Poor Things

11. Eighteen Park Circus

If hard rewarding work, interesting, undemanding friendship, and a comfortable home are the best grounds for happiness then the following months were perhaps the pleasantest I have known. All Baxter’s servants had begun life as country girls of my mother’s class, and though none were much less than fifty I believe they liked having a comparatively young man in the house who enjoyed the food they prepared. They never saw me eat because my meals were hoisted up to the dining-room on a dumb-waiter, but I often sent a cheap bunch of flowers or note of thanks down to the kitchen with the dirty plates.

I ate with Baxter at a huge table, sitting as far from him as possible. Having little or no pancreas he made his digestive juices by hand, stirring them into his food before chewing and swallowing. When I asked about the ingredients he evaded the question in a shamefaced way which suggested some were extracted from his bodily wastes. The odour at his end of the table confirmed this. Behind his chair was a sideboard loaded with carboys, stoppered vials, graduated glasses, pipettes, syringes, litmus papers, thermometers and a barometer; also the Bunsen burner, retort and tubing of a distillation plant. This last bubbled on a low gas throughout the day. At unpredictable moments in every meal he would stop chewing and stay absolutely still as if listening to something remote, yet inside himself. After seconds like this he would slowly stand, carefully carry his plate to the sideboard and spend minutes concocting messes for addition to it. On the sideboard lay a chart where every four hours he recorded his pulse, respiration and temperature, besides chemical changes in his blood and lymphatic system. One morning before breakfast I studied it and was so disturbed that I never looked at it again. It showed daily fluctuations too irregular, sudden and steep for even the strongest and healthiest body to survive. Times and dates (noted in Baxter’s clear, tiny, childish yet firm script) showed that when talking to me the day before his neural network had passed through the equivalent of an epileptic seizure, yet I had noticed no change in his manner. Surely all this apparatus and charting must be pretences, ploys by which an ugly hypochondriac exaggerated his diseases in order to feel superhuman?

Outside the dining-room life at 18 Park Circus was splendidly commonplace. After the evening meal we tended the sick animals in the operating-theatre, then retired to the study where we read or played chess (which Baxter always won) or draughts (which I nearly always won) or cribbage (where the victor was unpredictable). We resumed our long weekend tramps and all the time talked about Bella. She did not let us forget her. Every three or four days a telegram saying “M HR” arrived from Amsterdam, Frankfort-on-Maine, Marienbad, Geneva, Milan, Trieste, Athens, Constantinople, Odessa, Alexandria, Malta, Morocco, Gibraltar and Marseilles.

One foggy November afternoon came a telegram from Paris saying DNT WRRY. Baxter grew frantic. He cried, “There must be something dreadful to worry about if she tells me not to do it. I will go to Paris. I will hire detectives. I will find her.”

I said, “Wait till she summons you, Baxter. Trust her honesty. That message means she is not disturbed by an event which would upset you or me. Rather than thwart her you trusted her to Duncan Wedderburn. Better trust her to herself, now.”

This convinced but did not calm him. When the same message came from Paris exactly a week later his resolution collapsed. I went to work one morning feeling sure he would have left for France when I got back, but as I entered the front door he hailed me vigorously from the study landing shouting, “News of Bella, McCandless! Two letters! One from a maniac in Glasgow and one from her residence in Paris!”

“What news?” I cried, casting off my coat and running upstairs. “Good? Bad? How is she? Who wrote these letters?”

“The news is certainly not altogether bad,” he said cautiously. “In fact, I think she is doing remarkably well, though conventional moralists would disagree. Come into the study and I will read the letters to you, leaving the best till last. The other one has a south Glasgow postmark, and a maniac wrote it.”

We composed ourselves on the sofa

He read aloud what follows.

41 Aytoun Street,

Pollokshields.

November 14th.

