The Carissima: a modern grotesque

Front matter

A MODERN GROTESQUE BY LUCAS MALET AUTHOR OF "THE WAGES OF sin" "colonel enderby's wife" etc. etc. METHUEN & CO. 6 ESSEX STREET, W.C LONDON NOTE This story was originally named " The Power of the Dog." Last year my attention was called to the fact that this title had been appropriated. I altered the name of my story to that which it now bears. I have, however, retained the phrase in Leversedge's letter in the last chapter ; which, I may add, was written and submitted to Messrs. Methuen & Co. long before I had heard of book now bearing the title I had originally chosen. Lucas Malet. Kensington, W., August 1896. We are no other than a moving row Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held In Midnight by the Master of the Show ; Bat helpless Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days ; Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays." Omar Khayyam.

Prologue

ANTONY HAMMOND told me this story one wet afternoon sitting in the smoking-room of a certain country-house. Everyone else had gone out, regardless of weather, to tramp across the sodden park, walk down to the home farm, or up to the rectory. I observe, when it rains hard some members of a house-party are invariably taken up to tea at the rectory. But neither the plashy grass, nor the manorial pig-styes, nor the clerical teapot seemed to exercise any wild fascination over us ; so, with an agreeable conviction of having chosen the better, and dryer, part, we remained at home. Hammond recounts very well when he is in the vein. He also possesses the gift of pronouncing a larger number of words in a limited space of time than any other person of my acquaintance. We had talked of many things. Discussed that chief wonder of the age, the modern young woman ; who differs as much from all bygone types of womanhood as our modern modes of locomotion do from those obtaining in the days of Abraham.

" For," said Hammond, " broadly speaking, is she not to her mother, as is the Orient Express to a string of camels ? " He added that, compared with even a superficial comprehension of the intricacies of her thought and conduct, the mastery of the Chinese language would supply an airy pastime, the study of the higher mathematics a gentle sedative. " You may take her," he declared, "as a single or, in conjunction with man as a double, acrostic. In either case she is past finding out." Then the conversation wandered on to the heroines of modern fiction ; and brought up, by chance, against the lady to whom is given the title role in that penetrating little tale of Daudet's, La menteuse. Here Hammond became didactic. PHASE FIRST

Chapter I Few

persons (Hammond said) are truthful; yet the complete and experienced liar is rare. A really great lie, whether acted or spoken, is the supreme expression of a nature. It is an in spiration of genius. I make my bow to it with my hand on my heart. And all this reminds me of a man whom I once knew called Leversedge—Con stantine Leversedge. For although he told, con sciously at all events, no lies, he was intimately involved in the telling of one of a really superior order. And a young lady, eminently distinguished for the ripeness of her modernity, was involved in it also. I met Leversedge in London once in a way. Then he would disappear for an indefinite period, to return — very long and lean and brown — furnished with a vocabulary floridly rich in abusive epithets applicable to South African society.

He had business, as I understood, in those savage regions. And it must have proved remunerative, for he gave an increasing impression of prosperity each time I saw him. But whether it consisted in exploiting the aborigines, digging for diamonds, pulling the tail feathers out of live ostriches, or undertaking dental operations on dead elephants, I never exactly knew. He grew rich, voild tout; and he really was a charming fellow, though his appearance always seemed to imply the near neighbourhood of a horse — a thing which I, personally, find slightly irritating. For I have no drop of the blood of the Centaurs in me. I gravitate naturally, as you may say, to my own feet or to wheels. So that a being half equine, as are so many of the members of our great race, produces in me an annoying sense of the limita tions of my opportunities.

This, however, is a digression. — It remains that this man Leversedge had just that hint of a stoop about the shoulders, indolent fashion of moving, and slightly distracted look across the eyes and brow which riding-men so frequently have. He had more legs, too, than are absolutely requisite in civilised society. I may mention, in passing, that he was delightfully clean ; that his almost black beard was neatly trimmed, while his moustache, which was a quite bright brown, stood rather gallantly away from it. Had you arrayed him in white ruff and trunk-hose he would have made an admirable Elizabethan adventurer. Pardon these details, since it is necessary to the appreciation of what follows that you should see the creature " in his habit as he lived." The last time I met Leversedge was at a large summer hotel on the Lake of Geneva.

