The Red Book Magazine/Volume 44/Number 1/The Mummy

by John Galsworthy

For works with similar titles, see The Mummy.

 

The Mummy

^By John
Galsworthy

IN the end shelter of that Devon watering-place Eugene Daunt had been sitting for two days and nights. At sixty-three, and with his lack of adipose, any but the south-west wind in late October must have “sewn him up” long before. He sat, huddled in his worn blue overcoat with belt tight-drawn, peaked golfing cap over his eyes, and his skinny brown hands deep-thrust into his pockets, dozing or staring before him.

This end shelter was out of range of lamplight, and few passed it even in the daytime. For these reasons he had chosen it. He had ceased to wonder how much longer he could “stick it.” His nodding thoughts were free from the tortures of effort. The cards were hopelessly against him, and he just wanted to be let alone. Nothing so definite as suicide was in his drowsing mind. Suicide meant effort, and he had always avoided effort, except in the playing of games. He played this last game—conserving the ebbing vitality of his body, ribby as a greyhound’s. Neither was he bitter, sitting there. Natural that the “Johnnies” of whom he had borrowed scantily these last five years should be “fed up.” He would have been “fed up” himself. Natural that his old landlady should have come to him crying—“poor old soul;” a wonder she hadn't, long ago! He had shifted two watering-places down the coast, to sit it out where he was not known. On his lean brown face lurked a sort of grin. He looked a little like a Red Indian; had there ever been one who needed their stoicism more—or needed it less?

Only child of an Indian civilian, Eugene Daunt had been born in India, and taken home at the age of five. While at a private school he lost both parents, killed in an accident, and fell under the protection of his father’s sister, an unmarried lady who lived at Baymouth, and doted on him. He remained at this private school till he was fourteen. He was given to dyspepsia, and apt at games, good-looking, assured, stoical; he won races, made scores, had indigestion whenever there was an examination. It was thought that he would go into the army or the diplomatic service. On leaving school, however, he was such a comfort to his aunt, and it was so difficult to find a tutor who did not give him instant dyspepsia, that he was found suddenly too old to go in for either. His aunt rejoiced; she would have missed him too much, and he was now permanently free for the sports, handicaps, drives, and matches of the neighborhood, whence he could bring home those cups, cigarette cases, and other rewards of which she was so proud. She had a verandaed house called Eglamont, in a pleasant garden. Eugene had his own rooms and key, his spirits and tobacco, his fox terrier and spaniel, a day’s hunting when he wished; he shot well, and was welcome with his gun, to the landed neighbors: or on the local yachts where he looked to the life in a yachting cap. He had no patrimony, but his aunt had enough for two. A singularly placid woman, she concerned herself entirely with seeing that time made no changes in the life of him on whom she doted. No girls, however much he impressed them, lean in his very good clothes, detached him from her roof. It was less dangerous to prefer, platonically at least, the society of barmaids and married women. So the years passed by him, embalmed in her affection, in sport, and cigarettes; till, at the age of twenty-eight, he fell in love with the wife of a naval commander with whom he yachted and played billiards. She was a gray-eyed young woman, with great good humor, and an admirable figure. They had leased a house within a stone’s throw of “Eglamont” before the naval commander retired to the China station for two years. Not, indeed, till after his departure was Eugene aware of his feelings. Loyal to one with whom he had played games, he took himself in hand at once, and would sit gloomily pulling his fox terrier’s ears and smoking cigarette after cigarette, sooner than go and see her. In 1890 the phrase “playing the game” had not as yet come in, and he was confined to fortification by the term “not sporting.” The young woman, however, whose name was Mollie, had Venetian red hair; and he was startled one morning by her appearance with a letter in her hand. She had come to read him a message from her husband. After that it seemed natural that she should often come. The effort of saying: “Look here, you know, you mustn’t; I'm gone on you,” exhausted his defenses; nor was it easy to remember a man who, after all, was too old for her, and would not be back for two years. They remained, however, on platonic terms, partly because of their loyalty to the absent commander, and partly because he was not accustomed to any form of energy outside sport. So he would sit in his long chair, a cigarette between the yellow-stained fingers of one hand, and his fox terrier’s ear between the yellow-stained fingers of the other hand, staring at her and casting out between his filed-looking teeth, his short laughs and answers to her rallying talk. So it might have gone on for the two years, if her hair, one evening, had not been too much for Plato.

Eugene woke up next morning genuinely shocked—he had not been “sporting.” And yet, it was impossible to resist her. For a fortnight the affair proceeded, till one morning she arrived with a telegram in her hand, and on her face an expression remorseful, elated, tearful, glad. The commander had died on a boat expedition up a Chinese river. The news was three weeks old.

“Gene,” she said, “isn’t it awful, and isn’t it—isn’t it wonderful, in a way! After all, we—we haven't committed—and we can—we can be—” She stopped; his face was copper-colored. He stammered out: “Poor Bink! Poor old chap!”

She went away dreadfully upset. Next day he had violent dyspepsia.

During the following weeks of seclusion under his aunt’s care, he had time to see the matter in all its bearings; it had become evident to him that he was on the edge of being married. It would need inertia almost amounting to effort to avoid that fate. Had he enough? Thinking of her hair, he felt a sinking in that part of him nourished just then solely on Benger’s food. In the third week it came to him by inspiration that he knew a “Johnny” about to start on a six weeks’ yachting cruise. That evening, eluding his aunt, he made his way to the “Lion’s Tail” and over a game of billiards proposed to the “Johnny” and was accepted. That night he was free from pain for the first time.

Leaning over the side in the sun, on his friend’s yacht, a week later, he felt a kind of regretful deliverance. He wrote from Fowey:

“Dear Mollie,

“I have been very seedy, but am feeling as right as rain again. This is a nice little hooker. We shall be hanging about in her most of the summer. The weather is jolly, at present. I hope you are fit. It was a shock to me to hear about poor old Bink. Poor old chap! What awful luck!

“With the best,
“Yours ever,
“Gene.”

He did not return to Baymouth till October. He hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that she had left. A letter informed him that she could not live on her “moldy pension” and had started a milliner’s shop. He admired her pluck, her energy. She sent her love and hoped that his “poor tummy” was stronger. She mentioned theaters—she was evidently having quite a good time. Just one sentence began: “Gene, don’t you ever—” It had been crossed through. He felt that she had “sand.”

He settled down to the sports of the season; and time passed like a game that is played.

HE was thirty-eight, a little more dried, with a gray hair or two, when she came down to Baymouth again with her second husband, an old sportsman of fifty with any amount of brass, and a dicky chest. He was no end glad to see her, looking “so jolly fit,” with her hair as red as ever. “The old sportsman” played quite a good game of bridge—just then coming in. They resumed their relations quietly under his nose. She had never stopped loving him all this time, she said. He was touched and flattered, and would sit in his long chair with a cigarette between the yellow-stained fingers of one hand, and the ear of his spaniel between the yellow-stained fingers of the other hand, staring up at her, and emitting his rather high cackles, while she laughed lovingly at his taciturnity.

The Boer War began—he had thought “those Johnnies” couldn’t ride or shoot “for nuts; he became surprised. It got on his mind a good deal. In December he noticed a great change in Mollie; she grew excitable. And then one day, clinging to him, she said it couldn’t go on, they would have to “kick over;” she couldn’t bear that old man any more. Gene must take her away—he must! Divorce and all, it wouldn’t take a year until they could be married. Extremely copper-colored, he smoothed her. “Easy on!” he muttered. “You're off color, old girl. What’s’ the matter with the old sportsman? He seems a harmless sort of old Johnny.”

She flung off his hand, Oh! yes; what did he know—what did he care? He had no blood in him! She was altogether unjust. He told her not to be a little juggins. She clung to him—she called him a “mummy.” He said: “If you don’t shut up, I'll spank you!” She raved at him. Couldn’t he see—couldn’t he feel—she was only thirty-three—to be taken away from Gene—to be tied to that old man—with his—and his—and his—!

He smoothed her again; told her to go “steady over the stones!” They were very well off as they were.

“Yes,” she said suddenly, “but he suspects.”

“Oh!” he said, and sat down in his long chair. He had seen, suddenly, an effort before him. He had a pain in his diaphragm. He lighted a cigarette. His teeth at that moment looked very filed.

The effort before him took shape in the watches of the second night. Enlist! After all, what would it be? Only, as it were, a long day’s hunting, the exertion of it nothing compared with that of running away with Mollie to an ultimate marriage. He had four days’ severe dyspepsia—then took an early train to Exeter, and joined the Imperial Yeomanry. They wanted fellows of his stamp who could ride and shoot. His aunt was horrified; it seemed to her the end of the world. He rallied her. It would be a “picnic.” She admired his patriotism. They wanted him at once, he said. He left without having again seen his young and ardent woman. He wrote to her from Plymouth, on his way out:

“Dear Mollie,

“I was awfully sorry not to see you to say good-by. The Johnnies in my troop ride pretty well, but they can’t shoot for nuts. We're all as keen as mustard to give these Boer jokers a knock. I hope you’ll have a good winter, and get some hunting. I shall think of you riding the chestnut. Well—so-long, Mollie.

“Yours with the best,
“Gene.”

He rather enjoyed the campaign, and developed a talent for stalking. He had drilled three of those “jokers” when he himself received a bullet through the calf. While in hospital he developed enteric, and when convalescent was discharged and invalided home. Leaner and browner than ever, he lay in a long chair with a cigarette in his yellow fingers, staring at some conversationalist of the female sex with his steel-colored eyes, and occasionally emitting a little high laugh. He felt “full of steam,” and enjoyed the voyage “like smoke.”

“Well, Aunt Susan,” he said, on reaching Baymouth. His aunt shed tears of rapture. He renewed his life as if it had never been broken. The young woman and her husband were no longer there. And ten more years passed like a game that is played.

He was forty-nine when his Aunt Susan died. It upset him; she was a “good old soul.” “That old josser,” her lawyer worried him awfully about business. She seemed to have been living on her capital. All he would have would be the proceeds of the house. It was sold under his feet. He and his fox terrier were compelled to move out. They moved to lodgings close to the “Lion’s Tail.” He experienced almost at once the lack of Aunt Susan; he had to think of money. It was “an awful bore.” His billiards and bridge became systematic. He could no longer afford to hunt unless a friend mounted him. Still, he got along—there were few evenings when he did not make his five to ten shillings over the green baize—large and small. And five years passed as a game that is played.

He was fifty-four when the Great War broke out. It roused him as nothing had ever roused him yet. Those German “jossers” wanted a good hiding. Sitting in his long chair with a cigarette between the yellow fingers of one hand and his cocker spaniel’s ear between the yellow fingers of the other, he nerved himself for an effort. Two or three months passed in the process; then he journeyed up to Londen and presented himself at the head- quarters of an Officers’ Training Corps. He asked for a commission on the strength of his service in the Boer War. They were sorry—they wanted men of his stamp, but he was too old for a commission. He persisted that he could ride and shoot. They looked at him, and somebody remarked: “Yes, but can you think?”

He went very copper-colored, looked at them deeply, and left the room. If those “poopsticks” thought they were going to win the war by thinking—! He traveled back to Baymouth, and en- rolled himself as special constable. It was his duty to guard a culvert. He did it sitting on a shooting-stick, with a cigarette between the yellow fingers of one hand, and the yellow fingers of the other hand playing with the ears of his cocker spaniel.

THINK! He had plenty of time to think, out there week in, week out, in various weather. He would listen to the dripping stillness, or the soughing of the wind in the neighboring spinney, and wish that one of those “Hun Johnnybirds” would appear and give him sport. Now and again he stalked some innocuous person who came near his culvert; but there was never anything “really doing.” In sheer boredom he took to thinking about how to improve his income. What little he had could easily be doubled, he was sure, by any “juggins who knew the ropes.” He set himself to know them, by reading newspapers. And three years passed as a game that is played. During those years he doubled his income—on paper—but owing to circumstances that no juggins could have foreseen, he was receiving less of it than before he began to increase it. He was literally compelled to seek for a paid job. They gave him something in connection with a hospital. In 1919 the hospital was closed; the war being over, there was nothing for anybody to do, and his income was now just half the insufficient amount it had been before he increased it. In fact, it was about a pound a week; and prices double what they had been. He shot his dog Quiz—“poor old chap;” sold his gun, and changed to a back bedroom in a by-street, where he could sit in what sun there was, and settled down to live on “fags” and billiards. “Bet you a lunch” was his formula, varied by “Bet you fifty cigarettes” —he seldom lost. His clothes were still those he had worn in the days of Aunt Susan, pressed under his heavy leather trunk, and only put on when he went out to the “Lion’s Tail” at noon. The mornings he spent in an old blue dressing-gown, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and conning some derelict paper picked up in the bar. He never pitied himself, but he would now and again go copper-colored, thinking of his income and the newspapers. On the parade, in the spring of 1921, a lady sat down beside him. He recognized her at once—his old flame Mollie, and “pretty long in the tooth,” too! He made no sign of recognition—he hadn’t forgotten her calling him a “mummy” last time he had seen her, and that his clothes were not what they had been. But suddenly she turned and said: “Why, it’s Gene! So you’re still here!” It seemed to him odd. Where else should he be? And how was he? She herself hadn’t been at Baymouth since. She was a widow again. “Oh! And aren’t we old! Why, you’re quite white, Gene; and so should I be, if I didn’t—”

He grinned. Old Mollie had always been a “sport.”

“And to think you nearly knocked me out twice, Gene!” She looked him over slowly: “Poor old Gene, you look rather ‘on your uppers!’”

He became copper-colored, showed his filed teeth, and said:

“What damned cheek! You always were a cheeky kid!”

Something came into her eyes—a sort of light.

“You must come and dine with me, Gene. I’m at the Courtfield

He answered stiffly: “Thanks.”

He still had an old dress suit, and one white shirt with cuffs intact. In the next few days he used it several times. She could never elicit from him where he lived. He just grinned, or emitted his high laugh. He began to perceive that she had “tumbled to” his one dress shirt, and pitied him. He did not like it. One evening after dinner, while he was sitting in a long chair with a cigarette in the yellow fingers of one hand and the other hand dangling to the floor, she proposed to him. He grinned, and called her “‘a little juggins.” Next day he was down with a severe attack of dyspepsia. There was something disgusting to him in her wanting at her age to marry him out of pity. If she thought he was “such a tail-down Johnny,” she was jolly well mistaken. For a fortnight he stayed in his room, reading old Pink ’Uns, and living on Benger’s and cigarettes. Only when he had none left did he emerge. To his relief, she was gone. He had seldom played billiards better than in the week that followed. Then a real disaster befell him. His hands suddenly began to shake—he couldn’t play “for nuts.” It meant that he must live on a pound a week. He began to sit stiller than ever; thinking of what he could do. “Bear-leading some young cub”—something in a riding school; he even thought of wheeling a bath chair, of billiard-marking, of clerking to a bookmaker. But all such occupations would necessitate his leaving Baymouth; he was too well known. The exertion of such uprooting was beyond him. Besides, he had no interest anywhere else, and for such careers interest was necessary. In a sort of coma, time went by. Five shillings borrowed here and there, “tick” with his old landlady— “poor old soul;” the sale of little odd bits of salvage from Aunt Susan’s days, eked out his existence for the next six months. And then he plunged. A “josser” of his acquaintance who bred dogs was going out of business. Selling out his one remaining stock of value, he bought it. With the paid help of a “joker” out of a job, he put up extra kennels. It was the most definite work he had ever done. In memory of his shot spaniel, Quiz—“poor old chap!”—he bred cockers. For over a year nearly everything went well—he spent most of his capital, and had three large litters of pedigree pups. He passed hours among the “little beggars,” a cigarette between his lips, his yellow fingers crumpling their ears or feeling their points, while their little avid tongues licked all of him within reach. They were a great pleasure to him, not the less so for their promise of ten pounds apiece, and twenty pounds if over distemper. He debated whether to have them inoculated and sell them with a guarantee. Nature took the matter out of his hands before he had made the effort of decision. The violent distemper of that season came down like a wolf on his pups; all but two died. “The poor little black beggars!” For the first time since he went to school he almost shed tears. He had sat up with them night after night, had buried them one after the other. It was “rotten luck.” When the holocaust was over be was compelled to sell the kennel, lock, stock and barrel, to pay the bills he had run up. He had fifty pounds left. The efforts of that past year and its final disaster had produced in him a perfect fatalism. For fourteen months he lived on the fifty pounds, his watch, his family seal, the remains of his wardrobe. He never mentioned his condition, and would sit whole afternoons on the high seat in the billiard room of the “Lion’s Tail,” watching the game being played, and thinking: “They can't play for nuts.” What people thought of him sitting there, lean and white-haired, with his drawn copper-colored face and thirsting eyes, with his grin, and his well-cut clothes shiny from age, he neither knew nor cared. He had to sit somwhere. And here he got cigarettes, and once in a way a drink was offered him. His friends he had exhausted; he had borrowed from them and was never able to repay; his acquaintances began to shun him for fear that he would borrow. He was “down and out.”

One morning his landlady, “poor old soul,” came to him crying. She owed money. He couldn’t—she supposed—pay her just a little? He called her an “old juggins,” and told her to buck up. That afternoon he put his toothbrush, shaving brush and razor in the pocket of his old blue overcoat, sold his old bowler and his spare shirt for seven-and-six, bought two hundred fags and a ticket down the coast. The “poor old soul” would be able to let his room, at least.

IN the shelter, huddled into the corner out of the increasing wind, he passed his shaking hand over the bone and skin of his face, then diving it into his pocket, brought out a paper packet. Still ten cigarettes, but he felt too sick and empty to smoke them. If the sun would come out, he would get into it and have a sleep. He was “fed up.” Some “jokers” in his place would make for a workhouse, or take a brick and heave it through a window, get “quodded” and fed. Not much! Easier, more dignified, to sit on, here. If only the sun would come out and warm him! These “dam-cold” nights his heart was giving him “beans.” He thought with a grin of his Aunt Susan—the “old girl” would have a fit if she could see him; so would “old Mollie,” or his landlady, “poor old soul!” He shivered, so that his teeth rattled. People would notice him. He would get under the lee side of a fishing boat till it was dark. He stood up with difficulty, and began to move slowly toward the beach. With hands deep thrust into his pockets, he tried to look like any other “Johnny” crossing that little space. He sat down exhausted between two boats. An “old josser” was looking down at him from the parade; he took up a pebble, and with a shaking hand threw it at a log of driftwood ten yards or so away. Nobody would notice a chap throwing pebbles. He threw them at long intervals. His hand shook so that he could not aim—could not hit “the darned thing.” It angered him. Who would bet him he didn’t hit it five times out of fifty? He groped slowly for the pebbles, amassed a little heap, and counted fifty. Yes, he would hit “the darned thing” five times in fifty. He began. He missed his first sixteen shots, then hit the log twice running, and, taking out a cigarette, he rested. He smoked slowly—he was two pebbles up. The sun had come out, and shone full on him over the edge of the old boat. He turned his face to it; then taking up a pebble, began again. His hand shook worse than ever; he missed eleven times, then “got it plumb center.” Three hits in thirty shots—just up to his points. Again he took a cigarette and rested. Two hits to make in twenty shots—odd if he couldn’t win that bet! Time was when he would have hit that “joker” every time. His cigarette went out. He leaned against the boat, and closed his eyes. Cold sweat oozed from him; things sank around him. He rested, half- conscious; came to again, and saw the log with the sun on it. He groped up a pebble, and feebly flung it. A hit—by George! The devil would be in it now if he couldn’t make the other in nineteen shots. On his face, bony and copper-colored in the sinking sunlight, a grin was fixed. He flung and flung. Miss after miss after miss—thirteen running! “Curse! Couldn’t throw for nuts! Get the damned thing or bust!” Miss after miss after miss. Three more pebbles! He paused.

THE setting sun still shone; a sea-gull with brightened wings was passing within gunshot. As a boy he remembered he had shot a sea-gull—before he had learned to be a sportsman. Three more shots. He was tempted to get up and lob them. But could he get up? Besides, he must “play the game” with the darned old log! He had once claimed a ball “out” at tennis, when he knew that it was in. It was the sort of thing one didn’t like remembering. He raised his arm. Look at it shaking—how could a Johnny throw with an arm like that? The pebble flew wide. Two more! He remembered a “beak” at his private school who used to bowl round-arm. Nobody had bowled round-arm for forty years and more. Give it a chance! He swung his trembling arm three times in practice, then took up the last pebble but one. Now for it! His whole body swung with his arm. Whump! A faint exultant whoop came from his lips. A stab went through his breast-bones—it “hurt like steam!” He fell back, collapsed under the tarry boat, still as a mummy. And so next day they found him.