The Tarantula

Summary

A velvet-clad Manhattanite, Beauty Smythe, lounges in mahogany-scented privilege when Van Allen uncorks a venomous parable: Teddy, Smythe’s mirror-image, once chased the sun-drenched illusion of Chonita across Mexico’s sierras, promising marriage while already bound by a gilded New York family; the spurned Pedro and a patriarchal thunderclap exile the lovers, yet Teddy’s cowardice blooms in the shadow of a single tarantula—an eight-legged totem of his own skittering conscience. Chonita, birthing her child into dirt-floored desolation, ascends from ruin to become a flame-lit dancer in a tawdry hall, her hips writing revenge in smoke. She ships herself northward, dagger refused, carrying instead a lacquered box that pulses like a heart. In a penthouse overlooking the same river that once bore Teddy’s escape, she gifts him the spider; its hairy legs scuttle across his naked terror, and the poisoned epiphany kills not merely flesh but the legend of the untouchable rake. The tale’s final twitch: Smythe’s unmailed billet-doux flutters into waste-paper damnation, a silent covenant that the past’s articulated fangs still twitch beneath modern parquet.

Synopsis

"Beauty Smythe is at his old tricks again. Look at the raving beauty he's got on the string now." This was Manning's contribution to the discussion, which was taking place in one of New York's most exclusive clubs. All seemed to take a jolly view of the matter, except Van Allen, who, the others noticed, looked with disapproval on the flirtation. They could not understand his mood, and prodded him for his prudishness. When Smythe joined them, Van Allen called him over and asked him to listen to the story he was about to tell, the story of one man who paid for his loose habits. First, he drew from his pocket, a picture of a young man, about Smythe's age. "My sister's only boy," he said. "Two years ago he was leading the kind of life you are now, Smythe. He came down to Mexico to visit me and met Chonita, a pretty Mexican girl. He immediately became infatuated with her, to the consternation of Pedro, another of her lovers, who soon saw that Teddy held a higher place in her heart than he. When her father heard of the affair, he sent her away to their summer hacienda, hoping that she would forget Teddy. Then Ted received an invitation from a friend to spend the summer with him, and accepted. Out hunting one day, he met Chonita and both were happy at the reunion. He told her of his love for her, and she believed him. Of course he promised to marry her. One day, while walking through the forest. Ted just missed stepping on a tarantula, and shrinking from the hideous thing, told Chonita that he feared those terrible spiders worse than anything on earth. Sometime later, Ted received a note from her telling him to meet her at the usual place, and from the tone of the note he knew what had happened. She came, and brought a minister with her, but Teddy was married, and had two children, so even if he had wanted to, he could not have married her. Before word got back to the hacienda, Ted had hopped on a horse and started at a mad gallop for the railroad station, to avoid the wrath of her father and Pedro. Back in New York once more, he felt secure. Chonita meanwhile was thrown out of her father's house, and her child was born in an abandoned cabin. It lived but a few hours. Then Chonita got a position as dancer in a cheap music hall and became popular immediately. The proprietor of a New York café, seeing her perform, asked her to come to the city and dance for him. When she remembered that her betrayer was also in the city, she accepted. Hearing of her proposed trip, her father sent her a dagger, so that she might first kill Teddy and then herself, but she returned it, telling him that she would choose her own method of death for both of them. In the city she met Teddy once more. She responded to all his advances and finally induced him to invite her to his apartment. Here she presented him with an elaborate jewel case, which, she said, contained a gift. When his anxious hands opened the case, a giant tarantula crawled out. Need I tell you that he died a terrible death?" In a meditative mood, Beauty Smythe sat in his room and reflected on what he had heard. Then the moral hit home, and the letter he had intended sending to his latest "sweetheart" never went further than the trash basket.