THE nurses at the sanitarium were all fond of the gentlest patient in
the place, and they spoke of him as “Uncle Charlie,” though he was so
sweetly dignified that usually they addressed him as “Mr. Blake,” even
when it was necessary to humour his delusion. The delusion was peculiar
and of apparently interminable persistence; he had but the one during
his sixteen years of incarceration—yet it was a misfortune painful only
to himself (painful through the excessive embarrassment it cost him) and
was never for an instant of the slightest distress to any one else,
except as a stimulant of sympathy. For all that, it closed him in,
shutting out the moving world from him as completely as if he had been
walled up in concrete. Moreover, he had been walled up overnight—one
day he was a sane man, and the next he was in custody as a lunatic; yet
nothing had happened in this little interval, or during any preceding
interval in his life, to account for a seizure so instantaneous.
In 1904 no more commonplace young man could have been found in any of
the great towns of our Eastern and near-Eastern levels. “Well brought
up,” as we used to say, he had inherited the quiet manner, the good
health, and the moderate wealth of his parents; and not engaging in any
business or profession, he put forth the best that was in him when he
planned a lunch for a pretty “visiting girl,” or, again, when he bought
a pair of iron candle-snuffers for what he thought of as his
“collection.” This “collection,” consisting of cheerless utensils and
primitive furniture once used by woodsmen and farmers, and naturally
discarded by their descendants, gave him his principal occupation,
though he was sometimes called upon to lead a cotillion, being
favourably regarded in the waltz and two-step; but he had no
eccentricities, no habitual vices, and was never known to exhibit
anything in the nature of an imagination.
It was in the autumn of the year just mentioned that he went for the
first time to Europe, accompanying his sister, Mrs. Gordon Troup, an
experienced traveller. She took him through the English cathedrals, then
across the Channel; and they arrived unfatigued at her usual hotel in
Paris after dark on a clear November evening—the fated young
gentleman’s last evening of sanity. Yet, as Mrs. Troup so often recalled
later, never in his life had her brother been more “absolutely normal”
than all that day: not even the Channel had disturbed him, for it was as
still as syrup in a pantry jug; he slept on the French train, and when
he awoke, played gently with Mrs. Troup’s three-year-old daughter
Jeannette who, with a nurse, completed the small party. His talk was not
such as to cause anxiety, being in the main concerned with a tailor who
had pleased him in London, and a haberdasher he made sure would please
him in Paris.
They dined in the salon of their apartment; and at about nine o’clock,
as they finished their coffee, flavoured with a little burnt cognac,
Mrs. Troup suggested the theatre—a pantomime or ballet for preference,
since her brother’s unfamiliarity with the French language rapidly
spoken might give him a dull evening at a comedy. So, taking their
leisure, they went to the Marigny, where they saw part of a potpourri
called a “revue,” which Mrs. Troup declared to be at once too feeble and
too bold to detain them as spectators; and they left the Marigny for the
Folies Bergères, where she had once seen a fine pantomime; but here they
found another “revue,” and fared no better. The “revue” at the Folies
Bergères was even feebler, she observed to her brother, and much bolder
than that at the Marigny: the feebleness was in the wit, the boldness in
the anatomical exposures, which were somewhat discomfiting—“even for
Paris!” she said.
She remembered afterward that he made no response to her remark but
remained silent, frowning at the stage, where some figurantes just then
appeared to be dressed in ball gowns, until they turned, when they
appeared to be dressed almost not at all. “Mercy!” said Mrs. Troup; and
presently, as the costume designer’s ideas became less and less
reassuring, she asked her brother if he would mind taking her back to
the hotel: so much dullness and so much brazenness together fatigued
her, she explained.
He assented briefly, though with some emphasis; and they left during the
entr’acte, making their way through the outer room where a “Hungarian”
band played stormily for a painted and dangerous-looking procession
slowly circling like torpid skaters in a rink. The _bang-whang_ of the
music struck full in the face like an impulsive blow from a fist; so did
the savage rouging of the promenaders; and young Mr. Blake seemed to be
startled: he paused for a moment, looking confused. But Mrs. Troup
pressed his arm. “Let’s get out to the air,” she said. “Did you ever see
anything like it?”
He replied that he never did, went on quickly; they stepped into a cab
at the door; and on the way to the hotel Mrs. Troup expressed contrition
as a courier. “I shouldn’t have given you this for your first impression
of Paris,” she said. “We ought to have waited until morning and then
gone to the Sainte Chapelle. I’ll try to make up for to-night by taking
you there the first thing to-morrow.”
He murmured something to the effect that he would be glad to see
whatever she chose to show him, and afterward she could not remember
that they had any further conversation until they reached their
apartment in the hotel. There she again expressed her regret, not with
particular emphasis, of course, but rather lightly; for to her mind, at
least, the evening’s experience was the slightest of episodes; and her
brother told her not to “bother,” but to “forget it.” He spoke casually,
even negligently, but she was able to recall that as he went into his
own room and closed the door, his forehead still showed the same frown,
perhaps of disapproval, that she had observed in the theatre.