Mr. Baxter,

Until a week ago I would have been ashamed to write to you, sir. I then thought my signature on a letter would convulse you with such loathing that you would burn it unread. You invited me to your home on a matter of business. I saw your “niece”, loved her, plotted with her, eloped with her. Though unmarried we toured Europe and circled the Mediterranean in the character of husband and wife. A week ago I left her in Paris and returned alone to my mother’s home in Glasgow. Were these facts made public The Public would regard me as a villain of the blackest dye, and that, until a week ago, is how I viewed myself: as a guilty reckless libertine who had ravished a beautiful young woman from her respectable home and loving guardian. I now think much better of Duncan Wedderburn and far, far worse of you, sir. Did you see the great Henry Irving’s production of Goethe’s Faust at the Glasgow Theatre Royal? I did. I was deeply moved. I recognized myself in that tormented hero, that respectable member of the professional middle class who enlists the King of Hell to help him seduce a woman of the servant class. Yes, Goethe and Irving knew that Modern Man — that Duncan Wedderburn — is essentially double: a noble soul fully instructed in what is wise and lawful, yet also a fiend who loves beauty only to drag it down and degrade it. That is how I saw myself until a week ago. I was a fool, Mr. Baxter! A blind misguided fool! My affair with Bella was Faustian from the start, the intoxicating incense of Evil was in my nostrils from the moment you foisted me onto your “niece”. Little did I know that in THIS melodrama I would play the part of the innocent, trusting Gretchen, that your overwhelming niece was cast as Faust, and that YOU! YES, YOU, Godwin Bysshe Baxter, are Satan Himself!

“Notice, McCandless,” said Baxter at this point, “that the fellow writes as you talk when you are drunk.”

I must try to write calmly. Exactly a week ago I crouched in the corner of a stationary carriage with Bella on the platform outside, chattering to me through the window. She was bright and beautiful as ever, with a fresh expectant youthfulness which seemed wholly new, yet hauntingly familiar. WHY was it familiar? Then I remembered Bella had looked exactly like that when we first became lovers. And now, with every appearance of kindness (for it was I who had said we must part) she was discarding me like a worn shoe or broken toy, having been RENEWED by someone I had never seen, someone she must have glimpsed that very morning, for we had arrived in Paris from Marseilles only six hours before. In those six hours she had met nobody, spoken to nobody but me and the manageress of our hotel — I had been beside her the whole time, apart from my visit to the nearby Cathedral which took thirty minutes or less — yet in that time she had fallen in love anew! All things are possible for a witch. Suddenly she said, “Promise when you get to Glasgow that you tell God I will soon want the candle.” I promised, although I thought the message gibberish — or more witchcraft. This letter discharges that promise.

Why, having discharged it, am I gripped by an urge to tell you more, tell you all? Whence this hunger to disclose to YOU, Mephisto Baxter, the innermost secrets of my guilty and tortured heart? Is it because I believe you already know them?

“Catholicism just might restore his sanity,” muttered Baxter. “Lacking the rites of the confessional he will seize any excuse to blether out his second-hand, second-rate sentiments to anyone.”

Did you see at the Theatre Royal two years ago Beerbohm-Tree’s production of She Stoops to Conquer by that greatest of Irishmen, Oliver Goldsmith? The hero is a bright clever handsome gentleman, liked by his companions, favoured by the elderly, attractive to women. He has but one defect. He is only at ease with women of the servant class. Respectable women of his own income group make him feel frigid and formal, and the more beautiful and pleasant they are the more awkward and incapable of loving them he feels. My case entirely! As a child I took it for granted that only women who worked with their hands would not find the natural Duncan Wedderburn a disgusting creature, and the result of this was that working women became the only class of female who attract me. As an adolescent I thought this proved me a kind of monster. Will you believe me when I say, that on entering University I discovered that TWO-THIRDS of the students felt exactly as I did? Most of them conquered this instinct to the extent of marrying respectable women and getting children by them, but I doubt if they are truly happy. My instincts were too strong for that, or perhaps I was too honest to live a lie. Goldsmith’s hero is eventually saved by a beautiful heiress of his own class who wins him by dressing up and talking like her maid. Alas, no such happy ending is possible for a Glasgow solicitor in the nineteenth century. My love life was below the stairs and behind the scenes of my professional life, and in these cramped surroundings I enjoyed the ecstasies and obeyed the moral code enjoyed, preached and practised by Scotland’s National Bard, Rabbie Burns. As I told each panting fair one I would love her for ever I was perfectly sincere, and indeed, I would have married every one of them had the social gulf between us not forbade this. My few poor bastard bairns (excuse the Scotticism, but to my ear the word bairns has a truer human warmth than babies or children) my few poor bastard bairns (fewer than the number of your fingers, Mr. Baxter, for my precautions prevented a great many) my few poor bastard bairns were never uncared for. Every one went into the charitable institution of my friend Quarrier. You know (if you read The Glasgow Herald) how that great philanthropist fosters such tender unfortunates, then ships them to Canada where they are put to good domestic agricultural use on the expanding frontier of our Empire in the North. Nor did their mothers suffer. No delicious scullions, tempting laundry manglers, luscious latrine scrubbers ever lost a day’s work by dallying with Duncan Wedderburn, though the shortness and irregularity of their free time meant I had to court several at once. Basically innocent despite my wicked ways — fundamentally honest underneath my superficial hypocrisies — such was the man you introduced to your so-called niece, Mr. Baxter.

