Fancies and Goodnights Part 6

The angel thought it a very poor joke. "I know I broke the rules," said she. "And I know you can make me work and slave for you. But what I did wasn't a real sin, so you can't make me suffer a fate worse than death."

"Worse than death, eh?" said the devil, his vanity wounded. "That shows how much you know about it."

"If I wished to know more," she replied, "I wouldn't choose you for my master."

"Not if I made you a sparkling necklace," said he, "out of the tears of innocent chorus girls?"

"Thank you!" said she. "Keep your trumpery jewelry, and I'll keep my virtue."

"Trumpery!" said he indignantly. "It's clear you don't know what's what in the jewelry line, or in the virtue line either. All right, my dear, there are more ways than one of taming an absolute little spitfire!"

The old sensualist, however, reckoned without his host. In the days that followed, he tried this and he tried that, but neither tyranny nor cajolery availed him in the very least against her snowy virtue and his own sooty complexion. When he frowned she feared him, but when he smiled she hated him worse than ever devil has been hated before.

"I can," said he, "put you into a whisky bottle, from which you will have to emerge when a cloak-and-suit buyer draws the cork."

"Do so," said she. "He can be no uglier than you, and no more of a nuisance."

"Perhaps not," said he. "Though I imagine you have very little experience of cloak-and-suit buyers. I can feed you to an oyster, from which you'll come out imprisoned in a pearl, and find yourself traded, in the most embarra.s.sing circ.u.mstances, for a whole wagon-load of the chast.i.ty you hold so dear."

"I shall scream 'culture,'" said she, very coolly. "And the victim will reach for her .22, and thus we shall both be saved."

"Very neat," said he. "But I can send you to earth as a young girl of nineteen or twenty. That's the age when temptations are thickest, and resistance is very low. And the first time you sin, your body, soul, virtue and all is mine at seven years' purchase. And that," said he, with an oath, "is what I'll do. I was a fool not to have hit on it before."

No sooner said than done. He took her by the ankles, and heaved her far out into the seas of s.p.a.ce. He saw her body descending, turning, glimmering, and he dived after it like a schoolboy after a silver coin flung into a swimming bath.

Some ordinary people, going home very late over Brooklyn Bridge, pointed out to each other what they took to be a falling star, and a little later a drunken poet, returning from an all-night party, was inspired by what he thought was the rosy dawn, glimmering through the skimpy shrubbery of Central Park. This, however, was not the dawn, but our beautiful young she-angel, who had arrived on earth as a young girl who had lost both her clothes and her memory, as sometimes young girls do, and who was wandering about under the trees in a state of perfect innocence.

It is impossible to say how long this would have continued, had she not been found by three kindly old ladies, who always were the first to enter the Park in the morning, for the purpose of taking crumbs to their friends the birds. Had our young angel remained there till lunchtime, anything might have happened, for she retained all her original beauty, and was pinker and more pearly than any dawn. She was round, she was supple, she was more luscious than peaches; there was a something about her that was irresistibly appealing.

The old ladies, with a twittering and fluttering like that of their feathered favorites, charitably surrounded this pink perfection of innocence and desirability. "Poor creature!" said Miss Belfrage, "undoubtedly some man has brought her to this condition."

"Some devil!" said Miss Morrison. This remark afforded infinite amus.e.m.e.nt to the lubber fiend, who stood invisibly by. He could not resist giving Miss Morrison a little pinch, of a sort entirely new to her experience. "Dear me! Did you do that, Miss Shank?" cried Miss Morrison. "Surely you did not do that?"

"I? I did nothing," said Miss Shank. "What is it?"

"I felt," said Miss Morrison, "a sort of pinch."

"So did I," cried Miss Belfrage. "I felt one that very moment"

"So do I," cried Miss Shank. "Oh, dear! Perhaps we shall all lose our memories."

"Let us hurry with her to the hospital," said Miss Morrison. "The Park seems all wrong this morning, and the birdies won't come near. They know! What experiences she most have gone through!"

These kind old ladies took our beautiful but unfortunate she-angel to a hospital for nervous diseases, where she was received charitably and to some extent enthusiastically. She was soon hurried into a little room, the walls of which were of duck's-egg green, this color having been found very soothing to girls discovered wandering in Central Park with neither their clothes nor their memories. A certain brilliant young psychoa.n.a.lyst was put in charge of her case. Such cases were his specially, and he seldom failed to jog their memories to some purpose.

