The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents
things it was now impossible to say about him.
At last Hapley began to realise in what direction the pre-occupation
tended. He determined to make a fight for it, and started by trying to
read novels. But he could not get his mind off Pawkins, white in the
face, and making his last speech--every sentence a beautiful opening
for Hapley. He turned to fiction--and found it had no grip on him.
He read the "Island Nights' Entertainments" until his "sense of
causation" was shocked beyond endurance by the Bottle Imp. Then
he went to Kipling, and found he "proved nothing," besides being
irreverent and vulgar. These scientific people have their limitations.
Then unhappily, he tried Besant's "Inner House," and the opening
chapter set his mind upon learned societies and Pawkins at once.
So Hapley turned to chess, and found it a little more soothing. He
soon mastered the moves and the chief gambits and commoner closing
positions, and began to beat the Vicar. But then the cylindrical
contours of the opposite king began to resemble Pawkins standing up
and gasping ineffectually against Check-mate, and Hapley decided to
give up chess.
Perhaps the study of some new branch of science would after all be
better diversion. The best rest is change of occupation. Hapley
determined to plunge at diatoms, and had one of his smaller
microscopes and Halibut's monograph sent down from London. He thought
that perhaps if he could get up a vigorous quarrel with Halibut, he
might be able to begin life afresh and forget Pawkins. And very soon
he was hard at work, in his habitual strenuous fashion, at these
microscopic denizens of the way-side pool.
It was on the third day of the diatoms that Hapley became aware of
a novel addition to the local fauna. He was working late at the
microscope, and the only light in the room was the brilliant little
lamp with the special form of green shade. Like all experienced
microscopists, he kept both eyes open. It is the only way to avoid
excessive fatigue. One eye was over the instrument, and bright and
distinct before that was the circular field of the microscope, across
which a brown diatom was slowly moving. With the other eye Hapley saw,
as it were, without seeing[A]. He was only dimly conscious of the
brass side of the instrument, the illuminated part of the table-cloth,
a sheet of note-paper, the foot of the lamp, and the darkened room
beyond.
[Footnote A: The reader unaccustomed to microscopes may easily
understand this by rolling a newspaper in the form of a tube and
looking through it at a book, keeping the other eye open.]
Suddenly his attention drifted from one eye to the other. The
table-cloth was of the material called tapestry by shopmen, and rather
brightly coloured. The pattern was in gold, with a small amount of
crimson and pale blue upon a greyish ground. At one point the pattern
seemed displaced, and there was a vibrating movement of the colours at
this point.
Hapley suddenly moved his head back and looked with both eyes. His
mouth fell open with astonishment.
It was a large moth or butterfly; its wings spread in butterfly
fashion!
It was strange it should be in the room at all, for the windows were
closed. Strange that it should not have attracted his attention when
fluttering to its present position. Strange that it should match the
table-cloth. Stranger far that to him, Hapley, the great entomologist,
it was altogether unknown. There was no delusion. It was crawling
slowly towards the foot of the lamp.
"_Genus novo_, by heavens! And in England!" said Hapley, staring.
Then he suddenly thought of Pawkins. Nothing would have maddened
Pawkins more.... And Pawkins was dead!
Something about the head and body of the insect became singularly
suggestive of Pawkins, just as the chess king had been.
"Confound Pawkins!" said Hapley. "But I must catch this." And, looking
round him for some means of capturing the moth, he rose slowly out
of his chair. Suddenly the insect rose, struck the edge of the
lampshade--Hapley heard the "ping"--and vanished into the shadow.
In a moment Hapley had whipped off the shade, so that the whole room
was illuminated. The thing had disappeared, but soon his practised eye
detected it upon the wall paper near the door. He went towards it,
poising the lamp-shade for capture. Before he was within striking
distance, however, it had risen and was fluttering round the room.
After the fashion of its kind, it flew with sudden starts and turns,
seeming to vanish here and reappear there. Once Hapley struck, and
missed; then again.
The third time he hit his microscope. The instrument swayed, struck
and overturned the lamp, and fell noisily upon the floor. The lamp
turned over on the table and, very luckily, went out. Hapley was left
in the dark. With a start he felt the strange moth blunder into his
face.
It was maddening. He had no lights. If he opened the door of the
room the thing would get away. In the darkness he saw Pawkins quite
distinctly laughing at him. Pawkins had ever an oily laugh. He swore
furiously and stamped his foot on the floor.
There was a timid rapping at the door.
Then it opened, perhaps a foot, and very slowly. The alarmed face of
the landlady appeared behind a pink candle flame; she wore a night-cap
over her grey hair and had some purple garment over her shoulders.
"What _was_ that fearful smash?" she said. "Has anything--" The
strange moth appeared fluttering about the chink of the door. "Shut
that door!" said Hapley, and suddenly rushed at her.
The door slammed hastily. Hapley was left alone in the dark. Then in
the pause he heard his landlady scuttle upstairs, lock her door and
drag something heavy across the room and put against it.
