on an oak door.”

      “He will keep my secrets, if I have any, as one of his collegians? He won’t stand on the corner and button-hole everybody with the news that I never go to bed, and hardly ever get up? He won’t put my deeds or misdeeds in the news-papers?”

      “No. If you should say to him, ‘Locksley, I’ve got a maggot in my head. I am going to lock myself up in Rubbish Palace and train it. I want to hibernate for three months and not see a soul, except you with my meals. Let me be forgotten!’ Locksley would reply, ‘Very well, sir!’ And you would be as secluded as if you had gone to Kamtschatka.”

      “You speak as if such things happened in Chrysalis.”

      “They might, under Locksley.”

      “How refreshing,” said I, “to find such a place and such a person plump in the middle of New York! But tell me, what is Locksley to Towner?”

      “Towner married our janitor’s wife’s sister. Locksley is a very clever machinist. He was a prosperous locksmith, manufacturing locks of a patent of his own, until Towner persuaded him to indorse his paper. Towner had some fine scheme by which he meant to make himself independent of Densdeth, and so escape from his service. His old master had become hateful to him. But Densdeth did not propose to let his serf go free. He made it his business, so both the men think, to spoil the speculation, and ruin the two, financially. Locksley lost everything. I got him this place, until he could look about and take a fresh start.”

      I opened my door. From the back of the sombre apartment, the great black stove, with its isinglass door, like a red Cyclops eye, stared at the strangers. The gas-light from the street shone faint through the narrow windows.

      “Ghostly scenery!” said I, glancing about.

      The casts and busts stood white and ghostly in the corners, and by the door of the lumber-room a suit of armor, holding a spiked mace in its fingerless gauntlets, reflected the dull glow of the fire-light.

      “Those great carved arm-chairs,” said Churm, “stand as if the shadows of so many black-robed inquisitors had just quitted them.”

      “What a chamber this would have been,” I said, “for the sittings of a secret tribunal, a Vehmgericht! Imagine yourself and me enthroned, with crapes over our faces, and Locksley, armed with one of these halberds of Stillfleet’s, leading in the culprit.”

      “Have you selected your culprit?”

      “Well, Densdeth is convenient. He might be brought in from that dark room of his, next door. The scene becomes real to me. Come, Mr. Churm, you shall pronounce sentence. Put on the black cap, and speak!”

      “I condemn him to bless as many lives as he has cursed.”

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