The Complete Simon Iff (58 page)

 Alone, no sunlight to insult her face,

 No Time to violate her with his hours.

 Ages and ages ere she was a bud

 God made her, then she could not well be less

 Than he, and so she sucked away his blood,

 And bleached it for the dye of her own dress.

 Then she pressed out that purity to still

 Her soul, for music also is a curse.

 She wrote the triumph of her virgin will

 Over the ruins of the universe.'

"In this poem the phantasy has fulfilled itself. She has destroyed God, and remains sole and supreme; she even pretended to despise the record of her victory. Note also how definite is the conception; we shall find, perhaps, that in this year (1904 it is) she is more independent in reality. Possibly her father was actually sick."

"Well, this is sure some stunt. Funny stuff, I call it. Dad had the grip that winter, and laid up for a month. Never quite the same man, to my way of thinking."

"Let us go on. Whew! here's Buddhism!"

"Why yes, 'bout that time she was plumb crazy on Nirvany or some such heathen god."

"This is her 'Ode to Nirvana'.

 "'O vast abyss! Engulf all seeming form

 Within thine amphitheatre of ice!

 Shield me from Life's inhospitable storm,

 And slay me Mara's dazzling cockatrice!

 O Nirvana! blest Nirvana!

 Save me from the woes of Prana!'

"Verse Two!" announced Simon Iff, with a savage look at Miss Mollie Madison, who was making things excessively difficult for his self-control, though (as she subsequently swore by all red-headed gods) she was doing her utmost to preserve propriety.

 "'O bliss of nothingness! Thy silence great

 Hath swallowed moon and planet, star and

 sun;

 With the inexorable Urge of Fate,

 Thy Virgin Nought hath mastered Father One.

 O Nirvana! blest Nirvana!

 Shila! Kshanti! Virya! Dana!'

 "There's a lot more, but we have enough here. It's the same thought, in a jargon of misunderstood Theosophy, and a great show of sham learning introduced to give her the sensation of superiority of knowledge or scholarship: more psychic compensation. But the main idea is this vast formless negative icy sphere--she's compelled to the formula she hates, poor girl!--which swallows up the fire and energy of the father, not by construction but by annihilation. Observe, she is no longer content to have his skull split; she wants him to disappear without leaving the minutest trace. Oh we're getting near nineteen seven, be sure!"

William Smith had become strangely excited. He trembled continusouly, and the sweat ran over his face.

Simon Iff turned the pages. The poems were more confident and positive as he proceeded. There was one that ended:

"The Curse, the Everlasting

Curse,

Swept beyond the Universe."

 Another was on sympathetic magic, as if she had been reading "The Golden Bough". One verse read:

"Every boy that fills a cup

 Winds eternal mischief up,

 And every girl that breaks a rod

 Throws his malice back to God."

 "Something of Black in that, somehow, eh? Never mind; it shows she was thinking of doing a magic ceremony. Just as you can raise a wind by blowing in some ceremonial fashion, so you could blot out the infinite evil if you could blot out some person whom you took to symbolize the cause of evil. In this case, the father. Now--come to the critical year--hullo! This s great. Words no longer seem adequate to the conception. So we find a symbolic picture."

 It was a very simple drawing, entirely crude and untutored, but with a curious fascination of evil such as one often sees in 'automatic' or 'spirit' pictures. The whole page was covered with stars, and the Milky Way ran through it like a snake. Part of this group was thickened into the likeness of a shark, on whose head was set the crescent moon. With open jaw it was rushing upon the sun, to whom the artist had given not only features, but thin arms and legs. In one arm he was brandishing a stick. The picture was full of movement; a most skillful artist might have been less successful in this respect than this untrained woman.

 At the bottom of the page appeared the earth, a hilly landscape with clouds masking the sky. There was a house upon a hill-side, and between the house and the hill a rude bridge of planks. Under the bridge was a small black circle, and in the air above it a broken stick.

 Simon Iff did not take long to read the message.

