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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Simon the Jester, by William J. Locke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Simon the Jester
+
+Author: William J. Locke
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3828]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIMON THE JESTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+SIMON THE JESTER
+
+
+By William J. Locke
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+I met Renniker the other day at the club. He is a man who knows
+everything--from the method of trimming a puppy's tail for a dog-show,
+without being disqualified, to the innermost workings of the mind of
+every European potentate. If I want information on any subject under
+heaven I ask Renniker.
+
+"Can you tell me," said I, "the most God-forsaken spot in England?"
+
+Renniker, being in a flippant mood, mentioned a fashionable
+watering-place on the South Coast. I pleaded the seriousness of my
+question.
+
+"What I want," said I, "is a place compared to which Golgotha, Aceldama,
+the Dead Sea, the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and the Bowery would be leafy
+bowers of uninterrupted delight."
+
+"Then Murglebed-on-Sea is what you're looking for," said Renniker. "Are
+you going there at once?"
+
+"At once," said I.
+
+"It's November," said he, "and a villainous November at that; so you'll
+see Murglebed-on-Sea in the fine flower of its desolation."
+
+I thanked him, went home, and summoned my excellent man Rogers.
+
+"Rogers," said I, "I am going to the seaside. I heard that Murglebed
+is a nice quiet little spot. You will go down and inspect it for me and
+bring back a report."
+
+He went blithe and light-hearted, though he thought me insane; he
+returned with the air of a serving-man who, expecting to find a
+well-equipped pantry, had wandered into a charnel house.
+
+"It's an awful place, sir. It's sixteen miles from a railway station.
+The shore is a mud flat. There's no hotel, and the inhabitants are like
+cannibals."
+
+"I start for Murglebed-on-Sea to-morrow," said I.
+
+Rogers started at me. His loose mouth quivered like that of a child
+preparing to cry.
+
+"We can't possibly stay there, sir," he remonstrated.
+
+"_We_ are not going to try," I retorted. "I'm going by myself."
+
+His face brightened. Almost cheerfully he assured me that I should find
+nothing to eat in Murglebed.
+
+"You can amuse yourself," said I, "by sending me down a daily hamper of
+provisions."
+
+"There isn't even a church," he continued.
+
+"Then you can send me down a tin one from Humphreys'. I believe they can
+supply one with everything from a tin rabbit-hutch to a town hall."
+
+He sighed and departed, and the next day I found myself here, in
+Murglebed-on-Sea.
+
+On a murky, sullen November day Murglebed exhibits unimagined horrors
+of scenic depravity. It snarls at you malignantly. It is like a bit of
+waste land in Gehenna. There is a lowering, soap-suddy thing a mile away
+from the more or less dry land which local ignorance and superstition
+call the sea. The interim is mud--oozy, brown, malevolent mud. Sometimes
+it seems to heave as if with the myriad bodies of slimy crawling eels
+and worms and snakes. A few foul boats lie buried in it.
+
+Here and there, on land, a surly inhabitant spits into it. If you
+address him he snorts at you unintelligibly. If you turn your back to
+the sea you are met by a prospect of unimagined despair. There are
+no trees. The country is flat and barren. A dismal creek runs miles
+inland--an estuary fed by the River Murgle. A few battered cottages, a
+general shop, a couple of low public-houses, and three perky red-brick
+villas all in a row form the city, or town, or village, or what you
+will, of Murglebed-on-Sea. Renniker is a wonderful man.
+
+I have rented a couple of furnished rooms in one of the villas. It has
+a decayed bit of front garden in which a gnarled, stunted stick is
+planted, and it is called The Laburnums. My landlord, the owner of
+the villas, is a builder. What profits he can get from building in
+Murglebed, Heaven alone knows; but, as he mounts a bicycle in the
+morning and disappears for the rest of the day, I presume he careers
+over the waste, building as he goes. In the evenings he gets drunk at
+the Red Cow; so I know little of him, save that he is a red-faced man,
+with a Moustache like a tooth-brush and two great hands like hams.
+
+His wife is taciturn almost to dumbness. She is a thick-set,
+black-haired woman, and looks at me disapprovingly out of the corner of
+her eye as if I were a blackbeetle which she would like to squash under
+foot. She tolerates me, however, on account of the tongues and other
+sustenance sent by Rogers from Benoist, of which she consumes prodigious
+quantities. She wonders, as far as the power of wonder is given to her
+dull brain, what on earth I am doing here. I see her whispering to her
+friends as I enter the house, and I know they are wondering what I am
+doing here. The whole village regards me as a humorous zoological freak,
+and wonders what I am doing here among normal human beings.
+
+And what am I doing here--I, Simon de Gex, M.P., the spoilt darling of
+fortune, as my opponent in the Labour interest called me during the last
+electoral campaign? My disciple and secretary, young Dale Kynnersley,
+the only mortal besides Rogers who knows my whereabouts, trembles for
+my reason. In the eyes of the excellent Rogers I am horn-mad. What my
+constituents would think did they see me taking the muddy air on a soggy
+afternoon, I have no conception. Dale keeps them at bay. He also baffles
+the curiosity of my sisters, and by his diplomacy has sent Eleanor
+Faversham on a huffy trip to Sicily. She cannot understand why I bury
+myself in bleak solitude, instead of making cheerful holiday among the
+oranges and lemons of the South.
+
+Eleanor is a girl with a thousand virtues, each of which she expects to
+find in counterpart in the man to whom she is affianced. Until a week or
+two ago I actually thought myself in love with Eleanor. There seemed
+a whimsical attraction in the idea of marrying a girl with a thousand
+virtues. Before me lay the pleasant prospect of reducing them--say, ten
+at a time--until I reached the limit at which life was possible,
+and then one by one until life became entertaining. I admired her
+exceedingly--a strapping, healthy English girl who looked you straight
+in the eyes and gripped you fearlessly by the hand.
+
+My friends "lucky-dog'd" me until I began to smirk to myself at my own
+good fortune. She visited the constituency and comported herself as if
+she had been a Member's wife since infancy, thereby causing my heart to
+swell with noble pride. This unparalleled young person compelled me to
+take my engagement almost seriously. If I shot forth a jest, it struck
+against a virtue and fell blunted to the earth. Indeed, even now I am
+sorry I can't marry Eleanor. But marriage is out of the question.
+
+I have been told by the highest medical authorities that I may manage to
+wander in the flesh about this planet for another six months. After that
+I shall have to do what wandering I yearn for through the medium of my
+ghost. There is a certain humourousness in the prospect. Save for an
+occasional pain somewhere inside me, I am in the most robust health.
+
+But this same little pain has been diagnosed by the Faculty as the
+symptom of an obscure disease. An operation, they tell me, would kill
+me on the spot. What it is called I cannot for the life of me remember.
+They gave it a kind of lingering name, which I wrote down on my
+shirt-cuff.
+
+The name or characteristics of the thing, however, do not matter a fig.
+I have always hated people who talked about their insides, and I am not
+going to talk about mine, even to myself. Clearly, if it is only going
+to last me six months, it is not worth talking about. But the quaint
+fact of its brief duration is worth the attention of a contemplative
+mind.
+
+It is in order perfectly to focus this attention that I have come to
+Murglebed-on-Sea. Here I am alone with the murk and the mud and my own
+indrawn breath of life. There are no flowers, blue sky, smiling eyes,
+and dainty faces--none of the adventitious distractions of the
+earth. There are no Blue-books. Before the Faculty made their jocular
+pronouncement I had been filling my head with statistics on pauper
+lunacy so as to please my constituency, in which the rate has increased
+alarmingly of late years. Perhaps that is why I found myself their
+representative in Parliament. I was to father a Bill on the subject next
+session. Now the labour will fall on other shoulders. I interest myself
+in pauper lunacy no more. A man requires less flippant occupation for
+the premature sunset of his days. Well, in Murglebed I can think, I
+can weigh the _pros_ and _cons_ of existence with an even mind, I can
+accustom myself to the concept of a Great Britain without Simon de Gex.
+M.P.
+
+Of course, when I go I shall "cast one longing, lingering look behind."
+I don't particularly want to die. In fact, having otherwise the prospect
+of an entertaining life, I regard my impending dissolution in the light
+of a grievance. But I am not afraid. I shall go through the dismal
+formality with a graceful air and as much of a smile on my face as the
+pain in my inside will physically permit.
+
+My dear but somewhat sober-sided friend Marcus Aurelius says: "Let death
+surprise me when it will, and where it will, I may be _eumoiros_, or
+a happy man, nevertheless. For he is a happy man who in his lifetime
+dealeth unto himself a happy lot and portion. A happy lot and portion in
+good inclinations of the soul, good desires, good actions."
+
+The word _eumoiros_ according to the above definition, tickles my fancy.
+I would give a great deal to be eumoirous. What a thing to say: "I have
+achieved eumoiriety,"--namely the quintessence of happy-fatedness dealt
+unto oneself by a perfect altruism!
+
+I don't think that hitherto my soul has been very evilly inclined, my
+desires base, or my actions those of a scoundrel. Still, the negatives
+do not qualify one for eumoiriety. One wants something positive. I
+have an idea, therefore, of actively dealing unto myself a happy lot or
+portion according to the Marcian definition during the rest of the time
+I am allowed to breathe the upper air. And this will be fairly easy;
+for no matter how excellently a man's soul may be inclined to the
+performance of a good action, in ninety cases out of a hundred he is
+driven away from it by dread of the consequences. Your moral teachers
+seldom think of this--that the consequences of a good action are often
+more disastrous than those of an evil one. But if a man is going to die,
+he can do good with impunity. He can simply wallow in practical virtue.
+When the boomerang of his beneficence comes back to hit him on the
+head--_he won't be there to feel it_. He can thus hoist Destiny with its
+own petard, and, besides, being eumoirous, can spend a month or two in a
+peculiarly diverting manner. The more I think of the idea the more am
+I in love with it. I am going to have a seraph of a time. I am going to
+play the archangel.
+
+I shall always have pleasant memories of Murglebed. Such an idea could
+not have germinated in any other atmosphere. In the scented groves of
+sunny lands there would have been sown Seeds of Regret, which would have
+blossomed eventually into Flowers of Despair. I should have gone about
+the world, a modern Admetus, snivelling at my accursed luck, without
+even the chance of persuading a soft-hearted Alcestis to die for me. I
+should have been a dismal nuisance to society.
+
+"Bless you," I cried this afternoon, waving, as I leaned against a
+post, my hand to the ambient mud, "Renniker was wrong! You are not a
+God-forsaken place. You are impregnated with divine inspiration."
+
+A muddy man in a blue jersey and filthy beard who occupied the next post
+looked at me and spat contemptuously. I laughed.
+
+"If you were Marcus Aurelius," said I, "I would make a joke--a short
+life and an eumoiry one--and he would have looked as pained as you."
+
+"What?" he bawled. He was to windward of me.
+
+I knew that if I repeated my observation he would offer to fight me. I
+approached him suavely.
+
+"I was wondering," I said, "as it's impossible to strike a match in this
+wind, whether you would let me light my pipe from yours."
+
+"It's empty," he growled.
+
+"Take a fill from my pouch," said I.
+
+The mud-turtle loaded his pipe, handed me my pouch without
+acknowledgment, stuck his pipe in his breeches pocket, spat again, and,
+deliberately turning his back, on me, lounged off to another post on a
+remoter and less lunatic-ridden portion of the shore. Again I laughed,
+feeling, as the poet did with the daffodils, that one could not but be
+gay in such a jocund company.
+
+There are no amenities or urbanities of life in Murglebed to choke the
+growth of the Idea. This evening it flourishes so exceedingly that I
+think it safe to transplant it in the alien soil of Q 3, The Albany,
+where the good Rogers must be leading an idle existence peculiarly
+deleterious to his morals.
+
+This gives one furiously to think. One of the responsibilities of
+eumoiriety must be the encouragement and development of virtue in my
+manservant.
+
+Also in my young friend and secretary, Dale Kynnersley. He is more to me
+than Rogers. I may confess that, so long as Rogers is a sober, honest,
+me-fearing valet, in my heart of hearts I don't care a hang about
+Rogers's morals. But about those of Dale Kynnersley I do. I care a great
+deal for his career and happiness. I have a notion that he is erring
+after strange goddesses and neglecting the little girl who is in love
+with him. He must be delivered. He must marry Maisie Ellerton, and the
+two of them must bring lots of capable, clear-eyed Kynnersleys into the
+world. I long to be their ghostly godfather.
+
+Then there's Eleanor Faversham--but if I begin to draw up a programme
+I shall lose that spontaneity of effort which, I take it, is one of the
+chief charms of dealing unto oneself a happy lot and portion. No; my
+soul abhors tabulation. It would make even six months' life as jocular
+as Bradshaw's Railway Guide or the dietary of a prison. I prefer to look
+on what is before me as a high adventure, and with that prospect in view
+I propose to jot down my experiences from time to time, so that when I
+am wandering, a pale shade by Acheron, young Dale Kynnersley may have
+not only documentary evidence wherewith to convince my friends and
+relations that my latter actions were not those of a lunatic, but also,
+at the same time, an up-to-date version of Jeremy Taylor's edifying
+though humour-lacking treatise on the act of dying, which I am sorely
+tempted to label "The Rule and Example of Eumoiriety." I shall resist
+the temptation, however. Dale Kynnersley--such is the ignorance of the
+new generation--would have no sense of the allusion. He would shake his
+head and say, "Dotty, poor old chap, dotty!" I can hear him. And if, in
+order to prepare him, I gave him a copy of the "Meditations," he
+would fling the book across the room and qualify Marcus Aurelius as a
+"rotter."
+
+Dale is a very shrewd fellow, and will make an admirable legislator
+when his time comes. Although his highest intellectual recreation is
+reiterated attendance at the musical comedy that has caught his fancy
+for the moment and his favourite literature the sporting pages of the
+daily papers, he has a curious feline pounce on the salient facts of
+a political situation, and can thread the mazes of statistics with the
+certainty of a Hampton Court guide. His enthusiastic researches (on my
+behalf) into pauper lunacy are remarkable in one so young. I foresee
+him an invaluable chairman of committee. But he will never become a
+statesman. He has too passionate a faith in facts and figures, and has
+not cultivated a sense of humour at the expense of the philosophers.
+Young men who do not read them lose a great deal of fun.
+
+Well, to-morrow I leave Murglebed for ever; it has my benison.
+Democritus returns to London.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+I was at breakfast on the morning after my arrival in London, when Dale
+Kynnersley rushed in and seized me violently by the hand.
+
+"By Jove, here you are at last!"
+
+I smoothed my crushed fingers. "You have such a vehement manner of
+proclaiming the obvious, my dear Dale."
+
+"Oh, rot!" he said. "Here, Rogers, give me some tea--and I think I'll
+have some toast and marmalade."
+
+"Haven't you breakfasted?"
+
+A cloud overspread his ingenuous countenance.
+
+"I came down late, and everything was cold and mother was on edge.
+The girls are always doing the wrong things and I never do the right
+ones--you know the mater--so I swallowed a tepid kidney and rushed off."
+
+"Save for her worries over you urchins," said I, "I hope Lady Kynnersley
+is well?"
+
+He filled his mouth with toast and marmalade, and nodded. He is a
+good-looking boy, four-and-twenty--idyllic age! He has sleek black hair
+brushed back from his forehead over his head, an olive complexion, and
+a keen, open, clean-shaven face. He wore a dark-brown lounge suit and
+a wine-coloured tie, and looked immaculate. I remember him as the
+grubbiest little wretch that ever disgraced Harrow.
+
+He swallowed his mouthful and drank some tea.
+
+"Recovered your sanity?" he asked.
+
+"The dangerous symptoms have passed over," I replied. "I undertake not
+to bite."
+
+He regarded me as though he were not quite certain, and asked in his
+pronounless way whether I was glad to be back in London.
+
+"Yes," said I. "Rogers is the only human creature who can properly wax
+the ends of my moustache. It got horribly limp in the air of Murglebed.
+That is the one and only disadvantage of the place."
+
+"Doesn't seem to have done you much good," he remarked, scanning me
+critically. "You are as white as you were before you went away. Why the
+blazes you didn't go to Madeira, or the South of France, or South Africa
+I can't imagine."
+
+"I don't suppose you can," said I. "Any news?"
+
+"I should think I have! But first let me go through the appointments."
+
+He consulted a pocket-book. On December 2nd I was to dine with Tanners'
+Company and reply to the toast of "The House of Commons." On the 4th
+my constituency claimed me for the opening of a bazaar at Wymington.
+A little later I was to speak somewhere in the North of England at a
+by-election in support of the party candidate.
+
+"It will be fought on Tariff Reform, about which I know nothing," I
+objected.
+
+"I know everything," he declared. "I'll see you through. You must buck
+up a bit, Simon, and get your name better known about the country. And
+this brings me to my news. I was talking to Raggles the other day--he
+dropped a hint, and Raggles's hints are jolly well worth while picking
+up. Just come to the front and show yourself, and there's a place in the
+Ministry."
+
+"Ministry?"
+
+"Sanderson's going."
+
+"Sanderson?" I queried, interested, in spite of myself, at these
+puerilities. "What's the matter with him?"
+
+"Swelled head. There have been awful rows--this is confidential--and
+he's got the hump. Thinks he ought to be the Chancellor of the
+Exchequer, or at least First Lord, instead of an Under Secretary. So
+he's going to chuck it, before he gets the chuck himself--see?"
+
+"I perceive," said I, "that your conversational English style is
+abominable."
+
+He lit a cigarette and continued, loftily taking no notice of my rebuke.
+
+"There's bound to be a vacancy. Why shouldn't you fill it? They seem to
+want you. You're miles away over the heads of the average solemn duffers
+who get office."
+
+I bowed acknowledgment of his tribute.
+
+"Well, you will buck up and try for it, won't you? I'm awfully proud
+of you already, but I should go off my head with joy if you were in the
+Ministry."
+
+I met his honest young eyes as well as I could. How was I going to
+convey to his candid intelligence the fact of my speedy withdrawal from
+political life without shattering his illusions? Besides, his devotion
+touched me, and his generous aspirations were so futile. Office! It was
+in my grasp. Raggles, with his finger always on the pulse of the party
+machine, was the last man in the world to talk nonsense. I only had to
+"buck up." Yet by the time Sanderson sends in his resignation to the
+King of England, I shall have sent in mine to the King of Hosts. I moved
+slightly in my chair, and a twinge of the little pain inside brought a
+gasp to my throat. But I felt grateful to it. It was saving me from an
+unconscionable deal of worry. Fancy going to a confounded office every
+morning like a clerk in the City! I was happier at peace. I rose and
+warmed myself by the fire. Dale regarded me uncomprehendingly.
+
+"You look as if the prospect bored you to tears. I thought you would be
+delighted."
+
+"_Vanitas vanitatum_," said I. "_Omnia vanitas_."
+
+"Rot!" said Dale.
+
+"It's true."
+
+"I must fetch Eleanor Faversham back from Sicily," said Dale.
+
+"Don't," said I.
+
+"Well, I give you up," he declared, pushing his chair from the table and
+swinging one leg across the other. I leaned forward and scrutinised his
+ankles.
+
+"What are you looking at?"
+
+"There must be something radically wrong with you, Dale," I murmured
+sympathetically. "It is part of the religion of your generation to wear
+socks to match your tie. To-day your tie is wine-coloured and your socks
+are green----"
+
+"Good Lord," he cried, "so they are! I dressed myself anyhow this
+morning."
+
+"What's wrong with you?"
+
+He threw his cigarette impatiently into the fire.
+
+"Every infernal thing that can possibly be. Everything's rotten--but
+I've not come here to talk about myself."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It isn't the game. I'm here on your business, which is ever so much
+more important than mine. Where are this morning's letters?"
+
+I pointed to an unopened heap on a writing-table at the end of the room.
+He crossed and sat down before them. Presently he turned sharply.
+
+"You haven't looked through the envelopes. Here is one from Sicily."
+
+I took the letter from him, and sighed to myself as I read it. Eleanor
+was miserable. The Sicilians were dirty. The Duomo of Palermo did
+not come up to her expectations. The Mobray-Robertsons, with whom she
+travelled, quarrelled with their food. They had never even heard of
+Theocritus. She had a cold in her head, and was utterly at a loss to
+explain my attitude. Therefore she was coming back to London.
+
+I wish I could find her a nice tame husband who had heard of Theocritus.
+It would be such a good thing for everybody, husband included. For, I
+repeat, Eleanor is a young woman of fine character, and the man to whom
+she gives her heart will be a fortunate fellow.
+
+While I was reading the letter and meditating on it, with my back to
+the fire, Dale plunged into the morning's correspondence with an air of
+enjoyment. That is the astonishing thing about him. He loves work.
+The more I give him to do the better he likes it. His cronies, who in
+raiment, manners, and tastes differ from him no more than a row of pins
+differs from a stray brother, regard a writing-chair as a mediaeval
+instrument of torture, and faint at the sight of ink. They will put
+themselves to all kinds of physical and pecuniary inconvenience in order
+to avoid regular employment. They are the tramps of the fashionable
+world. But in vain do they sing to Dale of the joys of silk-hatted and
+patent-leather-booted vagabondage and deride his habits of industry;
+Dale turns a deaf ear to them and urges on his strenuous career. Rogers,
+coming in to clear away the breakfast things, was despatched by my young
+friend to fetch a portfolio from the hall. It contained, he informed
+me, the unanswered letters of the past fortnight with which he had
+found himself unqualified to deal. He grasped the whole bundle of
+correspondence, and invited me to follow him to the library and start on
+a solid morning's work. I obeyed meekly. He sat down at the big table,
+arranged the pile in front of him, took a pencil from the tray, and
+began:
+
+"This is from Finch, of the _Universal Review_."
+
+I put my hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Tell him, my boy, that it's against my custom to breakfast at afternoon
+tea, and that I hope his wife is well."
+
+At his look of bewilderment I broke into a laugh.
+
+"He wants me to write a dull article for his stupid paper, doesn't he?"
+
+"Yes, on Poor Law Administration."
+
+"I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do anything these people ask
+me. Say 'No, no, no, no,' to everybody."
+
+"In Heaven's name, Simon," he cried, laying down his pencil, "what has
+come over you?"
+
+"Old age," said I.
+
+He uttered his usual interjection, and added that I was only
+thirty-seven.
+
+"Age is a relative thing," I remarked. "Babes of five have been known
+to die of senile decay, and I have seen irresponsible striplings of
+seventy."
+
+"I really think Eleanor Faversham had better come back from Sicily."
+
+I tapped the letter still in my hand. "She's coming."
+
+"I'm jolly glad to hear it. It's all my silly fault that she went away.
+I thought she was getting on your nerves. But you want pulling together.
+That confounded place you've been to has utterly upset you."
+
+"On the contrary," said I, "it has steadied and amplified my conception
+of sublunary affairs. It has shown me that motley is much more
+profitable wear than the edged toga of the senator--"
+
+"Oh, for God's sake, dry up," cried young England, "and tell me what
+answers I'm to give these people!"
+
+He seemed so earnest about it that I humoured him; and my correspondents
+seemed so earnest that I humoured them. But it was a grim jest. Most of
+the matters with which I had to deal appeared so trivial. Only here and
+there did I find a chance for eumoiriety. The Wymington Hospital applied
+for their annual donation.
+
+"You generally give a tenner," said Dale.
+
+"This time I'll give them a couple of hundred," said I.
+
+Dale earmarked the amount wonderingly; but when I ordered him to send
+five pounds apiece to the authors of various begging letters he argued
+vehemently and quoted the Charity Organisation Society.
+
+"They're frauds, all of them," he maintained.
+
+"They're poor necessitous devils, at any rate," said I, "and they want
+the money more than I do."
+
+This was a truth whose significance Dale was far from realising. Of
+what value, indeed, is money to me? There is none to whom I can usefully
+bequeath my little fortune, my sisters having each married rich men. I
+shall not need even Charon's obolus when I am dead, for we have ceased
+to believe in him--which is a pity, as the trip across the Styx must
+have been picturesque. Why, then, should I not deal myself a happy lot
+and portion by squandering my money benevolently during my lifetime?
+
+It behooves me, however, to walk warily in this as in other matters, for
+if my actions too closely resemble those of a lunatic at large, trustees
+may be appointed to administer my affairs, which would frustrate my
+plans entirely.
+
+When my part in the morning's work was over, I informed my secretary
+that I would go out and take the air till lunch-time.
+
+"If you've nothing better to do," said he, "you might run round to
+Eccleston Square and see my mother."
+
+"For any particular reason?"
+
+"She wants to see you. Home for inebriate parrots or something. Gave me
+a message for you this morning."
+
+"I'll wait," said I, "on Lady Kynnersley with pleasure."
+
+I went out and walked down the restful covered way of the Albany to
+the Piccadilly entrance, and began my taking of the air. It was a soft
+November day, full of blue mist, and invested with a dying grace by a
+pale sunshine struggling through thin, grey rain-cloud. It was a faded
+lady of a day--a lady of waxen cheeks, attired in pearl-grey and
+old lace, her dim eyes illumined by a last smile. It gave an air
+of unreality to the perspective of tall buildings, and treated with
+indulgent irony the passing show of humans--on foot, on omnibuses, in
+cabs and motors--turning them into shadow shapes tending no whither.
+I laughed to myself. They all fancied themselves so real. They all had
+schemes in their heads, as if they were going to live a thousand years.
+I walked westwards past the great clubs, moralising as I went, and
+feeling the reaction from the excitement of Murglebed-on-Sea. I looked
+up at one of my own clubs, a comfortable resting-place, and it struck
+me as possessing more attractions than the family vault in Highgate
+Cemetery. An acquaintance at the window waved his hand at me. I thought
+him a lucky beggar to have that window to stand by when the street will
+be flooded with summer sunshine and the trees in the green Park opposite
+wave in their verdant bravery. A little further a radiant being, all
+chiffons and millinery, on her way to Bond Street for more millinery and
+chiffons, smiled at me and put forth a delicately-gloved hand.
+
+"Oh, Mr. de Gex, you're the very man I was longing to see!"
+
+"How simply are some human aspirations satisfied!" said I.
+
+"Farfax"--that's her husband, Farfax Glenn, a Member on my side of the
+House--"Farfax and I are making plans already for the Easter recess. We
+are going to motor to Athens, and you must come with us. You can tell us
+all about everything as we pass by."
+
+I looked grave. "Easter is late next year."
+
+"What does that matter? Say you'll come."
+
+"Alas! my dear Mrs. Glenn," I said, with a smile, "I have an engagement
+at Easter--a very important one."
+
+"I thought the wedding was not to take place till June."
+
+"It isn't the wedding," said I.
+
+"Then break the engagement."
+
+"It's beyond human power," said I.
+
+She held up her bracelet, from which dangled some charms.
+
+"I think you're a ----" And she pointed to a little golden pig.
+
+"I'm not," I retorted.
+
+"What are you, then?"
+
+"I'm a gentleman in a Greek tragedy."
+
+We laughed and parted, and I went on my way cheered by the encounter.
+I had spoken the exact truth, and found amusement in doing so. One has
+often extracted humour from the contemplation of the dissolution of
+others--that of the giant in "Jack the Giant-killer" for instance, and
+the demise of the little boy with the pair of skates in the poem. Why
+not extract it from the contemplation of one's own?
+
+The only disadvantage of my position is that it give me, in spite of
+myself, an odd sense of isolation from my kind. They are looking forward
+to Easters and Junes and summers, and I am not. I also have a fatuous
+feeling of superiority in being in closer touch than they with eternal
+verities. I must take care that I do not play too much to the gallery,
+that I do not grow too conceited over the singularity of my situation,
+and arrive at the mental attitude of the criminal whose dominant
+solicitude in connection with his execution was that he should be hanged
+in his dress clothes. These reflections brought me to Eccleston Square.
+
+Lady Kynnersley is that type of British matron who has children in fits
+of absent-mindedness, and to whom their existence is a perpetual
+shock. Her main idea in marrying the late Sir Thomas Kynnersley was to
+associate herself with his political and philanthropic schemes. She is
+the born committee woman, to whom a home represents a place where one
+sleeps and eats in order to maintain the strength required for the
+performance of committee duties. Her children have always been outside
+the sphere of her real interests, but, afflicted, as such women are,
+with chronic inflammation of the conscience, she had devoted the most
+scrupulous care to their upbringing. She formed herself into a society
+for the protection of her own children, and managed them by means of a
+committee, which consisted of herself, and of which she was the honorary
+secretary. She drew up articles of association and regulations. If Dale
+contracted measles, she applied by-law 17. If Janet slapped
+Dorothy, by-law 32 was brought into play. When Dale clamoured for
+a rocking-horse, she found that the articles of association did not
+provide for imaginative equitation. As the children grew up, the
+committee had from time to time to revise the articles and submit them
+to the general body for approval. There were many meetings before the
+new sections relating to a University career for the boy and the coming
+out for the girls were satisfactorily drafted. Once given the effect
+of law, however, there was no appeal against these provisions. Both
+committee and general body were powerless. Dale certainly owed his
+methodical habits to his mechanical training, but whence he derived and
+how he maintained his exuberance and spontaneity has often puzzled
+me. He himself accounts for it on the score of heredity, in that an
+ancestress of his married a highwayman who was hanged at Tyburn under
+William and Mary.
+
+In person Lady Kynnersley is lean and blanched and grey-haired. She
+wears gold spectacles, which stand out oddly against the thin whiteness
+of her face; she is still a handsome, distinguished woman, who can have,
+when she chooses, a most gracious manner. As I, worldling and jester
+though I am, for some mysterious reason have found favour in the lady's
+eyes, she manifests this graciousness whenever we foregather. Ergo,
+I like Lady Kynnersley, and would put myself to much inconvenience in
+order to do her a service.
+
+She kept me waiting in the drawing-room but a minute before she made
+her appearance, grasped my hand, proclaimed my goodness in responding
+so soon to her call, bade me sit down on the sofa by her side, inquired
+after my health, and, the gods of politeness being propitiated, plunged
+at once into the midst of matters.
+
+Dale was going downhill headlong to Gadarene catastrophe. He had no
+eyes or ears or thoughts for any one in the world but for a certain Lola
+Brandt, a brazen creature from a circus, the shape of whose limbs was
+the common knowledge of mankind from Dublin to Yokohama, and whose path
+by sea and land, from Yokohama to Dublin, was strewn with the bodies of
+her victims. With this man-eating tigress, declared Lady Kynnersley,
+was Dale infatuated. He scorched himself morning, noon, and night in her
+devastating presence. Had cut himself adrift from home, from society.
+Had left trailing about on his study table a jeweller's bill for a
+diamond bracelet. Was committing follies that made my brain reel to
+hear. Had threatened, if worried much longer, to marry the Scarlet One
+incontinently. Heaven knew, cried Lady Kynnersley, how many husbands
+she had already--scattered along the track between Dublin and Yokohama.
+There was no doubt about it. Dale was hurtling down to everlasting
+bonfire. She looked to me to hold out the restraining hand.
+
+"You have already spoken to Dale on the subject?" I asked, mindful of
+the inharmonious socks and tie.
+
+"I can talk to him of nothing else," said Lady Kynnersley desperately.
+
+"That's a pity," said I. "You should talk to him of Heaven, or pigs, or
+Babylonic cuneiform--anything but Lola Brandt. You ought to go to work
+on a different system."
+
+"But I haven't a system at all," cried the poor lady. "How was I to
+foresee that my only son was going to fall in love with a circus rider?
+These are contingencies in life for which one, with all the thought in
+the world, can make no provision. I had arranged, as you know, that
+he should marry Maisie Ellerton, as charming a girl as ever there was.
+Isn't she? And an independent fortune besides."
+
+"A rosebud wrapped in a gold leaf," I murmured.
+
+"Now he's breaking the child's heart----"
+
+"There was never any engagement between them, I am sure of that," I
+remarked.
+
+"There wasn't. But I gave her to understand it was a settled
+affair--merely a question of Dale speaking. And, instead of speaking,
+he will have nothing to do with her, and spends all his time--and,
+I suppose, though I don't like to refer to it, all his money--in the
+society of this unmentionable woman."
+
+"Is she really so--so red as she is painted?" I asked.
+
+"She isn't painted at all. That's where her artful and deceitful devilry
+comes in----"
+
+"I suppose Dale," said I, "declares her to be an angel of light and
+purity?"
+
+"An angel on horseback! Whoever heard of such a thing?"
+
+"It's the name of a rather fiery savoury," said I.
+
+"In a circus!" she continued.
+
+"Well," said I, "the ring of a circus is not essentially one of the
+circles in Dante's Inferno."
+
+"Of course, my dear Simon," she said, with some impatience, "if you
+defend him--"
+
+I hastened to interrupt her. "I don't. I think he is an egregious young
+idiot; but before taking action it's well to get a clear idea of the
+facts. By the way, how do you know she's not painted?"
+
+"I've seen her--seen her with my own eyes in Dale's company--at the
+Savoy. He's there supping with her every night. General Lamont told
+me. I wouldn't believe it--Dale flaunting about in public with her.
+The General offered to take me there after the inaugural meeting of
+the International Aid Society at Grosvenor House. I went, and saw them
+together. I shall never forget the look in the boy's eyes till my dying
+day. She has got him body and soul. One reads of such things in the
+poets, one sees it in pictures; but I've never come across it in real
+life--never, never. It's dreadful, horrible, revolting. To think that a
+son of mine, brought up from babyhood to calculate all his actions
+with mathematical precision, should be guilty of this profligacy! It's
+driving me mad, Simon; it really is. I don't know what to do. I've come
+to the end of my resources. It's your turn now. The boy worships you."
+
+A wild appeal burned in her eyes and was refracted oddly through her
+near-sighted spectacles. I had never seen her betray emotion before
+during all the years of our friendship. The look and the tone of her
+voice moved me. I expressed my sympathy and my readiness to do anything
+in my power to snatch the infatuated boy from the claw and fang of the
+syren and hale him to the forgiving feet of Maisie Ellerton. Indeed,
+such a chivalrous adventure had vaguely passed through my mind during my
+exalted mood at Murglebed-on-Sea. But then I knew little beyond the fact
+that Dale was fluttering round an undesirable candle. Till now I had no
+idea of the extent to which his wings were singed.
+
+"Hasn't Dale spoken to you about this creature?" his mother asked.
+
+"Young men of good taste keep these things from their elders, my dear
+Lady Kynnersley," said I.
+
+"But you knew of it?"
+
+"In a dim sort of way."
+
+"Oh, Simon--"
+
+"The baby boys of Dale's set regard taking out the chorus to supper as
+a solemn religious rite. They wouldn't think themselves respectable if
+they didn't. I've done it myself--in moderation--when I was very young."
+
+"Men are mysteries," sighed Lady Kynnersley.
+
+"Please regard them as such," said I, with a laugh, "and let Dale alone.
+Allow him to do whatever irrational thing he likes, save bringing the
+lady here to tea. If you try to tear him away from her he'll only cling
+to her the closer. If you trumpet abroad her infamy he'll proclaim her a
+slandered and martyred saint. Leave him to me for the present."
+
+"I'll do so gladly," said Lady Kynnersley, with surprising meekness.
+"But you _will_ bring him back, Simon? I've arranged for him to marry
+Maisie. I can't have my plans for the future upset."
+
+By-law 379! Dear, excellent, but wooden-headed woman!
+
+"I have your promise, haven't I?" she said, her hand in mine.
+
+"You have," said I nobly.
+
+But how in the name of Astaroth I'm going to keep it I haven't the
+remotest conception.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Some letters in Dale's round handwriting lay on the library table
+awaiting my signature. Dale himself had gone. A lady had called for him,
+said Rogers, in an electric brougham. As my chambers are on the second
+floor and the staircase half-way down the arcade, Rogers's detailed
+information surprised me. I asked him how he knew.
+
+"A chauffeur in livery, sir, came to the door and said that the brougham
+was waiting for Mr. Kynnersley."
+
+"I don't see how the lady came in," I remarked.
+
+"She didn't, sir. She remained in the brougham," said Rogers.
+
+So Lola Brandt keeps an electric brougham.
+
+I lunched at the club, and turned up the article "Lola Brandt" in the
+living encyclopaedia--that was my friend Renniker. The wonderful man
+gave me her history from the cradle to Cadogan Gardens, where she now
+resides. I must say that his details were rather vague. She rode in a
+circus or had a talking horse--he was not quite sure; and concerning
+her conjugal or extra-conjugal heart affairs he admitted that his
+information was either unauthenticated or conjectural. At any rate, she
+had not a shred of reputation. And she didn't want it, said Renniker; it
+would be as much use to her as a diving suit.
+
+"She has young Dale Kynnersley in tow," he remarked.
+
+"So I gather," said I. "And now can you tell me something else? What is
+the present state of political parties in Guatemala?"
+
+I was not in the least interested in Guatemala; but I did not care to
+discuss Dale with Renniker. When he had completed his sketch of affairs
+in that obscure republic, I thanked him politely and ordered coffee.
+
+Feeling in a gregarious, companionable humour--I have had enough
+solitude at Murglebed to last me the rest of my short lifetime--I went
+later in the afternoon to Sussex Gardens to call on Mrs. Ellerton. It
+was her day at home, and the drawing-room was filled with chattering
+people. I stayed until most of them were gone, and then Maisie dragged
+me to the inner room, where a table was strewn with the wreckage of tea.
+
+"I haven't had any," she said, grasping the teapot and pouring a treacly
+liquid into a cup. "You must have some more. Do you like it black, or
+with milk?"
+
+She is a dainty slip of a girl, with deep grey eyes and wavy brown hair
+and a sea-shell complexion. I absently swallowed the abomination she
+handed me, for I was looking at her over the teacup and wondering how
+an exquisite-minded gentleman like Dale could forsake her for a Lola
+Brandt. It was not as if Maisie were an empty-headed, empty-natured
+little girl. She is a young person of sense, education, and character.
+She also adores musical comedy and a band at dinner: an excellent thing
+in woman--when she is very young.
+
+"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked.
+
+"Because, my dear Maisie," said I, "you are good to look upon. You are
+also dropping a hairpin."
+
+She hastily secured the dangling thing. "I did my hair anyhow to-day,"
+she explained.
+
+Again I thought of Dale's tie and socks. The signs of a lover's
+"careless desolation," described by Rosalind so minutely, can still be
+detected in modern youth of both sexes. I did not pursue the question,
+but alluded to autumn gaieties. She spoke of them without enthusiasm.
+Miss Somebody's wedding was very dull, and Mrs. Somebody Else's dance
+manned with vile and vacuous dancers. At the Opera the greatest of
+German sopranos sang false. All human institutions had taken a crooked
+turn, and her cat could not be persuaded to pay the commonest attention
+to its kittens. Then she asked me nonchalantly:
+
+"Have you seen anything of Dale lately?"
+
+"He was working with me this morning. I've been away, you know."
+
+"I forgot."
+
+"When did you last see him?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, ages ago! He has not been near us for weeks. We used to be such
+friends. I don't think it's very polite of him, do you?"
+
+"I'll order him to call forthwith," said I.
+
+"Oh, please don't! If he won't come of his own accord--I don't want to
+see him particularly."
+
+She tossed her shapely head and looked at me bravely.
+
+"You are quite right," said I. "Dale's a selfish, ill-mannered young
+cub."
+
+"He isn't!" she flashed. "How dare you say such things about him!"
+
+I smiled and took both her hands--one of them held a piece of brown
+bread-and-butter.
+
+"My dear," said I, "model yourself on Little Bo-Peep. I don't know who
+gave her the famous bit of advice, but I think it was I myself in a
+pastoral incarnation. I had a woolly cloak and a crook, and she was like
+a Dresden china figure--the image of you."
+
+Her eyes swam, but she laughed and said I was good to her. I said:
+
+"The man who wouldn't be good to you is an unhung villain."
+
+Then her mother joined us, and our little confidential talk came to an
+end. It was enough, however, to convince me that my poor little Ariadne
+was shedding many desperate tears in secret over her desertion.
+
+On my way home I looked in on my doctor. His name is Hunnington. He
+grasped me by the hand and eagerly inquired whether my pain was worse. I
+said it was not. He professed delight, but looked disappointed. I ought
+to have replied in the affirmative. It is so easy to make others happy.
+
+I dined, read a novel, and went to sleep in the cheerful frame of mind
+induced by the consciousness of having made some little progress on the
+path of eumoiriety.
+
+The next morning Dale made his customary appearance. He wore a morning
+coat, a dark tie, and patent-leather boots.
+
+"Well," said I, "have you dressed more carefully today?"
+
+He looked himself anxiously over and inquired whether there was anything
+wrong. I assured him of the impeccability of his attire, and commented
+on its splendour.
+
+"Are you going to take Maisie out to lunch?"
+
+He started and reddened beneath his dark skin. Before he could speak I
+laid my hand on his shoulder.
+
+"I'm an old friend, Dale. You mustn't be angry with me. But don't you
+think you're treating Maisie rather badly?"
+
+"You've no right to say so," he burst out hotly. "No one has the right
+to say so. There was never a question of an engagement between Maisie
+and myself."
+
+"Then there ought to have been," I said judicially. "No decent man plays
+fast and loose with a girl and throws her over just at the moment when
+he ought to be asking her to marry him."
+
+"I suppose my mother's been at you. That's what she wanted to see you
+about yesterday. I wish to God she would mind her own business."
+
+"And that I would mind mine?"
+
+Dale did not reply. For some odd reason he is devotedly attached to me,
+and respects my opinion on worldly matters. He walked to the window and
+looked out. Presently, without turning round, he said:
+
+"I suppose she has been rubbing it in about Lola Brandt?"
+
+"She did mention the lady's name," said I. "So did Renniker at the club.
+I suppose every one you know and many you don't are mentioning it."
+
+"Well, what if they are?"
+
+"They're creating an atmosphere about your name which is scarcely that
+in which to make an entrance into public life."
+
+Still with his back turned, he morosely informed me in his vernacular
+that he contemplated public life with feelings of indifference, and was
+perfectly prepared to abandon his ambitions. I took up my parable, the
+same old parable that wise seniors have preached to the deluded young
+from time immemorial. I have seldom held forth so platitudinously even
+in the House of Commons. I spoke as impressively as a bishop. In the
+midst of my harangue he came and sat by the library table and rested
+his chin on his palm, looking at me quietly out of his dark eyes. His
+mildness encouraged me to further efforts. I instanced cases of other
+young men of the world who had gone the way of the flesh and had ended
+at the devil.
+
+There was Paget, of the Guards, eaten to the bone by the Syren--not even
+the gold lace on his uniform left. There was Merridew, once the hope
+of the party, now living in ignoble obscurity with an old and painted
+mistress, whom he detested, but to whom habit and sapped will-power kept
+him in thrall. There was Bullen, who blew his brains out. In a generous
+glow I waxed prophetic and drew a vivid picture of Dale's moral, mental,
+physical, financial, and social ruin, and finished up in a masterly
+peroration.
+
+Then, without moving, he calmly said:
+
+"My dear Simon, you are talking through your hat!"
+
+He had allowed me to walk backwards and forwards on the hearthrug before
+a blazing fire, pouring out the wealth of my wisdom, experience, and
+rhetoric for ten minutes by the clock, and then coolly informed me that
+I was talking through my hat.
+
+I wiped my forehead, sat down, and looked at him across the table in
+surprise and indignation.
+
+"If you can point out one irrelevant or absurd remark in my homily, I'll
+eat the hat through which you say I'm talking."
+
+"The whole thing is rot from beginning to end!" said he. "None of you
+good people know anything at all about Lola Brandt. She's not the
+sort of woman you think. She's quite different. You can't judge her by
+ordinary standards. There's not a woman like her in the wide world!"
+
+I made a gesture of discouragement. The same old parable of the wise
+had evoked the same old retort from the deluded young. She was quite
+different from other women. She was misunderstood by the cynical and
+gross-minded world. A heart of virgin purity beat beneath her mercenary
+bosom. Her lurid past had been the reiterated martyrdom of a noble
+nature. O Golden Age! O unutterable silliness of Boyhood!
+
+"For Heaven's sake, don't talk in that way!" he cried (I had been
+talking in that way), and he rose and walked like a young tiger about
+the room. "I can't stand it. I've gone mad about her. She has got into
+my blood somehow. I think about her all day long, and I can't sleep at
+night. I would give up any mortal thing on earth for her. She is the one
+woman in the world for me! She's the dearest, sweetest, tenderest, most
+beautiful creature God ever made!"
+
+"And you honour and respect her--just as you would honour and respect
+Maisie?" I asked quietly.
+
+"Of course I do!" he flashed. "Don't I tell you that you know nothing
+whatever about her? She is the dearest, sweetest----" etc., etc. And he
+continued to trumpet forth the Olympian qualities of the Syren and his
+own fervent adoration. I was the only being to whom he had opened his
+heart, and, the floodgates being set free, the torrent burst forth in
+this tempestuous and incoherent manner. I let him go on, for I thought
+it did him good; but his rhapsody added very little to my information.
+
+The lady who had "houp-la'd" her way from Dublin to Yokohama was the
+spotless queen of beauty, and Dale was frenziedly, idiotically in love
+with her. That was all I could gather. When he had finished, which he
+did somewhat abruptly, he threw himself into a chair and took out his
+cigarette-case with shaky fingers.
+
+"There. I suppose I've made a damn-fool exhibition of myself," he said,
+defiantly. "What have you got to say about it?"
+
+"Precisely," I replied, "what I said before. I'll repeat it, if you
+like."
+
+Indeed, what more was there to say for the present about the lunatic
+business? I had come to the end of my arguments.
+
+He reflected for a moment, then rose and came over to the fireplace.
+
+"Look here, Simon, you must let me go my own way in this. In matters of
+politics and worldly wisdom and social affairs and honourable dealing
+and all that sort of thing I would follow you blindly. You're my chief,
+and a kind of elder brother as well. I would do any mortal thing for
+you. You know that. But you've no right to try to guide me in this
+matter. You know no more about it than my mother. You've had no
+experience. You've never let yourself go about a woman in your life.
+Lord of Heaven, man, you have never begun to know what it means!"
+
+Oh, dear me! Here was the situation as old as the return of the Prodigal
+or the desertion of the trusting village maiden, or any other cliche in
+the melodrama of real life. "You are making a fool of yourself," says
+Mentor. "Ah," shrieks Telemachus, "but you never loved! You don't know
+what love is."
+
+I looked at him whimsically.
+
+"Don't I?"
+
+My thoughts sped back down the years to a garden in France. Her name was
+Clothilde. We met in a manner outrageous to Gallic propriety, as I used
+to climb over the garden wall to the peril of my epidermis. We loved. We
+were parted by stern parents--not mine--and Clothilde was packed off to
+the good Sisters who had previously had care of her education. Now she
+is fat and happy, and the wife of a banker and the mother of children.
+
+But the romance was sad and bad and mad enough while it lasted; and when
+Clothilde was (figuratively) dragged from my arms I cursed and swore and
+out-Heroded Herod, played Termagant, and summoned the heavens to fall
+down and crush me miserable beneath their weight. And then her brother
+challenged me to fight a duel, whereupon, as the most worshipped of all
+She's had not received a ha'porth of harm at my hands, I called him a
+silly ass and threatened to break his head if he interfered any more
+in my legitimate despair. I smile at it now; but it was real at
+two-and-twenty--as real, I take it, as Dale's consuming passion for the
+lady of the circus.
+
+There was also, I remembered, a certain ---- But this had nothing to do
+with Dale. Neither had the tragedy of my lost Clothilde. The memories,
+however, brought a wistful touch of sympathy into my voice.
+
+"You soberly think, my dear old Dale," said I, "that I know nothing of
+love and passion and the rest of the divine madness?"
+
+"I'm sure you don't," he cried, with an impatient gesture. "If you did,
+you wouldn't--"
+
+He came to an abrupt and confused halt.
+
+"I wouldn't--what?"
+
+"Nothing. I forgot what I was going to say. Let us talk of something
+else."
+
+"It was on the tip of your impulsive tongue," said I cheerfully, "to
+refer to my attitude towards Miss Faversham."
+
+"I'm desperately sorry," said he, reddening. "It was unpardonable. But
+how did you guess?"
+
+I laughed and quoted the Latin tag about the ingenuous boy of the
+ingenuous visage and ingenuous modesty.
+
+"Because I don't feverishly search the postbag for a letter from Miss
+Faversham you conclude I'm a bloodless automaton?"
+
+"Please don't say any more about it, Simon," he pleaded in deep
+distress.
+
+A sudden idea struck me. I reflected, walked to the window, and, having
+made up my mind, sat down again. I had a weapon to hand which I had
+overlooked, and with the discovery came a weak craving for the boy's
+sympathy. I believe I care more for him than for any living creature. I
+decided to give him some notion of my position.
+
+Sooner or later he would have to learn it.
+
+"I would rather like to tell you something," said I, "about my
+engagement--in confidence, of course. When Eleanor Faversham comes back
+I propose to ask her to release me from it."
+
+He drew a long breath. "I'm glad. She's an awfully nice girl, but
+she's no more in love with you than my mother is. But it'll be rather
+difficult, won't it?"
+
+"I don't think so," I replied, shaking my head. "It's a question of
+health. My doctors absolutely forbid it."
+
+A look of affectionate alarm sprang into his eyes. He broke into
+sympathy. My health? Why had I not told him before? In Heaven's name,
+what was the matter with me?
+
+"Something silly," said I. "Nothing you need worry about on my account.
+Only I must go _piano_ for the rest of my days. Marriage isn't to be
+thought of. There is something else I must tell you. I must resign my
+seat."
+
+"Resign your seat? Give up Parliament? When?"
+
+"As soon as possible."
+
+He looked at me aghast, as if the world were coming to an end.
+
+"We had better concoct an epistle to Raggles this morning."
+
+"But you can't be serious?"
+
+"I can sometimes, my dear Dale. This is one of the afflicting
+occasions."
+
+"You out of Parliament? You out of public life? It's inconceivable. It's
+damnable. But you're just coming into your own--what Raggles said, what
+I told you yesterday. But it can't be. You can hold on. I'll do all the
+drudgery for you. I'll work night and day."
+
+And he tramped up and down the room, uttering the disconnected phrases
+which an honest young soul unaccustomed to express itself emotionally
+blurts out in moments of deep feeling.
+
+"It's no use, Dale," said I, "I've got my marching orders."
+
+"But why should they come just now?"
+
+"When the sweets of office are dangling at my lips? It's pretty simple."
+I laughed. "It's one of the little ironies that please the high gods
+so immensely. They have an elementary sense of humour--like that of
+the funny fellow who pulls your chair from under you and shrieks with
+laughter when you go wallop on to the floor. Well, I don't grudge them
+their amusement. They must have a dull time settling mundane affairs,
+and a little joke goes a long way with them, as it does in the House
+of Commons. Fancy sitting on those green benches legislating for all
+eternity, with never a recess and never even a dinner hour! Poor high
+gods! Let us pity them."
+
+I looked at him and smiled, perhaps a little wearily. One can always
+command one's eyes, but one's lips sometimes get out of control. He
+could not have noticed my lips, however, for he cried:
+
+"By George, you're splendid! I wish I could take a knock-out blow like
+that!"
+
+"You'll have to one of these days. It's the only way of taking it. And
+now," said I, in a businesslike tone, "I've told you all this with a
+purpose. At Wymington it will be a case of 'Le Roi est mort. Vive le
+Roi!' The vacancy will have to be filled up at once. We'll have to find
+a suitable candidate. Have you one in your mind?"
+
+"Not a soul."
+
+"I have."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"You."
+
+"Me?" He nearly sprang into the air with astonishment.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"They'd never adopt me."
+
+"I think they would," I said. "There are men in the House as young as
+you. You're well known at Wymington and at headquarters as my right-hand
+man. You've done some speaking--you do it rather well; it's only
+your private conversational style that's atrocious. You've got a name
+familiar in public life up and down the country, thanks to your father
+and mother. It's a fairly safe seat. I see no reason why they shouldn't
+adopt you. Would you like it?"
+
+"Like it?" he cried. "Why I'd give my ears for it."
+
+"Then," said I, playing my winning card, "let us hear no more about Lola
+Brandt."
+
+He gave me a swift glance, and walked up and down the room for a while
+in silence. Presently he halted in front of me.
+
+"Look here, Simon, you're a beast, but"--he smiled frankly at the
+quotation--"you're a just beast. You oughtn't to rub it in like that
+about Lola until you have seen her yourself. It isn't fair."
+
+"You speak now in language distinctly approaching that of reason," I
+remarked. "What do you want me to do?"
+
+"Come with me this afternoon and see her."
+
+My young friend had me nicely in the trap. I could not refuse.
+
+"Very well," said I. "But on the distinct understanding--"
+
+"Oh, on any old understanding you like!" he cried, and darted to the
+door.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"To ring her up on the telephone and tell her you're coming."
+
+That's the worst of the young. They have such a disconcerting manner of
+clinching one's undertakings.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+My first impression of Lola Brandt in the dimness of the room was that
+of a lithe panther in petticoats rising lazily from the depths of an
+easy chair. A sinuous action of the arm, as she extended her hand to
+welcome me, was accompanied by a curiously flexible turn of the body.
+Her hand as it enveloped, rather than grasped, mine seemed boneless but
+exceedingly powerful. An indoor dress of brown and gold striped Indian
+silk clung to her figure, which, largely built, had an appearance of
+great strength. Dark bronze hair and dark eyes, that in the soft light
+of the room glowed with deep gold reflections, completed the pantherine
+suggestion. She seemed to be on the verge of thirty. A most dangerous
+woman, I decided--one to be shut up in a cage with thick iron bars.
+
+"It's charming of you to come. I've heard so much of you from Mr.
+Kynnersley. Do sit down."
+
+Her voice was lazy and languorous and caressing like the purr of a great
+cat; and there was something exotic in her accent, something seductive,
+something that ought to be prohibited by the police. She sank into her
+low chair by the fire, indicating one for me square with the hearthrug.
+Dale, so as to leave me a fair conversational field with the lady,
+established himself on the sofa some distance off, and began to talk
+with a Chow dog, with whom he was obviously on terms of familiarity.
+Madame Brandt make a remark about the Chow dog's virtues, to which I
+politely replied. She put him through several tricks. I admired his
+talent. She declared her affections to be divided between Adolphus (that
+was the Chow dog's name) and an ouistiti, who was confined to bed for
+the present owing to the evil qualities of the November air. For the
+first time I blessed the English climate. I hate little monkeys. I also
+felt a queer disappointment. A woman like that ought to have caught an
+ourang-outang.
+
+She guessed my thought in an uncanny manner, and smiled, showing strong,
+white, even teeth--the most marvellous teeth I have ever beheld--so even
+as to constitute almost a deformity.
+
+"I'm fonder of bigger animals," she said. "I was born among them.
+My father was a lion tamer, so I know all the ways of beasts. I love
+bears--I once trained one to drive a cart--but"--with a sigh--"you can't
+keep bears in Cadogan Gardens."
+
+"You may get hold of a human one now and then," said Dale.
+
+"I've no doubt Madame Brandt could train him to dance to whatever tune
+she played," said I.
+
+She turned her dark golden eyes lazily, slumberously on me.
+
+"Why do you say that, Mr. de Gex?"
+
+This was disconcerting. Why had I said it? For no particular reason,
+save to keep up a commonplace conversation in which I took no absorbing
+interest. It was a direct challenge. Young Dale stopped playing with the
+Chow dog and grinned. It behooved me to say something. I said it with a
+bow and a wave of my hand:
+
+"Because, though your father was a lion-tamer, your mother was a woman."
+
+She appeared to reflect for a moment; then addressing Dale:
+
+"The answer doesn't amount to a ha'porth of cats'-meat, but you couldn't
+have got out of it like that."
+
+I was again disconcerted, but I remarked that he would learn in time
+when my mentorship was over and I handed him, a finished product, to
+society.
+
+"How long will that be?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know. Are you anxious for his immediate perfecting?"
+
+Her shoulders gave what in ordinary women would have been a shrug: with
+her it was a slow ripple. I vow if her neck had been bare one could have
+seen it undulate beneath the skin.
+
+"What is perfection?"
+
+"Can you ask?" laughed Dale. "Behold!" And he pointed to me.
+
+"That's cheap," said the lady. "I've heard Auguste say cleverer things."
+
+"Who's Auguste?" asked Dale.
+
+"Auguste," said I, "is the generic name of the clown in the French
+Hippodrome."
+
+"Oh, the Circus!" cried Dale.
+
+"I'll be glad if you'll teach him to call it the Hippodrome, Mr. de
+Gex," she remarked, with another of her slumberous glances.
+
+"That will be one step nearer perfection," said I.
+
+The short November twilight had deepened into darkness; the fire, which
+was blazing when we entered, had settled into a glow, and the room was
+lit by one shaded lamp. To me the dimness was restful, but Dale, who,
+with the crude instincts of youth, loves glare, began to fidget, and
+presently asked whether he might turn on the electric light. Permission
+was given. My hostess invited me to smoke and, to hand her a box of
+cigarettes which lay on the mantelpiece, I rose, bent over her while
+she lit her cigarette from my match, and resuming an upright position,
+became rooted to the hearthrug.
+
+With the flood of illumination, disclosing everything that hitherto had
+been wrapped in shadow and mystery, came a shock.
+
+It was a most extraordinary, perplexing room. The cheap and the costly,
+the rare and the common, the exquisite and the tawdry jostled one
+another on walls and floor. At one end of the Louis XVI sofa on which
+Dale had been sitting lay a boating cushion covered with a Union Jack,
+at the other a cushion covered with old Moorish embroidery. The chair
+I had vacated I discovered to be of old Spanish oak and stamped Cordova
+leather bearing traces of a coat-of-arms in gold. My hostess lounged in
+a low characterless seat amid a mass of heterogeneous cushions. There
+were many flowers in the room--some in Cloisonne vases, others in
+gimcrack vessels such as are bought at country fairs. On the mantelpiece
+and on tables were mingled precious ivories from Japan, trumpery chalets
+from the Tyrol, choice bits of Sevres and Venetian glass, bottles with
+ladders and little men inside them, vulgar china fowls sitting on eggs,
+and a thousand restless little objects screeching in dumb agony at one
+another.
+
+The more one looked the more confounded became confusion. Lengths of
+beautifully embroidered Chinese silk formed curtains for the doors and
+windows; but they were tied back with cords ending in horrible little
+plush monkeys in lieu of tassels. A Second Empire gilt mirror hung over
+the Louis XVI sofa, and was flanked on the one side by a villainous
+German print of "The Huntsman's Return" and on the other by a dainty
+water-colour. Myriads of photographs, some in frames, met the eye
+everywhere--on the grand piano, on the occasional tables, on the
+mantelpiece, stuck obliquely all round the Queen Anne mirror above it,
+on the walls. Many of them represented animals--bears and lions and
+pawing horses. Dale's photograph I noticed in a silver frame on the
+piano. There was not a book in the place. But in the corner of the room
+by a further window gleamed a large marble Venus of Milo, charmingly
+executed, who stood regarding the welter with eyes calm and unconcerned.
+
+I was aroused from the momentary shock caused by the revelation of
+this eccentric apartment by an unknown nauseous flavour in my mouth.
+I realised it was the cigarette to which I had helped myself from the
+beautifully chased silver casket I had taken from the mantelpiece. I
+eyed the thing and concluded it was made of the very cheapest tobacco,
+and was what the street urchin calls a "fag." I learned afterwards that
+I was right. She purchased them at the rate of six for a penny, and
+smoked them in enormous quantities. For politeness' sake I continued
+to puff at the unclean thing until I nearly made myself sick. Then,
+simulating absentmindedness, I threw it into the fire.
+
+Why, in the sacred name of Nicotine, does a luxurious lady like Lola
+Brandt smoke such unutterable garbage?
+
+On the other hand, the tea which she offered us a few minutes later, and
+begged us to drink without milk, was the most exquisite I have tasted
+outside Russia. She informed us that she got it direct from Moscow.
+
+"I can't stand your black Ceylon tea," she remarked, with a grimace.
+
+And yet she could smoke "fags." I wondered what other contradictious
+tastes she possessed. No doubt she could eat blood puddings with relish
+and had a discriminating palate for claret. Truly, a perplexing lady.
+
+"You must find leisure in London a great change after your adventurous
+career," said I, by way of polite conversation.
+
+"I just love it. I'm as lazy as a cat," she said, settling with her
+pantherine grace among the cushions. "Do you know what has been my
+ambition ever since I was a kid?"
+
+"Whatever of woman's ambitions you had you must have attained," said I,
+with a bow.
+
+"Pooh!" she said. "You mean that I can have crowds of men falling
+in love with me. That's rubbish." She was certainly frank. "I meant
+something quite different. I wonder whether you can understand. The
+world used to seem to me divided into two classes that never met--we
+performing people and the public, the thousand white faces that looked
+at us and went away and talked to other white faces and forgot all about
+performing animals till they came next time. Now I've got what I wanted.
+See? I'm one of the public."
+
+"And you love Philistia better than Bohemia?" I asked.
+
+She knitted her brows and looked at me puzzled.
+
+"If you want to talk to me," she said, "you must talk straight. I've had
+no more education than a tinker's dog."
+
+She made this peculiar announcement, not defiantly, not rudely, but
+appealingly, graciously. It was not a rebuke for priggishness; it was
+the unpresentable statement of a fact. I apologized for a lunatic habit
+of speech and paraphrased my question.
+
+"In a word," cried Dale, coming in on my heels with an elucidation of my
+periphrasis, "what de Gex is driving at is--Do you prefer respectability
+to ramping round?"
+
+She turned slowly to him. "My dear boy, when do you think I was not
+respectable?"
+
+He jumped from the sofa as if the Chow dog had bitten him.
+
+"Good Heavens, I never meant you to take it that way!"
