Fancies and Goodnights Part 45

"A nice old couple!" said Alan. "Silver hair, plastic dentures ... !"

"Even so, if we still love each other," maintained Caroline.

"Sure! On a porch! With roses!"

It was that very night, in the middle of the night, Alan was suddenly awakened. Caroline had turned the light on, and was bending over him, looking at him.

"What is it? What's the matter? What are you looking at me for?"

"Oh, I was just looking at you."

Most men, if they woke up in the middle of the night and found Caroline bending over them, would think they must have died and gone to Heaven, but Alan took it very peevishly. He seemed to think that she was examining him for enlarged pores, deepening wrinkles, sagging tissues, blurring lines, and other signs of incipient decay, and she found it hard to make a convincing denial, because she had been doing exactly that.

"I've a good mind to take that stuff and swallow it down right now," said Alan in a rage.

"Yes, it's just the sort of thing you would do," retorted Caroline.

It will be seen that a situation had developed in which almost anything that either of them did would be certain to offend the other.

Things went on like this until the last day of the tournament at Forest Hills. It was on this day that Alan encountered the boy-wonder from California. He saw, as he had seen before, that the stripling had a game very noticeably lacking in finesse. He had tremendous force and a great deal of speed, but no finesse at all. His reflexes were uncanny; it was impossible to fool him by a change of pace. But reflexes are one thing; finesse is quite another. "Why the h.e.l.l do I keep thinking about finesse?" said Alan to himself before the first set was over. When the last set was done, the answer was there as big as the scoreboard. The stringy boy from California put his hand on Alan's shoulder as they walked off the court together. To a man who has been played to a stand-still, the hand of the victor is a heavy load to carry.

Nevertheless Alan took his defeat very well. All through the evening he firmly discounted the alibis that his friends invented for him. "The son of a b.i.t.c.h just plain battered me off the court," said he with a rueful grin. Even when Caroline explained to everyone how tense and nervous he'd been lately, he showed no slightest sign of the rage and desolation which howled within him.

That night, in spite of his aching weariness, he lay awake long after Caroline was sound asleep. At last he got up and crept with infinite caution into the living-room. He took up the little phial, unscrewed the top, and drained the contents at a single gulp. He went to the little faucet behind the bar, and refilled the phial with water. He was about to replace the cap when a thought struck him, and he looked about among the bottles until he settled on some bitters. He added several drops to the water in the phial, and then put it back on the mantelpiece. Over the mantle-piece was a mirror; Alan took a long look in this mirror, and he smiled.

Now it happened that at this time Caroline was playing the part of a girl who was enc.u.mbered with an amiable fool of a younger sister. The girl who played this sister walked out in a fit of temper, and a new girl had to be found in a hurry. One of the producers, without even the excuse of a villainous motive, but out of sheer sottish good nature, nominated the niece of a friend of his. The girl had to be sent for and looked at, and at once everyone saw that she was the crazy kid sister in person, for she was nothing more or less than a long-limbed, wide-mouthed, dazzle-eyed version of Caroline in slang, so to speak, with a grin instead of a smile, and a stumble instead of Caroline's wonderful walk; and instead of that look of spring morning joy that beamed from Caroline's face the newcomer had an expression of slap-happy bewilderment, as if the world was playing a succession of highly diverting tricks on her.

Everyone thought she was charming, and everyone approved the choice, Caroline included. The first time she went on, Caroline stood in the wings to see how she took to it. She could see just by looking at her back that the girl lit up as she stepped into view of the audience. It hardly amounted to a premonition, but she stepped forward and watched attentively as the girl blundered through the agreeable little routine that the part called for. It was a scene that always drew a pleasant round of applause. This time, as the girl came off the stage: "My G.o.d!" thought Caroline, "that's my applause."

She was perfectly right. The sound that was mounting out front was of a timbre discernibly more feverish, and with more of the humming undertone of the human voice in it, than the applause that rewards a good piece of acting. This was the sound made by an audience that has fallen in love. Caroline knew it well. She had heard it every night for a good many years, and she heard it that same night when, a few minutes later, she made her own entrance. But, rightly or wrongly, it now seemed to her that a certain amount was missing, and to Caroline's ear that amount was exactly equal to what had been bestowed on the gangling youngster.

