Parrot watches the midwife and her lanky girl hurry down Portugal Street and vanish. He shuts the door, and the darkness in the shop unaccountably oppresses him. Despite the warmness of the weather, he shivers and hopes he is not getting a fever. Defiantly he thrusts out his lower lip and returns to the dispensary, where Mr. Chambers has lighted another candle.
“They’re gone, now, sir.”
“Who? Who?”
Mr. Chambers glares round at the flasks and scales as if in panic.
“The midwife and her girl.”
“Oh.”
“Can I—can I get you some more medicine, sir?”
“Why?”
“You—you look a bit flushed, sir.”
Mr. Chambers hastily fishes out his physician’s mirror and examines himself.
“It—it’s only the candlelight. I’m all right, Parrot! Perfectly all right. Never felt better!”
He tries to get up but cannot keep his balance.
“I think, perhaps, I’ll go and—and lie down.”
“Let me help you, sir!”
“Only—only to the door. Mrs. Chambers will come. My wife . . . my wife . . .”
Parrot supports him. He feels the large man trembling, and a multitude of apprehensions and fears overwhelms the apprentice.
“You can lock up, Parrot. Go out and—and enjoy yourself, my boy. I—I’ll go to—to bed, I think. . . .”
“Mrs. Chambers! Mrs. Chambers!” calls Parrot urgently. He opens the door from the dispensary into Mr. Chambers’ home.
“Mrs. Chambers!” echoes the apothecary.
He sways round to dismiss his apprentice . . . and Parrot is suddenly transfixed with horror!
Round his loved and honoured master’s neck, just above his loosened cravat, is hanging, for the world to see, a bundle of dried St. John’s Wort and Rue. Parrot feels the blood in his veins turn to burning acid and eat a hole in his heart.
Mr. Chambers, seeing the look upon Parrot’s face, does not fully understand it; he tries to laugh but is too drunk to manage more than a guilty hiccup.
Parrot retreats. “You!” he mutters. “T. W. Chambers! Why . . . why you’re no better than—than the rest of ’em! You . . . you . . .”
Mr. Chambers, sobered a little by the accusation, extends a fat hand, much stained with Gentian and Cochineal.
“It—it’s a joke, really! It’s nothing, my boy! Only—only I was thinking . . . she said—the midwife said it was—was wrong to take chances when such—such happiness is at stake. That’s all! That’s why. And—and after all, where’s the harm in it, Parrot?”
Parrot does not answer.
“It’ll always be you, Parrot!” goes on Mr. Chambers anxiously. “You’re more than a son! Much, much more! You’ll have me book! I promise you! Even if—if I was to have a son of me own—tonight—it won’t make a drachm of difference . . . to us! It’s all for—for Mrs. Chambers! I swear it, my boy! It’ll always be you and me . . . Chambers and Parrot!”
“Never!” says Parrot harshly, and strikes all mention of his master’s name from The Chemistry of Thought.
“Parrot!” moans Mr. Chambers, seeing all too clearly: “A Faded Sign: Death of an Apothecary, by Parrot.”
Then he totters through the doorway, calling, “Mrs. Chambers! Mrs. Chambers . . . Sarah, my love!”
Midsummer Eve, when landlords polish their pewter ware and hang Garlic Root and Rosemary on the taps of the sherry firkins—for goblins are well known to be demons for the drink.
“Why, if it ain’t young Mr. Parrot from down the road!” says a landlord conversationally as the apprentice slumps in at the door. “Tell us, lad, with all your chemical learning, what’s a good balm for a bleedin’ heart?”
“Cut it out,” says Parrot. “With a surgeon’s knife.”
Parrot means it. His master’s treachery has struck deep. Although he has tried to persuade himself that his anger is because of Mr. Chambers’ shameful betrayal of truth and science, he knows the blow to have been bitterer than that.
Plainly, the wretched man had wanted a son of his own so much that he’d thought nothing of betraying everything Parrot held most sacred for the stupid hope of a magical Midsummer begetting.
Parrot wasn’t good enongh for him—Parrot, who had tended and even worshipped him more than any son would have done! Was it for this that he’d uprooted his heart from Russell Street and planted it in Portugal Street? The soil is poisoned everywhere! Despised and rejected of men, Parrot leaves the inn for such comfort as there’s to be found in the darkening streets.