The outer door of the apartment, giving entrance to their little
hallway, opened upon a main corridor of the hotel; she locked this door
and took the key with her into her bedchamber, having some vague idea
that her jewels were thus made safer; and this precaution of hers later
made it certain that her brother had not gone out again, but without
doubt passed the night in his own room—in his own room and asleep, so
far as might be guessed.
* * * * *
Her little girl’s nurse woke her the next morning; and the woman’s voice
and expression showed such distress, even to eyes just drowsily opening,
that Mrs. Troup jumped up at once. “Is something wrong with Jeannette?”
“No, ma’am. It is Mr. Blake.”
“Is he ill?”
“I think so. That is, I don’t know, ma’am. A _valet-de-chambre_ went
into his room half an hour ago, and Mr. Blake hid himself under the
bed.”
“What?”
“Perhaps you’d better come and see, ma’am. The _valet-de-chambre_ is
very frightened of him.”
But it was poor young Mr. Blake who was afraid of the
_valet-de-chambre_, and of everybody else, for that matter, as Mrs.
Troup discovered. He declined to come out from under the bed so long as
she and the nurse and the valet were present, and in response to his
sister’s entreaties, he earnestly insisted that she should leave the
room at once and take the servants with her.
“But what’s the matter, Charlie dear?” she asked, greatly disturbed.
“_Why_ are you under the bed?”
In his voice, as he replied, a pathetic indignation was audible:
“Because I haven’t got any clothes on!”
At this her relief was manifest, and she began to laugh. “Good
heavens——”
“But no, madame!” the valet explained. “He has his clothes on. He is
dressed all entirely. If you will stoop and look——”
She did as he suggested, and saw that her brother was fully dressed and
making gestures as eloquently plaintive as the limited space permitted.
“Can’t you take these people away?” he cried pettishly. “Do you think
it’s nice to stand around looking at a person that’s got nothing on?”
He said the same thing an hour later to the doctor Mrs. Troup summoned,
though by that time he had left his shelter under the bed and had locked
himself in a wardrobe. And thus, out of a clear sky and with no
premonitory vagaries, began his delusion—his long, long delusion, which
knew no variation in the sixteen years it possessed him. From first to
last he was generally regarded as a “strange case;” yet his state of
mind may easily be realized by anybody who dreams; for in dreams,
everybody has undergone, however briefly, experiences similar to those
in which Mr. Blake fancied himself so continuously involved.
He was taken from the hotel to a private asylum near Paris, where he
remained until the following year, when Mrs. Troup had him quietly
brought home to a suburban sanitarium convenient for her to visit at
intervals; and here he remained, his condition changing neither for the
better nor for the worse. He was violent only once or twice in the whole
period, and, though he was sometimes a little peevish, he was the most
tractable patient in the institution, so long as his delusion was
discreetly humoured; yet it is probable that the complete records of
kleptomania would not disclose a more expert thief.
This was not a new form of his disease, but a natural by-product and
outgrowth of it, which within a year or two had developed to the point
of fine legerdemain; and at the end of ten years Doctor Cowrie, the
chief at the sanitarium, declared that his patient, Uncle Charlie Blake,
could “steal the trousers off a man’s legs without the man’s knowing
it.” The alienist may have exaggerated; but it is certain that “Uncle
Charlie” could steal the most carefully fastened and safety-pinned apron
from a nurse, without the nurse’s being aware of it. Indeed, attendants,
nurses and servants who wore aprons learned to remove them before
entering his room; for the most watchful could seldom prevent what
seemed a miraculous exchange, and “Uncle Charlie” would be wearing the
apron that had seemed, but a moment before, to be secure upon the
intruder. It may be said that he spent most of his time purloining and
collecting aprons; for quantities of them were frequently discovered
hidden in his room, and taken away, though he always wore several, by
permission. Nor were other garments safe from him: it was found that he
could not be allowed to take his outdoor exercise except in those
portions of the grounds remotest from the laundry yard; and even then as
he was remarkably deft in concealing himself behind trees and among
shrubberies, he was sometimes able to strip a whole length of
clothesline, to don many of the damp garments, and to hide the others,
before being detected.
He read nothing, had no diversions, and was immersed in the sole
preoccupation of devising means to obtain garments, which, immediately
after he put them on, were dissolved into nothingness so far as his
consciousness was concerned. Mrs. Troup could not always resist the
impulse to argue with him as if he were a rational man; and she made
efforts to interest him in “books and the outside world,” kindly efforts
that only irritated him. “How can I read books and newspapers?” he
inquired peevishly from under the bed, where he always remained when he
received her. “Don’t you know any better than to talk about intellectual
pursuits to a man that hasn’t got a stitch of clothes to his name? Try
it yourself if you want to know how it feels. Find yourself totally
undressed, with all sorts of people likely to drop in on you at any
minute, and then sit down and read a newspaper! Please use your _reason_
a little, Frances!”
