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First published J922
Published in The Malabar Edition

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
NORTM[tJMBBRl.ANl> PRESS Z.IMITED
GATESHEAD ON TYNE
F.451

R. THORNTON WILSON

WHO MADE WITH ME THE ITALIAN JOURNEY

NOTE

The author docs not hold himself responsible for opinions
expressed by his characters. Therefore if any reader feels moved to
write an abusive letter, he is asked to address it to Father d'Astier,
the Principcssa d’Orobclli, Mrs. Weatherby, Mr. Winnery, Bessie
Cudlip or even poor Miss Annie Spragg herself. By this time she
knows more about God than any of us who arc left on the earth.

CONTENTS

FACE

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL ... 9

THE MAN WHO BECAME GOD . . . . ^

TWENTY mRS OF DEVOTION . . . . 60

A PRAIRIE IDYLL 8l

A SENTIMENTAL PASSAGE .... 97

THE CRIME OF MEEKER’s GULCH . . .112

FATHER d’aSTIEr's STORY . . . . I24

J

STAY ME WITH FLAGONS . • i • •

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE . . ? . . I49

SISTER ANNUNZIATA . . . ’ . . 184

CODA . . • . . • • *200

THE JANITRESS’ TALE 221

THE ROMANCE OF MR. WINNERY . . .228

MR. WINNERY’s PRIVATE MIRACLE . . .245

"He did not tell Mrs. Winnery that in attempting to
solve one mystery, he had simply found himself face to face
with another and more terrifying one which neither saints
nor prophets nor scientists had ever solved in all the centuries
of the world's recorded existence. It made Mr. Winnery
seem to himself small and impertinent, and being a vain
man, he did not care to have his wife share this discovery.

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

I

I T was a broiling afternoon of mid-August in Brinoc and
everybody who was anybody had long ago quit its burn
ing pavements and chilly palaces for the mountains or the
sea. Left behind there were only stray bands of sweating
tourists and a few such remnants of the permanent colony
as Mrs. Weatherby and the mysterious companion whom
no one had ever met; old Mrs. Whitehead, Mr. Binnop, the
curate of the English church, the usual Marchesas and Con-
tessas, thick as flies, and Mr. Augustus John Winnery.
Except Mrs. Weatherby all these stayed in baking Brinoe
for the same reason. (The old Contessia Salvcrini put up
her shutters and lived in the back of her house, giving out
word that she had gone to Montecatint for the cure, and
receiving all her letters by arrangement with the paste
restante of Montecatini.) None of then# would have given
you the real reason. They stayed becaise they could not
leave their beloved Brinoe or because th^ were engaged in
some work of an archaeological or literary nature which
forced them to remain. The real reascai was that they were
too poor to leave.

In the case of Mr. Winnery, he could not leave because
he was engaged upn a colossal work which had already
taken up the greater part of his life. It was called Miracles
and Other Natural Phenomena. In speaking of this work
he always placed a profound emphasis on the word natural
lest you should think that he was taken in by such nonsense
as miracles. He was a small, bald man of fifty-two and a
quarter of a century earlier he had written parodies and
light verse which had appeared now and then in the Yellow

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Boo}{, But a kind of blight had fallen early on his literary
career and for years now he had been devoting his none too ^
great energies to demolishing the idea of miracles in general
and the legends clustered about the saints in particular.

His work kept him in Brinoe. It had kept him there for
twenty-nine previous and consecutive summers, and it was
not yet completed. (Indeed, only Mr. Winnery knew that it
was still in a chaotic stage, consisting almost entirely of huge
accumulations of notes and copyings from various little-
known books on the saints.) Still, it served its purpose, and
year after year it continued to give him a faint echo of that
fleeting glory which he had known as a young literary
radical. Old Mrs. Whitehead and those Anglo-Saxon
Marchesas and Contessas who had not become more Catho-
lic than the Blackest Black still spoke of Mr. Winnery*s
work with a kind of awe. Mr. Binnop, the curate, who
prided himself on being broadminded, did not mention the
work at all, but he did not, on the other hand, allow it to
interfere with his friendship with Mr. Winnery.

And now in the scalding heat of the August mid-
afternoon Mr. Winnery was driving in a decrepit fiacre
up the long winding road that led to the heights of Monte
Salvatore. He cursed the heat and himself and Mrs.
Weathcrby, Miss Annie Spragg, the coachman and Brinoe
itself — sacred, beautiful, romantic Brinoe, surrounded by
blue hills covered witli clouds of blue violets and fragrant
narcissus. Of course, thought Mr. Winnery bitterly, the
poetic temperament always chose to write about Brinoe
in May and never in August. Now if a scientist, a realist,
had written of Brinoe, it would have been another story.
He hated Brinoe, not because it lacked all the miraculous
qualities attributed to it by Browning, Longfellow and the
advertisements of the tourist agencies, but because he had
to live there. Poverty and inertia had chained him to
Brinoe for twenty-nine years and now at fifty-two he saw
no prospect of escaping from it even in death. In the end
he would be laid to rest, after a service read by Mr. Binnop

10

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

(who read the service so badly) in the Protestant cemetery.
It would have to be the Protestant cemetery because there
was no special cemetery for agnostics. He would rest in
death among all the poets, spinsters, retired colonels,
widows, decayed clergymen and adulteresses who since the
eighteenth century had lived and died among the exagger-
ated beauties of Brinoe. Probably he would be laid to rest
beside old Mrs. Whitehead. Perhaps even in her grave she
would rattle her false teeth over her dish of tea. Doubtless
she would be buried with a collected edition of Ouida
placed at the head of her coffin.

The fiacre moved in a cloud of yellow dust. Yellow dust
covered the black cypresses and the grey olive trees and the
blue-black ilex that wilted against walls turned a bilious
yellow by the unrelenting sun. ‘Ah,’ thought Mr. Win-
nery bitterly, ‘the beautiful blue cloudless sky of Italy.
Italy, land of laughter and sunshine. Ha! Ha!’ But it
was worse than that, for added to the baking sun there was
a hot wind from Africa. It had been Wowing steadily for
two days, having sprung up on the night of Miss Annie
Spragg’s death. It bore on its restless b«)som clouds of dust
and heat from the Sahara all the W|y across the blue
Mediterranean to the foothills of the A|ps. You wakened
in the morning to see the trees on the! hills above Brinoe
swaying in what appeared to be a oocji fresh breeze and
then you thrust your shutters open to that it was a wind
charged with the heat of all Infern<J^ And quickly you
clapped the shutters tight again, feeling slightly insane.

The driver of the fiacre smelled of sweat and garlic and
beat his bony horses from time to time with the butt of his
whip across their already scarred and blistered rumps. ‘ Ah,’
thought Mr. Winnery bitterly, ‘ these gay, kindly, carefree
Italians. Children of Nature.’ (So read the tourist cir-
culars.) He fell to cursing Ruskin and Browning. ‘ Where
you rest, there decorate,’ wrote Mr. Ruskin. (He was not
sure that he had the quotation correctly, but that was the
idea.) The Italians never stopped decorating. It was their

11

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

passion for decoration that had induced them to cover the
seat of the fiacre with great excrescences of soiled imitation
filet lace. The seat was at least black. You would not have
noticed the dirt. Or if they must decorate, why did they
not wash the decorations from time to time.

Mr. Winnery was a bachelor and wore yellow gloves to
keep microbes from his plump pink hands.

Fifty-two years of bachelordom had induced a certain in-
flexible routine into his manner of living. For at least twenty
years he had lived in the same rooms, eaten the same food,
risen and gone to bed at the same hours, always found his
cigarettes in the same spot and his books where he had last
put them down. He had sent off his querulous book
reviews and his fashionable correspondence to the Ladies'
Own World at exactly the same day by exactly the same
post. On Thursdays he went to the Principessa Bologna’s,
on Mondays to Mrs. Whitehead’s, and on Wednesdays to
the Marchesa Barducci’s.

To-day he had shattered the routine for the first time in
order to torture himself with the long drive to Mrs.
Weatherby’s villa. When he had gone more than half-way
he told himself that he had simply gone insane with heat
and boredom; but having already suffered a really colossal
discomfort it did not seem worth while to turn back. In the
cool of the evening the journey would be an easier one. At
least it could not be more uncomfortable.

The only concrete reason he could discover for the tem-
porary outburst of insanity was a desire to know something
of Miss Annie Spragg, and Mrs. Weatherby appeared to be
the only person in all Italy or all the world, for that matter,
who knew anything of her. Mr. Winnery was out in the
sun in the interests of science.

11

For twenty-nine years he had been writing his colossal

12

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

work and now for the first time a miracle had occurred, as
one might have said, just beneath his nose. It was the
miracle of the stigmata. In death an eccentric old maid,
who lived in one room of the ruined old rookery known as
the Palazzo Gonfarini, had received the marks of the Cruci-
fixion. It was the miracle of Saint Francis of Assisi and
Saint Catherine of Siena. Three persons had witnessed it,
besides all the mob that broke in afterwards to carry off as
relics all the furniture and even the clothes of Miss Annie
Spragg; these witnesses were a nun known as Sister Annun-
ziata, a priest called Father Baldessarc and the janitress of
the tenement, a bawdy, irreligious, anti-clerical Socialist
shrew, who called herself Signora Bardelli.

Here, Mr. Winnery told himself, was a perfect laboratory
specimen of a miracle. He might investigate and pull it
apart to his heart’s content. It was not, Mr. Winnery told
himself, a very rare miracle. It was always happening
somewhere. There were more than a hundred such cases
on record. Only last month there had been a sausage-
maker’s daughter in Bavaria. . . . And there were only
two cases which had been recognized a$ authentic and one
of these at least — that of Saint Catherine 0f Siena — ^he looked
upon as dubious. No one but Saint Catherine herself had
witnessed the scars because she had praydd that they be made
invisible to others. And then, as he poin|ted out in his work,
she had also a great motive in the ’irfvalry between the
Franciscans, who claimed the miraclij for the founder of
their order, and the Dominicans, of 'wd4ch she was in reality,
if not in name, the head. Pope Sixtus IV had issued a
decree at that time giving a monopedy of the miracle to
Saint Francis and making it a censuriible offence to mention
Saint Catherine’s experience as authentic. Saint Catherine,
Mr. Winnery thought, was a powerful but not a very origi-
nal woman.

But Miss Annie Spragg was neither Dominican nor
Franciscan. Indeed, no one seemed to know whether she
was anything at all.

13

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

For at least fifteen years Miss Annie Spragg had been one
of the sights of Brinoc, like the Etruscan excavations, and so
Winnery had seen her countless times. But it was not until
she was dead that he, in common with the rest of the world,
learned her name. To-day it was a name printed in news-
papers all over the world. ... In Paris, New York, Milan,
Bombay, Copenhagen. . . . Tired journalists had arrived
in Brinoe from Rome and Paris and Milan to report upon
the mysterious happening.

For at least fifteen years Miss Annie Spragg had wandered
the streets regardless of heat or cold, storm or sunshine — an
eccentric old maid whom the Italians looked upon merely
as one of the phenomena of a generous Nature, and whom
the foreign colony resented as something a little shameful.
She never seemed to have had but one costume. This con-
sisted of a bedraggled but miraculously serviceable suit of
tweed with a skirt which trailed the ground alike in dust and
mud, and a large flowered picture hat on which the roses,
from the constant assault of the brilliant Italian sunlight,
had long since lost the glory of their original aniline mauves
and magentas. Over this hat she wore a thick black veil
and always on her hands she wore white cotton gloves.

So little was known of her that in death there seemed no
one who was certain even of her nationality. One of the
two Brinoe newspapers (bitter rivals of each other) described
her as ‘Miss Annie Spragg, born at Newcastle-on-Tino
(sic), England,’— a quite natural mistake due to the convic-
tion that anyone eccentric must be English. It was the
mysterious Mrs. Weatherby who stepped forward and cor-
rected that impression. In bad Italian sne tactlessly addressed
a letter to the rival paper pointing out with some national-
istic feeling tliat Miss Annie Spragg was certainly not
English, but American, and that she had once been a resident
of Winnebago Falls, Iowa, a city of which Mrs. Weatherby
was herself a native. Mrs. Weatherby wrote that she had
recognized the old maid soon after coming to Brinoe when
she encountered her one day in the Piazza San Giovanni.

14

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

The letter was signed Henrietta Wcatherby (Mrs. Alonzo
Weathcrby), Villa Leonardo, Monte Salvatore.

Mrs. Weatherby was herself, Mr. Winnery believed, some-
thing of an eccentric. In winter and in the spring she was
to be seen driving about the town in a fiacre, clad all in
white, with a flowing white veil. In season she frequently
carried a bouquet of tube-roses. She was a middle-aged
woman of powerful build and in the circles frequented by
Mr. Winnery it was said that she was a secrcss and contem-
plated founding a new and what she chose to call an
‘eclectic* religion. In May it was her habit to retire to
the Villa Leonardo in a lonely valley some miles beyond
Monte Salvatore for the sake, it was said, ‘of meditation
and soul growth.’ Old Mrs. Whitehead, who sought out
every newcomer at least, reported an encounter with Mrs.
Weatherby which left her confused and baffled, owing, she
said, to the spiritual cast which Mrs. Weatherby insisted
upon giving to their brief conversation.

She was always accompanied by a phimp and youngish
woman dressed in black who appeared to be a sort of com-
panion-secretary. No one had ever heajrd the name of this
lady and she had had speech with no oHf. It was rumoured
that she was a deaf mute.

Ill

As the fiacre reached the crest of Monte Salvatore Mr.
Winnery’s nerves became worn to a fine edge. He began
even to think gloomily of suicide. His whole life, he told
himself, had been a failure. He had attained the age of
fifty-two without anything having happened to him. He
had known neither love nor love’s twin sister passion, and of
late the thought of the experiences which he had overlooked
troubled him profoundly. It was becoming a kind of neuras-
thenia. On its philosophic side he foUnd the thought terrify-
ing, It meant that he had missed the most important of
human experiences. Perhaps, he told himself, that was what

15

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

the world found lacking in his work; a touch of passion
might have made him popular if not distinguished. On the
physical side of the question it had occurred to him lately
that the attainment of such experience had not yet become
an impossibility.

He was, he supposed, at that period which people called
in capital letters the Dangerous Age in Men. And lately
he had noticed a certain physical change in himself, as
though some gland too long inactive had begun at last to
perform its functions. He who had always been a thin,
fragile little man began to grow heavier and feel stronger.
Even his liver seemed to trouble him less. He had begun
to experience the growth of a new force and vitality which
at times shook him like a fever. He supposed it was that new
force which had driven him out to-day in the burning heat.
On the intellectual side he had begun to have a curiosity
about life which was altogether new and quite disturbing.
It made him feel uneasy and restless, but although he slept
less well, the lack of sleep did not appear in his new-found
vigour to trouble him. Until the age of fifty-two he had been
a literary and classical writer who wrote of love only in its
more refined aspects.

The carriage reached the square of Monte Salvatore (that
romantic Monte Salvatore of which he had dreamed in his
Victorian youth and which now looked a bilious yellow and
smelled badly). It passed through the baking streets and
began to slip down the opposite side of the hill into another
pocket-like valley filled to the brim with dust and heat. Why,
Mr. Winnery asked himself, should anyone exchange the
heat of this valley for that of the other in the belief that it
was cooler here or that the air was any better? No one but
a fool like this Mrs. Weatherby. . . .

As the fiacre descended into the second valley Winnery
was forced to admit to himself that it did seem cooler here.
The trees appeared thicker and less jaded and the dust less
overwhelming, though that may have been only because
the road was rarely used. They ascended for a time and

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

then began a descent so sharp that the fiacre pressed close
against the buttocks of the oony horses, and presently on
turning a corner the driver turned and in a wave of garlic
exclaimed with an operatic gesture, ‘Behold the Villa
Leonardo.’

There was no villa to be seen, but only an island of dark
thick trees clinging to the side of the mountain and leading
up to it a long avenue of venerable oaks. As they drew
near, it became evident that the narrow road ended at the
villa itself and had no other reason for existence. The
clump of trees was like a patch of black sewn upon the side
of the grey and yellow hill. There was no other building
of any sort near it. Indeed, thought Winnery, it must be
impossible to see from there any human habitation. (He
was a gentleman given to rather pompous language, who
had known his great flowering in the day of the mo^ juste.)
It did seem cooler here, though it may have been only the
sense of isolation that enveloped the ancient villa.

On either side of the long straight drive leading up to the
house stood pillars of reddish stone, each surmounted by a
panther and a goat with a serpent at their feet. The panther
and the goat held between them a shield upon which no
arms had ever been cut. So damaged 'W^re the figures by
time and weather that a less antiquari|in eye than Mr.
Winnery’s would not have known the^^ for what they
were. Straight ahead the avenue lost it$df in the shadows
of gnarled and ancient trees which huhg closely over the
road.

After they had gone a little way, the villa itself came into
view — a commonplace yellowish villa set among cypresses
and olive trees with a flat facade ornamented in the fashion
of Spanish rather than Italian baroque. It had an unkempt
look with its shutters all closed against the heat and the
shrubbery all scraggly and unpruned. At the door, just
beside a large clump of sword-like yuccas, stood a smart
motor painted black with a delicate red stripe running
about the top. It was an eccentric, Latin and expensive car,

' 17

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

shining with too much polished metal and too many elegant
appurtenances, of the kind known as une voiture de grand
sport. The sight of it tended to raise the spirits of Mr.
Winnery. It meant that he would not be compelled to
encounter the formidable Mrs. Weatherby alone.

As he came nearer still, he saw that a part of the villa on
the side next to the valley had been built upon a sort of ter-
race foundation of a much older period. This, Mr. Winnery
saw, was of Roman construction. It might be that under-
ncath it lay an even more ancient foundation of Etruscan
origin,

‘Extremely interesting,’ he murmured, so loudly that
the driver turned as if in expectation of an order and then
saw at once that his fare was thinking of other things.

The house was placed so that it commanded a superb view
of the lonely valley, a view indeed which one would never
have suspected from the approach. Perhaps, he thought, it
had been chosen in the beginning by some Roman for its
sense of space, a thing so rare in the crowded valleys about
Brinoe. At the very bottom of the valley there was a yellow
line tracing the course of a freshet, now completely dry in
the heat of mid-August. And suddenly he felt sulTocated
once more and choking with dust.

The carriage stopped before the door and Mr. Winnery,
after putting on his yellow gloves and endeavouring vainly
to brush the thick dust from his clothing, went up the steps
and pulled a copper bell-handle made in the form of a
ram’s head and covered by a patinc of verdigris. There
was an answering tinkle of a bell, but no other evidence of
life. He rang again and then again with no more success,
and suddenly he was aware that the driver was looking at
him with an expression of malice as if he said, ‘ You forced
me to come all the way out here in the heat for nothing.’
It was a perfectly blank expression, but touched with insin-
uation. It made Mr. Winnery suddenly angry and embar-
rassed. It reminded him how he detested Italians as a race.
He pulled violently and the bell answered again with a

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

mocking violence. Then he turned and saying, * Wait for
me here,’ came down the steps and took a grass-grown path
that led through a tangle or ivy and cypress hedge toward
the back of the house.

IV

For more than a hundred feet Winnery made his way
through a sort of tunnel of foliage, so thick that even at this
season, the earth beneath his feet seemed damp and moist,
and then all at once he came upon the most extraordinary
and beautiful garden. It was large and square in size and
so placed upon the artificially raised terrace that it seemed
to hang in space above the valley. The garden was entirely
of greenery, a sort of vast chamber of which roof and walls
were made of foliage. There was no flower of any sort.
The villa itself made one wall and the other three sides
were entirely closed by the thick walls of ancient cypresses
of a size Winnery had never seen save at Tivoli. Near the
ground where the cypresses had no foliaj^, light, reflected
from the grey and yellow valley below, ^tered in between
the ancient grey trunks. Over the whole ^garden there was
a living roof made by the branches of colintless plane trees
planted to form colonnades and so trimined and trained
that their yellowing leaves shut out dl( heat and light.
Within this area the sun never penetrated imd there was no
grass but only a carpet of moss which, 14 the extraordinary
light, had turned an unreal and poison<iis shade of green.
It was as if in the entire parched and desolate valley, life,
green and exuberant, flourished only widiin this enclosure.

At first he had thought the garden empty, too, and silent
like the house, but after a moment, when his eyes had
grown accustomed to the fierce blaze of hot light from the
valley below, he discovered a group of figures at the far end.
There appeared to be several servants and working men,
and four women, of whom one, a vision of fluttering white,
was unmistakably the seeress, Mrs. Weatherby. There was

19

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

also a tall gentleman dressed all in black, with silver hair.
They stood gathered about a hole which appeared to be
the termination of a long trench freshly cut from the direc-
tion of the villa itself. The damp red clay lay heaped about
their feet. And then as he approached he discovered the
object of their scrutiny — ^something which appeared to be
the size and shape of a man and which was flecked and
discoloured by the clay.

It was the smallish plump woman in black who first
noticed him and spoke to Mrs. Weatherby. The seeress
turned and came toward him. She did not walk; she
floated in an artificial and gracious manner which made him
know at once that she had practised this walk for many
years. She was a heavy woman not without a certain hand-
someness due to her size and her majestic carriage. As
she drew near she held out her hand and, exposing an array
of flashing, healthy teeth in a practised smile, said, ‘Mr.
Winnery, I presume.’

And Winnery, fixing his face determinedly into a smile,
murmured, ‘It was good of you to let me come, Mrs.
Weatherby.’

Together they turned toward the others.

‘I am afraid there was no one to answer the bell. We
had all come out here, even the servants. We have just
made a remarkable discovery. While digging a new cess-
pool, the workmen unearthed a statue. We have been
unable to identify it. It seems to be a very strange statue.’

In the back of his mind Winnery kept thinking, ‘I
loathe this woman because she is refined and because she is
so healthy and therefore so entirely out of place here.’
Because he had a liver, healthy people full of vitality had
long been abhorrent to him, like people who whistle and
sing in their morning tubs.

He was then introduced to a tall, handsome but rather
battered woman of fifty, dressed smartly and much too
youthfully in clothes which by their simplicity and cut bore
the mark of the most expensive of Paris dressmakers. The

20

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

woman had for him a faint air of familiarity. It was a face he
had seen somewhere, the face of a woman of fifty which has
been much worked over. She wore a great many bracelets
and a string of real pearls.

‘ Principessa d’Orobelli,’ murmured Mrs. Weatherby
with a quiver of satisfaction. And then Mr. Winnery \new.
She was one of those brilliant birds of passage whose photo-
graphs taken at the Lido surrounded by naked young men,
whose names were of no importance, appeared from time
to time in the illustrated weeklies. Although he had never
seen her before, he had written many paragraphs for the
Ladies* Own World concerning her movements hither and
yon across the face of Italy. She was the smart, the almost
notorious, d’Orobelli.

‘ And Father d‘Astier,’ murmured Mrs. Weatherby with
a pleased and gracious nod in the direction of the silver-
haired gentleman. Father d’Asticr bowed, a tall, handsome
man with intense black eyes, a fine nose and a splendid
rather sensual mouth, a figure at sixty posscs^sed of great
vigour and distinction. Winnery knew of him> too, a priest
without any parish save all of God’s world, whd lunched and
dined ‘everywhere.’ He had a simple mission in life:
it was to convert the rich who married impo^rished titles
and to help on their way to grace any others of considerable
wealth who felt a leaning toward Rome. was a con-
fessor to many fashionable and scandalous Ikdics, to great
bankers and members of decayed royal famiKfc. Old stories
of Father d’Astier and ‘ the d’Orobelli * (as Winnery
thought of her), heard at second-hand through years, rolled
through the back of his mind. For an instant it gave him a
pleasant, warm sense of moving in the great world.

‘And Miss Fosdick,’ concluded Mrs. Weatherby with a
slight and careless gesture as if she were tossing a piece of
dirt, over her shoulder. The gesture indicated the plump,
shy little woman dressed in black who stood in the back-
ground with a touching air of timidity. This, of course,
was Mrs. Weatherby ’s companion, the deaf mute. Out of

21

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

the corner of his eye, Winnery saw how she hovered in the
background almost tremulously, obscured by that figure all
in white which seemed at once so vaporous and so solid.
Miss Fosdick was like shadow. She was too shy and fright-
ened like a bird. Mr. Winnery felt a sudden wave of pity
for her.

‘ What an awful life ! ’ he thought.

While they had been talking a workman appeared coming
down one of the long light-flecked corridors of the garden,
carrying in each hand a pail of water. In his wide belt of
black elastic was thrust a scrubbing-brush. He was a young
man, dark and black-eyed, who wore blue trousers stained
with the red clay and a check shirt open to expose his dark
sunburned chest. Winnery, who through years of boredom
had come to amuse himself at desperate moments by watch-
ing the sly, half-concealed actions of people, saw Princess
d’Orobelli’s eye rove over the masculine young figure.
Hcrodias, he thought. The workman knelt down and with
the scrubbing-brush began to remove the patches of red clay
from the freshly disinterred statue.

They stood about watching while the statue, slightly
pitted here and there by the action of acids hidden in the
sour ground of the dark garden, emerged in all the beauty
of its time-worn creamy white marble. Princess d*Orobelli
whispered something to Father d’Astier. One of the maid-
servants giggled and was silenced at once by a glance of
venom from Mrs. Weatherby, who had clearly determined
to regard this as a sacred moment.

Priapus himself had risen from the mouldering soil of
the ancient garden.

Whatever hand carved the figure had moved with under-
standing and passion. The statue carried in every line a
kind of quivering voluptuousness. The very curves of the
muscles and the line of the back and hips quivered between
the realms of ecstasy and that disgust which follows quickly
upon satiety. It was a glorification of sensuality. Indeed,
the sculptor had done his work so well that for a long time

22

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

the little group about the excavation stood awed into silence,
as if something had risen from the red clay which roused
disturbing memories in those who were experienced, and
disturbing intimations in those who had remained until
that moment virginal. No one could have remained entirely
chaste after looking upon the statue.

There were certain portions of the statue missing and
Mrs. Weatherby, noting this, said, ‘I’ll set Giovanni to
work tomorrow digging for the rest.*

But Father d’Astier protested quickly, perhaps in the
interests of the Church or perhaps he thought such a piece
of marble better buried for ever.

‘ I think it’s no use, Mrs. Weatherby. You might dig up
the whole garden without discovering anything. That is
usually the case.’

Giovanni suddenly turned the statue full upon its back so
that the face, amazingly preserved, looked up at them. It
was die face of an old man, but a full vigorous face partly
covered by a magnificent curling beard drawn ^ck to expose
the lips, in which there was that same sensualjbeauty hover-
ing between ecstasy and disgust. Winnery, looking down
at it, thought, ‘ It is a beautiful thing, but a liangerous and
disturbing one. Having it about, no one woiild ever have
peace. Perhaps it is safe with Mrs. Wea^rby. She is
possibly insensitive to everything.’ And th^n he saw sud-
denly that Miss Fosdick was watching him ai^a that she was
blushing. There was an odd flicker of synipathy between
them. Neither was very young and both' were without
experience. Suddenly he thought her appeafing and young
(though she must have been at least thirty-five) beside the
hardness of the notorious d’Orobelli, the cold worldliness of
Father d’Astier and the florid pretence of Mrs. Weatherby.

They set the statue against the wall of the garden above a
soft mattress of green ilex and then, with Mrs. Weatherby
floating before them in a cloud of white, they turned back
toward the villa. Winnery found himself walking beside
Miss Fosdick, for he already detested his hostess and was

23

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

shy and frightened in the presence of such creatures as the
d’Orobelli and Father d’Astier. A sense of depression still
haunted them all Once Winnery, feeling embarrassed by
this unnatural silence, murmured to Miss Fosdick, ‘It is
a beautiful thing— that statue.’

To which the answer came quickly with blushes and an
unexpected passion. ‘ No, I think it’s horrible.’

He knew then that the story of her being a deaf mute was
not true.

V

They had tea in a great room painted a faded pink and
decorated with a series of frescoes depicting the amorous
excursions of Jupiter to the earth. These frescoes might
well have been called The Apotheosis of Anatomy, for they
were done by some painter with an admiration for Luca
Signorelli and every muscle was thrown into high relief.
The whole effect was one of a plump and writhing unrest.
But the proportions of the room were noble and threw
the frescoes into obscurity. Unfortunately, Mrs. Wcatherby
had added fresh horrors. The furniture was an odd mixture
of periods and styles, all of them the frankest imitations.
On the chairs she had placed indiscriminately pillows of
satin in the most brilliant shades of Veronese green, Tyrian
purple and mustard yellow, all trimmed with black and
gold lace — pillows such as are born only of the Latin
nmagination. She explained that it was always the general
effect at which she drove rather than the detail, and that
therefore the authenticity of the furniture was of very little
importance to her. * The effect,’ she murmured, ‘ on enter-
ing a room ... the effect.’ She allowed the sentence to
finish itself in a vague, fluttering gesture, also (thought
Mr. Winnery) the result of much practice. A grey parrot
squawked on a perch in one corner and two tiny Pomer-
anians ran out screeching and yapping as the party entered.

But when the shutters were thrown open the room became

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL
magnificent, for one discovered that the whole valley lay
spread out beneath the windows. The same golden light
tnat filtered through into the deep garden poured in through
the great arched openings that made one side of the room.
The sun had be^n to slip down below the crests of the
mountain at the head of the valley and all the African dust
suspended in the hot air had caught and reflected its rays
in a blaze of extravagant colour. In the bottom of the valley
the lights were blue and purple and at the top these turned
to green and yellow and a curious shade of red-gold. It was
exaggerated and, to Mr. Winnery*s English eyes, a little
overdone, like everything in Italy.

‘What a marvellous place,’ murmured the Princess in a
deep, throaty voice. ‘Why have I never seen or heard
of it? ’

At that moment a servant brought tea, bad tea, of the
kind bought in Italy in ancient tins, and biscuits, also out
of tins, that were dry and hard.

‘I have never placed much importance; upon food,’
observed Mrs. Weatherby as she seated herself in an imita-
tion Renaissance chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl. ‘ I have
lived for seventeen years on the spirit, ever S]|tice I lost Mr.
Weatherby and discovered the consolationsi of religion.’
She turned suddenly and addressed her coittflanion. ‘Will
you pour, Gertrude? ’ And again to the Prindess d’Orobelli,

‘ Yes, it is a place rich in tradition and histofy, rich indeed.’
Again her words trailed off into space as if sne found them
poor, shabby things to express all the beauty of which she
alone was conscious.

Winnery began to suspect that this transparent woman
fancied herself as an enigma, a kind of Sibyl. Watching
her, he began to suspect, too, that she was a very rich and
a very mean woman, and that she sought to gloss over her
meanness by any motive at hand. She would have dragged
in God Himself if necessary. He saw also that Father
d’Astier and the Princess were profoundly bored and that
upon their faces had appeared that mechanical smile which

25

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

is a Strange mixture of condescension, absent-mindedness
and a desire to be polite — a smile which is one of the marks
of persons frequenting smart society. Thirty years of this
practice had fixed hard lines on the face of the Princess. He
asked himself suddenly why that strange pair had stayed to
tea when they might easily have sped back to Brinoe in the
black and red motor. Indeed, he could not see why they
were there at all.

Mrs. Weatherby, who had now struck an attitude in the
awkward Renaissance chair, continued her discussion of the
history of the place. It went back, she said, to Roman times at
least. The very statue they had just discovered proved as
much. Then certainly it had once oeen occupied by Leonardo
da Vinci, who, it was said, had used the cowshed for his
famous experiments in flying, and after that it had been the
property of the Spanish Ambassador at Brinoe, who used it
as a summer residence and added the baroque facade with
its agitated statues. Mrs. Weatherby ornamented the
account with many and minute boring details, most of
them completely inaccurate, since Mrs. Weatherby
possessed the sketchiest ideas of Italian history. Each
inaccuracy caused Winnery to wince and struggle with a
desire to set her right, for he was one who cared profoundly
for detail. He would have spoken, but that instinct told
him his effort was certain to make no impression and would
only delay the story of Miss Annie Spragg, A woman
accustomed to making over religions would not be awed by
history. Besides, as in the case of the furniture, it was the
effect she sought rather than the accuracy of detail.

During all this time Miss Fosdick sat quietly, her little
pink hands resting in her lap, but it was clear that her
thoughts had wandered far from the impressive account
she must already have heard a thousand times. She kept
looking out into the magnificent valley, that valley which
as night came nearer and nearer, began to approach in a
miraculous fashion that ideal which Winnery had once had
of the beauties of Italy. Here through these windows one

26

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

beheld no beggars and no Fascisti, one was aware of no
smells and no dirt, but only the magnificence of Nature
itself undefiled by the touch of man. Winnery for a moment
felt that its beauty compensated a little for the boredom of
being compelled to live in Brinoc.

But presently he found himself more fascinated by Miss
Fosdick than by the beauty of the view. He no longer
heard Mrs. Weatherby. Her sonorous voice had become
simply a dim annoyance, like the buzzing of a fly. Her
rapturous bosom no longer heaved and fell within the line
of his vision. He was touched by the look of hunger in the
eyes of her poor companion. It was a look which showed
itself in the eyes alone, for the rest of the face wore a fixed
and practised expression of sweetness and contentment as
befitted the handmaiden of a great religious teacher. She
even managed to look as if she were interested. Once more
she seemed to him touchingly young and innocent, like a
bird . . . (he groped for a moment for the proper literary
image) . . . like a bird that is being tormented. She was
aware, he thought, of a beauty which lay beyond the valley,
a beauty, too, which had nothing to do with|tlic caltimine
of the religions through which Mrs. Weatheipy must have
dragged her by the hair of her head. And tlmi suddenly he
experienced excitement at the sight of her jS^ft full throat
and the rather matronly curve of the bosc^ beneath the
shining black poplin. Fie began to see bi^ for the first
time — her fine hair and melancholy eyes, tier high colour
and all her Rubens curves. The experience startled him
for a second, as something new in all his jdxperience. He
could trace it vaguely only to the strange dbscene influence
of the statue. But it pleased and flattered him that the
emotion should have occurred at all.

Mrs. Weatherby had by now become launched upon her
period of religious experiment among the numerous sects
of Southern California, but the Princess d’Orobclli arose
and, taking the matter firmly in each hand, cut her short
and at the same time revealed the reason for her coming to

27

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

the Villa Leonardo. She said, ‘ Do tell us, Mrs. Weatherby,
what you know of this Spragg woman? I am dining with
friends and must leave soon. I should like to know the
story. It will help make the dinner a success. No one is
talking of anything else but Miss Annie Spragg.’

So that was the reason why the Princess and Father
d’Astier had made the hot, dusty journey ! They had come
to the apparent fount of all knowledge upon the subject of
Miss Annie Spragg.

Mrs. Weatherby, upset for a moment at being interrupted
in the process of making herself enigmatic, recovered quickly
and said, ‘Of course, I never really f{new her any more
than I \new her here in Brinoe. We lived in the same
community but, as you might say, in different worlds.
Gertrude knew her better than I. Isn’t that true, Gertrude? ’
She turned to wrest the attention of her companion away
from the unsafe extravagant beauty of the valley and back
into the room. From the irritation in her voice it was clear
that she had known all along, despite even Miss Fosdick’s
perfected expression of deep interest, that her companion’s
thoughts were wandering. It was clear also, thought
Winnery, that later, when the guests were gone. Miss
Fosdick would pay for her inattention. She would pay
dearly.

‘ Yes, Aunt Henrietta? ’ replied Miss Fosdick mildly.

Aunt Henrietta, thought Winnery. Then she must be
the niece of Mrs. Weatherby,

But Mrs. Weatherby displayed no intention of allowing
Miss Fosdick, however well she knew the story, to tell it.
She rolled into it in sonorous but refined periods, embroid-
ered by a great deal of explanation as to setting and back-
ground.

VI

Fifteen years earlier Mrs. Weatherby had been the richest
and the most important woman in Winnebago Falls, since

28

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

her husband, the late Mr. Alonzo Weatherby, had been
president of the Farmers’ Bank and also held a monopoly on
the new water works. Since then, Mrs. Weatherby indicated
modestly, she had become vasdy, incalculably richer due to
the fact that Mr. Weatherby, before dying, had invested
money in certain tracts of waste land in Oklahoma which
now poured forth gold in the form of oil. He had been,
one gathered from her accounts, a shrewd but ineffectual
little man whom she had browbeaten into the status of a
consort. Winnery saw him perfectly — the husband of Mrs.
Weatherby, Mr. Henrietta Weatherby. He had observed
a great many Mr. and Mrs. Weatherbys among the Ameri-
can tourists who visited Brinoe. She spoke of him with
condescension and even with a little contempt, as vaguely
useless and perfectly insignificant.

‘I can say honestly,’ she added, ‘that he was always
spiritually my inferior.’

The town of Winnebago Falls, which she $lso described
with a great amount of detail, rose up in a kind of crude
reality as a town old as towns went in Iowa, pf big houses
built in the florid style of the ’eighties and s^t back from
streets lined with rows of cottonwoods and c^ms — a town
which was the centre of an agricultural commlanity, and so
rather sleepy and quiet and the last place in which to expect
such stories as she had to tell of Miss Annie Spiiagg.

‘Winnebago Falls,* she said proudly, ‘w^s not one of
those German settlements in Iowa. It wi founded by
New Englanders. One of them was my grandfather.’

She made it clear that she was important, not only by
wealth, but also by blood, and even more than that by the
faith into which she had been born. ‘Miss Fosdick and
myself were both Congregationalists, and in such a place
the best people were always Congregationalists, That is
one of the reasons why I never really knew Miss Annie
Spragg. She was a Primitive Methodist and kept house
for her brother, who was much older than herself and a
Primitive Methodist preacher. But the Primitive Method-

29

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

ists were an insignificant lot and mostly poor whites from
the Kentucky mountains.’

At this point Father d’Asticr, speaking English with all
the elegance of one who knows a foreign tongue perfectly,
interrupted to ask exactly what was a poor white. He
listened with great interest while she explained and when
it was made clear she said, ‘ Of course. Miss Fosdick knew
Miss Spragg better than myself. There were reasons for
that.’

She made clear the reasons. Miss Fosdick ’s mother had
been a girl friend of Mrs. Weatherby. They had gone to
school together and been married on the same day, but
from that moment their courses had diverged, for Mrs.
Weatherby’s husband had gone up in the world and Mrs.
Fosdick ’s had slipped steadily down into poverty. With
poverty social obscurity came to her old school friend and
Mrs. Fosdick’s daughter, who now sat plump and on the
verge of middle age in the Villa Leonardo, had been forced
to do the best she could. Thus she had come into contact
with individuals in Winnebago Falls whom Mrs. Weatherby
knew only distantly if at all. Among these individuals was
Miss Spragg.

‘ But I never forgot that Emma Fosdick had always been
my friend,’ continued Mrs. Weatherby, ‘and I did all I
could for her daughter Gertrude.’

She indicated her companion with the gesture of one
showing his good works to the Lord. The wretched Miss
Fosdick turned quickly and gave an appreciative smile in
the direction of her benefactress and then fell once more to
staring out of the window into the purpling valley, looking
confused and tortured and miserable.

To Winnery, watching her, the thought occurred again
that she was like a plump pigeon used by the preposterous
woman in white as an object upon whicn to practise some
obscure and sadistic torment.

Mrs. Weatherby shifted her position a little, causing the
imitation chair to creak beneath her weight. At the same

30

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

moment the parrot burst into a scries of shrill screams and
squawks.

‘ He wants to go to bed,’ said Mrs. Weatherby, turning
to Miss Fosdick. ‘ Will you take him away, dear} He should
have gone long ago.’

Miss Fosdick rose with an awkward self-conscious gesture
of brushing imaginary crumbs from her lap, and murmur-
ing, *Yes, Aunt Henrietta,’ took the unpleasant bird from
its perch and carried it, still screeching horribly, off into
the shadows of the great echoing hall where the darkness
appeared to quiet its nerves.

As she went out of the door, Mrs. Weatherby murmured,
‘She is a good girl and a great comfort to me. She has
lived with me now ever since she was eighteen, when Mr.
Weatherby died and I went to California. She has never
cared to marry. Indeed, I think she has never found a man
worthy of her.’

With the disappearance of Miss Fosdick, Mr. Winnery
felt a little pang or disappointment like the first faint warn-
ings of an approaching indigestion. She seemdd to him the
only healthy, simple creature in the room. ,1

‘ But to get on with Miss Spragg,’ said Mr^ Weatherby.
‘She always lived a very quiet life and scl44tn went out
except in the evenings. She was always a >little queer,
but she grew queerer and queerer as she gyew middle-
aged.’ ,

Miss Spragg had occupied, it seemed, her brother
the clergyman, a small wooden house of somt six rooms set
back from the street in a tangle of lilacs, maple trees and
vines in the poorest part of town. Soon after she came there,
cither she or her brother had a high wooden fence built to
enclose the back yard. What went on inside the fence no
one knew very clearly, but it became known gradually that
it concealed a weird collection of animals. The old maid,
people said, was very fond of them. There were guinea-
pigs, rabbits, cats, a pair of decrepit dogs, and at one period,
Mrs. Weatherby heard, even a skunk. The thicK trees

31

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

about the house were alive with birds and they came from
all over the town to be fed within the enclosure.

‘That,’ interrupted Father d’Astier, ‘would perhaps
explain her having chosen Saint Francis of Assisi for special
adoration in her old age.’

‘ It was Saint John the Shepherd,’ put in Mr. Winnery
and then with a burst of Non-Conformist emotion, ‘ who in
the Roman church is merely a survival of the pagan
Dionysus.’

Mrs. Wcatherby ignored the comment, perhaps because
she had no idea of Saint Francis, of Saint John the Shep-
herd, or Dionysus, and sweeping on, said, ‘I used to sec
her sometimes, but I never cared for her. She had a proud
way of walking, like a cat, and she gave herself airs, as if
she was better dian other people. In the end that was what
made other people hate her. The congregation of her
brother’s church took a great dislike to her because she
would never join in church work and never went to call
on any of them. I don’t suppose there was anybody in the
town who in all the years she lived in Winnebago Falls had
a dozen words with her. Nobody ever knew anything
about her. They just took her for granted after a time. It
was the black goat that first began to make trouble.’

From somewhere, perhaps from some Irish family living
near the railroad in Winnebago Falls, the old maid acquired
a black he-goat to add to her pets. There was no reason,
said Mrs. Weatherby, why a goat should seem a pet more
strange than a dog except that the human race has always
had a curious feeling about goats, and in Winnebago Falls
this feeling turned to comment and indignation at the sight
of an old maid walking through the streets with a goat
by her side. For she developed the habit of taking the
goat at dusk each evening to the outskirts of the town to
feed on the thick sweet clover that grew by the county
road.

‘ It was a queer thing to do,’ observed Mrs. Wcatherby.
‘And in small towns, of course, everything gets to be

3 ^

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

known and people aren’t as tolerant as, well • . . we are in
a place like Brinoe.’

This remark she accompanied by a sweeping gesture in
the direction of the distant city, as if she would gather it up
and enclose it within her over-plump arms. It was her city,
Brinoe — Winnery suddenly had the feeling that she would
make her own anything which she thought might be of
use to her. She spoke as if her grandfather, instead of being
a Congrcgationalist, had been at least a Gonzaga or a Sforza.

‘But the worst trouble,’ she said, ‘came about when a
man called Hasselman, who delivered milk in Winnebago
Falls, told the story that he saw her coming home one
morning just after daylight across the fields from a place
called Meeker’s Gulch.’ She paused for a moment and
then added, ‘And the goat was with her.’

The last sentence she uttered slowly and with a great
ponderousness and then waited a moment. The Princess,
whose thoughts had clearly been wandering, was sitting
upright now. She had stopped glancing at her watch and
was listening, and into the eyes of Father d'Asticr there
had come a queer look of pain. i

‘Nobody ever proved the story,’ said Mrsl Weatherby,
‘and Hasselman was known to drink, so 4 great many
people thought he had been seeing things, i^t the people
in the town began to get uneasy about Miss Annie Spragg
and say that she ought to be shut up. A cpmmittec from
the church was going to see her brother ab$ut having her
sent away the very day he was murdered.’ ;

Somewhere in one of the other rooms the f^arrot began to
screech and Mrs, Weatherby, annoyed, suddenly rose and,
floating across the room, called out, ‘Gertrude, Gertrude,
what arc you doing to Anubis.'^ ’ There was an echo of
cold savagery in her voice, as if the parrot were the only
thing in the world she loved besides herself.

Miss Fosdick appeared again and in a tremulous voice
murmured, ‘He doesn’t seem to like being shut up now.
That’s why he’s screeching.’

33

B

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

‘ Well, take the curtain off his cage and then fetch a light.’

It had grown quite dark and the onlv light in the room
was tlie faint reflected glow of the aying sunset. Mrs.
Weatherby seemed a litdc, thought Mr. Winnery, like a
figure out of a nightmare which might suddenly turn out
to be real. It was not true, he told himself. There wasn’t
any such person as Mrs. Weatherby.

The Princess was murmuring, ‘ But the murder, my dear
Mrs. Weatherby. . . . You left us in mid-air.'

‘ It has never been explained,* said Mrs. Weatherby.
‘ He was found beaten to death in broad daylight by the
side of the road on the edge of the town. It seems he used
to compose his sermons while taking long walks and it
happened to him then. They never found out who did it.
People said that she must have had something to do with it
and that she ought to have been shut up long before. I think
they arrested her, but they couldn’t prove that she was even
out of the house that day. I never knew much about it.
It happened a little while after I moved to California to
begin my experimental work.’

And then suddenly, as if the story had comedo an end
before she meant it to, she said weakly, ‘And that’s all
there is. After the murder she left the town and nobody
knew where she went until I saw her in the Piazza San
Giovanni two years ago. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first,
and then I seized Miss Fosdick and said, “That’s that
Spragg woman, isn’t it, Gertrude? ” and Miss Fosdick
looked too, and said “ Yes ! ’’ We didn’t speak to her, because
she seemed so queer and we didn’t want to attract atten-
tion.’ She turned suddenly to Father d’Astier. ‘I sup-
pose that was not humble of me or Christian or Catholic,
but I hadn’t then received the light.*

There was something about this remark and its entire
unexpectedness which made Winnery start and ask himself,
‘What is she up to now? What game is she playing with
Father d’Asticr? ’

‘ I remember it was two years ago because it was at the

34

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOE

Easter procession and it rained on Easter and she was kneel-
ing in the rain and was wearing a big picture hat covered
with faded flowers. And the colours were running in the
rain.'

VII

At that moment Miss Fosdick appeared, carrying a huge
wrought-iron candlestick almost as tall and almost as heavy
as herself. In it, burning, there was one of those fat round
candles which are to be seen everywhere in the churches in
Italy. In place of a flame there was an electric bulb. She
came in quietly, put down the candlestick and retired silently
into the shadows.

The d'Orobclli rose abruptly and said, ‘What a very
interesting story ! But I am late. I must go.* She made it
clear none the less by some skilful intonation of her voice or
expression in her eyes that she had really found it a boring
tale badly told and not worth the trip to the V^la Leonardo.

Mrs. Weatherby became a miracle of gra<iiousness and,
bidding them all good-bye, murmured, ‘I ^ust have a
word with Father a Astier.’ I

Winnery would have gone into the hall witiij the Princess,
but he remembered that Miss Fosdick, forjj^tten and un-
graceful, was lingering in the shadows. He Uirned to speak
to her and founa that she was coming towaj^ him in order
to light them out. At the same moment ht heard Mrs.
Weatherby murmuring something to the jpricst. He was
able to catch only two words — ‘prayer aiw meditation’ —
and began to think that he had gone mad.

* You will have to go out by the garden,’ Mrs. Weatherby
was saying. ‘Margharita has stupidly lost the key to the
main door and no locksmith will come from Brinoe until
the end of the week.’

They moved down the hallway between dark rooms,
from one of which came the muffled indignant squawking
of the parrot Anubis, King of Darkness. Winnery had taken

35

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

the candlestick from the frightened Miss Fosdick and was
heading the little procession. In the garden the light still
filtered in between the black trunks of the gigantic cypresses,
but it was a different light now, feeble and blue and diffused,
the light from a hot waning moon that had risen above the
mountains on the opposite side of the valley. Far away, at
the end of one of me tunnels made by the plantain trees,
the statue, scrubbed white now by the strong brown hands
of Giovanni, gleamed against the black ilex hedge. Mr.
Winnery saw it again suddenly in his imagination. He saw
with a remarkable clearness all its beauty and sensuality. It
occurred to him that at some time in the remote past there
must have been other people living here in this same ancient
spot, living here and perhaps worshipping the ancient figure
of Priapus — troops or harlots and courtesans and voluptu-
aries. And their successors had been Mrs. Weatherby and
Miss Fosdick, bringing with them so much that was the
essence of a country that lay beyond Atlantis, unknown
and unimagined in the days when this Priapus was carved.

In order to reach the front of the villa it was necessary to
pass again through the tangled green tunnel which was
too low to allow the passage of the great candlestick. Miss
Fosdick solved the problem by removing the candle itself
and leading the way. In order not to fall in the darkness
they took hands in chain fashion, first Miss Fosdick and
then Winnery, then the Princess and last of all Father
d^Astier. Miss Fosdick’s hand was plump and soft and
placid, but the hand of the Princess was thin and hard and
feverish. Winnery thought it was trembling violently.

And then as they approached the other side there arose in
the thick bushes very near at hand the faint sound of a
scuffle and a torrent of words uttered in a soft masculine
Italian and then the laugh, hot and voluptuous and almost
hysterical, of a woman. For a second Mr. Winnery had the
wild thought that he had overheard the ghosts of that ancient
garden, and then the Princess, cmergi^ from the hedge,
called out sharply, ‘ Enrico 1 Enrico 1’ There was a silence

36

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

and she repeated the call and out of the bushes came a
chauffeur, aark and smartly dressed. She loosed on him a
torrent of nervous, impatient abuse. She was in great haste,
she said. She was already late. Why had he kept her wait-
ing while he amused himself pinching servant girls.

It was the vulgar performance of a well-bred woman
whose nerves were frayed.

Then Father d’Astier proposed that they take Mr. Win-
ner y in the motor. Turning, he said, ‘ If you go back in
the fiacre you’ll have no dinner until nearly midnight.’

The driver of the fiacre grumbled at being deserted after
darkness on a road so lonely, but Winnery, in an unbalanced
moment of extravagance, paid him for the whole journey
and a little over and he retired, still mumbling his indig-
nation.

It was the Princess herself who drove. She had Father
d’Astier by her side and Mr. Winnery was placed in the back
with the sulking Enrico. They bade Miss Fosdidk good night
and the car suddenly sprang forward with ^ wild roar,
violating the silence of the remote valley. The found echoed
and re-echoed through the hills, shattering the ftrange mood
that had settled on Winnery. He was alive, f after all. It
was the twentieth century. This was a de grand

sport in which he had clearly found a periled seat.

It shot through the green tunnel at a terr^ng speed, so
that the leaves whisked by with a hissing so^nd. Looking
back he saw the black figure of Miss Fosdieft, still bearing
the electric candle, disappear into the copse; of myrtle and
ivy and laburnum. At the end of the drive^ when they had
passed between the panthers and the fauns, he turned again
and there on the terrace beyond the room where they had
been sitting a little while before stood Mrs. Weatherby. In
the thin moonlight she would have been invisible save for
the whiteness of her gown. He thought she stood with her
arms held outstretched toward the sky, but he could not
make certain. The car suddenly shot ahead with a wild
roar. The Princess drove as if she were a mad woman.

