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Title: Eva's apples
A story of Jazz and Jasper
Author: William Alexander Gerhardie
Release date: December 1, 2025 [eBook #77377]
Language: English
Original publication: NEW YORK: Duffield and Company, 1928
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVA'S APPLES ***
_Eva’s Apples_
EVA’S APPLES
A STORY OF JAZZ AND JASPER
_by_
_William Gerhardi_
[Illustration]
Duffield and Company
New York - 1928
Copyright, 1928, by
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
_Printed in The United States of America
By The Cornwall Press_
Second Large Printing
TO THE GENIUS OF H. G. WELLS
IN HOMAGE
_By William Gerhardi_:
PRETTY CREATURES
THE POLYGLOTS
ANTON CHEHOV
FUTILITY
“And he carried me away in the
spirit to a great and high mountain,
and her light was like unto a stone
most precious, even like a jasper
stone, clear as crystal.”
--Revelations Ch. 21-10-11.
_Eva’s Apples_
I.
“No, no, ‘Me-Too,’ you’d better run away now, or sit and wait here in
the taxi.”
“But the taxi’s so expensive, darling.” (It was not at all like Eva, he
reflected, to object to his expenses.) “I’d better come upstairs with
you.”
“But no! I’ve an _appointment_ with Lord Ottercove!”
“But I’d like to see Lord Ottercove myself.”
“But he hasn’t asked to see you.”
“But he might like to--if he knew.”
“He doesn’t know you.”
“He would if I came up with you.”
How she added to his difficulties!
For a young man of his nervous complex, living in the fear of waiters
and hall porters and a general expectation that the next man he
solicited for information would come up, lower his pants and give him a
good hiding, an appointment with Lord Ottercove, though flattering, was
arduous enough. Before the porch of a tall Fleet Street building from
whose roof an electric sign proclaimed the fiery words _Daily Runner_,
they argued, while the taxi-meter ticked away the aeons, and the aeons
added shillings. From the pavement he gazed up at the huge inscrutable
building and reflected that, located somewhere in its innermost
recesses, like a spider waiting for him, was the great Lord Ottercove,
as the black hand of the hall clock moved towards the hour appointed for
the interview.
Leaving Eva in the taxi, he made away with a certain unnatural kind of
alacrity, a recklessly confident step, to face the braided
commissionaire who listened with faint but not unhopeful surprise to the
news of the visitor’s claim to an appointment with his lordship. Ever
jealous, however, like Peter, of his guardianship of the access to God,
he provided the applicant with a form to be filled in with information
of a biographical nature and outlining the general character of his
business: the form to precede him to the desired destination; the
aspirant to await below confirmation of the bona fides of his claim to
the exalted interview. The confirmation duly forthcoming, the faithful
steward handed the young visitor on to a lift boy who, taking him up
several floors, handed him on to a brother lift boy, who presently
handed him on to a third brother. Each new lift boy to whom he was
handed over looked more exclusive, had a manner at once more solemn and
more deferential--the mark of one who dwells in higher altitudes, more
immune from the grosser things of the earth. Up and up they went, higher
and higher, till the doors of the lift opened again and he was handed
out to a page altogether removed from the race of mere lift boys. The
page bade him follow him up the few remaining steps--the last golden
ladder to heaven--to a landing where the page divested him of his cruder
clothes of the street, took him up another three carpeted steps and,
bidding him wait, knocked reverently at the door. And opened it before
the visitor, who was pulling out his cuffs and, adjusting his tie, was
quite ready to step forward. With a jerky suddenness, not unlike that of
policemen in American comic films dashing off the ground in pursuit of a
criminal, he entered the room, the page shutting the door on him.
In a vast radiant space of yellow and blue, at an octangular table
surrounded by chairs, sat a slim middle-sized figure in a dark-blue
suit, a negligent lock over the brow. It rose promptly, shook hands,
gave the visitor one searching look with its penetrating grey eye, a
guarded smile revealing white affable teeth, and sat down again to the
octangular table, bidding the visitor to do likewise but taking no
further notice of him.
The visitor sat hushed and abashed, slowly taking in the surroundings,
and Lord Ottercove went on with his work, going through the small pile
of papers before him with record speed, while a trained lady-secretary
with a coyly grave manner and a voice attuned to the requisite pitch of
awed and concentrated attention received his instructions. From time to
time Lord Ottercove would take up the receiver and say, “Give me the
Prime Minister,” or “Give me the Duke of Liverpool,” and, incredible as
it seemed, the Prime Minister or the Duke of Liverpool was already
talking--and not from Liverpool. “Hello, Fred,” from Lord Ottercove.
“Oh, very well and full of mischief! What? Oh, I’m bored to hell. I’m
going in for a new hobby. Buying race horses. What? Let me know before
you start. Good-bye to you.”
The visitor had a feeling of sharing in Lord Ottercove’s multifarious
activities and interests, and when he smiled--his eyes were grey and
full of mischief--the visitor smiled too, involuntarily. But Lord
Ottercove still took no notice of him.
And now his eyes were scanning a batch of typescript. His mouth opened.
“_Pale Primroses_ by Frank Dickin,” he said and looked humorously at the
visitor. “Anything else?” he asked the secretary.
“Your spectacles.”
He stretched out his hand for them. “Good night to you.”
And while she was gathering her papers, Lord Ottercove leaned back, his
preoccupied air having deserted him, a leisurely smile having taken its
place. “Well, I am very interested to meet you, Mr. Dickin,” he said
(the secretary now having retired). “My serial editor submitted to me
the beginning of a proposed novel by you with a synopsis of its general
plot, and I am much intrigued by it for a reason that you won’t guess.
Your name--you will forgive me for saying so--was completely unknown to
me. Frank Dickin did not convey anything to me in itself, you
understand.”
“Frank Septimus Dickin.”
“You prefer it like that?”
“To redeem, I suppose, the plainness of the Dickin.”
“Of course, Dickin is not Dickens.” His lordship smiled indulgently.
“No, of course not.”
“Of course. Still, what attracted me--and that is chiefly why I wrote to
you--are the people in your book. So real. It seemed to me I knew them.”
“Well, I do try to make them living. I think it is up to a novelist----”
“I don’t mean that. I think I know the family you describe. Or, rather,
their connections and appendages. A remarkable coincidence, anyway,
about the names.”
Here Dickin smiled.
“So they _are_ ‘copies’?”
“Well, yes, to a considerable extent, I am bound to confess.”
“Have you brought me the continuation as I asked you to do in my letter?
If so, I will read it to-night.”
“I am afraid it is very rough manuscript. You would not feel very happy
with it.”
“Then you read it to me.”
“But it’s long.”
“Read it! I shall tell you when to stop.” Lord Ottercove pressed the
button. The page stood in the doorway. “Don’t let any of them bother me
for the next two hours. Keep them out, do you hear, and shut the door
behind you!”
“Yes, m’lord.”
To Captains of Industry time is said to be money. But Generals of the
Press are artists who express their sensibility in affairs. They have
risen to heights beyond time and avarice and avarice in time to a
condition of immanent immortality already in this world. Lord Ottercove
had suddenly expressed the wish to be relieved of the blazing heat and
burden of the day. For what does it profit a man to be rich if he cannot
please his own moods? He was interested, satisfied: the hours he devoted
to this visitor were of value to him: that was all. “Come and sit down
here, Mr. Dickin; you will get a better light.”
Dickin plunged into a delicate-looking armchair--and fell through. He
started up with a look as though he thought he was going to be thrashed
for it, but Lord Ottercove, with splendid unconcern for the chair, only
asked: “Have you hurt yourself?”
“On the contrary....”
“On the contrary what?”
“On the contrary: I have not hurt myself.”
“Thank God for that.”
“But I’ve hurt the chair.”
“Not a bit of it! Come and sit in this chair and read me your
manuscript. Now then.”
“It is difficult to relate these things in their proper sequence. Some
things stand out, others fade; that is all.”
“Are you talking now or reading?” asked Lord Ottercove.
“Reading.--I remember only a desultory Christmas Eve in the Tyrol. I
strolled about lonely, sad, because laden with memories, through the
winter streets of Innsbruck when a small group of people emerged from a
shop, arguing in Russian as to their next move. I had picked up a fair
amount of Russian in captivity during the war, quartered as we were with
Russian officers, and improved it later on our ill-starred mission in
Archangel, which, in the order of things, left behind memories. Was it
that snow called to snow? It was thawing, and the shop windows twinkling
in the winter dusk were faintly reminiscent. Memory calling to memory?
But I went straight up to them and, with a curt apology, expressed my
pleasure at hearing the dear language. In London I would have been
brought up at Marlborough Street Police Station next morning and fined
£5 for “annoying ladies in the street.” In New York I would have been
flung summarily into prison for attempted rape. But the Russian ladies
smiled with undisguised pleasure and expectation, and, talking eagerly,
we immediately repaired to the Maria-Theresien-Café and exchanged
experiences, attracting every one’s attention in the café by our voluble
reminiscences. One lady--the fair, small, good-looking one, bubbling
over with excitement--had married and divorced an Irishman, a certain
Mr. Kerr whom she had met in Russia before the war, and till recently
they owned a castle in Meran, but--she hinted at the Revolution, the
War, the Italian annexation of South Tyrol, and, well, at their large
and careless way of living. There had been debts. In fine, the castle
was no more. But there were children. Four of them: two boys, two girls.
Zita was the elder of the girls. She was sixteen. And, I perceived,
amazingly good-looking in her bright, fair way. The younger, Eva, was at
school in England. This little boy was John, the despair of her life! He
simply wouldn’t sit still. And, indeed, he was already fiddling with my
watch chain. But she had another son, the eldest of her children, who
had her eyes and loved her dearly. Raymond, the apple of her eye! He was
in England. They wished he might have gone to Oxford or Cambridge. Alas,
that was not possible now. He was in the motor trade. It wasn’t quite
the thing for him. He was more a poet at heart, melancholy, meditative,
interested in bird life. But how good-looking! Raymond and Eva were the
two best-looking of the family--her mother’s children. They had her
eyes. Now John was made for the motor trade. Let him see a wheel or a
piece of wire, and he must go and touch it.
“The other lady, dark and passionate but restrained by Mrs. Kerr’s
volubility, was Russian too, but married to a local Austrian
tram-driver. She told me her story. The daughter of a landowner, like
Mrs. Kerr, she met her future husband when he was a prisoner-of-war in
Russia; she a Red Cross nurse. Love at first sight. She married him and
helped him to escape, all very romantically. He had told her he was an
engineer by education and God-knows-what besides. They came to his
native Innsbruck and he resumed his duties as a tram-driver. And
everybody tells him he is a fool to have saddled himself with an
uncongenial Russian wife and he seems to resent the marriage more than
she resents his calling and has pawned the silver things she has managed
to smuggle out of Russia and has been unfaithful to her and treats her
brutally and she is now divorcing him because she hates him so. And yet
is curious about his doings and still goes by the name of Frau König and
works at a knitting establishment and is about to start work on her
own--if only somebody would provide her with capital. ‘But I can’t,’
immediately says Mrs. Kerr. ‘My husband can’t give me anything. I have
great hopes of getting some money from my parents in Russia, but my
mother writes that she can’t send us anything. They are starving
practically. Life is so hard for us who have come from Russia. And our
castle in Meran.... It’s all this awful Revolution.’
“Ah, the good old days in Russia! Did I know her father, the landowner
Pàvel Yàkovlevich Sabolenko? I didn’t? And yet everybody who had been
in Russia knew him. He owned mines, he owned railways, he owned heaven
knows what not. Everybody knew him. You had only to mention the name
Pàvel Yàkovlevich Sabolenko for everybody to say: ‘Sabolenko? Pàvel
Yàkovlevich? Why, of course!’ And now he said he couldn’t send her a
penny. It seemed a shame. But, of course, they have had a revolution.
Her father was seized by his own peasants (to whom he’d been a father
all his life; they even called him ‘our father’) and was led out into
the wood to be hanged, when a passing aeroplane attracted their
attention and they forgot about him. ‘But mother was seized by them on
their way back, by way of afterthought, and was about to be torn limb
from limb, when father butted in and shouted, “What’s the good of
wasting your time on an old hag like this? Get on with the Revolution!”
and they all shouted, “Hear! hear! Long live the Revolution!” and
elected father President of the Local Revolutionary Centre, which he is
still.’ But the trouble was that you could never be sure with such
erratic people, well-meaning but somehow not very certain of their
intellectual premises. Father was a genius, of course. He had graduated
at eight different universities and had written a philosophical
treatise, a sort of bridge work between Plato and Schopenhauer and had
of late much strengthened his position in regard to the Soviets by a
work on Socialism entitled “Beyond Lenin,” and was regarded as an
authority on mathematics. ‘I am telling you all this because you are a
writer. You can make use of it in your books. We Sabolenkos are a most
interesting, original family. One of my brothers shot himself; another
got drowned....’”
“Look here,” Lord Ottercove interrupted, “will you have a drink before
you continue?”
“Thanks awfully.”
“What will you have?”
“Wine. White wine.”
“Will you have champagne?”
“Thanks, I’ll have champagne. I adore it.”
Lord Ottercove rang in a special way. A butler sprang out of the floor.
“Give me the wine-list.”
The butler returned with a huge album bound in crocodile leather. “You
are looking at the binding, I notice. It is the skin of a crocodile I
shot myself on the Nile,” said the host. And he selected a half-bottle
of the year 1895. “According to historians,” he added, “a magnificent
vintage.”
Dickin drank the champagne and thought--because she too adored
champagne--of Eva waiting for him in the taxi. But the great room with
the drawn curtains and the electric radiators full on was so snug; and
already the champagne was doing its care-transcending work. He hoped
that Eva was very comfortable in the taxi.
“Well, go on,” said Lord Ottercove.
“It was arranged between us before we parted that we should spend that
Christmas Eve together at Frau König’s rooms. They had arranged to do
so before they met me. I arrived shortly before midnight, laden with
provisions. The Christmas tree was lit and John fiddling with everything
that he could fiddle with, and Zita all in white and somehow
marvellously seductive-looking. I marvelled at the lines of that young
body. I still marvel when I think of them. It was warm and cosy in Frau
König’s room on account of the lit candles. Mrs. Kerr was voluble and
took the words out of poor Frau König’s mouth.
“‘Charming!’ I exclaimed. The real Russian Christmas!’
“‘It’s what I wanted!’ cried Mrs. Kerr. ‘And I knew Frau König would be
pleased to spend Christmas Eve among Russian friends. And we regard you
as a Russian too.’
“‘As a matter of fact, I lived in Russia as a child, while my father was
Secretary at the British Embassy in Petersburg, and my earliest
reminiscences go back to Russia.’
“‘Well, there you are! I knew Frau König would appreciate a Russian
Christmas Eve. And so I said to her: ‘Tamara Leonidovna, you have a
larger room than I have; ask us to supper, and we will spend Christmas
Eve together.’ And we thought of writing a little story together: A
young brunette--Tamara Leonidovna--asked a--a young (I am not old, am
I?) blonde to her Christmas tree; and while they were thus together,
there looked in to them through the window a third guest--the Moon.’
“And, indeed, the moon looked through the tall blue pine of the forest.
‘Charming,’ I said.
“‘How much will they give us for it?’
“‘How do you mean?’
“‘How many dollars--in an American magazine?’
“‘Well--I don’t know--it depends, of course--’
“‘And in England? How many sterlings?’
“I am the last man to generalise about national characteristics; but
there was something perennially irresponsible about Mrs. Kerr’s nature.
She had taken part in a £1,000 competition for a General Election
forecast to be held in England on the Tuesday and arranged for a holiday
tour on the following Saturday on the strength of the £1,000 which she
hoped to win.”
“Ha!” laughed Lord Ottercove. “Incredible, isn’t it?”
Dickin, encouraged, continued with warmth, and without reference to the
manuscript: “The fate of these people! who had known affluent days in
genial surroundings on the accustomed background of Russian life, now
cast ashore in a foreign land which looks askance at them and knows them
not!”
Was it the champagne which spoke in him, or a look of dissension in his
listener’s eyes? But he brought down his fist on the table with a bang.
“Dammit, sir! They are too old to be acclimatised, too indolent to
start afresh. They have dragged themselves here and cast their living
carcasses upon the tide of life at this great turning point in human
destiny.”
“Come, come!” said Lord Ottercove. But Dickin, dazed with the wine, was
neither coming nor going. His heart was overwhelmed with love for
humanity. “They feel they dream. All familiar things by which they had
learnt their values had vanished overnight. They hear a tumult outside,
but they are at a loss to understand its meaning. They are no longer of
the past: it is not there: it has just vanished beneath their feet, and
its history is not yet. They are not of the present: they do not know
it, and it knows them not. They are silent, alone. They are alive, but
the shadow of death has crept over them. They are dead souls with just a
flicker of light on them....”
Lord Ottercove, listening, could not make out what this strange note of
emotion in Dickin connoted precisely: whether this was poetry, and, if
so, whether good or bad poetry. Dickin, conscious of discomfiture, felt
the need to excuse himself. “A beginning,” he said, “in the manner of
Guy de Maupassant in his more sentimental vein.” He had a feeling that
the air had gained that air-proof compartment in him in which alone pure
sentiment can thrive, and shrank at this contamination of
sentimentality. “I see I bore you.”
“Not a bit of it, my dear fellow. I cannot tell you how it all
interests me--for various reasons, of which I will tell you presently.”
“I will read on.”
“Whichever is quicker and more to the point.”
“I must read it all. It is nothing without the atmosphere.”
“I understand--about the atmosphere. Go on in your own way.”
“Both women vied to show me their photographs. Frau König took me aside
surreptitiously into her small bedroom--the Christmas tree was in the
kitchen--and there showed me photographs of her father, her mother,
herself and her brother, and even of the tram-driver. A man with a chin
and a moustachio. But when we got back into the kitchen Mrs. Kerr would
not let go of me. She had brought all her photographs with her so that
she might show them to me: her great genius of a father, her mother, the
brother who had shot himself, and the one who was drowned. ‘And this is
my husband.’
“From the cardboard in my hand Mr. Kerr gazed at me circumspectly.
“‘A handsome man, but a wicked, impossible temper. He left his people in
Ireland because he could not get on with them and bought the castle in
Meran and never wanted to go back. And even now, poor fellow, tries to
keep up appearances--eats nothing in the day but dines at night with an
old friend of his, a Rittmeister, at the station restaurant.’
“‘Daddy’s always very spick and span,’ said Zita.
“‘So he is still about?’
“‘Oh yes! He won’t go back to Ireland while his father is alive, and he
loves the Austrians.’
“‘Daddy is awfully stupid about learning languages,’ said Zita. ‘He’s
lived here all his life and can hardly speak a word of German.’
“‘But of course he can speak German,’ Mrs. Kerr butted in. ‘He always
speaks German with the Rittmeister. I heard him last night.’
“‘Mummy, he can’t, to save his life! When he orders three cups of coffee
he holds out three fingers and says: “Zwei.” And in Vienna when he
wanted to show us the Rathaus, he stopped a man in the street and said:
“Please show me the way to the rat house.’”
“‘He didn’t!’
“‘He did!’
“‘Still, your father is a fine man and if it hadn’t been for his temper
I should have never divorced him. But he used to throw things at me--a
flower vase, a candelabrum, a great big jug of water. I’d have to hide
in the garden all night. He was so insanely jealous!’ She smiled slyly.
‘Perhaps not without cause.’
“‘This, I forgot to show you,’ said Frau König, ‘is the photograph of my
fiancé.’
“‘Frau König,’ explained Mrs. Kerr, ‘is engaged to a very charming,
intellectual young man. A Russian student in Paris.’
“‘To a youth?’
“‘What age is he, Tamara Leonidovna?’
“‘Thirty-eight or nine. This is an old photo of him, taken about twenty
years ago on entering Tiflis University.’
“‘And what does he do now?’
“‘He wants to continue his course at the University in Paris in the
Faculty of Philosophy. Then, eventually, he will start a factory.’
“‘What kind of factory?’
“‘A knitting factory. We will direct it together. He is now, while
pursuing his course in philosophy at the University, putting aside money
for the factory by giving shorthand lessons in Paris.’
“‘A very active and sensible young man,’ commended Mrs. Kerr, ‘and I
congratulate you, Tamara Leonidovna, with all my heart.’
“‘Thank you, Vera Pavlovna, I am very proud and happy--’
“‘But wait, I haven’t shown you the photograph of our castle,’
interrupted Mrs. Kerr, ‘our Schloss (she sighed) in Meran.’
“‘Oh, a very lovely old castle.’
“‘Here all my four children were born. Raymond and Zita upstairs; Eva
and John here in the room next to the terrace. I changed my bedroom so
as to be able to take shelter in the garden.... But when he had calmed
down there was no kinder man than my husband. This was my
drawing-room--with the Japanese furniture. And they came and took
everything, everything....’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Like in _The
Cherry Orchard_....’
“‘But why? I do not follow. Your husband is a British subject, isn’t he?
The Italian annexation of Süd Tirol would not affect his property.’
“She nodded rapidly and sadly. ‘Debts ...’ she said. ‘How we lived!
Horses and motor-cars. Bouts. We used to give parties which must have
out-rivalled our Grand Duke’s! Spent without counting! My husband--they
are like that in Ireland--utterly unbusinesslike ... irresponsible!...
And now we are punished.’ She looked at Zita pensively. ‘Yes,’ she said,
‘this Revolution has done a great deal of harm and caused untold
suffering to us Russians of the cultured intellectual classes.... But
let us drink to Hope and a new and brighter Dawn!’
“We refilled our glasses with cognac, after which all things seemed
possible. ‘To the factory!’ I cried. ‘And here is to the future and an
even finer, greater castle!’
“‘I believe in what you say,’ chimed in Mrs. Kerr. ‘We shall be repaid
for our present suffering. Even the Bible says: _And many first shall be
last, and many last first._’”
II.
THE YOUNG GIRLS
“They came to my pension the day after, Mrs. Kerr, Zita, and John; and
Frau König turned up afterwards and sat there like a silent reproach as
Mrs. Kerr poured out her own woes, while John at once went over to my
typewriter and began fiddling with the keys, and being chased away
opened a box which contained razor-blades. ‘John has been sent into my
life as a punishment and thinks nothing of worrying his poor mummy. But
Raymond is a saint and angel to me. Raymond has my eyes--the large,
sorrowful eyes of the Madonna, you might say, kissing the finger-tips of
her Child.’
“They liked the pension and took a room in it. They attracted me chiefly
on Zita’s account. She had a wonderful way about her, as if on the brink
of revealing much. ‘You know,’ she would say. ‘You know--it’s queer
how--how--you know--’ And that sort of thing. And then her face had a
sincere and curiously attractive, open, ‘you know’ sort of look. She was
sixteen, and wonderfully built. Men were after her, all sorts of dingy
barons and counts. I took her out to dances. She seemed indifferent to
her success. But I was devilishly attracted by her. I suppose she had
the most perfect figure I had ever seen, and she danced adorably. Once,
after dinner, when we were alone in the pension dining room and she was
standing warming herself against the great white stove in the corner,
clasping it, her bosom against it, I ventured to press her from behind.
She laughed and called it ‘artificial respiration,’ and I, grateful for
a term, continued to interpret it, so to speak, in new and different
forms, but calling it by the old name whenever she showed signs of
decorous astonishment. And sneering the while at my rival, the young
Count Kolberg. ‘Where have you picked him up?’
“‘In a restaurant. He stood by the door. In a tail coat, you know, all
men look alike. Mummy called out: “Waiter!” And he came up and
introduced himself: “Graf Kolberg.’”
“‘Just like that?’
“‘Yes. Clicked his heels: “Graf Kolberg.’”
“‘Fancy that!’
“‘But he is such a ninny. Twenty-eight, and hangs to his mother’s apron
strings. She still holds him by the hand in the street, and each year
makes him a Christmas tree.’
“‘Fancy that.’ And I kissed her on the spot where the nape joins the
neck.
“‘But Mummy likes the old Gräfin who is nosing everywhere to find out
whether I’d be a suitable wife for him, and tries to borrow money from
Mummy thinking all English must be rich; and as she’s always expecting
something, Mummy’s sent her a box of soap. But the old Gräfin took it in
bad part. She thought it was an insinuation. I’m glad. She does look
rather filthy.’
“‘She does, darling,’ I said, and kissed her on the brow.
“‘It’s beastly people thinking one has a lot of money when one hasn’t
any. I want to go to England and take dancing lessons.’
“‘Whatever for?’
“‘To become a professional dancer. It’s a good thing.’
“She was now sitting on a table and performing a sort of Müller exercise
with her legs and trunk, as she spoke. I began to take a tangible
interest in her formation, in the shape of her limbs, softening the
crudity of my curiosity with remarks like: ‘Fancy this,’ or ‘Fancy
that.’ She was in my arms, warm, flexible, enticing. Her lips searched
mine. But we had eaten of some horrible cheese at the close of dinner
and didn’t dare to consummate the kiss. Nevertheless, getting on
splendidly when interrupted by the mother coming in--to talk. Babble!
gabble! blabber! twaddle! twattle! and if you please, about her younger
girl in England, when this one had been in my arms. The mockery of love!
“‘Zita, go up and bring us Eva’s letter. I should like Ferdinand
Feodorovich (she always got my patronymic wrong) to read it.’ The letter
was to her sister.
“‘_We tell each other everything in our bedroom which is private. I am
called Grandmother and give advice on all subjects. Kitty is called the
Babe as she has never even believed herself in love. Marion is aged
fifteen and one-half, Kitty fifteen. I am by age the youngest, but in
everything else I am considered the oldest. We had gym this afternoon.
Kitty got a giggling fit and couldn’t stop because Miss Hitchcock’s
tummy made awful noises. Marion’s last remark was “Oh! I’m feeling so
curly in my tummy, excited like. I’m expecting some more letters
to-morrow from Bonzo.” You can guess who Bonzo is, it’s_ HIM _for
Marion._’
“And so on in this strain.
“‘An awful imp,’ was Zita’s comment. ‘What I do, she must do too. What I
have, she must have too.’
“‘When they were children,’ Mrs. Kerr explained, ‘Eva always said “Me
too” to everything Zita did--“Me too.” And so we all nicknamed her
“Me-Too.’”
“‘I’d like to meet her when I go to England,’ I said.
“‘She’d want to,’ Zita said, ‘if she knows _I_’ve met you.’
“‘Well, why not?’ said Mrs. Kerr. ‘I will write to her. Frederick
Konstantinovich (again she got my patronymic wrong), a very charming,
intellectual young man, a friend of ours. I am sure she’ll be very
pleased.’
“‘She will!’ said Zita sardonically.
“When I was in England I wrote to Eva and we engaged in some
correspondence, exchanging photographs, before I was able to go down to
meet her. She could not understand this long delay and wondered what
might be the cause of it; and Marion, it seemed, scrutinised my photo
through a magnifying glass to see if perchance I hadn’t spots on my
face. And Eva wrote to me:
“‘_Even if you have spots on your face, show yourself._’
“We met. She was lovely. Unbelievably so. And she wrote to Marion, who
had gone home for the vacation:
“‘_He has no spots, is tall, not elegant but clean looking. And says he
loves me five times more than before. Am I not a lucky girl?_’
“When I went abroad she continued writing to me, mostly about Marion and
Kitty. ’ ... _Marion, Kitty and I are sleeping together like last term.
I like Marion and Kitty. We have arranged that we are going to have a
house in Canada together as we are afraid we are going to be old maids.
If one of us marries she is going to stay in Canada sometimes. We are
also thinking of becoming missionaries. Marion is too funny. She thinks
she is in love!! but she still thinks she will be an old maid. Marion,
Kitty and I are making rules for a Committee. We are the Members of the
Committee. We have agreed that everything is secret, but that I can tell
you, and Marion can tell her brother. We have to tell each other
everything except our worst sin. It sounds funny, but we are all very
wicked and have each done something we couldn’t tell other people. So we
have agreed that we haven’t got to tell that. You may know mine, but I’m
not shure. There are lots of By-Laws besides. I will give you further
perticulers later. All matters must be discussed in privacy. All members
are equal in_ ALL _affairs. T. C. (password) must only be used on urgent
occasions. Any member wishing to leave the Committee can do so if her
word of honour is given to remain silent consuming all matters discussed
in the aforesaid Committee. If remaining members agree that a certain
Member has broken a rule, that Member must pay a penalty fine of 2d. and
also if a Member has lost her rules. Those are the rules. I think it’s a
very good Committee, don’t you? I’ve been informed by Miss Hitchcock
that I’ve got to go in for Junior Cambridge exam next. I don’t think I
will. I think I should get brain fever, my brain being already weak.
It’s ever so hot to-day--more so than userlay. I had to undo my coat
coming out. In the garden there are lots of snow-drops, crocuses,
primroses, tulips and hyasinths out. I hope you apprechiate this lengthy
episel._--YOUR EVA.’
“‘_P.S.--Mummy writes that Count Kolberg is still after Zita, who cannot
bear his soppiness._’
“In the winter I was in Innsbruck. They were expecting Eva, who had left
school as they could not afford to pay for her. We all went to meet her.
Even now I can see the long Paris train steaming into Innsbruck
Station, and Eva alighting, rather more the young lady than when I had
last seen her in England. When Zita that evening showed me her albums
with snaps, ‘Me-Too’ insisted on doing the same. Their mother,
encouraged by the thought of the economy effected in sparing Eva’s
future school fees, deemed it well to celebrate the release in terms of
midnight frolics--‘Making a night of it,’ she called it. She got us all
to join some dancing class of a certain Fräulein Stube, and Count
Kolberg came along too, and brought his cousins and friends. Eva danced
with all the counts and barons and smiled into their eyes. And Zita, you
could see, hated that smile. She knew her ‘Me-Too’ inside out. But the
barons adored it; and Zita, who had not cared for Kolberg and the
barons, now that Eva deflected them, grew visibly jealous. ‘I don’t want
to be seen about with this lump!’ (Eva’s legs were ripening fast). ‘I’ll
make her get up and take exercise,’ and like remarks. And she never
called her Eva, but ‘Me-Too,’ with a certain venom of intonation. But
Eva, coy, continued smiling at the barons, who were like flies round
her.
“New Year’s Eve we spent at the Maria-Theresien Restaurant. A huge brass
band from the public park installed in the dining room---- deafening
music. The room crowded to overflowing. Men prowling about in the hope
of stealing a chair. Some Johnny actually seizing one of ours: ‘May I?’
I open my mouth to say ‘Indeed not!’ but that moment the band crashes
into martial vehemence--and my words are lost. Mrs. Kerr happy, her lost
château, lost income, debts, all forgotten in the excitement of the
moment, sits near me, praises all and everybody: ‘Ah, that dancing
mistress Fräulein Stube! A charming, intellectual young woman. So nice!
so educated! speaks English like a native!’ Presently I dance with the
said Fräulein Stube and ask her in explicit English:
“‘What is this dance?’
“‘Please?’ says Fräulein Stube.
“‘What is this dance? A fox-trot?’
“‘Please?’
“‘Is this a fox-trot?’
“‘No, de Schimmey,’ she replies.
“‘In England we dance differently,’ I say to her after a while.
“‘Please?’
“‘We dance differently in England.’
“‘Please?’
“In the effort, I stepped on to her toe. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I
stammered.
“‘Please?’
“‘I beg your pardon.’
“‘Yes, dis de Schimmey,’ she said.
“And then again I am in the midst of Mrs. Kerr’s amazing volubility,
praising all and everybody: ‘You dance so gracefully, so elegantly. And
Fräulein Stube, such a really nice and cultured, intellectual woman! So
pleasant, well brought-up, and educated! Knows languages, talks English
like a native.’ Suddenly all rise, holding up mugs of beer. ‘Prosit!
Prosit! Prosit!’ And, indeed, the hand of the big clock points midnight.
The band crashes on for a full two minutes. And stops. Noise and
confusion. Friends and strangers alike are drinking _Bruderschaft_. From
the table next to ours a man rises (he is unshaven, but in a sort of
dinner-jacket suit with a reddish velvet waistcoat) and introduces
himself: ‘Lieutenant-Colonel von Wiesendorf,’ then introduces his
daughter. We rise and introduce ourselves and one another. They drag up
their table to ours, and we are one large party. The Colonel says he can
speak English, his object in hooking himself on to us being either to
show off or to practise our language, which, he says, he picked up in
Africa.
“‘In the Foreign Legion?’ I ask.
“‘Pfui Teufel, no!’ he says. ‘Only desperados serve in the Foreign
Legion.’
“Evidently a _faux pas_.
“‘_Bruderschaft!_--Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!’ And the Colonel and myself are
linked in brotherhood and call each other ‘thou.’ Mrs. Kerr and Fräulein
von Wiesendorf drink _Bruderschaft_ and become inseparable. Zita and
Eva, in their turn, drink _Bruderschaft_ with Fräulein von Wiesendorf.
Finally Graf Kolberg with the Colonel. The band now crashes with
unheard-of vehemence. All drink.”
Here Frank Dickin stopped reading and helped himself to more champagne;
then continued with unction:
“Fräulein von Wiesendorf, whose great virtue, according to herself, is
that she is very jolly: ‘I’m so jolly!’ she squeals, and kicks her heels
up, becomes a bosom friend of Mrs. Kerr. ‘Ah, Ferdinand Vassilievich,’
she says (getting me wrong again), ‘you have no idea what a sincere,
cultured, jolly, well-informed and intellectual girl she is! Her father,
in his position of Comptroller of Public Morals, cannot take her out to
all the cabarets and night clubs and she hasn’t even been to the
Austria-Bar or the Odéon! But I will chaperone her and take her
everywhere, and she’s so pleased!’
“And together, they drag us to a cellar-restaurant, the barons like
hounds on Eva’s scent--Zita neglected, forgotten. And the Colonel, the
Comptroller of Public Morals, scratches his head, says ‘Na! The New Year
is not all the year, nor New Year’s Day every day,’ and comes along too,
Fräulein von Wiesendorf kicking her heels up with joy. In the
cellar-restaurant the goings-on have been going on five or six nights
running, ever since Christmas Eve. Shaky waiters with small, red, sleepy
eyes. The head waiter--it is the third night he hasn’t closed his
eyes--but propped up with drink, sings along with the band and, as a
special favour, right into my ear, occasionally spluttering on my cheek
and forehead:
“_Da sprach der Tut-An-Kamen:_
_‘Tun sich die Leut’ nicht schamen?’_ ...”
And we eat and we drink and we revel, till the music grows plaintive and
sorrowful, and I dance with Zita, while the band complains:
“_Wenn ich dich seh,_
_Da will ich weinen_....”
And she, poor girl, looked it. Eva had robbed her of all her admirers,
including Count Kolberg. Melancholy music breeds melancholy thoughts. As
we return to the table I overhear Mrs. Kerr complaining to the Colonel:
‘We cultured Russians of the intellectual class have suffered badly in
the Revolution....’ And there she was, pessimistic about life,
pessimistic about the outcome of their lawsuit, no money, no home,
lawyers mostly frauds....
“‘Stop that music!’ cries the Comptroller.
“The music stops. ‘What will you have instead?’ the head waiter and
bandmaster ask readily.
“‘_O! Katerina!_’
“And Mrs. Kerr shuffles along in the clumsy Colonel’s arms to the
ragamuffin beat.
“‘A very nice, sincere, understanding man, and a deep thinker,’ was her
comment as, bowed out by the band and the waiters, we come out into the
early morning frost.
“‘Zita, dear, what is the matter with you?’
“She did not answer. I walked home beside her, not then aware of what
she thought and felt; but afterwards she told me. Ever since she was a
child she had a sort of psychic complex: she thought that she was mad
and that everybody was hiding it from her. Her old grandfather in
Ireland could not see Zita, who had golden hair, without tears, for her
flaming hair recalled to him her dead grandmother. Whereas Zita thought
that Grandpapa cried because he knew that she was mad. Her stern old
grandfather, who thought nothing of saying to his guests sitting out on
the stairs during a ball, ‘The stairs were made to walk on, not to sit
on. Get up!’ crying at the thought of her affliction! And now she knew
that she was mad, ghastly, desperately mad, and that they were all
hiding it from her. She thought, thought, thought of it, and all to no
purpose. She knew an uncanny lot without thinking; but when she
_thought_ she knew nothing at all. And she decided that she was
uncommonly dull--that was it: mad, mad beyond hope and repair!
“The sudden cessation of attention on the part of Graf Kolberg and the
barons was due to her madness. Somebody must have blurted it out.
Clearly they shunned her. Going over, in a body, to ‘Me-Too.’ How awful.
This was the end of all things.
“There are moments when we positively seek humiliation. ‘Me-Too’ had
taken all her partners from her, had left her destitute and lonely. But
she felt, in her extremity, the need to propitiate the victor by an
admission of her helplessness, her complete prostration, put all her
cards before her, make her responsible for her next move, the invading
enemy who must needs assume responsibility for the welfare of the
population in the area he has occupied. Take it, curse you, my last rag
of self-respect and exult in the completeness of your victory! This is
the spirit in which, on reaching home, Zita must have faced her younger
sister. She confessed that she was mad and that she knew that they were
hiding it from her. She stood ashamed, expectant, with head bent, as if
to say, ‘Now there! What can you think of it?’ while ‘Me-Too,’ half
undressed, lay on the bed, and pondered. She pondered a long time over
this doleful piece of news, with insight, a profound and melancholy
understanding. ‘I think,’ she said at last, ‘we are both mad....’
“‘You’re _crazy_!’ Zita cried.
“Suddenly she felt sane, terrifyingly, devastatingly sane.”
III.
“Ha!” said Lord Ottercove. “Was it like that?”
“I keep pretty close to life where I can,” answered Dickin.
“Well, go on. What happened to the woman, Mrs. Kerr?”
“They could not afford to stay on at the pension, and they took a room
and a kitchen in town, for the four of them. But she would not cut out
the dances.
“‘You know, Frederick Fyodorovich, what I’ll tell you. I am disappointed
in Tamara Leonidovna. As you know, all our things have been confiscated
by the bailiff. Everything, everything! But I managed to smuggle through
a bedroom carpet to a friend of mine at Bozen, and I gave Tamara
Leonidovna 500.000 Kronen, over thirty shillings, to go to Bozen and
bring the carpet. But my friend in Bozen, when she saw her, got
positively frightened of Tamara Leonidovna, who really looks forbidding.
A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, just like a Gipsy. Those lips, those
consuming eyes. She is terribly sensual, you know.’
“‘Is she?’
“‘You don’t mean to say that you haven’t noticed it?’
“‘I haven’t.’
“‘Hasn’t she made any advances to you?’
“‘No.’
“Mrs. Kerr thought for a space. ‘Well, all the more honour to her, then.
Because, you can see by her face and whole figure how hard it is for her
to bridle her passions. The tram-driver, Herr König, won’t have her come
near him now that they’re divorced. He has another woman. And poor
Tamara Leonidovna, who has been used to a married life, doesn’t know
what to do with herself. But she leads, I think, an exemplary life. And
all the more honour to her, I say--but it’s not good, it’s a strain on
her. Well, the lady got such a fright when she saw Tamara Leonidovna
that she would not give the carpet. And Tamara Leonidovna got so scared
of the lady being scared to death of her that when the lady did offer to
give her the carpet Tamara Leonidovna wouldn’t take it. And her German,
as you know, is not up to much.
“‘“Why didn’t you take the carpet when she offered it, Tamara
Leonidovna?” I cried when she returned on Saturday, empty-handed--just
as I am waving my hair to go to the Hôtel d’Europe ball. Imagine my
position: I hadn’t a Krone left. The last went to pay for the entrance
tickets, for I was counting on Tamara Leonidovna returning with the
bedroom carpet. And my hair already waved. And here she stands and says:
“She wouldn’t give the carpet.” And looks at me like that--uncertainly,
and adds: “Besides, I was afraid of the Customs.”
“‘“The Customs?” I say. “Then you _did_ have a chance to get the carpet
from her?”
“‘“I had a chance ...” she says, uncertainly.
“‘“Then why--why--why (I was so angry that I shook the curling tongs at
her) tell me ... otherwise?” I wanted to say “a lie,” but restrained
myself.
“‘“Ah, if that’s the way you talk to me, after all my kindness to you,
good-bye to you,” she said, and slammed the door behind her.
“‘I rushed off to the station restaurant, where my husband always dines
with the Rittmeister. “Charles!” I cried, “that woman has come back
without the carpet! What _am_ I to do now? I am dressed for the ball and
I’ve ordered the table and I’ve no money to pay for the champagne
supper! What _am_ I to do, Charles?’”
“‘And what did he do?’
“‘He cursed me, Fyodor Ferdinandovich. Cursed me, cursed me, cursed
me--oh, _terrible_! He never talks to me now--only curses.’
“‘And the Rittmeister?’
“‘The Rittmeister laughed.’
“The Rittmeister must have laughed very contagiously, for, remembering
how he laughed, Mrs. Kerr began to laugh too, at first quietly, then
louder and louder, till her laughter became riotous. ‘What a life!’ she
sighed, wiping the tears that had come to her eyes from laughing so
heartily. ‘I have ceased to take myself, or my clothes, or my life, or
my fate seriously. I only look and laugh, look in wonder, in
astonishment--and laugh. But, as I tell you, I am disappointed in Tamara
Leonidovna. And what language she uses! Like a cab-driver. I am grateful
to God that my children do not know Russian. And that poor student she
wants to marry!’
“‘Why “poor”?’
“‘She will consume him. She is fire.’
“‘Daddy ought to know her,’ from Zita.
“‘He knows her.’
“‘But closer.’
“However, they went to the Hôtel d’Europe ball and there they met
Viscount de Jones, who knew them. And I presume he paid for the
champagne supper.”
“Look here,” said Lord Ottercove, looking worried, “now you are actually
using real names. Well-known names.”
Frank smiled.
“I have kept all the original names deliberately so as to attract your
attention. I knew I would have to change them for publication. But this
is a small matter.”
Lord Ottercove smiled, then leaned back and laughed. “That was clever of
you! I must confess that but for the names my serial editor might have
easily passed it over.... So de Jones paid, did he?” Lord Ottercove
looked pensive.
“I presume so.”
“But actually you know who pays?”
“Who?”
Lord Ottercove pointed a forefinger at his own chest.
Frank Dickin looked at him with dull amazement, but as Lord Ottercove
looked morose, did not press for explanation. “The silly woman rather
advertised her connection with Lord de Jones and told me, as though she
were giving me a hundred pounds, that she was going to introduce me to
the noble lord! I hadn’t the slightest interest to meet him. A pretty
big fool, I imagine, to judge by his tastes in women.”
“He has married my niece,” said Lord Ottercove.
“No!... I say, this is rather a brick I’ve let fall.”
“You mean to say you didn’t know it?”
“Well--how shall I say?--I did and I didn’t. I thought it would help to
keep up your flagging interest in my serial if I introduced into it
Hidden Hand bits from the back-door life of your relative. Not that I
know much about him. We novelists have to rely largely on our own
imagination. Though I remember now that Lord and Lady de Jones were on
their honeymoon and put up at the Tirolerhof in Innsbruck.”
“That’s a bigger brick than the first.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Not a bit of it. I don’t think you realise that what interests me most
in your serial is not what de Jones does but why he does it. What it is
that attracts him so in Mrs. Kerr. It must be nearly twenty years now
since he first met her, I believe, in Russia. Or was she already
married? And now I realise. You have conveyed her character wonderfully
well. I think it is that extraordinary irresponsibility,
that--that--that something else. It’s there, I feel it, though I can’t
for the moment describe the peculiar fascination. What else can it be?
Is she still so good-looking?”
“Good-looking, no, but attractive. Her daughters have it from her.”
“He always goes back to her. It is the second time he is married. My
niece should never have married him. But there is genius in him. He
could have been a second Newton if he had wanted to. As it is he is a
Genius of the Untried. They are all like that, the whole family. I have
a great affection for him. But Eleonor is determined to divorce him.
He’ll be quite penniless unless I find him something to do. But go on.
What happened to the woman?”
“I lost sight of them soon after that dance, and Frau König told me they
had gone off to Abbazia, while Lord de Jones had returned to England. I
enquired about her own affairs. ‘Everything now depends on the knitting
machine, which is due to arrive in March.’
“‘And your fiancé in Paris?’
“‘He is saving money for the factory. But imagine!’ she exclaimed, ‘in
his last letter--so pathetic--he writes that the franc, owing to the
political machinations of the Cartel des Gauches, has all gone to pieces
and reduced the potential capital of our knitting factory.’
“We spoke of Mrs. Kerr. ‘Your Mrs. Kerr,’ said Tamara Leonidovna, ‘is a
goose. Just a Great Big Goose.... What a fool that woman is! Not a cent
in her pocket, not an idea in her top storey beyond dancing and pleasing
men--at her age! A newly married man, too--just because he is a lord!
Openly, before her daughters! What matter that she is divorced? I, too,
am divorced and six years younger than she is, but I keep myself back.’
A look of strain came into her face. ‘I don’t let myself go.’ She set
her jaw, clenched her fists. ‘I try to keep myself in check. I have more
pride, more self-respect than ... than.... When he comes back from Paris
then ... then ... then yes.’”
“Go on,” said Lord Ottercove.
IV.
DOGS AND NIGHTINGALES
“I saw nothing of them till the spring, when I had a surprise visit from
Mrs. Kerr, looking considerably dilapidated. ‘Ach, Ferdinand
Ferdinandovich, you won’t believe what I have been through in these two
months! If I were a writer like you I would write a novel in the _genre_
of Dostoevski, so true, and yet incredible, so poignant! I have begun a
diary. I will bring it to you this afternoon. You can make use of it for
your books.
“‘Lord de Jones lent me some money to go and have a thorough change and
rest, and so Zita, Eva, John and I went to Abbazia. A lovely coast. Blue
sea, sunshine, casino, roulette, _chemin de fer_, baccarat. A real
change and rest for the nerves. All day we gamble, and at night dancing,
flirtations. Both girls passionate gamblers, also John. But luck went
against us and we found we had no more money to go on with. I pawned
some of my things and we lived very comfortably for a time at the Grand
Hotel--dancing, music, sea bathing twice a day and getting to know lots
of very agreeable young men on the beach, and at night moonlight walks
in the wood--in couples: Zita with the Italian boy; Eva with the young
Dane; and I with the Spaniard Rodrigo. Or to the cinema--always in
couples, Rodrigo looking at me with great passionate eyes. Very
delightful and charming. When the money was exhausted, I found a post as
housekeeper in a small pension overlooking the sea--very artistically
situated--and Zita, Eva and John were taken in by a lady friend of
Rodrigo’s, a very nice, quiet, well-read woman. I was busy all day in
the kitchen which gives out into the garden, and the children, looking
so gay and fresh in their white summer things, would be coming to see me
all the time. And I’d say to them, “Go and play in the garden,” and I
would give them things through the window, as the lady friend of
Rodrigo’s could not provide them with food. “There you are, children,
take this and this and this,” and I’d give them cakes, coffee, sugar,
sweets, dainties, pastry, everything, and they’d take it home and eat it
and come back for more. And I’d give them more through the window, all
kinds of preserved meats and provisions: “Here you are, children,” and
they never went short of anything while I was housekeeper there.
But--but would you believe it, Fyodor Frederickovich? The landlady,
seeing me give nourishment to my children, gave me the sack. If it had
been for myself, I understand, but for the children! I have noticed a
strange insensibility in those people, a hardness, a general--how shall
I say?--unfeelingness. No love, no understanding of children. I just
looked at her like that--I could say nothing. I could not have expressed
what was in my heart. A feeling of sorrow, not of anger. And as I took
my things and passed her on the doorstep I just turned my head to her:
“In Russia this could not have been,” and went without a word.
“‘Outside, in the street, the children around me, I stop and ask:
“All-wise and loving God,” I ask, “why dost Thou punish me so? _Why?_”
“‘From there I got into the Grand Hotel as “Kaffee-Köchin” and all day
long I had to boil coffee, first for the clients, then for the hotel
staff--all day long boil coffee and nothing but coffee. They gave me a
tiny little room on the roof, overlooking an unfinished church, and at
night dogs would come to sleep in that church and howl hungrily--dogs;
and up in the trees, nightingales. I opened the window. Below in the
square, lilac shrubs in bloom. The scent of lilac. And thoughts, like a
bevy of bees, stung my heart. I remembered our dear Russia when I was a
young girl, my mother a young woman, my father, my two brothers, and how
I felt and how I hoped. It all came back--Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy,
Turgenev, Dostoevski--and hot tears streamed down my cheeks. “Dear God,”
I said, “to think what was once! and what is now! Come back, days of
youth, of my innocence, and hot faith in the divinity of Thy Creation,
Thy Love! Vague dreams of my heart, virgin and untouched, of my
unsullied soul, come back, come back!...” The breath of Spring. Dogs, an
unfinished church, you know ... and those nightingales, all the night
through. Dogs and nightingales.
“‘All day long I boiled coffee. I went by the name of “Frau
Kaffeeköchin,” for I alone in the whole hotel was to boil coffee and I
wasn’t to do anything else. From six in the morning till ten at night I
boiled coffee. But at half past ten I would put on my yellow satin gown
and sit out on the Casino terrace, order a vermouth, light a cigarette,
and never in a thousand years would it occur to anyone that the smart,
elegantly gowned, romantic-looking woman sitting out on the Casino
terrace and looking, you might say, like a Queen of the Steppes, was the
Frau Kaffeeköchin of the Grand Hotel. And one night as I sit there, an
old beggar, sick, filthy, stenchy, all in rags, and barefoot, comes up
to me. “Here, beggar,” I give him a copper, and he holds out his hand
and introduces himself: “Captain of the Imperial Russian Navy, Nobleman
Khan Balalykin.” Yes, Khan Balalykin--a Tartar Prince! And, do you know,
Ferdinand Ferdinandovich, he fell in love with me? What am I to do?
Where I go he follows me. “No,” he says, “I cannot live without you,”
and looks at me with soft, love-lorn eyes. And also calls me “My Queen
of the Steppes.” Or quotes a lyric from Lermontov. Well, we made a night
of it, and spoke of Russia. Next morning I return to the hotel to work;
he after me, right into the kitchen. “Sit down, Captain,” I say, “here
is meat, bread, cheese, butter, beer. Eat and drink, it will do you
good, restore your strength a bit.” He tucked in, oblivious of
everything, poor old man, he looked so starved; but here the head cook,
a huge great man, comes in--a great big animal with a short, thick neck,
just like an ox--horrible!--an obnoxious big bully, the real cave man.
And, would you believe it, Ferdinand Fyodorovich, begins to remonstrate
with Captain Khan Balalykin, who is peacefully tucking in at the table?
But I wasn’t going to be bullied by this ox of a man. “Don’t you dare
shout at me,” I screamed, “I’m not afraid of you. I care that much for
your being head cook. In Russia at one time one used to beat one’s cook
when one wasn’t satisfied with him, and I, the daughter of Pàvel
Yàkovlevich Sabolenko, won’t stand any of your nonsense, I can tell
you!” Well, I thought this would pacify him a little. But no! The ox
shouts and storms more than ever and begins to insult Captain Khan
Balalykin. Well, I wasn’t going to have my guest reviled and insulted.
He may look dirty and all that, which is not surprising in his sphere
as a beggar, but he is a real gentleman of the old school, a captain of
the Russian Navy, graduated with Honours at the Imperial Naval Academy,
and the bully is a common ignorant Austrian cook. I took the big brass
pan with the potatoes and crashed it to the ground: I was so angry.
Well, he begins shouting madder than ever and kicks Captain Khan
Balalykin out of the kitchen and then fetches in the manager and points
at me and the potatoes on the floor and screams: “It’s she!” And the
pair of them begin to scream at me together, though I can scream as loud
as they together. “No--it’s _he!_--_he!_--_he!_” I scream, and go for
both of them with my fists. Insulting a distinguished Russian officer,
an old nobleman, Khan Balalykin, a graduate of the Imperial Naval
Academy: I _was_ so wild!
“‘Well, do you know, Fyodor Ferdinandovich, the manager being hand in
glove with the head cook, gave me the sack. I pawned my last ruby ring
and we all came back this morning. In Milan we ran across Fräulein von
Wiesendorf, and we all came back together.’
“‘And how is she?’ I asked.
“‘Well, it seems from all the drinking bouts during the _Fasching_ and
the late hours Fräulein von Wiesendorf got the colics and a sort of
nervous breakdown. Her father, who is Comptroller of Public Morals,
alarmed at his daughter’s condition, called in the doctor, who examined
Fräulein von Wiesendorf and found symptoms of the beginnings of
consumption and ordered her _immediately_, without a moment’s loss or
hesitation, at railway speed to Italy. “As fast as the train will carry
you!” he said. Fräulein von Wiesendorf throws a few odd things into a
bag and darts off, helter-skelter, to Italy and arrives, holus-bolus, in
Genoa and as she has no means takes a post as governess to children.
Nine children of assorted ages. She has to teach and feed and wash for
them and take them out for walks, and the children all veritable devils,
real Machiavellis, cruel, mischievous, teasing her, and the parents
exigent and stingy. In a month poor Fräulein von Wiesendorf was worn to
a shadow; a doctor was called in, examined her and--“Back home!” he
said, “at full tilt! As fast as you can fly!” She arrived in hot haste
this morning. To-morrow night we are making a last night of it, and the
day after I am off to Abbazia.’
“‘What! again!’
“‘To get the ruby ring back from the pawn-shop. I’ve borrowed some money
here on the strength of my caracole coat.’
“‘And how are Zita, Eva and John?’
“‘The children are so happy. As we had no quarters to go to on arrival
we went and sat in the Hofpark and we’ve chummed up with four Bulgarian
students: two small ones, a thin one, and a big one. The two small ones
have fallen in love with Zita and Eva. the thin one with Fräulein von
Wiesendorf, and the big one with me. I must be off now to look for a
room for the children, and don’t forget to ask them for my diary.’”
V.
PALE PRIMROSES THAT DIE UNMARRIED
“I met Zita, Eva and John a few days later crossing the
Maria-Theresienstrasse on their way to their sparse meal at the cheap
restaurant under the arch. They were rather short of money, but full of
enthusiasm on account of the Bulgarian students. ‘We spend all our time
with them in the Hofpark,’ they told me. Later I saw them home to their
room--a poor room tucked away behind someone else’s kitchen; one narrow
bed for the two girls and a little sofa for John. ‘And doesn’t your
father bother about you?’ I asked.
“‘Daddy’s gone back to Ireland.’
“We decided, in the absence of the mother, to make a climbing expedition
to the top of the Patscherkofl mountain and arranged to meet at four
o’clock next morning. It was still dark as we set out, clad in the
appropriate mountaineering fashion: alpenstock and rucksack; the girls
in Tyrolese peasant dress: short skirt, tight waist; John and I in blue
coat and leather shorts, and leaving the still somnolent streets of the
town behind us, began the ascent. At Igls we halted and breakfasted,
then continued by the steep side wind through pine woods, as the red sun
rose to meet us. John ran in front and behind, and Zita and Eva walked
sprightly on either side of me, and we spoke of how nice it would be to
make a hut in the pine woods or live in a cave. And to all Zita’s ‘I’s’
Eva said ‘we.’ By midday we reached Heiligwasser, famed for the
miraculous cure of the sick, and unpacked our rucksacks for lunch; then
continued the winding ascent. The Inn Vale now stretched deep beneath
us. More mountains, like ghost ships on an uncharted sea, loomed into
sight as we climbed the spiral grass-edged path, encountering more
flowers on our way: snow-drops, buttercups, daisies, bluebells,
primulas, violets, while little brooks scurried down head over heels to
announce that Spring was already come. An hour’s distance from our goal,
we spread out our mantles on the green slope of a sheltered warm valley
where daffodils grew in profusion by the side of a brook and stretched
our limbs and dozed rapturously in the sun.
