THE EVIL EYE

This is a plain tale of that mediæval belief—the Evil Eye—playing its course in a modern London suburb. Perhaps it is all nonsense ... like vampires in Kensington. Anyhow, Peter Joneson made a mistake in caring to come to Mrs. Guilda Faning’s flat every day. Mr. John Faning made a mistake in not caring that he came, and Mrs. Faning made the mistake of not caring whether her husband cared or not. None of their feelings then approximated to definiteness, which was probably a mistake and in the end a pity. Peter Joneson’s at least tended towards definiteness and Mrs. Faning was pleased to accept his definite admiration of her person and personality.

Peter Joneson used to come almost every afternoon and stay as long as he could. If he missed tea at the flat, he used to write rather a dull letter of apology or send some smutty flowers bought from the old woman sitting outside the public-house. He became a piece of movable furniture in the flat, like an old armchair for Guilda to rest on mentally or Mr. Faning to shift sometimes from the room unconsciously. Peter was punctual at coming and good at going. But it was all rather hazy. He was like a mouse to Guilda. Mr. Faning was one of the happily uninspired men who want nothing in life. Peter, of course, felt he wanted something. Guilda only wanted to want something. For want of something, she began to train herself to want Peter. Peter, of course, wanted her in a comfortable sort of way but without evil prepense. She never dreamed of hunting Peter, for she had instinctive woman’s pride, if her suburban breeding did not allow her good taste. It was enough that she began to like Peter for the reflex of her liking to reflect itself fivefold from the lenses of his eyes. The invisible flash and counterflash did not produce discordancy but touched the same key, was wafted on the same plane and formed the same ray. The attraction between them was complete.

But she made a mistake in showing him one day that she loved him, and Peter made the mistake of showing her husband that he had discovered that she loved him, and finally Mr. Faning made the mistake of showing his wife that he had begun to dislike the man she liked. For, of course, she only liked him the more. Hitherto, nothing had mattered. Peter had poised his own mind open and for the first time felt her emotions moving with his. He had always been prepared to fall in love. Not she, and she still hesitated to admit the great and spicy wind that bloweth from the South, after having been so long satisfied with the puffs and draughts and teacup-tempests that make up middle-class temperament in suburban flats. They had all three agreed in the wish to live comfortably and quietly. Neighbourly flirtation had suited both the Fanings, and Peter had made a well-conducted collusive foil to the husband. The passion that had suddenly flashed between him and Guilda was as upsetting to all as a hawk lighting on a canary cage or a thunderstone falling into a suburban rockery.

Mr. Faning was quite upset, for love had crossed his wife’s path once before. During courtship he had had a serious rival whom Guilda had loved to distraction, and the stronger she had loved the sadder and sicker the chosen lover had become until he died. This tale must be told without subterfuge or keeping back the point. Guilda said he had died of love, and married her second string. The neighbours said that Mr. Faning had put weed-killer in his tea. An old housekeeper with a drop of gipsy blood had said that Guilda, whether she knew it or not, had the evil eye and would be the death of any person she really loved. Mr. Faning, however, married her and had lived quite happily without a day’s illness ever since. This Mr. Faning had taken to disprove the theory thoroughly. Guilda used to laugh a little when he stated this view. More logically put, it showed that she did not love her husband or that the evil eye on her part was mythical. Just an empty superstition and she had put it quite out of her mind. Her married life had been quite uneventful and unsorrowed except for one thing. Whenever she had trained and come to love a dog, it was run over or disappeared mysteriously. There was Fido, crushed by a cart; there was Carlo, who had been twisted in the spokes of a butcherboy’s bicycle, and Horatio Bottomley, a magnificent bulldog, whom she had loved above all her pets individually and above the whole human race generally. Well, they had all come to grief and those whose bodies had been recovered lay in the dank little garden between the gate and the door of her house.

And now romance had come with all its light radiancy of prelude, exciting her mind to an intense pitch of curiosity as to what lay behind the next turning. She was in no hurry. She still cared for her husband exactly the same, without loving him. Peter she loved without really caring for him. She was still careful of her husband’s throat when he went out at night, while of Peter’s sore throat she seemed rather oblivious. Perhaps it made him more interesting because the sore throat had been developed in her service. Sensitive to the possibility of romance in the prosaic and humdrum surroundings of her home, Guilda felt that Peter’s mechanical arrivals with teapot and sugar basin must be changed. She quietly enjoined him to come at a later hour and never by the front door. He must climb into her drawing-room by the balcony and wait until she answered his taps. Somewhat against his will, Peter had submitted to this daily ordeal until the servants were as used to one form of entry as the other, and the policeman standing at the corner received a hint from Mr. Faning himself that his friend was not practising to be a burglar. Mr. Faning had been puzzled by this new departure, or new form of entry rather, but vaguely supposed it would satisfy Peter’s absurd affection for his wife.