37

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

VIII

The ride back to Brinoe was much quicker, but no less
free from discomfort, than the ride out in the fiacre. It was
only a different sort of discomfort. Winnery, who never
rode in motors because he could not afford it, felt that he
was being shot through Italy in a cannon-ball. There was
no dust this time, for the dust was left far behind, and even
the dust which remained on his clothes was blown away
by the very speed at which the big car hurtled along the
narrow roads. In Monte Salvatore and beyond, the Princess
set the strident German horn to shrieking at each wall and
turning. It was as if all the violence of a wild, undisciplined
nature had been loosed. The big Grebel lights ate through
dust and darkness alike and presently Brinoe lay below them
huddled in the tight little valley and glowing faintly in the
moonlight, covered by a thick canopy of heat and dust.
The wind from Africa still blew.

Once inside the city the Princess was forced to drive more
slowly as the car, making rumbling noises of impatience,
turned and twisted through the crooked streets. In the poor
quarter they were compelled suddenly to draw up altogether
and stop for a moment. In front of them, before the door
of an ancient palace, stood a crowd that filled the street
from side to side. It was the ancient Palazzo Gonfarini
where Miss Annie Spragg had died two days before. The
throng made way sullenly for the big motor and as it passed
the door of the palace Winnery discerned in the dim light
from a battered jet of gas three figures— a stout Italian
woman leaning on a broom made of twigs, a gigantic nun,
and a fat short little priest. These were no doubt the
janitress and Father Baldessarc and Sister Annunziata, the
witnesses of the miracle. Against the grey wall just beneath
the gaslight knelt the black figures of two peasant women,
praying.

Winnery suddenly shouted to the Princess, ‘I will get

38

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

down here. . . The car stopped abruptly before the pastry-
cake fafade of Saint Stefano and he descended. Thanking
them, he bade them good night. The car suddenly shot
ahead, leaving him on the sidewalk alone, knowing that
he would never see them again. They did not belong to
his world. They were not interested in him. They were
gone about their business and he felt a sudden wild pang
of literary curiosity. Where was the d’Orobelli bound in
such haste? What would they be doing that night? Why
was her hand so feverish? Why did it tremble so violently?
Where had they come from? What tragedies, what delights,
had touched their lives? Why had they gone to the Villa
Leonardo? They were growing old, too, like himself, and
the d’Orobelli was frightened.

Suddenly, as if awakening, he turned toward the old
palace where he occupied two shabby rooms. Something
odd had happened to him and he was aware of it all at
once with a sudden quickening of the heart. He had gone
up the hill feeling a bitter and disappointed . man, old at
fifty and lost for ever, and now he felt suddenly no age at
all. It was as if age did not exist. Even thc.^redom had
vanished — that awful boredom in which nothing interested
him, in which everything lost its value and Withered to a
common level of monotony. There were t^o things he
wanted passionately. One was to escape soAichow from
Brinoe and the other to live a little before hf died. It was
becoming an obsession with him. It seemed that until now
he had existed in a kind of literary spell completely detached
from reality, and now when he had begun to be old he was
aware of life.

He felt a disturbing desire to wander off alone in search
of adventure, moving in the constant romantic expectancy
that something might happen to him. He had no idea what
it was he expected nor what he would do with it when it
arrived, but it seemed to him that he could not go back to
his flat to unlock the door and find the same chairs, the same
books, even the same food that he had known day after day

39

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

in years of endless monotony. He halted and turned abruptly,
setting out for the Piazza Garibaldi, where there were lights
and music and gaiety.

He had a poor dinner and some vinegary wine, neither of
which seemed to matter greatly. He listened to the sugary
Italian music played abominably by a band seated under
the arcade. ‘The Italians,’ he thought bitterly, ‘are a
musical people.’ He listened to fragments of talk and
fanned himself because of the heat. Yet he enjoyed him-
self as he had not done in years. He felt life stirring about
him. He fell again to speculating upon the mystery of such
lives as Father d’Astier’s and the d’Orobelli’s, which seemed
so obvious and were in reality so mysterious. He thought of
that preposterous woman Mrs. Wcatherby and found him-
self wondering what it would be like to love and be loved,
to have a home and wife and perhaps children. He could
not see why these things had never occurred to him before
and he thought himself a little mad. Perhaps it was the
heat and the hot wind, and perhaps it was the queer change
which had come over him lately. Indeed, he even blushed
a little in the darkness. He thought a great deal about
Miss Fosdick.

At last when he had finished dinner he went for a walk
in the moonlight along the river. The wind had died down
and it occurred to him suddenly that in the moonlight Brinoe
seemed as romantic as people supposed it to be. In the
moonlight even the terrible equestrian statue of Victor
Emmanuel seemed romantic.

As he walked, his own past began to concern him more
and more as a sterile thing which had meant nothing to
the world and very little to himself, a past filled with promise
that had always seemed foredoomed to disappointment.
At twenty-four he had been a brilliant and promising fellow.
His parodies and his verse had appeared in the Yellow Boo\
alonpide the work of other men whose promise had been
fulfilled. People had taken him up and asked him about—
him, the son of humble parents, educated at Oxford by his

40

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL
uncle who made a fortune as a ship chandler. Critics
wrote of him that ‘he struck a new note^ et cetera, et
cetera. He had been one of the literary radicals of his day.
And then suddenly something had happened and people
grew tired of him. No one wrote of him any longer. The
fashions changed and his sort of thing was no longer
wanted. The Yellow Boo\ died. And now all the parodies
and verse lay encased, forgotten and dusty, in copies of a
periodical filed away in dusty museums. It was a curiosity.
It all dated now. Nobody wanted that kind of thing. It
dated. It was older than the writing of the Venerable Bede.

In all the symphony of literature he had been able only to
harp on one string and long ago that string had grown flat
and monotonous from too much use.

Now for fifteen years he had been writing items about
the English who lived in Italy and about those fashionable
and gaudy creatures like the d*Orobelli and Father d’Astier
who passed through Florence on their way from Rome to
Paris or Rome to Venice. He knew them iot. He only
wrote what filtered down from their world ihto the duller
circles which he frequented. Sometimes he w|ote querulous
book reviews, mostly of travel books writtcj^ about Italy,
and these , too, appeared in the Ladies' Own 'f/^orld between
advertisements for scents and flesh reduccri It was all
sordid and unworthy, but it helped to eke out the income
given him by Uncle Horace. Well, som^me he would
finish his book on Miracles. . . . Some dajf if he had any
money and could escape from the boredom; of Brinoe.

And then again when he had been on the terge of inherit-
ing all that money from Uncle Horace the old man chose
in his dotage to marry a strumpet, a cheap Cockney woman
young enough to be his granddaughter. Aunt Bessie ! He
thought of her with disgust as he had seen her in the
Temperance Hotel in Bloomsbury on the day he went to
buy her off with promises of money after Uncle Horace was
dead, A yellow-haired slattern, fat and vulgar, with a
Cockney accent. But then Uncle Horace had always been

41 B*

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

a common, vulgar old man. . . . To leave all that income
to her with the provision that when she died it was to go
on to him, her nephew ! And that woman — his Aunt Bessie
— was ten years younger than himself and had the constitu-
tion of an 0x1 No, he had been haunted by bad luck.
Nothing ever came out right. And now he was nearly
fifty-three. His life meant nothing to himself or to anyone
else. He had been a failure and it was too late now to
accomplish anything. Nothing that mattered had ever
happened to him.

IX

At eleven o’clock when he turned again toward his own
flat he went by way of the Palazzo Gonfarini, through
crooked narrow streets, filled with rubbish and smells, where
shadows seemed thicker than shadows should have been.
The crowd before the battered doors of the old palace had
thinned a little, but there were still people there, gossiping
and looking up toward the window just beneath the eaves,
and near the doorway there were three devout women kneel-
ing in the dust beneath the room of the mysterious old maid
who would be buried tomorrow.

All the way from the Gonfarini Palace to his own flat
Mr. Winnery turned over in his mind the power of super-
stition, against which all the logic and the intelligence in
the world appeared to make no progress. There were things
which science could not yet explain, but some day it would
explain all and then in a moment of triumph superstition,
religions, churches, all would be swept away and man liber-
ated to command his own destiny untrammelled by dark
heritages of the past. Some day he would finish his book.
For the moment he had at hand splendid material, a labora-
tory, as it were, a perfect specimen in the case of Miss Annie
Spragg. He would go deeper and deeper into her story.
Mrs. Weatherby had not told everything. Clearly she knew
things she had chosen for some reason not to tell.

42

THE THING FOUND IN THE CESSPOOL

His own flat was dark and after he had turned on the
light and turned down his bed, he discovered that the char-
woman had thrust a telegram under the door. It might,
he thought, have come from the editor of the Ladies* Own
World asking for information of some special importance.
He had had such telegrams before. He picked it up and
opened it.

Your Aunt Bessie died to-day.

John Willis

Who was John Willis? For a moment he stood quite still
with the telegram in his hand, uncomprehending. Then
for a second he felt suddenly ill. And slowly it began to
make sense to him.

Aunt Bessie was dead and he was a rich man. His whole
life was changed. He need no longer live in Brinoe because
he had no money. He need no longer write grudging book
reviews and bits of gossip about people he did not Know.
Aunt Bessie was dead. Aunt Bessie, who was younger than
himself and whom he had never expected to c^e. She could
not have been more than forty-two and Ae had stood
between him and his uncle’s wealth for Nearly twenty
years. Aunt Bessie with her Cockney accent and low
manners who had kidnapped into marriage 4. rich old man
three times her age. All that money was his. It was an
act of God.

When he had recovered his senses a little,: he sat down at
the table and stuck the telegram in the lettof-rack. He was
a careful man and he knew that when he wakened in the
morning he would need to see it there in order to believe
that he had not been dreaming.

Then his eye fell upon the pile of paper on which was
written his weekly corrcsponoence for the Ladies* Own
World, An hour later he would have taken his pen and
added, * Among those who paid Brinoe fleeting visits during
the month were Father d’Astier, the well-known dignitary,
and Princess Faustino d’Orobelli. She wore, etc., etc., etc.’

43

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

At this season, when there was no one in Brinoc, every item
was precious. Now he simply took up the papers and,
tearing them twice across, threw them into the waste-paper
basket. Then, feeling the need of air, he pushed open the
windows and as he stood there looking down at the river,
he found himself thinking of Miss Fosdick.

‘She is of a suitable age,’ he thought. ‘Neither too
young nor too old. She is not a widow, so she will have no
experience. She is innocent, more innocent than myself. I
must find out more about her.’

As he turned away from the window it occurred to him
that all the evening he had been aware of some vague thing
disturbing himself and all the life about him. Perhaps it
was only because the wind from Africa had died down at
last.

He was intensely lonely.

THE MAN WHO BECAME GOD
1

O NE crisp autumn morning in the year 1840 a little
after dawn there appeared out of the mists covering
the Illinois prairies a great covered wagon drawn by four
oxen and guided by a man of great physical power and
beauty who wore his hair cropped at the line of his shoulders
and a black, curling, vigorous beard that covered his whole
breast. In the wagon rode his wife and the four children
which she had borne him in five years. Guiding the oxen
with a long pole, he walked beside the cart much as
Abraham in the glory of his strength walked beside his
flocks, erect and beautiful and full of dignity. In his eyes
there was a burning light and on his arm he carried a great
Bible fastened and locked with brass clasps.

44

THE MAN WHO BECAME GOD

Beneath the ox-cart swung a crate filled with shivering
fowls and behind it walked a cow, a black hc-goat and two
milking she-goats. He had come from the Mormon settle-
ment where a little while before he had been publicly cast
out for immoral practices. Behind him in the colony he
left two wives and three other children. The wife who
slept in the covered wagon with the nursing child in her
arms was his first wife, a woman called Maria Trent, two
years older than himself and the daughter of a fur trader
of St. Louis, The youngest child was a male child who
had already been baptized by his father in the waters of
the Mississippi with the name of Uriah.

On the outskirts of a shabby village the wanderer halted
his wagon, unyoked the oxen and set about building a fire,
and in a little while a dozen early morning risers wander-
ing out from the village gathered about to stare at him.
Of these he took no notice cither by word Or glance, but
went on filling an iron pot with water and oatmeal. This
he hung over the fire. Then he turned toward the wagon
and called out ‘Maria! ’ and a pale, sickly^ woman with
reddish hair opened the canvas and climbed ^own carrying
a baby in her arms. In turn the stranger lift^ down three
small children, two boys and a girl. When t|ey had seated
themselves on a log beside the fire, the i^kn turned his
face toward the sky and raising his mighty arms began
to pray in a voice of singular beauty.

For a moment the little crowd gathered ^out the wagon
became uneasy, as if looking upon something not meant
for its eyes. One of the men grinned with a sclf-conscious-
ness rare in that crude frontier world. And then slowly the
voice and presence of the stranger began to work its effect
upon them. They were simple people and the words of
the stranger’s prayer were commonplace and filled with
noble expressions of a grandeur long since worn threadbare
by the mouthings of countless bad and insincere preachers.
But the same worn phrases in the voice of this preacher
became different.

45

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

‘O Lord of Hosts,’ he prayed in the beautiful voice,
‘ guide Thy poor children in their wanderings through the
wilderness. Look upon Thy poor servant and humble him.
Take him as Thy rod and Thy staff to spread Thy truth
like a morning sun piercing the darkness. . .

He prayed for a long time and one by one the three
village women knelt on the frozen clay. One of them threw
off her shawl and flinging herself down cried out, ‘ Forgive
us our sins, O Lord. Hallelujah. Forgive us our sins.’
One of the men began to pray and the others stood about
in silence, staring resentfully at the ground. The wife of
Cyrus Spragg began to rock to and fro on the log, silencing
the baby Uriah, who had begun to cry with cold and hunger.

When the stranger had finished, ne opened his eyes and
looked round him with the empty stare of one who had
come back from a great distance. Then the burning eyes
rested in turn upon each of the kneeling women, and he
murmured, ‘ Arise, my children, and go your ways, telling
publicans and sinners ye have found him on whom the
Spirit of the Lord is descended. Blessed be he who fills the
belly of the Prophet of God.’

They went away in silence and in a little while the three
women returned bringing with them two boys who carried
bags of beans and potatoes, late melons and bread and a
quarter of fresh mutton. These they laid beside the fire and
then one of the women, a plump and handsome young
thing, pulled her shawl more closely over her yellow hair
and speaking in a low, timid voice said, ‘Will you come
and preach for us, Reverend? It’s been a long spell since
we had a good preacher.’ There was a curious hot excite-
ment in her voice.

When they had gone again the woman on the log looked
up at her husband with the strangest expression. In her
eyes there was the light of admiration, but the thin mouth
curled as if in derision. She was the only woman in the
world who \new this man, and she could not bring herself
to leave him.

46

THE MAN WHO BECAME GOD

II

He stayed and preached. His wife played for the services
on a melodion which they carried in the covered wagon.
Each night brought souls to God. Each night brought
singing and weeping. In that little town all came to God
save one old man whose deafness shut him out from the
sonorous beauty of Cyrus Spragg’s voice and whose blind-
ness hung a veil between him and the fire in the preacher’s
eyes. They came to him, each one, in secret to ask forgive-
ness from their sins. He was to them the Prophet of God.

He left at last with his ox-cart and chickens and goats, his
wife and children, and he took with him a store of food and
a young heifer bred and due to calve the following spring,
and on the day he left a little crowd followed the covered
wagon for three miles beyond the village, and in it were
women weeping and crying out hysterically. When at last
he took leave of them at the ford in a muddy prairie stream,
he stood on the back of the wagon and madc^a long prayer
while they knelt on the frozen turf. And iwhen he had
finished he said, * And God came to His servj^t in a dream
and said, ‘‘Go ye into the wilderness and wfien ye find a
place where three streams meet, there shall y© found a new
kingdom which shall be called the New Ja’Usalem. And
it shall flourish and flow with milk and hofaiey, and to all
the faithful the founding of the kingdom #ill. be revealed
by a sign, and the faithful shall sell all and feive their homes
and firesides, their wives and husbands, nay even their
children, and come at last into the Kingdom of Heaven.” ’

Then he blessed them all and taking up the long wand
by which he piided the oxen, set out through the water to
cross the ford. One woman, the plump comely one who
had spoken to him on the first morning, rushed into the
cold water up to her knees, but he turned her back saying,

‘ Until the Lord send you a sign, tend your hearth and your
home.’

47

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Inside the wagon the wife lay with her face buried in a
new feather bed, her fingers pressed against her ears. She
was sobbing and ill and pregnant with another child of the
Prophet.

And in the village early in the following summer, the
plump blonde woman gave birth to a child which she said
was not her husband’s child, but the child of God and that
she must take it to the Prophet. Some thought her mad
and some whispered about ncr, and her husband hired a
woman to keep watch over her while he worked in the
fields, but one day when he had gone to Chicago she
escaped, and with the child joined a wagon-train bound
westward and they never heard of her again.

Ill

The tale of Cyrus Spragg is a legend of the flat country,
of those prairies of tht Middle West where one can travel
for days discovering only monotony, and the origin of
Cyrus Spragg is as mysterious as his end. No one ever knew
whence he came and none knows when he died. There is
no record of his grave. Some said that he was a gipsy, but
he was far too massive in build for one of the Romany race.
Others said that he was the son of a Frcnch-Canadian
father and a New England mother, and others that he was
of German origin, the son of immigrants from the Palatin-
ate, and still others that he was the son of a white man and
an Indian woman. It is known only that he came out of
the wilderness somewhere on the borders of Canada. It is
likely that he had Indian blood and that it was the blood
of the Five Nations, But there is little chance that the truth
will ever be known, for the Spraggites ceased to exist half
a century ago. The sect died when it no longer had a God
and those remaining alive who saw him in life never knew
anything of his origin.

The hrst existing record of his physical appearance is to
be found in the works of Miss Amelia Bossert, a lady of a

48

THE MAN WHO BECAME GOD

highly emotional nature who became the poetess and histor-
ian of the Spraggite sect as well as the mother of four
children by the Prophet. After she had passed middle age
and was no longer attractive she quarrelled with the sect
and was publicly expelled from the colony. But her impres-
sions had been written as a girl and having been already
printed and distributed she found it impossible to collect
and destroy them. She was seventeen at the time when
Cyrus Spragg first entered her life. She saw him on the
morning he entered Valencia, Illinois, driving a wagon-
train laden with food and household furniture sent West
into the frontier country by an enterprising Philadelphia
merchant. She must even then have been a woman of an
hysterical nature easily susceptible to a faith which rested
upon outbursts of wild religious ecstasy. There was a great
deal in her account that was significant.

She wrote : * He was a handsomely made man of about
six feet two inches with a remarkable high-coloured, full-
blooded look, with fiery black eyes and black curling hair
which he wore cropped so that it fell just bclpw the ears.
In weight he was much heavier than he appeared because
he was a muscular man of huge physical stren]^ fashioned
in such grandeur of proportion as might hav^een chosen
by Fidias or one of the Greeks (sic). His brow vjras open and
noble and his nose large and straight with elegant nostrils.
These nostrils were always a little distend(fca as I have
remarked is the case with men of virility apd passion of
purpose. The lips were of a fine strawberry ired and finely
shaped though I have heard it said they were too full for
some tastes, tjis hands were large and powerful, but of a
beautiful shape, although hard and calloused from the
powerful and heavy work which his truly Democratic
(sic) nature craved warmly. Though he was but nineteen
he had the mien and dignity of a well-developed man of
forty.

^ In his countenance there was already the light of God-
hood. His were the flashing eyes of a man born to com-

49

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

mand as the Prophet of God. People on whom the Great
Light had descended knew him at once as the leader sent
by God to conduct His children out of the black slough of
this world’s sin and despair. A great light shone from his
countenance. Many times since, the sight of him has called
to mind those noble words of Solomon in describing God’s
love for the Church :

His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters,
washed with milk, and ntly set.

‘ “ His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers ;
his lips like lilies dropping sweet smelling myrrh.

* “ His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl. . . .

His legs ate as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of
fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the
cedars.” ’

Miss Bossert, perhaps through a modesty which appears
to have deserted her in later life, saw fit to delete one sen-
tence of the passage. She writes that she saw him for the
first time when she was standing in front of Petersen’s
General Store, where she had been sent to buy eggs by her
afterward sainted mother.

‘While I stood watching him with all the curiosity
which we in Valencia felt for each new-comer, he lifted
single-handed out of the rut into which it had sunk a
whole laden ox-cart which two oxen had been unable to
move.’

Of that first appearance in Valencia there is no further
record, but from Miss Bossert’s description it is easy to see
that he was no usual frontier youth. It may have been that
he had in Valencia one of those adventures which later
marked his progress back and forth across the face of the
Middle West, but Miss Bossert, being at that time only
seventeen, would scarcely have heard of it. Her own adven-
ture came much later.

From Valencia he went westward to sell what remained

50

THE MAN WHO BECAME GOD

of his Store of commerce and then for nine years he appears
to have been lost, like Saint John the Baptist, in the wilder-
ness. They were years spent perhaps in trading and trap-
ping. Throughout his lire he was surrounded from time to
time by complete mystery. At the end of the nine years he
appeared in Saint Louis, where he married Maria Trent and
began his long career as a religious experimenter and itiner-
ant preacher.

IV

For thirty years from the day the Mormons cast him out
Cyrus Spragg and his ever-increasing family wandered the
frontier country, appearing now here, now there, bringing
with him excitement and romance and ecstasy where other-
wise there was only poverty and work. As he grew older
and more certain of himself, a kind of conscious glory came
to envelop him, so that at times his journeying took on the
aspect of a royal progress. Villages came to await his coming.
Twice there were scandals diat became known. Once
in Mississippi he was forced to flee before the fjhreats of an
outraged husband across the border into Tenncfsec, leaving
his family and his ox-cart to follow him. And t|ach year the
tired pretty woman who was his wife bore Him another
child until at length there were thirteen. ■

They were strong children, full of vitality, who thrived
on the abundant fo^ given by those to whom Oyrus Spragg
had brought the light. He had other childfoi, beyond all
doubt— children like that of the plump yellow-haired woman
who had disappeared seeking the Prophet. They were
scattered throughout the borders of the Middle West.
There were thirteen by his wife and three by the two
deserted Mormon wives and countless others not included
among those he sired after he ruled as God in New
Jerusalem.

The wife, it seemed, could not bring herself to leave him,
perhaps because without him she could not have fed all

51

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

those mouths, perhaps because in the end, after he had come
to believe in himself, she, too, began to believe that he might
be God. Or it may have been a thing even simpler and less
complex, that he had for her that fascination which he had
for other women, like Miss Amelia Bossert and the yellow-
haired wife.

The children had Biblical names — Jared and Obadiah,
Vashti and Uriah, Solomon and Bathsheba, Joshua and
Isaiah, Boaz and Sulamith, Abraham and Ishmael — all save
the last. For some reason the tired woman rebelled against
giving the last a Biblical name. Perhaps it was because she
had some foreknowledge that she would never have another
child and so sought to have one that might be her own in-
stead of his. Perhaps she knew even before it was born that
the last child was aestined to be strange and different from
the others.

The child was born one hot August night in a cotton-
wood grove in Iowa. There was a clear sky with a red moon
that came up out of the flat prairie as the sun disappeared.
The tired woman felt the pains coming on and begged her
husband to stop for the night among the pleasant trees.
She could not bear a child far out alone on that flat monoto-
nous plain with not even a bush to hide her agony. And
when she had seen to it that the smaller children were
asleep and the older ones had wandered off among the trees,
she went with Cyrus Spragg deep into the grove until they
came to a swamp bordered with deep thickets of witch-
hazel, and there in the wildest corner they made a bed of
leaves and blankets under the trees and Cyrus heated water
in an iron pot.

Her pain lasted all through the night, to the wild accom-
paniment of frogs croaking in the marshes and white herons
moving about and chortling in their sleep. A single coyote
somewhere on the edge oi the marsh sat on his haunches
and bayed at the moon, long quivering wails that came
surely from another world. It seemed that the child would
never be born and that surely she must die, but when morn-

52

THE MAN WHO BECAME GOD

ing came and the moon had disappeared and only Venus
hung red in the pale East, Cyrus Spragg tore the child from
its mother’s womb. It was a girl and it lived, but the tired
mother knew she could never have another child.

They baptized the baby in the waters of the marsh, giving
it the name of Annie, which was the name of Maria Spragg’s
mother.

V

In the years that followed, revelations that were false came
from time to time to the Prophet. Once he returned from
meditation in the wilderness declaring that God had come
to him in a pillar of fire to say that mankind could alone be
saved by turning again to the ways of the birds and the
beasts of the field. There must be no more marrying or giv-
ing in marriage and man must go about clothed only in his
skin, like the birds and the beasts. Sin, God told Cyrus
Spragg, was born of the garments with which n(ian covered
his body, ;

With his family and a little band of followers: he set up a
kingdom of Nature in the dunes and forests 0| Michigan.
But two things he had failed to consider. The Winter came
and with it forty-seven Vigilantes from the adarest town.
Together they dispersed the little band. Among t|ic followers
was Miss Amelia Bossert, the poetess, who early in the
summer of the next year bore a son to the {^ory of the
Prophet. The tired wife was released at list from the
servitude of her body.

And then again at Cairo, Illinois, God came to him
in the shape of a ram speaking with the tongues of angels
to warn him against the new deluge. From the back of
the great ox-cart he preached repentance and destruction,
and beside it he and his followers set about building a
clumsy barge that would have sunk as soon as launched.
The great ship was finished in November and he settled
himself to wait for the rains to descend and the waters to

53

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

rise. It is true that in that year the rains came and the rivers
in the Middle West rose higher than they had ever risen
before; but the Ark remained on dry land. No trickle
of water touched it, despite even the prayers of all his
band of followers. On the eighth day the river subsided
again.

He did not wait for new floods, but told his followers
that he had been guilty of error and sin and so had been
blind to the true meaning of God’s revelation, and packing
his family into the cart, he disappeared again, moving to-
ward the West with a small band of eccentric disciples. The
Ark remained, a curiosity which farmers drove miles to see,
and at last it was carried off piecemeal for firewood by the
negroes who lived on the river banks.

VI

In the spring of the following year the little caravan led
by the Prophet came suddenly upon * the spot where three
rivers joined their waters *. He was no longer a young man
and no longer quite a charlatan. At sixty-one he had come
to believe in himself as others believed in him. The thing
he had created took possession of him. The site where
three rivers joined their waters was the spot indicated by
him in a prophecy thirty years earlier. He had not believed
it then, and now it had come true. It was as if God had
chosen him, after all. Here he unyoked the oxen for the
last time. This was the New Jerusalem.

It was a fertile country, green and well watered, with
deep black soil, though it was a flat country and treeless and
bare. The land was to be had for the taking. At this time
there were in his train seven grown sons and nineteen fol-
lowers, men and women, and among them they claimed
land larger in area than all Judea. Cyrus Spragg became
the ruler and the patriarch and throughout me prairie
country those who had been awaiting a sign heard of the
New Jerusalem and left their homes and flocked to join

54

THE MAN WHO BECAME GOD

him. They came for days and weeks in wagons and ox-
carts, on foot and on horseback, a restless, emotional people
seeking the compensation of a romantic faith.

He built a Temple of which Miss Amelia Bossert’s des-
cription remains. It was eight-sided, without windows, and
possessed a single door. Inside there were no dividing
walls, but only draperies and curtains. What light there
was came through the roof which rose to a height of a
hundred feet in a gigantic dome-topped tower that was
visible for miles across the flat prairie from any part of New
Jerusalem. Near it he built the Ecclesiastical Palace, a
rambling wooden house painted white, that was to shelter
his wife, his six daughters, his seven sons and daughters-in-
law and his eighteen legitimate grandchildren. It was the
first house his tired wife had known in forty years and when
it was finished she took to a bed placed near a window that
gave out on the square before the Temple. There she lived,
wearing out her tired life in watching with dimmed but un-
complaining eyes this strange thing built up out of nothing
by the strange man she had loved and despised for nearly
forty years. Neither the thing nor the man hpd she ever
understood. i

When the Temple and the Palace were finished there was
a great service in the open air. Cyrus Spraggiwas photo-
graphed and took leave of his followers ano^tered into
the Temple, to pass eternity in repose and meditation. God,
he told them, would rule New Jerusalem thii)ugh His in-
strument, Cyrus Spragg. He would send out revelations
from time to time administering the sowing of crops and
price of grain and the shearing of sheep. As God’s instru-
ment, Cyrus Spragg could not die. He would live for ever
in the depths of the Temple watching over their good.
There would be only virgins to serve him, virgins to carry
forth his revelations into the light, virgins to feed him and
attend his will. Then he entered into the Temple and no
man ever saw him again. He became an Invisible Presence
and there were converts to the faith and children born in

55

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

New Jerusalem who had never seen Cyrus Spragg and so
came to think of him as God.

But in New Jerusalem dissension and wrangling broke
out even in the family of the Prophet himself, for his third
son, Uriah, was unlike the others and would take no part
in the plan, and went about muttering against his father.
He and the Prophet’s youngest daughter, Annie Spragg,
who never left the side of her mother, talked bitterly against
their father, even though their brothers upbraided and beat
them, until at last the tired mother, with her favourite
children, Uriah and Annie, left the squabbles of the Palace
and went to live by themselves in a house on the borders of
the colony. It was there the defeated old woman died at
last calling on the Prophet to leave the Temple and visit
her. But he never came, for God could not appear among
his people. When she was buried, Uriah Spragg and his
sister fled the colony one dark night, and with them went
Miss Amelia Bossert and her four sons, for she was an old
woman now and when the Prophet failed to choose her
among those to serve him in the Temple, she uttered blas-
phemies that caused her to be driven from New Jerusalem.
She went to Omaha to live and supported her four sons by
sewing. One of them became a senator.

When the Prophet was sixty-eight God sent him a revela-
tion saying that it was through his seed that the world
would be redeemed and that all his children would be
blessed unto the fifth and sixth generation as the chosen
and the true children of God. It became a great hon-
our for any woman to be chosen as the mother of God’s
children.

vn

There lived in a house not far from the Temple a young
woman of twenty called Eliza Weatherby, the daughter of
one of the Prophets oldest converts. She was a pretty girl,
devout and serious, but not without vanity. She sinned bv

56

THE MAN WHO BECAME GOD

wearing brooches and bright ribbons, and so she attracted
many admirers. Her father’s house adjoined the building
where the produce of New Jerusalem was sold and the mail
given out. Through this circumstance she made the
acquaintance of a young man, the only unbeliever who was
ever allowed within the sacred ground of the colony. He
was tall and straight and lean and a Kentuckian. He was
a hard rider and employed by the government to bring the
mail from Omaha west across the prairies to New Jerusalem.
For Miss Wcatherby he conceived a romantic Southern
passion which appears to have excited the girl, perhaps
because it was so free of all the piety which surrounded
the dour courtships of the Faithful. For New Jerusalem was
a moral community where there was no dancing or gambling
and no drinking of alcohol, and adultery was punished by
expulsion from the sect. But the girl resisted nim because
she could not marry an infidel and urged him to become
converted.

The suitor was a young man and quite out ®f his head
with love and desire for the pretty Eliza Wead^rby and at
length, when she remained firm, he was drii^cn beyond
endurance. He expressed a desire to be cojfverted and
under Obadiah Spragg, eldest son of the Prophet, he began
a course of instruction. What he learned there was never
known, for the secrets of the sect were well gtla^'ded, but it
caused him to violate the Temple. He discovofed that Eliza
was among the virgins chosen to serve the Prophet and on
the day she was called to enter the sanctuary tfet Kentuckian
broke in the door. A passing woman heard dirce shots of
a pistol and saw him emerge and leap on his horse and ride
off, not toward Omaha but toward the West. A little while
later Eliza Weatherby ran screaming into the street crying
out that her lover had murdered God.

A crowd gathered about the Temple, but none dared enter
to violate its sanctity save the woman chosen to serve on that
day, and as Eliza Wcatherby had fallen into a faint that
lasted until nightfall, she could not enter. So they waited,

57

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION

I

AS Mrs. Wcatherby had explained, food meant little to
IX her; it was rather the things of the spirit in which
she found satisfaction. There were two reasons for this,
one, that she really had no taste for food and could not dis-
tinguish good food from bad, and the other, that no matter
how great her efforts, no matter the number of Yogi exer-
cises which she practised, it was impossible to keep her
majestic figure within bounds. The trouble was wim her
glands.

The night after her strange callers had gone off in the
black and red motor of the Princess d’Orobelli she and Miss
Fosdick seated themselves to a dinner of veal and spaghetti
and wilted salad served by the same Margharita who a little
while earlier had been pinched by the chauffeur of the
Princess. There was also a little of that acid wine which
Italy produces in vast quantities. Miss Fosdick hated veal
and from a too great familiarity detested spaghetti. She
liked good food and only once in two years, when she had
escaped secretly to a restaurant, had she tasted it.

But the meal was a little better than usual because Mrs.
Weatherby was in high spirits over the success of the after-
noon and the glory reflected upon her as the sole existing
friend of Miss Annie Spragg, For Miss Fosdick this was
a condition as rare as good fwd. The sweet disposition, the
poise, the trained smile and the throaty voice, the sweet
expression which Mrs. Weatherby exhibited to the world —
all these were bought at a cost, paid in the beginning by
Alonzo Weatherby and after his death by Miss Fosdick.
All her ill temper was poured out upon their heads.

Shp observed to Miss Fosdick that Father d’Astier was a

6o

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION

devout and charming man, that the Princess was a woman
of great distinction and that Mr. Winnery (although he had
scarcely uttered a word) was a man of great intelligence.

‘We must do something about the villa,’ she said, ‘now
that we have begun to receive people.’

She watched Miss Fosdick. She had a way of watching
her companion as if to measure how much she might be
told, for one could not afford to betray oneself to a com-
panion. But as both grew older Miss Fosdick appeared to
notice less and less what happened about her. She was,
after all (reflected Mrs. Weatherby), a perfect companion,
docile and admiring, never intruding her own personality,
and, most important of all, she was a companion who could
not quit her place. Miss Fosdick no longer even gave in to
those fits of hysterical weeping which had been so trying, or
if she did weep, she wept in private where it would not
disturb anyone. ‘What would the poor lamb have done
without me? ’ thought Mrs. Weatherby. ‘ She would prob-
ably have been helpless in this world, probably doing sewing
by the day in Winnebago Falls. She is only a -child, after
all.’ I

They sat in the grand salon with the superb view over
the valley because as yet there was no furiutire for the
dining-room. From time to time Mrs. WeadiCrby would
lean over and murmur, ‘Do Too-Too and Liju want to
cat? ’ at which the two Pomeranians, yapping, lM>uld spring
into the air to snap at the piece of veal she hekl'cn her fork.
The candles burned without a flicker in the stifl hot air and
Margharita shuffled in and out noiselessly in felt slippers.
It was the same night after night. This was the middle of
August and it had been exactly the same every night since
the middle of May. On the opposite side of the table Miss
Fosdick stared out of her round eyes across the dark valley.
The excitement of callers had made her a little seasick, so
that she was uncertain whether she could cat or not. She
thought, ‘ I shall go insane. I can stand it no longer.’

Mrs, Weatherby continued eating the tired lettuce. ‘ You

6i

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

aren’t listening, Gertrude. I said we must do something
about the dining-room, now that visitors have begun to
come.’

‘We might drive into Brinoc to-morrow.’

‘ Not in this heat. You know how this heat affects you.
I shouldn’t mind it. If you could only believe as I do, the
heat would have no effect upon you.’

‘ Perhaps we’d better leave it until next year. It’s so late
in the season.’ (This, Miss Fosdick knew, was what she
was meant to say.)

‘Yes, next year,’ echoed Mrs. Weatherby, and then tartly,
‘You don’t seem to take any interest in anything any
more.’

Next year (thought Miss Fosdick) they would come out
here and live in the same dreary fashion. Nothing would
be done. And no one would come to see them except some
crazy woman who would talk magnetism and spirit control.
And next year and next year and next year. . . .

‘ If you can’t listen I might as well go to bed. Consider-
ing all I do for you. . . .’

Miss Fosdick never heard the end of the sentence, for
Mrs. Weatherby, in one of her sudden tempers, had rushed
out of the door, followed by the yapping Pomeranians. On
her way she knocked over her chair and the sound of it
striking the stone floor echoed through the empty villa long
after she had gone. Miss Fosdick’s expression did not
change. There was a buzzing in her head. The room
seemed suddenly to swell to enormous proportions and then
contract again. She lifted the tired lettuce to her mouth
and ate mechanically. Everything was so still and breath-
less and hot. ‘I shall go mad,’ she thought. ‘I shall go
mad.’

It was the return of Margharita that brought her out of
the sudden trance. She decided that she was glad of the
quarrel, for it gave her a chance to be alone for a little time.
If she stayed away long enough Aunt Henrietta would
send for her and then when she came. Aunt Henrietta

62

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION

would sulk and refuse to talk. Anything was better than
talking, feeding, feeding, feeding, the vanity of Aunt Hen-
rietta. What the world failed to give her Miss Fosdick was
forced to supply, and at the moment the world of Brinoe
was simply ignoring Mrs. Weatherby.

Then suddenly Miss Fosdick thought with a pang, ‘ I have
been rude and ungrateful. We are two women alone to-
gether in the world. I must not forget that. I owe her
everything in the world. But for her I shouldn't be here in
this beautiful spot, in this interesting and historic country.’
But almost at once she was overcome with a loathing for
the villa, for Brinoe, for all of Italy. She had to live there.
She could see no way of ever escaping this alien, unsympa-
thetic land where everything seemed romantic and untidy,
fantastically beautiful and reeking with smells.

‘If only I could speak Italian,* she thought, ‘I could at
least talk to the servants now and then. I must try and
learn next winter.’

But she knew she would never learn. She had never
learned anything. There was nothing, she told Herself, that
she could do. She was not clever enough.

‘I will go out into the garden until I’ve rc<i)vered my
temper.’

II

In the garden the air seemed cool and thereiwas a smell
of fresh earth coming from the trench that had been dug
for the cesspool. The moon had risen to the fop of the sky
and its light fell upon the roof of fading plantain leaves, so
that the carpet of moss below was flecked all over with a
pattern of silver. Usually she was afraid at night in the gar-
den, with that fear of darkness and the unknown that had
paralysed her timid nature since childhood. And there was
something special about this garden. She always had a
feeling of being watched by invisible eyes. It was too old,
too haunted by its incalculable antiquity. But to-night the

63

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

shadows seemed less ominous and the faint whispering of
the leaves even friendly. It may have been the light showing
from the the servants’ wing that gave her courage, or it may
have been a sudden overwhelming conviction that anything
was better than talking to Aunt Henrietta.

‘ I must not think that,’ she told herself. ‘ Aunt Henrietta
is right. It is evil thoughts that destroy us and make us
old. . . . But what difference does it make whether I am
old or not.? Nothing can ever happen to me. I am thirty-
eight years old and nothing has ever happened. I am get-
ting fat and no man would ever look at me even if I had
the chance to know one.’

* Still,’ she thought, blushing a little, ‘ that Mr. Winnery
did look at me to-day.’

She found herself presently at a spot in the garden where
the jasmine climbed over the pitted stone balustrade that
overhung the deep valley. A few pale blossoms still gleamed
in the moonlight and the fragrance drifted through the still
air under the colonnades of trees. The scent came to her
vaguely, awakening and sharpening her senses and draw-
ing her thoughts away from herself. Leaning over tlie
balustrade she broke off a blossom and smelled of it,
half dreaming. ‘That Mr. Winnery who was here to-
day. . . . He was polite to me. But I shan’t ever see him
again.’

She turned away and wandered down one of the long
alUes, but after a few steps she halted and thrusting the
jasmine blossom into her hair, patted it smooth again and
then set off, following the wall. She walked a long way
half dreaming, half aware that far down in the bottom of
the valley on the opposite side there was a motor-car
moving along the lonely road toward Monte Salvatore.
The distant sound of the motor drifted up from the valley
below, and then all at once she was aware that the sound
had stopped and that the car was not moving. It sat quite
still at a point almost directly opposite the villa. It seemed
an odd place to stop, in the very midst of an empty valley

64

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION

where there was no inn, no house and nothing but rocks
and olive trees.

Watching it, she thought again of Mr. Winnery. He was
a small man and not handsome, but he had nice manners
and a kind face. It would be nice to know that ... It
would be pleasant to feel safe. . . . Her thoughts went
silly and muddled and she found herself blushing in the
darkness. Surely she was going mad.

How long she stood there dreaming she did not know,
but presently she was aware of the familiar terrifying cer-
tainty that she was no longer alone. The light in the
servants* wing had gone out. It was as if something were
watching her out of the shadows. A wild impulse stronger
than her own terror compelled her to turn and look fear-
fully over her shoulder, and then she discovered that she
was standing a dozen feet from the new-found statue. It
lay against the black ilex, white and glistening in the moon-
light. She saw the face with an extraordinary dearness and
all the too-rich beauty of the voluptuous body. For a time
she remained fascinated and chilled with terroij, and then
in the most unmaidenly fashion she gathered her skirts
and ran toward the darkened villa. Once insw the door
she fell upon the stone flagging and lay there $4 overcome
by panic that she was unable to rise. ^

HI

At ten o’clock, sitting in the vast empty room which she
called her boudoir Mrs. Weatherby lost patieiw^ and began
ringing the great brass bell with which she was accustomed
to summon the servants. Not only was she out of
patience, but disturbed. Miss Fosdick had never remained
away sulking for so long a time, and there came to Mrs.
Weatherby that faint and unlikely suspicion which some-
times raised its head, that her companion might have run
away.

She had not gone. There was a timid knock on the door
65 c

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

and Miss Fosdick entered, looking, Mrs, Weatherby
thought, pale and agitated.

‘It seems to me, Gertrude, that you’re old enough not
to sulk.’

‘I wasn’t sulking, Aunt Henrietta.*

‘ I’ve finished my exercises long ago. I thought you were
never coming.’

Miss Fosdick did not answer, but took up the hair-brush
and began her nightly task of soothing Mrs. Weatherby’s
frayed nerves. The large empty room was lighted by two
candles and an oil-lamp which stood on the dressing-table
before an antique mirror in which Mrs. Weatherby’s coun-
tenance gazed out, blotched and hazy, from the age not so
much of Mrs. Weatherby’s face as of the quicksilver. The
great religious experimenter had changed into a white
peignoir trimmed with white maribou. The exercises to
which she referred were a series of facial contortions which
she practised each night for forty-five minutes in order to
give firmness to the muscles of the face and sweetness to the
expression. ‘Everything by nature,’ was her creed, and
‘ tne power of mind over matter.’ No flake of powder, no
morsel of rouge, no cream of any sort, had ever touched
her face and so her skin had that weatherbeaten, tough look
that marks the skin of those firm women who are above
vanities.

Miss Fosdick, brushing the hair slowly (eight strokes to
the minute was Mrs. Weatherby’s formula) was having
bitter thoughts. ‘Why,’ she asked herself, ‘should she
want to keep young.? Certainly it is not to attract men. She
hates the attention of men. Maybe she wants people to
remark how young she looks for sixty-five.’ And almost at
once she reproached herself for having thoughts so lewd,
disloyal and cynical.

At the same time Mrs. Weatherby was thinking, ‘ Now
is a time when I wish Gertrude had some sense. I’d like to
talk over this conversion affair, but I can’t risk it.’

It was one of the times when the indomitable woman was

66

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION
put to rout by the very simplicity of her companion. She
spoke again without turning, ‘You haven’t cnanged your
mind? ’

‘No, Aunt Henrietta. I tried praying but I got no
answer.’

Mrs. Weatherby answered her with a snort and the pair
fell back into silence. Presendy Miss Fosdick, looking out
of the window, saw that the motor on the road far down
the valley had not moved. Someone had dimmed the lights.
She thought of calling Aunt Henrietta’s attention to it, and
then changed her mind through a desire to spite her by
keeping this bit of excitement a secret.

IV

Mrs. Weatherby kept thinking of her approaching con-
version. It was a subject which had occupied her a great
deal lately; indeed, ever since she had abandoned the idea
of founding a new religion out of her experience with new
faiths. The idea of an ‘ eclectic ’ faith combiMng the best
points of all religions had come at length to di| for lack of
energy and any sense of organization. She wa| a muddled
woman and being very rich she had no need of |he material
gains which commonly reward contcmporailr prophets.
Indeed, the whole idea had been rather a fail^^. She had
come to Brinoc to pass her twilight (‘ old agi was an ex-
pression she never used), expecting something of that
triumph and that notoriety which had corhe to her in
Winnebago Falls and later at Carmel and Los Angeles; and
now it seemed that she had drawn a blank. No one noticed
her, even when she drove to the town dressed all in white
carrying tube-roses. There was, she told herself, too much
competition among eccentrics in Brinoc. It was worse, even,
than in Los Angeles. (At the moment, as she sat before the
blotched mirror, she experienced an actual jealousy of the
posthumous notoriety or Miss Annie Spragg. That queer
old woman had succeeded where she had failed.)

67

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

She wanted notice and flattery and no one in Brinoe
noticed her and no one flattered save a little group of
Marchesas, Principessas and Contessas, all old and dowdy
and poor who thought they might get something from her.
At first the mention of their titles pleased her and then she
made the disillusioning discovery that Marchesas and Con-
tessas were as thick as flies in Italy, and her natural shrewd-
ness told her that they were simply leeches. People in
Brinoe seemed not to be interested in Messages and clung
stubbornly to conventional forms of religion. Two years
of campaigning had brought her nowhere.

Being entirely without sensibility she was never bored and
so could not understand boredom in others. She did not
know into what depths of boredom she had plunged her
three visitors that very afternoon. She never imagined the
depths of boredom in which poor Miss Fosdick had spent
the better part of twenty years — depths so profound that at
times she goaded Mrs. Weatherby into abusing her simply
for the sake of change. It had never occurred to her, who
had known such triumphs in Carmel and Los Angeles, that
in Brinoe she was regarded as simply a colossal bore from
whom people fled after one meeting as from a plague. She,
the imposing Henrietta Weatherby!

She had a passion for knowing what she called ‘ interest-
ing people,’ and Brinoe, she felt must be alive with ‘ interest-
ing people’ — writers, painters, musicians and others who
were simply ‘characters.’ It was simply a matter of meet-
ing them. She firmly and naively believed that parties
made up of people who were ‘aoing things’ instantly
became charged with fascination, wit and brilliant conversa-
tion. It never occurred to her that in groups musicians are
vain and egotistical, painters hostile and technical and
writers envious and mean-spirited. To her they were all
just fascinating.

For months she had given thought to the question of how
to make herself interesting. Being as devoid of talents as of
sensibility, she could not suddenly become a singer, writer

68

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION

or painter, and being mean by nature she could not bring
herself to buy her way to the things she desired. So in the
end she had fallen back upon her great asset — her interest
in religion. At last she had hit upon a plan. She would
be converted to the Catholic faith and become a pillar of
devoutness. Perhaps she would even gain a place for herself
in that Papal party referred to in mysterious whispers by the
Marchesa as the Blacks. Religion, she told herself, was her
sphere. She had spent a lifetime studying religions and
this very fact would give to her conversion a certain sensa-
tional interest. Having been much in the public prints in
America she thought of each new adventure in headlines.
‘Famous experimenter of many faiths turns to bosom of
Mother Church.’

From the moment she reached a decision she had set about
with energy planning the conversion. The Marchesa, to
whom she expressed a casual interest in the Roman faith,
advised her to be instructed by Father d’Astier as the most
fashionable of worldly missionaries. She let it he known to
Miss Fosdick that a conversion was expected fyom her at
the same time, but Miss Fosdick, who had followed with
docility through the mysteries of Christian Science, of
Theosophy, of Bahaism, New Thought and 3clf Expres-
sion, suddenly rebelled at Rome. Something in hei with roots
deep in New England and Congregationalisms stubbornly
refused to undert^e what she referred to cru^dy one day
as Popery. She was so firm, so amazingly faiiatic on the
subject, that even Mrs, Wcatherby was thrown down in
defeat.

Sitting before the mirror while Miss Fosdick brushed her
hair Mrs. Weatherby turned over in her mind the idea
of becoming a Papal Countess. In her imagination she
tried over the title, ‘Countess Wcatherby ... Countess
Weatherby.’ It sounded a litdc ridiculous. Still she had
heard of other Papal Countesses with names that sounded
more absurd — Irish names. If only there was such a title
as ‘ Lady ’, ‘ Lady Weatherby ’ sounded quite distinguished.

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

And then she frowned as she thought that such titles were
purchased for good solid money, not bought really, but
given in exchange for rich gifts to the Church. And giving
money was to her like cutting off a piece of her own flesh.

That is probably the reason, she thought, why Father
d’Astier came all the way out here in the heat. He knew
that she was rich . . . that and his curiosity about the
miracle of Miss Annie Spragg.

At the thought of Miss Annie Spragg her eyes narrowed
a little. She wished that she knew exactly how the Church
meant to treat the miracle. If the Church canonized Annie
Spragg it would be a great help to her (Mrs. Weatherby).
She could bathe in the glory of having been the only person
in Italy (except Gertrude, who did not count) who knew the
queer old woman. She could indeed pose as the best friend
of the saint. That would advance her a long way, further,
indeed, than any amount of money. Perhaps they would
make Annie Spragg a saint. They’d probaoly never dis-
cover that she was the daughter of old Cyrus Spragg the
Prophet, nor ever hear the scandalous stories that had gone
the rounds of Winnebago Falls, nor all those things she
herself had chosen not to reveal. Father d’Astier had
refused to commit himself. Father d’Astier, her shrewd-
ness told her, was a clever man who would need managing
if she were to get from him what she desired.

She yearned passionately for a confidante with whom she
might discuss all these tnings, but with Gertrude it was
impossible. In her stupidity she would not understand their
complications. Undoubtedly she would put upon them the
wrong interpretation.

In the placid bosom of Miss Fosdick there was a fury
asmoulder and with each stroke of the brush it blazed and
gained ih stren^. She had reached a pitch of boredom
and irritation vwierein she no longer asked herself whether

70

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION

she was being disloyal. All such self-inquiry was being
buried under tides of long-pent-up resentment It was as
if all her softness had for twenty long years concealed a core
of inflexibility. She was at that moment giving birth to a
character, bringing decision into a soul where before there
had been no decision. And it was such a small thing that
kindled this great flame— the fact that Mr. Winnery had
looked upon her as if she were a woman. She had not
actually seen him do it. She had felt him looking at her
while Aunt Henrietta was telling that interminable and
inaccurate story of the villa. She was aware that in the look
there was admiration, perhaps even desire. It was years
since such a thing had happened to her. Not since that
organist at the Bahai Temple . . .

