THE PURPLE PILEUS
Mr. Coombes was sick of life. He walked away from his unhappy home,and, sick not only of his own existence, but of everybody else's,turned aside down Gaswork Lane to avoid the town, and, crossing thewooden bridge that goes over the canal to Starling's Cottages, waspresently alone in the damp pinewoods and out of sight and sound ofhuman habitation. He would stand it no longer. He repeated aloud withblasphemies unusual to him that he would stand it no longer.
He was a pale-faced little man, with dark eyes and a fine and veryblack moustache. He had a very stiff, upright collar slightly frayed,that gave him an illusory double chin, and his overcoat (albeitshabby) was trimmed with astrachan. His gloves were a bright brownwith black stripes over the knuckles, and split at the finger ends.His appearance, his wife had said once in the dear, dead days beyondrecall,--before he married her, that is,--was military. But now shecalled him-- It seems a dreadful thing to tell of between husband andwife, but she called him "a little grub." It wasn't the only thing shehad called him, either.
The row had arisen about that beastly Jennie again. Jennie was hiswife's friend, and, by no invitation of Mr. Coombes, she came in everyblessed Sunday to dinner, and made a shindy all the afternoon. She wasa big, noisy girl, with a taste for loud colours and a strident laugh;and this Sunday she had outdone all her previous intrusions by bringingin a fellow with her, a chap as showy as herself. And Mr. Coombes,in a starchy, clean collar and his Sunday frock-coat, had sat dumband wrathful at his own table, while his wife and her guests talkedfoolishly and undesirably, and laughed aloud. Well, he stood that, andafter dinner (which, "as usual," was late), what must Miss Jennie dobut go to the piano and play banjo tunes, for all the world as if itwere a week-day! Flesh and blood could not endure such goings on. Theywould hear next door, they would hear in the road, it was a publicannouncement of their disrepute. He had to speak.
He had felt himself go pale, and a kind of rigour had affected hisrespiration as he delivered himself. He had been sitting on one ofthe chairs by the window--the new guest had taken possession of thearm-chair. He turned his head. "Sun Day!" he said over the collar, inthe voice of one who warns. "Sun Day!" What people call a "nasty" toneit was.
Jennie had kept on playing, but his wife, who was looking throughsome music that was piled on the top of the piano, had stared at him."What's wrong now?" she said; "can't people enjoy themselves?"
"I don't mind rational 'njoyment, at all," said little Coombes, "but Iain't a-going to have week-day tunes playing on a Sunday in this house."
"What's wrong with my playing now?" said Jennie, stopping and twirlinground on the music-stool with a monstrous rustle of flounces.
Coombes saw it was going to be a row, and opened too vigorously, as iscommon with your timid, nervous men all the world over. "Steady on withthat music-stool!" said he; "it ain't made for 'eavy weights."
"Never you mind about weights," said Jennie, incensed. "What was yousaying behind my back about my playing?"
"Surely you don't 'old with not having a bit of music on a Sunday, Mr.Coombes?" said the new guest, leaning back in the arm-chair, blowinga cloud of cigarette smoke and smiling in a kind of pitying way. Andsimultaneously his wife said something to Jennie about "Never mind 'im.You go on, Jinny."
"I do," said Mr. Coombes, addressing the new guest.
"May I arst why?" said the new guest, evidently enjoying both hiscigarette and the prospect of an argument. He was, by the bye, a lankyoung man, very stylishly dressed in bright drab, with a white cravatand a pearl and silver pin. It had been better taste to come in a blackcoat, Mr. Coombes thought.
"Because," began Mr. Coombes, "it don't suit me. I'm a business man. I'ave to study my connection. Rational 'njoyment"--
"His connection!" said Mrs. Coombes scornfully. "That's what he'salways a-saying. We got to do this, and we got to do that"--
"If you don't mean to study my connection," said Mr. Coombes, "what didyou marry me for?"
"I wonder," said Jennie, and turned back to the piano.
"I never saw such a man as you," said Mrs. Coombes. "You've altered allround since we were married. Before"--
Then Jennie began at the tum, tum, tum again.
"Look here!" said Mr. Coombes, driven at last to revolt, standing upand raising his voice. "I tell you I won't have that." The frock-coatheaved with his indignation.
"No vi'lence, now," said the long young man in drab, sitting up.
"Who the juice are you?" said Mr. Coombes fiercely.
