Dear Mr. Overshaw, I am starting for Egypt to-morrow. I hope you will redeem your promise.With kind regards,Yours sincerely,Lucilla Merriton.
Dear Mr. Overshaw, I am starting for Egypt to-morrow. I hope you will redeem your promise.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
Lucilla Merriton.
Paralysed then were the promptings towards sluggish plentitude and tepid matrimonial comfort. Love summoned him to fantastic adventure. For a while he lost mental balance. He decided to put himself in the hands of Fortinbras. He would abide loyally by his decision. Under his auspices he had already made one successful bid for happiness. By dismissing Margett’s Universal College to the limbo of irretrievable things, according to the Dealer’s instructions, had he not tasted during the past five months hundreds of the once forbidden delights of life? Was he the same man who in apologetic trepidation had written to Corinna in August? His blind faith in Fortinbras was intensified by knowledge of the suffering whereby the Dealer in Happiness had acquired wisdom. East or West, whichever way Fortinbras pointed, he would go.
Thus in some measure he salved his conscience when he left Brantôme. Bigourdin expected him back at the end of his fortnight’s holiday. So did Félise. She packed him a little basket of food and wine, and with a smile bade him hasten back. She did not question the purport of his journey. He needed a change, a peep into the great world of Paris and London.
“If you have a quarter the good time I had, I envy you,” she said.
And Bigourdin, with a grip of the hand and a knowing smile, as they parted, whispered: “I will give that old dress suit to Anatole, theplongeurat the Café de l’Univers. He will be enchanted.”
The train steamed out of the station carrying a traitorous, double-dyed villain. It arrived at Paris carrying a sleepless, anxious-eyed young man throbbing with suspense. He drove to the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse.
“Ah! Monsieur has returned,” said the fat and greasy Bocardon as he entered.
“Evidently,” replied Martin, who now had no timidities in the presence of hotel managers and was not impressed by the professional facial memory. Was he not himself on the verge of becoming a French innkeeper? He presented a business card of the Hôtel des Grottes mysteriously inscribed by Bigourdin, and demanded a good room. The beady black eyes of the Provençal regarded him shrewdly.
“Some months ago you were a professor.”
“It is always permissible for an honest man to change his vocation,” said Martin.
“That is very true,” said Bocardon. “I myself made my studies as a veterinary surgeon, but as I am one of those unfortunates whom horses always kick and dogs always bite, I entered the service of my brother, Emile Bocardon, who keeps an hotel at Nîmes.”
“The Hôtel de la Curatterie,” said Martin.
“You know it?” cried Bocardon, joyously.
“Not personally. But it is familiar to everycommis-voyageurin France.”
His professional knowledge at once gained him the esteem and confidence of Monsieur Bocardon and a magnificent chamber at a minimum tariff. After he had eaten and sent a message to Fortinbras at the new address given him by Bigourdin, he went out into the crisp, exhilarating air, with Paris and all the universe before him.
In the queer profession into which he had drifted, Heaven knows how, of giving intimate counsel not only to the students, but (as his reputation spread) to the small shopkeepers and work-people of therive gauche, at his invariable fee of five francs per consultation, Fortinbras had been able to take a detached view of human problems. In their solution he could forget the ever frightening problem of his own existence, and find a subdued delight. Only in the case of Corinna and Martin had he posed otherwise than as an impersonal intelligence. As an experiment he had brought them into touch with his own personal concerns. And now there was the devil to pay.
For consider. Here he was prepared to deal out advice to Martin according to the conspiracy into which he had entered with Bigourdin. Martin was to purchase an interest in the Hôtel des Grottes and (although he knew it not) marry Félise. There could not have been a closer family arrangement.
When Fortinbras rose from the frostyterrasseof the Café Cardinal, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu and the Boulevard des Italiens, their appointed rendezvous, and greeted Martin, there was something more than benevolence in his smile, something paternal in his handshake. They entered the Café-Restaurant and sat down at one of the tables not yet laid fordéjeuner, for it was only eleven o’clock. Fortinbras, attired in his customary black, looked more trim, more prosperous. Collar, cuffs and tie were of an impeccable whiteness. The silk hat which he hung with scrupulous care on the peg against the wall, was startlingly new. He looked like a disguised cardinal in easy circumstances. He made bland enquiries as to the health of the good folks at Brantôme, and ordered anapéritiffor Martin and black-currant syrup and water for himself. Then Martin said:
“I have come from Brantôme to consult you on a matter of the utmost importance—to myself, of course. It’s a question of my whole future.”
He laid a five-franc piece on the table. Fortinbras pushed the coin back.
“My dear boy, this is a family affair. I know all about it. For you I’m no longer theMarchand de Bonheur.”
“If you’re not,” said Martin, “I don’t know what the devil I shall do.” And, with his finger, he flicked the coin midway between them.
“My dear fellow,” said Fortinbras, flicking the coin an inch towards Martin, “if you so desire it, I will deal with you in my professional capacity. But as in the case of the solicitor or the doctor it would be unprofessional to accept fees for the settlement of his own family affairs, so, in this matter, I am unable to accept a fee from you. Bigourdin, whose character you have had an intimate opportunity of judging, has offered you a share in his business. As a lawyer and a man of the world, I say unhesitatingly, ‘Accept it,’ As long as Brantôme lasts—and there are no signs of it perishing,—commercial travellers and tourists will visit it and go to the Hôtel des Grottes. And as long as European civilisation lasts, it will demand the gastronomic delicacies of truffles,pâté de foie gras, Périgord pie, stuffed quails and compôte of currants which now find their way from thefabriqueof the hotel to Calcutta, Moscow, San Francisco, Bayswater and Buenos Ayres. As amarchand de bonheur, as you are pleased to call me, I also unhesitatingly affirm that in your acceptance you will find true happiness.”
