The Complete Simon Iff (19 page)

“I studied the facts with intense care; I tried to trace to their true source the phenomena displayed by all parties. Ultimately I came to a conclusion. I began to believe that in this case a physical correspondence with the mental and moral state exhibited might exist. . . .”

“And so?” interrupted Jack Flynn, excitedly, a gleam in his eye. “I insisted upon a physical examination. I found a malformation so curious and monstrous that, despite his human parentage, it was impossible to admit him any title to membership of our race.”

There was a long silence of complete astonishment. The old magician opened his case, drew out a long cigar, and lighted it. “Any one coming my way?” he asked, rising.

“I’m coming, if I may, sir,” said Flynn, sprightly. “I want to talk mysticism for an hour, to get the taste out of my mouth.”

Simon Iff was a magician. A magician is a superstitious idiot. Therefore, Simon Iff, travelling to America, carried nothing but a convenient handbag. Why? To carry more, said he, is to pretend that America is a long way away. This would be an insult to the ghost of Robert Stephenson, I do not mean Robert Louis Stevenson. It is not safe to insult ghosts.

Now there were certain people who believed that the madness of "Simple Simon" was as carefully calculated as a Table of Logarithms, and those of this creed who happened to be in New York, at the Cunard Pier, just as he crossed the gangway from the 'Mauretania', were rejoiced to observe that his absurd fear of ghosts had saved him from any similar emotion in the presence of the Custom House Officials!

"Through already?" cried his friend, Keynes Aloysius Wimble, of the "Literary Chyle", a native of Birmingham, England, and sometime of Nairobi and a very minor college at Oxford, but esteemed by Simon on account of his astonishing talent for ecclesiasticism, his profound knowledge of foreign tongues, his atrocious insolence of manner, and his overmastering determination to get to the bottom of everything that came his way.

"My dear man!" replied Simon heartily, "I am 'through' on one condition - that you do not ask me to spell it t-h-r-u." This was his first and only criticism of the American continent. Like Hamlet, (there cracked a noble spirit) the rest is silence. "This way, then," cried Wimble, "this way for my tin Lizzie." Thus unassumingly did he refer to his tremendous roadster. The journalist was a Power in America. Without the 'Chyle' no one would have known what not to read. As nobody would have read anything, in any case, the value of the publication was universally agreed to be immense. Its circulation was beyond anything ever discovered by Harvey, and it paid its editors almost as well as if they were man-milliners or cooks.

"Thought I'd drive you to the cottage," said Wimble. "Lizzie's been eating her head off all the week. Besides, we have to pay a visit of condolence. Our local Saint has lost his wife in the most distressing circumstances. It appears that she took Bichloride of Mercury in mistake for Aspirin."

"Ah! the Chemist's Boy in Pickwick!"

"Don't joke! The old boy's the best fellow alive, and he's utterly broken up over it."

"I thought 'local Saint' was sarcastic, perhaps."

"Not a scrap. He's not ostentatious about it; but he does good everywhere, and is beloved by everybody."

"Religious?"

"Intensely so. Has a bluff frank way with him that you and I might think irreverent; but it's better than cant and hypocrisy. He's very highly thought of in the Presbyterian Church."

"Ah! a Scot?"

"Name of Burns. Phineas Calvin Zebedee Burns."

"No, no!" cried Simon Iff, "I don't like that. The man certainly poisoned his wife!"

Wimble roared with laughter. "Dear old England! I used to feel that way myself; but eight years here have put me hep to all the bughouse monikers. (You may as well begin to learn the language.) Where a Member of the United States Senate, finding himself named Hogg, can call his daughters Ima and Ura respectively, there's nothing in a name!"

"I've heard that. It's a stupid joke, of course."

"No; it actually happened. There's no background. Anything can happen; anything. Anything!"