+
+She laughed, stretched up a lazy arm to him, and looked at him somewhat
+quizzically in the face as he kissed her finger-tips. Although I could
+have boxed the silly fellow's ears, I vow he did it in a very pretty
+fashion. The young man of the day, as a general rule, has no more notion
+how to kiss a woman's hand than how to take snuff or dance a pavane.
+Indeed, lots of them don't know how to kiss a girl at all.
+
+"My dear," she said. "I was much more respectable sitting on the stage
+at tea with my horse, Sultan, than supping with you at the Savoy. You
+don't know the deadly respectability of most people in the profession,
+and the worst of it is that while we're being utterly dull and dowdy,
+the public think we're having a devil of a time. So we don't even get
+the credit of our virtues. I prefer the Savoy--and this." She turned to
+me. "It is nice having decent people to tea. Do you know what I should
+love? I should love to have an At Home day--and receive ladies, real
+ladies. And I have such a sweet place, haven't I?"
+
+"You have many beautiful things around you," said I truthfully.
+
+She sighed. "I should like more people to see them."
+
+"In fact," said I, "you have social ambitions, Madame Brandt?"
+
+She looked at me for a moment out of the corner of her eye.
+
+"Are you skinning me?" she asked.
+
+Where she had picked up this eccentric metaphor I know not. She had many
+odd turns of language as yet not current among the fashionable classes.
+I gravely assured her that I was not sarcastic. I commended her
+praiseworthy aspirations.
+
+"But," said I innocently, "don't you miss the hard training, the
+physical exercise, the delight of motion, the excitement, the----?"--my
+vocabulary failing me, I sketched with a gesture the equestrienne's
+classical encouragement to her steed.
+
+She looked at me uncomprehendingly.
+
+"The what?" she asked.
+
+"What are you playing at?" inquired Dale.
+
+"I was referring to the ring," said I.
+
+They both burst out laughing, to my discomfiture.
+
+"What do you take me for? A circus rider? Performing in a tent and
+living in a caravan? You think I jump through a hoop in tights?"
+
+"All I can say," I murmured, by way of apology, "is that it's a
+mendacious world. I'm deeply sorry."
+
+Why had I been misled in this shameful manner?
+
+Madame Brandt with lazy good nature accepted my excuses.
+
+"I'm what is professionally known as a _dompteuse_," she explained. "Of
+course, when I was a kid I was trained as an acrobat, for my father was
+poor; but when he grew rich and the owner of animals, which he did when
+I was fourteen, I joined him and worked with him all over the world
+until I went on my own. Do you mean to say you never heard of me?"
+
+"Madame Brandt," said I, "the last thing to be astonished at is human
+ignorance. Do you know that 30 per cent of the French army at the
+present day have never heard of the Franco-Prussian War?"
+
+"My dear Simon," cried Dale, "the two things don't hang together. The
+Franco-Prussian War is not advertised all over France like Beecham's
+Pills, whereas six years ago you couldn't move two steps in London
+without seeing posters of Lola Brandt and her horse Sultan."
+
+"Ah, the horse!" said I. "That's how the wicked circus story got about."
+
+"It was the last act I ever did," said Madame Brandt. "I taught
+Sultan--oh, he was a dear, beautiful thing--to count and add up and
+guess articles taken from the audience. I was at the Hippodrome. Then
+at the Nouveau Cirque at Paris; I was at St. Petersburg, Vienna,
+Berlin--all over Europe with Sultan."
+
+"And where is Sultan now?" I asked.
+
+"He is dead. Somebody poisoned him," she replied, looking into the fire.
+After a pause she continued in a low voice, singularly like the growl of
+a wrathful animal, "If ever I meet that man alive it will go hard with
+him."
+
+At that moment the door opened and the servant announced:
+
+"Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos!"
+
+Whereupon the shortest creature that ever bore so lengthy a name, a
+dwarf not more than four feet high, wearing a frock coat and bright
+yellow gloves, entered the room, and crossing it at a sort of trot fell
+on his knees by the side of Madame Brandt's chair.
+
+_"Ah! Carissima, je vous vois enfin, Ach liebes Herz! Que j'ai envie de
+pleurer!"_
+
+Madame Brandt smiled, took the creature's head between her hands and
+kissed his forehead. She also caressed his shoulders.
+
+"My dear Anastasius, how good it is to see you. Where have you been this
+long time? Why didn't you write and let me know you were in England?
+But, see, Anastasius, I have visitors. Let me introduce you."
+
+She spoke in French fluently, but with a frank British accent, which
+grated on a fastidious ear. The dwarf rose, made two solemn bows, and
+declared himself enchanted. Although his head was too large for
+his body, he was neither ill-made nor repulsive. He looked about
+thirty-five. A high forehead, dark, mournful eyes, and a black moustache
+and imperial gave him an odd resemblance to Napoleon the Third.
+
+"I arrived from New York this morning, with my cats. Oh, a mad success.
+I have one called Phoebus, because he drives a chariot drawn by six
+rats. Phoebus Apollo was the god of the sun. I must show him to you,
+Madonna. You would love him as I love you. And I also have an angora,
+my beautiful Santa Bianca. And you, gentlemen"--he turned to Dale and
+myself and addressed us in his peculiar jargon of French, German,
+and Italian--"you must come and see my cats if I can get a London
+engagement. At present I must rest. The artist needs repose sometimes.
+I will sun myself in the smiles of our dear lady here, and my pupil and
+assistant, Quast, can look after my cats. Meanwhile the brain of the
+artist," he tapped his brow, "needs to lie fallow so that he can invent
+fresh and daring combinations. Do such things interest you, messieurs?"
+
+"Vastly," said I.
+
+He pulled out of his breast pocket an enormous gilt-bound pocket-book,
+bearing a gilt monogram of such size that it looked like a cartouche
+on an architectural panel, and selected therefrom three cards which he
+gravely distributed among us. They bore the legend:
+
+
+PROFESSOR ANASTASIUS PAPADOPOULOS
+
+GOLD AND SILVER MEDALLIST
+
+THE CAT KING
+
+LE ROI DES CHATS
+
+DER KATZEN KONIG
+
+London Agents: MESSRS. CONTO & BLAG,
+
+172 Maiden Lane, W.C.
+
+
+"There," said he, "I am always to be found, should you ever require my
+services. I have a masterpiece in my head. I come on to the scene like
+Bacchus drawn by my two cats. How are the cats to draw my heavy weight?
+I'll have a noiseless clockwork arrangement that will really propel the
+car. You must come and see it."
+
+"Delighted, I'm sure," said Dale, who stood looking down on the
+Liliputian egotist with polite wonder. Lola Brandt glanced at him
+apologetically.
+
+"You mustn't mind him, Dale. He has only two ideas in his head, his cats
+and myself. He's devoted to me."
+
+"I don't think I shall be jealous," said Dale in a low voice.
+
+"Foolish boy!" she whispered.
+
+During the love scene, which was conducted in English, a language which
+Mr. Papadopoulos evidently did not understand, the dwarf scowled at Dale
+and twirled his moustache fiercely. In order to attract Madame Brandt's
+attention he fetched a packet of papers from his pocket and laid them
+with a flourish on the tea-table.
+
+"Here are the documents," said he.
+
+"What documents?"
+
+"A full inquiry into the circumstances attending the death of Madame
+Brandt's horse Sultan."
+
+"Have you found out anything, Anastasius?" she asked, in the indulgent
+tone in which one addresses an eager child.
+
+"Not exactly," said he. "But I have a conviction that by this means the
+murderer will be brought to justice. To this I have devoted my life--in
+your service."
+
+He put his hand on the spot of his tightly buttoned frock-coat that
+covered his heart, and bowed profoundly. It was obvious that he resented
+our presence and desired to wipe us out of our hostess's consideration.
+I glanced ironically at Dale's disgusted face, and smiled at the
+imperfect development of his sense of humour. Indeed, to the young,
+humour is only a weapon of offence. It takes a philosopher to use it as
+defensive armour. Dale burned to outdo Mr. Papadopoulos. I, having
+no such ambition, laid my hand on his arm and went forward to take my
+leave.
+
+"Madame Brandt," said I, "old friends have doubtless much to talk
+over. I thank you for the privilege you have afforded me of making your
+acquaintance."
+
+She rose and accompanied us to the landing outside the flat door.
+After saying good-bye to Dale, who went down with his boyish tread, she
+detained me for a second or two, holding my hand, and again her clasp
+enveloped it like some clinging sea-plant. She looked at me very
+wistfully.
+
+"The next time you come, Mr. de Gex, do come as a friend and not as an
+enemy."
+
+I was startled. I thought I had conducted the interview with peculiar
+suavity.
+
+"An enemy, dear lady?"
+
+"Yes. Can't I see it?" she said in her languorous, caressing voice. "And
+I should love to have you for a friend. You could be such a good one. I
+have so few."
+
+"I must argue this out with you another time," said I diplomatically.
+
+"That's a promise," said Lola Brandt.
+
+"What's a promise?" asked Dale, when I joined him in the hall.
+
+"That I will do myself the pleasure of calling on Madame again."
+
+The porter whistled for a cab. A hansom drove up. As my destination was
+the Albany, and as I knew Dale was going home to Eccleston Square, I
+held out my hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Dale. I'll see you to-morrow."
+
+"But aren't you going to tell me what you think of her?" he cried in
+great dismay.
+
+The pavement was muddy, the evening dark, and a gusty wind blew the
+drizzle into our faces. It is only the preposterously young who expect
+a man to rhapsodise over somebody else's inamorata at such a moment. I
+turned up the fur collar of my coat.
+
+"She is good-looking," said I.
+
+"Any idiot can see that!" he burst out impatiently. "I want to know what
+opinion you formed of her."
+
+I reflected. If I could have labelled her as the Scarlet Woman, the
+Martyred Saint, the Jolly Bohemian, or the Bold Adventuress, my task
+would have been easy. But I had an uncomfortable feeling that Lola
+Brandt was not to be classified in so simple a fashion. I took refuge in
+a negative.
+
+"She would hardly be a success," said I, "in serious political circles."
+
+With that I made my escape.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+I wish I had not called on Lola Brandt. She disturbs me to the point
+of nightmare. In a fit of dream paralysis last night I fancied myself
+stalked by a panther, which in the act of springing turned into Lola
+Brandt. What she would have done I know not, for I awoke; but I have
+a haunting sensation that she was about to devour me. Now, a woman who
+would devour a sleeping Member of Parliament is not a fit consort for a
+youth about to enter on a political career.
+
+The woman worries me. I find myself speculating on her character while
+I ought to be minding my affairs; and this I do on her own account,
+without any reference to my undertaking to rescue Dale from her
+clutches. Her obvious attributes are lazy good nature and swift
+intuition, which are as contrary as her tastes in tobacco and tea; but
+beyond the obvious lurks a mysterious animal power which repels and
+attracts. Were not her expressions rather melancholy than sensuous,
+rather benevolent than cruel, one might take her as a model for Queen
+Berenice or the estimable lady monarchs who yielded themselves adorably
+to a gentleman's kisses in the evening and saw to it that his head
+was nicely chopped off in the morning. I can quite understand Dale's
+infatuation. She may be as worthless as you please, but she is by no
+means the vulgar syren I was led to expect. I wish she were. My task
+would be easier. Why hasn't he fallen in love with one of the chorus
+whom his congeners take out to supper? He is an aggravating fellow.
+
+I have declined to discuss her merits or demerits with him. I could
+scarcely do that with dignity, said I; a remark which seemed to impress
+him with a sense of my honesty. I asked what were his intentions
+regarding her. I discovered that they were still indefinite. In his
+exalted moments he talked of marriage.
+
+"But what has become of her husband?" I inquired, drawing a bow at a
+venture.
+
+"I suppose he's dead," said Dale.
+
+"But suppose he isn't?"
+
+He informed me in his young magnificence that Lola and himself would be
+above foolish moral conventions.
+
+"Indeed?" said I.
+
+"Don't pretend to be a Puritan," said he.
+
+"I don't pretend to like the idea, anyhow," I remarked.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. It was not the time for a lecture on
+morality.
+
+"How do you know that the lady returns your passion?" I asked, watching
+him narrowly.
+
+He grew red. "Is that a fair question?"
+
+"Yes," said I. "You invited me to call on her and judge the affair for
+myself. I'm doing it. How far have things gone up to now?"
+
+He flashed round on me. Did I mean to insinuate that there was anything
+wrong? There wasn't. How could I dream of such a thing? He was vastly
+indignant.
+
+"Well, my dear boy," said I, "you've just this minute been scoffing at
+foolish moral conventions. If you want to know my opinion," I continued,
+after a pause, "it is this--she doesn't care a scrap for you."
+
+Of course I was talking nonsense.
+
+I did not condescend to argue. Neither did I dwell upon the fact that
+her affection had not reached the point of informing him whether she
+had a husband, and if so, whether he was alive or dead. This gives me an
+idea. Suppose I can prove to him beyond a shadow of doubt that the lady,
+although flattered by the devotion of a handsome young fellow of birth
+and breeding, does not, as I remarked, care a scrap for him. Suppose I
+exhibit her to him in the arms, figuratively speaking, of her husband
+(providing one is lurking in some back-alley of the world), Mr.
+Anastasius Papadopoulos, a curate, or a champion wrestler. He would do
+desperate things for a month or two; but then he would wake up sane
+one fine morning and seek out Maisie Ellerton in a salutary state of
+penitence. I wish I knew a curate who combined a passion for bears and a
+yearning for ladylike tea-parties. I would take him forthwith to Cadogan
+Gardens. Lola Brandt and himself would have tastes in common and would
+fall in love with each other on the spot.
+
+Of course there is the other time-honoured plan which I have not yet
+tried--to arm myself with diplomacy, call on Madame Brandt, and, working
+on her feelings, persuade her in the name of the boy's mother and
+sweetheart to make a noble sacrifice in the good, old-fashioned way. But
+this seems such an unhumourous proceeding. If I am to achieve eumoiriety
+I may as well do it with some distinction.
+
+
+
+"Who doth Time gallop withal?" asks Orlando.
+
+"With a thief to the gallows," says Rosalind. It is true. The days
+have an uncanny way of racing by. I see my little allotted span of life
+shrinking visibly, like the _peau de chagrin_. I must bestir myself, or
+my last day will come before I have accomplished anything.
+
+
+
+When I jotted down the above not very original memorandum I had passed a
+perfectly uneumoirous week among my friends and social acquaintances.
+I had stood godfather to my sister Agatha's fifth child, taking upon
+myself obligations which I shall never be able to perform; I had dined
+amusingly at my sister Jane's; I had shot pheasants at Farfax
+Glenn's place in Hampshire; and I had paid a long-promised charming
+country-house visit to old Lady Blackadder.
+
+When I came back to town, however, I consulted my calendar with some
+anxiety, and set out to clear my path.
+
+I have now practically withdrawn from political life. Letters have
+passed; complimentary and sympathetic gentlemen have interviewed me
+and tried to weaken my decision. The great Raggles has even called,
+and dangled the seals of office before my eyes. I said they were very
+pretty. He thought he had tempted me.
+
+"Hang on as long as you can, for the sake of the Party."
+
+I spoke playfully of the Party (a man in my position, with one eye on
+Time and the other on Eternity, develops an acute sense of values) and
+Raggles held up horrified hands. To Raggles the Party is the Alpha and
+Omega of things human and divine. It is the guiding principle of the
+Cosmos. I could have spoken disrespectfully of the British Empire, of
+which he has a confused notion; I could have dismissed the Trinity, on
+which his ideas are vaguer, with an airy jest; in the expression of my
+views concerning the Creator, whom he believes to be under the Party's
+protection, I could have out-Pained Tom Paine, out-Taxiled Leo Taxil,
+and he would not have winced. But to blaspheme against the Party was the
+sin for which there was no redemption.
+
+"I always thought you a serious politician!" he gasped.
+
+"Good God!" I cried. "In my public utterances have I been as dull as
+that? Ill-health or no, it is time for me to quit the stage."
+
+He laughed politely, because he conjectured I was speaking
+humourously--he is astute in some things--and begged me to explain.
+
+I replied that I did not regard mustard poultices as panaceas, the
+_vox populi_ as the _Vox Dei_, or the policy of the other side as the
+machinations of the Devil; that politics was all a game of guess-work
+and muddle and compromise at the best; that, at the worst, as during
+a General Election, it was as ignoble a pastime as the wit of man had
+devised. To take it seriously would be the course of a fanatic, a man
+devoid of the sense of proportion. Were such a man, I asked, fitted to
+govern the country?
+
+He did not stop to argue, but went away leaving me the conviction that
+he thanked his stars on the Government's providential escape from so
+maniacal a minister. I hope I did not treat him with any discourtesy;
+but, oh! it was good to speak the truth after all the dismal lies I have
+been forced to tell at the bidding of Raggle's Party. Now that I am no
+longer bound by the rules of the game, it is good to feel a free, honest
+man.
+
+Never again shall I stretch forth my arms and thunder invectives against
+well-meaning people with whom in my heart I secretly sympathise.
+Never again shall I plead passionately for principles which a horrible
+instinct tells me are fundamentally futile. Never again shall I attempt
+to make mountains out of mole-hills or bricks without straw or sunbeams
+out of cucumbers.
+
+I shall conduct no more inquiries into pauper lunacy, thank Heaven! And
+as for the public engagements which Dale Kynnersley made for me during
+my Thebaid existence on Murglebed-on-Sea, the deuce can take them all--I
+am free.
+
+I only await the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, for which quaint
+post under the Crown I applied, to cease to be a Member of Parliament.
+And yet, in spite of all my fine and superior talk, I am glad I am
+giving up in the recess. I should not like to be out of my seat were the
+House in session.
+
+I should hate to think of all the fascinating excitement over nothing
+going on in the lobbies without me, while I am still hale and hearty.
+When Parliament meets in February I shall either be comfortably dead or
+so uncomfortably alive that I shall not care.
+
+_Ce que c'est que de nous!_ I wonder how far Simon de Gex and I are
+deceiving each other?
+
+
+
+There is no deception about my old friend Latimer, who called on me a
+day or two ago. He is on the Stock Exchange, and, muddle-headed creature
+that he is, has been "bearing" the wrong things. They have gone up
+sky-high. Settling-day is drawing near, and how to pay for the shares he
+is bound to deliver he has not the faintest notion.
+
+He stamped up and down the room, called down curses on the prying fools
+who came across the unexpected streak of copper in the failing mine,
+drew heart-rending pictures of his wife and family singing hymns in the
+street, and asked me for a drink of prussic acid. I rang the bell and
+ordered Rogers to give him a brandy and soda.
+
+"Now," said I, "talk sense. How much can you raise?"
+
+He went into figures and showed me that, although he stretched his
+credit to the utmost, there were still ten thousand pounds to be
+provided.
+
+"It's utter smash and ruin," he groaned. "And all my accursed folly. I
+thought I was going to make a fortune. But I'm done for now." Latimer is
+usually a pink, prosperous-looking man. Now he was white and flabby,
+a piteous spectacle. "You are executor under my will," he continued.
+"Heaven knows I've nothing to leave. But you'll see things straight for
+me, if anything happens? You will look after Lucy and the kids, won't
+you?"
+
+I was on the point of undertaking to do so, in the event of the
+continuance of his craving for prussic acid, when I reflected upon my
+own approaching bow and farewell to the world where Lucy and the kids
+would still be wandering. I am always being brought up against this
+final fireproof curtain. Suddenly a thought came which caused me to
+exult exceedingly.
+
+"Ten thousand pounds, my dear Latimer," said I, "would save you from
+being hammered on the Stock Exchange and from seeking a suicide's grave.
+It would also enable you to maintain Lucy and the kids in your luxurious
+house at Hampstead, and to take them as usual to Dieppe next summer. Am
+I not right?"
+
+He begged me not to make a jest of his miseries. It was like asking
+a starving beggar whether a dinner at the Carlton wouldn't set him up
+again.
+
+"Would ten thousand set you up?" I persisted.
+
+"Yes. But I might as well try to raise ten million."
+
+"Not so," I cried, slapping him on the shoulder. "I myself will lend you
+the money."
+
+He leaped to his feet and stared at me wildly in the face. He could not
+have been more electrified if he had seen me suddenly adorned with wings
+and shining raiment. I experienced a thrill of eumoiriety more exquisite
+than I had dreamed of imagining.
+
+"You?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"You don't understand. I can give you no security whatsoever."
+
+"I don't want security and I don't want interest," I exclaimed, feeling
+more magnanimous than I had a right to be, seeing that the interest
+would be of no use to me on the other side of the Styx. "Pay me back
+when and how you like. Come round with me to my bankers and I'll settle
+the matter at once."
+
+He put out his hands; I thought he was about to fall at my feet; he
+laughed in a silly way and, groping after brandy and soda, poured half
+the contents of the brandy decanter on to the tray. I took him in a cab,
+a stupefied man, to the bank, and when he left me at the door with my
+draft in his pocket, there were tears in his eyes. He wrung my hand and
+murmured something incoherent about Lucy.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, don't tell her anything about it," I entreated. "I
+love Lucy dearly, as you know; but I don't want to have her weeping on
+my door-mat."
+
+I walked back to my rooms with a springing step. So happy was I that I
+should have liked to dance down Piccadilly. If the Faculty had not made
+their pronouncement, I could have no more turned poor Latimer's earth
+from hell to heaven than I could have changed St. Paul's Cathedral into
+a bumblebee. The mere possibility of lending him the money would not
+have occurred to me.
+
+A man of modest fortune does not go about playing Monte Cristo. He gives
+away a few guineas in charity; but he keeps the bulk of his fortune to
+himself. The death sentence, I vow, has compensations. It enables a man
+to play Monte Cristo or any other avatar of Providence with impunity,
+and to-day I have discovered it to be the most fascinating game in the
+world.
+
+When Latimer recovers his equilibrium and regards the transaction in the
+dry light of reason, he will diagnose a sure symptom of megalomania, and
+will pity me in his heart for a poor devil.
+
+
+
+I have seen Eleanor Faversham, and she has released me from my
+engagement with such grace, dignity, and sweet womanliness that I wonder
+how I could have railed at her thousand virtues.
+
+"It's honourable of you to give me this opportunity of breaking it off,
+Simon," she said, "but I care enough for you to be willing to take my
+chance of illness."
+
+"You do care for me?" I asked.
+
+She raised astonished eyes. "If I didn't, do you suppose I should have
+engaged myself to you? If I married you I should swear to cherish you in
+sickness and in health. Why won't you let me?"
+
+I was in a difficulty. To say that I was in ill-health and about to
+resign my seat in Parliament and a slave to doctor's orders was one
+thing; it was another to tell her brutally that I had received my death
+warrant. She would have taken it much more to heart than I do.
+
+The announcement would have been a shock. It would have kept the poor
+girl awake of nights. She would have been for ever seeing the hand of
+Death at my throat. Every time we met she would have noted on my face,
+in my gait, infallible signs of my approaching end. I had not the right
+to inflict such intolerable pain on one so near and dear to me.
+
+Besides, I am vain enough to want to walk forth somewhat gallantly into
+eternity; and while I yet live I particularly desire that folks should
+not regard me as half-dead. I defy you to treat a man who is only going
+to live twenty weeks in the same pleasant fashion as you would a man who
+has the run of life before him.
+
+There is always an instinctive shrinking from decay. I should think that
+corpses must feel their position acutely.
+
+It was entirely for Eleanor's sake that I refrained from taking her into
+my confidence. To her question I replied that I had not the right to
+tie her for life to a helpless valetudinarian. "Besides," said I, "as
+my health grows worse my jokes will deteriorate, until I am reduced to
+grinning through a horse-collar at the doctor. And you couldn't stand
+that, could you?"
+
+She upbraided me gently for treating everything as a jest.
+
+"It isn't that you want to get rid of me, Simon?" she asked tearfully,
+but with an attempt at a smile.
+
+I took both hands and looked into her eyes--they are brave, truthful
+eyes--and through my heart shot a great pain. Till that moment I had not
+realised what I was giving up. The pleasant paths of the world--I could
+leave them behind with a shrug. Political ambition, power, I could
+justly estimate their value and could let them pass into other hands
+without regret. But here was the true, staunch woman, great of heart and
+wise, a helper and a comrade, and, if I chose to throw off the jester
+and become the lover in real earnest and sweep my hand across the
+hidden chords, all that a woman can become towards the man she loves. I
+realised this.
+
+I realised that if she did not love me passionately now it was only
+because I, in my foolishness, had willed it otherwise. For the first
+time I longed to have her as my own; for the first time I rebelled.
+I looked at her hungeringly until her cheeks grew red and her eyelids
+fluttered. I had a wild impulse to throw my arms around her, and kiss
+her as I had never kissed her before and bid her forget all that I had
+said that day. Her faltering eyes told me that they read my longing. I
+was about to yield when the little devil of a pain inside made itself
+sharply felt and my madness went from me. I fetched a thing half-way
+between a sigh and a groan, and dropped her hands.
+
+"Need I answer your question?" I asked.
+
+She turned her head aside and whispered "No."
+
+Presently she said, "I am glad I came back from Sicily. I shouldn't have
+liked you to write this to me. I shouldn't have understood."
+
+"Do you now?"
+
+"I think so." She looked at me frankly. "Until just now I was never
+quite certain whether you really cared for me."
+
+"I never cared for you so much as I do now, when I have to lose you."
+
+"And you must lose me?"
+
+"A man in my condition would be a scoundrel if he married a woman."
+
+"Then it is very, very serious--your illness?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "very serious. I must give you your freedom whether you
+want it or not."
+
+She passed one hand over the other on her knee, looking at the
+engagement ring. Then she took it off and presented it to me, lying in
+the palm of her right hand.
+
+"Do what you like with it," she said very softly.
+
+I took the ring and slipped it on one of the right-hand fingers.
+
+"It would comfort me to think that you are wearing it," said I.
+
+Then her mother came into the room and Eleanor went out. I am thankful
+to say that Mrs. Faversham who is a woman only guided by sentiment when
+it leads to a worldly advantage, applauded the step I had taken. As a
+sprightly Member of Parliament, with an assured political and social
+position, I had been a most desirable son-in-law. As an obscure invalid,
+coughing and spitting from a bath-chair at Bournemouth (she took it for
+granted that I was in the last stage of consumption), I did not take the
+lady's fancy.
+
+"My dear Simon," replied my lost mother-in-law, "you have behaved
+irreproachably. Eleanor will feel it for some time no doubt; but she is
+young and will soon get over it. I'll send her to the Drascombe-Prynnes
+in Paris. And as for yourself, your terrible misfortune will be as much
+as you can bear. You mustn't increase it by any worries on her behalf.
+In that way I'll do my utmost to help you."
+
+"You are kindness itself, Mrs. Faversham," said I.
+
+I bowed over the delighted lady's hand and went away, deeply moved by
+her charity and maternal devotion.
+
+But perhaps in her hardness lies truth. I have never touched Eleanor's
+heart. No romance had preceded or accompanied our engagement. The
+deepest, truest incident in it has been our parting.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Dale's occupation, like Othello's, being gone, as far as I am concerned,
+Lady Kynnersley has despatched him to Berlin, on her own business,
+connected, I think, with the International Aid Society. He is to stay
+there for a fortnight.
+
+How he proposes to bear the separation from the object of his flame I
+have not inquired; but if forcible objurgations in the vulgar tongue
+have any inner significance, I gather that Lady Kynnersley has not
+employed an enthusiastic agent.
+
+Being thus free to pursue my eumoirous schemes without his intervention,
+for you cannot talk to a lady for her soul's good when her adorer is
+gaping at you, I have taken the opportunity to see something of Lola
+Brandt.
+
+I find I have seen a good deal of her; and it seems not improbable that
+I shall see considerably more. Deuce take the woman!
+
+On the first afternoon of Dale's absence I paid her my promised visit.
+It was a dull day, and the room, lit chiefly by the firelight,
+happily did not reveal its nerve-racking tastelessness. Lola Brandt,
+supple-limbed and lazy-voiced, talked to me from the cushioned depths of
+her chair.
+
+We lightly touched on Dale's trip to Berlin. She would miss him
+terribly. It was so kind of me to come and cheer her lonely hour.
+Politeness forbade my saying that I had come to do nothing of the sort.
+To my vague expression of courtesy she responded by asking me with a
+laugh how I liked Mr. Anastasius Papadopoulos.
+
+I replied that I considered it urbane on his part to invite me to see
+his cats perform.
+
+"If you were to hurt one of his cats he'd murder you," she informed me.
+"He always carries a long, sharp knife concealed somewhere about him on
+purpose."
+
+"What a fierce little gentleman," I remarked.
+
+"He looks on me as one of his cats, too," she said with a low laugh,
+"and considers himself my protector. Once in Buda-Pesth he and I were
+driving about. I was doing some shopping. As I was getting into the cab
+a man insulted me, on account, I suppose, of my German name. Anastasius
+sprang at him like a wild beast, and I had to drag him off bodily and
+lift him back into the cab. I'm pretty strong, you know. It must have
+been a funny sight." She turned to me quickly. "Do you think it wrong of
+me to laugh?"
+
+"Why shouldn't you laugh at the absurd?"
+
+"Because in devotion like that there seems to be something solemn
+and frightening. If I told him to kill his cats, he would do it. If I
+ordered him to commit Hari-Kari on the hearthrug, he would whip out his
+knife and obey me. When you have a human soul at your mercy like that,
+it's a kind of sacrilege to laugh at it. It makes you feel--oh, I can't
+express myself. Look, it doesn't make tears come into your eyes exactly,
+it makes them come into your heart."
+
+We continued the subject, divagating as we went, and had a nice little
+sentimental conversation. There are depths of human feeling I should
+never have suspected in this lazy panther of a woman, and although she
+openly avows having no more education than a tinker's dog, she can talk
+with considerable force and vividness of expression.
+
+Indeed, when one comes to think of it, a tinker's dog has a fine
+education if he be naturally a shrewd animal and takes advantage of his
+opportunities; and a fine education, too, of its kind was that of
+the vagabond Lola, who on her way from Dublin to Yokohama had more
+profitably employed her time than Lady Kynnersley supposed. She had
+seen much of the civilised places of the earth in her wanderings from
+engagement to engagement, and had been an acute observer of men and
+things.
+
+We exchanged travel pictures and reminiscences. I found myself floating
+with her through moonlit Venice, while she chanted with startling
+exactness the cry of the gondoliers. To my confusion be it spoken, I
+forgot all about Dale Kynnersley and my mission. The lazy voice and
+rich personality fascinated me. When I rose to go I found I had spent a
+couple of hours in her company. She took me round the room and showed me
+some of her treasures.
+
+"This is very old. I think it is fifteenth century," she said, picking
+up an Italian ivory.
+
+It was. I expressed my admiration. Then maliciously I pointed to a
+horrible little Tyrolean chalet and said:
+
+"That, too, is very pretty."
+
+"It isn't. And you know it."
+
+She is a most disconcerting creature. I accepted the rebuke meekly. What
+else could I do?
+
+"Why, then, do you have it here?"
+
+"It's a present from Anastasius," she said. "Every time he comes to
+see me he brings what he calls an _'offrande'_. All these things"--she
+indicated, with a comprehensive sweep of the arm, the Union Jack
+cushion, the little men mounting ladders inside bottles, the hen sitting
+on her nest, and the other trumpery gimcracks--"all these things are
+presents from Anastasius. It would hurt him not to see them here when he
+calls."
+
+"You might have a separate cabinet," I suggested.
+
+"A chamber of horrors?" she laughed. "No. It gives him more pleasure to
+see them as they are--and a poor little freak doesn't get much out of
+life."
+
+She sighed, and picking up "A Present from Margate" kind of mug,
+fingered it very tenderly.
+
+I went away feeling angry. Was the woman bewitching me? And I felt
+angrier still when I met Lady Kynnersley at dinner that evening. Luckily
+I had only a few words with her. Had I done anything yet with regard to
+Dale and the unmentionable woman? If I had told her that I had spent
+a most agreeable afternoon with the enchantress, she would not have
+enjoyed her evening. Like General Trochu of the Siege of Paris fame, I
+said in my most mysterious manner, "I have my plan," and sent her into
+dinner comforted.
+
+But I had no plan. My next interview with Madame Brandt brought me no
+further. We have established telephonic communications. Through the
+medium of this diabolical engine of loquacity and indiscretion, I was
+prevailed on to accompany her to a rehearsal of Anastasius's cats.
+
+Rogers, with a face as imperturbable as if he was announcing the visit
+of an archbishop, informed me at the appointed hour that Madame Brandt's
+brougham was at the door. I went down and found the brougham open, as
+the day was fine, and Lola Brandt, smiling under a gigantic hat with an
+amazing black feather, and looking as handsome as you please.
+
+We were blocked for a few minutes at the mouth of the courtyard, and
+I had the pleasure of all Piccadilly that passed staring at us in
+admiration. Lola Brandt liked it; but I didn't, especially when I
+recognised one of the starers as the eldest Drascombe-Prynne boy whose
+people in Paris are receiving Eleanor Faversham under their protection.
+A nice reputation I shall be acquiring. My companion was in gay mood.
+Now, as it is no part of dealing unto oneself a happy life and portion
+to damp a fellow creature's spirits, I responded with commendable
+gaiety.
+
+I own that the drive to Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos's cattery in
+Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell, was distinctly enjoyable. I forgot all
+about the little pain inside and the Fury with the abhorred shears, and
+talked a vast amount of nonsense which the lady was pleased to regard
+as wit, for she laughed wholeheartedly, showing her strong white, even
+teeth. But why was I going?
+
+Was it because she had requested me through the telephone to give
+unimagined happiness to a poor little freak who would be as proud as
+Punch to exhibit his cats to an English Member of Parliament? Was it
+in order to further my designs--Machiavellian towards the lady, but
+eumoirous towards Dale? Or was it simply for my own good pleasure?
+
+Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos, resplendently raimented, with the
+shiniest of silk hats and a flower in the buttonhole of his frock-coat,
+received us at the door of a small house, the first-floor windows of
+which announced the tenancy of a maker of gymnastic appliances; and
+having kissed Madame Brandt's hand with awful solemnity and bowed deeply
+to me, he preceded us down the passage, out into the yard, and into a
+ramshackle studio at the end, where his cats had their being.
+
+There were fourteen of them, curled up in large cages standing against
+the walls. The place was lit by a skylight and warmed by a stove.
+The floor, like a stage, was fitted up with miniature acrobatic
+paraphernalia and properties. There were little five-barred gates, and
+trapezes, and tight-ropes, and spring-boards, and a trestle-table, all
+the metal work gleaming like silver. A heavy, uncouth German lad, whom
+the professor introduced as his pupil and assistant, Quast, was in
+attendance. Mr. Papadopoulos polyglotically acknowledged the honour I
+had conferred upon him. He is very like the late Emperor of the French;
+but his forehead is bulgier.
+
+With a theatrical gesture and the remark that I should see, he opened
+some cages and released half a dozen cats--a Persian, a white Angora,
+and four commonplace tabbies, who all sprang on to the table with
+military precision. Madame Brand began to caress them. I, wishing to
+show interest in the troupe, prepared to do the same; but the dwarf
+scurried up with a screech from the other end of the room.
+
+_"Ne touchez pas--ne touchez pas!"_
+
+I refrained, somewhat wonderingly, from touching. Madame Brandt
+explained.
+
+"He thinks you would spoil the magnetic influence. It is a superstition
+of his."
+
+"But you are touching."
+
+"He believes I have his magnetism--whatever that may be," she said, with
+a smile. "Would you like to see an experiment? Anastasius!"
+
+"Carissima."
+
+"Is that the untamed Persian you were telling me of?" she asked,
+pointing to a cage from which a ferocious gigantic animal more like a
+woolly tiger than a tom-cat looked out with expressionless yellow eyes.
+"Will you let Mr. de Gex try to make friends with it?"
+
+"Your will is law, meine Konigin," replied Professor Papadopoulos,
+bowing low. "But Hephaestus is as fierce as the flames of hell."
+
+"See what he'll do," laughed Lola Brandt.
+
+I approached the cage with an ingratiating, "Puss, puss!" and a hideous
+growl welcomed me. I ventured my hand towards the bars. The beast
+bristled in demoniac wrath, spat with malignant venom, and shot out its
+claws. If I had touched it my hand would have been torn to shreds. I
+have never seen a more malevolent, fierce, spiteful, ill-conditioned
+brute in my life. My feelings being somewhat hurt, and my nerves a bit
+shaken, I retreated hastily.
+
+"Now look," said Lola Brandt.
+
+With absolute fearlessness she went up to the cage, opened it, took
+the unresisting thing out by the scruff of its neck, held it up like a
+door-mat, and put it on her shoulder, where it forthwith began to purr
+like any harmless necessary cat and rub its head against her cheek. She
+put it on the floor; it arched its back and circling sideways rubbed
+itself against her skirts.
+
+She sat down, and taking the brute by its forepaws made it stand on its
+hind legs. She pulled it on to her lap and it curled round lazily. Then
+she hoisted it on to her shoulder again, and, rising, crossed the room
+and bowed to the level of the cage, when the beast leaped in purring
+thunderously in high good humour. Mr. Papadopoulos sang out in
+breathless delight:
+
+"If I am the King of Cats, you, Carissima, are the Queen. Nay, more, you
+are the Goddess!"
+
+Lola Brandt laughed. I did not. It was uncanny. It seemed as if some
+mysterious freemasonic affinity existed between her and the evil beast.
+During her drive hither she had entered my own atmosphere. She had
+been the handsome, unconventional woman of the world. Now she seemed as
+remote from me as the witches in "Macbeth."
+
+If I had seen her dashing Paris hat rise up into a point and her
+umbrella turn into a broomstick, and herself into one of the buxom
+carlines of "Tam O'Shanter," I should not have been surprised. The feats
+of the mild pussies which the dwarf began forthwith to exhibit provoked
+in me but a polite counterfeit of enthusiasm. Lola Brandt had discounted
+my interest. Even his performance with the ferocious Persian lacked the
+diabolical certainty of Lola's handling. He locked all the other cats up
+and enticed it out of the cage with a piece of fish. He guided it with
+a small whip, as it jumped over gates and through blazing hoops, and he
+stood tense and concentrated, like a lion-tamer.
+
+The act over, the cat turned and snarled and only jumped into its cage
+after a smart flick of the whip. The dwarf did not touch it once with
+his hands. I applauded, however, and complimented him. He laid his hand
+on his heart and bent forward in humility.
+
+"Ah, monsieur, I am but a neophyte where Madame is an expert. I know the
+superficial nature of cats. Now and then without vainglory I can say I
+know their hearts; but Madame penetrates to and holds commune with their
+souls. And a cat's soul, monsieur, is a wonderful thing. Once it was
+divine--in ancient Egypt. Doubtless monsieur has heard of Pasht? Holy
+men spent their lives in approaching the cat-soul. Madame was born to
+the privilege. Pasht watches over her."
+
+"Pasht," I said politely in French, in reply to this clotted nonsense,
+"was a great divinity. And for yourself, who knows but what you may have
+been in a previous incarnation the keeper of the Sacred Cats in some
+Egyptian temple."
+
+"I was," he said, with staggering earnestness. "At Memphis."
+
+"One of these days," I returned, with equal solemnity, "I hope for the
+privilege of hearing some of your reminiscences. They would no doubt be
+interesting."
+
+On the way back Lola thanked me for pretending to take the little man
+seriously, and not laughing at him.
+
+"If I hadn't," said I, "he would have stuck his knife into me."
+
+She shook her head. "You did it naturally. I was watching you. It is
+because you are a generous-hearted gentleman."
+
+Said I: "If you talk like that I'll get out and walk."
+
+And, indeed, what right had she to characterise the moral condition
+of my heart? I asked her. She laughed her low, lazy laugh, but made no
+reply. Presently she said:
+
+"Why didn't you like my making friends with the cat?"
+
+"How do you know I didn't like it?" I asked.
+
+"I felt it."
+
+"You mustn't feel things like that," I remarked. "It isn't good for
+you."
+
+She insisted on my telling her. I explained as well as I could. She
+touched the sleeve of my coat with her gloved hand.
+
+"I'm glad, because it shows you take an interest in me. And I wanted
+to let you see that I could do something besides loll about in
+a drawing-room and smoke cigarettes. It's all I can do. But it's
+something." She said it with the humility of the Jongleur de Notre Dame
+in Anatole Frances's story.
+
+In Eaton Square, where I had a luncheon engagement, she dropped me, and
+drove off smiling, evidently well pleased with herself. My hostess was
+standing by the window when I was shown into the drawing-room. I noted
+the faintest possible little malicious twinkle in her eye.
+
+During the afternoon I had a telephonic message from my doctor, who
+asked me why I had neglected him for a fortnight and urged me to go to
+Harley Street at once. To humour him I went the next morning. Hunnington
+is a bluff, hearty fellow who feeds himself into pink floridity so as to
+give confidence to his patients. In answer to his renewed inquiry as to
+my neglect, I remarked that a man condemned to be hanged doesn't seek
+interviews with the judge in order to learn how the rope is getting on.
+I conveyed to him politely, although he is an old friend, that I desired
+to forget his well-fed existence. In his chatty way he requested me not
+to be an ass, and proceeded to put to me the usual silly questions.
+
+Remembering the result of my last visit, I made him happy by answering
+them gloomily; whereupon he seized his opportunity and ordered me out
+of England for the winter. I must go to a warm climate--Egypt, South
+Africa, Madeira--I could take my choice. I flatly refused to obey. I had
+my duties in London. He was so unsympathetic as to damn my duties. My
+duty was to live as long as possible, and my wintering in London would
+probably curtail my short life by two months. Then I turned on him
+and explained the charitable disingenuousness of my replies to
+his questions. He refused to believe me, and we parted with mutual
+recriminations. I sent him next day, however, a brace of pheasants, a
+present from Farfax Glenn. After all, he is one of God's creatures.
+
+The next time I called on Lola Brandt I went with the fixed
+determination to make some progress in my mission. I vowed that I would
+not be seduced by trumpery conversation about Yokohama or allow my mind
+to be distracted by absurd adventures among cats. I would clothe myself
+in the armour of eumoiriety, and, with the sword of duty in my hand,
+would go forth to battle with the enchantress. All said and done, what
+was she but a bold-faced, strapping woman without an idea in her head
+save the enslavement of an impressionable boy several years her junior?
+It was preposterous that I, Simon de Gex, who had beguiled and fooled an
+electorate of thirty thousand hard-headed men into choosing me for their
+representative in Parliament, should not be a match for Lola Brandt.
+As for her complicated feminine personality, her intuitiveness, her
+magnetism, her fascination, all the qualities in fact which my poetical
+fancy had assigned to her, they had no existence in reality. She was
+the most commonplace person I had ever encountered, and I had been but a
+sentimental lunatic.
+
+In this truly admirable frame of mind I entered her drawing-room. She
+threw down the penny novel she was reading, and with a little cry of joy
+sprang forward to greet me.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come. I was getting the blind hump!"
+
+Did I not say she was commonplace? I hate this synonym for boredom.
+It may be elegant in the mouth of a duchess and pathetic in that of an
+oyster-wench, but it falls vulgarly from intermediate lips.
+
+"What has given it to you?" I asked.
+
+"My poor little ouistiti is dead. It is this abominable climate."
+
+I murmured condolences. I could not exhibit unreasonable grief at the
+demise of a sick monkey which I had never seen.
+
+"I'm also out of books," she said, after having paid her tribute to the
+memory of the departed. "I have been forced to ask the servants to lend
+me something to read. Have you ever tried this sort of thing? You ought
+to. It tells you what goes on in high society."
+
+I was sure it didn't. Not a duchess in its pages talked about having a
+blind hump. I said gravely:
+
+"I will ask you to lend it to me. Since Dale has been away I've had no
+one to make out my library list."
+
+"Do turn Adolphus out of that chair and sit down," she said, sinking
+into her accustomed seat. Adolphus was the Chow dog before mentioned,
+an accomplished animal who could mount guard with the poker and stand on
+his head, and had been pleased to favour me with his friendship.
+
+"I miss Dale greatly," said I.
+
+"I suppose you do. You are very fond of him?"
+
+"Very," said I. "By the by, how did you first come across Dale?"
+
+She threw me a swift glance and smiled.
+
+"Oh, in the most respectable way. I was dining at the Carlton with Sir
+Joshua Oldfield, the famous surgeon, you know. He performed a silly
+little operation on me last year, and since then we've been great
+friends. Dale and some sort of baby boy were dining there, too, and
+afterwards, in the lounge, Sir Joshua introduced them to me. Dale asked
+me if he could call. I said 'Yes.' Perhaps I was wrong. Anyhow, _voila_!
+Do you know Sir Joshua?"
+
+"I sat next to him once at a public dinner. He's a friend of the
+Kynnersleys. A genial old soul."
+
+"He's a dear!" said Lola.
+
+"Do you know many of Dale's friends?" I asked.
+
+"Hardly any," she replied. "It's rather lonesome." Then she broke into a
+laugh.
+
+"I was so terrified at meeting you the first time. Dale can talk of no
+one else. He makes a kind of god of you. I felt I was going to hate you
+like the devil. I expected quite a different person."
+
+The diplomatist listens to much and says little.
+
+"Indeed," I remarked.
+
+She nodded. "I thought you would be a big beefy man with a red face, you
+know. He gave me the idea somehow by calling you a 'splendid chap.' You
+see, I couldn't think of a 'splendid chap' with a white face and a waxed
+moustache and your way of talking."
+
+"I am sorry," said I, "not to come up to your idea of the heroic."
+
+"But you do!" she cried, with one of her supple twists of the body. "It
+was I that was stupid. And I don't hate you at all. You can see that I
+don't. I didn't even hate you when you came as an enemy."
+
+"Ah!" said I. "What made you think that? We agreed to argue it out, if
+you remember."
+
+She drew out of a case beside her one of her unspeakable cigarettes. "Do
+you suppose," she said, lighting it, and pausing to inhale the first
+two or three puffs of smoke, "do you suppose that a woman who has lived
+among wild beasts hasn't got instinct?"
+
+I drew my chair nearer to the fire. She was beginning to be uncanny
+again.
+
+"I expected you were going to be horrified at the dreadful creature your
+friend had taken up with. Oh, yes, I know in the eyes of your class
+I'm a dreadful creature. I'm like a cat in many ways. I'm suspicious
+of strangers, especially strangers of your class, and I sniff and sniff
+until I feel it's all right. After the first few minutes I felt you were
+all right. You're true and honourable, like Dale, aren't you?"
+
+Like a panther making a sudden spring, she sat bolt upright in her chair
+as she launched this challenge at me. Now, it is disconcerting to a man
+to have a woman leap at his throat and ask him whether he is true and
+honourable, especially when his attitude towards her approaches the
+Machiavellian.
+
+I could only murmur modestly that I hoped I could claim these
+qualifications.
+
+"And you don't think me a dreadful woman?"
+
+"So far from it, Madame Brandt," I replied, "that I think you a
+remarkable one."
+
+"I wonder if I am," she said, sinking back among her cushions. "I should
+like to be for Dale's sake. I suppose you know I care a great deal for
+Dale?"
+
+"I have taken the liberty of guessing it," said I. "And since you have
+done me the honour of taking me so far into your confidence," I added,
+playing what I considered to be my master-card, "may I venture to ask
+whether you have contemplated"--I paused--"marriage?"
+
+Her brow grew dark, as she looked involuntarily at her bare left hand.
+
+"I have got a husband already," she replied.
+
+As I expected. Ladies like Lola Brandt always have husbands unfit for
+publication; and as the latter seem to make it a point of honour never
+to die, widowed Lolas are as rare as blackberries in spring.
+
+"Forgive my rudeness," I said, "but you wear no wedding ring."
+
+"I threw it into the sea."
+
+"Ah!" said I.
+
+"Do you want to hear about him?" she asked suddenly. "If we are to be
+friends, perhaps you had better know. Somehow I don't like talking to
+Dale about it. Do you mind putting some coals on the fire?"
+
+I busied myself with the coal-scuttle, lit a cigarette, and settled down
+to hear the story. If it had not been told in the twilight hour by a
+woman with a caressing, enveloping voice like Lola Brandt's I should
+have yawned myself out of the house.
+
+It was a dismal, ordinary story. Her husband was a gentleman, a Captain
+Vauvenarde in the French Army. He had fallen in love with her when she
+had first taken Marseilles captive with the prodigiosities of her
+horse Sultan. His proposals of manifold unsanctified delights met
+with unqualified rejection by the respectable and not too passionately
+infatuated Lola. When he nerved himself to the supreme sacrifice of
+offering marriage she accepted.
+
+She had dreams of social advancement, yearned to be one of the white
+faces of the audience in the front rows. The civil ceremony having been
+performed, he pleaded with her for a few weeks' secrecy on account of
+his family. The weeks grew into months, during which, for the sake of
+a livelihood, she fulfilled her professional engagements in many other
+towns. At last, when she returned to Marseilles, it became apparent that
+Captain Vauvenarde had no intention whatever of acknowledging her openly
+as his wife. Hence many tears. Moreover, he had little beyond his pay
+and his gambling debts, instead of the comfortable little fortune that
+would have assured her social position. Now, officers in the French
+Army who marry ladies with performing horses are not usually guided by
+reason; and Captain Vauvenarde seems to have been the most unreasonable
+being in the world. It was beneath the dignity of Captain Vauvenarde's
+wife to make a horse do tricks in public, and it was beneath Captain
+Vauvenarde's dignity to give her his name before the world. She must
+neither be Lola Brandt nor Madame Vauvenarde. She must give up her
+fairly lucrative profession and live in semi-detached obscurity up a
+little back street on an allowance of twopence-halfpenny a week and be
+happy and cheerful and devoted. Lola refused. Hence more tears.
+
+There were scenes of frantic jealousy, not on account of any human
+being, but on account of the horse. If she loved him as much as she
+loved that abominable quadruped whose artificial airs and graces made
+him sick every time he looked at it, she would accede to his desire.
+Besides, he had the husband's right--a powerful privilege in France. She
+pointed out that he could only exercise it by declaring her to be his
+wife. Relations were strained. They led separate lives. From Marseilles
+she went to Genoa, whither he followed her. Eventually he went away in a
+temper and never came back. She had not heard from him since, and where
+he was at the present moment she had not the faintest idea.
+
+"So you went cheerfully on with your profession?" I remarked.
+
+"I returned to Marseilles, and there I lost my horse Sultan. Then my
+father died and left me pretty well off, and I hadn't the heart to train
+another animal. So here I am. Ah!"
+
+With one of her lithe movements she rose to her feet, and, flinging out
+her arms in a wide gesture, began to walk about the room, stopping here
+and there to turn on the light and draw the flaring chintz curtains. I
+rose, too, so as to aid her. Suddenly as we met, by the window, she laid
+both her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face earnestly and
+imploringly, and her lips quivered. I wondered apprehensively what she
+was going to do next.
+
+"For God's sake, be my friend and help me!"
+
+The cry, in her rich, low notes, seemed to come from the depths of the
+woman's nature. It caused some absurd and unnecessary chord within me to
+vibrate.
+
+For the first time I realised that her strong, handsome face could look
+nobly and pathetically beautiful. Her eyes swam in an adorable moisture
+and grew very human and appealing. In a second all my self-denying
+ordinances were forgotten. The witch had me in her power again.
+
+"My dear Madame Brandt," said I, "how can I do it?"
+
+"Don't take Dale from me. I've lived alone, alone, alone all these
+years, and I couldn't bear it."
+
+"Do you care for him so very much?"
+
+She withdrew her hands and moved slightly. "Who else in the wide world
+have I to care for?"
+
+This was very pathetic, but I had the sense to remark that compromising
+the boy's future was not the best way of showing her devotion.
+
+"Oh, how could I do that?" she asked. "I can't marry him. And if I do
+what I've never done before for any man--become his mistress--who need
+know? I could stay in the background."
+
+"You seem to forget, dear lady," said I, "that Captain Vauvenarde is
+probably alive."
+
+"But I tell you I've lost sight of him altogether."
+
+"Are you quite so sure," I asked, regaining my sanity by degrees, "that
+Captain Vauvenarde has lost sight of you?"
+
+She turned quickly. "What do you mean?"
+
+"You have given him no chance as yet of recovering his freedom."
+
+She passed her hand over her face, and sat down on the sofa. "Do you
+mean--divorce?"
+
+"It's an ugly word, dear Madame Brandt," said I, as gently as I could,
+"but you and I are strong people and needn't fear uttering it. Don't
+you think such a scandal would ruin Dale at the very beginning of his
+career?"
+
+There was a short silence. I was glad to see she was feminine enough to
+twist and tear her handkerchief.
+
+"What am I to do?" she asked at last. "I can't live this awful lonely
+life much longer. Sometimes I get the creeps."
+
+I might have given her the sound advice to find healthy occupation
+in training crocodiles to sit up and beg; but an idea which advanced
+thinkers might classify as more suburban was beginning to take shape in
+my mind.
+
+"Has it occurred to you," I said, "that now you have assumed the
+qualifications imposed by Captain Vauvenarde for bearing his name?"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"You no longer perform in public. He would have no possible grievance
+against you."
+
+"Are you suggesting that I should go back to my husband?" she gasped.
+
+"I am," said I, feeling mighty diplomatic.
+
+She looked straight in front of her, with parted lips, fingering her
+handkerchief and evidently pondering the entirely new suggestion. I
+thought it best to let her ponder. As a general rule, people will do
+anything in the world rather than think; so, when one sees a human
+being wrapped in thought, one ought to regard wilful disturbance of the
+process as sacrilege. I lit a cigarette and wandered about the room.
+
+Eventually I came to a standstill before the Venus of Milo. But while
+I was admiring its calm, mysterious beauty, the development of a former
+idea took the shape of an inspiration which made my heart sing. Fate had
+put into my hands the chance of complete eumoiriety.
+
+If I could effect a reconciliation between Lola Brandt and her husband,
+Dale would be cured almost automatically of his infatuation, and
+I should be the Deputy Providence bringing happiness to six human
+beings--Lola Brandt, Captain Vauvenarde, Lady Kynnersley, Maisie
+Ellerton, Dale, and Mr. Anastasius Papadopoulos, who could not fail to
+be delighted at the happiness of his goddess.
+
+There also might burst joyously on the earth a brood of gleeful little
+Vauvenardes and merry little Kynnersleys, who might regard Simon de Gex
+as their mythical progenitor. It might add to the gaiety of regiments
+and the edification of parliaments. Acts should be judged, thought
+I, not according to their trivial essence, but by the light of their
+far-reaching consequences.
+
+Lola Brandt broke the silence. She did not look at me. She said:
+
+"I can't help feeling that you're my friend."
+
+"I am," I cried, in the exultation of my promotion to the role of Deputy
+Providence. "I am indeed. And a most devoted one."
+
+"Will you let me think over what you've said for a day or two--and then
+come for an answer?"
+
+"Willingly," said I.
+
+"And you won't----?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"No. I know you won't."
+
+"Tell Dale?" I said, guessing. "No, of course not."
+
+She rose and put out both her hands to me in a very noble gesture. I
+took them and kissed one of them.
+
+She looked at me with parted lips.
+
+"You are the best man I have ever met," she said.
+
+At the moment of her saying it I believed it; such conviction is induced
+by the utterances of this singular woman. But when I got outside the
+drawing-room door my natural modesty revolted. I slapped my thigh
+impatiently with what I thought were my gloves. They made so little
+sound that I found there was only one. I had left the other inside. I
+entered and found Lola Brandt in front of the fire holding my glove in
+her hand. She started in some confusion.
+
+"Is this yours?" she asked.
+
+Now whose could it have been but mine? The ridiculous question worried
+me, off and on, all the evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The murder is out. A paragraph has appeared in the newspapers to the
+effect that the marriage arranged between Mr. Simon de Gex and Miss
+Eleanor Faversham will not take place. It has also become common
+knowledge that I am resigning my seat in Parliament on account of
+ill-health. That is the reason rightly assigned by my acquaintances for
+the rupture of my engagement. I am being rapidly killed by the doleful
+kindness of my friends. They are so dismally sympathetic. Everywhere I
+go there are long faces and solemn hand-shakes. In order to cheer myself
+I gave a little dinner-party at the club, and the function might have
+been a depressed wake with my corpse in a coffin on the table. My
+sisters, dear, kind souls, follow me with anxious eyes as if I were one
+of their children sickening for chicken-pox. They upbraid me for leaving
+them in ignorance, and in hushed voices inquire as to my symptoms. They
+both came this morning to the Albany to see what they could do for me.
+I don't see what they can do, save help Rogers put studs in my shirts.
+They expressed such affectionate concern that at last I cried out:
+
+"My dear girls, if you don't smile, I'll sit upon the hearthrug and howl
+like a dog."
+
+Then they exchanged glances and broke into hectic gaiety, dear things,
+under the impression that they were brightening me up. I am being
+deluged with letters. I had no idea I was such a popular person. They
+come from high placed and lowly, from constituents whom my base and
+servile flattery have turned into friends, from Members of Parliament,
+from warm-hearted dowagers and from little girls who have inveigled me
+out to lunch for the purpose of confiding to me their love affairs. I
+could set up as a general practitioner of medicine on the advice that is
+given me. I am recommended cod-liver oil, lung tonic, electric massage,
+abdominal belts, warm water, mud baths, Sandow's treatment, and every
+patent medicament save rat poison. I am urged to go to health resorts
+ranging geographically from the top of the Jungfrau to Central Africa.
+All kinds of worthy persons have offered to nurse me. Old General Wynans
+writes me a four-page letter to assure me that I have only to go to his
+friend Dr. Eustace Adams, of Wimpole Street, to be cured like a shot. I
+happen to know that Eustace Adams is an eminent gynecologist.
+
+And the worst of it all is that these effusions written in the milk of
+human kindness have to be answered. Dale is not here. I have to sit down
+at my desk and toil like a galley slave. I am being worn to a shadow.
+
+Lola Brandt, too, has heard the news, Dale in Berlin, and the London
+newspapers being her informants. Tears stood in her eyes when I called
+to learn her decision. Why had I not told her I was so ill? Why had I
+let her worry me with her silly troubles? Why had I not consulted
+her friend, Sir Joshua Oldfield? She filled up my chair with cushions
+(which, like most men, I find stuffy and comfortless), and if I had
+given her the slightest encouragement, would have stuck my feet in hot
+mustard and water. Why had I come out on such a dreadful day? It was
+indeed a detestable day of raw fog. She pulled the curtains close, and,
+insisting upon my remaining among my cushions, piled the grate with coal
+half-way up the chimney. Would I like some eucalyptus?
+
+"My dear Madame Brandt," I cried, "my bronchial tubes and lungs are as
+strong as a hippopotamus's."
+
+I wish every one would not conclude that I was going off in a rapid
+decline.
+
+Lola Brandt prowled about me in a wistful, mothering way, showing me a
+fresh side of her nature. She is as domesticated as Penelope.
+
+"You're fond of cooking, aren't you?" I asked suddenly.
+
+She laughed. "I adore it. How do you know?"
+
+"I guessed," said I.
+
+"I'm what the French call a _vraie bourgeoise_."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," said I.
+
+"Are you? I thought your class hated the _bourgeoisie_."
+
+"The _bourgeoisie_," I said, "is the nation's granary of the virtues.
+But for God's sake, don't tell any one that I said so!"
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"If it found its way into print it would ruin my reputation for
+epigram."
+
+She drew a step or two towards me in her slow rhythmic way, and smiled.
+
+"When you say or do a beautiful thing you always try to bite off its
+tail."
+
+Then she turned and drew some needlework--plain sewing I believe they
+call it--from beneath the Union Jack cushion and sat down.
+
+"I'll make a confession," she said. "Until now I've stuffed away my work
+when I heard you coming. I didn't think it genteel. What do you think?"
+
+I scanned the shapeless mass of linen or tulle or whatever it was on her
+lap.
+
+"I don't know whether it's genteel," I remarked, "but at present it
+looks like nothing on God's earth."
+
+My masculine ignorance of such mysteries made her laugh. She is readily
+moved to mild mirth, which makes her an easy companion. Besides, little
+jokes are made to be laughed at, and I like women who laugh at them.
+There was a brief silence. I smoked and made Adolphus stand up on his
+hind legs and balance sugar on his nose. His mistress sewed. Presently
+she said, without looking up from her work:
+
+"I've made up my mind."
+
+I rose from my cushioned seat, into which Adolphus, evidently thinking
+me a fool, immediately snuggled himself, and I stood facing her with my
+back to the fire.
+
+"Well?" said I.
+
+"I am ready to go back to my husband, if he can be found, and, of
+course, if he will have me."
+
+I commended her for a brave women. She smiled rather sadly and shook her
+head.
+
+"Those are two gigantic 'ifs.'"
+
+"Giants before now have been slain by the valiant," I replied.
+
+"How is Captain Vauvenarde to be found?"
+
+"An officer in the French Army is not like a lost sparrow in London. His
+whereabouts could be obtained from the French War Office. What is his
+regiment?"
+
+"The Chasseurs d'Afrique. Yes," she added thoughtfully. "I see, it isn't
+difficult to trace him. I make one condition, however. You can't refuse
+me."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Until things are fixed up everything must go on just as at present
+between Dale and me. He is not to be told anything. If nothing comes
+of it then I'll have him all to myself. I won't give him up and be left
+alone. As long as I care for him, I swear to God, I won't!" she said, in
+her low, rich voice--and I saw by her face that she was a woman of her
+word. "Besides, he would come raving and imploring--and I'm not quite
+a woman of stone. It isn't all jam to go back to my husband. Goodness
+knows why I am thinking of it. It's for your sake. Do you know that?"
+
+I did not. I was puzzled. Why in the world should Lola Brandt, whom I
+have only met three or four times, revolutionise the whole of her life
+for my sake?
+
+"I should have thought it was for Dale's," said I.
+
+"I suppose you would, being a man," she replied.
