Fancies and Goodnights
Page 46
«These things happen,»said Humphrey.
«It's your fault,» she said. «Not really yours, perhaps, but it was that horrible stuff you gave us. Humphrey, I'm the lowest, the most despicable rat; I'm such a hypocrite and traitor as you can't ever imagine.»
«I very much doubt it,» said Humphrey. «I suppose this means you drank the stuff.»
«Yes, behind his back,»
«And what did he say when you told him?»
«I haven't told him, Humphrey. I wouldn't dare. No. I filled the thing up with water and put some quinine in it, and …»
«Tell me why you put quinine in it.»
«To give it that bitter taste.»
«I see. Go on.»
«Oh, I felt so horrible afterwards. I can't tell you how awful I felt. I tried, I tried so hard to love him more than ever to make up for it. But you can't make up for a thing like that. Besides …»
«Yes?»
«Oh, it just ruined everything, in all sorts of ways. I suppose I've been watching him — you can't help watching a person who's aging in front of your eyes. And when you watch anyone like that you see all sorts of things wrong with them. And I know he's felt it because he … well, he hasn't been very nice lately. But it's my fault, because I don't love him any more. Maybe I never did.» With that she began to weep, which showed a very proper feeling. «Don't tell me,» said Humphrey, «that you don't want to be young forever.»
«Not if I can't ever love anyone again.»
«There's always yourself, you know.»
«It's cruel of you to say that. It's cruel even if it's true.»
«It's lonely being like this,» said Humphrey. «But that's the price we pay for our little immortality. You, and me, and of course old Vingleberg. We're animals of a new species. There's us» — his hand swept a little circle around them —«and the rest of the world.» They sat for quite a long time in silence, alone together in this imaginary circle. The sensation was not at all unpleasant. «Of course,» added Humphrey, «I used to think we were like that for quite a different reason.»
«If it could … Oh, but I'm so worthless! I let you down. Now I've let him down.»
«The first was a mistake. It can be put right.»
«But not the second. That we can't live with.»
«Yes, I think so. You say the stuff tasted bitter? There's no mistake about that, I suppose?»
«No, oh, no, it was very bitter.»
«You see, that has far-reaching implications. I used nothing but ordinary salt in the water.»
POSSESSION OF ANGELA BRADSHAW
There was a young woman, the daughter of a retired colonel, resident in one of London's most select suburbs, and engaged to be married to Mr. Angus Fairfax, a solicitor who made more money every year. The name of this young woman was Angela Bradshaw; she wore a green sweater and had an Aberdeen terrier, and when open-toed shoes were in fashion, she wore open-toed shoes. Angus Fairfax was as ordinary as herself, and pleasant and ordinary were all the circumstances of their days.
Nevertheless, one day in September this young woman developed symptoms of a most distressing malady. She put a match to the curtains of the drawing-room, and kicked, bit, and swore like a trooper when restrained.
Everyone thought she had lost her reason, and no one was more distressed than her fiancé. A celebrated alienist was called in; he found her in a collected frame of mind. He made a number of little tests, such as are usual in these examinations, and could find none of the usual symptoms of dementia.
When he had done, however, she burst into a peal of coarse laughter, and, calling him a damned old fool, she reminded him of one or two points he had overlooked. Now these points were extremely abstruse ones, and most unlikely to be known to a young girl who had never studied psychoanalysis, or life, or anything of that sort.
The alienist was greatly shocked and surprised, but he was forced to admit that while such knowledge was most abnormal, and while the term she had applied to him was indicative of ignorance and bad taste, he did not feel that she could be certified on these grounds alone.
«But cannot she be certified for setting fire to my curtains?» asked her mother.
«Not unless I find symptoms of insanity,» said the specialist. «You can, of course, charge her with arson.»
«What? And have her go to prison?» cried her mother. «Think of the disgrace!»
«I could undertake her defence, free of charge, and doubtless get her off with a caution,» said Mr. Fairfax.
