increasing perplexity. Yet, wherever he went, there came that poor
relation, the Head Porter, to face him. Always big, he now looked bigger
than ever. Sir Timothy Puffe felt somehow ridiculous in his presence.
The young fellow had character, pluck, some touch of intrinsic value.
For all his failure in life, the Eternities considered him _real_. He
towered rather dreadfully in his gold braid and smart uniform--towered
in his great height all about the hall, like some giant in his own
palace. The other’s head scarcely came up to his great black belt where
the keys swung and jangled.
The Baronet went upstairs again to his room, strangely disconcerted. The
first thing he did as he left the lift was to stumble over the step. The
liftman picked him up as though he were a boy. Down the passage, now
well lighted, he went quickly, his feet almost pattering, his tread
light, and--so oddly short. His importance had gone. A voice behind each
door he passed whispered to him through the narrow crack as it
cautiously opened, “Make an effort, make an effort! Be yourself, be
real, be alive before it’s too late!” But he saw no one, and the first
thing he did on entering his room was to hide the smaller mirror by
turning it against the wall, just as he had done to the pier-glass. He
was so painfully little and insignificant now. As the externals and the
possessions dropped away one by one in his thoughts, the revelation of
the tiny little centre of activity within was horrible. He puffed
himself out in thought as of old, but there was no response. It was
degrading.
The fact was--he began to understand it now--his mind had been pursuing
possible results of his loss of title and estates to their logical
conclusion. The idea in all its brutal nakedness, of course, hardly
reached him--namely, that, without possessions, he was practically--nil!
All he grasped was that he was--_less_. Still, the notion did prey upon
him atrociously. He followed the advice of the strange housemaid and
“made an effort,” but without marked success. So empty, indeed, was his
life that, once stripped of the possessions, he would stand there as
useless and insignificant as an ownerless street dog. And the thought
appalled him. He had not even enough real interest in others to hold him
upright, and certainly not enough sufficiency of self, good or evil, to
stand alone before any tribunal. The discovery shocked him
inexpressibly. But what distressed him still more was to find a fixed
mirror in his sitting-room that he could _not_ take down, for in its
depths he saw himself shrunken and dwindled to the proportions of a....
The knock at the door and the arrival of his dinner broke the appalling
train of thought, but rather than be seen in his present diminutive
appearance--later, of course, he would surely grow again--he ran into
the bedroom. And when he came out again after the waiter’s departure he
found that his dinner shared the same abominable change. The food upon
the dishes was reduced to the minutest proportions--the toast like
children’s, the soup an egg-cupful, the tenderloin a little slice the
size of a visiting-card, and the bird not much larger than a
blackbeetle. And yet more than he could eat; more than sufficient! He
sat in the big chair positively lost, his feet dangling. Then,
mortified, frightened, and angry beyond expression, he undressed and
concealed himself beneath the sheets and blankets of his bed.
“Of course I’m going mad--that’s what it all means,” he exclaimed. “I’m
no longer of any account in the world. I could never go into my Club,
for instance, _like this_!”--and he surveyed the small outline that made
a little lump beneath the surface of the bed-clothes--“or read the
lessons having to stand upon a chair to reach the lectern.” And tears of
bleeding vanity and futile wrath mingled upon his pillow.... The
humiliation was agonising.
In the middle of which the door opened and in came the hotel valet,
bearing before him upon a silver salver what at first appeared to be
small, striped sandwiches, darkish in hue, but upon closer inspection
were seen to be several wee suits of clothes, neatly pressed and folded
for wearing. Glancing round the room and perceiving no one, the man
proceeded to put them away in the chest of drawers, soliloquising from
time to time as he did so.
“So the old buffer did go out after all!” he reflected, as he smoothed
the tiny trousers in the drawer. “’E’s nothing but a gas-bag, anyway!
Close with the coin, too--always was that!” He whistled, spat in the
grate, hunted about for a cigarette, and again found relief in speech.
My little dawg’s worth two of ’im all the time, and lots to spare. Tim’s
_real_ ...!” And other things, too, he said in similar vein. He was
utterly oblivious of Sir Timothy’s presence--serenely unconscious that
the thin, fading line beneath the sheets _was_ the very individual he
was talking about. “Even hides his cigarettes, does he? He’s right,
though. Take away what he’s got and there wouldn’t be enough left over
to stand upright at a poultry show!” And he guffawed merrily to himself.
