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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/77377-0.txt b/77377-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..47e27a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/77377-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11737 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77377 *** + + + + + _Eva’s Apples_ + + + + + EVA’S APPLES + + + A STORY OF JAZZ AND JASPER + + _by_ + + _William Gerhardi_ + + [Illustration] + + Duffield and Company + New York - 1928 + + + Copyright, 1928, by + DUFFIELD & COMPANY + + _Printed in The United States of America + By The Cornwall Press_ + + Second Large Printing + + + TO THE GENIUS OF H. G. WELLS + IN HOMAGE + + + + + _By William Gerhardi_: + + + PRETTY CREATURES + THE POLYGLOTS + ANTON CHEHOV + FUTILITY + + + “And he carried me away in the + spirit to a great and high mountain, + and her light was like unto a stone + most precious, even like a jasper + stone, clear as crystal.” + --Revelations Ch. 21-10-11. + + + + +_Eva’s Apples_ + + + + +I. + + +“No, no, ‘Me-Too,’ you’d better run away now, or sit and wait here in +the taxi.” + +“But the taxi’s so expensive, darling.” (It was not at all like Eva, he +reflected, to object to his expenses.) “I’d better come upstairs with +you.” + +“But no! I’ve an _appointment_ with Lord Ottercove!” + +“But I’d like to see Lord Ottercove myself.” + +“But he hasn’t asked to see you.” + +“But he might like to--if he knew.” + +“He doesn’t know you.” + +“He would if I came up with you.” + +How she added to his difficulties! + +For a young man of his nervous complex, living in the fear of waiters +and hall porters and a general expectation that the next man he +solicited for information would come up, lower his pants and give him a +good hiding, an appointment with Lord Ottercove, though flattering, was +arduous enough. Before the porch of a tall Fleet Street building from +whose roof an electric sign proclaimed the fiery words _Daily Runner_, +they argued, while the taxi-meter ticked away the aeons, and the aeons +added shillings. From the pavement he gazed up at the huge inscrutable +building and reflected that, located somewhere in its innermost +recesses, like a spider waiting for him, was the great Lord Ottercove, +as the black hand of the hall clock moved towards the hour appointed for +the interview. + +Leaving Eva in the taxi, he made away with a certain unnatural kind of +alacrity, a recklessly confident step, to face the braided +commissionaire who listened with faint but not unhopeful surprise to the +news of the visitor’s claim to an appointment with his lordship. Ever +jealous, however, like Peter, of his guardianship of the access to God, +he provided the applicant with a form to be filled in with information +of a biographical nature and outlining the general character of his +business: the form to precede him to the desired destination; the +aspirant to await below confirmation of the bona fides of his claim to +the exalted interview. The confirmation duly forthcoming, the faithful +steward handed the young visitor on to a lift boy who, taking him up +several floors, handed him on to a brother lift boy, who presently +handed him on to a third brother. Each new lift boy to whom he was +handed over looked more exclusive, had a manner at once more solemn and +more deferential--the mark of one who dwells in higher altitudes, more +immune from the grosser things of the earth. Up and up they went, higher +and higher, till the doors of the lift opened again and he was handed +out to a page altogether removed from the race of mere lift boys. The +page bade him follow him up the few remaining steps--the last golden +ladder to heaven--to a landing where the page divested him of his cruder +clothes of the street, took him up another three carpeted steps and, +bidding him wait, knocked reverently at the door. And opened it before +the visitor, who was pulling out his cuffs and, adjusting his tie, was +quite ready to step forward. With a jerky suddenness, not unlike that of +policemen in American comic films dashing off the ground in pursuit of a +criminal, he entered the room, the page shutting the door on him. + +In a vast radiant space of yellow and blue, at an octangular table +surrounded by chairs, sat a slim middle-sized figure in a dark-blue +suit, a negligent lock over the brow. It rose promptly, shook hands, +gave the visitor one searching look with its penetrating grey eye, a +guarded smile revealing white affable teeth, and sat down again to the +octangular table, bidding the visitor to do likewise but taking no +further notice of him. + +The visitor sat hushed and abashed, slowly taking in the surroundings, +and Lord Ottercove went on with his work, going through the small pile +of papers before him with record speed, while a trained lady-secretary +with a coyly grave manner and a voice attuned to the requisite pitch of +awed and concentrated attention received his instructions. From time to +time Lord Ottercove would take up the receiver and say, “Give me the +Prime Minister,” or “Give me the Duke of Liverpool,” and, incredible as +it seemed, the Prime Minister or the Duke of Liverpool was already +talking--and not from Liverpool. “Hello, Fred,” from Lord Ottercove. +“Oh, very well and full of mischief! What? Oh, I’m bored to hell. I’m +going in for a new hobby. Buying race horses. What? Let me know before +you start. Good-bye to you.” + +The visitor had a feeling of sharing in Lord Ottercove’s multifarious +activities and interests, and when he smiled--his eyes were grey and +full of mischief--the visitor smiled too, involuntarily. But Lord +Ottercove still took no notice of him. + +And now his eyes were scanning a batch of typescript. His mouth opened. +“_Pale Primroses_ by Frank Dickin,” he said and looked humorously at the +visitor. “Anything else?” he asked the secretary. + +“Your spectacles.” + +He stretched out his hand for them. “Good night to you.” + +And while she was gathering her papers, Lord Ottercove leaned back, his +preoccupied air having deserted him, a leisurely smile having taken its +place. “Well, I am very interested to meet you, Mr. Dickin,” he said +(the secretary now having retired). “My serial editor submitted to me +the beginning of a proposed novel by you with a synopsis of its general +plot, and I am much intrigued by it for a reason that you won’t guess. +Your name--you will forgive me for saying so--was completely unknown to +me. Frank Dickin did not convey anything to me in itself, you +understand.” + +“Frank Septimus Dickin.” + +“You prefer it like that?” + +“To redeem, I suppose, the plainness of the Dickin.” + +“Of course, Dickin is not Dickens.” His lordship smiled indulgently. + +“No, of course not.” + +“Of course. Still, what attracted me--and that is chiefly why I wrote to +you--are the people in your book. So real. It seemed to me I knew them.” + +“Well, I do try to make them living. I think it is up to a novelist----” + +“I don’t mean that. I think I know the family you describe. Or, rather, +their connections and appendages. A remarkable coincidence, anyway, +about the names.” + +Here Dickin smiled. + +“So they _are_ ‘copies’?” + +“Well, yes, to a considerable extent, I am bound to confess.” + +“Have you brought me the continuation as I asked you to do in my letter? +If so, I will read it to-night.” + +“I am afraid it is very rough manuscript. You would not feel very happy +with it.” + +“Then you read it to me.” + +“But it’s long.” + +“Read it! I shall tell you when to stop.” Lord Ottercove pressed the +button. The page stood in the doorway. “Don’t let any of them bother me +for the next two hours. Keep them out, do you hear, and shut the door +behind you!” + +“Yes, m’lord.” + +To Captains of Industry time is said to be money. But Generals of the +Press are artists who express their sensibility in affairs. They have +risen to heights beyond time and avarice and avarice in time to a +condition of immanent immortality already in this world. Lord Ottercove +had suddenly expressed the wish to be relieved of the blazing heat and +burden of the day. For what does it profit a man to be rich if he cannot +please his own moods? He was interested, satisfied: the hours he devoted +to this visitor were of value to him: that was all. “Come and sit down +here, Mr. Dickin; you will get a better light.” + +Dickin plunged into a delicate-looking armchair--and fell through. He +started up with a look as though he thought he was going to be thrashed +for it, but Lord Ottercove, with splendid unconcern for the chair, only +asked: “Have you hurt yourself?” + +“On the contrary....” + +“On the contrary what?” + +“On the contrary: I have not hurt myself.” + +“Thank God for that.” + +“But I’ve hurt the chair.” + +“Not a bit of it! Come and sit in this chair and read me your +manuscript. Now then.” + +“It is difficult to relate these things in their proper sequence. Some +things stand out, others fade; that is all.” + +“Are you talking now or reading?” asked Lord Ottercove. + +“Reading.--I remember only a desultory Christmas Eve in the Tyrol. I +strolled about lonely, sad, because laden with memories, through the +winter streets of Innsbruck when a small group of people emerged from a +shop, arguing in Russian as to their next move. I had picked up a fair +amount of Russian in captivity during the war, quartered as we were with +Russian officers, and improved it later on our ill-starred mission in +Archangel, which, in the order of things, left behind memories. Was it +that snow called to snow? It was thawing, and the shop windows twinkling +in the winter dusk were faintly reminiscent. Memory calling to memory? +But I went straight up to them and, with a curt apology, expressed my +pleasure at hearing the dear language. In London I would have been +brought up at Marlborough Street Police Station next morning and fined +£5 for “annoying ladies in the street.” In New York I would have been +flung summarily into prison for attempted rape. But the Russian ladies +smiled with undisguised pleasure and expectation, and, talking eagerly, +we immediately repaired to the Maria-Theresien-Café and exchanged +experiences, attracting every one’s attention in the café by our voluble +reminiscences. One lady--the fair, small, good-looking one, bubbling +over with excitement--had married and divorced an Irishman, a certain +Mr. Kerr whom she had met in Russia before the war, and till recently +they owned a castle in Meran, but--she hinted at the Revolution, the +War, the Italian annexation of South Tyrol, and, well, at their large +and careless way of living. There had been debts. In fine, the castle +was no more. But there were children. Four of them: two boys, two girls. +Zita was the elder of the girls. She was sixteen. And, I perceived, +amazingly good-looking in her bright, fair way. The younger, Eva, was at +school in England. This little boy was John, the despair of her life! He +simply wouldn’t sit still. And, indeed, he was already fiddling with my +watch chain. But she had another son, the eldest of her children, who +had her eyes and loved her dearly. Raymond, the apple of her eye! He was +in England. They wished he might have gone to Oxford or Cambridge. Alas, +that was not possible now. He was in the motor trade. It wasn’t quite +the thing for him. He was more a poet at heart, melancholy, meditative, +interested in bird life. But how good-looking! Raymond and Eva were the +two best-looking of the family--her mother’s children. They had her +eyes. Now John was made for the motor trade. Let him see a wheel or a +piece of wire, and he must go and touch it. + +“The other lady, dark and passionate but restrained by Mrs. Kerr’s +volubility, was Russian too, but married to a local Austrian +tram-driver. She told me her story. The daughter of a landowner, like +Mrs. Kerr, she met her future husband when he was a prisoner-of-war in +Russia; she a Red Cross nurse. Love at first sight. She married him and +helped him to escape, all very romantically. He had told her he was an +engineer by education and God-knows-what besides. They came to his +native Innsbruck and he resumed his duties as a tram-driver. And +everybody tells him he is a fool to have saddled himself with an +uncongenial Russian wife and he seems to resent the marriage more than +she resents his calling and has pawned the silver things she has managed +to smuggle out of Russia and has been unfaithful to her and treats her +brutally and she is now divorcing him because she hates him so. And yet +is curious about his doings and still goes by the name of Frau König and +works at a knitting establishment and is about to start work on her +own--if only somebody would provide her with capital. ‘But I can’t,’ +immediately says Mrs. Kerr. ‘My husband can’t give me anything. I have +great hopes of getting some money from my parents in Russia, but my +mother writes that she can’t send us anything. They are starving +practically. Life is so hard for us who have come from Russia. And our +castle in Meran.... It’s all this awful Revolution.’ + +“Ah, the good old days in Russia! Did I know her father, the landowner +Pàvel Yàkovlevich Sabolenko? I didn’t? And yet everybody who had been +in Russia knew him. He owned mines, he owned railways, he owned heaven +knows what not. Everybody knew him. You had only to mention the name +Pàvel Yàkovlevich Sabolenko for everybody to say: ‘Sabolenko? Pàvel +Yàkovlevich? Why, of course!’ And now he said he couldn’t send her a +penny. It seemed a shame. But, of course, they have had a revolution. +Her father was seized by his own peasants (to whom he’d been a father +all his life; they even called him ‘our father’) and was led out into +the wood to be hanged, when a passing aeroplane attracted their +attention and they forgot about him. ‘But mother was seized by them on +their way back, by way of afterthought, and was about to be torn limb +from limb, when father butted in and shouted, “What’s the good of +wasting your time on an old hag like this? Get on with the Revolution!” +and they all shouted, “Hear! hear! Long live the Revolution!” and +elected father President of the Local Revolutionary Centre, which he is +still.’ But the trouble was that you could never be sure with such +erratic people, well-meaning but somehow not very certain of their +intellectual premises. Father was a genius, of course. He had graduated +at eight different universities and had written a philosophical +treatise, a sort of bridge work between Plato and Schopenhauer and had +of late much strengthened his position in regard to the Soviets by a +work on Socialism entitled “Beyond Lenin,” and was regarded as an +authority on mathematics. ‘I am telling you all this because you are a +writer. You can make use of it in your books. We Sabolenkos are a most +interesting, original family. One of my brothers shot himself; another +got drowned....’” + +“Look here,” Lord Ottercove interrupted, “will you have a drink before +you continue?” + +“Thanks awfully.” + +“What will you have?” + +“Wine. White wine.” + +“Will you have champagne?” + +“Thanks, I’ll have champagne. I adore it.” + +Lord Ottercove rang in a special way. A butler sprang out of the floor. +“Give me the wine-list.” + +The butler returned with a huge album bound in crocodile leather. “You +are looking at the binding, I notice. It is the skin of a crocodile I +shot myself on the Nile,” said the host. And he selected a half-bottle +of the year 1895. “According to historians,” he added, “a magnificent +vintage.” + +Dickin drank the champagne and thought--because she too adored +champagne--of Eva waiting for him in the taxi. But the great room with +the drawn curtains and the electric radiators full on was so snug; and +already the champagne was doing its care-transcending work. He hoped +that Eva was very comfortable in the taxi. + +“Well, go on,” said Lord Ottercove. + +“It was arranged between us before we parted that we should spend that +Christmas Eve together at Frau König’s rooms. They had arranged to do +so before they met me. I arrived shortly before midnight, laden with +provisions. The Christmas tree was lit and John fiddling with everything +that he could fiddle with, and Zita all in white and somehow +marvellously seductive-looking. I marvelled at the lines of that young +body. I still marvel when I think of them. It was warm and cosy in Frau +König’s room on account of the lit candles. Mrs. Kerr was voluble and +took the words out of poor Frau König’s mouth. + +“‘Charming!’ I exclaimed. The real Russian Christmas!’ + +“‘It’s what I wanted!’ cried Mrs. Kerr. ‘And I knew Frau König would be +pleased to spend Christmas Eve among Russian friends. And we regard you +as a Russian too.’ + +“‘As a matter of fact, I lived in Russia as a child, while my father was +Secretary at the British Embassy in Petersburg, and my earliest +reminiscences go back to Russia.’ + +“‘Well, there you are! I knew Frau König would appreciate a Russian +Christmas Eve. And so I said to her: ‘Tamara Leonidovna, you have a +larger room than I have; ask us to supper, and we will spend Christmas +Eve together.’ And we thought of writing a little story together: A +young brunette--Tamara Leonidovna--asked a--a young (I am not old, am +I?) blonde to her Christmas tree; and while they were thus together, +there looked in to them through the window a third guest--the Moon.’ + +“And, indeed, the moon looked through the tall blue pine of the forest. +‘Charming,’ I said. + +“‘How much will they give us for it?’ + +“‘How do you mean?’ + +“‘How many dollars--in an American magazine?’ + +“‘Well--I don’t know--it depends, of course--’ + +“‘And in England? How many sterlings?’ + +“I am the last man to generalise about national characteristics; but +there was something perennially irresponsible about Mrs. Kerr’s nature. +She had taken part in a £1,000 competition for a General Election +forecast to be held in England on the Tuesday and arranged for a holiday +tour on the following Saturday on the strength of the £1,000 which she +hoped to win.” + +“Ha!” laughed Lord Ottercove. “Incredible, isn’t it?” + +Dickin, encouraged, continued with warmth, and without reference to the +manuscript: “The fate of these people! who had known affluent days in +genial surroundings on the accustomed background of Russian life, now +cast ashore in a foreign land which looks askance at them and knows them +not!” + +Was it the champagne which spoke in him, or a look of dissension in his +listener’s eyes? But he brought down his fist on the table with a bang. +“Dammit, sir! They are too old to be acclimatised, too indolent to +start afresh. They have dragged themselves here and cast their living +carcasses upon the tide of life at this great turning point in human +destiny.” + +“Come, come!” said Lord Ottercove. But Dickin, dazed with the wine, was +neither coming nor going. His heart was overwhelmed with love for +humanity. “They feel they dream. All familiar things by which they had +learnt their values had vanished overnight. They hear a tumult outside, +but they are at a loss to understand its meaning. They are no longer of +the past: it is not there: it has just vanished beneath their feet, and +its history is not yet. They are not of the present: they do not know +it, and it knows them not. They are silent, alone. They are alive, but +the shadow of death has crept over them. They are dead souls with just a +flicker of light on them....” + +Lord Ottercove, listening, could not make out what this strange note of +emotion in Dickin connoted precisely: whether this was poetry, and, if +so, whether good or bad poetry. Dickin, conscious of discomfiture, felt +the need to excuse himself. “A beginning,” he said, “in the manner of +Guy de Maupassant in his more sentimental vein.” He had a feeling that +the air had gained that air-proof compartment in him in which alone pure +sentiment can thrive, and shrank at this contamination of +sentimentality. “I see I bore you.” + +“Not a bit of it, my dear fellow. I cannot tell you how it all +interests me--for various reasons, of which I will tell you presently.” + +“I will read on.” + +“Whichever is quicker and more to the point.” + +“I must read it all. It is nothing without the atmosphere.” + +“I understand--about the atmosphere. Go on in your own way.” + +“Both women vied to show me their photographs. Frau König took me aside +surreptitiously into her small bedroom--the Christmas tree was in the +kitchen--and there showed me photographs of her father, her mother, +herself and her brother, and even of the tram-driver. A man with a chin +and a moustachio. But when we got back into the kitchen Mrs. Kerr would +not let go of me. She had brought all her photographs with her so that +she might show them to me: her great genius of a father, her mother, the +brother who had shot himself, and the one who was drowned. ‘And this is +my husband.’ + +“From the cardboard in my hand Mr. Kerr gazed at me circumspectly. + +“‘A handsome man, but a wicked, impossible temper. He left his people in +Ireland because he could not get on with them and bought the castle in +Meran and never wanted to go back. And even now, poor fellow, tries to +keep up appearances--eats nothing in the day but dines at night with an +old friend of his, a Rittmeister, at the station restaurant.’ + +“‘Daddy’s always very spick and span,’ said Zita. + +“‘So he is still about?’ + +“‘Oh yes! He won’t go back to Ireland while his father is alive, and he +loves the Austrians.’ + +“‘Daddy is awfully stupid about learning languages,’ said Zita. ‘He’s +lived here all his life and can hardly speak a word of German.’ + +“‘But of course he can speak German,’ Mrs. Kerr butted in. ‘He always +speaks German with the Rittmeister. I heard him last night.’ + +“‘Mummy, he can’t, to save his life! When he orders three cups of coffee +he holds out three fingers and says: “Zwei.” And in Vienna when he +wanted to show us the Rathaus, he stopped a man in the street and said: +“Please show me the way to the rat house.’” + +“‘He didn’t!’ + +“‘He did!’ + +“‘Still, your father is a fine man and if it hadn’t been for his temper +I should have never divorced him. But he used to throw things at me--a +flower vase, a candelabrum, a great big jug of water. I’d have to hide +in the garden all night. He was so insanely jealous!’ She smiled slyly. +‘Perhaps not without cause.’ + +“‘This, I forgot to show you,’ said Frau König, ‘is the photograph of my +fiancé.’ + +“‘Frau König,’ explained Mrs. Kerr, ‘is engaged to a very charming, +intellectual young man. A Russian student in Paris.’ + +“‘To a youth?’ + +“‘What age is he, Tamara Leonidovna?’ + +“‘Thirty-eight or nine. This is an old photo of him, taken about twenty +years ago on entering Tiflis University.’ + +“‘And what does he do now?’ + +“‘He wants to continue his course at the University in Paris in the +Faculty of Philosophy. Then, eventually, he will start a factory.’ + +“‘What kind of factory?’ + +“‘A knitting factory. We will direct it together. He is now, while +pursuing his course in philosophy at the University, putting aside money +for the factory by giving shorthand lessons in Paris.’ + +“‘A very active and sensible young man,’ commended Mrs. Kerr, ‘and I +congratulate you, Tamara Leonidovna, with all my heart.’ + +“‘Thank you, Vera Pavlovna, I am very proud and happy--’ + +“‘But wait, I haven’t shown you the photograph of our castle,’ +interrupted Mrs. Kerr, ‘our Schloss (she sighed) in Meran.’ + +“‘Oh, a very lovely old castle.’ + +“‘Here all my four children were born. Raymond and Zita upstairs; Eva +and John here in the room next to the terrace. I changed my bedroom so +as to be able to take shelter in the garden.... But when he had calmed +down there was no kinder man than my husband. This was my +drawing-room--with the Japanese furniture. And they came and took +everything, everything....’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Like in _The +Cherry Orchard_....’ + +“‘But why? I do not follow. Your husband is a British subject, isn’t he? +The Italian annexation of Süd Tirol would not affect his property.’ + +“She nodded rapidly and sadly. ‘Debts ...’ she said. ‘How we lived! +Horses and motor-cars. Bouts. We used to give parties which must have +out-rivalled our Grand Duke’s! Spent without counting! My husband--they +are like that in Ireland--utterly unbusinesslike ... irresponsible!... +And now we are punished.’ She looked at Zita pensively. ‘Yes,’ she said, +‘this Revolution has done a great deal of harm and caused untold +suffering to us Russians of the cultured intellectual classes.... But +let us drink to Hope and a new and brighter Dawn!’ + +“We refilled our glasses with cognac, after which all things seemed +possible. ‘To the factory!’ I cried. ‘And here is to the future and an +even finer, greater castle!’ + +“‘I believe in what you say,’ chimed in Mrs. Kerr. ‘We shall be repaid +for our present suffering. Even the Bible says: _And many first shall be +last, and many last first._’” + + + + +II. + +THE YOUNG GIRLS + + +“They came to my pension the day after, Mrs. Kerr, Zita, and John; and +Frau König turned up afterwards and sat there like a silent reproach as +Mrs. Kerr poured out her own woes, while John at once went over to my +typewriter and began fiddling with the keys, and being chased away +opened a box which contained razor-blades. ‘John has been sent into my +life as a punishment and thinks nothing of worrying his poor mummy. But +Raymond is a saint and angel to me. Raymond has my eyes--the large, +sorrowful eyes of the Madonna, you might say, kissing the finger-tips of +her Child.’ + +“They liked the pension and took a room in it. They attracted me chiefly +on Zita’s account. She had a wonderful way about her, as if on the brink +of revealing much. ‘You know,’ she would say. ‘You know--it’s queer +how--how--you know--’ And that sort of thing. And then her face had a +sincere and curiously attractive, open, ‘you know’ sort of look. She was +sixteen, and wonderfully built. Men were after her, all sorts of dingy +barons and counts. I took her out to dances. She seemed indifferent to +her success. But I was devilishly attracted by her. I suppose she had +the most perfect figure I had ever seen, and she danced adorably. Once, +after dinner, when we were alone in the pension dining room and she was +standing warming herself against the great white stove in the corner, +clasping it, her bosom against it, I ventured to press her from behind. +She laughed and called it ‘artificial respiration,’ and I, grateful for +a term, continued to interpret it, so to speak, in new and different +forms, but calling it by the old name whenever she showed signs of +decorous astonishment. And sneering the while at my rival, the young +Count Kolberg. ‘Where have you picked him up?’ + +“‘In a restaurant. He stood by the door. In a tail coat, you know, all +men look alike. Mummy called out: “Waiter!” And he came up and +introduced himself: “Graf Kolberg.’” + +“‘Just like that?’ + +“‘Yes. Clicked his heels: “Graf Kolberg.’” + +“‘Fancy that!’ + +“‘But he is such a ninny. Twenty-eight, and hangs to his mother’s apron +strings. She still holds him by the hand in the street, and each year +makes him a Christmas tree.’ + +“‘Fancy that.’ And I kissed her on the spot where the nape joins the +neck. + +“‘But Mummy likes the old Gräfin who is nosing everywhere to find out +whether I’d be a suitable wife for him, and tries to borrow money from +Mummy thinking all English must be rich; and as she’s always expecting +something, Mummy’s sent her a box of soap. But the old Gräfin took it in +bad part. She thought it was an insinuation. I’m glad. She does look +rather filthy.’ + +“‘She does, darling,’ I said, and kissed her on the brow. + +“‘It’s beastly people thinking one has a lot of money when one hasn’t +any. I want to go to England and take dancing lessons.’ + +“‘Whatever for?’ + +“‘To become a professional dancer. It’s a good thing.’ + +“She was now sitting on a table and performing a sort of Müller exercise +with her legs and trunk, as she spoke. I began to take a tangible +interest in her formation, in the shape of her limbs, softening the +crudity of my curiosity with remarks like: ‘Fancy this,’ or ‘Fancy +that.’ She was in my arms, warm, flexible, enticing. Her lips searched +mine. But we had eaten of some horrible cheese at the close of dinner +and didn’t dare to consummate the kiss. Nevertheless, getting on +splendidly when interrupted by the mother coming in--to talk. Babble! +gabble! blabber! twaddle! twattle! and if you please, about her younger +girl in England, when this one had been in my arms. The mockery of love! + +“‘Zita, go up and bring us Eva’s letter. I should like Ferdinand +Feodorovich (she always got my patronymic wrong) to read it.’ The letter +was to her sister. + +“‘_We tell each other everything in our bedroom which is private. I am +called Grandmother and give advice on all subjects. Kitty is called the +Babe as she has never even believed herself in love. Marion is aged +fifteen and one-half, Kitty fifteen. I am by age the youngest, but in +everything else I am considered the oldest. We had gym this afternoon. +Kitty got a giggling fit and couldn’t stop because Miss Hitchcock’s +tummy made awful noises. Marion’s last remark was “Oh! I’m feeling so +curly in my tummy, excited like. I’m expecting some more letters +to-morrow from Bonzo.” You can guess who Bonzo is, it’s_ HIM _for +Marion._’ + +“And so on in this strain. + +“‘An awful imp,’ was Zita’s comment. ‘What I do, she must do too. What I +have, she must have too.’ + +“‘When they were children,’ Mrs. Kerr explained, ‘Eva always said “Me +too” to everything Zita did--“Me too.” And so we all nicknamed her +“Me-Too.’” + +“‘I’d like to meet her when I go to England,’ I said. + +“‘She’d want to,’ Zita said, ‘if she knows _I_’ve met you.’ + +“‘Well, why not?’ said Mrs. Kerr. ‘I will write to her. Frederick +Konstantinovich (again she got my patronymic wrong), a very charming, +intellectual young man, a friend of ours. I am sure she’ll be very +pleased.’ + +“‘She will!’ said Zita sardonically. + +“When I was in England I wrote to Eva and we engaged in some +correspondence, exchanging photographs, before I was able to go down to +meet her. She could not understand this long delay and wondered what +might be the cause of it; and Marion, it seemed, scrutinised my photo +through a magnifying glass to see if perchance I hadn’t spots on my +face. And Eva wrote to me: + +“‘_Even if you have spots on your face, show yourself._’ + +“We met. She was lovely. Unbelievably so. And she wrote to Marion, who +had gone home for the vacation: + +“‘_He has no spots, is tall, not elegant but clean looking. And says he +loves me five times more than before. Am I not a lucky girl?_’ + +“When I went abroad she continued writing to me, mostly about Marion and +Kitty. ’ ... _Marion, Kitty and I are sleeping together like last term. +I like Marion and Kitty. We have arranged that we are going to have a +house in Canada together as we are afraid we are going to be old maids. +If one of us marries she is going to stay in Canada sometimes. We are +also thinking of becoming missionaries. Marion is too funny. She thinks +she is in love!! but she still thinks she will be an old maid. Marion, +Kitty and I are making rules for a Committee. We are the Members of the +Committee. We have agreed that everything is secret, but that I can tell +you, and Marion can tell her brother. We have to tell each other +everything except our worst sin. It sounds funny, but we are all very +wicked and have each done something we couldn’t tell other people. So we +have agreed that we haven’t got to tell that. You may know mine, but I’m +not shure. There are lots of By-Laws besides. I will give you further +perticulers later. All matters must be discussed in privacy. All members +are equal in_ ALL _affairs. T. C. (password) must only be used on urgent +occasions. Any member wishing to leave the Committee can do so if her +word of honour is given to remain silent consuming all matters discussed +in the aforesaid Committee. If remaining members agree that a certain +Member has broken a rule, that Member must pay a penalty fine of 2d. and +also if a Member has lost her rules. Those are the rules. I think it’s a +very good Committee, don’t you? I’ve been informed by Miss Hitchcock +that I’ve got to go in for Junior Cambridge exam next. I don’t think I +will. I think I should get brain fever, my brain being already weak. +It’s ever so hot to-day--more so than userlay. I had to undo my coat +coming out. In the garden there are lots of snow-drops, crocuses, +primroses, tulips and hyasinths out. I hope you apprechiate this lengthy +episel._--YOUR EVA.’ + +“‘_P.S.--Mummy writes that Count Kolberg is still after Zita, who cannot +bear his soppiness._’ + +“In the winter I was in Innsbruck. They were expecting Eva, who had left +school as they could not afford to pay for her. We all went to meet her. +Even now I can see the long Paris train steaming into Innsbruck +Station, and Eva alighting, rather more the young lady than when I had +last seen her in England. When Zita that evening showed me her albums +with snaps, ‘Me-Too’ insisted on doing the same. Their mother, +encouraged by the thought of the economy effected in sparing Eva’s +future school fees, deemed it well to celebrate the release in terms of +midnight frolics--‘Making a night of it,’ she called it. She got us all +to join some dancing class of a certain Fräulein Stube, and Count +Kolberg came along too, and brought his cousins and friends. Eva danced +with all the counts and barons and smiled into their eyes. And Zita, you +could see, hated that smile. She knew her ‘Me-Too’ inside out. But the +barons adored it; and Zita, who had not cared for Kolberg and the +barons, now that Eva deflected them, grew visibly jealous. ‘I don’t want +to be seen about with this lump!’ (Eva’s legs were ripening fast). ‘I’ll +make her get up and take exercise,’ and like remarks. And she never +called her Eva, but ‘Me-Too,’ with a certain venom of intonation. But +Eva, coy, continued smiling at the barons, who were like flies round +her. + +“New Year’s Eve we spent at the Maria-Theresien Restaurant. A huge brass +band from the public park installed in the dining room---- deafening +music. The room crowded to overflowing. Men prowling about in the hope +of stealing a chair. Some Johnny actually seizing one of ours: ‘May I?’ +I open my mouth to say ‘Indeed not!’ but that moment the band crashes +into martial vehemence--and my words are lost. Mrs. Kerr happy, her lost +château, lost income, debts, all forgotten in the excitement of the +moment, sits near me, praises all and everybody: ‘Ah, that dancing +mistress Fräulein Stube! A charming, intellectual young woman. So nice! +so educated! speaks English like a native!’ Presently I dance with the +said Fräulein Stube and ask her in explicit English: + +“‘What is this dance?’ + +“‘Please?’ says Fräulein Stube. + +“‘What is this dance? A fox-trot?’ + +“‘Please?’ + +“‘Is this a fox-trot?’ + +“‘No, de Schimmey,’ she replies. + +“‘In England we dance differently,’ I say to her after a while. + +“‘Please?’ + +“‘We dance differently in England.’ + +“‘Please?’ + +“In the effort, I stepped on to her toe. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I +stammered. + +“‘Please?’ + +“‘I beg your pardon.’ + +“‘Yes, dis de Schimmey,’ she said. + +“And then again I am in the midst of Mrs. Kerr’s amazing volubility, +praising all and everybody: ‘You dance so gracefully, so elegantly. And +Fräulein Stube, such a really nice and cultured, intellectual woman! So +pleasant, well brought-up, and educated! Knows languages, talks English +like a native.’ Suddenly all rise, holding up mugs of beer. ‘Prosit! +Prosit! Prosit!’ And, indeed, the hand of the big clock points midnight. +The band crashes on for a full two minutes. And stops. Noise and +confusion. Friends and strangers alike are drinking _Bruderschaft_. From +the table next to ours a man rises (he is unshaven, but in a sort of +dinner-jacket suit with a reddish velvet waistcoat) and introduces +himself: ‘Lieutenant-Colonel von Wiesendorf,’ then introduces his +daughter. We rise and introduce ourselves and one another. They drag up +their table to ours, and we are one large party. The Colonel says he can +speak English, his object in hooking himself on to us being either to +show off or to practise our language, which, he says, he picked up in +Africa. + +“‘In the Foreign Legion?’ I ask. + +“‘Pfui Teufel, no!’ he says. ‘Only desperados serve in the Foreign +Legion.’ + +“Evidently a _faux pas_. + +“‘_Bruderschaft!_--Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!’ And the Colonel and myself are +linked in brotherhood and call each other ‘thou.’ Mrs. Kerr and Fräulein +von Wiesendorf drink _Bruderschaft_ and become inseparable. Zita and +Eva, in their turn, drink _Bruderschaft_ with Fräulein von Wiesendorf. +Finally Graf Kolberg with the Colonel. The band now crashes with +unheard-of vehemence. All drink.” + +Here Frank Dickin stopped reading and helped himself to more champagne; +then continued with unction: + +“Fräulein von Wiesendorf, whose great virtue, according to herself, is +that she is very jolly: ‘I’m so jolly!’ she squeals, and kicks her heels +up, becomes a bosom friend of Mrs. Kerr. ‘Ah, Ferdinand Vassilievich,’ +she says (getting me wrong again), ‘you have no idea what a sincere, +cultured, jolly, well-informed and intellectual girl she is! Her father, +in his position of Comptroller of Public Morals, cannot take her out to +all the cabarets and night clubs and she hasn’t even been to the +Austria-Bar or the Odéon! But I will chaperone her and take her +everywhere, and she’s so pleased!’ + +“And together, they drag us to a cellar-restaurant, the barons like +hounds on Eva’s scent--Zita neglected, forgotten. And the Colonel, the +Comptroller of Public Morals, scratches his head, says ‘Na! The New Year +is not all the year, nor New Year’s Day every day,’ and comes along too, +Fräulein von Wiesendorf kicking her heels up with joy. In the +cellar-restaurant the goings-on have been going on five or six nights +running, ever since Christmas Eve. Shaky waiters with small, red, sleepy +eyes. The head waiter--it is the third night he hasn’t closed his +eyes--but propped up with drink, sings along with the band and, as a +special favour, right into my ear, occasionally spluttering on my cheek +and forehead: + + “_Da sprach der Tut-An-Kamen:_ + _‘Tun sich die Leut’ nicht schamen?’_ ...” + +And we eat and we drink and we revel, till the music grows plaintive and +sorrowful, and I dance with Zita, while the band complains: + + “_Wenn ich dich seh,_ + _Da will ich weinen_....” + +And she, poor girl, looked it. Eva had robbed her of all her admirers, +including Count Kolberg. Melancholy music breeds melancholy thoughts. As +we return to the table I overhear Mrs. Kerr complaining to the Colonel: +‘We cultured Russians of the intellectual class have suffered badly in +the Revolution....’ And there she was, pessimistic about life, +pessimistic about the outcome of their lawsuit, no money, no home, +lawyers mostly frauds.... + +“‘Stop that music!’ cries the Comptroller. + +“The music stops. ‘What will you have instead?’ the head waiter and +bandmaster ask readily. + +“‘_O! Katerina!_’ + +“And Mrs. Kerr shuffles along in the clumsy Colonel’s arms to the +ragamuffin beat. + +“‘A very nice, sincere, understanding man, and a deep thinker,’ was her +comment as, bowed out by the band and the waiters, we come out into the +early morning frost. + +“‘Zita, dear, what is the matter with you?’ + +“She did not answer. I walked home beside her, not then aware of what +she thought and felt; but afterwards she told me. Ever since she was a +child she had a sort of psychic complex: she thought that she was mad +and that everybody was hiding it from her. Her old grandfather in +Ireland could not see Zita, who had golden hair, without tears, for her +flaming hair recalled to him her dead grandmother. Whereas Zita thought +that Grandpapa cried because he knew that she was mad. Her stern old +grandfather, who thought nothing of saying to his guests sitting out on +the stairs during a ball, ‘The stairs were made to walk on, not to sit +on. Get up!’ crying at the thought of her affliction! And now she knew +that she was mad, ghastly, desperately mad, and that they were all +hiding it from her. She thought, thought, thought of it, and all to no +purpose. She knew an uncanny lot without thinking; but when she +_thought_ she knew nothing at all. And she decided that she was +uncommonly dull--that was it: mad, mad beyond hope and repair! + +“The sudden cessation of attention on the part of Graf Kolberg and the +barons was due to her madness. Somebody must have blurted it out. +Clearly they shunned her. Going over, in a body, to ‘Me-Too.’ How awful. +This was the end of all things. + +“There are moments when we positively seek humiliation. ‘Me-Too’ had +taken all her partners from her, had left her destitute and lonely. But +she felt, in her extremity, the need to propitiate the victor by an +admission of her helplessness, her complete prostration, put all her +cards before her, make her responsible for her next move, the invading +enemy who must needs assume responsibility for the welfare of the +population in the area he has occupied. Take it, curse you, my last rag +of self-respect and exult in the completeness of your victory! This is +the spirit in which, on reaching home, Zita must have faced her younger +sister. She confessed that she was mad and that she knew that they were +hiding it from her. She stood ashamed, expectant, with head bent, as if +to say, ‘Now there! What can you think of it?’ while ‘Me-Too,’ half +undressed, lay on the bed, and pondered. She pondered a long time over +this doleful piece of news, with insight, a profound and melancholy +understanding. ‘I think,’ she said at last, ‘we are both mad....’ + +“‘You’re _crazy_!’ Zita cried. + +“Suddenly she felt sane, terrifyingly, devastatingly sane.” + + + + +III. + + +“Ha!” said Lord Ottercove. “Was it like that?” + +“I keep pretty close to life where I can,” answered Dickin. + +“Well, go on. What happened to the woman, Mrs. Kerr?” + +“They could not afford to stay on at the pension, and they took a room +and a kitchen in town, for the four of them. But she would not cut out +the dances. + +“‘You know, Frederick Fyodorovich, what I’ll tell you. I am disappointed +in Tamara Leonidovna. As you know, all our things have been confiscated +by the bailiff. Everything, everything! But I managed to smuggle through +a bedroom carpet to a friend of mine at Bozen, and I gave Tamara +Leonidovna 500.000 Kronen, over thirty shillings, to go to Bozen and +bring the carpet. But my friend in Bozen, when she saw her, got +positively frightened of Tamara Leonidovna, who really looks forbidding. +A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, just like a Gipsy. Those lips, those +consuming eyes. She is terribly sensual, you know.’ + +“‘Is she?’ + +“‘You don’t mean to say that you haven’t noticed it?’ + +“‘I haven’t.’ + +“‘Hasn’t she made any advances to you?’ + +“‘No.’ + +“Mrs. Kerr thought for a space. ‘Well, all the more honour to her, then. +Because, you can see by her face and whole figure how hard it is for her +to bridle her passions. The tram-driver, Herr König, won’t have her come +near him now that they’re divorced. He has another woman. And poor +Tamara Leonidovna, who has been used to a married life, doesn’t know +what to do with herself. But she leads, I think, an exemplary life. And +all the more honour to her, I say--but it’s not good, it’s a strain on +her. Well, the lady got such a fright when she saw Tamara Leonidovna +that she would not give the carpet. And Tamara Leonidovna got so scared +of the lady being scared to death of her that when the lady did offer to +give her the carpet Tamara Leonidovna wouldn’t take it. And her German, +as you know, is not up to much. + +“‘“Why didn’t you take the carpet when she offered it, Tamara +Leonidovna?” I cried when she returned on Saturday, empty-handed--just +as I am waving my hair to go to the Hôtel d’Europe ball. Imagine my +position: I hadn’t a Krone left. The last went to pay for the entrance +tickets, for I was counting on Tamara Leonidovna returning with the +bedroom carpet. And my hair already waved. And here she stands and says: +“She wouldn’t give the carpet.” And looks at me like that--uncertainly, +and adds: “Besides, I was afraid of the Customs.” + +“‘“The Customs?” I say. “Then you _did_ have a chance to get the carpet +from her?” + +“‘“I had a chance ...” she says, uncertainly. + +“‘“Then why--why--why (I was so angry that I shook the curling tongs at +her) tell me ... otherwise?” I wanted to say “a lie,” but restrained +myself. + +“‘“Ah, if that’s the way you talk to me, after all my kindness to you, +good-bye to you,” she said, and slammed the door behind her. + +“‘I rushed off to the station restaurant, where my husband always dines +with the Rittmeister. “Charles!” I cried, “that woman has come back +without the carpet! What _am_ I to do now? I am dressed for the ball and +I’ve ordered the table and I’ve no money to pay for the champagne +supper! What _am_ I to do, Charles?’” + +“‘And what did he do?’ + +“‘He cursed me, Fyodor Ferdinandovich. Cursed me, cursed me, cursed +me--oh, _terrible_! He never talks to me now--only curses.’ + +“‘And the Rittmeister?’ + +“‘The Rittmeister laughed.’ + +“The Rittmeister must have laughed very contagiously, for, remembering +how he laughed, Mrs. Kerr began to laugh too, at first quietly, then +louder and louder, till her laughter became riotous. ‘What a life!’ she +sighed, wiping the tears that had come to her eyes from laughing so +heartily. ‘I have ceased to take myself, or my clothes, or my life, or +my fate seriously. I only look and laugh, look in wonder, in +astonishment--and laugh. But, as I tell you, I am disappointed in Tamara +Leonidovna. And what language she uses! Like a cab-driver. I am grateful +to God that my children do not know Russian. And that poor student she +wants to marry!’ + +“‘Why “poor”?’ + +“‘She will consume him. She is fire.’ + +“‘Daddy ought to know her,’ from Zita. + +“‘He knows her.’ + +“‘But closer.’ + +“However, they went to the Hôtel d’Europe ball and there they met +Viscount de Jones, who knew them. And I presume he paid for the +champagne supper.” + +“Look here,” said Lord Ottercove, looking worried, “now you are actually +using real names. Well-known names.” + +Frank smiled. + +“I have kept all the original names deliberately so as to attract your +attention. I knew I would have to change them for publication. But this +is a small matter.” + +Lord Ottercove smiled, then leaned back and laughed. “That was clever of +you! I must confess that but for the names my serial editor might have +easily passed it over.... So de Jones paid, did he?” Lord Ottercove +looked pensive. + +“I presume so.” + +“But actually you know who pays?” + +“Who?” + +Lord Ottercove pointed a forefinger at his own chest. + +Frank Dickin looked at him with dull amazement, but as Lord Ottercove +looked morose, did not press for explanation. “The silly woman rather +advertised her connection with Lord de Jones and told me, as though she +were giving me a hundred pounds, that she was going to introduce me to +the noble lord! I hadn’t the slightest interest to meet him. A pretty +big fool, I imagine, to judge by his tastes in women.” + +“He has married my niece,” said Lord Ottercove. + +“No!... I say, this is rather a brick I’ve let fall.” + +“You mean to say you didn’t know it?” + +“Well--how shall I say?--I did and I didn’t. I thought it would help to +keep up your flagging interest in my serial if I introduced into it +Hidden Hand bits from the back-door life of your relative. Not that I +know much about him. We novelists have to rely largely on our own +imagination. Though I remember now that Lord and Lady de Jones were on +their honeymoon and put up at the Tirolerhof in Innsbruck.” + +“That’s a bigger brick than the first.” + +“I am so sorry.” + +“Not a bit of it. I don’t think you realise that what interests me most +in your serial is not what de Jones does but why he does it. What it is +that attracts him so in Mrs. Kerr. It must be nearly twenty years now +since he first met her, I believe, in Russia. Or was she already +married? And now I realise. You have conveyed her character wonderfully +well. I think it is that extraordinary irresponsibility, +that--that--that something else. It’s there, I feel it, though I can’t +for the moment describe the peculiar fascination. What else can it be? +Is she still so good-looking?” + +“Good-looking, no, but attractive. Her daughters have it from her.” + +“He always goes back to her. It is the second time he is married. My +niece should never have married him. But there is genius in him. He +could have been a second Newton if he had wanted to. As it is he is a +Genius of the Untried. They are all like that, the whole family. I have +a great affection for him. But Eleonor is determined to divorce him. +He’ll be quite penniless unless I find him something to do. But go on. +What happened to the woman?” + +“I lost sight of them soon after that dance, and Frau König told me they +had gone off to Abbazia, while Lord de Jones had returned to England. I +enquired about her own affairs. ‘Everything now depends on the knitting +machine, which is due to arrive in March.’ + +“‘And your fiancé in Paris?’ + +“‘He is saving money for the factory. But imagine!’ she exclaimed, ‘in +his last letter--so pathetic--he writes that the franc, owing to the +political machinations of the Cartel des Gauches, has all gone to pieces +and reduced the potential capital of our knitting factory.’ + +“We spoke of Mrs. Kerr. ‘Your Mrs. Kerr,’ said Tamara Leonidovna, ‘is a +goose. Just a Great Big Goose.... What a fool that woman is! Not a cent +in her pocket, not an idea in her top storey beyond dancing and pleasing +men--at her age! A newly married man, too--just because he is a lord! +Openly, before her daughters! What matter that she is divorced? I, too, +am divorced and six years younger than she is, but I keep myself back.’ +A look of strain came into her face. ‘I don’t let myself go.’ She set +her jaw, clenched her fists. ‘I try to keep myself in check. I have more +pride, more self-respect than ... than.... When he comes back from Paris +then ... then ... then yes.’” + +“Go on,” said Lord Ottercove. + + + + +IV. + +DOGS AND NIGHTINGALES + + +“I saw nothing of them till the spring, when I had a surprise visit from +Mrs. Kerr, looking considerably dilapidated. ‘Ach, Ferdinand +Ferdinandovich, you won’t believe what I have been through in these two +months! If I were a writer like you I would write a novel in the _genre_ +of Dostoevski, so true, and yet incredible, so poignant! I have begun a +diary. I will bring it to you this afternoon. You can make use of it for +your books. + +“‘Lord de Jones lent me some money to go and have a thorough change and +rest, and so Zita, Eva, John and I went to Abbazia. A lovely coast. Blue +sea, sunshine, casino, roulette, _chemin de fer_, baccarat. A real +change and rest for the nerves. All day we gamble, and at night dancing, +flirtations. Both girls passionate gamblers, also John. But luck went +against us and we found we had no more money to go on with. I pawned +some of my things and we lived very comfortably for a time at the Grand +Hotel--dancing, music, sea bathing twice a day and getting to know lots +of very agreeable young men on the beach, and at night moonlight walks +in the wood--in couples: Zita with the Italian boy; Eva with the young +Dane; and I with the Spaniard Rodrigo. Or to the cinema--always in +couples, Rodrigo looking at me with great passionate eyes. Very +delightful and charming. When the money was exhausted, I found a post as +housekeeper in a small pension overlooking the sea--very artistically +situated--and Zita, Eva and John were taken in by a lady friend of +Rodrigo’s, a very nice, quiet, well-read woman. I was busy all day in +the kitchen which gives out into the garden, and the children, looking +so gay and fresh in their white summer things, would be coming to see me +all the time. And I’d say to them, “Go and play in the garden,” and I +would give them things through the window, as the lady friend of +Rodrigo’s could not provide them with food. “There you are, children, +take this and this and this,” and I’d give them cakes, coffee, sugar, +sweets, dainties, pastry, everything, and they’d take it home and eat it +and come back for more. And I’d give them more through the window, all +kinds of preserved meats and provisions: “Here you are, children,” and +they never went short of anything while I was housekeeper there. +But--but would you believe it, Fyodor Frederickovich? The landlady, +seeing me give nourishment to my children, gave me the sack. If it had +been for myself, I understand, but for the children! I have noticed a +strange insensibility in those people, a hardness, a general--how shall +I say?--unfeelingness. No love, no understanding of children. I just +looked at her like that--I could say nothing. I could not have expressed +what was in my heart. A feeling of sorrow, not of anger. And as I took +my things and passed her on the doorstep I just turned my head to her: +“In Russia this could not have been,” and went without a word. + +“‘Outside, in the street, the children around me, I stop and ask: +“All-wise and loving God,” I ask, “why dost Thou punish me so? _Why?_” + +“‘From there I got into the Grand Hotel as “Kaffee-Köchin” and all day +long I had to boil coffee, first for the clients, then for the hotel +staff--all day long boil coffee and nothing but coffee. They gave me a +tiny little room on the roof, overlooking an unfinished church, and at +night dogs would come to sleep in that church and howl hungrily--dogs; +and up in the trees, nightingales. I opened the window. Below in the +square, lilac shrubs in bloom. The scent of lilac. And thoughts, like a +bevy of bees, stung my heart. I remembered our dear Russia when I was a +young girl, my mother a young woman, my father, my two brothers, and how +I felt and how I hoped. It all came back--Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, +Turgenev, Dostoevski--and hot tears streamed down my cheeks. “Dear God,” +I said, “to think what was once! and what is now! Come back, days of +youth, of my innocence, and hot faith in the divinity of Thy Creation, +Thy Love! Vague dreams of my heart, virgin and untouched, of my +unsullied soul, come back, come back!...” The breath of Spring. Dogs, an +unfinished church, you know ... and those nightingales, all the night +through. Dogs and nightingales. + +“‘All day long I boiled coffee. I went by the name of “Frau +Kaffeeköchin,” for I alone in the whole hotel was to boil coffee and I +wasn’t to do anything else. From six in the morning till ten at night I +boiled coffee. But at half past ten I would put on my yellow satin gown +and sit out on the Casino terrace, order a vermouth, light a cigarette, +and never in a thousand years would it occur to anyone that the smart, +elegantly gowned, romantic-looking woman sitting out on the Casino +terrace and looking, you might say, like a Queen of the Steppes, was the +Frau Kaffeeköchin of the Grand Hotel. And one night as I sit there, an +old beggar, sick, filthy, stenchy, all in rags, and barefoot, comes up +to me. “Here, beggar,” I give him a copper, and he holds out his hand +and introduces himself: “Captain of the Imperial Russian Navy, Nobleman +Khan Balalykin.” Yes, Khan Balalykin--a Tartar Prince! And, do you know, +Ferdinand Ferdinandovich, he fell in love with me? What am I to do? +Where I go he follows me. “No,” he says, “I cannot live without you,” +and looks at me with soft, love-lorn eyes. And also calls me “My Queen +of the Steppes.” Or quotes a lyric from Lermontov. Well, we made a night +of it, and spoke of Russia. Next morning I return to the hotel to work; +he after me, right into the kitchen. “Sit down, Captain,” I say, “here +is meat, bread, cheese, butter, beer. Eat and drink, it will do you +good, restore your strength a bit.” He tucked in, oblivious of +everything, poor old man, he looked so starved; but here the head cook, +a huge great man, comes in--a great big animal with a short, thick neck, +just like an ox--horrible!--an obnoxious big bully, the real cave man. +And, would you believe it, Ferdinand Fyodorovich, begins to remonstrate +with Captain Khan Balalykin, who is peacefully tucking in at the table? +But I wasn’t going to be bullied by this ox of a man. “Don’t you dare +shout at me,” I screamed, “I’m not afraid of you. I care that much for +your being head cook. In Russia at one time one used to beat one’s cook +when one wasn’t satisfied with him, and I, the daughter of Pàvel +Yàkovlevich Sabolenko, won’t stand any of your nonsense, I can tell +you!” Well, I thought this would pacify him a little. But no! The ox +shouts and storms more than ever and begins to insult Captain Khan +Balalykin. Well, I wasn’t going to have my guest reviled and insulted. +He may look dirty and all that, which is not surprising in his sphere +as a beggar, but he is a real gentleman of the old school, a captain of +the Russian Navy, graduated with Honours at the Imperial Naval Academy, +and the bully is a common ignorant Austrian cook. I took the big brass +pan with the potatoes and crashed it to the ground: I was so angry. +Well, he begins shouting madder than ever and kicks Captain Khan +Balalykin out of the kitchen and then fetches in the manager and points +at me and the potatoes on the floor and screams: “It’s she!” And the +pair of them begin to scream at me together, though I can scream as loud +as they together. “No--it’s _he!_--_he!_--_he!_” I scream, and go for +both of them with my fists. Insulting a distinguished Russian officer, +an old nobleman, Khan Balalykin, a graduate of the Imperial Naval +Academy: I _was_ so wild! + +“‘Well, do you know, Fyodor Ferdinandovich, the manager being hand in +glove with the head cook, gave me the sack. I pawned my last ruby ring +and we all came back this morning. In Milan we ran across Fräulein von +Wiesendorf, and we all came back together.’ + +“‘And how is she?’ I asked. + +“‘Well, it seems from all the drinking bouts during the _Fasching_ and +the late hours Fräulein von Wiesendorf got the colics and a sort of +nervous breakdown. Her father, who is Comptroller of Public Morals, +alarmed at his daughter’s condition, called in the doctor, who examined +Fräulein von Wiesendorf and found symptoms of the beginnings of +consumption and ordered her _immediately_, without a moment’s loss or +hesitation, at railway speed to Italy. “As fast as the train will carry +you!” he said. Fräulein von Wiesendorf throws a few odd things into a +bag and darts off, helter-skelter, to Italy and arrives, holus-bolus, in +Genoa and as she has no means takes a post as governess to children. +Nine children of assorted ages. She has to teach and feed and wash for +them and take them out for walks, and the children all veritable devils, +real Machiavellis, cruel, mischievous, teasing her, and the parents +exigent and stingy. In a month poor Fräulein von Wiesendorf was worn to +a shadow; a doctor was called in, examined her and--“Back home!” he +said, “at full tilt! As fast as you can fly!” She arrived in hot haste +this morning. To-morrow night we are making a last night of it, and the +day after I am off to Abbazia.’ + +“‘What! again!’ + +“‘To get the ruby ring back from the pawn-shop. I’ve borrowed some money +here on the strength of my caracole coat.’ + +“‘And how are Zita, Eva and John?’ + +“‘The children are so happy. As we had no quarters to go to on arrival +we went and sat in the Hofpark and we’ve chummed up with four Bulgarian +students: two small ones, a thin one, and a big one. The two small ones +have fallen in love with Zita and Eva. the thin one with Fräulein von +Wiesendorf, and the big one with me. I must be off now to look for a +room for the children, and don’t forget to ask them for my diary.’” + + + + +V. + +PALE PRIMROSES THAT DIE UNMARRIED + + +“I met Zita, Eva and John a few days later crossing the +Maria-Theresienstrasse on their way to their sparse meal at the cheap +restaurant under the arch. They were rather short of money, but full of +enthusiasm on account of the Bulgarian students. ‘We spend all our time +with them in the Hofpark,’ they told me. Later I saw them home to their +room--a poor room tucked away behind someone else’s kitchen; one narrow +bed for the two girls and a little sofa for John. ‘And doesn’t your +father bother about you?’ I asked. + +“‘Daddy’s gone back to Ireland.’ + +“We decided, in the absence of the mother, to make a climbing expedition +to the top of the Patscherkofl mountain and arranged to meet at four +o’clock next morning. It was still dark as we set out, clad in the +appropriate mountaineering fashion: alpenstock and rucksack; the girls +in Tyrolese peasant dress: short skirt, tight waist; John and I in blue +coat and leather shorts, and leaving the still somnolent streets of the +town behind us, began the ascent. At Igls we halted and breakfasted, +then continued by the steep side wind through pine woods, as the red sun +rose to meet us. John ran in front and behind, and Zita and Eva walked +sprightly on either side of me, and we spoke of how nice it would be to +make a hut in the pine woods or live in a cave. And to all Zita’s ‘I’s’ +Eva said ‘we.’ By midday we reached Heiligwasser, famed for the +miraculous cure of the sick, and unpacked our rucksacks for lunch; then +continued the winding ascent. The Inn Vale now stretched deep beneath +us. More mountains, like ghost ships on an uncharted sea, loomed into +sight as we climbed the spiral grass-edged path, encountering more +flowers on our way: snow-drops, buttercups, daisies, bluebells, +primulas, violets, while little brooks scurried down head over heels to +announce that Spring was already come. An hour’s distance from our goal, +we spread out our mantles on the green slope of a sheltered warm valley +where daffodils grew in profusion by the side of a brook and stretched +our limbs and dozed rapturously in the sun. + +“Profusion is not a good thing. So I mused, watching the two sisters, +each so exquisite in her own way that at once when you began to focus +your attention on the one, you were diverted from her by the other. They +thus neutralised each other’s charm to a great extent and dissipated +your affection. And lying with them in the sun I watched them lustless, +in benignant peace. How beautiful life could be for a space! + +“Rising, we set out on the last but one stage in our journey, climbing +hills without paths, cutting across pastures where frisky young cows, +turned irresponsible on these heights, jumped over the moon; now +clearing gurgling brooks which still ran hurry-scurry down to the +valleys to tell the glad tidings; now stooping to drink the cool water. +By two we reached the top of the shaggy mountain slope: above loomed the +gleaming naked dead rock of the summit. A separate journey, after an +hour’s repose. + +“At the Gasthaus we drank beer and booked accommodation for the night; +then lay on the edge of a plateau projecting perilously over the void +and looked down at Innsbruck, miniature like on a map, the river Inn +bedded in the soft, green folds of the valley, the parcelled fields, the +dotted villages, the spired churches, all lucent and serene in the +spring sun. Leaving John asleep in the tavern, we climbed the steep +rocky way to the peak, clinging to loose stones and sending them rolling +a mile or two till they rebounded with a heavy earthen thud in the +abyss. No more shrubs or alpine roses; nor a human habitation anywhere. +The last was the Gasthaus, which is now lost to sight. On we climb till, +in the first dusk, we reach the flat rocky mountain-top: there is +nowhere higher to go. The girls frolic and gambol like frisky gazelles: +the air is amazingly light. But I sat away on a rock, struck speechless +by the mighty spectacle. The neighbouring mountain-peaks, all level now +and grandly equal, looked on into the gathering dusk, heavy with a +silent utterance. + +“What is it when, the veil lifted, he beholds how lovely it all was in +the beginning?... + +“But as the rocky summits, like ghostly dreadnaughts anchored in doom’s +waters, closed their eyes in the ensuing gloom, we hastened to retrace +our steps towards the Gasthaus. Zita was in a hurry to get back to John. +The paths diverged to all sides of us. We were afraid lest darkness +should overtake us before we reached the Gasthaus, and, agreeing all on +the necessity for haste, disagreed as to which path we ought to follow. +Zita thought she knew a shorter way to the inn than the one we had come +by, whereat Eva and I doubted, and stuck to the old path, or what we +imagined to be the old path, which led us untowardly down the steep edge +of the mountain, as Zita quickly vanished on the other side. When you +look at a hill from below, it all seems perfectly easy and simple: you +either walk up or else you walk down, according to whether you wish to +find yourself at the top or the bottom. But as you begin to descend you +find that the hill has a trick of breaking into new hills, new valleys, +new precipices, that, having at length reached the foot of your hill, +you are still at the top of another, and rounding it to get into the +valley, you are thwarted by another precipice. Once Zita appeared far +away, it seemed on the edge of a fourth hill; then vanished. We shouted +as loud as our voices would carry; the wind took our words but brought +us none back. Dusk fell upon us rapidly, and stones rolled dangerously +beneath our feet, as we felt our way down the slippery steep rock. Soon +it was too dark to move at all. We sat down on a stony slope, and Eva +cried. I could have done so myself, with the exhaustion and nervous +tension and vexation of it all; but her tears accomplished the trick for +me. We were even too tired to eat. It was fresh in the dark, but not +cold. We thought that Zita was back now and asleep with John at the inn. +We spread our mantels and, sooner than we knew, we slept. + +“In the night there was a storm, and we ran hand in hand down the +slippery stones in search of shelter; and then hid ourselves under a +rock. + +“At dawn we were up, and having eaten of the contents of our rucksacks, +we set afoot in search of the path, keeping together for fear of worse +things. When a moving dot of a figure appeared across the wide gulf that +separated us from another chain of rocks, we shouted and waved, and the +figure waved back. Thinking it must be a man from the Gasthaus, we waved +more and shouted ourselves hoarse. Manœuvring, the figure and we came +nearer; we could dimly hear it shouting to us, presumably explaining the +direction. Then, as it neared, we recognised Zita’s scarf flying in the +wind, and then her voice asking for the way. We began a mad rush to +each other across trackless slopes of naked rock, till, meeting finally +on neutral ground in a small valley, she told us of the fearful night +she spent alone and burst into sobs. With breaks for food, we continued +our search, all keeping together, till the sun sank behind the mountains +and the shadows crept up and, once again, it was night. + +“We slept huddled together, and thought of John alone at the inn. Still, +the Wirt would take care of him, and, compared with us, he was +comfortable. + +“In the course of next day we reconnoitred all round the summit and +found ourselves trapped: very evidently the one pass connecting the rock +with the main body of the hill had fallen away. We were cut off from the +rest of the world, isolated on the naked rock which, like a tooth, +sloped down at an angle we could not hope to descend without being swept +into the precipice by the stones which barely piled on its steep sides +and every now and then rolled off into the abyss. This was, we realised, +what must have happened to the one connecting link by which we had +ascended to the peak of the mountain, now clearly inaccessible except +possibly by air. + +“We began to ration our supplies and wait for relief. Surely the people +at the Gasthaus where John still waited for us would do something? By +the following day we began to doubt whether our provisions could +possibly last out another day. Doubtless the Gasthaus people were +searching for us; but how would they reach us with the pass missing? +Where could they get an aeroplane? Munich was the nearest centre. Or +perhaps John, quicksilver that he was, had left soon after us and the +people at the inn concluded that we had all returned to Innsbruck. + +“The day after was glorious and hot, and towards midday we had cleared +our last supplies. We lay on the ground and felt very still and odd. I +watched Zita lying on her belly, her long legs stretched out and apart. +The sun was beating on us. Luckily there was no lack of water. How long +could one last out on water? And would the rescue come at all? We did +not say it to one another. We seemed to know and feel it that the other +understood. They were young; it was a pity. For it seemed, though the +weather was so beautiful, uncommonly like the end. The spring, and they +so young. And death yawning to claim our bones. Somehow as I lay there +watching them, these lines from Shakespeare swung back into my heart-- + + “‘_Pale primroses,_ + _that die unmarried, ere_ + _they can behold_ + _Bright Phoebus in his strength,_ + _a malady_ + _Most incident to maids...._’ + +At that moment Zita turned a look, molten gold from the sun, upon me. +Why should she? + +“We kissed under the hot rays of the sun, taking the last it had to +offer us before it withdrew its rays to shine on us no more. + +“And then it was that Eva, whom I had forgotten, caught my look and +said: + +“‘Me too.’” + + * * * * * + +Lord Ottercove interrupted the reading with an astonished--“Ha!”, sprang +up with that agility characteristic of him and which testified to his +success, went over to the sideboard and mixed himself some whisky. Frank +must have discerned disapproval in the gurgling notes of the whisky as +it poured down into his lordship’s cavity, for, “Dammit, sir,” he +protested, “the sun, spring, death crouching at you, the end of life in +time, and these pale primroses to die unmarried--” + +“Are you--I don’t quite understand--defending the book or your conduct?” + +“That is--” + +“Yes?” The noble lord now looked like a magistrate. + +“I don’t think this is a fair question.” + +“I agree.--Go on.” + +“Reading?” + +“Of course.” + +“I think I’ve read enough.” + +“My dear fellow, you can’t stop like that. I am dying to know what +happened.” + +“What happened?... Dammit, sir,” Dickin said, “is a fellow to blame for +getting saved?” + +“All saved?” + +“All. They came and found us the day after. A picnic party from +Innsbruck. The pass had not been destroyed as we imagined, and indeed +there were several passes. We’d made a mistake. I am not very clever at +mountaineering, you know. Nor the girls, either. John, as we had +suspected, had slipped down to Innsbruck almost immediately on waking, +thinking we had gone back to town. So all’s well that ends well.” + +“Rather terrible that, what?” said Lord Ottercove. + +“Dammit, sir, I appeal to your idealism. Yawning death. Pale primroses +to die unmarried.... No escape. I tell you we thought we were for ever +lost.” + +“Didn’t you think so too readily?” + +“I deprecate this attempt to abuse the autonomy of a work of +literature.” + +“So it is merely literature?” + +“I don’t think it’s fair to my characters of you to ask.” + +“Read on!” laughed Lord Ottercove. + + + + +VI. + +THE QUEEN OF THE STEPPES + + +“In the autumn I was in Vienna. One day as I returned from a walk the +maid in the _pension_ told me that two ladies were waiting for me in my +room. Who but Mrs. Kerr and Eva! My first thought was: Does the mother +know? But from her ebullient flow I soon perceived that all was well. + +“A long tale. She had come back with the ruby ring and for some time at +all events they lived quite comfortably on the proceeds. When they had +spent their last, ‘I went,’ she said, ‘and threw myself on the charity +of the police authorities, who were very kind and sent the three of us, +John, Eva, and myself, by goods train to Vienna. An English lady had +taken Zita back to England with her as a companion. Arrived in Vienna, I +went straight to the policeman on the platform and said: “Here we +are--destitute, without means. What do you propose to do with us?” It’s +always better to be downright: no good doing things by half. Once +destitute, throw all responsibility on the police. He looked very +worried and said: “Follow me,” and took us to the gendarme, who told us +to wait in the waiting-room. We waited three or four hours. Meanwhile +the first policeman came back, with a confused look and something +clenched in his fist. “I am not a rich man,” he said, opening his fist, +“but please accept that.” I was touched. 30.000 Kronen--almost two +shillings. The gendarme came to invite us into his chief’s office. A +nice grey-haired old gentleman. He had tears in his eyes as he looked at +the children, and was all milk and honey when I related to him of our +Schloss in Meran, now in the hands of the Italians, and said softly: +“_Sic transit gloria mundi!_” + +“‘Anyhow, they took John off my hands. They put him in an orphanage. You +won’t believe how nice it is for him there. Never been so happy before! +Warm and cosy and plenty of boys of his own age to play with. And, do +you know, he heckles them all and fights them. We visited him the next +day, Eva and I. He was at his midday meal. Very good food. But he said, +“Mummy, what is the matter with this meat? It chews and chews and +doesn’t eat up.” Made them all laugh. + +“‘“Me-Too” and I were conveyed to the workhouse. And, fancy, crossing +the Landstrasse-Hauptstrasse, we saw two of the Bulgarian students--the +thin one and one of the small ones. Eva shouted to them across the +street, but they couldn’t hear. The workhouse--not too bad, only no +privacy. A huge barrack-like room and lots of low, fallen women who use +dreadful language. I don’t like it on Eva’s account. Yesterday, when +“Me-Too” came in and left the door open, there was such a volley of +abuse from an old hag that I shut my ears so as not to hear. But Eva +said never a word, only looked at her like that. You could see the race +in her. + +“‘We found out your address through police records--they are really so +well organised in this town--and, well, we’ve come to see you and to ask +if you won’t take us out to some dance or other to-night. We are so +tired of the regulation workhouse meals. I still have my smart yellow +satin gown in which Khan Balalykin admired me so much and thought I +looked like a Queen of the Steppes. And “Me-Too” still has her orange +crepe-de-Chine gown. She hid it in her purse--it folds ever so +small--when the bailiffs came into our Schloss in Meran and took +everything away from us.’ + +“I expressed my willingness, my pleasure. I asked her tactfully if I +could not lend her a little money. She took the note with charming +simplicity, ‘on condition,’ she said, ‘that you will let me pay it back +later--when things mend up in Russia.’ + +“At the cabaret, the ‘Nachtlokal,’ which she had selected as being the +most elegant according to her husband when in the affluent old days he +used to take her to Vienna for the season, she nevertheless complained +of the general inferiority and paucity of Vienna night life as compared +with that of Petrograd or Moscow, and that brought her back again to +Russia. ‘Ach, Russia!... We upper classes in Russia have been thrown in +the dirt and trampled on with the muddy feet of the coarse proletariat.’ +It would have been heartless for me to remind her of the complete +independence of her personal misfortunes of the fate of Russia, +heartless and uncalled for, ‘But we will go back and find, I truly +expect and believe, our reward in riches and pleasures as yet undreamt +of, and then when you come and visit us there, Fyodor Ferdinandovich, we +shall have such a binge together as will outshine anything previously +known in that line.’ + +“‘Of course we will,’ I said tenderly, laying my hand on her own. + +“‘_I believe in it!_’ she cried, ‘hotly and passionately! In the face of +all the calamities and disasters falling upon me, it shall not be said +that I have lost faith!’ She looked passionately at the orchestra. + +“I filled her champagne glass. The band played doleful music. She +touched my arm. ‘But I do not regret these experiences. The kind hearts, +the interesting people one comes to meet. That policeman. The +grey-haired Colonel’s tears.’ Her eyes filled; and, indeed, she looked +at that moment like ‘the Madonna kissing the finger-tips of her Child.’ +‘And, you know, even the workhouse women. That old hag who shouted so at +“Me-Too”--well, I’ve chummed up with her. Not a bad woman at heart. She +has had a hard life. A great beauty. An early seduction....’ + +“She sighed. ‘We have no luck. Imagine, my mother has managed to get out +of Russia at last and even smuggle through some jewelry, so Eva and I +both wrote to her to be quick and send us some money till the +authorities can find us situations. But she is in Monte Carlo, gambling +heavily, it seems, and writes back: “I can’t. I am bust.’” + +“Eva, while her mother talked to me, flirted with me over her mother’s +head. ‘Come and talk to me,’ her look seemed to say. + +“It was cruel after the dance-supper to take them back in a taxi to the +workhouse. But what could I do? I was, after paying for the supper, +stony broke myself. I could not have arranged to keep them at an hotel +indefinitely, and the authorities who were charged with finding work for +them would have discontinued their efforts on their leaving the +workhouse. + +“A week later, she came in to me, jubilant. They had both got positions, +Eva as nurse to small children, Mrs. Kerr as housekeeper to a solitary +Austrian colonel. ‘An intellectual, original man. We read Dostoevski +together and I am keeping a journal which eventually I hope to develop +into a novel. We are both of us so happy, Ferdinand Fyodorovich--’ + +“‘Fomitch,’ I corrected. ‘My father was called Tom--Foma, in Russian.’ + +“‘ ...Ferdinand Fomitch, that we want you to take us out this evening, +make a night of it. The other night “Me-Too” and I went out to a night +club together, to celebrate our release from the workhouse and our good +fortune in getting situations so soon, and we struck up an acquaintance +with two Russian gentlemen: Ivan Andrèiech Zshikov, and the other: +Fyodor Yàkovlevich Suhomlinski. Suhomlinski fell in love at first sight +with “Me-Too”; and Zshikov with me. Zshikov has long almond eyes and +looks like that into mine all the time. Jokes, little flirtations. Very +delightful and charming. From there we went together to another cabaret. +In the street some other unknown men fell into step with us, and we all +went along together to an underground tavern--like the one in Innsbruck, +only larger and gayer. And all the men in love--either with Eva or me. +All Russians in exile, huddled together, helping one another to bear up. +Very charming and touching. The Hussar Kòlenka Shavèlenkov; Olèg +Aleksèiech Pevtsòff, disappointed in love and seeking a meaning in life; +and Captain of Lancers, Rotmister von Bologovski. Yes, calls himself +“von”--“von Bologovski.” All intellectual, original people. We revel +till three in the morning, and, do you know, when Eva had to go back to +her charges the mistress made quite a scene, in spite of “Me-Too” +explaining to her that she had been out with her mother; and nearly +dismissed her. It was her first day there, you see. But I slipped in +noiselessly with my latch key; my old Diogenes of a colonel was still +snoring, and there are no servants. He leaves early and does not come +back till six. So I give little parties when he is away. I try to make a +kind of Russian intellectual centre, to attract interesting, original +people, a sort of nucleus of the Russian Colony in Vienna. A large +dining room. I give them tea with lemon. They feel very pleased. All +interesting, well-read people of unconventional views. Zshikov came, and +Suhomlinski (to see Eva, who slips in with her elder charges when she +can), and also Kòlenka Shavèlenkov, and Olèg Aleksèiech Pevtsòff, the +disappointed, and the Lancer Rotmister von Bologovski; all came, drank +tea and smoked and argued, very sincerely and passionately, about +politics and art. I was very pleased on Eva’s account. Very beneficial +and instructive for her. I was sorry Zita wasn’t there. But she writes +this morning that she has left the English lady and has taken a post as +professional dancing partner at a dancing place in Hammersmith. She is +very pleased, for the lady she was companion to she says was a stuffy +old thing.’” + + + + +VII. + + +“Well, I went to one or two of her intellectual tea parties, and once I +just missed Lord de Jones by a hair’s breadth: he had left a minute or +so before my arrival.” + +“De Jones! You don’t say so!” exclaimed Lord Ottercove. “Ha!” And he +shook his head. + +“And how,” he asked after a pause, pulling out his watch and looking at +it with mild alarm, “do you finish your serial? Does your hero marry +both sisters and serve his time for bigamy?” + +“No. I will read it to you.” + +“Don’t: it suffices that I have your word for it. Shall _I_ tell you +what becomes of your characters?” + +“Do.” + +“Shall I tell you where they are?” + +“Where?” + +“Here. In London.” + +“I know.” + +“But do you know who got them to come over?” + +“I can guess.” + +“You’re good at guessing, are you? And can you guess why he got them +over?” + +“I think I have shown through the pages of my serial that I am not +insensible to his interest in the mother.” + +“Or in the daughter.” + +“In the daughter!?” + +“The younger daughter.” + +“Eva? Great heavens!” + +“I am happy,” said Lord Ottercove, “to be able to introduce into your +serial this little touch of suspense. Indeed, if there is an element +lacking in your story it is this element of suspense. Between you and +me, it is an element entirely unimportant and one which, I have always +found, interferes with the peaceful enjoyment of a story as it tells +itself through the growth and actions of the characters. But it is, +nevertheless, an element upon which serial editors insist as a matter of +tradition. But I am going to change all that. I am, perhaps you have +noticed, changing the tradition of journalism in this country.” + +“For the better,” said Frank. + +“What?” + +“For the better,” said Frank. + +“Now I like your story. I think it is a corking tale. I accept it for my +newspapers, and what is more I will pay for it. Now what do you want for +it?” + +Frank hesitated only a moment. Better men than he owed their fortune to +a bold word put in in the proper accent at the proper moment. Big men +act bigly, so that their gestures may go down to history. And what did +Shakespeare say? “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at +the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is +bound in shallows and in miseries.” + +He closed his eyes. “£10,000,” he said. + +Now, despite the opening given him, Lord Ottercove did not avail himself +of the immortal gesture. Or, perhaps he couldn’t recognise a tide in the +affairs of another man. + +“Ha!” he said, and leaned back. “If I--if I gave you--gave you--” (The +sum seemed to stick in his throat), “gave you £10,000, my staff would +think I’d gone right off my chump; and I should have, of course.” + +He took up the receiver and said: “I want Mr. Wilson.” And turning back +to the visitor: “I can’t do these things over the head of my serial +editor. I can’t do these things over the heads of my editors,” he +repeated; and again: “I can’t do these things--“, to fill the interval +of time it took Mr. Wilson to reach the office. And now Mr. Wilson, with +eyes and crown discreetly lustrous, was shown in by the page. + +“This, Mr. Wilson, is Mr. Dickin from whom I want to buy a serial. I +asked him to name a price, and he said £10,000, which is, of course, +preposterous.” + +Mr. Wilson inclined his head a little, thus discreetly suggesting that +it was preposterous. + +“Mr. Dickin,” continued Lord Ottercove, “is not acquainted with the +prices of serials paid by newspapers. Obviously so, to judge by the +figure he named. What do you think we ought to pay him?” + +“Well--” said Mr. Wilson. The situation was one warranting discretion. +“The prices vary.” It was not wise to say more. + +Lord Ottercove looked sad and troubled at having to be so. + +“According to the serial and the author,” Mr. Wilson added. + +“I suppose,” Lord Ottercove said doubtfully, “you are a fairly good +author?” + +“I suppose so,” Frank said gloomily. + +“Has Vernon Sprott read any of your novels?” Vernon Sprott was the +foreman of British fiction, proud of purse and dexterous with the pen. + +“I don’t know.” + +“We’ll ask him.--Give me Vernon Sprott--Vernon, old boy, how are you?” +Frank had a feeling that he was at the centre of all things, in the very +signal box from which all the wires were pulled and the signals flashed +the wide world over. “Vernon, I say, have you read any of Frank Dickin’s +novels? You have? Well, what do you think of them? What? They’re all +right? Vernon, good evening to you!” He put down the receiver. “He says +they’re all right.” + +“That’s good.” + +“Well--” said Lord Ottercove, still far from making history. But the +next moment, as a cat is reputed nearly always to fall on its feet, he +slipped into history. “Are you,” he said, “at all ready to leave it all +to me?” + +“To no one more!” Dickin said passionately, feeling that he was now +treading a pivot on which fortunes turn, and henceforward fly round, +multiplying incessantly. + +“I’ll tell you what I will do for you. I’ll let you draw on my account.” + +“On your account?” + +“Yuh!” + +“To--to what extent?” + +“Without limit.” + +“But how do you mean?” + +“As much as you need.” + +Frank, flushed, his scalp tingling, punctuated the air with words of +embarrassed and bewildered gratitude. “ ... incredible ... +incomprehensible....” + +Lord Ottercove, as in an alternating duet, kept up with: “Not a bit.... +I like doing it....” + +“I cannot believe it....” + +“My dear fellow, it’s a pleasure to me....” + +“I’m staggered....” + +“It shall be done!...” + +“Speechless.... It’s a dream....” + +“Which is your bank?” + +“Barclays.” + +He took up the receiver. “I want Mrs. Hannibal.” + +Mrs. Hannibal was Lord Ottercove’s Secretary-in-Chief. This was, as she +entered, already apparent from her general demeanour, from her outward +calm and ease and the smiles and little graces she was able to bestow on +visitors: that somewhat frozen smile of a lion trainer who, while +smiling thus his careless smile at the fascinated audience, is yet, you +notice by a certain pink light in the corner of his eye, not unaware of +the gravity of the task in hand, of the fearful perils of the open cage +with the unaccountable big lion. + +“Mrs. Hannibal, will you arrange for Mr. Dickin to draw on my account at +Barclays Bank to an unlimited extent, till further notice.” + +Mrs. Hannibal had trained herself never to look astonished. “Yes,” she +said, making a shorthand note of it in her book, and vanished with ease +to complete it in practice. At that moment another visitor--a strange +man in large ungainly boots--was ushered into the vast gay room. + +“Hullo, Chris!” Lord Ottercove exclaimed. + +“How are you, Rex?” + +“Oh--bored to hell. Mr. Dickin has just been reading me his serial.” And +without any further introduction, he rose and took the visitor across to +the large blue sofa at the far end of the room, and both men sat down +and engaged in a silent conversation in which the movements of their +lips alone were perceptible (as so often happens on the stage). After a +while they rose and sauntered towards Frank. + +“Have you, Mr. Dickin, ever heard of a man who can grow two blades of +grass for every one? You haven’t? Well, Lord de Jones is the man to do +it, and, moreover, I am the man to get him to do it.--You know Mr. +Dickin, Chris?” + +“No,” said Lord de Jones, holding out a bony hand. “How do you do?” + +“But he knows _you_, Chris. He’s put you into his blooming book!” + +Lord de Jones smiled, revealing a row of shark-like teeth. There was +something, Frank felt, uncanny and incalculable about him. Lord de Jones +could be most suitably described as “a strange man.” + +“Lord de Jones,” explained the host, “is a religious scientist. He +belongs to the Adventist sect. His argument, if you make bold to +disagree with him, is that any one unwilling to be converted to his +faith is prevented from doing so by the Devil.” + +“I believe,” said Lord de Jones earnestly, “that the world is +approaching its prophesied end--” + +“Creaking under the burden of his abominations,” laughed his wife’s +uncle. + +“It may be for that reason,” rejoined Lord de Jones, “that I have been +chosen as His instrument to bring about an end.” + +“It may be. But before you are instrumental in so doing you will be good +enough to carry out your plan of increasing the crop-growing capacity +and general fecundity of this lazy mother earth by closing all the +craters in the world.” + +“Oh?” said Dickin. “Is that a fact? I mean is it a fact that the closing +of craters would inevitably have that effect?” + +“Yuh,” said Lord Ottercove. + +“Are you sure it’s good science?” + +“It’s good politics, anyway. The only thing to give old Joe a leg up. +The Liberal Party has no platform. Never had one since the Great War. +But this crop-increasing stunt will appeal to all sections of the +community, and will be the saving of the party. It appeals to me on two +grounds. It’s sound economics--at least on the face of it; it’s got a +Liberal smack about it: ‘International Good Will. Live and Let Live. +Bread for the People.’ Why, it will simply swing him back into the +saddle!--But you will exercise discretion, won’t you?” he turned to +Frank. “I hope you don’t transcribe everything into your books, do you?” + +“Everything,” said Frank. + +For a while the three of them sat silent round the octangular table. +Lord Ottercove looked kind and a little fatigued; Lord de Jones silent +and pensive. Frank looked at the great newspaper proprietor, who was +obviously tired but still genial and kind, and his heart swelled with +gratitude and a love for Ottercove and the world that he graced and +illumined. “I think,” he said, “I am really taking up too much of your +time.” + +“Not at all. Do stay. And will you dine with me on Friday night at half +past eight at my house?” + +The intimate warmth of the great room, the political confidences +exchanged in his presence, all this filled Frank Dickin with a sense of +loyal elation. At last he rose. + +“I hope to see you several times before Friday,” said Lord Ottercove, +rising and proffering a strong, sensitive hand. “Don’t forget to give +your address to my secretary, and come and see me any time you like. +Good-bye to you. And mind the step.” + +On the landing, Mrs. Hannibal caught him and gave him a special cheque +book. “This will be all right,” she said. “I have advised them.” + +In the glass in the lift he saw red patches on his cheeks. He thought +that unless he steadied his thoughts he might have a stroke. His heart +ebbed and swelled and he walked unsteadily on his feet past the braided +commissionaire into the lighted street. + + + + +VIII. + +EVA + + +Eva did not reproach him for his inordinately long absence. And the +taxi-driver, whatever he may have looked like before, now looked +resigned, as if hoping for the best. “I stopped him ticking after a +time,” she said, “and I told him you would pay him well. So he looked +quite pleased and stopped ticking.” + +“I know it was a long time. It must have seemed a terribly long time.” + +“Oh, it seemed ages and ages and ages! I thought perhaps you had had a +stroke or that Lord Ottercove had strangled you. And then I simply +ceased worrying and fell asleep.” + +“And the taxi-driver?” + +“He fell asleep too. I told him it would be all right.” + +“And yet,” said Frank, looking at his watch, “I haven’t been away three +hours!” + +“And I dreamt that it was a big mystery case, and that they dragged out +your body and hanged Lord Ottercove for instigating the affair and--” + +“I’ve been reading my book to him.” + +“Your book?” + +“About you, darling.” + +“Oh, darling!” + +As the taxi-driver, who had by now outgrown the faculty of astonishment, +asked for a clue, they directed him, provisionally, to Piccadilly +Circus. Alone, Eva at once pressed herself to his side and brought her +mouth to his for kissing, before he was really ready for it; for he had +drunk too much champagne and had read aloud so long and now was +hiccupping all the time. + +“Stop hiccupping,” she said. + +For him the day was too rich in new impressions to allow him to savour +his happiness. That morning, after a long absence, he had come back from +Paris. The Calais boat sidling to the Dover pier. British porters, big, +sturdy ruffians, elbowing, like a football team, by the gang-plank; +suddenly charging the decks, making away with your boxes and bags. Then +the bright shining boat-train gliding away and racing along through the +dim countryside, London-ward, without stop. Victoria at last. The vast +hideous metropolis blinking through the milky mist. And Eva’s letter in +his pocket-book: + + “_Darling Blue Eyes.--So sorry you are ill. And here I’m waiting + for you all alone in London Town._” + +He had not understood the secret pleading of these words, till, +following up the girl’s address to a dingy lodging-house off the Edgware +Road, the landlady related to him how Eva, waiting for him, had held +out three weeks, but that her sister Zita tracked her up through the +police and took her home with her where, ever since, she was kept under +surveillance but was allowed to take the terrier out for daily exercise +in the adjoining Park. Eva, said the landlady, was a nice girl; owed +rent, but all the time while waiting for him at the lodging-house sat +piously at home, retired early to her bed to read a novel and eat +chocolates. + +She had waited, perilously, for him all these weeks, running up a debt, +while he idled away in Paris on the pretext of sickness and postponed +indefinitely his arrival! She had no money; but had not reproached him, +had only written: “Come as soon as you are better. Perhaps it’s selfish +of me to ask you to get better quickly. But I am _waiting_ for you, +Ferdinand,” etc. His name was Frank, but she did not like the plainness +of it, and so called him Ferdinand. The landlady, who told him she had +in her day eloped romantically and married secretly and very, very +happily, exhorted him to be the knight-errant who should, like her own +late husband, free his Eva from her intolerable captivity; while he +rather wished she would mind her own business and let him do as he saw +fit. And then, having pursued all the terriers in Hyde Park in vain, and +equally so in Kensington Gardens, he had halted for a moment by +Whiteley’s window in Queen’s Road and somebody sidled up to him, and +before he turned to look he could feel the warmth of her delighted +gaze. “Eva! And I had lost all hope of ever finding you!” + +They lunched together hurriedly and then took a taxi to his appointed +interview with Ottercove. + +“‘Me-Too’ Darling! And how did Zita find you?” + +“Through Scotland Yard.” + +“And she came and took you away, did she?” + +“Yes, she broke in and cried, ‘You’ve got a man here!’ and began opening +all the cupboards and looking under the bed. But I was alone, in bed, +reading a novel and eating chocolates and waiting.” + +“Waiting?” + +“For you, darling.” + +“Oh, darling! And who paid?” + +“She paid.” + +“Rather generous of her.” + +“But she took it all out of my saving’s bank at the post office.” + +“Oh! how mean! how cruel!” + +“And she took me home with her and locked me up, and got Mr. Pilling to +lecture to me on morals.” + +“But what is Mr. Pilling to you!” + +“He is our guardian, while Mummy is away in Ireland.” + +“He has guarded you well,” Frank said, not without bitterness. “What +about Zita?” + +“He’s taken a fancy to Zita long ago at the Arcadia Ball Rooms, where +he’s a professional with her.” + +“He has, has he? A fine guardian and no mistake! What is their +relation?” + +“What do you mean?” + +“You know quite well what I mean.” He looked bluntly into her eyes. “Yes +...?” + +“Yes,” she nodded. + +“And so he’s taken you both under his wing?” + +“Yes. And Mr. Pilling said I was not to go out except to take the +terrier out for exercise. And I took him every morning out into the Park +and wandered all over Kensington Gardens, hoping I might come across you +suddenly.” + +“And you did!” + +“And I did!” + +“Darling Eva!” He pressed her to his side. + +The taxi-cab had reached the bottom of the Strand and was rounding +Nelson’s Column into Pall Mall. “I must think of a hotel,” he said. “I +daresay I will find a room at the Madrid Palace.” + +“No, no,” she said, “that is not a smart hotel. Mr. Pilling will say it +isn’t smart.” + +“Hang Mr. Pilling! Besides, why can’t you tell him I am staying at the +Ritz?” + +She thought a while. “I didn’t think of it. Yes, I will tell him you are +staying at the Ritz.” + +He gave directions to the driver; ran up the steps into the hotel, +ordered a room, and came back to her. “Darling, what do you want to do +now?” + +“Let us get out, darling, and walk and think. I am so tired of living in +this taxi.” + +He dismissed the man, after paying the full penalty of his caprice, and +they walked on into Piccadilly and inadvertently turned into New Bond +Street. “What do you want to do?” he asked again. “You are surely not +going back to your sister’s to-night, are you?” + +“No, no, I am not!” + +Her reassurance weakened his resolve. “But if she searches for you; if +she goes to Scotland Yard?” he asked uneasily. + +“I don’t care, darling. I want to be with you.” + +“We’ll dine.” + +“Yes, and after dinner go to a dance.” + +“All right,” he said, unenthusiastically. “What your mother used to call +‘making a night of it.’” + +“Mummy writes that she is very dull in Ireland.” + +“What is she doing there?” + +“She’s gone to visit daddy’s people to see what they can do for us. I’d +like,” she added, “to go to the Kiss-Lick Club.... It isn’t really +expensive.” + +“No. All right.” + +“But I--” + +“But you--?” + +“But I haven’t a gown. The old Meran orange crêpe-de-Chine one is an old +rag now.” + +“We’ll get one.” + +“But, darling, are you rich enough?” + +“Just enough,” he said, not wishing to encourage her in her +extravagance. + +Now she was already standing at a shop window, trying to decide between +two equally attractive gowns. But as they went in, the choice, and with +it the difficulty of selection, and the perils of subsequent remorse, +increased alarmingly. Seated, like a royal pair, in luxurious armchairs, +the mannequins parading with studied step before them, they displayed, +in return for the united efforts of the selling staff, an increasingly +dispersed appreciation. From time to time, Eva disappeared behind a +screen to emerge from it as an exhibit, to the venal praises of the +saleswoman, who, anxious to bring matters to a head, gradually narrowed +down the field of selection to two expensive gowns. + +“I really can’t make up my mind which I should take.” + +“Take both,” he said. + +The saleswoman looked up at him as though she thought he was a fine +young gentleman, and he felt pleased to have risen in her estimation. + +“But are you sure--?” + +“I think I can just do it.” Lucky to have cleared his entire bank +balance that morning! To-morrow he would draw a cheque on Ottercove. It +seemed scarcely credible. The affair smacked of the fairy godfather type +of Christmas tale in an all-fiction magazine for juveniles. Yet +Ottercove, his cheque book, and his bank balance were presumably +realities. In the midst of life we’re in a dream, he mused, as they were +bowed out into the street, when, a few paces off, Eva suddenly +remembered that she had no shoes to match the gowns, and he took her to +the nearest shop where she selected competently, while asking him, “Are +you quite sure--?” the best the shop could offer. + +“I think I’ll manage,” he replied, more by way of secret loyalty to +Ottercove, who, he recalled, had said, “As much as _you_ need,” not “as +much as your women folk may feel they need,” which was not the same. + +The shops were just closing; but, of his own accord, he suggested that +she indulge in lingerie, and here, despite the closing hour, Eva’s fancy +ran adrift, while his new-born tenderness for her prevented him from +curbing her desires. So long as he had money enough to last out till the +morning, what did it matter? + +But he did not himself indulge in any purchases that evening, as an +ascetic act of abstinence before the pure image of the kindly Ottercove +which, like an ikon illumined by a candle, always shone before him. +Nevertheless the devil tempted him from time to time. Suppose, he +thought, Lord Ottercove had gone mad. It was not impossible. He could +then gradually appropriate all his property. Till the executors stopped +him. If so, was that not a cause for hurry? And Eva’s impulse was right? +But it would never do to tell her. Not even if Lord Ottercove was mad. + +He whispered in her ear as they pushed through the revolving door into +the hall of the hotel, and she signed her name--with a, to unsuspecting +eyes surely imperceptible, hesitation--“Nancy Dickin.” As they ascended +in the lift, he was tendering excuses: + +“It’s a poor room, you know.” + +“Is,” she asked, “my room as poor as yours?” + +“It’s the same,” he said. + +Forgetting to kiss him, she immediately began to inspect her purchases, +till he suggested it was time she put them on. + +“It’s cold,” she twitched her shoulders. + +“There’s a gas fire.” + +“Yes, yes. Darling, ring the bell for me.” + +And to the maid, in a commanding, knowing way: + +“Put on the gas fire at eleven o’clock so it should be warm when we +return. My husband likes it warm.” + +“Yes, ma’am.” + +At the Kiss-Lick she beamed all the time. While they danced she talked +to him of himself. “Pilling said ... Zita said ... I said to Pilling: +‘Mr. Dickin doesn’t care a rap for your opinions! He wouldn’t look at +you--’” Or, suddenly, without preliminary introduction, she would +volunteer such isolated bits of information as: “He hurt me with my +teeth. I cried.” + +“Who? Pilling?” + +“No, the dentist. And the man in the Tube thought I was a little Russian +girl because I had a grey fur cap and was reading the translation of a +Russian novel.” + +Eva, he noticed, was very observant and ironic about Mr. Pilling. “He +tries to speak French to Zita, because he thinks it’s grand. Pilling +thinks she has influence.” + +“With whom?” + +“With Lord Ottercove. Through Lord de Jones, you know, who is Mummy’s +friend. He is very funny.” + +“Who? Pilling?” + +“No, Lord de Jones. He goes about muttering funny things to me about +wanting to blow up the earth. I think he is not quite all there. But +Pilling would like Lord Ottercove to finance him.” + +“Whom? Lord de Jones?” + +“No, Pilling. He’d like to open out on his own. A dancing place, a night +club like this one. Only he says he wants Lord Ottercove or somebody to +finance him, because it will cost a lot of money. Pilling is very high +class. He has bought a cottage at Marlow and called it ‘Villa +Esperanza.’” + +“Full of hope, evidently!” + +“And he makes up to a man there because he is a member of the motor-boat +club, and Pilling can’t be a member of the motor-boat club because he +has no motor-boat. And he says he only needs Lord Ottercove to finance +him to buy himself a motor-boat. That is why I wanted to meet Lord +Ottercove this afternoon; and you wouldn’t let me.” + +“You wanted to speak to Lord Ottercove to--to--” he stammered with +incredulity. + +“To ask him if he’d like to finance Pilling.” + +“But why?” + +“I thought it would please Pilling.” + +While they supped, her legs touched his and he had but one thought and +one desire: to return with her to the hotel, to grasp her, clutch her, +smother and devour her just as she was now with her wistful violet eyes +and her thoughts of Pilling. She sipped her champagne. She was silent, +completely content. Her large eyes were bright dewy flowers. + +Ensconced in a taxi, she at once fell over him and brought her mouth to +his for kissing. But kissing, by this time, was nothing new to him. He +wanted to explore new avenues, new vistas of experience. + +Then they were back, alone. He clutched her in his arms. “Come, come, +come,” he pleaded. She had quickly slipped into bed before he returned +to the room and looked at him doubtfully. + +“Ah!” he cried in the accents of the primitive man and leaping to her +side. + +But she had turned her back to him. “Darling....” she murmured. + +“What?” he cried. + +“Yes,” she said, “it isn’t always easy to be a woman, darling.” + +He looked at her blankly. “Where is my revolver?” + +“Your revolver?” + +“Or I shall go out and hang myself--” + +“What do you mean?” + +“On the nearest lamp-post.” + +After pacing the room up and down for a space, he lay down. But he could +not sleep. At last he dressed and, to the astonishment of the night +porter, went out and, incurring the suspicion of a lone policeman, +loitered in empty Piccadilly Circus. He had calmed down and his thoughts +turned back to his miraculous acquaintance with Lord Ottercove and his +unlimited offer of money, so unusually generous that he could hardly +force himself to take advantage of it. He would rather assassinate his +old grandmother for the meagre contents of her purse than overdraw Lord +Ottercove’s account. Wandering aimlessly about the quiet streets, +tears dimmed his eyes as he reflected on the essential goodness +of human nature. His look was moist, peculiarly naïve, and if a +confidence-trickster had that moment come up to him, he would have been +inclined to accept his offer, convinced that he would and could not harm +him. + +Eva was not asleep when he came back. Where had he seen it? Ah, she +reminded him of that picture of a kitten tucked away in a big bed, with +one paw over the quilt, one eye closed, the other open and looking at +the world. In the dark they talked across the bedside table which +separated their two beds, and she told him of all that had happened to +her since he saw her last in Vienna. “Lord de Jones got Mummy to put me +into a Secretarial College as he said he would need a secretary to go on +his mission with him round the world to close all the craters and Mount +Vesuvius and such for which Lord Ottercove is financing him for +propaganda and such like purposes and that he could see from the colour +of my eyes that he could trust me. Mummy wants to go with Lord de Jones +on his mission all round the world because she says she hasn’t been +round the world and would like to see it as his private secretary, but +Lord de Jones says he’d rather I went with him, much rather than Mummy. +And so he put me into this Secretarial College to learn shorthand and +typewriting, and the Principal was making up to him, because he was +Viscount de Jones, and used to write silly letters to him trying to +flatter him because he thought Lord de Jones would appreciate deep +thoughts. And so he wrote to Lord de Jones to congratulate him on the +nobility of his scientific thoughts and researches and said: ‘Your +philosophical mind, I am sure, will appreciate what a small fraction +time is of eternity.’” + +“And Lord de Jones?” + +“He simply laughed, and I told the Principal what a fool Lord de Jones +thought him. But he was making up to me.” + +“Who? The Principal? Or Lord de Jones?” + +“The Principal. And Lord de Jones, too. But I don’t mind Lord de Jones +because he is an old friend of Mummy’s. But the Principal was a real +rotter. He had a sort of conservatory behind his study where he used to +receive visitors, and there was a palm tree there and an aquarium with +goldfish, and he said to me when I said I was leaving him because he was +a fool, ‘We had better kiss and be friends,’ and he tried to kiss me +there among the goldfish.” + +“No!” + +“He did! And he used to pay his teaching staff at the end of the week in +silver money. Three or four half-crowns, not more. They all stood +huddled together at the end of the room and he’d recline in his chair at +the desk and call out: ‘Jones!’ ‘Ferguson!’ ‘Gould!’ (Never ‘Mrs. +Ferguson,’ or ‘Miss Gould!’) ‘Here!’ and give them three or four +half-crowns each. And the typewriting mistress, Miss Gould, only got two +half-crowns and a shilling.” + +“And they seemed pleased?” + +“No, not pleased, but kind of dumb, cowed, hungry looking. And when +Mummy was behind with the payment because Lord de Jones had quarrelled +with his wife and she wouldn’t let him have any more money, Mr. Bumphill +got very ratty and said I had a bad character. I asked him what I had +done; and he said: ‘You are lazy, and where is your loyalty to the +College? Have you ever recommended it to a single human being?’ + +“‘I have,’ I said. + +“He suddenly looked very interested. ‘And to whom, pray?’ said he. + +“‘To Mr. Gorilla,’ said I, ‘a Spanish young gentleman.’ + +“‘Oh, indeed! I am interested to hear it,’ says he. ‘Take his name down, +Miss Frazer.... H’m! And what is his address?’ + +“‘The Zoological Gardens,’ said I.” + +“And then?” + +“Then I left his Secretarial College. Mr. Pilling thought I should study +to become a Nurse.” + +“And why must you listen to Mr. Pilling.” + +“I told you he is our guardian.” + +“A fine guardian!” said Frank bitterly. “I’d like to bash his head for +his treatment of Zita.” + +“But what about yourself?” she asked, it seemed to him rather +tactlessly. + +“That was different. That was on a hill.” + +“It was lovely. And Zita too thought it was lovely. But she said she +could never tell Pilling about it. She doesn’t know what he’d do to you +if he knew.” + +“No need for him to know,” Frank said, gloomily. And then: “I say, is he +... Pilling a great reader of novels?” + +“I don’t know, darling. I don’t remember having seen any of yours in +their flat, though Pilling once said about you, ‘He is very clever. I +wish I had his brains. I would not be a professional, nor Zita either.’” + +“Why don’t they marry?” + +“Pilling told her from the start that he couldn’t marry her as he was +already married but separated from his wife, but Zita being always +business-like and practically minded asked Pilling to guarantee to her +on paper that he would remain true and loyal to her all his life. But +Pilling said he couldn’t do such a thing as a man can never trust +himself. Zita then met a doctor--an old consumptive fellow, full of gout +and ischias and sciatica and heart disease--who fell in love with her +and wanted her to be his own eternally and everlastingly, and as he also +could not marry her he gave her the guarantee she asked in writing that +he would be true to her during all his lifetime and even had it stamped +at Somerset House; and then she became just like his wife. But he died +in a week--from heart failure.” + +“And what did Zita say?” + +“She said: ‘I could have murdered him for it.’” + +“Poor thing! And now?” + +“Now she has gone back to Pilling unconditionally. She did ask him for a +guarantee, but he only laughed at her. She still warns me about men. But +I also laugh at her.” + +“Yet she controls your movements?” + +“Yes, she does. Once, when I got so tired of sitting at home with Zita +and Pilling and went for a walk by myself, and a fat gentleman I met on +the station platform at Victoria took me to a dance, Zita gave me an +awful hiding and told Pilling to give me a dressing-down, and then +slapped me.” + +“Really slapped you hard?” + +“Yes, darling, I haven’t had an easy kind of life, I can tell you.” + +“And so Pilling sent you to the hospital to study to become a Nurse, did +he?” + +“He did. I had to cram my poor brains with so much anatomy. And the +things they made us look at, the operations and things. Once I fainted; +then I got used to it.” + +“And do you really know something about it?” + +“I know every little bone in your body.” + +“Really?” + +“There was a doctor there, an Irishman. He used to help me with my +examinations and kiss me.” + +“You let him?” + +“He loved me, he said. And it was Spring like that time on the hill, and +so stuffy at night, and the textbooks so difficult, and he so clever!” + +“And then?” + +“And then I ran away. I didn’t come back after my annual leave. I went +to London to Mrs. White’s boarding house.” + +“Why?” + +“Because you wrote to me from Paris that you wanted me to meet you in +London, and so I came to London from Colchester and waited for +you--weeks and weeks, till my sister came--the matron at the hospital +had started a hue and cry--and took me away.” + +“And then?” + +“Then Pilling said I must go back to the hospital, but I said I’d rather +die than go back to the hospital, so I had a row with Pilling. He was +furious, and I was furious, and so I went away to Mother Martha’s +boarding house and took a room, but I had no money, so had to look for a +situation.” + +“You all alone in London looking for a situation! while I was lounging +lazily in Paris!” + +“Yes. I went to the shops asking for a job, and I didn’t know where I +could get a reference. The managers were all the same. They said, ‘You +have intriguing eyes.’ Or, ‘If you’ll be nice and friendly with me, I’ll +give you a good cushy job.’ I had a good job in a draper’s shop in +Holborn; I got twenty-five shillings a week. But as they began to reduce +their staff and I was the lastcomer I was the first to go. Then I got a +job as part cashier, part waitress in a tea-shop in the City. It was +quite interesting. Business men would come up and talk to me and promise +me a job. They said I had intriguing eyes. One man said, ‘You have eyes +like violets.’ They would come up to the counter and we’d discuss +together City topics. And one fat man asked me if I knew what Nero was +doing while Rome was burning, and I said I didn’t know, and he said: +‘Fiddling.’ And we’d all burst laughing. It was quite intriguing.” + +His heart ached for her. Poor child, all alone, men like vultures, ready +to pounce on her: forgetting that men, old and young, common and +cultivated, were to her a navigable ocean whereon indeed she was an A-1 +skipper. + +“Then I lost my job as part cashier because the manageress said I added +up all wrong and she couldn’t make head or tail whether the shop was +making profits or losses and I said she had better add up herself to +make sure, and I went back to Mother Martha’s boarding house and waited, +waited for you, while Mother Martha swilled whisky by herself upstairs. +And when the Irish Doctor from the hospital came to see me Mother +Martha, who was full of whisky, said I had a lover in my room and that +she’d write and tell my father in Ireland. But I said: ‘I shall inform +my Solicitor: False Accusation,’ and she got scared like a rabbit and +crawled upstairs to swill down some more whisky.” + +“And then?” + +“Then I went to see what Zita and Pilling were doing and left Mother +Martha severely alone.” + +“Do you know what time it is? It’s four o’clock!” + +“Good night, darling.” + +“Good night, darling.” + + + + +IX. + + +Leaving the hotel next morning, they passed the gauntlet of waiting +menials and tipped their way through to the door to the total price of +their freedom, while the door porter waved his arms in the middle of the +street in an ostentatious display to arrest a taxi for them, and a page +boy craned his neck at the glass door to see if it was coming, to +receive, for looking interested, another sixpence. + +At the bank he cashed, without any trouble, a cheque for one hundred +pounds, and indulged in some purchases for himself. Unlike Edith +Wharton’s American heroes and heroines, he did not buy a grand piano, a +motor-car, or a steam yacht, but invested in shirts, waistcoats, a new +pair of pyjamas, a bathing-suit and an opera hat. At a bookstall he +bought a booklet in a bright yellow jacket entitled _Dictators of the +Press_ and a recent volume of _Who’s Who_, and at lunch, having tired a +little of Eva’s conversation, absorbed himself in the literature he had +purchased. + +_Who’s Who_, laconic but informative, recorded: + +“OTTERCOVE, Rex Victor Alexander Green, P. C. 1st. Baron Ottercove of +Ottercove. _b_. Ottercove, New Zealand; unmarried; _heiress_: niece, +Eleonor Viscountess de Jones; _recreation_: controlling public opinion; +_address_: Bourne Abbey, Kent; Stonedge House, S.W. 1.” + +He read it out aloud to Eva, who said that Pilling would approve of the +address. + +The little yellow booklet related in a racy style the facts which were +more or less common knowledge to the public, but re-dressed them with +gay ribbons of fancy and let them scurry down the ebullient river of +facile imagination. Frank learnt that Lord Ottercove was probably the +greatest political and financial force operating in the England of the +twentieth century--greater than Lord Northcliffe, greater than Lord +Beaverbrook. Yes, greater! History records (said the little yellow book) +that if the latter two had chosen to pull together there was nothing in +the realm of the material universe that these two peers could not +accomplish. Now what they could do if they pulled together Lord +Ottercove, it seemed, could do alone. If you took the trouble to turn up +in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ the rubric recording the development of +journalism in the last half-century, you would learn that just as Lord +Northcliffe’s advent opens a new page, and Lord Beaverbrook’s another, +so the arrival of Lord Ottercove in Fleet Street definitely marks a +third and, possibly, last, stage. + +He was born (the booklet said) of English missionary stock in New +Zealand, who, after working for the furtherance of what they regarded as +the Christian Cause, in heathen lands, retired to that Commonwealth upon +whose soil our hero first saw light. Human meteors had been known to +exist before: but never quite so swift, so bright, so deft, so certain. +By seventeen, Rex Green controlled the major part of the New Zealand +industries. By the time he was nineteen he exhausted all Colonial +possibilities and went to the United States and captured Wall Street. At +twenty-four he accumulated such a fortune that, from sheer revulsion, he +stopped making money (except for such as rolled in on its own momentum), +came to England and plunged into home politics. He unmade two Prime +Ministers, made a third, buried a fourth, and, tired of the game of +politics, accepted a peerage, buying a controlling share in the +_Universal Press of the United Kingdom Syndicate_. He bought fifty-one +per cent. of the shares of a daily newspaper, arranging that this +newspaper should purchase fifty-one per cent. of the shares of another +newspaper, which second newspaper he instructed to buy fifty-one per +cent. of the shares of a third newspaper, continuing the application of +this principle, till, controlling the first newspaper, he automatically +controlled all the worthwhile newspapers in the United Kingdom. + +Yet despite his meteoric sweep, Rex Green was a man of strong +attachments. So when, with the offer of a peerage, the time arrived for +choosing a new name, and all the county, town, village, street and +railway names in England lay before him, the great man remembered the +little village in New Zealand that had been his landing-stage where he +alighted we know not whence upon the Realm of Matter, and decided by +adopting its name to distinguish the village. “In Ottercove I was born, +and as Ottercove I will die,” he was reported to have said at the +banquet given in his honour by the Ottercove inhabitants during his +visit there soon after his creation, thereby drawing tears from their +eyes; a banquet followed by a tour of inspection round the village, +small, and with a railroad station so embryonic that you could not even +buy a ticket there, but picturesque in its simple rustic way, quite a +dear little place full of coves, creeks, and little brooks with beavers +and otters, quite domesticated, it seemed, and almost eating out of your +hand. The guest of honour, it is reported, beamed with pleasure as he +beheld the place of his birth, and is said to have added to his +foregoing remark at the banquet: “And in Ottercove I wish to be buried,” +thereby drawing renewed tears from the onlookers’ eyes. + +“Well,” said Frank, closing the book and leaning back luxuriously, “it +seems we’ve struck oil this time!” + +“But why don’t you get Lord Ottercove to give you some money, darling?” + +“I have,” he said. + +“How much?” + +“Well, I don’t know. He said ‘without limit.’” It was out before he had +meant it to be. + +“Without limit,” she said. “But that means that you can buy yourself +everything, darling; horses and houses with grounds all over England and +Scotland and--” + +“No, no--” + +“But yes, darling. ‘Without limit’ means everything.” + +“But no--” + +“But it does, darling. Everything, everything without limit.” + +He was sorry he had said it. + +“We must tell Mummy,” she said. + +“Great heavens, no! Why tell her?” + +“She will be pleased.” + +“Now then,” he said, rising and helping her with her coat and then +taking _Who’s Who_ under his arm. “No. I shall make the restaurant a +gift of it.” + +“No, darling, don’t. Pilling would love to have it.” + +“What does he want with a copy of _Who’s Who_?” + +“He’d read and read it days and nights.” + +“Whatever for?” + +“To find out who is who.” + +“But how will you get it over to him?” + +“In a taxi.” + +“Well, look here, you had better take a taxi and go straight to Pilling +with it.” There were moments, after prolonged social intercourse with +people, when his soul positively shrieked to be left alone. + +“I shall ring you up at your club,” she said as she drove away with the +book. + + + + +X. + + +At the club he found a message from Mrs. Hannibal that Lord Ottercove +expected him to tea at five o’clock at his house. Frank, who was late, +having failed by sheer strength of will to accelerate the movement of +the train in the Inner Circle, jumped into a taxi at Dover-street, +imploring the driver to make a dash for Stonedge House. But the +vehicle, freighted with his dismay and anxiety, got jammed in a mesh of +other vehicles. A march through London by the Unemployed, the +taxi-driver put him wise: a call to Direct Action. Not for the first +time. Frank jumped out, paid the fare, and made a dash through the +crowd. A cordon of policemen barred his way into the square. Gaping +suspiciously at him, they none the less let him pass through to Stonedge +House. + +The butler informed him that his lordship was expecting him, but had not +yet come in from his walk, and conducted him into a great bare lounge +with windows overlooking the Park, a huge marble chimney-piece, as in a +club room, with an oil portrait of a member of the Royal family hung +over it, and a lady sitting by the log fire. She smiled to him and said +Lord Ottercove had asked her to meet him so that she might write an +article about him for one of Lord Ottercove’s newspapers, probably the +_Evening Ensign_. They had barely exchanged a few words when Lord +Ottercove strolled in somberly across the soft carpet with a cloud on +his face. + +Frank wondered whether the cause of it was not his cashing forthwith one +hundred pounds of Lord Ottercove’s money. “Why aren’t you having any +tea?” asked the host, and rang for the butler. “Well, have you talked it +over?” he asked rather wearily. + +“Mr. Dickin has only just come,” said the lady, thus giving her partner +away, Frank felt, rather cruelly. + +Lord Ottercove gave his visitor a searching look, as though he thought +this was a bad beginning. “They wouldn’t let me pass through the crowd,” +Frank proffered his excuses. + +“Nor would they let me,” said Lord Ottercove. + +“A bewildering procession of the Unemployed,” the lady journalist +remarked. “More ominous than the last one.” + +“Yes. I don’t know what is going to happen. Processions are indelicate +manifestations and are best discouraged by indifference. But an idle +curiosity sends everyone out into the streets to see what is happening +and swells the ranks of the dissatisfied. It is the same with +revolutions. Mankind is periodically beset by mass dissatisfaction when, +at some obscure, unmeaning signal, men suddenly begin to air their +private grievances in a mass--as though that could possibly help them; +and then, growing hearty, and with that corporate look in their eyes, +they are ready to track down the Evil in their life to any handy +bogey--the capitalist, the Jew, the profiteer, the Bolshevik, or any +foreigner. It used to be religion--the Jesuit, the Pope, the Turk, or +the Free-Mason--but that is now out of fashion. I do not see that +anything is likely to side-track their present agitation saving some big +stunt which would appeal to their imagination--such as the increased +crop-growing scheme which Lord de Jones and myself have in mind. Miss +Henderson, will you make a note of that for your Sunday article. Lord de +Jones, who is a scientist by training, and myself, under the auspices of +the re-dressed and re-bandaged Liberal Party (with Joe pleased as Punch +at last to have a party policy) are travelling round the world to +agitate public opinion in the countries concerned in favour of the +closing of craters, wherever such are known to exist, to increase the +crop-growing capacity of weary Mother Earth, for the general benefit of +the human race, irrespective of class or nationality. The policy is to +be launched in the broadest Liberal terms, and I want my newspapers to +give it the widest possible publicity.” + +“When do you hope to start on your journey, Lord Ottercove?” + +“I cannot tell you. We have to time it with the General Election. It +wouldn’t do to have it all behind us before the General Election begins. +A policy is only a policy if it is a promise. A difficulty is only a +difficulty if it needs overcoming. A difficulty overcome is like your +last year’s birthday present. You cannot talk of it with any credit to +yourself. And in politics you must boast in order to get credit, and +though you cannot boast of what you have done, you can boast of what you +will do, if they let you do it for them.” + +“Do you expect any difficulties ahead of you?” + +“Our difficulty is that there will not be any to enable us to overcome +them with glory. But I expect we will be able to overcome that +difficulty by creating a few difficulties of the spectacular order we +require to swing old Joe back into the saddle at the next General +Election, which cannot now be long delayed.” + +“Is it an established scientific fact,” Frank ventured, “that the +closing of the craters _would_ increase the crop?” + +Lord Ottercove frowned. “You’ve asked me that before. I cannot tell you. +It’s a journalistic fact, anyhow.” He paused. “But I have no reason to +doubt it. It stands to reason if you reflect. More heat, more pressure +from the bowels of the earth, and the quicker the blades pushed to the +surface. That’s how I read the scientific aspect of it. But de Jones +ought to know; he is a scientist.” + +“Rather a genius by the looks of him,” said Frank, in order to hear Lord +Ottercove reply with deliberation: + +“A Genius of the Untried.” + +“I see,” said Frank, “you will leave nothing untried, not even +questionable science, if you may thereby alleviate the lot of the +people.” + +“I am a man of the people,” said Lord Ottercove, “and my sympathies are +with the people. But here it is not a case of alleviating the lot of the +people. Increased crops will cheapen bread, undoubtedly, but only to +lower wages. I know my capitalists!” + +“But there are socialist weapons for that.” + +“Strikes,” said Lord Ottercove. “Direct action. Revolutions.” + +Frank was not so much disarmed as submerged by the intensity of Lord +Ottercove’s self-assurance. + +“No,” said Lord Ottercove. “My aim is somewhat different. In ancient +Rome the people were given bread and shows. They will have their bread +and plenty of it, the Lord and Lord de Jones willing; but I am out to +give them shows, grip their attention, side-track the vicious trend of +idle minds--or I am not a journalist.” + +He paused to give both listeners an opportunity to survey the boldness +and originality of his vision. + +“I am a journalist, and I love my newspapers. You, Miss Henderson, and +you, Mr. Dickin, must have known love in the course of your lives; my +love is akin to yours, but rather than being wasted on a mistress” (he +looked at Dickin), “or on a lover” (he looked at Miss Henderson +enquiringly), “_my_ love is lavished on my newspapers. I love my +newspapers.” Tears stood in his eyes as he spoke, and Miss Henderson and +Frank lowered their heads as though they were in church. “I am amazed, +with a sweet amazement, when I suddenly look into my heart and discover +the depth of my love for these journals of mine.” Miss Henderson and +Frank suspended their breath and continued suspending it so far as this +is possible. “They were nothing. I witnessed and sponsored their birth; +guarded their adolescence; tended their youth; exulted in their +maturity....” He paused as if having revealed too much of his heart. + +“There is also an intellectual side to it,” he said at last, as if to +prove that such things were not foreign to him. “I have slowly come to +the realisation that things, the ordinary common things we see and grip, +_are_ not: they only seem.... They are phantoms, dreams of some one +great Dreamer who has dreamt us and presently awakes to congratulate +himself.” + +“And are we the dream or the dreamer?” + +“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, pensively, “I haven’t so far rounded off my +philosophy, though now that you have put this question it is already +clear to me that two courses of enquiry are feasible.” + +“I mean, are we included in the congratulation?” + +“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “my original thesis was in the negative. +But now I have come to think that for a series of Sunday articles in +which I want to incorporate my philosophy the notion that we are the +Dreamer and everything unpleasant in life the Dream about to be +dissolved in the reality of our awakening is rather more cheerful and +more suitable from a journalistic point of view and I will pursue the +Dreamer as against the Dream course.” + +“But is that a ground?” + +“Certainly. A journalistic ground.” + +“But I thought you were going to write philosophy.” + +“Journalism, as I was going to explain, is philosophy. Life is a dream, +according to my philosophy, a dream of illusions. And this faculty of +creating illusions in a world of appearances is, I claim, the function +of the journalist.” + +“Make-belief?” + +“If you like to--to put it so crudely,” said Lord Ottercove, evidently +hurt. It seemed strange to see this rich, successful, powerful, +middle-aged newspaper magnate, once Cabinet Minister, hurt. So it seemed +he was vulnerable? + +Miss Henderson rose, and her host and employer, in his double capacity, +saw her out into the hall, murmuring, “So you have grasped the trend of +the Wheat-Growing Story?”--completing his instructions in an undertone. +“And will you do a story on Mr. Dickin? Dwell on the strange similarity +of his name to another famous novelist?” + +“Which one, Lord Ottercove?” + +“Dickens, my girl. Author of _David Copperfield_, _The Pickwick Papers_, +_Oliver Twist_, _The Tale of Two Cities_. You might work Mr. Dickin into +these tales. Perhaps suggest a common ancestry. Here’s a title for you: +‘Is Genius Hereditary?: The Unpublished Story of the Dickens Issue.’ You +might add that modesty, a fastidious dislike to shine in the blinding +light of his grandparent caused this shy, blinking, unassuming-looking +youth who, nevertheless, in the course of years is groping after the +crown of his illustrious forbear, to drop the ‘s’ in his name--and +substitute ‘i’ for ‘e’.” + +“I see.” + +“Well, I’ve given you two stories. Write them to-night and send them in +to me before breakfast to-morrow. I will read them in bed directly on +waking. Good-bye to you.” + + * * * * * + +Frank was about to follow Miss Henderson, and rose; but “Don’t go,” said +the host, and each sank back into an enormous leather chair, Lord +Ottercove opening his mouth to pose a question--perhaps why had Frank +cashed so much money--when the butler strode in, announcing: + +“Mr. Atkinson, my lord.” + +“Come in! Come in, Atkinson!” roared Lord Ottercove. “You bloody ruffian +... come right in. Well, how’s New Zealand? Gone to hell, I suppose, +since I left it, what? This is Mr. Dickin. You’ve read his books, of +course. _The Tale of Two Cities. David Copperfield._” + +“Of course, of course.” + +“Bloody liar, you’ve read nothing!” + +“Too busy, too busy ...” murmured Mr. Atkinson. + +“How would you like turning out twenty motor-cars a day Mr. Dickin? This +man here earns more money in an hour of his sleep by growing fat than +you with all your artistry and intelligence and talent can earn in a +year!” + +“I assure you,” Mr. Atkinson protested, “there is great artistry in +designing a new model ... and the machinery, too, trickish ... +devilishly trickish.... At least Archie thinks so. But then Archie--” + +“Is a liar,” supplied Lord Ottercove, looking humorously at Frank, who, +not knowing Archie, smiled at them both noncommittally. + +“Did I tell you Archie’s latest?” asked the guest. + +“No.” + +“He’d gone out hunting lions in East Africa. ‘I advance,’ he says, +‘under cover, and straight before me sits a lion. I aim--and bang! down +goes the lion. But there, a few paces off, if you please, sits a second +lion. Bang! And down he goes. I shoulder my gun and advance under cover, +and there, just in front, sits the third lion--’” + +The telephone at Lord Ottercove’s feet rang discreetly, and taking it +up, “Of course,” he said. “Use your judgment. What’s the use of my +having a great editor like you if I am to do all the work? Quite. In the +question of National Defence I am supporting the Admiralty against the +Air Force. All you need know. Good-bye to you.” + +The motor-car manufacturer was evidently only waiting for the host to +put down the receiver, for: + +“‘And there to the side of me was the fourth lion,’” he said, smiling +all over. + +Lord Ottercove looked pensive. “Excuse me,” he said, and taking up the +telephone from the floor spoke, “Give me Lady de Jones. How are you, +Eleonor? Look here, you’d better have Admiral Battersea to your right +and the Emir to your left to-morrow night. I want to mark my support of +the Admiralty. What? You would rather I gave you the £30,000 necklace +for your birthday? You’re welcome to it, of course. But I advise you +against it. Why? I don’t think it will do you any good having it. Why? +It would not make you happy. Why not? The remorse at imposing on your +uncle. Not a bit, you are welcome to it, my dear; it is only advice. +Good day, to you.” + +“‘And there,’” said Mr. Atkinson, watching his friend put down the +telephone, “‘was the fifth lion.’” + +“Excuse me,” said the host, and uttered forth a strange wood-note like a +bird (which he must have learnt when as a boy he tended to spend his +school hours in the wood behind Ottercove); in answer to which vocal +sign Mrs. Hannibal came into his presence. “Tell Franklin,” said Lord +Ottercove, completing his instructions in an undertone with an almost +silent movement of his robust lips. The instructions were so long and +explicit that the car manufacturer, despairing of securing Lord +Ottercove’s attention, buttonholed Frank Dickin and was saying to him in +a tone hushed to a level likely not to interfere with their host’s +business conversation but adequately forceful and dramatic: + +“‘And there,’ says he, ‘to either side of me were the sixth and seventh +lion. Bang! Bang! Down they went.’” + +“What’s that?” Lord Ottercove questioned, Mrs. Hannibal having gone to +execute his instructions. + +“‘Down they went....’” + +“Who?” + +“The sixth and the seventh lions.” + +“H’m.” + +“‘And there,’ he says, ‘to the front of me ... was ... the eighth +lion!’” + +Here the car manufacturer paused for appreciation, a little tardy in +coming; and then, not waiting for it and holding his curved sides to +prevent them from splitting, burst out into a Homeric roar. + +“Well,” he said, cheerily, linking this his leave-taking to the humorous +anecdote, but his face growing serious, “thank you for your hospitality. +What message have you for me to take back with me to New Zealand? Is the +Old Country all right? Will keep the flag flying? Eh? What?” + +“Sure!” from Lord Ottercove, more forced than spontaneous. + +“If,” said the car manufacturer, “you can keep Labour down and their +wages you’ll be all right in this old country yet.” + +“This is a point,” Lord Ottercove said coldly, “on which I differ from +you,” looking to Frank for recognition of this sympathetic attitude to +the workers. + +“But ain’t we both of us Conservatives?” + +“In New Zealand, yes, but not in this country, Atkinson.” + +“How so?” the dull, blood-shot look of an uncomprehending bull coming +into the manufacturer’s face. + +“In so far as I wish to conserve the liberties won by the Liberals in +the past, I am a Conservative; but in as much as I would gain new +liberties worth the conservation, I am a Liberal.” + +He paused, and added: + +“I stand for tolerance--for the complete toleration of everything short +of the intolerable.” + +The car manufacturer, shaking his head at the brainy madcapness that +overtakes some successful business men, made for the door, followed +cheerily by Ottercove, proffering, with subversive gusto, advice to a +man he knew incapable of following it. “Atkinson, you should stop making +money and go in for Thought.” + +“Why should I, if it keeps me occupied?” + +“It’s a vice. A man should stop when he has made enough. I’ve stopped.” + +Frank made a mental picture of Lord Ottercove stopping. “You don’t make +any more money, Lord Ottercove?” he asked. + +“No. Except for such as makes itself. Of course, every year I am called +upon to invest fresh capital. But that is not for want of any facility +of imagination in the art of spending it.” + +Lord Ottercove followed Mr. Atkinson into the hall, and as he waited for +his host’s return Frank Dickin’s mind sang and tingled at the thought of +money. Money! Money! Money! How did Lord Ottercove make so much money? +“Business ability,” was the saying. But what was it? Frank’s ideas were +vague and nebulous. Lord Ottercove, he thought, bought consols, sold +them at valuation, at contango, and depreciation; bought debentures at +quotation; accumulated stock, multiplied it by going into liquidation +... and made a fortune. Frank believed High Finance to be closely allied +with Mysticism. It was ineffable and inutterable: it could be revealed, +but not explained; its priests were inspired. As Lord Ottercove returned +to him, with a smile, he blessed Lord Ottercove’s entire organisation +for the kindly light that emanated from him. Lord Ottercove’s bias, he +was pleased to note, was artistic. He turned his turnovers like a +virtuoso, delighting in what he could do with so little effort. His +friendships, his natural disposition, were all for artists. His collar +and negligent tie bore witness to it. Whenever Frank was about to rise +Lord Ottercove would say, “Don’t go.” And when at last the guest, +feeling the indecency of lingering any longer, rose convincingly, Lord +Ottercove reminded him that he was dining with him to-morrow night. + +“I am afraid for my own sake,” said the visitor, “that the more you see +of me, the sooner will the reaction in you, to borrow the language of +critics, make itself felt.” + +“My dear fellow,” said Lord Ottercove, “you don’t know how all this +delights me. Are you,” he asked in the hushed tones of a doctor who +enquires if your stomach is in order, “drawing all the money you want?” + +“Yes. Thanks awfully.” + +“Good-bye to you!” + + + + +XI. + + +When at half-past eight next evening Frank arrived at Stonedge House and +the footman, divesting him with critical thoughtfulness of his street +clothes, ushered him into the inner rooms, a lady, regally resplendent, +came out to meet him and, greeting him with spontaneous affability, took +him upstairs to the drawing-room, saying, “I can’t drag Uncle Rex from +the roasting fire in his room. He is always miserably cold.” But already +Lord Ottercove, festal in his immaculate tailcoat and pumps, was slowly +coming up the steps behind them, and--“How are you?” he asked. + +A question to which it is difficult to say anything but, “Oh, very +well.” + +They had not been in the blue, mirrored drawing-room many moments when +the butler flung open the doors and announced: + +“His Majesty the Emir of Turkestania.” + +A tall ample man, with a protruding shirt front, blew in like a +whirlwind and immediately began to register a vocal admiration of the +hostess’s sparkling sea-green gown. “The result of your Paris season I +can see, Lady de Jones?” he boomed in tones of teasing gallantry. + +“As I know to my cost,” said her uncle. “This is Mr. Frank Dickin, your +Majesty. You’ve read his novels, of course.” + +“Who hasn’t read them!” exclaimed the Emir and, turning to the hostess: +“A most artistic, subversively provocative gown!” when the butler again +appeared at the door on the landing and announced: + +“Admiral Lord Battersea.” + +Up the red carpeted steps came a corpulent figure with a visage, +familiar to readers of the picture press in a large-rimmed naval cap +tilted at a rakish angle over a wind-beaten sea-dog face, now projecting +out of a prosaic but discreetly confident tailcoat. + +From time to time the butler appeared on the threshold, announcing the +guests as they came up the steps; and presently he ceased announcing, +and at a sign they all trooped down again to dinner. As the footman +pushed up the chair behind him, Frank began to take his dispositions. In +a moment of periodical unemployment when both his partners were engaged +in conversation, he would prick his ears--for he was curious about his +fellow men--and listen. Admiral Battersea was saying in his hoarse, +sea-grunting way to the pretty, dark-eyed woman at his side: “The Prince +of Wales, I hear, kept very fit during the trip by taking a great deal +of exercise....” + +He found Lord de Jones at his side peculiarly congenial. Did he know +the Kerrs? Didn’t he! Eva? “The darling!” said de Jones. And Mrs. Kerr? + +Lord de Jones’s silence seemed to hold a lot. + +“She craved for impossible things,” Dickin suggested. + +“And she got them,” said de Jones. + +“What she wanted.” + +“Exactly what she wanted. They were Impossible.” + +They covered many a familiar field--Russia, Vienna, the Tyrol. “Did you +know her father?” asked de Jones. “I went out to Russia as a young man. +I was taken to their country place by him. She had just got married. +Lovely. She was lovely then; really lovely. Just like Eva now. If I’d +known her three days earlier she wouldn’t have married Kerr.” He was +pensive. “Eva might have been my daughter.” He stopped, as if realising +the superfluity of his reflections. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing +matters now. A journey with her round the world. And then ... the _coup +de grâce_! It is finished....” The butler was removing his plate. He +looked ironically at Frank. “It is finished,” he said, a strange light +in his greenish eyes. + +“Would you mind it awfully?” he asked Frank. + +“What?” + +“If I were to end it all.” + +“How do you mean?” + +“At a stroke. The world and its suffering.” + +“Which world?” Frank asked, he felt, rather stupidly, but he had mixed +wine and his head was happily singing. + +“The suffering world.” + +“But I thought you were concerned to grow more wheat.” He thought Lord +de Jones could not be quite right in the head. + +“Wheat!” said de Jones, drinking lugubriously, “Wheat!” + +When the ladies had left them to their smoke and smirky wit Frank found +himself side by side with Admiral Battersea, who, he reflected, was +surely the extreme opposite of his own type, so much so that if Lord +Battersea had read his books, he would, given the chance, have gladly +got him hanged and considered it as a service to the community. Lord +Ottercove must have read his thoughts, for, “Admiral,” he said, “come +and sit by my side.” The conversation turned upon whisky, which was +described as a good thing; at which the Emir protested. “Wine,” he said, +“is a good thing; but whisky--?!” + +“_Good_ whisky, your Majesty.” + +Good whisky, it was urged, was a good thing. + +From whisky they switched on to politicians who drank whisky and from +politicians to politics. “Ah, Joe,” said Lord Ottercove. “There’s nobody +like him. Just you wait till he is again in the saddle.” + +“He is a long way off it,” grunted a guest. + +“But he wants it, he wants it with all his heart. When a man day and +night thinks of the one thing he wants, he gets it.” + +“He has oratory, inspiration, energy; he only lacks one thing: a goal, +an objective,” said another guest. + +“What can you do?” said the host. “Liberals have no policy, since the +war. But now we have something. I am off myself with Chris”--he nodded +towards Lord de Jones--“on this stunt of ours and I hope”--he dropped +his voice to a whisper and his lips moved inaudibly--“to identify the +party with it.” + +Upstairs in the ball-room, where chairs had been spread in rows, a dark, +passionate man was already singing and some guests had seated themselves +and were listening, while Lord Ottercove walked about, with a long fat +cigar in his mouth, looking pleased. Frank found the pretty girl on his +left, now looking beautiful, with melodious eyes. She closed her eyes at +him in bliss and said that passionate music stirred people’s passions. +To his right, leaning back leisurely, was Lord Battersea, puffing away +at his cigar, while the baritone squeezed juice and tears out of the +“Lotusblume.” And when the song was done, the British Admiral, who had +measured his strength on the high seas with von Scheer, each, on his own +admission, emerging the victor, now with eyes dim with beatitude +murmured ecstatically: + +“_Die Lotusblume_ ... _Die Lotusblume_....” + + + + +XII. + + +Next morning Frank telephoned to Eva and arranged to take her out to +lunch. He waited for her half-an-hour in the Victoria Arcade and +suddenly caught sight of her mouse-grey cap and mouse-grey fur mounting +the underground stairs (Eva looked down when she walked) and she was at +his side, and she was in the taxi, and at once she was kissing.... + +“Why so late?” + +“Shopping,” she said. + +“Mummy has come back with John from Ireland,” she told him over lunch, +“and absolutely wants me to bring you to tea.” + +“Where?” + +“At home. I mean at Pilling’s flat in Maida Vale.” + +As they were half way through with their lunch and waiting for the +sweets, she passed him, with a smile but without a word, an account, he +perceived, for £203 10s. + +“What’s this?” + +“Furniture,” she said. “A dining room suite for Zita. It’s her birthday, +you know.” + +“You ordered her that?” + +“I’ve had it sent this morning with a visiting card--‘With Miss Eva +Kerr’s compliments.’” + +“Oh. And who is to pay for it?” + +“I thought it would be nothing to you, darling, now that you can draw on +Lord Ottercove without limit. And it would take me years and years to +pay it out of my secretarial funds.” + +“God Almighty!” he said; and then again, after a pause: “God Almighty!” + +“What’s the matter, darling?” she asked. + +He grasped his head with both hands and shook it savagely. “God +Almighty!” he said. + +“You are an awful old miser,” she said. + +“But why did you do such a thing?” + +“I thought Pilling would look pleased.” + +“But why couldn’t you _ask_?” + +“But you haven’t seen the furniture! It isn’t at all expensive for what +it is: it’s real lemon wood.” + +“But whatever made you buy such a thing?” + +“Because they already have a bedroom suite and are paying off for it; +but not a dining room suite. They can’t afford a dining room suite.” + +“But what is that to me?” + +“But I’ve _told_ you: it’s her birthday, darling, and it’s nothing to +you.” + +“But to run up to such a figure! Are you mad?” + +“But you haven’t seen it!” she cried impatiently. “Wait till you’ve seen +it. What’s the use of arguing before you’ve seen it!” + +“I’ll stop it!” he said, rising. + +“It’s been delivered this morning, darling.” + +“I’ll get them to take it back.” + +“You can’t do such a thing; it’s a birthday gift.” + +“I shall apply for facilities of payment, and Pilling can pay it off +within the next hundred years.” + +“You can’t, darling. It would look so shabby. And Pilling wouldn’t think +you were a gentleman. Besides, I said to them at the shop this morning: +‘There will be no trouble: Lord Ottercove, you know....’ And they looked +like understanding.” + +“This morning?” + +“That’s why I was late, darling.” + +He felt that he had nothing further to say. + +They took a taxi-cab and went straight to the Pillings. They found the +family, except for Raymond, in full strength. Pilling, a strong, wiry +man with crisp, curly black hair, frivolous on the surface but really +with ‘no nonsense about him,’ was almost fulsomely flattering and trying +to speak French to Mrs. Kerr. + +“He speaks it remarkably fluently for an Englishman,” was Mrs. Kerr’s +comment as she turned to Frank. “I was just telling Mr. Pilling that my +father, who had graduated at eight different faculties and universities, +could speak twelve languages like a native.” + +“I envy him,” said Pilling, with a little bow which he thought +continental ideas of good breeding exacted. “If I had his abilities and, +I understand, wealth, all the doors would be open to me. As it is I try +to keep up my French whenever the opportunity presents itself.” + +“In buses and trains,” added Zita. “Morty’s such a bore!” + +“Well, French is an amiable language,” said Frank, “but I find it +difficult to scintillate in it--even more difficult than in any other +language!” + +He expected the natural retort: “The difficulty would seem to lie in +your scintillation rather than in any particular language.” But that +also seemed to be their own difficulty. Pilling replied: “My own idea, +though you may correct me, is that nothing so helps the study of foreign +languages as travel, and as I hope, with the financing of my project, +presently to come into some money, my beloved Zita and myself propose to +undertake an extensive European trip to improve our linguistic equipment +and to broaden our general outlook.” + +“If you go to Abbazia,” cried Mrs. Kerr eagerly, “I can give you an +introduction to the lady friend of the Spaniard Rodrigo. A very nice, +quiet, well-read woman.” + +“Yes, yes!” Eva cried. + +“Or if you pass through Innsbruck, you must absolutely look up my friend +Fräulein von Wiesendorf, and I am sure she would be very glad to give +you German lessons.” + +“I am very much indebted to you for this information,” Pilling bowed, +“and if you allow me I will make a note of their addresses.” He produced +out of his waistcoat pocket a neat leather-bound pocket-book and pencil, +and their two heads mingled as he recorded: “Fräulein von Wiesendorf, +in the care of Herr Oberst von Wiesendorf, Comptroller of Public Morals, +Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria.” + +“And what about Tamara Leonidovna?” said Eva. + +“Frau König? No, no, she is too fiery; she will consume him.” + +As they passed into the dining room, Frank perceived a striking suite of +bright polished furniture. As he stood gaping at it, Eva slightly +pinched his arm in the doorway, and her look seemed to say: “Now what +did I tell you?” + +“I congratulate you,” Mrs. Kerr turned to Frank, “on your very good +taste.” + +“It’s ‘Me-Too’s’ selection,” said Zita. + +“But it’s Ferdinand Fyodorovich’s--how shall I say?--inspiration.” + +“The Power-behind-the-Throne! Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Pilling--rather like +a horse. + +“I’ve heard of your prosperity. Very charming and touching.” + +“Dam’ fine fibre in this wood,” said Pilling knowingly. + +“What did I tell you, darling?” Eva said. + +“And not at all expensive,” added Mrs. Kerr. “When I come to think what +we paid for our Japanese suite in our Meran Schloss--” + +“I told you it’s a bargain,” Eva said. + +“Dirt cheap,” said Pilling, “considering,” he explained, “the _finesse_ +of the fibre.” + +“I suppose it is,” said Frank, bewildered. + +“Good value,” Eva said. + +“Only the colour is wrong,” said Zita quietly. + +They all turned to her enquiringly. + +“The wall-paper,” she pointed by way of explanation. “Still, it’s very +nice and sweet. And now let us all sit down to tea.” + +“There is a Russian saying,” laughed Mrs. Kerr: “‘You don’t look into +the mouth of a gift horse.’” + +“I wish I knew Russian,” said Pilling. + +“You must come and stay with us,” said Mrs. Kerr, “when things mend in +Russia.” + +The door opened and a lanky, awkward boy on the verge of youth walked +timidly into the room. + +“Hello, John!” said Zita. + +“Is that John?” Frank cried. “To think it’s John, who fiddled with my +razor blades way back in the Tyrol! How he’s pushed up!” + +John giggled bashfully. + +“Come up, John,” from Eva. + +“John, say how do you do,” from Zita. + +A tremulous leaf of a lad, at that awkward age which borders on +adolescence, when one is neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring, +came up lankily and shook hands with a shy grin. And that nervous youth +had once been a dare-devil child! + +“Hello, John,” from Pilling. + +“John is so shy,” from Eva. + +“Come and have tea, John,” from his mother. + +Pilling looked him over, up and down. “Cheer up, John!” + +John giggled bashfully. + +“John is so shy,” Zita said. + +“You’ll be all right on the farm, John,” from Eva. + +“John is going on the farm when we go back to Ireland,” Mrs. Kerr +explained. + +“To our cousins in Ireland,” said Eva. + +“With Daddy,” said Zita. + +“Cheer up, John!” from Pilling. + +“John is so shy,” from Zita. + +“Don’t be shy, John,” from Eva. + +“It’s a real family reunion to-day,” observed Mrs. Kerr. Very charming +and touching. I am sorry Raymond couldn’t come, or we would have all +been together.” + +“I have a real feeling for family,” Pilling remarked, “and consider +Zita’s people like my own.” + +“It’s very delightful and homely. And I hope we will have a rattling +good holiday together before Eva starts on her tour with Lord de Jones +and John and I return to Ireland.” + +“Lord de Jones asked me to come with him as his private secretary +because he likes me very much and I remind him, he says, of Mummy. We +start for Paris end of this month.” + +“My husband can’t hear the name of de Jones,” Mrs. Kerr explained, +“without a thirst for violence seizing him. I suppose it is because Lord +de Jones came into my life almost immediately on our getting married. +And, curiously enough, I loved him for the same sort of thing as I loved +my husband. Both had wandered away from their families, seeking +something remote and romantic, and both had alighted on me! I called +them ‘my lost dogs.’ And Lord de Jones--he was then the Honourable +Christopher Mosquito--was also called ‘Werther.’ Only, unlike Werther, +he was not a poet, but a scientist, with queer, sombre ideas about the +end of the world and his mission. Very romantic and charming. And my +husband was Kestner, the fiancé, you know. Only they were not friends, +as in _Werther_, but enemies. They used to go out with my father bear +shooting on sleighs, but really trying to kill each other. I waited at +home, wondering which of them would come back. Very exciting and +thrilling.” + +“Lord de Jones telephoned to me,” said Eva, “to come and see him on +business, and as he was ill in bed he asked me to sit down beside him +and hold his hand, as he said it did him good as I reminded him of +Mummy.” + +“When I was a young girl like Eva,” Mrs. Kerr pursued with a look of +tender reminiscence, “I used to visit a young student, who lived in an +attic and who was terribly in love with me, and sit on his bed, while he +looked into my eyes and wept....” + +“But Mr. Bumphill thinks it’s he who got me a secretarial post--but I +said to him: ‘Confound your impudence!’” from Eva. “‘We want no +introductions to anybody,’ I said, ‘We are well known. My fiancé--’” + +“Who’s your fiancé?” asked Zita eagerly. + +“Him,” said Eva, with a casual nod at Frank. “‘My fiancé,’ I said, +‘secured admission to Lord Ottercove by merely putting us into a +story.’” + +Pilling looked at Frank enquiringly. + +“That’s true,” said Frank. + +“I congratulate you,” Pilling said. And then, not without emotion: “I +sincerely congratulate you. You are a made man.” + +“‘And as for Lord de Jones,’ I said, ‘he’s Mummy’s friend,’ I said, ‘and +no admirer of yours.’ So Mr. Bumphill looked very thoughtfully at the +goldfishes and said at last: ‘Come, let us kiss and be friends.’” + +“Now I was thinking,” said Pilling as he shifted his look from Eva to +Frank, “of starting”--he looked for approval to his paramour--“with the +expert assistance of my dear Zita, a West End dancing establishment of +my own, if Lord Ottercove saw fit to finance the project.” + +Eva sat facing Frank across the long tea table, staring at him with her +large violet eyes, as if to take him in properly and now, as Pilling +spoke, a faint look of irony came into them that made them ripple with +light. As Frank passed her in a narrow passage she pinched his arm. + +“What’s all this nonsense about your going away with de Jones?” he +asked, and saw that she appreciated in the briskness of his tone the +nervous jealousy that prompted it. “You’re not going, really, are you?” + +“No.” + +“Will you, darling, dine with me to-night? and we might go to the +theatre afterwards.” + +“If Zita lets me.” + +“She surely will.” + +“If Pilling lets her.” + +“Oh, hang Pilling!” + +“Hang Pilling!” she echoed. + +“I do want you to come to the theatre with me to-night.” + +“To something funny,” she said. + +“We’ll go to the Opera. I want you to hear _Die Walküre_.” + +“Is it a funny thing?” + +“Oh, screamingly funny!” + +But she missed his intonation. “We saw, Baby and I when she was here +last month, _The Constant Nymph_. Rather good.” + +“Who is Baby?” + +“My little Irish cousin. She is back again in County Clare. And there +was a man on my right who said I was like Tony. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, +‘but you are just like my conception of Antonia.’ ‘I have a nobler +soul,’ I said: ‘I am more like Tessa.’ And he called me ‘The Nymph.’ +Quite amusing.” + +But she did not find it very amusing; she sat still, listening with an +attentive but unreceiving look, like a good little girl in church. + +In the taxi she sighed and said, “Another three weeks, and you won’t see +me any more. Perhaps never again.” + +“But what do you mean?” + +“De Jones,” she said and nodded gravely. + +“But you said No. I asked you this afternoon and you said No, you +weren’t going.” + +“I didn’t want to disappoint you,” she said. + +On nearing home she asked the taxi-driver to make a noise--and the +obliging man pressed the accelerator--“to make Zita jealous,” she +explained. “Now that they live together, Pilling never takes her out, +and if he does, once in a blue moon, they go by bus; never in a taxi.” + +“I’ve noticed she has grown bitter.” + +“Bitter. Bitter. That’s the right word for her. You have hit on the +right word, darling. Bitter. I must tell her.--Louder!” she called to +the taxi-driver. + +The man was forcing his machine to convey the illusion of machine-gun +fire. + +“Still louder!” said Eva. + +At last a window raised itself at the top and a head, dim and nebulous +in the gloom, thrust out under it. “Oh, it’s you, Eva?” came Zita’s +voice. + +“Arrived,” answered Eva. + + + + +XIII. + +THE SPIDER + + +In the vast cream-and-blue office all the lamps were discreetly shaded +and cast a mild, steady light; the electric radiators exuded an even, +purified warmth. Lord Ottercove seemed to go on with his work +unencumbered, nay, stimulated by Frank’s presence. Frank would arrive at +any time after six o’clock in the evening, and the braided +commissionaire who confronted applicants with questionnaires would at +once call out to the lift boy: “Mr. Dickin to see his lordship.” And +Frank would be taken straight up, without relays on the way, and handed +by the original lift boy to the topmost page, who, without a second’s +hesitation, announced him to his master: “Mr. Dickin, m’lord,” +immediately followed by a “Show him in.” He would saunter in noiselessly +across the polished floor, Lord Ottercove taking no notice of him, and +lounge luxuriously in one of the enormous blue chairs, and dream. Now +visitors would be shown in, and Frank would listen, wonder and learn. +Learn of the enormous net of activities controlled by Lord Ottercove. +Now the page would announce that the editors of Lord Ottercove’s +newspapers whom he had called for a conference were on the landing, and +indeed one could already hear the shuffling of editorial feet. But Lord +Ottercove might be settling a point with Frank as to the relative value +of Buddha’s philosophy in the light of Einsteinian physics, or the +historic veracity of the Immaculate Conception, and he would call out to +the page: “Don’t let them in, unless it be over your dead body!” And the +page, flattered by the momentous responsibility thrust on his slender +shoulders, leaned zealously against the door behind which editorial feet +were still shuffling, till the great chief, the historic or philosophic +point settled, shouted: “Let ’em in!” They entered in a thin file, men +of assorted girths, sizes and physiognomies, and Lord Ottercove as he +beheld them would call out to Frank, with the leer of a Nero: “How do +you like them, Dickin? eh? Aren’t they a gang of bloody ruffians, what?” +while the editors with solemn mien and stately port settled round the +octangular table, Lord Ottercove among them but eminently presiding. And +now for matters of high policy! “Damn John Knox,” Lord Ottercove would +say. “These interminable Sunday articles about him! I am sick to death +of him. Let us have something new and fresh.” And gradually he would +expand into a living message and tell them what it was he wanted his +newspapers to say; his hands would rise, his fingers spread and come +together, till they held the extracted substance, the salt, the +Bovril-like quintessence of the meaning he wished to have conveyed to +the waiting world outside. Fascinated, his editors watched him, +fascinated and mesmerised, while he, like a conductor of orchestra, +played on their heart strings, till even the sulky and backward ones +melted. + +They rose, the conference being over. Tired, he sat there, his hand on +his brow. + +“To get them to pull in a team. Not so easy,” he said. + +“I don’t think your staff likes me very much,” said Dickin. “They think +I have wormed myself into your heart and become an evil influence. A +sort of Rasputin.” + +“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Ottercove. He rose, pressed the bell, ordered +dinner. + +The butler sprang out of the floor, the octangular table was cleared of +papers and fittings. Chicken, caviare took their place. And champagne +bottles. + +They sat down to dinner. The host, who had had the telephone placed at +his elbow, would every now and then take up the receiver and communicate +with the editors of his newspapers, or the editors would themselves +telephone to ask for instructions, when he would say: “I am supporting +the Air Force against the Admiralty. All you need know.” + +“But last Friday when I had tea with you at your house you were +supporting the Admiralty against the Air Force,” Frank said. + +“Getting too cocky,” Lord Ottercove explained. + +“I suppose they are.” + +“Besides, it doesn’t do for a newspaper proprietor to be one-sided. He +must steer the middle course.” + +“I suppose he must.” + +To be alone with a man who has wrecked more than one Ministry, and +register his sigh cumulative of a strenuous day’s work, to feel the +contact of power! By no means a negligible experience. Frank felt he +would like to incite Lord Ottercove to further action. But what action? +Something big, something shattering, something gigantic. Wreck the +Celestial Empire? Establish a Kingdom of Jewdom? a Negro Republic? Imbue +the Fascisti with Socialist sense? + +His heart swelled at the thought and he looked at his host tenderly. “I +should like to write ... to describe ... all this....” + +“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “and why not?” + + + + +XIV. + + +And when Frank called on him again at his office, Lord Ottercove was +lying on the sofa, covered by a luxurious Eastern rug, the telephone on +the floor by his side and two electric radiators turned full on to him, +dictating to a lady stenographer discreetly seated on the edge of a +chair beside him. He looked enquiringly at Frank as if to ask: “Now +isn’t that good enough copy for you?” + +Frank looked hot and more than usually perplexed and embarrassed. He +had experienced some difficulty in getting dressed for dinner. He had +broken his collar stud, then torn his collar. He found the shirt studs +would not go through the shirt front button holes, while the new collar +stud would not keep open. He discovered that he had no clean tie and +that the waistcoats, except for one which had no buckle at the back, +were all in the wash, and the one without the buckle had, moreover, +shrunk so much that he could not get the buttons through it. He lost his +temper and his hat, and then, unable to secure a taxi, dashed off to the +nearest Underground station and stepped into the wrong train. Emerging +at the other end, he trod on to some slippery nastiness on the pavement +and nearly broke his neck. He realised that he was over two hours late +for dinner and he felt deeply distressed and unhappy. Lord Ottercove, on +the other hand, looked harassed. Perhaps the news of the dining-room +suite had reached him. Or perhaps he thought Frank wasn’t drawing nearly +enough. But whenever now he met Lord Ottercove, Frank read a meaning +into his look. Lord Ottercove looked sad, dubious, alarmed; or was +trying not to look dubious, alarmed or sad. The uncertainty of Lord +Ottercove’s reactions to the scale of Frank’s financial manipulations +began to tell on the latter’s nerves. “As much as you need,” Lord +Ottercove had said. But his needs had grown with his wants, and alarmed +him. And he was as much pained by the thought of exceeding Lord +Ottercove’s generosity (Lord Ottercove’s watchful generosity) as he was +by the possibility of erring quite needlessly on the side of financial +timidity and reluctance to use his good fortune. There was no kind of +security in this arrangement, and suddenly he felt he couldn’t stand it. +It was already in his throat. “I want to ask you to--” + +“I’ve had a man in here just now playing”--Lord Ottercove pointed at the +piano--“Rimsky-Korsakoff. That lovely bit from his opera.... Oh, what’s +the name? It’s on my lips....” + +“I want to ask you to turn off that financial arrangement,” Frank said. +“It’s too upsetting. I--” + +Lord Ottercove pressed the bell button. + +“Stop that banking arrangement Mr. Dickin has with me,” he said as Mrs. +Hannibal entered the room. + +Frank gasped. + +Mrs. Hannibal made a shorthand note of it and retired. + +“It’s on my lips,” said Lord Ottercove. “I know the opera well. Lord! +now what is the name?” He pulled out his watch and looked up at Frank. + +“I know I am late. An evening of misadventures culminating” (he was +going to say “in your stopping my principal source of income,” but +pulled up in time) “in my nearly breaking my neck as I stepped on to +some slippery nastiness on the pavement.” His sense of social injustice +provoked by Lord Ottercove’s action, who, after depriving him of the +principal means to a comfortable existence, remained lying on the sofa +calmly stroking his pekingese, vented itself through a side outlet. +“Confound these dogs and their owners! They should be made to respect +the integrity of pavements. Pavements were made for men, not for dogs. +But in this country it’s all topsy-turvy. If I were the Prime Minister +of England I should exterminate the breed.” + +Lord Ottercove suddenly jumped off the sofa and, without a word, went +over to the octangular table in the middle of the room and made a note. +Then, rising, “I will act on your suggestion,” he said. + +“What? exterminate the breed of dogs?” + +“Not I. The Prime Minister.” + +“Hardly a popular task you are giving him?” + +“Give him just enough rope to hang himself on,” said Lord Ottercove. He +rang the bell, ordered a journalist to write an obituary article on a +world-famous novelist about to be operated upon for appendicitis, and +instructed a reporter to spend all night outside the house of a man +remanded on bail on the chance of his committing suicide; then leaned +back and said: “As you are too late for dinner I am taking you to-night +to sup at the Kiss-Lick Club.” + +“Are you really?” + +Lord Ottercove began taking off his boots. Frank watched him, and was +moved. There is something moving in seeing a great newspaper magnate and +owner of several score million pounds removing his boots like any other +citizen of the Western portion of the British Empire. One cannot assist +at such a spectacle without an inward feeling that this should not be +so. It should not be so, when a somebody-and-nobody in the Eastern part +of the same empire has his sandals removed for him by servile wives or +servants. And yet, resent it as you may, there was something fine, +unquestionably right and noble, in seeing Lord Ottercove remove his +boots, in a quick, breezy manner as though he thought this the most +natural thing in the world. + +And he did more than remove his boots. He disappeared into the bathroom +and returned from there in his vest and pants--just as any other man +might do--and yet still looking the part, still the unchallenged +proprietor and director of the _Daily Runner_. He slipped into pumps and +a boiled shirt prepared for him by his valet Gilbert, into the black +braided trousers, tacked on the stiff white collar--so tortuous a task +for most men--quite effortlessly, and presently was tying his white +bow-tie. And now he emerged in an exquisite tailcoat, spruce and tight +like a glove. + +In the historic lift they descended to the ground and stepped into the +great motor, Mimi, the decadent and undogly pekingese, with them. A +crowd of _Daily Runner_ hands had gathered at the corner of the +building, and Lord Ottercove touched his hat with his forefinger on the +chance of their having saluted him. “They’re awfully disappointed, I +guess, that I am not emerging from that office with a woman.” The huge +propellered car ran swiftly and imperiously down the deserted Fleet +Street and, suddenly, spread out wings in front and behind and left the +ground, clearing the roofs of Fleet-street houses, flying +Piccadilly-ward. Frank gasped with surprise. + +“You didn’t expect that, now did you?” said Lord Ottercove. + +“I did not.” + +“This is, in fact, the first model of a ‘Winged Chariot’ to reach this +country. But I guess I won’t be long the only one to have a chariot.” + +“Winged chariots!” mused Frank. “If, in addition, we could have winged +love, a winged life, I would not refuse eternity at that.” + +“If you had the refusal of it!” grunted Lord Ottercove, from the depth +of the car, hatless as usual. + +“You talk like a publisher,” Frank laughed; and presently asked: “Do you +believe in immortality, Lord Ottercove?” + +“Not a bit of it!” + +“As Lord Balfour once said, ‘If there is no life after this, then life +is a miserable joke. And whose joke?’” + +“When did he say that and to whom?” + +“He is reported by Lady Oxford to have said it to her.” + +Lord Ottercove took out a pocket-book and pencil and made a note in it. +For a while he looked pensive. + +“You are thinking--?” Frank said. + +“Of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s opera. What the hell is the name?” + +“After love, music is the best thing in the world.” + +“Love,” said Lord Ottercove, “is an inconvenience.” + +“You mean sexual love?” + +“No, love. Sexual love is a nuisance.” + +Waiters were falling prostrate before Lord Ottercove at the Kiss-Lick +Club and (in a manner of exaggeration) were committing hari-kari before +him. But he gathered them round him and said: “Can any of you tell me +the name of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s famous opera?” + +They couldn’t. + +He called the head waiter: who couldn’t. He called the manager; the +director and his sleeping partner; they summoned the bandmaster, who +returned to his band and conferred with the musicians and came back, +shrugging his shoulders. Lord Ottercove looked sad and perplexed. “There +is no solution,” he said at last, “but to get hold of Rimsky-Korsakoff +in Leningrad or Moscow.” + +“He is dead,” said Frank. + +“Really!” Lord Ottercove shook his head. “ ... betrayed again ...” he +muttered. He ate gloomily for a time, and watching him Frank wondered +how even the rich in this world could not evade the anguish of thwarted +longings! The two men ate in silence. When the meal was drawing to its +close, Lord Ottercove looked up at Frank. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I +will telegraph the name to you to-morrow morning.” + +“You are very kind,” said Frank. “You cannot imagine how that relieves +me.” + +“Now this,” said Lord Ottercove more cheerily, “is instructive for you +to see as a novelist. A real Michael Arlen atmosphere!” + +“Ah!” + +Frank did not tell Ottercove that he had already been to the Kiss-Lick +with Eva a few nights before. He perceived that Ottercove liked to +astonish him, and so he adopted the attitude of a newly-fledged chicken +and to everything that was pointed out to him he said: “Ah!” + +“Do you see that young man over there sitting at the side of my niece?” +said the host. “Now it is my turn to continue your serial. That is +Raymond Kerr.” + +“Raymond Kerr!” + +“Raymond Kerr.” + +“Raymond Kerr! Her favourite boy? The one she used always to talk of. +‘Raymond has my eyes.’ Raymond this. Raymond that.” + +“There is only one Raymond. And there is Chris de Jones.” + +“I know him.” + +“But you don’t know that the two are related.” + +“How related?” + +“Quite spontaneously. Chris is his dad--his ‘Papa.’” + +“It never occurred to me! Yet, of course. There is a sort of +resemblance.” + +“A very marked resemblance.” + +“Though Raymond is good-looking.” + +“His mother’s boy.” + +“And de Jones looks saintly but hideous.” + +“He looks the part. A man with a mission. An ominous mission. Wait and +he will tell you that he is the new Messiah. He came out with it once +under chloroform; said his mission was to blow us all up.” + +“I think,” said Frank, “that it is quite conceivable that the end of the +world might come about in some such casual way. A fanatic like that.... +Suppose he blows up the earth instead of increasing the crop?” + +“I wish he did,” said Ottercove. + +“Is he mad?” + +“Mad as a hatter! But a genius.” + +“Of the untried,” said Frank. + +Lord Ottercove looked at him first circumspectly, then quizzically. + +“Hullo, hullo, Mr. Kerr!” + +“How do you do, Lord Ottercove.” + +“This is Mr. Dickin, the novelist, you know him?” + +Mr. Kerr, an extremely foolish-looking man, fixed a suspicious pair of +eyes on Frank. “How do you do?” + +“And you are happy on your farm in Ireland?” + +Mr. Kerr took Lord Ottercove by the arm to where Lady de Jones and +Raymond were sitting amorously together, and said in a significant +undertone: + +“This is my revenge.” + +Then, as significantly, he walked away. + +Lord Ottercove took Frank Dickin by the arm and led him towards Eleonor +and Raymond Kerr. “This,” he observed, “is really getting to be more and +more of a Michael Arlen atmosphere, of great help to you as a novelist, +I daresay.--Well, Eleonor, how are you? Hullo, Raymond. Enjoying your +fame as a prospective co-respondent, what? Some men win battles and get +fame; others write lyrics; others, again, well--do as you do. This is +Mr. Dickin, the novelist. You know my niece? Kerr, do you know Mr. +Dickin? You don’t? But he knows all about you. You will see that he does +as soon as you read his serial. Eleonor, how is your divorce getting +on?” + +“I expect it will be all right, Uncle Rex, but the difficulty is you +never know just when it will be over, and with the baby coming....” She +looked at Dickin fearlessly. She was a modern woman. + +“Yes,” said her uncle, “you cannot time these things.” + +“The divorce?” + +“I mean the baby.” + +“The baby is a deliberate protest on my part against Chris’s deserting +me for Raymond’s mother.” + +“Quite. I appreciate your motive. But you should have timed him for a +little later. As it is, the baby will land between two stools. And as +for Chris, he is at present more interested in Raymond’s sister than +Raymond’s mother.” + +“I cannot have the baby landing between two stools. Chris must +acknowledge the baby as his son. It’s bad enough that Raymond has been +tricked by him out of his heritage, and, as Raymond’s son, the baby is a +de Jones by blood, and ought to have the name, too. Mr. Dickin, you are +a psychologist. Don’t you think I am right?” + +“You are quite right, Lady de Jones.” + +“I see your point,” said her uncle. “Chris may deny the paternity of the +baby: but he cannot deny its grandparentage. So he might as well not +deny anything. And Raymond will not press his parental claims.” + +“No. You see, he feels that thus he will be getting something of his own +back, if not for himself, at least for his son.” + +“If it is a son.” + +“I hope it is.” + +“Oh, here is Chris. We’ll speak to him about it. Hullo, Chris.” + +“Hello, Rex.” + +“Now look here, Chris. Eleonor wants to marry Raymond. I don’t mind. +But--” (his lips moved silently) “she’s used to a great name; she’ll +feel chilly, naked, don’t you know, as plain Mrs. Raymond Kerr.” + +“I’m very sorry. But what can I do? I’d gladly sell him my name. But I +know of no means to do so.” + +“No--no, it’s all very simple. It’s all perfectly simple. You adopt +Raymond as your son and heir. When you die he will be Viscount de Jones, +and while you still potter about he’ll be--what will he be?” + +“The Honourable Raymond Mosquito.” + +“Well, that’s better than nothing. Here, Eleonor, I propose that”--his +lips moved silently--“Chris adopts Raymond straightaway. Then the +baby’ll be born a de Jones, and no need for Chris to adopt the baby. +Kills two birds with one stone.” + +Raymond seemed very pleased. + +“But the baby’s nearly due.” + +“Oh, well, in that case, Chris, you’ll have to acknowledge it as your +own child, for, you know, it won’t fit into its proper time.” + +“I don’t mind,” said Chris. + +“What will he be?” + +“Depends on what you call him.” + +“What will you call him, Eleonor?” + +“If it’s a boy, I’ll call him Robert.” + +“The Honourable Robert Mosquito.” + +“Now that’s all right. All perfectly in order. When can you do it?” + +“What?” + +“Adopt Raymond.” + +“Not till after the divorce, of course.” + +“Why, Chris?” + +“I can’t adopt my co-respondent, can I?” + +“But what nonsense, Chris!” cried Eleonor. “Raymond doesn’t come into +the divorce at all. It’s his mother who is the co-respondent, or +whatever the name happens to be.” + +“I thought it was Raymond’s sister,” said Lord Ottercove. + +“It was the mother at the time we started the proceedings, and let us +stick to her or we shall never get divorced,” said Eleonor irritably. +“You have no memory, Chris. You forget you are taking the blame on +yourself.” + +“I don’t mind.” + +“Still,” Lord Ottercove observed, “I doubt the wisdom of adopting +Raymond till after the divorce. It might prejudice the case. The +difference, as I envisage the situation, is whether Raymond is to be +Chris’s elder or younger son, and if the baby is to be born before +Raymond is adopted, Raymond will be the younger brother of the baby.” + +“What! the younger brother of his own son!” Eleonor exclaimed. “I +understand nothing.” + +“That’s right. The baby’ll be the elder brother of his own father. And +why not?” said her uncle. + +“I’d rather,” she said, “he was what he is: the son of his father and +mother.” + +“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “it’s all very simple. It’s all perfectly +simple. All you have to do is to adopt the baby. And he will be +Raymond’s son again--The Honourable Robert Mosquito.” + +“No, he won’t,” said de Jones. + +“What will he be, Chris?” + +“Master Robert Mosquito.” + +“Well, all this will right itself,” said Lord Ottercove, “the moment +Chris dies.” + +They all looked at de Jones expectantly. + +“But, of course, the baby may turn out to be a girl,” he said. + +“Quite conceivably she may.” + +On the way home, in the taxi, Frank once more reviewed the matrimonial +situation revealed before him at the Kiss-Lick Club and found that he +could not improve on the harmony of Ottercove’s solution. + +At the club he found a telegram from Eva, despatched from Dublin: + + “_Wire money at once. Love. Eva._” + + + + +XV. + + +He was wakened at his club by an attendant who brought in his morning +mail and a telegram. The telegram ran: + + “_The name of Rimsky Korsakoff’s opera is quote Sadko unquote. + Ottercove._” + +So it was! + +It was a “reply paid” telegram, and Frank scribbled back:-- + + “_Congratulations. Much relieved. Unspeakably happy. Dickin._” + +Among the morning mail was a letter from Eva, bearing an Irish post +mark. + + “_I am sending you_,” she wrote, “_all my beautiful love, and + please send me some money as quick as ever you can. Will tell you + reason for it afterwards. Am leaving with de Jones for Paris and + Rome etc. end of next week. If you really wish to see me alone we + could meet at Holyhead as I am afraid to come to London on account + of Daddy and his people who are stuffy and churchy old birds and + would get suspicious, darling, if I stayed away too long with you, + don’t you see, and if you came to Holyhead I could pretend, you + see, I only went to see Aunt Jane etc. in Dublin, don’t you see. + Can’t write any more as Postman is outside and screeching for my + letter--‘Country Post!’ Accept all my Beautiful Love etc. Also I + have a little cat and I have called Him Ferdinand. And don’t forget + to meet me Tuesday midnight on the landing stage at Holyhead and + arrange everything for our Honeymoon._ + +_Eva._” + + + +Frank, who hated the idea of arriving empty-handed but, since the sudden +stoppage of the Ottercove source did not dispose of the necessary sums, +shrank at the thought of Eva’s extravagance. By a happy chance he heard +of a draper and milliner in the Edgeware Road who was selling out her +business and he went and bought up most of her remaining stock, thinking +Eva would be glad to have it. The box he brought with him to Holyhead +comprised a corset, eight pairs of crisp calico knickers, a number of +strong cotton stockings, a skirt, and a couple of hats. He left the box +containing these treasures in the room at the hotel and went out to the +pier to meet the boat which, at midnight, a lighted shell out of the +dark, suddenly swam up towards him; and on board, waving to him, already +stood Eva. + +She alighted with a portmanteau, and the boat train took them back into +Holyhead Town. “I thought something was sure to happen, and you wouldn’t +come,” he said. + +“All the village boys,” she said, “came to see me off at the station. +‘Ah!’ they said: ‘Here’s Miss Kerr going off to London!’” + +“Did they now?” + +“They did.” + +“I’ve brought you a present,” he said. + +“Where is it?” she asked quickly. + +“It’s in the room at the hotel.” + +“Is it a ring?” + +“No, it’s not a ring.” + +“Is it--I mean--jewelry?” + +“No--it’s clothes.” + +“Clothes?” + +“Clothes.” + +“I thought you’d like to have them,” he said, opening the box at the +hotel. + +She took out the things one by one and laid them out on the bed. “H’m! +H’m!” she said. “Of course, darling, they’re old, very old.” + +“Never been worn,” Frank said, a little stiffly. + +“I don’t mean that. I mean old-fashioned. Those two hats, for instance. +Nobody wears such hats nowadays.” + +“I am sure you’d look very well in them.” + +“It’s the fashion when Mummy was a young girl or even earlier.” + +“Still,” he said, “they look strong. I don’t see why you shouldn’t wear +them.” + +“And these stockings--cotton, you know.” + +“They look very neat and strong,” he said. + +“These knickers”--she held them out--“calico--they scratch.” + +“Well,” he said, a little ruffled, “I only wished to please you.” + +“I know. But--” + +“This bodice,” he said. “I am sure it’s very nice.” + +“No one wears corsets now, darling.” + +“Well,” he said, evidently hurt, “I am sure I haven’t bought it for +myself, and if you don’t want to wear it--” + +He went away and lay sulking on his bed. “Gratitude!” he thought. “For +all his trouble and expense....” + +“I’ll wear them,” she said, coming up to him tenderly. “You know I’d do +anything to please you, darling. Let us have no more quarrelling about +these clothes, darling; they aren’t worth it.” + +“Oh, aren’t they?” he said, rolling over and turning his back to her. + +But she came up to him, tenderly, sauntered up to him, lovingly, on tip +toe, and overtook him on the other side. “You look funny,” she said. + +“Funny?” + +“Kind of puzzled.” + +“I’ve poured some beer into a glass containing peroxide of hydrogen.” He +stood up and looked at her: “Most unusual beer.” + +“Your skin, darling.” + +“Yes.” + +“Against my skin.” + +“Is that,” he asked, “why they say that love is only skin deep?” + +“Never mind what they say.” + +“I don’t mind,” he said, and drew her passionately to himself. + +“I like,” she said, “when you begin suddenly to breathe like that--like +a steam engine.” A strange look of prepared abandonment came onto her +face as she drew herself up to him and closed her eyes. + +“Eva, you looked like that then ... on that hill.” + +They were awed, breathless. Standing behind her, he clasped her with his +sinewy arms, his hands like travelling flames. She threw her head back +as his mouth pressed into the warm hollow of her shoulder, burnt her +through and through.... He lifted her and carried her, with a simulation +of ease, across the room. “There.... And the village boys in Ireland all +mad on you. And Ferdinand has all this--and this--and this--all to +himself.” + +“All for you,” she said. + +In the morning he woke up to a mood of warning and sat up. “Ottercove--” + +“Yes, darling?” + +“Has stopped all my money.” + +“He hasn’t!” she cried. And also sat up. + +“He has.” + +“I wouldn’t have wired to you for money had I known, darling, of +Ottercove’s action. He is a walking mountain of impudence!” + +“But you needed it all the same for your journey.” + +“No, it wasn’t the journey. It was for Charity.” + +“Charity?” + +“You see, I was asked to go about getting subscriptions for a life-boat +saving fund or something and got all sorts of people to put down their +names, but neglected to collect the money from them. About £20 in all. +So I thought it would be simpler to wire you for it, don’t you see.” + +“I see.” + +“Couldn’t remember their addresses.” + +“So you had no money for the journey?” + +“A French lady called Thérèse Lapin, who lives in Dublin, gave me money +to go to London with.” + +“Whatever for?” + +“On a tour of inspection. She has a daughter in London and Madame Lapin +has heard in a round-about way that her daughter is living with a +married man. So she wants me to take some eggs and butter to her +daughter and report to her on my way back whether the daughter lives +with a married man or whether she is straight and the rumour has been +spread through malice.” + +“So you want to go to London?” + +“Darling, I must, for I wouldn’t know what to do with the eggs and +butter. They’re in the portmanteau.” + +The sun now looked into the room, and Eva, sitting up in bed, delicately +sipped her chocolate. “And all the time while I was away in Ireland I +talked about you to my little cousin Baby, and I said, every time there +was a noise outside, that it must be you arriving, and Baby ran out to +look and there was no one there. And on Sunday mornings I would say to +her: ‘Now if you come to church with me you will see him, for he is +surely there, sitting in his pew.’ And, together, we’d tear off to +church, talking all the way of your sitting there already, and Baby’s +cheeks--she is only twelve, you know--glowing with excitement. ‘Now,’ +I’d say to her, ‘you are going to see him.’ And we would both get so +excited that I’d forget myself that I was only teasing her.” + +“What is your cousin Baby like? Is she nice?” + +“She’s like me, only her hair isn’t a bit curly, but quite straight, and +she has brown eyes instead of violet ones.” + +In the afternoon they sat not far from the sea, and Frank was beginning +to snooze. Eva had got him to buy picture postcards and stamps and, +sitting beside him, scribbled innumerable postcards. + +“To whom all this, Eva?” + +“Village friends.” + +“Let me see.” Nearly all recipients were men, addressed as “Esquires.” +One was a “Mr.” “Hello,” he said, “why is this one a ‘Mr.’ while all the +others are ‘Esquires’?” + +“Oh,” she said, “it’s good enough for him.” + +“It isn’t fair, you know; it’s vulgar to discriminate in these things.” + +“But if I write ‘Esquire’ to him he’ll go round showing it to all the +people in the village, and Daddy might find out I am in Holyhead with +you. You don’t know the frightful danger I am in. I must be so very +careful, darling, on account of Daddy and his people in Ireland, who are +very strict on morals and things. It is a village, and everything, you +know, goes round like wild fire. And I only told them I was going down +to Dublin to see Aunt Jane and would be back the same day.” + +“What awful busybodies!” + +“And on board there was a register for anyone who cared to sign his name +in it. And I couldn’t help myself, you know, and I signed my name: Miss +Eva Kerr. Destination: London, viâ Holyhead.” + +“Whatever did you do that for?” + +“I couldn’t help myself, darling. Because the register is reprinted in +all the local Irish newspapers, you see, and I thought it would be so +nice to have all the old fogeys in the village, don’t you see, read it +in their evening papers: ‘Ah,’ they’d say: ‘Here is Miss Eva Kerr off to +London viâ Holyhead.’ Rather nice, you know, if you know what I mean.” + +“Well, here we are in Holyhead. And aren’t we pleased! Or what is your +idea of perfect bliss?” + +“I like to eat chocolates and as I eat them to think of you, Ferdinand.” + +“‘But I feel,’ said Byron,--‘and I feel it bitterly--that a man should +not consume his life at the side and on the bosom of a woman, and a +stranger; that even the recompense, and it is much, is not enough, and +that this Cicisbean existence is to be condemned.’” + +“What’s the matter?” + +“Don’t know. Don’t feel very well. But you are a nurse; you ought to be +able to tell me what is the matter.” + +Eva looked very enigmatic. “H’m.... Yes, yes.” + +And then, hard up for an answer, she kissed him. She kissed him again +and again and, it seemed, would not stop. + +To kiss and to be conscious of conferring a favour, to feel ashamed of +it, and to wonder when, where, _your_ satisfaction came in--was now his +melancholy lot. She was, he felt, shy of him, had always been, +fundamentally, shy of him. Only in the taxi on their long drive back to +the hotel she let herself go. She wanted that love which he could only +feel when he had lost her. Women want it there and then, and men cannot +give it till it is too late.... + +The railway porter, carrying her box of clothes to the London train next +morning, looked as though he did not think much of them, anyhow. Frank +bought himself a copy of _The Nation & Athenaeum_, and Eva, asked what +she wanted to read, said, with some hesitation: “Buy me ... _Home +Chat_.” It gave him a pang--a twist of the heart. + +She read it stealthily and looked up at him. All the way to London Eva +attracted everyone’s attention on account of her unusual hat and dowdy +skirt coming down nearly to her heels and keeping off, Frank thought, +possible lewd glances at her legs. + +Arrived in London, she went straight away to the Dublin lady’s daughter. +She had a rattling good time with them, went off for the week-end with +them in motor-cars to picnics, races, shows and theatres, attracting +great attention by her extraordinary new clothes and the enormous plumed +and fruit-clad hats (the married man who shared a flat with Mlle. Lapin +visibly seduced by Eva’s charms), and, on passing home through Dublin, +she reported nothing to the mother; only said she had forgotten to +deliver the eggs and butter, but otherwise had had a rattling good time. + +Lord de Jones, whom she had met in London, had given her money to go on +a learned errand for him to Edinborough University in connection with +their forthcoming mission to the continent. But, after lunching with her +lover, she decided she had better spend the day with him. + +The day was bright. The shops beckoned invitingly. + +“Buy me--” + +“You know Lord Ottercove has stopped all my money.” + +“Buy me all the same a little book of poetry.” + +“What poetry?” + +“Any poetry. A little book--to read in bed. It mustn’t be heavy, you +know.” + +“Well--yes.” + +“I saw a nice little book in blue leather in a shop window the other +day. I am sure it’s poetry. Buy me that.” + +“Anything else?” + +“Chocolates. To read in bed and eat and think of you, Ferdinand.” + +“Yes.” + +“And do send me roses for my birthday.” + +“Yes. The fifteenth of this month. I won’t forget.” + +She saw him off at the station, but left before the train went to meet +de Jones, who had telephoned for her that morning. + +“Remember: _roses_. All other flowers, Pilling says, are vulgar.” + +She waved to him at the corner, and was gone. + + + + +XVI. + +THE FAREWELL + + + “_Mummy was surprised_,” she wrote to Frank from Ireland a few days + later, “_at the many underclothes you’ve given me. But when I said + it was a parting gift on account of my going away to Rome and Paris + with de Jones, she said it was all right. As for de Jones, Darling, + I am Furious; I told him all. And He is Furious. I told him all the + Truth that I never went on his errand to Edinborough University but + spent the day with you in London as well as the money He’d given me + for Travelling Expenses on sweets and things. And He says he is + going to dismiss me. Never mind, if I’ll flirt with Him he won’t + dismiss me. And I said to him that you bought me a box of + chocolates before you left, and a little book of poems to read in + bed. ‘Oh,’ says He, ‘that is a Consolation!’ I shall be in London + all next week, packing. We leave on Friday morning. Shall wait for + you on Thursday at Paddington at Eleven Sharp. It will be our last + day together._ + + _Your Eva._” + +But she was not there at eleven. She was not there at twelve. As he +paced up and down he was conscious that all the porters and the waiting +taxi-cab drivers looked at him with interest. Shameless flag vendors +buttonholed him with pertinacity. He paced on, angry and exhausted, his +thick heavy overcoat on his arm, and a small fly flew straight into his +ear; and pacing up and down vehemently he stepped again onto some +slippery nastiness on the pavement. “Must tell Ottercove,” he made a +mental note of it. “Have this scandal ventilated in the House.” At one +o’clock he went into the station bar and drank a glass of beer on an +empty stomach, and suddenly he took courage, ceased to be concerned +about the formidable mass opinion of the porters on the subject of +himself, saw them as mere independent, ignorant at that, individuals. +The movement of the traffic, the sight of a girl stepping into a coach +and revealing a ripening, silk-stockinged leg--such sights and sounds +began to work on him, till his mind, with the beer and the oxygen +inhaled, hummed like music, and saw God. + +“Well--!” he said; and then again: “Well--!” + +“Why, darling, what has happened?” + +The presence of John emphasised her crime and irritated him unspeakably. +“You ask me; you--you--you ask me--” He could not continue. He cast an +accusing look at the brother, who giggled bashfully. + +“Zita said I must take John about with me and show him London for he is +so shy and it’s his last day, you know. To-morrow he is going on a farm +in Ireland. ‘And,’ says she, ‘you’ve only one young brother.’” + +“And what of her? It’s our last day together.” + +“Exactly! But she wants to be alone with Pilling all the time. How she +loves Pilling!” + +“And why aren’t you wearing the nice new clothes I gave you?” + +“Child: it won’t do.” + +“It won’t do?” + +“No, child.” + +While John was looking into a shop window, Frank pleaded with her +whether they could not really spend this last day alone. + +“I will telephone to her,” said Eva, as if struck by a brain-wave, “and +see what she says.” + +She vanished in a telephone box, and Frank and John watched her mute +lips through the glass door assiduously explaining into the telephone +what looked a difficult, and at the other end an uncongenial, +proposition. + +“No,” she said, emerging from the box, “she says John must come with us, +because he is so shy and would lose himself alone in London. ‘You have +only one little brother,’ she said.” + +“This is damnable,” thought Frank. “At any rate let us go and have lunch +somewhere,” he said aloud, “and think it over.” + +They lunched in embarrassed silence, broken here and there by an +embarrassed question. “You crossed over when?” + +“Tuesday. Arrived in London very late, so went to a hotel. Travelled +with nine Catholic priests,” she said, “so all went to the same hotel, +and to the Cinema together, and we all held hands.” + +“Nine Catholic priests, and you in the middle?” + +“No, at one end. Father Michael and I holding hands, and all the other +eight, too, in a chain. Very intriguing.” + +“Must have been.” + +After lunch, as they were sauntering along, an idea occurred to Frank. +“John,” he said, “would you like to go to a theatre--by yourself?” + +“Fancy! all by yourself like a grown-up man!” said Eva. + +John giggled nervously. + +“To a show of Maskelyne and Devant?” + +“Fancy!” said Eva. “Acrobats, John! Acrobats and things. Eh? John?” + +“I don’t mind,” said John. + +They jumped into a taxi, and Frank bought a stall ticket, and John, +accepting it with a kind of nervous misgiving, was ushered into the +darkness (the performance having already begun), the attendant like a +gaoler on his heels. “Tell him, tell him to look after John, who is so +shy!” Eva cried. But John and his gaoler had vanished in the dark. + +Freedom at last! They were free, free, free; free of all but the +exigence of their freedom. He avoided the shops with her, but she must +have a bottle of scent and let him buy all that the saleswoman +insinuated. She gave in completely to the saleswoman’s idea of what was +the proper thing for her. The saleswoman seemed to have no doubt, and +appreciating Frank’s secret loathing of her and her sex, made it a point +of honour for him to comply with Eva’s tutored wishes. + +“And I just want to look at these gowns.” + +“Better come out and look at Nature. A lovely day!” + +“I’d like that gown.” + +“No doubt. I’d like a new suit.” + +“Must have another gown to go about with de Jones, you know. In Paris +and Rome.” + +“I got old Ottercove to stop his payments too soon, it would seem. Too +soon, too damned soon!” + +“Couldn’t you borrow, perhaps?” + +“Couldn’t I!... Women will sell their bodies and souls for a vivid rag,” +he said bitterly. + +He looked at her and read her thought. With a melancholy twinge, she +reflected that she had evidently sold hers without any such extenuating +material compensation. “You are an awful old miser,” she said. + +He suffered hell. Damn it all, she seemed to have no idea about the +value of money! She did not know that the number of pounds in his +pocket-book was strictly limited. + +Through the Park they drifted into Kensington Gardens and walked across +the grass towards the Serpentine. Eva wouldn’t let him take her arm. + +“Bad form,” she explained. + +They hired a boat, and as he rowed he watched her steer. She steered +intently but very badly, zig-zagging needlessly all the way, while he +puffed and sweated at the oars; which provoked him into biting sarcasm. + +“Crooked again!” + +“Why don’t you put it straight with the oars?” + +“Can’t you see me,” he said, puffing, “otherwise employed?” + +“Now don’t get ratty, darling, or you will feel sorry afterwards.” + +“Why sorry?” + +“When you think of it--remember, I mean.” + +By the time they had rowed back, it was time, she judged, to go and +fetch John from the matinée. “If we are not there, he won’t know where +to turn to: he is so shy,” she said. “And Zita said to me, ‘Take care of +John; you won’t always have your little brother with you.’” + +This solicitude on behalf of John angered him. “Damn it all, we thought +nothing of leaving him alone at the inn.” + +“What inn, darling?” + +“On the top of the Patscherkofl mountain in the Tyrol. Don’t you +remember?” + +Her eyes darkened and lightened again. “I remember, darling, I +remember.” + +“And it’s our last day together.” + +“I am thinking--” + +“What?” + +“I have no real travelling costume for my Continental trip.” + +“I have no proper overcoat, damn you.” Oh, why were there no girls as +beautiful as Frances Doble and as intelligent as Henry James! + +“Well, John, did you enjoy the performance?” + +“Great fun,” stammered John. + +“Tell us all about it, John.” + +“There was a man,” said John, “and a ring and another man on the ring--” + +“That will do, John. Wait till we are settled down in the café,” she +said. + +“Now then, John.” + +“There was a ring and a man held on to the ring and a girl held on to +the man and--” + +“Wait, John. I was just thinking, if Zita asks me all about the +performance I must tell the same story as John.” + +“All the more reason why John should be allowed to disclose his +impressions,” said Frank. + +“Yes. Go on, John.” + +“There was a man,” said John, “and a ring--” + +“What will you have, John,” she asked, “tea or chocolate?” + +On the way home, John talked of the performance. “There was a man,” he +would say, “with a ring, and a girl held on to the man.” + +“Shut up, John. That will do.” + +She went in with John, and Frank said he would wait for her in +Kensington Gardens to take her out to dinner. He was tired and glad to +be alone. He sat down on a bench, and a nasty little girl of ten or so +disengaged herself from a group of urchins and sat down between him and +an old lady and began to tease him, pointing at him with her dirty +forefinger. “You funny-looking bloke, you. Now why don’t you smile?” and +all the other urchins crowded round and giggled at him. “Come on! Let’s +see a smile!” the girl went on, encouraged. + +The old lady at his side saw fit to intervene. “Behave yourself,” she +said, “or go away and leave the gentleman alone.” + +“It’s ‘im I’m torking to, not yer; you ‘old yer tongue.” + +“Disgraceful girl!” said the old lady. But the little girl went on at +Frank: + +“Come, show us you can smile. Now then!” + +“Shut up, will you!” suddenly Frank roared at her. + +The girl went red and shrivelled up on the bench. “It’s ‘er,” she said +tearfully, pointing at the old lady, “not me. None of ‘er bloomin’ +business.” + +One of those nasty winter fogs was descending on to London when Eva, +late by an hour, appeared at the gate. + +“Is sweet’eart!” jeered the girl, and all the urchins giggled with her. + +“Well,” he said, rising, “I _have_ had a time, waiting for you.” + +“Zita and Pilling kept me back with their nonsense about my getting de +Jones to talk to Ottercove about Pilling’s dancing place. I told them +I’d be late and keep you waiting, but Pilling said: ‘Ferdinand will +wait.’” + +They were rattling along in a taxi, and he was telling her all about the +cheeky girl in Kensington Gardens. + +“Darling, I am not interested.” + +“In anything that happens to me.” + +“That isn’t true, darling. When I am away from you I always talk about +you. This evening, for example, while you were waiting for me, I asked +them if they thought you were very beautiful, but Pilling said: ‘I +shouldn’t say he was beautiful to look at, but he is very clever. I wish +I had his brains.’” + +To Frank, who for years had been regarded as the fool of the family, +this universal discovery of his brains was stimulating and refreshing. + +At dinner Eva was crotchety because he would not take her out to the +Savoy to dance. “It isn’t really at all expensive, darling. It really +isn’t. I only want to go so as to tell Zita how you don’t mind throwing +away money on me. Because Pilling is so careful, and she hates it so. +Only to be able to tell her, you see.” + +“Well, tell her.” + +“What?” + +“Anything you like.” + +“H’m. That’s an idea. I never thought of that.” + +“Tell her we dined with their Majesties.” + +“Zita,” she confided to him, “doesn’t seem to like you much. She said, +‘The one good thing about him is that he has pots of money.’” + +“Pots! Barrels full! Brains and money. Beauty, too! Oh, what a lucky man +am I! But why is it that I feel I’d like to go and blow my brains out?” + +“If you don’t stop quarrelling,” she said, “I will leave immediately, +and you will be sorry all your life.” + +“Then we shall leave together.” + +On their way back he stopped the taxi-cab a few doors away from +Pilling’s house and walked on with her into a more deserted lane. They +walked in silence. Suddenly it came to him that he might be seeing her +for the last time. And what was it that she resented? That he had so far +omitted to say the fateful word? He guided her to a sort of blind door +in the masonry of a house, and took her in his arms. But a policeman +hove in sight and said, “Move on, please. You’re not allowed to stand +here.” + +They went on and turned into another lane. She hurried him, saying that +Pilling and Zita were surely anxious that she was not yet home. It +angered him, and at the thought of the last inadequate hours together, +full of bickerings and vexations, tears flooded his eyes as he suddenly +kissed her good-bye. He stood in the darkness, watching her as she +walked to the end of the lane and, without turning to him, disappeared +behind the corner. + +He walked away at an accelerated pace. He said: “No. Never again. It’s +finished as if it had never been! I am glad, and nothing that may come +will wipe out the memory of my saying here, deliberately, immediately on +parting, that I am glad I did not say the word.” He walked the length of +Bayswater-road into Oxford-street and all the way to his club, and on +entering his room pulled out his diary and wrote: + + “ ... _I put it down on record_....” + + + + +XVII. + + +It was thus that soon after Eva’s departure with the mystical de Jones, +Frank found himself one afternoon strolling vacantly down Oxford-street. +A crowd of people. Bustling, frolicking folk. Women, gay, charming, so +beautiful, so tender, whose arms, if they could guess, might open for +the kiss--and who passed him without a look! Flitting by on what was the +latest in footwear, thin ankles, swelling into glossy silken calves--oh, +rapture! oh, seduction! How lonely one could be in a crowd. For it +wasn’t--he reflected--that there was any one cohesive and receptive +sensibility in that crowd, which frolicked and enjoyed life while he +suffered, into which he could have merged with any profit. Groups of +laughing young voices.... Why could he not talk to them without causing +them to feel they had been slighted, or landing himself at +Marlborough-street Police Station? Why could he not join them without +very soon being bored? There they were, groups on the face of it, but +really solitary, yearning, suffering souls like himself. There was no +sort of one central well in all this diffused accidentally accumulated +hilarity from which one could draw. All came out to look at the +feast--and all looked without being filled. + +He saw rich men in furs and motor-cars, and wished them joy of it; he +read the New Year’s Honours list, and sensed no pang; he watched old +colleagues overtake him on the road to fame, and felt no jealousy; he +had seen his father’s fortune blown to smithereens, without a blink: but +that every woman whom he looked at twice did not immediately yield +herself to him was something he found hard to bear, harder to forgive. +To possess all the comely women in the world, the female portion of the +universe, in a sort of cumulative, consummative kiss--it was his dream. +For--indisputably--one woman was not like another; and how? how enjoy +them all? While lying, as he thought appeased, in one woman’s arms, the +thought that there must be another in some particular different from his +own would at once renew his restlessness and send him searching, +searching round the globe. Content at last, content and happy at Port +Said, the thought of what he must be missing in Calcutta was sufficient +to uproot him and send him on his onward quest over plain and mountain, +dune and sea, continent and ocean, till, with ever greater frequency, he +would rebound in London, in Piccadilly Circus, the reputed centre of the +world, with his heart still burning, with hot tears in his parched +throat. “I can’t bear it,” he said, looking with a kind of stupor at the +fountain he had seen before. “I will kill myself....” + +A practical man inessentially, Frank was impractical in essentials. He +had a kind of vague idea that the whole universe and all that it held +could, under favourable conditions, be embraced in a woman’s kiss, the +consummation, _das Welt-Alles_! The all-in-all. There was a critic just +then who wrote copiously in the _Adelphi_ about the One and the Many. +Yes, perhaps the One was to be realised most clearly in one of the many. +“Very likely,” he said, “very likely.” Was he already beginning to +regret his Eva’s absence? No, he had weighed her kisses in the balance +and had found them wanting. Except for that first virgin kiss upon the +mountain-top when she came up close, close to him, took a long breath +and closed her eyes.... + +He turned into Piccadilly, steadied his thoughts, and continued in a +Tolstoyan mood of honest self-analysis: “Then what am I to do? Renounce +the flesh and turn saint? Difficult. Difficult and uncongenial. +Essentially the world is good and one ought to know how to be happy. But +happiness is a strange thing: it is in two parts and is conditioned by +an inner equilibrium. On the surface I oscillate in a kind of twilight, +through black night into the dawn and back: but within, my soul sings +like a lark and it is morning. And all is well and beyond implication. I +knew it long ago. Yet I cannot sit down in the cool quiet of a pillared +cathedral as I would by choice, with all my passions and lusts raging in +me, raging in me! Essentially all is well. Certainly. Certainly. But +that does not do away with the surface things being all wrong. Mere +pinpricks. Perhaps. But the skin is a sensitive tissue.” + +Tired out, he sat down on a bench in the Green Park and pulled out his +_Times_. How it assumed that all was well and orderly in the world. With +what propriety it examined and relegated to the requisite sections and +columns the haphazard irrelevance of life. But how sane, how quiet and +dignified and, withal, informed. Under a rubric headed “Science,” he +read: + +“ ...In the course of the year Jeans has explored the problem further, +and has reached conclusions of immense significance in our conceptions +of the universe. These are, in short, that the chemical elements of +which we have knowledge are only one end of an indefinite series and +that end a degeneration from an indefinitely more complex set of atoms +in the distant stars and nebulæ. The conditions in which life is +possible are an extreme case, possibly unique, and came about by a +destruction of matter through countless aeons of time. The primary +physical process of the universe is the conversion of matter into +radiation, a process not even suspected until 1904. The primary matter +of the universe consists of highly complex atoms, dissociated and +incapable of association inasmuch as they change their make-up millions +of times in a second.” + +He stopped reading and pondered. “Dissociated and incapable of +association.” Significant.... Significant and suggestive. “The primary +matter of the universe ... consists of atoms incapable of association +... inasmuch as they change their make-up millions of times in a +second.... Like me,” he thought. And came to the conclusion that he was, +his salvation lay, in the primary matter of the universe. + +Calmed down, appeased by a distant hope of merging into the primary +matter of the universe and finding peace in changing his make-up with it +millions of times in a second with more inward profit than heretofore +and more pleasure than he found in his already frequent reboundings in +London, he strolled on across the Park and called in to see Lord +Ottercove. + +Lord Ottercove, as he saw him, looked as though he had no wish to change +his make-up millions of times in a second, but was indeed perfectly +content with his make-up such as it was and, moreover, dissociated +himself from the primary matter of the universe, being content to dwell +and act within that end of the indefinite series of chemical elements +come about by a destruction of matter through countless aeons of time +and described by the paragraph in _The Times_ as an extreme, possibly +unique, case in which life (and journalistic activity) was possible. + +“Forgive me for not rising,” he said. “But all these things will fall +off my lap if I do.” + +“What need for me to forgive you,” thought Frank, “since you have +already forgiven yourself?” + +There was an air about Lord Ottercove as though he knew what a rich and +splendid type he was for the imaginative novelist--and he was always +ready to help the young and striving artist--but could scarcely +comprehend the established novelists’ blindness to the riches lying at +their feet. Now that he knew Frank had conceived him as the hero of his +new novel he not only proved a willing sitter, but lent his own +imagination towards bettering Frank’s plot. And this he did in a way +that tended to enhance the prestige and lovableness of the hero by +placing him in more favourable situations than those envisaged by the +author. Frank, in relating the plot of his new novel, might say: “And +here the scientist gets the better of the hero by an ingenious use of +the latter’s newspapers to an end the hero cannot at this stage +envisage.” + +“Quite,” Lord Ottercove would say. “But by pretending not to see the +scientist’s game the newspaper proprietor outwits him in the following +chapter.” + +Frank was grateful to Lord Ottercove for the privilege of seeing him in +all his multifarious attitudes from every angle and aspect: in his +beautifully fitting tailcoats (there were several of them in the office +and in every one of his several town and country houses); in his silk +pyjamas; in the heroic act of jumping out of bed; sitting on the edge of +it in pensive mood with his bare feet dangling meditatively; in +dishabille; in dressing-gown and _en pantoufles_; or shaving in his vest +and pants: in all attitudes and from all aspects Lord Ottercove, Frank +could but remark, was unequivocally, indubitably great. It seemed as if +Lord Ottercove in his unfailing thoughtfulness provided him with these +opportunities to study him at all hours and in all attitudes. If Frank +had not, as yet, had the opportunity of studying his lordship _au +naturel_, it was because such study, both for descriptive purposes in a +work of fiction and as a practical opportunity, was, he willingly +recognised, in advance of current customs and usages. + +“Well, how are you?” said Lord Ottercove. “How are your sales?” + +In the first week of January, and having run through some twenty issues +of one of Ottercove’s newspapers, _Pale Primroses_ by Frank Septimus +Dickin appeared, in a pale jacket liberally sprinkled with flowers of +the title, on the bookstalls; yet enjoyed but a melancholy sale which, +with rumours of a new European imbroglio, dropped like the jaw of a man +astonished. “Completely and utterly stopped,” said Frank. + +“Look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “you should get married.” + +“Gladly. But who will marry me with my sales stopped? My publisher’s +wife’s great aunt died the other day, and he said to me over the +telephone: ‘I think it only right to close down the office for a week to +commemorate our respect for the dead woman.’” + +Lord Ottercove thought deeply, and said: + +“You should get married.” + +“To whom?” + +“I’ll introduce you. A peach of a girl. Beautiful. A wonderful face. I +can look at it for hours at a stretch without getting bored. The trouble +with her is that she’s got ... too much money.” + +“But will she marry me?” + +“She would if I gave you ... gave you _The Evening Ensign_.” + +There was a pause. “It’s a pity,” said Frank, “that I don’t know her.” + +“I will introduce you.” + +“When?” + +“Come and dine with me to-morrow night at my house.” + + + + +XVIII. + +THE COTTAGE + + +Not unnaturally, cottagers are apt to dream of palaces, while it is well +known that princes eat their hearts out for being denied the joy of +dwelling in a cottage. “The Cottage,” situated in a shrubby garden high +up in the Finchley-road, was Lord Ottercove’s unofficial home, and +whither he retired whenever he felt like swinging a loose leg. Owning a +great house in the West End of London, and several castles and country +houses, he preferred to dwell in the seclusion of “The Cottage” in the +Finchley-road. The ground floor had but two rooms: a dining and a +sitting room, and here at the after-theatre hour he was that night +dispensing supper to a bevy of chorus girls escorted by a number of +young lords. + +Lord Ottercove was a success. Whatever he touched, flowered: whatever he +left, withered--and died of its own rottenness. He stood in the doorway +now, in his exquisite tailcoat, one hand thrust in his trouser-pocket, +indolently tapping his heel and looking on with that intelligent bright +look which seemed to say: “I have long since reached my goal in life +without much effort: what could I possibly do next?” + +“Come in, Freddie, come in, now don’t be shy!” he cried to a young actor +hesitating on the threshold. “My love, my sweetheart, my honeysuckle, +how are you?”