«There would still be the newspapers,» said the Colonel, shaking his head. «At the same time, it seems extraordinary that nothing can be done about it.» Saying this, he gave the eminent alienist his cheque and a look. The alienist shrugged his shoulders and departed.
Angela immediately put her feet on the table (her legs were extremely well turned) and recited a string of doggerel verses, celebrating the occasion in great detail, and casting scorn on her parents and her fiancé. These verses were very scurrilous, or I would reproduce them here.
During the next few days, she played some other tricks, all of them troublesome and undignified; above all, she rhymed away like the principal boy in a pantomime. A whole string of doctors was called in. They all said her misbehaviour was not due to insanity.
Her parents then tried a few quacks, who, powerless to certify, were also impotent to cure. In the end they went to a seedy Madame who claimed to see into the soul. «The whole thing is perfectly clear,» said this unprepossessing old woman. «Your daughter is possessed of a devil. Two guineas.»
They asked her to exorcise the intrusive fiend, but that was ten, so they said they would think the matter over, and took Angela home in a taxi.
On the way, she said to them with a smile, «If you had had the decency to ask me, I could have told you that was the trouble, all along.»
When they had finished rating her for allowing them to go to so much expense unnecessarily, they asked her how she knew.
«In the simplest way,» she said. «I see him very frequently.»
«When?» cried the Colonel.
«Where?» cried her mother.
«What is he like?» cried her fiancé.
«He is young and not at all bad-looking,» replied Angela, «and he talks most amusingly. He generally appears to me when I am alone. I am seldom alone but in my bedroom, and it is there that I see him, between eleven at night and seven in the morning.»
«What does he say?» cried her father, grasping his malacca.
«Is he black?» cried her mother.
«What does he—? How do you know it is not a she-devil?» cried her fiancé.
«But how does he appear?» asked her mother.
«Frequently I find him beside me, when I have got into bed,» said Angela, with the greatest composure in the world.
«I have always asked you to let me order a wider bed for that loom,» observed her mother to the Colonel.
«This fiend must be exorcised at once,» said Angus Fairfax, «for there is no bed wide enough to sleep three, once we are married.»
«I'm not sure that he wants to be exorcised,» said Angela. «In any case, I must ask him first.»
«Colonel Bradshaw,» said Angus Fairfax, «I hope you realize my position. In face of these revelations, and of all that lies behind them, I cannot but withdraw from the engagement.»
«A good riddance, I say,» observed the fiend, now speaking for the first time.
«Be quiet, dear,» said Angela.
Mr. Fairfax rapped on the glass, stopped the taxi, and got out
«In face of what we have just heard,» said he, «no action for breach of promise can possibly lie.»
«It is not the custom of the Bradshaws to bring actions for breach of promise,» said the Colonel. «No more shall we sue you for your share of the taxi-fare.»
The fiend, while Mr. Fairfax hastily fumbled for his money, recited a valedictory quatrain, rhyming most obscenely upon his name.
To resume our tale: they got ho
me. The Colonel immediately telephoned for the old Madame to come, regardless of cost
«I'll have this fiend out before eleven tonight, anyway, Miss,» said he to his daughter, who laughed.
The old Madame turned up, bearing a great box of powders, herbs, bones, symbols, and heaven knows what else. She had the drawing-room darkened, and the wireless disconnected from its aerial, just in case, and, as an afterthought, had the Colonel go out with a sardine to tempt a cat in from the street. «They often like to go into a cat,» she said. «I don't know why.»
Then, Angela being seated in the middle of the room, and the ornamental paper being taken out of the fireplace, because fiends very frequently like to make an exit by way of the chimney, the old woman lit a joss-stick or two, and began to mumble away for dear life.
When she had said all that was required, she set fire to a saucerful of Bengal Light. «Come forth, Asmodeus!» she cried.
«Wrong,» said the fiend, with a chuckle.
