A SEA OF TROUBLES
Mr Meggs's mind was made up. He was going to commit suicide.
There had been moments, in the interval which had elapsed between thefirst inception of the idea and his present state of fixeddetermination, when he had wavered. In these moments he had debated,with Hamlet, the question whether it was nobler in the mind to suffer,or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. Butall that was over now. He was resolved.
Mr Meggs's point, the main plank, as it were, in his suicidal platform,was that with him it was beside the question whether or not it wasnobler to suffer in the mind. The mind hardly entered into it at all.What he had to decide was whether it was worth while putting up anylonger with the perfectly infernal pain in his stomach. For Mr Meggswas a martyr to indigestion. As he was also devoted to the pleasures ofthe table, life had become for him one long battle, in which, whateverhappened, he always got the worst of it.
He was sick of it. He looked back down the vista of the years, andfound therein no hope for the future. One after the other all thepatent medicines in creation had failed him. Smith's Supreme DigestivePellets--he had given them a more than fair trial. Blenkinsop's LiquidLife-Giver--he had drunk enough of it to float a ship. Perkins'sPremier Pain-Preventer, strongly recommended by the sword-swallowinglady at Barnum and Bailey's--he had wallowed in it. And so on down thelist. His interior organism had simply sneered at the lot of them.
'Death, where is thy sting?' thought Mr Meggs, and forthwith began tomake his preparations.
Those who have studied the matter say that the tendency to commitsuicide is greatest among those who have passed their fifty-fifth year,and that the rate is twice as great for unoccupied males as foroccupied males. Unhappy Mr Meggs, accordingly, got it, so to speak,with both barrels. He was fifty-six, and he was perhaps the mostunoccupied adult to be found in the length and breadth of the UnitedKingdom. He toiled not, neither did he spin. Twenty years before, anunexpected legacy had placed him in a position to indulge a naturaltaste for idleness to the utmost. He was at that time, as regards hisprofessional life, a clerk in a rather obscure shipping firm. Out ofoffice hours he had a mild fondness for letters, which took the form ofmeaning to read right through the hundred best books one day, butactually contenting himself with the daily paper and an occasionalmagazine.
Such was Mr Meggs at thirty-six. The necessity for working for a livingand a salary too small to permit of self-indulgence among the moreexpensive and deleterious dishes on the bill of fare had up to thattime kept his digestion within reasonable bounds. Sometimes he hadtwinges; more often he had none.
Then came the legacy, and with it Mr Meggs let himself go. He leftLondon and retired to his native village, where, with a French cook anda series of secretaries to whom he dictated at long intervalsoccasional paragraphs of a book on British Butterflies on which heimagined himself to be at work, he passed the next twenty years. Hecould afford to do himself well, and he did himself extremely well.Nobody urged him to take exercise, so he took no exercise. Nobodywarned him of the perils of lobster and welsh rabbits to a man ofsedentary habits, for it was nobody's business to warn him. On thecontrary, people rather encouraged the lobster side of his character,for he was a hospitable soul and liked to have his friends dine withhim. The result was that Nature, as is her wont, laid for him, and gothim. It seemed to Mr Meggs that he woke one morning to find himself achronic dyspeptic. That was one of the hardships of his position, tohis mind. The thing seemed to hit him suddenly out of a blue sky. Onemoment, all appeared to be peace and joy; the next, a lively andirritable wild-cat with red-hot claws seemed somehow to have introduceditself into his interior.
So Mr Meggs decided to end it.
In this crisis of his life the old methodical habits of his youthreturned to him. A man cannot be a clerk in even an obscure firm ofshippers for a great length of time without acquiring system, and MrMeggs made his preparations calmly and with a forethought worthy of abetter cause.
And so we find him, one glorious June morning, seated at his desk,ready for the end.
Outside, the sun beat down upon the orderly streets of the village.Dogs dozed in the warm dust. Men who had to work went about their toilmoistly, their minds far away in shady public-houses.
But Mr Meggs, in his study, was cool both in mind and body.
Before him, on the desk, lay six little slips of paper. They werebank-notes, and they represented, with the exception of a few pounds,his entire worldly wealth. Beside them were six letters, six envelopes,and six postage stamps. Mr Meggs surveyed them calmly.
