At last, very thoughtfully, he came to the house in Audley Square. As he rang, a clock struck one and gave him an idea.
“I will ask her to luncheon at Claridge’s,” he thought. “It will be a good opening.”
Major Cypress waited in the drawing-room for quite a long time. He paced about. The floor was of parquet, mostly uncovered, and so his feet made a noise. He sat down.
“You again!” cried Shirley.
“How are you, Shirley?”
“I refuse to tell you, Hugo. I am tired of telling you. Don’t I look well?”
“Hum,” said Hugo. He could never answer questions like that.
Shirley came near. She was in a sort of bronze dress ofcrêpe marocain, and her throat glowed very white. Her face Major Cypress did not actually look at, it tempted him so exceedingly. Shirley smiled.
“I will tell you,” she smiled, “what youhave come to do, Hugo. You have come to take me out to lunch.”
“I do wish,” said Hugo, “that you would get out of that nasty habit of calling ‘luncheon’ lunch. Lunch sounds like a glass of milk and a digestive biscuit.”
“Dear Hugo!”
“Look here, Shirley, don’t ever say that again!”
Shirley was very near, and her white hands were somehow like white flowers. But at her face he did not look.
“Dea——”
“Don’t!” he roared.
Now Shirley was twenty and tall and straight and fair, and when she laughed you saw why servants were polite to her on sight. And oh, she was such a pretty girl!
“Hugo,” she said, “you are going to propose to me again.”
“Oh, am I?”
“Yes,” she said, “you are. And if you say you are not, then you are a liar, and I don’t like liars.”
Then something happened to Hugo Cypress; and, after all, he was thirty-four, and she only twenty. He glared down at Shirley St. George, and from his mouth issued reasonable and critical noises, as befitted a manof thirty-four who has offered his hand five times running to a slip of a girl of twenty.
“Shirley,” he said, “listen to me. You are a very pretty young lady. I have so far been so shy with you that I have not been able to tell you how beautiful I think you are——”
“Thank you, Hugo,” she said very softly. And she tempted him exceedingly, but he continued on his manly way, glaring at a point half-way between her right ear and her left shoulder.
“Nor have I been able to tell you, Shirley, how I love you. That was because I was shy—but I have now finished with being shy. I adore you so frightfully, my dear, that I have made myself a carpet for you to walk on. And you have taken advantage of me, that’s what you’ve done. Carpets get frayed. You have treated me, Shirley, exactly as a heartless, meretricious woman of thirty might treat an infatuated soap-manufacturer. That is, perhaps, because you are used to men being in love with you, and know that they will love you all the more the worse you treat them. Perhaps you are right, Shirley. But I can’t bear it any more, and so I am now going to leave this building and your life....” And Hugo went towards the door with a firm step.
“You’re not going, Hugo!” It was a cry.
“I am indeed, Shirley. Good-bye. And God bless you.”
“Oh, dear, every man says ‘God bless you!’”cried Shirley. “It is the most final and most bitter thing they can say, for they say it with a prayer to the devil in their hearts. Go away, Hugo Cypress. I hate you.”
“That’s why I am saying good-bye, Shirley.”
“But surely you can’t go without proposing to me for the sixth and last time!” And that was a cry.
Hugo opened the door; and he smiled, in a sort of way.
“I thought I couldn’t, Shirley—but I find I can.”
“But you can’t, you simply can’t!” she cried. “Why, I came down to see you on the distinct understanding that you were going to propose to me for the sixth and last time and onlythengoing away for ever! Hugo, you can’t do one without the other—it’s not fair!”
“Don’t worry, little Shirley. The day is yet young, and some one else is sure to propose to you in the course of it. You will observe, my dear, that I am being cynical, after the manner of all rejected young men.”
“But, Hugo, I wantyouto—for the sixth and last time, dear, just to see what I’ll say!” And she tempted him exceedingly with her sun-lit face.
“That’s just it, Shirley. I know what you’ll say. Good-bye.”
“Oh, oh!” cried Shirley. “How awful men are! And how d’you know what I’ll say, Hugo? You are a clever chap, aren’t you? Are you a psycho-analyst, Hugo? Can you tell what is passing in a woman’s mind by looking at her instep? And for heaven’s sake don’t go on standing in that doorway looking like a draught!”
“Sorry, Shirley.” And Hugo faded away round the angle of the door and was closing it behind him.
“Hugo, how dare you go like that!” And that was the most frantic cry of all; and Hugo’s face reappeared round the angle of the door, and it was a rather bewildered face.
“Well, damn it, my dear, I must go somehow!”
“Yes, but you know very well you can’t live without me—don’t you, Hugo? Now answer truthfully, Hugo.”
“Well, you know, since you came in this morning, I’ve been thinking it over——”
“But how awful you are to admit thatyou can think of anything when you’re with Shirley!”
“There you go!” he cried harshly. “Making a fool of me!”
“But, my darling, I must make someth——”
“What was that you said?” he snapped.
“Have you gone mad? Didn’t you hear me?”
“Child, did you or did you not call me ‘darling’?”
“Why, so I did!—I’m so sorry, Hugo....”
Hugo Cypress advanced across the room and towered above Shirley St. George.
“Are you playing the fool, Shirley?”
“I am playing for time, my darling—lunch-time. Luncheon-time, I mean.”
She giggled.
Now Shirley was not given to giggling....
No one had ever seen Shirley carrying an umbrella, and no one had ever heard Shirley giggling.
“Ho!” muttered Major Cypress.
“Don’t gargle in my aunt’s drawing-room, Hugo!”
“I’m thinking, Shirley.”
“Don’t think!” she cried sharply.
“Well,” he began, and stopped.
“Wipe your forehead, dear; you’re rather hot.”
Hugo wiped his forehead.
“Look here, Shirley, supposing—just supposing—that I so far forget myself as to prop——”
“Oh, Hugo!” And she clapped her hands—little Shirley! “You must! For the sixth and last time ... just to make it even numbers!”
Hugo’s face was as white as his gardenia.
“For the sixth and last time, Shirley, will you marry me?”
As she stood, with the palms of her hands pressed down on the table and her little face thrown back, she was like a dove, still and absorbed. She was absorbed in something that was Hugo, yet in something that was much more than Hugo. And then her lips trembled a little; they whispered:
“Oh, Hugo, I have been such a beast! But you are so sweet that I simply couldn’t help it!”
