little dogs! Just through here, my pretty pets. Gentle, Pelleas!
Gently, very gently! There, there, there! Oh, what dear little dogs!”
He stumbled forward through the quagmire of desolation, picking his
way as though familiar with every inch of ground, to the further
corner where it was even darker, and where the noise of shunting
freight trains drowned every other murmur of the night.
* * * * *
It was eight o’clock when Old Fags reached his room in Bolingbroke
Buildings carrying his heavily laden sack across his shoulders. The
child in Room 476 had been peevish and fretful all the afternoon
and the two women were lying down exhausted. They heard Old Fags
come in. He seemed very busy, banging about with bottles and tins
and alternately coughing and wheezing. But soon the potent aroma of
onions reached their nostrils and they knew he was preparing to keep
his word.
At nine o’clock he staggered across with a steaming saucepan of hot
stew. In contrast to the morning’s conversation, which though devoid
of self-consciousness, had taken on at times an air of moribund
analysis, making little stabs at fundamental things, the evening
passed off on a note of almost joyous levity. The stew was extremely
good to the starving women, and Old Fags developed a vein of
fantastic pleasantry. He talked unceasingly, sometimes on things they
understood, sometimes on matters of which they were entirely ignorant
and sometimes he appeared to them obtuse, maudlin and incoherent.
Nevertheless he brought to their room a certain light-hearted
raillery that had never visited it before. No mention was made of
Meads. The only blemish to the serenity of this bizarre supper party
was that Old Fags developed intervals of violent coughing, intervals
when he had to walk around the room and beat his chest. These fits
had the unfortunate result of waking the baby. When this undesirable
result had occurred for the fourth time Old Fags said:
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! This won’t do! Oh, no, this won’t do. I must go
back to my hotel!” a remark that caused paroxysms of mirth to old
Mrs. Birdle.
Nevertheless, Old Fags retired and it was then just on eleven
o’clock. The women went to bed, and all through the night Minnie
heard the old man coughing. And while he is lying in this unfortunate
condition let us follow the movements of Mr. Meads.
Meads jumped off the ’bus at Shepherd’s Bush and hurried quickly
in the direction that Old Fags had instructed him. He asked three
people for the Pomeranian Road before an errand boy told him that he
“believed it was somewhere off Giles Avenue,” but at Giles Avenue no
one seemed to know it. He retraced his steps in a very bad temper and
enquired again. Five other people had never heard of it. So he went
to a post office and a young lady in charge informed him that there
was no such road in the neighbourhood.
He tried other roads whose names vaguely resembled it, then he
came to the conclusion “that that blamed old fool had made a silly
mistake.” He took a ’bus back with a curious fear gnawing at the pit
of his stomach, a fear that he kept thrusting back; he dare not allow
himself to contemplate it. It was nearly seven-thirty when he got
back to Hyde Park and his eye quickly scanned the length of railing
near which Old Fags was to be. Immediately that he saw no sign of him
or the little dogs, a horrible feeling of physical sickness assailed
him. The whole truth flashed through his mind. He saw the fabric of
his life crumble to dust. He was conscious of visions of past acts
and misdeeds tumbling over each other in a furious kaleidoscope.
The groom was terribly frightened. Mrs. Bastien-Melland would be in
at eight o’clock to dinner, and the first thing she would ask for
would be the little dogs. They were never supposed to go out after
dark, but he had been busy that afternoon and arranged to take them
out later. How was he to account for himself and their loss? He
visualized himself in a dock, and all sorts of other horrid things
coming up--a forged character, an affair in Norfolk and another at
Enfield, and a little trouble with a bookmaker seven years ago. For
he felt convinced that the dogs had gone for ever, and Old Fags with
them.
He cursed blindly in his soul at his foul luck and the wretched
inclination that had lured him to drink “beer-gin” with the old
thief. Forms of terrific vengeance passed through his mind, if he
should meet the old devil again. In the meantime what should he do?
He had never even thought of making Old Fags give him any sort of
address. He dared not go back to Hyde Park Square without the dogs.
