OLD MAN'S BEARD Read online

  ‘Have you really ever known a case like this?’ asked young Randall, leaning forward and regarding the Specialist with a haggard and earnest gaze. ‘I mean — I mean, do people have such hallucinations without any real cause for them?’

  Sir Perseus paused before replying. ‘That depends on what you mean by a “real cause”. I have known similar cases, but only when, as I have told Mr Bickley, some deep indentation has been made on the patient’s mind from severe shock — psychic shock, I mean. I have read, of course, of some alleged phenomena, reported from Eastern lands, which have always seemed to be hopelessly unsubstantiated — witchery, hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo. If such phenomena have any basis in fact they can, in my opinion, be satisfactorily explained by the potent influence of auto-suggestion on the primitive mind. It is significant that they seem to lose their force with the donning of trousers. But we are wandering from the point, the subject on hand, and I must go and get something to eat. Mariella,’ he concluded impressively, ‘is a healthy-minded Western girl, she isn’t a Zulu or a South-Sea islander, and she is in great trouble; I do not wish to minimise the extent of that trouble, but she can and must be cured, and you two, and of course her mother, but you especially, Mr Randall, can greatly assist the process of recovery by your tact, your love, your intelligent determination.’

  Mr Bickley saw him out, and while he was doing so young Randall drank another half-tumbler of neat whisky.

  Mariella recovered slowly. The next day she had several attacks of semi-hysteria, and she insisted that everything grey should be taken from her room. And she had a strong but diminishing antipathy for hair, so much so that she asked her mother to wear a shawl over her head. And the latter cut away the ribboned streamers from the electric fan, because she noticed Mariella staring at them in a rather strange way as they fluttered in the draught.

  Young Randall spent several hours a day with her and appeared to be attempting — without complete success — to be obeying Sir Perseus’s instructions. The latter came every afternoon and was breezily chatty and reassuring, but it was a full week before his patient was well enough to come downstairs though she had no relapse in the meantime; but Sir Perseus was less reassured by this than he allowed himself to appear. She never referred to her condition or trouble, and seemed indeed rather disinterested in her progress, and yet, so it seemed to Sir Perseus, she was psychically abnormal, subtly so, almost as though she were ‘entranced’; hypnotised, though in a very sly, unobtrusive way. He attributed this vague spiritual eccentricity to shock, and he told himself that she would either make a slow but sure recovery or relapse suddenly and violently and become past his aid. She talked very little and paid the very slightest heed to anything anyone else said, and spent most of the day sitting in a chair on the beach and staring out to sea. ‘Somehow she doesn’t seem quite a free agent,’ thought Sir Perseus. Her mother, who hid a very deep distress with heroic success and had become just the mother of a sick child, had formed the habit of waking up frequently during the night, but only once found anything to report to Sir Perseus, when Mariella suddenly sat up in bed and said, ‘Who’s that whispering?’ and then sank back again and went to sleep, though she muttered at intervals, as if discussing something almost under her breath with someone who was visiting her in her dreams. That happened during the early hours of September 9th. On the next morning there was a remarkable change in her. She came down to breakfast in her bathing costume and seemed her old care-free self. She talked away fluently and flippantly and, one would have judged, she kept no remembrance whatsoever of any displeasing experiences. Young Randall, who had been a wretched, withered shadow of himself ever since that evening when he had seen Mariella sprawled down the shingle, and drinking far too much in Mr Bickley’s opinion, responded instantly to his fiancée’s changed state, and it was a very thankful and delighted trio which went down with Mariella to the beach about eleven o’clock. It was a blithe day, cloudless and breezy, and the small waves chased in hard on each other’s heels.

  Mariella and young Randall stretched themselves out and let the searching rays of the sun pour through them, and then, just before twelve o’clock, they got up lazily and dawdled down to the water’s edge. The beach was crowded, and Mariella seemed quite content that everyone should have a generous opportunity of scrutinising once more her exquisite workmanship and finish.

