Fancies and Goodnights Part 40

As soon as Einstein declared that s.p.a.ce was finite, the price of building sites, both in Heaven and h.e.l.l, soared outrageously. A number of petty fiends, who had been living in snug squalor in the remoter infernal provinces, found themselves evicted from their sorry shacks, and had not the wherewithal to buy fresh plots at the new prices. There was nothing for it but to emigrate. They scattered themselves over the various habitable planets of our universe; one of them arrived in London at about the hour of midnight in the October of last year.

Some angels in like case took similar measures, and by a coincidence one of them descended at the same hour into the same northern suburb.

Beings of this order, when they take on the appearance of humans, have the privilege of a.s.suming whichever s.e.x they choose. Things being as they are, and both angels and devils knowing very well what's what, both of them decided to become young women of about the age of twenty-one. The fiend, as soon as he touched earth, was no other than Bella Kimberly, a brunette, and the angel became the equally beautiful Eva Anderson, a blonde.

By the essential limitation of their natures, it is impossible for an angel to recognize fiendishness on beholding it, and equally so for a fiend even to conceive the existence of angelic virtue. As a matter of fact, at such a meeting as now took place in Lowndes Crescent, St. John's Wood, the angel is innocently attracted by what seems to her the superior strength and intensity of the fiendish nature, while the devil experiences that delicious interest that one feels in a lamb cutlet odorous upon the grill.

The two girls accosted one another, and each asked if the other knew of a suitable lodging-house in the neighbourhood. The similarity of their need caused them first to laugh heartily, and then to agree to become room-mates and companions of fortune. Bella suggested that it was perhaps too late to make respectable application for a lodging, therefore they spent the night strolling on Hampstead Heath, talking of how they would earn their livings, and of what fun they would have together, and of love, and then of breakfast, which is not an unnatural sequel.

They had some poached eggs in the little Express Dairy in Heath Street, and afterwards found a pleasant room on the third floor of a large house in Upper Park Road. Then they went out in search of employment. Bella was soon taken on as a dancing instructress, and Eva, with a little more difficulty, secured a situation as harpist in a ladies' orchestra.

Once they were settled thus, they began to enjoy themselves as girls do, chattering and giggling at all hours. It is true that some of the things Bella said made Eva blush from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, but she already loved her dark friend, and found her daring humour quite irresistible. They made amicable division of the chest of drawers, and shared the same bed, which no one thought was extraordinary, nor would have if they had known them in their true characters, for nothing is more common than to find a fiend and an angel between the same pair of sheets, and if it were otherwise life would be h.e.l.lishly dull for some of us.

Now there was living in this lodging-house a young man scarcely older than Bella and Eva, who was studying to become an architect; and who had never known love, nor been put off for long by any imitation. His name was Harry Pettigrew, and his hair was a very medium colour, neither too dark nor too fair.

His means were limited, and his room was on the topmost floor, but not so far above that inhabited by the two girls but he could hear their delicious giggling at that still hour when he should have been at his latest studies. He longed to go down and tap at their door and ask them what the joke was, but he was too shy.

However, when three such young people are in the same house, it is not long before they become acquainted. On one occasion Bella forgot to lock the bathroom door, and the reason for this must have been that in h.e.l.l there are no baths, and hence no bathrooms, and consequently no bathroom doors.

It was a Sunday; the young man himself was descending in a dressing-gown to take his morning dip. There was a delicious little contretemps, in which, fortunately, he saw no more than any decent young man would wish to see. All the same, he retreated in great confusion, for he had no notion of the wishes of decent young women. His confusion was so extreme, that he counted neither stairs nor landings in ascending, and, flinging open a door which he took to be his own, he discovered Eva in the third position of Midler's exercise for the abdominal muscles, and in nothing else at all.

Now angels, as every man knows, are, by virtue of their very innocence, or the simplicity of the celestial costume, sometimes far less conventionally modest than the squeakers of the darker sisterhood. Eva hastily but without panic threw a wrap about her shoulders: "You look quite upset," she said. "There is no reason to be upset. Did you want anything?"

"No ..." he said, "... I did not. In fact I came in by mistake. It is nice of you not to scream or be angry with me."

