The Hypocrite

CHAPTER V

A PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT

There was once a wood-louse, who, being dissatisfied with his position, called himself a Pterygobranchiate. This arrogation of dignity was much resented by his friends. "You belong to the Bourgeoisie," they said to him, "and we cannot call to mind that you have done anything to warrant an assumption of this aristocratic title." "My good fools," said the wood-louse, "you mistake the term 'Bourgeoisie.' The Bourgeoisie are not a class. A Bourgeois is merely a man who has time to sit down, a chair is not a caste." So saying he took another glass of log-juice, and looked his friends steadily in the face. He was an epigrammatic wood-louse.

They returned somewhat abashed, and for a time, though he was not liked, he was asked about a good deal; for as people said, "To have a Pterygobranchiate in one's rooms lends a party such an air of distinction."

Our friend made some mistakes at first, for he could not resist the dishes of dried wood á la Française and the '74 log-juice that were of frequent occurrence at the tables of the great. The result of this was that Nemesis, in the shape of gastric pains, overtook him, and he had to moderate his appetites.

"Indigestion," he said, "is charged by God with the enforcement of morality on the stomach, I will reform my habits." Another reason also contributed to this wise decision, for one day, when going to the kitchen for his boots, he heard the cook (an elderly wood-louse of uncertain temper) say to the boy wood-louse who cleaned the knives and helped in the garden: "Master's that independent and 'e smell so of drink since 'e 's been a Pterygobranchiate, there's no bearin' with 'im." He realized how foolish he must look in the eyes of many good people, so he pitched his new visiting cards into a rabbit-hole, and once more returned to middle-class respectability and happiness.

This story has seven morals, only one of which is wanted here, and that is: "Any divergence from habit is generally attended with disastrous results." This was the case with Gobion, who, in an unguarded moment, told Mr. Lovering something approaching the truth, and so gave himself away.

The three or four days at the close of the Loverings' visit were very enjoyable to him, especially after the hard work of the last week; but unfortunately Mr. Lovering could not quite understand what he was doing in London, and after a time bluntly asked him the reason for this change of plans. Thereupon Gobion admitted that he had had a disagreement with his father, and the parson putting two and two together arrived at a guess that was not far short of the truth.

Both of them were humbugs, but with this difference, that while Gobion knew it and made it pay, Mr. Lovering prayed night and morning that he might not find it out. The result was that the clergyman, who, as the father of a most attractive damsel, naturally desired to sell her to an eligible bidder, took Marjorie home at once, telling her that he had been "greatly deceived" in Gobion, and dictating a polite little note which she sent him.

He got the letter while he was at breakfast, and read it slowly, trying in vain to feel it as a blow. It was of no use, however, for it did not even lessen his hunger for the meal before him.

Then in a flash he realized what this callousness meant. It meant simply this, that the actual moment had arrived when all higher aspirations had deserted him, that he was inevitably and firmly bound to sin, while his mind was allowed to realize the horror of it.

His soul had passed into the twilight.

He knew all this in the space of time that it took to pour out a cup of coffee, but not a muscle of his face moved.

He knew the reaction would be torture when it came – the torture of a man damned before death – but until then there was the hideous joy of absolute unrestraint. There would be no more even shadowy scruples, he would frolic in evil over the corpse of a dead conscience.

He rang the bell for some more bacon and a morning paper. While he was reading a "Drama of the Day" article by Clement Scott, the landlady knocked at the door, and said, "Please, sir, a boy messenger has brought this, and is there any answer?" He took the note.

"Dear Mr. Yardly Gobion, – I and Veda are going to The Liars to-night, and we want you to escort us. Come to dinner first if you can.

He scribbled an acceptance and sent it back by the boy. The invitation came from a Mrs. Ella Picton, the wife of Lionel Picton, the editor of the well-known paper The Spy. Gobion had been to her house several times, and she had petted and made much of him.