+
+I retorted, with a smile: "Woman is the eternal conundrum to which the
+wise man always leaves her herself to supply the answer. Doubtless one
+of these days you'll do it. Meanwhile, I'll wait in patience."
+
+She gave me one of her sidelong, flashing glances and sewed with more
+vigour than appeared necessary. I admired the beautiful curves of her
+neck and shoulders as she bent over her work. She seemed too strong to
+wield such an insignificant weapon as a needle.
+
+"That's neither here nor there," she said in reference to my last
+remark. "I say, I don't look forward to going back to my husband--though
+why I should say 'going back' I don't know, as he left me--not I him.
+Anyhow, I'm ready to do it. If it can be managed, I'll cut myself adrift
+suddenly from Dale. It will be more merciful to him. A man can bear a
+sudden blow better than lingering pain. If it can't be managed, well,
+Dale will know nothing at all about it, and both he and I will be saved
+a mortal deal of worry and unhappiness."
+
+"Suppose" said I, "it can't be managed? Do you propose to keep Dale
+ignorant of the danger he is running in keeping up a liaison with a
+married woman living apart from her husband?"
+
+She reflected. "If my husband says he'll see me damned first before
+he'll come back to me, then I'll tell Dale everything, and you can say
+what you like to him. He'll be able to judge for himself; but in the
+meanwhile you'll let me have what happiness I can."
+
+I accepted the compromise, and, dispossessing Adolphus, sat down again.
+I certainly had made progress. Feeling in a benevolent mood, I set forth
+the advantages she would reap by assuming her legal status; how at last
+she would shake the dust of Bohemia from off her feet, and instead of
+standing at the threshold like a disconsolate Peri, she would enter as a
+right the Paradise of Philistia which she craved; how her life would be
+one continual tea-party, and how, as her husband had doubtless by this
+time obtained his promotion, she would be authorised to adopt high and
+mighty airs in her relations with the wives of all the captains and
+lieutenants in the regiment. She sighed and wondered whether she would
+like it, after all.
+
+"Here in England I can say 'damn' as often as I choose. I don't say it
+very often, but sometimes I feel I must say it or explode."
+
+"There are its equivalents in French," I suggested.
+
+She laughed outright. "Fancy my coming out with a _sacre nom de Dieu_ in
+a French drawing-room!"
+
+"Fancy you shouting 'damn' in an English one."
+
+"That's true," she said. "I suppose drawing-rooms are the same all the
+world over. I do try to talk like a lady--at least, what I imagine they
+talk like, for I've never met one."
+
+"You see one every time you look in the glass," said I.
+
+Her olive face flushed. "You mustn't say such things to me if you don't
+mean them. I like to think all you say to me is true."
+
+"Why in the world," I cried, "should you not be a lady? You have the
+instincts of one. How many of my fair friends in Mayfair and Belgravia
+would have made their drawing-rooms unspeakable just for the sake of not
+hurting the feelings of Anastasius Papadopoulos?"
+
+She put aside her work and, leaning over the arm of the chair, her chin
+in her hands, looked at me gratefully.
+
+"I'm so glad you've said that. Dale can't understand it. He wants me to
+clear the trash away."
+
+"Dale," said I, "is young and impetuous. I am a battered old philosopher
+with one foot in the grave."
+
+Quick moisture gathered in her eyes. "You hurt me," she said. "You'll
+soon get well and strong again. You must!"
+
+"_Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut_," I laughed.
+
+"_Eh bien, je le veux_," she said with an odd expression in her eyes
+which burned golden. They fascinated me, held mine. For some seconds
+neither of us moved. Just consider the picture. There among the cushions
+of her chair she sprawled beneath the light of a shaded lamp on the
+further side, and in front of the leaping flames, a great, powerful,
+sinuous creature of sweeping curves, clad in a clinging brown dress, her
+head crowned with superb bronze hair, two warm arms bare to the elbow,
+at which the sleeve ended in coffee-coloured lace falling over the side
+of the chair, and her leopard eyes fixed on me. About her still hung the
+echo of her last words spoken in deep tones whose register belongs less
+to human habitations than to the jungle. And from her emanated like
+a captivating odour--but it was not an odour--a strange magnetic
+influence.
+
+I have done my best to write her down in my mind a commonplace, vulgar,
+good-natured mountebank. But I can do so no longer.
+
+There is something deep down in the soul of Lola Brandt which sets her
+apart from the kindly race of womankind; whether it is the devil or
+a touch of pre-Adamite splendour or an ancestral catamount, I make
+no attempt to determine. At any rate, she is too grand a creature to
+fritter her life away on a statistic-hunting and pheasant-shooting young
+Briton like Dale Kynnersley. He would never begin to understand her. I
+will save her from Dale for her own sake.
+
+All this, ladies and gentlemen, because her eyes fascinated me, and
+caused me to hold my breath, and made my heart beat.
+
+And will Captain Vauvenarde understand her? Of course he won't. But then
+he is her husband, and husbands are notoriously and _cum privilegio_
+dunder-headed. I make no pretensions to understand her, but as I am
+neither her lover nor her husband it does not matter. She says nothing
+diabolical or eerie or fantastic or feline or pre-Adamite or uncanny or
+spiritual; and yet she _is_, in a queer, indescribable way, all these
+things.
+
+"_Je le veux_," she said, and we drank in each other's souls, or
+gaped at each other like a pair of idiots just as you please. I had a
+horrible, yet pleasurable consciousness that she had gripped hold of my
+nerves of volition. She was willing me to live. I was a puppet in her
+hands like the wild tom-cat. At that moment I declare I could have
+purred and rubbed my head against her knee. I would have done anything
+she bade me. If she had sent me to fetch the Cham of Tartary's cap or a
+hair of the Prester John's beard, I would have telephoned forthwith to
+Rogers to pack a suit-case and book a seat in the Orient express.
+
+What would have happened next Heaven alone knows--for we could not have
+gone on gazing at each other until I backed myself out at the door by
+way of leave-taking--had not Anticlimax arrived in the person of Mr.
+Anastasius Papadopoulos in his eternal frock-coat. But his gloves were
+black.
+
+As usual he fell on his knees and kissed his lady's hand. Then he rose
+and greeted me with solemn affability.
+
+"_C'est un privilege de rencontrer den gnadigsten Herrn_," said he.
+
+Confining myself to one language, I responded by informing him that
+it was an honour always to meet so renowned a professor, and inquired
+politely after the health of Hephaestus.
+
+"Ah, Signore!" he cried. "Do not ask me. It is a tragedy from which I
+shall never recover."
+
+He sat down on a footstool by the side of Madame Brandt and burst into
+tears, which coursed down his cheeks and moustache and hung like drops
+of dew from the point of his imperial.
+
+"Is he dead?" asked Madame.
+
+"I wish he were! No. It is only the iron self-restraint that I possess
+which prevented me from slaying him on the spot. But poor Santa Bianca!
+My gentle and accomplished Angora. He has killed her. I can scarcely
+raise my head through grief."
+
+Lola put her great arm round the little man's neck and patted him like a
+child, while he sobbed as if his heart would break.
+
+When he recovered he gave us the details of the tragic end of Santa
+Bianca, and wound up by calling down the most ingeniously complicated
+and passionate curses on the head of the murderer. Lola Brandt strove to
+pacify him.
+
+"We all have our sorrows, Anastasius. Did I not lose my beautiful horse
+Sultan?"
+
+The professor sprang to his full height of four feet and dashed away his
+tears with a noble gesture of his black-gloved hand.
+
+Base slave that he was to think of his own petty bereavement in the face
+of her eternal affliction. He turned to me and bade me mark her serene
+nobility. It was a model and an example for him to follow. He, too,
+would be brave and present a smiling face to evil fortune.
+
+"Behold! I smile, carissima!" he cried dramatically.
+
+We beheld--and saw his features (smudged with tearstains and the dye
+from the black gloves which he obviously wore out of respect for the
+deceased Santa Bianca) contorted into a grimace of hideous imbecility.
+
+"Monsieur," said he, assuming his natural expression which was one of
+pensive melancholy, "let us change the conversation. You are a great
+statesman. Will you kindly let me know your opinion on the foreign
+policy of Germany?"
+
+Whereupon he sat down again upon his stool and regarded me with earnest
+attention.
+
+"Germany," said I, with the solemnity of a Sir Oracle in the
+smoking-room of one of the political clubs, "has dreams of an empire
+beyond her frontiers, and with a view to converting the dream into a
+reality, is turning out battleships nineteen to the dozen."
+
+The Professor nodded his head sagaciously, and looked up at Lola.
+
+"Very profound," said he, "very profound. I shall remember it. I am
+a Greek, Monsieur, and the Greeks, as you know, are a nation of
+diplomatists."
+
+"Ever since the days of Xenophon," said I.
+
+"You're both too clever for me," exclaimed our hostess. "Where did you
+get your knowledge from, Anastasius?"
+
+The Professor, flattered, passed his hand over his bulgy forehead.
+
+"I was a great student in my youth," said he. "Once I could tell you all
+the kings of Rome and the date of the battle of Actium. But pressure of
+weightier concerns has driven my erudition from me. Pardon me. I have
+not yet asked after your health. You are looking sad and troubled. What
+is the matter?"
+
+He sat bolt upright, fingering his imperial and regarding her with the
+keen solicitude of a family physician. To my amazement, Lola Brandt told
+him quite simply:
+
+"I am thinking of living with my husband again."
+
+"Has the traitor been annoying you?" he asked with a touch of
+fierceness.
+
+"Oh, no! It's my own idea. I'm tired of living alone. I don't even know
+where he is."
+
+"Do you want to know where he is?"
+
+"How can I communicate with him unless I do?"
+
+Anastasius Papadopoulos rose, struck an attitude, and thumped his
+breast.
+
+"I will seek him for you at the ends of the earth, and will bring him to
+prostrate himself at your feet."
+
+"That's very kind of you, Anastasius," said Lola gently; "but what will
+become of your cats?"
+
+The dwarf raised his hand impressively.
+
+"The Almighty will have them in His keeping. I have also my pupil and
+assistant, Quast."
+
+Lola smiled indulgently from her cushions, showing her curious even
+teeth.
+
+"You mustn't do anything so mad, Anastasius, I forbid you."
+
+"Madame," said he in a most stately manner, "when I devote myself, it is
+to the death. I have the honour to salute you!"--he bowed over her
+hand and kissed it. "Monsieur." He bowed to me with the profundity of a
+hidalgo, and trotted magnificently out of the room.
+
+It was all so sudden that it took my breath away.
+
+"Well I'm----" I didn't know what I was, so I stopped. Lola Brandt broke
+into low laughter at my astonishment.
+
+"That's Anastasius's way," she explained.
+
+"But the little man surely isn't going to leave his cats and start on a
+wild-goose chase over Europe to find your husband?"
+
+"He thinks he is, but I shan't let him."
+
+"I hope you won't," said I. "And will you tell me why you made so
+hot-headed a person your confidant?"
+
+I confess that I was wrathful. Here had I been using the wiles of a
+Balkan chancery to bring the lady to my way of thinking, and here was
+she, to my face, making a joke of it with this caricature of a Paladin.
+
+"My dearest friend," she replied earnestly, "don't be angry with me.
+I've given the poor little man something to think of besides the death
+of his cat. It will do him good. And why shouldn't I tell him? He's a
+dear old friend, and in his way was so good to me when I was unhappy. He
+knows all about my married life. You may think he's half-witted; but he
+isn't. In ordinary business dealings he's as shrewd as they make 'em.
+The manager who beats Anastasius over a contract is yet to be born."
+
+By some extraordinary process of the contortionist's art, she curled
+herself out of her chair on to the hearthrug and knelt before me, her
+hands clasped on my knee.
+
+"You're not angry with me, are you?" she asked in her rich contralto.
+
+I took both her hands, rose, and assisted her to rise. I was not going
+to be mesmerised again.
+
+"Of course not," I laughed. Indeed my wrath had fallen from me.
+
+Her bosom heaved with a sigh. "I'm so glad," she said. Her breath fanned
+my cheek. It was aromatic, intoxicating. Her lips are ripe and full.
+
+"You had better find your husband as soon as possible," said I.
+
+"Do you think so?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I do. And it strikes me I had better go and find him myself."
+
+She started. "You?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "The Chasseurs d'Afrique are probably in Africa, and the
+doctors have ordered me to winter in a hot climate, and I shall go on
+writing a million letters a day if I stay here, which will kill me off
+in no time with brain fag and writer's cramp. Your husband will be what
+the newspapers call an objective. Good-bye!" said I, "I'll bring him to
+you dead or alive."
+
+And without knowing it at the time, I made an exit as magnificent as
+that of Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+I do not know whether I ought to laugh or rail. Judged by the ordinary
+canons that regulate the respectable life to which I have been
+accustomed, I am little short of a lunatic. The question is: Does
+the recognition of lunacy in oneself tend to amusement or anger? I
+compromise with myself. I am angry at having been forced on an insane
+adventure, but the prospect of its absurdity gives me a considerable
+pleasure.
+
+Let me set it down once and for all. I resent Lola Brandt's existence.
+When I am out of her company I can contemplate her calmly from my
+vantage of social and intellectual superiority. I can pooh-pooh her
+fascinations. I can crack jokes on her shortcomings. I can see perfectly
+well that I am Simon de Gex, M.P. (I have not yet been appointed to
+the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds), of Eton and Trinity College,
+Cambridge, a barrister of the Inner Temple (though a brief would cause
+me as much dismay as a command to conduct the orchestra at Covent
+Garden), formerly of the Foreign Office, a man of the world, a
+diner-out, a hardened jester at feminine wiles, a cynical student of
+philosophy, a man of birth, and, I believe, breeding with a cultivated
+taste in wine and food and furniture, one also who, but for a little
+pain inside, would soon become a Member of His Majesty's Government,
+and eventually drop the "Esquire" at the end of his name and stick "The
+Right Honourable" in front of it--in fact, a most superior, wise and
+important person; and I can also see perfectly well that Lola Brandt
+is an uneducated, lowly bred, vagabond female, with a taste, as I have
+remarked before, for wild beasts and tea-parties, with whom I have
+as much in common as I have with the feathered lady on a coster's
+donkey-cart or the Fat Woman at the Fair. I can see all this perfectly
+well in the calm seclusion of my library. But when I am in her
+presence my superiority, like Bob Acres's valour, oozes out through my
+finger-tips; I become a besotted idiot; the sense and the sight and
+the sound of her overpower me; I proclaim her rich and remarkable
+personality; and I bask in her lazy smiles like any silly undergraduate
+whose knowledge of women has hitherto been limited to his sisters and
+the common little girl at the tobacconist's.
+
+I say I resent it. I resent the low notes in her voice. I resent the
+cajolery of the supple twists of her body. I resent her putting her
+hands on my shoulders, and, as the twopenny-halfpenny poets say, fanning
+my cheek with her breath. If it had not been for that I should never
+have promised to go in search of her impossible husband. At any rate, it
+is easy to discover his whereabouts. A French bookseller has telegraphed
+to Paris for the _Annuaire Officiel de l'Armee Francaise_, the French
+Army List. It locates every officer in the French army, and as the
+Chasseurs d'Afrique generally chase in Africa, it will tell me the
+station in Algeria or Tunisia which Captain Vauvenarde adorns. I can
+go straight to him as Madame Brandt's plenipotentiary, and if the
+unreasonable and fire-eating warrior does not run me through the body
+for impertinence before he has time to appreciate the delicacy of my
+mission, I may be able to convince him that a well-to-do wife is worth
+the respectable consideration of a hard-up captain of Chasseurs. I say
+I may be able to convince him; but I shrink from the impudence of the
+encounter. I am to accost a total stranger in a foreign army and tell
+him to return to his wife. This is the pretty little mission I have
+undertaken. It sounded glorious and eumoirous and quixotic and deucedly
+funny, during the noble moment of inspiration, when Lola's golden eyes
+were upon me; but now--well, I shall have to persuade myself that it is
+funny, if I am to carry it out. It is very much like wagering that one
+will tweak by the nose the first gentleman in gaiters and shovel-hat
+one meets in Piccadilly. This by some is considered the quintessence of
+comedy. I foresee a revision of my sense of humour.
+
+This afternoon I met Lady Kynnersley again--at the Ellertons'. I was
+talking to Maisie, who has grown no happier, when I saw her sailing
+across to me with questions hoisted in her eyes. Being particularly
+desirous not to report progress periodically to Lady Kynnersley, I made
+a desperate move. I went forward and greeted her.
+
+"Lady Kynnersley," said I, "somebody was telling me that you are in
+urgent need of funds for something. With my usual wooden-headedness I
+have forgotten what it is--but I know it is a deserving organisation."
+
+The philanthropist, as I hoped, ousted the mother. She exclaimed at
+once:
+
+"It must have been the Cabmen and Omnibus Drivers' Rheumatic Hospital."
+
+"That was it!" said I, hearing of the institution for the first time.
+
+"They are martyrs to rheumatic gout, and of course have no means of
+obtaining proper treatment; so we have secured a site at Harrogate and
+are building a comfortable place, half hospital, half hotel, where they
+can be put up for a shilling a day and have all the benefits of the
+waters just as if they were staying at the Hotel Majestic. Do you want
+to become a subscriber?"
+
+"I am eager to," said I.
+
+"Then come over here and I'll tell you all about it."
+
+I sat with her in a corner of the room and listened to her fairy-tale.
+She wrung my heart to such a pitch of sympathy that I rose and grasped
+her by the hand.
+
+"It is indeed a noble project," I cried. "I love the London cabby as my
+brother, and I'll post you a cheque for a thousand pounds this evening.
+Good-bye!"
+
+I left her in a state of joyous stupefaction and made my escape. If it
+had not fallen in with my general scheme of good works I should regard
+it as an expensive method of avoiding unpleasant questions.
+
+Another philanthropist, by the way, of quite a different type from Lady
+Kynnersley, who has lately benefited by my eleemosynary mania is Rex
+Campion. I have known him since our University days and have maintained
+a sincere though desultory friendship with him ever since. He is also a
+friend of Eleanor Faversham, whom he now and then inveigles into weird
+doings in the impossible slums of South Lambeth. He has tried on many
+occasions to lure me into his web, but hitherto I have resisted.
+Being the possessor of a large fortune, he has been able to gratify a
+devouring passion for philanthropy, and has squandered most of his money
+on an institution--a kind of club, school, labour-bureau, dispensary,
+soup-kitchen, all rolled into one--in Lambeth; and there he
+lives himself, perfectly happy among a hungry, grubby, scarecrow,
+tatterdemalion crowd. At a loss for a defining name, he has called it
+"Barbara's Building," after his mother. His conception of the cosmos
+is that sun, moon and stars revolve round Barbara's Building. How he
+learned that I was, so to speak, standing at street corners and flinging
+money into the laps of the poor and needy, I know not. But he came to
+see me a day or two ago, full of Barbara's Building, and departed in
+high feather with a cheque for a thousand pounds in his pocket.
+
+I may remark here on the peculiar difficulty there is in playing Monte
+Cristo with anything like picturesque grace. Any dull dog that owns
+a pen and a banking-account can write out cheques for charitable
+institutions. But to accomplish anything personal, imaginative,
+adventurous, anything with a touch of distinction, is a less easy
+matter. You wake up in the morning with the altruistic yearnings of a
+St. Francois de Sales, and yet somehow you go to bed in the evening with
+the craving unsatisfied. You have really had so few opportunities; and
+when an occasion does arise it is hedged around with such difficulties
+as to baffle all but the most persistent. Have you ever tried to give a
+beggar a five-pound note? I did this morning.
+
+She was a miserable, shivering, starving woman of fifty selling matches
+in Sackville Street. She held out a shrivelled hand to me, and eyes that
+once had been beautiful pleaded hungrily for alms.
+
+"Here," said I to myself, "is an opportunity of bringing unimagined
+gladness for a month or two into this forlorn creature's life."
+
+I pressed a five-pound note into her hand and passed on. She ran after
+me, terror on her face.
+
+"I daren't take it, sir; they would say I had stolen it, and I should be
+locked up. No one would believe a gentleman had given it to me."
+
+She trembled, overwhelmed by the colossal fortune that might, and yet
+might not, be hers. I sympathised, but not having the change in gold, I
+could do no more than listen to an incoherent tale of misery, which did
+not aid the solution of the problem. It was manifestly impossible to
+take back the note; and yet if she retained it she would be subjected
+to scandalous indignities. What was to be done? I turned my eyes
+towards Piccadilly and beheld a policeman. A page wearing the name of a
+milliner's shop on his cap whisked past me. I stopped him and slipped a
+shilling into his hand.
+
+"Will you ask that policeman to come to me?"
+
+The boy tore down the street and told the policeman and followed him up
+to me, eager for amusement.
+
+"What has the woman been doing, sir?" asked the policeman.
+
+"Nothing," said I. "I have given her a five-pound note."
+
+"What for, sir?" he asked.
+
+"To further my pursuit of the eumoirous," said I, whereat he gaped
+stolidly; "but, be that as it may, I have given it her as a free gift,
+and she is afraid to present it anywhere lest she should be charged with
+theft. Will you kindly accompany her to a shop, where she can change it,
+and vouch for her honesty?"
+
+The policeman, who seemed to form the lowest opinion of my intellect,
+said he didn't know a shop on his beat where they could change it. The
+boy whistled. The woman held the box of matches in one hand, and in the
+other the note, fluttering in the breeze. Idlers paused and looked on.
+The policeman grew authoritative and bade them pass along. They crowded
+all the more. My position was becoming embarrassing. At last the boy,
+remembering the badge of honour on his cap, undertook to change the note
+at the hatter's at the corner of the street. So, having given the note
+to the boy and bidden the policeman follow him to see fair play, and
+encouraged the woman to follow the policeman, I resumed my walk down
+Sackville Street.
+
+But what a pother about a simple act of charity! In order to repeat it
+habitually I shall have to rely on the fortuitous attendance of a boy
+and a policeman, or have a policeman and a boy permanently attached to
+my person, which would be as agreeable as the continuous escort of a
+jackdaw and a yak.
+
+
+
+Poor Latimer is having a dreadful time. Apparently my ten thousand
+pounds have vanished like a snowflake on the river of liabilities. How
+he is to repay me he does not know. He wishes he had not yielded to
+temptation and had allowed himself to be honestly hammered. Then
+he could have taken his family to sing in the streets with a quiet
+conscience.
+
+"My dear fellow," said I through the telephone this morning. "What are
+ten thousand pounds to me?"
+
+I heard him gasp at the other end.
+
+"But you're not a millionaire!"
+
+"I am!" I cried triumphantly. And now I come to think of it, I spoke
+truly. If a man reckons his capital as half a year's income, doubles it,
+and works out the capital that such a yearly income represents, he is
+the possessor of a mint of money.
+
+"I am," I cried; "and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll settle five
+thousand on Lucy and the children, so that they needn't accompany you
+in your singing excursions. I shouldn't like them to catch cold, poor
+dears, and ruin their voices."
+
+In tones more than telephonically agonised he bade me not make a jest of
+his misery. I nearly threw the receiver at the blockhead.
+
+"I'm not jesting," I bawled; "I'm deadly serious. I knew Lucy before you
+did, and I kissed her and she kissed me years before she knew of your
+high existence; and if she had been a sensible woman she would have
+married me instead of you--what? The first time you've heard of it? Of
+course it is--and be decently thankful that you hear it now."
+
+It is pleasant sometimes to tell the husbands of girls you have loved
+exactly what you think of them; and I had loved Lucy Latimer. She came,
+an English rose, to console me for the loss of my French _fleur-de-lis_,
+Clothilde. Or was it the other way about? One does get so mixed in these
+things. At any rate, she did not marry me, her first love, but jilted me
+most abominably for Latimer. So I shall heap five thousand pounds on her
+head.
+
+I have been unfortunate in my love affairs. I wonder why? Which reminds
+me that I made the identical remark to Lucy Latimer a month or two ago.
+(She is a plump, kind, motherly, unromantic little person now.) She had
+the audacity to reply that I had never had any.
+
+"_You_, Lucy Crooks, dare say such a thing!" I exclaimed indignantly.
+
+She smiled. "Are there many more qualified than I to give the opinion?"
+
+I remember that I rose and looked her sternly in the face.
+
+"Lucy Crooks or Lucy Latimer," said I, "you are nothing more or less
+than a common hussy."
+
+Whereupon she laughed as if I had paid her a high compliment.
+
+I maintain that I have been unfortunate in my love affairs. First, there
+was an angel-faced widow, a contemporary of my mother's, whom I wooed in
+Greek verses--and let me tell the young lover that it is much easier
+to write your own doggerel and convert it into Greek than to put "To
+Althea" into decent Anacreontics. I also took her to the Eton and Harrow
+match, and talked to her of women's hats and the things she loved, and
+neglected the cricket. But she would have none of me. In the flood tide
+of my passion she married a scorbutic archdeacon of the name of Jugg.
+Then there was a lady whose name for the life of me I can't remember. It
+was something ending in "-ine." We quarrelled because we held divergent
+views on Mr. Wilson Barrett. Then there was Clothilde, whose tragical
+story I have already unfolded; Lucy Crooks, who threw me over for this
+dear, amiable, wooden-headed stockjobbing Latimer; X, Y and Z--but here,
+let me remark, I was the hunted--mammas spread nets for me which by the
+grace of heaven and the ungraciousness of the damsels I escaped; and,
+lastly, my incomparable Eleanor Faversham. Now, I thought, am I safe
+in harbour? If ever a match could have been labelled "Pure heaven-made
+goods, warranted not to shrink"--that was one. But for this rupture
+there is an all-accounting reason. For the others there was none. I vow
+I went on falling in love until I grew absolutely sick and tired of the
+condition. You see, the vocabulary of the pastime is so confoundedly
+limited. One has to say to B what one has said to A; to C exactly
+what one has said to A and B; and when it comes to repeating to F
+the formularies one has uttered to A, B, C, D and E one grows almost
+hysterical with the boredom of it. That was the delightful charm of
+Eleanor Faversham; she demanded no formularies or re-enactment of
+raptures.
+
+The _Annuaire Officiel de l'Armee Francaise_ has arrived. It is a volume
+of nearly eighteen hundred pages, and being uncut both at top and bottom
+and at the side it is peculiarly serviceable as a work of reference.
+I attacked it bravely, however, hacking my way into it, paperknife
+in hand. But to my dismay, the more I hacked the less could I find
+of Captain Vauvenarde. I sought him in the Alphabetical Repertory of
+Colonial Troops, in the list of officers _hors cadre_, in the lists
+of seniority, in the list of his regiment, wherever he was likely or
+unlikely to be. There is no person in the French army by the name of
+Vauvenarde.
+
+I went straight to Lola Brandt with the hideous volume and the unwelcome
+news. Together we searched the pages.
+
+"He _must_ be here," she said, with feminine disregard of fact.
+
+"Are you quite certain you have got the name right?" I asked.
+
+"Why, it is my own name!"
+
+"So it is," said I; "I was forgetting. But how do you know he was in the
+army at all?"
+
+He might have been an adventurer, a Captain of Kopenick of the day, who
+had poured a gallant but mendacious tale into her ears.
+
+"I hardly ever saw him out of uniform. He was quartered at Marseilles on
+special duty. I knew some of his brother officers."
+
+"Then," said I, "there are only two alternatives. Either he has left the
+army or he is----"
+
+"Dead?" she whispered.
+
+"Let us hope," said I, "that he has left the army."
+
+"You must find out, Mr. de Gex," she said in a low voice. "I took it for
+granted that my husband was alive. It's horrible to think that he may be
+dead. It alters everything, somehow. Until I know, I shall be in a state
+of awful suspense. You'll make inquiries at once, won't you?"
+
+"Did you love your husband, Madame Brandt?" I asked.
+
+She looked at the fire for some time without replying. She stood with
+one foot on the fender.
+
+"I thought I did when I married him," she said at last. "I thought I did
+when he left me."
+
+"And now?"
+
+She turned her golden eyes full on me. It is a disconcerting trick of
+hers at any time, because her eyes are at once wistful and compelling;
+but on this occasion it was startling. They held mine for some seconds,
+and I caught in them a glimpse of the hieroglyphic of the woman's soul.
+Then she turned her head slowly and looked again into the fire.
+
+"Now?" she echoed. "Many things have happened between then and now. If
+he is alive and I go to him, I'll try to think again that I love him. It
+will be the only way. It will save me from playing hell with my life."
+
+"I am glad you see your relations to Dale in that light," said I.
+
+"I wasn't thinking of Dale," she said calmly.
+
+"Of what, then, if I may ask without impertinence?"
+
+She broke into a laugh which ended in a sigh, and then swung her
+splendid frame away from the fireplace and walked backwards and
+forwards, her figure swaying and her arms flung about in unrestrained
+gestures.
+
+"You are quite right," she said, with an odd note of hardness in her
+voice. "You're quite right in what you said the other day--that it was
+high time I went back to my husband. I pray God he is not dead. I have
+a feeling that he isn't. He can't be. I count on you to find him and ask
+him to meet me. It would be better than writing. I don't know what to
+say when I have a pen in my hand. You must find him and speak to him and
+send me a wire and I'll come straight away to any part of the earth. Or
+would you like me to come with you and help you find him? But no; that's
+idiotic. Forget that I have said it. I'm a fool. But he must be found.
+He must, he must!"
+
+She paused in her swinging about the room for which I was sorry, as her
+panther-in-a-cage movements were exceedingly beautiful, and she gazed
+at me with a tragic air, wringing her hands. I was puzzled to find an
+adequate reason for this sudden emotional outburst. Hitherto she had
+accepted the prospect of a resumption of married life with a fatalistic
+calm. Now when the man is either dead or has vanished into space,
+she pins all her hopes of happiness on finding him. And why had her
+salvation from destruction nothing to do with Dale? There is obviously
+another range of emotions at work beneath it all; but what their nature
+is baffles me. Although I contemplate with equanimity my little
+corner in the Garden of Prosperpine, and with indifference this common
+lodging-house of earth, and although I view mundane affairs with the
+same fine, calm, philosophic, satirical eye as if I were already a
+disembodied spirit, yet I do not like to be baffled. It makes me angry.
+But during this interview with Lola Brandt I had not time to be angry.
+I am angry now. In fact I am in a condition bordering on that of a mad
+dog. If Rogers came and disturbed me now, as I am writing, I would bite
+him. But I will set calmly down the story of this appalling afternoon.
+
+Lola stood before me wringing her hands.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"I can get an introduction to the _Chef de bureau_ of the information
+department of the _Ministere de la Guerre_ in Paris," I replied after
+a moment's reflection. "He will be able to tell me whether Captain
+Vauvenarde is alive or dead."
+
+"He is alive. He must be."
+
+"Very well. But I doubt whether Captain Vauvenarde keeps the office
+informed of his movements."
+
+"But you'll go in search of him, won't you?"
+
+"The earth is rather a large place," I objected. "He may be in Dieppe,
+or he may be on top of Mount Popocatapetl."
+
+"I'm sure you'll find him," she said encouragingly.
+
+"You'll own," said I, "that there's something humourous in the idea
+of my wandering all over the surface of the planet in search of a
+lost captain of Chasseurs. It is true that we might employ a private
+detective."
+
+"Yes!" she cried eagerly. "Why not? Then you could stay here--and I
+could go on seeing you till the news came. Let us do that."
+
+The swiftness of her change of mood surprised me.
+
+"What is the particular object of your going on seeing me?" I asked,
+with a smile.
+
+She turned away and shrugged her shoulders and took up her pensive
+attitude by the fire.
+
+"I have no other friend," she said.
+
+"There's Dale."
+
+"He's not the same."
+
+"There's Sir Joshua Oldfield."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+I lit a cigarette and sat down. There was a long silence. In some
+unaccountable way she had me under her spell again. I felt a perfectly
+insane dismay at the prospect of ending this queer intimacy, and I
+viewed her intrigue with Dale with profound distaste. Lola had become a
+habit. The chair I was sitting in was _my_ chair. Adolphus was _my_ dog.
+I hated the idea of Dale making him stand up and do sentry with the fire
+shovel, while Lola sprawled gracefully on the hearthrug. On the other
+hand the thought of remaining in London and sharing with my young friend
+the privilege of her society was intolerable.
+
+I smoked, and, watching her bosom rise and fall as she leaned forward
+with one arm on the mantelpiece, argued it out with myself, and came to
+the paradoxical conclusion that I could pack her off without a pang to
+Kamtchatka and the embraces of her unknown husband, but could not hand
+her over to Dale without feelings of the deepest repugnance. A pretty
+position to find myself in. I threw away my cigarette impatiently.
+
+Presently she said, not stirring from her pose:
+
+"I shall miss you terribly if you go. A man like you doesn't come
+into the life of a common woman like me without"--she hesitated for a
+word--"without making some impression. I can't bear to lose you."
+
+"I shall be very sorry to give up our pleasant comradeship," said I,
+"but even if I stay and send the private inquiry agent instead of going
+myself, I shan't be able to go on seeing you in this way."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It would be scarcely dignified."
+
+"On account of Dale?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+There was another pause, during which I lit another cigarette. When I
+looked up I saw great tears rolling down her cheeks. A weeping woman
+always makes me nervous. You never know what she is going to do next.
+Safety lies in checking the tears--in administering a tonic. Still, her
+wish to retain me was very touching. I rose and stood before her by the
+mantelpiece.
+
+"You can't have your pudding and eat it too," said I.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You can't have Captain Vauvenarde for your husband, Dale for your
+_cavaliere servente_, and myself for your guide, philosopher and friend
+all at the same time."
+
+"Which would you advise me to give up?"
+
+"That's obvious. Give up Dale."
+
+She uttered a sound midway between a sob and a laugh, and said, as it
+seemed, ironically:
+
+"Would you take his place?"
+
+Somewhat ironically, too, I replied, "A crock, my dear lady, with one
+foot in the grave has no business to put the other into the _Pays du
+Tendre_."
+
+But all the same I had an absurd desire to take her at her word, not
+for the sake of constituting myself her _amant en titre_, but so as
+to dispossess the poor boy who was clamouring wildly for her among his
+mother's snuffy colleagues in Berlin.
+
+"That's another reason why I shrink from your going in search of my
+husband," she said, dabbing her eyes. "Your ill-health."
+
+"I shall have to go abroad out of this dreadful climate in any case.
+Doctor's orders. And I might just as well travel about with an object in
+view as idle in Monte Carlo or Egypt."
+
+"But you might die!" she cried; and her tone touched my heart.
+
+"I've got to," I said, as gently as I could; and the moment the words
+passed my lips I regretted them.
+
+She turned a terrified look on me and seized me by the arms.
+
+"Is it as bad as that? Why haven't you told me?"
+
+I lifted my arms to her shoulders and shook my head and smiled into her
+eyes. They seemed true, honest eyes, with a world of pain behind them.
+If I had not regarded myself as the gentleman in the Greek Tragedy
+walking straight to my certain doom, and therefore holding myself aloof
+from such vain things, I should have yielded to the temptation and
+kissed her there and then. And then goodness knows what would have
+happened.
+
+As it was it was bad enough. For, as we stood holding on to each other's
+shoulders in a ridiculous and compromising attitude, the door opened
+and Dale Kynnersley burst, unannounced, into the room. He paused on the
+threshold and gaped at us, open-mouthed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+We sprang apart, for all the world like a guilty pair surprised. Luckily
+the room was in its normal dim state of illumination, so that to one
+suddenly entering, the expression on our faces was not clearly visible;
+on the other hand, the subdued light gave a romantic setting to the
+abominable situation.
+
+Lola saved it, however. She rushed to Dale.
+
+"Do you know what Mr. de Gex was just telling me? His illness--it is
+worse than any one thought. It's incurable. He can't live long; he must
+die soon. It's dreadful--dreadful! Did you know it?"
+
+Dale looked from her to me, and after a slight pause, came forward.
+
+"Is this true, Simon?"
+
+A plague on the woman for catching me in the trap! Before Dale came in
+I was on the point of putting an airy construction on my indiscreet
+speech. I had no desire to discuss my longevity with any one. I want
+to keep my miserable secret to myself. It was exasperating to have
+to entrust it even to Dale. And yet, if I repudiated her implied
+explanation of our apparent embrace it would have put her hopelessly in
+the wrong. I had to support her.
+
+"It's what the doctors say," I replied, "but whether it's true or not is
+another matter."
+
+Again he looked queerly from me to Lola and from Lola back to me. His
+first impression of our attitude had been a shock from which he found it
+difficult to recover. I smiled, and, although perfectly innocent, felt a
+villain.
+
+"Madame Brandt is good enough to be soft-hearted and to take a tragic
+view of a most commonplace contingency."
+
+"But it isn't commonplace. By God, it's horrible!" cried the boy, the
+arrested love for me suddenly gushing into his heart. "I had no idea of
+it. In Heaven's name, Simon, why didn't you tell me? My dear old Simon."
+
+Tears rushed into his eyes and he gripped my hand until I winced. I put
+my other hand on his shoulder and laughed with a contorted visage.
+
+"My good Dale, the moribund are fragile."
+
+"Oh, Lord, man, how can you make a jest of it?"
+
+"Would you have me drive about in a hearse, instead of a cab, by way of
+preparation?"
+
+"But what have the doctors told you?" asked Lola.
+
+"My two dear people!" I cried, "for goodness' sake don't fall over me
+in this way. I'm not going to die to-morrow unless my cook poisons me or
+I'm struck by lightning. I'm going to live for a deuce of a time yet.
+A couple of weeks at least. And you'll very much oblige me by not
+whispering a word abroad about what you've heard this afternoon. It
+would cause me infinite annoyance. And meanwhile I suggest to you,
+Dale, as the lawyers say, that you have been impolite enough not to say
+how-do-you-do to your hostess."
+
+He turned to her rather sheepishly, and apologised. My news had bowled
+him over, he declared. He shook hands with her, laughed and walked
+Adolphus about on his hind legs.
+
+"But where have you dropped from?" she asked.
+
+"Berlin. I came straight through. Didn't you get my wire?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I sent one."
+
+"I never got it."
+
+He swung his arms about in a fine rage.
+
+"If ever I get hold of that son of Satan I'll murder him. He was covered
+up to his beastly eyebrows in silver lace and swords and whistles and
+medals and things. He walked up and down the railway station as if he
+owned the German navy and ran trains as a genteel hobby. I gave him ten
+marks to send the telegram. The miserable beast has sneaked the lot.
+I'll get at the railway company through the Embassy and have the brute
+sacked and put in prison. Did you ever hear of such a skunk?"
+
+"He must have thought you a very simple and charming young Englishman,"
+said I.
+
+"You've done the same thing yourself!" he retorted indignantly.
+
+"Pardon me," said I. "If I do send a telegram in that loose way, I
+choose a humble and honest-looking porter and give him the exact fee for
+the telegram and a winning smile."
+
+"Rot!" said Dale, and turning to Lola--"He has demoralised the whole
+railway system of Europe with his tips. I've seen him give a franc to
+the black greasy devil that bangs at the carriage wheels with a bit of
+iron. He would give anybody anything."
+
+He had recovered his boyish pride in my ridiculous idiosyncracies, and
+was in process of illustrating again to Lola what a "splendid chap"
+I was. Poor lad! If he only knew what a treacherous, traitorous,
+Machiavelli of a hero he had got. For the moment I suffered from a nasty
+crick in the conscience.
+
+"Wouldn't he, Adolphus, you celestial old blackguard?" he laughed. Then
+suddenly: "My hat! You two are fond of darkness! It gives me the creeps.
+Do you mind, Lola, if I turn on the light?"
+
+He marched in his young way across to the switches and set the room
+in the blaze he loved. My crick of the conscience was followed by an
+impulse of resentment. He took it for granted that his will was law in
+the house. He swaggered around the room with a proprietary air. He threw
+in the casual "Lola" as if he owned her. Dale is the most delightful
+specimen of the modern youth of my acquaintance. But even Dale, with
+all his frank charm of manner, has the modern youth's offhand way with
+women. I often wonder how women abide it. But they do, more shame to
+them, and suffer more than they realise by their indulgence. When next I
+meet Maisie Ellerton I will read her a wholesome lecture, for her soul's
+good, on the proper treatment a self-respecting female should apply to
+the modern young man.
+
+Dale filled the room with his clear young laugh, and turned on every
+light in the place. Lola and I exchanged glances--she had adopted her
+usual lazy pantherine attitude in the armchair--and her glance was not
+that of a happy woman to whom a longed-for lover had unexpectedly come.
+Its real significance I could not divine, but it was more wistful than
+merely that of a fellow-conspirator.
+
+"By George!" cried Dale, pulling up a chair by Lola's side, and
+stretching out his long, well-trousered legs in front of the fire.
+"It's good to come back to civilisation and a Christian language and a
+fireside--and other things," he added, squeezing Lola's hand. "If only
+it had not been for this horrible news about you, dear old man----"
+
+"Oh, do forget it and give me a little peace!" I cried. "Why have you
+come back all of a sudden?"
+
+"The Wymington people wired for me. It seems the committee are divided
+between me and Sir Gerald Macnaughton."
+
+"He has strong claims," said I. "He has been Mayor of the place and got
+knighted by mistake. He also gives large dinners and wears a beautiful
+diamond pin."
+
+"I believe he goes to bed in it. Oh, he's an awful ass! It was he who
+said at a public function 'The Mayor of Wymington must be like Caesar's
+wife--all things to all men!' Oh, he's a colossal ass! And his conceit!
+My word!"
+
+"You needn't expatiate on it," said I. "I who speak have suffered much
+at the hands of Sir Gerald Macnaughton."
+
+"If he did get into Parliament he'd expect an armchair to be put for him
+next to the Speaker. Really, Lola, you never saw such a chap. If there
+was any one else up against me I wouldn't mind. Anyway, I'm running down
+to Wymington to-morrow to interview the committee. And if they choose
+me, then it'll be a case of 'Lord don't help me and don't help the b'ar,
+and you'll see the derndest best b'ar fight that ever was.' I'll make
+things hum in Wymington!"
+
+He went on eagerly to explain how he would make things hum. For the
+moment he had forgotten his enchantress who, understanding nothing of
+platforms and planks and electioneering machinery, smiled with pensive
+politeness at the fire. Here was the Dale that I knew and loved, boyish,
+impetuous, slangy, enthusiastic. His dark eyes flashed, and he threw
+back his head and laughed, as he enunciated his brilliant ideas for
+capturing the constituency.
+
+"When I was working for you, I made love to half the women in the place.
+You never knew that, you dear old stick. Now I'm going in on my own
+account I'll make love to the whole crowd. You won't mind, Lola, will
+you? There's safety in numbers. And when I have made love to them one
+by one I'll get 'em all together and make love to the conglomerate mass!
+And then I'll rake up all the prettiest women in London and get 'em down
+there to humbug the men--"
+
+"Lady Kynnersley will doubtless be there," said I; "and I don't quite
+see her--"
+
+He broke in with a laugh: "Oh! the mater! I'll fix up her job all right.
+She'll just love it, won't she? And then I know a lot of silly asses
+with motor-cars who'll come down. They can't talk for cob-nuts, and
+think the Local Option has something to do with vivisection, and have a
+vague idea that champagne will be cheaper if we get Tariff Reform--but
+they'll make a devil of a noise at meetings and tote people round the
+country in their cars holding banners with 'Vote for Kynnersley' on
+them. That's a sound idea, isn't it?"
+
+I gravely commended the statesmanlike sagacity of his plan of campaign,
+and promised to write as soon as I got home to one or two members of the
+committee whom I suspected of pro-Macnaughton leanings.
+
+"I do hope they'll adopt you!" I cried fervently.
+
+"So do I," murmured Lola in her low notes.
+
+"If they don't," said Dale, "I'll ask Raggles to give me an unpaid
+billet somewhere. But," he added, with a sigh, "that will be an awful
+rotten game in comparison."
+
+"I'm afraid you won't make Raggles hum," said I.
+
+He laughed, rose and straddled across the hearthrug, his back to the
+fire.
+
+"He'd throw me out if I tried, wouldn't he? But if they do adopt me--I
+swear I'll make you proud of me, Simon. I'll stick my soul into it. It's
+the least I can do in this horrid cuckoo sort of proceeding, and I feel
+I shall be fighting for you as well as for myself. My dear old chap, you
+know what I mean, don't you?"
+
+I knew, and was touched. I wished him God-speed with all my heart.
+He was a clean, honest, generous gentleman, and I admired, loved and
+respected him as he stood there full of his youth and hope. I suddenly
+felt quite old and withered at the root of my being, like some decrepit
+king who hands his crown to the young prince. I rose to take my
+leave (for what advantage was there in staying?) and felt that I was
+abandoning to Dale other things beside my crown.
+
+Lola's strong, boneless hand closed round mine in a more enveloping grip
+than ever. She looked at me appealingly.
+
+"Shall I see you again before you go?"
+
+"Before you go?" cried Dale. "Where are you off to?"
+
+"Somewhere south, out of the fogs."
+
+"When?"
+
+"At once," said I.
+
+He turned to our hostess. "We can't let him go like that. I wonder if
+you could fix up a little dinner here, Lola, for the three of us. It
+would be ripping, so cosy, you know."
+
+He glowed with the preposterous inspiration. Lola began politely:
+
+"Of course, if Mr. de Gex----"
+
+"It would be delightful," said I, "but I'm starting at once--to-morrow
+or the day after. We will have the dinner when I come back and you are a
+full-blown Member of Parliament."
+
+I made my escape and fled to my own cheerful library. It is oak-panelled
+and furnished with old oak, and the mezzo-tints on the walls are mellow.
+Of the latter, I have a good collection, among them a Prince Rupert of
+which I am proud. I threw myself, a tired man, into an armchair by the
+fire, and rang the bell for a brandy and soda. Oh, the comfort of the
+rooms, the comfort of Rogers, the comfort of the familiar backs of the
+books in the shelves! I felt loth to leave it all and go vagabonding
+about the cold world on my lunatic adventure. For the first time in my
+life I cursed Marcus Aurelius. I shook my fist at him as he stood on the
+shelf within easy reach of my hand. It was he who had put into my head
+this confounded notion of achieving eumoiriety. Am I dealing to myself,
+I asked, a happy lot and portion? Certainly not, I replied, and when
+Rogers brought me my brandy and soda I drank it off desperately. After
+that I grew better, and drew up a merry little Commination Service.
+
+A plague on the little pain inside.
+
+A plague on Lady Kynnersley for weeping me into my rash undertaking.
+
+A plague on Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos for aiding and abetting
+Lady Kynnersley.
+
+A plague on Captain Vauvenarde for running away from his wife; for
+giving up the army; for not letting me know whether he is alive or dead;
+for being, I'll warrant him, in the most uncomfortable and ungetatable
+spot on the globe.
+
+A plague on Dale for becoming infatuated with Lola Brandt. A plague on
+him for beguiling me to her acquaintance; for bursting into the room at
+that unfortunate moment; for his generous, unsuspecting love for me;
+for his youth and hope and charm; for asking me to dine with Lola and
+himself in ripping cosiness.
+
+A plague on myself--just to show that I am broad-minded.
+
+And lastly, a plague, a special plague, a veritable murrain on Lola
+Brandt for complicating the splendid singleness of my purpose. I don't
+know what to think of myself. I have become a common conundrum--which
+provides the lowest form of intellectual amusement. It is all her fault.
+
+Listen. I set out to free a young man of brilliant promise, at his
+mother's earnest entreaty, from an entanglement with an impossible lady,
+and to bring him to the feet of the most charming girl in the world who
+is dying of love for him. Could intentions be simpler or more honourable
+or more praiseworthy?
+
+I find myself, after two or three weeks, the lady's warm personal
+friend, to a certain extent her champion bound by a quixotic oath to
+restore her husband to her arms, and regarding my poor Dale with a
+feeling which is neither more nor less than green-eyed jealousy. I am
+praying heaven to grant his adoption by the Wymington committee, not
+because it will be the first step of the ladder of his career, but
+because the work and excitement of a Parliamentary election will
+prohibit overmuch lounging in _my_ chair in Lola Brandt's drawing-room.
+
+Is there any drug I wonder which can restore a eumoirous tone to the
+system?
+
+Of course, Dale came round to my chambers in the evening and talked
+about Lola and himself and me until I sent him home to bed. He kept on
+repeating at intervals that I was glorious. I grew tired at last of the
+eulogy, and, adopting his vernacular, declared that I should be jolly
+glad to get out of this rubbishy world. He protested. There was never
+such a world. It was gorgeous. What was wrong with it, anyway? As I
+could not show him the Commination Service, I picked imaginary flaws in
+the universe. I complained of its amateurishness of design. But Dale,
+who loves fact, was not drawn into a theological disputation.
+
+"Do you know, I had a deuce of a shock when I came into Lola's this
+afternoon?" he cried irrelevantly, with a loud laugh. "I thought--it was
+a damnable and idiotic thing to come into my head--but I couldn't help
+thinking you had cut me out! I wanted to tell you. You must forgive me
+for being such an ass. And I want to thank you for being so good to her
+while I was away. She has been telling me. You like her, don't you? I
+knew you would. No one can help it. Besides being other things, she's is
+such a good sort, isn't she?"
+
+I admitted her many excellencies, while he walked about the room.
+
+"By Jove!" he cried, coming to a halt. "I've got a grand idea. My little
+plan has succeeded so well with you that I've a good mind to try it on
+my mother."
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" I asked.
+
+"Why shouldn't I take the bull by the horns and bring my mother and Lola
+together?"
+
+I gasped. "My dear boy," said I. "Do you want to kill me outright? I
+can't stand such shocks to the imagination."
+
+"But it would be grand!" he exclaimed, delighted. "Why shouldn't
+mother take a fancy to Lola? You can imagine her roping her in for the
+committee!"
+
+I refused to imagine it for one instant, and I had the greatest
+difficulty in the world to persuade him to renounce his maniacal
+project. I am going to permit no further complications.
+
+
+
+I have been busy for the past day or two setting my house in order.
+I start to-morrow for Paris. All my little affairs are comfortably
+settled, and I can set out on my little trip to Avernus via Paris
+and the habitat of Captain Vauvenarde with a quiet conscience. I have
+allayed the anxiety of my sisters, whispered mysterious encouragement
+to Maisie Ellerton, held out hopes of her son's emancipation to Lady
+Kynnersley, played fairy godmother to various poor and deserving
+persons, and brought myself into an enviable condition of glowing
+philanthropy.
+
+To my great relief the Wymington committee have adopted Dale as their
+candidate at the by-election. He can scarcely contain himself for joy.
+He is like a child who has been told that he shall be taken to the
+seaside. I believe he lies awake all night thinking how he will make
+things hum.
+
+The other side have chosen Wilberforce, who unsuccessfully contested the
+Ferney division of Wiltshire at the last general election. He is old and
+ugly. Dale is young and beautiful. I think Dale will get in.
+
+I have said good-bye to Lola. The astonishing woman burst into tears
+and kissed my hands and said something about my being the arbiter of
+her destiny--a Gallic phrase which she must have picked up from Captain
+Vauvenarde. Then she buried her face in the bristling neck of Adolphus,
+the Chow dog, and declared him to be her last remaining consolation.
+Even Anastasius Papadopoulos had ceased to visit her. I uttered words of
+comfort.
+
+"I have left you Dale at any rate."
+
+She smiled enigmatically through her tears.
+
+"I'm not ungrateful. I don't despise the crumbs."
+
+Which remark, now that I come to think of it, was not flattering to my
+young friend.
+
+But what is the use of thinking of it? My fire is burning low. It is
+time I ended this portion of my "Rule and Example of Eumoiriety," which,
+I fear, has not followed the philosophic line I originally intended.
+
+The die is cast. My things are packed. Rogers, who likes his British
+beef and comforts, is resigned to the prospect of Continental travel,
+and has gone to bed hours ago. There is no more soda water in the
+siphon. I must go to bed.
+
+Paris to-morrow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"Ay!" says Touchstone; "now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was
+at home I was in a better place."
+
+Now am I in Algiers; the more fool I; et cetera, et cetera.
+
+It is true that from my bedroom window in the Albany I cannot see
+the moon silvering the Mediterranean, or hear the soft swish of
+pepper-trees; it is true that oranges and eucalyptus do not flourish
+in the Albany Court-yard as they do in this hotel garden at Mustapha
+Superieur; it is true that the blue African sky and sunshine are more
+agreeable than Piccadilly fogs; but, after all, his own kennel is
+best for a dying dog, and his own familiar surroundings best for his
+declining hours. Again, Touchstone had not the faintest idea what he was
+going to do in the Forest of Arden, and I was equally ignorant of what
+would befall when I landed at Algiers. He was bound on a fool adventure,
+and so was I. He preferred the easy way of home, and so do I. I have
+always loved Touchstone, but I have never thoroughly understood him till
+now.
+
+It rained persistently in Paris. It rained as I drove from the Gare du
+Nord to my hotel. It rained all night. It rained all the day I spent
+there and it rained as I drove from my hotel to the Gare de Lyon.
+A cheery newspaper informed me that there were torrential rains at
+Marseilles. I mentioned this to Rogers, who tried to console me by
+reminding me that we were only staying at Marseilles for a few hours.
+
+"That has nothing to do with it," said I. "At Marseilles I always eat
+bouillabaisse on the quay. Fancy eating bouillabaisse in the pouring
+rain!"
+
+As usual, Rogers could not execute the imaginative exercise I
+prescribed; so he strapped my hold-all with an extra jerk.
+
+Now, when homespun London is wet and muddy, no one minds very much.
+But when silken Paris lies bedraggled with rain and mud, she is the
+forlornest thing under the sky. She is a hollow-eyed pale city, the
+rouge is washed from her cheeks, her hair hangs dank and dishevelled,
+in her aspect is desolation, and moaning is in her voice. I have a
+Sultanesque feeling with regard to Paris. So long as she is amusing and
+gay I love her. I adore her mirth, her chatter, her charming ways. But
+when she has the toothache and snivels, she bores me to death. I lose
+all interest in her. I want to clap my hands for my slaves, in order to
+bid them bring me in something less dismal in the way of fair cities.
+
+I drove to the Rue Saint-Dominique and handed in my card and letter
+of introduction at the _Ministere de la Guerre_. I was received by
+the official in charge of the _Bureau des Renseignements_ with bland
+politeness tempered with suspicion that I might be taking a mental
+photograph of the office furniture in order to betray its secret to
+a foreign government. After many comings and goings of orderlies
+and underlings, he told me very little in complicated and reluctant
+language. Captain Vauvenarde had resigned his commission in the
+Chasseurs d'Afrique two years ago. At the present moment the Bureau had
+no information to give as to his domicile.
+
+"Have you no suggestion, Monsieur, to offer?" I asked, "whereby I may
+obtain this essential information concerning Captain Vauvenarde?"
+
+"His old comrades in the regiment might know, Monsieur."
+
+"And the regiment?"
+
+He opened the _Annuaire Officiel de l'Armee Francaise_, just as I might
+have done myself, and said:
+
+"There are six regiments. One is at Blidah, another at Tlemcen, another
+at Constantine, another at Tunis, another at Algiers, and another at
+Mascara."
+
+"To which regiment, then, did Captain Vauvenarde belong?" I inquired.
+
+He referred to one of the dossiers that the orderlies had brought him.
+
+"The 3rd, Monsieur."
+
+"I should get information, then, from Tlemcen?"
+
+"Evidently, Monsieur."
+
+I thanked him and withdrew, to his obvious relief. Seekers after
+knowledge are unpopular even in organisations so far removed from the
+Circumlocution Office as the French _Ministere de la Guerre_. However,
+he had put me on the trail of my man.
+
+During my homeward drive through the rain I reflected. I might, of
+course, write to the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 3rd Regiment at Tlemcen,
+and wait for his reply. But even if he answered by return of post, I
+should have to remain in Paris for nearly a week.
+
+"That," said I, wiping from my face half a teacupful of liquid mud
+which had squirted in through the cab window--"that I'll never do. I'll
+proceed at once to Algiers. If I can get no news of him there, I'll go
+to Tlemcen myself. In all probability I shall learn that he is residing
+here in Paris, a stone's throw from the Madeleine."
+
+So I started for Algiers. The next morning, before the sailing of the
+_Marechal Bugeaud_, one of the quaint churns styled a steamship by the
+vanity of the French Company which undertakes to convey respectable folk
+across the Mediterranean, I ate my bouillabaisse below an awning on the
+sunny quay at Marseilles. The torrential rains had ceased. I advised
+Rogers to take equivalent sustenance, as no lunch is provided on day of
+sailing by the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique. I caught sight of him
+in a dark corner of the restaurant--he is too British to eat in the
+open air on the terrace, or perhaps too modest to have his meal in
+my presence--struggling grimly with a beefsteak, and, as he is a
+teetotaller, with an unimaginable, horrific liquid which he poured out
+from a vessel vaguely resembling a teapot.
+
+My meal over, and having nearly an hour to spare, I paid my bill, rose
+and turned the corner of the quay into the Cannebiere, thinking to have
+my coffee at one of the cafes in that thoroughfare of which the natives
+say that, if Paris had a Cannebiere, it would be a little Marseilles. I
+suppose for the Marseillais there is a magic in the sonorous name; for,
+after all, it is but a commonplace street of shops running from the
+quays into the heart of the town. It is also deformed by tramcars. I
+strolled leisurely up, thinking of the many swans that were geese, and
+Paradises that were building-plots, and heroes that were dummies, and
+solidities that were shadows, in short, enjoying a gentle post-prandial
+mood, when my eyes suddenly fell on a scene which brought me down from
+such realities to the realm of the fantastic. There, a few yards in
+front of me, at the outer edge of the terrace of a cafe, clad in
+his eternal silk hat, frock coat, and yellow gloves, sat Professor
+Anastasius Papadopoulos in earnest conversation with a seedy stranger of
+repellent mien. The latter was clean-shaven and had a broken nose,
+and wore a little round, soft felt hat. The dwarf was facing me. As
+he caught sight of me a smile of welcome overspread his Napoleonic
+features. He rose, awaited my approach, and, bareheaded, made his usual
+sweeping bow, which he concluded by resting his silk hat on the pit of
+his stomach. I lifted my hat politely and would have passed on, but he
+stood in my path. I extended my hand. He took it after the manner of a
+provincial mayor receiving royalty.
+
+"_Couvrez-vous, Monsieur, je vous en prie_," said I.
+
+He covered his head. "Monsieur," said he, "I beseech you to be seated,
+and do me the honour of joining me in the coffee and excellent cognac of
+this establishment."
+
+"Willingly," said I, mindful of Lola's tale of the long knife which he
+carried concealed about his person.
+
+"Permit me to present my friend Monsieur Achille Saupiquet--Monsieur de
+Gex, a great English statesman and a friend of that _gnadigsten Engel_,
+Madame Lola Brandt."
+
+Monsieur Saupiquet and I saluted each other formally. I took a seat.
+Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos moved a bundle of papers tied up with
+pink ribbon from in front of me, and ordered coffee and cognac.
+
+"Monsieur Saupiquet also knows Madame Brandt," he explained.
+
+"_Bien sur_," said Monsieur Saupiquet. "She owes me fifteen sous."
+
+Papadopoulos turned on his sharply. "Will you be silent!"
+
+The other grumbled beneath his breath.
+
+"I hope Madame is well," said Papadopoulos.
+
+I said that she appeared so, when last I had the pleasure of seeing her.
+The dwarf turned to his friend.
+
+"Monsieur has also done my cats the honour of attending a rehearsal.
+He has seen Hephaestus, and his tears have dropped in sympathy over the
+irreparable loss of my beautiful Santa Bianca."
+
+"I hope the talented survivors," said I, "are enjoying their usual
+health."
+
+"My daily bulletin from my pupil and assistant, Quast, contains
+excellent reports. _Prosit_, Signore."
+
+It was only when I found myself at the table with the dwarf and his
+broken-nosed friend that I collected my wits sufficiently to realise
+the probable reason of his presence in Marseilles. The grotesque little
+creature had actually kept his ridiculous word. He, too, had come south
+in search of the lost Captain Vauvenarde. We were companions in the Fool
+Adventure. There was something mediaeval in the combination; something
+legendary. Put back the clock a few centuries and there we were, the
+Knight and the Dwarf, riding together on our quest, while the Lady for
+whose sake we were making idiots of ourselves was twiddling her fair
+thumbs in her tower far beyond the seas.
+
+Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos broke upon this pleasing fancy by
+remarking again that Monsieur Saupiquet was a friend of Madame Brandt.
+
+"He was with her at the time of her great bereavement."
+
+"Bereavement?" I asked forgetfully.
+
+"Her horse Sultan."
+
+He whispered the words with solemn reverence. I must confess to being
+tired of the horse Sultan and disinclined to treat his loss seriously.
+
+"Monsieur Saupiquet," said I, "doubtless offered her every consolation."
+
+"He used to travel with her and look after Sultan's well-being. He was
+her----"
+
+"Her Master of the Horse," I suggested.
+
+"Precisely. You have the power of using the right word, Monsieur de Gex.
+It is a great gift. My good friend Saupiquet is attached to a circus at
+present stationed in Toulon. He came over, at my request, to see me--on
+affairs of the deepest importance"--he waved the bundle of papers--"the
+very deepest importance. _Nicht wahr_, Saupiquet?"
+
+"_Bien sur_," murmured Saupiquet, who evidently did not count loquacity
+among his vices.
+
+I wondered whether these important affairs concerned the whereabouts of
+Captain Vauvenarde; but the dwarf's air of mystery forbade my asking for
+his confidence. Besides, what should a groom in a circus know of retired
+Captains of Chasseurs? I said:
+
+"You're a very busy man, Monsieur le Professeur."
+
+He tapped his domelike forehead. "I am never idle. I carry on here
+gigantic combinations. I should have been a lawyer. I can spread nets
+that no one sees, and then--pst! I draw the rope and the victim is
+in the toils of Anastasius Papadopoulos. _Hast du nicht das bemerkt_,
+Saupiquet?"