Above Mrs. Weatherby’s grey head she saw her own
reflection in the mirror and she noticed presently many
things that she had forgotten to notice for a long time past —
that she had pretty hair, smooth and shiny and still a mousey
brown, that her eyes were blue and attractive ijtnd that her
nose was red and shiny. She thought, ‘ I will J)uy powder
the next time I go to Brinoc, and I will use it ^vhether she
likes it or not.’ (She had suddenly ceased Ihinking of
Mrs. Weatherby as Aunt Henrietta but merely ^ she,) Miss
Fosdick even wondered if her hair would be booming cut
short like the Principessa’s flaming locks. she told

herself, ‘ I am too fat. I must try to lose weight. I must
write for one of those diets advertised in the £adw' Own
World.' Having been born with a fine high ralour which
needed only toning down, she had no need of rouge.
‘Still,’ she thought giddily, *a touch on the lips— just a
touch.’

Mrs. Weatherby interrupted her. ‘Don’t pull so hard.
You know how it affects my nerves.’

Miss Fosdick had a wild impulse to say ‘ Humph ’ and,
riving the grey hair a good pull, to throw the brush on the
floor, but the force of habit was stronger than her new-born
character and she went on with her task. When one had

71

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

She wanted notice and flattery and no one in Brinoe
noticed her and no one flattered save a little group of
Marchesas, Principessas and Contessas, all old and dowdy
and poor who thought they might get something from her.
At first the mention of their titles pleased her and then she
made the disillusioning discovery that Marchesas and Con-
tessas were as thick as flies in Italy, and her natural shrewd-
ness told her that they were simply leeches. People in
Brinoe seemed not to be interested in Messages and clung
stubbornly to conventional forms of religion. Two years
of campaigning had brought her nowhere.

Being entirely without sensibility she was never bored and
so could not understand boredom in others. She did not
know into what depths of boredom she had plunged her
three visitors that very afternoon. She never imagined the
depths of boredom in which poor Miss Fosdick had spent
the better part of twenty years — depths so profound that at
times she goaded Mrs. Weatherby into abusing her simply
for the sake of change. It had never occurred to her, who
had known such triumphs in Carmel and Los Angeles, that
in Brinoe she was regarded as simply a colossal bore from
whom people fled after one meeting as from a plague. She,
the imposing Henrietta Weatherby!

She had a passion for knowing what she called ‘ interest-
ing people,’ and Brinoe, she felt must be alive with ‘ interest-
ing people’ — writers, painters, musicians and others who
were simply ^characters.’ It was simply a matter of meet-
ing them. She firmly and naively believed that parties
made up of people who were ‘ doing things ’ instantly
became charged with fascination, wit and brilliant conversa-
tion. It never occurred to her that in groups musicians are
vain and egotistical, painters hostile and technical and
writers envious and mean-spirited. To her they were all
just fascinating.

For months she had given thought to the question of how
to make herself interesting. Being as devoid of talents as of
sensibility, she could not suddenly become a singer, writer

68

TWENTY YEAES OF DEVOTION

or painter, and being mean by nature she could not bring
herself to buy her way to the things she desired. So in the
end she had fallen back upon her great asset — her interest
in religion. At last she had hit upon a plan. She would
be converted to the Catholic faith and become a pillar of
devoutness. Perhaps she would even gain a place for herself
in that Papal party referred to in mysterious whispers by the
Marchesa as the Blacks. Religion, she told herself, was her
sphere. She had spent a lifetime studying religions and
this very fact would give to her conversion a certain sensa-
tional interest. Having been much in the public prints in
America she thought of each new adventure in headlines.
‘Famous experimenter of many faiths turns to bosom of
Mother Church.’

From the moment she reached a decision she had set about
with energy planning the conversion. The Marchesa, to
whom she expressed a casual interest in the Roman faith,
advised her to be instructed by Father d’Astier as the most
fashionable of worldly missionaries. She let it be known to
Miss Fosdick that a conversion was expected from her at
the same time, but Miss Fosdick, who had fo^owed with
docility through the mysteries of Christian Science, of
Theosophy, of Bahaism, New Thought and ^If Expres-
sion, suddenly rebelled at Rome. Something in her with roots
deep in New England and Congregationalism’ stubbornly
refused to undertake what she referred to cru^dy one day
as Popery. She was so firm, so amazingly f^tic on the
subject, that even Mrs. Weatherby was tnrown down in
defeat.

Sitting before the mirror while Miss Fosdick brushed her
hair Mrs. Weatherby turned over in her mind the idea
of becoming a Papal Countess. In her imagination she
tried over the title, ‘Countess Weatherby . . . Countess
Weatherby.’ It sounded a little ridiculous. Still she had
heard of other Papal Countesses with names that sounded
more absurd — Irish names. If only there was such a title
as * Lady ’, ‘ Lady Weatherby ’ sounded quite distinguished.

69

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

And then she frowned as she thought that such titles were
purchased for good solid money, not bought really, but
given in exchange for rich gifts to the Church. And giving
money was to her like cutting off a piece of her own flesh.

That is probably the reason, she thought, why Father
d’Astier came all die way out here in the heat. He knew
that she was rich . . . that and his curiosity about the
miracle of Miss Annie Spragg.

At the thought of Miss Annie Spragg her eyes narrowed
a little. She wished that she knew exactly how the Church
meant to treat the miracle. If the Church canonized Annie
Spragg it would be a great help to her (Mrs. Weatherby).
She could bathe in the jglory of having been the only person
in Italy (except Gertruoe, who did not count) who knew the
queer old woman. She could indeed pose as the best friend
of the saint. That would advance her a long way, further,
indeed, than any amount of money. Perhaps they would
make Annie Spragg a saint. They’d probably never dis-
cover that she was the daughter of old Cyrus Spragg the
Prophet, nor ever hear the scandalous stories that had gone
the rounds of Winnebago Falls, nor all those things she
herself had chosen not to reveal. Father d’Astier had
refused to commit himself. Father d’Astier, her shrewd-
ness told her, was a clever man who would need managing
if she were to get from him what she desired.

She yearned passionately for a confidante with whom she
might discuss all these things, but with Gertrude it was
impossible. In her stupidity she would not understand their
complications. Undoubtedly she would put upon them the
wrong interpretation.

In the placid bosom of Miss Fosdick there was a fury
asmoulder and with each stroke of the brush it blazed and
gained iii strength. She had reached a pitch of boredom
and irritation wherein she no longer asked herself whether

70

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION
she was being disloyal. All such self-inquiry was being
buried under tides of long-pent-up resentment. It was as
if all her softness had for twenty long years concealed a core
of inflexibility. She was at that moment giving birth to a
character, bringing decision into a soul where before there
had been no decision. And it was such a small thing that
kindled this great flame — the fact that Mr. Winnery had
looked upon her as if she were a woman. She had not
actually seen him do it. She had felt him looking at her
while Aunt Henrietta was telling that interminable and
inaccurate story of the villa. She was aware that in the look
there was admiration, perhaps even desire. It was years
since such a thing had happened to her. Not since that
organist at the Bahai Tempic . . .

Above Mrs. Weatherby’s grey head she saw her own
reflection in the mirror and she noticed presently many
things that she had forgotten to notice for a long time past —
that she had pretty hair, smooth and shiny and sdll a mousey
brown, that her eyes were blue and attractive and that her
nose was red and shiny. She thought, * I will buy powder
the next time I go to Brinoe, and I will use it Whether she
likes it or not.* (She had suddenly ceased fhinking of
Mrs. Weatherby as Aunt Henrietta but merely sb she.) Miss
Fosdick even wondered if her hair would be becoming cut
short like the Principcssa’s flaming locks. ‘Nb/ she told
herself, ‘ I am too fat. I must try to lose wd^t. I must
write for one of those diets advertised in the indies' Own
World. ^ Having been born with a fine high tolour which
needed only toning down, she had no need of rouge.
‘Still,’ she thought giddily, ‘a touch on the lips—just a
touch.’

Mrs. Weatherby interrupted her. ‘Don’t pull so hard.
You know how it affects my nerves,’

Miss Fosdick had a wild impulse to say ‘ Humph ’ and,
giving the grey hair a good puU, to throw the brush on the
floor, but the force of habit was stronger than her tiew-born
character and she went on with her task. When one had

71

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

done the same thing at the same hour three hundred and
sixty-five times a year for twenty years the effect became
paralysing. She tried to calculate how many times she had
brushed ^at hateful grey head. Twenty times three hundred
and sixty-five (sometimes three hundred and sixty-six) times
one hundred and eighty strokes. But the problem was quite
beyond her. She was very poor at figures.

A sense of ^wer rose in her with the knowledge that she
had refused flatly to become converted and that she had
taken it quietly. One had one’s right to a religion. No-
body could command you to change your faith, thought
Miss Fosdick. People had been burned for refusing to
change, by that very Church which Aunt Henrietta was
considering. ‘I could never meet my mother in Heaven
with her knowing 1 had taken up Popery.’ It was the first
time she had ever refused Aunt Henrietta anything.

Memories of ancient wrongs began to well up in her soul.
Clarence Hazeltine she might have married but for Aunt
Henrietta, who said she was too young to marry and carted
her off to California. Clarence — she saw again through
mists of sentiment — thin, a little bald at thirty, round-
shouldered and round-eyed. Timid he was. If he hadn’t
been he wouldn’t have let her be carried off.

Again Mrs. Weatherby interrupted her. ‘Really, Ger-
trude, I don’t know what has come over you. You know
what a sensitive scalp I have.’

Again Miss Fosdick had an impulse to hurl the brush,
this time through the blotched old mirror. Again habit
chained her.

‘And you needn’t sulk, cither,’ added Mrs. Weatherby.

Sulk! Sulk! thought Miss Fosdick. If she only knew
what I was thinking. By now Clarence probably owned the
drugstore and had a family that might have been her own
family. And there was that young organist at Carmel who
played in the Bahai Temple and came to call night after
night. He might have married her but for someming she
did. She suspected Aunt Henrietta of telling him that if

72

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION

he married Gertrude neither of them would ever get a cent
from her. Maybe he did mean to marry her for Aunt
Henrietta’s money, ‘Well,’ Miss Fosdick thought, ‘what
of it? At least I’d have been married. Something would
have happened to me. It would be better than being a fat
old maid. Something has got to happen to me! Something!
Anything! Anything at all!’

Mrs. Weatherby was speaking again. ‘I’m afraid I have
one of my headaches again. Some enemy is directing ill
will toward me.’

Again Miss Fosdick made no answer. She knew what
the speech meant. In a moment Aunt Henrietta would ask
her to sit by the bed all night exerting her will against the
currents of malice being projected at Aunt Henrietta by
some unknown enemy. If she only knew that on those
occasions Miss Fosdick never stayed awake at all but slept
soundly sitting upright. Nothing ever kept Aunt Henri-
etta awake when she felt like sleeping.

‘Oh, I mean to escape,’ Miss Fosdick kept telling her
interiorly, as if to break down the chain of h^bit. ‘ Oh, I
mean to escape, all right.’ She gazed mali^antly at the
image of Mrs. Weatherby, who was doing hhr nails and
practising her expression at the same time, )‘Ah, if she
only knew,’ But Miss Fosdick hadn’t the l<^t idea what
she meant to do.

All this time she had been watching the clc^ and count-
ing the strokes of the brush with a part of |icr mind that
seemed immune from that wild torrent of rcbd|ious thought.
One hundred and forty-two, one hundred and forty-three
. . . eight strokes to the minute according to Mrs. Wcather-
by’s schedule.

Aunt Henrietta was speaking again. ‘ I’m afraid, dear,
that I’ll have to ask you to sit by me to-night.’

It was not possible that it was coming so surely, exactly
as she had known that it would come. This time she might
have thrown down the brush, but before she had time to
act there rose in the still air the sound of a voice calling in

73 c*

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Italian, ‘ Hello! Hello in there! ’ and the sound of vigorous
knocking on the main door.

For a second the gaze of the two women, so hostile
and now suddenly frightened, met in the blotched old
mirror.

* Who could it be? ’ whispered Mrs. Weatherby, who was
always afraid of something. * At this hour of the night? ’

They listened for a moment and then the knocking was
repeated and the shouting.

‘ Go to the window, Gertrude.’

Miss Fosdick, with the hateful brush still in her hand,
went timidly to the window on the opposite side of the
room. Below her the gravelled courtyard lay drenched in
the moonlight and bordered by the lean black shadows of
the cypresses. She was aware that the motor with dimmed
lights still stood on the opposite side of the valley. At first
she could see no one, and then after a moment a tall man
stepped from the shadow of the portico into the moonlight
and called up to her in Italian. Miss Fosdick understood
only the word ‘telephone’, and partly in gestures, partly
in bad Italian, explained that there was no telephone. The
stranger at once began speaking English in a deep melo-
dious voice with scarcely any accent.

His companion stepped into the moonlight and Miss Fos-
dick recognized him. It was dirty old Pietro, who kept
goats and lived in a hut among the olive trees half-way up
the mountain.

The stranger explained that he was motoring from Siena
to Brinoe and that he had had an accident. Some thief had
charged him for forty litres of petrol and put only twenty
into the tank of his motor. If they had no telephone he
was lost, unless by some miracle they had a few litres of
petrol.

Behind Miss Fosdick Mrs. Weatherby had crossed the
room and was standing discreetly in the shadow, peeping
from the shelter of a curtain.

There was a miracle and the miracle was the Ford which

74

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION

Giovanni used for going into Monte Salvatore. There
must be some petrol in the tank. It stood in a part of the
vast ruined stable built by the Spanish Ambassador to house
his Arab horses.

‘I suppose,’ whispered Mrs. Weatherby, *we must help
him, but I don’t like people who wander aoout in the night.’

She moved to the window and called down, ‘Young man,
turn the light on your face.’

‘ Old Pietro is with him,’ murmured Miss Fosdick hope-
fully.

The stranger did as commanded. He was not a young
man though his figure was trim and slender. He might have
been foity-five. He was distinguished and certainly hand-
some in a dark, almost Moorish fashion. The humour of
the situation had caused him to grin.

VI

Trembling with excitement. Miss Fosdick, still carrying
the hair-brush absent-mindedly in one hand^ took up a
candle and clattered down the stone stairs injhcr slippers.
She was so excited that she even forgot to be afraid of the
garden and made her way without a tremor ^through the
tunnel that led into the courtyard. There the ^tranger met
her murmuring a thousand apologies mad<s with all the
overwrought extravagance of Latin courtcly. He was
dressed in beige tweeds and wore a cap and' yellow buck-
skin gloves. The wind from Africa had died away at last
and the candle burned in the still air without a flicker. By
its yellow light Miss Fosdick saw that he wai older than she
had believed and of an aspect even more romantic than she
had imagined. Thinking in terms of Aunt Henrietta’s
speech she told herself that it was Force that he had . . ,
Personal and Magnetic Force. She thought, ‘Things are
beginning to happen to me. He is exactly like the hero of
In a Winter City'

Despite herself, her manner became overwrought and

75

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

arch. She explained that Mrs. Weatherby was afraid of
Italian servants. . . . She had heard stories in Carmel
. . . and that all the servants slept in a pavilion near the
stables. She led the way to the stables, followed by the
stranger and Pietro, who limped as he walked and kept
muttering to himself. The miracle at the stables was even
greater than she had hoped. In the shadows and among
the ghosts of the Spanish Ambassador's Arab horses they
discovered the battered Ford. The petrol tank was full to
the brim.

The stranger appeared in such great haste that he threw
himself down without a thought into the dust and grease
beneath the Ford and set to work filling the two bidons he
carried with him. When he had finished he rose and insisted
upon seeing Miss Fosdick back through the shrubbery des-
pite all her fluttering protests that she was not afraid. In
the thickest part of the shrubbery he even touched her arm
gently with an old-fashioned courtesy. The implication
that Miss Fosdick was so fragile that she might easily slip
in the darkness and injure herself flattered her vanity, and
made her feel very small and. feminine. At the door he took
out a soft leather wallet and taking from it a card gave it
to her. It was then that she discovered for the first time
with embarrassment that in one hand she still held Mrs.
Weatherby's hair-brush. Strands of Aunt Henrietta's grey
hair still clung to it.

Bowing, the stranger said, ‘ This is my name. I will send
a cheque tomorrow. Whose name shall I put on it? '

She wanted to say, ‘Oh, no. Don't think of it,’ in a
grand and generous manner, but she knew Aunt Henrietta
would insist upon being paid for the petrol. She should
at least have answered ‘ Mrs. Henrietta Weatherby,’ but in
an insane burst of unmaidenly behaviour, she murmured,

‘ Miss Gertrude Fosdick,’ and spelled it for him as he wrote
it down. ‘F-o-s-d-i-c-k.’

He took off his cap and bowed elaborately once more and
disappeared, and then for the first time she was able to look

76

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION

at the card. Being far-sighted and not having her glasses,
she had to hold it far from her. She read :

Oreste Valmente
El Duque de Fuenterrabia
El Marques de Santoban

For a moment she feared her knees would give way. It
was just like a novel, she thought. Just like a novel. It was
like one of those stories of Ouida, one of the things you got
in a paper-backed edition. Just like In a Winter City,
The hand trembled with excitement and the flame of the
candle trembled too. Her shadow trembled on the ancient
wall so that it looked as if she were dancing. Presently she
shut the door and shot the huge iron bolt, but as she closed
it she caught a sudden glimpse of the statue gleaming white
in the moonlight and felt suddenly frightened again.

A voice from the top of the stairs brought her oack to the
horrid reality.

‘What on earth are you doing, Gertrude? They have
gone long ago.’

Then Miss Fosdick remembered that theit were still
thiity-seven strokes of the brush to be done. i

VII

When she re-entered the bedroom. Aunt Henrietta was
awaiting her in a cold fury. She exhibited aQ the signs of
what Miss Fosdick described to herself as ‘ a tjintrum.’ She
had been working toward this point ever since dinner-time.
Miss Fosdick knew the signs — the look of fury in the eye,
the distended nostrils of the large, fleshy nose, the fat hands
clasping the foot of the bed, the heavy breathing. With her
thin grey hair hanging about her face, she was a terrifying
sight that caused all the flame of rebellion in Miss Fosdick’s
bosom to turn to water and flow away.

For a moment Mrs. Weatherby stood regarding her in a

77

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

cold silence as if choosing how she should begin. Then
suddenly she found what was needed.

* What on earth have you got in your hair? ’ she cried out.
‘I think you must be crazy lately ... an old maid like
you putting flowers in her hair, as if a man was going to
look at you'

Something exploded in Miss Fosdick’s brain. She hurled
the brush and the candle on the floor. The card of Oreste
Valmcnte, Duke of Fonterrabia and Marquis of Santoban,
fell with them.

‘ ril put what I like in my hair and you can go to Hell.’

For a moment Mrs. Weatherby recoiled as if Miss Fosdick
had struck her a blow. ‘ Oh ! Oh ! ’ she cried in a stricken
manner, and then firmly, ‘Take care what you’re saying.’

‘ I’ll put what I like in my hair. I’m an old maid because
you made me one.’

‘You’re a ridiculous sight.*

‘No more than you and your silly religions. You’ve
spoiled everything for me.’

Mrs. Weatherby gave a throaty laugh. ‘Spoiled every-
thing, have I ? And where would you be without me, pray ?
You’d have nothing except for me. You’d be a pauper.’

In Miss Fosdick a hundred respectable New England
ancestors rose and ran riot. ‘Yo«. Everybody lau^s at
you. Nobody ever comes here but a lot of old women who
want a meal.’ She choked and began to cry hysterically,
‘ And a lot of old fools with silly religions.’

Suddenly with a groan Mrs. Weatherby collapsed full
length on the floor. She lay there crying out, calling upon
Heaven to witness the ingratitude of this creature she had
protected for so long. Miss Fosdick understood only frag-
ments. ‘After I’m dead you’ll remember. . . . Alter all
I’ve done for you.’

But Miss Fosdick felt suddenly seasick and ran from the
room. The screams followed her along the corridor until
she was in her own room with the door bolted behind
her.

78

TWENTY YEARS OF DEVOTION

Sobbing, she seated herself at the dressing-table. There
was a light in her eye. At last the suppressed hatred of
twenty years was satisfied. She had told Aunt Henrietta
what she thought of her. The feeling was like a fresh cool
breeze. It was all over. She was free . . . free with one
hundred and thirty-two lira in the world, the savings of
twenty years of slavery. Free, and there was nothing she
could do, not even sew properly. But she was free. She
could scrub floors. She was free.

In all the confusion the sprig of jasmine had come loose
from her hair and had fallen into the V that revealed her
plump white throat. She took it out and laid it on the
table. Then when she had grown more calm, she regarded
herself in the ancient mirror and fell to trying new ways of
doing her hair. She couldn’t go out into the world dressed
in the ridiculous fashion that she had always commanded.
Her hands trembled. She was afraid of herself and of this
madness which had swept her without any effort of will into
revolt. This was a strange woman who looked out of the
mirror at her. Who was she? This creature born of the
fires of hatred. J

Then she let her hair fall down. It reached|to her waist.
Her hair, she told herself, had always been herj great beauty
even as a girl. She could not cut it.

Presently she rose feeling weak and shakeii, and after
drinking half a bottle of Fiuzzi water, went to the window
for air. Far down below in the valley she could see a tiny
light moving through the olive trees toward the stalled
motor. Presently it reached the road, the' lights of the
motor flared up. There was a sudden wild impatient roar
and the car shot away toward Brinoe. As the lights dis-
appeared around a curve in the valley, she suddenly felt sea-
sick once more. The romance was gone and with it all
the intoxication of her wild hysterical outburst. She was an
old maid with one hundred and thirty-two lira in the world.
She had not even a friend and there was no work that she
could do. The fascinating Duque dc Fuenterrabia would

79

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

aever even think of her again. She was quite certain now.
The twenty years had driven her insane at last.

VIII

For an hour Mrs. Weatherby lay on the floor waiting for
Miss Fosdick to return and beg forgiveness. When at last
the floor had grown impossibly hard and there seemed to be
little chance of her companion coming back, she raised her-
self, and picked up the brush and the candle. Then for
the first time she saw the card of Oreste Valmente, Duque
de Fuenterrabia and Marques de Santoban. Twice she
read it through with awe and then thrust it reverently into
the side of the blotchy mirror. Doing her thin hair into a
knot, she walked down the corridor to Miss Fosdick’s room,
where a line of light showed beneath the door. For a
moment she stood thoughtfully and then, knocking gently,
she called out in the voice of a dove, ‘ Gertrude. Gertrude
dear,'*

There was no answer and she called again, ‘Gertrude.
Gertrude.’

Again only silence.

‘ Gertrude dear. Listen to Aunt Henrietta. You’ve
broken her heart.’

Still no response.

‘Gertrude dear. Aunt Henrietta is willing to forgive.
You wouldn’t let a little quarrel like that break up all the
love of twenty years? ’

Not a word.

‘ Gertrude dear^ let Aunt Henrietta go to bed knowing that
you are sorry for the awful things you said.’

In the end she went away, and in the morning when she
went again to Miss Fosdick’s room, she found it empty.
Margharita, with a malicious gleam in her eye, said she had
seen Miss Fosdick at dawn walking along the road to Monte
Salvatore. She was carrying a suitcase.

8o

A PRAIRIE IDYLL

I N the seventies the town of Cordova straggled its length
along the highroad which once had been a trail across
the prairies into the Far West. There were a few houses
built of sawed timber, a few of the log houses that were
remnants of its early days, a few shanties that served as
dwelling-places for the negroes along the river, and the
pretentious brick buildings of the Primitive Methodist
Divinity School. The village sat pressed against a flat
prairie so vast that it seemed to extend to the limits of
the known world. The only break in the even line of its
monotony was the sluggish meandering river whose waters
were red with the fertility of the earth. To thpc south there
extended a great area of land that had once bceai only a vast
marsh, but with the passing of centuries the tslow-moving
river had cut itself deeper and deeper into the ^il, draining
the marsh and leaving it dry with a caked pe^-like surface
which burned slowly with the flameless intouity of rotten
wood. In the seventies there was so much ridh land to be
had that no one paused on his way west ta claim any of
the bog, and when the peat-like surface to^k fire it was
allowed to burn until drowned by the flood-like rains of
the spring. Always there was some part of the bog
asmoulder, sending up great columns of white smoke. The
sight provided variety in a landscape that Otherwise was
insanely monotonous. Sometimes the soil burned in a dozen
places at once so that the whole countryside to the south of
Cordova took on the aspect of Hell, and sometimes in the
fantastic damp heat of the prairie summers there appeared
in it the mirages of lakes that seemed made of smouldering

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

brimstone. The water in wells of that flat country was stale
and flat and without life.

It was to this town that Uriah Spragg and his sister
Annie came on the death of their mother, tor Uriah had set
his mind on becoming a preacher of the Primitive Methodist
faith and to thus atone for the colossal sins of his father,
the Prophet. And Uriah Spragg was no longer a young
man and he knew now that there was much to atone for.
He planned after he was ordained to go from place to place
in a wagon as his father had done, preaching in villages
and crossroads, wiping out the evil spread by the Prophet.

The burden of his father’s sin was a thing which never
left him.

He was a tall man, raw-boned in the parlance of the
country, with great wrists and knuckles and khee-bones.
Save for his great strength — he could straighten horseshoes
and bend bars of iron — he had nothing in common with
the Prophet. It was as if Nature had taken an impish
delight in making father and son so unlike each other.
Uriah’s hair was sandy red and sparse; Uriah’s lips were
thin and always drawn a little, as if there was some pain
forever gnawing him from within. His skin was pale and
dry and covered with freckles; and his beard, which he
shaved, was thin and scraggly. In his face there were deep
furrows that seemed cut there by a careless chisel. His pale
blue eyes had a way of wavering and shifting restlessly, so
that they appeared never to be looking directly into the eyes
of any person. It may have been the sense of his father’s
sin, the shame of being a son of the Prophet, which made
him fearful and uneasy, for he was a sensitive man who
suffered agonies. It was the soul of a woman in the body of
a giant. And he was shy and silent and had no friends, for
he believed that people were for ever whispering about the
doings of his father.

He came to Cordova to learn what he must learn, a man
alreadv on his way to middle age, to listen to sermons and
read tne teachings of Wesley with adolescent boys come out

82

A PRAIRIE IDYLL

of the prairies and cornfields, all like himself believing them-
selves chosen by God to spread His word. There were boys
among them scarcely more than half his age and none of
them was as old as his youngest sister Annie.

There was between Annie and Uriah a mysterious feel-
ing which bound them together, as if they had been twins
born of the same cell rather than brother and sister separated
by twelve years with many brothers and sisters between.
It may have been the knowledge that they were the two
most cherished by the tired long-suffering woman who had
borne them, or that they alone of all the thirteen understood
the long agony of her lifetime. And they had known now
for a long time, without once speaking of it, that their
father was neither God nor God’s Prophet nor even a good
man, but ftnly a lustful old reprobate who deceived himself
into believing that he was God. It was a thought neither of
them had ever uttered. They knew it. And when their
mother died they went quickly away because IJriah was in
haste to begin the atonement.

It had never occurred to either of them that on leaving
the Saint’s colony they should go separate wa^s. Having
lived always a little apart from the world in vthe strange
migratory life of the Prophet, having been stamped always
in religion and Bible reading, they came to bcl&ve without
knowing it that they were strange marked qr^tures who
did not belong to the world as others did. Ai» far back as
they could remember the world had treated t|em as curio-
sities. There were always crowds about the Wagon of the
Prophet staring at him and his children .\ . as if they
were wild beasts.

At the time they came to Cordova Annie Spragg was
possessed of a strange wild beauty that pass^ for plain-
ness among the women of the place because it had none of
the chromo-like pretdness for which their starved souls had

83

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

a craving. More discerning and worldly critics would have
discovered in her figure and in her sly face a mysterious
excitement that stirred what was deepest and most carnal
in man. Of all the thirteen legitimate children of the
Prophet she alone appeared to have been touched by the
same unholy power which he came to understand so well
and to exploit with such profit. The two eldest sons had it
not, for their joint imposture of the Prophet had been dis-
covered soon enough by the women of the Saint’s colony.
They were not men enough to fill their father’s shoes.

She was of middle height with red hair, not the nonde-
script sandy red of Uriah’s hair, but a deep flaming red as
her mother’s hair had been on the day the Prophet first
saw her in her father’s cabin at St. Louis before she had
borne thirteen children in fifteen years; and her skin was
not pale and freckled like Uriah’s, but of that waxen green-
white to be found in the women of Titian. Her figure at
twenty-four was slim, but possessed of curves which even
stiff skirts and coarse black cloth could not conceal. Her
eyes were greenish and of an odd almond shape, slanting
upward at the outer corners; and her mouth was the mouth
of the Prophet himself, red and full-blooded and voluptuous,
with a disturbing power of excitement. She had a gliding,
sinuous walk. Yet because love had not touched her, she
went her way all unconscious of her power. Like Uriah,
the dark unspoken things which they knew but never
mentioned had made her afraid even of herself. Else-
where, outside the lost village, she could have had what
she wanted from the world, but in Cordova desire and the
flesh were things to inspire horror. And always like a
warning against the pale sky of that flat country rose the
clouds of smoke from the burning bog, always the mirage
of lakes of burning brimstone.

They rented one of the decaying log cabins from an old
pioneer woman who had gone to live with her grand-
children, and when Uriah had stopped the holes in the roof
and the walls they settled themselves in it until Uriah should

A PRAIRIE IDYLL

be ordained. Though it was a thing never spoken of between
them, they understood that neither of them should ever
marry. Uriah had no desire to marry. Women had made
his mother’s life a long and passionate tragedy. She alone
of all the women in the world was pure and good. He was
afraid of women and hated them. There were even times
when he hated his sister Annie for being a woman and the
root of sin. He hated her for her fine shining hair and red
lips, and for her sinuous walk.

Ill

Among all those who came to the seminary at Cordova
believing they were the elect of God, there was a youth
named Leander Potts, one of the nine sons of a farmer on
the plains west of the Mississippi. He had come in a way
as an offering to God from a rather who was grateful for
nine sons, but he would have come whether his father per-
mitted it or not because he had seen visions while turning
the sod and knew that God had chosen him. And his
mother was a religious who was half insane froin the loneli-
ness of the prairie where there were no otiier women.
Leander was her darling and the one chos^i by her to
follow God. To him had been given the rich^ft food. He
alone had been given books and the time mjread them.
When he came to Cordova he was still an adolejccnt, chaste
and tempted, troubled by visions and dreamis, carnal and
celestial. He was, too, a strong youth.

He was handsome in the florid way of Anglo-Saxon
youths, with curling blond hair and bright blue eyes with
long dark lashes like those of a girl. At forty he would be
ruddy and perhaps bloated. At twenty he was like a young
Florentine painted by Leonardo.

It was Leander Potts who became the only friend of
Annie and Uriah Spragg. It was a slow thing, this friend-
ship, for Uriah with his pride and sense of difference from
the rest of the world, could make no advances. And Annie

85

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Stayed much at home, save for solitary walks along the
sluggish river when she was happy, noticing the ways of
the birds and beasts, the trees and the flowers. Uriah ack-
nowledged the greetings of his fellow students, but chose
never to be the first to exchange a word regarding the
weather or the sermons. He had the sensitiveness of a boy
too old and too big for his schoolfellows. He was all joints
and knuckles, ashamed and flushing easily.

But from the first day when he saw Leander’s curly head
before him in the chapel, he felt drawn toward the boy.
The sight of Lcander was like a ray of sunlight piercing
the gloomy depths of his soul, illuminating and warming it
as no man or woman save his mother had ever been ^le
to do. And Lcander was, too, a sort of an ideal, a symbol
of all that which Uriah might have been save for his age,
his uncouthness and the scar upon his soul. Leander seemed
in truth the chosen of God — comely, confident, young and,
in a community made harsh by fear of a terrible God, a
creature bright with charm. On the day he first spoke
to Uriah, the older man felt the skies open and saw the sun
pour through.

In Leant&r the first impulse to speak arose from a sense
of pity for Uriah, who even in that queer community seemed
strange and awkward and out of place. It was Uriah’s lone-
liness that touched him, almost without his knowing it.

From that moment onward the older man came to look
for the boy’s greeting as one who lives in a dour climate
looks for the sun. He plotted, without plotting, that he
might encounter Lcander during the day. To Annie, wait-
ing for him at home, he seemed to grow more cheerful and
talkative. She wondered at the reason, but she never asked
him and Uriah could not have told her why the world
seemed a better place, less black with sin.

As for Annie, she cooked and baked, and in order to help
Uriah with money she began to do sewing for the women of
the village. She even made an entrance into that trade
which all small towns associate with fast women. She

86

A PRAIRIE IDYLL

became a milliner. But the people of Cordova did not take
kindly to her. Her silence and aloofness disturbed them.
They came to know presendy that she was the daughter of
the Prophet Spragg and so they gave her a name for im-
morality and evil, a reputation which her appearance, despite
all her plain and ugly clothes could not deny. No matter
how black her dresses, there was something in the green
slanting eyes, the pointed nose, the red hair and the white
skin which made women draw together in little groups
like hens as she passed and caused men to turn to look
after her as if their wills had turned to butter. The wall of
her isolation grew higher and higher, shutting her in from
ail the world. And so she took to going more and more on
those solitary walks along the river bank. The river was
the only relief from the monotony of that smoke-hazed
world.

Because human companionship was denied her she came
to make friends of the birds and the tiny beasts^ the flowers
and the rare trees of that flat country. The very rabbits
came to know her and the birds along tnc river bimk awaited
her coming with the crumbs she brought frotli her table.
It was a happy life and she seemed content with it, living
only in dread of the coming of winter. Sometimibs when she
had gone a long way and could see across the fliit land that
there was no one within miles of her, she would take off her
ugly black dress and tight stays and bathe in a ^warm slug-
gish stream, warming her naked body sinfuUjf in the sun-
light. And all the while she drifted further^ and further
from the dreadful God of Cordova. Uriah noticed it and
reproved her. He saw her sit dreaming in tjic House of
God, deaf to the harsh words of the Reverend Mr. Simpson,
her mind wandering far from ‘ a hell paved with the skulls
of unbaptized infants,’ And his fear for her would be
shadowed at times with a strange dark cloud erf hatred and
envy, as if he understood somehow that she was secretly
escaping him and the sins of their father and the justice of a
vengeful God.

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

His friendship with Lcandcr grew, bringing with it a
disturbing and incomplete happiness. As the elder of the
two he gave Leander timid advice. Together they had long
talks of the future, rising into a flame of passion at the
glory of spreading abroad the Kingdom of God as taught
in Cordova. They went on long rambles across a country
where each mile was exactly like the last and the one
before and talk could be the only diversion. Uriah always
walked bent forward a little, his great bony hands clasped
behind his back. And one day Uriah in a burst of fire
proposed timidly that when they left Cordova they should
set out together in a covered wagon carrying their message
to remote villages and crossroads where men of God seldom
came. Annie, his sister, said Uriah, could go with them
and cook and mend their clothes. Life seemed to become
a bright and beautiful thing.

Leander said, ‘ But your sister. I have never seen your
sister. I will go home with you to-night and see her.’

But Uriah’s face grew dark and he was silent, torn be-
tween a desire to take the beloved Leander to his home and
an obscure and nameless fear of having Leander lay eyes
upon his sister Annie.

IV

Leander did come to the house, not that day but another,
one evening just after the long prairie sunset. Uriah was
not there and Annie asked him in to await her brother’s
coming. The meeting disturbed them both, but in Leander ’s
feelings there was no pity for Annie as there had been for
Uriah. He was confused and frightened. For a long time
now he had been aware of women, but he had never been
aware of one woman, and there was something about this
strange girl which seemed to be the apotheosis or all women.
He watched her, afraid but fascinated, while she went
quietly about her work in the kitchen, making polite and
halting remarks about the weather or the corn or the sermon

A PRAIRIE IDYLL

of the Reverend Mr. Simpson. It was all outwardly cold
and meaningless and inwardly charged with disturbing
things. Leander was aware of her in every nerve and muscle.
Annie watching him stealthily, was aware of a new beauty
come into her life. Of late during the long walks by the
river life had seemed to be opening like a flower, petal by
petal, in a loveliness she had never suspected. And now
came this beautiful young man with blue eyes and fair
curling hair like an angel.

Uri3i came at last, dark-browed and forbidding, and
when Annie suggested that his friend stay to supper, he
could not send Leander away. Leander did stay and all
through supper Annie sat modestly with eyes cast down
while her brother and his friend talked of tlxe church and
of God.

After that Leander came more and more often, though
there was little talk between him and Annie. Evening
after evening she sat quietly apart in the darkness by the
fireplace while the two men read the Scriptures and inter-
preted them. Sometimes she sat watching Lea^der’s golden
head from under her long lashes without being seen and*
sometimes when he was reading she stole sadden quick
glances at his odd disturbing beauty. Always Uriah took
care that the atmosphere should be saturated with the words
of the Bible. He fought his battle in silenc<^ filled with a
corroding jealousy, knowing always that Leaiiaer was there
because of Annie and not because of himsdf or of God.
Craftily he chose to read and expound passages filled with
sonorous warnings against unchastity, of tht evils of the
flesh and of desire. He read always in the cold tight voice
of one in pain.

And presently Leander came to look ill. The high colour
left his cheeks and there was a tired look in his blue eyes.
At night his visions and dreams grew more and more fan-
tastic and troubled, filled with strange beasts like those out
of the Apocalypse, Annie gave him pennyroyal tea to
drink lest he Ixi coming down with the fevers that swept

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

the hot, damp prairies, and as he drank she watched him
closely out of the green, veiled, slanting eyes. Leander knew
now when she was watching him. It was as if her gaze
burned into his flesh and set his blood on fire. Slowly
Uriah grew confident again, believing that he had won and
kept the soul of Leander unstained by the sin of desire that
had damned his own father. Annie said nothing, for they
never spoke of such things.

V

Six months after Leander first came to the cabin, a tenth
child was born in the house where he lodged and there was
no longer room for him. Nor was there any room in all the
village save in the house of Annie and Uriah Spragg. He
came there with his carpet-bag and tin trunk to live in the
extra room, and after that there was no longer any peace
in the house, but only smothered passion and hatrea and
jealousy. Uriah, more terrified than before, talked much
and hysterically of their mission, saying that they must give
themselves in chastity to God alone, looking neither to right
nor to left. Leander devoured himself with desire and a
sense of sin.

One night in midsummer when the heat and stillness of
the country was intolerable, the three of them sat as usual
in the single common room. It was Leander’s turn to read
the Scripture and he chose to read from the Song of Songs
which is Solomon’s, showing the Mutual Love of Christ and
his Church. He plunged deep into the middle of it as if he
had been reading it again and again and knew each verse,
and he read in a loud and terrible voice shaken with his
inward illness. Crying out, he read :

‘How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O Prince’s
daughter ! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work
of the hands of a cunning workman.

‘Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not

90

A PRAIRIE IDYLL

liquor: thy belly is like an heap o£ wheat set about with
lilies.

‘ Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.

‘ Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fish'
pools of Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim : thy nose is
as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.

‘Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of
thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries.

‘ How fair and how pleasant art thou, O Love, for delights I

‘ This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to
clusters of grapes.

‘ I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of
the boughs thereof : now also thy breasts shall be as clusters
of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples;

‘And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my
beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those
that are asleep to speak.

‘ I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.’

In her corner Annie Spragg stopped seeing. She clasped
her hands together lest their trembling betray her. Uriah
Spragg sat upright and very still, his bony haifds hanging
at his side, his furrowed face ashen and drawn ahd strangely
like the head of death. He looked neither to one side nor
the other. It was as if he did not hear the paw^onate voice
of Leander, torn and twisted by the dark things in his soul.

And Annie Spragg \new now, for the worq^ of Solomon
had made her aware of her body.

When Leander had finished and put down the book,
Uriah without a word reached out a knotty hand and took
it from him. In silence he turned the pages and then in the
cold strangled voice that was so different from the warm,
rich voice of the Prophet, he read :

‘We have heard it said of them of old time, Thou shalt
not commit adultery.

‘But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh upon a

91

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her
already in his heart.’

When he had finished, he closed the book without a word
and, rising, went into his own room, leaving them alone.
Lcander rose and in silence rushed through the open door
out into the cornfields. And Annie, sitting alone in her
corner, heard the voice of her brother raised in prayer.

VI

All the next morning the three in the cabin went the mean
small round of their existence betraying no sign of recog-
nizing the thing that had happened. Life went on the same
as if by denying the thing they could annihilate its existence.
But at noonday neither Leander nor Uriah came home for
dinner. Annie waited for them and when at last she gave
up all hope of their coming, she locked the house and set
out for a walk along the river.

It was a hot still afternoon, damp with the smell of grow-
ing corn turning to milk in the ear, and she walked slowly,
stopping now and then to rest in the shade of the feathery
willows and witch-hazel that grew in the fertile soil by the
edge of the stream. Two little birds followed her, twittering
and flying from bush to bush. Once while she was resting
three quail came out from among the rows of corn to eat
the crusts she brought them. The mud turtles, instead of
slipping in alarm from logs and stones into the water,
watched her with staring beady eyes, unafraid. The blue
jays out of vulgar friendliness kept up a wild screeching and
calling.

She wandered on and on, sadly and in a kind of dream,
not knowing why it was she felt so tired and so confused,
knowing only that the heat and the smell of the corn seemed
to fill her with an overpowering desire to sleep. She had
walked for miles and miles when she came at last to a spot
which long ago she had chosen for her own. It lay in a

92

A PRAIRIE IDYLL

wide bend of the meandering stream so that the fragment of
earth was almost an island. In another year the spring
floods would have cut through the narrow neck and isolated
it, leaving it to be washed away bit by bit in the years that
followed, into the distant ocean that Annie had never seen.
No one had ploughed this land and it lay overgrown with a
thicket of golden rod and sumach and gentians. Here she
had come alone many times. There was a kind of bower
where she lay for whole afternoons watching the ways of the
birds and the beetles, the turtles and the ants. Sometimes
she fell asleep, to awake only when the afternoon sun had
fallen low on the prairie and the cool of evening had begun.

To-day she pushed her way through the briars into the
bower and flinging herself down yielded to the hunger for
sleep.

VII

It was late when she awakened slowly, aware of a faint
pleasant sound of splashing somewhere near her, a sound
that was cool, as if water touched her own hot troubled
brow. Slowly she sat up and looking out from the bower,
she saw the cause of the noise. On the log in |he midst of
the stream sat Leander with his back to her, quite naked.
He was splashing his feet in the water and sending it high
in the air to fall down in glistening drops his blond
head and white body.

A strange, voluptuous weakness filled her;body so that
she could not rise. She felt that she must be dying. She knew
that if she did rise she could not escape lest he notice her
and know that she had seen him thus. She was frozen to
the earth, fascinated and helpless, and suddenly Leander
slipped into the reddish water and swam away toward the
far shore. She tried to cover her face with her hands, but
she could not move them to her face. On the sloping bank
opposite Leander was lifting a great stone high above his
head. She saw the muscles flow beneath the white skin as

93

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

he lifted it higher and higher until with a gesture of triumph
in his own strength he hurled it from him into the midst of
the cornfield. Then he ran and leaped and turned cart-
wheels on the thick red-black soil, and Annie burying her
face in the thick grass to shield it from what she kept seeing,
felt a sudden wave of sickening beauty, of a kind she had
never known before. It was a new world, as unknown to
her as it was to the people of Cordova. Beauty and delight
in life flowed in upon her, dazzling and blinding her, and
with a great sense of freshness and freedom, as if she were
herself for the first time, she pressed her face against the
earth and wept.

When she raised her head again he was gone, and pulling
herself to her feet she pushed her way through the bushes
and ran along the edge of the high corn, keeping close
against the willows and sumach for fear that he might sec
her and know that she had seen him in his nakedness.
When she had run a long way, she fell from exhaustion and
lay panting.

‘From mis day,’ she thought, ‘I am a lost woman.’ For
she knew now that she was sick with desire for Leander.

In the south the bog was afire and the white smoke drifted
slowly up in a great cloud against the prairie sky. In it the
lakes of brimstone swam and flickered in the heat.

VIII

She found Uriah waiting for her, his narrow eyes dark
with suspicion and accusation, but neither of them said any-
thing. They waited for Leander to return and at last at
dark when he had not come in they sat down to cat without
speaking to each other. It was nine o’clock and Uriah had
been many times to the door looking out into the darkness
when at last Leander appeared. He was hadcss and in his
hand he carried Annie Spragg’s sunbonnet. Looking at
her with a queer expression in his blue eyes, he said, ‘I
found it by the bend in the river. I knew it was yours.’

94

A PRAIRIE IDYLL

It was a strange accusing look as if he believed that she
had been spying on him. Behind it lay a mist of shocked
and confusing tnoughts. She took the bonnet and ran into
her room, closing the door and bolting it.

But she did not sleep. It was as if a demon had taken
possession of her. She heard Uriah and Leander talking,
talking, talking, still as if nothing unusual had occurred.
She heard them reading the Scripture, Uriah in his tight

E inched voice, Leander in his low warm soft one. She
eard one of them go to bed and then the other. The light
disappeared and the house fell into darkness. She lay think-
ing, ‘ I am an evil woman. I am cursed as my father was
before me. I had better die. I had better kill myself at
once.*

Her love for Leander was so great that she could no
longer breathe in peace. And he had said nothing. Perhaps
tomorrow he would go away and she would never see him
again. They could not go on like this. Perhaps if she did
not kill herself, Uriah would kill her. She had thought of
late that there was a look of cold murder in hi$icye. They
could not go on like this. i

She did not know how long she lay thus tormenting her-
self, but toward morning she rose, thinking to go into the
kitchen for a drink of water from the pail that «tood there.
It was not clear sparkling water, but the dead «t^c water of
the flat country. In the darkness she made her jwv^y through
the common room into the kitchen. She found the pail. She
was raising the dipper to her hot parched lip| when there
was the sound of a door opening. She pressed against the
wall listening and presently someone crossed the common
room and entered the kitchen. She thought, ‘ It may be
Uriah coming to kill me.’ And then with a sudden sick feel-
ing, ‘ It may be Leander. He, too, could not sleep.’ But
in the blackness she could not make certain.

She heard the figure in the dark fumbling at the latch of
the kitchen door. The door opened against the blue of the
prairie night and she saw that it was Leander. He was

95

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

dressed and in his hand he carried his carpet-bag. He was
going away and she would never see him again. She grew
cold and trembled and wanted to cry out, ‘Don’t go,
Leandcr. Don’t go. I am here waiting for you. Nothing
makes any difference.’ He must not go away. He must
not go away.

And then, although she had not cried out, he hesitated
for a moment as if he had felt her standing there in the
darkness, and putting down the bag he turned and made his
way toward the water pail. He was coming nearer and
nearer. He was beside her now, he would see her in a
moment. In a low voice, she said, ‘It’s me, Annie.
Leander, you mustn’t go away.’

She heard him make a sudden quick movement of terror
and echo, ‘ Annie,’ and then it seemed to her that they were
enveloped by a flame.

IX

In the morning he was gone and he did not return all
that Jay though she went a hundred times to the door of the
cabin to look for him. And he did not return the next day
or the next. On the fourth day they found him. It was
Uriah who made the discovery. Leander was lying at the
bend in the river a little way from Annie’s bower. He was
dead and his gun lay beside him. He had shot himself
through the head.

It was Uriah who brought her the news. He told the
story simply, as if he did not know the reason why Leander
had destroyed himself or that it meant anything at all to
her. There was only the look in the pale blue eyes, so cold,
so full of hatred that Annie Spragg turned away and hid
her face. Uriah Spragg had now to atone for the sin of his
sister as well as the sin of his father. They never spoke of
it again, for it was their habit never to speak of sins but
only of sin. And they never spoke again of Leander,

But they had to leave Cordova before Uriah was ordained

96

A SENTIMENTAL PASSAGE

because people began to whisper that they were evil because
they were children of the Prophet, and that Annie was a
witch and a bad woman. They even whispered that between
them the brother and sister had made away 'with L^andcr
because of the things he knew. One morning Annie found
under the door a crude, misspelled letter warning them
that if they did not leave the town before nightfall they
would be tarred and feathered and driven out. They len:
and took up a life of wandering, for there was no place in
all the world where they belonged.

A SENTIMENTAL PASSAGE
1

W HEN Anna d’Orobclli left Father d*Astier before
the door of the tall house where he sl^ed when in
Brinoe, their parting was a simple good-night# There was
not even a pressure of the hand, for a curious at|d unfamiliar
restraint had taken possession of them both. lAll the way
from the Villa Leonardo, they had driven si4c by side in
silence while the big motor roared up hill and tfown through
the yellow dust. At the door she did not^e^en wait for
him to mount the steps and disappear, but car

and rushed away across the Piazza. She late already

and at forty-nine a woman could ill afford keep a lover

waiting. But she was driven, too, by a fierce desire to
escape the quiet eyes of Father d’Astier. He had, she
thought, come at last to make a truce with life, and so he
was calm and filled with peace. He had rest and that was
a precious thing.

She fled from him as she might have tried to flee her own
conscience. Father d’Asticr was all the conscience she had,
and now he had turned up in Brinoe when she wanted least

97 ^

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

to encounter him. Who could have expected to find him
there in the horrible heat of August when everybody fled
Brinoe? (In her mind echoed the shadow, ‘ Anybody who
is anybody.* Not seedy people, of course, like those she had
encountered this afternoon.) Oh, he knew well enough
why she was there and what she was doing. That was why
he had been so silent, as if she were betraying him. But
he had been reasonable enough, all things considered; he
had never reproached her but once and then only by the
inscription on the fly-leaf of the Thomas-a-Kempis. He
had kept silent, which in a way was worse than if he had
spoken, especially when you had loved him for nearly thirty
years.

At the door of the Palazzo Biancamano, she turned the
motor over to the chauffeur. ‘At five tomorrow, Enrico,’
she said, looking a little away from him. Enrico, too, knew
why she was in Brinoe. He knew why she had driven
through the dust and heat all the way from Venice in
August. She would not need the motor until five because
she and Oreste would spend the heat of the day in the
apartment.

As the motor drove off she turned and looked up at the
windows of the apartment with that sudden feeling of sick-
ness and ecstasy which always overcame her at such times.
The windows were still dark. She was in time. He had
not come yet.

II

It was not her own apartment. She hated Brinoe because
she thought the people who lived there dull and stuffy and
full of gossip. It was an apartment loaned her by Nina de
Paulhac, Nina knowing well enough what it was to be
used for. A great many people knew, she thought, and yet
what difference did it make? Your friends were your friends
no matter what you did, and the others did not matter.
Only she must not make a fool of herself. When women

A SENTIMENTAL PASSAGE

were old, love sometimes made them silly. She mustn’t
be an old fool like Mrs. Whitby, running ^cr gigolos and
dubious dukes at sixty.

The apartment was strange to her and there was only
Ottilia, me femme de mdnage^ to show her about. Ottilia
knew why she was there. Well, better that she did know.
Then there wouldn’t be any violated innocence. She won-
dered how many times the apartment had been lent to
others for the same purpose.

Swarthy, moustacheef, with ox-like eyes, Ottilia showed
her the bedrooms and the two baths.

" I am hard,’ she thought. ‘ But what of it? God knows
I’ve reason to be hard. Only where love is concerned,
I am not hard. It’s always me that suffers. You
can’t be really hard if you go on being hurt again
and again.’

