In some such puzzled frame of mind did Quixtus, freed from the obsession of the Idea, regard his self of the last few months. He remembered how it had happened. There had been several shocks; the Marrable disaster, the discovery of Angela and Hammersley’s betrayal, that of the disloyalty of his three pensioners, the cynical trick of his uncle. He remembered toying with the Idea on his homeward journey, the farcical faithlessness of the drunken housekeeper—and then, click! the hag Idea had mounted on his shoulders and ridden away with him, as Al Kohol (the very devil himself) rides away with the unresisting drunkard. Every action, every thought of this strange period was clear in his memory. He could not have been mad—and yet he must have been.
To strain the analogy a trifle, the nightmare in the train and the horror of the morning had been his delirium tremens. But here the analogy suffers a solution of continuity. From that climax of devil work, the drunkard descends but slowly and gradually through tortures innumerable to the normal life of man. Shock is ineffective. But in Quixtus’s case there was a double shock—the seismic convulsion of his being at the climactic moment, and the sudden announcement of that, which to all men born is the only Absolute, final, immutable.
And then click! the hag that had ridden him had been thrown from his shoulders, and he had looked upon the dead through the eyes of a sane man. And now, through the eyes of a sane man he regarded the incredible spectacle of his self of yesterday. He turned from it with shivers of disgust. He must have been mad. A great depression came upon him. He had suffered grievous wrongs, it is true; no man since Job had been more sorely afflicted; the revelations of human baseness and treachery had been such as to kill his once childlike faith in humanity. But why had loss of faith sent him mad? What had his brain been doing to allow this grotesque impulse to over-master it? At the present moment, he assured himself, he had neither more nor less faith in mankind than when he had walked a maniac through the London streets, or during last night’s tortured journey in the train. Yet now he desired to commit no wickedness. The thought of evil for evil’s sake was revolting. . . . The self that he had striven to respect and keep clean all his life, had been soiled. Wherein lay purification?
Had he been mad? If so, how could he trust his memory as to what had happened? By the grace of God those acts of wickedness whose contemplation he remembered, had been rendered nugatory. Even Tommy had not materially suffered, seeing that he had kept the will intact and had placed two thousand pounds to his banking account. But could he actually have committed deeds of wickedness which he had forgotten? Were there any such which he had committed through the agency of the three evil counsellors? He racked his memory in vain.
The time at Marseilles passed gloomily. Poynter, the good Samaritan, started the first evening for Devonshire to satisfy his hungry soul with the unutterable comfort of English fields. Clementina and Quixtus saw him off at the station and walked back through the sultry streets together. The next day he was left much to his own company, as Clementina broke the news of death to the child and stayed with her for comfort. He wandered aimlessly about the town, seeking the shade, and wrapping himself in his melancholy. When he saw Sheila in the afternoon she was greatly subdued. She understood that her father had gone to Heaven to stay with her mother. She realised that she would never see him again. Clementina briefly informed Quixtus of the child’s grief. How she had cried and called for him most of the morning, how she had fallen asleep and had awakened more calm. To distract her mind and to give her the air, they hired a taxi-cab and drove on the Corniche Road past the Restaurant de la Réserve. Sheila’s tiny body easily nestled on the seat between them, and she seemed comforted by the human contact. From Pinkie she also derived great consolation. Pinkie was stupid, she explained, and she couldn’t talk; but really she was a fairy princess, and fairy princesses were always affectionate. Pinkie was stuffed with love as tight as she could hold.
“Have you ever been in a motor-car before?” asked Quixtus.
“Oh yes. Of course I have,” she replied in her rich little voice. “Daddy had one in Shanghai. He used to take me out in it.”
Then her lips quivered and the tears started and she flung herself weeping against Clementina.
“Oh, daddy! I want my daddy!”
The essential feminine in Clementina sprang to arms.