+
+"_Bien sur_," said Saupiquet again. He seemed perfectly conversant with
+the dwarf's polyglot jargon.
+
+"To the temperament of the artist," continued the modest Papadopoulos,
+"I join the intellect of the man of affairs and the heart of a young
+poet. I am always young; yet as you see me here I am thirty-seven years
+of age."
+
+He jumped from his chair and struck an attitude of the Apollo Belvedere.
+
+"I should never have thought that you were of the same age as a bettered
+person like myself," said I.
+
+"The secret of youth," he rejoined, sitting down again, "is enthusiasm,
+the worship of a woman, and intimate association with cats."
+
+Monsieur Saupiquet received this proposition without a gleam of interest
+manifesting itself in his dull blue eyes. His broken nose gave his face
+a singularly unintelligent expression. He poured out another glass of
+cognac from the graduated carafe in front of him and sipped it slowly.
+Then he gazed at me dully, almost for the first time, and said:
+
+"Madame Brandt owes me fifteen sous."
+
+"And I say that she doesn't!" cried the dwarf fiercely. "I send for him
+to discuss matters of the deepest gravity, and he comes talking about
+his fifteen sous. I can't get anything out of him, but his fifteen sous.
+And the _carissima signora_ doesn't owe it to him. She can't owe it
+to him. _Voyons_, Saupiquet, if you don't renounce your miserable
+pretensions you will drive me mad, you will make me burst into tears,
+you will make me throw you out into the street, and hold you down until
+you are run over by a tramcar. You will--you will"--he shook his fist
+passionately as he sought for a climactic menace--"you will make me spit
+in your eye."
+
+He dashed his fist down on the marble table so that the glasses jingled.
+Saupiquet finished his cognac undisturbed.
+
+"I say that Madame Brandt owes me fifteen sous, and until that is paid,
+I do no business."
+
+The little man grew white with exasperation, and his upper lip
+lifted like an angry cat's, showing his teeth. I shrank from meeting
+Saupiquet's eye. Hurriedly, I drew a providential handful of coppers
+from my pocket.
+
+"Stop, Herr Professor," said I, eager to prevent the shedding of tears,
+blood, or saliva, "I have just remembered. Madame did mention to me an
+unaquitted debt in the South, and begged me to settle it for her. I am
+delighted to have the opportunity. Will you permit me to act as Madam's
+banker?"
+
+The dwarf at once grew suave and courteous.
+
+"The word of _carissima signora_ is the word of God," said he.
+
+I solemnly counted out the fifteen halfpence on the table and pushed
+them over to Saupiquet, who swept them up and put them in his pocket.
+
+"Now we can talk," said he.
+
+"Make him give you a receipt!" cried Papadopoulos excitedly. "I know
+him! He is capable of any treachery where money is concerned. He is
+capable of re-demanding the sum from Madame Brandt. He is an ingrate.
+And she, Monsieur le Membre du Parlement Anglais, has overwhelmed him
+with benefits. Do you know what she did? She gave him the carcass of her
+beloved Sultan to dispose of. And he sold it, Monsieur, and he got drunk
+on the money."
+
+The mingled emotions of sorrow at the demise of Sultan, the royal
+generosity of Madame Brandt, and the turpitude of his friend Saupiquet,
+brought tears to the little man's eyes. Monsieur Saupiquet shrugged his
+shoulders unconcernedly.
+
+"A poor man has to get drunk when he can. It is only the rich who can
+get drunk when they like."
+
+I looked at my watch and rose in a hurry.
+
+"I'm afraid I must take an unceremonious leave of you, Monsieur le
+Professeur."
+
+"You must wait for the receipt," cried the dwarf.
+
+"Will you do me the honour of holding it for me until we meet again?
+Hi!" The interpellation was addressed to a cabman a few yards away.
+"Your conversation has made me neglect the flight of time. I shall only
+just catch my boat."
+
+"Your boat?"
+
+"I am going to Algiers."
+
+"Where will you be staying, Monsieur? I ask in no spirit of vulgar
+curiosity."
+
+I raised a protesting hand, and with a smile named my hotel.
+
+"I arrived here from Algiers yesterday afternoon," he said, "and I
+proceed there again to-morrow."
+
+"I regret," said I, "that you are not coming to-day, so that I could
+have the pleasure of your company on the voyage."
+
+My polite formula seemed to delight Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos
+enormously. He made a series of the most complicated bows, to the joy
+of the waiters and the passers-by. I shook hands with him and with
+the stolid Monsieur Saupiquet, and waving my hat more like an excited
+Montenegrin than the most respectable of British valetudinarians, I
+drove off to the Quai de la Joliette, where I found an anxious but
+dogged Rogers, in the midst of a vociferating crowd, literally holding
+the bridge that gave access to the _Marechal Bugeaud_.
+
+"Thank Heaven, you've come, sir! You almost missed it. I couldn't have
+held out another minute."
+
+I, too, was thankful. If I had missed the boat I should have had to wait
+till the next day and crossed in the embarrassing and unrestful company
+of Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos. It is not that I dislike the
+little man, or have the Briton's nervous shrinking from being seen
+in eccentric society; but I wish to eliminate mediaevalism as far as
+possible from my quest. In conjunction with this crazy-headed little
+trainer of cats it would become too preposterous even for my light
+sardonic humour. I resolved to dismiss him from my mind altogether.
+
+Yet, in spite of my determination, and in spite of one of Monsieur
+Lenotre's fascinating monographs on the French Revolution, on which
+I had counted to beguile the tedium of the journey, I could not get
+Anastasius Papadopoulos out of my head. He stayed with me the whole of
+a storm-tossed night, and all the next morning. He has haunted my
+brain ever since. I see him tossing his arms about in fury, while the
+broken-nosed Saupiquet makes his monotonous claim for the payment
+of sevenpence halfpenny; I hear him speak in broken whispers of the
+disastrous quadruped on whose skin and hoofs Saupiquet got drunk. I
+see him strutting about and boasting of his intellect. I see him taking
+leave of Lola Brandt, and trotting magnificently out of the room bent on
+finding Captain Vauvenarde. He haunts my slumbers. I hope to goodness he
+will not take to haunting this delectable hotel.
+
+I wonder, after all, whether there is any method in his madness--for mad
+he is, as mad as can be. Why does he come backwards and forwards between
+Algiers and Marseilles? What has Saupiquet to do with his quest? What
+revelation was he about to make on the payment of his fifteen sous?
+It is all so grotesque, so out of relation with ordinary life. I feel
+inclined to go up to the retired Colonels and elderly maiden ladies, who
+seem to form the majority of my fellow-guests, and pinch them and ask
+them whether they are real, or, like Papadopoulos and Saupiquet, the
+gentler creatures of a nightmare.
+
+Well, I have written to the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 3rd Regiment of
+Chasseurs at Tlemcen, which is away down by the Morocco frontier. I have
+also written to Lola Brandt. I seem to miss her as much as any of the
+friends I have left behind me in England. I cannot help the absurd fancy
+that her rich vitality helps me along. I have not been feeling quite
+so robust as I did when I saw her daily. And twinges are coming more
+frequently. I don't think that rolling about in the Mediterranean on
+board the _Marechal Bugeaud_ is good for little pains inside.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+When I began this autobiographical sketch of the last few weeks of my
+existence, I had conceived, as I have already said, the notion of making
+it chiefly a guide to conduct for my young disciple, Dale Kynnersley.
+Not only was it to explain to him clearly the motives which led to my
+taking any particular line of action with regard to his affairs, and so
+enable me to escape whatever blame he might, through misunderstanding,
+be disposed to cast on me, but also to elevate his mind, stimulate his
+ambitions, and improve his morals. It was to be a Manual of Eumoiriety.
+It was to be sweetened with philosophic reflections and adorned with
+allusions to the lives of the great masters of their destiny who have
+passed away. It was to have been a pretty little work after the manner
+of Montaigne, with the exception that it ran of its own accord into
+narrative form. But I am afraid Lola Brandt has interposed herself
+between me and my design. She had brought me down from the serene
+philosophic plane where I could think and observe human happenings and
+analyse them and present them in their true aspect to my young friend.
+She has set me down in the thick of events--and not events such as
+the smiling philosopher is in the habit of dealing with, but lunatic,
+fantastic occurrences with which no system of philosophy invented by man
+is capable of grappling. I can just keep my head, that is all, and note
+down what happens more or less day by day, so that when the doings of
+dwarfs and captains, and horse-tamers and youthful Members of Parliament
+concern me no more, Dale Kynnersley can have a bald but veracious
+statement of fact. And as I have before mentioned, he loves facts, just
+as a bear loves honey.
+
+I passed a quiet day or two in my hotel garden, among the sweet-peas,
+and the roses, and the geraniums. There were little shady summer-houses
+where one could sit and dream, and watch the blue sky and the palms and
+the feathery pepper trees drooping with their coral berries, and the
+golden orange-trees and the wisteria and the great gorgeous splash of
+purple bougainvillea above the Moorish arches of the hotel. There were
+mild little walks in the eucalyptus woods behind, where one went through
+acanthus and wild absinthe, and here and there as the path wound, the
+great blue bay came into view, and far away the snow-capped peaks of the
+Atlas. There were warmth and sunshine, and the unexciting prattle of
+the retired Colonels and maiden ladies. There was a hotel library filled
+with archaic fiction. I took out Ainsworth's "Tower of London," and
+passed a happy morning in the sun renewing the thrills of my childhood.
+I began to forget the outer world in my enchanted garden, like a knight
+in the Forest of Broceliande.
+
+Then came the letter from Tlemcen. The Lieutenant-Colonel commanding
+the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs d'Afrique had received my honoured
+communication but regretted to say that he, together with all the
+officers of the regiment, had severed their connection with Captain
+Vauvenarde, and that they were ignorant of his present address.
+
+This was absurd. A man does not resign from his regiment and within
+a year or two disappear like a ghost from the ken of every one of
+his brother officers. I read the letter again. Did the severance of
+connection mean the casting out of a black sheep from their midst?
+I came to the conclusion that it did. They had washed their hands of
+Captain Vauvenarde, and desired to hear nothing of him in the future.
+
+So I awoke from my lethargy, and springing up sent not for my shield and
+spear, but for an "Indicateur des Chemins de Fer." I would go to Tlemcen
+and get to the bottom of it. I searched the time-table and found two
+trains, one starting from Algiers at nine-forty at night and getting
+into Tlemcen at noon next day, and one leaving at six-fifty in the
+morning and arriving at half-past ten at night. I groaned aloud. The
+dealing unto oneself a happy life and portion did not include abominable
+train journeys like these. I was trying to decide whether I should
+travel all night or all day when the Arab chasseur of the hotel brought
+me a telegram. I opened it. It ran:
+
+
+"Starting for Algiers. Meet me.--LOLA."
+
+
+It was despatched that morning from Victoria Station. I gazed at it
+stupidly. Why in the world was Lola Brandt coming to join me in Algiers?
+If she had wanted to do her husband hunting on her own account, why had
+she put me to the inconvenience of my journey? Her action could not have
+been determined by my letter about Anastasius Papadopoulos, as a short
+calculation proved that it could not have reached her. I wandered round
+and round the garden paths vainly seeking for the motive. Was it escape
+from Dale? Had she, womanlike, taken the step which she was so anxious
+to avoid--and in order to avoid taking which all this bother had
+arisen--and given the boy his dismissal? If so, why had she not gone to
+Paris or St. Petersburg or Terra del Fuego? Why Algiers? Dale abandoned
+outright, the necessity for finding her husband had disappeared. Perhaps
+she was coming to request me, on that account, to give up the search.
+But why travel across seas and continents when a telegram or a letter
+would have sufficed? She was coming at any rate; and as she gave no date
+I presumed that she would travel straight through and arrive in about
+forty-eight hours. This reflection caused a gleam of sunshine to
+traverse my gloom. I was not physically capable of performing the
+journey to Tlemcen and back before her arrival. I could, therefore,
+dream among the roses of the garden for another couple of days. And when
+she came, perhaps she would like to go to Tlemcen herself and try
+the effect of her woman's fascinations on the Lieutenant-Colonel and
+officers of the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs d'Afrique.
+
+In any case, her sudden departure argued well for Dale's liberation.
+If the rupture had occurred I was quite contented. That is what I had
+wished to accomplish. It only remained now to return to London, while
+breath yet stayed in my body, and lead him diplomatically to the feet of
+Maisie Ellerton. Then I would have ended my eumoirous task, and my last
+happy words would be a paternal benediction. But all the same, I had set
+forth to find this confounded captain and did not want to be hindered.
+The sportsman's instinct which, in my robust youth, had led me to crawl
+miles on my belly over wet heather in order to get a shot at a stag, I
+found, somewhat to my alarm, was urging me on this chase after Captain
+Vauvenarde. He was my quarry. I resented interference. Deer-stalking
+then, and man-stalking now, I wanted no petticoats in the party. I
+worked myself up into an absurd state of irritability. Why was she
+coming to spoil the sport? I had arranged to track her husband down,
+reason with him, work on his feelings, telegraph for his wife, and in
+an affecting interview throw them into each other's arms. Now, goodness
+knows what would happen. Certainly not my beautifully conceived _coup de
+theatre_.
+
+"And she has the impertinence," I cried in my wrath, "to sign herself
+'Lola'! As if I ever called her, or could ever be in a position to call
+her 'Lola'! I should like to know," I exclaimed, hurling the "Indicateur
+des Chemins de Fer" on to the seat of a summer-house, built after the
+manner of a little Greek temple, "I should like to know what the deuce
+she means by it!"
+
+"Hallo! Hallo! What the devil's the matter?" cried a voice; and I
+found I had disturbed from his slumbers an unnoticed Colonel of British
+Cavalry.
+
+"A thousand pardons!" said I. "I thought I was alone, and gave vent to
+the feelings of the moment."
+
+Colonel Bunnion stretched himself and joined me.
+
+"That's the worst of this place," he said. "It's so liverish. One lolls
+about and sleeps all day long, and one's liver gets like a Strasburg
+goose's and plays Old Harry with one's temper. Why one should come here
+when there are pheasants to be shot in England, I don't know."
+
+"Neither your liver nor your temper seem to be much affected, Colonel,"
+said I, "for you've been violently awakened from a sweet sleep and are
+in a most amiable frame of mind."
+
+He laughed, suggested exercise, the Briton's panacea for all ills, and
+took me for a walk. When we returned at dusk, and after I had had tea
+before the fire (for December evenings in Algiers are chilly) in one of
+the pretty Moorish alcoves of the lounge, my good humour was restored. I
+viewed our pursuit of Captain Vauvenarde in its right aspect--that of
+a veritable Snark-Hunt of which I was the Bellman--and the name "Lola"
+curled itself round my heart with the same grateful sensation of comfort
+as the warm China tea. After all, it was only as Lola that I thought
+of her. The name fitted her personality, which Brandt did not. Out
+of "Brandt" I defy you to get any curvilinear suggestion. I reflected
+dreamily that it would be pleasant to walk with her among the roses in
+the sunshine and to drink tea with her in dusky Moorish alcoves. I also
+thought, with an enjoyable spice of malice, of what the retired Colonels
+and elderly maiden ladies would have to say about Lola when she arrived.
+They should have a gorgeous time.
+
+So light-hearted did I become that, the next evening, while I was
+dressing for dinner, I did not frown when the chasseur brought me up the
+huge trilingual visiting-card of Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos.
+
+"Show the gentleman up," said I.
+
+Rogers handed me my black tie and began to gather together discarded
+garments so as to make the room tidy for the visitor. It was a
+comfortable bed-sitting-room, with the bed in an alcove and a tiny
+dressing-room attached. A wood fire burned on the hearth on each side of
+which was an armchair. Presently there came a knock at the door. Rogers
+opened it and admitted Papadopoulos, who forthwith began to execute his
+usual manoeuvres of salutation. Rogers stood staring and open-mouthed
+at the apparition. It took all his professional training in
+imperturbability to enable him to make a decent exit. This increased my
+good humour. I grasped the dwarf's hand.
+
+"My dear Professor, I am delighted to see you. Pray excuse my receiving
+you in this unceremonious fashion, and sit down by the fire."
+
+I hastily completed my toilette by stuffing my watch, letter-case, loose
+change and handkerchief into my pockets, and took a seat opposite him.
+
+"It is I," said he politely, "who must apologise for this untimely call.
+I have wanted to pay my respects to you since I arrived in Algiers, but
+till now I have had no opportunity."
+
+"Allow me," said I, "to disembarrass you of your hat."
+
+I took the high-crowned, flat-brimmed thing which he was nursing
+somewhat nervously on his knees, and put it on the table. He murmured
+that I was "_Sehr aimable_."
+
+"And the charming Monsieur Saupiquet, how is he?" I asked.
+
+He drew out his gilt-embossed pocket-book, and from it extracted an
+envelope.
+
+"This," said he, handing it to me, "is the receipt. I have to thank you
+again for regulating the debt, as it has enabled me to transact with
+Monsieur Saupiquet the business on which I summoned him from Toulon. He
+is the most obstinate, pig-headed camel that ever lived, and I believe
+he has returned to Toulon in the best of health. No, thank you," he
+added, refusing my offer of cigarettes, "I don't smoke. It disturbs
+the perfect adjustment of my nerves, and so imperils my gigantic
+combinations. It is also distasteful to my cats."
+
+"You must miss them greatly," said I.
+
+He sighed--then his face lit up with inspiration.
+
+"Ah, signor! What would one not sacrifice for an idea, for duty, for
+honour, for the happiness of those we love?"
+
+"Those are sentiments, Monsieur Papadopoulos," I remarked, "which do you
+infinite credit."
+
+"And, therefore, I express them, sir," he replied, "to show you what
+manner of man I am." He paused for a moment; then bending forward, his
+hands on his little knees--he was sitting far back in the chair and his
+legs were dangling like a child's--he regarded me intently.
+
+"Would you be equally chivalrous for the sake of an idea?"
+
+I replied that I hoped I should conduct myself _en galant homme_ in any
+circumstances.
+
+"I knew it," he cried. "My intuition is never wrong. An English
+statesman is as fearless as Agamemnon, and as wise as Nestor. Have you
+your evening free?"
+
+"Yes," I replied wonderingly.
+
+"Would you care to devote it to a perilous adventure? Not so perilous,
+for I"--he thumped his chest--"will be there. But still _molto
+gefahrlich_."
+
+His black eyes held mine in burning intensity. So as to hide a smile I
+lit a cigarette. I know not what little imp in motley possessed me that
+evening. He seemed to hit me over the head with his bladder, and counsel
+me to play the fool like himself, for once in my life before I died. I
+could almost hear him speaking.
+
+"Surely a crazy dwarf out of a nightmare is more entertaining company
+than decayed Colonels of British Cavalry."
+
+I blew two or three puffs of my cigarette, and met my guest's eager
+gaze.
+
+"I shall be happy to put myself at your disposal," said I. "May I ask,
+without indiscretion--?"
+
+"No, no," he interrupted, "don't ask. Secrecy is part of the gigantic
+combination. _En galant homme_, I require of you--confidence."
+
+With an irresistible touch of mockery I said: "Professor Papadopoulos,
+I will be happy to follow you blindfold to the lair of whatever
+fire-breathing dragon you may want me to help you destroy."
+
+He rose and grasped his hat and made me a profound bow.
+
+"You will not find me wanting in courage, Monsieur. There is
+another small favour I would ask of you. Will you bring some of your
+visiting-cards?"
+
+"With pleasure," said I.
+
+At that moment the gong clanged loudly through the hotel.
+
+"It is your dinner-hour," said the dwarf. "I depart. Our rendezvous--"
+
+"Let us have no rendezvous, my dear Professor," I interposed. "What more
+simple than that you should do me the pleasure of dining with me here?
+We can thus fortify ourselves with food and drink for our adventure, and
+we can start on it comfortably together whenever it seems good to you."
+
+The little man put his head on one side and looked at me in an odd way.
+
+"Do you mean," he asked in a softened voice, "that you ask me to dine
+with you in the midst of your aristocratic compatriots?"
+
+"Why, evidently," said I, baffled. "It's only an ordinary table d'hote
+dinner."
+
+To my astonishment, tears actually spurted out of the eyes of the
+amazing little creature. He took my hand and before I knew what he was
+going to do with it he had touched it with his lips.
+
+"My dear Professor!" I cried in dismay.
+
+He put up a pudgy hand, and said with great dignity:
+
+"I cannot dine with you, Monsieur de Gex. But I thank you from my heart
+for your generous kindness. I shall never forget it to my dying day."
+
+"But----"
+
+He would listen to no protests. "If you will do me the honour of coming
+at nine o'clock to the Cafe de Bordeaux, at the corner of the Place
+du Gouvernement, I shall be there. _Auf wiedersehen_, Monsieur, and a
+thousand thanks. I beg you as a favour not to accompany me. I couldn't
+bear it."
+
+And, drawing a great white handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his
+eyes, blew his nose, and disappeared like a flash through the door which
+I held open for him.
+
+I went down to dinner in a chastened mood. The little man had not shown
+me before the pathetic side of the freak's life. By asking him to dinner
+as if he were normal I had earned his eternal gratitude. And yet, with
+a smile, which I trust the Recording Angel when he makes up my final
+balance-sheet of good and evil will not ascribe to an unfeeling heart,
+I could not help formulating the hope that his gratitude would not be
+shown by presents of China fowls sitting on eggs, Tyrolese chalets and
+bottles with ladders and little men inside them. I did not feel within
+me the wide charity of Lola Brandt; and I could not repress a smile, as
+I ate my solitary meal, at the perils of the adventure to which I was
+invited. I had no doubt that it bore the same relation to danger as
+Monsieur Saupiquet's sevenpence-halfpenny bore to a serious debt.
+
+Colonel Bunnion, a genial little red-faced man, with bulgy eyes and
+a moustache too big for his body, who sat, also solitary, at the next
+table to mine, suddenly began to utter words which I discovered were
+addressed to me.
+
+"Most amazing thing happened to me as I was coming down to dinner. Just
+got out of the corridor to the foot of the stairs, when down rushed
+something about three foot nothing in a devil of a top-hat and butted me
+full in the pit of the stomach, and bounded off like a football. When I
+picked it up I found it was a man--give you my word--it was a man. About
+so high. Gave me quite a turn."
+
+"That," said I, with a smile, "was my friend Professor Anastasius
+Papadopoulos."
+
+"A friend of yours?"
+
+"He had just been calling on me."
+
+"Then I wish you'd entreat him not to go downstairs like a six-inch
+shell. I'll have a bruise to-morrow where the crown of his hat caught me
+as big as a soup-plate."
+
+I offered the cheerily indignant warrior apologies for my friend's
+parabolic method of descent, and suggested Elliman's Embrocation.
+
+"The most extraordinary part of it," he interrupted, "was that when I
+picked him up he was weeping like anything. What was he crying about?"
+
+"He is a sensitive creature," said I, "and he doesn't come upon the pit
+of the stomach of a Colonel of British Cavalry every day in the week."
+
+He sniffed uncertainly at the remark for a second or two and then
+broke into a laugh and asked me to play bridge after dinner. On the two
+preceding evenings he and I had attempted to cheer, in this manner,
+the desolation of a couple of the elderly maiden ladies. But I may
+say, parenthetically, that as he played bridge as if he were leading a
+cavalry charge according to a text-book on tactics, and as I play card
+games in a soft, mental twilight, and as the two ladies were very keen
+bridge players indeed, I had great doubts as to the success of our
+attempts.
+
+"I'm sorry," said I, "but I'm going down into the town to-night."
+
+"Theatre? If so, I'll go with you."
+
+The gallant gentleman was always at a loose end. Unless he could
+persuade another human being to do something with him--no matter
+what--he would joyfully have played cat's cradle with me by the hour--he
+sat in awful boredom meditating on his liver.
+
+"I'm not going to the theatre," I said, "and I wish I could ask you to
+accompany me on my adventure."
+
+The Colonel raised his eyebrows. I laughed.
+
+"I'm not going to twang guitars under balconies."
+
+The Colonel reddened and swore he had never thought of such a thing. He
+was a perjured villain; but I did not tell him so.
+
+"In what my adventure will consist I can't say," I remarked.
+
+"If you're going to fool about Algiers at night you'd better carry a
+revolver."
+
+I told him I did not possess such deadly weapons. He offered to lend
+me one. The two Misses Bostock from South Shields, who sat at the table
+within earshot and had been following our conversation, manifested signs
+of excited interest.
+
+"I shall be quite protected," said I, "by the dynamic qualities of
+your acquaintance, Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos, with whom I have
+promised to spend the evening."
+
+"You had better have the revolver," said the Colonel. And so bent was he
+on the point, that after dinner he came to me in the lounge and laid a
+loaded six-shooter beside my coffee-cup. The younger Miss Bostock grew
+pale. It looked an ugly, cumbrous, devastating weapon.
+
+"But, my dear Colonel," I protested, "it's against the law to carry
+fire-arms."
+
+"Law--what law?"
+
+"Why the law of France," said I.
+
+This staggered him. The fact of there being decent laws in foreign parts
+has staggered many an honest Briton. He counselled a damnation of the
+law, and finally, in order to humour him, I allowed him to thrust the
+uncomfortable thing into my hip-pocket.
+
+"Colonel," said I, when I took leave of him an hour later, "I have armed
+myself out of pure altruism. I shan't be able to sit down in peace and
+comfort for the rest of the evening. Should I accidentally do so, my
+blood will be on your head."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The tram that passes the hotel gates took me into the town and dropped
+me at the Place du Gouvernement. With its strange fusion of East
+and West, its great white-domed mosque flanked by the tall minaret
+contrasting with its formal French colonnaded facades, its groupings of
+majestic white-robed forms and commonplace figures in caps and hard
+felt hats; the mystery of its palm trees, and the crudity of its
+flaring electric lights, it gave an impression of unreality, of a modern
+contractor's idea of Fairyland, where anything grotesque might assume an
+air of normality. The moon shone full in the heavens, and as I crossed
+the Place I saw the equestrian statue of the Duke of Orleans silhouetted
+against the mosque. The port, to the east, was quiet at this hour, and
+the shipping lay dreamily in the moonlight. Far away one could see the
+dim outlines of the Kabyle Mountains, and the vague melting of sea and
+sky into a near horizon. The undefinable smell of the East was in the
+air.
+
+The Cafe de Bordeaux, which forms an angle of the Place, blazed in front
+of me. A few hardy souls, a Zouave or two, an Arab, a bored Englishman
+and his wife, and some French inhabitants were sitting outside in the
+chilliness. I entered. The cafe was filled with a nondescript crowd, and
+the rattle of dominoes rose above the hum of talk. In a corner near the
+door I discovered the top of a silk hat projecting above a widely opened
+newspaper grasped by two pudgy hands, and I recognised the Professor.
+
+"Monsieur," said he, when I had taken a seat at his table, "if the
+unknown terrors which you are going to confront dismay you, I beg that
+you will not consider yourself bound to me."
+
+"My dear Professor," I replied, "a brave man tastes of death but once."
+
+He was much delighted at the sentiment, which he took to be original.
+
+"I shall quote it," said he, "whenever my honour or my courage is called
+into question. It is not often that a man has the temerity to do so. Can
+I have the honour of offering you a whisky and soda?"
+
+"Have we time?" I asked.
+
+"We have time," he said, solemnly consulting his watch. "Things will
+ripen."
+
+"Then," said I, "I shall have much pleasure in drinking to their
+maturity."
+
+While we were drinking our whisky and soda he talked volubly of many
+things--his travels, his cats, his own incredible importance in
+the cosmos. And as he sat there vapouring about the pathetically
+insignificant he looked more like Napoleon III than ever. His eyes had
+the same mournful depths, his features the same stamp of fatality. Each
+man has his gigantic combinations--perhaps equally important in the eyes
+of the High Gods. I was filled with an immense pity for Napoleon III.
+
+Of the object of the adventure he said nothing. As secrecy seemed to
+be a vital element in his fifteen-cent scheme, I showed no embarrassing
+curiosity. Indeed, I felt but little, though I was certain that the
+adventure was connected with the world-cracking revelations of Monsieur
+Saupiquet, and was undertaken in the interest of his beloved lady, Lola
+Brandt. But it was like playing at pirates with a child, and my pity
+for Napoleon gave place to my pity for my valiant but childish little
+friend.
+
+At last he looked again at his watch.
+
+"The hour his struck. Let us proceed."
+
+Instinctively I summoned the waiter, and drew a coin from my pocket; and
+when the grown-up person and the small boy hobnob together the former
+pays. But Anastasius, with a swift look of protest, anticipated my
+intention. I was his guest for the evening. I yielded apologetically,
+the score was paid, and we went forth into the moonlight.
+
+He led me across the Place du Gouvernement and struck straight up the
+hill past the Cathedral, and, turning, plunged into a network of narrow
+streets, where the poor of all races lived together in amity and evil
+odours. Shops chiefly occupied the ground floors; some were the ordinary
+humble shops of Europeans; others were caves lit by a smoky lamp, where
+Arabs lounged and smoked around the tailors or cobblers squatting at
+their work; others were Jewish, with Hebrew inscriptions. There were
+dark Arab cafes, noisy Italian wine-shops, butchers' stalls; children of
+all ages played and screamed about the precipitous cobble-paved streets;
+and the shrill cries of Jewish women, sitting at their doors, rose in
+rebuke of husband or offspring. Not many lights appeared through the
+shuttered windows of the dark, high houses. Overhead, between two
+facades, one saw a strip of paleness which one knew was the moonlit sky.
+Conversation with my companion being difficult--the top of his silk hat
+just reached my elbow--I strode along in silence, Anastasius trotting by
+my side. Many jeers and jests were flung at us as we passed, whereat he
+scowled terribly; but no one molested us. I am inclined to think that
+Anastasius attributed this to fear of his fierce demeanour. If so, he
+was happy, as were the simple souls who flouted; and this reflection
+kept my mind serene.
+
+Presently we turned into a wide and less poverty-stricken street, which
+I felt sure we could have reached by a less tortuous and malodorous
+path. A few yards down we came to a dark _porte cochere_. The dwarf
+halted, crossed, so as to read the number by the gas lamp, and joining
+me, said:
+
+"It is here. Have you your visiting-cards ready?"
+
+I nodded. We proceeded down the dark entry till we came to a slovenly,
+ill-kept glass box lit by a small gas jet, whence emerged a slovenly,
+ill-kept man. This was the concierge. Anastasius addressed a remark to
+him which I did not catch.
+
+"_Au fond de la cour, troisieme a gauche_," said the concierge.
+
+As yet there seemed to be nothing peculiarly perilous about the
+adventure. We crossed the cobble-paved courtyard and mounted an
+evil-smelling stone staircase, blackened here and there by the
+occasional gas jets. On the third landing we halted. Anastasius put up
+his hand and gripped mine.
+
+"Two strong men together," said he, "need fear nothing."
+
+I confess my only fear was lest the confounded revolver which swung
+insecurely in my hip-pocket might go off of its own accord. I did not
+mention this to my companion. He raised his hat, wiped his brow, and
+rang the bell.
+
+The door opened about six inches, and a man's dark-moustachioed face
+appeared.
+
+"_Vous desirez, Messieurs_?"
+
+As I had not the remotest idea what we desired, I let Anastasius be
+spokesman.
+
+"Here is an English milord," said Anastasius boldly, "who would like to
+be admitted for the evening to the privileges of the Club."
+
+"Enter, gentlemen," said the man, who appeared to be the porter.
+
+We found ourselves in a small vestibule. In front of us was a large
+door, on the right a small one, both closed. At a table by the large
+door sat a dirty, out-of-elbows raven of a man reading a newspaper. The
+latter looked up and addressed me.
+
+"You wish to enter the Club, Monsieur?"
+
+I had no particular longing to do so, but I politely answered that such
+was my desire.
+
+"If you will give your visiting-card, I will submit it to the
+Secretariat."
+
+I produced my card; Anastasius thrust a pencil into my hand.
+
+"Write my name on it, too."
+
+I obeyed. The raven sent the porter with the card into the room on the
+right, and resumed the perusal of his soiled newspaper. I looked at
+Anastasius. The little man was quivering with excitement. The porter
+returned after a few minutes with a couple of pink oval cards which he
+handed to each of us. I glanced at mine. On it was inscribed: _Cercle
+Africain d'Alger. Carte de Member Honoraire. Une soiree_. And then there
+was a line for the honorary member's signature. The raven man dipped a
+pen in the ink-pot in front of him and handed it to me.
+
+"Will you sign, Messieurs?"
+
+We executed this formality; he retained the cards, and opening the great
+door, said:
+
+"_Entrez, Messieurs_!"
+
+The door closed behind us. It was simply a _tripot_, or gambling-den.
+And all this solemn farce of Secretariats and _cartes d'entree_ to
+obtain admission! It is curious how the bureaucratic instinct is
+ingrained in the French character.
+
+It was a large, ill-ventilated room, blue with cigarette and cigar
+smoke. Some thirty men were sitting or standing around a baccarat table
+in the centre, and two or three groups hung around _ecarte_ tables in
+the corners. A personage who looked like a slightly more prosperous
+brother of the raven outside and wore a dinner-jacket, promenaded the
+room with the air of one in authority. He scrutinised us carefully from
+a distance; then advanced and greeted us politely.
+
+"You have chosen an excellent evening," said he. "There are a great many
+people, and the banks are large."
+
+He bowed and passed on. A dingy waiter took our hats and coats and hung
+them up. Anastasius plucked me by the sleeve.
+
+"If you don't mind staking a little for the sake of appearances, I shall
+be grateful."
+
+I whispered: "Can you tell me now, my dear Professor, for what reason
+you have brought me to this gaming-hell?"
+
+He looked up at me out of his mournful eyes and murmured, "_Patienza,
+lieber Herr_." Then spying a vacant place behind the chairs at the
+baccarat table, he darted thither, and I followed in his wake. There
+must have been about a couple of hundred louis in the bank, which was
+held by a dissipated, middle-aged man who, having once been handsome in
+a fleshy way, had run to fat. His black hair, cropped short, stood up
+like a shoebrush, and when he leaned back in his chair a roll of flesh
+rose above his collar. I disliked the fellow for his unhealthiness,
+and for the hard mockery in his puffy eyes. The company seemed fairly
+homogeneous in its raffishness, though here and there appeared a thin,
+aristocratic face, with grey moustache and pointed beard, and the homely
+anxious visage of a small tradesman. But in bulk it looked an ugly,
+seedy crowd, with unwashed bodies and unclean souls. I noticed an
+Italian or two, and a villainous Englishman with a face like that of a
+dilapidated horse. A glance at the table plastered with silver and gold
+showed me that they were playing with a five-franc minimum.
+
+Anastasius drew a handful of louis from his pocket and staked one. I
+staked a five-franc piece. The cards were dealt, the banker exposed a
+nine, the highest number, and the croupier's flat spoon swept the table.
+A murmur arose. The banker was having the luck of Satan.
+
+"He always protects me, the good fellow," laughed the banker, who had
+overheard the remark.
+
+Again we staked, again the hands were dealt. Our tableau or end of the
+table won, the other lost. The croupier threw the coins in payment. I
+let my double stake lie, and so did Anastasius. At the next coup we lost
+again. The banker stuffed his winnings into his pocket and declared a
+_suite_. The bank was put up at auction, and was eventually knocked down
+to the same personage for fifty louis. The horse-headed Englishman
+cried "_banco_," which means that he would play the banker for the whole
+amount. The hands were dealt, the Englishman lost, and the game started
+afresh with a hundred louis in the bank. The proceedings began to bore
+me. Even if my experience of life had not suggested that scrupulous
+fairness and honour were not the guiding principles of such an
+assemblage, I should have taken little interest in the game. I am a
+great believer in the wholesomeness of compounding for sins you are
+inclined to by damning those you have no mind to. It aids the nice
+balance of life. And gambling is one of the sins I delight to damn. The
+rapid getting of money has never appealed to me, who have always had
+sufficient for my moderately epicurean needs, and least of all did it
+appeal to me now when I was on the brink of my journey to the land where
+French gold and bank notes were not in currency. I repeat, therefore,
+that I was bored.
+
+"If the perils of the adventure don't begin soon, my dear Professor," I
+whispered, "I shall go to sleep standing."
+
+Again he asked for patience and staked a hundred-franc note. At that
+moment the man sitting at the table in front of him rose, and the dwarf
+slipped swiftly into his seat. He won his hundred francs and made
+the same stake again. It was obvious that the little man did not damn
+gambling. It was a sin to which he appeared peculiarly inclined. The
+true inwardness of the perilous adventure began to dawn on me. He had
+come here to make the money wherewith he could further his gigantic
+combinations. All this mystery was part of his childish cunning. I
+hardly knew whether to box the little creature's ears, to box my own,
+or to laugh. I compromised with a smile on the last alternative, and
+baccarat being a dreary game to watch, I strolled off to the nearest
+_ecarte_ table, and, to justify my presence in the room, backed one of
+the players.
+
+Presently my attention was called to the baccarat table by a noise as
+of some dispute, and turning, I saw the gentleman in the dinner-jacket
+hurrying to what appeared to be the storm centre, the place where
+Anastasius was sitting. Suspecting some minor peril, I left the _ecarte_
+players, and joined the gentleman in the dinner-jacket. It seemed that
+the hand, which is played in rotation by those seated at each tableau
+or half-table, had come round for the first time to Anastasius, and
+objection had been taken to his playing it, on the score of his physical
+appearance. The dwarf was protesting vehemently. He had played baccarat
+in all the clubs of Europe, and had never received such treatment. It
+was infamous, it was insulting. The malcontents of the punt paid
+little heed to his remonstrances. They resented the entrusting of their
+fortunes to one whose chin barely rose above the level of the table.
+The banker lit a cigarette and sat back in his chair with a smile of
+mockery. His attitude brought up the superfluous flesh about his chin
+and the roll of fat at the back of his neck. With his moustache
+_en croc_, and his shoebrush hair, I have rarely beheld a more
+sensual-looking desperado.
+
+"But gentlemen," said he, "I see no objection whatever to Monsieur
+playing the hand."
+
+"Naturally," retorted a voice, "since it would be to your advantage."
+
+The raven in the dinner-jacket commanded silence.
+
+"Gentlemen, I decide that, according to the rules of the game, Monsieur
+is entitled to play the hand."
+
+"Bravo!" exclaimed one or two of my friend's supporters.
+
+"_C'est idiot_!" growled the malcontents.
+
+"_Messieurs, faites vos jeux_!" cried the croupier.
+
+The stakes were laid, the banker looked around, estimating the
+comparative values of the two tableaux. Anastasius had backed his hand
+with a pile of louis. To encourage him, and to conciliate the hostile
+punt, I threw down a hundred-franc note.
+
+"_Les jeux sont faits? Rien ne va plus_."
+
+The banker dealt, two cards to each tableau, two to himself. Anastasius,
+trembling with nervous excitement, stretched out a palsied little fist
+towards the cards. He drew them towards him, face downwards, peeped at
+them in the most approved manner, and in a husky voice called for an
+extra card.
+
+The card dealt face upwards was a five. The banker turned up his own
+cards, a two and a four, making a point of six. Naturally he stood,
+Anastasius did nothing.
+
+"Show your cards--show your cards!" cried several voices.
+
+He turned over the two cards originally dealt to him. They were a king
+and a nine, making the natural nine, the highest point, and he had
+actually asked for another card. It was the unforgivable sin. The five
+that had been dealt to him brought his point to four. There was a roar
+of indignation. Men with violent faces rose and cursed him, and shook
+their fists at him. Others clamoured that the coup was ineffective. They
+were not going to be at the mercy of an idiot who knew nothing of the
+game. The hand must be dealt over again.
+
+"_Jamais de la vie_!" shouted the banker.
+
+"_Le coup est bon_!" cried the raven in authority, and the croupier's
+spoon hovered over the tableau. But the horse-headed Englishman clutched
+the two louis he had staked. He was damned, and a great many other
+things, if he would lose his money that way. The raven in the
+dinner-jacket darted round, and bending over him, caught him by the
+wrist. Two or three others grabbed their stakes, and swore they would
+not pay. The banker rose and went to the rescue of his gains. There
+was screaming and shouting and struggling and riot indescribable. Those
+round about us went on cursing Anastasius, who sat quite still, with
+quivering lips, as helpless as a rabbit. The raven tore his way
+through the throng around the Englishman and came up to me excited and
+dishevelled.
+
+"It is all your fault, Monsieur," he shrieked, "for introducing into the
+club a half-witted creature like that."
+
+"Yes, it's your fault," cried a low-browed, ugly fellow looking like
+a butcher in uneasy circumstances who stood next to me. Suddenly the
+avalanche of indignation fell upon my head. Angry, ugly men crowded
+round me and began to curse me instead of the dwarf. Cries arose. The
+adventure began, indeed, to grow idiotically perilous. I had never been
+thrown out of doors in my life. I objected strongly to the idea. It
+might possibly hurt my body, and would certainly offend my dignity. I
+felt that I could not make my exit through the portals of life with the
+urbanity on which I had counted, if, as a preparatory step, I had been
+thrown out of a gambling-hell. There were only two things to be done.
+Either I must whip out my ridiculous revolver and do some free shooting,
+or I must make an appeal to the lower feelings of the assembly. I chose
+the latter alternative. With a sudden movement I slipped through the
+angry and gesticulating crowd, and leaped on a chair by one of the
+deserted _ecarte_ tables. Then I raised a commanding arm, and, in my
+best election-meeting voice, I cried:
+
+"_Messieurs_!"
+
+The unexpectedness of the manoeuvre caused instant silence.
+
+"As my friend and myself," I said, "are the cause of this unpleasant
+confusion, I shall be most happy to pay the banker the losses of the
+tableau."
+
+And I drew out and brandished my pocket-book, in which, by a special
+grace of Providence, there happened to be a considerable sum of money.
+
+Murmurs of approbation arose. Then the Englishman sang out:
+
+"But what about the money we would have won, if that little fool had
+played the game properly?"
+
+The remark was received with cheers.
+
+"That amount, too," said I, "I shall be happy to disburse."
+
+There was nothing more to be said, as everybody, banker and punt, were
+satisfied. The raven in the dinner-jacket came up and informed me that
+my proposal solved the difficulty. I besought him to make out the bill
+for my little entertainment as quickly as possible. Then I dismounted
+from my chair and beckoned to the dwarf, still sitting white and
+piteous, to join me. He obeyed like a frightened child who had been
+naughty. All his swagger and braggadocio were gone. His bosom heaved
+with suppressed sobs. He sat down on the chair I had vacated and buried
+his face on the _ecarte_ table. We remained thus aloof from the crowd
+who were intent on the calculation at the baccarat table. At last the
+raven in the dinner-jacket arrived with a note of the amount. It was
+two thousand three hundred francs. I gave him the notes, and, taking
+Anastasius by the arm, led him to the door, where the waiter stood with
+our hats and coats. Before we could reach it, however, the banker, who
+had risen from his seat, crossed the room and addressed me.
+
+"Monsieur," said he, with an air of high-bred courtesy, "I infinitely
+regret this unpleasant affair and I thank you for your perfect
+magnanimity."
+
+I did not suggest that with equal magnanimity he might refund the
+forty-six pounds that had found its way from my pocket to his, but I
+bowed with stiff politeness, and made my exit with as much dignity as
+the attachment to my heels of the crestfallen Anastasius would permit.
+
+Outside I constituted myself the guide, and took the first turning
+downhill, knowing that it would lead to the civilised centre of the
+town. The dwarf's roundabout route was characteristic of his tortuous
+mind. We walked along for some time without saying anything. I could
+not find it in my heart to reproach the little man for the expensiveness
+(nearly a hundred pounds) of his perilous adventure, and he seemed too
+dazed with shame and humiliation to speak. At last, when we reached,
+as I anticipated, the Square de la Republique, I patted him on the
+shoulder.
+
+"Cheer up, my dear Professor," said I. "We both are acquainted with
+nobler things than the ins and outs of gaming-hells."
+
+He reeled to a bench under the palm trees, and bursting into tears, gave
+vent to his misery in the most incoherent language ever uttered by man.
+I sat beside him and vainly attempted consolation.
+
+"Ah, how mad I am! Ah, how contemptible! I dare not face my beautiful
+cats again. I dare not see the light of the sun. I have betrayed my
+trust. Accursed be the cards. I, who had my gigantic combination. It is
+all gone. Beautiful lady, forgive me. Generous-hearted friend, forgive
+me. I am the most miserable of God's creatures."
+
+"It is an accident that might happen to any one," I said gently. "You
+were nervous. You looked at the cards, you mistook the nine for a ten,
+in which case you were right to call for another card."
+
+"It is not that," he wailed. "It is the spoiling of my combination, on
+which I have wasted sleepless nights. A curse on my mad folly. Do you
+know who the banker was?"
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"He was Captain Vauvenarde, the husband of Madame Brandt."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+You could have knocked me down with a feather. It is a trite metaphor,
+I know; but it is none the less excellent. I repeat, therefore,
+unblushingly--you could have knocked me down with a feather. I gasped.
+The little man wiped his eyes. He was the tearfullest adult I have ever
+met, and I once knew an Italian _prima donna_ with a temperament.
+
+"Captain Vauvenarde? The man with the shoebrush hair and the rolls of
+fat at the back of his neck? Are you sure?"
+
+The dwarf nodded. "I set out from England to find him. I swore to the
+_carissima signora_ that I would do so. I have done it," he added, with
+a faint return of his self-confidence.
+
+"Well, I'm damned!" said I, in my native tongue.
+
+I don't often use strong language; but the occasion warranted it. I
+was flabbergasted, bewildered, out-raged, humiliated, delighted,
+incredulous, and generally turned topsy-turvy. In conversation one has
+no time for so minute an analysis of one's feelings. I therefore summed
+them up in the only word. Captain Vauvenarde! The wild goose of my
+absurd chase! Found by this Flibbertigibbet of a fellow, while I, Simon
+de Gex, erstwhile M.P., was fooling about War Offices and regiments! It
+was grotesque. It was monstrous. It ought not to have been allowed. And
+yet it saved me a vast amount of trouble.
+
+"I'm damned!" said I.
+
+Anastasius had just enough English to understand. I suppose, such is
+mortal unregeneracy, that it is the most widely understood word in the
+universe.
+
+"And I," said he, "am eternally beaten. I am trampled under foot and
+shall never be able to hold up my head again."
+
+Whereupon he renewed his lamentations. For some time I listened
+patiently, and from his disconnected remarks I gathered that he had gone
+to the Cercle Africain in view of his gigantic combinations, but that
+the demon of gambling taking possession of him had almost driven them
+from his mind. Eventually he had lost control of his nerves, a cloud
+had spread over his brain, and he had committed the unspeakable blunder
+which led to disaster.
+
+"To think that I should have tracked him down--for this!" he exclaimed
+tragically.
+
+"What beats me," I cried, "is how the deuce you managed to track him
+down. Your magnificent intellect, I suppose"--I spoke gently and not in
+open sarcasm--"enabled you to get on the trail."
+
+He brightened at the compliment. "Yes, that was it. Listen. I came to
+Algiers, the last place he was heard of. I go to the cafes. I listen
+like a detective to conversation. I creep behind soldiers talking.
+I find out nothing. I ask at the shops. They think I am crazy, but
+Anastasius Papadopoulos has a brain larger than theirs. I go to my
+old friend the secretary of the theatre, where I have exhibited the
+marvellous performance of my cats. I say to him, 'When have you a date
+for me?' He says, 'Next year.' I make a note of it. We talk. He knows
+all Algiers. I say to him, 'What has become of Captain Vauvenarde of the
+Chasseurs d'Afrique?' I say it carelessly as if the Captain were an old
+friend of mine. The secretary laughs. 'Haven't you heard? The Captain
+was chased from the regiment----'"
+
+"The deuce he was!" I interjected.
+
+"On account of something," said Anastasius. "The secretary could not
+tell what. Perhaps he cheated at cards. The officers said so.
+
+"'Where is he now?' I ask. 'Why, in Algiers. He is the most famous
+gambler in the town. He is every night at the Cercle Africain, and some
+people believe that it belongs to him.' My friend the secretary asks me
+why I am so anxious to discover Captain Vauvenarde. I do not betray my
+secret. When I do not wish to talk I close my lips, and they are sealed
+like the tomb. I am the model of discretion. You, Monsieur, with the
+high-bred delicacy of the English statesman, have not questioned me
+about my combination. I appreciate it. But, if you had, though it broke
+my heart, I should not have answered."
+
+"I am not going to pry into your schemes," I said, "but there are one
+or two things I must understand. How do you know the banker was Captain
+Vauvenarde?"
+
+"I saw him several times in Marseilles with the _carissima signora_."
+
+"Then how was it he did not recognise you to-night?"
+
+"I was then but an acquaintance of Madame; not her intimate friend,
+counsellor, champion, as I am now. I did not have the honour of being
+presented to Captain Vauvenarde. I went to-night to make sure of my man,
+to play the first card in my gigantic combination--but, alas! But no!"
+He rose and thumped his little chest. "I feel my courage coming back.
+My will is stiffening into iron. When the _carissima signora_ arrives in
+Algiers she will find she has a champion!"
+
+"How do you know she is coming to Algiers?" I asked startled.
+
+"As soon as I learned that Captain Vauvenarde was here," he replied
+proudly, "I sent her a telegram. 'Husband found; come at once.' I know
+she is coming, for she has not answered."
+
+An idea occurred to me. "Did you sign your name and address on the
+telegram?"
+
+He approached me confidentially as I sat, and wagged a cunning finger.
+
+"In matters of life and death, never give your name and address."
+
+As Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos was himself again, and as I began
+to sneeze--for the night was chilly--I rose and suggested that we might
+adjourn this conference till the morrow. He acquiesced, saying that all
+was not lost and that he still had time to mature his combinations. We
+crossed the road, and I hailed a cab standing by the Cafe d'Alger. I
+offered Anastasius to drive him to his hotel, but he declined politely.
+We shook hands.
+
+"Monsieur," said he, "I have to make my heartfelt apologies for having
+caused you so painful, so useless, and so expensive an evening. As for
+the last aspect I will repay you."
+
+"You will do no such thing, Professor," said I. "My evening has, on
+the contrary, been particularly useful and instructive. I wouldn't have
+missed it for the world."
+
+And I drove off homewards, glad to be in my own company.
+
+Here was an imbroglio! The missing husband found and, like most
+missing husbands, found to be entirely undesirable. And Lola, obviously
+imagining her summons to be from me, was at that moment speeding hither
+as fast as the _Marechal Bugeaud_ could carry her. If I had discovered
+Captain Vauvenarde instead of Anastasius I would have anathematised
+him as the most meddlesome, crazy little marplot that ever looked like
+Napoleon the Third. But as the credit of the discovery belonged to him
+and not to me, I could only anathematise myself for my dilettanteism in
+the capacity of a private inquiry agent.
+
+I went to bed and slept badly. The ludicrous scenes of the evening
+danced before my eyes; the smoke-filled, sordid room, the ignoble faces
+round the table, the foolish hullaballoo, the collapse of Anastasius,
+my melodramatic intervention, and the ironical courtesy of the fleshy
+Captain Vauvenarde. Also, in the small hours of the night, Anastasius's
+gigantic combinations assumed a less trivial aspect. What lunatic scheme
+was being hatched behind that dome-like brow? His object in taking me to
+the club was obvious. He could not have got in save under my protection.
+But what he had reckoned upon doing when he got there Heaven and
+Anastasius Papadopoulos only knew. I was also worried by the confounded
+little pain inside.
+
+On the following afternoon I went down to meet the steamer from
+Marseilles. I more than expected to find the dwarf on the quay, but to
+my relief he was not there. I had purposely kept my knowledge of Lola's
+movements a secret from him, as I desired as far as possible to conduct
+affairs without his crazy intervention. I was not sorry, too, that he
+had not availed himself of my proposal to visit me that morning and
+continue our conversation of the night before. The grotesque as a
+decoration of life is valuable; as the main feature it gets on your
+nerves.
+
+I stood on the sloping stone jetty among the crowd of Arab porters and
+Europeans and watched the vessel waddle in. Lola and I, catching sight
+of each other at the same time, waved handkerchiefs in an imbecile
+manner, and when the vessel came alongside, and during the tedious
+process of mooring, we regarded each other with photographic smiles. She
+was wearing a squirrel coat and a toque of the same fur, and she looked
+more like a splendid wild animal than ever. Something inside me--not the
+little pain--but what must have been my heart, throbbed suddenly at her
+beauty, and the throb was followed by a sudden sense of shock at the
+realisation of my keen pleasure at the sight of her. A wistful radiance
+shone in her face as she came down the gangway.
+
+"Oh, how kind, how good, how splendid of you to meet me!" she cried as
+our hands clasped. "I was dreading, dreading, dreading that it might be
+some one else."
+
+"And yet you came straight through," said I, still holding her hand--or,
+rather, allowing hers to encircle mine in the familiar grip.
+
+"Didn't you command me to do so?"
+
+I could not explain matters to her then and there among the hustle of
+passengers and the bustle of porters. Besides, Rogers, who had come down
+with the hotel omnibus, was at my side touching his hat.
+
+"I have ordered you a room and a private sitting-room with a balcony
+facing the sea. Put yourself in charge of me and your luggage in charge
+of Rogers and dismiss all thoughts of worry from your mind."
+
+"You are so restful," she laughed as we moved off.
+
+Then she scanned my face and said falteringly. "How thin and worn you
+look! Are you worse?"
+
+"If you ask me such questions," said I, "I'll leave you with the luggage
+in charge of Rogers. I am in resplendent health."
+
+She murmured that she wished she could believe me, and took my arm as we
+walked down the jetty to the waiting cab.
+
+"It's good to hear your voice again," I said. "It's a lazy voice and
+fits in with the lazy South." I pointed to the burnous-enveloped Arabs
+sleeping on the parapet. "It's out of place in Cadogan Gardens."
+
+She laughed her low, rippling laugh. It was music very pleasant to hear
+after the somewhat shrill cachinnation of the Misses Bostock of South
+Shields. I was so pleased that I gave half a franc to a pestilential
+Arab shoeblack.
+
+"That was nice of you," she said.
+
+"It was the act of an imbecile," I retorted. "I have now rendered it
+impossible for me to enter the town again. How is Dale?"
+
+She started. "He's well. Busy with his election. I saw him the day
+before I left. I didn't tell him I was coming to Algiers. I wrote from
+Paris."
+
+"Telling him the reason?"
+
+She faced me and met my eyes and said shortly: "No."
+
+"Oh!" said I.
+
+This brought us to the cab. We entered and drove away. Then leaning back
+and looking straight in front of her, she grasped my wrist and said:
+
+"Now, my dear friend, tell me all and get it over."
+
+"My dear Madame Brandt--" I began.
+
+She interrupted me. "For goodness' sake don't call me that. It makes a
+cold shiver run down my back. I'm either Lola to you or nothing."
+
+"Then, my dear Lola," said I, "the first thing I must tell you is that I
+did not send for you."
+
+"What do you mean? The telegram?"
+
+"It was sent by Anastasius Papadopoulos."
+
+"Anastasius?" She bent forward and looked at me. "What is he doing
+here?"
+
+"Heaven knows!" said I. "But what he has done has been to find Captain
+Vauvenarde. I am glad he has done that, but I am deeply sorry he sent
+you the telegram."
+
+"Sorry? Why?"
+
+"Because there was no reason for your coming," I said with unwonted
+gravity. "It would have been better if you had stayed in London, and it
+will be best if you take the boat back again to-morrow."
+
+She remained silent for a while. Then she said in a low voice:
+
+"He won't have me?"
+
+"He hasn't been asked," I said. "He will, as far as I can command the
+situation, never be asked."
+
+On that I had fully determined; and, when she inquired the reason, I
+told her.
+
+"I proposed that you should reunite yourself with an honourable though
+somewhat misguided gentleman. I've had the reverse of pleasure in
+meeting Captain Vauvenarde, and I regret to say, though he is still
+misguided, he can scarcely be termed honourable. The term 'gentleman'
+has still to be accurately defined."
+
+She made a writhing movement of impatience.
+
+"Tell me straight out what he's doing in Algiers. You're trying to make
+things easy for me. It's the way of your class. It isn't the way of
+mine. I'm used to brutality. I like it better. Why did he leave the army
+and why is he in Algiers?"
+
+"If you prefer the direct method, my dear Lola," said I--and the name
+came quite trippingly on my tongue--"I'll employ it. Your husband
+has apparently been kicked out of the army and is now running a
+gambling-hell."
+
+She took the blow bravely; but it turned her face haggard like a
+paroxysm of physical pain. After a few moments' silence, she said:
+
+"It must have been awful for him. He was a proud man."
+
+"He is changed," I replied gently. "Pride is too hampering a quality for
+a knight of industry to keep in his equipment."
+
+"Tell me how you met him," she said.
+
+I rapidly sketched the whole absurd history, from my encounter with
+Anastasius Papadopoulos in Marseilles to my parting with him on the
+previous night. I softened down, as much as I could, the fleshiness of
+Captain Vauvenarde and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck, but I
+portrayed the villainous physiognomies of his associates very neatly. I
+concluded by repeating my assertion that our project had proved itself
+to be abortive.
+
+"He must be pretty miserable," said Lola.
+
+"Devil a bit," said I.
+
+She did not answer, but settled herself more comfortably in the carriage
+and relapsed into mournful silence. I, having said my say, lit a
+cigarette. Save for the clanging past of an upward or downward tram,
+the creeping drive up the hill through the long winding street was very
+quiet; and as we mounted higher and left the shops behind, the only
+sounds that broke the afternoon stillness were the driver's raucous
+admonition to his horses and the wind in the trees by the wayside. At
+different points the turns of the road brought to view the panorama of
+the town below and the calm sweep of the bay.
+
+"Exquisite, isn't it?" I said at last, with an indicative wave of the
+hand.
+
+"What's the good of anything being exquisite when you feel mouldy?"
+
+"It may help to charm away the mouldiness. Beauty is eternal and
+mouldiness only temporal. The sun will go on shining and the sea will go
+on changing colour long after our pains and joys have vanished from the
+world. Nature is pitilessly indifferent to human emotion."
+
+"If so," she said, her intuition finding the weakness of my slipshod
+argument, "how can it touch human mouldiness?"
+
+"I don't know," said I. "The poets will tell you. All you have to do is
+to lie on the breast of the Great Mother and your heartache will go
+from you. I've never tried it myself, as I've never been afflicted with
+heartache."
+
+"Is that true?" she asked, womanlike catching at the personal.
+
+I smiled and nodded.
+
+"I'm glad on your account," she said sincerely. "It's the very devil of
+an ache. I've always had it."
+
+"Poor Lola," said I, prompted by my acquired instinct of eumoiriety. "I
+wish I could cure you."
+
+"You?" She gave a short little laugh and then turned her head away.
+
+"I had a very comfortable crossing," she remarked a moment later.
+
+I gave her into the keeping of the manager of the hotel and did not see
+her again until she came down somewhat late for dinner. I met her in
+the vestibule. She wore a closely fitting brown dress, which in colour
+matched the bronze of her hair and in shape showed off her lithe and
+generous figure.
+
+I thought it my duty to cheer her by a well-deserved compliment.
+
+"Are you aware," I said, with a low bow, "that you're a remarkably
+handsome woman?"
+
+A perfectly unnecessary light came into her eyes and a superfluous flush
+to her cheeks. "If I'm at least that to you, I'm happy," she said.
+
+"You're that to the dullest vision. Follow the _maitre d'hotel_,"
+said I, as we entered the _salle a manger_, "and I'll walk behind in
+reflected glory."
+
+We made an effective entrance. I declare there was a perceptible rattle
+of soup-spoons laid down by the retired Colonels and maiden ladies as
+we passed by. Colonel Bunnion returned my nod of greeting in the most
+distracted fashion and gazed at Lola with the frank admiration of
+British Cavalry. I felt foolishly proud and exhilarated, and gave her at
+my table the seat commanding a view of the room. I then ordered a bottle
+of champagne, which I am forbidden to touch.
+
+"It isn't often that I have the pleasure of dining with you," I said by
+way of apology.
+
+"This is the very first time," she said.
+
+"And it's not going to be the last," I declared.
+
+"I thought you were going to ship me back to Marseilles to-morrow."
+
+She laughed lazily, meeting my eyes. I smiled.
+
+"It would be inhuman. I allow you a few day's rest."
+
+Indeed, now she was here I had a curious desire to keep her. I regarded
+the failure of my eumoirous little plans with more than satisfaction.
+I had done my best. I had found (through the dwarf's agency) Captain
+Vauvenarde. I had satisfied myself that he was an outrageous person,
+thoroughly disqualified from becoming Lola's husband, and there was
+an end of the matter. Meanwhile Fate (again through the agency of
+Anastasius) had brought her many hundreds of miles away from Dale and
+had moreover brought her to me. I was delighted. I patted Destiny on the
+back, and drank his health in excellent Pommery. Lola did not know in
+the least what I meant, but she smiled amiably and drank the toast. It
+was quite a merry dinner. Lola threw herself into my mood and jested as
+if she had never heard of an undesirable husband who had been kicked
+out of the French Army. We talked of many things. I described in fuller
+detail my adventure with Anastasius and Saupiquet, and we laughed over
+the debt of fifteen sous and the elaborate receipt.
+
+"Anastasius," she said, "is childish in many ways--the doctors have a
+name for it."
+
+"Arrested development."
+
+"That's it; but he is absolutely cracked on one point--the poisoning of
+my horse Sultan. He has reams of paper which he calls the dossier of the
+crime. You never saw such a collection of rubbish in your life. I cried
+over it. And he is so proud of it, poor wee mite." She laughed suddenly.
+"I should love to have seen you hobnobbing with him and Saupiquet."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You're so aristocratic-looking," she did me the embarrassing honour to
+explain in her direct fashion. "You're my idea of an English duke."