She told Ottilia to keep the supper hot. ‘ It’s impossible
to ruin Italian food,’ she thought. And aloud, ‘ I’m expect-
ing a friend to dine with me.’ ;

Yes. Ottilia knew. Signora dc Paulhac had written her.

She wished Ottilia wouldn’t smile like thatiwith her eyes.
Was she smiling just because she took that fi^endly interest
which all Latins have in an intrigue, or becatijike she thought
it ridiculous in a woman of her age to hav«|a lover? She
must be about the same age as Ottilia, ^^ough Ottilia
looked ten years older. Would Ottilia be gbtog downstairs
to regale other servants below with the tal^?: What did it
matter? What did anything matter? *|t is silly,’ she
thought, ‘ for a woman of my age and cxpcpcncc to behave
always as if it were the first time, always worrying what
people might say, always afraid of being caught.’ There
wasn’t anybody in the world who cared if ^e was caught,
certainly not Faustino. A husband like that could be made
cocu a thousand times in public and he wouldn’t care at all
so long as she gave him money for electric toys and a train
to run by real steam around the garden at Ventcrollo — * like
the children in the Bois riding to the Jardin d’Acclimata-

99

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

tion the way I used to do. My God! How long ago was
that? I mustn’t think of it. I mustn’t think. Perhaps
that’s why I’ve always kept my lovers so long, because it’s
always like the first time, always a renewal, a rebirth of
love, rising from its own ashes. It was always exciting
when it was like that. There was no growing blase'

For a long time she lay in the hot water, allowing it to
soothe her, to set loose all the nerves made taut by the
wretched visit to the Villa Leonardo. When at last she
rose and dried herself, she covered her body with a scented
powder made for herself alone, and then fell to regarding
it in the mirror. It was not an old body, but firm and
young, and the face was not old.

‘Nina looks old sometimes, because she gets tired. It’s
vitality that counts in this world. It’s the only thing. I’m
never tired. Faustino was old and tired at thirty-four when
I married him.’

Her hair, cut short but not too short, was a fine artificial
red. ‘Thank heaven,’ she thought, ‘I’ve dyed it for so
many years that no one remembers it was ever any other
colour. It’s swimming that preserves the figure. Swim-
ming and sun and exercise. If women would only learn
that.’ She thought of Oreste and of the many women who
envied her, and she grew warm with triumph. Oreste was
at least five years younger than herself, only he didn’t know.
‘ I am carnal woman,’ she thought, ‘ and quite pleased with
myself.’ She thought suddenly of the curious piece of sculp-
ture found in the garden of the preposterous Mrs. Weatherby.
The memory of it gave her strange and voluptuous excite-
ment.

Then she put on a pale green peignoir the colour of sea-
water and a collar of pearls.

Ill

There was a loggia off the saloon which hung above the
river. It was quite dark now and the moon had risen above

100

A SENTIMENTAL PASSAGE

the circling hills. The air was still hot, but the insane wind
from Africa had died away at last.

‘ It is after nine,’ she thought. ‘ He is late. He counted
on being here by seven.’

She walked out into the loggia and leaning on the stone
balustrade looked down. Below her the river flowed in the
moonlight a pale golden yellow, shrunken by the drought
to the size of a brook. It smelled badly. Save for a pair of
lovers the long bare quai was empty. The lovers leaned
against the river wall, two small black figures melted into
a single passionate shadow. Presently on the bridge just
beneath appeared the dimmed lights of a motor.

‘ There he is now,* she thought. The motor turned slowly
into the street below and moved toward the Palazzo Bianca-
mano, and the old feeling of sickness swept over her. He
was coming hearer and nearer. He would stop now at the

door She waited, but he did not stop. The motor went

slowly on. Perhaps he had mistaken the way or did not
know the house. But that could not be. He knew Brinoc
well. He knew Nina’s apartment. Perhaps he had had a
small accident on the way, an accident that^ had delayed
him but not injured him, and he had telegraphed, only they
had failed to deliver the telegram. Things like ^at happened
in Italy. It wasn’t any better with the F'asd^, no matter
how much they said to the contrary. You Oollldn’t change
the whole character of a race overnight. Ih Kmerica . . .
What was America like now? It was eighlfedi years since
she had last been there. Queer that she alyrays thought of
it as ‘ home ’ when she had lived in Europe more than half
her life.

In one of the apartments below someone had begun to
play a piano and to sing. It was familiar music but she
could not place it. The voice of the soprano was young.
It sang a little uncertainly.

Newport. What was Newport like now? Who lived in
the old house with the ugly stone turrets? Her room had
been the one in the turret above the porte cochhre . . . the

loi

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

room she had left to marry Faustino, Principe d’Orobelli,
Conte di Venterollo. Well, it had sounded splendid enough
to suit her mother — ^her mother, who was having an affaire
with a dentist years younger than herself. Wilkins was his
name, Herbert Wilkins. We are bad blood (she thought).
But there were plenty of other girls willing to take her
place. Faustino was getting money and she was becoming
a Princess — Princess d’Orobelli. A fool she was, knowing
nothing about anything . . . nothing about life. Thank
God, girls to-day were different, especially American girls;
they knew what they were doing.

There was another motor coming across the bridge. It
wasn’t Orestc. It was a camion, rumbling and rattling
through the stillness of the night.

‘ I mustn’t watch for him,’ she thought. ‘ If I watch it
will only make him later.*

The voice below kept on singing. She knew the music
now. It was the Rosenkavalier — ^the music of the Feld-
marschallin in the first act. The voice was singing in French
and not too good French. Probably an American girl
studying in Italy. A Viennese opera sung in French by an
American in Brinoe. The world was getting like that.
She, an American married to an Italian, had a Spanish
lover. What did it matter? What did anything matter
except staying young, like that fresh uncertain voice and the
dark pair of lovers on the quai. The voice was like silver.

'Mats comment est-il done possible que I' enfant que
j^itais jadis puisse un jour connaitre la vieiUesse? Etre une
Vieille! La Vieille Marichale! Voyez, c*est elle, la vieille
Princessc/

A bell rang somewhere in the apartment. She listened.
Surely it was the telegram, perhaps explaining why he was
late. A door opened. There was the sound of Ottilia’s
voice talking to someone with a man’s voice, and then a
laugh and then the door closing again. Ottilia would be
coming now in a moment with the telegram. She stepped
inside from the loggia, but Ottilia didn’t CQpic. What was

102

A SENTIMENTAL PASSAGE

keeping her? When a telegram came she ought to bring it
in. All Italians were the same— hopeless.

Suddenly she rang with a too great violence, thinking at
once, ‘I have lost control of myself. I mustn’t do that.*
There was another thought in the back of her mind which
she kept pushing from her so that she might not even recog-
nize it for what it was.

Ottilia was standing before her,

‘The bell rang, Ottilia. Was it something for me? *
‘No, Eccellcnza. It was my cousin coming to pay me
a visit.’

Eccellcnza! Eccellcnza! Where had Ottilia learned that
absurd method of address? If I watch for him he will
never come. I must not be cross with Ottilia. Being rude
to servants is a worse crime in the eyes of God than adultery.
Most Latins are horrible to their servants. Faustino treats
them like dogs.

She found herself in the loggia, watching, watching.
‘Well,’ she thought, ‘I’m here again, watAing, without
knowing it. There’s no use going back novs^*’

She began to sec herself all at once as another woman
whom she regarded from a great distance, j
It was a funny thing what life did to yott#f Who would
have thought that the girl being married ill |he garden at
Newport would have turned into the woi)aiin waiting in
the loggia for Oreste? One would have said! |hat there was
no connection between the two, but the was simple
and clear enough. It fitted together link by Jink, beginning
with Faustino. If a woman had a husband like Faustino
what could you expect of her? It wasn’t in her nature to
be a rdigieuse, wearing black and doing good deeds. After
what had happened with Faustino she wanted only life
and more life. He hadn’t broken her. Only three months
she had lived with him, but that was long enough— too
long, because it was long enough for her to conceive a child,
not a child, but a monster, an idiot. Her own good blood
hadn’t been strong enough to overcome the taint of Faus-

103

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

tino’s life and blood. It wasn’t easy to think that your first-
born was a cripple and an idiot, and a grown man now.
He must be twenty-six, shut up always at Venterollo with
his father. She hadn’t seen him in years. How many?
Well, she wouldn’t think of that. After all, he wasn’t much
more insane than Faustino himself.

She’d think instead of Victor because Victor was a boy
10 be proud of, with red hair, people said, like his mother’s.
Only her hair had never been red. It was the red hair
of his father — not Faustino, praise God, not Faustino but
of Nigel. Victor wasn’t a d’Orobelli. He wasn’t even
Italian. He was son of Nigel Burnham.

Another car was now crossing the bridge. No, that
wasn’t Oreste either. His motor was grey and long. If I
watch for him he’ll never come. Ottilia said her cousin.
More likely it’s her lover. I can’t go inside and sit there
alone. O God, don’t let anything happen to Oreste!

And Faustino didn’t care that Victor wasn’t his son, even
though he knew it. Victor was the heir, the next Prince
d’Orobelli. He had saved the line, Victor, the son of an
English father and an American mother, Victor, product
of six happy weeks in Malta. I was young then. I thought
I wanted to dabble in archaeology instead of life. Maybe it
would have been better; I shouldn’t be standing here now,
suffering. Six weeks in Malta. No, that was worth all this
suffering when you thought of the happiness, even the happi-
ness of thinking about it now, years afterward. I am old, she
thought. Everything is measured in years now instead of
months. There had never been anything quite like Nigel,
nothing so young and clean and unspoiled. It was probably
his first affaire, and mine, O God, mine was with Faustino
my husband. A clean affair like that with Nigel must be better
in the eyes of God than legitimate marriage with a beast
like Faustino. Odd how she thought of him always as he
had l^een in Malta in his uniform as officer of His Majesty’s
Navy and never as she had seen him last in Monte Carlo,
middle-aged, an admiral, with two daughters growing up

104

A SENTIMENTAL PASSAGE

into tall blonde English girls. Nigel was young, all
youth. And she had been young then, too, young save for
the stain of Faustino. And Victor was like Nigel, as if
Nigel had never grown old at all but simply changed into a
son. That was why she loved Victor better than Amadeo,
Jim Cain’s child.

' Le temps/ sang the voice, * est subtil comme un poison;
on ne le sent pas, tant qu* on s*aime; mats soudain, un jour,
on ne sent plus que lux, II est autour de nous, il pdnetre cn
nous-mime, En nous sans cesse il glisse; dans le miroir il
coule; il ride nos pauvres visages; mime entre nous son onde
coule encore, sans bruit, sihsncieuse. Oh, mon ami I . .

O God! Stop her singing! Send Oreste safely to me!

Odd how you could love in so many ways. Love with
Nigel was like the morning sunlight streaming in at the
windows. And with Jim Cain it was mixed with pity.
Jim Cain, who thought himself a gentleman because he
hadn’t vitality enough to be positive. It was queer how
quickly families went to seed in America in three genera-
tions, Jim thought that doing nothing meant l^ing a gentle-
man. He was a gentleman, but only by environment and
accident. I could have married him instead of^Faustino, but
I’m glad that I didn’t. I should have died of ^redom with
him. And I could not have betrayed him.,. I’d have been
so sorry for him. Jim would worry a great 4cal about his
honour, because he thought that was one of: the marks of a
gentleman. And he was dead now for thi^ years. And
Amadeo was like him. Nobody had ever su$|)ected Amadeo
but Faustino. Faustino /(new Amadeo wasn’t his child.
And Jim’s cousin Sabine, who suspected ^jverything and
everybody ... she even dared to speak of Amadeo as
‘my cousin.’

*I mustn’t think these things,’ she told herself. ‘It’s a
bad omen, as if I were really an old woman looking back
over my life. I mustn’t act as if everything was finished.
It isn*t finished. It isn't finished.’

The thought kept pressing in upon her closer and closer.

105 D*

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SFRAGG

I must push it away. I mustn’t even let it take shape. It’s
nearly eleven now. O God, send him to me. O God, just
this once more. Don’t make me an old woman. I’m still
young. My heart is young. My soul is young. O God,
don’t take him from me.

A motor horn was sounding somewhere across the river
in the direction of the Palazzo Gonfarini. It’s a German
horn, like the one Oreste has. If I wait, if I cross my fingers,
it will turn into Oreste. Such miracles may happen, only
we never know about them. He might nave taken the
road by Monte Salvatore. No, it isn’t Oreste. It sounds
farther away now. It was going in the other direction. It
was climbing the hill toward San Marco. How high the
moon is, at the very top of the sky.

Jean could have saved me. Jean was the only one 1 have
ever loved. Queer that never once in twenty-five years have
I called him Jean, but always Father d’Astier, politely,
respectfully, as if there was nothing between us. He was
the only one before whom I’d have grovelled on the ground,
kissing his feet because he was a man and a good man. And
it was his goodness that spoiled everything. We could have
run away, anywhere, giving up everything, even though he
was a priest. What difference would it have made in the
end? Who would have cared? And now he is an old man
with peace in his soul who thinks me a harlot. It is your
fault, Jean. It is your fault. You could have taken me when
you wanted me, that time at Caporolla in the garden or at
Nina’s or the night at Brufani’s when Fate brought us to-
gether alone. You could have saved me, Jean. You could
have saved me! I’d have been with you to-night happy to
sit by you, instead of here in the loggia waiting for Oreste.
But you turned your back and contented yourself with writ-
ing pious sayings in a book and looking at me in silence out
of your black eyes. God understands. God must know
that what you did was a sin. And still you can have peace
and faith, shutting me out. Shutting me out.

(The thought was near now, far too near to be put away.)
io6

A SENTIMENTAL PASSAGE

The city is quiet. There isn’t even the sound of a motor
horn or the faint music from the Piazza. The moon has
passed the zenith and everyone is in bed . . . everyone but
me who stands listening and watching in the loggia. Even
the lovers have gone away. They are young, happy crea-
tures, they are young. There are years before them, and be-
fore me — ^perhaps a single night, a week, a month. O God,
send him to me.

(The thought cried out aloud.) He is not coming now.
It is too late. He is never coming. It is all over now, I
am too old. Tomorrow he will write to me giving excuses
and letting me know that it’s ended and again I shall be
hurt as if I’d never learned anything. O God, don’t let me
be hurt this last time, this last time when I am saying good-
bye to youth, to love, to everything. Love, God, that’s all
I’ve ever had. I’m not a clever woman. I’m not a good
woman. I’ve never had anything but love.

She found her nails digging into the stone of the balus-
trade. ‘ I must go in now,’ she thought. ‘ I mustn’t stand
here any longer. I’m being a fool, an old f^l, like Kitty
Whitby. I mustn’t do that. I’ve always jbeen discreet.
I’ve been dignified. O God, if only You Bad given me
faith and peace like Jean. O God, it was|You and the
Church who took Jean from me. I’d have hec|n a good wife
to him.’ . I

He's not coming now. He's never coming it all, Ifs too
late. It's all over, |

She went inside and threw herself on the sofa,

where she lay for a long time not knp^ing what she
thought, or even whether she was alive. Ahd slowly when
she had wept and wept she began to feel Calm again and
cool.

I must not be a fool, she told herself. It’$ over now and
there’s nothing to be done. I must make the most of it.
Perhaps if I pray God will send me peace and faith. I must
be an old woman now. I must go out in dignity. It’s time
now. Victor is a man now and he mustn’t hear people

107

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

laugh at his mother. The past is the past, but Victor is old
enough now to understand. Victor, Nigel’s son. Nigel, who
was like the morning sun streaming in at the windows. He
is getting old, too.

She rose and rang the bell and standing in the shadow so
that Ottilia should not see she had been weeping, she told
her to serve the supper and then go to bed.

I must not let her know that he is not coming. I must
not let her know that it matters to me. Aloud she said,
‘ You can leave the supper on the table. I’ll serve myself.’

Ottilia knew that he wasn’t coming. You could tell by
the look in her ox-like eyes. They weren’t smiling any
longer. They had in them a gleam of sympathy. That
was because the ‘ cousin * was a lover. Ottilia understood.
To be pitied by a servant! In love women were all of one
kind. There were no princesses and no servants.

When Ottilia had placed the supper on the table and gone
away, the Princess rose and going into the bathroom disposed
of the soup and a portion of the vegetables so that in the
morning Ottilia would not think that she had been unable to
eat. She did this in the proper order so that if Ottilia came in
suddenly she would not find all the food disposed of mira-
culously at once. But Ottilia did not return.

Then she drank coffee, thinking perhaps if I stay awake
and pray all night God will send me faith and peace like
Jean’s. She took out the Thomas-^-Kempis that Jean had
given her long ago, and tried to read it. It was a thing
she carried with her always, more precious than her pearls,
not because of what it contained, but because he had given
it to her. He had held it in his hands and had written in it.
He had beautiful hands. She always saw them when she
read out of the Thomas-i-Kcmpis. She read from what he
had written with his beautiful hands.

Dans la damnation le feu est la moindre chose; le supplice
propre au damnS est le progris tnfini dans le vice et dans le
crime, Vdme s'endurcissant, se dipravant toujours, s'enfon-

io8

A SENTIMENTAL PASSAGE

cant nicessairemcnt dans le tnal de minute en progression
giomStrique pendant Vitemiti.

Michelet.

That was true, but its truth did not change the ways of
humanity. It went on just the same. It was a clever
thought, but not strong enough to overcome and subdue the
body that you shut in, a prisoner. I will wear black, she
thought, and devote myself to hospitals and the poor.
Perhaps a legend will grow up about me — the woman who
had given all to life and turned in the end to God and the
church. That would be a fitting end to the story, a fine
way to end it, and it was only the end that mattered
now.

She wept a little, pitying herself, and then read some more
out of the little book, passages which she had read many
times.

‘ O Lord, let that become possible to me by Thy grace,
which by nature seemed impossible to me.

‘Thou knowest that I am able to suffer but little, and
that I am quickly cast down, when a slight adversary
ariseth. «

‘For Thy Name’s sake, let every tribulation be made
pleasant and desirable to me: for to suffer a|bd to be dis-
quieted for Thy sake is very wholesome for soul.’

‘Jean sought to cure me,’ she thought, ‘by' giving me a
book when he should have given me himself/

Perhaps if I read now God will reward!' me and send
Oreste, after all. But that is foolish. I have never prayed to
God except when I am unhappy. He must retnember that.
I only come to Him when I want to beg something of Him.
No, the end must be in black. All great harlots become
pious in their old age, as if faith could take the place of
love.

She tried to read, but she did not know what she was
reading. She kept thinking of the excuses Oreste would
write tomorrow and thinking, * If I wear black I had best

109

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

go to Worth. He will make me look discreet and respect-
able and chic. I shall be able to wear black without becoming
an old horror. Satin I shall wear and black velvet. How
people will talk when I am no longer seen about, when they
hear that I have shut myself up at Ventcrollo with Faustino
and my idiot son. Perhaps they will come and see
me there. Surely God won’t mind that. I can have Nina
come. 1 can even have people to stay. God wouldn’t mind
that.

‘ But he that is wise and well instructed in the Spirit is
raised above these mutable things: not heeding what he
feeleth in himself, of which way the wind of instability
bloweth; but studies only that his mind may be directed to
its supreme and final good.

‘ For thus he will be able to continue throughout one and
the selfsame, and unshaken. . . .’

She tried to read on and on, calming her soul with the
long, quiet, beautiful periods, but she could not sec the
page for the feeling of sickness which came over her. People,
she thought, must feel like this when they are condemned to
death. For me to be old is to die.

Suddenly she flung herself down once more on the sofa
and began to weep. It was no use. It was all over. She
hadn’t it in her to shut herself away from life. And she
never loved Orestc as much as she had loved him to-night.

0 God, send him to me. No, I must not do that. (She sat
up.) I will be courageous. It’s all over. Tomorrow I will
go to Jean and ask him where I can go into retreat, to begin
another life. I will break completely with the past and never
sec any of them again, not even Nina. (She rose and
walked to the mirror.) I am old now. I should never weep.
It makes me look weary like Nina. It’s only then that I
look really old. I am ola. I am finished. I must find peace
now in God. I must go out in a beautiful dignity. If I
say it over and over again, I will believe it and have
peace . . . peace such as Jean has. I am old. I am old.

1 am old.

no

A SENTIMENTAL PASSAGE

It did make her feel more calm, more peaceful. She sat
down once more and opened the Imitation of Christy but as
she opened it she saw again the beautiful hands of Father
d’Astier.

I am calmer now, she told herself. I will read it through
each day and in the end I will be saved.

‘ Prepare not thyself for much rest, but for great patience.

* Seek true peace, not in earth, but in heaven : not in men,
nor in any other creature, but in God alone.

‘ For the love of God thou oughtest cheerfully to undergo
all things, that is to say, all la^ur and pain, temptation,
vexation, anxiety, necessity, infirmity, injury, obloquy, re-
proof, humiliation, confusion, correction and scorn.'

Perhaps it was true. Perhaps there was such peace to be
had on earth. In the end she would find it, like Jean, and
be content. It was all over now. I am old, I am old.

* Nevertheless in all these they bore themselves patiently,

and trusted rather in God than in themselves; knowing that
“the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be
compared with the glory that should be;' revealed in
them.” . . .’ I

There was a bell ringing again, distantly, ardently.
Perhaps it was he. O God, send me Orestet ^ust this once
. . . this last time. Why isn’t Ottilia answctii^ it? O God,
send me Oreste I ’ ^

She rose, thinking, ‘This is not true. It nightmare.’
In the hall she thought, *I dare not open 0c door. If I
open it, it will change into someone else. Ijdstrc not touch
the handle. I will call out his name. Thep^k can’t change
into someone else,’

She stood trembling, making a great effort, and at last
she was able to say in a weak voice, ‘ Oreste.*

From the other side came his voice, the voice.

* Anna. Let me in.’

She tore open the door and he stood there telling her that
he had had an accident in a remote valley. And she thought,

‘ I must not cry. When I cry I look old.’ But her whole

III

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

body was shaking with sobs. For no reason at all she was
suddenly aware again of that strange statue found in the
garden of the Villa Leonardo.

The book slipped forgotten to the floor, where Ottilia
found it the next morning when her ‘ cousin the green-
grocer, had gone.

THE CRIME OF MEEKER’S GULCH

TP ROM the day that Annie and Uriah Spragg left Cordova
JL their existence drifted into a strange state that was some-
thing more and something less than human. In all their
obscure wanderings it appears that they were hounded like
the figures out of a Greek tragedy by some fate which gave
them no peace, shutting them further and further away
from the world into the solitude of their own souls. It may
have been that the consciousness of their own queerness set
them apart, or it may have been as Signora Bardelli, the
janitress, believed long afterward — that Miss Annie Spragg
sold her soul to the Devil, a bargain she made perhaps on
the day that Uriah found the body of Leander Potts lying in
her bower by the bend of the river. Perhaps she preferred
the Devil to such a God as Uriah worshipped. The same
strange thing that shut them in from the world bound them
to each other in a lonely solitude.

On fleeing Cordova they fell back once more into that life
which they had led so long as children of the Prophet. From
town to town they went and from village to village and cross-
road to crossroad, carrying the word of Uriah’s harsh God
into the wilderness. But it was a life neither as pleasant nor
as comfortable as life had been in the days of the Prophet, for
there was nothing about the voice or the face or the body of

112

THE CRIME OF MEEKER’s GULCH

Uriah which stirred men to tears of repentance and women
to frenzies of hysteria. Uriah was merely repellent and
cold. Gifts of money and of food must have been slendei
and infrequent and Annie, it appears, beyond pumping the
wheezy melodion for the services, did nothing to help her
brother. Nevertheless in those days a man of God was
looked upon as touched by a Divine fire that set him aside
from other men, and so Uriah was tolerated and respected.

They accomplished most in remote and lonely com-
munities where the arrival of a travelling preacher was the
peak of excitement from one year’s end to another, where
souls were craving salvation as a change from the mono-
tonies of harsh weather and dreary landscape. But Annie
Spragg contributed nothing save that uncertain touch upon
the melodion. Even that disturbing power of seduction
come down to her from the Prophet she seemed to have
armoured and locked away in the depths of her wounded
soul. More and more she became a solitary, more and more
she wandered through woods and fields, taking for her
friends only the birds and the animals.

At some period during their long wanderii|gs (and they
went as far west as Boise and as far east as Cafthage) Urian
came at last to be ordained a legitimate prea^er, qualified
by his church and fit to be given a flock and aj house where
he might rest a little from his long and wandering atone-
ment. But even then God saw fit to give hitii only a little
peace, for wherever he went, he was drivett 6n again in a
little time. People disliked him and they distiustd the queer
Annie and her silent, mysterious ways. Uiisdi’s hatred of
women grew with advancing age and as wdmen were the
best defenders of priests he failed in his mission, for his
female parishioners came to look upon him as a poor thing
who was a feeble preacher with a harsh, weak voice in which
there was only me monotonous grey and bitter scale of
denunciation. The women of a parish were the natural
antagonists of a preacher's wife and she of them, and Annie
Spragg was worse than the most helpless clergyman’s wife.

113

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

The women she ignored. She did not call upon them or go
to the Ladies’ Aid or make mother Hubbards for the mission-
ary society. She merely sat at home, mysterious and silent,
surrounded by the outlandish wild things she had made her
pets.

II

And so at last when Uriah Spragg had passed his fiftieth
birthday, they came to the church at Winnebago Falls, a
miserable and dying parish worthy only of one whose life
had been a failure. The building itself was a primitive
affair of unpainted wood, long in need of repair, which
stood in a poor part of the town between the railroad yards
and the river, and his flock was made up of the remnants of
a migration of poor whites who, abandoned by their strength
in the course of a western migration, had settled down in
apathy along the mud flats. They were a poor lot, under-
nourished, superstitious and fearful. Most of them could
not read or write, but they were all Children of God who
possessed souls, and Uriah, whose only ambition was atone-
ment, took up his task without complaint.

The preacher’s house stood on the outskirts of the town,
a .poor wooden affair like the church, half hidden from a
highway which was neither city street nor country road, by
great cottonwoods and a thicket of untended lilacs, syringas
and woodbine. Great clumps of burdock, emblem of
poverty and the sordid, had taken possession of the yard
and grew close against the old house. Beyond it stretched
an abandoned terrain grown over with sumach and wild
cherries, which in summer served mercifully to hide the
fragments of old buggies and baby<arriages, tin cans and
bicycles, dumped there when they ceased to be any longer
of use to the citizens of Winnebago Falls.

Into this house Uriah and Annie Spragg moved the few
primitive things which made up their household furniture.
The pay was three hundred dollars a year and ‘contribu-

114

THE CRIME OF MEEKER’s GULCH

dons *, but ‘ contributions * from a dock which itself lingered
on the fringes of starvation could not have been great. Still
they were for a little time secure and safe from change,
since it was impossible to assign Uriah to a lower charge.

Not long after they had moved in, Annie Spragg was
discovered foraging along the river and on the fringes of
the dump heap, collecting bits of wood. With these she
constructed by her own hands a crude enclosure which she
began to fill with pets. To the members of her brother’s
new flock she remained a mystery, since no one spoke to her
even when they came to the house, unless by chance she
happened to open the door and usher them in silence into a
parlour furnished with three chairs, a worn carpet, two
religious chromos and a rubber-plant. People saw her
sometimes in the town, wandering along the street, peering
into shop windows at things which she could never afford to
buy. She had begun even at that date to appear extremely
eccentric. Her clothes were queer and out of date, with a
skirt which always trailed far behind her thr<|)ugh dust or
mud regardless or the weather. But she was vejry clean, and
even in those days wore white cotton gloves. People who
encountered her at the door of Uriah’s hou^^noticed that
she wore them even when opening the doc|:, and Mrs.
Bosanky, the drunken old Irishwoman who cs^e up some-
times from the flats to help her clean the hOi|se, said that
Miss Annie wore the gloves even when cooking and clean-
ing and doing the wasning. \

Within the crude enclosure among the Wrdocks at the
back of the house there came to be shelwid rabbits and
guinea-pigs, three or four stray cats, a crow with a broken
wing and an old and bony mongrel dog whose broken leg
Miss Annie Spragg had mended with great care. The thicket
about the house had long been a refuge for Wrds and after
she came their numbers increased. People said it was strange
that Miss Annie Spragg’s cats never annoyed the birds and
that even blue jays ana sparrows lived in the thicket in peace
with more timid wingea things.

”5

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

And then one morning old Mrs. Bosanky arrived leading
on a string a young he-goat that had been left behind by an
Irish family which had set out for Oregon. He was a fine
creature, with black intelligent eyes and a long fine shining
coat as black as night. And after a time the town became
used to a new sight, more extraordinary than any of the
others. It saw Miss Annie Spragg walking in the evenings
after her work was done along the road toward Meeker’s
Gulch, a lonely and almost impenetrable marshy thicket
some four miles to the north. The he-goat walked beside
her in the most docile fashion without even the constraint
of a leading string, and when dogs ran out from the houses
along the toad to bark at the queer figure of Miss Annie
Spragg, he arched his back prettily and bent his head and
beat the earth with his pretty shining black hoofs. She took
him there to feed upon the wild sweet clover that grew high
on the edges of the country road. Sometimes when people
passed along the road while the goat was feeding, they
encountered the green eyes of Miss Annie Spragg watching
them through the black veil she always wore, and they
hurried on, filled with the nameless and ancestral fear that
attacks children in the dark.

HI

Uriah, too, sometimes walked along the county road that
led to Meeker’s Gulch, but never at the hour of sunset. He
chose the morning and the middle of the day. Heat seemed
to have no effect upon his great shambling body, not even
the thick damp heat of the fertile prairies. He was fifty-one
and then fifty-two and life and the atonement he had

E lanned seemed only to withdraw further and further from
im. There were men and women who presently had
stopped coming to his church and others who, for reasons he
could not understand, hated him. He had done his best,
his duty; he had been hard and conscientious toward Annie
as well as toward himself, yet none loved him, none asked

Ii6

his aid. He still possessed his gigantic physical strength, but
he was becoming an old man, with hair turning white.
The bitter chiselled lines in his face were becoming great
hard gashes that gave the countenance a perpetual icx)k of
anger and hatred. The pale blue eyes sank deeper and
deeper into their cavernous sockets. And the ungainly
body, denied since the beginning the pleasures for which
nature intended it, began like the bodies of those who
abuse the pleasures of the flesh to be racked with obscure
but devastating pains. At times he could no longer stand
erect for the pain in his spine. People saw him day
after day walking along the county road, his body bent
with pain, still in the same old posture, with the great
bony hands clasped behind him, composing his bitter
sermons as he walked or calling fiercely upon God for
strength.

There had never been much love in the harsh body and
even the little that there had been appeared to have burned
itself out in the flame of his strange passion Tor Leandcr
Potts. But neither was there any hate in him, but only that
thing which is less than human — duty and the sense of
atonement for the sins of his father the Prophef and for the
sins of his unchaste sister. He came at last nev^r to walk in
the town but always in the open country. 04 :c a year he
went away to attend for three days the conviition of his
church. It was his only diversion.

IV

Among the farmers who lived along the rbad to Meeker’s
Gulch there was one of German descent called Ed Hassel-
man, who kept cows and supplied milk for most of' the
citizens of Winnebago Falls. He was a hard-working man,
but the curse of drink was upon him. Sometimes he
would stay sober for months and then one day the appetite
would take possession of him and he would become like a
madman, staying drunk for days and weeks. Sometimes

117

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Until further warning the church will be closed.

Ta\€ warning and do not try to force yourself where you
are not wanted.

{Signed)

John Hemphill.

Darius Curtis.

Alexander Bostwic\.

{Committee).

He did not attempt to tear loose the planks and force an
entrance to his church. For a little time he simply stood
quite still in *the high grass staring at the paper, and then,
turning slowly, he walked away with his head bowed and
his great cruel hands behind his tired back. As he left the
churchyard, passing through the rusted gate, there arose
behind him from the thicket of sumach a loud and derisive
laugh. The committee had been hiding there to watch
him.

It was the end. There was nothing left.

V

At two o’clock in the afternoon of the same day Maria
Hazlett, drowsing in the heat with the reins hanging loose
over the dashboard of the milk-wagon, was roused sharply.
Her team had shied at something that lay on the edge of the
road and very nearly threw the wagon into the ditch. Stir-
ring herself to action, she halted the team to find that almost
beside her, among the high sweet clover, lay the body of a
man. Being a courageous and unsqueamish woman used
to hard farm work and butchering, she got down heavily
and turned the body over on its back. She saw then that it
was the Reverend Uriah Spragg, and that although the
body was still warm he was quite dead. It needed Maria’s
calloused nature to regard the sight without turning ill. His
face was no Jonger the face of Uriah Spragg, but she recog-
nized him by the white hair, the rusty black clothes and the

120

THE CRIME OF MEEKER’s GULCH

great hands that were like the cruel claws of a bird of prey.
He had been beaten savagely from head to foot by some
sharp instrument. Even his clothing had been ripped and
torn in the mad fury of the attack.

There was no one in sight. The murder had been done
at noonday on the county*road in the very midst of the flat
prairie where there was neither tree nor bush nor dwelling
to hide the murderer.

VI

All that day and during most of the night crowds streamed
out to the county road to stare morbidly at the spots of blood
in the dust at the edge of the tall sweet clover. Crowds hung
over the fence of the old house where they took Uriah's
broken body back to his sister Annie. Crowds trampled
the vulgar burdocks into the ground. No one saw Miss
Annie Spragg save the sheriff and two sweating and stupid
policemen who said that she received them in white gloves
and took the news calmly enough—* Although that maybe
was because she was cracked.* i

After three days they buried him, and Miss Atinie Spragg,
who did not take the trouble to put on black 0|’ put off her
flower-trimmed picture hat, tacked up a notice |on the front
fence that she was going away and that her ; ftrniturc was
for sale. She would have gone perhaps overiobked and in
solitude as she had always been, but ror the id^rk rumours
which began to be heard. It was said outright that she had
killed her brother and that everyone knew thiSt crazy people
were far craftier than sane ones. At last a committee from
Uriah's own church, feeling perhaps that they were not
above suspicion, called upon the sheriff to make an investiga-
tion and * clear the honour of Hanna County by fixing me
guilt for the murder of the Reverend Uriah Spragg.’ People,
moved perhaps by some dark mistrust, began to hint that
the black hc-goat had played some part in the crime. No
one had found the weapon with which Uriah Spragg had

I2I

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

been beaten to death and Joe Hutton, the undertaker, told a
story that the wounds on his body were like those that
might have been made by the twin prongs of a pair of horns.
It was true that since the day of the murder no one had
seen the he-goat.

And so they arrested Miss Annie Spragg and questioned
her, although they could draw no intelligible story from
her muddled and perhaps crafty answers. Next they
searched her, calling in two women from Uriah’s church
to strip her naked. She made no resistance, only looking
at them quietly out of her disturbing green eyes. At the very
beginning when they took off the white cotton gloves they
made a strange discovery. On the palms and the backs of
both hands there were red scars, as if they had been branded
there with a hot iron, and as they undressed her they found
other scars like them on the tops and soles of her feet and
one on her right side just below her breast; and on her brow
under the fringe of thick red hair were other scars that
might have been burned there by placing on her head a
crown of jagged hot metal. On her back were the healed
blue scars of flogging. But they could get from her no
answer as to how she came by these scars. Though clearly
they were the scars of wounds, she led them craftily to
believe that she had been born thus.

Awed a little and unable to find even a suspicion of her
guilt, they let her go back in peace to the old house behind
the lilacs, following close behind her in order to search the
place. In the bare small room where Uriah Spragg had
slept they found a long cruel blacksnakc whip and across
the hall in the room of Miss Annie Spragg they discovered a
strange contrivance which at first puzzled them. It consisted
of a rusty pump-chain, fastened in the middle to one of the
beams in the ceiling just above the bed. To the two ends
were attached crude nandcuffs fastened with locks equally
crude. They questioned Miss Annie Spragg for two nours
and at the end of that time they learned that Uriah Spragg
had locked her into the handcuffs each night after she h^

122

THE CRIME OF MEEKER’s GULCH

gone to bed. Only on three nights a year when he had gone
to the church convention was she free.

At the back of the house a crowd of curious gathered once
more, peering in at the windows and breaking down the
cellar door, for the mob no longer looked upon Annie Spragg
as a human creature with the rights of a citizen like them-
selves, but a kind of monster who filled them with a hungry
desire to destroy her. There seems to have been an un-
natural intensity in their feeling against her. She was to
them no longer a woman, or even human. At length three
bold citizens in an excess of virtue broke down the fence
built so laboriously by the hand of Miss Annie Spragg her-
self to shelter her pets, and there on the beaten yellow
earth they found what they sought — three great stains made
by blood.

It was then that old Mrs. Bosanky, for once sober and in
her right mind, pushed through the crowd and told her
story. Miss Annie Spragg, she said, could not have com-
mitted the murder because she, Mrs. Bosanky, had been in
the house all day on the day that Uriah Spragg was found
beaten to death on the edge of the county roa^ She took
her oath to it, calling upon the Virgin Mary ^nd all the
Irish saints to witness that she was telling the |truth. She
explained delicately that she had not told her? story until
now because the murder had upset her and dfc^e then she
had been drinking a little in order to quiet h<^lf.

But the blood She could explain that tOO. It was the

blood of the pretty black he-goat. On the mdrtiing of the
day the Reverend Uriah Spragg was murd<Srcd, he had
killed it himself with an axe.

vii

Since they could find nothing against Miss Annie Spragg
save that she was a little moonstruck, they dropped the case
and annoyed her no more, and the mystery remained un-
solved, an epic in the history of a town where little ever

123

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

happened. Some even felt a little sorry for her when the
stories got about that she had been beaten and branded by
her brother, but none approached her save drunken old
Mary Bosanky.

She went away at last, so quietly that no one knew she
had gone until long afterward. Only Mrs. Bosanky knew
where she had gone, for she had asked her and received the
answer, ‘To Italy.’ And when Mrs. Bosanky asked her
why, she had answered ‘ Because I lived there once.’ And
Mrs. Bosanky who could neither read nor write, thought
Italy must be a town in the next county and took no more
notice of it.

FATHER D’ASTIER’S STORY

H e was born of mixed blood. On his father’s side he
was French and on his mother’s Italian, and the two
bloods had been at war within him since the day he was
born. Until the day he died they would battle there in
his body and in his mind. In youth the struggle had been
incomplete and confused, but with age the two demons came
to divide, each withdrawing a little into his own corner,
and with the clearness of division there had come a certain
peace, for Father d’Astier understood that he was two
persons and not one and that there was no merging the one
into the other. The one man was a mystic, and gullible and
sentimental, of that blood which painted smiling Madonnas
and miraculous children seated in fields starred with impos-
sible flowers beneath throngs of pretty angels. The other
was of the blood of the philosopners, of Voltaire and the
eighteenth century, a creature inquiring and restless, scepti-
cal and touched with the despair of those who stand in

124

FATHER d’aSTIER’s STORY

awe of that which they are too proud to believe. All that
was French in him found satisfaction in facing the truth
and knowing it however unpleasant it might be.

There was in him, too, a monster, born perhaps of the
long struggle in his soul. This, too, at sixty he knew well.
He had known it for a long time now. It was a monster
not easy to tame, perverse and cruel, which sometimes
claimed possession of his very soul and destroyed what he
loved best.

He was thinking of these things when the Princess
dropped him before the door of his own house, a great house
which he owned, for he was a rich man, and in which he
kept for himself only two small rooms under the eaves
looking down upon the square beneath the lovely tower of
San Stefano. Of those who occupied his house he knew
notliing. They lived their lives beneath him, lives that
were tangled and complex, tragic or comic, pathetic and
nondescript. He preferred not knowing his tenants. And
he owned, too, the old rookery called the Palazzo Gonfarini
where this strange woman Miss Annie Sprag^ had died.
But as he climbed the stairs a little wearily, he wais not think-
ing of Miss Annie Spragg but of his own life ai^ the life of
Anna d'Orobelli. 1

He was tired. That long motor ride had worj| his nerves.
And then the discovery of that obscene but bca|itiful statue
had been disturbing. A thing like that was bitter hidden
for ever in the dark earth of that ancient garden. It stirred
up the demons.

‘I am growing old,’ he thought. ‘ Yet she seems as young
as ever. She is a remarkable woman.*

She had not tricked him. He knew well cnougli, why
she had been in such haste. Had he not known her for
nearly thirty years, better perhaps than any man, better even
than any of ner lovers, for there was a side of her known
to him which they would never know? She was a woman,
he thought, born out of her time, a woman who might have
been a grande amoureusCy or a great courtesan. She was

125

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

always in haste, always unsatisfied, like a flame, always
seeking, seeking, seeking something. What could it have
been? Love, perhaps, or something more than that, if
indeed there was anything greater than that. Perhaps she
had been seeking always a man whom she could find worthy
of her, to receive all that she had to give. Such a man might
have saved her, but it was too late now. She would never
find him. She was growing old and to seek love when one
was old was to be ridiculous. The thought hurt him, as it
had hurt him many times during the past year or two, when
he had heard her name mentioned in jest, when people had
told stories against her. Women did not like her and that
was natural, but men had come of late to talk of her. It
was like an audience of dolts witnessing a great play which
they had not the capacity to understand. A whole life
wasted. They did not know her as he knew her. They
could not understand why it hurt him when they laughed.

He turned the key and let himself into the two small
rooms. They were like twin cells, sparsely furnished, with
plain oak tables and chairs, a cupboard. ... It was here
that he came when he wanted peace and rest from the
world, when he had need to retire and fight the demon that
sometimes claimed his soul. This time he had come all the
way from a country house in Shropshire so that he might
be alone. And now he was to have no solitude because he
had found Anna d’Orobclli in Brinoe and because Fulco
chose to torment him with all the nonsense about the Spragg
woman being a saint. He was to have no peace because he
had found Uiere the two people in all the world whose
presence tormented him most.

He did not bother to send for a hot supper. He ate the
cheese and wine and bread which he always kept in the cup-
board, eating in a room that was dark save for the splashes
of moonlight on the floor. Fulco would be coming in a
little while. It would be time enough then to have a light.

He thought again, ‘People do not know how it hurts
me when they laugh at her. They do not know that I shall

126

FATHER D*ASTIER*S STORY

die wondering if I was not the one chosen by God to save
her.* Perhaps saving her would have been in the sight of
God rriore worthy than all the souls he had brought to the
Church, cowardly, worldly, snivelling souls, most of them.
But who could decide a thing like that? Certainly not the
Church, filled with men no nearer to God than himself and
most of them far more stupid. It required charity to under-
stand such things and only God had charity. And who
could know that there was a God ? He had been honest with
the Church, he told himself. He had never let men know
that he doubted these things.

The struggle was beginning again. He saw it now. He
was too old to fight against it any longer, but there was a
part of him that would not leave him in peace — that part
which would not lie down shamelessly in the calm which
appeared to envelop those who never asked questions.

He did not see Anna now as he had seen her a little while
before in the loggia of that preposterous woman at the Villa
Leonardo. He kept seeing her as he had seen her years
before when they were both young, when — (’syhy did he
keep on tormenting himself?) when it could hav^ happened.
And now it was too late. There was no living. lifefover again.
There was only that single straight narrow groove, the
record of each life, which was soon worn aW^y and for-
gotten when you were dead. Who would rcti^mber you
when you were dead ? Who would care what had done,
what pleasures you had known and what sorrows? What
difference could it have made? It would not &ave been an
easy thing, what with his having been Father d*Astier and
she the Princess d’Orobelli. Could they have dared such a
thing, and faced life confident in each other, finding in each
enough to throw away ail else? She would have gone in
recklessly, greedily. Perhaps her way was better, after all,
taking life as it came, squeezing it for the last drop of
colour and fire and beauty.

His agony was that it was too late now. He would die
without ever knowing. If he had taken the wrong turning,

127

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

it could not be undone now. And she had gone on and on
all these years, wasting herself and all she had to give prodig-
ally and without restraint. Perhaps in the eyes of God he
had committed the greatest of sins. If God and Nature
were one, he was the greatest of sinners. The Church taught
otherwise, but the Church, the Church. . . . The Church
had far less in common with God than Nature had. As it
grew older, the Church seemed to have less and less. For
forty years he had been serving the Church like an honest
servant, no more, no less. For forty years he had been
atoning for the first sin, and surely by now he had atoned.
Had he not brought souls to God? Souls to God? The
phrase echoed bitterly inside his head like a phrase spoken
aloud in an empty room. Souls to God. Souls who had
wanted to come to God because they were worldly or because
they were afraid of Ufe and needed to believe in a pretty
story that was considered holy and could not be denied.
And at the end there was always Heaven, not a fine, noble,
splendid Heaven, but a Paradise like the Primitives’, filled
with pink and blue angels and God in a blue robe. He had
brought souls to God, but not his own soul. It was still
the same as it had been at seventeen before he had known
anything of life, a little more placid, perhaps, and more
resigned, but not much different. Sixty years of life had
not proven anything. He was no nearer the mystery now
than he had ever been. Sometimes he fancied that God
was perhaps on his side smiling at the antics of all the others.

And suddenly he thought with shame of what he had
written on the first empty white page of the Thomas-^-
Kempis he had given Anna so long ago.

Dans la damnation hs feu cst la moindre chose; le suppltce
propre au damnS cst le progris infini dans le vice et dans le
crime, Vdme s* endurcissant, se ddpravant toujours, s*en-
foncant nicessairement dans le mal de minute en progres-
sion giomitrique pendant Viterniti.

128

Michelet.

FATHER D*ASTIER*S STORY

He had written that. He who could have saved
her.

What did it all mean, what did it all matter? There was
Anna a little way off with Orcstc Fucnterrabfa searching
for what Oreste Fuenterrabia could never give her, and
what she could never find now. Soon they would both be
dead. Ten more years. Twenty more years. The sooner,
the better now for Anna. She was not made to be old.
For himself it did not matter. Nothing could happen to
him now. He was tired to-night and he had yet to deal
with Fulco and all his stupidity, to keep Fulco from making
a fool of himself. Fulco, who would not sec that the world
was what it was and that Christ had come too soon. There
were those who believed that Jesus would come again. Per-
haps when he came again the world would not reject him —
this world of priests and preachers, of statesmen and bar-
terers and politicians and cheats and idle women, a world
ridden with greed and ambition. He knew the world. He
had lived in it for a long time. He knew those who ruled
the world. The poor were humble, but the popr in power
would be no different. No, he had seen too much of the
world, years and years too much. ?

There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs land he put
down the glass of wine to listen. He knew the licps. They
were Fulco ’s, shuffling, timid, uncertain. knew the
creaking boots. For some reason Fulco’s h^ts always
creaked. He rose and lighted a candle, wearily* ^ior he would
rather have received Fulco in the dark. There was a knock
on the door, a timid, apologetic knock. It Was his past
knocking. It was his fiery, unhappy youth. There were
people, he thought bitterly, who said that youth was the
time of happiness.

The door opened and his son stood there, fat and squat
and awkward in his priest’s clothes, and ill at case like a
peasant, with red swollen peasant’s hands and a round face
covered with pimples. Only the eyes were her eyes, great
brown, gentle sensitive eyes, like a doc’s, in which the

1^9 £

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

shadow of pain was mirrored so easily. He had wanted it
dark so that he could not see those eyes.

He tried to speak kindly. ‘Sit down, Fulco. Where have
you been? ’

The man sat down. (He must be nearly forty-one,
thought Father d’Astier.) His hands clasped his hat. It
was not the proper manner for a priest, but rather the
manner of a timid commercial traveller trying to sell an
article which no one wanted. (He will never rise in the
Church, thought Father d’Astier, because he does not under'
stand the world. He is too simple.)

Fulco spoke in a weak voice, rather too high-pitched and
a little grating. ‘I have been to the Palazzo Gonfarini
praying there. There was a great crowd of devout. Surely
the Holy Virgin has vouchsafed a miracle in your own
house.’

How round-eyed he was and how credulous, how exactly
likp her! Father d’Astier tried to be firm and kind.

‘ It is true, Fulco, that the woman died in my house, but
that means nothing. You must not hope for vain things,
Fulco. Nothing is known of her. People always come like
that to seek relics the minute anything strange occurs.
People want to believe in miracles, and among the
poor, relics are valuable. The poor can turn them into
money.’

It was odd that he found himself speaking to this man of
forty as if he were a child. It was odd and revolting.

‘She was a good woman, Father d’Astier. A religieuse.
She came daily for years to worship the pictures of Saint
John the Shepherd. I have seen her there day after day
with my own eyes. The very doves in the Piazza loved her,
and the little birds sat by when she was dying. Sister
Annunziata swears to that. And the janitress. J saw them
too, but you need not take my word; there is the word of
the others.’

Father d’Asticr interrupted him. ‘ The janitress is infidel
and anti-clerical and Socialist. She is malicious and intelU-

130

gent. We cannot take her word. Besides, saints are not
made like that. We do not even know that the woman had
espoused the Church.*

‘She was a good woman,’ persisted Fulco. ‘The light
of God was in her eyes,’

‘ And how do you know the light of God? ’

* I know, Father d’Astier, I know. I have seen it once
before in the eyes of Sister Annunziata who they are begin-
ning to say is crazy. I know the light of God.’

Fulco went on a little breathlessly, for the climb up the
four flights of stairs to the top of the palace had taken his
breath. He kept telling Father d’Astier all those things
about Miss Annie Spragg which the older man had already
found out for himself and knew better than Fulco. The old
priest did not listen. He sat with bowed head as if he were
listening, but he was thinking of other things. He was
thinking of Brinoe forty years before when he had come to
stay with his mother’s people, not much different from the
Brinoe that lay all about him to-night in the moonlight.
The city was too old to alter much. And he was thinking
of the villa on the hill beyond the Church ofsMontc Salva-
tore, a small white villa surrounded by an orchard of olive
trees. And he was thinking of the fat widoW of Professor
Baldessare and their daughter. The Professor had been a
remarkable man, raising himself from tht , level of the
peasantry with a peasant wife, greedy and coarse and vulgar.
But the daughter was a miracle. He saw iitr again with
a sickening clarity, like one of the womoi of Botticelli.
There was a room in the Uflfizi that he had not entered in
years because he could not bear to look at a picture that
nung there. (Fulco was talking. He became drunk with
words without ever knowing their value.) Laura was her
name, like Petrarch’s Laura. It was odd how long an old
wound could give pain.

He had been young then and strong, not this old man
tired of the world who sat listening to Fulco’s complaints
against his fellow priests — young and twenty-two, a boy

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

who thought the world his for the taking, a boy who
sinned and then tormented himself with his sense of sin
and then mocked at God and the Church, only to begin
again on the same round in the order. He had been full
of animal delight at being alive, and the delight of delights
was Laura Baldessare. It was not the memory of his sin
with her that troubled him now, but of the other sin he had
committed, so much the worse, of destroying her soul by
tearing from it cruelly the simple faith that had dwelt there.
He had done it with wild gusts of adolescent talk, and be-
cause she loved him she had believed what he told her. She
believed anything he told her — ^he who stood in awe of God
at one moment in the next felt superior to God, a silly fellow
strong enough to doubt but too feeble to stand before the
awesome spectacle of a universe. He knew better now. He
was no longer defiant. He only waited for the end, to
see.

Fulco was questioning him. He raised his head and
murmured, ‘Yes, Fulco, but continue. Tell me all your
reasons first.* Fulco was so certain that the old maid was a
saint.

