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Title: May Fair
being an entertainment purporting to reveal to gentlefolk the
real state of affairs existing in the very heart of London during the fifteenth
and sixteenth years of the reign of His Majesty King George the Fifth:
together with suitable reflections on the last follies, misadventures and
galanteries of these charming people
Author: Michael Arlen
Release date: January 8, 2024 [eBook #72651]
Language: English
Original publication: NYC: George H. Doran Company, 1925
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously
made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAY FAIR ***
LAST ADVENTURES OF THESE CHARMING
PEOPLE
May Fair
By
Michael Arlen
May Fair
———
MICHAEL ARLEN
By MICHAEL ARLEN
May Fair
The Green Hat
These Charming People
“Piracy”
The London Venture
The Romantic Lady
A Paramount Picture. The Ace of Cads.
THE ONLY FINE THING IN “BEAU” MATURIN’S LIFE—HIS LOVE
FOR ELEANOUR.
May Fair
BEING AN ENTERTAINMENT PURPORTING TO
REVEAL TO GENTLEFOLK THE REAL STATE
OF AFFAIRS EXISTING IN THE VERY HEART
OF LONDON DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND
SIXTEENTH YEARS OF THE REIGN OF
HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE THE FIFTH:
TOGETHER WITH SUITABLE REFLEC-
TIONS ON THE LAST FOLLIES, MIS-
ADVENTURES AND GALANTERIES
OF THESE CHARMING PEOPLE BY
Michael Arlen
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1925,
By George H. Doran Company
MAY FAIR
—B—
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
PAGE
PROLOGUE 9
I A ROMANCE IN OLD BRANDY 36
II THE ACE OF CADS 59
III WHERE THE PIGEONS GO TO DIE 95
IV THE BATTLE OF BERKELEY SQUARE 116
V THE PRINCE OF THE JEWS 133
VI THE THREE-CORNERED MOON 166
VII THE REVOLTING DOOM OF A GENTLEMAN WHO 202
WOULD NOT DANCE WITH HIS WIFE
VIII THE GENTLEMAN FROM AMERICA 224
IX TO LAMOIR 251
X THE GHOUL OF GOLDERS GREEN 276
XI FAREWELL, THESE CHARMING PEOPLE 327
MAY FAIR
Michael Arlen
PROLOGUE
ONCE upon a time in London there was a young gentleman who had
nothing better to do one afternoon, so what should he do but take a walk?
Now he did not set out as one on pleasure bent, but with an air of
determination that would have surprised his friends, saying between his
teeth: “I have always heard that walking is good exercise. I will try a bit.”
However, he had not walked far before circumstances compelled him to
abate his ardour, for it was an afternoon in July and quite warm for the time
of the year.
Eastward our young gentleman strode, by Sloane Street, through
Knightsbridge, across Hyde Park Corner, he strode even from Chelsea to
Mayfair; for he was by way of being a writer and lived in Chelsea, whereas
his people lived in Mayfair and understood nothing.
Now while we are about it we may as well add that the young writer’s
father was a baronet who had for some years been a perfect martyr to
bankruptcy, and had called his son to him on this afternoon to impress upon
him the fact that in future he, the young writer’s father, could not and would
not be a victim to his, the young writer’s, extravagances. So much, then, for
the young writer’s father; but with himself we must continue yet a while,
although what this tale is really about is a hand and a flower.
For that is what he chanced to see on the afternoon we tell of, a hand and
a flower; and since it was inconceivable that the hand could belong to a
man, so white and delicate it was, he put two and two together and decided
that it could only belong to a lady. Further, there was that about the droop of
the hand which fired him to think of it as the hand of an unhappy heart.
While as for the flower, it was scarlet, and of the sort that anyone can buy at
any florist’s by just going in and saying: “I want some carnations, please,
but not white ones, please, thank you, good-day.”
Now the sun was so high and bright over London that day that the voices
of Americans were distinctly heard rising above the polished tumult of the
Berkeley Hotel, crying plaintively for ice; and when at last our young writer
came into Mayfair he was grateful for the cool quiet streets, but being still
at some discomfort from the effects of the heat on his person, he thought to
turn into Mount Street Gardens and rest a while beneath the trees.
This, however, he was not to do that afternoon; for it chanced that he had
not walked far towards that pleasaunce when, at that point of the pretty
quarter of Mayfair where South Street becomes North Street and Grosvenor
Square is but a step in the right direction, he was drawn to admire a great
house that stood in a walled garden. Quite a country-house this looked like,
and right in the heart of the town, so that our young gentleman thought:
“Now I wonder whose house that is. Ah, to be rich! Or, at least, to be so
attractive that rich people would take one to their hearts on sight!”
In this wise relishing the deplorable charms of money, he had stared long
over the wall at the house in the garden had not something happened which
instantly gave his fancies a prettier turn: for what should he suddenly espy
through the curtain of leaves but a hand drooping from one of the upper
windows, and what should he espy in the hand but a scarlet flower?
Now that made a delightful picture of innocence, of dreaming youth and
fond imagining, and not at all the sort of thing you see every day, especially
in Mayfair, where motor-cars grow from the cracks in the pavements and
ladies recline in slenderness on divans, playing with rosaries of black pearls
and eating scented macaroons out of bowls of white jade.
Presently a policeman happened by, and the young gentleman thought to
turn from the wall and greet him in a friendly way with a view to further
conversation.
“And what,” he asked, “is the name of the lady who lives in the house
with the garden?”
“Young sir,” said the policeman severely, “that will do from you.”
“I beg your pardon!” said the young writer with spirit.
“Granted,” said the policeman severely.
“But this is absurd! I am an honest man and I have asked you an honest
question.”
The policeman unbent his expression so far as to say, with a significant
look at the great house in the walled garden: “Young sir,” said he, “there
danger lies for the likes of you. For the likes of her is not for the likes of
you.”
“Oh, nonsense!” cried our young gentleman. “This is a free country. This
is not America!”
“Is it swearing at me you are?” said the policeman severely. “Now move
on, young man, move on.”
“I will not!” cried our hero.
“Well, I will!” said the policeman, and walked away, while the young
gentleman turned away from this unsatisfactory conversation just in time,
alas, to see the scarlet flower drop from the white fingers; and the hand was
withdrawn.
Now such was the effect of the hand and the flower on the young
writer’s susceptible mind that he quite forgot to go and see his father, who
thereupon cut him off with a shilling, which he sent to the young writer in
the form of postage stamps. But the occasion was not without some profit,
albeit of the spiritual sort, to the young man; for that very night he dreamed
he was kissing that very hand, and who shall say that that was all he
dreamed, for surely he is a sorry young man who cannot kiss more than a
lady’s hand in a dream.
II
The Court Chronicles of the Grand Duchy of Valeria report the following
conversation as having taken place between the reigning Duke and his
consort. That the conversation took place in London is undoubtedly due to
the fact that the Royal Duke and his Duchess were at the time on a state
visit to that capital, with a view to taking a turn around the Wembley
Exhibition.
“We will give a ball,” said His Highness the Hereditary Grand Duke of
Valeria. “In fact, we must give a ball. And everyone in London will come to
it.”
“Why should they?” said Her Highness.
“Now try not to be disagreeable, my dear. I have no idea why they
should, but I am positive they will. They always do.”
“But, Frederick, what is the matter with you to-night? Why do you want
to give a ball, since you cannot dance? Upon my word, if I danced like you
I should be ill at the very idea of a ball! So be sensible, my love, and go to
sleep again.”
“Now try not to be unpleasant, Ethelberta. You do not seem to
understand that people in our position must every now and then give a ball.
That is undoubtedly what balls are for, that people in our position should
give them. I have worked out the matter very carefully.”
“Then you are quite wrong, my love. Balls are for something quite
different. I assure you that I have also worked out the matter very carefully.
Balls are for English people to give, Americans to pay for, and Argentines
to dance at.”
“Now try not to be tiresome, my dear. It will seem extremely peculiar in
us not to give at least one ball while we are in London. The Diplomatic
Corps will not fail to remark our ill-timed economy. Do you forget that we
are Royalty?”
“Fiddledidee!” said the Duchess.
“Now,” said the Duke, “try not to be——”
“Bother Royalty!” said the Duchess. “I’ve never got anything by being
Royal except to be treated like a village idiot all my life. And now you want
me to give a beastly ball, at which I shall have to dance with a lot of clumsy
Ambassadors. Frederick, I tell you here and now that I will not give a ball.
And if you want to know my reasons for not giving a ball, they are, briefly,
as follows.”
They followed.
“Whereas,” said His Highness, “my reasons for wishing to give this
confounded ball are not entirely social. Our daughter——”
“You are not going to pretend, my love, that the happiness of our only
daughter is influencing you in the least! You will not dare to pretend that,
Frederick, considering that ever since we have been in London you have
kept the poor child locked in her room.”
“You know very well,” said the Duke hotly, “that we both decided that in
the circumstances——”
“Well, I think it’s most insanitary,” said the Duchess, “keeping the poor
child locked in her room day in and day out! In the end all that will happen
will be that she will lose her figure and no one will marry her at all and then
where are we?”
“Ethelberta!” cried His Highness, leaping from the bed and looking
sternly down at her. “I did not think you could carry levity so far. Woman,
would you compromise with our honour and the honour of Valeria?”
“If there was any money in it, my love, I would of course ask your
advice first, as you know so much more than I do about selling things. I
really don’t know where we would be now if you hadn’t been so clever
about our neutrality during the war. Now, my love, stop being silly and get
back to bed. You look too ridiculous in those bright pink pyjamas. What the
Lord-in-Waiting was doing to let you buy them I can’t imagine!”
“Ethelberta,” said His Highness sternly, “understand this! We are in
England, at considerable expense——”
“Naturally, my love, if you will buy pyjamas like that!”
“—— to avenge a mortal insult to our honour. Woman, would you have
our innocent daughter be spurned by the villain who seduced her?”
“These are strong words!” said the Duchess.
“I feel strongly about it,” said the Duke.
“And anyhow, she can’t be as innocent as all that,” said the Duchess
thoughtfully, “now. I know girls. Oh, dear, what fun girls have!”
“Ethelberta, this English lord must die!”
“All English lords must die, my love, in due course. It is a law of nature.
Now come back to bed.”
“I have worked the matter out very carefully, and that is why I am giving
this ball. We cannot kill this coward out-of-hand by hiring some low
assassin, for he is, after all, a gentleman. And besides, in this confounded
country,” His Highness continued warmly, “you cannot fire a revolver
without every policeman in the neighbourhood wanting to know why you
did it. Therefore, the ball.”
“What, are you going to fire revolvers off at our ball? My love, are you
sure that will be quite safe?”
“My idea is that the noise of the ball will screen the rattle of musketry.
For that purpose I shall engage the most violent saxophone-player in the
country. I have already taken advice on that point. The firing-party will, of
course, be in the garden. So now, Ethelberta, you understand why we must
give this——”
“Oh, give your rotten ball!” said Her Highness sleepily.
III
The red carpet stretched from the doors of the great house in the walled
garden to the broad pavement where South Street meets North Street and
Grosvenor Square is but a step in the right direction; and up the red carpet
walked the flower of England’s quality and fashion and the loftiest
dignitaries of the Church and Press. Came, too, all the circumstance of
diplomacy and the first among the burgesses. Decorations were worn. Art
and literature were represented only by a painter with a beard who had
forgotten to wear a tie, a young reporter with a boil on his neck, and a
rugged novelist with a large circulation who liked hunting. Came, too, all
the first actors of the day, talking about themselves to each other and
thinking about each other to themselves. All the most intelligent young
ladies of Society were present, murmuring hoarsely to each other: “One
really cannot understand how one can come to a party when one might be
reading a book by Maurice Baring.” Footlight favourites by Royal
Appointment. Astorias and his band of the Loyalty Club were engaged to
play. The reception given to the honourable company in every way
accorded with the ancient dignity of the Grand Duchy of Valeria. The guests
passed between two lines of the Hussars of Death or Honour, brilliant in
white uniforms with crimson facings, epaulettes of gold and cloaks of black
gabardine lined with ermine, under the command of Baron Hugo von
Müsselsaroffsir. Champagne by G. H. Mumm.
Not among the last to arrive was my lord Viscount Quorn, a young
nobleman whose handsome looks and plausible address were fated to be as
a snare and a delusion to those who were not immediately informed as to
his disordered temperament and irregular habits. Yet, although many a
pretty young lady had lived to regret with burning tears the confidence she
had been persuaded to misplace in that young gallant’s code of chivalry, not
a man in England could be found to impugn my lord’s honour; for was he
not renowned from Ranelagh to Meadowbrook for his incomparable agility,
did not Australian cricketers wince at the mere mention of the name of
Quorn, and did any soldier present on the high occasion we tell of wear
pinned across his breast braver emblems of gallantry in war?
With him to the Duke’s ball came his boon companion, Mr. Woodhouse
Adams, a gentleman whose claim to the regard of his familiars was based
solidly on the fact that he knew a horse when he saw one; yet so great was
his reserve that what he knew when he did not see a horse was a secret
which Mr. Woodhouse Adams jealously guarded from even his most
intimate friends. On this occasion, however, as they walked up the red
carpet to the open doors of the house in the walled garden, Mr. Woodhouse
Adams appeared to be unable to control a particular indignation, and
presently spoke to the following effect:
“If you ask my opinion, Condor, I think you are putting your jaws into
the lion’s head.”
“I gather,” said Lord Quorn, whose nickname took the peculiar form of
Condor for reasons which are quite foreign to this story, “that you mean I
am putting my head into the lion’s jaws. It may be so. But I tell you,
Charles, that I am in love with this girl. At last, I am in love. And I am not
going to miss the most slender chance of seeing her again—not to speak of
my desire to take this unrivalled opportunity of paying my respects to her
father with a view to a matrimonial entanglement.”
“You’re not going to do that!” incredulously cried his friend.
“Almost at once,” said Lord Quorn.
“Gentlemen’s Cloak-Room on the left,” said a Hussar of Death or
Honour.
“Am I speaking to milord Quorn?” asked a page bearing a salver of gold.
“You are, boy.”
“Then I have the honour, milord, to be the bearer of a note to milord
from my mistress, Her Select Highness the Princess Baba.”
“Well, don’t shout the glad news all over the Cloak-Room,” said Mr.
Woodhouse Adams.
“Go tell Her Highness,” said my lord to the boy, “that I shall beg the
honour of the first dance with her.”
“Milord, I go!” said the page, and went.
“I don’t like that boy,” said Mr. Woodhouse Adams.
“This note,” said Lord Quorn, “touches me very nearly.”
“Good Lord, Condor, she doesn’t want to borrow money from you
already! Gad, my father was right when he told me on his death-bed never
to have any financial dealings with Royalty. His exact words were: ‘It takes
four Greeks to get the better of a Jew, three Jews to deal with an Armenian,
two Armenians to a Scot, and the whole damn lot together to withstand the
shock of Royalty in search of real-estate.’ ”
“My friend, there is but a line in this letter, yet I would not exchange this
one line for all the rhapsodies of the poets. For in this one line,” sighed
Lord Quorn, “the Princess Baba tells me that she loves me.”
“No girl,” gallantly admitted his friend, “can say fairer than that.”
“It is certainly very encouraging,” said my lord.
“Gentlemen’s Cloak-Room to the right!” said a Hussar of Death or
Honour.
“Thank you, we’ve been,” said Mr. Woodhouse Adams.
“This way, messieurs!” said Baron Hugo von Müsselsaroffsir. “His
Highness the Hereditary Grand Duke of Valeria will receive you at the head
of the stairs.”
At the head of the stairs, indeed, His Highness was receiving his guests
with all the circumstance of Royalty. He held great state, this puissant
prince who had so notably enriched the land of his fathers by an heroic
neutrality throughout the war. He wore the blue cordon of the Order of
Credit and, over his heart, the Diamond Cross of Discretion. He said:
“How do you do, Lord Quorn?”
“Thank you, sir, I am very well,” returned my lord.
“And you, Mr. Woodhouse Eves?”
“Adams to you, sir,” said that gentleman. “But otherwise I am well,
thank you.”
“Lord Quorn,” His Highness cordially continued, “I am really most
pleased that you could accept my invitation.”
“You do me too much honour, sir. And may I take it that your courtesy in
selecting me for an invitation for your probably enjoyable ball is a sign of
your gracious forgiveness?”
“You may, Lord Quorn.”
“Then I have the honour, sir, to declare myself, without any reserve
whatsoever, to be your Highness’s most obedient servant.”
“And I, sir,” said Mr. Woodhouse Adams.
“Gentlemen,” said His Highness, “you are very kind.”
“Your condescension, sir, but points our crudity,” protested my lord.
“May I, however, further trespass on your indulgence by asking to be
allowed to enroll myself as the humblest among your daughter’s suitors?”
“We can talk this matter out more comfortably,” said His Highness
agreeably, “in my study. Ho, there! Ho, page!”
“Altesse!”
“Conduct milord Quorn and Mr. Woodhouse Eves to my study, and see
to it that they have suitable refreshment. Lord Quorn, I will join you not a
moment after I have received my guests.”
“I’m not sure I like this study business,” said Mr. Woodhouse Adams as
they followed the page through many halls and corridors to a distant part of
the house in the walled garden. They passed through marble halls radiant
with slender columns and crystal fountains, through arcades flaming with
flowers in vases of Venetian glass, beneath sombre tapestries of the chase
after fabulous beasts, by tables of satinwood and cabinets of ebony, jade
and pearl: until at last they were conducted to a quiet-seeming door, and
were no sooner within than what appeared to be a regiment of Hussars of
Death or Honour had pinioned their arms to their sides.
“This is outrage!” cried my lord with very cold eyes.
“Gentlemen, you are under arrest,” said an officer with moustachios
whose name the chronicler has unfortunately overlooked.
“We’re under what?” cried Mr. Woodhouse Adams.
“And you will await His Highness’s pleasure in this room,” said the
officer with moustachios, but he had no sooner spoken than the Duke
entered, followed by a lean young officer with pitiless eyes.
“Altesse!” saluted the Hussars of Death or Honour.
Not so Lord Quorn. “Sir,” cried he, “this is outrage and assault on the
persons of King George’s subjects. Do you forget that you are in England,
sir?”
“Silence!” thundered the officer with moustachios.
“Silence be damned!” cried Mr. Woodhouse Adams. “Your Highness,
what can this piracy mean? I wish to lodge a formal complaint.”
“Sir, take it as lodged,” said His Highness graciously, but it was with
lowered brows that he turned to address my lord.
“Lord Quorn,” said he, “it was my first intention to have you shot like a
dog. But I have suffered myself to be dissuaded from consigning you to that
ignominious fate at the intercession of this gentleman here. I present
Captain Count Rupprecht Saxemünden von Maxe-Middengräfen.”
“Oh, have a heart!” gasped Mr. Woodhouse Adams.
But Lord Quorn, being a much-travelled gentleman whose ears were
hardened against the most surprising sounds, merely said: “How do you
do?”
“Such information, sir, is not for scum!” snapped the lean young officer
with the pitiless eyes.
“Were I to hit you once,” said Lord Quorn gently, looking at him as
though he smelt so bad that he could readily understand why the dustman
had refused to remove him, “your mother would not know you. Were I to
hit you twice, she would not want to. Think it over.”
“Your differences will soon be arranged,” sternly continued His
Highness. “Count Rupprecht has very properly put before me certain
reasons which give him an undoubted right to be the agent of your
destruction. The course of this night, Lord Quorn, shall see you as a
duellist. And I can only hope that you have some knowledge of
swordsmanship, for Count Rupprecht Saxemünden von Maxe-
Middengräfen is the first swordsman of Valeria.
“I may add, Lord Quorn, that his engagement to the Princess Baba will
be formally announced immediately after your interment, which will take
place in a corner of the garden. That is already arranged. Also your death
will be accounted for to the authorities in a satisfactory way. Mr.
Woodhouse Eves will, no doubt, act as your second. I will now leave you
until such time as the ball is at its height, when there will be little chance of
any of my guests being distracted by the ring of steel in the garden. Au
revoir, milord. You will yet find that to deflower a maid is a dangerous
sport. Count Rupprecht, your arm to the ball-room!”
“Altesse!” saluted the Hussars of Death or Honour.
“And what a mess!” sighed Mr. Woodhouse Adams.
“I’ll have to kill that boy,” said Lord Quorn thoughtfully.
IV
The dance was not yet at its most furious: the dowagers had scarcely
begun nudging each other the better to point their risqué tales of the days of
good King Edward: Cabinet Ministers had not long been exchanging
doubtful Limericks with jaded dexterity: when the following events
happened:
Anyone penetrating to a secluded conservatory leading from a corner of
the ball-room might have espied a young lady sitting at her ease on a bench
of cedarwood beneath the dusty and unbalanced-looking growth which is
sold in civilised countries as a palm-tree. The languid young lady’s air was
that of one who is forlorn, of one who is sad, of one who is so bored, yet
decidedly that of one who would not for worlds have her dolour interrupted
by the general run of humanity, such as perspire without suavity and go
poking their tedious noses into corners of ball-rooms, saying: “I say, will
you dance? I say, do dance!” Woe and woe to such youths, for they shall
instantly be answered by the magical words “Missing three” and their
persons shall be enveloped in forgetfulness forever.
Secure in her solitude behind a screen of plants and flowers, our young
lady had quite evaded the eye of even the most relentless dancer but for the
whisper of her white dress through the leaves. It should further be noted
that not one among all the flowers in that flaming conservatory was more
beautiful than the flowers of Cartier, Lacloche, Boucheron, and Janesich,
which graced the young lady’s slender forearm in the guise of bracelets of
diamonds, emeralds, black onyx, pink pearls and sapphires, all wrought
upon platinum in divers tender designs. Her throat was unadorned but for a
double rope of pearls, while two captive emeralds wept from the tips of her
ears. Her hair was tawny, and it glittered like a swarm of bees. As for her
eyes, they were more than adequate to every occasion, men being what they
are.
But no sudden intruder could have been more surprised to see the
Princess Baba sitting alone—for it was she—than was the Princess Baba
herself to see, by the merest hazard of a glance over her shoulder, the
curious phenomenon of the hands, the feet and the person of a young
gentleman forcing himself into the premises through one of the
conservatory windows.
She said, sighed, cried: “Oh!”
The intruder said something denoting astonishment, confusion, and
grief; while his appearance was notably devoid of that air of calm which is
the mark of your perfect rogue or practising philosopher.
“Well!” said the Princess Baba. “To come in by the roof!”
“Sorry,” said the young gentleman. “Sorry.”
“Sir, what can this mean! It is not by saying ‘sorry’ that one is excused
for housebreaking!”
“Madam,” begged the youth, “won’t you please allow me to explain?”
“And he calls me ‘madam’!” sighed the Princess Baba with vexation.
“Now I ask you, young man, do I look like a ‘madam’?”
He said: “You look divine. You are beautiful.”
“Attractive I may be,” said the young Princess, “but beautiful, no. For,
look at it which way you like, I’ve got a turned-up nose.”
“We are all as God made us,” sighed the young gentleman.
“By no means,” said the Princess Baba, “for some people are charming
and some are not, and what does God know of charm? It is dreadful to lie
awake at nights thinking that God lacks charm. Yet the word is never so
much as mentioned in the Bible.”
“As for the Bible,” said the young gentleman, “it is nowadays the
fashion among rich men to say that it makes the most delightful reading in
the world. Perhaps one day I shall have the time to read it too. In the
meanwhile, may I sit down?”
“But this is most unusual!” cried the young Princess. “To come to a ball
through a window! May I ask, are you a burglar? You certainly do not look
like a burglar. Explain yourself, sir!”
“I am a poor writer,” quoth our young friend. We, of course, knew that.
But the Princess Baba was surprised, protesting: “Oh, come, that must be
nonsense! For, firstly, you are rather a dear, and so you can’t be poor; and,
secondly, you are quite well-dressed, and so you can’t be a writer.”
“Your nonsense suits my nonsense,” said the young gentleman. “Thank
you.”
“Know, Sir Author, that I am the Princess Baba of Valeria.”
He rose and knelt and said: “Princess! What have I done!”
“Rise, my friend. Men no longer need to kneel to Royalty.”
“Princess, what shall I say! Oh, what have I done! How can I apologise
for this intrusion!”
The young Princess cried: “Why, here is an idea! You might begin by
kissing my hand. I assure you that that is quite usual. But oh, my friend, you
must please not kiss my hand while you are kneeling! That will never, never
do, for a man who is kneeling before a woman has her at a great
disadvantage. Provided, of course, that the woman has a temperament. I am,
unfortunately, full of temperament. My father is very worried about me.”
“Princess, this is not the first time I have kissed your hand.”
“Oh!” sighed the Princess Baba, and the young writer did his part like a
man and a cavalier, whereupon she said: “You have a very pretty way of
kissing a lady’s hand, Sir Author. And I had been told it was a lost art in
England!”
“All the arts were lost in England by our fathers, Princess. Youth is just
rediscovering them.”
“Young man,” said the Princess severely, “do you think it quite wise to
be so full of self-confidence as all that?”
“Princess, forgive me! But I am so poor that I have to be full of what
costs me least.”
“And may I ask what was that idiotic remark you just made about this
not being the first time you have kissed my hand? Why, you had never so
much as set eyes on me until a moment ago!”
“I have kissed your hand in a dream,” said the young writer gravely, and
then he told how one afternoon he had seen her hand and in her hand a
flower, and how he had woven such a web of romance about that hand and
flower that he had never a wink of sleep from night to night.
“But you must sleep!” cried the young Princess. “Oh, dear, and so you
are miserable, too! Ah, the misery of vain desire, and oh, the misery of
delight cut short! But you certainly must get some sleep to-night. You can’t
be allowed to go about kissing women’s hands as prettily as you do and
getting no sleep for your pains. Now wait here a few moments while I go
and get you some aspirin.”
But the youth dissuaded her, asking her how she could have the heart to
put an aspirin between them when he had dared all the legal penalties for
trespass for the sake of speech with her, nay, even for sight of her.
“Well, I think you are very bold,” sighed she, but he humbly protested
that never was a man less bold than he by ordinary, but that the fires of
chivalry had burned high in him at sight of her hand at the window, for, said
he, could any but an unhappy heart sit with a hand drooping out of a
window on the only sunny afternoon of an English summer?
“There is certainly something in that,” said the young Princess, and then
she told him how miserable she was and how miserable she must always be,
for her heart was engaged in a battle with superior odds. And she made him
sit beside her on the bench of cedarwood, telling him of her father and
mother and the gay Court of Valeria, “which is so gay,” she said, “that some
of the most respectable ladies of the Court are goaded into getting
themselves divorced just for the sake of the peace and quiet of being
déclassée.”
And she told how it was to this Court that one fine day there came an
English lord with the very best introductions and such very excellent white
waist-coats for evening wear as were the envy of every cavalier in Valeria.
“Like this one of mine?” asked the young gentleman, for is he a proper
man who will not belittle another by claiming an equal degree of eminence
in the sartorial abyss?
“That is not the point,” said the Princess Baba, “but the point is that my
Lord Quorn, for such was my lover’s name, was the handsomest man I ever
saw, and I loved him and he loved me and I lost him and he lost me. That
may seem a very reasonable combination of events to you, who are young
and cynical, but to me it was a matter of the utmost wretchedness. My
friend, know that this English lord had to fly for his life, for a jealous lady
of the Court had gone to my parents saying he had seduced me.”
“The liar!” cried our hero.
“Oh, it was quite true!” sighed the Princess Baba.
“The cad!” cried our hero.
“I can’t agree with you,” said the Princess Baba. “I adore him. I adore
him. I adore him. And, oh, I am so very unhappy!”
He rose and knelt and said: “Princess, mayn’t I be of some use? Can’t I
help you? Please command me, for I would die for you.”
“At this very moment,” she sobbed, “he is very probably either dead or
dying, for how can he hope to survive a duel with the best swordsman of
Valeria, Captain Count Rupprecht Saxemünden von Maxe-Middengräfen?”
“It certainly does sound rather improbable,” said the youth dismally.
“And when it is all over and my lover lies dead—ah, how can I even say
it!—my betrothal to his murderer will be formally announced.”
“What, you are actually to marry a man with a name like that!”
“Yes, isn’t it dreadful!” sobbed the Princess Baba, whereupon the young
gentleman rose and stood before her with respectful determination, saying
that he for one could not bear the idea of her marrying Captain Count
Rupprecht God-knöws-what von Whät-not, and would therefore do all in
his power to preserve life in the person of Lord Quorn, since the same was
so delightful to her.
“For even at the risk of your grave displeasure,” said our hero, “I must
tell you, Princess, that I like you frightfully and shall never again know
delight but in your presence.”
“Now you are making love to a breaking heart!” pitifully cried the
Princess Baba. “So this is chivalry!”
“Princess,” said he firmly, “I do but owe it to myself to ask you to make
a note of the fact that I love you. And it is because I love you that I will do
all in my power to save Lord Quorn.”
“But, my friend,” said she with very wide eyes, “however will you
manage that?”
“I am just thinking, Princess. But shall we, while I am thinking, dance?”
“What, you would have me dance while my love lies bleeding? I had
thought my confidence was placed in a more understanding mind. Ah listen,
oh look!”
And with a cry the Princess tore aside the flowers that screened the
conservatory windows and both looked down with eyes of horror on the
figures grouped in the garden below. Within, the rout was at its height and
the saxophone ever raised its frightful cry to the glory of the gods of Africa.
Without, was silence and the ring of steel.
“Oh, I can’t bear it, but I can’t bear it!” sobbed the young Princess,
holding a cry to her lips with a handkerchief plaintive with scent. The
antagonists in the dark garden were plain to see, the whiteness of their vests
moving dimly in the darkness; and the tall figure of Lord Quorn was seen to
be forced back against a tree-trunk, so that there could be no doubt but that
he must presently be run through.
“Oh, have I to watch him die!” cried the young Princess, and was
suddenly made to stare incredulously at the youth beside her, for he had
whispered in accents of triumph:
“By Heaven, I’ve got an idea, a marvellous idea! You want to be happy,
Princess? Then come with me! Come, we will dance through the crowd to
the door and then we will see about my plan.”
“But what is it, what is it, why do you keep me in such suspense? Ah;
you are cruel!” sighed the Princess Baba. “But you certainly do dance very
well. Oh, how I love dancing! When I was very young I used to dream that
I would like to be loved by a fairy prince with finger-nails of lapis-lazuli,
but lately I have dreamed that I would like to be an exhibition-dancer in a
night-club. But are you sure this is the nearest way to the door? It is so very
crowded that I can’t see it, but how well you guide, almost as well as you
kiss a lady’s hand! But quick, quick, to the door!”
“I am doing my best, Princess, guiding you through this crowd. It is
amazing how generously middle-aged people dance these days, denying
their elbows and feet to no one who comes near them.”
“But my lover dies—the door, the door!” cried the Princess Baba.
“And by Heaven, through it!”
“And now your plan?”
“Ah, you may well ask!” laughed our hero.
The tall figure of Lord Quorn lay crumpled and inert where he had fallen
against the tree-trunk. Only his eyes retained the magic gift of life, and they
looked upon the scene with sardonic resignation. Who shall describe what
thoughts then passed through the dying gallant’s mind? He was mortally
wounded.
Count Rupprecht lay stretched on his back a few yards away, the grass
about him soaked with the blood that flowed from his pierced lung. He was
dead. Above him stood the Duke, silently. Mr. Woodhouse Adams was on
his knees beside his dying friend.
“You got him, anyhow,” said he. “He’ll never know Christmas from
Easter again.”
“Fluke,” sighed Lord Quorn. “I always had the luck.”
“Luck, do you call it,” cried his friend, “to be killed!”
“It is better to be killed than to die,” said Lord Quorn faintly.
His Highness called grimly: “Ho, there! Ho, page!”
“Altesse!”
“Boy, go call my chaplain instantly.”
“Pester me with no priests, sir, I beg you!” cried the wicked Lord Quorn.
“I was born without one, I have lived without one, I have loved without
one, and I can damn well die without one.”
“Then has death no terrors for you, Lord Quorn?”
“Why, sir, I go to meet my Maker with the best heart in the world! I have
lived a perfectly delightful life in the best possible way. Can Paradise show
a more consummate achievement! Or must one have been bored to death in
this world to win eternal life in the next?”
“Then, page,” grimly said His Highness, “go tell the Princess Baba the
issue of the duel. Do not spare the truth. Count Rupprecht lies dead in
defence of her honour and the honour of Valeria; and Lord Quorn will
shortly be answering to God for his sins. And further tell the Princess that
she is permitted to say farewell to her lover. Begone!”
“Thank you very much,” sighed Lord Quorn.
But the page was not gone above a moment before he was returned,
saying breathlessly:
“Altesse, I bear this message from the Platinum-Stick-in-Waiting. The
Princess Baba was seen leaving the house a few minutes ago in a hired
vehicle, and with her was a young gentleman with an unknown face and
utterly devoid of decorations. Her Highness left word behind her with the
attendant of the Gentlemen’s Cloak-Room to the effect that she could so
little bear to await the issue of a duel in which her heart was so deeply
engaged that she had eloped with one who would understand her grief.”
“Good!” sighed Lord Quorn into the livid silence.
“What’s that you say!” snapped the Duke.
“I was merely thanking my God, sir, that I die at last convinced of the
truth of what I have always suspected, that nothing in this world means
anything at all.”
“Except, of course, dogs and horses,” said Mr. Woodhouse Adams, and
that will do well enough for the end of the tale of the hand and the flower,
which is called Prologue because nobody ever reads a Prologue and how
can it be to anyone’s advantage to sit out so improbable a tale without the
accompaniment of a Viennese waltz?
As for our hero and his darling, there are, naturally, no words to describe
the happiness they had in each other. It was not long, however, before the
young writer ceased to be a writer, for there was no money in it; but with
what his young wife made by selling the story of her elopement for to make
a musical-comedy they opened a night-club in Golden Square called
Delight is my Middle Name and lived happily ever after, the whilom
Princess Baba making a great name for herself as a dancer, for she was all
legs and no hips and her step was as light as her laughter and her laughter
was as light as the breath of Eros.
In conclusion, may he who is still young enough and silly enough to
have told this tale be some day found worthy to be vouchsafed that which
will make him, too, live happily ever after in peace and good-will with his
heart, his lady and his fellows; and may the like good fortune also befall
such youths and maidens as, turning aside for a moment from the realities
of life, shall read this book.
I: A ROMANCE IN OLD BRANDY
TALKING of dogs, no one will deny that dogs make the best, the dearest,
and the most faithful companions in the world. No one will deny that even
very small dogs have very large hearts. No one will deny that human beings
are as but dirt beside dogs, even very small dogs. No one will deny that all
dogs, large or small, are more acceptable to the Lord than foxes, rats or
Dagoes. That is, if the Lord is a gentleman. No one can deny that. No one,
anyhow, dares deny that. Let us be quite candid. A man who does not glory
in the companionship of dogs is no fit mate for any woman. That is what
Valerest said. A woman who glories in nothing else but the companionship
of a dratted little beast with two unblinking black eyes is certainly no fit
mate for any man. That is what Valentine thought.
Valentine and Valerest were sat at dinner. Valerest was the name of
Valentine’s wife, and she was a nice girl. A pretty maid waited on them.
Valentine and Valerest were silent. The pretty maid left them.
Valerest said: “Any man who does not like dogs is no fit mate for a
woman.”
Valentine thought as above.
“I really don’t see,” said Valerest bitterly, “why you are so sulky this
evening.”
Sulky! Ye gods and little fishes, to be moved by a profound and
sorrowful anger—and to be called ‘sulky’! O God of words and phrases, O
Arbiter of tempers and distempers, to sit in silent dignity and resignation—
and to be called ‘sulky’! Verily, what a petty thing one word can make of
martyrdom! Wherefore Valentine raised his voice and said: “I am not
sulky.”
“Well,” said Valerest, “you needn’t shout.”
Valentine said: “I never shout.”
A situation was thus created. The pretty maid came in with the sweet in
the middle of it. Valentine and Valerest were silent. Mr. Tuppy was not. Mr.
Tuppy said “Yap!” Mr. Tuppy lay on a mouldy old cushion, and the mouldy
old cushion lay on a chair, and the chair was beside Valerest. Dear Mr.
Tuppy, sweet Mr. Tuppy! Tuppy was a Chinaman, Tuppy was a dog.
“The pretty darling, the mother’s tiny tot!” sighed Valerest. “And does
he want his dinner then, the mother’s rabbit?”
“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.
“Isn’t he a darling!” cried Valerest.
“Charming,” said Valentine.
“Well,” said Valerest, “you aren’t very gay to-night, I do think!”
It could be asked, need Valerest have said that? Again, it could be asked,
need Valerest have said that brightly? Valentine, at that moment, appeared
to be engaged in spearing a boiled cherry, which formed part of a fruit-
salad. It would not appear, therefore, that Valentine was engaged on
anything very important. Indeed, there will not be wanting those to say that
Valentine’s attention might well have been diverted to something more
“worth while” (an American phrase meaning money) than even the most
notable fruit-salad. They will be wrong. For there is a time in everyone’s
life when even the most homely fruit-salad, even one unspiced with Kirsch
or liqueur, can be of such moment that everything else must, for that time,
go by the board. Therefore it must at once be apparent to even the most
impatient reader that The Romance in Old Brandy must be delayed for at
least another paragraph while impartial enquiry is made into the fruit-salad
of Valentine Vernon Chambers.
