Some letters in Dale's round handwriting lay on the library table awaiting my signature. Dale himself had gone. A lady had called for him, said Rogers, in an electric brougham. As my chambers are on the second floor and the staircase half-way down the arcade, Rogers's detailed information surprised me. I asked him how he knew.
“A chauffeur in livery, sir, came to the door and said that the brougham was waiting for Mr. Kynnersley.”
“I don't see how the lady came in,” I remarked.
“She didn't, sir. She remained in the brougham,” said Rogers.
So Lola Brandt keeps an electric brougham.
I lunched at the club, and turned up the article “Lola Brandt” in the living encyclopaedia—that was my friend Renniker. The wonderful man gave me her history from the cradle to Cadogan Gardens, where she now resides. I must say that his details were rather vague. She rode in a circus or had a talking horse—he was not quite sure; and concerning her conjugal or extra-conjugal heart affairs he admitted that his information was either unauthenticated or conjectural. At any rate, she had not a shred of reputation. And she didn't want it, said Renniker; it would be as much use to her as a diving suit.
“She has young Dale Kynnersley in tow,” he remarked.
“So I gather,” said I. “And now can you tell me something else? What is the present state of political parties in Guatemala?”
I was not in the least interested in Guatemala; but I did not care to discuss Dale with Renniker. When he had completed his sketch of affairs in that obscure republic, I thanked him politely and ordered coffee.
Feeling in a gregarious, companionable humour—I have had enough solitude at Murglebed to last me the rest of my short lifetime—I went later in the afternoon to Sussex Gardens to call on Mrs. Ellerton. It was her day at home, and the drawing-room was filled with chattering people. I stayed until most of them were gone, and then Maisie dragged me to the inner room, where a table was strewn with the wreckage of tea.
“I haven't had any,” she said, grasping the teapot and pouring a treacly liquid into a cup. “You must have some more. Do you like it black, or with milk?”
She is a dainty slip of a girl, with deep grey eyes and wavy brown hair and a sea-shell complexion. I absently swallowed the abomination she handed me, for I was looking at her over the teacup and wondering how an exquisite-minded gentleman like Dale could forsake her for a Lola Brandt. It was not as if Maisie were an empty-headed, empty-natured little girl. She is a young person of sense, education, and character. She also adores musical comedy and a band at dinner: an excellent thing in woman—when she is very young.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“Because, my dear Maisie,” said I, “you are good to look upon. You are also dropping a hairpin.”
She hastily secured the dangling thing. “I did my hair anyhow to-day,” she explained.
Again I thought of Dale's tie and socks. The signs of a lover's “careless desolation,” described by Rosalind so minutely, can still be detected in modern youth of both sexes. I did not pursue the question, but alluded to autumn gaieties. She spoke of them without enthusiasm. Miss Somebody's wedding was very dull, and Mrs. Somebody Else's dance manned with vile and vacuous dancers. At the Opera the greatest of German sopranos sang false. All human institutions had taken a crooked turn, and her cat could not be persuaded to pay the commonest attention to its kittens. Then she asked me nonchalantly:
“Have you seen anything of Dale lately?”
“He was working with me this morning. I've been away, you know.”
“I forgot.”
“When did you last see him?” I asked.
“Oh, ages ago! He has not been near us for weeks. We used to be such friends. I don't think it's very polite of him, do you?”
“I'll order him to call forthwith,” said I.
“Oh, please don't! If he won't come of his own accord—I don't want to see him particularly.”
She tossed her shapely head and looked at me bravely.
“You are quite right,” said I. “Dale's a selfish, ill-mannered young cub.”
“He isn't!” she flashed. “How dare you say such things about him!”
I smiled and took both her hands—one of them held a piece of brown bread-and-butter.
“My dear,” said I, “model yourself on Little Bo-Peep. I don't know who gave her the famous bit of advice, but I think it was I myself in a pastoral incarnation. I had a woolly cloak and a crook, and she was like a Dresden china figure—the image of you.”
Her eyes swam, but she laughed and said I was good to her. I said:
“The man who wouldn't be good to you is an unhung villain.”
Then her mother joined us, and our little confidential talk came to an end. It was enough, however, to convince me that my poor little Ariadne was shedding many desperate tears in secret over her desertion.