He could not hear what Fulco said for the memories
that crowded in upon him, memories which went back
years before there was ever a potential saint in the Palazzo
Gonfarini. In Fulco’s eyes there was that same fire of
belief that had once burned in her eyes. It redeemed Fulco,
he thought, from being an utter lout. ‘ There is a demon
born in me,’ he thought, ‘that has always tempted those
I have loved best.’ Anna, too, he had tormented, long
afterward.

Again he began to think what his life would have been if
at its beginning he had taken another turning. If he had
married Laura. He could have married her even at the
end before she died when Fulco was born, but chance had
brought him too late, an hour after she had died, going out
into the darkness shaken and terrified because he had
destroyed her faith. That, he thought, was a real sin, a sin

132

FATHER d’aSTIER’s STORY

that could torment one even into the grave. Her poor
faith did no one any harm and it made her unafraid.

And now for forty years he had been atoning for that sin
since the day when in the midst of youth he had turned to
the Church to atone. He had kept his vow. He had atoned.
From that day on he had never known love, and for him
that was not an easy thing. But others had been made to
atone as well, for life was a silly tangled thing. There was
Anna driving through the darkness like a mad woman to
meet her lover because she had never found love and still
believed that one day she might find it. That was her
faith, a good faith, quite as good perhaps as the other
though more easily proven false. She would not believe that
already it was too late. And what good had this atonement
brought to himself or to God or to the world ? What had it
brought him in the end but old age and doubt? It had not
made Laura alive again. It had not restored her faith
before she died, so that she might die in peace.

And here was Fulco raving about faith and saints and a
peasant’s Heaven filled with pink and blue plaster images
and magenta paper wreaths. That was me cruel joke
Nature had played on him — making Fulco no| in the image
of Laura or himself, so that he might have a to be proud
of, but in the image of that vulgar and schemtnjg old woman,
Laura’s mother, who connived at her daughtcl’s sin because
she saw her one day as the Marquise d’Asii^. That was
Nature’s bitter jest, that and his stupid a4dration which
Fulco had for the man he did not even know! was his father.
If Fulco had not been stupid he might havt guessed long
ago that there was some reason for this stranger’s interest
in him. And Fulco had become a priest because he, Father
d’Asticr, was a priest. This fat, stupid, pimply little man
was his son, his heir, who should have been me Marquis
d’Astier. Suddenly he felt a sickening wave of distaste and
hatred for his own son. He was stupid, stupid, and he
could never be rid of him.

Then all at once he knew a fierce desire to beat his head

133

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

against the floor. ‘I am proud and worldly like all the
others. I have learned noming at all. I am no different.
O God, teach me humility.’

Fulco’s thin monotonous voice trickled through the haze
of memories. ‘Sister Annunziata is a woman inspired
of God. . . .’

Me could bear it no longer. He raised his head this time
and looked straight into those trusting doe-like eyes. A
kind of madness seized him. There was something in
those eyes which he must destroy. He knew he must
quench it for ever. He could have no peace until he had
done it.

‘ You are stupid, Fulco. You are stupid. You have lived
in the world for forty years and have learned nothing. . . .
Nothing. You complain because they do not give you a
parish. Parishes are not gotten by faith alone. Men are not
made princes of the Church simply because they have faith.
You learn nothing. The Church has no need of a saint
now, least of all in Brinoe. There is nothing to show that
this woman has ever embraced the faith. Miracles cannot
happen to heretics. There is no place for your simplicity
in the Church. For centuries there has been no place
for it.’

In the eyes of the fat little man the shadow of pain and
terror was mirrored. He sat on the edge of the chair, his
fat red hands crushing the black hat. The sight of him
sitting thus, so stupid and humble, only enraged Father
d’Asticr. He thought wildly, ‘He has neither courage
nor intelligence.’

Aloud he said, ‘ You have lived too long among priests,
Fulco, and superstitious peasants. Can you not sec that
the Church is no longer a power? It is only a shelter
for the weak and fearful, all those who must have miracles
and wondrous things, like children in the presence of a
cheap magician.’

He arose suddenly, as if possessed, and began to pace the
narrow room. The demon had risen now, alive and fearful.

134

FATHER d’aSTIEr’s STORY

He told Fulco things which had long been hidden in his
heart which he had told to no one since the day he entered
the Church. The heretic churches were no better, he cried,
because they tried to mingle faith with reason and that could
not be done. All that the Church taught was a legend
and a superstition. To believe, one had to be as simple as
the most ignorant man. To believe, one must be stupid and
afraid. Had he not brought souls to the Church ? Had he
not brought money to the Church? It was for that he
worked and that alone. Did he not know these things?
Had he not lived with the Church for nearly half a century?
Not because he believed, but because it was a profession, a
career.

And this whole affair of the Spragg woman was nonsense
— the concoction of a half-insane nun and a malicious peas-
ant woman who hated priests. And if even such things
could be, if they were true, the Church would not make a
saint of her, because it had no need of saints at the moment.
The same miracle had happened to more than a hundred
others. It was on record. They were alwsays hysterical
women. No great organization could saint every woman
who saw fit to produce miraculous scars on fer body. The
Church made saints when it needed them iand where it
needed them. It was not an affair left to the 0ivine Will of
God. It was geography and politics.

The Church was not rich and powerful , Because it was
the instrument of God, but because the men in the Church
had made it so. They were politicians. Because men chose
to enter the Church it did not make them different from
other men. They were, after all, pitiful and human and
insignificant like all the others. They made people believe
in things which no man could prove. The Church had
muddled and compromised and corrupted the teachings of
Jesus. It had buried his teachings beneath a mountain of
cant and theology and superstition. When it was powerful
it had committed murder by fire and torture always in the
name of God but always to increase its own power and

135

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

wealth and stamp out its enemies. It was among the great
criminals of the world.

‘ Go to your history, Fulco,’ he cried out. * Cease being a
dolt. Read the records of its worldliness. It lives by gold
more than by faith, taking the money of those who are
afraid or who bargain with it. I l{now. I have brought it
much money. It is my work to bring the rich and tlie
powerful into the Church.’

He halted suddenly, facing the frightened Fulco. ‘And
your faith. What is it? It has been said that faith can
move mountains, but no one has seen it done, save by the
faith that man has in himself, in the steam shovels and the
dynamite he has invented in the face of a hostile Nature.
Man can save himself by faith, but not by a cowardly faith
that pins itself upon conjuror’s tricks, but by faith in him-
self and in Nature and in the teachings of Christ. The
world and the Church have forgotten Christ, who was a
simple man. What had Christ to do with the cheap tricks
of an old maid, an insane nun and a malicious scrub-
woman? All that should be beneath the dignity of God’s
church.’

He moved to the table and took up the thin book which
held for him all the peace he knew. He opened easily to a
page to which he had turned a thousand times in the
struggle to subdue the monster in his soul. By the yellow
light of the candle he began to read :

* For a man's worthiness is not to be estimated by the
number of visions and comforts which he may have, or by
his sf{ill in the Scriptures or by his being placed in a higher
station:

' But by his being grounded in humility, and full of divine
charity; if he be always purely and sincerely seeding God's
honour; if he thin\ nothing of and unfeignedly despise him-
self, and even rejoice more to be despised and little esteemed
by others than to be honoured by them!

He put down the book and turned his white face toward
Fulco. ‘Where is humility in the world to-day? Where

136

FATHER d’aSTIEr’s STORY

is divine charity? Who is it that purely and sincerely seeks
God’s honour? *

Then, quite suddenly, he felt weak and leaned against the
window, his head in his hands, trembling. He was an
old, tired man once more.

There was a long silence and then the timid voice of Fulco
murmuring, ‘ The world, the Church can be purified. If
what you say is true. It can be purified.’

* And who is to do it? The Church would have none of
Savonarola. The Jesuits turned into politicians who said
the end justified the means. It hanged Savonarola by the
neck and burnt his body when he sought to purify the
Church.’ He turned and looked at the cowering Fulco.
‘Go now. I can’t talk any longer.’

Fulco answered him. He was weeping like a litde child.

‘ I can’t argue these things. I know too little. But the world
can be saved,’ he repeated. ‘ The Church can be purified.’

To Father d’Astier it seemed impossible to remain any
longer in the same room with this man who was his son.
Turning, he went quickly into the bedroom and, closing
the door, bolted it. . . . The room was tii^ with only a
narrow iron bed covered with coarse blankcfts. Upon this
he flung himself down, feeling that he wa^ ready to die.
Fulco knew now. Fulco, his own son, wai the only one
who knew the truth. He had killed FulcoV faith as he had
slaughtered the faith of Fulco’s mother. ' The demon
had won a second time. And faith was all, that poor Fulco
had in the world.

Presendy he sat up on the narrow bedi, ‘Tomorrow,’
he thought bitterly, ‘I shall go out into the world again
and go to dinners and make flattering speeches to rogues
and criminals and fools. It is too late now to change. I
am too old. And tomorrow no one will know.’ Again
he had betrayed the thing he served.

Tomorrow he would go again to the Villa Leonardo to
continue the conversion or that silly woman Mrs. Weatherby,
and from her he would get money for the Church. Oh, he

137 E*

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

had brought money to the Church-thousands, millions of
lira and francs and marks and dollars and pounds. He had,
he thought, bought himself a place in Heaven by now. He
had the right to ask a seat of God. He would tell God he
had bought a scat in Heaven and paid for it. He would
go again to dinners and to house parties and great
receptions. . . .

In the midst of these thoughts he seemed to hear the voice
of someone talking quite near at hand. He listened and
presently he recognized the voice. It was Fulco’s. He had
not gone away after all. He had been in the next room all
the while, and now he was down on his fat knees, praying
to God for the soul of Father d’Astier.

STAY ME WITH FLAGONS

T he citizens of Winnebago Falls came long before
she died to think of Mary Bosanky simply and primi-
tively as a town character, placing her in the category of
those who were a little less than human. Most of them
thought of her until her death simply as a drunken old
Irishwoman who worked a little when she was sober, who
went along the streets muttering to herself and who died
in the end at the county poorhouse. But none of them had
seen her as she stepped ashore from a sailing ship at New
Orleans in the year of the Great Irish Famine. Then she
was twenty-six, buxom, strong as a man, and handsome
with black hair and blue eyes and a fine colour. She could
neither read nor write but she boasted when drunk that she
was descended from the Kings of Clare. Toward the end
it was a boast that she used more and more frequently, in
the fashion of those who invoke blue blood to compensate

• 138

STAY ME WITH FLAGONS

for the disappointments of this life. And with Mary
Bosanky there was great need for compensation. There
was the worthlessness of Michael Bosanky and the poverty
of the shack in which they lived by the railroad, and most
of all there was Shamus, her son, who was so beautiful to
look upon and so different from other sons. She knew that
all the blood of all the kings of Ireland could not brighten
the wits of Shamus.

And all her life she had as well to bear the cross of her
own stormy nature, which was that of one who never found
life quite nne enough to satisfy her desires. In the begin-
ning when she was young and had her strength and vitality
she managed somehow to wrest from life a little of what
she asked of it, or at least she was young enough then to
delude herself into believing that she had. She found a
strange excitement in everything — in the wharves and the
river boats, the negroes and the markets of New Orleans
and then for a little time on the river boat where she worked
for the wife of the captain. She had a kind of rollicking
good nature that was always hungry for adventure, and
when adventure did not come she grew borcd,i and when she
grew bored she imagined grievances which Convinced her-
self that she was a creature abused and exploited, and this
in turn gave her a reason for quitting the place where she
worked and moving on to a new town or a new country.
Before she was thirty she had been a chambermaid, a cook,
a dishwasher in a Cincinnati saloon. Sh« had cared for
children and even worked in the fields at harvest time. She
lived almost the life of a man, save that she was always
virtuous because rooted deep in her savage and superstitious
nature there was a fear of priests and of the life after death.
She was terrified of thunderstorms and of corpses and heard
strange noises in the night. There were no even, mono-
tonous plains of contentment in her life. Her mood was
either one in which she went all day singing ballads from
her home county or one in which she went about praying
and moaning and saying her rosary. At the age of twenty-

139

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

eight she found herself washing dishes in Rafferty’s saloon
and lunch-room on the edge of Winnebago Falls where the
tracks of the Iowa, Nebraska and Western Railroad crossed
those of the Trans-Mississippi Freight and Passenger Com-
pany. In those days they were building railroads every-
where and it was always the Irish who did the work, so
Rafferty’s saloon was filled a large part of the time with
wild Irishmen drinking and carousing in the hours when
they were not shovelling earth and stone to bring prosperity
to sleepy places like Winnebago Falls.

Among the Irishmen was one Michael Bosanky, a great
red-haired giant of a fellow two years older than Mary, who
drank and roared and sought to make life constantly more
exciting than it could possibly be. He was a devil with the
ladies and he tried to be a devil with Mary, but she would
have none of him save on the terms that the priests held
holy and respectable, and in the end the banns were pub-
lished and they were married, drawn together by an attrac-
tion which had its roots in that mutual hunger for a life
that was better than any life can be.

It was the beginning of Mary’s real trouble, because she
was tied to Michael by a force stronger than banns and
marriage ties, stronger than her fear of priests and of Hell.
It was a force that would not let her quit her job and go on
to the next town. She was in love wiA Michael in her own
passionate and possessive way and it was a love as violent
as the very natures of herself and Michael. She could not
imagine living without him. The sight of his great brawny
figure reeling across the tracks from Rafferty’s saloon gave
her a kind of fine palpitating excitement she had never dis-
covered in all her adventures. And it was thrilling to live
with Michael because he was roaring drunk a great part of
the time and he threw things at her and tried to beat her.
But she was a strong woman and the attempted beating

140

STAY ME WITH FLAGONS

often turned into a brawl that ended in the wildest of love-
making. She discovered almost at once that Michael was
no good, but that did not vanquish the certainty that life
with him was a fine and glorious affair.

He lost one job after another and presently Mary went
back to working out, not this time at a regular job, but by
the day, sometimes cooking, sometimes washing, sometimes
scrubbing floors. She made a little money this way, but
Michael always took it from her and went across the tracks
to Rafferty’s place. All of Winnebago Falls came to know
Mary Bosanky. She worked for the best families like
the Weatherbys and the Fosdicks. They grew fond of her
and they pitied her hard life, but it never occurred to Mary
to pity herself. Michael never chased after other women
any longer. He seemed to find her enough for him.

And presently when Mary became a little weary of
Michael’s perpetual drunkenness she began, too, to drink
and life at once became brighter. They drank together and
the fights they had were magnificent. Sometimes one
emerged with a blackened eye and sometimes the other and
sometimes both. She began to grow undcp^dable among
the best families of Winnebago Falls ana so to lose her
work. \

When she was thirty-nine something h^pened which
Mary regarded as a miracle. For nine years ibe had prayed
to all the saints of fertility and now at thilty-nine she was
going to have a baby. On the advice of the priest she even
gave up drinking, which was for Mary ^ great sacrifice.
The child was born in the two-room shade by the railroad.
It was a pretty baby, a boy, curiously strotig and healthy,
with black hair and blue eyes like herself. He was strong
enough even to survive the rough treatment that was certain
to meet any child born into the world of Bosanky’s shanty.
She called him Shamus after her father from whom she had
not heard in fifteen years. As he grew older he was slow in
walking and in making himself understood.

But when Shamus was old enough to go to the parish
141

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

school it was clear that there was something wrong with
him. He did not learn things like other children and he
could remember nothing of his lessons. He was not an
idiot. It was more as if there were a part of his brain that
had never existed. The other children tormented him and
so he came to play alone and to invent extraordinary games.
At home his only playground was the railroad tracks and
there he found his way miraculously in and out among the
locomotives and shunting trains. At nine he was still among
the six-year-old children in the parish school. At ten he ran
away four times within a month. Once he was missing for
two days and Mary Bosanky, who loved the child with the
love which mothers have for children who are different,
wandered over the whole countryside searching for him.
He was discovered at last on Ed Hasselman’s farm by Maria
Hazlctt, Hasselman’s housekeeper, asleep in a thicket in the
midst of a flock of sheep. After that they gave up trying to
teach him anything and he was allowed to run wild.
When he was thirteen he began to have visions. He would
fall down in a kind of trance and remain unconscious for
hours and when he awakened he told wonderful stories of
having been to Heaven and seen the golden streets and the
angels walking about. He heard wonderful music and his
great friend was Saint John the Shepherd.

Ill

Since neither Shamus nor drinking made life seem grand
enough, Mary and Michael came to discover new ways of
elevating their spirits. One way was their expeditions to a
place called Lakeville, which was a sort of cheap summer
resort for the Germans of Winnebago Falls. There was at
Lakeville a round deep lake of cold clear blue water
where the fivshing was good. On its banks there was a grove
of trees with cottages that were little more than shacks set
in their shade. Mary and Michael seemed to know without
planning it when the time had come to go to Lakeville for

142

STAY ME WITH FLAGONS

a carouse. Together they would set out on foot to walk the
fourteen miles along the county road to the north past Ed
Hasselman’s farm and Meeker’s Gulch. A friend of Mike’s,
the foreman of the road gang, had a shack there where they
could stay. They always took plenty of whisky with them
and left Shamus behind in the shanty. Sometimes they
would sleep out of doors on a sandbar under the moon and
sometimes in a rowboat made fast among the lily pads and
the tall shaking reeds near the shore. And always there
was wild drinking and wilder love-making, as if Mary were
still a handsome young girl instead of a middle-aged woman
bloated and saddled by drink.

And Shamus, left to himself, took to wandering more and
more often and farther and farther. He never slept under a
roof. Sometimes if the weather was warm he slept in a
thicket or a ditch and if it was cool, among the sheep or
among the cattle in the open sheds built in the fields to
shelter the beasts from the winter blizzards. The farmers of
three counties came to know him and to feed him when he
came their way. He was harmless and sometimes he would
help them in the fields without asking any pay. He invented
games for the children and made them whistles from the
willows that grew along the streams and m£|rshes. He did
not make them simple primitive whistles but whole sets of
pipes bound together with willow bark on which they could
play tunes. He was skilful with his hands and gentle in
working about beasts. At sixteen he was as strong as a man
and possessed of a strange beauty not to be found among
the blond heavy German farmers. He went about in rags,
his clothing torn by briars and barbed wire fences. Some-
times a farmer’s wife gave him a shirt or an old pair of
overalls. He had a dark skin with a fine high colour,
black curling hair, blue eyes and small ears that were
pointed at the tips. He knew about weather and could tell
the farmers when it would be safe to cut their hay and take
in their wheat. There was really nothing very strange about
him but the curious vacant look in his eyes, his strange love

143

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

for beasts and his way of not seeming at times to understand
when people spoke to him.

The year that he was sixteen his mother came back alone
one morning from Lakeville and tried to tell Shamus that
his father was dead. He had fallen overboard from a row-
boat and been drowned. At least that was what people
thought. It was what Mary thought, for she didn’t really
know what had happened. She had awakened sober to find
herself alone in the boat in the middle of the lake. Michael
had disappeared. They made an effort to drag the lake but
no trace was ever found of Shamus’s father. There was a
legend that the lake had no bottom; at least no one had been
able to reach the bottom with a sounding line.

For a time Mary, sobered a little, gave up drinking and
went again to working regularly. She began too to find a
compensation for Shamus’s dull wits in the miraculous
visions which he had. These were more frequent now and
more complete in their details. She fancied that God had
made her the mother of a saint. The stories of his visions
went the round of the parish and all the county. But Shamus
did not abandon his habit of wandering off into the open
country for days at a time. When he was gone Mary found
life insupportable and took again to the bottle.

They had been town characters for years when the Rever-
end Uriah Spragg and his sister Annie came to live in
Winnebago Falls and old Mrs. Bosanky, when she was
sober enough, went to work for Annie Spragg. Shamus
Bosanky and his mother were the only people in the town
poorer than Uriah and Annie Spragg and Annie Spragg
was the only person in the place who would any longer give
Mary Bosanky work to do.

Sometimes Shamus went with his mother to the weathered
wooden house hidden by lilacs, syringas and burdock where
the Sprasgs lived. Miss Annie Spragg fed them and was
kind to them and presently they came to be her only friends
in Winnebago F^ls. She showed Shamus all the animals
and birds that lived in the wooden enclosure behind the

144

STAY ME WITH FLAGONS

house and after a time it was as if he became one of them.
He would come day after day to spend his time there,
playing with them and teaching them tricks.

IV

The rest of the tale comes from Ed Hasselman and Maria
Hazlett who kept house for him on the farm near Meeker’s
Gulch. Their part of it happened long after Uriah Spragg
was murdered and Annie, questioned and tormented, had
been allowed to disappear.

Since Shamus had first run off as a little boy he had been
friendly with Ed Hasselman and Maria Hazlett. They
always fed him and took no notice of his goings and com-
ings, and from the first they seemed to accept him without
question. Sometimes he stayed about the farm for days
sleeping among the animals and helping in the fields. He
was a great help to Maria Hazlett at the periods when Ed
retired into drunkenness. At the time he told them the
story he was thirty-four years old. It was oilily a little time
before his death. :

It was at the beginning of one of Ed Haiselman’s spells
and Shamus appeared one evening just at qusk out or the
woods behind the house. They had finished iisupper and the
milking was over and Maria was washing tfcife cream separa-
tor and the milk crocks outside the kitcheii door under the
great catalpa tree that grew there. As the sud had gone down
a great burning harvest moon came heavily up out of the
prairie and Ed on the doorstep with a flagon of hard cider
beside him sat playing on his concertina snatches of half-
forgotten tunes that he had heard as a child in Dorfsweiler,
his father’s village of the Black Forest. Maria got Shamus
some cold ham and some hard cider and bread and cheese
and he sat eating and listening shyly on the edge of the stone
coping about the spring.

He finished his supper and as it grew darker he got up
presendy and began to dance, not any set dance, but a series

145

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

of steps which he had made up himself. It was a dance
composed mostly of mad ieapings and caperings so violent
that remains of his ragged clothes fell apart leaving him
naked to the waist under the hot August moon. Ed Hassel-
man drinking more and more, gave Shamus more and more
to drink and played the concertina more and more wildly
while Shamus danced with his black hair flying about his
dark face. And all the while Maria, her work finished, sat
on a milking stool watching the whole scene with a face on
which there showed neither astonishment nor interest. She
accepted the scene just as she had appeared to accept every-
thing since she had left the poorhousc as an orphan and gone
out into the world. Thus she had accepted the long trial
of Ed Hasselman’s drunkenness and the discovery years
earlier of the body of Uriah Spragg in the ditch by the
county road.

At length Ed Hasselman became too drunk to play and
Shamus grew weary of his dancing and the two of them sat
quietly drinking and looking at the moon. And presently
Shamus told them the story which no one in Winnebago
Falls ever believed because they said that Shamus was a
half-wit and that Ed Hasselman was drunk. But Maria
Hazlett was not drunk. She never drank. She simply sat
there listening quietly. She was content with her world
as she found it.

It had happened years earlier before Uriah Spragg was
murdered and when he still lived with his sister in the
wooden house by the town dump. Shamus was about
twenty years old at the time and he had been off wandering
for days and was on his way home because he felt one of
his visions coming on. It was dark and he had been hurry-
ing across fields and through woods for hours when he
reached Meeker’s Gulch. It was a lonely marshy place over-
grown with sumach and witch-hazel so dense that even
stray hunters rarely penetrated it. But Shamus wasn’t
afraid of it. In the depths of the wild swamp he felt at
home. It was only people who frightened him.

146

STAY ME WITH FLAGONS

It was, too, a hot still night like the night he sat telling the
story under the catalpas to Ed Hasselman and Maria
Hazlett, with a red heavy August moon climbing the prairie
sky. There was not a breath of air stirring, yet as Shamus
penetrated the swamp he noticed an odd thing — that all
the leaves of the sumach and witch-hazel, the oaks and the
cottonwoods, were dancing with a gentle motion as if
stirred by a gentle breeze. They kept up a faint whispering
and presently he was aware of a faint perfume like that of
wild honeysuckle and he began to hear snatches of faint
music which seemed to come out of the very sticks and
stones and the trunks of the trees. It was sweet low music
like the sound of the fifes in the Grand Army parade on
the Fourth of July, only it was softer and less shrill. He
thought one of his visions was coming on and so he hurried,
pushing his way through the thicket witli such violence that
most of his clothes were torn from his body. He was looking
for some open grassy place where he might fall down and lie
for hours in a state of unconsciousness.

Then as he pushed through the witch^^hazel he came
suddenly upon an open space where the thick marsh grass
had been trampled down in a wide circle an^ in the moon-
light he discovered two dancing figures, one Very white and
the other as black as the shadows cast by thi copper moon.
One was Miss Annie Spragg and the other was the black
he-goat. She was quite naked with her long Ted hair falling
to her knees. There was a wreath of hoUieysuckle on her
head. The black he-goat capering prettily with his delicate
black front hoofs raised in the air followed her round and
round the trampled circle. For a little time Shamus stood
watching them from behind the trunk of a great oak tree and
presently, as if he could not help himself, he joined in the
dance.

It was sunset of the following day when he came to his
senses and found himself lying on the bruised grass in the
middle of Meeker’s Gulch.

When he had finished his story he slipped quietly to the

147

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

grass and fell into a sleep beneath the catalpa trees. Maria
Hazlett rose and covered him with a featherbed and then
raising the half-conscious Ed Hasselman got him into bed.
In the morning she had to deliver the milk on the milk
route in Winnebago Falls, because Ed was taken again by
one of his spells.

It was two years after this almost to the day when Shamus
went off for the last time wandering across the country.
His mother had been sleeping quietly in the shanty by the
railroad tracks when she was awakened in the middle of
the night by the thunder that terrified her. Rising, she
began to sprinkle holy water about the shanty and to call
upon the saints to protect her. When she went into the
kitchen where Shamus slept she found his bed empty.
Despite her terror of the storm, she went outside and called
his name again and again into the screaming prairie wind.
But she got no answer. In the flashes of lightning she found
no trace of Shamus but only thick black shadows and the
distant lights of the railroad switches. He was gone into the
wild storm and she could not find him.

When the sun came up the next morning he did not
return and she went to the police, who laughed at her crazi-
ness not knowing what Shamus was to her. They tele-

C honed about the county but tio one had seen any trace of
im. It was Maria Hazlett who thought where he might
be found. That evening when she went to fetch the cows
from the pasture by Meeker’s Gulch she went into the
swamp and there in the thickest part she found him. He
was lying on the thick grass, which had been trampled down
in a wide circle. He lay on his back in the shadow of the
big oak with one arm thrown over his head. His clothes
were all torn and the rain had plastered them close to his
supple body. His black hair lay in ringlets over the dark
forehead. She thought he was asleep at first or in one of his

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

trances, but he was dead. There was no mark of any kind
on his body.

She picked him up and managed to carry him to the edge
of the swamp, where she laid his body on the grass beside
Ae brook until Ed Hasselman could come and help her get
it back to the house. Dead, he seemed to her more beautiful
than ever. It was odd, she told Ed Hasselman, that he
had never appeared to grow any older. He must have been
thirty-eight when he died but he looked no older than he
had looked at twenty. Perhaps, she said, it was because he
was half-witted. People like that didn’t seem to grow old.
They belonged to a world of their own.

VI

The Church buried him in consecrated ground, so Mary’s
soul was at peace. After that she was never sober again and
at last they took her out of the filth and squalor of the little
shack, off to the poorhouse. One morning three weeks
after they brought her there the keeper found her dead in
bed. She was seventy-seven years old, a ^ueer dried-up
wisp of a woman who had once been the fin^ high-coloured
Mary Bosanky. In all those seventy-seven f years life had
never once been fine enough for her. |

THE END OF AUNT BfiSSIE

S HE was not a bad girl really. It simply never occurred
to her that there was anything wrong, not very wrong,
in the way she lived. And so she often remarked to Teena
Bitts, T’m not a tart proper, I never went off with a man
that I didn’t meet proper in Winterbottom’s place.’ The

149

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

pavement knew her not although she was well known to
the patrons of the Pot and Pie, a sort of restaurant and
public house and rendezvous of bookmakers on the city side
of Bayswater. She had been ruined at sixteen in an area-
way while her mother was away scrubbing the stairs of the
Houses of Parliament, and when the same mother dis-
covered Bessie’s error and its impending result, she sought
out the man and made him right the wrong. Technically
Bessie’s child (which died) had a father, but substantially
Bessie had no husband, for he disappeared two days after
the ceremony and was never heard of again.

But marriage did not make of Bessie an honest woman.
She went her way as before and in a few months Mrs.
Cudlip, her mother, reported to her charring friends that
Bessie’s husband had returned and that Bessie had lost her
position at the Pot and Pie. In four months Bessie gave
birth to what her mother called ‘ a little girl,’ and Bessie
went back to work leaving the baby to be cared for by a
childless couple who lived in Hammersmith and later
adopted it. Before Bessie was twenty-four the same incident
in all its details (even to the return of the husband who
appeared to visit Bessie after the mysterious fashion preva-
lent among the heathen gods) was repeated twice more. At
the birth of the third child, Bessie very nearly died and after
that she appeared to change her ways. At least the husband
did not miraculously reappear and she had no more children.

At twenty-eight she was a plump, coarsely pretty girl,
whose high spirits never deserted her. With a loud laugh
she could bandy the coarsest jests with any of the coarse
patrons of the Pot and Pie. Her round rosy face, her blue
eyes, and the blonde hair that hung damp and curling from
a huge pompadour constructed over an elaborate apparatus
of wire, were among the stimuli which betrayed sober men
suddenly into the pagan knowledge that it was best to live
while one was alive. Without dreaming of such a thing
she conveyed this message to every man she served with
mutton pic and stout. And Bessie was so carefree and good-

150

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

natured that she never imposed upon her admirers any sense
o£ sin. It was all a lark. She even came to be known in a
strange blend of good humour, affection and contempt bred
of familiarity as Our Bess and sometimes Good Queen
Bess. She was the toast and the joy of the Pot and Pie and
the men who came in with pockets empty and spirits dep-
ressed went away after a tilt with Our Bess feeling warmed
and cheered. She really loved humanity. She loved the
smoke and heat of the tap room, the collared looks of the
mugs of ale, the oaths of the cabbies and bookmakers and
the sight of old Mrs. Crumyss, ginny and happy, exchanging
crackling witticisms with the gentlemen who baited her.
She had, too, a liking, fatal to one of her tendency to plump-
ness, a great liking for the ale that came out of the shiny
brass-bound tuns served by Teena Bitts. ‘ That Mrs.
Crumyss,’ she used to say in relating to her mother choice
bits of that lady’s wit, ‘ She’s a hot ’un.’ She had a way of
emphasizing such remarks by a hearty slap on her round,
well-covered thigh. There was all the zest about Our Bess
that Rubens, who loved life, imparted to the plump rosy
ladies who were so like her. Winterbottora, the proprietor
of the Pot and Pie, understood her value toihim. He did
not even object to her enforced holidays. j
But Bessie never had any money. It wa| not that she
spent it, even in betting on the races, as tn%ht have been
supposed. She had a ’orror of betting and 6f bookmakers
as bookmakers. She never had any money because she
never understood how it was people got money. Even
Winterbottom underpaid her. Sometimes her ‘friends’
gave her a cheap trinket or a pair of silk stockings or a few
shillings but rarely more than that. Teena Bitts said scorn-
fully that she had no character. But Our Bess only laughed
and asked Teena what her character had got her beyond a
reputation for being cold-blooded and stingy.

151

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

U

The development of character in Our Bess — ^that change
which turned her in the end into Aunt Bessie of Blooms-
bury and St. John’s Chapel— dated from the twenty-
fourth of December, 1905, a cold foggy night with snow
falling that melted as it fell. She had been standing in the
doorway watching Tcena Bitts draw ale from the fine brass-
bound tuns and listening with hearty appreciation to the
sallies of old Mrs. Crumyss, who was trying to drink through
her veil, when the door opened and in out of the fog came a
small thin man with a pinched face as white as wax. He
had no overcoat and the collar of his coat was turned up
about his thin thoat. None of the others appeared to take
any notice but the sight of him did something to Bessie.
Perhaps it was pity that struck her down, for he was every-
thing that she was not. He was sickly, white and shivering,
with a wild look in his near-sighted brown eyes. She
marked him at once for her own, filled with a strange
emotion that sometimes took possession of her. To herself
she called it, ‘ feeling that she ought to brighten ’im up a
bit,’ but it was really much more primitive and direct than
that. Bessie felt sorry for anyone who could not see that
the world was a fine and shining place, as fine indeed as
the brass bands on Winterbottom’s ale barrels. She could
not sec why everyone should not be as happy as herself.

He did not respond to her sallies as other men did. Even
after she had served him with meat pie, a pitcher of stout, a
gooseberry tart and some coffee, his spirits failed to show
any signs of rising. Nothing, she discovered, seemed to
have any effect upon him. He failed even to appreciate the
excruciating sallies of Mrs. Crumyss. After he had eaten
he began to drink brandies and sodas, drinks with a great
deal of brandy and very little soda. The more depressed he
became the more interested and curious became Bessie’s
attitude. It was like a challenge to her, as if her record was

152

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

to be besmirched with failure for the first time in the eyes of
Winterbottom and Teena Bitts and the others. She noticed
that despite the shabbiness of his clothes he was clean, and
that his hands were white and soft. And then suddenly she
discovered that under his coat he had no shirt but only a
frayed undershirt and she had doubts that he would be able
to pay for all he was drinking. But remembering that it
was Christmas Eve she told herself that if Winterbottom
made trouble she’d pay the bill out of her own money.
Everyone else in the place was so gay and happy. Mrs
Crumyss was never in better form. She was still drinking
through her veil and seemed now to be managing quite
well, as if, like the seventh child of a seventh child, she had
been born with one.

A little before closing time when the noise was at its
height the stranger suddenly fell forward on the table and
Bessie, feeling that the time had come to act, pointed out to
him that the pub was closing and that he had better pay for
all he had eaten and drunk. Her suggestion brought forth
no response save a mumbling and moaning ^und of which
she could make nothing. Winterbottom It last noticed
her efforts and knowing her fatal sympathy fti* any customer
who could not pay, came over to the table, went straight
to the point, searching the stranger’s pockets^ hopefully, but
he found only a half-penny, a soiled handkerchief and three
damp Woodbines. He had already started for the door to
summon a policeman when Bessie stopp^ him. ‘Leave
’im alone,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay for it.’

Winterbottom was content. It had hap|)ened before. He
would rather have the money than see the stranger arrested,
even if the money came out of Bessie’s pocket.

‘ And what are you going to do when it closes? ’ he asked
her.

‘ Never you fret about that. I’ll take ’im in charge.’

The revellers, singing, went out at last. Teena Bitts put
on her hat and went off scornfully to spend a respectable
Christmas with her parents in Limehousc, and Winter-

153

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

bottom stood waiting to see what Bessie proposed to do. In
a moment she came in from the washroom and gave the
cynical Winterbottom a challenging glance. She was look-
ing high-coloured and high-spirited as if she felt her repu-
tation menaced a second time in the same evening. She was
a strong woman, and after raising the stranger to his feet
she took him firmly by one arm and set out through the fog.
Winterbottom put up the shutters, locked the door and
put out the lights, unaware that he had lost Our Bess for
ever.

Somehow, through fog and snow, through crooked and
winding streets, she got the stranger back to her own room.
Toward the end it was a little easier because he began to see
things following him and that hurried him along.

Ill

The beginning of Bessie’s character was a violent one,
for she no sooner had the pitiful creature safe in her warm
and shabby room than he went entirely to pieces. He began
seeing things in her closet, under the bed and coming
through the transom above the door. He saw all manner
of strange beasts, even to unicorns, which Bessie knew well
enough did not exist except on the splendid device of the
British Empire. Under the stimulus of delirium the little
man developed a superhuman strength which proved very
nearly too much even for the stalwart Bessie. But she suc-
ceeded at last in binding him into the great double bed,
and after rousing another indignant lady dwelling in die
same house she secured morphine, which after a time
reduced him to a stupor. She managed at last to get an
hour’s sleep lying beside him lest he should awake and
become violent again. In the early morning she gave him
some hot milk and when he fell asleep again she put on her
hat and coat and set out through the slush for the Pot and
Pic.

There she confronted Winterbottom and told him that

154

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

she was in need of a holiday. He looked at her with a
twinkle in his hard eye and asked, ‘What? Again? ’

But Bessie denied his suspicion. She had a cousin, she
said, who was ill and in need of care. Otherwise he would
be sent to the workhouse and no Cudlip had ever darkened
the door of a workhouse.

So Mrs. Winterbottom took Bessie’s place at the Pot and
Pie until Bessie was able to return. It had long since become
an accepted system.

IV

I’he stranger not only became Bessie’s problem; he took
on the proportions of a crusade. She tended him carefully,
rarely leaving his side save to buy food out of her almost
invisible savings or to come down on the heads of others in
the house who disturbed his rest by becoming noisy. She
had in a cheap doctor and with the shrewdness of the poor
she learned from him enough so that it was unnecessary to
have him a second time. Her patient, she discovered, was
suffering not only from drink but from starVjatfon. She fed
him up in splendid style and as he progressed toward recov'
cry she experienced a new emotion — that 6f pride in the
efficacy of her cure. She even thought for si time of giving
up her way of life and becoming a nurse, but learning upon
investigation that such a change implied corhplications and
a good deal of tiresome training, she abandoned the idea.

It was not until the third week that she learned the name
of the stranger. He had been well enough for some time
to lie in bed watching her out of his dark eyes, but Bessie,
feeling that it was indelicate to be curious about his name,
did not mention the matter. She simply continued to
address him as ‘ You ’ and refer to him to the others in the
house as ‘ ’im.’ She stood in awe of him, for her cockney
shrewdness told her that he had come out of a world far
above her, of which she knew nothing. The delicate hands,
the beautiful accent, the dim weak face with dark eyes

155

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRACG

under a high white forehead, filled her with a strange pride.
This was indeed a rare flower that had fallen into her hands.
Even as she lay beside him on the bed (there was nowhere
else for her to sleep) she felt that she was committing sacri-
lege.

At length one day he looked at her and said, ‘ My name is
Lionel Blundon. What’s yours? ’

She blushed and said, ‘Bessie Cudlip.’ It sounded so
cheap and commonplace beside the elegance of Lionel Blun-
don. ‘Lionel,’ she said to herself, ‘Lionel.’ That was an
elegant name.

He began presently to sit up weakly in bed and to take a
faint interest in things.

But Bessie soon found that her funds were vanishing.
Funds were a thing that never mattered before. There was
always the Pot and Pie or she could borrow from Teena
Bitts or get an advance from Winterbottom. But it mattered
now; Mr. Blundon was a responsibility. He could not be
sent out into the streets, white and ill and shaking with
fever. He seemed content with his lot and displayed no
inclination to go.

So one night after Mr. Blundon had gone to sleep, she
slipped out to the Pot and Pie dressed in her best clothes.
She took up a place in the corner and became the centre of
interest. The place had not been the same since she left
and they now received her with cheers. The men bought
her drinks. Even old Mrs. Crumyss was thrown into the
shadow by her triumphant return and spent the whole
evening neglected in the corner, mumbling and drinking.
Teena Bitts, standing before her shining tuns, grew sarcas-
tic and made bitter inquiries about the stranger whom
Bessie ‘ had picked from the dustbin.’ And Bessie, a little
flushed and excited by her triumph, retorted that he had
turned out to be a gentleman and the cousin of the Duke.

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

But this gave Mrs. Crumyss her long awaited opportunity.
From then on she kept on making bitter remarks about
‘ The Duchess ’ and ‘ ’er Gryce,’ and won back a little of
her prestige. The name stuck to Bessie. Our Bess became
’er Gryce from that day forward.

At closing time Mrs. Crumyss led the way with unsteady
dignity, followed one by one by the others, and at last Bessie
left too, accompanied by ’Arry, who, rumour had it, had
just made a killing on tne Newmarket. Tcena, seeing her
go, remarked that it was the first time Bessie had shown
any character.

At dawn she returned before Mr. Blundon was awake
and for several days she was in funds. Necessity had made
her practical.

As Mr. Blundon (as she continued to call him) grew
stronger, he appeared also to grow restless. Feeling that
he was too proud and of a birth too noble to accept money
from her, she left small sums about carelessly when she went
out, sometimes on the table, sometimes on a shelf in the
closet, as if it were crumbs for birds. Always when she
returned it was gone. By this trick he was able to buy him-
self cigarettes and newspapers. He did not «jturn to the Pot
and Pie and showed no inclination to drink fo she came to
the conclusion that his drinking was not a disease but done
deliberately out of despair. Once in a bux»| of confidence
he confided to her that on the night he had come to the Pot
and Pie he had been contemplating suicide but that on
studying the chilly river he had decided kistead to drink
himself to death. He was a simple feltow, she thought,
who didn’t pretend to be anything he was not

Then one day he asked her timidly if she would do an
errand for him. He wanted some books and he was still
too ill to go into the city for them himself. So Bessie dressed
herself up and made the excursion, bearing a slip of paper
on which were written the titles, because she could not
possibly have remembered them. They were difficult names
which impressed her profoundly, such names as Astaroth

157

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

and Indb'Persian and Anait. They seemed very rare books,
for she was forced to trudge from shop to shop to find them
all, and they were very expensive. Later on she made other
trips to buy books until her room had quite the air of a
library. Then Mr. Blundon bought ink and pens and paper
and went to work. Each day he covered a great many
sheets of paper with spidery handwriting which she attemp-
ted without much success to decipher when he was not in
the room. But even those portions which she was able to
read (and she was none too good at reading and writing)
she failed to understand, and she had not the presumption
to question him about the whole affair.

But all this took money (she had even to buy him new
clothes) and so Bessie went more and more frequently to
the Pot and Pie, always as a patron, and only after Mr.
Blundon had gone to bed. Always she came in early before
he was awake. She was afraid that he would discover the
nature of her excursions and forbid them. She took great
care not to disturb him on getting into bed, but once or
twice she fancied that he was awake when she came in.
When he made no reference to her mysterious absences, she
decided that she must have been wrong, though she was
quite certain that once at least he had opened his eyes and
looked at her. She even managed to save up quite a lot of
money. Tcena Bitts’s sarcastic references to ‘ ’er Grycc’s
lack of character ’ grew more and more mild and at length
died away altogether. Teena was outdone.

But Bessie had a plan that would require all her money.
Mr. Blundon had become to her more than a crusade; he
was now a part of her life. If he seemed tired, she began to
worry. If he did not eat she thought of calling a doctor.
She could not imagine her life without him. And when
his poor health lingered she decided that it was the air of
Bayswater and that what he needed was a holiday at
Brighton.

She was fearful that if she mentioned the plan his pride
might cause him to object to it and so until the day when

158

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

she had saved enough to swing the excursion in style,
she did not speak of it. When at last she summoned up
courag;e to propose it, Blundon accepted it at once as a
splendid idea. He would take his books and work in the
sea air.

But she could not resist having a final triumph at the
Pot and Pic and the night before they departed she went
there to let Teena Bitts and Winterbottom and Mrs.
Crumyss know in the most casual way possible that she and
her friend were going to Brighton for a spell. Winter-
bottom eyed her shrewdly and sadly, suspecting that the
moment had come when he was to lose Our Bess for ever,
and after she had gone Mrs. Crumyss remarked acidly
through her veil that ‘ the next thing they’d be hearing was
that *cr Gryce had become one of them swell divorce co-
respondents.’

VI

It was the first time Bessie had ever been outside London
and, as she said, ‘it made her feel lost.’ Even the crowds
and the music on the jetty did not help much after she was
used to them; they did not make up for the gfiety of the Pot
and Pie with Teena Bitts uttering coarse bkter comments
and ’Arry and Alf drinking and Mrs. Crumvfs giving freely
of her experience of life. Without Mr. Blundton Bessie would
have been miserable, but his presence gave her a purpose,
something, as it were, to steer by. She had to plan the days
and watch over his health and see there, wasn’t any noise
in the lodging house and buy him cigarettes. Although
she had long been Bessie to him, she never presumed to
call him anything but Mr. Blundon, and although they
shared the same room there had never been even a suspicion
of love-making between them.

It was in the second week of the visit that the great meet-
ing occurred. Mr. Blundon, who was working hard at the
lodging house and was a bit exhausted by Bessie’s hungry

159

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

attempts at conversation, suggested that she go and listen to
the band concert, and as she always felt restless away from
crowds, she took his advice. He would meet her by the fifth
light out from the shore on the pier.

It was a soft fine evening and all Bessie’s smouldering
hunger for life was fanned into a flame. Indeed her emo-
tions had so thoroughly got the better of her that she
began to wish that Mr. Blundon wasn’t so sickly and that
he wasn’t such a swell that she was afraid of him. She
began to feel deep yearnings for the companionship of the
Pot and Pie. She even wished that Mr. Blundon might
miraculously turn out to be ’Arry or Alf. Lost in this
strange mood of depression she wandered along the pier to
the accompaniment of Pomp and Circumstance. She
reached the fifth light and halted, lost in a slough of home-
sickness. And then someone pinched her and her spirits
skyrocketed once more.

Turning, she planned to upbraid her insulter, since that
was the conventional thing to do. ‘ How dared he do such a
thing to a lady? ’ (Indeed she had been acquiring airs lately
through contact with Mr. Blundon’s elegance.) But when
she turned there was no possible suspect in sight but a
kindly looking old gentleman in black who wore a black
Homburg hat and carried a black umbrella. He looked a
little, she thought, like a parson. Thinking that the pinch
must have been administered by some mischievous person
who vanished in the crowd, she turned back to her reverie.
Being pinched was not a new experience for Bessie. Her
plumpness made her a tempting subject and she had devel-
oped a technique for dealing with the situation. Barely had
her spirits fallen, leaving her to brood over the sea, than the
pinch was repeated.

Again she turned sharply and this time there could be no
mistake. It was the kindly old gentleman in the Homburg
hat who had pinched her. She gave him an indignant
glance, but not so indignant as it would have been if Alf and
’Arry had been nearer than Bayswater. He lifted his hat

i6o

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

calmly and said, ‘Good evening, ma’am,, it’s a fine
evening.’

Her instinct told her at once that this was not a gentleman
of Mr. Blundon’s elegance. His clothes were rich but his
manner and spirit were those which she understood.

‘I’ve seen finer,’ she replied with some tartness, resolved
not to give in too easily.

He was really a fine-looking old gentleman, about seventy,
she thought, with a fine ruddy face and a chin beard that
was white and cut short and round. On his black waistcoat
glittered a massive gold watch-chain. He had bland round
blue eyes and an air of good humour. He asked her if she
was alone.

‘ Not exactly,’ said Bessie. ‘ I’m wyting for a friend.’

Would she mind if he chatted a bit until her friend came?
No, she said, but she’d have to stay there by the fifth light
because that was where she was going to meet her friend.

‘Nice music,’ he said.

‘Yes, nice music.’

‘ I’ve always liked Pomp and Circumstance. It’s like the
British Empire.’ !

‘You must be musical,’ she suggested. I

‘ I like music.’ i

‘ I’m from London,’ she said wistfully. ‘ I ca^e down here
for the air and I ran into my friend.’ , j

The mention of London appeared to makft the old gentle-
man a little bolder. ‘ Maybe I’d better td| you my name
so you can introduce me when she comes ilong.’

‘It’s a he,’ said Bessie, and then noticing the old gentle-
man’s alarm, added, ‘ But it’s all right. only friends.’

‘Oh,* said her companion. ‘Well, my name’s Winnery —
Horace J. Winnery.’

‘And mine’s Cudlip — Bessie Cudlip.’

Horace J. Winnery, she thought, was a beautiful name
like Lionel Blundon, only it didn’t fill her with awe. It
made her feel quite at home.

The band blared into a potpourri from Faust and Mr.

i6i F

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Blundon came into sight through the crowd. He was peer-
ing to right and to left with his near-sighted eyes. Bessie,
being in a realistic mood, could not help thinking that her
new acquaintance, even at his age, was more of a man.

‘ There’s my friend now,’ said Bessie, and Mr. Winnery
with a glance at Mr. Blundon looked relieved of some secret
anxiety.

She introduced them and Mr. Winnery was very cordial
but Mr. Blundon seemed absent-minded and concerned with
his own thoughts. But she was proud of him and hoped
that his accent had impressed Mr. Winnery. It would
show him what sort she was.

‘Let’s go and ’ave some ale,’ said old Mr. Winnery, so
they went and sat in the pavilion and drank together. It
seemed to cheer Mr. Blundon. It was the first time he had
had a drop since Christmas Eve.

Mr. Winnery, who wanted clearly to be friendly, relaxed
a great deal more and began telling them the story of his
life in a voice loud enough to compete with the ‘ Soldiers’
Chorus ’. He was in Brighton, he said, for a spell and he
didn’t think much of Brighton. Frankly, it was getting on
his nerves. In his opinion it was a poor place. London
for him every time. He was lonely. It was funny but he’d
been hoping he’d run into some young people. He was a
bit of a gay dog himself and didn’t feel a day over thirty.
He’d lost his wife some months ago. That was why he was
wearing black clothes. He didn’t like black clothes but you
had to wear them. Not that she wasn’t a good sort. He’d
been married to her for forty years and when you’d had
somebody about for forty years you missed them when they
were gone. Would they have another drink.? Yes. It was a
hot night. He was always thirsty on hot nights. He was a
ship’s chandler, and a good business it was, too. He’d made
a lot of money at it. And now he was trying to enjoy him-
self, but he couldn’t do it alone, not alone. You had to have
somebody to enjoy things with you.

(At this point the band swept gaily into a potpourri
162

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE*

from Cavalleria Rusticana and Mr. Blundon dropped into
a quiet slumber.) ‘ Like most drunks/ thought Bessie, ‘ ’c’s
got a weak head. It ain’t that he drinks so much.’ She
considered his behaviour a proper breach of manners but
she hadn’t the courage to disturb him.

Mr. Winnery was still shouting above Mascagni’s best
effort. Maybe if they weren’t too busy they’d spend a litde
time with him. It would be his treat. He had plenty of
money.

Bessie said Mr. Blundon was working in the daytime,
but that she had nothing to do. He was writing a book,
she explained impressively.

‘Ah,’ breathed Mr. Winnery, impressed. ‘A book. What
kind of a book? ’

‘ 1 don’t know,’ said Bessie. ‘ It’s just a book.’

The band stopped pjaying and began putting its brass
instruments to bed in green baize. Bessie thought it was
time for them all to go home and awakened Mr. Blundon.
Together the three of them walked to the end of the pier.
She noticed that Mr. Blundon was a little unsteady. On
the promenade Mr. Winnery bade them a polite good night.

‘ Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘ we might meet iii the morning.
Say ten o’clock.’ ^

Mr. Blundon offered no objections. He j did not even
seem to hear.

‘All right,’ said Bessie.

vn

Bessie liked the old gentleman. He was, she told herself,
one of her sort, out for a good time. All the black clothes
and Homburg hats and black umbrellas in the world could
not dampen the twinkle in his blue eyes or the healthy pink
in his cheeks. ‘ When he was young,’ she speculated, ‘ he
must have been a wild ’un.’ She was growing a little tored
with Mr. Blundon ’s quiet way of living. Bessie was one
who could not do without her fun.

