Theodore Bugg, a year later, was paying the price of his fall. He had
allowed Gertrude to attend Art Classes, although he knew it to be
sinful. But he had grown to fear his daughter, and--on such a point
especially--he was incapable of fighting her.
For there were times when he tried to persuade himself that there was
“nothing wrong in it.” A brother churchwarden had looked a little
askance when the news of Gertrude’s “advanced ideas” had come, but
Theodore had stoutly and even a little sternly rebuked him with the
original remark: “To the pure all things are pure.” It was knowing when
to be bold that had made Theodore the fine business man he was.
And very bold it was, for conscience makes cowards of us all.
The secret shame of his orgies! Every week-night--once even on a
Sunday!--after everyone had gone to bed, he opened the little safe in
the wall at the head of his bed, and drew forth the obscene picture
from its envelope marked “In case of my death or disability THIS PACKET
IS TO BE DESTROYED UNOPENED. T. Bugg.” Then he would sit, and hold
it in his hot hands, and gloat upon the evil thing, lifting it now
and again to his mouth to cover it with greedy slobbering kisses.
And afterwards, when it was safely locked up again, he would undress
with a certain unction. Once even he attempted--with the aid of a
bath towel--to take the pose before the mirror. And he saw nothing
ridiculous in that, just as he saw nothing beautiful in the photograph.
Nakedness is lust; so ran his simple gospel of aesthetics.
Shame quickened him, too, to measures of expiation or precaution.
He read family prayers twice a day instead of once, and he took the
chair at the Annual Meeting of a Society for Sending Out Trousers to
Converted Hindoos.
As everybody in the Midlands knows, “Hindoos” are Naked Savages.
And he discharged a groom for whistling on Sunday.
But if these expedients salved his conscience, they did nothing to
quell Gertrude’s incipient tendency to independence, of thought and
action. There had been a very unpleasant scene when he threw into the
fire a book from Mudie’s (I thought one could have trusted Mudie’s!)
called “The Stolen Bacillus,” which he understood to be of a grossly
immoral tendency. (Nasty filth about free love or something, isn’t it?)
Theodore Bugg was not a sensitive man; excess of intuitive sympathy had
not made his life a hell; but he felt that his domestic relations were
strained. Especially since “that Mrs. Grahame” had evinced a liking
for Gertrude. Her husband’s colonelcy was the gilding of the pill; but
the pill was a bitter one, for Mrs. Grahame went motoring and even
golfing on Sunday instead of going to church, and once or twice had
taken Gertrude with her, to the scandal of the neighbourhood. Colonel
Grahame, too, rather got on Bugg’s nerves, in spite of the “honour of
his acquaintance.”
Such thoughts went dully through his mind as he waited in the garden
for his daughter to come in to tea from the “Art Class.” But when she
arrived, portfolio in hand, her beauty and the splendour of her long
easy swing determined him to be gracious.
Under such circumstances conversation is apt to be artificial; but
Gertrude was gay and garrulous, and the tea went very pleasantly until
her father’s eye unluckily fell on the portfolio. “And what has my
little fairy been doing lately?” he asked with elephantine lightness.
“Oh, sketches mostly, father. This week we’re copying from the old
Greek masterpieces, though. Let me show you, father, dear.” She opened
the portfolio and turned over the leaves. “I’m getting on splendidly,
Mr. Davis thinks I ought to go to Paris and study properly. Do let me.”
“How can you think of such a thing, Gertrude? A daughter of mine! Study
properly!!! No indeed! A little sketching is a nice accomplishment for
a young lady, but----”
His jaw dropped. A thin, graceful pencil sketch it was that he clutched
in frenzied fingers; but he could not mistake the subject.
“Wretched girl,” he shouted, “where did you get the--the--the-- Damn it
all, what d’ye call it?--the--ay! that’s it!--the model for this vile,
filthy, lewd, obscene, lustful thing? Damn it! you’re as bad as Cousin
Jenny! (Cousin Jenny was a blot on the ’scutcheon of the Buggs). You’re
a harlot, miss!” And then, with an awful change as the truth came home
to him: “O my God! Damn it!” he screamed, “how did you get the keys of
my little safe!”
The girl had frozen colder than the stone, but there was a new light
in her eye, and if the curl of a lip could tread a worm into the dust,
that lip was hers and that worm the author of her being. She had
withdrawn as one who comes suddenly upon a toad, and the first flaming
of her face had died instantly to deadlier ice.
Bugg saw his mistake, his masses of mistakes. There being but one
more to make, he made it; and, finding himself in the frying pan of
discovery, leapt into the fire of things irrevocable and not to be
forgotten. His fat, heavy-jowled, coarse face all twitching, he fell on
his knees and clasped his hands together. “So you found me out? Don’t,
don’t give away your poor old father, Gertie! My little Gertie!”
There was a silence. “Excuse me, father,” said the girl at last, “but
I’ve just had a glimpse of you for the first time in my life, and it’s
a bit of a shock. I must think.”
And she stood motionless until her hapless father attracted her
attention by backing into his wicker chair.
“Don’t touch holy things,” she snapped suddenly, taking the sketch from
his nerveless hand, and replacing it reverently in the portfolio.
The action seemed to decide her.
“I’ll give you an address to send my things to,” she said, and walked
out of the garden.
Theodore Bugg sat stunned. “Holy things,” she had said. She called that
lustful French photograph holy! Was this Original Sin; or was it that
strange new thing people were talking about--what was it? Ah! heredity.
Heredity? His secret sin become her open infamy? Truly the sins of the
fathers were visited on the children!
By this time he was upstairs and in his bedroom. He must destroy the
accursed thing; he must destroy--Ah! yes. He had contaminated Gertrude
by having such a thing in his house. He must be the Roman father,
and--what would a Roman father do?
He had the match alight, but he could not put it to the edge of the
packet. Then the silence of the house hit him; he knew that his
daughter would never return, and in a fit of rage, he trampled on the
envelope like a wild beast mauling a corpse.
He thrust it into the empty grate, lit the paper frills, watched all
blaze up. Then, gulping down a sob, he went to the drawer of a cabinet
and pulled out the revolver which he had bought (and loaded, under the
shopman’s guidance) against burglars.
Yes, he must kill himself. He drew back the hammer. Cold sweat beaded
his flabby face. He could not; and anyhow, how did one? He thought of
many stories of people who had shot themselves ineffectively. He felt
for his heart and failed to find it, wondered if it had stopped and he
were dying, had a fit of fear paralysing all his will. He thought of
himself lying dead.
“No, by God! I can’t do it!” he cried, and flung the pistol back into
the drawer. As luck would have it, the weapon exploded. The bullet
broke his jaw, tore away four molars, smashed the cheek-bone, pulped
the right eye, and, glancing from the frontal bone, found its billet in
the ceiling. He lost consciousness and fell. His head struck the grate
where yet smouldered the ashes of the photograph.
It was three months before he recovered, and then with only half a face
to face the world with. He still thinks that Gertrude gave him away,
for the street-boys have taken to calling him “old Venus.” But he is
wrong; the boys have their aesthetic reasons for the name.
Gertrude in any case is much too busy to bother her head about him;
for, after a year in the Latin Quarter, if she has failed to surpass
Degas and Manet and Van Gogh, she has at least conquered the great
pianist Wlodywewsky, and it takes her all her time to manage him and
keep the baby out of mischief.
Theodore Bugg needs no help of hers in his moral sculpture of the
destinies of England.
_Printed and Made in Great Britain by
The Crypt House Press Limited, Gloucester and London._