METAMORPHOSIS
The day of James Andersen’s funeral and of Gladys’ confirmation
happened to coincide with a remarkable and unexpected event in the
life of Mr. Quincunx. Whatever powers, lurking in air or earth, were
attempting at that moment to influence the fatal stream of events in
Nevilton, must have been grimly conscious of something preordained and
inevitable about this eccentric man’s drift towards appalling moral
disaster.
It seemed as though nothing on earth now could stop the marriage of
Lacrima and Goring, and from the point of view of the moralist, or even
of the person of normal decency, such a marriage, if it really did lead
to Mr. Quincunx’s pensioning at the hands of his enemy, necessarily
held over him a shame and a disgrace proportionate to the outrage done
to the girl who loved him. What these evil powers played upon, if evil
powers they were,--and not the blind laws of cause and effect,--was the
essential character of Mr. Quincunx, which nothing in heaven nor earth
seemed able to change.
There are often, however, elements in our fate, which lie, it might
seem, deeper than any calculable prediction, deeper, it may be, than
the influence of the most powerful supernatural agents, and these
elements--unstirred by angel or devil--are sometimes roused to
activity by the least expected cause. It is, at these moments, as
though Fate, in the incalculable comprehensiveness of her immense
designs, condescended to make use of Chance, her elfish sister, to
carry out what the natural and normal stream of things would seem to
have decreed as an impossibility.
Probably not a living soul who knew him,--certainly not Lacrima,--had
the least expectation of any chance of change in Mr. Quincunx. But then
none of these persons had really sounded the depths in the soul of
the man. There were certain mysterious and unfathomable gulfs in the
sea-floor of Mr. Quincunx’s being which would have exhausted all the
sorceries of Witch-Bessie even to locate.
So fantastic and surprising are the ways of destiny, that,--as shall
be presently seen,--what neither gods nor devils, nor men nor angels,
could effect, was effected by nothing more nor less than a travelling
circus.
The day of the burying of James and the confirmation of Gladys brought
into Nevilton a curious cortège of popular entertainers. This cortège
consisted of one of those small wandering circuses, which, during the
month of August are wont to leave the towns and move leisurely among
the remoter country villages, staying nowhere more than a night, and
taking advantage of any local festival or club-meeting to enhance their
popularity.
The circus in question,--flamingly entitled Porter’s Universal
World-Show,--was owned and conducted by a certain Job Love, a shrewd
and avaricious ruffian, who boasted, though with little justification,
the inheritance of gipsy blood. As a matter of fact, the authentic
gipsy tribes gave Mr. Love an extremely wide berth, avoiding his path
as they would have avoided the path of the police. This cautious
attitude was not confined, however, to gipsies. Every species of
itinerant hawker and pedler avoided the path of Mr. Love, and the few
toy-booths and sweet-stalls that followed his noisy roundabouts were a
department of his own providing.
It was late on Tuesday night when the World-Show established itself in
Nevilton Square. The sound of hammers and the barking of dogs was the
last thing that the villagers heard before they slept, and the first
thing they heard when they awoke.
The master of the World-Show spent the night according to his custom
in solitary regal grandeur in the largest of his caravans. The sun had
not, however, pierced the white mists in the Nevilton orchards before
Mr. Love was up and abroad. The first thing he did, on descending the
steps of his caravan, was to wash his hands and face in the basin of
the stone fountain. His next proceeding was to measure out into a
little metal cup which he produced from his pocket a small quantity
of brandy and to pour this refreshment, diluted with water from the
fountain, down his capacious throat.
Mr. Love was a lean man, of furtive and irascible appearance. His
countenance, bleached by exposure into a species of motley-coloured
leather, shone after its immersion in the fountain like the knob of a
well-worn cudgel. His whitish hair, cut in convict style close to his
head, emphasized the polished mahogany of his visage, from the upper
portion of which his sky-blue eyes, small and glittering, shone out
defiantly upon the world, like ominous jewels set in the forehead of an
obscene and smoke-darkened idol.
Having replaced his cup and flask in his pocket, the master of the
World-Show looked anxiously at the omens of the weather, snuffing the
morning breeze with the air of one not lightly to be fooled either by
rain or shine. Returning to the still silent circus, he knocked sharply
with his knuckles at the door of the smallest of the three caravans.
“Flick!” he shouted, “let me in! Flick! Old Flick! Darn ’ee, man, for
a blighting sand-louse! Open the door, God curse you! Old Flick! Old
Flick! Old Flick!”
Thus assaulted, the door of the caravan was opened from within, and Mr.
Love pushed his way into the interior. A strange enough sight met him
when once inside.
