PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS
I HAVE called this story “Ponsonby and the Pantheress,� because Ponsonby’s nocturnal visitor undoubtedly belonged to the genus Carnaria, species F. pardus, the Pardalis of the ancients. The whole thing hinges on Ponsonby’s getting a ticket of invitation to a mighty dinner given by one of the great City Livery Companies. Had he refused the invitation, and stayed at home with Mrs. Ponsonby, it would have been better for him—and for her. He would not to-day have been a silent, atrabilious man, who goes upon his way in loneliness—that mated loneliness which is of all desolate conditions on this earth the most desolate—with a vampire gnawing underneath his waistcoat. She would not have been a much-wronged, cruelly neglected woman—or the other type of sufferer, the woman who has been found out; and for ever robbed of that which women hold dearest in life—the power to create illusions.
It was a great dinner at that City Hall—a feast both succulent and juicy, and upon a scale so prodigious as to put it utterly beyond the power of a single-stomached man to do justice thereto. Many of the guests had thoughtfully provided themselves with several of these necessary organs, but Ponsonby—who had recently sold out of the Army, and invested his commission money in business, and settled down with Mrs. Ponsonby in a neat little house in Sloane Street—was still young, and fairly slim.
The baked meats and confectionery were excellent, and “the drinks�—as Betsey Prig might have observed—“was good.� It was revealed to Ponsonby that he had absorbed a considerable quantity only by the swollen condition of his latchkey when he tried to fit it into the door of the little house in Sloane Street. But after a short struggle the door opened, and Ponsonby paused a moment on the doorstep to take some observations on the weather. It was just one o’clock as he looked at his watch in the moonlight. Ponsonby was reminded of Indian moons by the lucent brightness of the broad silver orb that floated so majestically on the calm bosom of the dark overhead. She was getting near her wane, but only notifying it by an exaggerated handsomeness, like a professional Society beauty. Ponsonby thought of that simile—all by himself—and was proud of it, as he had always been a man more celebrated for his moustache than his intellect. He tied a knot in his mental pocket handkerchief to remember it by, and, facing round to go into the house, was a little disconcerted to find the hall door gaping to receive him.
Then he went in, barred and bolted very carefully, and set the spring burglar alarum—for once. Ponsonby was unusually careful and deliberate in his movements on this particular night. Then he sat down on the hall bench and took off his boots. Then he switched off the electric hall light. Then he pondered whether he should or should not have just one brandy and soda before going to bed—because he had come home so clear and calm and cool-headed from that City dinner. Ay or No—and the Ayes had it. He went into the dining-room. It had been furnished for the Ponsonbys on the best authority; in oak, with Brummagem-Benares brass pots and tea trays. The window curtains, and the drapery which hung before a deepish recess in the wall to the left of the door as you entered, were plush, of that artistic shade of olive-green which is so shabby when it is new that you can’t tell when it gets old. The recess had originally been intended for a book case; but young married people just starting in life never have any books—they are too much bound up in each other—and so it had been covered up. You can put things behind a covering of this sort which you do not care to expose to the gaze of the casual guest—a row of old slippers, or a pile of superannuated Army Lists, or a collection of summonses—or the Family Skeleton.
Ponsonby switched on the light, and opened the liquor case with his watch-chain key, and got a tumbler and soda siphon from the buffet, and lighted a cigar. Then he sat down in an armchair, unbuttoned his white waistcoat, loosened his collar, and prepared to be lonelily convivial. He thought of his girl-like bride asleep upstairs, with her cheek upon her hand, and her gold-brown hair swamping the pillow. It says much for the state of Ponsonby’s affections, that while he knew the uses of the monthly half pint of peroxide which was an unfailing item on the chemist’s bill, he could still be poetical about that tinge of gold. But newly married men seldom look into the roots of anything. He lifted his glass and drank her health. “To Mamie!� he said, as the frisky gas bubbles snapped at his nose. And then he glanced over the edge of the tumbler at the curtained recess behind the door. And the short hairs of his head rose up and began to promenade. And his teeth clicked against the glass he held. For a bolt of ice had shot through either ear orifice straight to his brain. In other words—Something had laughed—an ugly laugh—behind that drawn curtain.
