Chapter II: Part IV: An Evening of the Same Day 299 (2)

Whether in answer to her prayer, or from come other cause, God had stayed His coming on that occasion, and to-night, within a week of her twentieth birthday, she was thinking of quite other things: not of God, but of the moon. There was something placid and sisterly to-night about that celestial presence, and Harriet was deliciously aware of a bond between them, ‘Because Geoff likes us both,’ she said in her heart. What had been his phrase, the phrase that had astonished her first to gladness? ‘Gentle as moonlight, soft and gentle as moonlight.’ The words haunted her memory like singing birds. Geoff’s liking was in itself strange enough: the degree of his liking was scarcely credible. Why had he no eyes for Alice, the acknowledged beauty of the family?--or for Maud, with her brains? ‘Cinderella and the Ugly Sisters,’ Geoff had said. But Cinderella had been a pretty girl, and she, Harriet, was all too plain. It could only have been kindness or perverse obstinacy that had made him deny that. She glanced into the tiny mirror that hung from a nail on the pink distempered wall, and examined with some distaste the oval olive face, the fair hair, and the large brown eyes that looked out at her. Tears began to form in those eyes. ‘Now don’t start that silliness!’ she admonished herself. And she returned to the practical world and to the washing of the things dirtied at supper. ‘I do wish mamma wouldn’t leave all her fat,’ she thought, as with her scullery knife she sped three quivering fragments into the waste-pail.

There remained the undeniable fact that Geoff wanted to marry her: that is, he liked her so much that he wished her to share his home, when he acquired one, and wash his dishes instead of her mother’s. She could cook, too: she could make him nice things; and she would indeed have cheerfully slaved for his comfort in gratitude for that pity which, as she supposed, had made his glance linger in kindness upon her. But that was not to be. Even in that wonderful moment when he praised her gentleness she had realized how impossible it was that she should leave mamma; and her sisters had been not slow to emphasize that impossibility. ‘Boy and girl flirtation,’ said Alice with genial contempt--unaccountably, since Geoff was twenty-six and considered to be rather a clever young man. He was a poet--a bank-clerk in his spare time--and his knack of finding rhymes should alone have earned him some respect. To Geoff himself Alice had always been conspicuously friendly; and as for Maud--he had been her friend in the first place (she had met him in the city), and it had always been assumed that it was Maud whom he came to see. But about Geoff’s intentions now there could be no doubt at all. He had even wanted, the dear silly, to help Harriet wash up, but she had not dared to allow that, and he, making a virtue of necessity, was at this moment closeted with the family, perhaps urging once more his extravagant claim.

The last dish dried, the last fork placed in its proper section of the plate-basket, she returned, rather shamefaced, to the sitting-room. As the door closed behind her an ominous hush fell. A smile upon the proud plump face of Alice froze hard and thawed suddenly. Maud swung round upon the revolving music-stool and began turning the pages of Mendelssohn’s _Lieder_. Her mother, perched insecurely on the edge of her chair, visibly suffered. She was always visibly suffering.

‘Girls!’ said mamma plaintively.... It was enough. Harriet’s sisters rose without a word and left the room. Mamma looked at the young man, but he made no movement. ‘Geoffrey!’ she said, a world of pathos in her voice. But Geoffrey was deaf to it. ‘This concerns me too,’ he said. ‘May I smoke?’

‘Very well. Stay, if you wish to be cruel....’ But this man, lost to all sense of humanity, only replied: ‘I’m vulgarly persistent, no doubt, but you see I happen to want Harry.’

Harry’s mother turned twin orbs of suffering upon her daughter, and began reciting the speech she had prepared.

‘I’m sorry, Harriet, to disappoint you. I understand your desire to get away from a troublesome invalid mother and your two bread-winning sisters. But you are God’s charge to me and I must protect you.’

‘From me?’ inquired Geoffrey.

She did not heed the interruption.

‘I say nothing against Geoffrey, but I can’t consent to anything in the shape of an engagement between you. For one thing you are as yet a mere girl; you know nothing of life and nothing of marriage. And that isn’t all. Geoffrey has told me something very sad. He has been very open and frank with me: I _will_ say that for him. We all like Geoffrey. But he’s told me that he would wish to be married in an office. He has queer views, my dear. He even tells me that he only goes to church to please his mother and father. I’m afraid he’s let go of the Saviour’s hand altogether. After that, I need hardly say more. I know my little Harriet too well to believe that she can wish to give mother pain. I already have my Cross to bear.’

‘Very well, mamma.’ Harriet’s eyes were luminous with tears.

At that Geoffrey rose. ‘Then I’d better clear off home at once.’

‘My dear Geoffrey,’ protested his hostess, ‘I know you are thinking to spare my feelings after this upset. You’re very good to me always. But you’ll please stay your week-end. We mustn’t part in unfriendliness--and you know how I should hate you to travel on Sunday.’

He could not keep bitterness out of his smile, but he replied cheerfully enough:

‘Well, Mrs. Mason, since Harry is not to be engaged to me there’ll be no harm in my taking her out for half an hour before bed? Would you care to come, Harry?... Thanks awfully.’

2

Harriet went to her room in a trembling ecstasy, struggling against odds to believe that she was indeed beautiful, as he had said. While she moved about, within the pink beflowered walls of her very own room (as in her heart she was wont to call it), his voice still made music in her memory.

‘Why will you submit to be boxed up in that prison? Can’t you understand how I want you? Can’t you understand how lovely you are?’ He had never before been so passionate in his iterations. And she could only shake her head, elated, yet with secret misgiving. He had very queer ideas, mamma had said. Was this obsession by the thought of beauty perhaps one of them? But there was worse to follow.

