Dan England and the Noonday Devil

by Myles Connolly

  But it was not Dan whom we saw.

  Archer, as casual as could be, appeared in the hall. Under his arm, he carried a roll of the magazines with the story.

  All of us stared at him. We had visualized a man in hiding, tortured by conscience, and here he was coming nonchalantly home for dinner. He entered as he always did, completely indifferent to the presence of others. He glanced through the door into the dining room and when he discovered the table was not set for dinner his lips tightened slightly in irritation.

  He had seen us in the living room as he entered, not observing, in his self-absorption, anything unusual in the tense, silent group there. Now he entered the room. He was unchanged in any way. It was obvious that for him this was just another night at Dan’s.

  We, the five of us close together, faced him without a word. Our hostility was unmistakable. Suddenly he saw it and, puzzled by it, stopped.

  Briggs abruptly spoke out. He spoke with restraint but there was no missing the fierce sincerity of his emotion. He told Archer the opinion we all had of him, making the point particularly that the stealing of the story was not mere thievery, but a profound offense against Dan’s generosity and innocence. After Briggs had put the charge, we all joined in, talking one over the other, and when we had finished there was little left, we thought, of Justus Archer.

  But we did not know Justus Archer. He did not quite understand, he said. Weren’t we making a mountain out of a molehill? And weren’t we being a little theatrical? Dan would never have written the story. It would have disappeared forever into the thin air had he not captured it. It was not easy capturing it, either, he said.

  He should be congratulated, he suggested, not condemned. His cool confidence in the rightness of what he had done took us completely by surprise.

  I managed to find words to say that Dan had changed lately, that he had been talking of writing the story only a week before, that it was to be the first story in his book.

  Archer smiled his small, impersonal smile. Yes, Dan had been talking of writing the story. He was always talking of writing stories. Had he ever written one? It was foolish to imagine he had changed one bit. Dan would, he was sure, be grateful to him for what he had done. He held up the magazines he carried. Dan’s message was here, wasn’t it? He was wrong we knew, radically, profoundly wrong, and yet so imperturbable was his conceit, so overwhelming his ego, that we were helpless before him. If he had been evasive about his deed, or embarrassed, we would have been able to have sustained our attack. But here he was, apparently devoid of any feeling, declaring with complete assurance that Dan would be pleased with him in his iniquity.

  There was silence a moment. Ours was the silence of helplessness. He stood there, facing us with complete complacency, at ease in the belief that all things began and ended in him, obviously our master.

  Finally, Tim in a trembling voice told him the tragedy of Dan’s disillusionment and heartbreak. Dan had read the story and gone out and it was late now and he had not returned. Did Archer not remember the Professor Ambrose story? Dan was gone as Professor Ambrose had gone. This wickedness, Tim said in simple words, was terrible and unforgivable.

  Archer again smiled his small, cool smile. The Professor Ambrose story was pure nonsense, he said, and Dan, he was sure, would be home presently. He was about to elaborate when suddenly he saw something behind us that silenced him. Abruptly his impersonality disappeared and on his face was that most personal of expressions—fear.

  Barney was coming into the room from the hall, his pudgy, battered face grim with brutish determination, his small cloudy eyes now fiercely bright with rage. He had obviously overheard the last of the conversation from the hall. He had learned of the betrayal.

  Barney came in slowly, his head sunk in his huge hunched shoulders, his upper body thrust forward, his long, heavy arms with their big, bruised hands swinging slightly before him. He toed in as he walked, the better to grip the floor for the kill. Hate, fierce, primitive, was in every line of his face and body. Archer, strong only with greed, was a weakling before him.

  Barney, not changing pace, moved on Archer. Archer, his complacency gone, backed away, his normally tight face now loose with terror.

  “Stop him, Doris! Stop him!” he shouted. Then, suddenly, swiftly, he shoved Doris into Barney’s path, darted through the dining room and around into the hall and sped up the stairs.