It is a very commendable dwelling-place, — according to the style of such things, — situated in several acres of garden that stretch down to and along the lake shore. I abstain from localising it more par ticularly, for Leversedge's is not a name to conjure with there. Quite unintentionally he spoilt the manager's season for him. Even the British and American tourist, matter-of-fact animal though it is, has its superstitions. My friend's eccentric action aroused them, aroused them to the extent of making the owners of them run away. For he caused life suddenly to dip to the tragic level — a thoughtless thing to do at any time, an almost criminal one at a summer hotel. But I am getting the cart before the horse. All that came later. Immediately, Leversedge appeared to be in the very heyday of success.

He had attained. He had made his pile. The elephants and ostriches and South Africans, white or black, had receded into the Great Inane. The diamonds had receded also, saving and excepting the considerable store of those delightful stones that he had brought along with him, and destined for the delectation and adorn ment of his bride. For Leversedge's tastes were innocent, innocent to the point of matrimony. He was engaged to a young lady, by name Miss Charlotte Perry, — playfully addressed by her father in moments of expansion as "carissima Carlotta mia,"— bad been so engaged for quite a number of years. Now he was about to marry her, a proceeding which, subject to the fact of a protracted engagement, really touches the high water mark of innocence, doesn't it? The Perry parents, I regret to say, struck me as leaving something to be desired.

Leversedge had offered to take the best suite of rooms in the house for them ; and they had, perhaps consequently, shown considerable alacrity in coming this far to meet him on his homeward journey. They were a rather dusty-looking couple. He a voracious, adhesive little rat of a man, with a lop-sided way of walking, a coat-collar insuffi ciently brushed at all times, and a waistcoat to match after meals. He smiled upon one ravenously ; and told many stock stories of witty bishops and Conservative politicians, giving his audience to understand he had himself invariably acted Horatio to the Hamlet of these good and great men. Mrs. Perry was in another style. Dusty too, but round-about and kindly ; of an expansive, middle-class figure, and a countenance resembling a moon on a clock-face. A suburban moon, be it added, of the very honestest sort, wholly unsymbolic of the worship of Artemis or Astarte, without phases, standing ever at a guileless full.

But if in outward aspect this worthy pair was divided, in sentiment they were one — in as far, at least, as sentiment related to their fair daughter ; for they reverenced her as the supreme expression of their highest selves. And there was something genuinely touching in the whole heartedness of that reverence, in their whispered confidences regarding the effect of her beauty, the widespread recognition of her talents, the brilliancy of her social successes. If one might accept the witness of these good parents, the life of London, intellectual and artistic, pulsed with profounder colour and thrilled into more vigorous effort when Charlotte Perry passed along. According to them, Walter Creighton extolled her pastels, and even that harshest of critics, James Colthurst, praised her draughtsmanship ; while Zeltingen had been heard, more than once, to protest that if she played in public his reputation as a pianist would be completely gone.

At Adolphus Carr's Wednesday afternoons she was a more than welcome guest ; and Mrs. Septimus Mertyns, the wife of the distinguished Q.C., whose drawing-rooms in Portland Place so perpetually reverberate to the roarings of lions young and old, could not be happy without her. Given dearest Lotta to help, she is reported to have declared herself equal to entertaining the Immortals of all ages — without distinction of race, creed, or sex — and, what is more, of making a success of the affair. From all of which it may assuredly be gathered that this accomplished young lady had been designed by nature to fill some notable niche in contemporary history. And that provoked a little inward questioning as to whether she was equally designed by nature to be the contented wife of Constantine Leversedge, with his distracted brow, and long legs, and probably very ordinary, primitive view of the marital relation.

The thermometer, I remember, stood rather persistently at 90' in the shade that summer, — a condition of the atmosphere which disposes one to the exclusive observation of objects in the immediate foreground, easily within the range of vision, that can be contemplated without the breaking of a decent repose, without the unlovely heatings of physical exertion. And therefore, I suppose, I began to observe the Perry-Leversedge drama rather closely. It was under my hand. Daily it was round about me. At first the action was languid. Suddenly unexpected elements in troduced themselves into the piece.

Chapter II It

happened thus. Leversedge was off duty. He and I were alone, drinking our coffee after luncheon in the central hall of the hotel. It is a very good hall, lighted from above by a glass roof. Galleries — over the white balustrades of which waiters and chambermaids, valets, couriers, and ladies'-maids lean half the day, watching the antics of their social superiors down below — open upon it right up to the fourth floor. The Perrys had gone out to luncheon. Mrs. Septimus Mertyns had just announced her advent at a popular hostelry in the neighbouring little town — half a mile away down a scorching boulevard, very inadequately shaded by rows of small, round - headed mountain - ash trees. You may reach the place — the Perrys had done so — by means of an electric tram of phenomenal joltiness, the whirrings and hootings of which distract the sensitive ear from 7 A.M. to 9.30 at night.