Ever since he was so high Valentine would always eat a fruit-salad
according to certain laws of precedence. Not for worlds would he have
admitted it, but that is how it was. He liked the chunks of pineapple best, so
he kept the chunks of pineapple to the last. Strawberries he liked next best,
if they weren’t too sloppy, so they came one but last. As for grapes in a fruit
salad, they are slippery and sour, and Valentine thought it was no fit place
for them. After strawberries, he was partial to cherries. While first of all he
would demolish the inevitable bits of banana. Cream he never took with a
fruit-salad.
It will therefore be seen that, as he was then only at the beginning of the
cherry stratum, the fruit-salad future of Valentine Vernon Chambers was
one of exceptional promise. But it was not to be. Even as Valerest spoke,
brightly, he couldn’t help but cast one furtive look at the chunks of
pineapple. Nor were the strawberries sloppy. But queer depths were moving
in him that evening. From the chunks of pineapple he looked across the
table at his wife, and Valerest saw that his blue eyes were dark, and she was
afraid, but did she look afraid? Valerest, Oh, Valerest!
“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.
“There, there!” said Valerest, and she kissed Mr. Tuppy, and Mr. Tuppy
loved it.
“By Heaven, that dog!” snapped Valentine.
Valerest said: “That’s it! Vent your bad-temper on poor little Mr.
Tuppy!”
Valentine looked at Valerest.
“I see,” said Valentine quietly. Very quietly. “Oh, I see!”
And worse. Much worse. Very quietly.
“I suppose you think,” said Valerest, “that because I’m your wife you
can say anything you like to me. You’re wrong.”
“I think,” said Valentine, “that because you’re my wife you ought to
behave like my wife. And I’m right.”
And then he left the room. And then he left the house. And then the
house was very still.
Valerest, sitting very straight in her chair, heard the front-door slam. She
listened. Through the open window behind her came the sound of manly
footsteps marching away down South Street. She listened. Away the
footsteps marched, away. Then a taxi screamed, and the incident of the
manly footsteps was closed forever.
“Well, that’s that!” said Valerest.
“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.
“Mother’s rabbit!” said Valerest absently.
“Mr. Tuppy,” said Valerest suddenly, “this can’t go on. You know, this
can’t go on.”
“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.
“I’m not a chattel,” said Valerest. “To be used just as a man likes. I will
not be a chattel.”
The pretty maid came in.
Valerest said: “Come along, Mr. Tuppy. I’ve got a headache. Bed.”
II
Valentine walked. When he had been walking for some time he realised
that he was achieving the impossible in combining an excess of motive
power with a minimum of progress, for he found himself walking in a
direction exactly opposed to that in which his destination lay. He corrected
this, and presently stood before a house in Cadogan Gardens. The houses in
Cadogan Gardens wear a gentle and sorrowful air, and Valentine grew more
depressed than ever.
Now, years before, his guardian had said: “There may come a time,
Valentine, when something happens to you about which you will think it
impossible that anyone can advise you. But you may be wrong in thinking
that. Try me then, if you care to.”
Valentine’s parents had died when he was very young, in one of those
marvellously complete accidents arranged by any competent story-teller
when he simply must deprive a child at one blow of a mother’s love and a
father’s care. Valentine’s parents, however, had in some measure protested
against their simultaneous fate, and Valentine’s mother had lived long
enough after the accident to appoint Mr. Lapwing her boy’s sole guardian.
Mr. Lapwing was the senior partner of the city firm of Lapwing & Lancelot,
merchants. And as, quite apart from his regard for Valentine’s parents, he
was wealthy, a widower, and childless, it can readily be understood that he
eagerly accepted the trust. Although when it is said that he accepted the
trust it is not to be implied that Mr. Lapwing tried to take a “father’s place”
with the boy. Mr. Lapwing, like so many childless men, knew all about his
place with any boy. He was without one theory as to education, but acted
merely on a vague idea that the relations between parents and children,
whether it was the Victorian one of shaming the joy out of children or the
Georgian one of encouraging the joy into vulgarity, had gotten the world
into more trouble than anything in history since the fall of Lucifer from
Paradise.
On this evening, twenty-four years after he had first entered the house in
Cadogan Gardens, Valentine stood quite a while before the door and
wondered how he was to put It. It, you understand, was very difficult to put.
A disagreement between a man and his wife remains indissolubly a
disagreement between a man and his wife, and only a man or his wife may
solve It. Indeed, Valentine had already solved It. He detested compromise.
A divorce was, undoubtedly, indicated. Undoubtedly. So undoubtedly,
indeed, that Valentine would not have dreamed of putting It to Mr. Lapwing
at all had he not thought himself bound in honour to ask his guardian’s
advice “when something happens to you about which you will think it
impossible that anyone can advise you.”
III
Valentine at last made an end to the muttering noises with which he had
tried to put before his guardian the state of acute disagreement that existed
between himself and Valerest. Mr. Lapwing finished his brandy, rose from
the table, and thoughtfully took a turn or two about the room.
“Well?” said Valentine.
“I,” said Mr. Lapwing absently, “can tell you a much better story than
that. Any day.”
Valentine flushed. “I didn’t tell you about this, sir, so that you should
make a guy of me.”
Mr. Lapwing said gloomily: “Keep your hair on. When I said that I could
tell you a much better story than yours, I meant, naturally, that my story is
complete, whereas yours, you will agree, is as yet far from complete.”
Valentine muttered something about his being quite complete enough for
him, but all Mr. Lapwing said sharply was: “Here, no more of that brandy!
That brandy is too good to swim in. But if you want to get drunk, I will ring
for some whisky.”
“I don’t want to get drunk,” snapped Valentine.
“Good boy!” said Mr. Lapwing vaguely, and continued pacing up and
down the dim, long room, while Valentine sat still and thought of his past
life and found it rotten.
Suddenly Mr. Lapwing said, in that irritatingly exact way of his which
was never quite exact: “You, Valentine, are twenty-nine years old. Valerest is
twenty-two——”
“Four,” said Valentine.
“Very well. And you have been married just over three years——”
“Nearly five,” sighed Valentine.
“Very well. You, Valentine, want a child. Valerest, however, does not
want a child just yet. Your argument is a sound one: that if parents wait too
long before their children are born, by the time the children grow up the
parents will be too old to share any of their interests and pleasures——”
“That’s right,” said Valentine sourly. “Valerest and I will be a pair of old
dodderers by the time they’re of age.”
“Exactly. A very sound argument. Whereas Valerest——”
Valentine snapped: “She doesn’t even trouble to argue. She just sits and
grins!”
“Exactly. She is much too deeply in the wrong to argue. When nations are
too deeply in the wrong to argue they call on God and go to war. When
women are too deeply in the wrong to argue they sit and grin. And I daresay
that the way you put your arguments gives Valerest plenty to sit and grin
about.”
“My God,” said Valentine, “don’t I try to be reasonable!”
“Listen,” said Mr. Lapwing, and then he told Valentine that he had been
married twice. Valentine was amazed. He had not known that.
Mr. Lapwing said: “I was very young when I married my first wife. Even
younger than you, although even then I knew a good brandy from a poor
one. And I was very much in love. As, if you will not think an old man too
ridiculous, I am still. Of course, she is dead now.”
Valentine was listening with only half a mind. He had still to get over his
surprise that his guardian had been married twice. There are some men who
look as though they simply could not have been married twice. They look as
though one marriage would be, or had been, a very considerable feat for
them. Mr. Lapwing looked decidedly like that: he looked, if you like, a
widower: but decidedly not like a widower multiplied by two——
Mr. Lapwing was saying, from a dim, distant corner of the room: “In
those days I was a very serious young man. I took love and marriage very
seriously. And when we had been married a couple of years I discovered in
myself a vehement desire to be a father: a natural enough desire in a very
serious young man. My wife, however, was younger than I: she loved life,
the life of the country and the town, of the day and of the night, of games
and dances. You see what I mean?”
Valentine snapped: “Don’t I! Just like Valerest.”
“Exactly. At first,” said Mr. Lapwing, and his face as he slowly paced up
and down the dim room would every now and then be quite lost in the
shadows. “At first, I indulged her. To tell you the truth, I was very proud of
her service at tennis, her handicap at golf. But there are limits.”
“There are,” said Valentine. “Valerest is already in training for
Wimbledon next year, and I hope a tennis-ball gets up and shingles her
eyelashes. And she’s got to 6 at golf. Pretty good for a kid who looks as
though she hadn’t enough muscle to play a fast game of ludo. But that’s right
about there being limits. There are limits! And I’ve reached them.”
“Exactly,” agreed Mr. Lapwing’s dim voice from the distance of the
room. “I had reached them too, Valentine. And, I am afraid, I grew to be
rather unpleasant in the home—as you, no doubt, are with Valerest. One’s
manner, you know, isn’t sometimes the less unpleasant for being in the
right.”
Valentine said: “I don’t know about pleasant or unpleasant. But a fellow
must stick to his guns.”
“Guns?” said Mr. Lapwing vaguely. “Were we talking of guns?”
“I merely said, sir, that one must stick to one’s guns.”
“Of course, yes! Decidedly one must stick to one’s guns. Very proper.
Well, Valentine, I too stuck to my guns. Like you, I thought they were good
guns. My young wife and I grew to disagree quite violently about her
preference for being out-and-about to rearing my children: until one day,
after a more than usually fierce and childish argument, she left my house—
this house, Valentine—and never came back.”
From the shadowy distance Mr. Lapwing was looking thoughtfully at
Valentine. But Valentine’s eyes were engaged elsewhere: he was seeing a
picture of Valerest stamping out of his house, never to come back. It was,
Valentine saw, quite conceivable. He could see it happening. It was just the
sort of thing Valerest might do, stamp out of the house and never come back.
And the picture grew clearer before Valentine’s eyes, and he stared the
picture out.
“Well,” he said at last, “that’s the sort of thing that happens. It’s got to
happen.”
Mr. Lapwing said: “Exactly.” His face was in the shadow. Valentine,
fiddling with a cigarette, still staring at the picture in his mind, went on:
“I mean, it’s inevitable, isn’t it? A man can’t go on forever living in the
same house with a woman who laughs at the—the—well, you know what I
mean—at the most sacred things in him. And she’s got a dog.”
“I know,” said Mr. Lapwing. “Mr. Tuppy. Nice little dog.”
“Bloody little dog!” snapped Valentine. “Look here, sir, when things have
got to the state they have with Valerest and me the crash has got to come.
Just got to, that’s all.”
Mr. Lapwing said gloomily: “Of course, there’s love.”
Valentine thought profoundly about that.
“No!” snapped Valentine. “That’s just where you are wrong, sir. There
was love. Certainly. But they kill it. They just kill love. I mean, I know what
I’m talking about. Some of these young women treat love as though it was a
naughty little boy who should be made to stand in a corner except as a great
treat once in six weeks. I’ve thought about this a lot lately. Valerest has just
gone out of her way to kill my love.”
“Sex,” said Mr. Lapwing thoughtfully.
“Sex?” said Valentine.
“Sex,” said Mr. Lapwing dimly. “Sex becomes very important when a
man is—er—deprived of it. When he is—er—not deprived of it he becomes
used to it, and it ceases to have any—er—importance at all. Women don’t
like that. Women——”
“Damn women!” snapped Valentine.
“Women,” said Mr. Lapwing, “can be very tiresome. Wives can be
intolerable. I have been married twice. England and America are strewn with
good men suffering from their wives’ virtues. It is damnable. When a
woman is faithful to her husband she generally manages to take it out of him
in some other way. The mere fact that she is faithful makes her think that she
has a right to be, well, disagreeable. The faithful wife also considers that she
has a right to indulge in disloyal moods——”
“Disloyal moods!” said Valentine thoughtfully. “That’s good.”
“Fidelity,” said Mr. Lapwing, “can cause the devil of a lot of trouble in
the home, unless it is well managed. Fidelity needs just as much good
management as infidelity. I am telling you this,” said Mr. Lapwing, “because
I think fidelity is beautiful and I hate to see it made a mess of. I draw from
my own life, from my first marriage. I stuck firmly to those guns which you
so aggressively brought into the conversation. A year or so went by. Then
her parents approached me and suggested that we should come to some
agreement, either to live together again or to arrange a divorce on the usual
lines. They were good people. Their argument was that we were both too
young to go on wasting our lives in this shilly-shally way.
“By this time, of course, the matter of my quarrel with my wife had faded
into nothing. There remained only the enormous fact that we had quarrelled
and that, since neither of us had tried to make the quarrel up, our love must
obviously be dead.
“I referred her parents to her, saying I would do as she wished. She sent
them back to me, saying she was quite indifferent. A divorce was then
arranged by our lawyers; and I was divorced for failing to return to my wife
on her petition for restitution of conjugal rights. The usual rubbish.
“To be brief, it was not long before I married again. But now I was older,
wiser. I had tasted passion, I had loved: to find that passion was yet another
among the confounded vanities that are perishable.
“Valentine, I married my second wife with an eye to the mother of my
children. I married sensibly. I have, as you know, a considerable property;
and I continued to desire, above all things, an heir to my name and a
companion for my middle years. That I have a companion now in you—and
in Valerest—is due to the infinite grace of God: that I have not an heir to
carry on my name is due to my own folly.
“My second wife was of that type of woman whom it is the fashion of our
day to belittle as ‘matronly,’ but from whose good blood and fine quality is
forged all that is best in great peoples. The difference between my affection
for her and my passion for my first wife is not to be described in words: yet
when she died in giving birth to a dead child you will easily understand how
I was grieved almost beyond endurance—not only at the shattering of my
hopes, but at the loss of a gracious lady and a dear companion.
“I was at a South Coast resort the summer after my second wife’s death.
One morning on the sands I struck up a great friendship with a jolly little
boy of three, while his nurse was gossiping with some of her friends. Our
friendship grew with each fine morning; and the nurse learnt to appreciate
my approach as a relief for a time from her duties.
“You will already have seen, Valentine, the direction of my tale: the irony
of my life must already be clear to you: nor can you have failed to see the pit
of vain hopes that sometimes awaits those who stick to their guns. As my
young friend and I sat talking one morning, or rather as he talked and I
played with handfuls of sand thinking how gladly I had called him my son,
he leapt up with a cry of joy; and presented me to his father and mother.
“My first wife had grown into a calm, beautiful woman. Yet even her
poise could not quite withstand the surprise of our sudden meeting after so
many years; and it was her husband who broke the tension, and won my
deepest regard forever, by taking my hand. From that moment, Valentine,
began for me, and I think for them both, and certainly for the boy, as rare
and sweet a friendship as, I dare to say, is possible in this world.
“People like ourselves, Valentine, must, for decency, conform to certain
laws of conduct. The love that my first wife and I rediscovered for each
other was not, within our secret hearts, in our power to control: yet it did not
need even a word or a sign from either of us to tell the other that our love
must never, no matter in what solitudes we might meet, be expressed. Her
husband was a good man, and had always understood that our divorce had
not been due to any uncleanliness or cruelty but to what is called, I think,
incompatibility of temperament. So that until she died soon after, the three of
us were devoted friends and constant companions.
“And that,” said Mr. Lapwing from the shadows, “is all my story. More or
less.”
Valentine sat very still. Mr. Lapwing paced up and down. Silence walked
with him.
Valentine muttered. “I’m sorry. It’s a dreadful story. Good Lord, yes! May
I have some more brandy, please?”
“It’s not,” snapped Mr. Lapwing, “a dreadful story. It is a beautiful story.
Help yourself.”
“Well,” said Valentine, “call it beautiful if you like. It’s your story. But I
should hate it to happen to me.”
“There are,” said Mr. Lapwing, “consolations.”
Mr. Lapwing paced up and down.
“Consolations,” said Mr. Lapwing.
Valentine said: “Oh, certainly. I suppose there always are consolations.
All the same, I should hate to be done out of my son like that. For that’s
what it comes to.”
Mr. Lapwing was in a distant corner of the room, his face a shadow
among shadows. He said: “Exactly. That is why, Valentine Chambers, I said
there are consolations. My wife’s second husband was Lawrence
Chambers.”
Valentine said: “Oh!”
Mr. Lapwing touched him on the shoulder.
Valentine said: “Good Lord, I might have been your son!”
“You might,” said Mr. Lapwing. “Easily. But it has come to almost the
same thing in the end, hasn’t it? Except, perhaps, that I have not a father’s
right to advise you.”
Valentine said violently: “You’ve got every right in the world to advise
me! Considering what you’ve done for me all my life!”
“Then,” said Mr. Lapwing, “don’t be an ass.”
Valentine saw Valerest’s mocking eyes, heard Valerest’s mocking laugh,
and about his mind walked Mr. Tuppy with his old, unsmiling eyes. He
muttered: “But, look here, Valerest will just think I’ve given in!”
“So you have,” said Mr. Lapwing.
“Well, then,” said Valentine bitterly, “it will all——”
“She’ll grow,” said Mr. Lapwing. He was tired. “And, Valentine, she has
got more right to be an ass than you have. Remember that. There’s no use
being sentimental about it, but they put up with a lot of pain, women.
Remember that. And——”
“But look here,” said Valentine, “if I——”
“Oh, go and make love to the girl!” snapped Mr. Lapwing. “And forget
that a clergyman ever told you that she must obey you.”
VI
THEY tell a tale of high romance and desperate villainy, how one night the
dæmon of wickedness arose from the depths and faced his master Capel
Maturin, the pretty gentleman whose exploits have made him known to all
London by the engaging title of Beau Maturin, the ace of cads. The tale
begins in bitter darkness and its direction is Piccadilly, not the shopkeeper’s
nor the wanton’s Piccadilly but the sweet sulky side where the pavement
trips arm-in-arm with the trees of the Green Park and men are wont to walk
alone with the air of thinking upon their debts and horses and women. There
and thus, they say, George Brummel walked, to the doom that awaits all
single-hearted men, and Scrope Davies, that pleasant wit, Lord Alvanley, the
gross, D’Orsay, the beautiful and damned, and latterly Beau Maturin, who
was a very St. George for looks and as lost to grace as the wickedest imp in
hell.
But here was no night for your beau to be abroad in, and a man had been
tipsy indeed to have braved those inclement elements unless he must. Yet
one there was, walking the Green Park side. Ever and often the east wind
lashed the rain into piercing darts, as though intent to inflict with ultimate
wretchedness the sodden bundles of humanity that may any night be seen
lying one against the other beneath the railings of the Green Park. But the
deuce was in it if the gentleman in question appeared to be in the least
discommoded. His flimsy overcoat flung wide open and ever wider in
paroxysms of outraged elegance by the crass wind, and showing an expanse
of white shirt-front of that criss-cross piqué kind which is one of the happiest
discoveries of this century, and his silk hat rammed over his right eyebrow as
though to dare a tornado to embarrass it, he strode up from Hyde Park
Corner at a pace which, while not actually leisurely, seemed to be the
outward manifestation of an entire absence of interest in time, place,
destination, man, God and the devil. Nor was there anything about this
gentleman’s face to deny this superlative indifference to interests temporal
and divine; for, although that of a man still young enough, and possessed of
attractions of a striking order, it showed only too plainly the haggard blasé
marks of a wanton and dissipated life.
It was with such epithets, indeed, that the more austere among his friends
had some time before finally disembarrassed themselves of the acquaintance
of Capel Maturin. A penniless cadet of good family, Mr. Maturin, after a
youth devoted to prophecy as to the relative swiftness of horses and to
experiments into the real nature of wines, had in his middle thirties been left
a fortune by an affectionate uncle who, poor man, had liked his looks; and
Mr. Maturin was now engaged in considering whether three parts of a
decade had been well spent in reducing that fortune, with no tangible results,
to as invisible an item as, so Mr. Maturin vulgarly put it to himself, a pony
on a profiteer. It was a question, thought Mr. Maturin, which could demand
neither deep thought nor careful answering, insomuch as the answer was
only too decidedly a lemon.
At a certain point on Piccadilly Mr. Maturin suddenly stayed his walk.
What it was that made him do this we shall, maybe, never know, but stop he
did. There were witnesses to the event: the same lying at Mr. Maturin’s feet,
huddled against the railings of the Green Park, a heap of sodden bundles
with hidden faces; and it had wanted the attention of a physician or the like
to decide which of the five or six was of the male or the female of the
species.
“It’s a cold night,” said a husky voice.
Mr. Maturin, towering high into the night above the husky voice, agreed
that it was a cold night.
“Ay, that it is!” said a woman’s cracked voice. “Cold as Christian
charity!”
Whereupon Mr. Maturin exhorted her to thank her stars that he was a
pagan and, withdrawing his hand from an inner pocket, scattered some bank-
notes over the bewildered wretches.
“Oh! Oh!” they cried, but caught them quickly enough, not grabbing nor
pushing overmuch, for there was maybe a couple or so for each. And when,
with the bank-notes tight and safe in their hands, they stared their wonder up
at their mad benefactor, it was to find him staring moon-struck at a point far
above their heads, while across his face was stamped a singular smile. It
should be known that Beau Maturin had in his youth been a great reader of
romantic literature, and now could not but smile at the picture of himself in
an ancient situation, for is not the situation of a penniless spendthrift, with
that of a man in love, among the most ancient in the world?
A policeman, his black cape shining in the rain like black armour,
approached heavily: the august impersonality of the law informed for the
moment with an air of interest that had a terrifying effect on the suddenly
enriched wretches, for the law does not by ordinary recognise any close
connection between a person with no visible means of support and the Bank
of England.
“Good evening, sir,” said the law to Mr. Maturin, who, returning the
greeting somewhat absently, was about to continue his walk when an
anxious voice from the ground whispered:
“ ’Ere, sir, these are fivers, sir!”
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Maturin.
The law, meanwhile, had taken one of the bank-notes from a reluctant
hand and was examining it against the lamplight.
“These ’ere, sir,” said the law impersonally, “are five-pun notes.”
“True,” said Mr. Maturin. “True. Lovely white angels of the devil. Good-
night, constable.”
“Good-night, sir,” said the constable, replacing the bank-note into an
eager hand; and Mr. Maturin, for long devoid of common sense, and now
entirely devoid of money as well, continued his walk in the rain. His
direction, or such direction as his feet appeared to have, led him towards the
A Paramount Picture. The Ace of Cads.
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS BETWEEN “BEAU” AND ELEANOUR.
pillared arcade that protects the entrance of the Ritz Restaurant from the
gross changes of London’s climate; and it was as he strode under this arcade,
his steps ringing sharply on the dry white stones, that it was distinctly
brought to his notice that he was being followed.
He did not, however, turn his head or show any other sign of interest,
merely dismissing his pursuer as an optimist. Mr. Maturin’s, in point of fact,
was a nature peculiarly lacking in any interest as to what might or might not
at any moment be happening behind him; and one of his favourite mots had
ever been, whether in discussion, distress or danger, “Well, my friends, let’s
face it!” There were, of course, not wanting those who ventured to doubt
whether Beau Maturin had so readily faced “things” had he not had such a
prepossessing face with which to conciliate them. “Ah,” Mr. Maturin would
say to such, “you’re envious, let’s face it.”
On this occasion, so absorbed was he in absence of thought, he allowed
himself to reach the corner of Arlington Street before swinging round to
“face it.”
“Well?” said Mr. Maturin.
“ ’Ere!” said the other sans courtesy. “You do walk a pace, you do!”
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Maturin. “What do you want?”
“Want!” said the other. “I like that! What do I want! Jerusalem!”
“If you want Jerusalem,” said Mr. Maturin severely, “you should apply to
the Zionist Society. They would be company for you. It must be very
depressing for a man of your size to go about wanting Jerusalem all by
yourself.”
That the pursuer had no evil intentions, at least to one of Mr. Maturin’s
stature, had instantly been obvious. He was a small seedy-looking man in a
bowler-hat of some past civilisation: his clothes sadly reflected the
inclemencies of the weather, but had the air of not being very valuable, while
the coloring of his face was that of one who had not in recent times suffered
the delightful but perilous purification of water; and, as he stood panting
beneath our gentleman, his expression was one of such bitter disgust that Mr.
Maturin, being able to account for it only by the continued action of acid
foods on the liver, thought it but right to advise him not to take so much
vinegar with his tinned salmon.
“Am I,” snapped the small seedy man, “talking to Mr. Chapel Matcherin,
or am I not?”
“More or less,” Mr. Maturin could not but admit.
“Orl I knows is,” snapped the small seedy man, “that you was the gent
pointed out to me as yer left that club in Belgrave Square. Gent told me to
give yer this. ’Ere.”
Mr. Maturin quickly opened the envelope, which was addressed to his
name, and drew from it a folded sheet of note-paper and a folded bank-note.
The small seedy man looked bitterly surprised and hurt.
“Money!” he sighed. “Money! ’Ow I ’ate money! And me carrying it
abaht! I like that! Me!”
“You’re still here?” said Mr. Maturin.
“Still ’ere!” said the small seedy man. “I like that! Still ’ere! Me!”
But Mr. Maturin was giving his full attention to the note-paper, the while
the folded bank-note depended tantalisingly from between the knuckles of
two fingers. The small seedy man stared at it fascinated.
“If I’d known!” he sighed bitterly.
The letter addressed to Mr. Maturin ran thus:
“Enclosed Mr. Maturin will find a bank-note, which is in the nature of a
present to him from the correspondent: who, if he was not misinformed, this
night saw Mr. Maturin lose the last of his fortune at chemin de fer. Should
Mr. Maturin’s be a temperament that does not readily accept gifts from
strangers, which the correspondent takes the liberty to doubt, he may give
the bank-note to the bearer, who will no doubt be delighted with it. The
correspondent merely wishes Mr. Maturin to know that the money, having
once left his hands and come into contact with Mr. Maturin’s, interests him
no further. Nor are there any conditions whatsoever attached to this gift. But
should Mr. Maturin retain some part of honour, which the correspondent
takes the liberty to doubt, he may return service for service. In so remote a
contingency Mr. Maturin will find a closed motor-car awaiting him near the
flower-shop in Clarges Street.”
Mr. Maturin thoughtfully tore the note into several parts and dropped
them to the pavement. The folded bank-note he, very thoughtful indeed, put
into an inner pocket.
“ ’Ere!” whined the small seedy man.
“Tell me,” said Mr. Maturin, “what manner of gentleman was the gent
who gave you this?”
“Bigger than you!” snarled the small seedy man. “Blast ’im for an old
capitalist, else my name isn’t ’Iggins!”
“I am sorry your name is Higgins if you don’t like it. But why,” asked Mr.
Maturin, “do you blast the gent who sent you after me?”
“I like that! Why hell! ’Ere he gives me two bob to go chasing after you
to give you a bank-note! Two bob! You couldn’t offer two bob for a bloater
in Wapping without getting arrested for using indecent language. And you’re
so blarsted superior, you are, that you ain’t even looked to see ’ow much it
is!”
“Why, I had forgotten!” smiled Mr. Maturin, and, producing the bank-
note, unfolded it. It was a Bank of England note for £1,000.
“It’s not true!” gasped the small seedy man. “Oh, Gawd, it can’t be true!
And in my ’and all that time and me chasing orl up Piccadilly with it to give
away!”
“Well, good-night,” said Mr. Maturin. “And thank you.”
“ ’E thanks me!” gasped the small seedy man. “ ’Ere, and ain’t you even
going to give me a little bit of somethink extra so’s I’ll remember this
ewneek occasion?”
“I’m very afraid,” said Mr. Maturin, feeling carefully in all his pockets,
“that this note you have brought me is all I have. I am really very sorry. By
the way, don’t forget what I said about the salmon. And be very careful of
what you drink. For what, let’s face it, do they know of dyspepsia, who only
Kia-Ora know?”
“ ’Ere!” whined the small seedy man, but Mr. Maturin, crossing
Piccadilly where the glare of an arc-lamp stamped the mire with a thousand
yellow lights, was already lost in the shadow of the great walls of
Devonshire House. In Clarges Street, near the corner, he came upon a long,
closed car. The chauffeur, a boy, looked sleepily at him.
“I believe you have your directions,” said Mr. Maturin.
“And I’ve had them for hours!” said the boy sleepily. A nice boy.
II
Now, at last, the occasion is complete, the parts of the comedy all filled:
the persons of the play bear themselves with becoming suspense: and the
scene is richly set with age, dignity, devilry and youth, one and all essential
to the true spirit of comedy.
The grandeur of distress, the lofty silence of disdain—there is the girl’s
mother in her shadowed chair and Sir Guy Conduit de Gramercy at his
writing-table, the light of the shaded lamp by his elbow laying a rich gloss
on his thick white hair. The indifference that masks the depths of emotion,
the faint mockery, the deep gravity, and the cunning candour of love——
there is Joan de Gramercy coiled in a chair near her mother, a girl with
those cool eyes that dare a man to surprise in them any secret that they will
not, in their own good time, completely surrender to him.
Mr. Maturin, handsome Beau Maturin, is talking. He generally is. A
talkative man, let’s face it.
“Joan,” he addressed the girl’s eyes, “your mother and your grandfather
have objected to our engagement. We guessed they would, you remember?
Just lately, in fact, we’ve been guessing nothing else. Unfortunately for
their authority, however, they are not in a position to prevent it. Now, Joan,
we have had quite a long conversation in here, a little about you, but
considerably more about me. That I am as God made me is a truth your
grandfather will not for a moment admit. He is convinced that I am a good
deal worse. That I am in love, your mother is unkind enough to doubt. She
is convinced that I am suffering from a physical distemper. And so, just as
you were not swayed by your guardians’ arguments to-day, I have not been
swayed by them to-night——”
“How, sir!” cried Sir Guy hotly. “Are you——”
“I am talking, Sir Guy. But, Joan,” continued Mr. Maturin, “they insisted
that I could cure you of your attachment to me, if I wished. I pointed out
that I had already put myself before you as a man whose character
contained certain grave flaws; and that you had, while deploring my recent
and second bankruptcy and my only too frequent lapses from the strictly
moral code, chosen to believe that there is still some good in me, and had
therefore remained by your decision to become my wife. Your mother and
grandfather, however, have dared me to tell you the complete truth about
myself and yet hold you. Joan, did I think for one moment that I would lose
you in this way, I frankly admit,” said Mr. Maturin emphatically, “that I
would not put my hand to any such quixotic folly——”
“After all,” said Joan de Gramercy, “the past is dead.”
“My point exactly, child. And that is why,” said Mr. Maturin, “if only to
satisfy your mother and grandfather of the inevitability of your choice and
of my complete faith in your love, I have decided to do what I will do.
Listen, Joan——”
It was Sir Guy’s stern voice that fell on the room like an axe.
“You live up to my description of you completely, Mr. Maturin. You are
indeed the ace of cads! For now you are betraying your word of a few
minutes ago.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t interrupt,” said Mr. Maturin warmly. “I am
embarked, let’s face it, on a suspension-bridge of very doubtful strength and
you keep on trying to upset my balance with sweeping comments on my
character. My tale, Joan,” he continued into the middle air, and spoke from
this moment on with his eyes fixed absently in the shadows of the books on
the shelves opposite, “my tale has to do with many years ago. Now I have
been and I have done many things in my time; and have become one of
those men of whom it is vaguely said, ‘He could write a book about his
life,’ which of course means that I have done everything in my life except
write a book. At the time I speak of I was a subaltern in a Guards regiment;
a mode of life which, it may distress you to hear, Sir Guy, bored me in the
extreme. As, however, the small allowance my father gave me was
contingent on my retaining my commission, and as even the smallest
allowance is better than a poke in the eye, I endured in patience the while I
gave myself up to the pleasures of the town. You must not for a moment
think,” protested Mr. Maturin with feeling, “that I am trying to belittle the
gentlemen of the Brigade, for better men than I have tried and failed at that
game: nor that I am a slave to malice, for as you know I was later expelled
from their company: but truth compels me to confess that my companions
of those days were notable rather for the correctness of their appearance
than for their learning, while their charm was of that static, profound sort
which no one could call ingratiating and a certain kind of primitive
badinage was held among them to be the superior of wit. And as time went
on I came to be esteemed among the lighter sort for those qualities of the
tongue and mind that are calculated to send any man, in due course,
headlong down the crooked path.
“But I must tell you I had one very great friend among them. This was a
man who had everything I had not: a simple frankness, a plain but almost
painfully honest bearing, and a heart like gold; which was then, of course,
more evidently in circulation than it is now. I cannot imagine how a boy of
that sort could have loved and admired me; but he undoubtedly did, and to a
singular degree, so that I was frequently enabled to borrow money from him
almost painlessly, for he was heir to a great fortune, with which went a
great name; although, to be sure, he was often as hard put to it as I was to fit
a morsel of caviare to a piece of toast, for his father had ideas about real
estate quite contrary to ours.
“My friend became engaged to a beautiful girl. What she saw in the boy,
I do not know. Women are, let’s face it, odd. That she loved him, I was
instantly certain. Even my youthful cynicism could not ascribe to her the
mean calculation of a fortune-hunter. That he loved her, madly and madly
again, he frequently made clear to me in those broken and inarticulate
periods that are the hall-mark of all honest Englishmen in love: and which,
being often quite inaudible, have earned for Englishmen a delightful
reputation for restraint. But let us not generalise when we can so profitably
be particular.
“We were at that time in the barracks that guard the frontiers of Chelsea:
my friend and I in adjacent rooms. Our ways of life, however, were at that
time vastly different; for as I was passing through a financial void I would,
with that resignation which no one can deny has been my one consistent
virtue, go early to bed every night: whereas my friend would return night
after night at about this hour, having escorted his betrothed home after a
play and a ball; and night after night, as he prepared himself for bed in the
adjoining room, he would softly whistle a tune. Thus, you understand, he
expressed his happiness; and killed it, for the walls were thin and the tune
intolerable.
“It was Mendelssohn’s Spring Song; and, Sir Guy, I have already told
you,” said Mr. Maturin with a glance at the old gentleman, who was
listening with every mark of attention if not of approval, “how my distaste
for that composition led me, some months after the time I speak of, to a
hasty action. But what that same distaste caused me to do to that boy was
not done hastily.
“One day I borrowed a sum of money from him. He, poor boy, was so
absorbed in his happiness that he scarcely noticed the third zero which,
having seen how readily he had already attached two, I persuaded him to
add to the primary numeral on the cheque. Whereupon, with his full
permission, and a thousand pounds of his money, I prepared to make myself
agreeable to his fiancée.
“He trusted me implicitly, that boy. And who,” Mr. Maturin asked
dreamily of the middle distance, “who will tell the tale of the ramifications
and subtleties and intrigues of the next few weeks, how I used every art on
that beautiful girl, how she came to believe in my love for her—and maybe
I believed in it myself—how she came to look wearily on the honest but
plain features of her fiancé, how she came to suffer his inarticulate periods
with a doubtful smile; and how finally—though he had long since ceased to
whistle the Spring Song—she broke her engagement to him, and had
certainly become my wife but that I was at about that time expelled from
the Brigade and was never, until quite lately, a marrying man. That is all;
and, I think,” said Beau Maturin softly, looking round at the chair which
had until a moment ago been occupied by the figure of Joan de Gramercy,
“quite enough.”
Sir Guy was silent: his thin long hands clasped nervously together on the
surface of the writing-table, he stared fixedly at a point on the carpet. Mrs.
de Gramercy was silent. Mr. Maturin examined, for quite a while, the points
of his shoes. At last he murmured: “Well....”
Sir Guy said, as though to himself: “That was a very dreadful story.”
“Wasn’t it!” Mr. Maturin agreed gravely. “Well, good-night, Mrs. de
Gramercy. Good-night, Sir Guy.” And he strode towards the distant
shadows by the door.
“A moment!” the old gentleman seemed to awake. “Mr. Maturin, my
daughter-in-law and I have to thank you. Good-bye.”
The tall shadow by the door, as though on the impulse of a sudden
memory, seemed to touch the outside of his breast-pocket. “Oh, by the
way,” he said, “I will, if you don’t mind, keep this bank-note. Your house
owes it to me. Good-bye, good de Gramercys!”
Through the silence of the house the two heard the steps of Beau
Maturin on the flags of the hall, the closing of the front-door, the faint echo
of his passage down the square. Sir Guy was staring bemused at the still,
distant figure of his daughter-in-law.
“What did he say, Eleanour? that our house owed him that money? What
on earth did the man mean?”
“What he said,” the shadow whispered, and then it laughed, and old Sir
Guy jumped from his chair with the queer shock of that laugh.
“Eleanour!”
As she came towards him he took her hands in his and looked intently
down at her. Her eyes were very, very tired. She said: “I am very tired. I
will go to bed now.”
Old Sir Guy held her hands very tenderly. “But what is on your mind,
Eleanour? Why did you laugh in that dreadful way?”
She opened those tired eyes very wide. “Oh, surely, dear, I am allowed
that—to laugh at your having called Beau Maturin the ace of cads!”
Old Sir Guy said sternly: “Yes, you are tired, Eleanour. You are not
yourself.”
“Poor old gentleman!” she tenderly, bitterly, smiled up at him. “Poor old
gentleman! Dear, like all your generation you have been wrong about
everything in ours, but everything! Oh, you have been so wrong about what
was good and what was rotten in young people! Wrong about your son,
about me, about Beau Maturin——”
Sir Guy snapped with savage impatience: “You will kindly explain,
Eleanour, what all this fantastic nonsense is about.”
“Of course,” she said thoughtfully, “there was a certain amount of
excuse for your son Basil. I made it rather easy for him. You see, dear,
Capel Maturin lied. As usual, you might say. Well, yes. He just told the
story the wrong way round. You know, I was once engaged to be married to
Mr. Maturin. And he introduced me to his best friend, Basil de Gramercy.
Oh, dear, why did you give your son such a very small allowance? Whereas
to be able to seduce his best friend’s fiancée he needed money. But Capel
Maturin had done very well on the Derby that year, and Basil easily
managed to borrow a thousand from him, for no one, let’s face it, could ever
call Beau Maturin mean with money. And one day Mr. Maturin, who used
to whistle the Spring Song to himself because he and I both loved it,
suddenly found that I preferred Basil’s prospects to his good looks. I don’t
suppose you can even yet realise, dear, the exquisite revenge that Mr.