On my way home I looked in on my doctor. His name is Hunnington. He grasped me by the hand and eagerly inquired whether my pain was worse. I said it was not. He professed delight, but looked disappointed. I ought to have replied in the affirmative. It is so easy to make others happy.
I dined, read a novel, and went to sleep in the cheerful frame of mind induced by the consciousness of having made some little progress on the path of eumoiriety.
The next morning Dale made his customary appearance. He wore a morning coat, a dark tie, and patent-leather boots.
“Well,” said I, “have you dressed more carefully today?”
He looked himself anxiously over and inquired whether there was anything wrong. I assured him of the impeccability of his attire, and commented on its splendour.
“Are you going to take Maisie out to lunch?”
He started and reddened beneath his dark skin. Before he could speak I laid my hand on his shoulder.
“I'm an old friend, Dale. You mustn't be angry with me. But don't you think you're treating Maisie rather badly?”
“You've no right to say so,” he burst out hotly. “No one has the right to say so. There was never a question of an engagement between Maisie and myself.”
“Then there ought to have been,” I said judicially. “No decent man plays fast and loose with a girl and throws her over just at the moment when he ought to be asking her to marry him.”
“I suppose my mother's been at you. That's what she wanted to see you about yesterday. I wish to God she would mind her own business.”
“And that I would mind mine?”
Dale did not reply. For some odd reason he is devotedly attached to me, and respects my opinion on worldly matters. He walked to the window and looked out. Presently, without turning round, he said:
“I suppose she has been rubbing it in about Lola Brandt?”
“She did mention the lady's name,” said I. “So did Renniker at the club. I suppose every one you know and many you don't are mentioning it.”
“Well, what if they are?”
“They're creating an atmosphere about your name which is scarcely that in which to make an entrance into public life.”
Still with his back turned, he morosely informed me in his vernacular that he contemplated public life with feelings of indifference, and was perfectly prepared to abandon his ambitions. I took up my parable, the same old parable that wise seniors have preached to the deluded young from time immemorial. I have seldom held forth so platitudinously even in the House of Commons. I spoke as impressively as a bishop. In the midst of my harangue he came and sat by the library table and rested his chin on his palm, looking at me quietly out of his dark eyes. His mildness encouraged me to further efforts. I instanced cases of other young men of the world who had gone the way of the flesh and had ended at the devil.
There was Paget, of the Guards, eaten to the bone by the Syren—not even the gold lace on his uniform left. There was Merridew, once the hope of the party, now living in ignoble obscurity with an old and painted mistress, whom he detested, but to whom habit and sapped will-power kept him in thrall. There was Bullen, who blew his brains out. In a generous glow I waxed prophetic and drew a vivid picture of Dale's moral, mental, physical, financial, and social ruin, and finished up in a masterly peroration.
Then, without moving, he calmly said:
“My dear Simon, you are talking through your hat!”
He had allowed me to walk backwards and forwards on the hearthrug before a blazing fire, pouring out the wealth of my wisdom, experience, and rhetoric for ten minutes by the clock, and then coolly informed me that I was talking through my hat.
I wiped my forehead, sat down, and looked at him across the table in surprise and indignation.
“If you can point out one irrelevant or absurd remark in my homily, I'll eat the hat through which you say I'm talking.”
“The whole thing is rot from beginning to end!” said he. “None of you good people know anything at all about Lola Brandt. She's not the sort of woman you think. She's quite different. You can't judge her by ordinary standards. There's not a woman like her in the wide world!”
I made a gesture of discouragement. The same old parable of the wise had evoked the same old retort from the deluded young. She was quite different from other women. She was misunderstood by the cynical and gross-minded world. A heart of virgin purity beat beneath her mercenary bosom. Her lurid past had been the reiterated martyrdom of a noble nature. O Golden Age! O unutterable silliness of Boyhood!
“For Heaven's sake, don't talk in that way!” he cried (I had been talking in that way), and he rose and walked like a young tiger about the room. “I can't stand it. I've gone mad about her. She has got into my blood somehow. I think about her all day long, and I can't sleep at night. I would give up any mortal thing on earth for her. She is the one woman in the world for me! She's the dearest, sweetest, tenderest, most beautiful creature God ever made!”
“And you honour and respect her—just as you would honour and respect Maisie?” I asked quietly.
