drag herself into a chair and fumble with a cigarette. He twisted
the cable into a spill, touched a red coal and lit her fag. Then
he left her in charge of his housekeeper and went to bed. All his
other servants had given notice and left long ago. On the whole he
decided that it was wisest to keep her under liquor until Saturday.
It was still Tuesday. When his first wife reached Liverpool a special
messenger awaited her with a sealed letter from John Betterman
announcing his legal marriage with his second wife and asking her,
his first, to accept the remainder of the fortune at his disposal. He
himself remained in the gutter.
It was her turn to receive a shock. She sat stunned in her cabin,
unable to go ashore, thinking over the year. It had been a bitter
experience and this was the knife. Murphy had taken her money and,
after dancing her almost to death in the lowest haunts of New York,
had left her for a professional dancer and disappeared. It was the
British Consul who had advanced the money for her return, and this was
her return. In her misery stood forth the miraculous white flower of
sea-engendered love for her husband. It seemed inconceivable to her
that she had not loved him before. She only knew that she had loved
him ever since she had hesitated for one fatal second on his empty
threshold. The thought of his _Beau geste_, infinitely divisible and
intangibly volatile, had caught in some secret recess of her heart and
flowered during the dismays and miseries of her American trip. But
love, real love, is cheap at any price. It was a wonderful experience
for her to feel as she did. Though fate had driven her down a blind
alley and the cup she had snatched had been broken across her bleeding
lips, yet here was a cup more tempting and a more perfect delight. Lust
had carried her across the Atlantic. Love had accompanied her home.
She felt how marvellous it was to feel as she felt even in her intense
suffering. She had never dreamed it was possible. What tinsel all dream
is to one thread of reality!
That night John Betterman gave a holiday to his housekeeper and opened
his own door every time the bell rang. His instinct was right, for the
second ring that he answered was hers. When he opened she knelt, and he
lifted her gently past the threshold that was once theirs. They looked
at each other and he perceived what certainly he had never seen in
her eyes before. She whispered, asking forgiveness, and then with the
lover’s practical outlook, whether the coast was clear? Where was the
other woman? He shuddered and pointed upstairs. She insisted on meeting
her successor. He told her that after nine o’clock she was generally
insensible to the world of visitors and motioned her towards her former
room. Feeling it was part of her penance, she followed and beheld lying
across the bed a rather jovial-looking drab breathing liquor heavily
from the gills. It was an awful moment for her and John Betterman.
Their two faces of agony met and she discerned from his the reflection
of her own great love. And there lay this wretched creature between
them. It was maddening that they should suddenly love each other as
greatly as they did; maddening, too, that they had taken the trouble to
marry and divorce in the past. Yet it was maddening in a delicious way
that they had found each other at last. If they had never divorced they
might never have fallen in love with each other. But they did not try
to think. He picked her up in his arms and the great flash of immortal
love made them one as they stood gazing at each other in trance. She
slipped to his knees.
There she only petitioned that, as she had forsaken him as wife, he
would not spurn her as mistress. The connubial chamber was filled but
she understood now why he had filled it with the filth of the street
rather than seek a presentable second hand rosebud. It was his love for
her. She understood the self-torture he had inflicted upon himself,
his refusal to try and find happiness. She had the woman’s instinct
to realise that this snoring slut symbolised as great a compliment
to herself as though her adoring lover had committed suicide on his
deserted doorstep. Poor John Betterman had committed worse than
suicide. He had assumed a mental torture that no Inquisition would
have imposed. He had clad his soul in the most ghastly of public _San
Benitos_ and made the most piteous _auto-da-fé_ that a despairing man
could make. It all rushed upon her and she only begged to share in his
humiliation. She only asked to lower herself with him into the gutter.
She had forfeited the position of wife but she prayed to be allowed to
live as his hireling in the mews round the corner. She was content to
live in shame. She would go on the streets if he would be her lover.
She promised she would never intrude into his house. He would find her
whenever he wished, humbly waiting upon the hour of his divine visit.