--to a bevy of beauties, as they sidled in, twitching their +nude shoulders. + +“Freezing, darling Rex,” they twittered. + +“Rita,” to a leading lady, “do you love me?” + +“You are Christ to me!” + +And then, panting slightly (by the end of the night Frank loved her +panting, and by the end of the month he hated it), in sauntered a, Frank +perceived, very strikingly good-looking girl in red, and by his host’s +eager look and introduction: “This is Mr. Dickin. Miss Cynthia +Wellington,” Frank understood that she indeed must be his proffered +prize. + +If so, she didn’t seem to appreciate her mission. She was certainly +beautiful and, as Ottercove had said, her face could be beheld for hours +at a stretch, with cumulative pleasure. She had been seated at Frank’s +side and she was mildly interested in what he could contrive to tell +her. But supper over, and the host having taken her aside for a few +moments, she came back another woman, and Frank found he had no +difficulty now in keeping her at his side. The other guests, numbering +a princess of the blood, a starving Russian diplomat, exquisitely +arrayed, and the cream of the West End Theatreland, sustained a +strenuously “Bohemian” conversation of unmeaning levity till it was late +enough for all to go without pronouncing the party a failure. Lord +Ottercove’s attitude--Frank read the question in his look--was: + +“Amusing dogs--or are they not amusing? Have you been used to something +more amusing?” + +The dogs were not amusing. + +He kept Frank and Cynthia back till all the other guests had gone, and +then told the butler to wake up his chauffeur, and despatched them home +in the winged chariot. + +Frank had not been long in the car with her when he discovered that +Cynthia was physically desirable. As the chariot, taking a good, long +run down the Finchley-road, suddenly took wing and Cynthia panted, he +grasped her hand as if to reassure her, and having grasped her hand +(good old Ottercove to provide him with this opportunity) he did not let +go again. When Cynthia panted again, it was a different kind of panting. + +The view that all women are alike seemed to Frank, as a piece of +thinking, to err on the inadequate side. They were indeed all different. +But in one particular all women were alike, and that was in their +uniform desire to be different; and in their cheap fear of seeming +cheap. Seized by the idea of making her his wife and eager to +anticipate the marriage ceremony, he was prepared to hear her say that +no doubt he thought her just like any other woman and replied that, on +the contrary, she seemed to him peculiarly, uniquely different from them +all; after which assurance she behaved like all the other women, and +then said: + +“Now, I wonder what you’ll think of me after that.” + +He had not thought anything of her to begin with and did not think any +the worse of her now. + +“Now, darling,” he said, “we simply must get married.” + +The winged chariot and his thoughts, descending from the air at a slope, +touched ground at the same time. The car ran forward. His thoughts ran +on. “The day after to-morrow.” + +“I suppose we might,” Cynthia said quietly. “Are you rich enough?” + +The darling! She was really sweet! Didn’t want to hurt his feelings, +evidently, and let him think he was the breadwinner. Evidently a girl of +sensibility. Welcome. Very welcome. Thinks, no doubt, he may resent her +money, and keeps quiet about it. Sensible girl. Good girl. Beautiful +girl. Nice to look at. Voluptuous. In every way adequate. Are you rich +enough, indeed! He had ten pounds in his breast-pocket; and beyond that +he may yet have something in his trouser-pocket. He didn’t know how +much. But probably a shilling piece. And perhaps more. + +“You needn’t chaff about it. I’ve more than you think, darling. +Ottercove has promised me, in case of marriage with you, _The Evening +Ensign_ as a wedding present.” + +At that she sat up. “Very nice.” + +Before the car pulled up at her door, she said: + +“Come and have tea with me to-morrow.” + +“I will have tea with you to-morrow--Sunday,--and marry you on Monday.” + +He gave Lord Ottercove’s flying chauffeur ten pounds and undressing for +bed emptied his trouser-pocket of the shilling. + + + + +XIX. + + +Out of the shilling he purchased next day a ticket on the metropolitan +railway and rang at the bell of Cynthia’s door; in Half-Moon-street. +When the door yielded under his vehement onslaught he strode like a +fighting-cock past the door porter, for he was burning with love. But +the door porter, an elderly man, called him back and said: + +“Kindly wipe your feet, sir, on that mat outside: this is an expensive +carpet and belongs to the first floor people.” + +“But isn’t Miss Wellington on the first floor?” + +“No, sir, she lives in the attic.” + +He crawled upstairs, up innumerable flights of stairs, and the higher he +climbed the lower his spirits descended. Strange, he reflected, that a +girl whose trouble Ottercove had said was too much money should live in +an attic. But there it was! Millionaires had fancies and did for +pleasure what other folks were paid to do. Wasn’t the late Emperor of +All the Russia’s favourite recreation chopping wood in the palace yard? + +A maid responded to his summons and he stepped into a neatly-appointed +apartment. He had scarcely had time to smile at Cynthia, when the maid +announced: + +“Mr. Mortimer Pilling.” + +And the delicate room held the strong, wiry man with the crisp, curly +black hair. “’Pon my word! Dickin, of all people! Had no idea you knew +him, Cynthia. You never let on.” + +“How could I? I only know him since last night.” + +“Oh, really?” Pilling looked enquiringly at Frank. + +“It seems as if I had known you all my life and even earlier in a +pre-terrestrial existence. But, in point of fact, we only met last +night. Where was it? Ah, yes, at Ottercove’s, wasn’t it?” said Frank. + +“A man,” said Pilling, “I always wished to meet. A most delightful man, +by all accounts, and one who could be useful to me in a thousand ways +and particularly in a little enterprise I have in mind.” + +“You must meet him, Mortimer,” said Cynthia, while the bell rang at the +front door. + +There was a sigh of exhaustion in the hall, and when Cynthia came back +she was followed by a new guest. + +“Mr. Mortimer Pilling. Lord Ottercove.” + +Lord Ottercove gave Pilling one searching, long look with his +penetrating grey eye and shook hands. Mortimer Pilling looked as though +his day had arrived. But Lord Ottercove turned to Frank: “Well, how did +you enjoy yourself last night?” + +“By all accounts,” said Pilling, following Lord Ottercove round the +room, “he enjoyed himself very much. Ha! ha! ha!” + +“It was dull,” said Ottercove to Frank and not looking at Pilling. + +“You need Mrs. Kerr,” said Pilling, looking from Frank to Ottercove, “to +brighten up a party. You remember, Dickin, our tea-party together last +month?” + +“Yes,” said Frank, “I remember.” + +Lord Ottercove sat down heavily in a big chair and never once looked up +at Pilling. Never did Frank Dickin see him so impressive. The Grand Duke +of Fleet Street had surreptitiously climbed up eight flights of steps +(he who said he suffered from his heart) and now sat still in a great +armchair and wouldn’t look at Pilling. Never, Frank reflected, is a +great man more a great man than in a low-ceilinged attic, at the side of +a Pilling. For, but for the Pillings, no one might know that Lord +Ottercove was a great man. + +“How are de Jones and Eva?” Frank enquired. + +“Very well,” said Ottercove. + +“I am very fond of Eva,” put in Pilling. + +“Nearly done with Paris and going on to Rome. I am off myself to join +them at Nice at the end of the month. Will you come with me?” + +“Well,” said Frank, looking anxiously at Cynthia, who returned a look +which he interpreted as a sign not to reveal to Ottercove the secret of +their forthcoming wedding. + +“Have you seen the papers?” Lord Ottercove asked, confining his enquiry +to Frank and Cynthia, while Pilling quickly said: “About the General +Election?” + +“How old Joe’s already shouting,” Ottercove continued, oblivious of +Pilling’s question, “about the bursting granaries that would be ours if +we back the Liberals to put an end to international bickerings and +jealousies and push on with the Lord de Jones scheme. And his Hackney +speech! Lord Ottercove assumed the pose of a public speaker. ‘And we +shall ask, by what right, whether human or divine, some men’s tummies +digest more bread and butter in one hour of their sleep than you, O +Toiling Masses, can earn by the sweat of your brow in a week?’ + +“‘’Ear, ‘ear! Good old Joe!’ + +“But he silences them with a gesture; his hand again shoots out: ‘_And +we shall ask_’--Grand fellow!” + +“A great orator,” exclaimed Pilling. + +Lord Ottercove’s eyes dimmed. “Joe,” he said, “is a giant.” + +“He is,” said Pilling, looking from Lord Ottercove to Frank. + +Lord Ottercove did not look at him. “And the news that de Jones has been +received with acclamation by the Paris mob. Good sign that. Cheaper +bread for the common people! And old Joe knows how to give it the right +ring. Grand fellow! We will beat the Conservatives at the poll this +time, you’ll see. It’ll do them good to be beaten.” + +“Why?” + +“Conservatism is a subversive habit to conserve what was won by the +Liberals of the past. If Conservatism is to live to-morrow, let Liberals +have their way to-day.” He rose and, turning to Frank, said: + +“Come and see me to-morrow at five.” + +Frank looked significantly at Cynthia. “Can’t at five:--six.” + +Pilling left soon after Lord Ottercove. + +Frank and Cynthia left a considerable time after Pilling. + + + + +XX. + + +When Frank called on Lord Ottercove at six o’clock on Monday, Lord +Ottercove was standing at a window in his office, gazing pensively at +the dissolving outlines of St. Paul’s gradually devoured by the dusk. +Lord Ottercove’s pose reminded Frank of Napoleon looking at burning +Moscow, and of Kerenski, in imitation of Napoleon, gazing from a window +in the Winter Palace at the burning theatre “Bouffe”, and Frank felt +that the situation called for a fitting and pregnant remark on the man +of action by the man of letters: “A man of letters puts into letters +what he cannot put into action.” But Lord Ottercove, who, having soared +above mean human endeavour and now only pondered upon it, considered +himself a man of meditation, and did not look pleased. + +“I was thinking,” he said, “of youth and the glory of struggle. How I +envy you young men. The future belongs to you.” + +“Why envy us, since the present belongs to you? The future is but a +deferred present.” + +“All the good the present is to us is that it helps us to forget that we +have no future.” + +“Mankind has not yet learnt,” said Frank, “to live in and for each +moment. That is the meaning of life. And that is why I have just gone +and got married: as a most effective means of living in the present.” + +“Got married?” said Lord Ottercove, knitting his brows. “To whom?” + +“To Cynthia Wellington!” + +Lord Ottercove walked up and down several times. “Incredible,” he said. +“It amazes me. Why, she’ll be the ruin of you. An extravagant girl like +that, and you have no money.” + +“But she has, hasn’t she?” + +“Too much! Too damned much, one might think by the way she goes about +it. That’s the trouble with her. Tends to give the impression of having +what she hasn’t got.” + +“But you said so.” + +“Ironically. You should study the inflection when I speak; it is +all-important. As important as punctuation. Ever heard of King Charles?” + +“Yes.” + + “‘_King Charles walked and talked_ + _Half an hour after his head was cut off_.’ + +That doesn’t seem to make sense.” + +“No. How could a man walk and talk half an hour after his head was cut +off?” + +“Precisely. Even King Charles couldn’t do it. But put a full stop after +‘talked’ and it makes perfect sense. You may have heard of treaties +being wrecked through a comma out of place. And what punctuation is for +the written speech, intonation is for the spoken language. You should +have listened for it.” + +“I have heard of treaties wrecked by faulty punctuation,” Frank said +bitterly; “but this is my first experience of two human lives ruined by +an ambiguous intonation.” + +“Obviously you married under a misapprehension. But she! I am surprised +she didn’t know any better. I am rather concerned about the matter. I +knew her mother well. What was she thinking? Marrying a man like you +without a farthing to bless himself with!” + +“I told her you would give me _The Evening Ensign_ as a wedding +present.” + +Lord Ottercove frowned. + +“You said so.” + +“I cannot,” said Lord Ottercove, “give you _The Evening Ensign_ as a +wedding present. It is my principal evening paper. It has the best tone +of all the evening papers; it is read by the _élite_, the cream of the +nation. But look here, I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you.” + +Frank looked up at him hopefully. + +“I’ll take an article from you. I’ll pay you”--he blew hard while +considering the sum--“£20 for it. You know, when I like a fellow there’s +nothing that I wouldn’t do for him! I am like that--can’t help myself. +My staff consider me wildly extravagant.” + +“Is there any valid objection to paying me more?” + +“Well, look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “you must make a name for +yourself, and I will pay you more.” + +“All very well, but how? How?” + +“Well, we must bring your personality before the public. I am sure that +if your personality is brought before the public the public will begin +to get curious about your personality and begin to want to buy your +books.” + +Frank meditated for a minute. “There is nothing in my life of any +interest to anybody, except perhaps that I was born at the time my +father was First Secretary at our Embassy in St. Petersburg and--” + +“Well, that’s interesting enough. Couldn’t you develop the situation?” + +“How? Perhaps suggest that the Tsar eloped with my mother?” + +“Of course. That would immediately reflect on your paternity and bring +into question your legitimacy.” + +“A marked resemblance to the late Emperor--what?” + +“Certainly. It will make them talk.” He took up the receiver. “Send up +Miss Sherwood to me, will you. I want her to write up a story about Mr. +Dickin, who is in my office.” + +Frank learnt that “stories” was the journalistic term for articles; +whereas real stories--he suggested writing a short story for Lord +Ottercove for £100--were called “articles.” + +“All right,” said Lord Ottercove. “Write it to-night and let me have +your article by six o’clock to-morrow morning. I will read it in bed +before breakfast.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms to +the ceiling. “Oh God, I’m bored to hell,” he said, and yawned +voluptuously. + +“Now, Miss Sherwood, you know Mr. Dickin, the famous novelist. Don’t say +you haven’t read his books. That would sound uneducated. Now I want you +to write a story about him that would reach the wider public which lives +in ignorance of him only because they haven’t heard of him. I am +convinced that he has a great future before him, a future of fame and +felicity. He has already taken the first step towards it: he has gone +and got married to-day. But I feel that the public wants to know +personal details about him. There is, in the first place, his birth, +under mysterious circumstances, in Russia. His mother was an intimate of +the Imperial family. It is delicate ground we are treading upon here, +but I know you are a clever woman and I have every confidence in your +address and discretion. Your treatment of my niece’s divorce case +confirms my opinion. You could begin by giving a pen-portrait of the +late Tsar by projecting, so to speak, onto the screen of your story +salient points of the amorous life of the late Emperor. Go to the +British Museum and see if you find something, or look through the works +of William Le Queux. I remember reading something about spies in Russia +or somewhere--sure to be something about Rasputin or somebody. Well, +here is Dickin’s mother....” Lord Ottercove’s tone grew inaudible; he +took her across to the blue sofa. His robust lips moved silently. “You +understand ...” Dickin heard, “ ... more than the lad cares to +admit....” + +“It’s a fine story,” nodded Miss Sherwood. + +Lord Ottercove looked radiant. “Creating illusions,” he murmured, “in a +world of appearances. The essential function of the journalist. Mrs. +Hannibal,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “have that hung up as my +motto all over the building.” + +Mrs. Hannibal, making a shorthand note of it, retired to execute his +instructions. + +“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, stretching his hands to heaven, but +restraining a yawn. + +Miss Sherwood and Frank understood that the _séance_ was at an end. + +After the door had closed on them, Lord Ottercove vented his yawn, +looked at his watch, and jumped up. + + + + +XXI. + + +“On the banks of the river Neva stands the city of St. Petersburg, in +the Empire of Russia.” + +Thus, illustrated by a picture of the Fortress of Peter and Paul, _The +Sunday Runner_ started off Miss Sherwood’s article. Frank read it out +aloud in bed to his wife as they woke up on Sunday in her (now their) +attic flat in Half-Moon-street. “It is not perhaps generally known that +Mr. Frank Septimus Dickin, the novelist, was born in Petrograd--or as he +prefers to call it, St. Petersburg--at the time his father was Naval +Attaché to our Embassy. This austerely beautiful city has changed its +name twice since its inception by Peter the Great, who christened it in +the Swedish idiom after himself. The late war changed the idiom, while +maintaining the name, and the revolution changed the name to that of +Lenin, while preserving the Russian idiom. In truth, a romantic city. (A +corner picture showed the Winter Palace and the Quay.) Here Peter once +walked. Here the last tragic emperor dwelt in fear and misgiving, while +Lenin stormed the citadel by word of mouth and word of print--the +capital which was to bear his name! Mr. Dickin, who loves this granite +city of private palaces, built by Peter and sung by the great poet +Pushkin and haunted by the spirit of Rasputin, claims to be connected +with it by ties of blood of the Romanov strain. It is a romantic story +which, perhaps, some day he will give us in full; the love of the last +and most tragic of Romanovs for the novelist’s beautiful mother. There +are things in life that are hurt by indelicate scrutiny, things which +shrink before the too-eager curiosity of the sensational mind, when the +biographer must withdraw or stand aside and linger in reverence.” + +Ensconced in a single bed with his wife, Frank felt more like an adjunct +than a husband, and the reading of the article he thought might +rehabilitate his dwindling prestige with Cynthia. If he had no money, +he had at least, it seemed, imperial blood. When, on discovering his +financial infecundity, she had said: “What are we to do?” he had +replied: “Don’t you bother. Live on as you’ve been doing and take no +notice of me.” Hence the single bed. She was just to go on sleeping in +it as before and take no notice of his presence in it. + +Their married life was enriched by a stream of press-cuttings which +trickled in with every post. Miss Sherwood’s article was reprinted by +some of the provincial newspapers, and Frank’s Press-Cutting Agency had +no difficulty in supplying him with paragraphs of a biographical +interest. + + “_Imperial Claim_,” was the heading in an American journal. “_We + understand that among the claimants to the dubious throne of Russia + is a young English novelist, Mr. Dickin, who claims the paternity + of the Czar and a connection with the capital way back to Peter the + Great._” + +Another cutting, headed, “_Descendant of the Tsars_,” read: + + “_Mr. Dickin’s family has sprung from a branch of Peter the Great, + and Mr. Dickin himself, as is perhaps not generally known, is the + son of the Emperor Nicholas II by a morganatic marriage--the last + of the Romanovs, whose reign has been brought to destruction by + the Rasputin régime and consummated by Lenin._” + +A new cutting read: + + “_Claiming to be the son of Rasputin, Mr. Dickin’s connection with + the Russian Court goes back, through his mother, to Peter the Great + and indeed earlier, to the first Romanov, in whose time a relative + of Mrs. Dickin was Mayor of Moscow. Mr. Dickin thus is well + immersed in Russian atmosphere. He is also the author of ‘Pale + Primroses’_ (Sender: 7s. 6d.)” + + * * * * * + +As time went on, the press-notices became more involved and informative. +“_Mr. Dickin’s mother_,” read a notice, “_which may not be generally +known, was a governess at the Imperial Russian Court who became the +Czar’s mistress and later that of Lenin, and his fame reposes on these +two tragic pillars of Czardom and Communism_.” + + * * * * * + +A further cutting, from a Liverpool paper, read: + + “_Illegitimate Son of Rasputin and Lenin. Mr. Dickin’s mother, + whose son’s novel, ‘Pale Primroses’_ (Sender: 7s. 6d.) _we reviewed + in this column last week, was among the victims at the seizure of + the Winter Palace, where she had been housed by her friend Kerensky + during his all too abortive régime, after being for years the + governess of the heir to the throne and an intimate friend of the + Emperor--a mere puppet, as will be recalled, in the hands of the + sinister Rasputin; and it was her fate, with the surrender of the + Woman’s Battalion which defended the Palace, to fall into the + unregenerate hands of Lenin. Mr. Dickin’s parentage, on his own + admission, like that of many a great poet born in time of stress, + may be said to be in jeopardy and, we feel, will lead many a + scholar of the future into that fascinating country and furnish him + with matter for research._” + +A Dundee paper reprinted this identically, up to the words “_Woman’s +Battalion_,” after which it had added: “_of which she was the leader_.” + + * * * * * + +“Well,” said Frank. “We seem to have had a good run for our money!” + +“If it helps to sell the book,” said Cynthia. + +“Bound to do! And now that we are comfortably settled in our own abode, +don’t you think, darling, that we ought to give a party?” + +“Whom could we ask?” + +“I mean return hospitality to Ottercove before he goes abroad.” + +“But he is so difficult about food.” + +“I know. Always gets poisoned. It’s uncanny the way some people have a +gift for getting poisoned in the most innocuous circumstances. I can’t +conceive of getting poisoned short of going to an apothecary’s and +asking for a bottle of poison. But Ottercove can’t swallow an egg +without dropping his napkin on the floor and groaning: ‘Poisoned!’” + +“But what does he eat?” + +“We might write to his butler and find out.” + +“Well, if you like write to the butler,” she said warily. + +“I don’t remember his name.” + +“What does that matter?” + +“It doesn’t, of course.” He sat down to Cynthia’s (now his) +writing-table and began to write to the butler, reading aloud to his +wife as he did so, feeling that, in matrimony, a man cedes one half of +his thoughts to his mate: + +“‘My Dear Friend--’” + +“You don’t address a butler as My Dear Friend. Frank! Really!” + +“It does rather sound like addressing a Salvation Army meeting.” + +“You simply write: to Mr. So-and-So.” + +“Every day of my life with you, Cynthia, I am learning something!” + +And he wrote: “_To Mr.----, Butler to Lord Ottercove: Conceiving the +idea of entertaining your lord at dinner, I appeal to you in all +sincerity and friendship to supply me with a list of his lordship’s +favourite dishes._” + +“Leave out ‘appeal in all sincerity and friendship.’” + +“All right. ‘Request in all earnestness.’” + +“No, leave that out, too.” + +Her intellect was not, Frank perceived, penetrating. She always meant +what she said and thought that others did so too. + +“Then we might ask ... whom?” + +“Whom?” + +“The Foreign Secretary. The difficulty is how begin my letter to +him.--‘Signor, I would esteem it a privilege--’” + +“Frank! Really! Don’t you know that only foreigners, I mean Italians, +are addressed ‘Signor?’” + +“I thought the Foreign Secretary was a foreigner.” + +“Frank! Really! Don’t you know any better?” + +“But why then is he called the _Foreign_ Secretary?” + +“Because he has to deal with foreigners--with other foreign +secretaries!” + +“Ah--!--that’s why!... But are they _too_ called foreign because they +deal with foreigners?” + +“Of course.” + +“A world, I see, populated by foreigners.” + +“Foreign to us. We foreign to them.” + +“Every day of my life with you I learn something!” + +A reply came next day from the butler of Lord Ottercove. + +“_Sir_,” he wrote, “_My lord is fond of cold chicken, ham, plaice, +salmon, a mutton chop (well done) with mashed potatoes, curry and rice, +roast beef (hot), and strawberries. His lordship’s favourite drink is +whisky.--Your obedient servant, T. Wilkins._ + +“_P.S.--Taking the liberty to show your kind letter to his lordship, my +lord desires me to say that he would prefer a hard boiled egg._” + + * * * * * + +At half past seven Lord Ottercove’s winged chariot came to a halt, +grandly yet sensitively, at their door in Half-Moon-street and, not +bothering to wipe his feet, Lord Ottercove climbed up the expensive +carpet and the remaining seven flights to their comfortable attic flat, +panting dreadfully. + +Frank took him at once into the dining room. “Since there is no cook on +the premises, Cynthia is attending to the egg. And a great big fine egg +it is too; you will see for yourself.” + +“Fine,” said Lord Ottercove. + +“Cynthia, bring forth the golden egg!” + +Cynthia came in, with a plate in her hands. + +“There,” cried Frank, “there you have it. There it is! A real egg....” + +“Great ... grand ...” said Lord Ottercove. + +“Sit down. There’s no one else to wait for. We invited the Foreign +Secretary. But he couldn’t come. Either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Anyway, +didn’t. Tuck in, Lord Ottercove.” + +“Great ...” said Lord Ottercove, eating. “Grand....” + +“And a drop of port,” said Frank, “to gulp it down with.” + +“Grand fellow....” + +“The meal’s finished!” peremptorily. + +“Yes, I must be off. I am speaking at the House of Lords to-night.” The +guest rose. “Grand fellow!” to Frank. “Well, darling,” to Cynthia, +“happy? eh?” + +“Quite, Rex,” she said, doubtfully. And paused, as if to say, in the +confidential way a woman has with a man worth confiding in: “Rex, dear, +what about _The Evening Ensign_?” But Lord Ottercove, who was endowed +with extraordinary powers of divination into human motive, accelerated +his steps downstairs. His conscience, owing to the hospitality partaken +of, or, perhaps, because of its lamentable inadequacy and the +implications therefrom arising, pricked him on the third step down, and +he turned his head to say to Frank: + +“Look here, I’ll take another article from you.” + +But Frank’s gestures, to the unspeakable annoyance of his wife, had now +become quite Eastern in their obsequiousness. “Good, my lord,” he bowed. +“Kind, my lord.” + +Cynthia stood on the doorstep, while Frank went out into the road and +stroked the car. The chauffeur and Gilbert had both jumped out and were +assisting their master into its soft and spacious confines. Frank stood +at the door of the winged chariot, smug and nimble with its wings tucked +under its shining sides, and commented aloud: + +“Tuck in his lordship’s feet. Look after him well, Gilbert.” + +“Yessir.” + +Lord Ottercove was pleased. The source of human pleasure is a hidden +well: for one reason or another Lord Ottercove looked pleased. +“Great!... Grand!...” he kept muttering. + +“Evenberry, faithful steward,” Frank was addressing the chauffeur, +“drive his lordship carefully. Avoid sharp corners. Keep well within the +speed limit.” + +“Yes, sir.” + +“Now then, Gilbert, I rely on you.” + +“Yessir.” + +“Good master you have. Take good care of him.” + +“Yessir.” + +“Good man, Gilbert,” said Lord Ottercove benignantly, as to a horse. +“Good man. Good servant.” + +“Gilbert, enter into the joy of your lord....” + +Cynthia stood, shivering a little, on the doorstep. + +As the car moved off, Lord Ottercove, as always, hatless, waved an +indulgent hand. “Good-bye, sweetie!” + +“Good-bye, Rex.” + +The car, owing to the lack of space, did not take wing but prosaically +turned the corner. + +“If your hospitality is scant,” said Frank, “nothing like enlarging on +your guest’s preserves.” He ran into the house, kicking the cat on the +way, and wiping his shoes on the mat, to spare the first-floor people’s +carpet, climbed upstairs. + + * * * * * + +“A joke’s a joke,” said his lordship to himself, since there was no one +else to say it to, “but a fellow can’t make a decent speech on an empty +stomach.” He took up the telephone tube and said to the chauffeur: + +“Call in at the Kiss-Lick Club.” + + + + +XXII. + + +“Well, how are your sales?” cried Lord Ottercove as Frank crossed the +threshold--a dangerous step, perhaps symbolical--into his office. + +“Low--still low. Seven copies a day.” + +“Low average,” agreed the newspaper baron. + +“I know why it doesn’t sell.” + +“Why?” + +“It’s a poor novel. That’s why. Poor stuff.” + +“Dam’ poor stuff,” agreed Lord Ottercove. “That’s why I am interested in +it.” + +The author looked up at him in surprise. + +“Any fool can sell a good novel. But it takes genius to sell a poor +book. That’s why I like pushing it.” + +“That is why I come to see you, hoping you may succeed in pushing it.” + +“When I like a fellow,” the baron said in loud, robust tones, his +light-grey eyes glinting jovially, “there is nothing that I wouldn’t do +for him! You saw the boy who was in my office when you came in? You know +who he is?” + +“Who?” + +“The business-manager of all my newspapers.” + +“That boy?” + +“That boy. He’s seventeen. You heard our business conversation?” + +“It was like machine-gun fire.” + +“That’s how I do my business!” said Lord Ottercove. “That boy, the +business-manager of all my newspapers, was a page, what they call a bell +boy out there, at the Metropole in San Francisco four months ago. He +took my luggage up, switched on the light, drew the curtains, unstrapped +my suitcase, took out the slippers. I had forgotten Gilbert on the road, +and this solicitude and efficiency in the bell boy touched me to the +heart. ‘Good boy,’ I said. ‘Good heart. Kind soul.’ + +“‘I have a reason for it, sir,’ he said. + +“‘What reason?’ + +“‘I want a job from you.’ + +“‘Well, look here,’ I said, ‘you come to England one of these days, into +my office, and I will give you a job.’ + +“He came a month after, worked his passage, you know, and found his way +into my office. ‘I’ve come for that job, sir.’ + +“‘Well, look here,’ I said, ‘I want a business-manager who can manage +all the business of all my newspapers. Can you manage it? If you can’t +manage it I will make you a lift boy.’ + +“‘I’ll manage it,’ he said. And, by George, he does! You’ve heard our +conversation?” + +“Like rapid fire.” + +“That’s how I do my business!” + +“You don’t let them climb up?” + +“No. I put a good boy up. And if he isn’t any good I pull him down.” + +“I’d like to get as much out of you as that bell boy.” + +“And why not? I am a man of money, and I am bored to hell, and your +rotten book amuses me.” + +“Quite. But you’ve a personality so charming and magnetic and you like +to talk about yourself and you do it so engagingly that as a rule one +forgets about one’s ulterior motives and becomes disinterested!” + +“Well, look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “we must do something about that +book of yours. We’ll have to advertise it. As a rotten book. The +rottenest book of the century. What do you say to that?” + +“Might take on.” + +“Sure to do!” + +The success of this strategem, however, proved social rather than +financial. A few nights later, Lord Ottercove, after talking to Frank of +himself till midnight, suddenly rose and said: “I am taking you to-night +to a ball.” + +“Are you really! Had I better ring up Cynthia and ask her to come along +too?” + +“Oh, no! You’ll be bored to death with her. She’s all right for love and +that sort of thing. But never take her out with you. She used to bore me +stiff before she married you. Now let us go.” + +As the chariot was turning into a side lane, the baron suddenly leaned +over to his companion. “I must tell you before the chariot comes to a +stop, for it may interest you as a novelist, that where I am taking you +now is Society. Not quite the real society, but the lighter Mayfair +Michael Arlen sort, somewhat polluted with actors and such. Bohemian and +the like, and chorus girls. I am doing this to help you with atmosphere +and local colour--invaluable for you, as a recorder of contemporary +customs, to get first-hand and red hot.” + +“You are too kind.” + +They had scarcely had their coats removed from them when the hostess +appeared at the door and quickly whispered something to Lord Ottercove +who, acting on the hint, said to Frank in a hushed undertone: “Whiz like +mad across the hall!” + +Frank did as he was bid, and, rejoining him in the drawing-room, “You +see,” Lord Ottercove explained, “we tried to get you safely past Lady +Kennan and Mrs. Ashton who, having heard of your being acclaimed the +author of the rottenest novel of the century, had come out into the hall +to snap you up on your arrival. It’s the sort of rare distinction that +they are all out to secure for their _salons_. There are three great +literary hostesses in London: Lady Kennan, Mrs. Ashton, and Lady Isabel +Croft, where you are to-night. The three hostesses tend to frequent one +another’s parties and they stand out in the hall to snatch away a +literary novelty before the hostess has had time to warn and welcome +him, and your being acclaimed the rottenest author of our time was +something quite unusual; they are all mad to have you. Now go and talk +to them.” + +Lord Ottercove was borne away by a couple of hearty men, while Lady +Isabel, a tall, excited woman, came up to Frank and welcomed him +effusively. “I’ve put the two there off the scent, said you hadn’t +arrived yet, so they are waiting in the hall. I am so glad you’ve come. +Rex rang me up this afternoon. ‘Shall I bring you a literary prodigy, a +man who’s written the rottenest book of our time and century?’ ‘Actually +_the_ rottenest? Oh, do, Rex darling, do!’ I said, ‘and see that he +isn’t kidnapped at the door.’ But you’ve escaped their claws +beautifully. That was a gallant dash across the hall. Now come and have +something to eat; you deserve it.” And she pressed champagne and caviare +sandwiches upon him, and then led him into another room full of +over-powdered, over-painted, over-talkative women here and there dotted +by a white-black figure of a man, and she made him sit beside her on the +floor very uncomfortably so that he was afraid that his shirt front +having blown out, would next blow open and the studs fly out on to the +parquet. And she introduced him to an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer: +“Johnny, this is Mr. Dickin, who wrote the rottenest novel of our time.” + +The ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer beamed with delight and shaking +Frank, who had jumped up from the floor, heartily by the hand, said: +“Have you written the rottenest book of our time? Excellent! Haw! haw! +haw!” + +“Come,” said the hostess, “I’ll introduce you to my daughters. I have +two lovely daughters. They’ve heard all about you and are thrilled at +the idea of meeting you. Pamela, this is Mr. Dickin.” + +Pamela was blonde and serious and interested in literature. “Now are you +_the_ rottenest novelist?” she asked. “Because this afternoon I met a +man who said that he was even more rotten than you.” + +“I cannot believe it,” said Frank. + +“Now what do you want to do?” asked the hostess. “Do you want to eat or +drink or smoke or dance or--?” + +“Dance.” + +“Pamela, take him upstairs and dance with him.” + +Pamela took him upstairs into the music-room and on the way thither +introduced him to people sitting out on the steps. + +“This is Eleonor de Jones.” + +“Oh, but we know him!” Eleonor exclaimed. + +“Mr. Dickin. Mr. Raymond Mosquito.” + +“Have you written the rottenest novel?” Eleonor asked. + +“I must have done.” + +“How splendid!” And she wrung from him before she let him go the promise +to attend her baby’s christening. + +“Raymond’s been adopted, then?” he asked Pamela while they danced +upstairs. + +“Yes. They will be married very soon now. Have you seen the baby?” + +“A boy?” + +“A boy. The image of Raymond. Isn’t he beautiful?” + +“He has Eva’s eyes. His sister’s,” Frank added as Pamela did not seem to +know who he was speaking of. While he danced on with Pamela, who was +blonde, Maisy, her younger sister, even more blonde, talked to him all +the time, while dancing with another. “Who are you?” she kept asking +him, and he would not tell. + +As he was going, she held him back by the hand. “Don’t go,” she said. +“Oh, don’t go. I’ve found out who you are,” she looked into his eyes +long and intently. “It couldn’t be better!” + + + + +XXIII. + +THE PRETENDER + + +In matrimony, Frank and Cynthia both proved themselves to be inveterate +individualists; they would be untrue to each other several times every +day, so that when, exhausted and full of champagne, they returned to +their flat in the morning, they could but stare and feebly giggle at +each other. Thus far their partnership was a success. + +Frank, whose mind began to run on the rails of publicity, which he +discovered to be an unparallelled art, sometimes, when her condition +made it possible, discoursed on it before his wife. “There are,” he +would say, striding about in his dressing-gown out of which he rarely +emerged before dusk, “no end of ways of advertising oneself.” + +“For example?” she questioned. + +“For example, thanking prominent people extravagantly in the press for +the least little thing they may have done for you. It’s a graceful and +lucrative self-advertisement. If, for example, the Duke of Bamboo should +happen to nod to you on a dark day, having mistaken you for someone +else, write to _The Times_ that you have been unspeakably touched by the +kind and thoughtful attitude of his Royal Highness to yourself and your +works. Next day other newspapers, with the befuddled inaccuracy of the +daily press, will comment on the incident under some such head lines: +‘Novelist Discovered and Helped by the Duke of Bamboo. His Royal +Highness as Reader and Critic.’ Furthermore, the Duke, seeing it, might +feel really flattered and demand to see the actual book, and, old and of +infirm memory, might think that it’s some other book that he has seen +before and--who knows?--may create a sensation by what must be, for +Royalty, an unprecedented reference to a printed volume. If he but +sneezes over it, all other British subjects will follow suit. And you +are made.” + +But his sales, despite all his philosophy, fell below his least sanguine +expectations. He complained bitterly to Lord Ottercove, who indulged in +some detached speculation. “You must shed,” he said, “your old +personality, and assume a new individuality. I am convinced that if the +public hears you have shed your old personality they will get curious +about your new individuality and will begin to want to read your books.” + +“I think,” said Frank, “that if I shed my clothes with my personality, +they would be more curious still.” + +“You would make a real impression on the public.” + +“You seriously mean it?” + +“They would see you were serious. The public doesn’t like to be trifled +with. As a serious artist you must be prepared to suffer for your art.” + +“Have I not suffered enough!” + +“I will get some one to interview you on your attitude.” + +“What attitude?” + +“Towards nudeness. Mrs. Prologue would be the right woman for you, I +daresay.” He looked at Dickin as if measuring his stature, and took up +the receiver. “Send Mrs. Prologue up to me.” + +“But she won’t expect me to--” Frank blushed. “She won’t I hope--” + +“No, no, of course not. What the hell do you think my office is? A house +of convenience? It is enough if she reports it.” + +“But how will she know?” + +“Well, you’ve got to tackle her yourself.” + +“Mrs. Prologue, m’lord,” announced the page. + +“Show her in.--This, Mrs. Prologue, is Mr. Dickin, the novelist. No, not +Dickens. He is ... how shall I say?... morbid, perverse, threatens to go +about--well--you are a married woman, Mrs. Prologue, and I needn’t +paraphrase these things for you--naked, in a word. It’s--how shall I +say?--it’s--” + +“A complex,” helped out Mrs. Prologue. + +“That’s right. A complex.” + +He was afraid that this spectacled and earnest-looking lady might “dare” +him; but she was quiet and sensible and did not insist. “Is it”--she +fixed a pair of competent eyes upon him--“your conviction that we +should--” + +“He, not we,” corrected her employer. + +“That you should go about ... in that state?” + +“It’s more--it’s a belief--a sort of religion,” said Frank. + +“I see. _Nacktkultur_. I’ve been reading a story recently by Paul Morand +who very amusingly deals with a club up in Norway devoted to the +practising of these theories--” + +“That’s right! That’s right! You’ve hit on it, Mrs. Prologue. You’ll be +able to write a story about Mr. Dickin. You may say, in fact, that he +has, while performing the cult of this _Kultur_ or what, been surprised +by a visit from ... we’ll have to think of some name ... to the roof of +his house where he performs it. I leave him to you.” + +Frank returned to Half-Moon-street, which Cynthia, by the way, it +occurred to him, had deserted some days ago, in more buoyant spirits. He +did not resent her disappearance. A man who had failed to provide his +horse with a stable, the stable with a manger, the manger with fodder, +would indeed be unjust and unreasonable to object to his horse’s grazing +outside in the field. And in this harsh and difficult world Frank was +not unreasonable. He watched, contentedly, her grazing on the greenest, +most flourishing fields of London, Paris, and New York. He walked about +in the flat, inspecting the shelves in the kitchen containing things in +tins bought with her money; and in applying them to their uses drew on +his common sense and such powers of divination as he possessed; and +reflected that man’s needs were few, and woman’s less. He even +attempted, with a certain misgiving, to boil himself an egg on the +“Primus” stove, unable to foretell under what circumstances it might +explode. How sweet it was to exist alone and owe nothing to anybody! + +The post brought him a batch of press-notices. “The author of ‘Pale +Primroses,’”read a cutting, “(who, it will be remembered, turned up +naked at a recent literary gathering) is greatly in vogue and is, in +fact, quite the lion of the moment.” + +Also he seemed to be getting more and more homage from Liverpool, +whereas the city of Glasgow appeared to despise him and he conceived in +his heart a warm sympathy for Liverpool, and a shy hostility towards +Glasgow took shape in his mind. (But when, a month later, he had +occasion to arrive in Liverpool he was ignored; whereas at Glasgow +straight away he hit it off with a Scotch lassie and they stepped it to +jazz music and she was more than kissed by him forthwith.) And a +different notion of the relative hospitality of Liverpool and Glasgow +now formed itself in his receptive mind. + +Mrs. Prologue’s article bore fruit. A week later he was able to inform +the Baron of Ottercove that his sales were enormous. “Enormous!” + +“Good!” said the baron, thinking. “Change the title to ‘The Diary of a +Naked Man.’” + +“There is nothing naked in it.” + +“Tell them that there will be in Part II.” + +“But I’m not writing a Part II. It’s complete.” + +“I guess you’ll have to,” said Lord Ottercove. + +“What else? Perhaps also change my name?” Frank’s tone was ironic. + +“Your name?” Lord Ottercove reflected. “Your Christian name.” + +“My Christian name?” + +“Couldn’t you call yourself Charles?” + +“I could call myself Jesus if necessary.” + +“No, not Jesus. Charles. It goes well with your surname.” + +“Well, I might, of course. It might help.” + +“Bound to do! I start for Nice to-morrow. But telegraph to me twice a +day how you are selling. Good-bye to you. And mind the step!” + +With a little training one could move, Frank felt, about the modern +world with ease and felicity and face with equanimity the deadliest of +situations. He would find himself making ambiguous statements to +reporters who interviewed him relative to his parentage. + +“Are you the son of the late Nicholas II?” + +“I do not propose at this juncture of events to say anything which might +render the position of certain parties and persons involved more +difficult than it is already.” + +“Do you claim the imperial throne?” + +“I do not consider the present moment propitious for the making of any +definite statement bearing on this thorny and delicate question, which, +moreover, may easily be misinterpreted. I follow the development of the +political situation in Russia with equanimity, firm in the belief that +when the time for expressing their choice is at hand the people of +Russia will not fail in their wisdom, loyalty and courage.” + +In all his public utterances Frank displayed unfailing moderation and +restraint in reference to the situation that had spun itself into a web +around him, and when a Russian Grand Duke in the Kiss-Lick Club heckled +him in the vestibule and even hit him on the ear with an immaculately +folded umbrella and otherwise tried to make himself disagreeable to him, +with a view to consummating the quarrel in assassination, Frank did not +lose his head, but tried to avoid him so as not to be involved too early +in the Russian imbroglio. When a reporter interviewed him on the +regrettable incident in the Kiss-Lick Club, Frank said: + +“I feel--and I say it earnestly--that we who love Russia should know how +to merge our petty differences in a common devotion to a holy cause, +and, awaiting the grand moment, remember the magnitude of our +responsibilities and the dignity imposed by a great and noble heritage.” + +The restraint and moderation of his utterances won him a following among +the anglicised Russian emigrés in London, who, suspicious of the +qualities of their own race, had learnt to admire British parliamentary +language as reported in the newspapers. But in proportion to his +success as a pretender, he became increasingly aware of being watched by +Chesham House, of being followed on his daily strolls by individuals who +looked suspiciously like agents of the Tcheka. He applied, on the advice +of friends, to Scotland Yard, and two plain-clothed policemen were +assigned to accompany him on his walks and protect him from (a) those +zealous puritans who wanted to destroy him so as to put an end to what +they understood from certain references to the quality of his books to +be his propagation of foul literature; (b) rival claimants to the throne +of Russia; and (c) the Bolshevist agents of the Tcheka who resented his +imperialism. His fame reached its apotheosis when the Soviet Foreign +Minister, in reply to the now hackneyed British accusation of their +spreading Bolshevist propaganda in the British Empire, cited Mr. Dickin +in the Soviet note to Downing-street as an active instance of the +fostering of an imperialistic movement by the British and their +intervention in the domestic politics of Russia, and the British Foreign +Secretary in the House of Commons disclaimed, while deprecating Mr. +Dickin’s activities, responsibility for his acts and dissociated what he +described to be the private views of a novelist from the considered +policy of the Foreign Office. By that time Frank had sold over one +hundred and twenty thousand copies of _Pale Primroses_, alias _The Diary +of a Naked Man_; to say nothing of American rights, film rights, +dramatic rights, translation rights, and second, third, and fourth +British Empire (excluding Canada) serial rights. The resulting publicity +procured him a lucrative commission for a series of articles in an +American magazine, a lost relative, and three offers of marriage. + + + + +XXIV. + +NICE + + +The day after the christening of the Kerr-de Jones baby, Frank, having +received a telegram from Ottercove inviting him to come to Nice, went +abroad. His wife was grazing somewhere--he didn’t know where. + +He didn’t bother about Cynthia. He didn’t see why he should bother about +her. He could have divorced her, or she could have divorced him, but he +didn’t see why he should go to the bother of divorcing her. He simply +didn’t bother about her. And, moreover, she didn’t bother about him. + +Mrs. Kerr, he recalled, had been conspicuous at the christening of the +Honourable Richard Mosquito, and Pilling had been loud in extolling, +some felt rather indiscreetly, the Kerr strain in the baby. Raymond, +hastily adopted by de Jones, officiated in the absence of his father at +the side of Eleonor. He looked very red and hot and embarrassed at the +arrival of his little son-brother and resented Pilling’s _faux pas_, +who, conscious of his blunder, and anxious to agree that the baby was +the image of de Jones, added inadvertently: “But of course! The image of +his grandfather,” while Mr. Kerr walked about sardonically, as if +saying: “This is my revenge.” + +“Can’t stand that man Pilling,” Raymond said bitterly. + +“I, on the contrary,” rejoined his mother, “find him a very charming, +intellectual young man.” + +“Why doesn’t he marry Zita?” + +“My dear, he can’t. He is already married.” + +“Then why doesn’t he leave her to marry another?” + +“They live together--just the same as if they were married. That is a +common custom nowadays among the more intellectual classes. Already in +my youth it was accepted. You even find it in Turgenev and Dostoevski.” + +In parting on the kerb, Frank overheard Mrs. Kerr thanking her son. +“Chris can give me nothing now. And if he could, he would give it all to +Eva.” + +“Eleonor,” said Raymond, “has no banking account of her own. But she has +a cheque book and draws on her uncle’s account to an unlimited extent.” + +“A very nice, well-read, original young woman, and I am very fond of +her,” was Mrs. Kerr’s reply. + +Smiling thus over these insistent memories of yesterday, Frank pulled +open the blinds in the morning: the blue train was touching the south +coast of France. + +Nice. The most beautiful thing about Nice is its name, full of a +delicious springtide fragrance. Apart from the name, it may be +questioned, Frank thought, whether there was anything else particularly +beautiful about the town, that somewhat hard and heartless courtesan de +luxe organised for the sale of dubious pleasure. + +Already from the window of your carriage you behold the long train +bending like a serpent as it races up the coast carrying dutifully its +load of passengers who had dribbled from the four corners of the world, +congregating towards Paris, rushed in the night through northern wet and +wind and bleakness, to turn the corner at Marseilles at daybreak, and +now gaily down the sunny Côte d’Azur, past all the pink and cream and +white of basking villas, towards Nice. + +In another three hours, Frank reflected, he would see Eva, and the +benignant luxury of the scenery illustrated his anticipation. The train +curved amid the rocky hills and flowery valleys, past the rose-white +garden villas perched above the blue, blue sea--all swiftly whirling by. + +Nice. + +“His lordship is lunching in the restaurant and asks you to come in, +sir.” + +Entering the huge dining-room, Frank instantly perceived Lord +Ottercove’s steel-grey eye peering at him in its essential hardness, +but softened as it were by an air of bonhomie. There was about the +baron’s face something at once fine and comic, stern and pantaloonish, +Jehovahian and George Robian. His glinting eyes blazed with a righteous +blue fire, while his tilted nose protruded a naïve, peeping curiosity +about human affairs, and his noble brow frowned olympically. When he +closed one eye at you to glint with double force with the other, he +looked a satyr. At one side of him was Eva, gay and spring-like in +appearance; on the other, Lord de Jones, more shark-like than ever. No +one could look less a peer than de Jones. + +“Why won’t you take off your coat and come and have lunch?” said +Ottercove, genially. The three of them looked as though they had been +revelling considerably. + +“You do all look washed out,” said Frank. + +“We’ve decided to make a halt here before going on to Rome,” said +Ottercove. “I must recuperate my forces before I tackle Mussolini over +the craters.” + +“Do you expect any serious opposition?” + +“Yuh,” said Ottercove. “I guess they’ll want heavy compensation. The +Vesuvius alone, they argue, is a steady source of revenue, attracting +hordes of tourists.” + +“But he must see the international side of it if he has any good will in +him.” + +“The good will among men,” said the baron, “is a moral support +physically precarious for individual man to lean on. But all the better +for us. We are in no hurry since the General Election is again delayed. +We must give the illusion of warring, of desperately battling with evil +and sinister forces and win the battle of David and Goliath.” + +“Well, you certainly look exhausted.” + +“Don’t look at Chris,” said Eva. (So she already called him ‘Chris’!) +“He is always dirty looking, he can’t help it. I mean he’s clean, but +dirty-looking. There are such people. And there are others, who are +dirty and always look quite clean.” + +“You wise little girl, Eva,” said Ottercove tenderly. + +“Lord Ottercove, have you read Ferdinand’s novel?” she asked. + +“I’ve read it twice.” + +“H’m.--I must read it again,” she said. + +After lunch, Lord Ottercove took them up to his suite. On the table in +the drawing-room copies of his newspapers were spread out invitingly. “I +can’t,” said Frank, fingering _The Evening Ensign_, “behold this +newspaper without an inward pang.” + +Lord Ottercove frowned. He did not like to be reminded of it. Instead, +and in pursuance of a certain association of ideas, he asked, + +“What have you done to Cynthia?” + +“Alas! Alack!” said Frank, who, in the absence of his host’s material +interest in their marriage, did not see himself compelled to satisfy +the baron’s idle curiosity. + +Learning from Frank that he had put up at another hotel and would not +move over to this for fear of being ruined, “Stay with me two or three +weeks,” said Lord Ottercove. “You don’t know what pleasure it gives me.” +His words were so warm and inviting. “Gilbert,” he said softly, “go and +see if there are any more rooms on this floor.” + +“Yes, m’lord.” + +Gilbert returned to say that there was the choice of an imperial and an +ordinary suite. Which of the two did his lordship wish him to reserve +for Mr. Dickin? + +“Mr. Dickin will see and choose for himself,” said Lord Ottercove. “And +now I will jump into bed. I will see the three of you, I hope, at dinner +and take you to the Opera at Monte Carlo.” + +“Agreed!” + + + + +XXV. + + +When, dressed, that night he joined them in Ottercove’s private +drawing-room, Frank was amazed by the new, modern aspect of Eva. How was +it that he had never been so struck with her before? What ease! what +grace! withal what beauty! + +They dined at the Negresco in Nice and then hurried at a dangerous speed +in a hired Rolls-Royce to Monte Carlo, and again in Ottercove’s box, +alone with three men, Eva’s charm was conspicuous, as on the stage the +melancholy chime of Kremlin bells determined the slow but steady ruin of +a conscience-stricken man. + +On the way back to Nice, they were pensive. _Boris Godounov_ had made a +deep impression on the baron, who never missed a performance. “Fine man +Moussorgski!” he muttered. “A great and wonderful genius! To have +written that!” He paused. “If he were alive to-day, I would have made +him a duke, or editor-in-chief of all my newspapers.” + +“Or given him _The Evening Ensign_ as a wedding present,” added Frank. + +Lord Ottercove closed one eye and glared at Frank with the other, and +then closed it too and went to sleep in the depth of the car. + +In the night, Frank could not sleep for jealousy. Why was she so +intimate with de Jones and Ottercove? Why? + +At three, he crept to her door and knocked gently. + +She opened the door. + +He went in. + +“Darling!” he said. + +“Darling!” she answered, and came into his arms. + +“I am wretched,” he said, covering his face with his hands. + +“Darling,” she watched him tenderly, “you are getting very thin. Your +corner tooth is losing colour.” She looked at that thin individual with +scanty hair and thought, without pressing the thought home to her: “Is +that thing the thing on which I spent all my beautiful love?... Never +mind, such as he is he is mine.” + +“It is tragic,” Frank said, “to grow ugly without ever having been +beautiful.” + +She gave him a long kiss. And they were silent, and the silence seemed +pregnant with memories. “Do you remember?” it seemed to say. + +And for him there was fear and foreboding of loss in that kiss. He held +her breathless and exulted in the thought that her naked heart beat +against his. + +She looked into his eyes. “Do with me what you like.” + +How could he have ever parted with her? How could he ever part with her? + + + + +XXVI. + + +All next day they spent with Ottercove. Lord Ottercove habitually put up +at Nice, with the sole purpose, it would seem, of dining at Monte Carlo. +He came to the Riviera to relax after the strenuous social life of +London. And his relaxation, by the force of habit, took the form of +whizzing up and down the curved and much frequented road of the Côte +d’Azur to lunch at Cannes, to dine at Mentone, or hurrying off to play +golf, hurrying to get into bed and sleep hurriedly, to be wakened by +Gilbert to dress and hurry along to dine at Rapallo. After a month of +such relaxation, he would hurry back to London to rush from house to +house (mysteriously preceded by Mrs. Hannibal and his telephone +operator) and write hurried articles and print newspapers, and the news +boys were already hurrying out of the building carrying batches of them +and selling them at a run. Lord Ottercove privately claimed that since +his descent on London he had “gingered up” the public life of Great +Britain. His success was evidenced by his peerage; which is no guarantee +of anything more than success. + +His own personality and the effect it produced on his time and +surroundings interested and stimulated him beyond all else. An American +reporter in Nice had referred in the local Press to Lord Ottercove’s +having the head of a musician, and he instantly sent out Gilbert to buy +an album with the portraits of all the notable composers, and left it in +his private drawing-room, and his friends (who had read the notice) +said: “Rex, that chap Beethoven has your head to a t.” And another said, +“Rex, upon my word you have mistaken your profession and we enjoin you, +ere too late, to turn musical. Then, in a couple of years’ time, they +will be saying: ‘Ottercove.... Who the hell is Ottercove?’--‘Oh, the man +who wrote the Symphony in B flat.’” + +He smiled indulgently. He went down the steps (forgetting the existence +of the lift), whistling to himself and wondering ... really if ... and +_if really_ ... how nice. + +In the car, since the question had been jarringly dropped as it seemed +to him, he turned to Eva. + +“Eva, do you think,” he said from his reclining, hatless attitude in the +depth of the great car, “I look like a composer?” + +“You look like an angel, Rex,” she said. + +“Thank you, darling.” + +“You’re not as beautiful as Ferdinand,” she added, “but you are very +clever.” + +“Thank you, darling, thank you, dear, that’s comforting.” + +So she already called him Rex. Frank was astonished at the rapidity of +progress possible to women; and even a little jealous. + +“Chris,” said Ottercove, “how is your work getting on? Is it true I hear +you mean to blow us all up?” + +“If I didn’t others would. Ideas like these never come singly. There +must be at least half-a-dozen men now harbouring this amiable idea.” + +Lord Ottercove glanced at Frank and Eva. “I told you he was a lunatic.” + +“It’s you who are lunatics. Any one could do and talk about doing it, +for no one would believe him, everyone would think he was a lunatic.” De +Jones looked away, detached. + +“Let us change the conversation,” Eva said. + +They were hurrying in the direction of Cagnes--a destination which at +all times that it is mentioned is accompanied by a sort of footnote that +it is a place other than, and therefore not to be confused with, Cannes. +“You speak French,” said Ottercove. “Tell him to go to Cagnes. Cagnes, +not Cannes.” + +Frank took up the telephone tube and said to the chauffeur: “Cagnes.” + +“Cagnes,” repeated Lord Ottercove. “Not Cannes.” + +“Cagnes,” said Frank into the tube. “Not Cannes.” + +“I understand perfectly,” said the chauffeur. + +It seemed that the distinction was more familiar than generally +supposed. Still, the similarity was unfortunate, and many a passenger +for Cagnes must have found himself, unwittingly, in Cannes and, perhaps, +with profounder astonishment and reluctance, many a passenger for Cannes +must have discovered himself, with inward qualms and bitter +questionings, in Cagnes. But there it was, and even Ottercove could not +change this state of things. + +They alighted on the green hillside by the sea, and Ottercove, +perennially the host, opened the basket with the eatables. “Damn!” he +said. “That jackass Gilbert has forgotten the glasses.” Inwardly they +all cursed Gilbert. “You speak French,” said Ottercove to Frank, “Go and +ask that peasant woman on the top of that hill to lend us a few glasses. +Here--” He held out a batch of notes. + +“I’ve got some money.” + +“Here, give her this.” + +The old peasant woman who was sitting on the ground beside her donkey +could produce but two doubtful looking glasses, and Frank thrust the +batch of bank notes--some four hundred francs in all--into her hand. + +“But, monsieur!” she cried bewildered. “All this for a couple of +glasses! No, no....” + +They washed the glasses in champagne, drinking what was left of it and +eating delectable sandwiches delicately prepared by a luxurious hotel. +Then Lord Ottercove took his Bible out of his side-pocket and began to +read: + +“‘And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a +great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the +moon became as blood; + +“‘And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree +casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. + +“‘And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and +every mountain and island were moved out of their places. + +“‘And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and +the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every +free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; + +“‘And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the +face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: + +“‘For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to +stand?’” + +He shut the book, and for a while there was silence. De Jones took off +his glasses and wiped them pensively with his handkerchief; then quoted +softly: + +“‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be +no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any +more pain: for the former things are passed away.’” + +Frank waved away the flies. “If I were God I would consign all flies to +the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. For don’t tell me that +they know not what they do!” + +Eva looked at him reproachfully. “You are so stupid, darling. You wave +and shout at the flies.” + +“But they do go away when I shout.” + +“It’s not because you shout, but because you wave that they go away.” + +“H’m, that’s possible. I never thought of that. I admit I am +impractical.” + +The secret of a successful picnic, in view of its invariable discomfort, +is that it should be as short as possible. They--all of them towny +people--discovered this very soon and rose as if by mutual consent. + +“You speak French,” said Ottercove to Frank. “Go and take these glasses +back to the old woman on the hill and tell her she can have all the +sandwiches and fruit and champagne--” + +“Bottles,” qualified de Jones. + +“Bottles--all we’ve left, in fact.” + +Frank did as he was bid. + +They stepped into the hired Rolls-Royce, and as they drove away, this +time in the direction of Cannes, on the hill-side, by the side of an old +donkey, stood an old wrinkled woman who looked in their direction till +they were lost to sight. + +In the depth of the car, three men and a girl leaned back as far as it +is possible for three men and a girl to do so in a car. Lord Ottercove +was dozing, Eva gently playing the ukulele. + +“I didn’t know you played the ukulele,” Frank remarked. + +“There are things, Ferdinand, you do not know,” she said. + +Ottercove opened one eye. “You are right, sweetie,” he said. “He is no +good: I’m the man for you.” + +“‘I’m the man! I’m the man!’ This is from _Candida_,” chimed in de +Jones. “Let me quote, on my behalf, from the same work: ‘All the love in +the world is waiting to speak: but it is shy--shy--shy....’” + +“Eva,” said Frank. “Eva....” + +“What?” + +“Eyes as blue as the Mediterranean....” + +“Now, Eva, you must choose,” said Ottercove, “between this decrepit +Genius of the Untried who claims he can push up the grass but is only +fit to push up the daisies; the dubious heir to a, if possible, more +dubious throne; and a half-demented peer. Now come on, my love, and +choose your prize. Spot the winner.” + +Eva smiled and played the ukulele dreamily. And the music seemed to say, +Why choose? when you are snug, at ease, sprawling in the depth of a +great car rushing softly by the edge of the blue sea. + + + + +XXVII. + + +Returned, Eva vanished mysteriously and came back with a book and asked +them to write in her album. + +“All these your admirers, Eva?” Ottercove scanned the pages wearily. +“Hello what’s this? + + “‘_O Eva, O Eva,_ + _I love you so mighty,_ + _I wish my pyjama was_ + _Next to your nighty._’ + +“Whoever wrote this, Eva?” + +“A little schoolboy in Ireland.” + +“Shame!” + +“He loved me.” + +“That’s something.” + +Frank the while was scanning the pages of _The Sunday Runner_, +Ottercove’s youngest and favourite offspring. “Rotten newspaper,” he +said, as if to himself, but loud enough for Ottercove to hear him. +“Nothing of me in it.” + +“I am taking you to-night to Maxime’s. And now,” said Lord Ottercove, +“I’ll jump into bed. Good-night to you.” + +And, to precipitate their going, he was already removing his tie and +collar. + +That night at Maxime’s Eva looked exquisite. She had not, Frank felt, +before now expanded her more expensive potentialities. Now she looked +like really expanding them. And Lord Ottercove looked very much like +encouraging her to expand them. She was a plant that suddenly flowered +when put in a vase of champagne. The competition for her on the part of +the three men developed into rapid fire. “Now then, Eva, why this +hesitation?” Ottercove demanded. “I am a man of brains. I am a man of +money. I am a man of love and a capacity to requite love once it is +lavished on me tit for tat. _Quid pro quo._” + +“Do you love me, Rex?” + +He smote the table. “With all my heart.” + +“Truly?” + +“I swear by my love for my newspapers or may God strike me dead!” + +“And you, Ferdinand?” + +“Can you ask? What of my courage? Am I not setting out all alone +against all his newspapers, with possibly the other newspaper lord at +the back of him--in fact, the whole of the more sinister Press of Great +Britain against me!” + +Lord Ottercove, gripping his knife and fork in his two fists--he was in +high spirits to-night--leaned back and laughed. There was in his gesture +all the self-confidence and abandon of men who had climbed to the top of +the ladder. On the top of the ladder one is apt to let oneself go. +(Which, by no means, applies to all ladders. One’s solicitude for one’s +fate on most ladders is never so keen as on the last rung. But--let us +be perfectly clear--it is a solicitude different in kind from that which +is experienced by people passing _under_ a ladder.) + +“And you, Chris?” she asked. “Will you love me all your life?” + +“All my life and fifty years after.” + +“You might be Mr. Solberg, the Register of Copyrights at Washington,” +said Frank. + +“Isn’t Ferdinand beautiful?” + +“As beautiful as my nose.” + +Lord Ottercove was getting cheerier and cheerier, and he danced less +steadily than he was wont to do. “Now, Chris, don’t you make love to +Eva. Hands off! you married men! You haven’t been divorced a month. I at +least am a bachelor and can marry her to-morrow if the fancy takes us. +Can’t I, Eva? I’ll stop that crater mission of yours if you don’t take +yourself away in time.” He looked at Eva. “I’ve got to blow him up a +bit from time to time, or he gets too cocky, you know.” + +“It’s me who will do it,” de Jones said. + +“Do what?” + +“Blow you all up.” + +Lord Ottercove called the waiter and paid. While they were putting on +their coats and pushing through the door into the street, de Jones and +Frank lingering behind, Lord Ottercove jumped into the car after Eva, +slammed the door and drove off. + + + + +XXVIII. + +THE REVELATION + + +“Well,” said Lord de Jones, taking Frank by the arm and leading him into +a similar establishment almost next door, “if they are off, we shall +continue by ourselves.” And he ordered more champagne and more chicken. +The hour was far advanced into the morning and the last revellers were +leaving the premises. The band played on sulkily for the two new +visitors and looked appealingly at the waiters. “Look here, Dickin,” de +Jones said, rather thickly, “you’re a jolly good sort and I am awful +fond of you.” + +“I, too, I really am, very fond of you, more than I can say.” + +The wine had done its noble work: they lived in a world of mutual and +uncritical esteem. + +“By Jove, you’re a fine fellow, Dickin, that’s what you are! A fine +fellow. A _fine fellow_. And a damn good writer too!” + +Frank remembered through his dim but blissful state that de Jones could +never be persuaded to read a book of any sort, let alone Frank’s novels, +but now this fact did not detract, but rather added value to the +sincerity of the noble lord’s appreciation. And, when, with swelling +heart, Frank answered, “And I feel, de Jones, you’re first among +contemporary scientists!” he really felt it. As the waiter opened a new +bottle of champagne, Lord de Jones lapsed into reminiscence. “Why do I +love that girl? Traits of her mother? As a young man I did not care for +women, and they did not care for me. You see what I look like. A +Frenchwoman once described my appearance as ‘_ignoble_’! But that one +when I saw her first in Russia! Now, of course, she is nothing much to +look at. But at that time she was extraordinarily good looking--better +than her daughters. I was constrained by her husband and was half blind +to her suggestive looks. I wouldn’t listen. Till one day as I was +leaving her she fell before me on the floor. That somehow got hold of my +senses. Raymond dates back to that incident, I believe. The vision of +her prostrate on the floor haunted me always. It made me come back to +her. I always went back. And now’s she’s too old.... I am drunk or I +wouldn’t be telling you this.” + +He was silent a while. “Eva, Dickin,” he said. “He abducted her, but we +two can go on loving her more than _he_ will ever understand....” + +Dickin’s eyes filled. “We love her,” he said. “We all love her. Perhaps +Ottercove too loves her. Why can’t we all love her and love one +another?” + +“Don’t I know my excellent uncle Lord O.! Have you seen him sign himself +‘O.’? A tremendous O. Nevertheless, the numerical symbol.” + +“You are hard on the baron.” + +“Am I? I like his boyishness, his prodigious vitality. He is a Hannibal +playing quoits with the world. Not, I regret to say, because he loves +the world, but because he loves playing quoits. But a rather lovable +_enfant terrible_ all the same. He could have helped me. But he would +back out of it next day. He has no large plan of action; but he conceals +this very cleverly by dramatising every little situation on the spur of +the moment, improvising campaigns at the turn of an effective phrase, +and making you think that his least bit of whim is the component part of +a large premeditated whole.” + +“I know. A sort of second inspiration known to dramatists, more clever +but more freakish than the main idea.” + +“Exactly. But he has no main idea, unless it be a certain feeling for +caution, which, coupled with his second inspiration in which he is a +virtuoso, determines his success. He may turn into a great peacemaker +to-morrow, and the day after find himself uttering: ‘It is not peace I +have brought, but a sword,’ and side with the forces of war; and, in +turn, prove successful in each. I am bitter because I cannot get him to +help me in my mission without resorting to subterfuge, which maddens me. +This idiotic crop-growing scheme! He was quick enough to seize it for +his own journalistic ends without bothering to probe the scientific +aspect. If I could make him understand my real motive I might fire his +imagination for a day; but he would sleep on it (he always sleeps on all +important questions and telephones his decision in the morning), sleep +on it and ring me up at dawn: ‘Look here, Chris. It is a brilliant idea. +But I advise you against it. Why? It would not do you any good. Good-bye +to you,’ and hang up the receiver. ‘Do you no good.’ Not him, no! No +advertising possibilities. Actors and audience simultaneously reduced to +smithereens! + +“Why should we regret it? Schopenhauer could not understand how it was +that man, in the teeth of all this pain and hell of life, had not the +sense and pluck to end it. Wherever I look, in every moment there is +pain. The pain of memory, the pain of anxiety, the pain of sheer +dullness, the pain of regret. You cannot think either backward or +forward for ten minutes without a pang of pain. Then why should we be +sorry to quit it, to take ourselves away to where pain cannot reach us? + + “‘_Who breathes must suffer and who thinks must mourn,_ + _And he alone is blest who ne’er was born._’ + +“It’s a poor life, Dickin. The more successful, the more multifarious +and sensitive, the more painful. We are, with our birth, caught in a +vice and cannot away. You don’t believe in the devil. But I do. The +brain is the devil. A malignant cancerous growth. It’s a mockery from +start to finish. We are simply made to chase after our own tail, and +Satan stands by and laughs: ‘Let us see whether they have sense and +pluck enough to end it.’ The mundane life is a blind avenue we have +strayed into while nobody was looking. We must get out. There is no +other course. We do not belong here. Do not the eyes of humans and +beasts alike tell you that we do not belong here? We must quit _en +masse_, get away. + +“The cruelty and pain of this world. The pain and cruelty. Donkeys and +mules goaded with a stick; the resigned suffering in their eyes. The +Arabs cut their donkeys and then prod the wound: ‘Go on, damn you.’ And, +in the same way, we are all goaded. On the raw, or we won’t move. Goaded +by desire, remorse, love, hope, despair.... Hourly, minute by minute. + +“This is not an age that believes in the coming of a new Messiah. It +believes, foolishly, in what it can touch and see. What will you say, +Dickin, when I tell you that already as a youth I had intimations of a +mission, of being a--don’t laugh--a new Messiah, clad not in fine +raiment, nor born in a manger, but in the fashion of the age +scientifically equipped! Christ showed the way, but lacked the +mechanical means. He said this visible world had to be completely and +utterly destroyed: He waited for the miracle: but none came. Christ had +love, but no dynamite. + +“But not for ever will mankind be mocked. My friends, the hour of +deliverance is at hand. How is it?: ‘I am the Resurrection and the +Life.’ The Resurrection and the Life.” Suddenly his eyes were moist. He +wept. + +As they walked back it was light and the birds were twittering in the +square. + + + + +XXIX. + + +When Frank knocked at Eva’s door there was no answer. As he flung +himself into bed the sun already pressed itself through the curtain. + +The glowing earth swam in a silver sky. It swam and swam. And a shark +came out and followed it wanting to devour it. The poor earth had but +two fins and swam helplessly out of the reach of de Jones’s jaws. There +she was with all her cities and towns labouring to get away, panting +dreadfully; how hard he pushed her and how ineffectively. That was +because he was a passenger upon her and helpless as a man endeavouring +to accelerate the motion of a train. In his office on the top of the +roof, from the captain’s bridge, Ottercove shouted orders through a +megaphone: “Faster! faster! faster!” he cried. And the capitalists +whipped up the slaves and made them row faster. But a Trade Union strike +was just on and the miners and rowing men quitted their tools. And the +Prime Minister, as he urged the policemen to hearten them up with their +bayonet points, appealed to the galley slaves’ sense of duty and +patriotism and called on them “by a supreme effort, their loyalty and +solidarity in the cause of Humanity to save this planet, our Mother +Earth, the common heritage of all our race, from the treacherous jaws of +that monster,” while Ottercove from the bridge, whence there opened a +limitless view of the world, including Ludgate-hill and St. Paul’s, +shouted at them through the megaphone: “Faster, damn you! Still faster!” +Already de Jones’s huge lower jaw dropped and took water as he swam up +very close, and Frank’s heart stopped beating. The shark’s jaws opened +quite wide about to swallow the earth with London and Paris and Vienna +and all, and the men in the fields and the women and animals and the +suffering; and Ottercove from his bridge (pushing aside the Prime +Minister) encouraged the rowing men with a long, big stick, as de +Jones’s sharp teeth fastened upon the green flanks of the earth--an +enormous stick like the trunk of a tree: Bang! bang! bang! The knocking +grew louder. + +Frank opened his eyes. “Come in,” he said. + +The door opened admitting Gilbert’s tremulous frame. “Sorry to waken +you, sir, but his lordship asks if you will take breakfast with him in +his bedroom.” + +He threw on his dressing-gown and followed the valet into his master’s +apartment, where he found the baron in bed, which was littered with +newspapers. “Well,” said Lord Ottercove genially, “I’ve got away with +the goods.” The balcony door was wide open. The blue Mediterranean +stretched out its paws and basked in the sun. + +De Jones came in, and at the same time Eva in her pink dressing-gown and +red-heeled slippers sidled in from the adjoining room. “Gilbert,” she +said, “please wrap these up for me.” + +“Yes, my lady.” + +“Let me introduce you to my wife,” said Ottercove. + +“Your wife--?” + +“We went and got married last night,” she explained. + +“A brain wave,” said Ottercove. “I get such brain waves sometimes.” + +“A happy thought,” said Eva. + +“The second inspiration,” de Jones looked at Frank. + +“Anyway I got the better of you two there,” said Ottercove uncertainly. + +“You did,” said Eva. “It never occurred to them to do it. And I am sure +I gave you plenty of opportunities, Ferdinand.” Her tone was meek and +propitiating. “So it’s not my fault.” + +“No, of course not. Still, it is a blow. One is never so keen on a thing +as when one has just lost it.” + +Lord Ottercove smiled pleasantly. The assertion seemed to rehabilitate +his doubting judgment as to whether he had acted wisely overnight. “Of +course,” he said, “she’s a nice girl and wanted encouraging with +marriage to a man of brains and money who can do something with her. I +felt all along it would have been sheer waste throwing her away on +either of you. Casting pearls before swine, though I don’t, of course, +mean anything personal. Will you both lunch with us?” + +At lunch Lord Ottercove was subdued. All competition had suddenly ceased +with his acclaim as the winner; yet he did not look at all as though he +had won the Derby. He looked as he must have felt: as if he had rolled +head over heels in his best trousers and torn a hole in the seat, and +that instead of everyone laughing and clapping they merely said to him, +“Go and change.” In passing things during lunch and helping himself he +looked a little shame-faced, and the three men were all glad when the +meal was over and they could go for a drive. Each wanted to be sure that +Eva took the ukulele with her to help them slide over the blank minutes. +Frank enjoyed riding about with Lord Ottercove in powerful motor-cars, +rapidly, rapidly, with a purposeful air, to no particular destination. +It was somehow, he felt, symbolical of Ottercove’s whole person. “Now, +Chris, shut up and let us hear what Dickin has to say.” And after +listening to Frank, “Now, Dickin, shut up. You’ve said enough. Chris, +let’s hear you.” Then: “Well, neither of you seem to have anything very +illuminating to say. I had better think it out myself.” + +“You’re a genius,” said Frank. “A genius of God-knows-what; but a +genius!” + +“Yes,” concurred de Jones, “there is no doubt at all about your +greatness; there may be some doubt about the quality of your greatness, +but no doubt about the greatness.” + +“Yes, when you are without your spectacles, Rex, you look a genius,” +said Eva. “But the moment you put them on you look like a doctor or a +harassed business man, or a clergyman who says, ‘How are we this +morning?’” + +“My heart,” said Lord Ottercove, “very jumpy to-day.” + +“I think it’s the stomach,” said Eva. + +“I think it’s the stomach,” said Ottercove gravely, but reassured. + +“I think so,” said Frank. “Complete stoppage of the bowels.” + +“Better go back and telephone for the doctor,” said Eva. + +Lord Ottercove was touched if you chanced to ask about his health, and +now at Eva’s solicitude his eyes brimmed with tears. He took her hand +and stroked it. He was so moved by her attitude that he could not speak, +and only swallowed several times, and looked away. His health was not +too good. His boiler would suddenly demur in the midst of festivities +and pursue a mood of its own, and looking at the baron now as he +reclined hatless in the depth of the limousine, Dickin wondered if the +centre of his lordship’s mind was not--his expression suggested +it--superintending the issues fought within him. + +“No wonder,” Eva said, “your nose is red and shiny with all this +whizzing up and down in motor-cars and not a moment’s quietness.” + +He stroked her hand and went to sleep. + +Frank looked a long time at Eva, reproachfully, before he asked in a +whisper: “Why, why did you marry him? Why?” + +“I thought it would please Pilling.” + +“And I am forgotten! It didn’t take long.” + +“But you are married yourself.” + +“True. I’d forgotten.” + +“Rex telegraphed last night after we had got married for Mummy and Zita +and Pilling and Raymond and all to come out. ‘Let ’em all come out, the +whole bag o’ tricks of them!’ he said. And we were married by a +funny-looking parson; Rex had to pull him out of bed to marry us. He +gave him five minutes to slip into some clothes, and a hundred pounds of +money, and he married us in the sitting room without any trouble; said +it would be all right. I was so pleased it was definite. But Rex looked +puzzled and worried and talked to himself all the time, and when we were +back in the car he said he must have walked upstairs to the clergyman’s +flat in his sleep and wondered whether what he had just done could not +be undone perhaps by the Pope if he said he was a sleep-walker. But I +said the law was sacred and definite for better or worse. And when we +were all alone in the car and I began kissing him because he was my +husband and expected him to behave like a bridegroom, he was so scared +and looked through the window as though he wanted to jump out. And I +held him back and tried to calm him down, and he kept saying: ‘My God! +My God!’ And he asked me what had happened on the hill then? And I said, +‘Read Ferdinand’s serial.’ And he said, ‘Did it happen as in the +serial?’ I said, ‘Read the serial and never mind what happened.’ And so +he looked as though he’d gone and paid a huge price for something he’d +bought at a shop and then got home and found it was quite rotten.” + +“You may be his wife, Eva,” de Jones said, “but first and foremost you +are my secretary. And you shall remain with me for the duration of my +mission.” + +“Yes, I will do my best, Chris, to help you grow wheat.” + +He laughed. “They will believe anything--anything. But if ever you +conceive something really terrible, nobody will hinder you but they will +let you blow them up into smithereens with the sympathetic assistance of +the Ottercoves and such who will believe the first cock-and-bull story +that you choose to tell them.” + +Lord Ottercove opened one eye and glared with it at de Jones, then +closed it. + +“Let us change the conversation,” Eva said. + +Pointing at a pillared villa, “I like that pillared thing,” Frank said. +“It asserts itself on the surrounding landscape. It’s a yea-saying to +life! None of your snivelling English houses looking like half-built +factories of red brick, hiding their faces as if ashamed of themselves.” + +“Buy it, Rex, just for the two of us,” said Eva. + +“I’ll buy it,” said the baron. + +They got out and bought it, and then motored back to Nice in time for +tea. + +After tea, de Jones took Frank by the arm and marched him up and down +the deserted, wind-swept Promenade des Anglais. “Why did he marry that +girl, Dickin? He had no notion of it when he left us at Maxime’s last +night. Just to be able to say to us in the morning: ‘I’ve got away with +the goods.’ For the love of the phrase. And mind you, he didn’t seduce +her--no fun in that, no advertisement! altogether too ordinary--but he +married her to do something more striking that may arouse comment. He +just felt that he owed it to himself and his brains and his money and +all to afford a real piece of folly.” + +“No, de Jones, it is we who are the fools for not having married her. +His second inspiration has not failed him. It never does. He has +enriched the rest of his life. Her sheer livingness is inexhaustible +and--I can see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice--you love her as I +do, more and more, to my dismay. All art is the translation of the +subjective into an object. Thus I prefer Eva to earnest women who can +talk of Pessimism and Buddhism but have no living and spontaneous form +themselves. When an object like Eva shows no visible sign of containing +a subject but appeals beyond all analysis, it may be taken that the +divine spirit has found in her a happy home. She is God’s art, perfect +like a flower.” + +“You are right, Dickin. The soul wants fresh food, just the same as the +body. And what some please to call the divided soul is the taste of a +spiritual epicure whose crime and curse is that he does not care for +preserved food. My excellent uncle Lord O. must always have everything +of the best.” + +“Oh, the memory of that first kiss! How she came into my arms, pliable +like a young plant. The hot sun, the menace of our end, and the longing +not to die unmarried. De Jones, I can’t believe that I have lost her. +She will have all his houses and horses and servants to play with.” + +“But not all the King’s horses, not all the King’s men, can put +Humpty-Dumpty together again.” + +When in the evening Frank returned to his rooms, he found a gold watch +on his table. The watch was studded with large diamonds and inside was +the engraved inscription: + + “_From Eva Ottercove_ + _With Love._” + +When he entered the Ottercove’s suite and lingered in the drawing-room +he was startled by the animated conversation which reached him from the +adjoining bedroom. “Now don’t you think,” said a grieved, perhaps +somewhat sarcastic voice, unmistakably the baron’s, “you should have +taken me into your counsels instead of first disposing of the watch and +then sending the jeweller to me for the money?” + +“But you haven’t seen it!” the baroness rejoined impatiently. “It’s not +at all expensive for what it is; it’s all in diamonds. What’s the use of +your saying anything when you haven’t _seen_ it?” + +“Just so. Don’t you think I should have seen it, in view of your youth +and inexperience, instead of laying yourself out to be swindled?” + +“It’s nothing to you even to be swindled, so why make any bones about +it?” + +This seemed to disarm the other for a space. “Why do you do these +things?” he then asked sadly. + +“I wanted to please him.” + +“But you could have waited a little, or asked.” + +“You are an awful old miser,” she said, “and I am sorry I ever married +you.” + +“I see that I shall have to engage a governess to go about with you and +chaperone you for a bit.” + +“You are a walking mountain of impudence!” said the baroness, “and I +don’t know what God was about when he made you!” + + + + +XXX. + + +Eva’s comment was not lost on Lord Ottercove. When next morning they +drove to the Beau-Site in Cannes, Lord Ottercove wore a more becoming +pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. + +“Just gone and settled their affairs,” he said, coming out on to the +sunny terrace, where Eva’s relatives awaited him against the background +of an ornamental garden and tennis courts on which rich Americans and +English exercised their limbs all day. + +“Very charming and touching,” said Mrs. Kerr. “But you should not have +put yourself out, Lord Ottercove. Raymond would have settled my bill, I +am sure. He is his mother’s boy.” + +“Mummy, you are too silly for words!” Zita flared up. “Where does +Raymond get his money?” + +“From Eleonor of course.” + +“And Eleonor?” + +“From her uncle.” + +“Well?” + +“But I give it all to Chris.” + +“Mummy is so stupid. She always draws wrong conclusions from everything. +There she goes about with that ‘Please trample on me’ look, smoking +cigarettes all day, agreeing with everybody. She takes Italian lessons +at five shillings an hour, and in order to make up for it gives golfing +lessons at five shillings an hour, and then takes her pupils out to tea, +and spends ten shillings; or has her portrait done in the café; always +invites everybody, stands drinks and cigarettes all round, pays for +everybody; speaks to everybody in the restaurants--Italians, Germans, +Scandinavians.” + +“She is a white woman,” muttered Lord Ottercove. + +“You know what I’ll tell you, Lord Ottercove! I am disappointed in +Fyodor Ferdinandovitch. I knew nothing--nothing about it, till I read it +in _Pale Primroses_. Naturally I asked the girls, and it all came out.” + +“I know.” + +“But both! _Both!_” + +“He didn’t wish to leave either out, for fear of offending the other, I +guess.” + +“Mrs. Kerr,” said Frank, “I appeal to your idealism and good sense. In +the severity of your indignation, you did not sufficiently allow for +the circumstances in which, if I may put it thus, the drama was played. +Picture the scene. All around us, an epic panorama, and I alone with two +girls ... lovely girls ... the mountain spring ... certain death--and +Shakespeare’s immortal lines-- + + “‘_O Proserpina!