Salome and the Head/Chapter 17

“ and damn!” remarked the news-editor of the Daily Monocle, sitting in the fierce light that beats upon his office table—“what a squandering of headlines! Enough to keep us all yelling for a month of Sundays. And all to keep pouring in like this! What’s that? Don’t tell me any more: I don’t want to know. I’ve got my bellyful of news and a little bit over to put in the savings bank.” He tore open an envelope. “Oh yes—go on. Keep it up. Don’t mind me. Don’t you take breath on my account. The Honourable John Ferrier has given himself up!—described how he did it—shocking details!‘ Full confession in the left boot!’ The waste of it—the wicked wanton, waste, my boy! Why couldn’t he have nursed his sickly conscience in a decent retirement for a week or two? Why the man himself—his being here at all’s enough to star the front page with for a week.”

“Is he,” asked the sub., “anyone in particular?”

“Oh, Gods!” cried the editor, “is he anyone in particular! He’s everyone, practically speaking. The youngest major in the army, V. C. at twenty-one, daughter of a hundred earls—I mean eldest son of old Ferrier, disappeared six years ago—unpleasant business about cards—some woman—forged his uncle’s name. Spartan uncle—detectives on the track—clothes with card-case all complete on the beach at Hastings—I always thought that card-case a bit fishy myself. But everybody else would know best; they always do. Ripping good chap he was, too—but a bit too cape-and-swordy—swaggered through life in hunting spurs, twirling his moustache. The kind of chap adventures happen to, don’t you know. He seemed to get them regularly like other men get their meals. Always in some shindy or other—and always coming up smiling when you thought he’d gone under for good. Well—anyhow this is our scoop. He was up with me at Baliol; kept on my staircase. I bet I know more about him than any other Johnny in Fleet Street. Get out, my boy—take a couple of sticks of brimstone and the office matches, and make a little hell of headlines on your own. Oh, yes—bother the suffragettes and the Eastern Crisis. Cut everything out—or down if it won’t go out. Only let me alone. I’m on the biographical lay. The Hon. John Ferrier. His Thrilling Past. His Personality. His Disappearance. Reported Drowned. The Unknown Woman. The Forged Cheque. The Spartan Uncle. The Chauffeur’s Disguise—the headlines go down the column like ladder-rungs. God forgive us! It’s a dirty trade, is Journalism.”

The Editor of the Daily Monocle has, indeed, had his fill of events. For it is Tuesday night. The body of Saccage was found yesterday. And a man has given himself up for the murder of the man Saccage, and the police are looking for Sylvia the dancer, whose husband the dead man was, and who is supposed to have had some share in the murder, for did she not dance, holding the dead man’s head in her hands, clasping it in her arms, pressing it to her bosom. Yes—and on two nights. Almost certainly she danced with it twice. For examination of Messrs. Maskelyne & Devant’s clever magic-working machine, by which the head was given to the dancer, seeming to come to her out of space, evoked by her longings—showed on this machine, last used, as everyone agrees, on the Monday night, definite traces of blood. So the police are looking for Sylvia. And it seems that they do not at all know where to look, for the daily Press is informed that they have a clue. Also they would like to question Denis, the handsome, talented lame boy who played so well and whose magnificent symphony, etc. .. . It is plain to the press that this guileless youth was made a tool of—the head was given to him to pass to Sylvia as she danced, and the horror of it has evidently overcome him. He is probably by this time out of his mind. Several people now remember that he was deathly pale when he left the theatre after Monday’s performance. The deathly pallor was so striking as presently to be remembered distinctly even by people who had not happened to see him that night. It will be easy, the press opines, to trace this unfortunate victim of the passions of others. His deformity, though cleverly disguised on the stage, is of course matter of public knowledge, and his mental condition, etc. .. . And Mr. Templar, the lady’s lover, will also have to be questioned—when they can find him.

