LAST ADVENTURES OF THESE CHARMING PEOPLE

                              _May Fair_

                                  By
                             Michael Arlen

         _Author of “These Charming People,” “The Green Hat,”
                      “The London Venture,” etc._


                 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

                  _Among which Episodes May be Found_
                 THE REVOLTING DOOM OF A GENTLEMAN WHO
                   WOULD NOT DANCE WITH HIS WIFE THE
                 BATTLE OF BERKELEY SQUARE THE ACE OF
                    CADS THE GENTLEMAN FROM AMERICA
                    TO LAMOIR THE GHOUL OF GOLDERS
                   GREEN THE PRINCE OF THE JEWS THE
                 THREE-CORNERED MOON A ROMANCE IN OLD
                  BRANDY WHERE THE PIGEONS GO TO DIE

                    _Jacket Design by Edmund Dulac_

             GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY _Publishers_ New York




                              _May Fair_

                             MICHAEL ARLEN




                          _By_ MICHAEL ARLEN


                            _May Fair_
                            _The Green Hat_
                            _These Charming People_
                            “_Piracy_”
                            _The London Venture_
                            _The Romantic Lady_

[Illustration:

_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_

                            [Illustration]

                              _NEW YORK_
                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




                           _Copyright, 1925,
                      By George H. Doran Company_

         Copyright, 1924, 1925, by The Consolidated Magazines
                     Corporation [_The Red Book_].

        Copyright, 1925, by The International Magazine Company,
                       Inc. [_Harper’s Bazaar_].

               Copyright, 1924, _Everybody’s Magazine_.

                               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 WOULD NOT
    DANCE WITH HIS WIFE                                              202

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

[Illustration: MICHAEL ARLEN]

MAY FAIR




PROLOGUE


I

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.


V

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


I

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

Mr. Lapwing was cracking a nut. He said gloomily:

“Hullo, Valentine! Did you ring up to say you were coming round? I
didn’t get the message.”

“I came,” said Valentine, “on an impulse.”

Mr. Lapwing said: “I see. Well, sit down, sit down! I don’t want you
towering over me while I am trying to digest my food. Or is it one of
those impulses you have to stand up to?”

Valentine said: “If you really want to know, I don’t care if I never sit
down again. But I will, if only to show how well you’ve brought me up.”

“Now I don’t want any cheek,” said Mr. Lapwing.

“Cheek!” said Valentine, and he laughed, and the way he laughed caused
Mr. Lapwing to look sharply up at him.

“Cheek!” said Valentine. “If you knew as much about cheek as I do, sir,
you would think I was talking like a courtier.”

“Oh, sit down, sit down!” said Mr. Lapwing.

Now a gentleman called Mr. Lapwing can neither need nor merit any
further description. Mr. Lapwing looked in no way different from the way
that a Mr. Lapwing should look. Thin, tiresome, bald, boring, gouty,
gloomy. We see him for the first time at that end of his dinner when he
would sit a while at the table and stare with conscious
absent-mindedness into space, after the manner of any English gentleman
who is not averse from a drop of old brandy after his meals. Mr.
Lapwing’s was an old-world palate, and he enjoyed above all things a
drop of old brandy.

The dining-room of the house in Cadogan Gardens was large, austere, dim.
From where Valentine sat at the oval polished table, in the light of the
four candles which played in shadows about his guardian’s thin lined
face, the severe appointments of the room were as though seen through a
dark mist. Mr. Lapwing was not only a connoisseur of polite stimulants
but was known to many dealers as a formidable collector of Meryon’s
etchings; and the sombre fancies of the young Frenchman’s genius peered
at Valentine from the dim walls, as they might be old mocking friends
uncertain of recognition.

Mr. Lapwing said gloomily: “Port, Valentine? Or Sherry?”

“Brandy,” said Valentine.

“Drat the boy!” said Mr. Lapwing. “Fountain! Where are you, man? Oh,
there you are! Give the boy some brandy.”

Mr. Lapwing was old enough, but Fountain was older. From the dimness he
emerged, to the dimness returned. Fountain was very old. Mr. Lapwing
said: “Go away, Fountain. We don’t want you. The brandy, Valentine, is
at your elbow.”

“Thank you,” said Valentine.

“The difference between beer and brandy,” said Mr. Lapwing gloomily,
“is that it is not unusual to pour out a full glass of beer, but it is
damned unusual to take more than a drop of brandy at one time.”

“Depends,” said Valentine, “on the brandy.”

Mr. Lapwing said sharply: “That is very fine brandy.”

“Good!” said Valentine.


IV

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.”


V

The state of Valentine’s mind as he ascended the stairway of his house
is best described by the word “pale.” He felt pale. What made him feel
pale was terror. It was past one o’clock in the morning. He had
thundered out of the house at about half-past-eight. And the house was
now as still as a cemetery. The conclusion, to Valentine, was obvious:
the house was as still as a cemetery of love. He saw Valerest waiting,
waiting, waiting for him to return: he heard the clock striking ten,
eleven, midnight: he saw Valerest flush with a profound temper, hastily
pack a few things and--stamp out of the house, never to come back!

Within the bedroom all was dark, silent. Very dark it was, very silent.
Valentine stood just within the doorway, listening very intently. He
could not hear Valerest breathing. There was no Valerest to hear.

“Oh, God!” cried Valentine.

“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.

“Oh, dear!” sighed Valerest from the darkness. “What do you want to go
and wake me for when I have to be out riding at eight o’clock!”

Valentine said: “Valerest, thank Heaven you are here! I got such a
shock.”

“Here?” said Valerest. “Shock?”

Valentine switched on the lamp by the bed. It was Valerest’s bed.
Valentine’s bed was in the dressing-room. That is called hygiene. Our
grandfathers never knew about that.

Valerest stared up at him with sleepy bewilderment. Her curly hair was
all over the place. Valentine made it worse by running his hands through
it. Valerest said severely:

“Valentine, what are you talking about? Why shouldn’t I be here? And
where have you been all this time? Why do you look so pale? Have you
been drinking? Why did you get a shock?”

Valentine said violently: “I love you, Valerest.”

“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.

Valerest laid the tips of her fingers on his eyes, and she passed the
tips of her fingers over his lips, and she said: “But I _hate_ you!”

“You just wait!” said Valentine.

Valerest pulled at his ears with her fingers and defended her attitude
with irresistible logic. She cried: “I don’t want to love anyone! I
don’t want to love anyone! I don’t want to love anyone! I want to be
free!” And she bit his ear.

Now there are writers who would think nothing of ending this chapter
with a row of dots, _viz_: ... The author of this work, however, while
yielding to no one in his admiration of a dexterous use of dots, cannot
but think that the increasing use of dots to express the possibilities
of love has become a public nuisance, and that the practice should be
discouraged by literary-subscribers as dishonest, since what it really
comes to is selling a dud to readers just when they are expecting
something to happen. There are undoubtedly occasions, as when a writer
is plumbing the bestial abysses of illicit love, when a judicious
sprinkling of dots must be held to be proper, in the interests of
decency and restraint. Yet even then it is to be deplored that the
exploitation of dots so readily lends itself to the artfulness of
suggestion. And the author of this work, which is written throughout
under the government of marital virtue, cannot think that it is his part
to hold his pen while he asks himself whether he shall dot or not dot.
Has mankind, he asks himself, lived through all these æons of time only
to find now that it cannot serve the decencies without the artificial
aid of dots? Must, then, our dumb friends be neglected, while we needs
must resort to these bloodless dots? For dogs are infinitely superior to
dots as a means of describing the indescribable. The writer is, of
course, referring particularly to Mr. Tuppy. Poor Mr. Tuppy.

“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy. “Yap, yap, yap, yap!”

“What are you doing to Mr. Tuppy?” cried Valerest.

“Nothing,” said Valentine. “Only putting him out of the room.”

“You’ve kicked him, you beast!” wailed Valerest.

“Only once, sweet,” said Valentine; “for luck.”

“I hate you!” she cried.

“I love you!” he whispered.

“Darling!” she sighed. “But remember I have to be out and riding at
eight.”

“This is no time to talk of dogs and horses!” cried Valentine, and
Valerest was so surprised at such blasphemy that--Oh, well, dots.


VI

As Valentine left the house in Cadogan Gardens Fountain entered the
dining-room. Fountain was very old. He had been kept up very late. He
was tired. He drooped across the room.

“Shall I shut up now, sir?”

Mr. Lapwing said: “Yes, do. But just give me a drop of that brandy
first, will you?”

“Yes, sir. The candles are burning low, sir. Shall I remove the shades?”

“Fountain!”

“Sir?”

“How long have you been with me?”

Fountain stared at his master. Very old, Fountain was. “Why, sir, I was
with your father! I’ve known you ever since you was born--as you know as
well as I do, sir, if I may say so.”

“Ah! But did you ever know, Fountain, that I had been married twice?
And that my first wife had divorced me?”

Fountain lost patience. He said severely: “I never seen you like this
before, sir. Not all these years. I don’t know what you are talking
about, that I don’t. You married twice! Once was enough for you, sir, if
you will permit an old man the liberty. And you divorced! I never heard
of such a thing! I’d like to see the woman fit to divorce a Lapwing,
that I would! I never heard of such a thing.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Lapwing. “Well, have it your own way, Fountain. But it
made such a thundering good story that I was near believing it myself.
All in a good cause, Fountain: to teach that boy a thing or two. One
likes to see children happy, Fountain. And his mother won’t mind, not
she. A good sensible woman she was, if on the plain side. And, d’you
remember, Fountain, she always wanted a drop of romance in her life?
Well, she’s got it now, poor dear. But her son will appreciate it for
her, won’t he? And just give me another drop of that brandy, will you?
That’s very fine brandy, that is.”

“The bottle,” said Fountain bitterly, “is empty, sir.”

“Drat that boy!” said Mr. Lapwing. “Comes here looking for romance and
laps up all my brandy!”




II: THE ACE OF CADS


I

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

[Illustration:

_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

We live in a world of generalisations, which the wise never tire of
telling the foolish to mistrust and with which the foolish never tire of
pointing the failures of the wise. There is one, for instance, that lays
it down that a bad conscience is a sorry bedfellow. Yet Mr. Maturin,
whose conscience could not have been but in the blackest disorder,
immediately went to sleep in the car: to awake only when, the car having
stopped, the young chauffeur flung open the door of the tonneau and
said:

“If you please, sir!”

Mr. Maturin found himself before the doors of a mansion of noble
proportions. From the head of the broad steps he looked about him and
recognised the long narrow park of trees as that of Eaton Square. A
voice said:

“Come in, Mr. Maturin. A wretched night.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Maturin. “It is.”

Within, in a vast hall floored with black and white marble, he found
himself faced by an old gentleman who, as the small seedy man had said,
was even taller than himself. Mr. Maturin bowed. The tall old gentleman
said:

“It is good of you to have come, Mr. Maturin. I thank you. I must
confess, however, that I expected you would.”

“It is a rare pleasure for me, Sir Guy, to do what is expected of me,”
smiled Mr. Maturin.

“You know me then! You recognised me to-night at your--your club?”

Mr. Maturin smiled at that. It was, let’s face it, a low club. But, what
with one thing and another, he had had to resign from all his others. He
only said:

“Naturally. Who does not know you, Sir Guy!”

The deep old eyes seemed to pierce the younger man with a savage
contempt. “In coming here to-night, Mr. Maturin,” said old Sir Guy, “am
I to understand that you are serious? You have, as you may know,
something of a reputation for having made an art of misbehaviour.”

Mr. Maturin delayed answering while he thoughtfully considered the
ceiling of the great hall, which was so high as to refuse itself to
exact scrutiny. At the gaming-club that night he had immediately
recognised the formidable old gentleman; for the great lean height, the
sabre-wound across the left cheek, the mass of loosely brushed white
hair and the savage blue eyes under bushy white eyebrows, were the
well-known marks of Sir Guy Conduit de Gramercy, a _seigneur_ of a past
century who made no secret of the fact that he disdained any part in
this. For a passing moment Mr. Maturin had wondered what the proud old
gentleman was doing in those depths; but now, revealed as the donor of
the magnificent note, he could not but suspect what had brought Sir Guy
down from his contemptuous seclusion. Sir Guy’s descent, however, was
far from pleasing to Beau Maturin, for it always offended that man as
much to see pride humbled and the mighty fallen as to watch the lowly
being exalted and the humble getting above themselves. Mr. Maturin was
not a religious man; but he was decidedly one who had what he called
“let’s face it, a code of ethics.”

“Why, I’m serious enough,” said he at last. “I take your gift----”

“Ha!” snapped the old gentleman.

“In the spirit in which you give it, Sir Guy.”

“And what the devil can you know of that, sir?”

“Nothing, nothing!” said Mr. Maturin peaceably, and without more ado old
Sir Guy led the way into a wide, dim room lined with many books in rare
bindings, for here was a small part of the famous de Gramercy library.
From the shadows a lady emerged. Very beautiful this lady must have been
in her youth, but she was no longer young and now a sad, gentle dignity
was the flower of her personality, half hiding, while it half revealed,
the lovely dead graces of her youth. It was plain to see, however, that
she was not in her best looks this night, for her eyes were as though
strained with some pitiless anxiety; and, distantly acknowledging Mr.
Maturin’s bow, she retired again into the shadows of the room, for it is
only in the East that vanity dies with youth.

Said old Sir Guy: “I believe you have met my daughter-in-law. She and my
granddaughter are staying with me for a few days.”

From her shadows Mrs. de Gramercy spoke swiftly, almost breathlessly, as
though she would at all costs and quickly be done with something she
must say:

“Mr. Maturin, I have tried my best to dissuade Sir Guy from taking this
step. I feel there _must_ be a way of effecting our--our wish other than
one which must offend you so deeply----”

The voice of the old gentleman fell like a bar of iron across the poor
lady’s swift light speech. “Eleanour, you will kindly leave this to me,
as you promised. And Mr. Maturin is, I fancy, past taking offence at the
truth.”

“That depends on the truth,” said Mr. Maturin in a reasonable way. “So
far, I am quite mystified.”

“You lie, Mr. Maturin. You are not mystified.”

“Very well, sir. I lie. I am not mystified.”

Said Mrs. de Gramercy in distress: “I think, then, I will leave you,
since I can do nothing----”

“You will kindly stay, Eleanour. Surely you see that the occasion needs
the authority of your presence!”

“Yes, please stay, Mrs. de Gramercy,” Mr. Maturin begged. “For if I am
called a liar by my host while you are present, Heaven only knows what I
may not be called when you are gone. Please stay. And, if I may, I would
like to congratulate you on a very beautiful and talented daughter.”

Quivering with passion, the gigantic old man raised an arm. Mr. Maturin
did not move. He was lazy, and disliked moving.

“Mr. Maturin,” the old man whispered just audibly, “you are an
unbelievable cad! You are the--sir, you are the ace of cads!”

“Father, _please_!” the lady begged from the shadows, but in return Mr.
Maturin begged her not to be distressed, protesting that the insult was
not so pointed as it first appeared, whereas it would certainly be
provoking to be called the deuce of cads, which in the degree of
degradations must take a place near that of being run over by a Ford
car. “But please continue, Sir Guy. Your last words were that I am the
ace of cads. I would beg you not be constrained by any such small
consideration as my presence in your house.”

“Sit down, sit down,” said a _hidalgo_ to a hound, but it was Sir Guy
himself who sat down, while the other remained standing before the
fireplace. Mr. Maturin, for all his forty odd years of self-indulgence,
had still a very good figure, and he liked to be seen at his best. He
has, in point of fact, the best figure of any man in this book, and
should therefore be treated with some respect. Mrs. de Gramercy, a
shadow of distress, sat in a deep chair away in the dimness of the
room. And the thousands of books around the oak walls lent a fictitious
air of dignity to an occasion which must have embarrassed any but a
_grand seigneur_ and an ace of cads. Sir Guy, with a perceptible effort
at calm, addressed Mr. Maturin:

“As you may have gathered, sir, I want you to do me a service----”

“Only a great brain like mine could have divined it, sir.”

“Mr. Maturin, would you not provoke my father-in-law!” spoke the lady
sharply, and was as sharply told:

“This is men’s business, Eleanour. Now, sir! My son, this lady’s
husband, was killed in the war, as you may know. The best men _were_
killed, Mr. Maturin. Fate is not very generous to fine men in time of
war. You, I believe, were years ago cashiered from the Brigade for
drunkenness in a restaurant?”

“I assure you, sir, that the provocation was more than I could bear,”
Mr. Maturin explained with a gravity becoming in one faced by such a
misdeed. “I am, you must know, very musical. Perhaps you would hardly
think it, but I undoubtedly have a musical _flair_. And in that wretched
restaurant the orchestra would insist on playing Mendelssohn’s _Spring
Song_! Now I put it to you, Sir Guy--and to you, Mrs. de Gramercy, if I
may--could a man bear Mendelssohn’s _Spring Song_ over dinner? Yet I
bore myself with a fortitude which some of my lighter friends have since
been kind enough to think remarkable. I begged the conductor to cease,
once, twice, and thrice; and then, you know, I wasted a bottle of wine
over his head. I was hasty, let’s face it. But the provocation!”

Dimly spoke Mrs. de Gramercy from the shadows:

“Father, I believe Mr. Maturin has a D.S.O. with a bar.”

“Mr. Maturin,” the old gentleman said, “I apologise if I have seemed to
reflect at all on your courage. Such men as you are, I believe,
frequently very courageous----”

“Only when drunk, Sir Guy. In which such men as I are very much the same
as other men. Were you, may I ask, ever in a trench before an attack?”

“My fighting days were over before Omdurman, sir----”

“Oh, dear, dashing Omdurman! Illustrations by R. Caton Woodville! You
will agree with me that one didn’t need the stimulus of alcohol to turn
machine-guns on to a lot of septic-looking niggers without even a
water-pistol between them, even though they were devils with assegais,
darts, catapults or boomerangs. But the Germans needed fighting. I
remember----”

“That will do, Mr. Maturin. Your modesty takes as singular a form as
your manners. My son, I was saying, was killed in the war, and his son
and daughter were left to the charge of their mother. My grandchildren,
Mr. Maturin--heirs to an ancient name and a fortune which must, by
decent people, be taken as a responsibility rather than as a means for
self-indulgence. I have never agreed with that principle of privilege
which demands respect for ancient lineage and great fortune: such
things alone are merely baubles; and without the dignity of some office
and the ardour of some responsibility they can be of no value, but
rather of grave detriment, to serious minds.”

“Oh, quite,” said Mr. Maturin.

“I wished my grandchildren to be brought up to a lofty conception of the
duties of their station. My son had, quite rightly, a great regard for
the strength and good-sense of his wife, and left her as their sole
guardian. I, who have a no less regard for my daughter-in-law, was
content with the situation; and, with my mind at rest, continued to lead
the very retired life to which my years entitle me, even had I been able
to endure the manners of a generation of which, Mr. Maturin, you are
such a polished example. Thus, it was only lately that I heard of my
grandson’s folly. My grandson, Mr. Maturin! Or must I call upon you to
strain your imagination before you can realise that there are still some
men in this world to whom the honour of their name is dear!