He ran breathlessly up and down peering in every direction. Eight
o’clock came and there was still no sign! Suddenly he remembered
Minnie Birdle. He remembered that the old ruffian had mentioned and
seemed to know Minnie Birdle. It was a connection that he had hoped
to have wiped out of his life, but the case was desperate.
Curiously enough, during his desultory courtship of Minnie he had
never been to her home, but on the only occasion when he had visited
it, after the birth of the child, he had done so under the influence
of three pints of beer, and he hadn’t the faintest recollection now
of the number or the block. He hurried there, however, in feverish
trepidation. Now Bolingbroke Buildings harbour some eight hundred
people, and it is a remarkable fact that although the Birdles had
lived there about a year, of the eleven people that Meads asked not
one happened to know the name. People develop a profound sense of
self-concentration in Bolingbroke Buildings. Meads wandered up all
the stairs and through the slate-tile passages. Twice he passed their
door without knowing it: on the first occasion only five minutes
after Old Fags had carried a saucepan of steaming stew from No. 475
to No. 476.
At ten o’clock he gave it up. He had four shillings on him and he
adjourned to a small “pub.” hard by and ordered a tankard of ale,
and, as an afterthought, three pennyworth of gin which he mixed in
it. Probably he thought that this mixture, which was so directly
responsible for the train of tragic circumstances that encompassed
him, might continue to act in some manner toward a more desirable
conclusion. It did indeed drive him to action of a sort, for he sat
there drinking and smoking Navy Cut cigarettes, and by degrees he
evolved a most engaging but impossible story of being lured to the
river by three men and chloroformed, and when he came to, finding
that the dogs and the men had gone. He drank a further quantity of
“beer-gin” and rehearsed his rôle in detail, and at length brought
himself to the point of facing Mrs. Bastien-Melland....
It was the most terrifying ordeal of his life. The servants
frightened him for a start. They almost shrieked when they saw him
and drew back. Mrs. Bastien-Melland had left word that he was to go
to a breakfast-room in the basement directly he came in and she
would see him. There was a small dinner party on that evening and
an agitated game of bridge. Meads had not stood on the hearthrug of
the breakfast-room two minutes before he heard the foreboding swish
of skirts, the door burst open and Mrs. Bastien-Melland stood before
him, a thing of penetrating perfumes, high-lights and trepidation.
She just said “Well!” and fixed her hard bright eyes on him. Meads
launched forth into his improbable story, but he dared not look at
her. He tried to gather together the pieces of the tale he had so
carefully rehearsed in the “pub.,” but he felt like some helpless
bark at the mercy of a hostile battle fleet, the searchlights of
Mrs. Melland’s cruel eyes were concentrated on him, while a flotilla
of small diamonds on her heaving bosom winked and glittered with
a dangerous insolence. He was stumbling over a phrase about the
effects of chloroform when he became aware that Mrs. Melland was not
listening to the matter of his story, she was only concerned with the
manner. Her lips were set and her straining eyes insisted on catching
his. He looked full at her and caught his breath and stopped.
Mrs. Melland still staring at him was moving slowly to the door.
A moment of panic seized him. He mumbled something and also moved
toward the door. Mrs. Melland was first to grip the handle. Meads
made a wild dive and seized her wrist. But Mrs. Bastien-Melland came
of a hard-riding Yorkshire family. She did not lose her head. She
struck him across the mouth with her flat hand, and as he reeled
back she opened the door and called to the servants. Suddenly Meads
remembered that the rooms had a French window on to the garden. He
pushed her clumsily against the door and sprang across the room. He
clutched wildly at the bolts while Mrs. Melland’s voice was ringing
out:
“Catch that man! Hold him! Catch thief!”
But before the other servants had had time to arrive he managed
to get through the door and to pull it to after him. His hand was
bleeding with cuts from broken glass but he leapt the wall and got
into the shadow of some shrubs three gardens away. He heard whistles
blowing and the dominant voice of Mrs. Melland directing a hue and
cry. He rested some moments, then panic seized him and he laboured
over another wall and found the passage of a semi-detached house.
A servant opened a door and looked out and screamed. He struck her
wildly and unreasonably on the shoulder and rushed up some steps and
got into a front garden. There was no one there and he darted into
the street and across the road.