The fiend had naturally tagged along to the hospital, and now stood there picking his teeth and watching all that transpired. He was delighted to see that the young psychoa.n.a.lyst was as handsome as could be. His features were manly and regular, and his eyes dark and l.u.s.trous, and they became more l.u.s.trous still when he beheld his new patient. As for hers, they took on a forget-me-not glimmer which caused the devil to rub his hands again. Everyone was pleased.

The psychoa.n.a.lyst was an ornament to his much maligned profession. His principles were of the highest and yet no higher than his enthusiasm for his science. Now, dismissing the nurses who had brought her in, he took his seat by the couch on which she lay.

"I am here to make yon well," said he. "It seems you have had a distressing experience. I want you to tell me what you can remember of it"

"I can't," said she faintly. "I can remember nothing."

"Perhaps you are in a state of shock," said this excellent young a.n.a.lyst. "Give me your hand, my dear, so I may see if it is abnormally warm, or cold, and if there is a wedding ring on it."

"What is a hand?" murmured the unfortunate young she-angel. "What is warm? What is cold? What is a wedding ring?"

"Oh, my poor girl!" said he. "Quite evidently you have had a very severe shock. Those who forget what wedding rings are often get the worst of all. However, this is your hand."

"And is that yours?" said she.

"Yes, that is mine," he replied.

The young angel said no more, but looked at her hand in his, and then she lowered her delightful eyelashes, and sighed a little. This delighted the heart of the ardent young scientist, for he recognized the beginning of the transference, a condition which indescribably lightens the labors of psychoa.n.a.lysts.

"Well! Well!" said he at last. "We must find out what caused you to lose your memory. Here is the medical report. It seems you have not had a blow on the head."

"What is a head?" she asked.

"This is your head," he told her. "And these are your eyes, and this is your mouth."

"And what is this?" said she.

"That," said he, "is your neck."

This adorable young angel was the best of patients. She desired nothing more than to please her a.n.a.lyst, for, such is the nature of the transference, he seemed to her like some glorious figure out of her forgotten childhood. Her natural innocence was reinforced by the innocence of amnesia, so she pulled down the sheet that covered her, and asked him, "And what are these?"

"Those?" said he. "How you could have possibly forgotten them. I shall not forget them as long as I live. I have never seen a lovelier pair of shoulders."

Delighted by his approbation, the angel asked one or two more questions, such as at last caused this worthy young a.n.a.lyst to rise from his chair and pace the room in a state of considerable agitation. "Unquestionably," he murmured, "I am experiencing the counter-transference in its purest form, or at least in its most intense one. Such a p.r.o.nounced example of this phenomenon should surely be the subject of experiment. A little free a.s.sociation seems to be indicated, but with a bold innovation of technique. In my paper I will call it The Demonstrative Somatic Method as Applied to Cases of Complete Amnesia. It will be frowned upon by the orthodox, but after all Freud himself was frowned upon in his time."

We will draw a veil over the scene that followed, for the secrets of the psychoa.n.a.lytic couch are as those of the confessional. There was nothing sacred, however, to Tom Truncheontail, who by this time was laughing his ugly head off. "Because," thought he, "what sin in the world could be greater than to make such an exemplary young psychoa.n.a.lyst forget himself, his career, and all the ethics of his profession?"

At a certain moment the wily old devil allowed himself to become visible, leaning over the end of the couch with a cynical smile on his weather-beaten face.

"Oh, what is that, darling?" cried the young she-angel, in accents of frustration and dismay.

"What is what?" asked the a.n.a.lyst, who was at this moment somewhat preoccupied by his researches.

The young she-angel became very silent and melancholy. She knew what she had seen, and now remembered things she wished she had thought of before. It is well-known that this makes sins of this sort no smaller. "Alas," said she, "I think I have recovered my memory."

"Then you are cured," cried the a.n.a.lyst in delight, "and my method has been proved correct, and will be unanimously adopted in the profession. What an inestimable benefit I have conferred upon my colleagues, or at least on those whose patients are half or a quarter as beautiful as you are! But tell me what you remember. I ask you, not as your doctor, but as your future husband."

