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Page 19
"You never can tell about P.S. He's a queer little gink."
Footsteps became audible on the stairs below.
"Well, so long. See you at dinner," George added in haste.
"George!"
"Well?" he asked, delaying with ill grace.
"What makes you sound so funny?"
"Laughin'!" protested George convincingly.
With determination and a heavy tread he went on to his room.
VI
SPRING TWILIGHT
When he had shaved (with particular care) and changed his linen
(trimming collar and cuffs to a degree of uncommon nicety) and resumed
his coat (brushing and hating it simultaneously and with equal
ferocity, for its very shabbiness) P. Sybarite sought out a pipe old
and disreputable enough to be a comfort to any man, and sat down by
the one window of his room (top floor, hall, back) to smoke and
consider the state of the universe while awaiting the dinner gong.
The window commanded an elevated if non-exhilarating view of back
yards, one and all dank, dismal, and littered with the d�bris of a
long, hard winter. Familiarity, however, had rendered P. Sybarite
immune to the miasma of melancholy they exhaled; the trouble in his
patient blue eyes, the wrinkles that lined his forehead, owned another
cause.
In fact, George had wrought more disastrously upon his temper than P.
Sybarite had let him see. His hints, innuendoes, and downright
assertions had in reality distilled a subtle poison into the little
man's humour. For in spite of his embattled incredulity and the clear
reasoning with which he had overborne George's futile insistence,
there still lingered in his mind (and always would, until he knew the
truth himself) a carking doubt.
Perhaps it was true. Perhaps George had guessed shrewdly. Perhaps
Molly Lessing of the glove counter really was one and the same with
Marian Blessington of the fabulous fortune.
Old Brian Shaynon was a known devil of infinite astuteness; it would
be quite consistent with his character and past performances if,
despairing of gaining control of his ward's money by urging her into
unwelcome matrimony with his son, he had contrived to over-reach her
in some manner, and so driven her to become self-supporting.
Perhaps hardly likely: the hypothesis was none the less quite
plausible; a thing had happened, within P. Sybarite's knowledge of
Brian Shaynon....
Even if George's romance were true only in part, these were wretched
circumstances for a girl of gentle birth and rearing to adopt. It was
really a shocking boarding-house. P. Sybarite had known it intimately
for ten years; use had made him callous to its shortcomings; but he
was not yet so far gone that he could forget how unwholesome and
depressing it must seem to one accustomed to better things. He could
remember most vividly how he had loathed it for weeks, months, and
years after the tide of evil fortunes had cast him upon its crumbling
brownstone stoop (even in that distant day, crumbling).
Now, however ... P. Sybarite realised suddenly that habit had
instilled into his bosom a sort of mean affection for the grim and
sordid place. Time had made him sib to its spirit, close to its
niggard heart. Scarcely a nook or corner of it with which he was not
on terms of the most intimate acquaintance. In the adjoining room a
deserted woman had died by her own hand; her moans, filtered through
the dividing wall, had summoned P. Sybarite--too late. The double
front room on the same floor harboured an amiable couple whose
sempiternal dissensions only his tact and persistence ever served to
still. The other hall-bedroom had housed for many years a dipsomaniac
whose periodic orgies had cost P. Sybarite many a night of bedside
vigil. On the floor below lived a maiden lady whose quenchless hopes
still centred about his amiable person. Downstairs in the clammy
parlour he had whiled away unnumbered hours assisting at dreary
"bridge drives," or playing audience to amateur recitals on the aged
and decrepit "family organ." For an entire decade he had occupied the
same chair at the same table in the basement dining-room, feasting on
beef, mutton, Irish stew, ham-and-beans, veal, pork, or
just-hash--according to the designated day of the week....
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