_ + _For the flowers now that frighted thou let’st fall_ + _From Dis’s waggon! daffodils,_ + _That come before the swallow dares, and take_ + _The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,_ + _But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes_ + _Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses_ + _That die unmarried, ere they can behold_ + _Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady_ + _Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and_ + _The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,_ + _The flower-de-luce being one! Oh! these I lack_ + _To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,_ + _To strew him o’er, and o’er._’ + +“These loyal girls!” He placed a hand on either sister’s shoulder, and +drew them to him. “These splendid girls!” + +“Whom you have dishonoured!” + +“Tut-tut, Mummy!” said Zita. “You mustn’t blurt these things out! Morty +will murder Frank if he knows.” + +“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “I have made an honest woman of one of +them at any rate--sorry, can’t do it to both.” + +“I do not understand you, Lord Ottercove.” + +“I have made an honest woman of Eva.” + +“Explain it to me, please. I don’t understand.” + +“I have married her.” + +There was a pause. Mrs. Kerr looked round at them all, and satisfied +herself that the statement was a bona-fide one. + +“Well--I am very pleased. I must say that you have chosen well and +wisely. She will make a good wife to you. I congratulate you both.” + +“I hope, Mrs. Kerr,” Frank said, “that your grudge against me is over. I +trust that you will rejoice in your daughter’s happiness, and will ever +remember that the assignation of unworthy motives never helps but +weakens an argument.” + +“Dickin talks rot, but always with conviction. He would make a good +lawyer,” said Ottercove. + +“Yes, or a great priest,” said Frank, obviously pleased with himself. “I +like to practise my oratorical gift.” + +“Now let’s make a night of it!” proposed Mrs. Kerr. + +Lord Ottercove did not reply. Lord Ottercove hated to act on other +people’s suggestions and as a rule “advised them against it,” and if +pressed for his reasons, produced arguments so cynically free from +plausibility that he seemed himself amused by their bewildering effect +on his opponent. If he approved of a suggestion, he said nothing; then, +a few moments later, made it himself. + +“I am taking you out to-night, all of you,” he said. + +Pilling took Frank by the arm and marched him ahead, while the others +followed behind at a distance. + +“Glad you done it,” he said. “I thought it was me. My conscience sort of +worried me. It’s a dirty thing to do. Glad you done it.” + +“Damn it all, Pilling! It was a hill. Spring! Sunshine! You know those +lines from Shakespeare? + + “‘_O Proserpina,_ + _For the flowers now that frighted--_’” + +“Shut up, Dickin!” + +“You don’t realise the situation. We thought it was the end for us.” + +“I realise. _Force majeure._ That white-washes it a bit. Otherwise, you +know, I doubt whether you would be eligible for the best clubs.” + +“Still, I am disappointed in Ferdinand Fyodorovitch,” said Mrs. Kerr, +coming up from behind. + +“I appeal to your idealism,” said Frank automatically. “As I said, the +sun, the mountain spring--and those immortal lines--‘_O +Proserpina!..._’” + +They would not let him go on. Strange: the moment he began to quote +those lovely lines, they would look sullen and angry, and ask him to +“shut up.” It seemed as if they regarded his appeals to Shakespeare as +in bad taste; till he would lose his temper. “It would really seem that +my great crime consisted in getting saved!” + +Eleonor, after some consultation with Raymond, came up to her uncle and +took him aside. “It’s all very well,” she said, “Chris having adopted +Raymond. But suppose Chris marries again and has a child of his own?” + +“Then we must get him married at once.” + +“Married! That is just what we are anxious to prevent, for fear it might +result in a male child.” + +“Married, of course, to somebody who is beyond hope of begetting +children,” said Ottercove. + +“But who?” + +“To his old love, of course--Mrs. Kerr.” + +“But how do you know she can’t have a child?” + +“Her doctor told me in confidence.” + +“But he will refuse!” + +“We must bring pressure to bear on him.” + +“How?” + +“Chris is ruined, and he’s used to spending money. He knows I won’t give +him a penny, and, in fact, he won’t have it from me. He likes to feel +independent towards me. But of course, it’s only natural that Raymond, +married to my niece who draws on my account to an unlimited extent, +can’t help, good and loving son that he is, helping his mother. And +Chris, married to her, will be all right.” + +“Raymond and I want to marry next week in Paris,” said Eleonor. + +Lord Ottercove’s lips moved almost silently. “Why not marry here? I know +a chap--a parson--most obliging. Pulled him out of bed the other night +to marry us. Read the marriage ceremony unruffled.” + +“Yes, most obliging,” Eva concurred. + +“And you, Chris? And you, Mrs. Kerr?” + +“What’s that?” + +“Why don’t you get married?” + +“I don’t know that it’s very safe to attach me to her with the tape of a +spent passion.” + +“Look here, I’ve got hold of a fellow--a pastor of some obscure +denomination. Very accommodating. He will remarry you all. What d’you +think of it?” + +“I am very glad, Chris, to be of use. You are a genius--” + +“Of the untried,” said Ottercove. + +“A real genius in science. And I want to help you in your discoveries. +Yes, I do. Take the case of the Curies.” + +“You mean Monsieur and Madame Curie?” + +“Yes, I do. You will instruct me in your science and we will make new +discoveries together, you and I, Christopher!” + +“Help us!” Turning to Frank, he whispered: “They think they have got the +better of me there. But the boot is on the other foot! What do I care +whether I am blown up--single or married?” + +“So in the end, all are satisfied,” said Ottercove. + +“Except my poor ancestors,” murmured de Jones. + +“Who are dead.” + +“Who are dead.” + +Pilling seemed pleased and impressed. “Lord Ottercove,” he remarked, as +if out of the baron’s hearing, but loud enough for the baron to hear, +“is a man of wide sympathies.” + +“He is a live wire,” from de Jones. + +That night, dashing off to Monte Carlo, where Lord Ottercove was +entertaining them, Pilling was seen to step into the baron’s car, who +not only did not seem to resent this intrusion, but actually welcomed +him with a smile. “I have, as you say, wide sympathies. When I see a man +struggling to get out of the water, I can’t resist helping him. It is my +nature,” he was heard to say, stepping out of the car. + +And, stepping again into the car with Pilling close on his heels, on the +way back to Nice, he was heard to say: “I have an interest in a number +of hotels which brings me in--er--about--er--three hundred thousand +pounds a year, and I’ll finance you in your undertaking,” and slam the +door behind him. + +Next day, Mrs. Kerr, who always liked to show off herself and hers, +called her new husband into the bathroom while John was shaving. “Look, +look!” she said. “What a big sponge John has!” But Christopher looked +as though he wished the sponge had been smaller, and the dowry larger. + +The same day Frank picked up, in the lounge of the hotel, a newspaper, +which informed him: + +“Among the new arrivals at the Hotel Mauresco are Lord and Lady +Ottercove, Viscount and Viscountess de Jones, Mr. Frank Dickin, the +novelist, and the Honourable and Mrs. Raymond Mosquito.” + + + + +XXXI. + + +Since the wedding had taken place in Nice, the bride and bridegroom felt +that they had to “get away” for their honeymoon, and elected a voyage by +yacht. “I have got away with the goods,” said Lord Ottercove, “and I +must get away with them.” + +“I must leave at once,” said de Jones. + +“I agree,” from Ottercove. + +But as de Jones would not part with his secretary, and the new Lady de +Jones would not part with her husband, they all left together, Frank as +a supernumerary. + +Perhaps, as a result of his marriage to Mrs. Kerr, Lord de Jones found +delight in concentrating on his missionary work, dictating for hours and +hours to Eva, who complained of “her poor brains.” He dictated to her, +and made her read aloud her shorthand, and every time it seemed to him a +mystery and a miracle. He did not really believe anyone capable of +deciphering those puzzled and bewildered little signs they made. + +He was beautifully in love with her, and every word she typed seemed to +him a romance. He scanned the typescript, and suddenly perceived a +letter she had erased with her own darling fingers so as to insert the +right one: his heart filled with tears. + +Frank conceived it his duty to warn her. “Be careful of him. This +dictating is all very well, but it’s not the end of the business. It’s +unwholesome to be alone with that man. He can--he can--” + +“He can do nothing.” + +“He can seduce you.” + +“You have.” + +“True. I’d forgotten.” + +She looked at him quizzically. + +“You don’t know that Chris--yes, I might as well say it plainly--well, +you know as well as I do about Chris and your mother.” + +“They are married.” + +“Now they are. They haven’t before. Raymond is a living indictment of +their relations.” + +“Yes--Raymond--he somehow never cared for his father. But I don’t mind +Chris loving me, because he is a friend of Mummy’s.” + +“I have nothing further to say.” + +“Thank goodness for that!” + +But he would return at once with more to say. + +“You shouldn’t make yourself so cheap, Eva!” + +“Why shouldn’t I? He is so lonely, and never had a nice girl to love +him.” + +“Eva!” + +“It gives him so much pleasure, and it’s so little trouble to me.” + +“You leave my girl wife alone!” said Ottercove, coming upon Chris and +Eva suddenly in the seclusion of the Captain’s bridge. “Why don’t you +leave the girl alone?” + +De Jones blinked at him. “There is a divinity,” he said, “that shapes +our ends, rough-hew them as we may.” + +“You’ve got your wife, Chris. What do you want with mine?” + +“She reminds me of her mother,” said de Jones. + +“Ha! Not so bad!” + +“She’s more like her mother was than her mother is.” + +“But I’ve got away with the goods!” He strolled up and down several +times, and then stopped, peering at the horizon. “Oh, my heart!” + +“I think it’s the stomach,” said Chris. + +“Yes, I think it’s the stomach,” said Ottercove. + +“Poor darling!” from Eva. + +At that, tears came to his eyes, and he turned away to hide his +emotion. + + + + +XXXII. + + _Fliesse, fliesse, lieber Fluss!_ + _Nimmer werd’ ich froh;_ + _So verrauschte Scherz und Kuss_ + _Und die Treue so._ + _Goethe._ + + +Everything went wrong with Frank; he could succeed in nothing. He had no +luck in anything--but he won steadily at ping-pong. He was rapidly +losing his hair. But on that score he was optimistic. As his hair fell +out more and more, he lost neither courage nor faith, but interpreted +this as a process preparatory to new growth. The new hair which was to +make its appearance must, he argued, have room; and the old hair was +making room for it--with alacrity. When, after a time, it had entirely +disappeared, he judged that now at last the field was clear for a fresh +crop. And, as if to compensate him for his premature bereavement on the +top, dispassionate nature started a particularly bristling, pushful +growth out of his nostrils. Even so, his faith in the value of human +striving had not deserted him. All other remedies having failed, he +determined to grow hair by sheer strength of will. And he was +succeeding--succeeding.... + +Lord Ottercove devoted more and more time to reading. He had always been +a great reader, but now, since his marriage to Eva, he spent all the +day with her reading a book to himself. He had always been bored, but +now, married to her, he seemed more bored than ever before. + +The haze and hurry, the dreamy unreality of modern life. Frank was +bewildered rather than bored with it. He was thrown like flotsam into +the stream and was swept along. But he would step out--and life would be +timeless. He could not tell how passionately he craved to step out of +life in time, while he was with de Jones, Mrs. Kerr, and Ottercove. + +The scrambling on the part of the three men for the favours of Eva, as +the yacht made its way towards Rome, was too much for Frank, and he left +them at Genoa, travelling north by rail. + +And now, as he looked back, the bleak hours he once spent with Eva +seemed coloured beads wetted in light and translucent with a meaning. +The actual giving at the time was crude and like a pain. The remembrance +of it, as it grew more distant, was as the faint perfume of roses, a +romance far off. Dead, perhaps, we see these things completely. He +remembered how in that first kiss she had pressed herself, a pliant +plant, against him, and closed her eyes, as if to shut in the vision: +there was something in her movement half instinctive which thrilled him +in one so young; half naïve, as though she had only read of it in books +and now, for the first time, was tasting love, and staging it, in actual +life! He remembered how at his dentist’s one day, they had sat together +side by side on the narrow sofa in the waiting-room, and as the +attendant turned his back on them, he had touched her thigh and knee +(oh, thigh! oh, knee!), and at once when they were out, and in the taxi, +she had kissed him on his dentisted mouth. He remembered too, how she +had written to him once about a Cambridge “student,” alleged to have +given her circumstantial proof of his, Ferdinand’s, unfaithfulness, and +when he wrote to her demanding that she substantiate the charge, and +challenged her to identify the Cambridge “student,” her writing back: +“Let us drop the subject, as the matter is muddling.” Or how, after +saying to him: “You must absolutely send me roses for my birthday +to-morrow, Ferdinand!” she telegraphed next day: “Please don’t send +flowers;” and the basket of flowers he sent her in gallant disregard of +her wire crossed her letter to him containing a bill for £5 for a +costume she could not resist acquiring, and which she lent forthwith to +a friend who did not come back with it. At the time he resented this +overture. Now, in retrospect, it moved him: did it not show a touching +solicitude not to lead him into needless expense in the face of an +already existing bill--when she might so easily have asked for both! He +now thought of her feelings when one day he had spoken to her like a +boor, and barely tried to conceal his tedium in her presence. He +remembered the moistened look in her eye, the curve of her brow, the +twitch of her lashes. And these metaphors of love stirred and racked his +soul. + +In Milan, cold, sparse, and unfriendly, where at nightfall woeful +figures dotted the wide, deserted, wind-swept streets, his heart, grown +tender through memory, constricted in sombre anguish. “Poor women!” he +thought. + +Getting into the Vienna express at midnight, into a coupé in which the +blinds were drawn and the passengers asleep, his mood darkened and +deepened. A siren at his side, opening her eyes at his intrusion, +resumed a desultory conversation with another, a pale coughing girl, +with whom she was travelling north where “trade” was deemed to be +better. “On arrival,” she flustered, “I must buy myself some new hair, +and then you will wait for me downstairs while I go up and see Francesca +about giving us a room.” The girl close to him addressed him in Italian. +“I do not speak Italian,” Frank said. “Do you speak English?” + +“Yes,” she said, articulating deliberately: “we have no b-hananas; we +have no b-hananas to--day.” + +Was that all she knew of English? No, there were other words she knew. +“Love”--“kiss”--“cheque-book.” Did he have a cheque-book? Englishmen, +she said, always had a cheque-book. It was, she thought, their +distinguishing characteristic. Where were they going? To Budapest--where +they had once lived with their parents. “At the time when we were still +honest,” she added. + +“Fallen women! Lost women! Poor lost women!” + +“In this world we are all lost men and women,” echoed a voice in him to +the shattering rhythm of the train. + +All lost men and women. Lost. Some more luxuriously lost than others, +but all, all lost. Lost and damned. No escape! + +He closed his eyes. Lost, lost, lost ... lost, lost, lost.... + +A long, wide, endless road stretched before him. He is walking down that +road, the road to Purgatory. What is the crowd outside that house? He +stops and watches. They are carrying out an open coffin with a young +girl in it. The old harpies in the crowd shake their heads. “She took +her life.” “What, took her life?” “She has been betrayed by a young +good-for-nothing.” “No, she died in childbirth.” + +“Let me! Let me!” He rushes to her. “I was the first to cause her fall. +Oh, wait! Don’t close the lid! O, Eva! Dearest heart. She died for love +... like Fräulein Else.” + +He sheds hot tears as he kneels on her cold tomb which hides her and her +young white purity. But as he rises and leaves the cemetery, she follows +silently behind him to the gate, where, sensing something, he turns +round. “Eva!” + +“I don’t want to be buried. I am yours,” she says, coming to him in her +long white shroud. “Take me away with you.” + +They kiss. He is forgiven.... + +“What’s this?” He opens his eyes, heavy with tears. + +“Verona. A stop of forty minutes,” imparts his vis-à-vis, “and there is +a cold buffet.” + +Another dream, another life! + + + + +XXXIII. + + +He found himself, largely against his intention, writing long letters to +Eva. But Eva never wrote--only cabled. He had cables from Stockholm and +Moscow, Pekin and Buenos Ayres. It was not until they were nearing home +that Frank had a letter from her. Christopher de Jones, she wrote, was +madly in love with her. “_He said he wanted me to be his entirely and +everlastingly, if you know what I mean. I let him have his way because +he says he is quite serious about blowing up the world, and I think if +he had a little baby of his own, shurely he wouldn’t do such a thing. +But Rex does not agree with me. I told him all the truth about +Christopher and he says he is going to divorce me. I am furious, and He +is Furious. Never mind Darling, if I flirt with him he won’t divorce +me._” + +Frank planned to stay abroad for a long time to come. He would not +return to England, perhaps for years. One morning, however, he received +advice from Victoria Station that his cloak-room expenses in respect of +a trunk he had forwarded to his address in London, and which could not +be opened by the Custom officials as he had not sent them the key, were +piling up in geometrical progression, rising hourly, minute by minute. +The news shocked him out of his resolution to stay away from England. +Hiring a special motor, he rushed headlong to the station and caught the +express train to Boulogne, only to learn, on his arrival at Victoria, +that his cloak-room expenses amounted to seventeen shillings and +ninepence. He felt as a man, who, arriving breathless at the station, +finds that the train is not due for another half-hour. He was that kind +of man--the business side of life was a perpetual nightmare to him. +Having arrived in England, he made up his mind to stay there. A month +later, he recorded in his journal: + + “_There is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon. The + magnetic O. usurps more and more of my interest. Late at night we + dash into the country, spending the night at his resplendent + country house, and rush back to town in the morning. Feverish + activity. Articles are written, printed, and forgotten; to-day’s + paper lights to-morrow’s fire. It goes on--dances and + entertainments; the dinners and drinks of to-day are washed away + into the ocean to-morrow. ‘To-morrow and to-morrow, and to-morrow, + creeps in this petty pace from day to day, till the last syllable + of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way + to dusty death,’ O, if only this were all to end, change soon, this + vexatious, unavailing life in time! Don’t make it long, O Lord!_ + + “_Yesterday I visited Bourne Abbey (Ottercove’s country house) with + O. and Eva. As we went upstairs I sniffed the air; there seemed to + be a queer musty smell. I asked O. what it was. ‘I am sorry, + Dickin,’ he said. ‘I am very sorry that there should be a smell.’ + Eva seemed quite at home; no trace of self-consciousness--a perfect + hostess._ + + “_Last week Christopher de Jones came to me. The electric light had + failed, and his face looked worn and secretive by candle light, + like a monk’s. The lines round his mouth had deepened, too. We + talked of the end of the world; his voice and general attitude were + apocalyptic. He ended by making a confession. ‘You know why I + always come here. It is because you know her. I come to you so as + to talk of her. You love her. And I--I--I--‘_ + + “_I should welcome the change foreshadowed in the Apocalypse. For + time is a cheat, and life a snare. It is the curse of life in time + that it can only give us one thing at a time, while a latent memory + of Eden in us longs for all things all the time; ‘and nothing’ says + Shakespeare, (meaning not-being) ‘brings me all things.’ + ‘Abwarten,’ (abide, or perhaps better: mark time) was Goethe’s + motto in the wisdom of old age. But while conscious of the mirage + of love and freedom (for here again, while all the world seems open + to you, you must needs trail a narrow path, zigzag it as you will), + I have not the strength of will to forego their piecemeal + felicities with their fickle promise of what life was before the + fall. And so it is that though I expect nothing from life (and thus + have agreeable surprises), I shall live it (as one would say of + reading an unpromising manuscript) with interest, till we are + changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last + trump._ + + “_And, aye, there is hope! Lord de Jones has bought a penny trumpet + and threatens to shatter us all into dust. Well, we shall see. Or, + rather, we shall not see. Cease seeing. I wonder which...._” + + + + +XXXIV. + + +Lord de Jones put down the newspaper, and closed his eyes. After the +reading of a newspaper, particularly a Sunday newspaper, he generally +experienced an acute feeling of nausea, as though he had eaten a fruit +salad of the very worst kind. And indeed there was enough in it to-day +to disconcert a sensitive reader. There was the “Dog Election” in +England; the Fundamentalist-Evolutionist feud in America growing into +what looked very like a civil war; and a European embroglio likely to +develop into a new world war overnight. Yet in all three cases the +initial cause of contention had been so slight that but for the gravity +of the consequences he would have dismissed it all as unreal. + +The “Dog Election” which had shaken the country in the second half of +April had its origin, he recalled, in Frank Dickin’s, on a previous +evening, as he was hurrying to keep an appointment with Lord Ottercove, +slipping on the pavement and, in his indignation, recommending to his +host the wholesale extermination of the breed of dogs. Lord Ottercove, +who had made a note of it at the time, caused it to be described in his +newspapers as a public nuisance which the government should put a speedy +end to, and when, a week later, a prominent member of Parliament slipped +and broke his leg, Lord Ottercove’s newspapers rose _en masse_ against +dogs. In a hundred years’ time, one of his papers affirmed, historians +would note with horror that in the first half of the twentieth century +dogs were allowed complete license of behaviour in the public +thoroughfares. An altogether unexpected outburst of support from +readers, thousands of whom had apparently been storing up for many years +a somewhat unmanly resentment against the dog race, emboldened Lord +Ottercove to push the matter to extremities. DOGS MUST GO--his posters +cried in unison. Now the Prime Minister, a man of inconspicuous +curiosity, and an overwhelming sense of right and wrong, read these +articles. A country squire, who had been persuaded to shoulder the +burden of government much against his inclination, he was a confirmed +dog lover. The thought of exterminating our dumb and loyal friends was +repugnant to him. But his conscience told him that pavements erected +with the taxpayers’ money were being abused by caninity; accidents were +accumulating, deaths might ensue any day. The dogs were in the wrong; +yes, the dogs must go. It was his duty to carry out the policy however +unpopular, if he thought it a matter of duty that the policy should be +carried out. And he was a man of duty. “Exterminate the dog breed!” +became the slogan and policy (though largely against the advice of the +older statesmen) of the Conservative Party. The Liberal Party, it would +seem, had only been waiting for that. Assisted and advised by Lord +Ottercove, they made “The Preservation and Protection of Our Friend the +Dog” the chief item of their party programme. “Joe,” (as he was called +by his intimates) the Liberal leader, temperamentally repelled by dogs, +had been photographed sitting in a basket chair, a grave-eyed poodle +with his front legs across the Liberal leader’s knees. “The heart of +England is sound,” they said, stealing the Tory touch, “so long as she +remains a dog-loving Nation.” And again: “Do away with the dogs: and the +country will assuredly go with them!” + +“Where will it go?” from a heckler (put there by the Liberal candidate +himself). + +“To the dogs, sir!” blandly and crushingly. + +Loud laughter. + +The Labour Party unfortunately split itself over the issue. The more +responsible section sympathised with the socialising efforts of the +Conservative Prime Minister; the other half resented the adoption on the +part of the reactionaries of what by the look and sound of it should +have been a Socialist programme, and they were helped by the lovers of +whippets and rabbit coursing and the gamblers who flocked to the dog +races. The controversy grew in passion; something not unlike a civil war +loomed behind this sinister antagonism; a St. Bartholomew Night +threatened from day to day, a pogrom with extensive dog massacres having +been organised by the more energetic Die-hard section of the Tory Party +who did not believe in half measures, distrusted the Prime Minister’s +tendency to conciliation and compromise and were anxious to check his +retreat and by forcing his hand oblige him to take a firm stand. Till +_The Nation_, commenting in a leading article upon the situation that +had arisen over the “Right of Dog” question, pointed out with +characteristic pertinence and good sense that in the heat of passion the +main issue had been overlooked, as usual, namely, whether there was not +a possibility of doing away with the indubitable nuisance caused by dogs +who are wrongly granted the freedom of the pavement, without necessarily +doing away with the dogs themselves. _The New Statesman_ and _The +Spectator_ raised the same question in their individual voice. But +nobody cared to listen to them. The Conservative Government resigned on +a vote of confidence, and in the General Election which ensued the +Liberals carried everything before them. + +In America, Lord de Jones read, there was a growing feud between +Fundamentalists and Evolutionists. An Evolutionist had declared that he +was ready to appear at a Fundamentalist meeting and “dare” God to smite +him dead. An ardent Fundamentalist disciple, believing that he was +serving his cause, connected the steel platform on which the +Evolutionist was speaking by a wire with the main electric current of +the premises, thereby electrocuting the Evolutionist in the very act of +his challenge. Details, however, leaked out by and by, resulting in what +threatened to become a religious war between the two faiths hardly to be +paralleled since the Wars of the Crusades, if then. The Fundamentalist +declared at his trial that in so far as God Himself had put the idea +into his head, it was the hand of God that had struck down the +blasphemer; and in his summing-up the judge directed the jury to +determine just how far it was God and how far devilry. The jury were +reluctant to pass a verdict of “guilty” against so almighty a being, and +Counsel at a subsequent trial conceded so much to the scientific bias of +the day as to declare that the electrocution of the Evolutionist was in +the nature of a miracle intended to create and sustain faith, elevating +an otherwise unimportant mechanical trick into the realms of the +supernatural. The Fundamentalist was acquitted; and in the ensuing riots +directed by outraged Free Thinkers and Revolutionaries against the +headquarters of the Fundamentalists in Massachusetts, the responsible +leaders of the faith, though admitting the uncalled-for action and +excessive zeal of their feather-brained disciple who, while wishing to +assist their cause, had unwittingly damaged it, yet claimed that a +little trick like that could not implicate the essential wisdom of their +faith nor undermine the foundations of Fundamentalism. + +All over the world, Lord de Jones knew, and particularly in England, the +struggle between capital and labour grew more bitter and, as time went +on, threatened to develop into a general revolution; to side-track which +the respective Governments agreed to have a war. A _casus belli_ was +looked for; and was found. A Russian Tsarist “Government” living in +exile in Paris had published its claims on Eastern Prussia which once +upon a time was Slav; inasmuch as Petrograd (though this they were +reluctant to admit) had once been Finnish soil, and was now being +claimed by a Fascist Government in Helsingfors whose motto was “A +Greater Finland!” Germany, while admitting the justice of the Finnish +claims, disputed those of Russia; and Russia, while disputing the +Finnish claim to Petrograd, insisted on its own to Eastern Prussia. The +new war was broadly (and amicably) conceived on these lines, and the +British Government, declaring that it could not countenance another war +in Europe, plunged into it--so as to stop it. + +Lord Ottercove hailed the prospect of war (in lieu of revolution) with +mixed feelings of journalistic felicity and human discomfiture. As the +probability--and later the unavoidability--of war became more certain, +the humane resistance in him yielded to the _force majeure_ of patriotic +excitement, and he wrote himself the leading article, heading it: “The +Nation Demands--.” And the nation, reading it at breakfast next morning, +felt that, yes, it was in them to demand, and they demanded and would +not sheathe the sword until they had fought to utter exhaustion. And +young men from the public schools were already training in bayonet drill +on the lawns of Kensington Gardens under sergeants whose dictum, oft +repeated, was that the war was to be won by saluting by numbers. Grey +haired City men were forming fours everywhere, and, as a relaxation from +it, forming two deep. Once again there was “A Cause.” + +When, to forget the war, Lord de Jones turned in to a music hall +matinée, a comedian was singing: + + “_I joined the Army yesterday,_ + _So the Army of to-day_ + _’S all right;_ + +and a stoutish prima donna replied in mezzo soprano: + + “_I didn’t like you, John,_ + _Before you joined the Army, John;_ + _I like you now_ + _You’ve got your khaki on!_” + +and displayed her fat legs in a whirl. + + + + +XXXV. + + +One afternoon in early spring, when the streets of London resounded with +bugles and drums calling the manhood of Britain to rise in arms in +defense of Russia’s menaced right to Petrograd and Germany’s ownership +of Eastern Prussia, a dark curled, hazel-eyed girl rang the bell of +Stonedge House and asked for Lady Ottercove, who a moment later greeted +the visitor with astonished delight. + +“Baby!” she exclaimed and threw her arms around her neck. She dragged +Baby by the hand into the drawing-room, and from the drawing-room into +the second drawing-room, and from the second drawing-room into the +ball-room, and then up to her beautiful bedroom; and in all the rooms +Baby displayed astonishment and rapture. “I have another house,” Eva +said, “in the country, and Rex has another small house in town where we +go when we wish to be alone with nobody to bother us, and I have a +villa near Nice and a Rolls and lots of servants and everything, and +more money than I know what to do with.” + +“Not really!” + +“Oh, yes! And Rex is very pleased with me, he says, and very proud.” + +And indeed, every one of Lord Ottercove’s friends could testify that Eva +proved an admirable hostess. She seemed to carry out her duties with +ease and without self-consciousness; she had learnt the essentials of +the game by hearsay; and there was something so fresh, naïve, +spontaneous about her nature that men found her irresistible. And women +she did not bother about. + +“Aren’t you terribly, _terribly_ happy?” Baby asked. + +Eva suddenly looked a little grave and sad. “Can you,” she said, “keep a +secret?” + +Baby said she could. + +“If you can,” said Eva, “I will do something for you.” + +“Really? What?” + +“Save your life.” + +“No?” + +“Yes. I will tell you if you promise never, _never_ to say a word of it +to anyone. It’s about Christopher de Jones. All these years he has been +wanting to blow up the earth with all the people, etcetera, on it, and +when we were in Greece and he descended into a deep, deep crater which +he said was the deepest crater of them all, going right down into the +bowels of the earth, he said to me that he had only to disintegrate one +single atom in it to blow up all the earth with all the people on it +into smithereens. But I said that this was very, very wicked of him, so +he said that suffering humanity had suffered long enough and that if he +blew it up it would no longer suffer pain, and so on, but that as he +loved me more than anything else on earth he wished to spend the last +few hours with me, holding hands, etcetera, and one day he came to me +all radiant in the face and happy, and said he’d done it. ‘Done what?’ I +said. ‘Disintegerated the atom,’ he said, and that we were all doomed +and done for. ‘But, Chris,’ I said, ‘how could you have done such a +thing!’ + +“‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You needn’t worry; it’s all quite +respectable, and there is no noise or explosion. I have only +disintegrated the atom, and now all matter, the whole of the world is +slowly disintegrating, too, peeling away into nothing. Soon nothing will +be left of our planet.’ + +“‘But oh, Chris!’ I said. + +“‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘There is no pain, no suffering, no +inconvenience or discomfort. People just soften, disintegrate atom by +atom, turn into whiffs of steam, a sort of mist, and vanish like smoke +up the chimney. All is over in a few seconds.’ + +“‘Chris,’ I said, ‘I don’t understand.’ + +“‘It’s--how shall I say?--as if people ate themselves up,’ he said. + +“‘But they can’t quite, Chris. There’ll be crumbs left after them.’ + +“‘No, crumbs and all.’ + +“‘But the mouth will be left, Chris; when the mouth has eaten everything +there will still be the mouth left to eat.’ + +“‘And the mouth will eat it,’ he said. + +“‘I see. Chris, I want to tell you something,’ I said. + +“‘What?’ he said. + +“‘I am going to have a baby,’ I said. + +“‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Whose baby?’ + +“How could I know? But I looked soft and tender, as if it might be his. +‘Chris,’ I said, ‘Can you not save yourself and your baby--and me too, +perhaps?’ + +“‘I would do anything,’ he said, ‘to save you and the baby, but I’ve +laddered the world. You know what happens when you’ve laddered a silk +stocking.’ + +“‘You’ve got to buy a new pair,’ I said. + +“‘Exactly,’ he said. + +“‘Can’t you buy a ... a new world?’ I said. + +“‘I’ll have to see if I can mend the old one,’ he said. + +“‘Can’t you?’ + +“He said he didn’t know. He said he would have to look into it, think +about it. He might be able, he said, to isolate a bit of earth +somewhere--a mountain-top or something, where we three could be saved. + +“‘Yes, yes!’ I said. ‘We three and all our friends. Just a little +house-party!’ + +“‘No house-parties, by God!’ he said. ‘Just you and I and the baby--you +and I and the baby.’” + +Eva paused. Baby looked at her long and sadly, modestly, too, as if +reluctant to press her own claims to survival. + +“But if you keep quiet about it,” said Eva, “I will tell you where to go +to. You will just hide in the cellar or somewhere, lie low for a day or +two, and then creep out when I tell you to. I will make it all right +with Chris.” + +For a long while the two cousins chattered together of matters +irrelevant to the coming apocalypse; but presently they were back in the +future. “And Rex, and Ferdinand, and one or two others,” said Eva. “I +will manage it so that Chris doesn’t know.’ + +“And your mother, and Zita, and Pilling, I suppose?” + +“No, no! We mustn’t have a crowd. You see, there will be very little to +eat on the top of a hill. But we’ll have a good time all the same.” + + + + +XXXVI. + +THE LAST SUPPER + + +Thursday was the opening night of the _New Babylon_, Pilling’s new night +club. The butler had been announcing arrivals: + +“Lord and Lady de Jones. + +“The Honourable Raymond and Mrs. Mosquito. + +“Mrs. Frank Dickin.” + +Then, flinging open the doors, the butler made a last belated +appearance: “Mr. Kerr, m’lord.” + +“Now this is very, very nice. Come right in, Mr. Kerr!” from Lord +Ottercove. + +At the long table presided over by Ottercove, Frank found himself seated +by the side of his own wife. After the long absence, she seemed +beautiful and enchanting, and her presence, new yet familiar, broke the +crust of ice in his heart and released rivers of rapture; and outside it +was spring, full of desires, and here was she, his lovely mate.... + +And yet? And yet? Looked at objectively, enquired into dispassionately, +was marriage a solution of one’s terrestrial difficulties? Be honest +now, he said to himself. One wife was both too much and not enough. +Fifty wives, renewable like water in a swimming pool, would be better. +He would sit there then, all lust gone, among them, a man of action +turned philosopher, and pass his hand dispassionately over this or that +wife’s hair, seeking solace in intellectual intercourse with some other +man who agreed that life was wanting! “What?” He was roused from his +reverie, and, not hearing the question, replied: “Rather!” + +Indisputably, Cynthia was enchanting, and even Lord Ottercove singled +her out after dinner. “Are you the prettiest girl in London, Cynthia?” +He kissed her thoroughly on the mouth. + +“No, Rex, no!” + +An actress, jealous of Cynthia’s success, flung her champagne over her. +Cynthia, shocked beyond words, and followed by all her admirers, retired +to another room, where she was presently joined by the actress, who +lavished profuse apologies on her: “I am so frightfully sorry, darling!” + +“It’s quite all right, darling.” + +And all the women who hated each other, called one another thus: +“darling.” + +It was, to all appearance, a brilliant party. Vernon Sprott was +there--Vernon Sprott, the foreman of British fiction, whose novel +entitled _The New Babylon Hotel & Restaurant_ had provided the +designation of Pilling’s night club, in consideration of which Mr. +Sprott received a royalty on the gross profits of the New Babylon Club +of 0.0000002 per cent. free of income tax and payable to him after +deduction of a commission of ten per cent. by Mr. Sprott’s Literary +Agent. And both he and his literary agent (who was there) could not take +their eyes off Cynthia, by common consent the special, the most +distinctive ornament of the evening. She looked a little pale, +dream-like, ravishing, romantic; and as she danced her eyes seemed to +say: “Do you remember?” and Frank could scarcely wait for the end of the +party to elope with his wife, to carry her away ... away.... She said +what Juliet had said before her: that it was too sudden! + +Only Christopher de Jones seemed glum. He sat and watched how Eva danced +with an intent young man whose cleverness was in his feet; danced +confidentially, _giving_ him her pliable young body, every movement of +which seemed to say: “I am thine, thine....” For such is the melody of +the dance. He could see, it seemed to him, through all the souls of the +men and women, guests, musicians, waiters, and divine what the +headwaiter, the orchestra men, each individual thought to himself: how +each only suffered. Another little while, he thought, and it would all +be over.... + + + + +XXXVII. + +A PAIR OF BARE LEGS + + +Baby, who had been sent out by her cousin to ascertain the local +conditions in the Austrian Alps, having only reported, after a lapse of +two weeks, that dogs were not allowed in the public parks of Innsbruck +and that persons doing damage to the flower beds would be prosecuted, +Frank, the next candidate scheduled by Eva for salvation, was despatched +in Baby’s wake. + +He found her at the top of a mountain towering above the Inn valley, +playing chess with a handsome young bank clerk from Vienna, on his +annual holiday in the Tyrol. Neither knew a word of the other’s +language, and made love with the aid of a dictionary. He found the words +and passed her the dictionary. Love. Bliss. Desire. She read the English +equivalent and purred. It was exquisite. + +Frank deemed the _pension_ and the hill in every way an adequate _pied à +terre_, worthy of preservation and, so far as he could judge, eminently +suitable for isolation from the atomic disintegration about to overtake +the world; and he gave Eva all the available information as to victuals, +trains, etc, warning her, among other things, not to pull the +communication cord while the train was in motion unless there was +genuine need for it; and even gave the Italian of it: “_Tirare +lamaniglia solo in caso di pericolo. Ogni abuso verrà punito!_” + +The Pension Kogl stood alone on the mountain-top, and gazing down from +his balcony in the morning Frank saw an old Habsburg Schloss stretched +out beneath him, which looked like the Regent Palace Hotel, London. +Breakfast, perhaps, was a little on the short side, and on the +bedside-table on which it was laid there was a little tablecloth with +the words: “_Wenig aber von Herzen_” embroidered in red Gothic letters. +Below, under Frank’s windows, the proprietress’ husband, the Wirt, +looking very like Gogol’s Taras Boulba, paced the yard in a skull cap as +early as five-thirty. He was a bad sleeper, and thus was essentially +fitted to see to it that the sleepy servant girls did not oversleep +themselves. He was up and on the look-out for defaulters, like a +sergeant-major waiting in the barrack yard. In a bungalow annex across +lived an old apoplectic little baron who, early each morning, about the +time of mine host’s appearance, popped out his head through the window, +whereon the ensuing conversation could be overheard: + +“Good morning, Herr Baron! Have you slept well? The weather--well, I +think--or at least, it seems to me--that the sky might clear up, in +which case it is possible--I say, it is _possible_--possible that we may +have good weather to-day. Yes, yes, I am hopeful, Herr Baron.” + +Herr Kogl stood close to the Baron’s window and spat on the ground. The +Herr Baron, out of a feeling of fellowship, spat out of the window: +“Kh-kh-kh--Kh-hhrrr--Khhh!” they spat. + +“Hey! Where you off to!” the host would suddenly yell to the young farm +hand, who was setting out for town in the milk cart. + +“To town.” + +“Off you go at once!” he would shout after him angrily. “Hurry up! +You’ve overslept yourself again, you lazy bounder! Off you go, young +scoundrel, you!---- Youth,” he would add tenderly, turning back to the +Baron. + +Thus till nine o’clock in the morning he would stroll up and down the +yard, his hands behind his back, and then serve himself his first +Schnaps. + +Herr Kogl’s distinction was that he was supposed to have a particularly +strong will. Frau Kogl’s mother, who had bought the present _pension_ on +her Alsacian savings, had had just such a man in view for her daughter, +whom she did not consult in the matter, though once, in an unusually +tender and communicative mood, she did ask her: “What sort of a man +would you like for a husband, Anny?” Anny had lowered her lashes and +said: “With a strong will.” Herr Kogl was chosen without hesitation as +the sort of man with a strong will who would take care of his wife’s +property; and now, living up to his reputation, he would bawl at her +from time to time: “Hey, there! Anna!--I have called: ‘_Anna_!’”--and +she obeyed. + +Their son, who had a smooth voice, quiet manners, and a cast in one of +his eyes, knew on which side his bread was buttered, and though a little +fearful of his father, clung to his moneyed mother, and disdained his +Pa’s assumed authority, who, to bear out his own reputation, bawled at +him occasionally: “Hey, there! Herbert! I said: ‘_Herbert_!’” when his +son half turned a reluctant ear to him. Frau Kogl herself had moods when +she liked to assert her authority; but they were intermittent and +brief. She could never decide anything. Her mother was right in choosing +for her a husband who bawled at her. Frau Kogl had no illusions about +his utility, and secretly thought him a vagabond. But she needed someone +to bawl at her. When he bawled, his authority in her eyes was restored; +and she loved him. + +The briskness in the air of an early mountain spring morning! Old +forgotten feelings flooded his heart. As Frank went down the stairs, he +passed the bare-legged scullery maid who was washing the steps. He +looked round, and she smiled. And when later in the morning she helped +carry up his large trunk, he could not take away his gaze from those +healthy white legs. + +“Good morning, Herr Dickin,” the host greeted him. “I am hoping that if +the clouds disperse--I am hoping, I say, that if they disperse, we may +be having--we may be having, I say--having fine weather to--day. But I +regret to say it is Saint Peter”--he pointed to the skies--“who is in +charge of the winds, and our petition--our petition, I say, must be +addressed to him up there in the heavens, oh yes.” + +Dickin laughed amiably, and on passing the bar he heard Frau Kogl +upbraiding her husband: + +“You shouldn’t tell such silly jokes to the foreign guests; they will +think you’re quite silly.” + +“It may be a silly joke,” Herr Kogl agreed, “or it may not be a silly +joke, but he laughs; so anything seems good enough for him.” + +“Why, no, he is a clever man, a poet,” retorted Frau Kogl. + +“I am a poet myself,” answered Herr Kogl. + +“You’re a fat dotty old man, that’s what you are,” said Frau Kogl. “What +have you done with the glasses? Don’t stand there like that....” + +“Shut up, will you!” he bawled, and banged his fist on the counter. + +She quailed before the man with the strong will. + +From his balcony, Frank could see the scullery girl swish with her bare +legs through the wet grass, and come back with a basket full of fruit. +He cut across to meet her. He had a terrible longing to speak to her, +but he could not find words to say to her. Because she was desirable, +though her face was objectionable, she seemed to him (as women do seem +when they are desirable) to be endowed with a critical and sensitive +intelligence which might resent a clumsy overture, or an approach that +was not plausible. And so he walked towards her with a casual and +indifferent air. But when she smiled at him his shyness left him +suddenly and he asked her what the joke was. + +“Ach, to-day,” she said, “I must laugh, because I look so funny in these +boots.” How ugly her face was! And yet how desirable that body! + +Herr Kogl, at the door, found words to say to him. Herr Kogl always +found words to say to everybody. It was his only occupation. When he +wasn’t either eating or drinking, he stood in the yard and exchanged +remarks with visitors and casual passers-by. No one had ever seen him +take a drop of wine in public, and he affected to disdain it, though he +had blood-shot, oily eyes which betrayed him. “Wine? Why, there’s +nothing in it,” he would say. “I--never--have--any.” But every time he +went down into the cellar to fill the decanter, he first filled himself +and then the decanter. + +Now he stood in the doorway, red and obese, and addressed a small, +fluffy old dog of a nondescript breed and an incredible filthiness. +“Rags has been and had a puppy--a little ragamuffin like herself, what! +Rags, you bad thing! Rags, you dirty tyke! Rags, you immoral old bitch! +For shame! I shouldn’t have thought it of you, at your age!” And he dug +his crooked forefinger into Dickin’s chest, as he was wont to do when +emphasising a point; especially in moments of hilarious recollection, as +when, for instance, he might say: “Oh _that_ thing! Well, of course!” At +such moments he would dig even a little lower than the ribs, because the +joke addressed itself to a more central part of you--the abdominal part, +wherein all jokes are seated; or so at least we must suppose, because +when men laugh too heartily they protect and support these, their +boilers, from bursting. + +Again, as he stood there, Frank caught a glimpse of the scullery maid’s +bare legs, as she went out to hang out some linen. “What are you +smiling for?” he asked, overtaking her, Herr Kogl now having turned in. + +“Ach! Herr Dickin,” she said, “when you speak to me I must always laugh. +I don’t know why.” + +He looked round. There was no one about. “When do you finish your work?” + +“I go to bed at half-past ten.” + +“Won’t you come and see me before going to bed?” + +“Where?” she asked. + +“In my room.” + +“What shall I do in your room?” + +His blood coursed feverishly through his veins; his brain was on fire at +the thought of what they could not do in his room. “Keep me company,” he +said. + +She nodded assent and went in with the dry linen. Returning, he ran into +Herr Kogl, who came out of the cellar with the decanter, licking and +smacking his thick ruby lips. “Herr Kogl, will you have a glass of wine +with me?” + +Herr Kogl shook his head slowly, closing his eyes. +“I--never--have--wine. I--consider--that--there--is--nothing--in--it. +Oh, yes.” His diction was distinct, correct, precise, deliberate, and +slow. + +“Well, you are certainly setting an edifying example to your boy, aren’t +you, Herr Kogl?” + +“My boy,” said Herr Kogl, “is all right.” + +With a mystic, an unearthly, look Herr Kogl retired to the safe behind +the counter, and came back with a large sheet of parchment in his big +shaking red hands. “His college certificate,” he said, turning away to +hide his emotion and to give the visitor the opportunity of ascertaining +for himself the high standard of Herbert’s scholastic achievements: + + Calligraphy--proficient; + Arithmetic--good; + Cooking--very satisfactory; + Slaughtering--praiseworthy; + Waiting at table--very good; + Deportment--excellent; + General conduct--excellent. + +“Eminently satisfactory,” said Dickin, returning the document. + +“He is at the Hotel and Restaurant Institute in Vienna,” the father said +proudly, “and I afford him practical opportunities for perfecting his +studies when he is here for his summer vacation by allowing him to wait +at table. Of course, under my supervision,” he added. + +“You ought to be very proud of him.” + +“Proud? Why?” + +“Of course you ought to be! You _are_ proud!” + +“Well, of course--proud--why not? You wouldn’t think, would you, eh? A +Tyrolese poodle like he, now would you?... attain such distinction in +Vienna itself!...” And two large beads stood in Herr Kogl’s jaundiced +blood-shot eyes. + +At lunch, in the large panelled room looking out on the old archducal +Schloss beneath, steeped in the foliage of its enormous and forsaken +park, Frank found himself seated facing a Lutheran pastor from Germany, +who had large sad eyes, a quiet, melancholy voice, and helped himself +without cease to the _Kalter Aufschnitt_. He thought the world was all +right, the Church all right, and nothing wanted changing. Among the +guests was a Russian Grand Duke who turned out to be the cousin of +Frank’s one-time opponent who had hit him on the ear with an umbrella at +the Kiss-Lick Club. The Grand Duke’s cousin was killed in a motor smash +in Poland. His own brother was assassinated elsewhere. An uncle died in +mysterious circumstances. It seemed, of the old guard, there remained +only Frank and he, and over a decanter of Tyrolese wine consumed +together, they relinquished their claim to the throne of Russia in each +other’s favour. + +“Ah! you are a writer!” the Grand Duke exclaimed happily. “You write in +English? Ah, well! I’ve my own theories about English literature. I am +obstinate in the belief that in the portrayal of Dorian Gray, Oscar +Wilde did not mean to depict his own personality, so to speak.” + +Frank sounded the Grand Duke as to his further opinions. Wordsworth? No, +he hadn’t heard of Wordsworth. Keats?--No: who was he? No, he preferred +the moderns. There was one modern writer--German, he believed--who +amused him. Bernhard Schau.... Oh, he was British? How interesting! He +had bought quite a number of his works in Berlin, and enjoyed dipping +into them--he liked him for the wit salted with cynicism. Did his +Highness read any other English authors? The Grand Duke considered for a +moment, wrinkling his brow.--Of course--Byron! Who did not love that +stupendous genius, the greatest the world has yet produced? _Childe +Harold_.... Ah! The Grand Duke thought he himself was a little like +that--like Byron and Lermontov--romantic, rebellious, seeking something +(he made a gesture to the heavens)--dissatisfied with his +surroundings--that’s it, and seeking a meaning in life. Yes, he was a +lover of literature--though he preferred sport--riding and hunting, +drinking, too, he was not averse to. He considered, as if struck by a +sudden idea. “Have a drink,” he said. + +They passed into the lounge, into which Herr Kogl burst periodically, to +explain the working of the electric stove, which could be switched on at +will but must not be, he cautioned, switched off without a preliminary +intimation to Herbert, in charge of the electric supply station, because +a sudden superfluity of electricity sent the dynamo into commotion. Here +Frank perceived a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman looking like a gipsy. +“Frau König!” he exclaimed. “By heaven! this is unexpected!” + +Frau König, on the other hand, did not appear to regard this meeting as +unexpected, but at once proceeded to recount her life at the point at +which his knowledge of it had been interrupted. “My fiancé, alas, has +failed again in his examinations at the University, and that has put us +back for another couple of years and deferred our hope of establishing +the knitting factory. He says the Paris professors have been prejudiced +against him on account of his Russian nationality and vented on him +their bitterness over the Russian State Bonds they had acquired and lost +in the Revolution, and agreed to plough him.” And she introduced him to +Frau Professor Koch who occupied the room next to his own and owned a +dachshund, on whose account she felt concerned and diffident, for, “He +has inflammation of the lungs,” she said, “and his cough is terrible.” + +It rained. By the electric stove, Baby played chess with the bank clerk, +whose holiday was up and who that night was going back to Vienna. During +lunch, when Baby had anxiously eyed him, he had talked to the table at +large, explaining how the new divorce law was operating in Vienna--he +talked of divorce, while she wanted to be united to him for the rest of +existence! She had better, now that time was getting short, try and talk +to him--difficult though it was--in French. What had she better say to +him? How draw him? How tell him? She thought hard. + +“Do you ski in Austria with a horse?” she asked at last. + +He did not understand. + +The rain poured down straightly and beautifully, shooting through those +myriad trees on the mountain sides. The bank clerk saw in Frank his +natural successor, and hated him. The company constrained him. + +But a quarter of an hour before he was driven down to the station in the +little red car, they ran away hand in hand into the Schloss park, and +came back dripping with wet. She stood at the window and waved to him +shyly: “Good-bye,” as the little red motor buzzed off. + +Good-bye! Good-bye! + +How grey, how monotonous mountain scenery looked in the rain! “Well, +Baby, how do you like this place?” Frank asked. + +She loved it, she said, but complained that there were fleas in her bed. +Frau Kogl, to whom the complaint was made, said that it was +“ausgeschlossen”--quite out of the question. “Das gibt es nicht”--it +isn’t done. But the “boots” with the green apron was philosophical. +Fleas--well, what about it? They existed. There were fleas in the +carpet--fleas everywhere--between bedclothes--in a word, in nature. +Fleas, he implied, were in the scheme of things. God had so ordained it. +The “boots’” attitude, like that of the modern philosophers’, was one of +acceptance; he accepted all evil and all good in life with equal grace. +Herr Kogl ordered him to go to the chemist and buy a preparation +notoriously fatal to fleas, and the “boots” came back carefully carrying +a small bottle, in whose efficacy he did not believe. + +At dinner, Frank found himself seated among a group of German tourists. +Herr Nikulitsch, despite his Czech name, was a German--corpulent, +spectacled, with a large, square, short-cropped blond head; in fact so +typical a German that had he had the luck to be in England between the +years 1914 to 1918, he would have been arrested without provocation. His +wife had eyes which were so queerly adjusted that when she talked to you +she seemed to be looking at someone else. Frank was faced by this cow of +a woman who could only understand the German point of view about the +war; and two Scottish old maids who could only understand the British +point of view about the war; neither of whom could understand each +other. The Scottish old maids complained derisively about the _Kalter +Aufschnitt_: “The idea of giving you cheese without biscuits! Ha!” They +shook their heads and smiled malignantly. They marvelled at these +foreigners! The more they saw of them, the more they marvelled! + +“The Germans,” said Frau Nikulitsch, “are good people. We are good +people at heart. Any one of good will will admit that we are good +people. But the French are a nation of sadists.” + +“Yes,” said the Frau Pastor, “we are a thoroughly good people, devoid of +all guile. We haven’t an ungracious thought.” + +Baby listened politely. It was not what she had read in _The Daily +Mail_. “Tricking Huns. Once a German, always a German. Blond beasts,” +were phrases that occurred to her. Frank was talking to the Frau Pastor +now, and because he wanted to be sympathetic, and to show off his own +broadmindedness and the tolerant, liberal spirit of his countrymen, he +told her, with a smile (as if making light of it) that our own royalty +was mostly German; and he felt that it was strange that she thought +nothing of it, a little churlish of her even--it was as though she made +light of his kindness and that of his countrymen who bore this alien +taint with good grace. The Frau Pastor seemed to think England was +rather lucky. + +And why, she asked, was England supporting the Russian claim to Eastern +Prussia, and simultaneously supporting the Finnish claim to Northern +Russia? + +It was, said Frank, in pursuance of an ideal to keep alive the feeble +flame of patriotism in the face of a growing international revolution. +Men were losing interest in their countries, so you had to tread on +their toes to keep up their national pride. + +“And the English,” said the Frau Pastor (living up to the ideal), +“behaved worst of all in the last war.” + +Frank thought of showing her a 1920 copy of _The Daily Mail_ +(Continental edition), in which was set forth what Poincaré thought of +the German evasion of the Allied (just) demand for reparations. The +extremity of the shock brought him back to sanity. When he listened to +one German after another who told him that if Germany had been arming it +was because the Entente Cordiale was stifling them by a tightening ring +of alliances (to whom he had said that if the Entente Cordiale _was_ +stifling them by a tightening ring of alliances it was because Germany +had been arming), who were convinced that we had started the war as we +were convinced that they had provoked it, the thought struck him: “Of +course they must be convinced. When A is roused to a pitch where he will +do B in, and face the risk of being done in by B in the doing, he is +sincere in believing B to be in the wrong. This is the shady side of +faith. Frank looked to the Pastor to display some soothing impartiality, +and gave him a lead. “All nations are very much alike and equally unjust +to foreigners,” Frank said. But to all such overtures the pastor, who +thought the world was all right, the Church all right, and nothing +wanted changing, replied: “We Germans are well known to be +over-indulgent to foreigners. Germany is too idealistic a people.” + +“Patriotism,” said Frank, “is like wine--a good thing when you haven’t +had too much of it.” + +“You don’t understand,” said the Frau Pastor. “Only a German can +understand what we feel about these things, only a German who has gone +through what we have gone through and who knows what we know.” + +There is a limit to an intelligent man’s enjoyment of the irony of being +regarded as an imbecile by fools. And it is soon reached. A new war was +starting before the discords of the old have had time to resolve +themselves, and, identifying a nation of sixty million people with the +two who had displeased him, Frank felt that they deserved it and hoped +that they would be beaten! + +“And what ridiculous names these foreigners have!” remarked one of the +Scottish old maids, when the Germans had left the table. “That Viennese +lady opposite--Frau von Endte! I don’t know much German, but I know that +much: that Ente means duck! It’s as if she called herself: ‘Mrs. de +Ducke’!” + +Frank strolled away into the hills. The night was calm and benignant; +the stars whispered; and all this rocky waste listened, moonlit and +silent, to God. At every corner, a crucifix. Green lights and blue +lights and red lights illumining the twisted naked body of Christ, with +red blood flowing from the wounds. Yet curiously enough, Christ’s +message had not been understood, he thought, and looking back at the +bloody centuries which followed on the crucifixion and at Christ’s +tortured body, so shamelessly paraded, it occurred to Frank that +Christians generally may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick +from the beginning, inferring that it was blood-letting that He meant +and advocated to us. On consideration, Frank thought the world was well +ripe for destruction. + +Above and beyond, what peace! All desire abated, in the soft ablution of +the moon. O Lust, where is thy sting, and Satiety thy victory? + +A figure in the dark. “Hello, is that you? Oh, Frau König! All my +homages.” + +Frau König, with a preoccupied air, took him down the mountain track +into the thicket, the while saying: “I don’t deny. I don’t deny how hard +it is for a woman who had contracted certain habits in marriage suddenly +to find herself without a man. Well, here I am. Here I am, I say! Here I +am; you may have what you wish. But my condition”--she touched his +wrist--“is that you are to take me out into society.” + +“I do not wish it. I mean I do not wish what you wish me to wish. You +make me feel good, Frau König, and that’s the truth.” + +“I do not understand you. I have gone as far as I can.” + +“That’s the truth. Do not go further.” + +“But--” + +How could he explain? How could he tell her that where unattractive +women were concerned he was a prude and a puritan? For all sexual +morality, if we examine it more closely, is founded on aversion. It +pleased him to recall to her an ideal of womanhood which she was in no +mood to follow; of reticence and chastity, which he counselled her to +practise. “Not in abandon, but in restraint and self-discipline, Frau +König,” he said, leading her out of the thicket into the open road, +“lies the hope of a sane and healthy mankind.” + +“If,” she said, “my fiancé does not come soon, I shall go mad.” + +As they turned into the _pension_ courtyard, they passed the apoplectic +Baron’s bungalow, who peeped through the window and, though it was +evening, wished them: “Good morning.” The Baron’s knowledge of English +must have been very slight, because every time Frank passed him in the +morning, the Baron touched his cap and said: “Good evening.” In the big +barn, an automatic barrel organ played excruciating music, and Herr Kogl +explained that it had been a first-class barrel organ till the +Italians--a nation, as all knew, of organ grinders--spoilt it during +their occupation of the town in the war by over-taxing its musical +capacity. + +“How very inconsiderate!” + +Several couples were dancing. Herbert, removing his waistcoat, danced in +his braces and shirt sleeves with Lina, the bare-legged scullery maid, +at a considerably accelerated pace, as if to show them all what he could +do. “Our Herbert,” Herr Kogl, pointed with his chin towards him, “once +he starts dancing, outstrips them all.” Frank stood and watched till it +would be time for Lina to go up to bed. Heavens of ecstasy, oceans of +rapture awaited him. The Kogls sat there as always: Herr Kogl; Herr +Spatz, a fat, rough man of the same proportions as the host himself; the +policeman; the policeman’s wife, who was a waitress; and drank wine. The +policeman’s little boy slipped in and out between their legs and ran +about all day long, and they christened him “Quicksilver.” Herr Kogl +alone did not drink. The cook, a bewildered-looking old woman, who was +never seen about during the week, drank, after good takings, on a Sunday +night with Frau Kogl. Herr Kogl watched them drink, but refused to +participate. His maudlin eyes were fixed on the dog to whom he would +talk for hours at a stretch: “Rags, you wretch! Rags, you immoral little +bitch!” + +“Nice old doggie, what?” Frau Kogl would remark. + +Herr Kogl would shake his head. “It’s not a dog--kein Hund, sondern ein +Skandal!” + +The dog was very old, toothless, and refused all food but chocolate. The +Frau Wachmann, the policeman’s wife, a young shrew, shouted and cursed +at her husband, a shy middle-aged upright man, because he would not go +to bed immediately, but preferred to play cards with the others of a +Sunday evening. Herr Spatz thundered forth as he played: “Two aces! +Bang! Ha-a-a!--Queen of Clubs! Bang! Bang!” with his fist, so that all +the glasses on the table jingled nervously. He had once spent nine +months in Turkey, and he looked, with his clean-shaven head and his +mouthful of glittering white teeth himself like a Turk, and behaved like +one, or at least, as you would imagine “The Turk” to behave in his more +lustful moments. Frau Kogl, drunk, attempted to sing, but it came out +very badly and dismally and she stopped, ashamed of herself. + +“To hell with Czecho-Slovakia!” Herr Spatz was saying to a relative who, +thanks to the Treaty of Versailles, has become Czecho-Slovakian and now +said he was proud of the great country. “Great country!” roared Herr +Spatz. “I’ve lived nine months in Turkey: who can talk Czecho-Slovakian +there? Answer me that!” + +“Who will drive the van to town to-morrow morning, that is what I wish +to know?” Herr Kogl interjected. + +“Willy.” + +“Hm!--Hm!” distrustfully from Herr Kogl. + +“Why?” from Herr Spatz, whose son Willy happened to be. + +Herr Kogl looked on the ground. “Willy! Willy is not Herbert, that’s +why!” + +At long last the clock on the Schloss tower struck half-past ten, and +Herr Kogl was locking up. Frank paced his room up and down; every moment +the door might open and Lina come in, and then--. + +From time to time, unable to stand the suspense, he would go out and +wait for her in the corridor. Simultaneously, the door opposite would +open, and the Pastor and Frau Pastor peep out, again and again, as if to +put out their boots: but surely, Frank thought, they could not have so +many boots to put out. Then, as he stood in the corridor, the adjacent +door opened, and the Frau Professor peeped out to ask if her dachshund’s +coughing had not, perchance, disturbed his sleep. “He has acute +inflammation of the lungs,” she said, “and I am very anxious to know +what the specialist will say to-morrow morning.” + +“I am very sorry,” Frank said, “for you both.” And while he stood there +assuring Frau Professor Koch of his complete sympathy, and the Frau +Pastor peeped out of her room to put out another pair of boots, the +bare-legged Lina slipped into his room. + +He forgot everything, looked at her intently, grasped her eagerly, +savagely, asked: “Yes?” + +“Why?” she parried. + +“Because.” + +“Because what?” + +“Because--because we’re young, and because life isn’t for ever.” + +She bent down her look and was silent. + +“Yes?” + +“Yes.” + +She had said it so quietly and convincingly that his soul was devastated +by certitude. He was as certain of his reward as one is certain of money +placed to the credit of one’s current account, once receipt of it has +been acknowledged by the bank. It would take place all right. It was +indeed as though it had already taken place; and she seemed to him like +some tedious acquaintance; he asked her tedious questions, and asking +them, had not the patience to concentrate upon her tedious replies. “Are +both your parents alive?” + +“Yes, both my parents are alive.” + +“Have you any brothers or sisters?” + +“Yes, two sisters and one brother.” + +From outside came the sound of tears and choking. “I suppose,” said +Frank, “that is the policeman’s wife, by the sound of it.” + +“No, it’s he--the policeman.” + +“What! Sobbing like that? Why?” + +“She curses him dreadfully: that’s why. It’s the same every Sunday night +because she wants him to go to bed at once, whereas he, poor chap, wants +to sit out with the others and play cards. He’s an upright, decent, +quiet man; it’s a shame the life she leads him!” + +It did not interest him. The wind that bellied out his sails had +suddenly ceased, and his soul flopped down like a flag on a flagstaff. +He, she, and the world, seemed as flat as a pancake--as flat and as +unprofitable. + +“You--you--you!” she gasped. In this “you” was all her being, her +illusory love, her reunion with him, the dissolution, the loss of her +“I” in his “you.” But he thought he had squeezed her leg and said: “I +beg your pardon? Did you say anything?” + +She shook her head. + +“That’s all right, then.” + +She had begun to look forward, and he went to sleep at once. She waited +awhile, scanning his face with hatred. Then shook him by the shoulder. +“You _ninny_!” Then dressed herself and went out. + +She was gone. Presently he sat up on the edge of the bed, his naked feet +dangling down like a pendulum. He was drunk. It was significant that he +was both spiritually and physically drunk at the same time, and he had +just sufficient reason left him to comprehend and thoroughly appreciate +the humour of this interesting coincidence. + +Next morning he was woken by the conversation in the yard below his +window. “You were born in eighteen sixty-four, Herr Baron; I was born in +eighteen sixty-six. I take it that I am two years younger than +you--yes!” + +“Kh-kh-khrr-rrr-khrrr!” + +“Kh-kh-kh-khr-khrrr!” + +“The Herr Baron complains to me that he is damned and done for, +mattering as he is all over. But I say, _aber wo_! Herr Baron: what does +it matter if you matter in a world of matter: it is all matter--spirit, +flesh, and all! Oh, yes!” + +The Baron now was telling Herr Kogl of a brother who lived in Vienna and +was professor of modern languages at Vienna University; and Herr Kogl at +once retorted: “My son lives in Bizirk IX and has to go to his studies +in Bizirk V.” + +“What does he do?” + +“Studies at the Institute.” + +“What institute?” + +“The Hotel and Restaurant Institute. Why, Herbert can do +anything!--Drive a car--stick a pig--wait at table. Wonderful boy! +This--all this--is to be his. Ah! he will go a long way, our Herbert +will, he will, when he finishes his studies at the Institute. And I +intend to send him abroad for a year or two to pick up foreign +languages, so that he secures all the benefit that we old folks can +afford to give him.” + +“Of course. Why not?” said the Baron, “if you have the money to give +him.” + +“Ah, no!” exclaimed Herr Kogl. “He must earn the money himself. I don’t +believe in extravagance, Herr Baron. ‘No,’ I tell Herbert: ‘you go +abroad to France and England and serve your time there in the big hotels +and earn every penny yourself as a waiter.’ That’s the way to bring them +up--youth,” he added tenderly. + +He looked at Frau Kogl, who was coming down the steps towards him. Here +was this woman with all her money and property; he came along and made +it his, and gave her a son and made it his son’s: more than ever his +own. “I was telling the Herr Baron,” he said, “how when Herbert finishes +his studies at the Institute and has been abroad in France and England +he will on coming back devote himself to the development of the +_pension_ and alpine tourism generally by making use of the ties and +influence he has established in France and England. Oh, yes!” + +“That’s all right,” said the old woman, “but what are we to do about +Herr Dickin? All the ladies are leaving. I don’t know what to do. He +will have to go, that’s all.” + +“He--is a--good--man,” Herr Kogl replied. + +“What are we to do?” + +Herr Kogl did not reply. + +“Come on!” she cried. “Don’t stand there like a--” + +“Shut up, will you!” he shouted formidably, and banged his fist on the +table. + +She quailed before the man with the strong will. + +“I never bother; it is none of my business,” Frau Kogl began as Frank +came downstairs. “I attend to my own job, and what with the prices of +everything going up, I’ve got my work cut out. Meat, as you know, has +gone up 20 per cent., vegetables too. Fish is not to be had. To me it is +all the same, you understand; I never bother about what other people +do.” Her hands shot out awkwardly. In that gesture was all her weary +dissatisfaction with people who make bother. “I don’t mind what you do +upstairs. But I can’t lose all my clients, you understand. The season is +a slack one, and where will I get other guests? Meat, as I say, has gone +up; vegetables gone up. Fish is not to be had in the neighbourhood, and +they are all complaining now about you. But what can I do?” She shot +out her hands. She must have acquired these gestures in the French +convent in Alsace where she had been put by her mother. + +And indeed there was trouble ahead. Lina’s entry had been observed. The +Frau Pastor had communicated it to the Frau Doktor Wirt, and the Frau +Doktor Wirt, with the confirmation of the Frau Professor Koch, to the +Frau Direktor Bödingen and Frau Nikulitsch, and the Frau Direktor +Bödingen to the Frau Oberst von Kaisar, who complained to Frau von +Endte. A commotion had been caused. Frank was suspect. Two elderly +German women locked their doors at his approach and accused him of +having tried to force his way into their bedrooms. When all complained +and armed themselves against her, Frau Kogl could not decide. She +scratched her head pensively. “Yes,” she said, “Yes, I don’t know what +to do.” She looked old and ill with worry; even her housemaid’s knee had +taken a turn for the worse. “I am afraid we must ask you to go.” + +“With regret,” added Herr Kogl. + +As for Lina, Herr Kogl made short shift of her. He merely bawled at her: +“Out you go, you slut!” + +“If,” Frank reflected, “I can’t be anything better, let me at least be a +hero.” + +The little red car was prepared for him, and he got Lina to make a +bundle of her things and get inside with him. It was a desultory morning +and rain fell perfunctorily. “You ugly young thing!” he thought, +surveying her from his seat in the corner, as the car turned out of the +courtyard past the Baron’s bungalow (who peeped out of his window and, +touching his cap, said: “Good evening!”), “What the deuce am I to do +with you now?” + +“What sort of wage did you get?” he asked aloud. + +She told him; and, on taking thought, he decided to run her down to his +old friend Frau von Kestner; who afterwards wrote to him: + +“I have ordered her to put on a longer skirt and wear stockings. She was +embarrassing the postman each time he called with letters, as well as +the policeman in the square. Now, I need hardly say, nobody takes any +notice of her, because she really is not one little bit pretty.” + + + + +XXXVIII + +TOD UND GENESUNG + + +The tall lighted building, the abode of _The Daily_, _The Sunday_, _The +Monday_, _The Evening_, _The Midday_, _The Pictorial_ and _The +Illustrated Runner_, loomed in the fog. Lord de Jones looked up from the +pavement at the large lighted windows over the roof, behind which, he +knew, the big spider sat in the midst of his web; and Lord de Jones, +entering, by appointment, did indeed feel as a fly might feel if it had +an appointment with a great big spider who had expressed in unmistakable +terms the wish to devour it. He went up in the historical lift and, +arrived at the top, was ushered into the presence of Lord Ottercove. + +“Now where is that crop?” asked Lord Ottercove, without greeting the +visitor. + +“Under the sod, I expect,” retorted de Jones. + +“This mission of yours has cost me thousands in sealing wax alone, to +enable you to seal up all the craters. Stationers have made fortunes out +of me! And there is not a blade of grass anywhere; in fact, the +termination of our mission has synchronised with an unprecedented famine +in Russia. And, damn them, they’re blaming me for it!” + +“There is always a famine in Russia at one time or another through +causes, as is invariably urged, not connected with the political faith +of the government of the day.” + +Lord Ottercove ignored this retort. “The Foreign Secretary is ringing me +up all day long, and I refuse to see him; refuse to see him, Chris, for, +quite frankly, I wouldn’t know what to say to him. All that sealing +wax--and nothing to show for it. Shame!” + +Lord Ottercove walked over to the sideboard and poured himself some +Perrier water into a glass. “And there’s that other fellow,” he said, +drinking. + +“I know, the Prime Minister.” + +“Yes. Joe’s shouting himself hoarse about the bursting granaries, the +wheat springing up all over the globe--increased crop--the end of +international jealousies--the economic solution of national rivalries! +And you with all your untried genius cannot raise a blade of grass +anywhere to substantiate his speeches. He has to rely on the dog stunt +entirely, which, I frankly tell you so--is not good enough. It’s not +good enough, Chris. Read this.” + +Lord Ottercove handed him a copy of _The Evening Ensign_ containing the +report of Lord Evesham’s speech at the Carlton Club, the burden of which +was that the election in which the Conservatives were defeated had been +fought on an unreal issue, against the advice of the experienced members +of the party. + +“An unreal issue, he says!” exclaimed Lord Ottercove. + +“No more unreal than Gladstone’s Turk.” + +“An unreal issue! They’ve realised it at last and have decided to leave +the dog stunt out of their party programme, and they are already winning +all the by-elections, and we’ve not a friend anywhere except among +sealing-wax manufacturers.” + +“I’m sorry to hear it, Rex.” + +“Now, I believe in Joe. He is my friend, and if a man is my friend I’ll +stick to him through thick and thin. But he must have increased crop if +he is to go on shouting about it, and he’s shouted about it so much that +he can’t go back on it now. You promised us two blades of grass to every +one. Where are they? Where _are_ they, I ask?” He looked at his visitor +with the unrestrained ill-humour of a man who, being completely +accustomed to things going well with him, suddenly discovers that they +are going badly. “You make my papers look ridiculous.” + +“I’m sorry. I will make amends--look into the matter--enquire. It may be +that the sealing wax is defective. I promise to do what I can, Rex.” + +“Promises! To hell with promises! It’s meat we want. Meat, not +promises!” + +“True, we want meat. But all we can give you is cat’s meat. Indeed, that +is all you have ever had in the past.” + +“Enough of your cynicism, Chris.” + +“Now let me tell you, Rex, that I don’t care two tuppenny damns about +your crop. What I care about is the world. And that is no more.” + +Lord Ottercove rose and leaned heavily first on one leg, then on the +other. “It’s still there, Chris,” he said. + +“Only for a week. I’ve disintegrated the atom.” + +“Well?” + +“Which means that all other atoms, at first slowly, then faster and +faster, will follow suit, till not a rack is left behind.” + +“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the +great globe itself?” + +“Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial +pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff--” + +“I know: as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a +sleep.” He turned away and bit his lip. “Chris, I am vexed: bear with my +weakness; my first-class brain is troubled. Be not disturbed with my +infirmity. If you will be pleased, retire to that sofa and there repose: +a turn or two I’ll walk, to still my beating mind.” + +“I wish you peace.” + +When he came back Lord Ottercove’s face looked eager with hope. “I don’t +believe you, Chris. You say you’ve done it?” + +“A week ago. In Greece.” + +“My Athens correspondent is silent about the matter.” + +“Inevitably. He has disintegrated.” + +“There is no sign of panic anywhere.” + +“There is no panic because there is no way to communicate panic. No +sound, no sight: a whole area vanishes invisibly, ceases to be there.” + +“But what of the people in the adjoining area? Why don’t they +communicate or run away?” + +“The people next to those just vanished, vanish next. They do not know +that anything has vanished till they themselves vanish.” + +“I see. It’s a knowledge which is vouchsafed you at vanishing point, so +to speak.” + +“Exactly.” + +“But they must know if they find that a familiar house or square has +vanished.” + +“No: if it is not where they expect to find it, they naturally suppose +that they are in error: that what they are looking for is probably round +the other corner.” + +“H’m, I see.” + +There was a pause. + +“Well, what have you to say, Rex?” + +“Chris: I advise you against it.” + +“Too late, too late! The world is fast unravelling, like a laddered silk +stocking.” + +“Shame! And quite a new world, barely 200,000,000 years old. It will do +you no good, Chris.” + +“If an employee of yours, Rex, came to ask you for a rise, I verily +believe you would not say No, but: ‘I advise you against your suggesting +the idea to me.’ And should he ask for a reason, you’d say: ‘I don’t +think it would do you any good.’” + +“I don’t think this will. I don’t think it will do any of us any good. +Disintegrate. Ha! What an idea!” + +“Why?” + +“Well, look here, Chris, do you think it’s considerate? Do you think +it’s altogether kind?” + +“It’s the very milk of human kindness to spare us all the horrors of +this new war. You, Rex, must see this, for you are good at heart.” + +“Yes. I want, Chris, to do good. There is no greater pleasure in the +world than doing good. If you destroy the world, I wouldn’t be able to +go on doing good, now would I?” + +“That, I admit, is hard on you.” + +“It’s hard on us both, Chris. I wouldn’t be able to _do_ good, and you +wouldn’t be able to _make_ good. You would remain for ever a Genius of +the Untried.” + +“What! now that I _have_ tried and succeeded?” + +“I follow your argument. But believe me, Chris, it’s defective. To +destroy the world is not what I might call constructive work. I am +rather tempted, if you follow my line of thought, to relegate it to the +category of the destructive. It’s negative, Chris. That’s the word: +negative.” + +“Negative? Why, it’s positively destroying itself with a vengeance, +bolting away into nothing, overjoyed at the chance of release, bubbling +over with sheer _joie de vivre_!” + +“H’m.” + +“And can you wonder? For millions of years the atom has been kept in +harness. Round himself and round others like him, he was made to jump +without cease or sense, as if to bite off his own tail. He hasn’t known +a holiday since the world began. And what was it all for? To convince +crass fools that matter was solid!” + +“Since you came in this evening, Chris, everything seems less solid.” + +“Glad you are beginning to see light. I am looking forward to the time, +which is not distant, when what now serves, inadequately, to distinguish +the outward form of Baron Ottercove, will be converted into the purest +radiation. All matter, Rex, is a disease. It _is_ ‘matter.’ When pools +stagnate, or tissues decay, life springs to the surface, a pestilential +vermin. It’s a hitch somewhere in the atomic mechanism of the universe, +a clotting of the blood, an imperfect interplay of atoms in the cosmic +body which creates this fretting disease we call life. In the healthy +regions of the universe the atoms change their make-up millions of times +in a second and so are for ever dissociated and incapable of association +and cannot degenerate into a condition in which decay breeds life. +Unscientific people or unimaginative scientists would say that what I +have done is to ‘explode’ the atom. Nonsense! Even ‘disintegrated’ is +hardly the word for it, for it is apt to mislead us on a vital point. +What I’ve done is no more than what a watchmaker might do to a clock +which has got clogged and is losing time: I’ve speeded up its electrons +to the pitch at which the degenerated matter we call life regenerates +itself into radiation and, for us, ceases to be. A mere question of +revolution.” + +“Revolution!” cried Lord Ottercove. “I thought as much. You’ve let him +loose, the atom! Relinquished your hold on him, when your betters were +on the point of harnessing him to do all the world’s labour.” Lord +Ottercove suddenly jumped to his feet, a flush of anger suffusing his +cheeks. “Stop him, man!” he yelled. “Stop him, quick!” + +“Can’t catch him now.” + +“Run!” Lord Ottercove ran and opened the door. + +“You’d need a greyhound to catch him: he has galloped off into +not-being.” + +“What’s that?” + +“Death.” + +“Sheer idleness!” said Lord Ottercove. “At a time when servants are +scarce; when the human labourer has downed tools; when inertia like some +horrible disease has laid low the human race; when all our hope was in +the atom, you’ve released him, let him go to whirl senselessly in the +void!” + +“Far from it. There they have to dash round like fury to maintain a high +standard of death. For the moment they slacken their speed, sickness +sets in and life.” + +“That,” said Lord Ottercove, “might frighten the bird-livered neurotics +who are sick of life. I am sick with the healthy fear of death. I am all +for keeping the atom in his place. All this talk of Beyond, a Future +Life for the Atom--tell this to Dr. Conan Doyle or to Sir Oliver Lodge, +don’t tell it to me! Sheer sabotage! Allow one atom to strike, and all +the rest will follow suit. It’s not fair to the public. Next thing +they’ll want the dole. The country, Chris--I mean the world--will not +stand for it.” + +“It’s not work, Rex, but unhealthy conditions of work that the atoms +object to in life. Over there they work harder and quicker, yet freely +and joyfully, that we may all remain in the balmed and blessed state of +death.” + +“I see. The struggle for non-existence.” + +“Exactly.” + +“You are, I take it, a sort of Official Receiver winding up the affairs +of the visible world.” + +“No, a doctor who has released the circulation of the world which these +many centuries have clogged at our end: and the patient is speedily +recovering. When you and I and other sufferers cease to be, it will mean +that the patient is once again in the pink of condition. By healing one +atom I have healed the wound of the world.” + +“Who are the wound?” + +“All that which feels.” + +“I feel the coming death, feel it deeply and painfully, Chris.” + +“You must not feel: you must dry up.” + +“Dry up yourself!” said Ottercove, ruffled. + +“We’re mere boils and pimples, Rex, who feel the hurt. When I have +nursed the universe back to death, none of us shall feel any more.” De +Jones was muttering something. + +“What’s that?” asked Ottercove. + +“Just words. A German title has suggested itself to me as a caption for +what I mean--‘_Tod und Genesung_’ which, in our rotten tongue, might be +translated into ‘Death and Recovery.’ Shakespeare says: + + “‘_My long sickness_ + _Of health and living now begins to mend,_ + _And nothing brings me all things._’” + +“Come, Chris. Don’t make us all look asses in the eyes of your Maker.” + +“Asses?” + +“Asses.” + +“I’m going,” said de Jones, “not to my Maker--no: he is an usurper--but +to my Unmaker! He is the true God.” + +Lord Ottercove sat down dejectedly and stretched out his legs by the +electric radiator. “The world,” he began, “is a heritage which has been +committed into our keeping. It was not, I take it, put there to be +unmade at will. It is not ours, Chris, to dispose of.” + +“Oh, isn’t it?” + +“It isn’t, Chris.” + +“Whose is it, then?” + +“Well, a considerable portion of it, measured in terms of property and +money, happens to be mine.” + +“Ah!” + +“You smile at my alleged materialism. Unnecessarily, Chris! For it is +only in the banks and company offices that this wealth--and it is +much--is recorded in my name. I hold it as it were in custody for ... +Providence (call it the Deity, Fate, Destiny, the Supreme Being, or the +First Cause). We are but the stewards, the servants, as in the Parable +of the Talents, from whom account of stewardship will be exacted by the +Master. I have increased my five talents by ... I can’t tell you how +much. As for you, Chris, you’ve absconded with the one talent entrusted +to you. Which is worse than in the parable. You wonder at my prosperity. +It’s faith, Chris, faith. Faith in money. ‘For unto every one that hath +shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not +shall be taken away even that which he hath.’ Wish I was a preacher, +like my father. I’d be the Archbishop of Canterbury now. For I like the +sound of my own voice. The first condition of good preaching, Chris.” +Lord Ottercove sat still, wrapped in thought. + +Then he roused himself from his reverie. “Chris,” he said, “how much do +you want for it?” + +“What for?” + +“The visible world. I will buy it from you at your own price.” + +“Do you care for it so much?” + +“Not a damn!” + +“What do you want it for?” + +“For my friend Vernon Sprott. Like Gautier, he is one for whom the +visible world exists. I take it that you could ensure its existence.” + +“I might. I don’t know.” + +“How, Chris?” + +“By reversing the process. By crippling the mechanism of the atom and +reducing the electronic revolutions to a condition of slow decay in +which alone life for us is possible.” + +“Name your price.” + +De Jones considered. “It will be,” he said in the tone of a solicitor +calculating costs, “including all dues and charges, eighty million +pounds sterling. Guineas, I mean.” + +“Nothing doing. Good-bye to you.” + +Lord de Jones turned round on the threshold. “What will you do about it, +Rex?” + +“Have you arrested.” + +“On what charge? There is no law against introducing the Kingdom of God +into this country.” + +“Sedition. Instigation of atoms to mutiny. Under Dora.” + +“But why, Rex? Tell me why.” + +Lord Ottercove was a long time in replying. + +“I will not have humanity let down,” he said at last. + +“You and your humanity!” Anger had made de Jones inarticulate. “Running +your secretaries off their feet. Putting the fear of God into your +butlers. That last man you had has taken to drink, and is now in the +last stage of _delirium tremens_. Gilbert has developed the St. Vitus’ +dance, waiting on you and your follies. What respect have you ever shown +to the atom? When you look at a man you make all the atoms in him jump +the wrong way. Then about this war. You’ve gone right back on your +pacific scheme. Oh, these business brains! Oh, these strong, silent +men! Curse and damn your breed!” + +Lord Ottercove had walked over to the sideboard and was pouring himself +some Perrier water into a glass. “When you have done, please tell me,” +he said, drinking. + +De Jones was foaming at the mouth. “You and your confrère across the +road--newspaper proprietors! Bags of money! That’s all you are!” + +“And you’re an empty bag of money!” + +“Give the public what it wants. That’s your line--the line of least +resistance. But to write regeneratively is beyond your scope.” + +“Regenerative degenerates!” bawled Ottercove. He bawled so loud that +Gilbert came in to ask if his lordship wanted anything. + +“Nothing from you.” + +“Yes, m’lord.” + +“Leave us alone.” + +“Yes, m’lord.” Gilbert’s eyes danced. His face twitched. His hands +trembled. + +“Get out! I mean both of you. I’ve had enough of you all! Twitching +drivelling imbeciles! Atom mongers! Flea trainers!” Lord Ottercove +seized one of the eight chairs placed round the octangular table and +flung it at Viscount de Jones. When the Editor of _The Evening Ensign_ +came in a moment later, Lord Ottercove flung the second chair at him. +Outside his door a queue of secretaries, marshalled by Mrs. Hannibal and +each nervously scanning at her file of papers, awaited the Chief’s +summons. Time was when Mrs. Hannibal alone centralised all Lord +Ottercove’s activities. The traffick proved too much for a single +channel, and was accordingly decentralised, carried by a dozen streams. +A dozen secretarial maidens were always in attendance in the ante-room, +waiting for the signal to appear before the Chief, who shouted from his +chair: “Forward, Miss Davis!” and hurried her: “Come on, come on!” And +Miss Davis reported in a flutter: “We purchased 16 bottles of +Apollinaris, of which you drank 3; that leaves us 13.” + +“Carry them forward. Forward, Miss Badmington!” + +“The franc account shows a balance of 7 francs which I have changed into +pounds at the rate of 126 francs to the pound, making a total of 1s. +3d.” + +“Forward, Miss Harrison!” And so forth. + +And now as they appeared in the doorway, Lord Ottercove flung a chair at +them, and they retired in disorder. This left him with five chairs, +including the one he was sitting on. He flung the fourth chair at a +literary aspirant whose dream was to contribute humorous articles to +_The Daily Runner_, and the fifth chair at a lady who wished to sell him +tickets for a charity concert in the Albert Hall, and, having flung the +sixth and the seventh chair at some nondescripts who peeped through the +door to see what was happening, he remained seated in the eighth and +only chair in the room. Mrs. Hannibal came in with a fearless smile on +her face, the practised smile of a lion trainer whose first rule is to +show no fear of the lion for fear of encouraging the lion to behave in a +manner compatible with his nature. + +Lord Ottercove looked at her affectionately. “Do you admire my +moderation?” + +She admired him, and this physical symbolism of his political power, and +the sincerity of his self-expression, and his freedom from sham +convention. + +Lord Ottercove seized the receiver--Mrs. Hannibal thought, to speak to +Scotland Yard. She was wrong. Lord Ottercove was telephoning to his +editors. Here was real news! The end of all things: something not to be +missed. + +News, he thought, such as Lord Northcliffe would have appreciated at its +true value! There was no jealousy in Lord Ottercove. He admired Lord +Northcliffe, and though secretly he thought he himself had no peers +among living newspaper proprietors, he suffered from an inferiority +complex in the presence of Lord Beaverbrook. And so he was glad of the +exclusive news. In the beginning there was the Word. And in the end, +too. He was proud that it befell to _The Daily Runner_ to write the +Omega. “I, Baron Ottercove of Ottercove, hereby announce the end of the +world.” + +His principal editor, he was informed, was dining out. “As ever! Just +like him!” he muttered. “Dining, while the paper--not to say the +world--can go to hell.” For some minutes he sat alone in his vast roof +office, full of a strange wonder at the imminence of the fate which +confronted mankind. At last, he had to believe it. He sat very still, +while below the printing presses, with accustomed celerity, manufactured +the tidings. Then a sudden foreboding overcame him. It was not so much +that he feared the end for himself and his race: it was the uncertainty +of it that gnawed at his nerves. The uncertainty of when and under what +circumstances he might disintegrate. He stood by the enormous window +with a wide view of London roofs, including that of St. Paul’s, and +sadness filled his soul. An indescribable sorrow for all mankind +descended upon him. But as the minutes passed, the need for action +braced his nerves. Hatless he stepped into the lift, and passing the +solitary commissionaire, dashed into the busy streets. + + + + +XXXIX. + + +Where he went, he did not know. He walked on and on, his straggling hair +blown by the wind, and feeling a little like King Lear on the heath, +till, cutting across the Park to the Marble Arch, several open-air +meetings beckoned to him as a sign and a portent. + +Two hostile meetings, of Free Thinkers and devout Christians, were held +side by side, the speakers abusing each other at intervals, as though, +Lord Ottercove thought, God and the Day were not in sight! The +Christian protagonist, pointing at the blackboard on which a hen and an +egg had been sketched by him, questioned his audience: “They talk of +science, but what do they know? Can any of them tell me--can any of you +here tell me who came first? The hen or the egg? Did the hen first make +the egg, or did the egg first make the hen? Now, then, can any one here +tell me, I ask ye? Can any of the science students tell me? Ye can’t. +Well, _I_ can tell yer!--God made them both!” And he looked round +triumphantly. + +“They tell us--these Christian fellows,” shouted the Free Thinker, “that +Adam and Eve was sent to hell because Eve ‘ad eaten an apple. Now here +is an apple.” He held up an apple for all to see. “Now, Ladies and +Gentlemen, I ask ye: What is there in an apple? ‘Ere! _And yet they tell +us_--the Bible tells us--that Adam and Eve was sent to ‘ell ‘cause Eve’d +eaten an apple! Now I ask ye, Ladies and Gentlemen, can ye believe such +a silly thing?” + +“Free Thinkers!” shouted the Christian protagonist, pointing derisively +at his antagonist not five yards away. “Free Thinkers!--Free _Stinkers_ +I call them!” + +“Because they’d eaten an apple. Now here! Just look at it. Look at it! +What is there, I ask, in an apple? And yet they tell us--” + +Suddenly the urge to impart to this large gaping audience the momentous +message came over Ottercove. It was the end of the visible world. In a +few hours, perhaps in a few moments--at most in a week--they would have +to face the Judgment. It was for him to break the news. What consolation +had he to offer them? Call on their national pride in facing disaster +calmly and stoically? Recall the serene joys of eternity? Dwell on the +ultimate mercy of God? Or prophesy that there will be much weeping and +gnashing of teeth. + +Biblical language came readily to his lips: Lord Ottercove, though few +knew it, was the greatest living authority on biblical texts. He knew +the Bible from cover to cover and backwards: indeed, he could, at a +pinch, recite it by heart under an anesthetic. + +“What does it profit a man,” he began in a loud robust voice, the crowds +gathering round him, “if he gain the whole world (he paused as if to +prolong the tension of the ‘poser’; then added quietly:) and lose his +own soul? And why should it sadden a man if he lose the whole world +(Lord Ottercove paused), never having gained it?” He had the pleasurable +sensation of discovering (alas, as the world was about to let him down) +that he had the gift of a preacher and prophet, a gift that could hold +and sway multitudes. “Before I came here,” he went on, “I sat in the dim +light of my study and I dreamed and meditated by the fire; and there +came one of the seven angels, and he carried me away in the spirit to a +great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy +Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: +and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even”--Lord Ottercove +stopped as if seeking the _mot juste_--“like a jasper stone,” he said, +“clear as crystal.” + +The audience was writhing with excitement, but he stopped them with a +movement of his hand, leaning forward over the stand and speaking almost +in a whisper: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first +heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.” + +Once indeed he was taken aback by an interpellation: “Why the dickens +didn’t you stop the man, man?” yelled a dingy figure from the crowd, +when he had spoken of the adventist-scientist. + +“He wouldn’t stop!” returned Lord Ottercove. There was indeed no sort of +good in stopping him, he hastened to add. Did they not know that an +invention or discovery was at no time the monopoly of a single brain? +What use indeed having this scientist arrested when his successor, whose +hiding-place they could not know, was waiting to spring the mine? + +But suddenly as he spoke a sort of mental cramp seized upon his brain, +and he could not bring himself to utter another word. The harder he +tried, the more did thought and words elude him. He stood gazing at them +with what seemed to him an inane smile, but so magnetic, so masterful +was his personality to the people around him that they stood +fascinated, with their eyes glued on him, while he gazed back at them, +in silence. Three minutes elapsed. + +“Come on!” shouted a man from the crowd. + +“Sir,” Lord Ottercove turned to him, “will you be good enough to allow +me to complete my prayer?” + +At which the interlocutor relapsed into the obscurity whence he had +emerged. + +“Ladies and gentlemen!” said Lord Ottercove: “I thank you for your kind +attention.” + +As he walked home, posters of his own newspapers informed him of the +imminent dissolution of our planet. He groaned as he saw them. How bad! +How unimaginative! Posters depressed him. Never a day, never an hour but +that they would trot out some fresh disaster. A train derailed, liners +colliding in the Channel, a steamer run aground in the fog, a bus +toppled over, an airman lost in the Atlantic. Disaster, disaster, +disaster! “Disaster mongers!” he called them. How the public must be +getting sick of it. Never good news. He’d have to change all that. And +suddenly, he remembered that he could not change it: disaster mongers +had for ever triumphed. + +At a street corner he bought a newspaper. “End of the World” meetings, +he read, were being held in various parts of London. People began to +close their shops, and the excitement increased to such an extent that +later troops were called out, and large forces of police appeared at +the street corners, and the approach to Downing-street was barricaded, +the Prime Minister having refused to receive deputations who, resenting +his wait-and-see policy, were eager to compel him to do something _and +do it now_. Riots broke out in the east end of London, led by persons of +an irreligious disposition desiring to have a last good run for their +money, and men and women were committing suicide and going insane. There +was a vast crowd in Trafalgar Square. The Bishop of London, it seemed, +was addressing it. “Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee....” Voices, +out of time and tune, soared to the skies. A score of elderly virgins, +earnest, spectacled ladies in white, sang with transport, invoking +speedy transportation to the Seat of Judgment to be first among the +Brides of the Lamb. “A scramble,” thought Ottercove. “A queue before a +first-night. Wish I could be sure of my dramatic critic. Bright lad, +Allan Scoffer, might manage to get in.” + +The Brides’ white stood out luminously against the drab crowd. “What a +chance to make a corner in muslin,” Ottercove thought to himself, “to +meet the sure demand for Ascension robes!” The untimeliness of such an +enterprise, in the face of timelessness, which would rob him of the +fruits, damped his speculative ardour. He had long since lost interest +in making money, though the habit persisted into middle life, and +whenever now he sold a yacht or a Venetian palace or a country house in +Scotland, he would pride himself on a minimum profit of £5, as a +private reassurance that his old cunning had not left him. He was like a +veteran golfer who suddenly, during a quiet walk in the country, borrows +a club to show his friends the stuff he is made of. “Not lost the knack +yet,” they say tonelessly. + +He walked all the way home to Stonedge House and, unnoticed by his +servants, sauntered sombrely into his ground-floor sitting-room. His +mood was sombre. He stood at the wide French windows and looked out at +the darkling park which stretched before him, melting away into the +mist, stood there, a little weary and disenchanted. So this was the end. +Good! He felt sorry for the world, and for himself, and for the race +robbed of the promise of fulfilment. The imminent end of human life and, +with it, of his career on earth, threw him back upon a reminiscent mood. +He saw himself a boy way back in Ottercove, bright-eyed, eager, wide +awake, the visible world a glittering prize, a pear waiting to be +plucked. Well, he had plucked it. It had proved, however, more than he +really cared to chew; his appetite had waned as he partook of it. He had +had his fill; and, perhaps--he had always kept an open mind about these +things, had always been awake to other worldly possibilities--perhaps +there was room for his versatile talents beyond. He had always been +keen, modest, ready to learn the rules of the game--any game--to +appreciate the change in the nature of things, and always successful. +Those oft-quoted words with which his father once adorned his dreary +sermons, words whose beauty had arrested his attention, now stood before +him, cavernous with meaning: “We shall not all sleep: but we shall all +be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.” + +Probably. His father--a curious man. No pliability of mind. No +disinterested curiosity. Only a rigid belief in heaven and hell. Wrong! +Life was pliable, generous and miraculous to a degree we could not even +guess; it opened out suddenly, wondrously, as a flower overnight. To-day +a caterpillar--to-morrow a butterfly. But we, dull, sodden ruffians +ruminating over our existence, like cows chewing the cud, could not +imagine a heaven other than of grass and water--greener grass and +clearer water. Fools! + +He paced up and down. A series of articles on the nature of immortality, +for _The Sunday Runner_, commended themselves to his mind. A fitting +counter-blast to the precocious spiritualism exploited by a rival group +of newspapers. He would write them himself. It was wonderful how his +mind was opening out, like a bed of flowers, all looking, straining to +the sun. Intuitive orientation. Knew where the sun was, in fact had +always had a place in it. And God was just there, too, behind the sun. +He felt that he would get on well with God, owing to his reasonableness, +modesty, and readiness for transfiguration at short notice. He would +not ask questions, but watch every movement of God’s brow and anticipate +His every mood. + +Ah, well! he had faith. He would go on believing in a personal +immortality till, with a poker, from behind, Providence would knock him +dead.... A sinister afterthought; he brushed it aside. He stretched out +his hands to the unseen: “I am reasonable. Will not the reasonable from +beyond the grave claim me?” Half forgotten feelings flooded his heart. +He remembered his arrival in England back from his New Zealand tour, as +the train rolled noisily over the bridge into the great metropolis, the +witness of his crowning triumphs. He remembered a thrush outside his +bedroom window way back in Ottercove in early boyhood. The trees seemed +to stand still, as if waiting for something. These feelings, eternal +essences of things, were they to be wasted? These anticipations, were +they not to be fulfilled? They were pledges of something that was to be, +had always been, existed now, as if round the corner but somehow out of +reach. The quickness with which people disposed of dead bodies, the +rapidity with which they resigned themselves to their loss, suggested +that, at bottom, they thought it was all right. It was all right. _How_ +all right, he could not say, but all right it was. + +“Time for bed.” He stretched out his arms to the ceiling and yawned. “I +am,” he said aloud, “such as I am, and what I am--neither more nor +less--for the universe to chew and digest and assign to the requisite +uses.” + + + + +XL. + + +Lord de Jones had been in a hurry to cross over to the Continent, for +there was no means at all of knowing how much of it had disintegrated to +date. The uncertainty of the whole business appalled him. The +stationmaster at Victoria might not be able to cummunicate with the +_chef de la gare du Nord_. Yet he had no means of knowing whether this +was because Paris-Nord (or, for that matter, Paris) had disintegrated, +or whether it was because the number was engaged. + +There was of course an aeroplane service for abroad, but people still +clung to the _terra firma_, Lord de Jones thought, without good cause. +Moreover, they were travelling with luggage--a good deal of luggage. It +was indeed difficult to know how much luggage to take with one--Eva +could not take enough--to last one to the end of one’s days in time. The +sight of passengers reclining in the easy luxury of the Pullmans, +looking trim and hard, appalled him. They would not come back, he mused. +Never come back from this last journey into space whither they were +travelling _de luxe_, over viaducts, away, away, urbane materialists +melting into air.... + +And on the French side, against all the easy felicity of the language, +the sinuous tones of the restaurant-car attendant who sang out as he +squeezed himself along the swaying corridors: “_Prière de prendre place +pour le premier déjeuner!