The Shape of Fear | Page 4

he wrote limpid
and noble English. Purity seemed to dog his heels, no matter how
violently he attempted to escape from her. He was never so drunk that
he was not an exquisite, and even his creditors, who had become inured
to his deceptions, confessed it was a privilege to meet so perfect a
gentleman. The creature who held him in bondage, body and soul,
actually came to love him for his gentleness, and for some quality
which baffled her, and made her ache with a strange longing which she
could not define. Not that she ever de- fined anything, poor little beast!
She had skin the color of pale gold, and yellow eyes with brown lights
in them, and great plaits of straw-colored hair. About her lips was a
fatal and sensuous smile, which, when it got hold of a man's
imagination, would not let it go, but held to it, and mocked it till the
day of his death. She was the incarnation of the Eternal Feminine, with
all the wifeli- ness and the maternity left out -- she was ancient, yet
ever young, and familiar as joy or tears or sin.
She took good care of Tim in some ways: fed him well, nursed him
back to reason after a period of hard drinking, saw that he put on
overshoes when the walks were wet, and looked after his money. She
even prized his brain, for she discovered that it was a delicate little
machine which produced gold. By association with him and his friends,
she learned that a number of apparently useless things had value in the
eyes of certain con- venient fools, and so she treasured the auto- graphs
of distinguished persons who wrote to him -- autographs which he
disdainfully tossed in the waste basket. She was careful with
presentation copies from authors, and she went the length of urging
Tim to write a book himself. But at that he balked.
"Write a book!" he cried to her, his gen- tle face suddenly white with
passion. "Who am I to commit such a profanation?"
She didn't know what he meant, but she had a theory that it was
dangerous to excite him, and so she sat up till midnight to cook a 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 their apartments turned to the full. If, by any chance,
they returned together to a dark house, he would not enter till she
touched the button in the hall, and illuminated the room. Or if it so
happened that the lights were turned off in the night time, and he awoke
to find himself in darkness, he shrieked till the woman came running to
his relief, and, with derisive laughter, turned them on again. But when
she found that after these frights he lay trembling and white in his bed,
she began to be alarmed for the clever, gold-making little machine, and
to renew her assiduities, and to horde more tenaciously than ever, those
valu- able curios on which she some day expected to realize when he
was out of the way, and no longer in a position to object to their barter.
O'Connor's idiosyncrasy of fear was a source of much amusement
among the boys at the office where he worked. They made open sport
of it, and yet, recognizing him for a sensitive plant, and granting that
genius was entitled to whimsicalities, it was their custom when they
called for him after work hours, to permit him to reach the lighted cor-
ridor before they turned out the gas over his desk. This, they reasoned,
was but a slight service to perform for the most enchanting beggar in
the world.
"Dear fellow," said Rick Dodson, who loved him, "is it the Devil you
expect to see? And if so, why are you averse? Surely the Devil is not
such a bad old chap."
"You haven't found him so?"
"Tim, by heaven, you know, you ought to explain to me. A citizen of
the world and a student of its purlieus, like myself, ought to know what
there is to know! Now you're a man of sense, in spite of a few bad
habits -- such as myself, for example. Is this fad of yours madness? --
which would be quite to your credit, -- for gadzooks, I like a lunatic! Or
is it the complaint of a man who has gath- ered too much data on the
subject of Old Rye? Or is it, as I suspect, something more occult, and
therefore more interesting?"
"Rick, boy," said Tim, "you're too -- in- quiring!" And he turned to his
desk with a look of delicate hauteur.

It was