But what brought the final horror into that vanishing Personality on the
bed was the singular fact that the valet made no remark about the absurd
and horrible size of those tiny clothes. _This, then, was how
others--even a hotel valet--saw him!_
All night long, it seemed, he lay in atrocious pain, the darkness
mercifully hiding him, though never from himself, and only towards
daylight did he pass off into a condition of unconsciousness. He must
have slept very late indeed, too, for he woke to find sunlight in the
room, and the housemaid--that tall, dignified girl who had tried to be
kind--dusting and sweeping energetically. He screamed to her, but his
voice was too feeble to make itself heard above the sweeping. The
high-pitched squeak was scarcely audible even to himself. Presently she
approached the bed and flung the sheets back. “That’s funny,” she
observed, “could’ve sworn I saw something move!” She gave a hurried
look, then went on sweeping. But in the process she had tossed his
person, now no larger than a starved mouse, out on to the carpet. He
cried aloud in his anguish, but the squeak was too faint to be audible.
“Ugh!” exclaimed the girl, jumping to one side, “there’s that ’orrid
mouse again! Dead, too, I do declare!” And then, without being aware of
the fact, she swept him up with the dust and bits of paper into her pan.
Whereupon Sir Timothy awoke with a bad start, and perceived that his
train was running somewhat uneasily into King’s Cross, and that he had
slept nearly the whole way.
V
THE SECRET
I saw him walking down the floor of the A.B.C. shop where I was
lunching. He was gazing about for a vacant seat with that vague stare of
puzzled distress he always wore when engaged in practical affairs. Then
he saw me and nodded. I pointed to the seat opposite; he sat down. There
was a crumb in his brown beard, I noticed. There had been one a year
ago, when I saw him last.
“What a long time since we met,” I said, genuinely glad to see him. He
was a most lovable fellow, though his vagueness was often perplexing to
his friends.
“Yes--er--h’mmm--let me see----”
“Just about a year,” I said.
He looked at me with an expression as though he did not see me. He was
delving in his mind for dates and proofs. His fierce eyebrows looked
exactly as though they were false--stuck on with paste--and I imagined
how puzzled he would be if one of them suddenly dropped off into his
soup. The eyes beneath, however, were soft and beaming; the whole face
was tender, kind, gentle, and when he smiled he looked thirty instead of
fifty.
“A year, is it?” he remarked, and then turned from me to the girl who
was waiting to take his order. This ordering was a terrible affair. I
marvelled at the patience of that never-to-be-tipped waitress in the
dirty black dress. He looked with confusion from me to her, from her to
the complicated bill of fare, and from this last to me again.
“Oh, have a cup of coffee and a bit of that lunch-cake,” I said with
desperation. He stared at me for a second, one eyebrow moving, the other
still as the grave. I felt an irresistible desire to laugh.
“All right,” he murmured to the girl, “coffee and a bit of that
lunch-cake.” She went off wearily. “And a pat of butter,” he whispered
after her, but looking at the wrong waitress. “And a portion of that
strawberry jam,” he added, looking at another waitress.
Then he turned to talk with me.
“Oh no,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the crowd of girls by the
counter; “_not_ the jam. I forgot I’d ordered that lunch-cake.”
Again he switched round in his chair--he always perched on the edge like
a bird--and made a great show of plunging into a long-deferred chat with
me. I knew what would come. He was always writing books and sending
them out among publishers and forgetting where they were at the moment.
“And how are _you_?” he asked. I told him.
“Writing anything these days?” I ventured boldly.
The eyebrows danced. “Well, the fact is, I’ve only just finished a
book.”
“Sent it anywhere?”
“It’s gone off, yes. Let me see--it’s gone to--er----” The coffee and
lunch-cake arrived without the pat of butter, but with two lots of
strawberry jam. “I won’t have jam, thank you. And will you bring a pat
of butter?” he muttered to the girl. Then, turning to me again--“Oh, I
really forget for the moment. It’s a good story, I think.” His novels
were, as a fact, extraordinarily good, which was the strange part of it
all.
“It’s about a woman, you see, who----” He proceeded to tell me the story
in outline. Once he got beyond the confused openings of talk the man
became interesting, but it took so long, and was so difficult to follow,
that I remembered former experiences and cut him short with a lucky
inspiration.