163

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

She met old Mr. Winnery the following day. She even
arrived at the rendezvous a little before the hour agreed
upon. It was the wedding of twin spirits. They walked the
promenade together and rode in donkey carts and went to
the cinema and drank ale in large quantities. (Both, unlike
Mr. Blundon, were blessed with hard heads.) They had
lunch in the showiest hotels and restaurants, such places as
Bessie had never before dreamed of entering. Indeed,
Bessie began to think that she was cut out for a grand life.
Mr. Winnery was never awkward in such places; he had
an assurance beside which the elegant Mr. Blundon seemed
a cringing creature. Mr. Winnery could buy anything he
wanted and going about with such a gentleman was a
new experience for Bessie. He bought her trinkets — a
barette set with brilliants for her taffy-coloured hair, a
spotted veil which she admired and which gave her a fast
look. She kept thinking, ‘I wish that Teena Bitts could
see me now.’ She squealed with delight in the shooting
galleries and places where she garnered gaudy vases and
trinkets by throwing hoops over them. She and Mr. Win-
nery came to think Brighton the gayest place in the world.

Meanwhile Mr. Blundon worked uninterrupted in the
daytime and accompanied them at night to the band concerts.
Sometimes he drank a little too much and Bessie was
forced to steer him home. It was all very gay and everyone
was very happy until one day Bessie, who seldom thought of
such things, looked in the old stocking where she kept her
money and found that there remained only three pounds and
ten shillings. The Paradise of Brighton was at an end unless
she found an Alf or a ’Arry, and that, she told herself, was
difficult with Mr. Blundon on one side and Mr. Winnery
on the other taking up all her time. Mr. Winnery might
have been an aid but he, like Mr. Blundon, showed no
interest in love-making, that is, if you discounted an occa-
sional furtive pinch or shady joke. There seemed to be no
way out but to bid old Mr. Winnery a sorrowful farewell
and conduct Mr. Blundon, whose health seemed much

164

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

improved, back to Bayswatcr where she knew her ground.

The next morning while she and Mr. Winnery were
drinking together she told him that her visit was at an end,
and old Mr. Winnery very nearly caused her to faint by
asking her to marry him. She did not accept at once for she
had, of course, to consider Mr. Blundon. She could not turn
him out abruptly into the world to fall back into poverty
and drunkenness. Besides, she would miss him. He would
leave a hole in her life. So she told Mr. Winnery the whole
story, out and out, even to the fact that although they had
long shared a room there was nothing between them. She
gave it as her opinion that Mr. Blundon was too sickly to
be interested in such things. She told the story regretfully,
feeling that she was driving the last nail into the coffin of
her adventure with Mr. Winnery.

But Mr. Winnery proved himself a gentleman in every
sense of the word. He believed the story, he told her,
moved perhaps by the certainty that Bessie was too guileless
to have invented such a tale. Her generosity, he said, made
him care for her all the more deeply. As Mr. Blundon,
he could go on in his present state until he i^as well enough
to fight his own battles in the world. Mr. 'ginnery would
pay the expenses. Oh, yes, it would be a pl^surc. He had
plenty of money. And in that way they eobld be married
at once. He implied a little sadly that h« probably hadn’t
long to live and now that he’d found a ^ <2t)mpanion that
enjoyed life the way he did, he didn’t wint to waste any
time. He told her about his house in Bloomsbury, his
victoria and his brougham and his horse! and his business.
They would travel, he said. He’d always wanted to travel
and find out about the world but he never had been able to
get away from the docks, and Amanda — ^that was his late
wife — ^had always made such a fuss when travelling.

She said she would speak to Mr. Blundon. She couldn’t
say yes or no until she found out how he took it.

165

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPKAGG

VIII

When she regained the lodging house she found the room
in disorder. The books were mostly lying on the floor and
Mr. Blundon’s precious manuscript was scattered from one
end of the room to the other. There was an ominous scent
of brandy in the air. At first she did not see Mr. Blundon.
It was only after she had set about putting the room in order
that she discovered him. He was lying half in, half out of the
closet, entirely hidden by the open door. Only his feet were
in view. And he was dead to the world.

She thought, ‘ It was that first drink at the pavilion. It
got ’im started again.’

After she had lifted him into the bed, she picked up the
books. No, she could not marry Mr. Winnery and desert
poor Mr. Blundon to drink himself to death. It was like
turning a puppy out into the cold. Still maybe she owed it
to herself to be hard-hearted and forget him. She couldn’t
go on for ever. . . .

Then as she was sorting the numbered sheets of illegible
manuscript, she found among them a bit of paper that did
not belong there. It was a sheet of mauve paper and there
was a purple coronet in the corner and under it was printed
Nark worth Abbey, Middlebox, Surrey. The letter began,
‘ My dear Cousin Lionel * and was written in the crabbed
and trembling hand of an aged person.

Bessie began to feel a little sick but curiosity pressed her
and she read on. ‘ I have taken up your case with your
cousin, the Duke, but he is unwilling to do anything. He
remains firm in his belief that you have disgraced the
family and the name of Blundon not once but many times
and that you have been at all times stubborn and unregener-
ate. I believe I am quoting his own words correctly. I have
done my best to soften him, but as you know, he is a hard
man. The Blundons are always hard.

‘ I have disobeyed him in writing to you. He forbade any

i66

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

communication whatever unless, of course, you are willing
to go to Africa or Australia. You know he is extremely
close and allows me barely enough money to run the two
houses, the one here and Ac one at Prince’s Gate. There-
fore I am able to spare you only the small amount enclosed.’

(The cheque, Aought Bessie, which he had spent in get-
ting drunk.)

‘ I am glad to hear that your health is better and that you
are working. I hope you will continue in Ae same condi-
tion, living quietly and respectably and that your health
will not again be affected. I have never been to Brighton
but hear that the air is good except for Aosc who have
livers.

‘I am, with best wishes, your aunt ,

Letitia,

Duchess of Narl{worth/

For Ae only time in her life, Bessie felt faint. She sat
down and read the letter through a second time. So Ac lie
she told Teena Bitts had turned out to be true. Mr. Blundon
was Ae cousin of a duke. She felt suddenly dizzy and to
steady herself took a drink of what remained in Mr, Blun-
don’s bottle. Then she stared for a time atjAe frail small
sleeping figure on the bed with its mouth opep. She thought
of Mr. Winnery asking her to marry him. It ain’t true,’
she told herself. ‘ It’s like any blooming nightmare.’ It
was like something she had made up. It was; like a cinema.
That little thing on the bed was the cousin^ of a duke.

Overcome with emotion she began to bliibber. No, she
couldn’t turn Mr. Blundon out into the cold — not Hm, the
cousin of a duke. He wasn’t made to get on in Ac world.
Somebod) would have to look after him. Well, she’d
explain to Mr. Winnery how she couldn’t desert Mr.
Blundon.

IX

But when Mr. Winnery set his mind on a thing he got it,
167

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

SO the unfortunate collapse of Mr. Blundon made no differ-
ence. When Mr. Blundon had recovered a little, the three
of them went back to London, only not to Bayswater this
time, but to Bloomsbury, where Mr. Blundon was put in
lodgings near enough at hand so that Bessie might keep an
eye on him. Bessie herself, with the new-found airs
acquired from Mr. Winnery at Brighton, went to a temper-
ance hotel. She objected to this and it was only later that
she understood the subtlety of this move of Mr. Winnery.

It had never occurred to her that Mr. Winnery had any
relatives. He had always seemed to her a gift from God
sent to destroy the fit of misery which had seized her that
night by the fifth light on the Brighton pier. It was only
when Mr. Winnery announced the banns that the relatives
came suddenly to light, filled with fury and indignation.
There appeared two pious and rather dreary maiden sisters
older than Mr. Winnery who lived at Scarborough on his
largesse, and an orphan nephew who lived in Italy. The
two sisters made the first move by telegraphing in distress
to the nephew, who came all the way from Italy to London.

The interview took place in the common sitting-room of
the temperance hotel and Bessie acquitted herself with
dignity. The nephew, Mr. Winnery of Brinoe, was small-
ish, about forty, with a bald spot and an air of condescen-
sion toward his uncle. It appeared from his insinuations that
he was a superior, cultivated and literary figure. Bessie,
who had only one standard in judring gentlemen, thought
him rather a poor thing. He had been educated at Oxford
by old Mr. Winnery and had an accent a little like Mr.
Blundon, a fact that helped to put Bessie at her ease, since
instead of aweing her it now seemed quite familiar.

She put on an air of style, taking care to point out that it
was old Mr. Winnery who wanted the marriage and not
herself. In fact he had insisted upon marrying ncr despite
the fact that she herself had raised many objections. She
knew, she said, that she could make him happy in his
declining years. They had already discovered that.

i68

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

Although she had developed a great deal of ‘ character ’
since she left the Pot and Pic, she was not to be tempted by
promises of money to be paid after the two sisters and Mr.
Winnery of Brinoe had come into the old gentleman’s
estate. The idea indeed made her indignant. She pointed
out that she was a friend of Mr. Winnery and not of his
money and that she would have married him just the same
if he hadn’t had a penny, which was quite true. She felt in
his debt for the good time at Brighton and she was one of
the few whose happiness is scarcely affected by money.

There was nothing to be done and in the end the Italian
Mr. Winnery went back gloomily to Italy and the spinster
sisters returned to Scarborough to tell day after day the
story of how their respectable brother had been kidnapped
by a cheap woman young enough to be his granddaughter.

Bessie was married to Mr. Winnery at the registry office
in the presence of three employees of the ship chandler’s
firm of Winnery and Company. Mr. Blundon managed to
leave his book long enough to be present, iHe looked very
nice in the new clothes Bessie and Mr, Al/'innery bought
him for the occasion. \

And Bessie, dressed in the finery lavished- upon her by an
adoring bridegroom, went on her bridal toui* to Paris. They
stayed at the Grand Hotel, where Bessie had but to open
her window at any hour of the day or ^ight to look out
upon the crowds and gaiety of the boulevards. They went
to music halls and dined each night in a different restaurant
and climbed the Eiffel Tower and visited the races and were
astonished by the chocolate splendour of the opera. Mr.
Winnery was happy as a boy and Paris became for them
only a glorified Brighton.

It was only when Bessie went back to the house in
Bloomsbury mat she became aware for the first time in her
life of that mental state known as temptation. The house

169 F*

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

bore the imprint of the late Amanda Winnery, a religious
v^oman and a stout believer until her death in the professions
of the Plymouth Brethren. The furniture was mostly of
black teakwood and red plush embellished by a large
amount of inlaid funereal marble. In each room framed
legends set forth such thoughts as Repent Lest Ye Fall
Into the Hands of the Devil, and He That Looketh
Upon the Wine When It Is Red Is in Danger of Hell
Fire. These had been embroidered in appropriately sombre
colours by Amanda Winnery and long ago had turned
faded ana dusty. Bessie found them depressing. During
the first few weeks, especially at those moments when the
cheerful Mr. Winnery was not in the house, she was filled
with a terrible desire to make a visit to the Pot and Pie.
Alone in the depths of that mausoleum, her soul cried out
for the companionship of Tecna Bitts, Alf and ’Arry and
old Mrs. Crumyss.

Then slowly, bit by bit, the presence of Amanda Win-
nery *s virtuous ghost began to give way to the presence of
the very living Bessie. The framed legends slowly dis-
appeared, whither no one knew, and in their place appeared
bright chromos purchased in Mile End Road and a great
deal of brass work, for which Bessie developed a great
taste. And last of all, a gramophone, a parrot, two canaries
and a pair of white poodles made their appearance. She
loved food and drink with a passion equalled only by that of
Mr. Winnery and sSO they gave themselves over to a perpetual
orgy of eating and drinking. She gracefully allowed her
natural indolence to take possession of her, sometimes not
troubling to dress until the evening, and each day she grew
plumper and plumper and, to the taste of the old-fashioned
Mr. Winnery, more desirable. Mr. Winnery beamed with
happiness and for the first time in all his seventy years, life
seemed to be what he had always believed that it should be.
In his lodgings Mr. Blundon seemed to be content. She
visited him three or four times weekly and his spells of
drunkenness grew fewer and fewer. He lived quite com-

170

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

fortably on the money allowed him by Bessie, and Mr.
Winncry grew to have quite an affection for him, and to
share the pride which Bessie found in supporting the cousin
of a duke.

It might have gone on for ever thus but that Mr. Winnery
was, when all was said and done, an old man, and drinking
and eating was certain to take its toll. One night while
Bessie sat in her wrapper reading John Bull on the opposite
side of the fire from Mr. Winncry she noticed that the news-
paper with which he covered his face when he slept was
very still and that his hands hung down in a queer fashion.
She went over to him and lifted the newspaper. He was
quite dead. He had simply gone to sleep in the midst of
his happiness, warm and content after a good dinner, with
his Bessie sitting opposite him.

XI

What might have been called the Last Phase of Bessie
began on the day after the funeral when the; will was read.
Save for the money to continue the incometof the maiden
sisters living in Scarborough, the income of; the entire for-
tune was left to Bessie Cudlip Winnery. sThere was no
provision made for the nephew who lived isa Brinoe, save
the ironical one that on the death of Bessie Ciidlip Winnery,
the entire fortune was to go to him. And «ssie was more
than ten years younger than her nephew tnd in the most
robust of health and spirits. But she waji of a forgiving
nature, and understanding perhaps the nephew’s agitation
at the time of her marriage to Mr. Winncry, she arranged
that the usual income was to be sent to Brinoe out of her
own money. So now, with Mr. Blundon, she supported two
gentlemen instead of one.

She dressed herself in the thickest and blackest crepe and
then discovered something which she had not noticed before
— that for nearly four years Mr. Winncry had been her
entire life and that without him she was lost. He had taken

171

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

the place of Bayswatcr and the Pot and Pie and of Alf and
*Arry and Teena Bitts and Mrs. Crumyss and now she had
neither the one nor the other. As she had grown immensely
fat and very indolent, she did nothing about it for a long
time. Even the temptation to return to the Pot and Pie seemed
to have weakened, or at least taken another form. She
wanted to return now on a single visit only to show Teena
Bitts and Winterbottom how well she had done.

Her only diversion was an occasional visit to the lodgings
of Mr. Blundon. Sometimes he was in and sometimes not
and when she did find him there he received her with the
same dignity and detachment that had marked their long
friendship. But, as Bessie said, he was never much of a
one for small talk and their conversation lagged. The
dialogue consisted usually of inquiries about the book, the
character of which remained a perpetual mystery to Bessie,
and remarks about the weather. The regeneration of Mr.
Blundon seemed well on the way to becoming an accom-
plished fact. He no longer got drunk, and in decent clothes
appeared the gentleman he was by birth. He was fond of
Bessie, but cold, and her own attitude toward him was a
little like that of a hen that had mothered a duckling. Only
once had he ever lost his temper and that was on the occasion
when she suggested that the book must be nearly finished
and that surely it would be in many volumes. At which
Mr. Blundon told her that it was a monumental and erudite
work and that she wouldn’t understand it even when it was
finished. Bessie wept a little, not because her feelings were
hurt (she knew he was quite right about her understanding
any book) but because the book had not been finished before
the death of Mr. Winnery. He would have understood it,
she said. He was a wonderful man and understood every-
thing. She was very lonely without him. Life wasn’t the
same. Perhaps, she suggested tearfully, Mr. Blundon
would like sometime to drive out in the victoria with her
and the poodles.

But Mr. Blundon told her that he detested riding in
172

THE END OF AUNT B£S$IE

victorias and that the motion made him seasick. His refusal
filled her Avith disappointment because at the bottom of
her proposal lay a crafty plan. She had hoped that one after-
noon they would make an early start and that suddenly they
would find themselves as if by accident in Bayswater oefore
the Pot and Pie. She had pictured to herself the triumph
of calling out Teena Bitts and Winterbottom and even old
Mrs. Crumyss, if she was still alive, to witness the spectacle
of herself with horses and coachman, poodles and Mr,
Blundon, the cousin of a duke. She wanted to know what
Teena Bitts would have to say now about her lack of
character.

But being of a philosophical turn she abandoned the
triumphal plan and pushed out into another direction in
search of human companionship. She simply wanted people
to be friendly. She wanted small talk, of this and that,
spiced perhaps by sallies like those of old Mrs. Crumyss.
So she turned to her own servants, the cook and two house-
maids, but the results were disastrous. After two weeks of
dreadful uneasiness, all three gave notice $nd sought mis-
tresses who would not seek to be intimate With them.

In despair Bessie told herself that as the vi^idow of Horace
J. Winnery she could not frequent public i^ouses. In any
case she could not go comfortably on foot! and ladies who
frequented pubs did not drive up to the dDor in a victoria
with a coachman. It wasn’t that she wanted to drink. She
could do that at home. She wanted sim||y an excuse for a
talk.

At last she hit upon the idea of going «d Brighton in the
hope that if she did not find it gay she might at least
recapture memories of that lovely visit with Mr. Blundon
and Mr. Winnery. So with a great effort she got off at
last and at Brighton took a gilded sitting-room and bed-
room in the showiest hotel in the place. She hired a vic-
toria and went driving with the poodles. She sometimes
went down to the beach and sat under a black umbrella
while they yapped and barked for stones thrown them by

173

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

the children. She sat gloomily listening to Pomp and Cir-
cumstance and potpourris from Faust, Carmen and Caval-
leria Rusticana. She sat drearily in dark cinemas. She
could not frequent places where you could shoot at ducks and
giraffes made of painted tin nor toss hoops over Japanese
vases. She found that hers was a nature that could not live
upon memories. She was trying to enjoy herself but she
couldn’t do it, not alone. You had to have somebody to
enjoy things with you.

In the end she began again to hate Brighton as she hated it
the first time she saw it. Only this time it was worse because
she didn’t even have the gloomy Mr. Blundon to sit with
her in the evenings.

XII

But Brighton appeared to occupy a prominent place in
the horoscope of Bessie, and two days before she planned to
end her visit as a failure she made by accident the acquaint-
ance of a lady and gentleman sitting at the next table to her
in the pavilion.

Bessie wouldn’t have noticed them, for they were quiet
and drab and she had no taste for drab people, but the lady
took a fancy to Esther, the poodle which she had in her lap.
The lady asked Esther’s name and so opened the conversa-
tion. One thing led to another. The lady and gentleman
were Mr. and Mrs. John Willis and their speech had that
faint cockney echo which always warmed Bessie’s heart.
They were from London, they said, and didn’t care much
for Brighton. It seemed a poor place and much over-
rated. Bessie said she thought so too. She was from
London. Yes, she lived in Bloomsbury.

Mrs. Willis, who was a dark, nervous little woman of
middle age, said, * Bloomsbury — well, I never. That’s
where Mr. Willis and I live.’

A glow emanated from Bessie’s heart and took possession
of her whole body. Bloomsbury, well, I never. Queer,

174

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

and they lived quite near each other and never knew it.
Funny how you could live in Bloomsbury for years and
never know your nearest neighbour. It was an exclusive
community. Mr. Willis, a little blond man with spectacles
and a walrus moustache said that was the way life was, he’d
found, and wasn’t the music nice. That was the only thing
they liked about Brighton — ^the band concerts. Indeco,
they were about to cut short their visit and go back to
London, where they felt more at home. They were going
to stay two more days just to give the place a fair trial. It
was Mr. Willis’s first real holiday in fifteen years. Yes, he
was a busy man. He had a linen shop and you could never
trust people who worked for you.

Queer, said Bessie, she felt the same way about Brighton.
She was going the day after tomorrow. Maybe they could
go up together. How was she travelling? On the express,
first class.

Mrs. Willis was afraid they couldn’t travel like that. They
weren’t rich enough. When you’ve a shop you have to
mind how you spend your money.

Perhaps then, suggested Bessie, they would travel with
her, as her guests. She'd like it. She had plenty of money
and she’d been hoping she’d meet someone jto enjoy things
with her. It wasn’t any good trying to enj^y things alone.
It would be a pleasure. .

But Mr. Willis, who appeared to be cautious, said he’d
have to think it over.

The band finished playing a pot[X)urri from Cavalleria
Rusticana and began putting away its instruments in recep-
tacles of green baize. Mrs. Willis thought perhaps they’d
all better be going to bed, so Bessie paid the bill for every-
thing and they set out slowly, for Bessie found it difficult to
move very fast. As they walked she said she had no chil-
dren (which was quite true) and so was very fond of dogs.
The Willises must see her other poodle, Minnie. Minnie
was at home because her chest was weak and Bessie didn’t
think the night air at the seaside was good for her.

175

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Queer, said Mrs. Willis, they hadn’t any children either,
although they’d prayed for tncm. But she managed to
fill in her time in church work. That helped a great deal
and it was sociable. Did Mrs. Winnery go to any particular
church?

Bessie said no, that she wasn’t much of a c?.c for church.
(Indeed, she had never seen the inside of a church.) She’d
come to Bloomsbury a stranger and she’d never yet found
her way about.

Mrs. Willis said she must come to their chapel. She was
sure that she’d feel at home there, and Bessie said they must
both come and have Sunday dinner with her. At the end of
the pier Bessie’s hired victoria was waiting and she drove
them home to their shabby lodgings. They parted the best
of friends.

‘ We might meet tomorrow,’ suggested Bessie.

* That would be fine,’ said Mrs. Willis.

‘ About ten-thirty at the end of the pier,’ said Bessie. She
waved back to them gaily as she drove off to the splendour
of her own suite at the George and Crown.

The next day proved a great success, so great a success
that they all decided to stay five days longer. Bessie it was
who paid the expenses. It gave her pleasure, she said, and
she had plenty of money. And in the end they all went
back to London on the express, first class, with a compart-
ment to themselves because Bessie felt uneasy when anyone
like Mr. Blundon was put in the same compartment with
her.

In Bloomsbury Bessie went to the chapel and Mr. and
Mrs. Willis came home in the victoria to Sunday dinner.
She did not care specially for the sermon nor for the bore-
dom of sitting an hour and a half in a hard pew, but she
had found human companionship and she told herself that
she couldn’t have everything. Mrs. Willis admired the brass
collection and the chromos and Bessie sent her as a gift a
female white poodle. It was the berinning of a great friend-
ship. From then on Bessie attended the chapel regularly

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

save on those Sundays when she found the effort to dress
quite beyond her power of will.

She got used to the services and came to endure them but
she found her real pleasure in the meetings of the ladies
and all the auxiliary activities of the chapel. She could sit
and drink her fill of amiable talk. And for the cha^l she
proved a godsend. In a congregation of small linen drapers,
greengrocers and clerks, she appeared to be a female Midas.
And because she wanted everybody to be happy she bought
a grand new organ for the chapel and had new windows
put in and presented it with a baptismal font. Out of
gratitude the members of the congregation had carved upon
it, ‘ Presented to St. John’s Chapel by Bessie Cudlip Win-
nery,’ As for Bessie, she was happy. She had only one
desire — that Teena Bitts might walk in some Sunday and
read that inscription on the oaptismal font.

It was Bessie, too, who established the famous August
Bank Holiday Excursion and Annual Picnic. O&ly
enough it was Mr. Blundon who suggested to her the idea.
He thought it would be splendid if the children of the con-
gregation could be made to get into the couii^try more often.
So Bessie made it an annual affair. On th^ August Bank
Holiday she hired char-a-bancs and, packing into them all
the Sunday School children and as many of the parents as
were free, set off into the country for the diy. She herself
occupied a seat in the back of the first ch^-ft-banc, leading
the way and filled with happiness. After tJic second year
the excursions became so celebrated that j^ple joined the
chapel and sent their children to Sunday School for the sake
of the single uproarious outing.

In the murth year after Bessie met Mr. and Mrs. Willis,
two momentous things happened. One was the death of
the poodles. Esther died or old age and Minnie of the lung
complaint which had troubled ner for so long. Bessie
bought two new poodles but they were never the same,
she told Mr. Willis, because she had had Esther and
Minnie while Mr. Winnery was still alive and their

177

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Queer, said Mrs, Willis, they hadn’t any children cither,
although they’d prayed for tnem. But she managed to
fill in her time in church work. That helped a great deal
and it was sociable. Did Mrs. Winnery go to any particular
church ?

Bessie said no, that she wasn’t much of a c ::c for church.
(Indeed, she had never seen the inside of a church.) She’d
come to Bloomsbury a stranger and she’d never yet found
her way about.

Mrs. Willis said she must come to their chapel. She was
sure that she’d feel at home there, and Bessie said they must
both come and have Sunday dinner with her. At the end of
the pier Bessie’s hired victoria was waiting and she drove
them home to their shabby lodgings. They parted the best
of friends.

" We might meet tomorrow,’ suggested Bessie.

‘ That would be fine,’ said Mrs. Willis.

‘ About ten-thirty at the end of the pier,’ said Bessie. She
waved back to them gaily as she drove off to the splendour
of her own suite at the George and Crown.

The next day proved a great success, so great a success
that they all decided to stay five days longer. Bessie it was
who paid the expenses. It gave her pleasure, she said, and
she had plenty of money. And in the end they all went
back to London on the express, first class, with a compart-
ment to themselves because Bessie felt uneasy when anyone
like Mr. Blundon was put in the same compartment with
her.

In Bloomsbury Bessie went to the chapel and Mr. and
Mrs. Willis came home in the victoria to Sunday dinner.
She did not care specially for the sermon nor for the bore-
dom of sitting an hour and a half in a hard pew, but she
had found human companionship and she told herself that
she couldn’t have everything. Mrs. Willis admired the brass
collection and the chromos and Bessie sent her as a gift a
female white poodle. It was the beginning of a great friend-
ship. From then on Bessie attended the chapel regularly

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

save on those Sundays when she found the effort to dress
quite beyond her power of will.

She got used to the services and came to endure them but
she found her real pleasure in the meetings of the ladies
and all the auxiliary activities of the chapel. She could sit
and drink her fill of amiable talk. And for the chapel she
proved a godsend. In a congregation of small linen drapers,
greengrocers and clerks, she appeared to be a female Midas.
And because she wanted everybody to be happy she bought
a grand new organ for the chapel and hacf new windows
put in and presented it with a baptismal font. Out of
gratitude the members of the congregation had carved upon
it, ‘ Presented to St. John’s Chapel by Bessie Cudlip Win-
nery.’ As for Bessie, she was happy. She had only one
desire — that Teena Bitts might walk in some Sunday and
read that inscription on the baptismal font.

It was Bessie, too, who established the famous August
Bank Holiday Excursion and Annual Picnic. Oddly
enough it was Mr. Blundon who suggested to her the idea.
He thought it would be splendid if the children of the con-
gregation could be made to get into the cour|try more often.
So Bessie made it an annual affair. On August Bank
Holiday she hired char-a-bancs and, packing into them all
the Sunday School children and as many of the parents as
were free, set off into the country for the diy. She herself
occupied a seat in the back of the first chi^-ia-banc, leading
the way and filled with happiness. Afteir> the second year
the excursions became so celebrated that fcople joined the
chapel and sent their children to Sunday School for the sake
of die single uproarious outing.

In the fourth year after Bessie met Mr. and Mrs. Willis,
two momentous things happened. One was the death of
the poodles. Esther oied of old age and Minnie of the lung
complaint which had troubled ner for so long. Bessie
bought two new poodles but they were never the same,
she told Mr. Willis, because she had had Esther and
Minnie while Mr. Winnery was still alive and their

177

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

deaths were like the breaking of a chain that bound her to
him.

In the midst of her grief she was sitting one afternoon in
the window of the drawing-room (happily dressed) and
listening to the gramophone when a shabby and high-
pitched Rolls Royce drove up and stopped before the door.
At sight of it Bessie withdrew quickly behind the curtains
but not so quickly that she wasn’t able to see that it had on
the door a coronet exactly like the one she had seen on the
letter found in Mr. Blundon’s room so many years before.
A footman rang the bell and in a moment Briggs came in
trembling, pale and shaken to ask if Mrs. Winnery could
receive ‘ *er Gryce, the Duchess of Narkworth.’

‘Now,’ thought Bessie, ‘ *e’s done it. E’s gone and told
’er the whole thing.’

Peering from behind the curtain she saw a little old
woman dressed very quecrly in black witli a black bonnet
and parasol get down from the Rolls Royce and come up the
steps.

‘ She ain’t so awesome,’ thought Bessie with relief. ‘ She
looks just like old Mrs. Grubb that sits in the third pew at
chapel.’

The little old lady came in and Bessie received her with
all the grace of manner Mr. Winnery had taught her.
Would ’er Gryce sit down.'^ And did she mind the poodle
puppies? No, it appeared, ’er Gryce didn’t mind, she kept
spaniels herself — cockers — and she was very attached to
them. Bessie told her about the death of Esther and Minnie,
not without shedding a tear and explaining their relation
to the late Mr. Winnery.

And then ’er Gryce came to the point. She too had just
lost her husband a little while before and since he was dead
there had been a reconciliation between her and Mr. Blun-
don, the cousin of the late Duke, Indeed Mr, Blundon had

{ rone to the funeral and then came to Narkworth House for
unch. And a very changed Mr. Blundon he was from the
last time she had seen him. He was even cheerful and

178

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

happy. And after lunch he had taken ’er Gryce aside and told
her what had happened to him and it was a Mr. and Mrs.
Winnery who had taken an interest in him and helped him
when his own family had cast him out. (Not that Mrs.
Winnery must think the worse of the dear Duke. He was
a good man but hard. The Blundons were all hard. And
Mr. Blundon had given him, as the head of the family, a
great deal of trouble.) So she had come to thank Mrs. Win-
nery for what she had been doing all these years. If the
dear Duke hadn’t been in his grave he would have come
too, out of thankfulness for seeing Mr. Blundon such a
changed creature.

Bessie said that what she’d done was nothing and that it
had given her and Mr. Winnery great pleasure and that they
were very fond of Mr. Blundon and couldn’t have got on
without him.

’Er Gryce said that now it was arranged for Mr. Blundon
to live in the dower house at Narkworth and go on with
his writing. He had told her that he was at work on a
book which he would have finished shwly and would
publish. He had been reticent about it. Did Mrs. Win-
nery know what it was about |

No, Bessie said, it was, she supposed, ji|st a book. But
it was really too bad about Mr. Blundott jgoing to live at
Narkworth. She’d miss having him thcr'cUn Bloomsbury.
It would be a hole in her life.

But ’er Gryce said Mr. Blundon was ioing to keep the
lodging in Bloomsbury to stop in when Tac came to town.
He had grown fond of the place. She didn’t suppose there
was anything she could do for Bessie, but she wanted her
to know how grateful the family had been for what she had
done.

Then Bessie suggested that ’er Gryce have a drop of tea
and the old lady lifted her veil and said she would be
delighted to have some and, after the trembling Briggs had
been sent to fetch it, they {c\\ to discussing this and that and
Bessie told her about the chapel and the August Bank

179

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Holiday Excursion and Annual Picnic. *Er Grycc said she
was interested in such ideas. She proved to be a very pious
old lady and much interested in work among the poor.
She would send Mrs. Winnery a cheque to help along her
good work, which seemed to be growing at such a pace that
Mrs. Winnery would soon find it beyond her means.

They drank tea together and became very friendly and ’er
Gryce suggested that they might meet again and plan a
place at Narkworth where tired girls could be sent for a rest.
Mrs. Winnery might help her with the London end of it.
Her daughter-in-law, the present Duchess, who was Miss
Mazie Ffolliott of the Gaiety, had already been a great help
in recruiting tired girls from the music halls. It was a plan
she had had in mind for a long time. She could, she
thought, house as many as twelve girls at a time in the old
Abbey at Narkworth. She was having plumbing laid down.
She had begun the day after the dear Duke’s funeral.
Perhaps Mrs. Winnery would come and have lunch with
her one day at Narkworth House and they would talk it
over. But Bessie said she didn’t go out much and maybe
’cr Grycc would come instead to Bloomsbury.

Bessie went with her to the door and was standing there
when ’er Gryce drove off bowing and waving pretty as any-
thing from the window of the Rolls. She was very nice,
thought Bessie, and not a bit like a Duchess. She reminded
her in a way of old Mrs. Crumyss if you forgot the way
Mrs. Crumyss talked and drank.

That evening Bessie dropped in to sec Mrs. Willis and
gave her a finely detailed account of ’er Gryce’s call.

The visit roused again the old temptation to return to
die Pot and Pie. She was tormented oy the desire to just
drop in in passing to tell Tecna Bitts about ’er Grycc. But
she could not go until after the August Bank Holiday,
which was only six days off. There was too much to be
done in preparation for the Excursion and Annual Picnic.
This year the crowd would heed fourteen char-a-bancs.
When that was over she would drive back to Bayswatcr in

i8o

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

splendour just for one afternoon to show Teena and Winter-
bottom and Mrs. Crumyss.

xni

The great day came and Bessie, sitting high in the back
of the first char-a-banc, watched Mr. Willis twirling his
walrus moustache and getting the crowd organized. At
last they were off in an uproar of motors and a cloud of
fluttering flags representing about equally the British
Empire and St. John’s Chapel. She wished again that
Teena Bitts and old Mrs. Crumyss could sec her.

They went to Nottingham Forest and there under the
trees with the efficient direction of Mr. Willis they spread
out the food from great hampers. There were all kinds of
sandwiches, roast beef and mutton, sausages, tarts and fruit,
and quantities of ice-cold beer, a real feast such as appealed
to the Gargantuan imagination of Bessie. Then Mr. Willis
organized a gymkhana in which all the children and
some of the grown-ups took part, and dll this led up
in the end to the peak of interest — a race between the fat
men of the congregation and the fat ladies # the congrega-
tion. There were twenty-three entries in | this event but
when the line-up came, Bessie was not ampng them. At
her absence a cry went up from all present |Shc, the fattest
woman in the congregation, was entered I She, Mrs.
Winnery, who was responsible for all the &n I It wouldn’t
be any race at all if she didn’t take part in! it, (Among the
fat ones it was already decided to fix the rate and allow her
to win.) The children gathered around her crying, *Go
along, Mrs. Winnery,’ and Bessie protested and laughed,
laughed until she became hysterical, but in the end she
yielded and, removing her hat and jacket, took her place
with the others.

The race was to be run from the green char-a-banc to the
foot of the great oak that stood on the edge of the road.
The whole congregation lined the edge of the course.

i8i

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Among the slim gentlemen bets were placed as to the
winner. Shrieks of merriment shattered the forest still-
ness. And at last Mr. Willis dropped the napkin that was
the starting signal and they were off. Bessie got off in the
midst and was making remarkable speed for so large a
woman. Cries of encouragement went up from all sides,
for Bessie was the favourite, such a favourite as there had
never been in any race. There was not one who did not
want her to win. And Bessie was doing her best, although
very nearly helpless with laughter. Slowly she forged
ahead into the lead. Fifteen more yards and the victory
would be hers.

But suddenly something happened. It seemed that she
tripped over something, perhaps a root, and fell to the
ground. A cry went up and fifty people ran to help her.
But when they got to her side, she seemed unable to rise.
She lay there quite still, breathing with difficulty. Six men
carried her into the shade of the great oak. They brought
water and fanned her and from somewhere in the congrega-
tion there appeared an unsuspected bottle of brandy. They
poured part of this between her lips. But there was nothing
to be clone. Her breathing stopped presently. She had
died of apoplexy in the midst of merriment,

XIV

At the chapel they gave her a great funeral. Mr, Blundon
attended it and ’er Gryce sent a wreath made by the garden-
ers at Nark worth House. The preacher delivered a long
sermon of eulogy, calling attention to the new organ, the
new windows and the baptismal font, and most of all to
the August Bank Holiday Excursion and Annual Picnic,
In the end he said, rather sentimentally, ‘For one reason,
if not for countless others, she will always be remembereci
among us. It can be said of her that she shared all she had
and that her only desire was that others should be happy
like herself.’

182

THE END OF AUNT BESSIE

It was Mr. Blundon himself who, as her oldest friend,
consulted with Mr, and Mrs. Willis about the tombstone.
They decided upon it at last — a simple stone with the inscrip-
tion:

HERE LIES

Bessie Cudlip Winnery

WIDOW

OF

Horace J. Winnery

Died August — at the age of forty-six years
at the August Bank Holiday Excursion and Annual
Picnic of St. John’s Chapel

HE PRAYETH BEST WHO LOVETH BEST
ALL THINGS BOTH GREAT AND SMALL
FOR THE DEAR GOD WHO LOVETH US
HE MADE AND LOVETH ALL

The two poodles went to join the poodle Bessie had given
Mrs. Willis and the house was closed and sold, and the
following week Mr. Blundon’s book was! published. It
was in two large volumes and was named A History of
Prostitution, Religious and Secular. It wjis an excellent
and erudite book and received scholarly notices. On the
flyleaf appeared the dedication, * To Mr. ai^ Mrs. Horace
J. Winnery, whose Friendship and Aid Made the Writing
of This Book Possible.’

But Bessie died without ever rcturninjg to Bayswater.
She died while the crowds stood in the hot street before the
Palazzo Gonfarini in Brinoe looking up at the window
where Miss Annie Spragg lay dead.

183

SISTER ANNUNZIATA

S IGNORA BARDELLI, concierge of the Palazza Gon-
farini, had asked for Sister Annunziata and she stood
there firmly waiting until she got what she wanted. It was
always Sister Annunziata whom they asked for when they
wanted a nun to come to the bedside of one of their dying.
Sister Maria Maddelcna, who stood in the small square
room facing the agitated janitress was in her heart a proud
nun and when she thought ‘ they ’ she meant all the poor
who lived in the decaying old rookeries in the quarter about
the Palazzo Gonfarini. Usually ‘they’ asked for Sister
Annunziata timidly but there was no timidity in the bearing
of the stalwart Signora Bardelli. Sister Maria Maddelena
knew her by reputation, a shrewd and a boastful woman,
who mocked priests and the Church. The sister, who was
human in her small way, could not resist murmuring, ‘ But
you do not hold with the Church, Signora Bardelli.’

‘ It is not for me,’ said the janitress. ‘ It is for the stranger
living in my house. She is religious.* She gave a shrug
indicating tnat when she came to die she would not call
upon the hocus pocus of the Church.

‘ Her name.? ’ asked Sister Maria Maddelena.

‘ Signorina Spragg.’

‘ Is she a foreigner.? ’

‘ It seems so. I do not know where she came from. She
has lived with me for sixteen years.’

‘And you don’t know anything about her? ’

‘ She never talked. She did not speak 'much Italian.’

‘ She has no money? ’

‘For three months she has not paid me anything. She

SISTER ANNUNZIATA

hasn’t any more money.’ Signora Bardelli began to gesticu-
late. ‘ What has all this got to do with it? She is sick.
She is out of her head. She is dying. I cannot care for her
and the whole house as well. I want to see Sister Annun-
ziata.’

‘ Sister Annunziata has just come in. She has been stay-
ing with the wife of Carducci, the butcher, who died two
hours ago.’

‘It will not matter to Sister Annunziata. Tell her that
Signora Bardelli wants to speak to her.’

She was stubborn because she was thinking she could not
support the presence in her house of any of the others. They
would be asking things of her and disturbing the other
tenants. Besides she distrusted nuns as meddlesome crea-
tures, only Sister Annunziata was different. She told her-
self she was not seeking aid from the Church. She was
coming for Sister Annunziata as for a friend. She would
not leave until she had seen her.

‘ The old woman may be dying now while we’re talking,’
persisted the janitress, and Aen as if to iittimidate Sister
Maria Maddclena she added threateningly, | Without abso-
lution, without the last rites of the dying. 1 And that will
be your fault for delaying me. I will not le4ve till I talk to
Sister Annunziata. It will be on your head*’

‘ They ’ nearly always talked like this. It^ was clear that
the janitress was beginning to lose her tempieir. Sister Maria
Maddclena said, ‘Wait,’ and disappeared ‘through a little
door behind the table where she had been sitting, and Sig-
nora Bardelli, feeling she had put to rout the entire Church
of Rome, seated herself solemnly on a bench against the grey
wall beneath the solitary crucifix, a Christ that was elegant
and prettified, half clad in purple and crimson garments
with a crown of thorns that was gilded.

When the door opened again Sister Maria Maddclena was
followed by a tall malformed figure who was forced to stoop
a little to pass through the archway. It was Sister Annun-
ziata, She was rather a grotesque than a woman and her

185

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Ugliness made her seem no age at all, although you would
have guessed that she was forty-five. She had high cheek-
bones and a long enormous nose ^md one eye turned out-
ward a little so that it was impossible to know when she
was looking at you. Her great hands hung suspended from
fantastically long arms. The nun’s dress suited her better
than any other. One is not taught to look for beauty as
the first quality of a nun. She seemed pale and tired.

At sight of her Signora Bardelli rose politely and greeted
her. The manner or open hostility melted away. She told
her story — how the strange old woman who had lived with
her for sixteen years was ill and perhaps dying. Signora
Bardelli had found her in bed unconscious when she failed
to appear during the day. She was fond of the old woman.
She had grown used to her. Sister Annunziata knew her.
It was the old woman who dressed so queerly and ran
about the streets of Brinoe in all weathers.

She talked rapidly and with excitement while Sister
Annunziata listened. The gaunt nun had a curious air of
humility as if she wanted desperately to please, not only
Sister Maria Maddelena but even the janitress.

‘ I will come,* she said. ‘ If she is dying we must fetch
a priest. Is she a believer? In the true faith? ’

‘I do not know,’ said the janitress. ‘She goes often to
the church, mostly to San Giovanni. She is devout and
religious.’

*I will come,’ repeated Sister Annunziata in her deep
masculine voice. She turned and disappeared through the
doorway, leaving the janitress to savour her triumph over
Sister Maria Maddelena. In a moment she returned with a

small bag. Without another word the two women set out
through the dark, narrow streets. As they stepped through
the doorway the wind from Africa blew into their faces like
the wind out of an oven. They made haste, for Sister
Annunziata had another soul upon her conscience. She
walked with the stride of a man, her big feet and long legs
covering in one step the distance covered by two steps of

i86

SISTER ANNUNZIATA

the Stout short janitress. The streets were empty and they
passed no one all the way to the gloomy archway that was
the entrance to the ruined Palazzo Gonfarini.

ii

It was a quarter in which Sister Annunziata knew every
door and every window, every cornice. She knew even the
holes in the pavement, which had never been repaired in
the twenty-nine years she had spent going from house to
house where she was needed. She did not, like Sister Maria
Maddelena, think in secret pride of these poor sleeping all
about her as ‘ they.’ To Sister Annunziata this was all of
the world, its beginning and its end. She had lived in it so
long, absorbed by its pain and sorrows, that she had long
ago forgotten she had ever belonged in any other. She had
forgotten too, because this life had been happy and the other
had never held any happiness.

She quite forgot that she was born Eugenia Beatrice
d’Orobelli. Among the poor it was said that she belonged
to a proud family, but long ago ‘ they ’ toc^ had forgotten,
if they ever knew, what she had been in the world. She was
simply Sister Annunziata whom ‘they’ ahvays asked for.
Sometimes they called her, behind her back,; The Ugly One,
and sometimes The Mad One, but there Wais in both names
a kind of affection of that simple quality which colours the
feelings of the humble.

In twenty-nine years she had seen none of her family
save Faustino, her only brother, and him she had seen only
twice when he had come from Ventctollo with family
papers for her to sign. She knew that he had married an
American woman and she knew that he had three sons,
one of whom, the eldest, was an invalid and lived always
with his father at Venterollo. Faustino had troubled him-
self to write her these things, but from her sisters and from
her mother and father, who were long since dead, she had
heard nothing. When they put her into a convent at six-

187

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

teen they had forgotten her as if she had never existed.
Afterward her mother in speaking of her family spoke of
‘my son and five daughters,* as if Eugenia Beatrice had
never existed at all. As a litde girl she had never been
allowed to see visitors who came to Venterollo. She was
always kept out of sight with the gardener’s wife in the
little house by the river.

So as a child she had played alone most of the time
because she was years younger than her sisters and because
they were proud and showed her that they did not want her
about them. She had come to make friends with the birds
and the animals in the park of Venterollo and to spend her
days like a wild thing under the ancient oaks and moss-
grown decaying walls.

She was twelve years old when she understood what it
was that caused them all to treat her differently. She had
been sitting quietly one day on a little copse near the ruined
pavilion watching a troop of ants building a city, when
she heard voices, which she recognized as those of her
mother and of her aunt. They were devout women who
went every day to Mass, and that day because it was hot
they had stopped on their way home to rest in the pavilion.
Her mother was crying because there was no money to
marry off her five daughters. Two were already grown and
on their way to being old maids. Her husband had only
debts and would not give up gambling and her son of
twenty was wild and always in trouble with women.
Worst of all and hardest to bear was Eugenia Beatrice.
Why had God sent her another daughter late in life? And
why had He sent her such a little monster who was as ugly
as if she had been the daughter of the Devil himself? No-
body would ever marry such an ugly creature even with a
dot of a million lire. What chance would she have without
a penny? Why had she, a good woman, been punished
thus?

There was nothing to be done with Eugenia Beatrice,
said her aunt, but to put her into a convent as soon as pos-

i88

SISTER ANNUNZIATA

sible. Even there a creature so ugly was certain to frighten
the other nuns.

That night Eugenia Beatrice did not return from the park.
They searched for her, not too carefully, for there was no
one who really wanted to find her, but at evening of the
next day she was brought home by a peasant living on the
side of the mountain fifteen miles away. He had found her
shivering among the rocks when he went out with his
goats in the early morning.

in

As the two women passed through the great arched door-
way of the Palazzo Gonfarini, the janitrcss went ahead
leading die way up the wide stone stairway. It was cool
here, tor the thick walls shut out the hot wind that sang so
perversely along the ancient cornices. At the second turning
of the stairway, Signora Bardelli opened a door and they
found themselves in a long corridor with a row of cell-like
doors opening along one side. It was lighted by a single
jet of flickering gas. The whole space had once been the
great banqueting hall of the palace but yea|s before it had
been filled in thus with partitions and converted into a kind
of rookery by the grandfather of Father d^Aktier, who now
owned the palace. At the end of the corner the janitress
turned and knocked and the two women stepped into a
small square room like a long box turned on end. It was
not more than ten by twelve feet in size, but it was high, so
high that in the dim glow of the night light floating in a
bowl of cheap blue pottery the ceiling would have been lost
in shadow save for the occasional glint sthick by the light
against the ancient gilding of the painted beams. As they
entered there arose a flutter and commotion from a great
number of tiny birds which rose from the end of the bed
where they had been perching and circled blindly about
until one by one they settled on the rows of cages hung
against the grey wall. In one corner there was a narrow

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

iron bed and on it lay the dying woman, a coarse poor sheet
drawn up to her chin.

She was quite still and lay on her back with her eyes
closed. It was a curious face, neither old nor young, not
beautiful and yet fascinating by the perfection of its model-
ling. It was the first time anyone save Signora Bardelli
had ever seen the face without the hat and the thick veil.
Great masses of red hair lay on the pillow. In front it was
cut into a long fringe that hid completely the forehead.

For a moment Sister Annunziata stood by the side of the
narrow bed looking down at Miss Annie Spragg and then
slowly, almost as if she was unconscious of the gesture, one
of the gaunt ugly hands touched the beautiful hair with a
curious gesture of reverence.

‘ She is not an old woman,’ said Sister Annunziata.

‘ She was like that when she came to me,’ said the janit-
ress. ‘ She cannot be young. She has been here for fifteen
years. She has not changed much.’

Then Sister Annunziata touched the brow, gently push-
ing back a little the thick fringe of hair. Then she listened
to the breathing and while Signora Bardelli held the night
light she bent over to look at the pale, tired eyelids.

‘She is dying,’ said Sister Annunziata. ‘You had better
go for Father Baldessare. I will stay with her.’ She knew
all the signs. For twenty-five years she had sat at the side
of the dying.

So the janitress went away again out into the hot night
and Sister Annunziata closed the great shutters against the
heat of the African wind. When she had done this she set
about putting the room in order, lifting the bedraggled
tweed suit and the battered old picture hat and veil from
the only chair in the room. Then she sat by the side of the
bed and reaching beneath the sheet felt the wrist of Miss
Annie Spragg and knelt beside the bed to pray. It was not
to God that she prayed or to the Virgin, but to Saint Francis
of the Birds. He was her saint. He was more than that.
He was to Sister Annunziata the only god who had ever

190

SISTER ANNUNZIATA

existed. She prayed for a long time, commending to his
care the soul of the dying woman. The souls of all the
dying she commended to the care of Saint Francis. He
was her saint whom she had adored since she was a little girl.

And at last she rose and opening the little bag she brought
with her took out a powder which she dissolved in water
and swallowed. Sister Annunziata was ill herself. Lately
she had reached the age when her body was sometimes
racked with pain and her mind seemed confused and
clouded. Twice lately she had had visions in which she
saw Saint Francis far off in the midst of a bright field
filled with little daisies and primroses. He appeared to be
beckoning to her but he came no nearer. He was the
simple Saint Francis of Giotto's picture that hung in her
room years ago at Ventcrollo. Lately she prayed at times
to him for some miraculous sign of his approbation. She
prayed that Saint Francis would show her a sign of his
love. . . .

After bending once more over the sick woman she seated
herself by the bed and took out of her bag a little worn
leather-bound copy of The Little Flowers 6f Saint Francis
and began to read. Once she had known it^l by heart but
lately with her trouble she seemed unable t^ remember the
verses in their proper order. She was for^d to hold the
book close to her face in the dim light bccau|e her eyes were
weak and swollen.

As she sat reading the little birds, who had been watching
her with bright eyes from the tops of the cages, appeared
to lose their fear and flew down in small confused groups of
two and three to perch once more on the foot of the iron bed.

IV

On the day that Eugenia Beatrice was sixteen her aunt
took her dressed all in black to enter the convent. They
kissed each other good-bye coldly, since the aunt had no
affection for her and the child had long ago ceased to look

191

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

for any affection from the world. The door closed and the
great ugly girl found herself among the sisters, shrinking
and frightened as she had always been in the presence of
strangers. They stared at her as intently as if they believed
there could be no creature so ugly in all the world.

From that day on her life was given over to pleasing
others in the vague half-formed hope that out of her service
there would grow some reward of commendation or affec-
tion. She scrubbed the floors and swept the vast hallway
and took upon herself the meanest tasks, and sometimes
there would be a reward, a word of praise from one of the
nuns or even the Mother Superior herself. She knelt for
long hours on the cold stone floor praying to Saint Francis
who had love for all living things and so might love her as
well, even if God had made her so ugly that she frightened

E eople. For in the great awkward body there was a soul so
ungry for love that it would have given itself over to
torture and slavery for the sake of anyone who had for her
a kind word. But her ugliness was so great that the other
sisters, almost without knowing it, thought of her as some-
thing grotesque and strange and different from themselves.

For three years she lived thus and at last when she went
out into the city to care for the sick and the poor she began
for the first time to find her place in the world and to forget
her childhood. Among the wretched she went about with
that same humble manner of supplication, peeking to please
them in return for kindliness. She entered their squalid
houses as a creature unworthy of serving them. She sat at
the bedside of old men dying of loathsome diseases and
young mothers who died bearing their first children. She
sat by young and handsome men cut off in the midst of
life and risked her life by the side of children ill with small-
pox and scarlet fever. She ate what the poor ate and slept
as they slept, asking nothing of them in return but a word
of kindness. And even the young men who loved only youth
and the joy of being alive and the feeling of the hot blood in
their veins came in the end to find a strange kind of beauty

192

SISTER ANNUNZIATA

in the presence of Sister Annunziata. It was an unearthly
beauty that seemed less concerned with the ugly body and
face of Sister Annunziata than with all that surrounded her.
With her by their side even the young found death quiet
and peaceful. They loved the gentleness of the huge mis-
shapen hands. A kind of light seemed to flow from the
ugly face.

