HOPKINS.ORCHARDwas artistic—and talked about it. How tiresome such people are! He split the world into two factions—the artist and the rank, impossible Philistine. Religious bigots talk in the same way—of professing Christians and the unregenerate. I knew a dear old lady once who thought that we had a perfect right to stone some Mohammedan missionaries who came to England.In the middle of a country walk Orchard would stop, with a deep gulp of admiration, and ask you to admire the view. He raved of autumn tints, apple blossoms, bare boughs. He pretended to like a fog. He painted landscapes—or seascapes, according to your imagination—on the panels of his walls; he stenciled his ceilings, and produced an idealized portrait of his laundress.He had all the delightful courage and egotism of the amateur. He boasted that he had only once been to the Academy—that temple of mediocrity.He told you coolly that there was only one English artist of talent—and he was Whiffin. “Never heard of Whiffin! Who is Whiffin? You astonish me. My dear fellow,” he would say pityingly, “there isonlyWhiffin.”The others—men whom the ignorant regard as leading—he disposed of glibly. This one was color-blind; he thought that was common knowledge. That one employed a ghost; the fellow could hardly hold a brush himself. Another only painted flesh tints; you can’t have a picture all flesh. “My dear fellow, I assure you there is no one but Whiffin. He is the coming man. I’m surprised you don’t know his work. Galleries! A man like Whiffin wouldn’t exhibit at the galleries.”Orchard was willing to undertake anything—artistic. But his great hobby was house-building. He said that the average architect didn’t get the surroundings in harmony. The architect’s work only began when the roof was on. He should design the garden, the furniture. He should choose the pictures, the tenants. Every new house ought to be embowered in creepers from the very start.An old lawn and a clipped yew tree were as essential, more essential, than water pipes. The house must cultivate a ghost. It must have a peacock with a spread tail, a fish pond, full of hoary carp, a raven that would say “nevermore.”He was full of amusing sentiment. He bought his bread at Mackary’s, the confectioner’s near Bernard Street. It was a queer old shop. Orchard said that it reminded him of Hogarth. Of course he had the greatest possible contempt for Hogarth—but he liked the faint flavor of hoops and beauty patches which hung about Mackary’s.Mackary’s business, so it is said above the door, was founded in 1712. The shop window was bow-fronted and had small square panes. Behind these panes were home-baked puffs and Banburys, straight glass bottles full of pink lozenges or sponge fingers. Mackary kept up the traditions of his house. He still made a feature of a special cake said to have been a favorite with Queen Charlotte, and he ignored French pastry.Miss Mackary kept the books, and wrote poetry after the shutters were up. Mrs. Mackary wasplump, wore a lace cap, and had house property in her own right near Tarn’s. They were superior people. Orchard willingly paid a halfpenny more on the half-quartern loaf for the privilege of stepping in with the assured air of a regular customer. He never paid his bill, so that it really made no difference. He used to sit and eat Queen Charlotte’s cakes and talk poetry with Miss Mackary. They were all very civil to him—he used to say that nothing demoralized a tradesman more than cash payment.I don’t know why I tell you of Whiffin, of the Mackarys, of Orchard’s crazy architectural ideas—they have nothing to do with the story. But they will prove to you what a harmless simpleton he was before he took set 7, before the advent of Hopkins.Hopkins had the set on the other side of the landing—the right-hand side as you go up. Orchard took the one on the left, he moved there from a ground floor in the other square. Set 7 was cheaper—that baleful set, which held at different times the tragedies of Orion, of Jimmy, of Stapley.No one had ever seen Hopkins, he was said to beabroad. Therefore it surprised me when Orchard said casually, with faint annoyance, that his neighbor across the landing was a nuisance; he came in late and made an awful row taking off his boots.I didn’t see Orchard for two or three months after this. It was astounding when next I went up to his rooms to see that Hopkins’ name was painted out from the oak on the right-hand set and bracketed with Orchard’s name on the left. There it was, as plain as white paint on a black door could make it:MR.D.B.ORCHARD.MR.GEOFFREYHOPKINS.I was surprised, I was also interested; no one had ever seen Hopkins. No one particularly wanted to. Still, as I waited for Orchard to let me in, I had a languid curiosity to know what his co-tenant was like.Orchard was not looking well. He didn’t talkin his usual airy, sweeping way. There were no new daubs on the wall. When I said, with a look round the room:“What’s this about Hopkins?” he jerked his head toward the bedroom wall, with the cautious remark:“Don’t speak so loudly: he’s in the bedroom. Hopkins! Oh! he’s all right. We thought it more convenient for him to come here. Great authority on Italian art; subject I’m interested in, as you know.”I didn’t know, but I waited on, chatting in rather a strained way, and expecting Hopkins—who never came out of the bedroom. Orchard wasn’t conversational that night. He let every subject I started flaccidly drop. He wanted perpetually winding up. His accustomed dogmatic manner had quite deserted him. He didn’t bring out his sketchbook. He talked disjointedly of Hopkins. I must come in some other night and look over Hopkins’ books on Italian art—thirteenth century principally. It was quite a valuable collection. Hopkins played the violin. That was his fiddle case in the corner. Tohear him play Rubinstein’s “Melody in F” was a genuine musical treat.Other men noticed the change in Orchard. Some said that he was drinking too much beer; others that he was in love with Miss Mackary, who had produced a true degenerate poem. He was not sociable, rarely came out, and took to sporting his oak. He said that he and Hopkins were deep in thirteenth-century Italian art, and had no time for anything else. They were writing a book on it. No one ever saw Hopkins. I, living immediately underneath, never heard his violin.It was about this time that Orchard took to making me his father confessor. He was always admitting small sins. He came in one night and said earnestly:“You know we were playing ha’penny nap at Green’s last Wednesday. Yes. Well, I didn’t put in the pool. It worries me. It was a mean trick, wasn’t it? Green kept saying, ‘Tit up,’ and I—I didn’t. Nobody noticed. It was pretty late. I feel ashamed of myself. What can I do?”