He didn’t understand.
But he understood when suddenly she crooked an arm around his neck and brought his face down to hers, and he saw that her eyes were wet....
“My God!” he said, and kissed her bravely.
“Of course,” she whispered. “Of course....”
“No, not like that,” she whispered. “Not as though I were your sister. I beg you to observe that I am not your sister. Yes, properly, dear. Oh, I do like you frightfully, Hugo....”
Then quite a lot of things happened at the same time; and then he cried:
“But why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because I didn’t realise, my darling. I didn’t know I loved you—and how can a girl know a thing like that? Oh, Hugo, you are so sweet! What fun to have you for keeps! And it will be nice to chew bits of you now and then—oh, what fun we’ll have! Dear Hugo....”
“And you said, Shirley, that you would never, never marry me!”
“I didn’t know myself, dear—nor you! Until, after the fifth time, when you went away saying that you would never come back. And then I was very sorry, Hugo.”
“Oh, by the way,” he said, “here’s a note from George—about taking you toLoyaltiesto-night.”
She read the note.
“Oh!” she said.
“What does he say?” he asked.
She tore up the note.
“Only that he’s got a box forLoyalties, and that I may ask whom I like——”
“Thanks so much, Shirley. I’d love to come. It will improve my mind.”
Now this was the note from George Tarlyon to his little sister, Shirley St. George:
“Shirley, how dare you go about London refusing to marry such of my friends, if any, who ask you? ‘Never, never,’ indeed! Remember, Shirley, that there’s only one bigger lie than ‘never, never,’ and that is ‘always, always.’”
“Oh!” thought Shirley. “Fat lot he knows about it!” But all the same, she never said ‘always, always’; she just thought it.
The rest of this story is quite uninteresting, for Hugo and Shirley were happy ever after: which is, unfortunately, more than most people are, what with first one thing and then another....
IT is told by young Raymond Paris, the novelist:
A few days after my arrival at the hotel on the hill behind Algiers, where I intended to stay some time for reasons best known to myself, I wrote to a friend in London, Ralph Trevor, telling him of the place and the people, and, in particular, of the people in my hotel. I must explain that I am a traveller of ignoble inclinations, so that my descent on Africa was in every way very dissimilar from that of Mrs. Rosita Forbes. I cannot lay claim to a very adventurous spirit—though, of course, I am always ready to make a fourth, a third, or a second, as the case may be but only too seldom is. What I mean to say is that on my arrival in Algiers, instead of hiring a room so situated in the town that I could see or smell its Arab activities, I straightway made for the large building which dominates the hill of Mustapha: and which has about as much relation to Algeria as the Carlton at Cannes, the Paris at Monte Carlo, or the Normandy at Deauville.
There I stayed, and I wrote to my friend,describing the hotel, and the people in the hotel, and how Robert Hichens was worshipped by the directors thereof, and how they fell down before effigies of the authoress ofThe Sheik, as well they might, for who knows how many people would not go to Algeria but forThe Garden of AllahandThe Sheik. In particular I described an amiable gentleman, and how he looked exactly like Lord Beaverbrook might have looked if he hadn’t made so much money all by himself, a sort of rugged grandeur being spread over features not otherwise remarkable; and then I went on to say that of course there was the usual hotel Pretty Girl, and very pretty she was too. “I do not know her yet,” I wrote, “and I probably never will, for they tell me—the barman tells me—that she and her mother are inclined to be rather exclusive and do not mix with the other guests. Be that as it may, the girl is extraordinarily pretty in a slim, fascinating way which is quite indescribable. She must be very young, for I notice that it’s only with difficulty that she manages to repress a giggle at things her mother says, which is really very nice of her, don’t you think? On the other hand she dresses so amazingly well, really well, I mean, no home-made stuff, that she simply can’t be under twenty—unless, of course, her mother chooses her clothes for her, but I am rather inclined to doubt that, her mother’s clothes being excessively county and therefore not remarkable forchic....” and so on and so on in a friendly way about this and that.
When next I wrote to Ralph Trevor, which was not before I had to, he having written to me several times about one thing and another, I mentioned that I had, so to speak, put the lid on the exclusive business as regards the hotel Pretty Girl and her agreeable parent. “Her name is Consuelo Brown,” I wrote, “and they live not far from Leicester. If you ask me how in the world a girl who lives not far from Leicester comes to be called Consuelo, I will tell you that it is because her mother has always admired that beautiful lady who was Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt; but I am only surmising that for your benefit, for Mrs. Brown has not as yet told me the true facts of the matter. Miss Brown is English and American in equal parts, her late father having been an American Admiral. If he was anything like his daughter he must have been a very pretty Admiral.
“By the way, I was quite wrong about Miss Brown’s age, she turns out to be only eighteen! And when she talks I can quitebelieve it, not that she is at all silly or giggly—she still deliciously represses the giggly part—but because she prefaces a good many of her remarks with an “Oh!” which sounds exactly as though she had just eaten a piece of Turkish Delight and had liked it rather a lot. I met her at a dance given at the hotel the other night. AGala Bal, they called it. ASoirée de Gala. Well, I wandered into theGala Bal, and saw her sitting in a far corner with her mother, looking very absent-minded, I thought; and well she might, for the difference between aGala Baland a common-or-gardenBalis that five hundred people are shoved on to a floor made to hold fifty; and so I sidled across the floor, made my bow and formed words indicative of a pressing desire to dance with her, all of which went quite well. It went even better, when, just as we were about to take the floor, I asked her ‘whether she preferred to be held by the spine or the liver?’ at which she suddenly gave such a laugh that various Frenchwomen looked for the first time away from her clothes to her face, which was a very agreeable contrast to theirs, they having used powder and what-nots to excess in honour of theGala Bal.
“I suppose you know what a French hotel orchestra is like at playing dance music?It is very good as an orchestra over meals, very classical and all that, but what is the use of a fox-trot without saxophones and drums and little tiddley-bits here and there? One has to be a little mad to dance a fox-trot, a little mad or a little drunk, but one can’t be a little mad to the polite strains of an orchestra lead by achef d’orchestre, which every now and then dries up completely to give the first violin a chance to be a first violin.