In the pa.s.sage outside her dressing room a small group was listening with new respect to the producer who had found the girl. "What do you think of her, Carrie?" he asked amiably as Caroline approached.

"I think she's a darling," replied Caroline.

"Carrie,"said he, "she's the biggest discovery since you walked on that night in Newport."

Caroline smiled and entered her dressing room. Through the half-open door she heard someone say, "But do you think she'll make an actress?"

"Let me tell you, my boy," returned the fortunate discoverer. "I was out front all through the second act. Now, when you're talking to that kid the way I'm talking to you, what is she? Just a kid. But, my boy, when she walks on the stage - she's YOUTH. The crazy, lovely, dizzy, unlucky, stumble-b.u.m youth of this day and age, my boy! And she tears your G.o.ddam heart out. So I don't give a hoot in h.e.l.l if she ever learns to act. In fact I hope to G.o.d she never will. I've put on as many good shows as anyone else over the last fifteen years, and I remember what Wolcott Gibbs said about some dame quite a time ago. 'When youth and beauty walk on the stage,' he said, 'to h.e.l.l with Sarah Bernhardt.'"

Caroline closed her door.

That night she couldn't get home fast enough. She felt she needed Alan. She felt like a wounded animal that instinctively seeks some bitter herb, the one thing that will cure it. She knew, as it were, the flavour of what she needed from him: harsh, astringent, healing to the bruised ego; the acrid emanation of ... which of his qualities. "Anyway, it's there," she thought in the elevator. "It's there in his ugly smile; in the way he ..." Here she stopped short. "Alan's smile? Ugly? I'm certainly good and mixed up. Never mind! At least I'm home."

She went in, and the place was empty. The emptiness of one's own home at midnight, when one has fled there for comfort, is an abomination and an injury, and Caroline took it as such, though it was the most ordinary thing in the world for Alan to go out while she was at the theatre, and to get home after she did. Recently, he had done so almost every night, and she hadn't given it a thought. But tonight she was injured and angry.

She walked from one room to another, looked at the largest photograph of Alan, and felt dissatisfied with his smile. "It's not mature," she said. She looked in the gla.s.s and tried, with considerable difficulty, a smile of her own. This she found even more unsatisfactory, but for the opposite reason. "I may as well face it," said this valetudinarian of twenty-seven, "I'm old." She stood there watching her reflection as she drew down the corners of her mouth, and in the stillness and silence of the apartment she could feel and almost hear the remorseless erosion of time. Moment after moment particles of skin wore away; hair follicles broke, splintered, and decayed like the roots of dead trees. All those little tubes and miles of thread-like channels in the inner organs were silting up like doomed rivers. And the glands, the all-important glands, were choking, clogging, abrading, falling apart. And she felt her marriage was falling apart, and Alan would be gone, and life would be gone.

Her eyes were already on the little phial. She took it up, she unscrewed the top, and she drank the contents. She was very calm and controlled as she went to the bathroom and refilled the phial with water, and added a little quinine to give it the bitter taste. She put the phial back in its place, eyed her reflection again as she did so, and called herself by a name so extremely coa.r.s.e and offensive that it is almost unbelievable that so charming a girl as Caroline could have uttered the word.

When Alan returned that night, she did not ask him where he had been, but overwhelmed him with tenderness, feeling of course as if she had unspeakably betrayed him, and was going to desert him, and go away into an endless springtime, where he could never follow her.

This mood continued over the weeks that followed, and should, one would say, have been matched by an equal remorseful tenderness in Alan, but things are not always as they should be. The fact is, the only inconvenience he suffered from his little secret concerning the phial, was the thought of being married to an aging woman, which makes a man feel like a gigolo.

So time, which was the cause of all this trouble, went on, and both Caroline and Alan, secure in imperishable youth, saw in the other, as through a magnifying gla.s.s, more and more of the hastening signs of decay. Alan began to feel very much ill-used. He felt that Caroline at the very least should have provided herself with a younger sister. One night he dropped into the theatre and discovered that, in a manner of speaking, she had done so.

Soon after this Alan began to win his matches again, and by the same comfortable margin as before. The experts all noted that he had entirely regained his old fire and aggressiveness, and they confidently expected him to win back the championship the following year.