“I don’t know that you can do anything now,” I returned, staring at his anxious face.“It was a mean, dirty trick,” he said despairingly. “I must have cheated you fellows first and last out of two bob. What can I do?”“You can’t do anything. What—what does Hopkins think? How is Hopkins, by the way? Quiet kind of fellow, isn’t he? Why don’t you bring him down some night?”“Hopkins! Oh! he’s a regular recluse. Steeped to his eyes in Italian art. Plays well, doesn’t he?”“Don’t know. I’ve never heard him.”Orchard looked at me in perplexity.“Never heard him! That’s odd. Why, he was practicing until one this morning.”Another night he came in, his pocket bulging with a book. He sat down in my saddle-bag chair with a groan. His face was clammy with emotion.“I’ve—I’ve stolen this book,” he said, bringing out a fat volume with lots of plates. “Couldn’t help it for the life of me. What on earth am I todo? It was on a stall in front—that shop at the corner of the Turnstile. They’ll run me in. What do you advise?”“That’s a matter for Hopkins. It’s on Italian art, isn’t it? The plates look good; no doubt he’ll be delighted. All’s fair in love and collecting, you know—but the policeman doesn’t admit that. I wouldn’t do it again.”The third time I happened to go up to him. He answered the door to my knock. For a moment, before he recognized me, there was blank horror on his once carelessly cynical face.“Hopkins in?” I asked, with a comprehensive movement of the head.Hopkins was a nuisance, although—perhapsbecause—one never saw him. I had more than once asked Orchard why he had taken in an odd, churlish chap like that, and he had answered, in a short, matter-of-fact way, that it was a perfectly natural selection—they had tastes in common. That night he said, looking very relieved:“Hopkins is out.”We went into the sitting room. Before he satdown he added, with a vague, troubled stare about the place:“Hopkins is a very untidy chap. He leaves his things about.”He made an irritable movement with his hands about the bare, big table in the middle of the room—and only shifted the evening paper. Then he threw himself into the easy chair on the opposite side of the hearth, and I brought out my tobacco pouch.“I’m going from bad to worse,” he broke out, but retaining enough presence of mind to hand me a box of matches and an ash tray.“I paid something on account of Mackary’s bill to-day—with a bad sovereign. But that isn’t all. I picked that picture up in a saleroom—put it under my arm and walked away, you know. I believe it is a ‘Simms.’”He looked gloatingly at a dark, little oil on the wall. “And I—I stole ten pounds from my young nephew. He gave it me to buy a bicycle—and I’ve spent every penny.”“These confidences are becoming oppressive,” I said. “So long as you restricted yourself to notputting in the pool, it didn’t matter so much. Cheating at cards may be one form of moral protest. Stealing books and pictures is simply an overflow of artistic enthusiasm. But passing bad sovereigns and spending other people’s money is reprehensible—to say nothing of its being idiotic. You’ll get found out, arrested, ruined. My dear fellow, you are suffering from a severe attack of crime. Crime is merely an infectious disease, like the measles; all sensible people admit that nowadays. Some of us have it; some escape. Occasionally there is an epidemic—look what a run there often is in a certain form of murder. You must see a doctor. It seems to me that you have only developed the attack since Hopkins——”He stopped me with an eager wave of his unsteady hand.“Hopkins,” he began excitedly, “Hopkins! Good Heavens!”—he stopped, then concluded calmly, with a sort of mechanical cordiality toward the other man—“Hopkins is a very good fellow.”A couple of mornings later I met him in thesquare. He had developed a peculiar walk; several men had commented on it. He seemed to be painfully trying to keep step with someone. Occasionally he threw a hunted, conciliating look over his shoulder. Sometimes he started off in a spasmodic trot, and then pulled up as if it were no use to struggle, and tried to keep step again. He meant to pass me with a nod, but I stepped in front of him and took his hand. He looked round, started, stared across the square, and then said:“Excuse me for not having introduced you to Hopkins. Don’t think it strange of him to make off like that. He’s a student, you see, very retiring and preoccupied.”“Hopkins!”“Yes, there he goes—that man with a pronounced stoop, a Norfolk jacket, and a soft hat.”The square was absolutely empty except for Orchard and me. There was no man with a stoop and a Norfolk jacket anywhere in sight; there never had been. Orchard, with his halting, timid walk, had crossed the square alone, had come out of his own doorway alone. Absolutely alone. I hadwatched him. I had never taken my eyes off him, from first to last. I took his arm.“Come over to No. 2 and see Harrowsmith,” I entreated. “You don’t look well. He’ll give you a tonic. Perhaps you’re smoking too much—don’t believe in a pipe myself. There isn’t half so much harm in a mild cigarette.”The square was empty, empty. It was a shock to me. It came so suddenly, it was utterly unexpected—the fact that Hopkins was a mere myth. There possibly was a Hopkins, that absent man, reputed to be abroad, whose name had been painted up on the right-hand set, who had, so I’d heard, been in the habit of sending regularly every quarter day the rent for his empty rooms. But Orchard’s Hopkins—the man who played the violin, who was a crank on early Italian art—simply didn’t exist. It was then I remembered that when Orchard had said casually, “There’s his violin,” I had not noticed one, that I had never heard a violin, or a strange voice, or a second pair of feet in the set immediately above my own. I remembered, too, that when Orchard had said, with annoyance, “Hopkinsis an untidy chap; he leaves his things about,” the room had been in perfect order. I had never seen the collection of books on Italian art—the man was a delusion, the product of an excited brain. Orchard was in a bad way. I repeated, “Come up to No. 2 and see Harrowsmith.”He dragged his arm away, gave another keen look across the square, and said