The car crossed the great Bridge, and gained new speed as the open country welcomed it. The day was frosty, and a black sky to Northward held snow in its shroud. The two friends fell to silence; then Wimble broke out into a passionate attack on the Belgians; for this was in 1911, before the year of the Great Enlightenment. He was not content to blame isolated officials for the atrocities of which his paper published weekly photographs; he proved that the fault lay in the inherent cruelty of the Belgian nature. He even blamed Cléo de Mérode and Anna Robinson, thus casting a slur upon Charlemagne and George Washington. Simon Iff did not appear particularly interested. "When I was in the Congo," was his only remark, "I had boils. I ate standing for three weeks. Nobody sits down in the Congo!"

Presently the assailant of King Leopold desisted in favour of topographical information. "That," said he, pointing, "is the house of P. C. Z. Burns. Zee, not Zed, please! Inside and out, materially and spiritually, one of the best houses in the section."

"It is really quite delightful," said Iff, though he would probably at the moment have preferred a wattle hut in Annam.

"We shall lunch with Phineas, for it is two hours more to the cottage. He has a perfect cook. Pray for Squab Soup, and a Celery Cream Broil of Saddle Rocks!"

"I have too long omitted these items from the schedule of my daily supplications."

The car passed through magnificent wrought brass gates swung upon marble pillars, and entered a long avenue of trees. It was evident that love had made a paradise, not money alone. Simple Simon expressed his pleasure.

"Yet Burns lives a life of Spartan simplicity. Here at least, wealth has not corrupted Republican manners."

"Was that what I saw on the boat?" murmured the magician.

Wimble displayed the renegade's obstinacy.

"There's something fine and big about the frankess of these people; there are a few Anglophile snobs, but the real American is a man all through. And Burns is one of the best of them."

The man himself was pacing the terrace of the house when the car drew up before the door. His whole attitude denoted dejection, even agony; yet one could see that he had braced himself to meet his sorrow. "It is the Will of God" was written on the face that he lifted to see whose importunity disturbed his grief. By his side waddled a somewhat self-important little man, a chubby good-humored parson dressed in rusty black cloth, his face rubicund and plump, his attitude rather like that of Monsieur Rostand's chanticleer, who believes that he has just caused the sun to rise. His fingers gripping an oblong of dram paper.

"My dear Wimble," cried the little fellow, running forward as Iff and his host alighted, "you have arrived at the psychological moment! Our friend's munificence has surpassed itself; we are to have a Memorial Hospital. He has given me a check for a million dollars!"

"It is very touching," remarked Simon Iff. "It reminds me of the Sultan who built the Taj Mahal."

"I didn't know they had hospitals in Turkey," said the little minister.

"No?" said Simon Iff, politely.

Phineas Burns walked up, greeted Wimble with subdued warmth, and extended a hearty hand to Simon. The conversation became general for a few moments; presently the Presbyterian went away, hugging his check, and Burns asked them to be seated in the library. "I want you to stay over dinner," he said; "it is full two hours to our friend's cottage. And I should like you to meet my daughter. I am no physician for such grief as hers; I beg you to do all in your power to distract her thoughts from our bereavement."

Simon Iff liked even the word 'dinner' as applied to the midday meal; it smacked of that Republican simplicity which his chance companions on the Mauretania had somehow missed.

The door opened, and a slight girl came in. Her father was repeated in her. His tallness, his leanness, his narrow brow, his thin lips, his pale complexion, his solemnity, his nervous tension; all these were already marked in the child of fifteen years old. But what most struck the old mystic was the extreme misery in her eyes. Burns himself had none of that; rather was his eye moist, genial, and humourous. And Iff saw too that she moved as if under some most powerful constraint. So unpleasant was the impression that he was shocked into silence. Burns left the room, making an excuse about 'ten minutes with my secretary'; Wimble started an animated conversation with the girl, whose name was Claudine, and Iff never stirred. But his face darkened and darkened as the conversation went on. Only after some minutes did he seem to pull himself together. "I think we shall have snow soon. There is a heavy black sky to windward," he said, addressing himself pointedly to Claudine. "Don't you think so?" The girl hesitated. "I shouldn't be at all surprised," she answered at last. Simon Iff did not reply. He rose abruptly, clapping his hand to his forehead, and went out on to the terrace. Wimble was cynically amused. Was his old friend in 'love at first sight?' He had always had the reputation of an ultra-English aplomb - and here he was, violently agitated about absolutely nothing. However, he went on talking to Claudine.