  ‘I heard a rumour,’ said one envious damsel to another, ‘that she’s really not quite “all there”; gets fits about once a week.’

  ‘She certainly has got something rather odd about her,’ said her girl friend. ‘I expect that’s why that Mr Randall has been looking so worried lately. What a figure he’s got and how good-looking! I’d give ten years of my life for a month with him. What a shame he should be tied up to someone who isn’t quite sane!’

  These charitable and erotic observations had just been exchanged when Mariella began to step delicately into the sea. Young Randall was already swimming about and waiting for her to join him in a cruise to the raft. She forced her way slowly in, rubbing her hands and uttering the conventional light cries evoked by the tart embraces of the North Sea. She paused for a moment as it splashed up over her waist, waved her hands to her parents, and then strode forward again. The water had just reached her neck when she suddenly screamed, flung up her arms and disappeared. In an instant the beach was in an uproar. Those in the sea swam furiously towards the spot where she had last been seen, a dozen sun-bathers dashed down into the sea, the boatman struggled at his oars, but young Randall was there first, and he dived for her. To Mr and Mrs Bickley, who had dashed down to the sea, it seemed a thousand years till he appeared holding Mariella round her armpits and brought her ashore. A doctor had run up and he got busy with artificial respiration, but Mariella, though she had swallowed more sea-water than was good for her, was in no danger of death from drowning, and though she showed no sign of coming-to she was very soon in a condition to be carried back to the house. A quarter of an hour later Sir Perseus was at her bedside. And then for a moment she recovered consciousness, and after staring fixedly at Sir Perseus for a full ten seconds, she said in a cold, toneless voice, ‘I put my foot on a face. I could feel it. And then I felt the hair, and it began to come up my legs and pull me down.’ And then she began to scream and scream and scream, and it took all the strength of Sir Perseus and young Randall to hold her down in bed. Presently her struggles became less violent and Sir Perseus put a hypodermic syringe to her arm.

  Five hours later she was on her way to a London nursing home in an ambulance which paid no heed to speed limits, her mother and Sir Perseus with her. His last words to her father and young Randall were, ‘I will save her reason if I can, but you must be prepared for the worst.’ And then with the light of battle in his eye he leaped into the ambulance. Mr Bickley and young Randall stayed behind by his orders; they would only be in the way for the present. He would ring up early the next morning and tell them what to do.

  Mr Bickley, who spent the evening in deep and melancholy reverie, hardly noticed the absence of young Randall. He in no way wished for company, and no doubt Randall felt the same way. Could Mariella have had some affair with a Grey Beard? She might have had. Certain horrible conjectures tapped for entrance to his brain. Utterly worn out, he lay down on the sofa in the drawing-room, but he could not sleep. At seven o’clock a maid came in and handed him a letter. To his surprise he recognised young Randall’s writing on the envelope. He opened it and found it contained two separate enclosures. The first he took up was headed ‘Letter 2. Letter 1 to be read first’. So he unfolded number 1 and read as follows:

  ‘DEAR MR BICKLEY,

  ‘When you get this I shall be lying in the gorse patch below the eighth tee, and I shall have even less brains in my head than I was born with. Incidentally it will be the first time I was ever on the left-hand side of that fairway. No doubt that sounds very flippant, but once I had finally made up my mind to shoot myself and knew I should have the guts to do it
— four hours ago — I became almost light-hearted, in a way exalted, scrubbed and robed for death. This mood would not have lasted, but it will remain with me at least long enough. The fact is, I poisoned my uncle, which was not nearly so difficult a feat as it sounds, for his doctor was half-witted and I made a careful study of his habits and his medicine chest. He was a vile, disgusting old Sadist and I feel no remorse whatsoever. Killing him seemed as natural a performance as beating down a wasp, and by killing him I did many people a service, for everyone who served him and was in his employ breathed a sigh of relief when they heard of his death. However, I am no altruist, and I should never have taken the serious risk entailed by experimenting with his sleeping-draught but for one thing. It came to my knowledge that he was about to make a new will, and cutting me right out of it. Consequently I should have to give up Mariella. Now I am not going to dwell on what that knowledge meant to me, for I know you realise how I feel about her. Life without her is unthinkable. Well, why am I going to kill myself? For this reason — my uncle had a rather long grey beard. That is why. The moment I heard of Mariella’s nightmares I had a dreadful suspicion that my plans had failed. When I heard why she had that seizure on the beach I almost believed it was hopeless. What happened this morning convinced me that the rest was up to me. Now I have no belief in a future life. My uncle was one of the few people I have met who deserved to go to the conventional hell, and I have never met anyone bad enough to merit the conventional heaven. Nevertheless, by some agency Mariella is being attacked, and I have a curious feeling of certainty that those attacks will cease when I am dead. Her sanity, I am convinced, depends on what I am about to do. Now I have worked out what I believe to be a consistent and plausible explanation of this, but I shall not go into it, for I must hurry, and very probably it would sound like lunacy to anyone but me. If, however, I am wrong and I meet Uncle Walter hereafter and find out something, then he’ll really know what hell can be! But I’m afraid that is too optimistic a prospect. Now I want you to do something for me. I want you to tear up this letter as soon as you’ve read it and send the other to the coroner — or whatever the procedure is. I can’t bear to think that people might point at Mariella as someone who almost married a murderer, and I don’t want her to know I was one. She won’t — and I am reconciled to the fact — sorrow for me for long. When she is well again I shall just seem part of a horrible memory, and as she forgets that she will forget me. And I’d rather it was so. Good-bye. I was once so happy with you all.

  ‘A.R.’

  When he had finished reading it Mr Bickley tore the letter to small pieces and burnt it in the grate. And then he took up the other and read:

  ‘DEAR MR BICKLEY,

  ‘I am about to shoot myself in the gorse below the eighth tee because I have discovered a horrible secret about myself. There is no need to tell you what this is, and I’d rather no one knew it, but it makes it impossible for me to marry your daughter, and life without her is unthinkable, so I am doing this.

  ‘A.R.’

  Mr Bickley put this epistle back into its envelope and went to the telephone.

  * * * * *

  The following April Mariella returned from a long sea voyage perfectly restored to health. The following August she became affianced to a certain Mr Peter Raines, whose past is as bland and innocent as an infant’s posterior, but concerning whose future stupendous prophecies are made. He has just left Oxford, where he was President of the Union, and only the fact that he has been adopted as Conservative candidate for a Midland constituency has prevented him from completing a really ‘brilliant and daring’ novel. As it is, he is about to publish a slim volume of essays entitled Constructive Toryism. Mariella is blissfully happy, and if she dreams at all it is of this formidable young thinker. Except just once when she had a very sharp dream vision of someone dark and lithe, beautifully poised, and flicking Larwood’s cannon-balls from his nose to the rails. She has just one idiosyncrasy — she cannot remain in the same room with a grey-bearded male person. But the owners of such are fortunately uncommon and, even in Scotland, becoming rarer every day.

  Mr and Mrs Bickley are very well indeed.

  The Last to Leave

  ARNOTT PUSHED ASIDE the papers on the table in front of him and got up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think that’s all the business for today, and it’s goodbye to Number 5.’

  ‘When do they actually begin to murder the dear old place?’ asked Walters.

  ‘They start dismantling tomorrow afternoon, I believe. They’re in a hurry, as they want to get the mess pretty well cleared up before the end of the holidays. Anyway it’s got to be done. If the Borough Surveyor saw the condition of that beam in your room, Bob, he’d condemn the house without a moment’s hesitation; for if that worm-eaten old hero did what he has threatened to do for the last six months, and decide he was as tired as he looks, we should probably all be cadavers in the basement inside ten seconds. I hated signing the death-warrant, but it will be a great weight off my mind when we’re all safely installed in Russell Street.’