Mrs. Troup sighed, and rose to depart—but found that her fur cloak had
disappeared under the bed.
In fact, though Mrs. Troup failed to comprehend this, he had explained
his condition to her quite perfectly: it was merely an excessive
protraction of the nervous anxiety experienced by a rational person
whose entire wardrobe is missing. No sensitive gentleman, under such
circumstances, has attention to spare from his effort to clothe himself;
and all information not bearing upon that effort will fail of important
effect upon his mind. You may bring him the news that the Brooklyn
Bridge has fallen with a great splash, but the gravity of the event will
be lost upon him until he has obtained trousers.
Thus, year after year, while Uncle Charlie Blake became more and more
dextrous at stealing aprons, history paced on outside the high iron
fence inclosing the grounds of the sanitarium, and all the time he was
so concerned with his embarrassment, and with his plans and campaigns to
relieve it, that there was no room left in his mind for the plans and
campaigns of Joffre and Hindenburg and Haig and Foch. Armistice Day, as
celebrated by Uncle Charlie, was the day when, owing to some cheerful
preoccupation on the part of doctors and attendants, he stole nine
aprons, three overcoats, a waistcoat and seventeen pillow-slips.
* * * * *
Rip Van Winkle beat Uncle Charlie by four years. The likeness between
the two experiences is pathetically striking, and the difference between
them more apparent than actual; for though Rip Van Winkle’s body lay
upon the hill like a stone, the while his slumber was vaguely decorated
with thousands of dreams, and although Uncle Charlie Blake had the full
use of his body, and was all the time lost in one particular and
definite dream, still if Rip Van Winkle could wake, so could Uncle
Charlie. At least, this was the view of the younger alienist, Doctor
Morphy, who succeeded Doctor Cowrie in 1919.
In the course of some long and sympathetic talks with his patient,
Doctor Morphy slightly emphasized a suggestion that of late tin had come
to be considered the most desirable clothing material: the stiffness and
glitter of tin, as well as the sound of it, enabled a person to be
pretty sure he had something over him, so long as he wore one of the new
tin suits, the Doctor explained. Then he took an engraving of _Don
Quixote_ in armour to a tinsmith, had him make a suit of armour in tin,
and left it in Uncle Charlie’s corridor to be stolen.
The awakening, or cure, began there; for the patient accepted the tin
armour as substance, even when it was upon him, the first apparel he had
believed to be tangible and opaque enough for modesty since the night
his sister had taken him to the Folies Bergères in 1904. The patient’s
satisfaction when he had put on this _Don Quixote_ armour was instant,
but so profound that at first he could express it only in long sighs,
like those of a swimmer who has attained the land with difficulty and
lies upon the bank flaccid with both his struggle and his relief. That
morning, for the first time, he made no dive under his bed at the sound
of a knock upon the door, and when he went out for his exercise, he
broke his long habit of darting from the shelter of one tree to another.
He was even so confident as to walk up to a woman nurse and remark that
it was a pleasant day.
Thence onward, the measures to be taken for his restoration to society
were obvious. The tin greaves pinched him at the joints when he moved,
and Doctor Morphy pointed out that silver cloth, with rows of tiny bells
sewed upon it here and there, would glitter and sound even better than
tin. Then, when the patient had worn a suit of this silver cloth,
instead of tin, for a few weeks, the bells were gradually removed, a row
at a time, until finally they were all gone, and Uncle Charlie was
convinced by only the glitter that he went apparelled. After that, the
silver was secretly tarnished, yet the patient remained satisfied. Next
a woollen suit of vivid green and red plaid was substituted; and others
followed, each milder than its predecessor, until at last Uncle Charlie
grew accustomed to the daily thought that he was clothed, and, relieved
of his long anxiety, began to play solitaire in his room. His delusion
had been gradually worn away, but not to make room for another;
moreover, as it lost actuality to him, he began to forget it. His
intelligence cleared, in fact, until upon Thanksgiving Day, 1920, when
Mrs. Troup came to take him away, he was in everything—except a body
forty-six years old—the same young man who had arrived in Paris on a
November evening in 1904. His information, his point of view and his
convictions were those of a commonplace, well-brought-up, conventional
young American of that period; he had merely to bridge the gap.
Doctor Morphy advised Mrs. Troup that the bridging must be done with as
little strain as possible upon the convalescent’s mind—a mind never too
hardily robust—and therefore the devoted lady took her brother to a
mountain health resort, where for a month they lived in a detached
cottage, walked footpaths in the woods, went to bed at nine, and made no
acquaintances. Mrs. Troup dispensed with newspapers for the time (her
charge did not appear to be aware of their absence) but she had brought
such books as she thought might be useful; and every day she talked to
him, as instructively as she could, of the terrific culminations history
had seen during the latter part of his incarceration.