He would not have admitted it, but he had had a lot of fun writingthose letters. The deliberation as to who should be his heirs hadoccupied him pleasantly for several days, and, indeed, had taken hismind off his internal pains at times so thoroughly that he hadfrequently surprised himself in an almost cheerful mood. Yes, he wouldhave denied it, but it had been great sport sitting in his arm-chair,thinking whom he should pick out from England's teeming millions tomake happy with his money. All sorts of schemes had passed through hismind. He had a sense of power which the mere possession of the moneyhad never given him. He began to understand why millionaires make freakwills. At one time he had toyed with the idea of selecting someone atrandom from the London Directory and bestowing on him all he had tobequeath. He had only abandoned the scheme when it occurred to him thathe himself would not be in a position to witness the recipient'sstunned delight. And what was the good of starting a thing like that,if you were not to be in at the finish?
Sentiment succeeded whimsicality. His old friends of the office--thosewere the men to benefit. What good fellows they had been! Some weredead, but he still kept intermittently in touch with half a dozen ofthem. And--an important point--he knew their present addresses.
This point was important, because Mr Meggs had decided not to leave awill, but to send the money direct to the beneficiaries. He knew whatwills were. Even in quite straightforward circumstances they often madetrouble. There had been some slight complication about his own legacytwenty years ago. Somebody had contested the will, and before the thingwas satisfactorily settled the lawyers had got away with about twentyper cent of the whole. No, no wills. If he made one, and then killedhimself, it might be upset on a plea of insanity. He knew of norelative who might consider himself entitled to the money, but therewas the chance that some remote cousin existed; and then the comradesof his youth might fail to collect after all.
He declined to run the risk. Quietly and by degrees he had sold out thestocks and shares in which his fortune was invested, and deposited themoney in his London bank. Six piles of large notes, dividing the totalinto six equal parts; six letters couched in a strain of reminiscentpathos and manly resignation; six envelopes, legibly addressed; sixpostage-stamps; and that part of his preparations was complete. Helicked the stamps and placed them on the envelopes; took the notes andinserted them in the letters; folded the letters and thrust them intothe envelopes; sealed the envelopes; and unlocking the drawer of hisdesk produced a small, black, ugly-looking bottle.
He opened the bottle and poured the contents into a medicine-glass.
It had not been without considerable thought that Mr Meggs had decidedupon the method of his suicide. The knife, the pistol, the rope--theyhad all presented their charms to him. He had further examined themerits of drowning and of leaping to destruction from a height.
There were flaws in each. Either they were painful, or else they weremessy. Mr Meggs had a tidy soul, and he revolted from the thought ofspoiling his figure, as he would most certainly do if he drownedhimself; or the carpet, as he would if he used the pistol; or thepavement--and possibly some innocent pedestrian, as must infalliblyoccur should he leap off the Monument. The knife was out of thequestion. Instinct told him that it would hurt like the very dickens.
No; poison was the thing. Easy to take, quick to work, and on the wholerather agreeable than otherwise.
Mr Meggs hid the glass behind the in
kpot and rang the bell.
'Has Miss Pillenger arrived?' he inquired of the servant.
'She has just come, sir.'
'Tell her that I am waiting for her here.'
Jane Pillenger was an institution. Her official position was that ofprivate secretary and typist to Mr Meggs. That is to say, on the rareoccasions when Mr Meggs's conscience overcame his indolence to theextent of forcing him to resume work on his British Butterflies, it wasto Miss Pillenger that he addressed the few rambling and incoherentremarks which constituted his idea of a regular hard, slogging spell ofliterary composition. When he sank back in his chair, speechless andexhausted like a Marathon runner who has started his sprint a mile ortwo too soon, it was Miss Pillenger's task to unscramble her shorthandnotes, type them neatly, and place them in their special drawer in thedesk.
Miss Pillenger was a wary spinster of austere views, uncertain age, anda deep-rooted suspicion of men--a suspicion which, to do an abused sexjustice, they had done nothing to foster. Men had always been almostcoldly correct in their dealings with Miss Pillenger. In her twentyyears of experience as a typist and secretary she had never had torefuse with scorn and indignation so much as a box of chocolates fromany of her employers. Nevertheless, she continued to be icily on herguard. The clenched fist of her dignity was always drawn back, ready toswing on the first male who dared to step beyond the bounds ofprofessional civility.