AT FIRST SIGHT I knew this was a woman to whom class distinctions were meaningless. Though beautifully dressed in the height of fashion she looked at me as gladly and frankly as a housemaid who has been tipped half a crown and chucked under the chin behind her mistress’s back. I knew she was seeing and welcoming the natural Wedderburn inside the solicitor. I hid my confusion under a chilly mask which may have struck you as bad manners, but my heart beat so hard that I feared you might hear the pounding. In matters of the heart it is best to be direct. When left with her I said, “May I see you again, soon, without anyone else knowing?”

She looked startled, but nodded. I said, “Is your bedroom at the back of the house?”

She smiled and nodded. I said, “Will you put a lit candle on the sill tonight when everyone else here is in bed. I will bring a ladder.”

She laughed and nodded. I said, “I love you.”

She said, “I’ve got another lad who does that,” and was prattling about her fiancé when you returned, Mr. Baxter. Her guile astonished and excited me. To this day I can hardly believe it.

But though I foolishly believed I had deceived you, I never tried to deceive her. I exposed all my past iniquities more frankly and fully than I have courage and space to do here

(“Thank goodness for that!” muttered Godwin fervently.)

because (blind fool that I was) I believed we would soon be man and wife! I had never before heard of a man-loving middle-class woman in her twenties who did NOT want marriage, especially to the man she eloped with. I was so sure Bella would soon be my bride that, by a piece of harmless chicanery, I obtained a passport on which we were named as husband and wife. This was to facilitate our honeymoon on the continent which I meant to start as soon as the civil contract was signed. And I swear with hand on heart that monetary gain had no part in my determination to turn Bella Baxter into Bella Wedderburn. I admit that your manner when ordering your will made me feel that you were perhaps not long for this world, but I was sure you would at least live long enough to see us return from our honeymoon. The most I expected from you sir, in the financial line, was a small steady allowance enabling me to support Bella in the style she enjoyed with you. A few thousand per annum would easily have done it, and Bella’s way of talking suggested there was no limit to your generosity where she — the woman you pretend to be your niece — is concerned. You must both be laughing heartily at how cunningly you have duped me! For when we boarded the London train on that soft summer evening I had arranged to break our journey at Kilmarnock¹³ where I had persuaded a local registrar to wait up for us, receive us in his home and unite us. Imagine my consternation when before we reached Crossmyloof she declared she COULD NOT MARRY ME BECAUSE SHE WAS ENGAGED TO ANOTHER!!!! I said, “Surely that is in the past?”

She said, “No — in the future.”

I said, “Where does that leave me?”

She said, “Here and now, Wedder,” and embraced me. She was a Houri, a Mahomet’s paradise. I bribed the guard to give us a complete first-class carriage to ourselves. It was not an express train, so it MUST have stopped at Kilmarnock, Dumfries, Carlisle, Leeds and all stations north of Watford Junction, but I knew only the motion and brief pauses in our pilgrimage of passion. I was man enough for her, but the pace was terrific.

“Is this causing you pain, McCandless?” asked Baxter.

“Go on!” I told him, hiding my face in my hands, “Go on!”

“Then I will, but remember he is exaggerating.”

At last the rattle of points, shriek of whistles and decreasing rhythm of the wheels showed that our coal-fired steed was panting to a halt in the southern terminus of the Midland line. As we adjusted our clothing she said, “I can’t wait to do that all over again in a proper bed.”

Feeling sure our Acts of Union had obliterated all feeling for the other man I again asked her to marry me. She said in a surprised way, “Don’t you remember my answer to that one? Let us go to the station hotel and order a huge breakfast. I want porridge and bacon and eggs and sausages and kippers and heaps of buttered toast and pints of sweet hot milky tea. And you must eat a lot too!”