Mrs. Mertyns, like the highland chieftain of legend or heroic story, had brought her tail along THE CARISSI MA 10 with her. A truly resplendent tail, socially and intellectually considered ; dazzling to the eyes of Perry pere et mere, and even, in a degree, to the more experienced orbs of the Carissima also. For it counted a clever peeress who does not get on well with her stupid peer ; pretty Mrs. Neville St. John, some time Miss Hattie White, an American. (She gets on equally well with St. John or without him, so there is no indiscretion in naming names. Upon the present occasion, I may remark, she was getting on quite capitally without him.) Walter Creighton, A.R.A., was also of the party ; and Percy Gerrard, the well-known editor of the Present Day. Lastly, Septimus Mertyns himself, looking bleak and slightly harried.

When his wife clearly is enjoying herself, it is repre hensibly weak of a husband to look harried. Bleak he must look, I suppose, poor dear, if nature has fashioned him that way, — but let that pass. The Perrys were bidden to meet the resplendent tail, and the Perrys went. Leversedge did not go. Being a very true gentleman, he assumed that he had not cared to go. " It was too hot," — too hot, forsooth, for this sun-grilled being just home from the tropics ! Whether he had not been included in the invita tion, or whether Miss Perry had desired him to refuse it, offered food for speculation. I could not determine. But I observed that he was a trifle low in his mind as he sat in that cool hall, among the palms and indiarubber plants, smoking the cigarette of peace and drinking black coffee. His talk ran on serious subjects.

The irruption of some lively children from out of the lift, accompanied by French bonnes and English governesses galore, caused a pause in our conversa tion. Leversedge was very fond of children, a wholesome trait in any man's character. He watched them, and as their cries and chatter died away out of doors in the garden he asked me — " Do you believe in devils ? " Now, this, if you like, was serious. It almost amounted to being fundamental ; and I own to an inherent distaste for formulating opinions upon fundamentals. " A devil, Leversedge," I therefore playfully pro tested. " Don't let us approach the question in the plural number. It becomes too complicated, too crowded. One devil, — one surely is enough for all practical purposes ? In the singular he is precious, though archaic; and, if only for dramatic and literary reasons, I don't think we can afford to abolish him.

He supplies the dash of absolute black, you see, which brings out all the delicate lights and shades of the moral picture. Without him the nuances would lose their values. No, we must keep one. He may be of any size you like, — quite a small one if you wish it, a veritable little ewe-lamb of a devil. But sor the sake of his colour, — I am getting slightly mixed as to sex, I fancy, but my knowledge of the sheepfold is scarcely professional, — well, of its colour, which is black, you understand, uncompromising black, I implore that one, just one, may be spared to us." Leversedge smiled upon me, but in a spirit of gentle endurance. His pensiveness remained, un abated. 'Twas not talking of property devils,"he answered ; " and they would hardly serve your purpose any how ; for they seem to make them red nowadays, mostly, not black.

I saw Faust last time I was home, at the Lyceum ; but I didn't think the scarlet variety patronised there amounted to very much. They were altogether too solid. You know, at a push you could do for them, — shoot, or stick, or strangle them. You must be an uncommonly poor lot if you find things frightening that you could strangle." He smoked reflectively for a little. " No," he went on ; " I — I mean you — I mean nobody's afraid of what they can strangle. Even when I was home last, I could have supplied the management with the ground-plan of a much nastier species of fiend than those hairy, pudding bodied creatures. And now " Leversedge's voice caught with a click in his throat. He sprang to his feet, making a violent movement of both hands, as though forcing some thing heavy and clinging off his lap.

" Get down," he cried, " you brute, — you hideous brute." This was startling. But there are incidents which, while provoking curiosity almost to burst ing-point, have about them a gravity — a gravity born of their very absurdity sometimes — which would effectually prevent any but a double-soled idiot making comments or asking questions. 1 did neither. Leversedge had just spoken of people being frightened ; and that more sympathetically than I should have expected, for he was himself certainly no poltroon. He was a quiet, steady, sensible fellow, the kind of man to whom women turn instinctively, as to a life-belt or lightning conductor, in an emergency. Yet at this moment his face expressed fear, and more than fear. It expressed downright terror and uncontrollable disgust. Really he presented a very distressing spectacle.