“Of course I do!” he flashed. “Don't I tell you that you know nothing whatever about her? She is the dearest, sweetest——” etc., etc. And he continued to trumpet forth the Olympian qualities of the Syren and his own fervent adoration. I was the only being to whom he had opened his heart, and, the floodgates being set free, the torrent burst forth in this tempestuous and incoherent manner. I let him go on, for I thought it did him good; but his rhapsody added very little to my information.
The lady who had “houp-la'd” her way from Dublin to Yokohama was the spotless queen of beauty, and Dale was frenziedly, idiotically in love with her. That was all I could gather. When he had finished, which he did somewhat abruptly, he threw himself into a chair and took out his cigarette-case with shaky fingers.
“There. I suppose I've made a damn-fool exhibition of myself,” he said, defiantly. “What have you got to say about it?”
“Precisely,” I replied, “what I said before. I'll repeat it, if you like.”
Indeed, what more was there to say for the present about the lunatic business? I had come to the end of my arguments.
He reflected for a moment, then rose and came over to the fireplace.
“Look here, Simon, you must let me go my own way in this. In matters of politics and worldly wisdom and social affairs and honourable dealing and all that sort of thing I would follow you blindly. You're my chief, and a kind of elder brother as well. I would do any mortal thing for you. You know that. But you've no right to try to guide me in this matter. You know no more about it than my mother. You've had no experience. You've never let yourself go about a woman in your life. Lord of Heaven, man, you have never begun to know what it means!”
Oh, dear me! Here was the situation as old as the return of the Prodigal or the desertion of the trusting village maiden, or any other cliche in the melodrama of real life. “You are making a fool of yourself,” says Mentor. “Ah,” shrieks Telemachus, “but you never loved! You don't know what love is.”
I looked at him whimsically.
“Don't I?”
My thoughts sped back down the years to a garden in France. Her name was Clothilde. We met in a manner outrageous to Gallic propriety, as I used to climb over the garden wall to the peril of my epidermis. We loved. We were parted by stern parents—not mine—and Clothilde was packed off to the good Sisters who had previously had care of her education. Now she is fat and happy, and the wife of a banker and the mother of children.
But the romance was sad and bad and mad enough while it lasted; and when Clothilde was (figuratively) dragged from my arms I cursed and swore and out-Heroded Herod, played Termagant, and summoned the heavens to fall down and crush me miserable beneath their weight. And then her brother challenged me to fight a duel, whereupon, as the most worshipped of all She's had not received a ha'porth of harm at my hands, I called him a silly ass and threatened to break his head if he interfered any more in my legitimate despair. I smile at it now; but it was real at two-and-twenty—as real, I take it, as Dale's consuming passion for the lady of the circus.
There was also, I remembered, a certain —— But this had nothing to do with Dale. Neither had the tragedy of my lost Clothilde. The memories, however, brought a wistful touch of sympathy into my voice.
“You soberly think, my dear old Dale,” said I, “that I know nothing of love and passion and the rest of the divine madness?”
“I'm sure you don't,” he cried, with an impatient gesture. “If you did, you wouldn't—”
He came to an abrupt and confused halt.
“I wouldn't—what?”
“Nothing. I forgot what I was going to say. Let us talk of something else.”
“It was on the tip of your impulsive tongue,” said I cheerfully, “to refer to my attitude towards Miss Faversham.”
“I'm desperately sorry,” said he, reddening. “It was unpardonable. But how did you guess?”
I laughed and quoted the Latin tag about the ingenuous boy of the ingenuous visage and ingenuous modesty.
“Because I don't feverishly search the postbag for a letter from Miss Faversham you conclude I'm a bloodless automaton?”
“Please don't say any more about it, Simon,” he pleaded in deep distress.
A sudden idea struck me. I reflected, walked to the window, and, having made up my mind, sat down again. I had a weapon to hand which I had overlooked, and with the discovery came a weak craving for the boy's sympathy. I believe I care more for him than for any living creature. I decided to give him some notion of my position.
Sooner or later he would have to learn it.
“I would rather like to tell you something,” said I, “about my engagement—in confidence, of course. When Eleanor Faversham comes back I propose to ask her to release me from it.”
He drew a long breath. “I'm glad. She's an awfully nice girl, but she's no more in love with you than my mother is. But it'll be rather difficult, won't it?”
