“My dear fellow,” said Quixtus, raising his long thin hand, “that’s the last thing I want you to do. In this world of fraud and deceit no man ought to regret having bared his soul honestly to the world. Now, gentlemen, I have not asked you here to insult you at my own table. I have gathered you around me because I need your counsel and your services for which I hope adequately to remunerate you.”
A quiver of animation passed over the three faces. “Remunerate” was a magic word; the master-word of an incantation. It meant money, and money meant food and drink—especially alcoholic drink.
“I know I am speaking for my two friends,” said Huckaby, “when I say that our hearts are always at your service.”
“The heart,” replied Quixtus, “is a physiological organ and a sentimental delusion. There are no hearts in that sense. You know as well as I do, my dear fellow, that there are no such things as love, affection, honour, loyalty in the world. Self-interest and self-indulgence are the guiding principles of conduct. Governed by a morbid and futile tradition, we refuse to regard the world in the malevolent light of day, but see it artificially through the hypocritical coloured glasses of benevolence.”
Huckaby and Vandermeer, who retained the rudiments of an intellect, looked at their once simple-minded and tender-hearted host in blank bewilderment. They hardly knew whether to wince under a highly educated gentleman’s cutting irony, or to accept these remarkable propositions as honest statements of opinion. But the ironical note was not perceptible. Quixtus spoke in the same gentle tone of assurance as he would have used when entering on a dissertation upon the dolichocephalic skulls in his collection which had been found in a long barrow in Yorkshire. He was the master of a subject laying down incontrovertible facts. So Huckaby and Vandermeer, marvelling greatly, stared at him out of speculative eyes. Billiter, before whom the incautious decanter of port had halted, lost the drift of his host’s philosophic utterances.
“The time has now come,” continued Quixtus, relighting (unsophisticated soul!) the cigar which he had allowed to go out—“the time has now come for us four to be honest with one another. Up to a recent date I was a slave to this optical delusion of tradition. But things have happened to clear my eyes, and to make me frankly confess myself no better than yourselves—an entirely unscrupulous man.”
“Pray remember that I’m a sometime Fellow—” began Huckaby.
“I’m a gentleman of good family—” began Billiter, who had understood the last sentence.
“Yes. Yes,” replied Quixtus, interrupting them. “I know. That’s why your assistance will be valuable. I need the counsels of men of breeding and education. I find from my reading that the vulgar criminal would be useless for my purpose. Now, you all have trusted men who have failed you. So have I. You have felt the cowardly blows of Fortune. So have I. You have no vestige of faith in your fellow man—you even believed me to be a party to my late partner’s frauds—you can have, I say, no faith left in humanity. Neither have I. You are Ishmaels, your hand against every man. So am I. You would like to be revenged upon your fellow creatures. So would I. You have passed your lives in pursuing evil rather than good. You, in a word, are entirely unscrupulous. If you will acknowledge this we can proceed to business. If not; we will part finally as soon as this agreeable evening is at an end. Gentlemen what do you say?”
Billiter, looking upon the wine while it was red—there was not much left to show the colour—laughed wheezily and shortly.