«Bother!» cried the old woman in dismay, for the flare had shown the cat eating one of the bones she had brought «That was a bone of St. Eulalia, which was worse than Keating's Powder to devils, and cost me twenty guineas,» she said. «No devil win go into that cat now, and the bone must go into the bill, and the Colonel must go into the street to fetch a fresh cat»
When everything was resettled, she began again, and, lighting a new saucerful, «Come forth, Beelzebub!» she demanded.
«Wrong again,» said the fiend, with a louder chuckle than before.
«They'll never guess, darling,» said Angela.
The old bedlam went on, at a prodigious expense of the Bengal Light, which was of a special kind. She called on Belial, Belphegor, Mahound, Radamanth, Minos, all the fiends ever heard of, and all she brought forth was taunts and laughter.
«Then who the devil are you?» cried the Colonel at last
«William Wakefield Wall,» replied the fiend.
«You might have asked that at the beginning,» said Angela quietly.
«And who, if you please, is William Wakefield Wan?» inquired her mother, with dignity. «At least dear, he is not one of those foreign fiends,» she added to the Colonel
«He is some charlatan,» said the old woman. «I have never heard of him.»
«Very few Philistines have,» rejoined the fiend, with great equanimity. «However, if there is, by any odd chance, anyone in this suburb who is familiar with the latest developments of modem poetry, I advise you to make your inquiries there.»
«Do you mean to say you're a poet?» cried the Colonel
«I am not a Poona jingler,» replied the other, «if that is what you mean by the term. Nor do I describe in saccharine doggerel such scenes as are often reproduced on coloured calendars. If, however, by the word 'poetry' you imply a certain precision, intensity, and clarity of —»
«He is a poet, Father,» said Angela, «and a very good one. He had a poem in a magazine printed in Paris. Didn't you, Will?»
«If the rascal is a poet,» cried the Colonel, «bring in a bottle of whiskey. That'll get him out, if I know the breed.»
«A typical army idea!» replied the poet. «Perhaps the only one. No, Colonel, you need not bring whiskey here, unless you need some yourself, and you may send away that old woman, at whom I do nothing but laugh. I shall come out on my own terms, or not at all»
«And your terms are —?» said the Colonel
«Permission to marry your daughter,» said the poet. «And the settlement upon her of a sum commensurate with the honour which my profession will bestow upon the family.»
«And if I refuse?» cried the outraged father.
«I am very comfortable where I am,» replied William Watt. «Angela can eat enough for two, and we are both as happy as anything. Aren't we, Angela?»
«Yes, dear,» said Angela. «Oh, don't!»
«We shall continue to have our bit of fun, of course,» added the poet.
«My dear,» said the Colonel to his wife, «I think we had better sleep on this.»
«I think it must be settled before eleven, my dear,» said Mrs. Bradshaw.
They could see no way out of it, so they had to come to an agreement. The poet at once emerged, and proved to be quite a presentable young man, though a little free in his mode of speech, and he was able to satisfy them that he came of an estimable family.
He explained that he had first seen Angela in the foyer of a theatre, during the entr'acte, and, gazing into her eyes (for he was much attracted), he had been amazed and delighted to find himself enter into possession of her. He was forced to reply in the affirmative to a certain question of Mrs. Bradshaw's, but after all young people have their own standards in these days. They were married at once, and, as he soon took to writing novels, the financial side worked out very satisfactorily, and they spent all their winters on the Riviera.
CANCEL ALL I SAID
Give the commuter Spring! Because, where the white walls are clustered close among the rocks and woods, the first daffodil is a portent most regarded; because among the companionable roofs there are more planes, more variously coloured lilac, plum and rose, for the last hoarfrost to moisten, glisten, and steam upon; because of the ice-break tinkle in the voices of children, and the appeal of their small rubbers; because of the untrustworthy lustre of the sky over Tarrytown and the east wind yet guerrilla on the plain, because of the glad heartbreaking babble at the breakfast table, and the bill beside the plate, give the commuter Spring!