Maturin has had of me and of your house to-night. He intended, obviously,
to marry my daughter: how, you might say, could I have borne that? But I
tell you I could have borne it infinitely better than the memory of this night.
Here I have sat, a faded woman, while Capel Maturin, fresher and more
handsome in bankruptcy than ever I have been in success, having won my
daughter’s love, killed it out of pity for you—Oh, not for me!—with a tale
which, however he had told it, does me very little honour. And, for pity’s
sake, for your sake, he spared you your son. I should not have told you
now; I have done wrong, but I had to. Even the old, dear, cannot be allowed
to be wrong about everything all the time! But don’t look so sad! Why do
you, why should you, look so sad? After all, the de Gramercys have had
everything they ever wanted from me and my daughter—and the ace of
cads certainly hasn’t! Good-night, dear.”
III: WHERE THE PIGEONS GO TO DIE
NOW it is as much as their jobs are worth for the authorities responsible
for the amenities of the town not to employ a man on the clear
understanding that every once in a while he climbs to the very top of Lord
Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square to cleanse away such refuse as might
have collected about the immortal sailor’s feet. And it is to the good man
who undertakes this perilous task that we owe a piece of information which
cannot fail to interest gentles and simples. He tells how he never but finds
numerous pigeons lying dead about the feet of our sailor hero. Sometimes
there will be not more than a score or so, sometimes there may be close on
an hundred, and he relates on oath how he once removed, in a bag which he
takes up with him for that purpose, the bodies of pigeons to the number of
one-hundred-and-thirty-four: among which, he tells with awe, there was the
corpse of a pretty white dove.
That was on the evening of the first of May of the year of grace 1924,
and the reason why the good man tells with awe of the dove among the
pigeons is because it was on that very evening that he was vexed by a
strange phenomenon. The facts may interest the curious.
The prodigious number of the dead pigeons had kept him at his task
much later than usual; and as he picked up the dove he chanced to look up
at Lord Nelson, who stood at that moment in the light and shadow of the
sun as it set beyond Admiralty Arch, and the good man fancied that the
stern face of my Lord Nelson frowned.
Unseemly though it is to doubt any man’s word, the sceptical sort may
be permitted to question whether the fellow was at that moment seeing
straight, and whether it was not the fanciful light of twilight that had set him
thinking that Lord Nelson had indulged in a passing frown.
But to more kindly folk the good man’s fancy will not present such
marvellous features when they know that it was on the evening of that first
of May that Miss Pamela Wych came upon an event beneath Lord Nelson’s
eyes that completely changed the course of her whole life.
II
The clear cool eyes of Miss Wych were clouded that spring evening.
Miss Wych was thinking. All about her the London of Oxford Street
marched and screamed and hooted, but Miss Wych walked unheeding,
alone as a tulip in a wild garden. The London of Oxford Street was like a
soiled silk handkerchief waving frantically to the evening sun but the genius
of thought draped the young lithe figure with a rare calm dignity. Now Miss
Wych was nearly always calm, for such was her nature. But she was not
always dignified, for dignity comes very rarely to youth, dignity is a gentle
blossom that grows with the years, and when dignity comes to youth it
comes always unconsciously, it is fleeting, frail, sad. We are not speaking of
the dignity of anger, but of the dignity of sorrow. Miss Wych was sad that
evening.
All that day, whilst she was at her allotted tasks in the millinery
department of Messrs. Come & Go, Miss Wych had been saying to herself:
“I must think. I will think this evening. One doesn’t think nearly enough. I
will think a lot this evening. I will walk home, thinking. I do hope it keeps
fine.”
That is what Miss Wych had thought, for she was very conscientious in
the fulfilment of her duties in the millinery department, and she always did
her best not to intrude her private concerns into her service of Messrs.
Come & Go. Not that either Mr. Come or Mr. Go could possibly have
noticed it if she had, since her service was but an atom among the service of
one thousand and five hundred employées; for Messrs. Come & Go’s was
advertised as the largest store in London, and why should anyone doubt the
verity of such beautiful advertisements as those of Messrs. Come & Go,
which tell unceasingly of the divers bargains that can be bought for next to
nothing by Mr. Everyman and Mrs. Everywoman merely by entering within
and being smiled at affectionately by either Mr. Come or Mr. Go in person,
and all delivered at Mr. Everyman’s door within twenty-four hours in plain
motors. Anyone can see by their advertisements that Mr. Come and Mr. Go
have got all other men beat on philanthropy, and how they manage to live at
all is very puzzling, but no doubt they have private incomes of their own
and don’t rely on making any money out of their store.
Miss Wych had never so much as set eyes on her great employers, but
she would wonder a great deal about them, and she would wonder
particularly about the great men’s youth. Now Miss Wych admired success
above all things. Those clear cool eyes looked at life, this teeming chaotic
life in which she was an atom of service, and as she looked at life a prince
in shining armour of gold and sapphire stepped forth from the boiling ranks,
brave with triumph, flaming with youth, indeed a very prince of princes.
And the name of this prince was Success. That is how Miss Wych thought
of success, like a glorious lover. She loved success, like a glorious lover.
And once upon a time she had tried to win him for herself, Miss Wych had
once tried her fortune on the stage, but unfortunately the glorious lover had
looked very coldly on her, for, as the producer had said: “Miss Wych is a
nice girl but a bum actress.”
The gentle circumstance of evening transmuted the trumpeting and
soiled machines on the road into shining caravans, but never a glance at
these wonders did Miss Wych give. Of the passers-by, one and all hurrying
to the assault of tubes and omnibuses, maybe one here and there forfeited
his place through looking twice at Miss Wych. Miss Wych was a very pretty
girl. Her eyes were grey. Her nose would have looked absurd on anyone’s
else face, because it was so small. Her face was as white as the moon.
Since she had made up her mind to walk to her boarding-house in South
Kensington she did not join the people waiting for omnibuses at the corner
of Marble Arch and Park Lane. They who had been in such haste a moment
before now waited so quietly, so uneagerly, as though they didn’t care
whether they were going home or not. The stillness of Park Lane seemed to
Miss Wych very refreshing after the din of the panting hosts of Oxford
Street. She walked in the broken shadows of the Park railings. A young man
on a black horse cantered by, looking as though he had bought the world for
tuppence and wanted his money back. Now and then an omnibus rolled by,
rolled on, and on, and on, the red-and-white monster born of man’s divine
gift for making his life intolerable. A young lady with a bright red hat in a
little silver car tore by like a jewel in a hurry. Huge limousines sped, sped
swiftly by, like shining insects whispering to Miss Wych of a grander world
than the world of Miss Wych. The people in Hyde Park walked slowly to
and fro listening to each other. When the sun lit their faces they looked
brown and gold and copper-red, but otherwise they looked tired. Through
the railings the sun fell in bars of gold about her feet and kissed the dark
hair that waved over her ears, so that the dark hair shone in a way that was a
wonder to behold. Miss Wych, of course, was always wishing that her hair
was fair, but she was quite wrong about that. The thoughts of Miss Wych as
she walked roughly: “The sun is sinking, if it only knew it, into Kensington
Gardens. The sun is sinking, if it only knew it, into Kensington Gardens.
The sun is....”
And a voice at her shoulder said:
“Excuse me! Please excuse me. I say, you must excuse me!”
Miss Wych thought: “And such things can happen in sunlight! O our
Father, why won’t You watch Your world more carefully!”
III
Miss Wych walked on, in the broken shadows of the Park railings. And
her eyes were turned to the sun, which did not know it was sinking into
Kensington Gardens, for what else was there to look at? Then a bird flew
across Park Lane and sat on a window-sill, and Miss Wych looked at that.
“Please,” said the voice at her shoulder. “You see, Miss Wych, I must.
For I can’t bear it any more, honestly. Don’t be beastly to me, please!”
Miss Wych thought: “This is a fine thing, being spoken to by strange
men! I suppose I look common or flashy or something, else he wouldn’t
dare. What shall I do, oh, what shall I do? What do women do?”
“Look here,” said the voice at her shoulder, “I can’t keep this up any
longer. I’m no good at speaking to people I don’t know. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Miss Wych.
“Oh, you’ve spoken!” cried the voice at her shoulder.
Miss Wych thought: “Oh, oh, damn!”
Miss Wych said: “This is very extraordinary behaviour. Please go away.”
Miss Wych had intended to say that icily, but in point of fact she said it
very shyly. There was a girl who worked with her in the millinery
department of Messrs. Come & Go who said: “When I don’t like a boy I
just give him the Once-Over and he’s Off.” Miss Wych envied that girl. But
she called up her courage and tried to give the stranger the Once-Over. The
stranger, however, did not go Off. The stranger was a lean young man with
deep dark eyes that seemed to whirl with the trouble that was in him.
“You see,” he said, “it’s like this, Miss Wych. I had to meet you
somehow. But how? I did not know what to do. And so I did this. Miss
Wych dear, will you forgive me?”
Miss Wych thought: “There are times when one must placate the devil.
This must be one of those times.”
Then Miss Wych discovered a most extraordinary thing. She discovered
that she was looking deep into the stranger’s dark eyes. She flushed as red
as a tennis-court.
“This is terrible,” she said bitterly. “Terrible! How dare you speak to me!
Please go away at once.”
“I can’t,” said the young stranger. “I would if I could. But I just can’t.
I’m sorry.”
Miss Wych thought: “He says he’s sorry, the beast!”
“You are mad,” said Miss Wych indifferently. The sun walked in fire and
glory, but the world was dark, the world was dark, and bold bad men
walked the streets for to be offensive to maids. The young stranger, for
instance, did not go away. He said desperately:
“If you will give me just one look you will see that I don’t mean to
offend you.”
“That may be so,” said Miss Wych bitterly, “but you do.”
“You only think I do,” protested the lean young man. “That’s all it is,
really.”
Then Miss Wych discovered a most extraordinary thing. She discovered
that she was walking slowly, slowly. Instantly she walked on quickly.
The lean young man sighed: “Oh, dear!”
Miss Wych said breathlessly: “I don’t even know your name! And how
you have got to know mine I really can’t imagine! But you don’t look
wicked. Please don’t go on being nasty! Please! Won’t you go away now?”
“Pamela Wych,” the young stranger whispered, “Pamela Wych, Pamela
Wych, Pamela Wych, how the devil was I to meet you except by daring
this? Further, you are my fate, and what sort of a man would I be if I were
to leave my fate in the very second of finding it?”
Miss Wych thought: “This is getting serious.”
“That is all very well,” she said reasonably, “talking about fate and big
things like that. But when you take it as just behaviour you can see as well
as I do that it is all wrong. Sir, there are things one can’t do, and this is one
of them, and so you must please go away at once.”
“That is the one thing I can’t do,” said the young stranger desperately.
“You see, although you won’t show me your face I can see the tip of your
ear peeping out from your hair, and it is as red as a rose.”
Miss Wych thought: “This can’t go on. How would it be if I called a
policeman?”
“It is red,” said the profile of Miss Wych, “for shame that a man can so
insult his manhood.”
“Oh, I do wish people wouldn’t talk like those small leaders in The Daily
Mail!” cried the voice at her shoulder. “I’m not insulting my manhood. I am
living up to it for the first time in my life.”
Miss Wych said fiercely: “Go away, go away, go away!”
“Dear,” said the young stranger, “listen to me. You must listen to me. I
am not playing.”
Miss Wych thought: “Our Father which art in Heaven——”
They were in the Park. How they had come to be in the Park Miss Wych
could not imagine. Over Kensington Gardens the sun was marching to
eternity with a cohort of clouds and colours.
“No,” said the lean young man, “I am certainly not playing. Miss Wych
dear, this is not a ‘pick-up’——”
“It’s piracy!” said Miss Wych contemptuously.
“That’s right,” said the lean young man with the eyes of trouble.
“You say you aren’t playing,” Miss Wych bitterly complained, “but you
are upsetting me very much. A little chivalry, sir, would help you to see
how terrified I am.”
“I am terrified, too,” said the young stranger, “of this happiness. It can’t
possibly last, can it? It’s too enormous.”
Miss Wych thought: “He’s gone mad!”
“I really don’t know why you ask me,” she panted spitefully, “whether it
can last or not. How should I know? And it’s perfectly absurd, what we are
doing. It is perfectly absurd. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, and
that’s that. Anyone would think we were babies!”
“But that’s just what I am! For,” said the young stranger, “I am exactly
one week old.”
Miss Wych thought: “And he talks like it!”
Miss Wych said: “Really! How interesting.”
“I am one week old,” the stranger said, “because it was exactly a week
ago that I first saw you. And you needn’t laugh!”
“I’m not laughing,” said Miss Wych.
They were sitting on two chairs in the Park. How they had come to be
sitting on two chairs in the Park Miss Wych could not imagine. The sun was
red in the face with trying to get to Australia through Kensington Gardens.
The young stranger said: “Now!”
His eyes were deep and dark and shy, and Miss Wych thought: “He is
one of those unhappy young men. There are a lot of them about. He is
probably used to burning people with those eyes of his. But he won’t burn
me.”
The lean young man was saying: “Miss Wych, may I tell you something
most important? I love you.”
“That is what you say,” said Miss Wych, and was surprised at herself, for
she had intended to say something quite different.
“Love,” said Miss Wych severely, “is a shy word. It should not be
thrown about just anyhow. That’s quite apart from it’s being cheek.”
The lean young man’s eyes burnt angrily, and he said: “I have been in
hell for a week, and you talk to me of cheek!”
“Well, it is cheek,” said Miss Wych sulkily.
Now because the young stranger’s deep dark eyes were whirling with the
trouble that was in him Miss Wych suddenly thought to close hers tight, for
she did not want to let herself be sorry for him. She thought: “If this is what
they call Romance—well, oh, dear, give me a nice bus ride in a hurricane! It
would be much less uncomfortable.”
“One day,” the voice was saying, “I happened to go with a friend into
that shop where you work, and I saw you, and my life fell down like a tin
soldier with a broken leg. That was a week ago, and since then I haven’t
picked it up, I haven’t known what to do. I have often heard that a man can
go mad with love, but I did not know before that a man could go sane with
love. All the people in the world who are not madly in love, Miss Wych
dear, are in some degree insane, for it is insane not to have a proper
perspective of life, and a proper perspective of life is to be quite certain that
the world is well lost for the love of one person. It is insane to work from
grubby birth to grubby death with never an attempt to chain a star, with
never a raid on enchantment, with never a try to kiss a fairy or to live in a
dream. Dear, only dreams make life real, all of life that is not touched and
troubled by our dreams is not real, does not exist. I could not have lived
until now if I had not dreamed that one day I would meet you. I have
worked, I have been what is called successful, but always I was under the
spell of a miracle that was to happen, and when I saw you I knew that
miracle had happened. I just wanted to tell you that. I believe in miracles
and magic and my love for you. That is my testament. And if it is cheek to
say I love you, then cheek must be as beautiful a thing as chastity. And now
I am going away, for your eyes are closed, and that must be because my talk
of love bores you. I have tried the impossible, just to be certain that nothing
is impossible until one has tried it. And I have learnt another thing: I know
now that when I am not looking at you I shall be blind, when I am not
listening to you I shall be deaf, and always I shall find no delight in the
world but in thoughts of you. And now I will go away.”
Miss Wych opened her eyes and said: “Don’t go away.” That is all she
said, but it was quite enough for the lean young man, who caught his breath
and threw down his hat and pinched himself. Now all the colours in the
world and in the heavens had met over Kensington Gardens in a conference
to discuss ways and means for putting the sun to sleep, and a few of them
came quickly and lit Miss Wych’s face as she said:
“There is something very silly about me. It has landed me into a lot of
trouble in my time. I always believe what people say. I believe in fairies. I
believe in God. I believe that moonlight has a lovely smell. I believe in
men.”
“Please believe in me!” said the lean young man.
“But why shouldn’t I!” cried Miss Wych with wide eyes. “What a funny
world this is, isn’t it? We always believe people straight away when they
say beastly things to us, but we don’t if they say lovely things——”
“We will change all that!” the young stranger whispered.
All this while the world was standing quite still as a special treat for the
sylphs and spirits, so that they could dart about the sky and never lose their
way back to the friends who had stayed at home. It was curious, Miss Wych
thought, how she could feel the silence of the world. It was as though the
wings of a darting bird brushed her cheek, scented her thoughts, sang in her
heart. It was as though the world was still with reverence. Before her very
eyes a fairy tripped over a blade of grass, and Miss Wych thought: “I must
be dreaming.”
“Talking of cheek,” said the lean young man.
“Yes?” said Miss Wych.
“Look here,” said the lean young man, and you could have blown his
voice away with a breath, “if I have the cheek to ask you to marry me, will
you have the cheek to say yes?”
He had a stick with an ivory top that was as yellow and cracked with age
as an old charwoman’s face. She looked at it for a long time, and then she
looked at him.
“Why,” she cried, “your eyes are wet!”
“I know,” said the lean young man fiercely. “And I don’t give a damn.
For the love of God, am I such a fool that I wouldn’t be crying for the
happiness of knowing you are in the world!”
“Well,” said Miss Wych, “I shall probably be crying myself at any
moment. But first of all I must tell you a story.”
“Won’t you marry me instead?” pleaded the young stranger.
“I will tell you a story,” said Miss Wych gravely, and she began at once.
IV
“I was born,” said Miss Wych, “in a small town in the north of England
which would have been the ugliest town in the world if there hadn’t been
uglier ones all round it. My mother died when I was quite young, and when
I was nineteen my father died; but I did not mind being alone half so much
as you might think, because I was very ambitious. So, with the few pounds
my father had left, I came to London to try my fortune on the stage. I had an
aunt who was once an actress in Birmingham, and that was why I thought
first of all of the stage. And people said I was pretty.
“In that ugly town there was a boy who loved me. His name was George
and he was a clerk in an auctioneer’s office, but he wanted to be a farmer.
When my father died George asked me to marry him, but I said I couldn’t
do that and explained about my ambitions and how I would first of all like
to have a try at being something in the world. You see, it isn’t only grown-
ups who have dreams. Besides, George was poor, and however would we
live if we did get married?
“He came to see me soon after I had settled in London. I told him I was
studying acting at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, and also I told him that I
loved him. Of course, I wouldn’t have told him that if he hadn’t asked me.
But I thought I did. I was only nineteen and a bit, and he was so strong and
serious, and as fair as you are dark, and when he was almost too serious to
speak the tip of his nose would quiver in a lovely funny way.
“That was the last time I saw George, but this evening I am to see him
again. You see, that was on the first of May five years ago, and George and
I swore a great oath. George said he was off to America to make his
fortune, but that in five years to the day he would be waiting for me at the
Savoy Hotel at eight o’clock to give me dinner and hear me say that I would
marry him. We chose a grand place like the Savoy Hotel because of course
George would have made his fortune by then. George added that he had no
ambitions for himself, he wouldn’t mind being just a farmer, but that he
would work for me. I said that was a very good idea, for men should be
ambitious and imperious, marching into history with clear heads and brave
thoughts and clean eyes.
“I said I would keep myself free for him. I promised him that just as he
was going away, and you should have seen how happy his eyes were and
how the tip of his nose quivered! And now I have to see him in a few
minutes’ time, and what shall I say to him?
“I was a failure on the stage. I am a failure even as a girl in a shop. I am
a failure in everything but my dreams. My childish ambitions have
withered, and you would think I had learnt such a lesson that I wouldn’t
have any more, but now I have the largest ambition in the world. I would
like very much to be happy. That is why I have been wondering all to-day
and for how many days what I would say to George this evening. You see, I
wasn’t really in love with him even when I made my promise, I knew that
in my heart even then. My promise was just one of those important-looking
flowers that are wrung out of the soil of pity. And my business in life from
now onwards, dear stranger, will be to keep that hidden from my husband.
But of course I will get used to disenchantment, just like everyone else, and
the time will come when I will wonder at myself for talking to you like this,
and the time will come when I, like everyone else, will die with the sick
heart of one who has never fulfilled herself. And now I must go, for it is
close on eight o’clock.”
“Of course,” said the lean young man thoughtfully, “he might, for some
reason we can’t tell, not keep his appointment. And then——”
“And then, and then, and then!” sang Miss Wych, but she added gravely:
“But oh, he will! George is a good man and a determined man. Failure or
success, he will be there.”
The fires burnt low in the west. They walked towards the gates of the
Park. Miss Wych counted four stars in the sky.
“Love,” said the lean young man, “knows every emotion but that of
patience. Mayn’t I come with you, Pamela Wych? Mayn’t we go together to
this George man? Could he do anything but release you?”
“That wouldn’t be fair,” said Miss Wych. “That wouldn’t be fair at all.
Oh, yes, George would release me. But life is not so easy as that. It’s all
very nice and easy to talk and dream, but aren’t there duties too? I will go to
George and tell him I am ready to marry him. I must do that. But maybe he
won’t want to marry me. And then——”
The clock at the Park Gates stood at ten minutes to eight o’clock; and on
this strange enchanted evening, said Miss Wych, she would indulge in the
extravagance of a taxicab. The lean young man stood by the door and said
good-bye, and he said also: “If that George man isn’t there, I shall know. Or
if that George man isn’t worthy of your loyalty, I shall know. And I will
come to you again.”
“If!” sighed Miss Wych. “If! If the world was a garden, and we were
butterflies! If the world was a garden, and God was kind to lovers! Good-
bye, good-bye, good-bye!”
ONE morning not long ago a gentleman was engaged in killing worms in
the gardens of Berkeley Square when it was forced on his attention that he
had a pain. The pain, which was offensive, was on his left side, but thinking
at first that it was no more than a temporary stitch brought about by the
unwonted exercise, he dismissed it from his mind as a pain unworthy of the
notice of an officer and a gentleman and went on killing worms according
to the directions on the tin.
This was a large tin; and, held at an angle in the gentleman’s right hand,
a white powder issued therefrom and covered the blades of grass, whilst
with his left hand he manœuvred a syringe in such a way that a brownish
liquid was sprayed upon the ground.
An entirely new and nasty smell was thus brought into the world; nor did
there appear to be any such good reason for it as is generally brought
forward on behalf of a novel smell, such as industry, agriculture, the
culinary necessities of certain foods or the general progress of civilisation.
Mean, however, though our gentleman’s physical position was, for he needs
must bend low to the end that not a blade of grass might escape his eagle
eye, mentally he took his stand on a lofty ideal; and, dismissing the stares of
passers-by as unworthy of the notice of an officer and a gentleman,
continued to misbehave according to the directions on the tin.
The chemist who had sold him the tin and the syringe had sworn a
pharmaceutical oath to the effect that, on sprinkling the grass with the
powder and spraying it with the lotion, not a worm in Mayfair but would
instantly arise from the bowels of the earth and die. Nor was the chemist’s
prophecy in vain; for the powdering and spraying had not been going on for
long, when behold! a multitude of worms arose and passed away peacefully.
So great, indeed, was the massacre that a Turkish gentleman who was
passing by stood at attention during a five minutes’ silence, but that is quite
by the way and has nothing to do with George Tarlyon’s pain, which was
growing more offensive with every moment. Thinking, however, that it
could be no more than an attack of lumbago, and therefore dismissing it
from his mind as a pain unworthy of the notice of an officer and a
gentleman, he went on killing worms because he wanted to stand well with
a pretty girl he had met the night before at a party who had said she was a
Socialist and that there were too many worms in Mayfair.
Major Cypress now enters the story, and the fact that this is a true story
makes it so much the more regrettable that therein the Major is presented in
a tedious, not to say a repellent, light. Poor Hugo. About a year before these
happenings he had entered upon matrimony with Tarlyon’s little sister
Shirley, and he loved her true, even as she loved him. We will now talk a
while of Hugo and Shirley.
Shirley was a darling and Hugo had no money above that which he
earned, which was nothing, and that is why they lived in a garage in the
Mews behind Berkeley Square, had breakfast late, went out for dinner and
on to supper. Not that the garage wasn’t delightful. The garage was
charming. Shirley herself had supervised the architects, builders, decorators
and plumbers, and by the time rooms had been added, kitchens hollowed
out, bathrooms punched in—by the time, in fact, the garage had been
converted into a house, it had cost Hugo more money at rates of interest
current in Jermyn Street than the lease of a fine modern residence in
Berkeley Square. Poor Hugo.
Every morning at about this hour he would emerge from the garage into
the Mews, pat his tie straight in the gleaming flanks of the automobiles that
were being washed to the accompaniment of song and rushing water, pass
the time of day with a chauffeur or two, and walk into Berkeley Square
where, in the pursuit of his profession, he would loiter grimly by the
railings of the gardens until the clocks struck twelve. The word
“profession” in connection with Major Cypress doubtless needs some
explanation. Hugo’s profession was the most ancient in the world bar none,
that of an inheritor: he was waiting for his father to die. This was a cause of
great distress to his mother, as it must be to everyone who likes Hugo. But,
as Mistress Moll Flanders says, I am giving an account of what was, not of
what ought or ought not to be.
All doctors are agreed that waiting has a lowering effect on the mind, but
this morning Major Cypress looked, as has been stated, even more
depressed than usual. And long he leant against the railings watching his
brother-in-law’s extraordinary behaviour before opening his lips: when, a
noise of a friendly nature being created, he waited patiently for an answer,
which he did not get. He then tried to attract Tarlyon’s attention by making
a noise like money, but in vain.
“George,” he shouted at last, “may I ask why you are behaving in that
peculiar way?”
“You may,” snapped Tarlyon, and, approaching him with a look of
absent-minded savagery, cast a little of the powder over his breeches,
squirted him with the syringe, and continued with his labours. Poor Hugo.
“George,” said Major Cypress, disregarding the man’s rudeness, “I am
depressed this morning. Guess why.”
“Hugo,” said Tarlyon bitterly, “I would be depressed every morning if I
were you. Now please go away at once. These worms aren’t rising half so
well since you came. And I have a pain in my left side.”
“A pain, George? I thought you looked sick, but I didn’t like to say
anything. What sort of a pain?”
“A hell of a pain,” said Tarlyon. “It gets me when I breathe.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Hugo. “I too have a pain. And it gets me when I
eat, drink, breathe and sleep. George, my pain is in my heart.”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” snapped Tarlyon, “and I hope it gives you
such a swelling in the feet that you can’t follow me about like a
moneylender after a dud cheque.”
“George, I am not, and never was, a moneylender. I am, by the grace of
God, a money-lendee. But to return to your pain, I shouldn’t wonder if you
had pneumonia. You have been very liable to pneumonia ever since you
took that bath on Armistice Day. And merely from the way your face has all
fallen in I should say pneumonia, quite apart from the fact that your breath
is coming in painful gasps.”
Tarlyon threw down the worm-killers and joined his friend. “I believe
you’re right, Hugo. It hurts me to breathe. I must have pneumonia. What
treatment would you advise?”
“Pyjamas,” said Hugo. “Nice, new, amusing pyjamas. You will be in bed
at least six weeks with the violent form of pneumonia you’ve got, and it
will be a comfort to you to think of your new pyjamas.”
“Suppose I die,” Tarlyon muttered.
“I am supposing it, George. The pyjamas will then, I hope, revert to me.”
Together they strode up the narrow defile of Berkeley Street towards
Piccadilly, two men of grave mien and martial address; and, although it was
a bitter December morning, neither wore an overcoat, which is a polity of
dress calculated to reveal, by the very action of a lounge-suit on the eye on
a bitter morning, the hardy frame of ships that pass in the night and the iron
constitution of publicans, wine-bibbers, chaps, guys, ginks, bloods, bucks
and beaux. Nevertheless, such was the stress of the distemper within him
that George Almeric St. George Tarlyon threw away his cigarette with a
gesture of distaste and said: “Hugo, I am in pain. It gets me when I
breathe.”
“Try not to breathe,” said Hugo. “In the meanwhile I will tell you why I
am depressed. My wife——”
“Hugo, I am very hot. I do believe I am sweating!”
“You look awful, George. You have probably a very high temperature.
Presently you will break out into a rash owing to the unclean state of your
blood brought about by your low habits. You can’t breakfast all your life off
a gin-and-bitters and two green olives and hope to get away with it. I was
telling you, George, that I am depressed because my wife is presenting me
with an heir.”
“It’s just cussedness, Hugo. I shouldn’t take any notice. Women are
always the same, forever letting one in for some extravagance. Just take no
notice, Hugo.”
“George, you don’t understand! She is in terrible pain, and I can’t bear it,
old friend, I simply can’t bear it.”
“I’m sorry, Hugo, really I am. Poor little Shirley. But I am feeling very
ill myself. Call me an ambulance, Hugo.”
“Pyjamas first, my honey. Ah, here we are! Ho there, Mr. Sleep! Ho
there, Mr. Sluis! Shop!”
For by this time the two gentlemen had arrived within the establishment
of Messrs. Sleep and Sluis, gents’ shirt-makers, which is situate where the
Piccadilly Arcade swoops falcon-like into Jermyn Street to be as a
temptation to mugs in search of a manicure. Mr. Sleep was a small man
with a round face who was a tie-specialist and Mr. Sluis was a small man
with a long face who was a shirt-specialist, while both were accomplished
students of masculine lingerie in every branch and could, moreover, as was
told in the adventure of the Princess Baba, build a white waistcoat about a
waist in a way that was a wonder to the eye. By Royal Appointment, and
rightly.
“My lord,” said Mr. Sleep, stepping forward two paces and standing
smartly at ease, “what can we do for you this morning? These new ties,”
said he, “have just this moment come in. They are delicious.”
“Mr. Sleep,” said Lord Tarlyon, “you know very well that I detest new
ties. I can think of nothing more common than wearing a new tie. Observe
my tie, Mr. Sleep. I have worn it six years. Observe its rugged grandeur.
Where is Mr. Sluis this morning?”
“My lord,” said Mr. Sluis, stepping forward three paces and bowing
smartly from his self-made waist, “what sort of pyjamas do you fancy?”
“What varieties have you this morning, Mr. Sluis?”
“We have many, my lord. Pyjamas can be used for various purposes.”
“You shock me, Mr. Sluis. I am not, however, going to Venice just yet. I
merely want some pneumonia pyjamas.”
“In crêpe-de-chine, my lord?”
“Your innuendoes are amazing, Mr. Sluis! Far from being that kind of
man, I have always adhered to the iron principle of once an adult always an
adult. The very manhood of England is being sapped by these vicious
luxuries, as one glance at my friend Major Cypress will show. Away with
these crêpe-de-chine pyjama suitings! And I take this opportunity, Mr.
Sleep, of crying woe and woe to the pretty and the effeminate of our sex,
for their lack of manly sins shall surely find them out and the odour of their
overdrafts shall descend to hell. For my own pyjamas, a homely quality of
antiseptic silk will do very well. I will have half-a-dozen suits in black
silk.”
“I say, George,” said Hugo, “black is very lowering. Mr. Sluis, make
them a lovely pale blue with a dash of maroon. They revert to me, you see.”
“Black, Mr. Sluis. I fight Death with his own weapons. Send these
pyjamas at once, and put them down to my account.”
“Certainly, my lord. You will have them at once.”
“Gentlemen,” said Lord Tarlyon, “I have had forty years’ experience of
owing money and never yet met with such simple faith as yours. I am
touched. Let me assure you that my executors will repay your courtesy, if
only in kind. Good-day, Mr. Sleep, and you, Mr. Sluis. Don’t, by the way,
send these pyjamas to my house, as the bailiffs are in, which is why I went
out in the dewy dawn and caught this pneumonia. Send them to Major
Cypress’s.”
“But you can’t have pneumonia in my place!” cried Hugo. “If you
should die it will depress my wife, and that,” said he indignantly, “will have
an effect on my unborn heir’s character.”
“He will be lucky, Hugo, if he has a character at all, from what I know of
you. Mr. Sleep, and you, Mr. Sluis, you might telephone to some doctors to
come round instantly to Major Cypress’s garage, as there will shortly be a
nice new pneumonia of two cylinders on view there. Hugo, call me a taxi at
once. I cannot have pneumonia all over Jermyn Street.”
“I don’t care where you have it,” said Hugo bitterly, “so long as you
don’t let the last agonies of your lingering death disturb my wife. Here’s an
idea, George! Why don’t you go and have pneumonia at Fitzmaurice
Savile’s place near by?”
But Tarlyon was not without a keen sense of what was proper to a
stainless gentleman: he put generosity, when he thought of it, above all
things: and protested now that he could not very well seek Fitzmaurice
Savile’s hospitality as Fitzmaurice Savile owed him money and would think
that he, Tarlyon, was taking it out of him in pneumonia.
“Well, lend me a fiver, then,” said Hugo desperately, but he hadn’t a
hope. However, he need have had no fear for his wife’s comfort, for never
was a sick man quieter than the last of the Tarlyon’s, the way he lay with
closed eyes among the damp dark clouds of fever, the way he would smile
now and then as at a joke someone was whispering to him from a far
distance, so that the nurse said to the doctor: “I never saw a man appear to
enjoy pneumonia so. You would think,” said she, “that he was hungry for
death. He is not fighting it at all, doctor. Are you sure he will not die?”
That is what the nurse said to the doctor, and the doctor looked grave and
punched Tarlyon in the lungs with a telephone arrangement, but Tarlyon
took no notice at all, still smiling to himself at the thought that in his life he
had done every silly thing in the world but die of pneumonia in a converted
garage, and maybe he would presently be doing that and the cup of folly be
drained to the dregs. And every now and then Hugo would come in and take
a glass of the iced wine by Tarlyon’s bed and look depressed, saying that
Shirley was in pain and that he couldn’t bear it.
Then one day, or maybe it was one night, Tarlyon seemed to awake from
a deep sleep that had taken him to a far distance, and from that far distance
what should he seem to be seeing but two shadows bending over his bed
and the calm shadow of the nurse nearby? Now he tried to speak, but he
could not, and from the far distance he could hear one of the shadows
saying: “You called me in not a moment too soon, Dr. Chill. Lord Tarlyon’s
is an acute case of appendicitis. Weak as he is, it is imperative that we
operate at once.”
“Right,” said Dr. Chill.
Now Tarlyon recognised the shadow that had spoken first for Ian Black,
the great surgeon, and a great friend of his since the distant days when he
had operated on Tarlyon’s unhappy dead wife, Virginia, she who had lived
for pleasure and found only pain. And Tarlyon spoke out in a dim voice and
said:
“Ian Black, much as I like having you about you must not operate on me
for appendicitis in this house, which is but a garage. Remember I am
staying with Hugo, and I came to stay with him on the distinct
understanding that I was to have only pneumonia. Not a word was said
between us about appendicitis, and I am sure that Hugo would be annoyed
at my abusing his hospitality, so will you kindly put that beastly knife
away?”
But at that very moment Hugo came in and took a glass of iced wine and
looked depressed, saying that his wife was in terrible pain and that he
couldn’t bear it and that the whole garage was strewn with doctors
murmuring among themselves; but as to a spot of appendicitis, said Hugo,
poor old George could go ahead and make himself quite at home and have
just what he liked. Whereupon Tarlyon at once closed his eyes again, and
then they put something over his mouth and he passed away, thinking,
“That’s all right.” But it could not have been quite all right, he thought on
waking suddenly, for although he could not see very well he could hear
quite distinctly, and the voice of Dr. Chill was saying:
“My dear Mr. Black, I am sorry to have to say this, but I certainly do not
consider this among your most successful operations. My patient’s pulse is
entirely arrested, and I am afraid there is now no hope. Are you sure, Mr.
Black, that the coroner will think you were quite wise to operate when he
was in so low a condition? And I am sure,” says he, “that you are not at all
wise to sew up that wound with the sponge still inside.”
“Oh, shut up!” says Mr. Black, for the same was a short-tempered man
much addicted to over-calling at bridge.
Tarlyon did not hear any more before he went off again; but when he
awoke this time he did not feel the sickly after-effects of chloroform, he did
not feel anything at all except that he was very weak and had a tummy-
ache. The room seemed much lighter, too, than when he had seen it last, and
many more people were in it, and then he heard a squealing noise and
thought: “Good God, where am I?”
And he tried to speak but could not, he tried hard but all he could
achieve was a sort of mewing noise similar to the squealing noise, and then
the blood simply rushed to his head with rage, for there was Hugo’s
tiresome face bending over him and there were Hugo’s tiresome eyes
simply running with tears.
He tried to turn his head away in disgust at the loathsome sight, but
could not move, and then he went almost raving mad, for Hugo was trying
to kiss him! Tarlyon tried to swear and failed for the first time in his life,
whereupon he made to raise his hand to catch Hugo a clout on the ear, but
all he did was to pat Hugo’s cheek, which the foul man took for a caress
encouraging him in his damp behaviour. But in raising his hand Tarlyon did
at least achieve something, for he saw that his hand had changed
considerably during his illness, it must have, for it was now a frail and
milk-white hand with a diamond ring on the third finger, so that he thought
in despair: “Good God, I’ve died under the operation and been born again
as an Argentine!”
Hugo never left the bedside until at last the doctor got him by the scruff
of the neck and, with silent cheers from Tarlyon, hurled him from the room.
But even as he went through the door he turned his repulsive face towards
Tarlyon and blew him a kiss, and then the fattest nurse Tarlyon had ever
seen shoved a bundle under his nose and said in an idiotic voice which he
supposed was meant to be cheering: “There, there, my dear, it’s a little boy
you’ve got now. Isn’t he a duck, fat as a peach and all!”
Bits of the bundle were then pulled about and Tarlyon was shown what
he considered was the most depressing little boy he had ever seen, with its
face all wrinkled up and an entirely bald head of an unpleasant colour.
