The Suicide Club (Wisehouse Classics Edition). Robert Louis Stevenson
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naturally hideous, nor one more ravaged by disease and ruinous excitements. He was no more than skin and bone, was partly paralysed, and wore spectacles of such unusual power, that his eyes appeared through the glasses greatly magnified and distorted in shape. Except the Prince and the President, he was the only person in the room who preserved the composure of ordinary life.
There was little decency among the members of the club. Some boasted of the disgraceful actions, the consequences of which had reduced them to seek refuge in death; and the others listened without disapproval. There was a tacit understanding against moral judgments; and whoever passed the club doors enjoyed already some of the immunities of the tomb. They drank to each other’s memories, and to those of notable suicides in the past. They compared and developed their different views of death—some declaring that it was no more than blackness and cessation; others full of a hope that that very night they should be scaling the stars and commencing with the mighty dead.
“To the eternal memory of Baron Trenck, the type of suicides!” cried one. “He went out of a small cell into a smaller, that he might come forth again to freedom.”
“For my part,” said a second, “I wish no more than a bandage for my eyes and cotton for my ears. Only they have no cotton thick enough in this world.”
A third was for reading the mysteries of life in a future state; and a fourth professed that he would never have joined the club, if he had not been induced to believe in Mr. Darwin.
“I could not bear,” said this remarkable suicide, “to be descended from an ape.”
Altogether, the Prince was disappointed by the bearing and conversation of the members.
“It does not seem to me,” he thought, “a matter for so much disturbance. If a man has made up his mind to kill himself, let him do it, in God’s name, like a gentleman. This flutter and big talk is out of place.”
In the meanwhile Colonel Geraldine was a prey to the blackest apprehensions; the club and its rules were still a mystery, and he looked round the room for some one who should be able to set his mind at rest. In this survey his eye lighted on the paralytic person with the strong spectacles; and seeing him so exceedingly tranquil, he besought the President, who was going in and out of the room under a pressure of business, to present him to the gentleman on the divan.
The functionary explained the needlessness of all such formalities within the club, but nevertheless presented Mr. Hammersmith to Mr. Malthus.
Mr. Malthus looked at the Colonel curiously, and then requested him to take a seat upon his right.
“You are a new-comer,” he said, “and wish information? You have come to the proper source. It is two years since I first visited this charming club.”
The Colonel breathed again. If Mr. Malthus had frequented the place for two years there could be little danger for the Prince in a single evening. But Geraldine was none the less astonished, and began to suspect a mystification.
“What!” cried he, “two years! I thought—but indeed I see I have been made the subject of a pleasantry.”
“By no means,” replied Mr. Malthus mildly. “My case is peculiar. I am not, properly speaking, a suicide at all; but, as it were, an honorary member. I rarely visit the club twice in two months. My infirmity and the kindness of the President have procured me these little immunities, for which besides I pay at an advanced rate. Even as it is my luck has been extraordinary.”
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