He sipped his cassis and water, and leaned back on the plush-covered seat. Martin pushed the five-franc piece three or four inches towards Fortinbras.
“It isn’t such a simple, straightforward matter as you seem to imagine,” said Martin. “Otherwise I should have closed with Bigourdin’s generous offer straight away. I’m not a fool. And I’m devotedly attached to Bigourdin, who, for no reason that I can see, save his own goodness of heart, has treated me like a brother. I haven’t come to consult you as a man of business at all. And as for conscientious scruples about Bigourdin being a relative of yours, please put them away.” He pushed the coin another inch. “It is solely asmarchand de bonheur, in the greatest crisis of my life, when I’m torn to pieces by all sorts of conflicting emotions, that I want to consult you. There are complications you know nothing about.”
“Complications?” Fortinbras stretched out a benign hand. “Is it possible that there is some little—what shall we say?—sentiment?” He smiled, seeing the young man’s love for Félise barring his candid way. “You can be frank with me.”
“It’s a damned sight more than sentiment,” cried Martin with unprecedented explosiveness. “Read this.”
He dragged from his pocket a dirty, creased and crumpled letter and threw it across the table. Fortinbras adjusted his glasses and read the imp-inspired message. He took off his glasses and handed back the letter. His face became impassive and he regarded Martin with expressionless, tired, blue eyes.
“Your promise. What was that?”
“To go to Egypt.”
“Why should you go to Egypt to meet Lucille Merriton?”
Martin threw up both hands in a wide gesture. “Can’t you see? I’m mad to go to Egypt, or Cape Horn, or Hell, to meet her. But I’ve enough sanity left to come here and consult you.”
Fortinbras regarded him fixedly, and nodded his head reflectively many times; and without taking his eyes off him, reached out his hand for the five-franc piece which he slipped into his waistcoat pocket.
“That puts,” said he, “an entirely different complexion on the matter.”
CHAPTER XVII
THEastute conspiracy had tumbled to ruins, the keystone, Félise, being knocked out. It was no longer a family affair. Fortinbras listened to the young man’s statement of his case with professional detachment. His practised wit questioned. Martin replied until he had laid bare his candid and intoxicated soul. At last Fortinbras, with a wave of his plump hand, and with his benevolent smile, said:—
“Let us now adjourn from labour to refreshment. I will give myself a luxury I have not enjoyed for many a year. I will entertain a guest. You shall lunch with me. When our spirits are fortified and our judgments mellowed by generous food, we shall adjourn from refreshment to labour. Sometimes you can put a five-franc piece into the slot and pull out an opinion. Sometimes you can’t. Let us go to another table.”
They lunched. Fortinbras talked of men and things and books. He played the perfect host until the first cigarette had been smoked. Then he lay back in the upholstered seat against the wall and looked into vacancy, his face a mask. Martin, sitting by his side, dared not disturb him. He felt like one in the awe-inspiring presence of an oracle. Presently the oracle stirred, shifted his position and resumed human semblance, the smile reappearing in his eyes and at the corners of his pursy mouth.
“My dear Martin,” said he, one elbow on the table and the hand caressing his white hair, “I have now fully considered the question, and see distinctly your path to happiness. As my good old friend Montaigne says—an author I once advised you to cultivate——”
“I’ve done so,” said Martin.
Fortinbras beamed. “There is none richer in humanity. In his words, I say ‘The wisdom of my instruction consists in liberty and naked truth,’ I take the human soul as it is and seek to strip it free from shackles and disguises. I strip yours from the shackles of gross material welfare and the travesty of content. I see it ardent in the pursuit, perhaps of the unattainable, but at any rate in the pursuit of splendour, which is a splendid thing for the soul. Liberty and naked truth are the only watchwords. Sell out some of your capital, equip yourself in lordly raiment, go to Egypt and give your soul a chance.”
“I needn’t tell you,” said Martin, after a pause, “that I was hoping you would give me this advice. It seems all crazy. But still——” he lit a cigarette, which during Fortinbras’s discourse he had been holding in his fingers. “Well—there it is. I don’t seem to care a hang what happens to me afterwards.”
“From my professional point of view,” said Fortinbras, “that is an ideal state of mind.”
“All the same, I can’t help feeling a brute. What the devil can I say to Bigourdin?”
“You can leave that to me,” replied Fortinbras. “He is aware that you are a client of mine and not only honour me with your confidence, but are willing to be guided by my counsel. If you will accept my society, I will accompany you to the Land of the Pharaohs——”
“What?” cried Martin, taken aback. “You? Good God! Of course,” he added, after recovery, “I should love you to come.”
“As I was saying,” Fortinbras continued, “I will accompany you, take upon my shoulders your responsibilities with regard to Bigourdin, and, for my own private satisfaction, realise the dream of my life which is to go up to the Sphinx and say, ‘Now, my dear creature, confidentially as between Augur and Augur, what the deuce is it all about?’ ”
Later, when Martin had accustomed himself to the amazing proposal, they discussed ways and means.
“You,” said Fortinbras, “in order to drink the deep draughts essential to your evolution, must peacock it with the best. You must dwell in palaces and drive in chariots. I, on the other hand, journeying as a philosopher, need but a palm-tree’s shade, a handful of dates and a cup of water. I shall therefore not be of your revellings. But I shall always be near at hand, a sort of private djinn, always at your distinguished service.”
“It’s most delightful and generous of you to put it that way,” laughed Martin, “but for the life of me I can’t see why you should do it.”
Fortinbras replied simply: “I’m a very weary man, my dear boy, and my heart needs a holiday. That is why I grasp this opportunity of going into the sunshine. As to my offer of counsel, that is a matter which it would be futile to discuss.”