Iff, on the terrace, was literally kicking his way from nowhere to nowhere. A lank gentleman with a little black bag came up to him. "Excuse me, Sir," he said, "can I do anything for you? I'm a doctor, and you look to me in pretty bad shape nervously."

"Nerves still holding out," replied Iff grimly. "I only landed this morning. But you can help me - if you were in attendance on the late Mrs. Burns. You were?"

"Surely."

"She died of Mercury Bichloride poisoning?"

"Surely."

"Where did it come from?"

The doctor was silent. "I ask," pursued Simon Iff, "because, in England, don't you know, Bichloride of Mercury doesn't grow on bushes." He had been warned that he would be expected to say "don't you know" as often as possible, and was trying to behave.

"I never thought to inquire," replied the doctor at last.

"Do you mind if I put that down in my notebook?" said Simon joyfully. "It's a wonderful phrase. It explains the world as nothing else does. 'I never thought to inquire.' Columbus did, don't you know? Which shows that there are two sides to every question." The doctor thought that the old man was decidedly in need of his skill.

"You never prescribed Mercury for any one in the house?"

"Certainly not."

"Ah!"

"What are you suggesting?"

"Nothing. I was waiting for you."

"Well, good morning."

"Good morning."

Simon Iff drifted back to the library, and gazed blankly at the books. There was a wilderness of theology, a sobriety of 'classical' English and American novelists, nothing modern. At the end of the shelves was a strongroom door, and the old man looked upon it with a wistful eye.

"Where is your father's place of business?" he asked Claudine.

"Wall and Vine," she said, after a pause.

"He must be a very busy man to make so much money?"

Another pause. "Oh yes!"

"I hope he never brings his business home?" Still hesitation from Caludine. "Oh yes! he has an office at the other end of the house, where he works at night, sometimes."

"I think we shall have snow."

Wimble was thoroughly irritated by Iff's imbecility, and might have said something but for the return of Burns, who took them to the dining-room.

The conversation took the subdued turn natural to a house of mourning. Once the bereaved husband spoke in low tones of his dead wife's goodness. He hardly touched his soup. The second course was a planked shad. Wimble in a few well-chosen phrases introduced this remarkably excellent fish, and instanced its delicacy of flavour as an example of the effeteness of Europe. As it happened, however, the shad was abominably cooked. It was impossible to avoid remark. "Mary was so beloved by all," explained the host; "nothing has gone right in the house since she passed over." Simon Iff hated people "passing over" or "being taken from us" when they had merely died, for he hated every kind of camouflage. He observed his host narrowly. It struck him that his words were entirely false. Unless his whole power of psychology were at fault, the man was boiling over with impotent anger. It was quite incommensurable emotion, out of all relation with any visible circumstance.

"I understand, Mr. Burns," he said slowly, "that the servant problem is very acute in America."

He kept the conversation to this subject throughout lunch, to the despair of Wimble, who tried again and again to change the topic. The victory was Iff's, and he crowned it by inducing their host to suggest a visit through the kitchens, to inspect the labour-saving devices in use in America.

Simon Iff thought that mechanical perfection might have been more fortunately attained had the cost in morale been less severe. The cook was a quadroon woman of thirty, muscular, high bosomed, with a strong, even a domineering face. Her sensual mouth and arrogant eyes told of selfish passions never restrained. She made her independence felt, even to the strangers. In Europe her manner would have been called self-assertive; Wimble whispered to Iff that the price of liberty was eternal vigilance. "Yes," said Iff, "but 'Halt, friend, and give the countersign' becomes a little wearing after a while. I think I'll consult that doctor, after all."