All this time, Humphrey, being trained to await patiently the outcome of his experiments, waited patiently. It may be asked how he knew that both of them would take the potion. The answer is, he was completely indifferent as to whether both of them took it, or one of them, or neither. It was his opinion that a good marriage would survive the phial, and a bad one would be wrecked by it, whichever way it happened.

Very late one evening his doorbell rang three or four times in rapid succession. He raised his eyebrows, and hurried to open it. There stood Caroline. Her hat, hair, dress, and all the rest of it looked just as usual; yet she gave the impression of having run all the way. Humphrey gave her his ugly smile, and, saying never a word, he led her through into the living-room, where she sat down, got up, walked about a little, and at last turned to him. "I've left Alan," she said.

"These things happen,"said Humphrey.

"It's your fault," she said. "Not really yours, perhaps, but it was that horrible stuff you gave us. Humphrey, I'm the lowest, the most despicable rat; I'm such a hypocrite and traitor as you can't ever imagine."

"I very much doubt it," said Humphrey. "I suppose this means you drank the stuff."

"Yes, behind his back,"

"And what did he say when you told him?"

"I haven't told him, Humphrey. I wouldn't dare. No. I filled the thing up with water and put some quinine in it, and ..."

"Tell me why you put quinine in it."

"To give it that bitter taste."

"I see. Go on."

"Oh, I felt so horrible afterwards. I can't tell you how awful I felt. I tried, I tried so hard to love him more than ever to make up for it. But you can't make up for a thing like that. Besides ..."

"Yes?"

"Oh, it just ruined everything, in all sorts of ways. I suppose I've been watching him - you can't help watching a person who's aging in front of your eyes. And when you watch anyone like that you see all sorts of things wrong with them. And I know he's felt it because he ... well, he hasn't been very nice lately. But it's my fault, because I don't love him any more. Maybe I never did." With that she began to weep, which showed a very proper feeling. "Don't tell me," said Humphrey, "that you don't want to be young forever."

"Not if I can't ever love anyone again."

"There's always yourself, you know."

"It's cruel of you to say that. It's cruel even if it's true."

"It's lonely being like this," said Humphrey. "But that's the price we pay for our little immortality. You, and me, and of course old Vingleberg. We're animals of a new species. There's us" - his hand swept a little circle around them -"and the rest of the world." They sat for quite a long time in silence, alone together in this imaginary circle. The sensation was not at all unpleasant. "Of course," added Humphrey, "I used to think we were like that for quite a different reason."

"If it could ... Oh, but I'm so worthless! I let you down. Now I've let him down."

"The first was a mistake. It can be put right."

"But not the second. That we can't live with."

"Yes, I think so. You say the stuff tasted bitter? There's no mistake about that, I suppose?"

"No, oh, no, it was very bitter."

"You see, that has far-reaching implications. I used nothing but ordinary salt in the water."

POSSESSION OF ANGELA BRADSHAW.

There was a young woman, the daughter of a retired colonel, resident in one of London's most select suburbs, and engaged to be married to Mr. Angus Fairfax, a solicitor who made more money every year. The name of this young woman was Angela Bradshaw; she wore a green sweater and had an Aberdeen terrier, and when open-toed shoes were in fashion, she wore open-toed shoes. Angus Fairfax was as ordinary as herself, and pleasant and ordinary were all the circ.u.mstances of their days.

Nevertheless, one day in September this young woman developed symptoms of a most distressing malady. She put a match to the curtains of the drawing-room, and kicked, bit, and swore like a trooper when restrained.

Everyone thought she had lost her reason, and no one was more distressed than her fiance. A celebrated alienist was called in; he found her in a collected frame of mind. He made a number of little tests, such as are usual in these examinations, and could find none of the usual symptoms of dementia.

When he had done, however, she burst into a peal of coa.r.s.e laughter, and, calling him a d.a.m.ned old fool, she reminded him of one or two points he had overlooked. Now these points were extremely abstruse ones, and most unlikely to be known to a young girl who had never studied psychoa.n.a.lysis, or life, or anything of that sort.

The alienist was greatly shocked and surprised, but he was forced to admit that while such knowledge was most abnormal, and while the term she had applied to him was indicative of ignorance and bad taste, he did not feel that she could be certified on these grounds alone.

"But cannot she be certified for setting fire to my curtains?" asked her mother.

"Not unless I find symptoms of insanity," said the specialist. "You can, of course, charge her with arson."