They exchanged one or two more little civilities. In the end, Harry was emboldened to suggest a walk on the Heath. Before Eva could reply, Bella entered, and, not seeing him there, she burst out, with a giggle, "Whatever do you think happened to me?" Then, catching sight of him, she subsided into a confusion doubly arch.

This took off a little from the exquisite naturalness of the other encounter, a service for which Harry was not as grateful as he might have been, had he known to what a quarter, and from what a quarter, his fancy was being inclined. The truth is, that where a fiend and an angel, both in female form, are seen by the same young man, in precisely the same illuminating circ.u.mstances, he will, fifty or fifty-five times out of a hundred, choose the angel, if he is a nice young man, and if he has time enough.

Therefore, when they were all three on Hampstead Heath that afternoon, Harry addressed Bella with very pleasant words, but with words only, while to Eva he accorded certain looks as well. Bella was not very slow at putting two and two together. She bad been looking forward to a long period of mortal sin with this attractive young man, and to flying off with his soul afterwards. The soul of an architect, especially if he is of strong Palladian tendencies, is well worth a handsome villa, standing in two or three acres of well-laid-out grounds, in the most desirable residential quarter of h.e.l.l. You imagine this homeless fiend's mortification, against which could have been measured the fury of the woman scorned, since they were here resident in the same anatomy.

She saw every day that Harry was growing fonder of her blonde companion, and conceived the idea of adding a fourth to their party, in the shape of a young man nearly as swarthy as herself, whom she had met at the dancing-hall, and with whom she was already quite sufficiently familiar.

She represented to him that Eva was likely to inherit a large sum of money. This, and her blonde locks and guileless air, was quite enough for the dance-hall Valentino, and all he asked was opportunity to come at her.

"It's no good just trying to do the sheik," said Bella, "for she's already crazy about Harry Pettigrew, who should be my boy friend by rights. What you want, is to give him the idea you and she are like that. That'll make him sheer off quick enough, if I know his lords.h.i.+p." It will be observed that Bella's speech was vulgar in the extreme: this is a very usual deficiency of fiends.

Her dancing-partner, whom she had made well acquainted with the stings of jealousy, soon found means to introduce them to Harry. For example, on one Sunday when they were all walking in the sylvan shades of Ken Wood, he had Bella fall behind with Harry on some pretext or other, and when he and Eva had gone ahead a turn or two of the winding pathway, he put his arm behind her, without touching her in the least (or he would have had a severe rebuke), but so that it should appear to Harry, when he rounded the bend, that his hastily withdrawn arm had been about her consenting waist.

Not only this, but he once or twice made a sudden movement, and appeared fl.u.s.tered, when Harry entered a room in which he and Eva had been left alone by his accomplice. He was not above making, when he heard his rival's step outside the door, a little kissing sound with his perjured lips. On one occasion, when Bella was away for the week end, he went so far as to throw a sock in at Eva's window.

Here he overreached himself. Harry, returning with Eva from a walk, was so overcome by the sight of this sock that he could no longer suffer in silence, but, first of all asking (as it were carelessly) whose sock that could be, he soon burst out with all the acc.u.mulated suspicions of the past few weeks, and had the infinite pleasure of hearing them denied frankly, emphatically, unmistakably and, above all, angelically.

A pretty little scene ensued, in which they discovered that their love partook of the nature of perfection. In fact, the only attribute that was wanting was completeness, which is recognized as being as essential to perfection by many of the ancient philosophers, several of the fathers of the Church, and by all young lovers. It is the nature of men to strive after perfection, and of angels to attain it. Our young pair were true to type, and, after a little amicable discussion, it was agreed that they should endeavour to realize perfection in Eva's room that very night, when all the house was asleep. If perfection itself is insufficient for the censorious, such are reminded that in Heaven there is no marrying or giving in marriage, and among architectural students very little.

Now it so happened that Bella had returned that very afternoon, and had gone into conference with her accomplice to devise some bold stroke by which they might each achieve their impatient ends. At last they agreed on the boldest of all. Bella that very night was to visit Harry in his bedroom, and the swarthy dancing-man was to play the Tarquin in Eva's.

