The cynical and unblushing baseness of Rupert Alexander Bashmead had
formed a subject of conversation among his friends and acquaintances
from his eighth birthday onwards. At school his masters, drawing gloomy
conclusions from the ingenious system of cribs for which the name of
Bashmead is still a household word at St. Asterisk’s, were wont to
observe that he would come to a bad end. They gave him to understand
that if—by some miscarriage of justice—his sentence were to be
commuted to penal servitude for life, they would be wounded and
disappointed. At College it was an accepted axiom in his set that if
there was only one comfortable chair in a room, Bashmead got it. In
fact, he was Bashmead. There is no other word.
Among the friends he made at College—for even a man of his hideous
moral blackness makes friends—was one James Prendergast. To sum up
James’s salient points, he was six-foot-two in height, frivolous in
disposition, and boasted a skill amounting to genius in the art of
tossing for drinks. He had a theory that a man who wishes to leave the
world a better place for his presence in it should choose a walk in
life, and not rest until he has made himself pre-eminent in it. James’s
walk in life was tossing for drinks.
It did not escape the notice of his acquaintances that Rupert Alexander
Bashmead was at considerable pains to cultivate James Prendergast. To
account for this phenomenon, they were divided into two schools of
thought. His enemies said, in their malicious way, that they supposed he
must like James. His friends generously ridiculed the idea. It was
absurd, they argued, to suppose that he would make a friend of a man
unless he hoped to get something out of him. He was trying to borrow
money from James—that was it.
But they were wrong, and for this reason—James had no money. If he
had any, we have every reason to suppose that Rupert would have
endeavoured to borrow it but as he had none another explanation becomes
necessary. Nor is it far to seek. James had a sister, Muriel. There was
not much of her, but what there was was charming. Brown hair and grey
eyes. Some people said she was clever. Her friends said it was a pity,
but she was not nearly so clever as she imagined herself to be.
It was shortly after his introduction to her that Rupert discovered,
with no small astonishment, that there was someone in the world whom he
cared for more than himself. Matters speedily reached such a pitch that,
after carefully diagnosing his symptoms, he came to the conclusion that
he was madly in love. At the time at which this story opens he had
reached the last stage, where the patient habitually steals small
articles, such as gloves and handkerchiefs, from the Object; treasures
them simply because she has touched them, and resolves to lead a better
life.
It was, therefore, with immense disgust that he found that he had a
rival, a person of such innate nobility of character that, though his
name was George Jobson, he was not ashamed of it. Also he wore a made-up
tie, and was not ashamed of that either. Moral worth could go no
further.
Muriel seemed to like his surety. Nay, to judge by appearances, she
preferred it to that of Rupert Alexander Bashmead. Jobson’s strong suit
was literature. Under the pseudonym of “Theodore Dalrymple” he had once
had a short poem published in a magazine. It was not so much the fact
that he had received two-and-eightpence for this effort that appealed to Muriel. For the sordid gains of the pen she had little sympathy. It was the fame that won her respect. She, too, trod the thorny paths of
Literature. One of her stories, “The Love of Gabriel Undershaw” had been refused by some of the best periodicals in London. This did not make
her arrogant, but it gave her a certain feeling of superiority over
those of more merely mortal clay, and on the strength of it she had
called Rupert Alexander Bashmead—much to the delight of Jobson, who
had been present at the outrage—vapid and irreflective, and had
scouted the notion that he possessed a soul. And what was left of Rupert
had retired in bad order to his lonely rooms. While he was sitting
there, chewing a pipe and revolving thoughts of breaking into feverish
verse on his own account, James appeared.
“You seem mouldy,” was James’s didactic utterance. “I’ve got something here that’ll cheer you up.”
“Bet it won’t,” said Rupert, with gloom.
“I bet it does. It nearly killed me. I thought I should have broken
something internally. It’s a story of my sister’s. I found it in the
drawing-room. Are you ready?”
Rupert had never been privileged to hear anything from Muriel’s pen before.
“I didn’t know your sister wrote comic things,” he said.
“Nor does she mean to,” replied James briefly. “Now then.”
And, having announced the title, “Stolen Lips,” he embarked upon the story.
For the first two paragraphs the gloom of his listener’s countenance
remained unshaken. At the fourth his features relaxed. At the seventh he
gulped. And, by the time the middle of the tale was reached, he was on
the floor biting the carpet.
“More, more!” moaned the stricken Rupert as his friend finished. “Read it again.”
He read it again.
And this is where the peculiar baseness of Rupert Alexander Bashmead
begins to rear its serpent head. I find the ink on my pen growing white
with horror as I write of that scoundrel’s immoral doings. Briefly, his
shameful conduct was this. He egged on his accomplice, the man
Prendergast, to read “Stolen Lips” to him until its first freshness,
and, so to speak, its suddenness, had worn off, and he could hear it
administered to him without any violent upheaval. Then he put into
effect the inconceivably scandalous plot which his disgraceful mind had
formed. He called upon Miss Muriel Prendergast at a time when he knew
that George Jobson would be there, and, by preconcerted arrangement,
James, his misguided tool, entered the room.
“Oh, I say,” remarked James, extending a bundle of manuscript, “I’ve found that story you lost, Muriel.”
“Oh, I am glad!” said Muriel, clutching the recovered treasure.
“I wish,” observed the snake, Bashmead, “that you would read it to us.”
“Oh, please do!” cooed the unsuspecting Jobson.
“If you would really like it,” said Muriel.
“Oh, we should,” murmured Jobson.
“It is called,” said Muriel, “‘Stolen Lips.’”
James darted from the room, and she began to read.
“If,” said the unspeakable Bashmead, severely, three minutes later, “you
cannot behave like a gentleman, Mr. Jobson, wouldn’t it be as well if
you went?”
“Good-bye, Mr. Jobson,” said Muriel. Her manner would have been noticeably chilly in a refrigerator. Jobson left.
“A man,” said Bashmead, judicially, “who could find anything to laugh at
in a beautiful story like ‘Stolen Lips’ is capable of anything.”
“Yes, isn’t he?” said Muriel.
“He is outside the pale; unworthy to associate with his fellow-man. A
fit companion for the brutes that perish. In fine, a worm!”
“Yes, isn’t he?” said Muriel.