The individual apostrophized as “Old Flick” closed and bolted the door
with extraordinary precaution, as soon as his master had entered, and
then turned and hovered nervously before him, while Mr. Love sank down
on the only chair in the place. The caravan was bare of all furniture
except a rough cooking-stove and a three-legged deal table. But it was
at neither of these objects that Job Love stared, as he tilted back his
chair and waved impatiently aside the deprecatory old man.
Stretched on a ragged horse-blanket upon the floor lay a sleeping
child. Clothed in little else than a linen bodice and a short flannel
petticoat, she turned restlessly in her slumber under Mr. Love’s
scrutiny, and crossing one bare leg over the other, flung out a long
white arm, while her dark curls, disturbed by her movement, fell over
her face and hid it from view.
“Ah!” remarked Mr. Love. “Quieter now, I see. She must dance today,
Flick, and no mistake about it! You must take her out in the fields
this morning, like you did that other one. I can’t have no more
rampaging and such-like, in my decent circus. But she must dance,
there’s no getting over that,--she must dance, Old Flick! ’Twas your
own blighting notion to take her on, remember; and I can’t have no
do-nothing foreigners hanging around, specially now August be come.
“What did she say her nonsense-name was? Lores,--Dolores? Whoever heard
tell of such a name as that?”
The sound of his voice seemed to reach the child even in her sleep; for
flinging her arms over her head, and turning on her back, she uttered a
low indistinguishable murmur. Her eyes, however, remained closed, the
dark curves of her long eye-lashes contrasting with the scarlet of her
mouth and the ivory pallor of her skin.
Even Job Love--though not precisely an æsthete--was struck by the
girl’s beauty.
“She’ll make a fine dancer, Flick, a fine dancer! How old dost think
she be? ’Bout twelve, or may-be more, I reckon.
“’Tis pity she won’t speak no Christian word. ’Tis wonderful, how these
foreign childer do hold so obstinate by their darned fancy-tongue!
“We must trim her out in them spangle-gauzes of Skipsy Jane. _She_
were the sort of girl to make the boys holler. But this one’ll do
well enough, I reckon, if so be she goes smilin’ and chaffin’ upon the
boards.
“But no more of that devil’s foolery, Flick? Dost hear, man? Take her
out into the fields;--take her out into the fields! She must dance and
she must smile, all in Skipsy Jane’s spangles, come noon this day. She
must do so, Flick--or I ain’t Jobie Love!”
The old man paused in his vague moth-like hovering, and surveyed the
outstretched figure. His own appearance was curious enough to excite a
thrill of intense curiosity, had any less callous eye but that of his
master been cast upon him.
He produced the effect not so much of a living person, animated by
natural impulses, as of a dead body possessed by some sort of wandering
spirit which made use of him for its own purposes.
If by chance this spirit were to desert him, one felt that what would
be left of Old Flick would be nothing but the mask of a man,--a husk, a
shard, a withered stalk, a wisp of dried-up grass! The old creature was
as thin as a lathe; and his cavernous, colourless eyes and drooping jaw
looked, in that indistinct light, as vague and shadowy as though they
belonged to some phantasmal mirage of mist and rain drifted in from the
sleeping fields.
“How did ’ee ever get Mother Sterner to let ’ee have so dainty a bit of
goods?” went on Mr. Love, continuing his survey of their unconscious
captive. “The old woman must have been blind-scared of the police or
summat, so as to want to be free of the maid. ’Tisn’t every day you can
pick up a lass so cut out for the boards as she be.”
At intervals during his master’s discourse the parchment-like visage
of the old man twisted and contorted itself, as if with the difficulty
of finding words.
When Job Love at last became silent, the words issued from him as if
they had been rustling eddies of chaff, blown through dried stalks.
“I’ve tried her with one thing, Mister, and I’ve tried her with
another,--but ’tis no use; she do cry and cry, and there’s no handling
her. I guess I must take her into them fields, as you do say. ’Tis
because of folks hearing that she do carry on so.”
Job Love frowned and scratched his forehead.
“Damn her,” he cried, “for a limpsy cat! Well--Old Flick--ye picked
her up and ye must start her off. This show don’t begin till nigh
along noon,--so if ye thinks ye can bring her to reason, some ways
or t’other ways, off with ’ee, my man! Get her a bite of breakfast
first,--and good luck to ’ee! Only don’t let’s have no fuss, and don’t
let’s have no onlookers. I’m not the man to stand for any law-breaking.
This show’s a decent show, and Job Love’s a decent man. If the wench
makes trouble, ye must take her back where she did come from. Mother
Sterner’ll have to slide down. I can’t have no quarrels with King and
Country, over a limpsy maid like she!”