"What? And have her go to prison?" cried her mother. "Think of the disgrace!"

"I could undertake her defence, free of charge, and doubtless get her off with a caution," said Mr. Fairfax.

"There would still be the newspapers," said the Colonel, shaking his head. "At the same time, it seems extraordinary that nothing can be done about it." Saying this, he gave the eminent alienist his cheque and a look. The alienist shrugged his shoulders and departed.

Angela immediately put her feet on the table (her legs were extremely well turned) and recited a string of doggerel verses, celebrating the occasion in great detail, and casting scorn on her parents and her fiance. These verses were very scurrilous, or I would reproduce them here.

During the next few days, she played some other tricks, all of them troublesome and undignified; above all, she rhymed away like the princ.i.p.al boy in a pantomime. A whole string of doctors was called in. They all said her misbehaviour was not due to insanity.

Her parents then tried a few quacks, who, powerless to certify, were also impotent to cure. In the end they went to a seedy Madame who claimed to see into the soul. "The whole thing is perfectly clear," said this unprepossessing old woman. "Your daughter is possessed of a devil. Two guineas."

They asked her to exorcise the intrusive fiend, but that was ten, so they said they would think the matter over, and took Angela home in a taxi.

On the way, she said to them with a smile, "If you had had the decency to ask me, I could have told you that was the trouble, all along."

When they had finished rating her for allowing them to go to so much expense unnecessarily, they asked her how she knew.

"In the simplest way," she said. "I see him very frequently."

"When?" cried the Colonel.

"Where?" cried her mother.

"What is he like?" cried her fiance.

"He is young and not at all bad-looking," replied Angela, "and he talks most amusingly. He generally appears to me when I am alone. I am seldom alone but in my bedroom, and it is there that I see him, between eleven at night and seven in the morning."

"What does he say?" cried her father, grasping his malacca.

"Is he black?" cried her mother.

"What does he-? How do you know it is not a she-devil?" cried her fiance.

"But how does he appear?" asked her mother.

"Frequently I find him beside me, when I have got into bed," said Angela, with the greatest composure in the world.

"I have always asked you to let me order a wider bed for that loom," observed her mother to the Colonel.

"This fiend must be exorcised at once," said Angus Fairfax, "for there is no bed wide enough to sleep three, once we are married."

"I'm not sure that he wants to be exorcised," said Angela. "In any case, I must ask him first."

"Colonel Bradshaw," said Angus Fairfax, "I hope you realize my position. In face of these revelations, and of all that lies behind them, I cannot but withdraw from the engagement."

"A good riddance, I say," observed the fiend, now speaking for the first time.

"Be quiet, dear," said Angela.

Mr. Fairfax rapped on the gla.s.s, stopped the taxi, and got out "In face of what we have just heard," said he, "no action for breach of promise can possibly lie."

"It is not the custom of the Bradshaws to bring actions for breach of promise," said the Colonel. "No more shall we sue you for your share of the taxi-fare."

The fiend, while Mr. Fairfax hastily fumbled for his money, recited a valedictory quatrain, rhyming most obscenely upon his name.

To resume our tale: they got home. The Colonel immediately telephoned for the old Madame to come, regardless of cost "I'll have this fiend out before eleven tonight, anyway, Miss," said he to his daughter, who laughed.

The old Madame turned up, bearing a great box of powders, herbs, bones, symbols, and heaven knows what else. She had the drawing-room darkened, and the wireless disconnected from its aerial, just in case, and, as an afterthought, had the Colonel go out with a sardine to tempt a cat in from the street. "They often like to go into a cat," she said. "I don't know why."

Then, Angela being seated in the middle of the room, and the ornamental paper being taken out of the fireplace, because fiends very frequently like to make an exit by way of the chimney, the old woman lit a joss-stick or two, and began to mumble away for dear life.

When she had said all that was required, she set fire to a saucerful of Bengal Light. "Come forth, Asmodeus!" she cried.

"Wrong," said the fiend, with a chuckle.

"Bother!" cried the old woman in dismay, for the flare had shown the cat eating one of the bones she had brought "That was a bone of St. Eulalia, which was worse than Keating's Powder to devils, and cost me twenty guineas," she said. "No devil win go into that cat now, and the bone must go into the bill, and the Colonel must go into the street to fetch a fresh cat"