I needed the hotel. The previous day had been a strenuous one and I had now not slept for twenty-four hours. Bella seemed as fresh as when we left Glasgow. As we approached the reception desk I stumbled, clung to her arm for support and heard her say, “My poor man is exhausted. We shall need to have breakfast served in our room.”

And so it befell that while Bella ate her huge breakfast I removed my coat, shoes, collar and lay down for a brief nap on top of the bed. I had many dreams, but the only one I remember is entering a barber’s shop to be shaved by Mary Queen of Scots. She coated my face and throat with warm soapy lather and had just begun removing it when I woke to find I was really being shaved by Bella. I lay naked in bed, my shoulders and head supported by pillows with a towel spread over them. Bella, wearing a silk négligé, was stroking my cheeks with the honed edge of my razor. She laughed aloud to see how wide I opened my eyes.

She said, “I’m taking your bristles off to make you as smooth and sweet and handsome as you were last night, Wedder, because it is almost night again. Don’t look so terrified, I’m not going to slash you! I’ve shaved off a lot of hair around wounds and suppurations in the carcasses of dogs, cats and an old mongoose. What a sound sleeper you are! You never opened your eyes this morning when I undressed you and slid you between the sheets. Guess where I’ve been today! Westminster Abbey and Madame Tussaud’s and a matinée performance of Hamlet. How wonderful to hear ordinary soldiers and princes and grave-diggers talking poetry! I wish that I talked poetry all the time. I also saw a lot of ragged little children and I gave them some of the money I took from your pockets before I went out. Now I’ll wipe your face with these soft warm cloths, and help you into your nice quilted dressing-gown, and you can sit up for half an hour before bedtime and eat the tasty supper I have ordered, for we must maintain your strength, Wedder.”

I arose in that dazed state felt by all who oversleep from exhaustion and waken when they usually retire. The supper was a collation of cold meats, pickles and salad with an apple tart and two bottles of India Export Ale. There was coffee from a pot kept hot on a trivet by the fire. Growing livelier and more alert I glanced at my Fate who had curled herself snakelike in the easy chair across the table from me. She gazed upon me with a smile of such peculiar meaning that I shuddered with awe, dread and intense desire. Her naked shoulders were white against the dishevelled black cloak of her hair, her softly heaving. .

“I am going to omit several sentences here, McCandless,” said Baxter, “for they are hideously over-written, even by Wedderburn’s standards. All they tell us is that he and our Bella spent the night as they had spent it on the train, except that shortly before 7 a.m. he begged her to let him sleep. I will read on from that point.”

“Why?” she asked. “You can sleep all you like after breakfast. I’ve told the management here that you are an invalid, and they’re very sympathetic.”

“I don’t want to spend my whole honeymoon in the Midland railway terminal hotel,” I sobbed, forgetting in my anguish that we had never married, “I had meant us to go abroad.”

“Whoopee!” she said, “I love abroad. Which bit of it first?”

In Glasgow (which now seemed years ago) I had planned to enjoy her in some quiet little inn of a lonely Breton fishing village, but now the thought of being in a lonely place with Bella chilled me to the soul. I muttered, “Amsterdam,” and fell asleep.

She woke me at ten, having gone to the Thomas Cook agency with my wallet, arranged for us to catch an afternoon boat to the Hague, paid our hotel bill, packed our bags and taken them to the foyer. Only my dressing-case and a fresh suit of clothes remained.

“I’m hungry and sleepy! I want my breakfast in bed!” I cried.

“Don’t worry poor lad,” she said soothingly. “Breakfast will be downstairs for us in another ten minutes, then you can sleep all you like on the cab, the train, the boat, the other train and the other cab.”

