something that seeks to deny him, and either in fear of that antagonism
or in the knowledge of his own imperfections he isolates and envelopes
the real issue of his being—much as an oyster does with the irritant
grain in its beard; only the outcome is seldom a pearl and not always
as useful as a fish. Bugloss was still wholly enveloped, and his
predicament gave a melancholy tone to his thoughts. He sat hunched in
his chair until the dance ended and the two girls came back, bringing
with them the lovely green-haired one!
“Hello, aunt,” she cried merrily enough, “why aren’t you in costume?
Like my get-up?”
Without a word the elderly lady kissed her, and all sat down within
a few feet of Bugloss. It thrilled him to hear her voice; at least
he would be able to recognize that when she turned back again to
daylight’s cool civilities.
“Did you know that I had blossomed out in business?” she was saying.
Bugloss thought it a beautiful voice.
“I heard of it,” said her aunt, whom you may figure as a lady with a
fan, eyeglasses, and the repellant profile of a bird of prey, “about
half an hour ago. I wish I had heard of it before.”
“I am a full-blown modiste.”
“Yes, you might have told me.”
“But I have told you.”
“You might have told me before.”
“But I haven’t seen you before, aunt.”
“No, we haven’t seen you. How is this business, Claire, is it thriving,
making money?”
“O, we get along, aunt,” said the radiant niece in a tone of almost
perverse amiability. “I have several assistants. Do you know, we made
seven of the costumes for this ball—seven—one of them for a man.”
“I thought ladies only made for ladies.”
“So did I, but this order just dropped in upon us very mysteriously,
and we did it, from top to toe, a most gorgeous arrangement, all
crimson and purple and silver and citron, but I haven’t seen anybody
wearing it yet. I wonder if you have? I’m so disappointed. It’s a
sultan, or a nabob, or a nankipoo of some kind, I am certain it was for
this ball. I was so anxious to see it worn. I had made up my mind to
dance at least half the dances with the wearer, it was so lovely. Have
you seen such a costume here?”
“No,” said the aunt grimly, “I have not, but I have noticed the pirate
king—did you make his costume too? I hope not!”
“O no, aunt,” laughed Claire, “isn’t he a fright?”
“Who is he?”
“That? O, a friend of mine, a business friend.”
“He seems fond of you.”
“I have known him some time. Yes, I like him. Don’t you like my pirate
king?” asked Claire, turning to her two cousins.
The cousins both thought he was splendid.
(“Good God!” groaned Bugloss.)
“I don’t,” declared auntie. “Do you know him very well, has he any
intentions? An orphan girl living by herself—you have your way to make
in the world—I am not presuming to criticize, my dear Claire, but is it
wise? Who is he?”
“Yes, aunt,” said Claire. Bugloss could hear the tinkle of her bells as
she moved a little restlessly.
“Are his intentions honourable? I should think they were otherwise.”
Claire did not reply immediately. It looked as if the musicians were
about to resume. There was a rattle of plates and things over at the
booth. Then she said reflectively: “I don’t think he has any—what you
call honourable intentions.”
“Not! Is he a bad man?”
“O no, I don’t mean that, aunt, no.”
“But what do you mean then, you’re a strange girl, what _could_ his
intentions be?”
“He hasn’t any intentions at all.”
“Not one way or the other?”
Claire seemed vaguely to hover over the significance of this. She said
calmly enough: “Not in any way. He’s my hairdresser, a Frenchman, and
so clever. He made this beautiful wig and gave it me. What do you think
of my beautiful wig, isn’t it sweet?”
There was a note of exasperation in the elder woman’s voice: “Why
don’t you get married, girl?”
“I’d rather work,” said Claire, “and besides, he’s already married.”
The music did begin, and a gentleman garbed as a druid came to claim
auntie for a dance. The three girls were left alone.
“Did he _really_ give you that wig?” asked the puritan maiden.
“Yes, isn’t it bonny? I love it.” She shook the dangling curls about
her face. “He’s frightfully clever with hair. French! You know his
saloon probably, Rabignol’s in the High Street. His wife is here, you
must have seen her too—a French soldier woman—what do you call them?
She hates me. She’s with a Danish captain. He _is_ a Dane, but he is
really an ice merchant. He thinks she adores him.”
“O Claire!” cried the two shocked cousins.
“But she doesn’t,” said Claire. “Sakes, I’m beginning to shiver; come
along.”
