The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories
"Pattison," I said, "took that stuff at his own risk." He pursed his mouth
and bowed.
"My great-grandmother's recipes," I said, "are queer things to handle. My
father was near making me promise----"
"He didn't?"
"No. But he warned me. He himself used one--once."
"Ah! ... But do you think----? Suppose--suppose there did happen to be
one----"
"The things are curious documents," I said. "Even the smell of 'em ...
No!"
But after going so far Pyecraft was resolved I should go farther. I was
always a little afraid if I tried his patience too much he would fall on
me suddenly and smother me. I own I was weak. But I was also annoyed with
Pyecraft. I had got to that state of feeling for him that disposed me to
say, "Well, _take_ the risk!" The little affair of Pattison to which
I have alluded was a different matter altogether. What it was doesn't
concern us now, but I knew, anyhow, that the particular recipe I used then
was safe. The rest I didn't know so much about, and, on the whole, I was
inclined to doubt their safety pretty completely.
Yet even if Pyecraft got poisoned----
I must confess the poisoning of Pyecraft struck me as an immense
undertaking.
That evening I took that queer, odd-scented sandal-wood box out of my
safe, and turned the rustling skins over. The gentleman who wrote the
recipes for my great-grandmother evidently had a weakness for skins of a
miscellaneous origin, and his handwriting was cramped to the last degree.
Some of the things are quite unreadable to me--though my family, with its
Indian Civil Service associations, has kept up a knowledge of Hindustani
from generation to generation--and none are absolutely plain sailing. But
I found the one that I knew was there soon enough, and sat on the floor by
my safe for some time looking at it.
"Look here," said I to Pyecraft next day, and snatched the slip away from
his eager grasp.
"So far as I can make it out, this is a recipe for Loss of Weight. ("Ah!"
said Pyecraft.) I'm not absolutely sure, but I think it's that. And if you
take my advice you'll leave it alone. Because, you know--I blacken my
blood in your interest, Pyecraft--my ancestors on that side were, so far
as I can gather, a jolly queer lot. See?"
"Let me try it," said Pyecraft.
I leant back in my chair. My imagination made one mighty effort and fell
flat within me. "What in Heaven's name, Pyecraft," I asked, "do you think
you'll look like when you get thin?"
He was impervious to reason, I made him promise never to say a word to me
about his disgusting fatness again whatever happened--never, and then I
handed him that little piece of skin.
"It's nasty stuff," I said.
"No matter," he said, and took it.
He goggled at it. "But--but--" he said
He had just discovered that it wasn't English.
"To the best of my ability," I said, "I will do you a translation."
I did my best. After that we didn't speak for a fortnight. Whenever he
approached me I frowned and motioned him away, and he respected our
compact, but at the end of the fortnight he was as fat as ever. And then
he got a word in.
"I must speak," he said, "It isn't fair. There's something wrong. It's
done me no good. You're not doing your great-grandmother justice."
"Where's the recipe?"
He produced it gingerly from his pocket-book.
I ran my eye over the items. "Was the egg addled?" I asked.
"No. Ought it to have been?"
"That," I said, "goes without saying in all my poor dear
great-grandmother's recipes. When condition or quality is not specified
you must get the worst. She was drastic or nothing... And there's one or
two possible alternatives to some of these other things. You got _fresh_
rattlesnake venom?"
"I got a rattlesnake from Jamrach's. It cost--it cost----"
"That's your affair anyhow. This last item----"
"I know a man who----"
"Yes. H'm. Well, I'll write the alternatives down. So far as I know the
language, the spelling of this recipe is particularly atrocious.
By-the-by, dog here probably means pariah dog."
For a month after that I saw Pyecraft constantly at the club and as fat
and anxious as ever. He kept our treaty, but at times he broke the spirit
of it by shaking his head despondently. Then one day in the cloakroom he
said, "Your great-grandmother----"
"Not a word against her," I said; and he held his peace.
I could have fancied he had desisted, and I saw him one day talking to
three new members about his fatness as though he was in search of other
recipes. And then, quite unexpectedly, his telegram came.
"Mr. Formalyn!" bawled a page-boy under my nose, and I took the telegram
and opened it at once.
"_For Heaven's sake come_.--_Pyecraft_."
"H'm," said I, and to tell the truth I was so pleased at the
rehabilitation of my great-grandmother's reputation this evidently
promised that I made a most excellent lunch.
I got Pyecraft's address from the hall porter. Pyecraft inhabited the
upper half of a house in Bloomsbury, and I went there so soon as I had
done my coffee and Trappistine. I did not wait to finish my cigar.
"Mr. Pyecraft?" said I, at the front door.
They believed he was ill; he hadn't been out for two days.
"He expects me," said I, and they sent me up.
I rang the bell at the lattice-door upon the landing.
"He shouldn't have tried it, anyhow," I said to myself. "A man who eats
like a pig ought to look like a pig."
An obviously worthy woman, with an anxious face and a carelessly placed
cap, came and surveyed me through the lattice.
I gave my name and she let me in in a dubious fashion.
"Well?" said I, as we stood together inside Pyecraft's piece of the
landing.
"'E said you was to come in if you came," she said, and regarded me,
making no motion to show me anywhere. And then, confidentially, "'E's
locked in, sir."
"Locked in?"