In another moment it was put aside. A woman came out of the recess that had concealed her, and stood before him.
Not to mince matters, she belonged to the class we are content to call unfortunate. From her tawdry bonnet to the mud-befouled hem of her low-necked silk dress—a preposterous garment, grease-stained and ragged, and partly hidden by an opera cloak of sullied whiteness—the nature of her profession was written on her from head to foot. She was not without beauty, or the archæological traces of what had been it; but as she grinned at the astonished man, showing two rows of strong square teeth, yellowed with liquor and cigarette smoking, and the gathered muscles of her cheeks pushed up her underlids, narrowing her fierce, greedy eyes to mere slits, and the hood of her soiled mantle fell back from her coarsely dyed hair, she was a thing unlovely. She seemed to snuff the air with her broad nostrils, as scenting prey; she worked her fingers in their dirty white gloves, as though they were armed with talons that longed to tear and rend; and, as she did so, Ponsonby was irresistibly reminded of a panther.
Ponsonby had shot panthers in India, and had once been slightly mauled by a female specimen. It was an odd coincidence that the old scars on his left shoulder and thigh should have begun to burn and throb and shoot unpleasantly as the yellow-white fangs of the intruder gleamed upon him, framed in by her grinning, painted lips.
But Ponsonby recovered himself after a moment, and asked her, without ceremony, how the devil she came there? He was not a particularly bright man, but he knew, even as he asked. She had been crouching in the shadow under the portico—some of the Sloane Street houses have porticoes—when his cab drove up. She had watched him get out. Then, when he had been standing with his foolish back to the open door, gaping at the moon, the Pantheress had skulked in, with the noiseless, cushioned step that distinguishes her race. And now he had to get rid of her.
Which was not as easy a task as one might think.
He began by telling her that he was a married man.
“Knew that,� said the Pantheress. “Saw you take off your boots in the hall. Saw you drink her health.� She mimicked him. “To Mamie!� And laughed again—that unspeakably jarring laugh.
Ponsonby grew irate. He took his courage in both hands and went into the hall, where he softly undid the door fastenings. Then he came back, and offered to show his visitor out.
She was in the act of pocketing a silver race cup, won by Ponsonby at a Pony Hurdle Handicap on the Bombay course in 1890, when Ponsonby came back. He caught her wrist and bade her drop it. She gave it up sullenly. Then, with a sudden accession of feminine meekness, she said she would go—if he would stand her a drink.
It seemed a cheap bargain. The unwitting Ponsonby got out another glass from the buffet cupboard, and mixed her a brandy and soda, not too weak. She drew a chair—his wife’s chair—to the table, and sat down, throwing her dingy cloak from her whitewashed shoulders. She put her hand to her head, and drew thence a long steel pin with a blue glass head, and took her gaudy bonnet off and threw it on the table. She did not hurry over the consumption of the liquid, and Ponsonby began to grow impatient. When he hinted this, she asked for a cigar.
He gave her one, and a light. And she drained the last drop in the tumbler, and stuck the burning weed between her teeth, with a coarse masquerade of masculinity. Ponsonby heaved a sigh of relief.
“Now, my girl, come along—time’s up!� He started for the door.
The Pantheress got up, and leaned against the mantelshelf, smoking. She intimated that she had changed her mind—and would remain. Ponsonby lost his temper, and threatened ejection by main force.
“Put me out? You daren’t!� rejoined the Pantheress. She added some adjectives reflecting upon Ponsonby and the honor of his family—but with those we have nothing to do.
Ponsonby’s under jaw came out, and his forehead lowered. He strode toward the Pantheress; her sex was not going to plead for that delicate piece of femininity, it was evident.