Now you know the pattern of my existence as we fled across Europe and round the Mediterranean. My strenuous waking hours were all at night in bed with a woman who never slept, so during the day I was either dozing or being guided about in a daze. I foresaw this likelihood before leaving London, and on the boat to the Hague decided to prevent it by EXHAUSTING Bella! I can almost hear the yells of fiendish laughter erupting from your hideous throat at the folly of the idea. By an iron exertion of will-power and continual cups of strong black coffee I rushed her daily by train, riverboat and cab to and in and out of the most tumultuous hotels, theatres, museums, racecourses and alas alas gambling casinos on the Continent, covering four nations in a single week. She enjoyed every minute of it, and with bright glances and light caresses promised she would soon show her gratitude in private acts of love. My one hope became this: that though the public transports and giddy whirl of the day did not reduce her to unconsciousness when she got to bed, they might do it for me. Vain hope! Between Bella and the natural Wedderburn — the lowest part of Wedderburn — was a sympathetic bond which my poor tortured brain COULD NOT stupefy or resist. Again and again I fell into bed as into the sleep of death and woke soon after to find I was pleasuring her. Like a victim of vertigo flinging himself FORWARD over a precipice instead of backward away from it, I CONSCIOUSLY embraced the dance of love with groans of ecstasy and despair until gleams of light through the shutters showed I was entering the purgatory of yet another day. In Venice I collapsed, rolled down the steps of San Giorgio Maggiore into the lagoon, thought I was drowning and thanked God for it. I woke up in bed with Bella again. I was seasick. We were in a first-class cabin of a ship cruising the Mediterranean.

“Poor Wedder, you have been forcing the pace!” she said. “No more casinos and café dansants for you! I am your doctor now and I order complete rest, except when we are cosy together, like now.”

From then on until the day I escaped I was a man of straw and her helpless plaything. But by staying prone whenever possible during daytime I at last began to slowly recover some strength.

Yet I still thought her kind! GUFFAW! GUFFAW!! GUFFAW!!! Yes, you damnable Baxter, let the violence of your laughter split your damnable sides! I still believed my Angelic Fiend was kind! When she raised my head with her arm to put forkfuls of food into my mouth, tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks. When she steered me into British banks in the ports we touched, told the clerk that her poor man was not very well and steered my hand to sign a cheque or money order, tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks. One glittering blue day we two lay side by side and hand in hand on deck-chairs, steaming down the Bosphorus with all Asia to port of us and Europe to starboard, or vice versa.

“You are only good for one thing, Wedder,” she said thoughtfully, “but you are very good at it indeed, a true grandee monarch magnifico excellency emperor lord-high-paramount president principal provost bobby-dazzler and boss at it.”

Tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks. I was so dependent and dilapidated that I still kept begging her hopelessly to marry me. My eyes were not even opened by the events in Gibraltar.

We left the ship and stayed there for a time while I arranged to sell my Scottish Widows and Orphans shares¹⁴, a transaction which could not be hurried. I remember a bank manager saying in an insistent way which made my head ache, “Are you sure you know what you are doing, Mr. Wedderburn?” so I looked at Bella who said simply, “We need money Wedder, and we are not the only ones.” I signed a document. She led me out of the bank and through the Alameda Gardens toward the South Bastion, where we had lodgings. Suddenly Bella was confronted by a stout, stately, well-dressed woman who said, “How astonishing to see you Lady Blessington, when did you arrive? Why did you not call on us at once? Do you not remember me? Surely we were introduced four years ago, at Cowes, on board the Prince of Wales’ yacht?”

“How wonderful!” cried Bella. “But most folk call me Bell Baxter when I’m not with my Wedderburn.”

“But surely — surely you are the wife of General Blessington who I met at Cowes?”

“Oo I hope so! Though God says I was in South America four years ago. What is my husband like? Handsomer than droopy old Wedders here? Taller? Stronger? Richer?”

“There is obviously some mistake,” said the lady coldly, “though your appearance and voice are remarkably similar.”

She bowed and walked on.

“I saw that woman bowling along in an open carriage yesterday,” said Bella broodingly, “and someone said she was the wife of an old admiral who governs this great big Rock. She never answered one of my questions. Can I crash in on her and ask them again? Why should I not have a spare military husband somewhere, and more than the few names I already have, and go for sails on royal yachts?”

It was thus I learned that my Awful Mistress had no memories of her life before the shock which made that strangely regular crack which circles her skull under the hair — IF CRACK IT BE, Mr. Baxter! But YOU know, and I NOW KNOW what it REALLY is—

“Baxter,” I groaned, “has Wedderburn deduced everything?”

“Wedderburn has deduced nothing sensible, McCandless. His flimsy brain has never recovered from his breakdown in Venice. Listen.”

YOU know, and I NOW KNOW what it REALLY is — a witch mark. Yes! The female equivalent of the mark of Cain, branding its owner as a lemur, vampire, succubus and thing unclean.