Such was Miss Pillenger. She was the last of a long line of unprotectedEnglish girlhood which had been compelled by straitened circumstancesto listen for hire to the appallingly dreary nonsense which Mr Meggshad to impart on the subject of British Butterflies. Girls had come,and girls had gone, blondes, ex-blondes, brunettes, ex-brunettes,near-blondes, near-brunettes; they had come buoyant, full of hope andlife, tempted by the lavish salary which Mr Meggs had found himselfafter a while compelled to pay; and they had dropped off, one afteranother, like exhausted bivalves, unable to endure the crushing boredomof life in the village which had given Mr Meggs to the world. For MrMeggs's home-town was no City of Pleasure. Remove the Vicar'smagic-lantern and the try-your-weight machine opposite the post office,and you practically eliminated the temptations to tread the primrosepath. The only young men in the place were silent, gaping youths, atwhom lunacy commissioners looked sharply and suspiciously when theymet. The tango was unknown, and the one-step. The only form of danceextant--and that only at the rarest intervals--was a sort of polka notunlike the movements of a slightly inebriated boxing kangaroo. MrMeggs's secretaries and typists gave the town one startled, horrifiedglance, and stampeded for London like frightened ponies.
Not so Miss Pillenger. She remained. She was a business woman, and itwas enough for her that she received a good salary. For five pounds aweek she would have undertaken a post as secretary and typist to aPolar Expedition. For six years she had been with Mr Meggs, anddoubtless she looked forward to being with him at least six years more.
Perhaps it was the pathos of this thought which touched Mr Meggs, asshe sailed, notebook in hand, through the doorway of the study. Here,he told himself, was a confiding girl, all unconscious of impendingdoom, relying on him as a daughter relies on her father. He was gladthat he had not forgotten Miss Pillenger when he was making hispreparations.
He had certainly not forgotten Miss Pillenger. On his desk beside theletters lay a little pile of notes, amounting in all to five hundredpounds--her legacy.
Miss Pillenger was always business-like. She sat down in her chair,opened her notebook, moistened her pencil, and waited expectantly forMr Meggs to clear his throat and begin work on the butterflies. She wassurprised when, instead of frowning, as was his invariable practicewhen bracing himself for composition, he bestowed upon her a sweet,slow smile.
All that was maidenly and defensive in Miss Pillenger leaped to armsunder that smile. It ran in and out among her nerve-centres. It hadbeen long in arriving, this moment of crisis, but here it undoubtedlywas at last. After twenty years an employer was going to court disasterby trying to flirt with her.
Mr Meggs went on smiling. You cannot classify smiles. Nothing lendsitself so much to a variety of interpretations as a smile. Mr Meggsthought he was smiling the sad, tender smile of a man who, knowinghimself to be on the brink of the tomb, bids farewell to a faithfulemployee. Miss Pillenger's view was that he was smiling like anabandoned old rip who ought to have been ashamed of himself.
'No, Miss Pillenger,' said Mr Meggs, 'I shall not work this morning. Ishall want you, if you will be so good, to post these six letters forme.'
Miss Pillenger took the letters. Mr Meggs surveyed her tenderly.
'Miss Pillenger, you have been with me a long time now. Six years, isit not? Six years. Well, well. I don't think I have ever made you alittle present, have I?'
'You give me a good salary.'
'Yes, but I want to give you something more. Six years is a long time.I have come to regard you with a different feeling from that which theordinary employer feels for his secretary. You and I have workedtogether for six long years. Surely I may be permitted to give you sometoken of my appreciation of your fidelity.' He took the pile of notes.'These are for you, Miss Pillenger.'
He rose and handed them to her. He eyed her for a moment with all thesentimentality of a man whose digestion has been out of order for overtwo decades. The pathos of the situation swept him away. He bent overMiss Pillenger, and kissed her on the forehead.
Smiles excepted, there is nothing so hard to classify as a kiss. MrMeggs's notion was that he kissed Miss Pillenger much as some greatgeneral, wounded unto death, might have kissed his mother, his sister,or some particularly sympathetic aunt; Miss Pillenger's view, differingsubstantially from this, may be outlined in her own words.
