Chapter IV (3)

“Why, man alive, that ’ud be Pettigrove, too.”

The bell in the tower gave another profoundly solemn beat.

“What’s the name on that headstone?” asked Mark.

“Caroline Pettigrove. What be you thinking on?”

“We’re in the wrong hole, Jethro; come and see for yourself, the plate on this old coffin says Caroline Cronshaw, see for yourself, we’re in the wrong hole.”

Again the bell voiced its melancholy admonition.

Jethro descended the short ladder and stood in the grave with Mark just as the cortège entered the church by the door on the opposite side of the yard. He knelt down and rubbed with his own fingers the dulled inscription on the mouldering coffin; there was no doubt about it, Caroline Cronshaw lay there.

“Well, may I go to glory,” slowly said the old man. It may have occurred to Mark that this was an extravagantly remote destination to prescribe; at any rate he said: “There ain’t no time, now, come on.”

“Who the devil be she? However come that wrong headstone to be putt on this wrong grave?” quavered the kneeling man.

“Are you coming out?” growled Mark, standing with one foot on the ladder, “or ain’t you? They’ll be chucking him on top of you in a couple o’ minutes. There’s no time, I tell you.”

“’Tis a strange come-up as ever I see,” said the old man; striking one wall of the grave with his hand: “that’s where we should be, Mark, next door, but there’s no time to change it and it must go as it is, Mark. Well, it’s fate; what is to be must be whether it’s good or right and you can’t odds it, you darn’t go against it, or you be wrong.” They stood in the grave muttering together. “Not a word, Mark, mind you!” At last they shovelled some earth back upon the tell-tale name-plate, climbed out of the grave, drew up the ladder, and stood with bent heads as the coffin was borne from the church towards them. It was lowered into the grave, and at the “earth to earth” Jethro, with a flirt of his spade dropped in a handful of sticky marl, another at “ashes to ashes,” and again at the “dust to dust.” Finally, when they were alone together again, they covered in the old lovers, dumping the earth tightly and everlastingly about them, and reset the headstone, Jethro remarking as they did so: “That headstone, well, ’tis a mystery, Mark! And I can’t bottom it, I can’t bottom it at all, ’tis a mystery.”

And indeed, how should it not be, for the secret had long since been forgotten by its originator.

_The Fancy Dress Ball_

There was a young fellow named Bugloss. He wore cufflinks made of agate with studs to match but was otherwise an agreeable person who suffered much from a remarkable diffidence, one of nature’s minor inconsistencies having been to endow him with a mute desire for romantic adventure and an entire incapacity to inaugurate any such thing.

It was in architecture that he found his way of life, quite a profitable and genteel way; for while other hands and heads devised the mere details of drainage, of window and wall, staircase, cupboard, and floor, in fact each mechanical thing down to the hooks and bells in every room, he it was who painted those entrancing draughts of elevation and the general prospect (with a few enigmatic but graceful trees, clouds in the offing, and a tiny postman plodding sideways up the carriage drive) which lured the fond fly into the architectural parlour. It must be confessed that he himself lived in rooms over the shop of a hairdresser, whose window displayed the elegantly coiffed head and bust of a wax lady suffering either from an acute attack of jaundice or the effects of a succession of late nights: next door was an establishment dealing exclusively, but not exhaustingly, in mangles and perambulators. In Bugloss’s room there were two bell handles with wires looking very handy and complete, yet whenever he desired the attendance of the maid he had (_a_) to take a silver whistle from his pocket; (_b_) to open the door; and (_c_) to blow it smartly in the passage.

His exceeding shyness was humiliating to himself and annoying to people of friendly disposition, it could not have been more preposterous had he been condemned to wear a false nose; he might have gone (he may even now be going) to his grave without once looking into a woman’s eyes. What a pity! His own eyes were worth looking at; he was really a nice young man, tall and slender with light fluffy hair, who if he couldn’t hide his amiable light under a bushel certainly behaved as if it wasn’t there. Things were so until one day he chanced to read with envious pleasure but a good deal of scepticism a book called _Anatol_ by a Viennese writer; almost immediately the fascinating possibilities of romantic infidelity were confirmed by a quarrel which began in the hairdresser’s house between the young hairdresser and his wife, Monsieur and Madame Rabignol, and lasted for a week in the course of which Bugloss learned that the hairdresser was indulging in precisely one of those intrigues with an unknown lady living somewhere near by; Madame Rabignol, charming but virulent, protested a thousand times that it must be a base woman who walked the streets at night, and that Monsieur Rabignol was a low pig. The fair temptress, it appeared, was given to the use of a toilet unguent with the beguiling misdescription of “Vanishing Face Cream”; that was an unfortunate circumstance, because the wife of the hairdresser, a very cute woman, on her husband’s return from an evening’s absence, invariably kissed him and smelt him.

“Evil communications,” saith St. Paul (borrowing the phrase from Menander), “corrupt good manners,” and his notion must have something of truth in it, for these domestic revelations produced an unusual stir in the Bugloss bosom—he bought a ticket for a popular fancy dress ball and made a mighty resolve to discard his pusillanimous self with one grand gesture and there and then take the plunge. At a fancy dress ball you could do that; everyone made a fool of himself more or less; and Bugloss determined to plunge into whatever there was to plunge in. This was desperately unwise, but you are not to suppose that he harboured any looseness or want of principle; he was good and modest, and virtuous as any young man could possibly be; he only hoped, at the very least, to look some fair girl deep in the eyes. So he designed an oriental costume, simple to make (being loose-fitting), and having bought quantities of purple and crimson fabric he wrapped them up and sent the office-boy with his design, materials, measurements, and instructions to a dressmaker in the neighbourhood, whom he wisely thought would make a better job of it than a tailor. When the costume was finished he was delighted; it was magnificent, resplendent, artistic, and the dressmaker’s charge was moderate.