“Profusion is not a good thing. So I mused, watching the two sisters,
each so exquisite in her own way that at once when you began to focus
your attention on the one, you were diverted from her by the other. They
thus neutralised each other’s charm to a great extent and dissipated
your affection. And lying with them in the sun I watched them lustless,
in benignant peace. How beautiful life could be for a space!
“Rising, we set out on the last but one stage in our journey, climbing
hills without paths, cutting across pastures where frisky young cows,
turned irresponsible on these heights, jumped over the moon; now
clearing gurgling brooks which still ran hurry-scurry down to the
valleys to tell the glad tidings; now stooping to drink the cool water.
By two we reached the top of the shaggy mountain slope: above loomed the
gleaming naked dead rock of the summit. A separate journey, after an
hour’s repose.
“At the Gasthaus we drank beer and booked accommodation for the night;
then lay on the edge of a plateau projecting perilously over the void
and looked down at Innsbruck, miniature like on a map, the river Inn
bedded in the soft, green folds of the valley, the parcelled fields, the
dotted villages, the spired churches, all lucent and serene in the
spring sun. Leaving John asleep in the tavern, we climbed the steep
rocky way to the peak, clinging to loose stones and sending them rolling
a mile or two till they rebounded with a heavy earthen thud in the
abyss. No more shrubs or alpine roses; nor a human habitation anywhere.
The last was the Gasthaus, which is now lost to sight. On we climb till,
in the first dusk, we reach the flat rocky mountain-top: there is
nowhere higher to go. The girls frolic and gambol like frisky gazelles:
the air is amazingly light. But I sat away on a rock, struck speechless
by the mighty spectacle. The neighbouring mountain-peaks, all level now
and grandly equal, looked on into the gathering dusk, heavy with a
silent utterance.
“What is it when, the veil lifted, he beholds how lovely it all was in
the beginning?...
“But as the rocky summits, like ghostly dreadnaughts anchored in doom’s
waters, closed their eyes in the ensuing gloom, we hastened to retrace
our steps towards the Gasthaus. Zita was in a hurry to get back to John.
The paths diverged to all sides of us. We were afraid lest darkness
should overtake us before we reached the Gasthaus, and, agreeing all on
the necessity for haste, disagreed as to which path we ought to follow.
Zita thought she knew a shorter way to the inn than the one we had come
by, whereat Eva and I doubted, and stuck to the old path, or what we
imagined to be the old path, which led us untowardly down the steep edge
of the mountain, as Zita quickly vanished on the other side. When you
look at a hill from below, it all seems perfectly easy and simple: you
either walk up or else you walk down, according to whether you wish to
find yourself at the top or the bottom. But as you begin to descend you
find that the hill has a trick of breaking into new hills, new valleys,
new precipices, that, having at length reached the foot of your hill,
you are still at the top of another, and rounding it to get into the
valley, you are thwarted by another precipice. Once Zita appeared far
away, it seemed on the edge of a fourth hill; then vanished. We shouted
as loud as our voices would carry; the wind took our words but brought
us none back. Dusk fell upon us rapidly, and stones rolled dangerously
beneath our feet, as we felt our way down the slippery steep rock. Soon
it was too dark to move at all. We sat down on a stony slope, and Eva
cried. I could have done so myself, with the exhaustion and nervous
tension and vexation of it all; but her tears accomplished the trick for
me. We were even too tired to eat. It was fresh in the dark, but not
cold. We thought that Zita was back now and asleep with John at the inn.
We spread our mantels and, sooner than we knew, we slept.
“In the night there was a storm, and we ran hand in hand down the
slippery stones in search of shelter; and then hid ourselves under a
rock.
“At dawn we were up, and having eaten of the contents of our rucksacks,
we set afoot in search of the path, keeping together for fear of worse
things. When a moving dot of a figure appeared across the wide gulf that
separated us from another chain of rocks, we shouted and waved, and the
figure waved back. Thinking it must be a man from the Gasthaus, we waved
more and shouted ourselves hoarse. Manœuvring, the figure and we came
nearer; we could dimly hear it shouting to us, presumably explaining the
direction. Then, as it neared, we recognised Zita’s scarf flying in the
wind, and then her voice asking for the way. We began a mad rush to
each other across trackless slopes of naked rock, till, meeting finally
on neutral ground in a small valley, she told us of the fearful night
she spent alone and burst into sobs. With breaks for food, we continued
our search, all keeping together, till the sun sank behind the mountains
and the shadows crept up and, once again, it was night.
“We slept huddled together, and thought of John alone at the inn. Still,
the Wirt would take care of him, and, compared with us, he was
comfortable.
“In the course of next day we reconnoitred all round the summit and
found ourselves trapped: very evidently the one pass connecting the rock
with the main body of the hill had fallen away. We were cut off from the
rest of the world, isolated on the naked rock which, like a tooth,
sloped down at an angle we could not hope to descend without being swept
into the precipice by the stones which barely piled on its steep sides
and every now and then rolled off into the abyss. This was, we realised,
what must have happened to the one connecting link by which we had
ascended to the peak of the mountain, now clearly inaccessible except
possibly by air.
“We began to ration our supplies and wait for relief. Surely the people
at the Gasthaus where John still waited for us would do something? By
the following day we began to doubt whether our provisions could
possibly last out another day. Doubtless the Gasthaus people were
searching for us; but how would they reach us with the pass missing?
Where could they get an aeroplane? Munich was the nearest centre. Or
perhaps John, quicksilver that he was, had left soon after us and the
people at the inn concluded that we had all returned to Innsbruck.
“The day after was glorious and hot, and towards midday we had cleared
our last supplies. We lay on the ground and felt very still and odd. I
watched Zita lying on her belly, her long legs stretched out and apart.
The sun was beating on us. Luckily there was no lack of water. How long
could one last out on water? And would the rescue come at all? We did
not say it to one another. We seemed to know and feel it that the other
understood. They were young; it was a pity. For it seemed, though the
weather was so beautiful, uncommonly like the end. The spring, and they
so young. And death yawning to claim our bones. Somehow as I lay there
watching them, these lines from Shakespeare swung back into my heart--
“‘_Pale primroses,_
_that die unmarried, ere_
_they can behold_
_Bright Phoebus in his strength,_
_a malady_
_Most incident to maids...._’
At that moment Zita turned a look, molten gold from the sun, upon me.
Why should she?
“We kissed under the hot rays of the sun, taking the last it had to
offer us before it withdrew its rays to shine on us no more.
“And then it was that Eva, whom I had forgotten, caught my look and
said:
“‘Me too.’”
* * * * *
Lord Ottercove interrupted the reading with an astonished--“Ha!”, sprang
up with that agility characteristic of him and which testified to his
success, went over to the sideboard and mixed himself some whisky. Frank
must have discerned disapproval in the gurgling notes of the whisky as
it poured down into his lordship’s cavity, for, “Dammit, sir,” he
protested, “the sun, spring, death crouching at you, the end of life in
time, and these pale primroses to die unmarried--”
“Are you--I don’t quite understand--defending the book or your conduct?”
“That is--”
“Yes?” The noble lord now looked like a magistrate.
“I don’t think this is a fair question.”
“I agree.--Go on.”
“Reading?”
“Of course.”
“I think I’ve read enough.”
“My dear fellow, you can’t stop like that. I am dying to know what
happened.”
“What happened?... Dammit, sir,” Dickin said, “is a fellow to blame for
getting saved?”
“All saved?”
“All. They came and found us the day after. A picnic party from
Innsbruck. The pass had not been destroyed as we imagined, and indeed
there were several passes. We’d made a mistake. I am not very clever at
mountaineering, you know. Nor the girls, either. John, as we had
suspected, had slipped down to Innsbruck almost immediately on waking,
thinking we had gone back to town. So all’s well that ends well.”
“Rather terrible that, what?” said Lord Ottercove.
“Dammit, sir, I appeal to your idealism. Yawning death. Pale primroses
to die unmarried.... No escape. I tell you we thought we were for ever
lost.”
“Didn’t you think so too readily?”
“I deprecate this attempt to abuse the autonomy of a work of
literature.”
“So it is merely literature?”
“I don’t think it’s fair to my characters of you to ask.”
“Read on!” laughed Lord Ottercove.
VI.
THE QUEEN OF THE STEPPES
“In the autumn I was in Vienna. One day as I returned from a walk the
maid in the _pension_ told me that two ladies were waiting for me in my
room. Who but Mrs. Kerr and Eva! My first thought was: Does the mother
know? But from her ebullient flow I soon perceived that all was well.
“A long tale. She had come back with the ruby ring and for some time at
all events they lived quite comfortably on the proceeds. When they had
spent their last, ‘I went,’ she said, ‘and threw myself on the charity
of the police authorities, who were very kind and sent the three of us,
John, Eva, and myself, by goods train to Vienna. An English lady had
taken Zita back to England with her as a companion. Arrived in Vienna, I
went straight to the policeman on the platform and said: “Here we
are--destitute, without means. What do you propose to do with us?” It’s
always better to be downright: no good doing things by half. Once
destitute, throw all responsibility on the police. He looked very
worried and said: “Follow me,” and took us to the gendarme, who told us
to wait in the waiting-room. We waited three or four hours. Meanwhile
the first policeman came back, with a confused look and something
clenched in his fist. “I am not a rich man,” he said, opening his fist,
“but please accept that.” I was touched. 30.000 Kronen--almost two
shillings. The gendarme came to invite us into his chief’s office. A
nice grey-haired old gentleman. He had tears in his eyes as he looked at
the children, and was all milk and honey when I related to him of our
Schloss in Meran, now in the hands of the Italians, and said softly:
“_Sic transit gloria mundi!_”
“‘Anyhow, they took John off my hands. They put him in an orphanage. You
won’t believe how nice it is for him there. Never been so happy before!
Warm and cosy and plenty of boys of his own age to play with. And, do
you know, he heckles them all and fights them. We visited him the next
day, Eva and I. He was at his midday meal. Very good food. But he said,
“Mummy, what is the matter with this meat? It chews and chews and
doesn’t eat up.” Made them all laugh.
“‘“Me-Too” and I were conveyed to the workhouse. And, fancy, crossing
the Landstrasse-Hauptstrasse, we saw two of the Bulgarian students--the
thin one and one of the small ones. Eva shouted to them across the
street, but they couldn’t hear. The workhouse--not too bad, only no
privacy. A huge barrack-like room and lots of low, fallen women who use
dreadful language. I don’t like it on Eva’s account. Yesterday, when
“Me-Too” came in and left the door open, there was such a volley of
abuse from an old hag that I shut my ears so as not to hear. But Eva
said never a word, only looked at her like that. You could see the race
in her.
“‘We found out your address through police records--they are really so
well organised in this town--and, well, we’ve come to see you and to ask
if you won’t take us out to some dance or other to-night. We are so
tired of the regulation workhouse meals. I still have my smart yellow
satin gown in which Khan Balalykin admired me so much and thought I
looked like a Queen of the Steppes. And “Me-Too” still has her orange
crepe-de-Chine gown. She hid it in her purse--it folds ever so
small--when the bailiffs came into our Schloss in Meran and took
everything away from us.’
“I expressed my willingness, my pleasure. I asked her tactfully if I
could not lend her a little money. She took the note with charming
simplicity, ‘on condition,’ she said, ‘that you will let me pay it back
later--when things mend up in Russia.’
“At the cabaret, the ‘Nachtlokal,’ which she had selected as being the
most elegant according to her husband when in the affluent old days he
used to take her to Vienna for the season, she nevertheless complained
of the general inferiority and paucity of Vienna night life as compared
with that of Petrograd or Moscow, and that brought her back again to
Russia. ‘Ach, Russia!... We upper classes in Russia have been thrown in
the dirt and trampled on with the muddy feet of the coarse proletariat.’
It would have been heartless for me to remind her of the complete
independence of her personal misfortunes of the fate of Russia,
heartless and uncalled for, ‘But we will go back and find, I truly
expect and believe, our reward in riches and pleasures as yet undreamt
of, and then when you come and visit us there, Fyodor Ferdinandovich, we
shall have such a binge together as will outshine anything previously
known in that line.’
“‘Of course we will,’ I said tenderly, laying my hand on her own.
“‘_I believe in it!_’ she cried, ‘hotly and passionately! In the face of
all the calamities and disasters falling upon me, it shall not be said
that I have lost faith!’ She looked passionately at the orchestra.
“I filled her champagne glass. The band played doleful music. She
touched my arm. ‘But I do not regret these experiences. The kind hearts,
the interesting people one comes to meet. That policeman. The
grey-haired Colonel’s tears.’ Her eyes filled; and, indeed, she looked
at that moment like ‘the Madonna kissing the finger-tips of her Child.’
‘And, you know, even the workhouse women. That old hag who shouted so at
“Me-Too”--well, I’ve chummed up with her. Not a bad woman at heart. She
has had a hard life. A great beauty. An early seduction....’
“She sighed. ‘We have no luck. Imagine, my mother has managed to get out
of Russia at last and even smuggle through some jewelry, so Eva and I
both wrote to her to be quick and send us some money till the
authorities can find us situations. But she is in Monte Carlo, gambling
heavily, it seems, and writes back: “I can’t. I am bust.’”
“Eva, while her mother talked to me, flirted with me over her mother’s
head. ‘Come and talk to me,’ her look seemed to say.
“It was cruel after the dance-supper to take them back in a taxi to the
workhouse. But what could I do? I was, after paying for the supper,
stony broke myself. I could not have arranged to keep them at an hotel
indefinitely, and the authorities who were charged with finding work for
them would have discontinued their efforts on their leaving the
workhouse.
“A week later, she came in to me, jubilant. They had both got positions,
Eva as nurse to small children, Mrs. Kerr as housekeeper to a solitary
Austrian colonel. ‘An intellectual, original man. We read Dostoevski
together and I am keeping a journal which eventually I hope to develop
into a novel. We are both of us so happy, Ferdinand Fyodorovich--’
“‘Fomitch,’ I corrected. ‘My father was called Tom--Foma, in Russian.’
“‘ ...Ferdinand Fomitch, that we want you to take us out this evening,
make a night of it. The other night “Me-Too” and I went out to a night
club together, to celebrate our release from the workhouse and our good
fortune in getting situations so soon, and we struck up an acquaintance
with two Russian gentlemen: Ivan Andrèiech Zshikov, and the other:
Fyodor Yàkovlevich Suhomlinski. Suhomlinski fell in love at first sight
with “Me-Too”; and Zshikov with me. Zshikov has long almond eyes and
looks like that into mine all the time. Jokes, little flirtations. Very
delightful and charming. From there we went together to another cabaret.
In the street some other unknown men fell into step with us, and we all
went along together to an underground tavern--like the one in Innsbruck,
only larger and gayer. And all the men in love--either with Eva or me.
All Russians in exile, huddled together, helping one another to bear up.
Very charming and touching. The Hussar Kòlenka Shavèlenkov; Olèg
Aleksèiech Pevtsòff, disappointed in love and seeking a meaning in life;
and Captain of Lancers, Rotmister von Bologovski. Yes, calls himself
“von”--“von Bologovski.” All intellectual, original people. We revel
till three in the morning, and, do you know, when Eva had to go back to
her charges the mistress made quite a scene, in spite of “Me-Too”
explaining to her that she had been out with her mother; and nearly
dismissed her. It was her first day there, you see. But I slipped in
noiselessly with my latch key; my old Diogenes of a colonel was still
snoring, and there are no servants. He leaves early and does not come
back till six. So I give little parties when he is away. I try to make a
kind of Russian intellectual centre, to attract interesting, original
people, a sort of nucleus of the Russian Colony in Vienna. A large
dining room. I give them tea with lemon. They feel very pleased. All
interesting, well-read people of unconventional views. Zshikov came, and
Suhomlinski (to see Eva, who slips in with her elder charges when she
can), and also Kòlenka Shavèlenkov, and Olèg Aleksèiech Pevtsòff, the
disappointed, and the Lancer Rotmister von Bologovski; all came, drank
tea and smoked and argued, very sincerely and passionately, about
politics and art. I was very pleased on Eva’s account. Very beneficial
and instructive for her. I was sorry Zita wasn’t there. But she writes
this morning that she has left the English lady and has taken a post as
professional dancing partner at a dancing place in Hammersmith. She is
very pleased, for the lady she was companion to she says was a stuffy
old thing.’”
VII.
“Well, I went to one or two of her intellectual tea parties, and once I
just missed Lord de Jones by a hair’s breadth: he had left a minute or
so before my arrival.”
“De Jones! You don’t say so!” exclaimed Lord Ottercove. “Ha!” And he
shook his head.
“And how,” he asked after a pause, pulling out his watch and looking at
it with mild alarm, “do you finish your serial? Does your hero marry
both sisters and serve his time for bigamy?”
“No. I will read it to you.”
“Don’t: it suffices that I have your word for it. Shall _I_ tell you
what becomes of your characters?”
“Do.”
“Shall I tell you where they are?”
“Where?”
“Here. In London.”
“I know.”
“But do you know who got them to come over?”
“I can guess.”
“You’re good at guessing, are you? And can you guess why he got them
over?”
“I think I have shown through the pages of my serial that I am not
insensible to his interest in the mother.”
“Or in the daughter.”
“In the daughter!?”
“The younger daughter.”
“Eva? Great heavens!”
“I am happy,” said Lord Ottercove, “to be able to introduce into your
serial this little touch of suspense. Indeed, if there is an element
lacking in your story it is this element of suspense. Between you and
me, it is an element entirely unimportant and one which, I have always
found, interferes with the peaceful enjoyment of a story as it tells
itself through the growth and actions of the characters. But it is,
nevertheless, an element upon which serial editors insist as a matter of
tradition. But I am going to change all that. I am, perhaps you have
noticed, changing the tradition of journalism in this country.”
“For the better,” said Frank.
“What?”
“For the better,” said Frank.
“Now I like your story. I think it is a corking tale. I accept it for my
newspapers, and what is more I will pay for it. Now what do you want for
it?”
Frank hesitated only a moment. Better men than he owed their fortune to
a bold word put in in the proper accent at the proper moment. Big men
act bigly, so that their gestures may go down to history. And what did
Shakespeare say? “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at
the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is
bound in shallows and in miseries.”
He closed his eyes. “£10,000,” he said.
Now, despite the opening given him, Lord Ottercove did not avail himself
of the immortal gesture. Or, perhaps he couldn’t recognise a tide in the
affairs of another man.
“Ha!” he said, and leaned back. “If I--if I gave you--gave you--” (The
sum seemed to stick in his throat), “gave you £10,000, my staff would
think I’d gone right off my chump; and I should have, of course.”
He took up the receiver and said: “I want Mr. Wilson.” And turning back
to the visitor: “I can’t do these things over the head of my serial
editor. I can’t do these things over the heads of my editors,” he
repeated; and again: “I can’t do these things--“, to fill the interval
of time it took Mr. Wilson to reach the office. And now Mr. Wilson, with
eyes and crown discreetly lustrous, was shown in by the page.
“This, Mr. Wilson, is Mr. Dickin from whom I want to buy a serial. I
asked him to name a price, and he said £10,000, which is, of course,
preposterous.”
Mr. Wilson inclined his head a little, thus discreetly suggesting that
it was preposterous.
“Mr. Dickin,” continued Lord Ottercove, “is not acquainted with the
prices of serials paid by newspapers. Obviously so, to judge by the
figure he named. What do you think we ought to pay him?”
“Well--” said Mr. Wilson. The situation was one warranting discretion.
“The prices vary.” It was not wise to say more.
Lord Ottercove looked sad and troubled at having to be so.
“According to the serial and the author,” Mr. Wilson added.
“I suppose,” Lord Ottercove said doubtfully, “you are a fairly good
author?”
“I suppose so,” Frank said gloomily.
“Has Vernon Sprott read any of your novels?” Vernon Sprott was the
foreman of British fiction, proud of purse and dexterous with the pen.
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll ask him.--Give me Vernon Sprott--Vernon, old boy, how are you?”
Frank had a feeling that he was at the centre of all things, in the very
signal box from which all the wires were pulled and the signals flashed
the wide world over. “Vernon, I say, have you read any of Frank Dickin’s
novels? You have? Well, what do you think of them? What? They’re all
right? Vernon, good evening to you!” He put down the receiver. “He says
they’re all right.”
“That’s good.”
“Well--” said Lord Ottercove, still far from making history. But the
next moment, as a cat is reputed nearly always to fall on its feet, he
slipped into history. “Are you,” he said, “at all ready to leave it all
to me?”
“To no one more!” Dickin said passionately, feeling that he was now
treading a pivot on which fortunes turn, and henceforward fly round,
multiplying incessantly.
“I’ll tell you what I will do for you. I’ll let you draw on my account.”
“On your account?”
“Yuh!”
“To--to what extent?”
“Without limit.”
“But how do you mean?”
“As much as you need.”
Frank, flushed, his scalp tingling, punctuated the air with words of
embarrassed and bewildered gratitude. “ ... incredible ...
incomprehensible....”
Lord Ottercove, as in an alternating duet, kept up with: “Not a bit....
I like doing it....”
“I cannot believe it....”
“My dear fellow, it’s a pleasure to me....”
“I’m staggered....”
“It shall be done!...”
“Speechless.... It’s a dream....”
“Which is your bank?”
“Barclays.”
He took up the receiver. “I want Mrs. Hannibal.”
Mrs. Hannibal was Lord Ottercove’s Secretary-in-Chief. This was, as she
entered, already apparent from her general demeanour, from her outward
calm and ease and the smiles and little graces she was able to bestow on
visitors: that somewhat frozen smile of a lion trainer who, while
smiling thus his careless smile at the fascinated audience, is yet, you
notice by a certain pink light in the corner of his eye, not unaware of
the gravity of the task in hand, of the fearful perils of the open cage
with the unaccountable big lion.
“Mrs. Hannibal, will you arrange for Mr. Dickin to draw on my account at
Barclays Bank to an unlimited extent, till further notice.”
Mrs. Hannibal had trained herself never to look astonished. “Yes,” she
said, making a shorthand note of it in her book, and vanished with ease
to complete it in practice. At that moment another visitor--a strange
man in large ungainly boots--was ushered into the vast gay room.
“Hullo, Chris!” Lord Ottercove exclaimed.
“How are you, Rex?”
“Oh--bored to hell. Mr. Dickin has just been reading me his serial.” And
without any further introduction, he rose and took the visitor across to
the large blue sofa at the far end of the room, and both men sat down
and engaged in a silent conversation in which the movements of their
lips alone were perceptible (as so often happens on the stage). After a
while they rose and sauntered towards Frank.
“Have you, Mr. Dickin, ever heard of a man who can grow two blades of
grass for every one? You haven’t? Well, Lord de Jones is the man to do
it, and, moreover, I am the man to get him to do it.--You know Mr.
Dickin, Chris?”
“No,” said Lord de Jones, holding out a bony hand. “How do you do?”
“But he knows _you_, Chris. He’s put you into his blooming book!”
Lord de Jones smiled, revealing a row of shark-like teeth. There was
something, Frank felt, uncanny and incalculable about him. Lord de Jones
could be most suitably described as “a strange man.”
“Lord de Jones,” explained the host, “is a religious scientist. He
belongs to the Adventist sect. His argument, if you make bold to
disagree with him, is that any one unwilling to be converted to his
faith is prevented from doing so by the Devil.”
“I believe,” said Lord de Jones earnestly, “that the world is
approaching its prophesied end--”
“Creaking under the burden of his abominations,” laughed his wife’s
uncle.
“It may be for that reason,” rejoined Lord de Jones, “that I have been
chosen as His instrument to bring about an end.”
“It may be. But before you are instrumental in so doing you will be good
enough to carry out your plan of increasing the crop-growing capacity
and general fecundity of this lazy mother earth by closing all the
craters in the world.”
“Oh?” said Dickin. “Is that a fact? I mean is it a fact that the closing
of craters would inevitably have that effect?”
“Yuh,” said Lord Ottercove.
“Are you sure it’s good science?”
“It’s good politics, anyway. The only thing to give old Joe a leg up.
The Liberal Party has no platform. Never had one since the Great War.
But this crop-increasing stunt will appeal to all sections of the
community, and will be the saving of the party. It appeals to me on two
grounds. It’s sound economics--at least on the face of it; it’s got a
Liberal smack about it: ‘International Good Will. Live and Let Live.
Bread for the People.’ Why, it will simply swing him back into the
saddle!--But you will exercise discretion, won’t you?” he turned to
Frank. “I hope you don’t transcribe everything into your books, do you?”
“Everything,” said Frank.
For a while the three of them sat silent round the octangular table.
Lord Ottercove looked kind and a little fatigued; Lord de Jones silent
and pensive. Frank looked at the great newspaper proprietor, who was
obviously tired but still genial and kind, and his heart swelled with
gratitude and a love for Ottercove and the world that he graced and
illumined. “I think,” he said, “I am really taking up too much of your
time.”
“Not at all. Do stay. And will you dine with me on Friday night at half
past eight at my house?”
The intimate warmth of the great room, the political confidences
exchanged in his presence, all this filled Frank Dickin with a sense of
loyal elation. At last he rose.
“I hope to see you several times before Friday,” said Lord Ottercove,
rising and proffering a strong, sensitive hand. “Don’t forget to give
your address to my secretary, and come and see me any time you like.
Good-bye to you. And mind the step.”
On the landing, Mrs. Hannibal caught him and gave him a special cheque
book. “This will be all right,” she said. “I have advised them.”
In the glass in the lift he saw red patches on his cheeks. He thought
that unless he steadied his thoughts he might have a stroke. His heart
ebbed and swelled and he walked unsteadily on his feet past the braided
commissionaire into the lighted street.
VIII.
EVA
Eva did not reproach him for his inordinately long absence. And the
taxi-driver, whatever he may have looked like before, now looked
resigned, as if hoping for the best. “I stopped him ticking after a
time,” she said, “and I told him you would pay him well. So he looked
quite pleased and stopped ticking.”
“I know it was a long time. It must have seemed a terribly long time.”
“Oh, it seemed ages and ages and ages! I thought perhaps you had had a
stroke or that Lord Ottercove had strangled you. And then I simply
ceased worrying and fell asleep.”
“And the taxi-driver?”
“He fell asleep too. I told him it would be all right.”
“And yet,” said Frank, looking at his watch, “I haven’t been away three
hours!”
“And I dreamt that it was a big mystery case, and that they dragged out
your body and hanged Lord Ottercove for instigating the affair and--”
“I’ve been reading my book to him.”
“Your book?”
“About you, darling.”
“Oh, darling!”
As the taxi-driver, who had by now outgrown the faculty of astonishment,
asked for a clue, they directed him, provisionally, to Piccadilly
Circus. Alone, Eva at once pressed herself to his side and brought her
mouth to his for kissing, before he was really ready for it; for he had
drunk too much champagne and had read aloud so long and now was
hiccupping all the time.
“Stop hiccupping,” she said.
For him the day was too rich in new impressions to allow him to savour
his happiness. That morning, after a long absence, he had come back from
Paris. The Calais boat sidling to the Dover pier. British porters, big,
sturdy ruffians, elbowing, like a football team, by the gang-plank;
suddenly charging the decks, making away with your boxes and bags. Then
the bright shining boat-train gliding away and racing along through the
dim countryside, London-ward, without stop. Victoria at last. The vast
hideous metropolis blinking through the milky mist. And Eva’s letter in
his pocket-book:
“_Darling Blue Eyes.--So sorry you are ill. And here I’m waiting
for you all alone in London Town._”
He had not understood the secret pleading of these words, till,
following up the girl’s address to a dingy lodging-house off the Edgware
Road, the landlady related to him how Eva, waiting for him, had held
out three weeks, but that her sister Zita tracked her up through the
police and took her home with her where, ever since, she was kept under
surveillance but was allowed to take the terrier out for daily exercise
in the adjoining Park. Eva, said the landlady, was a nice girl; owed
rent, but all the time while waiting for him at the lodging-house sat
piously at home, retired early to her bed to read a novel and eat
chocolates.
She had waited, perilously, for him all these weeks, running up a debt,
while he idled away in Paris on the pretext of sickness and postponed
indefinitely his arrival! She had no money; but had not reproached him,
had only written: “Come as soon as you are better. Perhaps it’s selfish
of me to ask you to get better quickly. But I am _waiting_ for you,
Ferdinand,” etc. His name was Frank, but she did not like the plainness
of it, and so called him Ferdinand. The landlady, who told him she had
in her day eloped romantically and married secretly and very, very
happily, exhorted him to be the knight-errant who should, like her own
late husband, free his Eva from her intolerable captivity; while he
rather wished she would mind her own business and let him do as he saw
fit. And then, having pursued all the terriers in Hyde Park in vain, and
equally so in Kensington Gardens, he had halted for a moment by
Whiteley’s window in Queen’s Road and somebody sidled up to him, and
before he turned to look he could feel the warmth of her delighted
gaze. “Eva! And I had lost all hope of ever finding you!”
They lunched together hurriedly and then took a taxi to his appointed
interview with Ottercove.
“‘Me-Too’ Darling! And how did Zita find you?”
“Through Scotland Yard.”
“And she came and took you away, did she?”
“Yes, she broke in and cried, ‘You’ve got a man here!’ and began opening
all the cupboards and looking under the bed. But I was alone, in bed,
reading a novel and eating chocolates and waiting.”
“Waiting?”
“For you, darling.”
“Oh, darling! And who paid?”
“She paid.”
“Rather generous of her.”
“But she took it all out of my saving’s bank at the post office.”
“Oh! how mean! how cruel!”
“And she took me home with her and locked me up, and got Mr. Pilling to
lecture to me on morals.”
“But what is Mr. Pilling to you!”
“He is our guardian, while Mummy is away in Ireland.”
“He has guarded you well,” Frank said, not without bitterness. “What
about Zita?”
“He’s taken a fancy to Zita long ago at the Arcadia Ball Rooms, where
he’s a professional with her.”
“He has, has he? A fine guardian and no mistake! What is their
relation?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know quite well what I mean.” He looked bluntly into her eyes. “Yes
...?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“And so he’s taken you both under his wing?”
“Yes. And Mr. Pilling said I was not to go out except to take the
terrier out for exercise. And I took him every morning out into the Park
and wandered all over Kensington Gardens, hoping I might come across you
suddenly.”
“And you did!”
“And I did!”
“Darling Eva!” He pressed her to his side.
The taxi-cab had reached the bottom of the Strand and was rounding
Nelson’s Column into Pall Mall. “I must think of a hotel,” he said. “I
daresay I will find a room at the Madrid Palace.”
“No, no,” she said, “that is not a smart hotel. Mr. Pilling will say it
isn’t smart.”
“Hang Mr. Pilling! Besides, why can’t you tell him I am staying at the
Ritz?”
She thought a while. “I didn’t think of it. Yes, I will tell him you are
staying at the Ritz.”
He gave directions to the driver; ran up the steps into the hotel,
ordered a room, and came back to her. “Darling, what do you want to do
now?”
“Let us get out, darling, and walk and think. I am so tired of living in
this taxi.”
He dismissed the man, after paying the full penalty of his caprice, and
they walked on into Piccadilly and inadvertently turned into New Bond
Street. “What do you want to do?” he asked again. “You are surely not
going back to your sister’s to-night, are you?”
“No, no, I am not!”
Her reassurance weakened his resolve. “But if she searches for you; if
she goes to Scotland Yard?” he asked uneasily.
“I don’t care, darling. I want to be with you.”
“We’ll dine.”
“Yes, and after dinner go to a dance.”
“All right,” he said, unenthusiastically. “What your mother used to call
‘making a night of it.’”
“Mummy writes that she is very dull in Ireland.”
“What is she doing there?”
“She’s gone to visit daddy’s people to see what they can do for us. I’d
like,” she added, “to go to the Kiss-Lick Club.... It isn’t really
expensive.”
“No. All right.”
“But I--”
“But you--?”
“But I haven’t a gown. The old Meran orange crêpe-de-Chine one is an old
rag now.”
“We’ll get one.”
“But, darling, are you rich enough?”
“Just enough,” he said, not wishing to encourage her in her
extravagance.
Now she was already standing at a shop window, trying to decide between
two equally attractive gowns. But as they went in, the choice, and with
it the difficulty of selection, and the perils of subsequent remorse,
increased alarmingly. Seated, like a royal pair, in luxurious armchairs,
the mannequins parading with studied step before them, they displayed,
in return for the united efforts of the selling staff, an increasingly
dispersed appreciation. From time to time, Eva disappeared behind a
screen to emerge from it as an exhibit, to the venal praises of the
saleswoman, who, anxious to bring matters to a head, gradually narrowed
down the field of selection to two expensive gowns.
“I really can’t make up my mind which I should take.”
“Take both,” he said.
The saleswoman looked up at him as though she thought he was a fine
young gentleman, and he felt pleased to have risen in her estimation.
“But are you sure--?”
“I think I can just do it.” Lucky to have cleared his entire bank
balance that morning! To-morrow he would draw a cheque on Ottercove. It
seemed scarcely credible. The affair smacked of the fairy godfather type
of Christmas tale in an all-fiction magazine for juveniles. Yet
Ottercove, his cheque book, and his bank balance were presumably
realities. In the midst of life we’re in a dream, he mused, as they were
bowed out into the street, when, a few paces off, Eva suddenly
remembered that she had no shoes to match the gowns, and he took her to
the nearest shop where she selected competently, while asking him, “Are
you quite sure--?” the best the shop could offer.
“I think I’ll manage,” he replied, more by way of secret loyalty to
Ottercove, who, he recalled, had said, “As much as _you_ need,” not “as
much as your women folk may feel they need,” which was not the same.
The shops were just closing; but, of his own accord, he suggested that
she indulge in lingerie, and here, despite the closing hour, Eva’s fancy
ran adrift, while his new-born tenderness for her prevented him from
curbing her desires. So long as he had money enough to last out till the
morning, what did it matter?
But he did not himself indulge in any purchases that evening, as an
ascetic act of abstinence before the pure image of the kindly Ottercove
which, like an ikon illumined by a candle, always shone before him.
Nevertheless the devil tempted him from time to time. Suppose, he
thought, Lord Ottercove had gone mad. It was not impossible. He could
then gradually appropriate all his property. Till the executors stopped
him. If so, was that not a cause for hurry? And Eva’s impulse was right?
But it would never do to tell her. Not even if Lord Ottercove was mad.
He whispered in her ear as they pushed through the revolving door into
the hall of the hotel, and she signed her name--with a, to unsuspecting
eyes surely imperceptible, hesitation--“Nancy Dickin.” As they ascended
in the lift, he was tendering excuses:
“It’s a poor room, you know.”
“Is,” she asked, “my room as poor as yours?”
“It’s the same,” he said.
Forgetting to kiss him, she immediately began to inspect her purchases,
till he suggested it was time she put them on.
“It’s cold,” she twitched her shoulders.
“There’s a gas fire.”
“Yes, yes. Darling, ring the bell for me.”
And to the maid, in a commanding, knowing way:
“Put on the gas fire at eleven o’clock so it should be warm when we
return. My husband likes it warm.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
At the Kiss-Lick she beamed all the time. While they danced she talked
to him of himself. “Pilling said ... Zita said ... I said to Pilling:
‘Mr. Dickin doesn’t care a rap for your opinions! He wouldn’t look at
you--’” Or, suddenly, without preliminary introduction, she would
volunteer such isolated bits of information as: “He hurt me with my
teeth. I cried.”
“Who? Pilling?”
“No, the dentist. And the man in the Tube thought I was a little Russian
girl because I had a grey fur cap and was reading the translation of a
Russian novel.”
Eva, he noticed, was very observant and ironic about Mr. Pilling. “He
tries to speak French to Zita, because he thinks it’s grand. Pilling
thinks she has influence.”
“With whom?”
“With Lord Ottercove. Through Lord de Jones, you know, who is Mummy’s
friend. He is very funny.”
“Who? Pilling?”
“No, Lord de Jones. He goes about muttering funny things to me about
wanting to blow up the earth. I think he is not quite all there. But
Pilling would like Lord Ottercove to finance him.”
“Whom? Lord de Jones?”
“No, Pilling. He’d like to open out on his own. A dancing place, a night
club like this one. Only he says he wants Lord Ottercove or somebody to
finance him, because it will cost a lot of money. Pilling is very high
class. He has bought a cottage at Marlow and called it ‘Villa
Esperanza.’”
“Full of hope, evidently!”
“And he makes up to a man there because he is a member of the motor-boat
club, and Pilling can’t be a member of the motor-boat club because he
has no motor-boat. And he says he only needs Lord Ottercove to finance
him to buy himself a motor-boat. That is why I wanted to meet Lord
Ottercove this afternoon; and you wouldn’t let me.”
“You wanted to speak to Lord Ottercove to--to--” he stammered with
incredulity.
“To ask him if he’d like to finance Pilling.”
“But why?”
“I thought it would please Pilling.”
While they supped, her legs touched his and he had but one thought and
one desire: to return with her to the hotel, to grasp her, clutch her,
smother and devour her just as she was now with her wistful violet eyes
and her thoughts of Pilling. She sipped her champagne. She was silent,
completely content. Her large eyes were bright dewy flowers.
Ensconced in a taxi, she at once fell over him and brought her mouth to
his for kissing. But kissing, by this time, was nothing new to him. He
wanted to explore new avenues, new vistas of experience.
Then they were back, alone. He clutched her in his arms. “Come, come,
come,” he pleaded. She had quickly slipped into bed before he returned
to the room and looked at him doubtfully.
“Ah!” he cried in the accents of the primitive man and leaping to her
side.
But she had turned her back to him. “Darling....” she murmured.
“What?” he cried.
“Yes,” she said, “it isn’t always easy to be a woman, darling.”
He looked at her blankly. “Where is my revolver?”
“Your revolver?”
“Or I shall go out and hang myself--”
“What do you mean?”
“On the nearest lamp-post.”
After pacing the room up and down for a space, he lay down. But he could
not sleep. At last he dressed and, to the astonishment of the night
porter, went out and, incurring the suspicion of a lone policeman,
loitered in empty Piccadilly Circus. He had calmed down and his thoughts
turned back to his miraculous acquaintance with Lord Ottercove and his
unlimited offer of money, so unusually generous that he could hardly
force himself to take advantage of it. He would rather assassinate his
old grandmother for the meagre contents of her purse than overdraw Lord
Ottercove’s account. Wandering aimlessly about the quiet streets,
tears dimmed his eyes as he reflected on the essential goodness
of human nature. His look was moist, peculiarly naïve, and if a
confidence-trickster had that moment come up to him, he would have been
inclined to accept his offer, convinced that he would and could not harm
him.
Eva was not asleep when he came back. Where had he seen it? Ah, she
reminded him of that picture of a kitten tucked away in a big bed, with
one paw over the quilt, one eye closed, the other open and looking at
the world. In the dark they talked across the bedside table which
separated their two beds, and she told him of all that had happened to
her since he saw her last in Vienna. “Lord de Jones got Mummy to put me
into a Secretarial College as he said he would need a secretary to go on
his mission with him round the world to close all the craters and Mount
Vesuvius and such for which Lord Ottercove is financing him for
propaganda and such like purposes and that he could see from the colour
of my eyes that he could trust me. Mummy wants to go with Lord de Jones
on his mission all round the world because she says she hasn’t been
round the world and would like to see it as his private secretary, but
Lord de Jones says he’d rather I went with him, much rather than Mummy.
And so he put me into this Secretarial College to learn shorthand and
typewriting, and the Principal was making up to him, because he was
Viscount de Jones, and used to write silly letters to him trying to
flatter him because he thought Lord de Jones would appreciate deep
thoughts. And so he wrote to Lord de Jones to congratulate him on the
nobility of his scientific thoughts and researches and said: ‘Your
philosophical mind, I am sure, will appreciate what a small fraction
time is of eternity.’”
“And Lord de Jones?”
“He simply laughed, and I told the Principal what a fool Lord de Jones
thought him. But he was making up to me.”
“Who? The Principal? Or Lord de Jones?”
“The Principal. And Lord de Jones, too. But I don’t mind Lord de Jones
because he is an old friend of Mummy’s. But the Principal was a real
rotter. He had a sort of conservatory behind his study where he used to
receive visitors, and there was a palm tree there and an aquarium with
goldfish, and he said to me when I said I was leaving him because he was
a fool, ‘We had better kiss and be friends,’ and he tried to kiss me
there among the goldfish.”
“No!”
“He did! And he used to pay his teaching staff at the end of the week in
silver money. Three or four half-crowns, not more. They all stood
huddled together at the end of the room and he’d recline in his chair at
the desk and call out: ‘Jones!’ ‘Ferguson!’ ‘Gould!’ (Never ‘Mrs.
Ferguson,’ or ‘Miss Gould!’) ‘Here!’ and give them three or four
half-crowns each. And the typewriting mistress, Miss Gould, only got two
half-crowns and a shilling.”
“And they seemed pleased?”
“No, not pleased, but kind of dumb, cowed, hungry looking. And when
Mummy was behind with the payment because Lord de Jones had quarrelled
with his wife and she wouldn’t let him have any more money, Mr. Bumphill
got very ratty and said I had a bad character. I asked him what I had
done; and he said: ‘You are lazy, and where is your loyalty to the
College? Have you ever recommended it to a single human being?’
“‘I have,’ I said.
“He suddenly looked very interested. ‘And to whom, pray?’ said he.
“‘To Mr. Gorilla,’ said I, ‘a Spanish young gentleman.’
“‘Oh, indeed! I am interested to hear it,’ says he. ‘Take his name down,
Miss Frazer.... H’m! And what is his address?’
“‘The Zoological Gardens,’ said I.”
“And then?”
“Then I left his Secretarial College. Mr. Pilling thought I should study
to become a Nurse.”
“And why must you listen to Mr. Pilling.”
“I told you he is our guardian.”
“A fine guardian!” said Frank bitterly. “I’d like to bash his head for
his treatment of Zita.”
“But what about yourself?” she asked, it seemed to him rather
tactlessly.
“That was different. That was on a hill.”
“It was lovely. And Zita too thought it was lovely. But she said she
could never tell Pilling about it. She doesn’t know what he’d do to you
if he knew.”
“No need for him to know,” Frank said, gloomily. And then: “I say, is he
... Pilling a great reader of novels?”
“I don’t know, darling. I don’t remember having seen any of yours in
their flat, though Pilling once said about you, ‘He is very clever. I
wish I had his brains. I would not be a professional, nor Zita either.’”
“Why don’t they marry?”
“Pilling told her from the start that he couldn’t marry her as he was
already married but separated from his wife, but Zita being always
business-like and practically minded asked Pilling to guarantee to her
on paper that he would remain true and loyal to her all his life. But
Pilling said he couldn’t do such a thing as a man can never trust
himself. Zita then met a doctor--an old consumptive fellow, full of gout
and ischias and sciatica and heart disease--who fell in love with her
and wanted her to be his own eternally and everlastingly, and as he also
could not marry her he gave her the guarantee she asked in writing that
he would be true to her during all his lifetime and even had it stamped
at Somerset House; and then she became just like his wife. But he died
in a week--from heart failure.”
“And what did Zita say?”
“She said: ‘I could have murdered him for it.’”
“Poor thing! And now?”
“Now she has gone back to Pilling unconditionally. She did ask him for a
guarantee, but he only laughed at her. She still warns me about men. But
I also laugh at her.”
“Yet she controls your movements?”
“Yes, she does. Once, when I got so tired of sitting at home with Zita
and Pilling and went for a walk by myself, and a fat gentleman I met on
the station platform at Victoria took me to a dance, Zita gave me an
awful hiding and told Pilling to give me a dressing-down, and then
slapped me.”
“Really slapped you hard?”
“Yes, darling, I haven’t had an easy kind of life, I can tell you.”
“And so Pilling sent you to the hospital to study to become a Nurse, did
he?”
“He did. I had to cram my poor brains with so much anatomy. And the
things they made us look at, the operations and things. Once I fainted;
then I got used to it.”
“And do you really know something about it?”
“I know every little bone in your body.”
“Really?”
“There was a doctor there, an Irishman. He used to help me with my
examinations and kiss me.”
“You let him?”
“He loved me, he said. And it was Spring like that time on the hill, and
so stuffy at night, and the textbooks so difficult, and he so clever!”
“And then?”
“And then I ran away. I didn’t come back after my annual leave. I went
to London to Mrs. White’s boarding house.”
“Why?”
“Because you wrote to me from Paris that you wanted me to meet you in
London, and so I came to London from Colchester and waited for
you--weeks and weeks, till my sister came--the matron at the hospital
had started a hue and cry--and took me away.”
“And then?”
“Then Pilling said I must go back to the hospital, but I said I’d rather
die than go back to the hospital, so I had a row with Pilling. He was
furious, and I was furious, and so I went away to Mother Martha’s
boarding house and took a room, but I had no money, so had to look for a
situation.”
“You all alone in London looking for a situation! while I was lounging
lazily in Paris!”
“Yes. I went to the shops asking for a job, and I didn’t know where I
could get a reference. The managers were all the same. They said, ‘You
have intriguing eyes.’ Or, ‘If you’ll be nice and friendly with me, I’ll
give you a good cushy job.’ I had a good job in a draper’s shop in
Holborn; I got twenty-five shillings a week. But as they began to reduce
their staff and I was the lastcomer I was the first to go. Then I got a
job as part cashier, part waitress in a tea-shop in the City. It was
quite interesting. Business men would come up and talk to me and promise
me a job. They said I had intriguing eyes. One man said, ‘You have eyes
like violets.’ They would come up to the counter and we’d discuss
together City topics. And one fat man asked me if I knew what Nero was
doing while Rome was burning, and I said I didn’t know, and he said:
‘Fiddling.’ And we’d all burst laughing. It was quite intriguing.”
His heart ached for her. Poor child, all alone, men like vultures, ready
to pounce on her: forgetting that men, old and young, common and
cultivated, were to her a navigable ocean whereon indeed she was an A-1
skipper.
“Then I lost my job as part cashier because the manageress said I added
up all wrong and she couldn’t make head or tail whether the shop was
making profits or losses and I said she had better add up herself to
make sure, and I went back to Mother Martha’s boarding house and waited,
waited for you, while Mother Martha swilled whisky by herself upstairs.
And when the Irish Doctor from the hospital came to see me Mother
Martha, who was full of whisky, said I had a lover in my room and that
she’d write and tell my father in Ireland. But I said: ‘I shall inform
my Solicitor: False Accusation,’ and she got scared like a rabbit and
crawled upstairs to swill down some more whisky.”
“And then?”
“Then I went to see what Zita and Pilling were doing and left Mother
Martha severely alone.”
“Do you know what time it is? It’s four o’clock!”
“Good night, darling.”
“Good night, darling.”
IX.
Leaving the hotel next morning, they passed the gauntlet of waiting
menials and tipped their way through to the door to the total price of
their freedom, while the door porter waved his arms in the middle of the
street in an ostentatious display to arrest a taxi for them, and a page
boy craned his neck at the glass door to see if it was coming, to
receive, for looking interested, another sixpence.
At the bank he cashed, without any trouble, a cheque for one hundred
pounds, and indulged in some purchases for himself. Unlike Edith
Wharton’s American heroes and heroines, he did not buy a grand piano, a
motor-car, or a steam yacht, but invested in shirts, waistcoats, a new
pair of pyjamas, a bathing-suit and an opera hat. At a bookstall he
bought a booklet in a bright yellow jacket entitled _Dictators of the
Press_ and a recent volume of _Who’s Who_, and at lunch, having tired a
little of Eva’s conversation, absorbed himself in the literature he had
purchased.
_Who’s Who_, laconic but informative, recorded:
“OTTERCOVE, Rex Victor Alexander Green, P. C. 1st. Baron Ottercove of
Ottercove. _b_. Ottercove, New Zealand; unmarried; _heiress_: niece,
Eleonor Viscountess de Jones; _recreation_: controlling public opinion;
_address_: Bourne Abbey, Kent; Stonedge House, S.W. 1.”
He read it out aloud to Eva, who said that Pilling would approve of the
address.
The little yellow booklet related in a racy style the facts which were
more or less common knowledge to the public, but re-dressed them with
gay ribbons of fancy and let them scurry down the ebullient river of
facile imagination. Frank learnt that Lord Ottercove was probably the
greatest political and financial force operating in the England of the
twentieth century--greater than Lord Northcliffe, greater than Lord
Beaverbrook. Yes, greater! History records (said the little yellow book)
that if the latter two had chosen to pull together there was nothing in
the realm of the material universe that these two peers could not
accomplish. Now what they could do if they pulled together Lord
Ottercove, it seemed, could do alone. If you took the trouble to turn up
in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ the rubric recording the development of
journalism in the last half-century, you would learn that just as Lord
Northcliffe’s advent opens a new page, and Lord Beaverbrook’s another,
so the arrival of Lord Ottercove in Fleet Street definitely marks a
third and, possibly, last, stage.
He was born (the booklet said) of English missionary stock in New
Zealand, who, after working for the furtherance of what they regarded as
the Christian Cause, in heathen lands, retired to that Commonwealth upon
whose soil our hero first saw light. Human meteors had been known to
exist before: but never quite so swift, so bright, so deft, so certain.
By seventeen, Rex Green controlled the major part of the New Zealand
industries. By the time he was nineteen he exhausted all Colonial
possibilities and went to the United States and captured Wall Street. At
twenty-four he accumulated such a fortune that, from sheer revulsion, he
stopped making money (except for such as rolled in on its own momentum),
came to England and plunged into home politics. He unmade two Prime
Ministers, made a third, buried a fourth, and, tired of the game of
politics, accepted a peerage, buying a controlling share in the
_Universal Press of the United Kingdom Syndicate_. He bought fifty-one
per cent. of the shares of a daily newspaper, arranging that this
newspaper should purchase fifty-one per cent. of the shares of another
newspaper, which second newspaper he instructed to buy fifty-one per
cent. of the shares of a third newspaper, continuing the application of
this principle, till, controlling the first newspaper, he automatically
controlled all the worthwhile newspapers in the United Kingdom.
Yet despite his meteoric sweep, Rex Green was a man of strong
attachments. So when, with the offer of a peerage, the time arrived for
choosing a new name, and all the county, town, village, street and
railway names in England lay before him, the great man remembered the
little village in New Zealand that had been his landing-stage where he
alighted we know not whence upon the Realm of Matter, and decided by
adopting its name to distinguish the village. “In Ottercove I was born,
and as Ottercove I will die,” he was reported to have said at the
banquet given in his honour by the Ottercove inhabitants during his
visit there soon after his creation, thereby drawing tears from their
eyes; a banquet followed by a tour of inspection round the village,
small, and with a railroad station so embryonic that you could not even
buy a ticket there, but picturesque in its simple rustic way, quite a
dear little place full of coves, creeks, and little brooks with beavers
and otters, quite domesticated, it seemed, and almost eating out of your
hand. The guest of honour, it is reported, beamed with pleasure as he
beheld the place of his birth, and is said to have added to his
foregoing remark at the banquet: “And in Ottercove I wish to be buried,”
thereby drawing renewed tears from the onlookers’ eyes.
“Well,” said Frank, closing the book and leaning back luxuriously, “it
seems we’ve struck oil this time!”
“But why don’t you get Lord Ottercove to give you some money, darling?”
“I have,” he said.
“How much?”
“Well, I don’t know. He said ‘without limit.’” It was out before he had
meant it to be.
“Without limit,” she said. “But that means that you can buy yourself
everything, darling; horses and houses with grounds all over England and
Scotland and--”
“No, no--”
“But yes, darling. ‘Without limit’ means everything.”
“But no--”
“But it does, darling. Everything, everything without limit.”
He was sorry he had said it.
“We must tell Mummy,” she said.
“Great heavens, no! Why tell her?”
“She will be pleased.”
“Now then,” he said, rising and helping her with her coat and then
taking _Who’s Who_ under his arm. “No. I shall make the restaurant a
gift of it.”
“No, darling, don’t. Pilling would love to have it.”
“What does he want with a copy of _Who’s Who_?”
“He’d read and read it days and nights.”
“Whatever for?”
“To find out who is who.”
“But how will you get it over to him?”
“In a taxi.”
“Well, look here, you had better take a taxi and go straight to Pilling
with it.” There were moments, after prolonged social intercourse with
people, when his soul positively shrieked to be left alone.
“I shall ring you up at your club,” she said as she drove away with the
book.
X.
At the club he found a message from Mrs. Hannibal that Lord Ottercove
expected him to tea at five o’clock at his house. Frank, who was late,
having failed by sheer strength of will to accelerate the movement of
the train in the Inner Circle, jumped into a taxi at Dover-street,
imploring the driver to make a dash for Stonedge House. But the
vehicle, freighted with his dismay and anxiety, got jammed in a mesh of
other vehicles. A march through London by the Unemployed, the
taxi-driver put him wise: a call to Direct Action. Not for the first
time. Frank jumped out, paid the fare, and made a dash through the
crowd. A cordon of policemen barred his way into the square. Gaping
suspiciously at him, they none the less let him pass through to Stonedge
House.
The butler informed him that his lordship was expecting him, but had not
yet come in from his walk, and conducted him into a great bare lounge
with windows overlooking the Park, a huge marble chimney-piece, as in a
club room, with an oil portrait of a member of the Royal family hung
over it, and a lady sitting by the log fire. She smiled to him and said
Lord Ottercove had asked her to meet him so that she might write an
article about him for one of Lord Ottercove’s newspapers, probably the
_Evening Ensign_. They had barely exchanged a few words when Lord
Ottercove strolled in somberly across the soft carpet with a cloud on
his face.
Frank wondered whether the cause of it was not his cashing forthwith one
hundred pounds of Lord Ottercove’s money. “Why aren’t you having any
tea?” asked the host, and rang for the butler. “Well, have you talked it
over?” he asked rather wearily.
“Mr. Dickin has only just come,” said the lady, thus giving her partner
away, Frank felt, rather cruelly.
Lord Ottercove gave his visitor a searching look, as though he thought
this was a bad beginning. “They wouldn’t let me pass through the crowd,”
Frank proffered his excuses.
“Nor would they let me,” said Lord Ottercove.
“A bewildering procession of the Unemployed,” the lady journalist
remarked. “More ominous than the last one.”
“Yes. I don’t know what is going to happen. Processions are indelicate
manifestations and are best discouraged by indifference. But an idle
curiosity sends everyone out into the streets to see what is happening
and swells the ranks of the dissatisfied. It is the same with
revolutions. Mankind is periodically beset by mass dissatisfaction when,
at some obscure, unmeaning signal, men suddenly begin to air their
private grievances in a mass--as though that could possibly help them;
and then, growing hearty, and with that corporate look in their eyes,
they are ready to track down the Evil in their life to any handy
bogey--the capitalist, the Jew, the profiteer, the Bolshevik, or any
foreigner. It used to be religion--the Jesuit, the Pope, the Turk, or
the Free-Mason--but that is now out of fashion. I do not see that
anything is likely to side-track their present agitation saving some big
stunt which would appeal to their imagination--such as the increased
crop-growing scheme which Lord de Jones and myself have in mind. Miss
Henderson, will you make a note of that for your Sunday article. Lord de
Jones, who is a scientist by training, and myself, under the auspices of
the re-dressed and re-bandaged Liberal Party (with Joe pleased as Punch
at last to have a party policy) are travelling round the world to
agitate public opinion in the countries concerned in favour of the
closing of craters, wherever such are known to exist, to increase the
crop-growing capacity of weary Mother Earth, for the general benefit of
the human race, irrespective of class or nationality. The policy is to
be launched in the broadest Liberal terms, and I want my newspapers to
give it the widest possible publicity.”
“When do you hope to start on your journey, Lord Ottercove?”
“I cannot tell you. We have to time it with the General Election. It
wouldn’t do to have it all behind us before the General Election begins.
A policy is only a policy if it is a promise. A difficulty is only a
difficulty if it needs overcoming. A difficulty overcome is like your
last year’s birthday present. You cannot talk of it with any credit to
yourself. And in politics you must boast in order to get credit, and
though you cannot boast of what you have done, you can boast of what you
will do, if they let you do it for them.”