“I will now skip six pages of superstitious drivel and resume on the second last page where he describes Bella bringing him to Paris by overnight train. They are again short of money so do not want to pay for a cab. They stroll through not-yet-crowded streets where the huge returning wagons of the night-soil collectors are the only vehicles. The sky is milky grey, the air fresh, sparrows audible. Bell gazes with eager pleasure at all she sees, though carrying their luggage in two heavy cases, one on each shoulder. Wedderburn carries nothing. He has recovered most of his physical strength but dare not admit it to Bella lest (I quote) she drain me once more of all manhood. Listen.”

The Rue Huchette is a very narrow street near the river. Here we found a small rather noisy hotel, considering the hour. The waiter of a nearby café was setting out chairs and tables on the cobbles, so I sat while Bella went to investigate.

She soon returned without the luggage and in high spirits. A room would be ready for us in an hour; also the manageress, though the widow of a Frenchman, had been born in London and spoke fluent Cockney. She had invited Bella to wait in her office, and as it was very small would I like to sit where I was? I could wait in a foyer if I preferred, but the foyers too were very small, many overnight customers were about to leave and might tumble over me. In a dolorous voice I said I would wait outside, hiding my delight at the first chance since our elopement to be without Bella in the open air. She smiled so brightly as she whisked back into the hotel that I nearly believed she was as glad to be rid of me.

From the waiter I ordered coffee, a croissant and a cognac. These gave me courage. At last I felt strong enough to open and read the letter I had received in Gibraltar along with the money order from the Clydesdale and North of Scotland Bank. I knew that letter, addressed to me in my mother’s hand, would be full of bitter and just reproaches: reproaches I could never have faced without brandy in my guts and NO BELLA beside me, for Bella would never have left me in peace to stew in the remorse and misery I so richly deserved. Almost luxuriously I tore open the envelope and winced over its contents.

The news was more terrible than I had feared. Mother was nearly destitute. She could only afford to keep two servants now, Auld Jessy and the cook. With these two I had first discovered the pleasures of love, but they were now long past their best. Auld Jessy had grown so doddery we had meant to send her to the poor-house after Christmas. Cook was now a dipsomaniac. These served mother without pay because nobody else would give them house-room. Less tragic but more poignant was the fact that my frail lovely mother, a lonely widow of forty-six years, could no longer order clothes from London and Edinburgh, but must shop for them herself, in Glasgow. Guilt and rage brought me panting to my feet — mainly rage against Bella, for what had she done with all my money? Without thinking I strode forward down a lane like a corridor, grinding my teeth at the memory of my sufferings in the grip of that gorgeous monster.

Was it the Hand of God that steered me over that busy bridge then stopped me short before the open door of the great Cathedral? I think it was. I had never entered a Roman Catholic edifice before. What trembling hope drew me into this one?

I saw receding aisles of mighty pillars like avenues of titanic stone trees upholding an overarching dimness; I heard a glorious blast of Honestly, McCandless, his style is so sickeningly derivative that I will summarize what follows. Duncan Doubleyou has never prayed to God before but decides he’ll have a go because others are doing it here. He drops a centime into a box through a slit in the lid; lights a candle; sticks it on a spike before an altar; kneels down with tight shut eyes and tells The First Mover of All Things that Duncan Doubleyou is evil wicked rotten and wrong mainly because of Bad Bell Baxter, so please send help. Suddenly the world feels brighter. Wedderburn, opening eyes, sees sunlight beaming in on him through stained-glass window behind altar; rays through a heart-shaped crimson pane are casting a bright pink shadow on the bosom of Duncan Doubleyou’s white silk fashionable waistcoat. A personal telegram to Duncan Doubleyou from The Prime Mover? DW’s first reaction is Protestant. He wants to go somewhere private and think it over, a small intimate place with a seat and a lock on the door where he can be safe from interruption. He sees a row of cubicles with ordinary folk going in and out, each door with an indicator saying if vacant or engaged. He bolts himself into a vacancy which of course proves to be a confessional box. If I tell you that the padre behind the grille spoke English, can you guess what happened then, McCandless?”

“Not exactly.”