He plucked her from his knees and kissed her ecstatically. There came
an unconscious grunt from their nuptial bed and its temporary incubus
took the occasion to snort.
They could not help laughing. They were lovers and everything turned
to amazing happiness or screaming humour. There could happen nothing
disgusting or distressing to them. The unconscious second wife was
only delightfully ridiculous. The poor thing on the bed had no soul
really, no meaning. She was just a frightful phantom. The next day John
Betterman took rooms over the mews for his first wife and their strange
_ménage_ took root and continued, John Betterman keeping this horrible
but harmless creature under his roof, allowing her five shillings a
day for drink, and leaving her entirely to his housekeeper to prevent
scenes in public. Though she was his legal wife, he had never dreamed
of living with her. She was merely allowed to infest his house like a
tame elemental, smelling as unpleasantly as they say elementals smell,
but far less uncanny. Instead of casting or buying her out, he simply
allowed her to sink brandy-logged in harbour. He was very kind to her
and she could not last very much longer. After dinner every evening he
retired to the mews, neighbours said to escape the horrors of married
life. On Saturday nights the phantom struggled into the purlieus of
Victoria Station, where she returned happily to her old life except
that she treated any men she could induce to come with her. If John
Betterman’s brandy hadn’t been so good she would have sunk underseas
long before. She really was living quite a happy animal life, without
care or worry, comfortably found in bed and board and drink. The
police knew her circumstances and let her alone. She was cheerfully
hail-fellow-well-met with half the boosers and all the broken men and
women of the locality. Sometimes they bamboozled her of her money, but
she was never blackmailed. The wretched company she kept contained
sinners but not beasts. She was believed to have a store in her
stocking and found to be very generous. She always drank to her last
penny. And some outcast was always ready to see her safely home. A year
passed....
She met the beast-type one night, a ruffianly swashbuckler, who spent
his time frightening prostitutes by pretending to be a detective and
squeezing their hard-earned gains. He had heard of Mrs. Betterman’s
reputed savings and when her red, frouzled hair was thrust into his
shirt one Saturday night he devised unto himself prompt and easy
plunder. He swore at her foully and she rather liked him for it. When
he had drunk her last penny, he wanted to take her to her lodging.
She brought him staggering home. John Betterman’s house was empty and
she used her key to open the door. Without turning on the light, she
dragged him upstairs, with the promise of a case of whisky under her
bed, which was true enough, though she forgot that the whisky had been
drunk weeks before. When he found there was no drink, he demanded
money, made avaricious and surprised by the comfort and richness of
her room. He would not take “no” for an answer, but she was used to
dealing with pugnacious gentlemen, and though it was a long time
since she had had to push one downstairs, she was able to master her
carousing companion. He fell heavily through the darkness. She judged
by his swearing that he was not seriously hurt. It was a nuisance.
She would have to follow and let him out of the door. She switched on
the lights in the hall. He was picking himself up. A long, cadaverous
looking fellow with a big nose, who might have been a cashiered cashier
or a Mormon elder in better days, and a hatchet-shaped cheek, was
reeling towards her. She shoved him against the door, where he stood
at bay begging and then threatening. He refused to leave the house
until she paid him and began twisting her wrist until the rotten bones
cracked. Furious with pain, she cut his mouth with the wedding-ring
on her free hand, cut him again and again, till he spluttered blood.
It stung him to singular fury and he looked round for a weapon. By
a chance, that was not so curious, his eye fell on the hall table,
and a clean revolver lying amid the grey visitors’ cards. His hand
closed familiarly upon it and without hesitation he discharged it into
the drunken red halo beside him. With a heart-rending cry the second
Mrs. Betterman fell into a shrivelled heap, but the dirty blood which
trickled from her mouth and gaping temple was not as red as her hair.
Her slayer stood looking at her sullenly. Then he realised that it was
a good chance to go, and blew the second cartridge through his throat.