Whereupon they all began talking at once. The new guest said he wasJennie's "intended," and meant to protect her, and Mr. Coombes said hewas welcome to do so anywhere but in his (Mr. Coombes') house; and Mrs.Coombes said he ought to be ashamed of insulting his guests, and (as Ihave already mentioned) that he was getting a regular little grub; andthe end was, that Mr. Coombes ordered his visitors out of the house,and they wouldn't go, and so he said he would go himself. With his faceburning and tears of excitement in his eyes, he went into the passage,and as he struggled with his overcoat--his frock-coat sleeves gotconcertinaed up his arm--and gave a brush at his silk hat, Jennie beganagain at the piano, and strummed him insultingly out of the house.Tum, tum, tum. He slammed the shop door so that the house quivered.That, briefly, was the immediate making of his mood. You will perhapsbegin to understand his disgust with existence.
As he walked along the muddy path under the firs,--it was late October,and the ditches and heaps of fir needles were gorgeous with clumps offungi,--he recapitulated the melancholy history of his marriage. Itwas brief and commonplace enough. He now perceived with sufficientclearness that his wife had married him out of a natural curiosityand in order to escape from her worrying, laborious, and uncertainlife in the workroom; and, like the majority of her class, she wasfar too stupid to realise that it was her duty to co-operate withhim in his business. She was greedy of enjoyment, loquacious, andsocially-minded, and evidently disappointed to find the restraints ofpoverty still hanging about her. His worries exasperated her, and theslightest attempt to control her proceedings resulted in a charge of"grumbling." Why couldn't he be nice--as he used to be? And Coombes wassuch a harmless little man, too, nourished mentally on _Self-Help_, andwith a meagre ambition of self-denial and competition, that was to endin a "sufficiency." Then Jennie came in as a female Mephistopheles,a gabbling chronicle of "fellers," and was always wanting his wifeto go to theatres, and "all that." And in addition were aunts of hiswife, and cousins (male and female), to eat up capital, insult himpersonally, upset business arrangements, annoy good customers, andgenerally blight his life. It was not the first occasion by manythat Mr. Coombes had fled his home in wrath and indignation, andsomething like fear, vowing furiously and even aloud that he wouldn'tstand it, and so frothing away his energy along the line of leastresistance. But never before had he been quite so sick of life as onthis particular Sunday afternoon. The Sunday dinner may have had itsshare in his despair--and the greyness of the sky. Perhaps, too, hewas beginning to realise his unendurable frustration as a business manas the consequence of his marriage. Presently bankruptcy, and afterthat-- Perhaps she might have reason to repent when it was too late.And destiny, as I have already intimated, had planted the path throughthe wood with evil-smelling fungi, thickly and variously planted it,not only on the right side, but on the left.
A small shopman is in such a melancholy position, if his wife turns outa disloyal partner. His capital is all tied up in his business, and toleave her, means to join the unemployed in some strange part of theearth. The luxuries of divorce are beyond him altogether. So that thegood old tradition of marriage for better or worse holds inexorably forhim, and things work up to tragic culminations. Bricklayers kick theirwives to death, and dukes betray theirs; but it is among the smallclerks and shopkeepers nowadays that it comes most often to a cuttingof throats. Under the circumstances it is not so very remarkable--andyou must take it as charitably as you can--that the mind of Mr. Coombesran for a while on some s
uch glorious close to his disappointed hopes,and that he thought of razors, pistols, bread-knives, and touchingletters to the coroner denouncing his enemies by name, and prayingpiously for forgiveness. After a time his fierceness gave way tomelancholia. He had been married in this very overcoat, in his firstand only frock-coat that was buttoned up beneath it. He began to recalltheir courting along this very walk, his years of penurious saving toget capital, and the bright hopefulness of his marrying days. For itall to work out like this! Was there no sympathetic ruler anywhere inthe world? He reverted to death as a topic.
He thought of the canal he had just crossed, and doubted whether heshouldn't stand with his head out, even in the middle, and it waswhile drowning was in his mind that the purple pileus caught his eye.He looked at it mechanically for a moment, and stopped and stoopedtowards it to pick it up, under the impression that it was some suchsmall leather object as a purse. Then he saw that it was the purple topof a fungus, a peculiarly poisonous-looking purple: slimy, shiny, andemitting a sour odour. He hesitated with his hand an inch or so fromit, and the thought of poison crossed his mind. With that he picked thething, and stood up again with it in his hand.
The odour was certainly strong--acrid, but by no means disgusting.He broke off a piece, and the fresh surface was a creamy white, thatchanged like magic in the space of ten seconds to a yellowish-greencolour. It was even an inviting-looking change. He broke off two otherpieces to see it repeated. They were wonderful things these fungi,thought Mr. Coombes, and all of them the deadliest poisons, as hisfather had often told him. Deadly poisons!