Then to the press, replete with details all new and all invaluably shocking, detailed news of the indiscretion of Mrs. Mosenthal, sister-in-law of Moses Mosenthal, so well known in theatrical and financial circles and, it is whispered, even, under the rose, in circles diplomatic. Revelations of a popular dancer’s private life. Secret marriage of Sylvia. Crowding on that:—Identity of Sylvia. Granddaughter of Richard Mundy, the Tallow King. Her father married Goosie Glanders (Mary Anne James), the Gaiety chorus-girl. And now the Honourable John Ferrier! The biography of every person involved would have filled columns in a slacker season. The pity of it! It was too much. All is fish that comes to a journalist’s net—but the Salome Scandal, as the press with happy originality combined to term it, presented a miraculous draught of fishes which Fleet Street was frankly incompetent to utilise.

If only the people concerned had been more considerate, more reticent, more conservative, the thing would have kept us going for weeks. As it was, every fresh item of news was an added outrage. And the fact that Isidore Saccage, whose name had appeared in the deaths with that cynical touch about the flowers, was not really dead at all when the papers said he was, but had, with his tongue in his cheek, himself written that paragraph of decent regret which all the papers had printed—this was the last unbearable morsel in the surfeit under which Fleet Street groaned. He had told the woman he lived with (Mr. Saccage’s unfortunate paramour distracted with grief. Her life story—another column! No space) that he had given himself out as dead “for a lark—to see what people would say about him, to see if he were really appreciated.” (Solemn column article on the psychology of swelled head.—No space!) Also on the Friday night he had told this abandoned creature that he had lost a pocket-book in a wood, near a house where he had gone a week before to “look after his own interests.” (Interview with the woman—the last person, except the murderer, who is known to have spoken to the murdered man. By our own correspondent.—Crowded out.) Told her this when he had had a little to drink. We all have our failings. (Special didactic article on drink in relation to crime and to the discovery of crime by Lady Henry Somerset. Regret extremely—No space.)

And so the stylographic pens niggle, and the fountain pens scrawl, and the typewriters tap and click, and the linotype machines do their weighty incredible magic in a thousand glaring offices, and Sylvia—Sylvia whom all the bother is about, is sitting very quiet in an upper room of The House With No Address, holding the hand of a man who is dying. A black-robed, wimpled woman kneels on the floor in one corner of the room. There are a lot of red roses all about the room. The man in the bed asked for them, and they came. A bearded man in black stands by the bed, holding the patient’s other hand.



“Give me something to make me strong,” a low grating voice says from the pillow—“just for a little—to tell her.”

The doctor shrugs his shoulders. “It can’t really hasten the end,” he says to himself. “Still. . . all right, my dear fellow—in a moment.”

He goes out, shutting the door very carefully. You cannot hear any voices through the door, but you get an impression that outside it people are whispering. The doctor comes in again, leaving the door open—a foot or so. You can see that there is a light on the landing outside.

He goes to the mantelpiece and mixes something in a glass—something reddish, with a faint opalescence.

“Now,” he says, “drink. You’ll feel a new man in—eh—um—yes—in about three minutes. And as soon as you feel you can speak, speak. There won’t be much time. I mean the effect of the drug soon goes off. And you’re not to worry. I shan’t forget anything you’ve told me. Everything will be perfectly right.” He speaks in his quiet, strong professional tones, slips a practical hand under the head of the dying man, and lifts it so that he can drink.

“Ah,” the pale lips breathe through the wetness of the draught, “thanks—but go. Only Sandra now. No one else.”

The doctor touches the nurse on the shoulder and they go out. The door is left open—but the man on the bed cannot see it—and the woman who sits by him can see nothing but what lies on the bed. And those two are left alone.

“Better,” the word comes in a gasp from the drawn lips of the sick man.

“Wait,” she says, “you’ll feel much better in a minute. The doctor says so.”

He waits. She holds his hand—lifts it—lays it against her face. Then she lifts her face, and when her eyes meet his she is smiling—not one of those pitiful smiles that poets say are sadder than tears, but a brave light smile that is like the smile of the girl who danced in the forest to the piping of Pan.

He lies breathing evenly, and with each new breath seems to draw in new strength—new life. His chest ceases to be hollow—his dull eyes grow liquid and awake—his features lose that look of having been pinched and moulded by some cruel hand. On a long quiet expiration of the breath he speaks.

“How I love you!” he says.

“And I you—I love you, too,” she urges passionately.

“Ah yes, I know,” he says, “but. . .”

