object:1f.lovecraft - Old Bugs
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter
An Extemporaneous Sob Story
by Marcus Lollius, Proconsul of Gaul
Sheehan’s Pool Room, which adorns one of the lesser alleys in the heart
of Chicago’s stockyard district, is not a nice place. Its air,
freighted with a thousand odours such as Coleridge may have found at
Cologne, too seldom knows the purifying rays of the sun; but fights for
space with the acrid fumes of unnumbered cheap cigars and cigarettes
which dangle from the coarse lips of unnumbered human animals that
haunt the place day and night. But the popularity of Sheehan’s remains
unimpaired; and for this there is a reason—a reason obvious to anyone
who will take the trouble to analyse the mixed stenches prevailing
there. Over and above the fumes and sickening closeness rises an aroma
once familiar throughout the land, but now happily banished to the back
streets of life by the edict of a benevolent government—the aroma of
strong, wicked whiskey—a precious kind of forbidden fruit indeed in
this year of grace 1950.
Sheehan’s is the acknowledged centre to Chicago’s subterranean traffic
in liquor and narcotics, and as such has a certain dignity which
extends even to the unkempt attachés of the place; but there was until
lately one who lay outside the pale of that dignity—one who shared the
squalor and filth, but not the importance, of Sheehan’s. He was called
“Old Bugs”, and was the most disreputable object in a disreputable
environment. What he had once been, many tried to guess; for his
language and mode of utterance when intoxicated to a certain degree
were such as to excite wonderment; but what he was, presented less
difficulty—for “Old Bugs”, in superlative degree, epitomised the
pathetic species known as the “bum” or the “down-and-outer”. Whence he
had come, no one could tell. One night he had burst wildly into
Sheehan’s, foaming at the mouth and screaming for whiskey and hasheesh;
and having been supplied in exchange for a promise to perform odd jobs,
had hung about ever since, mopping floors, cleaning cuspidors and
glasses, and attending to an hundred similar menial duties in exchange
for the drink and drugs which were necessary to keep him alive and
sane.
He talked but little, and usually in the common jargon of the
underworld; but occasionally, when inflamed by an unusually generous
dose of crude whiskey, would burst forth into strings of
incomprehensible polysyllables and snatches of sonorous prose and verse
which led certain habitués to conjecture that he had seen better days.
One steady patron—a bank defaulter under cover—came to converse with
him quite regularly, and from the tone of his discourse ventured the
opinion that he had been a writer or professor in his day. But the only
tangible clue to Old Bugs’ past was a faded photograph which he
constantly carried about with him—the photograph of a young woman of
noble and beautiful features. This he would sometimes draw from his
tattered pocket, carefully unwrap from its covering of tissue paper,
and gaze upon for hours with an expression of ineffable sadness and
tenderness. It was not the portrait of one whom an underworld denizen
would be likely to know, but of a lady of breeding and quality, garbed
in the quaint attire of thirty years before. Old Bugs himself seemed
also to belong to the past, for his nondescript clothing bore every
hallmark of antiquity. He was a man of immense height, probably more
than six feet, though his stooping shoulders sometimes belied this
fact. His hair, a dirty white and falling out in patches, was never
combed; and over his lean face grew a mangy stubble of coarse beard
which seemed always to remain at the bristling stage—never shaven—yet
never long enough to form a respectable set of whiskers. His features
had perhaps been noble once, but were now seamed with the ghastly
effects of terrible dissipation. At one time—probably in middle life—he
had evidently been grossly fat; but now he was horribly lean, the
purple flesh hanging in loose pouches under his bleary eyes and upon
his cheeks. Altogether, Old Bugs was not pleasing to look upon.