That night, at about the middle hour, they repaired at Hampstead. It was as black as pitch, no moon, a mist over the stars; no lights in the other lodgers' rooms, for they were all asleep; no light in Harry's, because he was not there; no light in Eva's, because he was.

Bella, not knowing this, goes up to the top, finds him absent, and gets into his bed by way of a little surprise for him when he returns.

The dancing-man, making his entry a little later, gropes his way up the stairs, and, stopping at Eva's door, hears a murmuring within, which is in fact our young pair expressing to one another their great admiration of the perfection of perfection. He concludes he is a flight too low, goes higher, opens the door of Harry's room, and, all in the dark, seizes upon the waiting Bella, who, in high delight at his enthusiasm, lets down a losing battle in a very convincing way.

Several hours pa.s.sed, in which the good enjoyed that happiness which is the reward of virtue, and the wicked that illusion of it that is the consolation of vice.

In the first grey of dawn, our good Harry made a very pretty speech of thanks to his charmer, in which he told her that she was an angel and had transported him to Heaven itself.

Bella and her companion, on the other hand, d.a.m.ned one another with more heat than grace. They were sufficiently realistic, however, to agree that a good illusion is better than nothing at all, and they resolved to perpetuate their error by seeking it in an eternity of darknesses, but at this, I believe, they were not particularly successful.

IN THE CARDS.

The Vascal System is the most reliable, the most up-to-date, and the most scientific method of foretelling the future by cards. It is true the operator cannot tell his own fortune, but that drawback seems to be common to all methods, and in every other way the successes of the Vascal System have been prodigious.

A wife, who studied a Vascal in her spare time, laid out the cards for her husband on the breakfast table. She revealed to him that he would be involved in an unfortunate collision, and suffer a severe jolt at the very least, if by any chance he drove his car home between three and five that afternoon. He now regularly desires his wife to lay out the cards for him, and never drives home before the hour she announces as propitious, with the result that he is almost the only person in the whole block who has not been severely jolted during the period in question.

A young girl, holder of a Grade A. Vascal Diploma, was able to warn her still younger sister that she might that evening expect to lose something she had possessed all her life, through the agency of a tall, dark man, but though this would cause her some little distress at the outset, it would in the end lead to lasting happiness and satisfaction. Sure enough, the young sister left for a blind date that evening in such haste that she forgot to lock the door behind her. A sneak thief, entering, took away her baby seed-pearl necklace, which was a tatty little number anyway, and she was successful in gypping the insurance people for at least three times its value, and bought that very same rhinestone clip which first attracted the attention of Mr. Jerry Horrabin, now her fiance.

Mr. Brewster, when only half-way through the Vascal Course, laid out the cards for his wife, and told her she would be wrong to insist on going to the theatre that evening, because the show would stink. She did insist, and it did stink.

Convinced by these, and by scores of other unsolicited testimonials, Myra Wilkins decided she could hardly do better than enroll as a student. Her idea was a big one; she meant to play her cards properly. She considered that sooner or later, among the numerous young men who would flock to consult her, she would strike one for whom she could forsee an enormous fortune arriving in the near future from some unsuspected source. She had no intention of unsettling this happy young man by telling him what the future held, but thought rather she might warn him against any Queens of Hearts or Diamonds with whom he might be involved, and guide him gently toward a marriage with a high-grade Spade, for Myra was a brunette.

She graduated with the highest honours, and set up in a shadowy little nook in the West Forties, above the establishment of a dancing instructress with whom she was acquainted. She figured that young men who suddenly took dancing lessons often had a great yearning to know what the future held for them, and she hoped these would form the nucleus of a clientele.

Myra had very little capital, and this was exhausted in furnis.h.i.+ng her nook with bead-curtain, witch b.a.l.l.s, images of Buddha, and similar junk, to create a convincing atmosphere for her visitors. She set her fee very low, in order to get the widest possible range of clients, and thus increase her chances of finding a future millionaire among them.

She shuffled and spread her greasy pack of cards, foretelling for innumerable insignificant young men the details of futures that were little better than pasts, which of course they would become one of these days. As far as the imminent fortune was concerned, the whole business was like a game of solitaire that never came out. The average future wealth of her clients was somewhere about the Two of Diamonds, and work and worry loomed up like a grand slam.