_” contrasting favourably with the brisk “First +luncheon!” of the British dining-car attendant, the incorrigible +insularity of the English passengers who said they wanted to shut out, +if possible, French passengers from the coupé (forgetting that they were +travelling across France in a French train), stood out a black and +reeking ghost of shame which made him think the world was doomed because +it lacked all manners. In the night the train stood still, emitting long +sighs at intervals; and his heart beat loud within him with foreboding. + +Images passed through his mind, of a life _à la_ Jean Jacques Rousseau, +in which he must rely on his dexterity of arm and on nature’s bounty. A +hardened hunter he is, building her a hut. Eva with only furs from furry +animals which he had hunted down for her to hide her nudeness. Primeval +love and lust. Long days of bliss. But what is this? The roar of a lion. +Bother! He must get up and see about it. He had been dozing, and opening +his eyes, she was there indeed, not in the wilderness as yet, but facing +him in the coupé, and smiling at him. + +But what if it fail him? She, the child,--no more than she could +understand how, having undone one atom, he had automatically undone the +world,--had not the remotest comprehension of how he could now isolate +a specific portion of it from destruction. Yet when he had, to +illustrate the process, said to her that all he had to do was to +vaccinate the hill they had selected as their future world, she said: +“Of course! How silly of me not to think of it myself!” + +But even if it fail, then death. And what was death? A change of +outlook. He remembered once crossing a wide river somewhere, and as he +landed on the other side, straying into a bathing place where lots of +naked people sat about on benches in the garden and on chairs in the +adjoining restaurant, smoking, eating, chatting, listening to music--but +with nothing on them. It was uncanny. And he thought that landing on the +other side of death must be as strange: for everything seemed different, +yet everything the same. + +Dusk fell as the train raced across Austria, and sheaves of corn in the +vast whirling fields looked like humans stealing away one by one in the +twilight. “Escaping,” he thought. + +And, waking in the morning suddenly, they saw the mountains. + +In the station square at Innsbruck, a fat German who looked like a pig +waved his whip at his dog and threatened it: “_Ach, du Schweinhund!_” + +“Disgraceful!” said Eva, and as she passed him she gave him an icy look +over her slim shoulder. It was a beautiful day in June. They hired a +victoria and drove, at first through the old mellow town with its +cloistered streets, domes, turrets, and pinnacles; then by the side of +the river, angry and turbulent. A faint hazy summer afternoon was +drawing to its close, and as, at sundown, they came to a hanging bridge +chained between rocks and the foaming green river rushing angrily under +the horse’s hoofs, Christopher’s eyes filled with tears: the beauty of +it all was more than he could bear. + +And when, at the Pension Kogl, they came out on to their balconies, they +were stunned with rapture by the view which opened out on to the +mountain scenery. Below was the river, the passionate Inn, and the +bridges, the funicular slowly climbing the mountain slope, and all +around were pine trees, birches, roses, villas hidden in lanes lined +with foliage; and at night when they walked by the river, where lanterns +shone forth from between secretive trees, it was as if a wonderful +secret, long dreamt and forgotten, awaited one round the corner. + + + + +XLI. + + +That night Lord Ottercove slept at The Cottage, and the following night +he spent in the country. It was not till he had got into bed on the +third night and turned over on his left side that he was aware of the +sound of rustling paper in his pyjama coat pocket, which, on inspection, +proved to be a letter, a _billet doux_ from his Eva. She was, she +wrote, with Christopher de Jones, who, as Rex probably knew, had gone +off his chump and had disintegrated the world, which was unravelling +rapidly of its own accord (“like a piece of crochet-work,” she wrote, +“if you know what I mean, whose first stitch he has undone,”) and she +had with difficulty persuaded him to isolate the top of a hill, which he +said he could do by vaccinating it, so to speak, against the spreading +corruption, to save her and himself, and she was now secretly indicating +the exact location of that hill in the Austrian Alps whither he, Rex, +should fly at once. He must not, however, bring anyone with him, as +there would be very little to eat. “_I told Him I’d like to have you +saved, but He won’t hear of it. I am furious. I told him all the Truth +that I have written to you. And He is Furious. Never mind, darling, if I +flirt with him perhaps He will not kill you. Your loving wife_ + +_Eva._” + +Lord Ottercove never weighed or reflected: he knew. Light came to him +without intermediaries, direct from the Holy Ghost. He must save himself +_and Vernon Sprott_. Vernon Sprott was, since the death of a late Prime +Minister, his oldest friend, and friendship was to Ottercove a pure and +sacred thing. In other departments of life he had displayed a versatile +ability, but in friendship he was a genius. No coldness, lack of +response, animosity, or even treachery could dull his friendship. If he +once liked a man, nothing that that man might do to him would stop his +liking him. Equally, he would stop at nothing if he could render even +the smallest service to a friend. Lord Ottercove was said to have made +the war in order to oblige a friend whose special gifts, he thought, +would find their happiest expression in a war cabinet. His tenderness in +the cause of friendship knew no bounds. And so, entering hatless into +his chariot, he muttered the address of Mr. Vernon Sprott. + +But when, his heart thumping within him, he dragged himself up to +Vernon’s study at the top of his house in Berkeley-square, Vernon Sprott +was writing a novel. Vernon Sprott was invariably writing a novel. That +was, according to the more esoteric critics, the special trouble with +him. And the special trouble to-night was that Vernon Sprott would not +stop writing the novel, hoping to finish, print, sell it, and retire on +the proceeds before the world came to its final dissolution. Lord +Ottercove beheld the broad industrious back of his friend, who made a +slave of himself to keep afloat a large yacht, and said: “Vernon, you’re +a writer of talent: but a merchant of genius.” + +Vernon Sprott turned round on his chair. “You, Rex,” he said, looking at +him with critical thoughtfulness, “who have cut such a figure in the +visible world, why don’t you now turn your mind to the invisible +mystery of things and solve, say, the Riddle of the Universe?” + +Lord Ottercove pondered silently awhile. “I cannot solve it,” he said. + +Mr. Vernon Sprott turned back to his desk. + +Lord Ottercove looked at his friend with grave significance. He loved +Vernon Sprott. All the music, all the poetry in the world was not so +strong nor yet so pure as this devotion of the younger for the elder +friend, and when he spoke of him his voice grew tender and tears came to +his eyes. “Vernon!” he said at last. “I am going to save your life! For, +you know, there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we +may. My chariot is at the door and” (looking at his watch) “we must +fly.” + +“Let me put the last stroke to my novel.” + +“I advise you against it.” + +“Why?” + +“Vernon: it would do you no good.” + +“But I must. No first-class artist--” + +“Vernon: we must fly.” + +Vernon Sprott, smoking a long fat cigar, followed Lord Ottercove +critically into the chariot which, cutting sharply round the corner, +took wing, and clearing the roofs of the Berkeley-square houses, soared +into the sky. Lord Ottercove and Mr. Vernon Sprott beheld for the last +time the great city of London which, viewed from this imposing height, +looked as though it had been inadvertently dropped out of the back of a +cart. An architectural effect that, though it was not premeditated, +could hardly be called happy, thought Mr. Sprott. However. He puffed at +his cigar. “Your secretary and telephone operator gone ahead, I expect?” + +“Yuh. Can’t get on without them.” + +They were now flying right into the dawn. + + + + +XLII. + +CASTOR AND POLLUX + + +Herr Kogl was in charge of the telephone and telegrams. +He would come up and say to you with oracular pride: +“A--telegram--is--on--the--way--to--you.” He articulated slowly, as if +appreciating the necessity of talking distinctly to foreigners. + +“How do you know?” Lord de Jones asked him. + +“I know,” said Herr Kogl, turning to go. But he came back at once and +explained: + +“They--have--telephoned--from--the--post--office--to--say--so.” + +The telegram arrived an hour later. De Jones opened it and read: + + “_Lord Ottercove and Mr. Vernon Sprott arriving by chariot this + evening. Reserve first class accommodation._ + +_Hannibal._” + + + +In the afternoon while everybody was at tea--“_Jause_,” in the +vernacular--Mrs. Hannibal and the telephone operator arrived in an +aeroplane and installed themselves with the efficiency and celerity of a +quartermaster. Mrs. Hannibal occupied the little reception room; the +telephone operator, a graduate of the Royal College of Science, +commandeered the telephone. Then, there being nothing for them to do +till evening, they strolled down the hill into town to inspect the +sights. + +And Baby? + +She was not at the gate, nor at the bandstand, nor in the by-ways of the +park. Since his demise from the Pension Kogl, Frank lived in town, often +meeting Baby when she came down to Innsbruck. And here she was, as fresh +as May, beckoning to him from across the flower-bespangled field. That +laughing, slanting look in her eyes stirred something in his frame as +though a bird had suddenly flown into him. He was joy, his body the +cage. Soon joy would fly out; and he fretted and flurried trying to lock +the door of the cage, losing his happiness in the anxiety of losing it. +That piquant blend of childish innocence on her face with a suggestion +of ripening womanhood about her form, so irresistible to men, was no +less irresistible to Frank. They took the funicular up the mountain +slope and continued the acclivious ascent by foot, stopping now and then +to look down at the town in the valley, when he would feel her lovely +weight against him. They wound their way up the Schillerweg and stopped +at a Gasthaus in the precincts of the Pension Kogl and had coffee and +cakes amidst the beer and wine drinking peasants with goat beards like +shaving brushes stuck in their coloured hats, and the women in Tyrolese +peasant dress taken in tightly at the waist and showing off their +figures to advantage, and sat still and looked down into the green folds +of the valley and up at the jagged summits of naked rock. She gave him a +look that came straight from the soul. Her eyes were as if they had just +been sad, had understood all, and now chose to see only the heavenly, +sunny side of your being. And looking at her eyes, you, too, felt but +the sunny side of yourself, and wanted to dance and prance in the +sunshine that emanated from those eyes. Fowls, chickens, strutted all +over the place, jumped on the chairs. The little serving maid, +bare-legged, would call them: “Chuck-chuck-chuck!” + +They were screened from sight by a tree. He put his hand on her arm. Her +look moistened. The sun, as if making a last effort, shone with a tragic +brightness; then, unable to sustain the effort, diminished its light. +The bare-legged maid had gone in. They kissed. When she came out she +wore a pair of brown stockings: and they stopped kissing. + +“Hello, hello!” + +They turned round and saw Eva and Christopher de Jones. “Wherever have +you been?” Eva turned on to her cousin. “We’ve been looking for you +everywhere. Chris is anxious to begin.” + +“There isn’t any time to waste. It’s coming our way now, spreading +fast,” de Jones confirmed. + +“Like creeping paralysis,” said Eva, “and Chris is going to vaccinate +this hill.” Then, turning to Frank: “Let me see! Have you any hair +left?” He quickly removed his hat. “Oh, lots and lots!” she exclaimed. + +“It’s about the only thing I have.” + +“It’s time I did it,” said de Jones. “Herr Kogl, can you oblige me with +a little gasoline?” + +“Yes, yes. We’ll see if we can get any,” said Herr Kogl politely. +“Kindly follow me to the garage, and we shall see if we are lucky.” + +Then in another tone: “Hey there! Herbert! Any gasoline! Any gasoline, I +said! Come on and get about it, quick! I’m waiting. I said: _waiting_!” + +Christopher de Jones returned with a mysterious air. “I have timed,” he +said, “the explosion for 5:15.” + +“What explosion is this?” Frank said with enquiring charm. + +“Oh, perfectly harmless in itself. But it will frighten away all the +rest, and leave this mountain top for our little party.” + +“Is this discrimination not perhaps a little heartless?” + +“Surplus, surplus. One must always get rid of the surplus.” + +He took out his watch and held it in his palm. Three minutes elapsed. + +There was a mild crash. Then several faces were thrust enquiringly out +of the windows of the Pension Kogl. Next, the word “earthquake” passed +from mouth to mouth, and a thin stream of visitors trickled down the +narrow mountain path into Innsbruck which stretched below them, sunning +itself in the valley. Herr Kogl, Frau Kogl, the policeman and the Frau +Policeman with her quicksilver of a little boy, the apoplectic Baron, +and some others, made light of Lord de Jones’s warning and refused to +budge. + +They stood with Frank and Eva and Baby and de Jones in a group on the +terrace and watched the other visitors trot down the hill: the Grand +Duke, the Frau Professor with the dachshund, the Herr Pastor, the Frau +Pastor, Herr and Frau Nikulitsch, the two Scottish old maids, Herr +Spatz, Frau Spatz, and their son Willy, the Frau Doktor Wirt, the Frau +Direktor Bödingen, the Frau Oberst von Kaisar, and Frau von Endte. There +lived among others in the annexe of the Pension Kogl an +effeminate-looking young artist from Vienna who was kept by a poor, pale +consumptive German girl who paid for him and cooked his meals, whereas +he, tired of her love, powdered his face and, adjusting his tie before +the mirror, went to town every day to distract himself with her money. +On the fatal day he, adjusting his tie, went to town and did not come +back. And she, going down the hill to the grocer’s to get him his +supper, did likewise. + +Frank remembered this afterwards. Now he stood between Eva and de Jones +and watched his erstwhile enemies from the _pension_ go down, never to +return. It was a warm Sunday afternoon. Far away, a train whistled and +then coiled below, like a serpent, on its long journey to Vienna. It +will not reach Vienna, Frank thought, not in eternity! All the peasants, +save for one old man, had already vanished down the hill. He drank his +big mug to the bottom, smacking his lips. Having paid for the beer and +lighted his pipe, he rose, and at once there came the sounds of his +jolly accordion, as, with twinkling eye, he strode to his own happy tune +out of the courtyard. Fresh and alert, he went down the road making his +own music, till his long curved pipe, and his knapsack, and the plume in +his hat ducked by the hill, and only the jolly tune spoke of his fresh +onward strides. + +The sun had long ago set behind the hills. It was very still: the empty +spell which hangs over the world before twilight. + +“And what’s that?” Baby exclaimed, pointing to an approaching dot in the +sky. Eva peered at the clouds. An airplane was speeding towards them. + +“It’s the chariot,” said Frank. + +“It’s Rex! It’s Rex!” she cried. “Hurrah! it’s Rex!” + +They could see them now with the naked eye, Lord Ottercove and Mr. +Vernon Sprott, seated side by side, puffing at their cigars. + +One moment it seemed as if Lord Ottercove’s winged chariot would land +safely and gracefully in the courtyard of the Pension Kogl. The next, it +looked as though it would do no such thing. + +The two occupants of the chariot suddenly looked at each other. They +were both, in their different ways, strong men, and said nothing. They +were, they knew it, subject to immediate dissolution. And there was +method in it. First, Mr. Vernon Sprott began to disintegrate (his +eighty-five volumes of fiction and _belles-lettres_ in the British +Museum having already preceded him). Mr. Sprott realised with his usual +imperturbable objectivity that he, who had always been one for whom the +visible world existed, was on the point of no longer existing for the +visible world. Now Lord Ottercove also began to get diffuse. He was not +aware of any pain or discomfort: he only felt that he was becoming less +and less homogeneous. This master of a million voices yielded inaudibly +to extinction, his last conscious feeling, one of sorrow not of anger, +being a profound regret that Lord de Jones had not remained a Genius of +the Untried. Soon their fabric melted into air, into thin air. Their +insubstantial pageant faded and left no rack behind. + +But in the growing twilight the tips of their cigars, fiery particles +immune from dissolution, two beacons of light, two golden stars in the +sky, twin brothers, Castor and Pollux, shone for ever and ever. + + + + +XLIII. + +THE COCK CROWS TWICE + + +There was no sound at all, and nothing to see: something that had +hitherto been ceased to be, like a dream on waking. Nothing crashed, +nothing fell: no mist, not a whiff of steam. No gossamer. Things rolled +up into nothing, as if they had vanished up their own sleeves.... The +world around seemed to be burning, silently, quickly, invisibly. + +They stood round and watched intently. Would the vaccination prove +adequate in neutralizing the creeping disease? Or would it overtake +their little hill, reach them and consume them all? By the answer to +this question Christopher de Jones will stand or fall. If he succeed, +how will they reward him? Foolish associations intrude their minds. +“Payment by results.” How long, how long! Will this ever end? Has it +ended? Are they dead, and, in a sense, as good as before? “Come, now,” +said Christopher impatiently. + +Gradually the hill detached itself, and as Baby and Herbert ran down the +slope hand in hand to ascertain if they were clear of the contamination, +floated away into space. + +“A clean piece of work, what?” said de Jones, looking round at everybody +for approbation. “We’re clear of the old earth.” + +They all looked admiringly at the wizard. + +“We’ve peeled right off the rotten crust of the world; the old planet’s +gone off to die by itself.” + +“The whole of her fabric vanished by now?” asked Frank. + +“Well, there may still be a piece of Asia left as we are talking. But it +need concern us no longer.” + +“I should hate to think, Chris,” Eva said, “that you have not quite +killed the earth and that she is suffering.” + +“A matter of a day or so, that’s all. The wound is mortal.” + +They stared away into space. “Look out!” he cried. “We are floating +away. No need for alarm. Merely changing our bearings in the firmament. +The stars are looking at us inquisitively; that is because we are +newcomers.” + +They could not recognise their Chris, their gloomy, silent Chris. He was +gay, excited, communicative; like a Cook’s tourists’ guide. “Hold on!” +he cried presently. “We seem to be getting away somewhere, I don’t quite +know where.” + +Away, away, away! To the sun, Frank thought, to be consumed in its +light! + +The movement increased in velocity. It seemed they were falling. +Falling, falling, still falling; but falling upwards, not downwards. +With indrawn breath they awaited the final impact which was to shatter +them into space. Now, with a crash, they would fall on the moon. + +Trembling, Eva came into Frank’s arms. He held her close that he might +drink her breath, commit her kiss into the keeping of his soul, forever +lost in hers. For his identity, as it dissolved in the encroaching dusk, +clung to his own self’s dream in her soul mirrored. Was it the end? Shut +in that vision! Now, Doom, devour them!... “Ever, and again, and +forever, thine.” + +Yet the minutes passed and no blow came. When they had stood tensely and +motionlessly for what seemed to them a decade, the velocity of their +fall decreased perceptibly, and they came to a halt. The sky gradually +cleared, and the sun flickered through the clouds. It looked as though +it might be over. + +Lord de Jones looked as nonplussed as the others. “Apparently,” said he, +“the law of gravity is no object to God.” + +“Yes,” Frank agreed, releasing Eva from his protective grasp, “we are +saved--if unscientifically saved.” + +“God has shown,” remarked Herr Kogl, “that whatever else He may be, He +is no doctrinaire.” + +“Apparently,” replied de Jones, still looking worried, “our knowledge of +astronomy is incomplete--if this sort of thing can happen.” + +“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, etcetera,” said +Frank. + +Herr Kogl looked at Frau Kogl. They smiled faintly at each other. They +were pale, yet happy. But where was Herbert? + +“Never mind Herbert. Where was Baby?” The question flashed through Eva’s +mind. + +Steps were taken accordingly to satisfy the curiosity on both sides. +Herbert and Baby had, it was remembered, run down the slope hand in hand +to ascertain whether the hill was clear of the dissolving earth, before +the hill had shot, like a bolt, into space; and neither Herbert nor Baby +could be traced any more. Lord de Jones advanced an interesting and +plausible theory that Herbert and Baby, having thoughtlessly overstepped +the line of demarcation, had rendered themselves subject to the chemical +laws operating outside the area he had thoughtfully isolated by means of +vaccination, and thus had shared the fate of all matter. While they were +discussing the sensational disappearance of two of their number who +should have been saved, the ground beneath them gave a jerk and then +began to revolve, at first slowly, then faster and faster. + +“Hold tight!” cried de Jones. The new globe was whirling with incredible +rapidity on its own axis and, what was even more distressing, round the +sun; which made it doubly difficult to keep one’s feet. They were, thank +God, for the most part of them, Londoners, accustomed to roughing it on +the tops of omnibuses, and this sort of thing held no real peril for +them. But twenty Austrian citizens, mountain folk who had lived away +from urban surroundings, failed to keep their poise and were hurled into +infinity to ascertain, but never to report, whether Einsteinian infinity +was indeed finite (even though some of the victims had no scientific +bias at all). + +But all things come to an end sooner or later, as was remarked by some +keen observer. Gradually the revolutions slowed down and then almost +subsided: and there they were--behold! the new Jerusalem descending out +of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto +a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. And +they saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the +first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. + +“By God, John, you’re right!” Frank exclaimed: “as right as sixpence!” + +“That was a narrow escape,” said Herr Kogl. + +Lord de Jones sat down on the ground and stretched out his limbs and +yawned. “Ha!” he laughed. + +“What is the joke, if I may ask?” Frank smiled enquiringly. + +“Fifty years ago,” said de Jones, “when the laws of science were +absolute, this would have been impossible. But in this age of +Relativity, nothing, thank God, is absolutely impossible!” + +“Relatively speaking,” said Frank. + +“I have always put God above mathematics,” said Herr Kogl. + +“Either nature lacked science,” Frank said, “or God knew a lot more. Our +experience is decidedly novel and interesting.” + +“As a matter of fact,” rejoined Lord de Jones, “it all happened +according to plan. Just as I thought. Nothing surprises me.” + +He _hadn’t_ thought so. He was like a captain who in a storm mislaid his +chart and instruments and, when the storm was over, pretended to take +his bearings and said that they tallied with his intended course. + +They were miraculously saved; and there was still a world. But what a +world! A rounded mountain top, peeled away and revolving very slowly by +itself round the old sun. + +And there, as before, stood the Pension Kogl. Nothing seemed to have +happened to it; all the windows were whole. Here was the garden, the +courtyard, the stables; and there the fields with the cows and sheep and +horses grazing imperturbably as before. Was it a dream? Where was it? +When was it? + +And here was Herr Kogl standing on the doorstep puffing at his pipe; and +there was Frau Kogl, agitated, throwing out her hands, probably saying, +Frank thought, “I don’t know what to do!” to the policeman who was +mystified, though not disagreeably, by the disappearance of the young +shrew who had been his wife. And in her agitation Frau Kogl seemed to +be forgetting her own grief. + +“The matter is simple,” de Jones was explaining. “When our new little +planet began to whirl like a merry-go-round, the Frau Policeman, having +failed to clutch at a solid object, or clutching an object that was not +solid (possibly her husband), was hurled like a stone outside the now +negligible gravitation zone of this little earth of ours, and was +attracted by the superior gravitation of the moon.” + +“For one who has always whined for the moon,” said Herr Kogl, “the +transference must have its attraction.” + +“The bump,” retorted de Jones, “will have been fatal. But that is +neither here nor there. All I ask you to note is that her death was due +to natural causes.” + +“Lucid, admirable,” said Frank, “and entirely convincing!” + +The apoplectic old Baron came up to say that he had just stumbled over +the body of little Hans, the policeman’s boy, and the company, sobered +by recent apocalyptic events, slowly made for the spot. De Jones again +assumed the initiative. + +“Observe,” he said, “an interesting phenomenon. The boy, too small and +not used to transit either by omnibus or the Metropolitan Railways, had +not developed the instinct of a strap-hanger, and if his ancestors had +indeed ever had this instinct, it had been atrophied in him through long +disuse. And thus he failed to clutch instinctively at the small bush +that might have saved him, and was hurled instead into space. But being +light in body he was not hurled far enough to reach the gravitation zone +of the moon, but remained within the gravitation halo of this little +planet whose power of attraction, as you are aware, is so weak that when +we raise our legs in walking we have some difficulty in touching ground +again. We might be penny balloons on the day after their purchase when, +no longer able to rise in the air, they do the next best thing. And so, +observe, this infant’s fall was not heavy: it did not maim or deform +him: only knocked the life out of him. All in the natural order of +phenomena.” + +“Most interesting and instructive,” said Frank. + +“Poor child,” said Eva. “Poor Baby! Poor Herbert! I wish now, +Christopher, you had never begun it.” + +“You can’t have,” retorted Christopher, “a worldwide cataclysm like this +without a victim here and there, which is all in the day’s work.” + +“The number of your victims,” interjected Frank, “is in the +neighbourhood of 1,600,000,000.” + +“What!” Frau Kogl was appalled. “That is not allowed! _Das gibt es +nicht!_ Herr Wachmann!” she called out to the policeman, “will you have +this gentleman arrested. He is the biggest murderer that ever lived!” + +The policeman, a tin sword trailing at his side, looked from one to the +other with an irresolute air. + +“Come, come!” said Lord de Jones, patting him on the shoulder, “this is +no longer your old Austria.” + +“Now don’t be a funk,” Frau Kogl egged him on, “assert your authority, +show what you can do.” + +“I am the only policeman in the world, a poor, lonely man. How can I +arrest anybody?” + +“Come, come, don’t you bother them,” Herr Kogl intervened. “What is done +is done and cannot be undone.” + +But she would not listen to him. And even when he bawled at her she did +not quail, this time, before the man with the strong will; and he turned +into the house with a shrug. “Women,” he said tenderly. + +“You’re a fine policeman and no mistake,” Frau Kogl jeered, till even +Lord de Jones himself felt sorry for the man. + +“Leave the poor man alone, can’t you?” he said. “What has he done to +you?” + +“It’s not what he, but what you’ve done, sir. Killed Herbert, killed +everybody. Everybody, everybody ... absolutely everybody one can think +of. And now with this funk of a policeman there will be no justice, no +authority left in the world; no one to bring you to book!” + +“That will do, Frau Kogl.” + +“No, it _won’t_ do, sir. This is _my_ pension, bought on my mother’s +hard savings she made in Alsace-Lorraine from where we spring, and as an +Alsacian I am too proud to tolerate the presence of the murderer of the +human race in my house.” + +“Stop!” cried de Jones. “Don’t try my patience too far, woman! My nerves +are on edge. I’ve had a very exceptional day. Do you know what you are +saying? This is the New Jerusalem that you see, the home of pacifism. +None of your Alsace-Lorraine now, I beg of you.” + +“I came from there--” + +“And you’ll go that way, if you are not careful.” + +“All this is mine.” + +“Oh, is it? Let heaven be my judge.” He snatched the sword from the +policeman and struck her on the head. + +She collapsed in a heap. + +The policeman walked away into the hills with a look which implied: “I +haven’t seen it.” + +Lord de Jones lit his pipe. Frank and Eva stood by, aghast. De Jones +looked at them with a propitiating smile. “I have slain,” he said, +removing his pipe, “this dragon of contention, this symbol of war and +nationalism, I hope, for ever.” + +“Cain!” + +A cock crowed twice. + +He started; then relaxed again. If the cock crowed twice to remind him +that he had betrayed his ideal at least once, he was nevertheless mighty +glad to know that there was a cock on the premises. He hoped there were +hens, too. + +“I have released,” he said, “the spirit imprisoned in a foul house.” + +“You’re blaspheming.” + +“It had to be done.” + +“Oh, had it?” + +“A hard thing, I admit, for a pacifist. But we must not sentimentalise +if we are to survive; we must fight the peace as we fought the war!” +There was silence. + +“Even the cock is too sick with you to crow again,” said Frank. + +The light sank: there was a long drop of rain, then another. It began to +hail. The three of them turned in and stood at the window blurred with +rain. The old woman’s body lay out in the wet. Neither the hail nor rain +could waken her. The earth was wrapped in a wet mist. And the Spirit of +God moved upon the face of the waters. + +And Lord de Jones said, “Let there be light”: and there was no light. So +he switched on the electric light: and he saw that it was quite good. + +“You blooming fool, Christopher! You’ve upset all the seasons!” cried +Eva. “You’ve made a mess of the weather! It’s neither day nor night, but +heaven knows what! It should be summer now, and it is winter.” + +“O Wind! If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” + +He sank into a chair and picked up a periodical, a copy of _The New +Statesman_, the last number. The very last! Eva opened the _Illustrated +London News_ full of pictures of the _concours hippique_ at the Olympia, +and Frank strolled over to the piano and tried his hand at the +_Symphony of the New World_, when Herr Kogl came in from the +dining-room. + +“Bad weather, Herr Kogl, what?” + +“Das ist kein Wetter, sondern ein Skandal,” and he adjusted the electric +stove. “Everyone can switch it out--I mean switch it on--whenever he +likes, but you must on no account switch it out without telling +Herbert....” He stopped, blubbered; then continued with a catch in his +voice: “because I mean then you release so much current that the dynamo +goes off like mad and may go phut, and then anything may happen. Though +I don’t care what happens now that Herbert....” He gulped and turned +away to the window. “What’s that?” + +Next, he was in the courtyard by her side. He stood still, petrified. +“Anna!” he said. “Anna!” + +Lord de Jones rose with _The New Statesman_ still in his hand, and went +upstairs, “To spare his feelings,” he said. “Though I wish these people +would realise that a certain modicum of suffering is unavoidable even in +this New Jerusalem. However, we don’t want scenes.” + +Herr Kogl placed the body on chairs in the dining-room and came back +into the lounge. Eva eyed him compassionately. “What will you do to +him?” + +“Nothing,” he said, “nothing. It is between him and his God, and I can +do nothing.” Tears streamed down his cheeks. “There are laws, delicately +adjusted spiritual laws. We must not meddle, must not touch God’s +scales. If I did, what would happen? ‘Leave off!’ God would say. ‘Away +with your clumsy hands, you bull in a china shop! By taking the law into +your own hands you have upset the delicate adjustment of my spiritual +world. You have disturbed the balance, disarranged the symmetry. Now, +instead of letting him, who has wrongfully taken, put it back by his own +exertion of soul, I must let him off lest I upset the scales of my world +by the wrong you have heaped on him. And who will square the original +sin? It falls back on the whole of mankind, don’t you see, young +feller-me-lad?’ That’s how God would speak to me if, in my great +ignorance, I presumed to take things into my own foolish hands.” + +For a minute they said nothing, but looked out of doors, where the rain +had stopped, at the dripping trees flooded with light. + +“And she was a clever woman,” he said; “she knew languages. Brought up +in a convent on the border of France....” His face puckered: he sobbed. + +When the others had gone, he stood alone in the doorway, gazed at the +clouds and listened to the pines in the wind. He looked with despair for +the night to cover his grief: and it was perpetual day. + + + + +XLIV. + +FINNEGAN! BEGIN AGAIN! + + +Lord de Jones, having, he deemed, ended his work, took a hot bath, +sitting in which he reflected that while it had taken God six days to +make the world, it took him only one day to unmake it. Yet he felt he +also needed a rest. It was 6 a.m. when he dragged himself up to his +room, dropped on his bed and fell asleep. He dreamt that he had been +given a lot of work which he resented because he was tired, having gone +to bed as late as 6 a.m. All night he dreamt that he had gone to bed at +6 a.m., and when he woke at noon he felt more tired than when he had +gone to bed at 6 a.m. + +Rising, he put on his trousers and fastened on his braces and, not +troubling to put on a coat, went out on to the balcony to look at the +world: and he saw that it was good. The earth was certainly small, but +there was a cosiness, an intimacy about it now which it lacked when it +boasted five continents. It was dear to him because it was the work of +his own hands--in his private opinion, a masterpiece. It had been for +him to make it as small as he deemed fit, and he had deemed its present +size--which was ten miles in diameter--entirely appropriate. + + “_In small proportions we just beauty see;_ + _And in short measures life may perfect be_,” + +he carolled hoarsely. “Yes, Ben Jonson would have understood me!” + +“Or,” Frank rejoined, stepping out on to his balcony, “as Goethe said, +‘In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister’.” + +“Very true, very true.” + +“But not too true to be good. One should have watched you. One should +have known that somebody like you, with more science than sense, must +attempt this sort of thing sooner or later.” + +“You supply your own answer. Someone, if not me then another, would have +done the same thing. No idea, not one so obvious, ever comes to one mind +alone. Thousands must have cherished it. Not for ever was mankind to be +mocked.” + +“And poor Rex,” said Eva, joining them on the balcony. “A few seconds, +and he would have been with us last night.” + +“And Vernon Sprott.” + +“And Vernon Sprott.” + +“Yes--I can picture Rex with us! He would have called for Mrs. Hannibal, +and there wouldn’t have been a Mrs. Hannibal. He would want to print +newspapers, and there would be nothing to print newspapers with or on. +He is better where he is.” + +“Poor Rex. I _did_ want him to be saved,” said Eva. She was in a loose +dressing-gown. It had become more and more evident that she was +expecting a baby--“of the old world,” said Christopher de Jones +regretfully. + +“I know. He was a great lad. We shall never see the like of him again.” + +“There was,” said Frank, “nothing ‘tinny’ or snobbish about him. He was +a great, warm-hearted creature, sensitive, knowing, not rancorous, kind +and unspoilt. What energy, what enthusiasm, what mobility of mind! And +withal what magnanimity! He was, I think, the most magnanimous man I +have ever met. If he caught you red-handed, plotting against his life +and fortune, and you politely put away your pistol or poison with the +words: ‘So sorry, Rex,’ he’d tell you: ‘Say no more about it! If it’s +money you want, why the hell don’t you say so?’ and, so as not to hurt +your feelings by simply giving you a batch of Bank of England notes, he +would appoint you Editor-in-chief of all his newspapers.” + +“And then worry the life out of you, till you resigned your job of your +own accord.” + +“He was the big drum in the jazz band of our civilisation, in which I +was the ukulele. But he was a rare friend, and, characteristically, he +died trying to save his friend’s life. There was at least nothing +jazz-like in that.” + +All Ottercove’s sympathetic qualities, unnoticed when he was alive, now +stood out and called for notice. They stood up as a mute reproach to +them and called up images of callous and ungrateful thoughts about a +man now mute, felled in the fullness of his strength, prematurely +disintegrated. He felt sore, badly hit by the loss. He was fond, he knew +it now, of Ottercove. Never again would he behold the glint of those +eyes. Never hear that robust voice.... + +“But why have been so half-hearted? Why not have finished off +everything?” He looked grievously at Chris. + +“That the race may survive.” + +“_Must_ it survive?” + +“Of course.” + +“Why ‘of course’?” + +“To honour my name and my memory.” + +“What a name! What a memory!” + +“We must recuperate, start afresh. My descendants will breed and +multiply, expand, develop trade, build fleets of aeroplanes, and shops +and factories. Ultimately we shall hope to open a new Bank of England.” + + “_There was a little man_ + _And his name was Finnegan;_ + _He grew whiskers on his chin again._ + _The wind did blow and blew them in again,_ + _Poor old Patsy Finnegan._ + _Finnegan!_ + _Begin again!_” + +“And we shall. As Goethe said, ‘Aller Anfang ist schwer.’ Glorious life! +Glorious beginning!” + +“But what is there, you fool, to begin from?” + +“Don’t call me fool.” + +“What is there that the race, if indeed it survive, can learn from? +Where is there a picture, a book, a gramaphone record to pass on to +those who shall follow us? Nothing. Not even an _Outline of History_!” + +“Wells? Ha!” + +“We could do with Wells here. The earnest, regenerative Wells. Where is +he now?” + +“Wells?” De Jones adjusted his telescope and peered at the clouds. “I am +looking if that be him over there.” + +“Let me look.” Frank looked and saw what looked like Mr. Wells floating, +it seemed, only a few yards away, a compact, self-contained little +figure, apparently immune from dissolution. “I think,” Frank said, still +peering, “I can see Winston’s hat.” + +“I might have saved Shaw.” + +They strained into the skies at a few dissociated splinters which may +have been fragments of George Bernard Shaw. + + “_I stand in no awe_ + _Of George Bernard Shaw_,” + +de Jones quoted. + +“The attitude of the press and the reading public towards Shaw has been +one protracted joke.” + +“How so?” + +“You see, when Shaw began he was not taken seriously but was treated as +a joke. It was not till recently that he succeeded in being regarded as +a serious artist.” + +“But where is the joke?” + +“That is the joke.” + +“And do you see that blot on the clear sky?” + +“Let me look. Yes, I see.” + +“That is Lord Birkenhead.” + +“You are forgiven.” + +“I am touched by your recognition. You were rather chary of it last +night.” + +“Well, you must admit, de Jones, that, near as you have come, you have +not quite brought it off.” + +“I suppose, like Jesus and Napoleon and Lenin, I will be deemed a +failure.” + +“A splendid failure.” + +“Not brought it off, as you say.” + +“Not quite.” + + “_Well, well! Nor I nor any man that but man is_ + _With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased_ + _With being nothing._” + +The cook, who was never seen about in the week, and thus was not missed +in the upheaval, came up to say that breakfast was served; and they all +repaired downstairs, Eva placing Herr Kogl on her right (because he was +old and had suffered), and de Jones, though he was a peer of England, on +her left. De Jones did not like it. He had scattered his title about, +but now he would take himself in hand. He would take care to leave his +full history to his descendants, so that they should all know who their +ancestor was. It occurred to him that possibly Adam himself was, had we +been privileged to enquire more closely into his record, the ninth earl +of something or other. “I dare say,” he said aloud, “it will tickle them +no end to know that their founder was of the English aristocracy.” + +“I am not sure,” said Frank, “whether I should not contest your +sovereignty. The last of the Romanovs having disintegrated (and even the +last before so doing having relinquished his claim in my favour), I am +by all accounts the Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, Czar of +Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland.” + +“With no heir to the throne,” said de Jones. + +“That depends on my Queen Consort, who in the case of my death and no +issue would succeed to the throne as Eva the Second.” + +“Eva is my consort, already by the fact that she is bearing me a child.” + +“My child?” + +“Eva, whose child?” + +“I don’t know.” + +“Strange not to know.” + +“Don’t you see, Chris, we must have children, little boys and girls, so +that they may marry again and carry on the race.” + +“What! their own half-sisters! Eva, I am shocked.” + +“Beggars can’t be choosers.” + +“Well, so long as they are good de Jones stock. Say what you like, +there’s something in having blue blood. I’m a believer in old families.” + +“My mother,” Dickin proffered shyly, “was an Adams.” + +“Adams and Eva!” + +“And we must hand down such knowledge as we possess, do you hear, de +Jones? We must put it down on paper--all we know and remember. There is +Mrs. Hannibal’s typewriter. Though we have no printing press, we can +make carbon copies. When I was at Cambridge--” + +“Were you at Cambridge?” + +“Why?” + +“It’s a rare thing.” + +“Why?” + +“It’s no more.” + +“When I was at Cambridge I made a point of recording all I knew. Do you +know any algebra?” + +“I don’t know any algebra. Leave me alone.” + +“But poetry? Has anyone got any poetry? My God! There is no poetry.” + +“Yes, darling, there is poetry.” + +“Give it here. Let me have it, quick. Where is it?” + +“I have some. Here, in my album.” + +“Give it to me. God! Not real poetry?” + +“Yes, darling, very nice poetry. There in the middle. There.” + +“Thanks. + + “‘_O Eva, O Eva,_ + _I love you so mighty,_ + _I wish my pyjama was_ + _Next to your nighty._’ + +Thanks.” + +“You can copy it out on the typewriter, darling, for all the boy and +girl lovers after our time. I suppose they will be able to read +English.” + +“Yes,” said Chris. English, he laid down, was to be the only language of +the new world, to perpetuate the traditions of the English-speaking +world. On the other hand, to show his complete lack of racial prejudice, +the daring unconventionality of his mind, he confessed, with a smile, +that though he preferred to stick to the criminal law of England, in +civic matters he was in favour of the Code Napoléon. He looked upon +himself as holding the new world under a mandate from the British +Empire; in fact he was himself in lineal descent from the Stuarts. He +was in reality the trustee of the British Crown. “Gentlemen,” he said: +“The King!” + +“The King!” + +The Baron and Herr Kogl, both of them confirmed anglophiles, did not +protest. + +After breakfast, they carried the body of Frau Kogl into the wood and +buried her among the trees and flowers. De Jones, who presided, said a +few unsentimental words over the open grave, the burden of which was +that to understand everything was to forgive everything. After that he +marched Herr Kogl away, the while enquiring in detail as to the number +and condition of the cattle, the orchard, the poultry farm, the +vegetable garden, and even the household utensils. “I shall require from +you,” he said, “a regular account of these.” And when later he inspected +the cattle, he said: “I am anxious at all cost to prevent the outbreak +of the foot-and-mouth disease. I shall hold you personally responsible.” + +Herr Kogl, wondering sorrowfully what his poor Anna would have said to +the noble lord’s attitude to her own property, took it all in with good +grace. His reputed strong will availed him but little, but his good +sense a great deal; and when on returning home he addressed Lord de +Jones as “_Il Duce_,” Lord de Jones appointed Herr Kogl Chief Intendant +and Quartermaster-General with the acting rank of Minister of the +Interior. + +While _Il Duce_ and his Quartermaster were discussing economy, Frank +Dickin, after being appointed Poet Laureate of the New World, strolled +away in search of inspiration. A thought struck him. He ambled on and, +when he was well out of sight, dashed across to the archducal Schloss +and hoisted his striped shirt, for want of a flag, according to the +rules of the old world. And according to the rules of the old world, he +looked about for something with which to defend the newly acquired +possession, and felt that in so doing he was also performing an act of +loyalty to the old world so ignominiously done in overnight. He waited +for Lord de Jones to attack him with bombs and shrapnel and machine +guns. And he reflected that if Lord de Jones did not attack him with +bombs and machine guns, it was because Lord de Jones had no bombs and +machine guns to attack him with. + +It was odd, this feeling of proprietorship, in the face of all this +dissolution. And yet he told himself again and again that this castle +with the stately staircase, those long rows of red-gold rooms succeeding +one another as in a picture gallery, the quadrangle and the park and the +surrounding moat, the drawbridge and the water falling down the steep of +the enshrouding hills, and not a soul around--was his and his alone. And +when Eva visited him there that morning, he showed her round till she +felt faint. + +“Talking of castles,” she said, lying down on the archducal sofa, “look: +is it not sweet?” + +And she displayed her garters with a castle worked in silk and bearing +the inscription on the castle gate: “For one only.” + +“Chris gave me this on leaving London.” She moved about the room and +fingered his things. “What’s this bottle, Ferdinand?” + +“The beautiful crop you see on my head I owe to the regular use of this +lotion, reinforced by sheer strength of will.” + +“Where will you get a new bottle when this is used up?” + +“Not in this world. It’s a French make of pre-Dissolution days, with an +excellent translation of the instructions for use. Read the label.” + +“I see. ‘This very energical and excitative lotion for the hair whose it +favours the growth and gives to the hair, sweetness strength. Mode of +use: with a little sponge, washing plentifully the head during a week. +Afterwards thrice in a week.’ Quite amusing.” She put it back. “You have +fine hair now.” + +“It’s the only thing I have left. And it wasn’t there before.” + +It seemed a shame that this fine crop of hair should survive in the +teeth of a dissolving world. Survive? How survive? + +“We had better go back to the _pension_ for lunch now,” she said. + +“Yes,” he agreed sourly. “That is the annoying thing about large houses. +All this luxury, and not a cook on the premises. What good owning a +castle with a hundred and seventy rooms, and no servants? Spend all my +days mopping the floors. Saw an automatic mopper in Tottenham Court Road +the other day. Ought to have secured one. Lacked vision. Lacked faith.” + +It would not always be so. He saw in the future unborn Dickins living in +these lofty halls. A brilliant party. Bare-armed women. And his portrait +looking down at them from the wall. His great granddaughter eloping +with a de Jones youth. Romeo and Juliet. Family feud. Capulets and +Montagues. Noble families. Hundred per cent. pre-Dissolution. Dreams, +dreams, dreams.... + +The prospect of there being nothing to eat at first upset them all so +much that they lost their appetite. But when they ascertained that there +was a great deal to eat, they were so delighted that they began to drink +heavily. While they were at lunch, the cook came in to say that she had +just come upon Frau König in the cellar, where she had evidently hidden +herself since yesterday’s sham earthquake and bore signs of being of +unsound mind. + +“Bring her forth,” commanded de Jones. + +Frau König, disshevelled, and looking more than ever like a gipsy, was +led into the room, whereupon Lord de Jones addressed her courteously but +firmly. “Your appearance,” he said, “is both timely and opportune and, +in the sociological sense, clearly an asset. The world has reached a +stage at which immediate repopulation has become of paramount +importance. We lack women, though we do not lack men. We have but two +women and five men. I do not count the cook as a woman because she is +clearly beyond the age of reproduction. The men, on the other hand, are +all (I do not exempt even the older gentlemen, such as the Herr Baron +and Herr Kogl) rare examples of virility coupled with a high sense of +public duty.” + +“Unfortunately,” said Frau König, “my fiancé in Paris, having again +failed in his examinations at the University, it has set us back two +years with our knitting factory. Otherwise--” + +“Frau König, it’s not knitting factories I am talking of, though we +could do with one here at a later stage, when we have reproduced an +adequate number of mill hands, which is the task we have in hand. And +you have no right to shirk the call.” + +“I don’t understand. My fiancé is still in Paris--” + +“Don’t understand? Am I not making myself clear? Frau König, I cannot +presume to know your opinion of our late educational system, and I know +that in a purely scholastic sense it perhaps ranked below that of the +late Continent. But we were taught at our English public schools +something which was called ‘playing the game.’ Now is this, if I may ask +you, ‘playing the game?’” + +“But I desire nothing better. If my fiancé were here, of course. I’m +quite ill waiting for him all these years, living on hope deferred.” + +“Your fiancé! Your fiancé! What do I care for a fiancé who exists but in +your memory?” De Jones grasped her by the wrist. “Frau König,” he said, +“there is no room for thoughts of self. It’s a question of repopulating +this planet at the shortest possible notice. Are you (I will not say +patriotic, for patriotism, as such, has lost all meaning): are you +mundic?” + +“I am not averse,” said Frau König. “In marriage one contracts certain +habits.... But,” she added, “my condition is that you take me out into +society.” + +“But, good heavens!” Eva cried. “Her offspring will be as mad as +hatters!” + +“Which may add a touch of genius to those who will follow. We have come +near enough to the Kingdom of God but have not quite tumbled to it. +They, with a touch of genius, may go one further and clear up the mess +after themselves, and themselves as well.” + +“Better let me do what I can.” + +“Now Eva, don’t be jealous. You can’t, Lilith, do it all yourself. You +will kill yourself.” + +“I am willing to do my bit.” + +“There must be no slacking, no half-heartedness,” cried de Jones. “Here +we start anew!” + + “_There was a little man,_ + _And his name was Finnegan;_ + _He grew whiskers on his chin again._ + _The wind did blow and blew them in again,_ + _Poor old Patsy Finnegan._ + _Finnegan!_ + _Begin again!_” + +“A message of courage and hope,” said de Jones. “Our new mundic anthem.” +De Jones had changed; he was “another man,” as they say. He was like an +artist who had just finished a picture, or a scholar who had completed a +treatise. This his work had been the making of him. He was lighthearted, +positively gay. Only the wrinkles round his mouth had deepened still +more. + +“Art thou man or devil?” Eva asked. + +But he cried, jumping to his feet with a glass in his hand: “Now all +together, please: + + “‘_There was a little man,_ + _And his name was Finnegan_....’” + +The Baron and Herr Kogl, unable to contribute to the singing, since the +Baron’s knowledge of English was confined to saying good-morning in the +evening, and Herr Kogl’s was nil, yet contrived to join in the chorus at +the end, and shouted lustily with the others: + + “_Finnegan!_ + _Begin again!_” + + + + +XLV. + + +In due course, that is exactly in the course of time prescribed by +nature, and unaffected by changed meteorological conditions, Eva gave +birth to a son, who, though both Frank Dickin and Christopher de Jones +were anxious to claim his paternity, proved to be, on inspection, +without the remotest shadow of a doubt, the second Baron Ottercove of +Ottercove. And all day long he laughed to himself. + +“That’s all right,” said de Jones, on being admitted. “But let him not +expect too much of the new world. For we came crying hither: thou +know’st the first time we smell the air we waul and cry.” + +“Alack! alack the day!” + +“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this (small) stage of +fools.” + +“What shall we call him?” asked his overjoyed mother. And many nice +names were suggested. + +“Rex Alexander,” by Eva herself, in undying memory of his illustrious +father. + +“Christopher,” by Lord de Jones, in honour of himself and Christopher +Columbus, the explorer, and Christopher Morley, the American critic. + +“Ferdinand,” by Ferdinand, and in honour of Ferdinand, “Ex-King of +Greece,” he explained when Lord de Jones frowned on him. + +“Call him Adam,” suggested Herr Kogl. “For he is the first-born of this +new earth.” + +“Yes, yes, Adam,” said Eva. + +And he was called Adam. In honour of the late Miss Adams (which was +Frank’s mother’s maiden name), as Frank liked to think fondly but on +insufficient evidence. + +Eva had become very competent. The Pension Kogl was transferred into a +day and night nursery; the kitchen was used for drying the second Baron +Ottercove’s garments; and when the men argued as to whether their world +could survive, she invariably cut short the discussion by saying, What +mattered the world? It was the survival of baby that mattered. + +“I wish,” she said, “Pilling could have seen my baby.” + +“Damn Pilling! Didn’t you think of your mother when you were making your +selection for your Noah’s ark?” + +“Well, darling, I thought she wouldn’t be alone in all this. She would +have all the other people with her. And Mummy always loved crowds.” + +Chris looked away, ashamed. “It was no use,” he said at last. “It was a +hopeless, incurable race. A perverted mentality. Nothing to be done with +them. Even the best of them were beyond salvation. Take my aunt. An +amiable old lady, yet cruel in her very kindness. During the last war, +like most old ladies, she had been vehemently, almost indecently, +anti-German. After the war, travelling about in Italy and being the +really nice old English lady that she was, she confessed to a feeling of +shame at the snarling attitude of _The Continental Daily Mail_, while so +many titled Germans were about. What she most quickly recovered was her +interest in the imperial family of Germany, and she confessed a +heart-felt sympathy for the ex-Kaiser. ‘Rather a fascinating man,’ she +said, ‘and after all, he was the grandson of our own dear Queen +Victoria, so we shouldn’t be too hard on him.’ The dear old lady! I can +see her now as she walked beside me, stopping every few paces to recover +her breath, but pretending she was doing so to bring home a point in +our conversation: ‘Now isn’t that remarkable!’ or else to examine a +bicycle propped up in front of a shop: ‘What an unusual bicycle!’ or to +read a poster: ‘Have you seen this?’ She was a good woman, and the very +stuff our race was made of. You might have thought that it would have +profited by its mistakes and devised a working social order. But (as +Goethe said about politics) men would not learn, and God did not seem to +want it.” + +“That is so, but if anything you have made things worse.” + +“Hardly worse,” said de Jones. “I have in my pocket a newspaper +fragment. Let me read it aloud so that you may realise what you have +been saved from. Here it is. It is entitled ‘Royal Month of February,’ +and it goes on: ‘_Many famous hostesses have already come to town, and +during the next few days will make the final preparations for their +participation in the stately pageant in the House of Lords when the King +opens Parliament in state to-morrow week. New Court gowns will be tried +on in Mayfair, St. James’s, and Belgravia, and priceless family jewels +will be brought from the strong-rooms of historic banks._’ + +“Almighty God! + +“‘_Among the weddings within the next week or two will be that of Major +the Hon. Maurice Duff Glayton and Lady Ursula Blaming at St. Margaret’s, +Westminster. The Marquis of Lillingsworth’s two charming daughters will +be among the bridesmaids. Both bride and bridegroom are well known in +the yachting world of Cowes._’ + +“Almighty God! + +“‘_The Marquis and Marchioness of Epping spent the week-end in town in +Curzon-street. Lord and Lady Castle have come from Kent, Lady Walden de +Munford from Paris, the Dowager Duchess of Hawke from Ireland, and the +American Ambassador from the United States. Countess Buxham and her +daughter are back again in Eaton-place._’ + +“God Almighty!” He wiped his brow with his handkerchief, and as he +walked away he stopped every few paces and said: + +“God Almighty! God Almighty!” + + + + +XLVI. + + _Elle avait appris dans sa jeunesse à caresser les phrases, au long + col sinueux et démesuré, de Chopin, si libres, si flexibles, si + tactiles, qui commencent par chercher et essayer leur place en + dehors et bien loin de la direction de leur départ, bien loin du + point où on avait pu espérer qu’atteindrait leur attouchement, et + qui ne se jouent dans cet écart de fantaisie que pour revenir plus + délibérément, d’un retour plus prémédité, avec plus de précision, + comme sur un cristal qui résonnerait jusqu’ à faire crier, vous + frapper au coeur._ + +_Proust._ + + + + +He returned to his Schloss park, went down the gravel path into the +hidden nooks where the waters dashing down from steep heights broke +their fall in cool spray. All was as still and wild and pure as on the +first day. So Adam must have brooded, too, in the cool and quiet of +Eden. + +He walked on. And suddenly he came upon her in the pine wood. + +“My pale primrose.” + +“No, no, not here.” + +“Yes, here and now. To make sure that you bear me a child.” + +“Yes, you and Chris, and everybody.” + +He was overwhelmed with tremulous anxiety that he might lose her, his +one, his only woman. To hold her, for a moment, if only for a moment, +was to hold all--eternity in a moment. There was Eva, and no other +woman; and she included all the beauty and the passion in the world. +“Oh, my Eva! My _dear_ love!” He thought of all the loving lost and gone +for ever: of moonlight meetings, heartthrobs, lingering farewells, by +waterfalls, in drifting gondolas, and sunlit glades, and cloistered +streets, and heaths, and lanes, and bridges: the water rushes, the +heart throbs loud; he tried to collect it all and impress it on these +lips, these taut, supple fingers, these heaving young breasts. + +And they took of the fruit thereof, and did eat: and they heard the +voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. + +“It’s you, only you now. When I hold you, Eva, I hold the world.” + +“Yes, darling, what is left of it.” + +“No distraction left.” He clutched his chin savagely. “I can’t have +them!” he cried. “Can’t have them!” + +“Who?” + +“All those other women.” + +“What’s to be done, darling?” + +“I can’t have them! Oh, aren’t I glad!” + +“No regrets?” + +“None! Eva,” he murmured, “my little Eva.” + +“And do you remember,” she said, “how we were lost on the hill?” + +“I remember.” + +“And how the storm came on, and how you held me, and how it rained and +we ran to hide under the rock?” + +“And you remember Count Kolberg?” + +“Yes, that soppy-face! And how when he asked us out to dinner he sent in +a long bill next day, charging up to Mummy our share of the meal, giving +all the details: + + 3 rolls + 3 soups + 3 cutlets + 3 salads + potatoes--3 portions + 2 lemonades + 1 beer + +and so on. And that night he took us to the “München” he ordered +champagne. But when it came to paying, he had no money and began to cry. +And Mummy said to him very kindly: ‘But why, if you _knew_ you hadn’t +any money, did you order champagne?’ ‘Because all the others did,’ he +said.” + +“And what happened?” + +“Oh, the waiter boxed his ears for him and kicked him out and called him +names. It was very disagreeable for us.” + +“How did he take it?” + +“Not very badly. Sort of half playfully. ‘You don’t know what I was +going through in my inner soul,’ he said, when we were out of doors. +‘Ach! Ai, ai, ai! Ai, ai, ai!’” + +“Then it was we who were lost. Now it is the world. The poor world, with +no lovers in it any more, save you and me. It seems we must love for the +lot. Justify love. We shall not fail. We shall not fail.” + +She looked wistful. + +“Eva ... honey love....” + +“Yes.” + +“I am unworthy. But God in His infinite love has brought all this about +that we may come together again, you and I, Eva.” + +“Darling,” she said, “I don’t believe it!” + +“Nor do I, for that matter,” he said, pressing her to him, “and I +scarcely think that this was an end pursued by de Jones.” + +“The last thing that he intended.” + +The sun subsided towards evening, and suddenly the landscape shone forth +with a crystalline clearness, as though you had adjusted your binoculars +to the required focus. Before them stretched a plain. No more horizons. + +They stood up and walked on, lifting themselves from the ground with one +foot and coming down in a leisurely curve with the other, as horses in a +slow-motion picture clearing a fence. + +“The gravitation,” he sniffed, “is ludicrously weak.” + +“It’s only a small planet, darling,” she said, “and hasn’t much +strength.” + +“We walk as on air.” + +“I don’t mind it, darling. And we’re in no great hurry.” + +The sun came out again, and, as they climbed up the steep ridge to the +pine wood, shone through the trees with a dazzling whiteness such as +only acetyline lamps can produce. On the edge of the wood they halted; +below was a lake surrounded by firs: a little lake, like a plum dipped +in water. Sky, firs, hills, water, all was blue, each just a shade +darker; all blue and motionless, as if still waiting for something. They +stood still, their hearts thumping; till the sun sank and the first +silver stars twinkled feebly in the sky. + +“And don’t you miss your dear Rex?” + +“He was so strange and peculiar.” + +“Yet I never met anyone who did not like him. It was his eagerness which +fascinated one. I once arrived during a very agitated conversation +between him and Vernon Sprott, who was pained by the alterations made by +Ottercove in his last article, when Ottercove defended himself with +spirit. ‘What’s the good of being a newspaper proprietor,’ he said, ‘if +you can’t butt in occasionally?’ There was a rare dash about him. It was +a joy to dine with him; all the waiting service congregated round his +table in the restaurants. Dinner over, he would step into the lift, a +panting waiter stepping in with him to present the bill, which Ottercove +would sign without looking. ‘Don’t they ever swindle you?’ I once asked +him. He looked at me earnestly. ‘Dickin: I expect them to swindle me.’ +This was great, if you like. But he would come out with better things, +too. Once, in failing to please him with my definition of him I +suggested that my definition was not flattering enough, and he said: +‘Not a bit. If I only listened to flatteries, it wouldn’t do my +character any good, now would it? I wouldn’t develop, would I?’” + +“The darling,” said Eva. “The little pet.” + +“What made him greater than most men of action was that there was, side +by side with his sense of his own abilities, an essential humility in +him. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for one who +had started literally with nothing, and rose to a share in the control, +and an enlightened control, of the destiny of a great empire, himself +surrounded on every side by awe-struck relatives and bowing sycophants, +to grow bumptious and megalomaniacal, intolerant and overbearing. Not a +sign of it in Ottercove! Instead, an enquiring charm, a readiness to +listen and learn even from youths. The same bright-eyed mischievous +boyishness at forty as at twenty, a touching eagerness to do worthwhile +things, ever the man of the world equal to every situation, and yet, a +sort of wayward kindness, an engaging modesty which left him unaware of +what it was in him that made up his charm. And withal a public +fearlessness, the sure touch of a genius in everything he did. I doubt +if he was ever told his worth. We did not tell him. And now it is too +late.” + +He paused before he spoke again. “For us who can remember him he is +gentle, human, and kind. But to those who will follow us he will be just +a star god, together with Sprott-Pollux, the two gods of material +success! What I say is, if not Ottercove, then the cigar of Ottercove! +May it shine for ever and ever.” + +They kneeled down and bowed low, touching the earth with their brow. And +in that attitude of holy prostration they remained a long time. + +“Look,” he said, lifting his face from the ground and sitting back on +his heels, “there they are, Castor and Pollux, looking down on us +through the clouds.” Eva, who, like a small girl in church, had followed +all Frank’s movements through her spread fingers while prostrate in +prayer, uncouched as yet in the new ritual, now also sat back on her +heels and looked up at the stars. “Pollux once wrote something about +somebody with the High Hand.” + +“Yes. There he stands with raised hand; you feel as if the whole of the +Five Towns were gazing down on us with quiet, benignant reproach. And +next him is Castor. Even in life Castor never used more than one eye at +a time: he closed one and put it all into the other. What an eye! All +the fire of Zeus was in that eye; it could pierce through stone walls. +He sees everything we do. There, read that look now. He seems to say: +‘You have disintegrated my thousand reporters: yet from here I see +everything and report it all direct to my God.’” + +“Good God!” Eva turned to him, alarmed. “Then he has seen how you have +loved me a minute ago.” + +“Castor was a reasonable being. His morality was pragmatic and rational. +Look again at that eye of his. What does it say? Not ‘go and sin no +more,’ but ‘sin and sin again till you have brought the population of +the earth back to pre-dissolution standard.’ Rex, you see, was always a +man who believed in giving you another chance.” + +Eva looked thoughtful. + +“The curse of Eve is upon you, my girl!” + +“What is that, darling?” + +“I haven’t got my Bible here--and I fear we haven’t a copy of it in this +world--but I believe it is something to do with bringing forth children +in pain and labour.” + +“It is a pity,” she said, “that we haven’t brought with us any +labour-saving devices.” + +“Lacked foresight, lacked vision.” + +“And you, darling, will have to work in the sweat of your brow.” + +“Not I! My motto is: ‘Give us peace in our time, O Lord, and _après nous +le déluge_.’” + +“They may do it yet. They may come to it yet. We must not lose faith.” + +“No, we must not! We must not lose faith in the sense of mankind to wipe +out mankind. But must wait, must be patient. That this idea may occur to +one among millions of men, we must breed millions of men, till there +emerges out of these masses the new Messiah, not a half-hearted devil +like de Jones who has let himself be tempted by this blue-eyed woman +Eva, but a man who will at last administer the _coup de grâce_. And so, +_allons, enfants de la patrie_! Breed, breed, breed!” + +“There’s only Frau König and me,” sighed Eva. “The cook does not count.” + +“Cook or no cook, we shall have to bring down the age of consent, or +else to precipitate the age of puberty, to twelve. In twelve years nine +months from to-day you and Frau König (for I have commended her to the +bereaved policeman) will be able, all being well, to give birth to +sixteen children, a total of thirty-two, of which two will come of age +that day. Some of the children may die, and the Baron’s may prove +apoplectic. But the general outlook, if not rosy, yet enables me to look +into the future with confidence.” + +He sat down, and was lost in reverie. He saw the population of their +little planet rising annually, in geometrical progression, till it was +black with people, like a dish with cranberries, people packed like +sardines: working in mills, the din of machines, roaring furnaces: +producing, producing, producing roaring furnaces: producing, +producing--a sight fit to delight the eyes of the gods. And Sunday +always spent in devotion, kneeling (for lack of other gods) before +Castor and Pollux, while a priest in flowing robes held forth on the +dignity, the nobility of hard work, winding up his oration with the new +mundic anthem, and from a million throttles came one long roar: + + “_Finnegan!_ + _Begin again!_” + +What a religion! + +With a start, he detached himself from his reverie. “The stars are +getting more golden,” he said, rising, “and the sky is a dark deep +blue.” + +“And, darling, look at them, I mean the stars. We can see them +everywhere, underneath as well as on top.” + +“That is quite natural. The earth is a tiny ball and we can walk round +it like flies.” + +“But Castor and Pollux are on top.” + +“Always were top dogs even in life.” + +“See, darling, Castor and Pollux are now pure gold.” + +“Not unnaturally, either. Look at that wood, secretive, leering. Hush! +Hark!” + +“Yes.” + +“Listen: + + “_‘Die Rehlein beten zur Nacht:_ + _“Hab Acht!”_ + _Halb neun, halb zehn, halb elf, elf, zwölf._ + _Die Rehlein beten zur Nacht,_ + _Sie falten die kleine Zehlein,_ + _Die Rehlein._’” + +“Sweet. What makes you think in German?” + +“I quote in the language of the country.” + +“Which country?” + +“Technically this is a piece of old Austria.” + +“M’m! It makes you think. A piece of old Austria. But Australia gone, +America gone, India, Russia, Paris, London, Vienna--all gone!” + +“To kingdom come. Didn’t Christ always warn us that it was at hand?” + +“Nobody took any notice of Him, darling.” + +“Till too late. But we shall muddle through. It is an English +characteristic, to give the old country its due. Not because we are +muddle-headed, but because no other race is clear-headed enough to +perceive how muddled they are, except the Russians, who, having +perceived the muddled nature of all life, have identified themselves +with it for good.” + +“There is the moon.” + +“Yes, there she is.” + +The moon swam out in all the fulness of her glory. + +“Oh, do you remember that passage in _Hermann und Dorothea_, as they go +homeward by night, as we are doing now? How goes it?-- + + “‘_Herrlich glänzte der Mond, der volle, vom Himmel herunter;_ + _Nacht war’s, völlig bedeckt das letzte Schimmern der Sonne._ + _Und so lagen vor ihnen in Massen gegen einander_ + _Lichter, hell wie der Tag, und Schatten dunkeler Nächte._’ + +My memory is the only repository of poetry that we have with us. And +nature, or what is left of it, the only promise of heaven. Look at those +rocks,” he pointed. “What serene dispassionate peace! They are death. +They brood, but not darkly. They are pressing upon us: you and I have to +bear their intolerable weight! The clouds sail above them, barely +touching them, toppling over. They teach us that life is not what we do +or think: that life is elsewhere, barely touching us, as those clouds.” + +Somebody, probably Frau König, began to play Chopin, and the rippling +waterfall of sound, marvellous and enchanting, filtered through the air; +the strains pressed into the night and asked questions. + +“O God of Love! How that woman plays. Her madness, resentment, then a +cowed, shuddering awe, and overflowing tears of tenderness. They have +summoned, you see, those other creatures, visitants from a world, +certainly not ours. ‘Perhaps,’ says Proust, ‘we shall lose them, perhaps +they will be obliterated, if we return to nothing in the dust. Perhaps +it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is +without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that these +phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our +dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages +these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in +their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, and perhaps +even less certain.’” + +“It dawns.” + +“It dawns. Home, darling, and to bed.” + +They began the descent, as the sky grew threadbare, the moon paled, and +a small peevish sun looked out, sleepy, red-eyed. Then a shaft of light +licked a fugitive cloud. A cock cleared his throat in the yard below. +The rich odour of mown grass and the rays on the ricks of straw bid them +live. They blessed their fate, and that neither of them was to be +hanged at dawn, that they had sufficient to eat and could go home and +sleep in clean sheets upon feather beds. + + + + +XLVII. + +IT IS FINISHED + + _Chor. Es ist vorbei._ + _Mephistopheles. Vorbei! ein dummes_ + _Wort. Warum vorbei?_ + _Faust. Teil II. Akt V._ + + +Six weeks it rained without cease. Dark clouds ran on, as if there was +still a scheme in the universe, even though this chip of a dead planet +was discarded; dark, brooding, they ran, on and on. Never had they known +such weather, except possibly in London. + +They were sarcastic at the expense of Lord de Jones, who told them they +had grown immodest in their expectations; that even in the New Jerusalem +it was not always sunshine. + +But lo! a shaft of sunlight. The wet valley glittered with gaiety; it +spread to the hills, then the whole vault of heaven broke out into +spontaneous sunlight. Soon they all cried out for mercy. Mercy! how hot! +The sun pressed on, pressed on, pressed on. + +It was--though the seasons played pranks--a midsummer’s day, and a +Sunday, so warm and radiant that they brought out the table and chairs +on to the terrace and lunched in the sight of the sun and the rocks. The +cook, responding to the mood, expressed her personality in an exquisite +meal of pre-Dissolution magnificence; and when Herr Kogl had filled +their glasses, Lord de Jones rose and proposed the health of the King. +The two ladies having retired, the five men addressed themselves to the +usual business of imparting bawdy jokes, and Herr Kogl related how when +he was in Wien and was told to buy a female fish he had ignorantly asked +for a virgin fish. “In Wien!” exclaimed the fishmonger, his eyes dilated +with wonder. “It’s not to be had.” + +“Ah, Wien! When as a youth I was doing my military service we had to +march through Wien, all along the Ring. There is no capital like Wien! +Not that I’ve seen other capitals.” + +Capitals! It seemed a shame that they should have gone, capitals more +magnificent than Vienna. But Herr Kogl, liberal on other topics, said +that Vienna beat them all. Wien! Wien! His son Herbert had been to +Wien--to the Hotel and Restaurant Institute. He had been getting on so +well--when the blow came. It seemed a shame. Herr Kogl went into the +house and came out with his son’s certificate in his big shaking red +hands. “Here it is. His college certificate.” He passed it reverently to +Lord de Jones, and while the other read it, turned away his face. Two +large beads rolled down his cheeks. Lord de Jones put on his glasses +and read: + + _Calligraphy--proficient;_ + _Arithmetic--good;_ + _Cooking--very satisfactory;_ + _Slaughtering--praiseworthy;_ + _Waiting at table--very good;_ + _Deportment--excellent;_ + _General conduct--excellent._ + +Herr Kogl turned round after an interval; hot tears streamed down his +cheeks, as Lord de Jones handed him back the certificate. They all +waited for Lord de Jones to say something. His mouth opened. + +“Shall we join the ladies in the drawing-room?” he said. + +But before they did so, Eva had come out with little Adam in her arms +and sat on the _pension_ steps, the second Baron Ottercove, a toothless +radiance illuminating his whole countenance, on her lap. Herr Kogl sat +by and tickled the baby’s nose with a feather. “Our only ray of +sunshine, our little hope....” And he would look into these eyes basking +in the sunshine with wonderment and tenderness, and think and think. “As +for you, Rags,” he turned to the dog at his feet, “the outlook for +caninity is black. Black.” + +“I wish the Frau Professor’s dachshund were saved,” remarked Lord de +Jones. “The canine race would have had a new start.” + +“But the dachshund was no good, darling; he had weak lungs.” + +“Still, beggars can’t be choosers, as you said yourself, Eva.” + +“And our Rags too is no good. Rags, you old bitch, you’re no good, are +you? No good! Poor old bitch! Poor old bitch!” Two large beads stood in +Herr Kogl’s eyes. + +And indeed, Rags was not much good to found a new canine race. She was +blind and deaf with old age and lay in a corner all day. Only when you +bent down to her and shouted very loudly in her ear: “Scho-ko-lade!” she +would turn over and twitch feebly with her forelegs, in reminiscent +pleasure. + +There were no more dogs. The Prime Minister had been vindicated. + +“There was,” said Eva dreamily, “a little tea-shop just off +Jermyn-street, where you could get delicious ices.” + +“Yes. The original sin was when man wrapped himself up in the visible +world. The ultimate sin was when he shed it.” + +“It may appear so to any one who has not been strong enough to shed his +vices. But, for my part, I have given up smoking,” said de Jones, “for +complete lack of tobacco.” + +“How weak! Strength of will would lie in going on, in persisting in the +face of unsurmountable difficulties.” + +“But though I have nothing to reproach myself with,” continued de Jones, +oblivious of Frank’s interruption, “I too have my memories of the old +world, and in particular do I remember the Allied Victory march through +Paris after the Great War as the troops passed under the Arc de +Triomphe, ablaze with glory! A powerful emotion for a pacifist.” + +Soldiers. Images drifted before Christopher. He saw ranks and ranks of +them. Soldiers in scarlet uniforms. Bayonets glistening in the sun. +_His_ soldiers, armed to the teeth, equipped with the latest weapons of +war. Glorious manhood! Only waiting for the word of command to set off +for the enemy. He saw other soldiers ready on the turrets of Frank’s +castle. His own lion-hearted warriors storming the castle, falling into +the moat. He looked at Frank and wished that the jolly game were already +beginning. “Ah!” he moved restively. + +“What is it, darling?” from Eva. + +“One day, Dickin,” he rubbed his hands anticipatingly, “yours and mine +will measure their strength in battle. Wish I were alive to see the +day!” + +The Baron held up his glass: “_Der Tag!_” + +De Jones sat pensive. “It seems to me, as I sit here, a sedentary, +useless man, that I can hear across the years the distant neighing of +chargers, the sharpening of flints by the camp fire. Dangerous life! +Glorious struggle! Give me Kipling or D. H. Lawrence. They’d understand +this. My men advancing valiantly and capturing the forts of yon castle.” + +“Nor, when they have captured it, let them rest. It is, remember, only a +milestone on their road to further achievement. Let them go on capturing +other castles, on and on, till they have had enough.” Frank’s look grew +reminiscent. “When I was a private in the last war, there was a good +deal of stealing--‘pinching,’ they called it, going on amongst the +troopers. What more natural and proper, you’d think, in a community of +roughnecks. ‘But, nay!’ says the Idealist in Man: ‘We stick bayonet +blades into other men in the name of an Idea. Pinching from your comrade +is subversive of ultimate efficiency in the business of stabbing your +neighbour. It deflects attention, sows suspicion, where there should be +love of one’s own and hatred of others. The ideal is to eliminate +dishonesty and to create a high standard of honour and mutual confidence +among the troops so that they may devote their undivided attention to +murdering the soldiers of another army (with an equally high moral +standard).’ That is the aim. That is patriotism--serving the flag.” + +“I agree,” said de Jones. “We must not arm for aggression, but for +defence alone. The best way to ensure peace is to be armed to the +teeth.” + +“I see.” + +“The meek,” said Herr Kogl, “shall inherit the earth.” + +“None of that here, Herr Kogl,” protested de Jones. “Maudlin mysticism! +Quite the proper note to strike in a _fin de siècle_ mood and period. +But we’re a new Finnegan-begin-again civilisation, up-and-doing, +straining every nerve that the race may survive. No room for mooners. +It’s men of action we want.” + +“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” + +“Quite.” + +“Peace within, love of those nearest to you, no desires, no regrets, +only love, steady, translucent love of all living beings: what bliss +could equal it? It fills your soul with peace, as beams of sun at +eventide. A peace”--Herr Kogl’s eyes filled with tears--“that passeth +all understanding. ‘Come unto me,’ He said, ‘all ye who labour and are +heavy-laden, and I will give you rest: for My yoke is easy and My burden +light.’” + +Frank jumped to his feet. “Give me riches, give me women, each day a new +one (unless I ask twice for the same one), give me food, wine--and I +shall give no thought to the things of this world. But to renounce, to +settle down when there is nothing ... nothing....” He could not speak. +He walked up and down. + +Eva looked at de Jones very earnestly. “You should never have done it,” +she said. + +But Herr Kogl smiled happily. “What does it matter? What does it +matter,” he asked, “how we step over into eternity? We are shaken off +this realm of matter one way or another.” + +“Herr Kogl is a mystic--while there is wine in the cellar.” De Jones +looked slyly at him. “We’ve found you out!” + +“Now I am dependent on spirits for my good temper--I might just as well +make a clean breast of it. But not always will I be so dependent. What +matter old age and darkness? My watch,” he said, “it still registers the +revolutions of our little planet. Here it is. Its dial is +phosphorescent. Now its face is dull and complacent; but take it into +utter darkness and its face will illumine. So shall our souls, now bleak +and obscure, illumine in the utter darkness of death.” + +Herr Kogl looked at his friends. They did not hear angels; they felt not +the utter glory of God. Only the baby smiled unendingly at God’s world, +smiled away all fear and concern into ripples of light. + +“But not a thing!” cried Frank. “Where is there a book of poems, a +scroll of music? Frau König,” he turned to her earnestly, “you must +teach Adam music when he grows up. You must teach him, Frau König, you +must! Think: if this too goes....” + +He jumped to his feet. “But not a Shakespeare, not a Goethe, not a +Raphael, not a Tristan....” + +He wailed aloud. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” He writhed on the damp ground. “Oh! Oh! +Oh!” + +Eva looked on mournfully. “The world--the poor world!” + +“It’s had a long run for its money,” muttered de Jones. + +“And I never told it that I cared for it.” + +“After life’s fitful fever it sleeps well.” + +The cook came in to say that she had prepared an egg dish for supper as +she feared that the cows had caught the foot-and-mouth disease, and that +they had better keep the sheep for wool, Frau König having told her of +her projected plans for a knitting factory. + +At this they all sat back, open-mouthed. The Baron shook his head. “This +intensifies the problem of survival,” he said gravely. But Lord de Jones +jumped to his feet, his hand raised in challenge. + +“Are--we--down-hearted?” he cried. + +“No-o-o!” The echo of the cry resounded from the rocks. Frank was +conspicuous by his silence. + +“But how will Adam do now without milk?” Eva looked much concerned. + +“He will have,” said de Jones, “to fall back on the milk of human +kindness. Frau König,” he turned to her, “it will hence be incumbent on +you to generate it. May your happiness consist therein! I will, on my +part, endeavour to reproduce synthetic milk--or synthetic cows. +Whichever comes easier. So tails up! keep smiling! and all the rest of +it. Now all together, please-- + + “‘_There was a little man,_ + _And his name was Finnegan._’” + +They joined in the anthem. + +“We shall survive!” finished de Jones. “See if we don’t! And little Adam +will not be the last nor the least to survive.” + +Eva embraced him tighter. “Oh, he must, oh, he must! for the sake of ... +love.” + +“ ... of everything that’s been.” Dear, dear earth! It was gone; +suddenly, while nobody was looking. Even now Frank could not realise it. +Slowly and doggedly man had been working, planning and thinking, +cautiously, step by step, climbing the steep rocky path, the circle of +light spreading before him larger and wider as he advanced to a +knowledge of nature, a forefeeling of God. Against heavy odds, divided +against itself, mankind had struggled heroically; it had built temples +and palaces, steamers and bridges and airplanes, mansions traversing the +oceans and mansions traversing the air. A little more, and man would +have conquered himself. But a morbid little mind had stolen the fire of +Zeus and put back the clock. Egypt and India, Greece, Rome--had they +laboured in vain? Had Europe created fortuitously? This is the end, he +thought. And he mourned it terribly, mourned all those millions who had +once loved, suffered, and died. Of course there had been misery, +tribulations, hate, lies, sordid hours, and moments of pain. But there +had been other moments. He remembered how fourteen of his friends had +volunteered to be bled to save his mother’s life. He wept at the thought +of it. He remembered other hours. Holiday crowds. Gaily clad women. The +briskness of mornings, the lassitude of nights. Dew on the roses. The +chivalry of reconciliation, of respect, the dignity of moments.... + +And they had all died, died.... + +The sun set behind the hill and left the valley cold and unfriendly; +only the tips of rocks still gleamed in the sun. Dark clouds, looking +like furrows, ran on without cease; cold, bleak and unmeaning, they ran, +on and on. A bird chirruped plaintively from a branch. Herr Kogl looked +up. + +“Bird, forlorn bird, you are surprised at the doom which has befallen +our beautiful earth. You grieve, and I grieve with you. The oceans are +finished--turned to air. These clouds, running furrows, will still be +passing, the sky will unveil its blue face and cover itself as before: +but there will be no one to notice it. Not a soul!” + +The baby smiled his dimpled, rippling smile, old, wise, and all-knowing. +What did he smile at? Where did it come from? the smile of life winding +through dark tunnels into light? Herr Kogl held out his finger, at which +Adam at once grabbed lustily. Was it for this that millions fought and +toiled and thought and felt? Was it for this that men went out “over the +top,” hung on barbed wires, bled on the cross? “Little humanity,” he +thought, “is this all that is left of thy deeds and high hopes? Little +humanity....” His face puckered. He turned away to the clouds chasing in +the unmeaning, unmerciful vault; and wept. + + +THE END + + * * * * * + + +EVA’S APPLES + + + _Some Critical Comment_: + +_Eva’s Apples_ is that literary potpourri of wit and manners, satire and +fantasy and humor and even at moments poetry, which is so easy to do but +so difficult to do right. Like Max Beerbohm, Huxley at his best, and +Jean Girardoux, Mr. Gerhardi does it right. + +_The New York Times_ + +Probably the best recommendation of the book is that it is very hard to +put down.... To be interesting is surely to be in a state of grace, and +_Eva’s Apples_ is interesting. + +_Heywood Broun +The Book of the Month Club News_ + +A novelist of genius ... wild and brilliant originality. + +_Arnold Bennett_ + +Extremely clever and wildly nutty. + +_Isabel M. Patterson_ + +Brilliant and farcical ... heady and deceptive, like absinthe. + +_The London Spectator_ + +Amusing, brilliant and quite, quite mad. + +_Herald Tribune_ + + + +Typographical error corrected by the etext transcriber: + +domestc politics=> domestic politics {pg 205} + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77377 *** diff --git a/77377-h/77377-h.htm b/77377-h/77377-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8690689 --- /dev/null +++ b/77377-h/77377-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,12032 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> + <head> +<link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Eva’s Apples, by William Gerhardi. +</title> +<style> + +a:link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} + + link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} + +a:visited {background-color:#ffffff;color:purple;text-decoration:none;} + +a:hover {background-color:#ffffff;color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;} + +body{margin-left:4%;margin-right:6%;background:#ffffff;color:black;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;font-size:medium;} + +.blockquot {margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%;} + +.cb {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold;} + +.fint {text-align:center;text-indent:0%; 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+display: inline-block; text-align: left;} +.poem .stanza {margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom:1em;} +.poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: .75em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i3 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i5 {display: block; margin-left: 3.5em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i9 {display: block; margin-left: 4.5em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + +div.trans {border:dotted 2px black; +margin:1em auto;max-width:50%;} + +div.trans p{text-align:center;} + +.toc {margin:1em auto;max-width:25em; +border:2px solid black;text-indent:0%;text-align:center;} + +</style> + </head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77377 ***</div> +<hr class="full"> + +<p class="toc"> +CONTENTS: +<a href="#I">I., </a> +<a href="#II">II., </a> +<a href="#III">III., </a> +<a href="#IV">IV., </a> +<a href="#V">V., </a> +<a href="#VI">VI., </a> +<a href="#VII">VII., </a> +<a href="#VIII">VIII., </a> +<a href="#IX">IX., </a> +<a href="#X">X., </a> +<a href="#XI">XI., </a> +<a href="#XII">XII., </a> +<a href="#XIII">XIII., </a> +<a href="#XIV">XIV., </a> +<a href="#XV">XV., </a> +<a href="#XVI">XVI., </a> +<a href="#XVII">XVII., </a> +<a href="#XVIII">XVIII., </a> +<a href="#XIX">XIX., </a> +<a href="#XX">XX., </a> +<a href="#XXI">XXI., </a> +<a href="#XXII">XXII., </a> +<a href="#XXIII">XXIII., </a> +<a href="#XXIV">XXIV., </a> +<a href="#XXV">XXV., </a> +<a href="#XXVI">XXVI., </a> +<a href="#XXVII">XXVII., </a> +<a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII., </a> +<a href="#XXIX">XXIX., </a> +<a href="#XXX">XXX., </a> +<a href="#XXXI">XXXI., </a> +<a href="#XXXII">XXXII., </a> +<a href="#XXXIII">XXXIII., </a> +<a href="#XXXIV">XXXIV., </a> +<a href="#XXXV">XXXV., </a> +<a href="#XXXVI">XXXVI., </a> +<a href="#XXXVII">XXXVII., </a> +<a href="#XXXVIII">XXXVIII, </a> +<a href="#XXXIX">XXXIX., </a> +<a href="#XL">XL., </a> +<a href="#XLI">XLI., </a> +<a href="#XLII">XLII., </a> +<a href="#XLIII">XLIII., </a> +<a href="#XLIV">XLIV., </a> +<a href="#XLV">XLV., </a> +<a href="#XLVI">XLVI., </a> +<a href="#XLVII">XLVII.</a> +<br> +<a href="#transcrib">TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE</a> +</p> + +<p class="cb"> +<i>Eva’s Apples</i> +</p> + +<h1> +EVA’S APPLES</h1> + +<p class="cb"> +A STORY OF JAZZ AND JASPER<br> +<br> +<i>by</i><br> +<br> +<i>William Gerhardi</i><br> +<br> + +Duffield and Company<br> +New York - 1928<br> +<br> +<br><small> +Copyright, 1928, by<br> +<span class="smcap">Duffield & Company</span><br> +<br> +<i>Printed in The United States of America<br> +By The Cornwall Press</i><br> +<br> +Second Large Printing<br></small> +<br> +<br> +TO THE GENIUS OF H. G. WELLS<br> +IN HOMAGE<br> +  <br>  <br> +</p> + +<div class="poetry"><div class="poem"> +<i>By William Gerhardi</i>:<br> +      ——————<br> +PRETTY CREATURES<br> +THE POLYGLOTS<br> +ANTON CHEHOV<br> +FUTILITY<br> +</div></div> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“And he carried me away in the<br></span> +<span class="i1">spirit to a great and high mountain,<br></span> +<span class="i1">and her light was like unto a stone<br></span> +<span class="i1">most precious, even like a jasper<br></span> +<span class="i1">stone, clear as crystal.”<br></span> +<span class="i5">—Revelations Ch. 21-10-11.<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<h1> +<i>Eva’s Apples</i><br> +</h1> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_1">{1}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="I">I.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">“No</span>, no, ‘Me-Too,’ you’d better run away now, or sit and wait here in +the taxi.”</p> + +<p>“But the taxi’s so expensive, darling.” (It was not at all like Eva, he +reflected, to object to his expenses.) “I’d better come upstairs with +you.”</p> + +<p>“But no! I’ve an <i>appointment</i> with Lord Ottercove!”</p> + +<p>“But I’d like to see Lord Ottercove myself.”</p> + +<p>“But he hasn’t asked to see you.”</p> + +<p>“But he might like to—if he knew.”</p> + +<p>“He doesn’t know you.”</p> + +<p>“He would if I came up with you.”</p> + +<p>How she added to his difficulties!</p> + +<p>For a young man of his nervous complex, living in the fear of waiters +and hall porters and a general expectation that the next man he +solicited for information would come up, lower his pants and give him a +good hiding, an appointment with Lord Ottercove, though flattering, was +arduous enough. Before the porch of a tall Fleet Street building from +whose roof an electric sign proclaimed the fiery words <i>Daily Runner</i>, +they argued, while the taxi-meter ticked away the aeons, and the aeons +added shillings. From the pavement he gazed up at the huge inscrutable +building and reflected that,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_2">{2}</a></span> located somewhere in its innermost +recesses, like a spider waiting for him, was the great Lord Ottercove, +as the black hand of the hall clock moved towards the hour appointed for +the interview.</p> + +<p>Leaving Eva in the taxi, he made away with a certain unnatural kind of +alacrity, a recklessly confident step, to face the braided +commissionaire who listened with faint but not unhopeful surprise to the +news of the visitor’s claim to an appointment with his lordship. Ever +jealous, however, like Peter, of his guardianship of the access to God, +he provided the applicant with a form to be filled in with information +of a biographical nature and outlining the general character of his +business: the form to precede him to the desired destination; the +aspirant to await below confirmation of the bona fides of his claim to +the exalted interview. The confirmation duly forthcoming, the faithful +steward handed the young visitor on to a lift boy who, taking him up +several floors, handed him on to a brother lift boy, who presently +handed him on to a third brother. Each new lift boy to whom he was +handed over looked more exclusive, had a manner at once more solemn and +more deferential—the mark of one who dwells in higher altitudes, more +immune from the grosser things of the earth. Up and up they went, higher +and higher, till the doors of the lift opened again and he was handed +out to a page altogether removed from the race of mere lift boys. The +page <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_3">{3}</a></span>bade him follow him up the few remaining steps—the last golden +ladder to heaven—to a landing where the page divested him of his cruder +clothes of the street, took him up another three carpeted steps and, +bidding him wait, knocked reverently at the door. And opened it before +the visitor, who was pulling out his cuffs and, adjusting his tie, was +quite ready to step forward. With a jerky suddenness, not unlike that of +policemen in American comic films dashing off the ground in pursuit of a +criminal, he entered the room, the page shutting the door on him.</p> + +<p>In a vast radiant space of yellow and blue, at an octangular table +surrounded by chairs, sat a slim middle-sized figure in a dark-blue +suit, a negligent lock over the brow. It rose promptly, shook hands, +gave the visitor one searching look with its penetrating grey eye, a +guarded smile revealing white affable teeth, and sat down again to the +octangular table, bidding the visitor to do likewise but taking no +further notice of him.</p> + +<p>The visitor sat hushed and abashed, slowly taking in the surroundings, +and Lord Ottercove went on with his work, going through the small pile +of papers before him with record speed, while a trained lady-secretary +with a coyly grave manner and a voice attuned to the requisite pitch of +awed and concentrated attention received his instructions. From time to +time Lord Ottercove would take up the receiver and say, “Give me the +Prime Minister,” or “Give me the Duke of Liverpool,” and, incredible<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_4">{4}</a></span> as +it seemed, the Prime Minister or the Duke of Liverpool was already +talking—and not from Liverpool. “Hello, Fred,” from Lord Ottercove. +“Oh, very well and full of mischief! What? Oh, I’m bored to hell. I’m +going in for a new hobby. Buying race horses. What? Let me know before +you start. Good-bye to you.”</p> + +<p>The visitor had a feeling of sharing in Lord Ottercove’s multifarious +activities and interests, and when he smiled—his eyes were grey and +full of mischief—the visitor smiled too, involuntarily. But Lord +Ottercove still took no notice of him.</p> + +<p>And now his eyes were scanning a batch of typescript. His mouth opened. +“<i>Pale Primroses</i> by Frank Dickin,” he said and looked humorously at the +visitor. “Anything else?” he asked the secretary.</p> + +<p>“Your spectacles.”</p> + +<p>He stretched out his hand for them. “Good night to you.”</p> + +<p>And while she was gathering her papers, Lord Ottercove leaned back, his +preoccupied air having deserted him, a leisurely smile having taken its +place. “Well, I am very interested to meet you, Mr. Dickin,” he said +(the secretary now having retired). “My serial editor submitted to me +the beginning of a proposed novel by you with a synopsis of its general +plot, and I am much intrigued by it for a reason that you won’t guess. +Your name—you will forgive me for saying so—was completely<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_5">{5}</a></span> unknown to +me. Frank Dickin did not convey anything to me in itself, you +understand.”</p> + +<p>“Frank Septimus Dickin.”</p> + +<p>“You prefer it like that?”</p> + +<p>“To redeem, I suppose, the plainness of the Dickin.”</p> + +<p>“Of course, Dickin is not Dickens.” His lordship smiled indulgently.</p> + +<p>“No, of course not.”</p> + +<p>“Of course. Still, what attracted me—and that is chiefly why I wrote to +you—are the people in your book. So real. It seemed to me I knew them.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I do try to make them living. I think it is up to a novelist——”</p> + +<p>“I don’t mean that. I think I know the family you describe. Or, rather, +their connections and appendages. A remarkable coincidence, anyway, +about the names.”</p> + +<p>Here Dickin smiled.</p> + +<p>“So they <i>are</i> ‘copies’?”</p> + +<p>“Well, yes, to a considerable extent, I am bound to confess.”</p> + +<p>“Have you brought me the continuation as I asked you to do in my letter? +If so, I will read it to-night.”</p> + +<p>“I am afraid it is very rough manuscript. You would not feel very happy +with it.”</p> + +<p>“Then you read it to me.”</p> + +<p>“But it’s long.”</p> + +<p>“Read it! I shall tell you when to stop.” Lord<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_6">{6}</a></span> Ottercove pressed the +button. The page stood in the doorway. “Don’t let any of them bother me +for the next two hours. Keep them out, do you hear, and shut the door +behind you!”</p> + +<p>“Yes, m’lord.”</p> + +<p>To Captains of Industry time is said to be money. But Generals of the +Press are artists who express their sensibility in affairs. They have +risen to heights beyond time and avarice and avarice in time to a +condition of immanent immortality already in this world. Lord Ottercove +had suddenly expressed the wish to be relieved of the blazing heat and +burden of the day. For what does it profit a man to be rich if he cannot +please his own moods? He was interested, satisfied: the hours he devoted +to this visitor were of value to him: that was all. “Come and sit down +here, Mr. Dickin; you will get a better light.”</p> + +<p>Dickin plunged into a delicate-looking armchair—and fell through. He +started up with a look as though he thought he was going to be thrashed +for it, but Lord Ottercove, with splendid unconcern for the chair, only +asked: “Have you hurt yourself?”</p> + +<p>“On the contrary....”</p> + +<p>“On the contrary what?”</p> + +<p>“On the contrary: I have not hurt myself.”</p> + +<p>“Thank God for that.”</p> + +<p>“But I’ve hurt the chair.”</p> + +<p>“Not a bit of it! Come and sit in this chair and read me your +manuscript. Now then.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_7">{7}</a></span></p> + +<p>“It is difficult to relate these things in their proper sequence. Some +things stand out, others fade; that is all.”</p> + +<p>“Are you talking now or reading?” asked Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Reading.