‘Harry, are you determined to give me up?’

She replied miserably: ‘I can’t go against mamma. You wouldn’t have me go against mamma. Oh, Geoff, I would do anything else for you.’

The words were like a match dropped in dry stubble. ‘Then you do love me? You do! You do!’

His violence frightened and braced her. ‘You know I like you tremendously,’ she said, grappling with the unknown, ‘better than anyone else in the world.’

‘Except your mother,’ he retorted bitterly, and then added in a changed tone: ‘Harry darling, we’ve never kissed. Do you like me enough for that? We may never have another moment alone.’

‘Of course, you funny boy!’

He bent towards her, and she kissed him, in friendly fashion, on the cheek. ‘Happy now?’ she asked, almost merrily, hoping to drive away his tragic air.

He smiled. ‘Not exactly.’ An odd smile it was. And at the bend of the road, under the shadow of Mrs. Lavender’s lime trees, he took her face suddenly between his hands and kissed her mouth. Something stirred in her but did not awake. She could not understand his emotion.

‘Harry, you said you’d do anything for me. Did you mean it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll think me strange. Perhaps you’ll be shocked. It’s this: let me see you. If I’m to go away from you, as I must, let me see you just once, as you really are. Give me a memory to take with me.’

Was he indeed mad? Poor Geoff! ‘But, dear, you can see me now.’

‘Your face, your clothes. Let me see _you_, all your beauty. Venus Anadyomene....’

She burned with shame as something of his meaning dawned on her ... and now, as she stood in her bedroom re-living the scene, the plan he had unfolded seemed both wild and wicked. Wild and wicked, yes: yet shot through with a flash of poetry. An illuminated ‘Thou God seest me’ gleamed at her from one wall, and a pledge to abstain by God’s help from all intoxicating liquors as beverages, signed in childish caligraphy _Harriet Mason_, accused her from another. Wild and wicked; but in a passion of gratitude for being loved, and for the spark kindled within her, she had yielded her promise.

‘Thou God seest me.’ Blushing hotly, very conscious of that inquisitive eye, she took down her hair. With a miniature clatter the pins fell from nerveless fingers on to the glass surface of the dressing-table. Slowly she undressed; paused a moment, shyly stroking her slim nude body; and then with a gesture of resolve slipped into her kimono. The eye of God was still upon her, but she had given her word.

Her woolly slippers made no sound on the oilcloth floor. She opened her door and stepped into the passage. Opposite her was Geoff’s door, left purposely ajar. Tremblingly, but swiftly lest fear should make her false, she crossed and entered. Geoff made no sound. She stood, too ashamed to look up, pushing his door to with a nervous backward movement of the hand. It closed, not without noise.

Her lips moved, as in prayer. She lifted her arms high, and her garment, slipping from white shoulders, fell and clustered at her feet, a diaphanous shimmering mass.

‘Lovely, lovely ... O God!’ The scarce-heard whisper made her heart leap in exultation. She raised her head and looked steadfastly at her love. He sat up in bed, still as an image of adoration, the moonlight making visible the worship in his eyes. She stooped, gathered up her gown, and went out into the passage ... into the arms of Alice.

‘I heard a door slam,’ said Alice. ‘What’s the matter? Why, you’ve---- That’s Geoff’s room!’

Alice became pale and for a moment speechless with anger. When she recovered her tongue it was to use a language strange to the ears of Harriet.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ cried Harriet, starry-eyed, ‘and I don’t care. He loves me, Alice, because I am so beautiful, beautiful. Why didn’t you tell me I was beautiful?’

She pushed past Alice and locked herself in her bedroom. Those bitter reproaches had no sting for her. Even had she understood them they would have been less than a feather’s weight against the joy now born in her heart. For her the world was made new, clean and new. With beauty, seen hitherto through a glass darkly, she was now face to face. She fell asleep exhausted with happiness, and when in the morning mamma came to her room and sobbed, and raved, she could understand not a word of it.

‘You’ve brought disgrace and shame upon us all, you wretched child!’ And to this Harriet, in her profound innocence, could only answer: ‘But we love each other, mamma. What harm have we done?’

‘You shall leave my house as soon as that man can be made to marry you, and never come back again.’

‘Am I to marry Geoff after all, then, mamma?’

Yes, it appeared that she was, and that her daring to ask the question was further proof of her shamelessness. It was all very baffling.

THE ENCHANTED MOMENT

THE ENCHANTED MOMENT

Mr. John Pardoe was not an imaginative man, but--if the truth must be known--he had once been a child, and though, as Mr. Pardoe aged, the child grew smaller and smaller, it was not yet squeezed out of existence. The secret had been well kept. Plump, rosy, and forty-five years old, encased in patent-toe boots, doeskin spats, sleek morning coat, striped trousering, and silk hat--not to mention certain articles of underwear--Mr. Pardoe oscillated daily between his office in Cannon Street and his pleasant home at Putney, giving no cause to his dearest friend or his bitterest enemy to suspect him of having a secret hoard of youth. His waking mind was occupied exclusively by lighterage, freight duties, marine insurance, bus routes, time tables, foreign exchange rates, and the criminal ineptitude of the Government party; and his dreams, which rose only to the bait of cheese and spring onions for supper, reflected his general staidness of character with a minimum of humorous distortion. For more than a decade he had lived within half a mile of the house that held Swinburne, and he was still unaware of having anything in particular to thank God for.

