DOI article:
Noble, James Ashcroft: The phantasies of Philarete
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21806#0227
By James Ashcroft Noble 223
to Andrew Mackenzie ; it was, as he put it to himself, “rather
neat.” But it came back to him with an unexpected rebound ;
and Major Forth was not wrong when he talked about a knock-
down blow.
For such it undoubtedly was. West was not, like Mackenzie, a
thick-skinned and insensitive man. He was, on the contrary, a
bündle of nerves, and the nerves were well on the surface—an
idiosyncrasy of physique which accounted for the delicacy and
exquisiteness of sympathetic realisation that had charmed
Errington in The Phantasies of Philarete. But he was a colossal
egoist, and when his egoistic instincts were aroused, the man who
became almost sick when he heard or read a story of cruelty,
showed himself capable of a sustained and startling ruthlessness of
malignity. When the mood passed he became again his ordinary
seif—the fastidious, sensitive creature, susceptible to tortures
which a chance word of any coarser-fibred acquaintance might
inflict. Errington’s letter appealed to the quick imagination
which was his hell as well as his heaven. It made pictures for
him, and he turned from one only to find himself face to face
with another. He saw the fainting woman, the dead child, the
corpse of the man—bloody it might be, for the tormenting fiend
of fancy provided all possible accessories of horror—and as he
looked the tide of life ebbed within him.
Next morning this one ghastliness of terror was removed, but its
place was taken by a new dread. He received a copy of a suburban
news-sheet, the West London Comet, with a thick line of blue
pencilling surrounding a report headed “ Sad Suicide of a Journal-
ist.” The details he knew and those that he did not know were
all there ; and there, too, was the evidence of a man Williams—
by whom he rightly conjectured this latest torture was inflicted—
who had told the jury that Errington’s misfortunes had been due
to
to Andrew Mackenzie ; it was, as he put it to himself, “rather
neat.” But it came back to him with an unexpected rebound ;
and Major Forth was not wrong when he talked about a knock-
down blow.
For such it undoubtedly was. West was not, like Mackenzie, a
thick-skinned and insensitive man. He was, on the contrary, a
bündle of nerves, and the nerves were well on the surface—an
idiosyncrasy of physique which accounted for the delicacy and
exquisiteness of sympathetic realisation that had charmed
Errington in The Phantasies of Philarete. But he was a colossal
egoist, and when his egoistic instincts were aroused, the man who
became almost sick when he heard or read a story of cruelty,
showed himself capable of a sustained and startling ruthlessness of
malignity. When the mood passed he became again his ordinary
seif—the fastidious, sensitive creature, susceptible to tortures
which a chance word of any coarser-fibred acquaintance might
inflict. Errington’s letter appealed to the quick imagination
which was his hell as well as his heaven. It made pictures for
him, and he turned from one only to find himself face to face
with another. He saw the fainting woman, the dead child, the
corpse of the man—bloody it might be, for the tormenting fiend
of fancy provided all possible accessories of horror—and as he
looked the tide of life ebbed within him.
Next morning this one ghastliness of terror was removed, but its
place was taken by a new dread. He received a copy of a suburban
news-sheet, the West London Comet, with a thick line of blue
pencilling surrounding a report headed “ Sad Suicide of a Journal-
ist.” The details he knew and those that he did not know were
all there ; and there, too, was the evidence of a man Williams—
by whom he rightly conjectured this latest torture was inflicted—
who had told the jury that Errington’s misfortunes had been due
to