The months stretched on into years, and the dust lay thick upon the witch ball and the Buddha. Myra had nothing but her dreams of wealth, and these, like an old knife, were sharpened to a razor keenness. At last, late one afternoon, when the shadows were at their deepest, the stairway groaned beneath a heavy tread, and a hulking figure tried to get four ways at once through the bead-curtain that screened her alcove.

The new customer was an ugly one, and a more prosperous fortune teller would probably have sent him straight back to the Zoo. Myra, however, could not afford to pa.s.s up a dollar, so she wearily laid out her pack. The Two of Clubs frisked around fairly actively in the near foreground, in a context that gave it the significance of a copper's night stick. She saw he was in some danger of visiting a large building, full of men in strange clothes, but vaguer influences seemed to indicate a postponement of this necessity.

Suddenly she had to repress a cry that rose unbidden to her lips. It was as if his future, dark as a cannibal king, had smiled, and revealed a golden tooth. Vascal declared unequivocally that a handsome fortune was coming to this young man on the death of someone very near to him.

"Have you any relations?" she asked. "Any near relations, I mean, who are well off?"

"No, "said he. "Not unless Uncle Joe soaked anything away before they got him."

"That must be it," she thought. "Well," she said aloud, "it doesn't matter much. There's no sign of any uncle leaving you anything. This card means money troubles. This means you're doublecrossed by a blonde. Looks like you're beaten up, too. I don't know what these two men in uniform are doing."

She continued prattling and laying out the cards, her mind working meanwhile like a three-ring circus. One ring was taken up with the story she was telling to her visitor, the second in reading the real future as it unfolded itself, and the third in wondering what she was going to do about it.

She stole another glance at her unattractive client. The fortune, as far as she could judge, appeared to be rather more than a million. Her visitor, on the other hand, seemed a good deal less than human. Myra had not expected romance, but there are things which make a nice girl hesitate, and he was one of them.

While she pondered she was still automatically laying out the cards. Suddenly her eyes brightened. She looked again. It was true. All her troubles were ended. The cards indicated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that her client would die of a sudden, violent shock within a few months of inheriting the money. This made quite an eligible bachelor of him.

Myra at once began her manoeuvres. "You seem," said she, "to be at the parting of the ways. One road leads to misery, poverty, sickness, despair, prison ..."

"I'll take the other," said the young man.

"You show great powers of judgment," said Myra. "But I can tell you it is not as easy as all that. The other road, which leads to riches and happiness, can only be travelled hand in hand with a good woman. Do you know a good woman?"

"Oh, phooey!" said her client in dismay.

"What a pity!" said Myra. "Because if you did, and if she was dark, and not bad-looking, and wore a number-five shoe, all you'd have to do would be to marry her, and you'd be rich for life. Very rich. Look - here it is. Money, money, money - coming to you from someone very near to you. If you marry that girl, that is. Look - this card means you at the Waldorf. Look - this is you at Palm Beach. Here you are at Saratoga. Gos.h.!.+ You've backed a big winner!"

"Say, lady," said her client. "What size shoe do you wear?"

"Well," said Myra with a smile, "I can squeeze into a four. But usually ..."

"Look, baby," said he, taking her hand. "It's you and me. Like that. See?" With that he extended his other hand with two fingers crossed, as an emblem of connubial bliss.

Myra controlled a shudder. "When he's dead," thought she, "I'll have a million, and get me one of these young film stars, in order to forget!"

Soon afterwards they were married, and took a small shack in an unprepossessing part of Long Island. Lew appeared to have strong reasons for living in inconspicuous retirement. Myra commuted, and drudged harder than ever with her greasy pack of cards, in order to keep them both until death should them part, leaving her a rich widow.

As time went on, and the fortune still failed to materialize, she was bitterly reproached by her hulking husband, whose stunted mind was as impatient as a child's, and who began to fear he had been married under false pretenses. He was also a little s.a.d.i.s.tic.

"Maybe you ain't the right dame after all," said he, pinching her black and blue. "Maybe you don't wear a five. Maybe you wear a six. Gimme a divorce and let me marry another dark dame. The money don't come along, and you're black and blue anyway. I don't like a black and blue dame. Come on, gimme a divorce."

"I won't," said she. "I believe marriages are made in Heaven."