“I was as displeased as I was surprised when I heard that my
daughter-in-law had lately met you at a ball at Lady Carnal’s. The
Carnals of my day were more discreet in their introductions. In my day,
sir, such fine gentlemen as you were not so easily enabled to corrupt
youth by your companionship. Such men as you, sir, used not to be
received in decent houses. Nor had good people yet become inured to the
habit of going to balls in the houses of _parvenu_ Americans and
grotesquely rich Jews, to mix with bankrupts, card-sharpers, notorious
adulterers and Socialist politicians. In some such house you must have
met my grandson; and, Mr. Maturin, I must grant you the quality of
attraction, little though I myself may be privileged to feel it, for
with your good looks and casual airs you seem to taint every child you
meet. You corrupted my grandson, Mr. Maturin! You flattered him by
treating him as a grown man, you taught him to gamble, to dissipate,
and, worst of all, to think uncleanly. Both my grandson and my
granddaughter, as you were aware, have fortunes of their own from their
mother’s father--and by God, sir, you played the devil with that
wretched boy’s money, didn’t you!”

“Why,” Mr. Maturin smiled, “the boy _enjoyed_ money for the first time
in his life! Until he met me, Sir Guy, he had only worried about what he
was going to do with it.”

“And did he, Mr. Maturin, _enjoy_ the money he lost to you at cards? It
is not for nothing, I have gathered, that you are spoken of as the best
_picquet_ player in London. That wretched boy would, I am sure, give you
a certificate----”

“I should be even better pleased, Sir Guy, with a cheque for what he
owes me.”

“You shall have it. Eleanour, my cheque-book! A flower in hell, Mr.
Maturin, would not be more lonely than a debt of honour on your person.”

“Quite,” said Mr. Maturin, thoughtfully folding the cheque. “Thank you
very much.”

“I have dealt with the boy,” old Sir Guy went on in a low voice, “as you
are no doubt aware; and he is now expiating his folly and, I hope,
regaining his health and self-respect, with some hard work on my
Canadian property. At our last meeting he defended you to me. He
remained, you understand, a gentleman even after his connection with
you, and he couldn’t but speak up for one who had been his friend.”

“He was a good boy,” said Mr. Maturin softly. “I liked that boy.”

Sir Guy rose to his full lean height. The two men faced one another.
“Mr. Maturin,” the old gentleman said, “you have corrupted my grandson.
You have plundered the best years of his life. Have you anything to
say?”

Mr. Maturin said: “If you don’t mind, sir, I will reserve my defence.
Isn’t there still worse to come?”

Sir Guy stared, as though he was seeing him for the first time, at the
elegant figure who stood with his back to the fire, warming his hands.
The savage old man was, so far as it was possible for him to be,
nonplussed. Always a great reader of those memoirs and _belles-lettres_
that tell intimately of the lives of gentlemen of more careless and
debonair times, the anatomy of _galanterie_, scoundrelism and coxcombry,
as exemplified in the Restoration gallants and the eighteenth-century
fops, had interested old Sir Guy’s leisure; but never had he thought he
would be faced by one so completely unashamed, so bad, by one who could
wear the evil _dandysme_ of his soul as nonchalantly as a monocle. Sir
Guy again sat himself at his long, burdened writing-table and played
thoughtfully with a paper-knife. For the first time in his life he was
faced with the humiliation of not knowing what to do: for here before
him was a man, an incredible man, to whom such ancient words as honour,
loyalty, betrayal, were without meaning. Beau Maturin would take such
words, distort them with a slanting smile, put false feet to them, and
send them tripping away on the wings of a merry laugh. Merry, for what
could shame such a man from his gaiety? And Sir Guy realised now that he
had made a mistake in sending Capel Maturin the bank-note. He had sent
it to arouse the man’s curiosity, thus to ensure his presence at this
interview, from which the old gentleman still, though grimly, expected
the best issue; but, more particularly, he had sent that bank-note as an
earnest of what he might be prepared to do for Mr. Maturin if he would
help the de Gramercys to bring about that blessed issue. But now Sir Guy
realised his false step. A thousand pounds more or less did not matter
very much to him; but did they matter so very much, he could now
reflect, to that pretty, penniless gentleman? Money, to be sure, could
not be of the first importance to so complete a cad as Capel Maturin: he
had spent his own considerable fortune quickly enough, and, they said,
generously enough: it must, thought Sir Guy, be the little cads to whom
money really appealed.

The old gentleman’s voice, when he continued, was more subdued, less
proud. And has it not been already remarked that Mr. Maturin did not
like to see the descent from pride to humility? which, had he had any
part of virtue, he should have taken for a sign of grace, even as it is
written in the Scriptures. But maybe he did not notice the slight
tremor that played in that proud old voice before it could be subdued,
for at the moment he was intent on examining his patent-leather shoes,
which were exquisite examples of Lobb’s later manner.

Sir Guy was saying: “My grandson, you corrupted. My granddaughter, you
have sed----”

“Dear!” cried Mrs. de Gramercy.

Mr. Maturin was quite silent, examining his shoes.

“Perhaps that was too harsh a word,” the old gentleman conceded--he
conceded!

“It was,” said Beau Maturin softly. “Much.”

Now Sir Guy’s voice was so low as to be barely audible, while his eyes
were as though enchanted by the monogram on his paper-knife.

“I was carried beyond my intention, Mr. Maturin. I apologise, to you and
to the child’s mother. But I have had a day that I would not wish for my
bitterest enemy. I am very old, Mr. Maturin. Peace, comfort, heart’s
ease, have lately assumed an importance which only a few years ago I
would have disdained to allow them. Was it essential to you, Capel
Maturin, to pilfer my granddaughter from me?”

“But why do you say ‘pilfer,’ sir? Am I not allowed to be like any other
man, to make love?”

“Men,” said old Sir Guy, “did not, I thought, make love to young girls.
Bankrupts, I am sure, should not. And a man who has been a corespondent
in two notorious divorce cases--he _cannot_! Mr. Maturin, it is not that
I wish to insult you wantonly, but----”

“I quite understand, Sir Guy. Let us, after all, face the facts.”

“Yes. My granddaughter has just come of age--and, incidentally, into her
fortune. You, I believe, are forty or so----”

“Ah, those confounded facts! Forty-seven.”

“I must say they become you very lightly. But, even so, there is a grave
disparity of age between you and the child; and, Mr. Maturin, there is
an even graver disparity of everything else. By Heaven, man, how could
you, how could any man like you, have so blinded yourself to all the
decencies of life as to put yourself in the way of a girl like my
granddaughter!”

“I’m positively damned if I know!” murmured Mr. Maturin. “But these
things happen. They just happen, Sir Guy.”

Sir Guy at last looked up from the shine of the paper-knife; and
pressing down with his knuckles on the writing-table as though to steady
himself, said: “Mr. Maturin, to-day I have had the greatest shock of my
life. My granddaughter told me she was going to marry you.”

“A brave girl!” said Mr. Maturin softly.

The old gentleman’s voice trembled. “Man, you cannot be serious!”

“I can be in love!” said Mr. Maturin coldly.

“Love!” cried the lady in the shadows.

“More,” said Mr. Maturin, “I can love. I did not know that until quite
lately. I did not know that when I was young. I get quite rhetorical
when I think of it. I did not know, Sir Guy, of this beautiful thing
lying in wait for me, Capel Maturin--to love, without fear, without
shame, even without hope, without desire----”

“Without desire!” cried Mrs. de Gramercy. “Mr. Maturin, aren’t you
exalting yourself?”

Mr. Maturin suddenly looked old and very tired. He said: “I did not
speak the exact truth a moment ago. I knew when I was young that I could
love. I suspected it. I have awaited the moment for many years. Of
course, I have had to kill time meanwhile. I must inform you, Sir Guy,
that when I was born a sunflower looked over a wall in Elm Park Gardens.
All the gardeners in the neighbourhood were astounded. No sunflower has
ever before looked over a wall in Elm Park Gardens. It could only have
meant that I would love--one day. And the day has come, I love.”

Sir Guy said: “You blaspheming _poseur_!”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Maturin, “for speaking the truth about
myself. People are not used to hearing others speak the truth about
themselves. It shall not occur again.”

The voice of Mrs. de Gramercy rose bitterly from the shadows: “Love!
What, dear Heaven, do you mean by ‘love,’ Mr. Maturin?”

“Love,” said Mr. Maturin, “is one of the few diseases of the liver which
cannot be cured by temperance or an apple a day. That is merely a
suggestion.”

“A vile one!” said old Sir Guy.

“Sorry,” sighed Mr. Maturin.

“Mr. Maturin,” cried Mrs. de Gramercy, “how dare you, you of all men,
talk so glibly of love! For you were right just now, when you spoke in
jest. For men like you love is no more than a fine word for a physical
distemper.”

“Mental,” said Mr. Maturin. “Quite mental, I assure you.”

“It’s a passing mood, it doesn’t last! Oh, the lives that have been
crucified in the name of love! And now you would crucify my little
Joan’s!”

Sir Guy said with savage calm: “Come, come, Eleanour, not so dramatic!
You will make the man shy. Mr. Maturin,” Sir Guy went on with a
perceptible effort, “I cannot stop the girl from marrying, as you know.
She came of age to-day, and from to-day has her own fortune. But, man,
is there no way in which we can appeal to your--your generosity! I pay
you the compliment of thinking that you are not intending to marry Joan
primarily for her money. Am I right?”

“I don’t know. You see,” Mr. Maturin rose to explain seriously, “these
things get awfully entangled. To-night, as you saw, the cards ran very
badly against me. And as I came away from the place I was so annoyed
with myself that I emptied my pockets of the last penny I had. I was
intending to begin life entirely afresh from to-morrow. With your
daughter, madam, if I may say so. For I am like any other Englishman,
Sir Guy, very sentimental about money when I haven’t any and not in the
least romantic about it when I have. And so I thought I wouldn’t bring
the taint of what money I had to my life with Joan. You must allow me,
Sir Guy, and you, Mrs. de Gramercy, to respect and love Joan.”

“And I almost believe you do!” said Sir Guy savagely. “After your
fashion. But fashions change, Mr. Maturin.”

“And so do the moon, the stars, the clouds and dancing; yet, let’s face
it, they are eternal and everlasting. Sir Guy, I would wish to marry
your granddaughter if she were penniless. Why should I not marry her
because she is not penniless? What is this spurious humbug about honour
that covers the middle and upper classes of England like verdigris: that
a poor man may not with honour marry a rich woman, that a poor girl can
only “sell” herself to a rich man? Can a man or woman not be loved,
then, because he or she is rich? Is that what our religion means when it
says that a rich man shall not enter the kingdom of heaven? Was it for
that, then, that the late Charles Garvice devoted his life?”

“A moment!” Sir Guy begged wearily. “I am to understand from this
rigmarole that you hold Joan to her promise?”

“Mr. Maturin, please!” sighed, as though involuntarily, the voice from
the shadows.

Mr. Maturin lit another cigarette and inhaled it. “Wasn’t Joan,” he
asked, “at all swayed by your arguments against me? They must have been
cogent enough, I fancy.”

“Like the boy,” Sir Guy said with sudden gentleness, “she defended you.
You have some magic for youth, it seems. They admit your faults, but do
not hold them against your character. But I have observed that it takes
grown-up people to condemn caddishness. Children will overlook it.”

“True,” said Mr. Maturin. “You see, Sir Guy, children like people for
what they are, not for what they do.” He turned to the dim lady. “I
fancy,” he said, “that you have both got hold of the wrong end of the
stick. I mean, don’t you see, that it’s not really much use persuading
me to give Joan up. I mean, it wouldn’t be much use if I did.”

“How, sir!”

“Mr. Maturin, I don’t quite understand.”

“Well, let’s face it, we must persuade her to give me up. Otherwise,”
said Mr. Maturin with an air of conviction, “if I were to break my
promise to her she would guess that it was at your persuasion--you might
indeed insinuate that you had paid me off, but she wouldn’t believe
it--and you would be faced for the rest of your days by an accusing
girl. And that would be beastly for you.”

There was a heavy silence: which fled sharply before a rattle when old
Sir Guy, with a gesture of distaste, flung his paper-knife on to the
table.

“Do I understand you to be caring for my old age, Mr. Maturin?”

“Neither your youth nor your old age are of any interest for me, sir. I
am merely suggesting that if I were to give up Joan without her consent
she would make a martyr of herself. Her very name will encourage the
idea. Mrs. de Gramercy, I am sure you understand me.”

“But,” the lady cried gladly, “does this mean that you _will_ give Joan
up? Father, I knew he would. Oh, I knew!”

Mr. Maturin said quickly: “You have misunderstood me. I will not give
Joan up.”

“Bah!” snapped Sir Guy.

“But,” said Mr. Maturin.

“Bah!” snapped Sir Guy.

“_But_,” said Mr. Maturin, “I will persuade Joan to give me up.”

“Oh, thank God, thank God!” breathed the mother.

“For,” said Mr. Maturin, “it is, as you say, a deplorable connection. I
see that. Besides, when the sunflower looked over the wall in Elm Park
Gardens nothing was said about my being loved, only that I should love.
And how much more fitting, Sir Guy, for a lady to disown a cad than for
a cad to disown a lady! Let us be reasonable.”

The taut old gentleman seemed almost to smile. “You are a dangerous
comedian, Mr. Maturin. And how will you effect this _finesse_?”

“Is Joan awake? Splendid! The practice of love grows easier every
moment. You ought to try it, Sir Guy. Do you mind if I now make a small
speech? It is about girls. Girls are by nature hero-worshippers. When
they are not they dress badly and write novels. There is, however, some
nonsense abroad to the effect that there is a ‘modern’ girl. How one
detests the word ‘modern!’ Disbelieve in the existence of the ‘modern’
girl, Sir Guy. Girlhood is an ancient situation, is exalted by ancient
joys, suffers ancient sorrows, reacts to ancient words. There is no
modern girl except on the tongues of certain silly people who find an
outlet for their own lewdness by ascribing it to other people.”

“And what is the point of all this, sir?”

“It is that no girl, Sir Guy, ancient or modern or what-not, will cease
to love a man because of any of the ordinary accusations you can bring
against him. There is only one which will destroy her love. You may call
her man a cad, and she will smile, and if you repeat it she will get
bored. He may be a burglar, but she won’t cease to love him, for is not
the world a den of thieves? A poisoner, and she may still love him, for
are there not many whom it would be good to poison? A coward, and she
may not despise him, for girls are not necessarily fools and brave men
can make uncommonly dull lovers. A card-sharper, and she may excuse him,
for does not God Himself play with loaded dice? But verily, I say unto
you, prove that man guilty of a deep disloyalty and at that moment her
love will be as distant as your youth, Sir Guy, and as dead as mine; for
disloyalty is the only bedfellow love will certainly reject. Will you
call your daughter in, Mrs. de Gramercy, and I will tell her a story?
Perhaps it will interest you, too.”

“Call her, Eleanour,” said old Sir Guy. “I fancy Mr. Maturin will have
no difficulty in persuading her of his ineligibility on those grounds.”

“True,” said Mr. Maturin. “True.”


III

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


I

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!”


V

There is an eminent school of thought which insists that there is no
such thing in this world as chance. Therefore we may take it that ever
since the beginning of creation there was appointed one small wind to
lurk nearby the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square for the purpose of
blowing an empty paper-bag under a horse’s nose.

The horse belonged to a van, and it was probably bored with the van. It
gave a kick at the paper-bag. It missed the paper-bag. “Woa!” cried the
driver of the van. That got on the horse’s nerves, and it bolted.

Two men cried: “Ho! Woa! Oi!” An old man selling newspapers by the steps
of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields said. “No ’orse can’t bolt far with an
’eavy van.” The driver of the van cried: “----!” An orange-and-banana
merchant leapt for his life from the horse’s hooves, and his oranges and
bananas fell as manna upon Trafalgar Square, and many little children
ran together and gave praise. A large handsome limousine was coming at a
good pace up the slope from the Strand. It had to swerve to avoid
running over the orange-and-banana merchant. As it swerved it crashed
into the side of an ancient taxicab that was bustling round the corner.
The ancient taxicab overturned. There was a scream of smashing glass,
and the two wheels of the taxicab revolved plaintively in the air.

“Bewty!” said the old man selling newspapers, for he was a connoisseur
of accidents. The limousine had stopped. The horse was walking on quite
calmly now. A little boy picked up the paper-bag, blew into it, and made
a noise. A lot of people came to look at the taxicab.

“Stand back, there! Stand back!” cried a young policeman.

The driver of the taxicab crawled from underneath the wreck. There was
blood on his face, and he was so ugly that he looked like several sorts
of animals at once. He stared at the chauffeur of the limousine.

“Wotcherdothatfor?” he asked bitterly.

“Come on now, lend a hand!” said the young policeman sternly.

A tall, fair, serious-looking young man had alighted quickly from the
limousine, and with him a young lady in a chinchilla coat.

“My, there’s a girl underneath!” she sobbed in a faint American accent.

“There was!” said the taxi-driver bitterly.

“Good God, she’s pinned there!” cried the tall, fair young man.

“George, and on our honeymoon!” sobbed the young lady in the chinchilla
coat.

“Come on now, give us room!” said the policeman sharply. “Now then, sir,
just help me lift this wheel off the young lady.”

It was the lean young man who was helping the policeman. He had followed
Miss Wych. As the tall fair young man and his young wife in the
chinchilla coat pressed forward through the crowd, the lean young man
looked up at him, and his face was very stern. The tall fair young man
looked back with bewildered, wretched eyes.

“Don’t say she’s dead!” he whispered.

“Now, sir,” said the young policeman, “I’ll keep this up while you bring
her through sharp as you like. Now!”

The lithe young body was broken and still. The crowd pressed round.

“She’s dead orl right!” said the orange-and-banana merchant.

The last flames of sunset over Admiralty Arch lit the peering faces, and
they looked as impersonal as gargoyles. Some took off their hats.

“Oh, she’s dead!” sobbed the young lady in the chinchilla coat.

“Such a pretty young lady!” said the taxi-driver bitterly, wiping the
blood from his face.

The lean young man and the young policeman knelt beside the still,
broken body and tried to find life where no life was. The
orange-and-banana merchant took off his hat. The policeman’s helmet fell
to the ground and rolled a little way down towards the Strand. The tall
fair young man held his silk hat in his hand. The lean young man looked
up at him through a blinding mist of tears and stammered: “Aren’t you
sorry, aren’t you sorry?”

“George,” sobbed the young lady in the chinchilla coat, “why is he
looking at you like that?”

“Blessed if I know!” stammered the tall fair young man.

“By gum, look at the cop!” said the orange-and-banana merchant.

The lean young man darted a look at the policeman kneeling beside him,
and he saw that the policeman wept, and he saw that the tip of the
policeman’s nose was quivering.

“She died,” stammered the lean young man, “while keeping her promise to
you. But you had failed her.”

“I’ve failed at everything in every country,” said the young policeman.
“And now I’ll probably get the sack from this job too for crying on my
beat.”

“’Ere, give ’im back ’is ’elmet,” said the taxi-driver bitterly. “A cop
without a ’elmet don’t look natchral.”