There is no time like the present for a rash resolve. Why not hereand now? thought Mr. Coombes. He tasted a little piece, a very littlepiece indeed--a mere crumb. It was so pungent that he almost spatit out again, then merely hot and full-flavoured. A kind of Germanmustard with a touch of horse-radish and--well, mushroom. He swallowedit in the excitement of the moment. Did he like it or did he not?His mind was curiously careless. He would try another bit. It reallywasn't bad--it was good. He forgot his troubles in the interest ofthe immediate moment. Playing with death it was. He took anotherbite, and then deliberately finished a mouthful. A curious tinglingsensation began in his finger-tips and toes. His pulse began to movefaster. The blood in his ears sounded like a mill-race. "Try bi' more,"said Mr. Coombes. He turned and looked about him, and found his feetunsteady. He saw and struggled towards a little patch of purple a dozenyards away. "Jol' goo' stuff," said Mr. Coombes. "E--lomore ye'." Hepitched forward and fell on his face, his hands outstretched towardsthe cluster of pilei. But he did not eat any more of them. He forgotforthwith.
He rolled over and sat up with a look of astonishment on his face.His carefully brushed silk hat had rolled away towards the ditch. Hepressed his hand to his brow. Something had happened, but he couldnot rightly determine what it was. Anyhow, he was no longer dull--hefelt bright, cheerful. And his throat was afire. He laughed in thesudden gaiety of his heart. Had he been dull? He did not know; but atanyrate he would be dull no longer. He got up and stood unsteadily,regarding the universe with an agreeable smile. He began to remember.He could not remember very well, because of a steam roundabout thatwas beginning in his head. And he knew he had been disagreeable athome, just because they wanted to be happy. They were quite right; lifeshould be as gay as possible. He would go home and make it up, andreassure them. And why not take some of this delightful toadstool withhim, for them to eat? A hatful, no less. Some of those red ones withwhite spots as well, and a few yellow. He had been a dull dog, an enemyto merriment; he would make up for it. It would be gay to turn hiscoat-sleeves inside out, and stick some yellow gorse into his waistcoatpockets. Then home--singing--for a jolly evening.
* * * * *
After the departure of Mr. Coombes, Jennie discontinued playing, andturned round on the music-stool again. "What a fuss about nothing,"said Jennie.
"You see, Mr. Clarence, what I've got to put up with," said Mrs.Coombes.
"He is a bit hasty," said Mr. Clarence judicially.
"He ain't got the slightest sense of our position," said Mrs. Coombes;"that's what I complain of. He cares for nothing but his old shop; andif I have a bit of company, or buy anything to keep myself decent,or get any little thing I want out of the housekeeping money, there'sdisagreeables. 'Economy,' he says; 'struggle for life,' and all that.He lies awake of nights about it, worrying how he can screw me out of ashilling. He wanted us to eat Dorset butter once. If once I was to givein to him--there!"
"Of course," said Jennie.
"If a man values a woman," said Mr. Clarence lounging back in thearm-chair, "he must be prepared to make sacrifices for her. For my ownpart," said Mr. Clarence, with his eye on Jennie, "I shouldn't thinkof marrying till I was in a position to do the thing in style. It'sdownright selfishness. A man ought to go through the rough-and-tumbleby himself, and not drag her"--
"I don't agree altogether with that," said Jennie. "I don't see whya man shouldn't have a woman's help, provided he doesn't treat hermeanly, you know. It's meanness"--
"You wouldn't believe," said Mrs. Coombes. "But I was a fool to 'ave'im. I might 'ave known. If it 'adn't been for my father, we shouldn'thave had not a carriage to our wedding."
"Lord! he didn't stick out at that?" said Mr. Clarence, quite shocked.
"Said he wanted the money for his stock, or some such rubbish. Why, hewouldn't have a woman in to help me once a week if it wasn't for mystanding out plucky. And the fusses he makes about money--comes to me,well, pretty near crying, with sheets of paper and figgers. 'If only wecan tide over this year,' he says, 'the business is bound to go.' 'Ifonly we can tide over this year,' I says; 'then it'll be, if only wecan tide over next year. I know you,' I says. 'And you don't catch mescrewing myself lean and ugly. Why didn't you marry a slavey?' I says,'if you wanted one--instead of a respectable girl,' I says."