On the night of the ball, a warm August night with soft thrilling air and a sky of sombre velvet, he drove in a closed cab. Dancing was in the open, the lawns of a mansion were lent for the occasion, and Bugloss went rather late to escape notice—nearly eleven o’clock—but in the cab his timorousness conspiring against him had deepened to palpitating dejection; he was afraid again, the grand gesture was forgotten, and his attire was fantastically guarded from the public eye. From his window he had watched the arrival of the cab and had slunk down to it secretly—not a word to the Rabignols!—in a bowler hat and a mackintosh that reached to his feet; his fancy shoes were concealed under a pair of goloshes, the bright tasselled cap was in his pocket.

Heavens! It was too painful. This was no plunge, this miserable sink or swim—it was delirium, hell—what a stupid man he had been to come—it was no go, it was useless—and he was about to order the cabman to turn back home when the cab stopped at the gates of the mansion, the door was flung open and a big policeman almost dragged him out upon the carpeted pavement. A knot of jocular bystanders caused him to scurry into the grounds where three officials—good, bad, and indifferent—examined his ticket and directed him onwards. But the cloak rooms were right across the grounds, the great lawn was simply a bath of illumination, the band played in the centre and the dancers, madly arrayed, were waltzing madly. Bugloss, desiring only some far corner of darkness to flee into, saw on all sides shadowy trees, dim shrubs, and walks that led to utter gloom—thank God!—and there was a black moonless sky, though even that seemed positively to drip with stars.

At this moment the big policeman, following after him, said: “What about this cab, sir?”

“What—yes—this cab!” repeated Bugloss, and to his agonized imagination every eye in the grounds became ironically fixed upon him alone; even the music ceased, and there resounded a flutter of coruscating amiability.

“D’ye want him to wait?” the policeman was grinning—“He ain’t got any orders.”

“O, O dear, how much, what’s his fare? I don’t want him again and—gracious! I haven’t a cent on me—what, what—O, please tell him to call at my house to-morrow. Pay him then I will. Please!”

“Righto, my lord!” said the big policeman, saluting—he was a regular joker that fellow. Then Bugloss, trembling in every limb, almost leapt towards one of the dark walks, away from those grinning eyes. The shrubs and trees concealed him, though even here an odd paper lantern or two consorted with a few coloured bulbs of light. Shortly he began his observations.

The cloak rooms, he found, could be approached only by crossing the lawn. In a mackintosh, goloshes, and a bowler hat, that was too terrific an ordeal; the trembling Israelite during that affrighting passage of the Red Sea had all the incitements of escape and the comfort of friends, but this more violent ordeal led into captivity, and Bugloss was alone. What was to be done? The music began again and it was agreeable, the illuminations were lustrous and pretty, the dancers gay, but Bugloss was neither agreeable nor gay, and his prettiness was not yet on the surface. He was in a highly wrought condition, he was limp, and he remained in what seclusion he could find in the garden, peering like a sinner at some assembly of the blest. At last he snatched off his goloshes and stuffed them in his pocket. “So far,” he murmured, “so good. I will hide the mackintosh among the bushes, I can’t face that dressing room.” Just then the band gave a heightened blare, drum and cymbals were rapidly beaten and the music ceased amid clapping and polite halloing. “Dash it, I must wait till the next dance,” said Bugloss, “and, O lord, there’s a lot of them coming this way.” He turned to retreat into deeper darkness when suddenly, near the musicians, he saw a fascinating girl, a dainty but startling figure skimming across the lawn as if to overtake a friend. Why—yes—she had a wig of bright green hair, green; a short-waisted cherry silk jacket and harlequin pantaloons, full at the hips but narrowing to the ankles, where white stockings slipped into a pair of gilded leather shoes with heels of scarlet. Delicately charming were her face and figure, entrancing were her movements, and she tinkled all over with hidden bells.

“Sweet God, what beauty!” thought Bugloss, “this is She, the Woman to know, I must, I must ... but how?”

She disappeared. For the moment he could not rid himself of the bowler hat and mackintosh, so many couples roamed in the dark glades; wherever he went he could see the glow of cigarettes, generally in twos, and there were whispering or silent couples standing about in unexpected places. Retiring to the darkest corner he had previously found he was about to discard his mackintosh when he was startled by a cry at his elbow: “Lena, where are you, what’s that?” and a girl scuttled away, calling “Lena! Lena!” Her terror dismayed him, the little shock itself brought the sweat to his brow, but the music beginning again drew all the stragglers back to the lawn. There, from his gloomy retreat, he beheld the green-haired beauty in the arms of a pirate king who was adorned with an admiral’s hat and a dangerous moustache. “If,” thought Bugloss, still in his mufti, “I couldn’t have discovered a better get-up than that fellow, I’d have stayed away. There’s no picture in it, it’s just silly, I couldn’t wear a thing like that, I couldn’t wear it, I’d have perished rather than come.” And indeed there was an absence of imagination about all the male adornment; many of the ladies were right enough, but some were horrors, and most of the men were horrors; there was justification for Bugloss’s subsequent reflection: “I’ll show them, a little later on, what can be done when an artist takes the thing in hand; now after this dance is over.... etc., etc.”