They all romped back towards the orchestra. Bugloss shivered too
and was glad—yes, glad—that she had gone. The tragedy had floated
satisfactorily out of his hands, thank the fates; it was Rabignol’s
affair. Damn Rabignol! Curse Rabignol! the bandit, the pig! He hoped
that Madame Rabignol _would_ elope with Johannes. He hoped the
green-haired girl—frail and lovely thing—would behave well; and he
hoped finally and frenziedly that Rabignol himself would be choked by
the common hangman. Bugloss then wanted to yawn, but somehow he could
not. He put on his rubber goloshes again. With unwonted audacity he
stalked off firmly, even a little fiercely, across the lawn in his
mackintosh and bowler hat, passing round the fringe of the dancers but
looking neither to the right nor to the left, then out of the gates
into the dark empty streets and so home. There, feeling rather like
a Cromwell made of chutney, he disarrayed himself and crept into bed
yawning and murmuring to himself: “So that’s a fancy dress ball! Sweet
God, but I’m glad I went! And I could have shown them something, I
could have. Say what you like, but mine was the finest costume at the
show; there’s no doubt about that, it was, it was! And I’m very glad I
went.”
_The Cat, the Dog, and the bad old Dame_
The chemist had certain odd notions that were an agreeable reflex of
his name, which was Oddfellow—Herbert Oddfellow. Our man was odd about
diet. It was believed that he lived without cookery, that he browsed,
as it were, upon fruit and salads. Ironically enough he earned a
considerable income by the sale of nostrums for indigestion. At any
hour of the day you were likely to find him devouring apples, nibbling
artichokes, or sucking an orange, and your inquiry for a dose of
bismuth or some such aid would cause by an obscure process a sardonic
grin to assemble upon his face. You would scarcely have expected to
find a lot of indigestion in the working-class neighbourhood where his
pharmacy flourished, but it was there, certainly; he was quite cynical
about it—his business throve abundantly upon dietary disorders.
There were four big ornamental carboys in his shop windows—red, violet,
green, and yellow; incidentally he sold peppermint drops and poisons,
and at forty years of age he was reputed to be the happiest, as he
was certainly the healthiest, man in the county. This was not merely
because he was unmarried ... but there, I declare this tale is not
about Oddfellow himself, but about his lethal chamber.
You must know that the sacrificial exactions of the war did not spare
cats and dogs. They, too, were immolated—but painlessly—scores of
them, at Oddfellow’s. He was unhappy about that part of his business,
very much so; he loved animals, perhaps rather more than people, for,
naturally, what he ministered to in his pharmacy was largely human
misery or human affectation. Evil cruel things—the bolt of a gaol, the
lime of the bird-snarer, the butcher’s axe—maddened him.
In the small garden at the back of the dispensary the interments were
carried out by Horace the errand boy, a juvenile with snub nose and
short, tough hair, who always wore ragged puttees. He delighted in such
obsequies, and had even instituted some ceremonial orgies. But at last
these lethal commissions were so numerous that the burial-ground began
to resemble the habitat of some vast, inappeasable mole, and thereupon
Oddfellow had to stipulate for sorrowing owners to conduct the
interments themselves in cemeteries of their own. Even this provision
did not quell the inflow of these easily disposable victims.
Mr. Franks brought him a magnificent cat to be destroyed. (Shortly
afterwards Franks was conveyed to the lunatic asylum, an institution
which still nurtures him in despotic durance.) Pending the return of
Horace, who was disbursing remedial shrapnel to the neighbourhood, the
cat, tied to a rail in the shop, sat dozing in the sunlight.
“What a beautiful cat!” exclaimed a lady caller, stroking its purring
majesty. The lady herself was beautiful. Oddfellow explained that its
demise was imminent—nothing the matter with it—owner didn’t want it.
“How cruel, you sweet thing, how cruel!” pronounced the lady, who
really was very beautiful. “I would love to have it. Why shouldn’t I
have it ... if its owner doesn’t want it? I wonder. May I?”
Manlike was Oddfellow, beautiful was the lady; the lady took the cat
away. Twenty-four hours later the shop counter was stormed by the
detestable Franks, incipient insanity already manifest in him. He
carried the selfsame cat under his arm—it had returned to its old home.
Franks assailed the abashed chemist with language that at its mildest
was abusive and libellous. His chief complaint seemed to repose upon
the circumstance of having _paid_ for the cat’s destruction, whereupon
Oddfellow who, like an Irishman, never walked into an argument—he
simply bounced in—threw down the fee upon the counter and urged Mr.