"Locked 'imself in yesterday morning and 'asn't let any one in since, sir.
And ever and again _swearing_. Oh, my!"
I stared at the door she indicated by her glances. "In there?" I said.
"Yes, sir."
"What's up?"
She shook her head sadly. "'E keeps on calling for vittles, sir.
'_Eavy_ vittles 'e wants. I get 'im what I can. Pork 'e's had, sooit
puddin', sossiges, noo bread. Everythink like that. Left outside, if you
please, and me go away. 'E's eatin', sir, somethink _awful_."
There came a piping bawl from inside the door: "That Formalyn?"
"That you, Pyecraft?" I shouted, and went and banged the door.
"Tell her to go away."
I did.
Then I could hear a curious pattering upon the door, almost like some one
feeling for the handle in the dark, and Pyecraft's familiar grunts.
"It's all right," I said, "she's gone."
But for a long time the door didn't open.
I heard the key turn. Then Pyecraft's voice said, "Come in."
I turned the handle and opened the door. Naturally I expected to see
Pyecraft.
Well, you know, he wasn't there!
I never had such a shock in my life. There was his sitting-room in a state
of untidy disorder, plates and dishes among the books and writing things,
and several chairs overturned, but Pyecraft----
"It's all right, old man; shut the door," he said, and then I discovered
him.
There he was, right up close to the cornice in the corner by the door, as
though some one had glued him to the ceiling. His face was anxious and
angry. He panted and gesticulated. "Shut the door," he said. "If that
woman gets hold of it----"
I shut the door, and went and stood away from him and stared.
"If anything gives way and you tumble down," I said, "you'll break your
neck, Pyecraft."
"I wish I could," he wheezed.
"A man of your age and weight getting up to kiddish gymnastics----"
"Don't," he said, and looked agonised.
"I'll tell you," he said, and gesticulated.
"How the deuce," said I, "are you holding on up there?"
And then abruptly I realised that he was not holding on at all, that he
was floating up there--just as a gas-filled bladder might have floated in
the same position. He began a struggle to thrust himself away from the
ceiling and to clamber down the wall to me. "It's that prescription," he
panted, as he did so. "Your great-gran----"
He took hold of a framed engraving rather carelessly as he spoke and it
gave way, and he flew back to the ceiling again, while the picture smashed
on to the sofa. Bump he went against the ceiling, and I knew then why he
was all over white on the more salient curves and angles of his person. He
tried again more carefully, coming down by way of the mantel.
It was really a most extraordinary spectacle, that great, fat,
apoplectic-looking man upside down and trying to get from the ceiling
to the floor. "That prescription," he said. "Too successful."
"How?"
"Loss of weight--almost complete."
And then, of course, I understood.
"By Jove, Pyecraft," said I, "what you wanted was a cure for fatness! But
you always called it weight. You would call it weight."
Somehow I was extremely delighted. I quite liked Pyecraft for the time.
"Let me help you!" I said, and took his hand and pulled him down. He
kicked about, trying to get foothold somewhere. It was very like holding a
flag on a windy day.
"That table," he said, pointing, "is solid mahogany and very heavy. If you
can put me under that----"
I did, and there he wallowed about like a captive balloon, while I stood
on his hearthrug and talked to him.
I lit a cigar. "Tell me," I said, "what happened?"
"I took it," he said.
"How did it taste?"
"Oh, _beastly_!"
I should fancy they all did. Whether one regards the ingredients or
the probable compound or the possible results, almost all my
great-grandmother's remedies appear to me at least to be extraordinarily
uninviting. For my own part----
"I took a little sip first."
"Yes?"
"And as I felt lighter and better after an hour, I decided to take the
draught."
"My dear Pyecraft!"
"I held my nose," he explained. "And then I kept on getting lighter and
lighter--and helpless, you know."
He gave way suddenly to a burst of passion. "What the goodness am I to
_do?_" he said.
"There's one thing pretty evident," I said, "that you mustn't do. If you
go out of doors you'll go up and up." I waved an arm upward. "They'd have
to send Santos-Dumont after you to bring you down again."
"I suppose it will wear off?"
I shook my head. "I don't think you can count on that," I said.
And then there was another burst of passion, and he kicked out at adjacent
chairs and banged the floor. He behaved just as I should have expected a
great, fat, self-indulgent man to behave under trying circumstances--that
is to say, very badly. He spoke of me and of my great-grandmother with an
utter want of discretion.
"I never asked you to take the stuff," I said.
And generously disregarding the insults he was putting upon me, I sat down
in his armchair and began to talk to him in a sober, friendly fashion.
I pointed out to him that this was a trouble he had brought upon himself,
and that it had almost an air of poetical justice. He had eaten too much.
This he disputed, and for a time we argued the point.
He became noisy and violent, so I desisted from this aspect of his lesson.
"And then," said I, "you committed the sin of euphuism. You called it, not
Fat, which is just and inglorious, but Weight. You----"
He interrupted to say that he recognised all that. What was he to
_do?_
I suggested he should adapt himself to his new conditions. So we came to
the really sensible part of the business. I suggested that it would not be
difficult for him to learn to walk about on the ceiling with his hands----
"I can't sleep," he said.
But that was no great difficulty. It was quite possible, I pointed out, to
make a shake-up under a wire mattress, fasten the under things on with