It didn’t. Peter left strips of skin on the rusty iron trellis-work and caught chills on wet draughty winter evenings. His hacking cough gave Guilda a sensation she thought she had long ago buried. And Peter, had he known, had no reason to complain of his cold, for it heightened Guilda’s love. Attraction had passed into love with her. It was then that Mr. Faning became aware, not of Peter’s love, which mattered nothing to him, but of Guilda’s which he had never possessed himself. This did seem to matter to him a great deal. It was no use her explaining that she only made Peter climb in for a joke. Mr. Faning banned a joke that made himself as ridiculous as Peter. Peter was told he was a good fellow, but his visits were limited in future to one a week, and would she be kind enough to admit him after ringing at the front door? As for Guilda, he told her that she was the laughing stock of the parish. Everybody knew she was pretending to be living in Mayfair and trying to show the neighbours that she secretly had a lover. It must stop!

Guilda’s face crimsoned and her passionate fury allowed her no retort. She could have reconciled a jealous outburst from her husband with her romance, blows even and threats of divorce. But to be called the joke of the parish was more than she could bear. When he strode out angrily, she waited for Peter’s taps impatiently at the drawing-room window. They came.

She preferred to be the tragedy of the parish rather than its joke. It had never occurred to her that she could be ridiculous. Romance was not ridiculous and she grated her teeth. There was a strange look on her face when she opened the glass door behind the curtains and let Peter come in coughing. Her eyes looked passionately upon him and a great tremor shook his lungs. It was some time before he could recover himself. She stroked his back and he dropped gratefully into a chair. For the first time pity passed into her love and love itself became fused to passion. She told him to follow her to her room, which Peter had never seen, never even imagined. It was quite like other bedrooms. That rather puzzled him, the same sort of furniture. All the wooden atmosphere of Maple’s, all the china soul of Whiteley’s, was there expressed with just the necessary alleviation of the feminine, the silk stockings hanging on the chair, the powder-puff and three dog collars on the dressing-table. He felt deliciously bewildered and tried to say something. One of her new garters, bought at a Selfridge sale, was on the bed. He was sorry it was not on the floor or he would have picked it up. As it was, he said “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” as he touched it. At that moment Mr. Faning came in.

Guilda had already begun to pour out water into a basin and, picking a towel off the rack, slipped Peter’s hands into the warm water. Mr. Faning stood watching until she had washed them free from the soot and dried them between the fresh folds of the clean towel. Then Faning burst out angrily: “I came back just to see that this joke wouldn’t go too far, and I find you in my wife’s bedroom! Never come back into this house again.” He turned to his wife and re-knifed her with the foolish words “joke of the whole parish!” She never answered him, but bowed her head and kissed each of Peter’s hands.... Peter went out shaking like a reed. When he reached his own rooms he found himself spitting blood. He stayed in for several days.

Peter felt very distracted those days. He made no effort to communicate with the Fanings. He felt he had lost a man friend, and the affectionate companionship of his wife. Companionship he had regarded as heavenly, but a red-blooded intrigue struck him with all the discomforts of hell. He sat dimly facing the prospect of fire. He had been so happy in his paradisal peace. He had now no choice but to clear out altogether or throw himself beyond the old relationships of family friend, and consider the Faning household in the sombre guise of mistress and enemy. It was appalling to think of, and he spat blood steadily through a night until his landlady became alarmed and sent for the doctor. He was found to be quite ill, and suffering from tuberculosis.

It was a month before he returned from the hospital. He had never let Guilda go far from his mind. How could he? He intended to be faithful to Mr. Faning’s injunction, and not cross the forbidden threshold.... But as soon as he was walking about again he made a point of passing the flat every afternoon on his return from the office. Always at the same hour, at the hour of tea, he came, and stood, and went, while a fragrance as of the delicious teas of the past smote his memory each time. He knew then how deeply he was still in love with her. It gave him a queerly increasing throb each time. His regularity in passing under the old lodestar was noted by servants, and brought to Guilda’s notice with the half-humorous and half-sympathetic understanding which can make servants and mistresses kin. One evening Guilda was watching for his passage, and threw him down a token. It was not a very romantic one, but token it was.

