Fancies and Goodnights

by John Collier

  «What,» he muttered, «'a mere race-course cad … a worthless vulgarian … a scoundrel of the sneaking sort' … and what's this? ' … cut him off absolutely …' What?» said he, with a horrifying oath. «Would you cut me off absolutely? Two can play at that game, you old devil!»

  And he snatched up a large pair of scissors that lay on the desk, and burst into the hothouse —

  Among fish, the dory, they say, screams when it is seized upon by man; among insects, the caterpillar of the death's-head moth is capable of a still, small shriek of terror; in the vegetable world, only the mandrake could voice its agony — till now.

  ROMANCE LINGERS ADVENTURE LIVES

  There is a great deal of devilry in a bright and windy midnight in the month of March. A little naked moon rides high over Fairlawn Avenue in the heart of the Sweetholme building development. The new houses are chalk-masked by its light, except for their darkened windows, which glare broodingly, like deep-set eyes, or the sockets of eyes. There are some young almond trees, which ordinarily look as if drawn by a childish hand. Now, as the wind sets their weak branches gibbering, they seem like shamanistic scratches on the white bone of the brittle bright night.

  The wind causes a man to tuck his chin into his coat collar, to become a mere rag, curved against the wind. His bowler-hatted moon-shadow, apparently cut from a sheet of tin, scythes its way implacably through the asphalt, and seems the better man of the two, probably the real man, the genuine Mr. Watkins. Around the bend, just out of sight, comes another figure, bowler-hatted also, scythe-curved also, also chopping its way through the icy air. It might be the shadow of the shadow. It might be Death. It is, however, only Mr. Gosport.

  The carriage from which he alighted out of the midnight train was the farthest from the station barrier. Also, his shoelace came undone. There is an explanation for everything: sometimes two explanations. These two explain why Mr. Gosport was a hundred yards or so behind Mr. Wat-kins.

  Mr. Watkins, with his little grin slipped in like a scarf-pin behind his upturned lapels, observed with a stare of desolate and hopeless superiority the monotony of the houses of Fairlawn Avenue. This was the vilest ingratitude, for the uniformity was due to the fact that each was the best possible house at the figure. Watkins, however, having drunk and sung away the Saturday evening in exclusively male company, was full of blood and villainy, intolerant of caution and incapable of gratitude. He decided that on Monday he would rob the bank at which he was employed, and fly to South America, where he would set up a seraglio.

  How different were the thoughts of Mr. Gosport, as out of sight, around the bend, he sheared his way into the wind and also regarded the monotony of Fairlawn Avenue! The good Gosport fully realized that each house was the best possible at the price; he knew that each chalky bump was a vertebra in the backbone of the country; he had read that the life of the little man was as full of romance and high adventure as that of any buccaneer of old; columnists had told him that the Fairlawn Avenues of the world are its very jewels, its necklaces of simple joys and sorrows, its rosaries in which each well matched home is a pearl. The only trouble was, he had no great fondness for jewelry, and wished that he was dead. «I am unfit to appreciate the best of all possible lives in the best of all possible building developments,» said he. «Tomorrow I will put my affairs in order, and be specially nice to Milly. On Monday I will go far away, to where there are trees larger than these little almond trees, and I will hang myself upon the branch of one of them.»

  Watkins, away ahead, roller-coastered in imagination over the curves of his future seraglio. He was brought to a halt by the appearance of a dim light behind a hall door. «Here we are,» said he. He went up the little path and opened the door, and was at once received into the warmth of domesticity and greeted by the beauty of a three-piece hallway set of a pattern very popular on Fairlawn Avenue.

  In a moment, the vigorous Watkins had hung hat and coat upon the peg, switched out the hall light, and was creeping up the stairs to bed.

  Still out in the cold, still shearing with sensitive nose the arctic currents of the wind, Mr. Gosport passed the now darkened house. Four doors farther up, his watering eyes perceived a dim light behind a hall-door pane. «Here I am!» said he with a sigh.