“So we gave up dancing after a while—we had to, anyhow, for theGala Balistsbegan dancing in open formation—and I lured her out on to the terrace with a promise of a lemon-squash: which, however, turned out to be an orangeade—two straws and a lump of ice, you know—but she seemed to enjoy it none the less for that. Did she like orangeade? Oh, yes, she liked orangeade frightfully. Then what to say? I asked her if she liked dancing.
“‘Oh, yes!’ she said very softly. ‘Why, what else is there!’
“Well, when one comes to think of it, there doesn’t really seem to be very much else, and so that was that. Later on, however, there turned out to be skiing. Oh, yes, she liked skiing. Dancing and skiing.... And, somehow or other, she asked me whatI was, and I said ‘Nothing,’ which is a good deal truer than I like to think. But she said in her soft, brown way: ‘Oh, how splendid! for I’m nothing, too, so we can be nothing together.’ That sounded charming at the time, though now I have written it down there looks something the matter with it. But that girl is quite beyond me.
“When I was eighteen I seemed to know quite a lot about girls of eighteen, but now I feel like a cow when Consuelo looks at me with her brown eyes, and my conversation with her degenerates into asking her a series of questions, like that dancing-skiing business. It is simply extraordinary, you know, how little one seems to know about what goes on inside girls of eighteen, and I think something ought to be done about it. I mean, one simply can’t go on living one’s whole life knowing nothing at all about girls of eighteen but pretending to know a whole lot about women of thirty who, on the other hand, know a good deal less than they think they do about chaps. This girl, though, is not at all a typical specimen, she can’t be, for (a) she is so amazingly well-dressed, (b) she has travelled a good deal, and (c) she ran away two years ago from Heathfield, by the simple expedient of climbing the school wall at six o’clock in the evening, hailing apassing motor-lorry on the Ascot Road, and so to London and to the home not far from Leicester. And here she is now, like a flower out of season among all these elderly people, who keep on saying that they don’t play bridge for money but that a shilling-a-hundreddoeslend a zest to the game. I can’t help wanting, you know, to find out what she thinks of thingsnow. It won’t be in the least interesting to find out what she thinks of things when she is in her twenties, for her fascinating kind of beauty—you want to pass your hand over it, that kind—can’t help spoiling her, the mere daily business of refusing proposals of marriage can’t help spoiling her—butnow! Well, those brown eyes are the devil’s own barrier, and she’s so infernally simple that one has to talk intelligibly about everything, which is a habit one has almost gotten out of ever since one grew up and lived among grown-up people. Do girls of eighteen, does Consuelo,know anything? I mean, does she know anything of the beauties and the dirts that men and women do to each other in the ordinary course of things, men and women being what they are and life being what it is? Or does Consuelo—she allowed me to call her that, by the way, by pulling a face when I Miss Browned her—does Consuelo, with herslim, brown, enchanting, touchable loveliness, know nothing about anything like that, does she think that young men admire only with their eyes and that therefore life is great fun? Or does she want them to admire her with something besides their eyes and their hearts and all the nice clean things? What does a girl of eighteen think about when she’s alone? Was Charles Garvice right or was Charles Garvice wrong?—I am serious—about the inner thoughts of a much admired girl of eighteen? Or are they more or less like boys? Do girls of eighteen—really nice ones, I mean, not the meretricious golden things one sees about London ballrooms in July with a tremendous air of having been bored at their first Garden Party—do the really nice ones just go fluttering on and on until a nasty big net comes plump down on them, calling itself Marriage and Womanhood and so on? It is all very puzzling, I do think, and I see no reason at all for my going on calling myself a novelist if I don’t know a damn thing about what goes on behind the brown eyes of a girl of eighteen! What do other writers do when they are writing about girls of eighteen? I suppose they just go on making up lies like anything, and bitterly hope for the best. If it comes to that I am a thundering good liarwhen I am put to it, but I simply couldn’t make up enough to put inside a girl like Consuelo with any hope of getting away with it. No, but it’s very depressing, and me calling myself a writer. It’s all right of course, when one is dealing with older women—on paper, I am talking about—for no matter how many lies one makes up about them, just to make them seem real and lifelike, some of them are sure to be true, or as near the truth as makes no matter....”
And then, a good while later, when I had moved from Algiers to Lagouat, which is right away in the desert, hundreds of miles away in the desert, Ralph Trevor wrote to me, and among other things he asked: “Why haven’t you mentioned Consuelo Brown in your last two letters? I am quite interested in her, and have been wondering whether you have fallen in love with her and had your advances rejected with contumely, which would be a quite sufficient reason for you to have lost all interest in her.”
I wrote back rebuking him for his harsh opinion of me and pointing out various of the less lustrous episode in his own career of celibacy, and then I came to Consuelo. “Yes, there is certainly a reason why I ceased to mention her in my letters, but it is not the reason to which you have quite bestiallysubscribed. There are some things one simply does not, of one’s own accord, write about, not for any consideration, and so not even to cure you forever of your fatuous pessimism concerning my character will I ever again mention the name of Consuelo Brown. I am, as you see, in Lagouat now, an aeroplane from Biskra dropped me here, and here I will stay until the spring, between the sand and the sun and the beggars....”
But when in the spring I returned to London, loveliest of all towns in the spring, and I dined one night with Ralph Trevor, he said to me, at that period after dinner when such things are commonly said: “Now then, out with it, old man. The later history of Miss Consuelo Brown, if you please.”
Very unwillingly, I told him how one day a young man I knew, not very well, was added to the guests of the hotel on the hill over the bay of Algiers. “A pleasant young man he was, and I was shocked at the sight of him, he was so white and fragile. He said he had been ill of a rheumatic fever for a long time and was now convalescing.