Of Bolshevism he appeared unable to make anything at all, though Mrs.
Troup’s explanations struck out a single spark from his memory. “Oh,
yes,” he said, “I remember a rather talky chap—he was one of the guests
at that queer place where I used to live, you know—well, he used to
make speeches the whole day long. He said the doctors got all the money
and it was _our_ money. If it wasn’t for us, the doctors wouldn’t have a
cent, he said; and since we produced all the wealth, we ought to
organize, and lock the doctors up in the cellar, and get the money
ourselves. I remember some of the other guests seemed to think there was
a good deal in the talky chap’s speeches, and I suppose it must be
something of this sort that’s happened in Russia. It’s very confusing,
though.”
And when her lessons, as mild as she could make them, had proceeded
somewhat further, he passed his hand over his brow, professing himself
more confused than ever.
“I declare!” he said. “No sensible person could make head or tail of it,
if I may use such an expression. I never dreamed anything could actually
come of all these eccentricities—women’s rights, socialism, blue
Sundays, prohibition and what not. I’ve heard of such people—heard
jokes about ’em—but never in my life _met_ a person that went in
seriously for any of ’em, except that speechifying chap I told you
about. How on earth did it all _happen_?”
Upon this she was able to enlighten him but feebly, and he rubbed his
forehead again.
“It’s no use,” he told her. “There’s no _reason_ behind these things:
the only thing to do is to realize that the world’s gone crazy. We used
to think that civilization was something made of parts working together
as they do in an engine; but from what you tell me, it must have been
trying to split itself up, all the time. The nations split up and began
to fight one another; and as soon as they’d all got so crippled and in
debt that they couldn’t fight any more, the other splits began.
Everybody had to be on the side of the women or on the side of the men,
and the women won. Now everybody has to be either a capitalist or a
labourer, it seems, no matter what _else_ he is; and even if he doesn’t
know which he is, he’ll have to fight, because somebody’s sure to hit
him. And besides _that_, the people have gone and split themselves into
those that drink and the others that won’t let ’em. How many _more_
splits are there going to be, with the people on each side just bound to
run the world their way? There are plenty of other _kinds_ of splits
that could be made, and I suppose we might as well expect ’em; for
instance, we can have all the married people on one side in a
‘class-conscious class,’ as you were explaining, and all the unmarried
ones on the other. Or all the parents on one side and all the children
on the other.” He paused, and laughed, adding: “However, I don’t suppose
it’s gone quite so far as children versus parents yet, has it?”
Mrs. Troup looked thoughtful. “I suppose it always _has_ been ‘children
versus parents’ at least, in a sense,” she said. “I’ve been thinking
lately, though, that since all revolts are more apt to take place
against feeble governments than against strong ones, if the children
_are_ in revolt, it must be because the parents are showing greater
laxity than they used to.”
Mr. Blake went to his afternoon nap, shaking his head, but in silence.
Naturally he was confused by what he heard from her, and once or twice
he was confused by some things he saw, though in their seclusion he saw
little. One mistake he made, however, amazed his sister.
From their pleasant veranda a rounded green slope descended slowly to
the level lawn surrounding the Georgian upheavings of an endless hotel;
and at a porte cochère of this hotel a dozen young women, come from a
ride on the hills, were getting down from their saddles. Mr. Blake, upon
the veranda of the cottage a hundred yards distant, observed them
thoughtfully.
“It may be only the difference in fashions,” he remarked; “but people’s
figures look very queer to me. The actual shapes seem to have changed as
much as the clothes. You’re used to them, I suppose, and so they don’t
surprise you, but down there at that porte cochère, for instance, the
figures all look odd and—well, sort of bunchy. To me, every single one
of those boys seems to be either knock-kneed or bow-legged.”
“‘Boys!’” Mrs. Troup cried.
He stared at her. “What are they?”
“Good gracious! Don’t you see? They’re women!”
He still stared at her, while his incredulous expression slowly changed
to one of troubled perplexity. But he said nothing at all, and after a
moment more, turned away and went to his room, where he remained until
dinner-time. When he appeared at the table, he made no reference to his
mistake, but reverted to the topic of which they had been speaking that
afternoon before his attention wandered to the horsewomen at the porte
cochère.
“Prohibition must have altered a great many people’s lives quite
violently,” he said. “I suppose it was quite a shock for people who’d
always had wine or Scotch at dinner—giving it up so suddenly.”
“I suppose so—I don’t know——” A little colour showed below Mrs.
Troup’s eyes. “Of course, quite a number of people had supplies on hand
when the day came.”
“But most of that must be gone by this time.”
