than ever. Being quite convinced that there were no such things as
discomfort or evil or disease or death, she recognised with increased
vividness that the world was an exceedingly pleasant place, and went
about all day with a brilliant smile. This smile became rather hard and
fixed when small false claims put in their appearance, as, for instance,
when a fish-bone seemingly stuck in her throat, or when, reciting the
True Statement of Being as she went upstairs, she forgot the last step
and tumbled rather heavily on to her knees. Thus, in the semblance of
choking or of agonising pain in the knee-cap, it was necessary to tie
the smile on, so to speak, lest the false claim should get a foothold.
What made the house more uncomfortable for her husband was that his
false claims were ignored also, so that if his study fire was found not
to be lit, and the room in consequence like an ice-house, instead of
sympathising with him over the carelessness of the housemaid, Jane
continued to assure him that there was no such thing as cold, though her
teeth were chattering in her head. She got into touch with other
sufferers from these cheerful delusions, who seemed to him to resemble
gargoyles with their fixed inflexible smiles, and their attitudes of
determined hilarity, and the house became a perfect Bedlam of
invincible cheerfulness, which was depressing to the last degree. He had
a moment of reviving hope when Jane woke one morning with a very
plausible claim in a wisdom-tooth, which the uninitiated would have
called a raging toothache, and which he hoped might convince her. But
learning, by telephone, from a healer that though the pain would
certainly vanish with absent treatment, it was permissible to go to a
dentist in order to save time, for mere manipulation (in other words
having the tooth out), his hopes faded again. Mrs. Eddy herself, it
appeared, had consulted a dentist in such circumstances, and Mrs. Weston
did the same, and came home, brighter than ever, having had the tooth
extracted quite painlessly under laughing-gas. The last thing she had
said to herself, so she triumphantly announced, before she went off was
that the extraction wouldn’t hurt at all, and it didn’t. The True
Statement of Being had scored one triumph the more in completely
annihilating not only the sense of pain, but commonsense also.
Now the insidiousness of fads is that they are invariably based on
something which is true and reasonable, and thus have an appeal to
reasonable persons. In this they are unlike superstitions, for
superstition is in its essence unreasonable, and Mrs. Weston would no
more have bowed to the new moon (seen not through glass) or turned her
money, than she would have been made miserable by breaking a
looking-glass. She knew perfectly well that the fact of her seeing the
new moon could not affect the prosperity of her investments, while if
that amiable satellite had any power over her money it would certainly
exercise it whether she curtsied or not. But her embrace of the
vegetarian and Christian Science faith was undoubtedly based on reason:
it was true that fleshless foods contained less uric acid than sirloin
of beef: it was true also that if she or anybody else had a slight
headache, that headache would in all probability efface itself quicker
if she occupied herself in other matters, and, instead of sitting down
to think about her headache denied it in principle by disregarding it.
But it is easily possible to stretch a reasonable proposition too far,
and make it applicable to things to which it does not apply, and it is
exactly here that the faddist begins to differ from reasonable people. A
sufficiently excruciating pain cannot be banished from the
consciousness, and it is not the slightest use asserting that it does
not exist. At this point, with regard to her wisdom-tooth, she became
momentarily reasonable again, and had it out with laughing-gas like a
sensible person. But then her mind rushed back again, like air into an
exhausted receiver, into the vacuum of faddishness, and she became
happier and more ridiculous than ever. The effect must never be denied:
the faddist while convinced of her fad is extremely cheerful, as is
natural to one who has found out and is putting in practice the secret
of ideal existence. It made poor Mr. Weston very uncomfortable, but
since one of the strongest characteristics of Christian Scientists is
their inhuman disregard of other people, she did not take any notice of
a little thing like that, and proceeded to make home unhappy with utter
callousness.
But it was not her way to attach herself for very long to one creed: she
flew, like a bee gathering honey from every flower, to suck the
sweetness out of every fad, and presently she turned her volatile mind
to the study of the unseen world that she suddenly felt to be
surrounding her. Christian Science no doubt had its basis in the unseen,
but in its application it was chiefly concerned with bodily ailments and
discomforts, and the True Statement of Being harnessed itself, so to
speak, to a congested liver or a sore throat. But now she went deeper
yet, and took the final plunge of the faddist and the credulous into the
sea of spiritualism.