“We had met by chance on the very first day of his arrival, and we did the ‘Hello! Fancy seeingyouhere!’ business, but I fancied that his ‘Hello!’ was not so hearty as it might have been, considering that I was oneof his elder brother’s oldest friends. We sat down, on the terrace there, just before luncheon it was, and he seemed to be getting at something, until finally he came out with: ‘Don’t you know? Haven’t you—haven’t you heard?’ I told him I hadn’t seen an English paper for weeks, and then he sort of gasped out: ‘Just the other day—in Paris—Basil—Basil shot himself! Awful. Oh, my God, awful!’ Your own letter telling me of poor Basil’s suicide was to arrive that very evening, so you can imagine how shocked I was to hear of the ghastly thing like that—and shocked too, at this poor boy’s face, it was so livid with pain! I was so sorry for him that I was quite, quite silent. Here had he, at the end of a long illness, been running away from the turmoil of his elder brother’s suicide—and the first man he meets is one of his brother’s oldest friends! He had somehow had to tell me about it, the poor boy. And then there we sat, staring down at the silent Mediterranean a mile below, but the sea at noon was not more silent than we were. Not until that moment had I seen so clearly the wide, blue-white bay of Algiers, the sea as blue as a pretty doll’s eyes and the bending coast dotted with white villages looking so deceptively clean in the sunlit distance, and away in the west, from the sea to thedesert, the long low ridge of the Atlas Mountains with here and there snow-capped peaks towering up behind them, like huge white minarets in the blue haze of the sun ... and then Consuelo came up the steps between us and the sea, pretty Consuelo, so slim, so young, so smart, and the poor boy beside me gasped, ‘My God!’ Consuelo gave him one white look and was gone into the hotel, and that afternoon out of the hotel and, I hope to God, out of my life. Now, if you please, I am tired of this tale, and if you will be a little more active with that not very superior port, as becomes a host to his guest, I shall be infinitely obliged. Thank you.”
“But, my dear man, you have not finished the tale! What the devil was it all about?”
“Yes, the devil and hell certainly had a lot to do with it, Ralph. There was hell in that poor boy’s eyes when he saw Miss Brown and said, ‘My God!’ You see, he loved that girl quite frantically and seriously, and she came to stay with him and his people in Hampshire so that the engagement could be confirmed and all that, and early one morning he saw her coming out of Basil’s room. A hungry girl. After that he went away without a word, to give poor Basil his chance—you remember, we guessed that poorBasil was in love at last, the queer, furtive way he came by of breaking dinner-engagements?—and then the next thing he heard was that the girl had broken the engagement and that Basil had put a bullet into his silly sweet head....
“Perhaps,” said Ralph Trevor, “she couldn’t help it. Life is very hard for very pretty girls, Raymond. Perhaps she just couldn’t help it....”
But I said nothing, what was the use? I had seen that white look she gave that wretched boy, and that white look was like a disease in the sunlight. Lithe limbs and curling lips, laughing eyes and loose heart—a hungry girl, made to rot men.
SAID Mr. Fall to Lord Tarlyon on the telephone, one day in July:
“Pleased if you’d dine with me to-night.”
“Sorry,” said Lord Tarlyon; and he was sorry, for he liked Mr. Fall very well. “Promised to dine with a man.”
“Pleased if you’d bring him along,” said Mr. Fall.
Mr. Fall lived in Lord Brazie’s house in Grosvenor Square. (Lord Brazie, of course, lived somewhere else, but he wouldn’t have been able to live at all if Mr. Fall had not taken his house.) As George Tarlyon and I walked thither through the quietening streets and the dainty noises of the Town in the evening, we spoke of Cyrus Fall; and then a silence fell upon us, for we were meditating on millionaires of the Canadian sort. In the last decade of the last century millionaires were always American: in the first decade of this century an Australian modeset in, and many a young lady of birth was married to a fruit-farm, and many a chorus-girl decorated the bush: but fashion, asThe Tatlerhas brilliantly put it, is proverbially fickle, and with the war all millionaires who were not Canadian fell into great discredit, so that many women exchanged theirs for the Canadian model on the first opportunity. Now of these, the greatest was Cyrus Fall....
The history of Mr. Fall and his millions is simple. Like all Canadian millionaires he was born near Limerick and emigrated, with his parents, to Canada at the age of three. For a time he was dancing-master and chucker-out in acabaretin Toronto; but, deciding that that was a discreditable profession, bought some newspapers and edited them in such an original way that he very soon became a Force. Throughout this time he never failed to consult his mother at every turn, and though in doing so he sometimes made mistakes, he never missed an opportunity of saying that a man’s best friend is his mother; and when, at the age of thirty, having been a Force in Canada for some years, he came to England, he wrote to his mother, who of course lived in Winnipeg, every day, saying that a man should be grateful to the woman who gave him birth. InEngland Mr. Fall went on being a millionaire until the war broke out, when he at once became a multi-millionaire. He was offered a knighthood for his services on the field of finance, but humbly refused the honour in a letter which, his newspapers said, was that of a simple, sincere and great-hearted man and should be a historic model for all letters refusing knighthoods. Later on he refused a baronetcy in the same simple and sincere way, excusing himself to his friends on the grounds that his mother wouldn’t like him making a guy of himself; and when some one said that Canadians can’t be choosers Mr. Fall biffed him one. About the time when George Tarlyon and I were going to dine with him he was said to be about to accept a barony, excusing himself on the ground that he was getting too old for letter-writing. Mr. Fall had not married.
I had never actually met Mr. Fall, but when we did meet he said he was pleased to know me, so that was all right.
“You will, of course, have a cocktail,” he said.
“Of course,” we said.
“My own particular make,” Mr. Fall toldus. “Instead of shaking them I stir them with a shagreen shoe-horn steeped in Chartreuse.”
“Perfect it is,” I assured him.
With the cocktails were caviare sandwiches.
“They go together very well,” said George Tarlyon. When they had gone, we dined.
Somewhere near us, but not in the room, sang aukelele: near enough to be enjoyed, far enough not to distract, a gentle noise, a mezzotint noise, unrecognisable and remote.
And then in the fulness of time, the table was cleared, and there was coffee.
“You will like the brandy,” said Mr. Fall, as Tarlyon hesitated on the butler’s question. We liked the brandy very much.
“Leave it,” said Mr. Fall; and the butler left us.
“It’s like this,” he began; and he put both elbows on the table, and in one hand he waved a cigar and with the other he caressed his chin. Seriously he glanced from one to the other of us; he was a man with a courteous eye.
“It’s like this,” Mr. Fall addressed Tarlyon. “I asked you to dinner, Lord Tarlyon, not only because of the very real pleasure I take in your company, but because I want your advice—your advice,” said Mr. Fall,“as an Englishman of honour. And for yours, too, Mr. Trevor, I shall be very much obliged. Have some brandy.”
“You see,” said Mr. Fall, “I am not a gentleman. I am not even quite a gentleman. My birth and upbringing, though they have fitted me for very much, have not fitted me to decide on certain matters with that clearness of vision and decision which I find so admirable in men of breeding....”
Tarlyon made a faint noise which sounded like “Ah....”