“Quite a good deal of it is gone, yes; you don’t see wine very often any
more. People who have any left are getting very piggish about it, I
believe.”
“It must be odd,” he said contemplatively, “the whole country’s being
absolutely sober and dry, like this.”
“Well——” she began; then, after a pause, went on: “It isn’t like
that—exactly. You see——”
“Oh, of course there would be a few moonshine stills and low dives,” he
interrupted. “But people of our circle——”
“Aren’t exactly ‘dry,’ Charles.”
“But if they have no wine or——”
“It’s my impression,” said Mrs. Troup, “that certain queer kinds of
whisky and gin——”
“But we were speaking of ‘our circle’—the kind of people _we_——”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “They carry these liquids about with them in
the most exquisite flasks. Jeannette has one—a boy friend gave it to
her—and it must have been made by a silversmith who is a real artist.
It must have been fearfully expensive.”
Mr. Blake’s open mouth remained distended for a moment. “Your
Jeannette!” he exclaimed. “Why, she’s only——”
“Oh, she’s nineteen,” his sister informed him soothingly.
“But was it exactly nice for her to receive such a gift from a young
man?”
“Oh, he’s one of the nicest boys we know,” Mrs. Troup explained. “They
swim together every day.”
“‘Swim together’?” her brother inquired feebly.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Troup. “His aunt has a tank.”
“‘His aunt has a tank,’” the convalescent repeated in a low voice, as if
he wished to get the sentence by heart. “‘His aunt has a tank.’”
Mrs. Troup coughed placatively. “It may be a little difficult for you to
understand,” she said. “Of course, even I feel obliged to have something
in the house at home—a certain amount of whisky. I don’t approve of
such things, naturally, but Jeannette feels it’s necessary on account of
the young men and the other girls. She doesn’t like whisky and never
touches it herself.”
Jeannette’s uncle uttered a sigh of relief. “I should think not! I was
afraid, from what you told me of her flask——”
“Oh, in that,” said Mrs. Troup, “she keeps gin.”
“Gin?” he said in a whisper. “Gin?”
“She’s rather fond of gin,” Mrs. Troup informed him. “She makes it
herself from a recipe; it’s quite simple I believe.”
“And she _carries_ this flask——”
“Oh, not all the time!” Mrs. Troup protested, laughing. “Only to dances
and girls’ lunches.” And, observing her brother’s expression, she added:
“Of course, she never takes too _much_; you mustn’t get a wrong idea of
Jeannette. She and all the girls of her set don’t believe in _that_, at
all—I’m positive none of them has ever been intoxicated. They have the
very highest principles.”
“They have?”
“Yes; you see, Jeannette has read Wells and Shaw since she was twelve.
When we go home and you meet Jeannette, you must try to understand that
she belongs to a different generation, Charles. You see, Jeannette has
had so _many_ influences that didn’t affect your own youth at all. For
instance, she always insisted on going to the movies even when she was a
little girl, and I rather enjoy them myself, when I’m tired; and then
there’s the new stage—and the new novel—you know, we have everything
on the stage and in books that we used to think could only be in books
and on the stage in France, because here the police——”
“But in France,” he interrupted, “—in France they didn’t let the _jeune
fille_ read the books or go to the theatre.”
“No,” she agreed. “But of course over here we’ve had feminism——”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I think it’s something to do with the
emancipation of women.” She paused, then added thoughtfully: “Of course,
Jeannette smokes.”
“What!”
“Oh, that’s nothing at all,” she said hastily. “They’ve had to permit it
in nearly all the restaurants.”
He rose, leaning heavily upon his chair, as if for support, and looking
rather more pallid than usual. In fact, his brow was damp from the
exertion its interior workings had undergone in the effort to comprehend
his sister’s conversation. “I think, if you don’t mind,” he murmured,
“I’ll go directly to bed and rest.”
“Do,” she said sympathetically. “We’ll talk some more about Jeannette
to-morrow. She’s the most lovably pretty thing in the world, and you’ll
be cra——” She changed the phrase hastily. “You’ll be delighted to have
such a niece.”
But, as it happened, when she began to speak of Jeannette the next day,
he gently protested, asking her to choose another topic. “I’m sure I
couldn’t understand,” he said, “and the effort rather upsets me. It
would be better to wait and let me form my own impressions when I see
her.”
His sister assented without debate; and nothing more was said about
Jeannette until a week later when they were on the train, and half the
way home. A telegram was handed to Mrs. Troup by the porter, and after
reading it, she glanced rather apprehensively toward her brother, who,
in the opposite seat, was so deeply attentive to a book that he had not
noticed the delivery of the telegram; in fact, he did not observe it,
still in her hand, when he looked up vaguely, after a time, to speak a
thought suggested by his reading.