Franks to take his cat, and his money, and himself away as speedily
as might be. This reprehensible behaviour did by no means allay the
tension; the madman-designate paraded many further signs of his
impending doom.
“Take your cat away, I tell you,” shouted Oddfellow, “take it away. I
wouldn’t destroy it for a thousand pounds!”
“You won’t, oh?”
“Put an end to you with pleasure!”
“Yes?”
“Make you a present of a dose of poison whenever you like to come and
take it!”
“Yes?”
“I will!”
Franks went away with his tom-cat.
“O ... my ... lord!” ejaculated the chemist, that being his favourite
evocation; “I’ll do no more of this cat-and-dog business. I shall not
do any more; no, I shall not. I do not like it at all.”
But in the afternoon his assistant, who had not been informed of this
resolve, accepted two more victims for the lethal chamber, another
tom-cat and a collie dog.
“O ... my ... lord!” groaned the chemist distractedly; but there was
no help for it, and, calling his boy Horace, they carried the cat
into the storeroom. The lethal box was in a corner; all round were
shelves of costly drugs. The place did not smell of death; it smelt of
paint, oils, volatile spirits, tubs of white lead, and packing-cases
that contained scented soap or feeding-bottles. As Oddfellow prepared
his syringe, a sporting friend named Jerry peeped in to watch the
proceedings.
“Shut the door!” cried little Horace. “I can’t hold him.... He’s off!”
Sure enough the cat, sensing its danger, had burst from his arms and
sprung to one of the shelves. Immediately phials of drugs began to
fall and smash upon the floor, and as the cat rushed and scurried from
their grasp disaster was heaped upon disaster; the green, glowing eyes,
the rigid teeth, that seemed to grow as large as a tiger’s, confounded
them, and the havoc deterred them; they dared not approach the spitting
fury, it was a wild beast again, and a bold one.
“O ... my ... lord!” said Oddfellow, also swearing softly, for bottles
continued to slip from shelf to floor. “What’s to be done?”
“Open the door—let the flaming thing go,” said Jerry.
“No fear,” replied the chemist, “I’ve had enough of these dead cats
turning up like Banquo’s ghost—just enough.”
Horace intervened. “My father’s got a gun, sir; shall I run round home
and get it?”
Jerry’s eyes began to gleam, the costly phials kept dropping to
the floor—the chemist distractedly agreed—the boy Horace ran home
and fetched a rook rifle. But his prowess was so poor, his aim so
disastrous—he shot a hole through a barrel of linseed oil and received
a powerful squirt of it in his eye—that Jerry deprived him of the
weapon. Even then several rounds had to be fired, a carboy of acid was
cracked, a window smashed, a lamp blown to pieces, before poor tom was
finally subdued. Oddfellow had gone into the shop. He could not bring
himself to witness the dismal slaughter. Every repercussion sent a pang
of pity to his heart, and when at last the bleeding body of the cat was
laid in the yard to await removal by its owner he almost vomited and he
almost wept; if he had not sniffed the bunch of early primroses in his
buttonhole he would surely have done one or the other.
“Now the dog,” whispered the chemist. The collie was very subdued, good
dog, he gave no trouble at all, good dog, he was hustled into the big
box, good dog, and quietly chloroformed. Later on, a countryman with
his cart called for the body. The old woman who owned it was going
to make a hearthrug with the skin. It was enveloped in a sack; the
countryman carried it out on his shoulder like a butcher carrying the
carcase of a sheep and flung it into the cart. The callousness of this
struck Mr. Oddfellow so profoundly that he announced there and then,
positively and finally, that he would undertake no more business of
that kind, and doubly to insure this the lethal box was taken into the
yard and chopped up.
Now, the poor old woman who owned the dog called next day at the
chemist’s shop. Behind her walked the very collie. For a moment or two
Oddfellow feared that he was to be haunted by the walking ghost of cats
and dogs for evermore. Said the old woman: “Please, sir, you must do
him again; he’s woke up!”
She described at great length the dog’s strange revival. It stood
humbly enough in the background, a little drowsy, but not at all uneasy.
“No,” cried Oddfellow firmly; “can’t do it—destroyed my tackle. You
take him home, ma’am; he’s all right. Dog that’s been through that
ought to live a long life. Take him home again, ma’am,” he urged, “he’s
all right.”
