The Complete Simon Iff (18 page)

You are perhaps aware that our greatest misery is impotence to act freely. Deprivation of a sense or a limb is wretched principally because of the limit it sets to our activities. This, more than anything else, is at the root of our dread of blindness or paralysis. You remember Guy de Maupassant’s story of the blind man on whom his family played malicious tricks? It seems peculiarly cruel to us because of the victim’s helplessness. Now, of all the savages upon the earth, there are none more ferocious or more diabolical than the Highlanders of Scotland. Dr. Frazer gives many instances of incredibly vile superstitions, in vogue even at this hour as we sit in the enlightened Hemlock Club. “Scratch the Russian and you find the Tartar?” well, scratch the Scotchman, and you have a being who can give points and a beating to the Chinese or the Red Indian. The sex-instinct is especially powerful in the Celt; where it is nobly developed, we find genius, as among the Irish; but where it is thwarted by a religion like Calvinism, it nearly always turns to madness or to cruelty — which is a form of madness.

To return to the point, Ada Glass set her wits to work. The hideous loneliness of the Highlands in the eye of all those who have not the true soul of the artist is a true antecedent condition to morbid imagination; and Ada Glass and her sexlessness the pendant to it.

She began operations by neglect. She postponed attention when he called for her; and she became careless in the preparation of his meals. He saw the intention, and agonized mentally for weeks. Ultimately he resolved to kill himself in the only way possible, by refusing food. She retorted by the tortures of Tantalus, setting spiced and savory foods under his nose, so that he was physically unable to resist — after a while. The fiendishness of this was heightened by its manner; the whole plan was carried out with inconceivable hypocrisy on both sides. She would use such words of love and tenderness as had never occurred to her on the honeymoon.

Such courses are set upon a steepening slope of damnation. Soon ideas incredibly abominable came into her mind, perhaps suggested by the tortures of hunger and thirst to which she submitted him. For she varied her pleasure by offering him sweetsmelling foods that on tasting were found to be seasoned with salt and pepper, so that only extreme hunger would make a man eat of them. Then she would excite his thirst by such hot dishes, and put salt in the water which he demanded to assuage it. But always she would apologize and blame herself, and weep over him, and beg forgiveness. And he would pretend to be deceived, and grant his pardon. And then she would speak of love, and - but no! gentlemen, I must leave you to dot the i’s and cross the t’s in the story.

Presently — after months of this miserable comedy — she took it into her head to excite his jealousy. (I want you to remember all the time, by the way, that these people were absolutely alone, with no distraction whatever, save the rare and formal visits of the minister. And Glass was far too proud and brave to speak of what was going on.) She began to set her cap at the gardener. As I said, she had no more feeling than a saucepan; it was all bred out of her by Calvinism; but she knew how to act. She knew her husband’s own stern view of marriage; she thought she would break his spirit by infraction of her vows. For that is what it had come to, though she probably did not realize it; she wanted to see the hero of a dozen campaigns snivel and whine and whimper like a cur. Many women indulge a similar ambition.

So she set herself to snare the gardener. It was an easy task. He was a rough, rude laborer, a vigorous, healthy animal. And she wooed him as she had seen the fine ladies of Bath do with their cavaliers. Once his first shyness was overcome, he became her slave; and from that moment she began to play her next abominable comedy. Her husband must suspect for a long while before he knew for certain. And so she laid her plans. She watched the fleeting thoughts upon his face hour by hour. Soon she imbued her lover with hatred of his master; and she persuaded him one day to kiss her in the room where the Major lay on his pallet of straw. She had long since deprived him of a bed, urging the trouble of making it up. The spasm of pain upon his face, the violent words that he addressed to her, these were her greatest triumph so far. She went on with her plan; she went to the utmost extremity of shamelessness; the gardener, with no sensibility, thought it merely a good joke, in the style of Boccacio. For weeks this continued, always with increasing success; then Glass suddenly made up his mind to bear it — or something in his heart broke. At least it became evident that he was no longer suffering. Her refinement imagined a new device, a thing so abominable that it almost shames manhood even to speak of it. She resolved to corrupt the child. Joshua was now old enough to understand what was said to him; and she privately coached him in hate and loathing for his father. Also, she taught him the pleasures of physical cruelty. (I told you this was a hideous story.)