The disposition of Old Bugs was as odd as his aspect. Ordinarily he was
true to the derelict type—ready to do anything for a nickel or a dose
of whiskey or hasheesh—but at rare intervals he shewed the traits which
earned him his name. Then he would try to straighten up, and a certain
fire would creep into the sunken eyes. His demeanour would assume an
unwonted grace and even dignity; and the sodden creatures around him
would sense something of superiority—something which made them less
ready to give the usual kicks and cuffs to the poor butt and drudge. At
these times he would shew a sardonic humour and make remarks which the
folk of Sheehan’s deemed foolish and irrational. But the spells would
soon pass, and once more Old Bugs would resume his eternal
floor-scrubbing and cuspidor-cleaning. But for one thing Old Bugs would
have been an ideal slave to the establishment—and that one thing was
his conduct when young men were introduced for their first drink. The
old man would then rise from the floor in anger and excitement,
muttering threats and warnings, and seeking to dissuade the novices
from embarking upon their course of “seeing life as it is”. He would
sputter and fume, exploding into sesquipedalian admonitions and strange
oaths, and animated by a frightful earnestness which brought a shudder
to more than one drug-racked mind in the crowded room. But after a time
his alcohol-enfeebled brain would wander from the subject, and with a
foolish grin he would turn once more to his mop or cleaning-rag.
I do not think that many of Sheehan’s regular patrons will ever forget
the day that young Alfred Trever came. He was rather a “find”—a rich
and high-spirited youth who would “go the limit” in anything he
undertook—at least, that was the verdict of Pete Schultz, Sheehan’s
“runner”, who had come across the boy at Lawrence College, in the small
town of Appleton, Wisconsin. Trever was the son of prominent parents in
Appleton. His father, Karl Trever, was an attorney and citizen of
distinction, whilst his mother had made an enviable reputation as a
poetess under her maiden name of Eleanor Wing. Alfred was himself a
scholar and poet of distinction, though cursed with a certain childish
irresponsibility which made him an ideal prey for Sheehan’s runner. He
was blond, handsome, and spoiled; vivacious and eager to taste the
several forms of dissipation about which he had read and heard. At
Lawrence he had been prominent in the mock-fraternity of “Tappa Tappa
Keg”, where he was the wildest and merriest of the wild and merry young
roysterers; but this immature, collegiate frivolity did not satisfy
him. He knew deeper vices through books, and he now longed to know them
at first hand. Perhaps this tendency toward wildness had been
stimulated somewhat by the repression to which he had been subjected at
home; for Mrs. Trever had particular reason for training her only child
with rigid severity. She had, in her own youth, been deeply and
permanently impressed with the horror of dissipation by the case of one
to whom she had for a time been engaged.
Young Galpin, the fiancé in question, had been one of Appleton’s most
remarkable sons. Attaining distinction as a boy through his wonderful
mentality, he won vast fame at the University of Wisconsin, and at the
age of twenty-three returned to Appleton to take up a professorship at
Lawrence and to slip a diamond upon the finger of Appleton’s fairest
and most brilliant daughter. For a season all went happily, till
without warning the storm burst. Evil habits, dating from a first drink
taken years before in woodland seclusion, made themselves manifest in
the young professor; and only by a hurried resignation did he escape a
nasty prosecution for injury to the habits and morals of the pupils
under his charge. His engagement broken, Galpin moved east to begin
life anew; but before long, Appletonians heard of his dismissal in
disgrace from New York University, where he had obtained an
instructorship in English. Galpin now devoted his time to the library
and lecture platform, preparing volumes and speeches on various
subjects connected with belles lettres, and always shewing a genius so
remarkable that it seemed as if the public must sometime pardon him for
his past mistakes. His impassioned lectures in defence of Villon, Poe,
Verlaine, and Oscar Wilde were applied to himself as well, and in the
short Indian summer of his glory there was talk of a renewed engagement
at a certain cultured home on Park Avenue. But then the blow fell. A
final disgrace, compared to which the others had been as nothing,
shattered the illusions of those who had come to believe in Galpin’s
reform; and the young man abandoned his name and disappeared from
public view. Rumour now and then associated him with a certain “Consul
Hasting” whose work for the stage and for motion-picture companies
attracted a certain degree of attention because of its scholarly
breadth and depth; but Hasting soon disappeared from the public eye,
and Galpin became only a name for parents to quote in warning accents.