“I don't think so,” I replied, shaking my head. “It's a question of health. My doctors absolutely forbid it.”
A look of affectionate alarm sprang into his eyes. He broke into sympathy. My health? Why had I not told him before? In Heaven's name, what was the matter with me?
“Something silly,” said I. “Nothing you need worry about on my account. Only I must gopianofor the rest of my days. Marriage isn't to be thought of. There is something else I must tell you. I must resign my seat.”
“Resign your seat? Give up Parliament? When?”
“As soon as possible.”
He looked at me aghast, as if the world were coming to an end.
“We had better concoct an epistle to Raggles this morning.”
“But you can't be serious?”
“I can sometimes, my dear Dale. This is one of the afflicting occasions.”
“You out of Parliament? You out of public life? It's inconceivable. It's damnable. But you're just coming into your own—what Raggles said, what I told you yesterday. But it can't be. You can hold on. I'll do all the drudgery for you. I'll work night and day.”
And he tramped up and down the room, uttering the disconnected phrases which an honest young soul unaccustomed to express itself emotionally blurts out in moments of deep feeling.
“It's no use, Dale,” said I, “I've got my marching orders.”
“But why should they come just now?”
“When the sweets of office are dangling at my lips? It's pretty simple.” I laughed. “It's one of the little ironies that please the high gods so immensely. They have an elementary sense of humour—like that of the funny fellow who pulls your chair from under you and shrieks with laughter when you go wallop on to the floor. Well, I don't grudge them their amusement. They must have a dull time settling mundane affairs, and a little joke goes a long way with them, as it does in the House of Commons. Fancy sitting on those green benches legislating for all eternity, with never a recess and never even a dinner hour! Poor high gods! Let us pity them.”
I looked at him and smiled, perhaps a little wearily. One can always command one's eyes, but one's lips sometimes get out of control. He could not have noticed my lips, however, for he cried:
“By George, you're splendid! I wish I could take a knock-out blow like that!”
“You'll have to one of these days. It's the only way of taking it. And now,” said I, in a businesslike tone, “I've told you all this with a purpose. At Wymington it will be a case of 'Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!' The vacancy will have to be filled up at once. We'll have to find a suitable candidate. Have you one in your mind?”
“Not a soul.”
“I have.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“Me?” He nearly sprang into the air with astonishment.
“Why not?”
“They'd never adopt me.”
“I think they would,” I said. “There are men in the House as young as you. You're well known at Wymington and at headquarters as my right-hand man. You've done some speaking—you do it rather well; it's only your private conversational style that's atrocious. You've got a name familiar in public life up and down the country, thanks to your father and mother. It's a fairly safe seat. I see no reason why they shouldn't adopt you. Would you like it?”
“Like it?” he cried. “Why I'd give my ears for it.”
“Then,” said I, playing my winning card, “let us hear no more about Lola Brandt.”
He gave me a swift glance, and walked up and down the room for a while in silence. Presently he halted in front of me.
“Look here, Simon, you're a beast, but”—he smiled frankly at the quotation—“you're a just beast. You oughtn't to rub it in like that about Lola until you have seen her yourself. It isn't fair.”
“You speak now in language distinctly approaching that of reason,” I remarked. “What do you want me to do?”
“Come with me this afternoon and see her.”
My young friend had me nicely in the trap. I could not refuse.
“Very well,” said I. “But on the distinct understanding—”
“Oh, on any old understanding you like!” he cried, and darted to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To ring her up on the telephone and tell her you're coming.”
That's the worst of the young. They have such a disconcerting manner of clinching one's undertakings.
My first impression of Lola Brandt in the dimness of the room was that of a lithe panther in petticoats rising lazily from the depths of an easy chair. A sinuous action of the arm, as she extended her hand to welcome me, was accompanied by a curiously flexible turn of the body. Her hand as it enveloped, rather than grasped, mine seemed boneless but exceedingly powerful. An indoor dress of brown and gold striped Indian silk clung to her figure, which, largely built, had an appearance of great strength. Dark bronze hair and dark eyes, that in the soft light of the room glowed with deep gold reflections, completed the pantherine suggestion. She seemed to be on the verge of thirty. A most dangerous woman, I decided—one to be shut up in a cage with thick iron bars.