  ‘All the stock has been taken round, hasn’t it?’ asked Moberly.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Arnott, sitting down again and lighting a cheroot, ‘and, by the way, Tambourin is going very strong. Smiths’ had fifty again this morning, Simpkins’ another twenty-five, and both The Times and Mudie’s have repeated.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good book,’ said Moberly with a yawn. ‘The most deliberately naive plot, excellently sardonic characterisation, and charmingly sophisticated dialogue, a young man’s pen and an old man’s mind, the type of the Best-Seller of the future in my humble and usually inaccurate opinion. To find everything rather ridiculous and yet worth writing about, that paradox which stokes the genuine satirist’s mind and keeps its safety-valve screaming.’

  ‘And,’ said Arnott, ‘no smut for smut’s sake and no bunk for James Douglas’s. It’s very soothing to have one selling like that. One week’s sales will pay for the move and “then some”.’

  ‘And to think it’s by a man over thirty,’ added Walters. ‘How rare and refreshing! Thank the Lord we’ve got him nicely tied up for the next four.’

  ‘I hate leaving this room,’ said Arnott. ‘I’ve done so much darned hard work in it, and I have always had a silly feeling that it was the sort of work it respected — making books. Supposing we were in the brassière business, for example, how the old aristocrat would have felt his walls degraded, for I bet he’s really a hopeless old snob. He’d have collapsed long ago. Whatever authors may say, publishing is a gent’s job and, considering what authors are like, the fact that we swindle them so little is a great tribute to our integrity.’

  ‘We’ve a pretty decent bunch on the whole,’ said Moberly. ‘Certainly they are the crosses we have to bear, but ours are fairly light, and, provided one always agrees that their last book is their best, and they see their singular countenances in gossip columns at regular intervals, they’re not so much trouble as they’re worth. As for the old house, I feel like whimpering too, but you, Jack, can’t reproach yourself. You’ve spent your own real money in prolonging its life to the last possible moment, and it ought to be very grateful to you.’

  ‘I should like to think so,’ replied Arnott with a smile. ‘And now it’s half-past five and time for a little farewell ceremony, a little suitable sentimentality.’ He got up and went to his cupboard, from which he took out a bottle and three glasses. He twisted off the wire, eased out the cork and filled the glasses.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘let us drink of this quite tolerable Roderer to the memory of Number 5, Equity Court, built in the prosperous reign of King William and Queen Mary, designed by a gentleman to be a home for gentlefolk, a gentleman itself. In a few hours the pick will be laid at its roots, in a few days it will be a vulgar heap of rubble, but it is still a small poem in bricks and mortar. We have looked after it so far as was in our power; it has been a good friend to us. Now we strike our tents. But its memory will remain with
us. We have loved it; let us hope it has tolerated us. So here’s to the memory of Number 5, Equity Court. . . . My God, what was that?’

  He put down his glass and rushed to the bell, and a moment later the manager came into the room, looking nervous.

  ‘What was that row?’ asked Arnott sharply.

  ‘You mean that big cracking sound, sir?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It sounded as if someone had dropped a ton weight somewhere in the house. Run up and see if the beam’s holding. I’ll go downstairs.’

  The others went with him. All the members of the small staff of John Arnott & Co., Ltd., were out in the passages, looking uncertain.

  ‘I thought it came from your room, sir,’ said James the clerk, addressing Moberly.

  The latter hurried across the corridor. ‘No,’ he said after a moment, ‘everything’s O.K. here.’

  ‘I thought it came from your room too, sir,’ added the book-keeper.

  ‘Well, it didn’t,’ answered Moberly, a shade irritably.

  Just then the manager joined them. ‘Beam looks just the same, sir,’ he said, ‘and if I may say so, when I’ve stayed late I’ve thought I heard noises sometimes.’