impatiently:“I shall do nothing of the sort. Don’t believe in doctors. When I’m hard up for a chronic disease I’ll consult one, not before. Hundreds of men have been killed by going to a specialist or by trying to get their lives insured. The specialist shakes his head, the insurance doctor looks grave, and you’re done. No! It’s a preliminary to going to the undertaker.”This had been one of his many eccentricities in the old extravagant days. I simply said soothingly:“But you don’t go to the undertaker. Someone else has to go—when the time comes. So the bottom’s knocked out of your argument. Come on.”He twitched himself away, quite petulantly, like a child, and said:“I’m off to the country for the day; that will do me more good than doctors’ stuff. I shall take train from Baker Street and get down to the valley of the Chess.”I was out late that night. When I came home I noticed a light in Orchard’s window. So he was back! I decided not to go up to him. I was half undressed when I heard his oak slam violently, heard heavy, hurried feet coming downstairs. They seemed to come, those feet, half a flight at a time. I knew at once that something was up. My doors were open in a moment. Orchard came toppling into my passage, shutting the oak behind him.“I’ve murdered him,” he said. “My God! Murdered him. Hopkins!”“Keep cool. It’s all a delusion. There isn’t any Hopkins. Your nerves are unstrung——”“No Hopkins!” the poor fellow interrupted, with a derisive laugh. “You shall hear all about it. No Hopkins! Haven’t I lived with him? Hasn’t he been tempting me to every devilry? It was Hopkins who made me steal the picture, thebook, the bicycle money; he gave me the bad sovereign for Mackary, he’s got a bag full. The man was bothering me. I made a mistake at first to pay him anything on account—you lose their respect directly you make a cash payment. Hopkins! And he was egging me on to—what do you think? To murder you, old man. To murder you, because you’ve got Rogers’ “Italy,” with plates after Turner, and he wanted it. The very word Italy is enough for him.”This was startling. I had reason to be grateful that I had pricked the Hopkins bubble in time. Orchard continued, dropping his voice and looking up now and then at the ceiling, and putting his head aside in a listening attitude:“I dodged him this morning. I went off to Chesham alone, meaning to think the thing out quietly. I’d made up my mind to emigrate, if I could raise the passage money without his suspecting it. And then—well, I might have known—there were steps behind me; his face over my shoulder. He said,—he knows my very thoughts,—“‘Emigration would be the worst thing in theworld for us, dear boy. They want muscles, not art, in a new country.’“It was more than I could stand. I shoved him into the Chess when he was off his guard. It gave me positive honest enjoyment to see the water eddying over him.”I took his hand and shook it heartily.“Shoved him into the Chess! You are sure he sank? It is the best bit of news I’ve heard for a long time. The fellow was a bad lot evidently—what is worse, he was a confounded nuisance. You haven’t been the same man since he shared your rooms.”I thought it wiser, just at the moment, not to irritate and excite him by again disputing Hopkins. It was really a remarkable business. The delusion was so perfect, so realistic. From the moment Orchard complained that he could hear Hopkins taking off his boots through the wall, I had never doubted the man’s existence—no one had doubted. Yet it was all a delusion. There was no Hopkins. Consequently, Orchard had not cheated at nap, had not betrayed Mackary by a bad sovereign, had notstolen the book with the fine plates nor the picture that he believed to be a Simms, had not spent his nephew’s ten pounds. But he might have murdered me if the delusion had gone on long enough. Hopkins! Whiffin! I began to wonder whether Whiffin really existed or whether he also was a myth. It did not matter much. Orchard said tremulously:“You haven’t heard the worst. I knocked him over into the Chess. I walked into Chesham and had a feed—never enjoyed anything so much in my life, never felt so free and hopeful. I got back to the Inn about ten. As I crossed the square I saw a light move across my window. It struck me as rather odd, but then I remembered that Mrs. Neaves had told me she was coming back to fetch her apron, or a bundle of newspapers she was going to sell at the butcher’s, I forget which. It does not matter—nothing matters. I went upstairs. I let myself in with the latchkey. The passage was dark, but there was a steady light under the sitting-room door. No sound. Only the steady yellow light. I went in. As I live, he was sitting there. Hopkins! the manI had drowned. I staggered to the first chair and sat like a fool, staring at him. He was cutting a portrait out of a ragged pamphlet he bought yesterday at the shop near Tottenham Court Road; he’s making an illustrated copy of some book or the other. I forget the title; I forget everything. When he had done he turned round deliberately and looked at me. He didn’t seem annoyed in the least. He actually didn’t seem conscious of that dip in the Chess. I wanted to ask him how he got out, but I couldn’t, to save my soul, speak one word. He was sitting there calmly cutting pictures out of a book. The man I had drowned! I saw him drown. I took devilish good care not to leave the river until I was sure. Yet there he sat. He said:“‘Which train did you come back by? I took the 8.05.’“I couldn’t bear it any more. I came down to you. What am I to do? How am I to get rid of him? You see, I am absolutely in his power. He owns me. He could hang me if he liked.”“I’ll come up and have a talk with him.”We went up to his set together. The sitting room was perfectly dark.“I expect he’s gone to bed,” said Orchard.We looked into the bedroom. It was the only bedroom, but Orchard had put up a second bed, a camp. The sheets on it were dingy, but absolutely unruffled. The bed had never been slept in. He had provided a second washstand—one of those skeleton, brightly painted metal things. It was covered with dust.“He’s gone out,” I said encouragingly. “You get to bed and I’ll sit up and wait for him to come back.”Orchard undressed as docilely as a child, and stretched himself with a groan of fatigue beneath the sheets. His eyes were wide open—on the empty camp bedstead with the smoothly turned down sheet and the gayly striped blanket which served as a quilt.