“It's charming of you to come. I've heard so much of you from Mr. Kynnersley. Do sit down.”
Her voice was lazy and languorous and caressing like the purr of a great cat; and there was something exotic in her accent, something seductive, something that ought to be prohibited by the police. She sank into her low chair by the fire, indicating one for me square with the hearthrug. Dale, so as to leave me a fair conversational field with the lady, established himself on the sofa some distance off, and began to talk with a Chow dog, with whom he was obviously on terms of familiarity. Madame Brandt make a remark about the Chow dog's virtues, to which I politely replied. She put him through several tricks. I admired his talent. She declared her affections to be divided between Adolphus (that was the Chow dog's name) and an ouistiti, who was confined to bed for the present owing to the evil qualities of the November air. For the first time I blessed the English climate. I hate little monkeys. I also felt a queer disappointment. A woman like that ought to have caught an ourang-outang.
She guessed my thought in an uncanny manner, and smiled, showing strong, white, even teeth—the most marvellous teeth I have ever beheld—so even as to constitute almost a deformity.
“I'm fonder of bigger animals,” she said. “I was born among them. My father was a lion tamer, so I know all the ways of beasts. I love bears—I once trained one to drive a cart—but”—with a sigh—“you can't keep bears in Cadogan Gardens.”
“You may get hold of a human one now and then,” said Dale.
“I've no doubt Madame Brandt could train him to dance to whatever tune she played,” said I.
She turned her dark golden eyes lazily, slumberously on me.
“Why do you say that, Mr. de Gex?”
This was disconcerting. Why had I said it? For no particular reason, save to keep up a commonplace conversation in which I took no absorbing interest. It was a direct challenge. Young Dale stopped playing with the Chow dog and grinned. It behooved me to say something. I said it with a bow and a wave of my hand:
“Because, though your father was a lion-tamer, your mother was a woman.”
She appeared to reflect for a moment; then addressing Dale:
“The answer doesn't amount to a ha'porth of cats'-meat, but you couldn't have got out of it like that.”
I was again disconcerted, but I remarked that he would learn in time when my mentorship was over and I handed him, a finished product, to society.
“How long will that be?” she asked.
“I don't know. Are you anxious for his immediate perfecting?”
Her shoulders gave what in ordinary women would have been a shrug: with her it was a slow ripple. I vow if her neck had been bare one could have seen it undulate beneath the skin.
“What is perfection?”
“Can you ask?” laughed Dale. “Behold!” And he pointed to me.
“That's cheap,” said the lady. “I've heard Auguste say cleverer things.”
“Who's Auguste?” asked Dale.
“Auguste,” said I, “is the generic name of the clown in the French Hippodrome.”
“Oh, the Circus!” cried Dale.
“I'll be glad if you'll teach him to call it the Hippodrome, Mr. de Gex,” she remarked, with another of her slumberous glances.
“That will be one step nearer perfection,” said I.
The short November twilight had deepened into darkness; the fire, which was blazing when we entered, had settled into a glow, and the room was lit by one shaded lamp. To me the dimness was restful, but Dale, who, with the crude instincts of youth, loves glare, began to fidget, and presently asked whether he might turn on the electric light. Permission was given. My hostess invited me to smoke and, to hand her a box of cigarettes which lay on the mantelpiece, I rose, bent over her while she lit her cigarette from my match, and resuming an upright position, became rooted to the hearthrug.
With the flood of illumination, disclosing everything that hitherto had been wrapped in shadow and mystery, came a shock.
It was a most extraordinary, perplexing room. The cheap and the costly, the rare and the common, the exquisite and the tawdry jostled one another on walls and floor. At one end of the Louis XVI sofa on which Dale had been sitting lay a boating cushion covered with a Union Jack, at the other a cushion covered with old Moorish embroidery. The chair I had vacated I discovered to be of old Spanish oak and stamped Cordova leather bearing traces of a coat-of-arms in gold. My hostess lounged in a low characterless seat amid a mass of heterogeneous cushions. There were many flowers in the room—some in Cloisonne vases, others in gimcrack vessels such as are bought at country fairs. On the mantelpiece and on tables were mingled precious ivories from Japan, trumpery chalets from the Tyrol, choice bits of Sevres and Venetian glass, bottles with ladders and little men inside them, vulgar china fowls sitting on eggs, and a thousand restless little objects screeching in dumb agony at one another.