  Barney spun around with unbelievable swiftness and moved out into the hall after him. At the foot of the stairs, he heard Archer’s door slam above and the key click in the lock.

  Barney stopped for a single instant. He remembered, I imagine, that the windows to Archer’s room were barred and his prey had no escape, for now when he moved, he moved slowly again, going heavily up the stairs with deadly purpose, his head thrust forward, his ugly face uglier with his craze to kill. We, dazed by Barney’s abrupt entrance and Archer’s sudden show of terror, had looked on, insensible to the fierceness of Barney’s fury and the ends to which it might go. If we had any clear thought at the moment it was, I’m afraid, that a good thrashing was what the arrogant Archer needed.

  It was the first crash of Barney’s body against the door above that shocked us out of our impassivity. Doris screamed one long hysterical scream. Briggs, Henry, and Tim raced out into the hall and up the stairs.

  Barney’s body crashed against the door again. I knew that Briggs, Henry, and Tim could never stop him. I ran to the hall telephone, quickly dialed the operator. The police might help if they could arrive before it was too late.

  Again, Barney’s body crashed against the door.

  The telephone operator answered immediately. At the same moment, the front door opened. The sound of the door opening distracted me from the telephone. I looked, astounded.

  It was Dan England. He had come back after all.

  I could not speak. I searched his face to see what I could see there. But his face told nothing.

  He seemed distant, abstracted. He wore no hat or overcoat despite the cold. He looked at Doris and me as if he had never seen us before. In my stunned brain I could hear, unreal and far away, the telephone operator’s voice monotoning, “Operator. Operator.”

  Doris suddenly came out of her astonishment, raced to him, crying crazily, “Barney’s killing him! He’s killing him!”

  Upstairs, Barney’s body crashed again but this time with a crunching sound and I knew the door had given way.

  Dan stiffened, looked quickly from Doris’ trembling face to the floor above.

  Then, Archer’s panic-stricken voice was heard. “No, Barney! No! I was wrong! No! No!”

  Archer’s voice rose again but almost immediately it was throttled and I knew Barney’s huge and frenzied hands were tight around his throat.

  Dan raced up the stairs two at a time. I still stood with the telephone in my hand and the operator was still monotoning, “Operator. Operator,” unreal and far away.

  I put the telephone back in its cradle and dumbly waited for the sound of another crash, this time the crash of Archer’s body as lifeless it was thrown to the floor.

  But no last sound came.

  Chapter 16

  We were a tensely anxious group as we stood in the living room waiting for Dan to come downstairs.

  Dan had reached Archer’s room in time to save him from Barney’s madness. Now Dan was still upstairs with Archer while the rest of us, including Barney, stood in the living room and waited. Barney, his fury unappeased, hung surlily back in a corner watching the door like a dog waiting to spring for a bone that had been snatched from him.

  But we, Doris, Briggs, Henry, Tim, and I, waited with a feeling of dread. What Dan’s feelings were, none of those who had been upstairs could discern. He had not spoken to them. And Doris and I who had remained downstairs were unable to guess. But we knew, we were sure. In our hearts we were sure we knew.

  We knew how deeply Dan felt about the man who steals another man’s ideas. To steal a man’s ideas, he ha
d said in telling of Ambrose’s tragedy, “is to steal the very stuff of his soul. That is not only a sin against a fellow man; it is a grievous sin against the Holy Spirit.”

  We knew how Evening Star had been precious to Dan and was to have been the first story of his book. But we knew more than that, far more than that—for we knew his innocence and generosity; and his profound faith in men and his almost religious belief in friendship.

  We knew, we were sure, we were going to see a man whose spirit had been broken. We were going to see another Professor Ambrose but this time a beaten man who could not flee but had to return to face the disillusioning truth and the tragedy.

  Now, listening tensely, we heard footsteps on the stairs.

