“It was fully five minutes before he regained his self-control, and he did this with an effort which was in itself dreadful to contemplate—so severe was the struggle. He explained to me in a voice which faltered and trembled with the shock that he had received, that he had had very bad news—that a large sum of money which was absolutely necessary to the carrying out of his projects had been embezzled by some unscrupulous person, that he did not know what he should do. He fell back into his chair; in a few minutes he had become an old man.
“He did not seem upset, or even astonished, when, later in the day, a telegram announced that he had failed in the aim of his life—that a stranger was to bear rule in his beloved Lupton. He murmured something to the effect that it was no matter now. He never held up his head again.”
This note is an extract from George Horbury: A Memoir. It was written by Dr. Wood for the use of a few friends and privately printed in a small edition of a hundred and fifty copies. The author felt, as he explains in his brief Foreword, that by restricting the sale to those who either knew Horbury or were especially interested in his work, he was enabled to dwell somewhat intimately on matters which could hardly have been treated in a book meant for the general public.
The extract that has been made from this book is interesting on two points. It shows that Horbury was quite unaware of what had been going on for four years before Chesson’s resignation and that he had entirely misinterpreted the few and faint omens which had been offered him. He was preparing to break a sulky sentinel or two when all the ground of his fortalice was a very network of loaded mines! The other point is still more curious. It will be seen from Wood’s story that the terrific effect that he describes was produced by a letter, received some hours before the news of the Trustees’ decision arrived by telegram. “Later in the day” is the phrase in the Memoir; as a matter of fact, the final deliberation of the Lupton Trustees, held at Marshall’s Hotel in Albemarle Street, began at eleven-thirty and was not over till one-forty-five. It is not likely that the result could have reached the Old Grange before two-fifteen; whereas the letter found in the hall must have been read by Horbury before ten o’clock. The invariable breakfast hour at the Old Grange was eight o’clock.
C. L. Wood says: “I rejoined him in the course of an hour,” and the letter was brought in “a few minutes later.” Afterwards, when the fatal telegram arrived, the Memoir notes that the unfortunate man was not “even astonished.” It seems to follow almost necessarily from these facts that Horbury learnt the story of his ruin from the letter, for it has been ascertained that the High Usher’s account of the contents of the letter was false from beginning to end. Horbury’s most excellent and sagacious investments were all in the impeccable hands of “Witham’s” (Messrs. Witham, Venables, Davenport and Witham), of Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, who do not include embezzlement in their theory and practice of the law; and, as a matter of fact, the nephew, Charles Horbury, came into a very handsome fortune on the death of his uncle—eighty thousand pounds in personality, with the Old Grange and some valuable ground rents in the new part of Lupton. It is as certain as anything can be that George Horbury never lost a penny by embezzlement or, indeed, in any other way.
One may surmise, then, the real contents of that terrible letter. In general, that is, for it is impossible to conjecture whether the writer told the whole story; one does not know, for example, whether Meyrick’s name was mentioned or not: whether there was anything which carried the reader’s mind to that dark evening in November when he beat the white-faced boy with such savage cruelty. But from Dr. Wood’s description of the wretched man’s appearance one understands how utterly unexpected was the crushing blow that had fallen upon him. It was a lightning flash from the sky at its bluest, and before that sudden and awful blast his whole life fell into deadly and evil ruin.
“He never held up his head again.” He never lived again, one may say, unless a ceaseless wheel of anguish and anger and bitter and unavailing and furious regret can be called life. It was not a man, but a shell, full of gall and fire, that went to Wareham; but probably he was not the first of the Klippoth to be made a Canon.
As we have no means of knowing exactly what or how much that letter told him, one is not in a position to say whether he recognised the singularity—one might almost say, the eccentricity—with which his punishment was stage-managed. Nec deus intersit certainly; but a principle may be pushed too far, and a critic might point out that, putting avenging deities in their machines on one side, it was rather going to the other extreme to bring about the Great Catastrophe by means of bad