Two lovers startled him by beginning to quarrel. They were passing among the trees behind him and talking quite loudly, both with a slight foreign accent. “But I shall not let you go, Johannes,” said the lady with a fierce little cry. Bugloss turned and could just discern a lady costumed as a vivandière; her companion was in the uniform Of a Danish soldier.

“If you forced me to stop I would kill you,” retorted the man.

“O, you would kill me!”

“If you forced me to stop.”

“You would kill me ... so!”

“Yes, I would kill you.”

“But you have told me that if I _can_ keep you here in England I may do it. You know. If I can. You know that, Johannes!”

Bugloss was persuaded that he had heard her voice before, though he could not recognize the speaker.

“Be quiet, you are a fool,” the man said. That was all Bugloss heard. It was brutal enough. If only a woman, any woman, had wanted _him_ like that!

He wandered about during other dances. The green-haired girl was always with that idiotic pirate, and it made things very difficult, because although Bugloss had fallen desperately in love with her he could not, simply could not, march up and drag her away from her companion. He could not as yet even venture from his ambush among the trees, and they never wandered in the gloom—they were always dancing together or eating together. He, Bugloss, had no interest in any other woman there, no spark of interest whatsoever. That being so, why go to all the fuss of discarding the mackintosh and making an exhibition of himself? Why go bothering among that crowd, he was not a dancer at all, he didn’t want to go! But still ... by and by perhaps ... when that lovely treasure was not so extraordinarily engaged. Sweet God! she was just ... well, but he could not stand much more of that infernal pirate’s antics with her. Withdrawing his tantalized gaze he sat down in darkness behind a clump of yew trimmed in the shape of some fat animal that resembled a tall hippopotamus. Here he lit his tenth cigarette. At once a dizziness assailed him, he began to see scarlet splashes in the gloom, to feel as if he were being lacerated with tiny pins. Throwing the cigarette away he stretched himself at full length under the bush. Scarcely had he done so when he became aware that two others were sitting down on the other side of it, the same foreign couple, the vivandière and her threatening cavalier.

“Listen to me, Hélène,” the man was saying in a soft consoling voice, “you shall trust to me and come away. Together we will go. But here I cannot stay. It is fate. You love, eh? Come then, we will go to Copenhagen, I will take you to my country. Now, Hélène!”

The lady made no reply; Bugloss felt that she must be crying. The Dane continued to woo and the Frenchwoman to murmur back to him: “Is it not so, Johannes?” “No, Hélène, no.” But at last he cried angrily: “Pah! Then stop with your bandit, that pig! Pah!” and chattering angrily in his strange language he sprang up and stalked away. Hélène rose too and followed him beseechingly into the gloom: “No, no, Johannes, no!”

Bugloss got up from the grass; his dizziness was gone. He knew that voice, it seemed impossible, but he knew her, and he had half a mind to rush home: but being without his watch and unable to discover what o’clock it was, he did not care to walk out into the streets with the chance of being guyed by any half-drunken sparks passing late home. He would wait, he was sure it was past midnight now, there would be a partial exodus soon, and he would go off unnoticed in the crowd. There was no more possibility now of him shedding his coat and joining the revellers than there was of that beauteous girl flying into his arms; his inhibition possessed him with tenfold power, he was an imbecile. Sad, pitiful, wretched, outcast! Through the screen of foliage the music floated with exquisite faintness, luminous cadenzas from a gleaming but guarded Eldorado whose light was music, whose music was all a promise and a mockery; he was a miserable prisoner pent in his own unbearable but unbreakable shackles and dressed up like a doll in a pantomime! Many people had come in their ordinary clothes; why, O why had he put on this maddening paralysing raiment? Why had he come at all?

Some of the lights had begun to fade; at one end of the lawn most of the small lamps had guttered out, leaving a line of a dozen chairs in comparative obscurity. Weary of standing, he slunk to the corner chair and sat down with a sigh. Just beside him was a weeping ash that he supposed only looked happy when it rained, and opposite was a poplar straining so hard to brush the heavens that he fancied it would be creaking in every limb. By and by an elderly decorous lady, accompanied by two girls not so decorous—the one arrayed as a Puritan maiden and the other as a Scout mistress—came and sat near him, but he did not move. They did not perceive the moody Bugloss. The elderly lady spoke: “Do go and fetch her here; no, when this waltz is over. She is very rude, but I want to see her. I can’t understand why she avoids us, and how she is getting on is a mystery to everybody. Bring her here.”

The puritan maiden and the scout mistress, embracing each other, skipped away to the refreshment booth. Glorious people sat about there drinking wine as if they disliked it, sipping ices as if it were a penance, and eating remarkable food or doing some other reasonable things, but Bugloss dared not join them although he was very hungry. It was not hunger he wanted to avert, but an impending tragedy.