Tarlyon’s first impression was that the little boy must have been drinking
too much to get that colour; and he tried to wave the bundle away, but he
was quite helpless, he could not move nor utter, and the fat nurse shoved the
wretched little boy’s bald head against his mouth so that he simply had to
kiss it as he had not the strength to bite it. Meanwhile everyone in the room
was smiling idiotically, as though someone had just done something clever,
so that, speechless with rage as he already was, he became doubly
speechless and thought to himself: “This is what comes of having
pneumonia in a garage!”
Not for minutes, it seemed not for years, was the full terror of what had
actually happened revealed to him. He must have been making a face of
some sort, for the fat nurse brought a mirror and held it to him, saying:
“There, there, don’t fret. See how well you look!” And the face that Tarlyon
saw in the mirror was the face of his little sister Shirley, a pretty little white
face with cheeky curled lips and large grey eyes and a frantic crown of
curly golden hair.
Tarlyon tried to stammer: “Some awful mistake has been made,” but not
a word would come, and for very terror at what had happened he closed his
eyes that he might, even as though he verily was Shirley, sob in peace.
It was for Shirley more than for himself that he was distracted with grief,
for he realised only too well what must have happened. Shirley, the poor
darling, must have been having terrible trouble in childbirth—and all for
that foul Hugo’s wretched heir with the bald head—while he had died of
pneumonia-cum-appendicitis in the next room. His soul having left his body
—while Ian Black and Dr. Chill were still arguing about it—he had, or it
had, wandered about between the two rooms for a while and then, while
Shirley wasn’t looking, had slipped into her body and expelled her soul into
the outer darkness.
That his supposition was only too accurate was presently proved beyond
all doubt. Hugo had managed to sneak into the room again, and when
Tarlyon opened his eyes he looked at Hugo beseechingly for news,
whereupon the wretched man at once kissed him. But Tarlyon must have
looked so furious, even with Shirley’s pretty face, that the fat nurse at once
stopped Hugo from clinching again; and when Tarlyon again looked
beseechingly towards the wall of the room in which he had had pneumonia
Hugo nodded his head cheerfully and said: “Yes, he’s dead, poor old
George. Doctor said he would have lived if he hadn’t been such a hard
drinker. Poor old George. They are embalming the corpse in Vichy Water at
the moment.”
Tarlyon lost count of time, of days and nights, he lost count of
everything but the number of his discomforts and fears. He spent hours with
closed eyes enumerating the terrors in store for him as a woman, as a pretty
woman, as Hugo’s wife. It would be no use his saying that he was not really
Shirley but her brother George, for people would only think he was mad. Of
course he would divorce Hugo as soon as he was better; it was too revolting
to have Hugo’s face shoved close to his own on the slightest provocation.
Heavens, how well he now understood the many ways in which men can
infuriate women! And then, chief among the terrors of his new life, must be
the bringing-up of that awful baby with the bald head. As it was, he was
seeing a great deal too much of it, the fat nurse would always be bringing it
to him and pushing it at him, but as to taking it into bed with him Tarlyon
wasn’t having any, not even for the look of the thing when his mother came
into the room. For one day his mother did come, and she in deep mourning
for his death, and she stood above him with sad eyes, and as she held the
wretched baby she whispered: “Poor George! How he would have loved his
little nephew!” Fat lot she knew, poor old mother.
But always it was Hugo and his repellently affectionate face who was the
last straw. One evening he managed to get into the room in his pyjamas, in
Tarlyon’s pyjamas, in Tarlyon’s black pyjamas, and saying to the fat nurse:
“I must just kiss her once,” furtively approached the bed. But Tarlyon was
ready, and now he was just strong enough to lash out at Hugo as he bent
down——
“Oi!” said Ian Black’s voice. “Steady there, you Tarlyon!”
Tarlyon said something incredibly wicked and Ian Black said: “You’ll be
all right soon. In fact you must be quite all right now, if you can swear like
that. But don’t land me one on the head again with that hot-water bottle else
I’ll operate on you for something else. And I haven’t left a sponge inside
you, either. Hullo, here’s Hugo with a smile like a rainbow!”
“I should think so!” cried Hugo. “Chaps, I’ve got a son! What do you
know about that?”
“Everything!” gasped Tarlyon. “He’s bald.”
“Bald be blowed, George! All babies are bald. In my time I was the
baldest baby in Bognor, and proud of it. He’s a wonder, I tell you.”
“He’s awful!” sighed Tarlyon. “Go away, Hugo, go away! I’ll explain
later, but at the moment I am so tired of your face. And in future,” said he
sharply, “don’t dare to try to kiss Shirley more than once a day.”
The rest of this story is not very interesting, and nothing more need be
said but that Tarlyon nowadays makes a point of advising a man never to
kiss his wife without first making quite certain that she wants to be kissed,
which is quite a new departure in the relations between men and women
and one to be encouraged as leading to a better understanding and less
waste of temper between the sexes.
As for the bald baby, he now has some hair of that neutral colour which
parents call golden, and four teeth, and Hugo shows off his scream with
pride. Hugo and Shirley think he is marvellous. Maybe he is. Maybe all
babies are. But it is certain that all women are, by reason of what they put
up with in men one way and another. That is what Tarlyon says, and if he
does not speak on the matter with authority then this is not a true story and
might just as well not have been written, which is absurd.
V: THE PRINCE OF THE JEWS
THIS is the tale of the late Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Fasset-Faith, K.C.B.,
C.M.G., D.S.O. This distinguished torpedo officer was advanced to flag
rank only last June, having previously been for two years Commodore of
the First Class commanding the —— Fleet. Throughout the war he was
attached to the submarine service; and for the vigilance and fearlessness of
his command his name came to be much on men’s lips. His early death, at
the age of forty-five, will be regretted by all who knew him. He never
married. This is also the tale of Julian Raphael the Jew and of Manana
Cohen, his paramour.
One summer evening a gentleman emerged from the Celibates Club in
Hamilton Place; and, not instantly descending the few broad steps to the
pavement, stood a while between the two ancient brown columns of the
portico. The half of a cigar was restlessly screwed into the corner of his
mouth in a manner that consorted quite oddly with his uneager English eye;
and that, with the gentleman’s high carriage, might have reminded a
romantic observer of the President of the Suicide Club. His silk hat,
however (for he was habited for the evening), was situated on his head with
an exact sobriety which would seem to rebuke the more familiar relations
customary between desperate gentlemen and their hats; and he appeared, at
his idle station at the head of the broad steps, to be lost in peaceful
contemplation.
The Admiral made thus a notable mark for any passing stranger with a
nice eye for distinction: he stood so definitely for something, a very column
of significance, of conduct. Unusually tall for a sailor, and of powerful
build, his complexion was as though forged—it is the exact word—in the
very smithy of vengeful suns and violent winds: his pale dry eyes, which
would, even in a maelstrom, always remain decidedly the driest of created
things, in their leisure assumed that kindly, absent look which is the
pleasant mark of Englishmen who walk in iron upon the sea: while short
brown side-whiskers mightily became the authority of Sir Charles’s looks.
The hour was about ten o’clock, and the traffic by the corner of
Hamilton Place and Piccadilly marched by without hindrance. The din of
horns and wheels and engines, as though charmed by the unusual gentleness
of the night, swept by inattentive ears as easily as the echoes of falling
water in a distant cavern. The omnibuses to Victoria and to the Marble Arch
trumpeted proudly round the corner where by day they must pant for
passage in a heavy block. Limousines and landaulettes shone and passed
silently. The very taxis, in the exaltation of moderate speed, seemed almost
to be forgetting their humble places in the hierarchy of the road. Every now
and then figures scuttled across the road with anxious jerking movements.
“A fine night!” sighed the commissionaire of the Celibates Club. His
face was very lined and his old eyes clouded with the stress of countless
days of London fog and London rain. “A taxi, Sir Charles?”
The Admiral cleared his throat and aimed the remnant of his cigar into
the gutter. “Thanks, Hunt, I think I’ll walk. Yes, a fine night.”
Omnibus after omnibus tore down the short broad slope from Park Lane
and galloped gaily across the sweep of Hyde Park Corner. There was half a
moon over St. George’s Hospital, and the open place looked like a park
with the lamps for flowers.
“The buses do speed up at night!” sighed the commissionaire.
“Don’t they! But see there, Hunt!” Sir Charles, suddenly and sharply,
was waving his cane towards the opposite side of the road, towards the
corner by the massive Argentine Club. “See that man?”
The commissionaire with the lined face followed the direction of the
cane.
“That constable, Sir Charles?”
“No, no! That Jew!”
The commissionaire, mistrustful of his ancient eyes, peered through the
clear night. He sighed: “God knows, Sir Charles, there’s Jews enough in
Mayfair, but I can’t see one just there.”
The Admiral thoughtfully took another cigar from his case. His eyes
were of iron, but his voice had lost all its sudden sharpness as he said:
“Never mind, Hunt. Just give me a light, will you?”
But, as he made to walk down Piccadilly, to join in a rubber at his other
club in St. James’s Street, Sir Charles did not let the dark lean man on the
other side of the road pass out of the corner of his eye. The young Jew
crossed the road. That did not surprise our gentleman. He walked on and,
once on Piccadilly, walked at a good pace.
The Piccadilly scene was seldom crowded between ten and eleven:
cinema-theatres, music-halls and playhouses held the world’s attention,
while the night was not yet deep enough for the dim parade of the world’s
wreckage. Sir Charles would always, at about this hour, take a little exercise
between his clubs in Hamilton Place and St. James’s.
He had passed the opening of Half-Moon Street before the young Jew
caught up with his shoulder. Sir Charles walked on without concerning
himself to look round at the dark, handsome face. Handsome as a black
archangel was Julian Raphael the Jew. Sir Charles vaguely supposed that
the archangels had originally been Jewish, and it was as a black archangel
that the looks of Julian Raphael had first impressed him. It was altogether a
too fanciful business for the Admiral’s taste; but he had no one to blame for
it but himself, since he had originally let the thing, he’d had to admit often,
run away with him.
“Well?” he suddenly smiled over his shoulder. There was, after all, a
good deal to smile about, if you took the thing properly. And it had needed
more than a handsome Jew to prevent Sir Charles taking a thing properly.
But Julian Raphael did not smile. He said gravely:
“When I first saw you, Sir Charles, I thought you were only a fool. But I
am not sure now. You show a resignation towards fate unusual in your
sceptical countrymen. It is scepticism that makes men dull, resignation that
makes men interesting. It is a dull mind that believes in nothing: it is an
interesting mind that expects nothing and awaits the worst. Your waiting
shall be rewarded, Sir Charles.”
The Admiral walked on with a grim smile. He was growing used to this
—even to this! They passed beneath the bitter walls of what was once
Devonshire House. The beautiful Jew said softly:
“You have a broad back, Sir Charles. It is a fine mark for a well-thrown
knife. Have I not always said so!”
Our gentleman swung round on the lean young Jew. A few yards from
them a policeman was having a few words with the commissionaire of the
Berkeley Restaurant about a car that had been left standing too long by the
curb. It was Julian Raphael who was smiling now. Sir Charles said sternly:
“Am I to understand that you are trying to frighten me with this
ridiculous persecution? And what, Mr. Raphael, is to prevent me from
giving you in charge to that policeman? You are, I think, wanted for
murder.”
Julian Raphael’s black eyes seemed to shine with mockery. “There’s
nothing in the world to prevent you, Sir Charles, except that any policeman
would think you mad for asking him to arrest air. Not, as you suggest, that
he wouldn’t, in the ordinary way, be pleased to catch the Prince of the Jews.
May I offer you a light for that cigar?”
And as Sir Charles lit his cigar from the match held out to him he was
not surprised to find himself looking into the ancient eyes of Hunt, the
commissionaire outside his club in Hamilton Place. His walk up Piccadilly,
his talk with the young Jew, had taken no longer than it takes to light a
cigar. This was the third time within a fortnight that the Admiral had been
privileged to see his old enemy, to walk with him and talk with him; and his
awakening had each time been to find that not more than a couple of
seconds had passed and that he had never moved from his station.
Sir Charles abruptly reentered the club and, in the smoking-room,
addressed himself to his old friend Hilary Townshend.
“Hilary,” said he, “I have a tale to tell you. It is very fanciful, and you
will dislike it. I dislike it for the same reason. But I want you, my oldest
friend, to know certain facts in case anything happens to me in the course of
the next few days—or nights. In my life, as you know, I have not had many
dealings with the grotesque. But the grotesque seems lately to be desiring
the very closest connection with me. It began two years ago when I
officiously tried to be of some service to a young Jewess called Manana
Cohen. God help me, I thought I was acting for the best.”
There follows the tale told by Admiral Sir Charles Fasset-Faith to Mr.
Townshend.
About two years ago [said Sir Charles], during one of my leaves in
London, young Mrs. Harpenden persuaded me to go down with her to a
club of some sort she was helping to run down in the East End.
There were then, and for all I know there are now, a number of pretty
and sound young women doing their best to placate God for the sins of their
Victorian fathers by making life in the East End as tolerable as possible. Of
course, only once a week. Venice’s idea in landing me was that I should
give the young devils down there a rough lecture on the Navy in general
and the Jutland fight in particular—that kind of thing.
So there I stood yapping away, surrounded by a crowd of amiable and
attentive young men and women. In a room nearby poor Napier Harpenden
was trying to get away with only one black eye from a hefty young navvy to
whom he was supposed to be teaching boxing. Across a counter in a far
corner Venice was handing out cups of perfectly revolting coffee. She had
all the bloods at her call that night, had Venice. In one corner Tarlyon was
teaching a crowd Jujitsu, and in another Hugo Cypress was playing
draughts with a Boy Scout—it did one good to see him. And there, in the
middle of all that, was the old mug roaring away about the silent Navy.
I was just getting settled down and raising laughs with the usual Jack Tar
stuff when—well, there they were, a pair of them, quite plainly laughing at
me. Not with me, mark you. You’ll understand that it put me off my stroke.
However, I did my level best to go on without looking at them, but that
wasn’t so easy, as they were bang in front of me, three or four rows back. I
had spotted the young man first. He was the one making the jokes and
leading the laugh, while the girl only followed suit. Both Jews, obviously,
and as handsome as a couple of new coins. Smart, too—the young man too
smart by half.
You could tell at a glance that they had no right in the place, which was
for very poor folk, and that they had come in just to guy. At least, that
devilish young man had. He had a thin dead-white face, a nose that
wouldn’t have looked amiss on a prince of old Babylon, black eyes the size
of walnuts, and a smile—I’ll tell you about that smile. Hilary, I’ve never in
my life so wanted to do anything as to put my foot squarely down on that
boy’s smile. Call me a Dutchman if they don’t hate it even down in hell.
The girl wasn’t any less beautiful, with her white face, black hair, black
eyes, fine slim Hebrew nose. Proud she looked too, and a proud Jewess can
—and does—look any two English beauties in the face. But she was better,
gentler, nicer. They were of the same stuff, those two young Jews, the same
ancient sensitive clever stuff, but one had gone rotten and the other hadn’t.
You could easily see that from the way, when she did meet my eyes, she did
her level best to look serious and not to hear what her companion was
whispering into her ear. She didn’t particularly want to hurt my feelings, not
she, no matter how much her man might want to. Of course I could have
stopped the lecture then and there and chucked the young man out, but I
didn’t want to go and have a rough-house the first time I was asked down to
young Venice’s potty old club.
It will puzzle me all my life (or what’s left of it, let’s say) to know why
that diabolically handsome young Jew took such an instant dislike to me;
and why I took such a dislike to him! For that was really at the bottom of all
that followed—just good old black hatred, Hilary, from the first moment
our eyes met. But I want to give you all the facts. Maybe the girl had
something to do with it even then—the girl and his own shocking smile.
You simply couldn’t help fancying that those gentle eyes were in for a very
bad time from that smile. Decidedly not my business, of course. Nothing
that interests one ever is, is it? But, on the other hand, the young man went
on whispering and laughing so all through my confounded lecture that by
the time I had finished there was just one small spot of red floating about
my mind. I don’t think I’ve ever before been so angry. There’s one
particular thing about people who sneer that I can’t bear, Hilary. They
simply insist on your disliking them, and I hate having to dislike people
more than I can tell you.
They began to clear out as soon as I had finished. The young Jew’s
behaviour hadn’t, naturally, made my effort go any better. He needed a
lesson, that bright young man. I collared him in the passage outside. Of
course he and his young lady were much too smart to hurry themselves, and
the rest of the lecturees had almost gone. Inside, Venice had given up
poisoning her club with coffee and was trying to bring it round with
shocking noises from a wireless set.
I can see that passage now. A narrow stairway leading up to God knows
where. Just one gas-jet, yellow as a Chinaman. The front-door wide open to
a narrow street like a canal of mud, for it was pelting with rain, you could
see sheets of it falling between us and the lamp on the opposite side of the
road. A man outside somewhere whistling “Horsey, keep your tail up,” and
whistling it well. Radio inside.
Our young Jewboy was tall. I simply didn’t feel I was old enough to be
his father, although he couldn’t have been more than three or four-and-
twenty. And he liked colours, that boy. He had on a nice bright brown suit, a
silk shirt to match, and not a tartan in the Highlands had anything on his tie.
His young lady’s eyes, in that sick light, shone like black onyx. It struck me
she was terrified, the way she was staring at me. I was sorry for that, it
wasn’t her terror I wanted. And where I did want it, not a sign. Then I
realised she wasn’t terrified for him but for me. Cheek.
I had the fancy youth by the shoulder. Tight. He was still laughing at me.
“This lout!” that laugh said. I can hear that laugh now. And, confound it,
there was a quite extraordinary authority to that boy’s eyes. He wasn’t used
to following anyone, not he.
I said: “Young man, your manners are very bad. What are you going to
do about it?”
I was calm enough. But he was too calm by half. He didn’t answer, but
he had given up smiling. He was looking sideways down at my hand on his
shoulder. I’ve never had a pretty hand, but it has been quite useful to me
one way and another and I’ve grown attached to it. I can’t attempt to
describe the disgust and contempt in that boy’s look. It sort of said: “By the
bosom of Abraham, what is that filthy thing on my shoulder?”
I said sharply: “I’m waiting.”
The girl sighed: “Don’t! Don’t, Julian!”
As though, you know, he might hit me! Me!
Well, he might! I said: “Careful, young man!”
The girl whispered almost frantically: “Let him go, sir! Please! You
don’t know....”
I comforted her. I said I could take care of myself. She wasn’t, I fancy,
convinced. The way she looked at a man, with those scared black eyes!
But our young friend wasn’t taking any notice of either of us. He was
busy. All this, of course, happened in a few seconds. The Jew had raised his
hand, slowly, very slowly, and had caught the wrist of my hand on his
shoulder. I felt his fingers round my wrist. Tight.
“Steady, boy!” I said. I’d have to hit him, and I didn’t want to do that. At
least, I told myself I didn’t want to. That young Jew had strong fingers. He
simply hadn’t spoken one word yet. His conversation was limited to trying
to break my wrist. My wrist! Then he spoke. He said: “You swine!” The girl
suddenly pulled at my arm, hard. His back was to the open doorway, the
rain, the gutter. I caught him one on the chin so that he was in it flat on his
back. His tie looked fancier than ever in the mud, too. The girl sort of
screamed.
“All right,” I said. “All right.” Trying, you know, to comfort the poor
kid. She was rushing after her man, but I had my arm like a bar across the
door. She stared at me.
I said: “Listen to me, my child. You’re in bad company.”
“She is now,” a voice said. The young Jew had picked himself up. He
looked a mess, fine clothes and all. I thought he would try to rush me, but
not he! He just smiled and said quite calmly: “I’ll make a note of that, Sir
Charles Fasset-Faith. Come on, Manana.”
But I wasn’t letting “Manana” go just yet. The poor kid.
“What’s his name?” I asked her.
She stared at me. I never knew what “white” really meant until I saw that
child’s teeth.
“His name?” I repeated. Gently, you know.
She whispered: “Julian Raphael.”
That young Jew’s voice hit me on the back of the neck like a knife.
“You’ll pay for that, Manana! See if you don’t!”
By the way, it isn’t just rhetoric about the knife. It was like a knife. But
I’ll tell you more about knives later.
“Oh,” she sobbed.
“Look here,” I said to the devilish boy, “if you so much as——”
He laughed. The girl bolted under my arm and joined him. He just
laughed. I said: “Good-night, Manana. Don’t let him hurt you.” She didn’t
seem to dare look at me.
They went, up that muddy lane. He had her by the arm, and you could
see he had her tight. There aren’t many lamps in that beau quartier, and a
few steps took them out of my sight. I heard a scream, and then a sob.
That settled Julian Raphael so far as I was concerned. Then another sob
—from the back of that nasty darkness. I couldn’t, of course, go after them
then. It would look too much as though I was bidding for possession of the
young Jew’s love-lady. But at that moment I made up my mind I’d land that
pretty boy sometime soon. That scream had made me feel just a trifle sick.
That was personal. Then I was against Julian Raphael impersonally because
I’ve always been for law and order. You have too, Hilary. I shouldn’t
wonder if that’s not another reason why women find men like us dull. But
some of us must be, God knows, in this world. And it was against all law
and order that young Mr. Julian Raphael—imagine any man actually using
a name like that!—should be loose in the world. Crook was too simple a
word for Mr. Raphael. And he was worse for being so devilish handsome.
One imagined him with women—with this poor soul of a Manana. Of
course, Venice and Napier and the other people at their potty old club knew
nothing about either of them. They must have just drifted in, they said.
They had, into my life.
The very next morning I rang up our friend H—— at Scotland Yard and
asked him if he knew anything about a Julian Raphael. Oh, didn’t he! Had a
dossier of him as long as my arm. H—— said: “The Prince of the Jews,
that’s Julian Raphael’s pet name. Profession: counterfeiter. But we’ve never
yet caught him or his gang.”
Oh, the cinema wasn’t in it with our fancy young friend. The police had
been after him for about five years. Once they had almost got him for
knifing a Lascar. Murder right enough, but they’d had to release him for
lack of evidence. The Lascar, H—— said, had probably threatened to give
away a cocaine plant, and Julian Raphael had slit his throat. Suspected of
cocaine-smuggling, living on immoral earnings of women, and known to be
the finest existing counterfeiter of Bank of England £5 notes. Charming
man, Mr. Julian Raphael.
“I want to land him,” I told H——.
“Thanks very much,” said he. “So do we.”
“Well, how about that girl of his—Manana something?”
“Manana Cohen? Catch her giving him away! She adores the beast, and
so do they all, those who aren’t terrified of him.”
I said: “Well, we’ll see. I want to get that boy. I don’t like him.”
H——’s last words to me were: “Now look here, Charles, don’t go
playing the fool down there. I know the East End is nowadays supposed to
be as respectable as Kensington and that the cinema has got it beat hollow
for pools of blood, but believe me a chap is still liable to be punctured in the
ribs by a clever boy like Julian Raphael. So be a good fellow and go back to
your nice old Navy and write a book saying which of your brother Admirals
didn’t win Jutland just to show you’re an Admiral as well.”
H—— was right. I was a fool, certainly. But God drops the folly into the
world as well as the wisdom, and surely it’s part of our job to pick up bits of
it. Besides, I’ve never been one for dinner-parties or the artless prattle of
young ladies, and so, thought I, could a man spend his leave more
profitably than in landing a snake like Julian Raphael?
I took myself off down to the East End with my oldest tweeds, a
toothbrush and a growth on my chin. George Tarlyon came with me. He had
scented a row that night, and not the devil himself can keep George from
putting both his feet into the inside of a row. Besides, he wanted to have a
look at Miss Manana Cohen, saying he was a connoisseur of Cohens and
liked nothing so much as to watch them turning into Curzons or
Colquhouns. I wasn’t sorry, for you can’t have a better man in a row than
George Tarlyon, and with his damfool remarks he’d make a miser forget he
was at the Ritz. We took two rooms in Canning Town E., and very nice
rooms they were, over a ham and beef shop, and walked from pub to pub
watching each other’s beards grow and listening for Julian Raphael. At
least, I listened and George talked.
You would naturally have thought that the likely place to find that smart
young man would be round about what journalists call the “exclusive hotels
and night-clubs of the West End.” Not a bit of it. We soon heard something
of Julian Raphael’s ways from one tough or another. Tarlyon’s idea of
getting information delicately about a man was to threaten to fight anyone
who wouldn’t give it to him, and we soon collected quite a bit that way.
Mr. Raphael was a Socialist, it appeared—remember, I’d guessed he was
clever?—and hated the rich. He hated the rich so bitterly that, though he
had a pretty fat bank-account of his own, he still clung to his old quarters in
the East End. But no one knew, or cared to give, the address of his “old
quarters,” which were probably various. Tarlyon threatened to fight any
number of toughs who didn’t “know” Mr. Raphael’s address, but they
preferred to fight, and in the end George got tired.
Oh, yes, Julian Raphael was certainly watched by the police, but he was
generally somewhere else while the police were watching him. And Miss
Manana Cohen was certainly his young lady-love, and she loved him and
lived with him but he wouldn’t marry her because of another principle he
had, that it was wrong for a man of independent spirit to have a wife of his
own. Nice boy, Mr. Julian Raphael. But it appeared that he loved Miss
Manana very decidedly and discouraged competition. It also appeared that
before he had taken to the downward path he had been a juggler with knives
on the music-halls. Knives again. Tarlyon thought that a pretty good joke at
the time, but he didn’t enjoy it nearly so much later on.
We had been pottering about down there several days and George was
just beginning to think of a nice shave and a bath when we hit on our first
clue. The clue was walking up a grimy side-street by the East India Docks.
“Oh, pretty!” says George. And she certainly was. She hadn’t seen us.
She was in a hurry.
“We follow,” I said.
“Naturally,” says George. “A nice girl like that! What do you take me
for, a Y. M. C. A.?”
We followed. She walked fast, did Miss Manana. And it was queer, how
she lit up that grimy God-forsaken street. The way she was walking, you
might have taken her for a young gentlewoman “doing” the East End in a
hurry. Tall, lithe, quietly dressed—Julian Raphael’s property! And he’d
made her scream with pain.
“Now what?” snapped George.
She had been about twenty yards ahead of us. Street darkish, deserted,
lined with warehouses, and all closed because it was a Saturday afternoon.
Suddenly, no Manana Cohen. We slipped after her quick as you like. She
had dived down a narrow passage between the warehouses. We were just in
time to see the tail of her skirt whisking through a door in the wall a few
yards up—and just in time to cut in after her.
“Oh!” she gasped. We must have looked a couple of cut-throats. And it
was dark in there. I was panting—nothing like a sailor’s life for keeping
you thoroughly out of training, unless it’s a soldier’s. But George was all
there, being a good dancer.
“Miss Cohen, I believe?” he asks. All in whispers. She just stared at us.
George didn’t want to scare her any more than I did. He was gay, in that
mood of his when he seems to be laughing more at himself than at anyone
else. But she just stared at us. She was tall, as women go, but we simply
towered over the poor child. Then she recognised me and went as red as a
carnation. I couldn’t think why. Tarlyon said comfortingly: “There, there!”
Then she panted all in a jumble: “I’m sorry I was rude to you the other
night. Really I am. Please go away now, please!”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” I whispered. “We want——”
George, with his foot, gently shut the door behind us. We were in the
passage of the house or whatever it was. It was pitch-dark. I lit another
match.
“But what is it, what do you want?” the girl moaned.
“We just want to have a word with your young man,” said George, the
idiot, in his ordinary voice.
“Oh!” she caught her breath. That gave the show away all right. Julian
Raphael was at home, whatever home was. Then the match went out. And
the lights went on, snap! Julian Raphael stood at the end of the passage,
pointing a revolver.
George said: “Don’t be an ass!”
“Come here!” says Mr. Raphael to the girl.
“No, you don’t!” said George, hauling her to him by the arm.
Julian Raphael smiled in that way he had. “If you don’t let her go at
once,” he says, “I shoot.”
“You what!” I said.
Tarlyon laughed. You can hear him. He said: “Now don’t be a fool all
your life but stand at attention when you speak to my friend here, because
he’s a knight. And put that comic gun away else I’ll come and hit you.”
I couldn’t help laughing. The young Jew looked so surprised. He’d never
before been talked to just in that way and it bothered him, he was used to
doing the laughing and being taken seriously. But I had laughed too soon.
There was a whizz by my ear, a thud on the door behind me, and a knife an
inch deep in the panel. The surprise had given Manana a chance to slip
away. She was by Mr. Raphael now at the end of the passage. There wasn’t
light enough to make out what was behind them, a stairway up or a stairway
down. Down, I guessed, into the bowels of the earth. Julian Raphael was
smiling. I’ll say it was well thrown, that knife.
Tarlyon was livid. “By God,” he whispered, “threw a knife at us! We are
having a nice weekend!”
I held him back. What was the use? A little child could have led us at
knife-throwing. Julian Raphael said, with that infernal sneer of his:
“Gentlemen, I merely wanted to show you what to expect if you were to
advance another step. I wouldn’t kill you—not yet. One of you, yes. But it
would cause comment, the disappearance of two fools. However, I might
slice bits off your ears. Further, this is my house. Are you not intruding?
Gentlemen, you may go.”
And, you know, we did. What the deuce else was there to do? If Tarlyon
with his infernal chuckling hadn’t roused the man out of his lair we might
have taken him by surprise and learnt something of the whereabouts of that
counterfeiting business. But as it was, “go” was us while the going was
good. And the way Tarlyon swore when we were outside made me glad it
was a Saturday afternoon and the warehouses were closed, else he might
have corrupted the poor workmen.
“What do we do now?” he asked at last. “Lump it?”
“Well, at any rate, we know his address now.”
“Address be blowed! That’s not an address, Charles, but an exit. I’ll bet
our smart friend doesn’t press his trousers in that hole—and, by Heaven,
there you are!”
He made me jump. I hadn’t, didn’t, see anything. I thought it was
another knife.
“Never mind,” snapped George. “Too late now. Come on, man, come
on!”
He made me walk on. After reaching daylight from that passage between
the warehouses we had turned to the left, walked on a hundred yards or so
by the front of the warehouses, then to the left again. This, running parallel
to the passage, was a row of quite respectable-looking houses all stuck
together, as quite respectable-looking houses should do in these times.
There are streets and streets of them down there, and I’m told white women
sometimes marry Chinamen just for the pleasure of living in them. But, as
someone has said, white women will do anything. We had come to the end
of a block when Tarlyon set up that howl and then shut me up.
“What the deuce!” I said again.
George said, walking on: “Jewboy has made one mistake. Naughty
Jewboy. Now have a look at that house we passed. Don’t stare as though
you were an American tailor looking at the Prince of Wales. Casually. The
corner one.”
I turned and looked, casually. It was a house like another, and I said so.
George asked me how far I thought it was from the passage in which I had
nearly fielded Raphael’s knife with my ear. I said it must be a good way.
Two hundred yards at least. There was a whole block of warehouses and a
row of houses in between.
“Quite,” said George. We walked on. “Then how did Mr. Raphael get
there so quick? Not by the road. I just saw a piece of his delightful face
round the curtain of one of the windows. His one mistake, to have let me
see him. There must be an underground passage about two hundred yards
long between his warehouse address and his residence. You’ll bet the police
have never spotted it yet, and I only spotted it because he was so eager to
see us well away. I don’t think he likes us, Charles. But I’d be pleased to
know who is supposed to be living in that house. And I’d take a bet that
there’s a nice counterfeiting matinée going on this very moment somewhere
between that house and that warehouse passage. Now you say something.”
“The point is, George, do you think he saw you spot him?”
Tarlyon smiled. “There’s always a catch. Trust the God of the Jews to lay
a snag for poor Gentiles. But I don’t know. He mayn’t have seen I got him.
But we will have to act as if he had. Get him quick, else he’ll be in the air.
What’s the time now? Nearly eight. We’ll get back to civilisation, try and
catch H—— at his home address, come down here to-night and surround
the place. Fun. Hurray!”
I said: “Look here, George——”
He looked at me sharply. “I know what you are going to say, Charles.
Don’t say it. You’re old enough to know better.”
But I stuck to my point. We must let H—— know at once, yes. Post men
at the warehouse entrance and the house entrance, certainly. Catch Julian
Raphael and his friends, decidedly. But we must give Manana Cohen
another chance. She was only a child—twenty-one or two at most.
George said: “Charles, don’t be a silly old man. She is probably as bad
as any of them. You can’t tell. Girls don’t live a life like that unless they
want to.”
I knew he was wrong. I just knew it. So I didn’t argue, but stuck to my
point. The girl must be got out of the way before the place was raided. If the
police found her there, she would be jailed—perhaps for years. I simply
wouldn’t have it. The girl was at the beginning of her life. To jail her now
would be to ruin her for all her life.
Tarlyon, of course, didn’t need to be convinced. He was only leading me
on. Tarlyon wouldn’t have put the police on a girl for trying to boil him in
oil. But I was right about Manana Cohen. Good God, don’t I know I was
right! This had been her life, was her life, these dreary streets, these foul
alleys. Julian Raphael had found her, dazzled her, seduced her, bullied her,
broken her. What chance had the girl, ever? She was timorous, you could
see. A timid girl. No matter how kindly you talked to her, she stared at you
like a rabbit at a stoat. Life was the stoat to Manana Cohen. Who knows
what the girl hadn’t already suffered in her small life, what hell? Maybe she
had loved Julian Raphael, maybe she loved him now. That wasn’t against
her. Saints love cads. It’s the only way you can know a saint, mostly. Some
of the nicest women you and I know, Hilary, have been divorced for the
love of blackguards. Well, if Manana loved Raphael she would be punished
enough by seeing him go to prison for a long stretch. One might find her a
job on the stage, with her looks and figure. Good Lord, the way that girl
looked at you when you so much as opened your mouth, her black eyes
shivering as though her heart was hurt.
We found a taxi in the Whitechapel Road. To civilisation. Tarlyon was
quiet. I wondered if he thought I was in love with the girl. Me, at my age.
As we rattled through Cheapside—deserted on a Saturday afternoon—
Tarlyon said: “We will have to think of a way of getting the girl out of the
place beforehand. But how? If we warn her she will naturally pass the glad
news on to her man. Naturally.”
Naturally, I agreed. She wouldn’t be herself if she went back on her man.
I said I would think of a way as I bathed and dressed for dinner. As George
dropped me at my flat he said:
“Let’s say dinner in an hour’s time at White’s. Meanwhile I’ll ring up H
——. Maybe he will dine with us. I suppose it will be about midnight
before we get down there with his men. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not
going to have knives chucked at me on an empty stomach—for I’ll not be
left out of this, not for all the knives in Christendom and Jewry. This is a
real treasure-hunt as compared to chasing poppycock with children round
Regent’s Park and chickenfood with flappers up Piccadilly. I said midnight,
Charles, to give you a chance of getting Miss Manana Colquhoun clear
away. Wish you luck!”
But fate wouldn’t be bullied by George Almeric St. George Tarlyon. Fate
had ideas of her own. Or is fate a he? No, it would be a woman, for she
hates slim women. I’ve noticed that in the East, where no slim woman ever
comes to any good. I hadn’t finished glancing at my letters, while my bath
was running, when my man announced a young lady.
“A young what?” I said.
He was surprised, too. I went into the sitting-room. Manana Cohen was
by the open door, as though she was afraid to come right in.
I said: “Thank Heaven you’ve come!” Extraordinary thing to say, but I
said it.
She tried to smile. All scared eyes. I thought she was going to faint, tried
to make her sit down, fussed about. Hilary, I’m trying to tell you I was shy.
“I’m frightened,” she said, as though that would be news for me. Then it
all came out in that jumbled way of hers. She had given Raphael the slip,
had found my address in the telephone-book, had come to me to warn me.
“To warn me!” I gasped. The cheek of these young people! Here were
we and all Scotland Yard after them—and she had come to warn me!
“Yes. Listen.” Then she stopped. Suddenly, she blushed crimson.
I said: “Now, Manana, what is it? What on earth is there to blush about?”
She tried not to stammer as she said: “I can’t help it. Julian’s after you.
He’s out to kill. He hates you once and he hates you twice because he thinks
I’m in love with you. I don’t know why. He’s just mad jealous. I know
Julian. And they’ll never catch him. Never. The fool police! I just thought
I’d warn you. Go away, please go away—out of London. I feel if you die it
will be my fault. He’ll throw you if you don’t go away. I know Julian.
You’ll be walking up Piccadilly one evening, this evening perhaps.
Suddenly, swish, knife in your back. No one will know who threw it, in the
crowd. He could throw it from the top of a ’bus and no one notice. He never
misses.”
I said: “So, Manana, he thinks you love me. Why does he think that?”
She wasn’t blushing now. She was quite calm now. She had never moved
from the open door. Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine. They shone like
anything in that white face. She just said: “Now I’ve warned you, I must go
back. He will miss me. I’m glad I warned you. I think you must be a good
man. Good-bye. But go away, please go away at once! Good-bye.”
I couldn’t stop her by touching her, else she would have got scared. I just
told her not to go back East. We were going to raid Julian Raphael’s place
that night.
“You came to warn me,” I said, “but I was just coming to warn you. My
friend and I don’t want you to go to prison, Manana. You had better stay
away from there for the present. I can find you somewhere to stay to-night,
if you like. You can trust me.”
She opened her eyes very wide, but all she said was: “I must go back at
once.”
I began to protest, but she went on tonelessly: “You don’t understand. I
came to warn you because you are a good man. You are, aren’t you? I’m
sorry I was led into laughing at you that night. He pinched my arm when I
didn’t laugh. But I must stand by Julian. He is my man, good or bad. You
see? He has been kind to me in his way. He loves me. I must go back to him
at once. If you make me promise not to tell him about the police, I won’t. I
won’t tell him anyway, I think. He must go to prison. It is time, because he
will do more murders. I hate murders. But I will go with him to prison. And
that will make it all right between Julian and me. Good-bye.”