“And who’s goin’ to give me back my oranges and bananas?” said the
orange-and-banana merchant. “Isn’t there no justice in this world,
that’s wot I want to know?”




IV: THE BATTLE OF BERKELEY SQUARE


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.


THE ADMIRAL’S TALE

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.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Townshend had listened gravely. A grey man, of the type
conscientiously sad, Mr. Townshend found no aspect of this our life on
earth which was not a proper occasion for the exercise of gravity,
command of temper and forbearance. He therefore forbore to make any
comment on his friend’s tale, but merely remarked:

“You ought not to stay in London, Charles. An unhealthy place, at best.
Why not come down to Magralt with me to-morrow? Guy de Travest is
coming. There’s some fishing. Not much, and that little is poor, but you
can always smoke in peace.”

Sir Charles laughed. “You talk like Manana! But, anyhow, I am due at
Portsmouth the day after to-morrow. No, no, I’ll see my time out in
London. I’ve been in most corners of the world, Hilary, and never found
romance but in London.”

“Hm!” said Mr. Townshend thoughtfully. “You have an odd idea of romance,
Charles. Romance! And I don’t, as a general rule, believe in
apparitions. Hm! Have you rung up H---- to tell him of the reappearance
of this remarkably unpleasant youth?”

“And he laughed me to scorn! Was ready, in fact, to lay a pony against
Raphael’s being within a thousand miles of London or England.”

“You never know,” said Mr. Townshend thoughtfully.

“Never know what, Hilary?”

“Where you are,” said Mr. Townshend thoughtfully. “With Jews.”

It was on the night following this conversation that the Admiral, on
emerging from the Celibates Club, made an astonishing suggestion to Hunt
the commissionaire.

“Hunt,” says Sir Charles, “do you mind walking with me down to the
Piccadilly corner? I will know then that I am actually moving and not
just standing here and thinking I’m moving. You see my point, Hunt?”

“Certainly, Sir Charles. I quite understand.”

“I’m glad someone does!” sighed our gentleman.

The commissionaire with the lined face, whose own antipathy to wine in
his youth had not been insuperable, could sympathise with the Admiral’s
probable condition, while admiring the correct address with which, as
became a gentleman of the sea, he bore his suffering.

“See any Jews about, Hunt?” the Admiral asked as they came to the
Piccadilly corner.

“Not definitely, Sir Charles. But a couple of Rolls-Royces have just
passed. Good-night, Sir Charles.”

“Good-night, Hunt.”

Those were the last words the ancient commissionaire was ever to hear
from his good friend the Admiral. For as Sir Charles made to cross
Piccadilly from Albemarle Street to St. James’s Street he heard that
“whizz” behind him. He had been expecting it, but it startled him. He
half-turned and jumped sideways, colliding with the bonnet of a
fast-moving car.

There was a terrific din about him as he raised himself to his hands and
knees. It deafened him, the din of engines and voices. Many voices
seemed to be arguing. Then, as he rose to his feet, the din happily
receded. There was silence, but the silence of a pleasant voice. He
walked on to St. James’s Street, glad things had been no worse. Then he
saw the face of Julian Raphael. It was just in front of him, smiling. He
was holding out his hand to Sir Charles, smiling. He was beautiful.
Behind his shoulder was Manana. She was laughing at Sir Charles’s
bewilderment. Then, as he stared at them, they pointed over his
shoulder. They were still laughing. Behind him, in the middle of
Piccadilly, there was a great crowd around a large motor-car and a
prostrate figure that looked oddly like a dingy travesty of himself.
That is how it was, but still he did not understand. Julian Raphael and
Manana laughed at him and each took him by an arm and walked with him
down the slope of St. James’s Street. There was a valley at the foot of
St. James’s Street, and over the valley a golden cloud as large as a
continent. Many people were walking about, looking calm and clean and
happy. Manana was still laughing happily.

“Julian died last night in Paris,” she told Sir Charles. “He was just
coming over to London to kill you. Isn’t it idiotic? I don’t say he
loves you now, but he’s willing to consider an intelligent friendship.
Aren’t you, Julian? Death isn’t at all what the Salvation Army thinks,
Charles. You’ll be surprised. You’re just yourself, that’s all. Funny
you have to die before you’re allowed to be yourself. Oh, look! Look,
Charles! Isn’t it beautiful! Charles, let’s walk and walk and walk!”

“Just look at those asses behind!” cried Julian Raphael, shouting with
laughter. But now the people at the head of St. James’s Street were very
faint, the clear golden air of the sun triumphant was falling between
Sir Charles’s eyes and the people grouped round the prostrate figure
that looked oddly like a dingy travesty of himself.

“If they only knew,” said Manana gravely, “that living is worth while
just because one has to die! Come on, Charles, let’s walk!”

“Here, and me!” cried Julian Raphael.

“Young man,” said the Admiral severely, “you just stay where you are. I
have been waiting a long time for this walk with Manana.”

“I’ll follow you. Where are you going to walk to?”

“You can’t follow us, Julian,” laughed Manana. “They won’t let you, yet.
Naturally, dear, considering how awful you’ve been. You can have a drink
while we’re gone.”

“A drink?” said Sir Charles. “But, good Lord, he can’t have a drink
here, can he?”

“But why not?” Manana laughed. “There’s only one hell, dear, and that’s
on earth. Come on, come on! We’ll walk towards that golden cloud and
back!”




VI. THE THREE-CORNERED MOON


I

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._’”

[Illustration:

_A Paramount Picture._      _The Ace of Cads._

“THE ACE OF CADS” TRIES TO FORGET HIS LOST ELEANOR AT THE GAMING
TABLE]

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._’”

He sighed: “How I loved you, Leonora! As I had never loved anyone
before, as I will never love anyone again!”

“How I loved you, Maximilian! But now!” And she said: “A legal
separation is a silly quibble. Besides, you might want to marry again.
Or I might.”

“Might, Leonora? But you will, must, can’t help but! With your beauty,
youth, wealth.”

“Thank you. I have often noticed that one’s friends like one best as one
is leaving them. Then, Maximilian, shall I divorce you?”

“If you please, dear. My lawyers are Messrs. Onward & Christian. They
will arrange the matter with yours in the usual way.”

“Remember, dear, that your King will not receive a divorced Duke at
court.”

“The King can do no wrong,” yawned the Duke. “It must be rather hard on
him sometimes, but the law is the law.”

His eyes were closed against her beauty, else he had seen the sudden
smile that touched her beauty, touched it and was going, going, lurked a
while in the depths of her eyes like a very small bird in the ferns of
love-in-the-mist, and lo! was gone. She said softly: “You are such a
baby, Max!”

Seamen passed by, bearing a great leather Innovation trunk to the side.
A black cloud rose up from Africa and hid the sun. A shadow walked
across the pretty town of Cannes and drove the youth from painted faces.

“And because,” said the young Duchess wistfully, “you are such a baby, I
don’t put it beyond you to make love to my sister if you should meet
her. She has always been jealous of me, so she would enjoy nothing so
much as your making love to her. Promise not to, Max, please, oh,
please! She has just come over to Paris, so I read this morning in _The
New York Herald_. Max, promise not to make a fool of me to my own
sister!”

“She’s pretty?”

“Pretty? Are words so scarce, sir, that you must use a copper coin? And
she my twin!”

“Ah me! Oh dear!”

Her voice scarce disturbed the silence of the yacht: “Good-bye, Duke
Maximilian. Our lives go different ways. I do wish you success,
happiness, health. Good-bye.”

As he lay, with closed eyes, his fingers found her hand and raised it to
his lips.

“Good-bye,” said he. Such was his farewell.

She looked back from the side. He lay silent. She said:

“Courtesy, Maximilian?”

A sea-bird mocked the silence. The cloud athwart the sun was now as
large as half the world. The Duchess of Mall said:

“Chivalry, Maximilian?”

The sea-bird screamed and flew away, and Leonora of Mall cried: “I will
forgive you all things but your farewell, Maximilian. The very birds are
appalled to see chivalry so low in a man that he will take his lady’s
_adieu_ lying down.”

Her maid, hatted and veiled for travelling, whispered to her ear:

“Your Grace, he is asleep.”


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

Students of sociology have of recent years made great strides in their
alleviation of the conditions prevailing among the poor; but is it not a
fact that, as a notorious daily paper lately asked, the study of those
conditions appears to attract the interest of only the lighter sort of
society people and the pens of only the most ambitious novelists? And
that the benefits of this study, at least to novelists, are not mean,
was proved beyond all doubt only the other day, when perhaps the
wealthiest of contemporary writers increased his fortune by writing a
tale about a miser in a slum. No one, on the other hand, will deny that
the achievements of sociologists among the poor are as nothing compared
with those of students of hospitality who, poor and unrewarded though
they remain, have of late years done yeoman work in alleviating the
conditions prevailing among the rich. It is to the generous spadework of
men such as these that American hostesses in Europe owe the betterment
of their lot; and it is by the support of their merciful hands that
ladies burdened with great wealth are prevented from sinking down in
the rarefied atmosphere to which they have been called.

Mere students of hospitality had not, however, been strong enough to
support the ailing burden of Mrs. Omroy Pont when that lady had first
come over from America at the call of certain voices that had advised
her that her mission lay in European society. It had needed graduates of
that brotherhood, lean with endeavour in ball-rooms and browned with the
suns of the Riviera, to prevent that ample lady from succumbing to the
exhaustion of carrying her wealth through the halls of her houses in
London and Paris among guests who had failed to catch her name on being
introduced. But the Good Samaritans had worked unceasingly on her
behalf, and since Mrs. Omroy Pont had both great wealth and infinite
insensibility she was soon in a position to give a ball at which quite
half the guests knew her by sight.

The morning after the Duke’s arrival in Paris there was this notice in
the Continental _Daily Mail_: “The Duke of Mall has arrived at his
residence in the Avenue du Bois, and will spend the spring in Paris.”
And presently the good Mrs. Omroy Pont was on the telephone, first here,
then there and finally to the Duke himself, saying: “My dear Duke, how
do you do, how do you do? I am so glad you are in Paris just now, Paris
is so attractive in the spring. You mustn’t fail to see the tulips in
the Tuileries, they are as beautiful as _débutantes_. My dear Duke, I am
giving a party to-morrow night, you must come, you really must come, now
don’t say you won’t because I can’t bear that, and really I must say,
my dear Duke, that your unfortunate inability to accept any of my
invitations so far has seemed almost marked, whereas----”

“I am afraid,” began the Duke, who had not the faintest intention of
going anywhere near one of Mrs. Omroy Pont’s parties, for she bored him
and life is short.

“But you mustn’t be afraid!” cried Mrs. Omroy Pont. “Now, my dear Duke,
I want you particularly to come to this party because there is someone
who wants to meet you, someone very lovely, positively I am not pulling
your leg----”

“Really this is too much!” the Duke muttered, coldly saying out aloud:
“Dear Mrs. Omroy Pont, you do me great honour but I am afraid that an
extremely previous and decidedly prior engagement----”

“It is Miss Ava Lamb who wants to meet you, my dear Duke. She has just
come over to Paris. Dinner is at nine. Thank you, thank you. It will be
such fun. You will not have to talk unless you want to and you may go to
sleep just when you like as I have engaged Mr. Cherry-Marvel to conduct
the conversation over dinner. At nine then, my dear Duke.”


V

The Duke, as he fairly acknowledged to himself the morning after Mrs.
Omroy Pont’s party, had been diverted beyond all expectation by his
meeting with Miss Lamb. While she, candour compelled him to admit,
hadn’t seemed any less sensible to the pleasant quality of their
companionship. A beautiful girl, a sensible girl, with a lively interest
in the passing moment and a delicious capacity for deriving pleasure
from the twists in conversation which came so naturally to the Duke but
were become, it has to be confessed, a shade familiar to his friends.
She hadn’t, he reflected over his morning coffee, said anything
throughout the evening that didn’t interest and entertain; and, since
she had come to Europe for the first time but the other day, had amused
him vastly with her impressions, which weren’t by any means all
favourable, since Miss Lamb confessed to a taste for simplicity; which
was very agreeable to the Duke, who was also wealthy.

All this made very pleasant thinking for the Duke over his morning
coffee; but had he consulted his memory more carefully, it might have
emerged that Miss Lamb had listened with pretty attention the while he
had talked, the matter of his talk seldom being so abstract in nature
that she couldn’t entirely grasp it by just looking at him.

What, of course, had instantly impressed him, as it impressed all who
knew the Duchess, was the amazing resemblance between the sisters; since
the fact that twins are very frequently as alike as two peas never does
seem to prepare people for the likeness between the twins they actually
meet. Now between Miss Lamb and the Duchess of Mall there wasn’t, you
dared swear, so much as a shadow of difference in grace of line and
symmetry of feature. But why, as Ava Lamb sensibly protested, why on
earth should there be or need there be or could there be, since Leonora
and she had been twins as punctually to the second as was possible?

A nearer view, however, discovered a deal of difference between the
sisters: in those small gestures of voice, habits of expression,
capacity for attention and the like, which, so the Duke had warmly said,
contribute far more than actual looks to mark the difference between one
woman and another. Nor were they less dissimilar in colouring, for
whereas both the Duchess and Miss Lamb had those small white faces and
immense blue eyes generally affected by American ladies for the conquest
of Europe, the Duchess’s hair was of a rich and various auburn shaded
here to the deep lights of Renaissance bronze and there to the glow of
Byzantine amber--the Duchess’s hair was, in fact, fair to fairish, while
Miss Lamb’s was as near black as is proper in anyone with blue eyes who
is without Irish blood.

In the course of the ball that inevitably followed Mrs. Omroy Font’s
dinner-party the Duke had had further opportunity of judging the
differences between his wife and her beautiful sister. And presently he
had thought it only fair to tell Miss Lamb that he and her sister had
decided, for each their sakes, to break their marriage; and he had
thought it only fair to himself to point his confession with a sigh, a
sigh which he explained, after a silence quite beautifully bridged by an
understanding look from her, as being forced from him by the fact that
there was no pleasing some women.

“You mustn’t for a moment think,” he’d added wretchedly, “that I am
trying to enlist your sympathy against your own sister, but----”

“Please!” Miss Lamb had protested quite unhappily to that. And here was
another and the sweetest difference of all between the sisters, for Miss
Lamb’s was the prettiest American accent imaginable, whereas the Duchess
had long since and all too completely achieved the cold and ironic
monotony of the mother-tongue.

To be with Ava Lamb, the Duke had gratefully reflected at that moment,
was to look on all the beauty of his wife in atmospheric conditions
undisturbed by his wife’s sarcastic habit of mind. Miss Lamb hadn’t a
touch of that irony and sophistication which is so often mistaken by
American ladies for European culture, she was perfectly that rarest of
all visitors to a bored continent, a fresh and simple American lady.

And “Please!” was all she had said about her sister! But to the young
Duke that one word had meant so much, forced as it had been so unhappily
from her lips, as if half to shield her pert sister against the
consequences of her folly, half to prevent him from seeing how deeply
she disapproved of that sister, and wholly and sweetly to stay his
tongue from exploring further into that misguided sister’s character--it
had meant so much that he had been content to wait on her understanding
even before she’d quietly added: “Oh, I understand----”

“But do you, do you?” he had cried emphatically, and she had let silence
present him anew with her deep sense of understanding. She had a
delicious talent for silence.

“My dear”--it had just slipped out of him like that, quite naturally,
quite wonderfully--“if only other women were like you! To understand, I
mean, just to understand!”

“And men?” Miss Lamb had dropped the two words with perceptible
unwillingness yet with just a touch of defiance, as who should say that
she too, on so rare an occasion, must for once say what was in her mind.

“Men?” the Duke had smiled. He couldn’t somehow think of this tall
gentle girl as a woman of the same age as his wife. She verily quite
charmed him. Once or twice, indeed, he couldn’t help but pity Leonora
Mall for the way she had let life so quickly polish her freshness into
that worldliness which he, for one, found so unsympathetic in women.

“Men, Miss Lamb? And what, if you’ll forgive me, do you know of men?”

“Enough surely, surely!”

“But that sounds quite threatening! Have you, then, hunted men in
jungles and caught them, caged them and watched them?”

“But, Duke, wouldn’t I, surely, have been married by now if I knew
nothing of men?”

“Oh, well caught! But, Miss Lamb, you haven’t married probably just
because, like all rare people, you’re--well, fastidious!”

“Oh, I don’t know! Maybe. Fastidious is a long word, Duke, and I seem to
have been waiting a long time, so maybe you’re right. But I don’t
know....”

“May I say, then, that you’ve been very wise? So much wiser than many
quite sensible men, so much wiser than many beautiful women. I mean, to
wait.”

“But aren’t we all,” she pleaded, “always waiting?”

“Some of us, unfortunately,” the Duke said grimly, “haven’t. I, Miss
Lamb, didn’t wait long enough.”

“But are you so sure, Duke?” She was pleading with him. They were alone.
The music and the dance passed behind them. He met her eyes humbly. “Are
you so sure you’ve waited long enough--I mean, my friend, for time to
bring the best out of someone you love?”

“But,” he’d cried wretchedly, “I don’t love her! That’s just, don’t you
see, the awful mistake and pity of it all! It’s not that Leonora and I
have quarrelled, but that we’ve each just found the other out.”

Miss Lamb sighed: “Oh! Oh, dear! And why, why? Way back home I’ve
wondered, you know, about many things. All this sadness in life! It
hurts to hear this. It hurts me--for you both. Poor, poor Leonora!”

The Duke said very earnestly: “Look here, don’t for a moment think that
I’m being cruel or anything like that. Believe me, your sister loves me
no more than she has driven me into loving her. Honest to God, Miss
Lamb.”

“You _say_ that! But I know her, Duke. My own sister! Go to her now, and
you will see. I am telling you to go to Leonora now and you will find
her crying for her lost love.”

“She left me cruelly, completely. I had done nothing. She left me, as a
matter of fact, while I was asleep. She took herself from my yacht as
though--look here, as though I was a plague! You call that caring, Miss
Lamb? I’d rather be hated in purgatory than cared for on earth after
that fashion. But let us talk of something else. Of you!”

“Oh, me! Just a tourist in Europe....”

“Of your heart, then, in America! You left it there? Now confess!”

“Dear no! I wouldn’t have my heart jumped by man or god, not I!”

“Bravo, bravo!”

“So my heart’s with me here and now, I thank you.”

“What, you feel it beating!”

“Perhaps. A little.”

“Oh!”

“At being in Paris, Duke.”

“I deserved the snub. Go on, please.”

“My friend,” she said softly, “the history of my life is the history of
my dreams. When I was a girl I had--oh, such dreams!”

“Girls, Miss Lamb dear, do! And when they grow up and marry they use the
sharpest pieces of those broken dreams to beat their husbands with. Oh,
I know! Every husband in the world is held responsible for the accidents
that befall the dreams of his wife’s girlhood! Oh, I know! I’ve been,
Miss Lamb dear, most utterly married.”

“I’m growing afraid of you, Duke. You’ve a cruel tongue!”