 "Here," said he, "we see an attempt to picture the relations between heaven and earth. The shark Nirvana, with the Chaste Moon for the crest, is going to swallow the Sun with his symbol of authority and paternity. The corresponding facts on earth concern this house on the hill. Mr. Smith, was there a plank gangway to the back door of the house?"

 "Why yes, Mr. Iff. There was a shallow cave in the shale where things were kept for coolness. The planks saved one from walking over the rough shale, which was pretty wet, too, most times, from a spring somewhere."

 "Then if you will get into my car, I will take you to the grave of your father."

 Smith, like a man in a trance, followed, with Miss Mollie Madison and the coroner to bring up the rear. He had a new shock of terror when Dobson produced pick and shovel from beneath his seat. He perceived that all had been understood and foreseen.

 The planks of the gangway were already rotted. They broke at once under Dobson's vigorous blows.

 "Dig a six-inch channel," said the magician, "it won't be very deep."

 He was right. The loose shale flew high as Dobson shovelled. Less than a foot beneath the surface he struck a hard smooth surface. It was cement. A few strokes disclosed a circular plate of this material. The chauffeur took the pick, and broke it. He stopped, and flung the loose pieces to one side. A broken stick, all rotten, lay upon the skeleton of a man.

 It dawned suddenly upon William Smith that this whole operation had been designed to trap him. He trembled. He read something akin to his own apprehension in the eye of the coroner, who was regarding him askance.

 "I swear by God," he cried solemnly, "that I had not art nor part in this."

 "My dear man," returned Simon, "I never supposed for one moment that you had. Your alibi is perfect."

 "Alibi!" stammered Smith, more alarmed than ever. "I don't know what you mean. I was here."

 "A moral alibi, friend Smith! Your mind was not on sharks and suns; you were cantering away to Boston, having a glorious time with the girls. You had conquered reality; you did not need any psychic compensation for a sense of inferiority." He extended his hand; Smith took it, with tears in his eyes.

 "Understand, please," said the magician, "that I knew this whole story, all but the location of the body, before I had been three hours in Potter's Place.

"It was certain that your father had met with foul play; his psychology was all against a voluntary disappearance. And how could he have avoided the family? And why should he not have disappeared in some simple way, by going off to Boston, and crossing the Atlantic, for instance? Besides, he had touched no money for such a journey. It was then clear that one of the family was responsible; perhaps two, or even all three. But the active agent must have been Mamie; it was she who followed her father into the house, and was alone with him for five minutes or so. She could easily arrange the details: a place of concealment for the body, possibly a temporary affair like her trunk. Anything would serve, since no one would think to look for a hidden corpse, but only for a living man. She had then merely to hide his stick, so as to detain him in the house, and give her an excuse to go back and do the murder. More likely still, she may have hidden the stick as a symbolic gesture--and simply seen and taken the opportunity--despite her conscious will--when it presented itself. Some casual word of the old man may have fired the hidden train of gunpowder.

"But why should she take so extraordinary a means to cope with her secret anguish? One could only see an answer by invoking the Psychology of the Unconscious. I began to probe the persons concerned. Mrs. Smith was clearly guiltless. She had not the physical strength or adroitness; besides, she was not there. Unless all three were lying, Mamie was alone with her father. Andall three were not lying, if they had been, they would have invented some commonplace story of accident.

"So we contemplate Mamie, the plain, flat-chested unconsidered nullity, not wanted save for household drudgery. It was she, surely, who, if she became neurotic, as she was almost certain to do, might accentuate her compensating fiction to the point of attacking the social condition which oppressed her in the person of its representative, the 'Father-Governor'. He, too, was personally responsible for most of her misery, since he had begotten her female and not male, or (as she put it in that cipher) had robbed her of manhood. Also, he was--in the eyes of her Unconscious self--'the Man', that is, she was as an infant unconsciously in love with him. The incest-barrier (as we call it) baulked her here; and as, when she came to the experience of sex-need, she was not able to obtain other men to represent the Father, she threw back on him the responsibility for her emptiness.