It was good-bye. I knew it was no use arguing. With some women one
doesn’t know when it’s any good or not, with a few one does. They’re the
ones who count. I could hold her by force, of course—for her own good.
Dear God, the lies we can tell ourselves! If I held her by force from going
back to Julian Raphael it would not have been so much for her own good as
for mine. I hated her going, I wanted her. But she must do as she thought
right. Everyone must always, in spite of everything. I’m glad I’ve never
married, Hilary, I would have made a mess of it just by always seeing my
wife’s point of view.
I saw Manana downstairs to the door. It was raining the deuce, and the
difference between twilight and night was about the same as that between a
man of colour and a nigger. Manana and I stood close together in the open
doorway. It was good-bye. I said: “Perhaps they will let you off. I will do
my best. Come to me for help later on. Good-bye, Manana. Thank you.”
She smiled. The first and last smile I ever saw light that face. “I must
never see you again,” she said, and then the laughter of Julian Raphael tore
the smile from her face.
My rooms, as you know, are in Curzon Street: at the rather grubby end
where Curzon Street, as though finally realising that it is deprived of the
residential support of the noble family of that name, slopes helplessly down
to a slit in a grey wall called Lansdowne Passage. I don’t know if you ever
have occasion to go through there. When it is dark in London it is darker in
Lansdowne Passage. It leads, between Lansdowne House and the wreck of
Devonshire House, to Berkeley Street. There is a vertical iron bar up the
middle of each opening, which I’m told were originally put there to prevent
highwaymen making a dash through the Passage to the open country round
Knightsbridge. Against that vertical iron bar leant Julian Raphael. I
remember he had a pink shirt on. Our young dandy always showed a stretch
of cuff. Between us and him there was one of those very tall silver-grey
lamp-posts. You could see him round the edge of it, a black lean lounging
shape. And that pink shirt.
“Manana, I followed you!” he cried. And he laughed.
The girl whispered frantically to me: “Get in, get in, get in!”
I said “What?” like a fool. She tried to push me inside the doorway. I
was looking at her, not at Julian Raphael. I didn’t understand. There was a
scream from the twilight: “Mind out, Manana!” Manana jumped in front of
me. That’s all.
I held her as she fell backward. She just sighed.
“Manana!” the voice screamed again. Oh, in terror! The knife was up to
the hilt in her throat.
I think I lost my head completely for the first time in my life. I made a
dash towards the figure in the opening of Lansdowne Passage. He didn’t
move, didn’t even see me coming. He was sobbing like a baby. Then I
changed my mind and rushed back to Manana. Lay a flower on a pavement
in the rain, and you have Manana as I last saw her. Her eyelids fluttered
once or twice. The rain was washing the blood from her throat into the
gutter. My man had come down and was doing his best. I looked through
the twilight at the crumpled black figure against the iron bar.
“She’s dead, Raphael!” I called, whispering to my man: “Go get him!”
He did his best, poor devil. Raphael yelled: “Yes, for you! And I’ll never
throw but one more knife—but I’ll do that if I have to come back from hell
to do it!” He was gone, through Lansdowne Passage. My wretched man
hadn’t a chance. That night and for days there wasn’t a port in England that
H—— left unwatched for Julian Raphael. But, as in the story-books, he has
never been seen or heard of again. H—— has an idea he is somewhere in
the Americas.
But it’s not quite true (the Admiral added) that Julian Raphael has never
been seen or heard of again. I have seen him and heard him, quite lately—in
a sort of way. Of course, it can be no more than a trick of the imagination.
He has probably been more on my mind recently than I had realised. But
the illusion is quite definitely vivid and unpleasant. And I can tell you it
gets rather on a man’s nerves, this comic talk of knives on Piccadilly.
Imagination, Hilary, can play us queer dark tricks sometimes. And it’s no
good trying to explain them with spirit talk. The mind is a dark place and
we don’t know what’s in the sky and that’s all there is to it.
THE structure, economy and polity of our time do not incline the meek
and lowly to a particular regard for persons of condition. Nor is the
patronage of princes and the favour of lords solicited to any noticeable
degree by the poets and scientists of the day. The most superficial survey of
history will discover that the condescension of a gentleman of the haut ton
was once regarded as almost an essential of a poet’s success: while the
craftsman, was he never so cunning and exquisite, must rely for his fame on
the caprice of the young men of fashion, who were, it is to be presumed, not
the less generous because they were invariably in debt and had not the
worse taste because they were nearly always in wine.
In our generation, however, we have progressed so far in the liberal arts
that, should a man of letters so mask himself with the impertinence of
fashion as to be remarked at Ascot in clothes which, with a deplorable want
of faith in the dignity of letters, have been cut to fit his person, he shall at
once be convicted by all really intelligent people of a lack of feeling for all
that is genuine in art and literature. That cannot be altogether just. An
effeminate manner and unusual habits should not, on the other hand,
invariably be taken for sure signs of genius in the mental sciences; and
laymen should be warned against regarding soiled linen as an essential of
the successful ascent of Parnassus.
In the face of this illiberal attitude towards the upper sort, the popular
interest in the young Duke of Mall is the more surprising; and to that
gentleman’s familiars and dependents it has for long been a source of
gratification to observe how the esteem in which he is held by the people of
England is rivalled only by the interest shown in the table-manners of the
most famous pugilists and the respect extended to the tireless energies of
the most beloved prince in Christendom.
Nor was the young Duke’s greatness unheralded, his birth without good
omen: historians the world over will know the legend of the Dukedom of
Mall, how it was prophesied by a sibyl of the Restoration that on the birth
of the greatest of that house the golden cock on the weather-vane of St.
James’s tower would crow thrice, and on his death it would also crow
thrice. And only those most steeped in the modern vice of scepticism will
disbelieve the unanimous evidence of every club servant in St. James’s
Street, that this miracle attended the birth of the seventeenth Duke; while
we vulgar lovers of England’s might and enemies to the Socialist tyranny
can only pray that the second manifestation of that miracle be averted for
the longest span of God’s mercy to the most gallant of His creatures.
There follow, then, some sidelights on the recent life of the young Duke
of Mall and his splendid lady. Than these two, history will say, history must
say, there never was a more comely pair; for such is the unknowable
wisdom of the All-Wise, that opposites will discover the sweetest harmony.
The differences referred to are, of course, those of breeding and nationality,
for the lady was an American out of Chicago, in the State of Illinois. But to
attempt to describe Miss Lamb were to challenge contempt and defy the
limitations set by the gods upon human speech. Let it suffice that she was
beautiful: the quality of her colour comparable only to that of a garden in
tempered sunlight, the texture of her complexion the envy of silkworms,
while the glory of her hair has been described by a minor poet as a cap of
beaten gold and autumn leaves. As for the lady’s eyes, shall a phrase
attempt where a thousand photographs have failed?
The Duke, then, was tender of this lady: he wooed her, was mocked, he
entreated, was beguiled, he pleaded, was provoked, he stormed, was
dismissed, he worshipped, was accepted. The wedding paralysed the traffic
of London for several hours and the newspapers of England and America
for several days. The happy pair spent their honeymoon at the Trianon at
Versailles, lent to the young Duke by the French Government in recognition
of his gallant services as a liaison officer during the war.
It should be noted that the wedding-present of the bride’s father to the
young Duke was an ocean-going yacht of gratifying tonnage. White and
graceful, the yacht Camelot rode the seas like a bird. The Duke, who liked
birds, was very impressed.
II
That, however, was some time ago. Now, alas, not the most kindly
observer of society can but have remarked that the recent life of the young
Duke and his Duchess has been as conspicuous for its private dolour as for
its public splendour. There have been rumours, there has been chatter. This
has been said, and that, and the other. Gossip, in fact, has been rife. But it is
the austere part of the historian to deal only in facts. The facts are as
follows:
South of the lands of the old troubadours, between the heights of the
Southern Alps and the languor of the Mediterranean, lies the pretty town of
Cannes. The year we tell of was in its first youth. The flower and chivalry
of England and America were promenading in the sunlight of the pretty
town or commenting at their ease on the brilliant tourneys of tennis and
polo. Here and there about the links the sun lit up the brilliant Fair Isle
sweaters of Jews, Greeks and Argentines where they were playing a
friendly match for the empiry of the world. The mimosa was at its full glory
of fresh-powdered gold. Brilliant sun-shades lit the walks. From the gardens
of white villas could be heard the laughter of children and millionaires. The
beach was strewn with jewels, and ladies walked in beauty. Great
automobiles loitered between the Casino and the Carlton Hotel, while youth
in swift Bugatti or Bentley challenged time to a race from Cannes to Monte
Carlo. The waters slept profoundly in the full kiss of the afternoon sun.
There, as a dove on a spacious lawn, rode a fair white yacht. From its stern
hung a cluster of golden cherries, for such was the pretty nautical device of
the young Duke of Mall.
It must be granted by the most fastidious that the scene was set for
enchantment. The sea slept under the sun, the sun upon the mountains, the
chauffeurs at their driving-wheels, the croupiers in the Casino, the
diplomats at a conference, the demi-mondaines near the diplomats. Yet in
the yacht raged a storm: the Duke of Mall was having a row with his lady.
It will be incredible that it was not their first. It must be incredible that it
looked like being their last. At the moment of our intrusion, my Lord Duke,
in point of fact, was saying:
“By Heaven, Leonora, I am sick and tired of it!”
That small, lovely head, those wide, deep, gentle eyes! Yet stern Juno
herself did sometimes walk the earth in those very eyes. She was not more
than twenty-four, this lady, yet with what proud calm and disdain she could
at one glance enwrap her husband! Not, however, that it always advantaged
her case, for sometimes it might be he was too sleepy to notice or maybe he
would be too busily engaged in disdaining her, which on occasions he could
do very handsomely.
Gently said she: “You say you are sick and tired of ‘it.’ ‘It,’ my dear, my
well-beloved? Am I, by ‘it,’ to understand that you mean me?”
The young Duke pointed his indifference with the application of a match
to a rough surface and the application of the match to a cigar. “You may,”
said he, “understand what you like. I said what I said.”
Tenderness was never yet so fitly clothed as by this lady’s voice. “Shall
I, then,” said she, “tell you all that I understand by what you said?”
The Duke need not have waved a hand skyward, need not have smiled,
have yawned, and said: “Am I God, to stop you talking! But maybe it is not
necessary for me to add that I wish I were, if only for that purpose.”
The Duchess said: “However, I will not be provoked. It is too hot. I will
content myself merely with remarking that in my considered opinion the
ancient Dukedom of Mall does at present grace one with the manners of a
boor and the habits of a stable-boy.”
“Leonora, you go too far!”
She sighed: “Dear, had I, before marrying you, gone even a little further,
how much more comfortably I had fared!”
For as long as it takes to say a forbidden word of one syllable the young
Duke’s fair features wore the air of a battlefield: thereon anger fought with
apathy: but was, by the grace of God and a public-school education,
repulsed.
“Not, mind you,” said the Duchess, “that I can blame the pretty dolls
whom you encourage to pursue you under my very nose.”
The Duke remarked that she had a very beautiful nose, a very small
nose.
The Duchess thanked him.
“But,” said the Duke, “by the number of things which you accuse me of
doing under it, any one would think it cast as long a shadow as Lord
Nelson’s column. For the sake of your own beauty,” he pleaded earnestly,
“may I beg you to leave your nose, much as I admire it, out of my supposed
infidelities?”
The Duchess remarked that she could quite well understand why women
pursued him with their attentions. Yet, as she spoke, no spark of bitterness
pointed her low light voice, no trace of jealousy marred her urbanity. She
remarked that he was very rich. His rank was second only to his King’s. He
was very handsome. He was charming.
The Duke thanked her.
“However,” said the Duchess.
“Ah, that’s not too good,” sighed the Duke. “I knew there was a catch
somewhere.”
“However,” said the Duchess, “the beauty that you most admire in any
woman is the beauty of her not being a woman you already know: the only
charm of which you never are tired is the charm of novelty.”
“One likes a change,” sighed the Duke. “If that’s what you are talking
about.”
“It certainly is,” said the Duchess.
“Well, don’t let me hinder you,” said the Duke. He was rude. “I am all
attention. But should I interrupt you, sweet, you must forgive me, for I am
apt to talk in my sleep.”
“Oh, but haven’t I made quite a collection of names like Dolly and Lucy
and Maudie!”
The Duke said one word. It expressed all the volumes that could be
written by the men who, alas, cannot write. But the Duchess had now been
in England for four years and knew that the facility with which an
Englishman can swear at his wife does not detract in the least from his deep
respect for Womanhood, else would England be what England undoubtedly
is?
She said: “Maximilian, I want to tell you that you are a most
extraordinary man. In public, for instance, you are all that is charming; and
many who know of our private disagreements can’t but think the fault is
mine, since in public you are so very right and seem never for a moment
deficient in the manners, graces and consideration proper to a great
gentleman.”
The Duke expressed a hope that she would put that down in writing, so
that he could send it as a reference to any lady, or ladies, to whom he might
be paying his suit, or suits.
“However,” said the Duchess, “when we come to examine you in the
home, what a different picture do we find! Your manners are monstrous,
your graces those of a spoilt schoolboy, while your consideration for your
wife such that, far from concealing from me your preference for the
company of low women, you will actually,” said she, “bring them on board
this yacht and make love to them under my very——”
The Duke, he sighed.
“In,” snapped the Duchess, “my company. And now,” she added calmly,
“I will say good-bye.”
“Child,” said the Duke softly, “must you go? Must you really? Can’t I
tempt you to stay? Very well, then,” said he, “good-bye.”
“Captain Tupper!” the Duchess called.
“Captain Tupper,” the Duchess said, “I am going ashore. You will please
see to it at once. I think my maid has everything packed. Thank you.”
The Duke opened his eyes. It was an effort, for he was sleepy.
“Captain Tupper,” said he, “her Grace will take the fastest cutter to the
town to catch the Blue Train to Calais. Should a sleeper on the Blue Train
be unavailable, you will see to it that she is accommodated with one of a
suitable colour. We, in the cool of the evening, will make for Naples. Thank
you.”
The Duke closed his eyes again, for he was sleepy. The Duchess stared
as though into the heart of the still blue bay, and who shall say what it was
that she saw in that deep place, whether she saw the towers of her love torn
down by the winds of man’s discontent, the ruins of her marriage washed in
the infinite sea of man’s inconstancy? Her eyes darkened, and presently she
said, bemused: “I am going now. Adieu, Maximilian.”
“Leonora,” he said, with closed eyes, “I wish you all happiness and
content.”
“Content!” said she, and laughed.
“Good-bye, Leonora.”
She said: “Max, we were very happy once. We were lovers once. So
happy—once upon a time!”
He whispered:
“ ‘Out upon it, I have loved
Three whole days together!
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fine weather.’ ”
She: “Oh, but I can match you one vulgar Restoration gallant against
another!
“ ‘Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts and broken vows;
If I by miracle can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
’Tis all that Heaven allows.’ ”
III
It is a sorry business to enquire into what men think, when we are every
day only too uncomfortably confronted with what they do. Moreover, the
science of psychology—for that is what we are talking about—is as yet but a
demoiselle among the sciences; and that writer carries the least conviction
who tries to wind his tale about her immature coils. Therefore we will not
enquire into the young Duke’s thoughts, but merely relate his actions: we
will leave his psychology to the fishes of the tideless sea, while we let him
confront us with all his vanity.
The time came when the young Duke awoke. Now the winds of the sea
were playing about him, the sun was certainly not where he had left it, and
the angle of his deck-chair was peculiar. The world was very dark. He
looked upon the sea and found it odd, and he looked upon the land and did
not find it at all.
“Ho!” cried the Duke. “Where is the land, the land of France? Ho there,
Captain Tupper! What have you done with the fair land of France? I do not
see it anywhere. Our French allies will be exceedingly annoyed when they
hear we have mislaid them. And do my eyes deceive me, or is that a wave
making for us over there?”
“It is blowing moderate from the southeast, your Grace.”
“Moderate, upon my word! Captain Tupper, moderation sickens me. Ho, I
see some land over there!”
“We have just left Nice behind, your Grace.”
“I sincerely hope, Captain Tupper, that you are not among those who
affect to despise Nice. Queen Victoria was very fond of Nice. It may not be
Deauville or Coney Island, Captain Tupper, but Nice can still offer
attractions of a homely sort.”
“But I understood, your Grace, that——”
“These are strange words, Captain Tupper! But proceed.”
“—that our direction was Naples.”
“Naples? Good God, Naples! And look, there’s another wave making
straight for us! Hang on, Tupper. I’ll see you are all right. You sailors aren’t
what you were in the days when you each had a port in every——”
“A wife in every port is the correct form of the libel, your Grace.”
“But hang it, I call this, don’t you, a damned rough sea? However, I feel
very gay this evening. I have just had an idea. Now, Tupper, let me hear no
more of this high-handed talk about turning your back on Nice.”
“But, your Grace, we are making for Naples!”
“Your obsession for Naples seems to me singularly out of place on a
windy evening. I think you might consider me a little, even though I am on
my own yacht. I detest, I deplore, Naples. Put back to Nice, Captain Tupper.
I am for Paris!”
“For Paris, your Grace!”
“For Paris, Captain Tupper, with a laugh and a lance and a tara-tara-
diddle for to break a pretty heart!”
IV
VI
Now the Duke had turned his yacht from Naples merely to amuse himself
(that is to say, to annoy his wife); but is it not a fact, as The Morning Post
lately asked in reference to our treating with the Soviet Republic, that it is
dangerous to play with fire? So it happened that the Duke had not been gay
of his new enchantment for long before all others palled on him, and he
awoke one morning to recognise that he could not, try as he would, do
without the one enchantment that was called Ava Lamb. Those American
sisters, first the one and then the other, were fated, it appeared, to ravish his
imagination to the exclusion of the whole race of womankind. And he had
all the more leisure in which to contemplate his dilemma insomuch as Miss
Lamb, pleading the importunity of friends, would sometimes not see him for
days at a time.
In the meanwhile the Duchess, in London, was preparing to petition the
Courts to release her from her unfortunate marriage; and after the usual
correspondence had passed between the lawyers of both parties, and the
usual evidence collected, the majesty of the law pronounced the usual decree
and everyone said the usual things.
Impatiently the Duke in Paris awaited the wire which would tell him that
he was no longer the husband of Leonora Mall; and when it came he delayed
only long enough to instruct his valet to telephone his London florists to
send the ex-Duchess a basket of flowers before calling on Miss Ava Lamb at
her hotel.
However, she was not at home. The Duke protested. Even so, she was not
at home. The Duke felt rebuked for not having conformed to the decencies
of divorce so far as to wait twenty-four hours; and in all humility he returned
the next day.
However, she was not at home. The Duke pleaded. Even so, she was not
at home; for, her maid said, she was resting before the ardours of the night
journey to Cherbourg, whence she would embark for New York. The Duke
scarce awaited the end of the astounding news. Miss Lamb was lying down.
Calm and cold, she said:
“What does this mean, Duke? How dare you force yourself on me like
this?”
Fair, tall, intent, the Duke further dared her displeasure by raising her
unwilling hand to his lips. Twilight filled the room. Outside, the motors
raced across the Place Vendôme. The Duke said:
“I have dared everything on this one throw. Ava, I love you.”
Miss Lamb said to her maid, “Go,” and she went.
The Duke smiled unsteadily, saying: “Well? Ava, what have you to say?”
Where she lay on her couch in the dusk, her face was like a pale white
flower. But he could not see her eyes, because they were closed. The dress
she wore was black. The hand that lay outstretched on her black dress was as
soft as a temptation, and he said: “I have a ring for that hand that has not its
peer in the world. I love you. Ava, will you marry me?”
He could not see her eyes, because they were closed. But still the dusk
lacked the courage to steal the red from her mouth, and the Duke saw that
her mouth was parted in a queer sad smile.
“Why do you smile?” he whispered, and he said unsteadily: “I know why.
You do not believe I love you, you do not believe I know how to love, you
think me the shallow, vain braggart that I have shown to you in the guise of
myself until this moment. But I love you, Ava, more than life. I love you,
Ava, with all the youthful love I had for your sister increased a thousandfold
by the knowledge I now have of myself: for it is by loving that men come to
know themselves, and it is by knowing themselves in all humility that men
can love with the depths of their hearts. Ava, I do love you terribly! Won’t
you speak, won’t you say one word, do you disdain my love so utterly as
that? Yet I can’t blame you, for I have spent my life in proving that my love
is despicable. I have been proud, pitiless, impious. I am soiled. But, Ava,
even a fool may come to know the depths of his folly; and I who know so
much of desire, dearly beloved, know that I have never loved until this
moment. Still you won’t speak? Ava, I did not think you so ungenerous
when in my vanity I first fell under your gentle enchantment. Dear, your
silence is destroying all of me but my love. Won’t you give me even so
much as a queen will give a beggar, that, had he been another man in another
world, he might have kissed her hand?”
Now night had extinguished all but the last tapers of twilight, and in the
dark silence the maid whispered to his ear: “Your Grace, she is asleep.”
VII
The Duke told his chauffeur outside Miss Lamb’s hotel that he would not
need him again that evening, he would walk. But he had not walked above a
dozen yards across the Place Vendôme, regardless of his direction, regardless
of the traffic, when the breathless voice of his valet detained him. Stormily
the Duke swung about.
“This telegram,” the valet panted, “came the minute after you had left this
afternoon. I feared, your Grace, it might be important, and took the liberty to
follow you.”
The Duke’s face paled as he read. The telegram was from the hall-porter
of his club in St. James’s Street. The valet, an old servant, was concerned at
his master’s pale looks: but he was even more concerned at the sudden smile
that twisted them.
“I hope I did right, your Grace.”
“Quite right, Martin.” And suddenly the young Duke smiled a happy
smile. “You have brought me this wire at just the right moment. I can’t,
Martin, thank you enough. Meanwhile, old friend, go back and pack.
Everything. We are for Mall to-night. Paris is no place for an Englishman to
die in. For pity’s sake, Martin, don’t look so gaga—but go!”
Miss Lamb’s maid did not attempt to conceal her surprise at the Duke’s
quick reappearance at the door of the suite. But the young man’s face was so
strangely set that she had not the heart to deny him sight of her mistress.
“I’ll be,” she sighed, “dismissed!”
The Duke smiled, and maybe he never was so handsome nor so gay as at
that moment.
The maid said: “My mistress still sleeps. It is when she is happy that she
sleeps.”
“Happy? Does it make a woman happy, then, to see a man destroyed by
love?”
“It is more comfortable, your Grace, to be loved than to love. But I know
nothing of my mistress’s heart. I came to her service only the other day. Yes,
she is asleep. And the room is dark.”
The Duke said: “Good! This is indeed my lucky day.”
“I leave you, your Grace. And if I am dismissed?”
“I count you as my friend. I do not forget my friends. Leave me now.”
But a few minutes before he had left that room in a storm of rage. Now, a
great peace was on him. He let the minutes pass by, standing there in the soft
darkness, a man condemned to death. His life behind him lay like a soiled
wilderness through which smirked and pirouetted an unclean travesty of
himself. The gates of death looked to him clean and beautiful. He did not
wish his life had been otherwise: he regretted not a minute of waste, not one
inconstancy, not one folly: he regretted not a strand that had gone to the
making of the mad silly tapestry of his life, he was glad that all had been as
it had been so that he could now be as he was, a man who understood
himself and could die with a heart cleansed of folly and sacred to love.
To the windows of the quiet dark room rose the chatter of the lounging
traffic of the Place Vendôme. The Duke listened, and smiled. Brown eyes
and scarlet lips, blue eyes and scarlet lips, black hair and golden hair and
tawny hair, lazy smile and merry smile and greedy smile and bored smile,
little breathless laughs, little meaningless laughs and sharp cries of pleasure,
dresses of Chanel, Patou, Vionnet, Molyneux—round and round the Place
Vendôme they went, like automata on a bejewelled merry-go-round. And the
Duke saw himself sitting in motor-cars first beside one and then beside
another, talking, talking, whispering, sighing, yawning....
As the minutes passed his sight began to distinguish the objects in the
room. On a table some roses were fainting in a bowl. He made obeisance and
kissed a rose, for kissing a rose will clean a man’s lips. Then he knelt beside
the still figure on the couch and he kissed her mouth.
“Oh!” she cried, and she cried: “You thief!”
He said: “Your voice is so cold that ice would seem like fire beside it. But
I don’t care.” And again he kissed her mouth. Then he said: “Your lips are
burning. That is very odd. Your voice is very cold, but your lips are burning.
Now why is that?”
“For shame,” she whispered. “They are burning for shame that you are so
little of a man.”
He laughed, his lips by her ear. “Beloved, do you think I would die
without kissing your lips? Honestly, beloved, could you expect it?”
In the darkness he could just see the pale mask of her face and the
shining, savage pools of her eyes, and he kissed first one and then the other.
She was very still.
“Die?” she whispered.
He would have laughed again, but he fancied that maybe too much
laughter would not become his situation, would appear like bravado. But he
would have liked to show her he was happy, and why he was happy. A vain
man, he had realised that he was contemptible: therefore it was good to die.
Loving as he had never loved before, he was unloved: therefore it was good
to die.
He told her how he had been warned that the cock on St. James’s tower
had crowed thrice that dawn. And then he was amazed, for as he made to
rise he could not. He cried out his wonder.
She said: “Be still!”
He cried out his despair.
She whispered: “Be still!”
Her arm was tight about his shoulder, and that was why his happiness had
left him like a startled bird. He sobbed: “Child, for pity’s sake! It’s too late
now. Let me die in peace. To have died without your love was blessedly
easy. A moment ago I was happy.”
“Die! You!” And, as she mocked him thus, the cold irony of the English
tongue tore aside the veil of the American accent, and when the Duke stared
into her eyes he had leapt up and run away for shame but that her arm was
still tight about his shoulder.
“You, Leonora, you! And so you have revenged yourself!”
She whispered: “Be still!”
And as he made to tear himself away, she said: “Yes, I wanted to be
revenged. I wanted you to fall in love with me. I wanted you to look a fool.”
“Then you must be very content, Leonora! Let me go now.”
“Let you go?” she cried. “Let you go! But are you mad!”
“Oh, God,” he said pitifully, “what is this new mockery!”
“You see,” she sighed, “I’ve gone and fallen in love with you again! That
rather takes the edge off my joke, doesn’t it? Oh, dear! Maximilian, I have
waited to love you as I love you now ever since I married you four years
ago. But you never would let me. Be honest, sweet—would you ever let me
love you? You were always the world’s spoilt darling, the brilliant and
dashing and wealthy Duke of Mall—and I your American wife! Darling,
what a lot of trouble you give those who love you! I have had to go through
all the bother of divorcing you to make you love me, and now I suppose I
must go through all the bother of marrying you again because you’ve made
me love you——”
“Oh, but listen!” he made to protest.
“I certainly won’t!” she cried. “I must say, though, that you’ve made love
to me divinely these last few months, and the real Ava would have fallen for
you, I’m sure, if she hadn’t been in California all this while. I dyed my hair a
little, but the only real difference between me and your wife was that I
listened to you while you talked about yourself. Darling,” said she, “kiss me,
else how shall I know that we are engaged to be married?”
He said desperately: “Leonora, what are you saying! Do you forget that I
am to die?”
“Not you, not you! You may be divorced for the time being, poor
Maximilian, but you’re not nearly dead yet. I sent that wire myself this
morning from Victoria Station—to mark the fact that the Duke of Mall is
dead! Long live the Duke of Mall!”
“Leonora, I can’t bear this happiness!”
“But you must learn to put up with it, sweet!”
“Leonora, how divine it is to be in love! I love you, Leonora!”
“My, how this British guy mocks a poor American girl!”
“But, Leonora, I adore you!”
“Words, words, words! Whereas, sweet, a little action would not come
amiss. You might for instance, kiss me. Max, how I’ve longed to be kissed
by you these last few months! Max darling, please kiss me at once! I assure
you it is quite usual between engaged couples.”
NOTE: The legend of the Dukedom of Mall may not find a full measure of
credence owing to the fact (only recently pointed out to the author) that the
weather-vane on the tower of St. James’s Palace is adorned, not by a golden
cock, but by a golden arrow. But have we not been warned in letters of gold,
that shall last so long as mankind lasts, not to put our faith in the word of
Princes? The author does in all humility venture to suggest that the same
must undoubtedly apply also to the word of Dukes.
VII: THE REVOLTING DOOM OF A GENTLEMAN WHO WOULD
NOT DANCE WITH HIS WIFE
THERE is a tale that is told in London, and maybe it is told also in the
salons of New York and upon the Boulevards of Paris, how one night a
nightingale sang in Berkeley Square and how that song was of a doubtful
character calculated to provoke disorder in households brought up in the fear
of God. Needless to say, there are not wanting those who will have it that no
nightingale could have done such a thing; nor has the meanness of envy ever
been so clearly shown as by those who have suborned certain bird-fanciers
into declaring that the nightingale is a bird notably averse from singing in
squares and that the legend should therefore be deleted from the folk-tales of
Mayfair. But, however that may be, the song of the nightingale is far from
being the burden of this tale, which has to do in a general way with a plague
of owls, in a particular way with one owl, and in a most particular way with
the revolting doom of a gentleman who would not dance with his wife.
Many will hold, in extenuation of his disagreeable attitude, that he could not
dance. But could he not have taken a lesson or two?
Now of the many and divers people who saw the owls in flight we need
mention only policemen, statesmen, ’bus-drivers, noblemen, Colonials and
hawkers, to be convinced of the truth of what they one and all say, how in
the gloom of a certain summer’s twilight not long ago there flew a plague of
owls across Trafalgar Square towards the polite heights of Hampstead Heath.
Maybe no one would have remarked them, for the strange cries and hootings
with which they adorned their flight were not discordant with the noises of
the town, had not the pigeons that play about Lord Nelson’s monument fled
before them with affrighted coos; and in such an extremity of terror were the
timid creatures that very few were ever seen in those parts again, which is a
sad thing to relate.
Nor can any man speak with any certainty as to the exact number of the
owls, for the twilight was deep and the phenomenon sudden; but one and all
need no encouragement to vouch for their prodigious multitude: while the
fact that they appeared to be flying from the direction of Whitehall at the
impulse of a peculiar indignation has given rise among the lower people to a
superstition of the sort that is perhaps pardonable in those who have not had
the benefits of a public-school education. These simples declare that the
owls, for long peacefully asleep within the gloomy recesses unrecognisable
to the feathered intelligence as the austere House of Lords, had been startled
from their rest by the activities of the new Labour Government as revealed
in that patrician place by the agile incendiarism of my Lords Haldane and
Parmoor, and had in one body fled forth to seek a land wherein a
Conservative Government would afford them the lulling qualities necessary
for their rest.
The serious historian, however, is concerned only with facts. The plague
of owls fled no one knows whither, although superstition points to Italy. But
this much is known, that whilst crossing the brilliant centre of Piccadilly
Circus one among them swooped down from the twilight and perched on the
left wing of the figure of Eros:[A] which, presented to the nation by one of
the Earls of Shaftesbury, adorns the head of the charming fountain where old
women will sell pretty flowers to anyone who will buy, roses in summer and
roses in winter, roses by day and roses by night, or maybe a bunch of violets
for a young lady, a gardenia for a gentleman of the mode.
[A] Almost immediately after the publication of this tale in a magazine, the figure of Eros
was removed from Piccadilly Circus. It has been generally supposed that, to effect this removal,
pressure was brought to bear on the London County Council by gentlemen-who-will-not-dance-
with-their-wives, whose name, alas, is legion.
Now why that one owl separated itself from its fellows for no other
apparent reason than to perch on the left wing of Lord Shaftesbury’s Eros
has hitherto been a mystery to the man in the street, who was at the time
present in considerable numbers reading The Evening News and discussing
the probable circulation the next morning of The Daily Mail. The owl rested
on its perch most silently: nor did it once give the least sign of any
perturbation at the din of the marching hosts of Piccadilly Circus, and this
for the space of one hour and eighteen minutes: when it hooted thrice with
marvellous dolour and fled, to be lost almost on the instant among the lofty
shadows of the Regent’s Palace Hotel.
It has to be told that the cry of the owl on the fountain served three
purposes, which the historian can best arrange in ascending degrees of
abomination with the help of the letters a, b and c: (a) it struck such terror
into the vitals of an inoffensive young gentleman of the name of Dunn that
he has never been the same man since; (b) it was the death-knell of a gentle
and beautiful lady; and (c) the herald of approaching doom to a lord. May
they rest in peace, for we are all of us miserable sinners and only very few
of us are allowed to get away with it.
II
III
The silence was unnerving the young private secretary; and he was
trying, with the utmost care, to peel a nut before he realised that one does
not and cannot peel a nut. The second butler was vulgar enough to wink at
him again. The second butler was a low fellow who had been at Eton with
Mr. Dunn and despised Mr. Dunn for not having gone up in the world.
At last Lady Vest made to rise from the table, and spoke for the first time
since she had sat down.
“I will leave you,” said she, “to your coffee.”
“You will stay,” said my lord, “exactly where you are.” And he smiled in
an unpleasant way all his own which showed his false teeth, and at sight of
which the menials at once left the room. Another long and heavy silence
fell, so that Mr. Dunn cursed the day he was born. Outside, night had fallen.
“I am to gather,” said Lord Vest, with a smile, to his wife, “that this
Dunn person is your lover?”
The young private secretary put down his unpeeled nut. He was afraid,
but was he not a gentleman? Mr. Dunn was a cadet of a noble but
impoverished house, and it was not in vain that he had spent nine years at
Eton and Oxford to no other end than to know the difference between a cad
and a gentleman.
“Look here, sir,” said Mr. Dunn, “that’s a bit much. I mean, it’s going too
far. I’ll stand a good deal and all that, but I will not stand for a lady being
insulted before my face. You will receive my resignation in the morning,
Lord Vest. In the meanwhile, I’m off.”
Mr. Dunn was undeniably furious. The Napoleon of the Press was not,
however, without a sense of humour: so, at least, his papers would now and
then confess rather shyly, hinting that the manly laughter of Lord Vest must
come as a solace to God for the press of His business elsewhere that
compelled Him to give Lord Vest the vice-royalty of this earth. He laughed
now. He laughed alone.
“Gently, Mr. Dunn, gently!” he laughed, and his voice was of a
courteous balance surprising in one of his rugged appearance: nor had he
any trace of that accent which by ordinary adorns the speech of our
Australian cousins. “That you will be leaving my employment more or less
at once,” he continued playfully, “is, I am afraid, self-evident. And that you
will find any other employment in England in the course of, I hope, a long
life, is exceedingly improbable, for I shall make it my business, Mr. Dunn,
to have you hounded out of the country; and I have, I need scarcely remind
you, more experience of hounding people out of countries than perhaps any
other man in England. But I don’t think, Mr. Dunn, that I can allow you to
leave this house for another half-an-hour or so. For I have something to say
to you.” And Lord Vest smiled at Mr. Dunn. He was a much bigger man
than Mr. Dunn, and he was between Mr. Dunn and the door.
It was at that moment that my lady raised her voice. She wore always a
sad, brave dignity, always she was a quiet lady; but in her voice now, as her
eyes rested very calmly on the sneering face of her husband, the very
landscape of England might have been quivering. She did not conceal from
his lordship that the reason for this quivering was a profound distaste for his
person, manners and conversation.
“I did not think,” said she, “that any man could say so base a thing on
such flimsy provocation. The fact that in spite of your childish prejudice
against dancing (which I sincerely hope is not shared by all the natives of
Australia) Mr. Dunn has been kind enough to dance with me——”
“You call that dancing?” smiled my lord. “Oh, do you! I may seem very
uncivilised, Pamela, but to me it seemed more like making love. Am I right,
Mr. Dunn?”
“You are not,” said Mr. Dunn with a dignity which would have surprised
his mother. “Any man who sneers as you are sneering at the moment, Lord
Vest, must be in the wrong about everything. You cannot be in the right, sir,
with a poisonous voice like that. I am Lady Vest’s very humble admirer and,
I hope, friend——”
“Friendship, Mr. Dunn, can wear strange shapes. Friendship, my dear
Mr. Dunn, can be the outward label of infidelity. Am I right, Pamela?”
“Mr. Dunn,” said Lady Vest with flushed cheeks, “you will be doing me
a very great favour by overlooking my husband’s behaviour this evening.
Justinian,” she turned to her husband with a high look, “I knew I was
married to a megalomaniac. But I did not realise I was married to a
madman. I insist on retiring now; and would advise Mr. Dunn to do the
same.”
“And I,” shouted Lord Vest, “insist on your staying where you are; and
would advise Mr. Dunn to do the same. Do you understand? And you, my
good young man?”
Mr. Dunn could not help but pretend to understand, while awaiting
developments. He was dismayed by the violence of dislike on the
nobleman’s colonial face as he turned it to his wife, the gentle lady, a
picture of outraged innocence, of appalled decorum, her great blue eyes
swept with astonished distaste, her sweet sad face white with sudden fear.
For my Lord Vest was not smiling now.
Mr. Dunn revealed at the enquiry which later sat on these affairs that it
was at that moment he first realised that his lordship was mad. But his
madness, said Mr. Dunn, wore so sane, so coherent a habit, that a chap
couldn’t but mistrust his fleeting, if well-grounded, suspicion; and even in
the very second of his dashing frantically past Lord Vest to the door, which
the second butler, being conveniently situated nearby in a curved position,
held closed for him on the outside while he made his escape from the house,
you couldn’t be certain, said Mr. Dunn, whether the nobleman’s roar of
baffled rage was not more than that of one cheated of the entertainment of a
repulsive jest than that of a chap mortified to the point of lunacy. For his
employer, said Mr. Dunn warmly, was ever a gentleman with a partiality for
making jests of a kind which, Mr. Dunn indignantly supposed, might be
considered laughter-provoking on the Australian veldt, bush, or prairie, but
were certainly not the thing in England.
