H.P. Lovecraft - Old Bugs

H.P. LOVECRAFT

OLD BUGS
AN EXTEMPORANEOUS SOB STORY BY
MARCUS LOLLIUS, PROCONSUL OF GAUL

Written in 1919

OLD BUGS

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 attaches 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 habitues 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 fiance 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
motionpicture 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'1' 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 fiery 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 of 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."

Habitues 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 far 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 glassyeyed 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.

THE END