The hypersensitive creature sees in the common mass of his fellows only something that seeks to deny him, and either in fear of that antagonism or in the knowledge of his own imperfections he isolates and envelopes the real issue of his being—much as an oyster does with the irritant grain in its beard; only the outcome is seldom a pearl and not always as useful as a fish. Bugloss was still wholly enveloped, and his predicament gave a melancholy tone to his thoughts. He sat hunched in his chair until the dance ended and the two girls came back, bringing with them the lovely green-haired one!

“Hello, aunt,” she cried merrily enough, “why aren’t you in costume? Like my get-up?”

Without a word the elderly lady kissed her, and all sat down within a few feet of Bugloss. It thrilled him to hear her voice; at least he would be able to recognize that when she turned back again to daylight’s cool civilities.

“Did you know that I had blossomed out in business?” she was saying. Bugloss thought it a beautiful voice.

“I heard of it,” said her aunt, whom you may figure as a lady with a fan, eyeglasses, and the repellant profile of a bird of prey, “about half an hour ago. I wish I had heard of it before.”

“I am a full-blown modiste.”

“Yes, you might have told me.”

“But I have told you.”

“You might have told me before.”

“But I haven’t seen you before, aunt.”

“No, we haven’t seen you. How is this business, Claire, is it thriving, making money?”

“O, we get along, aunt,” said the radiant niece in a tone of almost perverse amiability. “I have several assistants. Do you know, we made seven of the costumes for this ball—seven—one of them for a man.”

“I thought ladies only made for ladies.”

“So did I, but this order just dropped in upon us very mysteriously, and we did it, from top to toe, a most gorgeous arrangement, all crimson and purple and silver and citron, but I haven’t seen anybody wearing it yet. I wonder if you have? I’m so disappointed. It’s a sultan, or a nabob, or a nankipoo of some kind, I am certain it was for this ball. I was so anxious to see it worn. I had made up my mind to dance at least half the dances with the wearer, it was so lovely. Have you seen such a costume here?”

“No,” said the aunt grimly, “I have not, but I have noticed the pirate king—did you make his costume too? I hope not!”

“O no, aunt,” laughed Claire, “isn’t he a fright?”

“Who is he?”

“That? O, a friend of mine, a business friend.”

“He seems fond of you.”

“I have known him some time. Yes, I like him. Don’t you like my pirate king?” asked Claire, turning to her two cousins.

The cousins both thought he was splendid.

(“Good God!” groaned Bugloss.)

“I don’t,” declared auntie. “Do you know him very well, has he any intentions? An orphan girl living by herself—you have your way to make in the world—I am not presuming to criticize, my dear Claire, but is it wise? Who is he?”

“Yes, aunt,” said Claire. Bugloss could hear the tinkle of her bells as she moved a little restlessly.

“Are his intentions honourable? I should think they were otherwise.”

Claire did not reply immediately. It looked as if the musicians were about to resume. There was a rattle of plates and things over at the booth. Then she said reflectively: “I don’t think he has any—what you call honourable intentions.”

“Not! Is he a bad man?”

“O no, I don’t mean that, aunt, no.”

“But what do you mean then, you’re a strange girl, what _could_ his intentions be?”

“He hasn’t any intentions at all.”

“Not one way or the other?”

Claire seemed vaguely to hover over the significance of this. She said calmly enough: “Not in any way. He’s my hairdresser, a Frenchman, and so clever. He made this beautiful wig and gave it me. What do you think of my beautiful wig, isn’t it sweet?”

There was a note of exasperation in the elder woman’s voice: “Why don’t you get married, girl?”

“I’d rather work,” said Claire, “and besides, he’s already married.”

The music did begin, and a gentleman garbed as a druid came to claim auntie for a dance. The three girls were left alone.

“Did he _really_ give you that wig?” asked the puritan maiden.

“Yes, isn’t it bonny? I love it.” She shook the dangling curls about her face. “He’s frightfully clever with hair. French! You know his saloon probably, Rabignol’s in the High Street. His wife is here, you must have seen her too—a French soldier woman—what do you call them? She hates me. She’s with a Danish captain. He _is_ a Dane, but he is really an ice merchant. He thinks she adores him.”

“O Claire!” cried the two shocked cousins.

“But she doesn’t,” said Claire. “Sakes, I’m beginning to shiver; come along.”

They all romped back towards the orchestra. Bugloss shivered too and was glad—yes, glad—that she had gone. The tragedy had floated satisfactorily out of his hands, thank the fates; it was Rabignol’s affair. Damn Rabignol! Curse Rabignol! the bandit, the pig! He hoped that Madame Rabignol _would_ elope with Johannes. He hoped the green-haired girl—frail and lovely thing—would behave well; and he hoped finally and frenziedly that Rabignol himself would be choked by the common hangman. Bugloss then wanted to yawn, but somehow he could not. He put on his rubber goloshes again. With unwonted audacity he stalked off firmly, even a little fiercely, across the lawn in his mackintosh and bowler hat, passing round the fringe of the dancers but looking neither to the right nor to the left, then out of the gates into the dark empty streets and so home. There, feeling rather like a Cromwell made of chutney, he disarrayed himself and crept into bed yawning and murmuring to himself: “So that’s a fancy dress ball! Sweet God, but I’m glad I went! And I could have shown them something, I could have. Say what you like, but mine was the finest costume at the show; there’s no doubt about that, it was, it was! And I’m very glad I went.”