Uttering these words in a tone of formidable finality, Mr. Love moved
to the entrance and let himself out.
Their master gone, Old Flick turned waveringly to the figure on the
floor. Taking down a faded coat from its peg on the wall, he carefully
spread it over the child, tucking it round her body with shaking
hands. He then went to the stove in the corner, lit it, and arranged
the kettle. From the stove he turned to the three-legged table; and
removing from a hanging cupboard a tea-pot, some cups and plates,
a loaf of bread and a pat of butter, he set out these objects with
meticulous nicety, avoiding the least clatter or sound. This done, he
sat down upon the solitary chair, and waited the boiling of the water
with inscrutable passivity.
From outside the caravan came the shuffle of stirring feet and the
murmur of subdued and drowsy voices. The camp was beginning to enter
upon its labour of preparation.
When he had made tea, Old Flick touched his sleeping captive lightly on
the shoulder.
The girl started violently, and sat up, with wide-open eyes. She began
talking hurriedly, protesting and imploring; but not a word of her
speech was intelligible to Old Flick, for the simple reason that it was
Italian,--Italian of the Neapolitan inflexion.
The old man handed her a strong cup of tea, together with a large slice
of bread-and-butter, uttering as he did so all manner of soothing and
reassuring words. When she had finished her breakfast he brought her
water and soap.
“Tidy thee-self up, my pretty,” he said. “We be goin’ out, along into
them fields, present.”
Bolting the caravan door on the outside, he shuffled off to the
fountain to perform his own ablutions, and to assist his companions in
unloading the stage-properties, and setting up the booths and swings.
After the lapse of an hour he climbed the caravan-steps and re-entered
softly.
He found the girl crouched in a corner, her hands clasped over her
knees, and traces of tears upon her cheeks. Before leaving her, the old
man had placed shoes and stockings by her side, and these she now wore,
together with a dark-coloured skirt and a scarlet gipsy-shawl.
“Come,” he said. “Thee be goin’ wi’ I into the fields. Thee be goin’
to learn a dancin’ trick or two. Show opens along of noon; and Master,
he’s goin’ to let ’ee have Skipsy Jane’s spangles.”
How much of this the child understood it is impossible to say; but
the old man’s tone was not threatening, and the idea of being taken
away--somewhere--anywhere--roused vague hopes in her soul. She pulled
the red shawl over her head and let him lead her by the hand.
Down the steps they clambered, and hurriedly threaded their way across
the square.
The old man took the road towards Yeoborough, and turned with the girl
up Dead Man’s Lane. He was but dimly acquainted with the neighbourhood;
but once before, in his wanderings as a pedler, he had encamped in a
certain grassy hollow bordering on the Auber Woods, and the memory of
the seclusion of this spot drew him now.
As they passed Mr. Quincunx’s garden they encountered the solitary
himself, who, in his sympathy with Luke Andersen on this particular
day, had resolved to pay the young man an early morning visit.
The recluse looked with extreme and startled interest at this singular
pair. The child’s beauty struck him with a shock that almost took his
breath away. There was something about the haunting expression of her
gaze as she turned it upon him that roused an overpowering flood of
tenderness and pity in untouched abysses of his being.
There must have been some instantaneous reciprocity in the eccentric
man’s grey eyes, for the young girl turned back after they had passed,
and throwing the shawl away from her head, fixed upon him what seemed a
deliberate and beseeching look of appeal.
Mr. Quincunx was so completely carried out of his normal self by this
imploring look that he went so far as to answer its inarticulate prayer
by a wave of his hand, and by a sign that indicated,--whether she
understood it or not,--that he intended to render her assistance.
In his relations with Lacrima Mr. Quincunx was always remotely
conscious that the girl’s character was stronger than his own,
and--Pariah-like--this had the effect of lessening the emotion he felt
towards her.
But now--in the look of the little Dolores--there was an appeal from
a weakness and helplessness much more desperate than his own,--an
appeal to him from the deepest gulfs of human dependence. The glance
she had given him burned in his brain like a coal of white fire. It
seemed to cry out to him from all the flotsam and jetsam, all the drift
and wreckage of everything that had ever been drowned, submerged, and
stranded, by the pitilessness of Life, since the foundation of the
world.
The child’s look had indeed the same effect upon Mr. Quincunx that the
look of his Master had upon the fear-stricken Apostle, in the hall of
Caiaphas the high priest. In one heart-piercing stab it brought to his
overpowered consciousness a vision of all the victims of cruelty who
had ever cried aloud for help since the generations of men began their
tragic journey.