Now in this highly organised city of London, if you want anything you
can always get on the track of something of the sort by a few enquiries,
and one of Mrs. Weston’s discarded vegetarians introduced her to the
celebrated medium, and general fountain-head in the matters of
table-turning, crystal-gazing, automatic writing, materialisation,
séances, planchettes and auras, the Princess Spookoffski. Nobody could
produce positive proof that she was not a Russian Princess, for Russia
is a very large place, and has probably many princesses, nor that her
companion, a small man with a chin-beard and a positive passion for
going into trances, was not a Polish refugee of high birth. This august
lady was beginning to do very good business in town, for London, ever
Athenian in its desire for some new thing, had just turned its mind to
psychical matters, and held séances with quenched lights in the
comfortable hour between tea and dinner, and had much helpful converse
with the spirits of departed dear ones, and discarnate intelligences,
that were not always remarkably intelligent.
Mrs. Weston accordingly went by appointment to the Princess’s flat in a
small street off Charing Cross Road, and was received by the Polish
refugee of high birth, who conducted her through several small rooms,
opening out of each other, to the presence of the sybil. These rooms had
a lot of muslin draped about them, and were dimly lit with small oil
lamps in front of shrines containing images or portraits hung with faded
yellow jasmine of the great spiritual guides from Moses down to Madame
Blavatsky, and a faint smell of incense and cigarettes hung about them.
In the last of these the Princess was sitting lost in profound
meditation. She wore a blue robe, serpents of yellow and probably
precious metal writhed up her arm, and she had a fat pasty face with
eyebrows so black and abundant as to be wholly incredible. Eventually
she raised her head, and with a deep sigh fixed her beady eyes on Mrs.
Weston. Then in a throaty voice she said:
‘My child, you ’ave a purple ’alo.’
This was very gratifying, especially when the Princess explained that
only the most elect souls have purple halos, and the man with the
chin-beard, whom the Princess called Gabriel dear, said that the moment
he touched Mrs. Weston’s hand he knew she had power. Thereupon the
Princess’s fingers began to twitch violently, and Gabriel dear,
explaining that Raschia, the spirit of an ancient Egyptian priestess,
possessed her, brought a writing-pad and a pencil, and the Princess,
with Raschia to guide her, dashed off several pages of automatic script.
This was written in curious broken English, and the Princess gaily
explained that darling Raschia was not very good at English yet, for she
was only learning. But the message was quite intelligible, and clearly
stated that this new little friend, Mrs. Weston, was a being of the
brightest psychical gifts, which must instantly be cultivated. It ended
‘Ta, ta, darlings. Raschia must fly away. God bless you all.’
It was not to be wondered at that after so cordial a welcome, Mrs.
Weston joined Princess Spookoffski’s circle, and went there again next
day for a regular séance, price two guineas a head. There were four
other persons beside the Princess and Gabriel and they all had purple
halos, for the Princess was so great an aristocrat in the spiritual
world (as well as being a Princess on the mortal plane) that she only
‘took’ purple halos. The room swam with incense, a small musical-box was
placed in the middle of the table, and hardly had the lights been put
out and the circle made, when Gabriel, who was to be the medium, went
off into a deep trance, as his stertorous breathing proved, and the
musical-box began to play ‘Lead, kindly Light.’ On which the Princess
said--
‘Ah, perhaps the dear Cardinal will come to us. Let us all sing.’
Thereupon they all began helping the Cardinal to come by joining in to
the best of their powers, with the gratifying result that before they
were half-way through the second verse, a stentorian baritone suddenly
joined in too, and that was the Cardinal singing his own hymn. He had a
quantity of wholly edifying things to say when the hymn was over, such
as ‘beyond the darkness there is light,’ and ‘beyond death there is
life,’ and ‘beyond trouble there is peace.’ Having delivered himself of
these illuminating truths, he said ‘Good-bye, Benedictine, my children,’
and left the mortal plane. Thereupon there was dead silence again,
except for Gabriel’s stertorous breathing.
