MOON-FACE AND OTHER STORIES
BY JACK LONDON
MOON-FACE
John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind,
cheek-bones wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks
to complete the perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy,
equidistant from the circumference, flattened against the very
centre of the face like a dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that
is why I hated him, for truly he had become an offense to my eyes,
and I believed the earth to be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps
my mother may have been superstitious of the moon and looked upon
it over the wrong shoulder at the wrong time.
Be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me
what society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it. The
evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as
to defy clear, definite analysis in words. We all experience such
things at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a
certain individual, one who the very instant before we did not dream
existed; and yet, at the first moment of meeting, we say: "I do not
like that man." Why do we not like him? Ah, we do not know why; we
know only that we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all. And
so I with John Claverhouse.
What right had such a man to be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He
was always gleeful and laughing. All things were always all right,
curse him! Ah I how it grated on my soul that he should be so happy!
Other men could laugh, and it did not bother me. I even used to
laugh myself--before I met John Claverhouse.
But his laugh! It irritated me, maddened me, as nothing else under
the sun could irritate or madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of
me, and would not let me go. It was a huge, Gargantuan laugh. Waking
or sleeping it was always with me, whirring and jarring across my
heart-strings like an enormous rasp. At break of day it came
whooping across the fields to spoil my pleasant morning revery.
Under the aching noonday glare, when the green things drooped and
the birds withdrew to the depths of the forest, and all nature
drowsed, his great "Ha! ha!" and "Ho! ho!" rose up to the sky and
challenged the sun. And at black midnight, from the lonely
cross-roads where he turned from town into his own place, came his
plaguey cachinnations to rouse me from my sleep and make me writhe
and clench my nails into my palms.
I went forth privily in the night-time, and turned his cattle into
his fields, and in the morning heard his whooping laugh as he drove
them out again. "It is nothing," he said; "the poor, dumb beasties
are not to be blamed for straying into fatter pastures."
He had a dog he called "Mars," a big, splendid brute, part
deer-hound and part blood-hound, and resembling both. Mars was a
great delight to him, and they were always together. But I bided
my time, and one day, when opportunity was ripe, lured the animal
away and settled for him with strychnine and beefsteak. It made
positively no impression on John Claverhouse. His laugh was as
hearty and frequent as ever, and his face as much like the full
moon as it always had been.
Then I set fire to his haystacks and his barn. But the next morning,
being Sunday, he went forth blithe and cheerful.
"Where are you going?" I asked him, as he went by the cross-roads.
"Trout," he said, and his face beamed like a full moon. "I just dote
on trout."
Was there ever such an impossible man! His whole harvest had gone up
in his haystacks and barn. It was uninsured, I knew. And yet, in the
face of famine and the rigorous winter, he went out gayly in quest
of a mess of trout, forsooth, because he "doted" on them! Had gloom
but rested, no matter how lightly, on his brow, or had his bovine
countenance grown long and serious and less like the moon, or had he
removed that smile but once from off his face, I am sure I could
have forgiven him for existing. But no. he grew only more cheerful
under misfortune.
I insulted him. He looked at me in slow and smiling surprise.
"I fight you? Why?" he asked slowly. And then he laughed. "You are so
funny! Ho! ho! You'll be the death of me! He! he! he! Oh! Ho! ho! ho!"
What would you? It was past endurance. By the blood of Judas, how
I hated him! Then there was that name--Claverhouse! What a name!
Wasn't it absurd? Claverhouse! Merciful heaven, WHY Claverhouse?
Again and again I asked myself that question. I should not have
minded Smith, or Brown, or Jones--but CLAVERHOUSE! I leave it to
you. Repeat it to yourself--Claverhouse. Just listen to the
ridiculous sound of it--Claverhouse! Should a man live with such
a name? I ask of you. "No," you say. And "No" said I.
But I bethought me of his mortgage. What of his crops and barn
destroyed, I knew he would be unable to meet it. So I got a shrewd,
close-mouthed, tight-fisted money-lender to get the mortgage
transferred to him. I did not appear but through this agent I forced
the foreclosure, and but few days (no more, believe me, than the
law allowed) were given John Claverhouse to remove his goods and
chattels from the premises. Then I strolled down to see how he took
it, for he had lived there upward of twenty years. But he met me
with his saucer-eyes twinkling, and the light glowing and spreading
in his face till it was as a full-risen moon.
"Ha! ha! ha!" he laughed. "The funniest tike, that youngster of
mine! Did you ever hear the like? Let me tell you. He was down
playing by the edge of the river when a piece of the bank caved in
and splashed him. 'O papa!' he cried; 'a great big puddle flewed
up and hit me.'"
He stopped and waited for me to join him in his infernal glee.
"I don't see any laugh in it," I said shortly, and I know my face
went sour.
He regarded me with wonderment, and then came the damnable light,
glowing and spreading, as I have described it, till his face shone
soft and warm, like the summer moon, and then the laugh--"Ha! ha!