"Now then, was William Smith her accomplice? At first sight--or rather hearing, for I got all this, so far, in New York from this lady's account--it seemed probable, for material, if not psychological, reasons. But when I discovered that he was expressing himself freely and fully as the 'superior male', capable, ambitious, enjoying himself without restraint in Boston, I absolved him. Morals are the cause of madness. Unmoral people never go mad, except in the case where insanity is a symptom of some disease like tuberculosis. Madness is caused by a conflict in the will. Immoral, as opposed to unmoral, people often go mad; for their 'conscience' reproaches them--Satan divided against Satan. And moral people go mad too, for their suppressed desires reproach them; and this is worse than conscience, because conscience is a factitious thing, an Intruder on Nature. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The penalty of disobedience is insanity.

"So this book of poems, which the writer herself never properly understood, fully and wholly, leads us to this grave. Here is the stick, the symbol of authority, broken by the blow which shattered the skull of its living parallel, the Father. Now we are ready to continue our reading.

"The next few poems are short and joyous. The magic has succeeded. But look here! Nineteen nine, April. Isn't this strange? 'The Pipes of Pan'. Last verse.

"'O Syrinx, we were glad indeed

To hear thee, changed into a reed;

Thine, losing Pan, was all the loss,

Thou female Jesus on the Cross!'

"Still no sense of humour! But are not these strange words from the Chosen Virgin? No; for her father's murder has been successful. She feels that she has conquered reality; so she faces it at last. The murder is only a substituted satisfaction of her real need; but it has given her confidence. The idea comes into her mind: 'I may be able to fulfill myself sexually after all.' Now watch is idea grow. Here are poems passionate, even sensual, one after another. 'The Night is Short,' 'My Dove,' 'Abelard', and so on. She still wants to triumph over man, but now it is in the normal way. All this means that she sees a chance to marry. But with this comes the note of doubt, of lack of confidence in herself. In the world of her psychic compensation she had conquered completely; but in this real life she was still unproven. We are near the end now--ah look!"

The poems had all been fair copies in her superbly delicate caligraphy; but this last page was a hurried scrawl, with blots. It was as if she wished to symbolize, even by means of external form, the sudden ruin of her life. The poem was entitled 'Red'.

 "'O flame of hell! how I have hated thee,

 Thou God, thou Father, thou creative curse,

 Red robber, red smutch on virginity,

 Red energy of this vile universe.

 I conquered thee, I blotted thee quite out,

 Abolishing thy presence like a dream,

 But when I came to thy my triumph out,

 Again I found the accursed red supreme.

 O vile! O serpent! I had crushed thee firm

 When I destroyed, annihilated Man,

 But thou, disguised, o execrable worm,

 Hast by a prostitute upset my plan.

 Thou art the Sun, thou God and Father, thou

 Red-Headed Harlot, scarlet Babylon

 That took my triumph. O, I see thee now

 And him thy red mouth, harlot, fixes on.

 I see thee pass me in a flash of light,

 The chariot of the Sun. Then what's to do?

 I will die virgin, for my soul is white,

 Spilling the red in me, my fault all through!'"

Simon Iff hesitated a moment, as if puzzled.

"Excuse me, Sir," said Dobson, "but I can explain one bit of that. She was in the village as we raced through. Miss Madison didn't see her because (begging your pardon, Miss) she was all over the parson, kissing him, with her hair down."

"I have never been accused of lack of thoroughness," cried Mollie, her shame taking refuge in pert affrontery.

"I think it's all clear now," said Simon Iff, very sadly. "At the last moment Reality defeats her by that very symbol of Red which she thought she had destroyed. Then the true horror was revealed to her as by an angel; the Red was in herself all the time. the 'Virgin' compensation was a fraud, after all; the red blood was in her heart. Ah well, that could easily be cured."

He closed the book, and put it into the hands of William Smith.

Then he locked his hands behind his back, and went with bowed head out of the house.

They followed him. He ignored the car, and went slowly towards Potter's Place, none daring to speak to him.

Smith and the coroner, walking some fifty yards behind with Miss Mollie Madison, saw that she was crying. Smith tried a stammering word of consolation. "Oh! Oh!" she said trembling, "there was never a man like Simon Iff. His soul is one fierce flame of love for humanity, and he--he--sees--too--much."