“To men like you,” Mr. Fall continued, “there are not two ways of doing a thing: there is only a right way; and that, with you, is the instinctive way. Whereas for me there is also the right way, but there are other ways as well, and sometimes I find myself wandering up these other ways and wondering if they are not quite as right as the right way, even though they are more convenient. In matters of policy there are two sides to every question; and I sometimes wonder if, in matters of honour, there are not also two sides to every question....”
“There are,” said George Tarlyon. “But one of them is a precipice....”
“Exactly, Lord Tarlyon. And that is why I am about to put before you the case of myself and a lady, as discreetly as possible ofcourse, so that you can advise me what to do—as a man of honour. Or rather, so that you can support me in going on doing what I am already doing, or encourage me to change my course towards what, I frankly admit, will be a happy fulfilment for me. Have some brandy.”
Mr. Fall, in the interests of his country at war, had frequently had occasion to voyage on board a cruiser of His Majesty’s Fleet, and had thus acquired that finished courtesy which presumes a man has drunk nothing before the glass you are offering him.
“I may say,” Mr. Fall continued, “that at the age of fifty-two I know as little about ladies as I did when I was twenty, when I didn’t know any. Perhaps it is because I have always been a very busy man, perhaps it is because I do not attract them enough——”
“Or perhaps it’s because you attract them too much,” Tarlyon suggested.
“Of course,” Mr. Fall admitted, “one is agreeable financially; and a knowledge of that fact has sometimes, I am afraid, caused me to reconsider an invitation to dinner which the night before had seemed full of friendship, and, perhaps, possibilities of a kind which I am not too old to think romantic. However....”
“A little over a year ago,” said Mr. Fall, “I met the lady who is bound up in the situation on which I need your advice. I met her in an ordinary way, at a ball; and saw nothing unusual in the meeting until the evening of the following day, when I found to my surprise that throughout the day she had been inhabiting that part of a man’s mental economy which is called the ‘back-of-his-mind.’ On bringing her to the front I discovered that I was in love with her; and on ringing her up was delighted to hear that she was agreeably disposed to seeing me at her flat, at about five o’clock any afternoon. That was a year ago, and that is as far as I have got.”
“You mean, she has so far refused to marry you?” I asked.
“I have not asked her, Mr. Trevor. That is the point—I cannot ask her. With such as she, as you can understand, the words love and marriage are synonymous—and both, to her in particular, are offensive. I am her friend. I do not want to be, but I am.
“She is a lady of birth, of deep principles and affections, which, I believe, it is the custom of the day to find wanting in women offashion; and I find that, at the end of a year, I respect the dignity of her mind as much as I admire that of her carriage, her principles as much as her features, which are of the kind known as classical, though indeed I find in them every quality of romance. We were speaking, a moment ago, of ladies to whom a rich man is, if in no other way, financially agreeable. With this lady, that would suffice me: I would think myself well-rewarded to be allowed to marry her on any terms; but I would dare to offer her anything but the most trifling bric-à-brac—for not she to accept expensive presents—as little as I would dare to offer her my hand. I cannot even mention marriage to her, because of the damn silly thing which stands between us. Have some brandy.
“Her husband had died some twelve months before I met this lady, in Rome, where he was on political business, of a sudden chill. At that time I was also in Rome; and though I had never met his wife, or even knew he was married, I had had a fairly long acquaintance with him, which had begun in the early days of the war in Paris, where he was stationed as a military officer of some consequence. I remember while I was there he won the D.S.O. for service at the front—telephone service, I gathered.
“He died of his chill within twenty-four hours, and my business took me from Rome before his wife could arrive. I leave you to imagine the tragedy of her arrival in a city where, only a few years before, she had spent the happiest weeks of her life, her honeymoon, to look upon the still face of one who had left her two weeks before in the full vigour of youth and health. She has described it to me, not as a whole but in those disjointed pieces with which a sensitive mind can make a figure of tragedy vivid to a sympathetic listener, and I can see the thing so clearly that I feel it as a personal loss....”
“And so,” Mr. Fall added grimly, “it is. It seems that, on the night I met her at the ball, she had discovered my acquaintance with her dead husband; and it was that fact which had made her so agreeably disposed to allowing me to call on her, for hers was that kind of breeding—rare, I am given to understand, in these days—which is not usually approachable by a slight acquaintance on the telephone. I am quite assured, in spite of her very courteous assertions to the contrary, that we would never have become friends but for my having known her husband; and I, of course, was at first only too pleased to have chanced on a link which gave her a certain degree of pleasure in my person andcompany—for both, I have since discovered, were at first devoid of any other interest for her. Very early in our friendship I found that she had loved her husband as few men are fortunate enough to be loved; and in this love had been contained a respect which I can only describe as religious. It was not the qualities of his mind, which were gentlemanly but scarcely above the commonplace, but those of his heart, which had held such a high place in her love; and which, now that he was dead, reigned in her mind to the exclusion—I speak literally, Lord Tarlyon—of every other interest and affection. She had not loved him enough, she said. She ought, she insisted, to have recognised more deeply his regard for and constancy to her; and she ought certainly to have insisted on accompanying him to Rome when, perhaps, under her care, he might not have caught that fatal chill. She persuaded herself that she had neglected one whose every thought, whose whole life, was bound up in hers, a great gentleman whose fidelity to her, one of four daughters of an impoverished house, had merited the most utter devotion; and whose memory she couldn’t but hold in the highest esteem, to the exclusion of every petty circumstance which might invade the life of a woman who was still young and,perhaps, not unattractive. Have some brandy.