'Ah!' she cried, as, dealing Mr Meggs's conveniently placed jaw a blowwhich, had it landed an inch lower down, might have knocked him out,she sprang to her feet. 'How dare you! I've been waiting for this MrMeggs. I have seen it in your eye. I have expected it. Let me tell youthat I am not at all the sort of girl with whom it is safe to behavelike that. I can protect myself. I am only a working-girl--'
Mr Meggs, who had fallen back against the desk as a stricken pugilistfalls on the ropes, pulled himself together to protest.
'Miss Pillenger,' he cried, aghast, 'you misunderstand me. I had nointention--'
'Misunderstand you? Bah! I am only a working-girl--'
'Nothing was farther from my mind--'
'Indeed! Nothing was farther from your mind! You give me money, youshower your vile kisses on me, but nothing was farther from your mindthan the obvious interpretation of such behaviour!' Before coming to MrMeggs, Miss Pillenger had been secretary to an Indiana novelist. Shehad learned style from the master. 'Now that you have gone too far, youare frightened at what you have done. You well may be, Mr Meggs. I amonly a working-girl--'
'Miss Pillenger, I implore you--'
'Silence! I am only a working-girl--'
A wave of mad fury swept over Mr Meggs. The shock of the blow and stillmore of the frightful ingratitude of this horrible woman nearly madehim foam at the mouth.
'Don't keep on saying you're only a working-girl,' he bellowed. 'You'lldrive me mad. Go. Go away from me. Get out. Go anywhere, but leave mealone!'
Miss Pillenger was not entirely sorry to obey the request. Mr Meggs'ssudden fury had startled and frightened her. So long as she could endthe scene victorious, she was anxious to withdraw.
'Yes, I will go,' she said, with dignity, as she opened the door. 'Nowthat you have revealed yourself in your true colours, Mr Meggs, thishouse is no fit place for a wor--'
She caught her employer's eye, and vanished hastily.
Mr Meggs paced the room in a ferment. He had been shaken to his core bythe scene. He boiled with indignation. That his kind thoughts shouldhave been so misinterpreted--it was too much. Of all ungrateful worlds,this world was the most--
He stopped suddenly in his stride, partly because his shin had struck achair, partly becaus
e an idea had struck his mind.
Hopping madly, he added one more parallel between himself and Hamlet bysoliloquizing aloud.
'I'll be hanged if I commit suicide,' he yelled.
And as he spoke the words a curious peace fell on him, as on a man whohas awakened from a nightmare. He sat down at the desk. What an idiothe had been ever to contemplate self-destruction. What could haveinduced him to do it? By his own hand to remove himself, merely inorder that a pack of ungrateful brutes might wallow in his money--itwas the scheme of a perfect fool.
He wouldn't commit suicide. Not if he knew it. He would stick on andlaugh at them. And if he did have an occasional pain inside, what ofthat? Napoleon had them, and look at him. He would be blowed if hecommitted suicide.
With the fire of a new resolve lighting up his eyes, he turned to seizethe six letters and rifle them of their contents.
They were gone.
It took Mr Meggs perhaps thirty seconds to recollect where they hadgone to, and then it all came back to him. He had given them to thedemon Pillenger, and, if he did not overtake her and get them back, shewould mail them.
Of all the mixed thoughts which seethed in Mr Meggs's mind at thatmoment, easily the most prominent was the reflection that from hisfront door to the post office was a walk of less than five minutes.
* * * * *
Miss Pillenger walked down the sleepy street in the June sunshine,boiling, as Mr Meggs had done, with indignation. She, too, had beenshaken to the core. It was her intention to fulfil her duty by postingthe letters which had been entrusted to her, and then to quit for everthe service of one who, for six years a model employer, had at lastforgotten himself and showed his true nature.
Her meditations were interrupted by a hoarse shout in her rear; and,turning, she perceived the model employer running rapidly towards her.His face was scarlet, his eyes wild, and he wore no hat.
Miss Pillenger's mind worked swiftly. She took in the situation in aflash. Unrequited, guilty love had sapped Mr Meggs's reason, and shewas to be the victim of his fury. She had read of scores of similarcases in the newspapers. How little she had ever imagined that shewould be the heroine of one of these dramas of passion.