A perfect tattoo of raps followed, and amid peals of spiritual laughter,
Pocky announced that he was coming. Pocky was a dear naughty boy, the
Princess explained to Mrs. Weston, so full of fun, and so mischievous,
and had been, when on earth, a Hungarian violinist. Pocky’s presence was
soon announced by a shrill scream from the lady on Mrs. Weston’s right,
who said the naughty boy had given her such a slap. Then he pulled the
Princess’s hair, and a voice close to Mrs. Weston said ‘’Ullo, ’ullo,
’ere is a new friend. What a nice lady! Kiss me, ducky,’ and Mrs. Weston
distinctly felt a touch on her neck below her ear. Then after another
bastinado of raps, Pocky’s face, swathed in white muslin and faintly
luminous, appeared above the middle of the table. They had had lovely
music that day, he told them, ‘on the other side,’ and Pocky had played
to them. If they all said ‘please,’ he would play to them now, and after
they had all said ‘please,’ play to them he did on a violin. His tune
was faintly reminiscent of a Brahms valse, but as it was a spirit air it
could not have been that. Then with a clatter the violin descended on to
the middle of the table, and Pocky, after blowing kisses to them all,
went away in peals of happy laughter.
Thereafter Mrs. Weston became a prey to psychical things. She gazed into
the crystal she purchased from the Princess; she sat for hours, pencil
in hand, waiting for automatic script to outline itself on her virgin
paper; she took excursions into astrology; she frequented a fashionable
palmist, who gave her the most gratifying information about her future,
and assured her that marvellous happiness and success would attend her
every step in life, so long as she regularly consulted Mrs. Jones, say
once a week at seven and sixpence. The Princess and Gabriel gave a
séance in Chesterfield Street, and put her into communication with her
great-uncle, whose portrait by Lawrence happened to be hung in the hall.
The Princess had been struck with this the moment she saw it, for the
purpleness of the halo (even in the oil-picture) astonished her, and she
asked who that saint was. He had not been recognised as such while on
the earth, but no doubt he had learned much afterwards, for his remarks
at the séance that evening equalled Cardinal Newman’s for spiritual
beauty. To clinch the matter, he materialised at the next séance, and
apart from his nose, which certainly did resemble Gabriel’s, his
great-niece found that he exactly corresponded with her childish
remembrances of him.
For several months these spiritual experiences were a source of great
happiness to Mrs. Weston, but, though encouraged to persevere, she
could never see anything in her crystal except the distorted reflection
of the room, nor would Raschia do anything in the way of automatic
script except cover the paper with angled lines which resembled
fortifications. Similarly at the séances, Pocky and Uncle Robert and
Cardinal Newman did not seem to get on, but remained on their respective
levels of mischievousness and saintliness, without any further
revelations. Her attendances became less frequent and her crystal grew
dusty from disuse, while she found that whether she consulted Mrs. Jones
or not, her life moved forward on a quite prosperous course. But
fortunately about this time, she encountered a disciple of the Higher
Thought, and soared away again into the bright zenith of another
enthusiasm, which still at present holds her.
She is one of the happiest freaks in all Mayfair, with never a dull or a
despondent moment. The limits of a normal lifetime are not large enough
to allow her to exhaust all the quackeries with which from time
immemorial the inquisitive sons of men have deluded and delighted
themselves, and if she lives till ninety, which is quite probable, she
will continue to find fresh outlets for her exuberant credulity. Just
now she finds that Higher Thought is much assisted by walking with bare
feet through wet grass for a quarter of an hour every morning. The only
sufficiently private grass in London is a small sooty patch in her own
back-garden. But it is grass, and it is usually wet in the early
morning, and she has her bath afterwards.
THE POISON OF ASPS
CHAPTER FOUR
[Illustration: _Poison of Asps._]
Horace Campbell has an unerring gift of smudging whatever he speaks of.
As he speaks most of the time, he manages to smudge a good deal, and in
consequence is in great demand at somewhat smudgy houses by reason of
his appropriate and amusing conversation. Every decent man would like to
kick him, and every nice woman would like to slap his fat white face,
and so his habitats are the establishments of those not so foolishly
particular. But though he lunches and dines without intermission at
other people’s houses, he is in no degree one who sings for his dinner,
for he has a quite distinct career of his own, and spends his mornings
earning not daily bread only, but truffles and asparagus and all the
more expensive foods, by teaching other people to sing. His knowledge of
voice-production is quite unrivalled, and he could probably, if he
chose, turn a corn-crake into a contralto. The enormous fees that he
charges thus enable him to compress into three hours the period of his
working day, and during that time he is the father and mother of most of
the beautiful noises that next year will be heard rising from human
throats at concerts and opera-houses. Then, his business being over and
his pocket fat, he puts on his black morning coat, and his cloth-topped
shoes, his grey silk tie with the pearl tie-pin, and goes forth to cause
himself as well as his pocket to grow fat, and makes a music of his own.