“You’d better go back to your own place, old man,” he said suddenly. “I shall be all right. Head’s been a bit queer, but a sleep will make me all right. I’m very sleepy. It would bother me toknow you were waiting, and there is no necessity. Good-night.”His eyes closed drowsily, then opened, and fixed themselves on that empty bed.“I want you to go,” he said more positively. “I shan’t get to sleep until you do.”I went. I thought that he would sleep, and after a good night’s rest he would be reasonable. I’d take him to the doctor in the morning. I slept myself. It was past nine next morning when I woke. There was an envelope in the letter box. It was from Orchard. He inclosed the key of his set, and a little note in pencil. So far as I can remember, this is pretty much how it ran:“Not a bit of good, old fellow. Hopkins won’t leave me alone. He was in bed all the time—his own bed, under the window. I wonder you didn’t see him. He looked hard at me, and I knew he meant me to send you away. Not a bit of good trying to resist a man like that—a fellow who won’t drown! He’s making me hang myself; says he’s a firm believer in capital punishment. I murdered him, and I must swing for it. You’ll find me, ifhe leaves me alone, behind the kitchen door. I’m going to bring this note down, with the key, and put it in your letter box. Hope Hopkins won’t get it. I should like you to know the truth. Suicide is vulgar—hanging the most popular form of self-effacement. I dislike popularity, as you know. Hopkins reassures me; he says it’s only justice. He’s reading every word I write. Sell the sticks—if he’ll let you—and square up Mackary. Poor Miss M——, she was a little sweet on me. Clever girl! Wasted on a ‘good family trade.’”That was all. I know that the reference to Miss Mackary came last. She’s still at the shop in Bernard Street; you must come and have a couple of Queen Charlotte cakes.I went up. He was hanging, as he said he would be, behind the kitchen door. The door is half glass. As I pushed it back. I saw him gently swinging. You won’t believe it—I’m not sure that I believe it myself—but I’ll swear that as I put the key in the outer door I heard the long, wailing cry of a violin.*****A good year afterward I was dining with thePrays at Kensington. There was another man there—a tiresome fool. The second Mrs. Pray has a knack of collecting stupid people—the sort of stupid people who are small somebodies in their particular line. This man had been abroad collecting rare orchids. His name was Hopkins. It is such a common name that, although I remembered poor Orchard at once, I never thought of asking him if he knew the Inn. Still, I brought the conversation round to it. After dinner, when Mrs. Pray had left us, I said to Pray:“There is a man called Jackson in your old set. And Kinsman’s gone—to the bad some say.”Hopkins pricked up his ears.“You are talking of the Inn,” he said, and mentioned my number. “Odd thing! I have a set in that very house. Top floor, right-hand side as you go up the stairs. Of course you’ve seen my name—Hopkins.”I could only look at him and nod my head. He filled his glass and carefully cut the end of a cigar.He was the most commonplace, prosperous-looking man you can possibly imagine. I thought ofOrchard’s Hopkins—“Decided stoop, Norfolk jacket, and soft hat.” This man’s shoulders were well squared back and ingeniously padded by his tailor. He was the sort of man who would never wear a Norfolk jacket in town; a man who would go to spend Sunday in the country in a black diagonal coat, and take his top hat with him in case of emergency. I looked at him, looked into his dull, bulging eyes. Eyes without depth, without secrets, without soul—just eyes! hard, glassy things put for purely practical purposes into his head! It was clearly superfluous to ask him if he took an interest in Italian art or played the violin.“Perhaps you can explain,” he continued. “I went to the Inn the week before last. They’ve painted my name out on the door of the right-hand set and stuck it on the left-hand set with another man’s. I took his name—wait a moment.”He brought out a fat notebook—he was the kind of accurate dullard who would be sure to take notes.“D. B. ORCHARD. That’s it. Now, who is he?Icouldn’t find out. I went and beat up the man who does most of the painting, and he didn’tknow. It was a piece of confounded impudence. It may have done me some injury—I use the place as a business address. If it was a practical joke, then it was a very foolish one, and in precious bad taste.”He began to look swollen and angry; looked at me as if he half suspected that I’d a hand in it. No doubt I looked guilty.“Who is D. B. Orchard?” he persisted, in the puffy, thick-throated way of the pompous man. “How is one to get at the fellow? I hammered at the door for the best part of half an hour. D. B. Orchard!” He laughed ironically. “I’d teach him not to play stupid jokes on me. I’d have him understand, sir, that Geoffrey Hopkins is not a man to be played with.”Geoffrey Hopkins! I felt my very lips grow white. I must have looked like some foolish, anæmic girl.“How is one to get at him? I might claim damages.” He brought his broad, hairy fist down vigorously on the shining table. Pray, looking from one to the other—my quivering countenanceand the inflamed features of the man Hopkins—was evidently uncomfortable.I looked at that man. Geoffrey Hopkins! I could have taken that flabby body in my grip and shaken it for all that it had made poor Orchard suffer. And yet!Wasthis the man? Instinct told me, common sense told me, that it was not.“D. B. Orchard is dead,” I said curtly at last; then, with a savage laugh and a terror-stricken glance at the coarse face, added, “You can’t get at him. He’s out of your reach, poor devil, at last.”I didn’t know; I don’t know, now—how can one be sure! Of course he wasn’t Orchard’s Hopkins. But! What an affair!Tell him? No. I saw him look at me with disgust and suspicion—no doubt he thought I was a little drunk. No doubt he went away and told his friends that I wasn’t quite a gentleman. That sort of man talks like that.When we were alone I told the whole story to Pray. But he, with a pathetic droop of his mouth and a mystic flicker in eyes that were hard with success, said—glancing at the door—that such subjectsdidn’t interest him. He hated to dabble on the edge of the infinite—he’d had enough. He seemed to sigh as he lighted his pipe.I haven’t seen Hopkins since. If ever I see him again I shan’t tell him—he’s too commonplace.THE END.