The remembrance of that hour will stay with her till she dies. Not as at first, a maddening memory, an infinite sorrow that makes life a desert and joy a desecration—but as a part of life, a sombre picture, unbelievably beautiful, inexpressibly tragic, that is to be the background of all the happiness and clear hope and love that life will bring her.

For now one spoke who loved her. And he showed her all his heart. The cordial the doctor had given served its turn. He did not go out into the darkness with his tale untold.

Before he had said a dozen words her arm was round his neck, and it was with his head on the breast of his adored mistress that he told the story that he had to tell. Many people, afterwards, hearing the story, pitied him. I am not sure. There are many ways of love.

“And so,” he said, “I read that letter and I knew that he was spoiling your life. And he had mocked at me. Princess, always when people mocked at me I wanted to kill them. And I knew about your happiness and your sorrow, my dear. And I had finished the symphony, and you had sent me—no—what was I saying?”

“I had sent you away—because I thought he might come. And he didn’t, he didn’t. I shall never forgive myself for that. But that was afterwards, dear.”

“My princess, do you think I don’t understand? Wouldn’t I have sent God himself away—and the whole Company of Heaven, if I’d thought there was the least shade of a shadow of a chance of your coming to me—if you had loved me? Don’t you understand that I understand?”

“Yes,” she said, and “Yes” once more, and “Oh, my dear, but all the same. . .”

“He’s dead,” said the man who so soon was to be dead also. “That’s the great, beautiful thing that makes all my life worthwhile. He’s dead. He can’t trouble you any more. That night—it was Friday—I heard the gate go. And. . . princess, you know how silly people are when they’re in love—I thought it might be you. . . . come down for the fun of the thing, by moonlight. And I went out. You know what it is to love anyone. You know what I felt when I undid the bolts. One of them stuck. I couldn’t bear it—I remember I thought I’d take that bolt off in the morning and hammer it to little bits for coming between you and me. And I got out—and there was a light in the shrubbery, and all the music of all the worlds sang in my ears, and said, ‘She’s here—she’s here’—you understand that, don’t you?” he broke off to ask anxiously, “because you know what love is.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And then—Sandra—I hadn’t got my little friend—but I wanted you so. You know how I go when I haven’t got it. No, I forgot—I’ve never let you see me like that. That was silly of me. I shouldn’t mind now—your seeing how I crawl about. It looks funny; I’ve watched myself often—moving about the looking-glass room. It’s very amusing—like a hen with its wing clipped. My wings were clipped, Princess, almost from the beginning. Clipped wings—the angels must find that silly, don’t you think?”

“Drink the rest of this,” she said; “you’ll feel better then.”

“I remember,” he said after a few moments of silence and deep breathing. “I thought it was you—and I found him. And I knew he was dead, because I’d read your letter. So I spoke as you speak to ghosts, you know. ‘In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ I said, ‘what do you want?’ And he said, ‘In the name of common-sense and a man’s rights and a reasonable income, I want my pocket-book. And I’ve found it. Good night, my crippled worm. Drag yourself back to your earth. By Jove, I should like to see how you work it with that funny little leg of yours.’ That’s what he said, princess.”

“Yes?” she said.

“I don’t know what I said, and he said, ‘If you dare to tell a soul you’ve seen me—promise you won’t,’ he said, and he pulled out a knife. Very long and sharp. Both sides were sharp, dear—I found that out afterwards.”

“Yes?” said she—it began to sound like a response in some strange religious service—the worship of an unknown god.

“And I got his legs, and threw him down—and I got the knife away from him, and I got my hands on his throat.”

“Yes?”

“And when I found he was quite dead I found the knife. And, princess—it seemed such a pity to run the risk of there being any mistake. So I made sure—I cut his head off. I covered him with mould and leaves, all but the head. Then I cut it off—it was hard work, but you know how strong my hands are. But it took a long time. I thought I should never get. . . No—I won’t, that’s not what I want to say.”

“It’s enough,” she said. “Rest now, darling.”

“No. Because it was after that I went mad. My symphony—the last movement, you know, was shouting in my head. And I wanted to see you do the Dance of Love and Death, with That in your hands. I thought you’d be glad. It was to be a triumph dance. You see,” he said, gently and reasonably,” it seemed so perfectly right then that he should be dead. You see that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” came the response.