“I need scarcely tell you, who are men of the world, that a lady so devoted, so consistent, is rare, and must undoubtedly possess qualities of mind and heart deserving a man’s highest respect. Perhaps, however, I carried this respect business too far when, at that beginning, and in the natural flow of conversation about some one whose memory was so admirably dear to her, I helped to feed her illusion about her husband; but I was aware only of the present moment, and wished—and who, being human, would not?—to make myself agreeable enough for her to wish to see me again. For my success in that little intrigue I am now being sufficiently punished. In me, Mr. Trevor, and you, Lord Tarlyon, you may see at the present moment a man undergoing heavy punishment for the pettiest of all crimes, the crime of thoughtless kindness. I am now suffering for my lies, for I told more lies about that dead husband than you could believe possible in a man whose imagination has hitherto been considered financial rather than fanciful. I had, you understand, been so deeply impressed by her belief in the love and fidelity of her dead husband, had been so moved by the naïve illusions of a ladywho, passing her life among a generation avid for the details of other people’s infidelities, prized constancy above all things, that I had let myself go. It seemed, don’t you see, the decent thing to do; and I, not being well versed in the rules concerning these matters, did it very thoroughly. Anyway, I could at best only have kept my mouth shut, for one breath of a hint adverse to that treasured memory would have snapped the slender cord of our friendship. But I need not, in trying to anchor her interest in me, have gone so far as I did: I need not, just for the pleasure of seeing the tender light in her eyes, have rashly struck out on my own and invented magnificent Parisian situations in which her husband’s constancy to her had been as a shining light among the crude passions let loose by war among even the most decent of temporarily celibate men. I need not have depicted him as a man whose purity and asceticism were such as to astonish his friends—myself, who was but human, among them—and as one whom the fascinations of the most lovely women left untouched, except for a sad smile which I had frequently seen to come on his face, as at the thought of some one inexpressibly dear to him. Have some brandy.
“The man is dead; and I wouldn’t haveyou think me so wanting in decency as to speak harshly of a dead man. But the fact remains that that man must have been one of the world’s biggest liars, a liar of inconceivable genius and magnitude, a liar beside whom Ananias would have been a saint, Cagliostro a child, and Barry Lyndon a novice. As for Casanova, I simply hate to think how small he would have felt beside that dear, dead, faithful husband. I have told you how, throughout the time I knew him, I was not even aware that he was married; but there was not only nothing in his conversation, but there was less than nothing in his behaviour, to indicate that he had a wife in England for whose company he was passionately longing. I may say that I have never yet met a man who gave the appearance of passionately longing for his own wife less. I had nothing against him, mind you; he was a charming bachelor, a gay companion, and, if you will permit a small vulgarity, could resist a pretty woman about as much as a mouse can resist a cheese. He was certainly a shining light among the crude passions let loose by war; in fact, he shone magnificently; and a patriotic element in me was, in a dim kind of way, only too pleased to see him at it, for Frenchmen are nowadays so uppish about their talents atle Sport,what with one thing and another, that it was pleasant to see an Englishman teaching them a thing or two about the one which, with boxing, they are most cocksure about. By the way, Lord Tarlyon, I wonder if you will agree with me when I suggest that this modern fashion among Englishwomen of decrying Englishmen as lovers in comparison to foreigners is not only getting very tedious but is, so I heard in a discussion on the matter with a student of my acquaintance, entirely without foundation in fact?”
“Our friend Trevor,” said Tarlyon, with a sombre nod, “has been actively engaged in propaganda to that effect for some time: and with, I am told, no small measure of success.”
“I am sincerely glad to hear that, Mr. Trevor; for it is by the accumulation of such small cancerous growths, perhaps scarcely significant in themselves but considerable in their rolling together, that the heart of an Empire is affected and its body grows rotten. The Dominion of Canada looks to you gentlemen of England to combat such insidious errors, which may seem harmless enough as part of the merry prattle of young ladies, but are, I am persuaded, detrimental to our particular civilisation. However....” Mr. Fall waved aside our particular civilisation for the time being, and lit another cigar. He continued:
“The fever which proved fatal to this amorous gentleman in Rome was caused by exposure to the treacherous chill of that city in the early hours of the morning when, I am told, even a strong man’s vitality is at its lowest; and the contrast between a warm place and the cold streets towards a hotel is sometimes more than the human constitution will bear. It has been my part to have had to sit and listen to his praises by the hour, and at his name I have had to endure seeing tears spring to the eyes of a noble and beautiful lady. With her I have stood by his grave, and on it I have emptied the contents of Solomon’s windows. I have sat close beside her, and longed to touch her hand, to kiss her hair, to express even the surface of my passion—I have known that, perhaps, in happier circumstances, she might not have pushed away my hand nor denied my kiss—and I have also known that she would not allow herself for one second to deviate from the path she had set herself, the path of self-sacrifice to the memory of a man who, I knew, had never spent a moment of his life in thinking about her. Have some brandy.
“It may seem strange to you, Lord Tarlyon, and to you, Mr. Trevor, that I should confide in you with so little restraint. But, as I told you in throwing myself upon your kind attention, I lack the breeding which could alone give me an instinctive direction in such a matter. I need guidance, Lord Tarlyon. I am in a damnable case; and in the last few weeks I have been seeking refuge from a position which becomes more insupportable every moment—and the more so, you understand, because I can see I am not altogether distasteful to the lady—in wondering whether, in some recess in the code of honour, there is no decent way out of this damnable lie. That in particular is why, Lord Tarlyon, I was so anxious to see you, and to put the matter before you. Is there, for a man of honour, no way out of a mess like this? Is it utterly impossible for me to shatter her illusions about her late—her extremely late, in his nightly habits—husband? Is there nothing I can do but look sulky every time the man’s name is mentioned? But I have tried that, and I am afraid she takes it as the expression of a sympathy too deep for words. What can I do, Lord Tarlyon? Or perhaps you, Mr. Trevor, can suggest some way out? Have some brandy.”
A silence fell on us a while. At last I said:
“I’m afraid, Mr. Fall, as you have honoured me by asking for my advice, that there seems to be nothing youcando but what you have already done—to wait. Maybe sometime ... she ... well, you know what I mean.” I hope he did, for I was by no means sure....
“And you, Lord Tarlyon?”
“Well,” said George, very thoughtfully, with his eyes somewhere on the table, “as you ask me, I must say that your behaviour throughout seems to me to have been irreproachable, and I respect you enormously for it. I can’t say fairer than that. But,” and he looked across at Mr. Fall; and he smiled at him a grave smile, “neither can I for the life of me see how you can break away from the position you are in. It seems beastly—but, since you’ve asked my advice, I can only suggest that you must just wait. You can’t, as you have said, shatter the illusion—you can’t, as a man of honour. A cad, of course, would long ago have stepped into the breach and away with the body—I mean, booty. Your brandy is marvellous, Mr. Fall. But, as I was saying, I can’t for the life of me see that you can do anything but just wait and look sulky whenever you get the chance....”
“You will forgive my boring you?” Mr. Fall put to us sincerely.