Perhaps to all extremely sensitive natures of Mr. Quincunx’s type, a
type of morbidly self-conscious weakness as well as sensitiveness, the
electric stir produced by beauty and sex can only reach a culmination
when the medium of its appearance approximates to the extreme limit of
fragility and helplessness.
Hell itself, so to speak, had to display to him its span-long babes,
before he could be aroused to descend and “harrow” it! But once roused
in him, this latent spirit of the pitiful Son of Man became formidable,
reckless, irresistible. The very absence in him of the usual weight of
human solidity and “character” made him the more porous to this divine
mood.
Anyone who watched him returning hastily to his cottage from the
garden-gate would have been amazed by the change in his countenance. He
looked and moved like a man under a blinding illumination. So must the
citizen of Tarsus have looked, when he staggered into the streets of
Damascus.
He literally ran into his kitchen, snatched up his hat and stick,
poured a glass of milk down his throat, put a couple of biscuits into
his pocket, and re-issued, ready for his strange pursuit. He hurried up
the lane to the first gate that offered itself, and passing into the
field continued the chase on the further side of the hedge.
The old man evidently found the hill something of an effort, for it was
not long before Mr. Quincunx overtook them.
He passed them by unremarked, and continued his advance along the
hedgerow till he reached the summit of the ridge between Wild Pine and
Seven Ashes. Here, concealed behind a clump of larches, he awaited
their approach. To his surprise, they entered one of the fields on the
opposite side of the road, and began walking across it.
Mr. Quincunx watched them. In a corner of the field they were crossing
lay a spacious hollow,--once the bed of a pond,--but now quite dry and
overgrown with moss and clover.
Old Flick’s instinct led him to this spot, as one well adapted to the
purpose he had in mind, both by reason of its absolute seclusion and by
reason of its smooth turf-floor.
Mr. Quincunx waited till their two figures vanished into this
declivity, and then he himself crossed the field in their track.
Having reached the mossy level of the vanished pond,--a place which
seemed as though Nature herself had designed it with a view to his
present intention,--Old Flick assumed a less friendly air towards
his captive. A psychologist interested in searching out the obscure
workings of derelict and submerged souls, would have come to the speedy
conclusion as he watched the old man’s cadaverous face that the spirit
which at present animated his corpse-like body was one that had little
commiseration or compunction in it.
The young Dolores had not, it seemed, to deal at this moment with an
ordinary human scoundrel, but with a faded image of humanity galvanized
into life by some conscienceless Larva.
In proportion as this unearthly obsession grew upon Old Flick, his
natural countenance grew more and more dilapidated and withered.
Innumerable years seemed suddenly added to the burden he already
carried. The lines of his face assumed a hideous and Egyptian
immobility; only his eyes, as he turned them upon his companion, were
no longer colourless.
“Doll,” said he, “now thee must try thee’s steps, or ’twill be the
worse for thee!”
The girl only answered by flinging herself down on her knees before
him, and pouring forth unintelligible supplications.
“No more o’ this,” cried the old man; “no more o’ this! I’ve got to
learn ’ee to dance,--and learn ’ee to dance I will. Ye’ll have to go on
them boards come noon, whether ’ee will or no!”
The child only clasped her hands more tightly together, and renewed her
pleading.
It would have needed the genius of some supreme painter, and of such
a painter in an hour of sheer insanity, to have done justice to the
extraordinary expression that crossed the countenance of Old Flick at
that moment. The outlines of his face seemed to waver and decompose.
None but an artist who had, like the insatiable Leonardo, followed the
very dead into their forlorn dissolution, could have indicated the
setting of his eyes; and his eyes themselves, madness alone could have
depicted.
With a sudden vicious jerk the old man snatched the shawl from the
girl’s shoulders, flung it on the ground, and seizing her by the wrists
pulled her up upon her feet.
“Dance, ye baggage!” he cried hoarsely;--“dance, I tell ’ee!”
It was plain that the luckless waif understood clearly enough now what
was required of her, and it was also plain that she recognized that the
moment for supplication had gone by. She stepped back a pace or two
upon the smooth turf, and slipping off her unlaced shoes,--shoes far
too large for her small feet,--she passed the back of her hand quickly
across her eyes, shook her hair away from her forehead, and began a
slow, pathetic little dance.
“Higher!” cried Old Flick in an excited voice, beating the air with his
hand and humming a strange snatch of a tune that might have inspired
the dances of Polynesian cannibals. “Higher, I tell ’ee!”
The girl felt compelled to obey; and putting one hand on her hip
and lifting up her skirt with the other, she proceeded, shyly and
in forlorn silence, to dance an old Neapolitan folk-dance, such as
might be witnessed, on any summer evening, by the shores of Amalfi or
Sorrento.