“Don’t spoil it for me by telling it. I shan’t enjoy it when it comes
out.”
He laughed, and both eyebrows dropped and hid his eyes. He busied
himself with the cake and butter. A second crumb went to join the first.
I thought of balls in golf bunkers, and laughed outright. For a time
the conversation flagged. I became aware of a certain air of mystery
about him. He was full of something besides the novel--something he
wanted to talk about but had probably forgotten “for the moment.” I got
the impression he was casting about in the upper confusion of his mind
for the cue.
“You’re writing something else now?” I ventured.
The question hit the bull’s-eye. Both eyebrows shot up, as though they
would vanish next minute on wires and fly up into the wings. The cake in
his hand would follow; and last of all he himself would go. The
children’s pantomime came vividly before me. Surely he was a made-up
figure on his way to rehearsal.
“I am,” he said; “but it’s a _great_ secret. I’ve got a _magnificent_
idea!”
“I promise not to tell. I’m safe as the grave. Tell me.”
He fixed his kindly, beaming eyes on my face and smiled charmingly.
“It’s a play,” he murmured, and then paused for effect, hunting about on
his plate for cake, where cake there was none.
“Another piece of that lunch-cake, please,” he said in a sudden loud
voice, addressed to the waitresses at large. “It came to me the other
day in the London Library--er--very fine idea----”
“Something really original?”
“Well, I think so, perhaps.” The cake came with a clatter of plates, but
he pushed it aside as though he had forgotten about it, and leaned
forward across the table. “I’ll tell you. Of course you won’t say
anything. I don’t want the idea to get about. There’s money in a good
play--and people do steal so, don’t they?”
I made a gesture, as much as to say, “Do I look like a man who would
repeat?” and he plunged into it with enthusiasm.
Oh! The story of that play! And those dancing eyebrows! And the bits of
the plot he forgot and went back for! And the awful, wild confusion of
names and scenes and curtains! And the way his voice rose and fell like
a sound carried to and fro by a gusty wind! And the feeling that
something was coming which would make it all clear--but which never
came!
“The woman, you see,”--all his stories began that way,--“is one of those
modern women who ... and when she dies she tells on her death-bed how
she knew all the time that Anna----”
“That’s the heroine, I think?” I asked keenly, after ten minutes’
exposition, hoping to Heaven my guess was right.
“No, no, she’s the widow, don’t you remember, of the clergyman who went
over to the Church of Rome to avoid marrying her sister--in the first
act--or didn’t I mention that?”
“You mentioned it, I think, but the explanation----”
“Oh, well, you see, the Anglican clergyman--he’s Anglican in the first
act--always suspected that Miriam had not died by her own hand, but had
been poisoned. In fact, he finds the incriminating letter in the
gas-pipe, and recognises the handwriting----”
“Oh, _he_ finds the letter?”
“Rather. _He_ finds the letter, don’t you see? and compares it with the
others, and makes up his mind who wrote it, and goes straight to Colonel
Middleton with his discovery.”
“So Middleton, of course, refuses to believe----”
“Refuses to believe that the second wife--oh, I forgot to mention that
the clergyman had married again in his own Church; married a woman who
turns out to be Anna’s--no, I mean Miriam’s--half-sister, who had been
educated abroad in a convent,--refuses to believe, you see, that _his_
wife had anything to do with it. Then Middleton has a splendid scene. He
and the clergyman have the stage to themselves. Wyndham’s the man for
Middleton, of course. Well, he declares that he has the proof--proof
that must convince everybody, and just as he waves it in the air in
comes Miriam, who is walking in her sleep, from her sick-bed. They
listen. She is talking in her sleep. By Jove, man, don’t you see it? She
is talking about the crime! She practically confesses it before their
very eyes.”
“Splendid!”
“And she never wakes up--I mean, not in that scene. She goes back to bed
and has no idea next day what she has said and done.”
“And the clergyman’s honour is saved?” I hazarded, amazed at my
rashness.
“No. _Anna_ is saved. You see, I forgot to tell you that in the second
act Miriam’s brother, Sir John, had----”
The waitress brought the little paper checks.
“Let’s go outside and finish. It’s getting frightfully stuffy here,” I
suggested desperately, picking up the bills.