It became evident to Hapley that his conduct and appearance had been
strange and alarming. Confound the moth! and Pawkins! However, it was
a pity to lose the moth now. He felt his way into the hall and found
the matches, after sending his hat down upon the floor with a noise
like a drum. With the lighted candle he returned to the sitting-room.
No moth was to be seen. Yet once for a moment it seemed that the thing
was fluttering round his head. Hapley very suddenly decided to give up
the moth and go to bed. But he was excited. All night long his sleep
was broken by dreams of the moth, Pawkins, and his landlady. Twice in
the night he turned out and soused his head in cold water.
One thing was very clear to him. His landlady could not possibly
understand about the strange moth, especially as he had failed to
catch it. No one but an entomologist would understand quite how he
felt. She was probably frightened at his behaviour, and yet he failed
to see how he could explain it. He decided to say nothing further
about the events of last night. After breakfast he saw her in her
garden, and decided to go out to talk to her to reassure her. He
talked to her about beans and potatoes, bees, caterpillars, and the
price of fruit. She replied in her usual manner, but she looked at him
a little suspiciously, and kept walking as he walked, so that there
was always a bed of flowers, or a row of beans, or something of
the sort, between them. After a while he began to feel singularly
irritated at this, and to conceal his vexation went indoors and
presently went out for a walk.
The moth, or butterfly, trailing an odd flavour of Pawkins with it,
kept coming into that walk, though he did his best to keep his mind
off it. Once he saw it quite distinctly, with its wings flattened out,
upon the old stone wall that runs along the west edge of the park,
but going up to it he found it was only two lumps of grey and yellow
lichen. "This," said Hapley, "is the reverse of mimicry. Instead of
a butterfly looking like a stone, here is a stone looking like a
butterfly!" Once something hovered and fluttered round his head, but
by an effort of will he drove that impression out of his mind again.
In the afternoon Hapley called upon the Vicar, and argued with him
upon theological questions. They sat in the little arbour covered with
briar, and smoked as they wrangled. "Look at that moth!" said Hapley,
suddenly, pointing to the edge of the wooden table.
"Where?" said the Vicar.
"You don't see a moth on the edge of the table there?" said Hapley.
"Certainly not," said the Vicar.
Hapley was thunderstruck. He gasped. The Vicar was staring at him.
Clearly the man saw nothing. "The eye of faith is no better than the
eye of science," said Hapley, awkwardly.
"I don't see your point," said the Vicar, thinking it was part of the
argument.
That night Hapley found the moth crawling over his counterpane. He sat
on the edge of the bed in his shirt-sleeves and reasoned with himself.
Was it pure hallucination? He knew he was slipping, and he battled
for his sanity with the same silent energy he had formerly displayed
against Pawkins. So persistent is mental habit, that he felt as if it
were still a struggle with Pawkins. He was well versed in psychology.
He knew that such visual illusions do come as a result of mental
strain. But the point was, he did not only _see_ the moth, he had
heard it when it touched the edge of the lampshade, and afterwards
when it hit against the wall, and he had felt it strike his face in
the dark.
He looked at it. It was not at all dreamlike, but perfectly clear and
solid-looking in the candle-light. He saw the hairy body, and the
short feathery antennae, the jointed legs, even a place where the down
was rubbed from the wing. He suddenly felt angry with himself for
being afraid of a little insect.
His landlady had got the servant to sleep with her that night, because
she was afraid to be alone. In addition she had locked the door, and
put the chest of drawers against it. They listened and talked in
whispers after they had gone to bed, but nothing occurred to alarm
them. About eleven they had ventured to put the candle out, and had
both dozed off to sleep. They woke up with a start, and sat up in bed,
listening in the darkness.
Then they heard slippered feet going to and fro in Hapley's room. A
chair was overturned, and there was a violent dab at the wall. Then a
china mantel ornament smashed upon the fender. Suddenly the door of
the room opened, and they heard him upon the landing. They clung to
one another, listening. He seemed to be dancing upon the staircase.
Now he would go down three or four steps quickly, then up again, then
hurry down into the hall. They heard the umbrella stand go over, and
the fanlight break. Then the bolt shot and the chain rattled. He was
opening the door.
They hurried to the window. It was a dim grey night; an almost
unbroken sheet of watery cloud was sweeping across the moon, and the
hedge and trees in front of the house were black against the pale
roadway. They saw Hapley, looking like a ghost in his shirt and white
trousers, running to and fro in the road, and beating the air. Now he
would stop, now he would dart very rapidly at something invisible, now
he would move upon it with stealthy strides. At last he went out of
sight up the road towards the down. Then, while they argued who should
go down and lock the door, he returned. He was walking very fast, and
he came straight into the house, closed the door carefully, and went
quietly up to his bedroom. Then everything was silent.
"Mrs Colville," said Hapley, calling down the staircase next morning.
"I hope I did not alarm you last night."
"You may well ask that!" said Mrs Colville.
"The fact is, I am a sleep-walker, and the last two nights I have been
without my sleeping mixture. There is nothing to be alarmed about,
really. I am sorry I made such an ass of myself. I will go over the
down to Shoreham, and get some stuff to make me sleep soundly. I ought