_The Cat, the Dog, and the bad old Dame_

The chemist had certain odd notions that were an agreeable reflex of his name, which was Oddfellow—Herbert Oddfellow. Our man was odd about diet. It was believed that he lived without cookery, that he browsed, as it were, upon fruit and salads. Ironically enough he earned a considerable income by the sale of nostrums for indigestion. At any hour of the day you were likely to find him devouring apples, nibbling artichokes, or sucking an orange, and your inquiry for a dose of bismuth or some such aid would cause by an obscure process a sardonic grin to assemble upon his face. You would scarcely have expected to find a lot of indigestion in the working-class neighbourhood where his pharmacy flourished, but it was there, certainly; he was quite cynical about it—his business throve abundantly upon dietary disorders.

There were four big ornamental carboys in his shop windows—red, violet, green, and yellow; incidentally he sold peppermint drops and poisons, and at forty years of age he was reputed to be the happiest, as he was certainly the healthiest, man in the county. This was not merely because he was unmarried ... but there, I declare this tale is not about Oddfellow himself, but about his lethal chamber.

You must know that the sacrificial exactions of the war did not spare cats and dogs. They, too, were immolated—but painlessly—scores of them, at Oddfellow’s. He was unhappy about that part of his business, very much so; he loved animals, perhaps rather more than people, for, naturally, what he ministered to in his pharmacy was largely human misery or human affectation. Evil cruel things—the bolt of a gaol, the lime of the bird-snarer, the butcher’s axe—maddened him.

In the small garden at the back of the dispensary the interments were carried out by Horace the errand boy, a juvenile with snub nose and short, tough hair, who always wore ragged puttees. He delighted in such obsequies, and had even instituted some ceremonial orgies. But at last these lethal commissions were so numerous that the burial-ground began to resemble the habitat of some vast, inappeasable mole, and thereupon Oddfellow had to stipulate for sorrowing owners to conduct the interments themselves in cemeteries of their own. Even this provision did not quell the inflow of these easily disposable victims.

Mr. Franks brought him a magnificent cat to be destroyed. (Shortly afterwards Franks was conveyed to the lunatic asylum, an institution which still nurtures him in despotic durance.) Pending the return of Horace, who was disbursing remedial shrapnel to the neighbourhood, the cat, tied to a rail in the shop, sat dozing in the sunlight.

“What a beautiful cat!” exclaimed a lady caller, stroking its purring majesty. The lady herself was beautiful. Oddfellow explained that its demise was imminent—nothing the matter with it—owner didn’t want it.

“How cruel, you sweet thing, how cruel!” pronounced the lady, who really was very beautiful. “I would love to have it. Why shouldn’t I have it ... if its owner doesn’t want it? I wonder. May I?”

Manlike was Oddfellow, beautiful was the lady; the lady took the cat away. Twenty-four hours later the shop counter was stormed by the detestable Franks, incipient insanity already manifest in him. He carried the selfsame cat under his arm—it had returned to its old home. Franks assailed the abashed chemist with language that at its mildest was abusive and libellous. His chief complaint seemed to repose upon the circumstance of having _paid_ for the cat’s destruction, whereupon Oddfellow who, like an Irishman, never walked into an argument—he simply bounced in—threw down the fee upon the counter and urged Mr. Franks to take his cat, and his money, and himself away as speedily as might be. This reprehensible behaviour did by no means allay the tension; the madman-designate paraded many further signs of his impending doom.

“Take your cat away, I tell you,” shouted Oddfellow, “take it away. I wouldn’t destroy it for a thousand pounds!”

“You won’t, oh?”

“Put an end to you with pleasure!”

“Yes?”

“Make you a present of a dose of poison whenever you like to come and take it!”

“Yes?”

“I will!”

Franks went away with his tom-cat.

“O ... my ... lord!” ejaculated the chemist, that being his favourite evocation; “I’ll do no more of this cat-and-dog business. I shall not do any more; no, I shall not. I do not like it at all.”

But in the afternoon his assistant, who had not been informed of this resolve, accepted two more victims for the lethal chamber, another tom-cat and a collie dog.

“O ... my ... lord!” groaned the chemist distractedly; but there was no help for it, and, calling his boy Horace, they carried the cat into the storeroom. The lethal box was in a corner; all round were shelves of costly drugs. The place did not smell of death; it smelt of paint, oils, volatile spirits, tubs of white lead, and packing-cases that contained scented soap or feeding-bottles. As Oddfellow prepared his syringe, a sporting friend named Jerry peeped in to watch the proceedings.

“Shut the door!” cried little Horace. “I can’t hold him.... He’s off!”

Sure enough the cat, sensing its danger, had burst from his arms and sprung to one of the shelves. Immediately phials of drugs began to fall and smash upon the floor, and as the cat rushed and scurried from their grasp disaster was heaped upon disaster; the green, glowing eyes, the rigid teeth, that seemed to grow as large as a tiger’s, confounded them, and the havoc deterred them; they dared not approach the spitting fury, it was a wild beast again, and a bold one.

“O ... my ... lord!” said Oddfellow, also swearing softly, for bottles continued to slip from shelf to floor. “What’s to be done?”

“Open the door—let the flaming thing go,” said Jerry.

“No fear,” replied the chemist, “I’ve had enough of these dead cats turning up like Banquo’s ghost—just enough.”

Horace intervened. “My father’s got a gun, sir; shall I run round home and get it?”