“I daren’t, eh?�
“You daren’t. Because I’d tear, and scratch, and scream, I would—till the police came—till your wife woke up and came downstairs to see what the row was about. Nice for you, then! Easy for you to explain—with two glasses on the table!�
Ponsonby broke into a cool perspiration. He spake in his soul and cursed himself for a fool—of all fools the one most thoroughly impregnated with foolery. For he saw that he had been trapped. The Pantheress rocked upon her hips and laughed, shaking out a coarse aroma of patchouli from her shabby garments.
“You had me in and stood me drinks. I can swear to that. My swell toff, I think you’d better knock under!�
Ponsonby had to arrive at that conclusion, thinking of his wedded happiness and the golden-brown hair scattered on the pillow upstairs. He was awed to the pitch of making overtures—of asking the Pantheress how much she would take to go?
The Pantheress sprang high. Twenty pounds.
Ponsonby had not as much in the house. With great difficulty, and much exercise of eloquence, he got her to bate five. It was necessary that she should be brought to forego another five, for all the ready cash he could muster did not amount to much more than ten. How to attain this desirable end? Ponsonby had a dramatic inspiration.
He had read many novels and seen many plays. In most of these the main plot turned upon the ultimate victory of Human Virtue and Truth over Vice and Disintegrity. In these books or dramas Vice was generally personified by an adventuress—a brazen, defiant person, who had made up her mind to ruin somebody or another; and Virtue, by an innocent girl or pure young wife, who pleaded until the hardened heart was melted, the fierce eyes moistened by an unaccustomed tear—until, in short, the naughty woman abandoned her unhallowed purpose and left the nice one mistress of the field. The theory is an admirable one in a book or in a play, but in real life it does not hold good. Ponsonby has since learned this; but at that time he was youngish and inexperienced.
He would weave a net, with those golden-brown tresses upstairs, in which to catch the Pantheress. He begged her to listen, and told his story quite prettily. He explained how, three years before, his regiment having newly returned from India, he had met at a certain South Coast resort, separated by a mile or two of arid common from a great dockyard town, a lovely girl. She was a friendless orphan, the daughter of a clergyman, had been a governess, had broken down in health, and, with the last remnant of her little savings, taken a humble lodging near the sea, in order to benefit by the ozone. How she had found, during her innocent strolls on the beach, not only that health of which she had been in search, but a husband. And, finally, how every fiber of her soul, being naturally bound up in that husband, and her present state of health delicate, the infliction of such a blow as the Pantheress contemplated striking might not only strike at the roots of love, but of life.
With which peroration counsel concluded, not wholly dissatisfied with himself. He wiped his brow, and sent a hopeful glance at the Pantheress. Her features had not softened, nor was her eye dimmed. Her lips twitched, certainly, but the convulsive movement was merely the herald of a yawn.
“You’re a good one to jaw!� she said, when he had finished. “Come, I’ll not be hard on you. How much have you got?�
He named the amount.
“Hand out!� the Pantheress bade him.
He would give her half the sum then and there, Ponsonby said, with a gleam of strategic cunning, and the other half when she was fairly outside the hall-door—not before.
The Pantheress nodded, and clutched the first installment from his hand greedily, and caught her dirty bonnet from the table and threw it on her head. “No larks!� she said warningly—“come on!� and moved to the room door, where she paused. “Ain’t you got manners enough to open it for a lady?� she remarked in an aggrieved tone. Ponsonby, hastily restoring the tell-tale second glass to the sideboard, sprang forward and grasped the handle—and dropped it as though it had been red-hot, for he had caught the sound of footsteps—light, regular, measured footsteps—descending the stairs. He could not utter a word. He turned a white face and glaring eyes upon the Pantheress. And the steps came nearer. As the dining-room door opened, he fell back, helplessly, behind it. The wall seemed to open and swallow him—thick, suffocating folds fell before his face; he had backed into the curtained recess whence the Pantheress had emerged thirty fateful minutes previously. Through a three-cornered rent in the stuff, just the height of his eye from the ground, and through which that beast of prey had probably watched him, he looked—and saw his wife!