The more one looked the more confounded became confusion. Lengths of beautifully embroidered Chinese silk formed curtains for the doors and windows; but they were tied back with cords ending in horrible little plush monkeys in lieu of tassels. A Second Empire gilt mirror hung over the Louis XVI sofa, and was flanked on the one side by a villainous German print of “The Huntsman's Return” and on the other by a dainty water-colour. Myriads of photographs, some in frames, met the eye everywhere—on the grand piano, on the occasional tables, on the mantelpiece, stuck obliquely all round the Queen Anne mirror above it, on the walls. Many of them represented animals—bears and lions and pawing horses. Dale's photograph I noticed in a silver frame on the piano. There was not a book in the place. But in the corner of the room by a further window gleamed a large marble Venus of Milo, charmingly executed, who stood regarding the welter with eyes calm and unconcerned.
I was aroused from the momentary shock caused by the revelation of this eccentric apartment by an unknown nauseous flavour in my mouth. I realised it was the cigarette to which I had helped myself from the beautifully chased silver casket I had taken from the mantelpiece. I eyed the thing and concluded it was made of the very cheapest tobacco, and was what the street urchin calls a “fag.” I learned afterwards that I was right. She purchased them at the rate of six for a penny, and smoked them in enormous quantities. For politeness' sake I continued to puff at the unclean thing until I nearly made myself sick. Then, simulating absentmindedness, I threw it into the fire.
Why, in the sacred name of Nicotine, does a luxurious lady like Lola Brandt smoke such unutterable garbage?
On the other hand, the tea which she offered us a few minutes later, and begged us to drink without milk, was the most exquisite I have tasted outside Russia. She informed us that she got it direct from Moscow.
“I can't stand your black Ceylon tea,” she remarked, with a grimace.
And yet she could smoke “fags.” I wondered what other contradictious tastes she possessed. No doubt she could eat blood puddings with relish and had a discriminating palate for claret. Truly, a perplexing lady.
“You must find leisure in London a great change after your adventurous career,” said I, by way of polite conversation.
“I just love it. I'm as lazy as a cat,” she said, settling with her pantherine grace among the cushions. “Do you know what has been my ambition ever since I was a kid?”
“Whatever of woman's ambitions you had you must have attained,” said I, with a bow.
“Pooh!” she said. “You mean that I can have crowds of men falling in love with me. That's rubbish.” She was certainly frank. “I meant something quite different. I wonder whether you can understand. The world used to seem to me divided into two classes that never met—we performing people and the public, the thousand white faces that looked at us and went away and talked to other white faces and forgot all about performing animals till they came next time. Now I've got what I wanted. See? I'm one of the public.”
“And you love Philistia better than Bohemia?” I asked.
She knitted her brows and looked at me puzzled.
“If you want to talk to me,” she said, “you must talk straight. I've had no more education than a tinker's dog.”
She made this peculiar announcement, not defiantly, not rudely, but appealingly, graciously. It was not a rebuke for priggishness; it was the unpresentable statement of a fact. I apologized for a lunatic habit of speech and paraphrased my question.
“In a word,” cried Dale, coming in on my heels with an elucidation of my periphrasis, “what de Gex is driving at is—Do you prefer respectability to ramping round?”
She turned slowly to him. “My dear boy, when do you think I was not respectable?”
He jumped from the sofa as if the Chow dog had bitten him.
“Good Heavens, I never meant you to take it that way!”
She laughed, stretched up a lazy arm to him, and looked at him somewhat quizzically in the face as he kissed her finger-tips. Although I could have boxed the silly fellow's ears, I vow he did it in a very pretty fashion. The young man of the day, as a general rule, has no more notion how to kiss a woman's hand than how to take snuff or dance a pavane. Indeed, lots of them don't know how to kiss a girl at all.
“My dear,” she said. “I was much more respectable sitting on the stage at tea with my horse, Sultan, than supping with you at the Savoy. You don't know the deadly respectability of most people in the profession, and the worst of it is that while we're being utterly dull and dowdy, the public think we're having a devil of a time. So we don't even get the credit of our virtues. I prefer the Savoy—and this.” She turned to me. “It is nice having decent people to tea. Do you know what I should love? I should love to have an At Home day—and receive ladies, real ladies. And I have such a sweet place, haven't I?”