But in his forty-sixth year, when he had already begun to cherish some of the idiosyncrasies proper to a much older man and to regard with complacency his shining porcelain pate and his fringe of greying hair, something happened to Mr. Pardoe that was the beginning of a spiritual revolution. The something was named Miss Adela Simpson, and it had for many years typed his business letters with an enthusiasm and a generous disregard for pedantry in spelling which would have been hard to match in any other city office. Perhaps it was Mr. Pardoe’s patience with these orthographical freedoms that won Adela’s affection, or perhaps she alone of all his acquaintances had divined the existence of that child in him which I have felt it my duty to mention. Whatever the cause, she married him; and, being herself a fluffy, golden-haired, and sentimental creature, with an unbounded capacity for enjoyment, she persuaded him that he was very happy with her. Had the matter ended there, all might have been well: Mr. Pardoe might have lived and died decorously, a plain man with no nonsense about him. The youth in him might have remained bottled and out of sight for ever, had not Adela tampered with the cork.

But destiny, in the person of Mrs. Pardoe, chose to play tricks on this excellent man. Some eighteen months after that rational registry wedding, the fluffy girl insisted on giving birth to a boy. The local doctor assisted its entry, and the local vicar declared its name to be Timothy. I have already said that Mr. Pardoe was not an imaginative man, and this event was quite outside his calculations. Being both by instinct and training a gentleman of considerable delicacy, he was embarrassed--as who would not be?--and quite unable to assume, at short notice, the rôle of fond parent. But as the weeks passed by and the red squeaking pudding called Timothy began to shew some traces of its humanity, began even to bear a slight resemblance to himself, a change more subtle but no less real occurred in the feelings of the reluctant father. For one thing, the preposterous littleness of the creature attracted his notice and excited his wonder. Sometimes when he looked at Timothy Mr. Pardoe’s face would break into a wholly irrational grin. Once or twice, when no one was near, he presented his index finger to be enfolded in miniature hands of unparalleled clamminess, or played the fool with his watch; and once, once only, he blushed to find himself making ridiculous noises, noises not unlike those emitted habitually by the child’s agreeable but infatuated mother.

The translation of Mr. Pardoe from a serious man with business responsibilities and a taste for party politics into a kind of domestic pet, thinker of thoughts too deep for tears, and lover of children--this translation might have continued apace had not the cook suddenly, wantonly, left to get married. Adela, luxuriating in her new freedom, decided to manage without a cook; but Adela’s cooking was no more precise than her spelling. It played havoc with Mr. Pardoe’s digestive apparatus, and--by that transmutation of matter into spirit which is the most disconcerting fact in life--Mr. Pardoe’s digestive apparatus played havoc with Mr. Pardoe’s temper. He became angry with the world and with the life that crawled upon its surface.

Nevertheless the world continued to revolve, and life was not extinct. Timothy, in particular, was far from extinct. For five years he flourished, and on his fifth birthday, at an hour well past his bedtime, he entered Mr. Pardoe’s study and demanded to be told a story.

Mr. Pardoe, interrupted in the reading of his favourite periodical, _The Bondholder’s Register_, was annoyed. Birthday or no birthday, this was an outrage: the sanctuary violated, the high priest disturbed at his devotions. Yet, in spite of his dyspepsia, he exhibited an admirable restraint.

‘No, Timothy,’ he said, holding up a cautionary finger. ‘I shall not tell you a story. You know I do not like to be disturbed in the evening. You will go to bed, and at the proper moment I shall come to kiss you good night. But tell you a story I will not. I see your mother’s hand in this--this act of rebellion. If you wanted stories you could go to your toy-cupboard, where you would find several volumes of stories: ridiculous enough, no doubt, but suited to your age. Although you cannot yet read with facility you could easily amuse yourself with the pictures. Really, Timothy, I can’t imagine why you should suppose that I should tell you a story, a thing I have never done in my life.’

As a substitute for an applauding public meeting of the company’s shareholders, Timothy was not a success. He clung to his simple thesis with the brutal tenacity of the very young. ‘Mummy says _you_ are to tell me a story.’

The fluffy girl appeared suddenly in the doorway. ‘Yes, John, you really might, this once. He’s tired of my stories. And it’s his birthday, after all, poor little thing!’

‘Poor little thing!’ sneered Mr. Pardoe. This was sheer domestic tyranny: he wouldn’t suffer it. ‘Let me tell you, Adela,’ he cried, pointing at her accusingly with _The Bondholder’s Register_, ‘you are spoiling the poor little thing, as you call him. It’s eight o’clock, an hour past his bedtime. The way to bring a child up....’

But here Mr. Pardoe was interrupted, and a valuable homily on the training of children thereby lost to the world. The clock began striking. Now it was one of Mr. Pardoe’s nervous weaknesses, of which there were many, that he could never raise his voice above the sound of a striking clock. He disliked clocks. He resented their unmannerly habit of cutting his sentences in half and making him lose the thread of his discourse. And now he had to wait several seconds until that clock chose to let him proceed with what he was saying. Very well: he resigned himself to the delay. His face was that of a martyr too well-bred even to invoke his God. He mentally counted the strokes: ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven....’

‘Why!’ cried Mr. Pardoe, ‘that clock’s wrong. An hour slow. I’m sure it’s eight o’clock. I set my watch this morning by Greenwich Time....’