His last words were flavoured with mystery. As far as Martin was concerned, Fortinbras was free to go whithersoever he pleased. But why this solicitude as to his welfare, this self-made Slave of the Lamp obligation? Soon he gave up the riddle. Too many exciting thoughts swept his brain.
Until it was written, the letter to Bigourdin weighed on his mind. The problem confronting him was to explain his refusal without reference to Lucilla. To Fortinbras, keeper of his conscience, he could avow his splendid lunacy and be understood. To Bigourdin his English reserve forbade his writing himself down an ass and saying: “The greasy waiter cannot accept partnership with you, as he must follow to the ends of the earth the radiant lady to whom he handed the mutton cutlets.” The more he tried the less could he do it. He sat up all night over the letter. It contained all the heart of him that was left for the Hôtel des Grottes and Brantôme and Périgord; but—well—he had arranged to abide by Fortinbras’s decision. Fortinbras had advised him to see more of the world before definitely settling his life. With a disingenuousness which stabbed his conscience, he threw the responsibility on Fortinbras. Fortinbras was carrying him to Egypt on an attempt to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. Bigourdin knew the utter faith he had in Fortinbras. He sent his affectionate regards to everybody—and to Félise. It was the most dreadful, heart-tearing letter he had ever had to write.
Meanwhile, Fortinbras, betraying, for the first time in his life, professional secrecy, revealed the whole matter to Bigourdin in an illuminating document. And Bigourdin, reading it, and comparing it with Martin’s letter, said “Bigre!” and “Sacrebleu!” and “Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!” and all sorts of other things. At first he frowned incredulously. But on every re-perusal of the letter the frown grew fainter, until, after the fifth, the placid smile of faith overspread his broad countenance. But Félise, who was only told that Martin was not returning but had gone to Egypt with her father, grew white and thin-lipped, and hated the day she had met Lucilla Merriton and all the days she had spent with Lucilla Merriton, and, in a passion of tears, heaped together everything that Lucilla Merriton had ever given her, gowns and furs and underlinen and trinkets, in a big trunk which she stowed away in an attic. And theplongeurfrom the Café de l’Univers was appointed waiter in Martin’s stead and strutted about proudly in Martin’s cast-off raiment. He was perhaps the most care-free person in the Hôtel des Grottes.
Martin went on a flying visit to London, and, on the advice of Fortinbras, put up at the Savoy.
“Accustom yourself to lordliness,” the latter had counselled. “You can’t conquer Egypt with the self-effacing humility of the servitor. By rubbing shoulders with the wealthy, you will acquire that suspicion of arrogance—the whiff of garlic in the salad—in which your present demeanour is so sadly lacking. You will also learn by observation the correct wear in socks and ties, and otherwise steep yourself in the study of indispensable vanities.”
Martin studied conscientiously, and when he had satisfactorily arranged his financial affairs, including the opening of a banking account with Messrs. Thomas Cook & Son, visited tailors and haberdashers and hatters and bootmakers, ordering all the things he had seen worn by the opulent youth of the Savoy Hotel. If he had stolen the money to pay for them, or if he had intended to depart with them without paying, he could not have experienced a more terrifying joy. Like a woman clothes-starved for years, who has been given the run of London shops, Martin ran sartorially mad. He saw suitings, hosiery, shoes, with Lucilla’s eye. He bought himself a tie-pin, a thing which he had never possessed nor dreamed of possessing in his life before; and, observing that an exquisite young Lothario upon whom he resolved to model himself did not appear with the same tie-pin on two consecutive days, he went out and bought another. Modesty and instinctive breeding saved him from making himself a harlequin.
In the midst of these preoccupations, he called, by arrangement, on Corinna. She was living with another girl on the fifth floor of a liftless block of flats in Wandsworth. The living room held two fairly comfortably. Three sat at somewhat close quarters. So when Martin arrived, the third, Corinna’s mate, after a perfunctory introduction, disappeared into a sort of cupboard that served her as a bedroom.
Corinna looked thin and ill and drawn, and her blouse gaped at the back, and her fair hair exhibited the ropiness of neglect. The furniture of the room was of elementary flimsiness. Loose newspapers, pamphlets, handbills, made it as untidy as Corinna’s hair. As soon as they were alone, Martin glanced from her to her surroundings and then back again to her.
“My dear Corinna,” said he, putting hat, stick and gloves on a bamboo table, “what on earth are you doing with yourself?”
She looked at him defiantly, with a touch of haggardness.
“I am devoting myself to the Cause.”
Martin wrinkled a puzzled brow. “What cause?”
“For a woman there is only one,” said Corinna.
“Oh!” said Martin. “May I sit down?”
“Please do.”
She poked a tiny fire in a diminutive tiled grate, while he selected the most solid of the bamboo chairs. She sat on a stool on the hearthrug.
“I suppose you’re anti-suffrage like any other bigoted reactionary,” she said.
Martin replied truly: “I haven’t worried about it one way or the other.”
She turned on him swiftly. “Then you’re worse than a downright opponent. It’s just the contemptuous apathy of men like you that drive us mad.”
She entered upon a long and nervous tirade, trotting out the old arguments, using the stock phrases, parroting a hundred platform speeches. And all the time, though appearing to attack, she was on the defensive, defiant, desperate. Martin regarded her with a shocked expression. Her thin blonde beauty was being pinched into shrewishness.
“But, my dear Corinna,” said he. “I’ve come to see you, as an old friend. I just want to know how you’re getting on. What’s the good of a political argument between us two? You may be wrong or you may be right. I haven’t studied the question. Let us drop it from a contentious point of view. Let us meet humanly. Or if you like, let us tell each other the outside things that have happened to us. You haven’t even asked me why I’m here. You haven’t asked after Félise, or Fortinbras, or Bigourdin.” He waxed warm. “I’ve just come from Brantôme. Surely you must have some grateful memories of the folks there. They treated you splendidly. Surely you must still take some interest in them.”