“Wedderburn wants to confess all his sins from the age of five (when Auld Jessy taught him masturbation) to half an hour earlier when Bella booked him into what sounded like a brothel. He also wants professional advice on the value of the Sacred Heart telegram just got from God. Priest says all who pray before that shrine get that telegram when the sun shines from a certain direction, and the message is always good if properly read. Priest says he cannot absolve Monsieur Doubleyou of his sins because Monsieur is a heretic or pagan, but if Monsieur Doubleyou will give a five-minute précis of the sins which now so afflict him, priest will give him a straight opinion. Out pours the story. Priest tells Monsieur Doubleyou to marry Bella and go home to his mother or leave Bella and go home to his mother or rot in Hell. Priest advises Monsieur Doubleyou to take instruction in the Catholic Faith when he returns to Glasgow and now Adieu Monsieur, I will pray for your soul. Wedderburn steps into the street where the sunlight shone on me like a benediction, for I felt that a hideous burden had fallen from my shoulders et cetera. In other words, he at last discovers he is sick and tired of Bella. Back to the hotel then! Bella is unpacking in the bedroom. ‘Stop!’ cries Wedderburn, and tells her he must return to Glasgow and WORK, but he cannot take her with him unless she returns as his wife. She says cheerfully, ‘That’s all right Wedder, I want to see a bit more of Paris,’ packs his things into one of the cases and gives him money for the fare home. He says, ‘Is that all?’ She says, ‘It’s all that’s left of your money, but if you need more I’ll give you what God gave me.’ She takes out her sewing-scissors, unstitches the lining of her travelling-coat, removes £500 in Bank of England notes and gives it to him saying, ‘That is to pay for all the fun you gave me. You deserve a lot more, but this is all I have. Still, it’s quite a lot, and God gave it to me because he said something like this would happen with you.’

“I now return to the letter, McCandless. Wedderburn’s description of how he acted on hearing that I knew of his elopement before it happened is of great clinical interest.”

As my brain tried at once to grasp and repel the hideous meaning of her words I came to know what madness is. Writhing my head from shoulder to shoulder and mouthing as if biting the air or silently screaming I retreated into a corner and slowly sank to the floor, frantically punching at the space around my head as if boxing with a loathsome and swarming antagonist like huge wasps or carnivorous bats; yet I knew these vermin were not really outside but INSIDE my brain and gnawing, gnawing. They gnaw there still. Bella must have called in her new friend, the manageress, but my madness multiplied these two into a jabbering crowd of dishevelled women of every age and shape, their scanty clothing displaying their sexual charms to the full as they flooded vengefully over me like all the serving-women I have ever seduced. And Bella seemed one of them! With their strong soft limbs they bound my limbs and body as tight as a baby in swaddling bands. They poured brandy down my throat. I grew stupid and passive. Bella took me by cab to the Gare du Nord, bought a ticket, put it in my waistcoat pocket, told me which other pockets held money and passport, placed me and my luggage in a train, and all the time she poured out a maddening stream of soothing chat: “—poor Wedder, poor old lad, I’ve been bad for you, I’ve over-tired you, I bet you are glad to be going home to your mother’s house and a nice long rest, think of the money you will save, but we had some good times together, I don’t regret a moment of it, I’m sure there is not a better athlete and sportsman than Duncan Wedderburn in the whole wide world but do tell God I want the candle soon do you remember our first night in the train?” et cetera, and when the train moved from the station she ran along the platform beside it shouting through the window, “GIVE MY LOVE TO BONNY SCOTLAND!”

So I know who your niece is now, Mr. Baxter. The Jews called her Eve and Delilah; the Greeks, Helen of Troy; the Romans, Cleopatra; the Christians, Salome. She is the White Daemon who destroys the honour and manhood of the noblest and most virile men in every age. She came to me in the guise of Bella Baxter. To King Louis she was Madame de Maintenon, to Prince Charlie she was Clementina Walkinshaw, to Robert Burns she was Jean Armour et cetera and to General Blessington she was Victoria Hattersley. Does that name make you tremble, Lucifer Baxter? The General’s matrimonial disaster was not noised aloud by the newspapers, but we lawyers have other sources of knowledge, and through these I have penetrated your secret. FOR THE WHITE DAEMON IS IN EVERY AGE AND NATION THE PUPPET AND TOOL OF A VASTER, DARKER DAEMON!!!!! Eve was ruled by the Serpent, Delilah by the Philistine Elders, Madame de Maintenon by Cardinal Thingummy and Bella Baxter by YOU, Godwin Bysshe Baxter, Arch-Fiend and Manipulator of this Age of Material Science! Only in Modern Glasgow — the BABYLON of Material Science — could you have gained wealth, power and respect by carving up human brains, prowling through morgues and haunting the death-beds of the poor. You would have been burned as a warlock for that when Scotland was a Spiritual Nation, GOD-SWINE BOSH BACK-STAIR, BEAST OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT!!!!!