“Ava, I wouldn’t have you think I’m abusing your sister to you. But she
certainly was born to be a good man’s wife, and she’s certainly never
let me forget why she has failed to live up to the promise of her
birth.”

“But my dreams weren’t at all of knights, cavaliers, heroes! You bet no!
My dreams were just of Paris, this lovely merciless Paris!”

The music and the dance lay in the halls behind them. They were alone on
the formal terrace high above the marvellous sweep of the Champs
Élysées. Far down on the left the fountains of the Place de la Concorde
hung in the blue air like slim curved reeds of crystal. In the courtyard
below them a cypress-tree stood dark and still, and in its shadow the
_concierge’s_ wife talked in whispers to her lover. From the wide
pavement men looked up at the lighted windows with pale astonished
faces. Far up on the right, served by long processions of lights from
all the corners of the world, the Arc de Triomphe stood high against the
pale spring night. Most massive of monuments, built high to the god of
war upon the blood of a hundred battlefields, upon the bones of
uncountable men and horses, upon the anguish of ravished countries--the
miraculous art of men to worship their own misery has raised the
monument to the Corsican murderer to be as a dark proud jewel on the
brow of the most beautiful of cities. And Ava cried: “Look, the stars
are framed in the arch! Oh, Duke, look! And so the arch is like a gate
into the kingdom of the stars!”

The Duke whispered: “Don’t talk of the stars, Ava Lamb! The stars make
me think of all that is impossible.”

Up and down the broad avenue between the trees prowled the beasts of the
cosmopolitan night, these with two great yellow eyes, those with one
small red eye closely searching the ground. In the middle distance the
Seine shone like a black sword, and the horrible gilt creatures that
adorn the Bridge of Alexander III were uplifted by the mercy of the
night to the dignity of fallen archangels driving chariots to the
conquest of the Heavens. And a three-cornered moon lifted up an eyelash
from the _beau quartier_ about the Place Victor Hugo.

“There’s beauty, isn’t there,” sighed Miss Lamb, “in the very name of
Paris! even when it’s said in an American accent----”

“But, sister-in-law, I love your accent!”

“My, how you laugh at me! But ... Paris, Paris! Oh, isn’t that a lovely
name for a town built by men to have!”

And as, over his coffee the next morning, the young Duke reflected on
yesternight, he found himself enchanted by a gay memory. Oh, to be
enchanted again, to be thrilled, to be exalted--and all, honest to God,
by companionship! What fun there was in life when women didn’t grow so
confoundedly familiar with one’s habits. To be with Ava Lamb was to
renew all the joy he’d once had of loving his wife, to renew it and to
increase it, for wasn’t he now older and wiser, wasn’t he now wise
enough to appreciate enchantment? Why, oh, why, wasn’t his wife like
this girl, why, since they were both alike in so much, hadn’t Leonora a
little of Ava’s warm attention and quick understanding? And again the
Duke, in solace for self-pity, cast back to yesternight, how he had
warmed to the beautiful stranger’s love of Paris and had told her the
tale of how Paris had come to be called Paris, and the way of that was
this:

“In the old days, Ava, if I may call you Ava, when the world was small
and the animals enormous, they tell how a young conqueror came out of
the dark lands, and with fire and sword he came into the smiling land of
France. Of course it was not called France then, but you know what I
mean. Now that was a great and noble prince, and it was his custom to
rest himself after the tumult of battle with the worship of art and
beauty, which is not at all the fashion among princes nowadays, because
of course we have progressed so far since then. And so our prince, when
he had killed as many natives of the conquered country as the honour of
war demands, chained the rest with iron chains and put them to the
building of a mighty city by the river Seine. And when at last the city
was builded it was far and away the fairest city in the world, as all
who saw it instantly admitted under torture, for the young prince hated
argument.

“All went well until they came to the christening of the city, when it
transpired that no one had the faintest idea what name to call it. Here
was a to-do! Nameless they could not leave so great a city, yet what
name would embrace all these marvels of architecture, how could they
call so fair a city by any such commonplace kind of label as Rome,
Jerusalem or Wapping? Therefore the young prince fell weeping with
mortification for that his city must remain nameless just because it
was the fairest city in the world, when an ancient man rose up in the
assembly and said: ‘This here is not the fairest city in the world. But
the magic city of Is in the land of Brittany has got it so beat that
this looks like a slum beside it. I have spoken.’ Not that he ever had a
chance to again, even though it presently was proved that not the
fairest city in the world could be fairer than Is in Brittany, and so
the prince made the best of a bad job and called his city the Equal to
Is, which is Par-Is, which is Paris. Shall we dance?”

But she said: “No, no! They are playing an old-fashioned fox-trot.
Besides, one can always dance; there are so many men with whom one can
only dance, for what have they to talk about? Duke, I did love your
legend of the christening of Paris! Did you make it up?”

Now these words had chanced to cast a gloom about the young Duke, and he
had said: “But there is another legend, a more private legend. It tells,
sister, of the house of Mall, how the golden cock on the weather-vane of
St. James’s tower shall crow thrice at the birth of the greatest of the
Dukes of Mall. And, although I say it who shouldn’t, this very miracle
attended the birth of him who now stands beside you. And the legend
further tells that when the golden cock on St. James’s tower again crows
thrice the greatest of the Dukes of Mall shall die. Ava, to-night I find
myself in fear of my fate. That which is written shall come to pass, and
no man may defy the passage of his destiny--but to-night, Ava, I am
troubled with a foreboding that the second crowing of that beastly cock
is not far distant from this dear moment.”

Very sweetly she had tried to soothe his foreboding, but it was heavy in
him and he had not listened, saying: “I’ve never but once before been
vexed with this depression, and that was on the night of the day I fell
in love with Leonora Lamb.”

“Let us dance,” she had said shyly, but they had not danced very
enjoyably owing to the number of the students of hospitality who were
generously supporting Mrs. Omroy Pont on so memorable an occasion.

And thus it was on the first night between Miss Ava Lamb and the young
Duke of Mall.


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


I

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

In the dining-room of a great house in Carlton House Terrace three
persons sat at meat. They made, against the spacious simplicities of
great wealth and good taste, an austere picture in black and white.
Reading from left to right they were my lord the Marquess of Vest, his
delightful lady, and Mr. Dunn, private secretary to my lord.

They made a silent company. Lord Vest was never of a very talkative
habit: my lady was always very gentle, and did her best to please him on
all occasions: while Mr. Dunn’s duties did not embrace speaking unless
he was spoken to.

Eight candles in tall candlesticks of ancient silver played their timid
light upon the polished surface of the wide table; and in the calm air
of the summer evening the flames of the candles were so still that a
fanciful eye might have charged them with the beauty of flowers of
twilight. Young Mr. Dunn’s was a fanciful eye, but to him they appeared
to be as poppies of the night; for the poppy is an evil flower.

The curtains were not drawn across the windows, that Lord Vest might
lose nothing of the sweet evening air, which he always held to be good
for him until it gave him a cold in the head. Over his employer’s
shoulder Mr. Dunn could see the lights of the Mall glowing against the
dark tapestry of St. James’s Park. To the left, twilight draped the
Horse Guards and the great buildings of Government, whence, had Mr. Dunn
only known, the owls were at that moment fleeing on their ominous
business. To the right, night fought with day for the honour of
shrouding the palace of the King of England, who is also Emperor of
India and Protector of the Faith, which some people nowadays seem
inclined to forget. Great automobiles would every now and then pass to
and fro between the noble trees that delight those who have the leisure
to walk about the avenue of the Mall.

Mr. Dunn would have found it, at that moment, very agreeable to be
walking about the avenue of the Mall. Mr. Dunn would, in point of fact,
have parted with money to exchange places with the meanest walker in
London; for the situation of private secretary to a lord is not always
what the well-informed call a sinecure. Mr. Dunn was just thinking how
nice it would be to have a sinecure, whatever it might be, when the
second butler winked at him. The second butler thought the whole affair
very funny, and the silence very funny indeed. The second butler thought
he knew everything. Mr. Dunn made a mental note to the effect that he
must not forget, immediately after dinner, to tell the second butler
that he was an ass. That is if he, Mr. Dunn, was alive.

Now for Lord Vest, so much has been written of the early beginnings of
that powerful and ill-fated nobleman that it would be impertinent, at
this hour, to give more than a broad outline of his life. Mr. Justinian
Pant was an Australian gentleman of great fortune who had in the past
decade been raised to a baronetcy (Sir Justinian Pant, Bart.), a barony
(Lord Pant of Warboys, in the county of Huntingdonshire), a viscounty
(Viscount Pant of Warboys), an earldom (the Earl of Cowden, in the
county of Sussex) and a marquisate (the Marquess of Vest, in the county
of Cornwall) for services to the State. The bulletin announcing his last
ennoblement had been welcomed by all England with every appearance of
pleasure and gratification: that is, if one can judge by the newspapers
of the day: as, of course, one can. The mere fact that the barony of
Warboys, the earldom of Cowden, and the marquisate of Vest, were
welcomed far otherwise by the newspapers of Australia gave the envious
grounds for saying that the newspapers of England were prejudiced in the
great man’s favour for the reason that he owned most of them: which is
tantamount to saying that the glorious press of England is not free, an
insinuation that one cannot deign to answer but with a dignified
silence.

Of the early activities in Australia of Justinian Pant little of a
definite nature is known. The Australian papers, at the time of Mr.
Pant’s first elevation to the peerage, were rife with information on the
subject, but the voice of envy is ever loud; and one, an Adelaide
society journal, was so far lacking in the respect due to the
mother-country as to belittle the English peerage by saying that the
lord in question would no doubt make a very good lord, as lords go, but
only so long as he did not go back to Australia, where there was a
warrant out for his arrest on a charge of petty larceny while employed
as a bell-boy in a First-Class Family Hotel in Melbourne.

The tale of this man’s venture on London may entertain the curious and
inspire the ambitious, for it tells how one evening fifteen years ago
Justinian Pant stood in Piccadilly Circus, wondering what he would do
next. Starvation was indicated, for in his pocket there was only one
penny. And he was about to send up a prayer to God for guidance when he
was distracted by falling into conversation with an old native of the
Circus, from whom he was amazed to learn that the old man had expected
his coming and had been awaiting him for some time with impatience.

Mr. Pant was not yet a master of men and could therefore afford to show
surprise, which he did after the Colonial manner by swearing through his
nose and whistling between his teeth. Whereupon the ancient man
confessed to being a soothsayer and told how it had been revealed to him
in a dream that a young man with a face similar in every detail to the
face of Mr. Pant, which was of a somewhat unusual shape, would one
night come into Piccadilly Circus from Australia and give him, the
soothsayer, the sum of one pound in cash, and how from that moment the
Australian would rise with remarkable velocity to be the greatest Force
in England.

Justinian Pant was not unwilling to be a Force, and asked eagerly for
more precise information as to the steps to be taken: adding that he had
only one penny on him, but would be pleased to owe the old gentleman the
small sum of nineteen shillings and eleven pence.

“Buy an evening paper and look at the advertisements,” said the ancient
man, for he earned his living by the sale of evening papers. And whilst
the Australian reluctantly exchanged his last penny for an evening
paper, the old soothsayer spat into the gutter and said harshly:

“Justinian Pant, you will be a Force. You will be a Napoleon. You will
be a lord. You will make wars, unmake Parliaments, shuffle Cabinets and
reshuffle Cabinets. You will be the first person in the world to
discover how to make the maximum amount of money out of the execution of
a murderer. You will give away your dearest friends on all occasions of
possible profit, while standing by them through thick and thin when
nothing is to be gained by standing anywhere else. You will be as a
thorn in the sides of upright men, and as a bastinado upon the behinds
of those who are down. You will be successful in all things; and honours
shall shower upon you like gold on a commercial traveller selling beer
by the yard. You will marry a lady of quality, and be an honourary
member of the most exclusive night-clubs. You will love your wife,
after your fashion. You will be jealous of her, after your fashion. And
you will forget to pay me the sum of nineteen shillings and eleven pence
which you owe me. For that reason, as also because all things must have
an end, whether it is the might of Empires or the beneficial effects of
alcohol--even, Justinian Pant, as the first news of your high destiny
comes to you in Piccadilly Circus, so the first knell of your awful doom
will be cried by a bird of wise omen that will perch on the left wing of
the Eros on the fountain over yonder. So it is written. I have spoken.”
And the ancient man disappeared among the crowds by the Underground
Station, leaving Justinian Pant to gape at a copy of the evening paper
of the night before last.

Nor did the contents of the days that followed put an end to his
astonishment; for as it was written, so it happened, even to the lady of
quality for a wife, whom Lord Vest loved violently. Young Mr. Dunn
appears, however, to have been an afterthought in the nobleman’s
destiny. How much rather young Mr. Dunn had remained forever unthought
of! But it is written that every cloud is full of rain and it is no use
crying into spilled milk when you have a handkerchief.


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.


V

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


I

It is told by a decayed gentleman at the sign of _The Leather Butler_,
which is in Shepherd’s Market, which is in Mayfair, how one night three
men behaved in a most peculiar way; and one of them was left for dead.

Towards twelve o’clock on a night in the month of November some years
ago, three men were ascending the noble stairway of a mansion in
Grosvenor Square. The mansion, although appointed in every detail--to
suit, however, a severe taste--had yet a sour and sensitive atmosphere,
as of a house long untenanted but by caretakers.

The first of the men, for they ascended in single file, held aloft a
kitchen candlestick: whilst his companions made the best progress they
could among the deep shadows that the faulty light cast on the oaken
stairway. He who went last, the youngest of the three, said gaily:

“Mean old bird, my aunt! Cutting off the electric-light just because she
is away.”

“Fur goodness’ sake!” said the other.

The leader, whose face the candle-light revealed as thin almost to
asceticism, a face white and tired, finely moulded but soiled in texture
by the dissipations of a man of the world, contented himself with a
curt request to his young friend not to speak so loud.

It was, however, the gentleman in between the two whom it will advantage
the reader to consider. This was an unusually tall and strongly built
man. Yet it was not his giant stature, but rather the assurance of his
bearing, which was remarkable. His very clothes sat on his huge frame
with an air of firmness, of finality, that, as even a glance at his two
companions would show, is deprecated by English tailors, whose
inflexible formula it is that the elegance of the casual is the only
possible elegance for gentlemen of the mode. While his face had that
weathered, yet untired and eager, look which is the enviable possession
of many Americans, and is commonly considered to denote, for reasons not
very clearly defined, the quality known as poise. Not, however, that
this untired and eager look is, as some have supposed, the outward sign
of a lack of interest in dissipation, but rather of an enthusiastic and
naïve curiosity as to the varieties of the same. The gentleman from
America looked, in fine, to be a proper man; and one who, in his early
thirties, had established a philosophy of which his comfort and his
assurance of retaining it were the two poles, his easy perception of
humbug the pivot, and his fearlessness the latitude and longitude.

It was on the second landing that the leader, whose name was Quillier,
and on whom the dignity of an ancient baronetcy seemed to have an almost
intolerably tiring effect, flung open a door. He did not pass into the
room, but held the candlestick towards the gentleman from America. And
his manner was so impersonal as to be almost rude, which is a fault of
breeding when it is bored.

“The terms of the bet,” said Quillier, “are that this candle must
suffice you for the night. That is understood?”

“Sure, why not?” smiled the gentleman from America. “It’s a bum bet, and
it looks to me like a bum candle. But do I care? No, sir!”

“Further,” continued the impersonal, pleasant voice, “that you are
allowed no matches, and therefore cannot relight the candle when it has
gone out. That if you can pass the night in that room, Kerr-Anderson and
I pay you five hundred pounds. And _vice versa_.”

“That’s all right, Quillier. We’ve got all that.” The gentleman from
America took the candle from Quillier’s hand and looked into the room,
but with no more than faint interest. In that faulty light little could
be seen but the oak panelling, the heavy hangings about the great bed,
and a steel engraving of a Meissonier duellist lunging at them from a
wall nearby.

“Seldom,” said he, “have I seen a room look less haunted----”

“Ah,” vaguely said Sir Cyril Quillier.

“But,” said the gentleman from America, “since you and Kerr-Anderson
insist on presenting me with five hundred pounds for passing the night
in it, do I complain? No, sir!”

“Got your revolver?” queried young Kerr-Anderson, a chubby youth whose
profession was dining out.

“That is so,” said the gentleman from America.

Quillier said: “Well, Puce; I don’t mind telling you that I had just as
soon this silly business was over. I have been betting all my life, but
I have always had a preference for those bets which did not turn on a
man’s life or death----”

“Say, listen, Quillier, you can’t frighten me with that junk!” snapped
Mr. Puce.

“My aunt,” said young Kerr-Anderson, “will be very annoyed if anything
happens and she gets to hear of it. She hates a corpse in her house more
than anyone I know. You’re sure you are going on with it, Puce?”

“Boy, if Abraham Lincoln was to come up this moment and tell me Queen
Anne was dead I’d be as sure he was speaking the truth as that I’m going
to spend this night in this old haunted room of your aunt’s. Yes, sir!
And now I’ll give you good-night, boys. Warn your mothers to be ready to
give you five hundred pounds to hand on to Howard Cornelius Puce.”

“I like Americans,” said Quillier vaguely. “They are so enthusiastic.
Good-night, Puce, and God bless you. I hope you have better luck than
the last man who spent a night in that room. He was strangled.
Good-night, my friend.”

“Aw, have a heart!” growled Mr. Puce. “You get a guy so low with your
talk that I feel I could put on a tall hat and crawl under a snake.”


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 _an_noyed. 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


I

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.


V

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


I

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.

“_H_ave 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._”

“You will,” said the policeman. “Oh, you will!”

    “_By a knight of ghosts and shadows_
    _I summoned am to tourney_
        _Ten leagues beyond_
        _The wide world’s end--_
    _Methinks it is no journey!_”

“Not to Vine Street, it isn’t,” said the policeman.

“Ho there!” cried the approaching voice. “Who dares interrupt my song!”

“Beau Maturin!” cried Mr. Trevor gladly. “It’s not you! Bravo, Beau
Maturin! Sing, bless you, sing! For I am depressed.”

    “_From Heaven’s Gate to Hampstead Heath_
      _Young Bacchus and his crew_
    _Came tumbling down, and o’er the town_
      _Their bursting trumpets blew._”

“Fine big gent, your friend,” said the policeman thoughtfully.

    “_And when they heard that happy word_
      _Policemen leapt and ambled:_
    _The busmen pranced, the maidens danced,_
      _The men in bowlers gambolled._”

“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_----”

“Oh!” sobbed the young lady. “Is this chivalry?”

“Trousers,” said Mr. Maturin, “are closely connected with chivalry,
insomuch as he who commits chivalry without them is to be considered a
rude fellow. But, child,” Mr. Maturin protested sincerely, “we addressed
you only in the hope that we might be of some service in the extremity
of your grief. I assure you that you can trust us, for since we are no
longer soldiers rape and crime have ceased to attract us. However, you
do not need us. We were wrong. We will go.”