+
+"My dear Lola," I replied, "you're quite wrong. The ordinary English
+duke is a stout, middle-aged gentleman with a beard, and he generally
+wears thick knickerbockers and shocking bad hats."
+
+"Do you know any?"
+
+"Two or three," I admitted.
+
+"And duchesses, too?"
+
+I again pleaded guilty. In these democratic days, if one is engaged in
+public and social affairs one can't help running up against them. It is
+their fault, not mine.
+
+"Do tell me about them," said Lola, with her elbows on the table.
+
+I told her.
+
+"And are earls and countesses just the same?" she asked with a
+disappointed air.
+
+"Just the same, only worse. They're so ordinary you can't pick them out
+from common misters and missuses."
+
+Saying this I rose, for we had finished our dessert, and proposed coffee
+in the lounge. There we found Colonel Bunnion at so wilful a loose end
+that I could not find it in my heart to refuse him an introduction
+to Lola. He manifested his delight by lifting the skirt of his
+dinner-jacket with his hands and rising on his spurs like a bantam cock.
+I left her to him for a moment and went over to say a civil word to the
+Misses Bostock of South Shields. I regret to say I noticed a certain
+frigidity in their demeanour. The well-conducted man in South Shields
+does not go out one night with a revolver tucked away in the pocket of
+his dress-suit, and turn up the next evening with a striking-looking
+lady with bronze hair. Such goings-on are seen on the stage in South
+Shields in melodrama, and they are the goings-on of the villain. In
+the eyes of the gentle ladies my reputation was gone. I was trying to
+rehabilitate myself when the chasseur brought me a telegram. I asked
+permission to open it, and stepped aside.
+
+The words of the telegram were like a ringing box on the ears.
+
+
+"Tell me immediately why Lola has joined you in Algiers. --KYNNERSLEY."
+
+
+Not "Dale," mark you, as he has signed himself ever since I knew him in
+Eton collars, but "Kynnersley." Why has Lola joined you? Why have you
+run off with Lola? What's the reason of this treacherous abduction?
+Account for yourself immediately. Stand and deliver. I stood there
+gaping at the words like an idiot, my blood tingling at the implied
+accusation. The peremptoriness of it! The impudence of the boy! The wild
+extravagance of the idea! And yet, while my head was reeling with
+one buffet a memory arose and gave me another on the other side. I
+remembered the preposterous attitude in which Dale had found us when he
+rushed from Berlin into Lola's drawing-room.
+
+I took the confounded telegram into a remote corner of the lounge, like
+a dog with a bone, and growled over it for a time until the humour of
+the situation turned the growl into a chuckle. Even had I been in sound
+health and strength, the idea of running off with Lola would have been
+absurd. But for me, in my present eumoirous disposition of mind; for
+me, a half-disembodied spirit who had cast all vain and disturbing human
+emotions into the mud of Murglebed-on-Sea; for me who had a spirit's
+calm disregard for the petty passions and interests of mankind and
+walked through the world with no other object than healing a few human
+woes; for me who already saw death on the other side of the river and
+found serious occupation in exchanging airy badinage with him; for me
+with an abominable little pain inside inexorably eating my life out and
+wasting me away literally and perceptibly like a shadow and twisting
+me up half a dozen times a day in excruciating agony; for me, in this
+delectable condition of soul and this deplorable condition of body, to
+think of running hundreds of miles from home with--to say the least of
+it--so inconvenient a creature as a big, bronze-haired woman, the idea
+was inexpressibly and weirdly comic.
+
+I stepped into the drawing-room close by and drew up a telegram to Dale.
+
+
+"Lady summoned by Papadopoulos on private affairs. Avoid lunacy save for
+electioneering purposes.--SIMON."
+
+
+Then I joined Lola and Colonel Bunnion. She was lying back in her
+laziest and most pantherine attitude, and she looked up at me as I
+approached with eyes full of velvet softness. For the life of me I
+could not help feeling glad that they were turned on me and not on Dale
+Kynnersley.
+
+Almost immediately the elder Miss Bostock came up to claim the Colonel
+for bridge. He rose reluctantly.
+
+"I suppose it's no use asking you to make a fourth, Mr. de Gex?" she
+asked, after the subacid manner of her kind.
+
+"I'm afraid not," I replied sweetly. Whereupon she rescued the Colonel
+from the syren and left me alone with her. I lit a cigarette and sat by
+her side. As she did not stir or speak I asked whether she was tired.
+
+"Not very. I'm thinking. Do you know you've taught me an awful lot?"
+
+"I? What can I have taught you?"
+
+"The way people like yourself look at things. I'm treating Dale
+abominably. I didn't realise it before."
+
+Now why on earth did she bring Dale in just at that moment.
+
+"Indeed?" said I.
+
+She nodded her head and said in her languorous voice:
+
+"He's over head and ears in love with me and thinks I care for him. I
+don't. I don't care a brass button for him. I'm a bad influence in his
+life, and the sooner I take myself out of it the better. Don't you think
+so?"
+
+"You know my opinions," I said.
+
+"If I had followed your advice at first," she continued, "we needn't
+have had all this commotion. And yet I'm not sorry."
+
+"What do you propose to do?" I asked.
+
+"Before deciding, I shall see my husband."
+
+"You shall do no such thing."
+
+She smiled. "I shall."
+
+I protested. Captain Vauvenarde had put himself outside the pale. He was
+not fit to associate with decent women. What object could she have in
+meeting him?
+
+"I want to judge for myself," she replied.
+
+"Judge what? Surely not whether he is eligible as a husband!"
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"But, my dear Lola," I cried, "the notion is as crazy as any of
+Anastasius Papadopoulos's. Of course, as soon as he learns that you're
+a rich woman, he'll want to live with you, and use your money for his
+gaming-hell."
+
+"I am going to meet him," she said quietly.
+
+"I forbid it."
+
+"You're too late, dear friend. I wrote him a letter before dinner and
+sent it to the Cercle Africain by special messenger. I also wrote to
+Anastasius. I asked them both to see me to-morrow morning. That's why
+I've been so gay this evening."
+
+At the sight of my blank face she laughed, and with one of her movements
+rose from her chair. I rose too.
+
+"Are you angry with me?"
+
+"I thought I had walked out of a nightmare," I said. "I find I'm still
+in it."
+
+"But don't be angry with me. It was the only way."
+
+"The only way to, or out of, what?" I asked, bewildered.
+
+"Never mind."
+
+She looked at me with a singular expression in her slumbrous eyes. It
+was sad, wistful, soothing, and gave me the idea of a noble woman making
+a senseless sacrifice.
+
+"There is no earthly reason to do this on account of Dale," I protested.
+
+"Dale has nothing to do with it."
+
+"Then who has?"
+
+"Anastasius Papadopoulos," she said with undisguised irony.
+
+"I beg your pardon," I said rather stiffly, "for appearing to force your
+confidence. But as I first put the idea of joining your husband into
+your head and have enjoyed your confidence in the matter hitherto, I
+thought I might claim certain privileges."
+
+As she had done before, she laid her hands on my shoulders--we were
+alone in the alcove--and looked me in the eyes.
+
+"Don't make me cry. I'm very near it. And I'm tired to-night, and
+I'm going to have a hellish time to-morrow. And I want you to do me a
+favour."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"When I'm seeing my husband, I'd like to know that you were within
+call--in case I wanted you. One never knows what may happen. You will
+come won't you, if I send for you?"
+
+"I'm always at your service," I said.
+
+She released my shoulders and grasped my hand.
+
+"Good-night," she said, abruptly, and rushed swiftly out of the room,
+leaving me wondering more than I had ever wondered in my life at the
+inscrutable ways of women.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+I am glad I devoted last night and the past hour this morning to
+bringing up to date this trivial record, for I have a premonition that
+the time is rapidly approaching when I shall no longer have the strength
+of will or body to continue it. The little pain has increased in
+intensity and frequency the last few days, and though I try to delude
+myself into the belief that otherwise I am as strong as ever, I know in
+my heart that I am daily growing weaker, daily losing vitality. I shall
+soon have to call in a doctor to give me some temporary relief, and
+doubtless he will put me to bed, feed me on slops, cut off alcohol,
+forbid noise and excitement, and keep me in a drugged, stupefied
+condition until I fall asleep, to wake up in the Garden of Prosperpine.
+Death is nothing; it is the dying that is such a nuisance. It is going
+through so much for so little. It is as bad as the campaign before
+a parliamentary election. It offends one's sense of proportion. In a
+well-regulated universe there would be no tedious process of decay,
+either before or after death. You would go about your daily avocation
+unconcerned and unwarned, and then at the moment appointed by an
+inscrutable Providence for your dissolution--phew!--and your clothes
+would remain standing for a surprised second, and then fall down in
+a heap without a particle of you inside them. If we have to die, why
+doesn't Providence employ this simple and sensible method? It would
+save such a lot of trouble. It would be so clean, so painless, so
+picturesque. It would add to the interest of our walks abroad. Fancy
+a stout, important policeman vanishing from his uniform--the helmet
+falling over the collar, the tunic doubling in at the belt, the knees
+giving way, and the unheard, merry laughter of the disenuniformed spirit
+winging its way truncheonless into the Empyrean.
+
+But if you think you are going to get any fun out of dying in the
+present inconvenient manner, you are mistaken. Believe one who is
+trying.
+
+I will remain on my feet, however, as long as my will holds out. In this
+way I may continue to be of service to my fellow creatures, and procure
+for myself a happy lot or portion. Even this morning I have been able to
+feel the throb of eumoiriety. A piteous letter came from Latimer, and
+a substantial cheque lies on my table ready to be posted. I wonder how
+much I have left? So long as it is enough to pay my doctor's bills and
+funeral expenses, what does it matter?
+
+
+
+The last line of the above was written on December 21st. It is now
+January 30th, and I am still alive and able to write. I wish I weren't.
+But I will set down as plainly as I can what has happened in the
+interval.
+
+I had just written the last word, seated at my hotel window in the
+sunshine, and enjoying, in spite of my uncheerful thoughts, the scents
+that rose from the garden, when I heard a knock at my door. At my
+invitation to enter, Anastasius Papadopoulos trotted into the room in a
+great state of excitement carrying the familiar bunch of papers. He put
+his hat on the floor, pitched the papers into the hat, and ran up to me.
+
+"My dear sir, don't get up, I implore you. And I won't sit down. I have
+just seen the ever beautiful and beloved lady."
+
+I turned my chair away from the table, and faced him as he stood blowing
+kisses with one little hand, while the other lay on his heart. In a
+flash he struck a new gesture; he folded his arms and scowled.
+
+"I was with her. She was opening her inmost heart to me. She knows I
+am her champion. A servant came up announcing Monsieur Vauvenarde.
+She dismissed me. I have come to my patron and friend, the English
+statesman. Her husband is with her now."
+
+I smiled. "Madame Brandt told me that she had asked for an interview."
+
+"And you allow it? You allow her to contaminate her beautiful presence
+with the sight of that traitor, that cheat at cards, that murderer, that
+devil? Ah, but I will not have it! I am her champion. I will save her. I
+will save you. I will take you both away to Egypt, and surround you with
+my beautiful cats, and fan you with peacock's feathers."
+
+This was sheer crackedness of brain. For the first time I feared for the
+little man. When people begin to talk that way they are not allowed to
+go about loose. He went on talking and the three languages he used in
+his jargon got clotted to the point of unintelligibility. He spoke very
+fast and, as far as I could understand, poured abuse on the head of
+Captain Vauvenarde, and continued to declare himself Lola's champion
+and my devoted friend. He stamped up and down the room in his tightly
+buttoned frock-coat from the breastpocket of which peeped the fingers of
+his yellow dogskin gloves. At last he stopped, and drawing a chair near
+the window perched on it with a little hop like a child. He held out his
+hand.
+
+"Do you believe I am your friend?"
+
+"I am sure of it, my dear Professor."
+
+"Then I'll betray a sacred confidence. The _carissima signora_ loves
+you. You didn't know it. But she loves you."
+
+I stared for a moment at the dwarf as if he had been a reasonable being.
+Something seemed to click inside my head, like a clogged cog-wheel
+that had suddenly freed itself, and my mind went whirling away straight
+through the past few weeks. I tried to smile, and I said:
+
+"You are quite mistaken."
+
+"Oh, no," he replied, wagging his Napoleonic head. "Anastasius
+Papadopoulos is never mistaken. She told me so herself. She wept. She
+put her beautiful arms round my neck and sobbed on my shoulder."
+
+I found myself reproving him gently. "You should not have told me this,
+my dear Professor. Such confidences are locked up in the heart of _un
+galant homme_, and are not revealed even to his dearest friend."
+
+But my voice sounded hollow in my own ears, and what he said for the
+next few minutes I do not remember. The little man had told the truth to
+me, and Lola had told the truth to him. The realisation of it paralysed
+me. Why had I been such a fool as not to see it for myself? Memories of
+a hundred indications came tumbling one after another into my head--the
+forgotten glove, the glances, the changes of mood, the tears when she
+learned of my illness, the mysterious words, the abrupt little "You?" of
+yesterday. The woman was in love, deeply in love, in love with all the
+fervour of her big nature. And I had stood by and wondered what she
+meant by this and by that--things that would have been obvious to a
+coalheaver. I thought of Dale and I felt miserably guilty, horribly
+ashamed. How could I expect him to believe me when I told him that I had
+not wittingly stolen her affections from him. And her affections? _Bon
+Dieu_! What on earth could I do with them? What is the use of a woman's
+love to a dead man? And did I want it even for the tiny remainder of
+life?
+
+Anastasius, perceiving that I paid but scant attention to his
+conversation, wriggled off his chair and stood before me with folded
+arms.
+
+"You adore each other with a great passion," he said. "She is my
+Madonna, and you are my friend and benefactor. I will be your protection
+and defence. I will never let her go away with that infamous, gambling
+and murdering scoundrel. My gigantic combinations have matured. I bless
+your union."
+
+He lifted his little arms in benediction. The situation was cruelly
+comical. For a moment I hated the mournful-visaged, posturing monkey,
+and had a wild desire to throw him out of the window and have done with
+him. I rose and, towering over him, was about to lecture him severely on
+his impertinent interference, when the sight of his scared face made
+me turn away with a laugh. What would be the use of reproaching him? He
+would only sit down on the floor and weep. So I paced the room, while he
+followed me with his eyes like an uncertain spaniel.
+
+"Look here, Professor," said I at last. "Now that you've found Captain
+Vauvenarde, brought Madame Brandt and him together, and told me that she
+is in love with me, don't you think you've done enough? Don't you think
+your cats need your attention? Something terrible may be happening to
+them. I dreamed last night," I added with desperate mendacity, "that
+they were turned into woolly lambs."
+
+"Monsieur," said the dwarf loftily, "my duty is here. And I care not
+whether my cats are turned into the angels of Paradise."
+
+I groaned. "You are wasting a great deal of money over this affair," I
+urged.
+
+"What is money to my gigantic combinations?"
+
+"Tell me," I cried with considerable impatience. "What are your
+confounded combinations?"
+
+He began to tremble violently. "I would rather die," said he, "than
+betray my secret."
+
+"It's all some silly nonsense about that wretched horse!" I exclaimed.
+
+He covered his ears with his hands. "Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Don't utter
+it!"
+
+In another moment he was cowering on his knees before me.
+
+"You, of all men, mustn't blaspheme. You whom I love like my master.
+You whom the divine lady loves. I can't bear it!" He continued to gibber
+unintelligibly.
+
+He was stark mad. There was no question of it. For a moment I
+stood irresolute. Then I lifted him to his feet and patted his head
+soothingly.
+
+"Never mind," said I. "I was wrong. It was a beautiful horse. There
+never was such a horse in the world. If I had a picture of him I would
+hang it up on the wall over my bed."
+
+"Would you?" he cried joyfully. "Then I will give you one."
+
+He trotted over to the bundle of papers that reposed in his hat on
+the floor, searched through them, and to my dismay handed me a faded,
+unmounted, and rather torn and crumpled photograph of the wonderful
+horse.
+
+"There!" said he.
+
+"I could not rob you of it," I protested.
+
+"It will be my joy to know that you have it--that it is hanging over
+your bed. See--have you a pin? I myself will fix it for you."
+
+While he was searching my table for pins the chasseur of the hotel came
+with a message from Madame Brandt. Would Monsieur come at once to Madame
+in her private room?
+
+"I'll come now," I said. "Professor, you must excuse me."
+
+"Don't mention it. I shall occupy myself in hanging the picture in the
+most artistic way possible."
+
+So I left him, his mind apparently concentrated on the childish task of
+pinning the photograph of the ridiculous horse on my bedroom wall,
+and went with the most complicated feelings downstairs and through the
+corridors to Lola's apartments.
+
+She rose to meet me as I entered.
+
+"It's very kind of you to come," she said in her fluent but Britannic
+French. "May I present my husband, Monsieur Vauvenarde."
+
+Monsieur Vauvenarde and I exchanged bows. I noticed at once that he wore
+the Frenchman's costume when he pays a _visite de ceremonie_, frock-coat
+and gloves, and that a silk hat lay on the table. I was glad that he
+paid her this mark of respect.
+
+"I have had the pleasure of meeting you before, Monsieur," said he, "in
+circumstances somewhat different."
+
+"I remember perfectly," said I.
+
+"And your charming but inexperienced little friend--is he well?"
+
+"He is at present decorating my room with photographs of Madame's late
+horse, Sultan," said I.
+
+He was startled, and gave me a quick, sharp look. I did not notice it
+at the time, but I remembered it later. Then he broke into an indulgent
+laugh.
+
+"The poor animal!" He turned to Lola. "How jealous I used to be of him!
+And how quickly the time flies. But give yourself the trouble of seating
+yourself, Monsieur."
+
+He motioned me to a chair and sat down. He was a man of polished manner
+and had a pleasant voice. I guessed that in the days when he paid court
+to Lola, he had been handsome in his dark Norman way, and possessed
+considerable fascination. Evil living and sordid passions had coarsened
+his features, produced bagginess under the eyes and a shiftiness of
+glance. Idleness and an inverted habit of life were responsible for
+the nascent paunch and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck. He
+suggested the revivified corpse of a fine gentleman that had been
+unnaturally swollen. I had disliked him at the Cercle Africain; now I
+detested him heartily. The idea of Lola entering the vitiated atmosphere
+of his life was inexpressibly repugnant to me.
+
+Contrary to her habit, Lola sat bolt upright on the stamped-velvet
+suite, the palms of her hands pressing the seat on either side of her.
+She caught the shade of disgust that swept over my face, and gave me a
+quick glance that pleaded for toleration. Her eyes, though bright, were
+sunken, like those of a woman who has not slept.
+
+"Monsieur," said Vauvenarde, "my wife informs me that to your
+disinterested friendship is due this most charming reconciliation."
+
+"Reconciliation?" I echoed. "It was quickly effected."
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," he said. "I have always longed for the comforts of a home.
+My wife has grown tired of a migratory existence. She comes to find
+me. I hasten to meet her. There is nothing to keep us apart. The
+reconciliation was a matter of a few seconds. I wish to express my
+gratitude to you, and, therefore, I ask you to accept my most cordial
+thanks."
+
+"It has always been a pleasure to me," said I very frigidly, "to place
+my services at the disposal of Madame Brandt."
+
+"Vauvenarde, Monsieur," he corrected with a smile.
+
+"And is Madame Vauvenarde equally satisfied with the--reconciliation?" I
+asked.
+
+"I think Monsieur Vauvenarde is somewhat premature," said Lola, with a
+trembling lip. "There were conditions--"
+
+"A mere question of protocol." He waved an airy hand.
+
+"I don't know what that is," said Lola. "There are conditions I must
+fix, and I thought the advice of my friend, Monsieur de Gex--"
+
+"Precisely, my dear Lola," he interrupted. "The principle is affirmed.
+We are reconciled. I proceed logically. The first thing I do is to thank
+Monsieur de Gex--you have a French name, Monsieur, and you pronounce it
+English fashion, which is somewhat embarrassing--But no matter. The
+next thing is the protocol. We have no possibility of calling a family
+council, and therefore, I acceded with pleasure to the intervention
+of Monsieur. It is kind of him to burden himself with our unimportant
+affairs."
+
+The irony of his tone belied the suave correctitude of his words. I
+detested him more and more. More and more did I realise that the dying
+eumoirist is capable of petty human passions. My vanity was being
+sacrified. Here was a woman passionately in love with me proposing
+to throw herself into another man's arms--it made not a scrap of
+difference, in the circumstances, that the man was her husband--and into
+the arms of such a man! Having known me to decline--etcetera, etcetera!
+How could she face it? And why was she doing it? To save herself from
+me, or me from herself? She knew perfectly well that the little pain
+inside would precious soon settle that question. Why was she doing it?
+I should have thought that the first glance at the puffy reprobate would
+have been enough to show her the folly of her idea. However, it was
+comforting to learn that she had not surrendered at once.
+
+"If I am to have the privilege, Monsieur," said I, "of acting as a
+family council, perhaps you may forgive my hinting at some of the
+conditions that doubtless are in Madame's mind."
+
+"Proceed, Monsieur," said he.
+
+"I want to know where I am," said Lola in English. "He took everything
+for granted from the first."
+
+"Are you willing to go back to him?" I asked also in English.
+
+She met my gaze steadily, and I saw a woman's needless pain at the back
+of her eyes. She moistened her lips with her tongue, and said:
+
+"Under conditions."
+
+"Monsieur," said I in French, turning to Vauvenarde, "forgive us for
+speaking our language."
+
+"Perfectly," said he, and he smiled meaningly and banteringly at us
+both.
+
+"In the first place, Monsieur, you are aware that Madame has a little
+fortune, which does not detract from the charm you have always found in
+her. It was left her by her father, who, as you know, tamed lions and
+directed a menagerie. I would propose that Madame appointed trustees to
+administer this little fortune."
+
+"There is no necessity, Monsieur," he said. "By the law of France it is
+hers to do what she likes with."
+
+"Precisely," I rejoined. "Trustees would prevent her from doing what she
+liked with it. Madame has indeed a head for affairs, but she also has
+a woman's heart, which sometimes interferes with a woman's head in the
+most disastrous manner."
+
+"Article No. 1 of the protocol. _Allez toujours_, Monsieur."
+
+I went on, feeling happier. "The next article treats of a little matter
+which I understand has been the cause of differences in the past between
+Madame and yourself. Madame, although she has not entered the arena
+for some time, has not finally abandoned it." I smiled at the look of
+surprise on Lola's face. "An artist is always an artist, Monsieur. She
+is willing, however, to renounce it for ever, if you, on your side, will
+make quite a small sacrifice."
+
+"Name it, Monsieur."
+
+"You have a little passion for baccarat----"
+
+"Surely, Monsieur," said he blandly, "my wife would not expect me to
+give up what is the mere recreation of every clubman."
+
+"As a recreation pure and simple--she would not insist too much,
+but----" I shrugged my shoulders. I flatter myself on being able to do
+it with perfect French expressiveness. I caught, to my satisfaction, an
+angry gleam in his eye.
+
+"Do you mean to say, Monsieur, that I play for more than recreation?"
+
+"How dare I say anything, Monsieur. But Madame is prejudiced against
+the Cercle Africain. For a bachelor there is little to be said against
+it--but for a married man--you seize the point?" said I.
+
+"_Bien_, Monsieur," he said, swallowing his wrath. "And Article 3?"
+
+"Since you have left the army--would it not be better to engage in
+some profession--unless your private fortune dispenses you from the
+necessity."
+
+He said nothing but: "Article 4?"
+
+"It would give Madame comfort to live out of Algiers."
+
+"_Moi aussi_," he replied rather unexpectedly. "We have the whole of
+France to choose from."
+
+"Would not Madame be happier if she lived out of France, also? She has
+always longed for a social position."
+
+"_Eh, bien_? I can give her one in France."
+
+"Are you quite sure?" I asked, looking him in the eyes.
+
+"Monsieur," said he, rising and giving his moustache a swashbuckler
+twist upward, "what are you daring to insinuate?"
+
+I leaned back in my chair and fingered the waxed ends of mine.
+
+"Nothing, Monsieur; I ask a simple question, which you surely can have
+no difficulty in answering."
+
+"Your questions are the height of indiscretion," he cried angrily.
+
+"In that case, before we carry this interview further, the Family
+Council and Madame would do well to have a private consultation."
+
+"Monsieur," he cried, completely losing his temper. "I forbid you to use
+that tone to me. You are making a mock of me. You are insulting me. I
+bore with you long enough to see how much further your insolence would
+dare to go. I'm not to have a hand in the administration of my wife's
+money? I'm to forsake a plentiful means of livelihood? I'm to become a
+commercial traveller? I'm to expatriate myself? I'm to explain, too,
+the reasons why I left the army? I would not condescend. Least of all to
+you."
+
+"May I ask why, Monsieur?"
+
+"_Tonnerre de Dieu_!" He stamped his foot. "Do you take me for a fool?
+Here I am--I came at my wife's request, ready to take her back as
+my wife, ready to condone everything--yes, Monsieur, as a man of the
+world--you think I have no eyes, no understanding--ready to take her off
+your hands--"
+
+I leaped to my feet.
+
+"Monsieur!" I thundered.
+
+Lola gave a cry and rushed forward. I pushed her aside, and glared at
+him. I was in a furious rage. We glared at each other eye to eye. I
+pointed to the door.
+
+"_Monsieur, sortez_!"
+
+I went to it and flung it wide. Anastasius Papadopoulos trotted into the
+room.
+
+His entrance was so queer, so unexpected, so anti-climatic, that for the
+moment the three of us were thrown off our emotional balance.
+
+"I have heard all, I have heard all," shrieked the little man. "I know
+you for what you are. I am the champion of the _carissima signora_
+and the protector of the English statesman. You are a traitor and
+murderer--"
+
+Vauvenarde lifted his hand in a threatening gesture.
+
+"Hold your tongue, you little abortion!" he shouted.
+
+But Anastasius went on screaming and flourishing his bundle of papers.
+
+"Ask him if he remembers the horse Sultan; ask him if he remembers the
+horse Sultan!"
+
+Lola took him by the shoulders.
+
+"Anastasius, you must go away from here--to please me. It's my orders."
+
+But he shook himself free, and the silk hat which he had not removed
+fell off in the quick struggle.
+
+"Ask him if he remembers Saupiquet," he screamed, and then banged the
+door.
+
+A malevolent devil put a sudden idea into my head and prompted speech.
+
+"_Do_ you remember Saupiquet?" I asked ironically.
+
+"Monsieur, meddle with your own affairs and let me pass. You shall hear
+from me."
+
+The dwarf planted himself before the door.
+
+"You shall not pass till you have answered me. Do you remember
+Saupiquet? Do you remember the five francs you gave to Saupiquet to let
+you into Sultan's stable? Ah! Ha! Ha! You wince. You grow pale. Do you
+remember the ball of poison you put down Sultan's throat?"
+
+Lola started forward with flaming eyes and anguished face.
+
+"You--you?" she gasped. "You were so ignoble as to do that?"
+
+"The accursed brute!" shouted Vauvenarde. "Yes, I did it. I wish I had
+burned out his entrails."
+
+Anastasius sprang at him like a tiger cat. I had a quick vision of the
+dwarf clinging in the air against the other's bulky form, one hand at
+his throat, and then of an incredibly swift flash of steel. The dwarf
+dropped off and rolled backwards, revealing something black sticking out
+of Vauvenarde's frock-coat--for the second I could not realise what it
+was. Then Vauvenarde, with a ghastly face, reeled sideways and collapsed
+in a heap on the ground.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Of what happened immediately afterwards I have but a confused memory. I
+remember that Lola and I both fell on our knees beside the stabbed man,
+and I remember his horrible staring eyes and open mouth. I remember
+that, though she was white and shaky, she neither shrieked, went into
+hysterics, nor fainted. I remember rushing down to the manager; I
+remember running with him breathlessly through obscure passages of
+the hotel in search of a doctor who was attending a sick member of the
+staff. I remember the rush back, the doctor bending over the body, which
+Lola had partially unclothed, and saying:
+
+"He is dead. The blade has gone straight through his heart."
+
+And I have in my mind the unforgettable and awful picture of Anastasius
+Papadopoulos disregarded in a corner of the room, with his absurd silk
+hat on--some reflex impulse had caused him to pick it up and put it on
+his head--sitting on the floor amid a welter of documents relating to
+the death of the horse Sultan, one of which he was eagerly perusing.
+
+After this my memory is clear. It was only the first awful shock and
+horror of the thing that dazed me.
+
+The man was dead, said the doctor. He must lie until the police arrived
+and drew up the _proces-verbal_. The manager went to telephone to the
+police, and while he was gone I told the doctor what had occurred.
+Anastasius took no notice of us. Lola, holding her nerves under iron
+control, stood bolt upright looking alternately at the doctor and
+myself as we spoke. But she did not utter a word. Presently the manager
+returned. The alarm had not been given in the hotel. No one knew
+anything about the occurrence. Lola went into her bedroom and came back
+with a sheet. The manager took it from her and threw it over the dead
+man. The doctor stood by Anastasius. The end of a strip of sunlight by
+the window just caught the dwarf in his corner.
+
+"Get up," said the doctor.
+
+Anastasius, without raising his eyes from his papers, waved him away.
+
+"I am busy. I am engaged on important papers of identification. He had a
+white star on his forehead, and his tail was over a metre long."
+
+Lola approached him.
+
+"Anastasius," she said gently. He looked up with a radiant smile. "Put
+away those papers." Like a child he obeyed and scrambled to his feet.
+Then, seeing the unfamiliar face of the doctor for the first time, he
+executed one of his politest and most elaborate bows. The doctor after
+looking at him intently for a while, turned to me.
+
+"Mad. Utterly mad. Apparently he has no consciousness of what he has
+done."
+
+He lured him to the sofa and sat beside him and began to talk in a low
+tone of the contents of the papers. Anastasius replied cheerfully, proud
+at being noticed by the stranger. The papers referred to a precious
+secret, a gigantic combination, which he had spent years in maturing. I
+shivered at the sound of his voice, and turned to Lola.
+
+"This is no place for you. Go into your bedroom till you are wanted."
+
+I held the door open for her. She put her hands up to her face and
+reeled, and I thought she would have fallen; but she roused herself.
+
+"I don't want to break down--not yet. I shall if I'm left alone--come
+and sit with me, for God's sake."
+
+"Very well," said I.
+
+She passed me and I followed; but at the door I turned and glanced round
+the cheerful, sunny room. There, against the background of blue sky and
+tree tops framed by the window, sat Anastasius Papadopoulos, swinging
+his little legs and talking bombastically to the tanned and grizzled
+doctor, and opposite stood the correctly attired hotel manager in
+the attitude in which he habitually surveyed the lay-out of the table
+d'hote, keeping watch beside the white-covered shape on the floor. I was
+glad to shut the sight from my eyes. We waited silently in the bedroom,
+Lola sitting on the bed and hiding her face in the pillows, and I
+standing by the window and looking out at the smiling mockery of the
+fair earth. An agonising spasm of pain--a _momento mori_--shot through
+me and passed away. I thanked God that a few weeks would see the end of
+me. I had always enjoyed the comedy of life. It had been to me a thing
+of infinite jest. But this stupid, meaningless tragedy was carrying the
+joke too far. My fastidiousness revolted at its vulgarity. I no longer
+wished to inhabit a world where such jests were possible. . . . I had
+never seen a man die before. I was surprised at the swiftness and
+the ugliness of it. . . . I suddenly realised that I was smoking a
+cigarette, which I was quite unconscious of having lit. I threw it away.
+A minute afterwards I felt that if I did not smoke I should go crazy. So
+I lit another. . . . The ghastly silliness of the murder! . . . Colonel
+Bunnion's loud laugh rose from the terrace below, jarring horribly on
+my ears. A long green praying mantis that had apparently mounted on the
+bougainvillea against the hotel wall appeared in meditative stateliness
+on the window-sill. I picked the insect up absent-mindedly, and began
+to play with it. Lola's voice from the bed startled me and caused me to
+drop the mantis. She spoke hoarsely.
+
+"Tell me--what are they going to do with him?"
+
+I turned round. She had raised a crushed face from the pillows, and
+looked at me haggardly. I noticed a carafe of brandy and a siphon by the
+bedside. I mixed her a strong dose, and, before replying, made her drink
+it.
+
+"They'll place him under restraint, that's all. He's not responsible for
+his actions."
+
+"He did that once before--I told you--but without the knife--I wish I
+could cry--I can't--You don't think it heartless of me--but my brain is
+on fire--I shall always see it--I wish to God I had never asked him to
+come--Why did I? My God, why did I?--It was my fault--I wanted to see
+him--to judge for myself how much of the old Andre was left--there was
+good in him once--I thought I might possibly help him--There was nothing
+for me to do in the world--Without you any kind of old hell was good
+enough--That's why I sent for him--When he came, after a bit, I was
+afraid, and sent for you----"
+
+"Afraid of what?" I asked.
+
+"He asked me at once what money I had--Then there seemed to be no doubt
+in his mind that I would join him--We spoke of you--the friend who could
+advise me--He never said--what he said afterwards--I thought it kind
+of him to consent to see you--I rang the bell and sent the chasseur for
+you. I supposed Anastasius had gone home--I never thought of him. The
+poor little man was sweet to me, just like a dog--a silent,
+sympathetic dog--I spoke to him as I would to something that wouldn't
+understand--all sorts of foolish things--Now and then a woman has to
+empty her heart"--she shivered--her hands before her face.
+
+"It's my fault, it's my fault."
+
+"These things are no one's fault," I said gently. But just as I was
+beginning to console her with what thumb-marked scraps of platitude I
+could collect--the only philosophy after all, such is the futility of
+systems, adequate to the deep issues of life--the door opened and the
+manager announced that the police had arrived.
+
+We went through the ordeal of the _proces-verbal_. Anastasius,
+confronted with his victim, had no memory of what had occurred. He
+shrieked and shrank and hid his face in Lola's dress. When he was forced
+to speak he declared that the dead man was not Captain Vauvenarde.
+Captain Vauvenarde was at the Cercle Africain. He, himself, was seeking
+him. He would take the gendarmes there, and they could arrest the
+Captain for the murder of Sultan of which his papers contained
+indubitable proofs. Eventually the poor little wretch was led away in
+custody, proud and smiling, entirely convinced that he was leading his
+captors to the arrest of Captain Vauvenarde. On the threshold he turned
+and bowed to us so low that the brim of his silk hat touched the
+floor. Then Lola's nerve gave way and she broke into a passion of awful
+weeping.
+
+The _commissaire de police_ secured the long thin knife (how the dwarf
+had managed to conceal it on his small person was a mystery) and the
+bundle of documents, and accompanied me to my room to see whether he had
+left anything there to serve as a _piece de conviction_. We found
+only the crumpled picture of the horse Sultan neatly pinned against my
+bedroom wall, and on the floor a ribbon tied like a garter with a little
+bell opposite the bow. On it was written "Santa Bianca," and I knew it
+was the collar of the beloved cat which he must have been carrying about
+him for a talisman. The _commissaire_ took this also.
+
+
+
+If you desire to know the details of the judicial proceedings connected
+with the murder of Andre Marie-Joseph Vauvenarde, ex-Captain in the
+Chasseurs d'Afrique, and the trial of Anastasius Papadopoulos, I must
+refer you to the Algerian, Parisian, and London Press. There you will
+find an eagerly picturesque account of the whole miserable affair. Now,
+not only am I unable to compete with descriptive verbatim reporters
+on their own ground, but also a consecutive statement, either bald or
+graphic, of the tedious horrors Lola Brandt and I had to undergo,
+would be foreign to the purpose of these notes, however far from their
+original purpose an ironical destiny has caused them to wander. You know
+nearly all that is necessary for you to know, so that when I am dead
+you may not judge me too harshly. The remainder I can summarise in a few
+words. At any rate, I have told the truth, often more naively than one
+would have thought possible for a man who prided himself as much as I
+did on his epicurean sophistication.
+
+These have been days, as I say, of tedious horror. There have been
+endless examinations, reconstructions of the crime, exposures in daring
+publicity of the private lives of the protagonists of the lunatic drama.
+The French judges and advocates have accepted the account given by Lola
+and myself of our mutual relations with a certain mocking credulity. The
+Press hasn't accepted it at all. It took as a matter of course the
+view held by the none too noble victim. At first, seeing Lola shrug her
+shoulders with supreme indifference as to her own reputation, I cared
+but little for these insinuations. I wrote such letters to my sisters
+and to Dale as I felt sure would be believed, and let the long-eared,
+gaping world go hang. Besides, I had other things to think of. Physical
+pain is insistent, and I have suffered damnable torture. The pettiness
+of the legal inquiry has been also a maddening irritation. Nothing has
+been too minute for the attention of the French judiciary. It seemed as
+though the whole of the evil gang of the Cercle Africain were called as
+witnesses. They testified as to Captain Vauvenarde's part proprietorship
+of the hell--as to wrong practices that occurred there--as to the crazy
+conduct of both Anastasius and myself on the occasion of my insane
+visit. Officers of the Chasseurs d'Afrique were compelled further to
+blacken the character of the dead man--he had been a notorious plucker
+of pigeons during most of his military career, and when at last he was
+caught red-handed palming the king at _ecarte_, he was forced to resign
+his commission. Arabs came from the slums with appalling stories. Even
+the stolid Saupiquet, dragged from Toulon, gave evidence as to the
+five-franc bribe and the debt of fifteen sous, and identified the horse
+Sultan by the crumpled photograph. Lola and I have been racked day
+after day with questions--some, indeed, prompted by the suspicion that
+Vauvenarde might have met his death directly by our hand instead of that
+of Anastasius. It was the Procureur-general who said: "It can be argued
+that you would benefit by the decease of the defunct." I replied that
+we could not benefit in any way. My sole object was to effect a
+reconciliation between husband and wife. "Will you explain why you gave
+yourself that trouble?" I never have smiled so grimly as I did then.
+How could I explain my precious pursuit of the eumoirous to a French
+Procureur-general? How could I put before him the point of view of a
+semi-disembodied spirit? I replied with lame lack of originality that
+my actions proceeded from disinterested friendship. "You are a pure
+altruist then?" said he. "Very pure," said I. . . . It was only the
+facts of the scabbard of the knife having been found attached to the
+dwarf's person beneath his clothes, and of certain rambling menaces
+occurring in his Sultan papers that saved us from the indignity of being
+arrested and put into the dock. . . .
+
+During all this time I remained at the hotel at Mustapha Superieur. Lola
+moved to a suite of rooms in another hotel a little way down the hill. I
+saw her daily. At first she shrank from publicity and refused to go out,
+save in a closed carriage to the town when her presence was necessary
+at the inquiries. But after a time I persuaded her to brave the stare of
+the curious and stroll with me among the eucalyptus woods above. We
+cut ourselves off from other human companionship and felt like two lost
+souls wandering alone through mist. She conducted herself with grave and
+simple dignity. . . . Once or twice she visited Anastasius in prison.
+She found him humanely treated and not despondent. He thought they
+had arrested him for the poisoning of the horse, and laughed at their
+foolishness. As they refused to return him his dossier, he occupied
+himself in reconstructing it, and wrote pages and pages of incoherence
+to prove the guilt of Captain Vauvenarde. He was hopelessly mad. . . .
+The bond of pain bound me very close to Lola.
+
+"What are you going to do with your life?" I asked her one day.
+
+"So long as I have you as a friend, it doesn't greatly matter."
+
+"You forget," I said, "that you can't have me much longer."
+
+"Are you going to leave me? It's not because I have dragged you through
+all this dirt and horror. Another woman might say that of another
+man--but not I of you. Why are you going to leave me? I want so
+little--only to see you now and then--to keep the heart in me."
+
+"Can't you realise, that what I said in London is true?"
+
+"No. I can't. It's unbelievable. You can't believe it yourself. If
+you did, how could you go on behaving like anybody else--like me for
+instance?"
+
+"What would you do if you were condemned to die?"
+
+She shuddered. "I should go mad with fear--I----" She broke off and
+remained for some moments reflective, with knitted brow. Then she lifted
+her head proudly. "No, I shouldn't. I should face it like you. Only
+cowards are afraid. It's best to show things that you don't care a hang
+for them."
+
+"Keep that sublime _je m'en fich'isme_ up when I'm dead and buried,"
+said I, "and you'll pull through your life all right. The only thing you
+must avoid is the pursuit of eumoiriety."
+
+"What on earth is that?" she asked.
+
+"The last devastating vanity," said I.
+
+And so it is.
+
+"When you are gone," she said bravely, "I shall remember how strong and
+true you were. It will make me strong too."
+
+I acquiesced silently in her proposition. In this age of flippancy
+and scepticism, if a human soul proclaims sincerely its faith in the
+divinity of a rabbit, in God's name don't disturb it. It is _something_
+whereto to refer his aspirations, his resolves; it is a court of
+arbitration, at the lowest, for his spiritual disputes; and the rabbit
+will be as effective an oracle as any other. For are not all religions
+but the strivings of the spirit towards crystallisation at some point
+outside the environment of passions and appetites which is the flesh, so
+that it can work untrammelled: and are not all gods but the accidental
+forms, conditioned by circumstance, which this crystallisation takes?
+All gods in their anthropo-, helio-, thero-, or what-not-morphic forms
+are false; but, on the other hand, all gods in their spiritual essence
+are true. So I do not deprecate my prospective unique position in Lola
+Brandt's hagiology. It was better for her soul that I should occupy it.
+Even if I were about to live my normal life out, like any other hearty
+human, marry and beget children, I doubt whether I should attempt to
+shake my wife's faith in my heroical qualities.
+
+This was but a fragment of one among countless talks. Some were lighter
+in tone, others darker, the mood of man being much like a child's
+balloon which rises or falls as the strata of air are more rarefied or
+more dense. Perhaps during the time of strain, the atmosphere was more
+often rarefied, and our conversation had the day's depressing incidents
+for its topics. We rarely spoke of the dead man. He was scarcely a
+subject for panegyric, and it was useless to dwell on the memory of
+his degradation. I think we only once talked of him deeply and at
+any length, and that was on the day of the funeral. His brother, a
+manufacturer at Clermont-Ferrand, and a widowed aunt, apparently his
+only two surviving relatives, arrived in Algiers just in time to attend
+the ceremony. They had seen the report of the murder in the newspapers
+and had started forthwith. The brother, during an interview with Lola,
+said bitter things to her, reproaching her with the man's downfall, and
+cast on her the responsibility of his death.
+
+"He spoke," she said, "as if I had suggested the murder and practically
+put the knife into the poor crazy little fellow's hand."
+
+The Vauvenardes must have been an amiable family.
+
+"Before I came," she said a little while later, "I still had
+some tenderness for him--a woman has for the only man that has
+been--really--in her life. I wish I could feel it now. I wish I could
+feel some respect even. But I can't. If I could, it would lessen the
+horror that has got hold of me to my bones."
+
+It was a torture to her generous soul that she could not grieve for him.
+She could only shudder at the tragedy. In her heart she grieved more for
+Anastasius Papadopoulos, and in so doing she was, in her feminine way,
+self-accusative of callous lack of human feeling. It was my attempt to
+bring her to a more rational state of mind that caused us to review the
+dead man's career, and recapitulate the unpleasing incidents of the last
+interview.
+
+Of Captain Vauvenarde, no more. He has gone whither I am going. That his
+soul may rest in peace is my earnest prayer. But I do not wish to meet
+him.
+
+Lola went tearless and strong through the horrible ordeal of
+the judicial proceedings. She said I gave her courage. Perhaps,
+unconsciously, I did. It was only when the end came that she broke down,
+although she knew exactly what the end would be. And I, too, felt a lump
+in my throat when they sentenced Anastasius Papadopoulos to the asylum,
+and I saw him for the last time, the living parody of Napoleon III,
+frock-coated and yellow-gloved, the precious, newly written dossier in
+his hand, as he disappeared with a mournful smile from the court,
+after bowing low to the judge and to us, without having understood the
+significance of anything that had happened.
+
+In the carriage that took us home she wept and sobbed bitterly.
+
+"I loved him so. He was the only creature on earth that loved me. He
+loved me as only a dog can love--or an angel."
+
+I let her cry. What could I say or do?
+
+
+
+These have been weeks of tedious horror and pain. With the exception of
+Colonel Bunnion, I have kept myself aloof from my fellow creatures
+in the hotel, even taking my meals in my own rooms, not wishing to be
+stared at as the hero of the scandal that convulsed the place. And with
+regard to Colonel Bunnion shall I be accused of cynicism if I say that
+I admitted him--not to my confidence--but to my company, because I know
+that it delighted the honest but boring fellow to prove to himself that
+he could rise above British prejudice and exhibit tact in dealing with
+a man in a delicate position? For, mark you, all the world--even those
+nearest and dearest to me as I soon discovered--believed that the wife
+of the man who was murdered before my eyes was my mistress. Colonel
+Bunnion was kind, and he meant to be kind. He was a gentleman for all
+his wearisomeness, and his kindness was such as I could accept. But I
+know what I say about him is true. Ye gods! Haven't I felt myself the
+same swelling pride in my broadmindedness? When a man is going on my
+journey he does not palter with truth.
+
+Though I held myself aloof, as I say, from practically all my fellow
+creatures here, I have not been cut off from the outside world. My
+sisters, like this French court in Algiers, have accepted my statement
+with polite incredulity. Their letters have been full of love,
+half-veiled reproach, anxiety as to their social position, and an insane
+desire to come and take care of me. This I have forbidden them to do.
+The pain they would have inflicted on themselves, dear souls, would have
+far outweighed the comfort I might have gained from their ministrations.
+Then I have had piteous letters from Dale.
+
+". . . Your telegram reassured me, though I was puzzled. Now I get a
+letter from Lola, telling me it's all off--that she never loved me--that
+she valued my youth and my friendship, but that it is best for us not to
+meet again. What is the meaning of it, Simon? For Heaven's sake tell me.
+I can't think of anything else. I can't sleep. I am going off my
+head. . . ."
+
+Again. ". . . This awful newspaper report and your letter of
+explanation--I have them side by side. Forgive me, Simon. I don't know
+what to believe, where to turn. . . . I have looked up to you as the
+best and straightest man I know. You must be. Yet why have you done
+this? Why didn't you tell me she was married? Why didn't she tell me? I
+can't write properly, my head is all on a buzz. The beastly papers say
+you were living with her in Algiers--but you weren't, were you? It would
+be too horrible. In fact, you say you weren't. But, all the same,
+you have stolen her from me. It wasn't like you. . . . And this awful
+murder. My God! you don't know what it all means to me. It's breaking my
+heart. . . ."
+
+And Lady Kynnersley wrote--with what object I scarcely know. The
+situation was far beyond the poor lady's by-laws and regulations for the
+upbringing of families and the conduct of life. The elemental mother
+in her battled on the side of her only son--foolishly, irrationally,
+unkindly. Her exordium was as correct as could be. The tragedy shocked
+her, the scandal grieved her, the innuendoes of the Press she refused to
+believe; she sympathised with me deeply. But then she turned from me
+to Dale, and feminine unreason took possession of her pen. She bitterly
+reproached herself for having spoken to me of Madame Brandt. Had she
+known how passionate and real was this attachment, she would never have
+interfered. The boy was broken-hearted. He accused me of having
+stolen her from him--his own words. He took little interest in his
+electioneering campaign, spoke badly, unconvincingly; spent hours in
+alternate fits of listlessness and anger. She feared for her darling's
+health and reason. She made an appeal to me who professed to love
+him--if it were honourably possible, would I bring Madame Brandt back to
+him? She was willing now to accept Dale's estimate of her worth. Could
+I, at the least, prevail on Madame Brandt to give him some hope--of what
+she did not know--but some hope that would save him from ruining his
+career and "doing something desperate"?
+
+And another letter from Dale:
+
+". . . I can't work at this election. For God's sake, give her back to
+me. Then I won't care. What is Parliament to me without her? And the
+election is as good as lost already. The other side has made as much as
+possible of the scandal. . . ."
+
+The only letters that have not been misery to read have come from
+Eleanor Faversham. There was one passage which made me thank God that He
+had created such women as Eleanor--
+
+"Don't fret over the newspaper lies, dear. Those who love you--and why
+shouldn't I love you still?--know the honourable gentleman that you are.
+Write to me if it would ease your heart and tell me just what you feel
+you can. Now and always you have my utter sympathy and understanding."
+
+And this is the woman of whose thousand virtues I dared to speak in
+flippant jest.
+
+Heaven forgive me.
+
+After receiving Lady Kynnersley's appeal, I went to Lola. It was just
+before the case came on at the Cour d'Assises. She had finished luncheon
+in her private room and was sitting over her coffee. I joined her. She
+wore the black blouse and skirt with which I have not yet been able
+to grow familiar, as it robbed her of the peculiar fascinating quality
+which I have tried to suggest by the word pantherine. Coffee over, we
+moved to the window which opened on a little back garden--the room was
+on the ground floor--in which grew prickly pear and mimosa, and newly
+flowering heliotrope. I don't know why I should mention this, except
+that some scenes impress themselves, for no particular reason, on the
+memory, while others associated with more important incidents fade into
+vagueness. I picked a bunch of heliotrope which she pinned at her bosom.
+
+"Lola," I said, "I want to speak to you seriously."
+
+She smiled wanly: "Do we ever speak otherwise these dreadful days?"
+
+"It's about Dale. Read this," said I, and I handed her Lady Kynnersley's
+letter. She read it through and returned it to me.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I asked you a week or two ago what you were going to do with your
+life," I said. "Does that letter offer you any suggestion?"
+
+"I'm to give him some hope--what hope can I give him?"
+
+"You're a free woman--free to marry. For the boy's sake the mother will
+consent. When she knows you as well as we know you she will--"
+
+"She will--what? Love me?"
+
+"She's a woman not given to loving--except, in unexpected bursts, her
+offspring. But she will respect you."
+
+She stood for a few moments silent, her arm resting against the window
+jamb and her head on her arm. She remained there so long that at last I
+rose and, looking at her face, saw that her eyes were full of tears. She
+dashed them away with the back of her hand, gave me a swift look, and
+went and sat in the shadow of the room. An action of this kind on the
+part of a woman signifies a desire for solitude. I lit a cigarette and
+went into the garden.
+
+It was a sorry business. I saw as clearly as Lola that Lady Kynnersley
+desired to purchase Dale's immediate happiness at any price, and that
+the future might bring bitter repentance. But I offered no advice.
+I have finished playing at Deputy Providence. A madman letting off
+fireworks in a gunpowder factory plays a less dangerous game.
+
+Presently she joined me and ran her arm through mine.
+
+"I'll write to Dale this afternoon," she said. "Don't let us talk of it
+any more now. You are tired out. It's time for you to go and lie down.
+I'll walk with you up the hill."
+
+It has come to this, that I must lie down for some hours during the day
+lest I should fall to pieces.
+
+"I suppose I'll have to," I laughed. "What a thing it is to have the
+wits of a man and the strength of a baby."
+
+She pressed my arm and said in her low caressing voice which I had not
+heard for many weeks: "I shouldn't be so proud of those man's wits, if I
+were you."
+
+I knew she said it playfully with reference to masculine non-perception
+of the feminine; but I chose to take it broadly.
+
+"My dear Lola," said I, "it has been borne in upon me that I am the most
+witless fool that the unwisdom of generations of English country squires
+has ever succeeded in producing."
+
+"Don't talk rot," she said, with foolishness in her eyes.
+
+She accompanied me bareheaded in the sunshine to the gate of my hotel.
+
+"Come and dine with me, if you're well enough," she said as we parted.
+
+I assented, and when the evening came I went. Did I not say that we were
+like two lost souls wandering alone in the mist?
+
+It was only when I rose to bid her good-night that she referred to Dale.
+
+"I wrote to him this afternoon," she announced curtly.
+
+"You said you would do so."
+
+"Would you like to know what I told him?"
+
+She put her hands behind her back and stood facing me, somewhat
+defiantly, in all her magnificence. I smiled. Women, much as they scoff
+at the blindness of our sex, are often transparent.
+
+"It's your firm determination to tell me," said I. "Well?"
+
+She advanced a step nearer to me, and looked me straight in the eyes
+defiantly.
+
+"I told him that I loved you with all my heart and all my soul. I told
+him that you didn't know it; that you didn't care a brass curse for me;
+that you had acted as you thought best for the happiness of himself and
+me. I told him that while you lived I could not think of another man.
+I told him that if you could face Death with a smile on your face, he
+might very well show the same courage and not chuck things right and
+left just because a common woman wouldn't marry him or live with him and
+spoil his career. There! That's what I told him. What do you think?"
+
+"Heaven knows what effect it will have," said I, wearily, for I was
+very, very tired. "But why, my poor Lola, have you wasted your love on a
+shadow like me?"
+
+She answered after the foolish way of women.
+
+
+
+I have not heard from either Dale or Lady Kynnersley. A day or two ago,
+in reply to a telegram to Raggles, I learned that Dale had lost the
+election.
+
+This, then, is the end of my _apologia pro vita mea_, which I began with
+so resonant a flourish of vainglory. I have said all that there is to be
+said. Nothing more has happened or is likely to happen until they put me
+under the earth. Oh, yes, I was forgetting. In spite of my Monte Cristo
+munificence, poor Latimer has been hammered on the Stock Exchange. Poor
+Lucy and the kids!
+
+I shall have, I think, just enough strength left to reach Mentone--this
+place is intolerable now--and there I shall put myself under the care of
+a capable physician who, with his abominable drugs, will doubtless begin
+the cheerful work of inducing the mental decay which I suppose must
+precede physical dissolution.
+
+I must confess that I am disappointed with the manner of my exit. I had
+imagined it quite different. I had beheld myself turning with a smile
+and a jest for one last view of the faces over which I, in my eumoirous
+career, had cast the largesse of happiness, and the vanishing with a
+gallant carelessness through the dusky portals. Instead of that, here
+am I sneaking out of life by the back door, covering my eyes for very
+shame. And glad? Oh, God, how glad I am to slink out of it!
+
+I have indeed accomplished the thing which I set out to do. I have
+severed a boy from the object of his passion. What an achievement
+for the crowning glory of a lifetime! And at what a cost: one
+fellow-creature's life and another's reason. On me lies the
+responsibility. Vauvenarde, it is true, did not adorn this grey world,
+but he drew the breath of life, and, through my jesting agency, it
+was cut off. Anastasius Papadopoulos, had he not come under my malign
+influence would have lived out his industrious, happy and dream-filled
+days. Lesser, but still great price, too, has been paid. Jealous hatred,
+misery and failure for the being I care most for in the world, the shame
+of a sordid scandal to those that hold me dear, the hopeless love and
+speedy mourning of a woman not without greatness.
+
+I have tried to make a Tom Fool of Destiny--and Destiny has proved
+itself to be the superior jester of the two, and has made a grim and
+bedraggled Tom Fool of me.
+
+. . . I must end this. I have just fallen in a faint on the floor, and
+Rogers has revived me with some drops Hunnington had given me in view of
+such a contingency.
+
+These are the last words I shall write. Life is too transcendentally
+humorous for a man not to take it seriously. Compared with it, Death is
+but a shallow jest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+It is many weeks since I wrote those words which I thought were to be
+my last. I read them over now, and laugh aloud. Life is more devilishly
+humorous than I in my most nightmare dreams ever imagined. Instead of
+dying at Mentone as I proposed, I am here, at Mustapha Superieur, still
+living. And let me tell you the master joke of the Arch-Jester.
+
+I am going to live.
+
+I am not going to die. I am going to live. I am quite well.
+
+Think of it. Is it farcical, comical, tragical, or what?
+
+This is how it has befallen. The last thing I remember of the
+old conditions was Rogers packing my things, and a sudden, awful,
+excruciating agony. I lost consciousness, remained for days in a
+bemused, stupefied state, which I felt convinced was death, and found
+particularly pleasant. At last I woke to a sense of bodily constriction
+and discomfort, and to the queer realisation that what I had taken for
+the Garden of Prosperpine was my own bedroom, and that the pale lady
+whom I had so confidently assumed was she who, crowned with calm leaves,
+"gathers all things mortal with cold, immortal hands" was no other than
+a blue-and-white-vested hospital nurse.
+
+"What the----" I began.
+
+"Chut!" she said, flitting noiselessly to my side. "You mustn't talk."
+And then she poured something down my throat. I lay back, wondering
+what it all meant. Presently a grizzled and tanned man, wearing a narrow
+black tie, came into the room. His face seemed oddly familiar. The nurse
+whispered to him. He came up to the bed, and asked me in French how I
+felt.
+
+"I don't know at all," said I.
+
+He laughed. "That's a good sign. Let me see how you are getting on."
+He stuck a thermometer in my mouth and held my pulse. These formalities
+completed, he turned up the bedclothes and did something with my body.
+Only then did I realise that I was tightly bandaged. My impressions grew
+clearer, and when he raised his face I recognised the doctor who had sat
+on the sofa with Anastasius Papadopoulos.
+
+"Nothing could be better," said he. "Keep quiet, and all will be well."
+
+"Will you kindly explain?" I asked.
+
+"You've had an operation. Also a narrow escape."
+
+I smiled at him pityingly. "What is the good of taking all this trouble?
+Why are you wasting your time?"
+
+He looked at me uncomprehendingly for a moment, and then he laughed as
+the light came to him.
+
+"Oh, I understand! Yes. Your English doctors had told you you were going
+to die. That an operation would be fatal--so your good friend
+Madame Brandt informed us--but we--_nous autres Francais_--are more
+enterprising. Kill or cure. We performed the operation--we didn't kill
+you--and here you are--cured."
+
+My heart sickened with a horrible foreboding. A clamminess, such as
+others feel at the approach of death, spread over my brow and neck.
+
+"Good God!" I cried, "you are not trying to tell me that I'm going to
+live?"
+
+"Why, of course I am!" he exclaimed, brutally delighted. "If nothing
+else kills you, you'll live to be a hundred."
+
+"Oh, damn!" said I. "Oh, damn! Oh, damn!" and the tears of physical
+weakness poured down my cheeks.
+
+"_Ce sont des droles de gens, les Anglais_!" I heard him whisper to the
+nurse before he left the room.
+
+Belonging to a queer folk or not, I found the prospect more and more
+dismally appalling according as my mind regained its clarity. It was the
+most overwhelming, piteous disappointment I have ever experienced in my
+life. I cursed in my whimpering, invalid fashion.
+
+"But don't you want to get well?" asked the wide-eyed nurse.
+
+"Certainly not! I thought I was dead, and I was very happy. I've been
+tricked and cheated and fooled," and I dashed my fist against the
+counterpane.
+
+"If you go on in this way," said the nurse, "you will commit suicide."
+
+"I don't care!" I cried--and then, they tell me, fainted. My temperature
+also ran up, and I became lightheaded again. It was not until the next
+day that I recovered my sanity. This time Lola was in the room with the
+nurse, and after a while the latter left us together. Even Lola could
+not understand my paralysing dismay.
+
+"But think of it, my dear friend," she argued, "just think of it. You
+are saved--saved by a miracle. The doctor says you will be stronger than
+you have ever been before."
+
+"All the more dreadful will it be," said I. "I had finished with life.
+I had got through with it. I don't want a second lifetime. One is quite
+enough for any sane human being. Why on earth couldn't they have let me
+die?"
+
+Lola passed her cool hand over my forehead.
+
+"You mustn't talk like that--Simon," she said, in her deepest and most
+caressing voice, using my name somewhat hesitatingly, for the first
+time. "You mustn't. A miracle really has been performed. You've been
+raised from the dead--like the man in the Gospel----"
+
+"Yes," said I petulantly, "Lazarus. And does the Gospel tell us what
+Lazarus really thought of the unwarrantable interference with his plans?
+Of course he had to be polite--"
+
+"Oh, don't!" cried, Lola, shocked. In a queer unenlightened way, she was
+a religious woman.
+
+"I'm sorry," said I, feeling ashamed of myself.
+
+"If you knew how I have prayed God to make you well," she said. "If I
+could have died for you, I would--gladly--gladly----"
+
+"But I wanted to die, my dear Lola," I insisted, with the egotism of
+the sick. "I object to this resuscitation. I say it is monstrous that
+I should have to start a second lifetime at my age. It's all very
+well when you begin at the age of half a minute--but when you begin at
+eight-and-thirty years----"
+
+"You have all the wisdom of eight-and-thirty years to start with."
+
+"There is only one thing more disastrous to a man than the wisdom of
+thirty-eight years," I declared with mulish inconvincibility, "and that
+is the wisdom he may accumulate after that age."
+
+She sighed and abandoned the argument. "We are going to make you well in
+spite of yourself," she said.
+
+They, namely, the doctor, the nurse, and Lola, have done their best, and
+they have succeeded. But their task has been a hard one. The patient's
+will to live is always a great factor in his recovery. My disgust at
+having to live has impeded my convalescence, and I fully believe that
+it is only Lola's tears and the doctor's frenzied appeals to me not
+to destroy the one chance of his life of establishing a brilliant
+professional reputation that have made me consent to face existence
+again.
+
+As for the doctor, he was pathetically insistent.
+
+"But you must get well!" he gesticulated. "I am going to publish it,
+your operation. It will make my fortune. I shall at last be able to
+leave this hole of an Algiers and go to Paris! You don't know what I've
+done for you! I've performed an operation on you that has never been
+performed successfully before. I thought it had been done, but I found
+out afterwards my English _confreres_ were right. It hasn't. I've worked
+a miracle in surgery, and by my publication will make you as the
+subject of it famous for ever. And here you are trying to die and ruin
+everything. I ask you--have you no human feelings left?"
+
+At the conclusion of these lectures I would sigh and laugh, and stretch
+out a thin hand. He shook it always with a humorous grumpiness which did
+me more good than the prospect of acquiring fame in the annals of the
+_Ecole de Medicine_.