  Upstairs in the first house, treading soft so as not to wake his sleeping wife, Watkins flung off his clothing, expanded his chest, scratched his rump, donned his pyjamas, and slipped into the bed. His wife acknowledged his entry with a muted whinny.

  Here were two human caterpillars, immobile in a cotton cocoon, awaiting the pupescence of sleep, the wings of dream.

  There is, however, a great deal of devilry at midnight on a Saturday. What was the influence that drew the lady up from sleep like Sheba's queen from glowing Africa, and reclaimed the gentleman like Solomon from the contemplation of his seraglio? Was it that which had been moribund three years, or was it something totally different? It felt like something totally different.

  Something very much the same — that is to say, something totally different — was happening at the very same time to Mr. Gosport.

  Both couples slept late on Sunday morning, and when they woke the ladies did what they had not done since honeymoon days. That is to say, they rose smiling in the darkness of the curtained rooms, and hastened downstairs to prepare a morning cup of coffee.

  Watkins, waking to full consciousness, heard the clink of the crockery below. He smiled, stretched, sniffed, expanded his chest, and with a coy smile abandoned himself to a warm flood of happiness. This, like a Gulf Stream, bore his thoughts away from South America and set the almonds all ablossoming on Fairlawn Avenue.

  Watkins descended the stairs, and entered the little kitchen. There was the steaming coffee; there was a beloved figure in a fresh and flowery wrapper, bending over the gas stove. He bestowed a jovial but appreciative pinch, and took up the newspaper.

  «How manly!» thought she.

  At the same moment Mr. Gosport was descending the stairs, and in a similar mood. To him also was accorded the scent of new-made coffee, and the sight of a sweet figure in flowered wrapper bending over the stove. He bestowed a lingering and grateful kiss just where the hair twirls in little tendrils at the back of the neck, and took up the newspaper.

  «How refined!» thought she.

  «Hey, what's this?» said Mr. Watkins, when he had sipped his coffee, and skimmed smilingly over an account of a fugitive bank clerk being arrested at Southampton. «Hey, what's this? Where is the true detective story feature in this Sunday's Telegram?»

  «That is not the Telegram,» said the lady, turning in surprise from the stove. «And you,» said she on a rising note, «And you are not my husband.»

  With that she fell to the floor, in a faint of the third intensity. «I got into the wrong house last night,» murmured Watkins. «I had better get off home.»

  He quickly assembled his clothes and left the house. On his way along the Avenue he passed Mr. Gosport, with whom he was unacquainted. Each was too busy concocting an excuse for staying in town overnight, to take any notice of the other.

  Mr. Watkins found Mrs. Watkins, and Mr. Gosport found Mrs. Gosport, highly agitated at the unaccountable absence of their husbands, and too relieved at their return to scrutinize very closely the likelihood of the excuses they made.

  They each had a nice cut of beef for their Sunday lunch, and after lunch they took a nap, while their wives looked out of the window. Their dreams were not unpleasant, and when they woke, Fairlawn Avenue no longer seemed so monotonous as to justify resort to crime or suicide. How long this cheerful mood would have lasted without reinforcement it is impossible to say. Fortunately Mrs. Gosport shortly afterwards made the acquaintance of Mrs. Watkins while seeking a strayed kitten, and the two families became the greatest of friends, and spent most of their evenings, their week ends, and their summer holidays together.

  This happy relationship altogether banished monotony from Fairlawn Avenue, and it would have persisted to thi
s day, had not a slight coolness arisen last spring owing to Mr. Gosport refusing Mr. Watkins the loan of his lawn mower.

  BIRD OF PREY

  The house they call the Engineer's house is now deserted. The new man from Baton Rouge gave it up after living less than a month in it, and built himself a two-room shack with his own money, on the very farthest corner of the company's land.

  The roof of the Engineer's house has caved in, and most of the windows are broken. Oddly enough, no birds nest in the shelter of the eaves, or take advantage of the forsaken rooms. An empty house is normally fine harborage for rats and mice and bats, but there is no squeak or rustle or scamper to disturb the quiet of this one. Only creatures utterly foreign, utterly remote from the most distant cousinhood to man, only the termite, the tarantula, and the scorpion indifferently make it their home.