2

The words died on his lips, which remained open only because in his bewilderment Mr. Pardoe forgot to close them. He seemed to have stepped into the very heart of Spring. The sounds and colours and the rich earthy smell of the woods made him tingle with delight. Never before had he breathed such air. It was like strong wine in its effect, and that alarmed Mr. Pardoe, who dreaded nothing so much as to lose control of himself. For him the light of reason was the only legitimate light in the universe: moonlight, starlight, sunlight--these were merely decorative. ‘No wonder the fruit is so fine,’ he said to himself; and he plucked one of the golden apples from a laden branch that bowed towards him, and set his teeth in it with a disregard of the rights of property that was quite foreign to his principles. All round him tall grasses waved, and satin-skinned trees stretched out armfuls of treasure, their leaves luminously green, their fruit glowing like multi-coloured glass globes. Mr. Pardoe began to revise his first impression. It could hardly be Spring with all this fruit already ripe for eating, and in such abundance, such astonishing variety! Apple, pear, plum, greengage, lemon, pomegranate, quince--‘Why, with greengages at their present price, there’s a small fortune here!’ He wondered whether there was a market within easy distance. There was no sort of road within sight: there was only a long avenue of arched trees, in the branches of which birds sang with laughter as well as joy in their tumultuous music. At his feet, wherever he stepped, flowers sprang up as if to greet him: lilies lifted their pale faces towards him; roses red and blue rioted in the grass; pansies eyed him amorously. A sound that was like colour made audible, a deep golden sound, a singing dream, filled the forest till it brimmed over with loveliness. In the dim glowing air shot through by shafts of moonlight from the outer world, great dragonflies poised themselves, lost in trance. ‘A trifle theatrical, perhaps,’ said Mr. Pardoe, ‘but undeniably pretty.’

Moving slowly on, he racked his poor brains for a rational explanation of these phenomena. Nature, hitherto so circumspect, was behaving in a most unbridled way. A voice dropped out of the sky, like a bell: ‘Greenwich Time, my dear sir? Good stuff, isn’t it! Come and have some.’

‘Thank you. But I never drink between meals.’ The reply came from Mr. Pardoe’s lips before he could check it. This was absurd--he of all men to have an experience like this! Indignantly he stared in the direction of the voice that had hailed him. A little golden star appeared to be falling through the sky. It lodged in the lower branches of a tree, writhed brilliantly for a moment, and resolved itself into a human being: a creature about the size of a foot-rule with a round red baby-face. It jumped to the ground and shook lumps of starshine from the soles of its wooden boots. ‘Excuse me, won’t you. I’ve been shopping. A fellow gets simply smothered with this stuff in the Milky Way.’

Mr. Pardoe bowed. ‘It is for me to apologize, if you, as I surmise, are the proprietor of this valuable piece of orchard-land. I fear I am trespassing. I must have lost my way. To be perfectly frank with you, I’ve not the slightest idea how I got here; and let me hasten to add that I’m a strictly temperate man. I rather fancy that I’ve been made the victim of some clownish practical joke.’

The midget shed a scintillating tear, which made a circle of green light in the grass where it fell. From his pocket he snatched a notebook. ‘I must make a note of that,’ he said.

‘Of what?’ inquired Mr. Pardoe.

‘That tear. I’ve got only six to last the whole evening. I limit myself to ten a day now. It’s bad to become a slave to pleasure.’

Mr. Pardoe coughed to hide his alarm and embarrassment. ‘Yes, yes. Quite so. Did you read your paper this morning, my dear sir? What a disgraceful Budget again!’

‘Ah,’ cried the midget, turning up his eyes; ‘what is there more enjoyable than a choking sob on a cold Wednesday morning before breakfast? And they ought not to have taken your clothes. I can’t allow that.’

‘My clothes!’ Mr. Pardoe blushed from top to toe, and that blush was the only thing that covered his nakedness. ‘Incredible! It had entirely escaped my notice. I really don’t know how to apologize. I am more ashamed than I can say. This is a disaster that has never happened before. Whatever am I to do?’

‘A happy encounter,’ chuckled the midget, rubbing his hands together. ‘I’m a tailor by trade. Fit you out in no time. Three yards of gossamer spun out of lovers’-dream. The finer the mesh the higher the price. Excuse my speaking commercially, but business is business, you know.’

For the first time Mr. Pardoe’s heart went out to this odd creature. ‘I share your admirable sentiments. Business _is_ business. But I deplore this rather fanciful talk about dreams and gossamer, this--ah--second-rate poetry, if I may call it so. But there, I’m only a plain business man.’

‘Do you believe in God?’ asked the midget surprisingly.

Mr. Pardoe looked revolted. ‘A rather indelicate question, is it not? However, since you have seen fit to ask it, I will confess that I have never found any particular need for believing in the Person to whom you allude.’

The midget put out his tongue, looking inconceivably pert. ‘I’m God,’ said he.

‘Pardon me,’ Mr. Pardoe replied, with immense dignity. ‘I cannot stand here and listen to blasphemy. I am a member of the Church of England.’

‘Don’t know the name,’ said the midget. ‘If it’s an inn, take me to it, like a good fellow.’