Corinna supported herself on an outspread hand on the hearthrug.
“Do you want me to tell you the truth?” She held him with her pained blue eyes. “I don’t take an interest in any damned thing in God’s universe.”
“May I smoke?” said Martin. He lit a cigarette, after having offered her his case which she waved aside impatiently.
“If that is so,” said he, “what in the world is the meaning of all the stuff you have just been talking?”
“I thought you had the sense to have learned something about me. How otherwise am I to earn my living? We’ve gone over the ground a hundred times. This is a way, anyhow, and it’s exciting. It keeps one from thinking of anything else. I’ve been to prison.”
Martin gasped, asked her if she had hunger-struck.
“I tried, but I hadn’t the pluck or the hysteria. Isabel Banditch can do it.” She lowered her voice and waved towards her concealed companion. “I can’t. She believes in the whole thing. The vote will bring along the millennium. Once we have the power, men are going to be as good as little cherubs terminating in wings round their necks. Drink will disappear. Wives shall be like the fruitful soda-water siphon on the sideboard, and there will be no more struggle for existence and no more wars. Oh! the earth is going to be a devil of a place when we’ve finished with it.”
“Do you talk like this to Miss Banditch?” asked Martin.
She smiled for the first time, and shook her head.
“On the whole you’re rather a commonplace person, Martin,” she replied, “but you have one remarkable quality. You always seem to compel me to tell you the truth. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is just to puzzle you and annoy you and hurt you.”
“Why should you want to hurt me?”
She shrugged her shoulders, and sat with her hands clasping her knees. “Well—for one thing, you were my intimate companion for three months and never for a single second did you think of making love to me. For all the impression I made on you I might have been your austere maiden aunt. Sometimes I’ve wanted to take you between my teeth and shake you as a terrier shakes a rat. Instead, like an ass, I’ve told you the blatant truth.”
“That’s interesting,” said Martin, calmly. “But you seem to want to hurt everybody—those who don’t fall in love with you and those who do. You hurt our poor old Bigourdin and he hasn’t got over it.”
Corinna looked into the diminutive fire. “I suppose you think I was a fool.”
“I can’t believe it matters to you what I think,” said Martin, his vanity smarting at being lashed for a Joseph Andrews.
“It doesn’t. But you think me a fool all the same. I’ll go on telling you the truth”—she flashed a glance at him. “Bigourdin’s a million times too good for me. I should have led him a beast of a life. He has had a lucky escape. You can tell him that when you go back.”
“I’m not going back.”
“What?” she said with a start.
He repeated his statement and smiled amiably.
“Fed up with being a waiter? I’ve wondered how long you could stick it. What are you going to do now? As a polite hostess, I suppose I should have asked that when you first came into the room.”
“I did expect something of the sort,” Martin confessed, “until you declared you didn’t take an interest in any damned thing.”
Then they both laughed. Corinna stretched out a hand. “Forgive me,” she said. “I’ve been standing nearly all day in front of the tube station, dressed in a green, mauve and white sandwich-board and selling newspapers, and I’m dog-tired and miserable. I would ask you to have some tea, but that would only bring out Isabel, who would talk our heads off. Why have you left Brantôme?”
He told her of Bigourdin’s proposal and of Fortinbras’s counsel; but he made no reference to the flashing of the divine Lucilla across his path. Once he had confessed to her the kiss of the onion-eating damsel who had married the plumber. She had jested but understood. His romantic knight-errant passion for Lucilla was stars above her comprehension. When he mentioned the fact of the death of Mrs. Fortinbras, Corinna softened.
“Poor little Félise! It must have been a great sorrow to her. I’ll write to her. She’s a dear little girl.” She paused for a few moments. “Now, look here, Martin,” she said, seizing a fragile poker and smiting a black lump of coal the size of a potato, “it strikes me that as fools we’re very much in the same box. We’ve both thrown over a feather-bed existence. I’ve refused to marry Bigourdin and incidentally to run the Hôtel des Grottes, and you have refused to run the Hôtel des Grottes and incidentally marry Félise.”
“There was never any question of my marrying Félise,” cried Martin hotly.
She scrambled to her feet and flung an impatient arm.
“You make me tired. Have you a grain of sense in your head or an ounce of blood in your body?”
Martin also rose. “And you?” he countered. “What have you?”
“Neither,” said Corinna.
“In that case,” said Martin, gathering up hat, stick and gloves, “I don’t see why we should continue a futile conversation.”
He devoid of sense and blood! He who had probed the soul of Félise and found there virgin indifference! He who had flung aside a gross temptation. He who was consumed with a burning passion for an incomparable goddess! A chasm thousands of miles wide yawned between him and Corinna. In the same box, indeed! He quivered with indignation. She regarded him curiously, through narrowed eyes.
“I do believe,” she said slowly, “that I’ve knocked some sparks out of you at last.”
“You would knock sparks out of a putty dog,” Martin retorted wrathfully.
She took hat and stick away from him and laid them on the bamboo table. “Don’t let us quarrel,” she said more graciously. “Sit down again and finish your story. You said something about Egypt and Fortinbras going with you. Why Egypt?”
“Why not?” asked Martin.
“I suppose Fortinbras pointed a prophetic finger. ‘There lies the road to happiness.’ But what is he doing there himself?”
“He is going to talk to the Sphinx,” said Martin.
“And when you’ve spent all your capital in riotous living, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said he.
“Well, it’s your business, not mine,” said Corinna. “You’re lucky to be able to get out of this beastly climate. I wish I could.”