  We waited to see Archer, suitcase in hand, pass across the hall on his way out of Dan’s life forever.

  We waited to see Dan, his tragedy in his eyes, come before us, a man beyond comforting, beyond joy ever again. And like Professor Ambrose’s friends, we were fearful of that moment when he, his faith and innocence gone, would see us, not as he imagined us but as we were, petty and mean and commonplace.

  Now we heard Dan’s voice, and immediately afterward Dan and Archer appeared in the hall at the foot of the stairs.

  Then, together, they turned into the living room.

  We watched in rigid silence.

  Dan had his arm affectionately around Archer, and thus they entered the living room. How wrong, it seemed, how profoundly wrong we had been about Dan. The good Professor Ambrose had faith in man, but Dan England had a greater faith than that.

  Dan was kinder, gentler than I had ever seen him. Archer was no longer the coolly objective, self-possessed egotist we had known but a trembling, still terrified weakling who had seen death face to face. We all knew we were witnessing heroic charity.

  Archer saw Barney, his fury still in his eyes. He stopped, pulled slightly back. But Dan kept his arm around him, held him.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of Barney, now, Justus,” Dan said, smiling. “We are all friends here together.” He called to Barney to come out of the corner. He put his free arm around Barney’s shoulder. “Justus, you must forgive Barney. He didn’t understand. His loyalty to his friends is so radiant it blinds him on occasions. My good Barney imagined you had done me a wrong and, I’m afraid, he let his loyalty get the better of his judgment.” He drew Barney closer to him. “Justus wrote Evening Star much better than I could have ever written it. Barney, I am very proud of him. Just as I am very proud of you for your devotion.” Then he raised himself up to his full height, looked at all of us, one after another, with his smile. “Suppose we have a little glass of wine,” he said.

  Whereupon, getting the wine bottle and glasses from the dining room table, he poured wine for all of us, filling the glasses to the brim. He seemed happy and completely at ease, a man who had not a sorrow or a problem in the world.

  At the time, I thought perhaps his happiness came from his pleasure in his conquest of himself. It was, I was sure, a critical battle he had won over his feelings when he discovered Archer’s treachery. And it was certainly an extraordinary triumph; for here he was, not merely forgiving, but apparently proud of Archer for what he had done.

  He lifted his glass for a toast. “To our friends,” he said, glowing, “with whom alone we can dare to be ourselves!”

  We all drank to it. Dan hardly touched his wine, putting his lips to it and no more.

  Archer drank deeply, almost finishing his glass at one gulp, something I had not seen him do before, and it seemed to me there was a trace of gratitude on his face. Justus Archer had changed in that single hour.

  Dan had never in the months I had known him seemed so lighthearted, so eager to talk. He proposed toast after toast, as he usually did, though, as with the first toast, he hardly touched his wine. After each toast, his gaiety would sparkle in the glitter of his wit and the flashes of his fancy. His words were wise as usual, but more buoyant, more vivid, volatilized as they were by his, even for him, high enthusiasm.

  His last toast was one he had written himself and one of his favorites.

  “To the fools of God!” He raised his glass. “To those beloved fools who blinded by His Glory see not the nose in front of their faces, who know no knowledge and can count only to Three, who are always lost yet forever know the Way, who flee what others love and love what others flee, who squander what others save and save what others squander, who sing when others weep and weep when others sing, who die when others live and live when others die!” He lifted his glass high. “The wisdom of God is the folly of man. To the fools of God!”

  He put his glass down. This time he had not touched his wine.

  There was a curious finality to this toast and to his not touching his wine, and we all felt it. We must have looked quite solemn. But he was gay, buoyant as before when he spoke.

  He had to go out for a little while, he said. He urged us all to have dinner. He would not join us. He had been over to the college and had had dinner with Father Pitka. He should have telephoned but he got to talking and we knew, he smiled, how it was when he got to talking. He was sorry.