Her husband was a clever, sardonic man, who let his pretty wife do exactly as she liked. He said that marriage resembled vaccination, it might take well or ill, and as for him he put up with the result for quietness. To his great amusement, his wife had almost persuaded herself that she was in love with Gobion. He looked so young and fresh, with such a pretty mouth, and such expressive eyes. She felt a desire to taste all this dawn.

Picton quite understood, and resolved to use Gobion for his own purposes, as it seemed necessary to have him in the house. Accordingly after dinner he asked him a good many questions about The Pilgrim and its editor. His tongue being loosened by champagne, Gobion made fun of Heath, an easy subject of ridicule, and blasphemed against The Pilgrim.

"Heath is a sort of literary fat boy, an urchin Rabelais," he said.

"Look here, I'll give you ten guineas for a column in The Spy, showing up Heath and The Pilgrim. You needn't give names. Just make it racy, and cut into the old elephant. You'll excuse my talkin' shop in my own house, but I should like to have you on The Spy very much."

Gobion was flattered. The Spy was disreputable, but big and important. He agreed to do an article for the next issue, and as the arrangement was concluded, the butler came in to say that the ladies were ready to start. Bidding his host good-night, he went up to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Picton and her sister Veda Leuilette were waiting.

They drove to the "Criterion," and the air of the carriage was heavy with the scent of flowers and a subtle odour of white lilac, and the frou-frou of skirts seemed to accentuate the perfume. They drove up to the theatre, the footman springing down to open the door, and Gobion helped the ladies out. As they went into the foyer he noticed Wild and Blanche Huntley going into the stalls. It was very pleasant to take care of two strikingly pretty women, and Gobion was conscious of a wish that some of his Oxford friends, who had imagined that his flight to London practically meant starvation, could see him now.

The house was full of celebrities. There were warm scents in the air, and from their box they could see vaguely as through a mist a parterre of bright colours, the swirl of a fan, the gleaming of white arms, and the occasional sharp scintillation from a diamond ring or bracelet, while beyond, the space under the circle was crowded with rows of white faces framed in black.

Mrs. Picton was dressed in pale blue crêpe-de-chine, looking very lovely, and her violet eyes flashed a dangerous fascination while Gobion and she consulted the programme. Soon after their entrance the band came in, and began to play a lazy, swinging waltz, which seemed to Gobion to harmonize strangely with the apricot light of the theatre. The whole scene struck an unreal and exotic note; he felt a strange deadening of thought, a dreamy sensuousness more physical than mental, and every time Mrs. Picton leant back to make some remark, with a little flash of white teeth framed in wine-red lips, her looks stung his blood.

One of her hands lay on the cushion of the box, white and soft, with rosy filbert nails.

"How Botticelli would have loved to paint your hands," he said, speaking a little thickly.

"A portrait is always so unsatisfactory, don't you think?"

"Perhaps; a looking-glass is a better artist than Herkomer."

"Now you're going to be clever! Look at Mrs. Wrampling in the stalls – fancy showing so soon after the divorce! Isn't she a perfect poem, though?"

"One that has been through several editions."

"She's well made up, but she's put on a little too much colour."

"Oh, she's not as ugly as she's painted."

"Now you are much too nice a boy to be cynical."

"The cynic only sees things as they really are."

She laughed a silvery little laugh. "Who is that ugly man with her?"

"That is the man – Wilfrid Fletcher."

"She must be fonder of his purse than of his person."

"The most thorough-going of all the philosophies."

"Who else is here that you know?"

"Well, that very fat man in the third row is Heath, the editor of The Pilgrim. He was at Exeter – my college – years ago."

"I should have imagined that he was a University man."

"Really! Why?"

"He is so evidently an apostle of the Extension movement."

"That's quite good! Heath is a clever man though, despite his size."

"In what way?"

"He manages to grasp the changeful modern spirit of the day exactly."

"I think I was introduced to him once, somewhere or other."