They talked for a while the generalities of travel. Then he asked her to dine with him and go to a theatre. This brought her back to herself. She couldn’t. She had no time. All her evenings were taken up with meetings which she had to attend. And she hadn’t an evening gown fit to wear.
“I would rather die than appear in a blouse and skirt in the stalls of a theatre.”
“We can go to the pit or upper circle,” said Martin, who had never sat in the stalls in his life.
But she declined. The prodigal in the pit was too ludicrous. No. She was conscientious. She had adopted martyrdom as a profession; she was paid for being a martyr; and to martyrdom, so long as it didn’t include voluntary starvation, she would stick until she could find a pleasanter and more lucrative means of livelihood.
“It’s all very well for you to talk like that,” said Martin in his sober way, “but how can you call yourself conscientious when you take these people’s money without believing in their cause?”
“Who told you I didn’t believe in it?” she cried. “Do you know what it means to be an utterly useless woman? I do. I’m one. It is to prevent replicas of myself in the next generation that I get up at a public meeting and bleat out ‘Votes for Women,’ and get ignominiously chucked. Can’t you see?”
“No,” said Martin. “Your attitude is too Laodicean.”
“What?” snapped Corinna.
“It’s somewhere in the Bible. The Laodiceans were people who blew both hot and cold.”
“My father found scriptural terms for me much more picturesque than that,” said Corinna, with a laugh.
A door opened and the frozen, blue-nosed head of Miss Banditch appeared.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Corinna, but are we never going to have tea?”
Corinna apologised. Tea was prepared. Miss Banditch talked on the One and Only Topic. Martin listened politely. During a pause, while he stood offering a cup for Corinna to fill for the second time, she remarked casually:
“By the way, you met Miss Merriton, didn’t you?”
The question was like a knock on the head. He nearly dropped the cup.
“Miss Merriton?”
“She’s a friend of mine. I had a note from her at Christmas to say that she had been to Brantôme and made your acquaintance, and had carried off Félise to the south of France. Why haven’t you told me about her?”
Under her calm, smiling gaze he felt himself grow hot and red and angry. He fenced.
“You must remember my position in Brantôme.”
She poured the milk into his cup. “She said she was going to Egypt. Sugar?”
Miss Banditch resumed her argument. The remainder of the visit was intolerable. As soon as he could swallow his tea, he took his leave. Corinna followed him into the tiny passage by the flat-door.
“My dear old Martin,” she said, impulsively throwing an arm round him and gripping his shoulder. “I’m a beast, and a brute, and I hate everybody and everything in this infernal world. But I do wish you the very best of good luck.”
She opened the door and with both hands thrust him gently forth; then quickly she closed the door all but a few inches behind him, and through the slit she cried:
“Give my love to Lucilla!”
The door banged, and Martin descended the five flights of stairs, lost in the maze of the Eternal Feminine.
CHAPTER XVIII
CAIROstation. An illumination of livid blue. A horde of brown-legged turbaned figures wearing red jerseys on which flaunted in white the names of hotels, and reconstructing Babel. An urbane official, lifting a gold-banded cap in the middle of a small oasis of silence and inviting Martin in the name of the Semiramis Hotel, to surrender luggage and all other cares to his keeping, and to follow the stream through the exit to the hotel motor. A phantasmagoria of East and West rendered more fantastic by the shadows cast by the high arc-lamps. He had lost sight of Fortinbras, who bag in hand—his impedimenta being of the scantiest—had disappeared in quest of the palm-tree against whose trunk he presumably was to pass the night. Martin emerged from the station, entered the automobile, one of a long row, and waited with his fellow passengers until the roof was stacked with luggage. Then the drive through European streets suggestive of Paris and the sudden halt at the hotel. A dazzling vision of a lounge, a swift upward journey in a lift worked by a Nubian gorgeous in scarlet and gold, a walk down a corridor, a door flung open, and Martin found himself in his bedroom. An Arab brought hot water and retired.
Martin opened the shutters of the window and looked out. It was hard moonlight. Beneath him shimmered a broad ribbon of water, against which were silhouetted outlandish masts and spars of craft moored against the embankment. The dark mass on the further shore seemed to be pleasant woods. The water could be nothing else than the Nile; the sacred river; the first river in which he had taken a romantic interest, on account of Moses and the Ark and Pharaoh’s daughter; the mighty river which is the very life of a vast country; the most famous river in the world. He regarded it with a curious mixture of awe and disappointment. On his right it was crossed by a bridge dotted with the slowly moving lamps of carts and now and then flashing with the headlights of a motor-car. It was not unlike any ordinary river—the Thames, the Seine, the Rhone at Geneva. He had imagined it broad as the Amazon.
Yet it was wonderful; the historic water, the moonlight, the clear Egyptian air in which floated a vague perfume of spice, the dimly seen long-robed figures seated on a bench by the parapet on the other side of the road, whose guttural talk rose like a proclamation of the Orient. He leaned out over the iron railing. On his left stood out dreamily defined against the sky two shadowy little triangles. He wondered what they could be. Suddenly came the shock of certainty. They were the Pyramids. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. A thrill ran over his skin. He had not counted on being brought up bang, as it were, against them. He had imagined that one journeyed for half a day on a camel through a trackless desert in order to visit these wonders of the world: but here he was staring at them from the hotel-window of a luxurious capital. He stared at them for a long time. Yes: there was the Nile; there were the Pyramids; and, after a knock at the door, there was his luggage. He became conscious of hunger; also of Lucilla more splendid than moonlit Nile and Pyramids and all the splendours of Egypt put together. Hunger—it was half-past nine and he had eaten nothing since lunch on ship-board—counselled speedy ablutions and a descent in quest of food. Lucilla ordained correctitude of vesture. His first evening on board ship had taught him that dinner jacket suit and black tie were the only wear. He changed and went downstairs.