The plain truth of the matter is, as you can see when shorn of Mr. Dunn’s
naïve observations, that Mr. Dunn turned tail and fled. In the graphic words
of Lord Tarlyon, who was among the Commission of Peers who sat to
enquire into the Vest affair, Mr. Dunn, awaiting his opportunity with an
eagerness worthy of a braver purpose, jumped up from his chair like a
scalded cat and, muttering something about a dog, ran out of that house like
a bat out of hell.
IV
He was, however, no sooner out of the house, the lofty stone hall of
which had always impressed Mr. Dunn’s fanciful eye as being like a
“holocaust”—by which he meant “mausoleum,” for Mr. Dunn had received
the education proper to an English gentleman, and one can’t know
everything—when he was sensible of a peculiar, unhomely feeling within
his person; which he was not long in recognising as the prickings of his
conscience, a disorder by which he was seldom assailed, for Mr. Dunn was
a good young man.
His thoughts, never profound but frequently vivid, quickly passed
beyond his control. He thought of the lady on whom he had brought such
cruel discomfiture. He saw her again as she sat at the table, her great blue
eyes swept with astonished distaste, her sweet sad face white with sudden
fear, whilst her husband sneered at her exquisite breeding as though all the
seven devils were dancing on his poisoned antipodean tongue.
“And all, dear God,” frantically thought Mr. Dunn, “about absolutely
nothing!”
For let us at once state frankly, and once and for all, that there was
absolutely nothing between Mr. Dunn and Lady Vest. Mr. Dunn was a man
of honour. While the Lady Vest was a lady of noble birth and fastidious
habits, to whom the idea of the smallest infidelity must necessarily be
repellent to a degree far beyond the soiled understanding of those society
novelists who write sensationally about the state of inconstancy prevalent
among people of condition.
Among her high-minded habits, however, Lady Vest had always
included, until her marriage to Lord Vest, the inoffensive distraction of
dancing, at which she was notably graceful. But Lord Vest had revealed, on
the very night of his marriage, the fact that he could not dance; had excused
his disgusting reticence on that point until it was too late for her to change
her mind on the ground of his love for her; which was so great, he had
protested, that he did not know what he would do should he ever discover
her dancing with any man; adding that in the frenzy of such a discovery he
would not care to take long odds against the probability of his strangling
her; so dark were the obsessions that clouded the Australian nobleman’s
mind.
Until the recent engagement of Mr. Dunn as his lordship’s private
secretary Lady Vest had not so much as wavered from the letter of her
promise to her husband, that she would dance nevermore. But chancing one
afternoon on Mr. Dunn in the neighbourhood of Bond Street, and Mr. Dunn
happening to say that he was partial to dancing, Lady Vest had, as though in
a flash, realised the narrow tyranny of her husband’s prohibition, and had
acceded to Mr. Dunn’s request that she should take a turn with him round
the floor of a neighbouring dance-club.
The path of temptation is sweet to tread, and the air about it is fragrant
with the lovely scents of forbidden flowers. Never once did Lady Vest and
Mr. Dunn waver from the exercise of those formalities that are bred in the
bone of the county families of England and come as naturally to the
meanest cadet of the landed gentry as writing good plays to a dramatic
critic: she was ever Lady Vest to him, he Mr. Dunn to her; but insensibly
they fell into the habit of dancing a while every afternoon (except, of
course, on Sundays), and had come to no harm whatsoever, but had rather
gained in the way of exercise, had it not been for the fact that the monstrous
suspicions of my lord were never at rest.
For, to their indignant amazement, Lord Vest had informed them just
before dinner on the night we tell of that he had for some time past been
having his lady watched by detectives; that he was fully informed of their
goings-on; and was now awaiting dinner with some impatience, for after
dinner he was prepared, he said, to be very interested to hear what steps
they, his lady and Mr. Dunn, were going to take about it.
And it was at that moment before dinner that Mr. Dunn had first decided
that he, for his part, would prefer to take steps of a purely material nature,
and those in a direction opposite from any that Lord Vest might be treading
at that moment. Nor was he in any way weakened in his decision when
Lord Vest, whilst pressing on Mr. Dunn a second cocktail—so that, said my
lord, Mr. Dunn should have no excuse for not enjoying a dinner that
promised to be very entertaining in the way of table-talk, in which Mr.
Dunn as a rule excelled—related how he had that afternoon suborned the
saxophone player in the orchestra of the dance-club into allowing him, his
lordship, to take the man’s place; and therefore had had, whilst emitting to
the best of his ability those screams and noises that are expected of a
saxophone player, an unrivalled opportunity of judging whether his lady
and Mr. Dunn were proficient in those offensive irregularities of the legs,
hips, and teeth which, said my lord crudely, were dignified with the name of
dancing.
Mr. Dunn had then sworn at his luck, which never had been but rotten;
for on this afternoon of all he had taken the liberty to introduce Lady Vest to
certain movements recently imported from the Americas; and he had no
doubt but that the instruction of those quite delightful and original
movements might have appeared, to one playing the saxophone in a hostile
frame of mind, compromising to a degree.
Such thoughts as these, before and during dinner, had confirmed Mr.
Dunn in his decision to take the steps already referred to at the earliest
possible moment. Nor can we really blame the poor young gentleman: the
occasion was decidedly domestic: Mr. Dunn was in a cruelly false position:
and the degraded mentality of his lordship was never less amenable to
polite argument than on that fateful night.
Yet, now that he had taken them, now that he stood beneath the trees on
the other side of Carlton House Terrace and stared at the great house from
which he had but a moment before fled like a poltroon, he discovered
within himself a profound repugnance for his, Mr. Dunn’s, person. The
picture of the gentle lady, on whom his innocent partiality for the latest
movements in dancing had brought this discomfiture, preyed on his mind;
the wrath of his lordship must by now, thought Mr. Dunn, have been
confined within reasonable limits; and, with set face and determined mind,
he was again approaching the house when its great doors were flung open
and the second butler, with a look of agonised fear on his low face, was
hurled forth by Lord Vest into the night. Mr. Dunn fled.
Nor did he abate his pace so much as to take breath until he was some
distance up that stretch of Regent Street which sweeps nobly upwards to
meet Piccadilly Circus at a point marked by the imperious façade of the
new Criterion Restaurant; and he was in the very act of passing a
handkerchief over his deranged forehead when from behind him he was
startled to hear a low cry:
“Mr. Dunn! Mr. Dunn!”
“Good God!” said he, swinging about. “And thank God! For at least you
are safe!”
For there by his elbow, prettily panting for breath, was my lady; and
never did she look to a manly eye so fragile and gentle, for she was
enwrapped in the fairy elegance of a cloak of white ermine.
“Oh,” she sighed softly, “and I did so want to dance once again! Just
once again!”
“But what happened? The man is mad!” cried Mr. Dunn. “Did you
soothe him, Lady Vest? Did he see the absurdity of his suspicions, did he
apologise for his behaviour?”
But it was as though the lady was not heeding his words. As they made
to walk on up Regent Street she smiled absently into his concerned face and
sighed: “And, oh, I did so want to dance with you just once again! But just
imagine my indiscretion, running after you like this! and all because of my
overpowering desire to dance with you once again. It will not occur again, I
promise you, Mr. Dunn. But, oh, just to do those new movements of the
Blues once again!”
“Dear Lady Vest,” said Mr. Dunn sincerely, “there is nothing I would
enjoy more. Besides, it will soothe us. See, here we are at the doors of the
Criterion, where, I am told, one may dance with comfort and propriety. But
won’t you tell me first about the issue of Lord Vest’s temper? He was very
angry? And you soothed him?”
“Oh, yes, yes! I soothed him, indeed. Look, Mr. Dunn! Oh, look! There
is an owl perched on the fountain yonder, on the left wing of Eros! Just
fancy, Mr. Dunn, an owl! Did you ever hear of such a thing!”
“Holy smoke, you’re right!” said Mr. Dunn. “An owl, or I’m a
Dutchman! There’s never been an owl there before, that I’ll swear.”
“See,” cried Lady Vest with a strange exaltation, “see, it is staring at us!
Mr. Dunn, do you know what that owl, a bird of wise omen, means? Can
you imagine, Mr. Dunn! It means the doom of my lord. And what a doom!”
“Holy smoke!” said Mr. Dunn, starting back from her. “Lady Vest, you
haven’t—you haven’t kil——”
“Listen, Mr. Dunn!” And she held him by the arm, looking into his eyes
with sweet, sad dignity, whilst all about them passed the gay crowds that
love to throng Piccadilly Circus, and the electric advertisements lit the
scene with a festive glamour; nor ever did the owl stir from its station on
the fountain.
“Listen, Mr. Dunn! When you had made your escape, my husband
revealed the true state of his mind by drawing a revolver. He was mad. I did
not know what to do. I screamed, and on the second butler’s rushing into
the room without knocking on the door the poor fellow was hurled from the
house. But in the meanwhile I had managed to grab hold of the revolver.
What could I do, Mr. Dunn? I ask you, what could I do?”
“Holy smoke!” said Mr. Dunn. “I don’t know. But——”
“The madman advanced on me. His face livid, his eyes mad, and his
hands arranged before him in such a way as to leave one no room to doubt
that his immediate intention was to strangle me. I threatened to fire. Can
you, can anyone, blame me? Was I wrong, may one not defend one’s life?”
“Holy smoke!” said Mr. Dunn. “Certainly. But——”
“My threat to fire did not discommode his mad approach. I kept on
making it. But did he stop?”
“Did he?” gasped Mr. Dunn.
“Mr. Dunn, he did not. I fired.”
“You didn’t!” said Mr. Dunn.
“I did,” said my lady.
“But holy smoke!” cried Mr. Dunn. “You killed him!”
“No,” she whispered sadly. “I missed. Mr. Dunn, he killed me.”
And it was at that moment, even as the phantom of the unfortunate lady
faded before his eyes and Mr. Dunn let out an appalling yell, that the owl on
the fountain hooted thrice with marvellous dolour and fled, to be lost almost
on the instant among the lofty shadows of the Regent’s Palace Hotel.
Amateurs of history and students of privilege should note that additional
point is lent to this already interesting chronicle by the fact that the late
Lord Vest was the first Australian marquess to be hanged by the neck in the
year of grace 1924. A vast concourse attended outside the prison gates on
the morning of the execution, some of whom were photographed by
pressmen in the act of gnashing their teeth, which is to be explained by the
fact that they had brought their breakfast with them in the form of
sandwiches. The executioners were Lovelace, Lovibond and Lazarus. The
drop given was sixteen feet. The criminal died unrepentant, thus denying
his soul the grace of salvation and directing it with terrible velocity and
unerring aim to the fires of eternal damnation, where he will no doubt
continue to burn miserably as a warning for all time to gentlemen who will
not dance with their wives.
VIII: THE GENTLEMAN FROM AMERICA
II
The gentleman from America, alone in the haunted room, lost none of
his composure. Indeed, if anything disturbed him at all, it was that, irritated
by Quillier’s manner at a dinner-party a few nights before, and knowing
Quillier to be a bankrupt wastrel, he had allowed himself to be dared into
this silly adventure and had thus deprived himself for one night of the
amenities of his suite at Claridge’s Hotel. Five hundred pounds more or less
did not matter very much to Mr. Puce: although, to be sure, it was some
consolation to know that five hundred pounds more or less must matter
quite a deal to Sir Cyril Quillier, for all his swank. Mr. Puce, like a good
American, following the gospel according to Mr. Sinclair Lewis, always
stressed the titles of any of his acquaintance.
Now, he contented himself with a very cursory examination of the dim,
large room: he rapped, in an amateurish way, on the oak panels here and
there for any sign of any “secret passage junk,” but succeeded only in
soiling his knuckles: and it was only when, fully clothed, he had thrown
himself on the great bed that it occurred to him that five hundred pounds
sterling was quite a pretty sum to have staked about a damfool haunted
room.
The conclusion that naturally leapt to one’s mind, thought Mr. Puce, was
that the room must have something the matter with it: else would a hawk
like Quillier have bet money on its qualities of terror? Mr. Puce had, indeed,
suggested, when first the bet was put forward, that five hundred pounds was
perhaps an unnecessary sum to stake on so idiotic a fancy; but Quillier had
said in a very tired way that he never bet less than five hundred on
anything, but that if Mr. Puce preferred to bet with poppycock and
chickenfood, he, Quillier, would be pleased to introduce him to some very
jolly children of his acquaintance.
Such thoughts persuaded Mr. Puce to rise and examine more carefully
the walls and appointments of the room. But as the furniture was limited to
the barest necessities, and as the oak-panelled walls appeared in the faint
light to be much the same as any other walls, the gentleman from America
swore vaguely and again reclined on the bed. It was a very comfortable bed.
He had made up his mind, however, that he would not sleep. He would
watch out, thought Mr. Puce, for any sign of this old ghost, and he would
listen with the ears of a coyote, thought Mr. Puce, for any hint of those
rapping noises, rude winds, musty odours, clanking of chains and the like,
with which, so Mr. Puce had always understood, the family ghosts of
Britishers invariably heralded their foul appearance.
Mr. Puce, you can see, did not believe in ghosts. He could not but think,
however, that some low trick might be played on him, since on the honour
of Sir Cyril Quillier, peer though he was—for Mr. Puce, like a good
American, could never get the cold dope on all this fancy title stuff—he had
not the smallest reliance. But as to the supernatural, Mr. Puce’s attitude was
always a wholesome scepticism—and a rather aggressive scepticism at that,
as Quillier had remarked with amusement when he had spoken of the ghost
in, as he had put it, the house of Kerr-Anderson’s aunt. Quillier had said:
“There are two sorts of men on whom ghosts have an effect: those who
are silly enough to believe in them, and those who are silly enough not to
believe in them.”
Mr. Puce had been annoyed at that. He detested clever back-chat. “I’ll
tell the world,” Mr. Puce had said, “that a plain American has to go to a
drug-store after a conversation with you.”
Mr. Puce, lying on the great bed, whose hangings depressed him,
examined his automatic and found it good. He had every intention of
standing no nonsense, and an automatic nine-shooter is, as Mr. Puce
remembered having read somewhere, an Argument. Indeed, Mr. Puce was
full of those dour witticisms about the effect of a “gun” on everyday life
which go to make the less pretentious “movies” so entertaining; although,
to be sure, he did not know more than a very little about guns. Travellers
have remarked, however, that the exciting traditions behind a hundred-per-
cent American nationality have given birth in even the most gentle citizens
of that great republic to a feeling of familiarity with “guns,” as such homely
phrases as “slick with the steel mit,” “doggone son of a gun,” and the like,
go to prove.
Mr. Puce placed the sleek little automatic on a small table by the bed, on
which stood the candle and, as he realised for the first time, a book. One
glance at the paper jacket of the book was enough to convince the
gentleman from America that its presence there must be due to one of
Quillier’s tired ideas. It showed a woman of striking, if conventional,
beauty fighting for her life with a shape which might or might not be the
wraith of a bloodhound but was certainly something quite outside a lovely
woman’s daily experience. Mr. Puce laughed. The book was called: Tales of
Terror for Tiny Tots, by Ivor Pelham Marlay.
The gentleman from America was a healthy man, and needed his sleep;
and it was therefore with relief that he turned to Mr. Marlay’s absurd-
looking book as a means of keeping himself awake. The tale at which the
book came open was called The Phantom Foot-steps; and Mr. Puce
prepared himself to be entertained, for he was not of those who read for
instruction. He read:
THE PHANTOM FOOT-STEPS
The tale of “The Phantom Foot-steps” is still whispered with awe and
loathing among the people of that decayed but genteel district of London
known to those who live in it as Belgravia and to others as Pimlico.
Julia and Geraldine Biggot-Baggot were twin sisters who lived with their
father, a widower, in a town in Lancashire called Wigan, or it may have
been called Bolton. The tale finds Julia and Geraldine in their nineteenth
year, and it also finds them in a very bad temper, for they were yearning for
a more spacious life than can be found in Wigan, or it might be Bolton. This
yearning their neighbours found all the more inexplicable since the parents
of the girls were of Lancashire stock, their mother having been a Biggot
from Wigan and their father a Baggot from Bolton.
The reader can imagine with what excess of gaiety Julia and Geraldine
heard one day from their father that he had inherited a considerable
property from a distant relation; and the reader can go on imagining the
exaltation of the girls when they heard that the property included a mansion
in Belgravia, since that for which they had always yearned most was to
enjoy, from a central situation, the glittering life of the metropolis.
Their father preceded them from Wigan, or was it Bolton? He was a man
of a tidy disposition, and wished to see that everything in the Belgravia
house was ready against his daughters’ arrival. When Julia and Geraldine
did arrive, however, they were admitted by a genial old person of repellent
aspect and disagreeable odour, who informed them that she was doing a bit
of charing about the house but would be gone by the evening. Their father,
she added, had gone into the country to engage servants, but would be back
the next day; and he had instructed her to tell Julia and Geraldine not to be
nervous of sleeping alone in a strange house, that there was nothing to be
afraid of, and that he would, anyhow, be with them first thing in the
morning.
Now Julia and Geraldine, though twins, were of vastly different
temperaments; for whereas Julia was a girl of gay and indomitable spirit
who knew not fear, Geraldine suffered from agonies of timidity and knew
nothing else. When, for instance, night fell and found them alone in the
house, Julia could scarcely contain her delight at the adventure; while it was
with difficulty that Geraldine could support the tremors that shook her
girlish frame.
Imagine, then, how differently they were affected when, as they lay in
bed in their room towards the top of the house, they distinctly heard from
far below a noise, as of someone moving. Julia sat up in bed, intent,
unafraid, curious. Geraldine swooned.
“It’s only a cat,” Julia whispered. “I’m going down to see.”
“Don’t!” sighed Geraldine. “For pity’s sake don’t leave me, Julia!”
“Oh, don’t be so childish!” snapped Julia. “Whenever there’s the chance
of the least bit of fun you get shivers down your spine. But as you are so
frightened I will lock the door from the outside and take the key with me, so
that no one can get in when I am not looking. Oh, I hope it’s a burglar! I’ll
give him the fright of his life, see if I don’t.”
And the indomitable girl went, feeling her way to the door in darkness,
for to have switched on the light would have been to warn the intruder, if
there was one, that the house was inhabited: whereas it was the plucky girl’s
conceit to turn the tables on the burglar, if there was one, by suddenly
appearing to him as an avenging phantom: for having done not a little
district-visiting in Wigan or, possibly, Bolton, no one knew better than Julia
of the depths of base superstition among the vulgar.
A little calmed by her sister’s nonchalance, Geraldine lay still as a
mouse in the darkness, with her pretty head beneath the bedclothes. From
without came not a sound, and the very stillness of the house had impelled
Geraldine to a new access of terror had she not concentrated on the works
of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, which tell of the grit of the English people.
Then, as though to test the grit of the English people in the most
abominable way, came a dull noise from below. Geraldine restrained a
scream, lay breathless in the darkness. The dull noise, however, was not
repeated, and presently Geraldine grew a little calmer, thinking that maybe
her sister had dropped a slipper or something of the sort. But the reader can
imagine into what terror the poor girl had been plunged had she been a
student of the detective novels of the day, for then she must instantly have
recognised the dull noise as a dull thud, and can a dull thud mean but one
thing?
It was as she was praying a prayer to Our Lady that her ears grew aware
of footsteps ascending the stairs. Her first feeling was one of infinite relief.
Of course Julia had been right, and there had been nothing downstairs but a
cat or, perhaps, a dog. And now Julia was returning, and in a second they
would have a good laugh together. Indeed, it was all Geraldine could do to
restrain herself from jumping out of bed to meet her sister, when she was
assailed by a terrible doubt; and on the instant her mind grew so charged
with fear that she could no longer hold back her sobs. Suppose it was not
Julia ascending! Suppose——“Oh, God!” sobbed Geraldine.
Transfixed with terror, yet hopeful of the best, the poor girl could not
even command herself to reinsert her head beneath the sheets. And always
the ascending steps came nearer. As they approached the door, she thought
she would die of uncertainty. But as the key was fitted into the lock she
drew a deep breath of relief—to be at once shaken by the most acute agony
of doubt, so that she had given anything in the world to be back again in
Wigan or, even better, Bolton.
“Julia!” she sobbed. “Julia!”
For the door had opened, the footsteps were in the room, and Geraldine
thought she recognised her sister’s maidenly tread. But why did Julia not
speak, why this intolerable silence? Geraldine, peer as hard as she might,
could make out nothing in the darkness. The footsteps seemed to fumble in
their direction, but came always nearer to the bed, in which poor Geraldine
lay more dead than alive. Oh, why did Julia not speak, just to reassure her?
“Julia!” sobbed Geraldine. “Julia!”
The footsteps seemed to fumble about the floor with an indecision
maddening to Geraldine’s distraught nerves. But at last they came beside
the bed—and there they stood! In the awful silence Geraldine could hear
her heart beating like a hammer on a bell.
“Oh!” the poor girl screamed. “What is it, Julia? Why don’t you speak?”
But never a sound nor a word gave back the livid silence, never a sigh
nor a breath, though Julia must be standing within a yard of the bed.
“Oh, she is only trying to frighten me, the beast!” poor Geraldine
thought; and, unable for another second to bear the cruel silence, she
timidly stretched out a hand to touch her sister—when, to her infinite relief,
her fingers touched the white rabbit fur with which Julia’s dressing-gown
was delicately trimmed.
“You beast, Julia!” she sobbed and laughed. Never a word, however,
came from the still shape. Geraldine, impatient of the continuation of a joke
which seemed to her in the worst of taste, raised her hand from the fur, that
she might touch her sister’s face; but her fingers had risen no further than
Julia’s throat when they touched something wet and warm, and with a
scream of indescribable terror Geraldine fainted away.
When Mr. Biggot-Baggot admitted himself into the house early the next
morning, his eyes were assailed by a dreadful sight. At the foot of the stairs
was a pool of blood, from which, in a loathsome trail, drops of blood wound
up the stairway.
Mr. Biggot-Baggot, fearful lest something out-of-the-way had happened
to his beloved daughters, rushed frantically up the stairs. The trail of blood
led to his daughters’ room; and there, in the doorway, the poor gentleman
stood appalled, so foul was the sight that met his eyes. His beloved
Geraldine lay on the bed, her hair snow-white, her lips raving with the shrill
fancies of a maniac. While on the floor beside the bed lay stretched, in a
pool of blood, his beloved Julia, her head half-severed from her trunk.
The tragic story unfolded only when the police arrived. It then became
clear that Julia, her head half-severed from her body, and therefore a corpse,
had yet, with indomitable purpose, come upstairs to warn her timid sister
against the homicidal lunatic who, just escaped from an Asylum nearby, had
penetrated into the house. However, the police consoled the distracted
father not a little by pointing out that the escape of the homicidal lunatic
from the Asylum had done some good, insomuch as there would now be
room in an Asylum near her home for Geraldine.
III
When the gentleman from America had read the last line of The
Phantom Foot-steps he closed the book with a slam and, in his bitter
impatience with the impossible work, was making to hurl it across the room
when, unfortunately, his circling arm overturned the candle. The candle, of
course, went out.
“Aw, hell!” said Mr. Puce bitterly, and he thought: “Another good mark
to Sir Cyril Quillier! Won’t I Sir him one some day! For only a lousy guy
with a face like a drummer’s overdraft would have bought a damfool book
like that.”
The tale of The Phantom Foot-steps had annoyed him very much; but
what annoyed him even more was the candle’s extinction, for the gentleman
from America knew himself too well to bet a nickel on his chances of
remaining awake in a dark room.
He did, however, manage to keep awake for some time merely by
concentrating on wicked words: on Quillier’s face, and how its tired,
mocking expression would change for the better were his, Puce’s, foot to be
firmly pressed down on its surface: and on Julia and Geraldine. For the
luckless twins, by the almost criminal idiocy with which they were
presented, kept walking about Mr. Puce’s mind; and as he began to nod to
the demands of a healthy and tired body he could not resist wondering if
their home town had been Wigan or Bolton and if Julia’s head had been
severed from ear to ear or only half-way....
When he awoke, it was the stillness of the room that impressed his
sharply awakened senses. The room was very still.
“Who’s there!” snapped Mr. Puce. Then, really awake, laughed at
himself. “Say, what would plucky little Julia have done?” he thought,
chuckling. “Why, got up and looked!”
But the gentleman from America discovered in himself a reluctance to
move from the bed. He was very comfortable on the bed. Besides, he had
no light and could see nothing if he did move. Besides, he had heard
nothing at all, not the faintest noise. He had merely awoken rather more
sharply than usual....
Suddenly, he sat up on the bed, his back against the oak head. Something
had moved in the room. He was certain something had moved. Somewhere
by the foot of the bed.
“Aw, drop that!” laughed Mr. Puce.
His eyes peering into the darkness, Mr. Puce stretched his right hand to
the table on which stood the automatic. The gesture reminded him of
Geraldine’s when she had touched the white rabbit fur—Aw, Geraldine
nothing! Those idiotic twins kept chasing about a man’s mind. The
gentleman from America grasped the automatic firmly in his hand. His
hand felt as though it had been born grasping an automatic.
“I want to tell you,” said Mr. Puce into the darkness, “that someone is
now going to have something coming to him, her or it.”
It was quite delicious, the feeling that he was not frightened. He had
always known he was a helluva fellow. But he had never been quite certain.
Now he was certain. He was regular.
But, if anything had moved, it moved no more. Maybe, though, nothing
had moved at all, ever. Maybe it was only his half-awakened senses that had
played him a trick. He was rather sorry, if that was so. He was just
beginning to enjoy the evening.
The room was very still. The gentleman from America could only hear
himself breathing.
Something moved again, distinctly.
“What the hell!” snapped Mr. Puce.
He levelled the automatic towards the foot of the bed.
“I will now,” said Mr. Puce grimly, “shoot.”
The room was very still. The gentleman from America wished, forcibly,
that he had a light. It was no good leaving the bed without a light. He’d
only fall over the infernal thing, whatever it was. What would plucky little
Julia have done? Aw, Julia nothing! He strained his ears to catch another
movement, but he could only hear himself breathing—in short, sharp gasps!
The gentleman from America pulled himself together.
“Say, listen!” he snapped into the darkness. “I am going to count ten. I
am then going to shoot. In the meanwhile you can make up your mind
whether or not you are going to stay right here to watch the explosion. One.
Two. Three. Four....”
Then Mr. Puce interrupted himself. He had to. It was so funny. He
laughed. He heard himself laugh, and again it was quite delicious, the
feeling that he was not frightened. And wouldn’t they laugh, the boys at the
Booster Club back home, when he sprung this yarn on them! He could hear
them. Oh, Boy! Say, listen, trying to scare him, Howard Cornelius Puce,
with a ghost like that! Aw, it was like shooting craps with a guy that
couldn’t count. Poor old Quillier! Never bet less than five hundred on
anything, didn’t he, the poor boob! Well, there wasn’t a ghost made, with or
without a head on him, that could put the wind up Howard Puce. No, sir!
For, as his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and helped by
the mockery of light that the clouded, moonless night just managed to thrust
through the distant window, the gentleman from America had been able to
make out a form at the foot of the bed. He could only see its upper half, and
that appeared to end above the throat. The phantom had no head. Whereas
Julia’s head had been only half-severed from—Aw, what the hell!
“A family like the Kerr-Andersons,” began Mr. Puce, chuckling—but
suddenly found, to his astonishment, that he was shouting at the top of his
voice: anyhow, it sounded so. However, he began again, much lower, but
still chuckling:
“Say, listen, Mr. Ghost, a family like the Kerr-Andersons might have
afforded a head and a suit of clothes for their family ghost. Sir, you are one
big bum phantom!” Again, unaccountably, Mr. Puce found himself shouting
at the top of his voice. “I am going on counting,” he added grimly.
And, his automatic levelled at the thing’s heart, the gentleman from
America went on counting. His voice was steady.
“Five ... six....”
He sat crouched at the head of the bed, his eyes never off the thing’s
breast. Phantom nothing! He didn’t believe in that no-head bunk. What the
hell! He thought of getting a little nearer the foot of the bed and catching
the thing a whack on that invisible head of his, but decided to stay where he
was.
“Seven ... eight....”
He hadn’t seen the hands before. Gee, some hands! And arms! Holy
Moses, he’d got long arms to him, he had....
“Nine!” said the gentleman from America.
Christopher and Columbus, but this would make some tale back home!
Yes, sir! Not a bad idea of Quillier’s, that, though! Those arms. Long as old
glory ... long as the bed! Not bad for Sir Cyril Quillier, that idea....
“Ten, you swine!” yelled the gentleman from America and fired.
Someone laughed. Mr. Puce quite distinctly heard himself laughing, and
that made him laugh again. Fur goodness’ sake, what a shot! Missed from
that distance!
His eyes, as he made to take aim again, were bothered by the drops of
sweat from his forehead. “Aw, what the hell!” said Mr. Puce, and fired
again.
The silence after the second shot was like a black cloud on the darkness.
Mr. Puce thought out the wickedest word he knew, and said it. Well, he
wasn’t going to miss again. No, sir! His hand was steady as iron, too. Iron
was his second name. And again the gentleman from America found it quite
delicious, the feeling that he was not frightened. Attaboy! The drops of
sweat from his forehead bothered him, though. Aw, what the hell, that was
only excitement.
He raised his arm for the third shot. Jupiter and Jane, but he’d learn that
ghost to stop ghosting! He was certainly sorry for that ghost. He wished,
though, that he could concentrate more on the actual body of the headless
thing. There it was, darn it, at the foot of the bed, staring at him—well, it
would have been staring at him if it had a head. Aw, of course it had a head!
It was only Quillier with his lousy face in a black wrap. Sir Cyril Quillier’d
get one piece of lead in him this time, though. His own fault, the bastard.
“Say, listen, Quillier,” said the gentleman from America, “I want to tell
you that unless you quit you are a corpse. Now I mean it, sure as my name
is Howard Cornelius Puce. I have been shooting to miss so far. Yes, sir. But
I am now annoyed. You get me, kid?”
If only, though, he could concentrate more on the body of the thing. His
eyes kept wandering to the hands and arms. Gee, but they sure were long,
those arms! As long as the bed, no less. Just long enough for the hands to
get at him from the foot of the bed. And that’s what they were at, what’s
more! Coming nearer. What the hell! They were moving, those doggone
arms, nearer and nearer....
Mr. Puce fired again.
That was no miss. He knew that was no miss. Right through the heart,
that little boy must have gone. In that darkness he couldn’t see more than
just the shape of the thing. Aw, Goddammit! But it was still now. The arms
were still. They weren’t moving any more. The gentleman from America
chuckled. That one had shown him that it’s a wise little crack of a ghost that
stops ghosting. Yes, sir! It certainly would fall in a moment, dead as
Argentine mutton.
Mr. Puce then swore. Those arms were moving again. The hands weren’t
a yard from him now. What the hell! They were for his throat, Goddammit.
“You swine!” sobbed the gentleman from America, and fired again. But
he wouldn’t wait this time. No, sir! He’d let that ghost have a ton of lead.
Mr. Puce fired again. Those hands weren’t half-a-yard from his throat now.
No good shooting at the hands, though. Thing was to get the thing through
the heart. Mr. Puce fired the sixth bullet. Right into the thing’s chest. The
sweat bothered his eyes. “Aw, hell!” said Mr. Puce. He wished the bed was
a bit longer. He couldn’t get back any more. Those arms.... Holy Moses;
long as hell, weren’t they! Mr. Puce fired the seventh, eighth ... ninth. Right
into the thing. The revolver fell from Mr. Puce’s shaking fingers. Mr. Puce
heard himself screaming.
IV
Towards noon on a summer’s day several years later two men were
sitting before an inn some miles from the ancient town of Lincoln. Drawn
up in the shade of a towering ash was a large grey touring-car, covered with
dust. On the worn table stood two tankards of ale. The travellers rested in
silence and content, smoking.
The road by which the inn stood was really no more than a lane, and the
peace of the motorists was not disturbed by the traffic of a main road.
Indeed, the only human being visible was a distant speck on the dust,
coming towards them. He seemed, however, to be making a good pace, for
he soon drew near.
“If,” said the elder of the two men, in a low tired voice, “if we take the
short cut through Carmion Wood, we will be at Malmanor for lunch.”
“Then you’ll go short-cutting alone,” said the other firmly. “I’ve heard
enough tales about Carmion Wood to last me a lifetime without my adding
one more to them. And as for spooks, one is enough for this child in one
lifetime, thanks very much.”
The two men, for lack of any other distraction, watched the pedestrian
draw near. He turned out to be a giant of a man; and had, apparently, no
intention of resting at the inn. The very air of the tall pedestrian was a
challenge to the lazy content of the sunlit noon. He was walking at a great
pace, his felt hat swinging from his hand. A giant he was: his hair greying:
his massive face set with assurance.
“By all that’s holy!” gasped the elder of the two observers. A little lean
gentleman that was, with a lined face which had been handsome in a
striking way but for the haggard marks of the dissipations of a man of the
world. He had only one arm, and that added a curiously flippant air of
devilry to his little, lean, sardonic person.
“Puce!” yelled the other, a young man with a chubby, good-humoured
face. “Puce, you silly old ass! Come here at once!”
The giant swung round at the good-natured cry, stared at the two smiling
men. Then the massive face broke into the old, genial smile by which his
friends had always known and loved the gentleman from America, and he
came towards them with hand outstretched.
“Well, boys!” laughed Mr. Puce. “This is one big surprise. But it’s good
to see you again, I’ll say that.”
“The years have rolled on, Puce, the years have rolled on,” sighed
Quillier in his tired way, but warmly enough he shook the gentleman from
America with his one hand.
“They certainly have!” said Mr. Puce, mopping his brow and smiling
down on the two. “And by the look of that arm, Quillier, I’ll say you’re no
stranger to war.”
“Sit down, old Puce, and have a drink,” laughed Kerr-Anderson. Always
gay, was Kerr-Anderson.
But the gentleman from America seemed, as he stood there, uncertain.
He glanced down the way he had come. Quillier, watching him, saw that he
was fagged out. Eleven years had made a great difference to Mr. Puce. He
looked old, worn, a wreck of the hearty giant who was once Howard
Cornelius Puce.
“Come, sit down, Puce,” he said kindly, and quite briskly, for him. “Do
you realise, man, that it’s eleven years since that idiotic night? What are you
doing? Taking a walking-tour?”
Mr. Puce sat down on the stained bench beside them. His massive
presence, his massive smile, seemed to fill the whole air about the two men.
“Walking-tour? That is so, more or less,” smiled Mr. Puce; and, with a
flash of his old humour: “I want to tell you boys that I am the daughter of
the King of Egypt, but I am dressed as a man because I am travelling
incognito. Eleven years is it, since we met? A whale of a time, eleven
years!”
“Why, there’s been quite a war since then,” chuckled Kerr-Anderson.
“But still that night seems like last night. I am glad to see you again, old
Puce! But, by Heaven, we owe you one for giving us the scare of our lives!
Don’t we, Quillier?”
“That’s right, Puce,” smiled Quillier. “We owe you one all right. But I
am heartily glad that it was only a shock you had, and that you were quite
yourself after all. And so here we are gathered together again by blind
chance, eleven years older, eleven years wiser. Have a drink, Puce?”
The gentleman from America was looking from one to the other of the
two. The smile on the massive face seemed one of utter bewilderment.
Quillier was shocked at the ravages of a mere eleven years on the man’s
face.
“I gave you two a scare!” echoed Mr. Puce. “Aw, put it to music, boys!
What the hell! How the blazes did I give you two a scare?”
Kerr-Anderson was quite delighted to explain. The scare of eleven years
ago was part of the fun of to-day. Many a time he had told the tale to while
away the boredom of Flanders and Mesopotamia, and had often wanted to
let old Puce in on it to enjoy the joke on Quillier and himself but had never
had the chance to get hold of him.
They had thought, that night, that Puce was dead. Quillier, naked from
the waist up, had rushed down to Kerr-Anderson, waiting in the dark porch,
and had told him that Puce had kicked the bucket. Quillier had sworn like
nothing on earth as he dashed on his clothes. Awkward, Puce’s corpse, for
Quillier and Kerr-Anderson. Quillier, thank Heaven, had had the sense not
to leave the empty revolver on the bed. They shoved back all the ghost
properties into a bag. And as, of course, the house wasn’t Kerr-Anderson’s
aunt’s house at all, but Johnny Paramour’s, who was away, they couldn’t so
easily be traced. Still, awkward for them, very. They cleared the country
that night. Quillier swearing all the way about the weak hearts of giants.
And it wasn’t until the Orient Express had pitched them out at Vienna that
they saw in the Continental Daily Mail that an American of the name of
Puce had been found by the caretaker in the bedroom of a house in
Grosvenor Square, suffering from shock and nervous breakdown. Poor old
Puce! Good old Puce! But he’d had the laugh on them all right....
And heartily enough the gentleman from America appeared to enjoy the
joke on Quillier and Kerr-Anderson.
“That’s good!” he laughed. “That’s very good!”
“Of course,” said Quillier in his tired, deprecating way, “we took the
stake, this boy and I. For if you hadn’t collapsed you would certainly have
run out of that room like a Mussulman from a ham-sandwich.”
“That’s all right,” laughed Mr. Puce. “But what I want to know, Quillier,
is how you got me so scared?”
Kerr-Anderson says now that Puce was looking at Quillier quite amiably.
Full in the face, and very close to him, but quite amiably. Quillier smiled, in
his deprecating way.