In a few minutes he was lost in a labyrinth of back streets and
laughing hysterically to himself. He had two shillings and eightpence
on him. He spent fourpence of this on whisky, and then another
fourpence just before the pubs. closed. He struggled vainly to
formulate some definite plan of campaign. The only point that seemed
terribly clear to him was that he must get away. He knew Mrs. Melland
only too well. She would spare no trouble in hunting him down. She
would exact the uttermost farthing. It meant gaol and ruin. The
obvious impediment to getting away was that he had no money and no
friends. He had not sufficient strength of character to face a tramp
life. He had lived too long in the society of the pampered Pekinese.
He loved comfort.
Out of the simmering tumult of his soul grew a very definite
passion--the passion of hate. He developed a vast, bitter, scorching
hatred for the person who had caused this ghastly climax to his
unfortunate career--Old Fags. He went over the whole incidents of the
day again, rapidly recalling every phase of Old Fags’s conversation
and manner. What a blind fool he was not to have seen through the
filthy old swine’s game! But what had he done with the dogs? Sold the
lot for a pound, perhaps! The idea made Meads shiver. He slouched
through the streets harbouring his pariah-like lust.
* * * * *
We will not attempt to record the psychologic changes that harassed
the soul of Mr. Meads during the next two days and nights, the ugly
passions that stirred him and beat their wings against the night,
the tentative intuitions urging toward some vague new start,
the various compromises he made with himself, his weakness and
inconsistency that found him bereft of any quality other than the
sombre shadow of some ill-conceived revenge. We will only note that
on the evening of the day we mention he turned up at Bolingbroke
Buildings. His face was haggard and drawn, his eyes blood-shot and
his clothes tattered and muddy. His appearance and demeanour was
unfortunately not so alien to the general character of Bolingbroke
Buildings as to attract any particular attention, and he slunk like a
wolf through the dreary passages and watched the people come and go.
It was at about a quarter to ten when he was going along a passage
in Block “F” that he suddenly saw Minnie Birdle come out of one door
and go into another. His small eyes glittered and he went on tip-toe.
He waited till Minnie was quite silent in her room and then he went
stealthily to Room 475. He tried the handle and it gave. He opened
the door and peered in. There was a cheap tin lamp guttering on a box
that dimly revealed a room of repulsive wretchedness. The furniture
seemed mostly to consist of bottles and rags. But in one corner on a
mattress he beheld the grinning face of his enemy--Old Fags. Meads
shut the door silently and stood with his back to it.
“Oh!” he said. “So here we are at last, old bird, eh!”
This move was apparently a supremely successful dramatic coup, for
Old Fags lay still, paralyzed with fear, no doubt.
“So this is our little ’ome, eh?” he continued, “where we bring
little dogs and sell ’em. What have you got to say, you old----”
The groom’s face blazed into a sudden accumulated fury. He thrust his
chin forward and let forth a volley of frightful and blasting oaths.
But Old Fags didn’t answer; his shiny face seemed to be intensely
amused with this outburst.
“We got to settle our little account, old bird, see?” and the
suppressed fury of his voice denoted some physical climax. “Why the
hell don’t you answer?” he suddenly shrieked, and springing forward
he lashed Old Fags across the cheek.
And then a terrible horror came over him. The cheek he had struck was
as cold as marble and the head fell a little impotently to one side.
Trembling, as though struck with an ague, the groom picked up the
guttering lamp and held it close to the face of Old Fags. It was set
in an impenetrable repose, the significance of which even the groom
could not misunderstand. The features were calm and childlike, lit by
a half smile of splendid tolerance that seemed to have over-ridden
the temporary buffets of a queer world. Meads had no idea how long he
stood there gazing horror-struck at the face of his enemy. He only
knew that he was presently conscious that Minnie Birdle was standing
by his side and as he looked at her, her gaze was fixed on Old Fags
and a tear was trickling down either cheek.
“’E’s dead,” she said. “Old Fags is dead. ’E died this morning of
noomonyer.”
She said this quite simply as though it was a statement that
explained the wonder of her presence. She did not look at Meads or
seem aware of him. He watched the flickering light from the lamp
illumining the underside of her chin and nostrils and her quivering
brows.
