He paused for a moment in the little hall-way to select a cane from the stick rack. He took an ebony one at last, with an engraved silver knob bearing his own initials. There was something ghastly about the deliberation with which he did all this, but it was ghastliness wasted upon polished furniture and decrepit flies—unless every human house conceals invisible watchers. He hesitated a little between a Panama hat and one of some light-coloured cloth material, but finally selected the former, toying carefully with its flexible rim before placing it upon his head, and even when it was there giving it some final touches.
The absolute loneliness of the little house, broken only by an occasional voice from the tavern door, became, during his last moments there, a sort of passive accomplice to some nameless ritual. At length he opened the door and let himself out.
He walked deliberately and thoughtfully towards the park gates, and, passing in, made his way up the leaf-strewn avenue. Arrived at the house, he nodded in a friendly manner at the servant who opened the door, and asked to be taken to Mrs. Renshaw’s room. The man obeyed him respectfully, and went before him up the staircase and down the long echoing passage.
He found Mrs. Renshaw sewing at the half-open window. She put down her work when he entered and greeted him with one of those illumined smiles of hers, which Fingal Raughty was accustomed to say made him believe in the supernatural.
“Thank you for coming to see me,” she said, as he seated himself at her side, spreading around him an atmosphere of delicate odours. “Thank you, Baltazar, so much for coming.”
“Why do you always say that, Aunt Helen?” he murmured, almost crossly. It was one of the little long-established conventions between them that he should address his father’s wife in this way.
There came once more that indescribable spiritual light into her faded eyes. “Well,” she said gaily, “isn’t it kind of a young man, who has so many interests, to give up his time to an old woman like me?”
“Nonsense, nonsense, Aunt Helen!” he cried, with a rich caressing intonation, laying one of his slender hands tenderly upon hers. “It makes me absolutely angry with you when you talk like that!”
“But isn’t it true, Tassar?” she answered. “Isn’t this world meant for the young and happy?”
“As if I cared what the world was meant for!” he exclaimed. “It’s meant for nothing at all, I fancy. And the sooner it reaches what it was meant for and collapses altogether, the better for all of us!”