ORCHARDwas artistic—and talked about it. How tiresome such people are! He split the world into two factions—the artist and the rank, impossible Philistine. Religious bigots talk in the same way—of professing Christians and the unregenerate. I knew a dear old lady once who thought that we had a perfect right to stone some Mohammedan missionaries who came to England.
In the middle of a country walk Orchard would stop, with a deep gulp of admiration, and ask you to admire the view. He raved of autumn tints, apple blossoms, bare boughs. He pretended to like a fog. He painted landscapes—or seascapes, according to your imagination—on the panels of his walls; he stenciled his ceilings, and produced an idealized portrait of his laundress.
He had all the delightful courage and egotism of the amateur. He boasted that he had only once been to the Academy—that temple of mediocrity.He told you coolly that there was only one English artist of talent—and he was Whiffin. “Never heard of Whiffin! Who is Whiffin? You astonish me. My dear fellow,” he would say pityingly, “there isonlyWhiffin.”
The others—men whom the ignorant regard as leading—he disposed of glibly. This one was color-blind; he thought that was common knowledge. That one employed a ghost; the fellow could hardly hold a brush himself. Another only painted flesh tints; you can’t have a picture all flesh. “My dear fellow, I assure you there is no one but Whiffin. He is the coming man. I’m surprised you don’t know his work. Galleries! A man like Whiffin wouldn’t exhibit at the galleries.”
Orchard was willing to undertake anything—artistic. But his great hobby was house-building. He said that the average architect didn’t get the surroundings in harmony. The architect’s work only began when the roof was on. He should design the garden, the furniture. He should choose the pictures, the tenants. Every new house ought to be embowered in creepers from the very start.An old lawn and a clipped yew tree were as essential, more essential, than water pipes. The house must cultivate a ghost. It must have a peacock with a spread tail, a fish pond, full of hoary carp, a raven that would say “nevermore.”
He was full of amusing sentiment. He bought his bread at Mackary’s, the confectioner’s near Bernard Street. It was a queer old shop. Orchard said that it reminded him of Hogarth. Of course he had the greatest possible contempt for Hogarth—but he liked the faint flavor of hoops and beauty patches which hung about Mackary’s.
Mackary’s business, so it is said above the door, was founded in 1712. The shop window was bow-fronted and had small square panes. Behind these panes were home-baked puffs and Banburys, straight glass bottles full of pink lozenges or sponge fingers. Mackary kept up the traditions of his house. He still made a feature of a special cake said to have been a favorite with Queen Charlotte, and he ignored French pastry.
Miss Mackary kept the books, and wrote poetry after the shutters were up. Mrs. Mackary wasplump, wore a lace cap, and had house property in her own right near Tarn’s. They were superior people. Orchard willingly paid a halfpenny more on the half-quartern loaf for the privilege of stepping in with the assured air of a regular customer. He never paid his bill, so that it really made no difference. He used to sit and eat Queen Charlotte’s cakes and talk poetry with Miss Mackary. They were all very civil to him—he used to say that nothing demoralized a tradesman more than cash payment.
I don’t know why I tell you of Whiffin, of the Mackarys, of Orchard’s crazy architectural ideas—they have nothing to do with the story. But they will prove to you what a harmless simpleton he was before he took set 7, before the advent of Hopkins.
Hopkins had the set on the other side of the landing—the right-hand side as you go up. Orchard took the one on the left, he moved there from a ground floor in the other square. Set 7 was cheaper—that baleful set, which held at different times the tragedies of Orion, of Jimmy, of Stapley.
No one had ever seen Hopkins, he was said to beabroad. Therefore it surprised me when Orchard said casually, with faint annoyance, that his neighbor across the landing was a nuisance; he came in late and made an awful row taking off his boots.
I didn’t see Orchard for two or three months after this. It was astounding when next I went up to his rooms to see that Hopkins’ name was painted out from the oak on the right-hand set and bracketed with Orchard’s name on the left. There it was, as plain as white paint on a black door could make it:
MR.D.B.ORCHARD.MR.GEOFFREYHOPKINS.
I was surprised, I was also interested; no one had ever seen Hopkins. No one particularly wanted to. Still, as I waited for Orchard to let me in, I had a languid curiosity to know what his co-tenant was like.
Orchard was not looking well. He didn’t talkin his usual airy, sweeping way. There were no new daubs on the wall. When I said, with a look round the room:
“What’s this about Hopkins?” he jerked his head toward the bedroom wall, with the cautious remark:
“Don’t speak so loudly: he’s in the bedroom. Hopkins! Oh! he’s all right. We thought it more convenient for him to come here. Great authority on Italian art; subject I’m interested in, as you know.”
I didn’t know, but I waited on, chatting in rather a strained way, and expecting Hopkins—who never came out of the bedroom. Orchard wasn’t conversational that night. He let every subject I started flaccidly drop. He wanted perpetually winding up. His accustomed dogmatic manner had quite deserted him. He didn’t bring out his sketchbook. He talked disjointedly of Hopkins. I must come in some other night and look over Hopkins’ books on Italian art—thirteenth century principally. It was quite a valuable collection. Hopkins played the violin. That was his fiddle case in the corner. Tohear him play Rubinstein’s “Melody in F” was a genuine musical treat.
Other men noticed the change in Orchard. Some said that he was drinking too much beer; others that he was in love with Miss Mackary, who had produced a true degenerate poem. He was not sociable, rarely came out, and took to sporting his oak. He said that he and Hopkins were deep in thirteenth-century Italian art, and had no time for anything else. They were writing a book on it. No one ever saw Hopkins. I, living immediately underneath, never heard his violin.
It was about this time that Orchard took to making me his father confessor. He was always admitting small sins. He came in one night and said earnestly:
“You know we were playing ha’penny nap at Green’s last Wednesday. Yes. Well, I didn’t put in the pool. It worries me. It was a mean trick, wasn’t it? Green kept saying, ‘Tit up,’ and I—I didn’t. Nobody noticed. It was pretty late. I feel ashamed of myself. What can I do?”
