A very insignificant man, for all his height and his big forehead. Altogether of The Beeches, Arlington Road. Had he turned grey, he might have looked less shabby, but dark thin locks still clustered above his high crown and behind his long-lobed ears. His eyes were dark, his moustache drooped, and he had a small, straight nose. Marmaduke saw that he was the sort of man who, in youth, might have been considered very handsome. He looked like a seedy poet and some sort of minor civil servant mingled, the civil servant having got the better of the poet. Marmaduke also imagined that he would have a large family and a harassed but ambitious wife, with a genteel accent—a wife a little below himself. His tie was of a dull red silk. Marmaduke did not like him.
Mr. Thorpe glanced round, as if cautiously, to see if the nurse had closed the door, and then, it was really as if more cautiously still, looked at Marmaduke, slightly moving back his chair.
“I’m very grateful to you, very grateful indeed,” he said in a low voice, “for seeing me.”
“You’ve come a long way,” said Marmaduke.
“Yes. A long way. I had heard of your being here. I hoped to get here. I felt that I must see you. We are all proud of you; more proud than I can say.”
He looked down now at the motoring-cap he held, and Marmaduke became aware that the reddened eyes were still more suffused and that the mouth under the drooping moustache twitched and trembled. He could think of nothing to say, except to murmur something about being very glad—though he didn’t want to say that; and he supposed, to account for Mr. Thorpe’s emotion, that he must be a moving sight, lying there, wasted, bandaged, and dying.
“You don’t remember my name, I suppose,” said Mr. Thorpe after a moment, in which he frankly got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” said Marmaduke very politely. He was glad to say this. It was the sort of thing he did want to say.
“Yet I know yours very, very well,” said Mr. Thorpe, with a curious watery smile. “I lived at Channerley once. I was tutor there for some time—to Robert, your brother, and Griselda. Yes,” Mr. Thorpe nodded, “I know the Folletts well; and Channerley, the dear old place.”
Now the dim something in memory pressed forward, almost with a physical advance, and revealed itself as sundry words scratched on the schoolroom window-panes and sundry succinct drawings in battered old Greek and Latin grammars. Robert had always been very clever at drawing, catching with equal facility and accuracy the swiftness of a galloping horse and the absurdities of a human profile. What returned to Marmaduke now, and as clearly as if he had the fly-leaf before him, was a tiny thumb-nail sketch of such a galloping horse unseating a lank, crouching figure, of whom the main indications were the angles of acute uncertainty taken by the knees and elbows; and a more elaborate portrait, dashed and dotted as if with a ruthless boyish grin—such an erect and melancholy head it was, so dark the tossed-back locks, so classical the nose and unclassical the moustache, and a brooding eye indicated in a triangular sweep of shadow. Beneath was written in Robert’s clear, boyish hand, “Mr. Guy Thorpe, Poet, Philosopher, and Friend. Vale.” Even the date flashed before him, 1880; and with it—strange, inappropriate association—the daffodils running out upon the lawn, as no doubt he had seen them as he leaned from the schoolroom window, with the Greek grammar under his elbow on the sill.