Midsummer Eve, when apprentices and their girls foregather in St. Mary’s Burying Ground to light the bonfire that will bring the phantoms of dead lovers from their graves to marry again under the haunted porch.
“Look! Look! There’s Johnny Parrot from the apothecary’s! Come over here and tell us a good ointment for a burnin’, blisterin’ love!”
“The bite of an adder,” says Parrot. “That’ll put out the fire!”
He leaves them to their shallow madness and reflects, as he crosses the Strand, that a wise man must always be lonely in a world of fools.
Midsummer Eve, when watermen’s boats on the river are hung with sprigs of Rosemary, Eyebright, and Lily of the Valley—all of which are sovereign against lovers’ forgetfulness.
“Ain’t you the ’pothecary’s lad from Portugal Street?”
Parrot nods.
“That’s a bit of luck! Come and tell us of a potion or a syrup that’ll teach these old bones to remember what it’s like to be young!”
“That black syrup there,” says Parrot to the waterman, and points to the dark, flowing river. “That’s a good remedy for all aches and pains.”
Parrot sets no store by memory. It’s memory, not wisdom, that makes him so lonely. Every back is turned on him, and he walks in the valley of the shadow.
Midsummer Eve, and Miss Kitty Parrot—just seventeen and pretty as paint—has two best friends home to Russell Street for the desperate purpose of baking the dumb cake; two to make it, two to break it, and one to hide the pieces under the pillows for dreams of lovers to come. On such a night, nobody wants to be left on the shelf.
Betty Martin, a pastrycook’s daughter, has brought the ingredients, and Sally Brown has brought the dish. Miss Parrot herself has supplied the basin and spoon, and her ma has lit the oven fire. They are all in the kitchen, and Mr. Parrot, drapery and inn-sign painter, is engaged in sketching the curious scene.
“Ssh! Not a sound, boy! Can’t you see that they’re making the dumb cake?”
Parrot, having fled from one silence, now finds himself unhappily in another. He thrusts out his lower lip with savage contempt. Betty Martin catches his eye and goes red again in patches. But Parrot no longer wants to cut her up for the benefit of science; he wants to cut her up because he hates her and the whole stupid pack of them.
His misery has, by now, passed through a cold fire and emerged as a finely tempered dislike for the whole human race. He feels that the world would be a better place without them. He would like to be the destroying angel, killing and killing until, high on some lonely mountaintop, he’d survey the bloody wreckage and empty out the last of the vials of wrath.
Unaware of this, Sally Brown holds the basin, and Kitty Parrot, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, stirs.
“Just like your shop,” whispers Mrs. Parrot to her son.
Sally Brown and Kitty Parrot change about, biting their lips the while so they won’t utter a single whisper, which would spoil the spell. Betty Martin, wearing a white shift, newly washed and inside out—for that’s important—looks on, and Mr. Parrot catches exactly the expression of rapt attention in her cowlike eyes.
Parrot cannot stand it any more. He leaves the hell’s kitchen, dragging his feet in the hopes his sister will break her silence, even if only to abuse him. But everyone ignores him, so he wanders into the parlour, where his father’s ugly daubs of Kitty Parrot disfigure the wal
ls. There’s Miss Parrot as Spring, there’s Miss Parrot as Summer, and there’s Miss Parrot combing her hair. She’s all over the house; the only likeness of her brother is at the age of three months—a nameless, faceless lump of dough in his mother’s arms. Mr. Parrot had never painted a wise thing in his life.
Parrot finds a piece of charcoal in a box on the sideboard and gives his sister a beard and blacks out both her eyes; then he goes back into the kitchen, where the cake is already in the oven and the three Midsummer maidens are preparing to go out into the backyard and sow hemp seed. Sally Brown and his sister glare at him balefully as they sweep past on their way upstairs to put on their shifts, which they hadn’t wanted to dirty while mixing the cake.
Betty Martin stays behind and watches the oven, in which all their hopes of future happiness are steadily browning and giving off a strong smell of cinnamon and mint.
Mr. Parrot catches her attitude down to the smallest detail of the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth.
