Orchard was not looking well. He didn’t talk in his usual airy, sweeping way. There were no new daubs on the wall. When I said, with a look round the room:
“What’s this about Hopkins?” he jerked his head toward the bedroom wall, with the cautious remark:
“Don’t speak so loudly: he’s in the bedroom. Hopkins! Oh! he’s all right. We thought it more convenient for him to come here. Great authority on Italian art; subject I’m interested in, as you know.”
I didn’t know, but I waited on, chatting in rather a strained way, and expecting Hopkins—who never came out of the bedroom. Orchard wasn’t conversational that night. He let every subject I started flaccidly drop. He wanted perpetually winding up. His accustomed dogmatic manner had quite deserted him. He didn’t bring out his sketchbook. He talked disjointedly of Hopkins. I must come in some other night and look over Hopkins’ books on Italian art—thirteenth century principally. It was quite a valuable collection. Hopkins played the violin. That was his fiddle case in the corner. To hear him play Rubinstein’s “Melody in F” was a genuine musical treat.
Other men noticed the change in Orchard. Some said that he was drinking too much beer; others that he was in love with Miss Mackary, who had produced a true degenerate poem. He was not sociable, rarely came out, and took to sporting his oak. He said that he and Hopkins were deep in thirteenth-century Italian art, and had no time for anything else. They were writing a book on it. No one ever saw Hopkins. I, living immediately underneath, never heard his violin.
It was about this time that Orchard took to making me his father confessor. He was always admitting small sins. He came in one night and said earnestly:
“You know we were playing ha’penny nap at Green’s last Wednesday. Yes. Well, I didn’t put in the pool. It worries me. It was a mean trick, wasn’t it? Green kept saying, ‘Tit up,’ and I—I didn’t. Nobody noticed. It was pretty late. I feel ashamed of myself. What can I do?”
“I don’t know that you can do anything now,” I returned, staring at his anxious face.
“It was a mean, dirty trick,” he said despairingly. “I must have cheated you fellows first and last out of two bob. What can I do?”
“You can’t do anything. What—what does Hopkins think? How is Hopkins, by the way? Quiet kind of fellow, isn’t he? Why don’t you bring him down some night?”