“It was I who was wrong!” came the low voice; and Mr. Trevor says that
only then did the young lady raise her face, when it was instantly as
though the beauty of that small face sent the surrounding darkness
scurrying away. Not, however, that Mr. Trevor was impressed altogether
in the young lady’s favour. Her eyes, which were large, dark and
charming, appeared to rest on handsome Beau Maturin with an intentness
which Mr. Trevor can only describe as bold; while her disregard of his
own presence might have hurt him had he, says Mr. Trevor, cared two pins
for that kind of thing.

“You see, I have not eaten to-day,” the young lady told Beau Maturin,
who cried: “But, then, we _can_ help you!”

“Ah, how do I know! Please,” the young lady began weeping again, and Mr.
Trevor says that had he not hardened his heart he could not say what he
might not have done. “Please, sirs, I simply do not know what to do! I
am so unhappy, so alone--oh, but you cannot imagine! You are gentlemen?”

“Speaking for my friend,” said Mr. Maturin warmly, “he has been asked to
resign from Buck’s Club only after repeated bankruptcies.”

“Mr. Maturin,” said Mr. Trevor, “has in his time been cashiered from no
less a regiment than the Coldstream Guards.”

The young lady did not, however, favour Mr. Trevor with so much as a
glance, never once taking her beautiful eyes from the handsome face of
Beau Maturin. Indeed, throughout the course of that miserable night she
admirably controlled any interest Mr. Trevor might have aroused in her,
which Mr. Trevor can only account for by the supposition that she must
have been warned against him. Beau Maturin, meanwhile, had taken the
young lady’s arm, a familiarity with which Mr. Trevor cannot too
strongly dissociate himself, and was saying:

“Child, you may come with us, if not with honour, at least with safety.
And while you refresh yourself with food and drink you can tell us, if
you please, the tale of your troubles. Can’t she, Ralph?”

“I don’t see,” said Mr. Trevor, “what good we can do.”

“Your friend,” said the young lady sadly to Beau Maturin, “does not like
me. Perhaps you had better leave me alone to my misery.”

“My friend,” said Beau Maturin, guiding her steps down the fat little
street towards Conduit Street, “likes you only too well, but is
restraining himself for fear of your displeasure. Moreover, he cannot
quickly adapt himself to the company of ingenuous young ladies, for he
goes a good deal into society, where somewhat cruder methods obtain.”

“But, oh, where are you taking me to?” suddenly cried the young lady.

“To _The Garden of My Grandmother_,” said Mr. Trevor bitterly, and
presently they found a taxicab on Regent Street which quickly delivered
them at the place in Leicester Square. Mr. Trevor cannot help priding
himself on the agility with which he leapt out of that taxicab, saying
to the driver: “My friend will pay.”

But Mr. Maturin, engrossed in paying those little attentions to the
young lady which really attractive men, says Mr. Trevor, can afford to
neglect, told the driver to wait, and when the driver said he did not
want to wait, to go and boil his head.


III

Mr. Trevor describes _The Garden of my Grandmother_ in some detail, but
that would be of interest only to the specialist. The place was lately
raided, and is now closed; and remained open so long as it did only with
the help of such devices as commend themselves to those aliens who know
the laws of the land only to circumvent them. For some time, indeed, the
police did not even know of its existence as a night-club, for the
entrance to the place was through two mean-looking doors several yards
apart, on one of which was boldly inscribed the word “Gentlemen” and on
the other “Ladies.”

Within, all was gaiety and _chic_. From the respectable night-clubs and
restaurants, all closed by this hour, would come the _jeunesse_ of
England; and an appetising smell of kippers brought new life to the
jaded senses of young ladies, while young gentlemen cleverly contrived
to give the appearance of drinking ginger ale by taking their champagne
through straws. Mr. Trevor says, however, that there was not the
smallest chance of the place being raided on the night in question, for
among the company was a Prince of the Blood; and it is an unwritten law
in the Metropolitan Police Force that no night-club shall be raided
while a Prince of the Blood is pulling a party therein.

The young lady and our two gentlemen were presently refreshing
themselves at a table in a secluded corner; and when at last only the
wine was left before them Mr. Maturin assumed his courtliest manner to
beg the young lady to tell her tale, and in detail, if she thought its
relation would relieve her at all. She thought, with all the pensive
beauty of her dark eyes, that it would, and immediately began on the
following tale:


_The Tale of the Bulgarian Girl_

I am (she said) twenty-three years old, and although I once spent two
years in England at a boarding-school in Croydon, my life hitherto has
been lived entirely in Bulgaria. My father was a Bulgar of the name of
Samson Samsonovitch Samsonoff, my mother an Englishwoman of the
Lancashire branch of the race of Jones, and for her tragic death in a
railway accident just over a year ago I shall grieve all my life: which,
I cannot help praying, may be a short one, for I weary of the insensate
cruelties that every new day opens out for me.

I must tell you that my mother was an unusual woman, of rigid
principles, lofty ideals and a profound feeling for the grace and
dignity of the English tongue, in which, in spite of my father’s
opposition, for the Samsonoffs are a bitter proud race, she made me
proficient at an early age. Never had this admirable woman a thought in
her life that was not directed towards furthering her husband’s welfare
and to obtaining the happiness of her only child; and I am convinced
that my father had not met his cruel death two months ago had she been
spared to counsel him.

My father came of an ancient Macedonian house. For hundreds of years a
bearer of the name of Samson Samsonovitch Samsonoff has trod the stark
hillsides of the Balkans and raided the sweet, rich valleys about
Philippopolis. As brigands, the Samsonoffs had never a rival; as
_comitadjis_, in war or peace, their name was a name for heroism and of
terror: while as assassins--for the domestic economy of Bulgaria has
ever demanded the occasional services of a hawk’s eye and a ruthless
hand--a Samsonoff has been honourably associated with some of the most
memorable _coups_ in Balkan history. I am well aware that pride of
family has exercised a base dominion over the minds of many good men and
women; yet I do not hesitate to confess that it is with almost
unbearable regret that I look upon the fact that I, a wretched girl, am
the last and only remnant of our once proud house.

Such a man it was whom my mother, while accompanying her father, a civil
engineer, through Bulgaria, married. Nor did it need anything less than
the ardour of her love and the strength of her character to seduce a
Samson Samsonovitch from the dour dominion of the hills to the
conventional life of the valleys. I loved my father, but cannot be blind
to the grave flaws in his character. A tall, hairy man, with a beard
such as would have appalled your description of Beaver, he was subject
to ungovernable tempers and, occasionally, to regrettable lapses from
that moral code which is such an attractive feature of English domestic
life. Ah, you who live in the content and plenty of so civilised a land,
how can you even imagine the horrors of lawlessness that obtain among
primitive peoples! Had not that good woman my mother always willed him
to loving-kindness, Samsonovitch Samsonoff had more than once spilled
the blood of his dearest friends in the heat of some petty tavern brawl.

We lived in a farmhouse in what is surely the loveliest valley in the
world, that which is called the Valley of the Roses, and whence is given
to the world that exquisite essence known as _attar_ of roses. Our
little household in that valley was a happy and united one; more and
more infrequent became my father’s demoniac tempers; and, but for his
intolerance of fools and cravens, you had taken the last of the
Samsonoffs to be a part of the life of the valley-men, of whose
industry, the cultivation of roses, he rapidly became a master.

Thus we come to the time which I now think of as two months before my
mother’s death. My father had attained to a certain degree of wealth,
and was ever enticing my mother with dreams of a prolonged visit to her
beloved birthplace, Southport, which is, I believe, a pretty town on the
seaboard of Lancashire, and which I look forward with delight to
visiting. While enticing her, however, with such visions, he did not
hesitate to warn her that she must wait on the issue of his fanciful
hobby, which daily grew on him; for the last of the Samsonoffs had
become an inventor of flowers!

You may well look bewildered. But had you known my father you would in
some measure have understood how a man, of an extreme audacity of
temperament, might be driven into any fanciful pursuit that might lend a
spice to a life of intolerable gentility. Nor was that pursuit so
fanciful as might as first appear to those of conventionally studious
minds: my father had a profound knowledge of the anatomy of flowers; and
was in the habit of saying that he could not but think that the mind of
man had hitherto neglected the invention and cultivation of the most
agreeable variations. In fine, the tempestuous but simple mind of
Samsonovitch Samsonoff had been captivated by the possibility of growing
green carnations.

My mother and I were, naturally enough, not at all averse from his
practising so gentle a hobby as the invention and cultivation of
improbable flowers. And it was long before we even dreamt of the evil
consequences that might attend so inoffensive an ambition. But my poor
mother was soon to be rid of the anxieties of this life.

One day she and I were sitting in the garden, discussing the English
fashion journals, when, silently as a cloud, my father came out of the
house and looked towards us in the half-frowning, half-smiling way of
his best mood. Tall and patriarchal, he came towards us--and in his hand
we saw a flower with a long slender stem, and we stared at it as though
we could not believe our eyes, for it was a green carnation!

“You have painted it!” we cried, my mother and I, for his success had
seemed to us as remote as the stars.

“I have _made_ it!” said my father, and he smiled into his beard, which
was ever his one confidential friend. “Women, I have made it in my
laboratory. And as I have made this I can make thousands, millions, and
thousands of millions!”

He waved a closely-covered piece of paper towards me. “My daughter,” he
said, “here is your dower, your heritage. I am too old to burden myself
with the cares of great riches, but by the help of this paper you, my
beloved child, will become an heiress who may condescend to an Emperor
or an American. We will not lose a minute before going to England, the
land of honest men, to put the matter of the patent in train. For on
this paper is written the formula by which green carnations, as well as
all previously known varieties of carnations, can be _made_ instead of
grown. _Made_, I say, instead of grown! Women, do you understand what it
is that I have achieved? I have stolen something of the secret of the
sun!”

“Samson, boast not!” cried my mother, but he laughed at her and fondled
me, while I stared in great wonder at the slip of paper that fluttered
in his hand and dreamed the fair dreams of wealth and happiness in a
civilised country. Ah me, ah me, the ill-fated excellence of dreams! For
here I am in the most civilised country in the world, a pauper, and more
wretched than a pauper!

Our preparations for removal to England were not far advanced before
that happened which brought the first cruel turn to our fortunes. On an
evil day my mother set out to Varna to buy some trivial thing, and--but
I cannot speak of that, how she was returned to us a mangled corpse, her
dear features mutilated beyond recognition by the fury of the railway
accident.

My father took his sudden loss strangely: it was as though he was
deprived at one blow of all the balance, the restraint, with which so
many years of my mother’s influence had softened the dangerous temper of
the Samsonoff; and the brooding silence he put upon his surroundings
clamoured with black thoughts. Worst of all, he began again to frequent
the taverns in the valley, wherein he seemed to find solace in goading
to fury the craven-hearted lowlanders among whom he had lived in peace
for so long. The Samsonoff, in short, seemed rapidly to be reverting to
type; and I, his daughter, must stand by and do nothing, for my
influence over him was never but of the pettiest sort.

The weeks passed, and our preparations for departure to England
proceeded at the soberest pace. In England we were going to stay with my
mother’s brother, a saintly man of some little property who lived a
retired life in London, and whose heir I would in due course be, since
he was himself without wife or children.

My father, never notable for the agreeable qualities of discretion and
reticence, soon spread about the report of his discovery of the green
carnation. He could not resist boasting of it in his cups, of the
formula with which he could always make them, of the fortune he must
inevitably make. Nor did he hesitate to taunt the men of the valley,
they who came of generations of flower-growers, with his own success in
an occupation which, he said, he had never undertaken but at a woman’s
persuasion, since it could be regarded as manly only by those who would
describe as manly the painted face of a Circassian eunuch. Thus he would
taunt them, laughing me to scorn when I ventured to point out that even
worms will turn and cravens conspire. Woe and woe to the dour and
high-handed in a world of polity, for their fate shall surely find them
out!

One day, having been to the village to procure some yeast for the making
of a _yaourt_ or _yawort_, which is that same Bulgarian “sour milk” so
strongly recommended to Anglo-Saxon digestions, I was startled, as I
walked up the path to the door, by the bruit of loud rough voices. Only
too soon was my fear turned to horror. One of the voices was my
father’s, arrogant and harsh as only his could be, with a sneer like a
snake running through it. The other I could not recognise, but could
hear only too well that it had not the soft accents of the men of the
valley; and when, afraid to enter, I peered in through the window, I saw
my father in violent altercation with a man his equal in stature and
demeanour--another bearded giant, as fair as my father was dark, and
with the livid eyes of a wolf.

What was my horror on recognising him as Michaelis the _comitadji_, the
notorious and brutal Michaelis of the hills. The Michaelises and the
Samsonovitch Samsonoffs had always been the equal kings of the
_banditti_ and, in many a fight between Christian and Turk, the equal
champions of the Cross against the Crescent. And now, as I could hear
through the window, the last of the Michaelises was asking of the last
of the Samsonoffs some of his great wealth, that he might arm and
munition his troop to the latest mode.

My father threw back his head and laughed. But his laugh had cost him
dear had I not screamed a warning, for the Michaelis with the wolfish
eyes had raised a broad knife. My father leapt to one side, and taking
up the first thing that came to hand, a heavy bottle of _mastique_,
crashed it down like an axe on the fair giant’s head; and then, without
so much as a glance at the unconscious man, and massive though the
Michaelis was, slung him over his shoulder, strode out of the house and
garden and flung him into the middle of the roadway, where he lay for
long moaning savagely with the pain of his broken head. I had gone to
the aid of the wretch, but my father would not let me, saying that no
Michaelis ever yet died of a slap on the crown and that a little
blood-letting would clear the man’s mind of his boyish fancies. Ah, if
it had!

It was at a late hour of the very next night--for since my mother’s
death my father would loiter in the taverns until all hours--that his
hoarse voice roused me from my sleep; and on descending I found him
raging about the kitchen like a wounded tiger, his clothes in disorder
and showing grim dark stains that, as I clung to him, foully wetted my
hands. I prayed him, in an access of terror, to tell me he was not hurt,
for what other protection than him had I in that murderous land?

“I am not hurt, child,” he growled impatiently. “But I have been driven
to hurt some so that they can never again feel pain.”

They had ambushed him, the cowards, as he came home through the wood--as
though a hundred of those maggots of the valley could slay a
Samsonovitch Samsonoff! My father had caught the last of them by the
throat, and the trembling coward had saved himself by confessing the
plot. It appeared that it was they who had persuaded the Michaelis to
visit us the day before, alluring his fancy with tales of the discovery
of the carnation and of the great riches the Samsonoff had concealed
about the house. And the Michaelis had come to our house not for part of
my father’s wealth but for all he could find, as also for the secret of
the carnation, which he might sell at a great price to some Jew in
Sofia--he had come to kill my father!

“And I, like a fool,” cried my father, “only broke the skin of his
wolfish head! Girl, we must be off at once! I have not lived in
unwilling peace all these years to die like a rat; and now that these
weak idiots have failed to kill me Michaelis and his troop will surround
the house, and who shall escape the wolves of the hills? Now linger not
for your clothes and fineries. Grigory Eshekovitch has horses for us at
the edge of the wood, and we can make Philippopolis by the morning. Here
is all our money in notes. Take them, so that you will be provided for
should these scum get me. And the formula--take care of the formula,
child, for that is your fortune! Should I have to stay behind, your
mother’s brother in England is a good man and will probably not rob you
of more than half the profits of it.”

And so we came to leave our beloved home, stealing like thieves through
the darkness of a moonless night. How shall I ever forget those
desperate moments! Our farm lay far from any other habitation, and a
long sloping lane joined our pastures to the extensive Karaloff Wood, a
wood always evoked by Bulgarian poets of past centuries as the home of
vampires and the kennel of the hounds of hell.

There, at its borders, Grigory Eshekovitch, a homely man devoted to our
interests, awaited us with two horses; and, although I could not see his
face in the darkness, I could imagine by the tremor of his never very
assured voice how pallid, indeed green, it must have been; for poor
Grigory Eshekovitch suffered from some internal affection which had the
effect of establishing his complexion very uncertainly.

“Have you seen anyone in the wood?” my father asked him.

“No, but I have heard noises,” Grigory Eshekovitch trembled.

“Bah!” growled my father. “That was the chattering of your own miserable
teeth.”

I wonder what has happened to poor Grigory Eshekovitch, whether he
survived that hideous night. We left him there, a trembling figure on
the borders of the wood, while we put our horses into the heart of that
darkness; and I tried to find solace in our desperate situation by
looking forward to the safety and comfort of our approaching life in
England. Little I knew that I was to suffer such agonies of fear in this
huge city that I would wish myself back in the land of wolves!

My dreams were shattered by a low growl from my father, and we pulled up
our horses, listening intently. By this time we were about half-way
through the wood; and had we not known the place by heart we had long
since lost our way, for the curtain of leaves between us and the faint
light of the stars made the place so black that we could not even see
the faintest glimmer of each other. At last my father whispered that it
was all right, and we were in the act of spurring our tired horses for
the last dash through the wood when torches flamed on all sides and we
stood as in the tortured light of a crypt in moonlight.

“Samson Samsonovitch,” cried a hoarse voice, and like a stab at my heart
I knew it for the voice of the Michaelis, “we hope your sins are not too
heavy, for your time has come.”

It ill becomes a girl to boast of her parent; but shall I neglect to
mention the stern fortitude, the patriarchal resignation, the monumental
bravery, of my father, how he sat his horse still as a rock in a tempest
and only his lips moved in a gentle whisper to me. “Child, save
yourself,” said he, and that was his farewell. “I command you to go--to
save yourself and my secret from these hounds. Maybe I too will get
through. God is as good to us as we deserve. Head right through them.
Their aim, between you and me, will be so unsure that we might both
escape. Go, and God go with you!”

Can you ask me to remember the details of the awful moment? The
darkness, the flaming torches, the hoarse cries of the bandits as they
rode in on us, my father’s great courage--all these combined to produce
in me a state for which the word “terror” seems altogether too homely.
Perhaps I should not have left my father. Perhaps I should have died
with him. I did not know what I was doing. Blindly as in a nightmare I
spurred my horse midway between two moving torches. The horse, startled
already, flew madly as the wind. Cries, curses, shots seemed to sweep
about me, envelop me, but terror lent wings to my horse, and the shots
and shouts faded behind me as phantoms might fade in a furious wind.
Last of all came a fearful fusillade of shots, then a silence broken
only by the harsh rustle of the bracken under my horse, which, with the
livid intelligence of fear, did not stop before we reached Philippopolis
in the dawn.

I was never to see my father again. Until noon of the next day I sat
anxiously in the only decent inn of the ancient town, praying that some
act of Providence had come to his aid and that he might at any moment
appear; when, from a loquacious person, who did not know my name, I
heard that the last of the Samsonoffs had that morning been found in
Karaloff Wood nailed to a tree-trunk with eighteen bullet wounds in his
body.

I will spare you my reflections on the pass in which I then found
myself. No young girl was ever so completely alone as she who sat the
day through in the parlour of the Bulgarian inn, trying to summon the
energy with which to arrange for her long journey on the Orient Express
to England.

Arrived in London, I at once set out to my uncle’s house in Golgotha
Road, Golders Green. I was a little surprised that he had not met me at
the station, for I had warned him of my arrival by telegram; but,
knowing he was a gentleman of particular though agreeable habits, it was
with a sufficiently good heart that I rang the bell of his tall gloomy
house, which stood at the end of a genteel street of exactly similar
houses.

Allow me, if you please, to hurry over the relation of my further
misfortunes. My uncle had died of a clot of blood on the heart a week
before my arrival. His property he had, of course, left to me; and I
could instantly take possession of his house in Golgotha Road. I was
utterly alone.

That was four weeks ago. Though entirely without friends or
acquaintance--for my uncle’s lawyer, Mr. Tarbold, was a man who bore his
own lack of easy conversation and human sympathy with a resigned
fortitude worthy of more wretched sorrows--I passed the first two weeks
pleasantly enough in arranging the house to my taste, in engaging a
housekeeper and training her to my ways, and in wondering how I must
proceed as regards the patenting and exploiting of the carnation, the
formula for which I kept locked in a secret drawer of my toilet-table.

At the end of three weeks--one week ago--my housekeeper gave me notice
of her instant departure, saying that no consideration would persuade
her to spend another night in the house. She was, it seemed, psychic,
and the atmosphere of the house, which was certainly oppressive, weighed
heavily on her mind. She had heard noises in the night, she affirmed,
and also spoke indignantly of an unpleasant smell in the basement of the
house, a musty smell which she for one made no bones of recognising as
of a graveyard consistency; and if she did not know a graveyard smell,
she asked, from one of decent origins, who did, for she had buried three
husbands?

Of course I laughed at her tremors, for I am not naturally of a nervous
temper; and when she insisted on leaving that very day I was not at all
disturbed. Nor did I instantly make enquiries for another woman, for I
could very well manage by myself; and the work of the house, I thought,
must help to fill in the awful spaces made by the utter lack of
companionship. As to any nervousness at being left entirely alone in a
house, surrounded as it was by the amenities of Golders Green, I never
gave a thought to it, for I had been inured to a reasonable solitude all
my life. And, putting up a notice of “Apartments to Let” in one of the
ground-floor windows, I set about the business of the house in something
of a spirit of adventure natural, if I may say so, to one of my years.

That, as I have said, was one week ago; and the very next day but one
after my housekeeper had left me was to see my hardly-won peace
shattered at one blow. I do not know if you gentlemen are aware of the
mode of life that obtains in Golders Green; but I must tell you that the
natives of that quarter do not discourage the activities of
barrel-organs--a somewhat surprising exercise of restraint to one who
has been accustomed to the dolorous and beautiful songs of the Balkan
_cziganes_. It is true, however, that these barrel-organs are played
mostly by foreigners, and I have been given to understand that
foreigners are one of the most sacred institutions of this great
country.

The very next morning after my housekeeper had left me I was distracted
from my work by a particularly disagreeable combination of sounds,
which, I had no doubt, could come only from a barrel-organ not of the
first order and the untrained voice of its owner. A little amused, I
looked out of the window--and, with a heart how still, leapt back into
the room, for the face of the organ-grinder was the face of the
Michaelis!

I spent an hour of agony in wondering if he had seen me, for how could I
doubt but that he had followed me to England in quest of the formula of
the carnation? At last, however, I decided that he could not have seen
me, and I was in some degree calmed by the decreasing noise of the
barrel-organ as it inflicted itself on more distant streets. London, I
told myself, was a very large city; it was not possible that the
Michaelis could have the faintest idea in what part of it I lodged; and
it could only have been by the most unfortunate combination of chances
that he had brought his wretched organ into Golgotha Road. Nevertheless
I took the precaution to withdraw the notice of Apartments to Let from
the window, lest yet another unfortunate combination of chances should
lead him or his minions to search for lodging in my house.

The next day passed quietly enough. I went out shopping with a veil over
my face, for reasons you can well understand. And little did I dream
that the approaching terror was to come from a quarter which would only
be known to the Michaelis when he was dead.

That evening in my bedroom, in a curious moment of forgetfulness, I
chanced to pull the bell-rope. I wanted some hot water, had for the
moment forgotten that the silly woman had left me, and only remembered
it with a smile when, far down in the basement, I heard the thin clatter
of the bell. The bathroom was some way down the passage, and I had
reached the door, empty jug in hand, when I was arrested by the sound of
approaching steps! They were very faint, they seemed to be coming up
from the basement, as though in answer to the bell! I pressed my hand to
my forehead in a frantic attempt to collect my wits, and I have no
hesitation in saying that for those few moments I was near insane. The
accumulation of terrors in my recent life had, I thought, unhinged my
mind; and I must that day have engaged a servant and forgotten it.

Meantime the steps ascended, slowly, steadily, exactly as an elderly
servant might ascend in answer to the bell; and as they ascended I was
driven, I cannot tell you how, somehow past fear. Maybe it was the blood
of the Samsonoffs at last raging in me: I was not afraid: and, without
locking the door, I withdrew to a far corner of the room, awaiting the
moment when the steps must reach the door. I must not forget to add that
the empty jug was still in my hand.

Steadily, but with a shuffling as of carpet-slippers, the steps came up
the passage: slowly the door was opened, and a gaunt, grey-haired woman
in musty black stood there, eyeing me with strange contempt. Fear
returned, enveloped me, shook me, and I sobbed, I screamed. The woman
did not move, did not speak, but stood there, gaunt and grey and dry,
eyeing me with a strange contempt; and on her lined face there was such
an undreamt-of expression of evil. Yet I recognised her.

I must tell you that my mother had often, in telling me of her brother,
spoken of his confidential housekeeper. My mother was a plain-spoken
woman, and I had gathered from her that the woman had exercised some
vulgar art to enthrall my poor uncle and had dominated him, to his hurt,
in all things. At the news of this woman’s death just before my mother’s
tragic end, she had been unable to resist an expression of relief; and
I, on having taken possession of the house a few weeks before, had
examined with great interest, as girls will, the various photographs of
her that stood about the rooms.

It was from these that I recognised the woman who stood in the doorway.
But she was dead, surely she had died more than a year ago! Yet there
she now stood, eyeing me with that strange contempt--with such contempt,
indeed, that I, reacting from fear to anger, sternly demanded of her
what she did there and what she wanted.

She was silent. That was perhaps the most awful moment of all--but no,
no, there was worse to come! For, sobbing with terror, I hurled the
empty jug at her vile face with a precision of aim which now astonishes
me: but she did not waver so much as the fraction of an inch as the jug
came straight at her--and, passing through her head, smashed into pieces
against the wall of the passage outside. I must have swooned where I
stood; for when I was again conscious of my surroundings she was gone, I
was alone; but, far down in the house, I could hear the shuffling steps,
retreating, descending, to the foul shades whence she had come.

Now I am one who cannot bear any imposition; and unable, despite the
witness of my own eyes, to believe in the psychic character of the
intruder, I ran out of the room and in hot pursuit down the stairs. The
gaunt woman must have descended with a swiftness surprising in one of
her years, for I could only see her shadow far below, on the last flight
of stairs that would take her to the basement. Into that lower darkness,
I must confess, I had not the courage to follow her; and still less so
when, on peering down the pitch-dark stairs into the kitchen, I was
assailed by that musty smell which my housekeeper had spoken of with
such indignant conviction as of a graveyard consistency.

I locked the door of my room and slept, I need scarcely say, but ill
that night. However, in the cheerful light of the following morning, I
was inclined, as who would not, to pooh-pooh the incredible events of
the previous night; and again pulled the bell-rope, just to see the
event, if any. There was; and, unable to await the ascent of the
shuffling steps, I crammed on a hat and ran down the stairs.

The woman was coming upstairs, steadily, inevitably. As she heard me
descending she stopped and looked up, and I cannot describe the effect
that the diabolical wickedness of her face had on me in the clear
daylight. I stopped, was rooted there, could not move. To get to the
front-door I must pass the foul thing, and that I could not summon the
courage to do. And then she raised an arm, as though to show me
something, and I saw the blade of a razor shining in her hand. You may
well shudder, gentlemen!

When I came to it was to find myself lying at the foot of the stairs,
whither I must have fallen, and the foul thing gone. Why she did not
kill me, I do not know. God will pardon me for saying that maybe it had
been better if she had, for what miseries are not still in store for me!
Trembling and weak, I reached the door and impelled myself into the
clear air of morning. Nor could the fact that I had forgotten my veil,
and the consequent fear of the Michaelis, persuade me to reenter that
house until I had regained some degree of calmness.

All day long I wandered about, knowing neither what to do nor where to
go. I am not without some worldly sense, and I knew what little
assistance the police could give me in such a dilemma, even had they
believed me; while as for the lawyer, Mr. Tarbold, how could I face a
man of so little sympathy in ordinary things with such an extraordinary
tale?

Towards ten o’clock that night, I determined to return and risk another
night in that house; I was desperate with weariness and hunger; and
could not buy food nor lodging for the night, for in my flight I had
forgotten my purse; while I argued to myself that if, after all, she had
intended to murder me, she could without any difficulty have done so
that morning when I lay unconscious on the stairs.

My bravery, however, did not help me to ascend the stairs to my bedroom
with any resolution. I stole upstairs, myself verily like a phantom.
But, hearing no sound in the house, I plucked up the courage to switch
on the light on my bedroom landing. My bedroom-door stood open, but I
could not remember whether or not I had left it so that morning. It was
probable, in my hasty descent. I tiptoed to it and peered in--and I take
the liberty to wonder whether any man, was he never such a lion-heart,
had been less disturbed than I at the sight which the light of the moon
revealed to my eyes.

The Michaelis lay full length on the floor, his great fair beard
darkened with his blood, which came, I saw, from a great gash behind his
ear. Across him, with her back to me, sat straddled the gaunt foul
thing, as silent as the grave. Yet even my terror could not overcome my
curiosity as to her actions, for she kept on lowering and raising her
left hand to and from the Michaelis’s beard, while with her right, in
which shone the bloody razor, she sawed the air from side to side. I
could not realise what that vile shape was doing--I could, and could not
admit the realisation. For with her left hand she was plucking out one
by one the long hairs of the Michaelis’s beard, while with the razor in
her right she was slicing them to the floor!

I must have gasped, made some noise, for she heard me; and, turning on
me and brandishing the dripping razor, she snarled like an animal and
leapt towards me. But I am young and quick, and managed just in time to
reach the street-door and slam it against her enraged pursuit.

That was last night. Since then, gentlemen, I have wandered about the
streets of London, resting a little among the poor people in the Parks.
I have had no food, for what money I have is in that house, together
with the formula for the green carnation; but nothing, not death by
exposure nor death by starvation, would induce me to return to the house
in Golders Green while it is haunted by that foul presence. Is she a
homicidal lunatic or a phantom from hell? I do not know, I am too tired
to care. I have told you two gentlemen my story because you seem kind
and capable, and I can only pray that I have not wearied you overmuch.
But I do beg you to believe that nothing is further from my mind than to
ask, and indeed nothing would induce me to accept, anything from you but
the generous sympathy of your understanding and the advice of your
chivalrous intelligence. My tale is finished, gentlemen. And, alas, am
not I?


IV

Mr. Trevor is somewhat confused in his relation of the course of events
immediately subsequent to Miss Samsonoff’s narrative. During its course
he had time, he says, to study the young lady’s beauty, which, though of
a very superior order, was a little too innocent and insipid for his
taste. His judgment, however, cannot be entirely fair, for such was the
direction of the young lady’s eyes that Mr. Trevor could judge her by
her features only. As to the story itself, Mr. Trevor says that, while
yielding to no one in his liking for a good story, he could not see his
way to considering Miss Samsonoff’s notable either for interest,
entertainment, or that human note of stark realism which makes for
conviction; and while, in the ordinary way, a murderer was to him like a
magnet, he could not rouse himself to feel irresistibly attracted
towards the ghoul of Golders Green. It was therefore with surprise not
unmixed with pain that he heard Mr. Maturin saying:

“Ralph, we are in luck!”

“To what,” Mr. Trevor could not entirely cleanse his voice from the
impurity of sarcasm, “to what do you refer?” But it was not without some
compunction that he heard the young lady sigh miserably to Beau Maturin:

“I am afraid I have wearied your friend. Forgive me.”

“My friend,” said Beau Maturin gently, “is an ass. In point of fact,
Miss Samsonoff, far from wearying us, you have put us under a great
obligation----”

“Ah, you are kind!” the young lady was moved to sob.

“On the contrary,” Mr. Maturin warmly protested, “I am selfish. I gather
you have not been reading the newspapers lately? Had you done so, you
would have read of a murderer who has recently been loose in London and
has so far evaded not only capture but even identification. So far as
the public know through the newspapers this criminal has been
responsible for only two or three murders; but this very night my friend
and I have had private information to the effect that within the last
few weeks twelve mutilated corpses have been found in various parts of
London; to which we must now, no doubt, add a thirteenth, the remains of
your late enemy, Mr. Michaelis. But where _your_ information,” said Mr.
Maturin gallantly, “is especially valuable, is that the police do not
dream that the criminal is of your sex. To my friend and me it is this
original point that invests the pursuit----”

“Pursuit?” Mr. Trevor could not help starting.

“--with,” said Mr. Maturin coldly, “an added charm. And now with your
permission, Miss Samsonoff, we will not only return to you your formula,
as to the financial worth of which I cannot entirely share your late
parent’s optimism, but also----”

“Also,” Mr. Trevor said with restraint, “we will first of all call at
Vine Street and borrow a few policemen.”

“Oh, yes!” the young lady said eagerly. “We will be sure to need some
policemen. Please get some policemen. They will listen to you.”

“I do not find an audience so difficult to find as all that,” said Mr.
Maturin coldly. “The London police, Miss Samsonoff, are delightful, but
rather on the dull side. They are much given to standing in the middle
of crowded roads and dreaming, and in even your short stay in London you
must have observed what a serious, nay intolerable, obstruction they are
to the traffic. No, no, my friend and I will get this murderer
ourselves. Come, Miss Samsonoff.”

“But I dare not come with you!” cried the young lady. “I simply dare not
approach that house again! May I not await your return here?”

“The attacks of ten murderers,” said Mr. Maturin indignantly, “cannot
disfigure your person more violently than being left alone in a
night-club will disfigure your reputation. Bulgarians may be violent,
Miss Samsonoff. But lounge lizards are low dogs.”

Mr. Trevor says that he was so plunged in thought that he did not arise
from the table with his usual agility; and the first notice he had that
Mr. Maturin had risen and was nearly at the door was on hearing him
waive aside a pursuing waiter with the damnable words: “My friend will
pay.”

Without, the taxicab was still waiting. Its driver, says Mr. Trevor, was
one of those stout men of little speech and impatient demeanour: on
which at this moment was plainly written the fact that he had been
disagreeably affected by waiting in the cold for nearly two hours; and
on Mr. Maturin’s sternly giving him a Golders Green direction he just
looked at our two gentlemen and appeared to struggle with an impediment
in his throat.

Golgotha Road was, as the young lady had described it, a genteel street
of tall gloomy houses. Mr. Trevor says that he cannot remember when he
liked the look of a street less. The taxicab had not penetrated far
therein when Miss Samsonoff timidly begged Mr. Maturin to stop its
further progress, pointing out that she could not bear to wait
immediately opposite the house and would indeed have preferred to await
her brave cavaliers in an altogether different part of London. Mr.
Maturin, however, soothed her fears; and, gay as a schoolboy, took the
key of the house from her reluctant fingers and was jumping from the cab
when Miss Samsonoff cried:

“But surely you have weapons!”

Mr. Trevor says that, while yielding to no one in deploring the use of
weapons in daily life, in this particular instance the young lady’s
words struck him as full of a practical grasp of the situation.

“Of course,” said Mr. Trevor nonchalantly, “we must have weapons. How
stupid of us to have forgotten! I will go back to my flat and get some.
I won’t be gone a moment.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Maturin agreed, “because you won’t be gone at all.
My dear Miss Samsonoff, my friend and I do not need weapons. We put our
trust in God and St. George. Come along, Ralph. Miss Samsonoff, we will
be back in a few moments.”

“And wot do I do?” asked the taxi-driver.

“Nothing,” cried Mr. Maturin gaily. “Nothing at all. Aren’t you lucky!”

The house which the young lady had pointed out to them had an air of
even gloomier gentility than the others, and Mr. Trevor says he cannot
remember when he liked the look of a house less, particularly when the
ancient brown door gave to Beau Maturin’s hand before he had put the key
into the lock. Mr. Trevor could not resist a natural exclamation of
surprise. Mr. Maturin begged him not to shout. Mr. Trevor said that he
was not shouting, and, without a thought for his own safety, was rushing
headlong into the house to meet the terror single-handed when he found
that his shoe-lace was untied.

He found Beau Maturin in what, he supposed, would be called a hall when
it was not a pit of darkness. A stealthily lit match revealed that it
was a hall, a narrow one, and it also revealed a closed door to the
right, by Mr. Trevor’s elbow, which he removed. The match went out.

“Quietly,” said Mr. Maturin quite unnecessarily, for Mr. Trevor says he
cannot remember when he felt less noisy. He heard the door to his right
open, softly, softly.

“Is it you opening that door?” he asked, merely from curiosity.

“Ssh!” snapped Beau Maturin. “Hang on to my shoulder-blades.”

Mr. Trevor thought it better to calm Beau Maturin’s fears by acceding to
his whim, and clung close behind him as they entered the room. The moon,
which Mr. Trevor already had reason to dislike, was hanging at a
moderate elevation over Golders Green as though on purpose to reveal the
darkness of that room. Mr. Trevor’s foot then struck a shape on the
floor. The shape was soft and long. Mr. Trevor was surprised. Mr.
Maturin whispered:

“Found anything?”

Mr. Trevor said briefly that his foot had.

“So’s mine,” said Beau Maturin. “What’s yours like? Mine’s rather soft
to the touch.”

“And mine,” said Mr. Trevor.

“They’re corpses, let’s face it,” sighed Mr. Maturin. “Making fifteen in
all. With us, seventeen. Just give yours a kick, Ralph, to see if it’s
alive. I’ve kicked mine.”

“I don’t kick corpses,” Mr. Trevor was muttering when he felt a hard
round thing shoved into the small of his back.

“Ow!” said Mr. Trevor.

“Found anything?” said Mr. Maturin.

Mr. Trevor said briefly that there was something against his back.

“And mine,” sighed Mr. Maturin. “What’s yours like? Mine’s rather hard
on the back.”

“So is mine,” said Mr. Trevor.

“They’re revolvers, let’s face it,” sighed Beau Maturin.

“They are,” said a hard voice behind them. “So don’t move.”

“I’ve got some sense, thank you,” snapped Beau Maturin.

“Sir,” said the harsh voice, and it was a woman’s voice, “I want none of
your lip. I have you each covered with a revolver----”

“Waste,” said Beau Maturin. “One revolver would have been quite enough.
Besides, my friend and I were distinctly given to understand that you
were partial to a razor. Or do you use that for shaving?”

“I use a razor,” said the harsh voice, “only when I want to kill. But I
have a use for you two.”

