Part 8 (1/2)

”I hope you can stand this food,” he whispered, or rather croaked. ”For G.o.d's sake, order anything you fancy. As for me, I can't even eat like you people. a.s.ses' milk is what I get, and slops. Done for, this time.

I'm a dying man; anybody can see that. A dying man----”

”Something,” I said, ”is happening to that moon.”

It was in eclipse. Half the bright surface had been ominously obscured since we took our seats. O---- scowled at the satellite, and went on:

”But I won't be carried out of this dirty hole (Bertolini's)--not feet first. Would you mind my gasping another day or two at your place? Rolfe has told me about it.”

We moved him, with infinite trouble. The journey woke his dormant capacities for invective. He cursed at the way they jolted him about; he cursed himself into a collapse that day, and we thought it was all over.

Then he rallied, and became more abusive than before. Nothing was right.

Stairs being forbidden, the whole lower floor of the house was placed at his disposal; the establishment was dislocated, convulsed; and still he swore. He swore at me for the better part of a week; at the servants, and even at the good doctor Malbranc, who came every morning in a specially hired steam-launch to make that examination which always ended in his saying to me: ”You must humour him. Heart-patients are apt to be irritable.” Irritable was a mild term for this particular patient. His appet.i.te, meanwhile, began to improve.

It was soon evident that my cook had not the common sense to prepare his invalid dishes; a second one was engaged. Then, my gardener and sailor-boy being manifest idiots, it became necessary to procure an extra porter to fetch the numberless odd things he needed from town every day, and every hour of the day. I wrote to the messenger people to send the most capable lad on their books; we would engage him by the week, at twice his ordinary pay. He arrived; a limp and lean nonent.i.ty, with a face like a boiled codfish.

This miserable youth promptly became the object of O----'s bitterest execration. I soon learnt to dread those conferences, those terrific scenes which I was forced to witness in my capacity of interpreter.

O---- revelled in them with exceeding gusto. He used to gird his loins for the effort of vituperation; I think he regarded the performance as a legitimate kind of exercise--his last remaining one. As soon as the boy returned from town and presented himself with his purchases, O---- would glare at him for two or three minutes with such virulence, such concentration of hatred and loathing, such a blaze of malignity in his black eyes, that one fully expected to see the victim wither away; all this in dead silence. Then he would address me in his usual whisper, quite calmly, as though referring to the weather:

”Would you mind telling that double-distilled abortion that if he goes on making such a face I shall have to shoot him. Tell him, will you; there's a good fellow.”

And I had to ”humour” him.

”The gentleman”--I would say--”begs you will try to a.s.sume another expression of countenance,” or words to that effect; whereto he would tearfully reply something about the will of G.o.d and the workmans.h.i.+p of his father and mother, honest folks, both of them. I was then obliged to add gravely:

”You had better try, all the same, or he may shoot you. He has a revolver in his pocket, and a shooting licence from your government.”

This generally led to the production of a most ghastly smile, calculated to convey an ingratiating impression.

”Look at him,” O---- would continue. ”He is almost too good to be shot.

And now let's see. What does he call these things? Ask him, will you?”

”Asparagus.”

”Tell him that when I order asparagus I mean asparagus and not walking-sticks. Tell him that if he brings me such objects again, I'll ram the whole bundle up--down his throat. What does he expect me to do with them, eh? You might ask him, will you? And, G.o.d! what's this? Tell him (accellerando) that when I send a prescription to be made up at the Royal Pharmacy----”

”He explained about that. He went to the other place because he wanted to hurry up.”

”To hurry up? Tell him to hurry up and get to blazes. Oh, tell him----”

”You'll curse yourself into another collapse, at this rate.”

To the doctor's intense surprise, he lingered on; he actually grew stronger. Although never seeming to gain an ounce in weight, he could eat a formidable breakfast and used to insist, to my horror and shame, in importing his own wine, which he accused my German maid Bertha of drinking on the sly. Callers cheered him up--Rolfe the Consul, Dr. Dohrn of the Aquarium, and old Marquis Valiante, that perfect botanist--all of them dead now! After a month and a half of painful experiences, we at last learnt to handle him. The household machinery worked smoothly.

A final and excruciating interview ended in the dismissal of the errand-boy, and I personally selected another one--a pretty little rascal to whom he took a great fancy, over-tipping him scandalously. He needed absolute rest; he got it; and I think was fairly happy or at least tranquil (when not writhing in agony) at the end of that period. I can still see him in the sunny garden, his clothes hanging about an emaciated body--a skeleton in a deck-chair, a death's head among the roses. Humiliated in this inactivity, he used to lie dumb for long hours, watching the b.u.t.terflies or gazing wistfully towards those distant southern mountains which I proposed to visit later in the season. Once a spark of that old throttling instinct flared up. It was when a kestrel dashed overhead, bearing in its talons a captured lizard whose tail fluttered in the air: the poor beast never made a faster journey in its life. ”Ha!” said O----. ”That's sport.”

At other times he related, always in that hoa.r.s.e whisper, anecdotes of his life, a life of reckless adventure, of fortunes made and fortunes lost; or spoke of his old pa.s.sion for art and books. He seemed to have known, at one time or another, every artist and connoisseur on either side of the Atlantic; he told me it had cost about 10,000 to acquire his unique knowledge and taste in the matter of mezzotints, and that he was concerned about the fate of his ”Daphnis and Chloe” collection which contained, he said, a copy of every edition in every language--all except the unique Elizabethan version in the Huth library (now British Museum). I happened to have one of the few modern reprints of that stupid and ungainly book: would he accept it? Not likely! He was after originals.

One day he suddenly announced: