Leaven of Malice Read online

  The Bellman was closely perused by countless specialists, and by none more keenly than the specialists in morality; the reports from the police court were their special meat, and they acquired and retained a wide knowledge of who had been before the magistrate, and upon what charge; reckless driving, drunkenness, non-support of wives, all the common offences were docketed in their minds, enlivened now and again by a lively fist-fight or tasty bit of indecent exposure. Everybody looks at a police court report now and then, but the specialists never missed one; wherever a report might be printed, separated by some mechanical necessity from others of its kind, they would sniff it out, make it part of their mental fabric, never forget it, and recall it when the offender died, or when his daughter married, or when some distinction or piece of good fortune brought him once again into the news. They were good people, these moralists, who rarely offended against the law themselves; but if by chance one of their kind were found, say, drunk and in charge of a car, they knew at once all the details—that his wife was pregnant, or his aged mother trembling upon the threshold of death (for these are the two commonest afflictions of wrongdoers, as every newspaperman knows) and bemoaned his fall with an intensity which might almost have been mistaken for relish.

  To set down all the special interests to which a paper like The Bellman ministers every night would be a gigantic task and weary reading. For who, in his heart, really wants to give much of his time to another man’s concerns? Most people will sympathize with the schoolchildren who search the columns of the paper for items about “Current Events” to take to school to appease a teacher who approaches history by that path. But who except a physician searches the columns of accident news, to see what other physicians may be mentioned; and who but a lawyer gives special attention to the lawyers who are named in the reports of court cases? Professional etiquette forbids the gentlemen of the short and the long robes to advertise their skill, but they do not like to be overlooked in the news columns; as Mr. Marryat sometimes bitterly remarked, they were fond enough of advertising when they did not have to pay for it. Even the clergy are not above this human weakness; they may personally choose to do good by stealth, but their congregations like themselves and their pastors to be frequently and favourably mentioned. The page of social news was read with eagerness by those who hoped to be included, or who admired or envied those who were named, for even in democratic Canada the fire of social ambition burns with a hard, gem-like flame in many bosoms. There were thousands among The Bellman’s readers who apparently never wearied of reading that “lovely flower arrangements and tapers in dainty silver holders graced the table”; they always wanted to know who had “poured”, at afternoon teas, for to “pour” is for many ladies the pinnacle of social achievement. And the wedding photographs were keenly scanned by all the photographers, of course, to see whose work had been printed and what could be found wrong with it.

  Specialists of all sorts find the daily newspaper a mine of treasures for their delight. Sometimes this delight lies in indignation, and here both labour and management can be accommodated by a single item of news, for both are convinced that newspapers never use them with complete fairness. Indignation, also, was sought by the old lady who nightly scanned The Bellman for pictures of girls in bathing suits; upon finding such a picture, she never failed to write to Gloster Ridley, threatening to cancel her subscription if the offence were repeated. The advent of the two-piece suit, with its inevitable concomitant of a few exposed navels, was an unlooked-for source of delicious indignation to her. There were the people who read everything about royalty, and pasted it in a scrap-book, and the people who did the same with all news about movie stars. There were the people who always worked the simple crossword puzzle, or who read the article on bridge. There were the people who read the advice to the lovelorn, sometimes for laughter but usually in deep earnest. There were the people who read the nightly article of the medical columnist, seeking always a new name to apply to the sense of insufficiency, of dissatisfaction, of heart-hunger which gnawed at them. And of course everyone who had written a letter to the editor sought early for it until it was printed, or until hope died and resentment came to fill its place.

  As well as these specialists there were of course the professional newspapermen who read the paper closely for their own reasons. Mr. Rumball read all that he himself had written to see whether the city editor (who was, of course, jealous) had cut that splendid paragraph of “colour” in his report of a street accident. Archie Blaine looked to see whether, as he suspected, he had not written considerably more news reporting than anyone else; he was not jealous, but he sometimes wondered whether the fellows who had taken journalist courses at universities would ever write as much, as fast, as well, as he did. Mr. Swithin Shillito invariably read all that he had written aloud to Mrs. Shillito, and then pondered aloud on possible reasons why some of his witty aperçus (“Quite good enough for Punch, though I say it myself, my dear”) had not been printed. Jealousy, he feared; yes, it was a pity that poor Ridley could not rise above jealousy. Nevertheless, his brilliant couple of paragraphs about the decline in the quality of shoelaces had been used, and certainly Mr. Eldon Bumford would comment on it when next they met.

  Matthew Snelgrove read his evening copy of The Bellman with a special gloomy relish, for it never failed to yield several instances in which rampant democracy had been guilty of some foolishness which could never, he was convinced, have happened under the old squirearchy—particularly if a sufficient number of squires happened also to be lawyers. Life, as he conceived of it, was a long decline from a glorious past, and if a reader approaches a newspaper in that spirit, he can find much to confirm him in his belief, particularly if he has never examined any short period of the past in day-to-day detail. Bleak also in her approach to The Bellman was Mrs. Solomon Bridgetower, the mother of that Solomon Bridgetower whose name had been unwarrantably linked with that of Pearl Vambrace. She was a lady whose life had been devoted in great part to the study of world politics; when she was a young and keen-witted undergraduate of Waverley she had explored and dreaded the Yellow Peril with an intensity which was beyond her years, and won the admiration of her professors. As a young wife during the First World War she had been a great expert on German atrocities; she had successively foreseen and dreaded the Jazz Age, the Depression, the Rise of Fascism and the Second World War, but she had always had a soft spot for her first dread, the Yellow Peril, and insisted on regarding the rise of Russia to world power as an aspect of it. Higher education and a naturally acute mind had enabled her to dread all these things much more comprehensively and learnedly than most ladies of her acquaintance, and had won her a local reputation as a woman of capacious intellect. She read her Bellman with a special pair of scissors at her side, so that she might cut out and keep any particularly significant and doom-filled piece of news.

  The only other reader of the Salterton paper who used scissors was the secretary to the archbishop of the Roman Catholic diocese which had its cathedral there. Unknown to each other as they were, Monsignor Caffrey and Mrs. Bridgetower had both read and been impressed by a book written in the ’twenties by a French abbé, who recommended the clipping of newspapers as a method of clarifying and understanding what appeared in them. But while he did not use scissors, Gloster Ridley made it his nightly duty to read The Bellman, using a blue pencil to mark every error of spelling, punctuation, proof-reading and grammar; from time to time he confronted his staff with these marked papers, as a means of urging them toward the perfection which danced before him, an ever-fleeting goal.

  There was one other paper-marker in Salterton, and that was Mrs. Edith Little, Ridley’s housekeeper, and it was this habit of hers which made him think of her as Constant Reader.

  “COME ON THERE, Ede, come on! Let some of the rest of us have a look at the paper!” It was Mrs. Little’s brother-in-law, George Morphew, who spoke, and he playfully punched the November 1st issue of The Bellman from behind, as he did so,
startling her from her absorption.

  “You can have it in a few minutes,” she said, with dignity. “Just be patient.”

  “Patient, hell! I got to check up on my investments.” George laughed loudly.

  “Oh, your investments! You’re more of a baby than Earl. And speaking of Earl, just mind your language, George.”

  “He’s in bed.”

  “But not asleep. He can hear everything. And he just picks up everything he hears. So just let’s have a little less of H and D, please.”

  George’s reply was to belch, long and pleasurably. His sister-in-law gave him a sharp glance, and although his face was solemn, she knew that he was kidding her. George thought of himself as a great kidder. Pity there was such a coarse streak in George. Still, that was how it was with most men; swear or burp or even worse, and think themselves funny. She went on with her painstaking reading of the paper; from time to time she wetted her pencil and marked a typographical error. It was not long until her sister came in. George caught his wife by the wrist and drew her down into his lap. He kissed her with relish, while she struggled and giggled in his arms.

  “Cut it out, Georgie,” she cried.

  “A fine thing!” said George, feigning dismay. “A fellow comes home after five days on the road, and he can’t even get a little smooch!”

  “Not in front of Ede,” said his wife.

  “Cripes! Can’t swear because of Earl; can’t give you a smooching because of Ede! What the heck kind of house is this anyway?”

  “Don’t mind me,” said Edith, but she was blushing.

  “Lookit, Ede’s blushing!” cried George, delighted. “Come on, Kitten, let’s show her a real burner, and she’ll go up in smoke!” He seized his wife again, and kissed her in what he believed to be a Hollywood manner.

  “George, that’s enough!” said Kitten. “You got to remember that Ede’s living a single life, and that kind of thing isn’t fair to her. She’s got her feelings, you know.”

  “O.K., O.K.,” said George, with assumed docility, and as his wife sat on his lap rearranging her hair, he whistled When I Get You Alone Tonight, rolling his eyes in rapture. This caused Kitten to give him a playful punch in the chest, to which he responded by slipping his hand under her skirt and snapping her garter against her thigh. Edith sniffed and glowered at the paper. These nights when George came home from “the road” were always difficult. She wondered how Kitten could stand for it. Funny how some people seemed to lose all the refinement they’d been brought up with, after marriage. These thoughts of hers were well understood by her sister, who thought that what Ede needed, maybe, was a little cheering up. Nothing raw, like George wanted to pull, but some fun.

  “Ede’s marking up the paper for her fella,” said she, winking at her husband.

  “Oh, that’s it, eh?” said George. “Say, how’s the big romance coming along, Ede?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” said Mrs. Little, blushing again.

  “Go on! Sure you have. You and Mr. Shakespeare Ridley. Have you named the day?”

  “Things between Mr. Ridley and I are just exactly what they’ve always been, to wit, strictly formal as between employer and daily homemaker.”

  “Strictly formal, eh? Like the time he was sick and asked you to give him a bed-bath?” said George.

  “George Morphew, you made that up out of whole cloth, and I’d just like you to understand I don’t like it!”

  “Well, cripes, Ede, keep your shirt on! Cripes, it’s nothing to me if you give him a bath. For all of me you can get into the tub together,” said George, who delighted in this subtle baiting of his sister-in-law and was prepared to continue on these lines for an hour. But Mrs. Little’s cheeks were very red, and there were tears in her eyes.

  “I’d just like you to know, George, that I’m a part owner in this house and I don’t have to put up with that kind of talk,” said she. “And if there’s any more of it, I’ll march right out of here with Earl, and you can carry the whole thing, mortgage and all.”

  “Now you’ve made her sore, George,” said Kitten. “Why do you always have to go so far? Can’t you ever kid without getting raw? Lookit, now you’ve got her bawling.” She went to her sister and set about those shoulder squeezings, proffering of bits of partly-used Kleenex, and murmurings, with which women comfort one another.

  “O.K., O.K., you don’t have to take that line with me,” said George who, like many great kidders, quickly became aggrieved. “I know we’ve got a mortgage just as well as anybody else in this house, and if you don’t want Earl to know it too, you better not shout so loud. You don’t have to throw the mortgage up in my face, just when I get home from five days on the road.”

  “When you get back from the road, all you want to think about is One Thing,” said Mrs. Little, with an air of injured virtue.

  “Yeah? Well, just because you’re not getting any of it yourself you don’t have to pick on me,” said her brother-in-law, who now firmly believed himself to be the injured party.

  “Georgie! You just take that right back!” It was his wife who spoke. “Just because Ede’s had hard luck and is left to fend for herself and her kiddie you got no right to taunt her because she’s living the life of a single girl and it gets her all nervous and stewed up—”

  “I’m not stewed up,” shrieked Mrs. Little, and hid her face in the sofa cushions, sobbing.

  “Now look what you done!” roared George, happy to blame his wife for something.