His mouth was slightly open, while his lips curled back queerly from his teeth. It may sound ridicul ous, but I could almost swear that his hair bristled. His action had been too rapid for premeditation. I never doubted it was wholly spontaneous and honest. Still, I knew — knew as positively as I have ever known anything in my life — that nothing, animate or inanimate, had been reposing upon his i4 TH E CARISSIMA excellently white, flannel trousers. Knew, equally well, that nothing had slipped from off them on to the inlaid marble floor as, beating his knees, he lunged up out of the chair beside me. We had only just finished our coffee. The tray and a flacon of cognac still stood on the table before me. After about a minute Leversedge laid hold of the flacon, and emptied half its contents into one of the dirty coffee-cups.

He gulped down the brandy, and wiped his moustache and beard — as well as he could, for his teeth were chattering and his hands shaking, like those of a person in the cold fit of a fever. Then he walked up and down the length of the hall once or twice, fished a cane stool out from under one of the seats, came back and sat down beside me again. He had entered into possession of himself. But he was still shaking. Very carefully he placed the stool on his knees, wrong way about, so that the four legs of it stuck up into the air, took out his cigarette case, and lighted another cigarette. " I beg your pardon, Hammond," he said, as he did so. " This has not happened to me for some time, and it took me by surprise. I don't make such a fool of myself when I am in training — when I'm habitually hag-ridden.

But I've been pretty free of all that lately." He looked round, doing his best to smile, though his lips twitched oddly. "Now, do you believe in devils?" he asked. " Real ones, I mean, — not property devils." " I believe in liver, my dear friend," I asserted. " And still more sincerely do I believe in nerves, which are superior in the production of torments to all the Satans generated by the unhealthy imaginations of all ascetics, Oriental and mediæval, put together." " And still more readily do you believe in drink, I suppose," he said quietly. " Only let me remind you, the monsters that haunt drunkards do it openly in broad day. You can see them, so they tell me, as plain as your hand. Now, I only see this beast at night, when the lights are out and there's no moon. And even then only — only part of it.

By day I only feel it." Leversedge shook again all over, while he slowly slid the cane stool up and down his lap. " When I begin to see it in the light, I shall have sense enough left to look for the nearest lunatic asylum, I hope. Or put an end to the business in an even more effectual manner." What did I do ? Naturally I did what everyone does, except a very few women — on whom may heaven rain all blessings, they richly deserve such, faithful souls ! — what everyone, I say, does when a fellow-creature is in any vital need of help, or advice, or encouragement. I expended myself in ineptitudes, in palpable platitudes, in sieve-like commonplaces of consolation, through which the comfort ran with the silliest little tinkle imagin able. Poor Leversedge listened in commendable patience. " You're extremely kind," he said ; " but this is nothing new.

It's been going on for ever so long. I've tried drugs, and dieting, and doctors — they make no difference. I hoped perhaps coming back to Europe and the old life " He paused, still sliding the stool backwards and forwards in that unpleasantly suggestive manner. " Smoke, please," he said. " Do you mind my telling you ? I've never told anybody before. The best and the worst things that happen to you, you keep to yourself as a rule, you know. But — but — I'm rather knocked about by what's just occurred. I should be glad to have you know." Again the stool travelled backwards and for wards. Then Leversedge said slowly — " It began like this — I had been riding for a couple of days expecting to strike a mining camp where I had business. But I'd fever on me, and got out of my course. Do you know the Veldt, Hammond ?

Of course you don't — the endless roll of the treeless land, under the dome of the thick, tropic sky, both alike grey with the heavy, deadly heat. It gets you with a sort of despair. You look at it as you might look at a sentence of penal servitude for life. The monotony takes the heart out of you — that, and the heat, the killing heat. At last the hazy warming-pan of a sun went down, and the dark came quick, and I muddled on pretty well done. And, from the top of one of those ever lasting bare ridges, I saw the white tilts of a couple of waggons showing up about half a mile away. It wasn't my camp, but it meant something in the Way of rest and help. At least, I thought so at first, though there was no smoke, and the whole place seemed unaccountably quiet, save for the yapping of a dog." Leversedge looked round at me, and spoke as though forcing himself.

" I needn't go into details, Hammond," he said. " That camp was dead. Even in the night, which decently hides a good deal, it was a ghastly place. I suppose they'd all died of thirst, they and the oxen. And I had fever on me. I shall never know quite all I did see. But in one of the waggons I made out a dead woman. Underneath it a dog was tied, a small, yellowish cur, the only thing left alive, and it yapped. And — and — there had been a child in the waggon, a little baby-child — and I suppose it had lived longer than the rest. And it must have crawled out over the tail of the waggon, and fallen close to the dog. It lay there, a white bundle of a thing in the gloom. And the dog squatted with its forepaws out across the child's chest, its eyes showing green, straining at the rope which tied it.