The woman was old; she was feeble and poor; she was not able to keep
him now, he was such a big dog. Wasn’t it hard enough to get him food,
things were so dear, and now there was the licence money due! She
hadn’t got it; she never would have it; she really couldn’t afford it.
“You take him, sir, and keep him, sir.”
“No, I can’t keep a dog—no room.”
“Have him, sir,” she pleaded; “you’ll be kind to him.”
“No, no; ... but ... if it’s only his licence ... I’ll tell you what.
I’ll pay for his licence rather than destroy him.”
Putting his hand into the till, he laid three half-crowns before her.
The old woman stared at the chemist, but she stared still more at the
money. Then, thanking him with quaint, confused dignity, she gathered
it up, but again stood gazing meditatively at the three big coins, now
lying, so unexpectedly, in her thin palm.
“Good dog,” said the chemist, giving him a final pat. “Good dog!”
Then the poor old woman, with tears in her eyes, turned out of Mr.
Oddfellow’s shop and, followed by her dog, walked off to a quarter of
the town where there was another chemist who kept a lethal chamber.
_The Wife of Ted Wickham_
Perhaps it is a mercy we can’t see ourselves as others see us. Molly
Wickham was a remarkable pretty woman in days gone by; maybe she is
wiser since she has aged, but when she was young she was foolish. She
never seemed to realize it, but I wasn’t deceived.
So said the cattle-dealer, a healthy looking man, massive, morose, and
bordering on fifty. He did not say it to anybody in particular, for it
was said—it was to himself he said it—privately, musingly, as if to
soothe the still embittered recollection of a beauty that was foolish,
a fondness that was vain.
Ted Wickham himself was silly, too, when he married her. Must have been
extraordinarily touched to marry a little soft, religious, teetotal
party like her, and him a great sporting cock of a man, just come into
a public-house business that his aunt had left him, “The Half Moon,”
up on the Bath Road. He always ate like an elephant, but she’d only
the appetite of a scorpion. And what was worse, he was a true blood
conservative while all her family were a set of radicals that you
couldn’t talk sense to: if you only so much as mentioned the name of
Gladstone they would turn their eyes up to the ceiling as if he was a
saint in glory. Blood is thicker than water, I know, but it’s unnatural
stuff to drink so much of. Grant their name was. They christened her
Pamela, and as if that wasn’t cruel enough they messed her initials up
by giving her the middle name of Isabel.
But she was a handsome creature, on the small side but sound as a
roach and sweet as an apple tree in bloom. Pretty enough to convert
Ted, and I thought she would convert him, but she was a cussed
woman—never did what you would expect of her—and so she didn’t even
try. She gave up religion herself, gave it up altogether and went to
church no more. That was against her inclination, but of course it
was only right, for Ted never could have put up with that. Wedlock’s
one thing and religion’s two: that’s odd and even: a little is all
very well if it don’t go a long ways. Parson Twamley kept calling on
her for a year or two afterwards, trying to persuade her to return
to the fold—he couldn’t have called oftener if she had owed him a
hundred pound—but she would not hear of it, she would not go. He was
not much of a parson, not one to wake anybody up, but he had a good
delivery, and when he’d the luck to get hold of a sermon of any sense
his delivery was very good, very good indeed. She would say: “No, sir,
my feelings aren’t changed one bit, but I won’t come to church any
more, I’ve my private reasons.” And the parson would glare across at
old Ted as if he were a Belzeboob, for Ted always sat and listened to
the parson chattering to her. Never said a word himself, always kept
his pipe stuck in his jaw. Ted never persuaded her in the least, just
left it to her, and she would come round to his manner of thinking in
the end, for though he never actually said it, she always knew what his
way of thinking was. A strange thing, it takes a real woman to do that,
silly or no! At election times she would plaster the place all over
with tory bills, do it with her own hands!
Still, there’s no stability in meekness of that sort, a weathervane can
only go with wind and weather, and there was no sense in her giving
in to Ted as she did, not in the long run, for he couldn’t help but
despise her. A man wants something or other to whet the edge of his
life on; and he did despise her, I know.
But she was a fine creature in her way, only her way wasn’t his. A
beautiful woman, too, well-limbered up, with lovely hair, but always
a very proper sort, a milksop—Ted told me once that he had never seen
her naked. Well, can you wonder at the man? And always badgering him to
do things that could not be done at the time. To have “The Half Moon”
painted, or enlarged, or insured: she’d keep on badgering him, and he
could not make her see that any god’s amount of money spent on paint
wouldn’t improve the taste of liquor.