“Oh, an old trick, Puce! A black rag over the head, a couple of yards of
stuffed cloth for arms....”
“Aw, steady!” said Mr. Puce. But quite amiably. “Say, listen, I shot at
you! Nine times. How about that?”
“Dear, oh, dear!” laughed Kerr-Anderson. But that was the last time he
laughed that day.
“My dear Puce,” said Quillier gently, slightly waving his one arm. “That
is the oldest trick of all. I was in a panic all the time that you would think of
it and chuck the gun at my head. Those bullets in your automatic were
blanks.”
Kerr-Anderson isn’t at all sure what exactly happened then. All he
remembers is that Puce’s huge face had suddenly gone crimson, which
made his hair stand out shockingly white; and that Puce had Quillier’s
fragile throat between his hands; and that Puce was roaring and spitting into
Quillier’s blackening face.
“Say, listen, you Quillier! You’d scare me like that, would you! You’d
scare me with a chicken’s trick like that, would you! And you’d strangle
me, eh? You swine, you Sir Cyril Quillier you, right here’s where the
strangling comes in, and it’s me that’s going to do it——”
Kerr-Anderson hit out and yelled. Quillier was helpless with his one
arm, the giant’s grip on his throat. The woman who kept the inn had
hysterics. Puce roared blasphemies. Quillier was doubled back over the
small table, Puce on top of him, tightening his death-hold. Kerr-Anderson
hit, kicked, bit, yelled.
Suddenly there were shouts from all around.
“For God’s sake, quick!” sobbed Kerr-Anderson. “He’s almost killed
him.”
“Aw, what the hell!” roared Puce.
The men in dark uniforms had all they could do to drag him away from
that little, lean, blackened, unconscious thing. Then they manacled Puce.
Puce looked sheepish, and grinned at Kerr-Anderson.
Two of the six men in dark uniforms helped to revive Quillier.
“Drinks,” gasped Kerr-Anderson to the woman who kept the inn.
“Say, give me one,” begged the gentleman from America. Huge,
helpless, manacled, he stood sheepishly among his uniformed captors. Kerr-
Anderson stared at them. Quillier was reviving.
“Gets like that,” said the head warder indifferently. “Gave us the slip this
morning. Certain death for someone. Homicidal maniac, that’s ’im. And
he’s the devil to hold. Been like that eleven years. Got a shock, I fancy.
Keeps on talking about a sister of his called Julia who was murdered and
how he’ll be revenged for it....”
Kerr-Anderson had turned away. Quillier sobbed: “God have mercy on
us!” The gentleman from America suddenly roared with laughter.
“Can’t be helped,” said the head warder. “Sorry you were put to trouble,
sir. Good-day, gentlemen. Glad it was no worse.”
IX: TO LAMOIR
ALAS, it is a pity I know so little of trees and flowers, and how I shall tell
this tale without their help I cannot imagine, for it is a tale that demands a
profound knowledge of still, gentle things. But I daresay it will get itself
written somehow, and saying that leads us to quite another question, for
serious men will have it that that is the pity of nearly all the writing of our
time, it just gets itself written somehow.
Now it is difficult not to think a little of my own life in telling of Hugh
and Lamoir, for they helped me when I was very young, for a long time
they were my only friends in London, and ever since they have remained
the dearest. But it was only the other day that Hugh told me about the tree. I
suppose he must have had a sort of idea of what might happen and wanted
to tell someone about it while he could. But it’s odd that I had known him
all those years, him and Lamoir, and he had never so much as mentioned
the tree—when out he suddenly comes with it!
Of course there will be those to say that he hadn’t concealed anything
worth concealing, that it’s an impossible story anyhow, and who could
believe it? But I do believe it decidedly, for how could Hugh have made it
up? Hugh wasn’t an imaginative man, not a bit. That, in point of fact, is
what the story is about. Of course, he had a passion for fine things, a
passion for touching fine things, but your collector or your connoisseur isn’t
generally anything of an imaginative man. Lamoir, now, she was quite
different, and she might easily have thought of the garden and the tree and
the whole business, but so far as I can make out Hugh and Lamoir never
once breathed a word to each other about it.
I have never been able to think of Lamoir quite steadily, I liked her too
much. I know a writer is supposed to be impersonal, but that can’t be
helped. She knew the very hearts of trees and flowers, Lamoir did, and she
was always so still and quiet, like a flower herself, that you never knew
what she was thinking of. And that is more or less how the trouble between
them began, so Hugh told me the other day. He never knew what she was
thinking of, but he hoped for the best, and then one day he found that she
had been thinking away from him all the time. That is what Hugh said. But
I feel that the truth of it was that he never thought Lamoir was thinking of
anything at all, except maybe about what a good husband he was, and then
one day he got a shock. Many men seem to be like that, they have happy
natures, for when their wives are quiet and thoughtful they never dream that
those thoughts might be out of accord with their own, and when they do at
last realise that something has been wrong all the time they are surprised
and hurt and want to know why they were not told sooner. As though, you
know, some things can be told sooner, as though some things can be told
until it is too late!
Now Hugh and Lamoir were a difficult pair to know, together or singly.
Hugh wasn’t at all your democratic sort, there was nothing at all easy-going
about him. I remember once seeing him in a crowded room and thinking he
was like an island of nerves in an ocean of grins. Lamoir said he was proud.
He simply didn’t seem to concern himself at all with other people’s
opinions; it was as though he just hadn’t the time to go about dealing in the
slack forms of geniality which pass for manners in this century. That is
Hugh’s phrase, not mine. Lamoir left him about nine years ago.
They say that people made a great fuss over Lamoir when she first came
from India, because she was so lovely. That must have been about twenty-
five years ago, and about nine years ago she packed up a lot of trunks and
went to Algeria. People were very surprised at that, for Lamoir was beloved
of everyone, and she seemed to be liking her life in England—as much,
anyhow, as anyone ever does seem to like his or her life in England, for
there seems to be a feeling in people that one shouldn’t like living in
England. I like it very much myself, but then I am not English. People said
vaguely that she was going away because her heart was weak—quite all
right, but weak, and that she must have quiet. She never came back.
I went to see her in Algeria two winters ago. I wanted very much just to
see how she was in that solitary new life. Naturally I didn’t tell Hugh the
main reason why I was going to Algeria, and I think he had an idea I was
going there to try to write a book about it, one of those marvellous books
about sheiks and sand and suburban Englishwomen with love flaming in
their eyes to such a degree that none of their friends at home would ever
recognise them. As Hugh never used to speak of his wife one had nothing to
go on as to what his feelings about her were, and so, of course, one said
nothing about her either.
Just the same, that is how I found Lamoir. She had the grace of silence,
of reflection, to a rare degree. Some people found her frightfully dull, but
then imagine what “some people” are, it can be said that their disapproval is
a distinction that no fairly admirable person should ever be without. The
house she was living in had been the palace of the last of the Admirals of
the Dey’s fleet, Lamoir said, and one could well believe it. There were
dungeons below, deep, dark, crooked, with chains and iron clamps on the
walls where the poor devils of Christian slaves used to be kept, and on the
morning Lamoir was showing me round there was a vampire-bat hanging
asleep from the black broken walls. From the dungeons there was a secret
passage, Lamoir said, down to the bay two miles away at the foot of the
hill, and through this passage the old Admiral scoundrel had tried to escape
when the French stormed the town about eighty years ago—or maybe it was
more or less than eighty years ago; I don’t know when it was, and Lamoir
didn’t know either.
One morning we were walking about on the pink tiles of the flat, uneven
roof, not talking much, while below the sea slept. Lamoir asked after Hugh,
just how he was, and I said he was quite well. “Lonely,” I added.
We sat on the parapet of the roof, looking down the hill at the white
untidy town. There was an American liner in the bay, like a smudge. At last
Lamoir said: “Yes, he was always lonely. Lonely and proud. Hugh is very
proud. Don’t you think so?”
I said: “And you, Lamoir, aren’t you proud, too?”
You see, I knew nothing of the difficulty between Hugh and Lamoir. All
I knew was that two dear friends of mine had parted from each other nine
years before. Lamoir was looking towards the sea, she was smiling. Then
she shook her head suddenly. Her hair was quite grey, and short, and curly
—you can see how attractive Lamoir was, an autumnal flower.
“Oh, no!” she said. “I’m not proud, not a bit. And I don’t like proud
people.”
“I do!” I said.
She said gravely: “You do, of course. But you are young, and it’s quite
right that you should like proud people and should try to be proud yourself,
though I should think your sense of humour would bother you a little while
you were trying. I think young people should be proud, because if they are
not they will put up with makeshifts and get dirty; but elderly people and
old people should not be proud, because it prevents them from
understanding anything.”
“But elderly people,” I said, “don’t they get dirty too, if they’re not
proud?”
She laughed at me, and all she said was: “I was talking about nice
elderly people.” And there the conversation ended, just nowhere. I think it
very silly in a man to go generalising about women, but if I were to start
generalising I might say that most abstract conversations between men end
nowhere, but you have a feeling that at least something interesting has
passed, while with a woman an abstract conversation ends nowhere and you
have a feeling that she has only been talking about whatever it was just out
of politeness.
I remember that what struck me most about Lamoir at that time was how
happy she was, happy and feeling safe in her happiness. That puzzled me
then, for I knew she loved Hugh.
II
I would see a good deal of Hugh, sometimes going to stay with him at
Langton Weaver, and often, in London, dining with him at his house in
Charles Street, just he and I alone. It was very pleasant to know of a quiet
house in which I might now and then pass an evening talking, as one always
did with Hugh if one talked at all, of books and tapestries and fine things. I
never knew a man who had such a passion for the touch of fine things as
Hugh, and seeing him thoughtfully holding a little old ivory figure in his
hand one might almost think his skin was in love with it.
But a few weeks ago, the last time I was ever to dine with my friend, it
instantly struck me that he was in quite a different mood. And presently he
told me about the garden and the tree. He didn’t preface it with anything in
particular, he was thoughtfully twisting the stem of his port-glass when he
said: “Nearly nine years since I have seen Lamoir——”
I said vaguely: “Yes....” Never once, you see, in all those nine years, had
he so much as mentioned the name of Lamoir, and so I felt rather stunned at
first.
Hugh went on thoughtfully, not particularly to me: “And the first time I
saw her I was nine years old. She must have been seven.”
I said: “But I always understood that Lamoir passed her childhood in
India and never came to England until she was twenty or so! I’d no idea you
too were in India when you were little.”
“I wasn’t,” he said, and he smiled, I think out of shyness just because he
was talking about himself. “I wasn’t. That’s why, you see, it was so funny
——”
I was trying to imagine Lamoir seven years old. It was easy, of course, as
it always is easy with people one likes. Her curly grey hair would be golden
then, and maybe her grey eyes would be more blue than grey, and they
would look enormous in a tiny face. And she would be walking, very still,
making no noise at all, with two thin brown sticks for legs and two blue
pools for eyes, very thoughtful indeed, and all this would be happening in a
garden of red and yellow flowers with a long low white house nearby. That
was how Hugh first saw Lamoir, in a garden, and nearby a long low white
house with a broad flight of steps up to the open doorway and tall, shining
windows.
Dazzling white the house seemed to him, Hugh said, but that must have
been because there was a very brilliant sun that afternoon. There was no
noise, except just summer noises, and although he didn’t remember actually
seeing any birds there must have been a lot of birds about, because he heard
them. And simply masses of flowers there were in that garden, red and
yellow flowers, and over a grey wall somewhere there was hung a thick
curtain of flowers that may have been blue roses. And they may very well
have been blue roses, Hugh said. And bang in the middle of all those
flowers was Lamoir, staring at him as he came into the garden. Hugh was so
surprised, he said, that he didn’t know what to say or do.
He hadn’t, you see, intended coming into that garden at all. He hadn’t, a
moment before, known anything at all about that garden or whose garden it
was or even that there was a garden there at all. That is the funny part about
the whole thing, the way it just sprung out at him, garden, Lamoir, blue
roses and all, out of the summer afternoon. But there it was, and there
Lamoir was, staring at Hugh. Not that she looked a bit surprised, Hugh said,
although she was such a kid. She just stuck her finger into her mouth and
came towards him.
Hugh’s father’s place, Langton Weaver, lay on the slope of a low hill not
far from Hungerford, looking over the plain towards where the old red
Elizabethan pile of Littlecott lies embowered in trees. Hugh, that bright
afternoon, was kicking his heels about in the lane outside his father’s gates,
which was of course against all rules. But Hugh was lonely that afternoon,
he never had any brothers or sisters, and he was wondering what he would
do next, and he was hoping that someone would come along to do
something with—when, bang, there he was in that garden and a little kid
advancing on him with a finger stuck in her mouth. It was very odd, Hugh
said.
“Hullo!” she said. All eyes, that’s what she was.
“Hullo!” Hugh said. She was only a kid, after all. Hugh was nine.
“You’re a boy,” she said.
“Of course I’m a boy,” Hugh said, and he was going to add “just as
you’re a girl,” but a fellow couldn’t stand there arguing all day with a slip
of a thing like that. Then he suddenly remembered he didn’t know where he
was.
“I say,” he said, “I don’t know how I got here. What’s this place?”
She twisted her finger out of her mouth and stared at the wet thing. Hugh
remembered that it shone in the sun. And her hair shone in the sun, too.
Hugh said her hair shone even when they were in the shade. But of course
he didn’t attach any importance to that kind of thing.
“I say, where am I?” Hugh asked again. He must have sounded pathetic,
in spite of himself.
“You’re here,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Hugh,” he said. “But, I say, where’s here? I’ve never seen that house
before. My father’s got the biggest house round here, Langton Weaver. My
father’s Lord of the Manor, and when he’s dead I’m Lord of the Manor.”
“Oo!” she said, staring.
Hugh said he felt frightfully let down. Any other kid would have exalted
the merits of her own house, but she just swallowed everything and stared
at you. Hugh said he felt as though he had been boasting.
“Our house doesn’t look so jolly clean as this,” he said. “Rather live
here, any day.”
And he suddenly realised he was speaking the truth. That was the
amazing part of it, Hugh said: suddenly to feel that he would much rather
live here than in his father’s house. With this kid. And from that moment,
somehow, he forgot every particle of his surprise at being in that garden.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Not got a name,” the kid said. “No name.” All legs and eyes, that’s
what she was.
“But you must have a name!” Hugh cried. “Everyone’s got names, even
dogs and cats. We’ve got seven dogs and they’re all called after every day
in the week except one because you can’t call a dog Sunday, father says.”
“No name,” she said breathlessly. “I’m me.”
“But look here, how do they call you when they want you?” He thought
he’d got her there all right, Hugh said.
She giggled. “I just come,” she giggled. “I don’t need to be called. Oo!
Just come when I’m wanted. Did you want me? You did, didn’t you?”
He stared at her, he was so dumbfounded. Jiminy, hadn’t he wanted her!
Anyhow, hadn’t he wanted something to happen. But how had this kid
known that?
“Look here, no rotting!” he warned her.
“Not rotting,” she said, sucking her finger. “What’s rotting?”
“But what’s this place?” he asked almost frantically. “Hasn’t it got a
name either?”
“Oo, yes! Playmate Place.”
“It’s not!” Hugh cried. “Not Playmate Place! You’re rotting now.”
Hugh says she took her finger out of her mouth, stamped her foot and
screamed at one and the same time. “It is called Playmate Place and
Playmate Place and Playmate Place! So there!”
“Oh, all right!” Hugh said, and he didn’t let on any further about his
opinion of a house called Playmate Place. Hugh says a boy of nine would
rather die than live in a house called Playmate Place. It sounded so soft. But
she was only a kid, after all, and she couldn’t know anything.
“I’m going to run now,” the kid said, standing on one leg and staring at
the other.
That was too much, Hugh said. She was going to run! As though she
could run! “Beat you blindfolded,” he just said.
“Oo, you try!” she giggled, and she turned, and she flew. She just flew,
Hugh said. All brown legs and golden hair. He hadn’t a chance. But he must
have been quite a nice boy really, Hugh said, because he began laughing at
himself. He beat this kid!
She stopped, miles away, just under a tree. Hugh panted on. And they
must have run some distance, for the house and the blue roses were no
longer visible. Hugh couldn’t remember any of the particulars of where they
were now. There was a sense of flowers, he said, clean flowers, a lot of
flowers. And that tree, under which Lamoir was waiting for him. Of course
he didn’t know she was Lamoir then. That tree seemed to him a big tree.
Hugh said that when you touched it it smelt like a sort of echo of all the
good smells you had ever smelt.
But he hadn’t come quite up to her when she turned and, before you
could say “knife,” shinned up that tree!
“I say!” cried Hugh.
“Can’t catch me!” panted a little voice from among the leaves.
“Can if I want to,” said Hugh, looking up. All he could see between the
leaves was something white.
“Like you to want to,” piped the something white, and Hugh fell in love
for the first and last time in his life.
When he caught up with her, on a branch high up, she said “Oo!” and
gave him a damp kiss on his cheek. She didn’t giggle or anything, she was
as serious as a man playing cricket. Hugh felt rather ashamed.
“Look here,” he said, to say something, “what’s this tree called? Never
seen a tree like this before.”
“It’s a lovely tree,” she said, staring. “It’s called Playmate Tree, of
course.”
“That’s a soft word, playmate,” Hugh rashly said.
She stared at him with those big grey eyes, Hugh said, so that he began
to feel weak, just weak with meanness. And then she said “Yow!” and wept.
Well! She wept. Hugh didn’t know what to do, stuck up there on a branch of
a tree and this kid crying fit to break her kid’s heart. He kept muttering, “I
say, I’m sorry,” and things like that, and then he found she was somehow in
his arms, and he kissing her and kissing her hair. Her hair smelt like the
tree, Hugh said, so it must have been a funny sort of tree.
“Kiss the tree now,” the small voice said. “You’ve hurt it.”
“Oh, I say!” said Hugh, but he did as he was told, and then they climbed
down the magic tree in silence, he trying to help her and almost breaking
his neck. They walked slowly back, hand in hand, towards where the house
was, through the sweet lush grass. There was music somewhere, Hugh said.
Or maybe there wasn’t and he only thought there was. And Hugh said that
he was happier at that moment than he had ever been since in his whole life.
“Mustn’t laugh at words like playmate,” said the wise kid. “You’ll get
hurt if you do.”
“I say, I’d like to see you again,” Hugh said shyly, and he found himself
walking on the dusty lane towards Nasyngton! He was almost in
Nasyngton, he could see, down the slope, the thick old bridge over the
Kennet. He must have walked two miles or more while he thought he was
in that garden. Playmate Place. He stopped to wipe his face, wondering
passionately. He was simply streaming with perspiration. But what had
happened to that old garden, that’s what puzzled him. And that kid! That
jolly little kid. He rubbed his cheek, but he couldn’t be certain if there still
was a damp patch where she had kissed him. Anyhow, it would have dried
by then, and, anyhow again, he’d got so hot since.
When he got home Hugh told Hugh’s father the outline of his adventure,
and Hugh’s father told Hugh he had broken rules by being outside the gates
at all and that he must have been dreaming, but Hugh said passionately that
he was sorry he had broken rules but he hadn’t been anything like
dreaming, and Hugh’s father told Hugh not to be an ass, and two years later
Hugh’s father died.
Hugh did not see the garden of the white house again. Playmate Place.
Hugh, as he grew up, blushed to think of Playmate Place. He had blushed at
the time, and later on he blushed at the very thought of it. He wouldn’t have
dared let any of his friends at school even dream of his ever having
swallowed such a soft yarn as the Playmate Place one. But, despite himself,
the face of the kid whose name was to be Lamoir stayed with him, and her
silver voice, and her enormous eyes. And now and then in his dreams, Hugh
said, he would seem to hear the faint echo of an “Oo!”
III
It was almost twenty years to a day after the adventure of Playmate Place
that Hugh met Lamoir at a party at Mace, Guy de Travest’s place. Miss
Cavell her name was. He recognised her, he said, at once, at very first sight.
She had been seven then and she was twenty-seven now, but he knew her
on sight. And when she spoke, he was quite certain. Of course she didn’t
suck her finger and say “Oo!” any longer, but without a doubt Lamoir
Cavell was the grown-up of the kid of Playmate Place. And he actually
found himself wondering, as he talked to her that first time at Mace, if she
recognised him—and then he almost laughed aloud at his childishness, for
of course the whole thing had been a boy’s dream. But it was very odd, his
dreaming about someone he was actually to meet twenty years later. And
once he fancied, as he turned to her suddenly, that she was looking at him a
little strangely, in a puzzled sort of way maybe, with that small slanting
smile of hers as though she was smiling at something she just hadn’t said.
Oh, Lamoir must have been very beautiful then!
She was born in India, where old man Cavell was something in the Civil
Service, and she had lived in India until recently, when her father died.
Hugh, that first time, asked her if she had ever been in England as a child,
and she said, staring at him in a way that seemed so familiar to him that his
heart gave a throb: “Only in dreams.” But he didn’t tell her about the
Playmate Place then. Then was the time to tell her, then or never. He never
told her.
They walked in enchantment, those two, for the next few days. Guy de
Travest has told me since that the whole house-party went about on tiptoe,
so as not to disturb Hugh and Lamoir in their exquisite contemplation of
their triumph over the law of life, which is of course unknowable, but must
be pretty depressing, seeing what life is.
They were married in the little village church at Mace, and Hilary
Townshend was Hugh’s best man, and Hilary has told me since that he
almost wept to see them going away—knowing as he did so certainly,
Hilary said, that Hugh and Lamoir had taken the one step in life which will
wake any couple up from any dream.
Hugh continually pulled at the stiff grey affair on his upper lip as he told
me of his marriage. “It’s Playmate Place,” he said, “that is important in the
story: much more important than my married life. Lamoir and I never quite
reached Playmate Place in actual life. We were in sight of it sometimes—
when I let Lamoir have her head. But I only see that now, I didn’t realise it
then.”
He said that about the importance of Playmate Place quite seriously.
And, you know, I took it quite as seriously. A dream or vision or whatever it
was, that has lasted fresh in a man’s mind from the age of nine to the age of
forty-nine is, after all, a thing to be taken seriously. I haven’t, as a rule,
much patience with dreams; and there’s a deal too much talk of dreams in
the novels of the day, for it’s so easy to write “dream”; but Hugh’s, as they
say, rather “got” me.
He never spoke about it to Lamoir. “I began to, several times,” he said,
“but somehow I never went on. You see, there was such a difference
between our life together and the way we had been together in that garden. I
mean, such a tremendous difference in spirit. She was the same, but I—
well, I was the same, too, but only that ‘same’ which had jeered at the word
‘playmate.’ It’s difficult to explain. I knew, you see, as I said things that
might hurt her, that I was in the wrong—and I didn’t want to say them,
either—but somehow it was in me to say them and so I said them. It’s
somehow the impulses you can’t put into words that are the strongest.”
The marriage of Hugh and Lamoir appeared to have gone much the same
way as most marriages. At first they were very happy, and they were quite
certain that they were going to be even happier. Then they thought that
perhaps they were not so happy as they had been, and then they were quite
certain that they were not so happy as they had been. Hugh said it was more
or less like that.
Hugh, at the time, had thought privately that this was because Lamoir
did not take very much interest in his collections of fine things. Not that he
wasn’t quite contented with his marriage. Good Lord, contented! I wonder
what Lamoir thought about that. Contented! But she never confided, that
quiet Lamoir.
It was a great unhappiness to her, Hugh said, that there were no children.
A very great unhappiness. He hadn’t, he admitted, minded so much,
because year by year he was growing more absorbed in his collections.
Throughout his married life he would go off searching Europe for pieces.
Italy, Greece, Spain. At first he used to take Lamoir with him, but later on
she would stay at home. She preferred that, Hugh said. She wouldn’t stay in
the London house, but at Langton Weaver, the house which was larger but
not so clean-looking as Playmate Place. Lamoir lived in the garden and the
park. I met Hugh and Lamoir in the last years of their life together, and
whenever I went to stay at Langton Weaver I would find Lamoir in the
park. She would generally be standing just off a path, quite still, wearing
gardening-gloves, and looking thoughtfully down at the flowers. Then she
would touch one here and there. She was gardening.
So, Hugh said, ten years passed; and he, when he thought of it at all,
would think theirs a happy enough marriage, as marriages go. Reality, after
all, couldn’t be so good as dreams, ever. That is what he thought. And he
loved Lamoir. He was a collector of fine things, and so it was bred in his
bone to love Lamoir. She loved him, too. Sometimes in quite a strange
abandoned way, for a woman who had been married so long. In quite an un-
English way, when you came to think of it—although it can’t be in the least
“un-English” to be passionate, but one gets into the habit of saying the
idiotic things that English novelists say. Lamoir would say things
unmentionable and beautiful, in the rare moments. But, somehow, those
rarest moments would never be of Hugh’s contriving, not after the first year
or so. They would come suddenly, out of the night of ordinary marriage,
they would come like angels with silent wings. And Lamoir would be the
voice of the angel with silent wings, and Lamoir in those rarest moments
would be the very body and soul of love. But Hugh couldn’t woo those
moments. Perhaps no man ever can. It may be, Hugh said, that there’s a
frontier to any woman’s love for any man, and beyond that frontier is the
unknowable darkness and unknowable light, and from that secret place can
leap a passion that no man in the world is worthy to woo. It just comes or it
doesn’t come.
These moments did not come when he thought they would, when he
expected them. She would somehow be passive then, somehow there yet
not there. Then suddenly, when he had got used to the hurt of her
“coldness,” out of the night of ordinary marriage would sweep the angel
with the silent wings in the body and the voice of Lamoir. Hugh said that
sometimes the song of the sirens was in Lamoir’s voice, but if Hugh was
right about that Ulysses must have been just a silly old man and the sirens
darlings.
IV
For Hugh, his pleasure in travelling was given an exquisite point by
returning to Lamoir. That was when he seemed to love her most, as he
returned to her. One gets out of the habit of being desirous if one stays in
the home all the time. And Lamoir would be waiting for him, sweet and
still. He thought of her all the time, as he returned towards her.
Once, nine years ago, he returned to her by night. He had been away
from England for four or five months, and, arriving that evening in London,
he had dined quickly and taken the first train down to Langton Weaver. It
was a cool July night, loaded with stars. He had walked the two miles from
the railway station.
Hugh was happy as he walked. He was conscious of his happiness, of his
health, of his strength. Hugh was forty then, a dry, taut forty. And the idea
of Lamoir, white and supple, was like a temptation that exalted and
ennobled. The sky was almost Italian, Hugh said, the stars were so
unusually clear and bright. He walked, not up the drive towards the door,
but across the lawn towards the three French windows of the drawing-room.
They showed a faint bronze light. Lamoir was there. She was sitting in a
Dorothy chair of old blue velvet, reading. A lamp in a bowl of yellow
amber lit the book, but her face was only a frail whiteness, and her hair was
as though veiled. He pushed open a window which was unlatched. He
called: “Lamoir!”
She made that gesture he knew so well, loved so well. Lamoir would not
be Lamoir without that gesture. Always, at first sight of him returning to
her, she would make that gesture. It was delicious with a lure which he
never could explain. It was as though she was afraid of her love for him.
Towards her heart, the gesture was: but faint, not definite: a hand like a
white bird, fluttering, fluttering vainly, fluttering out of stillness, fluttering
back into stillness—all in a second. Lamoir, you see, had a weak heart, and
that was why, maybe, she was born so still, to balance the weakness of her
heart.
And it was always the same with him when he saw her after an absence.
The world stood still, no living thing moved but Lamoir’s hand and his
infinite desire. The pleasure of seeing her was exquisite, like a pain. In all
his life Hugh had known no woman but Lamoir. Seeing her now, the earth
and sky held only himself and her and the thing that was between them.
That vivid thing with eyes of fire which can be beautiful or beastly. She
troubled him and exalted him, and somehow his love for her would be
stabbed by a queer sense of terror, which he never could explain. And she
was so still, so passive, unknowable. But her eyes, as he made to touch her,
adored him.
She lay beside him a long time in the delicious silence of love before she
spoke and said: “Good-bye, Hugh.”
He thought she must have gone mad. He stared at her, through the
darkness. “Good-bye?” he echoed.
“Yes,” she said, and that was all she said.
He had put out the light in the bowl of yellow amber. He lay in the
darkness, understanding nothing. Then his mind grew darker than the room,
and he just managed to say:
“But, Lamoir, are you mad? Good-bye! What do you mean?”
She did not answer for what seemed a long time. She was a soft darkness
in the dark room, beside him. The night was a blue curtain over the
windows, hung with stars like toys. He touched her, as though to prove to
himself that he was not dreaming. He must be dreaming. But she was there,
beside him, soft, warm: Lamoir, his wife. And the stars on the windows
were as though at his finger-tips, but Lamoir was untouchable. She was
untouchable, suddenly. She was most untouchable when he touched her. It
seemed wrong to touch her. That made him angry. He laughed.
“I’m damned,” he said, “if I understand what all this is about! I come
home after months away, and you say good-bye!”
“I don’t think,” she said, “that I can explain. Not now....”
He laughed. She was going away, and she didn’t trouble to explain why!
He wanted her to say: “Don’t be bitter, please!” But she was silent. She
was beside him, yet her breath came from across the universe. And what on
earth was it all about?
“But do you mean you want to leave me?” he asked, astounded, angry.
She said: “Yes.”
“Lamoir!”
She said: “I can’t bear it any longer, Hugh. I love you too much.”
He repeated idiotically: “You love me too much?”
Now she was standing, a shadow in the darkness, away from him, a
million miles away from him. He was silent. All the inside of him went
silent. Suddenly there were no words, no need for words, no Lamoir, no
Hugh, nothing but the primal nothingness before Adam. He would not hold
her for a moment if she wished to leave him.
“You will understand,” she said. “You see, I want to be free to love you,
and you won’t let me. You will understand that, too. God has given me no
children, Hugh. He has given me only my love for you. That is all I have,
and I have been sacrificing it to you for ten years; but now I am growing
afraid for it, it’s become such a poor, beaten, wretched bit of a thing, and so
I must leave you. I owe that to myself, dear—and to the you inside you.”
And he said, despite himself, that he loved her. What was so strange was
that, suddenly, he had ceased to feel like her husband, suddenly it seemed to
him inconceivable that he had possessed her countless times. Inconceivable
that he and she had been one, when now they were so apart! It had seemed
so easy then to touch her—now, not a lifetime would surmount the barriers
she had raised between them. He suddenly thought: “Good Lord, how lucky
I’ve been in the past—and I never knew it!”
He was going to touch her, when like a blow on the face he realised that
to touch her would be indecent. She was not his wife. Suddenly, absurdly,
he thought of Soames Forsyte, of John Galsworthy. Hugh had always
disliked Galsworthy for his creation of Forsyte, a man who could rape his
wife.
Lamoir said suddenly: “There will be another chance later on....”
He leapt at that. “Later on? Lamoir, you mean you will come back?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. I shall never come back.”
“You will,” he said between his teeth, and with a great effort of will he
took her in his arms.
But afterwards she went away, and she never came back.
We were silent for a long time after Hugh had spoken of the way Lamoir
had left him. And then he said: “Of course she was right. I did understand,
later on. That is why I have made no attempt to see her these last nine years.
Love, you see, has many masks. We slip on one or other of them, and we
say, ‘This is love,’ but really it’s only a fraction of love. And a fraction of
love can be the negation of love. Love is enormous and difficult. We must
learn how to love, as we must learn how to play music. I did not know how.
But I shall see Lamoir soon. I am going to Algeria next week. I have been
wanting to go for a long time, but I must just wait another few days....”
“But, Hugh, why do you wait even one day?” I protested. “Lamoir is
longing to see you, I know she is.”
“Yes. But I must wait four or five days or so. For a sort of anniversary.
My idea, if you won’t laugh at me too much, is to see Playmate Place again,
and then that will give me a clue as to how to deal with Lamoir when I see
her in the flesh. I’m sure it will give me a clue. And I’m sure I shall see it
again, in three or four days from to-day. I’d like to, immensely. Of course it
won’t have changed one bit, but I wonder if Lamoir and I will have grown
up. If we have, it will be rather a feat to climb that tree, won’t it? Or maybe
the tree will have grown too, though it seemed huge enough at the time.
You see, the thing seems to go in cycles of twenty years, more or less. I saw
the garden for the first time on a June day in my ninth year. I met Lamoir
for the first time on a June day, perhaps the same one, in my twenty-ninth
year. And now I’m forty-nine, and the day falls in three or four or five days’
time. Either, I’m quite sure, I see that garden again on that day, or I see
Lamoir herself, or....”
“Or?” I said. “Or what?”
“Well, God knows!” Hugh smiled, pulling at that stiff grey thing on his
upper lip, and on the dawn of the fourth day from that night Hugh was
found by one of the keepers of Hyde Park lying at the foot of a great tree
near the Albert Gate, dead of a broken neck. At the inquest there was read
out a letter from his wife’s lawyers, which had been delivered at Hugh’s
house on the morning of his death and which he couldn’t, therefore, have
read, saying that they had heard by wire from Algeria that his wife had died
of heart-failure the day before.
X: THE GHOUL OF GOLDERS GREEN
IT is fortunate that the affair should have happened to Mr. Ralph Wyndham
Trevor and be told by him, for Mr. Trevor is a scholar of some authority. It
is in a spirit of almost ominous premonition that he begins the tale, telling
how he was walking slowly up Davies Street one night when he caught a
cab. It need scarcely be said that Davies Street owes its name to that Mary
Davies, the heiress, who married into the noble house of Grosvenor. That
was years and years ago, of course, and is of no importance whatsoever
now; but it may be of interest to students.
It was very late on a winter’s night, and Mr. Trevor was depressed, for he
had that evening lost a great deal more than he could afford at the card
game of auction bridge. Davies Street was deserted; and the moon and Mr.
Trevor walked alone towards Berkeley Square. It was not the sort of moon
that Mr. Trevor remembered having seen before. It was, indeed, the sort of
moon one usually meets only in books or wine. Mr. Trevor was sober.
Nothing happened, Mr. Trevor affirms, for quite a while: he just walked;
and, at that corner where Davies Street and Mount Street join together the
better to become Berkeley Square, stayed his walking upon an idea that he
would soothe his depression with the fumes of a cigarette. His cigarette-
case, however, was empty. All London, says Mr. Trevor, appeared to be
empty that night. Berkeley Square lay pallid and desolate: looking clear, not
as though with moonlight, but with dead daylight; and never a voice to put
life into the still streets, never a breeze to play with the bits of paper in the
gutters or to sing among the dry boughs of the trees. Berkeley Square
looked like nothing so much as an old stage property that no one had any
use for. Mr. Trevor had no use at all for it; and became definitely
antagonistic to it when a taxicab crawled wretchedly across the waste white
expanse and the driver, a man in a Homburg hat of green plush, looked into
his face with a beseeching look.
“Taxi, sir?” he said.
Mr. Trevor says that, not wanting to hurt the man’s feelings, he just
looked another way.
“Nice night, sir,” said the driver miserably, “for a drive in an ’ackney-
carriage.”
“I live,” said Mr. Trevor with restraint, “only a few doors off. So
hackney-carriage to you.”
“No luck!” sighed the driver and accelerated madly away even as Mr.
Trevor changed his mind, for would it not be an idea to drive to the nearest
coffee-stall and buy some cigarettes? This, however, he was not to do, for
there was no other reply to his repeated call of “Taxi!” but certain heavy
blows on the silence of Davies Street behind him.
“Wanting a taxi, sir?” said a voice which could only belong to a
policeman.
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Trevor bitterly. “I never want a taxi. But now
and then a taxi-driver thrusts himself on me and pays me to be seen in his
cab, just to give it a tone. Next question.”
“Ho!” said the policeman thoughtfully.
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Trevor.
“Ho!” said the policeman thoughtfully.
“The extent of your vocabulary,” said Mr. Trevor gloomily, “leads me to
conclude that you must have been born a gentleman. Have you, in that case,
a cigarette you could spare?”
“Gaspers,” said the policeman.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Trevor, rejecting them. “I am no stranger to
ptomaine poisoning.”
“That’s funny,” said the policeman, “your saying that. I was just thinking
of death.”
“Death?” said Mr. Trevor.
“You’ve said it,” said the policeman.
“I’ve said what?” said Mr. Trevor.
“Death,” said the policeman.
“Oh, death!” said Mr. Trevor. “I always say ‘death,’ constable. It’s my
favourite word.”
“Ghoulish, I calls it, sir. Ghoulish, no less.”
“That entirely depends,” said Mr. Trevor, “on what you are talking
about. In some things, ghoulish is as ghoulish does. In others, no.”
“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “But ghoulish goes, in this ’ere
affair. One after the other lying in their own blood, and not a sign as to
who’s done it, not a sign!”
“Oh, come, constable! Tut-tut! Not even a thumb-mark in the blood?”
“I’m telling you,” said the policeman severely. “Corpses slit to ribbons
all the way from ’Ampstead ’Eath to this ’ere Berkeley Square. And why?
That’s what I asks myself. And why?”
“Of course,” said Mr. Trevor gaily, “there certainly have been a lot of
murders lately. Ha-ha! But not, surely, as many as all that!”
“I’m coming to that,” said the policeman severely. “We don’t allow of
the Press reporting more’n a quarter of them. No, sir. That’s wot it ’as come
to, these larst few days. A more painful situation ’as rarely arisen in the
hannals of British crime. The un’eard-of bestiality of the criminal may well
baffle ordinary minds like yours and mine.”
“I don’t believe a word of it!” snapped Mr. Trevor.
“Ho, you don’t!” said the policeman. “You don’t!”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Trevor, “I don’t. Do you mean to stand there and
tell me that I wouldn’t ’ave ’eard—I mean, have heard of this criminal if he
had really existed?”