The police were quickly summoned by the hysterical housekeeper and
spent an hour taking down wholly unnecessary information, for the ends
of Justice had already been served. There was no thought of suspecting
a third person in the crime as the name on the revolver corresponded
with cards and envelopes addressed in the dead man’s pocket. Early next
morning, John Betterman came home and was surprised to find waiting for
him a letter from the Coroner.
THE EVIL EYE
This is a plain tale of that mediæval belief--the Evil Eye--playing its
course in a modern London suburb. Perhaps it is all nonsense ... like
vampires in Kensington. Anyhow, Peter Joneson made a mistake in caring
to come to Mrs. Guilda Faning’s flat every day. Mr. John Faning made a
mistake in not caring that he came, and Mrs. Faning made the mistake
of not caring whether her husband cared or not. None of their feelings
then approximated to definiteness, which was probably a mistake and in
the end a pity. Peter Joneson’s at least tended towards definiteness
and Mrs. Faning was pleased to accept his definite admiration of her
person and personality.
Peter Joneson used to come almost every afternoon and stay as long
as he could. If he missed tea at the flat, he used to write rather a
dull letter of apology or send some smutty flowers bought from the old
woman sitting outside the public-house. He became a piece of movable
furniture in the flat, like an old armchair for Guilda to rest on
mentally or Mr. Faning to shift sometimes from the room unconsciously.
Peter was punctual at coming and good at going. But it was all rather
hazy. He was like a mouse to Guilda. Mr. Faning was one of the happily
uninspired men who want nothing in life. Peter, of course, felt he
wanted something. Guilda only wanted to want something. For want of
something, she began to train herself to want Peter. Peter, of course,
wanted her in a comfortable sort of way but without evil prepense. She
never dreamed of hunting Peter, for she had instinctive woman’s pride,
if her suburban breeding did not allow her good taste. It was enough
that she began to like Peter for the reflex of her liking to reflect
itself fivefold from the lenses of his eyes. The invisible flash and
counterflash did not produce discordancy but touched the same key,
was wafted on the same plane and formed the same ray. The attraction
between them was complete.
But she made a mistake in showing him one day that she loved him, and
Peter made the mistake of showing her husband that he had discovered
that she loved him, and finally Mr. Faning made the mistake of showing
his wife that he had begun to dislike the man she liked. For, of
course, she only liked him the more. Hitherto, nothing had mattered.
Peter had poised his own mind open and for the first time felt her
emotions moving with his. He had always been prepared to fall in love.
Not she, and she still hesitated to admit the great and spicy wind
that bloweth from the South, after having been so long satisfied with
the puffs and draughts and teacup-tempests that make up middle-class
temperament in suburban flats. They had all three agreed in the wish
to live comfortably and quietly. Neighbourly flirtation had suited
both the Fanings, and Peter had made a well-conducted collusive foil
to the husband. The passion that had suddenly flashed between him and
Guilda was as upsetting to all as a hawk lighting on a canary cage or a
thunderstone falling into a suburban rockery.
Mr. Faning was quite upset, for love had crossed his wife’s path once
before. During courtship he had had a serious rival whom Guilda had
loved to distraction, and the stronger she had loved the sadder and
sicker the chosen lover had become until he died. This tale must be
told without subterfuge or keeping back the point. Guilda said he had
died of love, and married her second string. The neighbours said that
Mr. Faning had put weed-killer in his tea. An old housekeeper with a
drop of gipsy blood had said that Guilda, whether she knew it or not,
had the evil eye and would be the death of any person she really loved.
Mr. Faning, however, married her and had lived quite happily without
a day’s illness ever since. This Mr. Faning had taken to disprove
the theory thoroughly. Guilda used to laugh a little when he stated
this view. More logically put, it showed that she did not love her
husband or that the evil eye on her part was mythical. Just an empty
superstition and she had put it quite out of her mind. Her married life
had been quite uneventful and unsorrowed except for one thing. Whenever
she had trained and come to love a dog, it was run over or disappeared
mysteriously. There was Fido, crushed by a cart; there was Carlo, who
had been twisted in the spokes of a butcherboy’s bicycle, and Horatio
Bottomley, a magnificent bulldog, whom she had loved above all her pets
individually and above the whole human race generally. Well, they had
all come to grief and those whose bodies had been recovered lay in the
dank little garden between the gate and the door of her house.
