The Shape of Fear

by Elia W. Peattie

　　

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TIM O'CONNOR -- who was descendedfrom the O'Conors withone N -- started life as a poetand an enthusiast. His motherhad designed him for the priesthood, and atthe age of fifteen, most of his verses had anecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other,he got into the newspaper business instead,and became a pessimistic gentleman, with aliterary style of great beauty and an incomeof modest proportions. He fell in with menwho talked of art for art's sake, -- thoughwhat right they had to speak of art at allnobody knew, -- and little by little his viewof life and love became more or less profane.He met a woman who sucked hisheart's blood, and he knew it and made noprotest; nay, to the great amusement of thefellows who talked of art for art's sake, hewent the length of marrying her. He couldnot in decency explain that he had the traditionsof fine gentlemen behind him andso had to do as he did, because his friendsmight not have understood. He laughed atthe days when he had thought of the priesthood,blushed when he ran across any ofthose tender and exquisite old verses he hadwritten in his youth, and became addictedto absinthe and other less peculiar drinks,and to gaming a little to escape a madnessof ennui.As the years went by he avoided, withmore and more scorn, that part of the worldwhich he denominated Philistine, and consortedonly with the fellows who flocked aboutJim O'Malley's saloon. He was pleased withsolitude, or with these convivial wits, and withnot very much else beside. Jim O'Malleywas a sort of Irish poem, set to inspiringmeasure. He was, in fact, a HibernianMæcenas, who knew better than to put badwhiskey before a man of talent, or tell a tritetale in the presence of a wit. The recountalof his disquisitions on politics and other currentmatters had enabled no less than threemen to acquire national reputations; and anumber of wretches, having gone the way ofmen who talk of art for art's sake, and dyingin foreign lands, or hospitals, or asylums,having no one else to be homesick for, hadbeen homesick for Jim O'Malley, and weptfor the sound of his voice and the grasp ofhis hearty hand.When Tim O'Connor turned his back uponmost of the things he was born to and tookup with the life which he consistently livedtill the unspeakable end, he was unable toget rid of certain peculiarities. For example,in spite of all his debauchery, he continuedto look like the Beloved Apostle. Notwithstandingabject friendships he wrote limpidand noble English. Purity seemed to dog hisheels, no matter how violently he attemptedto escape from her. He was never so drunkthat he was not an exquisite, and even hiscreditors, who had become inured to hisdeceptions, confessed it was a privilege tomeet so perfect a gentleman. The creaturewho held him in bondage, body and soul,actually came to love him for his gentleness,and for some quality which baffled her, andmade her ache with a strange longing whichshe could not define. Not that she ever definedanything, poor little beast! She hadskin the color of pale gold, and yellow eyeswith brown lights in them, and great plaitsof straw-colored hair. About her lips was afatal and sensuous smile, which, when it gothold of a man's imagination, would not letit go, but held to it, and mocked it till theday of his death. She was the incarnationof the Eternal Feminine, with all the wifelinessand the maternity left out -- she wasancient, yet ever young, and familiar as joyor tears or sin.She took good care of Tim in some ways:fed him well, nursed him back to reason aftera period of hard drinking, saw that he puton overshoes when the walks were wet, andlooked after his money. She even prizedhis brain, for she discovered that it was adelicate little machine which produced gold.By association with him and his friends, shelearned that a number of apparently uselessthings had value in the eyes of certain convenientfools, and so she treasured the autographsof distinguished persons who wrote tohim -- autographs which he disdainfully tossedin the waste basket. She was careful withpresentation copies from authors, and shewent the length of urging Tim to write abook himself. But at that he balked."Write a book!" he cried to her, his gentleface suddenly white with passion. "Whoam I to commit such a profanation?"She didn't know what he meant, but shehad a theory that it was dangerous to excitehim, and so she sat up till midnight to cooka chop for him when he came home that night.He preferred to have her sitting up for him,and he wanted every electric light in theirapartments turned to the full. If, by anychance, they returned together to a darkhouse, he would not enter till she touched thebutton in the hall, and illuminated the room.Or if it so happened that the lights wereturned off in the night time, and he awoke tofind himself in darkness, he shrieked till thewoman came running to his relief, and, withderisive laughter, turned them on again. Butwhen she found that after these frights he laytrembling and white in his bed, she began tobe alarmed for the clever, gold-making littlemachine, and to renew her assiduities, and tohorde more tenaciously than ever, those valuablecurios on which she some day expected torealize when he was out of the way, and nolonger in a position to object to their barter.O'Connor's idiosyncrasy of fear was asource of much amusement among the boysat the office where he worked. They madeopen sport of it, and yet, recognizing himfor a sensitive plant, and granting that geniuswas entitled to whimsicalities, it was theircustom when they called for him after workhours, to permit him to reach the lighted corridorbefore they turned out the gas over hisdesk. This, they reasoned, was but a slightservice to perform for the most enchantingbeggar in the world."Dear fellow," said