“Do you expect any difficulties ahead of you?”
“Our difficulty is that there will not be any to enable us to overcome
them with glory. But I expect we will be able to overcome that
difficulty by creating a few difficulties of the spectacular order we
require to swing old Joe back into the saddle at the next General
Election, which cannot now be long delayed.”
“Is it an established scientific fact,” Frank ventured, “that the
closing of the craters _would_ increase the crop?”
Lord Ottercove frowned. “You’ve asked me that before. I cannot tell you.
It’s a journalistic fact, anyhow.” He paused. “But I have no reason to
doubt it. It stands to reason if you reflect. More heat, more pressure
from the bowels of the earth, and the quicker the blades pushed to the
surface. That’s how I read the scientific aspect of it. But de Jones
ought to know; he is a scientist.”
“Rather a genius by the looks of him,” said Frank, in order to hear Lord
Ottercove reply with deliberation:
“A Genius of the Untried.”
“I see,” said Frank, “you will leave nothing untried, not even
questionable science, if you may thereby alleviate the lot of the
people.”
“I am a man of the people,” said Lord Ottercove, “and my sympathies are
with the people. But here it is not a case of alleviating the lot of the
people. Increased crops will cheapen bread, undoubtedly, but only to
lower wages. I know my capitalists!”
“But there are socialist weapons for that.”
“Strikes,” said Lord Ottercove. “Direct action. Revolutions.”
Frank was not so much disarmed as submerged by the intensity of Lord
Ottercove’s self-assurance.
“No,” said Lord Ottercove. “My aim is somewhat different. In ancient
Rome the people were given bread and shows. They will have their bread
and plenty of it, the Lord and Lord de Jones willing; but I am out to
give them shows, grip their attention, side-track the vicious trend of
idle minds--or I am not a journalist.”
He paused to give both listeners an opportunity to survey the boldness
and originality of his vision.
“I am a journalist, and I love my newspapers. You, Miss Henderson, and
you, Mr. Dickin, must have known love in the course of your lives; my
love is akin to yours, but rather than being wasted on a mistress” (he
looked at Dickin), “or on a lover” (he looked at Miss Henderson
enquiringly), “_my_ love is lavished on my newspapers. I love my
newspapers.” Tears stood in his eyes as he spoke, and Miss Henderson and
Frank lowered their heads as though they were in church. “I am amazed,
with a sweet amazement, when I suddenly look into my heart and discover
the depth of my love for these journals of mine.” Miss Henderson and
Frank suspended their breath and continued suspending it so far as this
is possible. “They were nothing. I witnessed and sponsored their birth;
guarded their adolescence; tended their youth; exulted in their
maturity....” He paused as if having revealed too much of his heart.
“There is also an intellectual side to it,” he said at last, as if to
prove that such things were not foreign to him. “I have slowly come to
the realisation that things, the ordinary common things we see and grip,
_are_ not: they only seem.... They are phantoms, dreams of some one
great Dreamer who has dreamt us and presently awakes to congratulate
himself.”
“And are we the dream or the dreamer?”
“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, pensively, “I haven’t so far rounded off my
philosophy, though now that you have put this question it is already
clear to me that two courses of enquiry are feasible.”
“I mean, are we included in the congratulation?”
“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “my original thesis was in the negative.
But now I have come to think that for a series of Sunday articles in
which I want to incorporate my philosophy the notion that we are the
Dreamer and everything unpleasant in life the Dream about to be
dissolved in the reality of our awakening is rather more cheerful and
more suitable from a journalistic point of view and I will pursue the
Dreamer as against the Dream course.”
“But is that a ground?”
“Certainly. A journalistic ground.”
“But I thought you were going to write philosophy.”
“Journalism, as I was going to explain, is philosophy. Life is a dream,
according to my philosophy, a dream of illusions. And this faculty of
creating illusions in a world of appearances is, I claim, the function
of the journalist.”
“Make-belief?”
“If you like to--to put it so crudely,” said Lord Ottercove, evidently
hurt. It seemed strange to see this rich, successful, powerful,
middle-aged newspaper magnate, once Cabinet Minister, hurt. So it seemed
he was vulnerable?
Miss Henderson rose, and her host and employer, in his double capacity,
saw her out into the hall, murmuring, “So you have grasped the trend of
the Wheat-Growing Story?”--completing his instructions in an undertone.
“And will you do a story on Mr. Dickin? Dwell on the strange similarity
of his name to another famous novelist?”
“Which one, Lord Ottercove?”
“Dickens, my girl. Author of _David Copperfield_, _The Pickwick Papers_,
_Oliver Twist_, _The Tale of Two Cities_. You might work Mr. Dickin into
these tales. Perhaps suggest a common ancestry. Here’s a title for you:
‘Is Genius Hereditary?: The Unpublished Story of the Dickens Issue.’ You
might add that modesty, a fastidious dislike to shine in the blinding
light of his grandparent caused this shy, blinking, unassuming-looking
youth who, nevertheless, in the course of years is groping after the
crown of his illustrious forbear, to drop the ‘s’ in his name--and
substitute ‘i’ for ‘e’.”
“I see.”
“Well, I’ve given you two stories. Write them to-night and send them in
to me before breakfast to-morrow. I will read them in bed directly on
waking. Good-bye to you.”
* * * * *
Frank was about to follow Miss Henderson, and rose; but “Don’t go,” said
the host, and each sank back into an enormous leather chair, Lord
Ottercove opening his mouth to pose a question--perhaps why had Frank
cashed so much money--when the butler strode in, announcing:
“Mr. Atkinson, my lord.”
“Come in! Come in, Atkinson!” roared Lord Ottercove. “You bloody ruffian
... come right in. Well, how’s New Zealand? Gone to hell, I suppose,
since I left it, what? This is Mr. Dickin. You’ve read his books, of
course. _The Tale of Two Cities. David Copperfield._”
“Of course, of course.”
“Bloody liar, you’ve read nothing!”
“Too busy, too busy ...” murmured Mr. Atkinson.
“How would you like turning out twenty motor-cars a day Mr. Dickin? This
man here earns more money in an hour of his sleep by growing fat than
you with all your artistry and intelligence and talent can earn in a
year!”
“I assure you,” Mr. Atkinson protested, “there is great artistry in
designing a new model ... and the machinery, too, trickish ...
devilishly trickish.... At least Archie thinks so. But then Archie--”
“Is a liar,” supplied Lord Ottercove, looking humorously at Frank, who,
not knowing Archie, smiled at them both noncommittally.
“Did I tell you Archie’s latest?” asked the guest.
“No.”
“He’d gone out hunting lions in East Africa. ‘I advance,’ he says,
‘under cover, and straight before me sits a lion. I aim--and bang! down
goes the lion. But there, a few paces off, if you please, sits a second
lion. Bang! And down he goes. I shoulder my gun and advance under cover,
and there, just in front, sits the third lion--’”
The telephone at Lord Ottercove’s feet rang discreetly, and taking it
up, “Of course,” he said. “Use your judgment. What’s the use of my
having a great editor like you if I am to do all the work? Quite. In the
question of National Defence I am supporting the Admiralty against the
Air Force. All you need know. Good-bye to you.”
The motor-car manufacturer was evidently only waiting for the host to
put down the receiver, for:
“‘And there to the side of me was the fourth lion,’” he said, smiling
all over.
Lord Ottercove looked pensive. “Excuse me,” he said, and taking up the
telephone from the floor spoke, “Give me Lady de Jones. How are you,
Eleonor? Look here, you’d better have Admiral Battersea to your right
and the Emir to your left to-morrow night. I want to mark my support of
the Admiralty. What? You would rather I gave you the £30,000 necklace
for your birthday? You’re welcome to it, of course. But I advise you
against it. Why? I don’t think it will do you any good having it. Why?
It would not make you happy. Why not? The remorse at imposing on your
uncle. Not a bit, you are welcome to it, my dear; it is only advice.
Good day, to you.”
“‘And there,’” said Mr. Atkinson, watching his friend put down the
telephone, “‘was the fifth lion.’”
“Excuse me,” said the host, and uttered forth a strange wood-note like a
bird (which he must have learnt when as a boy he tended to spend his
school hours in the wood behind Ottercove); in answer to which vocal
sign Mrs. Hannibal came into his presence. “Tell Franklin,” said Lord
Ottercove, completing his instructions in an undertone with an almost
silent movement of his robust lips. The instructions were so long and
explicit that the car manufacturer, despairing of securing Lord
Ottercove’s attention, buttonholed Frank Dickin and was saying to him in
a tone hushed to a level likely not to interfere with their host’s
business conversation but adequately forceful and dramatic:
“‘And there,’ says he, ‘to either side of me were the sixth and seventh
lion. Bang! Bang! Down they went.’”
“What’s that?” Lord Ottercove questioned, Mrs. Hannibal having gone to
execute his instructions.
“‘Down they went....’”
“Who?”
“The sixth and the seventh lions.”
“H’m.”
“‘And there,’ he says, ‘to the front of me ... was ... the eighth
lion!’”
Here the car manufacturer paused for appreciation, a little tardy in
coming; and then, not waiting for it and holding his curved sides to
prevent them from splitting, burst out into a Homeric roar.
“Well,” he said, cheerily, linking this his leave-taking to the humorous
anecdote, but his face growing serious, “thank you for your hospitality.
What message have you for me to take back with me to New Zealand? Is the
Old Country all right? Will keep the flag flying? Eh? What?”
“Sure!” from Lord Ottercove, more forced than spontaneous.
“If,” said the car manufacturer, “you can keep Labour down and their
wages you’ll be all right in this old country yet.”
“This is a point,” Lord Ottercove said coldly, “on which I differ from
you,” looking to Frank for recognition of this sympathetic attitude to
the workers.
“But ain’t we both of us Conservatives?”
“In New Zealand, yes, but not in this country, Atkinson.”
“How so?” the dull, blood-shot look of an uncomprehending bull coming
into the manufacturer’s face.
“In so far as I wish to conserve the liberties won by the Liberals in
the past, I am a Conservative; but in as much as I would gain new
liberties worth the conservation, I am a Liberal.”
He paused, and added:
“I stand for tolerance--for the complete toleration of everything short
of the intolerable.”
The car manufacturer, shaking his head at the brainy madcapness that
overtakes some successful business men, made for the door, followed
cheerily by Ottercove, proffering, with subversive gusto, advice to a
man he knew incapable of following it. “Atkinson, you should stop making
money and go in for Thought.”
“Why should I, if it keeps me occupied?”
“It’s a vice. A man should stop when he has made enough. I’ve stopped.”
Frank made a mental picture of Lord Ottercove stopping. “You don’t make
any more money, Lord Ottercove?” he asked.
“No. Except for such as makes itself. Of course, every year I am called
upon to invest fresh capital. But that is not for want of any facility
of imagination in the art of spending it.”
Lord Ottercove followed Mr. Atkinson into the hall, and as he waited for
his host’s return Frank Dickin’s mind sang and tingled at the thought of
money. Money! Money! Money! How did Lord Ottercove make so much money?
“Business ability,” was the saying. But what was it? Frank’s ideas were
vague and nebulous. Lord Ottercove, he thought, bought consols, sold
them at valuation, at contango, and depreciation; bought debentures at
quotation; accumulated stock, multiplied it by going into liquidation
... and made a fortune. Frank believed High Finance to be closely allied
with Mysticism. It was ineffable and inutterable: it could be revealed,
but not explained; its priests were inspired. As Lord Ottercove returned
to him, with a smile, he blessed Lord Ottercove’s entire organisation
for the kindly light that emanated from him. Lord Ottercove’s bias, he
was pleased to note, was artistic. He turned his turnovers like a
virtuoso, delighting in what he could do with so little effort. His
friendships, his natural disposition, were all for artists. His collar
and negligent tie bore witness to it. Whenever Frank was about to rise
Lord Ottercove would say, “Don’t go.” And when at last the guest,
feeling the indecency of lingering any longer, rose convincingly, Lord
Ottercove reminded him that he was dining with him to-morrow night.
“I am afraid for my own sake,” said the visitor, “that the more you see
of me, the sooner will the reaction in you, to borrow the language of
critics, make itself felt.”
“My dear fellow,” said Lord Ottercove, “you don’t know how all this
delights me. Are you,” he asked in the hushed tones of a doctor who
enquires if your stomach is in order, “drawing all the money you want?”
“Yes. Thanks awfully.”
“Good-bye to you!”
XI.
When at half-past eight next evening Frank arrived at Stonedge House and
the footman, divesting him with critical thoughtfulness of his street
clothes, ushered him into the inner rooms, a lady, regally resplendent,
came out to meet him and, greeting him with spontaneous affability, took
him upstairs to the drawing-room, saying, “I can’t drag Uncle Rex from
the roasting fire in his room. He is always miserably cold.” But already
Lord Ottercove, festal in his immaculate tailcoat and pumps, was slowly
coming up the steps behind them, and--“How are you?” he asked.
A question to which it is difficult to say anything but, “Oh, very
well.”
They had not been in the blue, mirrored drawing-room many moments when
the butler flung open the doors and announced:
“His Majesty the Emir of Turkestania.”
A tall ample man, with a protruding shirt front, blew in like a
whirlwind and immediately began to register a vocal admiration of the
hostess’s sparkling sea-green gown. “The result of your Paris season I
can see, Lady de Jones?” he boomed in tones of teasing gallantry.
“As I know to my cost,” said her uncle. “This is Mr. Frank Dickin, your
Majesty. You’ve read his novels, of course.”
“Who hasn’t read them!” exclaimed the Emir and, turning to the hostess:
“A most artistic, subversively provocative gown!” when the butler again
appeared at the door on the landing and announced:
“Admiral Lord Battersea.”
Up the red carpeted steps came a corpulent figure with a visage,
familiar to readers of the picture press in a large-rimmed naval cap
tilted at a rakish angle over a wind-beaten sea-dog face, now projecting
out of a prosaic but discreetly confident tailcoat.
From time to time the butler appeared on the threshold, announcing the
guests as they came up the steps; and presently he ceased announcing,
and at a sign they all trooped down again to dinner. As the footman
pushed up the chair behind him, Frank began to take his dispositions. In
a moment of periodical unemployment when both his partners were engaged
in conversation, he would prick his ears--for he was curious about his
fellow men--and listen. Admiral Battersea was saying in his hoarse,
sea-grunting way to the pretty, dark-eyed woman at his side: “The Prince
of Wales, I hear, kept very fit during the trip by taking a great deal
of exercise....”
He found Lord de Jones at his side peculiarly congenial. Did he know
the Kerrs? Didn’t he! Eva? “The darling!” said de Jones. And Mrs. Kerr?
Lord de Jones’s silence seemed to hold a lot.
“She craved for impossible things,” Dickin suggested.
“And she got them,” said de Jones.
“What she wanted.”
“Exactly what she wanted. They were Impossible.”
They covered many a familiar field--Russia, Vienna, the Tyrol. “Did you
know her father?” asked de Jones. “I went out to Russia as a young man.
I was taken to their country place by him. She had just got married.
Lovely. She was lovely then; really lovely. Just like Eva now. If I’d
known her three days earlier she wouldn’t have married Kerr.” He was
pensive. “Eva might have been my daughter.” He stopped, as if realising
the superfluity of his reflections. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing
matters now. A journey with her round the world. And then ... the _coup
de grâce_! It is finished....” The butler was removing his plate. He
looked ironically at Frank. “It is finished,” he said, a strange light
in his greenish eyes.
“Would you mind it awfully?” he asked Frank.
“What?”
“If I were to end it all.”
“How do you mean?”
“At a stroke. The world and its suffering.”
“Which world?” Frank asked, he felt, rather stupidly, but he had mixed
wine and his head was happily singing.
“The suffering world.”
“But I thought you were concerned to grow more wheat.” He thought Lord
de Jones could not be quite right in the head.
“Wheat!” said de Jones, drinking lugubriously, “Wheat!”
When the ladies had left them to their smoke and smirky wit Frank found
himself side by side with Admiral Battersea, who, he reflected, was
surely the extreme opposite of his own type, so much so that if Lord
Battersea had read his books, he would, given the chance, have gladly
got him hanged and considered it as a service to the community. Lord
Ottercove must have read his thoughts, for, “Admiral,” he said, “come
and sit by my side.” The conversation turned upon whisky, which was
described as a good thing; at which the Emir protested. “Wine,” he said,
“is a good thing; but whisky--?!”
“_Good_ whisky, your Majesty.”
Good whisky, it was urged, was a good thing.
From whisky they switched on to politicians who drank whisky and from
politicians to politics. “Ah, Joe,” said Lord Ottercove. “There’s nobody
like him. Just you wait till he is again in the saddle.”
“He is a long way off it,” grunted a guest.
“But he wants it, he wants it with all his heart. When a man day and
night thinks of the one thing he wants, he gets it.”
“He has oratory, inspiration, energy; he only lacks one thing: a goal,
an objective,” said another guest.
“What can you do?” said the host. “Liberals have no policy, since the
war. But now we have something. I am off myself with Chris”--he nodded
towards Lord de Jones--“on this stunt of ours and I hope”--he dropped
his voice to a whisper and his lips moved inaudibly--“to identify the
party with it.”
Upstairs in the ball-room, where chairs had been spread in rows, a dark,
passionate man was already singing and some guests had seated themselves
and were listening, while Lord Ottercove walked about, with a long fat
cigar in his mouth, looking pleased. Frank found the pretty girl on his
left, now looking beautiful, with melodious eyes. She closed her eyes at
him in bliss and said that passionate music stirred people’s passions.
To his right, leaning back leisurely, was Lord Battersea, puffing away
at his cigar, while the baritone squeezed juice and tears out of the
“Lotusblume.” And when the song was done, the British Admiral, who had
measured his strength on the high seas with von Scheer, each, on his own
admission, emerging the victor, now with eyes dim with beatitude
murmured ecstatically:
“_Die Lotusblume_ ... _Die Lotusblume_....”
XII.
Next morning Frank telephoned to Eva and arranged to take her out to
lunch. He waited for her half-an-hour in the Victoria Arcade and
suddenly caught sight of her mouse-grey cap and mouse-grey fur mounting
the underground stairs (Eva looked down when she walked) and she was at
his side, and she was in the taxi, and at once she was kissing....
“Why so late?”
“Shopping,” she said.
“Mummy has come back with John from Ireland,” she told him over lunch,
“and absolutely wants me to bring you to tea.”
“Where?”
“At home. I mean at Pilling’s flat in Maida Vale.”
As they were half way through with their lunch and waiting for the
sweets, she passed him, with a smile but without a word, an account, he
perceived, for £203 10s.
“What’s this?”
“Furniture,” she said. “A dining room suite for Zita. It’s her birthday,
you know.”
“You ordered her that?”
“I’ve had it sent this morning with a visiting card--‘With Miss Eva
Kerr’s compliments.’”
“Oh. And who is to pay for it?”
“I thought it would be nothing to you, darling, now that you can draw on
Lord Ottercove without limit. And it would take me years and years to
pay it out of my secretarial funds.”
“God Almighty!” he said; and then again, after a pause: “God Almighty!”
“What’s the matter, darling?” she asked.
He grasped his head with both hands and shook it savagely. “God
Almighty!” he said.
“You are an awful old miser,” she said.
“But why did you do such a thing?”
“I thought Pilling would look pleased.”
“But why couldn’t you _ask_?”
“But you haven’t seen the furniture! It isn’t at all expensive for what
it is: it’s real lemon wood.”
“But whatever made you buy such a thing?”
“Because they already have a bedroom suite and are paying off for it;
but not a dining room suite. They can’t afford a dining room suite.”
“But what is that to me?”
“But I’ve _told_ you: it’s her birthday, darling, and it’s nothing to
you.”
“But to run up to such a figure! Are you mad?”
“But you haven’t seen it!” she cried impatiently. “Wait till you’ve seen
it. What’s the use of arguing before you’ve seen it!”
“I’ll stop it!” he said, rising.
“It’s been delivered this morning, darling.”
“I’ll get them to take it back.”
“You can’t do such a thing; it’s a birthday gift.”
“I shall apply for facilities of payment, and Pilling can pay it off
within the next hundred years.”
“You can’t, darling. It would look so shabby. And Pilling wouldn’t think
you were a gentleman. Besides, I said to them at the shop this morning:
‘There will be no trouble: Lord Ottercove, you know....’ And they looked
like understanding.”
“This morning?”
“That’s why I was late, darling.”
He felt that he had nothing further to say.
They took a taxi-cab and went straight to the Pillings. They found the
family, except for Raymond, in full strength. Pilling, a strong, wiry
man with crisp, curly black hair, frivolous on the surface but really
with ‘no nonsense about him,’ was almost fulsomely flattering and trying
to speak French to Mrs. Kerr.
“He speaks it remarkably fluently for an Englishman,” was Mrs. Kerr’s
comment as she turned to Frank. “I was just telling Mr. Pilling that my
father, who had graduated at eight different faculties and universities,
could speak twelve languages like a native.”
“I envy him,” said Pilling, with a little bow which he thought
continental ideas of good breeding exacted. “If I had his abilities and,
I understand, wealth, all the doors would be open to me. As it is I try
to keep up my French whenever the opportunity presents itself.”
“In buses and trains,” added Zita. “Morty’s such a bore!”
“Well, French is an amiable language,” said Frank, “but I find it
difficult to scintillate in it--even more difficult than in any other
language!”
He expected the natural retort: “The difficulty would seem to lie in
your scintillation rather than in any particular language.” But that
also seemed to be their own difficulty. Pilling replied: “My own idea,
though you may correct me, is that nothing so helps the study of foreign
languages as travel, and as I hope, with the financing of my project,
presently to come into some money, my beloved Zita and myself propose to
undertake an extensive European trip to improve our linguistic equipment
and to broaden our general outlook.”
“If you go to Abbazia,” cried Mrs. Kerr eagerly, “I can give you an
introduction to the lady friend of the Spaniard Rodrigo. A very nice,
quiet, well-read woman.”
“Yes, yes!” Eva cried.
“Or if you pass through Innsbruck, you must absolutely look up my friend
Fräulein von Wiesendorf, and I am sure she would be very glad to give
you German lessons.”
“I am very much indebted to you for this information,” Pilling bowed,
“and if you allow me I will make a note of their addresses.” He produced
out of his waistcoat pocket a neat leather-bound pocket-book and pencil,
and their two heads mingled as he recorded: “Fräulein von Wiesendorf,
in the care of Herr Oberst von Wiesendorf, Comptroller of Public Morals,
Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria.”
“And what about Tamara Leonidovna?” said Eva.
“Frau König? No, no, she is too fiery; she will consume him.”
As they passed into the dining room, Frank perceived a striking suite of
bright polished furniture. As he stood gaping at it, Eva slightly
pinched his arm in the doorway, and her look seemed to say: “Now what
did I tell you?”
“I congratulate you,” Mrs. Kerr turned to Frank, “on your very good
taste.”
“It’s ‘Me-Too’s’ selection,” said Zita.
“But it’s Ferdinand Fyodorovich’s--how shall I say?--inspiration.”
“The Power-behind-the-Throne! Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Pilling--rather like
a horse.
“I’ve heard of your prosperity. Very charming and touching.”
“Dam’ fine fibre in this wood,” said Pilling knowingly.
“What did I tell you, darling?” Eva said.
“And not at all expensive,” added Mrs. Kerr. “When I come to think what
we paid for our Japanese suite in our Meran Schloss--”
“I told you it’s a bargain,” Eva said.
“Dirt cheap,” said Pilling, “considering,” he explained, “the _finesse_
of the fibre.”
“I suppose it is,” said Frank, bewildered.
“Good value,” Eva said.
“Only the colour is wrong,” said Zita quietly.
They all turned to her enquiringly.
“The wall-paper,” she pointed by way of explanation. “Still, it’s very
nice and sweet. And now let us all sit down to tea.”
“There is a Russian saying,” laughed Mrs. Kerr: “‘You don’t look into
the mouth of a gift horse.’”
“I wish I knew Russian,” said Pilling.
“You must come and stay with us,” said Mrs. Kerr, “when things mend in
Russia.”
The door opened and a lanky, awkward boy on the verge of youth walked
timidly into the room.
“Hello, John!” said Zita.
“Is that John?” Frank cried. “To think it’s John, who fiddled with my
razor blades way back in the Tyrol! How he’s pushed up!”
John giggled bashfully.
“Come up, John,” from Eva.
“John, say how do you do,” from Zita.
A tremulous leaf of a lad, at that awkward age which borders on
adolescence, when one is neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring,
came up lankily and shook hands with a shy grin. And that nervous youth
had once been a dare-devil child!
“Hello, John,” from Pilling.
“John is so shy,” from Eva.
“Come and have tea, John,” from his mother.
Pilling looked him over, up and down. “Cheer up, John!”
John giggled bashfully.
“John is so shy,” Zita said.
“You’ll be all right on the farm, John,” from Eva.
“John is going on the farm when we go back to Ireland,” Mrs. Kerr
explained.
“To our cousins in Ireland,” said Eva.
“With Daddy,” said Zita.
“Cheer up, John!” from Pilling.
“John is so shy,” from Zita.
“Don’t be shy, John,” from Eva.
“It’s a real family reunion to-day,” observed Mrs. Kerr. Very charming
and touching. I am sorry Raymond couldn’t come, or we would have all
been together.”
“I have a real feeling for family,” Pilling remarked, “and consider
Zita’s people like my own.”
“It’s very delightful and homely. And I hope we will have a rattling
good holiday together before Eva starts on her tour with Lord de Jones
and John and I return to Ireland.”
“Lord de Jones asked me to come with him as his private secretary
because he likes me very much and I remind him, he says, of Mummy. We
start for Paris end of this month.”
“My husband can’t hear the name of de Jones,” Mrs. Kerr explained,
“without a thirst for violence seizing him. I suppose it is because Lord
de Jones came into my life almost immediately on our getting married.
And, curiously enough, I loved him for the same sort of thing as I loved
my husband. Both had wandered away from their families, seeking
something remote and romantic, and both had alighted on me! I called
them ‘my lost dogs.’ And Lord de Jones--he was then the Honourable
Christopher Mosquito--was also called ‘Werther.’ Only, unlike Werther,
he was not a poet, but a scientist, with queer, sombre ideas about the
end of the world and his mission. Very romantic and charming. And my
husband was Kestner, the fiancé, you know. Only they were not friends,
as in _Werther_, but enemies. They used to go out with my father bear
shooting on sleighs, but really trying to kill each other. I waited at
home, wondering which of them would come back. Very exciting and
thrilling.”
“Lord de Jones telephoned to me,” said Eva, “to come and see him on
business, and as he was ill in bed he asked me to sit down beside him
and hold his hand, as he said it did him good as I reminded him of
Mummy.”
“When I was a young girl like Eva,” Mrs. Kerr pursued with a look of
tender reminiscence, “I used to visit a young student, who lived in an
attic and who was terribly in love with me, and sit on his bed, while he
looked into my eyes and wept....”
“But Mr. Bumphill thinks it’s he who got me a secretarial post--but I
said to him: ‘Confound your impudence!’” from Eva. “‘We want no
introductions to anybody,’ I said, ‘We are well known. My fiancé--’”
“Who’s your fiancé?” asked Zita eagerly.
“Him,” said Eva, with a casual nod at Frank. “‘My fiancé,’ I said,
‘secured admission to Lord Ottercove by merely putting us into a
story.’”
Pilling looked at Frank enquiringly.
“That’s true,” said Frank.
“I congratulate you,” Pilling said. And then, not without emotion: “I
sincerely congratulate you. You are a made man.”
“‘And as for Lord de Jones,’ I said, ‘he’s Mummy’s friend,’ I said, ‘and
no admirer of yours.’ So Mr. Bumphill looked very thoughtfully at the
goldfishes and said at last: ‘Come, let us kiss and be friends.’”
“Now I was thinking,” said Pilling as he shifted his look from Eva to
Frank, “of starting”--he looked for approval to his paramour--“with the
expert assistance of my dear Zita, a West End dancing establishment of
my own, if Lord Ottercove saw fit to finance the project.”
Eva sat facing Frank across the long tea table, staring at him with her
large violet eyes, as if to take him in properly and now, as Pilling
spoke, a faint look of irony came into them that made them ripple with
light. As Frank passed her in a narrow passage she pinched his arm.
“What’s all this nonsense about your going away with de Jones?” he
asked, and saw that she appreciated in the briskness of his tone the
nervous jealousy that prompted it. “You’re not going, really, are you?”
“No.”
“Will you, darling, dine with me to-night? and we might go to the
theatre afterwards.”
“If Zita lets me.”
“She surely will.”
“If Pilling lets her.”
“Oh, hang Pilling!”
“Hang Pilling!” she echoed.
“I do want you to come to the theatre with me to-night.”
“To something funny,” she said.
“We’ll go to the Opera. I want you to hear _Die Walküre_.”
“Is it a funny thing?”
“Oh, screamingly funny!”
But she missed his intonation. “We saw, Baby and I when she was here
last month, _The Constant Nymph_. Rather good.”
“Who is Baby?”
“My little Irish cousin. She is back again in County Clare. And there
was a man on my right who said I was like Tony. ‘Pardon me,’ he said,
‘but you are just like my conception of Antonia.’ ‘I have a nobler
soul,’ I said: ‘I am more like Tessa.’ And he called me ‘The Nymph.’
Quite amusing.”
But she did not find it very amusing; she sat still, listening with an
attentive but unreceiving look, like a good little girl in church.
In the taxi she sighed and said, “Another three weeks, and you won’t see
me any more. Perhaps never again.”
“But what do you mean?”
“De Jones,” she said and nodded gravely.
“But you said No. I asked you this afternoon and you said No, you
weren’t going.”
“I didn’t want to disappoint you,” she said.
On nearing home she asked the taxi-driver to make a noise--and the
obliging man pressed the accelerator--“to make Zita jealous,” she
explained. “Now that they live together, Pilling never takes her out,
and if he does, once in a blue moon, they go by bus; never in a taxi.”
“I’ve noticed she has grown bitter.”
“Bitter. Bitter. That’s the right word for her. You have hit on the
right word, darling. Bitter. I must tell her.--Louder!” she called to
the taxi-driver.
The man was forcing his machine to convey the illusion of machine-gun
fire.
“Still louder!” said Eva.
At last a window raised itself at the top and a head, dim and nebulous
in the gloom, thrust out under it. “Oh, it’s you, Eva?” came Zita’s
voice.
“Arrived,” answered Eva.
XIII.
THE SPIDER
In the vast cream-and-blue office all the lamps were discreetly shaded
and cast a mild, steady light; the electric radiators exuded an even,
purified warmth. Lord Ottercove seemed to go on with his work
unencumbered, nay, stimulated by Frank’s presence. Frank would arrive at
any time after six o’clock in the evening, and the braided
commissionaire who confronted applicants with questionnaires would at
once call out to the lift boy: “Mr. Dickin to see his lordship.” And
Frank would be taken straight up, without relays on the way, and handed
by the original lift boy to the topmost page, who, without a second’s
hesitation, announced him to his master: “Mr. Dickin, m’lord,”
immediately followed by a “Show him in.” He would saunter in noiselessly
across the polished floor, Lord Ottercove taking no notice of him, and
lounge luxuriously in one of the enormous blue chairs, and dream. Now
visitors would be shown in, and Frank would listen, wonder and learn.
Learn of the enormous net of activities controlled by Lord Ottercove.
Now the page would announce that the editors of Lord Ottercove’s
newspapers whom he had called for a conference were on the landing, and
indeed one could already hear the shuffling of editorial feet. But Lord
Ottercove might be settling a point with Frank as to the relative value
of Buddha’s philosophy in the light of Einsteinian physics, or the
historic veracity of the Immaculate Conception, and he would call out to
the page: “Don’t let them in, unless it be over your dead body!” And the
page, flattered by the momentous responsibility thrust on his slender
shoulders, leaned zealously against the door behind which editorial feet
were still shuffling, till the great chief, the historic or philosophic
point settled, shouted: “Let ’em in!” They entered in a thin file, men
of assorted girths, sizes and physiognomies, and Lord Ottercove as he
beheld them would call out to Frank, with the leer of a Nero: “How do
you like them, Dickin? eh? Aren’t they a gang of bloody ruffians, what?”
while the editors with solemn mien and stately port settled round the
octangular table, Lord Ottercove among them but eminently presiding. And
now for matters of high policy! “Damn John Knox,” Lord Ottercove would
say. “These interminable Sunday articles about him! I am sick to death
of him. Let us have something new and fresh.” And gradually he would
expand into a living message and tell them what it was he wanted his
newspapers to say; his hands would rise, his fingers spread and come
together, till they held the extracted substance, the salt, the
Bovril-like quintessence of the meaning he wished to have conveyed to
the waiting world outside. Fascinated, his editors watched him,
fascinated and mesmerised, while he, like a conductor of orchestra,
played on their heart strings, till even the sulky and backward ones
melted.
They rose, the conference being over. Tired, he sat there, his hand on
his brow.
“To get them to pull in a team. Not so easy,” he said.
“I don’t think your staff likes me very much,” said Dickin. “They think
I have wormed myself into your heart and become an evil influence. A
sort of Rasputin.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Ottercove. He rose, pressed the bell, ordered
dinner.
The butler sprang out of the floor, the octangular table was cleared of
papers and fittings. Chicken, caviare took their place. And champagne
bottles.
They sat down to dinner. The host, who had had the telephone placed at
his elbow, would every now and then take up the receiver and communicate
with the editors of his newspapers, or the editors would themselves
telephone to ask for instructions, when he would say: “I am supporting
the Air Force against the Admiralty. All you need know.”
“But last Friday when I had tea with you at your house you were
supporting the Admiralty against the Air Force,” Frank said.
“Getting too cocky,” Lord Ottercove explained.
“I suppose they are.”
“Besides, it doesn’t do for a newspaper proprietor to be one-sided. He
must steer the middle course.”
“I suppose he must.”
To be alone with a man who has wrecked more than one Ministry, and
register his sigh cumulative of a strenuous day’s work, to feel the
contact of power! By no means a negligible experience. Frank felt he
would like to incite Lord Ottercove to further action. But what action?
Something big, something shattering, something gigantic. Wreck the
Celestial Empire? Establish a Kingdom of Jewdom? a Negro Republic? Imbue
the Fascisti with Socialist sense?
His heart swelled at the thought and he looked at his host tenderly. “I
should like to write ... to describe ... all this....”
“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “and why not?”
XIV.
And when Frank called on him again at his office, Lord Ottercove was
lying on the sofa, covered by a luxurious Eastern rug, the telephone on
the floor by his side and two electric radiators turned full on to him,
dictating to a lady stenographer discreetly seated on the edge of a
chair beside him. He looked enquiringly at Frank as if to ask: “Now
isn’t that good enough copy for you?”
Frank looked hot and more than usually perplexed and embarrassed. He
had experienced some difficulty in getting dressed for dinner. He had
broken his collar stud, then torn his collar. He found the shirt studs
would not go through the shirt front button holes, while the new collar
stud would not keep open. He discovered that he had no clean tie and
that the waistcoats, except for one which had no buckle at the back,
were all in the wash, and the one without the buckle had, moreover,
shrunk so much that he could not get the buttons through it. He lost his
temper and his hat, and then, unable to secure a taxi, dashed off to the
nearest Underground station and stepped into the wrong train. Emerging
at the other end, he trod on to some slippery nastiness on the pavement
and nearly broke his neck. He realised that he was over two hours late
for dinner and he felt deeply distressed and unhappy. Lord Ottercove, on
the other hand, looked harassed. Perhaps the news of the dining-room
suite had reached him. Or perhaps he thought Frank wasn’t drawing nearly
enough. But whenever now he met Lord Ottercove, Frank read a meaning
into his look. Lord Ottercove looked sad, dubious, alarmed; or was
trying not to look dubious, alarmed or sad. The uncertainty of Lord
Ottercove’s reactions to the scale of Frank’s financial manipulations
began to tell on the latter’s nerves. “As much as you need,” Lord
Ottercove had said. But his needs had grown with his wants, and alarmed
him. And he was as much pained by the thought of exceeding Lord
Ottercove’s generosity (Lord Ottercove’s watchful generosity) as he was
by the possibility of erring quite needlessly on the side of financial
timidity and reluctance to use his good fortune. There was no kind of
security in this arrangement, and suddenly he felt he couldn’t stand it.
It was already in his throat. “I want to ask you to--”
“I’ve had a man in here just now playing”--Lord Ottercove pointed at the
piano--“Rimsky-Korsakoff. That lovely bit from his opera.... Oh, what’s
the name? It’s on my lips....”
“I want to ask you to turn off that financial arrangement,” Frank said.
“It’s too upsetting. I--”
Lord Ottercove pressed the bell button.
“Stop that banking arrangement Mr. Dickin has with me,” he said as Mrs.
Hannibal entered the room.
Frank gasped.
Mrs. Hannibal made a shorthand note of it and retired.
“It’s on my lips,” said Lord Ottercove. “I know the opera well. Lord!
now what is the name?” He pulled out his watch and looked up at Frank.
“I know I am late. An evening of misadventures culminating” (he was
going to say “in your stopping my principal source of income,” but
pulled up in time) “in my nearly breaking my neck as I stepped on to
some slippery nastiness on the pavement.” His sense of social injustice
provoked by Lord Ottercove’s action, who, after depriving him of the
principal means to a comfortable existence, remained lying on the sofa
calmly stroking his pekingese, vented itself through a side outlet.
“Confound these dogs and their owners! They should be made to respect
the integrity of pavements. Pavements were made for men, not for dogs.
But in this country it’s all topsy-turvy. If I were the Prime Minister
of England I should exterminate the breed.”
Lord Ottercove suddenly jumped off the sofa and, without a word, went
over to the octangular table in the middle of the room and made a note.
Then, rising, “I will act on your suggestion,” he said.
“What? exterminate the breed of dogs?”
“Not I. The Prime Minister.”
“Hardly a popular task you are giving him?”
“Give him just enough rope to hang himself on,” said Lord Ottercove. He
rang the bell, ordered a journalist to write an obituary article on a
world-famous novelist about to be operated upon for appendicitis, and
instructed a reporter to spend all night outside the house of a man
remanded on bail on the chance of his committing suicide; then leaned
back and said: “As you are too late for dinner I am taking you to-night
to sup at the Kiss-Lick Club.”
“Are you really?”
Lord Ottercove began taking off his boots. Frank watched him, and was
moved. There is something moving in seeing a great newspaper magnate and
owner of several score million pounds removing his boots like any other
citizen of the Western portion of the British Empire. One cannot assist
at such a spectacle without an inward feeling that this should not be
so. It should not be so, when a somebody-and-nobody in the Eastern part
of the same empire has his sandals removed for him by servile wives or
servants. And yet, resent it as you may, there was something fine,
unquestionably right and noble, in seeing Lord Ottercove remove his
boots, in a quick, breezy manner as though he thought this the most
natural thing in the world.
And he did more than remove his boots. He disappeared into the bathroom
and returned from there in his vest and pants--just as any other man
might do--and yet still looking the part, still the unchallenged
proprietor and director of the _Daily Runner_. He slipped into pumps and
a boiled shirt prepared for him by his valet Gilbert, into the black
braided trousers, tacked on the stiff white collar--so tortuous a task
for most men--quite effortlessly, and presently was tying his white
bow-tie. And now he emerged in an exquisite tailcoat, spruce and tight
like a glove.
In the historic lift they descended to the ground and stepped into the
great motor, Mimi, the decadent and undogly pekingese, with them. A
crowd of _Daily Runner_ hands had gathered at the corner of the
building, and Lord Ottercove touched his hat with his forefinger on the
chance of their having saluted him. “They’re awfully disappointed, I
guess, that I am not emerging from that office with a woman.” The huge
propellered car ran swiftly and imperiously down the deserted Fleet
Street and, suddenly, spread out wings in front and behind and left the
ground, clearing the roofs of Fleet-street houses, flying
Piccadilly-ward. Frank gasped with surprise.
“You didn’t expect that, now did you?” said Lord Ottercove.
“I did not.”
“This is, in fact, the first model of a ‘Winged Chariot’ to reach this
country. But I guess I won’t be long the only one to have a chariot.”
“Winged chariots!” mused Frank. “If, in addition, we could have winged
love, a winged life, I would not refuse eternity at that.”
“If you had the refusal of it!” grunted Lord Ottercove, from the depth
of the car, hatless as usual.
“You talk like a publisher,” Frank laughed; and presently asked: “Do you
believe in immortality, Lord Ottercove?”
“Not a bit of it!”
“As Lord Balfour once said, ‘If there is no life after this, then life
is a miserable joke. And whose joke?’”
“When did he say that and to whom?”
“He is reported by Lady Oxford to have said it to her.”
Lord Ottercove took out a pocket-book and pencil and made a note in it.
For a while he looked pensive.
“You are thinking--?” Frank said.
“Of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s opera. What the hell is the name?”
“After love, music is the best thing in the world.”
“Love,” said Lord Ottercove, “is an inconvenience.”
“You mean sexual love?”
“No, love. Sexual love is a nuisance.”
Waiters were falling prostrate before Lord Ottercove at the Kiss-Lick
Club and (in a manner of exaggeration) were committing hari-kari before
him. But he gathered them round him and said: “Can any of you tell me
the name of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s famous opera?”
They couldn’t.
He called the head waiter: who couldn’t. He called the manager; the
director and his sleeping partner; they summoned the bandmaster, who
returned to his band and conferred with the musicians and came back,
shrugging his shoulders. Lord Ottercove looked sad and perplexed. “There
is no solution,” he said at last, “but to get hold of Rimsky-Korsakoff
in Leningrad or Moscow.”
“He is dead,” said Frank.
“Really!” Lord Ottercove shook his head. “ ... betrayed again ...” he
muttered. He ate gloomily for a time, and watching him Frank wondered
how even the rich in this world could not evade the anguish of thwarted
longings! The two men ate in silence. When the meal was drawing to its
close, Lord Ottercove looked up at Frank. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I
will telegraph the name to you to-morrow morning.”
“You are very kind,” said Frank. “You cannot imagine how that relieves
me.”
“Now this,” said Lord Ottercove more cheerily, “is instructive for you
to see as a novelist. A real Michael Arlen atmosphere!”
“Ah!”
Frank did not tell Ottercove that he had already been to the Kiss-Lick
with Eva a few nights before. He perceived that Ottercove liked to
astonish him, and so he adopted the attitude of a newly-fledged chicken
and to everything that was pointed out to him he said: “Ah!”
“Do you see that young man over there sitting at the side of my niece?”
said the host. “Now it is my turn to continue your serial. That is
Raymond Kerr.”
“Raymond Kerr!”
“Raymond Kerr.”
“Raymond Kerr! Her favourite boy? The one she used always to talk of.
‘Raymond has my eyes.’ Raymond this. Raymond that.”
“There is only one Raymond. And there is Chris de Jones.”
“I know him.”
“But you don’t know that the two are related.”
“How related?”
“Quite spontaneously. Chris is his dad--his ‘Papa.’”
“It never occurred to me! Yet, of course. There is a sort of
resemblance.”
“A very marked resemblance.”
“Though Raymond is good-looking.”
“His mother’s boy.”
“And de Jones looks saintly but hideous.”
“He looks the part. A man with a mission. An ominous mission. Wait and
he will tell you that he is the new Messiah. He came out with it once
under chloroform; said his mission was to blow us all up.”
“I think,” said Frank, “that it is quite conceivable that the end of the
world might come about in some such casual way. A fanatic like that....
Suppose he blows up the earth instead of increasing the crop?”
“I wish he did,” said Ottercove.
“Is he mad?”
“Mad as a hatter! But a genius.”
“Of the untried,” said Frank.
Lord Ottercove looked at him first circumspectly, then quizzically.
“Hullo, hullo, Mr. Kerr!”
“How do you do, Lord Ottercove.”
“This is Mr. Dickin, the novelist, you know him?”
Mr. Kerr, an extremely foolish-looking man, fixed a suspicious pair of
eyes on Frank. “How do you do?”
“And you are happy on your farm in Ireland?”
Mr. Kerr took Lord Ottercove by the arm to where Lady de Jones and
Raymond were sitting amorously together, and said in a significant
undertone:
“This is my revenge.”
Then, as significantly, he walked away.
Lord Ottercove took Frank Dickin by the arm and led him towards Eleonor
and Raymond Kerr. “This,” he observed, “is really getting to be more and
more of a Michael Arlen atmosphere, of great help to you as a novelist,
I daresay.--Well, Eleonor, how are you? Hullo, Raymond. Enjoying your
fame as a prospective co-respondent, what? Some men win battles and get
fame; others write lyrics; others, again, well--do as you do. This is
Mr. Dickin, the novelist. You know my niece? Kerr, do you know Mr.
Dickin? You don’t? But he knows all about you. You will see that he does
as soon as you read his serial. Eleonor, how is your divorce getting
on?”
“I expect it will be all right, Uncle Rex, but the difficulty is you
never know just when it will be over, and with the baby coming....” She
looked at Dickin fearlessly. She was a modern woman.
“Yes,” said her uncle, “you cannot time these things.”
“The divorce?”
“I mean the baby.”
“The baby is a deliberate protest on my part against Chris’s deserting
me for Raymond’s mother.”
“Quite. I appreciate your motive. But you should have timed him for a
little later. As it is, the baby will land between two stools. And as
for Chris, he is at present more interested in Raymond’s sister than
Raymond’s mother.”
“I cannot have the baby landing between two stools. Chris must
acknowledge the baby as his son. It’s bad enough that Raymond has been
tricked by him out of his heritage, and, as Raymond’s son, the baby is a
de Jones by blood, and ought to have the name, too. Mr. Dickin, you are
a psychologist. Don’t you think I am right?”
“You are quite right, Lady de Jones.”
“I see your point,” said her uncle. “Chris may deny the paternity of the
baby: but he cannot deny its grandparentage. So he might as well not
deny anything. And Raymond will not press his parental claims.”
“No. You see, he feels that thus he will be getting something of his own
back, if not for himself, at least for his son.”
“If it is a son.”
“I hope it is.”
“Oh, here is Chris. We’ll speak to him about it. Hullo, Chris.”
“Hello, Rex.”
“Now look here, Chris. Eleonor wants to marry Raymond. I don’t mind.
But--” (his lips moved silently) “she’s used to a great name; she’ll
feel chilly, naked, don’t you know, as plain Mrs. Raymond Kerr.”
“I’m very sorry. But what can I do? I’d gladly sell him my name. But I
know of no means to do so.”
“No--no, it’s all very simple. It’s all perfectly simple. You adopt
Raymond as your son and heir. When you die he will be Viscount de Jones,
and while you still potter about he’ll be--what will he be?”
“The Honourable Raymond Mosquito.”
“Well, that’s better than nothing. Here, Eleonor, I propose that”--his
lips moved silently--“Chris adopts Raymond straightaway. Then the
baby’ll be born a de Jones, and no need for Chris to adopt the baby.
Kills two birds with one stone.”
Raymond seemed very pleased.
“But the baby’s nearly due.”
“Oh, well, in that case, Chris, you’ll have to acknowledge it as your
own child, for, you know, it won’t fit into its proper time.”
“I don’t mind,” said Chris.
“What will he be?”
“Depends on what you call him.”
“What will you call him, Eleonor?”
“If it’s a boy, I’ll call him Robert.”
“The Honourable Robert Mosquito.”
“Now that’s all right. All perfectly in order. When can you do it?”
“What?”
“Adopt Raymond.”
“Not till after the divorce, of course.”
“Why, Chris?”
“I can’t adopt my co-respondent, can I?”
“But what nonsense, Chris!” cried Eleonor. “Raymond doesn’t come into
the divorce at all. It’s his mother who is the co-respondent, or
whatever the name happens to be.”
“I thought it was Raymond’s sister,” said Lord Ottercove.
“It was the mother at the time we started the proceedings, and let us
stick to her or we shall never get divorced,” said Eleonor irritably.
“You have no memory, Chris. You forget you are taking the blame on
yourself.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Still,” Lord Ottercove observed, “I doubt the wisdom of adopting
Raymond till after the divorce. It might prejudice the case. The
difference, as I envisage the situation, is whether Raymond is to be
Chris’s elder or younger son, and if the baby is to be born before
Raymond is adopted, Raymond will be the younger brother of the baby.”
“What! the younger brother of his own son!” Eleonor exclaimed. “I
understand nothing.”
“That’s right. The baby’ll be the elder brother of his own father. And
why not?” said her uncle.
“I’d rather,” she said, “he was what he is: the son of his father and
mother.”
“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “it’s all very simple. It’s all perfectly
simple. All you have to do is to adopt the baby. And he will be
Raymond’s son again--The Honourable Robert Mosquito.”
“No, he won’t,” said de Jones.
“What will he be, Chris?”
“Master Robert Mosquito.”
“Well, all this will right itself,” said Lord Ottercove, “the moment
Chris dies.”
They all looked at de Jones expectantly.
“But, of course, the baby may turn out to be a girl,” he said.
“Quite conceivably she may.”
On the way home, in the taxi, Frank once more reviewed the matrimonial
situation revealed before him at the Kiss-Lick Club and found that he
could not improve on the harmony of Ottercove’s solution.
At the club he found a telegram from Eva, despatched from Dublin:
“_Wire money at once. Love. Eva._”
XV.
He was wakened at his club by an attendant who brought in his morning
mail and a telegram. The telegram ran:
“_The name of Rimsky Korsakoff’s opera is quote Sadko unquote.
Ottercove._”
So it was!
It was a “reply paid” telegram, and Frank scribbled back:--
“_Congratulations. Much relieved. Unspeakably happy. Dickin._”
Among the morning mail was a letter from Eva, bearing an Irish post
mark.
“_I am sending you_,” she wrote, “_all my beautiful love, and
please send me some money as quick as ever you can. Will tell you
reason for it afterwards. Am leaving with de Jones for Paris and
Rome etc. end of next week. If you really wish to see me alone we
could meet at Holyhead as I am afraid to come to London on account
of Daddy and his people who are stuffy and churchy old birds and
would get suspicious, darling, if I stayed away too long with you,
don’t you see, and if you came to Holyhead I could pretend, you
see, I only went to see Aunt Jane etc. in Dublin, don’t you see.
Can’t write any more as Postman is outside and screeching for my
letter--‘Country Post!’ Accept all my Beautiful Love etc. Also I
have a little cat and I have called Him Ferdinand. And don’t forget
to meet me Tuesday midnight on the landing stage at Holyhead and
arrange everything for our Honeymoon._
_Eva._”
Frank, who hated the idea of arriving empty-handed but, since the sudden
stoppage of the Ottercove source did not dispose of the necessary sums,
shrank at the thought of Eva’s extravagance. By a happy chance he heard
of a draper and milliner in the Edgeware Road who was selling out her
business and he went and bought up most of her remaining stock, thinking
Eva would be glad to have it. The box he brought with him to Holyhead
comprised a corset, eight pairs of crisp calico knickers, a number of
strong cotton stockings, a skirt, and a couple of hats. He left the box
containing these treasures in the room at the hotel and went out to the
pier to meet the boat which, at midnight, a lighted shell out of the
dark, suddenly swam up towards him; and on board, waving to him, already
stood Eva.
She alighted with a portmanteau, and the boat train took them back into
Holyhead Town. “I thought something was sure to happen, and you wouldn’t
come,” he said.
“All the village boys,” she said, “came to see me off at the station.
‘Ah!’ they said: ‘Here’s Miss Kerr going off to London!’”
“Did they now?”
“They did.”
“I’ve brought you a present,” he said.
“Where is it?” she asked quickly.
“It’s in the room at the hotel.”
“Is it a ring?”
“No, it’s not a ring.”
“Is it--I mean--jewelry?”
“No--it’s clothes.”
“Clothes?”
“Clothes.”
“I thought you’d like to have them,” he said, opening the box at the
hotel.
She took out the things one by one and laid them out on the bed. “H’m!
H’m!” she said. “Of course, darling, they’re old, very old.”
“Never been worn,” Frank said, a little stiffly.
“I don’t mean that. I mean old-fashioned. Those two hats, for instance.
Nobody wears such hats nowadays.”
“I am sure you’d look very well in them.”
“It’s the fashion when Mummy was a young girl or even earlier.”
“Still,” he said, “they look strong. I don’t see why you shouldn’t wear
them.”
“And these stockings--cotton, you know.”
“They look very neat and strong,” he said.
“These knickers”--she held them out--“calico--they scratch.”
“Well,” he said, a little ruffled, “I only wished to please you.”
“I know. But--”
“This bodice,” he said. “I am sure it’s very nice.”
“No one wears corsets now, darling.”
“Well,” he said, evidently hurt, “I am sure I haven’t bought it for
myself, and if you don’t want to wear it--”
He went away and lay sulking on his bed. “Gratitude!” he thought. “For
all his trouble and expense....”
“I’ll wear them,” she said, coming up to him tenderly. “You know I’d do
anything to please you, darling. Let us have no more quarrelling about
these clothes, darling; they aren’t worth it.”
“Oh, aren’t they?” he said, rolling over and turning his back to her.
But she came up to him, tenderly, sauntered up to him, lovingly, on tip
toe, and overtook him on the other side. “You look funny,” she said.
“Funny?”
“Kind of puzzled.”
“I’ve poured some beer into a glass containing peroxide of hydrogen.” He
stood up and looked at her: “Most unusual beer.”
“Your skin, darling.”
“Yes.”
“Against my skin.”
“Is that,” he asked, “why they say that love is only skin deep?”
“Never mind what they say.”
“I don’t mind,” he said, and drew her passionately to himself.
“I like,” she said, “when you begin suddenly to breathe like that--like
a steam engine.” A strange look of prepared abandonment came onto her
face as she drew herself up to him and closed her eyes.
“Eva, you looked like that then ... on that hill.”
They were awed, breathless. Standing behind her, he clasped her with his
sinewy arms, his hands like travelling flames. She threw her head back
as his mouth pressed into the warm hollow of her shoulder, burnt her
through and through.... He lifted her and carried her, with a simulation
of ease, across the room. “There.... And the village boys in Ireland all
mad on you. And Ferdinand has all this--and this--and this--all to
himself.”
“All for you,” she said.
In the morning he woke up to a mood of warning and sat up. “Ottercove--”
“Yes, darling?”
“Has stopped all my money.”
“He hasn’t!” she cried. And also sat up.
“He has.”
“I wouldn’t have wired to you for money had I known, darling, of
Ottercove’s action. He is a walking mountain of impudence!”
“But you needed it all the same for your journey.”
“No, it wasn’t the journey. It was for Charity.”
“Charity?”
“You see, I was asked to go about getting subscriptions for a life-boat
saving fund or something and got all sorts of people to put down their
names, but neglected to collect the money from them. About £20 in all.
So I thought it would be simpler to wire you for it, don’t you see.”
“I see.”
“Couldn’t remember their addresses.”
“So you had no money for the journey?”
“A French lady called Thérèse Lapin, who lives in Dublin, gave me money
to go to London with.”
“Whatever for?”
“On a tour of inspection. She has a daughter in London and Madame Lapin
has heard in a round-about way that her daughter is living with a
married man. So she wants me to take some eggs and butter to her
daughter and report to her on my way back whether the daughter lives
with a married man or whether she is straight and the rumour has been
spread through malice.”
“So you want to go to London?”
“Darling, I must, for I wouldn’t know what to do with the eggs and
butter. They’re in the portmanteau.”
The sun now looked into the room, and Eva, sitting up in bed, delicately
sipped her chocolate. “And all the time while I was away in Ireland I
talked about you to my little cousin Baby, and I said, every time there
was a noise outside, that it must be you arriving, and Baby ran out to
look and there was no one there. And on Sunday mornings I would say to
her: ‘Now if you come to church with me you will see him, for he is
surely there, sitting in his pew.’ And, together, we’d tear off to
church, talking all the way of your sitting there already, and Baby’s
cheeks--she is only twelve, you know--glowing with excitement. ‘Now,’
I’d say to her, ‘you are going to see him.’ And we would both get so
excited that I’d forget myself that I was only teasing her.”