“So many of these books about the war and the after-effects of the war
say that there is to be a ‘new world.’ All the young people have made up
their minds that the old world was a failure and they’re going to have
something different. I don’t know just what they mean by this ‘new
world’ the writers talk so much about, because they never go into the
details of the great change. It’s clear, though, that the young people
intend the new world to be much more spiritual than the old one. Well,
I’m anxious to see it, and, of course, it’s a great advantage to me,
because I stayed so long at that queer place—where the doctors were—it
will be easier to start in with a new world than it would be, maybe, to
get used to the changes in the old one. I’m mighty anxious to see these
new young people who——”
His sister interrupted him. “You’ll see some of them soon enough, it
appears. I really think Jeannette shouldn’t have done this.” And she
handed him the telegram to read.
=Thought I better let you know in case you prefer taking
Uncle Charles to hotel for first night at home as am throwing
toddle about forty couples at house sausage breakfast at four am
to finish the show and blackamaloo band might disturb Uncle
Charles=.
Uncle Charles was somewhat disturbed, in fact, by the telegram itself.
“‘Am throwing toddle’——” he murmured.
“She means she’s giving a dance,” his sister explained, frowning. “It’s
really not very considerate of her, our first evening at home; but
Jeannette is just made of impulses. She’s given I don’t know how many
dances since I went away with you, and she might have let this one drop.
I’m afraid it may be very upsetting for you, Charles.”
“You could send her a telegram from the next station,” he suggested.
“You could ask her to telephone her friends and postpone the——”
“Not Jeannette!” Mrs. Troup laughed. “I could wire, but she wouldn’t pay
any attention. _I_ have no influence with her.”
“You haven’t?”
“No.” And upon this Mrs. Troup became graver. “I don’t think her father
would have had any either, if he had lived; he was so easy-going and
used to sing so loudly after dinner. Jeannette always seemed to think he
was just a joke, even when she was a child. The truth is, she’s like a
great many of her friends: they seem to lack the quality of respect.
When we were young, Charles, we had that, at least; our parents taught
us to have that quality.”
“But haven’t you taught Jeannette to have it?”
“Indeed I have,” Mrs. Troup sighed. “I’ve told her every day for years
that she hadn’t any. I noticed it first when she was thirteen years old.
It seemed to break out on her, as it were, that year.”
“How did it happen?”
“Why, we were staying at a summer hotel, a rather gay place, and I’m
afraid I left her too much to her governess—I was feeling pretty blue
that summer and I wanted distraction. I liked tangoing——”
“‘Tangoing’?” he said inquiringly. “Was it a game?”
“No; a dance. They called it ‘the tango’; I don’t know why. And there
was ‘turkey-trotting,’ too——”
“‘Turkey-trotting’?” he said huskily.
“Well, that,” she explained, “was really the _machiche_ that tourists
used to see in Paris at the _Bal Bullier_. In fact, you saw it yourself,
Charles. A couple danced the _machiche_ that night at the Folies
Ber——” She checked herself hastily, bit her lip, and then, recovering,
she said: “I got quite fond of all those dances after we imported them.”
“You mean you got used to looking at them?” he asked slowly. “You went
to see them at places where they were allowed?”
At this she laughed. “No, of course not! I danced them myself.”
“_What!_”
“Why, of course!”
“No one——” He faltered. “No one ever _saw_ you do it?”
“Why, of course. It’s a little difficult to explain this to you,
Charles, but all those dances that used to seem so shocking to us when
we went to look on at them in foreign places—well, it turned out that
they were _perfectly_ all right and proper when you dance them yourself.
Of course I danced them, and enjoyed them very much; and besides, it’s a
wholesome exercise and good for the health. _Everybody_ danced them.
People who’d given up dancing for years—the oldest _kind_ of
people—danced them. It began the greatest revival of dancing the
world’s ever seen, Charles, and the——”
He interrupted her. “Go a little slower, please,” he said, and applied a
handkerchief to his forehead. “About your seeming to lose your authority
with Jeannette——”
“Yes; I was trying to tell you. She used to sit up watching us dancing
in the hotel ballroom that summer, and I just _couldn’t_ make her go to
bed! That was the first time she deliberately disobeyed me, but it was a
radical change in her; and I’ve never since then seemed to have any
weight with her—none at all; she’s just done exactly what she pleased.
I’ve often thought perhaps that governess had a bad influence on her.”
He wiped his forehead again, and inquired: “You say she’s given dances
while you’ve been away with me?”
“Oh, she asks plenty of married people, of course.”
“And it wouldn’t be any use to telegraph her to postpone this one?”
“No. She’d just go ahead, and when we got home, she’d be rather annoyed
with me for thinking a dance _could_ be postponed at the last minute. We
must make the best of it.”
“I suppose so.”
“We won’t reach the house till almost nine, and you can go straight to
bed, Charles. I’m afraid the music may disturb you; that’s all. Dance
music is rather loudish, nowadays.”