Major Glass, deprived of all exercise, had become terribly obese. He was a frightful object to look upon; a vast dome of belly, a shrunk chest, a bloated and agonized face. Four stumps only accentuated the repulsion. It was only too easy to persuade the child to play infamous tricks. By this time she had thrown off the mask of her hypocrisy; she taunted him openly, and jeered; she spat out rivers of hate at him; and she let him know that she no longer wished the society of Bath, that she was glad that he might live half a century; for never until now had she known pleasure. And she incited the boy to stick long pins into the helpless log. “You’re not even like a pig any more,” she laughed one night, “you’re like a pincushion!” And Joshua, with an evil laugh, walked up upon that word, and thrust three pins into the tense abdomen. He ran to his mother gleefully, and imitated the involuntary writhings of the sufferer.

This game recommenced every night. The intervals were but anticipations of some further abomination. He had long prayed audibly for death; now he began to beg her for some means of it. She laughed at him contemptuously. “If you hadn’t settled the money as you did, I might have thought of it. After all, I ought to marry again.”

He answered her in an unexpected vein. “I’ll make it easy for you. One night, when snow threatens, take Joshua down to a neighbor’s. Pretend you are ill, and stay the night. Leave the door open when you go; I think a chill would kill me. And I want to die so much!” She gloated over the weakness of his spirit. “If you’ll swear on the Bible to do that,” he went on, “I’ll tell you the great secret.” Instantly she became attentive; she divined something of importance. “When I was in Spain,” continued Glass, “I was quartered in a certain castle belonging to one of the grandees. He was an old man, paralysed, as helpless as I am to-day. His lady, at the first of the invasion, had buried the family treasure in a secret place. There are diamonds there, and pieces of eight, and many golden ornaments. They told me this one night under the following strange circumstances ——” he broke off. “Give me water! I’m faint, of a sudden.” She brought it to him. Presently he continued in a firmer voice. “One day we were attacked by a body of French troops — a reconnaissance in force. The castle was surrounded. I and the few men with me, our retreat cut off, prepared to defend ourselves, and our host and hostess, to the last. We were driven from floor to floor. But one of my men, sore wounded, lying below, determined on a desperate resource. He managed to crawl to the cellar, where great quantities of wood were stored; and he set it on fire. The French, alarmed, beat a hasty retreat from the precincts; I and my few remaining men pursued them to the gates. The fight would doubtless have been renewed, but at that moment the plumes of our dragoons appeared in the distance. The French sprang to their horses and were off. I returned hastily to the castle, and we succeeded in extinguishing the fire. I bore the lady in my own arms into the fresh air, through all the smoke; two of my men rescued the old count. That afternoon they had a long conference together, and in the evening said that they had decided to tell me of the treasure.

In case misfortune should happen to them both, I was to pledge myself to convey the paper, which they then intrusted to me, to their only son, who was fighting in our army. I readily agreed. A few nights later the devil tempted me; I opened the paper. It was a mass of meaningless figures, a cipher; but I had the key. I worked it out; I went to the place indicated; there lay the treasure. But my heart smote me; not mine be a fouler than the sin of Achan! I replaced the earth. I returned, and prayed all night for a clean heart.

Shortly afterwards I changed my quarters; we were retreating. On our next advance I returned to pay a visit to my kind hosts. Alas! They had been murdered by a band of guerillas. As duty bade, I sought the son; but again I was too late; he had fallen in battle on the third day of our advance.

I have kept the secret locked in my breast; I would not touch the treasure, though it was now as much mine as anybody’s, because I had been tempted. But now I see necessity itself command me; I am no longer man enough to endure the torture which I suffer”. Here his voice broke. “I will give you the key if you will do as I say; and when I am dead you are free to go and find it.”

Ada Glass made her mind up in a moment. She was eager. After all, there were other pleasures in the world than — what she had been enjoying.

“Take the Bible,” said Glass, “and swear!” She did so without a tremor. It was an oath to commit murder; but the Scots mind does not halt in such a case.