“’E’s dead,” she said again, and the statement seemed to come as an
edict of dismissal as though love and hatred and revenge had no place
in these fundamental things. Meads looked from her to the tousled
head leaning slightly to one side of the mattress and he felt himself
in the presence of forces he could not comprehend. He put the lamp
back quietly on the box and tip-toed from the room.
Out once more in the night, his breath came quickly and a certain
buoyancy drove him on. He dared not contemplate the terror of that
threshold upon which he had almost trodden. He only knew that out of
the surging mælstrom of irresolution some fate had gripped him. He
walked with a certain elasticity in the direction of Millwall. There
would be doss-houses and docks there and many a good ship that glided
forth to strange lands, carrying human freight of whom few questions
would be asked, for the ship wanted them to ease her way through the
regenerating seas....
And in the cold hours of the early dawn Minnie Birdle lay awake
listening to the rhythmic breathing of her child. And she thought
of that strange old man less terrible now in his mask of death than
when she had first known him. No one to-morrow would follow to
his pauper’s grave, and yet at one time--who knows? She dared not
speculate upon the tangled skein of this difficult life that had
brought him to this. She only knew that somehow from it she had drawn
a certain vibrant force that made her build a monster resolution. Her
child! She would be strong, she would throw her frail body between it
and the shafts of an unthinking world. She leant across it, listening
intensely, then kissed the delicate down upon its skull, crooning
with animal satisfaction at the smell of its warm soft flesh.
THE ANGEL OF ACCOMPLISHMENT
In reconstructing the sombre story which gathered round the
professional association of those two clever men, James Wray and
Francis Vallery, it is necessary to know a little of their early
life and up-bringing. I am indebted very considerably to my friend,
Timothy Rallish, for the light of his somewhat sardonic perceptions
upon the character of Wray. They were at Marlborough together, and
afterward at Oxford, although at different colleges; Timothy at
Oriel, and Wray--as one would naturally expect--at Balliol.
“I used to like him,” said Timothy. “I suppose I was the only chap
who did. They hated him at Marlborough; he was so confoundedly
pious. Up at Oxford it was not so bad. There are always such a lot
of precious people at Balliol; it doesn’t stand out so. He was an
idealist, without a conscience, if you know what I mean. He set up
impossible standards, never attempted to live up to them, or to
observe whether any one else attempted to. His contempt for his
fellow-creatures was almost abnormal. I think the whole attitude in
some queer way came out of his music-madness. Music was the absorbing
passion of his life, and even for the best of that he never
appeared to have a very great opinion. I believe he thought that
Bach’s compositions were not too bad, and for Beethoven he sometimes
indulged in mild patronage. Schumann bored him, so did Wagner, and
for Chopin’s ‘sentimental tripe’ he had no use.”
“I am talking now of Wray between the age of seventeen and
twenty-three--the age when one’s critical faculties are relentless,
when one knows every darned thing, don’t you know. I can’t tell
why I liked Wray. He did not--and never has--liked me. Perhaps
there was something about the profundity of his discontent which
appealed to me--his restlessness and detachment. I like people who
are dissatisfied. But there was more than that about him: he was a
spiritual wanton. I believe he would have sacrificed a city full of
babies to perfect one musical phrase. You see, there was no reason at
all why he should have gone up to Oxford. He was only interested in
music, which has never been properly taught there. I think he liked
to compose tone-poems in the society of rich men’s sons who were only
interested in sports and rag-time. The contact satisfied some cynical
kink in his own nature. It was certainly nothing to do with the
mediævalism of Oxford, which only bored him. O Lord! The things which
bored Jimmy Wray when he was twenty-three!”
“At that time,” I asked, “do you know anything of his standard of
accomplishments?”