+
+Here am I, however, cured. I have thrown away the stick with which I
+first began to limp about the garden, and I discourage Lola and Rogers
+in their efforts to treat me as an invalid. Like the doctor, I have
+been longing to escape from "this hole of an Algiers" and its painful
+associations, and, when I was able to leave my room, it occurred to me
+that the sooner I regained my strength the sooner should I be able to do
+so. Since then my recovery has been rapid. The doctor is delighted, and
+slaps me on the back, and points me out to Lola and the manager and the
+concierge and the hoary old sinner of an Arab who displays his daggers,
+and trays, and embroideries on the terrace, as a living wonder. I
+believe he would like to put me in a cage and carry me about with him in
+Paris on exhibition. But he is reluctantly prepared to part with me, and
+has consented to my return in a few days' time, to England, by the North
+German Lloyd steamer. He has ordered the sea voyage as a finishing
+touch to my cure. Good, deluded man, he thinks that it is his fortuitous
+science that has dragged me out of the Valley of the Shadow and set me
+in the Garden of Life. Good, deluded man! He does not realise that he
+has been merely the tool of the Arch-Jester. He has no notion of the
+sardonic joke his knife was chosen to perpetrate. That naked we should
+come into the world, and naked we should go out is a time-honoured
+pleasantry which, as far as the latter part of it is concerned, I did
+my conscientious best to further; but that we should come into it again
+naked at the age of eight-and-thirty is a piece of irony too grim for
+contemplation. Yet am I bound to contemplate it. It grins me in the
+face. Figuratively, I am naked.
+
+Partly by my own act, and partly with the help of Destiny (the greater
+jester than I) I have stripped myself of all these garments of life
+which not only enabled me to strut peacock-fashion in the pleasant
+places of the world, but also sheltered me from its inclemencies.
+
+I had wealth--not a Rothschild or Vanderbilt fortune but enough to
+assure me ease and luxury. I have stripped myself of it. I have but a
+beggarly sum remaining at my bankers. Practically I am a pauper.
+
+I had political position. I surrendered it as airily as I had achieved
+it; so airily, indeed, that I doubt whether I could regain it even had
+I the ambition. For it was a game that I played, sometimes fascinating,
+sometimes repugnant to my fastidious sense of honourable dealing, for
+which I shall never recapture the mood. Mood depends on conditions, and
+conditions, as I am trying to show, are changed.
+
+I had social position. I did not deceive myself as to its value in the
+cosmic scheme, but it was one of the pleasant things to which I was
+born, just as I was born to good food and wines and unpatched boots and
+the morning hot water brought into my bedroom. I liked it. I suspect
+that it has fled into eternity with the spirit of Captain Vauvenarde.
+The penniless hero of an amazing scandal is not usually made an idol of
+by the exclusive aristocracy of Great Britain.
+
+I had a sweet and loyal woman about to marry me. I put Eleanor Faversham
+for ever out of my life.
+
+I had the devotion and hero-worship of a lad whom I thought to train in
+the paths of honour, love and happiness. In his eyes I suppose I am an
+unconscionable villain.
+
+I have stripped myself of everything; and all because the medical
+faculty of my country sentenced me to death. I really think the Royal
+Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians ought to pay me an indemnity.
+
+And not only have I stripped myself of everything, but I have incurred
+an incalculable debt. I owe a woman the infinite debt of her love which
+I cannot repay. She sheds it on me hourly with a lavishness which scares
+me. But for her tireless devotion, the doctor tells me, I should not
+have lived. But for her selfish forbearance, sympathy, and compassion I
+should have gone as crazy as Anastasius Papadopoulos. Yet the burden of
+my debt lies iceberg cold on my heart. Now that we are as intimate
+as man and woman who are still only friends can be, she has lost the
+magnetic attraction, that subtle mystery of the woman--half goddess,
+half panther--which fascinated me in spite of myself, and made
+me jealous of poor young Dale. Now that I can see things in some
+perspective, I confess that, had I not been under sentence of death,
+and, therefore, profoundly convinced that I was immune from all such
+weaknesses of the flesh, I should have realised the temptation of
+languorous voice and sinuous limbs, of the frank radiation of the
+animal enchanted as it was by elusive gleams of the spiritual, of the
+Laisdom--in a word, of all the sexual damnability of a woman which, as
+Francois Villon points out, set Sardanapalus to spin among the women,
+David to forget the fear of God, Herod to slay the Baptist, and made
+Samson lose his sight. Whether I should have yielded to or resisted the
+temptation is another matter. Honestly speaking, I think I should have
+resisted.
+
+You see, I should still have been engaged to Eleanor Faversham. . . .
+But now this somewhat unholy influence is gone from her. She has lifted
+me in her strong arms as a mother would lift a brat of ten. She has
+patiently suffered my whimsies as if I had been a sick girl. She has
+become to me the mere great mothering creature on whom I have depended
+for custard and the removal of crumbs and creases from under my body,
+and for support to my tottering footsteps. The glamour has gone from
+before my eyes. I no longer see her invested in her queer
+splendour. . . .
+
+My invalid peevishness, too, has accentuated my sensitiveness to shades
+of refinement. There is about Lola a bluffness, a hardihood of speech,
+a contempt for the polite word and the pretty conventional turning of
+a phrase, a lack of reticence in the expression of ideas and feelings,
+which jar, in spite of my gratitude, on my unstrung nerves. Her
+ignorance, too, of a thousand things, a knowledge of which is the
+birthright of such women as Eleanor Faversham, causes conversational
+excursions to end in innumerable blind alleys. I know that she would
+give her soul to learn. This she has told me in so many words, and when,
+in a delicate way, I try to teach her, she listens humbly, pathetically,
+fixing me with her great, gold-flecked eyes, behind which a deep sadness
+burns wistfully. Sometimes when I glance up from my book, I see that her
+eyes, instead of being bent on hers have been resting long on my face,
+and they say as clearly as articulate speech: "Teach me, love me, use
+me, do what you will with me. I am yours, your chattel, your thing, till
+the end of time."
+
+I lie awake at night and wonder what I shall do with my naked life
+sheltered only by the garment of this woman's love, which I have
+accepted and cannot repay. I groan aloud when I reflect on the
+irremediable mess, hash, bungle I have made of things. Did ever sick man
+wake up to such a hopeless welter? Can you be surprised that I regarded
+it with dismay? Of course, there is a simple way out of it, and into
+the shadowy world which I contemplated so long, at first with mocking
+indifference and then with eager longing. A gentleman called Cato once
+took it, with considerable aplomb. The means are to my hand. In my
+drawer lies the revolver with which the excellent Colonel Bunnion (long
+since departed from Mustapha Superieur) armed me against the banditti of
+Algiers, and which I forgot to return to him. I could empty one or more
+of the six chambers into my person and that would be the end. But I
+don't think history records the suicide of any humorist, however dismal.
+He knows too well the tricks of the Arch-Jester's game. Very likely I
+should merely blow away half my head, and Destiny would give my good
+doctor another chance of achieving immortal fame by glueing it on again.
+No, I cannot think seriously of suicide by violent means. Of course, I
+might follow the example of one Antonios Polemon, a later Greek sophist,
+who suffered so dreadfully from gout that he buried himself alive in the
+tomb of his ancestors and starved to death. We have a family vault in
+Highgate Cemetery, of which I possess the key. . . . No, I should be
+bored and cold, and the coffins would get on my nerves; and besides,
+there is something suggestive of smug villadom in the idea of going to
+die at Highgate.
+
+Lola came up as I was scribbling this on my knees in the garden.
+
+"What are you writing there?"
+
+"I am recasting Hamlet's soliloquy," I replied, "and I feel all the
+better for it."
+
+"Here is your egg and brandy."
+
+I swallowed it and handed her back the glass.
+
+"I feel all the better for that, too."
+
+As I sat in the shade of the little stone summer-house within the Greek
+portico, she lingered in the blazing sunshine, a figure all glorious
+health and supple curves, and the stray brown hairs above the brown mass
+gleamed with the gold of a Giotto aureole. She stood, a duskily glowing,
+radiant emblem of life against the background of spring greenery and
+rioting convolvulus. I drew a full breath and looked at her as
+if magnetised. I had the very oddest sensation. She seemed, in
+Shakespearean phrase, to rain influence upon me. As if she read the
+stirrings of my blood, she smiled and said:
+
+"After all, confess, isn't it good to be alive?"
+
+A thrill of physical well-being swept through me. I leaped to my feet.
+
+"You witch!" I cried. "What are you doing to me?"
+
+"I?" She retreated a step, with a laugh.
+
+"Yes, you. You are casting a spell on me, so that I may eat my words."
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about, but you haven't answered my
+question. It _is_ good to be alive."
+
+"Well, it is," I assented, losing all sense of consistency.
+
+She flourished the egg-and-brandy glass. "I'm so glad. Now I know you
+are really well, and will face life as you faced death, like the brave
+man that you are."
+
+I cried to her to hold. I had not intended to go as far as that. I
+confronted death with a smile; I meet life with the wriest of wry faces.
+She would have none of my arguments.
+
+"No matter how damnable it is--it's splendid to be alive, just to feel
+that you can fight, just to feel that you don't care a damn for any old
+thing that can happen, because you're strong and brave. I do want you
+to get back all that you've lost, all that you've lost through me, and
+you'll do it. I know that you'll do it. You'll just go out and smash up
+the silly old world and bring it to your feet. You will, Simon, won't
+you? I know you will."
+
+She quivered like an optimistic Cassandra.
+
+"My dear Lola," said I.
+
+I was touched. I took her hand and raised it to my lips, whereat she
+flushed like a girl.
+
+"Did you come here to tell me all this?"
+
+"No," she replied simply. "It came all of a sudden, as I was standing
+here. I've often wanted to say it. I'm glad I have."
+
+She threw back her head and regarded me a moment with a strange, proud
+smile; then turned and walked slowly away, her head brushing the long
+scarlet clusters of the pepper trees.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+The other day, while looking through a limbo of a drawer wherein have
+been cast from time to time a medley of maimed, half-soiled, abortive
+things, too unfitted for the paradise of publication, and too good (so
+my vanity will have it) for the damnation of the waste-paper basket,
+I came across, at the very bottom, the manuscript of the preceding
+autobiographical narrative, the last words of which I wrote at Mustapha
+Superieur three years ago. At first I carried it about with me, not
+caring to destroy it and not knowing what in the world to do with it
+until, with the malice of inanimate things, the dirty dog's-eared bundle
+took to haunting me, turning up continually in inconvenient places and
+ever insistently demanding a new depository. At last I began to look
+on it with loathing; and one day in a fit of inspiration, creating the
+limbo aforesaid, I hurled the manuscript, as I thought, into everlasting
+oblivion. I had no desire to carry on the record of my life any further,
+and there, in limbo, it has remained for three years. But the other day
+I took it out for reference; and now as I am holiday-making in a certain
+little backwater of the world, where it is raining in a most unholiday
+fashion, it occurs to me that, as everything has happened to me which is
+likely to happen (Heaven knows I want no more excursions and alarums
+in my life's drama), I may as well bring the narrative up to date. I
+therefore take up the thread, so far as I can, from where I left off.
+
+Lola, having nothing to do in Algiers, which had grown hateful to us
+both, accompanied me to London. As, however, the weather was rough, and
+she was a very bad sailor, I saw little of her on the voyage. For my own
+part, I enjoyed the stormy days, the howling winds and the infuriated
+waves dashing impotently over the steamer. They filled me with a sense
+of conflict and of amusement. It is always good to see man triumphing
+over the murderous forces of nature. It puts one in conceit with one's
+kind.
+
+At Waterloo I handed Lola over to her maid, who had come to meet her,
+and, leaving Rogers in charge of my luggage, I drove homeward in a cab.
+
+It was only as I was crossing Waterloo Bridge and saw the dark mass of
+the Houses of Parliament looming on the other side of the river, and the
+light in the tower which showed that the House was sitting, that I
+began to realise my situation. As exiles in desert lands yearn for green
+fields, so yearned I for those green benches. In vain I represented to
+myself how often I had yawned on them, how often I had cursed my folly
+in sitting on them and listening to empty babble when I might have been
+dining cosily, or talking to a pretty woman or listening to a comic
+opera, or performing some other useful and soul-satisfying action of
+the kind; in vain I told myself what a monument of futility was that
+building; I longed to be in it and of it once again. And when I realised
+that I yearned for the impossible, my heart was like a stone. For,
+indeed, I, Simon de Gex, with London once a toy to my hand, was coming
+into it now a penniless adventurer to seek my fortune.
+
+The cab turned into the Strand, which greeted me as affably as a
+pandemonium. Motor omnibuses whizzed at me, cabs rattled and jeered
+at me, private motors and carriages passed me by in sleek contempt;
+policemen regarded me scornfully as, with uplifted hand regulating
+the traffic, they held me up; pavements full of people surged along
+ostentatiously showing that they did not care a brass farthing for
+me; the thousands of lights with their million reflections, from shop
+fronts, restaurants, theatres, and illuminated signs glared pitilessly
+at me. A harsh roar of derision filled the air, like the bass to the
+treble of the newsboys who yelled in my face. I was wearing a fur-lined
+coat--just the thing a penniless adventurer would wear. I had a valet
+attending to my luggage--just the sort of thing a penniless adventurer
+would have. I was driving to the Albany--just the sort of place where a
+penniless adventurer would live. And London knew all this--and scoffed
+at me in stony heartlessness. The only object that gave me the slightest
+sympathy was Nelson on top of his column. He seemed to say, "After all,
+you _can't_ feel such a fool and so much out in the cold as I do up
+here."
+
+At Piccadilly Circus I found the same atmosphere of hostility. My cab
+was blocked in the theatre-going tide, and in neighbouring vehicles
+I had glimpses of fair faces above soft wraps and the profiles of
+moustached young men in white ties. They assumed an aggravating air of
+ownership of the blazing thoroughfare, the only gay and joyous spot
+in London. I, too, had owned it once, but now I felt an alien; and the
+whole spirit of Piccadilly Circus rammed the sentiment home--I was an
+alien and an undesirable alien. I felt even more lost and friendless as
+I entered the long, cold arcade (known as the Ropewalk) of the Albany.
+
+I found my sister Agatha waiting for me in the library. I had
+telegraphed to her from Southampton. She was expensively dressed in grey
+silk, and wore the family diamonds. We exchanged the family kiss and the
+usual incoherent greetings of our race. She expressed her delight at my
+restoration to health and gave me satisfactory tidings of Tom Durrell,
+her husband, of the children, and of our sister Jane. Then she shook her
+head at me, and made me feel like a naughty little boy. This I resented.
+Being the head of the family, I had always encouraged the deferential
+attitude which my sisters, dear right-minded things, had naturally
+assumed from babyhood.
+
+"Oh, Simon, what a time you've given us!"
+
+She had never spoken to me like this in her life.
+
+"That's nothing, my dear Agatha," said I just a bit tartly, "to the
+time I've given myself. I'm sorry for you, but I think you ought to be a
+little sorry for me."
+
+"I am. More sorry than I can say. Oh, Simon, how could you?"
+
+"How could I what?" I cried, unwontedly regardless of the refinements of
+language.
+
+"Mix yourself up in this dreadful affair?"
+
+"My dear girl," said I, "if you had got mixed up in a railway collision,
+I shouldn't ask you how you managed to do it. I should be sorry for you
+and feel your arms and legs and inquire whether you had sustained any
+internal injuries."
+
+She is a pretty, spare woman with a bird-like face and soft brown hair
+just turning grey; and as good-hearted a little creature as ever adored
+five healthy children and an elderly baronet with disastrous views on
+scientific farming.
+
+"Dear old boy," she said in milder accents, "I didn't mean to be
+unkind. I want to be good to you and help you, so much so that I asked
+Bingley"--Bingley is my housekeeper--"whether I could stay to dinner."
+
+"That's good of you--but this magnificence----?"
+
+"I'm going on later to the Foreign Office reception."
+
+"Then you do still mingle with the great and gorgeous?" I said.
+
+"What do you mean? Why shouldn't I?"
+
+I laughed, suspecting rightly that my sisters' social position had not
+been greatly imperilled by the profligacy of their scandal-bespattered
+brother.
+
+"What are people saying about me?" I asked suddenly.
+
+She made a helpless gesture. "Can't you guess? You have told us the
+facts, and, of course, we believe you; we have done our best to spread
+abroad the correct version--but you know what people are. If they're
+told they oughtn't to believe the worst, they're disappointed and still
+go on believing it so as to comfort themselves."
+
+"You cynical little wretch!" said I.
+
+"But it's true," she urged. "And, after all, even if they were well
+disposed, the correct version makes considerable demands on their faith.
+Even Letty Farfax--"
+
+"I know! I know!" said I. "Letty Farfax is typical. She would love to
+be on the side of the angels, but as she wouldn't meet the best people
+there, she ranges herself with the other party."
+
+Presently we dined, and during the meal, when the servants happened
+to be out of the room, we continued, snippet-wise, the inconclusive
+conversation. Like a good sister Agatha had come to cheer a lonely and
+much abused man; like a daughter of Eve she had also come to find out as
+much as she possibly could.
+
+"I think I must tell you something which you ought to know," she said.
+"It's all over the town that you stole the lady from Dale Kynnersley."
+
+"If I did," said I, "it was at his mother's earnest entreaty. You can
+tell folks that. You can also tell them Madame Brandt is not the kind
+of woman to be stolen by one man from another. She is a thoroughly
+virtuous, good, and noble woman, and there's not a creature living who
+wouldn't be honoured by her friendship."
+
+As I made this announcement with an impetuosity which reminded me (with
+a twinge of remorse) of poor Dale's dithyrambics, Agatha shot at me a
+quick glance of apprehension.
+
+"But, my dear Simon, she used to act in a circus with a horse!"
+
+"I fail to see," said I, growing angry, "how the horse could have imbued
+her with depravity, and I'm given to understand that the tone of the
+circus is not quite what it used to be in the days of the Empress
+Theodora."
+
+A ripple passed over Agatha's bare shoulders, which I knew to be a
+suppressed shrug.
+
+"I suppose men and women look at these things differently," she
+remarked, and from the stiffness of her tone I divined that the idea
+of moral qualities lurking in the nature of Lola Brandt occasioned her
+considerable displeasure.
+
+"I hope----" She paused. There was another ripple. "No. I had better not
+say it. It's none of my business, after all."
+
+"I don't think it is, my dear," said I.
+
+Rogers bringing in the cutlets ended the snippet of talk.
+
+It was not the cheeriest of dinners. I took advantage of the next
+interval of quiet to inquire after Dale. I learned that the poor boy had
+almost collapsed after the election and was now yachting with young Lord
+Essendale somewhere about the Hebrides. Agatha had not seen him, but
+Lady Kynnersley had called on her one day in a distracted frame of mind,
+bitterly reproaching me for the unhappiness of her son. I should never
+have suspected that such fierce maternal love could burn beneath Lady
+Kynnersley's granite exterior. She accused me of treachery towards Dale
+and, most illogically, of dishonourable conduct towards herself.
+
+"She said things about you," said Agatha, "for which, even if they
+were true, I couldn't forgive her. So that's an end of that friendship.
+Indeed, it has been very difficult, Simon," she continued, "to keep
+up with our common friends. It has placed us in the most painful and
+delicate position. And now you're back, I'm afraid it will be worse."
+
+Thus under all Agatha's affection there ran the general hostility of
+London. Guilty or not, I had offended her in her most deeply rooted
+susceptibilities, and as yet she only knew half the imbroglio in which I
+was enmeshed. Over coffee, however, she began to take a more optimistic
+view of affairs.
+
+"After all, you'll be able to live it down," she said with a cheerful
+air of patronage. "People soon forget. Before the year is out you'll
+be going about just as usual, and at the General Election you'll find a
+seat somewhere."
+
+I informed her that I had given up politics. What then, she asked, would
+I do for an occupation?
+
+"Work for my living," I replied.
+
+"Work?" She arched her eyebrows, as if it were the most extraordinary
+thing a man could do. "What kind of work?"
+
+"Road-sweeping or tax-collecting or envelope-addressing."
+
+She selected a cigarette from the silver box in front of her, and did
+not reply until she had lit it and inhaled a puff or two.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't be so flippant, Simon."
+
+From this remark I inferred that I still was in the criminal dock before
+this lady Chief Justice. I smiled at the airs the little woman gave
+herself now that I was no longer the impeccable and irreproachable
+dictator of the family. Mine was the experience of every fallen tyrant
+since the world began.
+
+"My dear Agatha, I've had enough shocks during the last few weeks to
+knock the flippancy out of a Congregational minister. In November I was
+condemned to die within six months. The sentence was final and absolute.
+I thought I would do the kind of good one can't do with a lifetime in
+front of one, and I wasted all my substance in riotous giving. In the
+elegant phraseology of high society I am stone-broke. As my training has
+not fitted me to earn my living in high-falutin ways, I must earn it in
+some humble capacity. Therefore, if you see me call at your house for
+the water rate, you'll understand that I am driven to that expedient by
+necessity and not by degradation."
+
+Naturally I had to elaborate this succinct statement before my sister
+could understand its full significance. Then dismay overwhelmed her.
+Surely something could be done. The fortunes of Jane and herself were
+at my disposal to set me on my feet again. We were brother and sisters;
+what was theirs was mine; they couldn't see me starve. I thanked her for
+her affection--the dear creatures would unhesitatingly have let me play
+ducks and drakes with their money, but I explained that though poor, I
+was still proud and prized the independence of the tax-collector above
+the position of the pensioner of Love's bounty.
+
+"Tom must get you something to do," she declared.
+
+"Tom must do nothing of the kind. Let me say that once and for all,"
+I returned peremptorily. "I've made my position clear to you,
+because you're my sister and you ought to be spared any further
+misinterpretation of my actions. But to have you dear people intriguing
+after billets for me would be intolerable."
+
+"But what are you going to _do_?" she cried, wringing her hands.
+
+"I'm going for my first omnibus ride to-morrow," said I heroically.
+
+Upon which assertion Rogers entered announcing that her ladyship's
+carriage had arrived. A while later I accompanied her downstairs and
+along the arcade.
+
+"I shall be so miserable, thinking of you, poor old boy," she said
+affectionately, as she bade me good-bye.
+
+"Don't, I am going to enjoy myself for the first time in my life."
+
+These were "prave 'orts," but I felt doleful enough when I re-entered
+the chambers where I had lived in uncomplaining luxury for fourteen
+years.
+
+"There's no help for it," I murmured. "I must get rid of the remainder
+of my lease, sell my books and pictures and other more or less expensive
+household goods, dismiss Rogers and Bingley, and go and live on thirty
+shillings a week in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. I think," I continued,
+regarding myself in the Queen Anne mirror over the mantelpiece, "I think
+that it will better harmonise with my fallen fortunes if I refrain from
+waxing the ends of my moustache. There ought to be a modest droop about
+the moustache of a tax-collector."
+
+The next morning I gave my servants a months' notice. Rogers, who
+had been with me for many years, behaved in the correctest manner. He
+neither offered to lend me his modest savings nor to work for me for
+no wages. He expressed his deep regret at leaving my service and his
+confidence that I would give him a good character. Bingley wept after
+the way of women. There was also a shadowy housemaidy young person in
+a cap who used to make meteoric appearances and whom I left to the
+diplomacy of Bingley. These dismal rites performed, I put my chambers
+into the hands of a house agent and interviewed a firm of auctioneers
+with reference to the sale. It was all exceedingly unpleasant. The agent
+was so anxious to let my chambers, the auctioneer so delighted at the
+chance of selling my effects, that I felt myself forthwith turned neck
+and crop out of doors. It was a bright morning in early spring, with a
+satirical touch of hope in the air. London, no longer to be my London,
+maintained its hostile attitude to me. If any one had prophesied that I
+should be a stranger in Piccadilly, I should have laughed aloud. Yet I
+was.
+
+Walking moodily up Saint James's street I met the omniscient and
+expansive Renniker. He gave me a curt nod and a "How d'ye do?" and
+passed on. I felt savagely disposed to slash his jaunty silk hat
+off with my walking-stick. A few months before he would have rushed
+effusively into my arms and bedaubed me with miscellaneous inaccuracies
+of information. At first I was furiously indignant. Then I laughed, and
+swinging my stick, nearly wreaked my vengeance on a harmless elderly
+gentleman.
+
+It was my first experience of social ostracism. Although I curled a
+contumelious lip, I smarted under the indignity. It was all very well
+to say proudly "_io son' io_"; but _io_ used to be a person of some
+importance who was not cavalierly "how d'ye do'd" by creatures like
+Renniker. This and the chance encounters of the next few weeks gave
+me furiously to think. I knew that in one respect my sister Agatha was
+right. These good folks who shied now at the stains of murder with which
+my reputation was soiled would in time get used to them and eventually
+forget them altogether. But I reflected that I should not forget, and
+I determined that I should not be admitted on sufferance, as at first
+I should have to be admitted, into any man's club or any woman's
+drawing-room.
+
+One day Colonel Ellerton, Maisie Ellerton's father, called on me. He
+used to be my very good friend; we sat on the same side of the House and
+voted together on innumerable occasions in perfect sympathy and common
+lack of conviction. He was cordial enough, congratulated me on my
+marvellous restoration to health, deplored my absence from Parliamentary
+life, and then began to talk confusedly of Russia. It took a little
+perspicacity to see that something was weighing on the good man's mind;
+something he had come to say and for his honest life could not get out.
+His plight became more pitiable as the interview proceeded, and when he
+rose to go, he grew as red as a turkey-cock and began to sputter. I went
+to his rescue.
+
+"It's very kind of you to have come to see me, Ellerton," I said, "but
+if I don't call yet awhile to pay my respects to your wife, I hope
+you'll understand, and not attribute it to discourtesy."
+
+I have never seen relief so clearly depicted on a human countenance. He
+drew a long breath and instinctively passed his handkerchief over his
+forehead. Then he grasped my hand.
+
+"My dear fellow," he cried, "of course we'll understand. It was a
+shocking affair--terrible for you. My wife and I were quite bowled over
+by it."
+
+I did not attempt to clear myself. What was the use? Every man denies
+these things as a matter of course, and as a matter of course nobody
+believes him.
+
+Once I ran across Elphin Montgomery, a mysterious personage behind many
+musical comedy enterprises. He is jewelled all over like a first-class
+Hindoo idol, and is treated as a god in fashionable restaurants,
+where he entertains riff-raff at sumptuous banquets. I had some slight
+acquaintance with the fellow, but he greeted me as though I were a long
+lost intimate--his heavy sensual face swagged in smiles--and invited me
+to a supper party. I declined with courtesy and walked away in fury. He
+would not have presumed to ask me to meet his riff-raff before I became
+disgustingly and I suppose to some minds, fascinatingly, notorious. But
+now I was hail-fellow-well-met with him, a bird of his own feather,
+a rogue of his own kidney, to whom he threw open the gates of his
+bediamonded and befrilled Alsatia. A pestilential fellow! As if I would
+mortgage my birthright for such a mess of pottage.
+
+So I stiffened and bade Society high and low go packing. I would
+neither seek mine own people, nor allow myself to be sought by Elphin
+Montgomery's. I enwrapped myself in a fine garment of defiance. My
+sister Jane, who was harder and more worldly-minded than Agatha, would
+have had me don a helmet of brass and a breastplate of rhinoceros hide
+and force my way through reluctant portals; but Agatha agreed with
+me, clinging, however, to the hope that time would not only reconcile
+Society to me, but would also reconcile me to Society.
+
+"If the hope comforts you, my dear Agatha," said I, "by all means
+cherish it. In the meantime, allow me to observe that the character of
+Ishmael is eminently suited to the profession of tax-collecting."
+
+During these early days of my return the one person with whom I had no
+argument was Lola. She soothed where others scratched, and stimulated
+where others goaded. The intimacy of my convalescence continued. At
+first I acquainted her, as far as was reasonably necessary, with my
+change of fortune, and accepted her offer to find me less expensive
+quarters. The devoted woman personally inspected every flat in London,
+with that insistence of which masculine patience is incapable, and
+eventually decided on a tiny bachelor suite somewhere in the clouds over
+a block of flats in Victoria Street where the service is included in the
+rent. Into this I moved with such of my furniture as I withdrew from the
+auctioneer's hammer, and there I prepared to stay until necessity should
+drive me to the Bloomsbury boarding-house. I thought I would graduate my
+descent. Before I moved, however, she came to the Albany for the first
+and only time to see the splendour I was about to quit. In a modest way
+it was splendour. My chambers were really a large double flat to the
+tasteful furnishing of which I had devoted the thought and interest of
+many years. She went with me through the rooms. The dining-room was all
+Chippendale, each piece a long-coveted and hunted treasure; the library
+old oak; the drawing-room a comfortable and cunning medley. There were
+bits of old china, pieces of tapestry, some rare prints, my choice
+collection of mezzotints, a picture or two of value--one a Lancret, a
+very dear possession. And there were my books--once I had a passion
+for rare bindings. Every thing had to me a personal significance, and I
+hated the idea of surrender more than I dared to confess even to myself.
+But I said to Lola:
+
+"Vanity of vanities! All things expensive are vanity!"
+
+Her eyes glistened and she slipped her arm through mine and patted the
+back of my hand.
+
+"If you talk like that I shall cry and make a fool of myself," she said
+in a broken manner.
+
+It is not so much the thing that is done or the thing that is said that
+matters, but the way of doing or saying it. In the commonplace pat on
+the hand, in the break in the commonplace words there was something that
+went straight to my heart. I squeezed her arm and whispered:
+
+"Thank you, dear."
+
+This sympathy so sure and yet so delicately conveyed was mine for the
+trouble of mounting the stairs that led to her drawing-room in Cadogan
+Gardens. She seemed to be watching my heart the whole time, so that
+without my asking, without my knowledge even, she could touch each sore
+spot as it appeared, with the healing finger. For herself she made
+no claims, and because she did not in any way declare herself to be
+unhappy, I, after the manner of men, took her happiness for granted. For
+lives there a man who does not believe that an uncomplaining woman has
+nothing to complain of? It is his masculine prerogative of density.
+Besides, does not he himself when hurt bellow like a bull? Why,
+he argues, should not wounded woman do the same? So, when I wanted
+companionship, I used to sit in the familiar room and make Adolphus, the
+Chow dog, shoulder arms with the poker, and gossip restfully with Lola,
+who sprawled in her old languorous, loose-limbed way among the cushions
+of her easy chair. Gradually my habitual reserve melted from me, and
+at last I gave her my whole confidence, telling her of my disastrous
+pursuit of eumoiriety, of Eleanor Faversham, of the attitude of Society,
+in fact, of most of what I have set down in the preceding pages. She was
+greatly interested in everything, especially in Eleanor Faversham. She
+wanted to know the colour of her eyes and hair and how she dressed.
+Women are odd creatures.
+
+The weeks passed.
+
+Besides ministering to my dilapidated spirit, Lola found occupation in
+looking after the cattery of Anastasius Papadopoulos, which the little
+man had left in the charge of his pupil and assistant, Quast. This
+Quast apparently was a faithful, stolid, but unintelligent and incapable
+German who had remained loyally at his post until Lola found him there
+in a state of semi-starvation. The sum of money with which Anastasius
+had provided him had been eked out to the last farthing. The cats were
+in a pitiable condition. Quast, in despair, was trying to make up his
+dull mind whether to sell them or eat them. Lola with superb feminine
+disregard of legal rights, annexed the whole cattery, maintained Quast
+in his position of pupil and assistant and informed the landlord that
+she would be responsible for the rent. Then she set to work to bring the
+cats into their proper condition of sleekness, and, that done, to put
+them through a systematic course of training. They had been thoroughly
+demoralised, she declared, under Quast's maladministration, and had
+almost degenerated into the unhistrionic pussies of domestic life. As
+for Hephaestus, the great ferocious tom, he was more like an insane
+tiger than a cat. He flew at the gate over which he used to jump,
+and clawed and bit it to matchwood, and after spitting in fury at
+the blazing hoop, sprang at the unhappy Quast as if he had been the
+contriver of the indignities to which he was being subjected. These
+tales of feline backsliding I used to hear from Lola, and when I asked
+her why she devoted her energies to the unproductive education of the
+uninspiring animals, she would shrug her shoulders and regard me with a
+Giaconda smile.
+
+"In the first place it amuses me. You seem to forget I'm a _dompteuse_,
+a tamer of beasts; it's my profession, I was trained to it. It's the
+only thing I can do, and it's good to feel that I haven't lost my power.
+It's odd, but I feel a different woman when I'm impressing my will
+on these wretched cats. You must come one of these days and see a
+performance, when I've got them ship-shape. They'll astonish you. And
+then," she would add, "I can write to Anastasius and tell him how his
+beloved cats are getting on."
+
+Well, it was an interest in her life which, Heaven knows, was not
+crowded with exciting incidents. Now that I can look back on these
+things with a philosophic eye, I can imagine no drearier existence than
+that of a friendless, unoccupied woman in a flat in Cadogan Gardens. At
+that time, I did not realise this as completely as I might have done.
+Because her old surgeon friend, Sir Joshua Oldfield, now and then took
+her out to dinner, I considered she was leading a cheerful if not a
+merry life. I smiled indulgently at Lola's devotion to the cats and
+congratulated her on having found another means whereby to beguile the
+_tedium vitae_ which is the arch-enemy of content.
+
+"I wish I could find such a means myself," said I.
+
+I not only had the wish, but the imperative need to so do. To stand like
+Ajax defying the lightning is magnificent, but as a continuous avocation
+it is wearisome and unprofitable, especially if carried on in a tiny
+bachelor suite, an eyrie of a place, at the top of a block of flats in
+Victoria Street. Indeed, if I did not add soon to the meagre remains of
+my fortune, I should not be able to afford the luxury of the bachelor
+suite. Conscious of this, I left the lightning alone, after a last
+denunciatory shake of the fist, and descended into the busy ways of men
+to look for work.
+
+Thus I entered on the second stage of my career--that of a soldier
+of Fortune. At first I was doubtful as to what path to glory and
+bread-and-butter I could carve out for myself. Hitherto I had been
+Fortune's darling instead of her mercenary, and she had most politely
+carved out my paths for me, until she had played her jade's trick
+and left me in the ditch. Now things were different. I stood alone,
+ironical, ambitionless, still questioning the utility of human effort,
+yet determined to play the game of life to its bitter end. What could I
+do?
+
+It is true that I had been called to the Bar in my tentative youth,
+while I drafted documents for my betters to pull to pieces and rewrite
+at the Foreign Office; but I had never seen a brief, and my memories
+of Gaius, Justinian, Williams's "Real Property," and Austin's
+"Jurisprudence," were as nebulous as those of the Differential Calculus
+over whose facetiae I had pondered during my schooldays. The law was as
+closed to me as medicine. I had no profession. I therefore drifted
+into the one pursuit for which my training had qualified me, namely,
+political journalism. I had written much, in my amateur way, during my
+ten years' membership of Parliament; why, I hardly know--not because I
+needed money, not because I had thoughts which I burned to express, and
+certainly not through vain desire of notoriety. Perhaps the motive was
+twofold, an ingrained Puckish delight in the incongruous--it seemed
+incongruous for an airy epicurean like myself to spend stodgy
+hours writing stodgier articles on Pauper Lunacy and Poor Law
+Administration--and the same inherited sense of gentlemanly obligation
+to do something for one's king and country as made my ancestors, whether
+they liked it or not, clothe themselves in uncomfortable iron garments
+and go about fighting other gentlemen similarly clad, to their own great
+personal danger. At any rate, it complemented my work at St. Stephen's,
+and doubtless contributed to a reputation in the House which I did
+not gain through my oratory. I could therefore bring to editors the
+stock-in-trade of a fairly accurate knowledge of current political
+issues, an appreciation of personalities, and a philosophical subrident
+estimate of the bubbles that are for ever rising on the political
+surface. I found Finch of _The Universal Review_, James of _The Weekly_,
+and one or two others more than willing to give me employment. I put my
+pen also at the disposal of Raggles. It was as uplifting and about as
+mechanical as tax-collecting; but it involved less physical exertion and
+less unpleasant contact with my fellow creatures. I could also keep the
+ends of my moustache waxed, which was a great consolation.
+
+My sister Agatha commended my courage and energy, and Lola read my
+articles with a glowing enthusiasm, which compensated for lack of exact
+understanding; but I was not proud of my position. It is one thing
+to stand at the top of a marble staircase and in a debonair, jesting
+fashion to fling insincere convictions to a recipient world. It is
+another to sell the same worthless commodity for money. I began, to my
+curious discomfort, to suspect that life had a meaning after all.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+One day I had walked from Cadogan Gardens with a gadfly phrase of Lola's
+tormenting my ears:
+
+"You're not quite alive even yet."
+
+I had spent most of the day over a weekly article for James's high-toned
+periodical, using the same old shibboleths, proclaiming Gilead to be the
+one place for balm, juggling with the same old sophistries, and proving
+that Pope must have been out of his mind when he declared that an honest
+man was the noblest work of God, seeing that nobler than the most honest
+man was the disingenuous government held up to eulogy; and I had gone
+tired, dispirited, out of conceit with myself to Lola for tea and
+consolation. I had not been the merriest company. I had spoken gloomily
+of the cosmos, and when Adolphus the Chow dog had walked down the room
+in his hind legs, I had railed at the futility of canine effort. To
+Lola, who had put forth all her artillery of artless and harmless
+coquetry in voice and gesture, in order to lure my thoughts into
+pleasanter ways, I exhibited the querulous grumpiness of a spoiled
+village octogenarian. We discussed the weather, which was worth
+discussing, for the spring, after long tarrying, had come. It was early
+May. Lola laughed.
+
+"The spring has got into my blood."
+
+"It hasn't got into mine," I declared. "It never will. I wonder what the
+deuce is the matter with me."
+
+Then Lola had said, "My dear Simon, I know. You're not quite alive even
+yet."
+
+I walked homewards pestered by the phrase. What did she mean by it?
+I stopped at the island round the clock-tower by Victoria Station and
+bought a couple of newspapers. There, in the centre of the whirlpool
+where swam dizzily omnibuses, luggage-laden cabs, whirling motors,
+feverish, train-seeking humans, dirty newsboys, I stood absently saying
+to myself, "You're not quite alive even yet."
+
+A hand gripped my arm and a cheery voice said "Hallo!" I started and
+recognised Rex Campion. I also said "Hallo!" and shook hands with him.
+We had not met since the days when, having heard of my Monte Cristo
+lavishness, he had called at the Albany and had beguiled me into giving
+a thousand pounds to his beloved "Barbara's Building," the prodigious
+philanthropic institution which he had founded in the slums of South
+Lambeth. In spite of my dead and dazed state of being I was pleased to
+see his saturnine black-bearded face, and to hear his big voice. He was
+one of those men who always talked like a megaphone. The porticoes of
+Victoria Station re-echoed with his salutations. I greeted him less
+vociferously, but with equal cordiality.
+
+"You're looking very fit. I head that you had gone through a miraculous
+operation. How are you?"
+
+"Perfectly well," said I, "but I've been told that I'm not quite alive
+even yet."
+
+He looked anxious. "Remains of trouble?"
+
+"Not a vestige," I laughed.
+
+"That's all right," he said breezily. "Now come along and hear Milligan
+speak."
+
+It did not occur to him that I might have work, worries, or engagements,
+or that the evening's entertainment which he offered me might be the
+last thing I should appreciate. His head, for the moment, was full
+of Milligan, and it seemed to him only natural that the head of all
+humanity should be full of Milligan too. I made a wry face.
+
+"That son of thunder?"
+
+Milligan was a demagogue who had twice unsuccessfully attempted to get
+into Parliament in the Labour interest.
+
+"Have you ever heard him?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said I in my pride.
+
+"Then come. He's speaking in the Hall of the Lambeth Biblical Society."
+
+I was tempted, as I wanted company. In spite of my high resolve to
+out-Ishmael Ishmael, I could not kill a highly developed gregarious
+instinct. I also wanted a text for an article. But I wanted my dinner
+still more. Campion condemned the idea of dinner.
+
+"You can have a cold supper," he roared, "like the rest of us."
+
+I yielded. Campion dragged me helpless to a tram at the top of Vauxhall
+Bridge Road.
+
+"It will do Your Mightiness good to mingle with the proletariat," he
+grinned.
+
+I did not tell him that I had been mingling with it in this manner
+for some time past or that I repudiated the suggestion of its benign
+influence. I entered the tram meekly. As soon as we were seated, he
+began:
+
+"I bet you won't guess what I've done with your thousand pounds. I'll
+give you a million guesses."
+
+As I am a poor conjecturer, I put on a blank expression and shook my
+head. He waited for an instant, and then shouted with an air of triumph:
+
+"I've founded a prize, my boy--a stroke of genius. I've called it by
+your name. 'The de Gex Prize for Housewives.' I didn't bother you about
+it as I knew you were in a world of worry. But just think of it.
+An annual prize of thirty pounds--practically the interest--for
+housewives!"
+
+His eyes flashed in his enthusiasm; he brought his heavy hand down on my
+knee.
+
+"Well?" I asked, not electrified by this announcement.
+
+"Don't you see?" he exclaimed. "I throw the competition open to the
+women in the district, with certain qualifications, you know--I look
+after all that. They enter their names by a given date and then they
+start fair. The woman who keeps her home tidiest and her children
+cleanest collars the prize. Isn't it splendid?"
+
+I agreed. "How many competitors?"
+
+"Forty-three. And there they are working away, sweeping their floors and
+putting up clean curtains and scrubbing their children's noses till they
+shine like rubies and making their homes like little Dutch pictures. You
+see, thirty pounds is a devil of a lot of money for poor people. As one
+mother of a large family said to me, 'With that one could bury them all
+quite beautiful.'"
+
+"You're a wonderful fellow," said I, somewhat enviously.
+
+He gave an awkward laugh and tugged at his beard.
+
+"I've only happened to find my job, and am doing it as well as I can,"
+he said. "'Tisn't very much, after all. Sometimes one gets discouraged;
+people are such ungrateful pigs, but now and again one does help a lame
+dog over a stile which bucks one up, you know. Why don't you come down
+and have a look at us one of these days? You've been promising to do so
+for years."
+
+"I will," said I with sudden interest.
+
+"You can have a peep at one or two of the competing homes. We pop into
+them unexpectedly at all hours. That's a part of the game. We've a
+complicated system of marks which I'll show you. Of course, no woman
+knows how she's getting on, otherwise many would lose heart."
+
+"How do the men like this disconcerting ubiquity of soap and water?"
+
+"They love it!" he cried. "They're keen on the prize too. Some think
+they'll grab the lot and have the devil's own drunk when the year's up.
+But I'll look after that. Besides, when a chap has been living in the
+pride of cleanliness for a year he'll get into the way of it and be less
+likely to make a beast of himself. Anyway, I hope for the best. My God,
+de Gex, if I didn't hope and hope and hope," he cried earnestly, "I
+don't know how I should get through anything without hope and a faith in
+the ultimate good of things."
+
+"The same inconvincible optimist?" said I.
+
+"Yes. Thank heaven. And you?"
+
+I paused. There came a self-revelatory flash. "At the present moment," I
+said, "I'm a perfectly convincible vacuist."
+
+We left the tram and the main thoroughfare, and turned into frowsy
+streets, peopled with frowsy men and women and raucous with the
+bickering play of frowsy children. It was still daylight. Over London
+the spring had fluttered its golden pinions, and I knew that in more
+blessed quarters--in the great parks, in Piccadilly, in Old Palace
+Yard, half a mile away--its fragrance lingered, quickening blood already
+quickened by hope, and making happier hearts already happy. But here the
+ray of spring had never penetrated either that day or the days of former
+springs; so there was no lingering fragrance. Here no one heeded the
+aspects of the changing year save when suffocated by sweltering heat, or
+frozen in the bitter cold, or drenched by the pouring rain. Otherwise in
+these gray, frowsy streets spring, summer, autumn, winter were all the
+same to the grey, frowsy people. It is true that youth laughed--pale,
+animal boys, and pale, flat-chested girls. But it laughed chiefly at
+inane obscenity.
+
+One of these days, when phonography is as practicable as photography,
+some one will make accurate records in these frowsy streets, and then,
+after the manner of the elegant writers of Bucolics and Pastorals,
+publish such a series of Urbanics and Pavimentals, phonographic
+dialogues between the Colins and Dulcibellas of the pavement and the
+gutter as will freeze up Hell with horror.
+
+An anemic, flirtatious group passed us, the girls in front, the boys
+behind.
+
+"Good God, Campion, what _can_ you do?" I asked.
+
+"Pay them, old chap," he returned quickly.
+
+"What's the good of that?"
+
+"Good? Oh, I see!" He laughed, with a touch of scorn. "It's a question
+of definition. When you see a fellow creature suffering and it shocks
+your refined susceptibilities and you say 'poor devil' and pass on, you
+think you have pitied him. But you haven't. You think pity's a passive
+virtue. It isn't. If you really pity anybody, you go mad to help
+him--you don't stand by with tears of sensibility running down your
+cheeks. You stretch out your hand, because you've damn well got to. If
+he won't take it, or wipes you over the head, that's his look-out. You
+can't work miracles. But once in a way he does take it, and then--well,
+you work like hell to pull him through. And if you do, what bigger thing
+is there in the world than the salvation of a human soul?"
+
+"It's worth living for," said I.
+
+"It's worth doing any confounded old thing for," he declared.
+
+I envied Campion as I had envied no man before. He was alive in heart
+and soul and brain; I was not quite alive even yet. But I felt better
+for meeting him. I told him so. He tugged his beard again and laughed.
+
+"I am a happy old crank. Perhaps that's the reason."
+
+At the door of the hall of the Lambeth Ethical Society he stopped short
+and turned on me; his jaw dropped and he regarded me in dismay.
+
+"I'm the flightiest and feather-headedest ass that ever brayed," he
+informed me. "I just remember I sent Miss Faversham a ticket for
+this meeting about a fortnight ago. I had clean forgotten it, though
+something uncomfortable has been tickling the back of my head all the
+time. I'm miserably sorry."
+
+I hastened to reassure him. "Miss Faversham and I are still good
+friends. I don't think she'll mind my nodding to her from the other side
+of the room." Indeed, she had written me one or two letters since my
+recovery perfect in tact and sympathy, and had put her loyal friendship
+at my service.
+
+"Even if we meet," I smiled, "nothing tragic will happen."
+
+He expressed his relief.
+
+"But what," I asked, "is Miss Faversham doing in this galley?"
+
+"I suppose she is displaying an intelligent interest in modern thought,"
+he said, with boyish delight at the chance I had offered him.
+
+"_Touche_," said I, with a bow, and we entered the hall.
+
+It was crowded. The audience consisted of the better class of artisans,
+tradesmen, and foremen in factories: there was a sprinkling of
+black-coated clerks and unskilled labouring men. A few women's hats
+sprouted here and there among the men's heads like weeds in a desert.
+There were women, too, in proportionately greater numbers, on the
+platform at the end of the hall, and among them I was quick to notice
+Eleanor Faversham. As Campion disliked platforms and high places in
+synagogues, we sat on one of the benches near the door. He explained it
+was also out of consideration for me.
+
+"If Milligan is too strong for your proud, aristocratic stomach," he
+whispered, "you can cut and run without attracting attention."
+
+Milligan had evidently just began his discourse. I had not listened to
+him for five minutes when I found myself caught in the grip which he was
+famous for fastening on his audience. With his subject--Nationalisation
+of the Land--and his arguments I had been perfectly familiar for years.
+As a boy I had read Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" with the
+superciliousness of the young believer in the divine right of Britain's
+landed gentry, and before the Eton Debating Society I had demolished the
+whole theory to my own and every one else's satisfaction. Later, as
+a practical politician, I had kept myself abreast of the Socialist
+movement. I did not need Mr. John Milligan, whom my lingering flippancy
+had called a son of thunder, to teach me the elements of the matter. But
+at this peculiar crisis of my life I felt that, in a queer, unknown way,
+Milligan had a message for me. It was uncanny. I sat and listened to
+the exposition of Utopia with the rapt intensity of any cheesemonger's
+assistant there before whose captured spirit floated the vision of days
+to come when the land should so flow with milk and money that golden
+cheeses would be like buttercups for the plucking. It was not the man's
+gospel that fascinated me nor his illuminated prophecy of the millennium
+that produced the vibrations in my soul, but the surging passion of his
+faith, the tempest of his enthusiasm. I had enough experience of public
+speaking to distinguish between the theatrical and the genuine in
+oratory. Here was no tub-thumping soothsayer, but an inspired zealot. He
+lived his impassioned creed in every fibre of his frame and faculties.
+He was Titanic, this rough miner, in his unconquerable hope, divine in
+his yearning love of humanity.
+
+When he ended there was a dead silence for a second, and then a roar of
+applause from the pale, earnest, city-stamped faces. A lump rose in my
+throat. Campion clutched my knee. A light burned in his eyes.
+
+"Well? What about Boanerges?"
+
+"Only one thing," said I, "I wish I were as alive as that man."
+
+A negligible person proposed a vote of thanks to Milligan, after which
+the hall began to empty. Campion, caught by a group of his proletariat
+friends, signalled to me to wait for him. And as I waited I saw Eleanor
+Faversham come slowly from the platform down the central gangway. Her
+eyes fixed themselves on me at once--for standing there alone I must
+have been a conspicuous figure, an intruder from the gorgeous West--and
+with a little start of pleasure she hurried her pace. I made my way past
+the chattering loiterers in my row, and met her. We shook hands.
+
+"Well? Saul among the prophets? Who would have thought of seeing you
+here!"
+
+I waved my hand towards Campion. "We have the same sponsor." She glanced
+at him for a swift instant and then at me.
+
+"Did you like it?"
+
+"Have you seen Niagara?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you like it?"
+
+"I'm so glad," she cried. "I thought perhaps----" she broke off. "Why
+haven't you tried to see me?"
+
+"There are certain conventions."
+
+"I know," she said. "They're idiotic."
+
+"There's also Mrs. Faversham," said I.
+
+"Mother is the dearest thing in life," she replied, "but Mrs. Faversham
+is a convention." She came nearer to me, in order to allow a freer
+passage down the gangway and also in order to be out of earshot of an
+elderly woman who was obviously accompanying her. "Simon, I've been a
+good friend to you. I believe in you. Nothing will shake my convictions.
+You couldn't look into my eyes like that if--well--you know."
+
+"I couldn't," said I.
+
+"Then why can't two honourable, loyal people meet? We only need meet
+once. But I want to tell you things I can't write--things I can't
+say here. I also want to hear of things. I think I've got a kind of
+claim--haven't I?"
+
+"I've told you, Eleanor. My letters--"
+
+"Letters are rubbish!" she declared with a laugh. "Where can we meet?"
+
+"Agatha is a good soul," said I.
+
+"Well, fix it up by telephone to-morrow."
+
+"Alas!" said I; "I don't run to telephones in my eagle's nest on
+Himalaya Mansions."
+
+She knitted her brows. "That's not the last address you wrote from."
+
+"No," I replied, smiling at this glimpse of the matter-of-fact Eleanor.
+"It was a joke."
+
+"You're incorrigible!" she said rebukingly.
+
+"I don't joke so well in rags as in silken motley," I returned with a
+smile, "but I do my best."
+
+She disdained a retort. "We'll arrange, anyhow, with Agatha."
+
+Campion, escaping from his friends, came up and chatted for a minute.
+Then he saw Eleanor and her companion to their carriage.
+
+"Now," said he a moment later, "come to Barbara and have some supper.
+You won't mind if Jenkins joins us?"
+
+"Who's Jenkins?" I asked.
+
+"Jenkins is an intelligent gas-fitter of Sociological tastes. He classes
+Herbert Spencer, Benjamin Kidd, and Lombroso as light literature. He
+also helps us with our young criminals. I should like you to meet him."
+
+"I should be delighted," I said.
+
+So Jenkins was summoned from a little knot a few yards off and duly
+presented. Whereupon we proceeded to Campion's plain but comfortably
+furnished quarters in Barbara's Building, where he entertained us till
+nearly midnight with cold beef and cheese and strenuous conversation.
+
+As I walked across Westminster Bridge on my homeward way it seemed as
+if London had grown less hostile. Big Ben chimed twelve and there was a
+distinct Dick Whittington touch about the music. The light on the
+tower no longer mocked me. As I passed by the gates of Palace Yard,
+a policeman on duty recognised me and saluted. I strode on with a
+springier tread and noticed that the next policeman who did not know me,
+still regarded me with an air of benevolence. A pale moon shone in the
+heavens and gave me shyly to understand that she was as much my moon as
+any one else's. As I turned into Victoria Street, omnibuses passed
+me with a lurch of friendliness. The ban was lifted. I danced
+(figuratively) along the pavement.
+
+What it portended I did not realise. I was conscious of nothing but a
+spiritual exhilaration comparable only with the physical exhilaration
+I experienced in the garden at Algiers when my bodily health had been
+finally established. As the body then felt the need of expressing itself
+in violent action--in leaping and running (an impulse which I firmly
+subdued), so now did my spirit crave some sort of expression in violent
+emotion. I was in a mood for enraptured converse with an archangel.
+
+Looking back, I see that Campion's friendly "Hallo" had awakened me from
+a world of shadows and set me among realities; the impact of Milligan's
+vehement personality had changed the conditions of my life from static
+to dynamic; and that a Providence which is not always as ironical as
+it pleases us to assert had sent Eleanor Faversham's graciousness to
+mitigate the severity of the shock. I see how just was Lola's diagnosis.
+"You're not quite alive even yet." I had been going about in a state of
+suspended spiritual animation.
+
+My recovery dated from that evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Agatha proved herself the good soul I had represented her to be.
+
+"Certainly, dear," she said when I came the following morning with my
+request. "You can have my boudoir all to yourselves."
+
+"I am grateful," said I, "and for the first time I forgive you for
+calling it by that abominable name."
+
+It was an old quarrel between us. Every lover of language picks out
+certain words in common use that he hates with an unreasoning ferocity.
+
+"I'll change it's title if you like," she said meekly.
+
+"If you do, my dear Agatha, my gratitude will be eternal."
+
+"I remember a certain superior person, when Tom and I were engaged,
+calling mother's boudoir--the only quiet place in the house--the
+osculatorium."
+
+She laughed with the air of a small bird who after long waiting had at
+last got even with a hawk. But I did not even smile. For the only time
+in our lives I considered that Agatha had committed a breach of good
+taste. I said rather stiffly:
+
+"It is not going to be a lovers' meeting, my dear."
+
+She flushed. "It was silly of me. But why shouldn't it be a lovers'
+meeting?" she added audaciously. "If nothing had happened, you two would
+have been married by this time--"
+
+"Not till June."
+
+"Oh, yes, you would. I should have seen about that--a ridiculously long
+engagement. Anyhow, it was only your illness that broke it off. You were
+told you were going to die. You did the only honourable and sensible
+thing--both of you. Now you're in splendid health again--"
+
+"Stop, stop!" I interrupted. "You seem to be entirely oblivious of the
+circumstances--"
+
+"I'm oblivious of no circumstances. Neither is Eleanor. And if she still
+cares for you she won't care twopence for the circumstances. I know I
+wouldn't."
+
+And to cut off my reply she clapped the receiver of the telephone to her
+ear and called up Eleanor, with whom she proceeded to arrange a date for
+the interview. Presently she screwed her head round.
+
+"She says she can come at four this afternoon. Will that suit you?"
+
+"Perfectly," said I.
+
+When she replaced the receiver I stepped behind her and put my hands on
+her shoulders.
+
+"'The mother of mischief,'" I quoted, "'is no bigger than a midge's
+wing,' and the grandmother is the match-making microbe that lurks in
+every woman's system."
+
+She caught one of my hands and looked up into my face.
+
+"You're not cross with me, Simon?"
+
+Her tone was that of the old Agatha. I laughed, remembering the
+policeman's salute of the previous night, and noted this recovery of
+my ascendancy as another indication of the general improvement in the
+attitude of London.
+
+"Of course not, Tom Tit," said I, calling her by her nursery name. "But
+I absolutely forbid your thinking of playing Fairy Godmother."
+
+"You can forbid my playing," she laughed, "and I can obey you. But you
+can't prevent my thinking. Thought is free."
+
+"Sometimes, my dear," I retorted, "it is better chained up."
+
+With this rebuke I left her. No doubt, she considered a renewal of my
+engagement with Eleanor Faversham a romantic solution of difficulties.
+I could only regard it as preposterous, and as I walked back to Victoria
+Street I convinced myself that Eleanor's frank offer of friendship
+proved that such an idea never entered her head. I took vehement pains
+to convince myself Spring had come; like the year, I had awakened from
+my lethargy. I viewed life through new eyes; I felt it with a new heart.
+Such vehement pains I was not capable of taking yesterday.
+
+"It has never entered her head!" I declared conclusively.
+
+And yet, as we sat together a few hours later in Agatha's little room a
+doubt began to creep into the corners of my mind. In her strong way
+she had brushed away the scandal that hung around my name. She did not
+believe a word of it. I told her of my loss of fortune. My lunacy
+rather raised than lowered me in her esteem. How then was I personally
+different from the man she had engaged herself to marry six months
+before? I remembered our parting. I remembered her letters. Her presence
+here was proof of her unchanging regard. But was it something more? Was
+there a hope throbbing beneath that calm sweet surface to which I did
+not respond? For it often happens that the more direct a woman is, the
+more in her feminine heart is she elusive.
+
+Clean-built, clean-hearted, clean-eyed, of that clean complexion which
+suggests the open air, Eleanor impressed you with a sense of bodily and
+mental wholesomeness. Her taste in dress ran in the direction of plain
+tailor-made gowns (I am told, by the way, that these can be fairly
+expensive), and shrank instinctively from the frills and fripperies to
+which daughters of Eve are notoriously addicted. She spoke in a clear
+voice which some called hard, though I never found it so; she carried
+herself proudly. Chaste in thought, frank in deed, she was a perfect
+specimen of the highly bred, purely English type of woman who, looking
+at facts squarely in the face, accepts them as facts and does not allow
+her imagination to dally in any atmosphere wherein they may be invested.
+To this type a vow is irrefragable. Loyalty is inherent in her like
+her blood. She never changes. What feminine inconsistencies she had
+at fifteen she retains at five-and-twenty, and preserves to add to the
+charms of her old age. She is the exemplary wife, the great-hearted
+mother of children. She has sent her sons in thousands to fight her
+country's battles overseas. Those things which lie in the outer temper
+of her soul she gives lavishly. That which is hidden in her inner shrine
+has to be wrested from her by the one hand she loves. Was mine that
+hand?
+
+It will be perceived that I was beginning to take life seriously.
+
+Eleanor must have also perceived something of the sort; for during our
+talk she said irrelevantly:
+
+"You've changed!"
+
+"In what way?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know. You're not the same as you were. I seem to know you
+better in some ways, and yet I seem to know you less. Why is it?"
+
+I said, "No one can go through the Valley of the Grotesque as I have
+done without suffering some change."
+
+"I don't see why you should call it 'the Valley of the Grotesque.'"
+
+I smiled at her instinctive rejection of the fanciful.
+
+"Don't you? Call it the Valley of the Shadow, if you like. But don't
+you think the attendant circumstances were rather mediaeval, gargoyley,
+Orcagnesque? Don't you think the whole passage lacked the dignity which
+one associates with the Valley of the Shadow of Death?"
+
+"You mean the murder?" she said with a faint shiver.
+
+"That," said I, "might be termed the central feature. Just look at
+things as they happened. I am condemned to death. I try to face it like
+a man and a gentleman. I make my arrangements. I give up what I can call
+mine no longer. I think I will devote the rest of my days to performing
+such acts of helpfulness and charity as would be impossible for a sound
+man with a long life before him to undertake. I do it in a half-jesting
+spirit, refusing to take death seriously. I pledge myself to an act of
+helpfulness which I regard at first as merely an incident in my career
+of beneficence. I am gradually caught in the tangle of a drama which at
+times develops into sheer burlesque, and before I can realise what is
+going to happen, it turns into ghastly tragedy. I am overwhelmed in
+grotesque disaster--it is the only word. Instead of creating happiness
+all around me, I have played havoc with human lives. I stand on the
+brink and look back and see that it is all one gigantic devil-jest at
+my expense. I thank God I am going to die. I do die--for practical
+purposes. I come back to life and--here I am. Can I be quite the same
+person I was a year ago?"
+
+She reflected for a few moments. Then she said:
+
+"No. You can't be--quite the same. A man of your nature would either
+have his satirical view of life hardened into bitter cynicism or he
+would be softened by suffering and face things with new and nobler
+ideals. He would either still regard life as a jest--but instead of its
+being an odd, merry jest it would be a grim, meaningless, hideous one;
+or he would see that it wasn't a jest at all, but a full, wonderful, big
+reality. I've expressed myself badly, but you see what I mean."
+
+"And what do you think has happened?" I asked.
+
+"I think you have changed for the better."
+
+I smiled inwardly. It sounded rather dull. I said with a smile:
+
+"You never liked my cap and bells, Eleanor."
+
+"No!" she replied emphatically. "What's the use of mockery? See where it
+led you."
+
+I rose, half-laughing at her earnestness, half-ashamed of myself, and
+took a couple of turns across the room.
+
+"You're right," I cried. "It led me to perdition. You might make an
+allegory out of my career and entitle it 'The Mocker's Progress.'" I
+paused for a second or two, and then said suddenly, "Why did you from
+the first refuse to believe what everybody else does--before I had the
+chance of looking you in the eyes?"
+
+She averted her face. "You forget that I had had the chance of searching
+deep beneath the mocker."
+
+I cannot, in reverence to her, set down what she said she found there. I
+stood humbled and rebuked, as a man must do when the best in him is laid
+out before his sight by a good woman.
+
+A maidservant brought in tea, set the table, and departed, Eleanor drew
+off her gloves and my glance fell on her right hand.