“Good,” said the Major. “Now look in the uniform case; you’ll find the cipher sewn into my tunic; it’s in the lining of the left sleeve.” His wife obediently unpicked the stuff. A small map, with a row of hieroglyphic figures, was in her hand. “Now tell me the key!” Glass began to breathe with difficulty; he spoke in a faint voice. “Water!” he whispered. She brought him a full glass, and he drank it, and sighed happily. “The key’s a word,” he said. “What? I can’t hear you.” She came over close to him. “The key’s a word. It’s in the Bible. I’ll remember it if you’ll read the passage. I marked it in the book. It’s somewhere in Judges.” He was evidently speaking with the greatest possible effort; and even so, she could hardly hear him. She brought the Bible across to him, but it was too dark to read; so she fetched the lamp and set it upon the floor at his side. “About Chapter Eight: I can’t remember.” “Chapter which?” “I think it’s eight.” “Eight?” “Yes.” It was the faintest murmur. He had been like that for some days; now it alarmed her; might he die without revealing the secret? She fetched some whiskey, and gave it to him to drink.

“Oh, is it this,” she said, “about Samson in the mill? It’s marked in red.” “Yes,” he said, still very faintly, “read from there.” She sat down by his head, and began to read. After each verse she questioned him; he signed to her to go on. Presently she came to the verse “And Samson said ‘Let me perish with

the Philistines’.” “It’s there,” he said. “It’s ” his voice died

away to nothing. “You’re not ill, are you?” she cried in alarm. “I’m going to die,” he gasped out, word by word. “Tell me the word!” she screamed, “for God’s sake, man, don’t die first!” “It’s ——” Again the voice died away. “Do, do try!” she said, putting her ear over his mouth. Instantly, with utter swiftness, his iron jaw closed like a vice upon her ear. She pulled away, screaming, but she might as well have tried to dislodge a bulldog. Indeed, she helped him to roll over toward the lamp. A jerk of one stump, and the oil flamed among the straw of the pallet.

The dying shrieks of his mother woke Joshua. He jumped out of bed, came into the room, saw the two bodies writhing in the flames. He clapped his hands gleefully, and ran out into the snow.

***

“I admit it’s a pretty ghastly story,” cried Jack Flynn, who had evoked it; “but I don’t see what in heaven’s name it has to with you, and saving the Hemlock Club!”

“Because, my young friend, as usual, you have not condescended to wait for the end of it. The events that I have been at the pains to recount occurred during the usurpation of George the Third, so-called.” (It was the club custom always to speak of the Georges as usurpers.) “My part begins in the year 1850 of the vulgar era.”

In February of that year an anonymous book entitled “A Jealous God,” was published through a well-known firm — I forget the name for the moment. The book made a great stir in religious circles. The author, evidently an authority on theology, had taken the teachings of Victorian Science as a commentary, and his work was principally intended to complete the ruin of Deism. The author insisted upon the cruelty and imbecility of nature; pointed out that all attempts to absolve the Creator from the responsibility must culminate in Manichaeism or some other form of Dualism; and proceeded to interpret the wisdom of the Deity as His ability to trick His creatures, His power as His capacity to break and torture them, and His glory as witnessed chiefly by the anguish and terror of His victims. I need hardly say, that the author, although anonymous, professed himself a member of the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren.

He was proposed for this club, as a prominent and deserving heretic of great originality; and I was the youngest member of the committee appointed to inquire into the matter. I took an instinctive dislike to the unknown author; I opposed the election with my ability. I proved that the book was perfectly orthodox, being but an expansion of John III:16. I pointed out that Charles Haddon Spurgeon had endorsed the principal teachings of the book; that evangelical clergymen all over England were doing the same thing, with only negligible modifications; but I was overruled.

We then proceeded to inquire into the authorship of the book; we discovered that his name was Joshua Glass.”

A thrill of terrible emotion passed through the old man’s hearers. “I refused to withdraw my opposition. I investigated; and I discovered the facts which to-night I have set forth before you.” “But there’s nothing in the rules against that sort of thing!” interrupted one of the men.

“You will not let me finish!”

“I beg your pardon.”