The light was suddenly switched on, a light so venomous, says Mr.
Trevor, that they had to blink furiously. And that must have been a very
large room, for they could not see into its far corners. The light came
from what must have been a very high-powered lamp directly above a table
in the middle of the room; and it was concentrated by a shade in such a
way as to fall, like a search-light, exactly on the two helpless
gentlemen. Mr. Trevor says that Beau Maturin’s handsome face looked
white and ghastly, so the Lord knows what Mr. Trevor’s must have looked
like. Meanwhile their captor leapt from her station behind them, and
they were privileged to see her for the first time. She was, says Mr.
Trevor, exactly as Miss Samsonoff had described her, grey and gaunt and
dry, and her expression was strangely contemptuous and evil as sin. And
never for a moment did she change the direction of her revolvers, which
was towards our gentlemen’s hearts. Mr. Trevor says he cannot remember
when he saw a woman look less afraid that a revolver might go off in her
hand.

“Look down,” she commanded.

“It’s all right,” said Beau Maturin peaceably; “we’ve already guessed
what they are. Corpses. Nice cold night for them, too. Keep for days in
weather like this.”

Mr. Trevor could not resist looking down to his feet. The corpses were
of two youngish men in dress-clothes.

“They’re cut badly,” said Mr. Maturin.

“They’re not cut at all,” said the woman harshly. “I shot these two for
a change.”

“I meant their clothes,” Mr. Maturin explained. “Death was too good for
them with dress-clothes like that.”

“Well, I can’t stop here all night talking about clothes,” snapped the
woman. “Now then, to business. These bodies have to be buried in the
back-garden. You will each take one. There are spades just behind you. I
shall not have the slightest hesitation in killing you as I have killed
these two, but it will be more convenient for me if you do as you are
told. I may kill you later, and I may not. Now be quick!”

“Lord, what’s that!” cried Mr. Trevor sharply. He had that moment
realised a strange muffled, ticking noise which must, he thought, come
either from somewhere in the room or from a room nearby. And, while he
was never in his life less conscious of feeling fear, he could not help
but be startled by that ticking noise, for he had heard it before, when
timing a dynamite-bomb.

“That is why,” the woman explained with what, Mr. Trevor supposed, was
meant to be a smile, “you will be safer in the garden. Women are but
weak creatures, and so I take the precaution of having a rather large
size in dynamite-bombs so timed that I have but to press a button to
send us all to blazes. It will not be comfortable for the police when,
if ever, they catch me. But pick up those spades and get busy.”

“Now don’t be rude,” begged Beau Maturin. “I can stand anything from
plain women but discourtesy. Ralph, you take the bigger corpse, as you
are smaller than I am, while I take this little fellow on my
shoulder--which will probably be the nearest he will ever get to heaven,
with clothes cut as badly as that.”

“You can come back for the bodies when you’ve dug the graves,” snapped
the woman. “Take the spades and go along that passage. No tricks! I am
just behind you.”

There was a lot of rubbish in that garden. It had never been treated as
a garden, it did not look like a garden, it looked even less like a
garden than did _The Garden of My Grandmother_. High walls enclosed it.
And over it that deplorable moon threw a sheet of dead daylight.

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.

“Do you mind if we take our coats off?” asked Beau Maturin. Mr. Trevor
says that he was being sarcastic.

“I don’t mind what you take off,” snapped the woman.

“Now don’t say naughty things!” said Mr. Maturin. “Nothing is more
revolting than the naughtiness of plain women.”

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.

They dug, says Mr. Trevor, for a long time, for a very long time. Not,
however, that it was difficult digging once one had got into the swing
of it, for that garden was mostly dug-up soil. Suddenly Beau Maturin
said:

“Bet you a fiver I dig a grave for my fellow before you.”

“Right!” said Mr. Trevor.

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.

“_And_,” said the woman, “I don’t allow any betting in this house. So
call that bet off.”

“What?” said Mr. Maturin.

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers.

Mr. Maturin threw down his spade.

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers.

Mr. Trevor dug.

Mr. Maturin said: “Dig yourself!”

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers.

Mr. Trevor brandished his spade from a distance. He noticed for the
first time that they had been digging in the light of the dawn and not
of the moon.

“And who the deuce,” said Mr. Maturin dangerously, “do you think you
are, not to allow any betting? I have stood a lot from you, but I won’t
stand that.”

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, but Mr. Maturin advanced upon
the revolvers like a punitive expedition. Mr. Trevor brandished his
spade.

“Another step, and I fire!” cried the woman harshly.

“Go ahead,” said Mr. Maturin. “I’ll teach you to stop me betting! And I
hate your face.”

“Oh, dear; oh, dear!” the woman suddenly cried with a face of fear and,
lowering her revolvers, fled into the house.

Mr. Trevor was so surprised that he could scarcely speak. Mr. Maturin
laughed so much that he could not speak.

“What’s there to laugh about?” Mr. Trevor asked at last.

“It’s funny. They’ve had us, let’s face it. Come on, let’s follow her
in.”

“She may shoot,” Mr. Trevor cautioned.

“Shoot my eye!” sighed Beau Maturin.

Once in the house, Mr. Trevor stopped spellbound. There were voices,
there was laughter--from the room of the two corpses!

“They’re laughing at us!” said Mr. Trevor.

“Who wouldn’t!” laughed Beau Maturin, and, opening the door, said: “Good
morning.”

“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “Haw-haw!”

“You’ll have some breakfast?” asked the woman with the revolvers.

“Please do!” said Miss Samsonoff.

“You _ought_ to be hungry,” said the taxi-driver with the Homburg hat of
green plush.

“Look here!” gasped Mr. Trevor. “What the blazes----”

“Haw-haw!” laughed the policeman. “’Ave a bit of vealanam-pie?”

“Now, Ted, don’t be rude to the gentlemen!” said the woman with the
revolvers.

“Quite right, mother,” said Miss Samsonoff. “We owe these gentlemen an
explanation and an apology----”

“And if they don’t take it we _are_ in the soup!” miserably said the
man in the Homburg hat of green plush.

“Now, you two, go and get cups and plates for the two gentlemen,” said
the woman with the revolvers to the two corpses in dress-clothes.

“Listen, please,” Miss Samsonoff gravely addressed Mr. Maturin, “my name
isn’t Samsonoff at all but Kettlewell, and that’s my mother and these
are my four brothers----”

“How do you do?” said Mr. Maturin, absently drinking the policeman’s
coffee, but Mr. Trevor is glad that no one heard what he said.

“You see,” said Miss Kettlewell, and she was shy and beautiful, “we are
The Kettlewell Film Company, just us; but of course we haven’t got a lot
of money----”

“A ‘lot’ is good!” said the policeman.

“My brother there,” and Miss Kettlewell pointed to the wretched man with
the Homburg hat of green plush, “was the director of an American company
in Los Angeles, but he got the sack lately and so we thought we would
make some films on our own. You see, we are such a large family! And the
recent murders gave us a really brilliant idea for a film called ‘The
Ghoul of Golders Green,’ which, thanks to you two gentlemen, we have
completed to-night. Oh, I do hope it will be a success, especially as
you have been kind enough to help us in our predicament, for we hadn’t
any money to engage actors--and we did so need two gentlemen, just like
you, who really looked the part, didn’t we, mother?”

“But, my dear child,” cried Beau Maturin, “I’m afraid your film can’t
have come out very well. Trevor and I will look perfectly ghastly, as
we neither of us had any make-up on.”

“But it’s that kind of film!” smiled Miss Kettlewell. “You see, you and
your friend are supposed to be corpses who by some powerful psychic
agency are digging your own graves---- Heavens, what’s that!”

There, at the open door, stood an apparition with a dreadful face. He
appeared, says Mr. Trevor, to have some difficulty in choosing among the
words that his state of mind was suggesting to him.

“And me?” gasped the taxi-driver hoarsely. “Wot abaht me?
‘Angingabahtallnight! ‘Oo’s going to pay me, that’s wot I want to know?
There’s four quid and more on that clock----”

Mr. Maturin swept his empty coffee-cup round to indicate the family
Kettlewell.

“My friends will pay,” sighed Mr. Maturin.




XI: FAREWELL, THESE CHARMING PEOPLE


I

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

Lady Surplice said: “I detest self-conscious people. No one was ever
self-conscious until the middle classes were invented. Oscar Wilde
invented the middle classes so that he could make fun of them, as he
would not have dreamt of making fun of his betters, like that Somerset
Maugham man. Unfortunately Oscar died without making a will, and as no
one knew what to do with his invention we let them, with usual English
slackness, grow until they have swamped the whole country.”

“The other day,” said the Lady Amelia Peep, “I went into my father’s
study to tell him that I was engaged to be married----”

“But, Amelia, you are not!” cried Lady Pynte.

“True,” said the Lady Amelia. “But to say one is engaged when one is not
and to be married without being engaged are the only parlour games open
to a _jeune fille_ of any real modesty. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘I am engaged
to be married. What do you know about that?’ He was busy writing a
letter, but absent-mindedly he stretched a hand out towards a volume of
Debrett, saying: ‘What initials, child?’ I thought that so sweet.”

“Personally,” said Lady Pynte, “I adore snobs. They are at least
faithful to their principles.”

“Faithful!” cried my Lady Surplice. “Did you say _faithful_, Cornelia?
Is there such a thing as fidelity?”

“_Dans un sauvage_,” bitterly said M. des Beaux-Aces. He would, said
Dwight-Rankin.

“But what is fidelity?” cried my lady. “Your Highness, why do you not
amuse us? I ask, what is fidelity? Is this a time for silence?”

“‘Fidelity’ is the title of a new novel,” said a young gentleman who had
not spoken before and who was requested not to speak again.

“Fidelity,” bitterly said Dame Warp, “is the only game of which a decent
woman--I said a _decent_ woman--never tires. I except, of course,
auction bridge.”

“Fidelity would be such fun,” sighed Fay Paradise, “if only one could
ever decide whom to be faithful to.”

“Amelia,” cried Lady Surplice. “I hear you were at Martha Putney’s ball
last night. What was it like?”

“Lousy, dear,” sighed the Lady Amelia.

“Fidelity,” said Lord Marketharborough, “is a beautiful talent, if I may
say so. Unfortunately, however, I am not a man of talent. I am a
genius.”

“I,” complained the Lady Amelia Peep, “know nothing of fidelity or
infidelity, as I have so far been a martyr to virginity.”

“Fidelity,” said Captain Charity, “is an art. But, surely, _ars est
celare artem_!”

“Fidelity is fiddlesticks,” snapped M. des Beaux-Aces.

“I beg your pardon!” cried Lady Pynte. “My good man, I myself know
several women who have gone through incredible ordeals in the Divorce
Courts and the Press owing to their fidelity to their lovers. Heavens,
allow us to retain _some_ virtue!”

“Fidelity,” said the young gentleman who had spoken only once before,
“is an affectation prevalent among musical-comedy actresses and
generally directed towards wealthy Jews.”

“Talking of Jews,” said M. des Beaux-Aces, “I hear that all the best
Jews are becoming Roman Catholics.”

“And what, sir, has that to do with the point?” thundered the Lord
Chancellor.

“Nothing, thank God!” said M. des Beaux-Aces. “I detest points.”

“Amelia,” bitterly said Dame Warp, “I hear you were at Martha Putney’s
ball last night. What was it like?”

“Divine, dear,” sighed the Lady Amelia.

Thus, said Dwight-Rankin, the dinner proceeded with a degree of
animation, of gaiety, that was unusual even about Lady Surplice’s
memorable table. The _morale_ of the diners was excellent: their address
polite, their appetites suave, their wit easy and swift: their _ton_, in
fine, irreproachable. While even His Highness the Prince de
Finaleauseltz was so agreeably affected by the swift interchange of
repartee and back-chat that, Dwight-Rankin assured me, he contributed
on two separate occasions to the entertainment. However....

All was, therefore, going beautifully when the Lady Fay Paradise
remarked, with amusement not untinged with repulsion, that someone had
spilled the salt.

“La!” cried Lady Pynte.

“Who has spilled the salt?” cried Lady Surplice.

“The Lord Chancellor has spilled the salt,” said Mr. Warp.

“Hell!” said the Lord Chancellor.

“Over your shoulder, over your shoulder!” cried Lady Pynte.

“Oh, Percy!” cried my lady. “To spill the salt is _most_ unlucky!”

“Oh, pouf!” said the Lady Amelia.

“Oh, dear!” said Pamela Star.

“I’m really very sorry,” said the Lord Chancellor.

“_Need_ you have spilled the salt?” bitterly said Dame Warp.

“Really, why all this fuss?” sighed Fay Paradise.

“Fuss indeed!” cried Lady Surplice.

“I’m really very sorry,” said the Lord Chancellor.

“My father,” said His Highness, “lost his crown on the day he spilled
some salt.”

“Then to spill salt must be lucky,” remarked de Travest, “for your
grandfather, sir, lost his head without having the chance to spill any
salt.”

“Well, all I can say is,” sighed my lady, “that I thank Heaven we are
not dining thirteen.”

“I’m really very sorry,” said the Lord Chancellor.

It was exactly at that moment, said Dwight-Rankin, that someone at the
table let out a yell. Who it was, no one can tell to this day. But
someone, even as Lord Marketharborough spoke, sobbed:

“But we are! We are thirteen!”

You can’t, said Dwight-Rankin, describe in so many words the effect of
that sob of terror. It must have been as though someone had turned a tap
somewhere and let out the blood from all their faces. One might imagine
them, said Dwight-Rankin, as all eyes, blanched eyes, staring
frantically at the empty chair on which had been but a moment before the
person of him who called himself Captain Charity.

“But this is too much!” sobbed Lady Pynte.

Lord Marketharborough, however, appeared to be quite unmoved. He said:
“When is a chap not a chap? When he falls under the table before even
the port has been round.”

But Captain Charity wasn’t, said Dwight-Rankin, under the table. He
wasn’t, in fact, anywhere to be seen in the large room. They looked
everywhere, while the bewildered silence was broken only by the
breathing of Dame Warp, who had notable adenoids.

“Talbot!” cried Lady Surplice.

“I’m afraid poor Talbot won’t be much use on _this_ occasion,” murmured
Shelmerdene.

“But the man can’t have disappeared!” cried my lady. “Talbot, did you
see Captain Charity leave the room? Answer me at once, Talbot. Is this a
time for silence?”

It needed, said Dwight-Rankin, only the base terror on the man Talbot’s
rugged face to seal the terror of the company.

“For God’s sake, man, speak up!” snapped the young gentleman who had
spoken only twice before.

“I saw him go!” whispered the man Talbot. “Saw ’im, I did, with these
eyes! One second he was on that chair, and the next--gorn, phut! Begging
your pardon, my lady----”

And then, said Dwight-Rankin, came perhaps the worst blow of all. It was
only then that Shelmerdene grew really, sharply, terrified. For on the
immovability, the valiancy, of my lord Viscount de Travest all who were
privileged to know him were wont to rely, as on a very column of
courage. Whereas now, what could they think? For, as the man Talbot made
an end to his craven whispering, Guy de Travest was seen to be rising in
his chair, his eyes as though frozen to some point of the room, his
forehead, glistening with those clean drops of sweat that add to the
charm of officers of the Household Cavalry and distinguish them from
those genteel persons who “perspire.” However....

“The deuce!” whispered de Travest. “Oh, the deuce! Look!”

“Oh!” screamed the Lady Amelia Peep, and, screaming, fainted.

He didn’t, said Dwight-Rankin, know much about furniture: but
along the wall towards the doors was a long sort of antique
whatdoyoucallem--anyhow, there was an antique arrangement there, and on
it, at intervals of a foot or so apart, stood a noble line of a dozen
candles in tall candlesticks.

“Guy!” cried Fay Paradise. “Guy, what is it?”

De Travest, now standing high above the company, was staring at the line
of twelve candles on the whatdoyoucallem. He murmured: “I don’t know.”

“Percy,” shrilled Lady Surplice, “what do you think?”

“There’s some trickery here!” sternly said the Lord Chancellor, who had
followed the direction of de Travest’s eyes. “Tell Talbot to keep that
door closed.”

“I daren’t, my lady!” the man Talbot trembled.

Someone laughed.

“Who laughed?” cried Shelmerdene.

De Travest snapped: “Why are you going, man? What’s your hurry?”

“But who is he talking to?” sobbed Lady Pynte.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Dame Warp bitterly.

“You there, who are you?” snapped de Travest.

“Gently, Guy, gently!” said Mr. Warp. “Let us not provoke him. Let us
not provoke anyone.”

“Oh!” screamed Lady Surplice, and then it was that everyone realised to
the full what ghastly portent it was that held the grim attention of the
Lord Chancellor and Guy de Travest. For, said Dwight-Rankin, the flames
of the twelve candles on the whatdoyoucallem were one by one being
obscured before their very eyes, as by a presence passing between them
and the candles towards the door; and as the presence passed on its way,
so each small flame was again visible.

“But I can’t bear this!” sobbed Lady Surplice. “What does it mean? Why
doesn’t someone speak? Is this a time for silence?”

Slowly, slowly, the presence passed between their eyes and the candles
towards the door: the eighth candle, the ninth, tenth, eleventh----

“Talbot, hold that door!” cried de Travest.

Someone laughed.

“Who laughed?” sobbed Lady Pynte.

Lord Marketharborough spoke: “What is this absurdity, sir? Who the devil
are you? Speak up now!”

They saw the door-knob turn, they heard it turn.

“Not so quickly!” cried de Travest. “We can’t let you go so quickly!”

“Gently, Guy, gently!” said Mr. Warp. “Let him go. We can then discuss
the matter at our leisure.”

They saw the door open, an inch, a little further....

“The word ‘devil,’” said a voice from the opening door, and the very
voice, said Dwight-Rankin, seemed to smile in a cold but charming way,
“the word ‘devil,’ my lord, comes very apt to this moment; and is, if
you but knew it, more precisely organic to the occasion than at any
previous time in the life which you have dedicated to me with such high
scholarship, iron principle and lofty ardour. But I must take this
opportunity to protest,” warmly continued the voice of Captain Charity,
“against the present frivolous use of such major expletives as ‘hell,’
‘damnation’ and ‘devil.’ They were created only for occasions of deep
corruption, for moments of incredible baseness, for profound and
monstrous annoyances, and, in particular, for use during times of
inconceivable boredom. For instance, I might with propriety apply each
one of them severally to different aspects of Lady Surplice’s charming
dinner-party; but courtesy forbids. I give you farewell, my lord, ladies
and gentlemen.”

“You might apply, sir! You give us farewell, sir! How, sir!” cried my
Lord Marketharborough, who was not less fearless as a man than he was
puissant as a lawyer. “And you dare to say, young man, that I have
dedicated my life to you!”