And she knew that sometimes they called her The Ugly
One and The Mad One and she smiled to herself and was
glad because they would not have called her such names
if there had not been affection in their hearts. In a way her
body came to exist no longer save as an instrument to serve
her spirit. She came, unlike other women, to cherish it
not as an instrument of love or of beauty but as something
that was useful to her. When at forty-five it began to fail
her she prayed desperately to Saint Francis to give her
strength. It was not death that she feared but the thought
that her body’s failing her might shut her off from all those
who called her The Ugly One and The Mad One. Saint
Francis could help her, whom she loved with all her soul.

Sitting by the bed of Miss Annie Spragg she read, hold-
ing the page close to her weak swollen eyes?

‘When Saint Francis drew nigh unto BcVagna he came
unto a spot wherein a great multitude of |)irds of divers
species were gathered together. When the holy man of
God perceived them he ran with all speed unto the place
and greeted them as if they had shared ill human under-
standing. They on their part all awaited him and turned
toward him, those that were perched on the bushes bending
their heads as he drew nigh them, and looking on him in
unwonted wise while he came right among them, and dili-
gendy exhorted them all to hear the word of God, saying,
“My brothers the birds, much ought ye to praise your
Creator, who hath clothed you with feathers and given
you wings to fly, and hath made over unto you the pure air,
and careth for you without your taking thought for your-

193 G

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

selves.’’ While he was speaking these and other like words,
the little birds— behaving themselves in wondrous wise—
began to stretch their necks, to open their beaks, and to
look intently upon him. He, with wondrous fervour of
spirit, passed in and out among them, touching them with
his habit, nor did one of them move from the spot until he
had made the sign of the cross over them and given them
leave; then with the blessing of the man of God, they all
flew away together. All these things were witnessed by
his companions who stood awaiting him by the way.
Returning unto them, the simple and holy man began to
blame himself for neglect in that he not afore then preached
unto the birds. . . .’

The little birds were quite still now and sat in a row on
the end of the bed, some with eyes closed, some watching
Sister Annunziata with their bright eyes.

It was nearly dawn when she was aroused by the sound
of creaking boots in the corridor. It was Father Baldessare.
She knew the sound of his boots. He was a humble simple
priest who had come many times to the homes of the poor
in response to her summons. His boots always creaked. The
door opened and he came in, fat and short with a red pimply
face, followed by Signora Bardelli. They were both hot and
panting from the long walk through the hot wind and
the climb up the great stone stairway. As they entered the
room the birds fluttered up again to their cages and the
woman on the bed opened her eyes a litde way slowlv and
with the greatest effort. For a moment they were darkened
by a strange look of terror in them as if she thought herself
already dead and was awakening in a dark world of black-
robed nuns and priests. And then she appeared to recog-
nize Sister Annunziata and the look of fear faded away.
She could not speak. Her lips were frozen.

194

SISTER ANNUNZIATA

Sister Annunziata made a gesture dismissing the janitress
and then turned to the fat little priest ‘ We’d better make
haste,* she murmured. ‘I will stay and hold her up. She
cannot raise her own body.’

And so they made ready to offer Miss Annie Spragg the
last service they could give her on this earth and when
Father Baldessare, after much panting and sweating was
ready Sister Annunziata knelt beside the bed and lifted the
dying woman, resting the thin helpless body against her
own gaunt shoulder. They found then that her hands were
covered by white cotton gloves and when Father Baldessare
tried to remove them a kind of convulsion shook her
and into her eyes there came a look so terrible that Sister
Annunziata understood her plea and they left her hands
covered.

The fat little priest began to read the lines and adminis-
ter the Sacrament and once more the little birds, no longer
fearful, fluttered down one by one to the iron rail at the foot
of the bed and sat in a row. The look of fear left the eyes
of the dying woman and slowly the eyelids drooped with
weariness. t

When at last Father Baldessare had
opened a little way and again a look of pleading came into
them. Then slowly in a kind of agony An^iie Spragg lifted
her right arm a little way and made a faifit gesture which
only Sister Annunziata understood. Still supporting the
dying woman the nun leaned down and took from the
chair the copy of T he Little Flowers of Saint Francis and
from her bag she took the stub of a worn blue pencil. She
put the pencil in Annie Spragg’s hand and opening the book
held it tor her to write. Slowly and with pain the dying
woman scrawled seven words and when she had finished
the pencil dropped from her hands and the eyelids drooped
again. There was a faint sigh filled with weariness and
Sister Annunziata commended her soul to the care of Saint
Francis of the Birds.

They laid her back upon the bed and Sister Annunziata

195

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Opened the page where she had written. At first she could
make nothing of the scrawl and peered at it for a long time
with her swollen red eyes. Then slowly she understood it.
The old woman had written :

Open the window. Let them he free.

When Father Baldessare loosened the heavy shutters the
first faint colour of dawn had begun to rise behind the
mountains and the rosy grey light was filtering down
among the ancient ghost-filled houses that surrounded the
Palazzo Gonfarini. As he stood there for a moment looking
out into the hot empty street there was a faint rushing
sound all about him. It was the little birds flying past him,
chirping and twittering, into the rising dawn. The air was
filled with the sound of wings.

After Father Baldessare had gone again, Sister Annun-
ziata drew the sheet over the face of the dead woman and
closing the door gently behind her went down the long
corridor and the great stone stairway to seek a bowl of hot
coffee. She needed it in order to keep her weary eyes open
any longer and she could not ask Signora Bardelli to fetch
it, for Signora Bardelli was a busy woman and had been up
most of the night. The hallway and the cortile were grey-
blue with morning light and already out of the celHike
doors there had begun to appear figures which Sister Annun-
ziata knew well ... the old man who washed the streets,
the blind old woman who sold flowers in the arcades of the
Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, Galeazzo the lame stone cutter.
They greeted her knowing that her presence in the Palazzo
Gonfarini meant that there was suffering and death within
its walls. She understood what it was they wanted to know.
It was the stranger, she told them, who lived at the far end
of the corridor. They crossed themselves and wished good
health to Sister Annunziata and peace to the soul of the
dead woman.

In a little while she returned bringing with her candles
and a great kettle of hot water and when she had entered
the room again she set about placing it in order. She went

SISTER ANNUNZIATA

through the drawers of the cheap pine table and the pockets
of the grey tweed suit but she found nothing. There were
no papers and not even a lira in money. The dead woman
appeared to have no possessions but the clothes she wore arid
the little birds.

Then Sister Annunziata went to the iron bed and lifted
the sheet and for a long time she stood looking down at
Miss Annie Spragg. The lines of pain had gone out of the
dead face, leaving it transparent and smooth and peaceful
against the masses of splendid tangled hair. Again Sister
Annunziata, who had a way of talking to herself, mur-
mured, ‘ But she is not an old woman.’ And once more the
great bony hand reached out with a gesture of reverence
and envy to touch the beauty of the dead woman’s hair.

As she set about her task with dim near-sighted eyes, she
saw that the body of the dead woman was not old and that
it was beautifully made and that in youth it had been superb.
She saw that it was a body which perhaps had known the
love which was shut out for ever from the life of a nun.
She had seen bodies many times that were young and
splendid even in death when it was no longer wrong to
look upon their nakedness, and each timk it gave her a
kind of twisting, sickening pain, so that in the end she had
come to look away from them.

As she worked with averted eyes she tri^d to repeat the
psalms she had learned as a child at Venterollo, but in her
trouble and in the pain that racked her body and the clouds
that obscured her thoughts she could not remember them.
When she had nearly finished her task $he discovered that
she had not removed the white cotton gloves that covered
the hands. She removed first one and then the other and
then quite suddenly she made the discovery. On the palm
of each hand there was a red scar as if both hands had been
pierced by nails. For a moment she stared in silence, leaning
close in order to see, and then gently, with a gesture almost
of terror, she pushed back the fringe of hair that covered
the brow of the dead woman, and there on the brow she dis-

197

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

covered other scars as if a crown of thorns had been pressed
upon her head. There was a great livid scar in the side and
the two feet had the marks of nails.

.For a second a vicious pain racked her body and a
blinding light dazzled her poor weak eyes and then without
a sou nd she slipped to the floor unconscious. For she had seen
the Stigmata. It was the sign of Saint Francis of the
Birds.

When Signora Bardelli climbed the stone stairs an hour
later she found that all the birds had flown from the room
and that Sister Annunziata lay unconscious on the floor.
And on the bed lay the naked body of the dead woman bear-
ing in its flesh the scars of the Crufixion. The room was
quite light now and the brilliant morning sun streamed in at
the open window.

For the only time in her life Signora Bardelli was fright-
ened. She felt a sudden wild impulse to fall upon her
knees and pray to the very saints she had mocked. She had
a strange fear of being watched by something which she
could neither see nor understand.

She seemed unable to revive the unconscious nun and
when Father Baldessare returned creaking and sweating
along the corridor he found her still kneeling beside the
prostrate figure. He too saw the miraculous scars on the body
of the dead woman and knelt humbly in prayer by the
side of the bed.

When at last Sister Annunziata opened her eyes, she
seemed for a long time unable to speak. They gave her
sour wine to drink and at last she told them a strange and
muddled story. She said that as she stood over the body a
great and blinding light had appeared on the wall opposite
the bed and that in the midst of it stood Saint Francis in a
tiny field of buttercups and primroses, surrounded by all the
little birds that a little time before had fluttered about the
room. From his body there streamed great rays of light.
These appeared to come from his hands and his feet, his side
and his brow, where there were wounds like those of Our

198

SISTER ANNUNZIATA

Lord. The light streamed toward the body of the dead
woman. After that she could remember no more.

As she told the story a strange unearthly look of happy
madness came into her face, so that even tne hard Signoi;a
Bardelli felt a sudden awe.

Before noon the story of the miracle had travelled through
all the quarter and crowds came streaming into the cortile,
up the staircase and along the corridor. Pushing and crying
out hysterically, women thrust themselves into the chamber
of the dead woman and there tore her clothes and the very
chair and table into bits as relics. They bore off the cages of
the little birds, and the night light, and one woman soaked
her shawl in the water that was in the bowl of cheap blue
crockery. In their hunger for relics they snatched the be-
draggled roses from the old picture hat and ripped bits from
the very sheet that covered the body of Miss Spragg, until
only torn fragments remained to hide its nakedness. It was
the police who at last cleared them from the house, pushing
them rudely back into the street. But the crowd would not
go away. It hung about the great arched, gateway of the
Palazzo Gonfarini and women lilelt in the dust to pray
beneath the windows. |

Through all the confusion and the vulgar turmoil Sister
Annunziata went about calmly, with that strange new light
of happiness in her face. She was loved at lait. Saint Francis
had sent her the sign.

199

CODA

O N the morning following Mr. Winnery’s extraordinary
attack of romanticism he awakened slowly and lay
abed for a long time after the goitred Maria, maidservant
of twenty years, had come in and flung open the shutters.
He awakened conscious that he was feeling exceedingly
well and freed of the usual torpor caused by the combina-
tion of a bad liver and the wretched climate of Brinoe. He
was aware that the wind from Africa had died out altogether
and that in its place there was a cool fresh breeze that
changed the brilliant sun and blue sky from a nightmare
into a delight. It was odd, he thought, how well he felt,
considering that he had been up walking the streets on the
night before until after midnight. It occurred to him that
perhaps you could break habits without inviting calamities.
Perhaps breaking habits made life more exciting. It was a
thing he had never tried before— this exciting way of living.

And then his eye fell upon the telegram, and he suddenly
felt even happier. He remembered that now he could leave
Brinoe for ever. He would not have to be buried in the
Protestant cemetery, among all the people who had bored
him for twenty years. He would not have to rest through
all eternity beside someone like old Mrs. Whitehead. He
could now travel everywhere and anywhere, always seeking
with the bright hope of an incurable romantic some spot that
would be as paradisiacal as it was reported to be by poets and
old ladies and tourist circulars. Aunt Bessie was dead, God
bless her.

He rose, and before doing the exercises which kept his
waist measurement within moderation, and his liver in

200

CODA

action, he went to the window and looked out. Below him
in the little square the usual things were going on. There
were bony horses and cab drivers in varnished leather hats,
three English ladies in tweeds and picture hats, armed
with umbrellas, Baedekers and cameras. An elderly Ameri-
can couple reading out of a book about the tower of the
church opposite. They read a paragraph and then regarded
the tower again, as if uncertain which things had been
regarded by Mr. Ruskin as beautiful and which things had
not. A brown-robed monk came down from the high
monastery of Monte Salvatore. A herd of goats with the
goatherd in a black smock playing a tune on a strange pipe
held in the hollow of his hand. A Ford automobile with
nine Italians. Though it was early morning they were
dressed in full evening clothes, clearly bound for a wedding
or a christening. A woman leaned out of a window and
screamed at the goatherd. He halted the flock, put away the
pipe and set himself industriously to milking one of the shc-
goats.

It was a delightful place, after all, Brinoe. Perhaps it
wasn’t as bad as he had thought. Now th^t he was rich he
could keep a larger apartment and have a ivilla somewhere
in the hills. Suddenly it occurred to him? that it must be
later than he thought and regarding the tdwer opposite he
discovered that it was already ten o’clock, it couldn’t be as
late as that. The clock was Italian and diercforc probably
an hour or two wrong. It was never collect with the sun,
and to Italians such things didn’t matter. But his own
watch showed him that the clock was not fast (which he
knew would be unusual in Brinoc), but slow by half an
hour. It was half-past ten. Maria had not called him and
for the first time in twenty years he had overslept. For a
moment he experienced a wild desire to summon Maria
and abuse her, but something about the square, the sky and
the sight of the wedding party in the Ford made him soften.
He decided to do nothing about Maria’s dereliction. It was
odd, indeed, how well he felt, and how young and spry.

201 G*

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

Then he saw coming round the tower of the church the
tall awkward figure or a nun, walking in great haste, her
full black skirt swinging with her masculine stride. ‘ It is
the crazy one,’ he thought, ‘Sister Annunziata.’ As she
crossed the little square toward his house, he saw that she
was smiling and talking to herself in the most animated
fashion as she walked. She turned and disappeared througti
the archway by the old Palace of the Podestas.

The sight of her brought to mind Miss Annie Spragg.
Well, it was an interesting case and he would have to go
further into it. If he continued in his present health and
spirits he would be able to complete Miracles and Other
Natural Phenomena within a year or two. He must see Mrs.
Weatherby again and go further into the history of Miss
Spragg at a time when diey would not be interrupted by the
presence of such frivolous and worldly people as Father
d’Astier and the d’Orobelli woman.

At that moment he saw the black and red motor swing
from under the archway and cross the square. In it were the
Princess d’Orobelli and a man whom he did not know, a
dark handsome man who was not Father d’Astier. ‘Ah,’
thought Mr. Winnery, with a sudden warm fcchng of being
a worldly devil,’ ‘ that is why she is in Brinoe at this time of
year. Tnat is it ... a lover. A rendezvous.’ It made him
feel almost a gay dog.

It made him also think, ‘If she is not too old for love,
neither am I. A man lasts much longer than a woman.’
And that in turn made him think of Miss Fosdick and
reflect again that now he was rich he could do anything he
pleased. With money you could buy anything. Perhaps he
might rescue Miss Fosdick from the dragon’s den and marry
her. Now that he was rich he would have to upset a good
many habits and upsetting habits it seemed did not bring
disaster. On the contrary, he never felt better. . . , Dear
me, it was an odd world.

He decided that he would hire the fiacre once more and
drive out to the Villa Leonardo before making up his mind

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CODA

entirely about Miss Fosdick. It was a pleasant day and the
drive would be refreshing. He could wring more informa-
tion from Mrs. Weatherby, if he could prevent her long
enough from talking about herself. And perhaps he coijd
have a word alone with Miss Fosdick. He might ask per-
mission to call upon her. Yes, he would need a wife now
that he was rich. But he must be cautious. At fifty-three
one had no time to indulge in mistakes.

He tried to pretend to himself that he was being merely
practical and not at all sentimental, but at the same time he
experienced again that pleasant tickling sensation of satis-
faction over his interest in her. It was no more than the
shadow of desire. It flattered him that there was a certain
. . . well, grossness ... in the feeling. He had a most
stimulating awareness of adventure.

The door opened and fat Maria came in, looking, decided
Mr. Winnery, as if she had swallowed a canary. That,
thought Winnery, is because she has been guilty of a derelic-
tion of duty and expects a scolding.

‘Buon giorno,’ he said brightly. ‘ Buon giorno.’

Maria looked somewhat astonished. Feeling a little
encouraged to gossip, she asked if Signer Winnery had
heard the latest about Signorina Spragg. Mfcs Annie Spragg
was being buried to-day and the burial w^ pausing the local
church authorities a great deal of trouble iind uncertainty.
The question was a purely technical ortt. No one could
decide whether the miraculous scars should be officially
recognized as a miracle and the body of Miss Annie Spragg
considered as that of a potential saint or whether she ought
to be treated simply with the conventional respect due to a
devout follower of the Church. There was even a party
among the more bigoted older priests which held that there
was not even any proof that she was a Roman Catholic and
that it was not proper to defile consecrated ground with the
body of a heretic. And there was always that ancient decree
of Pope Sixtus IV issued against Saint Catherine of Siena,
Sixtus IV holding that the miracle of the Stigmata was the

203

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

exclusive monopoly of Saint Francis and that it was a
censurable offence to report it of anyone else. The whole
thing threatened to grow into a scandal. Miss Annie Spragg
had no money, so Sister Annunziata was paying for the
funeral. Did Mr. Winnery know who Sister Annunziata
really was? Well, it turned out that she was born the
Princess d’Orobelli, and she was put into a convent because
her family saw no chance of ever marrying off so ugly a
woman,

Maria paused for breath and then went on. Had Signor
Winnery heard about Father Baldessare, that little fat priest
attached to San Giovanni? Yes, the one who had witnessed
the miracle and found Sister Annunziata lying senseless
after she had been visited by Saint Francis. Well, Father
Baldessare had left the Church and was going from town to
town, on foot, to preach in the market places. He was
going to purify Christianity, she said, and begin all over
again. That was a silly idea. How could there be any
Christianity without the Church? Wasn’t the Church
Christianity ?

‘ He has always been a little cracked,’ she said, ‘ and now
he seems to have gone out of his mind.’

She had heard all this at the market. ‘Ah,’ thought
Winnery, who had quite forgotten that he was still clad only
in an Italian night shirt, embroidered in red cotton, ‘no
wonder she was late.’

Maria walked to the window on the opposite side of the
room and stood looking down into the market. ‘Look,’
she said, pointing down, ‘There he is now,’

Winnery crossed over to the window. In one corner of
the market by the fountain of dolphins and serpents there
was a crowd of cooks and chambermaids and cab drivers.
On the edge stood the three English ladies with the
Baedekers, umbrellas and cameras. One had placed her hand
behind her ear in order to hear more distinctly. They sur-
rounded a fat short figure clad in a brightly checked suit of
the kind affected in London by bookmakers. In one hand

204

CODA

die figure held an umbrella. The other hand was being used
in emphatic but ineffective gestures. The crowd stood
staring up at him, amused and astonished, but aware that it
was being treated to an entertainment which cost nothing.
The speaker’s voice was weak and shrill so that it did nbt
carry above the tumult of excited bargaining that was in
progress on all sides. After a time the cooks began to drift
away one by one to buy their leeks and spinach and potatoes.
It was Father Baldessare, turned to plain Fulco Baldessarc,
leader of the new reformation.

Winnery, watching the spectacle, had a swift fleeting
vision of humanity struggling to extricate itself from some
colossal muddle. Then he returned to his breakfast, which
he ate with a hearty appetite.

II

From the moment of Miss Fosdick’s hysterical flight into
the great world life began to annoy Mrs, Weatherby. For
twenty years she had managed to subdue its annoyances
because dear Gertrude had seen to every tiresome detail —
the packing, ordering the food, shipping^ trunks, buying
tickets, giving orders timidly to servante-rin short, doing
all the things which might have broken iii i|X)n the spiritual
quiet of the Great Religious Experimenter- It had become
a system so thorough and so monotpnous that Mrs.
Weatherby had quite forgotten the grey , existence of such
troublesome details. Now that her slave Was gone, her life
collapsed about her ears in a confusion of petty annoyances.

Margharita wanted to know what Giovanni should bring
from the market. The men who were building a cesspool
found that the cement was of the wrong kind. Should
Giovanni buy a new tyre for the Ford? Lulu, the elder
Pomeranian, spit up her breakfast. There was no more
sunflower seed for Anubis. It was as if Mrs. Wcatherby’s star
had slipped into some profoundly disastrous conjunction.
She remembered with terror that her horoscope foretold

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THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

disaster and disappointments during the six months begin-
ning with August.

And she was forced to face and solve all these calamities
while suffering the greatest anguish of mind. Had she not
been betrayed by the one creature on whom for twenty years
she had lavished the wealth of affection and kindness of a
mother? For twenty years she had been harbouring an
ingrate, nay, a viper, at her bosom. She kept saying this
over and over again to herself while she squabbled with
Margharita and dosed Lulu with castor oil. And all those
cruel things which Gertrude had said the night before. She
must have been thinking them in secret for years while she
lived on the bounty of her doting Aunt Henrietta. And to
go away without a word, not even telling her Aunt Henri-
etta she had gone.

‘But she will return,’ she kept telling herself. ‘She will
return in good time, perhaps to-day, perhaps tomorrow.
What is there for her to do but to return? ’

And when she returned she would be more controllable
than before. After her ingratitude and treachery she would
seek to do penance. Perhaps it would better in the end. If
there was a divine law, people suffered for such behaviour.

‘ I must not think evil thoughts,’ she told herself, ‘ because
evil thoughts make us old and tired and bring on the
twilight.’

No, she would be sweet and forgiving when Gertrude
returned; sweet and forgiving, she repeated to herself, but
firm as well. She must not give in too easily.

Suddenly it occurred to her that her misfortune might
have to do with the strange statue found in the cesspool.
From the very beginning she had disliked it as an obscene
and disturbing thing, and now since Miss Fosdick was gone
and there was no other object at hand on which to vent her ill
temper she began to hate the statue. There was no doubt
that such an image aroused the lower nature. It was per-
haps the sight of it that had caused Gertrude to behave in
so idiotic a fashion with the Duke of Fonterrabia. Perhaps

CODA

it was the statue that had driven her to run off like a mad-
woman. She might, she thought, give the statue to a
museum, or, what was better still, she might bury it again,
even deeper than it had been before. Yes, that was it. She
would have the workmen bury it once more, and then
Gertrude would return and Lulu would recover and all
these troubles would disappear. Perhaps it was silly to think
such things, but you could never tell about superstitions.
Sometimes they were quite right. She would not have the
thing leaning against the ilex, watching everything that
passed in the garden.

Present^ she began to worry again about the Annie
Spragg affair. Isolated there on the side of the mountain
she could not discover what was happening, nor (what
would have been the most valuable of all knowledge) the
attitude the Church was taking toward the miracle. She
was aware that she must discover this before she spoke
again to Father d’Astier. If the Church looked upon Annie
Spragg as an imposter then she must wash her hands of
Annie Spragg and support the Church by telling all the
dark things she knew about Annie Spragg^ If the Church
chose to regard the affair in the light of a jtniracle then she
must espouse the cause of Miss Annie Spragg and appear as
her friend. It was all perplexing enou^; without having
the ungrateful Gertrude disappear just ^^n she was most
needed.

At noon she ate nothing but retired to her room for a
siesta. In her agitation she had not closed an eye all night.
More than that, Gertrude had not been there to will away the
currents of evil directed against her by her enemies. Lying
awake and alone in the house she had kcfX hearing ominous
noises in the garden and in the rooms below.

It was four o’clock when she awakened at last and went
down into the garden to attend to the business of reburying
the hateful statue. When she saw it again, the halo of evil
surrounding it struck her even more forcibly. It was only
after the reflection of the wakeful night that she realized its

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THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

full significance. Why, she saw now that portions of the
statue had been stained, perhaps nineteen centuries earlier,
in an obscene fashion.

In bad Italian and with the aid of much pantomime, she
finally conveyed to the workmen her idea. When at last
they understood her they exploded in a wild burst of pro-
test. She was unable to understand any of it, though she
understood well enough that they were in a tremendous
state of excitement. They all screamed at her at once. In
the very midst of the uproar Pietro, the old goatherd, who
lived on the hillside below the villa, suddenly appeared
bearing two melons and a branch laden with green olives.
He was an immensely old man, dirty and unkempt, with a
scraggly grey beard and pointed ears that stuck through
apertures in the matted long grey hair. He walked with a
limp sidewise like a crab. At sight of her he removed his
battered hat and gave her a scries of grovelling bows.

At first she thought he had brought the melons and olive
branch as a gift for herself and touched by the picturesque-
ness of Italian customs, she quickly assumed the gracious
manner of a chatelaine and came forward to receive the
offering. But Pietro made it certain that they were not for
her. As if he thought that she meant to take them from him
by force, he cunningly shifted them behind his back and
made a flowery speech, of which she understood not a word.
Then his true purpose was revealed. He went past her and
laid them at the very feet of the horrid statue. At the same
moment, one of the workmen, the bronze-chested Giovanni
whose physique had caught the wandering eye of the Prin-
cess d’Orobelli, said something to him, and he in his turn
began to gibber at the now completely distracted seeress. It
appeared that the arrival of Pietro gave them fresh courage.
She saw that they intended to prevent her by force from
carrying out her plan of doing away with the obscene thing.
She was the tenant of this property. She intended to do
with it as she pleased. Her fleshy nostrils began to distend
in an ominous way. Italians, so volatile by nature, could

CODA

not imagine the force of a granddaughter of Transcendent-
alists moved to anger by a long scries of torments. And un-
like Miss Fosdick, they had never witnessed the full fury of
one of her tantrums.

But at the crucial moment there appeared from the oppo-
site end of the garden a whole procession of goats which
had faithfully followed Pietro up the stony hill. At the very
end of the procession, emerging from the tunnel of greenery,
appeared Mr. Winnery, nattily dressed for courting in a
checked suit, a new pearl grey hat and lemon yellow gloves.

in

Mr. Winnery, entering into the cool dark garden, was
overcome, as he had been once before, by the certainty that
he had lost his mind. He was aware mat as the last of a
long procession of goats he had made an undignified
entrance, but his resentment at this died almost at once
before the spectacle of the Great Religious Experimenter
surrounded by gibbering Italians who seemed oent upon
doing her some bodily violence. Fearful tjiat Miss Fosdick
had perhaps already been done away wit|i he hurried for-
ward through the midst of the flock of goj^ts, driving them
out of his path with blows of his malacca stick (just pur-
chased on the strength of Aunt Bessie’s legacy).

At sight of a male foreigner, even so harmless a male
foreigner as Mr. Winnery, the workmen grew silent,
and Pietro retired into concealment behind them. Mrs.
Weatherby, with a new face composed almost instantan-
eously, floated forward and greeted him, explaining at the
same time that she was having difficulties with the work-
men. There was perhaps some confusion owing to their
inability to understand each other. Perhaps Mr. Winnery
would act as interpreter.

He addressed the workmen and received in reply a perfect
torrent of explanation. They all spoke at once and into
their soft voices they threw whole gamuts of seduction. It

209

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

would perhaps never have finished but in the midst of it he
turned to Mrs. Wcatherby — ‘They arc saying that you must
not bury the statue again. It is an ancient god of fertility
an^ if you bury it they say the crops will be blighted and
the shc-goats barren and the eggs infertile. They say you
will bring calamity on the neighbourhood. It is an ancient
god of fertility. Priapus, offspring of Dionysus and Aphro-
dite, or, if you prefer the Asiatic version, of Sabazius and
Astartc. They are quite right, though how they know
such a thing is beyond me. You will find . . .’

He would have, like the Italians, gone on for some time
explaining the legend of Priapus, but Mrs. Weatherby inter-
rupted. The nostrils had begun again to distend and
quiver. She seemed about to snort fire.

‘ It is my garden,’ she said quite firmly. ‘ I shall do with
it as I like.’

‘Why not,’ suggested Mr. Winnery tactfully, ‘give the
thing to a museum? *

* No, I understand about these things. Haven’t I devoted
my life to studies of the more psychic religions? It is an evil
omen and ought to buried again. I am certain of it. Ever
since it was found I have been having misfortunes.’

Winnery shrugged his shoulders. He failed to see quite
how the sceress could with intellectual honesty support her
own superstition and reject the much more ancient one sup-
ported by Pietro and his party. That, he supposed, was
the common attitude of superstitious and religious people.
But he simply turned to the workmen. He told them that
the signora wanted the thing buried and that if they chose
not to obey her, she would find other workmen. Deciding
that they could risk a blight in the future more easily than
the loss of a job in the present, they turned back sullenly,
but not silently, and began to dig. Pietro made as if to
launch a final protest and then fell silent. The goats had
by now gathered in a circle about the scene of the conflict,
watching it with large round eyes. Mr. Winnery had a
fleeting impression that Pietro had winked at him, but he

210

CODA

could not be certain, and he could not as a guest of Mrs.
Wcatherby endanger her prestige by acknowledging the
wink.

‘Now that we have settled it,’ said Mrs. Weathe^by
more calmly, ‘you must have some tea.’

As they started toward the villa Mr. Winnery turned
again to regard the statue in disgrace. It was a remarkably
fine thing, he thought, and a pity to bury it again. Still,
with this eccentric woman arguments would arrive no-
where. She placed no value upon anything in the world
but her own ego. It was a nne thing, the statue. At
moments it seemed almost to have a life of its own. Just
now in the heat of the afternoon it appeared lascivious and
amused as if it were saying, ‘ You may bury me and unbury
me a thousand times but you can’t be rid of me. I shall be
with you always.’

It was a pity, thought Mr. Winnery. It seemed to him
that the statue had brought him luck. Everything had
happened since Miss Annie Spragg had died and the statue
was dug up from the cesspool.

‘Shoo!’ cried Mrs. Weatherby, making j threatening ges-
tures and pushing her way through thc^ goats. ‘Shoo!
Shoo ! ’ i

IV

They had tea, the same bad tea out of rusty tins that
tasted as if it were made of hay, and dried digestive biscuits
very nearly as old, thought Mr. Winnery, as the freshly
buried statue. Mrs. Weatherby at once struck an attitude
in the fake Renaissance chair and began to talk about her-
self. Anubis the parrot blinked at them and gave out a
scries of disgruntled croaks. Everything was exactly the
same as before save that one of the Pomeranians, instead
of yapping, lay with a pallid expression on a Veronese green
pillow trimmed with gold, and that the view through the
loggia was even more magnificent in the clear transparent

211

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

air that had followed the dust-laden sirocco. He was aware
that there was still no sign of Miss Fosdick nor any reference
to her. He reminded himself that it was Miss Fosdick after
allfWhom he had come to sec. He did not care to hear any
more of the history of Mrs. Weatherby.

Once, however, Mrs. Weatherby did turn aside from her
principal subject, but only long enough to ask for the
latest developments in the scandalous affair of Miss Annie
Spragg. He passed on to her what he had heard that
morning from Maria. It was information which only left
her where she had been before. He had not, he told her
when asked, seen Father d’Astier, although he had seen the
Principessa d’Orobelli driving across the square with a
stranger, a man, to be exact. This bit of simple informa-
tion he translated with the slight but meaning inflection that
had come to be a habit born of long association with the old
ladies of Brinoe.

‘A very interesting woman,’ said Mrs. Weatherby. T
have never before seen an aura so red.’

‘Ah, you understand auras,’ murmured Mr. Winnery
in a helpless effort to fill in time until he gained the courage
to ask where Miss Fosdick was hiding. He was nor inter-
ested in auras except as nonsense. (It was absurd that a man
of his age should be as shy as a schoolboy. Why could he
not utter Miss Fosdick’s name?)

‘Yes, it is a profound and interesting subject.’

‘ Have you noticed my own? ’ asked Mr. Winnery wildly.

‘ Oh, yes, I noticed it at once yesterday by its paleness. I
had seldom seen so pale an aura. But it has changed to-day
remarkably. It is much redder.’

‘ And what does that signify? ’

Mrs. Weatherby simpered. ‘I don’t know that I ought
to tell you, Mr, Winnery. Still, you are an intelligent man
and will not misinterpret my interest in such things.’

‘Yes ... no ... of course not,’ murmured Mr. Win-
nery.

‘Red,’ said Mrs, Weatherby, ‘indicates passions of the
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CODA

body. I think — ’ she hesitated for a moment and then
plunged. ‘I think someone, something, some new— shall
I say — interest? — ^has entered your life since yesterday.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr. Winnery, somewhat startled. But he was
aware again that he was flattered by the change in his
aura.

‘ Green is the colour of the passions of the mind. That of
course is much worse . . . depraved, one might say.’ She
was peering at him through her glistening pince-nez with a
mystical intensity that made him squirm on the hard chair.
He saw with terror that she was scrutinizing his aura. ‘ I
am glad to sec, Mr. Winnery, that there is no trace of
green in your aura.’

Mr. Winnery murmured his gratitude and said modestly
he supposed that that was a thing you could not control and
that therefore he ought to take no credit to himself. Secretly
he was feeling disturbed for fear that her intensity might
increase and throw her into a trance. What could he do
with her if she suddenly went into a trance?

She did not. ‘That is what interested me about the
statue,’ she continued. ‘It has an aura, Mr. Winnery, a
positive, unmistakable aura, and it is a vifc mixture of red
and green. I'hat is why 1 thought the thing better buried
again at once.’

‘And what does such a mixture signify?’

‘ That, Mr. Winnery, I cannot bring inyself to tell you.
Will you have more tea? ’

But Mr. Winnery had done his duty to die social amenities
and did not feel called upon to drink a second cup of hay-
water.

‘ But I don’t understand, Mrs. Weatherby, how a statue,
an inanimate thing, may have an aura. I thought auras
were connected, so to speak, with what I suppose you
would call the life fluid.’

He found himself wondering if Miss Fosdick had been
forced to undergo much of this sort of thing, and his
sympathy for her deepened and broadened.

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THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

‘It is an extraordinary case. Doubtless the aura is an
accumulation of evil thought directed toward the statue
during its worship some centuries ago.*

(Mr. Winnery thought, ‘I must ask after Miss Fosdick
and yet how dare I after she has discovered the appearance
of red in my aura.*) Aloud he sai4, ‘ I have never had the
pleasure of knowing anyone who saw auras. It must be
very disconcerting — I mean, always to see not only your
friends but their auras as well.* He was beginning to be
afraid of the woman.

‘ It a privilege given to a few,’ replied Mrs. Weatherby
with a certain smugness.

He then asked her about Miss Annie Spragg. He felt, he
said, that Mrs. Weatherby had been somewhat constrained
yesterday by the presence of Father d’Astier and the Princi-
pessa d’Orobclli. With him, of course, it was different.
With him she might feel quite free, as with a man of
science.

But it was clear that her lips were to remain sealed. She
would say nothing. Yet there remained with him the cer-
tainty that she knew far more than she chose to tell. At
last he rose and made his adieux, filled with the terrible sus-
picion that the secress believed he had come back to the Villa
Leonardo because he found her attractive. A certain mincing-
ness had entered her manner. She bridled and held out her
little finger as she raised the teacup to her lips. Quite sud-
denly he was terrified and filled with a sense of panic. What
did this extraordinary woman expect from him? For a
moment he had the fantastic idea that the stone god (which
by now must be safely buried) was having its revenge upon
her.

She went with him to the door, snapping her pince-nez
back on the gold fleur-de-lis pin attached to her ample
bosom and thanking him for me call. She urged him to
come frequently. It was a lonely place. They seldom saw many
people but of course it was impossible for her to live
where the confusion of twentieth-century civilization broke

214

CODA

in upon her meditations. She would always arrange it so
that they could talk without intrusion.

As they reached the garden Winner y saw that the work
had been done. The statue was buried again and atop the
grave-like mound of reddish earth Pietro had left the olive
branch and the two melons as a propitiatory offering. The
goats had disappeared.

Wildly he said, *I have not seen Miss Fosdick. I was
hoping to say good-day to her.’

‘She is not here,’ said Mrs. Weatherby.

There was a pause in which Mr. Winner y found himself
at a loss for conversation. At last he said, ‘ I did not know
she was going away.’ (Why should I know?)

‘Yes, She has gone on a holiday, the first, I must say,
that she has had in twenty years. I urged her to do it. I
felt that she had had quite enough of me. She never wants
to leave me for a moment.’

This cast Mr. Winnery down. ‘She must indeed be
devoted,’ he murmured. And then suddenly — ‘Good-bye,
Mrs. Weatherby, and thank you for the tea.’

At the mouth of the tunnel he turned suddenly, seized by
what he felt must be the beginning of mjadness. If Mrs.-
Weatherby happened to be looking at hii aura she must
suddenly see that it had turned flaming red.; ‘ When do you
think she will return? ’ he asked.

‘ I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Weatherby.^ ‘ That was left
open. I told her to stay away as long as ahe liked. I don’t
imagine she’ll be away long. She has been so devoted for
twenty years. A thing like that gets tq be a habit. Have
you ever noticed, Mr. Winnery, that it is our habits and our
friends which give permanence and solidity to life? ’

‘Quite right, Mrs. Weatherby, quite right.’

By breaking habits he had got himself into this muddle.
Breaking habits by driving in the hot afternoon with the
African wind blowing. Breaking habits by going to bed
long after midnight. Breaking the habit of regarding people
as Uterary material rather than human creatures. He had

215

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

made this long trip for nothing. He had not seen Miss
Fosdick. He had not had a word with her. He did not
even know where she was and he did not know when she
WQuld return. He had had a wretched tea and ruined his
clothes. The checked suit, the new hat and yellow gloves
reeked with the strong smell of goat. But Mrs. Weatherby
had clearly been attracted to him. That he could not
forget.

V

Obstacles and difficulties, says an old sentimental proverb,
only serve to increase a passion, and the disappearance of
Miss Fosdick only served to inflame Mr. Winnery. If
Miss Fosdick had been at the Villa Leonardo she might
have said or done something which would have upset so
precise and finicky a man. There might have been a hole in
her stocking or she might have blown her nose too loudly
or, being surprised by the sudden call of Mr. Winnery, her
hair might nave been done sloppily. Since she was not
there, none of these things happened and Mr. Winnery left
disappointed (which is always good for love) and cherishing
only the memory of her richly curving bosom, her nice eyes
and her dove-like air. And since, despite himself, he really
wanted to believe in the beauty and virtue of Miss Fosdick
and really wanted to have his life disturbed and exciting
now that his liver troubled him less, he went on believing
in these things more and more passionately.

In the days that followed Mr. Winnery grew animated
and slept very little, walking a great deal and calling upon
Mr. Winnop, the curate, and the few old ladies who
remained in Brinoe. He was even seized with a fit of ambi-
tion to recover some of that glory he had known a quarter
of a century earlier as a literary prodigy and set to work to
bring order from the confusion of notes, copyings and false
starts which represented the existing state of Miracles and
Other Natural Phenomena, He discovered that love (for

216

CODA

he conceded that love was the proper diagnosis of his strange
transformation) and the creative instinct possessed an obs-
cure and subtle interrelation.

After much wrangling among the local clergy, Miss Annie
Spragg was buried at last in die little cemetery on the ?ar
slope of Monte Salvatore. The various parties reached a
compromise and it was decided at length that she was to be
buried in consecrated ground but without the special atten-
tions which should have gone to a woman who was a
potential saint. Nevertheless a large number of the poorer
and more ignorant devout made up a disorderly cortege
which followed the coffin through the dust all the way from
Brinoe to Monte Salvatore. There were in it old men and
women, a great many dirty children who looked upon the
excursion in the light of an outing, three men who were
quite drunk and sang, and even a woman pushing a peram-
bulator. Immediately behind the coffin marched Sister
Annunziata, who had disobeyed her superiors and joined
the cortege. She still had in her plain face the light of a
happiness that did not come of this worid. At her side
walked Fulco Baldessare, clad in his chcck^ed bookmaker’s
suit and protecting himself from the brill^nt sun with the
black cotton umbrella. It was all very and dishevelled,
in the best Italian tradition.

And when the excitement had died away a little so that
Mr. Winnery felt he might undertake hU investigation dis-
creetly and without becoming involved, ht set out to visit
Signora Bardelli. The janitress, he felt, would be able to
give him a straightforward and realistic account of what
had happened, unmarred and distorted by the trimmings
with which more religious and emotional witnesses were
certain to decorate the strange case of Miss Annie Spragg.

But Signora Bardelli had disappeared from the Palazzo
Gonfarini, and the new janitress, a gaunt, witch-like and
very dirty woman who had been among those in the dis-
orderly cortege, proved taciturn and ill-natured. It was
only ^ter Mr. Winnery had pressed into her hand a fraction

ai7

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

of Aunt Bessie’s fortune that she told him what had hap
pened and where the former janitrcss could be found.

Signora Bardelli, it appeared, had behaved scandalously.
No sooner had the body of Miss Annie Spragg been
removed from the Palazzo Gonfarini than the janitrcss
began spreading a singular story. She expressed it as her
belief that Miss Annie Spragg was not a holy woman at all
but that she had been in alliance with the dark powers of
fertility during her entire lifetime. Her relics, said Signora
Bardelli, were efficacious in the case of barren women.
Although she conceded a belief that any of the relics pos-
sessed a certain power, she was convinced that its very
centre was concentrated in the only piece of furniture left
behind by the relic-snatchers — the bed upon which Miss
Annie Spragg had died. The act of spending a night in
this bed had, she declared, a miraculous effect. She fixed
a price of forty lire for the privilege and before Father
d’Astier, her employer, discovered the outrage she had
already accumulated three customers. And then Father
d’Astier had come to the palace in person and had thrown
her into the street. But she had taken the miraculous bed
with her and she was now living in a tiny house in the
village of Monte Salvatore, where she had set it up once
more and was doing a good business.

Fate, reflected Mr. Winnery, was always drawing him
back to Monte Salvatore.

But before going he went to seek out the fat little Father
Baldcssare and the gaunt Sister Annunziata to gather from
them their version of the miracle. The priest had disap-
peared completely, none knew whither. His former acquain-
tances only confirmed the gossip of Maria — that he had gone
out to bring the world back to the simplicity of Jesus. He
had, they believed, now gone completely mad, but since in
Italy people paid small attention to crazy people there was
nothing to be done about it. At the convent Sister Maria
Maddclena told him that Sister Annunziata could sec no
one. She had been ill for a week and quite out of her head.

218

CODA

In her illness she had gone about saying such astounding
and scandalous things that they thought it better to keep
her in seclusion until the poor thing had recovered her senses.

Mr. Winnery, somewhat cast down, hired a fiacre and jet
out for Monte Salvatore. He felt that in all the confusion
of the superstition and madness it would be refreshing to
talk with a woman of hard, common sense like Signora
Bardelli. ^

VI

As Mr. Winnery made his entrance Signora Bardelli was
just receiving forty lire from a pretty young peasant woman
who had spent the night on the bca of Miss Annie Spragg.
The woman was telling her story for the third time. She
had been married seven years and although she had prayed
to all the saints of fertility there had been no answer to her
prayer. Her husband was growing impatient. He already
had a child outside of wedlock- and he wais fonder of this
child than of his wife. The woman wept a little and Signora
Bardelli assured her with all the authority ahd brightness of
a successful surgeon that from now on c^rything would
be all right, ;

It was a small room in one of the bilious yellow houses of
Monte Salvatore and it stood on the slope of the hill over-
looking the lonely valley where the Villa Leonardo perched
in its decaying and lonely splendour. Iii the evening the
very shadow of the monastery fell across its doorstep. Un-
willing to intrude upon the delicate transactions that were
taking place, Mr. Winnery waited just outside the door.

He beard the former janitress giving the young woman
earnest advice. Then he heard her selling for ten lire a
mixture composed, she said, of amber, laurel and a powder
made from the hill viper. This the young woman was to
put into her husband’s wine every night for seven nights
following the next change of the moon. And she sold a
charm containing a phial of powder (composition undes-

219

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

cribcd during the transaction) which she was to wear sus-
pended between her two breasts. If nothing happened
within three months Signora Bardelli advised returning to
spfnd another night in the bed of Signorina Spragg. Some
cases, she pointed out, were more difficult than others. It
all sounded, thought Mr. Winnery, rather like the last con-
sultation he had had with the expensive Doctor Gosse on
the subject of his liver.

Then the peasant woman departed and Mr. Winnery
brightly made his entrance. He planned to take Signora
Bardelli directly into his confidence and so let her under-
stand that he knew she was a shrewd and clever swindler.

His plan failed. The former janitress eyed him at once
with suspicion, and even after he had explained his mission
and the great work he had undertaken in driving super-
stition from the world, she warmed only a little. And that
faint shade of warmth he divined only when he referred to
the superstitions of the Church. She was, however, willing
to discuss the case of Miss Annie Spragg and asked him to
sit down, giving him to understand that the talk would be
in the nature of a consultation and would, of course, call for
a fee.

Mr. Winnery, dashed a bit by his reception, thought bit-
terly, ^ These free, generous Italians.’

It was a square plain room in which dried herbs hung
from the ceiling together with strings of garlic and red
peppers. The walls, once painted white, were blackened by
smoke. At one side there was a row of shelves with pots
and jars of many sizes, colours and descriptions, neatly
arranged according to size, and in one corner there was a
sort of throne like that in a restaurant. It had a till for
receiving money. The whole room was all arranged effici-
ently, rather in the manner, thought Mr. Winnery, of the
office of a specialist who charged five guineas a consulta-
tion. Certainly it was an organized business, quite as
organized as the Church itself. The room was quite clean.

Mr. Winnery seated himself on a wooden bench opposite
220

THE JANITRESS’ TALE

the doorway, and Signora Bardclli, taking off her spectacles,
seated herself opposite him. It was not until he sat down
that he noticed the magnificence of the view. The doorway
gave out upon the lonely valley and far off, dimly sc;pn
through the haze of heat, he discerned the dark grove of
trees which marked the Villa Leonardo.

THE JANITRESS’ TALE

I

S HE did not know how Miss Annie Spragg had come to
take lodgings in the Palazzo Gonfarini, The old maid
was already installed when Signora Bardelli took over the
post of janitress on the death of the old man who had
preceded her as caretaker. Miss Annie Spragg was already
established and affixture she remained. She was not a
troublesome tenant. She did not, like s0me of Signora
Bardelli’s lodgers, return home drunk or beat her children
or stab indiscriminately the other lodgers. ; She seemed to
have no wants and in all the years she livdd there she had
never made a complaint. She was very cl^an and seemed
content with a room which contained only a bed, a chair
and a wash-stand. She always paid her rdnt regularly until
three weeks before her death, and then, of course, she could
not pay it because her money had come to an end. Where
this money had come from Signora Bardclli did not know.
Miss Annie Spragg had never in all the years she had lived
in the Palazzo Gonfarini received a letter. She had no
friends and much of her time was spent in the churches,
mainly at San Giovanni before the celebrated paintings of
Saint John the Shepherd. She had learned to speak a little
Italian but she was never really able to converse in that
tongue.

221

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

In the third year after the janitress came to the Palazzo
Gonfarini, Miss Annie Spragg came one day and asked her
if she knew where there was a place she could go in the
mpuntains to pass a month now and then. It must be very
cheap, she said, because she had no money, and she would
like it to be in some rather remote region where she would
not be troubled by tourists. Signora Bardelli thought at
once of her sister-in-law who lived in a village called Bestia,
high in a remote part of the mountains. She sent word by a
cousin (since neither the sister-in-law nor her husband could
read) and received an answer that they would be glad of
the money to be got by having the visitor. It was arranged
to meet Miss Annie Spragg at Analo, which was the termi-
nal of the railroad. Beyond Analo there were only mountain
roads and donkey carts.

It was a wild country, said the janitress, which she had
not seen since childhood. There were a few olive orchards,
and herds of goats and half-way down the mountains they
were able to grow vines in the crevices of the volcanic rock.
There were wolves which in winter became ferocious and
sometimes attacked people in remote villages and farms. At
Bestia there was no church and the inhabitants were forced
to drive all the way to Analo to communicate with a priest.
Therefore, they seldom saw priests except when someone
died or was born. Sometimes children grew to manhood
and womanhood and died without ever being received into
the Church. They had a kind of religion of their own which
was a mixture of Christianity and old legends, half lost in
the mists of time. It was at Bestia that Signora Bardelli had
learned the science of herbs and charms. The people there
knew about such things and one old woman, long since
dead, had taught all she knew to the janitress.

(She had long sold herbs and charms to the poor, the
janitress said, but it was only since she had acquired the bed
of Miss Annie Spragg and lost her place as janitress that she
had really set herself up in a legitimate way.)

The family of the sister-in-law consisted of the mother
222

THE JANITRESS’ TALE

and father (a goatherd) and eleven children. There was a
room over the stable which they gave to Miss Annie Spragg
when she arrived bearing a straw suitcase and an empty
bird-cage. The entire family slept in one room. •

From the beginning their strange lodger proved a help to
them. She asked nothing and she paid regularly. She did
not talk much and spent a great deal of time on the moun-
tain, setting out in the morning with bread and cheese and
a little wine, and returning at sunset. On her second visit
she offered timidly to watch Giusseppi's goats while they
wandered along the mountainside. These were wilful and
troublesome goats which wandered off into ravines and
woods and caused Giusseppi much anxiety, but with Miss
Annie Spragg their character appeared to undergo a change.
They became docile and stayed near her while she was
making water-colour sketches or knitting clothes for Gius-
seppi’s half-clad family or simply wandering about over the
mountainside gathering wild flowers and listening to the
birds. She was a great help to Giusseppi because her taking
charge of the goats freed another son to help him in the rude
orchards and vineyards. People began to nO^ce that she had
a strange power over animals and to regard Her with respect.
It was only the wife (Signora Bardelli’s «isjfcer-in-law) who
did not like her. She thought there was soihething strange
about the lodger and even spread the story tjhat Miss Annie
Spragg had the power of the evil eye.

Among the children of the sister-in-law there was one, a
litrie girl of nine, who, her parents believed, was possessed
of a devil. The old priest from Analo had tried to exorcise
the demon and when he had failed they sought the aid of
the old woman who was the herb doctor. She also tried and
failed. The child’s name was Peppina and she gave them a
great deal of trouble. She was a pretty child with thick black
hair and great black eyes and for days at a time she would
be well-behaved and docile. But she had seizures when she
would run away and hide among the ravines of the moun-
tainside. Sometimes they would not find her for days.

223

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRACG

Once she fell into a stream and was nearly drowned and
on another time she set fire to the house in which they
lived. She fell down at times in a fit and had strange
vif^ions.

Upon this child Miss Annie Spragg had the same effect as
upon the goats. With the old maid Peppina remained docile
and well-behaved, but as soon as Miss Annie Spragg left
Bestia the child began once more to cause trouble and they
had to beat her and try new ways of driving out the demon.
When she was eleven she took to accompanying the old
maid and the goats when they set out in the morning to feed
on the mountainside.