“You have many beautiful things around you,” said I truthfully.
She sighed. “I should like more people to see them.”
“In fact,” said I, “you have social ambitions, Madame Brandt?”
She looked at me for a moment out of the corner of her eye.
“Are you skinning me?” she asked.
Where she had picked up this eccentric metaphor I know not. She had many odd turns of language as yet not current among the fashionable classes. I gravely assured her that I was not sarcastic. I commended her praiseworthy aspirations.
“But,” said I innocently, “don't you miss the hard training, the physical exercise, the delight of motion, the excitement, the——?”—my vocabulary failing me, I sketched with a gesture the equestrienne's classical encouragement to her steed.
She looked at me uncomprehendingly.
“The what?” she asked.
“What are you playing at?” inquired Dale.
“I was referring to the ring,” said I.
They both burst out laughing, to my discomfiture.
“What do you take me for? A circus rider? Performing in a tent and living in a caravan? You think I jump through a hoop in tights?”
“All I can say,” I murmured, by way of apology, “is that it's a mendacious world. I'm deeply sorry.”
Why had I been misled in this shameful manner?
Madame Brandt with lazy good nature accepted my excuses.
“I'm what is professionally known as adompteuse,” she explained. “Of course, when I was a kid I was trained as an acrobat, for my father was poor; but when he grew rich and the owner of animals, which he did when I was fourteen, I joined him and worked with him all over the world until I went on my own. Do you mean to say you never heard of me?”
“Madame Brandt,” said I, “the last thing to be astonished at is human ignorance. Do you know that 30 per cent of the French army at the present day have never heard of the Franco-Prussian War?”
“My dear Simon,” cried Dale, “the two things don't hang together. The Franco-Prussian War is not advertised all over France like Beecham's Pills, whereas six years ago you couldn't move two steps in London without seeing posters of Lola Brandt and her horse Sultan.”
“Ah, the horse!” said I. “That's how the wicked circus story got about.”
“It was the last act I ever did,” said Madame Brandt. “I taught Sultan—oh, he was a dear, beautiful thing—to count and add up and guess articles taken from the audience. I was at the Hippodrome. Then at the Nouveau Cirque at Paris; I was at St. Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin—all over Europe with Sultan.”
“And where is Sultan now?” I asked.
“He is dead. Somebody poisoned him,” she replied, looking into the fire. After a pause she continued in a low voice, singularly like the growl of a wrathful animal, “If ever I meet that man alive it will go hard with him.”
At that moment the door opened and the servant announced:
“Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos!”
Whereupon the shortest creature that ever bore so lengthy a name, a dwarf not more than four feet high, wearing a frock coat and bright yellow gloves, entered the room, and crossing it at a sort of trot fell on his knees by the side of Madame Brandt's chair.
“Ah! Carissima, je vous vois enfin, Ach liebes Herz! Que j'ai envie de pleurer!”
Madame Brandt smiled, took the creature's head between her hands and kissed his forehead. She also caressed his shoulders.
“My dear Anastasius, how good it is to see you. Where have you been this long time? Why didn't you write and let me know you were in England? But, see, Anastasius, I have visitors. Let me introduce you.”
She spoke in French fluently, but with a frank British accent, which grated on a fastidious ear. The dwarf rose, made two solemn bows, and declared himself enchanted. Although his head was too large for his body, he was neither ill-made nor repulsive. He looked about thirty-five. A high forehead, dark, mournful eyes, and a black moustache and imperial gave him an odd resemblance to Napoleon the Third.
“I arrived from New York this morning, with my cats. Oh, a mad success. I have one called Phoebus, because he drives a chariot drawn by six rats. Phoebus Apollo was the god of the sun. I must show him to you, Madonna. You would love him as I love you. And I also have an angora, my beautiful Santa Bianca. And you, gentlemen”—he turned to Dale and myself and addressed us in his peculiar jargon of French, German, and Italian—“you must come and see my cats if I can get a London engagement. At present I must rest. The artist needs repose sometimes. I will sun myself in the smiles of our dear lady here, and my pupil and assistant, Quast, can look after my cats. Meanwhile the brain of the artist,” he tapped his brow, “needs to lie fallow so that he can invent fresh and daring combinations. Do such things interest you, messieurs?”