How easily one sin follows upon another, particularly the sin of lying upon that which had just been committed! The poor angel could not find it in her heart to destroy his happiness by telling him that after seven years he would have to relinquish her to the gross and bristly fiend. She murmured something about having fallen asleep in her bath, and having a tendency to somnambulism. Her story was eagerly accepted, and the happy young a.n.a.lyst hastened out to procure a marriage license.

The fiend immediately made himself visible again, and smiled upon his victim with abominable good-nature. "Quick work!" said he. "You've saved me a lot of trouble. There are girls in this town who'd have s.h.i.+lly-shallied for the best part of a week. In return, I'll get you a box or two with some clothes in 'em, so your story will hold together, and you can marry the guy and be happy. You have to hand it to old Tom T. - he hasn't a jealous hair in his tail!" The truth is, the old rascal knew she'd sooner or later many someone or other, and as actually he was as jealous as a demon, he thought it better to be jealous of one than of two. Also, he felt she might just as well choose a good provider, with a well-stocked ice-box and liquor closet, and a bas.e.m.e.nt furnace beside which he could sleep warm of nights. Psychoa.n.a.lysts are always well furnished in these respects. And what had finally decided him was the reflection that a marriage which is founded on a lie is usually fertile in other transgressions, as pleasant to the nostrils of a fiend as are roses and lilies to the rest of us.

In this last respect, we may say at once that the old villain was bitterly disappointed. No wife could possibly be more angelic than our angel. In fact, the sweet odours of domestic virtue became so oppressive to the devil that he took himself off to Atlantic City for a breath of fresh air. He found the atmosphere of that resort so exhilarating that he remained there most of the seven years. Thus the angel was almost able to forget the future in the extreme happiness of the present. At the end of the first year she became the mother of a st.u.r.dy boy, and at the end of the third she had a beautiful little girl. The apartment they lived in was arranged in the best of taste; her husband rose higher and higher in his profession, and was cheered to the echo at all the princ.i.p.al meetings of psychoa.n.a.lysts. But as the seventh year drew to a close the fiend came around to see how things were getting along. He told her much of what he had seen in Atlantic City, and embroidered on the life they would live together when her time was up. From that day on he appeared very frequently, and not only when she was alone. He was utterly without delicacy, and would permit himself to be seen by her at moments when even an elephant-hided devil should have realized his presence was embarra.s.sing. She would close her eyes, but fiends are seen more easily with the eyes dosed. She would sigh bitterly.

"How can you sigh so bitterly at such a moment as this?" her husband asked her. The angel could hardly explain, and it almost made a rift between them.

"I wonder," said the a.n.a.lyst on another such occasion, "if this can be connected with your experiences before yon lost your memory. Is it possible your cure is not complete? It almost shakes my faith in my method."

This thought preyed upon his mind until he was on the point of a breakdown. "My work is ruined," said he one day. "I have lost, faith in my great discovery. I am a failure. I shall go downhill. I shall take to drink. Here is a grey hair! What is worse than an old, grey, drunken psychoa.n.a.lyst, who has lost faith in himself and his science, both of which he believed equal to anything? My poor children, what a father you will have to grow up with! You will have no pleasant home, no education, and probably no shoes. You will have to wait outside saloons. You will get inferiority complexes, and when you are married you will take it out on your unfortunate partners, and they too will have to be psychoa.n.a.lyzed."

At this the poor young angel gave way altogether. After all, there were only a few weeks left She thought it better to destroy the remnant of her happiness than to ruin the lives of her husband and children. That night she told him all.

"I would never have credited such things," said her husband, "but you, my dear, have made me believe in angels, and from that it is a short step to believing in fiends as well. You have restored my faith in my science, which has frequently been likened to the casting out of devils. Where is he? Can I get a sight of him?"

"All too easily," replied the angel. "Go upstairs a little earlier than usual, and hide yourself in my wardrobe. When I come up and begin to undress, he'll be quite certain to show himself."

"Very well," said her husband. "Perhaps tonight, as it is rather chilly, you need not..."

"Oh, my dear," said she, "it is far too late to bother about trifles of that sort."

"You are right," said he, "for after all, I am a psychoa.n.a.lyst, and therefore broad-minded, and he is only a devil."