For five years Miss Annie Spragg went each summer to
occupy the room over the stable at Bestia and each time
when she returned to the Palazzo Gonfarini she brought
with her a cage filled with small birds, most of them being
a kind of sparrow which frequented the mountains and
because of its smallness was worth nothing as food to the
peasants. When she left her room in the Palazzo Gonfarini
in the spring Miss Annie Spragg opened the window and
allowed them to escape. Signora Bardelli believed they
were always the same birds. They spent the winter at the
Palazzo Gonfarini and flew back in summer to rejoin Miss
Annie Spragg at Bestia. Once she even brought back with
her a box filled with field mice.

In Bestia they no longer thought her queer. She became
a part of the place. They even came to date things by the
arrival and the departure of the old maid, as if her coming
marked the beginning of summer and her departure the
arrival of the long Italian autumn.

She might have continued going summer after summer
to Bestia, said Signora Bardelli, but a strange thing hap-
pened. One night at midnight her brother-in-law was
awakened by the smell of smoke and discovered that the
house was burning. At first he believed that it was the
demon in Peppina who had set the fire a second time, but
when he had awakened all his family he discovered that

224

THE JANITRESS’ TALE

Peppina was not there at all. He discovered too that the
lodger’s room above the stable was empty and that in the
stable the goats had disappeared. When he had put out
the fire he set out to find the goats.

In the darkness he went up the mountainside calling c?ut
Peppina’s name and uttering at intervals the half-human,
halt-animal cry which he used in calling the goats when they
had strayed. But there was no answer. He had wandered
for hours over the rocks and pastures when dawn at last
began to slip in through the valleys and crevasses and down
the wild rocky slopes, and he turned toward home. Cold
blue mist veiled the hillside and clung to the groves of
ancient olive trees planted among the outcroppings of grey
tufa. The poor man, not knowing what to think, began
to believe that Peppina’s demon had swept Peppina and
their lodger and his goats off into limbo. As his bewilder-
ment increased he became certain that he would never see
any of them again. He regretted the loss of Peppina, said
the ex-janitress, far less than he regretted the loss of the
goats, for she was only a source of trouble to her parents
and goats were valuable property. He began to fret over
what he would tell the police when it was; discovered that
Miss Annie Spragg too had been swallowed up. He told
himself that this was what came of havii^ to do with a
strange foreign woman, and that his wife Was right in sus-
pecting her of being a witch.

In the midst of his reflections he heard ^ddenly the faint
far-off tinkle of the bell that the black h^goat wore about
his neck, and halting, he stood listening until he made
certain that he was not imagining the sound, and then to
discover from what direction the sound came. Looking
down he saw far below him, half hidden in mists so that it
was visible one moment and not the next, a little proces-
sion which had a strange likeness to a procession of children
on their way from a first communion. At the head walked
sedately the black he-goat who wore the bell, and behind
him came all the herd. In the rear, like the parents who

225 H

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

followed the children, walked Miss Annie Spragg and Pep-
pina. They seemed to be wearing wreaths on their heads
and Miss Annie Spragg was without the black veil she
always wore.

^fhere was no way of descending directly to them and the
puzzled man was forced to go by the tortuous narrow paths
that led down among the rocks and trees. When he reached
the bottom of the crevasse the procession had disappeared,
but there remained in the red earth the neat little prints of
goat’s hoofs.

When he reached the farm once more it was quite light
but he found that all his family were asleep, and that
beside the oven on her mattress of straw Peppina was also
sleeping soundly. In the stable the goats were in their pen
as they should have been and when he entered they pushed
forward behind their leader, the black he-goat, to be led out
to feed. And in the room overhead Miss Annie Spragg was
asleep. On the floor beside her there were a few &uised
and withered laurel leaves.

Thinking that he too must be possessed of a demon who
had driven him out on the mountain in the middle of the
night for nothing, the poor man returned and roused his
wife, telling her all that he had seen. Because he was con-
fused and could not believe his senses they examined the
beams above the oven to make certain there had ever been
a fire. There had been a fire. The beams were all charred.
They went to awaken Peppina but she could not be awak-
ened. They struck her and called her evil names but the
girl only slept on quietly. The smaller children wakened
and began to scream with fright, and in all the confusion
the father lost his head and sat down and wept. But his
wife did not take leave of her senses. She cried out that
their lodger was a witch and that she had known it all along
and now they would be free of her at last. She went to
the stable and roused Miss Annie Spragg, who said nothing
in reply to the woman’s abuse but packed her shabby bag
in silence. Then the old maid set out along the road to

226

THE JANITRESS’ TALE

Analo carrying her bag, her cage of little birds and her box
of water colours. The wife followed her for three miles
along the road, hiding from time to time in the bushes and
behind rocks to watch and make certain that she did not
return and to see whether she might not vanish abruptly
into thin air.

When the figure of the old maid had disappeared at last
on the serpentine road leading down the mountain to the
high valley of Analo, the woman returned to the lonely
farm and taking beeswax and three red hairs and seven nail
parings from a little box, she moulded the beeswax into the
image of the thin old maid and embedded the nail parings
and the three hairs deep in the wax, and sticking a pin
through the place where the heart should have been, she
threw the whole thing into the oven. She had been waiting
all the while. The red hair was Miss Annie Spragg’s hair
and the parings were the parings of Miss Annie Spragg’s
nails.

When the image had gone up in a burst of flame, Peppina
stirred on her bed and wakened, but when ihey talked to her
she could remember nothing. She had, said, been asleep
in her bed all the night. |

She was fifteen years old at the time, ana developed like a
woman of thirty.

But it was the end of Peppina, said Signora Bardelli.
After that the demon claimed her for his own. She had
many respectable suitors, some of whom:Wcre rich, but she
would have none of them and ran off in the end with a
corporal of the Carabinieri, who had been sent into the
mountains to run to earth a notorious brigand. He was a
gigantic and ugly brute, more like an animal than a man.
He beat her cruelly and was stabbed to death at last by a
man he found in Peppina’s bed when he came home unex-
pectedly. After that Pepppa disappeared. A young native
of Analo returning from South America said he had seen
her there in a brothel on the water front of Rio dc Janeiro.
She was dancing naked in the midst of a circle of sailors,

227

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

white men and black men, yellow men and brown men.
But no one knew for certain that the woman was Peppina.

THE ROMANCE OF MR. WINNERY

I

M r. WINNERY, listening to the talc, grew more and
more bewildered. This woman whom he had expected
to find sensible he saw was no different from all the others.
He saw that she believed all that she was telling him and
that he could never persuade her that it was all nonsense.
She too was like all the others, the prey of superstition, the
victim of ancient legends. It was simply another kind of
superstition, different and more ancient and more deeply
rooted than the superstitions which led Sister Annunziata
to believe that she was chosen by Saint Francis as the elect
of God. Sister Annunziata was more than half crazy, and
they were right perhaps in shutting her up, but this shrewd
hard peasant woman was clearly not mad. To Sister Annun-
ziata Miss Annie Spragg was a white saint and to Signora
Bardelli the old maid was a black saint.

He said to her, ‘But the Stigmata? How can a witch
have received the miracle of the Stigmata? ’

She looked at him mysteriously and replied, ‘That I do
not know.’

‘It it all very strange.’

‘ I do not know,’ observed Signora Bardelli, ‘ unless it is
the work of the Devil. Perhaps it is a joke played on the
Church by something that is older than the Church, older
even than Christianity. I have been told that things like
that are the oldest things in the world.’

She was stubborn and would not be shaken from her
beliefs into the admission that her sister-in-law and her hus-

228

THE ROMANCE OF MR. WINNERY

band might have imagined such a story, or that there had
really be^ none of the marks of the Stigmata on the body of
Miss Annie Spragg, She had seen the scars virith her own
eyes.

A figure suddenly filled the doorway, throwing a blue
shadow ac/oss the earthen floor. It was a tall, heavy woman,
a peasant with a light shawl thrown over her head to keep
oft the sun. She spoke to Signora Bardclli. She had walked
down from the mountains twenty'Scven miles to sleep in
the bed of Miss Annie Spragg. She had been married for
thirteen years and had never had a child.

Mr. Winnery, with, a sense of intruding a second time
upon a delicate situation, rose and gave Signora Bardelli ten
lira for the consultation. Then he bade her good-bye, aware
that she disapproved of him as one who sought to meddle
in things he could not understand. The tall heavy peasant
woman sat wearily down on the chair he had left, and he
walked out again into the blazing square where the battered
fiacre and the bony horses stood waiting for him in the
shadow of an enormous fig tree. For a |noment the light
blinded him. He felt weary and hot. An^ then he saw the
deep cool valley of Monte Salvatore conri^g into form and
on its side the distant black patch of cyprisses that marked
the Villa Leonardo.

A sense of the immense futility of everything swept over
him and he thought, ‘Why should I troilblc myself about
these things? Let them believe what they like. That peas-
ant woman is happier in the hope that a night on the Spragg
woman’s bed will give her the power of bringing more
brats into an over-crowded world. She is happier than if she
had stayed in her village without any hope. Life is short
and I have wasted most of it. It is time that I began to
bring my life to something.’

Suddenly he wasn’t interested in miracles and other
natural phenomena. He wanted to see Miss Fosdick. The
heat, the smell of the fig tree, the sight of the former janitress
doing her best to make the world a fertile place made him

229

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

feel languorous. He became the prey of his own imagina-
tion. He, a respectable man of tifty-threc who had led a
virginal existence, was becoming amorous.

He wakened the sleeping driver and said, ‘Go to the
Vifia Leonardo.’ And pointing with the malacca stick he
had purchased to celebrate the passing of Aunt Bessie and
the beginning of his courtship he added, * It is yonder. That
patch of cypresses.’

He would face Mrs. Weatherby again and tell her the
truth — that he proposed to marry her companion, and that
nothing would stop him, not even the famous twenty years
of devotion.

II

As he drove up the long avenue between the rows of
grotesque and ancient oaks he was stirred again by the villa’s
sense of loneliness and utter isolation. The windows were
again tightly shuttered and this time there was no red and
black motor standing before the door. The white flame of
yucca set among swords had turned brown and dead and
withered away. He got down — ^it had become a habit with
him, as if he were an old friend of the household — and went
through the dark tunnel of greenery. The garden had an
unkempt look, for the dry heat of early autumn had
detached the yellow leaves of the plane trees and left them
dead and drifted in little piles along the colonnades of
mottled trunks. The grave where the statue had been re-
buried had sunk now so that there was a little hollow instead
of a mound. Then he discovered that the back of the villa
presented the same appearance as the front. It was closed.
Every door and shutter was fastened. They had gone away
(he saw) and Miss Fosdick was perhaps lost for ever.

With the malacca stick he pounded on the door. A kind
of recklessness entered his soul. He called out the name of
Miss Fosdick but no one answered. He was about to leave
when he saw emerging from the decaying stables the abun-

230

THE ROMANCE OF MR, WINNERY

dant figure of Margharita. The girl came toward him and
when she was near enough to speak she said that Signora
Wetterbee had gone away, not only for this season, but for
ever. She did not know where she had gone but she sup«
posed she had gone back to her house in Brinoe. Wheif he
asked her why she had gone away the girl said that she had
taken a dislike to the place. The villa itself had been sold
over Signora Wetterbee’s head. The truth, she added, was
that she had been driven out.

It was all the doing of the statue, she said. It ought never
to have been buried again. It was taking vengeance on Sig-
nora Wetterbee. No sooner was it buried than strange
things began to happen. Signora Wetterbee had been unable
to sleep and in the middle of the night she had heard music
and sounds of wild gaieties in the garden. She, Margharita,
had heard none of the sounds nor had any of the other
servants, but Signora Wetterbee insisted there were sounds
and accused them of disturbing her rest, although, said
Margharita, they had all been sleeping soundly. It went on
night after night and then one morning Sgnora Wetterbee
packed all her belongings and got into tl^e Ford with her
dogs and the parrot Anubis without evenll saying good-bye,
and Giovanni drove her back to Brinoe, . Signora Wetter-
bee, she said, was a strange woman and imagined things.
It was her belief that perhaps Signora Wetterbee was a
witch. She had seen her standing on hcrihead on the terrace
in the moonlight clad only in a pair pf man’s trousers.
Surely such goings-on could be indulged in only by a witch.
What did the Signor think?

Mr. Winner y, who by now had begun to think that he
was losing his reason, said that perhaps she was a witch or
perhaps she was only doing the exercises that were part of a
certain religious cult. Who, he asked, had bought the villa?

It was the Principessa d’Orobclli. Margharita had heard
that she had bought it suddenly without even asking the
price and that she meant to retire to it and spend the rest of
her life there. She had not even come to see the place. She

^ 3 ^

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

had heard that the Principessa planned to install bathrooms.
That, thought Margharita, would be exciting. She had
never seen a bathroom. Was it true that the Principessa
was an American lady?

And then quite suddenly Margharita said, ‘ Signora Wet-
terbee went away three days ago but Signorina Fosdeek
returned this morning.’

‘ Where? ’ cried Mr. Winnery. ‘ Where is she? ’

Margharita said she did not know it was Signorina Fos-
deek he wanted to see. She thought it was Signora Wett-
erbee. She even (and here she became arch) thought that
perhaps there was a romance with Signora Wetterbee.
Signorina Fosdeek had arrived on foot carrying her bag.

‘On foot?’ exclaimed Mr. Winnery. ‘In this heat?’

‘ Si, si. And she ran away on foot.’

* Ran away ? ’ repeated Mr. Winnery.

‘She ran away. Signora Wetterbee did not know she
was going.’

A great light burst on Mr. Winnery. He wasted no more
time talking with Margharita. Leaving her astonished in
the midst oi a long recital, he went to the villa and this time
without knocking he pushed open the door. There was a
rustle of dried leaves in the hallway and a rat scurried off
into the shadows. He did not like rats. The sight of them
made his hair rise up on end. But he pushed bravely on,
calling out, ‘ Miss Fosdick ! Miss Fosdick ! ’ again and again.
But there was no answer. The name simply echoed through
the empty house. Perhaps, he thought wildly, she has killed
herself and I shall find the body. He went from room to
room. All were closed and the only light filtered in dimly
from the cracks in the shutters. The big salon overlooking
the valley was empty and the bare dining-room and the
small room under the stairway. He started up the stairs
and was half-way to the top when he heard below him a
scuffling sound, among the dead leaves. Turning he saw
Miss Fosdick. She had come out of the salon and was trying
to escape before he discovered her.

232

THE ROMANCE OF MR. WINNERY

Miss Fosdick, he called out. * Fve been searching for
you.*

She halted and stood against the wall without looking at
him. She had in her hand the worn suitcase. The bkck
dress was covered with dust to the knees and her hat nad
slipped a little over one ear. She was flushed and trembling
and her brown hair was all in disarray.

He came down the stairs toward her. * IVe been looking
for you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been twice before to call at the
villa, Mrs. Weatherby told me you had gone off on a holi-
day.’ He tried to put her at her case by behaving as if there
was nothing in the least strange in finding her thus. ‘I
really wanted to see you again.’

She suddenly began to cry. ‘ 1 don’t want to see you. I
don’t want to see anyone. I only want to die. I’m useless
and no good to anyone. I’m better out of the way. I ought
to kill myself but I can’t even do that properly.’

He had arrived in time. She had been thinking of
suicide.

Without quite knowing what he was doing he slipped an
arm gently about her shoulders. She did not protest or
draw away from him. i

‘ You’re not useless, Miss Fosdick,’ he said gently. ‘ None
of God’s creatures is useless. Come let’s sit down some-
where and talk. I’ve been looking for you for days.’

She seemed too tired to protest or speak and he led her
gently into the big salon. He did not thitik of his own feel-
ings, for in the excitement he had forgotten to be literary.
Miss Fosdick seemed plumper and prettier than he had ever
imagined, and in her distress far more charming.

The furniture had been stacked into one corner. He
selected one of the uncomfortable chairs and bade her sit in
it. She obeyed him meekly as a rabbit. Then he opened the
shutters and in a blaze of golden light the whole length of
the glorious valley opened up before them. Drawing up an-
other uncomfortable chair he seated himself and said, ‘Tell
me now. Perhaps I can help you.* But she seemed unable

233

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

to do anything but sob. ‘ Margharita,’ he said, ‘ told me you
had run away. She told me the whole story.’

Then the flood gates burst and the whole torrent poured
fortji. She told him the long story of her twenty years’
devotion to Mrs. Weatherby and how in the end when she
could stand it no longer she had run away. And she had
come back because her money had given out and at the
pension they would keep her no longer unless she paid in
advance. She had tried to get work as a companion. She
had even advertised in the papers but there had only been
three replies. One was from a clergyman’s widow who
required that she know how to crochet and do tatting. An-
other was from an elderly spinster who wanted to be read to
in Italian, and the third was from a retired army officer
with an invalid wife who required a woman who was young
and pretty and who had been trained as a nurse.

‘And I,’ said Miss Fosdick, ‘can do none of these things.
So I came back .... I came back to Aunt Henrietta and
now she has gone. I don’t know what I’m to do. I haven’t
any more money and I don’t know how to do anything but
be a companion to Aunt Henrietta. I ought to die.’

Mr. Winnery, feeling very masculine and medieval, told
her that they must first of all be practical. She must go back
to Brinoe in the fiacre with him. He would lend her money
until they worked out her problem. He told her about Aunt
Bessie’s death and how he was now a rich man. He had a
feeling for her, he said, from the very beginning. He had
known all along that she was unhappy with the seeress.

But Miss Fosdick suddenly grew respectable and un-
fcmininc. ‘ No,’ she said, ‘ I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t
accept any money from a gentleman I barely know. A lady
can’t do such things.’

For a moment Mr. Winnery was irritated, and then he
remembered that of course she was in trouble and he must
be gentle with her. He tried to make her understand that
it was purely a business matter and that she could pay him
back. But wneath his arguments Miss Fosdick only grew

234

THE ROMANCE OF MR. WINNERY

more and more respectable. He might have been a lecherous
old man planning the ruin of a young virgin. He wanted
to say, ‘Well, if you don’t borrow money from me what on
earth are you going to do? ’ He would have said it if he
had not thought her so charming with her plump face
flushed and her eyes damp with tears. And then he thought
of a solution.

do.

You can pay me back by going to work^for me.’

But how can I work for you? There is nothing I can

Nevertheless at this shadow of hope she grew more quiet
and took a handkerchief from her handbag and began to
dry her eyes.

Mr. Winnery explained to her all about Miracles and other
Natural Phenomena and the state of confusion in which
the vast amount of notes, copyings and references continu-
ally found themselves. It would be her task to keep them
in order, tied into little bundles and ticketed. It was not
a difficult task, he pointed out, nor one that required
training. All it needed was a clear head.

‘But 1 haven’t a clear head,’ echoed !$liss Fosdick. ‘I
always muddle everything.’ J

‘Well, well. In any case we must oulce a try. It will
be a help to me and will provide money f^r you.’

While he was speaking Mr. Winnery niade a remarkable
discovery. It was this — that during the period Miss Fosdick
had apparently been drying her tears htf flushed face had
grown perceptibly paler. For a moment he thought with
alarm that perhaps she meant to faint. And then suddenly
he understood the phenomenon. Undoubtedly there was
a pov/der-puff concealed in the folds of the handkerchief.
The discovery touched him. As a means of powdering the
nose it was a fashion so much more refined than that used
by women like, well, like the d’Orobclli, who simply ex-
tracted an apparatus from her bag and sent boldly the
powder flying in all directions.

Again he touched Miss Fosdick’s hand. ‘There now,’

^35

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

he said, ‘ you’re feeling better, aren’t you? There’s no need
of ever going back to Mrs. Wcatherby. Never again.’

Miss Fosdick admitted almost grudgingly that there did
seep to be hope.

‘ And now we can start back to Brinoe. I have a fiacre
outside. I will pay you a week’s wages in advance and you
can go back to the pension,''

Miss Fosdick thought perhaps she had better take less
than that. She doubted whether she would last a week.
But Mr. Winnery reassured her. ‘ Mrs. Weatherby,’ he said,
‘ always preaches self-confidence is the first of the virtues.
Besides, I am certain that you are just the secretary I’ve
been seeking. I’m sure,’ he added with meaning, ‘that
you’ll last for months and for years.’

They went through the empty hall where the dead leaves
still rustled in the draught from the open door, and on the
steps leading down into the garden Mr. Winnery halted
a moment to regard the view.

Tt is a beautiful place,’ he said. * It would be a splendid
place to live, only I hear the Princess d’Orobelli has bought
it for herself.’

Ill

They drove back to Brinoe, where Mr. Winnery escorted
her to her pension^ and the next morning at ten she appeared
for work. She lasted one week, and then two and then
three, tasting for the first time the sweets of a woman’s
economic independence. She muddled the mass of notes
and papers hopelessly so that Mr. Winnery was unable to
find anything he wanted, whereas before he had been able
to find at least a few things. But it did not seem to annoy
Mr. Winnery and at the beginning of the fourth week he
asked Miss Fosdick quite suddenly to marry him and quite
suddenly she accepted.

It was agreed that they were to go to Iowa on their
honeymoon because Mr. Winnery had a desire to see

236

THE ROMANCE OF MR, WINNERY

America and Mrs. Winnery wanted to revisit Winnebago
Falls. Not the least of her motives was a desire to exhibit
her rich and distinguished husband. As a kind of second
thought Mr. Winnery said it would give him an opportunity
to go into the very beginnings of the strange case of I^ss
Annie Spragg.

IV

A week before Mr. Winnery paid Signora Bardelli the
only visit he ever made her, the Principessa gave in Venice
the famous fete which each year marked the peak of the
season. It attained a new measure of splendour and mag-
nificence and attracted the fashionable and the notorious
from every part of Europe. Millionaires, decayed royalty,
gigolos, actresses, demi-mondaines; even two ministers of
state enjoying pompous holidays were present. It went off
in a blaze of triumph with Bengal lights and three orchestras
and a whole fleet of decorated gondolas. Anna d’Orobelli
and Oreste, Duke of Fonterrabia, appeared in the costumes
of the Countess Guiccioli and Lord Byiron, and Father
d’Astier was seen moving about wearily !and looking old
and tired in the robes of Mazarin, whi(^ suited him to
perfection. It was the first ball in years which Mr. Winnery
had not described at second hand in his correspondence to
the Ladies* Own World.

And two days later when the curtains of Anna d’Orobelli’s
bedchamber were pulled back to let the morning sun stream
in, there was a letter on the lacquered tray beside her choco-
late. It was the letter in the handwriting of the Duque de
Fonterrabia which she had been awaiting for nearly two
years. It was quite short and rather cold. It said simply
that he had been forced to undertake a voyage to the
Argentine and that he regretted not having had a chance
to bid his beloved Anna farewell. He would write her and
see her on his return. But she knew well enough that it
was the end. Voyez, c*est elle la vicille Prince sse!

237

THE STRANG^ CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

For two days she was not seen and on the third day she
left Venice mysteriously and appeared with equal mystery in
Brinoc, where she quickly set shout restoring and preparing
the Villa Leonardo. Because it was lonely and because it
was in a state of ruin, it had been waiting for years a
purchaser who saw its virtues. With a kind of mad vitality
she attacked the refitting of the villa. Masons came and
plumbers and painters. To Margharita and the other ser-
vants who lived on the place it all seemed a strange proceed-
ing for one who was simply preparing a spot where she
might retire from the world. Four bathrooms were installed
and much furniture, not furniture like that Mrs. Weatherby
had strewn about during her tenancy, but expensive and
beautiful pieces that should have been in museums. The
old chapel was opened again and put in order for religious
ceremonies. There was such a confusion as the old villa
had not seen since the great days of the Spanish Ambassador.
And at last when the Principessa came herself (dressed hand-
somely all in black by Worth) to examine the progress of
the work she asked what had become of the statue they
found in the garden, and Margharita told her that it had
been buried again. The Principessa herself superintended
the reopening of the grave, but they dug and dug without
ever finding a trace of the statue and at last Margharita con-
fessed that she had known all along it was not there. It had
already been dug up a second time and carted down the hill-
side where it was set up in the barren rocky little garden
of Pietro the goatherd. The Principessa flew into a wild
rage and said that the statue was her own and that she
meant to have it. She herself went to Pietro’s hut to
recover it.

And when the palace was finished Anna d’Orobelli drove
one day into Brinoc and sought out Father d’Asticr to show
him the place she had prepared for her retirement.

It was a warm day in April when the hillside beyond
Monte Salvatore was blue with violets and wild hyacinths
and the whole valley, that was by nature so bleak and barren,

238

THE ROMANCE OF MR. WINNERY

had turned fresh and green from the thin stream at the bottom
to the wild woods on its crest. But in her black and red
motor the Princess drove so fast that it was impossible to
appreciate the beauties of the burgeoning countryside. They
entered the villa by the main door and went from rooA to
room, from the great salon with the anatomical paintings
to the tiny room in the top fitted as a cell, with a hard iron
bed, a crucifix and a wooden bench, where Anna d’Orobelli
planned to retire for days at a time in prayer. They had
very few words to say to each other. Father d’Astier from
time to time murmured banal compliments upon her taste
and the Princess showed the rooms with indifference
as if it were a duty, as if she were saying all the while, ‘ It
is because of you that 1 have come to this. It is because of
you that I must end my life in barren loneliness here in this
solitary villa.’ When he asked her why she had troubled to put
in so many bathrooms, she replied that she thought God
would not mind if sometimes she had friends come to stop
with her, and Father d’Asticr murmured that he supposed
God would not mind, though that was scarcely the Church’s
idea of a religious retirement. ]

When they had finished the house, thcjl went down into
the garden. The colonnades of plane trees were no longer
yellow and brown as they had been nine months earlier
when they last walked together in the gai^en. The whole
place was covered by a canopy of fresh grten leaves that in
the spring sunlight appeared luminous, giving off a pure
green light. The roses that climbed over the ancient stone
balustrade above the valley were covered with white and
yellow blossoms.

Once Anna d’Orobelli said, ‘This is a haunted garden.
Margharita says at night they sometimes hear sounds of
singing and dancing although the place is quite empty. It
was the ghosts that drove away that preposterous Mrs.
Wcatherby. I don’t mind that. I’ve never been afraid of
ghosts.*

They found themselves suddenly at the end of one of the
239

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

colonnades before a niche let recently into the mouldering
wall. It was a niche such as one finds in the gardens of
Italy sheltering images of the Virgin, only the image was
not that of the interceding Mary but of a figure more
ancient. It was the statue that had been dug up out of the
cesspool. On the slab of stone beneath it there was an
inscription. Father d’Astier had need to read only the first
line to know what it was.

'Dans la damnation le feu est la moindre chose; le supplice
propre au damni est le progris infini dans le vice et dans le
crime, Vdme s*endurcissant, se depravant toujours, s'enfon-
cant necessairement dans le mol de minute en progression
gSomhrique pendant VeterniteJ

Michelet.

He turned away in silence and in silence they walked
back to the villa and, entering the motor, drove back again
at a mad speed down the long hill through Monte Salvatore
into Brinoe. They had talked a little but they had said
nothing with words. It was the silence which spoke for
them.

V

Father d’Astier never saw her again, and after that people
said that he had suddenly grown old. The women whom
he had once entertained by his wit and helped with his
worldly advice and solaced by his spiritual comfort no
longer found him either interesting or good company. He
ceased to be amused by their vanities and even while they
were talking to him his gaze would have a strange way of
wandering off as if in search of something or someone
whom he would never find. At times he wouU pull himself
up with a great effort and try again to be what he had once
been, but in the end he was too weary. People who had
once included him in dinners and week-ends began to neg-

240

THE ROMANCE OF MR. WINNERY

lect him. He went about bravely as usual in search of
converts, following the season from London to Venice, to
Paris, to Vienna, but clearly there was no longer any heart
in his journeys.

And so he came one night in July to be staying with* the
head of a great English Roman Catholic family. There had
been people for dinner, and after dinner, feeling a hunger
to be alone, he withdrew into the great library where the
old Duke kept his famous collection. There he left the
other men and hid himself behind a great globe mounted in
silver and mahogany to turn quietly, hdf dreaming, the
pages of an eighteenth-century translation of Horace. And
presently when he had wearied of reading he allowed the
book to slip into his lap and sat with his eyes closed. It was
through the mists of* sleep that he became aware of the,
voices.

Two men had seated themselves on the opposite side of
the globe and were talking. One of them was English and
the other spoke with an Italian accent. The Italian, he
knew, was the cousin of Faustino d’Orobelli. He was a
middle-aged man and rich with the proI]its of a motor-car
factory. The Englishman he thought Wst be Admiral
Burnham, whom he had not seen in morc^han twenty years
until to-night — not, he thought, since he had gone to
Malta on Nina’s yacht on the voyage thatraded in meeting
Anna.

The two men were gossiping. He heard the Italian say,
‘After all, my cousin Faustino was neVer much of a hus-
band for a woman like that.’ And ‘ She has kept remark-
ably young. She is quite extraordinary.*

And then the Englishman answering. * I knew her when
she was first married. I met her in Malta. Do you
remember her? ’

The voice of the Italian. ‘That was a long time ago.
Even her second son . . . the one who is quite all right
... is a grown man. But I hear she has come to the same
end as most of them.’

241

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

There was a sound of the admiral stirring in his chair,
as if he were sitting up with interest.

‘She’s found someone to console her,’ continued the
Italian voice. ... ‘A young Italian. He calls himself a
duRe but there are so many dukes. He makes ends meet by
gambling. . . .’ There was a slight pause, and then, ‘By
doing what he can. But he won't need to worry for some
time. She’s very rich. It was her money that saved Faus-
tino’s family. She’s an odd woman. She has no sense of
the value of money. It’s lucky she’s always had so much.
She met the gigolo at Nina dc Paulhac’s.’

The voice of the admiral sounded suddenly gruff and ill-
tempered. ‘I could never see why Nina has such people
about.’

‘ She has a list of them, for dances and week-ends. When
a woman gets to be Nina’s age, young men don’t flock about
for love.’

There was a pause and Father d’Astier was aware that he
must be very still lest they discover that he was sitting there,
for he knew that two men will gossip and say things of a
woman that they would not say if a third were present.
Honour to which he himself had sacrificed so much was, he
thought, an artificial thing, like the clothes one put on
before appearing in public. He found himself praying that
they would not speak of her again. And then the voice of
Faustino’s cousin.

‘They say that Oreste Fonterrabia went away on her
account.*

‘Yes, she was always reluctant to give up love.’ A sigh.

‘ But a magnificent woman.’

‘We must remember what she was,^

‘I’m glad to have news of her, I haven’t seen her in
years.’

And then the cracked voice of the childish old duke
moving toward them. ‘ I think, gentlemen, that we will join
the ladies.’

When they had gone Father d’Asticr replaced the volume
242

THE ROMANCE OF MR. WINNERY

of Horace, came out from his hiding-place and fixing his
mouth into a worldly smile went through the big door into
the drawing-room where the daughter of Admiral Burn-
ham who was the half-sister of Victor d’Orobelli was flay-
ing Chopin quietly in the far corner. He noticed that^shc
had the same fine red hair and clear skin that Victor had.
She was young and very beautiful, and in his weariness and
confusion it seemed to him for a moment that she might
have been his own daughter if he had chosen differently.
He had only Fulco.

That night when he was alone again in his room over the
Georgian doorway that faced the park he closed and locked
his door and then sat down before the fire they had made for
him, because he sometimes had chills at night, even in July.
All through the interminable evening he had been thinking
in the back of his mind, behind all the talk and chatter and
the music made by the Burnham girl, of Fulco, and he made
the astounding discovery that Fulco hadn’t any longer the
power of irritating him. He had begun to think of Fulco as
Poor Fulco in the way he thought of Anna as Poor Anna.
That meant, he knew, that he was really an old man and at
the end of things. He saw that he alone wi^s responsible for
Fulco’s very existence and that he had in a way always shirked
that responsibility. He saw poor Fulco in his checked suit
and umbrella wandering from village to village in Italy,
trying to ‘ purify Christianity,* and trying to free it of all the
centuries of tiresome accumulations and growths. Fulco
who hadn’t the power or the dignity Or the presence to
convince anyone of anything. Fulco attempting a new
Reformation. ...

He turned away from the fire and began to undress. His
hands trembled a little, like those of a very old man. They
had never trembled before. He was tired, but not too tired
to make a resolution. He would go back to Italy tomorrow
and go from town to town, searching out Fulco, and when
he had found Fulco he would reason with him to return to
the Church. He would even use his influence to help him

^3

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

and he would tell Fulco that he was his son and the only
relative who remained in the worlds Together they would
perhaps work something out and when that was done he
would retire into the monastery at Monte Salvatore and
ncv^r come out again, not even in deatli. They could bury
him in the end in the warm sunny garden above the valley.
The old conflict in his ravaged soul seemed dead at last.
The Church was his mother to whom he might return now
that he had finished with life. The world had nothing
better to offer. And he was tired of this world.

VI

He left suddenly saying that he had been called back to
Brinoe on business of the Church. It was in Bologna while
his train was awaiting the train from Venice that he bought
the newspaper and read the small paragraph at the bottom of
the page. In Milan, said the paper, a man later identified
as a renegade priest named Baldcssare had been found on a
street corner preaching Communism, and twelve vigilant
and heroic young men in black shirts had pulled him down
from the steps where he was speaking and beaten him and
dosed him with castor oil. The offender had died the same
night of his injuries. ‘It is by such vigilance and heroic
conduct,’ read the last florid sentence of the brief account,
‘that our leader and our sacred Italy arc preserved daily
from the corruptions of those who would destroy both. It
is hoped that the watchful young men will be properly
rewarded for their service.’

Father d’Astier closed his eyes and leaned back in the heat
of the compartment. ‘Communism,’ he thought. ‘Poor
Fulco had probably never heard of Communism.’ They had
killed him for preaching what Christ taught.

In another day they would have made him a martyr and
a saint.

That night when he arrived at Brinoe he went to the two
bare small rooms and taking a few books from them he

244

MR. WINNERY’s private MIRACLE
locked the door, and hiring a fiacre, drove up the long hill
to Monte Salvatore. They were awaiting him for he had
sent a telegram ahead from Bologna. Inside the monastery
they told him that the Principessa d’Orobelli had not
returned to the Villa Leonardo. She had leased it, they
said, to some English people named Winnery who were
recently married, for a moment Father d’Asticr wondered
whether it could be the pompous and common little man
he had met on the day they found the statue in the garden,
and then he told himself that a man like Mr. Winnery
would scarcely be enjoying a honeymoon at his age. From
the window of his room high up in the monastery above tlic
house of Signora Bardelli, Father d^Astier could see the
distant lights of the villa twinkling like stars in the darkness.
He knew what he had known all along, that she would
never return there.

MR. WINNERY’S PRIVATE MIRACLE

I

S O it was Mr. and Mrs. Winnery {jtie Fosdick) who
were destined in the end to use the four bathtubs in-
stalled by the Princess d’Orobelli for htr retirement from
the world. The very face of the villa had been changed and
the bleak, barren and mournful air which once had invested
it was gone for ever. Like the countenances of ladies who have
had their faces lifted it appeared new and pleasant without
losing altogether its engaging air of antiquity and experience.
The garden was all in order now and where only sour and
brilliant green moss had once grown there were now banks
of flowers which actually grew with all the extravagance
described in the tourist circulars on the subject of Brinoc.
And Mr. Winnery, now that he was no longer forced to

245

THE STRANGE CASE OF MI?S ANNIE SPRAGG

live in Brinoe, found it a lovely place. In the long summer
twilights he and the pregnant Mrs. Winnery walked slowly
up and down the long colonnades of mottled plane trees
talking together in sudden bird-like bursts of intimacy of
the* days before they were brought together by the death and
the miracle of Miss Annie Spragg. Neither of them had ever
known any intimacy before and its discovery enchanted
them.

She also told him a great deal more about Aunt Henrietta,
each day thinking up fresh horrors to relate. She expressed
surprise at the fact that Aunt Henrietta had never found
him guilty of improper or suggestive advances. It was a
kind of madness with her; Aunt Henrietta always believed
that men were making improper remarks in her presence
or staring at her or attempting flirtations. It was true, said
Gertrude Winnery, that die secrcss had been pinched once
in the museum of Pompeii by a guide who had seen her only
from the rear. There had been a tremendous and most
embarrassing scene until her honour was vindicated by the
arrest of the terrified little man, who discovered abruptly
that he had pinched a tornado. Yes, thought Mrs. Winnery,
she was a little mad on the subject of her attractions.

On their return Mr. Winnery took for his study the room
which the seeress had called her boudoir, and there he in-
stalled four large crates of confused notes, copyings and
false starts which represented Miracles and Other Natural
Phenomena, In this room he spent morning after morning
struggling to bring order out of chaos while Mrs. Winnery
occupied herself with the delights of keeping house for her-
self, instead of someone else. But his heart seemed to fail
him and the combative interest which had once animated
the colossal work appeared to have suffered a decline. At
length, in despair, as if he had been a writer of detective
mysteries, who must somehow bring the story to a close, he
made a summary of the facts and information for and against
the miraculous element in the case of Miss Annie Spragg.
It included all the information he had been able to collect

246

MR. WINNERY’s private MIRACLE

both in Brinoe and Winnebago Falls. It seemed the only
way to end the whole muddle.

He began by setting down the elements which appeared
to him to be subject to a reasonable explanation. He wrote :

1. The Church appears to have been entirely right in
quietly discrediting me so-called miracle. The scars on
the body of Miss Annie Spragg appear neither to have
been of miraculous origin nor to have appeared at the
moment of her death, but clearly were the scars of wounds
inflicted upon her at some time before the brutal murder
of her brother at Winnebago Falls. It is on record that
they were seen at the time of her examination in con-
nection with the murder. The agency which inflicted the
wounds will probably never be known, although it seems
likely that they were inflicted by her brother, Reverend
Uriah Spragg, a religious fanatic, as a punishment for
some sin she had committed and in the hope of redeeming
her soul. (See old Puritan law for the branding of women
caught in adultery).

2. The Church also appears to have been right in its
quiet assumption that the visitation of Saint Francis to
Sister Annunziata was not of a miraculous character but
only an hallucination due to her period of life and to
definite physical causes together with the discovery of
what to her poor weak mind appeared to be evidence of
the miraculous and authentic Stigmata^

3. On the surface there appears to be nothing which
might indicate that Miss Annie Spragg was anything but
an eccentric old maid of the kind found frequently enough
in small towns and religious communities. It must be
remembered that she was the daughter of Cyrus Spragg,
the Prophet, and the sister of Uriah Spragg. The one
was an over-sexed and lecherous old man and the other
a religious fanatic.

4. The story of Bestia and the strange happenings there

247

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SFRAGG

with Peppina and the goats may be explained, if they ever
occurred at all, simply as the eccentricities of a half-mad
old woman, magnified and embellished by the imagina-
tions of superstitious and ignorant peasants and of a
\*oman (Signora Bardelli, the janitress) who was, either
sincerely or insincerely, a devotee of the Black Arts. That
Miss Annie Spragg was in any way responsible for the
subsequent behaviour of the girl Peppina seems unlikely.
The character of the girl from childhood was clearly that
of an epileptic and a moral imbecile and of one destined
from birth to end her career in a brothel.

5. The testimony of the nun Sister Annunziata and
the priest Father Baldessare (later killed in a riot in Milan
where he was mistaken by Fascists for a Communist) is
highly unreliable owing to the unbalanced character of
the nun’s mind and the general stupidity of the priest
who appears to have been the dupe of various people
throughout his life.

6. The brutal murder of Reverend Uriah Spragg could
have been committed by a passing tramp or by one of his
own flock in a fit of hatred or religious insanity.

7. The apparently miraculous disappearance of Cyrus
Spragg, the Prophet, from the Temple at New Jerusalem
lends itself to a much simpler solution than that put forth
by his son Obadiah (that he was carried to heaven in a
chariot of fire). It seems more likely that he was killed
by the hot-blooded suitor of the pretty Maria Weatherby
and that his body was buried secretly the same night by
his two elder sons who then endeavoured to carry out an
imposture for the continued profit of themselves and their
brothers and sisters. (In this they failed through a lack of
the Prophet’s vigour.) There is no evidence of an effort
made to find and bring to justice the Kentuckian, Alonzo.
Such a procedure would possibly have been embarrassing
to the impostors by establishing the fact that the Prophet
really was dead.

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MR. WINNERY’s private MIRACLE

8, The behaviour of Shamus Bosanky and the visions
he had may be explained as due to epilepsy, of which he
was clearly a victim. There is nothing unusual in his
visions of Heaven, God, Saint John the Shepherd and
the Angels, for he had heard of all these things from^he
priests and from old Mary Bosanky, who was of a
strongly superstitious and religious temperament.

9. There is nothing unusual in Miss Annie Spragg’s
choice of Italy as a place of retreat after the death of her
brother. Italy is filled with eccentric old ladies whose
youth was starved for all the romantic and operatic back-
ground which Italy supplies with such extravagance.

Conclusion. All of these elements seem to fall within
the category of the natural and appear strange only as
they are subject to the imaginations, the prejudices and
the superstitions of the various witnesses involved.

On the other hand (wrote Mr. Winnery), there are cer-
tain elements wliich do not lend themselves to any reason-
able solution. Among these are:

I. The statement of the undertaker of Winnebago Falls
that the wounds on the body of Reverend Uriah Spragg
were lil{e those which might have bceil made by some
pronged instrument such as tlie sharp horns of a goat.
The skull had been pierced in three places by some sharp
instrument. But it must be remembered that the black
he-goat of Miss Annie Spragg was already dead at the
time of the murder, having been killed that very morn-
ing by Uriah Spragg himself with a hatchet. Together
with this element, there is also the fact that altnough
the murder was committed on the open prairie in broad
daylight with no shelter of any kind nearer than three
miles and that although the body wa$ still warm when
found by Maria Hazlett, no one was seen and no trace of
anyone was ever discovered near the spot. Nor was any
weapon ever found.

249

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

2. The Story told by Shamus Bosanky to Ed Hassclman
and Maria Hazlctt of the orgies which took place in the
marsh at Meeker’s Gulch. Shamus Bosanky had heard
of God and the Angels and the Saints from the priests
and from his mother, but it seems impossible that he ever
heard of pagan gods either from the priests or from a
mother who could neither read nor write. Therefore
he could scarcely have imagined such a story, save by
some obscure and scarcely believable trick of atavism.
Nor does it seem possible that the story was invented by
the woman Maria Hazlett, who, brought up in a poor-
house and scarcely able to read or write, had certainly
never heard of Dionysus or Bacchus. The Hazlett
woman, now nearly seventy years old, appears to be a
simple countrywoman with an extraordinary attachment
for the soil and for the drunken old man to whom she
devoted her entire life.

3. The incident of Miss Annie Spragg’s return at dawn
from Meeker’s Gulch accompanied by the black he-goat.
This could be said to have been only the hallucination of
the drunken milkman but for the discovery in the bed-
room of Miss Annie Spragg of the chains and the crude
handcuffs with which her brother chained her up at
night.

4. The fact that from among all the saints Shamus
Bosanky chose instinctively as his patron Saint John the
Shepherd.

5. The most singular and astonishing fact of all, that
Shamus Bosanky ran out into the storm to meet his death
at the very moment when Miss Annie Spragg lay dying
in the Palazzo Gonfarini on the other siae of the world.
Her own death occurred in the early morning of the
fifteenth of August. At midnight of the fourteenth
Shamus Bosanky vanished into the storm from the
shanty by the railroad in Winnebago Falls. It appears
that he went directly to Meeker’s Gulch as to a rendez-

250

vous, for it was here that he was found later by the
Hazlctt woman, who alone seems to have known where
to look for him. Allowing for the difference in time
between Brinoe and Winnebago Falls, the deaths must
have occured at almost the same moment. (Note, This
fact leads one to believe that if the elements of time and
space were always taken into consideration in such cases
there might emerge a whole and very strange new
world filled with undiscovered relationships.)

Note, Many other minor and contributory incidents
have by the passage of time been lost in an obscurity from
which it is scarcely possible to resurrect them for proper
scientific examination. Among these may be noted the
origins of the Prophet, Cyrus Spragg, and the strange
disappearance of Michael Bosanky, in the so-called
bottomless pond at Lakeville, Iowa.

II

One other curious fact came to light some time after
Mr. Winnery had established himself at the Villa Leonardo,
He had been walking one morning in d!>e garden after
breakfast turning over and over in his miiid the puzzling
evidence he had just set down on paper, when he found him-
self suddenly before the statue, reading with some dim
portion of his mind the inscription which began, ' Dans la
damnation le feu est la moindre chose, ttc., etc,' All at
once he was aware that the face of the Statue possessed a
similarity to the face of someone he had known in life, and
for a long time he stood there studying the sensual and
vigorous countenance, attempting to relate it to sonie face
which hovered elusively as a ghost in the back of his con-
sciousness. And then all at once he turned sharply about and
hastened back to his study where he took down from a box
a faded daguerreotype. Armed with this he descended
again to the garden and stood for a long time comparing

251

THE strange case OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

the face in the daguerreotype with that of Priapus, God of
Fertility.

When he returned at last to the villa, he took up his note-
book and made in it the last entry he was ever to make in
the^s'strange case of Miss Annie Spragg.

The strangest of all the facts (he wrote) is the likeness
between the face of the statue found in the garden of
the Villa Leonardo and the face in the daguerreotype
portrait made of Cyrus Spragg on the day the Prophet
retired into the temple at New Jerusalem, never to be
seen again by any man. The daguerreotype (secured by
the author after much difficulty from the daughter of one
of the original Spraggites and therefore possibly a
daughter of the Prophet himself) has faded with age, but
not sufficiently to weaken the certainty that the face of
Cyrus Spragg, the Prophet, and the face of the image of
Priapus are the same face.

And then half credulously, he added, ‘ Perhaps the story
told by the Prophet’s son, Obadiah Spragg, was true. Per-
haps Cyrus Spragg simply disappeared'

III

He told Mrs. Winnery that the whole affair appeared
hopelessly muddled and inexplicable, and that the solution
was scarcely worth any further expenditure of his valuable
time. Secretly he had a sense of it pointing toward some-
thing but what this was he could not say. He did not tell
Mrs. Winnery that in attempting to solve one mystery he
had simply confronted another and more terrifying one
which neither scientists nor prophets nor saints had ever
solved in all the centuries of tnc world’s recorded existence.
It made Mr. Winnery seem to himself small and insignifi-
cant and impertinent, and being a vain man, he did not
care to have his wife share this discovery.

252

MR. WINNERy’s private MIRACLE

Out of all the muddle only one thing seemed to emerge
clearly — that there was in the affair the evidence of some
colossal struggle between all that was Christian and all that
which Signora Bardelli described as ‘ older than the Church,
older than Christianity itself’ and that humanity was •the
battleground upon which the two ancient elements waged
their colossal and endless conflict. The Church of Rome,
he thought (though he did not confide this even to Mrs.
Winnery), was right just as it had been right in the question
of Miss Annie Spragg’s spurious miracle. It appeared to
attempt a compromise.

He had discovered that a Primitive Methodist had been
buried in consecrated ground by mistake but only he knew
this for a certainty and he saw no reason to disturb the
eternal rest of a poor eccentric old maid. Besides, such a
thing did not seem to him to be a matter of any great import-
ance. He bowed before the mystery and, feeling somewhat
ashamed of himself for his impertinence, packed away in
crates in the cellar of the Villa Leonardo, the vast accumula-
tion of notes, copyings and false starts which represented
Miracles and Other Natural Phenomena, This cellar he
found, as he had supposed, to be of Etruscan construction.

But the next day he began with singular energy a new
work. This time it was not a scientific undertaking but a
historical romance teeming with local colour. It was called
Riccardo and Giuliana and the setting was Brinoe in the
time of the Renaissance. The hero, Riccardo, was a man,
fifty-three years old, who had spent his life in the service of
the Dukes of Brinoe. The heroine, Giuliana, was a young
girl of thirty-five who had been kept a prisoner since child-
hood in a lonely villa in the valley behind Monte Salvatore
by an aunt who concealed a taste for sadism beneath a repu-
tation for great piety. Among the subsidiary characters were
Michelangelo, Leonardo, Machiavclli, Lucrezia Tornabuoni,
Lorenzo the Magnificent, , Cesare and Lucrezia Bor^a.
Botticelli, Fra Lippo Lippi (who supplied the comic relief)
and a few others. In the end Riccardo rescued Giuliana

253

THE STRANGE CASE OF MISS ANNIE SPRAGG

and they were majcried amid celebrations in which the
joyous and carefree natives of Brinoc and all the foreigners
living there took part. He told Mrs. Winnery that he
thought he had found at last the proper medium for the
expression of his literary talents. During the last month or
two of her pregnancy he read aloud to her chapter after
chapter as they were completed.

She was confined six weeks earlier than they had expected.
It was the month of October when the goatherd Pietro kept
a perpetual heap of offerings before the statue in the garden
and it was Sister Annunziata who brought him, pacing up
and down in the ancient garden, before me statue, the news
that he was the father of twin boys. They no longer kept
Sister Annunziata shut up because her madness seemed of
a harmless nature and madness was a thing never taken
seriously in Italy. She simply believed that Miss Annie
Spragg was an unappreciated saint and that Saint Francis
was her guardian and companion day and night. In a
vague gesture of gratitude toward the pagan gods of fer-
tility, Mr. Winnery made a rich gift of money to Sister
Annunziata’s convent. It was used to restoi'e abominably a
scries of famous frescoes by Gozzoli, which had faded almost
into oblivion. So in the end Aunt Bessie’s money came to
embellish a non-conformist chapel in Bloomsbury and a
Roman Catholic convent in Brinoe.

Mr. Winnery has completed his romance, for which he
was granted the very rare honour of an interview with the
Dictator and he has been made a Knight of the Order of
Saint Trevizius and a member of three societies of historical
research having to do with Brinoc. Mrs. Winnery is about
to have a third child and they are very happy in the Villa
Leonardo and are likely to remain its tenants for years
to come, for the retirement of the Principessa d’Orobelli
grows each year more and more remote in its possibilities.
The statue in the garden has never troubled them as it
troubled others because they arc by nature a pair of
innocents.

254

MR. WINNERY’s private MIRACLE

Often as they drive happily into Brjnoe, with die nurse
and the twins on the seat opposite them, they pass the house
of Signora Bardclli, lying close against the wall of the
monastery, where Father d’Astier sought refuge. The
retired janitress does a splendid business with the bcd^of
Miss Annie Spragg and has grown quite rich. There has
even been talk of offering her a medal for her efforts on
behalf of the apparently new but really ancient movement
toward greater fertility of Italy. Mr. and Mrs. Winnery
bow to greet her pleasantly, for Mr. Winnery came in the
end to the conviction that any belief which brought comfort
to the human race had its own place in the divine scheme of
things.

Frequently the Winnerys drive to the Campo Santo of
Monte Salvatore to carry flowers from the garden of the
Villa Leonardo to the grave of Miss Annie Spragg. They
have never forgotten that their meeting was due to her and
they are grateful to her for so much happiness. They
always find there other flowers and sometimes branches
of green olives and even melons and fruit, for there remain
scores and even hundreds among the poor fnd humble and
superstitious who continue stubbornly to regard her as a
saint. •