+
+"It's good of you to wear my ring to-day," I said.
+
+"To-day?" she echoed, with the tiniest touch of injury in her voice. "Do
+you think I put it on to just please you to-day?"
+
+"It would have been gracious of you to do so," said I.
+
+"It wouldn't," she declared. "It would have been mawkish and
+sentimental. When we parted I told you to do what you liked with the
+ring. Do you remember? You put it on this finger"--she waved her right
+hand--"and there it has stayed ever since."
+
+I caught the hand and touched it lightly with my lips. She coloured
+faintly.
+
+"Two lumps of sugar and no milk, I think that's right?" She handed me
+the tea-cup.
+
+"It's like you not to have forgotten."
+
+"I'm a practical person," she replied with a laugh.
+
+Presently she said, "Tell me more about your illness--or rather your
+recovery. I know nothing except that you had a successful operation
+which all the London surgeons said was impossible. Who nursed you?"
+
+"I had a trained nurse," said I.
+
+"Wasn't Madame Brandt with you?"
+
+"Yes," said I. "She was very good to me. In fact, I think I owe her my
+life."
+
+Hitherto the delicacy of the situation had caused me to refer to Lola
+no more than was necessary, and in my narrative I had purposely left her
+vague.
+
+"That's a great debt," said Eleanor.
+
+"It is, indeed."
+
+"You're not the man to leave such a debt unpaid?"
+
+"I try to repay it by giving Madame Brandt my devoted friendship."
+
+Her eyes never wavered as they held mine.
+
+"That's one of the things I wanted to know. Tell me something about
+her."
+
+I felt some surprise, as Eleanor was of a nature too proud for
+curiosity.
+
+"Why do you want to know?"
+
+"Because she interests me intensely. Is she young?"
+
+"About thirty-two."
+
+"Good-looking?"
+
+"She is a woman of remarkable personality."
+
+"Describe her."
+
+I tried, stumbled, and halted. The effort evoked in my mind a picture
+of Lola lithe, seductive, exotic, with gold flecks in her dusky, melting
+eyes, with strong shapely arms that had as yet only held me motherwise,
+with her pantherine suggestion of tremendous strength in languorous
+repose, with her lazy gestures and parted lips showing the wonderful
+white even teeth, with all her fascination and charm--a picture of Lola
+such as I had not seen since my emergence from the Valley--a picture of
+Lola, generous, tender, wistful, strong, yielding, fragrant, lovable,
+desirable, amorous--a picture of Lola which I could not put before this
+other woman equally brave and straight, who looked at me composedly out
+of her calm, blue eyes.
+
+My description resolved itself into a loutish catalogue.
+
+"It is not painful to you to talk of her, Simon?"
+
+"Not at all. There are not many great-hearted women going about. It is
+my privilege to know two."
+
+"Am I the other?"
+
+"Who else?"
+
+"I'm glad you have the courage to class Madame Brandt and myself
+together."
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"It proves beyond a doubt that you are honest with me. Now tell me
+about a few externals--things that don't matter--but help one to form an
+impression. Is she educated?"
+
+"From books, no; from observation, yes."
+
+"Her manners?"
+
+"Observation had educated them."
+
+"Accent?"
+
+"She is sufficiently polyglot to have none."
+
+"She dresses and talks and behaves generally like a lady?"
+
+"She does," said I.
+
+"In what way then does she differ from the women of our class?"
+
+"She is less schooled, less reticent, franker, more natural. What is on
+her tongue to say, she says."
+
+"Temper?"
+
+"I have never heard her say an angry word to or of a human creature. She
+has queer delicacies of feeling. For instance----"
+
+I told her of Anastasius Papadopoulos's tawdry, gimcrack presents which
+Lola has suffered to remain in her drawing-room so as not to hurt the
+poor little wretch.
+
+"That's very touching. Where does she live?"
+
+"She has a flat in Cadogan Gardens."
+
+"Is she in London now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I should like very much to know her," she said calmly.
+
+I vow and declare again that the more straightforward and open-eyed, the
+less subtle, temperamental, and neurotic are women, the more are they
+baffling. I had wondered for some time whither the catechism tended,
+and now, with a sudden jerk, it stopped short at this most unexpected
+terminus. It was startling. I rose and mechanically placed my empty
+tea-cup on the tray by her side.
+
+"The wish, my dear Eleanor," said I, quite formally, "does great credit
+to your heart."
+
+There was a short pause, marking an automatic close of the subject.
+Deeply as I admired both women, I shrank from the idea of their meeting.
+It seemed curiously indelicate, in view both of my former engagement
+to Eleanor and of Lola's frank avowal of her feelings towards me before
+what I shall always regard as my death. It is true that we had never
+alluded to it since my resurrection; but what of that? Lola's feelings,
+I was sure, remained unaltered. It also flashed on me that, with all the
+goodwill in the world, Eleanor would not understand Lola. An interview
+would develop into a duel. I pictured it for a second, and my sudden
+fierce partisanship for Lola staggered me. Decidedly an acquaintance
+between these two was preposterous.
+
+The silence was definite enough to mark a period, but not long enough to
+cause embarrassment. Eleanor commented on my present employment. I must
+find it good to get back to politics.
+
+"I find it to the contrary," said I, with a laugh. "My convictions,
+always lukewarm, are now stone-cold. I don't say that the principles of
+the party are wrong. But they're wrong for me, which is all-important.
+If they are not right for me, what care I how right they be? And as I
+don't believe in those of the other side, I'm going to give up politics
+altogether."
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"I don't know. I honestly don't. But I have an insistent premonition
+that I shall soon find myself doing something utterly idiotic, which to
+me will be the most real thing in life."
+
+I had indeed awakened that morning with an exhilarating thrill of
+anticipation, comparable to that of the mountain climber who knows not
+what panorama of glory may be disclosed to his eyes when he reaches the
+summit. I had whistled in my bath--a most unusual thing.
+
+"Are you going to turn Socialist?"
+
+"_Qui lo sa_? I'm willing to turn anything alive and honest. It doesn't
+matter what a man professes so long as he professes it with all the
+faith of all his soul."
+
+I broke into a laugh, for the echo of my words rang comic in my ears.
+
+"Why do you laugh?" she asked.
+
+"Don't you think it funny to hear me talk like a two-penny Carlyle?"
+
+"Not a bit," she said seriously.
+
+"I can't undertake to talk like that always," I said warningly.
+
+"I thought you said you were going to be serious."
+
+"So I am--but platitudinous--Heaven forbid!"
+
+The little clock on the mantelpiece struck six. Eleanor rose in alarm.
+
+"How the time has flown! I must be getting back. Well?"
+
+Our eyes met. "Well?" said I.
+
+"Are we ever to meet again?"
+
+"It's for you to say."
+
+"No," she said. And then very distinctly, very deliberately, "It's for
+you."
+
+I understood. She made the offer simply, nobly, unreservedly. My heart
+was filled with great gratitude. She was so true, so loyal, so thorough.
+Why could I not take her at her word? I murmured:
+
+"I'll remember what you say."
+
+She put out her hand. "Good-bye!"
+
+"Good-bye and God bless you!" I said.
+
+I accompanied her to the front door, hailed a passing cab, and waited
+till she had driven off. Was there ever a sweeter, grander, more loyal
+woman? The three little words had changed the current of my being.
+
+I returned to take leave of Agatha. I found her in the drawing-room
+reading a novel. She twisted her head sideways and regarded me with a
+bird-like air of curiosity.
+
+"Eleanor gone?"
+
+Her tone jarred on me. I nodded and dropped into a chair.
+
+"Interview passed off satisfactorily?"
+
+"We were quite comfortable, thank you. The only drawback was the tea.
+Why a woman in your position can't give people China tea instead of that
+Ceylon syrup will be a mystery to me to my dying day."
+
+She rose in her wrath and shook me.
+
+"You're the most aggravating wretch on earth!"
+
+"My dear Tom-Tit," said I gravely. "Remember the moral tale of
+Bluebeard."
+
+"Look here, Simon"--she planted herself in front of me--"I'm not a bit
+inquisitive. I don't in the least want to know what passed between you
+and Eleanor. But what I would give my ears to understand is how you
+can go through a two hours' conversation with the girl you were engaged
+to--a conversation which must have affected the lives of both of
+you--and then come up to me and talk drivel about China tea and
+Bluebeard."
+
+"Once on a time, my dear," said I, "I flattered myself on being an
+artist in life. I am humbler now and acknowledge myself a wretched
+bungling amateur. But I still recognise the value of chiaroscuro."
+
+"You're hopeless," said Agatha, somewhat crossly. "You get more flippant
+and cynical every day."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+I went home to my solitary dinner, and afterwards took down a volume of
+Emerson and tried to read. I thought the cool and spacious philosopher
+might allay a certain fever in my blood. But he did nothing of the kind.
+He wrote for cool and spacious people like himself; not for corpses
+like me revivified suddenly with an overcharge of vital force. I pitched
+him--how much more truly companionable is a book than its author!--I
+pitched him across the room, and thrusting my hands in my pockets and
+stretching out my legs, stared in a certain wonder at myself.
+
+I, Simon de Gex, was in love; and, _horribile dictu!_ in love with two
+women at once. It was Oriental, Mormonic, New Century, what you will;
+but there it was. I am ashamed to avow that if, at that moment, both
+women had appeared before me and said "Marry us," I should have--well,
+reflected seriously on the proposal. I had passed through curious enough
+experiences, Heaven knows, already; but none so baffling as this. The
+two women came alternately and knocked at my heart, and whispered in my
+ear their irrefutable claims to my love. I listened throbbingly to each,
+and to each I said, "I love you."
+
+I was in an extraordinary psychological predicament. Lola had remarked,
+"You are not quite alive even yet." I had come to complete life too
+suddenly. This was the result. I got up and paced the bird-cage, which
+the house-agents termed a reception-room, and wondered whether I were
+going mad. It was not as if one woman represented the flesh and the
+other the spirit. Then I might have seen the way to a decision. But both
+had the large nature that comprises all. I could not exalt one in
+any way to the abasement of the other. All my inherited traditions,
+prejudices, predilections, all my training ranged me on the side of
+Eleanor. I was clamouring for the real. Was she not the incarnation
+of the real? Her very directness piqued me to a perverse and delicious
+obliquity. And I knew, as I knew when I parted from her months before,
+that it was only for me to awaken things that lay virginally dormant.
+On the other hand stood Lola, with her magnetic seduction, her rich
+atmosphere, her great wide simplicity of heart, holding out arms into
+which I longed to throw myself.
+
+It was monstrous, abnormal. I hated the abominable indelicacy of
+weighing one against the other, as I had hated the idea of their
+meeting.
+
+I paced my bird-cage until it shrank to the size of a rat-trap. Then
+I clapped on my hat and fled down into the streets. I jumped into the
+first cab I saw and bade the driver take me to Barbara's Building.
+Campion suddenly occurred to me as the best antidote to the poison that
+had entered my blood.
+
+I found him alone, clearing from the table the remains of supper. In
+spite of his soul's hospitable instincts, he stared at me.
+
+"Why, what the----?"
+
+"Yes, I know. You're surprised to see me bursting in on you like a wild
+animal. I'm not going to do it every night, but this evening I claim a
+bit of our old friendship."
+
+"Claim it all, my dear de Gex!" he said cordially. "What can I do for
+you?"
+
+It was characteristic of Campion to put his question in that form.
+Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have asked what was the matter
+with me. But Campion, who all his life had given, wanted to know what he
+could co.
+
+"Tell me fairy tales of Lambeth and idylls of the Waterloo Bridge Road.
+Or light your pipe and talk to me of Barbara."
+
+He folded up the tablecloth and put it in the sideboard drawer.
+
+"If it's elegant distraction you want," said he, "I can do better
+than that." He planted himself in front of me. "Would you like to do a
+night's real work?"
+
+"Certainly," said I.
+
+"A gentleman of my acquaintance named Judd is in the ramping stage of
+_delirium tremens_. He requires a couple of men to hold him down so as
+to prevent him from getting out of bed and smashing his furniture and
+his wife and things. I was going to relieve one of the fellows there
+now, so that he can get a few hours' sleep, and if you like to come
+and relieve the other, you'll be doing a good action. But I warn you it
+won't be funny."
+
+"I'm in the mood for anything," I said.
+
+"You'll come?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"That's splendid!" he shouted. "I hardly thought you were in earnest.
+Wait till I telephone for some medicine to be sent up from the
+dispensary. I promised to take it round with me."
+
+He telephoned instructions, and presently a porter brought in the
+medicine. Campion explained that it had been prescribed by the doctor
+attached to the institution who was attending the case.
+
+"You must come and see the working of our surgery and dispensary!" he
+cried enthusiastically. "We charge those who can afford a sixpence for
+visit and medicine. Those who can't are provided, after inquiry, with
+coupons. We don't want to encourage the well-to-do to get their medical
+advice gratis, or we wouldn't be able to cope with the really poor. We
+pay the doctor a fixed salary, and the fees go to the general fund of
+the Building, so it doesn't matter a hang to him whether a patient pays
+or not."
+
+"You must be proud of all this, Campion?" I said.
+
+"In a way," he replied, lighting his pipe; "but it's mainly a question
+of money--my poor old father's money which he worked for, not I."
+
+I reminded him that other sons had been known to put their poor old
+father's money to baser uses.
+
+"I suppose Barbara is more useful to the community that steam yachts or
+racing stables; but there, you see, I hate yachting because I'm always
+sea-sick, and I scarcely know which end of a horse you put the bridle
+on. Every man to his job. This is mine. I like it."
+
+"I wonder whether holding down people suffering from _delirium tremens_
+is my job," said I. "If so, I'm afraid I shan't like it."
+
+"If it's really your job," replied Campion, "you will. You must. You
+can't help it. God made man so."
+
+It was only an hour or two later when, for the first time in my life, I
+came into practical touch with human misery, that I recognised the truth
+of Campion's perfervid optimism. No one could like our task that night
+in its outer essence. For a time it revolted me. The atmosphere of
+the close, dirty room, bedroom, kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room,
+bathroom, laundry--all in one, the home of man, wife and two children,
+caught me by the throat. It was sour. The physical contact with the
+flesh of the unclean, gibbering, shivering, maniacal brute on the foul
+bed was unutterably repugnant to me. Now and again, during intervals
+of comparative calm, I was forced to put my head out of the window to
+breathe the air of the street. Even that was tainted, for a fried-fish
+shop across the way and a public-house next door billowed forth their
+nauseating odours. After a while access to the window was denied me.
+A mattress and some rude coverings were stretched beneath it--the
+children's bed--on which we persuaded the helpless, dreary wife to lie
+down and try to rest. A neighbour had taken in the children for the
+night. The wife was a skinny, grey-faced, lined woman of six-and-twenty.
+In her attitude of hopeless incompetence she shed around her an
+atmosphere of unspeakable depression. Although I could not get to the
+window, I was glad when she lay down and spared me the sight of
+her moving fecklessly about the room or weeping huddled up on a
+broken-backed wooden chair and looking more like a half-animated
+dish-clout than a woman.
+
+The poor wretch on the bed was a journeyman tailor who, when sober,
+could earn fair wages. The cry of the wife, before Campion awed her
+into comparative silence, was a monotonous upbraiding of her husband for
+bringing them down to this poverty. It seemed impossible to touch her
+intelligence and make her understand that no words from her or any one
+could reach his consciousness. His violence, his screams, his threats,
+the horrors of his fear left her unmoved. We were there to guard her
+from physical danger, and that to her was all that mattered.
+
+In the course of an hour or so the nausea left me. I felt braced by the
+grimness of the thing, and during the paroxysms I had no time to think
+of anything but the mechanical work in hand. It was all that Campion and
+I, both fairly able-bodied men, could do to keep the puny little tailor
+in his bed. Horrible shapes menaced him from which he fought madly to
+escape. He writhed and shrieked with terror. Once he caught my hand in
+his teeth and bit it, and Campion had some difficulty in relaxing
+the wretch's jaw. Between the paroxysms Campion and I sat on the bed
+watching him, scarcely exchanging a word. The wife, poor creature,
+whimpered on her mattress. It was not a pleasant vigil. It lasted till
+the grey dawn crept in, pitilessly intensifying the squalor of the room,
+and until the dawn was broadening into daylight. Then two of Campion's
+men from Barbara's Building arrived to relieve us. Before we went,
+however, the neighbour who had taken charge of the children came in to
+help the slatternly wife light a fire and make some tea. I have enjoyed
+few things more than the warm, bitter stuff which I drank out of the
+broken mug in that strange and depressing company.
+
+I went out into the street with racked head and nerves and muscles.
+Campion kept his cloth cap in his hand, allowing the morning wind to
+ruffle his shaggy black hair, and drew a long breath.
+
+"I think the worst is over now. As soon as he can be moved, I'll get him
+down to the annexe at Broadstairs. The sea air will pull him round."
+
+"Isn't it rather hopeless?" I asked.
+
+He turned on me. "Nothing's hopeless. If you once start the hopeless
+game down here you'd better distribute cyanide of potassium instead of
+coals and groceries. I've made up my mind to get that man decent again,
+and, by George, I'm going to do it! Fancy those two weaklings producing
+healthy offspring. But they have. Two of the most intelligent kids
+in the district. If you hold up your hands and say it's awful to
+contemplate their upbringing you're speaking the blatant truth. It's
+the contemplation that's awful. But why contemplate when you can do
+something?"
+
+I admitted the justice of the remark. He went on.
+
+"Look at yourself now. If you had gone in with me last night and just
+stared at the poor devil howling with D.T. in that filthy place, you'd
+have come out sick and said it was awful. Instead of that, you buckled
+to and worked and threw off everything save our common humanity, and
+have got interested in the Judds in spite of yourself. You'll go and see
+them again and do what you can for them, won't you?"
+
+I was not in a merry mood, but I laughed. Campion had read the intention
+that had vaguely formulated itself in the back of my mind.
+
+"Of course I will," I said.
+
+We walked on a few steps down the still silent, disheartening street
+without speaking. Then he tugged his beard, half-halted, and glanced at
+me quickly.
+
+"See here," said he, "the more sensible people I can get in to help
+us the better. Would you like me to hand you over the Judd family _en
+bloc_?"
+
+This was startling to the amateur philanthropist. But it is the way of
+all professionals to regard their own business as of absorbing interest
+to the outside world. The stockbroking mind cannot conceive a sane
+man indifferent to the fluctuations of the money market, and to the
+professional cricketer the wide earth revolves around a wicket. How in
+the world could I be fairy godfather to the Judd family? Campion took my
+competence for granted.
+
+"You may not understand exactly what I mean, my dear Campion," said
+I; "but I attribute the most unholy disasters of my life to a ghastly
+attempt of mine to play Deputy Providence."
+
+"But who's asking you to play Deputy Providence?" he shouted. "It's the
+very last idiot thing I want done. I want you to do certain definite
+practical work for that family under the experienced direction of the
+authorities at Barbara's Building. There, do you understand now?"
+
+"Very well, I'll do anything you like."
+
+Thus it befell that I undertook to look after the moral, material, and
+spiritual welfare of the family of an alcoholic tailor by the name of
+Judd who dwelt in a vile slum in South Lambeth. My head was full of the
+prospect when I awoke at noon, for I had gone exhausted to sleep as soon
+as I reached home. If goodwill, backed by the experience of Barbara's
+Building, could do aught towards the alleviation of human misery, I
+determined that it should be done. And there was much misery to be
+alleviated in the Judd family. I had no clear notion of the means
+whereby I was to accomplish this; but I knew that it would be a
+philanthropic pursuit far different from my previous eumoirous
+wanderings abut London when, with a mind conscious of well-doing, I
+distributed embarrassing five-pound notes to the poor and needy.
+
+I had known--what comfortable, well-fed gentleman does not?--that within
+easy walking distance of his London home thousands of human beings live
+like the beasts that perish; but never before had I spent an intimate
+night in one of the foul dens where the living and perishing take place.
+The awful pity of it entered my soul.
+
+So deeply was I impressed with the responsibility of what I had
+undertaken, so grimly was I haunted by the sight of the pallid, howling
+travesty of a man and the squeezed-out, whimpering woman, that the
+memory of the conflicting emotions that had driven me to Campion the
+night before returned to me with a shock.
+
+"It strikes me," I murmured, as I shaved, "that I am living very
+intensely indeed. Here am I in love with two women at once, and almost
+hysterically enthusiastic over a delirious tailor." Then I cut my cheek
+and murmured no more, until the operation was concluded.
+
+I had arranged to accompany Lola that afternoon to the Zoological
+Gardens. This was a favourite resort of hers. She was on intimate terms
+with keepers and animals, and her curious magnetism allowed her to play
+such tricks with lions and tigers and other ferocious beasts as made
+my blood run cold. As for the bears, they greeted her approach with
+shrieking demonstrations of affection. On such occasions I felt the same
+curious physical antipathy as I did when she had dominated Anastasius's
+ill-conditioned cat. She seemed to enter another sphere of being in
+which neither I nor anything human had a place.
+
+With some such dim thoughts in my head, I reached her door in Cadogan
+Gardens. The sight of her electric brougham that stood waiting switched
+my thoughts into another groove, but one running oddly parallel.
+Electric broughams also carried her out of my sphere. I had humbly
+performed the journey thither in an omnibus.
+
+She received me in her big, expansive way.
+
+"Lord! How good it is to see you. I was getting the--I was going to say
+'the blind hump'--but you don't like it. I was going to turn crazy and
+bite the furniture."
+
+"Why?" I asked with masculine directness.
+
+"I've been trying to educate myself--to read poetry. Look here"--she
+caught a small brown-covered octavo volume from the table. "I can't make
+head or tail of it. It proved to me that it was no use. If I couldn't
+understand poetry, I couldn't understand anything. It was no good trying
+to educate myself. I gave it up. And then I got what you don't like me
+to call the hump."
+
+"You dear Lola!" I cried, laughing. "I don't believe any one has ever
+made head or tail out of 'Sordello.' There once was a man who said
+there were only two intelligible lines in the poem--the first and the
+last--and that both were lies. 'Who will, may hear Sordello's story
+told,' and 'Who would, has heard Sordello's story told.' Don't worry
+about not understanding it."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"Not a bit," said I.
+
+"That's a comfort," she said, with a generous sigh of relief. "How well
+you're looking!" she cried suddenly. "You're a different man. What have
+you been doing to yourself?"
+
+"I've grown quite alive."
+
+"Good! Delightful! So am I. Quite alive now, thank you."
+
+She looked it, in spite of the black outdoor costume. But there was a
+dash of white at her throat and some white lilies of the valley in
+her bosom, and a white feather in her great black hat poised with a
+Gainsborough swagger on the mass of her bronze hair.
+
+"It's the spring," she added.
+
+"Yes," said I, "it's the spring."
+
+She approached me and brushed a few specks of dust from my shoulder.
+
+"You want a new suit of clothes, Simon."
+
+"Dear me!" said I, glancing hastily over the blue serge suit in which I
+had lounged at Mustapha Superieur. "I suppose I do."
+
+It occurred to me that my wardrobe generally needed replenishing. I had
+been unaccustomed to think of these things, the excellent Rogers and his
+predecessors having done most of the thinking for me.
+
+"I'll go to Poole's at once," said I.
+
+And then it struck me, to my whimsical dismay, that in the present
+precarious state of my finances, especially in view of my decision to
+abandon political journalism in favour of I knew not what occupation, I
+could not afford to order clothes largely from a fashionable tailor.
+
+"I shouldn't have mentioned it," said Lola apologetically, "but you're
+always so spick and span."
+
+"And now I'm getting shabby!"
+
+I threw back my head and laughed at the new and comical conception of
+Simon de Gex down at heel.
+
+"Oh, not shabby!" echoed Lola.
+
+"Yes, my dear. The days of purple and fine linen are _vorbei_. You'll
+have to put up with me in a threadbare coat and frayed cuffs and ragged
+hems to my trousers."
+
+Lola declared that I was talking rubbish.
+
+"Not quite such rubbish as you may think, my dear. Shall you mind?"
+
+"It would break my heart. But why do you talk so? You can't be--as
+poor--as that?"
+
+Her face manifested such tragic concern that I laughed. Besides, the
+idea of personal poverty amused me. When I gave up my political work
+I should only have what I had saved from my wreck--some two hundred a
+year--to support me until I should find some other means of livelihood.
+It was enough to keep me from starvation, and the little economies I had
+begun to practise afforded me enjoyment. On the other hand, how folks
+regulated their balance-sheets so as to live on two hundred a year I had
+but a dim notion. In the course of our walk from Barbara's Building to
+the Judds the night before I had asked Campion. He had laughed somewhat
+grimly.
+
+"I don't know. I don't run an asylum for spendthrift plutocrats; but if
+you want to see how people live and bring up large families on fifteen
+shillings a week, I can show you heaps of examples."
+
+This I felt would, in itself, be knowledge of the deepest interest; but
+it would in no way aid me to solve my own economic difficulty. I was
+always being brought up suddenly against the problem in some form or
+another, and, as I say, it caused me considerable amusement.
+
+"I shall go on happily enough," said I, reassuringly. "In the meantime
+let us go and see the lions and tigers."
+
+We started. The electric brougham glided along comfortably through the
+sunlit streets. A feeling of physical and spiritual content stole over
+me. Our hands met and lingered a long time in a sympathetic clasp.
+Whatever fortune held in store for me here at least I had an inalienable
+possession. For some time we said nothing, and when our eyes met she
+smiled. I think she had never felt my heart so near to hers. At last we
+broke the silence and talked of ordinary things. I told her of my vigil
+overnight and my undertaking to look after the Judds. She listened
+with great interest. When I had finished my tale, she said almost
+passionately:
+
+"Oh, I wish I could do something like that!"
+
+"You?"
+
+"Why not? I came from those people. My grandfather swept the cages in
+Jamrach's down by the docks. He died of drink. He used to live in one
+horrible, squalid room near by. I remember my father taking me to see
+him when I was a little girl--we ourselves weren't very much better off
+at that time. I've been through it," she shivered. "I know what that
+awful poverty is. Sometimes it seems immoral of me to live luxuriously
+as I do now without doing a hand's turn to help."
+
+"_Chacun a son metier_, my dear," said I. "There's no need to reproach
+yourself."
+
+"But I think it might be my _metier_," she replied earnestly, "if only I
+could learn it."
+
+"Why haven't you tried, then?"
+
+"I've been lazy and the opportunity hasn't come my way."
+
+"I'll introduce you to Campion," I said, "and doubtless he'll be able to
+find something for you to do. He has made a science of the matter. I'll
+take you down to see him."
+
+"Will you?"
+
+"Certainly," said I. There was a pause. Then an idea struck me. "I
+wonder, my dear Lola, whether you could apply that curious power you
+have over savage animals to the taming of the more brutal of humans."
+
+"I wonder," she said thoughtfully.
+
+"I should like to see you seize a drunken costermonger in the act of
+jumping on his wife by the scruff of the neck, and reduce him to such
+pulp that he sat up on his tail and begged."
+
+"Oh, Simon!" she exclaimed reproachfully. "I quite thought you were
+serious."
+
+"So I am, my dear," I returned quickly, "as serious as I can be."
+
+She laughed. "Do you remember the first day you came to see me? You said
+that I could train any human bear to dance to whatever tune I pleased. I
+wonder if the same thought was at the back of your head."
+
+"It wasn't. It was a bad and villainous thought. I came under the
+impression that you were a dangerous seductress."
+
+"And I'm not?"
+
+Oh, that spring day, that delicious tingle in the air, that laughing
+impertinence of the budding trees in the park through which we were then
+driving, that enveloping sense of fragrance and the nearness and the
+dearness of her! Oh, that overcharge of vitality! I leaned my head to
+hers so that my lips nearly touched her ear. My voice shook.
+
+"You're a seductress and a witch and a sorcerer and an enchantress."
+
+The blood rose to her dark face. She half closed her eyes.
+
+"What else am I?" she murmured.
+
+But, alas! I had not time to answer, for the brougham stopped at the
+gates of the Zoological Gardens. We both awakened from our foolishness.
+My hand was on the door-handle when she checked me.
+
+"What's the good of a mind if you can't change it? I don't feel in a
+mood for wild beasts to-day, and I know you don't care to see me fooling
+about with them. I would much rather sit quiet and talk to you."
+
+With a woman who wants to sacrifice herself there is no disputing.
+Besides, I had no desire to dispute. I acquiesced. We agreed to continue
+our drive.
+
+"We'll go round by Hampstead Heath," she said to the chauffeur. As soon
+as we were in motion again, she drew ever so little nearer and said, in
+her lowest, richest notes, and with a coquetry that was bewildering on
+account of its frankness:
+
+"What were we talking of before we pulled up?"
+
+"I don't know what we were talking of," I said, "but we seem to have
+trodden on the fringe of a fairy-tale."
+
+"Can't we tread on it again?" She laughed happily.
+
+"You have only to cast the spell of your witchery over me again."
+
+She drew yet a little nearer and whispered: "I'm trying to do it as hard
+as I can."
+
+An adorable softness came into her eyes, and her hand instinctively
+closed round mine in its boneless clasp. The long pent-up longing of
+the woman vibrated from her in waves that shook me to my soul. My senses
+swam. Her face quivered glorious before me in a black world. Her lips
+were parted. Careless of all the eyes in all the houses in the Avenue
+Road, St. John's Wood, and in the head of a telegraph boy whom I only
+noticed afterwards, I kissed her on the lips.
+
+All the fulness and strength of life danced through my veins.
+
+"I told you I was quite alive!" I said with idiotic exultation.
+
+She closed her eyes and leaned back. "Why did you do that?" she
+murmured.
+
+"Because I love you," said I. "It has come at last."
+
+Where we drove I have no recollection. Presumably an impression of green
+rolling plain with soft uplands in the distance signified that we passed
+along Hampstead Heath; the side thoroughfare with villa residences on
+either side may have been Kilburn High Road; the flourishing, busy,
+noisy suburb may have been Kilburn: the street leading thence to
+the Marble Arch may have been Maida Vale. To me they were paths in
+Dreamland. We spoke but little and what we did say was in the simple,
+commonplace language which all men use in the big crises of life.
+
+There was no doubt now of my choice. I loved her. Love had come to me at
+last. That was all I knew at that hour and all I cared to know.
+
+Lola was the first to awake from Dreamland. She shivered. I asked
+whether she felt cold.
+
+"No. I can't believe that you love me. I can't. I can't."
+
+I smiled in a masterful way. "I can soon show you that I do."
+
+She shook her head. "I'm afraid, Simon, I'm afraid."
+
+"What of?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I can't tell you. I can't explain. I don't know how to. I've been
+wrong--horribly wrong. I'm ashamed."
+
+She gripped her hands together and looked down at them. I bent forward
+so as to see her face, which was full of pain.
+
+"But, dearest of all women," I cried, "what in the world have you to be
+ashamed of?"
+
+She paused, moistened her lips with her tongue, and then broke out:
+
+"I'll tell you. A decent lady like your Eleanor Faversham wouldn't tell.
+But I can't keep these things in. Didn't you begin by saying I was a
+seductress? No, no, let me talk. Didn't you say I could make a man do
+what I wanted? Well, I wanted you to kiss me. And now you've done it,
+you think you love me; but you don't, you can't."
+
+"You're talking the wickedest nonsense that ever proceeded out of the
+lips of a loving woman," I said aghast. "I repeat in the most solemn way
+that I love you with all my heart."
+
+"In common decency you couldn't say otherwise."
+
+Again I saw the futility of disputation. I put my hand on hers.
+
+"Time will show, dear. At any rate, we have had our hour of fairyland."
+
+"I wish we hadn't," she said. "Don't you see it was only my sorcery, as
+you call it, that took us there? I meant us to go."
+
+At last we reached Cadogan Gardens. I descended and handed her out, and
+we entered the hall of the mansions. The porter stood with the lift-door
+open.
+
+"I'm coming up to knock all this foolishness out of your head."
+
+"No, don't, please, for Heaven's sake!" she whispered imploringly. "I
+must be alone--to think it all out. It's only because I love you so. And
+don't come to see me for a day or two--say two days. This is Wednesday.
+Come on Friday. You think it over as well. And if it's really true--I'll
+know then--when you come. Good-bye, dear. Make Gray drive you wherever
+you want to go."
+
+She wrung my hand, turned and entered the lift. The gates swung to and
+she mounted out of sight. I went slowly back to the brougham, and gave
+the chauffeur the address of my eyrie. He touched his hat. I got in
+and we drove off. And then, for the first time, it struck me that an
+about-to-be-shabby gentleman with a beggarly two hundred a year, ought
+not, in spite of his quarterings, to be contemplating marriage with a
+wealthy woman who kept an electric brougham. The thought hit me like a
+stone in the midriff.
+
+What on earth was to be done? My pride rose up like the _deux ex
+machina_ in the melodrama and forbade the banns. To live on Lola's
+money--the idea was intolerable. Equally intolerable was the idea
+of earning an income by means against the honesty of which my soul
+clamoured aloud.
+
+"Good God!" I cried. "Is life, now I've got to it, nothing but an
+infinite series of dilemmas? No sooner am I off one than I'm on another.
+No sooner do I find that Lola and not Eleanor Faversham is the
+woman sent down by Heaven to be my mate than I realise the same old
+dilemma--Lola on one horn and Eleanor replaced on the other by Pride
+and Honour and all sorts of capital-lettered considerations. Life is
+the very Deuce," said I, with a wry appreciation of the subtlety of
+language.
+
+Why did Lola say: "Your Eleanor Faversham?"
+
+I had enough to think over for the rest of the evening. But I slept
+peacefully. Light loves had come and gone in the days past; but now for
+the first time love that was not light had come into my life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+"The Lord will find a way out of the dilemma," said I confidently to
+myself as I neared Cadogan Gardens two days after the revelatory drive.
+"Lola is in love with me and I am in love with Lola, and there is
+nothing to keep us apart but my pride over a matter of a few
+ha'-pence." I felt peculiarly jaunty. I had just posted to Finch the
+last of the articles I had agreed to write for his reactionary review,
+and only a couple of articles for another journal remained to be written
+in order to complete my literary engagements. Soon I should be out of
+the House of Bondage in which I had been a slave, at first willingly and
+now rebelliously, from my cradle. The great wide world with its infinite
+opportunities for development received my liberated spirit. I had broken
+the shackles of caste. I had thrown off the perfumed garments of
+epicureanism, the vesture of my servitude. My emotions, once stifled in
+the enervating atmosphere, now awake fresh and strong in the free air. I
+was elemental--the man wanting the woman; and I was happy because I knew
+I was going to get her. Such must be the state of being of a dragonfly
+on a sunny day. And--shall I confess it?--I had obeyed the dragon-fly's
+instinct and attired myself in the most resplendent raiment in my
+wardrobe. My morning coat was still irreproachable, my patent leather
+boots still gleamed, and having had some business in Piccadilly I had
+stepped into my hatter's and emerged with my silk hat newly ironed. I
+positively strutted along the pavement.
+
+For two days I had not seen her or heard from her or written to her. I
+had scrupulously respected her wishes, foolish though they were. Now I
+was on my way to convince her that my love was not a moment's surge of
+the blood on a spring afternoon. I would take her into my arms at once,
+after the way of men, and she, after the way of women, would yield
+adorably. I had no doubt of it. I tasted in anticipation the bliss of
+that first embrace as if I had never kissed a woman in my life. And,
+indeed, what woman had I kissed with the passion that now ran through
+my veins? In that embrace all the ghosts of the past women would be laid
+for ever and a big and lusty future would make glorious beginning. "By
+Heaven," I cried, almost articulately, "with the splendour of the world
+at my command why should I not write plays, novels, poems, rhapsodies,
+so as to tell the blind, groping, loveless people what it is like?
+
+"Take me up to Madame Brandt!" said I to the lift-porter. "Madame Brandt
+is not in town, sir," said the man.
+
+I looked at him open-mouthed. "Not in town?"
+
+"I think she has gone abroad, sir. She left with a lot of luggage
+yesterday, and her maid, and now the flat is shut up."
+
+"Impossible!" I cried aghast.
+
+The porter smiled. "I can only tell you what has happened, sir."
+
+"Where has she gone to?"
+
+"I couldn't say, sir."
+
+"Her letters? Has she left no address to which they are to be
+forwarded?"
+
+"Not with me, sir."
+
+"Did she say when she was coming back?"
+
+"No, sir. But she dismissed her cook with a month's wages, so it seems
+as though she was gone for a good spell."
+
+"What time yesterday did she leave?"
+
+"After lunch. The cabman was to drive her to Victoria--London, Chatham
+and Dover Railway."
+
+"That looks like the 2.20 to Paris," said I.
+
+But the lift-porter knew nothing of this. He had given me all the
+information in his power. I thanked him and went out into the sunshine a
+blinking, dazed, bewildered and piteously crushed man.
+
+She had gone, without drum or trumpet, maid and baggage and all, having
+dismissed her cook and shut up the flat. It was incredible. I wandered
+aimlessly about Chelsea trying to make up my mind what to do. Should I
+go to Paris and bring her back by main force? But how did I know that
+she had gone to Paris? And if she was there how could I discover her
+address? Suddenly an idea struck me. She would not have left Quast and
+the cattery in the same unceremonious fashion to get on as best they
+might. She would have given Quast money and directions. At any rate, he
+would know more than the lift-porter of the mansions. I decided to go to
+him forthwith.
+
+By means of trains and omnibuses I arrived at the house in the little
+street off Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell, where the maker of gymnastic
+appliances had his being. I knocked at the door. A grubby man appeared.
+I inquired for Quast.
+
+Quast had left that morning in a van, taking his cages of cats with him.
+He had gone abroad and was never coming back again, not if he knew
+it, said the grubby man. The cats were poison and Quast was a low-down
+foreigner, and it would cost him a year's rent to put the place in order
+again. Whereupon he slammed the door in my face and left me disconsolate
+on the doorstep.
+
+The only other person with whom I knew Lola to be on friendly terms was
+Sir Joshua Oldfield. I entered the first public telephone office I
+came to and rang him up. He had not seen Lola for a week, and had heard
+nothing from her relating to her sudden departure. I went sadly home
+to my bird-cage in Victoria Street, feeling that now at last the
+abomination of desolation had overspread my life.
+
+Why had she gone? What was the meaning of it? Why not a line of
+explanation? And the simultaneous disappearance of Quast and the
+cats--what did that betoken? Had she been summoned, for any reason, to
+the Maison de Sante, where Anastasius Papadopoulos was incarcerated? If
+so, why this secrecy? Why should Lola of all people side with Destiny
+and make a greater Tom Fool of me than ever? This could be no other than
+the final jest.
+
+I do not care to remember what I did and said in the privacy of my
+little room. There are things a man locks away even from himself.
+
+I was in the midst of my misery when the bell of my tiny flat rang. I
+opened the door and found my sister Agatha smiling on the threshold.
+
+"Hallo!" said I, gazing at her stupidly.
+
+"You're not effusive in your welcome, my dear Simon," she remarked.
+"Won't you ask me to come in?"
+
+"By all means," said I. "Come in!"
+
+She entered and looked round my little sitting-room. "What a pill-box in
+the sky! I had no idea it was as tiny as this. I think I shall call you
+Saint Simon Stylites."
+
+I was in no mood for Agatha. I bowed ironically and inquired to what I
+owed the honour of the visit.
+
+"I want you to do me a favour--a great favour. I'm dying to see the new
+dances at the Palace Theatre. They say they dance on everything except
+their feet. I've got a box. Tom promised to take me. Now he finds he
+can't. I've telephoned all over the place for something uncompromising
+in or out of trousers to accompany me and I can't get hold of anybody.
+So I've come to you."
+
+"I'm vastly flattered!" said I.
+
+She dismissed my sarcasm with bird-like impatience.
+
+"Don't be silly. If I had thought you would like it, I should have come
+to you first. I didn't want to bore you. But I did think you would pull
+me out of a hole."
+
+"What's a hole?" I asked.
+
+"I've paid for a box and I can't go by myself. How can I? Do take me,
+there's a dear."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm too dull for haunts of merriment," said I.
+
+She regarded me reproachfully.
+
+"It isn't often I ask you to put yourself out for me. The last time
+was when I asked you to be the baby's godfather. And a pretty godfather
+you've been. I bet you anything you don't remember the name."
+
+"I do," said I.
+
+"What's it then?"
+
+"It's--it's----" I snapped my fingers. The brat's name had for the
+moment gone out of my distracted head. She broke into a laugh and ran
+her arm through mine.
+
+"Dorcas."
+
+"Yes, of course--Dorcas. I was going to say so."
+
+"Then you were going to say wrong, for it's Dorothy. Now you _must_
+come--for the sake of penance."
+
+"I'll do anything you please!" I cried in desperation, "so long as
+you'll not talk to me of my own affairs and will let me sit as glum as
+ever I choose."
+
+Then for the first time she manifested some interest in my mood. She put
+her head to one side and scanned my face narrowly.
+
+"What's the matter, Simon?"
+
+"I've absorbed too much life the last few days," said I, "and now I've
+got indigestion."
+
+"I'm sorry, dear old boy, whatever it is," she said affectionately.
+"Come round and dine at 7.30, and I promise not to worry you."
+
+What could I do? I accepted. The alternative to procuring Agatha an
+evening's amusement was pacing up and down my bird-cage and beating my
+wings (figuratively) and perhaps my head (literally) against the bars.
+
+"It's awfully sweet of you," said Agatha. "Now I'll rush home and
+dress."
+
+I accompanied her down the lift to the front door, and attended her to
+her carriage.
+
+"I'll do you a good turn some day, dear," she said as she drove off.
+
+I rather flatter myself that Agatha had no reason to complain of my
+dulness at dinner. In my converse with her I was faced by various
+alternatives. I might lay bare my heart, tell her of my love for Lola
+and my bewildered despair at her desertion; this I knew she would no
+more understand than if I had proclaimed a mad passion for a young lady
+who had waited on me at a tea-shop, or for a cassowary at the Zoo;
+even the best and most affectionate of sisters have their sympathetic
+limitations. I might have maintained a mysterious and Byronic gloom;
+this would have been sheer bad manners. I might have attributed my lack
+of spontaneous gaiety to toothache or stomach-ache; this would have
+aroused sisterly and matronly sympathies, and I should have had the
+devil's own job to escape from the house unpoisoned by the nostrums that
+lurk in the medicine chest of every well-conducted family. Agatha, I
+knew, had a peculiarly Borgiaesque equipment. Lastly, there was the
+worldly device, which I adopted, of dissimulating the furnace of my
+affliction beneath a smiling exterior. Agatha, therefore, found me
+an entertaining guest and drove me to the Palace Theatre in high good
+humour.
+
+There, however, I could resign my role of entertainer in favour of the
+professionals on the stage. I sat back in my corner of the box and gave
+myself up to my harassing concerns. Young ladies warbled, comic acrobats
+squirted siphons at each other and kicked each other in the stomach,
+jugglers threw plates and brass balls with dizzying skill, the famous
+dancers gyrated pyrotechnically, the house applauded with delight,
+Agatha laughed and chuckled and clapped her hands and I remained silent,
+unnoticed and unnoticing in my reflective corner, longing for the
+foolery to end. Where was Lola? Why had she forsaken me? What remedy, in
+the fiend's name, was there for this heart torture within me? The most
+excruciating agonies of the little pain inside were child's play to
+this. I bit my lips so as not to groan aloud and contorted my features
+into the semblance of a smile.
+
+During a momentary interval there came a knock at the box door. I said,
+"Come in!" The door opened, and there, to my utter amazement, stood
+Dale Kynnersley--Dale, sleek, alert, smiling, attired in the very latest
+nicety of evening dress affected by contemporary youth--Dale such as I
+knew and loved but six months ago.
+
+He came forward to Agatha, who was little less astounded than myself.
+
+"How d'ye do, Lady Durrell? I'm in the stalls with Harry Essendale. I
+tried to catch your eye, but couldn't. So I thought I'd come up." He
+turned to me with frank outstretched hand, "How do, Simon?"
+
+I grasped his hand and murmured something unintelligible. The thing
+was so extraordinary, so unexpected that my wits went wandering. Dale
+carried off the situation lightly. It was he who was the man of the
+world, and I the unresourceful stumbler.
+
+"He's looking ripping, isn't he, Lady Durrell? I met old Oldfield the
+other day, and he was raving about your case. The thing has never been
+done before. Says they're going mad over your chap in Paris--they've
+given him medals and wreaths and decorations till he goes about like a
+prize bull at a fair. By Jove, it's good to see you again."
+
+"You might have taken an earlier opportunity," Agatha remarked with some
+acidity.
+
+"So I might," retorted Dale blandly; "but when a man's a born ass it
+takes him some time to cultivate sense! I've been wanting to see you for
+a long time, Simon--and to-night I just couldn't resist it. You don't
+want to kick me out?"
+
+"Heaven forbid," said I, somewhat brokenly, for the welcome sight of his
+face and the sound of his voice aroused emotions which even now I do not
+care to analyse. "It was generous of you to come up."
+
+He coloured. "Rot!" said he, in his breezy way. "Hallo! The curtain's
+going up. What's the next item? Oh, those fool dogs!"
+
+"I adore performing dogs!" said Agatha, looking toward the stage.
+
+He turned to me. "Do you?"
+
+The last thing on earth I desired to behold at that moment was a
+performing animal. My sensitiveness led me to suspect a quizzical look
+in Dale's eye. Fortunately, he did not wait for my answer, but went on
+in a boyish attempt to appease Agatha.
+
+"I don't despise them, you know, Lady Durrell, but I've seen them twice
+before. They're really rather good. There's a football match at the end
+which is quite exciting."
+
+"Oh, the beauties!" cried Agatha over her shoulder as the dogs trotted
+on the stage. I nodded an acknowledgment of the remark, and she plunged
+into rapt contemplation of the act. Dale and I stood at the back of the
+box. Suddenly he whispered:
+
+"Come out into the corridor. I've something to say to you."
+
+"Certainly," said I, and followed him out of the box.
+
+He thrust his hands into his pockets and looked at me with the defiant
+and you-be-damned air of the young Briton who was about to commit a
+gracious action. I knew what he was going to say. I could tell by his
+manner. I dreaded it, and yet I loved him for it.
+
+"Why say anything, my dear boy?" I asked. "You want to be friends with
+me again, and God knows I want to be friends again with you. Why talk?"
+
+"I've got to get if off my chest," said he, in his so familiar
+vernacular. "I want to tell you that I've been every end of a silly ass
+and I want you to forgive me."
+
+I vow I have never felt so miserably guilty towards any human being as
+I did at that moment. I have never felt such a smug-faced hypocrite.
+It was a humiliating position. I had inflicted on him a most grievous
+wrong, and here he was pleading for forgiveness. I could not pronounce
+the words of pardon. He misinterpreted my silence.
+
+"I know I've behaved rottenly to you since you've been back, but the
+first step's always so difficult. You mustn't bear a grudge against me."
+
+"My dear boy!" I cried, my hand on his shoulder, touched to the heart
+by his simple generosity, "don't let us talk of grudges and forgiveness.
+All I want to know is whether you're contented?"
+
+"Contented?" he cried. "I should just think I am. I'm the happiest ass
+that doesn't eat thistles!"
+
+"Explain yourself, my dear Dale," said I, relapsing into my old manner.
+
+"I'm going to marry Maisie Ellerton."
+
+I took him by the arm and dragged him inside the box.
+
+"Agatha," said I, "leave those confounded dogs for a moment and attend
+to serious matters. This young man has not come up to see either of us,
+but to obtain our congratulations. He's going to marry Maisie Ellerton."
+
+"Tell me all about it," said Agatha intensely interested.
+
+A load of responsibility rolled off my shoulders like Christian's pack.
+I looked at the dog football match with the interest of a Sheffield
+puddler at a Cup-tie, and clapped my hands.
+
+An hour or so later after we had seen Agatha home, and Dale had
+incidentally chucked Lord Essendale (the phrase is his own), we were
+sitting over whisky and soda and cigars in my Victoria Street flat. The
+ingenuousness of youth had insisted on this prolongation of our meeting.
+He had a thousand things to tell me. They chiefly consisted in a
+reiteration of the statement that he had been a rampant and unimagined
+silly ass, and that Maisie, who knew the whole lunatic story, was a
+brick, and a million times too good for him. When he entered my humble
+lodging he looked round in a bewildered manner.
+
+"Why on earth are you living in this mouse-trap?"
+
+"Agatha calls it a pill-box. I call it a bird-cage. I live here, my dear
+boy, because it is the utmost I can afford."
+
+"Rot! I've been your private secretary and know what your income is."
+
+I sighed heavily. I shall have to get a leaflet printed setting out the
+causes that led to my change of fortune. Then I can hand it to such of
+my friends as manifest surprise.
+
+Indeed, I had grown so used to the story of my lamentable pursuit of
+the eumoirous that I rattled it off mechanically after the manner of the
+sturdy beggar telling his mendacious tale of undeserved misfortune. To
+Dale, however, it was fresh. He listened to it open-eyed. When I had
+concluded, he brought his hand down on the arm of the chair.
+
+"By Jove, you're splendid! I always said you were. Just splendid!"
+
+He gulped down half a tumbler of whisky and soda to hide his feelings.
+
+"And you've been doing all this while I've been making a howling fool
+of myself! Look here, Simon, you were right all along the line--from the
+very first when you tackled me about Lola. Do you remember?"
+
+"Why refer to it?" I asked.
+
+"I must!" he burst in quickly. "I've been longing to put myself square
+with you. By the way, where is Lola?"
+
+"I don't know," said I with grim truthfulness.
+
+"Don't know? Has she vanished?"
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"That's the end of it, I suppose. Poor Lola! She was an awfully good
+sort you know!" said Dale, "and I won't deny I was hit. That's when I
+came such a cropper. But I realise now how right you were. I was just
+caught by the senses, nothing else; and when she wrote to say it was all
+off between us my vanity suffered--suffered damnably, old chap. I lost
+the election through it. Didn't attend to business. That brought me to
+my senses. Then Essendale took me away yachting, and I had a quiet time
+to think; and after that I somehow took to seeing more of Maisie. You
+know how things happen. And I'm jolly grateful to you, old chap. You've
+saved me from God knows what complications! After all, good sort as Lola
+is, it's rot for a man to go outside his own class, isn't it?"
+
+"It depends upon the man--and also the woman," said I, beginning to
+derive peculiar torture from the conversation.
+
+Dale shook his wise head. "It never comes off," said he. After a pause
+he laughed aloud. "Don't you remember the lecture you gave me? My word,
+you did talk! You produced a string of ghastly instances where the
+experiment had failed. Let me see, who was there, Paget, Merridew,
+Bullen. Ha! Ha! No, I'm well out of it, old chap--thanks to you."
+
+"If any good has come of this sorry business," said I gravely, "I'm only
+too grateful to Providence."
+
+He caught the seriousness of my tone.
+
+"I didn't want to touch on that side of it," he said awkwardly. "I know
+what an infernal time you had! It must have been Gehenna. I realise
+now that it was on my account, and so I can never do enough to show my
+gratitude."
+
+He finished his glass of whisky and walked about the tiny room.
+
+"What has always licked me," he said at length, "is why she never told
+me she was married. It's so curious, for she was as straight as they
+make them. It's devilish odd!"
+
+"Yes," I assented wearily, for every word of this talk was a new pain.
+"Devilish odd!"
+
+"I suppose it's a question of class again."
+
+"Or sex," said I.
+
+"What has sex to do with being straight?"
+
+"Everything," said I.
+
+"Rot!" said Dale.
+
+I sighed. "I wish your dialectical vocabulary were not so limited."
+
+He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.
+
+"Still the same old Simon. It does my heart good to hear you. May I have
+another whisky?"
+
+I took advantage of this break to change the conversation. He had
+told me nothing of his own affairs save that he was engaged to Maisie
+Ellerton.
+
+"Heavens!" cried he. "Isn't that enough?"
+
+"An engagement isn't an occupation."
+
+"Isn't it, by Jove?" He laughed boyishly. "I manage, however, to squeeze
+in a bit of work now and then. The mater has always got plenty on hand
+for me, and I do things for Raggles. He has been awfully decent. The
+first time I met him or any of the chiefs after the election I was in a
+blue funk. But no one seemed to blame me; they all said they were sorry;
+and now Raggles is looking out for a constituency for me to nurse for
+the next General Election. Then things _will_ hum, I promise you!"
+
+He waved his cigar with the air of a young paladin about to conquer
+the world. In spite of my own depression, I could not help smiling with
+gladness at the sight of him. With his extravagantly cut waistcoat, his
+elaborately exquisite white tie, his perfectly fitting evening clothes,
+with his supple ease of body, his charming manner, the preposterous
+fellow made as gallant a show as any ruffling blade in powder and
+red-heeled shoes. He had acquired, too, an extra touch of manhood since
+I had seen him last. I felt proud of him, conscious that to the making
+of him I had to some small degree contributed.
+
+"You must come out and lunch with Maisie and me one day this week," said
+he. "She would love to see you."
+
+"Wait till you're married," said I, "and then we'll consider it. At
+present Maisie is under the social dominion of her parents."
+
+"Well--what of it?"
+
+"Just that," said I.
+
+Then the truth dawned on him. He grew excited and said it was damnable.
+He wasn't going to stand by and see people believe a lot of scandalous
+lies about me. He had no idea people had given me the cold shoulder. He
+would jolly well (such were his words) take a something (I forget the
+adjective) megaphone and trumpet about society what a splendid fellow I
+was.
+
+"I'll tell everybody the whole silly-ass story about myself from
+beginning to end," he declared.
+
+I checked him. "You're very generous, my dear boy," said I, "but you'll
+do me a favour by letting folks believe what they like." And then I
+explained, as delicately as I could, how his sudden championship could
+be of little advantage to me, and might do him considerable harm.
+
+In his impetuous manner he cut short my carefully-expressed argument.
+
+"Rubbish! Heaps of people I know are already convinced that I was
+keeping Lola Brandt and that you took her from me in the ordinary vulgar
+way--"
+
+"Yes, yes," I interrupted, shrinking. "That's why I order you, in God's
+name, to leave the whole thing alone."
+
+"But confound it, man! I've come out of it all right, why shouldn't you?
+Even supposing Lola was a loose woman--"
+
+I threw up my hand. "Stop!"
+
+He looked disconcerted for a moment.
+
+"We know she isn't, but for the sake of argument--"
+
+"Don't argue," said I. "Let us drop it."
+
+"But hang it all!" he shouted in desperation. "Can't I do something!
+Can't I go and kick somebody?"
+
+I lost my self-control. I rose and put both my hands on his shoulders
+and looked him in the eyes.
+
+"You can kick anybody you please whom you hear breathe a word against
+the honour and purity of Madame Lola Brandt."
+
+Then I walked away, knowing I had betrayed myself, and tried to light
+a cigar with fingers that shook. There was a pause. Dale stood with
+his back to the fireplace, one foot on the fender. The cigar took some
+lighting. The pause grew irksome.
+
+"My regard for Madame Brandt," said I at last, "is such that I don't
+wish to discuss her with any one." I looked at Dale and met his keen
+eyes fixed on me. The faintest shadow of a smile played about his mouth.
+
+"Very well," said he dryly, "we won't discuss her. But all the same,
+my dear Simon, I can't help being interested in her; and as you're
+obviously the same, it seems rather curious that you don't know where
+she is."
+
+"Do you doubt me?" I asked, somewhat staggered by his tone.
+
+"Good Heaven's, no! But if she has disappeared, I'm convinced that
+something has happened which I know nothing of. Of course, it's none of
+my business."
+
+There was a new and startling note of assurance in his voice. Certainly
+he had developed during the past few months. What I had done, Heaven
+only knows. Misfortune, which is supposed to be formative of character,
+seemed to have turned mine into pie. How can I otherwise account for my
+not checking the lunatic impulse that prompted my next words.
+
+"Well, something has happened," said I, "and if we're to be friends,
+you had better know it. Two days ago, for the first time, I told Madame
+Brandt that I loved her. This very afternoon I went to get her answer to
+my question--would she marry me?--and I found that she had disappeared
+without leaving any address behind her. So whenever you hear her name
+mentioned you can just tell everybody that she's the one woman in the
+whole wide world I want to marry."
+
+"Poor old Simon," said Dale. "Poor old chap."
+
+"That's exactly how things stand."
+
+"Lord, who would have thought it?"
+
+"How I've borne with you talking about her all this evening the devil
+only knows," I cried. "You've driven me half crazy."
+
+"You should have told me to shut up."
+
+"I did."
+
+"Poor old Simon. I'm so sorry--but I had no idea you had fallen in love
+with her."
+
+"Fallen in love!" said I, losing my head. "She's the only woman on God's
+earth I've ever cared for. I want her as I've wanted nothing in the
+universe before."
+
+"And you've come to care for her as much as that?" he said
+sympathetically. "Poor old Simon."
+
+"Why the devil shouldn't I?" I shouted, nettled by his "poor old
+Simons."
+
+"Lola Brandt is hardly of your class," said Dale.
+
+I broke out furiously. "Damn class! I've had enough of it. I'm going to
+take my life into my own hands and do what I like with it. I'm going to
+choose my mate without any reference to society. I've cut myself adrift
+from society. It can go hang. Lola Brandt is a woman worth any man's
+loving. She is a woman in a million. You know nothing whatever about
+her."
+
+The last words were scarcely out of my mouth when an echo from the
+distance came and, as it were, banged at my ears. Dale himself had
+shrieked them at me in exactly the same tone with reference to the same
+woman. I stopped short and looked at him for a moment rather stupidly.
+Then the imp of humour, who for some time had deserted me, flew to my
+side and tickled my brain. I broke into a chuckle, somewhat hysterical
+I must admit, and then, throwing myself into an arm-chair, gave way to
+uncontrollable laughter.
+
+The scare of the unexpected rose in Dale's eyes.
+
+"Why, what on earth is the matter?"
+
+"Can't you see?" I cried, as far as the paroxysms of my mirth would let
+me. "Can't you see how exquisitely ludicrous the whole thing has been
+from beginning to end? Don't you realise that you and I are playing
+the same scene as we played months ago in my library, with the only
+difference that we have changed roles? I'm the raving, infatuated youth,
+and you're the grave and reverend mentor. Don't you see? Don't you see?"
+
+"I can't see anything to laugh at," said Dale sturdily.
+
+And he couldn't. There are thousands of bright, flame-like human beings
+constituted like that. Life spreads out before them one of its most
+side-splitting, topsy-turvy farces and they see in it nothing to laugh
+at.
+
+To Dale the affair had been as serious and lacking in the fantastic as
+the measles. He had got over the disease and now was exceedingly sorry
+to perceive that I had caught it in my turn.
+
+"It isn't funny a bit," he continued. "It's quite natural. I see it all
+now. You cut me out from the very first. You didn't mean to--you never
+thought of it. But what chance had I against you? I was a young ass and
+you were a brilliant man of the world. I bear you no grudge. You played
+the game in that way. Then things happened--and at last you've fallen in
+love with her--and now just at the critical moment she has gone off into
+space. It must be devilish painful for you, if you ask me."
+
+"Oh, Dale," said I, shaking my head, "the only fitting end to the farce
+would be if you wandered over Europe to find and bring her back to me."
+
+"I don't know about that," said he, "because I'm engaged, and that, as I
+said, gives me occupation; but if I can do anything practicable, my dear
+old Simon, you've only got to send for me."
+
+He pulled out his watch.
+
+"My hat!" he exclaimed. "It's past two o'clock."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+I am a personage apart from humanity. I vary from the kindly ways of
+man. A curse is on me.
+
+Surely no man has fought harder than I have done to convince himself of
+the deadly seriousness of existence; and surely before the feet of
+no man has Destiny cast such stumbling-blocks to faith. I might be an
+ancient dweller in the Thebaid struggling towards dreams of celestial
+habitations, and confronted only by grotesque visions of hell. No
+matter what I do, I'm baffled. I look upon sorrow and say, "Lo, this is
+tragedy!" and hey, presto! a trick of lightning turns it into farce. I
+cry aloud, in perfervid zeal, "Life is real, life is earnest, and the
+apotheosis of the fantastic is not its goal," and immediately a grinning
+irony comes to give the lie to my credo.
+
+Or is it that, by inscrutable decree of the Almighty Powers, I am
+undergoing punishment for an old unregenerate point of view, being
+doomed to wear my detested motley for all eternity, to stretch out my
+hand for ever to grasp realities and find I can do nought but beat the
+air with my bladder; to listen with strained ear perpetually expectant
+of the music of the spheres, and catch nothing but the mocking jingle of
+the bells on my fool's cap?
+
+I don't know. I give it up.
+
+Such were my thoughts on the morning after my interview with Dale, when
+I had read a long, long letter from Lola, which she had despatched from
+Paris.
+
+The letter lies before me now, many pages in a curious, half-formed
+foreign hand. Many would think it an ill-written letter--for there are
+faults of spelling and faults of grammar--but even now, as I look
+on those faults, the tears come into my eyes. Oh, how exquisitely,
+pathetically, monumentally, sublimely foolish! She had little or nothing
+to do with it, poor dear; it was only the Arch-Jester again, leading her
+blindly away, so as once more to leave me high and dry on the Hill of
+Derision.
+
+". . . My dear, you must forgive me! My heart is breaking, but I know
+I'm doing right. There is nothing for it but to go out of your life for
+ever. It terrifies me to think of it, but it's the only way. I know you
+think you love me, dear; but you can't, you can't _really_ love a woman
+so far beneath you, and I would sooner never see you again than marry
+you and wake up one day and find that you hated and scorned me. . . ."
+
+Can you wonder that I shook my fist at Heaven and danced with rage?