  All in a few years Edna Spalding's garden has been wiped out as if it had never existed. The porch where she and Jack sat so happily in the evenings is rotten under its load of wind-blown twigs and sand. A young tree has already burst up the boards outside the living-room window, so that they fan out like the stiff fingers of someone who is afraid. In this corner there still stands a strongly made parrot's perch, the wood of which has been left untouched even by the termite and the boring beetle.

  The Spaldings brought a parrot with them when first they came. It was a sort of extra wedding present, given them at the last moment by Edna's mother. It was something from home for Edna to take into the wilds.

  The parrot was already old, and he was called Tom, and, like other parrots, he sat on his perch, and whistled and laughed and uttered his few remarks, which were often very appropriate. Edna and Jack were both very fond of him, and they were overwhelmingly fond of each other. They liked their house, and the country, and Jack's colleagues, and everything in life seemed to be delightful.

  One night they had just fallen asleep when they were awakened by a tremendous squawking and fluttering outside on the porch. «Oh, Jack!» cried Edna. «Get up! Hurry! Run! It's one of those cats from the men's camp has got hold of poor Tom!»

  Jack sprang out of bed, but caught his foot in the sheet, and landed on his elbow on the floor. Between rubbing his elbow and disentangling his foot, he wasted a good many seconds before he was up again. Then he dashed through the living-room and out upon the porch.

  All this time, which seemed an age, the squawking and fluttering increased, but as he flung open the door it ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The whole porch was bathed in the brightest moonlight, and at the farther end the perch was clearly visible, and on the floor beneath it was poor old Tom parrot, gasping amid a litter of his own feathers, and crying, «Oh! Oh! Oh!»

  At any rate he was alive. Jack looked right and left for traces of his assailant, and at once noticed the long, heavy trailers of the trumpet vine were swinging violently, although there was not a breath of wind. He went to the rail and looked out and around, but there was no sign of a cat. Of course, it was not likely there would be. Jack was more interested in the fact that the swaying vines were spread over a length of several feet, which seemed a very great deal of disturbance for a fleeing cat to make. Finally he looked up, and he thought he saw a bird — a big bird, an enormous bird — flying away. He just caught a glimpse of it as it crossed the brightness of the moon.

  He turned back and picked up old Tom. The poor parrot's chain was broken, and his heart was pounding away like mad, and still, like a creature hurt and shocked beyond all endurance, he cried, «Oh! Oh! Oh!»

  This was all the more odd, for it was seldom the old fellow came out with a new phrase, and Jack would have laughed heartily, except it sounded too pathetic. So he carefully examined the poor bird, and finding no injury beyond the loss of a handful of feathers from his neck, he replaced him on the perch, and turned to reassure Edna, who now appeared in the doorway.

  «Is he dead?» cried she.

  «No,» said Jack. «He's had a bit of shock, though. Something got hold of him.»

  «I'll bring him a piece of sugar,» said Edna. «That's what he loves. That'll make him feel better.»

  She soon brought the sugar, which Tom took in his claw, but though usually he would nibble it up with the greatest avidity, this time he turned his lack-lustre eye only once upon it, and gave a short, bitter, despairing sort of laugh, and let it fall to the ground.

  «Let him rest,» said Jack. «He has had a bad tousling.»

  «It was a cat,» said Edna. «It was one of those beastly cats the men have at the camp.»

  «Maybe,» said Jack. «On the other hand — I don't know. I thought I saw an enormous bird flying away.»

  «It couldn't be an eagle,» said Edna. «There are none ever seen here.»

  «I know,» said Jack. «Besides, they don't fly at night. Nor do the buzzards. It might have been an owl, I suppose. But —»

  «But what?» said Edna.

  «But it looked very much larger than an owl,» said Jack.

  «It was your fancy,» said Edna. «It was one of those beastly cats that did it.»

  This point was discussed very frequently during the next few days. Everybody was consulted, and everybody had an opinion. Jack might have been a little doubtful at first, for he had caught only the briefest glimpse as the creature crossed the moon, but opposition made him more certain, and the discussions sometimes got rather heated.