“Very little,” replied Timothy. “Of course I know nothing about
music myself, but people who did know something used to differ
considerably about Wray. I got the general impression that he was
talented in a nebulous kind of way; that he had ideas but that they
were too involved; that he could create atmosphere but that he
couldn’t construct. He was a very pretty boy at that time, with a
thin æsthetic face, dark reflective eyes and two pink spots in the
centre of each cheek. He had got out of all sport on the ground that
he had a weak heart. It is certainly true that his father--who made a
small fortune out of accordion-pleated skirts--died at an early age
from heart disease. His mother was a gentle negative kind of woman,
who lived at Bournemouth, knitted things for people, and distributed
prizes at Girls’ Friendly Societies. He also had two sisters, one, I
believe, dabbled in Christian Science, the other married a sanitary
inspector. They played no great part in Wray’s life, neither did
any of them, or any relative or ancestor, as far as I can find out,
supply any note to account for the peculiarly individual precocity of
James himself. Afterward, when he became famous, the whole family was
almost shocked.”
This conversation with Timothy impressed itself on my memory very
vividly, for it occurred just after I had had an interview with
Wray’s mother. At that time the study and analysis of suppressions
and complexes had not reached the degree of fashionable absurdity
which it has at the present day, but neurosis has always been a
popular complaint amongst those people unlucky enough to be able to
afford to indulge in it. As an ordinary, rather over-worked local
practitioner, I can only give my opinion that neurosis only exists
amongst that small minority of people who do not have to fight for
existence.
It appears to me that this instinct of fighting for existence is born
in every man or woman. When circumstances rob them of it they are
apt to raise some artificial standard and fight for that, for fight
they must. We have not reached the millennium. During my thirty-three
years’ experience in the medical profession I have never yet met the
case of a man or a woman who worked hard for a living being neurotic,
unless his or her constitution was already undermined by neurotic
parentage. You may say that an artificial standard is as good a thing
to fight for as a real standard, and so it may be. A man who fights
for some spiritual cause is certainly as justified as a man who
fights to earn bread and wine. It is all a question of equipoise. But
a man who in Timothy’s terms would “sacrifice a city full of babies
to perfect one musical phrase” is in my opinion a lunatic.
But I am perfectly willing to admit that I may be wrong. For all I
know the whole social fabric may be changing its face values. We can
only act according to our lights. When Wray’s mother came and spoke
to me about him I knew nothing about the man. He was thirty-one
then. I can see her now, that gentle old lady, with silver curls
and pleading eyes, extremely confiding and rather outraged. Such
things didn’t happen at Bournemouth. But, dear her, Jimmy had only
been to Bournemouth once, and he refused to go again because--the
trams didn’t run on Sundays and it took him two hours to walk out
of the town! Was ever such a ridiculous excuse offered! He was a
dear boy, a lovable, clever--oh, brilliantly clever!--boy, but quite
incomprehensible, and with such awful moods. Then with great solemn
shaking curls, bobbing above the stiff corsets, worse than that--a
terrible temper ... cruel, vindictive, he might do anything in such
moods. She regarded me alertly. I think she thought I might prescribe
some pills--they do that in Bournemouth--one to be taken night and
morning, will cure asthma, sluggish liver or homicidal mania.
I remarked obligingly that I would see the young man. But how was
that to be done? He lived in Chelsea, a terrible, irreligious suburb
of London, inhabited by artists and others ... quite irresponsible
people. Besides, he was so exclusive, so apt to be rude, even violent
and abusive. He detested strangers. He was altogether so unlike his
dear papa, who treated everyone even his _work-people_ as though
they were equals! And then came the terrible crux of the story. It
appeared that on Jimmy Wray’s solitary visit to Bournemouth he had
murdered a cat. Not, mark you, an ordinary stray, vagabond cat,
but his mother’s cat, his mother’s own darling Pee-Wee. The cat, it
appeared, had annoyed him for several nights when he was sitting up
late, trying to compose. He had warned his mother that something
would have to be done. He had appeared haggard and distraught in the
mornings. But Mrs. Wray had not taken the matter very seriously. Such
a trivial affair! Dear Pee-Wee! He was often like that. He made funny
noises in the night.... There were several cats in the neighbouring
houses, doubtless friends of Pee-Wee’s. And then one night the
appalling thing happened. Jimmy got up about one o’clock. He went out
and picked up a piece of plank. He beat the cat to a pulp! He had
never been to Bournemouth since. What can you suggest, Doctor Parsons?