That's funny! You don't see it, eh? He! he! Ho! ho! ho! He doesn't
see it! Why, look here. You know a puddle--"
But I turned on my heel and left him. That was the last. I could
stand it no longer. The thing must end right there, I thought, curse
him! The earth should be quit of him. And as I went over the hill, I
could hear his monstrous laugh reverberating against the sky.
Now, I pride myself on doing things neatly, and when I resolved to
kill John Claverhouse I had it in mind to do so in such fashion that
I should not look back upon it and feel ashamed. I hate bungling,
and I hate brutality. To me there is something repugnant in merely
striking a man with one's naked fist--faugh! it is sickening! So, to
shoot, or stab, or club John Claverhouse (oh, that name!) did not
appeal to me. And not only was I impelled to do it neatly and
artistically, but also in such manner that not the slightest
possible suspicion could be directed against me.
To this end I bent my intellect, and, after a week of profound
incubation, I hatched the scheme. Then I set to work. I bought a
water spaniel bitch, five months old, and devoted my whole attention
to her training. Had any one spied upon me, they would have remarked
that this training consisted entirely of one thing--RETRIEVING. I
taught the dog, which I called "Bellona," to fetch sticks I threw
into the water, and not only to fetch, but to fetch at once, without
mouthing or playing with them. The point was that she was to stop
for nothing, but to deliver the stick in all haste. I made a
practice of running away and leaving her to chase me, with the stick
in her mouth, till she caught me. She was a bright animal, and took
to the game with such eagerness that I was soon content.
After that, at the first casual opportunity, I presented Bellona to
John Claverhouse. I knew what I was about, for I was aware of a
little weakness of his, and of a little private sinning of which he
was regularly and inveterately guilty.
"No," he said, when I placed the end of the rope in his hand. "No,
you don't mean it." And his mouth opened wide and he grinned all
over his damnable moon-face.
"I--I kind of thought, somehow, you didn't like me," he explained.
"Wasn't it funny for me to make such a mistake?" And at the thought
he held his sides with laughter.
"What is her name?" he managed to ask between paroxysms.
"Bellona," I said.
"He! he!" he tittered. "What a funny name."
I gritted my teeth, for his mirth put them on edge, and snapped out
between them, "She was the wife of Mars, you know."
Then the light of the full moon began to suffuse his face, until he
exploded with: "That was my other dog. Well, I guess she's a widow
now. Oh! Ho! ho! E! he! he! Ho!" he whooped after me, and I turned
and fled swiftly over the hill.
The week passed by, and on Saturday evening I said to him, "You go
away Monday, don't you?"
He nodded his head and grinned.
"Then you won't have another chance to get a mess of those trout you
just 'dote' on."
But he did not notice the sneer. "Oh, I don't know," he chuckled.
"I'm going up to-morrow to try pretty hard."
Thus was assurance made doubly sure, and I went back to my house
hugging myself with rapture.
Early next morning I saw him go by with a dip-net and gunnysack, and
Bellona trotting at his heels. I knew where he was bound, and cut
out by the back pasture and climbed through the underbrush to the
top of the mountain. Keeping carefully out of sight, I followed the
crest along for a couple of miles to a natural amphitheatre in the
hills, where the little river raced down out of a gorge and stopped
for breath in a large and placid rock-bound pool. That was the spot!
I sat down on the croup of the mountain, where I could see all that
occurred, and lighted my pipe.
Ere many minutes had passed, John Claverhouse came plodding up the
bed of the stream. Bellona was ambling about him, and they were in
high feather, her short, snappy barks mingling with his deeper
chest-notes. Arrived at the pool, he threw down the dip-net and
sack, and drew from his hip-pocket what looked like a large, fat
candle. But I knew it to be a stick of "giant"; for such was his
method of catching trout. He dynamited them. He attached the fuse by
wrapping the "giant" tightly in a piece of cotton. Then he ignited
the fuse and tossed the explosive into the pool.
Like a flash, Bellona was into the pool after it. I could have
shrieked aloud for joy. Claverhouse yelled at her, but without
avail. He pelted her with clods and rocks, but she swam steadily on
till she got the stick of "giant" in her mouth, when she whirled
about and headed for shore. Then, for the first time, he realized
his danger, and started to run. As foreseen and planned by me, she
made the bank and took out after him. Oh, I tell you, it was great!
As I have said, the pool lay in a sort of amphitheatre. Above and
below, the stream could be crossed on stepping-stones. And around
and around, up and down and across the stones, raced Claverhouse and
Bellona. I could never have believed that such an ungainly man could
run so fast. But run he did, Bellona hot-footed after him, and
gaining. And then, just as she caught up, he in full stride, and she
leaping with nose at his knee, there was a sudden flash, a burst of
smoke, a terrific detonation, and where man and dog had been the
instant before there was naught to be seen but a big hole in the
ground.
"Death from accident while engaged in illegal fishing." That was the
verdict of the coroner's jury; and that is why I pride myself on the
neat and artistic way in which I finished off John Claverhouse.
There was no bungling, no brutality; nothing of which to be ashamed
in the whole transaction, as I am sure you will agree. No more does
his infernal laugh go echoing among the hills, and no more does his
fat moon-face rise up to vex me. My days are peaceful now, and my
night's sleep deep.