"I believe he does go into society."

"Society condones a good deal."

"It is condonation incarnate."

She looked up at him, and blushed a little. "Perhaps it is as well?"

"For some of us?"

"Si loda l'uomo modesto."

"Don't you think modesty is advisable? One never knows how far to go."

"One should experiment, then; modesty is more original than natural nowadays."

"Originality is only a plagiarism from nature."

She opened her fan, moving it quickly. She was not accustomed to be fenced with like this.

Gobion's senses were coming back to him, the voluptuousness had gone, and after the first intoxication of her presence, he looked again and found she did not interest him in the way she sought. After the first act he offered to get them some ices, sending them by a man, while he went to the buffet.

Heath and Wild were there. "Hullo!" said the former, "who's that pretty woman in your box?"

"Picton's wife."

"Lionel Picton?"

"Yes."

"I wouldn't advise you to get mixed up with that lot," he said, making Gobion feel rather guilty as he remembered the article he was going to do for The Spy. After a minute Wild moved away.

"Such a joke," said Heath, with a grin. "Wild's brought little Blanche Huntley, the typewriter girl, and both Mrs. Wrampling and Will Fletcher are here, and they're saying that Wrampling himself is in the circle! It's a dirty world, my boy, a dirty world."

"I wouldn't quarrel with my bread and butter if I were you," said Gobion; "you and I'd be in rather a hole if it wasn't for these little episodes. Mrs. Grundy always was an indecent old person. Ta-ta, see you after at the 'copy shop'?"

"Yes, my wife's away in Birmingham, so I won't go home till morning."

Gobion went back to the box, where he found Moro de Minter, the new humourist, making himself agreeable. Gobion knew the man slightly, and hated him. People said his real name was Gluckstein, and he was reported to have been a ticket collector at Euston before he had come out as the apostle of the ridiculous. He was holding forth on his latest book, and he asked Gobion what he thought of the new humourists.

"I have only met two sorts," he answered, "the disgustingly facetious and the facetiously disgusting. Both are equally nasty."

Miss Leuilette was rather nettled; she liked Minter.

"And what do you think of the new critics of The Pilgrim type, Mr. Minter?" she asked.

"They squirt venom from the attic into the gutter, and nobody is ever hurt." After which passage of arms he left the box, and the curtain went up on the Inn at Shepperford.

After the play Gobion saw the ladies into their carriage, and Mrs. Picton, as she pressed his hand, whispered him to come to tea the next day.

"I shall be quite alone," she said, with a side look.

Then came the "copy shop" and a noisy supper, at which the latest sultry story of a certain judge's wife was repeated and enjoyed.

It struck Gobion more than ever what a drunken, rakish lot these men were, but still he was very little better, only less coarse in his methods, and it didn't matter.

Lucy, the barmaid, was in great form. Someone had given her a copy of The Yellow Book, with its strange ornamentation.

"They do get these books up in a rum way now," she said, pointing to the figures blazoned on the cover.

"You shouldn't find fault with that, my dear," he said. "The fig-leaf was the grandmother of petticoats"; and everyone roared.

"Can anyone recommend me a new religion?" said a fat man who did sporting tips for The Moon.

There was a yell at once. "Flintoff wants a new religion." "Theosophist!" "Absintheur!" "Jew!" "Mahomedan!"

"Theosophist?" said the fat man; "no, I think not. Madame Blavatski was too frankly indecent. Absintheur might perhaps suit if it wasn't for Miss Marie Corelli. Jew is quite out of the question; there are two difficulties, pork and another. Mahomedan! well, that isn't bad. As many wives as you like – the religion of the henroost. Yes, I think I'll be a Mahomedan."

"How about drinks?" said Gobion.

"Oh, damn! Yes, I forgot that, I must stick to Christianity after all." He limped to the table to get a match.

"What's the matter with your leg?" said Heath.

"I hurt it last night going home in the fog."