“What is your cousin Baby like? Is she nice?”
“She’s like me, only her hair isn’t a bit curly, but quite straight, and
she has brown eyes instead of violet ones.”
In the afternoon they sat not far from the sea, and Frank was beginning
to snooze. Eva had got him to buy picture postcards and stamps and,
sitting beside him, scribbled innumerable postcards.
“To whom all this, Eva?”
“Village friends.”
“Let me see.” Nearly all recipients were men, addressed as “Esquires.”
One was a “Mr.” “Hello,” he said, “why is this one a ‘Mr.’ while all the
others are ‘Esquires’?”
“Oh,” she said, “it’s good enough for him.”
“It isn’t fair, you know; it’s vulgar to discriminate in these things.”
“But if I write ‘Esquire’ to him he’ll go round showing it to all the
people in the village, and Daddy might find out I am in Holyhead with
you. You don’t know the frightful danger I am in. I must be so very
careful, darling, on account of Daddy and his people in Ireland, who are
very strict on morals and things. It is a village, and everything, you
know, goes round like wild fire. And I only told them I was going down
to Dublin to see Aunt Jane and would be back the same day.”
“What awful busybodies!”
“And on board there was a register for anyone who cared to sign his name
in it. And I couldn’t help myself, you know, and I signed my name: Miss
Eva Kerr. Destination: London, viâ Holyhead.”
“Whatever did you do that for?”
“I couldn’t help myself, darling. Because the register is reprinted in
all the local Irish newspapers, you see, and I thought it would be so
nice to have all the old fogeys in the village, don’t you see, read it
in their evening papers: ‘Ah,’ they’d say: ‘Here is Miss Eva Kerr off to
London viâ Holyhead.’ Rather nice, you know, if you know what I mean.”
“Well, here we are in Holyhead. And aren’t we pleased! Or what is your
idea of perfect bliss?”
“I like to eat chocolates and as I eat them to think of you, Ferdinand.”
“‘But I feel,’ said Byron,--‘and I feel it bitterly--that a man should
not consume his life at the side and on the bosom of a woman, and a
stranger; that even the recompense, and it is much, is not enough, and
that this Cicisbean existence is to be condemned.’”
“What’s the matter?”
“Don’t know. Don’t feel very well. But you are a nurse; you ought to be
able to tell me what is the matter.”
Eva looked very enigmatic. “H’m.... Yes, yes.”
And then, hard up for an answer, she kissed him. She kissed him again
and again and, it seemed, would not stop.
To kiss and to be conscious of conferring a favour, to feel ashamed of
it, and to wonder when, where, _your_ satisfaction came in--was now his
melancholy lot. She was, he felt, shy of him, had always been,
fundamentally, shy of him. Only in the taxi on their long drive back to
the hotel she let herself go. She wanted that love which he could only
feel when he had lost her. Women want it there and then, and men cannot
give it till it is too late....
The railway porter, carrying her box of clothes to the London train next
morning, looked as though he did not think much of them, anyhow. Frank
bought himself a copy of _The Nation & Athenaeum_, and Eva, asked what
she wanted to read, said, with some hesitation: “Buy me ... _Home
Chat_.” It gave him a pang--a twist of the heart.
She read it stealthily and looked up at him. All the way to London Eva
attracted everyone’s attention on account of her unusual hat and dowdy
skirt coming down nearly to her heels and keeping off, Frank thought,
possible lewd glances at her legs.
Arrived in London, she went straight away to the Dublin lady’s daughter.
She had a rattling good time with them, went off for the week-end with
them in motor-cars to picnics, races, shows and theatres, attracting
great attention by her extraordinary new clothes and the enormous plumed
and fruit-clad hats (the married man who shared a flat with Mlle. Lapin
visibly seduced by Eva’s charms), and, on passing home through Dublin,
she reported nothing to the mother; only said she had forgotten to
deliver the eggs and butter, but otherwise had had a rattling good time.
Lord de Jones, whom she had met in London, had given her money to go on
a learned errand for him to Edinborough University in connection with
their forthcoming mission to the continent. But, after lunching with her
lover, she decided she had better spend the day with him.
The day was bright. The shops beckoned invitingly.
“Buy me--”
“You know Lord Ottercove has stopped all my money.”
“Buy me all the same a little book of poetry.”
“What poetry?”
“Any poetry. A little book--to read in bed. It mustn’t be heavy, you
know.”
“Well--yes.”
“I saw a nice little book in blue leather in a shop window the other
day. I am sure it’s poetry. Buy me that.”
“Anything else?”
“Chocolates. To read in bed and eat and think of you, Ferdinand.”
“Yes.”
“And do send me roses for my birthday.”
“Yes. The fifteenth of this month. I won’t forget.”
She saw him off at the station, but left before the train went to meet
de Jones, who had telephoned for her that morning.
“Remember: _roses_. All other flowers, Pilling says, are vulgar.”
She waved to him at the corner, and was gone.
XVI.
THE FAREWELL
“_Mummy was surprised_,” she wrote to Frank from Ireland a few days
later, “_at the many underclothes you’ve given me. But when I said
it was a parting gift on account of my going away to Rome and Paris
with de Jones, she said it was all right. As for de Jones, Darling,
I am Furious; I told him all. And He is Furious. I told him all the
Truth that I never went on his errand to Edinborough University but
spent the day with you in London as well as the money He’d given me
for Travelling Expenses on sweets and things. And He says he is
going to dismiss me. Never mind, if I’ll flirt with Him he won’t
dismiss me. And I said to him that you bought me a box of
chocolates before you left, and a little book of poems to read in
bed. ‘Oh,’ says He, ‘that is a Consolation!’ I shall be in London
all next week, packing. We leave on Friday morning. Shall wait for
you on Thursday at Paddington at Eleven Sharp. It will be our last
day together._
_Your Eva._”
But she was not there at eleven. She was not there at twelve. As he
paced up and down he was conscious that all the porters and the waiting
taxi-cab drivers looked at him with interest. Shameless flag vendors
buttonholed him with pertinacity. He paced on, angry and exhausted, his
thick heavy overcoat on his arm, and a small fly flew straight into his
ear; and pacing up and down vehemently he stepped again onto some
slippery nastiness on the pavement. “Must tell Ottercove,” he made a
mental note of it. “Have this scandal ventilated in the House.” At one
o’clock he went into the station bar and drank a glass of beer on an
empty stomach, and suddenly he took courage, ceased to be concerned
about the formidable mass opinion of the porters on the subject of
himself, saw them as mere independent, ignorant at that, individuals.
The movement of the traffic, the sight of a girl stepping into a coach
and revealing a ripening, silk-stockinged leg--such sights and sounds
began to work on him, till his mind, with the beer and the oxygen
inhaled, hummed like music, and saw God.
“Well--!” he said; and then again: “Well--!”
“Why, darling, what has happened?”
The presence of John emphasised her crime and irritated him unspeakably.
“You ask me; you--you--you ask me--” He could not continue. He cast an
accusing look at the brother, who giggled bashfully.
“Zita said I must take John about with me and show him London for he is
so shy and it’s his last day, you know. To-morrow he is going on a farm
in Ireland. ‘And,’ says she, ‘you’ve only one young brother.’”
“And what of her? It’s our last day together.”
“Exactly! But she wants to be alone with Pilling all the time. How she
loves Pilling!”
“And why aren’t you wearing the nice new clothes I gave you?”
“Child: it won’t do.”
“It won’t do?”
“No, child.”
While John was looking into a shop window, Frank pleaded with her
whether they could not really spend this last day alone.
“I will telephone to her,” said Eva, as if struck by a brain-wave, “and
see what she says.”
She vanished in a telephone box, and Frank and John watched her mute
lips through the glass door assiduously explaining into the telephone
what looked a difficult, and at the other end an uncongenial,
proposition.
“No,” she said, emerging from the box, “she says John must come with us,
because he is so shy and would lose himself alone in London. ‘You have
only one little brother,’ she said.”
“This is damnable,” thought Frank. “At any rate let us go and have lunch
somewhere,” he said aloud, “and think it over.”
They lunched in embarrassed silence, broken here and there by an
embarrassed question. “You crossed over when?”
“Tuesday. Arrived in London very late, so went to a hotel. Travelled
with nine Catholic priests,” she said, “so all went to the same hotel,
and to the Cinema together, and we all held hands.”
“Nine Catholic priests, and you in the middle?”
“No, at one end. Father Michael and I holding hands, and all the other
eight, too, in a chain. Very intriguing.”
“Must have been.”
After lunch, as they were sauntering along, an idea occurred to Frank.
“John,” he said, “would you like to go to a theatre--by yourself?”
“Fancy! all by yourself like a grown-up man!” said Eva.
John giggled nervously.
“To a show of Maskelyne and Devant?”
“Fancy!” said Eva. “Acrobats, John! Acrobats and things. Eh? John?”
“I don’t mind,” said John.
They jumped into a taxi, and Frank bought a stall ticket, and John,
accepting it with a kind of nervous misgiving, was ushered into the
darkness (the performance having already begun), the attendant like a
gaoler on his heels. “Tell him, tell him to look after John, who is so
shy!” Eva cried. But John and his gaoler had vanished in the dark.
Freedom at last! They were free, free, free; free of all but the
exigence of their freedom. He avoided the shops with her, but she must
have a bottle of scent and let him buy all that the saleswoman
insinuated. She gave in completely to the saleswoman’s idea of what was
the proper thing for her. The saleswoman seemed to have no doubt, and
appreciating Frank’s secret loathing of her and her sex, made it a point
of honour for him to comply with Eva’s tutored wishes.
“And I just want to look at these gowns.”
“Better come out and look at Nature. A lovely day!”
“I’d like that gown.”
“No doubt. I’d like a new suit.”
“Must have another gown to go about with de Jones, you know. In Paris
and Rome.”
“I got old Ottercove to stop his payments too soon, it would seem. Too
soon, too damned soon!”
“Couldn’t you borrow, perhaps?”
“Couldn’t I!... Women will sell their bodies and souls for a vivid rag,”
he said bitterly.
He looked at her and read her thought. With a melancholy twinge, she
reflected that she had evidently sold hers without any such extenuating
material compensation. “You are an awful old miser,” she said.
He suffered hell. Damn it all, she seemed to have no idea about the
value of money! She did not know that the number of pounds in his
pocket-book was strictly limited.
Through the Park they drifted into Kensington Gardens and walked across
the grass towards the Serpentine. Eva wouldn’t let him take her arm.
“Bad form,” she explained.
They hired a boat, and as he rowed he watched her steer. She steered
intently but very badly, zig-zagging needlessly all the way, while he
puffed and sweated at the oars; which provoked him into biting sarcasm.
“Crooked again!”
“Why don’t you put it straight with the oars?”
“Can’t you see me,” he said, puffing, “otherwise employed?”
“Now don’t get ratty, darling, or you will feel sorry afterwards.”
“Why sorry?”
“When you think of it--remember, I mean.”
By the time they had rowed back, it was time, she judged, to go and
fetch John from the matinée. “If we are not there, he won’t know where
to turn to: he is so shy,” she said. “And Zita said to me, ‘Take care of
John; you won’t always have your little brother with you.’”
This solicitude on behalf of John angered him. “Damn it all, we thought
nothing of leaving him alone at the inn.”
“What inn, darling?”
“On the top of the Patscherkofl mountain in the Tyrol. Don’t you
remember?”
Her eyes darkened and lightened again. “I remember, darling, I
remember.”
“And it’s our last day together.”
“I am thinking--”
“What?”
“I have no real travelling costume for my Continental trip.”
“I have no proper overcoat, damn you.” Oh, why were there no girls as
beautiful as Frances Doble and as intelligent as Henry James!
“Well, John, did you enjoy the performance?”
“Great fun,” stammered John.
“Tell us all about it, John.”
“There was a man,” said John, “and a ring and another man on the ring--”
“That will do, John. Wait till we are settled down in the café,” she
said.
“Now then, John.”
“There was a ring and a man held on to the ring and a girl held on to
the man and--”
“Wait, John. I was just thinking, if Zita asks me all about the
performance I must tell the same story as John.”
“All the more reason why John should be allowed to disclose his
impressions,” said Frank.
“Yes. Go on, John.”
“There was a man,” said John, “and a ring--”
“What will you have, John,” she asked, “tea or chocolate?”
On the way home, John talked of the performance. “There was a man,” he
would say, “with a ring, and a girl held on to the man.”
“Shut up, John. That will do.”
She went in with John, and Frank said he would wait for her in
Kensington Gardens to take her out to dinner. He was tired and glad to
be alone. He sat down on a bench, and a nasty little girl of ten or so
disengaged herself from a group of urchins and sat down between him and
an old lady and began to tease him, pointing at him with her dirty
forefinger. “You funny-looking bloke, you. Now why don’t you smile?” and
all the other urchins crowded round and giggled at him. “Come on! Let’s
see a smile!” the girl went on, encouraged.
The old lady at his side saw fit to intervene. “Behave yourself,” she
said, “or go away and leave the gentleman alone.”
“It’s ‘im I’m torking to, not yer; you ‘old yer tongue.”
“Disgraceful girl!” said the old lady. But the little girl went on at
Frank:
“Come, show us you can smile. Now then!”
“Shut up, will you!” suddenly Frank roared at her.
The girl went red and shrivelled up on the bench. “It’s ‘er,” she said
tearfully, pointing at the old lady, “not me. None of ‘er bloomin’
business.”
One of those nasty winter fogs was descending on to London when Eva,
late by an hour, appeared at the gate.
“Is sweet’eart!” jeered the girl, and all the urchins giggled with her.
“Well,” he said, rising, “I _have_ had a time, waiting for you.”
“Zita and Pilling kept me back with their nonsense about my getting de
Jones to talk to Ottercove about Pilling’s dancing place. I told them
I’d be late and keep you waiting, but Pilling said: ‘Ferdinand will
wait.’”
They were rattling along in a taxi, and he was telling her all about the
cheeky girl in Kensington Gardens.
“Darling, I am not interested.”
“In anything that happens to me.”
“That isn’t true, darling. When I am away from you I always talk about
you. This evening, for example, while you were waiting for me, I asked
them if they thought you were very beautiful, but Pilling said: ‘I
shouldn’t say he was beautiful to look at, but he is very clever. I wish
I had his brains.’”
To Frank, who for years had been regarded as the fool of the family,
this universal discovery of his brains was stimulating and refreshing.
At dinner Eva was crotchety because he would not take her out to the
Savoy to dance. “It isn’t really at all expensive, darling. It really
isn’t. I only want to go so as to tell Zita how you don’t mind throwing
away money on me. Because Pilling is so careful, and she hates it so.
Only to be able to tell her, you see.”
“Well, tell her.”
“What?”
“Anything you like.”
“H’m. That’s an idea. I never thought of that.”
“Tell her we dined with their Majesties.”
“Zita,” she confided to him, “doesn’t seem to like you much. She said,
‘The one good thing about him is that he has pots of money.’”
“Pots! Barrels full! Brains and money. Beauty, too! Oh, what a lucky man
am I! But why is it that I feel I’d like to go and blow my brains out?”
“If you don’t stop quarrelling,” she said, “I will leave immediately,
and you will be sorry all your life.”
“Then we shall leave together.”
On their way back he stopped the taxi-cab a few doors away from
Pilling’s house and walked on with her into a more deserted lane. They
walked in silence. Suddenly it came to him that he might be seeing her
for the last time. And what was it that she resented? That he had so far
omitted to say the fateful word? He guided her to a sort of blind door
in the masonry of a house, and took her in his arms. But a policeman
hove in sight and said, “Move on, please. You’re not allowed to stand
here.”
They went on and turned into another lane. She hurried him, saying that
Pilling and Zita were surely anxious that she was not yet home. It
angered him, and at the thought of the last inadequate hours together,
full of bickerings and vexations, tears flooded his eyes as he suddenly
kissed her good-bye. He stood in the darkness, watching her as she
walked to the end of the lane and, without turning to him, disappeared
behind the corner.
He walked away at an accelerated pace. He said: “No. Never again. It’s
finished as if it had never been! I am glad, and nothing that may come
will wipe out the memory of my saying here, deliberately, immediately on
parting, that I am glad I did not say the word.” He walked the length of
Bayswater-road into Oxford-street and all the way to his club, and on
entering his room pulled out his diary and wrote:
“ ... _I put it down on record_....”
XVII.
It was thus that soon after Eva’s departure with the mystical de Jones,
Frank found himself one afternoon strolling vacantly down Oxford-street.
A crowd of people. Bustling, frolicking folk. Women, gay, charming, so
beautiful, so tender, whose arms, if they could guess, might open for
the kiss--and who passed him without a look! Flitting by on what was the
latest in footwear, thin ankles, swelling into glossy silken calves--oh,
rapture! oh, seduction! How lonely one could be in a crowd. For it
wasn’t--he reflected--that there was any one cohesive and receptive
sensibility in that crowd, which frolicked and enjoyed life while he
suffered, into which he could have merged with any profit. Groups of
laughing young voices.... Why could he not talk to them without causing
them to feel they had been slighted, or landing himself at
Marlborough-street Police Station? Why could he not join them without
very soon being bored? There they were, groups on the face of it, but
really solitary, yearning, suffering souls like himself. There was no
sort of one central well in all this diffused accidentally accumulated
hilarity from which one could draw. All came out to look at the
feast--and all looked without being filled.
He saw rich men in furs and motor-cars, and wished them joy of it; he
read the New Year’s Honours list, and sensed no pang; he watched old
colleagues overtake him on the road to fame, and felt no jealousy; he
had seen his father’s fortune blown to smithereens, without a blink: but
that every woman whom he looked at twice did not immediately yield
herself to him was something he found hard to bear, harder to forgive.
To possess all the comely women in the world, the female portion of the
universe, in a sort of cumulative, consummative kiss--it was his dream.
For--indisputably--one woman was not like another; and how? how enjoy
them all? While lying, as he thought appeased, in one woman’s arms, the
thought that there must be another in some particular different from his
own would at once renew his restlessness and send him searching,
searching round the globe. Content at last, content and happy at Port
Said, the thought of what he must be missing in Calcutta was sufficient
to uproot him and send him on his onward quest over plain and mountain,
dune and sea, continent and ocean, till, with ever greater frequency, he
would rebound in London, in Piccadilly Circus, the reputed centre of the
world, with his heart still burning, with hot tears in his parched
throat. “I can’t bear it,” he said, looking with a kind of stupor at the
fountain he had seen before. “I will kill myself....”
A practical man inessentially, Frank was impractical in essentials. He
had a kind of vague idea that the whole universe and all that it held
could, under favourable conditions, be embraced in a woman’s kiss, the
consummation, _das Welt-Alles_! The all-in-all. There was a critic just
then who wrote copiously in the _Adelphi_ about the One and the Many.
Yes, perhaps the One was to be realised most clearly in one of the many.
“Very likely,” he said, “very likely.” Was he already beginning to
regret his Eva’s absence? No, he had weighed her kisses in the balance
and had found them wanting. Except for that first virgin kiss upon the
mountain-top when she came up close, close to him, took a long breath
and closed her eyes....
He turned into Piccadilly, steadied his thoughts, and continued in a
Tolstoyan mood of honest self-analysis: “Then what am I to do? Renounce
the flesh and turn saint? Difficult. Difficult and uncongenial.
Essentially the world is good and one ought to know how to be happy. But
happiness is a strange thing: it is in two parts and is conditioned by
an inner equilibrium. On the surface I oscillate in a kind of twilight,
through black night into the dawn and back: but within, my soul sings
like a lark and it is morning. And all is well and beyond implication. I
knew it long ago. Yet I cannot sit down in the cool quiet of a pillared
cathedral as I would by choice, with all my passions and lusts raging in
me, raging in me! Essentially all is well. Certainly. Certainly. But
that does not do away with the surface things being all wrong. Mere
pinpricks. Perhaps. But the skin is a sensitive tissue.”
Tired out, he sat down on a bench in the Green Park and pulled out his
_Times_. How it assumed that all was well and orderly in the world. With
what propriety it examined and relegated to the requisite sections and
columns the haphazard irrelevance of life. But how sane, how quiet and
dignified and, withal, informed. Under a rubric headed “Science,” he
read:
“ ...In the course of the year Jeans has explored the problem further,
and has reached conclusions of immense significance in our conceptions
of the universe. These are, in short, that the chemical elements of
which we have knowledge are only one end of an indefinite series and
that end a degeneration from an indefinitely more complex set of atoms
in the distant stars and nebulæ. The conditions in which life is
possible are an extreme case, possibly unique, and came about by a
destruction of matter through countless aeons of time. The primary
physical process of the universe is the conversion of matter into
radiation, a process not even suspected until 1904. The primary matter
of the universe consists of highly complex atoms, dissociated and
incapable of association inasmuch as they change their make-up millions
of times in a second.”
He stopped reading and pondered. “Dissociated and incapable of
association.” Significant.... Significant and suggestive. “The primary
matter of the universe ... consists of atoms incapable of association
... inasmuch as they change their make-up millions of times in a
second.... Like me,” he thought. And came to the conclusion that he was,
his salvation lay, in the primary matter of the universe.
Calmed down, appeased by a distant hope of merging into the primary
matter of the universe and finding peace in changing his make-up with it
millions of times in a second with more inward profit than heretofore
and more pleasure than he found in his already frequent reboundings in
London, he strolled on across the Park and called in to see Lord
Ottercove.
Lord Ottercove, as he saw him, looked as though he had no wish to change
his make-up millions of times in a second, but was indeed perfectly
content with his make-up such as it was and, moreover, dissociated
himself from the primary matter of the universe, being content to dwell
and act within that end of the indefinite series of chemical elements
come about by a destruction of matter through countless aeons of time
and described by the paragraph in _The Times_ as an extreme, possibly
unique, case in which life (and journalistic activity) was possible.
“Forgive me for not rising,” he said. “But all these things will fall
off my lap if I do.”
“What need for me to forgive you,” thought Frank, “since you have
already forgiven yourself?”
There was an air about Lord Ottercove as though he knew what a rich and
splendid type he was for the imaginative novelist--and he was always
ready to help the young and striving artist--but could scarcely
comprehend the established novelists’ blindness to the riches lying at
their feet. Now that he knew Frank had conceived him as the hero of his
new novel he not only proved a willing sitter, but lent his own
imagination towards bettering Frank’s plot. And this he did in a way
that tended to enhance the prestige and lovableness of the hero by
placing him in more favourable situations than those envisaged by the
author. Frank, in relating the plot of his new novel, might say: “And
here the scientist gets the better of the hero by an ingenious use of
the latter’s newspapers to an end the hero cannot at this stage
envisage.”
“Quite,” Lord Ottercove would say. “But by pretending not to see the
scientist’s game the newspaper proprietor outwits him in the following
chapter.”
Frank was grateful to Lord Ottercove for the privilege of seeing him in
all his multifarious attitudes from every angle and aspect: in his
beautifully fitting tailcoats (there were several of them in the office
and in every one of his several town and country houses); in his silk
pyjamas; in the heroic act of jumping out of bed; sitting on the edge of
it in pensive mood with his bare feet dangling meditatively; in
dishabille; in dressing-gown and _en pantoufles_; or shaving in his vest
and pants: in all attitudes and from all aspects Lord Ottercove, Frank
could but remark, was unequivocally, indubitably great. It seemed as if
Lord Ottercove in his unfailing thoughtfulness provided him with these
opportunities to study him at all hours and in all attitudes. If Frank
had not, as yet, had the opportunity of studying his lordship _au
naturel_, it was because such study, both for descriptive purposes in a
work of fiction and as a practical opportunity, was, he willingly
recognised, in advance of current customs and usages.
“Well, how are you?” said Lord Ottercove. “How are your sales?”
In the first week of January, and having run through some twenty issues
of one of Ottercove’s newspapers, _Pale Primroses_ by Frank Septimus
Dickin appeared, in a pale jacket liberally sprinkled with flowers of
the title, on the bookstalls; yet enjoyed but a melancholy sale which,
with rumours of a new European imbroglio, dropped like the jaw of a man
astonished. “Completely and utterly stopped,” said Frank.
“Look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “you should get married.”
“Gladly. But who will marry me with my sales stopped? My publisher’s
wife’s great aunt died the other day, and he said to me over the
telephone: ‘I think it only right to close down the office for a week to
commemorate our respect for the dead woman.’”
Lord Ottercove thought deeply, and said:
“You should get married.”
“To whom?”
“I’ll introduce you. A peach of a girl. Beautiful. A wonderful face. I
can look at it for hours at a stretch without getting bored. The trouble
with her is that she’s got ... too much money.”
“But will she marry me?”
“She would if I gave you ... gave you _The Evening Ensign_.”
There was a pause. “It’s a pity,” said Frank, “that I don’t know her.”
“I will introduce you.”
“When?”
“Come and dine with me to-morrow night at my house.”
XVIII.
THE COTTAGE
Not unnaturally, cottagers are apt to dream of palaces, while it is well
known that princes eat their hearts out for being denied the joy of
dwelling in a cottage. “The Cottage,” situated in a shrubby garden high
up in the Finchley-road, was Lord Ottercove’s unofficial home, and
whither he retired whenever he felt like swinging a loose leg. Owning a
great house in the West End of London, and several castles and country
houses, he preferred to dwell in the seclusion of “The Cottage” in the
Finchley-road. The ground floor had but two rooms: a dining and a
sitting room, and here at the after-theatre hour he was that night
dispensing supper to a bevy of chorus girls escorted by a number of
young lords.
Lord Ottercove was a success. Whatever he touched, flowered: whatever he
left, withered--and died of its own rottenness. He stood in the doorway
now, in his exquisite tailcoat, one hand thrust in his trouser-pocket,
indolently tapping his heel and looking on with that intelligent bright
look which seemed to say: “I have long since reached my goal in life
without much effort: what could I possibly do next?”
“Come in, Freddie, come in, now don’t be shy!” he cried to a young actor
hesitating on the threshold. “My love, my sweetheart, my honeysuckle,
how are you?”--to a bevy of beauties, as they sidled in, twitching their
nude shoulders.
“Freezing, darling Rex,” they twittered.
“Rita,” to a leading lady, “do you love me?”
“You are Christ to me!”
And then, panting slightly (by the end of the night Frank loved her
panting, and by the end of the month he hated it), in sauntered a, Frank
perceived, very strikingly good-looking girl in red, and by his host’s
eager look and introduction: “This is Mr. Dickin. Miss Cynthia
Wellington,” Frank understood that she indeed must be his proffered
prize.
If so, she didn’t seem to appreciate her mission. She was certainly
beautiful and, as Ottercove had said, her face could be beheld for hours
at a stretch, with cumulative pleasure. She had been seated at Frank’s
side and she was mildly interested in what he could contrive to tell
her. But supper over, and the host having taken her aside for a few
moments, she came back another woman, and Frank found he had no
difficulty now in keeping her at his side. The other guests, numbering
a princess of the blood, a starving Russian diplomat, exquisitely
arrayed, and the cream of the West End Theatreland, sustained a
strenuously “Bohemian” conversation of unmeaning levity till it was late
enough for all to go without pronouncing the party a failure. Lord
Ottercove’s attitude--Frank read the question in his look--was:
“Amusing dogs--or are they not amusing? Have you been used to something
more amusing?”
The dogs were not amusing.
He kept Frank and Cynthia back till all the other guests had gone, and
then told the butler to wake up his chauffeur, and despatched them home
in the winged chariot.
Frank had not been long in the car with her when he discovered that
Cynthia was physically desirable. As the chariot, taking a good, long
run down the Finchley-road, suddenly took wing and Cynthia panted, he
grasped her hand as if to reassure her, and having grasped her hand
(good old Ottercove to provide him with this opportunity) he did not let
go again. When Cynthia panted again, it was a different kind of panting.
The view that all women are alike seemed to Frank, as a piece of
thinking, to err on the inadequate side. They were indeed all different.
But in one particular all women were alike, and that was in their
uniform desire to be different; and in their cheap fear of seeming
cheap. Seized by the idea of making her his wife and eager to
anticipate the marriage ceremony, he was prepared to hear her say that
no doubt he thought her just like any other woman and replied that, on
the contrary, she seemed to him peculiarly, uniquely different from them
all; after which assurance she behaved like all the other women, and
then said:
“Now, I wonder what you’ll think of me after that.”
He had not thought anything of her to begin with and did not think any
the worse of her now.
“Now, darling,” he said, “we simply must get married.”
The winged chariot and his thoughts, descending from the air at a slope,
touched ground at the same time. The car ran forward. His thoughts ran
on. “The day after to-morrow.”
“I suppose we might,” Cynthia said quietly. “Are you rich enough?”
The darling! She was really sweet! Didn’t want to hurt his feelings,
evidently, and let him think he was the breadwinner. Evidently a girl of
sensibility. Welcome. Very welcome. Thinks, no doubt, he may resent her
money, and keeps quiet about it. Sensible girl. Good girl. Beautiful
girl. Nice to look at. Voluptuous. In every way adequate. Are you rich
enough, indeed! He had ten pounds in his breast-pocket; and beyond that
he may yet have something in his trouser-pocket. He didn’t know how
much. But probably a shilling piece. And perhaps more.
“You needn’t chaff about it. I’ve more than you think, darling.
Ottercove has promised me, in case of marriage with you, _The Evening
Ensign_ as a wedding present.”
At that she sat up. “Very nice.”
Before the car pulled up at her door, she said:
“Come and have tea with me to-morrow.”
“I will have tea with you to-morrow--Sunday,--and marry you on Monday.”
He gave Lord Ottercove’s flying chauffeur ten pounds and undressing for
bed emptied his trouser-pocket of the shilling.
XIX.
Out of the shilling he purchased next day a ticket on the metropolitan
railway and rang at the bell of Cynthia’s door; in Half-Moon-street.
When the door yielded under his vehement onslaught he strode like a
fighting-cock past the door porter, for he was burning with love. But
the door porter, an elderly man, called him back and said:
“Kindly wipe your feet, sir, on that mat outside: this is an expensive
carpet and belongs to the first floor people.”
“But isn’t Miss Wellington on the first floor?”
“No, sir, she lives in the attic.”
He crawled upstairs, up innumerable flights of stairs, and the higher he
climbed the lower his spirits descended. Strange, he reflected, that a
girl whose trouble Ottercove had said was too much money should live in
an attic. But there it was! Millionaires had fancies and did for
pleasure what other folks were paid to do. Wasn’t the late Emperor of
All the Russia’s favourite recreation chopping wood in the palace yard?
A maid responded to his summons and he stepped into a neatly-appointed
apartment. He had scarcely had time to smile at Cynthia, when the maid
announced:
“Mr. Mortimer Pilling.”
And the delicate room held the strong, wiry man with the crisp, curly
black hair. “’Pon my word! Dickin, of all people! Had no idea you knew
him, Cynthia. You never let on.”
“How could I? I only know him since last night.”
“Oh, really?” Pilling looked enquiringly at Frank.
“It seems as if I had known you all my life and even earlier in a
pre-terrestrial existence. But, in point of fact, we only met last
night. Where was it? Ah, yes, at Ottercove’s, wasn’t it?” said Frank.
“A man,” said Pilling, “I always wished to meet. A most delightful man,
by all accounts, and one who could be useful to me in a thousand ways
and particularly in a little enterprise I have in mind.”
“You must meet him, Mortimer,” said Cynthia, while the bell rang at the
front door.
There was a sigh of exhaustion in the hall, and when Cynthia came back
she was followed by a new guest.
“Mr. Mortimer Pilling. Lord Ottercove.”
Lord Ottercove gave Pilling one searching, long look with his
penetrating grey eye and shook hands. Mortimer Pilling looked as though
his day had arrived. But Lord Ottercove turned to Frank: “Well, how did
you enjoy yourself last night?”
“By all accounts,” said Pilling, following Lord Ottercove round the
room, “he enjoyed himself very much. Ha! ha! ha!”
“It was dull,” said Ottercove to Frank and not looking at Pilling.
“You need Mrs. Kerr,” said Pilling, looking from Frank to Ottercove, “to
brighten up a party. You remember, Dickin, our tea-party together last
month?”
“Yes,” said Frank, “I remember.”
Lord Ottercove sat down heavily in a big chair and never once looked up
at Pilling. Never did Frank Dickin see him so impressive. The Grand Duke
of Fleet Street had surreptitiously climbed up eight flights of steps
(he who said he suffered from his heart) and now sat still in a great
armchair and wouldn’t look at Pilling. Never, Frank reflected, is a
great man more a great man than in a low-ceilinged attic, at the side of
a Pilling. For, but for the Pillings, no one might know that Lord
Ottercove was a great man.
“How are de Jones and Eva?” Frank enquired.
“Very well,” said Ottercove.
“I am very fond of Eva,” put in Pilling.
“Nearly done with Paris and going on to Rome. I am off myself to join
them at Nice at the end of the month. Will you come with me?”
“Well,” said Frank, looking anxiously at Cynthia, who returned a look
which he interpreted as a sign not to reveal to Ottercove the secret of
their forthcoming wedding.
“Have you seen the papers?” Lord Ottercove asked, confining his enquiry
to Frank and Cynthia, while Pilling quickly said: “About the General
Election?”
“How old Joe’s already shouting,” Ottercove continued, oblivious of
Pilling’s question, “about the bursting granaries that would be ours if
we back the Liberals to put an end to international bickerings and
jealousies and push on with the Lord de Jones scheme. And his Hackney
speech! Lord Ottercove assumed the pose of a public speaker. ‘And we
shall ask, by what right, whether human or divine, some men’s tummies
digest more bread and butter in one hour of their sleep than you, O
Toiling Masses, can earn by the sweat of your brow in a week?’
“‘’Ear, ‘ear! Good old Joe!’
“But he silences them with a gesture; his hand again shoots out: ‘_And
we shall ask_’--Grand fellow!”
“A great orator,” exclaimed Pilling.
Lord Ottercove’s eyes dimmed. “Joe,” he said, “is a giant.”
“He is,” said Pilling, looking from Lord Ottercove to Frank.
Lord Ottercove did not look at him. “And the news that de Jones has been
received with acclamation by the Paris mob. Good sign that. Cheaper
bread for the common people! And old Joe knows how to give it the right
ring. Grand fellow! We will beat the Conservatives at the poll this
time, you’ll see. It’ll do them good to be beaten.”
“Why?”
“Conservatism is a subversive habit to conserve what was won by the
Liberals of the past. If Conservatism is to live to-morrow, let Liberals
have their way to-day.” He rose and, turning to Frank, said:
“Come and see me to-morrow at five.”
Frank looked significantly at Cynthia. “Can’t at five:--six.”
Pilling left soon after Lord Ottercove.
Frank and Cynthia left a considerable time after Pilling.
XX.
When Frank called on Lord Ottercove at six o’clock on Monday, Lord
Ottercove was standing at a window in his office, gazing pensively at
the dissolving outlines of St. Paul’s gradually devoured by the dusk.
Lord Ottercove’s pose reminded Frank of Napoleon looking at burning
Moscow, and of Kerenski, in imitation of Napoleon, gazing from a window
in the Winter Palace at the burning theatre “Bouffe”, and Frank felt
that the situation called for a fitting and pregnant remark on the man
of action by the man of letters: “A man of letters puts into letters
what he cannot put into action.” But Lord Ottercove, who, having soared
above mean human endeavour and now only pondered upon it, considered
himself a man of meditation, and did not look pleased.
“I was thinking,” he said, “of youth and the glory of struggle. How I
envy you young men. The future belongs to you.”
“Why envy us, since the present belongs to you? The future is but a
deferred present.”
“All the good the present is to us is that it helps us to forget that we
have no future.”
“Mankind has not yet learnt,” said Frank, “to live in and for each
moment. That is the meaning of life. And that is why I have just gone
and got married: as a most effective means of living in the present.”
“Got married?” said Lord Ottercove, knitting his brows. “To whom?”
“To Cynthia Wellington!”
Lord Ottercove walked up and down several times. “Incredible,” he said.
“It amazes me. Why, she’ll be the ruin of you. An extravagant girl like
that, and you have no money.”
“But she has, hasn’t she?”
“Too much! Too damned much, one might think by the way she goes about
it. That’s the trouble with her. Tends to give the impression of having
what she hasn’t got.”
“But you said so.”
“Ironically. You should study the inflection when I speak; it is
all-important. As important as punctuation. Ever heard of King Charles?”
“Yes.”
“‘_King Charles walked and talked_
_Half an hour after his head was cut off_.’
That doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“No. How could a man walk and talk half an hour after his head was cut
off?”
“Precisely. Even King Charles couldn’t do it. But put a full stop after
‘talked’ and it makes perfect sense. You may have heard of treaties
being wrecked through a comma out of place. And what punctuation is for
the written speech, intonation is for the spoken language. You should
have listened for it.”
“I have heard of treaties wrecked by faulty punctuation,” Frank said
bitterly; “but this is my first experience of two human lives ruined by
an ambiguous intonation.”
“Obviously you married under a misapprehension. But she! I am surprised
she didn’t know any better. I am rather concerned about the matter. I
knew her mother well. What was she thinking? Marrying a man like you
without a farthing to bless himself with!”
“I told her you would give me _The Evening Ensign_ as a wedding
present.”
Lord Ottercove frowned.
“You said so.”
“I cannot,” said Lord Ottercove, “give you _The Evening Ensign_ as a
wedding present. It is my principal evening paper. It has the best tone
of all the evening papers; it is read by the _élite_, the cream of the
nation. But look here, I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you.”
Frank looked up at him hopefully.
“I’ll take an article from you. I’ll pay you”--he blew hard while
considering the sum--“£20 for it. You know, when I like a fellow there’s
nothing that I wouldn’t do for him! I am like that--can’t help myself.
My staff consider me wildly extravagant.”
“Is there any valid objection to paying me more?”
“Well, look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “you must make a name for
yourself, and I will pay you more.”
“All very well, but how? How?”
“Well, we must bring your personality before the public. I am sure that
if your personality is brought before the public the public will begin
to get curious about your personality and begin to want to buy your
books.”
Frank meditated for a minute. “There is nothing in my life of any
interest to anybody, except perhaps that I was born at the time my
father was First Secretary at our Embassy in St. Petersburg and--”
“Well, that’s interesting enough. Couldn’t you develop the situation?”
“How? Perhaps suggest that the Tsar eloped with my mother?”
“Of course. That would immediately reflect on your paternity and bring
into question your legitimacy.”
“A marked resemblance to the late Emperor--what?”
“Certainly. It will make them talk.” He took up the receiver. “Send up
Miss Sherwood to me, will you. I want her to write up a story about Mr.
Dickin, who is in my office.”
Frank learnt that “stories” was the journalistic term for articles;
whereas real stories--he suggested writing a short story for Lord
Ottercove for £100--were called “articles.”
“All right,” said Lord Ottercove. “Write it to-night and let me have
your article by six o’clock to-morrow morning. I will read it in bed
before breakfast.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms to
the ceiling. “Oh God, I’m bored to hell,” he said, and yawned
voluptuously.
“Now, Miss Sherwood, you know Mr. Dickin, the famous novelist. Don’t say
you haven’t read his books. That would sound uneducated. Now I want you
to write a story about him that would reach the wider public which lives
in ignorance of him only because they haven’t heard of him. I am
convinced that he has a great future before him, a future of fame and
felicity. He has already taken the first step towards it: he has gone
and got married to-day. But I feel that the public wants to know
personal details about him. There is, in the first place, his birth,
under mysterious circumstances, in Russia. His mother was an intimate of
the Imperial family. It is delicate ground we are treading upon here,
but I know you are a clever woman and I have every confidence in your
address and discretion. Your treatment of my niece’s divorce case
confirms my opinion. You could begin by giving a pen-portrait of the
late Tsar by projecting, so to speak, onto the screen of your story
salient points of the amorous life of the late Emperor. Go to the
British Museum and see if you find something, or look through the works
of William Le Queux. I remember reading something about spies in Russia
or somewhere--sure to be something about Rasputin or somebody. Well,
here is Dickin’s mother....” Lord Ottercove’s tone grew inaudible; he
took her across to the blue sofa. His robust lips moved silently. “You
understand ...” Dickin heard, “ ... more than the lad cares to
admit....”
“It’s a fine story,” nodded Miss Sherwood.
Lord Ottercove looked radiant. “Creating illusions,” he murmured, “in a
world of appearances. The essential function of the journalist. Mrs.
Hannibal,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “have that hung up as my
motto all over the building.”
Mrs. Hannibal, making a shorthand note of it, retired to execute his
instructions.
“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, stretching his hands to heaven, but
restraining a yawn.
Miss Sherwood and Frank understood that the _séance_ was at an end.
After the door had closed on them, Lord Ottercove vented his yawn,
looked at his watch, and jumped up.
XXI.
“On the banks of the river Neva stands the city of St. Petersburg, in
the Empire of Russia.”
Thus, illustrated by a picture of the Fortress of Peter and Paul, _The
Sunday Runner_ started off Miss Sherwood’s article. Frank read it out
aloud in bed to his wife as they woke up on Sunday in her (now their)
attic flat in Half-Moon-street. “It is not perhaps generally known that
Mr. Frank Septimus Dickin, the novelist, was born in Petrograd--or as he
prefers to call it, St. Petersburg--at the time his father was Naval
Attaché to our Embassy. This austerely beautiful city has changed its
name twice since its inception by Peter the Great, who christened it in
the Swedish idiom after himself. The late war changed the idiom, while
maintaining the name, and the revolution changed the name to that of
Lenin, while preserving the Russian idiom. In truth, a romantic city. (A
corner picture showed the Winter Palace and the Quay.) Here Peter once
walked. Here the last tragic emperor dwelt in fear and misgiving, while
Lenin stormed the citadel by word of mouth and word of print--the
capital which was to bear his name! Mr. Dickin, who loves this granite
city of private palaces, built by Peter and sung by the great poet
Pushkin and haunted by the spirit of Rasputin, claims to be connected
with it by ties of blood of the Romanov strain. It is a romantic story
which, perhaps, some day he will give us in full; the love of the last
and most tragic of Romanovs for the novelist’s beautiful mother. There
are things in life that are hurt by indelicate scrutiny, things which
shrink before the too-eager curiosity of the sensational mind, when the
biographer must withdraw or stand aside and linger in reverence.”
Ensconced in a single bed with his wife, Frank felt more like an adjunct
than a husband, and the reading of the article he thought might
rehabilitate his dwindling prestige with Cynthia. If he had no money,
he had at least, it seemed, imperial blood. When, on discovering his
financial infecundity, she had said: “What are we to do?” he had
replied: “Don’t you bother. Live on as you’ve been doing and take no
notice of me.” Hence the single bed. She was just to go on sleeping in
it as before and take no notice of his presence in it.
Their married life was enriched by a stream of press-cuttings which
trickled in with every post. Miss Sherwood’s article was reprinted by
some of the provincial newspapers, and Frank’s Press-Cutting Agency had
no difficulty in supplying him with paragraphs of a biographical
interest.
“_Imperial Claim_,” was the heading in an American journal. “_We
understand that among the claimants to the dubious throne of Russia
is a young English novelist, Mr. Dickin, who claims the paternity
of the Czar and a connection with the capital way back to Peter the
Great._”
Another cutting, headed, “_Descendant of the Tsars_,” read:
“_Mr. Dickin’s family has sprung from a branch of Peter the Great,
and Mr. Dickin himself, as is perhaps not generally known, is the
son of the Emperor Nicholas II by a morganatic marriage--the last
of the Romanovs, whose reign has been brought to destruction by
the Rasputin régime and consummated by Lenin._”
A new cutting read:
“_Claiming to be the son of Rasputin, Mr. Dickin’s connection with
the Russian Court goes back, through his mother, to Peter the Great
and indeed earlier, to the first Romanov, in whose time a relative
of Mrs. Dickin was Mayor of Moscow. Mr. Dickin thus is well
immersed in Russian atmosphere. He is also the author of ‘Pale
Primroses’_ (Sender: 7s. 6d.)”
* * * * *
As time went on, the press-notices became more involved and informative.
“_Mr. Dickin’s mother_,” read a notice, “_which may not be generally
known, was a governess at the Imperial Russian Court who became the
Czar’s mistress and later that of Lenin, and his fame reposes on these
two tragic pillars of Czardom and Communism_.”
* * * * *
A further cutting, from a Liverpool paper, read:
“_Illegitimate Son of Rasputin and Lenin. Mr. Dickin’s mother,
whose son’s novel, ‘Pale Primroses’_ (Sender: 7s. 6d.) _we reviewed
in this column last week, was among the victims at the seizure of
the Winter Palace, where she had been housed by her friend Kerensky
during his all too abortive régime, after being for years the
governess of the heir to the throne and an intimate friend of the
Emperor--a mere puppet, as will be recalled, in the hands of the
sinister Rasputin; and it was her fate, with the surrender of the
Woman’s Battalion which defended the Palace, to fall into the
unregenerate hands of Lenin. Mr. Dickin’s parentage, on his own
admission, like that of many a great poet born in time of stress,
may be said to be in jeopardy and, we feel, will lead many a
scholar of the future into that fascinating country and furnish him
with matter for research._”
A Dundee paper reprinted this identically, up to the words “_Woman’s
Battalion_,” after which it had added: “_of which she was the leader_.”
* * * * *
“Well,” said Frank. “We seem to have had a good run for our money!”
“If it helps to sell the book,” said Cynthia.
“Bound to do! And now that we are comfortably settled in our own abode,
don’t you think, darling, that we ought to give a party?”
“Whom could we ask?”
“I mean return hospitality to Ottercove before he goes abroad.”
“But he is so difficult about food.”
“I know. Always gets poisoned. It’s uncanny the way some people have a
gift for getting poisoned in the most innocuous circumstances. I can’t
conceive of getting poisoned short of going to an apothecary’s and
asking for a bottle of poison. But Ottercove can’t swallow an egg
without dropping his napkin on the floor and groaning: ‘Poisoned!’”
“But what does he eat?”
“We might write to his butler and find out.”
“Well, if you like write to the butler,” she said warily.
“I don’t remember his name.”
“What does that matter?”
“It doesn’t, of course.” He sat down to Cynthia’s (now his)
writing-table and began to write to the butler, reading aloud to his
wife as he did so, feeling that, in matrimony, a man cedes one half of
his thoughts to his mate:
“‘My Dear Friend--’”
“You don’t address a butler as My Dear Friend. Frank! Really!”
“It does rather sound like addressing a Salvation Army meeting.”
“You simply write: to Mr. So-and-So.”
“Every day of my life with you, Cynthia, I am learning something!”
And he wrote: “_To Mr.----, Butler to Lord Ottercove: Conceiving the
idea of entertaining your lord at dinner, I appeal to you in all
sincerity and friendship to supply me with a list of his lordship’s
favourite dishes._”
“Leave out ‘appeal in all sincerity and friendship.’”
“All right. ‘Request in all earnestness.’”
“No, leave that out, too.”
Her intellect was not, Frank perceived, penetrating. She always meant
what she said and thought that others did so too.
“Then we might ask ... whom?”
“Whom?”
“The Foreign Secretary. The difficulty is how begin my letter to
him.--‘Signor, I would esteem it a privilege--’”
“Frank! Really! Don’t you know that only foreigners, I mean Italians,
are addressed ‘Signor?’”
“I thought the Foreign Secretary was a foreigner.”
“Frank! Really! Don’t you know any better?”
“But why then is he called the _Foreign_ Secretary?”
“Because he has to deal with foreigners--with other foreign
secretaries!”
“Ah--!--that’s why!... But are they _too_ called foreign because they
deal with foreigners?”
“Of course.”
“A world, I see, populated by foreigners.”
“Foreign to us. We foreign to them.”
“Every day of my life with you I learn something!”
A reply came next day from the butler of Lord Ottercove.
“_Sir_,” he wrote, “_My lord is fond of cold chicken, ham, plaice,
salmon, a mutton chop (well done) with mashed potatoes, curry and rice,
roast beef (hot), and strawberries. His lordship’s favourite drink is
whisky.--Your obedient servant, T. Wilkins._
“_P.S.--Taking the liberty to show your kind letter to his lordship, my
lord desires me to say that he would prefer a hard boiled egg._”
* * * * *
At half past seven Lord Ottercove’s winged chariot came to a halt,
grandly yet sensitively, at their door in Half-Moon-street and, not
bothering to wipe his feet, Lord Ottercove climbed up the expensive
carpet and the remaining seven flights to their comfortable attic flat,
panting dreadfully.
Frank took him at once into the dining room. “Since there is no cook on
the premises, Cynthia is attending to the egg. And a great big fine egg
it is too; you will see for yourself.”
“Fine,” said Lord Ottercove.
“Cynthia, bring forth the golden egg!”
Cynthia came in, with a plate in her hands.
“There,” cried Frank, “there you have it. There it is! A real egg....”
“Great ... grand ...” said Lord Ottercove.
“Sit down. There’s no one else to wait for. We invited the Foreign
Secretary. But he couldn’t come. Either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Anyway,
didn’t. Tuck in, Lord Ottercove.”
“Great ...” said Lord Ottercove, eating. “Grand....”
“And a drop of port,” said Frank, “to gulp it down with.”
“Grand fellow....”
“The meal’s finished!” peremptorily.
“Yes, I must be off. I am speaking at the House of Lords to-night.” The
guest rose. “Grand fellow!” to Frank. “Well, darling,” to Cynthia,
“happy? eh?”
“Quite, Rex,” she said, doubtfully. And paused, as if to say, in the
confidential way a woman has with a man worth confiding in: “Rex, dear,
what about _The Evening Ensign_?” But Lord Ottercove, who was endowed
with extraordinary powers of divination into human motive, accelerated
his steps downstairs. His conscience, owing to the hospitality partaken
of, or, perhaps, because of its lamentable inadequacy and the
implications therefrom arising, pricked him on the third step down, and
he turned his head to say to Frank:
“Look here, I’ll take another article from you.”
But Frank’s gestures, to the unspeakable annoyance of his wife, had now
become quite Eastern in their obsequiousness. “Good, my lord,” he bowed.
“Kind, my lord.”
Cynthia stood on the doorstep, while Frank went out into the road and
stroked the car. The chauffeur and Gilbert had both jumped out and were
assisting their master into its soft and spacious confines. Frank stood
at the door of the winged chariot, smug and nimble with its wings tucked
under its shining sides, and commented aloud:
“Tuck in his lordship’s feet. Look after him well, Gilbert.”
“Yessir.”
Lord Ottercove was pleased. The source of human pleasure is a hidden
well: for one reason or another Lord Ottercove looked pleased.
“Great!... Grand!...” he kept muttering.
“Evenberry, faithful steward,” Frank was addressing the chauffeur,
“drive his lordship carefully. Avoid sharp corners. Keep well within the
speed limit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now then, Gilbert, I rely on you.”
“Yessir.”
“Good master you have. Take good care of him.”
“Yessir.”
“Good man, Gilbert,” said Lord Ottercove benignantly, as to a horse.
“Good man. Good servant.”
“Gilbert, enter into the joy of your lord....”
Cynthia stood, shivering a little, on the doorstep.
As the car moved off, Lord Ottercove, as always, hatless, waved an
indulgent hand. “Good-bye, sweetie!”
“Good-bye, Rex.”
The car, owing to the lack of space, did not take wing but prosaically
turned the corner.
“If your hospitality is scant,” said Frank, “nothing like enlarging on
your guest’s preserves.” He ran into the house, kicking the cat on the
way, and wiping his shoes on the mat, to spare the first-floor people’s
carpet, climbed upstairs.
* * * * *
“A joke’s a joke,” said his lordship to himself, since there was no one
else to say it to, “but a fellow can’t make a decent speech on an empty
stomach.” He took up the telephone tube and said to the chauffeur:
“Call in at the Kiss-Lick Club.”
XXII.
“Well, how are your sales?” cried Lord Ottercove as Frank crossed the
threshold--a dangerous step, perhaps symbolical--into his office.
“Low--still low. Seven copies a day.”
“Low average,” agreed the newspaper baron.
“I know why it doesn’t sell.”
“Why?”
“It’s a poor novel. That’s why. Poor stuff.”
“Dam’ poor stuff,” agreed Lord Ottercove. “That’s why I am interested in
it.”
The author looked up at him in surprise.
“Any fool can sell a good novel. But it takes genius to sell a poor
book. That’s why I like pushing it.”
“That is why I come to see you, hoping you may succeed in pushing it.”
“When I like a fellow,” the baron said in loud, robust tones, his
light-grey eyes glinting jovially, “there is nothing that I wouldn’t do
for him! You saw the boy who was in my office when you came in? You know
who he is?”
“Who?”
“The business-manager of all my newspapers.”
“That boy?”
“That boy. He’s seventeen. You heard our business conversation?”
“It was like machine-gun fire.”
“That’s how I do my business!” said Lord Ottercove. “That boy, the
business-manager of all my newspapers, was a page, what they call a bell
boy out there, at the Metropole in San Francisco four months ago. He
took my luggage up, switched on the light, drew the curtains, unstrapped
my suitcase, took out the slippers. I had forgotten Gilbert on the road,
and this solicitude and efficiency in the bell boy touched me to the
heart. ‘Good boy,’ I said. ‘Good heart. Kind soul.’
“‘I have a reason for it, sir,’ he said.
“‘What reason?’
“‘I want a job from you.’
“‘Well, look here,’ I said, ‘you come to England one of these days, into
my office, and I will give you a job.’
“He came a month after, worked his passage, you know, and found his way
into my office. ‘I’ve come for that job, sir.’
“‘Well, look here,’ I said, ‘I want a business-manager who can manage
all the business of all my newspapers. Can you manage it? If you can’t
manage it I will make you a lift boy.’
“‘I’ll manage it,’ he said. And, by George, he does! You’ve heard our
conversation?”
“Like rapid fire.”
“That’s how I do my business!”
“You don’t let them climb up?”
“No. I put a good boy up. And if he isn’t any good I pull him down.”
“I’d like to get as much out of you as that bell boy.”
“And why not? I am a man of money, and I am bored to hell, and your
rotten book amuses me.”
“Quite. But you’ve a personality so charming and magnetic and you like
to talk about yourself and you do it so engagingly that as a rule one
forgets about one’s ulterior motives and becomes disinterested!”
“Well, look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “we must do something about that
book of yours. We’ll have to advertise it. As a rotten book. The
rottenest book of the century. What do you say to that?”
“Might take on.”
“Sure to do!”
The success of this strategem, however, proved social rather than
financial. A few nights later, Lord Ottercove, after talking to Frank of
himself till midnight, suddenly rose and said: “I am taking you to-night
to a ball.”
“Are you really! Had I better ring up Cynthia and ask her to come along
too?”
“Oh, no! You’ll be bored to death with her. She’s all right for love and
that sort of thing. But never take her out with you. She used to bore me
stiff before she married you. Now let us go.”
As the chariot was turning into a side lane, the baron suddenly leaned
over to his companion. “I must tell you before the chariot comes to a
stop, for it may interest you as a novelist, that where I am taking you
now is Society. Not quite the real society, but the lighter Mayfair
Michael Arlen sort, somewhat polluted with actors and such. Bohemian and
the like, and chorus girls. I am doing this to help you with atmosphere
and local colour--invaluable for you, as a recorder of contemporary
customs, to get first-hand and red hot.”
“You are too kind.”
They had scarcely had their coats removed from them when the hostess
appeared at the door and quickly whispered something to Lord Ottercove
who, acting on the hint, said to Frank in a hushed undertone: “Whiz like
mad across the hall!”