“It’s a gift!” murmurs Mrs. Parrot in admiration. “A gift from God!”
Parrot considers the proposition that God must be something of a miser; then Sally Brown and Kitty come downstairs, looking like bundles of washing. Silently the three girls go outside into the yard, carrying a bag of hemp seed and a little brass fork and trowel.
Parrot watches them dimly flitting about in the darkness. He sees them bend down with their silly heads together. The fork and trowel flash in stray starlight . . . and in goes the enchanted seed.
The maidens, white as marsh wraiths, rise up and walk backwards to the house. Not a word is spoken, not a guiding look is cast. Betty Martin trips on her shift, and Parrot laughs loudly, but none of them can be tempted to break the spell. Any moment now, they will see, rising from the newly sown seed, the ghosts of their future lovers, following on with outstretched arms.
As they pass him by, their eyes are shining brightly, as if they’d really seen more than the broken fence and their own bare, muddy feet.
Mr. Parrot sketches them being pursued by three spectres, part earth, part air. . . .
Still in their secret, hugging silence, they go to the kitchen. Betty Martin opens the oven door and a great deal of smoke comes out, for someone has left a piece of brown paper inside, and it has got burnt. But no one dares to cough.
Sally Brown—who is the strongest—takes a cloth and lifts out the iron dish, which she puts by an open window to cool. Who, when the time comes, will break the dumb cake? Why, Betty Martin and Kitty Parrot; it’s all arranged. And who, when no one’s looking, will steal the pieces and hide them under the pillows upstairs? Sally Brown, of course!
Then she who’s destined to be married will have, this night, sweet visions of her lover; but she who’s doomed to be left on the shelf—to live and die alone—will have no such luck. Either she’ll dream of nothing or of new-made graves into which she falls, she’ll dream of winding sheets that tangle her limbs and of rings that fit no finger, or, if by force, they do, they’ll straightway crumble into a grey dust.
The three maidens gaze somewhat nervously at the blackened cake that is now out of its dish. In their heart of hearts, they are inclined to shrink from it, but, having gone so far, none of them has the courage to draw back.
So Kitty Parrot and Betty Martin score the cake with a knife and snap it into three—for it’s overdone and as crisp as a dried twig. They turn their backs, and Sally Brown, solemn as an owl, creeps upon tiptoe, steals the pieces, and flits from the kitchen with startled eyes.
While she’s gone, Mr. Parrot draws Betty Martin with a dream coming out of her head, like smoke from a haystack. Sally Brown comes back, looking pale with fright, as if she’d stolen a march on her companions and already laid her head on her pillow and seen something she hadn’t bargained for.
Now is the most solemn time of all, for it is almost midnight. The three maidens, quiet as mice, are to walk backwards up the stairs to their beds. They are to stare fixedly, looking neither to the right nor the left, and, if all is well, they will see the shades of their lovers hastening after them. But then they must hurry, for under no circumstances must such unnatural beings catch them on the stairs! They must pin up their shifts so that they can really scamper like the wind into the safety of their beds. Never, never must the pursuing shadows touch them and plant their grisly kisses on their pale lips!
But there still remains something important to be done, for during the strange, backward journey there must not be a sound in the house that has not been made by ghosts, for phantom lovers, sometimes in default of actually appearing, announce their presence by knocking, rustling curtains or scratching at a wainscot.
Therefore, in order to guard against mistakes, the three maidens leave the kitchen and begin upon their silent rounds. They move from room to room, fastening loose cupboard doors and closing windows against any misleading draught. Miss Parrot puts out the cat—who’s not sorry to go—and hangs a black cloth over her canary’s cage. Then, with a look of mingled pity and dislike at her brother, she and her white-gowned companions prepare to mount.
Their shifts are pinned up and their slender legs and garden-grimy feet give them a curious uprooted appearance, like mandrakes. Mr. Parrot sketches them rapidly, for everyone knows that once they’ve begun to mount, no one but the mysterious spectres of Midsummer Eve must be present to watch.
“Come along, boy. Into the kitchen with you. Don’t always spoil things for everybody. Use your imagination, for once. . . .”
