The Stratagem and Other Stories

II. Theodore Bugg, a year later, was paying the price of his fall. He had allowed Gertrude to attend Art Classes, although he knew it to be wrong. But he had grown to fear his daughter, and—on such a point especially—he was incapable of fighting her. For there were times when he tried to persuade himself that there was “nothing wrong in it.” A brother church-warden had looked a little askance when the news of Gertrude's “advanced ideas” had come; but Theodore had stoutly and even a little sternly rebuked him with the original remark: “To the pure all things are pure.” It was knowing when to be bold that had made Theodore the fine business man he was. And very bold it was, for conscience makes cowards of us all. The secret shame of his orgies! Every week- night—once even on a Sunday!—after everyone had gone to bed, he opened the little safe in the wall at the head of his bed, and drew forth the obscene picture from its envelope marked “In case of my death or dis- ability THIS PACKET is to be DESTROYED UNOPENED. T. Bugg.” Then he would sit, and hold it in his hot hands, and gloat upon the evil thing, lifting it now and again to his mouth to cover it with greedy, slobbering kisses. And afterwards, when it was safely locked up again, he would undress with a certain unction. Once even he at- tempted—with the aid of a bath towel—to take the pose before the mirror. And he saw nothing ridiculous in that, just as he saw nothing beautiful in the photograph. Na- kedness is lust: so ran his simple gospel of aesthetics. Shame quickened him, too, to measures of expiation or precaution. He read family prayers twice a day in- stead of once, and he took the chair at the Annual Meet- ing of a Society for Sending Out Trousers to Converted Hindoos. As everybody in the Midlands knows, “Hindoos” are Naked Savages.