“Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened windows, his fat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the last number of the Churchman at his elbow, and near it, on a huge dish, a fat melon—the fattest melon I’d ever seen. As I looked at it I pictured the ecstasy of contemplation from which I must have roused him, and congratulated myself on finding him in such a mood, since I had made up my mind to ask him a favour. Then I noticed that his face, instead of looking as calm as an egg-shell, was distorted and whimpering—and without stopping to greet me he pointed passionately to the melon.
“ ‘Look at it, look at it—did you ever see such a beauty? Such firmness—roundness—such delicious smoothness to the touch?’ It was as if he had said ‘she’ instead of ‘it,’ and when he put out his senile hand and touched the melon I positively had to look the other way.
“Then he told me what had happened. The Italian under-gardener, who had been specially recommended for the melon-houses—though it was against my cousin’s principles to employ a Papist—had been assigned to the care of the monster: for it had revealed itself, early in its existence, as destined to become a monster, to surpass its plumpest, pulpiest sisters, carry off prizes at agricultural shows, and be photographed and celebrated in every gardening paper in the land. The Italian had done well—seemed to have a sense of responsibility. And that very morning he had been ordered to pick the melon, which was to be shown next day at the county fair, and to bring it in for Mr. Lenman to gaze on its blonde virginity. But in picking it, what had the damned scoundrelly Jesuit done but drop it—drop it crash on the sharp spout of a watering-pot, so that it received a deep gash in its firm pale rotundity, and was henceforth but a bruised, ruined, fallen melon?
“The old man’s rage was fearful in its impotence—he shook, spluttered and strangled with it. He had just had the Italian up and had sacked him on the spot, without wages or character—had threatened to have him arrested if he was ever caught prowling about Wrenfield. ‘By God, and I’ll do it—I’ll write to Washington—I’ll have the pauper scoundrel deported! I’ll show him what money can do!’ As likely as not there was some murderous Black-hand business under it—it would be found that the fellow was a member of a ‘gang.’ Those Italians would murder you for a quarter. He meant to have the police look into it … And then he grew frightened at his own excitement. ‘But I must calm myself,’ he said. He took his temperature, rang for his drops, and turned to the Churchman. He had been reading an article on Nestorianism when the melon was brought in. He asked me to go on with it, and I read to him for an hour, in the dim close room, with a fat fly buzzing stealthily about the fallen melon.
“All the while one phrase of the old man’s buzzed in my brain like the fly about the melon. ‘I’ll show him what money can do!’ Good heaven! If I could but show the old man! If I could make him see his power of giving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous egotism! I tried to tell him something about my situation and Kate’s—spoke of my ill-health, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing to write, to make myself a name—I stammered out an entreaty for a loan. ‘I can guarantee to repay you, sir—I’ve a half-written play as security …’
“I shall never forget his glassy stare. His face had grown as smooth as an egg-shell again—his eyes peered over his fat cheeks like sentinels over a slippery rampart.
“ ‘A half-written play—a play of yours as security?’ He looked at me almost fearfully, as if detecting the first symptoms of insanity. ‘Do you understand anything of business?’ he enquired mildly. I laughed and answered: ‘No, not much.’
“He leaned back with closed lids. ‘All this excitement has been too much for me,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll prepare for my nap.’ And I stumbled out of the room, blindly, like the Italian.”
Granice moved away from the mantel-piece, and walked across to the tray set out with decanters and soda-water. He poured himself a tall glass of soda-water, emptied it, and glanced at Ascham’s dead cigar.
“Better light another,” he suggested.
The lawyer shook his head, and Granice went on with his tale. He told of his mounting obsession—how the murderous impulse had waked in him on the instant of his cousin’s refusal, and he had muttered to himself: “By God, if you won’t, I’ll make you.” He spoke more tranquilly as the narrative proceeded, as though his rage had died down once the resolve to act on it was taken. He applied his whole mind to the question of how the old man was to be “disposed of.” Suddenly he remembered the outcry: “Those Italians will murder you for a quarter!” But no definite project presented itself: he simply waited for an inspiration.
Granice and his sister moved to town a day or two after the incident of the melon. But the cousins, who had returned, kept them informed of the old man’s condition. One day, about three weeks later, Granice, on getting home, found Kate excited over a report from Wrenfield. The Italian had been there again—had somehow slipped into the house, made his way up to the library, and “used threatening language.” The house-keeper found cousin Joseph gasping, the whites of his eyes showing “something awful.” The doctor was sent for, and the attack warded off; and the police had ordered the Italian from the neighbourhood.
But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had “nerves,” and lost his taste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a colleague, and the consultation amused and excited the old man—he became once more an important figure. The medical men reassured the family—too completely!—and to the patient they recommended a more varied diet: advised him to take whatever “tempted him.” And so one day, tremulously, prayerfully, he decided on a tiny bit of melon. It was brought up with ceremony, and consumed in the presence of the house-keeper and a hovering cousin; and twenty minutes later he was dead …
“But you remember the circumstances,” Granice went on; “how suspicion turned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint the police had given him he had been seen hanging about the house since ‘the scene.’ It was said that he had tender relations with the kitchen-maid, and the rest seemed easy to explain. But when they looked round to ask him for the explanation he was gone—gone clean out of sight. He had been ‘warned’ to leave Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to heart that no one ever laid eyes on him again.”
Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the lawyer’s, and he sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking about the familiar room. Everything in it had grown grimacing and alien, and each strange insistent object seemed craning forward from its place to hear him.
“It was I who put the stuff in the melon,” he said. “And I don’t want you to think I’m sorry for it. This isn’t ‘remorse,’ understand. I’m glad the old skin-flint is dead—I’m glad the others have their money. But mine’s no use to me any more. My sister married miserably, and died. And I’ve never had what I wanted.”
Ascham continued to stare; then he said: “What on earth was your object, then?”
“Why, to get what I wanted—what I fancied was in reach! I wanted change, rest, life, for both of us—wanted, above all, for myself, the chance to write! I travelled, got back my health, and came home to tie myself up to my work. And I’ve slaved at it steadily for ten years without reward—without the most distant hope of success! Nobody will look at my stuff. And now I’m fifty, and I’m beaten, and I know it.” His chin dropped forward on his breast. “I want to chuck the whole business,” he ended.
III