“It would be too cold-blooded of us to say we have been entertained,” I began——
“But,” said Tarlyon, “we have certainly not been bored. And I only wish we could have been of some use——”
“I just wanted cor-rob-or-ation,” Mr. Fall murmured softly, sadly. “Have some brandy.”
It was past one o’clock when George Tarlyon and I set foot again in Grosvenor Square; we walked up South Audley Street, and I stopped at my door.
“Good-night, George,” I said. But Tarlyon held my arm.
“You are coming home with me,” says he.
“Nonsense!” said I; and though I was friendly, I was firm. “There was once a woman in a play by Shaw who amazed five continents by the magic words, ‘Not bloody likely.’ At this moment I am that woman, and it is thus that I refuse your solicitations. I have drunk brandy, and I would sleep. Good-night, George Almeric St. George.”
But he is a very tall man, and he dragged me by the arm down South Audley Street, the while crying mighty cries after the manner of one who wants a taxi immediately; and into one he threw me, and the taxi hurled itself towards Belgrave Square, where George Tarlyon lives in a house which, together with much money, was left to him by his wife, who died before she could make a will.
I was very angry, and insisted that he should make a note of it.
“There, there,” he soothed me. “All I want you to do, Ralph, is to leer in the offing while I ring up a lady. I do so hate to do that kind of thing alone.”
I pointed out that she couldn’t be much of a lady if he could ring her up at that unearthly hour; he warned me to leave his friends alone; I said I wouldn’t touch them at the end of a barge-pole, and then I composed myself to sleep. The taxi hurled itself across Hyde Park Corner, and dreamily I heard Tarlyon’s voice:
“I am not only going to telephone a lady, but I am going to insult a lady intolerably. And in case my invention should run low, I want you, Ralph, to stand by and suggest some more intolerable insults....”
And dreamily I heard Tarlyon’s voice:
“She keeps her telephone beside her bed, and so she must answer; and lo! I will insult her intolerably.”
The taxi stopped, and very soon the receiver was to his ear, while I leered at him from the depths of an arm-chair.
“Have some brandy,” said Tarlyon, but I sneered at him.
But what he said down the telephone, I cannot repeat. These things should only be spoken of privately, as between man and man. All I can do is to give a brief outline of his speech and a summary of the conclusions at which he arrived. He spoke at length of her character, of which he seemed to take an unfavourable view; he took grave exception to the manner of her life; and he begged her to hold him excused, in future, from any closer relationship than that of a distant acquaintance. She must have said he was drunk, for he denied any undue excess, while reserving to himself the right to think she was probably a secret drinker.
He began, I thought, rather subtly: on a matter which has been discussed between ladies and gentlemen ever since Solomon took a fancy to the Queen of Sheba and put off all dinner engagements for a week. In the gentlest way Tarlyon begged to beexcused from dining with her on the following night. No, it was not that he had discovered a previous engagement; no, he couldn’t say that. The truth was, he said, that he had found something better to do; he hadn’t, he added, had to look very hard. He then proceeded to give his reasons for never wishing to see her again, and these he deduced (a) from flaws in her character, (b) from fissures in her temperament, and (c) from structural errors in her personal appearance. He pointed out that he was putting himself to this trouble only for her good, and in memory of his long friendship with her late husband, whom he had known ever since they were at Oxford and Cambridge together. I can only put down the fact that she did not ring off before she did to some fatal fascination in his voice, which was throughout smooth and reasonable in tone.
“That woman,” he explained, “is a very clever woman. She has the kind of brains that don’t generally go with beauty; and if I had any political ambitions, or any indoor ambitions of any kind, I would marry her like a shot. She has been thinking this last year that I might marry her, but I’ve just managed to keep the conversation off that. For, though one doesn’t deserve an angel,one needn’t marry a devil. Meanwhile, however, I’ve grown fond of her, and I’ve taken no trouble to hide from her that I admire her enormously; and so she has kept me dangling for a year, doing neither one thing or the other—indeed, why should she?—on the off-chance that I might marry her; for though Viscounts are not what they were, Ralph, a wealthy Viscount was to her mind just preferable to a wealthy Canadian of a certain age. And so she has kept poor old Cyrus Fall, who adores her, as I’ve known for the last ten months or so, hanging on as her second string, palming off that ghastly lie on him about a husband she never cared a damn about—she’s just kept him hanging on, while she waited to see whether I’d toe the line or not; and if not.... But I’m rather sorry about it all, Ralph, for she is a clever and amusing woman, and I shall miss begging her to put off Mr. Fall to dine with me.”
“Poor old Cyrus Fall!” I murmured. “But then—why poor? He adores the woman—no matter how cunning she is, he adores her. And so on....”
“Exactly,” said Tarlyon. “There are men, Ralph, who would warn Mr. Fall against that woman, whereas we are throwing her into his arms. For we, Ralph, knowthat no matter how thoroughly he finds her out, as he surely will, he will not cease to adore her; for it is not virtue that men and women love in each other——”
“Quite,” said I, “Good-night.”
A week later, there was announced in theMorning Post, which somehow always seems to know about these things, the engagement of Mr. Cyrus Fall to Mrs. Leycester-Craven, widow of Major Leycester-Craven of the ----. The same morning Mr. Fall rang up Lord Tarlyon.
“Pleased if you’d take luncheon with me to-day,” said Mr. Fall.
“Sorry,” said Tarlyon. “Already luncheoning.”
“Cocktail?”
“Well, why not?”
“Ritz, one o’clock?”
“Right,” said Tarlyon.
Tarlyon grasped the outstretched hand, and wrung it.
“Congratulations,” he murmured.
“Thankyou,” said Mr. Fall.
Tarlyon raised his eyebrows.
“But is the man mad?” he asked. “What on earth for?”
“For your advice to the lady, Lord Tarlyon,” said Mr. Fall gently.
Tarlyon jumped in his chair, and he stared at Cyrus Fall.
“You don’t mean to tell me that she told you!” he gasped.
“Oh, no!” Mr. Fall assured him. “Oh, no! She has never mentioned your name, and I haven’t the faintest idea of what you said to her. But I knew that you would say something, Lord Tarlyon—as a man of honour. That is why I told you of my dilemma that night—after which, as a man of honour, you could do but one thing, since my intentions were serious and yours were not. A cocktail?”
“I’ll have some brandy,” whispered Tarlyon.