Frank did as he was bid, and, rejoining him in the drawing-room, “You
see,” Lord Ottercove explained, “we tried to get you safely past Lady
Kennan and Mrs. Ashton who, having heard of your being acclaimed the
author of the rottenest novel of the century, had come out into the hall
to snap you up on your arrival. It’s the sort of rare distinction that
they are all out to secure for their _salons_. There are three great
literary hostesses in London: Lady Kennan, Mrs. Ashton, and Lady Isabel
Croft, where you are to-night. The three hostesses tend to frequent one
another’s parties and they stand out in the hall to snatch away a
literary novelty before the hostess has had time to warn and welcome
him, and your being acclaimed the rottenest author of our time was
something quite unusual; they are all mad to have you. Now go and talk
to them.”
Lord Ottercove was borne away by a couple of hearty men, while Lady
Isabel, a tall, excited woman, came up to Frank and welcomed him
effusively. “I’ve put the two there off the scent, said you hadn’t
arrived yet, so they are waiting in the hall. I am so glad you’ve come.
Rex rang me up this afternoon. ‘Shall I bring you a literary prodigy, a
man who’s written the rottenest book of our time and century?’ ‘Actually
_the_ rottenest? Oh, do, Rex darling, do!’ I said, ‘and see that he
isn’t kidnapped at the door.’ But you’ve escaped their claws
beautifully. That was a gallant dash across the hall. Now come and have
something to eat; you deserve it.” And she pressed champagne and caviare
sandwiches upon him, and then led him into another room full of
over-powdered, over-painted, over-talkative women here and there dotted
by a white-black figure of a man, and she made him sit beside her on the
floor very uncomfortably so that he was afraid that his shirt front
having blown out, would next blow open and the studs fly out on to the
parquet. And she introduced him to an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer:
“Johnny, this is Mr. Dickin, who wrote the rottenest novel of our time.”
The ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer beamed with delight and shaking
Frank, who had jumped up from the floor, heartily by the hand, said:
“Have you written the rottenest book of our time? Excellent! Haw! haw!
haw!”
“Come,” said the hostess, “I’ll introduce you to my daughters. I have
two lovely daughters. They’ve heard all about you and are thrilled at
the idea of meeting you. Pamela, this is Mr. Dickin.”
Pamela was blonde and serious and interested in literature. “Now are you
_the_ rottenest novelist?” she asked. “Because this afternoon I met a
man who said that he was even more rotten than you.”
“I cannot believe it,” said Frank.
“Now what do you want to do?” asked the hostess. “Do you want to eat or
drink or smoke or dance or--?”
“Dance.”
“Pamela, take him upstairs and dance with him.”
Pamela took him upstairs into the music-room and on the way thither
introduced him to people sitting out on the steps.
“This is Eleonor de Jones.”
“Oh, but we know him!” Eleonor exclaimed.
“Mr. Dickin. Mr. Raymond Mosquito.”
“Have you written the rottenest novel?” Eleonor asked.
“I must have done.”
“How splendid!” And she wrung from him before she let him go the promise
to attend her baby’s christening.
“Raymond’s been adopted, then?” he asked Pamela while they danced
upstairs.
“Yes. They will be married very soon now. Have you seen the baby?”
“A boy?”
“A boy. The image of Raymond. Isn’t he beautiful?”
“He has Eva’s eyes. His sister’s,” Frank added as Pamela did not seem to
know who he was speaking of. While he danced on with Pamela, who was
blonde, Maisy, her younger sister, even more blonde, talked to him all
the time, while dancing with another. “Who are you?” she kept asking
him, and he would not tell.
As he was going, she held him back by the hand. “Don’t go,” she said.
“Oh, don’t go. I’ve found out who you are,” she looked into his eyes
long and intently. “It couldn’t be better!”
XXIII.
THE PRETENDER
In matrimony, Frank and Cynthia both proved themselves to be inveterate
individualists; they would be untrue to each other several times every
day, so that when, exhausted and full of champagne, they returned to
their flat in the morning, they could but stare and feebly giggle at
each other. Thus far their partnership was a success.
Frank, whose mind began to run on the rails of publicity, which he
discovered to be an unparallelled art, sometimes, when her condition
made it possible, discoursed on it before his wife. “There are,” he
would say, striding about in his dressing-gown out of which he rarely
emerged before dusk, “no end of ways of advertising oneself.”
“For example?” she questioned.
“For example, thanking prominent people extravagantly in the press for
the least little thing they may have done for you. It’s a graceful and
lucrative self-advertisement. If, for example, the Duke of Bamboo should
happen to nod to you on a dark day, having mistaken you for someone
else, write to _The Times_ that you have been unspeakably touched by the
kind and thoughtful attitude of his Royal Highness to yourself and your
works. Next day other newspapers, with the befuddled inaccuracy of the
daily press, will comment on the incident under some such head lines:
‘Novelist Discovered and Helped by the Duke of Bamboo. His Royal
Highness as Reader and Critic.’ Furthermore, the Duke, seeing it, might
feel really flattered and demand to see the actual book, and, old and of
infirm memory, might think that it’s some other book that he has seen
before and--who knows?--may create a sensation by what must be, for
Royalty, an unprecedented reference to a printed volume. If he but
sneezes over it, all other British subjects will follow suit. And you
are made.”
But his sales, despite all his philosophy, fell below his least sanguine
expectations. He complained bitterly to Lord Ottercove, who indulged in
some detached speculation. “You must shed,” he said, “your old
personality, and assume a new individuality. I am convinced that if the
public hears you have shed your old personality they will get curious
about your new individuality and will begin to want to read your books.”
“I think,” said Frank, “that if I shed my clothes with my personality,
they would be more curious still.”
“You would make a real impression on the public.”
“You seriously mean it?”
“They would see you were serious. The public doesn’t like to be trifled
with. As a serious artist you must be prepared to suffer for your art.”
“Have I not suffered enough!”
“I will get some one to interview you on your attitude.”
“What attitude?”
“Towards nudeness. Mrs. Prologue would be the right woman for you, I
daresay.” He looked at Dickin as if measuring his stature, and took up
the receiver. “Send Mrs. Prologue up to me.”
“But she won’t expect me to--” Frank blushed. “She won’t I hope--”
“No, no, of course not. What the hell do you think my office is? A house
of convenience? It is enough if she reports it.”
“But how will she know?”
“Well, you’ve got to tackle her yourself.”
“Mrs. Prologue, m’lord,” announced the page.
“Show her in.--This, Mrs. Prologue, is Mr. Dickin, the novelist. No, not
Dickens. He is ... how shall I say?... morbid, perverse, threatens to go
about--well--you are a married woman, Mrs. Prologue, and I needn’t
paraphrase these things for you--naked, in a word. It’s--how shall I
say?--it’s--”
“A complex,” helped out Mrs. Prologue.
“That’s right. A complex.”
He was afraid that this spectacled and earnest-looking lady might “dare”
him; but she was quiet and sensible and did not insist. “Is it”--she
fixed a pair of competent eyes upon him--“your conviction that we
should--”
“He, not we,” corrected her employer.
“That you should go about ... in that state?”
“It’s more--it’s a belief--a sort of religion,” said Frank.
“I see. _Nacktkultur_. I’ve been reading a story recently by Paul Morand
who very amusingly deals with a club up in Norway devoted to the
practising of these theories--”
“That’s right! That’s right! You’ve hit on it, Mrs. Prologue. You’ll be
able to write a story about Mr. Dickin. You may say, in fact, that he
has, while performing the cult of this _Kultur_ or what, been surprised
by a visit from ... we’ll have to think of some name ... to the roof of
his house where he performs it. I leave him to you.”
Frank returned to Half-Moon-street, which Cynthia, by the way, it
occurred to him, had deserted some days ago, in more buoyant spirits. He
did not resent her disappearance. A man who had failed to provide his
horse with a stable, the stable with a manger, the manger with fodder,
would indeed be unjust and unreasonable to object to his horse’s grazing
outside in the field. And in this harsh and difficult world Frank was
not unreasonable. He watched, contentedly, her grazing on the greenest,
most flourishing fields of London, Paris, and New York. He walked about
in the flat, inspecting the shelves in the kitchen containing things in
tins bought with her money; and in applying them to their uses drew on
his common sense and such powers of divination as he possessed; and
reflected that man’s needs were few, and woman’s less. He even
attempted, with a certain misgiving, to boil himself an egg on the
“Primus” stove, unable to foretell under what circumstances it might
explode. How sweet it was to exist alone and owe nothing to anybody!
The post brought him a batch of press-notices. “The author of ‘Pale
Primroses,’”read a cutting, “(who, it will be remembered, turned up
naked at a recent literary gathering) is greatly in vogue and is, in
fact, quite the lion of the moment.”
Also he seemed to be getting more and more homage from Liverpool,
whereas the city of Glasgow appeared to despise him and he conceived in
his heart a warm sympathy for Liverpool, and a shy hostility towards
Glasgow took shape in his mind. (But when, a month later, he had
occasion to arrive in Liverpool he was ignored; whereas at Glasgow
straight away he hit it off with a Scotch lassie and they stepped it to
jazz music and she was more than kissed by him forthwith.) And a
different notion of the relative hospitality of Liverpool and Glasgow
now formed itself in his receptive mind.
Mrs. Prologue’s article bore fruit. A week later he was able to inform
the Baron of Ottercove that his sales were enormous. “Enormous!”
“Good!” said the baron, thinking. “Change the title to ‘The Diary of a
Naked Man.’”
“There is nothing naked in it.”
“Tell them that there will be in Part II.”
“But I’m not writing a Part II. It’s complete.”
“I guess you’ll have to,” said Lord Ottercove.
“What else? Perhaps also change my name?” Frank’s tone was ironic.
“Your name?” Lord Ottercove reflected. “Your Christian name.”
“My Christian name?”
“Couldn’t you call yourself Charles?”
“I could call myself Jesus if necessary.”
“No, not Jesus. Charles. It goes well with your surname.”
“Well, I might, of course. It might help.”
“Bound to do! I start for Nice to-morrow. But telegraph to me twice a
day how you are selling. Good-bye to you. And mind the step!”
With a little training one could move, Frank felt, about the modern
world with ease and felicity and face with equanimity the deadliest of
situations. He would find himself making ambiguous statements to
reporters who interviewed him relative to his parentage.
“Are you the son of the late Nicholas II?”
“I do not propose at this juncture of events to say anything which might
render the position of certain parties and persons involved more
difficult than it is already.”
“Do you claim the imperial throne?”
“I do not consider the present moment propitious for the making of any
definite statement bearing on this thorny and delicate question, which,
moreover, may easily be misinterpreted. I follow the development of the
political situation in Russia with equanimity, firm in the belief that
when the time for expressing their choice is at hand the people of
Russia will not fail in their wisdom, loyalty and courage.”
In all his public utterances Frank displayed unfailing moderation and
restraint in reference to the situation that had spun itself into a web
around him, and when a Russian Grand Duke in the Kiss-Lick Club heckled
him in the vestibule and even hit him on the ear with an immaculately
folded umbrella and otherwise tried to make himself disagreeable to him,
with a view to consummating the quarrel in assassination, Frank did not
lose his head, but tried to avoid him so as not to be involved too early
in the Russian imbroglio. When a reporter interviewed him on the
regrettable incident in the Kiss-Lick Club, Frank said:
“I feel--and I say it earnestly--that we who love Russia should know how
to merge our petty differences in a common devotion to a holy cause,
and, awaiting the grand moment, remember the magnitude of our
responsibilities and the dignity imposed by a great and noble heritage.”
The restraint and moderation of his utterances won him a following among
the anglicised Russian emigrés in London, who, suspicious of the
qualities of their own race, had learnt to admire British parliamentary
language as reported in the newspapers. But in proportion to his
success as a pretender, he became increasingly aware of being watched by
Chesham House, of being followed on his daily strolls by individuals who
looked suspiciously like agents of the Tcheka. He applied, on the advice
of friends, to Scotland Yard, and two plain-clothed policemen were
assigned to accompany him on his walks and protect him from (a) those
zealous puritans who wanted to destroy him so as to put an end to what
they understood from certain references to the quality of his books to
be his propagation of foul literature; (b) rival claimants to the throne
of Russia; and (c) the Bolshevist agents of the Tcheka who resented his
imperialism. His fame reached its apotheosis when the Soviet Foreign
Minister, in reply to the now hackneyed British accusation of their
spreading Bolshevist propaganda in the British Empire, cited Mr. Dickin
in the Soviet note to Downing-street as an active instance of the
fostering of an imperialistic movement by the British and their
intervention in the domestic politics of Russia, and the British Foreign
Secretary in the House of Commons disclaimed, while deprecating Mr.
Dickin’s activities, responsibility for his acts and dissociated what he
described to be the private views of a novelist from the considered
policy of the Foreign Office. By that time Frank had sold over one
hundred and twenty thousand copies of _Pale Primroses_, alias _The Diary
of a Naked Man_; to say nothing of American rights, film rights,
dramatic rights, translation rights, and second, third, and fourth
British Empire (excluding Canada) serial rights. The resulting publicity
procured him a lucrative commission for a series of articles in an
American magazine, a lost relative, and three offers of marriage.
XXIV.
NICE
The day after the christening of the Kerr-de Jones baby, Frank, having
received a telegram from Ottercove inviting him to come to Nice, went
abroad. His wife was grazing somewhere--he didn’t know where.
He didn’t bother about Cynthia. He didn’t see why he should bother about
her. He could have divorced her, or she could have divorced him, but he
didn’t see why he should go to the bother of divorcing her. He simply
didn’t bother about her. And, moreover, she didn’t bother about him.
Mrs. Kerr, he recalled, had been conspicuous at the christening of the
Honourable Richard Mosquito, and Pilling had been loud in extolling,
some felt rather indiscreetly, the Kerr strain in the baby. Raymond,
hastily adopted by de Jones, officiated in the absence of his father at
the side of Eleonor. He looked very red and hot and embarrassed at the
arrival of his little son-brother and resented Pilling’s _faux pas_,
who, conscious of his blunder, and anxious to agree that the baby was
the image of de Jones, added inadvertently: “But of course! The image of
his grandfather,” while Mr. Kerr walked about sardonically, as if
saying: “This is my revenge.”
“Can’t stand that man Pilling,” Raymond said bitterly.
“I, on the contrary,” rejoined his mother, “find him a very charming,
intellectual young man.”
“Why doesn’t he marry Zita?”
“My dear, he can’t. He is already married.”
“Then why doesn’t he leave her to marry another?”
“They live together--just the same as if they were married. That is a
common custom nowadays among the more intellectual classes. Already in
my youth it was accepted. You even find it in Turgenev and Dostoevski.”
In parting on the kerb, Frank overheard Mrs. Kerr thanking her son.
“Chris can give me nothing now. And if he could, he would give it all to
Eva.”
“Eleonor,” said Raymond, “has no banking account of her own. But she has
a cheque book and draws on her uncle’s account to an unlimited extent.”
“A very nice, well-read, original young woman, and I am very fond of
her,” was Mrs. Kerr’s reply.
Smiling thus over these insistent memories of yesterday, Frank pulled
open the blinds in the morning: the blue train was touching the south
coast of France.
Nice. The most beautiful thing about Nice is its name, full of a
delicious springtide fragrance. Apart from the name, it may be
questioned, Frank thought, whether there was anything else particularly
beautiful about the town, that somewhat hard and heartless courtesan de
luxe organised for the sale of dubious pleasure.
Already from the window of your carriage you behold the long train
bending like a serpent as it races up the coast carrying dutifully its
load of passengers who had dribbled from the four corners of the world,
congregating towards Paris, rushed in the night through northern wet and
wind and bleakness, to turn the corner at Marseilles at daybreak, and
now gaily down the sunny Côte d’Azur, past all the pink and cream and
white of basking villas, towards Nice.
In another three hours, Frank reflected, he would see Eva, and the
benignant luxury of the scenery illustrated his anticipation. The train
curved amid the rocky hills and flowery valleys, past the rose-white
garden villas perched above the blue, blue sea--all swiftly whirling by.
Nice.
“His lordship is lunching in the restaurant and asks you to come in,
sir.”
Entering the huge dining-room, Frank instantly perceived Lord
Ottercove’s steel-grey eye peering at him in its essential hardness,
but softened as it were by an air of bonhomie. There was about the
baron’s face something at once fine and comic, stern and pantaloonish,
Jehovahian and George Robian. His glinting eyes blazed with a righteous
blue fire, while his tilted nose protruded a naïve, peeping curiosity
about human affairs, and his noble brow frowned olympically. When he
closed one eye at you to glint with double force with the other, he
looked a satyr. At one side of him was Eva, gay and spring-like in
appearance; on the other, Lord de Jones, more shark-like than ever. No
one could look less a peer than de Jones.
“Why won’t you take off your coat and come and have lunch?” said
Ottercove, genially. The three of them looked as though they had been
revelling considerably.
“You do all look washed out,” said Frank.
“We’ve decided to make a halt here before going on to Rome,” said
Ottercove. “I must recuperate my forces before I tackle Mussolini over
the craters.”
“Do you expect any serious opposition?”
“Yuh,” said Ottercove. “I guess they’ll want heavy compensation. The
Vesuvius alone, they argue, is a steady source of revenue, attracting
hordes of tourists.”
“But he must see the international side of it if he has any good will in
him.”
“The good will among men,” said the baron, “is a moral support
physically precarious for individual man to lean on. But all the better
for us. We are in no hurry since the General Election is again delayed.
We must give the illusion of warring, of desperately battling with evil
and sinister forces and win the battle of David and Goliath.”
“Well, you certainly look exhausted.”
“Don’t look at Chris,” said Eva. (So she already called him ‘Chris’!)
“He is always dirty looking, he can’t help it. I mean he’s clean, but
dirty-looking. There are such people. And there are others, who are
dirty and always look quite clean.”
“You wise little girl, Eva,” said Ottercove tenderly.
“Lord Ottercove, have you read Ferdinand’s novel?” she asked.
“I’ve read it twice.”
“H’m.--I must read it again,” she said.
After lunch, Lord Ottercove took them up to his suite. On the table in
the drawing-room copies of his newspapers were spread out invitingly. “I
can’t,” said Frank, fingering _The Evening Ensign_, “behold this
newspaper without an inward pang.”
Lord Ottercove frowned. He did not like to be reminded of it. Instead,
and in pursuance of a certain association of ideas, he asked,
“What have you done to Cynthia?”
“Alas! Alack!” said Frank, who, in the absence of his host’s material
interest in their marriage, did not see himself compelled to satisfy
the baron’s idle curiosity.
Learning from Frank that he had put up at another hotel and would not
move over to this for fear of being ruined, “Stay with me two or three
weeks,” said Lord Ottercove. “You don’t know what pleasure it gives me.”
His words were so warm and inviting. “Gilbert,” he said softly, “go and
see if there are any more rooms on this floor.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
Gilbert returned to say that there was the choice of an imperial and an
ordinary suite. Which of the two did his lordship wish him to reserve
for Mr. Dickin?
“Mr. Dickin will see and choose for himself,” said Lord Ottercove. “And
now I will jump into bed. I will see the three of you, I hope, at dinner
and take you to the Opera at Monte Carlo.”
“Agreed!”
XXV.
When, dressed, that night he joined them in Ottercove’s private
drawing-room, Frank was amazed by the new, modern aspect of Eva. How was
it that he had never been so struck with her before? What ease! what
grace! withal what beauty!
They dined at the Negresco in Nice and then hurried at a dangerous speed
in a hired Rolls-Royce to Monte Carlo, and again in Ottercove’s box,
alone with three men, Eva’s charm was conspicuous, as on the stage the
melancholy chime of Kremlin bells determined the slow but steady ruin of
a conscience-stricken man.
On the way back to Nice, they were pensive. _Boris Godounov_ had made a
deep impression on the baron, who never missed a performance. “Fine man
Moussorgski!” he muttered. “A great and wonderful genius! To have
written that!” He paused. “If he were alive to-day, I would have made
him a duke, or editor-in-chief of all my newspapers.”
“Or given him _The Evening Ensign_ as a wedding present,” added Frank.
Lord Ottercove closed one eye and glared at Frank with the other, and
then closed it too and went to sleep in the depth of the car.
In the night, Frank could not sleep for jealousy. Why was she so
intimate with de Jones and Ottercove? Why?
At three, he crept to her door and knocked gently.
She opened the door.
He went in.
“Darling!” he said.
“Darling!” she answered, and came into his arms.
“I am wretched,” he said, covering his face with his hands.
“Darling,” she watched him tenderly, “you are getting very thin. Your
corner tooth is losing colour.” She looked at that thin individual with
scanty hair and thought, without pressing the thought home to her: “Is
that thing the thing on which I spent all my beautiful love?... Never
mind, such as he is he is mine.”
“It is tragic,” Frank said, “to grow ugly without ever having been
beautiful.”
She gave him a long kiss. And they were silent, and the silence seemed
pregnant with memories. “Do you remember?” it seemed to say.
And for him there was fear and foreboding of loss in that kiss. He held
her breathless and exulted in the thought that her naked heart beat
against his.
She looked into his eyes. “Do with me what you like.”
How could he have ever parted with her? How could he ever part with her?
XXVI.
All next day they spent with Ottercove. Lord Ottercove habitually put up
at Nice, with the sole purpose, it would seem, of dining at Monte Carlo.
He came to the Riviera to relax after the strenuous social life of
London. And his relaxation, by the force of habit, took the form of
whizzing up and down the curved and much frequented road of the Côte
d’Azur to lunch at Cannes, to dine at Mentone, or hurrying off to play
golf, hurrying to get into bed and sleep hurriedly, to be wakened by
Gilbert to dress and hurry along to dine at Rapallo. After a month of
such relaxation, he would hurry back to London to rush from house to
house (mysteriously preceded by Mrs. Hannibal and his telephone
operator) and write hurried articles and print newspapers, and the news
boys were already hurrying out of the building carrying batches of them
and selling them at a run. Lord Ottercove privately claimed that since
his descent on London he had “gingered up” the public life of Great
Britain. His success was evidenced by his peerage; which is no guarantee
of anything more than success.
His own personality and the effect it produced on his time and
surroundings interested and stimulated him beyond all else. An American
reporter in Nice had referred in the local Press to Lord Ottercove’s
having the head of a musician, and he instantly sent out Gilbert to buy
an album with the portraits of all the notable composers, and left it in
his private drawing-room, and his friends (who had read the notice)
said: “Rex, that chap Beethoven has your head to a t.” And another said,
“Rex, upon my word you have mistaken your profession and we enjoin you,
ere too late, to turn musical. Then, in a couple of years’ time, they
will be saying: ‘Ottercove.... Who the hell is Ottercove?’--‘Oh, the man
who wrote the Symphony in B flat.’”
He smiled indulgently. He went down the steps (forgetting the existence
of the lift), whistling to himself and wondering ... really if ... and
_if really_ ... how nice.
In the car, since the question had been jarringly dropped as it seemed
to him, he turned to Eva.
“Eva, do you think,” he said from his reclining, hatless attitude in the
depth of the great car, “I look like a composer?”
“You look like an angel, Rex,” she said.
“Thank you, darling.”
“You’re not as beautiful as Ferdinand,” she added, “but you are very
clever.”
“Thank you, darling, thank you, dear, that’s comforting.”
So she already called him Rex. Frank was astonished at the rapidity of
progress possible to women; and even a little jealous.
“Chris,” said Ottercove, “how is your work getting on? Is it true I hear
you mean to blow us all up?”
“If I didn’t others would. Ideas like these never come singly. There
must be at least half-a-dozen men now harbouring this amiable idea.”
Lord Ottercove glanced at Frank and Eva. “I told you he was a lunatic.”
“It’s you who are lunatics. Any one could do and talk about doing it,
for no one would believe him, everyone would think he was a lunatic.” De
Jones looked away, detached.
“Let us change the conversation,” Eva said.
They were hurrying in the direction of Cagnes--a destination which at
all times that it is mentioned is accompanied by a sort of footnote that
it is a place other than, and therefore not to be confused with, Cannes.
“You speak French,” said Ottercove. “Tell him to go to Cagnes. Cagnes,
not Cannes.”
Frank took up the telephone tube and said to the chauffeur: “Cagnes.”
“Cagnes,” repeated Lord Ottercove. “Not Cannes.”
“Cagnes,” said Frank into the tube. “Not Cannes.”
“I understand perfectly,” said the chauffeur.
It seemed that the distinction was more familiar than generally
supposed. Still, the similarity was unfortunate, and many a passenger
for Cagnes must have found himself, unwittingly, in Cannes and, perhaps,
with profounder astonishment and reluctance, many a passenger for Cannes
must have discovered himself, with inward qualms and bitter
questionings, in Cagnes. But there it was, and even Ottercove could not
change this state of things.
They alighted on the green hillside by the sea, and Ottercove,
perennially the host, opened the basket with the eatables. “Damn!” he
said. “That jackass Gilbert has forgotten the glasses.” Inwardly they
all cursed Gilbert. “You speak French,” said Ottercove to Frank, “Go and
ask that peasant woman on the top of that hill to lend us a few glasses.
Here--” He held out a batch of notes.
“I’ve got some money.”
“Here, give her this.”
The old peasant woman who was sitting on the ground beside her donkey
could produce but two doubtful looking glasses, and Frank thrust the
batch of bank notes--some four hundred francs in all--into her hand.
“But, monsieur!” she cried bewildered. “All this for a couple of
glasses! No, no....”
They washed the glasses in champagne, drinking what was left of it and
eating delectable sandwiches delicately prepared by a luxurious hotel.
Then Lord Ottercove took his Bible out of his side-pocket and began to
read:
“‘And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a
great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the
moon became as blood;
“‘And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree
casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
“‘And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and
every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
“‘And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and
the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every
free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
“‘And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the
face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
“‘For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to
stand?’”
He shut the book, and for a while there was silence. De Jones took off
his glasses and wiped them pensively with his handkerchief; then quoted
softly:
“‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be
no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any
more pain: for the former things are passed away.’”
Frank waved away the flies. “If I were God I would consign all flies to
the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. For don’t tell me that
they know not what they do!”
Eva looked at him reproachfully. “You are so stupid, darling. You wave
and shout at the flies.”
“But they do go away when I shout.”
“It’s not because you shout, but because you wave that they go away.”
“H’m, that’s possible. I never thought of that. I admit I am
impractical.”
The secret of a successful picnic, in view of its invariable discomfort,
is that it should be as short as possible. They--all of them towny
people--discovered this very soon and rose as if by mutual consent.
“You speak French,” said Ottercove to Frank. “Go and take these glasses
back to the old woman on the hill and tell her she can have all the
sandwiches and fruit and champagne--”
“Bottles,” qualified de Jones.
“Bottles--all we’ve left, in fact.”
Frank did as he was bid.
They stepped into the hired Rolls-Royce, and as they drove away, this
time in the direction of Cannes, on the hill-side, by the side of an old
donkey, stood an old wrinkled woman who looked in their direction till
they were lost to sight.
In the depth of the car, three men and a girl leaned back as far as it
is possible for three men and a girl to do so in a car. Lord Ottercove
was dozing, Eva gently playing the ukulele.
“I didn’t know you played the ukulele,” Frank remarked.
“There are things, Ferdinand, you do not know,” she said.
Ottercove opened one eye. “You are right, sweetie,” he said. “He is no
good: I’m the man for you.”
“‘I’m the man! I’m the man!’ This is from _Candida_,” chimed in de
Jones. “Let me quote, on my behalf, from the same work: ‘All the love in
the world is waiting to speak: but it is shy--shy--shy....’”
“Eva,” said Frank. “Eva....”
“What?”
“Eyes as blue as the Mediterranean....”
“Now, Eva, you must choose,” said Ottercove, “between this decrepit
Genius of the Untried who claims he can push up the grass but is only
fit to push up the daisies; the dubious heir to a, if possible, more
dubious throne; and a half-demented peer. Now come on, my love, and
choose your prize. Spot the winner.”
Eva smiled and played the ukulele dreamily. And the music seemed to say,
Why choose? when you are snug, at ease, sprawling in the depth of a
great car rushing softly by the edge of the blue sea.
XXVII.
Returned, Eva vanished mysteriously and came back with a book and asked
them to write in her album.
“All these your admirers, Eva?” Ottercove scanned the pages wearily.
“Hello what’s this?
“‘_O Eva, O Eva,_
_I love you so mighty,_
_I wish my pyjama was_
_Next to your nighty._’
“Whoever wrote this, Eva?”
“A little schoolboy in Ireland.”
“Shame!”
“He loved me.”
“That’s something.”
Frank the while was scanning the pages of _The Sunday Runner_,
Ottercove’s youngest and favourite offspring. “Rotten newspaper,” he
said, as if to himself, but loud enough for Ottercove to hear him.
“Nothing of me in it.”
“I am taking you to-night to Maxime’s. And now,” said Lord Ottercove,
“I’ll jump into bed. Good-night to you.”
And, to precipitate their going, he was already removing his tie and
collar.
That night at Maxime’s Eva looked exquisite. She had not, Frank felt,
before now expanded her more expensive potentialities. Now she looked
like really expanding them. And Lord Ottercove looked very much like
encouraging her to expand them. She was a plant that suddenly flowered
when put in a vase of champagne. The competition for her on the part of
the three men developed into rapid fire. “Now then, Eva, why this
hesitation?” Ottercove demanded. “I am a man of brains. I am a man of
money. I am a man of love and a capacity to requite love once it is
lavished on me tit for tat. _Quid pro quo._”
“Do you love me, Rex?”
He smote the table. “With all my heart.”
“Truly?”
“I swear by my love for my newspapers or may God strike me dead!”
“And you, Ferdinand?”
“Can you ask? What of my courage? Am I not setting out all alone
against all his newspapers, with possibly the other newspaper lord at
the back of him--in fact, the whole of the more sinister Press of Great
Britain against me!”
Lord Ottercove, gripping his knife and fork in his two fists--he was in
high spirits to-night--leaned back and laughed. There was in his gesture
all the self-confidence and abandon of men who had climbed to the top of
the ladder. On the top of the ladder one is apt to let oneself go.
(Which, by no means, applies to all ladders. One’s solicitude for one’s
fate on most ladders is never so keen as on the last rung. But--let us
be perfectly clear--it is a solicitude different in kind from that which
is experienced by people passing _under_ a ladder.)
“And you, Chris?” she asked. “Will you love me all your life?”
“All my life and fifty years after.”
“You might be Mr. Solberg, the Register of Copyrights at Washington,”
said Frank.
“Isn’t Ferdinand beautiful?”
“As beautiful as my nose.”
Lord Ottercove was getting cheerier and cheerier, and he danced less
steadily than he was wont to do. “Now, Chris, don’t you make love to
Eva. Hands off! you married men! You haven’t been divorced a month. I at
least am a bachelor and can marry her to-morrow if the fancy takes us.
Can’t I, Eva? I’ll stop that crater mission of yours if you don’t take
yourself away in time.” He looked at Eva. “I’ve got to blow him up a
bit from time to time, or he gets too cocky, you know.”
“It’s me who will do it,” de Jones said.
“Do what?”
“Blow you all up.”
Lord Ottercove called the waiter and paid. While they were putting on
their coats and pushing through the door into the street, de Jones and
Frank lingering behind, Lord Ottercove jumped into the car after Eva,
slammed the door and drove off.
XXVIII.
THE REVELATION
“Well,” said Lord de Jones, taking Frank by the arm and leading him into
a similar establishment almost next door, “if they are off, we shall
continue by ourselves.” And he ordered more champagne and more chicken.
The hour was far advanced into the morning and the last revellers were
leaving the premises. The band played on sulkily for the two new
visitors and looked appealingly at the waiters. “Look here, Dickin,” de
Jones said, rather thickly, “you’re a jolly good sort and I am awful
fond of you.”
“I, too, I really am, very fond of you, more than I can say.”
The wine had done its noble work: they lived in a world of mutual and
uncritical esteem.
“By Jove, you’re a fine fellow, Dickin, that’s what you are! A fine
fellow. A _fine fellow_. And a damn good writer too!”
Frank remembered through his dim but blissful state that de Jones could
never be persuaded to read a book of any sort, let alone Frank’s novels,
but now this fact did not detract, but rather added value to the
sincerity of the noble lord’s appreciation. And, when, with swelling
heart, Frank answered, “And I feel, de Jones, you’re first among
contemporary scientists!” he really felt it. As the waiter opened a new
bottle of champagne, Lord de Jones lapsed into reminiscence. “Why do I
love that girl? Traits of her mother? As a young man I did not care for
women, and they did not care for me. You see what I look like. A
Frenchwoman once described my appearance as ‘_ignoble_’! But that one
when I saw her first in Russia! Now, of course, she is nothing much to
look at. But at that time she was extraordinarily good looking--better
than her daughters. I was constrained by her husband and was half blind
to her suggestive looks. I wouldn’t listen. Till one day as I was
leaving her she fell before me on the floor. That somehow got hold of my
senses. Raymond dates back to that incident, I believe. The vision of
her prostrate on the floor haunted me always. It made me come back to
her. I always went back. And now’s she’s too old.... I am drunk or I
wouldn’t be telling you this.”
He was silent a while. “Eva, Dickin,” he said. “He abducted her, but we
two can go on loving her more than _he_ will ever understand....”
Dickin’s eyes filled. “We love her,” he said. “We all love her. Perhaps
Ottercove too loves her. Why can’t we all love her and love one
another?”
“Don’t I know my excellent uncle Lord O.! Have you seen him sign himself
‘O.’? A tremendous O. Nevertheless, the numerical symbol.”
“You are hard on the baron.”
“Am I? I like his boyishness, his prodigious vitality. He is a Hannibal
playing quoits with the world. Not, I regret to say, because he loves
the world, but because he loves playing quoits. But a rather lovable
_enfant terrible_ all the same. He could have helped me. But he would
back out of it next day. He has no large plan of action; but he conceals
this very cleverly by dramatising every little situation on the spur of
the moment, improvising campaigns at the turn of an effective phrase,
and making you think that his least bit of whim is the component part of
a large premeditated whole.”
“I know. A sort of second inspiration known to dramatists, more clever
but more freakish than the main idea.”
“Exactly. But he has no main idea, unless it be a certain feeling for
caution, which, coupled with his second inspiration in which he is a
virtuoso, determines his success. He may turn into a great peacemaker
to-morrow, and the day after find himself uttering: ‘It is not peace I
have brought, but a sword,’ and side with the forces of war; and, in
turn, prove successful in each. I am bitter because I cannot get him to
help me in my mission without resorting to subterfuge, which maddens me.
This idiotic crop-growing scheme! He was quick enough to seize it for
his own journalistic ends without bothering to probe the scientific
aspect. If I could make him understand my real motive I might fire his
imagination for a day; but he would sleep on it (he always sleeps on all
important questions and telephones his decision in the morning), sleep
on it and ring me up at dawn: ‘Look here, Chris. It is a brilliant idea.
But I advise you against it. Why? It would not do you any good. Good-bye
to you,’ and hang up the receiver. ‘Do you no good.’ Not him, no! No
advertising possibilities. Actors and audience simultaneously reduced to
smithereens!
“Why should we regret it? Schopenhauer could not understand how it was
that man, in the teeth of all this pain and hell of life, had not the
sense and pluck to end it. Wherever I look, in every moment there is
pain. The pain of memory, the pain of anxiety, the pain of sheer
dullness, the pain of regret. You cannot think either backward or
forward for ten minutes without a pang of pain. Then why should we be
sorry to quit it, to take ourselves away to where pain cannot reach us?
“‘_Who breathes must suffer and who thinks must mourn,_
_And he alone is blest who ne’er was born._’
“It’s a poor life, Dickin. The more successful, the more multifarious
and sensitive, the more painful. We are, with our birth, caught in a
vice and cannot away. You don’t believe in the devil. But I do. The
brain is the devil. A malignant cancerous growth. It’s a mockery from
start to finish. We are simply made to chase after our own tail, and
Satan stands by and laughs: ‘Let us see whether they have sense and
pluck enough to end it.’ The mundane life is a blind avenue we have
strayed into while nobody was looking. We must get out. There is no
other course. We do not belong here. Do not the eyes of humans and
beasts alike tell you that we do not belong here? We must quit _en
masse_, get away.
“The cruelty and pain of this world. The pain and cruelty. Donkeys and
mules goaded with a stick; the resigned suffering in their eyes. The
Arabs cut their donkeys and then prod the wound: ‘Go on, damn you.’ And,
in the same way, we are all goaded. On the raw, or we won’t move. Goaded
by desire, remorse, love, hope, despair.... Hourly, minute by minute.
“This is not an age that believes in the coming of a new Messiah. It
believes, foolishly, in what it can touch and see. What will you say,
Dickin, when I tell you that already as a youth I had intimations of a
mission, of being a--don’t laugh--a new Messiah, clad not in fine
raiment, nor born in a manger, but in the fashion of the age
scientifically equipped! Christ showed the way, but lacked the
mechanical means. He said this visible world had to be completely and
utterly destroyed: He waited for the miracle: but none came. Christ had
love, but no dynamite.
“But not for ever will mankind be mocked. My friends, the hour of
deliverance is at hand. How is it?: ‘I am the Resurrection and the
Life.’ The Resurrection and the Life.” Suddenly his eyes were moist. He
wept.
As they walked back it was light and the birds were twittering in the
square.
XXIX.
When Frank knocked at Eva’s door there was no answer. As he flung
himself into bed the sun already pressed itself through the curtain.
The glowing earth swam in a silver sky. It swam and swam. And a shark
came out and followed it wanting to devour it. The poor earth had but
two fins and swam helplessly out of the reach of de Jones’s jaws. There
she was with all her cities and towns labouring to get away, panting
dreadfully; how hard he pushed her and how ineffectively. That was
because he was a passenger upon her and helpless as a man endeavouring
to accelerate the motion of a train. In his office on the top of the
roof, from the captain’s bridge, Ottercove shouted orders through a
megaphone: “Faster! faster! faster!” he cried. And the capitalists
whipped up the slaves and made them row faster. But a Trade Union strike
was just on and the miners and rowing men quitted their tools. And the
Prime Minister, as he urged the policemen to hearten them up with their
bayonet points, appealed to the galley slaves’ sense of duty and
patriotism and called on them “by a supreme effort, their loyalty and
solidarity in the cause of Humanity to save this planet, our Mother
Earth, the common heritage of all our race, from the treacherous jaws of
that monster,” while Ottercove from the bridge, whence there opened a
limitless view of the world, including Ludgate-hill and St. Paul’s,
shouted at them through the megaphone: “Faster, damn you! Still faster!”
Already de Jones’s huge lower jaw dropped and took water as he swam up
very close, and Frank’s heart stopped beating. The shark’s jaws opened
quite wide about to swallow the earth with London and Paris and Vienna
and all, and the men in the fields and the women and animals and the
suffering; and Ottercove from his bridge (pushing aside the Prime
Minister) encouraged the rowing men with a long, big stick, as de
Jones’s sharp teeth fastened upon the green flanks of the earth--an
enormous stick like the trunk of a tree: Bang! bang! bang! The knocking
grew louder.
Frank opened his eyes. “Come in,” he said.
The door opened admitting Gilbert’s tremulous frame. “Sorry to waken
you, sir, but his lordship asks if you will take breakfast with him in
his bedroom.”
He threw on his dressing-gown and followed the valet into his master’s
apartment, where he found the baron in bed, which was littered with
newspapers. “Well,” said Lord Ottercove genially, “I’ve got away with
the goods.” The balcony door was wide open. The blue Mediterranean
stretched out its paws and basked in the sun.
De Jones came in, and at the same time Eva in her pink dressing-gown and
red-heeled slippers sidled in from the adjoining room. “Gilbert,” she
said, “please wrap these up for me.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Let me introduce you to my wife,” said Ottercove.
“Your wife--?”
“We went and got married last night,” she explained.
“A brain wave,” said Ottercove. “I get such brain waves sometimes.”
“A happy thought,” said Eva.
“The second inspiration,” de Jones looked at Frank.
“Anyway I got the better of you two there,” said Ottercove uncertainly.
“You did,” said Eva. “It never occurred to them to do it. And I am sure
I gave you plenty of opportunities, Ferdinand.” Her tone was meek and
propitiating. “So it’s not my fault.”
“No, of course not. Still, it is a blow. One is never so keen on a thing
as when one has just lost it.”
Lord Ottercove smiled pleasantly. The assertion seemed to rehabilitate
his doubting judgment as to whether he had acted wisely overnight. “Of
course,” he said, “she’s a nice girl and wanted encouraging with
marriage to a man of brains and money who can do something with her. I
felt all along it would have been sheer waste throwing her away on
either of you. Casting pearls before swine, though I don’t, of course,
mean anything personal. Will you both lunch with us?”
At lunch Lord Ottercove was subdued. All competition had suddenly ceased
with his acclaim as the winner; yet he did not look at all as though he
had won the Derby. He looked as he must have felt: as if he had rolled
head over heels in his best trousers and torn a hole in the seat, and
that instead of everyone laughing and clapping they merely said to him,
“Go and change.” In passing things during lunch and helping himself he
looked a little shame-faced, and the three men were all glad when the
meal was over and they could go for a drive. Each wanted to be sure that
Eva took the ukulele with her to help them slide over the blank minutes.
Frank enjoyed riding about with Lord Ottercove in powerful motor-cars,
rapidly, rapidly, with a purposeful air, to no particular destination.
It was somehow, he felt, symbolical of Ottercove’s whole person. “Now,
Chris, shut up and let us hear what Dickin has to say.” And after
listening to Frank, “Now, Dickin, shut up. You’ve said enough. Chris,
let’s hear you.” Then: “Well, neither of you seem to have anything very
illuminating to say. I had better think it out myself.”
“You’re a genius,” said Frank. “A genius of God-knows-what; but a
genius!”
“Yes,” concurred de Jones, “there is no doubt at all about your
greatness; there may be some doubt about the quality of your greatness,
but no doubt about the greatness.”
“Yes, when you are without your spectacles, Rex, you look a genius,”
said Eva. “But the moment you put them on you look like a doctor or a
harassed business man, or a clergyman who says, ‘How are we this
morning?’”
“My heart,” said Lord Ottercove, “very jumpy to-day.”
“I think it’s the stomach,” said Eva.
“I think it’s the stomach,” said Ottercove gravely, but reassured.
“I think so,” said Frank. “Complete stoppage of the bowels.”
“Better go back and telephone for the doctor,” said Eva.
Lord Ottercove was touched if you chanced to ask about his health, and
now at Eva’s solicitude his eyes brimmed with tears. He took her hand
and stroked it. He was so moved by her attitude that he could not speak,
and only swallowed several times, and looked away. His health was not
too good. His boiler would suddenly demur in the midst of festivities
and pursue a mood of its own, and looking at the baron now as he
reclined hatless in the depth of the limousine, Dickin wondered if the
centre of his lordship’s mind was not--his expression suggested
it--superintending the issues fought within him.
“No wonder,” Eva said, “your nose is red and shiny with all this
whizzing up and down in motor-cars and not a moment’s quietness.”
He stroked her hand and went to sleep.
Frank looked a long time at Eva, reproachfully, before he asked in a
whisper: “Why, why did you marry him? Why?”
“I thought it would please Pilling.”
“And I am forgotten! It didn’t take long.”
“But you are married yourself.”
“True. I’d forgotten.”
“Rex telegraphed last night after we had got married for Mummy and Zita
and Pilling and Raymond and all to come out. ‘Let ’em all come out, the
whole bag o’ tricks of them!’ he said. And we were married by a
funny-looking parson; Rex had to pull him out of bed to marry us. He
gave him five minutes to slip into some clothes, and a hundred pounds of
money, and he married us in the sitting room without any trouble; said
it would be all right. I was so pleased it was definite. But Rex looked
puzzled and worried and talked to himself all the time, and when we were
back in the car he said he must have walked upstairs to the clergyman’s
flat in his sleep and wondered whether what he had just done could not
be undone perhaps by the Pope if he said he was a sleep-walker. But I
said the law was sacred and definite for better or worse. And when we
were all alone in the car and I began kissing him because he was my
husband and expected him to behave like a bridegroom, he was so scared
and looked through the window as though he wanted to jump out. And I
held him back and tried to calm him down, and he kept saying: ‘My God!
My God!’ And he asked me what had happened on the hill then? And I said,
‘Read Ferdinand’s serial.’ And he said, ‘Did it happen as in the
serial?’ I said, ‘Read the serial and never mind what happened.’ And so
he looked as though he’d gone and paid a huge price for something he’d
bought at a shop and then got home and found it was quite rotten.”
“You may be his wife, Eva,” de Jones said, “but first and foremost you
are my secretary. And you shall remain with me for the duration of my
mission.”
“Yes, I will do my best, Chris, to help you grow wheat.”
He laughed. “They will believe anything--anything. But if ever you
conceive something really terrible, nobody will hinder you but they will
let you blow them up into smithereens with the sympathetic assistance of
the Ottercoves and such who will believe the first cock-and-bull story
that you choose to tell them.”
Lord Ottercove opened one eye and glared with it at de Jones, then
closed it.
“Let us change the conversation,” Eva said.
Pointing at a pillared villa, “I like that pillared thing,” Frank said.
“It asserts itself on the surrounding landscape. It’s a yea-saying to
life! None of your snivelling English houses looking like half-built
factories of red brick, hiding their faces as if ashamed of themselves.”
“Buy it, Rex, just for the two of us,” said Eva.
“I’ll buy it,” said the baron.
They got out and bought it, and then motored back to Nice in time for
tea.
After tea, de Jones took Frank by the arm and marched him up and down
the deserted, wind-swept Promenade des Anglais. “Why did he marry that
girl, Dickin? He had no notion of it when he left us at Maxime’s last
night. Just to be able to say to us in the morning: ‘I’ve got away with
the goods.’ For the love of the phrase. And mind you, he didn’t seduce
her--no fun in that, no advertisement! altogether too ordinary--but he
married her to do something more striking that may arouse comment. He
just felt that he owed it to himself and his brains and his money and
all to afford a real piece of folly.”
“No, de Jones, it is we who are the fools for not having married her.
His second inspiration has not failed him. It never does. He has
enriched the rest of his life. Her sheer livingness is inexhaustible
and--I can see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice--you love her as I
do, more and more, to my dismay. All art is the translation of the
subjective into an object. Thus I prefer Eva to earnest women who can
talk of Pessimism and Buddhism but have no living and spontaneous form
themselves. When an object like Eva shows no visible sign of containing
a subject but appeals beyond all analysis, it may be taken that the
divine spirit has found in her a happy home. She is God’s art, perfect
like a flower.”
“You are right, Dickin. The soul wants fresh food, just the same as the
body. And what some please to call the divided soul is the taste of a
spiritual epicure whose crime and curse is that he does not care for
preserved food. My excellent uncle Lord O. must always have everything
of the best.”
“Oh, the memory of that first kiss! How she came into my arms, pliable
like a young plant. The hot sun, the menace of our end, and the longing
not to die unmarried. De Jones, I can’t believe that I have lost her.
She will have all his houses and horses and servants to play with.”
“But not all the King’s horses, not all the King’s men, can put
Humpty-Dumpty together again.”
When in the evening Frank returned to his rooms, he found a gold watch
on his table. The watch was studded with large diamonds and inside was
the engraved inscription:
“_From Eva Ottercove_
_With Love._”
When he entered the Ottercove’s suite and lingered in the drawing-room
he was startled by the animated conversation which reached him from the
adjoining bedroom. “Now don’t you think,” said a grieved, perhaps
somewhat sarcastic voice, unmistakably the baron’s, “you should have
taken me into your counsels instead of first disposing of the watch and
then sending the jeweller to me for the money?”
“But you haven’t seen it!” the baroness rejoined impatiently. “It’s not
at all expensive for what it is; it’s all in diamonds. What’s the use of
your saying anything when you haven’t _seen_ it?”
“Just so. Don’t you think I should have seen it, in view of your youth
and inexperience, instead of laying yourself out to be swindled?”
“It’s nothing to you even to be swindled, so why make any bones about
it?”
This seemed to disarm the other for a space. “Why do you do these
things?” he then asked sadly.
“I wanted to please him.”
“But you could have waited a little, or asked.”
“You are an awful old miser,” she said, “and I am sorry I ever married
you.”
“I see that I shall have to engage a governess to go about with you and
chaperone you for a bit.”
“You are a walking mountain of impudence!” said the baroness, “and I
don’t know what God was about when he made you!”
XXX.
Eva’s comment was not lost on Lord Ottercove. When next morning they
drove to the Beau-Site in Cannes, Lord Ottercove wore a more becoming
pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.
“Just gone and settled their affairs,” he said, coming out on to the
sunny terrace, where Eva’s relatives awaited him against the background
of an ornamental garden and tennis courts on which rich Americans and
English exercised their limbs all day.
“Very charming and touching,” said Mrs. Kerr. “But you should not have
put yourself out, Lord Ottercove. Raymond would have settled my bill, I
am sure. He is his mother’s boy.”
“Mummy, you are too silly for words!” Zita flared up. “Where does
Raymond get his money?”
“From Eleonor of course.”
“And Eleonor?”
“From her uncle.”
“Well?”
“But I give it all to Chris.”
“Mummy is so stupid. She always draws wrong conclusions from everything.
There she goes about with that ‘Please trample on me’ look, smoking
cigarettes all day, agreeing with everybody. She takes Italian lessons
at five shillings an hour, and in order to make up for it gives golfing
lessons at five shillings an hour, and then takes her pupils out to tea,
and spends ten shillings; or has her portrait done in the café; always
invites everybody, stands drinks and cigarettes all round, pays for
everybody; speaks to everybody in the restaurants--Italians, Germans,
Scandinavians.”
“She is a white woman,” muttered Lord Ottercove.
“You know what I’ll tell you, Lord Ottercove! I am disappointed in
Fyodor Ferdinandovitch. I knew nothing--nothing about it, till I read it
in _Pale Primroses_. Naturally I asked the girls, and it all came out.”
“I know.”
“But both! _Both!_”
“He didn’t wish to leave either out, for fear of offending the other, I
guess.”
“Mrs. Kerr,” said Frank, “I appeal to your idealism and good sense. In
the severity of your indignation, you did not sufficiently allow for
the circumstances in which, if I may put it thus, the drama was played.
Picture the scene. All around us, an epic panorama, and I alone with two
girls ... lovely girls ... the mountain spring ... certain death--and
Shakespeare’s immortal lines--
“‘_O Proserpina!_
_For the flowers now that frighted thou let’st fall_
_From Dis’s waggon! daffodils,_
_That come before the swallow dares, and take_
_The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,_
_But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes_
_Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses_
_That die unmarried, ere they can behold_
_Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady_
_Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and_
_The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,_
_The flower-de-luce being one! Oh! these I lack_
_To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,_
_To strew him o’er, and o’er._’
“These loyal girls!” He placed a hand on either sister’s shoulder, and
drew them to him. “These splendid girls!”
“Whom you have dishonoured!”
“Tut-tut, Mummy!” said Zita. “You mustn’t blurt these things out! Morty
will murder Frank if he knows.”
“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “I have made an honest woman of one of
them at any rate--sorry, can’t do it to both.”
“I do not understand you, Lord Ottercove.”
“I have made an honest woman of Eva.”
“Explain it to me, please. I don’t understand.”
“I have married her.”
There was a pause. Mrs. Kerr looked round at them all, and satisfied
herself that the statement was a bona-fide one.
“Well--I am very pleased. I must say that you have chosen well and
wisely. She will make a good wife to you. I congratulate you both.”
“I hope, Mrs. Kerr,” Frank said, “that your grudge against me is over. I
trust that you will rejoice in your daughter’s happiness, and will ever
remember that the assignation of unworthy motives never helps but
weakens an argument.”
“Dickin talks rot, but always with conviction. He would make a good
lawyer,” said Ottercove.
“Yes, or a great priest,” said Frank, obviously pleased with himself. “I
like to practise my oratorical gift.”
“Now let’s make a night of it!” proposed Mrs. Kerr.
Lord Ottercove did not reply. Lord Ottercove hated to act on other
people’s suggestions and as a rule “advised them against it,” and if
pressed for his reasons, produced arguments so cynically free from
plausibility that he seemed himself amused by their bewildering effect
on his opponent. If he approved of a suggestion, he said nothing; then,
a few moments later, made it himself.
“I am taking you out to-night, all of you,” he said.
Pilling took Frank by the arm and marched him ahead, while the others
followed behind at a distance.
“Glad you done it,” he said. “I thought it was me. My conscience sort of
worried me. It’s a dirty thing to do. Glad you done it.”
“Damn it all, Pilling! It was a hill. Spring! Sunshine! You know those
lines from Shakespeare?
“‘_O Proserpina,_
_For the flowers now that frighted--_’”
“Shut up, Dickin!”
“You don’t realise the situation. We thought it was the end for us.”
“I realise. _Force majeure._ That white-washes it a bit. Otherwise, you
know, I doubt whether you would be eligible for the best clubs.”
“Still, I am disappointed in Ferdinand Fyodorovitch,” said Mrs. Kerr,
coming up from behind.
“I appeal to your idealism,” said Frank automatically. “As I said, the
sun, the mountain spring--and those immortal lines--‘_O
Proserpina!..._’”
They would not let him go on. Strange: the moment he began to quote
those lovely lines, they would look sullen and angry, and ask him to
“shut up.” It seemed as if they regarded his appeals to Shakespeare as
in bad taste; till he would lose his temper. “It would really seem that
my great crime consisted in getting saved!”
Eleonor, after some consultation with Raymond, came up to her uncle and
took him aside. “It’s all very well,” she said, “Chris having adopted
Raymond. But suppose Chris marries again and has a child of his own?”
“Then we must get him married at once.”
“Married! That is just what we are anxious to prevent, for fear it might
result in a male child.”
“Married, of course, to somebody who is beyond hope of begetting
children,” said Ottercove.
“But who?”
“To his old love, of course--Mrs. Kerr.”
“But how do you know she can’t have a child?”
“Her doctor told me in confidence.”
“But he will refuse!”
“We must bring pressure to bear on him.”
“How?”
“Chris is ruined, and he’s used to spending money. He knows I won’t give
him a penny, and, in fact, he won’t have it from me. He likes to feel
independent towards me. But of course, it’s only natural that Raymond,
married to my niece who draws on my account to an unlimited extent,
can’t help, good and loving son that he is, helping his mother. And
Chris, married to her, will be all right.”
“Raymond and I want to marry next week in Paris,” said Eleonor.
Lord Ottercove’s lips moved almost silently. “Why not marry here? I know
a chap--a parson--most obliging. Pulled him out of bed the other night
to marry us. Read the marriage ceremony unruffled.”
“Yes, most obliging,” Eva concurred.
“And you, Chris? And you, Mrs. Kerr?”
“What’s that?”
“Why don’t you get married?”
“I don’t know that it’s very safe to attach me to her with the tape of a
spent passion.”
“Look here, I’ve got hold of a fellow--a pastor of some obscure
denomination. Very accommodating. He will remarry you all. What d’you
think of it?”
“I am very glad, Chris, to be of use. You are a genius--”
“Of the untried,” said Ottercove.
“A real genius in science. And I want to help you in your discoveries.
Yes, I do. Take the case of the Curies.”
“You mean Monsieur and Madame Curie?”
“Yes, I do. You will instruct me in your science and we will make new
discoveries together, you and I, Christopher!”
“Help us!” Turning to Frank, he whispered: “They think they have got the
better of me there. But the boot is on the other foot! What do I care
whether I am blown up--single or married?”
“So in the end, all are satisfied,” said Ottercove.
“Except my poor ancestors,” murmured de Jones.
“Who are dead.”
“Who are dead.”
Pilling seemed pleased and impressed. “Lord Ottercove,” he remarked, as
if out of the baron’s hearing, but loud enough for the baron to hear,
“is a man of wide sympathies.”
“He is a live wire,” from de Jones.
That night, dashing off to Monte Carlo, where Lord Ottercove was
entertaining them, Pilling was seen to step into the baron’s car, who
not only did not seem to resent this intrusion, but actually welcomed
him with a smile. “I have, as you say, wide sympathies. When I see a man
struggling to get out of the water, I can’t resist helping him. It is my
nature,” he was heard to say, stepping out of the car.
