Old Mr Blake, the erudite Frankincense, the young Indian, continued for the most part to treat him as an invisible man, but the women, he felt, noticed all these things. He was discovering a new use for women. They were interested in and affected by the clothing of the male. A new suit, a new cut of collar, a fresh tie—they saw it directly you came into the room. They looked at each other. He caught them at it. Thump was friendly, but he missed Edward Albert’s finer points.
Our hero was steadily becoming more unobjective and more autobiographical in his mind. When he went for a walk nowadays he found a new interest in the reflection of himself in oblique shop windows. He hardly ever looked at people. He looked for people who were looking at him. Sometimes he carried it off all right, but sometimes doubt would seize him and he would find himself uncertain about his steps and his hands became an encumbrance. Then he felt he would like to go home at once and change his clothes,
In spite of these incidental failures he would plan fresh aggressions. He had a vision of coming into the dining-room at seven-thirty sharp, eating his dinner in a tremendous hurry and departing headlong—in faultless evening dress—to some high and unknown destination! That would make them think. He carne near to ordering that evening dress merely for the sake of that reverie,
But in truth Doober’s was far too occupied with its own individual schemes of aggression to notice the mental stresses and turmoil of our hero. They thought of him, when they thought of him at all, merely as a gawky, growing young man with a rather convulsive, guilty manner if spoken to suddenly, a definitely Cockney accent, and an odd taste in dress.
V. The Thump Tragedy
Now while these things were happening within our accumulating young man as Nature expanded and consolidated him, familiar faces were disappearing from Scartmore House and new ones replacing them, and he was growing into a more and more definitely recognised member of Mrs Doober’s happy family. He watched the new arrivals with an increasing interest in his effect upon them, and he made advances to them instead of waiting to be accosted.
The Belgians went. They had found some sort of employment in the Congo Free State. Mr Frankincense took some tremendous honours in London University and went off, covered with glory, to become the Principal of a college in India where Indian young gentlemen studied to pass the degree examinations of London University. The seditious laugh of the long, lean Indian was heard no longer in the boarding-house, and old Mr Blake, having accumulated enough money to acquire an annuity, retired to a small boarding-house at Southsea where he devoted himself to composing a solidly libellous book to be published under the title of Professors, so-called, and Performances. It was to demonstrate the important rôle he had played in the development of physical science during the past forty years, for which he had
“never received the slightest credit. His departure was accelerated by the tragic death of Mr Harold Thump.
“It will never be the same place without him,” said old Mr Blake. “Sometimes we differed a bit in a friendly way, but it was all give and take. A fellow of infinite jest.”
But I have still to tell you of that tragedy. It was a great shock for Doober’s.
Mr Harold Thump, blythe after convivialities, had attempted, it seemed, to slide down the banisters of a restaurant staircase, instead of descending it in an ordinary dull manner. The banisters, which were elegant and elderly, had given way at the second bend and sent him spinning head over heels into an open service lift, which he had descended in a crumpled state to break his neck at the bottom. His last recorded words were, “Hey, boys, look here!”
It was all over in a minute. “We thought he was walking down behind us,” said the Boys in question, scared now and sober. “We heard him singing a bar or so, and then he seems to have taken it into his head to do it. He just flew by us.”
“Like him,” said Mrs Thump, tearlessly hearing the particulars.
It was a stupendous shock. Not only Mr Blake but the whole of Scartmore House was profoundly moved and hushed by this distressing event. The obliteration of so habitually audible an individual left the whole establishment for a while a self-conscious auditory vacuum. Most of the boarders seemed to have discovered for the first time that they also made sounds, and to have been cowed by the discovery. They spoke in whispers or undertones as if the departed was actually there lying in state instead of being away in a mortuary.
Respect restrained all unseemly playfulness. No games except chess went on, and that in silence. On,e was checked and mated by mouth-reading. And light and colour also were muted down. The small widow lady with mittens who had, so to speak, replaced the friend of Lady Tweedman, put aside the brilliant blazer she had been knitting, and started a black comforter, and the thoughtful man of thirty-five who had taken the room of Mr Frankincense openly read his Bible. Gawpy for her part tidied up the hall with extraordinary care and kept the blinds drawn at breakfast time in spite of the waste of gas. Doober’s couldn’t have shown more respect if it had been the King.
The dinner table conversation, except for an insincere Appreciation of the lovely weather and some brightness and hopefulness about the tulips in Regent’s Park and the Royal Academy, which was better than ever in spite of the war, turned almost entirely on the virtues and personal charm of the deceased.
Some boarder would chew mournfully, meditating the while, and then break out. “He”—they never named him—
“He was always so wonderful at Christmas. Christmas always seemed to brighten Him up. Like Dickens. Do you remember the time He gave us all with His snapdragon? He would have it done properly with the lights down, flaming away, and how he upset a lot of it on the carpet? Blue flames they were. Just like a big impatient Boy.”
“But we stamped it out all right,” said Mrs Doober.
“And it really did no harm. On that old carpet. How we laughed!”
“If he’d only been more serious he would have been a great actor—a great comedy actor.”
“He reminded me of Beerbohm Tree. The same big humorous personality. If he’d had the same chances, he might have had his own great Theatre.”
“He was as sensitive as a child. Easily discouraged. That was his weakness. He hated to push. In this world you must push. But he wouldn’t compete. And he’d sacrifice anything for a joke. You might say he sacrificed himself.”
“A great man lost. Yet it never seemed to worry him. Buoyant he was—right up to the end.”
Edward Albert thought out his special contribution to the chorus. “I’ll miss him dreadfully. He was so kind and sorta friendly like.”
“It must have been a great experience to have known Him when He was young and still full of hope and promise.”
The remark seemed aimed at Mrs Thump. She answered in her deliberate colourless way. “Yes. He was full of promise—then.”
“A born playboy. He was nobody’s enemy but his own.”
“And it had to be paid for, of course,” said Mrs Thump, and said no more.
The chorus was resumed. Edward Albert repeated his bit.
The only person who seemed to be backward in this heaping up of posthumous wreaths was Mrs Thump. At first that was ascribed to the depth of her sorrow. She had no words for it. Then it was whispered that she was going to have Him cremated, not handsomely buried in a large tomb, and that she was going away from London.
Cremation was a new idea to Edward Albert. It touched a vein of queer imagination in him. “It can’t be nice being cremated,” he said. “And where are you at the Resurrection? Just a jar or sumpthink.”
“This will be a shock to your literary work,” said old Mr Blake to the widow, finding her sitting alone in meditation.