THE Felix Waites, as every one knows, are the most exclusive people in Hampstead. And since the war, with its attendant new people, the family have become so aristocratic that they can scarcely speak, for Mrs. Felix Waite says that every one talks too much nowadays. The Felix Waites are understood to spend most of their time in the country, where they entertain only very small parties. There was a time when they spent anxious moments about their only son, Thomas, but all that is over now. Once upon a time young Thomas did the superman on them about a chorus-girl, and broke away. Young Thomas had never fancied himself as an aristocrat, and so he did not marry the chorus-girl at once; but he said he would, and in the meanwhile he concentrated on making money. He was understood to be making big money—so big that he could inhabit a suite of rooms at the Ritz for a week, sign the bill in pencil, and get away before the hotel clerks had rubbedthe dazzle of his sapphire tie-pin out of their eyes. But one day young Thomas forgot to wear his tie-pin, whereupon he adjourned to Brixton Prison for two days and four hours, which he spent in trying to imagine the expression on his father’s face on hearing of his son’s latest telegraphic address. However, Mr. Felix Waite paid up like a gentleman, as he did everything else like a gentleman. That is the only time a Felix Waite has ever stayed with King George, but they do not mention it. Whether the chorus girl became a footlight-favourite or just faded away was never known. Young Thomas married county.
It occurred to Mrs. Felix Waite during the season of 1922 that she might give a garden-party. There was a something about a garden-party, a certain elegance which, Mrs. Felix Waite thought, was lacking in a ball. Every one, after all, can give a ball. Whereas, except for the King and the Queen, very few can give a garden-party in London, for the central idea of a garden-party is that it be held in a garden, and gardens in London are rarer than the jewels on the Mikado’s brow. Now Mrs. Felix Waite had a spacious garden; and about it the walls were so high that the youth of Hampstead Heath had to stand on each other’s shoulders to catch a glimpse of the garden life of the gentry.
The garden-party was a great success. Quite half the people who were asked came, and nearly all the people who weren’t. The fact that it poured with rain from three o’clock onwards might have interfered with the pleasure of the company, had not Mrs. Felix Waite been a woman of invention and, with great presence of mind, held the garden-party in her spacious drawing-rooms; thereby, some have thought, changing the garden-party into an At Home or Afternoon Reception, but that is a matter for argument.
Among those present was Mr. Michael Wagstaffe, the young gentleman with the broken nose who called himself, with perhaps too much pomp, the cavalier of the streets; a list of what other people called him might be of interest, but could have no bearing on this story. It was not a habit with the cavalier of the streets to go to garden-parties, or to parties of any kind, for in London there were not a few people who would have been pleased to meet him just once more. However, on this occasion, hehad happened to be passing Mrs. Felix Waite’s house towards six o’clock, and, hearing music and being thirsty, had walked in. Not long after, he walked out. But he had not walked more than a few yards when some one caught his shoulder, and an abrupt voice said:
“Come back, you!”
Mr. Michael Wagstaffe turned round. “I never drink with strangers,” he said proudly.
“Come on, now,” said the gruff man impatiently. “No one can leave that house just yet. And we want you particularly—to ask you a few questions.”
“A detective!” sighed Mr. Wagstaffe. “I knew it! For his clothes are very plain.”
They started back, the plain-clothes man holding his arm. It was still raining hard—one of those afternoons when people paid to watch it rain on a nice new tarpaulin at the new tennis-courts at Wimbledon.
“I return under protest,” said Mr. Wagstaffe, “though I wouldn’t object to an umbrella as well.”
“We knowyou,” the plain-clothes man grinned disagreeably. “We knowyou. And I’ve had my eye on you in there—you weren’t invited, you weren’t.”
They walked up the soaked red strip of carpet into the spacious portico, through the spacious portico into the spacious Lounge Hall, and so into a little room. The garden-party, it seemed, was still in full swing in the drawing-rooms; there was music, there was gaiety, but in the little room downstairs were only the plain-clothes man and the cavalier of the streets. Methodically, the plain-clothes man began to search the cavalier’s pockets. Contentedly, the cavalier let him.
“If it’s cigarette-cards for your children you’re looking for,” he said, “I’m afraid I left my collection at home. And if it’s not cigarette-cards, what the hellareyou looking for?”
“Diamonds,” said the detective. “Off with your shoes now.”
“I always was a devil for diamonds. Whose diamond?”
“Lady of the house lost famous diamond-ring. Come on now, off with your shoes.”
“If you are worthy enough to untie them,” grinned Mr. Wagstaffe, and held out a wet and rather muddy shoe. But there were no diamond-rings in Mr. Wagstaffe’s shoes.
“Good-bye,” said Mr. Wagstaffe amiably.
“Au revoir,” the detective grinned. Hewas annoyed. “You’ll see more of me,Mr.Wagstaffe. Call on you soon, perhaps.”
The young man turned round at the door.
“Going to search all the guests?” he asked.
“’Course not. But you had no right in the house. You was loitering suspiciously.”
“Going to search the other people who came unasked?” asked Mr. Wagstaffe gently.
“Don’t pull any of that on me, young man,” said the plain-clothes man. “You was the suspicious character on the premises when the diamond-ring was stolen, and you’ll hear more of it.”
The cavalier of the streets advanced gently upon the plain-clothes man, and gently he smiled upon him.
“If you knew more of your London,” said he, “you would know that there were at least five other suspicious characters in this house, of whom not more than two could have been invited. And the next time you come near me you had better bring a posse along with you for protection, for at one more word from you I will smite you in such a manner that if you don’t fall down instantly I shall have to run behind you to see what’s holding you up. Good-afternoon.”
As Mr. Wagstaffe emerged from the little room into the spacious hall a young lady passed him towards the door. She passed swiftly, intently, and sweetly, for she was a pretty young lady. She was dressed like a flower, a flower from a garden sweeter than the spacious garden of Mrs. Waite, and as she passed by the cavalier of the streets a faint scent pierced the rain-sodden air of the outer hall.
“Chypre,” thought Mr. Wagstaffe, for it was his business to know these things.
“Good-afternoon,” said Mr. Wagstaffe amiably; but the young lady, the very smart young lady, passed him without a glance into a waiting taxi-cab outside.
The cavalier of the streets whistled gently as he walked away in the rain. He walked not because he liked walking, but because he had not the price of a taxi in the world, because the Underground was offensive to his sensitive nerves, and because busses bored him.