We walked out together, he still talking against time with the most
terrible confusion of names and acts and scenes imaginable. He bumped
into everybody who came in his way. His beard was full of crumbs. His
eyebrows danced with excitement--I knew then positively they were
false--and his voice ran up and down the scale like a buzz-saw at work
on a tough board.
“By Jove, old man, that _is_ a play!”
He turned to me with absolute happiness in his face.
“But for Heaven’s sake, don’t let out a word of it. I must have a
copyright performance first before it’s really safe.”
“Not a word, I promise.”
“It’s a dead secret--till I’ve finished it, I mean--then I’ll come and
tell you the _dénouement_. The last curtain is simply magnificent. You
see, Middleton never hears----”
“I won’t tell a living soul,” I cried, running to catch a bus. “It’s a
secret--yours and mine!”
And the omnibus carried me away Westwards.
Meanwhile the play remains to this day a “dead secret,” known only to
the man who thinks he told it, and to the other man who knows he heard
it told.
VI
THE LEASE
The other day I came across my vague friend again. Last time it was in
an A.B.C. shop; this time it was in a bus. We always meet in humble
places.
He was vaguer than ever, fuddled and distrait; but delightfully
engaging. He had evidently not yet lunched, for he wore no crumb; but I
had a shrewd suspicion that beneath his green Alpine hat there lurked a
straw or two in his untidy hair. It would hardly have surprised me to
see him turn with his childlike smile and say, “Would you mind _very
much_ taking them out for me? You know they _do_ tickle so!”--half
mumbled, half shouted.
Instead, he tried to shake hands, and his black eyebrows danced. He
looked as loosely put together as a careless parcel. I imagined large
bits of him tumbling out.
“You’re off somewhere or other, I suppose?” he said; and the question
was so characteristic it was impossible not to laugh.
I mentioned the City.
“I’m going that way too,” he said cheerfully. He had come to the
conclusion that he could not shake hands with safety; there were too
many odds and ends about him--gloves, newspapers, half-open umbrella,
parcels. Evidently he had left the house uncertain as to where he was
going, and had brought all these things in case, like the White Knight,
he might find a use for them on the way. His overcoat was wrongly
buttoned, too, so that on one side the collar reached almost to his ear.
From the pockets protruded large envelopes, white and blue. I marvelled
again how he ever concentrated his mind enough to write plays and
novels; for in both the action was quick and dramatic; the dialogue
crisp, forcible, often witty.
“Going to the City!” I exclaimed. “_You?_” Museums, libraries,
second-hand book-shops were his usual haunts--places where he could be
vague and absent-minded without danger to anyone. I felt genuinely
curious. “Copy of some kind? Local colour for something, eh?” I laughed,
hoping to draw him out.
A considerable pause followed, during which he rearranged several of his
parcels, and his eyebrows shot up and down like two black-beetles
dancing a hornpipe.
“I’m helping a chap with his lease,” he replied suddenly, in such a very
loud voice that everybody in the bus heard and became interested.
He had this way of alternately mumbling and talking very loud--absurdly
loud; picking out unimportant words with terrific emphasis. He also had
this way of helping others. Indeed, it was difficult to meet him without
suspecting an errand of kindness--rarely mentioned, however.
“Chap with his lease,” he repeated in a kind of roar, as though he
feared someone had not heard him--the driver, possibly!
We were in a white Putney bus, going East. The policeman just then held
it up at Wellington Street.
“It’s jolly stopping like this,” he cried; “one can chat a bit without
having to shout.”
My curiosity about the lease, or rather about his part in it, prevented
an immediate reply. How he could possibly help in such a complicated
matter puzzled me exceedingly.
“Horrible things, leases!” I said at length. “Confusing, I mean, with
their endless repetitions and absence of commas. Legal language seems so
needlessly----”
“Oh, but this one is right enough,” he interrupted. “You see, my pal
hasn’t signed it yet. He’s in rather a muddle about it, to tell the
truth, and I’m going to get it straightened out by my solicitor.”
The bus started on with a lurch, and he rolled against me.
“It’s a three-year lease,” he roared, “with an option to renew, you
know--oh no, I’m wrong there, by the bye,” and he tapped my knee and
dropped a glove, and, when it was picked up and handed to him, tried to
stuff it up his sleeve as though it was a handkerchief--“I’m wrong
there--that’s the house he’s in at present, and his wife wants to break
_that_ lease because she doesn’t like it, and they’ve got more children
than they expected (these words whispered), and there’s no bathroom, and
the kitchen stairs are absurdly narrow----”
“But the lease--you were just saying----?”