“I was thinking,” he said slowly, “—I was thinking maybe I’d dress and
look on for a while; I do want to see these new young people. It might
be a good thing for me to begin to get accustomed——”
“So it might,” she agreed, brightening. “I was only bothered on your
account, and if you take it that way, it will be all right.” She
laughed. “The truth is, I enjoy Jeannette’s dances myself. I like to
enter into things with her and be more like a sisterly companion than a
mother in the old-fashioned strict sense. That’s the modern spirit,
Charles; to be a hail-fellow of your children—more a wise comrade than
a parent. So, if you feel that you would be interested in looking on,
and won’t be disturbed—well, that’s just too lovely! And you’ll adore
Jeannette!”
He was sure of that, he said; and added that as he was Jeannette’s uncle
he supposed it would be proper to kiss her when she met them at the
station.
“Oh, she won’t be at the station,” said his sister. “In fact, I’ll be
surprised if she remembers to send the car for us.”
But as it happened, Mrs. Troup was surprised: Jeannette sent the car,
and they were comfortably taken homeward through a city that presented
nothing familiar to Charles Blake, though he had spent his youth in it.
The first thing he found recognizable was the exterior of his sister’s
big house, for she had lived in it ever since her marriage; but indoors
she had remodelled it, and he was as lost as he had been under the great
flares of light down-town. Mrs. Troup led him up to his room and left
him there. “Jeannette’s dressing, they tell me,” she said. “Hurry and
dress, yourself, so as to see her a minute before she gets too busy
dancing. It’s late.”
In spite of her instruction, he was too nervous to dress quickly, and
several times decided to get into bed instead of proceeding with his
toilet; but an ardent curiosity prevailed over his timidity, and he
continued to prepare himself for a state appearance, until a strange
event upset him.
There were a few thin squeaks and low blats of warning—small noises
incomprehensible to him, and seemingly distant—when suddenly burst
forth the most outrageous uproar he had ever heard, and he thought it
just outside his door. When it happened, he was standing with his right
foot elevated to penetrate the orifice of that leg of his trousers, but
the shock of sound overturned him; his foot became entangled, and he
fell upon the floor.
Lying there, helpless, he heard a voice sweet as silver bells, even when
it screamed, as it had to scream now to make itself heard. “No, _no_! I
don’t want ‘The Maiden’s Dream’! _Stop it; dam it!_” And the outrage
became silence, murmurously broken by only the silvery voice which was
itself now indistinguishable, except as ineffable sound; he could not
make out the words.
Fingers tapped on his door. “Do hurry, Charles dear,” Mrs. Troup said.
“Jeannette’s arguing with the musicians, but she might have a moment or
two to see you now. People are just beginning to come.”
“With whom?” he asked hoarsely, not attempting to move.
“‘With whom’ what? I don’t understand,” his sister inquired, shouting
through the closed door.
“You said she’s arguing. With whom?”
“With the musicians.”
“With whom?”
“The musicians. They began to play ‘The Maiden’s Dream,’ but she doesn’t
like it: she wants something livelier.”
“Livelier?”
“I must run,” Mrs. Troup shouted. “Do hurry, Charles.”
In spite of this departing urgency, Charles remained inert for some
time, his cheek upon a rug, his upper eye contemplating the baseboard of
the wall, and his right foot shackled in his trousers. Meanwhile, voices
began to rise without in an increasing strident babble, until finally
they roused him. He rose, completed his toilet and stepped outside his
door.
He found himself upon a gallery which looked down upon a broad hall
floored in wood now darkly lustrous with wax. He had a confused
impression of strewn and drifting great tropical flowers in haphazard
clusters and flaring again, in their unfamiliar colours, from the
reflecting darkness of the polished floor; such dresses as he had never
seen; and flesh-tints, too, of ivory and rose so emphasized and in such
profusion as likewise he had never seen. And from these clusters and
from the short-coated men among them, the shouting voices rose to him in
such uproarious garbling chorus that though he had heard choruses not
very different, long ago, it increased his timidity; and a little
longing floated into his emotion—a homesickness for the old asylum,
where everything had been so orderly and reasonable.
Suddenly he jumped: his hands were clutched upon the railing of the
gallery, and they remained there; but his feet leaped inches into the
air with the shock; for the crash that so startled him came from
directly beneath the part of the gallery where he stood. In his
nervousness, he seemed about to vault over the railing, but as his feet
descended, he recognized the sound: it was of a nature similar to that
which had overcome him in his room, and was produced by those whom his
sister had defined as “the musicians:” they had just launched the dance
music. The clusters of tropical flowers were agitated, broke up. The
short black coats seized upon them, and they seized upon the short black
coats; something indescribable began.