Parrot glances at his father’s drawing, thrusts out his lower lip—which always annoys everyone—and goes. He feels as cold as ice. He is on the mountaintop and ready with the last vial of wrath. He slams the door. His mother and father shrug their shoulders and retire to the parlour. They had intended to join their son in the kitchen, but they have no inclination to put up with bad temper.
The hall is now cleared of all save the three Midsummer maidens. They station themselves at the foot of the stairs and clutch one another fiercely by the hand. Then they draw in their breath, and with shaking knees and pins and needles in their toes, they take the first upward step.
They pause. Was that a scratching? They look mutely at one another and ask with their eyes alone. One by one they shake their heads and take another step. Was that a knocking? Surely that was a knocking! No . . . no . . . Two further steps are accomplished, and Betty Martin gasps and bites her lip, for she’s trodden on something sharp. But she didn’t utter a word; she shakes her head to prove it; the spell is still intact.
Something rustled! It was absolutely distinct! The three maidens hasten up still farther and fix their enormous eyes on the darkened pathway of stairs they’ve already mounted.
A church clock—St. Clement’s, in point of fact—begins to chime the midnight hour. They tremble in the sudden and appalling certainty of imminent pursuit by phantoms! The very shuddering of the air tells them that ghosts are about . . . for have not the mysterious requirements of the haunted time been obeyed in every particular? Since a quarter to eleven, the maidens have maintained a strict silence . . . and it has been a perfect torment. They have sown the seed and washed their shifts, which are still uncomfortably damp.
It would be cruel indeed if, after all this labour, none of them saw her lover’s shadow; it would be crueller still if only one of them was so blessed!
Hemp seed we’ve sown,
Let our crop be mown!
“Ah!” shrieks Betty Martin. “He’s come! He’s there!”
She points to the foot of the stairs. Sure enough, a ghastly apparition has manifested itself and with waving arms is giving every evidence of instant pursuit!
“I’ll kill him!” screams Kitty Parrot, recognizing the apparition in spite of the mask of flour with which he’s whitened his contemptuous face. It is her brother, Parrot.
The future author of The Chemistry of Thought laughs with a loud and bitter mockery as the three foolish females glare down at h
im; then the church clock tolls the last stroke of midnight, and Parrot’s laughter dies on the air.
The three harmless girls in their shifts on the topmost stair have vanished! In their place are now three demons whose eyes are burning with all the fires of hell!
“I’ll kill him!” repeats the one who had been his sister. “So help me, I will!”
Her hair is wild, and her raised fingers are armed with ten terrible daggers. Parrot stands stock-still, then gives a startled cry and bolts for the kitchen as the three furies rush suddenly down upon him.
He slams the door, but before he can secure it, it bursts open and strikes him a violent blow on the side of the head.
He staggers back and sees the demons standing in the doorway before him. There is a haze of madness in their eyes and the threat of mutilation in their eager hands.
In a flash, he sees himself all over the kitchen table and floor, a twitching, bloody index of all the hundred and fifty engravings in Human Anatomy. He shrieks with terror and goes through the back door like a dose of Epsom Salts.
He travels at immense speed down Russell Street, unable to determine whether the sounds of pursuit are in his mind or in the actual air immediately behind him. There is no way of confirming this save by looking back, and that he dares not do for fear of losing whatever advantage he might have.
His chief hope lies in finding company, but both Russell Street and Bridges Street are horribly empty. Then he sees ahead, reflected in the sky above the crippled crowd of chimneys, the glow of the bonfire in St. Mary’s Burying Ground.
He turns sharply into Russell Court, bruising his shoulder on a projecting piece of brickwork. Heedless of the pain, he runs fiercely towards the lych gate, which has been hung with a confused variety of branches as a protection against the more disagreeable powers of the night.
As he passes under it, he experiences the wholly unreasonable hope that it will put paid to his pursuers. Nevertheless, he does not relax his pace and runs fleetly towards fire.
“A—ah!” he shrieks as the soft ground suddenly opens and departs from beneath his feet. Monuments, headstones, and all the sober furniture of the graveyard rush upwards on either side of him, like the promised end of Babylon. Then they vanish, and Parrot lies on his back, staring at a rectangle of reddened sky.
The Apprentices Page 21