Jerry’s eyes began to gleam, the costly phials kept dropping to the floor—the chemist distractedly agreed—the boy Horace ran home and fetched a rook rifle. But his prowess was so poor, his aim so disastrous—he shot a hole through a barrel of linseed oil and received a powerful squirt of it in his eye—that Jerry deprived him of the weapon. Even then several rounds had to be fired, a carboy of acid was cracked, a window smashed, a lamp blown to pieces, before poor tom was finally subdued. Oddfellow had gone into the shop. He could not bring himself to witness the dismal slaughter. Every repercussion sent a pang of pity to his heart, and when at last the bleeding body of the cat was laid in the yard to await removal by its owner he almost vomited and he almost wept; if he had not sniffed the bunch of early primroses in his buttonhole he would surely have done one or the other.

“Now the dog,” whispered the chemist. The collie was very subdued, good dog, he gave no trouble at all, good dog, he was hustled into the big box, good dog, and quietly chloroformed. Later on, a countryman with his cart called for the body. The old woman who owned it was going to make a hearthrug with the skin. It was enveloped in a sack; the countryman carried it out on his shoulder like a butcher carrying the carcase of a sheep and flung it into the cart. The callousness of this struck Mr. Oddfellow so profoundly that he announced there and then, positively and finally, that he would undertake no more business of that kind, and doubly to insure this the lethal box was taken into the yard and chopped up.

Now, the poor old woman who owned the dog called next day at the chemist’s shop. Behind her walked the very collie. For a moment or two Oddfellow feared that he was to be haunted by the walking ghost of cats and dogs for evermore. Said the old woman: “Please, sir, you must do him again; he’s woke up!”

She described at great length the dog’s strange revival. It stood humbly enough in the background, a little drowsy, but not at all uneasy.

“No,” cried Oddfellow firmly; “can’t do it—destroyed my tackle. You take him home, ma’am; he’s all right. Dog that’s been through that ought to live a long life. Take him home again, ma’am,” he urged, “he’s all right.”

The woman was old; she was feeble and poor; she was not able to keep him now, he was such a big dog. Wasn’t it hard enough to get him food, things were so dear, and now there was the licence money due! She hadn’t got it; she never would have it; she really couldn’t afford it.

“You take him, sir, and keep him, sir.”

“No, I can’t keep a dog—no room.”

“Have him, sir,” she pleaded; “you’ll be kind to him.”

“No, no; ... but ... if it’s only his licence ... I’ll tell you what. I’ll pay for his licence rather than destroy him.”

Putting his hand into the till, he laid three half-crowns before her. The old woman stared at the chemist, but she stared still more at the money. Then, thanking him with quaint, confused dignity, she gathered it up, but again stood gazing meditatively at the three big coins, now lying, so unexpectedly, in her thin palm.

“Good dog,” said the chemist, giving him a final pat. “Good dog!”

Then the poor old woman, with tears in her eyes, turned out of Mr. Oddfellow’s shop and, followed by her dog, walked off to a quarter of the town where there was another chemist who kept a lethal chamber.

_The Wife of Ted Wickham_

Perhaps it is a mercy we can’t see ourselves as others see us. Molly Wickham was a remarkable pretty woman in days gone by; maybe she is wiser since she has aged, but when she was young she was foolish. She never seemed to realize it, but I wasn’t deceived.

So said the cattle-dealer, a healthy looking man, massive, morose, and bordering on fifty. He did not say it to anybody in particular, for it was said—it was to himself he said it—privately, musingly, as if to soothe the still embittered recollection of a beauty that was foolish, a fondness that was vain.

Ted Wickham himself was silly, too, when he married her. Must have been extraordinarily touched to marry a little soft, religious, teetotal party like her, and him a great sporting cock of a man, just come into a public-house business that his aunt had left him, “The Half Moon,” up on the Bath Road. He always ate like an elephant, but she’d only the appetite of a scorpion. And what was worse, he was a true blood conservative while all her family were a set of radicals that you couldn’t talk sense to: if you only so much as mentioned the name of Gladstone they would turn their eyes up to the ceiling as if he was a saint in glory. Blood is thicker than water, I know, but it’s unnatural stuff to drink so much of. Grant their name was. They christened her Pamela, and as if that wasn’t cruel enough they messed her initials up by giving her the middle name of Isabel.

But she was a handsome creature, on the small side but sound as a roach and sweet as an apple tree in bloom. Pretty enough to convert Ted, and I thought she would convert him, but she was a cussed woman—never did what you would expect of her—and so she didn’t even try. She gave up religion herself, gave it up altogether and went to church no more. That was against her inclination, but of course it was only right, for Ted never could have put up with that. Wedlock’s one thing and religion’s two: that’s odd and even: a little is all very well if it don’t go a long ways. Parson Twamley kept calling on her for a year or two afterwards, trying to persuade her to return to the fold—he couldn’t have called oftener if she had owed him a hundred pound—but she would not hear of it, she would not go. He was not much of a parson, not one to wake anybody up, but he had a good delivery, and when he’d the luck to get hold of a sermon of any sense his delivery was very good, very good indeed. She would say: “No, sir, my feelings aren’t changed one bit, but I won’t come to church any more, I’ve my private reasons.” And the parson would glare across at old Ted as if he were a Belzeboob, for Ted always sat and listened to the parson chattering to her. Never said a word himself, always kept his pipe stuck in his jaw. Ted never persuaded her in the least, just left it to her, and she would come round to his manner of thinking in the end, for though he never actually said it, she always knew what his way of thinking was. A strange thing, it takes a real woman to do that, silly or no! At election times she would plaster the place all over with tory bills, do it with her own hands!