  Then he turned and went to the door. He walked with a suppleness and an erectness extraordinary for him, not merely as if his years had fallen from him and he was young in body again, but as if he walked to a rhythm, a music he had never known before. He seemed eager to be on his way.

  At the door, he stopped. He looked slowly, affectionately, from one face to another.

  “You are good friends,” he said gently, “all of you.” He must have seen on our faces the deep affection we bore him for he smiled his boyish, almost wistful smile. Then he turned sharply and went erectly, eagerly, as before, out into the hall and to the door. The room was still, and in the stillness we heard the door snap shut behind him.

  “No, no.” The voice in the room was sudden, choked, pathetic.

  It was Archer. We all stared at him in surprise. There were tears in his eyes. It turned out that he, in his new wisdom, had sensed far more deeply than we the drama and significance of the moment.

  We never saw Dan England again.

  Notes

  ON DAN ENGLAND AND THE NOONDAY DEVIL

  The following abbreviations are used in the notes:

  CCC

  The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997.

  CE

  All references to the Catholic Encyclopedia are to the original edition published from 1907–1912 in New York by Robert Appleton Company in fifteen volumes. This comprehensive reference work is available online at New Advent (www.newadvent.org/cathen).

  CW

  G. K. Chesterton, The Collected Works, 37 vols. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986–2012.

  [DR]

  All Bible references are to the Douay-Rheims 1899 American edition, unless otherwise noted.

  GG

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby: The Authorized Text. New York: Scribner, 1925. Reprinted, New York: Scribner, 1995.

  JV

  St. John Vianney, The Spirit of the Curé of Ars. Translated by Alfred Monnin and edited by John Edward Bowden (London: Burns, Lambert, and Oates, 1865).

  MB

  Myles Connolly, Mr. Blue. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Reprinted with introduction and notes by Stephen Mirarchi. Tacoma, WA: Cluny Media, 2015.

  OED

  Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2017.

  Epigraph

  “There is no excellent beauty…”

  This famous quotation is from Francis Bacon’s short essay “Of Beauty,” first published in 1612 and in its “final English edition” in 1625.1 American authors have been fond of it; Edgar Allan Poe, for instance, quotes it more than once, as in his appraisal of Shelley in one of his “Marginalia” entries.2 Aquinas, whom Connolly often alludes to in his work, distinguishes three conditions for beauty: integrity, proportion, and clarity.3 One of Connoll
y’s greatest and most enduring influences, however, was Chesterton, and in quoting Bacon’s epigraph Connolly may have specifically had in mind Chesterton’s observation in Orthodoxy about the strangeness of beauty: “This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery of the new balance. Paganism had been like a pillar of marble, upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences exactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand years…in Christendom apparent accidents balanced.”4

  Dedication

  “For Myles, Kevin, Terence”

  Connolly had five children, and he dedicated this book to his three sons. Myles Jr. was the eldest of the children; Kevin came a year later; and Terence, called Terry, was born three years later. Ann Connolly would be born four years after that, and Mary—who has contributed the preface for this book—was born six years later.

  Chapter 1

  3: “Brother Ass”

  St. Francis of Assisi famously referred to his flesh this way, as Chesterton highlighted in his biography of him: “The saint who was so gentle with his Brother the Wolf was so harsh to his Brother the Ass (as he nicknamed his own body).”5

  4: “The wisdom of God…”

  Dan is drawing on two passages. The first is 1 Cor. 1: 25: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” The second is 1 Cor. 3:19: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”

  4: “To the fools of God!”

  St. Francis often used the moniker “fool of God” in a positive way, as Chesterton notes: “When Francis came forth from his cave of vision, he was wearing the same word ‘fool’ as a feather in his cap…he would be the court fool of the King of Paradise.”6

  4: “To affect the quality of the day…”

  This quotation is from the most famous chapter of Thoreau’s Walden, “Where I Lived, And What I Lived For.”7