A chasseur informed him that Miss Merriton was staying in the hotel, but that she had gone to the dance at the Savoy. When would she be back? The chasseur, a child rendered old by accumulated knowledge of trivial fact, replied that Cairo was very gay this season, that dances went on till the morning hours, and insinuated that Miss Merriton was as gay as anybody. Martin walked through the lounge into the restaurant and supped. He supped exceedingly well. Bearing in mind Fortinbras’s counsel of lordliness and the ways of lordly motorists passing through Brantôme, he ordered a pint of champagne. He was served by an impeccable waiter with lilac revers and brass buttons to his coat. He noted the livery with a professional eye. The restaurant was comparatively empty. Only at one table sat a party of correctly dressed men and women. A few others were occupied by his travelling companions, still in the garb of travel. Martin mellowed by the champagne, adjusted his black tie and preened his white shirt front, in the hope that the tweed-clad newcomers would see him and marvel and learn from him, Martin Overshaw, obscure and ignorant adventurer, what was required by English decorum. After his meal he sat in the lounge and ordered Turkish coffee, liqueur brandy and cigarettes. And so, luxuriously housed, clothed and fed, he entered on the newest phase of his new life.
Six months ago he had considered his sportive ride through France with Corinna a thrilling adventure. He smiled at his simplicity. An adventure, that tame jog-trot tour! As comparable to this as his then companion to the radiant lady of his present quest. Now, indeed, he had burned his boats, thrown his cap over the windmills, cast his frock to the nettles. The reckless folly of it all had kept his veins a-tingle, his head awhirl. At every moment during the past fortnight something amazingly new had flashed into his horizon. The very sleeping-berth in the train de luxe had been a fresh experience. So too was the awakening to the warmth and sunshine of Marseilles. Save for a crowded hour of inglorious life (he was a poor sailor) now and then on cross-channel boats he had never set foot on a ship. He wandered about the ocean-going liner with a child’s delight. Fortune favoured him with a spell of blue weather. He scoffed at sea-sickness. The meals characterised by many passengers as abominable, he devoured as though they were Lucullian feasts. He made acquaintance with folks going not only to Egypt, but to Peshawar and Mandalay and Singapore and other places with haunting names. Some shocked him by calling them God-forsaken holes and cursing their luck. Others, mainly women, going thither for the first time shared his emotions. . . . He was surprised at the ease with which he fell into casual talk with strangers. Sometimes a child was a means of introduction to its mother. Sometimes a woman in the next deck-chair would open a conversation. Sometimes Fortinbras chatting with a knot of people would catch him as he passed and present him blandly.
Among the minor things that gave him cause for wonder was the swift popularity of his companion. No longer did his costume stamp Fortinbras as a man apart from the laity. He wore the easy tweeds and soft felt hat of a score of other elderly gentlemen on board: even the gold watch-chain, which he had redeemed after a long, long sojourn at the Mount of Piety. But this very commonplace of his attire brought into relief the nobility of his appearance. His massive face lined with care, his broad brow, his prominent light blue kindly eyes, his pursy and benevolent mouth, his magnificent Abbé Liszt shock of white hair, now carefully tended, his impressive air of dignity—all marked him as a personage of distinction. He aroused the idle curiosity of the idle voyagers. Husbands were bidden by wives to talk to him and see what he was like. Husbands obeyed, as is the human though marriage-vow-subversive way of husbands, and meekly returned with information. A capital fellow; most interesting chap; English of course; very courtly old bird; like so-and-so who was Ambassador; old school; knows everything; talks like a book. Quoth any one of the wives, her woman’s mind intent on the particular. “But whoishe?” The careless husband, his masculine mind merely concerned with the general, did not know. He had not thought of asking. How could he ask? And what did it matter? The wife sighed. “Bring him along and I will soon find out.” Fortinbras at fit opportunity was brought along. The lady unconsciously surrendered to his spell—one has not practised as amarchand de bonheurfor nothing. “Now I know all about him,” said any one of the wives to any one of the husbands. “Why are men so stupid? He is an old Winchester boy. He is a retired philosopher and he lives in France.” That was all she learned about Fortinbras; but Fortinbras in that trial interview learned everything about the lady serenely unconscious of intimate avowal.
“My young friend,” said he to Martin, “the secret of social influence is to present yourself to each individual rather as a sympathetic intelligence, than as a forceful personality. The patient takes no interest in the morbid symptoms of his physician: but every patient is eager to discuss his symptoms with the kindly physician who will listen to them free, gratis and for nothing. By adopting this attitude I can evoke from one the dramatic ambitions of her secret heart, from another the history of her children’s ailments and the recipe for the family cough-cure, from a third the moving story of strained relations with his parents because he desired to marry his uncle’s typist, the elderly crown and glory of her sex, and from a fourth an intricate account of a peculiarly shady deal in lard.”
“That sounds all right,” said Martin; “but in order to get people to talk to you—say in the four cases you have mentioned, you must know something about the theatre, bronchitis, love and the lard-trade.”
Said Fortinbras, touching the young man’s shoulder:
“The experienced altruist with an eye to his own advantage knows something about everything.”
Martin, following the precepts of his Mentor, practised the arts of fence, parrying the thrusts of personal questions on the part of his opponent and riposting with such questions on his own.
“It is necessary,” said the sage. “What are you among these respectable Britons of substance, but an adventurer? Put yourself at the mercy of one of these old warriors with grey motor-veils and steel knitting needles and she will pluck out the heart of your mystery in a jiffy and throw it on the deck for all to feed on.”