So Mrs. Coombes. But we will not follow this unedifying conversationfurther. Suffice it that Mr. Coombes was very satisfactorily disposedof, and they had a snug little time round the fire. Then Mrs. Coombeswent to get the tea, and Jennie sat coquettishly on the arm of Mr.Clarence's chair until the tea-things clattered outside. "What wasthat I heard?" asked Mrs. Coombes playfully, as she entered, and therewas badinage about kissing. They were just sitting down to the littlecircular table when the first intimation of Mr. Coombes' return washeard.
This was a fumbling at the latch of the front door.
"'Ere's my lord," said Mrs. Coombes. "Went out like a lion and comesback like a lamb, I'll lay."
Something fell over in the shop: a chair, it sounded like. Then therewas a sound as of some complicated step exercise in the passage. Thenthe door opened and Coombes appeared. But it was Coombes transfigured.The immaculate collar had been torn carelessly from his throat. Hiscarefully-brushed silk hat, half-full of a crush of fungi, was underone arm; his coat was inside out, and his waistcoat adorned withbunches of yellow-blossomed furze. These little eccentricities ofSunday costume, however, were quite overshadowed by the change in hisface; it was livid white, his eyes were unnaturally large and bright,and his pale blue lips were drawn back in a cheerless grin. "Merry!"he said. He had stopped dancing to open the door. "Rational 'njoyment.Dance." He made three fantastic steps into the room, and stood bowing.
"Jim!" shrieked Mrs. Coombes, and Mr. Clarence sat petrified, with adropping lower jaw.
"Tea," said Mr. Coombes. "Jol' thing, tea. Tose-stools, too. Brosher."
"He's drunk," said Jennie in a weak voice. Never before had she seenthis intense pallor in a drunken man, or such shining, dilated eyes.
Mr. Coombes held out a handful of scarlet agaric to Mr. Clarence. "Jo'stuff," said he; "ta' some."
At that moment he was genial. Then at the sight of their startled faceshe changed, with the swift transition of insanity, into overbearingfury. And it seemed as if he had suddenly recalled the quarrel of hisdeparture. In such a huge voice as Mrs. Coombes had never heard before,he
shouted, "My house. I'm master 'ere. Eat what I give yer!" He bawledthis, as it seemed, without an effort, without a violent gesture,standing there as motionless as one who whispers, holding out a handfulof fungus.
Clarence approved himself a coward. He could not meet the mad fury inCoombes' eyes; he rose to his feet, pushing back his chair, and turned,stooping. At that Coombes rushed at him. Jennie saw her opportunity,and, with the ghost of a shriek, made for the door. Mrs. Coombesfollowed her. Clarence tried to dodge. Over went the tea-table with asmash as Coombes clutched him by the collar and tried to thrust thefungus into his mouth. Clarence was content to leave his collar behindhim, and shot out into the passage with red patches of fly agaric stilladherent to his face. "Shut 'im in!" cried Mrs. Coombes, and would haveclosed the door, but her supports deserted her; Jennie saw the shopdoor open, and vanished thereby, locking it behind her, while Clarencewent on hastily into the kitchen. Mr. Coombes came heavily against thedoor, and Mrs. Coombes, finding the key was inside, fled upstairs andlocked herself in the spare bedroom.
So the new convert to _joie de vivre_ emerged upon the passage, hisdecorations a little scattered, but that respectable hatful of fungistill under his arm. He hesitated at the three ways, and decided on thekitchen. Whereupon Clarence, who was fumbling with the key, gave upthe attempt to imprison his host, and fled into the scullery, only tobe captured before he could open the door into the yard. Mr. Clarenceis singularly reticent of the details of what occurred. It seems thatMr. Coombes' transitory irritation had vanished again, and he was oncemore a genial playfellow. And as there were knives and meat choppersabout, Clarence very generously resolved to humour him and so avoidanything tragic. It is beyond dispute that Mr. Coombes played with Mr.Clarence to his heart's content; they could not have been more playfuland familiar if they had known each other for years. He insisted gailyon Clarence trying the fungi, and after a friendly tussle, was smittenwith remorse at the mess he was making of his guest's face. It alsoappears that Clarence was dragged under the sink and his face scrubbedwith the blacking brush,--he being still resolved to humour the lunaticat any cost,--and that finally, in a somewhat dishevelled, chipped, anddiscoloured condition, he was assisted to his coat and shown out by theback door, the shopway being barred by Jennie. Mr. Coombes' wanderingthoughts then turned to Jennie. Jennie had been unable to unfasten theshop door, but she shot the bolts against Mr. Coombes' latch-key, andremained in possession of the shop for the rest of the evening.
It would appear that Mr. Coombes then returned to the kitchen, stillin pursuit of gaiety, and, albeit a strict Good Templar, drank (orspilt down the front of the first and only frock-coat) no less thanfive bottles of the stout Mrs. Coombes insisted upon having for herhealth's sake. He made cheerful noises by breaking off the necks ofthe bottles with several of his wife's wedding-present dinner-plates,and during the earlier part of this great drunk he sang divers merryballads. He cut his finger rather badly with one of the bottles,--theonly bloodshed in this story,--and what with that, and the systematicconvulsion of his inexperienced physiology by the liquorish brandof Mrs. Coombes' stout, it may be the evil of the fungus poison wassomehow allayed. But we prefer to draw a veil over the concludingincidents of this Sunday afternoon. They ended in the coal cellar, in adeep and healing sleep.
* * * * *
An interval of five years elapsed. Again it was a Sunday afternoonin October, and again Mr. Coombes walked through the pinewood beyondthe canal. He was still the same dark-eyed, black-moustached littleman that he was at the outset of the story, but his double chin wasnow scarcely so illusory as it had been. His overcoat was new, with avelvet lapel, and a stylish collar with turn-down corners, free of anycoarse starchiness, had replaced the original all-round article. Hishat was glossy, his gloves newish--though one finger had split and beencarefully mended. And a casual observer would have noticed about him acertain rectitude of bearing, a certain erectness of head that marksthe man who thinks well of himself. He was a master now, with threeassistants. Beside him walked a larger sunburnt parody of himself, hisbrother Tom, just back from Australia. They were recapitulating theirearly struggles, and Mr. Coombes had just been making a financialstatement.
"It's a very nice little business, Jim," said brother Tom. "In thesedays of competition you're jolly lucky to have worked it up so. Andyou're jolly lucky, too, to have a wife who's willing to help likeyours does."
"Between ourselves," said Mr. Coombes, "it wasn't always so. It wasn'talways like this. To begin with, the missus was a bit giddy. Girls arefunny creatures."
"Dear me!"
"Yes. You'd hardly think it, but she was downright extravagant, andalways having slaps at me. I was a bit too easy and loving, and allthat, and she thought the whole blessed show was run for her. Turnedthe 'ouse into a regular caravansery, always having her relations andgirls from business in, and their chaps. Comic songs a' Sunday, it wasgetting to, and driving trade away. And she was making eyes at thechaps, too! I tell you, Tom, the place wasn't my own."
"Shouldn't 'a' thought it."
"It was so. Well--I reasoned with her. I said, 'I ain't a duke, to keepa wife like a pet animal. I married you for 'elp and company.' I said,'You got to 'elp and pull the business through.' She wouldn't 'ear ofit. 'Very well,' I says; 'I'm a mild man till I'm roused,' I says, 'andit's getting to that.' But she wouldn't 'ear of no warnings."
"Well?"
"It's the way with women. She didn't think I 'ad it in me to be roused.Women of her sort (between ourselves, Tom) don't respect a man untilthey're a bit afraid of him. So I just broke out to show her. In comesa girl named Jennie, that used to work with her, and her chap. We 'ada bit of a row, and I came out 'ere--it was just such another day asthis--and I thought it all out. Then I went back and pitched into them."
"You did?"
"I did. I was mad, I can tell you. I wasn't going to 'it 'er, if Icould 'elp it, so I went back and licked into this chap, just to show'er what I could do. 'E was a big chap, too. Well, I chucked him, andsmashed things about, and gave 'er a scaring, and she ran up and locked'erself into the spare room."
"Well?"
"That's all. I says to 'er the next morning, 'Now you know,' I says,'what I'm like when I'm roused.' And I didn't 'ave to say anythingmore."
"And you've been happy ever after, eh?"
"So to speak. There's nothing like putting your foot down with them. Ifit 'adn't been for that afternoon I should 'a' been tramping the roadsnow, and she'd 'a' been grumbling at me, and all her family grumblingfor bringing her to poverty--I know their little ways. But we're allright now. And it's a very decent little business, as you say."
They proceed on their way meditatively. "Women are funny creatures,"said brother Tom.
"They want a firm hand," says Coombes.
"What a lot of these funguses there are about here!" remarked brotherTom presently. "I can't see what use they are in the world."
Mr. Coombes looked. "I dessay they're sent for some wise purpose," saidMr. Coombes.
And that was as much thanks as the purple pileus ever got for maddeningthis absurd little man to the pitch of decisive action, and so alteringthe whole course of his life.