Eleanor Wing soon celebrated her marriage to Karl Trever, a rising
young lawyer, and of her former admirer retained only enough memory to
dictate the naming of her only son, and the moral guidance of that
handsome and headstrong youth. Now, in spite of all that guidance,
Alfred Trever was at Sheehan’s and about to take his first drink.
“Boss,” cried Schultz, as he entered the vile-smelling room with his
young victim, “meet my friend Al Trever, bes’ li’l’ sport up at
Lawrence—thas’ ’n Appleton, Wis., y’ know. Some swell guy, too—’s
father’s a big corp’ration lawyer up in his burg, ’n’ ’s mother’s some
lit’ry genius. He wants to see life as she is—wants to know what the
real lightnin’ juice tastes like—so jus’ remember he’s me friend an’
treat ’im right.”
As the names Trever, Lawrence, and Appleton fell on the air, the
loafers seemed to sense something unusual. Perhaps it was only some
sound connected with the clicking balls of the pool tables or the
rattling glasses that were brought from the cryptic regions in the
rear—perhaps only that, plus some strange rustling of the dirty
draperies at the one dingy window—but many thought that someone in the
room had gritted his teeth and drawn a very sharp breath.
“Glad to know you, Sheehan,” said Trever in a quiet, well-bred tone.
“This is my first experience in a place like this, but I am a student
of life, and don’t want to miss any experience. There’s poetry in this
sort of thing, you know—or perhaps you don’t know, but it’s all the
same.”
“Young feller,” responded the proprietor, “ya come tuh th’ right place
tuh see life. We got all kinds here—reel life an’ a good time. The
damn’ government can try tuh make folks good ef it wants tuh, but it
can’t stop a feller from hittin’ ’er up when he feels like it. Whaddya
want, feller—booze, coke, or some other sorta dope? Yuh can’t ask for
nothin’ we ain’t got.”
Habitués say that it was at this point they noticed a cessation in the
regular, monotonous strokes of the mop.
“I want whiskey—good old-fashioned rye!” exclaimed Trever
enthusiastically. “I’ll tell you, I’m good and tired of water after
reading of the merry bouts fellows used to have in the old days. I
can’t read an Anacreontic without watering at the mouth—and it’s
something a lot stronger than water that my mouth waters for!”
“Anacreontic—what ’n hell’s that?” several hangers-on looked up as the
young man went slightly beyond their depth. But the bank defaulter
under cover explained to them that Anacreon was a gay old dog who lived
many years ago and wrote about the fun he had when all the world was
just like Sheehan’s.
“Let me see, Trever,” continued the defaulter, “didn’t Schultz say your
mother is a literary person, too?”
“Yes, damn it,” replied Trever, “but nothing like the old Teian! She’s
one of those dull, eternal moralisers that try to take all the joy out
of life. Namby-pamby sort—ever heard of her? She writes under her
maiden name of Eleanor Wing.”
Here it was that Old Bugs dropped his mop.
“Well, here’s yer stuff,” announced Sheehan jovially as a tray of
bottles and glasses was wheeled into the room. “Good old rye, an’ as
fiery as ya kin find anyw’eres in Chi’.”
The youth’s eyes glistened and his nostrils curled at the fumes of the
brownish fluid which an attendant was pouring out for him. It repelled
him horribly, and revolted all his inherited delicacy; but his
determination to taste life to the full remained with him, and he
maintained a bold front. But before his resolution was put to the test,
the unexpected intervened. Old Bugs, springing up from the crouching
position in which he had hitherto been, leaped at the youth and dashed
from his hands the uplifted glass, almost simultaneously attacking the
tray of bottles and glasses with his mop, and scattering the contents
upon the floor in a confusion of odoriferous fluid and broken bottles
and tumblers. Numbers of men, or things which had been men, dropped to
the floor and began lapping at the puddles of spilled liquor, but most
remained immovable, watching the unprecedented actions of the barroom
drudge and derelict. Old Bugs straightened up before the astonished
Trever, and in a mild and cultivated voice said, “Do not do this thing.