‘Before we continue this conversation,’ said Mr. Pardoe, beginning to relish the sound of his own voice, ‘I feel it only fair to say that I entertain the gravest suspicions of you. I suspect you of being a figment of my imagination, perhaps a mere dream. I am not aware of having eaten anything calculated to disagree with me, but that is what has probably happened. It’s a lesson to me, which I shall not easily forget, that one cannot be too careful about one’s diet.’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ remarked the midget. He paused to draw three circles in the grass with the point of his foot. ‘But if you want some Greenwich Time you’ve come to the right place. Slip these shoes on.’ In the centre of the middle circle was a pair of loose-fitting shoes, rather like goloshes, made of the skin of a green reptile. It seemed to be covered with eyes. Mr. Pardoe, convinced now that he was dreaming, obediently slipped his feet into these shoes, which immediately began to dance. He found it impossible to control them. That didn’t surprise him so much as did his enjoyment of the dance. ‘Come along,’ said the midget, kicking up his heels, and Mr. Pardoe, following in the wake of that preposterous figment of his imagination, danced down the avenues of Faery with a light heart. Something was released inside him. He felt himself shrink till he was scarcely bigger than his guide, and the loss of that frock coat and that pair of nicely creased striped trousers distressed him no longer. Was it possible that the child he had secreted so long had at last broken out, and that the old John Pardoe, that bond-holding, cheque-endorsing animal, was no more? Was it possible that he had died, and that this was the glorious resurrection promised to the faithful? Mr. Pardoe’s thoughts buzzed in his brain like a hive of bees when he remembered this little tailor-fellow’s blasphemous claim to godhead.

Nothing more unlike Mr. Pardoe’s conception of God can be imagined than the ruddy-faced mischievous creature who stood in the doorway of his house to welcome his guest. The house bore a striking resemblance to a country inn, the best kind of country inn, and Mr. Pardoe fell instantly in love with it. The sight of it induced in him a thirst such as he had never in all his life experienced before.

‘You’d like to see my beard, I expect,’ remarked his host, as they stepped across the threshold. ‘Well, there it is.’ He waved a careless hand towards the centre of the oak-raftered room, where, in a flower-pot that stood in the middle of the table, a grey beard flourished.

Mr. Pardoe scratched his head: sure proof that he was feeling more at home. ‘Now I can’t quite place that,’ he said, reverting to the idea that he was in a dream. ‘The dancing shoes were from Hans Andersen, but this for the moment eludes me.’

‘It’s a good growth,’ said the beard’s owner. ‘Never gives any trouble. Great advantage, not wearing it on the chin. Some of my clients don’t care about a bearded tailor. And to those who do, I say: Step inside. A place for everything and everything in its place, and the place for my beard is the parlour. Very quiet and well-behaved, and drinks far less water than an aspidistra. If it sings too loud I just snip it down a bit with me scissors.’

‘The Singing Beard,’ mused Mr. Pardoe. ‘That must be a public-house sign I’ve come across somewhere.’

‘Now,’ urged the genial tailor, ‘what about a little refreshment. Or would you rather I set about that suit of clothes first?’

The eyes of the abandoned Pardoe sparkled. He visioned a wineglass, the size of a milking-pail, filled with champagne. He felt it against his lips, felt it slip down his dry throat, and sink into his innermost being like a benediction.... He looked at his host with a little shamefaced smile. ‘Well, if it’s all the same to you ... if you’ll excuse my rather unconventional appearance....’

‘Come down to the cellar,’ cried his friend, taking him by the arm, ‘the Cellar of a Thousand Bottles.’ Still gripping Mr. Pardoe, he stamped thirstily on the floor. A trapdoor opened. They shot into the cellar with lightning speed, and before he could remember his manners Mr. Pardoe was knocking the tops off bottles with a skill that in cooler moments would have astounded him.

‘There you are!’ cried the little tailor. ‘Greenwich Time on every label. Look for our trademark and refuse imitations.’ He drank copious draughts. He became confidential, even affectionate. ‘Now that’s the difference between you and me. Your name’s Pardoe. That just shews the difference between you and me. Now my name’s Dionysus,’ he went on, with a radiant smile. ‘It’s a good name. And me father’s name was Dionysus before me. But me grandfather--ah, that’s another story.’

‘And what, my little man, was your grandfather’s name?’ enquired Mr. Pardoe, waving his glass in air.

‘Oh, me grandfather? Were you asking after me grandfather? Ah, _his_ name, don’t you see, was Dionysus. They distinguished us one from the other by our trades. We were tailors, you know, all three of us.’

Mr. Pardoe rose to his feet. The performance was a credit to him. He made a last effort to exorcise the demon of levity that possessed him. ‘My friend, you have had enough. More than enough. You are intoxicated.’

Dionysus paused in his drinking to fix a waggish eye on Mr. Pardoe. ‘Drunk. Drunk as a god. Aren’t you! Why the devil don’t you drink? Imprison you for sobriety.’

He held a brimming glass to the lips of Mr. Pardoe, and, as he drank, the poor bewitched gentleman saw his host swell till the house could no longer contain that vast bulk. Himself a flame of exultation, Mr. Pardoe stared until the eyes of Dionysus became fierce seas, sparkling with unearthly light, towering in storm, and the glory of his sunset-face filled the sky.

3

‘... eight.’ The last stroke of eight o’clock. Mr. Pardoe, rubbing his eyes, saw that his wife’s face still wore the expression of bored patience with which she was accustomed to receive his domestic sermons, and that Timothy, as before, balanced himself on one leg and jerked his body backwards and forwards by way of passing time. They seemed to be waiting for him.

‘What’s this?’ cried Mr. Pardoe, staring at the paper in his hand. He recognized _The Bondholder’s Register_. An alarming idea visited him. ‘Am I...?’ He looked down at his legs, stroked his arms. Yes, he was. He breathed deeply in his relief. ‘My dear, did you notice anything, anything unusual?’

Blank faces greeted him.

‘Between the seventh and eighth stroke of the hour--did anything happen to me?’

His wife took a step towards him. Her eyes became anxious. ‘No, dear. Are you feeling ill?’