The dance music did not throb—the nervous gentleman in the gallery
remembered dance music that throbbed, dance music that tinkled merrily,
dance music that swam, dance music that sang, and sometimes sang sadly
and perhaps too sweetly of romantic love—but this was incredible: it
beat upon his brain with bludgeons and blackjacks, rose in hideous
upheavals of sound, fell into chaos, squawked in convulsions, seemed
about to die, so that eighty pairs of shoes and slippers were heard in
husky whispers against the waxed floor; then this music leaped to life
again more ferociously than ever.
The thumping and howling of it brought to the gallery listener a dim
recollection: once, in his boyhood, he had been taken through a
slaughter-house; and this was what came back to him now. Pigs have
imaginations, and as they are forced, crowding against one another,
through the chute, their feet pounding the thunderous floor, the
terrible steams they smell warn them of the murderers’ wet knives ahead:
the pigs scream horror with their utmost lungs; and the dumfounded
gentleman recalled these mortal squealings now, though there was more to
this music. There should be added, among other noises, all the agony
three poisoned cats can feel in their entrails, the belabourings of
hollow-log tomtoms by Aruwimi witch-doctors, and incessant cries of
passion from the depths of negroes ecstasized with toddy.
A plump hand touched Mr. Blake’s shoulder, and lifting his pale glance
from below he found that his sister had ascended the gallery stairs to
speak to him.
“What are they doing down there?” he shouted.
“Toddling.”
“You mean _dancing_?”
“Yes; toddling. It’s dancing—great fun, too!”
He was still incredulous, and turned to look again. To his perturbed
mind everybody seemed bent upon the imitation of an old coloured woman
he had once seen swaying on the banks of a creek, at a baptism. She
jiggled the upper portions of her, he remembered, as if she were at once
afflicted and uplifted by her emotions; and at the same time she
shuffled slowly about, her very wide-apart feet keeping well to the
ground. All of these couples appeared to have studied some such ancient
religious and coloured person anxiously; but this was not all that
interested the returned Mr. Blake. Partners in the performance below him
clung to each other with a devotion he had never seen except once or
twice, and then under chance circumstances which had cost him a hurried
apology. Some, indeed, had set their cheeks together for better harmony;
moreover, the performers, who in this exhibition of comedy abandoned
forever all hope of ever being taken seriously by any spectator, were by
no means all of the youthfulness with which any such recklessness of
dignity had heretofore been associated in Mr. Blake’s mind: heads white
as clouds moved here and there among the toddlers; so did dyed heads,
and so did portly figures.
“I came up to point Jeannette out to you,” Mrs. Troup explained,
shouting in her brother’s ear. “I wanted you to see her dancing: she
looks so beautiful. There she is! See! _Doesn’t_ she look pretty?”
His eyes aimed along her extended forefinger and found Jeannette.
Jeannette did “look pretty” indeed, even when she toddled—there could
be no test more cruel. She was a glowing, dark-eyed, dark-haired,
exquisite young thing shimmering with innocent happiness. One of her
childish shoulders bore a jewelled string; the other nothing. Most of
her back and a part of each of her sides were untrammelled; and her
skirt came several inches below the knee, unless she sat. Nothing her
uncle had ever seen had been so pretty as Jeannette.
To her four grandparents, Jeannette would have been merely unbelievable.
Her eight great-grandparents, pioneers and imaginative, might have
believed her and her clothes possible, but they would have believed with
horror. In fact, to find ancestors who would not be shocked at
Jeannette, one would have to go back to the Restoration of Charles
Stuart. At that time she had five hundred and twelve
great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, and probably some of
them were familiar with the court. They would have misunderstood
Jeannette, and they would not have been shocked.
“I just wanted you to see her,” Mrs. Troup shouted. “I must run back to
my partner and finish this. Come down when this number is over and meet
some people.”
He did not attempt to reply, but stared at her blankly. As she turned
away, more of her was seen than when she stood beside him; and a
sculptor would have been interested. “Don’t forget to come down,” she
called back, as she descended the stairway.
But he did not appear at the end of the dance; nor could she find him in
the gallery or in his room; so, a little anxious, she sent a maid to
look for him; and presently the maid came back and said that she had
found him standing alone in the dining-room, but that when she told him
Mrs. Troup was looking for him, he said nothing; he had walked away in
the direction of the kitchen.
“How strange!” Mrs. Troup murmured; but as her troubled eyes happened to
glance downward, both of her hands rose in a gesture of alarm. “Jennie,
where’s your _apron_?” she cried.
“It’s on me, ma’am,” said Jennie; then she discovered that it wasn’t.
“Why, how in the world——”
But Mrs. Troup was already fluttering to the kitchen. She found trouble
there between the caterer’s people and her own: the caterer’s _chef_ was
accusing Mrs. Troup’s cook of having stolen a valuable apron.
Uncle Charles was discovered in the coal cellar. He had upon him both of
the missing aprons, several others, a fur overcoat belonging to one of
the guests, and most of the coal.