She looked for one brief instant up and down the street. Nobody was insight. With a loud cry she began to run.
'Stop!'
It was the fierce voice of her pursuer. Miss Pillenger increased tothird speed. As she did so, she had a vision of headlines.
'Stop!' roared Mr Meggs.
'UNREQUITED PASSION MADE THIS MAN MURDERER,' thought Miss Pillenger.
'Stop!'
'CRAZED WITH LOVE HE SLAYS BEAUTIFUL BLONDE,' flashed out in letters ofcrimson on the back of Miss Pillenger's mind.
'Stop!'
'SPURNED, HE STABS HER THRICE.'
To touch the ground at intervals of twenty yards or so--that was theideal she strove after. She addressed herself to it with all thestrength of her powerful mind.
In London, New York, Paris, and other cities where life is brisk, thespectacle of a hatless gentleman with a purple face pursuing hissecretary through the streets at a rapid gallop would, of course, haveexcited little, if any, remark. But in Mr Meggs's home-town events wereof rarer occurrence. The last milestone in the history of his nativeplace had been the visit, two years before, of Bingley's StupendousCircus, which had paraded along the main street on its way to the nexttown, while zealous members of its staff visited the back premises ofthe houses and removed all the washing from the lines. Since then deeppeace had reigned.
Gradually, therefore, as the chase warmed up, citizens of all shapesand sizes began to assemble. Miss Pillenger's screams and the generalappearance of Mr Meggs gave food for thought. Having brooded over thesituation, they decided at length to take a hand, with the result thatas Mr Meggs's grasp fell upon Miss Pillenger the grasp of several ofhis fellow-townsmen fell upon him.
'Save me!' said Miss Pillenger.
Mr Meggs pointed speechlessly to the letters, which she still graspedin her right hand. He had taken practically no exercise for twentyyears, and the pace had told upon him.
Constable Gooch, guardian of the town's welfare, tightened his hold onMr Meggs's arm, and desired explanations.
'He--he was going to murder me,' said Miss Pillenger.
'Kill him,' advised an austere bystander.
'What do you mean you were going to murder the lady?' inquiredConstable Gooch.
Mr Meggs found speech.
'I--I--I--I only wanted those letters.'
'What for?'
'They're mine.'
'You charge her with stealing 'em?'
'He gave them me to post with his own hands,' cried Miss Pillenger.
'I know I did, but I want them back.'
By this time the constable, though age had to some extent dimmed hissight, had recognized beneath the perspiration, features which, thoughthey were distorted, were nevertheless those of one whom he respectedas a leading citizen.
'Why, Mr Meggs!' he said.
This identification by one in authority calmed, if it a littledisappointed, the crowd. What it was they did not know, but, it wasapparently not a murder, and they began to drift off.
'Why don't you give Mr Meggs his letters when he asks you, ma'am?' saidthe constable.
Miss Pillenger drew herself up haughtily.
'Here are your letters, Mr Meggs, I hope we shall never meet again.'
Mr Meggs nodded. That was his view, too.
All things work together for good. The following morning Mr Meggs awokefrom a dreamless sleep with a feeling that some curious change hadtaken place in him. He was abominably stiff, and to move his limbs waspain, but down in the centre of his being there was a novel sensationof lightness. He could have declared that he was happy.
Wincing, he dragged himself out of bed and limped to the window. Hethrew it open. It was a perfect morning. A cool breeze smote his face,bringing with it pleasant scents and the soothing sound of God'screatures beginning a new day.
An astounding thought struck him.
'Why, I feel well!'
Then another.
'It must be the exercise I took yesterday. By George, I'll do itregularly.'
He drank in the air luxuriously. Inside him, the wild-cat gave him asudden claw, but it was a half-hearted effort, the effort of one whoknows that he is beaten. Mr Meggs was so absorbed in his thoughts thathe did not even notice it.
'London,' he was saying to himself. 'One of these physical cultureplaces.... Comparatively young man.... Put myself in their hands....Mild, regular exercise....'
He limped to the bathroom.
The Man with Two Left Feet, and Other Stories Page 12