“I don’t know that you can do anything now,” I returned, staring at his anxious face.
“It was a mean, dirty trick,” he said despairingly. “I must have cheated you fellows first and last out of two bob. What can I do?”
“You can’t do anything. What—what does Hopkins think? How is Hopkins, by the way? Quiet kind of fellow, isn’t he? Why don’t you bring him down some night?”
“Hopkins! Oh! he’s a regular recluse. Steeped to his eyes in Italian art. Plays well, doesn’t he?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never heard him.”
Orchard looked at me in perplexity.
“Never heard him! That’s odd. Why, he was practicing until one this morning.”
Another night he came in, his pocket bulging with a book. He sat down in my saddle-bag chair with a groan. His face was clammy with emotion.
“I’ve—I’ve stolen this book,” he said, bringing out a fat volume with lots of plates. “Couldn’t help it for the life of me. What on earth am I todo? It was on a stall in front—that shop at the corner of the Turnstile. They’ll run me in. What do you advise?”
“That’s a matter for Hopkins. It’s on Italian art, isn’t it? The plates look good; no doubt he’ll be delighted. All’s fair in love and collecting, you know—but the policeman doesn’t admit that. I wouldn’t do it again.”
The third time I happened to go up to him. He answered the door to my knock. For a moment, before he recognized me, there was blank horror on his once carelessly cynical face.
“Hopkins in?” I asked, with a comprehensive movement of the head.
Hopkins was a nuisance, although—perhapsbecause—one never saw him. I had more than once asked Orchard why he had taken in an odd, churlish chap like that, and he had answered, in a short, matter-of-fact way, that it was a perfectly natural selection—they had tastes in common. That night he said, looking very relieved:
“Hopkins is out.”
We went into the sitting room. Before he satdown he added, with a vague, troubled stare about the place:
“Hopkins is a very untidy chap. He leaves his things about.”
He made an irritable movement with his hands about the bare, big table in the middle of the room—and only shifted the evening paper. Then he threw himself into the easy chair on the opposite side of the hearth, and I brought out my tobacco pouch.
“I’m going from bad to worse,” he broke out, but retaining enough presence of mind to hand me a box of matches and an ash tray.
“I paid something on account of Mackary’s bill to-day—with a bad sovereign. But that isn’t all. I picked that picture up in a saleroom—put it under my arm and walked away, you know. I believe it is a ‘Simms.’”He looked gloatingly at a dark, little oil on the wall. “And I—I stole ten pounds from my young nephew. He gave it me to buy a bicycle—and I’ve spent every penny.”
“These confidences are becoming oppressive,” I said. “So long as you restricted yourself to notputting in the pool, it didn’t matter so much. Cheating at cards may be one form of moral protest. Stealing books and pictures is simply an overflow of artistic enthusiasm. But passing bad sovereigns and spending other people’s money is reprehensible—to say nothing of its being idiotic. You’ll get found out, arrested, ruined. My dear fellow, you are suffering from a severe attack of crime. Crime is merely an infectious disease, like the measles; all sensible people admit that nowadays. Some of us have it; some escape. Occasionally there is an epidemic—look what a run there often is in a certain form of murder. You must see a doctor. It seems to me that you have only developed the attack since Hopkins——”
He stopped me with an eager wave of his unsteady hand.
“Hopkins,” he began excitedly, “Hopkins! Good Heavens!”—he stopped, then concluded calmly, with a sort of mechanical cordiality toward the other man—“Hopkins is a very good fellow.”
A couple of mornings later I met him in thesquare. He had developed a peculiar walk; several men had commented on it. He seemed to be painfully trying to keep step with someone. Occasionally he threw a hunted, conciliating look over his shoulder. Sometimes he started off in a spasmodic trot, and then pulled up as if it were no use to struggle, and tried to keep step again. He meant to pass me with a nod, but I stepped in front of him and took his hand. He looked round, started, stared across the square, and then said:
“Excuse me for not having introduced you to Hopkins. Don’t think it strange of him to make off like that. He’s a student, you see, very retiring and preoccupied.”
“Hopkins!”
“Yes, there he goes—that man with a pronounced stoop, a Norfolk jacket, and a soft hat.”
The square was absolutely empty except for Orchard and me. There was no man with a stoop and a Norfolk jacket anywhere in sight; there never had been. Orchard, with his halting, timid walk, had crossed the square alone, had come out of his own doorway alone. Absolutely alone. I hadwatched him. I had never taken my eyes off him, from first to last. I took his arm.
“Come over to No. 2 and see Harrowsmith,” I entreated. “You don’t look well. He’ll give you a tonic. Perhaps you’re smoking too much—don’t believe in a pipe myself. There isn’t half so much harm in a mild cigarette.”
The square was empty, empty. It was a shock to me. It came so suddenly, it was utterly unexpected—the fact that Hopkins was a mere myth. There possibly was a Hopkins, that absent man, reputed to be abroad, whose name had been painted up on the right-hand set, who had, so I’d heard, been in the habit of sending regularly every quarter day the rent for his empty rooms. But Orchard’s Hopkins—the man who played the violin, who was a crank on early Italian art—simply didn’t exist. It was then I remembered that when Orchard had said casually, “There’s his violin,” I had not noticed one, that I had never heard a violin, or a strange voice, or a second pair of feet in the set immediately above my own. I remembered, too, that when Orchard had said, with annoyance, “Hopkinsis an untidy chap; he leaves his things about,” the room had been in perfect order. I had never seen the collection of books on Italian art—the man was a delusion, the product of an excited brain. Orchard was in a bad way. I repeated, “Come up to No. 2 and see Harrowsmith.”