This would lead to an argument, for he claimed to have evidence to the contrary. In the end his brutish wits would be baffled; he would fling her to the ground with a curse, and go into the back yard, where he would dig an enormously deep hole, into which he would gaze for a long time, and then fill it in again.

This continued for some months, and Myra herself began to wonder if the Vascal System could possibly have let her down. "Supposing he doesn't come into the money. Here I am - Mrs. King Kong, and working for it! Maybe I'd better get that divorce after all."

These defeatist notions came to a head one gloomy winter evening as she trudged home from the ferry. Crossing the dark yard of the shack, she stumbled into another of the enormous holes dug by her simple-minded husband. "That settles it," thought she.

When she entered the squalid kitchen, Lew greeted her with an unusual smile. "h.e.l.lo, sweetie," said he. "How's my darling wifie tonight?"

"Cut the sweetie stuff out," said she tersely. "And the wifie stuff, too. I don't know what's bit you, you big gorilla, but my mind's made up. You can have that divorce after all."

"Don't talk like that, honey," said he. "I was only joking. I wouldn't divorce you, not for all the world."

"No, but I'll divorce you," said she. "And quick."

"You gotta have grounds for that," observed her husband, with a frown.

"I've got 'em," said she. "When I show that judge where I'm black and blue, I'll get my divorce p.r.o.nto. I'm sitting pretty."

"Listen," said he. "Have a look at this letter that came for you. Maybe you'll change your mind."

"Why did you open my letter?" said Myra.

"To see what was inside," said he with the utmost candor. "Go on, read it."

"Uncle Ezra," cried Myra, staring at the letter. "Left a million and a half dollars! All to me! Gee, the old geezer must have made good! But, say, the cards must have slipped up, then. It was supposed to come to you."

"Never mind," said Lew, stroking the back of her neck. "Man and wife are one, ain't they?"

"Not for long," cried Myra in triumph. "I'm rich! I'm free! Or I will be."

"And what shall I do?" asked her husband.

"Go climb a tree," said Myra. "You ought to be good at it."

"I thought you might say that," said he, clasping her firmly around the throat. "Gypped me a dollar for that fortune too, didn't you? Well, if you won't do right by me, the cards must. Death of someone very near to me - that's what they said, didn't they? So they was right after all!"

Myra had no breath left to pay testimony to the Vascal System, or to warn him of the sudden, violent shock that awaited him.

THE INVISIBLE DOVE-DANCER OF STRATHPHEEN ISLAND.

I came again to Doyle's Hotel, at Ballymalley in Connemara, and unpacked my bags in a bedroom smelling of brine and damp towels. A little heap of sand lay in the grate, spilled out from someone else's shoes. Outside there was the wind and the dunes, and a sea already ragged with night. Downstairs was the bar.

Doyle was standing behind the bar, holding forth about Strathpheen Island. "And here," said he to his listener, "here is the gentleman to tell you it's the wonder of the world for the sight of the wild sea-birds, and the breeding places of them."

"No doubt about it," said I.

"A gentleman from America," said Doyle to me, indicating the stranger. "And him touring around, mourning over the graves of his forefathers."

The American gave me a big handshake. "Thomas P. Rymer," said he. "And I want to tell you, sir, this is the sort of place we read about in story-books, and can't altogether believe in."

"I'm only a visitor, myself," said I. "It's a romantic corner."

"Romance," said he. "Don't talk to me about romance. I'm what we call a hard-headed business man, but what this old Emerald Isle has done for me in the way of romance -! Nothing immoral, of course. Don't get me wrong."

"Is Mrs. Rymer with you?" said I.

"No, sir," said he. "I'm sorry to have to tell you, there isn't a Mrs. Rymer. Now don't laugh at me as a sentimentalist, or idealist, but a man in my line of business gets mighty particular about what I might call the finesse of the female form. Has to be. Foundation garments - girdles, corsets, bra.s.sieres. And, well, I've not seen just that bit of perfection - You know what I mean."

"Well, you won't see her on Strathpheen Island," said I. "All the same, why don't we go together? We'll get the boots here, the fellow they call old Danny, to help with the boat. Doyle'll pack us a bit of lunch."

"Now that's a grand idea," said he.