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 withsweeping 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 primitivebadinagewas 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 anyman, 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 waspassing 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’sSpring 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 hisfiancée.
“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 herfiancé, how she came to suffer his inarticulate periods with a doubtful smile; and how finally—though he had long since ceased to whistle theSpring 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 goodand 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’sfiancéehe 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 theSpring Songto 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, havingwon 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 everythingallthe 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.”
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.
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 alwayscalm, 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 hundredemployées; 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 plainmotors. 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 eyeswere 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. Thethoughts 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, youmustexcuse me!”
Miss Wych thought: “And such things can happen in sunlight! O our Father, whywon’tYou watch Your world more carefully!”
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’ssorry, 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 arethings 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 inThe 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, itischeek,” 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 birthto 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.
“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 meto 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 beingsomethingin 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. Imustdo 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!”
There is an eminent school of thought which insists that there is no such thing in this world aschance. 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?”
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 mightescape 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 thesehappenings 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 everyonewho 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 apain. 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 ofships that pass in the night and the iron constitution of publicans, wine-bibbers, chaps, guys, ginks, bloods, bucks andbeaux. 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 masculinelingeriein 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.”
“Incrêpe-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 thesecrêpe-de-chinepyjama 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 thedewy 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 waswhispering 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’sall 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 thereis 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 hishand 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 dayhis 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!”