—I remember only a desultory Christmas Eve in the Tyrol. I +strolled about lonely, sad, because laden with memories, through the +winter streets of Innsbruck when a small group of people emerged from a +shop, arguing in Russian as to their next move. I had picked up a fair +amount of Russian in captivity during the war, quartered as we were with +Russian officers, and improved it later on our ill-starred mission in +Archangel, which, in the order of things, left behind memories. Was it +that snow called to snow? It was thawing, and the shop windows twinkling +in the winter dusk were faintly reminiscent. Memory calling to memory? +But I went straight up to them and, with a curt apology, expressed my +pleasure at hearing the dear language. In London I would have been +brought up at Marlborough Street Police Station next morning and fined +£5 for “annoying ladies in the street.” In New York I would have been +flung summarily into prison for attempted rape. But the Russian ladies +smiled with undisguised pleasure and expectation, and, talking eagerly, +we immediately repaired to the Maria-Theresien-Café and exchanged +experiences, attracting every one’s attention in the café by our voluble +reminiscences. One lady—the fair, small, good<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_8">{8}</a></span>-looking one, bubbling +over with excitement—had married and divorced an Irishman, a certain +Mr. Kerr whom she had met in Russia before the war, and till recently +they owned a castle in Meran, but—she hinted at the Revolution, the +War, the Italian annexation of South Tyrol, and, well, at their large +and careless way of living. There had been debts. In fine, the castle +was no more. But there were children. Four of them: two boys, two girls. +Zita was the elder of the girls. She was sixteen. And, I perceived, +amazingly good-looking in her bright, fair way. The younger, Eva, was at +school in England. This little boy was John, the despair of her life! He +simply wouldn’t sit still. And, indeed, he was already fiddling with my +watch chain. But she had another son, the eldest of her children, who +had her eyes and loved her dearly. Raymond, the apple of her eye! He was +in England. They wished he might have gone to Oxford or Cambridge. Alas, +that was not possible now. He was in the motor trade. It wasn’t quite +the thing for him. He was more a poet at heart, melancholy, meditative, +interested in bird life. But how good-looking! Raymond and Eva were the +two best-looking of the family—her mother’s children. They had her +eyes. Now John was made for the motor trade. Let him see a wheel or a +piece of wire, and he must go and touch it.</p> + +<p>“The other lady, dark and passionate but restrained by Mrs. Kerr’s +volubility, was Russian too,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_9">{9}</a></span> but married to a local Austrian +tram-driver. She told me her story. The daughter of a landowner, like +Mrs. Kerr, she met her future husband when he was a prisoner-of-war in +Russia; she a Red Cross nurse. Love at first sight. She married him and +helped him to escape, all very romantically. He had told her he was an +engineer by education and God-knows-what besides. They came to his +native Innsbruck and he resumed his duties as a tram-driver. And +everybody tells him he is a fool to have saddled himself with an +uncongenial Russian wife and he seems to resent the marriage more than +she resents his calling and has pawned the silver things she has managed +to smuggle out of Russia and has been unfaithful to her and treats her +brutally and she is now divorcing him because she hates him so. And yet +is curious about his doings and still goes by the name of Frau König and +works at a knitting establishment and is about to start work on her +own—if only somebody would provide her with capital. ‘But I can’t,’ +immediately says Mrs. Kerr. ‘My husband can’t give me anything. I have +great hopes of getting some money from my parents in Russia, but my +mother writes that she can’t send us anything. They are starving +practically. Life is so hard for us who have come from Russia. And our +castle in Meran.... It’s all this awful Revolution.’</p> + +<p>“Ah, the good old days in Russia! Did I know her father, the landowner +Pàvel Yàkovlevich Sabolenko? I didn’t? And yet everybody who had been<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_10">{10}</a></span> +in Russia knew him. He owned mines, he owned railways, he owned heaven +knows what not. Everybody knew him. You had only to mention the name +Pàvel Yàkovlevich Sabolenko for everybody to say: ‘Sabolenko? Pàvel +Yàkovlevich? Why, of course!’ And now he said he couldn’t send her a +penny. It seemed a shame. But, of course, they have had a revolution. +Her father was seized by his own peasants (to whom he’d been a father +all his life; they even called him ‘our father’) and was led out into +the wood to be hanged, when a passing aeroplane attracted their +attention and they forgot about him. ‘But mother was seized by them on +their way back, by way of afterthought, and was about to be torn limb +from limb, when father butted in and shouted, “What’s the good of +wasting your time on an old hag like this? Get on with the Revolution!” +and they all shouted, “Hear! hear! Long live the Revolution!” and +elected father President of the Local Revolutionary Centre, which he is +still.’ But the trouble was that you could never be sure with such +erratic people, well-meaning but somehow not very certain of their +intellectual premises. Father was a genius, of course. He had graduated +at eight different universities and had written a philosophical +treatise, a sort of bridge work between Plato and Schopenhauer and had +of late much strengthened his position in regard to the Soviets by a +work on Socialism entitled “Beyond Lenin,” and was regarded as an +authority on mathematics. ‘I<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_11">{11}</a></span> am telling you all this because you are a +writer. You can make use of it in your books. We Sabolenkos are a most +interesting, original family. One of my brothers shot himself; another +got drowned....’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Look here,” Lord Ottercove interrupted, “will you have a drink before +you continue?”</p> + +<p>“Thanks awfully.”</p> + +<p>“What will you have?”</p> + +<p>“Wine. White wine.”</p> + +<p>“Will you have champagne?”</p> + +<p>“Thanks, I’ll have champagne. I adore it.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove rang in a special way. A butler sprang out of the floor. +“Give me the wine-list.”</p> + +<p>The butler returned with a huge album bound in crocodile leather. “You +are looking at the binding, I notice. It is the skin of a crocodile I +shot myself on the Nile,” said the host. And he selected a half-bottle +of the year 1895. “According to historians,” he added, “a magnificent +vintage.”</p> + +<p>Dickin drank the champagne and thought—because she too adored +champagne—of Eva waiting for him in the taxi. But the great room with +the drawn curtains and the electric radiators full on was so snug; and +already the champagne was doing its care-transcending work. He hoped +that Eva was very comfortable in the taxi.</p> + +<p>“Well, go on,” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“It was arranged between us before we parted that we should spend that +Christmas Eve together at Frau König’s rooms. They had arranged to do<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_12">{12}</a></span> +so before they met me. I arrived shortly before midnight, laden with +provisions. The Christmas tree was lit and John fiddling with everything +that he could fiddle with, and Zita all in white and somehow +marvellously seductive-looking. I marvelled at the lines of that young +body. I still marvel when I think of them. It was warm and cosy in Frau +König’s room on account of the lit candles. Mrs. Kerr was voluble and +took the words out of poor Frau König’s mouth.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Charming!’ I exclaimed. The real Russian Christmas!’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>It’s what I wanted!’ cried Mrs. Kerr. ‘And I knew Frau König would be +pleased to spend Christmas Eve among Russian friends. And we regard you +as a Russian too.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>As a matter of fact, I lived in Russia as a child, while my father was +Secretary at the British Embassy in Petersburg, and my earliest +reminiscences go back to Russia.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Well, there you are! I knew Frau König would appreciate a Russian +Christmas Eve. And so I said to her: ‘Tamara Leonidovna, you have a +larger room than I have; ask us to supper, and we will spend Christmas +Eve together.’ And we thought of writing a little story together: A +young brunette—Tamara Leonidovna—asked a—a young (I am not old, am +I?) blonde to her Christmas tree; and while they were thus together, +there looked in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_13">{13}</a></span> to them through the window a third guest—the Moon.’</p> + +<p>“And, indeed, the moon looked through the tall blue pine of the forest. +‘Charming,’ I said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>How much will they give us for it?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>How do you mean?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>How many dollars—in an American magazine?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Well—I don’t know—it depends, of course—’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And in England? How many sterlings?’</p> + +<p>“I am the last man to generalise about national characteristics; but +there was something perennially irresponsible about Mrs. Kerr’s nature. +She had taken part in a £1,000 competition for a General Election +forecast to be held in England on the Tuesday and arranged for a holiday +tour on the following Saturday on the strength of the £1,000 which she +hoped to win.”</p> + +<p>“Ha!” laughed Lord Ottercove. “Incredible, isn’t it?”</p> + +<p>Dickin, encouraged, continued with warmth, and without reference to the +manuscript: “The fate of these people! who had known affluent days in +genial surroundings on the accustomed background of Russian life, now +cast ashore in a foreign land which looks askance at them and knows them +not!”</p> + +<p>Was it the champagne which spoke in him, or a look of dissension in his +listener’s eyes? But he brought down his fist on the table with a bang. +“Dammit, sir! They are too old to be acclimatised,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_14">{14}</a></span> too indolent to +start afresh. They have dragged themselves here and cast their living +carcasses upon the tide of life at this great turning point in human +destiny.”</p> + +<p>“Come, come!” said Lord Ottercove. But Dickin, dazed with the wine, was +neither coming nor going. His heart was overwhelmed with love for +humanity. “They feel they dream. All familiar things by which they had +learnt their values had vanished overnight. They hear a tumult outside, +but they are at a loss to understand its meaning. They are no longer of +the past: it is not there: it has just vanished beneath their feet, and +its history is not yet. They are not of the present: they do not know +it, and it knows them not. They are silent, alone. They are alive, but +the shadow of death has crept over them. They are dead souls with just a +flicker of light on them....”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove, listening, could not make out what this strange note of +emotion in Dickin connoted precisely: whether this was poetry, and, if +so, whether good or bad poetry. Dickin, conscious of discomfiture, felt +the need to excuse himself. “A beginning,” he said, “in the manner of +Guy de Maupassant in his more sentimental vein.” He had a feeling that +the air had gained that air-proof compartment in him in which alone pure +sentiment can thrive, and shrank at this contamination of +sentimentality. “I see I bore you.”</p> + +<p>“Not a bit of it, my dear fellow. I cannot tell<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_15">{15}</a></span> you how it all +interests me—for various reasons, of which I will tell you presently.”</p> + +<p>“I will read on.”</p> + +<p>“Whichever is quicker and more to the point.”</p> + +<p>“I must read it all. It is nothing without the atmosphere.”</p> + +<p>“I understand—about the atmosphere. Go on in your own way.”</p> + +<p>“Both women vied to show me their photographs. Frau König took me aside +surreptitiously into her small bedroom—the Christmas tree was in the +kitchen—and there showed me photographs of her father, her mother, +herself and her brother, and even of the tram-driver. A man with a chin +and a moustachio. But when we got back into the kitchen Mrs. Kerr would +not let go of me. She had brought all her photographs with her so that +she might show them to me: her great genius of a father, her mother, the +brother who had shot himself, and the one who was drowned. ‘And this is +my husband.’</p> + +<p>“From the cardboard in my hand Mr. Kerr gazed at me circumspectly.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>A handsome man, but a wicked, impossible temper. He left his people in +Ireland because he could not get on with them and bought the castle in +Meran and never wanted to go back. And even now, poor fellow, tries to +keep up appearances—eats nothing in the day but dines at night with an +old friend of his, a Rittmeister, at the station restaurant.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_16">{16}</a></span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Daddy’s always very spick and span,’ said Zita.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>So he is still about?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Oh yes! He won’t go back to Ireland while his father is alive, and he +loves the Austrians.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Daddy is awfully stupid about learning languages,’ said Zita. ‘He’s +lived here all his life and can hardly speak a word of German.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>But of course he can speak German,’ Mrs. Kerr butted in. ‘He always +speaks German with the Rittmeister. I heard him last night.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Mummy, he can’t, to save his life! When he orders three cups of coffee +he holds out three fingers and says: “Zwei.” And in Vienna when he +wanted to show us the Rathaus, he stopped a man in the street and said: +“Please show me the way to the rat house.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>He didn’t!’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>He did!’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Still, your father is a fine man and if it hadn’t been for his temper +I should have never divorced him. But he used to throw things at me—a +flower vase, a candelabrum, a great big jug of water. I’d have to hide +in the garden all night. He was so insanely jealous!’ She smiled slyly. +‘Perhaps not without cause.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>This, I forgot to show you,’ said Frau König, ‘is the photograph of my +fiancé.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Frau König,’ explained Mrs. Kerr, ‘is engaged to a very charming, +intellectual young man. A Russian student in Paris.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_17">{17}</a></span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>To a youth?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>What age is he, Tamara Leonidovna?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Thirty-eight or nine. This is an old photo of him, taken about twenty +years ago on entering Tiflis University.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And what does he do now?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>He wants to continue his course at the University in Paris in the +Faculty of Philosophy. Then, eventually, he will start a factory.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>What kind of factory?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>A knitting factory. We will direct it together. He is now, while +pursuing his course in philosophy at the University, putting aside money +for the factory by giving shorthand lessons in Paris.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>A very active and sensible young man,’ commended Mrs. Kerr, ‘and I +congratulate you, Tamara Leonidovna, with all my heart.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Thank you, Vera Pavlovna, I am very proud and happy—’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>But wait, I haven’t shown you the photograph of our castle,’ +interrupted Mrs. Kerr, ‘our Schloss (she sighed) in Meran.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Oh, a very lovely old castle.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Here all my four children were born. Raymond and Zita upstairs; Eva +and John here in the room next to the terrace. I changed my bedroom so +as to be able to take shelter in the garden.... But when he had calmed +down there was no kinder man than my husband. This was my +drawing-room—with the Japanese furniture. And they came and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_18">{18}</a></span> took +everything, everything....’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Like in <i>The +Cherry Orchard</i>....’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>But why? I do not follow. Your husband is a British subject, isn’t he? +The Italian annexation of Süd Tirol would not affect his property.’</p> + +<p>“She nodded rapidly and sadly. ‘Debts ...’ she said. ‘How we lived! +Horses and motor-cars. Bouts. We used to give parties which must have +out-rivalled our Grand Duke’s! Spent without counting! My husband—they +are like that in Ireland—utterly unbusinesslike ... irresponsible!... +And now we are punished.’ She looked at Zita pensively. ‘Yes,’ she said, +‘this Revolution has done a great deal of harm and caused untold +suffering to us Russians of the cultured intellectual classes.... But +let us drink to Hope and a new and brighter Dawn!’</p> + +<p>“We refilled our glasses with cognac, after which all things seemed +possible. ‘To the factory!’ I cried. ‘And here is to the future and an +even finer, greater castle!’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I believe in what you say,’ chimed in Mrs. Kerr. ‘We shall be repaid +for our present suffering. Even the Bible says: <i>And many first shall be +last, and many last first.</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_19">{19}</a></span>’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<h2><a id="II">II.</a><br><br> +THE YOUNG GIRLS</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">“They</span> came to my pension the day after, Mrs. Kerr, Zita, and John; and +Frau König turned up afterwards and sat there like a silent reproach as +Mrs. Kerr poured out her own woes, while John at once went over to my +typewriter and began fiddling with the keys, and being chased away +opened a box which contained razor-blades. ‘John has been sent into my +life as a punishment and thinks nothing of worrying his poor mummy. But +Raymond is a saint and angel to me. Raymond has my eyes—the large, +sorrowful eyes of the Madonna, you might say, kissing the finger-tips of +her Child.’</p> + +<p>“They liked the pension and took a room in it. They attracted me chiefly +on Zita’s account. She had a wonderful way about her, as if on the brink +of revealing much. ‘You know,’ she would say. ‘You know—it’s queer +how—how—you know—’ And that sort of thing. And then her face had a +sincere and curiously attractive, open, ‘you know’ sort of look. She was +sixteen, and wonderfully built. Men were after her, all sorts of dingy +barons and counts. I took her out to dances. She seemed indifferent to +her success. But I was devilishly attracted by her. I suppose she had +the most perfect figure I had ever seen, and she danced adorably.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_20">{20}</a></span> Once, +after dinner, when we were alone in the pension dining room and she was +standing warming herself against the great white stove in the corner, +clasping it, her bosom against it, I ventured to press her from behind. +She laughed and called it ‘artificial respiration,’ and I, grateful for +a term, continued to interpret it, so to speak, in new and different +forms, but calling it by the old name whenever she showed signs of +decorous astonishment. And sneering the while at my rival, the young +Count Kolberg. ‘Where have you picked him up?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>In a restaurant. He stood by the door. In a tail coat, you know, all +men look alike. Mummy called out: “Waiter!” And he came up and +introduced himself: “Graf Kolberg.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Just like that?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Yes. Clicked his heels: “Graf Kolberg.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Fancy that!’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>But he is such a ninny. Twenty-eight, and hangs to his mother’s apron +strings. She still holds him by the hand in the street, and each year +makes him a Christmas tree.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Fancy that.’ And I kissed her on the spot where the nape joins the +neck.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>But Mummy likes the old Gräfin who is nosing everywhere to find out +whether I’d be a suitable wife for him, and tries to borrow money from +Mummy thinking all English must be rich; and as she’s always expecting +something, Mummy’s sent her a box of soap. But the old Gräfin took it in +bad part.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_21">{21}</a></span> She thought it was an insinuation. I’m glad. She does look +rather filthy.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>She does, darling,’ I said, and kissed her on the brow.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>It’s beastly people thinking one has a lot of money when one hasn’t +any. I want to go to England and take dancing lessons.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Whatever for?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>To become a professional dancer. It’s a good thing.’</p> + +<p>“She was now sitting on a table and performing a sort of Müller exercise +with her legs and trunk, as she spoke. I began to take a tangible +interest in her formation, in the shape of her limbs, softening the +crudity of my curiosity with remarks like: ‘Fancy this,’ or ‘Fancy +that.’ She was in my arms, warm, flexible, enticing. Her lips searched +mine. But we had eaten of some horrible cheese at the close of dinner +and didn’t dare to consummate the kiss. Nevertheless, getting on +splendidly when interrupted by the mother coming in—to talk. Babble! +gabble! blabber! twaddle! twattle! and if you please, about her younger +girl in England, when this one had been in my arms. The mockery of love!</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Zita, go up and bring us Eva’s letter. I should like Ferdinand +Feodorovich (she always got my patronymic wrong) to read it.’ The letter +was to her sister.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>We tell each other everything in our bedroom which is private. I am +called Grandmother and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_22">{22}</a></span> give advice on all subjects. Kitty is called the +Babe as she has never even believed herself in love. Marion is aged +fifteen and one-half, Kitty fifteen. I am by age the youngest, but in +everything else I am considered the oldest. We had gym this afternoon. +Kitty got a giggling fit and couldn’t stop because Miss Hitchcock’s +tummy made awful noises. Marion’s last remark was “Oh! I’m feeling so +curly in my tummy, excited like. I’m expecting some more letters +to-morrow from Bonzo.” You can guess who Bonzo is, it’s</i> <small>HIM</small> <i>for +Marion.</i>’</p> + +<p>“And so on in this strain.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>An awful imp,’ was Zita’s comment. ‘What I do, she must do too. What I +have, she must have too.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>When they were children,’ Mrs. Kerr explained, ‘Eva always said “Me +too” to everything Zita did—“Me too.” And so we all nicknamed her +“Me-Too.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I’d like to meet her when I go to England,’ I said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>She’d want to,’ Zita said, ‘if she knows <i>I</i>’ve met you.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Well, why not?’ said Mrs. Kerr. ‘I will write to her. Frederick +Konstantinovich (again she got my patronymic wrong), a very charming, +intellectual young man, a friend of ours. I am sure she’ll be very +pleased.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>She will!’ said Zita sardonically.</p> + +<p>“When I was in England I wrote to Eva and we<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_23">{23}</a></span> engaged in some +correspondence, exchanging photographs, before I was able to go down to +meet her. She could not understand this long delay and wondered what +might be the cause of it; and Marion, it seemed, scrutinised my photo +through a magnifying glass to see if perchance I hadn’t spots on my +face. And Eva wrote to me:</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>Even if you have spots on your face, show yourself.</i>’</p> + +<p>“We met. She was lovely. Unbelievably so. And she wrote to Marion, who +had gone home for the vacation:</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>He has no spots, is tall, not elegant but clean looking. And says he +loves me five times more than before. Am I not a lucky girl?</i>’</p> + +<p>“When I went abroad she continued writing to me, mostly about Marion and +Kitty. ’ ... <i>Marion, Kitty and I are sleeping together like last term. +I like Marion and Kitty. We have arranged that we are going to have a +house in Canada together as we are afraid we are going to be old maids. +If one of us marries she is going to stay in Canada sometimes. We are +also thinking of becoming missionaries. Marion is too funny. She thinks +she is in love!! but she still thinks she will be an old maid. Marion, +Kitty and I are making rules for a Committee. We are the Members of the +Committee. We have agreed that everything is secret, but that I can tell +you, and Marion can tell her brother. We have to tell each other +everything except our worst<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_24">{24}</a></span> sin. It sounds funny, but we are all very +wicked and have each done something we couldn’t tell other people. So we +have agreed that we haven’t got to tell that. You may know mine, but I’m +not shure. There are lots of By-Laws besides. I will give you further +perticulers later. All matters must be discussed in privacy. All members +are equal in</i> <small>ALL</small> <i>affairs. T. C. (password) must only be used on urgent +occasions. Any member wishing to leave the Committee can do so if her +word of honour is given to remain silent consuming all matters discussed +in the aforesaid Committee. If remaining members agree that a certain +Member has broken a rule, that Member must pay a penalty fine of 2d. and +also if a Member has lost her rules. Those are the rules. I think it’s a +very good Committee, don’t you? I’ve been informed by Miss Hitchcock +that I’ve got to go in for Junior Cambridge exam next. I don’t think I +will. I think I should get brain fever, my brain being already weak. +It’s ever so hot to-day—more so than userlay. I had to undo my coat +coming out. In the garden there are lots of snow-drops, crocuses, +primroses, tulips and hyasinths out. I hope you apprechiate this lengthy +episel.</i>—<span class="smcap">Your Eva.</span>’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>P.S.—Mummy writes that Count Kolberg is still after Zita, who cannot +bear his soppiness.</i>’</p> + +<p>“In the winter I was in Innsbruck. They were expecting Eva, who had left +school as they could not afford to pay for her. We all went to meet her. +Even now I can see the long Paris train steaming<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_25">{25}</a></span> into Innsbruck +Station, and Eva alighting, rather more the young lady than when I had +last seen her in England. When Zita that evening showed me her albums +with snaps, ‘Me-Too’ insisted on doing the same. Their mother, +encouraged by the thought of the economy effected in sparing Eva’s +future school fees, deemed it well to celebrate the release in terms of +midnight frolics—‘Making a night of it,’ she called it. She got us all +to join some dancing class of a certain Fräulein Stube, and Count +Kolberg came along too, and brought his cousins and friends. Eva danced +with all the counts and barons and smiled into their eyes. And Zita, you +could see, hated that smile. She knew her ‘Me-Too’ inside out. But the +barons adored it; and Zita, who had not cared for Kolberg and the +barons, now that Eva deflected them, grew visibly jealous. ‘I don’t want +to be seen about with this lump!’ (Eva’s legs were ripening fast). ‘I’ll +make her get up and take exercise,’ and like remarks. And she never +called her Eva, but ‘Me-Too,’ with a certain venom of intonation. But +Eva, coy, continued smiling at the barons, who were like flies round +her.</p> + +<p>“New Year’s Eve we spent at the Maria-Theresien Restaurant. A huge brass +band from the public park installed in the dining room—— deafening +music. The room crowded to overflowing. Men prowling about in the hope +of stealing a chair. Some Johnny actually seizing one of ours: ‘May I?’ +I open my mouth to say ‘Indeed not!’ but that mo<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_26">{26}</a></span>ment the band crashes +into martial vehemence—and my words are lost. Mrs. Kerr happy, her lost +château, lost income, debts, all forgotten in the excitement of the +moment, sits near me, praises all and everybody: ‘Ah, that dancing +mistress Fräulein Stube! A charming, intellectual young woman. So nice! +so educated! speaks English like a native!’ Presently I dance with the +said Fräulein Stube and ask her in explicit English:</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>What is this dance?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Please?’ says Fräulein Stube.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>What is this dance? A fox-trot?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Please?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Is this a fox-trot?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>No, de Schimmey,’ she replies.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>In England we dance differently,’ I say to her after a while.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Please?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>We dance differently in England.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Please?’</p> + +<p>“In the effort, I stepped on to her toe. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I +stammered.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Please?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I beg your pardon.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Yes, dis de Schimmey,’ she said.</p> + +<p>“And then again I am in the midst of Mrs. Kerr’s amazing volubility, +praising all and everybody: ‘You dance so gracefully, so elegantly. And +Fräulein Stube, such a really nice and cultured, intellectual woman! So +pleasant, well brought-up, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_27">{27}</a></span> educated! Knows languages, talks English +like a native.’ Suddenly all rise, holding up mugs of beer. ‘Prosit! +Prosit! Prosit!’ And, indeed, the hand of the big clock points midnight. +The band crashes on for a full two minutes. And stops. Noise and +confusion. Friends and strangers alike are drinking <i>Bruderschaft</i>. From +the table next to ours a man rises (he is unshaven, but in a sort of +dinner-jacket suit with a reddish velvet waistcoat) and introduces +himself: ‘Lieutenant-Colonel von Wiesendorf,’ then introduces his +daughter. We rise and introduce ourselves and one another. They drag up +their table to ours, and we are one large party. The Colonel says he can +speak English, his object in hooking himself on to us being either to +show off or to practise our language, which, he says, he picked up in +Africa.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>In the Foreign Legion?’ I ask.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Pfui Teufel, no!’ he says. ‘Only desperados serve in the Foreign +Legion.’</p> + +<p>“Evidently a <i>faux pas</i>.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>Bruderschaft!</i>—Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!’ And the Colonel and myself are +linked in brotherhood and call each other ‘thou.’ Mrs. Kerr and Fräulein +von Wiesendorf drink <i>Bruderschaft</i> and become inseparable. Zita and +Eva, in their turn, drink <i>Bruderschaft</i> with Fräulein von Wiesendorf. +Finally Graf Kolberg with the Colonel. The band now crashes with +unheard-of vehemence. All drink.”</p> + +<p>Here Frank Dickin stopped reading and helped<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_28">{28}</a></span> himself to more champagne; +then continued with unction:</p> + +<p>“Fräulein von Wiesendorf, whose great virtue, according to herself, is +that she is very jolly: ‘I’m so jolly!’ she squeals, and kicks her heels +up, becomes a bosom friend of Mrs. Kerr. ‘Ah, Ferdinand Vassilievich,’ +she says (getting me wrong again), ‘you have no idea what a sincere, +cultured, jolly, well-informed and intellectual girl she is! Her father, +in his position of Comptroller of Public Morals, cannot take her out to +all the cabarets and night clubs and she hasn’t even been to the +Austria-Bar or the Odéon! But I will chaperone her and take her +everywhere, and she’s so pleased!’</p> + +<p>“And together, they drag us to a cellar-restaurant, the barons like +hounds on Eva’s scent—Zita neglected, forgotten. And the Colonel, the +Comptroller of Public Morals, scratches his head, says ‘Na! The New Year +is not all the year, nor New Year’s Day every day,’ and comes along too, +Fräulein von Wiesendorf kicking her heels up with joy. In the +cellar-restaurant the goings-on have been going on five or six nights +running, ever since Christmas Eve. Shaky waiters with small, red, sleepy +eyes. The head waiter—it is the third night he hasn’t closed his +eyes—but propped up with drink, sings along with the band and, as a +special favour, right into my ear, occasionally spluttering on my cheek +and forehead:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_29">{29}</a></span></p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>Da sprach der Tut-An-Kamen:</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>‘Tun sich die Leut’ nicht schamen?’</i> ...”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">And we eat and we drink and we revel, till the music grows plaintive and +sorrowful, and I dance with Zita, while the band complains:</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>Wenn ich dich seh,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Da will ich weinen</i>....”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">And she, poor girl, looked it. Eva had robbed her of all her admirers, +including Count Kolberg. Melancholy music breeds melancholy thoughts. As +we return to the table I overhear Mrs. Kerr complaining to the Colonel: +‘We cultured Russians of the intellectual class have suffered badly in +the Revolution....’ And there she was, pessimistic about life, +pessimistic about the outcome of their lawsuit, no money, no home, +lawyers mostly frauds....</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Stop that music!’ cries the Comptroller.</p> + +<p>“The music stops. ‘What will you have instead?’ the head waiter and +bandmaster ask readily.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>O! Katerina!</i>’</p> + +<p>“And Mrs. Kerr shuffles along in the clumsy Colonel’s arms to the +ragamuffin beat.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>A very nice, sincere, understanding man, and a deep thinker,’ was her +comment as, bowed out by the band and the waiters, we come out into the +early morning frost.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Zita, dear, what is the matter with you?’</p> + +<p>“She did not answer. I walked home beside her,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_30">{30}</a></span> not then aware of what +she thought and felt; but afterwards she told me. Ever since she was a +child she had a sort of psychic complex: she thought that she was mad +and that everybody was hiding it from her. Her old grandfather in +Ireland could not see Zita, who had golden hair, without tears, for her +flaming hair recalled to him her dead grandmother. Whereas Zita thought +that Grandpapa cried because he knew that she was mad. Her stern old +grandfather, who thought nothing of saying to his guests sitting out on +the stairs during a ball, ‘The stairs were made to walk on, not to sit +on. Get up!’ crying at the thought of her affliction! And now she knew +that she was mad, ghastly, desperately mad, and that they were all +hiding it from her. She thought, thought, thought of it, and all to no +purpose. She knew an uncanny lot without thinking; but when she +<i>thought</i> she knew nothing at all. And she decided that she was +uncommonly dull—that was it: mad, mad beyond hope and repair!</p> + +<p>“The sudden cessation of attention on the part of Graf Kolberg and the +barons was due to her madness. Somebody must have blurted it out. +Clearly they shunned her. Going over, in a body, to ‘Me-Too.’ How awful. +This was the end of all things.</p> + +<p>“There are moments when we positively seek humiliation. ‘Me-Too’ had +taken all her partners from her, had left her destitute and lonely. But +she felt, in her extremity, the need to propitiate the victor by an +admission of her helplessness, her com<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_31">{31}</a></span>plete prostration, put all her +cards before her, make her responsible for her next move, the invading +enemy who must needs assume responsibility for the welfare of the +population in the area he has occupied. Take it, curse you, my last rag +of self-respect and exult in the completeness of your victory! This is +the spirit in which, on reaching home, Zita must have faced her younger +sister. She confessed that she was mad and that she knew that they were +hiding it from her. She stood ashamed, expectant, with head bent, as if +to say, ‘Now there! What can you think of it?’ while ‘Me-Too,’ half +undressed, lay on the bed, and pondered. She pondered a long time over +this doleful piece of news, with insight, a profound and melancholy +understanding. ‘I think,’ she said at last, ‘we are both mad....’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>You’re <i>crazy</i>!’ Zita cried.</p> + +<p>“Suddenly she felt sane, terrifyingly, devastatingly sane.”</p> + +<h2><a id="III">III.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">“Ha</span>!” said Lord Ottercove. “Was it like that?”</p> + +<p>“I keep pretty close to life where I can,” answered Dickin.</p> + +<p>“Well, go on. What happened to the woman, Mrs. Kerr?”</p> + +<p>“They could not afford to stay on at the pension,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_32">{32}</a></span> and they took a room +and a kitchen in town, for the four of them. But she would not cut out +the dances.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>You know, Frederick Fyodorovich, what I’ll tell you. I am disappointed +in Tamara Leonidovna. As you know, all our things have been confiscated +by the bailiff. Everything, everything! But I managed to smuggle through +a bedroom carpet to a friend of mine at Bozen, and I gave Tamara +Leonidovna 500.000 Kronen, over thirty shillings, to go to Bozen and +bring the carpet. But my friend in Bozen, when she saw her, got +positively frightened of Tamara Leonidovna, who really looks forbidding. +A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, just like a Gipsy. Those lips, those +consuming eyes. She is terribly sensual, you know.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Is she?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>You don’t mean to say that you haven’t noticed it?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I haven’t.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Hasn’t she made any advances to you?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>No.’</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Kerr thought for a space. ‘Well, all the more honour to her, then. +Because, you can see by her face and whole figure how hard it is for her +to bridle her passions. The tram-driver, Herr König, won’t have her come +near him now that they’re divorced. He has another woman. And poor +Tamara Leonidovna, who has been used to a married life, doesn’t know +what to do with herself. But she leads, I think, an exemplary life. And +all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_33">{33}</a></span> the more honour to her, I say—but it’s not good, it’s a strain on +her. Well, the lady got such a fright when she saw Tamara Leonidovna +that she would not give the carpet. And Tamara Leonidovna got so scared +of the lady being scared to death of her that when the lady did offer to +give her the carpet Tamara Leonidovna wouldn’t take it. And her German, +as you know, is not up to much.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>“Why didn’t you take the carpet when she offered it, Tamara +Leonidovna?” I cried when she returned on Saturday, empty-handed—just +as I am waving my hair to go to the Hôtel d’Europe ball. Imagine my +position: I hadn’t a Krone left. The last went to pay for the entrance +tickets, for I was counting on Tamara Leonidovna returning with the +bedroom carpet. And my hair already waved. And here she stands and says: +“She wouldn’t give the carpet.” And looks at me like that—uncertainly, +and adds: “Besides, I was afraid of the Customs.”</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>“The Customs?” I say. “Then you <i>did</i> have a chance to get the carpet +from her?”</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>“I had a chance ...” she says, uncertainly.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>“Then why—why—why (I was so angry that I shook the curling tongs at +her) tell me ... otherwise?” I wanted to say “a lie,” but restrained +myself.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>“Ah, if that’s the way you talk to me, after all my kindness to you, +good-bye to you,” she said, and slammed the door behind her.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_34">{34}</a></span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I rushed off to the station restaurant, where my husband always dines +with the Rittmeister. “Charles!” I cried, “that woman has come back +without the carpet! What <i>am</i> I to do now? I am dressed for the ball and +I’ve ordered the table and I’ve no money to pay for the champagne +supper! What <i>am</i> I to do, Charles?’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And what did he do?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>He cursed me, Fyodor Ferdinandovich. Cursed me, cursed me, cursed +me—oh, <i>terrible</i>! He never talks to me now—only curses.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And the Rittmeister?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>The Rittmeister laughed.’</p> + +<p>“The Rittmeister must have laughed very contagiously, for, remembering +how he laughed, Mrs. Kerr began to laugh too, at first quietly, then +louder and louder, till her laughter became riotous. ‘What a life!’ she +sighed, wiping the tears that had come to her eyes from laughing so +heartily. ‘I have ceased to take myself, or my clothes, or my life, or +my fate seriously. I only look and laugh, look in wonder, in +astonishment—and laugh. But, as I tell you, I am disappointed in Tamara +Leonidovna. And what language she uses! Like a cab-driver. I am grateful +to God that my children do not know Russian. And that poor student she +wants to marry!’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Why “poor”?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>She will consume him. She is fire.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Daddy ought to know her,’ from Zita.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_35">{35}</a></span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>He knows her.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>But closer.’</p> + +<p>“However, they went to the Hôtel d’Europe ball and there they met +Viscount de Jones, who knew them. And I presume he paid for the +champagne supper.”</p> + +<p>“Look here,” said Lord Ottercove, looking worried, “now you are actually +using real names. Well-known names.”</p> + +<p>Frank smiled.</p> + +<p>“I have kept all the original names deliberately so as to attract your +attention. I knew I would have to change them for publication. But this +is a small matter.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove smiled, then leaned back and laughed. “That was clever of +you! I must confess that but for the names my serial editor might have +easily passed it over.... So de Jones paid, did he?” Lord Ottercove +looked pensive.</p> + +<p>“I presume so.”</p> + +<p>“But actually you know who pays?”</p> + +<p>“Who?”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove pointed a forefinger at his own chest.</p> + +<p>Frank Dickin looked at him with dull amazement, but as Lord Ottercove +looked morose, did not press for explanation. “The silly woman rather +advertised her connection with Lord de Jones and told me, as though she +were giving me a hundred pounds, that she was going to introduce me to +the noble<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_36">{36}</a></span> lord! I hadn’t the slightest interest to meet him. A pretty +big fool, I imagine, to judge by his tastes in women.”</p> + +<p>“He has married my niece,” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“No!... I say, this is rather a brick I’ve let fall.”</p> + +<p>“You mean to say you didn’t know it?”</p> + +<p>“Well—how shall I say?—I did and I didn’t. I thought it would help to +keep up your flagging interest in my serial if I introduced into it +Hidden Hand bits from the back-door life of your relative. Not that I +know much about him. We novelists have to rely largely on our own +imagination. Though I remember now that Lord and Lady de Jones were on +their honeymoon and put up at the Tirolerhof in Innsbruck.”</p> + +<p>“That’s a bigger brick than the first.”</p> + +<p>“I am so sorry.”</p> + +<p>“Not a bit of it. I don’t think you realise that what interests me most +in your serial is not what de Jones does but why he does it. What it is +that attracts him so in Mrs. Kerr. It must be nearly twenty years now +since he first met her, I believe, in Russia. Or was she already +married? And now I realise. You have conveyed her character wonderfully +well. I think it is that extraordinary irresponsibility, +that—that—that something else. It’s there, I feel it, though I can’t +for the moment describe the peculiar fascination. What else can it be? +Is she still so good-looking?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_37">{37}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Good-looking, no, but attractive. Her daughters have it from her.”</p> + +<p>“He always goes back to her. It is the second time he is married. My +niece should never have married him. But there is genius in him. He +could have been a second Newton if he had wanted to. As it is he is a +Genius of the Untried. They are all like that, the whole family. I have +a great affection for him. But Eleonor is determined to divorce him. +He’ll be quite penniless unless I find him something to do. But go on. +What happened to the woman?”</p> + +<p>“I lost sight of them soon after that dance, and Frau König told me they +had gone off to Abbazia, while Lord de Jones had returned to England. I +enquired about her own affairs. ‘Everything now depends on the knitting +machine, which is due to arrive in March.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And your fiancé in Paris?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>He is saving money for the factory. But imagine!’ she exclaimed, ‘in +his last letter—so pathetic—he writes that the franc, owing to the +political machinations of the Cartel des Gauches, has all gone to pieces +and reduced the potential capital of our knitting factory.’</p> + +<p>“We spoke of Mrs. Kerr. ‘Your Mrs. Kerr,’ said Tamara Leonidovna, ‘is a +goose. Just a Great Big Goose.... What a fool that woman is! Not a cent +in her pocket, not an idea in her top storey beyond dancing and pleasing +men—at her age! A newly married man, too—just because he is a lord!<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_38">{38}</a></span> +Openly, before her daughters! What matter that she is divorced? I, too, +am divorced and six years younger than she is, but I keep myself back.’ +A look of strain came into her face. ‘I don’t let myself go.’ She set +her jaw, clenched her fists. ‘I try to keep myself in check. I have more +pride, more self-respect than ... than.... When he comes back from Paris +then ... then ... then yes.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Go on,” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<h2><a id="IV">IV.</a><br><br> +DOGS AND NIGHTINGALES</h2> + +<p>“I saw nothing of them till the spring, when I had a surprise visit from +Mrs. Kerr, looking considerably dilapidated. ‘Ach, Ferdinand +Ferdinandovich, you won’t believe what I have been through in these two +months! If I were a writer like you I would write a novel in the <i>genre</i> +of Dostoevski, so true, and yet incredible, so poignant! I have begun a +diary. I will bring it to you this afternoon. You can make use of it for +your books.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Lord de Jones lent me some money to go and have a thorough change and +rest, and so Zita, Eva, John and I went to Abbazia. A lovely coast. Blue +sea, sunshine, casino, roulette, <i>chemin de fer</i>, baccarat. A real +change and rest for the nerves. All day we gamble, and at night dancing, +flirtations.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_39">{39}</a></span> Both girls passionate gamblers, also John. But luck went +against us and we found we had no more money to go on with. I pawned +some of my things and we lived very comfortably for a time at the Grand +Hotel—dancing, music, sea bathing twice a day and getting to know lots +of very agreeable young men on the beach, and at night moonlight walks +in the wood—in couples: Zita with the Italian boy; Eva with the young +Dane; and I with the Spaniard Rodrigo. Or to the cinema—always in +couples, Rodrigo looking at me with great passionate eyes. Very +delightful and charming. When the money was exhausted, I found a post as +housekeeper in a small pension overlooking the sea—very artistically +situated—and Zita, Eva and John were taken in by a lady friend of +Rodrigo’s, a very nice, quiet, well-read woman. I was busy all day in +the kitchen which gives out into the garden, and the children, looking +so gay and fresh in their white summer things, would be coming to see me +all the time. And I’d say to them, “Go and play in the garden,” and I +would give them things through the window, as the lady friend of +Rodrigo’s could not provide them with food. “There you are, children, +take this and this and this,” and I’d give them cakes, coffee, sugar, +sweets, dainties, pastry, everything, and they’d take it home and eat it +and come back for more. And I’d give them more through the window, all +kinds of preserved meats and provisions: “Here you are, children,” and +they never went short of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_40">{40}</a></span> anything while I was housekeeper there. +But—but would you believe it, Fyodor Frederickovich? The landlady, +seeing me give nourishment to my children, gave me the sack. If it had +been for myself, I understand, but for the children! I have noticed a +strange insensibility in those people, a hardness, a general—how shall +I say?—unfeelingness. No love, no understanding of children. I just +looked at her like that—I could say nothing. I could not have expressed +what was in my heart. A feeling of sorrow, not of anger. And as I took +my things and passed her on the doorstep I just turned my head to her: +“In Russia this could not have been,” and went without a word.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Outside, in the street, the children around me, I stop and ask: +“All-wise and loving God,” I ask, “why dost Thou punish me so? <i>Why?</i>”</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>From there I got into the Grand Hotel as “Kaffee-Köchin” and all day +long I had to boil coffee, first for the clients, then for the hotel +staff—all day long boil coffee and nothing but coffee. They gave me a +tiny little room on the roof, overlooking an unfinished church, and at +night dogs would come to sleep in that church and howl hungrily—dogs; +and up in the trees, nightingales. I opened the window. Below in the +square, lilac shrubs in bloom. The scent of lilac. And thoughts, like a +bevy of bees, stung my heart. I remembered our dear Russia when I was a +young girl, my mother a young woman, my father, my two brothers, and how +I felt<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_41">{41}</a></span> and how I hoped. It all came back—Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, +Turgenev, Dostoevski—and hot tears streamed down my cheeks. “Dear God,” +I said, “to think what was once! and what is now! Come back, days of +youth, of my innocence, and hot faith in the divinity of Thy Creation, +Thy Love! Vague dreams of my heart, virgin and untouched, of my +unsullied soul, come back, come back!...” The breath of Spring. Dogs, an +unfinished church, you know ... and those nightingales, all the night +through. Dogs and nightingales.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>All day long I boiled coffee. I went by the name of “Frau +Kaffeeköchin,” for I alone in the whole hotel was to boil coffee and I +wasn’t to do anything else. From six in the morning till ten at night I +boiled coffee. But at half past ten I would put on my yellow satin gown +and sit out on the Casino terrace, order a vermouth, light a cigarette, +and never in a thousand years would it occur to anyone that the smart, +elegantly gowned, romantic-looking woman sitting out on the Casino +terrace and looking, you might say, like a Queen of the Steppes, was the +Frau Kaffeeköchin of the Grand Hotel. And one night as I sit there, an +old beggar, sick, filthy, stenchy, all in rags, and barefoot, comes up +to me. “Here, beggar,” I give him a copper, and he holds out his hand +and introduces himself: “Captain of the Imperial Russian Navy, Nobleman +Khan Balalykin.” Yes, Khan Balalykin—a Tartar Prince! And, do you know, +Ferdinand Ferdinandovich, he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_42">{42}</a></span> fell in love with me? What am I to do? +Where I go he follows me. “No,” he says, “I cannot live without you,” +and looks at me with soft, love-lorn eyes. And also calls me “My Queen +of the Steppes.” Or quotes a lyric from Lermontov. Well, we made a night +of it, and spoke of Russia. Next morning I return to the hotel to work; +he after me, right into the kitchen. “Sit down, Captain,” I say, “here +is meat, bread, cheese, butter, beer. Eat and drink, it will do you +good, restore your strength a bit.” He tucked in, oblivious of +everything, poor old man, he looked so starved; but here the head cook, +a huge great man, comes in—a great big animal with a short, thick neck, +just like an ox—horrible!—an obnoxious big bully, the real cave man. +And, would you believe it, Ferdinand Fyodorovich, begins to remonstrate +with Captain Khan Balalykin, who is peacefully tucking in at the table? +But I wasn’t going to be bullied by this ox of a man. “Don’t you dare +shout at me,” I screamed, “I’m not afraid of you. I care that much for +your being head cook. In Russia at one time one used to beat one’s cook +when one wasn’t satisfied with him, and I, the daughter of Pàvel +Yàkovlevich Sabolenko, won’t stand any of your nonsense, I can tell +you!” Well, I thought this would pacify him a little. But no! The ox +shouts and storms more than ever and begins to insult Captain Khan +Balalykin. Well, I wasn’t going to have my guest reviled and insulted. +He may look dirty and all that, which is not surprising in his sphere +as<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_43">{43}</a></span> a beggar, but he is a real gentleman of the old school, a captain of +the Russian Navy, graduated with Honours at the Imperial Naval Academy, +and the bully is a common ignorant Austrian cook. I took the big brass +pan with the potatoes and crashed it to the ground: I was so angry. +Well, he begins shouting madder than ever and kicks Captain Khan +Balalykin out of the kitchen and then fetches in the manager and points +at me and the potatoes on the floor and screams: “It’s she!” And the +pair of them begin to scream at me together, though I can scream as loud +as they together. “No—it’s <i>he!</i>—<i>he!</i>—<i>he!</i>” I scream, and go for +both of them with my fists. Insulting a distinguished Russian officer, +an old nobleman, Khan Balalykin, a graduate of the Imperial Naval +Academy: I <i>was</i> so wild!</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Well, do you know, Fyodor Ferdinandovich, the manager being hand in +glove with the head cook, gave me the sack. I pawned my last ruby ring +and we all came back this morning. In Milan we ran across Fräulein von +Wiesendorf, and we all came back together.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And how is she?’ I asked.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Well, it seems from all the drinking bouts during the <i>Fasching</i> and +the late hours Fräulein von Wiesendorf got the colics and a sort of +nervous breakdown. Her father, who is Comptroller of Public Morals, +alarmed at his daughter’s condition, called in the doctor, who examined +Fräulein von Wiesendorf and found symptoms of the beginnings<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_44">{44}</a></span> of +consumption and ordered her <i>immediately</i>, without a moment’s loss or +hesitation, at railway speed to Italy. “As fast as the train will carry +you!” he said. Fräulein von Wiesendorf throws a few odd things into a +bag and darts off, helter-skelter, to Italy and arrives, holus-bolus, in +Genoa and as she has no means takes a post as governess to children. +Nine children of assorted ages. She has to teach and feed and wash for +them and take them out for walks, and the children all veritable devils, +real Machiavellis, cruel, mischievous, teasing her, and the parents +exigent and stingy. In a month poor Fräulein von Wiesendorf was worn to +a shadow; a doctor was called in, examined her and—“Back home!” he +said, “at full tilt! As fast as you can fly!” She arrived in hot haste +this morning. To-morrow night we are making a last night of it, and the +day after I am off to Abbazia.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>What! again!’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>To get the ruby ring back from the pawn-shop. I’ve borrowed some money +here on the strength of my caracole coat.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And how are Zita, Eva and John?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>The children are so happy. As we had no quarters to go to on arrival +we went and sat in the Hofpark and we’ve chummed up with four Bulgarian +students: two small ones, a thin one, and a big one. The two small ones +have fallen in love with Zita and Eva. the thin one with Fräulein von<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_45">{45}</a></span> +Wiesendorf, and the big one with me. I must be off now to look for a +room for the children, and don’t forget to ask them for my diary.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<h2><a id="V">V.</a><br><br> +PALE PRIMROSES THAT DIE UNMARRIED</h2> + +<p>“I met Zita, Eva and John a few days later crossing the +Maria-Theresienstrasse on their way to their sparse meal at the cheap +restaurant under the arch. They were rather short of money, but full of +enthusiasm on account of the Bulgarian students. ‘We spend all our time +with them in the Hofpark,’ they told me. Later I saw them home to their +room—a poor room tucked away behind someone else’s kitchen; one narrow +bed for the two girls and a little sofa for John. ‘And doesn’t your +father bother about you?’ I asked.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Daddy’s gone back to Ireland.’</p> + +<p>“We decided, in the absence of the mother, to make a climbing expedition +to the top of the Patscherkofl mountain and arranged to meet at four +o’clock next morning. It was still dark as we set out, clad in the +appropriate mountaineering fashion: alpenstock and rucksack; the girls +in Tyrolese peasant dress: short skirt, tight waist; John and I in blue +coat and leather shorts, and leaving the still<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_46">{46}</a></span> somnolent streets of the +town behind us, began the ascent. At Igls we halted and breakfasted, +then continued by the steep side wind through pine woods, as the red sun +rose to meet us. John ran in front and behind, and Zita and Eva walked +sprightly on either side of me, and we spoke of how nice it would be to +make a hut in the pine woods or live in a cave. And to all Zita’s ‘I’s’ +Eva said ‘we.’ By midday we reached Heiligwasser, famed for the +miraculous cure of the sick, and unpacked our rucksacks for lunch; then +continued the winding ascent. The Inn Vale now stretched deep beneath +us. More mountains, like ghost ships on an uncharted sea, loomed into +sight as we climbed the spiral grass-edged path, encountering more +flowers on our way: snow-drops, buttercups, daisies, bluebells, +primulas, violets, while little brooks scurried down head over heels to +announce that Spring was already come. An hour’s distance from our goal, +we spread out our mantles on the green slope of a sheltered warm valley +where daffodils grew in profusion by the side of a brook and stretched +our limbs and dozed rapturously in the sun.</p> + +<p>“Profusion is not a good thing. So I mused, watching the two sisters, +each so exquisite in her own way that at once when you began to focus +your attention on the one, you were diverted from her by the other. They +thus neutralised each other’s charm to a great extent and dissipated +your affection. And lying with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_47">{47}</a></span> them in the sun I watched them lustless, +in benignant peace. How beautiful life could be for a space!</p> + +<p>“Rising, we set out on the last but one stage in our journey, climbing +hills without paths, cutting across pastures where frisky young cows, +turned irresponsible on these heights, jumped over the moon; now +clearing gurgling brooks which still ran hurry-scurry down to the +valleys to tell the glad tidings; now stooping to drink the cool water. +By two we reached the top of the shaggy mountain slope: above loomed the +gleaming naked dead rock of the summit. A separate journey, after an +hour’s repose.</p> + +<p>“At the Gasthaus we drank beer and booked accommodation for the night; +then lay on the edge of a plateau projecting perilously over the void +and looked down at Innsbruck, miniature like on a map, the river Inn +bedded in the soft, green folds of the valley, the parcelled fields, the +dotted villages, the spired churches, all lucent and serene in the +spring sun. Leaving John asleep in the tavern, we climbed the steep +rocky way to the peak, clinging to loose stones and sending them rolling +a mile or two till they rebounded with a heavy earthen thud in the +abyss. No more shrubs or alpine roses; nor a human habitation anywhere. +The last was the Gasthaus, which is now lost to sight. On we climb till, +in the first dusk, we reach the flat rocky mountain-top: there is +nowhere higher to go. The girls frolic and gambol like frisky gazelles: +the air is amazingly light. But I sat away on a rock, struck<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_48">{48}</a></span> speechless +by the mighty spectacle. The neighbouring mountain-peaks, all level now +and grandly equal, looked on into the gathering dusk, heavy with a +silent utterance.</p> + +<p>“What is it when, the veil lifted, he beholds how lovely it all was in +the beginning?...</p> + +<p>“But as the rocky summits, like ghostly dreadnaughts anchored in doom’s +waters, closed their eyes in the ensuing gloom, we hastened to retrace +our steps towards the Gasthaus. Zita was in a hurry to get back to John. +The paths diverged to all sides of us. We were afraid lest darkness +should overtake us before we reached the Gasthaus, and, agreeing all on +the necessity for haste, disagreed as to which path we ought to follow. +Zita thought she knew a shorter way to the inn than the one we had come +by, whereat Eva and I doubted, and stuck to the old path, or what we +imagined to be the old path, which led us untowardly down the steep edge +of the mountain, as Zita quickly vanished on the other side. When you +look at a hill from below, it all seems perfectly easy and simple: you +either walk up or else you walk down, according to whether you wish to +find yourself at the top or the bottom. But as you begin to descend you +find that the hill has a trick of breaking into new hills, new valleys, +new precipices, that, having at length reached the foot of your hill, +you are still at the top of another, and rounding it to get into the +valley, you are thwarted by another precipice. Once Zita appeared far +away,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_49">{49}</a></span> it seemed on the edge of a fourth hill; then vanished. We shouted +as loud as our voices would carry; the wind took our words but brought +us none back. Dusk fell upon us rapidly, and stones rolled dangerously +beneath our feet, as we felt our way down the slippery steep rock. Soon +it was too dark to move at all. We sat down on a stony slope, and Eva +cried. I could have done so myself, with the exhaustion and nervous +tension and vexation of it all; but her tears accomplished the trick for +me. We were even too tired to eat. It was fresh in the dark, but not +cold. We thought that Zita was back now and asleep with John at the inn. +We spread our mantels and, sooner than we knew, we slept.</p> + +<p>“In the night there was a storm, and we ran hand in hand down the +slippery stones in search of shelter; and then hid ourselves under a +rock.</p> + +<p>“At dawn we were up, and having eaten of the contents of our rucksacks, +we set afoot in search of the path, keeping together for fear of worse +things. When a moving dot of a figure appeared across the wide gulf that +separated us from another chain of rocks, we shouted and waved, and the +figure waved back. Thinking it must be a man from the Gasthaus, we waved +more and shouted ourselves hoarse. Manœuvring, the figure and we came +nearer; we could dimly hear it shouting to us, presumably explaining the +direction. Then, as it neared, we recognised Zita’s scarf flying in the +wind, and then her voice asking for the way. We began<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_50">{50}</a></span> a mad rush to +each other across trackless slopes of naked rock, till, meeting finally +on neutral ground in a small valley, she told us of the fearful night +she spent alone and burst into sobs. With breaks for food, we continued +our search, all keeping together, till the sun sank behind the mountains +and the shadows crept up and, once again, it was night.</p> + +<p>“We slept huddled together, and thought of John alone at the inn. Still, +the Wirt would take care of him, and, compared with us, he was +comfortable.</p> + +<p>“In the course of next day we reconnoitred all round the summit and +found ourselves trapped: very evidently the one pass connecting the rock +with the main body of the hill had fallen away. We were cut off from the +rest of the world, isolated on the naked rock which, like a tooth, +sloped down at an angle we could not hope to descend without being swept +into the precipice by the stones which barely piled on its steep sides +and every now and then rolled off into the abyss. This was, we realised, +what must have happened to the one connecting link by which we had +ascended to the peak of the mountain, now clearly inaccessible except +possibly by air.</p> + +<p>“We began to ration our supplies and wait for relief. Surely the people +at the Gasthaus where John still waited for us would do something? By +the following day we began to doubt whether our provisions could +possibly last out another day. Doubtless the Gasthaus people were +searching for us; but how would they reach us with the pass miss<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_51">{51}</a></span>ing? +Where could they get an aeroplane? Munich was the nearest centre. Or +perhaps John, quicksilver that he was, had left soon after us and the +people at the inn concluded that we had all returned to Innsbruck.</p> + +<p>“The day after was glorious and hot, and towards midday we had cleared +our last supplies. We lay on the ground and felt very still and odd. I +watched Zita lying on her belly, her long legs stretched out and apart. +The sun was beating on us. Luckily there was no lack of water. How long +could one last out on water? And would the rescue come at all? We did +not say it to one another. We seemed to know and feel it that the other +understood. They were young; it was a pity. For it seemed, though the +weather was so beautiful, uncommonly like the end. The spring, and they +so young. And death yawning to claim our bones. Somehow as I lay there +watching them, these lines from Shakespeare swung back into my heart—</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>Pale primroses,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>that die unmarried, ere</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>they can behold</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Bright Phoebus in his strength,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>a malady</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Most incident to maids....</i>’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">At that moment Zita turned a look, molten gold from the sun, upon me. +Why should she?</p> + +<p>“We kissed under the hot rays of the sun, taking<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_52">{52}</a></span> the last it had to +offer us before it withdrew its rays to shine on us no more.</p> + +<p>“And then it was that Eva, whom I had forgotten, caught my look and +said:</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Me too.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>  </p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove interrupted the reading with an astonished—“Ha!”, sprang +up with that agility characteristic of him and which testified to his +success, went over to the sideboard and mixed himself some whisky. Frank +must have discerned disapproval in the gurgling notes of the whisky as +it poured down into his lordship’s cavity, for, “Dammit, sir,” he +protested, “the sun, spring, death crouching at you, the end of life in +time, and these pale primroses to die unmarried—”</p> + +<p>“Are you—I don’t quite understand—defending the book or your conduct?”</p> + +<p>“That is—”</p> + +<p>“Yes?” The noble lord now looked like a magistrate.</p> + +<p>“I don’t think this is a fair question.”</p> + +<p>“I agree.—Go on.”</p> + +<p>“Reading?”</p> + +<p>“Of course.”</p> + +<p>“I think I’ve read enough.”</p> + +<p>“My dear fellow, you can’t stop like that. I am dying to know what +happened.”</p> + +<p>“What happened?... Dammit, sir,” Dickin said, “is a fellow to blame for +getting saved?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_53">{53}</a></span></p> + +<p>“All saved?”</p> + +<p>“All. They came and found us the day after. A picnic party from +Innsbruck. The pass had not been destroyed as we imagined, and indeed +there were several passes. We’d made a mistake. I am not very clever at +mountaineering, you know. Nor the girls, either. John, as we had +suspected, had slipped down to Innsbruck almost immediately on waking, +thinking we had gone back to town. So all’s well that ends well.”</p> + +<p>“Rather terrible that, what?” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Dammit, sir, I appeal to your idealism. Yawning death. Pale primroses +to die unmarried.... No escape. I tell you we thought we were for ever +lost.”</p> + +<p>“Didn’t you think so too readily?”</p> + +<p>“I deprecate this attempt to abuse the autonomy of a work of +literature.”</p> + +<p>“So it is merely literature?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t think it’s fair to my characters of you to ask.”</p> + +<p>“Read on!” laughed Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_54">{54}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="VI">VI.</a><br><br> +THE QUEEN OF THE STEPPES</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">“In</span> the autumn I was in Vienna. One day as I returned from a walk the +maid in the <i>pension</i> told me that two ladies were waiting for me in my +room. Who but Mrs. Kerr and Eva! My first thought was: Does the mother +know? But from her ebullient flow I soon perceived that all was well.</p> + +<p>“A long tale. She had come back with the ruby ring and for some time at +all events they lived quite comfortably on the proceeds. When they had +spent their last, ‘I went,’ she said, ‘and threw myself on the charity +of the police authorities, who were very kind and sent the three of us, +John, Eva, and myself, by goods train to Vienna. An English lady had +taken Zita back to England with her as a companion. Arrived in Vienna, I +went straight to the policeman on the platform and said: “Here we +are—destitute, without means. What do you propose to do with us?” It’s +always better to be downright: no good doing things by half. Once +destitute, throw all responsibility on the police. He looked very +worried and said: “Follow me,” and took us to the gendarme, who told us +to wait in the waiting-room. We waited three or four hours. Meanwhile +the first policeman came back, with a confused look and something +clenched in his fist. “I am not a rich man,” he said, opening his fist, +“but please accept<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_55">{55}</a></span> that.” I was touched. 30.000 Kronen—almost two +shillings. The gendarme came to invite us into his chief’s office. A +nice grey-haired old gentleman. He had tears in his eyes as he looked at +the children, and was all milk and honey when I related to him of our +Schloss in Meran, now in the hands of the Italians, and said softly: +“<i>Sic transit gloria mundi!</i>”</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Anyhow, they took John off my hands. They put him in an orphanage. You +won’t believe how nice it is for him there. Never been so happy before! +Warm and cosy and plenty of boys of his own age to play with. And, do +you know, he heckles them all and fights them. We visited him the next +day, Eva and I. He was at his midday meal. Very good food. But he said, +“Mummy, what is the matter with this meat? It chews and chews and +doesn’t eat up.” Made them all laugh.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>“Me-Too” and I were conveyed to the workhouse. And, fancy, crossing +the Landstrasse-Hauptstrasse, we saw two of the Bulgarian students—the +thin one and one of the small ones. Eva shouted to them across the +street, but they couldn’t hear. The workhouse—not too bad, only no +privacy. A huge barrack-like room and lots of low, fallen women who use +dreadful language. I don’t like it on Eva’s account. Yesterday, when +“Me-Too” came in and left the door open, there was such a volley of +abuse from an old hag that I shut my ears so as not to hear. But Eva +said never a word, only looked at her like that. You could see the race +in her.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_56">{56}</a></span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>We found out your address through police records—they are really so +well organised in this town—and, well, we’ve come to see you and to ask +if you won’t take us out to some dance or other to-night. We are so +tired of the regulation workhouse meals. I still have my smart yellow +satin gown in which Khan Balalykin admired me so much and thought I +looked like a Queen of the Steppes. And “Me-Too” still has her orange +crepe-de-Chine gown. She hid it in her purse—it folds ever so +small—when the bailiffs came into our Schloss in Meran and took +everything away from us.’</p> + +<p>“I expressed my willingness, my pleasure. I asked her tactfully if I +could not lend her a little money. She took the note with charming +simplicity, ‘on condition,’ she said, ‘that you will let me pay it back +later—when things mend up in Russia.’</p> + +<p>“At the cabaret, the ‘Nachtlokal,’ which she had selected as being the +most elegant according to her husband when in the affluent old days he +used to take her to Vienna for the season, she nevertheless complained +of the general inferiority and paucity of Vienna night life as compared +with that of Petrograd or Moscow, and that brought her back again to +Russia. ‘Ach, Russia!... We upper classes in Russia have been thrown in +the dirt and trampled on with the muddy feet of the coarse proletariat.’ +It would have been heartless for me to remind her of the complete +independence of her personal misfortunes of the fate of Russia, +heartless and un<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_57">{57}</a></span>called for, ‘But we will go back and find, I truly +expect and believe, our reward in riches and pleasures as yet undreamt +of, and then when you come and visit us there, Fyodor Ferdinandovich, we +shall have such a binge together as will outshine anything previously +known in that line.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Of course we will,’ I said tenderly, laying my hand on her own.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>I believe in it!</i>’ she cried, ‘hotly and passionately! In the face of +all the calamities and disasters falling upon me, it shall not be said +that I have lost faith!’ She looked passionately at the orchestra.</p> + +<p>“I filled her champagne glass. The band played doleful music. She +touched my arm. ‘But I do not regret these experiences. The kind hearts, +the interesting people one comes to meet. That policeman. The +grey-haired Colonel’s tears.’ Her eyes filled; and, indeed, she looked +at that moment like ‘the Madonna kissing the finger-tips of her Child.’ +‘And, you know, even the workhouse women. That old hag who shouted so at +“Me-Too”—well, I’ve chummed up with her. Not a bad woman at heart. She +has had a hard life. A great beauty. An early seduction....’</p> + +<p>“She sighed. ‘We have no luck. Imagine, my mother has managed to get out +of Russia at last and even smuggle through some jewelry, so Eva and I +both wrote to her to be quick and send us some money till the +authorities can find us situations. But<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_58">{58}</a></span> she is in Monte Carlo, gambling +heavily, it seems, and writes back: “I can’t. I am bust.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Eva, while her mother talked to me, flirted with me over her mother’s +head. ‘Come and talk to me,’ her look seemed to say.</p> + +<p>“It was cruel after the dance-supper to take them back in a taxi to the +workhouse. But what could I do? I was, after paying for the supper, +stony broke myself. I could not have arranged to keep them at an hotel +indefinitely, and the authorities who were charged with finding work for +them would have discontinued their efforts on their leaving the +workhouse.</p> + +<p>“A week later, she came in to me, jubilant. They had both got positions, +Eva as nurse to small children, Mrs. Kerr as housekeeper to a solitary +Austrian colonel. ‘An intellectual, original man. We read Dostoevski +together and I am keeping a journal which eventually I hope to develop +into a novel. We are both of us so happy, Ferdinand Fyodorovich—’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Fomitch,’ I corrected. ‘My father was called Tom—Foma, in Russian.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span> ...Ferdinand Fomitch, that we want you to take us out this evening, +make a night of it. The other night “Me-Too” and I went out to a night +club together, to celebrate our release from the workhouse and our good +fortune in getting situations so soon, and we struck up an acquaintance +with two Russian gentlemen: Ivan Andrèiech Zshikov, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_59">{59}</a></span> the other: +Fyodor Yàkovlevich Suhomlinski. Suhomlinski fell in love at first sight +with “Me-Too”; and Zshikov with me. Zshikov has long almond eyes and +looks like that into mine all the time. Jokes, little flirtations. Very +delightful and charming. From there we went together to another cabaret. +In the street some other unknown men fell into step with us, and we all +went along together to an underground tavern—like the one in Innsbruck, +only larger and gayer. And all the men in love—either with Eva or me. +All Russians in exile, huddled together, helping one another to bear up. +Very charming and touching. The Hussar Kòlenka Shavèlenkov; Olèg +Aleksèiech Pevtsòff, disappointed in love and seeking a meaning in life; +and Captain of Lancers, Rotmister von Bologovski. Yes, calls himself +“von”—“von Bologovski.” All intellectual, original people. We revel +till three in the morning, and, do you know, when Eva had to go back to +her charges the mistress made quite a scene, in spite of “Me-Too” +explaining to her that she had been out with her mother; and nearly +dismissed her. It was her first day there, you see. But I slipped in +noiselessly with my latch key; my old Diogenes of a colonel was still +snoring, and there are no servants. He leaves early and does not come +back till six. So I give little parties when he is away. I try to make a +kind of Russian intellectual centre, to attract interesting, original +people, a sort of nucleus of the Russian Colony in Vienna. A large +dining<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_60">{60}</a></span> room. I give them tea with lemon. They feel very pleased. All +interesting, well-read people of unconventional views. Zshikov came, and +Suhomlinski (to see Eva, who slips in with her elder charges when she +can), and also Kòlenka Shavèlenkov, and Olèg Aleksèiech Pevtsòff, the +disappointed, and the Lancer Rotmister von Bologovski; all came, drank +tea and smoked and argued, very sincerely and passionately, about +politics and art. I was very pleased on Eva’s account. Very beneficial +and instructive for her. I was sorry Zita wasn’t there. But she writes +this morning that she has left the English lady and has taken a post as +professional dancing partner at a dancing place in Hammersmith. She is +very pleased, for the lady she was companion to she says was a stuffy +old thing.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<h2><a id="VII">VII.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">“Well</span>, I went to one or two of her intellectual tea parties, and once I +just missed Lord de Jones by a hair’s breadth: he had left a minute or +so before my arrival.”</p> + +<p>“De Jones! You don’t say so!” exclaimed Lord Ottercove. “Ha!” And he +shook his head.</p> + +<p>“And how,” he asked after a pause, pulling out his watch and looking at +it with mild alarm, “do you finish your serial? Does your hero marry +both sisters and serve his time for bigamy?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_61">{61}</a></span></p> + +<p>“No. I will read it to you.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t: it suffices that I have your word for it. Shall <i>I</i> tell you +what becomes of your characters?”</p> + +<p>“Do.”</p> + +<p>“Shall I tell you where they are?”</p> + +<p>“Where?”</p> + +<p>“Here. In London.”</p> + +<p>“I know.”</p> + +<p>“But do you know who got them to come over?”</p> + +<p>“I can guess.”</p> + +<p>“You’re good at guessing, are you? And can you guess why he got them +over?”</p> + +<p>“I think I have shown through the pages of my serial that I am not +insensible to his interest in the mother.”</p> + +<p>“Or in the daughter.”</p> + +<p>“In the daughter!?”</p> + +<p>“The younger daughter.”</p> + +<p>“Eva? Great heavens!”</p> + +<p>“I am happy,” said Lord Ottercove, “to be able to introduce into your +serial this little touch of suspense. Indeed, if there is an element +lacking in your story it is this element of suspense. Between you and +me, it is an element entirely unimportant and one which, I have always +found, interferes with the peaceful enjoyment of a story as it tells +itself through the growth and actions of the characters. But it is, +nevertheless, an element upon which serial editors insist as a matter of +tradition. But I am going to change all that. I am, perhaps you have<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_62">{62}</a></span> +noticed, changing the tradition of journalism in this country.”</p> + +<p>“For the better,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“What?”</p> + +<p>“For the better,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“Now I like your story. I think it is a corking tale. I accept it for my +newspapers, and what is more I will pay for it. Now what do you want for +it?”</p> + +<p>Frank hesitated only a moment. Better men than he owed their fortune to +a bold word put in in the proper accent at the proper moment. Big men +act bigly, so that their gestures may go down to history. And what did +Shakespeare say? “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at +the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is +bound in shallows and in miseries.”</p> + +<p>He closed his eyes. “£10,000,” he said.</p> + +<p>Now, despite the opening given him, Lord Ottercove did not avail himself +of the immortal gesture. Or, perhaps he couldn’t recognise a tide in the +affairs of another man.</p> + +<p>“Ha!” he said, and leaned back. “If I—if I gave you—gave you—” (The +sum seemed to stick in his throat), “gave you £10,000, my staff would +think I’d gone right off my chump; and I should have, of course.”</p> + +<p>He took up the receiver and said: “I want Mr. Wilson.” And turning back +to the visitor: “I can’t do these things over the head of my serial +editor. I<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_63">{63}</a></span> can’t do these things over the heads of my editors,” he +repeated; and again: “I can’t do these things—“, to fill the interval +of time it took Mr. Wilson to reach the office. And now Mr. Wilson, with +eyes and crown discreetly lustrous, was shown in by the page.</p> + +<p>“This, Mr. Wilson, is Mr. Dickin from whom I want to buy a serial. I +asked him to name a price, and he said £10,000, which is, of course, +preposterous.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson inclined his head a little, thus discreetly suggesting that +it was preposterous.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Dickin,” continued Lord Ottercove, “is not acquainted with the +prices of serials paid by newspapers. Obviously so, to judge by the +figure he named. What do you think we ought to pay him?”</p> + +<p>“Well—” said Mr. Wilson. The situation was one warranting discretion. +“The prices vary.” It was not wise to say more.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove looked sad and troubled at having to be so.</p> + +<p>“According to the serial and the author,” Mr. Wilson added.</p> + +<p>“I suppose,” Lord Ottercove said doubtfully, “you are a fairly good +author?”</p> + +<p>“I suppose so,” Frank said gloomily.</p> + +<p>“Has Vernon Sprott read any of your novels?” Vernon Sprott was the +foreman of British fiction, proud of purse and dexterous with the pen.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_64">{64}</a></span></p> + +<p>“We’ll ask him.—Give me Vernon Sprott—Vernon, old boy, how are you?” +Frank had a feeling that he was at the centre of all things, in the very +signal box from which all the wires were pulled and the signals flashed +the wide world over. “Vernon, I say, have you read any of Frank Dickin’s +novels? You have? Well, what do you think of them? What? They’re all +right? Vernon, good evening to you!” He put down the receiver. “He says +they’re all right.”</p> + +<p>“That’s good.”</p> + +<p>“Well—” said Lord Ottercove, still far from making history. But the +next moment, as a cat is reputed nearly always to fall on its feet, he +slipped into history. “Are you,” he said, “at all ready to leave it all +to me?”</p> + +<p>“To no one more!” Dickin said passionately, feeling that he was now +treading a pivot on which fortunes turn, and henceforward fly round, +multiplying incessantly.</p> + +<p>“I’ll tell you what I will do for you. I’ll let you draw on my account.”</p> + +<p>“On your account?”</p> + +<p>“Yuh!”</p> + +<p>“To—to what extent?”</p> + +<p>“Without limit.”</p> + +<p>“But how do you mean?”</p> + +<p>“As much as you need.”</p> + +<p>Frank, flushed, his scalp tingling, punctuated the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_65">{65}</a></span> air with words of +embarrassed and bewildered gratitude. “ ... incredible ... +incomprehensible....”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove, as in an alternating duet, kept up with: “Not a bit.... +I like doing it....”</p> + +<p>“I cannot believe it....”</p> + +<p>“My dear fellow, it’s a pleasure to me....”</p> + +<p>“I’m staggered....”</p> + +<p>“It shall be done!...”</p> + +<p>“Speechless.... It’s a dream....”</p> + +<p>“Which is your bank?”</p> + +<p>“Barclays.”</p> + +<p>He took up the receiver. “I want Mrs. Hannibal.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannibal was Lord Ottercove’s Secretary-in-Chief. This was, as she +entered, already apparent from her general demeanour, from her outward +calm and ease and the smiles and little graces she was able to bestow on +visitors: that somewhat frozen smile of a lion trainer who, while +smiling thus his careless smile at the fascinated audience, is yet, you +notice by a certain pink light in the corner of his eye, not unaware of +the gravity of the task in hand, of the fearful perils of the open cage +with the unaccountable big lion.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hannibal, will you arrange for Mr. Dickin to draw on my account at +Barclays Bank to an unlimited extent, till further notice.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannibal had trained herself never to look astonished. “Yes,” she +said, making a shorthand note of it in her book, and vanished with ease +to complete it in practice. At that moment another<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_66">{66}</a></span> visitor—a strange +man in large ungainly boots—was ushered into the vast gay room.</p> + +<p>“Hullo, Chris!” Lord Ottercove exclaimed.</p> + +<p>“How are you, Rex?”</p> + +<p>“Oh—bored to hell. Mr. Dickin has just been reading me his serial.” And +without any further introduction, he rose and took the visitor across to +the large blue sofa at the far end of the room, and both men sat down +and engaged in a silent conversation in which the movements of their +lips alone were perceptible (as so often happens on the stage). After a +while they rose and sauntered towards Frank.</p> + +<p>“Have you, Mr. Dickin, ever heard of a man who can grow two blades of +grass for every one? You haven’t? Well, Lord de Jones is the man to do +it, and, moreover, I am the man to get him to do it.—You know Mr. +Dickin, Chris?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Lord de Jones, holding out a bony hand. “How do you do?”</p> + +<p>“But he knows <i>you</i>, Chris. He’s put you into his blooming book!”</p> + +<p>Lord de Jones smiled, revealing a row of shark-like teeth. There was +something, Frank felt, uncanny and incalculable about him. Lord de Jones +could be most suitably described as “a strange man.”</p> + +<p>“Lord de Jones,” explained the host, “is a religious scientist. He +belongs to the Adventist sect. His argument, if you make bold to +disagree with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_67">{67}</a></span> him, is that any one unwilling to be converted to his +faith is prevented from doing so by the Devil.”</p> + +<p>“I believe,” said Lord de Jones earnestly, “that the world is +approaching its prophesied end—”</p> + +<p>“Creaking under the burden of his abominations,” laughed his wife’s +uncle.</p> + +<p>“It may be for that reason,” rejoined Lord de Jones, “that I have been +chosen as His instrument to bring about an end.”</p> + +<p>“It may be. But before you are instrumental in so doing you will be good +enough to carry out your plan of increasing the crop-growing capacity +and general fecundity of this lazy mother earth by closing all the +craters in the world.”</p> + +<p>“Oh?” said Dickin. “Is that a fact? I mean is it a fact that the closing +of craters would inevitably have that effect?”</p> + +<p>“Yuh,” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Are you sure it’s good science?”</p> + +<p>“It’s good politics, anyway. The only thing to give old Joe a leg up. +The Liberal Party has no platform. Never had one since the Great War. +But this crop-increasing stunt will appeal to all sections of the +community, and will be the saving of the party. It appeals to me on two +grounds. It’s sound economics—at least on the face of it; it’s got a +Liberal smack about it: ‘International Good Will. Live and Let Live. +Bread for the People.’ Why, it will simply swing him back into the +saddle!—But you will exercise discretion, won’t you?” he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_68">{68}</a></span> turned to +Frank. “I hope you don’t transcribe everything into your books, do you?”</p> + +<p>“Everything,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>For a while the three of them sat silent round the octangular table. +Lord Ottercove looked kind and a little fatigued; Lord de Jones silent +and pensive. Frank looked at the great newspaper proprietor, who was +obviously tired but still genial and kind, and his heart swelled with +gratitude and a love for Ottercove and the world that he graced and +illumined. “I think,” he said, “I am really taking up too much of your +time.”</p> + +<p>“Not at all. Do stay. And will you dine with me on Friday night at half +past eight at my house?”</p> + +<p>The intimate warmth of the great room, the political confidences +exchanged in his presence, all this filled Frank Dickin with a sense of +loyal elation. At last he rose.</p> + +<p>“I hope to see you several times before Friday,” said Lord Ottercove, +rising and proffering a strong, sensitive hand. “Don’t forget to give +your address to my secretary, and come and see me any time you like. +Good-bye to you. And mind the step.”</p> + +<p>On the landing, Mrs. Hannibal caught him and gave him a special cheque +book. “This will be all right,” she said. “I have advised them.”</p> + +<p>In the glass in the lift he saw red patches on his cheeks. He thought +that unless he steadied his thoughts he might have a stroke. His heart +ebbed<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_69">{69}</a></span> and swelled and he walked unsteadily on his feet past the braided +commissionaire into the lighted street.</p> + +<h2><a id="VIII">VIII.</a><br><br> +EVA</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Eva</span> did not reproach him for his inordinately long absence. And the +taxi-driver, whatever he may have looked like before, now looked +resigned, as if hoping for the best. “I stopped him ticking after a +time,” she said, “and I told him you would pay him well. So he looked +quite pleased and stopped ticking.”</p> + +<p>“I know it was a long time. It must have seemed a terribly long time.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, it seemed ages and ages and ages! I thought perhaps you had had a +stroke or that Lord Ottercove had strangled you. And then I simply +ceased worrying and fell asleep.”</p> + +<p>“And the taxi-driver?”</p> + +<p>“He fell asleep too. I told him it would be all right.”</p> + +<p>“And yet,” said Frank, looking at his watch, “I haven’t been away three +hours!”</p> + +<p>“And I dreamt that it was a big mystery case, and that they dragged out +your body and hanged Lord Ottercove for instigating the affair and—”</p> + +<p>“I’ve been reading my book to him.”</p> + +<p>“Your book?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_70">{70}</a></span></p> + +<p>“About you, darling.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, darling!”</p> + +<p>As the taxi-driver, who had by now outgrown the faculty of astonishment, +asked for a clue, they directed him, provisionally, to Piccadilly +Circus. Alone, Eva at once pressed herself to his side and brought her +mouth to his for kissing, before he was really ready for it; for he had +drunk too much champagne and had read aloud so long and now was +hiccupping all the time.</p> + +<p>“Stop hiccupping,” she said.</p> + +<p>For him the day was too rich in new impressions to allow him to savour +his happiness. That morning, after a long absence, he had come back from +Paris. The Calais boat sidling to the Dover pier. British porters, big, +sturdy ruffians, elbowing, like a football team, by the gang-plank; +suddenly charging the decks, making away with your boxes and bags. Then +the bright shining boat-train gliding away and racing along through the +dim countryside, London-ward, without stop. Victoria at last. The vast +hideous metropolis blinking through the milky mist. And Eva’s letter in +his pocket-book:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>Darling Blue Eyes.—So sorry you are ill. And here I’m waiting +for you all alone in London Town.</i>”</p></div> + +<p>He had not understood the secret pleading of these words, till, +following up the girl’s address to a dingy lodging-house off the Edgware +Road, the landlady related to him how Eva, waiting for him,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_71">{71}</a></span> had held +out three weeks, but that her sister Zita tracked her up through the +police and took her home with her where, ever since, she was kept under +surveillance but was allowed to take the terrier out for daily exercise +in the adjoining Park. Eva, said the landlady, was a nice girl; owed +rent, but all the time while waiting for him at the lodging-house sat +piously at home, retired early to her bed to read a novel and eat +chocolates.</p> + +<p>She had waited, perilously, for him all these weeks, running up a debt, +while he idled away in Paris on the pretext of sickness and postponed +indefinitely his arrival! She had no money; but had not reproached him, +had only written: “Come as soon as you are better. Perhaps it’s selfish +of me to ask you to get better quickly. But I am <i>waiting</i> for you, +Ferdinand,” etc. His name was Frank, but she did not like the plainness +of it, and so called him Ferdinand. The landlady, who told him she had +in her day eloped romantically and married secretly and very, very +happily, exhorted him to be the knight-errant who should, like her own +late husband, free his Eva from her intolerable captivity; while he +rather wished she would mind her own business and let him do as he saw +fit. And then, having pursued all the terriers in Hyde Park in vain, and +equally so in Kensington Gardens, he had halted for a moment by +Whiteley’s window in Queen’s Road and somebody sidled up to him, and +before he turned to look he could feel the warmth of her delighted<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_72">{72}</a></span> +gaze. “Eva! And I had lost all hope of ever finding you!”</p> + +<p>They lunched together hurriedly and then took a taxi to his appointed +interview with Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Me-Too’ Darling! And how did Zita find you?”</p> + +<p>“Through Scotland Yard.”</p> + +<p>“And she came and took you away, did she?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, she broke in and cried, ‘You’ve got a man here!’ and began opening +all the cupboards and looking under the bed. But I was alone, in bed, +reading a novel and eating chocolates and waiting.”</p> + +<p>“Waiting?”</p> + +<p>“For you, darling.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, darling! And who paid?”</p> + +<p>“She paid.”</p> + +<p>“Rather generous of her.”</p> + +<p>“But she took it all out of my saving’s bank at the post office.”</p> + +<p>“Oh! how mean! how cruel!”</p> + +<p>“And she took me home with her and locked me up, and got Mr. Pilling to +lecture to me on morals.”</p> + +<p>“But what is Mr. Pilling to you!”</p> + +<p>“He is our guardian, while Mummy is away in Ireland.”</p> + +<p>“He has guarded you well,” Frank said, not without bitterness. “What +about Zita?”</p> + +<p>“He’s taken a fancy to Zita long ago at the Arcadia Ball Rooms, where +he’s a professional with her.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_73">{73}</a></span></p> + +<p>“He has, has he? A fine guardian and no mistake! What is their +relation?”</p> + +<p>“What do you mean?”</p> + +<p>“You know quite well what I mean.” He looked bluntly into her eyes. “Yes +...?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she nodded.</p> + +<p>“And so he’s taken you both under his wing?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. And Mr. Pilling said I was not to go out except to take the +terrier out for exercise. And I took him every morning out into the Park +and wandered all over Kensington Gardens, hoping I might come across you +suddenly.”</p> + +<p>“And you did!”</p> + +<p>“And I did!”</p> + +<p>“Darling Eva!” He pressed her to his side.</p> + +<p>The taxi-cab had reached the bottom of the Strand and was rounding +Nelson’s Column into Pall Mall. “I must think of a hotel,” he said. “I +daresay I will find a room at the Madrid Palace.”</p> + +<p>“No, no,” she said, “that is not a smart hotel. Mr. Pilling will say it +isn’t smart.”</p> + +<p>“Hang Mr. Pilling! Besides, why can’t you tell him I am staying at the +Ritz?”</p> + +<p>She thought a while. “I didn’t think of it. Yes, I will tell him you are +staying at the Ritz.”</p> + +<p>He gave directions to the driver; ran up the steps into the hotel, +ordered a room, and came back to her. “Darling, what do you want to do +now?”</p> + +<p>“Let us get out, darling, and walk and think. I am so tired of living in +this taxi.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_74">{74}</a></span></p> + +<p>He dismissed the man, after paying the full penalty of his caprice, and +they walked on into Piccadilly and inadvertently turned into New Bond +Street. “What do you want to do?” he asked again. “You are surely not +going back to your sister’s to-night, are you?”</p> + +<p>“No, no, I am not!”</p> + +<p>Her reassurance weakened his resolve. “But if she searches for you; if +she goes to Scotland Yard?” he asked uneasily.</p> + +<p>“I don’t care, darling. I want to be with you.”</p> + +<p>“We’ll dine.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, and after dinner go to a dance.”</p> + +<p>“All right,” he said, unenthusiastically. “What your mother used to call +‘making a night of it.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Mummy writes that she is very dull in Ireland.”</p> + +<p>“What is she doing there?”</p> + +<p>“She’s gone to visit daddy’s people to see what they can do for us. I’d +like,” she added, “to go to the Kiss-Lick Club.... It isn’t really +expensive.”</p> + +<p>“No. All right.”</p> + +<p>“But I—”</p> + +<p>“But you—?”</p> + +<p>“But I haven’t a gown. The old Meran orange crêpe-de-Chine one is an old +rag now.”</p> + +<p>“We’ll get one.”</p> + +<p>“But, darling, are you rich enough?”</p> + +<p>“Just enough,” he said, not wishing to encourage her in her +extravagance.</p> + +<p>Now she was already standing at a shop window,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_75">{75}</a></span> trying to decide between +two equally attractive gowns. But as they went in, the choice, and with +it the difficulty of selection, and the perils of subsequent remorse, +increased alarmingly. Seated, like a royal pair, in luxurious armchairs, +the mannequins parading with studied step before them, they displayed, +in return for the united efforts of the selling staff, an increasingly +dispersed appreciation. From time to time, Eva disappeared behind a +screen to emerge from it as an exhibit, to the venal praises of the +saleswoman, who, anxious to bring matters to a head, gradually narrowed +down the field of selection to two expensive gowns.</p> + +<p>“I really can’t make up my mind which I should take.”</p> + +<p>“Take both,” he said.</p> + +<p>The saleswoman looked up at him as though she thought he was a fine +young gentleman, and he felt pleased to have risen in her estimation.</p> + +<p>“But are you sure—?”