I was like you once, and I did it. Now I am like—this.”
“What do you mean, you damned old fool?” shouted Trever. “What do you
mean by interfering with a gentleman in his pleasures?”
Sheehan, now recovering from his astonishment, advanced and laid a
heavy hand on the old waif’s shoulder.
“This is the last time for you, old bird!” he exclaimed furiously.
“When a gen’l’man wants tuh take a drink here, by God, he shall,
without you interferin’. Now get th’ hell outa here afore I kick hell
outa ya.”
But Sheehan had reckoned without scientific knowledge of abnormal
psychology and the effects of nervous stimulus. Old Bugs, obtaining a
firmer hold on his mop, began to wield it like the javelin of a
Macedonian hoplite, and soon cleared a considerable space around
himself, meanwhile shouting various disconnected bits of quotation,
among which was prominently repeated, “ . . . the sons of Belial, blown
with insolence and wine.”
The room became pandemonium, and men screamed and howled in fright at
the sinister being they had aroused. Trever seemed dazed in the
confusion, and shrank to the wall as the strife thickened. “He shall
not drink! He shall not drink!” Thus roared Old Bugs as he seemed to
run out of—or rise above—quotations. Policemen appeared at the door,
attracted by the noise, but for a time they made no move to intervene.
Trever, now thoroughly terrified and cured forever of his desire to see
life via the vice route, edged closer to the blue-coated newcomers.
Could he but escape and catch a train for Appleton, he reflected, he
would consider his education in dissipation quite complete.
Then suddenly Old Bugs ceased to wield his javelin and stopped
still—drawing himself up more erectly than any denizen of the place had
ever seen him before. “Ave, Caesar, moriturus te saluto!” he shouted,
and dropped to the whiskey-reeking floor, never to rise again.
Subsequent impressions will never leave the mind of young Trever. The
picture is blurred, but ineradicable. Policemen ploughed a way through
the crowd, questioning everyone closely both about the incident and
about the dead figure on the floor. Sheehan especially did they ply
with inquiries, yet without eliciting any information of value
concerning Old Bugs. Then the bank defaulter remembered the picture,
and suggested that it be viewed and filed for identification at police
headquarters. An officer bent reluctantly over the loathsome
glassy-eyed form and found the tissue-wrapped cardboard, which he
passed around among the others.
“Some chicken!” leered a drunken man as he viewed the beautiful face,
but those who were sober did not leer, looking with respect and
abashment at the delicate and spiritual features. No one seemed able to
place the subject, and all wondered that the drug-degraded derelict
should have such a portrait in his possession—that is, all but the bank
defaulter, who was meanwhile eyeing the intruding bluecoats rather
uneasily. He had seen a little deeper beneath Old Bugs’ mask of utter
degradation.
Then the picture was passed to Trever, and a change came over the
youth. After the first start, he replaced the tissue wrapping around
the portrait, as if to shield it from the sordidness of the place. Then
he gazed long and searchingly at the figure on the floor, noting its
great height, and the aristocratic cast of features which seemed to
appear now that the wretched flame of life had flickered out. No, he
said hastily, as the question was put to him, he did not know the
subject of the picture. It was so old, he added, that no one now could
be expected to recognise it.
But Alfred Trever did not speak the truth, as many guessed when he
offered to take charge of the body and secure its interment in
Appleton. Over the library mantel in his home hung the exact replica of
that picture, and all his life he had known and loved its original.
For the gentle and noble features were those of his own mother.
Return to “Old Bugs”
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