You probably do not know you are Antichrist, for none are as deluded as the damned, so the Father of All Lies is condemned to know himself least of all. But you are a scientist. Examine the proofs I will now present coldly and logically, without using a lot of capital letters, except at the start.

THE COMING OF THE BEAST

BIBLE PROPHECIES

MODERN FACTS

1 The number of the Beast is 666.

You live at 18 Park Circus, which number is the sum of 6+6+6.

2 The Beast supports a Woman clothed in scarlet.

Bella is very fond of red.

3 The Beast is called Babylon, because that city ruled the biggest material empire in the ancient world, and persecuted the children of God, the spiritual people of that day. (Note that Protestant fanatics say Rome is the modern Babylon and the headquarters of the Beast, but remember that Roman Catholicism — with all its flaws — is nowadays a wholly spiritual empire.)

The British Empire is the largest Empire the world has ever known. It is wholly material, being based on industry, trade and military might. It was invented in Glasgow. Here James Watt conceived the steam engines which drive the British rail trains and merchant fleets and battle fleets, and here the best of these locomotives and ships are built. Here Adam Smith invented modern capitalism. Here Sir William Thomson devises the telegraph cables binding the empire together over the ocean floors, also the diesel electric engines of the future.

4 The Beast (and the Woman he supports) are also called Mystery.

Chemistry, electricity, anatomy et cetera are Mysteries to nearly everybody— except you!

5 The Beast is worshipped by all the kings of this earth.

Though Queen Victoria prefers Edinburgh to Glasgow, Balmoral to the rest of Scotland, the Grand Duke Alexis, son of the Tsar of Russia, called Glasgow “The centre of intelligence of England” in his speech at the launching of the Livadia last year, built for his father at Elder’s shipyard.

6 The Beast has seven heads — seven bits sticking up. (Protestant fanatics say it must therefore be Roman because Rome is notoriously built upon seven hills.)

But Glasgow is built on seven hills! Golf Hill, Balmano Brae, Blythswood Hill, Garnet Hill, Partick Hill, Gilmore Hill crowned by the University, Woodlands Hill crowned by Park Circus where you sacrificed me to the Scarlet Whore of Modern Babylon!

7 The Scarlet Woman on the Beast’s back holds a golden cup full of abominations.

I do not exactly know what the cup is nowadays because Bella disliked wine and spirits, but if you and I meet and discuss the matter calmly surely we will find something?

I am horribly lonely. Mother keeps telling me to pull myself together. I long to sit close to her but when I do she fidgets and asks why I do not go out to music-hall, sports-club or other “THINGS” I used to be busy with before my trip abroad. I dread such “THINGS” nowadays. When I was little Auld Jessy cared for me when Mother got the fidgets. So now I pretend to go out for a “night on the town” but skulk round by the backdoor tradesman’s entrance into the kitchen, where I sit tippling with Auld Jessy and the cook. I never drank alcohol in my Casanova days, for a devotee of Venus must abjure Bacchus. It is cold in the kitchen. I have so wasted the Wedderburn fortune that Mother cannot afford to let servants use our coals. Auld Jessy and the cook sleep together for warmth, so I sleep between them. I cannot sleep alone. Come back please warm me Bella.

Tomorrow I will start a new life by doing three things all at once. I will make Mother rich again by underrating devotion to the science and art of property conveyancing. I will save my Bella from Beastly Baxter by boxing with the Modern Babylon at street corners, in the open forum of Glasgow Green and through letters to the press. I will embrace the only true Catholic faith, make a vow of eternal chastity, and end my days in the peace of a cloister. I need rest. Help me.

I am Faithfully and Forever,

Bella’s Outcast Welter Weight

Bleeding Waistcoat Hearted

Duncan McNab Wed Wed Wedder

(Writer to the Signet and Auld Jessy’s Big Tumshie).