Now his thesis, his working hypothesis, the basis of his conversation,
is this. There are always several possible causes which may account for
all that happens in the busy little world of London, and in discussing
such happenings, he invariably assumes the smudgiest and more scandalous
cause. A few instances will make this clear.
Example (1): John Smith is engaged to Eliza Jones.
Possible causes:
(i.) John Smith loves Eliza Jones and Eliza Jones loves John Smith.
(ii.) John Smith is after Eliza Jones’s money.
(iii.) It was high time that John Smith _did_ marry Eliza Jones.
Of these possible causes Horace Campbell leaves cause (i.) out of the
question as not worth consideration. Cause (ii.) may account for it, but
he invariably prefers cause (iii.).
Or again--
Example (2): Mrs. Snookes went to the opera with Mr. Snookes.
Probable causes:
(i.) Husband and wife went to the opera because they like going to the
opera.
(ii.) Mrs. Snookes has an affair with the famous tenor Signor Topnotari.
(iii.) Mr. Snookes is paid £2:2:0 a night to applaud the soprano Signora
Beeinalt.
It is idle to point out which cause Horace Campbell proceeds to discuss.
Example (3): An eminent statesman goes into the country for a week-end.
Possible causes:
(i.) The eminent statesman needs rest.
(ii.) ‘Somebody’ goes with him.
Horace Campbell’s law of causation again applies.
Here then is the postulate which lies at the root of his conversation,
his standpoint towards life. He does not bear ill-will towards those on
whose conduct he habitually places the worst conceivable motive, and he
has no political or personal objection to the eminent statesman, whom he
would be very glad to know: it is merely that a nasty thing perches on
his mind with greater facility than a nice one, and evokes greater
sympathy there. Scandalous innuendoes seem to him more amusing than
innocent interpretations, and so too, it appears, do they seem to those
at whose tables he makes himself so entertaining. His stories are
considered ‘too killing,’ whereas there is nothing very killing about
the notion that Mr. and Mrs. Snookes went to the opera because they
liked music. Also he has a perfect command of the French language, and
often for the sake of guileless butlers and footmen he tells his little
histories in French, which produces an impression of intrigue and wit in
itself. Love-affairs, the theme round which he revolves, are no doubt of
perennial human interest, but he has but little sympathy with a
love-affair founded on or culminating in marriage. It must have some
taint of the illicit to be worth his busy embroidering needle; the other
has a touch of the bourgeois about it. Suggestiveness is more to his
mind than statement, hints than assertions. To judge by his conversation
you would think that he and the world generally swam in fathomless
oceans of vice, but as far as conduct goes, he never swam a stroke. At
the utmost he took off his shoes and stockings, and paddled at the
extreme edge of that unprofitable sea. He just pruriently paddles there
with his fat white feet....
It has been said that every decent man would like to kick him, but in
justice to him it must be added that he is not nearly so unkindly
disposed towards anybody. Decent men, like such bourgeois emotions as
honest straightforward love, only bore him, and he merely yawns in their
faces. But though he has no direct malice, no desire to injure anyone by
his _petites saletés_, he has, it must be confessed, a grudge against
all those whom he considers collectively as being at the top of the
tree. He has enough brains to know that the majority of the class Mr.
and Mrs. Not-quite-in-it, who are his intimate circle, have not a
quarter of his cleverness, but what he has not brains to see is that the
very gifts of belittlement and scandal-scattering that make him such a
tremendous success with them, are exactly the gifts which prevent his
being welcomed in more desirable circles. It would be altogether beyond
the mark to hint that he is in any way under a cloud: at the most he is,
like the cuttle-fish, enveloped in an obscurity of his own making.
