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Altogether, Stoner had gained a vague feeling, a curious intuition, that there was something queer, not unconnected with the visit of Cotherstone's new tenant, and when he heard, next morning, of what had befallen Kitely, all his suspicions were renewed. So much for the difficult reasons which had made him appropriate the half-sheet of foolscap. But there was a reason which was not difficult.
The curious economy in the use of a half-sheet of paper shows that some idea of that kind might have flashed through his mind, and the two delusions can coexist, but it is not common. As you must know, the delusion of vast wealth the folly of grandeurs, I believe our friends the French call it is, as a rule, persistent, to the exclusion of all others."
In my presence, my brother-in-law cited from memory a Latin passage which impressed him, concerning certain monks of ancient times, before Christ. He begged Giovanni to write it down for him. We were in the olive-grove above the villetta, seated on the grass. I immediately passed a pencil to Giovanni, and the half-sheet of paper, with the blank side uppermost.
"Do you see that?" said he. "It's the man's will!" The endorsement was plain enough My will: James Gilverthwaite. And beneath it was a date, 27-8-1904. There was a dead silence amongst the four of us my mother had been with us all the time as Mr. Lindsey unfolded the paper a thick, half-sheet of foolscap, and read what was written on it.
"I didn't know that, but I at once made up my mind it was dangerous to meddle with Fairfield if he was watched. I gave him the slip, went back to Mr. Grell, and typed out a note to you. You got it?" "Yes. I got it. Where did the paper you used come from?" Ivan's brow contracted into a frown of deep thought. "I forget no I got it from Mr. Grell. He tore off a half-sheet from a letter."
"Oh, that's awful," gasped the editor, and then the professional instinct reasserted itself, for he continued, handing the slip back: "Rush out an edition straight away, Johnson. Anything, if it's only a half-sheet get it on the streets as quick as you can there'll be plenty of people about still. If anything else comes bring it up."
His eyes had satire in them as he watched, but they had also admiration. Two or three hours after, they drew up at another siding, and Home got together his belongings. He handed them to a Bechuana boy who stood waiting for them outside on the step. Then he settled himself down again, for the engine was waiting to take water. He wrote a few words on a half-sheet and handed it to Donald.
So the name of Wilchester was familiar enough to Stoner. And now he wanted to know what what what made it so familiar to Cotherstone that Cotherstone absent-mindedly scribbled it all over a half-sheet of foolscap paper? But the figures? Had they any connexion with the word?
The poor, for whom he writes his "Practical Economy," shall not even care to read it; and he shall go down to the grave a failure and a lost thing in the eyes of men: but not in the eyes of grand God-fearing old Alison Christie, his mother, as he brings her, scrap by scrap, the proofs of their dead idol's poems, which she has prayed to be spared just to see once in print, and, when the last half-sheet is read, loses her sight for ever not in her eyes, nor in those of God who saw him, in the cold winter mornings, wearing John's clothes, to warm them for the dying man before he got up.
Pinned to the board with an old pen-nib was a half-sheet of scribbling-paper, and inscribed thereon, in what was evidently a disguised handwriting, were some verses, which were seen at once to refer to the previous afternoon's defeat. They were as follows: COLLEGE V. TOWN. Air, "Bonnie Dundee."
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