He dragged his arm away, gave another keen look across the square, and said impatiently:
“I shall do nothing of the sort. Don’t believe in doctors. When I’m hard up for a chronic disease I’ll consult one, not before. Hundreds of men have been killed by going to a specialist or by trying to get their lives insured. The specialist shakes his head, the insurance doctor looks grave, and you’re done. No! It’s a preliminary to going to the undertaker.”
This had been one of his many eccentricities in the old extravagant days. I simply said soothingly:
“But you don’t go to the undertaker. Someone else has to go—when the time comes. So the bottom’s knocked out of your argument. Come on.”
He twitched himself away, quite petulantly, like a child, and said:
“I’m off to the country for the day; that will do me more good than doctors’ stuff. I shall take train from Baker Street and get down to the valley of the Chess.”
I was out late that night. When I came home I noticed a light in Orchard’s window. So he was back! I decided not to go up to him. I was half undressed when I heard his oak slam violently, heard heavy, hurried feet coming downstairs. They seemed to come, those feet, half a flight at a time. I knew at once that something was up. My doors were open in a moment. Orchard came toppling into my passage, shutting the oak behind him.
“I’ve murdered him,” he said. “My God! Murdered him. Hopkins!”
“Keep cool. It’s all a delusion. There isn’t any Hopkins. Your nerves are unstrung——”
“No Hopkins!” the poor fellow interrupted, with a derisive laugh. “You shall hear all about it. No Hopkins! Haven’t I lived with him? Hasn’t he been tempting me to every devilry? It was Hopkins who made me steal the picture, thebook, the bicycle money; he gave me the bad sovereign for Mackary, he’s got a bag full. The man was bothering me. I made a mistake at first to pay him anything on account—you lose their respect directly you make a cash payment. Hopkins! And he was egging me on to—what do you think? To murder you, old man. To murder you, because you’ve got Rogers’ “Italy,” with plates after Turner, and he wanted it. The very word Italy is enough for him.”
This was startling. I had reason to be grateful that I had pricked the Hopkins bubble in time. Orchard continued, dropping his voice and looking up now and then at the ceiling, and putting his head aside in a listening attitude:
“I dodged him this morning. I went off to Chesham alone, meaning to think the thing out quietly. I’d made up my mind to emigrate, if I could raise the passage money without his suspecting it. And then—well, I might have known—there were steps behind me; his face over my shoulder. He said,—he knows my very thoughts,—
“‘Emigration would be the worst thing in theworld for us, dear boy. They want muscles, not art, in a new country.’
“It was more than I could stand. I shoved him into the Chess when he was off his guard. It gave me positive honest enjoyment to see the water eddying over him.”
I took his hand and shook it heartily.
“Shoved him into the Chess! You are sure he sank? It is the best bit of news I’ve heard for a long time. The fellow was a bad lot evidently—what is worse, he was a confounded nuisance. You haven’t been the same man since he shared your rooms.”
I thought it wiser, just at the moment, not to irritate and excite him by again disputing Hopkins. It was really a remarkable business. The delusion was so perfect, so realistic. From the moment Orchard complained that he could hear Hopkins taking off his boots through the wall, I had never doubted the man’s existence—no one had doubted. Yet it was all a delusion. There was no Hopkins. Consequently, Orchard had not cheated at nap, had not betrayed Mackary by a bad sovereign, had notstolen the book with the fine plates nor the picture that he believed to be a Simms, had not spent his nephew’s ten pounds. But he might have murdered me if the delusion had gone on long enough. Hopkins! Whiffin! I began to wonder whether Whiffin really existed or whether he also was a myth. It did not matter much. Orchard said tremulously:
“You haven’t heard the worst. I knocked him over into the Chess. I walked into Chesham and had a feed—never enjoyed anything so much in my life, never felt so free and hopeful. I got back to the Inn about ten. As I crossed the square I saw a light move across my window. It struck me as rather odd, but then I remembered that Mrs. Neaves had told me she was coming back to fetch her apron, or a bundle of newspapers she was going to sell at the butcher’s, I forget which. It does not matter—nothing matters. I went upstairs. I let myself in with the latchkey. The passage was dark, but there was a steady light under the sitting-room door. No sound. Only the steady yellow light. I went in. As I live, he was sitting there. Hopkins! the manI had drowned. I staggered to the first chair and sat like a fool, staring at him. He was cutting a portrait out of a ragged pamphlet he bought yesterday at the shop near Tottenham Court Road; he’s making an illustrated copy of some book or the other. I forget the title; I forget everything. When he had done he turned round deliberately and looked at me. He didn’t seem annoyed in the least. He actually didn’t seem conscious of that dip in the Chess. I wanted to ask him how he got out, but I couldn’t, to save my soul, speak one word. He was sitting there calmly cutting pictures out of a book. The man I had drowned! I saw him drown. I took devilish good care not to leave the river until I was sure. Yet there he sat. He said:
“‘Which train did you come back by? I took the 8.05.’
“I couldn’t bear it any more. I came down to you. What am I to do? How am I to get rid of him? You see, I am absolutely in his power. He owns me. He could hang me if he liked.”
“I’ll come up and have a talk with him.”
We went up to his set together. The sitting room was perfectly dark.
“I expect he’s gone to bed,” said Orchard.
We looked into the bedroom. It was the only bedroom, but Orchard had put up a second bed, a camp. The sheets on it were dingy, but absolutely unruffled. The bed had never been slept in. He had provided a second washstand—one of those skeleton, brightly painted metal things. It was covered with dust.
“He’s gone out,” I said encouragingly. “You get to bed and I’ll sit up and wait for him to come back.”
Orchard undressed as docilely as a child, and stretched himself with a groan of fatigue beneath the sheets. His eyes were wide open—on the empty camp bedstead with the smoothly turned down sheet and the gayly striped blanket which served as a quilt.
“You’d better go back to your own place, old man,” he said suddenly. “I shall be all right. Head’s been a bit queer, but a sleep will make me all right. I’m very sleepy. It would bother me toknow you were waiting, and there is no necessity. Good-night.”