She wore a loose white wrapping gown; her hair—the hair—hung in waves about her shoulders. Barring the bedroom candle she carried, and losing sight of her prosaic nineteenth-century surroundings, she resembled one of Burne Jones’s angels. But her calm expression changed, and her voice was tuned to a key of unangelic indignation, as her glance lighted on the painted, brazen Defiance, erect and bristling, before her.
“You ... a woman, what do you want? How did you?—how dared you come here?�
The Pantheress was about, in answer, to launch the first of an elaborate flight of insults, couched in the easy vernacular of Leicester Square, when she stopped short. Her thick lips rolled back from her gleaming fangs in a triumphant grin. She bent forward, with her hands upon her thighs, and made a close inspection of the face of Ponsonby’s wife.
“What! Luce?�...
The other recoiled, with a slight cry. And Ponsonby, in his retirement, was conscious of a deadly qualm—for Mrs. Ponsonby’s Christian name was Lucy! When he opened his shut eyes and peeped through the rent again, it was only to receive a fresh shock—for Mrs. Ponsonby and the Pantheress were sitting, one on either side of the table, chatting like old friends.
“Luck was poor,� the Pantheress was saying, “and me low down in my spirits. So when I found the door of a swell house like this open, ‘I’ll pop in,’ says I to myself, ‘and look about for a snack of something and a drop to drink, and then make off if I can, clear, or else go to quod—like a lady.’ And I did pop in—and I did look about—and the first thing that turns up is—you! On a smooth lay, ain’t you? Always a daring one, you were. A clergyman’s daughter, and an orphan! We’ve most of us been clergymen’s daughters and orphans in our time, but not a girl of us ever looked it more than you. And you’re married! Ha! ha! With a swell church service, and singin’, and a Continental tour to give the orphan a little change of scenery. She’d seen so little in her time, the poor dear! Lord! I shall die of it!�
The woman rocked with silent laughter. It seemed to the man behind the curtain that her eyes, across his wife’s shoulder, glared full into his—that her coarse jeers were leveled at him. He could not have uttered a sound, or stirred a finger, for the dear life. A kind of catalepsy had possessed him. But he saw them drink together, and heard them talk ... turning over with conversational pitchforks the unspeakable horrors of the dunghill whence his white butterfly had taken wing.... Ponsonby had never been an imaginative man, but that midnight conference wrought his sensibilities to such a pitch that, leaning against the wall in the corner of the curtained recess, he quietly fainted.
He came back to consciousness in darkness through which struggled no gleam of light. He did not know where he was until he staggered out from behind the stifling draperies and switched on the light with shaking hands. Then he found himself in his own dining-room. There were no glasses on the table—the spring bar of the liquor stand was in its place, the brandy decanter was, as he remembered to have left it, half full. He found his candle on the sideboard and lighted it, and went into the hall. The hall-door was barred and bolted.
“Thank God, I have been dreaming!� said Ponsonby, and went upstairs.
There she lay—a breathing picture of reposeful innocence—fast asleep. Ponsonby stooped and kissed the hair that flooded her pillow and invaded his own, and silently swore by all his deities that he would never go to another City dinner as long as he lived. Before he crept into bed he knelt down—a thing he had not done since he was a boy—and said awkwardly, “O God, I’m glad it was a dream! Thank you!�
He slept the sleep of the weary, and rose, not a giant, it is true, but very much refreshed. He dandered down to the breakfast table in a leisurely way, humming a tune. As he shook out his newspaper, the absurdity and improbability of his recent vision struck him for the first time; he laughed until he ached. Then he dropped his newspaper, and stooped to pick it up. Something bright that lay upon the carpet under the table attracted his notice. The man put forth his hand and took it, and his ruddy morning face underwent a strange and ghastly alteration. For the thing was a long steel bonnet pin, with a vulgar blue glass head! Men have died suddenly of pin pricks before now.
But Ponsonby’s tortures are lingering. He is alive still, and she is still Mrs. Ponsonby. He has never spoken—the Secret of the Blue Glass Pin is hidden from the woman who walks Life’s path with him. But sometimes she is haunted by a dreadful Doubt, and at all times he is bestridden by an overwhelming Certainty.