He at once went upstairs and concealed himself, and his angelic wife followed him soon after. Just as she had expected, the devil appeared at a certain moment, lying stretched out on the chaise-longue and leering insolently at the angel. He went so far as to give this innocent creature one of his humorous little pinches as she went by. "You're getting thin," said he. "However, you'll soon be back in your old form once we've started our honeymoon. What fun we shall have together! You've no idea how much I've learned in Atlantic City!"

He went on like this for some time. In the end the husband stepped out of the wardrobe and took him by the wrist "Let go of my wrist!" said the devil, trying to pull himself free, for these old, gross, and sensual devils are like scared and sullen children when a psychoa.n.a.lyst gets hold of them.

"It is not your wrist that interests me," said the a.n.a.lyst in a tone of lofty detachment. "It's that tail of yours."

"My tail?" muttered old Tom, taken altogether aback. "What about my tail? What's wrong with it?"

"I'm sure it's a very good tail," replied the a.n.a.lyst. "But I imagine you'd like to get rid of it."

"Get rid of my tail?" cried the startled devil. "Why in the name of all that's unholy should I want to do that!"

"Everyone to his taste," said the a.n.a.lyst with a contemptuous shrug. "Did you see any little appendages of that description in Atlantic City?"

"Well, no, as a matter of fact I didn't," replied the crestfallen fiend. The truth is, devils, who suggest so very much to the rest of us, are themselves extremely suggestible. That is how they got that way.

"In my opinion that tail is purely psychic in origin," said the a.n.a.lyst. "And I believe it could be cured without much difficulty."

"Who said I want it cured?" retorted the devil angrily.

"No one said so," replied the man of science in a tranquil tone. "But you have thought so, and tried to suppress the thought. By your own admission you are very p.r.o.nouncedly a voyeur - I'll touch on the disadvantages of that later. At least you have seen what is considered normal and pleasing in a well-formed male, and no doubt you would like to be in the mode."

"I have a good time," said the devil, now very much on the defensive.

The a.n.a.lyst allowed a pitying and incredulous smile to overspread his features. He turned to his wife. "My dear," said he, "I must ask you to leave us alone. The confidences of these twisted and unhappy creatures are sacred."

The angel at once withdrew, closing the door very quietly behind her. The a.n.a.lyst took a seat near the head of the chaise-longue on which the unfortunate devil was lying. "So you think you have a good time?" said he in the gentlest tone imaginable.

"I do," responded the fiend defiantly. "And what's more, very soon I expect to have a better one."

"It is a mere hypothesis, of course," said the a.n.a.lyst "It can be nothing more at this early stage of a.n.a.lysis. But I suggest that what you claim as a good time is just a mask for a very profound maladjustment. The physical symptoms are noticeable. You are appallingly overweight, and I suspect that this in turn has produced a heart condition."

"It's true I breathe a little hard now and then," said the devil uneasily.

"Do you mind telling me how old you are?" said the a.n.a.lyst "Three thousand four hundred and forty," replied the devil.

"I should have thought you at least a thousand years older than that," said the a.n.a.lyst. "However, I don't claim to be infallible. But one thing is quite certain: you were very much a misfit in your original surroundings, otherwise you would not have run away. And now you are trying to run away from a.n.a.lysis. It is a threat to that tail of yours. Consciously, yon know it's a terrible disfigurement, but you are unwilling to give it up."

"Oh, I don't know about that," said the fiend uncertainly.

"Oh, yes, you cling to it as a mark of your devilishness," said the a.n.a.lyst sternly. "And what does this devilishness amount to? I think we shall find it is a protest, arising out of a sense of rejection which may very well date to the actual moment of your becoming a devil. Even human birth is a traumatic experience. How much worse must it be, to be born a poor, rejected devil!"

The wretched fiend s.h.i.+fted his shoulders, pulled at his dewlaps, and showed other signs of distress. Thereupon the a.n.a.lyst drove home the attack, referring to fits of depression, vague fears, a sense of guilt, an inferiority complex, spells of insomnia, a compulsion to eat and drink too much, and psychosomatic aches and pains. In the end the poor devil positively begged to be a.n.a.lyzed; all he asked was that be might be given extra sessions so that the cure could be accomplished more quickly.

The a.n.a.lyst was willing to oblige. He sent his wife and children away for a long summer holiday, and worked day and night upon his difficult patient Before the angel returned, this transformed devil had left the house clad in a pearly grey suit, tailless, comparatively slim, and mentally alert. He shortly afterwards became engaged to a Mrs. Schlager, a widow who had also been a troublesome patient in her time.