Still, there’s no stability in meekness of that sort, a weathervane can only go with wind and weather, and there was no sense in her giving in to Ted as she did, not in the long run, for he couldn’t help but despise her. A man wants something or other to whet the edge of his life on; and he did despise her, I know.

But she was a fine creature in her way, only her way wasn’t his. A beautiful woman, too, well-limbered up, with lovely hair, but always a very proper sort, a milksop—Ted told me once that he had never seen her naked. Well, can you wonder at the man? And always badgering him to do things that could not be done at the time. To have “The Half Moon” painted, or enlarged, or insured: she’d keep on badgering him, and he could not make her see that any god’s amount of money spent on paint wouldn’t improve the taste of liquor.

“I can see as far into a quart pot as the King of England,” he says, “and I know that if this bar was four times as big as ’tis a quart wouldn’t hold a drop more then than it does now.”

“No, of course,” she says.

“Nor a drop less neither,” says Ted. He showed her that all the money expended on improvements and insurance and such things were so much off something else. Ted was a generous chap—liked to see plenty of everything, even though he had to give some of it away. But you can’t make some women see some things.

“Not a roof to our heads, nor a floor to our feet, nor a pound to turn round on if a fire broke out,” Molly would say.

“But why should a fire break out?” he’d ask her. “There never has been a fire here, there never ought to be a fire here, and what’s more, there never will be a fire here, so why should there be a fire?”

And of course she let him have his own way, and they never had a fire there while he was alive, though I don’t know that any great harm would have been done anyways, for after a few years trade began to slacken off, and the place got dull, and what with the taxes it was not much more than a bread and cheese business. Still, there’s no matter of that: a man don’t ask for a bed of roses: a world without some disturbance or anxiety would be like a duckpond where the ducks sleep all day and are carried off at night by the foxes.

Molly was like that in many things, not really contrary, but no tact. After Ted died she kept on at “The Half Moon” for a year or two by herself, and regular as clockwork every month Pollock, the insurance manager, would drop in and try for to persuade her to insure the house or the stock or the furniture, any mortal thing. Well, believe you, when she had only got herself to please in the matter that woman wouldn’t have anything to say to that insurance—she never did insure, and never would.

“I wouldn’t run such a risk; upon my soul it’s flying in the face of possibilities, Mrs. Wickham”—he was a palavering chap, that Pollock; a tall fellow with sandy hair, and he always stunk of liniment for he had asthma on the chest—“A very grave risk, it is indeed,” he would say, “the Meazer’s family was burnt clean out of hearth and home last St. Valentine’s day, and if they hadn’t taken up a policy what would have become of those Meazers?”

“I dunno,” Molly says—that was the name Ted give her—“I dunno, and I’m sorry for unfortunate people, but I’ve my private reasons.”

She was always talking about her private reasons, and they must have been devilish private, for not a soul on God’s earth ever set eyes on them.

“Well, Mrs. Wickham,” says Pollock, “they’d have been a tidy ways up Queer Street, and ruin’s a long-lasting affair,” Pollock says. He was a rare palavering chap, and he used to talk about Gladstone, too, for he knew her family history; but that didn’t move her, and she did not insure.

“Yes, I quite agree,” she says, “but I’ve my private reasons.”

Sheer female cussedness! But where her own husband couldn’t persuade her Pollock had no chance at all. And then, of course, two years after Ted died she did go and have a fire there. “The Half Moon” was burnt clean out, rafter and railings, and she had to give it up and shift into the little bullseye business where she is now, selling bullseyes to infants and ginger beer to boy scholars on bicycles. And what does it all amount to? Why, it don’t keep her in hairpins. She had the most beautiful hair once. But that’s telling the story back foremost.

Ted was a smart chap, a particular friend of mine (so was Molly), and he could have made something of himself and of his business, perhaps, if it hadn’t been for her. He was a sportsman to the backbone; cricket, shooting, fishing, always game for a bit of life, any mortal thing—what was there he couldn’t do? And a perfect demon with women, I’ve never seen the like. If there was a woman for miles around as he couldn’t come at, then you could bet a crown no one else could. He had the gift. Well, when one woman ain’t enough for a man, twenty ain’t too many. He and me were in a tight corner together more than once, but he never went back on a friend, his word was his Bible oath. And there was he all the while tied up to this soft wife of his, who never once let on she knew of it at all, though she knowed much. And never would she cast the blink of her eyes—splendid eyes they were, too—on any willing stranger, nor even a friend, say, like myself; it was all Ted this and Ted that, though I was just her own age and Ted was twelve years ahead of us both. She didn’t know her own value, wouldn’t take her opportunities, hadn’t the sense, as I say, though she had got everything else. Ah, she was a woman to be looking at once, and none so bad now; she wears well.

But she was too pious and proper, it aggravated him, but Ted never once laid a finger on her and never uttered one word of reproach though he despised her; never grudged her a thing in reason when things were going well with him. It’s God Almighty’s own true gospel—they never had a quarrel in all the twelve years they was wed, and I don’t believe they ever had an angry word, but how he kept his hands off her I don’t know. I couldn’t have done it, but I was never married—I was too independent for that work. He’d contradict her sometimes, for she _would_ talk, and Ted was one of your silent sorts, but _she_—she would talk for ever more. She was so artful that she used to invent all manners of tomfoolery on purpose to make him contradict her; believe you, she did, even on his death-bed.