‘No, no. Perfectly well. Just a whim of mine. A mere fancy. Nothing at all. Nothing.’

‘Oh, father!’ said Timothy, for the fourth time, ‘you _might_ tell me a story.’

Mr. Pardoe turned to the boy with enthusiasm. He beamed paternal affection upon him. ‘Yes, old man. Come along. A story before we go to bed, eh?... Once upon a time there was a tailor who lived in the forest and kept a beard, a grey beard, which sang pretty tunes....’

THE MOLE

THE MOLE

Conversation turned inevitably to the local tragedy that was agitating all the village. The little general store, the only shop the place boasted and a poor thing at that, had been burned down in the night, and nothing remained but the heap of ruins from which, not many hours since, two charred corpses had been removed. Our chessmen stood in battle array, ready for action, but unnoticed by either of us. Something in Saunders’s manner held my attention. Sceptic though I am, I have always found him interesting. He pays me the compliment of divesting himself of his rectorship when he visits me, and it has flattered my vanity to believe that I see a side of him that is for ever hidden from those of his parishioners who assemble Sunday by Sunday to receive from him their spiritual ration. And I was the more intrigued because I divined depths in him still to be explored.

Perhaps I am over-fanciful, said Saunders, edging his chair nearer to the fire; but it had always seemed to me that there was more in their marriage than the mere female domination so obvious to every one. And when poor Gubbins came to me last winter, with the story that I’m going to tell you, my guess was confirmed. Mrs. Gubbins wore the breeches--a vulgar phrase for a vulgar thing--but that wasn’t all. I shall never forget my first visit to her shop. You’ve seen the woman scores of times, but I’ll tell you the impression she made on me. Her face was leather; her nose was pinched and pitiless; her eyes--did you ever notice her eyes? You’d expect her to possess the malignant dominating eyes of the shrew. No such thing. Mrs. Gubbins’s eyes resembled those of a mask, or of a corpse: they were fixed, so it seemed to me, in a cold, everlasting, fishy scrutiny of a drab world. If they were the windows of her soul, they were windows made of frosted glass. Looking at them I seemed to see vacuity behind them. Looking again, I surmised a soul indeed, but a damned soul. A professional prejudice, perhaps, that you won’t sympathize with. But it was not her eyes that most disturbed me. I have seen a variety of unpleasant eyes. But I have never seen on any human being so ugly a mole as was on that woman’s chin. It was about the size of a pea, and growing from it were three longish black whiskers. The thing looked positively feline. It became for me, as soon as I caught sight of it, her most significant feature. And that, too, proved a good guess.

I had gone to the shop ostensibly to buy a cake of soap, but really in the hope of catching a glimpse of a human soul, of two human souls. I had heard queer accounts of this couple, and I was curious.

‘A cake of soap, please, Mrs. Gubbins.’ I was then a stranger to her, as to all the village, but my use of her name evoked no sign of life in those glassy eyes of hers. She turned to her husband, that mild little man with dreaming eyes and a trim beard who looked just what he was, a lay preacher with a taste for fantastic prophecy. He was sitting at the back of the shop on a case of sugar, or something of the kind, engrossed in reading his pocket Bible.

‘Run along,’ said Mrs. Gubbins, in her flat expressionless voice. ‘Soap, George! You know where it is!’

The little man looked up with the air of one dragged unwillingly from a dream. In his small rabbit-eyes Christian patience did battle with resentment. I seemed to scent a crisis. Had the woman nagged him for his idleness I couldn’t have blamed her. But what interested me was not the rights and wrongs of the quarrel, but its method.

He blinked at her defiantly. There was a pregnant silence during which they stared at each other. Then the woman, protruding her chin, elongating her thin neck, bent a little towards him. I was dumbfounded with astonishment and a kind of morbid curiosity. For the moment it seemed to me that she must be mutely demanding a kiss in token of his submission; but while I watched, fascinated out of my good manners, she lifted her hand slowly and placed her index finger upon the point of her chin. It flashed on me that she was directing his attention to that mole of hers.

Gubbins averted his eyes and slid off the seat. ‘Yes, dear!’ he muttered, and disappeared into the bowels of the shop.

2

Secrets of the confessional? Yes, in a sense. But Gubbins wouldn’t grudge you the story now. It was during that phenomenally cold spell in November, fifteen months ago, that he came to me. That he came to me at all should tell you something of his anguish of spirit, if you knew the man. Everybody knew him to be a deeply religious person, of the Bible-punching kind, but not everybody guessed how his particular conception of reality had eaten into his mind. He could prove to you by an elaborate system of Scriptural cross-references that the Day of Judgment was due to occur in the summer of 1950; and the geography of heaven was more familiar to him, and more concrete, than the chairs and tables in his own house or the streets of this village. Two-thirds of him lived among these precise humourless dreams of his, dreams that were the fruit not of mystical experience but of a laborious investigation, with rule and compass and a table of logarithms, extended over fifteen years. Two-thirds of him--that means he was more than a little unbalanced. He was a preposterous combination of arrogance and humility: we had many a friendly argument together, though the friendliness, I fancy, was rather on my side. Blandly certain of being the custodian of divine truth, he was yet pitifully dubious about his own chance of salvation and almost crazy in his forlorn pursuit of the love of God. Almost, but not quite: in the medical sense he was undoubtedly as sane as you or I. Me and all my kind he disliked because we receive payment for preaching Christ. That is what makes his appeal to me so remarkable an event.