  “Mo-o-ommie!” The child’s voice floated down the stairs.

  “Oh, God, you’ve wakened up Earl,” said Mrs. Little, hastily mopping her eyes. “Coming, Lover! Mommie’s coming to you right away!” She hurried from the room.

  “Well, now you’ve made a fine mess of it,” said Kitten.

  “Aw, hell, Kitten, she’s not the only one that’s nervous. I’ve been five days on the road and I’m nervous as a cat. You know how I get.”

  “I certainly do,” said Kitten, in what she meant to be a disapproving voice, but there was a strong hint of self-satisfaction in her tone.

  “Well, all right; you wouldn’t like it if I didn’t come home that way, would you? Best compliment a wife can have. You don’t have to jump on me, just because I kid Ede a little bit. I tell you how Ede is: you got to kid her to keep yourself from taking a punch at her.”

  “Now, Georgie, that’s my sister you’re talking about.”

  “Sure, sure, I know. But she gives me a heartburn the wrong end of my digestive track, like the fella says. We ought to have a place of our own, Kitten.”

  “We’ve been over all that lots of times, Georgie. We can share this big house with Ede a lot cheaper than we can live separate. We share the mortgage, and there’s what we get from the boarder, don’t forget.”

  “I don’t like having a boarder.”

  “It’s all money, and Mr. Higgin is no trouble. With you on the road most of every week, it doesn’t bother you much. You wouldn’t want a room to stand empty, would you?”

  “I guess not. But in this house everything’s for the boarder, or for Ede, or for that kid.”

  “Aw now, honey-bunch, don’t be sore. There’s one thing in this house that’s all for Georgie.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Me,” said Kitten, and gave her husband a long and passionate kiss. She was a pretty little woman, and because she loved and was loved in return, she was rounded and attractive. Edith, though she had a child, looked sharp and unfruitful compared with her childless sister.

  George was an unromantic figure, a travelling salesman for a food company, whose hair was thinning in front, and whose slack paunch slid down into the front of his trousers when he stood up. But so far as his nature allowed, he loved Kitten, and would have fought tigers for her. He kissed her now, greedily, and slipped his hand expertly into the bosom of her dress. And thus they remained, for perhaps a minute, until a key turned in the front door and the boarder ca
me in.

  “I hope I don’t intrude,” said he, popping his head around the corner from the hallway.

  “Oh, not a bit. Come in, Mr. Higgin,” said Kitten, jumping up and tidying her hair and frock.

  “Jeez, Kitten, you don’t have to jump like that. I guess it’s legal, after six years married,” said George. “Take a chair, Mr. Higgin.”

  BEVILL HIGGIN was a small, very neat man, so small and neat that the shininess of his suit and the oldness of his shoes did not at once attract attention. Although he was not eccentrically dressed, there was something old-fashioned in his appearance. His face was of a fresh, salmon pink, and his eyes were of a light and shiny blue. Although the top of his head was shiny and bald, the rusty hair which fringed it was long, and was brushed upward in an attempt to minimize his baldness, and this gave him a look of surprise. He had a long, inquisitive nose, and his little mouth was usually drawn into a bow, but from time to time it expanded in a smile which showed very white, very shiny false teeth. He was a teacher of elocution by profession, and, unlike many of his kind, he spoke in a pleasant voice with no particular accent, though an expert in such matters would have detected him as an Irishman. He perched himself neatly on a chair, and twinkled his eyes and his teeth at George and Kitten.

  “I shan’t stay long,” said he. “I see that you are—busy, shall I say?” And he laughed; his laugh was of a kind infrequently heard, which can only be suggested by the syllables tee-hee, tee-hee. “I wanted to ask a favour. I am acquiring a few pupils now, quite a number, really, and it is not always convenient for me to teach them in their homes. Many of them are business young men and women, who live in lodgings. I hoped that I might beg the use of this room for a couple of nights a week—when you are from home, naturally, Mr. Morphew—for two or three hours’ teaching?”