“I got my jacket off, and I rolled the head in it, and covered up the place I’d taken it from. Then I went to the tool shed and got the tar they’d used for the fence, and I took It in—and tarred it. It all seemed so right. I thought I was so brave and clever, dear. And I put it in the ice-safe. That’s why the key was lost—you remember?”

“Yes.”

“The ice-safe sounds half horrid and half silly now. It seemed perfect then. Things do look so different, don’t they, afterwards?”

“Yes.”

“And I brought It to London, and passed it to you—and I saw you dance—to my music, and you were my music. That was what it was all for. I felt that then. And then I slipped back and took It from you and I put it in the brougham, and went home and got in while you were saying ‘How do you do’ to Uncle Moses—I saw you at the theatre. But that new chauffeur of yours was watching, watching. And the curtain was drawn back and I couldn’t wait. So I went up into my room. Princess, your door was open, and I saw the roses in your room, but I wouldn’t go in. And I put the bedclothes over my head, so that you shouldn’t hear. It was your revolver, dear. I’m very sorry I used that—but I hadn’t another. And of course by that time I knew it was the only thing to do. I’d seen you dance my symphony and I’d killed him. There wasn’t really anything left—was there? I thought I’d got it right against my heart. The beating felt like that. But perhaps the heart’s in a different place when you’re crooked, like me. Is it, do you think?”

“Oh—rest,” she said; “don’t talk any more, darling. Rest.”

“Not yet,” he said, and smiled. “There’s plenty of time for resting. Oh, princess, it did hurt. And then I tried to find someone. It was so lonely. And then you came.”

“Yes.”

“And doctors and nurses—and horrible fears that they might cure me. But they can’t do that—can they? You wouldn’t let them do that—would you, princess?”

“I wouldn’t let them do that,” she said: “they can’t do that.” She stroked his face gently. “That’s all, isn’t it? You won’t talk any more—just lie here like this.”

“There’s only one other thing. I hope you found the wax head for your dance to-night. I put it on the piano, where you’d see it.”

“I never went in there.”

“I think I must have been delirious or something. It was while you were giving the nurse her dinner. I got up and moved about. The head was in the other attic. I found it there, and then I thought I must find the wax one. I got down somehow—and looked for the wax head. Clarkson promised to send it to Miss Steinhart. I don’t know how I got down and looked, but I did—and it wasn’t there. And then I thought of wine—and I opened the cabinet with my key, and there was the wax head. And I thought what a good place to hide His head in. So I fetched it. It seemed the right thing to do.”

“Yes. Ah—rest!”

“It doesn’t any of it matter, in the least, of course,” he said in a changed, flat voice: “the only real things are that I love you and that he is dead. I see now what a horrible way I took to give you my present, dear. But his head was really all I had to give—except the things you don’t want.”

He had raised himself on his elbow and his eyes embraced her.

“Don’t—your bandages.”

“I don’t need them any more,” he said. “Princess, it’s a royal death to die—on your heart. . .” He laid his head again on her breast, and as her arms held him more closely his arms went round her. “Oh, it’s worth it,” he said—and then: “Oh, Princess—it’s worth it—but it does hurt. . .”

That will do perfectly,” said someone outside the door, and he spoke to the doctor. “Whatever little unpleasantness the lady may have to go through will be quite temporary—quite temporary, I assure you. You managed it beautifully. Nothing could have been better. Your shorthand notes complete, Baynes?”

“Yes, sir,” said a subordinate voice.

“Quite like a play, yes. You managed wonderfully, doctor.”

“It’s wasn’t my idea,” said the doctor; “it was her chauffeur.”

“Indeed!” said the voice. “The man who gave himself up? Very interesting.”

“Excuse me,” said the doctor—“I think he’s dying.”

But he was not dying. That last disadvantage of living had ceased to be. The Thing which Sandra clasped in her warm young arms had nothing more to fear from life.

When they laid him out, he looked, so said the professional death-dresser, just like an ordinary man. “With the shroud over him,” she said, “you’d never believe he’d been a cripple—he looks as straight as you or me.”