And now romance had come with all its light radiancy of prelude,
exciting her mind to an intense pitch of curiosity as to what lay
behind the next turning. She was in no hurry. She still cared for her
husband exactly the same, without loving him. Peter she loved without
really caring for him. She was still careful of her husband’s throat
when he went out at night, while of Peter’s sore throat she seemed
rather oblivious. Perhaps it made him more interesting because the sore
throat had been developed in her service. Sensitive to the possibility
of romance in the prosaic and humdrum surroundings of her home, Guilda
felt that Peter’s mechanical arrivals with teapot and sugar basin must
be changed. She quietly enjoined him to come at a later hour and never
by the front door. He must climb into her drawing-room by the balcony
and wait until she answered his taps. Somewhat against his will, Peter
had submitted to this daily ordeal until the servants were as used
to one form of entry as the other, and the policeman standing at the
corner received a hint from Mr. Faning himself that his friend was not
practising to be a burglar. Mr. Faning had been puzzled by this new
departure, or new form of entry rather, but vaguely supposed it would
satisfy Peter’s absurd affection for his wife.
It didn’t. Peter left strips of skin on the rusty iron trellis-work
and caught chills on wet draughty winter evenings. His hacking cough
gave Guilda a sensation she thought she had long ago buried. And
Peter, had he known, had no reason to complain of his cold, for it
heightened Guilda’s love. Attraction had passed into love with her.
It was then that Mr. Faning became aware, not of Peter’s love, which
mattered nothing to him, but of Guilda’s which he had never possessed
himself. This did seem to matter to him a great deal. It was no use
her explaining that she only made Peter climb in for a joke. Mr. Faning
banned a joke that made himself as ridiculous as Peter. Peter was told
he was a good fellow, but his visits were limited in future to one
a week, and would she be kind enough to admit him after ringing at
the front door? As for Guilda, he told her that she was the laughing
stock of the parish. Everybody knew she was pretending to be living
in Mayfair and trying to show the neighbours that she secretly had a
lover. It must stop!
Guilda’s face crimsoned and her passionate fury allowed her no retort.
She could have reconciled a jealous outburst from her husband with her
romance, blows even and threats of divorce. But to be called the joke
of the parish was more than she could bear. When he strode out angrily,
she waited for Peter’s taps impatiently at the drawing-room window.
They came.
She preferred to be the tragedy of the parish rather than its joke. It
had never occurred to her that she could be ridiculous. Romance was
not ridiculous and she grated her teeth. There was a strange look on
her face when she opened the glass door behind the curtains and let
Peter come in coughing. Her eyes looked passionately upon him and a
great tremor shook his lungs. It was some time before he could recover
himself. She stroked his back and he dropped gratefully into a chair.
For the first time pity passed into her love and love itself became
fused to passion. She told him to follow her to her room, which Peter
had never seen, never even imagined. It was quite like other bedrooms.
That rather puzzled him, the same sort of furniture. All the wooden
atmosphere of Maple’s, all the china soul of Whiteley’s, was there
expressed with just the necessary alleviation of the feminine, the silk
stockings hanging on the chair, the powder-puff and three dog collars
on the dressing-table. He felt deliciously bewildered and tried to say
something. One of her new garters, bought at a Selfridge sale, was on
the bed. He was sorry it was not on the floor or he would have picked
it up. As it was, he said “_Honi soit qui mal y pense_,” as he touched
it. At that moment Mr. Faning came in.
Guilda had already begun to pour out water into a basin and, picking
a towel off the rack, slipped Peter’s hands into the warm water. Mr.