“You’re a gent,” said the policeman.
“You’ve said it,” said Mr. Trevor.
“And gents,” said the policeman, “know nothing. And what they do
know is mouldy. Ever ’eard of Jack the Ripper?”
“Yes, I ’ave,” said Mr. Trevor bitterly.
“Have is right, sir, if you’ll excuse me. Well, Jack’s death was never
rightly proved, not it! So it might well be ’im at ’is old tricks again, even
though ’e has been retired, in a manner of speaking, these forty years.
Remorseless and hindiscriminate murder, swift and sure, was Jack’s line, if
you remember, sir.”
“Before my time,” said Mr. Trevor gloomily.
“Well, Jack’s method was just to slit ’em up with a razor, frontwise and
from south to north, and not a blessed word spoken. No one’s touched ’im
yet, not for efficiency, but this new chap, ’e looks like catching Jack up.
And at Jack’s own game, razor and all. Makes a man fair sick, sir, to see the
completed work. Just slits ’em up as clean as you or me might slit up a
vealanam-pie. We was laying bets on ’im over at Vine Street only to-night,
curious like to see whether ’e’d beat Jack’s record. But it’ll take some
beating, I give you my word. Up to date this chap ’as only done in twelve in
three weeks—not that that’s ’alf bad, seeing as how ’e’s new to the game,
more or less.”
“Oh, rather, more or less!” said Mr. Trevor faintly. “Twelve! Good God
—only twelve! But why—why don’t you catch the ghastly man?”
“Ho, why don’t we!” said the policeman. “Becos we don’t know ’ow,
that’s why. Not us! It’s the little one-corpse men we’re good for, not these
’ere big artists. Look at Jack the Ripper—did we catch ’im? Did we? And
look at Julian Raphael—did we catch ’im? I’m asking you.”
“I know you are,” said Mr. Trevor gratefully. “Thank you.”
“I don’t want your thanks,” said the policeman. “I’m just warning you.”
Mr. Trevor gasped: “Warning me!”
“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “You don’t ought to be out alone at
this time of night, an ’earty young chap like you. These twelve ’e’s already
done in were all ’earty young chaps. ’E’s partial to ’em ’earty, I do believe.
And social gents some of ’em was, too, with top-’ats to hand, just like you
might be now, sir, coming ’ome from a smoking-concert. Jack the Ripper all
over again, that’s wot I say. Except that this ’ere new corpse-fancier, ’e
don’t seem to fancy women at all.”
“A chaps’ murderer, what!” said Mr. Trevor faintly. “Ha-ha! What?”
“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “But you never know your luck, sir.
And maybe as ’ow thirteen’s your lucky number.”
Mr. Trevor lays emphasis on the fact that throughout he treated the
constable with the courtesy due from a gentleman to the law. He merely
said: “Constable, I am now going home. I do not like you very much. You
are an alarmist. And I hope that when you go to sleep to-night your ears
swell so that when you wake up in the morning you will be able to fly
straight to heaven and never be seen or heard of again. You and your razors
and your thirteens!”
“Ho, they ain’t mine, far from it!” said the policeman, and even as he
spoke a voice crashed upon the silence from the direction of Mount Street.
The voice belonged to a tall figure in black and white, and on his head was
a top-hat that shone under the pallid moon like a monstrous black jewel.
“That there,” said the policeman, “is a Noise.”
“He’s singing,” said Mr. Trevor.
“I’ll teach ’im singing!” said the policeman.
Sang the voice:
“With an host of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear
And a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander.”
“Big!” said Mr. Trevor. “Big? Let me tell you, constable, that the last
time Mr. Maturin hit Jack Dempsey, Dempsey bounced back from the floor
so quick that he knocked Mr. Maturin out on the rebound.”
Mr. Trevor says that Beau Maturin came on through the night like an
avenger through a wilderness, so little did he reck of cruel moons and rude
policemen. Said he: “Good evening, Ralph. Good evening, constable. Lo, I
am in wine!”
“You’ve said it,” said the policeman.
“Gently, my dear! Or,” said Mr. Maturin cordially, “I will dot you one,
and look at it which way you like it is a far, far better thing to be in wine
than in a hospital. Now, are there any good murders going to-night?”
“Going?” said the constable. “I’m ’ere to see there ain’t any coming. But
I’ve just been telling this gent about some recent crises. Corpses slit to
ribbons just as you or me might slit up a vealanam——”
“Don’t say that again!” snapped Mr. Trevor.
“By Heaven, what’s that?” sighed Mr. Maturin; and, following his intent
eyes, they saw, a yard or so behind them on the pavement, a something that
glittered in the moonlight. Mr. Trevor says that, without a thought for his
own safety, he instantly took a step towards the thing, but that the
policeman restrained him. It was Mr. Maturin who picked the thing up. The
policeman whistled thoughtfully.
“A razor, let’s face it!” whispered Beau Maturin.
“And sharp!” said the policeman, thoughtfully testing the glittering blade
with the ball of his thumb.
Mr. Trevor says that he was never in his life less conscious of any
feeling of excitement. He merely pointed out that he could swear there had
been no razor there when he had come round the corner, and that, while he
had stood there, no one had passed behind him.
“The chap that owns this razor,” said the policeman, emphasising each
word with a gesture of the blade, “must ’ave slunk behind you and me as
we stood ’ere talking and dropped it, maybe not finding it sharp enough for
’is purpose. What do you think, Mr. Maturin?”
But Mr. Maturin begged to be excused from thinking, protesting that
men are in the hands of God and God is in the hands of women, so what the
devil is there to think about?
Mr. Trevor says that the motive behind his remark at that moment, which
was to the effect that he simply must have a drink, was merely that he was
thirsty. A clock struck two.
“After hours,” said the policeman; and he seemed, Mr. Trevor thought,
to grin evilly.
“What do they know of hours,” sighed Mr. Maturin, “who only Ciro’s
know? Come, Ralph. My love, she jilted me but the other night. Therefore I
will swim in wine, and thrice will I call upon her name when I am
drowning. Constable, good-night to you.”
“Now I’ve warned you!” the policeman called after them. “Don’t go into
any alleys or passages like Lansdowne Passage else you’ll be finding
yourselves slit up like vealanam-pies.”
Maybe it was only the treacherous light of the moon, but Mr. Trevor
fancied as he looked back that the policeman, where he stood thoughtfully
fingering the shining blade, seemed to be grinning evilly at them.
II
They walked in silence, their steps ringing sharp on the bitter-chill air.
The night in the sky was pale at the white disdain of the moon. It was Mr.
Maturin who spoke at last, saying: “There’s too much talk of murder to-
night. A man cannot go to bed on such crude talk. You know me, kid. Shall
we go to The Garden of My Grandmother?”
At that moment a taxicab crawled across the moonlight; and the driver, a
man in a Homburg hat of green plush, did not attempt to hide his pleasure at
being able to satisfy the gentlemen’s request to take them to The Garden of
My Grandmother.
Mr. Trevor says that he has rarely chanced upon a more unsatisfactory
taxicab than that driven by the man in the Homburg hat of green plush. By
closing one’s eyes one might perhaps have created an illusion of movement
by reason of certain internal shrieks and commotions, but when one saw the
slow procession of shops by the windows and the lamp-posts loitering by
the curb, one was, as Beau Maturin pointed out, justified in believing that
the hackney-cab in question was not going fast enough to outstrip a retired
Czecho-Slovakian admiral in an egg-and-spoon race. Nor were they
altogether surprised when the taxicab died on them in Conduit Street. The
man in the Homburg hat of green plush jumped out and tried to restart the
engine. He failed. The gentlemen within awaited the issue in silence. The
silence, says Mr. Trevor, grew terrible. But the taxicab moved not, and the
man in the Homburg hat of green plush began, in his agitation, thumping
the carburetor with his clenched fist.
“No petrol,” he pleaded. “No petrol.”
Said Mr. Trevor to Mr. Maturin: “Let us go. Let us leave this man.”
“ ’Ere, my fare!” said the fellow.
“Your fare?” said Mr. Maturin with contracted brows. “What do you
mean, ‘your fare’?”
“Bob on the meter,” said the wretch.
“My friend will pay,” said Mr. Maturin, and stalked away. Mr. Trevor
says that, while retaining throughout the course of that miserable night his
undoubted flair for generosity, he could not but hold Beau Maturin’s high-
handed disavowal of his responsibilities against him; and he was hurrying
after him up Conduit Street, turning over such phrases as might best point
the occasion and make Mr. Maturin ashamed of himself, when that pretty
gentleman swung round sharply and said: “Ssh!”
But Mr. Trevor was disinclined to Ssh, maintaining that Mr. Maturin
owed him ninepence.
“Ssh, you fool!” snapped Mr. Maturin; and Mr. Trevor had not obliged
him for long before he discerned in the quietness of Conduit Street a small
discordant noise, or rather, says Mr. Trevor, a series of small discordant
noises.
“She’s crying, let’s face it,” whispered Mr. Maturin.
“She! Who?”
“Ssh!” snapped Mr. Maturin.
They were at that point in Conduit Street where a turn to the right will
bring one into a fat little street which looks blind but isn’t, insomuch as
close by the entrance to the Alpine Club Galleries there is a narrow passage
or alley leading into Savile Row. Mr. Trevor says that the repugnance with
which he at that moment looked towards the darkness of that passage or
alley had less than nothing to do with the blood-thirsty policeman’s last
words but was due merely to an antipathy he had entertained towards all
passages or alleys ever since George Tarlyon had seen a ghost in one. Mr.
Maturin and he stood for some minutes in the full light of the moon while,
as though from the very heart of the opposite darkness, the lacerating
tremors of weeping echoed about their ears.
“I can’t bear it!” said Beau Maturin. “Come along.” And he advanced
towards the darkness, but Mr. Trevor said he would not, pleading foot
trouble.
“Come,” said Beau Maturin, but Mr. Trevor said: “To-morrow, yes. But
not to-night.”
Then did Beau Maturin advance alone into the darkness towards the
passage or alley, and with one pounce the darkness stole his top-hat from
the moon. Beau Maturin was invisible. The noise of weeping abated.
“Oi!” called Mr. Trevor. “Come back, you fool!”
“Ssh!” whispered the voice of Mr. Maturin.
Mr. Trevor said bitterly: “You’re swanking, that’s all!”
“It’s a girl!” whispered the voice of Mr. Maturin, whereupon Mr. Trevor,
who yielded to no man in the chivalry of his address towards women, at
once advanced, caught up Mr. Maturin and, without a thought for his own
safety, was about to pass ahead of him when Beau Maturin had the bad taste
to whisper “ ’Ware razors!” and thus again held the lead.
She who wept, now almost inaudibly, was a dark shape just within the
passage. Her face, says Mr. Trevor, was not visible, yet her shadow had not
those rather surprising contours which one generally associates with women
who weep in the night.
“Madam,” began Mr. Maturin.
“Oh!” sobbed the gentle voice. “He is insulting me!”
Mr. Trevor lays some emphasis on the fact that throughout the course of
that miserable night his manners were a pattern of courtliness. Thinking,
however, that a young lady in a situation so lachrymose would react more
favourably to a fatherly tone, he said:
“My child, we hope——”
“Ah!” sobbed the gentle voice. “Please go away, please! I am not that
sort!”
“Come, come!” said Mr. Maturin. “It is us whom you insult with a
suspicion so disagreeable. My friend and I are not of the sort to commit
ourselves to so low a process as that which is called, I believe, ‘picking
up.’ ”
“We have, as a matter of fact, friends of our own,” said Mr. Trevor
haughtily.
“Speaking generally,” said Mr. Maturin, “women like us. Time over
again I have had to sacrifice my friendship with a man in order to retain his
wife’s respect.”
“Ah, you are a man of honour!” sobbed the young lady.
“We are two men of honour,” said Mr. Trevor.
“And far,” said Mr. Maturin warmly, “from intending you any mischief,
we merely thought, on hearing you weeping——”
“You heard me, sir!”
“From Conduit Street,” said Mr. Trevor severely, whereupon Mr.
Maturin lifted up his voice and sang:
“From Conduit Street, from Conduit Street,
The street of ties and tailors:
From Conduit Street, from Conduit Street,
A shocking street for trousers——”
III
IV
NOW, at last, the entertainment moves towards its end, the curtain is
atremble for its fall, the affair called May Fair is on tiptoe to make a last
bow and retire forever into those anxious shades where all that is not of the
first excellence must come to the foul embrace of limbo. So let the curtain
fall, that we may get back to the serious business of life. But, oh, it is easy
enough to say that! The rub is, a curtain has to be contrived. Action is
demanded; and all the world loves a climax. In fine, ladies and gentlemen,
those inexorable twin sisters, Finale and Farewell, have still to be served.
And how shall that be done?
It happened that I was in Paris when I was thinking upon this matter with
some urgency. How shall the farewell be contrived, thought I, how indeed?
For, by the waters of the Thames, there never was such a trouble put upon
mankind as this confounded business of leave-taking! Haven’t we all, to be
sure, been sometime harassed by the saying of farewell? by the fumbling of
that pitiful, pitiless occasion? Indeed, find us the man or woman who can
say good-bye with ease, and he or she shall instantly have a clear start to
our friendship. How often we have been distressed by the agonies of
someone’s incapable departure! And you may rifle all diplomacy for ways
and means to help some people take their leave, and still their glassy,
fevered eyes will search your face as though for the ultimate word, still
their aggressive nervousness will not permit you to put them and yourself
out of their agony. While as for those poor wretches whom it is our dread
delight to “see off” at railway stations, what confusion of mind is theirs, and
ours! He is at the window of his carriage, smiling: we on the platform,
smiling: others are nearby, smiling: hands are shaken, good-byes are said ...
and does the train go? It does not. Wouldn’t we then, if we but dared,
implore the departing wretch to withdraw his tormented head from the
window, sit back in his seat, hide himself behind a paper and send us all to
the deuce? We would, but we don’t, and he can’t, so fumble, fumble,
fumble, until at last the train takes him—or her, why not?—from us who
had once thought we were sorry he was going. Oh, no, this business of
saying farewell is not like saying “Jack Robinson”: it needs, without a
doubt, a touch of inhumanity, which, if it does not make the whole world
kin, can at least help to make a good part of it comfortable, as the humane
gentleman now honoured as Lord Balfour found when he was Secretary of
State for Ireland.
It was, then, with such thoughts as these that my mind was vexed during
my stay in Paris, much to the disorder of my pleasures, when whom should
I meet but my friend Dwight-Rankin! Gratified, I was yet surprised almost
beyond endurance. I had been at school with the man, but later we had lost
sight of one another, and still later I had heard of his death on Gallipoli. I
had been sorry.
Dwight-Rankin was a blood, and I have an intellectual leaning towards
bloods. They may have only the most moderate aspirations towards a state
of grace, theirs may be only the most superficial grasp of the culture of the
ages, but theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do nothing and die. They
may not Achieve, they may have nothing to Give to the world, but
nevertheless they serve several useful purposes and are decidedly a good
market for British-made and Dominion-made goods; such as golf-links,
foxes, spats, plover’s eggs, chorus girls, kippers, the Conservative party,
night-clubs, bookmakers, whisky, the Army, etc. They are also decorative
and are frequently used at balls and at our Embassies abroad.
Dwight-Rankin remarked with gratification upon my pleasure at the fact
that he was still alive and invited me to take a glass of wine with him at the
Ritz, which we were at that moment passing. Nothing could have been
more agreeable to me, in my troubled state of mind. We then indulged in
conversation. It had rained the day before, and we spoke of the rain. There
was a rumour that it had been snowing in England, and we spoke of the
snow. Dwight-Rankin had just returned from Monte Carlo, where he had
lost money, and I had just returned from Rome, where I had lost my
luggage. We confounded Monte Carlo and Rome. Then Dwight-Rankin said
that the report of his death on Gallipoli was a gross exaggeration and that
one should not believe all one hears. His younger brother, Dwight-Rankin
said, had believed the report with an agility surprising in one who was a
confirmed sceptic in all religious matters, had stepped into the property and
had gone bankrupt before Dwight-Rankin could say “knife.” Dwight-
Rankin said he was now a broken man. I extended him my sympathy, for
which he thanked me.
“Talking of death,” he added, “that was a nasty end for Mrs. Amp,
wasn’t it?”
“Mrs. Amp!” I said. “Mrs. Amp? Who was Mrs. Amp?”
Dwight-Rankin said: “Rheumatism and Roosevelt, you’ve never heard
of Mrs. Amp! Nor of the death? Nor of the Lady Surplice?”
“Lady Surplice?” I said. “Oh, yes, I’ve heard of the Countess of
Surplice! And how is she?”
“She can’t be at all well,” said Dwight-Rankin. “She’s dead. Tummy
trouble, they said. By the way, one doesn’t say ‘the Countess of’ Surplice.
One says ‘Lady Surplice.’ Do you mind?”
“Not in the least,” I said.
“Then don’t say it or write it, will you?” begged Dwight-Rankin. “All
you writers are very vague about your titles. No, not vague—you are
malinspired. It puts people against you, I assure you. I often had a mind to
tell Miss Marie Corelli about that, but I never had a chance.”
I said: “You see, Dwight-Rankin, I never hear any of these things, as I
am not in society.”
“That’s all right,” said Dwight-Rankin. “Hang on to me.”
“Waiter!” I said. “Two Martinis, please.”
“Dry,” said Dwight-Rankin. “Dry, waiter. And with a dash.”
It was luncheon time, and the foyer was crowded with people waiting for
each other whilst they passed the time of day with someone else. There
were many women with eager eyes and low heels. Dwight-Rankin said they
were American. There were many women with good complexions and large
feet. Dwight-Rankin said they were English. There was a young man who
looked like a pretty girl, except that his hair was long. Dwight-Rankin said
he was known as the Venus de Marlow and that his friends thought him too
marvellous. Pacing up and down was a French gentleman with drooping
ginger moustachios, a gardenia and a dog. Dwight-Rankin said that he wore
stays and that the dog was called “Hélöise and Abélard,” and when I asked
him how one dog came to be called “Hélöise and Abélard” Dwight-Rankin
said severely that even a dog must be called something.
“The man who owns him, her, it or them,” said Dwight-Rankin, “is the
Marquis des Beaux-Aces. He married a very rich American, but she turned
out to be a girl of strong character and instead of letting him spend her
money she spent all his and then divorced him for being incompetent. He
has never been the same man since, but he manages to make an honest
living by selling fancy needlework to Argentine polo-players. But you will
hear more of him when I tell you of the strange affair of Mrs. Amp and
Lady Surplice—of the late Mrs. Amp,” said Dwight-Rankin gloomily, “and
the late Lady Surplice. A great pity. By the way, are you lunching with
anyone?”
I said: “No, but——”
“That’s all right,” said Dwight-Rankin; “I will lunch with you. I am
supposed to be lunching with some people, but I am so short-sighted that I
can’t see them. If you should remark two beautiful women looking at me
with more than usual interest, just don’t take any notice. This short-
sightedness of mine is developing into a nuisance. The other day I was
having a clean-up at the club and when I came to wipe my face I found it
was quite dry for the simple reason that I had been washing the face of the
man next to me.”
I said: “In the meanwhile, shall we——”
“This is on me,” said Dwight-Rankin. “Waiter, two Martinis, please.”
“Dry,” I said.
“That’s all right,” said Dwight-Rankin. “They always wipe them for me
first.”
II
The death of Mrs. Amp, said Dwight-Rankin, was the sensation of Paris
in the spring of the year 1924. Who Mr. Amp was, it appeared, no one knew
for certain. But it was said that he had fallen in love with a photograph of an
English gentlewoman in Arab costume, had plunged into the desert to
commune with his passion and had been kidnapped by a sheikess in plus-
fours who had a fancy for bald Americans with bulging eyes. However....
Mrs. Amp, said Dwight-Rankin, died suddenly and terribly; and her
mangled remains were the subject of discussion in society for many a day.
It was a Friday evening, and all Paris was dressing itself to be present at a
dinner-party that Mrs. Amp was to give that evening at the Ritz Hotel. “Just
here, where we are sitting now,” said Dwight-Rankin, turning a glassy eye
about the restaurant and accepting an invitation hurled at him by the
Duchess of Putney to dine next Thursday to meet the Shah of Pongistan on
the occasion of his having lost his job.
On that Friday evening, said Dwight-Rankin, there was only one person
of note in Paris who was not dressing to be present at Mrs. Amp’s dinner-
party. That, said Dwight-Rankin, was Lady Surplice. Mrs. Amp and Lady
Surplice did not speak. That is to say, said Dwight-Rankin, they spoke to
everyone about each other; but when they met, had you dropped a pin
between them it would have made a noise like a bomb, and had you lit a
match there would have been a cascade of water from the melting ice.
Lady Surplice, said Dwight-Rankin, had been the greatest hostess in
Europe for twenty years. London dined with her when she was in London,
Paris dined with her when she was in Paris, Mussolini met her at the station
when she went to Rome, New York hailed her as the Duchess of Mayfair,
while Palm Beach was her rouge-pot and over Ascot she cast her lorgnette.
Naturally all this was very encouraging for Lady Surplice, and she bitterly
resented any interference with her habits. However....
Lord Surplice—only technically known, said Dwight-Rankin severely,
as “the Earl of”—did not assist at his wife’s entertainments. He was
understood to be taking the waters for diabetes at a hydropathic
establishment near Woodhall Spa. Or maybe, said Dwight-Rankin, it was
liver trouble and Tunbridge Wells, but one can’t know everything.
Then one day, when Lady Surplice was at the height of her success, Mrs.
Amp fell on Europe. Nay, said Dwight-Rankin, Mrs. Amp obliterated
Europe. Without Mr. Amp, but with Mr. Amp’s millions. Mrs. Amp, said
Dwight-Rankin, was a large woman: a very large woman: and hearty. Her
face was not that of Aphrodite: her figure not that of Mrs. Vernon Castle:
but she had, said Dwight-Rankin, a certain Charm. Her descent on Europe
was catastrophic. She enveloped Europe. And Europe loved it. She laid one
hand on London and one on Paris, threw Venice over one shoulder and
hung Deauville about her neck, and people just fell on to her lap. And what
a lap, said Dwight-Rankin. However....
For days and days people went about saying: “I say, what’s all this about
a Mrs. Amp? Who is Mrs. Amp? What?” Then for days and days people
went about saying: “Have you met Mrs. Amp? The devil, what a woman!
These Americans! What?” Then for days and days people went about
saying: “Are you dining with Mrs. Amp to-night? Am I? Good Lord, no!
Why should one dine with Mrs. Amp? What?” Then for ever and ever
people went about saying: “I’m sorry, but I must be going now. I am dining
with Mrs. Amp to-night. What? Oh, you are too! Good, we’ll meet over
dinner.”
Lady Surplice, however, stood firm. She wouldn’t, said Dwight-Rankin,
accept Mrs. Amp. “Mrs. Amp,” said Lady Surplice, “is a Low woman. One
does not know Mrs. Amp.” But thousands did, said Dwight-Rankin. So
Lady Surplice tore between London and Paris, giving luncheons, dinners,
dances and receptions right and left in the hope that no one would have time
to go to any of Mrs. Amp’s parties. But people always had time, said
Dwight-Rankin, to go to Mrs. Amp’s parties. Mrs. Amp’s parties were like
that. Unavoidable, inevitable, eternal. And, said Dwight-Rankin,
uncommonly amusing. One met all one’s friends at them, and the
champagne was always dry.
Mrs. Amp was American, and Lady Surplice was born in Notting Hill of
Nonconformist parents. And so, said Dwight-Rankin, they carried the same
weights in the blue-blood stakes. But Mrs. Amp was the larger woman, the
larger personality. Lady Surplice was very tall, very thin, dark, brittle,
brilliant. Mrs. Amp enveloped, and could touch the ceiling of a sleeping-car
with her hips when she lay on her side. Lady Surplice was relentless in her
generosity and indomitable in her indiscretion. Mrs. Amp was as mean with
money as a temperance hotel with matches; but even so she could stay the
stars in their courses, anyhow for at least five courses and then make them
sing and dance to her guests on top of it. Lady Surplice was very tall. But
Mrs. Amp stood six-feet-two in her tiara. Lady Surplice undoubtedly put up
a gallant fight. But Mrs. Amp undoubtedly won. Lady Surplice said: “That
low, beastly woman!” Mrs. Amp said: “Muriel Surplice is proud of having
discovered Europe. I am amused at having discovered Muriel Surplice.”
It gradually dawned on people, said Dwight-Rankin, that this between
Mrs. Amp and Lady Surplice was not an affair which could be settled by a
duel at Mah Jongg, that this was a case of war to the death. Mrs. Amp died
first.
On that Friday evening, Mrs. Amp was dressing for dinner in her house
near the Champs Élysées. She sat at her toilet-table, and whilst her maid did
this and that to her hair, which, said Dwight-Rankin, aspired doggedly
rather than beautifully to the mode, Mrs. Amp passed the time by looking
out of the windows upon the noble trees of the Champs Élysées; and
presently drew her maid’s attention to the fact that a circus was at that
moment taking its station beneath them. “I want to tell you,” said Mrs. Amp
to her maid, “that I am just crazy about circuses. Don’t forget to remind me
to engage one the next time I pull a party.”
Those, her maid later told Dwight-Rankin, were almost the last words
Mrs. Amp spoke in this world. For even as she uttered them an uproar
became audible from without: the air was filled with screams, yells and
curses: while the roars of savage beasts struck terror into the most stable
heart and convinced the maid, she told Dwight-Rankin, that the end of the
world was at hand.
With a cry to Mrs. Amp, who sat staring out of the window as though
transfixed, the maid fled; for the uproar from the circus was caused by
nothing less than the escape of the lions from their cages; and these, their
maddened nostrils attracted by Heaven knows what odour, were rushing
furiously on Mrs. Amp’s house, vainly pursued by their keepers. For the
keepers, said Dwight-Rankin, appeared to be quite helpless: their whips
lashed the air with inconceivable energy, but there seemed to be a grave
lack of entente between their commands and the lions’ movements; which
was later only half-explained by the fact that they were Italian keepers in
charge of French lions.
The lions, with a bound, with a series of bounds, passed the concierge’s
lodge, wherein the concierge was clinging to an excrescence from the
ceiling; and when the mangled corpse of poor Mrs. Amp was later found, it
was recognisable, said Dwight-Rankin, only by the perfume which the poor
lady was used to affect and which gave proof of its quality by rising
superior even to the lively odour of the lions. However....
In such manner, said Dwight-Rankin, did Mrs. Amp give up the spirit.
Nor was the sensation caused by her nasty death at all soothed by the
evidence of her trembling concierge, who, before the Conference of
Ambassadors that sat to enquire on the great hostess’s death, gave
testimony to the effect that as the lions rushed into her bedroom Mrs. Amp
was distinctly heard to cry: “This is the doing of Muriel Surplice! I will be
revenged, if I roast in hell-fire for it!”
The concierge, of course, said Dwight-Rankin, gave his evidence in
French; and when the interpreters had translated it for the benefit of the
Conference of Ambassadors, those distinguished gentlemen were not a little
disturbed by the ominous, if extravagant, burden of Mrs. Amp’s dying
words. And, said Dwight-Rankin, rightly.
III
It was when we came to the second and last part of the affair of Mrs.
Amp and Lady Surplice, which took place in London nearly a year later,
that he himself, said Dwight-Rankin, entered upon the scene. He was, in
point of fact, quite definitely responsible for the awful end to my Lady
Surplice’s last dinner-party, a circumstance which would prey on his mind
to his dying day. For, said Dwight-Rankin, had he not at the last moment
been compelled, by some force outside himself, to take a bird out for a spot
of dinner, and therefore to cancel his engagement to dine with Lady
Surplice, nothing untoward could possibly have happened to that poor lady.
He had, however, been able to piece together every detail of the terrible
events of that dinner-party with the help of the relations of those of his
friends who were present: the most reliable among these being Shelmerdene
(that lovely lady), Guy de Travest, most upright of men, and Percy
Wentworth, 1st Marquess of Marketharborough, the Lord Chancellor of
England, who was, said Dwight-Rankin, a very hearty man and a devil for
accuracy whether on the Woolsack or the roundabouts.
It was Christmas Eve, and a dirty night. A violent wind distracted the
town, hurling the rain with idiot fury against the windows of swift
limousines and, no doubt, said Dwight-Rankin, greatly inconveniencing
those thoughtless persons who had gone abroad without their limousines.
But since Lady Surplice’s dinner was in honour of royalty, in the person of
Son Altesse le Prince de Finaleauseltz, of the Royal house of Bonbon de
Jambon-Parme, her guests, with that polite servility which distinguishes the
freedom-loving peoples of England and America, were within the house in
St. James’s Square by a quarter-to-nine o’clock.
Dinner was not yet announced: the conversation, easy and elegant,
embraced the topics of the day: while the more youthful wandered, as
though aimlessly, towards the far corners of the spacious drawing-room,
where stood the busts of notable men by Epstein and Mestrovic. Now Lady
Surplice never would have cocktails served in her house since a friend of
hers, an honourary attaché at the Bulgarian Legation, had succumbed to a
ptomaine poisoning gotten from swallowing a cherry in a Manhattan
cocktail. But my lady’s butlers were wont, such is the ingenuity of the lower
sort, to secrete cocktails behind the busts of notable men by Epstein and
Mestrovic, thus killing two birds with one stone; for while, on the one hand,
they satisfied the reasonable thirst of the company, they also, on the other
hand, gave Lady Surplice much real pleasure in seeing how her friends
were enamoured of the most advanced art of the day. Lady Surplice herself
loved the most advanced art of the day. And the most advanced art of the
day loved Lady Surplice. Playwrights, for instance, doted on her. One had
put her into a play as a courtesan for money (1205 performances), one as a
courtesan by temperament (2700 performances), another as a courtesan by
environment (still running), and lastly another as a courtesan to pass the
time. This last, however, was never produced, as the Lord Chamberlain had
banned it on the ground that it was too cynical. However....
Imagine, said Dwight-Rankin, with what consternation Lady Surplice
suddenly discovered that the company was thirteen in number! She was
livid. She said: “It is the fault of that Dwight-Rankin man. I had forgotten
that he had put me off at the last moment. That low, detestable man! How
rude people with two names can be! But what shall we do? We cannot dine
thirteen, and on Christmas Eve! Your Highness, what would you advise? I
am quite unable, my dear Highness, to sit down thirteen at meat. I detest
meat, but you know what I mean. It would quite destroy my luck.”
“His Highness,” said Guy Godolphin Greville Hawke, 21st Viscount de
Travest, “might very possibly prefer to have his luck completely destroyed;
for the present luck of Royalty in Europe is, if I may say so, sickening.”
Lord Marketharborough had been for some time examining the busts of
notable men by Mestrovic and Epstein, and had therefore not heard what
had gone before; but that did not deter him from asking one of those
pertinent questions which came naturally to his fearless mind. “Since,” said
the Lord Chancellor, “we are thirteen, are we a woman too many or a man?
Let us first get that quite clear.”
“There is always a woman too many,” snapped Lady Surplice,
whereupon Dame Warp strode forward and said bitterly between her teeth:
“I see I am not wanted. Let it never be said that a decent woman—I said a
decent woman—ever stood in the way of her friends’ enjoyment. I will go.”
She was, however, soothed by Monsieur des Beaux-Aces, whilst the other
gentlemen very properly laughed the superstition to scorn. In particular Mr.
Warp, who was eminent in private life for his researches into the defunct
branch of political thought once known as Liberalism, but was better known
in public as the husband of Dame Warp, distinguished himself by the
elegant scholarship of his scepticism.
Nor, said Dwight-Rankin, were the ladies—to wit, Shelmerdene, the
Lady Fay Paradise, Lady Pynte, Miss Pamela Star and the Lady Amelia
Peep, who was a young lady of the highest fashion with her hair parted at
the side, a talent for writing poetry, and a governing-classes voice—nor
were they behindhand with their ridicule of so childish a fancy as Lady
Surplice’s, that they could be susceptible of the least harm through sitting
thirteen at table.
“Dinner,” said the doyen of the butlers from the door, “is served, my
lady.”
“Talbot!” cried Lady Surplice. “How dared you not warn me that we
were thirteen for dinner? Why do you not answer me? Is this a time for
silence?”
“Decidedly,” said the Lord Chancellor. “For I am hungry.”
“My lady,” said the wretched Talbot, “I am sorry. It quite escaped my
notice. I will send in my resignation in the morning.”
Says my lady with a high look: “Talbot, you will expiate your sin now.
You will at once leave the house. You will walk round St. James’s Square.
And you will invite the first person you meet in to dine with me. Go.”
The conversation after the butler had gone became, said Dwight-Rankin,
rather strained; and only the polished genius of Lady Surplice could have
sustained it at anything approaching a well-informed level, as when, turning
to the Lady Amelia Peep, she said: “And what, my child, is your father
doing to-night? I had asked him to dine with me, but he said he was
engaged. I hope it is not serious.”
“Wearing,” said the Lady Amelia, “rather than serious. He is in S. W. 1
district, in the queue outside Buck House, waiting to be made a Duke in the
New Year’s Honours. He is so old-fashioned in his tastes! He will be
wanting to learn dancing soon.”
“Dukes,” said Lady Surplice, “are not a fit subject for conversation. One
should avoid being a Duke. They are low. Look, for instance, how they took
up with that Amp woman! Look how that handsome but ill-mannered Duke
of Mall made a fuss of that dreadful Mrs. Omroy Pont! And look at the
Duke of Dear! One cannot know that man. He has actually been divorced
time over again. England is getting simply flooded with ex-Duchesses of
Dear. And while the Duke indulges his almost violent partiality for middle-
class indiscretions, his only son has invented a rod with which he can catch
smoked salmon. Is that patrician, is it even gentlemanly? Answer me, your
Highness. Is this a time for silence? Then look at the Duchess of Sandal and
Sand! She is in Paris now, and I hear she has lovers right and left and sits up
every night at the Jardin de Ma Sœur staring at people through an emerald
monocle and drinking pink champagne through a straw. Is that just, is it
reasonable, is it even decent? Monseigneur, what do you think? Is this a
time for silence?”
“Yes, please!” pleaded Fay Paradise. “For just look at what’s
happening!”
But it was Shelmerdene, said Dwight-Rankin, who had first seen the
great doors opening. And Shelmerdene was very favourably impressed.
“Captain Charity,” announced Talbot.
Lady Surplice, said Dwight-Rankin, was also very favourably impressed.
She cried: “My dear Captain Charity, how kind of you to come to a
perfectly strange house! But you are so good-looking that I feel I ought to
have known you all my life.”
Now he who was called Captain Charity did not appear to be of those
who suffer from nervousness. His lean presence, indeed, radiated a certain
authority. And he smiled at Lady Surplice in a cold but charming way. But
one can’t do better, said Dwight-Rankin, than take Shelmerdene’s swift first
impression of the man. Shelmerdene said that he was a tall, lean, young
man, dark and beautiful; his air was military, but with a pleasing suggestion
of culture; and as he came towards the company he appeared to look at
nobody but Guy de Travest, and always he smiled, Shelmerdene had told
Dwight-Rankin, in a cold but charming way.
“Haven’t we,” doubtfully said de Travest to the teeth of that faint smile,
“met before somewhere?”
One must imagine those two, said Dwight-Rankin, as making as brave-
looking a pair of men as one could wish to see: the stranger, dark and
beautiful, and Guy de Travest, quiet and yellow-fair: the lean dark dandy
with the mocking mouth and the fair thunder-god of dandies with the frozen
eyes.
“I think not,” said Captain Charity, and he said: “But you are very like
Michael.”
“Michael?” quoth my lord. “And who, pray, is your Michael?”
“The archangel,” said Captain Charity, and that was that, for Lady
Surplice, who was fairly taken with the dark beauty of the stranger, could
no longer brook these masculine asides. She said: “My dear Captain
Charity, you must be introduced. It is quite usual. I have already presented
you to His Highness. He is charming. Here are Dame Warp and Lady Pynte,
who buys her shoes at Fortnum and Mason’s and rides to hounds four days
in the week all through the summer just to set a good example. While this is
Miss Pamela Star, who was left many millions by an Armenian. Armenians
are rather difficult, my dear Captain Charity, but she is charming. And this
is Shelmerdene, who has no surname because she has no surname, but who
is becoming the heroine of all the ladies in all the suburbs because a
misguided young man once put her into a book. Ah, and Fay! My dear
Captain Charity, this is Lady Fay Paradise, the most beautiful woman in
England. She never eats with her meals and never uses the same lover
twice. Do you, darling? Whereas here is Lady Amelia Peep, who is as yet
unmarried but she writes poetry about birds and her father wants to be made
a Duke. You will like her. She is appointed with every modern convenience.
And here—Percy, where are you? Ah, there he is, always admiring works of
art! Look at the back of his head—the strength, the charm, the moral poise
of it! Percy, come here at once! This, my dear Captain Charity, is Lord
Marketharborough, who is a Lord Chancellor, you know. Aren’t you,
Percy? But why do you not answer me? Is this a time for silence?”
“Dinner,” said the man Talbot, “is served, my lady.”
“Good!” said Lord Marketharborough.
Now the high position that Lady Surplice had won for herself in the
hierarchy of hostesses was due to nothing so much as to the fact that she
would not ever tolerate any but general conversation about her table.
Whereas, said Dwight-Rankin, at every other dinner in London one must be
continually blathering in whispers to one’s right or left to women who have
nothing to say and don’t know how to say it, so that there never can be any
conversational give-and-take about the table. But Lady Surplice most
properly insisted on conversational give-and-take at her parties. She gave,
you took. She gave, said Dwight-Rankin, magnificently.
IV
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