+
+
+". . . Miss Eleanor Faversham called on me just a few minutes after you
+left me that afternoon. We had a long, long talk. Simon, dear, you must
+marry her. You loved her once, for you were engaged, and only broke it
+off because you thought you were going to die; and she loves you, Simon,
+and she is a lady with all the refinement and education that I could
+never have. She is of your class, dear, and understands you, and can
+help you on, whereas I could only drag you down. I am not fit to black
+her boots. . . ."
+
+
+And so forth, and so forth, in the most heartrending strain of insensate
+self-sacrifice and heroic self-abasement. The vainest and most heartless
+dog of a man stands abashed and helpless before such things in a woman.
+
+She had not seen or written to me because she would not have her
+resolution weakened. After the great wrench, succeeding things were
+easier. She had taken Anastasius's cats and proposed to work them in
+the music-halls abroad and send the proceeds to be administered for the
+little man's comfort at the Maison de Sante. As both her name and the
+Papadopoulos troupe of cats were well known in the "variety" world, it
+would be a simple matter to obtain engagements. She had already opened
+negotiations for a short season somewhere abroad. I was not to be
+anxious about her. She would have plenty of occupation.
+
+
+". . . I am not sending you any address, for I don't want you to know
+where I am, dear. I shan't write to you again unless I scribble things
+and tear them up without posting. This is final. When a woman makes such
+a break she must do it once and for all. Oh, Simon, when you kissed me
+two days ago you thought you loved me; but I know what the senses are
+and how they deceive people, and I had only just caught your senses
+on that spring afternoon, and I made you do it, for I had been aching,
+aching for months for a word of love from you, and when it came I was
+ashamed. But I should have been weak and shut my eyes to everything if
+Miss Faversham had not come to me like God's good angel. . . ."
+
+
+At the fourth reading of the letter I stopped short at these words.
+God's good angel, indeed! Could anything have been more calculated to
+put a man into a frenzy? I seized my hat and stick and went in search
+of the nearest public telephone office. In less than ten minutes I had
+arranged an immediate interview with Eleanor Faversham at my sister
+Agatha's, and in less than half an hour I was pacing up and down
+Agatha's sitting-room waiting for her. God's good angel! The sound
+of the words made me choke with wrath. There are times when angelic
+interference in human destinies is entirely unwarrantable. I stamped and
+I fumed, and I composed a speech in which I told Eleanor exactly what I
+thought of angels.
+
+As I had to wait a considerable time, however, before Eleanor appeared,
+the raging violence of my wrath abated, and when she did enter the room
+smiling and fresh, with the spring in her clear eyes and a flush on her
+cheek, I just said: "How d'ye do, Eleanor?" in the most commonplace way,
+and offered her a chair.
+
+"I've come, you see. You were rather peremptory, so I thought it must be
+a matter of great importance."
+
+"It is," said I. "You went to see Madame Brandt."
+
+"I did," she replied, looking at me steadily, "and I have tried to write
+to you, but it is more difficult than I thought."
+
+"Well," said I, "it's no use writing now, for you've managed to drive
+her out of the country."
+
+She half rose in her chair and regarded me with wide-blue eyes.
+
+"I've driven her out of the country?"
+
+"Yes; with her maid and her belongings and Anastasius Papadopoulos's
+troupe of performing cats, and Anastasius Papadopoulos's late pupil and
+assistant Quast. She has given up her comfortable home in London and now
+proposes to be a wanderer among the music-halls of Europe."
+
+"But that's not my fault! Indeed, it isn't."
+
+"She says in a letter I received this morning bearing no address, that
+if you hadn't come to her like God's good angel, she would have remained
+in London."
+
+Eleanor looked bewildered. "I thought I had made it perfectly clear to
+her."
+
+"Made what clear?"
+
+She blushed a furious red. "Can't you guess? You must be as stupid as
+she is. And, of course, you're wildly angry with me. Aren't you?"
+
+"I certainly wish you hadn't gone to see her."
+
+"Was it merely to tell me this that you ordered me to come here?" she
+asked, with a touch of anger in her voice, for however much like God's
+good angels young women may be, they generally have a spirit of their
+own.
+
+I felt I had been wanting in tact; also that I had put myself--through
+an impetuosity foreign to what I had thought to be my character--in a
+foolish position. If I replied affirmatively to her question, she
+would have served me perfectly right by tossing her head in the air and
+marching indignantly out of the room. I temporised.
+
+"In order to understand the extraordinary consequences of your
+interview, I should like to have some idea of what took place. I know,
+my dear Eleanor," I continued as gently as I could, "I know that you
+went to see her out of the very great kindness of your heart--"
+
+"No, I didn't."
+
+I made a little gesture in lieu of reply. There was a span of silence.
+Eleanor played with the silky ears of Agatha's little Yorkshire terrier
+which had somehow strayed into the room and taken possession of her lap.
+
+"Don't you see, Simon?" she said at last, half tearfully, without taking
+her eyes off the dog, "don't you see that by accusing me in this way
+you make it almost impossible for me to speak? And I was going to be so
+loyal to you."
+
+A tear fell down her cheek on to the dog's back, and convicted me of
+unmitigated brutality.
+
+"What else could you be but loyal?" I murmured. "Your attitude all
+through has shone it."
+
+She flashed her hand angrily over her eyes, and looked at me. "And I
+wanted to be loyal to the end. If you had waited and she had waited, you
+would have seen. As soon as I could have conveyed it to you decently, I
+should have shown you----Ah!" She broke off, put the Yorkshire terrier
+on the sofa beside her, and rose with an impatient gesture. "You want to
+know why I called on Lola Brandt? I felt I had to know for myself what
+kind of woman she was. She was the woman between us--you and me. You
+don't suppose I ceased to care for you just because what we thought was
+a fatal illness broke off our engagement! I did care for you. I cared
+for you--in a way; I say 'in a way'--I'll tell you why later on. When we
+met here the last time do you think I was not moved? I knew your altered
+position would not allow you to suggest a renewal of the engagement so
+I offered you the opportunity. Do you remember? But I could not tell
+whether you still cared for me or whether you cared for the other woman.
+So I had to go and see her. I couldn't bear to think that you might feel
+in honour bound to take me at my word and be caring all the time for
+some one else. I went to see her, and then I realised that I didn't
+count. Don't ask why. Women know these things. And I found that she
+loved you with a warmth and richness I'm incapable of. I felt I had
+stepped into something big and splendid, as if I had been a caterpillar
+walking into the heart of a red rose. I felt prim and small and petty.
+Until then I had never known what love meant, and I didn't feel it;
+I couldn't feel it. I couldn't give you a millionth part of what
+that woman does. And I knew that having lived in that atmosphere, you
+couldn't possibly be content with me. If you had waited, I should have
+found some means of telling you so. That's what I meant by saying I
+was loyal to you. And I thought I had made it clear to her. It seems I
+didn't. It isn't my fault."
+
+"My dear," said I, when she had come to the end of this astonishing
+avowal, and stood looking at me somewhat defiantly and twisting her
+fingers nervously in front of her, "I don't know what in the world to
+say to you."
+
+"You can tell me, at least, that my instinct was right."
+
+"Which one? A woman has so many."
+
+"That you love Lola Brandt."
+
+I lifted my arms in a helpless gesture and let them drop to my sides.
+
+"One is not one's own master in these things."
+
+"Then you do?"
+
+"Yes," said I in a low voice.
+
+Eleanor drew a long breath, turned and sat down again on the sofa.
+
+"And she knows it?"
+
+"I have told her so."
+
+"Then why in the world has she run away?"
+
+"Because you two wonderful and divinely foolish people have been too big
+for each other. While you were impressed by one quality in her she was
+equally impressed by another in you. She departed, burning her ships, so
+as to go entirely out of my life for the simple reason, as she herself
+expresses it, that she was not fit to black your boots. So," said I,
+taking her left hand in mine and patting it gently, "between you two
+dear, divine angel fools, I fall to the ground."
+
+A while later, just before we parted, she said in her frank way:
+
+"I know many people would say I've behaved with shocking
+impropriety--immodestly and all that. You don't, do you? I believe half
+the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight
+at things. Perhaps I've gone too straight this time--but you'll forgive
+me?"
+
+I smiled and squeezed her hand. "My dear," said I, "Lola Brandt was
+right. You are God's good angel."
+
+I went away in a chastened mood, no longer wrathful, for what could
+woman do more for mortal man than what Eleanor Faversham had attempted?
+She had gone to see whether she should stand against her rival, and with
+a superb generosity, unprecedented in her sex, she had withdrawn. The
+magnanimity of it overwhelmed me. I walked along the street exalting her
+to viewless pinnacles of high-heartedness. And then, suddenly, the Devil
+whispered in my ear that execrated word "eumoiriety." It poisoned the
+rest of the day. It confirmed my conviction of the ironical designs of
+Destiny. Destiny, not content with making me a victim of the accursed
+principle in my own person, had used these two dear women as its
+instruments in dealing me fresh humiliation. Where would it end? Where
+could I turn to escape such an enemy? If I had been alone in green
+fields instead of Sloane Square, I should have clapped my hands to my
+head and prayed God not to drive me crazy. I should have cried wild vows
+to the winds and shaken my fist at the sky and rolled upon the grass
+and made a genteel idiot of myself. Nature would have understood. Men
+do these things in time of stress, and I was in great stress. I loved
+a woman for the first time in my life--and I was a man nearly forty. I
+wanted her with every quivering nerve in me. And she was gone. Lost in
+the vast expanse of Europe with a parcel of performing cats. Gone out of
+my life loving me as I loved her, all on account of this Hell-invented
+principle. Ye gods! If the fierce, pure, deep, abiding love of a man for
+a woman is not a reality, what in this world of shadows is anything but
+vapour? I grasped it tight, hugged it to my bosom--and now she was gone,
+and in my ears rang the derisive laughter of the enemy.
+
+Where would it end? What would happen next? Nothing was too
+outrageously, maniacally impossible. I walked up Sloane Street, a
+street for which impeccable respectability, security of life and person,
+comfortable, modern, twentieth-century, prosperous smugness has no
+superior in all the smug cities of the earth, and I was prepared to
+encounter with a smile of recognition anything that the whirling brains
+of Bedlam had ever conceived. Why should not this little lady tripping
+along with gold chain-bag and anxious, shopping knit of the brow, throw
+her arms round my neck and salute me as her long-lost brother? Why
+should not the patient horses in that omnibus suddenly turn into
+griffins and begin to snort fire from their nostrils? Why should not
+that policeman, who, on his beat, was approaching me with the heavy,
+measured tread, suddenly arrest me for complicity in the Pazzi
+Conspiracy or the Rye House Plot? Why should not the whole of the
+decorous street suddenly change into the inconsequence of an Empire
+ballet? Why should not the heavens fall down and universal chaos envelop
+all?
+
+The only possible reason I can think of now is that the Almighty Powers
+did not consider it worth while to go to quite so much trouble on my
+account.
+
+This, however, gives you some idea of my state of mind. But though it
+lasted for a considerable time, I would not have you believe that I
+fostered it unduly. Indeed, I repudiated it with some disgust. I took it
+out, examined it, and finding it preposterous, set to work to modify it
+into harmony with the circumstances of my every-day life. Even the most
+sorely tried of men cannot walk abroad shedding his exasperation around
+like pestilence. If he does, he is put into a lunatic asylum.
+
+If a man cannot immediately assuage the hunger of his heart, he must
+meet starvation with a smiling face. In the meantime, he has to eat so
+as to satisfy the hunger of his body, to clothe himself with a certain
+discrimination, to attend to polite commerce with his fellow man and to
+put to some fair use the hours of his day. I did not doubt but that
+by means of intelligent inquiry which I determined to pursue in every
+possible direction I should sooner or later obtain news of Lola. A lady
+with a troupe of performing cats could not for long remain in obscurity.
+True, I might have gone in gallant quest of her; but I had had enough of
+such fool adventures. I bided my time, consulted with Dale, who took
+up the work of a private detective agency with his usual zeal, writing
+letters to every crony who languished in the exile of foreign embassies,
+and corresponding (unknown to Lady Kynnersley) with the agencies of
+the International Aid Society, did what I could on my own account, and
+turned my attention seriously to the regeneration of the Judds.
+
+As the affairs of one drunken tailor's family could not afford me
+complete occupation for my leisure hours, I began to find myself
+insensibly drawn by Campion's unreflecting enthusiasm into all kinds of
+small duties connected with Barbara's Building. Before I could realise
+that I had consented, I discovered myself in charge of an evening class
+of villainous-looking and uncleanly youths who assembled in one of the
+lecture-rooms to listen to my recollections of the history of England.
+I was to continue the course begun by a young Oxford man, who, for some
+reason or other, had migrated from Barbara's Building to Toynbee Hall.
+
+"I've never done any schoolmastering in my life. Suppose," said I, with
+vivid recollections of my school days, "suppose they rag me?"
+
+"They won't," said Campion, who had come to introduce me to the class.
+
+And they did not. I found these five and twenty youthful members of the
+proletariat the most attentive, respectable, and intelligent audience
+that ever listened to a lecture. Gradually I came to perceive that they
+were not as villainous-looking and uncleanly as at first sight I had
+imagined. A great many of them took notes. When I came to the end of
+my dissertation on Henry VIII, I went among them, as I discovered the
+custom to be, and chatted, answering questions, explaining difficulties,
+and advising as to a course of reading. The atmosphere of trust and
+friendliness compensated for the lack of material sweetness. Here were
+young men pathetically eager to learn, grateful for every crumb of
+information that came from my lips. They reminded me of nothing more
+than the ragged class of scholars around a teacher in a mediaeval
+university. Some had vague dreams of eventually presenting themselves
+for examinations, the Science and Art Department, the College of
+Preceptors, the Matriculation of the University of London. Others
+longed for education for its own sake, or rather as a means of raising
+themselves in the social scale. Others, bitten by the crude Socialism of
+their class, had been persuaded to learn something of past movements
+of mankind so as to obtain some basis for their opinions. All were
+in deadly earnest. The magnetic attraction between teacher and taught
+established itself. After one or two lectures, I looked forward to the
+next with excited interest.
+
+Other things Campion off-handedly put into my charge. I went on tours of
+inspection round the houses of his competing housewives. I acted as his
+deputy at the police court when ladies and gentlemen with a good record
+at Barbara's got into trouble with the constabulary. I investigated
+cases for the charity of the institution. In quite a short time
+I realised with a gasp that I had become part of the machinery of
+Barbara's Building, and was remorselessly and helplessly whirled hither
+and thither with the rest of the force of the driving wheel which was
+Rex Campion.
+
+The amazing, the astounding, the utterly incredible thing about the
+whole matter was that I not only liked it, but plunged into it heart and
+soul as I had never plunged into work before. I discovered sympathies
+that had hitherto lain undreamed of within me. In my electioneering days
+I had, it is true, foregathered with the sons of toil. I had shaken the
+horny hands of men and the soap-suddy hands of women. I had flattered
+them and cajoled them and shown myself mighty affable, as a sensible and
+aspiring Parliamentary candidate should do; but the way to their hearts
+I had never found, I had never dreamed of seeking. And now it seemed as
+if the great gift had been bestowed on me--and I examined it with a new
+and almost tremulous delight.
+
+Also, for the first time in all my life, I had taken pain to be the
+companion of my soul. All my efforts to find Lola were fruitless. I
+became acquainted with the heartache, the longing for the unattainable,
+the agony of spirit. The only anodyne was a forgetfulness of self, the
+only compensation a glimmer of a hope and the shadow of a smile in the
+grey and leaden lives around me.
+
+
+
+On Whit Monday evening I was walking along the Thames Embankment on my
+way home from Waterloo Station, wet through, tired out, disappointed,
+and looking forward to the dry, soft raiment, the warm, cosy room, the
+excellent dinner that awaited me in my flat. I--with several others--had
+been helping Campion with his annual outing of factory girls and young
+hooligans. The weather, which had been perfect on Saturday, Sunday, and
+when we had started, a gay and astonishing army, at seven o'clock, had
+broken before ten. It had rained, dully miserable, insistently all day
+long. The happy day in the New Forest had been a damp and dismal fiasco.
+I was returning home, thinking I might walk off an incipient chill,
+as depressed as no one but the baffled philanthropist can be, when
+I perceived a tattered and dejected man sitting on a bench, a
+clothes-basket between his feet, his elbows on his knees, his head in
+his hands, and sobbing as if his heart would break. As the spectacle
+of a grown-up man crying bitterly in a public thoroughfare was somewhat
+remarkable, I paused, and then in order to see whether his distress was
+genuine, and also not to arouse his suspicions, I threw myself in an
+exhausted manner on the bench beside him. He continued to sob. At last I
+said, raising my voice:
+
+"You seem to be pretty miserable. What's wrong?"
+
+He turned bleared, yet honest-looking eyes upon me.
+
+"The whole blasted show!" said he. "There's nothing right in it, s'welp
+me Gawd."
+
+I gave a modified assent to the proposition and drew my coat-collar over
+my eyes. "Being wet through doesn't make it any better," said I.
+
+"Who would ha' thought it would come down as it has to-day? Tell me
+that. It's enough to make a man cut his throat!"
+
+I was somewhat surprised. "You're not in such a great distress just
+because it has been a rainy day!"
+
+"Ain't I just!" he exclaimed. "It's been and gone and ruined me, this
+day has. Look 'ere, guv'nor, I'll tell you all about it. I've been out
+of work, see? I was in 'orspital for three months and I couldn't get
+nothing regular to do when I come out. I'm a packer by trade. I did odd
+jobs, see, and the wife she earned a little, too, and we managed to keep
+things going and to scrape together five shillings, that's three months'
+savings, against Whitsun Bank Holiday. And as the weather was so fine,
+I laid it all out in paper windmills to sell to the kids on 'Amstead
+'Eath. And I started out this morning with the basket full of them all
+so fine and pretty, and no sooner do I get on the 'Eath than the rain
+comes down and wipes out the whole blooming lot, before I could sell
+one. Look 'ere!"
+
+He drew a bedraggled sheet of newspaper from the clothes-basket and
+displayed a piteous sodden welter of sticks and gaudy pulp. At the sight
+of it he broke down again and sobbed like a child.
+
+"And there's not a bite in the 'ouse, nor not likely to be for days;
+and I daren't go home and face the missus and the kids--and I wish I was
+dead."
+
+I had already seen many pitiful tragedies during my brief experience
+with Campion; but the peculiar pitifulness of this one wrung my heart.
+It taught me as nothing had done before how desperately humble are the
+aspirations of the poor. I thought of the cosy comfort that awaited me
+in my own home; the despair that awaited him in his.
+
+I put my hand in my pocket.
+
+"You seem to be a good chap," said I.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. The consciousness of applauded virtue offered
+no consolation. I drew out a couple of half-crowns and threw them into
+the basket.
+
+"For the missus and the kids," said I.
+
+He picked them out of the welter, and holding them in his hand, looked
+at me stupidly.
+
+"Can you afford it, guv'nor?"
+
+At first I thought this remark was some kind of ill-conditioned sarcasm;
+but suddenly I realised that dripping wet and covered with mud from head
+to foot, with a shapeless, old, green, Homburg hat drooping forlornly
+about my ears, I did not fulfil his conception of the benevolent
+millionaire. I laughed, and rose from the bench.
+
+"Yes. Quite well. Better luck next time."
+
+I nodded a good-bye, and walked away. After a minute, he came running
+after me.
+
+"'Ere," said he, "I ain't thanked yer. Gawd knows how I'm going to do
+it. I can't! But, 'ere--would you mind if I chucked a lot of the stuff
+into the river and told the missus I had sold it, and just got back my
+money? She's proud, she is, and has never accepted a penny in charity in
+her life. It's only because it would be better for 'er."
+
+He looked at me with such earnest appeal that I saw that the saving of
+his wife's pride was a serious matter.
+
+"Of course," said I, "and here's a few ha'pence to add to it, so as to
+give colour to the story."
+
+He saw that I understood. "Thank you kindly, sir," said he.
+
+"Tell me," said I, "do you love your wife?"
+
+He gaped at me for a moment; obviously the question had never been put
+to him either by himself or anybody else. Then, seeing that my interest
+was genuine, he spat and scratched his head.
+
+"We've been together twenty years," he said, in a low voice, emotion
+struggling with self-consciousness, "and I've 'ad nothing agin her all
+that time. She's a bloomin' wonder, I tell you straight."
+
+I held out my hand. "At any rate, you've got what I haven't," said I. "A
+woman who loves you to welcome you home."
+
+And I went away, longing, longing for Lola's arms and the deep love in
+her voice.
+
+Now that I come to view my actions in some sort of perspective, it seems
+to me that it was the underlying poignancy of this trumpery incident--a
+poignancy which, nevertheless, bit deep into my soul, that finally
+determined the current of my life.
+
+A short while afterwards, Campion, who for some time past had found the
+organisation of Barbara's Building had far outgrown his individual
+power of control, came to me with a proposal that I should undertake the
+management of the institution under his general directorship. As he knew
+of my financial affairs and of my praiseworthy but futile efforts to
+live on two hundred a year, he offered me another two hundred by way of
+salary and quarters in the Building. I accepted, moved the salvage of my
+belongings from Victoria Street to Lambeth, and settled down to the work
+for which a mirth-loving Providence had destined me from my cradle.
+
+When I told Agatha, she nearly fainted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+No sooner had I moved into Barbara's Building and was preparing to begin
+my salaried duties than I received news which sent me off post haste
+to Berlin. And just as it was not I but Anastasius Papadopoulos who
+discovered Captain Vauvenarde, so, in this case, it was Dale who
+discovered Lola.
+
+He burst in upon me one day, flourishing a large visiting-card, which he
+flung down on the table before my eyes.
+
+"Do you recognise that?"
+
+It was the familiar professional card of the unhappy Anastasius.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you see the last line?"
+
+I read "London Agents: Messrs. Conto and Blag, 172 Maiden Lane, W.C." I
+looked up. "Well?" I asked.
+
+"It has done the trick," said he triumphantly. "What fools we were not
+to have thought of it before. I was rooting out a drawer of papers and
+came across the card. You remember he handed us one all round the
+first day we met him. I put it away--I'm rather a methodical devil with
+papers, as you know. When I found it, I danced a hornpipe all round the
+room and went straight off to Conto and Blag. I made certain she would
+work through them, as they were accustomed to shop the cats, and I found
+I was right. They knew all about her. Wouldn't give her address, but
+told me that she was appearing this week at the Winter Garten at Berlin.
+Why that pudding-headed quagga, Bevan, at the Embassy, hasn't kept his
+eyes open for me, as he promised," he went on a while later, "I don't
+know! I can understand Eugen Pattenhausen, the owl-eyed coot who
+runs the International Aid Society, not doing a hand's turn to aid
+anybody--but Bevan! For Heaven's sake, while you're there call at the
+Embassy and kick him."
+
+"You forget, my dear boy," said I, with a laugh, for his news had
+made me light-hearted, "you forget that I have entered upon a life
+of self-denial, and one of the luxuries I must deny myself is that of
+kicking attaches."
+
+"I've a good mind to go with you and do it myself. But it'll keep. Do
+you know, it's rather quaint, isn't it?" he said, after a pause, as if
+struck by a luminous idea--"It's rather quaint that it should be I who
+am playing the little tin god on wheels for you two, and saying 'Bless
+you, my children.'"
+
+"I thought the humour of the situation couldn't fail to strike you at
+last."
+
+"Yes," said he, knitting his brows into an air of dark reflection "it is
+funny. Devilish funny!"
+
+I dismissed him with grateful words, and in a flutter of excitement went
+in search of Campion, whom I was lucky to find in the building.
+
+"I'm sorry to ask for leave of absence," said I, "before I've actually
+taken up my appointment; but I must do so. I am summoned at once to
+Berlin on important business."
+
+Campion gave willing consent. "How long will you be away?"
+
+"That depends," said I, with a smile which I meant to be enigmatic, but
+assuredly must have been fatuous, "upon my powers of persuasion."
+
+I had bright thoughts of going to Berlin and back in a meteoric flash,
+bringing Lola with me on my return journey, to marry her out of hand
+as soon as we reached London. Cats and Winter Gartens concerned me but
+little, and of trifles like contracts I took no account.
+
+"If you're there any time," said Campion, tugging thoughtfully at his
+black beard, "you might look into what the Germans are doing with regard
+to Female Rescue Work. You might pick up a practical tip or two for use
+down here."
+
+What a thing it is to be a man of one idea! I gave him an evasive answer
+and rushed away to make the necessary preparations for my journey. I was
+absurdly, boyishly happy. No doubt as to my success crossed my mind.
+It was to be my final and triumphant adventure. Unless the High Powers
+stove a hole in the steamer or sent another railway train to collide
+with mine, the non-attainment of my object seemed impossible. I had but
+to go, to be seen, to conquer.
+
+I arrived safely in Berlin at half-past seven in the evening, and drove
+to a modest hotel in the Kaiserstrasse, where I had engaged a room. My
+first inquiry was for a letter from Lola. To my disappointment nothing
+awaited me. I had telegraphed to her at the Winter Garten the day
+before, and I had written as well. A horrible surmise began to dance
+before me. Suppose Messrs. Conto and Blag had given Dale erroneous
+information! I grew sick and faint at the thought. What laughter there
+would be in Olympus over my fool journey! In great agitation I clamoured
+for a programme of the Winter Garten entertainment. The hotel clerk put
+it into my trembling hands. There was no mention of Madame Lola Brandt,
+but to my unspeakable comfort I saw the announcement:
+
+
+"Professorin Anastasius Papadopoulos und ihre wunderbaren Katzen."
+
+
+Lola was working the cats under the little man's name. That was why
+she had baffled the inquiries instituted by Dale and myself and had not
+received my telegram. I scribbled a hasty note in which I told her of
+my arrival, my love, and my impatience; that I proposed to witness the
+performance that evening, and to meet her immediately afterwards at the
+stage-door. This, addressed to the Professorin Anastasius Papadopoulos,
+I despatched by special messenger to the Winter Garten. After a hasty
+toilet and a more hurried meal, I went out, and, too impatient to walk,
+I hailed a droschky, and drove through the wide, cheery streets of
+Berlin. It was a balmy June evening. The pavements were thronged.
+Through the vast open fronts of the cafes one saw agglutinated masses
+of people just cleft here and there by white-jacketed waiters darting
+to and fro with high-poised trays of beer and coffee. Save these and the
+folks in theatres all Berlin was in the streets, taking the air. A sense
+of gaiety pervaded the place, organised and recognised, as though it
+were as much part of a Berliner's duty to himself, the Fatherland, and
+the Almighty to be gay when the labours of the day are over as to be
+serious during business hours. He goes through it with a grave face and
+enjoys himself prodigiously. Your Latin when he fills the street with
+jest and laughter obeys the ebullience of his temperament; your Teuton
+always seems to be conscientiously obeying a book of regulations.
+
+I soon arrived at the Winter Garten and secured a stall near the stage.
+The vast building was packed with a smoking and perspiring multitude.
+In shape it was like a long tunnel or a long, narrow railway station, an
+impression intensified by a monotonous barrel roof. This was, however,
+painted blue and decorated with myriads of golden stars. Along one side
+ran a gallery where those who liked to watch the performance and eat a
+six-course dinner at the same time could do so in elaborate comfort. In
+the centre of the opposite side was the stage, and below it, grouped in
+a semi-circle, the orchestra. Beneath the starry roof hung long wisps of
+smoke clouds.
+
+The performance had only just begun and Lola's turn was seventh on the
+list. I reflected that greater deliberation in my movements would have
+suited the maturity of my years, besides enabling me to eat a more
+digestible dinner. I had come with the unreasoning impatience of a boy,
+fully conscious that I was too early, yet desperately anxious not to be
+too late. I laughed at myself indulgently and patted the boy in me
+on the head. Meanwhile, I gave myself up with mild interest to the
+entertainment provided. It was the same as that at any music-hall,
+winter garden, or variety theatre the world over. The same brawny
+gentlemen in tights made human pyramids out of themselves and played
+football with the little boys and minced with their aggravating steps
+down to the footlights; the same red-nosed clown tried to emulate his
+dashing companion on the horizontal bars, pulling himself up, to the
+eternal delight of the audience, by the seat of his baggy breeches, and
+hanging his hat on the smooth steel upright; the same massive lady with
+the deep chest sang sentimental ballads; the same China-man produced
+warrens of rabbits and flocks of pigeons from impossible receptacles;
+the same half-dozen scantily clad damsels sang the same inane chorus in
+the same flat baby voices and danced the same old dance. Mankind in the
+bulk is very young; it is very easily amused and, like a child, clamours
+for the oft-repeated tale.
+
+The curtain went down on the last turn before Lola's. I felt a curious
+suspense, and half wished that I had not come to see the performance.
+I shrank from finding her a million miles away from me, a new, remote
+creature, impersonal as those who had already appeared on the stage.
+Mingled with this was a fear lest she might not please this vast
+audience. Failure, I felt, would be as humiliating to me as to her.
+Agatha, I remembered, confessed to the same feeling with regard to
+myself when I made my first speech in the House of Commons. But then
+I had an incontrovertible array of facts and arguments, drawn up by an
+infallible secretary and welded into cunning verbiage by myself, which
+I learned off by heart. And the House, as I knew it would, had been
+half asleep. I couldn't fail. But Lola had to please three thousand
+wide-awake Berlin citizens, who had paid their money for entertainment,
+with no other equipment than her own personality and the tricks of a set
+of wretched irresponsible cats.
+
+The orchestra struck up the act music. The curtains parted, and revealed
+the brightly polished miniature gymnasium I had seen at Anastasius's
+cattery; the row of pussies at the back, each on a velvet stand, some
+white, some tabby, some long-furred, some short-furred, all sitting with
+their forepaws doubled demurely under their chests, wagging their tails
+comically, and blinking with feline indifference at the footlights; a
+cage in a corner in which I descried the ferocious wild tomcat;
+and, busily putting the last touches to the guy ropes, the pupil and
+assistant Quast, neatly attired in a close fitting bottle-green uniform
+with brass buttons. Almost immediately Lola appeared, in a shimmering
+gold evening gown, and with a necklet of barbaric gold round her neck.
+I had never seen her so magnificently, so commandingly beautiful. I
+was conscious of a ripple of admiration running through the huge
+assembly--and it was a queer sensation, half pride, half angry jealousy.
+My immediate neighbors were emphatic in their praise. Applause greeted
+her. She smiled acknowledgments and, flicking the little toy whip which
+she carried in her hand, she began the act. First of all, the cats
+jumped from their stands, right-turned like a military line, and walked
+in procession round the stage. At a halt and a signal each pussy put its
+front paws on its front neighbour and the march began again. Then Lola
+did something with voice and whip, and each cat dropped on its paws, and
+as if by magic there appeared a space between every animal.
+
+At a further word the last cat jumped over the one in front and over the
+one in front of that and so on until, having cleared the first cat,
+it leaped on to its stand where it began to lick itself placidly.
+Meanwhile, the penultimate cat had begun the same evolution, and then
+the ante-penultimate cat, until all the cats had cleared the front one
+and had taken their positions on their stands. The last cat, left alone,
+looked round, yawned in the face of the audience, and, turning tail,
+regained its stand with the air of unutterable boredom. The audience,
+delighted, applauded vehemently. I raised my hands as I clapped them,
+trying vainly and foolishly to catch Lola's eye.
+
+At a tap of her whip a white angora and a sleek tabby jumped from
+the stands and took up their positions one at each end of a miniature
+tight-rope. Lola stuck a tiny Japanese umbrella in the collar of each
+and sent them forth on their perilous journey. When they met in the
+middle, they spat and caterwauled and argued spitefully. The audience
+shrieked. Then by a miracle the cats cleared each other and pursued
+their sedate and cautious ways to their respective ends of the rope. The
+next act was a team of a dozen rats drawing a tiled chariot driven by
+a stolid coal-black cat with green, expressionless eyes, down an aisle
+formed by the other cats who sat in solemn contemplation on their tails.
+There was no doubt of Lola's success. The tricks were as marvellous
+in themselves as their execution was flawless. During the applause I
+noticed her eagerly scanning the sea of faces. Her eyes seemed to be
+turned in my direction. I waved my handkerchief, and instinct told me
+that at last she recognised the point of pink and the flutter of white
+as me.
+
+Then the stage was cleared of the gentle cats and the wire cage
+containing Hephaestus was pushed forward by Quast. He showed off the
+ferocious beast's quality by making it dash itself against the wires,
+arch its huge back, and shoot out venomous claws. Lola commanded him
+by sign to open the cage. He approached in simulated terror, Hephaestus
+uttering blood-curdling howls, and every time he touched the handle of
+the door Hephaestus sprang at him like a tiger with the tomcat's
+hateful hiss. At last, amid the laughter of the audience (for this was
+prearranged business), Quast suddenly refused to obey his mistress any
+more, and went and sat on the floor in the corner of the stage. Then
+Lola, with a glance of contempt at him for his poltroonery and a glance
+of confidence at the audience, opened the cage door and dragged the
+gigantic and malevolent brute out by the scruff of its neck and held it
+up like a rabbit, as she had done in Anastasius's cattery.
+
+Suddenly her iron grip seemed to relax; she made one or two ineffectual
+efforts to retain it and the brute dropped to the ground. She looked at
+it for a second disconcerted as if she had lost her nerve, and then,
+in a horrible flash, the beast sprang at her face. She uttered piercing
+screams. The blood spurted from the ghastly claws. Quick as lightning
+Quast leapt forward and dragged it off. Lola clapped both hands to her
+eyes, and reeled and tottered to the wings, where I saw a man's two arms
+receive her. The last thing I saw was Quast kneeling on the beast on the
+floor mastering him by some professional clutch. Then there rang out a
+sharp whistle and the curtain went down with a run.
+
+I rose, sick with horror, barely conscious of the gasping excitement
+that prevailed around me, and blindly groped my path through the crowded
+rows of folk towards the door. I had only proceeded half-way when a
+sudden silence made me turn, and I saw a man addressing the audience
+from the stage. Apparently it was the manager. He regretted to have
+to inform the audience that Madame Papadopoulos would not be able
+to conclude her most interesting performance that evening as she
+had unfortunately received injuries of a very grave nature. Then he
+signalled to the orchestra, who crashed into a loud and vulgar march
+with clanging brass and thundering drum. It sounded so cynically and
+hideously inhuman that I trampled recklessly over people in my mad rush
+to the exit.
+
+I found the stage-door, where a knot of the performers were assembled,
+talking of the horrible accident. I pushed my way shiveringly through
+them, and tried to rush into the building, but was checked by a burly
+porter. I explained incoherently in my rusty German. I came for news of
+Madame Papadopoulos. I was her _Verlobter_ I declared, with a gush of
+inspiration. Whether he believed that I was her affianced I know not,
+but he bade me wait, and disappeared with my card. I became at once
+the object of the curiosity of the loungers. I heard them whispering
+together as they pointed me out and pitying me. The cat had torn her
+face away said one woman. I put my hands over my ears so as not to hear.
+Presently the porter returned with a stout person in authority, who drew
+me into the stage-doorkeeper's box.
+
+"You are a friend of Frau Papadopoulos?"
+
+"Friend!" I cried. "She is to be my wife. I am in a state of horror and
+despair. Tell me what has happened."
+
+Seeing my condition, he laid aside his official manner and became human.
+It was a dreadful accident, said he. The beast had apparently got its
+claws in near her eyes; but what were her exact injuries he could not
+tell, as her face was all over blood and she had fainted with the pain.
+The doctor was with her. He had telephoned for an ambulance. I was to be
+quite certain that she would receive every possible attention. He would
+give my card to the doctor. Meanwhile I was quite at liberty to remain
+in the box till the ambulance came. I thanked him.
+
+"In the meantime," said I, "if you can let me have a word with Fraulein
+Dawkins, her maid, should she be in the theatre, or Quast her attendant,
+I should be grateful."
+
+He promised and withdrew. The doorkeeper gave me a wooden chair, and
+there I sat for an unconscionable time, faint and dizzy with suspense.
+The chance words I had heard in the crowd, the manager's remark about
+the claws, the memory of the savage spring at the beloved face made me
+feel sick. Every now and then, as some doors leading to the stage swung
+open, I could hear the orchestra and the laughter and applause of
+the audience. Both Dawkins and Quast visited me. The former was in a
+helpless state of tears and hand-wringing. As she knew no word of German
+she could understand nothing that the doctors or others said. Madame was
+unconscious. Her head was tightly bandaged. That was all the definite
+information she had.
+
+"Did Madame know I was in front to-night?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, yes, sir! I think she had a letter from you. She was so pleased,
+poor dear Madame. She told me that you would see the best performance
+she had ever given."
+
+Whereupon she broke down and was useless for further examination. Then
+Quast came. He could not understand how the accident had occurred.
+Hephaestus had never before tried to attack her. She had absolute
+mastery over him, and he usually behaved with her as gently as any of
+the other cats. With himself it was quite different. He was accustomed
+to Hephaestus springing at him; but then he beat him hard with a great
+stick until he was so sore that he could neither stand up nor lie down.
+
+"I have always implored Madame to carry something heavier than that
+silly little whip, and now it's all over. She will never be able to
+control him again. Hephaestus will have to be killed, and I will be
+desolate. Ach, what a misfortune!"
+
+He began to weep.
+
+"Good God!" I cried; "you don't mean to say that you're sorry for the
+brute?"
+
+"One can't help being fond of him. We have been for five years
+inseparable companions!"
+
+I had no sympathy to fling away on him at that moment.
+
+"How do you account for his spring at Madame to-night? That's all I want
+to know."
+
+"She must have been thinking of something else when she grabbed him. For
+she missed her grip. Then he fell and was frightened, and she must have
+lost her nerve. Hephaestus knew it, and sprang. That is always the case
+when wild animals turn. All accidents happen like that."
+
+His words filled me with a new and sickening dread.
+
+_"She must have been thinking of something else."_ Of what else but of
+my presence there? That stupid, selfish wave of the handkerchief! I sat
+gnawing my hands and cursing myself.
+
+The ambulance arrived. Men hurried past my box. I waited again in agony
+of mind. At last the porter came and cleared the passage and doorway of
+loungers, and I heard the tread of footsteps and gruff directions. The
+manager and a man in a frock-coat and black tie, whom I recognised as
+the doctor, came down the passage, followed by two great men carrying
+between them a stretcher covered by a sheet on which lay all that I
+loved in life. Dawkins followed, weeping, and then came several theatre
+folk. I went outside and saw the stretcher put into the ambulance-van,
+and then I made myself known to the doctor.
+
+"She has received very great injuries--chiefly the right cheek and eye.
+So much so that she needs an oculist's care at once. I have telephoned
+to Dr. Steinholz, of No. 4, Thiergarten, one of our ablest oculists, to
+receive her now into his clinique. If you care to do so, you are welcome
+to accompany me."
+
+I drove through the gay, flaring streets of Berlin like a man in a
+phantasmagoria of horror.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+The first time they allowed me to see her was after many days of
+nerve-racking anxiety. I had indeed called at the clinique two or three
+times a day for news, and I had written short letters of comfort and
+received weirdly-spelt messages taken down from Lola's dictation by a
+nurse with an imperfect knowledge of English. These kept the heart in
+me; for the doctor's reports were invariably grave--possible loss of
+sight in the injured eye and permanent disfigurement their most hopeful
+prognostications. I lived, too, in a nervous agony of remorse. For
+whatever happened I held myself responsible. At first they thought her
+life was in danger. I passed nightmare days. Then the alarming symptoms
+subsided, and it was a question of the saving of the eye and the decent
+healing of the cheek torn deep by the claws of the accursed brute. When
+Quast informed me of its summary execution I felt the primitive savage
+arise in me, and I upbraided Quast for not having invited me to gloat
+over its expiring throes. How the days passed I know not. I wandered
+about the streets, looking into the windows of the great shops, buying
+flowers and fruit for Lola in eccentric quantities. Or sitting in
+beerhouses reading the financial pages of a German paper held upside
+down. I could not return to London. Still less could I investigate
+the German philanthropic methods of rescuing fallen women. I wrote to
+Campion a brief account of what had happened and besought him to set a
+deputy to work on the regeneration of the Judds.
+
+At last they brought me to where Lola lay, in a darkened room, with her
+head tightly bandaged. A dark mass spread over the pillow which I knew
+was her glorious hair. I could scarcely see the unbandaged half of her
+face. She still suffered acute pain, and I was warned that my visit
+could only be of brief duration, and that nothing but the simplest
+matters could be discussed. I sat down on a chair by the left side of
+the bed. Her wonderful nervous hand clung round mine as we talked.
+
+The first thing she said to me, in a weak voice, like the faint echo of
+her deep tones, was:
+
+"I'm going to lose all my good looks, Simon, and you won't care to look
+at me any more."
+
+She said it so simply, so tenderly, without a hint of reproach in it,
+that I almost shouted out my horrible remorse; but I remembered my
+injunctions and refrained. I strove to comfort her, telling her mythical
+tales of surgical reassurances. She shook her head sadly.
+
+"It was like you to stay in Berlin, Simon," she said, after a while.
+"Although they wouldn't let me see you, yet I knew you were within call.
+You can't conceive what a comfort it has been."
+
+"How could I leave you, dear," said I, "with the thought of you
+throbbing in my head night and day?"
+
+"How did you find me?"
+
+"Through Conto and Blag. I tried all other means, you may be sure. But
+now I've found you I shan't let you go again."
+
+This was not the time for elaborate explanations. She asked for
+none. When one is very ill one takes the most unlikely happenings as
+commonplace occurrences. It seemed enough to her that I was by her side.
+We talked of her nurses, who were kind; of the skill of Dr. Steinholz,
+who brought into his clinique the rigid discipline of a man-of-war.
+
+"He wouldn't even let me have your flowers," she said. "And even if he
+had I shouldn't have been able to see them in this dark hole."
+
+She questioned me as to my doings. I told her of my move to Barbara's
+Building.
+
+"And I'm keeping you from all that splendid work," she said weakly. "You
+must go back at once, Simon. I shall get along nicely now, and I shall
+be happy now that I've seen you again."
+
+I kissed her fingers. "You have to learn a lesson, my dear, which will
+do you an enormous amount of good."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"The glorious duty of selfishness."
+
+Then the minute hand of the clock marked the end of the interview, and
+the nurse appeared on the click and turned me out.
+
+After that I saw her daily; gradually our interviews lengthened, and as
+she recovered strength our talks wandered from the little incidents and
+interests of the sick-room to the general topics of our lives. I told
+her of all that had happened to me since her flight. And I told her that
+I wanted her and her only of all women.
+
+"Why--oh, why, did you do such a foolish thing?" I asked.
+
+"I did it for your good."
+
+"My dear, have you ever heard the story of the tender-hearted elephant?
+No? It was told in a wonderful book published years ago and called
+'The Fables of George Washington AEsop.' This is it. There was once an
+elephant who accidentally trod on the mother of a brood of newly-hatched
+chickens. Her tender heart filled with remorse for what she had done,
+and, overflowing with pity for the fluffy orphans, she wept bitterly,
+and addressed them thus: 'Poor little motherless things, doomed to face
+the rough world without a parent's care, I myself will be a mother to
+you.' Whereupon, gathering them under her with maternal fondness, she
+sat down on the whole brood."
+
+The unbandaged half of her face lit up with a wan smile. "Did I do
+that?"
+
+"I didn't conceive it possible that you could love me except for the
+outside things."
+
+"You might have waited and seen," said I in mild reproof.
+
+She sighed. "You'll never understand. Do you remember my saying once
+that you reminded me of an English Duke?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You made fun of me; but you must have known what I meant. You see,
+Simon, you didn't seem to care a hang for me in that way--until quite
+lately. You were goodness and kindness itself, and I felt that you
+would stick by me as a friend through thick and thin; but I had given up
+hoping for anything else. And I knew there was some one only waiting for
+you, a real refined lady. So when you kissed me, I didn't dare believe
+it. And I had made you kiss me. I told you so, and I was as ashamed as
+if I had suddenly turned into a loose woman. And when Miss Faversham
+came, I knew it would be best for you to marry her, for all the
+flattering things she said to me, I knew--"
+
+"My dear," I interrupted, "you didn't know at all. I loved you ever
+since I saw you first lying like a wonderful panther in your chair at
+Cadogan Gardens. You wove yourself into all my thoughts and around all
+my actions. One of these days I'll show you a kind of diary I used to
+keep, and you'll see how I abused you behind your back."
+
+Her face--or the dear half of it that was visible--fell. "Oh, why?"
+
+"For making me turn aside from the nice little smooth path to the
+grave which I had marked out for myself. I regarded myself as a genteel
+semi-corpse, and didn't want to be disturbed."
+
+"And I disturbed you?"
+
+"Until I danced with fury and called down on your dear head maledictions
+which for fulness and snap would have made a mediaeval Pope squirm with
+envy."
+
+She pressed my hand. "You are making fun again. I thought you were
+serious."
+
+"I am. I'm telling you exactly what happened. Then, when I was rapidly
+approaching the other world, it didn't matter. At last I died and came
+to life again; but it took me a long time to come really to life. I was
+like a tree in spring which has one bud which obstinately refuses to
+burst into blossom. At last it did burst, and all the love that had
+been working in my heart came to my lips; and, incidentally, my dear, to
+yours."
+
+This was at the early stages of her recovery, when one could only speak
+of gentle things. She told me of her simple Odyssey--a period of waiting
+in Paris, an engagement at Vienna and Budapest, and then Berlin. Her
+agents had booked a week in Dresden, and a fortnight in Homburg, and she
+would have to pay the forfeit for breach of contract.
+
+"I'm sorry for Anastasius's sake," she said. "The poor little mite wrote
+me rapturous letters when he heard I was out with the cats. He gave me a
+long special message for each, which I was to whisper in its ear."
+
+Poor little Anastasius Papadopoulos! She showed me his letters, written
+in a great round, flourishing, sanguine hand. He seemed to be happy
+enough at the Maison de Sante. He had formed, he said, a school for the
+cats of the establishment, for which the authorities were very grateful,
+and he heralded the completion of his gigantic combinations with regard
+to the discovery of the assassin of the horse Sultan. Lola and I never
+spoke of him without pain; for in spite of his crazy and bombastic
+oddities, he had qualities that were lovable.
+
+"And now," said Lola, "I must tell him that Hephaestus has been killed
+and the rest are again idling under the care of the faithful Quast. It
+seemed a pity to kill the poor beast."
+
+"I wish to Heaven," said I, "that he had been strangled at birth."
+
+"You never liked him." She smiled wanly. "But he is scarcely to be
+blamed. I grew unaccountably nervous and lost control. All savage
+animals are like that." And, seeing that I was about to protest
+vehemently, she smiled again. "Remember, I'm a lion-tamer's daughter,
+and brought up from childhood to regard these things as part of the
+show. There must always come a second's failure of concentration. Lots
+of tamers meet their deaths sooner or later for the same reason--just a
+sudden loss of magnetism. The beast gets frightened and springs."
+
+Exactly what Quast had told me. Exactly what I myself had divined at
+the sickening moment. I bowed my head and laid the back of her cool hand
+against it, and groaned out my remorse. If I had not been there! If
+I had not distracted her attention! She would not listen to my
+self-reproach. It had nothing to do with me. She had simply missed her
+grip and lost her head. She forbade me to mention the subject again. The
+misery of thinking that I held myself to blame was unbearable. I said no
+more, realising the acute distress of her generous soul, but in my heart
+I made a deep vow of reparation.
+
+It was, however, with no such chivalrous feelings, but out of the simple
+longing to fulfil my life that I asked her definitely, for the first
+time, to marry me as soon as she could get about the world again. I put
+before her with what delicacy I could that if she had foolish ideas of
+my being above her in station, she was above me in worldly fortune, and
+thus we both had to make some sacrifices to our pride. I said that my
+work was found--that our lives could be regulated as she wished.
+
+She listened, without saying a word, until I had finished. Then she took
+my hand.
+
+"I'm grateful," she said, "and I'm proud. And I know that I love you
+beyond all things on earth. But I won't give you an answer till I'm up
+and about on my feet again."
+
+"Why?" I insisted.
+
+"Don't ask. And don't mention the matter again. You must be good to me,
+because I'm ill, and do what I say."
+
+She smiled and fondled my hand, and cajoled a reluctant promise from me.
+
+Then came days in which, for no obvious reason, Lola received me
+with anxious frightened diffidence, and spoke with constraint. The
+cheerfulness which she had hitherto exhibited gave place to dull
+depression. She urged me continually to leave Berlin, where, as she
+said, I was wasting my time, and return to my work in London.
+
+"I shall be all right, Simon, perfectly all right, and as soon as I can
+travel, I'll come straight to London."
+
+"I'm not going to let you slip through my fingers again," I would say
+laughingly.
+
+"But I promise you, I'll swear to you I'll come back! Only I can't bear
+to think of you idling around a woman's sick-bed, when you have such
+glorious things to do at home. That's a man's work, Simon. This isn't."
+
+"But it is a man's work," I would declare, "to devote himself to the
+woman he loves and not to leave her helpless, a stranger in a strange
+land."
+
+"I wish you would go, Simon. I do wish you would go!" she would say
+wearily. "It's the only favour I've ever asked you in my life."
+
+Man-like, I looked within myself to find the reason for these earnest
+requests. In casting off my jester's suit had I also divested myself of
+the power to be a decently interesting companion? Had I become merely a
+dull, tactless, egotistical bore? Was I, in simple, naked, horrid fact,
+getting on an invalid's delicate nerves? I was scared of the new picture
+of myself thus presented. I became self-conscious and made particular
+efforts to bring a little gaiety into our talk; but though she smiled
+with her lips, the cloud, whatever it was, hung heavily on her mind, and
+at the first opportunity she came back to the ceaseless argument.
+
+In despair I took her nurse into my confidence.
+
+"She is right," said the nurse. "You are doing her more harm than good.
+You had better go away and write to her daily from London."
+
+"But why--but why?" I clamoured. "Can't you give me any reason?"
+
+The nurse glanced at me with a touch of feminine scorn.
+
+"The bandages will soon be removed."
+
+"Well?" said I.
+
+"The sight of one eye may be gone."
+
+"I know," said I. "She is reconciled to it. She has the courage and
+resignation of a saint."
+
+"She has also the very common and natural fears of a woman."
+
+"For Heaven's sake," I cried, "tell me plainly what you mean."
+
+"We don't quite know what disfigurement will result," said the nurse
+bluntly. "It is certain to be very great, and the dread of your seeing
+her is making her ill and retarding her recovery. So if you have any
+regard for her, pack up your things and go away."
+
+"But," I remonstrated, "I'm bound to see her sooner or later."
+
+The nurse lost patience. "Ach! Can't you get it into your head that it
+is essential it should be later, when she is strong enough to stand the
+strain and has realised the worst and made her little preparations?"
+
+I accepted the rebuke meekly. The situation, when explained, was
+comprehensible to the meanest masculine intelligence.
+
+"I will go," said I.
+
+When I announced this determination to Lola she breathed a deep sigh of
+relief.
+
+"I shall be so much happier," she said.
+
+Then she raised both her arms and drew my head down until our lips met.
+"Dear," she whispered, still holding me, "if I hadn't run away from you
+before I should run away now; but it would be silly to do it twice. So
+I'll come to London as soon as the doctor will let me. But if you find
+you don't and can't possibly love me I shan't feel hurt with you. I've
+had some months, I know, of your love, and that will last me all my
+life; and I know that whatever happens you'll be my very dear and
+devoted friend."
+
+"I shall be your lover always!" I swore.
+
+She shook her head and released me. A great pity welled up in my heart,
+for I know now why she had forbidden me to speak of marriage, and in
+some dim way I got to the depth of her woman's nature. I realised,
+as far as a man can, how the sudden blasting of a woman's beauty must
+revolutionise not only her own attitude towards the world, but her
+conception of the world's attitude towards her. Only a few weeks before
+she had gone about proudly conscious of her superb magnificence. It was
+the triumphant weapon in her woman's armoury, to use when she so chose.
+It had illuminated a man's journey (I knew and felt it now) through the
+Valley of the Shadow. It had held his senses captive. It had brought him
+to her feet. It was a charm that she could always offer to his eyes.
+It was her glory and her pride to enhance it for his delectation. Her
+beauty was herself. That gone, she had nothing but a worthless soul to
+offer, and what woman would dream of offering a man her soul if she had
+no casket in which to enshrine it? If I had presented this other aspect
+of the case to Lola, she would have cried out, with perfect sincerity:
+
+"My soul! You get things like mine anywhere for twopence a dozen."
+
+It was the blasting of her beauty that was the infinite matter. All
+that I loved would be gone. She would have nothing left to give. The
+splendour of the day had ceased, and now was coming the long, long,
+dreary night, to meet which with dignity she was nerving her brave
+heart.
+
+The tears were not far from my eyes when I said again softly:
+
+"Your lover always, dear."
+
+"Make no promises," she said, "except one."
+
+"And that is?"
+
+"That you will write me often until I come home."
+
+"Every day."
+
+So we parted, and I returned to London and to my duties at Barbara's
+Building. I wrote daily, and her dictated answers gave me knowledge of
+her progress. To my immense relief, I heard that the oculist's skill had
+saved her eyesight; but it could not obliterate the traces of the cruel
+claws.
+
+The days, although fuller with work and interests, appeared long until
+she came. I saw but little of the outside world. Dale, my sister Agatha,
+Sir Joshua Oldfield, and Campion were the only friends I met. Dale was
+ingenuously sympathetic when he head of the calamity.
+
+"What's going to happen?" he asked, after he had exhausted his
+vocabulary of abuse on cats, Providence and Anastasius Papadopoulos.
+"What's the poor dear going to do?"
+
+"If I am going to have any voice in the matter," said I, "she is going
+to marry me."
+
+He wrung me by the hand enthusiastically and declared that I was the
+splendidest fellow that ever lived. Then he sighed.
+
+"I am going about like a sheep without a leader. For Heaven's sake,
+come back into politics. Form a hilarious little party of your
+own--anything--so long as you're back and take me with you."
+
+"Come to Barbara's Building," said I.
+
+But he made a wry face, and said that he did not think Maisie would like
+it. I laughed and put my hand on his shoulder.
+
+"My son, you have a leader already, and she has already tied a blue
+riband round your woolly neck, and she is pulling you wherever she wants
+to go. And it's all to the infinite advantage of your eternal soul."
+
+Whereupon he grinned and departed to the sheepfold.
+
+At last Lola came. She begged me not to meet her at the station, but to
+go round after dinner to Cadogan Gardens.
+
+Dawkins opened the door for me and showed me into the familiar
+drawing-room. The long summer day was nearing its end, and only a dim
+twilight came through the open windows. Lola was standing rigid on the
+hearthrug, her hand shielding the whole of the right side of her face.
+With the free hand she checked my impetuous advance.
+
+"Stop and look!" she said, and then dropped the shielding hand, and
+stood before me with twitching lips and death in her eyes. I saw in a
+flash the devastation that had been wrought; but, thank God, I pierced
+beneath it to the anguish in her heart. The pity--the awful, poignant
+pity--of it smote me. Everything that was man in me surged towards her.
+What she saw in my eyes I know not; but in hers dawned a sudden wonder.
+There was no recoil of shock, such as she had steeled herself to
+encounter. I sprang forward and clasped her in my arms. Her stiffened
+frame gradually relaxed and our lips met, and in that kiss all fears and
+doubts were dissolved for ever.
+
+Some hours later she said: "If you are blind enough to care for a maimed
+thing like me, I can't help it. I shall never understand it to my dying
+day," she added with a long sigh.
+
+"And you will marry me?"
+
+"I suppose I've got to," she replied. And with the old pantherine twist
+of her body she slid from her easy-chair to the ground and buried her
+face on my knees.
+
+
+
+And that is the end of my story. We were quietly married three weeks
+afterwards. Agatha, wishing to humour a maniac for whom she retained an
+unreasonable affection, came to the wedding and treated Lola as only a
+sweet lady could. But my doings passed her understanding. As for Jane,
+my other sister, she cast me from her. People who did these things, she
+maintained, must bear the consequences. I bore them bravely. It is only
+now that my name is beginning to be noised abroad as that of one who
+speaks with some knowledge on certain social questions that Jane holds
+out the olive branch of fraternal peace. After a brief honeymoon Lola
+insisted on joining me in Barbara's Building. A set of rooms next to
+mine was vacant, and Campion, who welcomed a new worker, had the two
+sets thrown into what house-agents term a commodious flat. She is now
+Lady Superior of the Institution. The title is Campion's, and for some
+odd feminine reason Lola is delighted with it.
+
+Yes, this is the end of the story which I began (it seems in a previous
+incarnation) at Murglebed-on-Sea.
+
+The maiming of Lola's beauty has been the last jest which the
+Arch-Jester has practised on me. I fancy he thought that this final
+scurvy trick would wipe Simon de Gex for ever out of the ranks of his
+rivals. But I flatter myself that, having snapped my fingers in his
+face, the last laugh has been on my side. He has withdrawn discomfited
+from the conflict and left me master of the ground. Love conquers all,
+even the Arch-Jester.
+
+There are some who still point to me as one who has deliberately ruined
+a brilliant career, who pity me as one who has gone under, who speak
+with shrugged shoulders and uplifted eyebrows at my unfortunate marriage
+and my obscure and cranky occupation. The world, they say, was at
+my feet. So it was. But what the pitying critics lack the grace to
+understand is that better than to have it under one's feet is to have
+it, or that of it which matters, at one's heart.
+
+I sit in this tiny hotel by the sea and reflect that it is over three
+years since I awoke from death and assumed a new avatar. And since my
+marriage, what have been the happenings?
+
+Dale has just been elected for the Fensham Division of Westmoreland, and
+he has already begun the line of sturdy young Kynnersleys, of which I
+had eumoirous dreams long ago. Quast and the cats have passed into alien
+hands. Anastasius Papadopoulos is dead. He died three months ago of
+angina pectoris, and Lola was with him at the end. Eleanor Faversham has
+married a Colonial bishop. Campion, too, has married--and married the
+last woman in the world to whom one would have thought of mating him--a
+frivolous butterfly of a creature who drags him to dinner-parties and
+Ascot and suppers at the Savoy, and holds Barbara's Building and all
+it connotes in vixenish detestation. He roars out the agony of his
+philanthropic spirit to Lola and myself, who administer consolation and
+the cold mutton that he loves. The story of his marriage is a little
+lunatic drama all to itself and I will tell it some day. But now I
+can only rough-sketch the facts. He works when he can at the beloved
+creation of his life and fortune; but the brain that would be inadequate
+to the self-protecting needs of a ferret controls the action of this
+masterful enthusiast, and his one awful despair in life is to touch a
+heart that might beat in the bosom of a vicious and calculating haddock.
+I only mention this to explain how it has come to pass that Lola and I
+are now all-powerful in Barbara's Building. It has become the child of
+our adoption and we love it with a deep and almost fanatic affection.
+Before Lola my influence and personality fade into nothingness. She is
+the power, the terror, the adoration of Lambeth. If she chose she
+could control the Parliamentary vote of the borough. Her great, direct,
+large-hearted personality carries all before it. And with it there is
+something of the uncanny. A feat of hers in the early days is by way of
+becoming legendary.
+
+A woman, on the books of the Building, was about to bring a hopeless
+human fragment into a grey world. Lola went to see what aid the Building
+could provide. In front of the door lounged the husband, a hulking
+porter in a Bermondsey factory. Glowering at his feet lay a vicious
+mongrel dog--bull-terrier, Irish-terrier, mastiff--so did Lola with
+her trained eye distinguish the strains. When she asked for his wife in
+travail the chivalrous gentleman took his pipe from his mouth, spat, and
+after the manner of his kind referred to the disfigurement of her face
+in terms impossible to transcribe. She paid no attention.
+
+"I'm coming upstairs to see your wife."
+
+"If you pass that door, s'welp me Gawd, I'll set the dog on yer."
+
+She paused. He urged the dog, who bristled and growled and showed his
+teeth. Lola picked the animal up, as she would have picked up a sofa
+cushion, and threw him across the street. She went to where he had
+fallen, ordered him to his feet, and the dog licked her hand. She came
+back with a laugh.
+
+"I'll do the same to you if you don't let me in!"
+
+She pushed the hulking brute aside. He resisted and laid hands on her.
+By some extraordinary tamer's art of which she had in vain tried to
+explain to me the secret, and with no apparent effort, she glided away
+from him and sent him cowering and subdued some feet beyond the lintel
+of the door. The street, which was watching, went into a roar of
+laughter and applause. Lola mounted the stairs and attended to the
+business in hand. When she came down the man was still standing at the
+threshold smoking an obfusticated pipe. He blinked at her as if she had
+been a human dynamo.
+
+"Come round to Barbara's Building at six o'clock and tell me how she
+is."
+
+He came on the stroke of six.
+
+The fame of Lola spread through the borough, and now she can walk
+feared, honoured, unmolested by night or by day through the streets
+of horror and crime, which neither I nor any other man--no matter how
+courageous--dare enter at certain hours without the magical protection
+of a policeman.
+
+Sunshine has come at last, both into this little backwater of the world
+by the sea and into my own life, and it is time I should end this futile
+record.
+
+Yesterday as we lay on the sands, watching the waves idly lap the shore,
+Lola brought herself nearer to me with a rhythmic movement as no other
+creature form of woman is capable of, and looked into my eyes. And she
+whispered something to me which led to an infinite murmuring of foolish
+things. I put my arms round her and kissed her on the lips and on her
+cheek--whether the beautiful or the maimed I knew not--and she sank into
+a long, long silence. At last she said:
+
+"What are you thinking of?"
+
+I said, "I'm thinking that not a single human being on the face of the
+earth has a sense of humour."
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked.
+
+"Simply this," said I, "that what has occurred billions of billions of
+millions of times on the earth we are now regarding as the only thing
+that ever happened."
+
+"Well," said Lola, "so it is--for us--the only thing that ever
+happened."
+
+And the astounding woman was right.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Simon the Jester, by William J. Locke
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