His eyes closed drowsily, then opened, and fixed themselves on that empty bed.
“I want you to go,” he said more positively. “I shan’t get to sleep until you do.”
I went. I thought that he would sleep, and after a good night’s rest he would be reasonable. I’d take him to the doctor in the morning. I slept myself. It was past nine next morning when I woke. There was an envelope in the letter box. It was from Orchard. He inclosed the key of his set, and a little note in pencil. So far as I can remember, this is pretty much how it ran:
“Not a bit of good, old fellow. Hopkins won’t leave me alone. He was in bed all the time—his own bed, under the window. I wonder you didn’t see him. He looked hard at me, and I knew he meant me to send you away. Not a bit of good trying to resist a man like that—a fellow who won’t drown! He’s making me hang myself; says he’s a firm believer in capital punishment. I murdered him, and I must swing for it. You’ll find me, ifhe leaves me alone, behind the kitchen door. I’m going to bring this note down, with the key, and put it in your letter box. Hope Hopkins won’t get it. I should like you to know the truth. Suicide is vulgar—hanging the most popular form of self-effacement. I dislike popularity, as you know. Hopkins reassures me; he says it’s only justice. He’s reading every word I write. Sell the sticks—if he’ll let you—and square up Mackary. Poor Miss M——, she was a little sweet on me. Clever girl! Wasted on a ‘good family trade.’”
That was all. I know that the reference to Miss Mackary came last. She’s still at the shop in Bernard Street; you must come and have a couple of Queen Charlotte cakes.
I went up. He was hanging, as he said he would be, behind the kitchen door. The door is half glass. As I pushed it back. I saw him gently swinging. You won’t believe it—I’m not sure that I believe it myself—but I’ll swear that as I put the key in the outer door I heard the long, wailing cry of a violin.
*****
A good year afterward I was dining with thePrays at Kensington. There was another man there—a tiresome fool. The second Mrs. Pray has a knack of collecting stupid people—the sort of stupid people who are small somebodies in their particular line. This man had been abroad collecting rare orchids. His name was Hopkins. It is such a common name that, although I remembered poor Orchard at once, I never thought of asking him if he knew the Inn. Still, I brought the conversation round to it. After dinner, when Mrs. Pray had left us, I said to Pray:
“There is a man called Jackson in your old set. And Kinsman’s gone—to the bad some say.”
Hopkins pricked up his ears.
“You are talking of the Inn,” he said, and mentioned my number. “Odd thing! I have a set in that very house. Top floor, right-hand side as you go up the stairs. Of course you’ve seen my name—Hopkins.”
I could only look at him and nod my head. He filled his glass and carefully cut the end of a cigar.
He was the most commonplace, prosperous-looking man you can possibly imagine. I thought ofOrchard’s Hopkins—“Decided stoop, Norfolk jacket, and soft hat.” This man’s shoulders were well squared back and ingeniously padded by his tailor. He was the sort of man who would never wear a Norfolk jacket in town; a man who would go to spend Sunday in the country in a black diagonal coat, and take his top hat with him in case of emergency. I looked at him, looked into his dull, bulging eyes. Eyes without depth, without secrets, without soul—just eyes! hard, glassy things put for purely practical purposes into his head! It was clearly superfluous to ask him if he took an interest in Italian art or played the violin.
“Perhaps you can explain,” he continued. “I went to the Inn the week before last. They’ve painted my name out on the door of the right-hand set and stuck it on the left-hand set with another man’s. I took his name—wait a moment.”
He brought out a fat notebook—he was the kind of accurate dullard who would be sure to take notes.
“D. B. ORCHARD. That’s it. Now, who is he?Icouldn’t find out. I went and beat up the man who does most of the painting, and he didn’tknow. It was a piece of confounded impudence. It may have done me some injury—I use the place as a business address. If it was a practical joke, then it was a very foolish one, and in precious bad taste.”
He began to look swollen and angry; looked at me as if he half suspected that I’d a hand in it. No doubt I looked guilty.
“Who is D. B. Orchard?” he persisted, in the puffy, thick-throated way of the pompous man. “How is one to get at the fellow? I hammered at the door for the best part of half an hour. D. B. Orchard!” He laughed ironically. “I’d teach him not to play stupid jokes on me. I’d have him understand, sir, that Geoffrey Hopkins is not a man to be played with.”
Geoffrey Hopkins! I felt my very lips grow white. I must have looked like some foolish, anæmic girl.
“How is one to get at him? I might claim damages.” He brought his broad, hairy fist down vigorously on the shining table. Pray, looking from one to the other—my quivering countenanceand the inflamed features of the man Hopkins—was evidently uncomfortable.
I looked at that man. Geoffrey Hopkins! I could have taken that flabby body in my grip and shaken it for all that it had made poor Orchard suffer. And yet!Wasthis the man? Instinct told me, common sense told me, that it was not.
“D. B. Orchard is dead,” I said curtly at last; then, with a savage laugh and a terror-stricken glance at the coarse face, added, “You can’t get at him. He’s out of your reach, poor devil, at last.”
I didn’t know; I don’t know, now—how can one be sure! Of course he wasn’t Orchard’s Hopkins. But! What an affair!
Tell him? No. I saw him look at me with disgust and suspicion—no doubt he thought I was a little drunk. No doubt he went away and told his friends that I wasn’t quite a gentleman. That sort of man talks like that.
When we were alone I told the whole story to Pray. But he, with a pathetic droop of his mouth and a mystic flicker in eyes that were hard with success, said—glancing at the door—that such subjectsdidn’t interest him. He hated to dabble on the edge of the infinite—he’d had enough. He seemed to sigh as he lighted his pipe.
I haven’t seen Hopkins since. If ever I see him again I shan’t tell him—he’s too commonplace.
THE END.