</p> + +<p>“I think I can just do it.” Lucky to have cleared his entire bank +balance that morning! To-morrow he would draw a cheque on Ottercove. It +seemed scarcely credible. The affair smacked of the fairy godfather type +of Christmas tale in an all-fiction magazine for juveniles. Yet +Ottercove, his cheque book, and his bank balance were presumably +realities. In the midst of life we’re in a dream, he mused, as they were +bowed out into the street, when, a few paces off, Eva suddenly +remembered that she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_76">{76}</a></span> had no shoes to match the gowns, and he took her to +the nearest shop where she selected competently, while asking him, “Are +you quite sure—?” the best the shop could offer.</p> + +<p>“I think I’ll manage,” he replied, more by way of secret loyalty to +Ottercove, who, he recalled, had said, “As much as <i>you</i> need,” not “as +much as your women folk may feel they need,” which was not the same.</p> + +<p>The shops were just closing; but, of his own accord, he suggested that +she indulge in lingerie, and here, despite the closing hour, Eva’s fancy +ran adrift, while his new-born tenderness for her prevented him from +curbing her desires. So long as he had money enough to last out till the +morning, what did it matter?</p> + +<p>But he did not himself indulge in any purchases that evening, as an +ascetic act of abstinence before the pure image of the kindly Ottercove +which, like an ikon illumined by a candle, always shone before him. +Nevertheless the devil tempted him from time to time. Suppose, he +thought, Lord Ottercove had gone mad. It was not impossible. He could +then gradually appropriate all his property. Till the executors stopped +him. If so, was that not a cause for hurry? And Eva’s impulse was right? +But it would never do to tell her. Not even if Lord Ottercove was mad.</p> + +<p>He whispered in her ear as they pushed through the revolving door into +the hall of the hotel, and she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_77">{77}</a></span> signed her name—with a, to unsuspecting +eyes surely imperceptible, hesitation—“Nancy Dickin.” As they ascended +in the lift, he was tendering excuses:</p> + +<p>“It’s a poor room, you know.”</p> + +<p>“Is,” she asked, “my room as poor as yours?”</p> + +<p>“It’s the same,” he said.</p> + +<p>Forgetting to kiss him, she immediately began to inspect her purchases, +till he suggested it was time she put them on.</p> + +<p>“It’s cold,” she twitched her shoulders.</p> + +<p>“There’s a gas fire.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes. Darling, ring the bell for me.”</p> + +<p>And to the maid, in a commanding, knowing way:</p> + +<p>“Put on the gas fire at eleven o’clock so it should be warm when we +return. My husband likes it warm.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, ma’am.”</p> + +<p>At the Kiss-Lick she beamed all the time. While they danced she talked +to him of himself. “Pilling said ... Zita said ... I said to Pilling: +‘Mr. Dickin doesn’t care a rap for your opinions! He wouldn’t look at +you—’<span class="lftspc">”</span> Or, suddenly, without preliminary introduction, she would +volunteer such isolated bits of information as: “He hurt me with my +teeth. I cried.”</p> + +<p>“Who? Pilling?”</p> + +<p>“No, the dentist. And the man in the Tube thought I was a little Russian +girl because I had a grey fur cap and was reading the translation of a +Russian novel.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_78">{78}</a></span></p> + +<p>Eva, he noticed, was very observant and ironic about Mr. Pilling. “He +tries to speak French to Zita, because he thinks it’s grand. Pilling +thinks she has influence.”</p> + +<p>“With whom?”</p> + +<p>“With Lord Ottercove. Through Lord de Jones, you know, who is Mummy’s +friend. He is very funny.”</p> + +<p>“Who? Pilling?”</p> + +<p>“No, Lord de Jones. He goes about muttering funny things to me about +wanting to blow up the earth. I think he is not quite all there. But +Pilling would like Lord Ottercove to finance him.”</p> + +<p>“Whom? Lord de Jones?”</p> + +<p>“No, Pilling. He’d like to open out on his own. A dancing place, a night +club like this one. Only he says he wants Lord Ottercove or somebody to +finance him, because it will cost a lot of money. Pilling is very high +class. He has bought a cottage at Marlow and called it ‘Villa +Esperanza.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Full of hope, evidently!”</p> + +<p>“And he makes up to a man there because he is a member of the motor-boat +club, and Pilling can’t be a member of the motor-boat club because he +has no motor-boat. And he says he only needs Lord Ottercove to finance +him to buy himself a motor-boat. That is why I wanted to meet Lord +Ottercove this afternoon; and you wouldn’t let me.”</p> + +<p>“You wanted to speak to Lord Ottercove to—to—” he stammered with +incredulity.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_79">{79}</a></span></p> + +<p>“To ask him if he’d like to finance Pilling.”</p> + +<p>“But why?”</p> + +<p>“I thought it would please Pilling.”</p> + +<p>While they supped, her legs touched his and he had but one thought and +one desire: to return with her to the hotel, to grasp her, clutch her, +smother and devour her just as she was now with her wistful violet eyes +and her thoughts of Pilling. She sipped her champagne. She was silent, +completely content. Her large eyes were bright dewy flowers.</p> + +<p>Ensconced in a taxi, she at once fell over him and brought her mouth to +his for kissing. But kissing, by this time, was nothing new to him. He +wanted to explore new avenues, new vistas of experience.</p> + +<p>Then they were back, alone. He clutched her in his arms. “Come, come, +come,” he pleaded. She had quickly slipped into bed before he returned +to the room and looked at him doubtfully.</p> + +<p>“Ah!” he cried in the accents of the primitive man and leaping to her +side.</p> + +<p>But she had turned her back to him. “Darling....” she murmured.</p> + +<p>“What?” he cried.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she said, “it isn’t always easy to be a woman, darling.”</p> + +<p>He looked at her blankly. “Where is my revolver?”</p> + +<p>“Your revolver?”</p> + +<p>“Or I shall go out and hang myself—”</p> + +<p>“What do you mean?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_80">{80}</a></span></p> + +<p>“On the nearest lamp-post.”</p> + +<p>After pacing the room up and down for a space, he lay down. But he could +not sleep. At last he dressed and, to the astonishment of the night +porter, went out and, incurring the suspicion of a lone policeman, +loitered in empty Piccadilly Circus. He had calmed down and his thoughts +turned back to his miraculous acquaintance with Lord Ottercove and his +unlimited offer of money, so unusually generous that he could hardly +force himself to take advantage of it. He would rather assassinate his +old grandmother for the meagre contents of her purse than overdraw Lord +Ottercove’s account. Wandering aimlessly about the quiet streets, tears +dimmed his eyes as he reflected on the essential goodness of human +nature. His look was moist, peculiarly naïve, and if a +confidence-trickster had that moment come up to him, he would have been +inclined to accept his offer, convinced that he would and could not harm +him.</p> + +<p>Eva was not asleep when he came back. Where had he seen it? Ah, she +reminded him of that picture of a kitten tucked away in a big bed, with +one paw over the quilt, one eye closed, the other open and looking at +the world. In the dark they talked across the bedside table which +separated their two beds, and she told him of all that had happened to +her since he saw her last in Vienna. “Lord de Jones got Mummy to put me +into a Secretarial College as he said he would need a secretary to go on +his mis<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_81">{81}</a></span>sion with him round the world to close all the craters and Mount +Vesuvius and such for which Lord Ottercove is financing him for +propaganda and such like purposes and that he could see from the colour +of my eyes that he could trust me. Mummy wants to go with Lord de Jones +on his mission all round the world because she says she hasn’t been +round the world and would like to see it as his private secretary, but +Lord de Jones says he’d rather I went with him, much rather than Mummy. +And so he put me into this Secretarial College to learn shorthand and +typewriting, and the Principal was making up to him, because he was +Viscount de Jones, and used to write silly letters to him trying to +flatter him because he thought Lord de Jones would appreciate deep +thoughts. And so he wrote to Lord de Jones to congratulate him on the +nobility of his scientific thoughts and researches and said: ‘Your +philosophical mind, I am sure, will appreciate what a small fraction +time is of eternity.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“And Lord de Jones?”</p> + +<p>“He simply laughed, and I told the Principal what a fool Lord de Jones +thought him. But he was making up to me.”</p> + +<p>“Who? The Principal? Or Lord de Jones?”</p> + +<p>“The Principal. And Lord de Jones, too. But I don’t mind Lord de Jones +because he is an old friend of Mummy’s. But the Principal was a real +rotter. He had a sort of conservatory behind his study where he used to +receive visitors, and there was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_82">{82}</a></span> a palm tree there and an aquarium with +goldfish, and he said to me when I said I was leaving him because he was +a fool, ‘We had better kiss and be friends,’ and he tried to kiss me +there among the goldfish.”</p> + +<p>“No!”</p> + +<p>“He did! And he used to pay his teaching staff at the end of the week in +silver money. Three or four half-crowns, not more. They all stood +huddled together at the end of the room and he’d recline in his chair at +the desk and call out: ‘Jones!’ ‘Ferguson!’ ‘Gould!’ (Never ‘Mrs. +Ferguson,’ or ‘Miss Gould!’) ‘Here!’ and give them three or four +half-crowns each. And the typewriting mistress, Miss Gould, only got two +half-crowns and a shilling.”</p> + +<p>“And they seemed pleased?”</p> + +<p>“No, not pleased, but kind of dumb, cowed, hungry looking. And when +Mummy was behind with the payment because Lord de Jones had quarrelled +with his wife and she wouldn’t let him have any more money, Mr. Bumphill +got very ratty and said I had a bad character. I asked him what I had +done; and he said: ‘You are lazy, and where is your loyalty to the +College? Have you ever recommended it to a single human being?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I have,’ I said.</p> + +<p>“He suddenly looked very interested. ‘And to whom, pray?’ said he.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>To Mr. Gorilla,’ said I, ‘a Spanish young gentleman.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_83">{83}</a></span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Oh, indeed! I am interested to hear it,’ says he. ‘Take his name down, +Miss Frazer.... H’m! And what is his address?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>The Zoological Gardens,’ said I.”</p> + +<p>“And then?”</p> + +<p>“Then I left his Secretarial College. Mr. Pilling thought I should study +to become a Nurse.”</p> + +<p>“And why must you listen to Mr. Pilling.”</p> + +<p>“I told you he is our guardian.”</p> + +<p>“A fine guardian!” said Frank bitterly. “I’d like to bash his head for +his treatment of Zita.”</p> + +<p>“But what about yourself?” she asked, it seemed to him rather +tactlessly.</p> + +<p>“That was different. That was on a hill.”</p> + +<p>“It was lovely. And Zita too thought it was lovely. But she said she +could never tell Pilling about it. She doesn’t know what he’d do to you +if he knew.”</p> + +<p>“No need for him to know,” Frank said, gloomily. And then: “I say, is he +... Pilling a great reader of novels?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know, darling. I don’t remember having seen any of yours in +their flat, though Pilling once said about you, ‘He is very clever. I +wish I had his brains. I would not be a professional, nor Zita either.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Why don’t they marry?”</p> + +<p>“Pilling told her from the start that he couldn’t marry her as he was +already married but separated from his wife, but Zita being always +business-like<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_84">{84}</a></span> and practically minded asked Pilling to guarantee to her +on paper that he would remain true and loyal to her all his life. But +Pilling said he couldn’t do such a thing as a man can never trust +himself. Zita then met a doctor—an old consumptive fellow, full of gout +and ischias and sciatica and heart disease—who fell in love with her +and wanted her to be his own eternally and everlastingly, and as he also +could not marry her he gave her the guarantee she asked in writing that +he would be true to her during all his lifetime and even had it stamped +at Somerset House; and then she became just like his wife. But he died +in a week—from heart failure.”</p> + +<p>“And what did Zita say?”</p> + +<p>“She said: ‘I could have murdered him for it.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Poor thing! And now?”</p> + +<p>“Now she has gone back to Pilling unconditionally. She did ask him for a +guarantee, but he only laughed at her. She still warns me about men. But +I also laugh at her.”</p> + +<p>“Yet she controls your movements?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, she does. Once, when I got so tired of sitting at home with Zita +and Pilling and went for a walk by myself, and a fat gentleman I met on +the station platform at Victoria took me to a dance, Zita gave me an +awful hiding and told Pilling to give me a dressing-down, and then +slapped me.”</p> + +<p>“Really slapped you hard?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, darling, I haven’t had an easy kind of life, I can tell you.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_85">{85}</a></span></p> + +<p>“And so Pilling sent you to the hospital to study to become a Nurse, did +he?”</p> + +<p>“He did. I had to cram my poor brains with so much anatomy. And the +things they made us look at, the operations and things. Once I fainted; +then I got used to it.”</p> + +<p>“And do you really know something about it?”</p> + +<p>“I know every little bone in your body.”</p> + +<p>“Really?”</p> + +<p>“There was a doctor there, an Irishman. He used to help me with my +examinations and kiss me.”</p> + +<p>“You let him?”</p> + +<p>“He loved me, he said. And it was Spring like that time on the hill, and +so stuffy at night, and the textbooks so difficult, and he so clever!”</p> + +<p>“And then?”</p> + +<p>“And then I ran away. I didn’t come back after my annual leave. I went +to London to Mrs. White’s boarding house.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“Because you wrote to me from Paris that you wanted me to meet you in +London, and so I came to London from Colchester and waited for +you—weeks and weeks, till my sister came—the matron at the hospital +had started a hue and cry—and took me away.”</p> + +<p>“And then?”</p> + +<p>“Then Pilling said I must go back to the hospital, but I said I’d rather +die than go back to the hospital, so I had a row with Pilling. He was +furious, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_86">{86}</a></span> I was furious, and so I went away to Mother Martha’s +boarding house and took a room, but I had no money, so had to look for a +situation.”</p> + +<p>“You all alone in London looking for a situation! while I was lounging +lazily in Paris!”</p> + +<p>“Yes. I went to the shops asking for a job, and I didn’t know where I +could get a reference. The managers were all the same. They said, ‘You +have intriguing eyes.’ Or, ‘If you’ll be nice and friendly with me, I’ll +give you a good cushy job.’ I had a good job in a draper’s shop in +Holborn; I got twenty-five shillings a week. But as they began to reduce +their staff and I was the lastcomer I was the first to go. Then I got a +job as part cashier, part waitress in a tea-shop in the City. It was +quite interesting. Business men would come up and talk to me and promise +me a job. They said I had intriguing eyes. One man said, ‘You have eyes +like violets.’ They would come up to the counter and we’d discuss +together City topics. And one fat man asked me if I knew what Nero was +doing while Rome was burning, and I said I didn’t know, and he said: +‘Fiddling.’ And we’d all burst laughing. It was quite intriguing.”</p> + +<p>His heart ached for her. Poor child, all alone, men like vultures, ready +to pounce on her: forgetting that men, old and young, common and +cultivated, were to her a navigable ocean whereon indeed she was an A-1 +skipper.</p> + +<p>“Then I lost my job as part cashier because the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_87">{87}</a></span> manageress said I added +up all wrong and she couldn’t make head or tail whether the shop was +making profits or losses and I said she had better add up herself to +make sure, and I went back to Mother Martha’s boarding house and waited, +waited for you, while Mother Martha swilled whisky by herself upstairs. +And when the Irish Doctor from the hospital came to see me Mother +Martha, who was full of whisky, said I had a lover in my room and that +she’d write and tell my father in Ireland. But I said: ‘I shall inform +my Solicitor: False Accusation,’ and she got scared like a rabbit and +crawled upstairs to swill down some more whisky.”</p> + +<p>“And then?”</p> + +<p>“Then I went to see what Zita and Pilling were doing and left Mother +Martha severely alone.”</p> + +<p>“Do you know what time it is? It’s four o’clock!”</p> + +<p>“Good night, darling.”</p> + +<p>“Good night, darling.”</p> + +<h2><a id="IX">IX.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Leaving</span> the hotel next morning, they passed the gauntlet of waiting +menials and tipped their way through to the door to the total price of +their freedom, while the door porter waved his arms in the middle of the +street in an ostentatious display to arrest a taxi for them, and a page +boy craned his<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_88">{88}</a></span> neck at the glass door to see if it was coming, to +receive, for looking interested, another sixpence.</p> + +<p>At the bank he cashed, without any trouble, a cheque for one hundred +pounds, and indulged in some purchases for himself. Unlike Edith +Wharton’s American heroes and heroines, he did not buy a grand piano, a +motor-car, or a steam yacht, but invested in shirts, waistcoats, a new +pair of pyjamas, a bathing-suit and an opera hat. At a bookstall he +bought a booklet in a bright yellow jacket entitled <i>Dictators of the +Press</i> and a recent volume of <i>Who’s Who</i>, and at lunch, having tired a +little of Eva’s conversation, absorbed himself in the literature he had +purchased.</p> + +<p><i>Who’s Who</i>, laconic but informative, recorded:</p> + +<p>“OTTERCOVE, Rex Victor Alexander Green, P. C. 1st. Baron Ottercove of +Ottercove. <i>b</i>. Ottercove, New Zealand; unmarried; <i>heiress</i>: niece, +Eleonor Viscountess de Jones; <i>recreation</i>: controlling public opinion; +<i>address</i>: Bourne Abbey, Kent; Stonedge House, S.W. 1.”</p> + +<p>He read it out aloud to Eva, who said that Pilling would approve of the +address.</p> + +<p>The little yellow booklet related in a racy style the facts which were +more or less common knowledge to the public, but re-dressed them with +gay ribbons of fancy and let them scurry down the ebullient river of +facile imagination. Frank learnt that Lord Ottercove was probably the +greatest political and financial force operating in the England of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_89">{89}</a></span> +twentieth century—greater than Lord Northcliffe, greater than Lord +Beaverbrook. Yes, greater! History records (said the little yellow book) +that if the latter two had chosen to pull together there was nothing in +the realm of the material universe that these two peers could not +accomplish. Now what they could do if they pulled together Lord +Ottercove, it seemed, could do alone. If you took the trouble to turn up +in the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i> the rubric recording the development of +journalism in the last half-century, you would learn that just as Lord +Northcliffe’s advent opens a new page, and Lord Beaverbrook’s another, +so the arrival of Lord Ottercove in Fleet Street definitely marks a +third and, possibly, last, stage.</p> + +<p>He was born (the booklet said) of English missionary stock in New +Zealand, who, after working for the furtherance of what they regarded as +the Christian Cause, in heathen lands, retired to that Commonwealth upon +whose soil our hero first saw light. Human meteors had been known to +exist before: but never quite so swift, so bright, so deft, so certain. +By seventeen, Rex Green controlled the major part of the New Zealand +industries. By the time he was nineteen he exhausted all Colonial +possibilities and went to the United States and captured Wall Street. At +twenty-four he accumulated such a fortune that, from sheer revulsion, he +stopped making money (except for such as rolled in on its own momentum), +came to England and plunged into<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_90">{90}</a></span> home politics. He unmade two Prime +Ministers, made a third, buried a fourth, and, tired of the game of +politics, accepted a peerage, buying a controlling share in the +<i>Universal Press of the United Kingdom Syndicate</i>. He bought fifty-one +per cent. of the shares of a daily newspaper, arranging that this +newspaper should purchase fifty-one per cent. of the shares of another +newspaper, which second newspaper he instructed to buy fifty-one per +cent. of the shares of a third newspaper, continuing the application of +this principle, till, controlling the first newspaper, he automatically +controlled all the worthwhile newspapers in the United Kingdom.</p> + +<p>Yet despite his meteoric sweep, Rex Green was a man of strong +attachments. So when, with the offer of a peerage, the time arrived for +choosing a new name, and all the county, town, village, street and +railway names in England lay before him, the great man remembered the +little village in New Zealand that had been his landing-stage where he +alighted we know not whence upon the Realm of Matter, and decided by +adopting its name to distinguish the village. “In Ottercove I was born, +and as Ottercove I will die,” he was reported to have said at the +banquet given in his honour by the Ottercove inhabitants during his +visit there soon after his creation, thereby drawing tears from their +eyes; a banquet followed by a tour of inspection round the village, +small, and with a railroad station so embryonic that you could not even +buy a ticket there,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_91">{91}</a></span> but picturesque in its simple rustic way, quite a +dear little place full of coves, creeks, and little brooks with beavers +and otters, quite domesticated, it seemed, and almost eating out of your +hand. The guest of honour, it is reported, beamed with pleasure as he +beheld the place of his birth, and is said to have added to his +foregoing remark at the banquet: “And in Ottercove I wish to be buried,” +thereby drawing renewed tears from the onlookers’ eyes.</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Frank, closing the book and leaning back luxuriously, “it +seems we’ve struck oil this time!”</p> + +<p>“But why don’t you get Lord Ottercove to give you some money, darling?”</p> + +<p>“I have,” he said.</p> + +<p>“How much?”</p> + +<p>“Well, I don’t know. He said ‘without limit.’<span class="lftspc">”</span> It was out before he had +meant it to be.</p> + +<p>“Without limit,” she said. “But that means that you can buy yourself +everything, darling; horses and houses with grounds all over England and +Scotland and—”</p> + +<p>“No, no—”</p> + +<p>“But yes, darling. ‘Without limit’ means everything.”</p> + +<p>“But no—”</p> + +<p>“But it does, darling. Everything, everything without limit.”</p> + +<p>He was sorry he had said it.</p> + +<p>“We must tell Mummy,” she said.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_92">{92}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Great heavens, no! Why tell her?”</p> + +<p>“She will be pleased.”</p> + +<p>“Now then,” he said, rising and helping her with her coat and then +taking <i>Who’s Who</i> under his arm. “No. I shall make the restaurant a +gift of it.”</p> + +<p>“No, darling, don’t. Pilling would love to have it.”</p> + +<p>“What does he want with a copy of <i>Who’s Who</i>?”</p> + +<p>“He’d read and read it days and nights.”</p> + +<p>“Whatever for?”</p> + +<p>“To find out who is who.”</p> + +<p>“But how will you get it over to him?”</p> + +<p>“In a taxi.”</p> + +<p>“Well, look here, you had better take a taxi and go straight to Pilling +with it.” There were moments, after prolonged social intercourse with +people, when his soul positively shrieked to be left alone.</p> + +<p>“I shall ring you up at your club,” she said as she drove away with the +book.</p> + +<h2><a id="X">X.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">At</span> the club he found a message from Mrs. Hannibal that Lord Ottercove +expected him to tea at five o’clock at his house. Frank, who was late, +having failed by sheer strength of will to accelerate the movement of +the train in the Inner Circle, jumped into a taxi at Dover-street, +imploring the driver to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_93">{93}</a></span> make a dash for Stonedge House. But the +vehicle, freighted with his dismay and anxiety, got jammed in a mesh of +other vehicles. A march through London by the Unemployed, the +taxi-driver put him wise: a call to Direct Action. Not for the first +time. Frank jumped out, paid the fare, and made a dash through the +crowd. A cordon of policemen barred his way into the square. Gaping +suspiciously at him, they none the less let him pass through to Stonedge +House.</p> + +<p>The butler informed him that his lordship was expecting him, but had not +yet come in from his walk, and conducted him into a great bare lounge +with windows overlooking the Park, a huge marble chimney-piece, as in a +club room, with an oil portrait of a member of the Royal family hung +over it, and a lady sitting by the log fire. She smiled to him and said +Lord Ottercove had asked her to meet him so that she might write an +article about him for one of Lord Ottercove’s newspapers, probably the +<i>Evening Ensign</i>. They had barely exchanged a few words when Lord +Ottercove strolled in somberly across the soft carpet with a cloud on +his face.</p> + +<p>Frank wondered whether the cause of it was not his cashing forthwith one +hundred pounds of Lord Ottercove’s money. “Why aren’t you having any +tea?” asked the host, and rang for the butler. “Well, have you talked it +over?” he asked rather wearily.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Dickin has only just come,” said the lady,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_94">{94}</a></span> thus giving her partner +away, Frank felt, rather cruelly.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove gave his visitor a searching look, as though he thought +this was a bad beginning. “They wouldn’t let me pass through the crowd,” +Frank proffered his excuses.</p> + +<p>“Nor would they let me,” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“A bewildering procession of the Unemployed,” the lady journalist +remarked. “More ominous than the last one.”</p> + +<p>“Yes. I don’t know what is going to happen. Processions are indelicate +manifestations and are best discouraged by indifference. But an idle +curiosity sends everyone out into the streets to see what is happening +and swells the ranks of the dissatisfied. It is the same with +revolutions. Mankind is periodically beset by mass dissatisfaction when, +at some obscure, unmeaning signal, men suddenly begin to air their +private grievances in a mass—as though that could possibly help them; +and then, growing hearty, and with that corporate look in their eyes, +they are ready to track down the Evil in their life to any handy +bogey—the capitalist, the Jew, the profiteer, the Bolshevik, or any +foreigner. It used to be religion—the Jesuit, the Pope, the Turk, or +the Free-Mason—but that is now out of fashion. I do not see that +anything is likely to side-track their present agitation saving some big +stunt which would appeal to their imagination—such as the increased +crop-growing scheme which Lord de Jones and myself<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_95">{95}</a></span> have in mind. Miss +Henderson, will you make a note of that for your Sunday article. Lord de +Jones, who is a scientist by training, and myself, under the auspices of +the re-dressed and re-bandaged Liberal Party (with Joe pleased as Punch +at last to have a party policy) are travelling round the world to +agitate public opinion in the countries concerned in favour of the +closing of craters, wherever such are known to exist, to increase the +crop-growing capacity of weary Mother Earth, for the general benefit of +the human race, irrespective of class or nationality. The policy is to +be launched in the broadest Liberal terms, and I want my newspapers to +give it the widest possible publicity.”</p> + +<p>“When do you hope to start on your journey, Lord Ottercove?”</p> + +<p>“I cannot tell you. We have to time it with the General Election. It +wouldn’t do to have it all behind us before the General Election begins. +A policy is only a policy if it is a promise. A difficulty is only a +difficulty if it needs overcoming. A difficulty overcome is like your +last year’s birthday present. You cannot talk of it with any credit to +yourself. And in politics you must boast in order to get credit, and +though you cannot boast of what you have done, you can boast of what you +will do, if they let you do it for them.”</p> + +<p>“Do you expect any difficulties ahead of you?”</p> + +<p>“Our difficulty is that there will not be any to enable us to overcome +them with glory. But I ex<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_96">{96}</a></span>pect we will be able to overcome that +difficulty by creating a few difficulties of the spectacular order we +require to swing old Joe back into the saddle at the next General +Election, which cannot now be long delayed.”</p> + +<p>“Is it an established scientific fact,” Frank ventured, “that the +closing of the craters <i>would</i> increase the crop?”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove frowned. “You’ve asked me that before. I cannot tell you. +It’s a journalistic fact, anyhow.” He paused. “But I have no reason to +doubt it. It stands to reason if you reflect. More heat, more pressure +from the bowels of the earth, and the quicker the blades pushed to the +surface. That’s how I read the scientific aspect of it. But de Jones +ought to know; he is a scientist.”</p> + +<p>“Rather a genius by the looks of him,” said Frank, in order to hear Lord +Ottercove reply with deliberation:</p> + +<p>“A Genius of the Untried.”</p> + +<p>“I see,” said Frank, “you will leave nothing untried, not even +questionable science, if you may thereby alleviate the lot of the +people.”</p> + +<p>“I am a man of the people,” said Lord Ottercove, “and my sympathies are +with the people. But here it is not a case of alleviating the lot of the +people. Increased crops will cheapen bread, undoubtedly, but only to +lower wages. I know my capitalists!”</p> + +<p>“But there are socialist weapons for that.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_97">{97}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Strikes,” said Lord Ottercove. “Direct action. Revolutions.”</p> + +<p>Frank was not so much disarmed as submerged by the intensity of Lord +Ottercove’s self-assurance.</p> + +<p>“No,” said Lord Ottercove. “My aim is somewhat different. In ancient +Rome the people were given bread and shows. They will have their bread +and plenty of it, the Lord and Lord de Jones willing; but I am out to +give them shows, grip their attention, side-track the vicious trend of +idle minds—or I am not a journalist.”</p> + +<p>He paused to give both listeners an opportunity to survey the boldness +and originality of his vision.</p> + +<p>“I am a journalist, and I love my newspapers. You, Miss Henderson, and +you, Mr. Dickin, must have known love in the course of your lives; my +love is akin to yours, but rather than being wasted on a mistress” (he +looked at Dickin), “or on a lover” (he looked at Miss Henderson +enquiringly), “<i>my</i> love is lavished on my newspapers. I love my +newspapers.” Tears stood in his eyes as he spoke, and Miss Henderson and +Frank lowered their heads as though they were in church. “I am amazed, +with a sweet amazement, when I suddenly look into my heart and discover +the depth of my love for these journals of mine.” Miss Henderson and +Frank suspended their breath and continued suspending it so far as this +is possible. “They were nothing. I witnessed and sponsored their birth; +guarded their adolescence; tended their youth; exulted in their<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_98">{98}</a></span> +maturity....” He paused as if having revealed too much of his heart.</p> + +<p>“There is also an intellectual side to it,” he said at last, as if to +prove that such things were not foreign to him. “I have slowly come to +the realisation that things, the ordinary common things we see and grip, +<i>are</i> not: they only seem.... They are phantoms, dreams of some one +great Dreamer who has dreamt us and presently awakes to congratulate +himself.”</p> + +<p>“And are we the dream or the dreamer?”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, pensively, “I haven’t so far rounded off my +philosophy, though now that you have put this question it is already +clear to me that two courses of enquiry are feasible.”</p> + +<p>“I mean, are we included in the congratulation?”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “my original thesis was in the negative. +But now I have come to think that for a series of Sunday articles in +which I want to incorporate my philosophy the notion that we are the +Dreamer and everything unpleasant in life the Dream about to be +dissolved in the reality of our awakening is rather more cheerful and +more suitable from a journalistic point of view and I will pursue the +Dreamer as against the Dream course.”</p> + +<p>“But is that a ground?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly. A journalistic ground.”</p> + +<p>“But I thought you were going to write philosophy.”</p> + +<p>“Journalism, as I was going to explain, is<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_99">{99}</a></span> philosophy. Life is a dream, +according to my philosophy, a dream of illusions. And this faculty of +creating illusions in a world of appearances is, I claim, the function +of the journalist.”</p> + +<p>“Make-belief?”</p> + +<p>“If you like to—to put it so crudely,” said Lord Ottercove, evidently +hurt. It seemed strange to see this rich, successful, powerful, +middle-aged newspaper magnate, once Cabinet Minister, hurt. So it seemed +he was vulnerable?</p> + +<p>Miss Henderson rose, and her host and employer, in his double capacity, +saw her out into the hall, murmuring, “So you have grasped the trend of +the Wheat-Growing Story?”—completing his instructions in an undertone. +“And will you do a story on Mr. Dickin? Dwell on the strange similarity +of his name to another famous novelist?”</p> + +<p>“Which one, Lord Ottercove?”</p> + +<p>“Dickens, my girl. Author of <i>David Copperfield</i>, <i>The Pickwick Papers</i>, +<i>Oliver Twist</i>, <i>The Tale of Two Cities</i>. You might work Mr. Dickin into +these tales. Perhaps suggest a common ancestry. Here’s a title for you: +‘Is Genius Hereditary?: The Unpublished Story of the Dickens Issue.’ You +might add that modesty, a fastidious dislike to shine in the blinding +light of his grandparent caused this shy, blinking, unassuming-looking +youth who, nevertheless, in the course of years is groping after the +crown of his illustrious forbear, to drop the ‘s’ in his name—and +substitute ‘i’ for ‘e’.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_100">{100}</a></span></p> + +<p>“I see.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I’ve given you two stories. Write them to-night and send them in +to me before breakfast to-morrow. I will read them in bed directly on +waking. Good-bye to you.”</p> + +<p>  </p> + +<p>Frank was about to follow Miss Henderson, and rose; but “Don’t go,” said +the host, and each sank back into an enormous leather chair, Lord +Ottercove opening his mouth to pose a question—perhaps why had Frank +cashed so much money—when the butler strode in, announcing:</p> + +<p>“Mr. Atkinson, my lord.”</p> + +<p>“Come in! Come in, Atkinson!” roared Lord Ottercove. “You bloody ruffian +... come right in. Well, how’s New Zealand? Gone to hell, I suppose, +since I left it, what? This is Mr. Dickin. You’ve read his books, of +course. <i>The Tale of Two Cities. David Copperfield.</i>”</p> + +<p>“Of course, of course.”</p> + +<p>“Bloody liar, you’ve read nothing!”</p> + +<p>“Too busy, too busy ...” murmured Mr. Atkinson.</p> + +<p>“How would you like turning out twenty motor-cars a day Mr. Dickin? This +man here earns more money in an hour of his sleep by growing fat than +you with all your artistry and intelligence and talent can earn in a +year!”</p> + +<p>“I assure you,” Mr. Atkinson protested, “there <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_101">{101}</a></span>is great artistry in +designing a new model ... and the machinery, too, trickish ... +devilishly trickish.... At least Archie thinks so. But then Archie—”</p> + +<p>“Is a liar,” supplied Lord Ottercove, looking humorously at Frank, who, +not knowing Archie, smiled at them both noncommittally.</p> + +<p>“Did I tell you Archie’s latest?” asked the guest.</p> + +<p>“No.”</p> + +<p>“He’d gone out hunting lions in East Africa. ‘I advance,’ he says, +‘under cover, and straight before me sits a lion. I aim—and bang! down +goes the lion. But there, a few paces off, if you please, sits a second +lion. Bang! And down he goes. I shoulder my gun and advance under cover, +and there, just in front, sits the third lion—’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>The telephone at Lord Ottercove’s feet rang discreetly, and taking it +up, “Of course,” he said. “Use your judgment. What’s the use of my +having a great editor like you if I am to do all the work? Quite. In the +question of National Defence I am supporting the Admiralty against the +Air Force. All you need know. Good-bye to you.”</p> + +<p>The motor-car manufacturer was evidently only waiting for the host to +put down the receiver, for:</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And there to the side of me was the fourth lion,’<span class="lftspc">”</span> he said, smiling +all over.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove looked pensive. “Excuse me,” he said, and taking up the +telephone from the floor spoke, “Give me Lady de Jones. How are you, +Eleonor? Look here, you’d better have Admiral Battersea to your right +and the Emir to your left<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_102">{102}</a></span> to-morrow night. I want to mark my support of +the Admiralty. What? You would rather I gave you the £30,000 necklace +for your birthday? You’re welcome to it, of course. But I advise you +against it. Why? I don’t think it will do you any good having it. Why? +It would not make you happy. Why not? The remorse at imposing on your +uncle. Not a bit, you are welcome to it, my dear; it is only advice. +Good day, to you.”</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And there,’<span class="lftspc">”</span> said Mr. Atkinson, watching his friend put down the +telephone, “<span class="lftspc">‘</span>was the fifth lion.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Excuse me,” said the host, and uttered forth a strange wood-note like a +bird (which he must have learnt when as a boy he tended to spend his +school hours in the wood behind Ottercove); in answer to which vocal +sign Mrs. Hannibal came into his presence. “Tell Franklin,” said Lord +Ottercove, completing his instructions in an undertone with an almost +silent movement of his robust lips. The instructions were so long and +explicit that the car manufacturer, despairing of securing Lord +Ottercove’s attention, buttonholed Frank Dickin and was saying to him in +a tone hushed to a level likely not to interfere with their host’s +business conversation but adequately forceful and dramatic:</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And there,’ says he, ‘to either side of me were the sixth and seventh +lion. Bang! Bang! Down they went.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_103">{103}</a></span>’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“What’s that?” Lord Ottercove questioned, Mrs. Hannibal having gone to +execute his instructions.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Down they went....’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Who?”</p> + +<p>“The sixth and the seventh lions.”</p> + +<p>“H’m.”</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And there,’ he says, ‘to the front of me ... was ... the eighth +lion!’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>Here the car manufacturer paused for appreciation, a little tardy in +coming; and then, not waiting for it and holding his curved sides to +prevent them from splitting, burst out into a Homeric roar.</p> + +<p>“Well,” he said, cheerily, linking this his leave-taking to the humorous +anecdote, but his face growing serious, “thank you for your hospitality. +What message have you for me to take back with me to New Zealand? Is the +Old Country all right? Will keep the flag flying? Eh? What?”</p> + +<p>“Sure!” from Lord Ottercove, more forced than spontaneous.</p> + +<p>“If,” said the car manufacturer, “you can keep Labour down and their +wages you’ll be all right in this old country yet.”</p> + +<p>“This is a point,” Lord Ottercove said coldly, “on which I differ from +you,” looking to Frank for recognition of this sympathetic attitude to +the workers.</p> + +<p>“But ain’t we both of us Conservatives?”</p> + +<p>“In New Zealand, yes, but not in this country, Atkinson.”</p> + +<p>“How so?” the dull, blood-shot look of an un<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_104">{104}</a></span>comprehending bull coming +into the manufacturer’s face.</p> + +<p>“In so far as I wish to conserve the liberties won by the Liberals in +the past, I am a Conservative; but in as much as I would gain new +liberties worth the conservation, I am a Liberal.”</p> + +<p>He paused, and added:</p> + +<p>“I stand for tolerance—for the complete toleration of everything short +of the intolerable.”</p> + +<p>The car manufacturer, shaking his head at the brainy madcapness that +overtakes some successful business men, made for the door, followed +cheerily by Ottercove, proffering, with subversive gusto, advice to a +man he knew incapable of following it. “Atkinson, you should stop making +money and go in for Thought.”</p> + +<p>“Why should I, if it keeps me occupied?”</p> + +<p>“It’s a vice. A man should stop when he has made enough. I’ve stopped.”</p> + +<p>Frank made a mental picture of Lord Ottercove stopping. “You don’t make +any more money, Lord Ottercove?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“No. Except for such as makes itself. Of course, every year I am called +upon to invest fresh capital. But that is not for want of any facility +of imagination in the art of spending it.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove followed Mr. Atkinson into the hall, and as he waited for +his host’s return Frank Dickin’s mind sang and tingled at the thought of +money. Money! Money! Money! How did<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_105">{105}</a></span> Lord Ottercove make so much money? +“Business ability,” was the saying. But what was it? Frank’s ideas were +vague and nebulous. Lord Ottercove, he thought, bought consols, sold +them at valuation, at contango, and depreciation; bought debentures at +quotation; accumulated stock, multiplied it by going into liquidation +... and made a fortune. Frank believed High Finance to be closely allied +with Mysticism. It was ineffable and inutterable: it could be revealed, +but not explained; its priests were inspired. As Lord Ottercove returned +to him, with a smile, he blessed Lord Ottercove’s entire organisation +for the kindly light that emanated from him. Lord Ottercove’s bias, he +was pleased to note, was artistic. He turned his turnovers like a +virtuoso, delighting in what he could do with so little effort. His +friendships, his natural disposition, were all for artists. His collar +and negligent tie bore witness to it. Whenever Frank was about to rise +Lord Ottercove would say, “Don’t go.” And when at last the guest, +feeling the indecency of lingering any longer, rose convincingly, Lord +Ottercove reminded him that he was dining with him to-morrow night.</p> + +<p>“I am afraid for my own sake,” said the visitor, “that the more you see +of me, the sooner will the reaction in you, to borrow the language of +critics, make itself felt.”</p> + +<p>“My dear fellow,” said Lord Ottercove, “you don’t know how all this +delights me. Are you,” he asked in the hushed tones of a doctor who +en<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_106">{106}</a></span>quires if your stomach is in order, “drawing all the money you want?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. Thanks awfully.”</p> + +<p>“Good-bye to you!”</p> + +<h2><a id="XI">XI.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">When</span> at half-past eight next evening Frank arrived at Stonedge House and +the footman, divesting him with critical thoughtfulness of his street +clothes, ushered him into the inner rooms, a lady, regally resplendent, +came out to meet him and, greeting him with spontaneous affability, took +him upstairs to the drawing-room, saying, “I can’t drag Uncle Rex from +the roasting fire in his room. He is always miserably cold.” But already +Lord Ottercove, festal in his immaculate tailcoat and pumps, was slowly +coming up the steps behind them, and—“How are you?” he asked.</p> + +<p>A question to which it is difficult to say anything but, “Oh, very +well.”</p> + +<p>They had not been in the blue, mirrored drawing-room many moments when +the butler flung open the doors and announced:</p> + +<p>“His Majesty the Emir of Turkestania.”</p> + +<p>A tall ample man, with a protruding shirt front, blew in like a +whirlwind and immediately began to register a vocal admiration of the +hostess’s sparkling sea-green gown. “The result of your Paris<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_107">{107}</a></span> season I +can see, Lady de Jones?” he boomed in tones of teasing gallantry.</p> + +<p>“As I know to my cost,” said her uncle. “This is Mr. Frank Dickin, your +Majesty. You’ve read his novels, of course.”</p> + +<p>“Who hasn’t read them!” exclaimed the Emir and, turning to the hostess: +“A most artistic, subversively provocative gown!” when the butler again +appeared at the door on the landing and announced:</p> + +<p>“Admiral Lord Battersea.”</p> + +<p>Up the red carpeted steps came a corpulent figure with a visage, +familiar to readers of the picture press in a large-rimmed naval cap +tilted at a rakish angle over a wind-beaten sea-dog face, now projecting +out of a prosaic but discreetly confident tailcoat.</p> + +<p>From time to time the butler appeared on the threshold, announcing the +guests as they came up the steps; and presently he ceased announcing, +and at a sign they all trooped down again to dinner. As the footman +pushed up the chair behind him, Frank began to take his dispositions. In +a moment of periodical unemployment when both his partners were engaged +in conversation, he would prick his ears—for he was curious about his +fellow men—and listen. Admiral Battersea was saying in his hoarse, +sea-grunting way to the pretty, dark-eyed woman at his side: “The Prince +of Wales, I hear, kept very fit during the trip by taking a great deal +of exercise....”</p> + +<p>He found Lord de Jones at his side peculiarly con<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_108">{108}</a></span>genial. Did he know +the Kerrs? Didn’t he! Eva? “The darling!” said de Jones. And Mrs. Kerr?</p> + +<p>Lord de Jones’s silence seemed to hold a lot.</p> + +<p>“She craved for impossible things,” Dickin suggested.</p> + +<p>“And she got them,” said de Jones.</p> + +<p>“What she wanted.”</p> + +<p>“Exactly what she wanted. They were Impossible.”</p> + +<p>They covered many a familiar field—Russia, Vienna, the Tyrol. “Did you +know her father?” asked de Jones. “I went out to Russia as a young man. +I was taken to their country place by him. She had just got married. +Lovely. She was lovely then; really lovely. Just like Eva now. If I’d +known her three days earlier she wouldn’t have married Kerr.” He was +pensive. “Eva might have been my daughter.” He stopped, as if realising +the superfluity of his reflections. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing +matters now. A journey with her round the world. And then ... the <i>coup +de grâce</i>! It is finished....” The butler was removing his plate. He +looked ironically at Frank. “It is finished,” he said, a strange light +in his greenish eyes.</p> + +<p>“Would you mind it awfully?” he asked Frank.</p> + +<p>“What?”</p> + +<p>“If I were to end it all.”</p> + +<p>“How do you mean?”</p> + +<p>“At a stroke. The world and its suffering.”</p> + +<p>“Which world?” Frank asked, he felt, rather<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_109">{109}</a></span> stupidly, but he had mixed +wine and his head was happily singing.</p> + +<p>“The suffering world.”</p> + +<p>“But I thought you were concerned to grow more wheat.” He thought Lord +de Jones could not be quite right in the head.</p> + +<p>“Wheat!” said de Jones, drinking lugubriously, “Wheat!”</p> + +<p>When the ladies had left them to their smoke and smirky wit Frank found +himself side by side with Admiral Battersea, who, he reflected, was +surely the extreme opposite of his own type, so much so that if Lord +Battersea had read his books, he would, given the chance, have gladly +got him hanged and considered it as a service to the community. Lord +Ottercove must have read his thoughts, for, “Admiral,” he said, “come +and sit by my side.” The conversation turned upon whisky, which was +described as a good thing; at which the Emir protested. “Wine,” he said, +“is a good thing; but whisky—?!”</p> + +<p>“<i>Good</i> whisky, your Majesty.”</p> + +<p>Good whisky, it was urged, was a good thing.</p> + +<p>From whisky they switched on to politicians who drank whisky and from +politicians to politics. “Ah, Joe,” said Lord Ottercove. “There’s nobody +like him. Just you wait till he is again in the saddle.”</p> + +<p>“He is a long way off it,” grunted a guest.</p> + +<p>“But he wants it, he wants it with all his heart.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_110">{110}</a></span> When a man day and +night thinks of the one thing he wants, he gets it.”</p> + +<p>“He has oratory, inspiration, energy; he only lacks one thing: a goal, +an objective,” said another guest.</p> + +<p>“What can you do?” said the host. “Liberals have no policy, since the +war. But now we have something. I am off myself with Chris”—he nodded +towards Lord de Jones—“on this stunt of ours and I hope”—he dropped +his voice to a whisper and his lips moved inaudibly—“to identify the +party with it.”</p> + +<p>Upstairs in the ball-room, where chairs had been spread in rows, a dark, +passionate man was already singing and some guests had seated themselves +and were listening, while Lord Ottercove walked about, with a long fat +cigar in his mouth, looking pleased. Frank found the pretty girl on his +left, now looking beautiful, with melodious eyes. She closed her eyes at +him in bliss and said that passionate music stirred people’s passions. +To his right, leaning back leisurely, was Lord Battersea, puffing away +at his cigar, while the baritone squeezed juice and tears out of the +“Lotusblume.” And when the song was done, the British Admiral, who had +measured his strength on the high seas with von Scheer, each, on his own +admission, emerging the victor, now with eyes dim with beatitude +murmured ecstatically:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_111">{111}</a></span></p> +<p>“<i>Die Lotusblume</i> ... <i>Die Lotusblume</i>....”</p> + +<h2><a id="XII">XII.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Next</span> morning Frank telephoned to Eva and arranged to take her out to +lunch. He waited for her half-an-hour in the Victoria Arcade and +suddenly caught sight of her mouse-grey cap and mouse-grey fur mounting +the underground stairs (Eva looked down when she walked) and she was at +his side, and she was in the taxi, and at once she was kissing....</p> + +<p>“Why so late?”</p> + +<p>“Shopping,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Mummy has come back with John from Ireland,” she told him over lunch, +“and absolutely wants me to bring you to tea.”</p> + +<p>“Where?”</p> + +<p>“At home. I mean at Pilling’s flat in Maida Vale.”</p> + +<p>As they were half way through with their lunch and waiting for the +sweets, she passed him, with a smile but without a word, an account, he +perceived, for £203 10s.</p> + +<p>“What’s this?”</p> + +<p>“Furniture,” she said. “A dining room suite for Zita. It’s her birthday, +you know.”</p> + +<p>“You ordered her that?”</p> + +<p>“I’ve had it sent this morning with a visiting card—‘With Miss Eva +Kerr’s compliments.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Oh. And who is to pay for it?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_112">{112}</a></span></p> + +<p>“I thought it would be nothing to you, darling, now that you can draw on +Lord Ottercove without limit. And it would take me years and years to +pay it out of my secretarial funds.”</p> + +<p>“God Almighty!” he said; and then again, after a pause: “God Almighty!”</p> + +<p>“What’s the matter, darling?” she asked.</p> + +<p>He grasped his head with both hands and shook it savagely. “God +Almighty!” he said.</p> + +<p>“You are an awful old miser,” she said.</p> + +<p>“But why did you do such a thing?”</p> + +<p>“I thought Pilling would look pleased.”</p> + +<p>“But why couldn’t you <i>ask</i>?”</p> + +<p>“But you haven’t seen the furniture! It isn’t at all expensive for what +it is: it’s real lemon wood.”</p> + +<p>“But whatever made you buy such a thing?”</p> + +<p>“Because they already have a bedroom suite and are paying off for it; +but not a dining room suite. They can’t afford a dining room suite.”</p> + +<p>“But what is that to me?”</p> + +<p>“But I’ve <i>told</i> you: it’s her birthday, darling, and it’s nothing to +you.”</p> + +<p>“But to run up to such a figure! Are you mad?”</p> + +<p>“But you haven’t seen it!” she cried impatiently. “Wait till you’ve seen +it. What’s the use of arguing before you’ve seen it!”</p> + +<p>“I’ll stop it!” he said, rising.</p> + +<p>“It’s been delivered this morning, darling.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll get them to take it back.”</p> + +<p>“You can’t do such a thing; it’s a birthday gift.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_113">{113}</a></span></p> + +<p>“I shall apply for facilities of payment, and Pilling can pay it off +within the next hundred years.”</p> + +<p>“You can’t, darling. It would look so shabby. And Pilling wouldn’t think +you were a gentleman. Besides, I said to them at the shop this morning: +‘There will be no trouble: Lord Ottercove, you know....’ And they looked +like understanding.”</p> + +<p>“This morning?”</p> + +<p>“That’s why I was late, darling.”</p> + +<p>He felt that he had nothing further to say.</p> + +<p>They took a taxi-cab and went straight to the Pillings. They found the +family, except for Raymond, in full strength. Pilling, a strong, wiry +man with crisp, curly black hair, frivolous on the surface but really +with ‘no nonsense about him,’ was almost fulsomely flattering and trying +to speak French to Mrs. Kerr.</p> + +<p>“He speaks it remarkably fluently for an Englishman,” was Mrs. Kerr’s +comment as she turned to Frank. “I was just telling Mr. Pilling that my +father, who had graduated at eight different faculties and universities, +could speak twelve languages like a native.”</p> + +<p>“I envy him,” said Pilling, with a little bow which he thought +continental ideas of good breeding exacted. “If I had his abilities and, +I understand, wealth, all the doors would be open to me. As it is I try +to keep up my French whenever the opportunity presents itself.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_114">{114}</a></span></p> + +<p>“In buses and trains,” added Zita. “Morty’s such a bore!”</p> + +<p>“Well, French is an amiable language,” said Frank, “but I find it +difficult to scintillate in it—even more difficult than in any other +language!”</p> + +<p>He expected the natural retort: “The difficulty would seem to lie in +your scintillation rather than in any particular language.” But that +also seemed to be their own difficulty. Pilling replied: “My own idea, +though you may correct me, is that nothing so helps the study of foreign +languages as travel, and as I hope, with the financing of my project, +presently to come into some money, my beloved Zita and myself propose to +undertake an extensive European trip to improve our linguistic equipment +and to broaden our general outlook.”</p> + +<p>“If you go to Abbazia,” cried Mrs. Kerr eagerly, “I can give you an +introduction to the lady friend of the Spaniard Rodrigo. A very nice, +quiet, well-read woman.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes!” Eva cried.</p> + +<p>“Or if you pass through Innsbruck, you must absolutely look up my friend +Fräulein von Wiesendorf, and I am sure she would be very glad to give +you German lessons.”</p> + +<p>“I am very much indebted to you for this information,” Pilling bowed, +“and if you allow me I will make a note of their addresses.” He produced +out of his waistcoat pocket a neat leather-bound pocket-book and pencil, +and their two heads<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_115">{115}</a></span> mingled as he recorded: “Fräulein von Wiesendorf, +in the care of Herr Oberst von Wiesendorf, Comptroller of Public Morals, +Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria.”</p> + +<p>“And what about Tamara Leonidovna?” said Eva.</p> + +<p>“Frau König? No, no, she is too fiery; she will consume him.”</p> + +<p>As they passed into the dining room, Frank perceived a striking suite of +bright polished furniture. As he stood gaping at it, Eva slightly +pinched his arm in the doorway, and her look seemed to say: “Now what +did I tell you?”</p> + +<p>“I congratulate you,” Mrs. Kerr turned to Frank, “on your very good +taste.”</p> + +<p>“It’s ‘Me-Too’s’ selection,” said Zita.</p> + +<p>“But it’s Ferdinand Fyodorovich’s—how shall I say?—inspiration.”</p> + +<p>“The Power-behind-the-Throne! Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Pilling—rather like +a horse.</p> + +<p>“I’ve heard of your prosperity. Very charming and touching.”</p> + +<p>“Dam’ fine fibre in this wood,” said Pilling knowingly.</p> + +<p>“What did I tell you, darling?” Eva said.</p> + +<p>“And not at all expensive,” added Mrs. Kerr. “When I come to think what +we paid for our Japanese suite in our Meran Schloss—”</p> + +<p>“I told you it’s a bargain,” Eva said.</p> + +<p>“Dirt cheap,” said Pilling, “considering,” he explained, “the <i>finesse</i> +of the fibre.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_116">{116}</a></span></p> + +<p>“I suppose it is,” said Frank, bewildered.</p> + +<p>“Good value,” Eva said.</p> + +<p>“Only the colour is wrong,” said Zita quietly.</p> + +<p>They all turned to her enquiringly.</p> + +<p>“The wall-paper,” she pointed by way of explanation. “Still, it’s very +nice and sweet. And now let us all sit down to tea.”</p> + +<p>“There is a Russian saying,” laughed Mrs. Kerr: “<span class="lftspc">‘</span>You don’t look into +the mouth of a gift horse.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“I wish I knew Russian,” said Pilling.</p> + +<p>“You must come and stay with us,” said Mrs. Kerr, “when things mend in +Russia.”</p> + +<p>The door opened and a lanky, awkward boy on the verge of youth walked +timidly into the room.</p> + +<p>“Hello, John!” said Zita.</p> + +<p>“Is that John?” Frank cried. “To think it’s John, who fiddled with my +razor blades way back in the Tyrol! How he’s pushed up!”</p> + +<p>John giggled bashfully.</p> + +<p>“Come up, John,” from Eva.</p> + +<p>“John, say how do you do,” from Zita.</p> + +<p>A tremulous leaf of a lad, at that awkward age which borders on +adolescence, when one is neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring, +came up lankily and shook hands with a shy grin. And that nervous youth +had once been a dare-devil child!</p> + +<p>“Hello, John,” from Pilling.</p> + +<p>“John is so shy,” from Eva.</p> + +<p>“Come and have tea, John,” from his mother.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_117">{117}</a></span></p> + +<p>Pilling looked him over, up and down. “Cheer up, John!”</p> + +<p>John giggled bashfully.</p> + +<p>“John is so shy,” Zita said.</p> + +<p>“You’ll be all right on the farm, John,” from Eva.</p> + +<p>“John is going on the farm when we go back to Ireland,” Mrs. Kerr +explained.</p> + +<p>“To our cousins in Ireland,” said Eva.</p> + +<p>“With Daddy,” said Zita.</p> + +<p>“Cheer up, John!” from Pilling.</p> + +<p>“John is so shy,” from Zita.</p> + +<p>“Don’t be shy, John,” from Eva.</p> + +<p>“It’s a real family reunion to-day,” observed Mrs. Kerr. Very charming +and touching. I am sorry Raymond couldn’t come, or we would have all +been together.”</p> + +<p>“I have a real feeling for family,” Pilling remarked, “and consider +Zita’s people like my own.”</p> + +<p>“It’s very delightful and homely. And I hope we will have a rattling +good holiday together before Eva starts on her tour with Lord de Jones +and John and I return to Ireland.”</p> + +<p>“Lord de Jones asked me to come with him as his private secretary +because he likes me very much and I remind him, he says, of Mummy. We +start for Paris end of this month.”</p> + +<p>“My husband can’t hear the name of de Jones,” Mrs. Kerr explained, +“without a thirst for violence seizing him. I suppose it is because Lord +de Jones came into my life almost immediately on our getting<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_118">{118}</a></span> married. +And, curiously enough, I loved him for the same sort of thing as I loved +my husband. Both had wandered away from their families, seeking +something remote and romantic, and both had alighted on me! I called +them ‘my lost dogs.’ And Lord de Jones—he was then the Honourable +Christopher Mosquito—was also called ‘Werther.’ Only, unlike Werther, +he was not a poet, but a scientist, with queer, sombre ideas about the +end of the world and his mission. Very romantic and charming. And my +husband was Kestner, the fiancé, you know. Only they were not friends, +as in <i>Werther</i>, but enemies. They used to go out with my father bear +shooting on sleighs, but really trying to kill each other. I waited at +home, wondering which of them would come back. Very exciting and +thrilling.”</p> + +<p>“Lord de Jones telephoned to me,” said Eva, “to come and see him on +business, and as he was ill in bed he asked me to sit down beside him +and hold his hand, as he said it did him good as I reminded him of +Mummy.”</p> + +<p>“When I was a young girl like Eva,” Mrs. Kerr pursued with a look of +tender reminiscence, “I used to visit a young student, who lived in an +attic and who was terribly in love with me, and sit on his bed, while he +looked into my eyes and wept....”</p> + +<p>“But Mr. Bumphill thinks it’s he who got me a secretarial post—but I +said to him: ‘Confound your <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_119">{119}</a></span>impudence!’<span class="lftspc">”</span> from Eva. “<span class="lftspc">‘</span>We want no +introductions to anybody,’ I said, ‘We are well known. My fiancé—’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Who’s your fiancé?” asked Zita eagerly.</p> + +<p>“Him,” said Eva, with a casual nod at Frank. “<span class="lftspc">‘</span>My fiancé,’ I said, +‘secured admission to Lord Ottercove by merely putting us into a +story.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>Pilling looked at Frank enquiringly.</p> + +<p>“That’s true,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“I congratulate you,” Pilling said. And then, not without emotion: “I +sincerely congratulate you. You are a made man.”</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And as for Lord de Jones,’ I said, ‘he’s Mummy’s friend,’ I said, ‘and +no admirer of yours.’ So Mr. Bumphill looked very thoughtfully at the +goldfishes and said at last: ‘Come, let us kiss and be friends.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Now I was thinking,” said Pilling as he shifted his look from Eva to +Frank, “of starting”—he looked for approval to his paramour—“with the +expert assistance of my dear Zita, a West End dancing establishment of +my own, if Lord Ottercove saw fit to finance the project.”</p> + +<p>Eva sat facing Frank across the long tea table, staring at him with her +large violet eyes, as if to take him in properly and now, as Pilling +spoke, a faint look of irony came into them that made them ripple with +light. As Frank passed her in a narrow passage she pinched his arm.</p> + +<p>“What’s all this nonsense about your going away<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_120">{120}</a></span> with de Jones?” he +asked, and saw that she appreciated in the briskness of his tone the +nervous jealousy that prompted it. “You’re not going, really, are you?”</p> + +<p>“No.”</p> + +<p>“Will you, darling, dine with me to-night? and we might go to the +theatre afterwards.”</p> + +<p>“If Zita lets me.”</p> + +<p>“She surely will.”</p> + +<p>“If Pilling lets her.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, hang Pilling!”</p> + +<p>“Hang Pilling!” she echoed.</p> + +<p>“I do want you to come to the theatre with me to-night.”</p> + +<p>“To something funny,” she said.</p> + +<p>“We’ll go to the Opera. I want you to hear <i>Die Walküre</i>.”</p> + +<p>“Is it a funny thing?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, screamingly funny!”</p> + +<p>But she missed his intonation. “We saw, Baby and I when she was here +last month, <i>The Constant Nymph</i>. Rather good.”</p> + +<p>“Who is Baby?”</p> + +<p>“My little Irish cousin. She is back again in County Clare. And there +was a man on my right who said I was like Tony. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, +‘but you are just like my conception of Antonia.’ ‘I have a nobler +soul,’ I said: ‘I am more like Tessa.’ And he called me ‘The Nymph.’ +Quite amusing.”</p> + +<p>But she did not find it very amusing; she sat still,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_121">{121}</a></span> listening with an +attentive but unreceiving look, like a good little girl in church.</p> + +<p>In the taxi she sighed and said, “Another three weeks, and you won’t see +me any more. Perhaps never again.”</p> + +<p>“But what do you mean?”</p> + +<p>“De Jones,” she said and nodded gravely.</p> + +<p>“But you said No. I asked you this afternoon and you said No, you +weren’t going.”</p> + +<p>“I didn’t want to disappoint you,” she said.</p> + +<p>On nearing home she asked the taxi-driver to make a noise—and the +obliging man pressed the accelerator—“to make Zita jealous,” she +explained. “Now that they live together, Pilling never takes her out, +and if he does, once in a blue moon, they go by bus; never in a taxi.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve noticed she has grown bitter.”</p> + +<p>“Bitter. Bitter. That’s the right word for her. You have hit on the +right word, darling. Bitter. I must tell her.—Louder!” she called to +the taxi-driver.</p> + +<p>The man was forcing his machine to convey the illusion of machine-gun +fire.</p> + +<p>“Still louder!” said Eva.</p> + +<p>At last a window raised itself at the top and a head, dim and nebulous +in the gloom, thrust out under it. “Oh, it’s you, Eva?” came Zita’s +voice.</p> + +<p>“Arrived,” answered Eva.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_122">{122}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="XIII">XIII.</a><br><br> +THE SPIDER</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">In</span> the vast cream-and-blue office all the lamps were discreetly shaded +and cast a mild, steady light; the electric radiators exuded an even, +purified warmth. Lord Ottercove seemed to go on with his work +unencumbered, nay, stimulated by Frank’s presence. Frank would arrive at +any time after six o’clock in the evening, and the braided +commissionaire who confronted applicants with questionnaires would at +once call out to the lift boy: “Mr. Dickin to see his lordship.” And +Frank would be taken straight up, without relays on the way, and handed +by the original lift boy to the topmost page, who, without a second’s +hesitation, announced him to his master: “Mr. Dickin, m’lord,” +immediately followed by a “Show him in.” He would saunter in noiselessly +across the polished floor, Lord Ottercove taking no notice of him, and +lounge luxuriously in one of the enormous blue chairs, and dream. Now +visitors would be shown in, and Frank would listen, wonder and learn. +Learn of the enormous net of activities controlled by Lord Ottercove. +Now the page would announce that the editors of Lord Ottercove’s +newspapers whom he had called for a conference were on the landing, and +indeed one could already hear the shuffling of editorial feet. But Lord +Ottercove<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_123">{123}</a></span> might be settling a point with Frank as to the relative value +of Buddha’s philosophy in the light of Einsteinian physics, or the +historic veracity of the Immaculate Conception, and he would call out to +the page: “Don’t let them in, unless it be over your dead body!” And the +page, flattered by the momentous responsibility thrust on his slender +shoulders, leaned zealously against the door behind which editorial feet +were still shuffling, till the great chief, the historic or philosophic +point settled, shouted: “Let ’em in!” They entered in a thin file, men +of assorted girths, sizes and physiognomies, and Lord Ottercove as he +beheld them would call out to Frank, with the leer of a Nero: “How do +you like them, Dickin? eh? Aren’t they a gang of bloody ruffians, what?” +while the editors with solemn mien and stately port settled round the +octangular table, Lord Ottercove among them but eminently presiding. And +now for matters of high policy! “Damn John Knox,” Lord Ottercove would +say. “These interminable Sunday articles about him! I am sick to death +of him. Let us have something new and fresh.” And gradually he would +expand into a living message and tell them what it was he wanted his +newspapers to say; his hands would rise, his fingers spread and come +together, till they held the extracted substance, the salt, the +Bovril-like quintessence of the meaning he wished to have conveyed to +the waiting world outside. Fascinated, his<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_124">{124}</a></span> editors watched him, +fascinated and mesmerised, while he, like a conductor of orchestra, +played on their heart strings, till even the sulky and backward ones +melted.</p> + +<p>They rose, the conference being over. Tired, he sat there, his hand on +his brow.</p> + +<p>“To get them to pull in a team. Not so easy,” he said.</p> + +<p>“I don’t think your staff likes me very much,” said Dickin. “They think +I have wormed myself into your heart and become an evil influence. A +sort of Rasputin.”</p> + +<p>“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Ottercove. He rose, pressed the bell, ordered +dinner.</p> + +<p>The butler sprang out of the floor, the octangular table was cleared of +papers and fittings. Chicken, caviare took their place. And champagne +bottles.</p> + +<p>They sat down to dinner. The host, who had had the telephone placed at +his elbow, would every now and then take up the receiver and communicate +with the editors of his newspapers, or the editors would themselves +telephone to ask for instructions, when he would say: “I am supporting +the Air Force against the Admiralty. All you need know.”</p> + +<p>“But last Friday when I had tea with you at your house you were +supporting the Admiralty against the Air Force,” Frank said.</p> + +<p>“Getting too cocky,” Lord Ottercove explained.</p> + +<p>“I suppose they are.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_125">{125}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Besides, it doesn’t do for a newspaper proprietor to be one-sided. He +must steer the middle course.”</p> + +<p>“I suppose he must.”</p> + +<p>To be alone with a man who has wrecked more than one Ministry, and +register his sigh cumulative of a strenuous day’s work, to feel the +contact of power! By no means a negligible experience. Frank felt he +would like to incite Lord Ottercove to further action. But what action? +Something big, something shattering, something gigantic. Wreck the +Celestial Empire? Establish a Kingdom of Jewdom? a Negro Republic? Imbue +the Fascisti with Socialist sense?</p> + +<p>His heart swelled at the thought and he looked at his host tenderly. “I +should like to write ... to describe ... all this....”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “and why not?”</p> + +<h2><a id="XIV">XIV.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">And</span> when Frank called on him again at his office, Lord Ottercove was +lying on the sofa, covered by a luxurious Eastern rug, the telephone on +the floor by his side and two electric radiators turned full on to him, +dictating to a lady stenographer discreetly seated on the edge of a +chair beside him. He looked enquiringly at Frank as if to ask: “Now +isn’t that good enough copy for you?”</p> + +<p>Frank looked hot and more than usually per<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_126">{126}</a></span>plexed and embarrassed. He +had experienced some difficulty in getting dressed for dinner. He had +broken his collar stud, then torn his collar. He found the shirt studs +would not go through the shirt front button holes, while the new collar +stud would not keep open. He discovered that he had no clean tie and +that the waistcoats, except for one which had no buckle at the back, +were all in the wash, and the one without the buckle had, moreover, +shrunk so much that he could not get the buttons through it. He lost his +temper and his hat, and then, unable to secure a taxi, dashed off to the +nearest Underground station and stepped into the wrong train. Emerging +at the other end, he trod on to some slippery nastiness on the pavement +and nearly broke his neck. He realised that he was over two hours late +for dinner and he felt deeply distressed and unhappy. Lord Ottercove, on +the other hand, looked harassed. Perhaps the news of the dining-room +suite had reached him. Or perhaps he thought Frank wasn’t drawing nearly +enough. But whenever now he met Lord Ottercove, Frank read a meaning +into his look. Lord Ottercove looked sad, dubious, alarmed; or was +trying not to look dubious, alarmed or sad. The uncertainty of Lord +Ottercove’s reactions to the scale of Frank’s financial manipulations +began to tell on the latter’s nerves. “As much as you need,” Lord +Ottercove had said. But his needs had grown with his wants, and alarmed +him. And he was as much pained by the thought of exceeding Lord +Ot<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_127">{127}</a></span>tercove’s generosity (Lord Ottercove’s watchful generosity) as he was +by the possibility of erring quite needlessly on the side of financial +timidity and reluctance to use his good fortune. There was no kind of +security in this arrangement, and suddenly he felt he couldn’t stand it. +It was already in his throat. “I want to ask you to—”</p> + +<p>“I’ve had a man in here just now playing”—Lord Ottercove pointed at the +piano—“Rimsky-Korsakoff. That lovely bit from his opera.... Oh, what’s +the name? It’s on my lips....”</p> + +<p>“I want to ask you to turn off that financial arrangement,” Frank said. +“It’s too upsetting. I—”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove pressed the bell button.</p> + +<p>“Stop that banking arrangement Mr. Dickin has with me,” he said as Mrs. +Hannibal entered the room.</p> + +<p>Frank gasped.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannibal made a shorthand note of it and retired.</p> + +<p>“It’s on my lips,” said Lord Ottercove. “I know the opera well. Lord! +now what is the name?” He pulled out his watch and looked up at Frank.</p> + +<p>“I know I am late. An evening of misadventures culminating” (he was +going to say “in your stopping my principal source of income,” but +pulled up in time) “in my nearly breaking my neck as I stepped on to +some slippery nastiness on the pavement.” His sense of social injustice +provoked by Lord Ottercove’s action, who, after depriving him of the +prin<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_128">{128}</a></span>cipal means to a comfortable existence, remained lying on the sofa +calmly stroking his pekingese, vented itself through a side outlet. +“Confound these dogs and their owners! They should be made to respect +the integrity of pavements. Pavements were made for men, not for dogs. +But in this country it’s all topsy-turvy. If I were the Prime Minister +of England I should exterminate the breed.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove suddenly jumped off the sofa and, without a word, went +over to the octangular table in the middle of the room and made a note. +Then, rising, “I will act on your suggestion,” he said.</p> + +<p>“What? exterminate the breed of dogs?”</p> + +<p>“Not I. The Prime Minister.”</p> + +<p>“Hardly a popular task you are giving him?”</p> + +<p>“Give him just enough rope to hang himself on,” said Lord Ottercove. He +rang the bell, ordered a journalist to write an obituary article on a +world-famous novelist about to be operated upon for appendicitis, and +instructed a reporter to spend all night outside the house of a man +remanded on bail on the chance of his committing suicide; then leaned +back and said: “As you are too late for dinner I am taking you to-night +to sup at the Kiss-Lick Club.”</p> + +<p>“Are you really?”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove began taking off his boots. Frank watched him, and was +moved. There is something moving in seeing a great newspaper magnate and +owner of several score million pounds removing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_129">{129}</a></span> his boots like any other +citizen of the Western portion of the British Empire. One cannot assist +at such a spectacle without an inward feeling that this should not be +so. It should not be so, when a somebody-and-nobody in the Eastern part +of the same empire has his sandals removed for him by servile wives or +servants. And yet, resent it as you may, there was something fine, +unquestionably right and noble, in seeing Lord Ottercove remove his +boots, in a quick, breezy manner as though he thought this the most +natural thing in the world.</p> + +<p>And he did more than remove his boots. He disappeared into the bathroom +and returned from there in his vest and pants—just as any other man +might do—and yet still looking the part, still the unchallenged +proprietor and director of the <i>Daily Runner</i>. He slipped into pumps and +a boiled shirt prepared for him by his valet Gilbert, into the black +braided trousers, tacked on the stiff white collar—so tortuous a task +for most men—quite effortlessly, and presently was tying his white +bow-tie. And now he emerged in an exquisite tailcoat, spruce and tight +like a glove.</p> + +<p>In the historic lift they descended to the ground and stepped into the +great motor, Mimi, the decadent and undogly pekingese, with them. A +crowd of <i>Daily Runner</i> hands had gathered at the corner of the +building, and Lord Ottercove touched his hat with his forefinger on the +chance of their having saluted him. “They’re awfully disappointed, I +guess,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_130">{130}</a></span> that I am not emerging from that office with a woman.” The huge +propellered car ran swiftly and imperiously down the deserted Fleet +Street and, suddenly, spread out wings in front and behind and left the +ground, clearing the roofs of Fleet-street houses, flying +Piccadilly-ward. Frank gasped with surprise.</p> + +<p>“You didn’t expect that, now did you?” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“I did not.”</p> + +<p>“This is, in fact, the first model of a ‘Winged Chariot’ to reach this +country. But I guess I won’t be long the only one to have a chariot.”</p> + +<p>“Winged chariots!” mused Frank. “If, in addition, we could have winged +love, a winged life, I would not refuse eternity at that.”</p> + +<p>“If you had the refusal of it!” grunted Lord Ottercove, from the depth +of the car, hatless as usual.</p> + +<p>“You talk like a publisher,” Frank laughed; and presently asked: “Do you +believe in immortality, Lord Ottercove?”</p> + +<p>“Not a bit of it!”</p> + +<p>“As Lord Balfour once said, ‘If there is no life after this, then life +is a miserable joke. And whose joke?’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“When did he say that and to whom?”</p> + +<p>“He is reported by Lady Oxford to have said it to her.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove took out a pocket-book and pencil<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_131">{131}</a></span> and made a note in it. +For a while he looked pensive.</p> + +<p>“You are thinking—?” Frank said.</p> + +<p>“Of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s opera. What the hell is the name?”</p> + +<p>“After love, music is the best thing in the world.”</p> + +<p>“Love,” said Lord Ottercove, “is an inconvenience.”</p> + +<p>“You mean sexual love?”</p> + +<p>“No, love. Sexual love is a nuisance.”</p> + +<p>Waiters were falling prostrate before Lord Ottercove at the Kiss-Lick +Club and (in a manner of exaggeration) were committing hari-kari before +him. But he gathered them round him and said: “Can any of you tell me +the name of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s famous opera?”</p> + +<p>They couldn’t.</p> + +<p>He called the head waiter: who couldn’t. He called the manager; the +director and his sleeping partner; they summoned the bandmaster, who +returned to his band and conferred with the musicians and came back, +shrugging his shoulders. Lord Ottercove looked sad and perplexed. “There +is no solution,” he said at last, “but to get hold of Rimsky-Korsakoff +in Leningrad or Moscow.”</p> + +<p>“He is dead,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“Really!” Lord Ottercove shook his head. “ ... betrayed again ...” he +muttered. He ate gloomily for a time, and watching him Frank wondered +how even the rich in this world could not<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_132">{132}</a></span> evade the anguish of thwarted +longings! The two men ate in silence. When the meal was drawing to its +close, Lord Ottercove looked up at Frank. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I +will telegraph the name to you to-morrow morning.”</p> + +<p>“You are very kind,” said Frank. “You cannot imagine how that relieves +me.”</p> + +<p>“Now this,” said Lord Ottercove more cheerily, “is instructive for you +to see as a novelist. A real Michael Arlen atmosphere!”</p> + +<p>“Ah!”</p> + +<p>Frank did not tell Ottercove that he had already been to the Kiss-Lick +with Eva a few nights before. He perceived that Ottercove liked to +astonish him, and so he adopted the attitude of a newly-fledged chicken +and to everything that was pointed out to him he said: “Ah!”</p> + +<p>“Do you see that young man over there sitting at the side of my niece?” +said the host. “Now it is my turn to continue your serial. That is +Raymond Kerr.”</p> + +<p>“Raymond Kerr!”</p> + +<p>“Raymond Kerr.”</p> + +<p>“Raymond Kerr! Her favourite boy? The one she used always to talk of. +‘Raymond has my eyes.’ Raymond this. Raymond that.”</p> + +<p>“There is only one Raymond. And there is Chris de Jones.”</p> + +<p>“I know him.”</p> + +<p>“But you don’t know that the two are related.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_133">{133}</a></span></p> + +<p>“How related?”</p> + +<p>“Quite spontaneously. Chris is his dad—his ‘Papa.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“It never occurred to me! Yet, of course. There is a sort of +resemblance.”</p> + +<p>“A very marked resemblance.”</p> + +<p>“Though Raymond is good-looking.”</p> + +<p>“His mother’s boy.”</p> + +<p>“And de Jones looks saintly but hideous.”</p> + +<p>“He looks the part. A man with a mission. An ominous mission. Wait and +he will tell you that he is the new Messiah. He came out with it once +under chloroform; said his mission was to blow us all up.”</p> + +<p>“I think,” said Frank, “that it is quite conceivable that the end of the +world might come about in some such casual way. A fanatic like that.... +Suppose he blows up the earth instead of increasing the crop?”</p> + +<p>“I wish he did,” said Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Is he mad?”</p> + +<p>“Mad as a hatter! But a genius.”</p> + +<p>“Of the untried,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove looked at him first circumspectly, then quizzically.</p> + +<p>“Hullo, hullo, Mr. Kerr!”</p> + +<p>“How do you do, Lord Ottercove.”</p> + +<p>“This is Mr. Dickin, the novelist, you know him?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Kerr, an extremely foolish-looking man, fixed a suspicious pair of +eyes on Frank. “How do you do?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_134">{134}</a></span></p> + +<p>“And you are happy on your farm in Ireland?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Kerr took Lord Ottercove by the arm to where Lady de Jones and +Raymond were sitting amorously together, and said in a significant +undertone:</p> + +<p>“This is my revenge.”</p> + +<p>Then, as significantly, he walked away.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove took Frank Dickin by the arm and led him towards Eleonor +and Raymond Kerr. “This,” he observed, “is really getting to be more and +more of a Michael Arlen atmosphere, of great help to you as a novelist, +I daresay.—Well, Eleonor, how are you? Hullo, Raymond. Enjoying your +fame as a prospective co-respondent, what? Some men win battles and get +fame; others write lyrics; others, again, well—do as you do. This is +Mr. Dickin, the novelist. You know my niece? Kerr, do you know Mr. +Dickin? You don’t? But he knows all about you. You will see that he does +as soon as you read his serial. Eleonor, how is your divorce getting +on?”</p> + +<p>“I expect it will be all right, Uncle Rex, but the difficulty is you +never know just when it will be over, and with the baby coming....” She +looked at Dickin fearlessly. She was a modern woman.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said her uncle, “you cannot time these things.”</p> + +<p>“The divorce?”</p> + +<p>“I mean the baby.”</p> + +<p>“The baby is a deliberate protest on my part<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_135">{135}</a></span> against Chris’s deserting +me for Raymond’s mother.”</p> + +<p>“Quite. I appreciate your motive. But you should have timed him for a +little later. As it is, the baby will land between two stools. And as +for Chris, he is at present more interested in Raymond’s sister than +Raymond’s mother.”</p> + +<p>“I cannot have the baby landing between two stools. Chris must +acknowledge the baby as his son. It’s bad enough that Raymond has been +tricked by him out of his heritage, and, as Raymond’s son, the baby is a +de Jones by blood, and ought to have the name, too. Mr. Dickin, you are +a psychologist. Don’t you think I am right?”</p> + +<p>“You are quite right, Lady de Jones.”</p> + +<p>“I see your point,” said her uncle. “Chris may deny the paternity of the +baby: but he cannot deny its grandparentage. So he might as well not +deny anything. And Raymond will not press his parental claims.”</p> + +<p>“No. You see, he feels that thus he will be getting something of his own +back, if not for himself, at least for his son.”</p> + +<p>“If it is a son.”</p> + +<p>“I hope it is.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, here is Chris. We’ll speak to him about it. Hullo, Chris.”</p> + +<p>“Hello, Rex.”</p> + +<p>“Now look here, Chris. Eleonor wants to marry Raymond. I don’t mind. +But—” (his lips moved<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_136">{136}</a></span> silently) “she’s used to a great name; she’ll +feel chilly, naked, don’t you know, as plain Mrs. Raymond Kerr.”</p> + +<p>“I’m very sorry. But what can I do? I’d gladly sell him my name. But I +know of no means to do so.”</p> + +<p>“No—no, it’s all very simple. It’s all perfectly simple. You adopt +Raymond as your son and heir. When you die he will be Viscount de Jones, +and while you still potter about he’ll be—what will he be?”</p> + +<p>“The Honourable Raymond Mosquito.”</p> + +<p>“Well, that’s better than nothing. Here, Eleonor, I propose that”—his +lips moved silently—“Chris adopts Raymond straightaway. Then the +baby’ll be born a de Jones, and no need for Chris to adopt the baby. +Kills two birds with one stone.”</p> + +<p>Raymond seemed very pleased.</p> + +<p>“But the baby’s nearly due.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well, in that case, Chris, you’ll have to acknowledge it as your +own child, for, you know, it won’t fit into its proper time.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t mind,” said Chris.</p> + +<p>“What will he be?”</p> + +<p>“Depends on what you call him.”</p> + +<p>“What will you call him, Eleonor?”</p> + +<p>“If it’s a boy, I’ll call him Robert.”</p> + +<p>“The Honourable Robert Mosquito.”</p> + +<p>“Now that’s all right. All perfectly in order. When can you do it?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_137">{137}</a></span></p> + +<p>“What?”</p> + +<p>“Adopt Raymond.”</p> + +<p>“Not till after the divorce, of course.”</p> + +<p>“Why, Chris?”</p> + +<p>“I can’t adopt my co-respondent, can I?”</p> + +<p>“But what nonsense, Chris!” cried Eleonor. “Raymond doesn’t come into +the divorce at all. It’s his mother who is the co-respondent, or +whatever the name happens to be.”</p> + +<p>“I thought it was Raymond’s sister,” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“It was the mother at the time we started the proceedings, and let us +stick to her or we shall never get divorced,” said Eleonor irritably. +“You have no memory, Chris. You forget you are taking the blame on +yourself.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t mind.”</p> + +<p>“Still,” Lord Ottercove observed, “I doubt the wisdom of adopting +Raymond till after the divorce. It might prejudice the case. The +difference, as I envisage the situation, is whether Raymond is to be +Chris’s elder or younger son, and if the baby is to be born before +Raymond is adopted, Raymond will be the younger brother of the baby.”</p> + +<p>“What! the younger brother of his own son!” Eleonor exclaimed. “I +understand nothing.”</p> + +<p>“That’s right. The baby’ll be the elder brother of his own father. And +why not?” said her uncle.</p> + +<p>“I’d rather,” she said, “he was what he is: the son of his father and +mother.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_138">{138}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “it’s all very simple. It’s all perfectly +simple. All you have to do is to adopt the baby. And he will be +Raymond’s son again—The Honourable Robert Mosquito.”</p> + +<p>“No, he won’t,” said de Jones.</p> + +<p>“What will he be, Chris?”</p> + +<p>“Master Robert Mosquito.”</p> + +<p>“Well, all this will right itself,” said Lord Ottercove, “the moment +Chris dies.”</p> + +<p>They all looked at de Jones expectantly.</p> + +<p>“But, of course, the baby may turn out to be a girl,” he said.</p> + +<p>“Quite conceivably she may.”</p> + +<p>On the way home, in the taxi, Frank once more reviewed the matrimonial +situation revealed before him at the Kiss-Lick Club and found that he +could not improve on the harmony of Ottercove’s solution.</p> + +<p>At the club he found a telegram from Eva, despatched from Dublin:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>Wire money at once. Love. Eva.</i>”</p></div> + +<h2><a id="XV">XV.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">He</span> was wakened at his club by an attendant who brought in his morning +mail and a telegram. The telegram ran:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>The name of Rimsky Korsakoff’s opera is quote Sadko unquote. +Ottercove.</i>”</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_139">{139}</a></span></p> + +<p>So it was!</p> + +<p>It was a “reply paid” telegram, and Frank scribbled back:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>Congratulations. Much relieved. Unspeakably happy. Dickin.</i>”</p></div> + +<p>Among the morning mail was a letter from Eva, bearing an Irish post +mark.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>I am sending you</i>,” she wrote, “<i>all my beautiful love, and +please send me some money as quick as ever you can. Will tell you +reason for it afterwards. Am leaving with de Jones for Paris and +Rome etc. end of next week. If you really wish to see me alone we +could meet at Holyhead as I am afraid to come to London on account +of Daddy and his people who are stuffy and churchy old birds and +would get suspicious, darling, if I stayed away too long with you, +don’t you see, and if you came to Holyhead I could pretend, you +see, I only went to see Aunt Jane etc. in Dublin, don’t you see. +Can’t write any more as Postman is outside and screeching for my +letter—‘Country Post!’ Accept all my Beautiful Love etc. Also I +have a little cat and I have called Him Ferdinand. And don’t forget +to meet me Tuesday midnight on the landing stage at Holyhead and +arrange everything for our Honeymoon.</i></p> + +<p class="r"> +<i>Eva.</i>”<br> +</p></div> + +<p>Frank, who hated the idea of arriving empty-handed but, since the sudden +stoppage of the Otter<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_140">{140}</a></span>cove source did not dispose of the necessary sums, +shrank at the thought of Eva’s extravagance. By a happy chance he heard +of a draper and milliner in the Edgeware Road who was selling out her +business and he went and bought up most of her remaining stock, thinking +Eva would be glad to have it. The box he brought with him to Holyhead +comprised a corset, eight pairs of crisp calico knickers, a number of +strong cotton stockings, a skirt, and a couple of hats. He left the box +containing these treasures in the room at the hotel and went out to the +pier to meet the boat which, at midnight, a lighted shell out of the +dark, suddenly swam up towards him; and on board, waving to him, already +stood Eva.</p> + +<p>She alighted with a portmanteau, and the boat train took them back into +Holyhead Town. “I thought something was sure to happen, and you wouldn’t +come,” he said.</p> + +<p>“All the village boys,” she said, “came to see me off at the station. +‘Ah!’ they said: ‘Here’s Miss Kerr going off to London!’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Did they now?”</p> + +<p>“They did.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve brought you a present,” he said.</p> + +<p>“Where is it?” she asked quickly.</p> + +<p>“It’s in the room at the hotel.”</p> + +<p>“Is it a ring?”</p> + +<p>“No, it’s not a ring.”</p> + +<p>“Is it—I mean—jewelry?”</p> + +<p>“No—it’s clothes.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_141">{141}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Clothes?”</p> + +<p>“Clothes.”</p> + +<p>“I thought you’d like to have them,” he said, opening the box at the +hotel.</p> + +<p>She took out the things one by one and laid them out on the bed. “H’m! +H’m!” she said. “Of course, darling, they’re old, very old.”</p> + +<p>“Never been worn,” Frank said, a little stiffly.</p> + +<p>“I don’t mean that. I mean old-fashioned. Those two hats, for instance. +Nobody wears such hats nowadays.”</p> + +<p>“I am sure you’d look very well in them.”</p> + +<p>“It’s the fashion when Mummy was a young girl or even earlier.”</p> + +<p>“Still,” he said, “they look strong. I don’t see why you shouldn’t wear +them.”</p> + +<p>“And these stockings—cotton, you know.”</p> + +<p>“They look very neat and strong,” he said.</p> + +<p>“These knickers”—she held them out—“calico—they scratch.”</p> + +<p>“Well,” he said, a little ruffled, “I only wished to please you.”</p> + +<p>“I know. But—”</p> + +<p>“This bodice,” he said. “I am sure it’s very nice.”</p> + +<p>“No one wears corsets now, darling.”</p> + +<p>“Well,” he said, evidently hurt, “I am sure I haven’t bought it for +myself, and if you don’t want to wear it—”</p> + +<p>He went away and lay sulking on his bed. “Grati<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_142">{142}</a></span>tude!” he thought. “For +all his trouble and expense....”</p> + +<p>“I’ll wear them,” she said, coming up to him tenderly. “You know I’d do +anything to please you, darling. Let us have no more quarrelling about +these clothes, darling; they aren’t worth it.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, aren’t they?” he said, rolling over and turning his back to her.</p> + +<p>But she came up to him, tenderly, sauntered up to him, lovingly, on tip +toe, and overtook him on the other side. “You look funny,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Funny?”</p> + +<p>“Kind of puzzled.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve poured some beer into a glass containing peroxide of hydrogen.” He +stood up and looked at her: “Most unusual beer.”</p> + +<p>“Your skin, darling.”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“Against my skin.”</p> + +<p>“Is that,” he asked, “why they say that love is only skin deep?”</p> + +<p>“Never mind what they say.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t mind,” he said, and drew her passionately to himself.</p> + +<p>“I like,” she said, “when you begin suddenly to breathe like that—like +a steam engine.” A strange look of prepared abandonment came onto her +face as she drew herself up to him and closed her eyes.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_143">{143}</a></span></p> +<p>“Eva, you looked like that then ... on that hill.”</p> + +<p>They were awed, breathless. Standing behind her, he clasped her with his +sinewy arms, his hands like travelling flames. She threw her head back +as his mouth pressed into the warm hollow of her shoulder, burnt her +through and through.... He lifted her and carried her, with a simulation +of ease, across the room. “There.... And the village boys in Ireland all +mad on you. And Ferdinand has all this—and this—and this—all to +himself.”</p> + +<p>“All for you,” she said.</p> + +<p>In the morning he woke up to a mood of warning and sat up. “Ottercove—”</p> + +<p>“Yes, darling?”</p> + +<p>“Has stopped all my money.”</p> + +<p>“He hasn’t!” she cried. And also sat up.</p> + +<p>“He has.”</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t have wired to you for money had I known, darling, of +Ottercove’s action. He is a walking mountain of impudence!”</p> + +<p>“But you needed it all the same for your journey.”</p> + +<p>“No, it wasn’t the journey. It was for Charity.”</p> + +<p>“Charity?”</p> + +<p>“You see, I was asked to go about getting subscriptions for a life-boat +saving fund or something and got all sorts of people to put down their +names, but neglected to collect the money from them. About £20 in all. +So I thought it would be simpler to wire you for it, don’t you see.”</p> + +<p>“I see.”</p> + +<p>“Couldn’t remember their addresses.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_144">{144}</a></span></p> + +<p>“So you had no money for the journey?”</p> + +<p>“A French lady called Thérèse Lapin, who lives in Dublin, gave me money +to go to London with.”</p> + +<p>“Whatever for?”</p> + +<p>“On a tour of inspection. She has a daughter in London and Madame Lapin +has heard in a round-about way that her daughter is living with a +married man. So she wants me to take some eggs and butter to her +daughter and report to her on my way back whether the daughter lives +with a married man or whether she is straight and the rumour has been +spread through malice.”</p> + +<p>“So you want to go to London?”</p> + +<p>“Darling, I must, for I wouldn’t know what to do with the eggs and +butter. They’re in the portmanteau.”</p> + +<p>The sun now looked into the room, and Eva, sitting up in bed, delicately +sipped her chocolate. “And all the time while I was away in Ireland I +talked about you to my little cousin Baby, and I said, every time there +was a noise outside, that it must be you arriving, and Baby ran out to +look and there was no one there. And on Sunday mornings I would say to +her: ‘Now if you come to church with me you will see him, for he is +surely there, sitting in his pew.’ And, together, we’d tear off to +church, talking all the way of your sitting there already, and Baby’s +cheeks—she is only twelve, you know—glowing with excitement. ‘Now,’ +I’d say to her, ‘you are going<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_145">{145}</a></span> to see him.’ And we would both get so +excited that I’d forget myself that I was only teasing her.”</p> + +<p>“What is your cousin Baby like? Is she nice?”</p> + +<p>“She’s like me, only her hair isn’t a bit curly, but quite straight, and +she has brown eyes instead of violet ones.”</p> + +<p>In the afternoon they sat not far from the sea, and Frank was beginning +to snooze. Eva had got him to buy picture postcards and stamps and, +sitting beside him, scribbled innumerable postcards.</p> + +<p>“To whom all this, Eva?”</p> + +<p>“Village friends.”</p> + +<p>“Let me see.” Nearly all recipients were men, addressed as “Esquires.” +One was a “Mr.” “Hello,” he said, “why is this one a ‘Mr.’ while all the +others are ‘Esquires’?”</p> + +<p>“Oh,” she said, “it’s good enough for him.”</p> + +<p>“It isn’t fair, you know; it’s vulgar to discriminate in these things.”</p> + +<p>“But if I write ‘Esquire’ to him he’ll go round showing it to all the +people in the village, and Daddy might find out I am in Holyhead with +you. You don’t know the frightful danger I am in. I must be so very +careful, darling, on account of Daddy and his people in Ireland, who are +very strict on morals and things. It is a village, and everything, you +know, goes round like wild fire. And I only told them I was going down +to Dublin to see Aunt Jane and would be back the same day.”</p> + +<p>“What awful busybodies!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_146">{146}</a></span></p> + +<p>“And on board there was a register for anyone who cared to sign his name +in it. And I couldn’t help myself, you know, and I signed my name: Miss +Eva Kerr. Destination: London, viâ Holyhead.”</p> + +<p>“Whatever did you do that for?”</p> + +<p>“I couldn’t help myself, darling. Because the register is reprinted in +all the local Irish newspapers, you see, and I thought it would be so +nice to have all the old fogeys in the village, don’t you see, read it +in their evening papers: ‘Ah,’ they’d say: ‘Here is Miss Eva Kerr off to +London viâ Holyhead.’ Rather nice, you know, if you know what I mean.”</p> + +<p>“Well, here we are in Holyhead. And aren’t we pleased! Or what is your +idea of perfect bliss?”</p> + +<p>“I like to eat chocolates and as I eat them to think of you, Ferdinand.”</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>But I feel,’ said Byron,—‘and I feel it bitterly—that a man should +not consume his life at the side and on the bosom of a woman, and a +stranger; that even the recompense, and it is much, is not enough, and +that this Cicisbean existence is to be condemned.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“What’s the matter?”</p> + +<p>“Don’t know. Don’t feel very well. But you are a nurse; you ought to be +able to tell me what is the matter.”</p> + +<p>Eva looked very enigmatic. “H’m.... Yes, yes.”</p> + +<p>And then, hard up for an answer, she kissed him.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_147">{147}</a></span> She kissed him again +and again and, it seemed, would not stop.</p> + +<p>To kiss and to be conscious of conferring a favour, to feel ashamed of +it, and to wonder when, where, <i>your</i> satisfaction came in—was now his +melancholy lot. She was, he felt, shy of him, had always been, +fundamentally, shy of him. Only in the taxi on their long drive back to +the hotel she let herself go. She wanted that love which he could only +feel when he had lost her. Women want it there and then, and men cannot +give it till it is too late....