Rick Dodson, wholoved him, "is it the Devil you expect to see?And if so, why are you averse? Surely theDevil is not such a bad old chap.""You haven't found him so?""Tim, by heaven, you know, you ought toexplain to me. A citizen of the world anda student of its purlieus, like myself, ought toknow what there is to know! Now you're aman of sense, in spite of a few bad habits --such as myself, for example. Is this fad ofyours madness? -- which would be quite toyour credit, -- for gadzooks, I like a lunatic!Or is it the complaint of a man who has gatheredtoo much data on the subject of OldRye? Or is it, as I suspect, something moreoccult, and therefore more interesting?""Rick, boy," said Tim, "you're too -- inquiring!"And he turned to his desk with alook of delicate hauteur.It was the very next night that these twotippling pessimists spent together talking aboutcertain disgruntled but immortal gentlemen,who, having said their say and made the worldquite uncomfortable, had now journeyed onto inquire into the nothingness which theypostulated. The dawn was breaking in themuggy east; the bottles were empty, the cigarsburnt out. Tim turned toward his friend witha sharp breaking of sociable silence."Rick," he said, "do you know that Fearhas a Shape?""And so has my nose!""You asked me the other night what Ifeared. Holy father, I make my confessionto you. What I fear is Fear.""That's because you've drunk too much --or not enough. "'Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of SpringYour winter garment of repentance fling --'""My costume then would be too nebulousfor this weather, dear boy. But it's true whatI was saying. I am afraid of ghosts.""For an agnostic that seems a bit --""Agnostic! Yes, so completely an agnosticthat I do not even know that I do not know!God, man, do you mean you have no ghosts-- no -- no things which shape themselves?Why, there are things I have done --""Don't think of them, my boy! See,'night's candles are burnt out, and jocundday stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintop.'"Tim looked about him with a sickly smile.He looked behind him and there was nothingthere; stared at the blank window, where thesmoky dawn showed its offensive face, andthere was nothing there. He pushed awaythe moist hair from his haggard face -- thatface which would look like the blessed St.John, and leaned heavily back in his chair."'Yon light is not daylight, I know it, I,'"he murmured drowsily, "'it is some meteorwhich the sun exhales, to be to thee thisnight --'"The words floated off in languid nothingness,and he slept. Dodson arose preparatoryto stretching himself on his couch. But firsthe bent over his friend with a sense of tragicappreciation."Damned by the skin of his teeth!" he muttered.A little more, and he would havegone right, and the Devil would have lost agood fellow. As it is" -- he smiled with hisusual conceited delight in his own sayings,even when they were uttered in soliloquy -- "heis merely one of those splendid gentlemen onewill meet with in hell." Then Dodson had amomentary nostalgia for goodness himself,but he soon overcame it, and stretching himselfon his sofa, he, too, slept.That night he and O'Connor went togetherto hear "Faust" sung, and returning to theoffice, Dodson prepared to write his criticism.Except for the distant clatter of telegraphinstruments, or the peremptory cries of"copy" from an upper room, the office wasstill. Dodson wrote and smoked his interminablecigarettes; O' Connor rested his headin his hands on the desk, and sat in perfectsilence. He did not know when Dodson finished,or when, arising, and absent-mindedlyextinguishing the lights, he moved to thedoor with his copy in his hands. Dodsongathered up the hats and coats as he passedthem where they lay on a chair, and called:"It is done, Tim. Come, let's get out ofthis."There was no answer, and he thought Timwas following, but after he had handed hiscriticism to the city editor, he saw he wasstill alone, and returned to the room for hisfriend. He advanced no further than thedoorway, for, as he stood in the dusky corridorand looked within the darkened room,he saw before his friend a Shape, white, ofperfect loveliness, divinely delicate and pureand ethereal, which seemed as the embodimentof all goodness. From it came a softradiance and a perfume softer than the windwhen "it breathes upon a bank of violetsstealing and giving odor." Staring at it,with eyes immovable, sat his friend.It was strange that at sight of a thing sounspeakably fair, a coldness like that whichcomes from the jewel-blue lips of a Muircrevasse should have fallen upon Dodson, orthat it was only by summoning all the manhoodthat was left in him, that he was ableto restore light to the room, and to rush tohis friend. When he reached poor Tim hewas stone-still with paralysis. They tookhim home to the woman, who nursed him outof that attack -- and later on worried him intoanother.When he was able to sit up and jeer atthings a little again, and help himself to thequail the woman broiled for him, Dodson,sitting beside him, said:"Did you call that little exhibition of yourslegerdemain, Tim, you sweep? Or are youreally the Devil's bairn?""It was the Shape of Fear," said Tim, quiteseriously."But it seemed mild as mother's milk.""It was compounded of the good I mighthave done. It is that which I fear."He would explain no more. Later -- manymonths later -- he died patiently and sweetlyin the madhouse, praying for rest. The littlebeast with the yellow eyes had high mass celebratedfor him, which, all things considered,was almost as pathetic as it was amusing.Dodson was in Vienna when he heard of it."Sa, sa!" cried he. "I wish it wasn't sodark in the tomb! What do you suppose Timis looking at?"As for Jim O'Malley, he was with difficultykept from illuminating the grave withelectricity.

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