“Quite so; I was,” and both eyebrows dropped so that the eyes were
almost completely hidden, “but _that_ lease _is_ all right. It’s the
other one I was talking about just then----”
“The house he’s in now, you mean, or----?” My head already swam. The
attention of the people opposite had begun to wander.
My friend pulled himself together and clutched several parcels.
“No, no, no,” he explained, smiling gently; “he likes _this_ one. It’s
the other I meant--the one his wife doesn’t approve of--the one with the
narrow bathroom stairs and no kitchen--I mean the narrow kitchen stairs
and no bathroom. It has so few cupboards, too, and the nursery chimneys
smoke every time the wind’s in the east. (Poor man! How devotedly he
must have listened while it was being drummed into his good-natured
ears!) So you see, Henry, my pal, thought of giving it up when the lease
fell in and taking this other house--the one I was just talking
about--and putting in a bathroom at his own expense, provided the
landlord----”
A man opposite who had been listening intently got up to leave the bus
with such a disappointed look that my friend thought it was the
conductor asking for another fare, and fumbled for coppers. Seeing his
mistake in time, he drew out instead a large blue envelope. Two other
papers, feeling neglected, came out at the same time and dropped upon
the floor. My friend and a working-man beside him stooped to pick them
up and knocked their heads violently in the process.
“I _beg_ your pardon,” exclaimed the vague one, very loud, with a
tremendous emphasis on the “beg.”
“Oh, that’s all right, guv’nor,” said the working-man, handing over the
papers. “Might ’appen to anybody, that!”
“I beg your pardon?” repeated my friend, not hearing him quite.
“I said a thing like that might ’appen to anyone,” repeated the other,
louder.
He turned to me with his happy smile. “I suppose it might, yes,” he
said, very low. Then he opened the blue envelope and began to hunt.
“Oh no, that’s the wrong envelope. It’s the other,” he observed vaguely.
“What a bore, isn’t it? This is merely a copy of his letters
to--er--to----”
He looked distressingly about him through the windows, as though he
hoped to find his words in the shop-letterings or among the
advertisements.
“Where are we, I wonder? Oh yes; there’s St. Paul’s. Good!” His mind
returned to the subject in hand. Several people got out, and swept the
papers from his knee to the ground; and the next few minutes he spent
gathering them up, stooping, clutching his coat, stuffing envelopes into
his pockets, and exclaiming “I _beg_ your pardon!” to the various folk
he collided with in the process.
At last some sort of order was restored.
“----merely the letters,” he resumed where he had left off, and in a
voice that might suitably have addressed a public meeting, “the letters
to his tenant. There’s a tenant in the other house. I forgot to mention
_that_, I think----”
“I think you did. But, I say, look here, my dear chap,” I burst out, at
length, in sheer self-preservation, “why in the world don’t you let the
fellow manage his own leases? It’s giving you a dreadful lot of trouble.
It’s the most muddled-up thing I ever heard.”
“That’s because you’ve got no head for business,” he whispered sweetly.
“Besides, it’s really a pleasure to me to help him. That’s the best part
of life, after all--helping people who get into muddles.” He looked at
me with his kindly smile. Then he turned and smiled at everybody in the
bus--vaguely, happily, his black eyebrows very fierce. Several people, I
fancied, smiled back at him.
“Let’s see,” he said, after a pause; “where was I?”
“You were saying something about a lease,” I told him; “but, honestly,
old man, I’m afraid I haven’t quite followed it.”
“That’s my fault,” he said; “all my fault. I feel a bit stupid to-day.
I’ve got the ’flue, you know, and a touch of fever with it. But I
promised Henry I would see to it for him, because he’s awfully busy----”
“Is he really!” I wished I knew Henry. I felt a strong desire to say
something to him.
“----packing up for a trip to Mexico, you know, or something; so, of
course, he finds it difficult to--er--to----” He looked gently about
him. “Where the deuce am I?” he asked in a very loud voice indeed.
Several people, myself among them, mentioned the Mansion House.
“Dear me!” he exclaimed, gathering up parcels, envelopes, and various
loose parts of his body--his aching body, “I’m afraid--I must be getting
out. I’m in the wrong bus. I wanted Essex Street--up there by the Law
Courts, you know.”