Faning stood watching until she had washed them free from the soot and
dried them between the fresh folds of the clean towel. Then Faning
burst out angrily: “I came back just to see that this joke wouldn’t go
too far, and I find you in my wife’s bedroom! Never come back into this
house again.” He turned to his wife and re-knifed her with the foolish
words “joke of the whole parish!” She never answered him, but bowed her
head and kissed each of Peter’s hands.... Peter went out shaking like a
reed. When he reached his own rooms he found himself spitting blood. He
stayed in for several days.
Peter felt very distracted those days. He made no effort to
communicate with the Fanings. He felt he had lost a man friend, and
the affectionate companionship of his wife. Companionship he had
regarded as heavenly, but a red-blooded intrigue struck him with all
the discomforts of hell. He sat dimly facing the prospect of fire. He
had been so happy in his paradisal peace. He had now no choice but to
clear out altogether or throw himself beyond the old relationships
of family friend, and consider the Faning household in the sombre
guise of mistress and enemy. It was appalling to think of, and he spat
blood steadily through a night until his landlady became alarmed and
sent for the doctor. He was found to be quite ill, and suffering from
tuberculosis.
It was a month before he returned from the hospital. He had never let
Guilda go far from his mind. How could he? He intended to be faithful
to Mr. Faning’s injunction, and not cross the forbidden threshold....
But as soon as he was walking about again he made a point of passing
the flat every afternoon on his return from the office. Always at the
same hour, at the hour of tea, he came, and stood, and went, while a
fragrance as of the delicious teas of the past smote his memory each
time. He knew then how deeply he was still in love with her. It gave
him a queerly increasing throb each time. His regularity in passing
under the old lodestar was noted by servants, and brought to Guilda’s
notice with the half-humorous and half-sympathetic understanding which
can make servants and mistresses kin. One evening Guilda was watching
for his passage, and threw him down a token. It was not a very romantic
one, but token it was.
Peter was startled to be hit on the shoulder by an object flying out
of the dusk as he stood absorbing his sip of evening melancholy. He
picked it out of the mud. It was a dog’s collar, which he recognised,
carried home, and considered carefully. He did not dare to look up.
As he had suspected, it was one of the three dog collars that graced
Guilda’s dressing-room. Apart from a hundred teas and the washing of
his hands it was the first present she had ever given him. He turned
it over again and again in his hands, and then he began turning it in
his mind. He could not be faithless to the token she had given him,
even though it was but a morgan fey beckoning out of the fog. An unseen
light flickered before his closed eyes. A tremendous sadness passed
into his temperament such as he had never felt before. It left him so
uncomfortable that he tried to find a more ordinary name for it. He
decided that it must be a form of illness. It was a natural weakness
and reaction after the first days of convalescence. He was coughing
again, but thank God! without spitting blood.
The dog collar was perplexing. It might be interpreted in several ways.
Firstly, he might be considered a dog and needing a collar and leash!
Secondly, was he a drawing-room pet once more? Thirdly, she had once
told him how deeply she had loved her dogs. Could he aspire to a share
in the great love she had had for Fido, or in the holy emotion she once
felt for Horatio Bottomley? He began to question himself seriously. But
it was gratifying to be even noticed and, though the dog-collar had
descended on the bridge of his nose like a leathery meteorite, it had
already assumed the glamour of daystar in his mind. It was probably a
contemptuous joke on her part, he told himself, perhaps even an act
of hostility from Mr. Faning. He hated even to think that it might
possibly be a practical joke on the part of a servant. He remembered
the fate of Malvolio and shivered under the smart of ridicule. Of
course there was the thousand-and-oneth chance, which makes the test of
the lover--the chance that nobody would dream of following in commerce
or in politics, or even in gambling, but the lover follows the
thousandth chance. Deep below the strata of ten respectable generations
there lay some spark of the Restoration in Peter Joneson, some chip
even of some far-off but possibly prepossessing cavalier, enough to
send him that evening to linger a second time under the Fanings’ flat.