Thus the voyage—incidentally was it not to Cythæra?—transcended all his dreams of social amenity. It was a long protracted party in which he lost his shyness, finding frank welcome on all sides. To the man of thirty who had been deprived, all his man’s life, of the commonplace general intercourse with his kind, this daily talk with a girl here, a young married woman there, an old lady somewhere else, and all sorts and conditions of men in the smoking room and on deck, was nothing less than a kind of social debauch, intoxicating him, keeping him blissfully awake of nights in his upper berth, while Fortinbras snored below. Then soon after daybreak, to mount to the wet, sunlit deck after his cold, sea-water bath; perhaps to meet a hardy and healthy English girl, fresh as the Ægean morning; to tramp up and down with her for development of appetite, talking of nothing but the glitter of the sea, the stuffiness of cabins, the dishes they each would choose for breakfast; to descend into the warm, comforting smell of the dining-saloon; to fall voraciously on porridge and eggs and kidneys and marmalade; to go on deck again knowing that in a couple of hours’ time stewards would come to him fainting from hunger with bowls of chicken broth, that in an hour or two afterwards there would be lunch to be selected from a menu a foot long in close print, and so on during the golden and esurient day; to meet Fortinbras, late and luxurious riser; to bask for an hour, like a plum, in the sunshine of his wisdom; to continue the debauch of the day before; to sight great sailing vessels with bellying canvas, resplendent majesty of past centuries, or, on the other hand, the grey grim blocks of battleships; to pass the sloping shores of historic islands—Crete, home of the Minotaur, whose inhabitants—(Cretans are liars. Cretans are men. Therefore all men are liars)—had furnished the stock example of fallacy in the Syllogism; to watch the green wake cleaving the dark-blue sea; to make his way up and down decks, through the steerage, and stand in the bows, swept by the exhilarating air, with the pulse racking sense that he was speeding to the lodestar of his one desire—to find wildness of delight in these commonplaces of travel; to live as he lived, to vibrate as he vibrated with every nerve from dawn to dawn, to be drunk with the sheer ecstasy of existence, so that the past becomes a black abyss, and the future an amethystine haze glorified by the Sons of the Morning singing for joy, is given but to few, is given to none but poor, starved souls, is given to none of the poor, starved souls but those whom the high Gods in obedience to their throw of the dice happen to select.
Martin sitting in a deep armchair in the Semiramis Hotel dreamed of all these things, unconscious of the flight of time. Suddenly he became aware that he was the only occupant of the lounge, all the other folk having returned soberly to their rooms. Already a few early arrivals from the Savoy dance passed across the outer hall on their way to the lift. Drowsy with happiness he went to bed. To-morrow, Lucilla.
He became aware of her standing by the bureau licking a stamp to put on a letter. She wore a white coat and skirt and a straw hat with cherries on it. He could not see her face, but he guessed the blue veins on the uplifted, ungloved hand that held the stamp. On his approach, she turned and uttered a little laughing gasp of recognition, stuck the stamp on hastily and stretched out her hand.
“Why,” she cried, “it’s you! You really have come!”
“Did you think I would break my promise?” he asked, his eyes drinking in her beauty.
“I didn’t know how seriously you regarded it.”
“I’ve thought of nothing but Egypt, since I said you had pointed out the way,” he replied. “You commanded. I obeyed.”
She caught up her long parasol and gloves that lay on the ledge of the bureau. “If everybody did everything I told them,” she laughed, “I should have my hands full. They don’t, as a general rule, but when they do I take it as a compliment. It makes me feel good to see you. When did you come?”
She put him through a short catechism. What boat? What kind of voyage? Where was he staying? . . . Finally:
“Do you know many people in Cairo?”
“Not a soul,” said Martin.
With both arms behind her back, she rested lightly on the parasol, and beamed graciously.
“I know millions,” she said, not without a touch of exaggeration which pleased him. “Would you like to trust yourself to me, put yourself entirely in my hands?”
“I could dream of nothing more enchanting,” replied Martin. “But——”
“But——?”
“I don’t want to make myself an infliction.”
“You’re going to be a delight. You know in the cinematograph how an invisible pencil writes things on the sheet—or how a message is stamped out on the tape, and you look and wonder what’s coming next. Well, I want to see how this country is going to be stamped letter by letter on your virgin mind. It’s a thing I’ve been longing for—to show somebody with sense like yourself, Egypt of the Pharaohs and Egypt of the English. How long can you stay?”
“Indefinitely,” said Martin. “I have no plans.”
“From here you might go to Honolulu or Rangoon?”
“Or Greenland or Cape Horn,” said Martin.
She nodded smiling approval. “That is what I call a free and enlightened Citizen of the World. Let us sit down. I’m waiting for my friend, Mrs. Dangerfield of Philadelphia. Her husband’s here too. You will like them. I generally travel round with somebody, just for the sake of a table-companion. I’m silly enough to feel a fool eating alone every day in a restaurant.”
He drew a wicker chair for her and sat beside her. She deposited parasol and gloves on the little round table, and swept him with a quizzical glance from his well-fitting brown shoes to his trim black hair.
“May I without impertinence compliment you on your colour-scheme?”
His olive cheek flushed like a girl’s. He had devoted an hour’s concentrated thought to it before he rose. How should he appear in the presence of the divinity? He had decided on grey flannels, grey shirt, purple socks and tie. He wondered whether she guessed the part she had played in his anxious selection. Remembering the splotch of grease, he said:
“I hadn’t much choice of clothes when you last saw me.”
She laughed. “Tell me all about Brantôme. How is my dear little friend Félise?”
He gave her discreet news. “And the incomparable Fortinbras?”
“You’ll doubtless soon be able to judge for yourself. He’s here.”
“In Cairo? You don’t say!”
Mingled with her expression of surprise was a little perplexity of the brow, as though, seeing the Fortinbras of the Petit Cornichon, she wondered what on earth she could do with him.
“He came with me,” said Martin.
“Is he staying in this hotel?”