  «Charlie says it was all your imagination,» said Edna. «He says no owl would ever attack a parrot.»

  «How the devil does he know?» said Jack. «Besides, I said it was bigger than an owl.»

  «He says that shows you imagine things,» said Edna.

  «Perhaps he would like me to think I do,» said Jack. «Perhaps you both would.»

  «Oh, Jack!» cried Edna. She was deeply hurt, and not without reason, for it showed that Jack was still thinking of a ridiculous mistake he had made, a real mistake, of the sort that young husbands sometimes do make, when they come suddenly into a room and people are startled without any real reason for it. Charlie was young and free and easy and good-looking, and he would put his hand on your shoulder without even thinking about it, and nobody minded.

  «I should not have said that,» said Jack.

  «No, indeed you shouldn't,» said Edna, and she was right.

  The parrot said nothing at all. All these days he had been moping and ailing, and seemed to have forgotten even how to ask for sugar. He only groaned and moaned to himself, ruffled up his feathers, and every now and then shook his head in the most rueful, miserable way you can possibly imagine.

  One day, however, when Jack came home from work, Edna put her finger to her lips and beckoned him to the window. «Watch Tom,» she whispered.

  Jack peered out. There was the old bird, lugubriously climbing down from his perch and picking some dead stalks from the vine, which he carried up till he gained a corner where the balustrade ran into the wall, and added his gatherings to others that were already there. He trod round and round, twisted his stalks in and out, and, always with the same doleful expression, paid great attention to the nice disposition of a feather or two, a piece of wood, a fragment of cellophane. There was no doubt about it.

  «There's no doubt about it,» said Jack.

  «He's making a nest!» cried Edna.

  «He!» cried Jack. «He! I like that. The old impostor! The old male impersonator! She's going to lay an egg. Thomasina — that's her name from now on.»

  Thomasina it was. Two or three days later the matter was settled beyond the shadow of a doubt. There, one morning, in the ramshackle nest, was an egg.

  «I thought she was sick because of that shaking she got,» said Jack. «She was broody, that's all.»

  «It's a monstrous egg,» said Edna. «Poor birdie.»

  «What do you expect, after God knows how many years?» said Jack, laughing. «Some birds lay eggs nearly as big as themselves — the kiwi or something. Still, I must admit it's a whopper.»

  «She doesn't look well,»
said Edna.

  Indeed, the old parrot looked almost as sick as a parrot can be, which is several times sicker than any other living creature. Her eyes closed up, her head sank, and if a finger was put out to scratch her she turned her beak miserably away. However, she sat conscientiously on the prodigious egg she had laid, though every day she seemed a little feebler than before.

  «Perhaps we ought to take the egg away,» said Jack. «We could get it blown, and keep it as a memento.»

  «No,» said Edna. «Let her have it. It's all she's had in all these years.»

  Here Edna made a mistake, and she realized it a few mornings later. «Jack,» she called. «Do come. It's Tom — Thomasina, I mean. I'm afraid she's going to die.»

  «We ought to have taken the egg away,» said Jack, coming out with his mouth full of breakfast. «She's exhausted herself. It's no good, anyway. It's bound to be sterile.»

  «Look at her!» cried Edna.

  «She's done for,» said Jack, and at that moment the poor old bird keeled over and gasped her last.

  «The egg killed her,» said Jack, picking it up. «I said it would. Do you want to keep it? Oh, good Lord!» He put the egg down very quickly. «It's alive,» he said.

  «What?» said Edna. «What do you mean?»

  «It gave me a turn,» said Jack. «It's most extraordinary. It's against nature. There's a chick inside that egg, tapping.»

  «Let it out,» said Edna. «Break the shell.»

  «I was right,» said Jack. «It was a bird I saw. It must have been a stray parrot. Only it looked so big.»

  «I'm going to break the shell with a spoon,» said Edna, running to fetch one.

  «It'll be a lucky bird,» said Jack when she returned. «Born with a silver spoon in its beak, so to speak. Be careful.»