Henry Sanford II, somewhat sloping about the shoulders, but dark, slim, and hollow of abdomen, clad in loosely fitting grey with a tweedy touch to it, and a well-worn tweedy touch at that, was granted his full share of this delectable season. It was the last morning in April. The wood's edge, round two sides of the garden, smoked and flashed in the stainless air, the buds were bursting, the twigs glistened, birds flickered in and out, their songs were liquid among the awakening trees. Edna's foot was on the stair. She, too, was early for breakfast
Last night she had been so tired, having come all the way from California — and little Joyce a handful all the way — that it might have been said she had not got home at all, but, having slept, was arriving now, and with this spring morning to welcome her. «After breakfast,» thought Henry, «there'll be time to walk round the garden together, before I catch the train.»
Little Joyce, earliest of the three, was out there already. Her curls floating, golden, a daffodil child, a fairy child, she ran squeaking from new planted apple to new planted pear and plum, and looked up into their frail little branches as if in hope to find blossoms there. Or, since new fruit trees have the naïve uncertain lines of a child's drawing, as if she had come back, like a kindergarten Proserpine, to add the flowers herself. As a matter of fact, being more optimistic than her father supposed, and a good deal less poetic, the child was looking for fruit.
She now ran in as Edna came down, and they seated themselves for breakfast, smiling like a family in an advertisement. There was so much news to exchange, it was like opening a tremendous mail. Edna had been visiting her parents; her father was a professor at U.C.L.A.
«He is postponing his Sabbatical year,» said Edna. «He wants to wait till the wars are all over. Maybe he'll take it the year before his retiring date. Then he'll be able really to see China.»
«Lucky old devil!» said Henry. «I wish they gave us a Sabbatical year at the museum. My God, with a morning like this, and you back, I could do with a Sabbatical day. It's a pity you were so tired last night. Damn the museum!»
«That reminds me,» said Edna. «I've a dreadful confession to make, darling.»
«Dreadful?» said Henry. «No vast expenditure, I hope. We're pretty pinched.»
«Not that sort of thing,» said she. «Perhaps it's worse. To me, at the time, it seemed just sort of super-silliness. You know how different things seem out there.»
«Why, what was it?» said Henry. «What are you driving at?»
«Joyce,» said Edna. «Is your milk all
gone? Go out in the garden, darling. Go and see if your little table and chair are still there.»
«Mummy, I want to hear what you did, that was silly.»
«You can't hear that, darling. It's not for a little girl to hear.»
«Oh, Mummy!»
«Joyce,» said Henry. «Your mother said 'go out.' Go at once, please. Right away. That's right. Now, Edna, what on earth is it?»
«Well, it was when I spent that week at the Dickinsons. There was a man there, at lunch one day …»
«Oh? Go on.»
«He was in pictures.»
«An actor?» cried Henry. «Not an actor!»
«No, not an actor. Though, after all, why not? However, he was just in one of the big companies. He seemed quite all right. Well — I know it was ridiculous of me —»
«Do go on,» said Henry.
«He saw Joyce. She was showing off a little — you know how she shows off. Anyway, he begged me to let him have a screen test made.»
«Of Joyce?» cried Henry. «Well! Well! Well! Is that all? Ha! Ha! Ha!»
«But I did. I let him. I took her down.»
«Well, after all, why not?» said Henry. «If it gave you pleasure. Of course, nothing will ever make you scrupulous, darling, about wasting people's time and money. It's just the same in shops. Did they give you a print?»
«No. They don't give you a print. I don't know why I let them do it. It was just silly. I didn't want to seem stuffy.»
«I wish you hadn't done it,» said Henry. «It's not the right thing for a child. She's self-conscious enough already. I really don't know, Edna, how you could do such a thing. One has no right to be silly, as you call it, where a child is concerned.»
He went on in this strain for some time. «You are perfectly right,» said Edna. «But you need not go on so long. I've said I was a fool, and I'm sorry. Now it's late: we shan't see the garden. You must get your tram.»