And, stepping again into the car with Pilling close on his heels, on the
way back to Nice, he was heard to say: “I have an interest in a number
of hotels which brings me in--er--about--er--three hundred thousand
pounds a year, and I’ll finance you in your undertaking,” and slam the
door behind him.
Next day, Mrs. Kerr, who always liked to show off herself and hers,
called her new husband into the bathroom while John was shaving. “Look,
look!” she said. “What a big sponge John has!” But Christopher looked
as though he wished the sponge had been smaller, and the dowry larger.
The same day Frank picked up, in the lounge of the hotel, a newspaper,
which informed him:
“Among the new arrivals at the Hotel Mauresco are Lord and Lady
Ottercove, Viscount and Viscountess de Jones, Mr. Frank Dickin, the
novelist, and the Honourable and Mrs. Raymond Mosquito.”
XXXI.
Since the wedding had taken place in Nice, the bride and bridegroom felt
that they had to “get away” for their honeymoon, and elected a voyage by
yacht. “I have got away with the goods,” said Lord Ottercove, “and I
must get away with them.”
“I must leave at once,” said de Jones.
“I agree,” from Ottercove.
But as de Jones would not part with his secretary, and the new Lady de
Jones would not part with her husband, they all left together, Frank as
a supernumerary.
Perhaps, as a result of his marriage to Mrs. Kerr, Lord de Jones found
delight in concentrating on his missionary work, dictating for hours and
hours to Eva, who complained of “her poor brains.” He dictated to her,
and made her read aloud her shorthand, and every time it seemed to him a
mystery and a miracle. He did not really believe anyone capable of
deciphering those puzzled and bewildered little signs they made.
He was beautifully in love with her, and every word she typed seemed to
him a romance. He scanned the typescript, and suddenly perceived a
letter she had erased with her own darling fingers so as to insert the
right one: his heart filled with tears.
Frank conceived it his duty to warn her. “Be careful of him. This
dictating is all very well, but it’s not the end of the business. It’s
unwholesome to be alone with that man. He can--he can--”
“He can do nothing.”
“He can seduce you.”
“You have.”
“True. I’d forgotten.”
She looked at him quizzically.
“You don’t know that Chris--yes, I might as well say it plainly--well,
you know as well as I do about Chris and your mother.”
“They are married.”
“Now they are. They haven’t before. Raymond is a living indictment of
their relations.”
“Yes--Raymond--he somehow never cared for his father. But I don’t mind
Chris loving me, because he is a friend of Mummy’s.”
“I have nothing further to say.”
“Thank goodness for that!”
But he would return at once with more to say.
“You shouldn’t make yourself so cheap, Eva!”
“Why shouldn’t I? He is so lonely, and never had a nice girl to love
him.”
“Eva!”
“It gives him so much pleasure, and it’s so little trouble to me.”
“You leave my girl wife alone!” said Ottercove, coming upon Chris and
Eva suddenly in the seclusion of the Captain’s bridge. “Why don’t you
leave the girl alone?”
De Jones blinked at him. “There is a divinity,” he said, “that shapes
our ends, rough-hew them as we may.”
“You’ve got your wife, Chris. What do you want with mine?”
“She reminds me of her mother,” said de Jones.
“Ha! Not so bad!”
“She’s more like her mother was than her mother is.”
“But I’ve got away with the goods!” He strolled up and down several
times, and then stopped, peering at the horizon. “Oh, my heart!”
“I think it’s the stomach,” said Chris.
“Yes, I think it’s the stomach,” said Ottercove.
“Poor darling!” from Eva.
At that, tears came to his eyes, and he turned away to hide his
emotion.
XXXII.
_Fliesse, fliesse, lieber Fluss!_
_Nimmer werd’ ich froh;_
_So verrauschte Scherz und Kuss_
_Und die Treue so._
_Goethe._
Everything went wrong with Frank; he could succeed in nothing. He had no
luck in anything--but he won steadily at ping-pong. He was rapidly
losing his hair. But on that score he was optimistic. As his hair fell
out more and more, he lost neither courage nor faith, but interpreted
this as a process preparatory to new growth. The new hair which was to
make its appearance must, he argued, have room; and the old hair was
making room for it--with alacrity. When, after a time, it had entirely
disappeared, he judged that now at last the field was clear for a fresh
crop. And, as if to compensate him for his premature bereavement on the
top, dispassionate nature started a particularly bristling, pushful
growth out of his nostrils. Even so, his faith in the value of human
striving had not deserted him. All other remedies having failed, he
determined to grow hair by sheer strength of will. And he was
succeeding--succeeding....
Lord Ottercove devoted more and more time to reading. He had always been
a great reader, but now, since his marriage to Eva, he spent all the
day with her reading a book to himself. He had always been bored, but
now, married to her, he seemed more bored than ever before.
The haze and hurry, the dreamy unreality of modern life. Frank was
bewildered rather than bored with it. He was thrown like flotsam into
the stream and was swept along. But he would step out--and life would be
timeless. He could not tell how passionately he craved to step out of
life in time, while he was with de Jones, Mrs. Kerr, and Ottercove.
The scrambling on the part of the three men for the favours of Eva, as
the yacht made its way towards Rome, was too much for Frank, and he left
them at Genoa, travelling north by rail.
And now, as he looked back, the bleak hours he once spent with Eva
seemed coloured beads wetted in light and translucent with a meaning.
The actual giving at the time was crude and like a pain. The remembrance
of it, as it grew more distant, was as the faint perfume of roses, a
romance far off. Dead, perhaps, we see these things completely. He
remembered how in that first kiss she had pressed herself, a pliant
plant, against him, and closed her eyes, as if to shut in the vision:
there was something in her movement half instinctive which thrilled him
in one so young; half naïve, as though she had only read of it in books
and now, for the first time, was tasting love, and staging it, in actual
life! He remembered how at his dentist’s one day, they had sat together
side by side on the narrow sofa in the waiting-room, and as the
attendant turned his back on them, he had touched her thigh and knee
(oh, thigh! oh, knee!), and at once when they were out, and in the taxi,
she had kissed him on his dentisted mouth. He remembered too, how she
had written to him once about a Cambridge “student,” alleged to have
given her circumstantial proof of his, Ferdinand’s, unfaithfulness, and
when he wrote to her demanding that she substantiate the charge, and
challenged her to identify the Cambridge “student,” her writing back:
“Let us drop the subject, as the matter is muddling.” Or how, after
saying to him: “You must absolutely send me roses for my birthday
to-morrow, Ferdinand!” she telegraphed next day: “Please don’t send
flowers;” and the basket of flowers he sent her in gallant disregard of
her wire crossed her letter to him containing a bill for £5 for a
costume she could not resist acquiring, and which she lent forthwith to
a friend who did not come back with it. At the time he resented this
overture. Now, in retrospect, it moved him: did it not show a touching
solicitude not to lead him into needless expense in the face of an
already existing bill--when she might so easily have asked for both! He
now thought of her feelings when one day he had spoken to her like a
boor, and barely tried to conceal his tedium in her presence. He
remembered the moistened look in her eye, the curve of her brow, the
twitch of her lashes. And these metaphors of love stirred and racked his
soul.
In Milan, cold, sparse, and unfriendly, where at nightfall woeful
figures dotted the wide, deserted, wind-swept streets, his heart, grown
tender through memory, constricted in sombre anguish. “Poor women!” he
thought.
Getting into the Vienna express at midnight, into a coupé in which the
blinds were drawn and the passengers asleep, his mood darkened and
deepened. A siren at his side, opening her eyes at his intrusion,
resumed a desultory conversation with another, a pale coughing girl,
with whom she was travelling north where “trade” was deemed to be
better. “On arrival,” she flustered, “I must buy myself some new hair,
and then you will wait for me downstairs while I go up and see Francesca
about giving us a room.” The girl close to him addressed him in Italian.
“I do not speak Italian,” Frank said. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes,” she said, articulating deliberately: “we have no b-hananas; we
have no b-hananas to--day.”
Was that all she knew of English? No, there were other words she knew.
“Love”--“kiss”--“cheque-book.” Did he have a cheque-book? Englishmen,
she said, always had a cheque-book. It was, she thought, their
distinguishing characteristic. Where were they going? To Budapest--where
they had once lived with their parents. “At the time when we were still
honest,” she added.
“Fallen women! Lost women! Poor lost women!”
“In this world we are all lost men and women,” echoed a voice in him to
the shattering rhythm of the train.
All lost men and women. Lost. Some more luxuriously lost than others,
but all, all lost. Lost and damned. No escape!
He closed his eyes. Lost, lost, lost ... lost, lost, lost....
A long, wide, endless road stretched before him. He is walking down that
road, the road to Purgatory. What is the crowd outside that house? He
stops and watches. They are carrying out an open coffin with a young
girl in it. The old harpies in the crowd shake their heads. “She took
her life.” “What, took her life?” “She has been betrayed by a young
good-for-nothing.” “No, she died in childbirth.”
“Let me! Let me!” He rushes to her. “I was the first to cause her fall.
Oh, wait! Don’t close the lid! O, Eva! Dearest heart. She died for love
... like Fräulein Else.”
He sheds hot tears as he kneels on her cold tomb which hides her and her
young white purity. But as he rises and leaves the cemetery, she follows
silently behind him to the gate, where, sensing something, he turns
round. “Eva!”
“I don’t want to be buried. I am yours,” she says, coming to him in her
long white shroud. “Take me away with you.”
They kiss. He is forgiven....
“What’s this?” He opens his eyes, heavy with tears.
“Verona. A stop of forty minutes,” imparts his vis-à-vis, “and there is
a cold buffet.”
Another dream, another life!
XXXIII.
He found himself, largely against his intention, writing long letters to
Eva. But Eva never wrote--only cabled. He had cables from Stockholm and
Moscow, Pekin and Buenos Ayres. It was not until they were nearing home
that Frank had a letter from her. Christopher de Jones, she wrote, was
madly in love with her. “_He said he wanted me to be his entirely and
everlastingly, if you know what I mean. I let him have his way because
he says he is quite serious about blowing up the world, and I think if
he had a little baby of his own, shurely he wouldn’t do such a thing.
But Rex does not agree with me. I told him all the truth about
Christopher and he says he is going to divorce me. I am furious, and He
is Furious. Never mind Darling, if I flirt with him he won’t divorce
me._”
Frank planned to stay abroad for a long time to come. He would not
return to England, perhaps for years. One morning, however, he received
advice from Victoria Station that his cloak-room expenses in respect of
a trunk he had forwarded to his address in London, and which could not
be opened by the Custom officials as he had not sent them the key, were
piling up in geometrical progression, rising hourly, minute by minute.
The news shocked him out of his resolution to stay away from England.
Hiring a special motor, he rushed headlong to the station and caught the
express train to Boulogne, only to learn, on his arrival at Victoria,
that his cloak-room expenses amounted to seventeen shillings and
ninepence. He felt as a man, who, arriving breathless at the station,
finds that the train is not due for another half-hour. He was that kind
of man--the business side of life was a perpetual nightmare to him.
Having arrived in England, he made up his mind to stay there. A month
later, he recorded in his journal:
“_There is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon. The
magnetic O. usurps more and more of my interest. Late at night we
dash into the country, spending the night at his resplendent
country house, and rush back to town in the morning. Feverish
activity. Articles are written, printed, and forgotten; to-day’s
paper lights to-morrow’s fire. It goes on--dances and
entertainments; the dinners and drinks of to-day are washed away
into the ocean to-morrow. ‘To-morrow and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
creeps in this petty pace from day to day, till the last syllable
of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way
to dusty death,’ O, if only this were all to end, change soon, this
vexatious, unavailing life in time! Don’t make it long, O Lord!_
“_Yesterday I visited Bourne Abbey (Ottercove’s country house) with
O. and Eva. As we went upstairs I sniffed the air; there seemed to
be a queer musty smell. I asked O. what it was. ‘I am sorry,
Dickin,’ he said. ‘I am very sorry that there should be a smell.’
Eva seemed quite at home; no trace of self-consciousness--a perfect
hostess._
“_Last week Christopher de Jones came to me. The electric light had
failed, and his face looked worn and secretive by candle light,
like a monk’s. The lines round his mouth had deepened, too. We
talked of the end of the world; his voice and general attitude were
apocalyptic. He ended by making a confession. ‘You know why I
always come here. It is because you know her. I come to you so as
to talk of her. You love her. And I--I--I--‘_
“_I should welcome the change foreshadowed in the Apocalypse. For
time is a cheat, and life a snare. It is the curse of life in time
that it can only give us one thing at a time, while a latent memory
of Eden in us longs for all things all the time; ‘and nothing’ says
Shakespeare, (meaning not-being) ‘brings me all things.’
‘Abwarten,’ (abide, or perhaps better: mark time) was Goethe’s
motto in the wisdom of old age. But while conscious of the mirage
of love and freedom (for here again, while all the world seems open
to you, you must needs trail a narrow path, zigzag it as you will),
I have not the strength of will to forego their piecemeal
felicities with their fickle promise of what life was before the
fall. And so it is that though I expect nothing from life (and thus
have agreeable surprises), I shall live it (as one would say of
reading an unpromising manuscript) with interest, till we are
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump._
“_And, aye, there is hope! Lord de Jones has bought a penny trumpet
and threatens to shatter us all into dust. Well, we shall see. Or,
rather, we shall not see. Cease seeing. I wonder which...._”
XXXIV.
Lord de Jones put down the newspaper, and closed his eyes. After the
reading of a newspaper, particularly a Sunday newspaper, he generally
experienced an acute feeling of nausea, as though he had eaten a fruit
salad of the very worst kind. And indeed there was enough in it to-day
to disconcert a sensitive reader. There was the “Dog Election” in
England; the Fundamentalist-Evolutionist feud in America growing into
what looked very like a civil war; and a European embroglio likely to
develop into a new world war overnight. Yet in all three cases the
initial cause of contention had been so slight that but for the gravity
of the consequences he would have dismissed it all as unreal.
The “Dog Election” which had shaken the country in the second half of
April had its origin, he recalled, in Frank Dickin’s, on a previous
evening, as he was hurrying to keep an appointment with Lord Ottercove,
slipping on the pavement and, in his indignation, recommending to his
host the wholesale extermination of the breed of dogs. Lord Ottercove,
who had made a note of it at the time, caused it to be described in his
newspapers as a public nuisance which the government should put a speedy
end to, and when, a week later, a prominent member of Parliament slipped
and broke his leg, Lord Ottercove’s newspapers rose _en masse_ against
dogs. In a hundred years’ time, one of his papers affirmed, historians
would note with horror that in the first half of the twentieth century
dogs were allowed complete license of behaviour in the public
thoroughfares. An altogether unexpected outburst of support from
readers, thousands of whom had apparently been storing up for many years
a somewhat unmanly resentment against the dog race, emboldened Lord
Ottercove to push the matter to extremities. DOGS MUST GO--his posters
cried in unison. Now the Prime Minister, a man of inconspicuous
curiosity, and an overwhelming sense of right and wrong, read these
articles. A country squire, who had been persuaded to shoulder the
burden of government much against his inclination, he was a confirmed
dog lover. The thought of exterminating our dumb and loyal friends was
repugnant to him. But his conscience told him that pavements erected
with the taxpayers’ money were being abused by caninity; accidents were
accumulating, deaths might ensue any day. The dogs were in the wrong;
yes, the dogs must go. It was his duty to carry out the policy however
unpopular, if he thought it a matter of duty that the policy should be
carried out. And he was a man of duty. “Exterminate the dog breed!”
became the slogan and policy (though largely against the advice of the
older statesmen) of the Conservative Party. The Liberal Party, it would
seem, had only been waiting for that. Assisted and advised by Lord
Ottercove, they made “The Preservation and Protection of Our Friend the
Dog” the chief item of their party programme. “Joe,” (as he was called
by his intimates) the Liberal leader, temperamentally repelled by dogs,
had been photographed sitting in a basket chair, a grave-eyed poodle
with his front legs across the Liberal leader’s knees. “The heart of
England is sound,” they said, stealing the Tory touch, “so long as she
remains a dog-loving Nation.” And again: “Do away with the dogs: and the
country will assuredly go with them!”
“Where will it go?” from a heckler (put there by the Liberal candidate
himself).
“To the dogs, sir!” blandly and crushingly.
Loud laughter.
The Labour Party unfortunately split itself over the issue. The more
responsible section sympathised with the socialising efforts of the
Conservative Prime Minister; the other half resented the adoption on the
part of the reactionaries of what by the look and sound of it should
have been a Socialist programme, and they were helped by the lovers of
whippets and rabbit coursing and the gamblers who flocked to the dog
races. The controversy grew in passion; something not unlike a civil war
loomed behind this sinister antagonism; a St. Bartholomew Night
threatened from day to day, a pogrom with extensive dog massacres having
been organised by the more energetic Die-hard section of the Tory Party
who did not believe in half measures, distrusted the Prime Minister’s
tendency to conciliation and compromise and were anxious to check his
retreat and by forcing his hand oblige him to take a firm stand. Till
_The Nation_, commenting in a leading article upon the situation that
had arisen over the “Right of Dog” question, pointed out with
characteristic pertinence and good sense that in the heat of passion the
main issue had been overlooked, as usual, namely, whether there was not
a possibility of doing away with the indubitable nuisance caused by dogs
who are wrongly granted the freedom of the pavement, without necessarily
doing away with the dogs themselves. _The New Statesman_ and _The
Spectator_ raised the same question in their individual voice. But
nobody cared to listen to them. The Conservative Government resigned on
a vote of confidence, and in the General Election which ensued the
Liberals carried everything before them.
In America, Lord de Jones read, there was a growing feud between
Fundamentalists and Evolutionists. An Evolutionist had declared that he
was ready to appear at a Fundamentalist meeting and “dare” God to smite
him dead. An ardent Fundamentalist disciple, believing that he was
serving his cause, connected the steel platform on which the
Evolutionist was speaking by a wire with the main electric current of
the premises, thereby electrocuting the Evolutionist in the very act of
his challenge. Details, however, leaked out by and by, resulting in what
threatened to become a religious war between the two faiths hardly to be
paralleled since the Wars of the Crusades, if then. The Fundamentalist
declared at his trial that in so far as God Himself had put the idea
into his head, it was the hand of God that had struck down the
blasphemer; and in his summing-up the judge directed the jury to
determine just how far it was God and how far devilry. The jury were
reluctant to pass a verdict of “guilty” against so almighty a being, and
Counsel at a subsequent trial conceded so much to the scientific bias of
the day as to declare that the electrocution of the Evolutionist was in
the nature of a miracle intended to create and sustain faith, elevating
an otherwise unimportant mechanical trick into the realms of the
supernatural. The Fundamentalist was acquitted; and in the ensuing riots
directed by outraged Free Thinkers and Revolutionaries against the
headquarters of the Fundamentalists in Massachusetts, the responsible
leaders of the faith, though admitting the uncalled-for action and
excessive zeal of their feather-brained disciple who, while wishing to
assist their cause, had unwittingly damaged it, yet claimed that a
little trick like that could not implicate the essential wisdom of their
faith nor undermine the foundations of Fundamentalism.
All over the world, Lord de Jones knew, and particularly in England, the
struggle between capital and labour grew more bitter and, as time went
on, threatened to develop into a general revolution; to side-track which
the respective Governments agreed to have a war. A _casus belli_ was
looked for; and was found. A Russian Tsarist “Government” living in
exile in Paris had published its claims on Eastern Prussia which once
upon a time was Slav; inasmuch as Petrograd (though this they were
reluctant to admit) had once been Finnish soil, and was now being
claimed by a Fascist Government in Helsingfors whose motto was “A
Greater Finland!” Germany, while admitting the justice of the Finnish
claims, disputed those of Russia; and Russia, while disputing the
Finnish claim to Petrograd, insisted on its own to Eastern Prussia. The
new war was broadly (and amicably) conceived on these lines, and the
British Government, declaring that it could not countenance another war
in Europe, plunged into it--so as to stop it.
Lord Ottercove hailed the prospect of war (in lieu of revolution) with
mixed feelings of journalistic felicity and human discomfiture. As the
probability--and later the unavoidability--of war became more certain,
the humane resistance in him yielded to the _force majeure_ of patriotic
excitement, and he wrote himself the leading article, heading it: “The
Nation Demands--.” And the nation, reading it at breakfast next morning,
felt that, yes, it was in them to demand, and they demanded and would
not sheathe the sword until they had fought to utter exhaustion. And
young men from the public schools were already training in bayonet drill
on the lawns of Kensington Gardens under sergeants whose dictum, oft
repeated, was that the war was to be won by saluting by numbers. Grey
haired City men were forming fours everywhere, and, as a relaxation from
it, forming two deep. Once again there was “A Cause.”
When, to forget the war, Lord de Jones turned in to a music hall
matinée, a comedian was singing:
“_I joined the Army yesterday,_
_So the Army of to-day_
_’S all right;_
and a stoutish prima donna replied in mezzo soprano:
“_I didn’t like you, John,_
_Before you joined the Army, John;_
_I like you now_
_You’ve got your khaki on!_”
and displayed her fat legs in a whirl.
XXXV.
One afternoon in early spring, when the streets of London resounded with
bugles and drums calling the manhood of Britain to rise in arms in
defense of Russia’s menaced right to Petrograd and Germany’s ownership
of Eastern Prussia, a dark curled, hazel-eyed girl rang the bell of
Stonedge House and asked for Lady Ottercove, who a moment later greeted
the visitor with astonished delight.
“Baby!” she exclaimed and threw her arms around her neck. She dragged
Baby by the hand into the drawing-room, and from the drawing-room into
the second drawing-room, and from the second drawing-room into the
ball-room, and then up to her beautiful bedroom; and in all the rooms
Baby displayed astonishment and rapture. “I have another house,” Eva
said, “in the country, and Rex has another small house in town where we
go when we wish to be alone with nobody to bother us, and I have a
villa near Nice and a Rolls and lots of servants and everything, and
more money than I know what to do with.”
“Not really!”
“Oh, yes! And Rex is very pleased with me, he says, and very proud.”
And indeed, every one of Lord Ottercove’s friends could testify that Eva
proved an admirable hostess. She seemed to carry out her duties with
ease and without self-consciousness; she had learnt the essentials of
the game by hearsay; and there was something so fresh, naïve,
spontaneous about her nature that men found her irresistible. And women
she did not bother about.
“Aren’t you terribly, _terribly_ happy?” Baby asked.
Eva suddenly looked a little grave and sad. “Can you,” she said, “keep a
secret?”
Baby said she could.
“If you can,” said Eva, “I will do something for you.”
“Really? What?”
“Save your life.”
“No?”
“Yes. I will tell you if you promise never, _never_ to say a word of it
to anyone. It’s about Christopher de Jones. All these years he has been
wanting to blow up the earth with all the people, etcetera, on it, and
when we were in Greece and he descended into a deep, deep crater which
he said was the deepest crater of them all, going right down into the
bowels of the earth, he said to me that he had only to disintegrate one
single atom in it to blow up all the earth with all the people on it
into smithereens. But I said that this was very, very wicked of him, so
he said that suffering humanity had suffered long enough and that if he
blew it up it would no longer suffer pain, and so on, but that as he
loved me more than anything else on earth he wished to spend the last
few hours with me, holding hands, etcetera, and one day he came to me
all radiant in the face and happy, and said he’d done it. ‘Done what?’ I
said. ‘Disintegerated the atom,’ he said, and that we were all doomed
and done for. ‘But, Chris,’ I said, ‘how could you have done such a
thing!’
“‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You needn’t worry; it’s all quite
respectable, and there is no noise or explosion. I have only
disintegrated the atom, and now all matter, the whole of the world is
slowly disintegrating, too, peeling away into nothing. Soon nothing will
be left of our planet.’
“‘But oh, Chris!’ I said.
“‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘There is no pain, no suffering, no
inconvenience or discomfort. People just soften, disintegrate atom by
atom, turn into whiffs of steam, a sort of mist, and vanish like smoke
up the chimney. All is over in a few seconds.’
“‘Chris,’ I said, ‘I don’t understand.’
“‘It’s--how shall I say?--as if people ate themselves up,’ he said.
“‘But they can’t quite, Chris. There’ll be crumbs left after them.’
“‘No, crumbs and all.’
“‘But the mouth will be left, Chris; when the mouth has eaten everything
there will still be the mouth left to eat.’
“‘And the mouth will eat it,’ he said.
“‘I see. Chris, I want to tell you something,’ I said.
“‘What?’ he said.
“‘I am going to have a baby,’ I said.
“‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Whose baby?’
“How could I know? But I looked soft and tender, as if it might be his.
‘Chris,’ I said, ‘Can you not save yourself and your baby--and me too,
perhaps?’
“‘I would do anything,’ he said, ‘to save you and the baby, but I’ve
laddered the world. You know what happens when you’ve laddered a silk
stocking.’
“‘You’ve got to buy a new pair,’ I said.
“‘Exactly,’ he said.
“‘Can’t you buy a ... a new world?’ I said.
“‘I’ll have to see if I can mend the old one,’ he said.
“‘Can’t you?’
“He said he didn’t know. He said he would have to look into it, think
about it. He might be able, he said, to isolate a bit of earth
somewhere--a mountain-top or something, where we three could be saved.
“‘Yes, yes!’ I said. ‘We three and all our friends. Just a little
house-party!’
“‘No house-parties, by God!’ he said. ‘Just you and I and the baby--you
and I and the baby.’”
Eva paused. Baby looked at her long and sadly, modestly, too, as if
reluctant to press her own claims to survival.
“But if you keep quiet about it,” said Eva, “I will tell you where to go
to. You will just hide in the cellar or somewhere, lie low for a day or
two, and then creep out when I tell you to. I will make it all right
with Chris.”
For a long while the two cousins chattered together of matters
irrelevant to the coming apocalypse; but presently they were back in the
future. “And Rex, and Ferdinand, and one or two others,” said Eva. “I
will manage it so that Chris doesn’t know.’
“And your mother, and Zita, and Pilling, I suppose?”
“No, no! We mustn’t have a crowd. You see, there will be very little to
eat on the top of a hill. But we’ll have a good time all the same.”
XXXVI.
THE LAST SUPPER
Thursday was the opening night of the _New Babylon_, Pilling’s new night
club. The butler had been announcing arrivals:
“Lord and Lady de Jones.
“The Honourable Raymond and Mrs. Mosquito.
“Mrs. Frank Dickin.”
Then, flinging open the doors, the butler made a last belated
appearance: “Mr. Kerr, m’lord.”
“Now this is very, very nice. Come right in, Mr. Kerr!” from Lord
Ottercove.
At the long table presided over by Ottercove, Frank found himself seated
by the side of his own wife. After the long absence, she seemed
beautiful and enchanting, and her presence, new yet familiar, broke the
crust of ice in his heart and released rivers of rapture; and outside it
was spring, full of desires, and here was she, his lovely mate....
And yet? And yet? Looked at objectively, enquired into dispassionately,
was marriage a solution of one’s terrestrial difficulties? Be honest
now, he said to himself. One wife was both too much and not enough.
Fifty wives, renewable like water in a swimming pool, would be better.
He would sit there then, all lust gone, among them, a man of action
turned philosopher, and pass his hand dispassionately over this or that
wife’s hair, seeking solace in intellectual intercourse with some other
man who agreed that life was wanting! “What?” He was roused from his
reverie, and, not hearing the question, replied: “Rather!”
Indisputably, Cynthia was enchanting, and even Lord Ottercove singled
her out after dinner. “Are you the prettiest girl in London, Cynthia?”
He kissed her thoroughly on the mouth.
“No, Rex, no!”
An actress, jealous of Cynthia’s success, flung her champagne over her.
Cynthia, shocked beyond words, and followed by all her admirers, retired
to another room, where she was presently joined by the actress, who
lavished profuse apologies on her: “I am so frightfully sorry, darling!”
“It’s quite all right, darling.”
And all the women who hated each other, called one another thus:
“darling.”
It was, to all appearance, a brilliant party. Vernon Sprott was
there--Vernon Sprott, the foreman of British fiction, whose novel
entitled _The New Babylon Hotel & Restaurant_ had provided the
designation of Pilling’s night club, in consideration of which Mr.
Sprott received a royalty on the gross profits of the New Babylon Club
of 0.0000002 per cent. free of income tax and payable to him after
deduction of a commission of ten per cent. by Mr. Sprott’s Literary
Agent. And both he and his literary agent (who was there) could not take
their eyes off Cynthia, by common consent the special, the most
distinctive ornament of the evening. She looked a little pale,
dream-like, ravishing, romantic; and as she danced her eyes seemed to
say: “Do you remember?” and Frank could scarcely wait for the end of the
party to elope with his wife, to carry her away ... away.... She said
what Juliet had said before her: that it was too sudden!
Only Christopher de Jones seemed glum. He sat and watched how Eva danced
with an intent young man whose cleverness was in his feet; danced
confidentially, _giving_ him her pliable young body, every movement of
which seemed to say: “I am thine, thine....” For such is the melody of
the dance. He could see, it seemed to him, through all the souls of the
men and women, guests, musicians, waiters, and divine what the
headwaiter, the orchestra men, each individual thought to himself: how
each only suffered. Another little while, he thought, and it would all
be over....
XXXVII.
A PAIR OF BARE LEGS
Baby, who had been sent out by her cousin to ascertain the local
conditions in the Austrian Alps, having only reported, after a lapse of
two weeks, that dogs were not allowed in the public parks of Innsbruck
and that persons doing damage to the flower beds would be prosecuted,
Frank, the next candidate scheduled by Eva for salvation, was despatched
in Baby’s wake.
He found her at the top of a mountain towering above the Inn valley,
playing chess with a handsome young bank clerk from Vienna, on his
annual holiday in the Tyrol. Neither knew a word of the other’s
language, and made love with the aid of a dictionary. He found the words
and passed her the dictionary. Love. Bliss. Desire. She read the English
equivalent and purred. It was exquisite.
Frank deemed the _pension_ and the hill in every way an adequate _pied à
terre_, worthy of preservation and, so far as he could judge, eminently
suitable for isolation from the atomic disintegration about to overtake
the world; and he gave Eva all the available information as to victuals,
trains, etc, warning her, among other things, not to pull the
communication cord while the train was in motion unless there was
genuine need for it; and even gave the Italian of it: “_Tirare
lamaniglia solo in caso di pericolo. Ogni abuso verrà punito!_”
The Pension Kogl stood alone on the mountain-top, and gazing down from
his balcony in the morning Frank saw an old Habsburg Schloss stretched
out beneath him, which looked like the Regent Palace Hotel, London.
Breakfast, perhaps, was a little on the short side, and on the
bedside-table on which it was laid there was a little tablecloth with
the words: “_Wenig aber von Herzen_” embroidered in red Gothic letters.
Below, under Frank’s windows, the proprietress’ husband, the Wirt,
looking very like Gogol’s Taras Boulba, paced the yard in a skull cap as
early as five-thirty. He was a bad sleeper, and thus was essentially
fitted to see to it that the sleepy servant girls did not oversleep
themselves. He was up and on the look-out for defaulters, like a
sergeant-major waiting in the barrack yard. In a bungalow annex across
lived an old apoplectic little baron who, early each morning, about the
time of mine host’s appearance, popped out his head through the window,
whereon the ensuing conversation could be overheard:
“Good morning, Herr Baron! Have you slept well? The weather--well, I
think--or at least, it seems to me--that the sky might clear up, in
which case it is possible--I say, it is _possible_--possible that we may
have good weather to-day. Yes, yes, I am hopeful, Herr Baron.”
Herr Kogl stood close to the Baron’s window and spat on the ground. The
Herr Baron, out of a feeling of fellowship, spat out of the window:
“Kh-kh-kh--Kh-hhrrr--Khhh!” they spat.
“Hey! Where you off to!” the host would suddenly yell to the young farm
hand, who was setting out for town in the milk cart.
“To town.”
“Off you go at once!” he would shout after him angrily. “Hurry up!
You’ve overslept yourself again, you lazy bounder! Off you go, young
scoundrel, you!---- Youth,” he would add tenderly, turning back to the
Baron.
Thus till nine o’clock in the morning he would stroll up and down the
yard, his hands behind his back, and then serve himself his first
Schnaps.
Herr Kogl’s distinction was that he was supposed to have a particularly
strong will. Frau Kogl’s mother, who had bought the present _pension_ on
her Alsacian savings, had had just such a man in view for her daughter,
whom she did not consult in the matter, though once, in an unusually
tender and communicative mood, she did ask her: “What sort of a man
would you like for a husband, Anny?” Anny had lowered her lashes and
said: “With a strong will.” Herr Kogl was chosen without hesitation as
the sort of man with a strong will who would take care of his wife’s
property; and now, living up to his reputation, he would bawl at her
from time to time: “Hey, there! Anna!--I have called: ‘_Anna_!’”--and
she obeyed.
Their son, who had a smooth voice, quiet manners, and a cast in one of
his eyes, knew on which side his bread was buttered, and though a little
fearful of his father, clung to his moneyed mother, and disdained his
Pa’s assumed authority, who, to bear out his own reputation, bawled at
him occasionally: “Hey, there! Herbert! I said: ‘_Herbert_!’” when his
son half turned a reluctant ear to him. Frau Kogl herself had moods when
she liked to assert her authority; but they were intermittent and
brief. She could never decide anything. Her mother was right in choosing
for her a husband who bawled at her. Frau Kogl had no illusions about
his utility, and secretly thought him a vagabond. But she needed someone
to bawl at her. When he bawled, his authority in her eyes was restored;
and she loved him.
The briskness in the air of an early mountain spring morning! Old
forgotten feelings flooded his heart. As Frank went down the stairs, he
passed the bare-legged scullery maid who was washing the steps. He
looked round, and she smiled. And when later in the morning she helped
carry up his large trunk, he could not take away his gaze from those
healthy white legs.
“Good morning, Herr Dickin,” the host greeted him. “I am hoping that if
the clouds disperse--I am hoping, I say, that if they disperse, we may
be having--we may be having, I say--having fine weather to--day. But I
regret to say it is Saint Peter”--he pointed to the skies--“who is in
charge of the winds, and our petition--our petition, I say, must be
addressed to him up there in the heavens, oh yes.”
Dickin laughed amiably, and on passing the bar he heard Frau Kogl
upbraiding her husband:
“You shouldn’t tell such silly jokes to the foreign guests; they will
think you’re quite silly.”
“It may be a silly joke,” Herr Kogl agreed, “or it may not be a silly
joke, but he laughs; so anything seems good enough for him.”
“Why, no, he is a clever man, a poet,” retorted Frau Kogl.
“I am a poet myself,” answered Herr Kogl.
“You’re a fat dotty old man, that’s what you are,” said Frau Kogl. “What
have you done with the glasses? Don’t stand there like that....”
“Shut up, will you!” he bawled, and banged his fist on the counter.
She quailed before the man with the strong will.
From his balcony, Frank could see the scullery girl swish with her bare
legs through the wet grass, and come back with a basket full of fruit.
He cut across to meet her. He had a terrible longing to speak to her,
but he could not find words to say to her. Because she was desirable,
though her face was objectionable, she seemed to him (as women do seem
when they are desirable) to be endowed with a critical and sensitive
intelligence which might resent a clumsy overture, or an approach that
was not plausible. And so he walked towards her with a casual and
indifferent air. But when she smiled at him his shyness left him
suddenly and he asked her what the joke was.
“Ach, to-day,” she said, “I must laugh, because I look so funny in these
boots.” How ugly her face was! And yet how desirable that body!
Herr Kogl, at the door, found words to say to him. Herr Kogl always
found words to say to everybody. It was his only occupation. When he
wasn’t either eating or drinking, he stood in the yard and exchanged
remarks with visitors and casual passers-by. No one had ever seen him
take a drop of wine in public, and he affected to disdain it, though he
had blood-shot, oily eyes which betrayed him. “Wine? Why, there’s
nothing in it,” he would say. “I--never--have--any.” But every time he
went down into the cellar to fill the decanter, he first filled himself
and then the decanter.
Now he stood in the doorway, red and obese, and addressed a small,
fluffy old dog of a nondescript breed and an incredible filthiness.
“Rags has been and had a puppy--a little ragamuffin like herself, what!
Rags, you bad thing! Rags, you dirty tyke! Rags, you immoral old bitch!
For shame! I shouldn’t have thought it of you, at your age!” And he dug
his crooked forefinger into Dickin’s chest, as he was wont to do when
emphasising a point; especially in moments of hilarious recollection, as
when, for instance, he might say: “Oh _that_ thing! Well, of course!” At
such moments he would dig even a little lower than the ribs, because the
joke addressed itself to a more central part of you--the abdominal part,
wherein all jokes are seated; or so at least we must suppose, because
when men laugh too heartily they protect and support these, their
boilers, from bursting.
Again, as he stood there, Frank caught a glimpse of the scullery maid’s
bare legs, as she went out to hang out some linen. “What are you
smiling for?” he asked, overtaking her, Herr Kogl now having turned in.
“Ach! Herr Dickin,” she said, “when you speak to me I must always laugh.
I don’t know why.”
He looked round. There was no one about. “When do you finish your work?”
“I go to bed at half-past ten.”
“Won’t you come and see me before going to bed?”
“Where?” she asked.
“In my room.”
“What shall I do in your room?”
His blood coursed feverishly through his veins; his brain was on fire at
the thought of what they could not do in his room. “Keep me company,” he
said.
She nodded assent and went in with the dry linen. Returning, he ran into
Herr Kogl, who came out of the cellar with the decanter, licking and
smacking his thick ruby lips. “Herr Kogl, will you have a glass of wine
with me?”
Herr Kogl shook his head slowly, closing his eyes.
“I--never--have--wine. I--consider--that--there--is--nothing--in--it.
Oh, yes.” His diction was distinct, correct, precise, deliberate, and
slow.
“Well, you are certainly setting an edifying example to your boy, aren’t
you, Herr Kogl?”
“My boy,” said Herr Kogl, “is all right.”
With a mystic, an unearthly, look Herr Kogl retired to the safe behind
the counter, and came back with a large sheet of parchment in his big
shaking red hands. “His college certificate,” he said, turning away to
hide his emotion and to give the visitor the opportunity of ascertaining
for himself the high standard of Herbert’s scholastic achievements:
Calligraphy--proficient;
Arithmetic--good;
Cooking--very satisfactory;
Slaughtering--praiseworthy;
Waiting at table--very good;
Deportment--excellent;
General conduct--excellent.
“Eminently satisfactory,” said Dickin, returning the document.
“He is at the Hotel and Restaurant Institute in Vienna,” the father said
proudly, “and I afford him practical opportunities for perfecting his
studies when he is here for his summer vacation by allowing him to wait
at table. Of course, under my supervision,” he added.
“You ought to be very proud of him.”
“Proud? Why?”
“Of course you ought to be! You _are_ proud!”
“Well, of course--proud--why not? You wouldn’t think, would you, eh? A
Tyrolese poodle like he, now would you?... attain such distinction in
Vienna itself!...” And two large beads stood in Herr Kogl’s jaundiced
blood-shot eyes.
At lunch, in the large panelled room looking out on the old archducal
Schloss beneath, steeped in the foliage of its enormous and forsaken
park, Frank found himself seated facing a Lutheran pastor from Germany,
who had large sad eyes, a quiet, melancholy voice, and helped himself
without cease to the _Kalter Aufschnitt_. He thought the world was all
right, the Church all right, and nothing wanted changing. Among the
guests was a Russian Grand Duke who turned out to be the cousin of
Frank’s one-time opponent who had hit him on the ear with an umbrella at
the Kiss-Lick Club. The Grand Duke’s cousin was killed in a motor smash
in Poland. His own brother was assassinated elsewhere. An uncle died in
mysterious circumstances. It seemed, of the old guard, there remained
only Frank and he, and over a decanter of Tyrolese wine consumed
together, they relinquished their claim to the throne of Russia in each
other’s favour.
“Ah! you are a writer!” the Grand Duke exclaimed happily. “You write in
English? Ah, well! I’ve my own theories about English literature. I am
obstinate in the belief that in the portrayal of Dorian Gray, Oscar
Wilde did not mean to depict his own personality, so to speak.”
Frank sounded the Grand Duke as to his further opinions. Wordsworth? No,
he hadn’t heard of Wordsworth. Keats?--No: who was he? No, he preferred
the moderns. There was one modern writer--German, he believed--who
amused him. Bernhard Schau.... Oh, he was British? How interesting! He
had bought quite a number of his works in Berlin, and enjoyed dipping
into them--he liked him for the wit salted with cynicism. Did his
Highness read any other English authors? The Grand Duke considered for a
moment, wrinkling his brow.--Of course--Byron! Who did not love that
stupendous genius, the greatest the world has yet produced? _Childe
Harold_.... Ah! The Grand Duke thought he himself was a little like
that--like Byron and Lermontov--romantic, rebellious, seeking something
(he made a gesture to the heavens)--dissatisfied with his
surroundings--that’s it, and seeking a meaning in life. Yes, he was a
lover of literature--though he preferred sport--riding and hunting,
drinking, too, he was not averse to. He considered, as if struck by a
sudden idea. “Have a drink,” he said.
They passed into the lounge, into which Herr Kogl burst periodically, to
explain the working of the electric stove, which could be switched on at
will but must not be, he cautioned, switched off without a preliminary
intimation to Herbert, in charge of the electric supply station, because
a sudden superfluity of electricity sent the dynamo into commotion. Here
Frank perceived a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman looking like a gipsy.
“Frau König!” he exclaimed. “By heaven! this is unexpected!”
Frau König, on the other hand, did not appear to regard this meeting as
unexpected, but at once proceeded to recount her life at the point at
which his knowledge of it had been interrupted. “My fiancé, alas, has
failed again in his examinations at the University, and that has put us
back for another couple of years and deferred our hope of establishing
the knitting factory. He says the Paris professors have been prejudiced
against him on account of his Russian nationality and vented on him
their bitterness over the Russian State Bonds they had acquired and lost
in the Revolution, and agreed to plough him.” And she introduced him to
Frau Professor Koch who occupied the room next to his own and owned a
dachshund, on whose account she felt concerned and diffident, for, “He
has inflammation of the lungs,” she said, “and his cough is terrible.”
It rained. By the electric stove, Baby played chess with the bank clerk,
whose holiday was up and who that night was going back to Vienna. During
lunch, when Baby had anxiously eyed him, he had talked to the table at
large, explaining how the new divorce law was operating in Vienna--he
talked of divorce, while she wanted to be united to him for the rest of
existence! She had better, now that time was getting short, try and talk
to him--difficult though it was--in French. What had she better say to
him? How draw him? How tell him? She thought hard.
“Do you ski in Austria with a horse?” she asked at last.
He did not understand.
The rain poured down straightly and beautifully, shooting through those
myriad trees on the mountain sides. The bank clerk saw in Frank his
natural successor, and hated him. The company constrained him.
But a quarter of an hour before he was driven down to the station in the
little red car, they ran away hand in hand into the Schloss park, and
came back dripping with wet. She stood at the window and waved to him
shyly: “Good-bye,” as the little red motor buzzed off.
Good-bye! Good-bye!
How grey, how monotonous mountain scenery looked in the rain! “Well,
Baby, how do you like this place?” Frank asked.
She loved it, she said, but complained that there were fleas in her bed.
Frau Kogl, to whom the complaint was made, said that it was
“ausgeschlossen”--quite out of the question. “Das gibt es nicht”--it
isn’t done. But the “boots” with the green apron was philosophical.
Fleas--well, what about it? They existed. There were fleas in the
carpet--fleas everywhere--between bedclothes--in a word, in nature.
Fleas, he implied, were in the scheme of things. God had so ordained it.
The “boots’” attitude, like that of the modern philosophers’, was one of
acceptance; he accepted all evil and all good in life with equal grace.
Herr Kogl ordered him to go to the chemist and buy a preparation
notoriously fatal to fleas, and the “boots” came back carefully carrying
a small bottle, in whose efficacy he did not believe.
At dinner, Frank found himself seated among a group of German tourists.
Herr Nikulitsch, despite his Czech name, was a German--corpulent,
spectacled, with a large, square, short-cropped blond head; in fact so
typical a German that had he had the luck to be in England between the
years 1914 to 1918, he would have been arrested without provocation. His
wife had eyes which were so queerly adjusted that when she talked to you
she seemed to be looking at someone else. Frank was faced by this cow of
a woman who could only understand the German point of view about the
war; and two Scottish old maids who could only understand the British
point of view about the war; neither of whom could understand each
other. The Scottish old maids complained derisively about the _Kalter
Aufschnitt_: “The idea of giving you cheese without biscuits! Ha!” They
shook their heads and smiled malignantly. They marvelled at these
foreigners! The more they saw of them, the more they marvelled!
“The Germans,” said Frau Nikulitsch, “are good people. We are good
people at heart. Any one of good will will admit that we are good
people. But the French are a nation of sadists.”
“Yes,” said the Frau Pastor, “we are a thoroughly good people, devoid of
all guile. We haven’t an ungracious thought.”
Baby listened politely. It was not what she had read in _The Daily
Mail_. “Tricking Huns. Once a German, always a German. Blond beasts,”
were phrases that occurred to her. Frank was talking to the Frau Pastor
now, and because he wanted to be sympathetic, and to show off his own
broadmindedness and the tolerant, liberal spirit of his countrymen, he
told her, with a smile (as if making light of it) that our own royalty
was mostly German; and he felt that it was strange that she thought
nothing of it, a little churlish of her even--it was as though she made
light of his kindness and that of his countrymen who bore this alien
taint with good grace. The Frau Pastor seemed to think England was
rather lucky.
And why, she asked, was England supporting the Russian claim to Eastern
Prussia, and simultaneously supporting the Finnish claim to Northern
Russia?
It was, said Frank, in pursuance of an ideal to keep alive the feeble
flame of patriotism in the face of a growing international revolution.
Men were losing interest in their countries, so you had to tread on
their toes to keep up their national pride.
“And the English,” said the Frau Pastor (living up to the ideal),
“behaved worst of all in the last war.”
Frank thought of showing her a 1920 copy of _The Daily Mail_
(Continental edition), in which was set forth what Poincaré thought of
the German evasion of the Allied (just) demand for reparations. The
extremity of the shock brought him back to sanity. When he listened to
one German after another who told him that if Germany had been arming it
was because the Entente Cordiale was stifling them by a tightening ring
of alliances (to whom he had said that if the Entente Cordiale _was_
stifling them by a tightening ring of alliances it was because Germany
had been arming), who were convinced that we had started the war as we
were convinced that they had provoked it, the thought struck him: “Of
course they must be convinced. When A is roused to a pitch where he will
do B in, and face the risk of being done in by B in the doing, he is
sincere in believing B to be in the wrong. This is the shady side of
faith. Frank looked to the Pastor to display some soothing impartiality,
and gave him a lead. “All nations are very much alike and equally unjust
to foreigners,” Frank said. But to all such overtures the pastor, who
thought the world was all right, the Church all right, and nothing
wanted changing, replied: “We Germans are well known to be
over-indulgent to foreigners. Germany is too idealistic a people.”
“Patriotism,” said Frank, “is like wine--a good thing when you haven’t
had too much of it.”
“You don’t understand,” said the Frau Pastor. “Only a German can
understand what we feel about these things, only a German who has gone
through what we have gone through and who knows what we know.”
There is a limit to an intelligent man’s enjoyment of the irony of being
regarded as an imbecile by fools. And it is soon reached. A new war was
starting before the discords of the old have had time to resolve
themselves, and, identifying a nation of sixty million people with the
two who had displeased him, Frank felt that they deserved it and hoped
that they would be beaten!
“And what ridiculous names these foreigners have!” remarked one of the
Scottish old maids, when the Germans had left the table. “That Viennese
lady opposite--Frau von Endte! I don’t know much German, but I know that
much: that Ente means duck! It’s as if she called herself: ‘Mrs. de
Ducke’!”
Frank strolled away into the hills. The night was calm and benignant;
the stars whispered; and all this rocky waste listened, moonlit and
silent, to God. At every corner, a crucifix. Green lights and blue
lights and red lights illumining the twisted naked body of Christ, with
red blood flowing from the wounds. Yet curiously enough, Christ’s
message had not been understood, he thought, and looking back at the
bloody centuries which followed on the crucifixion and at Christ’s
tortured body, so shamelessly paraded, it occurred to Frank that
Christians generally may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick
from the beginning, inferring that it was blood-letting that He meant
and advocated to us. On consideration, Frank thought the world was well
ripe for destruction.
Above and beyond, what peace! All desire abated, in the soft ablution of
the moon. O Lust, where is thy sting, and Satiety thy victory?
A figure in the dark. “Hello, is that you? Oh, Frau König! All my
homages.”
Frau König, with a preoccupied air, took him down the mountain track
into the thicket, the while saying: “I don’t deny. I don’t deny how hard
it is for a woman who had contracted certain habits in marriage suddenly
to find herself without a man. Well, here I am. Here I am, I say! Here I
am; you may have what you wish. But my condition”--she touched his
wrist--“is that you are to take me out into society.”
“I do not wish it. I mean I do not wish what you wish me to wish. You
make me feel good, Frau König, and that’s the truth.”
“I do not understand you. I have gone as far as I can.”
“That’s the truth. Do not go further.”
“But--”
How could he explain? How could he tell her that where unattractive
women were concerned he was a prude and a puritan? For all sexual
morality, if we examine it more closely, is founded on aversion. It
pleased him to recall to her an ideal of womanhood which she was in no
mood to follow; of reticence and chastity, which he counselled her to
practise. “Not in abandon, but in restraint and self-discipline, Frau
König,” he said, leading her out of the thicket into the open road,
“lies the hope of a sane and healthy mankind.”
“If,” she said, “my fiancé does not come soon, I shall go mad.”
As they turned into the _pension_ courtyard, they passed the apoplectic
Baron’s bungalow, who peeped through the window and, though it was
evening, wished them: “Good morning.” The Baron’s knowledge of English
must have been very slight, because every time Frank passed him in the
morning, the Baron touched his cap and said: “Good evening.” In the big
barn, an automatic barrel organ played excruciating music, and Herr Kogl
explained that it had been a first-class barrel organ till the
Italians--a nation, as all knew, of organ grinders--spoilt it during
their occupation of the town in the war by over-taxing its musical
capacity.
“How very inconsiderate!”
Several couples were dancing. Herbert, removing his waistcoat, danced in
his braces and shirt sleeves with Lina, the bare-legged scullery maid,
at a considerably accelerated pace, as if to show them all what he could
do. “Our Herbert,” Herr Kogl, pointed with his chin towards him, “once
he starts dancing, outstrips them all.” Frank stood and watched till it
would be time for Lina to go up to bed. Heavens of ecstasy, oceans of
rapture awaited him. The Kogls sat there as always: Herr Kogl; Herr
Spatz, a fat, rough man of the same proportions as the host himself; the
policeman; the policeman’s wife, who was a waitress; and drank wine. The
policeman’s little boy slipped in and out between their legs and ran
about all day long, and they christened him “Quicksilver.” Herr Kogl
alone did not drink. The cook, a bewildered-looking old woman, who was
never seen about during the week, drank, after good takings, on a Sunday
night with Frau Kogl. Herr Kogl watched them drink, but refused to
participate. His maudlin eyes were fixed on the dog to whom he would
talk for hours at a stretch: “Rags, you wretch! Rags, you immoral little
bitch!”
“Nice old doggie, what?” Frau Kogl would remark.
Herr Kogl would shake his head. “It’s not a dog--kein Hund, sondern ein
Skandal!”
The dog was very old, toothless, and refused all food but chocolate. The
Frau Wachmann, the policeman’s wife, a young shrew, shouted and cursed
at her husband, a shy middle-aged upright man, because he would not go
to bed immediately, but preferred to play cards with the others of a
Sunday evening. Herr Spatz thundered forth as he played: “Two aces!
Bang! Ha-a-a!--Queen of Clubs! Bang! Bang!” with his fist, so that all
the glasses on the table jingled nervously. He had once spent nine
months in Turkey, and he looked, with his clean-shaven head and his
mouthful of glittering white teeth himself like a Turk, and behaved like
one, or at least, as you would imagine “The Turk” to behave in his more
lustful moments. Frau Kogl, drunk, attempted to sing, but it came out
very badly and dismally and she stopped, ashamed of herself.
“To hell with Czecho-Slovakia!” Herr Spatz was saying to a relative who,
thanks to the Treaty of Versailles, has become Czecho-Slovakian and now
said he was proud of the great country. “Great country!” roared Herr
Spatz. “I’ve lived nine months in Turkey: who can talk Czecho-Slovakian
there? Answer me that!”
“Who will drive the van to town to-morrow morning, that is what I wish
to know?” Herr Kogl interjected.
“Willy.”
“Hm!--Hm!” distrustfully from Herr Kogl.
“Why?” from Herr Spatz, whose son Willy happened to be.
Herr Kogl looked on the ground. “Willy! Willy is not Herbert, that’s
why!”
At long last the clock on the Schloss tower struck half-past ten, and
Herr Kogl was locking up. Frank paced his room up and down; every moment
the door might open and Lina come in, and then--.
From time to time, unable to stand the suspense, he would go out and
wait for her in the corridor. Simultaneously, the door opposite would
open, and the Pastor and Frau Pastor peep out, again and again, as if to
put out their boots: but surely, Frank thought, they could not have so
many boots to put out. Then, as he stood in the corridor, the adjacent
door opened, and the Frau Professor peeped out to ask if her dachshund’s
coughing had not, perchance, disturbed his sleep. “He has acute
inflammation of the lungs,” she said, “and I am very anxious to know
what the specialist will say to-morrow morning.”
“I am very sorry,” Frank said, “for you both.” And while he stood there
assuring Frau Professor Koch of his complete sympathy, and the Frau
Pastor peeped out of her room to put out another pair of boots, the
bare-legged Lina slipped into his room.
He forgot everything, looked at her intently, grasped her eagerly,
savagely, asked: “Yes?”
“Why?” she parried.
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“Because--because we’re young, and because life isn’t for ever.”
She bent down her look and was silent.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
She had said it so quietly and convincingly that his soul was devastated
by certitude. He was as certain of his reward as one is certain of money
placed to the credit of one’s current account, once receipt of it has
been acknowledged by the bank. It would take place all right. It was
indeed as though it had already taken place; and she seemed to him like
some tedious acquaintance; he asked her tedious questions, and asking
them, had not the patience to concentrate upon her tedious replies. “Are
both your parents alive?”
“Yes, both my parents are alive.”
“Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“Yes, two sisters and one brother.”
From outside came the sound of tears and choking. “I suppose,” said
Frank, “that is the policeman’s wife, by the sound of it.”
“No, it’s he--the policeman.”
“What! Sobbing like that? Why?”
“She curses him dreadfully: that’s why. It’s the same every Sunday night
because she wants him to go to bed at once, whereas he, poor chap, wants
to sit out with the others and play cards. He’s an upright, decent,
quiet man; it’s a shame the life she leads him!”
It did not interest him. The wind that bellied out his sails had
suddenly ceased, and his soul flopped down like a flag on a flagstaff.
He, she, and the world, seemed as flat as a pancake--as flat and as
unprofitable.
“You--you--you!” she gasped. In this “you” was all her being, her
illusory love, her reunion with him, the dissolution, the loss of her
“I” in his “you.” But he thought he had squeezed her leg and said: “I
beg your pardon? Did you say anything?”
She shook her head.
“That’s all right, then.”
She had begun to look forward, and he went to sleep at once. She waited
awhile, scanning his face with hatred. Then shook him by the shoulder.
“You _ninny_!” Then dressed herself and went out.
She was gone. Presently he sat up on the edge of the bed, his naked feet
dangling down like a pendulum. He was drunk. It was significant that he
was both spiritually and physically drunk at the same time, and he had
just sufficient reason left him to comprehend and thoroughly appreciate
the humour of this interesting coincidence.
Next morning he was woken by the conversation in the yard below his
window. “You were born in eighteen sixty-four, Herr Baron; I was born in
eighteen sixty-six. I take it that I am two years younger than
you--yes!”