And bending down from the saddle — I was too weak with fever to get off— my horse, too, would have scared, it was half mad at — well— at the death all round it, and the stench — I saw that the brute had torn the child's throat —for— for the blood." He paused a moment. And when he con tinued, it struck me through all the absorbing terror of his story that Leversedge was one of those persons who, even under severest stress of adverse circumstance, try to be just. " I know it was starving," he said, " and — which is worse — it was parched. Men have done as bad things before now at sea, — only, I tell you, Hammond, I had to kill that dog. I could not afford to squander cartridges, but I could spare a couple. Twice I tried it, but my revolver was heavy, and I was altogether played out, so that my hand shook.

The bullets only cut the rope. And then — then — I was taken with a sort of panic, Hammond. I cleared out of that awful place ; and the dog came too." His voice sank ; and while one hand still held the upturned legs of the stool, he leant sideways, and with the other made a slow level motion as of something passing across the floor. " It kept pace with my horse. Those dreadful eyes looking up at me — two yellowish-green discs galloping beside me, dropping behind for a minute or two, coming up with me again, mile after mile, all through the night. And the night seemed years and years long " I am afraid it is true, even with the most civilised of us, that the appetite for horror grows with what it feeds on. I am naturally a soft man, a dweller in tents, of the Jacob rather than the Esau order of mind.

I detest adventures, save of the drawing room and five-o'clock-tea sort. Yet, as Leversedge ceased speaking, I was sensible of an unholy craving for more of these horrors. And, when his silence grew somewhat prolonged, I found myself — to my shame — saying greedily — " Well, my dear fellow, well ? That's not the end ? " Leversedge turned to me with that pathetically patient smile of his. Did I perceive, though, the faintest flavour of contempt behind it? The con tempt of Esau, the fighter and hunter, the dealer in primitive passions, for the smooth-handed Jacob of the club, and the pavement, and the silver teapot ? " No, that's not the end," he answered at last ; " that's only the beginning. — I need not bother you with the whole set out. I was pretty bad for some time ; though I stumbled across my own people next day, and we struck a vein of luck at our mining place, and the money was rolling in hand over hand.

It seemed as if the curse and the gold had come together. — As soon as I could move I went down to the coast and got away to sea. And I thought it was all right. We were a couple of degrees south of the equator, and there had been a bad electric storm which had made us all feel pretty jumpy ; but the rain had come down and the weather was mending. Everyone else had gone under cover — some music and singing was going on in the saloon — and I was standing forward against the bulwarks with the doctor. He was a nice little chap — tremendously keen on travel and on natural history. He died of fever a year and a half afterwards, I heard, exploring somewhere up the Congo. I've always been sorry he dropped out. There was good stuff in him. — But about this affair of mine. It must have been about half past eight, and it was very close notwithstanding the rain ; and very dark, but for the glimmer through the slats of the saloon shutters.

And right along the length of the promenade deck, straight at us, came a dog, just as hard as it could lick. I only saw its eyes, — two glowing green discs a trifle bigger than a sixpence, — but there was no mistaking what they were. They travelled along about nine inches above the level of the deck, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, as the thing galloped. It turned, just short of us, round the end of the saloon, and went, as I supposed, down the other side of the deck. I spoke to the doctor about it — I hoped there might be a dog on board I did not know of — but he hadn't observed anything. Then the eyes came racing up our side of the deck again. I pointed them out to him, still he didn't see. Still I had a sort of hope about me, so I knelt down and whistled the brute to come to me." Leversedge grasped the up-turned legs of the stool, and leaned forward, looking across to where the great glass doors of the hall opened on to the buff of the carriage-drive, and the dancing green of the garden in blaze of sunshine beyond.

"It came," he said. " The eyes were close to me, — quite close. People are sentimental on board ship, you know. A girl was singing 'Annie Laurie' in the saloon. She'd an uncommonly pretty voice. I heard the words of the song quite distinctly ; that and the swish of the water against the side, and the steady pounding of the engines, as I put out my hand to pat the beast's head. And my hand went down, clean down, within a couple of inches of those eyes, where its neck should have been — where its neck was — I swear it was — clean down on to the wet planks of the deck. — Then I knew something very evil was upon me. In that dead camp I had seen the Thing-too-Much. — For there is a Thing-too-Much, you know, in nature, in men and women, in what happens. And you may tell by the look in a person's face whether they've seen it.