CHAPTER XVIII
Physical reaction following my interview with Mrs. Chrysostom. Reception of a wreath from the Maidstones. Moving excerpt from Simeon’s diary. I decide to marry one of Ezekiel’s sisters. Interview with Ezekiel and his deplorable language. Tact is selected to become my bride. Tragic return to Mon Repos. I fall unconscious, parallel to my father.
Glad as I was, however, and indeed, as a Xtian gentleman, glad as I was compelled to be that Mrs. Chrysostom had repented, it was nevertheless a penitence that in respect of myself was little short of disastrous. And even now it is with the utmost difficulty that I can look back upon the weeks that followed. Deprived of my living; already nearing thirty; and the subject, as I soon found, of the grossest misjudgment—such was my prostration that for nearly three weeks, I was confined to my bedroom, if not to my bed. For two or three days, in fact, I doubted if I could recover, a doubt that was shared by my dear father; while a small wreath, sent by the Maidstones, was actually delivered at the house. Whether this was despatched under a misapprehension; whether it was the symbol of a genuine contrition; or whether it was merely a sop to an uneasy conscience, will probably never be determined. And I refrained from acknowledging it until I had come to a decision as to the possibilities of legal action. After a prolonged interview, however, with Mr. Balfour Whey, and in view of my poor father’s unhappy experiences, it was regretfully decided that the British judiciary was too uncertain to be relied upon; and in a brief sentence, therefore, at the beginning of a letter, I informed Miss Maidstone of its safe arrival. The remainder of the letter, of which I still have a copy, was perhaps the severest exposure of a female character that has ever been penned, with the possible exception of certain passages in the Book of Revelation.
Another document, of which I have a copy, and which was also indited by me, while in bed, was rendered necessary by the widespread local confusion between acute port-poisoning and ordinary inebriation—a confusion accentuated, and indeed never wholly dispersed, owing to the despicable attitude of Mr. Chrysostom. Thanks to the generosity, however, of my kind friend Simeon Whey, who had not been present at the meeting, I was enabled to print several hundreds of these for personal and vicarious distribution, agents being posted, upon the following Sunday, at the doors of St. Nicholas, Newington Butts, and, during the ensuing week, at the exits and entrances of all my habitual haunts of prayer. In so far as I knew their addresses, too, the pamphlet was sent by post to the members of the A.D.S.U. and S.P.S.D.T., and to such other persons as might reasonably have been presumed to have been present at the Porter Street Drill Hall.
For the most part, however, I lay for long hours either comatose or actually asleep, all my meals being brought to my bedside and consumed in a semi-recumbent posture. Nor, had they come, should I have been able to receive visitors, although I made an exception in favour of Simeon Whey, who bicycled from Balham every Wednesday and Saturday, not only as a friend but also as a clergyman. Indeed in many ways I found his ministrations more soothing than those of my father, who had transferred both his bible and the harmonium from the parlour downstairs to my bedroom. His voice, however, though still very powerful, was much more uncertain than it used to be, and I was usually obliged, after about three-quarters of an hour, to ask him to desist from further vocalization.
So the days passed, one after another, and each a little longer than the one before; and although I endeavoured to summon, and I trust not unsuccessfully, the whole of my accumulated spiritual reserves, it was only by an effort that many would have judged superhuman that I began almost imperceptibly to regain my strength. Indeed, to at least one observer the spectacle I was now presenting was so fractionally short of a miracle that, as he wrote in his diary (for it was none other than Simeon) it “will never cease to be an inspiration to me.” But let me quote the whole passage, written after I had been in bed for about a fortnight.
“To-day,” he wrote, “I have again visited my poor friend, Augustus Carp, who is still laid aside on the bed of complete exhaustion as the result of the deception that I have already described; and more than ever, as I perceived him lying there, did I regret my absence from the meeting in question. Visibly flushed, although this may perhaps have been due to the imperfect absorption of a recent meal, his eyes were focussed upon a point in the ceiling with an almost tragic intensity, and the mute endurance with which he awaits the future will never cease to be an inspiration to me. Nor will he fail, as it seems to me, to need it. For with his chief means of sustenance rent away from him, it will probably become obligatory for him, as he has faintly whispered to me, to marry one of the sisters of Ezekiel Stool.”
That is the whole passage, and I have thought well to include it not only as an encouragement to the afflicted but also as an indication of the poignant decision to which I was now slowly being forced, for, as I had instantly feared on leaving Mrs. Chrysostom, and as I had since perceived, alas, only too distinctly, I was face to face with just such a catastrophe as marriage with a Stool had been kept in reserve for. Nor had I been able to discern, bitterly though I had sought for it, any practicable alternative—or none that would preserve me from the personal indignity of applying for fresh employment without adequate references.