“Kh-kh-khrr-rrr-khrrr!”
“Kh-kh-kh-khr-khrrr!”
“The Herr Baron complains to me that he is damned and done for,
mattering as he is all over. But I say, _aber wo_! Herr Baron: what does
it matter if you matter in a world of matter: it is all matter--spirit,
flesh, and all! Oh, yes!”
The Baron now was telling Herr Kogl of a brother who lived in Vienna and
was professor of modern languages at Vienna University; and Herr Kogl at
once retorted: “My son lives in Bizirk IX and has to go to his studies
in Bizirk V.”
“What does he do?”
“Studies at the Institute.”
“What institute?”
“The Hotel and Restaurant Institute. Why, Herbert can do
anything!--Drive a car--stick a pig--wait at table. Wonderful boy!
This--all this--is to be his. Ah! he will go a long way, our Herbert
will, he will, when he finishes his studies at the Institute. And I
intend to send him abroad for a year or two to pick up foreign
languages, so that he secures all the benefit that we old folks can
afford to give him.”
“Of course. Why not?” said the Baron, “if you have the money to give
him.”
“Ah, no!” exclaimed Herr Kogl. “He must earn the money himself. I don’t
believe in extravagance, Herr Baron. ‘No,’ I tell Herbert: ‘you go
abroad to France and England and serve your time there in the big hotels
and earn every penny yourself as a waiter.’ That’s the way to bring them
up--youth,” he added tenderly.
He looked at Frau Kogl, who was coming down the steps towards him. Here
was this woman with all her money and property; he came along and made
it his, and gave her a son and made it his son’s: more than ever his
own. “I was telling the Herr Baron,” he said, “how when Herbert finishes
his studies at the Institute and has been abroad in France and England
he will on coming back devote himself to the development of the
_pension_ and alpine tourism generally by making use of the ties and
influence he has established in France and England. Oh, yes!”
“That’s all right,” said the old woman, “but what are we to do about
Herr Dickin? All the ladies are leaving. I don’t know what to do. He
will have to go, that’s all.”
“He--is a--good--man,” Herr Kogl replied.
“What are we to do?”
Herr Kogl did not reply.
“Come on!” she cried. “Don’t stand there like a--”
“Shut up, will you!” he shouted formidably, and banged his fist on the
table.
She quailed before the man with the strong will.
“I never bother; it is none of my business,” Frau Kogl began as Frank
came downstairs. “I attend to my own job, and what with the prices of
everything going up, I’ve got my work cut out. Meat, as you know, has
gone up 20 per cent., vegetables too. Fish is not to be had. To me it is
all the same, you understand; I never bother about what other people
do.” Her hands shot out awkwardly. In that gesture was all her weary
dissatisfaction with people who make bother. “I don’t mind what you do
upstairs. But I can’t lose all my clients, you understand. The season is
a slack one, and where will I get other guests? Meat, as I say, has gone
up; vegetables gone up. Fish is not to be had in the neighbourhood, and
they are all complaining now about you. But what can I do?” She shot
out her hands. She must have acquired these gestures in the French
convent in Alsace where she had been put by her mother.
And indeed there was trouble ahead. Lina’s entry had been observed. The
Frau Pastor had communicated it to the Frau Doktor Wirt, and the Frau
Doktor Wirt, with the confirmation of the Frau Professor Koch, to the
Frau Direktor Bödingen and Frau Nikulitsch, and the Frau Direktor
Bödingen to the Frau Oberst von Kaisar, who complained to Frau von
Endte. A commotion had been caused. Frank was suspect. Two elderly
German women locked their doors at his approach and accused him of
having tried to force his way into their bedrooms. When all complained
and armed themselves against her, Frau Kogl could not decide. She
scratched her head pensively. “Yes,” she said, “Yes, I don’t know what
to do.” She looked old and ill with worry; even her housemaid’s knee had
taken a turn for the worse. “I am afraid we must ask you to go.”
“With regret,” added Herr Kogl.
As for Lina, Herr Kogl made short shift of her. He merely bawled at her:
“Out you go, you slut!”
“If,” Frank reflected, “I can’t be anything better, let me at least be a
hero.”
The little red car was prepared for him, and he got Lina to make a
bundle of her things and get inside with him. It was a desultory morning
and rain fell perfunctorily. “You ugly young thing!” he thought,
surveying her from his seat in the corner, as the car turned out of the
courtyard past the Baron’s bungalow (who peeped out of his window and,
touching his cap, said: “Good evening!”), “What the deuce am I to do
with you now?”
“What sort of wage did you get?” he asked aloud.
She told him; and, on taking thought, he decided to run her down to his
old friend Frau von Kestner; who afterwards wrote to him:
“I have ordered her to put on a longer skirt and wear stockings. She was
embarrassing the postman each time he called with letters, as well as
the policeman in the square. Now, I need hardly say, nobody takes any
notice of her, because she really is not one little bit pretty.”
XXXVIII
TOD UND GENESUNG
The tall lighted building, the abode of _The Daily_, _The Sunday_, _The
Monday_, _The Evening_, _The Midday_, _The Pictorial_ and _The
Illustrated Runner_, loomed in the fog. Lord de Jones looked up from the
pavement at the large lighted windows over the roof, behind which, he
knew, the big spider sat in the midst of his web; and Lord de Jones,
entering, by appointment, did indeed feel as a fly might feel if it had
an appointment with a great big spider who had expressed in unmistakable
terms the wish to devour it. He went up in the historical lift and,
arrived at the top, was ushered into the presence of Lord Ottercove.
“Now where is that crop?” asked Lord Ottercove, without greeting the
visitor.
“Under the sod, I expect,” retorted de Jones.
“This mission of yours has cost me thousands in sealing wax alone, to
enable you to seal up all the craters. Stationers have made fortunes out
of me! And there is not a blade of grass anywhere; in fact, the
termination of our mission has synchronised with an unprecedented famine
in Russia. And, damn them, they’re blaming me for it!”
“There is always a famine in Russia at one time or another through
causes, as is invariably urged, not connected with the political faith
of the government of the day.”
Lord Ottercove ignored this retort. “The Foreign Secretary is ringing me
up all day long, and I refuse to see him; refuse to see him, Chris, for,
quite frankly, I wouldn’t know what to say to him. All that sealing
wax--and nothing to show for it. Shame!”
Lord Ottercove walked over to the sideboard and poured himself some
Perrier water into a glass. “And there’s that other fellow,” he said,
drinking.
“I know, the Prime Minister.”
“Yes. Joe’s shouting himself hoarse about the bursting granaries, the
wheat springing up all over the globe--increased crop--the end of
international jealousies--the economic solution of national rivalries!
And you with all your untried genius cannot raise a blade of grass
anywhere to substantiate his speeches. He has to rely on the dog stunt
entirely, which, I frankly tell you so--is not good enough. It’s not
good enough, Chris. Read this.”
Lord Ottercove handed him a copy of _The Evening Ensign_ containing the
report of Lord Evesham’s speech at the Carlton Club, the burden of which
was that the election in which the Conservatives were defeated had been
fought on an unreal issue, against the advice of the experienced members
of the party.
“An unreal issue, he says!” exclaimed Lord Ottercove.
“No more unreal than Gladstone’s Turk.”
“An unreal issue! They’ve realised it at last and have decided to leave
the dog stunt out of their party programme, and they are already winning
all the by-elections, and we’ve not a friend anywhere except among
sealing-wax manufacturers.”
“I’m sorry to hear it, Rex.”
“Now, I believe in Joe. He is my friend, and if a man is my friend I’ll
stick to him through thick and thin. But he must have increased crop if
he is to go on shouting about it, and he’s shouted about it so much that
he can’t go back on it now. You promised us two blades of grass to every
one. Where are they? Where _are_ they, I ask?” He looked at his visitor
with the unrestrained ill-humour of a man who, being completely
accustomed to things going well with him, suddenly discovers that they
are going badly. “You make my papers look ridiculous.”
“I’m sorry. I will make amends--look into the matter--enquire. It may be
that the sealing wax is defective. I promise to do what I can, Rex.”
“Promises! To hell with promises! It’s meat we want. Meat, not
promises!”
“True, we want meat. But all we can give you is cat’s meat. Indeed, that
is all you have ever had in the past.”
“Enough of your cynicism, Chris.”
“Now let me tell you, Rex, that I don’t care two tuppenny damns about
your crop. What I care about is the world. And that is no more.”
Lord Ottercove rose and leaned heavily first on one leg, then on the
other. “It’s still there, Chris,” he said.
“Only for a week. I’ve disintegrated the atom.”
“Well?”
“Which means that all other atoms, at first slowly, then faster and
faster, will follow suit, till not a rack is left behind.”
“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the
great globe itself?”
“Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial
pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff--”
“I know: as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a
sleep.” He turned away and bit his lip. “Chris, I am vexed: bear with my
weakness; my first-class brain is troubled. Be not disturbed with my
infirmity. If you will be pleased, retire to that sofa and there repose:
a turn or two I’ll walk, to still my beating mind.”
“I wish you peace.”
When he came back Lord Ottercove’s face looked eager with hope. “I don’t
believe you, Chris. You say you’ve done it?”
“A week ago. In Greece.”
“My Athens correspondent is silent about the matter.”
“Inevitably. He has disintegrated.”
“There is no sign of panic anywhere.”
“There is no panic because there is no way to communicate panic. No
sound, no sight: a whole area vanishes invisibly, ceases to be there.”
“But what of the people in the adjoining area? Why don’t they
communicate or run away?”
“The people next to those just vanished, vanish next. They do not know
that anything has vanished till they themselves vanish.”
“I see. It’s a knowledge which is vouchsafed you at vanishing point, so
to speak.”
“Exactly.”
“But they must know if they find that a familiar house or square has
vanished.”
“No: if it is not where they expect to find it, they naturally suppose
that they are in error: that what they are looking for is probably round
the other corner.”
“H’m, I see.”
There was a pause.
“Well, what have you to say, Rex?”
“Chris: I advise you against it.”
“Too late, too late! The world is fast unravelling, like a laddered silk
stocking.”
“Shame! And quite a new world, barely 200,000,000 years old. It will do
you no good, Chris.”
“If an employee of yours, Rex, came to ask you for a rise, I verily
believe you would not say No, but: ‘I advise you against your suggesting
the idea to me.’ And should he ask for a reason, you’d say: ‘I don’t
think it would do you any good.’”
“I don’t think this will. I don’t think it will do any of us any good.
Disintegrate. Ha! What an idea!”
“Why?”
“Well, look here, Chris, do you think it’s considerate? Do you think
it’s altogether kind?”
“It’s the very milk of human kindness to spare us all the horrors of
this new war. You, Rex, must see this, for you are good at heart.”
“Yes. I want, Chris, to do good. There is no greater pleasure in the
world than doing good. If you destroy the world, I wouldn’t be able to
go on doing good, now would I?”
“That, I admit, is hard on you.”
“It’s hard on us both, Chris. I wouldn’t be able to _do_ good, and you
wouldn’t be able to _make_ good. You would remain for ever a Genius of
the Untried.”
“What! now that I _have_ tried and succeeded?”
“I follow your argument. But believe me, Chris, it’s defective. To
destroy the world is not what I might call constructive work. I am
rather tempted, if you follow my line of thought, to relegate it to the
category of the destructive. It’s negative, Chris. That’s the word:
negative.”
“Negative? Why, it’s positively destroying itself with a vengeance,
bolting away into nothing, overjoyed at the chance of release, bubbling
over with sheer _joie de vivre_!”
“H’m.”
“And can you wonder? For millions of years the atom has been kept in
harness. Round himself and round others like him, he was made to jump
without cease or sense, as if to bite off his own tail. He hasn’t known
a holiday since the world began. And what was it all for? To convince
crass fools that matter was solid!”
“Since you came in this evening, Chris, everything seems less solid.”
“Glad you are beginning to see light. I am looking forward to the time,
which is not distant, when what now serves, inadequately, to distinguish
the outward form of Baron Ottercove, will be converted into the purest
radiation. All matter, Rex, is a disease. It _is_ ‘matter.’ When pools
stagnate, or tissues decay, life springs to the surface, a pestilential
vermin. It’s a hitch somewhere in the atomic mechanism of the universe,
a clotting of the blood, an imperfect interplay of atoms in the cosmic
body which creates this fretting disease we call life. In the healthy
regions of the universe the atoms change their make-up millions of times
in a second and so are for ever dissociated and incapable of association
and cannot degenerate into a condition in which decay breeds life.
Unscientific people or unimaginative scientists would say that what I
have done is to ‘explode’ the atom. Nonsense! Even ‘disintegrated’ is
hardly the word for it, for it is apt to mislead us on a vital point.
What I’ve done is no more than what a watchmaker might do to a clock
which has got clogged and is losing time: I’ve speeded up its electrons
to the pitch at which the degenerated matter we call life regenerates
itself into radiation and, for us, ceases to be. A mere question of
revolution.”
“Revolution!” cried Lord Ottercove. “I thought as much. You’ve let him
loose, the atom! Relinquished your hold on him, when your betters were
on the point of harnessing him to do all the world’s labour.” Lord
Ottercove suddenly jumped to his feet, a flush of anger suffusing his
cheeks. “Stop him, man!” he yelled. “Stop him, quick!”
“Can’t catch him now.”
“Run!” Lord Ottercove ran and opened the door.
“You’d need a greyhound to catch him: he has galloped off into
not-being.”
“What’s that?”
“Death.”
“Sheer idleness!” said Lord Ottercove. “At a time when servants are
scarce; when the human labourer has downed tools; when inertia like some
horrible disease has laid low the human race; when all our hope was in
the atom, you’ve released him, let him go to whirl senselessly in the
void!”
“Far from it. There they have to dash round like fury to maintain a high
standard of death. For the moment they slacken their speed, sickness
sets in and life.”
“That,” said Lord Ottercove, “might frighten the bird-livered neurotics
who are sick of life. I am sick with the healthy fear of death. I am all
for keeping the atom in his place. All this talk of Beyond, a Future
Life for the Atom--tell this to Dr. Conan Doyle or to Sir Oliver Lodge,
don’t tell it to me! Sheer sabotage! Allow one atom to strike, and all
the rest will follow suit. It’s not fair to the public. Next thing
they’ll want the dole. The country, Chris--I mean the world--will not
stand for it.”
“It’s not work, Rex, but unhealthy conditions of work that the atoms
object to in life. Over there they work harder and quicker, yet freely
and joyfully, that we may all remain in the balmed and blessed state of
death.”
“I see. The struggle for non-existence.”
“Exactly.”
“You are, I take it, a sort of Official Receiver winding up the affairs
of the visible world.”
“No, a doctor who has released the circulation of the world which these
many centuries have clogged at our end: and the patient is speedily
recovering. When you and I and other sufferers cease to be, it will mean
that the patient is once again in the pink of condition. By healing one
atom I have healed the wound of the world.”
“Who are the wound?”
“All that which feels.”
“I feel the coming death, feel it deeply and painfully, Chris.”
“You must not feel: you must dry up.”
“Dry up yourself!” said Ottercove, ruffled.
“We’re mere boils and pimples, Rex, who feel the hurt. When I have
nursed the universe back to death, none of us shall feel any more.” De
Jones was muttering something.
“What’s that?” asked Ottercove.
“Just words. A German title has suggested itself to me as a caption for
what I mean--‘_Tod und Genesung_’ which, in our rotten tongue, might be
translated into ‘Death and Recovery.’ Shakespeare says:
“‘_My long sickness_
_Of health and living now begins to mend,_
_And nothing brings me all things._’”
“Come, Chris. Don’t make us all look asses in the eyes of your Maker.”
“Asses?”
“Asses.”
“I’m going,” said de Jones, “not to my Maker--no: he is an usurper--but
to my Unmaker! He is the true God.”
Lord Ottercove sat down dejectedly and stretched out his legs by the
electric radiator. “The world,” he began, “is a heritage which has been
committed into our keeping. It was not, I take it, put there to be
unmade at will. It is not ours, Chris, to dispose of.”
“Oh, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t, Chris.”
“Whose is it, then?”
“Well, a considerable portion of it, measured in terms of property and
money, happens to be mine.”
“Ah!”
“You smile at my alleged materialism. Unnecessarily, Chris! For it is
only in the banks and company offices that this wealth--and it is
much--is recorded in my name. I hold it as it were in custody for ...
Providence (call it the Deity, Fate, Destiny, the Supreme Being, or the
First Cause). We are but the stewards, the servants, as in the Parable
of the Talents, from whom account of stewardship will be exacted by the
Master. I have increased my five talents by ... I can’t tell you how
much. As for you, Chris, you’ve absconded with the one talent entrusted
to you. Which is worse than in the parable. You wonder at my prosperity.
It’s faith, Chris, faith. Faith in money. ‘For unto every one that hath
shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not
shall be taken away even that which he hath.’ Wish I was a preacher,
like my father. I’d be the Archbishop of Canterbury now. For I like the
sound of my own voice. The first condition of good preaching, Chris.”
Lord Ottercove sat still, wrapped in thought.
Then he roused himself from his reverie. “Chris,” he said, “how much do
you want for it?”
“What for?”
“The visible world. I will buy it from you at your own price.”
“Do you care for it so much?”
“Not a damn!”
“What do you want it for?”
“For my friend Vernon Sprott. Like Gautier, he is one for whom the
visible world exists. I take it that you could ensure its existence.”
“I might. I don’t know.”
“How, Chris?”
“By reversing the process. By crippling the mechanism of the atom and
reducing the electronic revolutions to a condition of slow decay in
which alone life for us is possible.”
“Name your price.”
De Jones considered. “It will be,” he said in the tone of a solicitor
calculating costs, “including all dues and charges, eighty million
pounds sterling. Guineas, I mean.”
“Nothing doing. Good-bye to you.”
Lord de Jones turned round on the threshold. “What will you do about it,
Rex?”
“Have you arrested.”
“On what charge? There is no law against introducing the Kingdom of God
into this country.”
“Sedition. Instigation of atoms to mutiny. Under Dora.”
“But why, Rex? Tell me why.”
Lord Ottercove was a long time in replying.
“I will not have humanity let down,” he said at last.
“You and your humanity!” Anger had made de Jones inarticulate. “Running
your secretaries off their feet. Putting the fear of God into your
butlers. That last man you had has taken to drink, and is now in the
last stage of _delirium tremens_. Gilbert has developed the St. Vitus’
dance, waiting on you and your follies. What respect have you ever shown
to the atom? When you look at a man you make all the atoms in him jump
the wrong way. Then about this war. You’ve gone right back on your
pacific scheme. Oh, these business brains! Oh, these strong, silent
men! Curse and damn your breed!”
Lord Ottercove had walked over to the sideboard and was pouring himself
some Perrier water into a glass. “When you have done, please tell me,”
he said, drinking.
De Jones was foaming at the mouth. “You and your confrère across the
road--newspaper proprietors! Bags of money! That’s all you are!”
“And you’re an empty bag of money!”
“Give the public what it wants. That’s your line--the line of least
resistance. But to write regeneratively is beyond your scope.”
“Regenerative degenerates!” bawled Ottercove. He bawled so loud that
Gilbert came in to ask if his lordship wanted anything.
“Nothing from you.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“Leave us alone.”
“Yes, m’lord.” Gilbert’s eyes danced. His face twitched. His hands
trembled.
“Get out! I mean both of you. I’ve had enough of you all! Twitching
drivelling imbeciles! Atom mongers! Flea trainers!” Lord Ottercove
seized one of the eight chairs placed round the octangular table and
flung it at Viscount de Jones. When the Editor of _The Evening Ensign_
came in a moment later, Lord Ottercove flung the second chair at him.
Outside his door a queue of secretaries, marshalled by Mrs. Hannibal and
each nervously scanning at her file of papers, awaited the Chief’s
summons. Time was when Mrs. Hannibal alone centralised all Lord
Ottercove’s activities. The traffick proved too much for a single
channel, and was accordingly decentralised, carried by a dozen streams.
A dozen secretarial maidens were always in attendance in the ante-room,
waiting for the signal to appear before the Chief, who shouted from his
chair: “Forward, Miss Davis!” and hurried her: “Come on, come on!” And
Miss Davis reported in a flutter: “We purchased 16 bottles of
Apollinaris, of which you drank 3; that leaves us 13.”
“Carry them forward. Forward, Miss Badmington!”
“The franc account shows a balance of 7 francs which I have changed into
pounds at the rate of 126 francs to the pound, making a total of 1s.
3d.”
“Forward, Miss Harrison!” And so forth.
And now as they appeared in the doorway, Lord Ottercove flung a chair at
them, and they retired in disorder. This left him with five chairs,
including the one he was sitting on. He flung the fourth chair at a
literary aspirant whose dream was to contribute humorous articles to
_The Daily Runner_, and the fifth chair at a lady who wished to sell him
tickets for a charity concert in the Albert Hall, and, having flung the
sixth and the seventh chair at some nondescripts who peeped through the
door to see what was happening, he remained seated in the eighth and
only chair in the room. Mrs. Hannibal came in with a fearless smile on
her face, the practised smile of a lion trainer whose first rule is to
show no fear of the lion for fear of encouraging the lion to behave in a
manner compatible with his nature.
Lord Ottercove looked at her affectionately. “Do you admire my
moderation?”
She admired him, and this physical symbolism of his political power, and
the sincerity of his self-expression, and his freedom from sham
convention.
Lord Ottercove seized the receiver--Mrs. Hannibal thought, to speak to
Scotland Yard. She was wrong. Lord Ottercove was telephoning to his
editors. Here was real news! The end of all things: something not to be
missed.
News, he thought, such as Lord Northcliffe would have appreciated at its
true value! There was no jealousy in Lord Ottercove. He admired Lord
Northcliffe, and though secretly he thought he himself had no peers
among living newspaper proprietors, he suffered from an inferiority
complex in the presence of Lord Beaverbrook. And so he was glad of the
exclusive news. In the beginning there was the Word. And in the end,
too. He was proud that it befell to _The Daily Runner_ to write the
Omega. “I, Baron Ottercove of Ottercove, hereby announce the end of the
world.”
His principal editor, he was informed, was dining out. “As ever! Just
like him!” he muttered. “Dining, while the paper--not to say the
world--can go to hell.” For some minutes he sat alone in his vast roof
office, full of a strange wonder at the imminence of the fate which
confronted mankind. At last, he had to believe it. He sat very still,
while below the printing presses, with accustomed celerity, manufactured
the tidings. Then a sudden foreboding overcame him. It was not so much
that he feared the end for himself and his race: it was the uncertainty
of it that gnawed at his nerves. The uncertainty of when and under what
circumstances he might disintegrate. He stood by the enormous window
with a wide view of London roofs, including that of St. Paul’s, and
sadness filled his soul. An indescribable sorrow for all mankind
descended upon him. But as the minutes passed, the need for action
braced his nerves. Hatless he stepped into the lift, and passing the
solitary commissionaire, dashed into the busy streets.
XXXIX.
Where he went, he did not know. He walked on and on, his straggling hair
blown by the wind, and feeling a little like King Lear on the heath,
till, cutting across the Park to the Marble Arch, several open-air
meetings beckoned to him as a sign and a portent.
Two hostile meetings, of Free Thinkers and devout Christians, were held
side by side, the speakers abusing each other at intervals, as though,
Lord Ottercove thought, God and the Day were not in sight! The
Christian protagonist, pointing at the blackboard on which a hen and an
egg had been sketched by him, questioned his audience: “They talk of
science, but what do they know? Can any of them tell me--can any of you
here tell me who came first? The hen or the egg? Did the hen first make
the egg, or did the egg first make the hen? Now, then, can any one here
tell me, I ask ye? Can any of the science students tell me? Ye can’t.
Well, _I_ can tell yer!--God made them both!” And he looked round
triumphantly.
“They tell us--these Christian fellows,” shouted the Free Thinker, “that
Adam and Eve was sent to hell because Eve ‘ad eaten an apple. Now here
is an apple.” He held up an apple for all to see. “Now, Ladies and
Gentlemen, I ask ye: What is there in an apple? ‘Ere! _And yet they tell
us_--the Bible tells us--that Adam and Eve was sent to ‘ell ‘cause Eve’d
eaten an apple! Now I ask ye, Ladies and Gentlemen, can ye believe such
a silly thing?”
“Free Thinkers!” shouted the Christian protagonist, pointing derisively
at his antagonist not five yards away. “Free Thinkers!--Free _Stinkers_
I call them!”
“Because they’d eaten an apple. Now here! Just look at it. Look at it!
What is there, I ask, in an apple? And yet they tell us--”
Suddenly the urge to impart to this large gaping audience the momentous
message came over Ottercove. It was the end of the visible world. In a
few hours, perhaps in a few moments--at most in a week--they would have
to face the Judgment. It was for him to break the news. What consolation
had he to offer them? Call on their national pride in facing disaster
calmly and stoically? Recall the serene joys of eternity? Dwell on the
ultimate mercy of God? Or prophesy that there will be much weeping and
gnashing of teeth.
Biblical language came readily to his lips: Lord Ottercove, though few
knew it, was the greatest living authority on biblical texts. He knew
the Bible from cover to cover and backwards: indeed, he could, at a
pinch, recite it by heart under an anesthetic.
“What does it profit a man,” he began in a loud robust voice, the crowds
gathering round him, “if he gain the whole world (he paused as if to
prolong the tension of the ‘poser’; then added quietly:) and lose his
own soul? And why should it sadden a man if he lose the whole world
(Lord Ottercove paused), never having gained it?” He had the pleasurable
sensation of discovering (alas, as the world was about to let him down)
that he had the gift of a preacher and prophet, a gift that could hold
and sway multitudes. “Before I came here,” he went on, “I sat in the dim
light of my study and I dreamed and meditated by the fire; and there
came one of the seven angels, and he carried me away in the spirit to a
great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy
Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God:
and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even”--Lord Ottercove
stopped as if seeking the _mot juste_--“like a jasper stone,” he said,
“clear as crystal.”
The audience was writhing with excitement, but he stopped them with a
movement of his hand, leaning forward over the stand and speaking almost
in a whisper: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first
heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”
Once indeed he was taken aback by an interpellation: “Why the dickens
didn’t you stop the man, man?” yelled a dingy figure from the crowd,
when he had spoken of the adventist-scientist.
“He wouldn’t stop!” returned Lord Ottercove. There was indeed no sort of
good in stopping him, he hastened to add. Did they not know that an
invention or discovery was at no time the monopoly of a single brain?
What use indeed having this scientist arrested when his successor, whose
hiding-place they could not know, was waiting to spring the mine?
But suddenly as he spoke a sort of mental cramp seized upon his brain,
and he could not bring himself to utter another word. The harder he
tried, the more did thought and words elude him. He stood gazing at them
with what seemed to him an inane smile, but so magnetic, so masterful
was his personality to the people around him that they stood
fascinated, with their eyes glued on him, while he gazed back at them,
in silence. Three minutes elapsed.
“Come on!” shouted a man from the crowd.
“Sir,” Lord Ottercove turned to him, “will you be good enough to allow
me to complete my prayer?”
At which the interlocutor relapsed into the obscurity whence he had
emerged.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” said Lord Ottercove: “I thank you for your kind
attention.”
As he walked home, posters of his own newspapers informed him of the
imminent dissolution of our planet. He groaned as he saw them. How bad!
How unimaginative! Posters depressed him. Never a day, never an hour but
that they would trot out some fresh disaster. A train derailed, liners
colliding in the Channel, a steamer run aground in the fog, a bus
toppled over, an airman lost in the Atlantic. Disaster, disaster,
disaster! “Disaster mongers!” he called them. How the public must be
getting sick of it. Never good news. He’d have to change all that. And
suddenly, he remembered that he could not change it: disaster mongers
had for ever triumphed.
At a street corner he bought a newspaper. “End of the World” meetings,
he read, were being held in various parts of London. People began to
close their shops, and the excitement increased to such an extent that
later troops were called out, and large forces of police appeared at
the street corners, and the approach to Downing-street was barricaded,
the Prime Minister having refused to receive deputations who, resenting
his wait-and-see policy, were eager to compel him to do something _and
do it now_. Riots broke out in the east end of London, led by persons of
an irreligious disposition desiring to have a last good run for their
money, and men and women were committing suicide and going insane. There
was a vast crowd in Trafalgar Square. The Bishop of London, it seemed,
was addressing it. “Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee....” Voices,
out of time and tune, soared to the skies. A score of elderly virgins,
earnest, spectacled ladies in white, sang with transport, invoking
speedy transportation to the Seat of Judgment to be first among the
Brides of the Lamb. “A scramble,” thought Ottercove. “A queue before a
first-night. Wish I could be sure of my dramatic critic. Bright lad,
Allan Scoffer, might manage to get in.”
The Brides’ white stood out luminously against the drab crowd. “What a
chance to make a corner in muslin,” Ottercove thought to himself, “to
meet the sure demand for Ascension robes!” The untimeliness of such an
enterprise, in the face of timelessness, which would rob him of the
fruits, damped his speculative ardour. He had long since lost interest
in making money, though the habit persisted into middle life, and
whenever now he sold a yacht or a Venetian palace or a country house in
Scotland, he would pride himself on a minimum profit of £5, as a
private reassurance that his old cunning had not left him. He was like a
veteran golfer who suddenly, during a quiet walk in the country, borrows
a club to show his friends the stuff he is made of. “Not lost the knack
yet,” they say tonelessly.
He walked all the way home to Stonedge House and, unnoticed by his
servants, sauntered sombrely into his ground-floor sitting-room. His
mood was sombre. He stood at the wide French windows and looked out at
the darkling park which stretched before him, melting away into the
mist, stood there, a little weary and disenchanted. So this was the end.
Good! He felt sorry for the world, and for himself, and for the race
robbed of the promise of fulfilment. The imminent end of human life and,
with it, of his career on earth, threw him back upon a reminiscent mood.
He saw himself a boy way back in Ottercove, bright-eyed, eager, wide
awake, the visible world a glittering prize, a pear waiting to be
plucked. Well, he had plucked it. It had proved, however, more than he
really cared to chew; his appetite had waned as he partook of it. He had
had his fill; and, perhaps--he had always kept an open mind about these
things, had always been awake to other worldly possibilities--perhaps
there was room for his versatile talents beyond. He had always been
keen, modest, ready to learn the rules of the game--any game--to
appreciate the change in the nature of things, and always successful.
Those oft-quoted words with which his father once adorned his dreary
sermons, words whose beauty had arrested his attention, now stood before
him, cavernous with meaning: “We shall not all sleep: but we shall all
be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.”
Probably. His father--a curious man. No pliability of mind. No
disinterested curiosity. Only a rigid belief in heaven and hell. Wrong!
Life was pliable, generous and miraculous to a degree we could not even
guess; it opened out suddenly, wondrously, as a flower overnight. To-day
a caterpillar--to-morrow a butterfly. But we, dull, sodden ruffians
ruminating over our existence, like cows chewing the cud, could not
imagine a heaven other than of grass and water--greener grass and
clearer water. Fools!
He paced up and down. A series of articles on the nature of immortality,
for _The Sunday Runner_, commended themselves to his mind. A fitting
counter-blast to the precocious spiritualism exploited by a rival group
of newspapers. He would write them himself. It was wonderful how his
mind was opening out, like a bed of flowers, all looking, straining to
the sun. Intuitive orientation. Knew where the sun was, in fact had
always had a place in it. And God was just there, too, behind the sun.
He felt that he would get on well with God, owing to his reasonableness,
modesty, and readiness for transfiguration at short notice. He would
not ask questions, but watch every movement of God’s brow and anticipate
His every mood.
Ah, well! he had faith. He would go on believing in a personal
immortality till, with a poker, from behind, Providence would knock him
dead.... A sinister afterthought; he brushed it aside. He stretched out
his hands to the unseen: “I am reasonable. Will not the reasonable from
beyond the grave claim me?” Half forgotten feelings flooded his heart.
He remembered his arrival in England back from his New Zealand tour, as
the train rolled noisily over the bridge into the great metropolis, the
witness of his crowning triumphs. He remembered a thrush outside his
bedroom window way back in Ottercove in early boyhood. The trees seemed
to stand still, as if waiting for something. These feelings, eternal
essences of things, were they to be wasted? These anticipations, were
they not to be fulfilled? They were pledges of something that was to be,
had always been, existed now, as if round the corner but somehow out of
reach. The quickness with which people disposed of dead bodies, the
rapidity with which they resigned themselves to their loss, suggested
that, at bottom, they thought it was all right. It was all right. _How_
all right, he could not say, but all right it was.
“Time for bed.” He stretched out his arms to the ceiling and yawned. “I
am,” he said aloud, “such as I am, and what I am--neither more nor
less--for the universe to chew and digest and assign to the requisite
uses.”
XL.
Lord de Jones had been in a hurry to cross over to the Continent, for
there was no means at all of knowing how much of it had disintegrated to
date. The uncertainty of the whole business appalled him. The
stationmaster at Victoria might not be able to cummunicate with the
_chef de la gare du Nord_. Yet he had no means of knowing whether this
was because Paris-Nord (or, for that matter, Paris) had disintegrated,
or whether it was because the number was engaged.
There was of course an aeroplane service for abroad, but people still
clung to the _terra firma_, Lord de Jones thought, without good cause.
Moreover, they were travelling with luggage--a good deal of luggage. It
was indeed difficult to know how much luggage to take with one--Eva
could not take enough--to last one to the end of one’s days in time. The
sight of passengers reclining in the easy luxury of the Pullmans,
looking trim and hard, appalled him. They would not come back, he mused.
Never come back from this last journey into space whither they were
travelling _de luxe_, over viaducts, away, away, urbane materialists
melting into air....
And on the French side, against all the easy felicity of the language,
the sinuous tones of the restaurant-car attendant who sang out as he
squeezed himself along the swaying corridors: “_Prière de prendre place
pour le premier déjeuner!_” contrasting favourably with the brisk “First
luncheon!” of the British dining-car attendant, the incorrigible
insularity of the English passengers who said they wanted to shut out,
if possible, French passengers from the coupé (forgetting that they were
travelling across France in a French train), stood out a black and
reeking ghost of shame which made him think the world was doomed because
it lacked all manners. In the night the train stood still, emitting long
sighs at intervals; and his heart beat loud within him with foreboding.
Images passed through his mind, of a life _à la_ Jean Jacques Rousseau,
in which he must rely on his dexterity of arm and on nature’s bounty. A
hardened hunter he is, building her a hut. Eva with only furs from furry
animals which he had hunted down for her to hide her nudeness. Primeval
love and lust. Long days of bliss. But what is this? The roar of a lion.
Bother! He must get up and see about it. He had been dozing, and opening
his eyes, she was there indeed, not in the wilderness as yet, but facing
him in the coupé, and smiling at him.
But what if it fail him? She, the child,--no more than she could
understand how, having undone one atom, he had automatically undone the
world,--had not the remotest comprehension of how he could now isolate
a specific portion of it from destruction. Yet when he had, to
illustrate the process, said to her that all he had to do was to
vaccinate the hill they had selected as their future world, she said:
“Of course! How silly of me not to think of it myself!”
But even if it fail, then death. And what was death? A change of
outlook. He remembered once crossing a wide river somewhere, and as he
landed on the other side, straying into a bathing place where lots of
naked people sat about on benches in the garden and on chairs in the
adjoining restaurant, smoking, eating, chatting, listening to music--but
with nothing on them. It was uncanny. And he thought that landing on the
other side of death must be as strange: for everything seemed different,
yet everything the same.
Dusk fell as the train raced across Austria, and sheaves of corn in the
vast whirling fields looked like humans stealing away one by one in the
twilight. “Escaping,” he thought.
And, waking in the morning suddenly, they saw the mountains.
In the station square at Innsbruck, a fat German who looked like a pig
waved his whip at his dog and threatened it: “_Ach, du Schweinhund!_”
“Disgraceful!” said Eva, and as she passed him she gave him an icy look
over her slim shoulder. It was a beautiful day in June. They hired a
victoria and drove, at first through the old mellow town with its
cloistered streets, domes, turrets, and pinnacles; then by the side of
the river, angry and turbulent. A faint hazy summer afternoon was
drawing to its close, and as, at sundown, they came to a hanging bridge
chained between rocks and the foaming green river rushing angrily under
the horse’s hoofs, Christopher’s eyes filled with tears: the beauty of
it all was more than he could bear.
And when, at the Pension Kogl, they came out on to their balconies, they
were stunned with rapture by the view which opened out on to the
mountain scenery. Below was the river, the passionate Inn, and the
bridges, the funicular slowly climbing the mountain slope, and all
around were pine trees, birches, roses, villas hidden in lanes lined
with foliage; and at night when they walked by the river, where lanterns
shone forth from between secretive trees, it was as if a wonderful
secret, long dreamt and forgotten, awaited one round the corner.
XLI.
That night Lord Ottercove slept at The Cottage, and the following night
he spent in the country. It was not till he had got into bed on the
third night and turned over on his left side that he was aware of the
sound of rustling paper in his pyjama coat pocket, which, on inspection,
proved to be a letter, a _billet doux_ from his Eva. She was, she
wrote, with Christopher de Jones, who, as Rex probably knew, had gone
off his chump and had disintegrated the world, which was unravelling
rapidly of its own accord (“like a piece of crochet-work,” she wrote,
“if you know what I mean, whose first stitch he has undone,”) and she
had with difficulty persuaded him to isolate the top of a hill, which he
said he could do by vaccinating it, so to speak, against the spreading
corruption, to save her and himself, and she was now secretly indicating
the exact location of that hill in the Austrian Alps whither he, Rex,
should fly at once. He must not, however, bring anyone with him, as
there would be very little to eat. “_I told Him I’d like to have you
saved, but He won’t hear of it. I am furious. I told him all the Truth
that I have written to you. And He is Furious. Never mind, darling, if I
flirt with him perhaps He will not kill you. Your loving wife_
_Eva._”
Lord Ottercove never weighed or reflected: he knew. Light came to him
without intermediaries, direct from the Holy Ghost. He must save himself
_and Vernon Sprott_. Vernon Sprott was, since the death of a late Prime
Minister, his oldest friend, and friendship was to Ottercove a pure and
sacred thing. In other departments of life he had displayed a versatile
ability, but in friendship he was a genius. No coldness, lack of
response, animosity, or even treachery could dull his friendship. If he
once liked a man, nothing that that man might do to him would stop his
liking him. Equally, he would stop at nothing if he could render even
the smallest service to a friend. Lord Ottercove was said to have made
the war in order to oblige a friend whose special gifts, he thought,
would find their happiest expression in a war cabinet. His tenderness in
the cause of friendship knew no bounds. And so, entering hatless into
his chariot, he muttered the address of Mr. Vernon Sprott.
But when, his heart thumping within him, he dragged himself up to
Vernon’s study at the top of his house in Berkeley-square, Vernon Sprott
was writing a novel. Vernon Sprott was invariably writing a novel. That
was, according to the more esoteric critics, the special trouble with
him. And the special trouble to-night was that Vernon Sprott would not
stop writing the novel, hoping to finish, print, sell it, and retire on
the proceeds before the world came to its final dissolution. Lord
Ottercove beheld the broad industrious back of his friend, who made a
slave of himself to keep afloat a large yacht, and said: “Vernon, you’re
a writer of talent: but a merchant of genius.”
Vernon Sprott turned round on his chair. “You, Rex,” he said, looking at
him with critical thoughtfulness, “who have cut such a figure in the
visible world, why don’t you now turn your mind to the invisible
mystery of things and solve, say, the Riddle of the Universe?”
Lord Ottercove pondered silently awhile. “I cannot solve it,” he said.
Mr. Vernon Sprott turned back to his desk.
Lord Ottercove looked at his friend with grave significance. He loved
Vernon Sprott. All the music, all the poetry in the world was not so
strong nor yet so pure as this devotion of the younger for the elder
friend, and when he spoke of him his voice grew tender and tears came to
his eyes. “Vernon!” he said at last. “I am going to save your life! For,
you know, there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we
may. My chariot is at the door and” (looking at his watch) “we must
fly.”
“Let me put the last stroke to my novel.”
“I advise you against it.”
“Why?”
“Vernon: it would do you no good.”
“But I must. No first-class artist--”
“Vernon: we must fly.”
Vernon Sprott, smoking a long fat cigar, followed Lord Ottercove
critically into the chariot which, cutting sharply round the corner,
took wing, and clearing the roofs of the Berkeley-square houses, soared
into the sky. Lord Ottercove and Mr. Vernon Sprott beheld for the last
time the great city of London which, viewed from this imposing height,
looked as though it had been inadvertently dropped out of the back of a
cart. An architectural effect that, though it was not premeditated,
could hardly be called happy, thought Mr. Sprott. However. He puffed at
his cigar. “Your secretary and telephone operator gone ahead, I expect?”
“Yuh. Can’t get on without them.”
They were now flying right into the dawn.
XLII.
CASTOR AND POLLUX
Herr Kogl was in charge of the telephone and telegrams.
He would come up and say to you with oracular pride:
“A--telegram--is--on--the--way--to--you.” He articulated slowly, as if
appreciating the necessity of talking distinctly to foreigners.
“How do you know?” Lord de Jones asked him.
“I know,” said Herr Kogl, turning to go. But he came back at once and
explained:
“They--have--telephoned--from--the--post--office--to--say--so.”
The telegram arrived an hour later. De Jones opened it and read:
“_Lord Ottercove and Mr. Vernon Sprott arriving by chariot this
evening. Reserve first class accommodation._
_Hannibal._”
In the afternoon while everybody was at tea--“_Jause_,” in the
vernacular--Mrs. Hannibal and the telephone operator arrived in an
aeroplane and installed themselves with the efficiency and celerity of a
quartermaster. Mrs. Hannibal occupied the little reception room; the
telephone operator, a graduate of the Royal College of Science,
commandeered the telephone. Then, there being nothing for them to do
till evening, they strolled down the hill into town to inspect the
sights.
And Baby?
She was not at the gate, nor at the bandstand, nor in the by-ways of the
park. Since his demise from the Pension Kogl, Frank lived in town, often
meeting Baby when she came down to Innsbruck. And here she was, as fresh
as May, beckoning to him from across the flower-bespangled field. That
laughing, slanting look in her eyes stirred something in his frame as
though a bird had suddenly flown into him. He was joy, his body the
cage. Soon joy would fly out; and he fretted and flurried trying to lock
the door of the cage, losing his happiness in the anxiety of losing it.
That piquant blend of childish innocence on her face with a suggestion
of ripening womanhood about her form, so irresistible to men, was no
less irresistible to Frank. They took the funicular up the mountain
slope and continued the acclivious ascent by foot, stopping now and then
to look down at the town in the valley, when he would feel her lovely
weight against him. They wound their way up the Schillerweg and stopped
at a Gasthaus in the precincts of the Pension Kogl and had coffee and
cakes amidst the beer and wine drinking peasants with goat beards like
shaving brushes stuck in their coloured hats, and the women in Tyrolese
peasant dress taken in tightly at the waist and showing off their
figures to advantage, and sat still and looked down into the green folds
of the valley and up at the jagged summits of naked rock. She gave him a
look that came straight from the soul. Her eyes were as if they had just
been sad, had understood all, and now chose to see only the heavenly,
sunny side of your being. And looking at her eyes, you, too, felt but
the sunny side of yourself, and wanted to dance and prance in the
sunshine that emanated from those eyes. Fowls, chickens, strutted all
over the place, jumped on the chairs. The little serving maid,
bare-legged, would call them: “Chuck-chuck-chuck!”
They were screened from sight by a tree. He put his hand on her arm. Her
look moistened. The sun, as if making a last effort, shone with a tragic
brightness; then, unable to sustain the effort, diminished its light.
The bare-legged maid had gone in. They kissed. When she came out she
wore a pair of brown stockings: and they stopped kissing.
“Hello, hello!”
They turned round and saw Eva and Christopher de Jones. “Wherever have
you been?” Eva turned on to her cousin. “We’ve been looking for you
everywhere. Chris is anxious to begin.”
“There isn’t any time to waste. It’s coming our way now, spreading
fast,” de Jones confirmed.
“Like creeping paralysis,” said Eva, “and Chris is going to vaccinate
this hill.” Then, turning to Frank: “Let me see! Have you any hair
left?” He quickly removed his hat. “Oh, lots and lots!” she exclaimed.
“It’s about the only thing I have.”
“It’s time I did it,” said de Jones. “Herr Kogl, can you oblige me with
a little gasoline?”
“Yes, yes. We’ll see if we can get any,” said Herr Kogl politely.
“Kindly follow me to the garage, and we shall see if we are lucky.”
Then in another tone: “Hey there! Herbert! Any gasoline! Any gasoline, I
said! Come on and get about it, quick! I’m waiting. I said: _waiting_!”
Christopher de Jones returned with a mysterious air. “I have timed,” he
said, “the explosion for 5:15.”
“What explosion is this?” Frank said with enquiring charm.
“Oh, perfectly harmless in itself. But it will frighten away all the
rest, and leave this mountain top for our little party.”
“Is this discrimination not perhaps a little heartless?”
“Surplus, surplus. One must always get rid of the surplus.”
He took out his watch and held it in his palm. Three minutes elapsed.
There was a mild crash. Then several faces were thrust enquiringly out
of the windows of the Pension Kogl. Next, the word “earthquake” passed
from mouth to mouth, and a thin stream of visitors trickled down the
narrow mountain path into Innsbruck which stretched below them, sunning
itself in the valley. Herr Kogl, Frau Kogl, the policeman and the Frau
Policeman with her quicksilver of a little boy, the apoplectic Baron,
and some others, made light of Lord de Jones’s warning and refused to
budge.
They stood with Frank and Eva and Baby and de Jones in a group on the
terrace and watched the other visitors trot down the hill: the Grand
Duke, the Frau Professor with the dachshund, the Herr Pastor, the Frau
Pastor, Herr and Frau Nikulitsch, the two Scottish old maids, Herr
Spatz, Frau Spatz, and their son Willy, the Frau Doktor Wirt, the Frau
Direktor Bödingen, the Frau Oberst von Kaisar, and Frau von Endte. There
lived among others in the annexe of the Pension Kogl an
effeminate-looking young artist from Vienna who was kept by a poor, pale
consumptive German girl who paid for him and cooked his meals, whereas
he, tired of her love, powdered his face and, adjusting his tie before
the mirror, went to town every day to distract himself with her money.
On the fatal day he, adjusting his tie, went to town and did not come
back. And she, going down the hill to the grocer’s to get him his
supper, did likewise.
Frank remembered this afterwards. Now he stood between Eva and de Jones
and watched his erstwhile enemies from the _pension_ go down, never to
return. It was a warm Sunday afternoon. Far away, a train whistled and
then coiled below, like a serpent, on its long journey to Vienna. It
will not reach Vienna, Frank thought, not in eternity! All the peasants,
save for one old man, had already vanished down the hill. He drank his
big mug to the bottom, smacking his lips. Having paid for the beer and
lighted his pipe, he rose, and at once there came the sounds of his
jolly accordion, as, with twinkling eye, he strode to his own happy tune
out of the courtyard. Fresh and alert, he went down the road making his
own music, till his long curved pipe, and his knapsack, and the plume in
his hat ducked by the hill, and only the jolly tune spoke of his fresh
onward strides.
The sun had long ago set behind the hills. It was very still: the empty
spell which hangs over the world before twilight.
“And what’s that?” Baby exclaimed, pointing to an approaching dot in the
sky. Eva peered at the clouds. An airplane was speeding towards them.
“It’s the chariot,” said Frank.
“It’s Rex! It’s Rex!” she cried. “Hurrah! it’s Rex!”
They could see them now with the naked eye, Lord Ottercove and Mr.
Vernon Sprott, seated side by side, puffing at their cigars.
One moment it seemed as if Lord Ottercove’s winged chariot would land
safely and gracefully in the courtyard of the Pension Kogl. The next, it
looked as though it would do no such thing.
The two occupants of the chariot suddenly looked at each other. They
were both, in their different ways, strong men, and said nothing. They
were, they knew it, subject to immediate dissolution. And there was
method in it. First, Mr. Vernon Sprott began to disintegrate (his
eighty-five volumes of fiction and _belles-lettres_ in the British
Museum having already preceded him). Mr. Sprott realised with his usual
imperturbable objectivity that he, who had always been one for whom the
visible world existed, was on the point of no longer existing for the
visible world. Now Lord Ottercove also began to get diffuse. He was not
aware of any pain or discomfort: he only felt that he was becoming less
and less homogeneous. This master of a million voices yielded inaudibly
to extinction, his last conscious feeling, one of sorrow not of anger,
being a profound regret that Lord de Jones had not remained a Genius of
the Untried. Soon their fabric melted into air, into thin air. Their
insubstantial pageant faded and left no rack behind.
But in the growing twilight the tips of their cigars, fiery particles
immune from dissolution, two beacons of light, two golden stars in the
sky, twin brothers, Castor and Pollux, shone for ever and ever.
XLIII.
THE COCK CROWS TWICE
There was no sound at all, and nothing to see: something that had
hitherto been ceased to be, like a dream on waking. Nothing crashed,
nothing fell: no mist, not a whiff of steam. No gossamer. Things rolled
up into nothing, as if they had vanished up their own sleeves.... The
world around seemed to be burning, silently, quickly, invisibly.
They stood round and watched intently. Would the vaccination prove
adequate in neutralizing the creeping disease? Or would it overtake
their little hill, reach them and consume them all? By the answer to
this question Christopher de Jones will stand or fall. If he succeed,
how will they reward him? Foolish associations intrude their minds.
“Payment by results.” How long, how long! Will this ever end? Has it
ended? Are they dead, and, in a sense, as good as before? “Come, now,”
said Christopher impatiently.
Gradually the hill detached itself, and as Baby and Herbert ran down the
slope hand in hand to ascertain if they were clear of the contamination,
floated away into space.
“A clean piece of work, what?” said de Jones, looking round at everybody
for approbation. “We’re clear of the old earth.”
They all looked admiringly at the wizard.
“We’ve peeled right off the rotten crust of the world; the old planet’s
gone off to die by itself.”
“The whole of her fabric vanished by now?” asked Frank.
“Well, there may still be a piece of Asia left as we are talking. But it
need concern us no longer.”
“I should hate to think, Chris,” Eva said, “that you have not quite
killed the earth and that she is suffering.”
“A matter of a day or so, that’s all. The wound is mortal.”
They stared away into space. “Look out!” he cried. “We are floating
away. No need for alarm. Merely changing our bearings in the firmament.
The stars are looking at us inquisitively; that is because we are
newcomers.”
They could not recognise their Chris, their gloomy, silent Chris. He was
gay, excited, communicative; like a Cook’s tourists’ guide. “Hold on!”
he cried presently. “We seem to be getting away somewhere, I don’t quite
know where.”
Away, away, away! To the sun, Frank thought, to be consumed in its
light!
The movement increased in velocity. It seemed they were falling.
Falling, falling, still falling; but falling upwards, not downwards.
With indrawn breath they awaited the final impact which was to shatter
them into space. Now, with a crash, they would fall on the moon.
Trembling, Eva came into Frank’s arms. He held her close that he might
drink her breath, commit her kiss into the keeping of his soul, forever
lost in hers. For his identity, as it dissolved in the encroaching dusk,
clung to his own self’s dream in her soul mirrored. Was it the end? Shut
in that vision! Now, Doom, devour them!... “Ever, and again, and
forever, thine.”
Yet the minutes passed and no blow came. When they had stood tensely and
motionlessly for what seemed to them a decade, the velocity of their
fall decreased perceptibly, and they came to a halt. The sky gradually
cleared, and the sun flickered through the clouds. It looked as though
it might be over.
Lord de Jones looked as nonplussed as the others. “Apparently,” said he,
“the law of gravity is no object to God.”
“Yes,” Frank agreed, releasing Eva from his protective grasp, “we are
saved--if unscientifically saved.”
“God has shown,” remarked Herr Kogl, “that whatever else He may be, He
is no doctrinaire.”
“Apparently,” replied de Jones, still looking worried, “our knowledge of
astronomy is incomplete--if this sort of thing can happen.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, etcetera,” said
Frank.
Herr Kogl looked at Frau Kogl. They smiled faintly at each other. They
were pale, yet happy. But where was Herbert?
“Never mind Herbert. Where was Baby?” The question flashed through Eva’s
mind.
Steps were taken accordingly to satisfy the curiosity on both sides.
Herbert and Baby had, it was remembered, run down the slope hand in hand
to ascertain whether the hill was clear of the dissolving earth, before
the hill had shot, like a bolt, into space; and neither Herbert nor Baby
could be traced any more. Lord de Jones advanced an interesting and
plausible theory that Herbert and Baby, having thoughtlessly overstepped
the line of demarcation, had rendered themselves subject to the chemical
laws operating outside the area he had thoughtfully isolated by means of
vaccination, and thus had shared the fate of all matter. While they were
discussing the sensational disappearance of two of their number who
should have been saved, the ground beneath them gave a jerk and then
began to revolve, at first slowly, then faster and faster.
“Hold tight!” cried de Jones. The new globe was whirling with incredible
rapidity on its own axis and, what was even more distressing, round the
sun; which made it doubly difficult to keep one’s feet. They were, thank
God, for the most part of them, Londoners, accustomed to roughing it on
the tops of omnibuses, and this sort of thing held no real peril for
them. But twenty Austrian citizens, mountain folk who had lived away
from urban surroundings, failed to keep their poise and were hurled into
infinity to ascertain, but never to report, whether Einsteinian infinity
was indeed finite (even though some of the victims had no scientific
bias at all).
But all things come to an end sooner or later, as was remarked by some
keen observer. Gradually the revolutions slowed down and then almost
subsided: and there they were--behold! the new Jerusalem descending out
of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto
a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. And
they saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the
first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
“By God, John, you’re right!” Frank exclaimed: “as right as sixpence!”
“That was a narrow escape,” said Herr Kogl.
Lord de Jones sat down on the ground and stretched out his limbs and
yawned. “Ha!” he laughed.
“What is the joke, if I may ask?” Frank smiled enquiringly.
“Fifty years ago,” said de Jones, “when the laws of science were
absolute, this would have been impossible. But in this age of
Relativity, nothing, thank God, is absolutely impossible!”
“Relatively speaking,” said Frank.
“I have always put God above mathematics,” said Herr Kogl.
“Either nature lacked science,” Frank said, “or God knew a lot more. Our
experience is decidedly novel and interesting.”
“As a matter of fact,” rejoined Lord de Jones, “it all happened
according to plan. Just as I thought. Nothing surprises me.”
He _hadn’t_ thought so. He was like a captain who in a storm mislaid his
chart and instruments and, when the storm was over, pretended to take
his bearings and said that they tallied with his intended course.
They were miraculously saved; and there was still a world. But what a
world! A rounded mountain top, peeled away and revolving very slowly by
itself round the old sun.
And there, as before, stood the Pension Kogl. Nothing seemed to have
happened to it; all the windows were whole. Here was the garden, the
courtyard, the stables; and there the fields with the cows and sheep and
horses grazing imperturbably as before. Was it a dream? Where was it?
When was it?
And here was Herr Kogl standing on the doorstep puffing at his pipe; and
there was Frau Kogl, agitated, throwing out her hands, probably saying,
Frank thought, “I don’t know what to do!” to the policeman who was
mystified, though not disagreeably, by the disappearance of the young
shrew who had been his wife. And in her agitation Frau Kogl seemed to
be forgetting her own grief.
“The matter is simple,” de Jones was explaining. “When our new little
planet began to whirl like a merry-go-round, the Frau Policeman, having
failed to clutch at a solid object, or clutching an object that was not
solid (possibly her husband), was hurled like a stone outside the now
negligible gravitation zone of this little earth of ours, and was
attracted by the superior gravitation of the moon.”
“For one who has always whined for the moon,” said Herr Kogl, “the
transference must have its attraction.”