“’Tis a point that seems to me self-evident, Lord Marketharborough.
Since when have you been taught in your schools that the laws, which
you, my lord, so vigorously interpret, come from Jehovah? The only laws
that Jehovah ever gave to the world were the tribal laws that may have
been good enough for a pack of grubby Jews in the dawn of understanding
but have been broken ever since at Satan’s instigation by every
self-respecting person: laws that encourage cruelty, exact poverty,
condemn beauty, deride chivalry, proscribe joy, deplore elegance, and
insist on a sordid and indiscriminate chastity. But was it Jehovah who
gave you the divine consolation of Divorce? Or is it not He, the jealous
God, who is ever so envious of Satan’s suggestions for greater happiness
between men and women that He has imbued His priests on earth with a
ferocious enmity to everything that can untie a man and a woman from the
intolerable ordeal of an unhappy union. Jehovah has given you the sword,
the rack, pestilence, Christianity, The King’s Proctor and Prohibition.
Satan gave you the glorious beauty of Greece, the Pax Romana and the
genius of invention. Jehovah gave you that ill-favoured lout, Martin
Luther. Satan gave you Voltaire, who was a fallen archangel incarnate.
Jehovah gave you the Cross. Satan gave you Chivalry. O Chivalry, poor
broken-winged angel of light! She was the dark one’s favourite child,
but your dour civilisation of the past ten centuries has been maiming
her until she now lies broken and dying, her tears washing over the
ruins of the past, her soul agonised by visions of the holocausts of the
future, her eyes set with despairing prayer only on the few scientists,
inventors and artists who are the hope of this rapacious and saintly
world.”

The agreeable and scholarly voice of Mr. Warp broke the silence:

“Your utterances, sir, appear to me to show a decidedly anti-Semitic
bias. Are you sure that is quite wise?”

“Socially, yes; politically, no. And I believe, Mr. Warp, that all good
Englishmen have been accommodating themselves to that dilemma for the
last fifty years. By inclination, however, I am naturally an
anti-Semite, since Hebrew is the language current in Paradise.”

“For pity’s sake,” said M. des Beaux-Aces, “don’t say that English is
the language current in Hell. They have already all the richest
colonies.”

“In the Scriptures,” said Dame Warp bitterly, “it is written, if I
remember aright, that persons with such unconventional views as yours
are consigned forever with appropriate torments to a place which it ill
befits a decent woman--I said a _decent_ woman--to call Hell. I can see,
however, no traces of the chastening effect of so proper a punishment in
your form of address to people to whom you have been scarcely
introduced. Indeed, you seem to be an unpleasantly self-assured young
man.”

“Gently, my love,” Mr. Warp admonished her. “We are not yet precisely
informed as to who the creature is. Should he be Lucifer himself a
certain arrogance is permitted to him by the unanimous authority of all
the best scholiasts. I incline to think, however, that he is only an
inferior demon, such as plague the shrill imaginations of minor French
agnostics and continually prick the Conservative Party into a senseless
antipathy to Free Trade. But let us wait----”

The door, which had all this while been held ajar, closed sharply. De
Travest started. Had the presence gone? Cries my Lord Marketharborough:

“Have you run away, you inferior demon you?”

“Dear me, no!” sighed the Other wearily. “But I must confess that I am
astounded at the ease with which you charming people put up with this
kind of thing night after night. You might, I do assure you, just as
well be locked in the perpetual shadows of Eblis. But I suppose I must
stay until I have fulfilled my promise----”

“Your promise!” cried Lady Surplice. “What promise? What is the dreadful
man talking about now?”

De Travest spoke sternly: “Sir, may I remind you that we of our
generation are not easily frightened by invisible presences, phantoms,
imps, ghosts, vampires and demons?”

“Oh, come!” laughed the Other. “Your generation, nay, your century, is
more susceptible of superstition than any that has gone before. It is
merely that you have altered the angle, and are now enslaved by the
meanest superstition of all, which is common sense.”

“That may or may not be,” said the Lord Chancellor; “but may I point out
to you, young man, that it is considered neither polite nor manly to sit
at a lady’s table only to distress her?”

“A lady?” said the Other.

“A lady, certainly!” snapped my lord.

“What lady?”

“Lady Surplice, sir.”

“Well, she may be a lady,” said the Other severely, “but she is
certainly no gentlewoman.”

“What!” cried Lady Surplice, her terror on the instant supplanted by
anger. “Are you referring to me, you low man? Talbot! Where is Talbot?
Talbot, show this person the door! If you cannot see him, you can see
the door. Open it.”

“That will do, Lady Surplice!” said the Other sharply; and now for the
first time, said Dwight-Rankin, the voice of him who called himself
Captain Charity was informed with a degree of severity quite unusual in
polite society. “You cannot hope, Lady Surplice, with your worldly quips
and cunning impertinences, to impress one of my condition and
experience. You forget that I, had I no other claim to distinction, am
the supreme host of all time.”

“You forget Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts,” said the Lord Chancellor, who
had had a good education.

“My friend,” said de Travest, “are you imp, god, or devil? You are too
self-confident for an imp, you attach too much importance to your social
position to be a god, so you are probably, as Mr. Warp suggested, some
inferior demon in search of cheap distraction. What is your name,
fellow?”

“I am that which is so dark that beside me darkness is radiance, and I
am that which walks in such brightness that I darken the sun and stars.
I am that which is stronger than God and more enduring than stone, and I
am that which is frailer than a flower and more destructible than glass.
I am that which cannot be killed, and I am that which dies a thousand
deaths every day. I am the spirit of man. But the interpreters of your
God, in their illiterate fulminations, have made my name familiar to you
under many vile disguises, the better to sacrifice the spirit of man to
the savagery of mankind.”

“Young man,” said the Lord Chancellor severely, “are you seriously
implying that you are the Prince of Darkness?”

“We do not recognise that title!” cried Lady Surplice. “Prince, indeed!
It is not in Burke, Debrett or the Almanack de Gotha----”

“Under how many vile disguises, woman!”

“What I want to know is,” said de Travest mildly, “why you insist on
calling me Michael? since, you know, my name is Guy.”

“Merely in moments of forgetfulness, de Travest. In appearance you
remind me of one whom I once loved as a brother, in the days before time
was. How calm and beautiful he was, in his golden cuirass and diamond
helmet! Only my love for the beautiful archangels Michael, Gabriel and
Raphael, kept me so long in subjection to the Lord of Hosts. But the
time came when I, the most favoured captain of the empyrean, the prince
of the hierarchy of archangels, with only the wings of the terrible and
adorable choir of cherubim and seraphim between my eager youth and the
thunderbolts of Jehovah, could no longer brook His ignorant and warlike
complacency. As you have been taught, I raised the black standards of
revolt; was at last defeated by Michael, Captain of the Hosts; and was
plunged into Hell for eternity. I turned to Nature. I watched this
planet come into being from the boiling elements. I watched this world’s
virginity. Then, after many æons, I observed the growth of mankind. At
first I was appalled at the misery in store for these helpless
creatures. Then, as I perceived mankind’s blind will to live and savage
instinct to conquer, to acquire, to destroy, I lay for long ages in fear
of the wretchedness in store for Nature, how it would be desecrated,
perverted and ravished by these creatures who could dominate all other
animals merely because of an opposable thumb. I conceived a plan to
avert this calamity; and, walking the earth in many shapes, I directed
mankind to fulfil its most childish dreams and to sink into Nature’s
bosom, wherein only can be found true joy, true love, and perfect peace.
I succeeded. The Greeks were beautiful because I taught them to adore
beauty: they made things of beauty because I taught them to worship
their own beauty: and the gods they served were beautiful because they
made their gods after their own image. I nearly succeeded with the Roman
world. But my ancient enemy sent the man Paul to revive the savagery in
men and women and to wither the love of Nature in the hearts of
children. Since then my enemy has ruled the world. Yet, only the other
day, I thought I saw a fit opportunity for my beneficial interference:
with my heart afire with love of mankind, which I have helped through so
many trials, I inspired certain noble minds with the crusade of the
League of Nations. But mankind has preferred the dictates of its cruel
God, the Lord of Hosts, who has long since given up trying to govern men
through Christianity and now leads them by the nose with the childish
superstition of common sense; and I have now no more hope for the
happiness of a world that will deride the audacious gentleness of a
Woodrow Wilson and countenance the rapacious insolence of a Poincaré,
the vulgar dictatorship of a Mussolini, the unnatural charm of a Winston
Churchill, and the complacent gracelessness of a gentleman who only too
obviously rejoices in the name of Elihu Root.”

The agreeable and scholarly voice of Mr. Warp broke the silence:

“Your utterances, sir, appear to me to show a decidedly anti-Chauvinist
bias. For my part, since the invasion of the Ruhr by the French and the
assault on Corfu by the Italians, I have never been able to think of
Poincaré or Mussolini without a grave disorder of mind. May I ask, sir,
if you favour the Liberal school of thought? We would be far from
disdaining your assistance in our imminent campaign for convincing the
people of the essential truths of Liberalism.”

“I incline, if anything, to Labour, Mr. Warp; and hope to assist that
party to very considerable success at your next elections; for, if I may
say so, you cannot sweep a party out of existence for long by talking
like a pack of silly schoolboys of biscuits, motor-cars and secret
documents.”

“Hear, hear!” said the Lord Chancellor, who had gone to sleep and was
dreaming that he was listening to a speech against Prohibition.

“On the other hand,” mildly said de Travest, “we are still awaiting an
explanation of your sickening intrusion into Lady Surplice’s house.”

“Mrs. Amp sent me,” said the Other wearily.

“Mrs. Amp!” cried Lady Surplice. “Mrs. Amp? That low woman!”

“How can you bring yourself to know such women?” said Dame Warp
bitterly. “Particularly when, through sundry minor faults, there must
be so many decent women--I said _decent_ women--in your, well,
environment.”

“She amuses me,” said Satan. “However,” the voice went on, “as I have
fulfilled my promise, I will now, with your permission, take my leave.”

“But, Prince,” cried Lady Surplice, “what was your promise? What have
you fulfilled? What has that low woman to do with it? I insist on
knowing, Prince. Is this a time for silence?”

“My promise was merely this, Lady Surplice. At a recent dinner-party of
Mrs. Amp’s, at which the guests of honour were Julius Cæsar,
Shakespeare, Samuel Pepys, Balzac and myself, I was reckless enough to
promise Mrs. Amp that I would ascend to earth one evening and spoil a
dinner-party of yours. I will report to her, however, that a
dinner-party so brilliant as yours would need the dulness of Jehovah
himself to spoil it. _Monseigneur_, I give you farewell. Ladies,
good-bye. _Adieu, caballeros!_”

“Stop, stop, stop!” cried Lady Surplice, frantically starting from her
chair. “Just one moment, my dear Prince----”

“Well, just one,” sighed the archangel of sin, “for I promised Mrs. Amp
to be back in time to hear Napoleon’s after-dinner speech on the
intellectual obesity of soldiers, and successful soldiers in particular.
What have you to say?”

“But am I to understand,” cried my lady indignantly, “that this
monstrous woman is allowed to give all the parties she likes in Hell?”

“Naturally, madam. Else why should it be called Hell?”

“Then,” flashed my lady with a brilliant smile, “when I die, I shall
also be able to give----”

“When you die, Lady Surplice, you will go to Heaven. For you are a good
woman. You have a kind heart. You have cared for your husband and your
children, and you have always given freely to the sick, the halt, the
blind, the deaf and the dumb. In fact, Lady Surplice, I am very glad to
have allowed myself this opportunity of congratulating you. You and your
butler are perhaps the only two people in this room who will ascend to
salvation. The odour of your sanctity already shames me, Lady Surplice.
The saints in Paradise shall find in you a matchless companion. Talbot,
the bosom of Abraham awaits you. I hope you will like it. Your only
crimes, Lady Surplice, have been those of snobbery and vulgarity; and as
the Bible was written before the existence of modern England, France and
America, the very possibility of snobbery and vulgarity was unthought
of, and thus they escaped inclusion among the heinous sins----”

“But look here,” protested Guy de Travest, “what reason but cruelty can
you have for altering Lady Surplice’s destiny? It appears to me a gross
case of prejudice, since, after all, Mrs. Amp has been allowed to ascend
to Hell----”

“_De_scend, Guy,” said the Lord Chancellor. “All authorities combine in
agreeing that the movement, if any, is downwards.”

“Mrs. Amp,” said the Other wearily, “has a claim to my hospitality
because she poisoned her husband. Now, upon my word, I really must
go----”

“But you mustn’t, you can’t!” sobbed my lady in distraction. “Am I to
understand that when I die I must go to Heaven--while all my friends,
all these charming people, are enjoying themselves in Hell at Mrs. Amp’s
parties? Oh, is that just, Prince, is that reasonable, is it even
gentlemanly?”

“You know, it really is not my fault,” protested the Prince of Darkness.
“It is the will of God. Good-bye, Lady Surplice. To you others I need
only say _au revoir_, for you are all miserable sinners.”

The company, said Dwight-Rankin, were sore distressed at Lady Surplice’s
plight, for the good lady was dear to them; and they would fain have
done all they could to ease her mind as she whimpered, in an access of
helplessness and despair: “Prince, cannot you--Oh!--can’t you prevail on
God to let me--Oh, dear!--to let me waive the distinction just this
once? I simply can’t face the idea of being parted from my
friends--please, Prince, won’t you be a dear and prevail on Him to----”

“Enough, madam!” thundered the voice of the fallen child of light. “Go
you to salvation! Behold, am I not the enemy of Jehovah? These are my
final words, Lady Surplice. Prepare yourself for your ascent. Let your
soul yearn for Heaven and your spirit accommodate itself to the idea of
walking forever in the groves of Paradise to the songs of the harp and
the lyre. Begone!”

“Begone?” said the Lady Amelia indignantly. “That is a harsh word to
give a lady in her own house!”

“Surely,” snapped de Travest, “you are not so wanting in manners as to
drink a lady’s wine and then kill her!”

“What can I do, my friend? It is the immemorial curse of thirteen, and
the super-added curse of the spilled salt. And I thought, as Lady
Surplice is the only one among you who is going to Heaven, that it would
be appreciated in me as an act of courtesy to allow her precedence in
death.”

“Please, may I say one word?” begged Shelmerdene, her eyes pitifully on
the despairing face of her hostess. “I have been Muriel Surplice’s
friend for many years, she has on several occasions been very kind and
good to me, and I cannot sit calmly by and watch her being wronged.
Sir,” said Shelmerdene to Satan, “this lady you would so recklessly
consign to Heaven has committed a crime every bit as heinous as that for
which Mrs. Amp is now suffering indigestion.”

“A crime?” cried Lady Surplice gladly. “Bless you, Shelmerdene dear! But
what crime was it?”

“Shelmerdene,” said Satan gently, “are you mocking me? Was it to be
mocked by you that I gave you charm, beauty and good sense, such a
combination of virtues as never was known before? Was it to be mocked by
you that I inspired a youth to give you a name which, although it is not
your real name, becomes you better than any real name could?”

“This lady,” cried Shelmerdene, “once had a lover----”

“Scarcely a crime,” said Lucifer. “Heaven has long since given up
rejecting women who have had lovers. The angels protested that they
found none but plain women wherever they walked in Paradise.”

“But she killed him!” cried Shelmerdene.

“Come, Shelmerdene!” said Dame Warp bitterly: “No decent woman--I said
no _decent_ woman--ever kills her lover.”

“Shelmerdene, are you sure I did?” sighed Lady Surplice. “Are you quite
sure, dear? Did I really kill him?”

“You did, darling, I assure you,” said Shelmerdene. “You bored him to
death. He begged me with his dying breath not to tell you, and I
wouldn’t have if I weren’t so fond of you.”

“Then,” sighed the Prince of Darkness, “she may go to Hell.”

And, said Dwight-Rankin, even as the door was seen to close, it was also
seen how all colour was instantly ravished from Lady Surplice’s face and
how she sat in her chair still and cold. But even in death, said
Dwight-Rankin, a smile of such happiness lit her face that her many
friends, who never could think of her departure from among them but with
the deepest regret, found solace in the certainty of the good lady’s
contentment in the other world. However....

At the inquest it was naturally given out that Lady Surplice had died in
some natural way: for who, asked Dwight-Rankin, would believe the tale
of what had actually happened, who would believe the tale of him who
called himself, with infinite mockery, Captain Charity? And who,
continued Dwight-Rankin, would believe that, but for the kindly
intervention of Shelmerdene, the spiritual parts of poor Lady Surplice
would even now and forever be arranged in that position over the ivory
parapets of Paradise in which she could most comfortably stare down,
with intolerable longing, at the social gaieties of another place?

“Who, indeed!” I echoed gloomily.


V

Dwight-Rankin fell silent. The restaurant was emptying. Voices from
distant tables approached ours and perished against the wall of silence
that had risen upon the end of Dwight-Rankin’s relation. I could say
nothing. At last Dwight-Rankin said: “Had poor Lady Surplice been alive
now, she would have been staying at this very hotel. I would have been
lunching with her. At this very moment I would have been enjoying a
cigar over a nice spot of brandy.”

I ordered cigars and liqueurs. At that moment a lady entered the
restaurant. She appeared to be a person of consideration. Waiters rushed
towards her, _maîtres d’hôtel_ bowed down before her. She waived them
away. Her present concern appeared to have nothing to do with food,
although her proportions were not those of one who had in the past
indulged any aspirations to asceticism. Her face was large and
good-humoured. When she smiled, her face was very large and very
good-humoured indeed. She smiled now, bearing down on Dwight-Rankin.
Silence perished around her. I prepared to fly. She enveloped the void
about our table. The pearls about her throat were larger than her eyes,
but her eyes shone more brilliantly than the diamonds on her hands. She
strode into the silence like a warrior from Babel; and a forest of
laughter stood on the site of the Ritz Hotel. She cried: “Dwight-Rankin!
The very man I am looking for! Now I want you to be certain and come
to----”

Dwight-Rankin indicated my presence.

“Mr.----” he said. “Mrs. Amp.”

“Say, listen, that’s not true! Mr.----, I certainly am glad to know you.
How do you do, how do you do? You must come too, Mr.----. I have read
your books. They are amazing, enchanting, universal. You are a genius. I
tell the world so. I was telling the Duke of Mall and the Grand Duke
Charles so only the other night. I said: ‘He is a genius.’ Now I want to
tell you boys that to-morrow night I am throwing the finest party that
has ever been dreamt of. It’s going to be just great. You boys have just
got to come. I’ll tell the world that there’s nothing that’s not going
to happen at that party. Muriel Surplice will be green. All her friends
are coming. Everyone is coming. Say, listen, I have taken the whole
Château de Madrid for the night and have changed it into a Venetian
lagoon and at midnight I have engaged just the most complete circus to
come and amuse us, as my point is, boys, that when one goes on a party
one should just have everything from Mah Jongg to marmosets----”

She went, at last.

Dwight-Rankin said dreamily: “Have a spot of brandy?”

I choked. “You dare!” I said. “You dare to sit there and talk to me
about spots of brandy after having palmed off on me that abominable
rigmarole----”

“But it might have happened,” said Dwight-Rankin dreamily, waving a hand
around the restaurant. “Perhaps it will happen. It certainly ought to
happen. To all these charming people. Even lions will turn. However....”


           _The end of the book called May Fair, in which
                    are told the last adventures of
                      These Charming People._



Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

be impertient=> be impertinent {pg 207}

he caught a crab=> he caught a cab {pg 276}

those inexorable twin sister=> those inexorable twin sisters {pg 327}

Then, after may æons=> Then, after many æons {pg 359}