Well, he came to the Rectory and was admitted by the maid, loyal to her orders to exclude no one, but scared. I found him standing on my study hearthrug, his face ashen, his lean hairy hands clutching a cloth cap as though it were his only hold on safety. The white knuckles gleamed like polished ivory. I saw the fear that flared in his tiny eyes and guessed that he had come as a suppliant, that in some way his faith in himself was broken. And knowing of old the obstinate strength of that faith, I shuddered.

‘In trouble, Mr. Gubbins?’

He appeared not to see my outstretched hand. ‘I’ve had an escape from hell,’ he squeaked. ‘It’s that damned monkey-spot, Mr. Saunders.’

The mild expletive, coming from Gubbins, astonished me no less than his statement. I asked him to sit down and tell me all about it, but he remained standing and his fingers twitched so violently that presently his cap fell to the ground unheeded. ‘It nearly got me, sir, that monkey-spot.’ A local expression, no doubt; but what did it mean? Gubbins saw at last that I didn’t understand him. ‘That monkey-spot on her chin. My wife’s chin. You must have seen it.’

Can you imagine two human beings, tied by marriage, devoting all their emotional energy to hating each other? Perhaps not; but that is, as near as I can tell it to you, the truth about the Gubbinses. Twenty years ago she was an unremarkable woman, and he no doubt a very ordinary youth. Mere propinquity, I imagine, threw them at each other. He, with little or nothing of the genuine affection that might have excused the act, took advantage of her, as the phrase is. Sin number one, the first link in the chain that was to bind him, the first grievance for her to cherish in her ungenerous heart. They were married three months before the birth of the child. It died within an hour. She chose to see in this event the punishment of the sin into which he, as she contended, had betrayed her. From that moment Gubbins was her thrall: not by virtue of love, or the legal tie, but by virtue of the hideous moral ascendancy that the woman had been cunning enough, and pitiless enough, to establish over him. Carefully she kept alive the memory of his offence. It was a whip ready to her hand. And when seeking for distraction from his domestic misery he turned to that intricate game of guesswork which was for him religion, what he learned there of the significance of sin only served to increase his wretchedness.

He was evidently a man weak both in spirit and intelligence, or he would have realized at once that he was no more guilty than she was. But once she had succeeded in imposing her view upon him he could not shake it off. It remained, to poison his self-respect. Side by side with his conviction of unworthiness there grew up a hatred of the woman he was supposed to have wronged. And, being itself sinful, this very hatred provided a further occasion for remorse. It was a race between loathing and repentance, and loathing won. Never a personable woman, Mrs. Gubbins became daily more repellent, until at last the wretched husband found her mere presence a discomfort, like an ill-fitting shoe or a bad smell. In particular, he detested--as well he might--that mole on her chin with its three feline hairs. And she, fiendishly acute, found it all out. She caught his sidelong glances of distaste, and pondered them long; and that distaste became another weapon to her hand. She accused him of harbouring cruel thoughts; taunted him with first robbing her of youth and then despising her for lacking it; flung out wild and baseless charges of infidelity. To propitiate her he made the most fantastic concessions: allowed her to turn him out of the shop, and consented to do all the housework in her stead. It became patent to the world that she was master.

You’ll ask why he was fool enough to put up with this treatment? But, given his weakness, the explanation is credible enough. She attacked him at his most vulnerable point, his conscience. Religion, as he conceived it, taught him to submit to circumstances, not to master them. In his darkest hour he could still kneel at his bedside and say, ‘Thy will, not mine, be done.’ And he really believed for a while that God’s will and Mrs. Gubbins’s were in mystical accord, that she, in fine, was the rod with which, for his own soul’s good, heaven was scourging him. To aid this grotesque delusion there was the spectacle of her formal piety. For she was a prayerful woman, scrupulous in her speech, and of unquestioned honesty in her commercial transactions.

If only he could have cursed her and stood by his words, she might have mended. But he, who believed he had unravelled the ultimate secrets of destiny, dared not pit his moral judgment against hers. He was ever ready to sit on the stool of repentance. A day came when hatred rose to a frenzy in him. He cut short her complaints with an oath, poured out the gall of his heart upon her. She seemed quelled, and in his triumph he added a taunt, banal and indeed puerile: ‘You whiskered old cat!’ It was a fatal mistake. She stared at him mutely for a moment, no doubt in sheer astonishment. Then her eyes narrowed and something like a smile twisted her lips. ‘Cat and mouse,’ she remarked coldly. And--call the man a fool, if you like--that reply terrified Gubbins as nothing else could have done.

He had betrayed himself once more into the hands of the enemy. He had provided her with a new and a bitter grievance. Worst of all, she knew his secret, knew that his loathing centred on that monkey-spot of hers, as he called it. From that moment I imagine her cherishing that mole with the solicitude that Samson, had he been a wiser man, would have lavished upon his hair. It was the source and the instrument of her power. So far as I understood Gubbins, it was as much nausea as hatred that the thing inspired in him. His soul sickened at the sight of it. It became a poison, a torture. All this she knew and exulted in.... Curious that an æsthetic sense, together with a weak stomach, should suffice to work a man’s downfall.

And so I come back to that night of fear the events of which drove Gubbins, twenty hours later but still electric with terror, to the refuge of my study.

3

Saunders paused to relight his pipe. One disconcerting thing about the affair, he resumed after a while, is that in Gubbins’s account of his wife I can discover no human qualities at all. I fancy he himself had begun to regard her as an agent, not of God this time, but of the devil. Characteristic of him to jump from one pole to the other. And that theological fantasia, his imagination, may have coloured everything. That is as it may be. I can only tell you what he told me.