“No,” said Martin.
Her brow grew smooth again. “How did he manage to get all this way? Has he retired from business?”
“I don’t think so. He needed a holiday. You see he came into a little money on the death of his wife.”
“His wife dead?” Lucilla queried. “Félise’s mother? I didn’t know. Perhaps that’s why she hasn’t written to me for such a long time. I think there must be some queer story connected with that mother,” she added shrewdly. “Anyway, Fortinbras can’t be broken-hearted, or he wouldn’t come on a jaunt to Egypt.”
Too well-bred to examine Martin on his friend’s private affairs, she changed the talk in her quick, imperious way. Martin sat like a man bewitched, fascinated by her remembered beauties—the lazy music of her voice, her mobile lips, her brown eyelashes. . . . His heart beat at the realisation of so many dreams. He listened, his brain scarcely following what she said; that she spoke with the tongue of an angel was enough.
Presently a stout, pleasant-faced woman of thirty came towards them with many apologies for lateness. This was Mrs. Dangerfield. Lucilla presented Martin.
“Behold in me the complete dragoman. Mr. Overshaw has engaged me for the season. It’s his first visit to Egypt and I’m going to show him round. I’ll draw up a programme for a personally conducted tour, every hour accounted for and replete with distraction.”
“It sounds dreadful,” laughed Mrs. Dangerfield. “Do you think you’ll survive, Mr. Overshaw?”
“Not only that,” said Martin, “but I hope for a new lease of life.”
“We start,” said Lucilla, “with a drive through the town, during which I shall point out the Kasr-el-Nil Barracks, the Bank of Egypt and the Opera House. Then we shall enter on the shopping expedition in the Mousky, where I shall prevent Mrs. Dangerfield from being robbed while bargaining for Persian lacq. I’m ready, Laura, if you are.”
She led the way out. Martin exchanging words of commonplace with Mrs. Dangerfield, followed in an ecstasy. Did ever woman, outside Botticelli’sPrimavera, walk with such lissomeness? A chasseur turned the four-flanged doors and they emerged into the clear morning sunshine. The old bearded Arab carriage porter called an hotelarabeahfrom the stand. But while the driver, correct in metal-buttoned livery coat and tarbush, was dashing up with his pair, Martin caught sight of Fortinbras walking towards them.
“There he is,” said Martin.
“Who?”
“Fortinbras.”
“Nonsense,” said Lucilla. “That’s an English Cabinet Minister, or an American millionaire, or the keeper of a gambling saloon.”
But when he came nearer, she admitted it was Fortinbras. She waved her hand in recognition. Nothing could have been more charming than her greeting; nothing more urbane than his acknowledgment, or his bow, on introduction to Mrs. Dangerfield. He had come, said he, to lay his respectful homage at her feet; also to see how his young friend was faring in a strange land. Lucilla asked him where he was staying.
“When last I saw you,” he answered, “I said something about the perch of the old vulture.”
She eyed him, smiling: “You look more like the wanton lapwing.”
“In that case I need even a smaller perch, the merest twig.”
“But ‘Merest Twig, Cairo,’ isn’t an address,” cried Lucilla. “How am I to get hold of you when I want you?”
Fortinbras regarded her with humorous benevolence. The question was characteristic. He knew her to be generous, warm-hearted and impatient of trivial convention: therefore he had not hesitated to go to her in his anxious hour; but he also knew how those long delicate fingers had an irresistible habit of drawing unwary humans into her harmless web. He had not come to Cairo just to walk into Lucilla’s parlour. He wanted to buzz about Egypt in philosophic and economical independence.
“That, my dear Lucilla,” said he, “is one more enigma to be put to the credit of the Land of Riddles.”
Ibrahim stood impassively holding open the door of thearabeah. A couple of dragomen in resplendent robes and turbans, seeing a new and prosperous English tourist, had risen from their bench on the other side of the road and lounged gracefully forward.
“You’re the most exasperating person I ever met,” exclaimed Lucilla. “But while I have you, I’m going to keep you. Come to lunch at one-fifteen. If you don’t I’ll never speak to you again.”
“I’ll come to lunch at one-fifteen, with very great pleasure,” said Fortinbras.
The ladies entered the carriage. Martin said hastily:
“You gave me the slip last night.”
“I did,” said Fortinbras. He drew the young man a pace aside, and whispered: “You think those are doves harnessed to the chariot. They’re not. They’re horses.”
Martin broke away with a laugh, and sprang to the back seat of the carriage. It drove off. The dragoman came up to the lonely Fortinbras. Did he want a guide? The Citadel, the Pyramids, Sakkara? Fortinbras turned to the impassive Ibrahim and in his grand manner and with impressive gesture said:
“Will you tell them they are too beautiful. They would eclipse the splendour of all the monuments I am here to visit.”
He walked away and Ibrahim, translating roughly to the dragomen, conveyed uncomplimentary references to the virtue of their grandmothers.
Meanwhile Martin, in beatitude, sat on the little seat, facing his goddess. She was an integral part of the exotic setting of Cairo. It was less real life than an Arabian Night’s tale. She was interfused with all the sunshine and colour and wonder. Only the camels padding along in single file, their bodies half hidden beneath packs of coarse grass, seemed alien to her. They held up their heads, as the carriage passed them, with a damnably supercilious air. One of them seemed to catch his eye and express contempt unfathomable. He shook a fist at him.
“I hate those brutes,” said he.
“Good gracious! Why?” asked Lucilla. “They’re so picturesque! A camel is the one thing I really can draw properly.”
“Well, I dislike them intensely,” said he. “They’re inhuman.”
He could not translate his unformulated thought into conventional words. But he knew that at the summons of the high gods all the world of animate beings would fall down and worship her: every breathing thing but the camel. He hated the camel.