Peter was startled to be hit on the shoulder by an object flying out of the dusk as he stood absorbing his sip of evening melancholy. He picked it out of the mud. It was a dog’s collar, which he recognised, carried home, and considered carefully. He did not dare to look up. As he had suspected, it was one of the three dog collars that graced Guilda’s dressing-room. Apart from a hundred teas and the washing of his hands it was the first present she had ever given him. He turned it over again and again in his hands, and then he began turning it in his mind. He could not be faithless to the token she had given him, even though it was but a morgan fey beckoning out of the fog. An unseen light flickered before his closed eyes. A tremendous sadness passed into his temperament such as he had never felt before. It left him so uncomfortable that he tried to find a more ordinary name for it. He decided that it must be a form of illness. It was a natural weakness and reaction after the first days of convalescence. He was coughing again, but thank God! without spitting blood.

The dog collar was perplexing. It might be interpreted in several ways. Firstly, he might be considered a dog and needing a collar and leash! Secondly, was he a drawing-room pet once more? Thirdly, she had once told him how deeply she had loved her dogs. Could he aspire to a share in the great love she had had for Fido, or in the holy emotion she once felt for Horatio Bottomley? He began to question himself seriously. But it was gratifying to be even noticed and, though the dog-collar had descended on the bridge of his nose like a leathery meteorite, it had already assumed the glamour of daystar in his mind. It was probably a contemptuous joke on her part, he told himself, perhaps even an act of hostility from Mr. Faning. He hated even to think that it might possibly be a practical joke on the part of a servant. He remembered the fate of Malvolio and shivered under the smart of ridicule. Of course there was the thousand-and-oneth chance, which makes the test of the lover—the chance that nobody would dream of following in commerce or in politics, or even in gambling, but the lover follows the thousandth chance. Deep below the strata of ten respectable generations there lay some spark of the Restoration in Peter Joneson, some chip even of some far-off but possibly prepossessing cavalier, enough to send him that evening to linger a second time under the Fanings’ flat.

Half timid he felt, for his body was trembling all over, but half determined, as though he were fated to press his suit and be done with it. However, he took his stand under the flat, and fear was all but making him move after he had cast one rhapsodical glance through the fog when he stopped dead still! He thought he saw Guilda move against the blinds of her bedroom, and all the pleasant pusslike purring in his soul became embattled passion. Peter decided to climb to the top floor of the flat, the floor beyond the balcony where Guilda slept. Fastening the dog collar round his wrist, he screwed his shaky clerk’s hands to the sticking point and crawled up the trellis work. In two minutes he was gasping on the balcony and a fine sweat was blinding his eyes. Then he swung himself on the railing and began pulling his febrile body up the stone work. He had luckily lost a good deal of weight lately, but this was offset by loss of strength. He reached half-way, and felt he could get no further. The fog thickened, and he waited to gather his last energy. He would see Guilda. That he was sure of, and he bargained with his gods that if he saw her this once he was willing never to see her again. This once, this once, and his strength swayed on the tottering side of weakness. He could not tell whether it was weakness or strength that beat in his veins. He was not a psychologist or he would have known that it was neither. However, he hoped it was new strength, and began to drive his nails into the mortared chinks. He spent whole moments hanging by his finger-tips. What agony! His grateful palm closed round a helpful ledge. It was her window-ledge! And he drew himself up with a last effort. He was kneeling on the very sill and a warm light was bathing him, but he had not the necessary last half-ounce of strength left to raise his arm and tap the old signal. He sat puffing and sighing until Guilda heard unusual sounds and not catlike, or, she thought if it was, it was a very sick cat. She came to the window. Peter saw her shadow swim into the blind like some enormous bird, and, like a vulture’s crooked wings, her long arms, trailing bands of vesture, moving to the window-bolt and slowly opening it behind the undrawn blind ... “Peter, I knew it was you. I have been thinking of you all the evening. I had an idea that if I thought strongly enough you would come.” Peter extended his smeared and bleeding hand, on the hilt of which was fastened her dog collar.