I used to go and sit with him when he was going, poor Ted, for I knew he was done for; and on the day he died, she said to him—and I was there and I heard it: “Is there anything you would like me to do, dear?” And he said, “No.” He was almost at his last gasp, he had strained his heart, but she was for ever on at him, even then, an unresting woman. It was in May, I remember it, a grand bright afternoon outside, but the room itself was dreadful, it didn’t seem to be afternoon at all; it was unbearable for a strong man to be dying in such fine weather, and the carts going by, and though we were a watching him, it seemed more as if something was watching us.

And she says to him again: “Isn’t there anything you would like me to do?”

Ted says to her: “Ah! I’d like to hear you give one downright good damn curse. Swear, my dear!”

“At what?” she says.

“Me, if you like.”

“What for?” she says. I can see her now, staring at him.

“For my sins.”

“What sins?” she says.

Now did you ever hear anything like that? What sins! After a while she began at him once more.

“Ted, if anything happens to you I’ll never marry again.”

“Do what you like,” says he.

“I’ll not do that,” she says, and she put her arms round him, “for you’d not rest quiet in your grave, would you, Ted?”

“Leave me alone,” he says, for he was a very crusty sick man, very crusty, poor Ted, but could you wonder? “You leave me alone and I’ll rest sure enough.”

“You can be certain,” she cries, “that I’d never, never do that, I’d never look at another man after you, Ted, never; I promise it solemnly.”

“Don’t bother me, don’t bother at all.” And poor Ted give a grunt and turned over on his side to get away from her.

At that moment some gruel boiled over on the hob—gruel and brandy was all he could take. She turned to look after it, and just then old Ted gave a breath and was gone, dead. She turned like a flash, with the steaming pot in her hand, bewildered for a moment. She saw he had gone. Then she put the pot back gently on the fender, walked over to the window and pulled down the blind. Never dropped a tear, not one tear.

Well, that was the end of Ted. We buried him, one or two of us. There was an insurance on his life for fifty pounds, but Ted had long before mortgaged the policy and so there was next to nothing for her. But what else could the man do? (Molly always swore the bank defrauded her!) She put a death notice in the paper, how he was dead, and the date, and what he died of: “after a long illness, nobly and patiently borne.” Of course, that was sarcasm, she never meant one word of it, for he was a terror to nurse, the worst that ever was; a strong man on his back is like a wasp in a bottle. But every year, when the day comes round—and it’s ten years now since he died—she puts a memorial notice in the same paper about her loving faithful husband and the long illness nobly and patiently borne!

And then, as I said, the insurance man and the parson began to call again on that foolish woman, but she would not alter her ways for any of them. Not one bit. The things she had once enjoyed before her marriage, the things she had wanted her own husband to do but were all against his grain, these she could nohow bring herself to do when he was dead and gone and she was alone and free to do them. What a farce human nature can be! There was an Italian hawker came along with rings in his ears and a coloured cart full of these little statues of Cupid, and churches with spires a yard long and red glass in them, and heads of some of the great people like the Queen and General Gordon.

“Have you got a head of Lord Beaconsfield?” Molly asks him.

He goes and searches in his cart and brings her out a beautiful head on a stand, all white and new, and charges her half a crown for it. Few days later the parson calls on the job of persuading her to return to his flock now that she was free to go once more. But no. She says: “I can never change now, sir, it may be all wrong of me, but what my man thought was good enough for me, and I somehow cling to that. It’s all wrong, I suppose, and you can’t understand it, sir, but it’s all my life.”

Well, Twamley chumbled over an argument or two, but he couldn’t move her; there’s no mortal man could ever more that woman except Ted—and he didn’t give a damn.

“Well,” says parson, “I have hopes, Mrs. Wickham, that you will come to see the matter in a new light, a little later on perhaps. In fact, I’m sure you will, for look, there’s that bust,” he says, and he points to it on the mantelpiece. “I thought you and he were all against Gladstone, but now you’ve got his bust upon your shelf; it’s a new one, I see.”

“No, no, that isn’t Gladstone,” cried Molly, all of a tremble, “that isn’t Gladstone, it’s Lord Beaconsfield!”

“Indeed, but pardon me, Mrs. Wickham, that is certainly a bust of Mr. Gladstone.”

So it was. This Italian chap had deceived the silly creature and palmed her off with any bust that come handy, and it happened to be Gladstone. She went white to the teeth, and gave a sort of scream, and dashed the little bust in a hundred pieces on the hearth in front of the minister there. O, he had a very vexing time with her.

That was years ago. And then came the fire, and then the bullseye shop. For ten years now I’ve prayed that woman to marry me, and she just tells me: No. She says she pledged her solemn word to Ted as he lay a-dying that she would not wed again. It was his last wish—she says. But it’s a lie, a lie, for I heard them both. Such a lie! She’s a mad woman, but fond of him still in her way, I suppose. She liked to see Ted make a fool of himself, liked him better so. Perhaps that’s what she don’t see in me. And what I see in her—I can’t imagine. But it’s a something, something in her that sways me now just as it swayed me then, and I doubt but it will sway me for ever.

_Tanil_