It was at this moment that Mr. Quincunx made his appearance against
the sky-line above them. He looked for one brief second at the girl’s
bare arms, waving curls, and light-swinging body, and then leapt down
between them.
All nervousness, all timidity, seemed to have fallen away from him
like a snake’s winter-skin under the spring sun. He seized the child’s
hand with an air of indescribable gentleness and authority, and made
so menacing and threatening a gesture that Old Flick, staggering
backwards, nearly fell to the ground.
“Whose child is this?” he demanded sternly, soothing the frightened
little dancer with one hand, while with the other he shook his cane in
the direction of the gasping and protesting old man.
“Whose child is this? You’ve stolen her, you old rascal! You’re no
Italian,--anyone can see that! You’re a damned old tramp, and if you
weren’t so old and ugly I’d beat you to death; do you hear?--to death,
you villain! Whose child is she? Can’t you speak? Take care; I’m badly
tempted to make you taste this,--to make _you_ skip and dance a little!
“What do you say? Job Love’s circus? Well,--he’s not an Italian either,
is he? So if you haven’t stolen her, he has.”
He turned to the child, stooping over her with infinite tenderness, and
folding the shawl of which she had again possessed herself, with hands
as gentle as a mother’s, about her shoulders and head.
“Where are your parents, my darling?” he asked, adding with a flash of
amazing presence of mind,--“your ‘padre’ and ‘madre’?”
The girl seemed to get the drift of the question, and with a pitiful
little smile pointed earthward, and made a sweeping gesture with both
her hands, as if to indicate the passing of death’s wings.
“Dead?--both dead, eh?” muttered Mr. Quincunx. “And these rascals
who’ve got hold of you are villains and rogues? Damned rogues! Damned
villains!”
He paused and muttered to himself. “What the devil’s the Italian for
a god-forsaken rascal?--‘Cattivo!’ ‘Tutto cattivo!’--the whole lot of
them a set of confounded scamps!”
The child nodded her head vigorously.
“You see,” he cried, turning to Old Flick, “she disowns you all. This
is clearly a most knavish piece of work! What were you doing to the
child? eh? eh? eh?” Mr. Quincunx accompanied these final syllables with
renewed flourishes of his stick in the air.
Old Flick retreated still further away, his legs shaking under him.
“Here,--you can clear out of this! Do you understand? You can clear out
of this; and go back to your damned master, and tell him I’m going to
send the police after him!
“As for this girl, I’m going to take her home with me. So off you
go,--you old reprobate; and thankful you may be that I haven’t broken
every bone in your body! I’ve a great mind to do it now. Upon my soul
I’ve a great mind to do it!
“Shall I beat him into a jelly for you,--my darling? Shall I make him
skip and dance for you?”
The child seemed to understand his gestures, if not his words; for she
clung passionately to his hands, and pressing them to her lips, covered
them with kisses; shaking her head at the same time, as much as to say,
“Old Flick is nothing. Let Old Flick go to the devil, as long as I can
stay with you!” In some such manner as this, at any rate, Mr. Quincunx
interpreted her words.
“Sheer off, then, you old scoundrel! Shog off back to your confounded
circus! And when you’ve got there, tell your friends,--Job Love and his
gang,--that if they want this little one they’d better come and fetch
her!
“Dead Man’s Lane,--that’s where I live. It’s easily enough found;
and so is the police-station in Yeoborough,--as you and your damned
kidnappers shall discover before you’ve done with me!”
Uttering these words in a voice so menacing that the old man shook like
an aspen-leaf, Mr. Quincunx took the girl by the hand, and, ascending
the grassy slope, walked off with her across the field.
Old Flick seemed reduced to a condition bordering upon imbecility. He
staggered up out of that unpropitious hollow, and stood stock-still,
like one petrified, until they were out of sight. Then, very slowly
and mumbling incoherently to himself, he made his way back towards the
village.
He did not even turn his head as he passed Mr. Quincunx’s cottage.
Indeed, it is extremely doubtful how far he had recognized him as the
person they encountered on their way, and still more doubtful how
far he had heard or understood, when the tenant of Dead Man’s Lane
indicated the place of his abode.
The sudden transformation of the timid recluse into a formidable man
of action did not end with his triumphant retirement to his familiar
domain. Some mysterious fibre in his complicated temperament had been
struck, and continued to be struck, by the little Dolores, which not
only rendered him indifferent to personal danger, but willing and happy
to encounter it.
The event only added one more proof to the sage dictum of the Chinese
philosopher,--that you can never tell of what a man is capable until he
is stone-dead.