“Vastly,” said I.
He pulled out of his breast pocket an enormous gilt-bound pocket-book, bearing a gilt monogram of such size that it looked like a cartouche on an architectural panel, and selected therefrom three cards which he gravely distributed among us. They bore the legend:
PROFESSOR ANASTASIUS PAPADOPOULOS GOLD AND SILVER MEDALLIST THE CAT KING LE ROI DES CHATS DER KATZEN KONIG
London Agents: MESSRS. CONTO & BLAG,
172 Maiden Lane, W.C.
“There,” said he, “I am always to be found, should you ever require my services. I have a masterpiece in my head. I come on to the scene like Bacchus drawn by my two cats. How are the cats to draw my heavy weight? I'll have a noiseless clockwork arrangement that will really propel the car. You must come and see it.”
“Delighted, I'm sure,” said Dale, who stood looking down on the Liliputian egotist with polite wonder. Lola Brandt glanced at him apologetically.
“You mustn't mind him, Dale. He has only two ideas in his head, his cats and myself. He's devoted to me.”
“I don't think I shall be jealous,” said Dale in a low voice.
“Foolish boy!” she whispered.
During the love scene, which was conducted in English, a language which Mr. Papadopoulos evidently did not understand, the dwarf scowled at Dale and twirled his moustache fiercely. In order to attract Madame Brandt's attention he fetched a packet of papers from his pocket and laid them with a flourish on the tea-table.
“Here are the documents,” said he.
“What documents?”
“A full inquiry into the circumstances attending the death of Madame Brandt's horse Sultan.”
“Have you found out anything, Anastasius?” she asked, in the indulgent tone in which one addresses an eager child.
“Not exactly,” said he. “But I have a conviction that by this means the murderer will be brought to justice. To this I have devoted my life—in your service.”
He put his hand on the spot of his tightly buttoned frock-coat that covered his heart, and bowed profoundly. It was obvious that he resented our presence and desired to wipe us out of our hostess's consideration. I glanced ironically at Dale's disgusted face, and smiled at the imperfect development of his sense of humour. Indeed, to the young, humour is only a weapon of offence. It takes a philosopher to use it as defensive armour. Dale burned to outdo Mr. Papadopoulos. I, having no such ambition, laid my hand on his arm and went forward to take my leave.
“Madame Brandt,” said I, “old friends have doubtless much to talk over. I thank you for the privilege you have afforded me of making your acquaintance.”
She rose and accompanied us to the landing outside the flat door. After saying good-bye to Dale, who went down with his boyish tread, she detained me for a second or two, holding my hand, and again her clasp enveloped it like some clinging sea-plant. She looked at me very wistfully.
“The next time you come, Mr. de Gex, do come as a friend and not as an enemy.”
I was startled. I thought I had conducted the interview with peculiar suavity.
“An enemy, dear lady?”
“Yes. Can't I see it?” she said in her languorous, caressing voice. “And I should love to have you for a friend. You could be such a good one. I have so few.”
“I must argue this out with you another time,” said I diplomatically.
“That's a promise,” said Lola Brandt.
“What's a promise?” asked Dale, when I joined him in the hall.
“That I will do myself the pleasure of calling on Madame again.”
The porter whistled for a cab. A hansom drove up. As my destination was the Albany, and as I knew Dale was going home to Eccleston Square, I held out my hand.
“Good-bye, Dale. I'll see you to-morrow.”
“But aren't you going to tell me what you think of her?” he cried in great dismay.
The pavement was muddy, the evening dark, and a gusty wind blew the drizzle into our faces. It is only the preposterously young who expect a man to rhapsodise over somebody else's inamorata at such a moment. I turned up the fur collar of my coat.
“She is good-looking,” said I.
“Any idiot can see that!” he burst out impatiently. “I want to know what opinion you formed of her.”
I reflected. If I could have labelled her as the Scarlet Woman, the Martyred Saint, the Jolly Bohemian, or the Bold Adventuress, my task would have been easy. But I had an uncomfortable feeling that Lola Brandt was not to be classified in so simple a fashion. I took refuge in a negative.
“She would hardly be a success,” said I, “in serious political circles.”
With that I made my escape.