He visited his benefactor's home, bounced the children on his knee, and apologized to his hostess for all the inconvenience he had caused her. She eagerly forgave him, for after all his misbehaviour had been the effect of unconscious impulses, and had resulted in her marriage, so that she felt he was a friend of the family. He was a little wearisome in recounting the history of his case, but this is very usual in those who have benefited from a.n.a.lysis. In the end, he went on to Wall Street, where he did so extremely well that he was soon able to endow a superb clinic for the young psychoa.n.a.lyst.

THE TOUCH OF NUTMEG MAKES IT.

A dozen big firms subsidize our mineralogical inst.i.tute, and most of them keep at least one man permanently on research there. The library has the intimate and smoky atmosphere of a club. Logan and I had been there longest and had the two tables in the big window bay. Against the wall, just at the edge of the bay, where the light was bad, was a small table which was left for newcomers or transients.

One morning a new man was sitting at this table. It was not necessary to look at the books he had taken from the shelves to know that he was on statistics rather than formulae. He had one of those skull-like faces on which the skin seems stretched painfully tight. These are almost a hallmark of the statistician. His mouth was intensely disciplined but became convulsive at the least relaxation. His hands were the focal point of a minor morbidity. When he had occasion to stretch them both out together - to s.h.i.+ft an open book, for example - he would stare at them for a full minute at a time. At such times the convulsive action of his mouth muscles was particularly marked.

The newcomer crouched low over his table when anyone pa.s.sed behind his chair, as if trying to decrease the likelihood of contact. Presently he took out a cigarette, but his eye fell on the "No smoking" sign, which was universally disregarded, and he returned the cigarette to its pack. At mid-morning he dissolved a tablet in a gla.s.s of water. I guessed at a long-standing anxiety neurosis.

I mentioned this to Logan at lunchtime. He said, "The poor guy certainly looks as miserable as a wet cat."

I am never repelled or chilled, as many people are, by the cheerless self-centredness of the nervous or the unhappy. Logan, who has less curiosity, has a superabundance of good nature. We watched this man sitting in his solitary cell of depression for several days while the pleasant camaraderie of the library flowed all around him. Then, without further discussion, we asked him to lunch with us.

He took the invitation in the typical neurotic fas.h.i.+on, seeming to weigh half-a-dozen shadowy objections before he accepted it. However, he came along, and before the meal was over he confirmed my suspicion that he had been starving for company but was too tied-up to make any move toward it. We had already found out his name, of course - J. Chapman Reid - and that he worked for the Walls Tyman Corporation. He named a string of towns he had lived in at one time or another, and told us that he came originally from Georgia. That was all the information he offered. He opened up very noticeably when the talk turned on general matters, and occasionally showed signs of having an intense and painful wit, which is the sort I like best. He was pathetically grateful for the casual invitation. He thanked us when we got up from the table, again as we emerged from the restaurant, and yet again on the threshold of the library. This made it all the more natural to suggest a quiet evening together sometime soon.

During the next few weeks we saw a good deal of J. Chapman Reid and found him a very agreeable companion. I have a great weakness for these dry, reserved characters who once or twice an evening come out with a vivid, penetrating remark that shows there is a volcanic core smouldering away at high pressure underneath. We might even have become friends if Reid himself hadn't prevented this final step, less by his reserve, which I took to be part of his nature, than by his unnecessary grat.i.tude. He made no effusive speeches - he was not that type - but a lost dog has no need of words to show his dependence and his appreciation. It was clear our company was everything to J. Chapman Reid.

One day Nathan Trimble, a friend of Logan's, looked in at the library. He was a newspaperman and was killing an hour while waiting for a train connection. He sat on Logan's table facing the window, with his back to the rest of the room. I went round and talked to him and Logan. It was just about time for Trimble to leave when Reid came in and sat down at his table. Trimble happened to look around, and he and Reid saw each other.

I was watching Reid. After the first startled stare, he did not even glance at the visitor. He sat quite still for a minute or so, his head dropping lower and lower in little jerks, as if someone was pus.h.i.+ng it down. Then he got up and walked out of the library.

"By G.o.d!" said Trimble. "Do you know who that is? Do you know who you've got there?"

"No," said we. "Who?"

"Jason C. Reid."