“The bump,” retorted de Jones, “will have been fatal. But that is
neither here nor there. All I ask you to note is that her death was due
to natural causes.”
“Lucid, admirable,” said Frank, “and entirely convincing!”
The apoplectic old Baron came up to say that he had just stumbled over
the body of little Hans, the policeman’s boy, and the company, sobered
by recent apocalyptic events, slowly made for the spot. De Jones again
assumed the initiative.
“Observe,” he said, “an interesting phenomenon. The boy, too small and
not used to transit either by omnibus or the Metropolitan Railways, had
not developed the instinct of a strap-hanger, and if his ancestors had
indeed ever had this instinct, it had been atrophied in him through long
disuse. And thus he failed to clutch instinctively at the small bush
that might have saved him, and was hurled instead into space. But being
light in body he was not hurled far enough to reach the gravitation zone
of the moon, but remained within the gravitation halo of this little
planet whose power of attraction, as you are aware, is so weak that when
we raise our legs in walking we have some difficulty in touching ground
again. We might be penny balloons on the day after their purchase when,
no longer able to rise in the air, they do the next best thing. And so,
observe, this infant’s fall was not heavy: it did not maim or deform
him: only knocked the life out of him. All in the natural order of
phenomena.”
“Most interesting and instructive,” said Frank.
“Poor child,” said Eva. “Poor Baby! Poor Herbert! I wish now,
Christopher, you had never begun it.”
“You can’t have,” retorted Christopher, “a worldwide cataclysm like this
without a victim here and there, which is all in the day’s work.”
“The number of your victims,” interjected Frank, “is in the
neighbourhood of 1,600,000,000.”
“What!” Frau Kogl was appalled. “That is not allowed! _Das gibt es
nicht!_ Herr Wachmann!” she called out to the policeman, “will you have
this gentleman arrested. He is the biggest murderer that ever lived!”
The policeman, a tin sword trailing at his side, looked from one to the
other with an irresolute air.
“Come, come!” said Lord de Jones, patting him on the shoulder, “this is
no longer your old Austria.”
“Now don’t be a funk,” Frau Kogl egged him on, “assert your authority,
show what you can do.”
“I am the only policeman in the world, a poor, lonely man. How can I
arrest anybody?”
“Come, come, don’t you bother them,” Herr Kogl intervened. “What is done
is done and cannot be undone.”
But she would not listen to him. And even when he bawled at her she did
not quail, this time, before the man with the strong will; and he turned
into the house with a shrug. “Women,” he said tenderly.
“You’re a fine policeman and no mistake,” Frau Kogl jeered, till even
Lord de Jones himself felt sorry for the man.
“Leave the poor man alone, can’t you?” he said. “What has he done to
you?”
“It’s not what he, but what you’ve done, sir. Killed Herbert, killed
everybody. Everybody, everybody ... absolutely everybody one can think
of. And now with this funk of a policeman there will be no justice, no
authority left in the world; no one to bring you to book!”
“That will do, Frau Kogl.”
“No, it _won’t_ do, sir. This is _my_ pension, bought on my mother’s
hard savings she made in Alsace-Lorraine from where we spring, and as an
Alsacian I am too proud to tolerate the presence of the murderer of the
human race in my house.”
“Stop!” cried de Jones. “Don’t try my patience too far, woman! My nerves
are on edge. I’ve had a very exceptional day. Do you know what you are
saying? This is the New Jerusalem that you see, the home of pacifism.
None of your Alsace-Lorraine now, I beg of you.”
“I came from there--”
“And you’ll go that way, if you are not careful.”
“All this is mine.”
“Oh, is it? Let heaven be my judge.” He snatched the sword from the
policeman and struck her on the head.
She collapsed in a heap.
The policeman walked away into the hills with a look which implied: “I
haven’t seen it.”
Lord de Jones lit his pipe. Frank and Eva stood by, aghast. De Jones
looked at them with a propitiating smile. “I have slain,” he said,
removing his pipe, “this dragon of contention, this symbol of war and
nationalism, I hope, for ever.”
“Cain!”
A cock crowed twice.
He started; then relaxed again. If the cock crowed twice to remind him
that he had betrayed his ideal at least once, he was nevertheless mighty
glad to know that there was a cock on the premises. He hoped there were
hens, too.
“I have released,” he said, “the spirit imprisoned in a foul house.”
“You’re blaspheming.”
“It had to be done.”
“Oh, had it?”
“A hard thing, I admit, for a pacifist. But we must not sentimentalise
if we are to survive; we must fight the peace as we fought the war!”
There was silence.
“Even the cock is too sick with you to crow again,” said Frank.
The light sank: there was a long drop of rain, then another. It began to
hail. The three of them turned in and stood at the window blurred with
rain. The old woman’s body lay out in the wet. Neither the hail nor rain
could waken her. The earth was wrapped in a wet mist. And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters.
And Lord de Jones said, “Let there be light”: and there was no light. So
he switched on the electric light: and he saw that it was quite good.
“You blooming fool, Christopher! You’ve upset all the seasons!” cried
Eva. “You’ve made a mess of the weather! It’s neither day nor night, but
heaven knows what! It should be summer now, and it is winter.”
“O Wind! If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
He sank into a chair and picked up a periodical, a copy of _The New
Statesman_, the last number. The very last! Eva opened the _Illustrated
London News_ full of pictures of the _concours hippique_ at the Olympia,
and Frank strolled over to the piano and tried his hand at the
_Symphony of the New World_, when Herr Kogl came in from the
dining-room.
“Bad weather, Herr Kogl, what?”
“Das ist kein Wetter, sondern ein Skandal,” and he adjusted the electric
stove. “Everyone can switch it out--I mean switch it on--whenever he
likes, but you must on no account switch it out without telling
Herbert....” He stopped, blubbered; then continued with a catch in his
voice: “because I mean then you release so much current that the dynamo
goes off like mad and may go phut, and then anything may happen. Though
I don’t care what happens now that Herbert....” He gulped and turned
away to the window. “What’s that?”
Next, he was in the courtyard by her side. He stood still, petrified.
“Anna!” he said. “Anna!”
Lord de Jones rose with _The New Statesman_ still in his hand, and went
upstairs, “To spare his feelings,” he said. “Though I wish these people
would realise that a certain modicum of suffering is unavoidable even in
this New Jerusalem. However, we don’t want scenes.”
Herr Kogl placed the body on chairs in the dining-room and came back
into the lounge. Eva eyed him compassionately. “What will you do to
him?”
“Nothing,” he said, “nothing. It is between him and his God, and I can
do nothing.” Tears streamed down his cheeks. “There are laws, delicately
adjusted spiritual laws. We must not meddle, must not touch God’s
scales. If I did, what would happen? ‘Leave off!’ God would say. ‘Away
with your clumsy hands, you bull in a china shop! By taking the law into
your own hands you have upset the delicate adjustment of my spiritual
world. You have disturbed the balance, disarranged the symmetry. Now,
instead of letting him, who has wrongfully taken, put it back by his own
exertion of soul, I must let him off lest I upset the scales of my world
by the wrong you have heaped on him. And who will square the original
sin? It falls back on the whole of mankind, don’t you see, young
feller-me-lad?’ That’s how God would speak to me if, in my great
ignorance, I presumed to take things into my own foolish hands.”
For a minute they said nothing, but looked out of doors, where the rain
had stopped, at the dripping trees flooded with light.
“And she was a clever woman,” he said; “she knew languages. Brought up
in a convent on the border of France....” His face puckered: he sobbed.
When the others had gone, he stood alone in the doorway, gazed at the
clouds and listened to the pines in the wind. He looked with despair for
the night to cover his grief: and it was perpetual day.
XLIV.
FINNEGAN! BEGIN AGAIN!
Lord de Jones, having, he deemed, ended his work, took a hot bath,
sitting in which he reflected that while it had taken God six days to
make the world, it took him only one day to unmake it. Yet he felt he
also needed a rest. It was 6 a.m. when he dragged himself up to his
room, dropped on his bed and fell asleep. He dreamt that he had been
given a lot of work which he resented because he was tired, having gone
to bed as late as 6 a.m. All night he dreamt that he had gone to bed at
6 a.m., and when he woke at noon he felt more tired than when he had
gone to bed at 6 a.m.
Rising, he put on his trousers and fastened on his braces and, not
troubling to put on a coat, went out on to the balcony to look at the
world: and he saw that it was good. The earth was certainly small, but
there was a cosiness, an intimacy about it now which it lacked when it
boasted five continents. It was dear to him because it was the work of
his own hands--in his private opinion, a masterpiece. It had been for
him to make it as small as he deemed fit, and he had deemed its present
size--which was ten miles in diameter--entirely appropriate.
“_In small proportions we just beauty see;_
_And in short measures life may perfect be_,”
he carolled hoarsely. “Yes, Ben Jonson would have understood me!”
“Or,” Frank rejoined, stepping out on to his balcony, “as Goethe said,
‘In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister’.”
“Very true, very true.”
“But not too true to be good. One should have watched you. One should
have known that somebody like you, with more science than sense, must
attempt this sort of thing sooner or later.”
“You supply your own answer. Someone, if not me then another, would have
done the same thing. No idea, not one so obvious, ever comes to one mind
alone. Thousands must have cherished it. Not for ever was mankind to be
mocked.”
“And poor Rex,” said Eva, joining them on the balcony. “A few seconds,
and he would have been with us last night.”
“And Vernon Sprott.”
“And Vernon Sprott.”
“Yes--I can picture Rex with us! He would have called for Mrs. Hannibal,
and there wouldn’t have been a Mrs. Hannibal. He would want to print
newspapers, and there would be nothing to print newspapers with or on.
He is better where he is.”
“Poor Rex. I _did_ want him to be saved,” said Eva. She was in a loose
dressing-gown. It had become more and more evident that she was
expecting a baby--“of the old world,” said Christopher de Jones
regretfully.
“I know. He was a great lad. We shall never see the like of him again.”
“There was,” said Frank, “nothing ‘tinny’ or snobbish about him. He was
a great, warm-hearted creature, sensitive, knowing, not rancorous, kind
and unspoilt. What energy, what enthusiasm, what mobility of mind! And
withal what magnanimity! He was, I think, the most magnanimous man I
have ever met. If he caught you red-handed, plotting against his life
and fortune, and you politely put away your pistol or poison with the
words: ‘So sorry, Rex,’ he’d tell you: ‘Say no more about it! If it’s
money you want, why the hell don’t you say so?’ and, so as not to hurt
your feelings by simply giving you a batch of Bank of England notes, he
would appoint you Editor-in-chief of all his newspapers.”
“And then worry the life out of you, till you resigned your job of your
own accord.”
“He was the big drum in the jazz band of our civilisation, in which I
was the ukulele. But he was a rare friend, and, characteristically, he
died trying to save his friend’s life. There was at least nothing
jazz-like in that.”
All Ottercove’s sympathetic qualities, unnoticed when he was alive, now
stood out and called for notice. They stood up as a mute reproach to
them and called up images of callous and ungrateful thoughts about a
man now mute, felled in the fullness of his strength, prematurely
disintegrated. He felt sore, badly hit by the loss. He was fond, he knew
it now, of Ottercove. Never again would he behold the glint of those
eyes. Never hear that robust voice....
“But why have been so half-hearted? Why not have finished off
everything?” He looked grievously at Chris.
“That the race may survive.”
“_Must_ it survive?”
“Of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“To honour my name and my memory.”
“What a name! What a memory!”
“We must recuperate, start afresh. My descendants will breed and
multiply, expand, develop trade, build fleets of aeroplanes, and shops
and factories. Ultimately we shall hope to open a new Bank of England.”
“_There was a little man_
_And his name was Finnegan;_
_He grew whiskers on his chin again._
_The wind did blow and blew them in again,_
_Poor old Patsy Finnegan._
_Finnegan!_
_Begin again!_”
“And we shall. As Goethe said, ‘Aller Anfang ist schwer.’ Glorious life!
Glorious beginning!”
“But what is there, you fool, to begin from?”
“Don’t call me fool.”
“What is there that the race, if indeed it survive, can learn from?
Where is there a picture, a book, a gramaphone record to pass on to
those who shall follow us? Nothing. Not even an _Outline of History_!”
“Wells? Ha!”
“We could do with Wells here. The earnest, regenerative Wells. Where is
he now?”
“Wells?” De Jones adjusted his telescope and peered at the clouds. “I am
looking if that be him over there.”
“Let me look.” Frank looked and saw what looked like Mr. Wells floating,
it seemed, only a few yards away, a compact, self-contained little
figure, apparently immune from dissolution. “I think,” Frank said, still
peering, “I can see Winston’s hat.”
“I might have saved Shaw.”
They strained into the skies at a few dissociated splinters which may
have been fragments of George Bernard Shaw.
“_I stand in no awe_
_Of George Bernard Shaw_,”
de Jones quoted.
“The attitude of the press and the reading public towards Shaw has been
one protracted joke.”
“How so?”
“You see, when Shaw began he was not taken seriously but was treated as
a joke. It was not till recently that he succeeded in being regarded as
a serious artist.”
“But where is the joke?”
“That is the joke.”
“And do you see that blot on the clear sky?”
“Let me look. Yes, I see.”
“That is Lord Birkenhead.”
“You are forgiven.”
“I am touched by your recognition. You were rather chary of it last
night.”
“Well, you must admit, de Jones, that, near as you have come, you have
not quite brought it off.”
“I suppose, like Jesus and Napoleon and Lenin, I will be deemed a
failure.”
“A splendid failure.”
“Not brought it off, as you say.”
“Not quite.”
“_Well, well! Nor I nor any man that but man is_
_With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased_
_With being nothing._”
The cook, who was never seen about in the week, and thus was not missed
in the upheaval, came up to say that breakfast was served; and they all
repaired downstairs, Eva placing Herr Kogl on her right (because he was
old and had suffered), and de Jones, though he was a peer of England, on
her left. De Jones did not like it. He had scattered his title about,
but now he would take himself in hand. He would take care to leave his
full history to his descendants, so that they should all know who their
ancestor was. It occurred to him that possibly Adam himself was, had we
been privileged to enquire more closely into his record, the ninth earl
of something or other. “I dare say,” he said aloud, “it will tickle them
no end to know that their founder was of the English aristocracy.”
“I am not sure,” said Frank, “whether I should not contest your
sovereignty. The last of the Romanovs having disintegrated (and even the
last before so doing having relinquished his claim in my favour), I am
by all accounts the Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, Czar of
Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland.”
“With no heir to the throne,” said de Jones.
“That depends on my Queen Consort, who in the case of my death and no
issue would succeed to the throne as Eva the Second.”
“Eva is my consort, already by the fact that she is bearing me a child.”
“My child?”
“Eva, whose child?”
“I don’t know.”
“Strange not to know.”
“Don’t you see, Chris, we must have children, little boys and girls, so
that they may marry again and carry on the race.”
“What! their own half-sisters! Eva, I am shocked.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Well, so long as they are good de Jones stock. Say what you like,
there’s something in having blue blood. I’m a believer in old families.”
“My mother,” Dickin proffered shyly, “was an Adams.”
“Adams and Eva!”
“And we must hand down such knowledge as we possess, do you hear, de
Jones? We must put it down on paper--all we know and remember. There is
Mrs. Hannibal’s typewriter. Though we have no printing press, we can
make carbon copies. When I was at Cambridge--”
“Were you at Cambridge?”
“Why?”
“It’s a rare thing.”
“Why?”
“It’s no more.”
“When I was at Cambridge I made a point of recording all I knew. Do you
know any algebra?”
“I don’t know any algebra. Leave me alone.”
“But poetry? Has anyone got any poetry? My God! There is no poetry.”
“Yes, darling, there is poetry.”
“Give it here. Let me have it, quick. Where is it?”
“I have some. Here, in my album.”
“Give it to me. God! Not real poetry?”
“Yes, darling, very nice poetry. There in the middle. There.”
“Thanks.
“‘_O Eva, O Eva,_
_I love you so mighty,_
_I wish my pyjama was_
_Next to your nighty._’
Thanks.”
“You can copy it out on the typewriter, darling, for all the boy and
girl lovers after our time. I suppose they will be able to read
English.”
“Yes,” said Chris. English, he laid down, was to be the only language of
the new world, to perpetuate the traditions of the English-speaking
world. On the other hand, to show his complete lack of racial prejudice,
the daring unconventionality of his mind, he confessed, with a smile,
that though he preferred to stick to the criminal law of England, in
civic matters he was in favour of the Code Napoléon. He looked upon
himself as holding the new world under a mandate from the British
Empire; in fact he was himself in lineal descent from the Stuarts. He
was in reality the trustee of the British Crown. “Gentlemen,” he said:
“The King!”
“The King!”
The Baron and Herr Kogl, both of them confirmed anglophiles, did not
protest.
After breakfast, they carried the body of Frau Kogl into the wood and
buried her among the trees and flowers. De Jones, who presided, said a
few unsentimental words over the open grave, the burden of which was
that to understand everything was to forgive everything. After that he
marched Herr Kogl away, the while enquiring in detail as to the number
and condition of the cattle, the orchard, the poultry farm, the
vegetable garden, and even the household utensils. “I shall require from
you,” he said, “a regular account of these.” And when later he inspected
the cattle, he said: “I am anxious at all cost to prevent the outbreak
of the foot-and-mouth disease. I shall hold you personally responsible.”
Herr Kogl, wondering sorrowfully what his poor Anna would have said to
the noble lord’s attitude to her own property, took it all in with good
grace. His reputed strong will availed him but little, but his good
sense a great deal; and when on returning home he addressed Lord de
Jones as “_Il Duce_,” Lord de Jones appointed Herr Kogl Chief Intendant
and Quartermaster-General with the acting rank of Minister of the
Interior.
While _Il Duce_ and his Quartermaster were discussing economy, Frank
Dickin, after being appointed Poet Laureate of the New World, strolled
away in search of inspiration. A thought struck him. He ambled on and,
when he was well out of sight, dashed across to the archducal Schloss
and hoisted his striped shirt, for want of a flag, according to the
rules of the old world. And according to the rules of the old world, he
looked about for something with which to defend the newly acquired
possession, and felt that in so doing he was also performing an act of
loyalty to the old world so ignominiously done in overnight. He waited
for Lord de Jones to attack him with bombs and shrapnel and machine
guns. And he reflected that if Lord de Jones did not attack him with
bombs and machine guns, it was because Lord de Jones had no bombs and
machine guns to attack him with.
It was odd, this feeling of proprietorship, in the face of all this
dissolution. And yet he told himself again and again that this castle
with the stately staircase, those long rows of red-gold rooms succeeding
one another as in a picture gallery, the quadrangle and the park and the
surrounding moat, the drawbridge and the water falling down the steep of
the enshrouding hills, and not a soul around--was his and his alone. And
when Eva visited him there that morning, he showed her round till she
felt faint.
“Talking of castles,” she said, lying down on the archducal sofa, “look:
is it not sweet?”
And she displayed her garters with a castle worked in silk and bearing
the inscription on the castle gate: “For one only.”
“Chris gave me this on leaving London.” She moved about the room and
fingered his things. “What’s this bottle, Ferdinand?”
“The beautiful crop you see on my head I owe to the regular use of this
lotion, reinforced by sheer strength of will.”
“Where will you get a new bottle when this is used up?”
“Not in this world. It’s a French make of pre-Dissolution days, with an
excellent translation of the instructions for use. Read the label.”
“I see. ‘This very energical and excitative lotion for the hair whose it
favours the growth and gives to the hair, sweetness strength. Mode of
use: with a little sponge, washing plentifully the head during a week.
Afterwards thrice in a week.’ Quite amusing.” She put it back. “You have
fine hair now.”
“It’s the only thing I have left. And it wasn’t there before.”
It seemed a shame that this fine crop of hair should survive in the
teeth of a dissolving world. Survive? How survive?
“We had better go back to the _pension_ for lunch now,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed sourly. “That is the annoying thing about large houses.
All this luxury, and not a cook on the premises. What good owning a
castle with a hundred and seventy rooms, and no servants? Spend all my
days mopping the floors. Saw an automatic mopper in Tottenham Court Road
the other day. Ought to have secured one. Lacked vision. Lacked faith.”
It would not always be so. He saw in the future unborn Dickins living in
these lofty halls. A brilliant party. Bare-armed women. And his portrait
looking down at them from the wall. His great granddaughter eloping
with a de Jones youth. Romeo and Juliet. Family feud. Capulets and
Montagues. Noble families. Hundred per cent. pre-Dissolution. Dreams,
dreams, dreams....
The prospect of there being nothing to eat at first upset them all so
much that they lost their appetite. But when they ascertained that there
was a great deal to eat, they were so delighted that they began to drink
heavily. While they were at lunch, the cook came in to say that she had
just come upon Frau König in the cellar, where she had evidently hidden
herself since yesterday’s sham earthquake and bore signs of being of
unsound mind.
“Bring her forth,” commanded de Jones.
Frau König, disshevelled, and looking more than ever like a gipsy, was
led into the room, whereupon Lord de Jones addressed her courteously but
firmly. “Your appearance,” he said, “is both timely and opportune and,
in the sociological sense, clearly an asset. The world has reached a
stage at which immediate repopulation has become of paramount
importance. We lack women, though we do not lack men. We have but two
women and five men. I do not count the cook as a woman because she is
clearly beyond the age of reproduction. The men, on the other hand, are
all (I do not exempt even the older gentlemen, such as the Herr Baron
and Herr Kogl) rare examples of virility coupled with a high sense of
public duty.”
“Unfortunately,” said Frau König, “my fiancé in Paris, having again
failed in his examinations at the University, it has set us back two
years with our knitting factory. Otherwise--”
“Frau König, it’s not knitting factories I am talking of, though we
could do with one here at a later stage, when we have reproduced an
adequate number of mill hands, which is the task we have in hand. And
you have no right to shirk the call.”
“I don’t understand. My fiancé is still in Paris--”
“Don’t understand? Am I not making myself clear? Frau König, I cannot
presume to know your opinion of our late educational system, and I know
that in a purely scholastic sense it perhaps ranked below that of the
late Continent. But we were taught at our English public schools
something which was called ‘playing the game.’ Now is this, if I may ask
you, ‘playing the game?’”
“But I desire nothing better. If my fiancé were here, of course. I’m
quite ill waiting for him all these years, living on hope deferred.”
“Your fiancé! Your fiancé! What do I care for a fiancé who exists but in
your memory?” De Jones grasped her by the wrist. “Frau König,” he said,
“there is no room for thoughts of self. It’s a question of repopulating
this planet at the shortest possible notice. Are you (I will not say
patriotic, for patriotism, as such, has lost all meaning): are you
mundic?”
“I am not averse,” said Frau König. “In marriage one contracts certain
habits.... But,” she added, “my condition is that you take me out into
society.”
“But, good heavens!” Eva cried. “Her offspring will be as mad as
hatters!”
“Which may add a touch of genius to those who will follow. We have come
near enough to the Kingdom of God but have not quite tumbled to it.
They, with a touch of genius, may go one further and clear up the mess
after themselves, and themselves as well.”
“Better let me do what I can.”
“Now Eva, don’t be jealous. You can’t, Lilith, do it all yourself. You
will kill yourself.”
“I am willing to do my bit.”
“There must be no slacking, no half-heartedness,” cried de Jones. “Here
we start anew!”
“_There was a little man,_
_And his name was Finnegan;_
_He grew whiskers on his chin again._
_The wind did blow and blew them in again,_
_Poor old Patsy Finnegan._
_Finnegan!_
_Begin again!_”
“A message of courage and hope,” said de Jones. “Our new mundic anthem.”
De Jones had changed; he was “another man,” as they say. He was like an
artist who had just finished a picture, or a scholar who had completed a
treatise. This his work had been the making of him. He was lighthearted,
positively gay. Only the wrinkles round his mouth had deepened still
more.
“Art thou man or devil?” Eva asked.
But he cried, jumping to his feet with a glass in his hand: “Now all
together, please:
“‘_There was a little man,_
_And his name was Finnegan_....’”
The Baron and Herr Kogl, unable to contribute to the singing, since the
Baron’s knowledge of English was confined to saying good-morning in the
evening, and Herr Kogl’s was nil, yet contrived to join in the chorus at
the end, and shouted lustily with the others:
“_Finnegan!_
_Begin again!_”
XLV.
In due course, that is exactly in the course of time prescribed by
nature, and unaffected by changed meteorological conditions, Eva gave
birth to a son, who, though both Frank Dickin and Christopher de Jones
were anxious to claim his paternity, proved to be, on inspection,
without the remotest shadow of a doubt, the second Baron Ottercove of
Ottercove. And all day long he laughed to himself.
“That’s all right,” said de Jones, on being admitted. “But let him not
expect too much of the new world. For we came crying hither: thou
know’st the first time we smell the air we waul and cry.”
“Alack! alack the day!”
“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this (small) stage of
fools.”
“What shall we call him?” asked his overjoyed mother. And many nice
names were suggested.
“Rex Alexander,” by Eva herself, in undying memory of his illustrious
father.
“Christopher,” by Lord de Jones, in honour of himself and Christopher
Columbus, the explorer, and Christopher Morley, the American critic.
“Ferdinand,” by Ferdinand, and in honour of Ferdinand, “Ex-King of
Greece,” he explained when Lord de Jones frowned on him.
“Call him Adam,” suggested Herr Kogl. “For he is the first-born of this
new earth.”
“Yes, yes, Adam,” said Eva.
And he was called Adam. In honour of the late Miss Adams (which was
Frank’s mother’s maiden name), as Frank liked to think fondly but on
insufficient evidence.
Eva had become very competent. The Pension Kogl was transferred into a
day and night nursery; the kitchen was used for drying the second Baron
Ottercove’s garments; and when the men argued as to whether their world
could survive, she invariably cut short the discussion by saying, What
mattered the world? It was the survival of baby that mattered.
“I wish,” she said, “Pilling could have seen my baby.”
“Damn Pilling! Didn’t you think of your mother when you were making your
selection for your Noah’s ark?”
“Well, darling, I thought she wouldn’t be alone in all this. She would
have all the other people with her. And Mummy always loved crowds.”
Chris looked away, ashamed. “It was no use,” he said at last. “It was a
hopeless, incurable race. A perverted mentality. Nothing to be done with
them. Even the best of them were beyond salvation. Take my aunt. An
amiable old lady, yet cruel in her very kindness. During the last war,
like most old ladies, she had been vehemently, almost indecently,
anti-German. After the war, travelling about in Italy and being the
really nice old English lady that she was, she confessed to a feeling of
shame at the snarling attitude of _The Continental Daily Mail_, while so
many titled Germans were about. What she most quickly recovered was her
interest in the imperial family of Germany, and she confessed a
heart-felt sympathy for the ex-Kaiser. ‘Rather a fascinating man,’ she
said, ‘and after all, he was the grandson of our own dear Queen
Victoria, so we shouldn’t be too hard on him.’ The dear old lady! I can
see her now as she walked beside me, stopping every few paces to recover
her breath, but pretending she was doing so to bring home a point in
our conversation: ‘Now isn’t that remarkable!’ or else to examine a
bicycle propped up in front of a shop: ‘What an unusual bicycle!’ or to
read a poster: ‘Have you seen this?’ She was a good woman, and the very
stuff our race was made of. You might have thought that it would have
profited by its mistakes and devised a working social order. But (as
Goethe said about politics) men would not learn, and God did not seem to
want it.”
“That is so, but if anything you have made things worse.”
“Hardly worse,” said de Jones. “I have in my pocket a newspaper
fragment. Let me read it aloud so that you may realise what you have
been saved from. Here it is. It is entitled ‘Royal Month of February,’
and it goes on: ‘_Many famous hostesses have already come to town, and
during the next few days will make the final preparations for their
participation in the stately pageant in the House of Lords when the King
opens Parliament in state to-morrow week. New Court gowns will be tried
on in Mayfair, St. James’s, and Belgravia, and priceless family jewels
will be brought from the strong-rooms of historic banks._’
“Almighty God!
“‘_Among the weddings within the next week or two will be that of Major
the Hon. Maurice Duff Glayton and Lady Ursula Blaming at St. Margaret’s,
Westminster. The Marquis of Lillingsworth’s two charming daughters will
be among the bridesmaids. Both bride and bridegroom are well known in
the yachting world of Cowes._’
“Almighty God!
“‘_The Marquis and Marchioness of Epping spent the week-end in town in
Curzon-street. Lord and Lady Castle have come from Kent, Lady Walden de
Munford from Paris, the Dowager Duchess of Hawke from Ireland, and the
American Ambassador from the United States. Countess Buxham and her
daughter are back again in Eaton-place._’
“God Almighty!” He wiped his brow with his handkerchief, and as he
walked away he stopped every few paces and said:
“God Almighty! God Almighty!”
XLVI.
_Elle avait appris dans sa jeunesse à caresser les phrases, au long
col sinueux et démesuré, de Chopin, si libres, si flexibles, si
tactiles, qui commencent par chercher et essayer leur place en
dehors et bien loin de la direction de leur départ, bien loin du
point où on avait pu espérer qu’atteindrait leur attouchement, et
qui ne se jouent dans cet écart de fantaisie que pour revenir plus
délibérément, d’un retour plus prémédité, avec plus de précision,
comme sur un cristal qui résonnerait jusqu’ à faire crier, vous
frapper au coeur._
_Proust._
He returned to his Schloss park, went down the gravel path into the
hidden nooks where the waters dashing down from steep heights broke
their fall in cool spray. All was as still and wild and pure as on the
first day. So Adam must have brooded, too, in the cool and quiet of
Eden.
He walked on. And suddenly he came upon her in the pine wood.
“My pale primrose.”
“No, no, not here.”
“Yes, here and now. To make sure that you bear me a child.”
“Yes, you and Chris, and everybody.”
He was overwhelmed with tremulous anxiety that he might lose her, his
one, his only woman. To hold her, for a moment, if only for a moment,
was to hold all--eternity in a moment. There was Eva, and no other
woman; and she included all the beauty and the passion in the world.
“Oh, my Eva! My _dear_ love!” He thought of all the loving lost and gone
for ever: of moonlight meetings, heartthrobs, lingering farewells, by
waterfalls, in drifting gondolas, and sunlit glades, and cloistered
streets, and heaths, and lanes, and bridges: the water rushes, the
heart throbs loud; he tried to collect it all and impress it on these
lips, these taut, supple fingers, these heaving young breasts.
And they took of the fruit thereof, and did eat: and they heard the
voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
“It’s you, only you now. When I hold you, Eva, I hold the world.”
“Yes, darling, what is left of it.”
“No distraction left.” He clutched his chin savagely. “I can’t have
them!” he cried. “Can’t have them!”
“Who?”
“All those other women.”
“What’s to be done, darling?”
“I can’t have them! Oh, aren’t I glad!”
“No regrets?”
“None! Eva,” he murmured, “my little Eva.”
“And do you remember,” she said, “how we were lost on the hill?”
“I remember.”
“And how the storm came on, and how you held me, and how it rained and
we ran to hide under the rock?”
“And you remember Count Kolberg?”
“Yes, that soppy-face! And how when he asked us out to dinner he sent in
a long bill next day, charging up to Mummy our share of the meal, giving
all the details:
3 rolls
3 soups
3 cutlets
3 salads
potatoes--3 portions
2 lemonades
1 beer
and so on. And that night he took us to the “München” he ordered
champagne. But when it came to paying, he had no money and began to cry.
And Mummy said to him very kindly: ‘But why, if you _knew_ you hadn’t
any money, did you order champagne?’ ‘Because all the others did,’ he
said.”
“And what happened?”
“Oh, the waiter boxed his ears for him and kicked him out and called him
names. It was very disagreeable for us.”
“How did he take it?”
“Not very badly. Sort of half playfully. ‘You don’t know what I was
going through in my inner soul,’ he said, when we were out of doors.
‘Ach! Ai, ai, ai! Ai, ai, ai!’”
“Then it was we who were lost. Now it is the world. The poor world, with
no lovers in it any more, save you and me. It seems we must love for the
lot. Justify love. We shall not fail. We shall not fail.”
She looked wistful.
“Eva ... honey love....”
“Yes.”
“I am unworthy. But God in His infinite love has brought all this about
that we may come together again, you and I, Eva.”
“Darling,” she said, “I don’t believe it!”
“Nor do I, for that matter,” he said, pressing her to him, “and I
scarcely think that this was an end pursued by de Jones.”
“The last thing that he intended.”
The sun subsided towards evening, and suddenly the landscape shone forth
with a crystalline clearness, as though you had adjusted your binoculars
to the required focus. Before them stretched a plain. No more horizons.
They stood up and walked on, lifting themselves from the ground with one
foot and coming down in a leisurely curve with the other, as horses in a
slow-motion picture clearing a fence.
“The gravitation,” he sniffed, “is ludicrously weak.”
“It’s only a small planet, darling,” she said, “and hasn’t much
strength.”
“We walk as on air.”
“I don’t mind it, darling. And we’re in no great hurry.”
The sun came out again, and, as they climbed up the steep ridge to the
pine wood, shone through the trees with a dazzling whiteness such as
only acetyline lamps can produce. On the edge of the wood they halted;
below was a lake surrounded by firs: a little lake, like a plum dipped
in water. Sky, firs, hills, water, all was blue, each just a shade
darker; all blue and motionless, as if still waiting for something. They
stood still, their hearts thumping; till the sun sank and the first
silver stars twinkled feebly in the sky.
“And don’t you miss your dear Rex?”
“He was so strange and peculiar.”
“Yet I never met anyone who did not like him. It was his eagerness which
fascinated one. I once arrived during a very agitated conversation
between him and Vernon Sprott, who was pained by the alterations made by
Ottercove in his last article, when Ottercove defended himself with
spirit. ‘What’s the good of being a newspaper proprietor,’ he said, ‘if
you can’t butt in occasionally?’ There was a rare dash about him. It was
a joy to dine with him; all the waiting service congregated round his
table in the restaurants. Dinner over, he would step into the lift, a
panting waiter stepping in with him to present the bill, which Ottercove
would sign without looking. ‘Don’t they ever swindle you?’ I once asked
him. He looked at me earnestly. ‘Dickin: I expect them to swindle me.’
This was great, if you like. But he would come out with better things,
too. Once, in failing to please him with my definition of him I
suggested that my definition was not flattering enough, and he said:
‘Not a bit. If I only listened to flatteries, it wouldn’t do my
character any good, now would it? I wouldn’t develop, would I?’”
“The darling,” said Eva. “The little pet.”
“What made him greater than most men of action was that there was, side
by side with his sense of his own abilities, an essential humility in
him. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for one who
had started literally with nothing, and rose to a share in the control,
and an enlightened control, of the destiny of a great empire, himself
surrounded on every side by awe-struck relatives and bowing sycophants,
to grow bumptious and megalomaniacal, intolerant and overbearing. Not a
sign of it in Ottercove! Instead, an enquiring charm, a readiness to
listen and learn even from youths. The same bright-eyed mischievous
boyishness at forty as at twenty, a touching eagerness to do worthwhile
things, ever the man of the world equal to every situation, and yet, a
sort of wayward kindness, an engaging modesty which left him unaware of
what it was in him that made up his charm. And withal a public
fearlessness, the sure touch of a genius in everything he did. I doubt
if he was ever told his worth. We did not tell him. And now it is too
late.”
He paused before he spoke again. “For us who can remember him he is
gentle, human, and kind. But to those who will follow us he will be just
a star god, together with Sprott-Pollux, the two gods of material
success! What I say is, if not Ottercove, then the cigar of Ottercove!
May it shine for ever and ever.”
They kneeled down and bowed low, touching the earth with their brow. And
in that attitude of holy prostration they remained a long time.
“Look,” he said, lifting his face from the ground and sitting back on
his heels, “there they are, Castor and Pollux, looking down on us
through the clouds.” Eva, who, like a small girl in church, had followed
all Frank’s movements through her spread fingers while prostrate in
prayer, uncouched as yet in the new ritual, now also sat back on her
heels and looked up at the stars. “Pollux once wrote something about
somebody with the High Hand.”
“Yes. There he stands with raised hand; you feel as if the whole of the
Five Towns were gazing down on us with quiet, benignant reproach. And
next him is Castor. Even in life Castor never used more than one eye at
a time: he closed one and put it all into the other. What an eye! All
the fire of Zeus was in that eye; it could pierce through stone walls.
He sees everything we do. There, read that look now. He seems to say:
‘You have disintegrated my thousand reporters: yet from here I see
everything and report it all direct to my God.’”
“Good God!” Eva turned to him, alarmed. “Then he has seen how you have
loved me a minute ago.”
“Castor was a reasonable being. His morality was pragmatic and rational.
Look again at that eye of his. What does it say? Not ‘go and sin no
more,’ but ‘sin and sin again till you have brought the population of
the earth back to pre-dissolution standard.’ Rex, you see, was always a
man who believed in giving you another chance.”
Eva looked thoughtful.
“The curse of Eve is upon you, my girl!”
“What is that, darling?”
“I haven’t got my Bible here--and I fear we haven’t a copy of it in this
world--but I believe it is something to do with bringing forth children
in pain and labour.”
“It is a pity,” she said, “that we haven’t brought with us any
labour-saving devices.”
“Lacked foresight, lacked vision.”
“And you, darling, will have to work in the sweat of your brow.”
“Not I! My motto is: ‘Give us peace in our time, O Lord, and _après nous
le déluge_.’”
“They may do it yet. They may come to it yet. We must not lose faith.”
“No, we must not! We must not lose faith in the sense of mankind to wipe
out mankind. But must wait, must be patient. That this idea may occur to
one among millions of men, we must breed millions of men, till there
emerges out of these masses the new Messiah, not a half-hearted devil
like de Jones who has let himself be tempted by this blue-eyed woman
Eva, but a man who will at last administer the _coup de grâce_. And so,
_allons, enfants de la patrie_! Breed, breed, breed!”
“There’s only Frau König and me,” sighed Eva. “The cook does not count.”
“Cook or no cook, we shall have to bring down the age of consent, or
else to precipitate the age of puberty, to twelve. In twelve years nine
months from to-day you and Frau König (for I have commended her to the
bereaved policeman) will be able, all being well, to give birth to
sixteen children, a total of thirty-two, of which two will come of age
that day. Some of the children may die, and the Baron’s may prove
apoplectic. But the general outlook, if not rosy, yet enables me to look
into the future with confidence.”
He sat down, and was lost in reverie. He saw the population of their
little planet rising annually, in geometrical progression, till it was
black with people, like a dish with cranberries, people packed like
sardines: working in mills, the din of machines, roaring furnaces:
producing, producing, producing roaring furnaces: producing,
producing--a sight fit to delight the eyes of the gods. And Sunday
always spent in devotion, kneeling (for lack of other gods) before
Castor and Pollux, while a priest in flowing robes held forth on the
dignity, the nobility of hard work, winding up his oration with the new
mundic anthem, and from a million throttles came one long roar:
“_Finnegan!_
_Begin again!_”
What a religion!
With a start, he detached himself from his reverie. “The stars are
getting more golden,” he said, rising, “and the sky is a dark deep
blue.”
“And, darling, look at them, I mean the stars. We can see them
everywhere, underneath as well as on top.”
“That is quite natural. The earth is a tiny ball and we can walk round
it like flies.”
“But Castor and Pollux are on top.”
“Always were top dogs even in life.”
“See, darling, Castor and Pollux are now pure gold.”
“Not unnaturally, either. Look at that wood, secretive, leering. Hush!
Hark!”
“Yes.”
“Listen:
“_‘Die Rehlein beten zur Nacht:_
_“Hab Acht!”_
_Halb neun, halb zehn, halb elf, elf, zwölf._
_Die Rehlein beten zur Nacht,_
_Sie falten die kleine Zehlein,_
_Die Rehlein._’”
“Sweet. What makes you think in German?”
“I quote in the language of the country.”
“Which country?”
“Technically this is a piece of old Austria.”
“M’m! It makes you think. A piece of old Austria. But Australia gone,
America gone, India, Russia, Paris, London, Vienna--all gone!”
“To kingdom come. Didn’t Christ always warn us that it was at hand?”
“Nobody took any notice of Him, darling.”
“Till too late. But we shall muddle through. It is an English
characteristic, to give the old country its due. Not because we are
muddle-headed, but because no other race is clear-headed enough to
perceive how muddled they are, except the Russians, who, having
perceived the muddled nature of all life, have identified themselves
with it for good.”
“There is the moon.”
“Yes, there she is.”
The moon swam out in all the fulness of her glory.
“Oh, do you remember that passage in _Hermann und Dorothea_, as they go
homeward by night, as we are doing now? How goes it?--
“‘_Herrlich glänzte der Mond, der volle, vom Himmel herunter;_
_Nacht war’s, völlig bedeckt das letzte Schimmern der Sonne._
_Und so lagen vor ihnen in Massen gegen einander_
_Lichter, hell wie der Tag, und Schatten dunkeler Nächte._’
My memory is the only repository of poetry that we have with us. And
nature, or what is left of it, the only promise of heaven. Look at those
rocks,” he pointed. “What serene dispassionate peace! They are death.
They brood, but not darkly. They are pressing upon us: you and I have to
bear their intolerable weight! The clouds sail above them, barely
touching them, toppling over. They teach us that life is not what we do
or think: that life is elsewhere, barely touching us, as those clouds.”
Somebody, probably Frau König, began to play Chopin, and the rippling
waterfall of sound, marvellous and enchanting, filtered through the air;
the strains pressed into the night and asked questions.
“O God of Love! How that woman plays. Her madness, resentment, then a
cowed, shuddering awe, and overflowing tears of tenderness. They have
summoned, you see, those other creatures, visitants from a world,
certainly not ours. ‘Perhaps,’ says Proust, ‘we shall lose them, perhaps
they will be obliterated, if we return to nothing in the dust. Perhaps
it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is
without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that these
phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our
dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages
these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in
their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, and perhaps
even less certain.’”
“It dawns.”
“It dawns. Home, darling, and to bed.”
They began the descent, as the sky grew threadbare, the moon paled, and
a small peevish sun looked out, sleepy, red-eyed. Then a shaft of light
licked a fugitive cloud. A cock cleared his throat in the yard below.
The rich odour of mown grass and the rays on the ricks of straw bid them
live. They blessed their fate, and that neither of them was to be
hanged at dawn, that they had sufficient to eat and could go home and
sleep in clean sheets upon feather beds.
XLVII.
IT IS FINISHED
_Chor. Es ist vorbei._
_Mephistopheles. Vorbei! ein dummes_
_Wort. Warum vorbei?_
_Faust. Teil II. Akt V._
Six weeks it rained without cease. Dark clouds ran on, as if there was
still a scheme in the universe, even though this chip of a dead planet
was discarded; dark, brooding, they ran, on and on. Never had they known
such weather, except possibly in London.
They were sarcastic at the expense of Lord de Jones, who told them they
had grown immodest in their expectations; that even in the New Jerusalem
it was not always sunshine.
But lo! a shaft of sunlight. The wet valley glittered with gaiety; it
spread to the hills, then the whole vault of heaven broke out into
spontaneous sunlight. Soon they all cried out for mercy. Mercy! how hot!
The sun pressed on, pressed on, pressed on.
It was--though the seasons played pranks--a midsummer’s day, and a
Sunday, so warm and radiant that they brought out the table and chairs
on to the terrace and lunched in the sight of the sun and the rocks. The
cook, responding to the mood, expressed her personality in an exquisite
meal of pre-Dissolution magnificence; and when Herr Kogl had filled
their glasses, Lord de Jones rose and proposed the health of the King.
The two ladies having retired, the five men addressed themselves to the
usual business of imparting bawdy jokes, and Herr Kogl related how when
he was in Wien and was told to buy a female fish he had ignorantly asked
for a virgin fish. “In Wien!” exclaimed the fishmonger, his eyes dilated
with wonder. “It’s not to be had.”
“Ah, Wien! When as a youth I was doing my military service we had to
march through Wien, all along the Ring. There is no capital like Wien!
Not that I’ve seen other capitals.”
Capitals! It seemed a shame that they should have gone, capitals more
magnificent than Vienna. But Herr Kogl, liberal on other topics, said
that Vienna beat them all. Wien! Wien! His son Herbert had been to
Wien--to the Hotel and Restaurant Institute. He had been getting on so
well--when the blow came. It seemed a shame. Herr Kogl went into the
house and came out with his son’s certificate in his big shaking red
hands. “Here it is. His college certificate.” He passed it reverently to
Lord de Jones, and while the other read it, turned away his face. Two
large beads rolled down his cheeks. Lord de Jones put on his glasses
and read:
_Calligraphy--proficient;_
_Arithmetic--good;_
_Cooking--very satisfactory;_
_Slaughtering--praiseworthy;_
_Waiting at table--very good;_
_Deportment--excellent;_
_General conduct--excellent._
Herr Kogl turned round after an interval; hot tears streamed down his
cheeks, as Lord de Jones handed him back the certificate. They all
waited for Lord de Jones to say something. His mouth opened.
“Shall we join the ladies in the drawing-room?” he said.
But before they did so, Eva had come out with little Adam in her arms
and sat on the _pension_ steps, the second Baron Ottercove, a toothless
radiance illuminating his whole countenance, on her lap. Herr Kogl sat
by and tickled the baby’s nose with a feather. “Our only ray of
sunshine, our little hope....” And he would look into these eyes basking
in the sunshine with wonderment and tenderness, and think and think. “As
for you, Rags,” he turned to the dog at his feet, “the outlook for
caninity is black. Black.”
“I wish the Frau Professor’s dachshund were saved,” remarked Lord de
Jones. “The canine race would have had a new start.”
“But the dachshund was no good, darling; he had weak lungs.”
“Still, beggars can’t be choosers, as you said yourself, Eva.”
“And our Rags too is no good. Rags, you old bitch, you’re no good, are
you? No good! Poor old bitch! Poor old bitch!” Two large beads stood in
Herr Kogl’s eyes.
And indeed, Rags was not much good to found a new canine race. She was
blind and deaf with old age and lay in a corner all day. Only when you
bent down to her and shouted very loudly in her ear: “Scho-ko-lade!” she
would turn over and twitch feebly with her forelegs, in reminiscent
pleasure.
There were no more dogs. The Prime Minister had been vindicated.
“There was,” said Eva dreamily, “a little tea-shop just off
Jermyn-street, where you could get delicious ices.”
“Yes. The original sin was when man wrapped himself up in the visible
world. The ultimate sin was when he shed it.”
“It may appear so to any one who has not been strong enough to shed his
vices. But, for my part, I have given up smoking,” said de Jones, “for
complete lack of tobacco.”
“How weak! Strength of will would lie in going on, in persisting in the
face of unsurmountable difficulties.”
“But though I have nothing to reproach myself with,” continued de Jones,
oblivious of Frank’s interruption, “I too have my memories of the old
world, and in particular do I remember the Allied Victory march through
Paris after the Great War as the troops passed under the Arc de
Triomphe, ablaze with glory! A powerful emotion for a pacifist.”
Soldiers. Images drifted before Christopher. He saw ranks and ranks of
them. Soldiers in scarlet uniforms. Bayonets glistening in the sun.
_His_ soldiers, armed to the teeth, equipped with the latest weapons of
war. Glorious manhood! Only waiting for the word of command to set off
for the enemy. He saw other soldiers ready on the turrets of Frank’s
castle. His own lion-hearted warriors storming the castle, falling into
the moat. He looked at Frank and wished that the jolly game were already
beginning. “Ah!” he moved restively.
“What is it, darling?” from Eva.
“One day, Dickin,” he rubbed his hands anticipatingly, “yours and mine
will measure their strength in battle. Wish I were alive to see the
day!”
The Baron held up his glass: “_Der Tag!_”
De Jones sat pensive. “It seems to me, as I sit here, a sedentary,
useless man, that I can hear across the years the distant neighing of
chargers, the sharpening of flints by the camp fire. Dangerous life!
Glorious struggle! Give me Kipling or D. H. Lawrence. They’d understand
this. My men advancing valiantly and capturing the forts of yon castle.”
“Nor, when they have captured it, let them rest. It is, remember, only a
milestone on their road to further achievement. Let them go on capturing
other castles, on and on, till they have had enough.” Frank’s look grew
reminiscent. “When I was a private in the last war, there was a good
deal of stealing--‘pinching,’ they called it, going on amongst the
troopers. What more natural and proper, you’d think, in a community of
roughnecks. ‘But, nay!’ says the Idealist in Man: ‘We stick bayonet
blades into other men in the name of an Idea. Pinching from your comrade
is subversive of ultimate efficiency in the business of stabbing your
neighbour. It deflects attention, sows suspicion, where there should be
love of one’s own and hatred of others. The ideal is to eliminate
dishonesty and to create a high standard of honour and mutual confidence
among the troops so that they may devote their undivided attention to
murdering the soldiers of another army (with an equally high moral
standard).’ That is the aim. That is patriotism--serving the flag.”
“I agree,” said de Jones. “We must not arm for aggression, but for
defence alone. The best way to ensure peace is to be armed to the
teeth.”
“I see.”
“The meek,” said Herr Kogl, “shall inherit the earth.”
“None of that here, Herr Kogl,” protested de Jones. “Maudlin mysticism!
Quite the proper note to strike in a _fin de siècle_ mood and period.
But we’re a new Finnegan-begin-again civilisation, up-and-doing,
straining every nerve that the race may survive. No room for mooners.
It’s men of action we want.”
“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”
“Quite.”
“Peace within, love of those nearest to you, no desires, no regrets,
only love, steady, translucent love of all living beings: what bliss
could equal it? It fills your soul with peace, as beams of sun at
eventide. A peace”--Herr Kogl’s eyes filled with tears--“that passeth
all understanding. ‘Come unto me,’ He said, ‘all ye who labour and are
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest: for My yoke is easy and My burden
light.’”
Frank jumped to his feet. “Give me riches, give me women, each day a new
one (unless I ask twice for the same one), give me food, wine--and I
shall give no thought to the things of this world. But to renounce, to
settle down when there is nothing ... nothing....” He could not speak.
He walked up and down.
Eva looked at de Jones very earnestly. “You should never have done it,”
she said.
But Herr Kogl smiled happily. “What does it matter? What does it
matter,” he asked, “how we step over into eternity? We are shaken off
this realm of matter one way or another.”
“Herr Kogl is a mystic--while there is wine in the cellar.” De Jones
looked slyly at him. “We’ve found you out!”
“Now I am dependent on spirits for my good temper--I might just as well
make a clean breast of it. But not always will I be so dependent. What
matter old age and darkness? My watch,” he said, “it still registers the
revolutions of our little planet. Here it is. Its dial is
phosphorescent. Now its face is dull and complacent; but take it into
utter darkness and its face will illumine. So shall our souls, now bleak
and obscure, illumine in the utter darkness of death.”
Herr Kogl looked at his friends. They did not hear angels; they felt not
the utter glory of God. Only the baby smiled unendingly at God’s world,
smiled away all fear and concern into ripples of light.
“But not a thing!” cried Frank. “Where is there a book of poems, a
scroll of music? Frau König,” he turned to her earnestly, “you must
teach Adam music when he grows up. You must teach him, Frau König, you
must! Think: if this too goes....”
He jumped to his feet. “But not a Shakespeare, not a Goethe, not a
Raphael, not a Tristan....”
He wailed aloud. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” He writhed on the damp ground. “Oh! Oh!
Oh!”
Eva looked on mournfully. “The world--the poor world!”
“It’s had a long run for its money,” muttered de Jones.
“And I never told it that I cared for it.”
“After life’s fitful fever it sleeps well.”
The cook came in to say that she had prepared an egg dish for supper as
she feared that the cows had caught the foot-and-mouth disease, and that
they had better keep the sheep for wool, Frau König having told her of
her projected plans for a knitting factory.
At this they all sat back, open-mouthed. The Baron shook his head. “This
intensifies the problem of survival,” he said gravely. But Lord de Jones
jumped to his feet, his hand raised in challenge.
“Are--we--down-hearted?” he cried.
“No-o-o!” The echo of the cry resounded from the rocks. Frank was
conspicuous by his silence.
“But how will Adam do now without milk?” Eva looked much concerned.
“He will have,” said de Jones, “to fall back on the milk of human
kindness. Frau König,” he turned to her, “it will hence be incumbent on
you to generate it. May your happiness consist therein! I will, on my
part, endeavour to reproduce synthetic milk--or synthetic cows.
Whichever comes easier. So tails up! keep smiling! and all the rest of
it. Now all together, please--
“‘_There was a little man,_
_And his name was Finnegan._’”
They joined in the anthem.
“We shall survive!” finished de Jones. “See if we don’t! And little Adam
will not be the last nor the least to survive.”
Eva embraced him tighter. “Oh, he must, oh, he must! for the sake of ...
love.”
“ ... of everything that’s been.” Dear, dear earth! It was gone;
suddenly, while nobody was looking. Even now Frank could not realise it.
Slowly and doggedly man had been working, planning and thinking,
cautiously, step by step, climbing the steep rocky path, the circle of
light spreading before him larger and wider as he advanced to a
knowledge of nature, a forefeeling of God. Against heavy odds, divided
against itself, mankind had struggled heroically; it had built temples
and palaces, steamers and bridges and airplanes, mansions traversing the
oceans and mansions traversing the air. A little more, and man would
have conquered himself. But a morbid little mind had stolen the fire of
Zeus and put back the clock. Egypt and India, Greece, Rome--had they
laboured in vain? Had Europe created fortuitously? This is the end, he
thought. And he mourned it terribly, mourned all those millions who had
once loved, suffered, and died. Of course there had been misery,
tribulations, hate, lies, sordid hours, and moments of pain. But there
had been other moments. He remembered how fourteen of his friends had
volunteered to be bled to save his mother’s life. He wept at the thought
of it. He remembered other hours. Holiday crowds. Gaily clad women. The
briskness of mornings, the lassitude of nights. Dew on the roses. The
chivalry of reconciliation, of respect, the dignity of moments....
And they had all died, died....
The sun set behind the hill and left the valley cold and unfriendly;
only the tips of rocks still gleamed in the sun. Dark clouds, looking
like furrows, ran on without cease; cold, bleak and unmeaning, they ran,
on and on. A bird chirruped plaintively from a branch. Herr Kogl looked
up.
“Bird, forlorn bird, you are surprised at the doom which has befallen
our beautiful earth. You grieve, and I grieve with you. The oceans are
finished--turned to air. These clouds, running furrows, will still be
passing, the sky will unveil its blue face and cover itself as before:
but there will be no one to notice it. Not a soul!”
The baby smiled his dimpled, rippling smile, old, wise, and all-knowing.
What did he smile at? Where did it come from? the smile of life winding
through dark tunnels into light? Herr Kogl held out his finger, at which
Adam at once grabbed lustily. Was it for this that millions fought and
toiled and thought and felt? Was it for this that men went out “over the
top,” hung on barbed wires, bled on the cross? “Little humanity,” he
thought, “is this all that is left of thy deeds and high hopes? Little
humanity....” His face puckered. He turned away to the clouds chasing in
the unmeaning, unmerciful vault; and wept.
THE END
* * * * *
EVA’S APPLES
_Some Critical Comment_:
_Eva’s Apples_ is that literary potpourri of wit and manners, satire and
fantasy and humor and even at moments poetry, which is so easy to do but
so difficult to do right. Like Max Beerbohm, Huxley at his best, and
Jean Girardoux, Mr. Gerhardi does it right.
_The New York Times_
Probably the best recommendation of the book is that it is very hard to
put down.... To be interesting is surely to be in a state of grace, and
_Eva’s Apples_ is interesting.
_Heywood Broun
The Book of the Month Club News_
A novelist of genius ... wild and brilliant originality.
_Arnold Bennett_
Extremely clever and wildly nutty.
_Isabel M. Patterson_
Brilliant and farcical ... heady and deceptive, like absinthe.
_The London Spectator_
Amusing, brilliant and quite, quite mad.
_Herald Tribune_
Typographical error corrected by the etext transcriber:
domestc politics=> domestic politics {pg 205}
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