You know how quickly some noxious weed will overrun a flower-bed. Well, something of the kind happened in the ill-disciplined mind of Gubbins. He was pitifully susceptible to suggestion. An idle fancy presented itself to him: ‘Many a woman has been murdered for less than that monkey-spot.’ And the fancy became a fear which walked with him night and day, a fear lest he should be betrayed by sheer force of suggestion into murdering his wife. You realize what that would mean; it would mean damnation for his soul, or so he believed. The gallows had but few terrors for him. I think he would have welcomed death, could he have been sure of his salvation hereafter.

The seed was sown. The idea took root. And the more passionately he struggled against it, the more persistently his imagination envisaged the crime. At last one night, after a hundred sleepless hours, he reached the end of his tether.

He jumped noiselessly out of bed. Moonlight flooded the room, imparting a ghastly pallor to the face of the supine Mrs. Gubbins. In sleep she had something of the chill dignity of a corpse lying in state. The thin lips curled back a little on one side of the mouth, and in the gap gleamed a gold-crowned tooth, a tiny yellow fang. On the point of her chin was that at which the wretched man tried not to look: itself not very offensive, but rendered hideous by the three black jealously-guarded hairs depending from it. Gubbins swears that as he stood staring at his wife’s face those hairs were moving to and fro like the long legs of a spider, or the antennæ of an insect seeking prey.

Having gazed long, he forced his fascinated eyes away, and padded across the room. The door clicked, in spite of him, as he opened it. He experienced all the alarms of a guilty man. Yet his intention was innocent enough: it was even, in its grotesque fashion, comical. He had determined to shear this female Samson of her power by cutting off those three hairs.

But when he returned to the bedside, and stood again by the sleeping body of his wife, he was overcome by nausea. Distaste for the task paralysed his will. He felt as a sensitive man would feel if he were forced to crush a beetle with his naked finger. As an excuse for delay he began examining the instrument in his hand, which was a perfectly ordinary pair of household scissors having, as all scissors have, one sharp end and one blunted. The sharp end interested him most. He scrutinized its point and pressed it against the ball of his thumb; and the thought flashed to him, as though the devil himself had whispered it: ‘This is sharp enough--one thrust under the left ear.’ He shuddered, recoiled from the idea, and burned with shame and fear for having ever had it. And, while still suffocating with the sense of his own guiltiness, there crept into his consciousness the nightmare conviction that he was being watched. He could not see his wife, his gaze being fixed on the scissors, but he knew that she had opened her eyes.

Gubbins couldn’t explain to me the horror of that moment. He merely bowed his head on my mantelpiece and closed his eyes as if to shut out an evil vision. For when, after an age of immobility and silence, he forced himself to look at the face on the bed, he saw the cruel lips curled in a smile of final triumph; and even the opaque eyes seemed for once to shine. And what, for Gubbins, gave the last turn to the screw of terror was that the woman was not looking at him at all. Her gaze, full of evil beatitude, was fixed on the ceiling. For several minutes, minutes that throbbed with his agony, she neither moved nor spoke; and at last, very slowly, she moved a little higher on to the pillow and, still smiling insanely, bared her throat for him to strike. Gubbins was convinced that she ardently desired him to stain his soul with her blood.

Well, as you know, he didn’t murder her: not that time, at any rate. He escaped, as he said, from hell. But I think I would as soon go to hell as have to live through those last fifteen months of his. For now she had completed his enslavement; now she had got his miserable little soul between her finger and thumb. Added to all her old grievances, those daggers with which to stab at his conscience, she had another and a more sensational one: this terrible sin, this attempt upon her life. Spiritual blackmail prolonged for twenty years. No wonder he set fire to the place.

A SENSITIVE MAN

A SENSITIVE MAN

The sight of Elsie’s drawn face, that pallid mask of desolation, moved Wyvern to a self-pity that savoured exquisitely on the tongue. To watch suffering and to be unable to relieve it was a cruel experience. He hardly dared to conjecture how much she had suffered during the last few days of suspense while he, the only man in the world for her, had been trying to make up his mind on a matter affecting the destinies of three persons. He could not dislike Elsie: she had a certain fragile winsomeness and she was still, though her first bloom was gone, pathetically young. Everything she said to-night did but strengthen his conviction of her intellectual immaturity. Between his mind and hers there was a great gulf fixed. Now Marion--Marion was so different. That did not mean that he had no pity left for Elsie. Not at all. His heart was wrung for the one no less than for the other. That was his tragedy: he had a threefold burden. From that point of view he had to admit himself the most luckless of the three.

‘I know my little wife will understand. Her Jim has been quite frank with her.’

Elsie leaned forward, chin in hands, staring fixedly at distance. Only her extreme pallor showed her to be suffering. For the rest, her brow was knitted as though she concentrated all her power upon some problem that as yet baffled her.

‘Yes, Jim, I understand. I understand that you’re so much more sensitive than other men, and can’t resist beauty. Your gift carries penalties with it, and acute susceptibility is one of them. But....’

He glowed in appreciation of her. She was really unique. ‘Only one woman in a thousand could see that,’ he said warmly. ‘And my little wife is that one. She is the dearest....’

Elsie winced. ‘I was going to say there’s something I _can’t_ understand. I always thought you were the soul of honour, and you were once. Yet you were going away from me without a word of explanation.’

Sorrow looked out at her from his eloquent brown eyes. ‘My dear Elsie, don’t disappoint me. You’ve always been so understanding and helpful. How many men would have confided to their wives all that I have confided to you about my love for Marion?’