Though perfectly honest himself, he would certainly, if anyone remarked
that honesty was the best policy, retort that successful swindling was
at least a good second, and it is exactly that habit of mind that causes
him to be _planté là_, as he would say himself, among the
Not-quite-in-its. Humour, of which he has plenty, is no doubt the salt
of life, but all his humour has gone rancid. It is there all right, but
it has gone bad, and gives a healthy digestion aches. But flies settle
on it, and are none the worse. Though there is no direct malice in him
towards those against whom he so incessantly uses his little toy
tar-squirt, there is a distinct trait of jealousy, that one vice that is
quite barren of pleasure, for of all the commandments there is none
except the tenth the breaking of which does not bring to the
transgressor some momentary gratification. That, too, accounts in large
measure for the raptures he causes at the tables of the
Not-quite-in-its, for they, like him, yearn to be quite in it, and not
being able to manage it, applaud this dainty use of the tar-squirt
against those who are. They have plenty of money, plenty of brains,
plenty of artistic tastes, and they would certainly scream with laughter
if they were told that it was just the want of a very bourgeois quality,
namely good-nature, that bars the fulfilment of their just desires. Yet
such is the case: they are not ‘kind inside.’ They are (ever so
slightly) pleased at other people’s checks and set-backs, and herein in
the main consists their second-rateness.
Horace Campbell is perhaps the priest of this little nest of asps, and
without doubt the priestess is the amazing Mrs. Dealtry, now flaming in
the sunset of her witty discontented life. She is tall and corpulent,
with wonderful vitality and quantities of auburn hair and carmine lip
salve, and mauve scarves, and when she and Horace Campbell get together,
as they do two or three times a day, to discuss their friends, those who
die, so to speak, and are dismissed by them, are the lucky ones, for the
rest they drive with whips through the London streets, without a rag of
reputation to cover them. She, like Horace, has plenty of humour, and if
the sight of a wrinkled old woman with a painted face, and one
high-heeled foot in the grave, dealing out horrible innuendoes like a
pack of cards, does not make you feel sick, you will enjoy her
conversation very much. Years ago she started the theory that Horace was
devotedly attached to her, and for her sake committed celibacy, and
though she has changed her friends more often than she changes her
dress, she still sticks to the gratifying belief that she has wrecked
his life.
‘Horace might have done anything,’ she is accustomed to say, ‘but he
would always waste his time on me. Poor Horace! such a dear, isn’t he,
but how much aged in this last year or two. And I can’t think why
somebody doesn’t tell him to have his teeth attended to.’
Then as Horace entered the room she made a place for him on the sofa.
‘Monster, come here at once,’ she said. ‘Now what is the truth about
Lady Genge’s sudden disappearance? I am told he simply turned her out of
the house, which any decent man would have done years ago.’
‘He did,’ said Horace, ‘and she always came in again by the back door.
This time he has turned her out of the back door. On dit que “Cherchez
le valet.”’
Mrs. Dealtry gave a little scream of laughter.
‘Last time it was the girl’s music master,’ she said. ‘She will never
take servants with a character.’
‘Character for what?’ asked Horace. ‘Sobriety?’
‘She was at the opera three nights ago, but blind drunk, though you
mustn’t repeat that. I’m told she had her tiara upside down with the
points over her forehead. Alice Chignonette, as I call her, was with
her, a small horse-hair bun glued with seccotine to the back of her
head. She hadn’t got any clothes on, but was slightly distempered.’
‘She always is slightly distempered, except when she holds four aces and
four queens, and has seen the whole of her opponent’s hand so that she
knows whether to finesse or not. And is it true that the Weasel has
stopped her allowance?’
‘Yes, he gave her a coat of dyed rabbit-skins with a card _pour prendre
congé_, and a second-class ticket to Milwaukee where he first found her
on the sidewalkee. What people get into society now! Large bare
shoulders, a perpetual cold in the head and the manners of a Yahoo are a
sufficient passport. One can’t go anywhere without running into them.
Not a soul would speak to her at Milwaukee so she came to London for
whitewash.’
‘And distemper.’
‘She brought that with her. The Weasel carried it in his grip-sack.’
Horace took an enamelled cigarette-case out of his pocket and lit a
cigarette that smelt of musk.
‘I saw Lily Broomsgrove to-day,’ he said. ‘She has become slightly
broader than she is long.’
‘Her conversation always was. It consists of seven improper adjectives
and one expletive. That is why she is so popular. She can be easily
understood.’
‘She seemed to have an understanding with Pip Rippington. He was
enclosed.’
‘He ought to be. Haven’t you heard? That golf club he started, you know.
Apparently golf was a terminological inexactitude. I suppose it will all
be common property soon, so I may as well tell you.’
Mrs. Dealtry proceeded to tell them, and all the little asps hissed with
pleasure....