"You should try Elliman's – horse for choice."

"I did, and I stank so of turpentine I was quite ashamed to lie with myself."

"You're not ashamed to lie here," said some feeble punster.

"No, it's my profession. I'm a sporting prophet."

Gobion suddenly remembered that he had heard nothing about the mass of copy that had been sent out some days before.

"Has Mr. Sturtevant been in to-night?" he asked the barmaid.

"No, I haven't seen him for two or three days," she said.

Gobion went quickly out into the Strand and walked to Sturtevant's rooms. The gas flamed on the dingy staircase, making a hissing noise in the silence, and shining on the white paint of the names above the door – Mr. Mordaunt Sturtevant, Mr. Thompson Jones, Mr. Gordon.

The "oak" was open, so Gobion went in, pushing aside the swing door at the end of the little passage.

A strong smell of brandy struck him in the face. He walked in, and looked round the screen by the fire, starting back for a moment with a sick horror of what he saw.

The candles were alight before the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. In front of it stood Sturtevant, with his back to Gobion. His thumbs were in the corners of his mouth, and with his first fingers he was pulling down the loose skin under his eyes, making the most ghastly grimaces at his image in the mirror.

Gobion stood still, petrified, and mechanically pressed the spring of his opera hat, which flew out with a loud pop. Sturtevant wheeled round like a shot, shaking with fear. When he saw who was there he gave a great sob of relief and fell into a chair.

"O God, how you startled me!" he said.

"What on earth's the matter with you?" said Gobion; "you look as if you were dying."

The man was not good to look at. His skin was a uniform tint of discoloured ivory, with red wrinkles round the eyes. His lips were dark purple and swollen, his hands shook.

"I'm so glad you've come; I've had a slight touch of D.T., and if you hadn't come in I should have broken out again to-night."

Gobion calmed him as well as he could, and in about an hour got him into something like ordinary condition.

"And now," he said, "how about our copy?"

"By George, I've forgotten all about it; there are probably a lot of letters in the box."

They got them out. The first one they opened was a collection of personal paragraphs sent in by Gobion, "Declined with thanks." The next was a cheque from the Resounder for four guineas, in payment of the "Gambling at Oxford" article. They went on opening one after the other, and at the end found that they had netted twenty-six pounds.

Sturtevant got excited about it, and wanted to have some more brandy, but Gobion managed to get him to bed, and locked the door, putting the key in his pocket. He built up the fire, took Daudet's Sappho from a shelf, and passed the night on the sofa alternately reading and dozing.

It took him three or four days to bring Sturtevant round to something like form, most of which he spent in the Temple, occupying himself by writing the attack on Heath for The Spy.

It was the cleverest piece of work he had done, and when it was finished it was with all the pride of an artist that he read it to Sturtevant, and sent it to Blanche Huntley to be typed.

Meanwhile he became at times horribly bored and low-spirited, and each new attack accentuated the next, for he would rush into the lowest forms of amusement to find oblivion. In the intervals of coarseness he called on Mrs. Picton.

Such society as was open to him soon began to pall, and he spent more and more time at the "copy shop" or with Sturtevant in the Temple.

These two men, who a few years ago were freshmen at Oxford, sat night after night cursing and blaspheming all that most men hold sacred.

They were colossal in their bitterness.

Sturtevant said once, "Life is a disease; as soon as we are born we begin to die. I shall die soon from D.T., and you'll write a realistic study for The Pilgrim. Perhaps my life was ordained for that end." Which, considering the degree the man had taken, and what his mental abilities were, was about the bitterest thing he could have said.

One night Sturtevant went to bed about two, leaving Gobion in the room not much inclined for sleep. After an inspection of the bookcase, he took down a Swinburne, and turned to "Dolores."

he read in the utter stillness of the night.

Then he put the book down and sat staring into the fire, thinking quietly of the literary merit of the poem, while its passion throbbed through and through him – a strange dual action of mind and sense.