She laughed as she helped him into the room. It was the merry laugh of love achieving love.... The window redescended. In the fog no one had seen. So Peter Joneson came within sight and touch of attaining the unattainable. He sank wearily but dreamily into an arm-chair. Dear, dear Guilda! She was pouring out the nice warm water again in a basin and bringing it to him. She was kneeling at his feet again with a nice crisp towel. He suppressed a frightful fit of coughing, which would not have chimed with the delectation of the moment. She had wiped the soot off his skin, and softened the clotted blood, and was drying his fingers, when suddenly the fresh blood began to spurt into the basin. There was quite a nasty cut there. He must have struck a snag of glass in the mortar. She uttered an exclamation of grief which pierced his flesh as the glass did not. At the same moment the inclination to cough became his imperative and dominant sensation within. He felt he would burst if he could not shake his lungs into his throat. But with a stifling exercise of will power he drove it down his gullet, while Guilda tried to slake the flow of his blood. It did not seem possible to stop. She pulled the dog collar tighter and tighter round his wrist, and still the drops flowed. Peter watched her as in a kind of delicious nightmare, but he felt something heavier than iron was sinking on his chest. He must try and shake it off. Perhaps it was only a dream. He was awakened from his dream by a fierce thrill running through his body. His wide eyes stared at Guilda—stared and stared. Good God! her hands were laid on his cut. He could feel her staunching his blood. “Don’t, oh don’t trouble!” he cried on the top of a heaving crash in his breaking lungs. “Don’t! don’t! don’t!” “But I love and adore you, Peter. Can’t you feel how I love you?” And Peter, in frenzied and prostrate terror felt his blood surge fiercely, unsatedly, passionately—and then the crash came. His body broke asunder, and he slipped from her with a single gasp. He coughed savagely, and sank at her feet. He could just clasp them before he passed into unconsciousness.... She simply stared.

When he awoke he felt endreamed not with the soft drowsiness that follows sleep, but startled with the horrible ticking beat with which one comes out of an anæsthetic. He tried to remember if he had been going to have an operation and could not, but there was a doctor standing there, and holding his pulse with a grey face and a watch. Oh, thank heavens! It was the watch, and not his heart that was making that awful tick, tick, tick! Faning was standing there, which was curious, looking at him with a look still more curious. And why was he in a strange bedroom? Then he caught sight of Guilda. She was carrying a basin across the room full of blood.... Then he remembered. She had washed his hands, and his eye followed her gratefully across the room. But he was growing weaker. Never had he felt so weak before. He was too exhausted to make sign or sound. He could hear the doctor talking; “I am sorry you did not send for me earlier, Mr. Faning, during the night, for he has been bleeding without cessation, and he must have been very anæmic before....” Peter’s eyes strayed to the bijou clock on the dressing-table. It was eight o’clock! Then he must have been two hours unconscious. He must have fainted. Then he noticed that it was daylight. Then he lay back, and gave up the ghost. Simply died!

The doctor, as a matter of fact, had been expecting him to die since six o’clock. He had cut the main artery in his wrist and had died owing to blood failure during the night. The doctor sat a little puzzled. He had seen cases of bleeding to death before, and the rarer cases of bleeders who are liable to shed blood at a touch. But this was an accident, and he mentioned to Mr. Faning that it would involve an inquest. Faning blanched, for he wisely hated scandal more than sin, and the idea of a dead body being found in his wife’s bedroom was a confusing prospect. Coroners were so unsympathetic in these days. He suggested it to the doctor, and the doctor agreed that an inquest would be awkward. What was particularly difficult for him was to explain where the man’s blood had gone to. There was only a pint or two in the basin and on the towels, and yet his veins were practically emptied. It would be a puzzling inquest, and had better be avoided. Guilda crept to the doorway and watched her husband and doctor deciding action. No servant was allowed to pry into her room that day, and it was given out that Guilda herself was unwell. She dropped into bed at Faning’s orders, and lay there half frightened, but weirdly sad and content. She slept until the evening without thinking of the corpse her husband had locked into the bathroom. At tea-time the doctor returned, and, when no one stood in the street, they pitched the body over the balcony into the garden where it fell with a sodden crash. Then they waited and waited, but no policeman came, no newsboy gave the alarm. Their plan was imminent and certain of success. The body would be found cold that night or in the morning by the milkman, and every policeman on the beat would testify to the peculiar character of the gentleman and his way of entering his friends’ houses. It suddenly occurred to the doctor that something would be missing. “The blood?” he said: “there is no blood in the garden.” Fortunately no servant had cleaned the basin, and the clotted fluid was diluted with hot water and carried carefully outside into the garden, and splashed about the crumpled figure under the trellis-work. Softly it sank into the gritty earth of two dogs’ graves.