“I can see as far into a quart pot as the King of England,” he says,
“and I know that if this bar was four times as big as ’tis a quart
wouldn’t hold a drop more then than it does now.”
“No, of course,” she says.
“Nor a drop less neither,” says Ted. He showed her that all the money
expended on improvements and insurance and such things were so much
off something else. Ted was a generous chap—liked to see plenty of
everything, even though he had to give some of it away. But you can’t
make some women see some things.
“Not a roof to our heads, nor a floor to our feet, nor a pound to turn
round on if a fire broke out,” Molly would say.
“But why should a fire break out?” he’d ask her. “There never has been
a fire here, there never ought to be a fire here, and what’s more,
there never will be a fire here, so why should there be a fire?”
And of course she let him have his own way, and they never had a fire
there while he was alive, though I don’t know that any great harm
would have been done anyways, for after a few years trade began to
slacken off, and the place got dull, and what with the taxes it was not
much more than a bread and cheese business. Still, there’s no matter
of that: a man don’t ask for a bed of roses: a world without some
disturbance or anxiety would be like a duckpond where the ducks sleep
all day and are carried off at night by the foxes.
Molly was like that in many things, not really contrary, but no tact.
After Ted died she kept on at “The Half Moon” for a year or two by
herself, and regular as clockwork every month Pollock, the insurance
manager, would drop in and try for to persuade her to insure the
house or the stock or the furniture, any mortal thing. Well, believe
you, when she had only got herself to please in the matter that woman
wouldn’t have anything to say to that insurance—she never did insure,
and never would.
“I wouldn’t run such a risk; upon my soul it’s flying in the face of
possibilities, Mrs. Wickham”—he was a palavering chap, that Pollock; a
tall fellow with sandy hair, and he always stunk of liniment for he had
asthma on the chest—“A very grave risk, it is indeed,” he would say,
“the Meazer’s family was burnt clean out of hearth and home last St.
Valentine’s day, and if they hadn’t taken up a policy what would have
become of those Meazers?”
“I dunno,” Molly says—that was the name Ted give her—“I dunno, and I’m
sorry for unfortunate people, but I’ve my private reasons.”
She was always talking about her private reasons, and they must have
been devilish private, for not a soul on God’s earth ever set eyes on
them.
“Well, Mrs. Wickham,” says Pollock, “they’d have been a tidy ways up
Queer Street, and ruin’s a long-lasting affair,” Pollock says. He was
a rare palavering chap, and he used to talk about Gladstone, too, for
he knew her family history; but that didn’t move her, and she did not
insure.
“Yes, I quite agree,” she says, “but I’ve my private reasons.”
Sheer female cussedness! But where her own husband couldn’t persuade
her Pollock had no chance at all. And then, of course, two years after
Ted died she did go and have a fire there. “The Half Moon” was burnt
clean out, rafter and railings, and she had to give it up and shift
into the little bullseye business where she is now, selling bullseyes
to infants and ginger beer to boy scholars on bicycles. And what does
it all amount to? Why, it don’t keep her in hairpins. She had the most
beautiful hair once. But that’s telling the story back foremost.
Ted was a smart chap, a particular friend of mine (so was Molly),
and he could have made something of himself and of his business,
perhaps, if it hadn’t been for her. He was a sportsman to the backbone;
cricket, shooting, fishing, always game for a bit of life, any mortal
thing—what was there he couldn’t do? And a perfect demon with women,
I’ve never seen the like. If there was a woman for miles around as he
couldn’t come at, then you could bet a crown no one else could. He had
the gift. Well, when one woman ain’t enough for a man, twenty ain’t
too many. He and me were in a tight corner together more than once,
but he never went back on a friend, his word was his Bible oath. And
there was he all the while tied up to this soft wife of his, who never
once let on she knew of it at all, though she knowed much. And never
would she cast the blink of her eyes—splendid eyes they were, too—on
any willing stranger, nor even a friend, say, like myself; it was
all Ted this and Ted that, though I was just her own age and Ted was
twelve years ahead of us both. She didn’t know her own value, wouldn’t
take her opportunities, hadn’t the sense, as I say, though she had got
everything else. Ah, she was a woman to be looking at once, and none so
bad now; she wears well.