There were four in the Coulson family: the father, a man of fifty years, the mother, somewhere in the middle forties, a son, and a daughter, Edith, a girl of twenty-two who lived in the house with her parents. Eugene never met the son: he had completed his course at Oxford a year or two before, and had gone down to London where he was now employed. During the time Eugene lived there the son did not come home.
They were a ruined family. How that ruin had fallen on them, what it was, Eugene never knew, for no one ever spoke to him about them. But the sense of their disgrace, of a shameful inexpiable dishonour, for which there was no pardon, from which there could never be redemption, was overwhelming. In the most astonishing way Eugene found out about it right away, and yet he did not know what they had done, and no one ever spoke a word against them.
Rather, the mention of their name brought silence, and in that silence there was something merciless and final, something that belonged to the temper of the country, and that was far more terrible than any open word of scorn, contempt, or bitter judgment could have been, more savage than a million strident, whispering, or abusive tongues could be, because the silence was unarguable, irrevocable, complete, as if a great door had been shut against their lives for ever.
Everywhere Eugene went in town the people knew about them, and said nothing — saying everything — when he spoke their names. He found this final, closed, relentless silence everywhere — in tobacco, wine, and tailor shops, in book stores, food stores, haberdashery stores — wherever he bought anything and gave the clerk the address to which it was to be delivered, they responded instantly with this shut finality of silence, writing the name down gravely, sometimes saying briefly, “Oh! Coulson’s!” when he gave them the address, but more often saying nothing.
But whether they spoke or simply wrote the name down without a word, there was always this quality of instant recognition, this obdurate, contemptuous finality of silence, as if a door had been shut — a door that could never again be opened. Somehow Eugene disliked them more for this silence than if they had spoken evilly: there was in it something ugly, knowing, and triumphant that was far more evil than any slyly whispering confidence of slander, or any open vituperation of abuse, could be. It seemed somehow to come from all the vile and uncountable small maggotry of the earth, the cautious little hatreds of a million nameless ciphers, each puny, pallid, trivial in himself, but formidable because he added his tiny beetle’s ball of dung to the mountainous accumulation of ten million others of his breed.
It was uncanny how these clerk-like faces, grave and quiet, that never spoke a word, or gave a sign, or altered their expression by a jot, when Eugene gave them the address, could suddenly be alive with something secret, foul, and sly, could be more closed and secret than a door, and yet instantly reveal the naked, shameful, and iniquitous filth that welled up from some depthless source. He could not phrase it, give a name to it, or even see a certain sign that it was there, any more than he could put his hand upon a wisp of fading smoke, but he always knew when it was there, and somehow when he saw it his heart went hard and cold against the people who revealed it, and turned with warmth and strong affection towards the Coulson family.
There was, finally, among these grave clerk-like faces, one face that Eugene could never forget thereafter, a face that seemed to resume into its sly suave surfaces all of the nameless abomination of evil in the world, for which he had no name, for which there was no handle he could grasp, no familiar places or edges he could get his hands upon, which slid phantasmally, oilily, and smokily away whenever he tried to get his hands upon it. But it was to haunt his life for years in dreams of hatred, madness, and despair that found no frontal wall for their attack, no word for their vituperation, no door for the shoulder of his hate — an evil world of phantoms, shapes, and whispers that was yet as real as death, as ever-present as man’s treachery, but that slid away from him like smoke whenever he tried to meet, or curse, or strangle it.
This face was the face of a man in a tailor shop, a fitter there, and Eugene could have battered that foul face into a bloody pulp, distilled the filthy refuse of that ugly life out of the fat swelling neck and through the murderous grip of his fingers if he could only have found a cause, a logic, and a provocation for doing it. And yet he never saw the man but twice, and briefly, and there had been nothing in his suave, sly, careful speech to give offence.
Edith Coulson had sent Eugene to the tailor’s shop: he needed a suit and when he asked her where to go to have it made, she had sent him to this place because her brother had his suits made there and liked it. The fitter was a heavy shambling man in his late thirties: he had receding hair, which he brushed back flat in a thick pompadour; yellowish, somewhat bulging eyes; a coarse heavy face, loose-featured, red, and sensual; a sloping meaty jaw, and large discoloured buck-teeth which showed unpleasantly in a mouth that was always half open. It was, in fact, the mouth that gave his face its sensual, sly, and ugly look, for a loose and vulgar smile seemed constantly to hover about its thick coarse edges, to be deliberately, slyly restrained, but about to burst at any moment into an open, evil, foully sensual laugh. There was always about his mouth this ugly suggestion of a loose, corrupt, and evilly jubilant mirth, and yet he never laughed or smiled.
The man’s speech had this same quality. It was suave and courteous, but even in its most urbane assurances there was something non-committal, sly, and jeering, something that slid away from you, and was never to be grasped, a quality that was faithless, tricky and unwholesome. When Eugene came for the final fitting it was obvious that he had done as cheap and shoddy a job as he could do; the suit was vilely botched and skimped, sufficient cloth had not been put into it, and now it was too late to remedy the defect.
Yet the fitter gravely pulled the vest down till it met the trousers, tugged at the coat, and pulled the thing together where it stayed until Eugene took a breath or moved a muscle, when it would all come apart again, the collar bulging outward from the shoulder, the skimpy coat and vest crawling backward from the trousers, leaving a hiatus of shirt and belly that could not now be remedied by any means.
Then, gravely he would pull the thing together again, and in his suave, yet oily, sly, and non-committal phrases say:
“Um! Seems to fit you very well.”
Eugene was choking with exasperation, and knew that he had been done, because he had foolishly paid them half the bill already, and now knew no way out of it except to lose what he had paid and get nothing for it or take the thing and pay the balance. He was caught in a trap, but even as he jerked at the coat and vest speechlessly, seized his shirt and thrust the gaping collar in the fitter’s face, the man said smoothly:
“Um! Yes! The collar. Should think all that will be all right. Still needs a little alteration.” He made some chalk-marks on Eugene. “Should think you’ll find it fits you very well when the tailor makes the alterations.”
“When will the suit be ready?”
“Um. Should think you ought to have it by next Tuesday. Yes. I think you’ll find it ready by Tuesday.”
The sly words slid away from the boy like oil: there was nothing to pin him to or grasp him by, the yellowed eyes looked casually away and would not look at Eugene, the sensual face was suavely grave, the discoloured buck-teeth shone obscenely through the coarse loose mouth, and the suggestion of the foul loose smile was so pronounced now that it seemed that at any moment the man would have to turn away with heavy trembling shoulders and stifle ............