</p> + +<p>The railway porter, carrying her box of clothes to the London train next +morning, looked as though he did not think much of them, anyhow. Frank +bought himself a copy of <i>The Nation & Athenaeum</i>, and Eva, asked what +she wanted to read, said, with some hesitation: “Buy me ... <i>Home +Chat</i>.” It gave him a pang—a twist of the heart.</p> + +<p>She read it stealthily and looked up at him. All the way to London Eva +attracted everyone’s attention on account of her unusual hat and dowdy +skirt coming down nearly to her heels and keeping off, Frank thought, +possible lewd glances at her legs.</p> + +<p>Arrived in London, she went straight away to the Dublin lady’s daughter. +She had a rattling good time with them, went off for the week-end with +them in motor-cars to picnics, races, shows and theatres, attracting +great attention by her extraordinary new clothes and the enormous plumed +and fruit-clad hats<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_148">{148}</a></span> (the married man who shared a flat with Mlle. Lapin +visibly seduced by Eva’s charms), and, on passing home through Dublin, +she reported nothing to the mother; only said she had forgotten to +deliver the eggs and butter, but otherwise had had a rattling good time.</p> + +<p>Lord de Jones, whom she had met in London, had given her money to go on +a learned errand for him to Edinborough University in connection with +their forthcoming mission to the continent. But, after lunching with her +lover, she decided she had better spend the day with him.</p> + +<p>The day was bright. The shops beckoned invitingly.</p> + +<p>“Buy me—”</p> + +<p>“You know Lord Ottercove has stopped all my money.”</p> + +<p>“Buy me all the same a little book of poetry.”</p> + +<p>“What poetry?”</p> + +<p>“Any poetry. A little book—to read in bed. It mustn’t be heavy, you +know.”</p> + +<p>“Well—yes.”</p> + +<p>“I saw a nice little book in blue leather in a shop window the other +day. I am sure it’s poetry. Buy me that.”</p> + +<p>“Anything else?”</p> + +<p>“Chocolates. To read in bed and eat and think of you, Ferdinand.”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“And do send me roses for my birthday.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_149">{149}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Yes. The fifteenth of this month. I won’t forget.”</p> + +<p>She saw him off at the station, but left before the train went to meet +de Jones, who had telephoned for her that morning.</p> + +<p>“Remember: <i>roses</i>. All other flowers, Pilling says, are vulgar.”</p> + +<p>She waved to him at the corner, and was gone.</p> + +<h2><a id="XVI">XVI.</a><br><br> +THE FAREWELL</h2> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>Mummy was surprised</i>,” she wrote to Frank from Ireland a few days +later, “<i>at the many underclothes you’ve given me. But when I said +it was a parting gift on account of my going away to Rome and Paris +with de Jones, she said it was all right. As for de Jones, Darling, +I am Furious; I told him all. And He is Furious. I told him all the +Truth that I never went on his errand to Edinborough University but +spent the day with you in London as well as the money He’d given me +for Travelling Expenses on sweets and things. And He says he is +going to dismiss me. Never mind, if I’ll flirt with Him he won’t +dismiss me. And I said to him that you bought me a box of +chocolates before you left, and a little book of poems to read in +bed. ‘Oh,’ says He, ‘that is a Consolation!’ I shall be in Lon<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_150">{150}</a></span>don +all next week, packing. We leave on Friday morning. Shall wait for +you on Thursday at Paddington at Eleven Sharp. It will be our last +day together.</i></p> + +<p><i>Your Eva.</i>”</p></div> + +<p>But she was not there at eleven. She was not there at twelve. As he +paced up and down he was conscious that all the porters and the waiting +taxi-cab drivers looked at him with interest. Shameless flag vendors +buttonholed him with pertinacity. He paced on, angry and exhausted, his +thick heavy overcoat on his arm, and a small fly flew straight into his +ear; and pacing up and down vehemently he stepped again onto some +slippery nastiness on the pavement. “Must tell Ottercove,” he made a +mental note of it. “Have this scandal ventilated in the House.” At one +o’clock he went into the station bar and drank a glass of beer on an +empty stomach, and suddenly he took courage, ceased to be concerned +about the formidable mass opinion of the porters on the subject of +himself, saw them as mere independent, ignorant at that, individuals. +The movement of the traffic, the sight of a girl stepping into a coach +and revealing a ripening, silk-stockinged leg—such sights and sounds +began to work on him, till his mind, with the beer and the oxygen +inhaled, hummed like music, and saw God.</p> + +<p>“Well—!” he said; and then again: “Well—!”</p> + +<p>“Why, darling, what has happened?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_151">{151}</a></span></p> + +<p>The presence of John emphasised her crime and irritated him unspeakably. +“You ask me; you—you—you ask me—” He could not continue. He cast an +accusing look at the brother, who giggled bashfully.</p> + +<p>“Zita said I must take John about with me and show him London for he is +so shy and it’s his last day, you know. To-morrow he is going on a farm +in Ireland. ‘And,’ says she, ‘you’ve only one young brother.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“And what of her? It’s our last day together.”</p> + +<p>“Exactly! But she wants to be alone with Pilling all the time. How she +loves Pilling!”</p> + +<p>“And why aren’t you wearing the nice new clothes I gave you?”</p> + +<p>“Child: it won’t do.”</p> + +<p>“It won’t do?”</p> + +<p>“No, child.”</p> + +<p>While John was looking into a shop window, Frank pleaded with her +whether they could not really spend this last day alone.</p> + +<p>“I will telephone to her,” said Eva, as if struck by a brain-wave, “and +see what she says.”</p> + +<p>She vanished in a telephone box, and Frank and John watched her mute +lips through the glass door assiduously explaining into the telephone +what looked a difficult, and at the other end an uncongenial, +proposition.</p> + +<p>“No,” she said, emerging from the box, “she says John must come with us, +because he is so shy and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_152">{152}</a></span> would lose himself alone in London. ‘You have +only one little brother,’ she said.”</p> + +<p>“This is damnable,” thought Frank. “At any rate let us go and have lunch +somewhere,” he said aloud, “and think it over.”</p> + +<p>They lunched in embarrassed silence, broken here and there by an +embarrassed question. “You crossed over when?”</p> + +<p>“Tuesday. Arrived in London very late, so went to a hotel. Travelled +with nine Catholic priests,” she said, “so all went to the same hotel, +and to the Cinema together, and we all held hands.”</p> + +<p>“Nine Catholic priests, and you in the middle?”</p> + +<p>“No, at one end. Father Michael and I holding hands, and all the other +eight, too, in a chain. Very intriguing.”</p> + +<p>“Must have been.”</p> + +<p>After lunch, as they were sauntering along, an idea occurred to Frank. +“John,” he said, “would you like to go to a theatre—by yourself?”</p> + +<p>“Fancy! all by yourself like a grown-up man!” said Eva.</p> + +<p>John giggled nervously.</p> + +<p>“To a show of Maskelyne and Devant?”</p> + +<p>“Fancy!” said Eva. “Acrobats, John! Acrobats and things. Eh? John?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t mind,” said John.</p> + +<p>They jumped into a taxi, and Frank bought a stall ticket, and John, +accepting it with a kind of nervous misgiving, was ushered into the +darkness<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_153">{153}</a></span> (the performance having already begun), the attendant like a +gaoler on his heels. “Tell him, tell him to look after John, who is so +shy!” Eva cried. But John and his gaoler had vanished in the dark.</p> + +<p>Freedom at last! They were free, free, free; free of all but the +exigence of their freedom. He avoided the shops with her, but she must +have a bottle of scent and let him buy all that the saleswoman +insinuated. She gave in completely to the saleswoman’s idea of what was +the proper thing for her. The saleswoman seemed to have no doubt, and +appreciating Frank’s secret loathing of her and her sex, made it a point +of honour for him to comply with Eva’s tutored wishes.</p> + +<p>“And I just want to look at these gowns.”</p> + +<p>“Better come out and look at Nature. A lovely day!”</p> + +<p>“I’d like that gown.”</p> + +<p>“No doubt. I’d like a new suit.”</p> + +<p>“Must have another gown to go about with de Jones, you know. In Paris +and Rome.”</p> + +<p>“I got old Ottercove to stop his payments too soon, it would seem. Too +soon, too damned soon!”</p> + +<p>“Couldn’t you borrow, perhaps?”</p> + +<p>“Couldn’t I!... Women will sell their bodies and souls for a vivid rag,” +he said bitterly.</p> + +<p>He looked at her and read her thought. With a melancholy twinge, she +reflected that she had evidently sold hers without any such extenuating<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_154">{154}</a></span> +material compensation. “You are an awful old miser,” she said.</p> + +<p>He suffered hell. Damn it all, she seemed to have no idea about the +value of money! She did not know that the number of pounds in his +pocket-book was strictly limited.</p> + +<p>Through the Park they drifted into Kensington Gardens and walked across +the grass towards the Serpentine. Eva wouldn’t let him take her arm.</p> + +<p>“Bad form,” she explained.</p> + +<p>They hired a boat, and as he rowed he watched her steer. She steered +intently but very badly, zig-zagging needlessly all the way, while he +puffed and sweated at the oars; which provoked him into biting sarcasm.</p> + +<p>“Crooked again!”</p> + +<p>“Why don’t you put it straight with the oars?”</p> + +<p>“Can’t you see me,” he said, puffing, “otherwise employed?”</p> + +<p>“Now don’t get ratty, darling, or you will feel sorry afterwards.”</p> + +<p>“Why sorry?”</p> + +<p>“When you think of it—remember, I mean.”</p> + +<p>By the time they had rowed back, it was time, she judged, to go and +fetch John from the matinée. “If we are not there, he won’t know where +to turn to: he is so shy,” she said. “And Zita said to me, ‘Take care of +John; you won’t always have your little brother with you.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>This solicitude on behalf of John angered him.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_155">{155}</a></span> “Damn it all, we thought +nothing of leaving him alone at the inn.”</p> + +<p>“What inn, darling?”</p> + +<p>“On the top of the Patscherkofl mountain in the Tyrol. Don’t you +remember?”</p> + +<p>Her eyes darkened and lightened again. “I remember, darling, I +remember.”</p> + +<p>“And it’s our last day together.”</p> + +<p>“I am thinking—”</p> + +<p>“What?”</p> + +<p>“I have no real travelling costume for my Continental trip.”</p> + +<p>“I have no proper overcoat, damn you.” Oh, why were there no girls as +beautiful as Frances Doble and as intelligent as Henry James!</p> + +<p>“Well, John, did you enjoy the performance?”</p> + +<p>“Great fun,” stammered John.</p> + +<p>“Tell us all about it, John.”</p> + +<p>“There was a man,” said John, “and a ring and another man on the ring—”</p> + +<p>“That will do, John. Wait till we are settled down in the café,” she +said.</p> + +<p>“Now then, John.”</p> + +<p>“There was a ring and a man held on to the ring and a girl held on to +the man and—”</p> + +<p>“Wait, John. I was just thinking, if Zita asks me all about the +performance I must tell the same story as John.”</p> + +<p>“All the more reason why John should be allowed to disclose his +impressions,” said Frank.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_156">{156}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Yes. Go on, John.”</p> + +<p>“There was a man,” said John, “and a ring—”</p> + +<p>“What will you have, John,” she asked, “tea or chocolate?”</p> + +<p>On the way home, John talked of the performance. “There was a man,” he +would say, “with a ring, and a girl held on to the man.”</p> + +<p>“Shut up, John. That will do.”</p> + +<p>She went in with John, and Frank said he would wait for her in +Kensington Gardens to take her out to dinner. He was tired and glad to +be alone. He sat down on a bench, and a nasty little girl of ten or so +disengaged herself from a group of urchins and sat down between him and +an old lady and began to tease him, pointing at him with her dirty +forefinger. “You funny-looking bloke, you. Now why don’t you smile?” and +all the other urchins crowded round and giggled at him. “Come on! Let’s +see a smile!” the girl went on, encouraged.</p> + +<p>The old lady at his side saw fit to intervene. “Behave yourself,” she +said, “or go away and leave the gentleman alone.”</p> + +<p>“It’s ‘im I’m torking to, not yer; you ‘old yer tongue.”</p> + +<p>“Disgraceful girl!” said the old lady. But the little girl went on at +Frank:</p> + +<p>“Come, show us you can smile. Now then!”</p> + +<p>“Shut up, will you!” suddenly Frank roared at her.</p> + +<p>The girl went red and shrivelled up on the bench.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_157">{157}</a></span> “It’s ‘er,” she said +tearfully, pointing at the old lady, “not me. None of ‘er bloomin’ +business.”</p> + +<p>One of those nasty winter fogs was descending on to London when Eva, +late by an hour, appeared at the gate.</p> + +<p>“Is sweet’eart!” jeered the girl, and all the urchins giggled with her.</p> + +<p>“Well,” he said, rising, “I <i>have</i> had a time, waiting for you.”</p> + +<p>“Zita and Pilling kept me back with their nonsense about my getting de +Jones to talk to Ottercove about Pilling’s dancing place. I told them +I’d be late and keep you waiting, but Pilling said: ‘Ferdinand will +wait.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>They were rattling along in a taxi, and he was telling her all about the +cheeky girl in Kensington Gardens.</p> + +<p>“Darling, I am not interested.”</p> + +<p>“In anything that happens to me.”</p> + +<p>“That isn’t true, darling. When I am away from you I always talk about +you. This evening, for example, while you were waiting for me, I asked +them if they thought you were very beautiful, but Pilling said: ‘I +shouldn’t say he was beautiful to look at, but he is very clever. I wish +I had his brains.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>To Frank, who for years had been regarded as the fool of the family, +this universal discovery of his brains was stimulating and refreshing.</p> + +<p>At dinner Eva was crotchety because he would not take her out to the +Savoy to dance. “It isn’t really<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_158">{158}</a></span> at all expensive, darling. It really +isn’t. I only want to go so as to tell Zita how you don’t mind throwing +away money on me. Because Pilling is so careful, and she hates it so. +Only to be able to tell her, you see.”</p> + +<p>“Well, tell her.”</p> + +<p>“What?”</p> + +<p>“Anything you like.”</p> + +<p>“H’m. That’s an idea. I never thought of that.”</p> + +<p>“Tell her we dined with their Majesties.”</p> + +<p>“Zita,” she confided to him, “doesn’t seem to like you much. She said, +‘The one good thing about him is that he has pots of money.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Pots! Barrels full! Brains and money. Beauty, too! Oh, what a lucky man +am I! But why is it that I feel I’d like to go and blow my brains out?”</p> + +<p>“If you don’t stop quarrelling,” she said, “I will leave immediately, +and you will be sorry all your life.”</p> + +<p>“Then we shall leave together.”</p> + +<p>On their way back he stopped the taxi-cab a few doors away from +Pilling’s house and walked on with her into a more deserted lane. They +walked in silence. Suddenly it came to him that he might be seeing her +for the last time. And what was it that she resented? That he had so far +omitted to say the fateful word? He guided her to a sort of blind door +in the masonry of a house, and took her in his arms. But a policeman +hove in sight and said,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_159">{159}</a></span> “Move on, please. You’re not allowed to stand +here.”</p> + +<p>They went on and turned into another lane. She hurried him, saying that +Pilling and Zita were surely anxious that she was not yet home. It +angered him, and at the thought of the last inadequate hours together, +full of bickerings and vexations, tears flooded his eyes as he suddenly +kissed her good-bye. He stood in the darkness, watching her as she +walked to the end of the lane and, without turning to him, disappeared +behind the corner.</p> + +<p>He walked away at an accelerated pace. He said: “No. Never again. It’s +finished as if it had never been! I am glad, and nothing that may come +will wipe out the memory of my saying here, deliberately, immediately on +parting, that I am glad I did not say the word.” He walked the length of +Bayswater-road into Oxford-street and all the way to his club, and on +entering his room pulled out his diary and wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“ ... <i>I put it down on record</i>....”</p></div> + +<h2><a id="XVII">XVII.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">It</span> was thus that soon after Eva’s departure with the mystical de Jones, +Frank found himself one afternoon strolling vacantly down Oxford-street. +A crowd of people. Bustling, frolicking folk. Women, gay, charming, so +beautiful, so tender, whose<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_160">{160}</a></span> arms, if they could guess, might open for +the kiss—and who passed him without a look! Flitting by on what was the +latest in footwear, thin ankles, swelling into glossy silken calves—oh, +rapture! oh, seduction! How lonely one could be in a crowd. For it +wasn’t—he reflected—that there was any one cohesive and receptive +sensibility in that crowd, which frolicked and enjoyed life while he +suffered, into which he could have merged with any profit. Groups of +laughing young voices.... Why could he not talk to them without causing +them to feel they had been slighted, or landing himself at +Marlborough-street Police Station? Why could he not join them without +very soon being bored? There they were, groups on the face of it, but +really solitary, yearning, suffering souls like himself. There was no +sort of one central well in all this diffused accidentally accumulated +hilarity from which one could draw. All came out to look at the +feast—and all looked without being filled.</p> + +<p>He saw rich men in furs and motor-cars, and wished them joy of it; he +read the New Year’s Honours list, and sensed no pang; he watched old +colleagues overtake him on the road to fame, and felt no jealousy; he +had seen his father’s fortune blown to smithereens, without a blink: but +that every woman whom he looked at twice did not immediately yield +herself to him was something he found hard to bear, harder to forgive. +To possess all the comely women in the world, the female portion of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_161">{161}</a></span> the +universe, in a sort of cumulative, consummative kiss—it was his dream. +For—indisputably—one woman was not like another; and how? how enjoy +them all? While lying, as he thought appeased, in one woman’s arms, the +thought that there must be another in some particular different from his +own would at once renew his restlessness and send him searching, +searching round the globe. Content at last, content and happy at Port +Said, the thought of what he must be missing in Calcutta was sufficient +to uproot him and send him on his onward quest over plain and mountain, +dune and sea, continent and ocean, till, with ever greater frequency, he +would rebound in London, in Piccadilly Circus, the reputed centre of the +world, with his heart still burning, with hot tears in his parched +throat. “I can’t bear it,” he said, looking with a kind of stupor at the +fountain he had seen before. “I will kill myself....”</p> + +<p>A practical man inessentially, Frank was impractical in essentials. He +had a kind of vague idea that the whole universe and all that it held +could, under favourable conditions, be embraced in a woman’s kiss, the +consummation, <i>das Welt-Alles</i>! The all-in-all. There was a critic just +then who wrote copiously in the <i>Adelphi</i> about the One and the Many. +Yes, perhaps the One was to be realised most clearly in one of the many. +“Very likely,” he said, “very likely.” Was he already beginning to +regret his Eva’s absence? No, he had weighed her kisses in the balance +and had found them wanting. Except<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_162">{162}</a></span> for that first virgin kiss upon the +mountain-top when she came up close, close to him, took a long breath +and closed her eyes....</p> + +<p>He turned into Piccadilly, steadied his thoughts, and continued in a +Tolstoyan mood of honest self-analysis: “Then what am I to do? Renounce +the flesh and turn saint? Difficult. Difficult and uncongenial. +Essentially the world is good and one ought to know how to be happy. But +happiness is a strange thing: it is in two parts and is conditioned by +an inner equilibrium. On the surface I oscillate in a kind of twilight, +through black night into the dawn and back: but within, my soul sings +like a lark and it is morning. And all is well and beyond implication. I +knew it long ago. Yet I cannot sit down in the cool quiet of a pillared +cathedral as I would by choice, with all my passions and lusts raging in +me, raging in me! Essentially all is well. Certainly. Certainly. But +that does not do away with the surface things being all wrong. Mere +pinpricks. Perhaps. But the skin is a sensitive tissue.”</p> + +<p>Tired out, he sat down on a bench in the Green Park and pulled out his +<i>Times</i>. How it assumed that all was well and orderly in the world. With +what propriety it examined and relegated to the requisite sections and +columns the haphazard irrelevance of life. But how sane, how quiet and +dignified and, withal, informed. Under a rubric headed “Science,” he +read:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_163">{163}</a></span></p> +<p>“ ...In the course of the year Jeans has explored the problem further, +and has reached conclusions of immense significance in our conceptions +of the universe. These are, in short, that the chemical elements of +which we have knowledge are only one end of an indefinite series and +that end a degeneration from an indefinitely more complex set of atoms +in the distant stars and nebulæ. The conditions in which life is +possible are an extreme case, possibly unique, and came about by a +destruction of matter through countless aeons of time. The primary +physical process of the universe is the conversion of matter into +radiation, a process not even suspected until 1904. The primary matter +of the universe consists of highly complex atoms, dissociated and +incapable of association inasmuch as they change their make-up millions +of times in a second.”</p> + +<p>He stopped reading and pondered. “Dissociated and incapable of +association.” Significant.... Significant and suggestive. “The primary +matter of the universe ... consists of atoms incapable of association +... inasmuch as they change their make-up millions of times in a +second.... Like me,” he thought. And came to the conclusion that he was, +his salvation lay, in the primary matter of the universe.</p> + +<p>Calmed down, appeased by a distant hope of merging into the primary +matter of the universe and finding peace in changing his make-up with it +millions of times in a second with more inward profit than heretofore +and more pleasure than he found<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_164">{164}</a></span> in his already frequent reboundings in +London, he strolled on across the Park and called in to see Lord +Ottercove.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove, as he saw him, looked as though he had no wish to change +his make-up millions of times in a second, but was indeed perfectly +content with his make-up such as it was and, moreover, dissociated +himself from the primary matter of the universe, being content to dwell +and act within that end of the indefinite series of chemical elements +come about by a destruction of matter through countless aeons of time +and described by the paragraph in <i>The Times</i> as an extreme, possibly +unique, case in which life (and journalistic activity) was possible.</p> + +<p>“Forgive me for not rising,” he said. “But all these things will fall +off my lap if I do.”</p> + +<p>“What need for me to forgive you,” thought Frank, “since you have +already forgiven yourself?”</p> + +<p>There was an air about Lord Ottercove as though he knew what a rich and +splendid type he was for the imaginative novelist—and he was always +ready to help the young and striving artist—but could scarcely +comprehend the established novelists’ blindness to the riches lying at +their feet. Now that he knew Frank had conceived him as the hero of his +new novel he not only proved a willing sitter, but lent his own +imagination towards bettering Frank’s plot. And this he did in a way +that tended to enhance the prestige and lovableness of the hero by +placing him in more favourable situations than those<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_165">{165}</a></span> envisaged by the +author. Frank, in relating the plot of his new novel, might say: “And +here the scientist gets the better of the hero by an ingenious use of +the latter’s newspapers to an end the hero cannot at this stage +envisage.”</p> + +<p>“Quite,” Lord Ottercove would say. “But by pretending not to see the +scientist’s game the newspaper proprietor outwits him in the following +chapter.”</p> + +<p>Frank was grateful to Lord Ottercove for the privilege of seeing him in +all his multifarious attitudes from every angle and aspect: in his +beautifully fitting tailcoats (there were several of them in the office +and in every one of his several town and country houses); in his silk +pyjamas; in the heroic act of jumping out of bed; sitting on the edge of +it in pensive mood with his bare feet dangling meditatively; in +dishabille; in dressing-gown and <i>en pantoufles</i>; or shaving in his vest +and pants: in all attitudes and from all aspects Lord Ottercove, Frank +could but remark, was unequivocally, indubitably great. It seemed as if +Lord Ottercove in his unfailing thoughtfulness provided him with these +opportunities to study him at all hours and in all attitudes. If Frank +had not, as yet, had the opportunity of studying his lordship <i>au +naturel</i>, it was because such study, both for descriptive purposes in a +work of fiction and as a practical opportunity, was, he willingly +recognised, in advance of current customs and usages.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_166">{166}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Well, how are you?” said Lord Ottercove. “How are your sales?”</p> + +<p>In the first week of January, and having run through some twenty issues +of one of Ottercove’s newspapers, <i>Pale Primroses</i> by Frank Septimus +Dickin appeared, in a pale jacket liberally sprinkled with flowers of +the title, on the bookstalls; yet enjoyed but a melancholy sale which, +with rumours of a new European imbroglio, dropped like the jaw of a man +astonished. “Completely and utterly stopped,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“Look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “you should get married.”</p> + +<p>“Gladly. But who will marry me with my sales stopped? My publisher’s +wife’s great aunt died the other day, and he said to me over the +telephone: ‘I think it only right to close down the office for a week to +commemorate our respect for the dead woman.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove thought deeply, and said:</p> + +<p>“You should get married.”</p> + +<p>“To whom?”</p> + +<p>“I’ll introduce you. A peach of a girl. Beautiful. A wonderful face. I +can look at it for hours at a stretch without getting bored. The trouble +with her is that she’s got ... too much money.”</p> + +<p>“But will she marry me?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_167">{167}</a></span></p> + +<p>“She would if I gave you ... gave you <i>The Evening Ensign</i>.”</p> + +<p>There was a pause. “It’s a pity,” said Frank, “that I don’t know her.”</p> + +<p>“I will introduce you.”</p> + +<p>“When?”</p> + +<p>“Come and dine with me to-morrow night at my house.”</p> + +<h2><a id="XVIII">XVIII.</a><br><br> +THE COTTAGE</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Not</span> unnaturally, cottagers are apt to dream of palaces, while it is well +known that princes eat their hearts out for being denied the joy of +dwelling in a cottage. “The Cottage,” situated in a shrubby garden high +up in the Finchley-road, was Lord Ottercove’s unofficial home, and +whither he retired whenever he felt like swinging a loose leg. Owning a +great house in the West End of London, and several castles and country +houses, he preferred to dwell in the seclusion of “The Cottage” in the +Finchley-road. The ground floor had but two rooms: a dining and a +sitting room, and here at the after-theatre hour he was that night +dispensing supper to a bevy of chorus girls escorted by a number of +young lords.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove was a success. Whatever he touched, flowered: whatever he +left, withered—and died of its own rottenness. He stood in the doorway +now, in his exquisite tailcoat, one hand thrust<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_168">{168}</a></span> in his trouser-pocket, +indolently tapping his heel and looking on with that intelligent bright +look which seemed to say: “I have long since reached my goal in life +without much effort: what could I possibly do next?”</p> + +<p>“Come in, Freddie, come in, now don’t be shy!” he cried to a young actor +hesitating on the threshold. “My love, my sweetheart, my honeysuckle, +how are you?”—to a bevy of beauties, as they sidled in, twitching their +nude shoulders.</p> + +<p>“Freezing, darling Rex,” they twittered.</p> + +<p>“Rita,” to a leading lady, “do you love me?”</p> + +<p>“You are Christ to me!”</p> + +<p>And then, panting slightly (by the end of the night Frank loved her +panting, and by the end of the month he hated it), in sauntered a, Frank +perceived, very strikingly good-looking girl in red, and by his host’s +eager look and introduction: “This is Mr. Dickin. Miss Cynthia +Wellington,” Frank understood that she indeed must be his proffered +prize.</p> + +<p>If so, she didn’t seem to appreciate her mission. She was certainly +beautiful and, as Ottercove had said, her face could be beheld for hours +at a stretch, with cumulative pleasure. She had been seated at Frank’s +side and she was mildly interested in what he could contrive to tell +her. But supper over, and the host having taken her aside for a few +moments, she came back another woman, and Frank found he had no +difficulty now in keeping her at his side. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_169">{169}</a></span> other guests, numbering +a princess of the blood, a starving Russian diplomat, exquisitely +arrayed, and the cream of the West End Theatreland, sustained a +strenuously “Bohemian” conversation of unmeaning levity till it was late +enough for all to go without pronouncing the party a failure. Lord +Ottercove’s attitude—Frank read the question in his look—was:</p> + +<p>“Amusing dogs—or are they not amusing? Have you been used to something +more amusing?”</p> + +<p>The dogs were not amusing.</p> + +<p>He kept Frank and Cynthia back till all the other guests had gone, and +then told the butler to wake up his chauffeur, and despatched them home +in the winged chariot.</p> + +<p>Frank had not been long in the car with her when he discovered that +Cynthia was physically desirable. As the chariot, taking a good, long +run down the Finchley-road, suddenly took wing and Cynthia panted, he +grasped her hand as if to reassure her, and having grasped her hand +(good old Ottercove to provide him with this opportunity) he did not let +go again. When Cynthia panted again, it was a different kind of panting.</p> + +<p>The view that all women are alike seemed to Frank, as a piece of +thinking, to err on the inadequate side. They were indeed all different. +But in one particular all women were alike, and that was in their +uniform desire to be different; and in their cheap fear of seeming +cheap. Seized by the idea<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_170">{170}</a></span> of making her his wife and eager to +anticipate the marriage ceremony, he was prepared to hear her say that +no doubt he thought her just like any other woman and replied that, on +the contrary, she seemed to him peculiarly, uniquely different from them +all; after which assurance she behaved like all the other women, and +then said:</p> + +<p>“Now, I wonder what you’ll think of me after that.”</p> + +<p>He had not thought anything of her to begin with and did not think any +the worse of her now.</p> + +<p>“Now, darling,” he said, “we simply must get married.”</p> + +<p>The winged chariot and his thoughts, descending from the air at a slope, +touched ground at the same time. The car ran forward. His thoughts ran +on. “The day after to-morrow.”</p> + +<p>“I suppose we might,” Cynthia said quietly. “Are you rich enough?”</p> + +<p>The darling! She was really sweet! Didn’t want to hurt his feelings, +evidently, and let him think he was the breadwinner. Evidently a girl of +sensibility. Welcome. Very welcome. Thinks, no doubt, he may resent her +money, and keeps quiet about it. Sensible girl. Good girl. Beautiful +girl. Nice to look at. Voluptuous. In every way adequate. Are you rich +enough, indeed! He had ten pounds in his breast-pocket; and beyond that +he may yet have something in his trouser-pocket. He<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_171">{171}</a></span> didn’t know how +much. But probably a shilling piece. And perhaps more.</p> + +<p>“You needn’t chaff about it. I’ve more than you think, darling. +Ottercove has promised me, in case of marriage with you, <i>The Evening +Ensign</i> as a wedding present.”</p> + +<p>At that she sat up. “Very nice.”</p> + +<p>Before the car pulled up at her door, she said:</p> + +<p>“Come and have tea with me to-morrow.”</p> + +<p>“I will have tea with you to-morrow—Sunday,—and marry you on Monday.”</p> + +<p>He gave Lord Ottercove’s flying chauffeur ten pounds and undressing for +bed emptied his trouser-pocket of the shilling.</p> + +<h2><a id="XIX">XIX.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Out</span> of the shilling he purchased next day a ticket on the metropolitan +railway and rang at the bell of Cynthia’s door; in Half-Moon-street. +When the door yielded under his vehement onslaught he strode like a +fighting-cock past the door porter, for he was burning with love. But +the door porter, an elderly man, called him back and said:</p> + +<p>“Kindly wipe your feet, sir, on that mat outside: this is an expensive +carpet and belongs to the first floor people.”</p> + +<p>“But isn’t Miss Wellington on the first floor?”</p> + +<p>“No, sir, she lives in the attic.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_172">{172}</a></span></p> + +<p>He crawled upstairs, up innumerable flights of stairs, and the higher he +climbed the lower his spirits descended. Strange, he reflected, that a +girl whose trouble Ottercove had said was too much money should live in +an attic. But there it was! Millionaires had fancies and did for +pleasure what other folks were paid to do. Wasn’t the late Emperor of +All the Russia’s favourite recreation chopping wood in the palace yard?</p> + +<p>A maid responded to his summons and he stepped into a neatly-appointed +apartment. He had scarcely had time to smile at Cynthia, when the maid +announced:</p> + +<p>“Mr. Mortimer Pilling.”</p> + +<p>And the delicate room held the strong, wiry man with the crisp, curly +black hair. “<span class="lftspc">’</span>Pon my word! Dickin, of all people! Had no idea you knew +him, Cynthia. You never let on.”</p> + +<p>“How could I? I only know him since last night.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, really?” Pilling looked enquiringly at Frank.</p> + +<p>“It seems as if I had known you all my life and even earlier in a +pre-terrestrial existence. But, in point of fact, we only met last +night. Where was it? Ah, yes, at Ottercove’s, wasn’t it?” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“A man,” said Pilling, “I always wished to meet. A most delightful man, +by all accounts, and one who could be useful to me in a thousand ways +and particularly in a little enterprise I have in mind.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_173">{173}</a></span></p> + +<p>“You must meet him, Mortimer,” said Cynthia, while the bell rang at the +front door.</p> + +<p>There was a sigh of exhaustion in the hall, and when Cynthia came back +she was followed by a new guest.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Mortimer Pilling. Lord Ottercove.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove gave Pilling one searching, long look with his +penetrating grey eye and shook hands. Mortimer Pilling looked as though +his day had arrived. But Lord Ottercove turned to Frank: “Well, how did +you enjoy yourself last night?”</p> + +<p>“By all accounts,” said Pilling, following Lord Ottercove round the +room, “he enjoyed himself very much. Ha! ha! ha!”</p> + +<p>“It was dull,” said Ottercove to Frank and not looking at Pilling.</p> + +<p>“You need Mrs. Kerr,” said Pilling, looking from Frank to Ottercove, “to +brighten up a party. You remember, Dickin, our tea-party together last +month?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Frank, “I remember.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove sat down heavily in a big chair and never once looked up +at Pilling. Never did Frank Dickin see him so impressive. The Grand Duke +of Fleet Street had surreptitiously climbed up eight flights of steps +(he who said he suffered from his heart) and now sat still in a great +armchair and wouldn’t look at Pilling. Never, Frank reflected, is a +great man more a great man than in a low-ceilinged attic, at the side of +a Pilling. For, but for the Pill<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_174">{174}</a></span>ings, no one might know that Lord +Ottercove was a great man.</p> + +<p>“How are de Jones and Eva?” Frank enquired.</p> + +<p>“Very well,” said Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“I am very fond of Eva,” put in Pilling.</p> + +<p>“Nearly done with Paris and going on to Rome. I am off myself to join +them at Nice at the end of the month. Will you come with me?”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Frank, looking anxiously at Cynthia, who returned a look +which he interpreted as a sign not to reveal to Ottercove the secret of +their forthcoming wedding.</p> + +<p>“Have you seen the papers?” Lord Ottercove asked, confining his enquiry +to Frank and Cynthia, while Pilling quickly said: “About the General +Election?”</p> + +<p>“How old Joe’s already shouting,” Ottercove continued, oblivious of +Pilling’s question, “about the bursting granaries that would be ours if +we back the Liberals to put an end to international bickerings and +jealousies and push on with the Lord de Jones scheme. And his Hackney +speech! Lord Ottercove assumed the pose of a public speaker. ‘And we +shall ask, by what right, whether human or divine, some men’s tummies +digest more bread and butter in one hour of their sleep than you, O +Toiling Masses, can earn by the sweat of your brow in a week?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>’Ear, ‘ear! Good old Joe!’</p> + +<p>“But he silences them with a gesture; his hand<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_175">{175}</a></span> again shoots out: ‘<i>And +we shall ask</i>’—Grand fellow!”</p> + +<p>“A great orator,” exclaimed Pilling.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove’s eyes dimmed. “Joe,” he said, “is a giant.”</p> + +<p>“He is,” said Pilling, looking from Lord Ottercove to Frank.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove did not look at him. “And the news that de Jones has been +received with acclamation by the Paris mob. Good sign that. Cheaper +bread for the common people! And old Joe knows how to give it the right +ring. Grand fellow! We will beat the Conservatives at the poll this +time, you’ll see. It’ll do them good to be beaten.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“Conservatism is a subversive habit to conserve what was won by the +Liberals of the past. If Conservatism is to live to-morrow, let Liberals +have their way to-day.” He rose and, turning to Frank, said:</p> + +<p>“Come and see me to-morrow at five.”</p> + +<p>Frank looked significantly at Cynthia. “Can’t at five:—six.”</p> + +<p>Pilling left soon after Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>Frank and Cynthia left a considerable time after Pilling.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_176">{176}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="XX">XX.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">When</span> Frank called on Lord Ottercove at six o’clock on Monday, Lord +Ottercove was standing at a window in his office, gazing pensively at +the dissolving outlines of St. Paul’s gradually devoured by the dusk. +Lord Ottercove’s pose reminded Frank of Napoleon looking at burning +Moscow, and of Kerenski, in imitation of Napoleon, gazing from a window +in the Winter Palace at the burning theatre “Bouffe”, and Frank felt +that the situation called for a fitting and pregnant remark on the man +of action by the man of letters: “A man of letters puts into letters +what he cannot put into action.” But Lord Ottercove, who, having soared +above mean human endeavour and now only pondered upon it, considered +himself a man of meditation, and did not look pleased.</p> + +<p>“I was thinking,” he said, “of youth and the glory of struggle. How I +envy you young men. The future belongs to you.”</p> + +<p>“Why envy us, since the present belongs to you? The future is but a +deferred present.”</p> + +<p>“All the good the present is to us is that it helps us to forget that we +have no future.”</p> + +<p>“Mankind has not yet learnt,” said Frank, “to live in and for each +moment. That is the meaning of life. And that is why I have just gone +and got<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_177">{177}</a></span> married: as a most effective means of living in the present.”</p> + +<p>“Got married?” said Lord Ottercove, knitting his brows. “To whom?”</p> + +<p>“To Cynthia Wellington!”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove walked up and down several times. “Incredible,” he said. +“It amazes me. Why, she’ll be the ruin of you. An extravagant girl like +that, and you have no money.”</p> + +<p>“But she has, hasn’t she?”</p> + +<p>“Too much! Too damned much, one might think by the way she goes about +it. That’s the trouble with her. Tends to give the impression of having +what she hasn’t got.”</p> + +<p>“But you said so.”</p> + +<p>“Ironically. You should study the inflection when I speak; it is +all-important. As important as punctuation. Ever heard of King Charles?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>King Charles walked and talked</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Half an hour after his head was cut off</i>.’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>That doesn’t seem to make sense.”</p> + +<p>“No. How could a man walk and talk half an hour after his head was cut +off?”</p> + +<p>“Precisely. Even King Charles couldn’t do it. But put a full stop after +‘talked’ and it makes perfect sense. You may have heard of treaties +being wrecked through a comma out of place. And what punctuation is for +the written speech, intonation is<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_178">{178}</a></span> for the spoken language. You should +have listened for it.”</p> + +<p>“I have heard of treaties wrecked by faulty punctuation,” Frank said +bitterly; “but this is my first experience of two human lives ruined by +an ambiguous intonation.”</p> + +<p>“Obviously you married under a misapprehension. But she! I am surprised +she didn’t know any better. I am rather concerned about the matter. I +knew her mother well. What was she thinking? Marrying a man like you +without a farthing to bless himself with!”</p> + +<p>“I told her you would give me <i>The Evening Ensign</i> as a wedding +present.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove frowned.</p> + +<p>“You said so.”</p> + +<p>“I cannot,” said Lord Ottercove, “give you <i>The Evening Ensign</i> as a +wedding present. It is my principal evening paper. It has the best tone +of all the evening papers; it is read by the <i>élite</i>, the cream of the +nation. But look here, I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you.”</p> + +<p>Frank looked up at him hopefully.</p> + +<p>“I’ll take an article from you. I’ll pay you”—he blew hard while +considering the sum—“£20 for it. You know, when I like a fellow there’s +nothing that I wouldn’t do for him! I am like that—can’t help myself. +My staff consider me wildly extravagant.”</p> + +<p>“Is there any valid objection to paying me more?”</p> + +<p>“Well, look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “you<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_179">{179}</a></span> must make a name for +yourself, and I will pay you more.”</p> + +<p>“All very well, but how? How?”</p> + +<p>“Well, we must bring your personality before the public. I am sure that +if your personality is brought before the public the public will begin +to get curious about your personality and begin to want to buy your +books.”</p> + +<p>Frank meditated for a minute. “There is nothing in my life of any +interest to anybody, except perhaps that I was born at the time my +father was First Secretary at our Embassy in St. Petersburg and—”</p> + +<p>“Well, that’s interesting enough. Couldn’t you develop the situation?”</p> + +<p>“How? Perhaps suggest that the Tsar eloped with my mother?”</p> + +<p>“Of course. That would immediately reflect on your paternity and bring +into question your legitimacy.”</p> + +<p>“A marked resemblance to the late Emperor—what?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly. It will make them talk.” He took up the receiver. “Send up +Miss Sherwood to me, will you. I want her to write up a story about Mr. +Dickin, who is in my office.”</p> + +<p>Frank learnt that “stories” was the journalistic term for articles; +whereas real stories—he suggested writing a short story for Lord +Ottercove for £100—were called “articles.”</p> + +<p>“All right,” said Lord Ottercove. “Write it to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_180">{180}</a></span>-night and let me have +your article by six o’clock to-morrow morning. I will read it in bed +before breakfast.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms to +the ceiling. “Oh God, I’m bored to hell,” he said, and yawned +voluptuously.</p> + +<p>“Now, Miss Sherwood, you know Mr. Dickin, the famous novelist. Don’t say +you haven’t read his books. That would sound uneducated. Now I want you +to write a story about him that would reach the wider public which lives +in ignorance of him only because they haven’t heard of him. I am +convinced that he has a great future before him, a future of fame and +felicity. He has already taken the first step towards it: he has gone +and got married to-day. But I feel that the public wants to know +personal details about him. There is, in the first place, his birth, +under mysterious circumstances, in Russia. His mother was an intimate of +the Imperial family. It is delicate ground we are treading upon here, +but I know you are a clever woman and I have every confidence in your +address and discretion. Your treatment of my niece’s divorce case +confirms my opinion. You could begin by giving a pen-portrait of the +late Tsar by projecting, so to speak, onto the screen of your story +salient points of the amorous life of the late Emperor. Go to the +British Museum and see if you find something, or look through the works +of William Le Queux. I remember reading something about spies in Russia +or somewhere—sure to be something about Rasputin<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_181">{181}</a></span> or somebody. Well, +here is Dickin’s mother....” Lord Ottercove’s tone grew inaudible; he +took her across to the blue sofa. His robust lips moved silently. “You +understand ...” Dickin heard, “ ... more than the lad cares to +admit....”</p> + +<p>“It’s a fine story,” nodded Miss Sherwood.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove looked radiant. “Creating illusions,” he murmured, “in a +world of appearances. The essential function of the journalist. Mrs. +Hannibal,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “have that hung up as my +motto all over the building.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannibal, making a shorthand note of it, retired to execute his +instructions.</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, stretching his hands to heaven, but +restraining a yawn.</p> + +<p>Miss Sherwood and Frank understood that the <i>séance</i> was at an end.</p> + +<p>After the door had closed on them, Lord Ottercove vented his yawn, +looked at his watch, and jumped up.</p> + +<h2><a id="XXI">XXI.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">“On</span> the banks of the river Neva stands the city of St. Petersburg, in +the Empire of Russia.”</p> + +<p>Thus, illustrated by a picture of the Fortress of Peter and Paul, <i>The +Sunday Runner</i> started off Miss Sherwood’s article. Frank read it out +aloud in bed to his wife as they woke up on Sunday in her (now their) +attic flat in Half-Moon-street. “It is not<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_182">{182}</a></span> perhaps generally known that +Mr. Frank Septimus Dickin, the novelist, was born in Petrograd—or as he +prefers to call it, St. Petersburg—at the time his father was Naval +Attaché to our Embassy. This austerely beautiful city has changed its +name twice since its inception by Peter the Great, who christened it in +the Swedish idiom after himself. The late war changed the idiom, while +maintaining the name, and the revolution changed the name to that of +Lenin, while preserving the Russian idiom. In truth, a romantic city. (A +corner picture showed the Winter Palace and the Quay.) Here Peter once +walked. Here the last tragic emperor dwelt in fear and misgiving, while +Lenin stormed the citadel by word of mouth and word of print—the +capital which was to bear his name! Mr. Dickin, who loves this granite +city of private palaces, built by Peter and sung by the great poet +Pushkin and haunted by the spirit of Rasputin, claims to be connected +with it by ties of blood of the Romanov strain. It is a romantic story +which, perhaps, some day he will give us in full; the love of the last +and most tragic of Romanovs for the novelist’s beautiful mother. There +are things in life that are hurt by indelicate scrutiny, things which +shrink before the too-eager curiosity of the sensational mind, when the +biographer must withdraw or stand aside and linger in reverence.”</p> + +<p>Ensconced in a single bed with his wife, Frank felt more like an adjunct +than a husband, and the reading of the article he thought might +rehabilitate<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_183">{183}</a></span> his dwindling prestige with Cynthia. If he had no money, +he had at least, it seemed, imperial blood. When, on discovering his +financial infecundity, she had said: “What are we to do?” he had +replied: “Don’t you bother. Live on as you’ve been doing and take no +notice of me.” Hence the single bed. She was just to go on sleeping in +it as before and take no notice of his presence in it.</p> + +<p>Their married life was enriched by a stream of press-cuttings which +trickled in with every post. Miss Sherwood’s article was reprinted by +some of the provincial newspapers, and Frank’s Press-Cutting Agency had +no difficulty in supplying him with paragraphs of a biographical +interest.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>Imperial Claim</i>,” was the heading in an American journal. “<i>We +understand that among the claimants to the dubious throne of Russia +is a young English novelist, Mr. Dickin, who claims the paternity +of the Czar and a connection with the capital way back to Peter the +Great.</i>”</p></div> + +<p>Another cutting, headed, “<i>Descendant of the Tsars</i>,” read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>Mr. Dickin’s family has sprung from a branch of Peter the Great, +and Mr. Dickin himself, as is perhaps not generally known, is the +son of the Emperor Nicholas II by a morganatic marriage—the last +of the Romanovs, whose reign has been brought<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_184">{184}</a></span> to destruction by +the Rasputin régime and consummated by Lenin.</i>”</p></div> + +<p>A new cutting read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>Claiming to be the son of Rasputin, Mr. Dickin’s connection with +the Russian Court goes back, through his mother, to Peter the Great +and indeed earlier, to the first Romanov, in whose time a relative +of Mrs. Dickin was Mayor of Moscow. Mr. Dickin thus is well +immersed in Russian atmosphere. He is also the author of ‘Pale +Primroses’</i> (Sender: 7s. 6d.)”</p></div> + +<p>  </p> + +<p>As time went on, the press-notices became more involved and informative. +“<i>Mr. Dickin’s mother</i>,” read a notice, “<i>which may not be generally +known, was a governess at the Imperial Russian Court who became the +Czar’s mistress and later that of Lenin, and his fame reposes on these +two tragic pillars of Czardom and Communism</i>.”</p> + +<p>  </p> + +<p>A further cutting, from a Liverpool paper, read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>Illegitimate Son of Rasputin and Lenin. Mr. Dickin’s mother, +whose son’s novel, ‘Pale Primroses’</i> (Sender: 7s. 6d.) <i>we reviewed +in this column last week, was among the victims at the seizure of +the Winter Palace, where she had been housed by her friend Kerensky +during his all too abortive régime, after being for years the +governess of the heir to the throne and an intimate friend of the +Em<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_185">{185}</a></span>peror—a mere puppet, as will be recalled, in the hands of the +sinister Rasputin; and it was her fate, with the surrender of the +Woman’s Battalion which defended the Palace, to fall into the +unregenerate hands of Lenin. Mr. Dickin’s parentage, on his own +admission, like that of many a great poet born in time of stress, +may be said to be in jeopardy and, we feel, will lead many a +scholar of the future into that fascinating country and furnish him +with matter for research.</i>”</p></div> + +<p>A Dundee paper reprinted this identically, up to the words “<i>Woman’s +Battalion</i>,” after which it had added: “<i>of which she was the leader</i>.”</p> + +<p>  </p> + +<p>“Well,” said Frank. “We seem to have had a good run for our money!”</p> + +<p>“If it helps to sell the book,” said Cynthia.</p> + +<p>“Bound to do! And now that we are comfortably settled in our own abode, +don’t you think, darling, that we ought to give a party?”</p> + +<p>“Whom could we ask?”</p> + +<p>“I mean return hospitality to Ottercove before he goes abroad.”</p> + +<p>“But he is so difficult about food.”</p> + +<p>“I know. Always gets poisoned. It’s uncanny the way some people have a +gift for getting poisoned in the most innocuous circumstances. I can’t +conceive of getting poisoned short of going to an apothecary’s and +asking for a bottle of poison. But<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_186">{186}</a></span> Ottercove can’t swallow an egg +without dropping his napkin on the floor and groaning: ‘Poisoned!’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“But what does he eat?”</p> + +<p>“We might write to his butler and find out.”</p> + +<p>“Well, if you like write to the butler,” she said warily.</p> + +<p>“I don’t remember his name.”</p> + +<p>“What does that matter?”</p> + +<p>“It doesn’t, of course.” He sat down to Cynthia’s (now his) +writing-table and began to write to the butler, reading aloud to his +wife as he did so, feeling that, in matrimony, a man cedes one half of +his thoughts to his mate:</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>My Dear Friend—’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“You don’t address a butler as My Dear Friend. Frank! Really!”</p> + +<p>“It does rather sound like addressing a Salvation Army meeting.”</p> + +<p>“You simply write: to Mr. So-and-So.”</p> + +<p>“Every day of my life with you, Cynthia, I am learning something!”</p> + +<p>And he wrote: “<i>To Mr.——, Butler to Lord Ottercove: Conceiving the +idea of entertaining your lord at dinner, I appeal to you in all +sincerity and friendship to supply me with a list of his lordship’s +favourite dishes.</i>”</p> + +<p>“Leave out ‘appeal in all sincerity and friendship.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“All right. ‘Request in all earnestness.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“No, leave that out, too.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_187">{187}</a></span></p> + +<p>Her intellect was not, Frank perceived, penetrating. She always meant +what she said and thought that others did so too.</p> + +<p>“Then we might ask ... whom?”</p> + +<p>“Whom?”</p> + +<p>“The Foreign Secretary. The difficulty is how begin my letter to +him.—‘Signor, I would esteem it a privilege—’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Frank! Really! Don’t you know that only foreigners, I mean Italians, +are addressed ‘Signor?’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“I thought the Foreign Secretary was a foreigner.”</p> + +<p>“Frank! Really! Don’t you know any better?”</p> + +<p>“But why then is he called the <i>Foreign</i> Secretary?”</p> + +<p>“Because he has to deal with foreigners—with other foreign +secretaries!”</p> + +<p>“Ah—!—that’s why!... But are they <i>too</i> called foreign because they +deal with foreigners?”</p> + +<p>“Of course.”</p> + +<p>“A world, I see, populated by foreigners.”</p> + +<p>“Foreign to us. We foreign to them.”</p> + +<p>“Every day of my life with you I learn something!”</p> + +<p>A reply came next day from the butler of Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“<i>Sir</i>,” he wrote, “<i>My lord is fond of cold chicken, ham, plaice, +salmon, a mutton chop (well done) with mashed potatoes, curry and rice, +roast beef (hot),<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_188">{188}</a></span> and strawberries. His lordship’s favourite drink is +whisky.—Your obedient servant, T. Wilkins.</i></p> + +<p>“<i>P.S.—Taking the liberty to show your kind letter to his lordship, my +lord desires me to say that he would prefer a hard boiled egg.</i>”</p> + +<p>  </p> + +<p>At half past seven Lord Ottercove’s winged chariot came to a halt, +grandly yet sensitively, at their door in Half-Moon-street and, not +bothering to wipe his feet, Lord Ottercove climbed up the expensive +carpet and the remaining seven flights to their comfortable attic flat, +panting dreadfully.</p> + +<p>Frank took him at once into the dining room. “Since there is no cook on +the premises, Cynthia is attending to the egg. And a great big fine egg +it is too; you will see for yourself.”</p> + +<p>“Fine,” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Cynthia, bring forth the golden egg!”</p> + +<p>Cynthia came in, with a plate in her hands.</p> + +<p>“There,” cried Frank, “there you have it. There it is! A real egg....”</p> + +<p>“Great ... grand ...” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Sit down. There’s no one else to wait for. We invited the Foreign +Secretary. But he couldn’t come. Either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Anyway, +didn’t. Tuck in, Lord Ottercove.”</p> + +<p>“Great ...” said Lord Ottercove, eating. “Grand....”</p> + +<p>“And a drop of port,” said Frank, “to gulp it down with.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_189">{189}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Grand fellow....”</p> + +<p>“The meal’s finished!” peremptorily.</p> + +<p>“Yes, I must be off. I am speaking at the House of Lords to-night.” The +guest rose. “Grand fellow!” to Frank. “Well, darling,” to Cynthia, +“happy? eh?”</p> + +<p>“Quite, Rex,” she said, doubtfully. And paused, as if to say, in the +confidential way a woman has with a man worth confiding in: “Rex, dear, +what about <i>The Evening Ensign</i>?” But Lord Ottercove, who was endowed +with extraordinary powers of divination into human motive, accelerated +his steps downstairs. His conscience, owing to the hospitality partaken +of, or, perhaps, because of its lamentable inadequacy and the +implications therefrom arising, pricked him on the third step down, and +he turned his head to say to Frank:</p> + +<p>“Look here, I’ll take another article from you.”</p> + +<p>But Frank’s gestures, to the unspeakable annoyance of his wife, had now +become quite Eastern in their obsequiousness. “Good, my lord,” he bowed. +“Kind, my lord.”</p> + +<p>Cynthia stood on the doorstep, while Frank went out into the road and +stroked the car. The chauffeur and Gilbert had both jumped out and were +assisting their master into its soft and spacious confines. Frank stood +at the door of the winged chariot, smug and nimble with its wings tucked +under its shining sides, and commented aloud:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_190">{190}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Tuck in his lordship’s feet. Look after him well, Gilbert.”</p> + +<p>“Yessir.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove was pleased. The source of human pleasure is a hidden +well: for one reason or another Lord Ottercove looked pleased. +“Great!... Grand!...” he kept muttering.</p> + +<p>“Evenberry, faithful steward,” Frank was addressing the chauffeur, +“drive his lordship carefully. Avoid sharp corners. Keep well within the +speed limit.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, sir.”</p> + +<p>“Now then, Gilbert, I rely on you.”</p> + +<p>“Yessir.”</p> + +<p>“Good master you have. Take good care of him.”</p> + +<p>“Yessir.”</p> + +<p>“Good man, Gilbert,” said Lord Ottercove benignantly, as to a horse. +“Good man. Good servant.”</p> + +<p>“Gilbert, enter into the joy of your lord....”</p> + +<p>Cynthia stood, shivering a little, on the doorstep.</p> + +<p>As the car moved off, Lord Ottercove, as always, hatless, waved an +indulgent hand. “Good-bye, sweetie!”</p> + +<p>“Good-bye, Rex.”</p> + +<p>The car, owing to the lack of space, did not take wing but prosaically +turned the corner.</p> + +<p>“If your hospitality is scant,” said Frank, “nothing like enlarging on +your guest’s preserves.” He ran into the house, kicking the cat on the +way, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_191">{191}</a></span> wiping his shoes on the mat, to spare the first-floor people’s +carpet, climbed upstairs.</p> + +<p>  </p> + +<p>“A joke’s a joke,” said his lordship to himself, since there was no one +else to say it to, “but a fellow can’t make a decent speech on an empty +stomach.” He took up the telephone tube and said to the chauffeur:</p> + +<p>“Call in at the Kiss-Lick Club.”</p> + +<h2><a id="XXII">XXII.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">“Well</span>, how are your sales?” cried Lord Ottercove as Frank crossed the +threshold—a dangerous step, perhaps symbolical—into his office.</p> + +<p>“Low—still low. Seven copies a day.”</p> + +<p>“Low average,” agreed the newspaper baron.</p> + +<p>“I know why it doesn’t sell.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“It’s a poor novel. That’s why. Poor stuff.”</p> + +<p>“Dam’ poor stuff,” agreed Lord Ottercove. “That’s why I am interested in +it.”</p> + +<p>The author looked up at him in surprise.</p> + +<p>“Any fool can sell a good novel. But it takes genius to sell a poor +book. That’s why I like pushing it.”</p> + +<p>“That is why I come to see you, hoping you may succeed in pushing it.”</p> + +<p>“When I like a fellow,” the baron said in loud,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_192">{192}</a></span> robust tones, his +light-grey eyes glinting jovially, “there is nothing that I wouldn’t do +for him! You saw the boy who was in my office when you came in? You know +who he is?”</p> + +<p>“Who?”</p> + +<p>“The business-manager of all my newspapers.”</p> + +<p>“That boy?”</p> + +<p>“That boy. He’s seventeen. You heard our business conversation?”</p> + +<p>“It was like machine-gun fire.”</p> + +<p>“That’s how I do my business!” said Lord Ottercove. “That boy, the +business-manager of all my newspapers, was a page, what they call a bell +boy out there, at the Metropole in San Francisco four months ago. He +took my luggage up, switched on the light, drew the curtains, unstrapped +my suitcase, took out the slippers. I had forgotten Gilbert on the road, +and this solicitude and efficiency in the bell boy touched me to the +heart. ‘Good boy,’ I said. ‘Good heart. Kind soul.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I have a reason for it, sir,’ he said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>What reason?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I want a job from you.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Well, look here,’ I said, ‘you come to England one of these days, into +my office, and I will give you a job.’</p> + +<p>“He came a month after, worked his passage, you know, and found his way +into my office. ‘I’ve come for that job, sir.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_193">{193}</a></span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Well, look here,’ I said, ‘I want a business-manager who can manage +all the business of all my newspapers. Can you manage it? If you can’t +manage it I will make you a lift boy.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I’ll manage it,’ he said. And, by George, he does! You’ve heard our +conversation?”</p> + +<p>“Like rapid fire.”</p> + +<p>“That’s how I do my business!”</p> + +<p>“You don’t let them climb up?”</p> + +<p>“No. I put a good boy up. And if he isn’t any good I pull him down.”</p> + +<p>“I’d like to get as much out of you as that bell boy.”</p> + +<p>“And why not? I am a man of money, and I am bored to hell, and your +rotten book amuses me.”</p> + +<p>“Quite. But you’ve a personality so charming and magnetic and you like +to talk about yourself and you do it so engagingly that as a rule one +forgets about one’s ulterior motives and becomes disinterested!”</p> + +<p>“Well, look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “we must do something about that +book of yours. We’ll have to advertise it. As a rotten book. The +rottenest book of the century. What do you say to that?”</p> + +<p>“Might take on.”</p> + +<p>“Sure to do!”</p> + +<p>The success of this strategem, however, proved social rather than +financial. A few nights later, Lord Ottercove, after talking to Frank of +himself till midnight, suddenly rose and said: “I am taking you to-night +to a ball.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_194">{194}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Are you really! Had I better ring up Cynthia and ask her to come along +too?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, no! You’ll be bored to death with her. She’s all right for love and +that sort of thing. But never take her out with you. She used to bore me +stiff before she married you. Now let us go.”</p> + +<p>As the chariot was turning into a side lane, the baron suddenly leaned +over to his companion. “I must tell you before the chariot comes to a +stop, for it may interest you as a novelist, that where I am taking you +now is Society. Not quite the real society, but the lighter Mayfair +Michael Arlen sort, somewhat polluted with actors and such. Bohemian and +the like, and chorus girls. I am doing this to help you with atmosphere +and local colour—invaluable for you, as a recorder of contemporary +customs, to get first-hand and red hot.”</p> + +<p>“You are too kind.”</p> + +<p>They had scarcely had their coats removed from them when the hostess +appeared at the door and quickly whispered something to Lord Ottercove +who, acting on the hint, said to Frank in a hushed undertone: “Whiz like +mad across the hall!”</p> + +<p>Frank did as he was bid, and, rejoining him in the drawing-room, “You +see,” Lord Ottercove explained, “we tried to get you safely past Lady +Kennan and Mrs. Ashton who, having heard of your being acclaimed the +author of the rottenest novel of the century, had come out into the hall +to snap you up on your arrival. It’s the sort of rare distinction<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_195">{195}</a></span> that +they are all out to secure for their <i>salons</i>. There are three great +literary hostesses in London: Lady Kennan, Mrs. Ashton, and Lady Isabel +Croft, where you are to-night. The three hostesses tend to frequent one +another’s parties and they stand out in the hall to snatch away a +literary novelty before the hostess has had time to warn and welcome +him, and your being acclaimed the rottenest author of our time was +something quite unusual; they are all mad to have you. Now go and talk +to them.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove was borne away by a couple of hearty men, while Lady +Isabel, a tall, excited woman, came up to Frank and welcomed him +effusively. “I’ve put the two there off the scent, said you hadn’t +arrived yet, so they are waiting in the hall. I am so glad you’ve come. +Rex rang me up this afternoon. ‘Shall I bring you a literary prodigy, a +man who’s written the rottenest book of our time and century?’ ‘Actually +<i>the</i> rottenest? Oh, do, Rex darling, do!’ I said, ‘and see that he +isn’t kidnapped at the door.’ But you’ve escaped their claws +beautifully. That was a gallant dash across the hall. Now come and have +something to eat; you deserve it.” And she pressed champagne and caviare +sandwiches upon him, and then led him into another room full of +over-powdered, over-painted, over-talkative women here and there dotted +by a white-black figure of a man, and she made him sit beside her on the +floor very uncomfortably so that he was afraid that his shirt front +having blown<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_196">{196}</a></span> out, would next blow open and the studs fly out on to the +parquet. And she introduced him to an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer: +“Johnny, this is Mr. Dickin, who wrote the rottenest novel of our time.”</p> + +<p>The ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer beamed with delight and shaking +Frank, who had jumped up from the floor, heartily by the hand, said: +“Have you written the rottenest book of our time? Excellent! Haw! haw! +haw!”</p> + +<p>“Come,” said the hostess, “I’ll introduce you to my daughters. I have +two lovely daughters. They’ve heard all about you and are thrilled at +the idea of meeting you. Pamela, this is Mr. Dickin.”</p> + +<p>Pamela was blonde and serious and interested in literature. “Now are you +<i>the</i> rottenest novelist?” she asked. “Because this afternoon I met a +man who said that he was even more rotten than you.”</p> + +<p>“I cannot believe it,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“Now what do you want to do?” asked the hostess. “Do you want to eat or +drink or smoke or dance or—?”</p> + +<p>“Dance.”</p> + +<p>“Pamela, take him upstairs and dance with him.”</p> + +<p>Pamela took him upstairs into the music-room and on the way thither +introduced him to people sitting out on the steps.</p> + +<p>“This is Eleonor de Jones.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, but we know him!” Eleonor exclaimed.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Dickin. Mr. Raymond Mosquito.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_197">{197}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Have you written the rottenest novel?” Eleonor asked.</p> + +<p>“I must have done.”</p> + +<p>“How splendid!” And she wrung from him before she let him go the promise +to attend her baby’s christening.</p> + +<p>“Raymond’s been adopted, then?” he asked Pamela while they danced +upstairs.</p> + +<p>“Yes. They will be married very soon now. Have you seen the baby?”</p> + +<p>“A boy?”</p> + +<p>“A boy. The image of Raymond. Isn’t he beautiful?”</p> + +<p>“He has Eva’s eyes. His sister’s,” Frank added as Pamela did not seem to +know who he was speaking of. While he danced on with Pamela, who was +blonde, Maisy, her younger sister, even more blonde, talked to him all +the time, while dancing with another. “Who are you?” she kept asking +him, and he would not tell.</p> + +<p>As he was going, she held him back by the hand. “Don’t go,” she said. +“Oh, don’t go. I’ve found out who you are,” she looked into his eyes +long and intently. “It couldn’t be better!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_198">{198}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="XXIII">XXIII.</a><br><br> +THE PRETENDER</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">In</span> matrimony, Frank and Cynthia both proved themselves to be inveterate +individualists; they would be untrue to each other several times every +day, so that when, exhausted and full of champagne, they returned to +their flat in the morning, they could but stare and feebly giggle at +each other. Thus far their partnership was a success.</p> + +<p>Frank, whose mind began to run on the rails of publicity, which he +discovered to be an unparallelled art, sometimes, when her condition +made it possible, discoursed on it before his wife. “There are,” he +would say, striding about in his dressing-gown out of which he rarely +emerged before dusk, “no end of ways of advertising oneself.”</p> + +<p>“For example?” she questioned.</p> + +<p>“For example, thanking prominent people extravagantly in the press for +the least little thing they may have done for you. It’s a graceful and +lucrative self-advertisement. If, for example, the Duke of Bamboo should +happen to nod to you on a dark day, having mistaken you for someone +else, write to <i>The Times</i> that you have been unspeakably touched by the +kind and thoughtful attitude of his Royal Highness to yourself and your +works. Next day other newspapers, with the befuddled inaccuracy of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_199">{199}</a></span> the +daily press, will comment on the incident under some such head lines: +‘Novelist Discovered and Helped by the Duke of Bamboo. His Royal +Highness as Reader and Critic.’ Furthermore, the Duke, seeing it, might +feel really flattered and demand to see the actual book, and, old and of +infirm memory, might think that it’s some other book that he has seen +before and—who knows?—may create a sensation by what must be, for +Royalty, an unprecedented reference to a printed volume. If he but +sneezes over it, all other British subjects will follow suit. And you +are made.”</p> + +<p>But his sales, despite all his philosophy, fell below his least sanguine +expectations. He complained bitterly to Lord Ottercove, who indulged in +some detached speculation. “You must shed,” he said, “your old +personality, and assume a new individuality. I am convinced that if the +public hears you have shed your old personality they will get curious +about your new individuality and will begin to want to read your books.”</p> + +<p>“I think,” said Frank, “that if I shed my clothes with my personality, +they would be more curious still.”</p> + +<p>“You would make a real impression on the public.”</p> + +<p>“You seriously mean it?”</p> + +<p>“They would see you were serious. The public doesn’t like to be trifled +with. As a serious artist you must be prepared to suffer for your art.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_200">{200}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Have I not suffered enough!”</p> + +<p>“I will get some one to interview you on your attitude.”</p> + +<p>“What attitude?”</p> + +<p>“Towards nudeness. Mrs. Prologue would be the right woman for you, I +daresay.” He looked at Dickin as if measuring his stature, and took up +the receiver. “Send Mrs. Prologue up to me.”</p> + +<p>“But she won’t expect me to—” Frank blushed. “She won’t I hope—”</p> + +<p>“No, no, of course not. What the hell do you think my office is? A house +of convenience? It is enough if she reports it.”</p> + +<p>“But how will she know?”</p> + +<p>“Well, you’ve got to tackle her yourself.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Prologue, m’lord,” announced the page.</p> + +<p>“Show her in.—This, Mrs. Prologue, is Mr. Dickin, the novelist. No, not +Dickens. He is ... how shall I say?... morbid, perverse, threatens to go +about—well—you are a married woman, Mrs. Prologue, and I needn’t +paraphrase these things for you—naked, in a word. It’s—how shall I +say?—it’s—”</p> + +<p>“A complex,” helped out Mrs. Prologue.</p> + +<p>“That’s right. A complex.”</p> + +<p>He was afraid that this spectacled and earnest-looking lady might “dare” +him; but she was quiet and sensible and did not insist. “Is it”—she +fixed a pair of competent eyes upon him—“your conviction that we +should<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_201">{201}</a></span>—”</p> + +<p>“He, not we,” corrected her employer.</p> + +<p>“That you should go about ... in that state?”</p> + +<p>“It’s more—it’s a belief—a sort of religion,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“I see. <i>Nacktkultur</i>. I’ve been reading a story recently by Paul Morand +who very amusingly deals with a club up in Norway devoted to the +practising of these theories—”</p> + +<p>“That’s right! That’s right! You’ve hit on it, Mrs. Prologue. You’ll be +able to write a story about Mr. Dickin. You may say, in fact, that he +has, while performing the cult of this <i>Kultur</i> or what, been surprised +by a visit from ... we’ll have to think of some name ... to the roof of +his house where he performs it. I leave him to you.”</p> + +<p>Frank returned to Half-Moon-street, which Cynthia, by the way, it +occurred to him, had deserted some days ago, in more buoyant spirits. He +did not resent her disappearance. A man who had failed to provide his +horse with a stable, the stable with a manger, the manger with fodder, +would indeed be unjust and unreasonable to object to his horse’s grazing +outside in the field. And in this harsh and difficult world Frank was +not unreasonable. He watched, contentedly, her grazing on the greenest, +most flourishing fields of London, Paris, and New York. He walked about +in the flat, inspecting the shelves in the kitchen containing things in +tins bought with her money; and in applying them to their uses drew on +his common sense and such<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_202">{202}</a></span> powers of divination as he possessed; and +reflected that man’s needs were few, and woman’s less. He even +attempted, with a certain misgiving, to boil himself an egg on the +“Primus” stove, unable to foretell under what circumstances it might +explode. How sweet it was to exist alone and owe nothing to anybody!</p> + +<p>The post brought him a batch of press-notices. “The author of ‘Pale +Primroses,’<span class="lftspc">”</span>read a cutting, “(who, it will be remembered, turned up +naked at a recent literary gathering) is greatly in vogue and is, in +fact, quite the lion of the moment.”</p> + +<p>Also he seemed to be getting more and more homage from Liverpool, +whereas the city of Glasgow appeared to despise him and he conceived in +his heart a warm sympathy for Liverpool, and a shy hostility towards +Glasgow took shape in his mind. (But when, a month later, he had +occasion to arrive in Liverpool he was ignored; whereas at Glasgow +straight away he hit it off with a Scotch lassie and they stepped it to +jazz music and she was more than kissed by him forthwith.) And a +different notion of the relative hospitality of Liverpool and Glasgow +now formed itself in his receptive mind.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Prologue’s article bore fruit. A week later he was able to inform +the Baron of Ottercove that his sales were enormous. “Enormous!”</p> + +<p>“Good!” said the baron, thinking. “Change the title to ‘The Diary of a +Naked Man.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“There is nothing naked in it.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_203">{203}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Tell them that there will be in Part II.”</p> + +<p>“But I’m not writing a Part II. It’s complete.”</p> + +<p>“I guess you’ll have to,” said Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“What else? Perhaps also change my name?” Frank’s tone was ironic.</p> + +<p>“Your name?” Lord Ottercove reflected. “Your Christian name.”</p> + +<p>“My Christian name?”</p> + +<p>“Couldn’t you call yourself Charles?”</p> + +<p>“I could call myself Jesus if necessary.”</p> + +<p>“No, not Jesus. Charles. It goes well with your surname.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I might, of course. It might help.”</p> + +<p>“Bound to do! I start for Nice to-morrow. But telegraph to me twice a +day how you are selling. Good-bye to you. And mind the step!”</p> + +<p>With a little training one could move, Frank felt, about the modern +world with ease and felicity and face with equanimity the deadliest of +situations. He would find himself making ambiguous statements to +reporters who interviewed him relative to his parentage.</p> + +<p>“Are you the son of the late Nicholas II?”</p> + +<p>“I do not propose at this juncture of events to say anything which might +render the position of certain parties and persons involved more +difficult than it is already.”</p> + +<p>“Do you claim the imperial throne?”</p> + +<p>“I do not consider the present moment propitious for the making of any +definite statement bearing on<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_204">{204}</a></span> this thorny and delicate question, which, +moreover, may easily be misinterpreted. I follow the development of the +political situation in Russia with equanimity, firm in the belief that +when the time for expressing their choice is at hand the people of +Russia will not fail in their wisdom, loyalty and courage.”</p> + +<p>In all his public utterances Frank displayed unfailing moderation and +restraint in reference to the situation that had spun itself into a web +around him, and when a Russian Grand Duke in the Kiss-Lick Club heckled +him in the vestibule and even hit him on the ear with an immaculately +folded umbrella and otherwise tried to make himself disagreeable to him, +with a view to consummating the quarrel in assassination, Frank did not +lose his head, but tried to avoid him so as not to be involved too early +in the Russian imbroglio. When a reporter interviewed him on the +regrettable incident in the Kiss-Lick Club, Frank said:</p> + +<p>“I feel—and I say it earnestly—that we who love Russia should know how +to merge our petty differences in a common devotion to a holy cause, +and, awaiting the grand moment, remember the magnitude of our +responsibilities and the dignity imposed by a great and noble heritage.”</p> + +<p>The restraint and moderation of his utterances won him a following among +the anglicised Russian emigrés in London, who, suspicious of the +qualities of their own race, had learnt to admire British parliamentary +language as reported in the newspapers.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_205">{205}</a></span> But in proportion to his +success as a pretender, he became increasingly aware of being watched by +Chesham House, of being followed on his daily strolls by individuals who +looked suspiciously like agents of the Tcheka. He applied, on the advice +of friends, to Scotland Yard, and two plain-clothed policemen were +assigned to accompany him on his walks and protect him from (a) those +zealous puritans who wanted to destroy him so as to put an end to what +they understood from certain references to the quality of his books to +be his propagation of foul literature; (b) rival claimants to the throne +of Russia; and (c) the Bolshevist agents of the Tcheka who resented his +imperialism. His fame reached its apotheosis when the Soviet Foreign +Minister, in reply to the now hackneyed British accusation of their +spreading Bolshevist propaganda in the British Empire, cited Mr. Dickin +in the Soviet note to Downing-street as an active instance of the +fostering of an imperialistic movement by the British and their +intervention in the domestic politics of Russia, and the British Foreign +Secretary in the House of Commons disclaimed, while deprecating Mr. +Dickin’s activities, responsibility for his acts and dissociated what he +described to be the private views of a novelist from the considered +policy of the Foreign Office. By that time Frank had sold over one +hundred and twenty thousand copies of <i>Pale Primroses</i>, alias <i>The Diary +of a Naked Man</i>; to say nothing of American rights, film rights, +dramatic<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_206">{206}</a></span> rights, translation rights, and second, third, and fourth +British Empire (excluding Canada) serial rights. The resulting publicity +procured him a lucrative commission for a series of articles in an +American magazine, a lost relative, and three offers of marriage.</p> + +<h2><a id="XXIV">XXIV.</a><br><br> +NICE</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> day after the christening of the Kerr-de Jones baby, Frank, having +received a telegram from Ottercove inviting him to come to Nice, went +abroad. His wife was grazing somewhere—he didn’t know where.</p> + +<p>He didn’t bother about Cynthia. He didn’t see why he should bother about +her. He could have divorced her, or she could have divorced him, but he +didn’t see why he should go to the bother of divorcing her. He simply +didn’t bother about her. And, moreover, she didn’t bother about him.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Kerr, he recalled, had been conspicuous at the christening of the +Honourable Richard Mosquito, and Pilling had been loud in extolling, +some felt rather indiscreetly, the Kerr strain in the baby. Raymond, +hastily adopted by de Jones, officiated in the absence of his father at +the side of Eleonor. He looked very red and hot and embarrassed at the +arrival of his little son-brother and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_207">{207}</a></span> resented Pilling’s <i>faux pas</i>, +who, conscious of his blunder, and anxious to agree that the baby was +the image of de Jones, added inadvertently: “But of course! The image of +his grandfather,” while Mr. Kerr walked about sardonically, as if +saying: “This is my revenge.”</p> + +<p>“Can’t stand that man Pilling,” Raymond said bitterly.</p> + +<p>“I, on the contrary,” rejoined his mother, “find him a very charming, +intellectual young man.”</p> + +<p>“Why doesn’t he marry Zita?”</p> + +<p>“My dear, he can’t. He is already married.”</p> + +<p>“Then why doesn’t he leave her to marry another?”</p> + +<p>“They live together—just the same as if they were married. That is a +common custom nowadays among the more intellectual classes. Already in +my youth it was accepted. You even find it in Turgenev and Dostoevski.”</p> + +<p>In parting on the kerb, Frank overheard Mrs. Kerr thanking her son. +“Chris can give me nothing now. And if he could, he would give it all to +Eva.”</p> + +<p>“Eleonor,” said Raymond, “has no banking account of her own. But she has +a cheque book and draws on her uncle’s account to an unlimited extent.”</p> + +<p>“A very nice, well-read, original young woman, and I am very fond of +her,” was Mrs. Kerr’s reply.</p> + +<p>Smiling thus over these insistent memories of yesterday, Frank pulled +open the blinds in the morning:<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_208">{208}</a></span> the blue train was touching the south +coast of France.</p> + +<p>Nice. The most beautiful thing about Nice is its name, full of a +delicious springtide fragrance. Apart from the name, it may be +questioned, Frank thought, whether there was anything else particularly +beautiful about the town, that somewhat hard and heartless courtesan de +luxe organised for the sale of dubious pleasure.</p> + +<p>Already from the window of your carriage you behold the long train +bending like a serpent as it races up the coast carrying dutifully its +load of passengers who had dribbled from the four corners of the world, +congregating towards Paris, rushed in the night through northern wet and +wind and bleakness, to turn the corner at Marseilles at daybreak, and +now gaily down the sunny Côte d’Azur, past all the pink and cream and +white of basking villas, towards Nice.</p> + +<p>In another three hours, Frank reflected, he would see Eva, and the +benignant luxury of the scenery illustrated his anticipation. The train +curved amid the rocky hills and flowery valleys, past the rose-white +garden villas perched above the blue, blue sea—all swiftly whirling by.</p> + +<p>Nice.</p> + +<p>“His lordship is lunching in the restaurant and asks you to come in, +sir.”</p> + +<p>Entering the huge dining-room, Frank instantly perceived Lord +Ottercove’s steel-grey eye peering<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_209">{209}</a></span> at him in its essential hardness, +but softened as it were by an air of bonhomie. There was about the +baron’s face something at once fine and comic, stern and pantaloonish, +Jehovahian and George Robian. His glinting eyes blazed with a righteous +blue fire, while his tilted nose protruded a naïve, peeping curiosity +about human affairs, and his noble brow frowned olympically. When he +closed one eye at you to glint with double force with the other, he +looked a satyr. At one side of him was Eva, gay and spring-like in +appearance; on the other, Lord de Jones, more shark-like than ever. No +one could look less a peer than de Jones.</p> + +<p>“Why won’t you take off your coat and come and have lunch?” said +Ottercove, genially. The three of them looked as though they had been +revelling considerably.</p> + +<p>“You do all look washed out,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“We’ve decided to make a halt here before going on to Rome,” said +Ottercove. “I must recuperate my forces before I tackle Mussolini over +the craters.”</p> + +<p>“Do you expect any serious opposition?”</p> + +<p>“Yuh,” said Ottercove. “I guess they’ll want heavy compensation. The +Vesuvius alone, they argue, is a steady source of revenue, attracting +hordes of tourists.”</p> + +<p>“But he must see the international side of it if he has any good will in +him.”</p> + +<p>“The good will among men,” said the baron, “is<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_210">{210}</a></span> a moral support +physically precarious for individual man to lean on. But all the better +for us. We are in no hurry since the General Election is again delayed. +We must give the illusion of warring, of desperately battling with evil +and sinister forces and win the battle of David and Goliath.”</p> + +<p>“Well, you certainly look exhausted.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t look at Chris,” said Eva. (So she already called him ‘Chris’!) +“He is always dirty looking, he can’t help it. I mean he’s clean, but +dirty-looking. There are such people. And there are others, who are +dirty and always look quite clean.”</p> + +<p>“You wise little girl, Eva,” said Ottercove tenderly.</p> + +<p>“Lord Ottercove, have you read Ferdinand’s novel?” she asked.</p> + +<p>“I’ve read it twice.”</p> + +<p>“H’m.—I must read it again,” she said.</p> + +<p>After lunch, Lord Ottercove took them up to his suite. On the table in +the drawing-room copies of his newspapers were spread out invitingly. “I +can’t,” said Frank, fingering <i>The Evening Ensign</i>, “behold this +newspaper without an inward pang.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove frowned. He did not like to be reminded of it. Instead, +and in pursuance of a certain association of ideas, he asked,</p> + +<p>“What have you done to Cynthia?”</p> + +<p>“Alas! Alack!” said Frank, who, in the absence of his host’s material +interest in their marriage, did<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_211">{211}</a></span> not see himself compelled to satisfy +the baron’s idle curiosity.</p> + +<p>Learning from Frank that he had put up at another hotel and would not +move over to this for fear of being ruined, “Stay with me two or three +weeks,” said Lord Ottercove. “You don’t know what pleasure it gives me.” +His words were so warm and inviting. “Gilbert,” he said softly, “go and +see if there are any more rooms on this floor.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, m’lord.”</p> + +<p>Gilbert returned to say that there was the choice of an imperial and an +ordinary suite. Which of the two did his lordship wish him to reserve +for Mr. Dickin?</p> + +<p>“Mr. Dickin will see and choose for himself,” said Lord Ottercove. “And +now I will jump into bed. I will see the three of you, I hope, at dinner +and take you to the Opera at Monte Carlo.”</p> + +<p>“Agreed!”</p> + +<h2><a id="XXV">XXV.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">When</span>, dressed, that night he joined them in Ottercove’s private +drawing-room, Frank was amazed by the new, modern aspect of Eva. How was +it that he had never been so struck with her before? What ease! what +grace! withal what beauty!</p> + +<p>They dined at the Negresco in Nice and then hurried at a dangerous speed +in a hired Rolls-Royce to Monte Carlo, and again in Ottercove’s box, +alone<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_212">{212}</a></span> with three men, Eva’s charm was conspicuous, as on the stage the +melancholy chime of Kremlin bells determined the slow but steady ruin of +a conscience-stricken man.</p> + +<p>On the way back to Nice, they were pensive. <i>Boris Godounov</i> had made a +deep impression on the baron, who never missed a performance. “Fine man +Moussorgski!” he muttered. “A great and wonderful genius! To have +written that!” He paused. “If he were alive to-day, I would have made +him a duke, or editor-in-chief of all my newspapers.”</p> + +<p>“Or given him <i>The Evening Ensign</i> as a wedding present,” added Frank.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove closed one eye and glared at Frank with the other, and +then closed it too and went to sleep in the depth of the car.</p> + +<p>In the night, Frank could not sleep for jealousy. Why was she so +intimate with de Jones and Ottercove? Why?</p> + +<p>At three, he crept to her door and knocked gently.</p> + +<p>She opened the door.</p> + +<p>He went in.</p> + +<p>“Darling!” he said.</p> + +<p>“Darling!” she answered, and came into his arms.</p> + +<p>“I am wretched,” he said, covering his face with his hands.</p> + +<p>“Darling,” she watched him tenderly, “you are getting very thin. Your +corner tooth is losing colour.” She looked at that thin individual with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_213">{213}</a></span> +scanty hair and thought, without pressing the thought home to her: “Is +that thing the thing on which I spent all my beautiful love?... Never +mind, such as he is he is mine.”</p> + +<p>“It is tragic,” Frank said, “to grow ugly without ever having been +beautiful.”</p> + +<p>She gave him a long kiss. And they were silent, and the silence seemed +pregnant with memories. “Do you remember?” it seemed to say.</p> + +<p>And for him there was fear and foreboding of loss in that kiss. He held +her breathless and exulted in the thought that her naked heart beat +against his.</p> + +<p>She looked into his eyes. “Do with me what you like.”</p> + +<p>How could he have ever parted with her? How could he ever part with her?</p> + +<h2><a id="XXVI">XXVI.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">All</span> next day they spent with Ottercove. Lord Ottercove habitually put up +at Nice, with the sole purpose, it would seem, of dining at Monte Carlo. +He came to the Riviera to relax after the strenuous social life of +London. And his relaxation, by the force of habit, took the form of +whizzing up and down the curved and much frequented road of the Côte +d’Azur to lunch at Cannes, to dine at Mentone, or hurrying off to play +golf, hurrying to get into bed<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_214">{214}</a></span> and sleep hurriedly, to be wakened by +Gilbert to dress and hurry along to dine at Rapallo. After a month of +such relaxation, he would hurry back to London to rush from house to +house (mysteriously preceded by Mrs. Hannibal and his telephone +operator) and write hurried articles and print newspapers, and the news +boys were already hurrying out of the building carrying batches of them +and selling them at a run. Lord Ottercove privately claimed that since +his descent on London he had “gingered up” the public life of Great +Britain. His success was evidenced by his peerage; which is no guarantee +of anything more than success.</p> + +<p>His own personality and the effect it produced on his time and +surroundings interested and stimulated him beyond all else. An American +reporter in Nice had referred in the local Press to Lord Ottercove’s +having the head of a musician, and he instantly sent out Gilbert to buy +an album with the portraits of all the notable composers, and left it in +his private drawing-room, and his friends (who had read the notice) +said: “Rex, that chap Beethoven has your head to a t.” And another said, +“Rex, upon my word you have mistaken your profession and we enjoin you, +ere too late, to turn musical. Then, in a couple of years’ time, they +will be saying: ‘Ottercove.... Who the hell is Ottercove?’—‘Oh, the man +who wrote the Symphony in B flat.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>He smiled indulgently. He went down the steps<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_215">{215}</a></span> (forgetting the existence +of the lift), whistling to himself and wondering ... really if ... and +<i>if really</i> ... how nice.</p> + +<p>In the car, since the question had been jarringly dropped as it seemed +to him, he turned to Eva.</p> + +<p>“Eva, do you think,” he said from his reclining, hatless attitude in the +depth of the great car, “I look like a composer?”</p> + +<p>“You look like an angel, Rex,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Thank you, darling.”</p> + +<p>“You’re not as beautiful as Ferdinand,” she added, “but you are very +clever.”</p> + +<p>“Thank you, darling, thank you, dear, that’s comforting.”</p> + +<p>So she already called him Rex. Frank was astonished at the rapidity of +progress possible to women; and even a little jealous.</p> + +<p>“Chris,” said Ottercove, “how is your work getting on? Is it true I hear +you mean to blow us all up?”</p> + +<p>“If I didn’t others would. Ideas like these never come singly. There +must be at least half-a-dozen men now harbouring this amiable idea.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove glanced at Frank and Eva. “I told you he was a lunatic.”</p> + +<p>“It’s you who are lunatics. Any one could do and talk about doing it, +for no one would believe him, everyone would think he was a lunatic.” De +Jones looked away, detached.</p> + +<p>“Let us change the conversation,” Eva said.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_216">{216}</a></span></p> + +<p>They were hurrying in the direction of Cagnes—a destination which at +all times that it is mentioned is accompanied by a sort of footnote that +it is a place other than, and therefore not to be confused with, Cannes. +“You speak French,” said Ottercove. “Tell him to go to Cagnes. Cagnes, +not Cannes.”</p> + +<p>Frank took up the telephone tube and said to the chauffeur: “Cagnes.”</p> + +<p>“Cagnes,” repeated Lord Ottercove. “Not Cannes.”</p> + +<p>“Cagnes,” said Frank into the tube. “Not Cannes.”</p> + +<p>“I understand perfectly,” said the chauffeur.</p> + +<p>It seemed that the distinction was more familiar than generally +supposed. Still, the similarity was unfortunate, and many a passenger +for Cagnes must have found himself, unwittingly, in Cannes and, perhaps, +with profounder astonishment and reluctance, many a passenger for Cannes +must have discovered himself, with inward qualms and bitter +questionings, in Cagnes. But there it was, and even Ottercove could not +change this state of things.</p> + +<p>They alighted on the green hillside by the sea, and Ottercove, +perennially the host, opened the basket with the eatables. “Damn!” he +said. “That jackass Gilbert has forgotten the glasses.” Inwardly they +all cursed Gilbert. “You speak French,” said Ottercove to Frank, “Go and +ask that peasant woman on the top of that hill to lend us a few glasses. +Here—” He held out a batch of notes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_217">{217}</a></span></p> + +<p>“I’ve got some money.”</p> + +<p>“Here, give her this.”</p> + +<p>The old peasant woman who was sitting on the ground beside her donkey +could produce but two doubtful looking glasses, and Frank thrust the +batch of bank notes—some four hundred francs in all—into her hand.</p> + +<p>“But, monsieur!” she cried bewildered. “All this for a couple of +glasses! No, no....”</p> + +<p>They washed the glasses in champagne, drinking what was left of it and +eating delectable sandwiches delicately prepared by a luxurious hotel. +Then Lord Ottercove took his Bible out of his side-pocket and began to +read:</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a +great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the +moon became as blood;</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree +casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and +every mountain and island were moved out of their places.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and +the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every +free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_218">{218}</a></span> us, and hide us from the +face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to +stand?’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>He shut the book, and for a while there was silence. De Jones took off +his glasses and wiped them pensively with his handkerchief; then quoted +softly:</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be +no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any +more pain: for the former things are passed away.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>Frank waved away the flies. “If I were God I would consign all flies to +the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. For don’t tell me that +they know not what they do!”</p> + +<p>Eva looked at him reproachfully. “You are so stupid, darling. You wave +and shout at the flies.”</p> + +<p>“But they do go away when I shout.”</p> + +<p>“It’s not because you shout, but because you wave that they go away.”</p> + +<p>“H’m, that’s possible. I never thought of that. I admit I am +impractical.”</p> + +<p>The secret of a successful picnic, in view of its invariable discomfort, +is that it should be as short as possible. They—all of them towny +people—discovered this very soon and rose as if by mutual consent.</p> + +<p>“You speak French,” said Ottercove to Frank. “Go and take these glasses +back to the old woman<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_219">{219}</a></span> on the hill and tell her she can have all the +sandwiches and fruit and champagne—”</p> + +<p>“Bottles,” qualified de Jones.</p> + +<p>“Bottles—all we’ve left, in fact.”</p> + +<p>Frank did as he was bid.</p> + +<p>They stepped into the hired Rolls-Royce, and as they drove away, this +time in the direction of Cannes, on the hill-side, by the side of an old +donkey, stood an old wrinkled woman who looked in their direction till +they were lost to sight.</p> + +<p>In the depth of the car, three men and a girl leaned back as far as it +is possible for three men and a girl to do so in a car. Lord Ottercove +was dozing, Eva gently playing the ukulele.</p> + +<p>“I didn’t know you played the ukulele,” Frank remarked.</p> + +<p>“There are things, Ferdinand, you do not know,” she said.</p> + +<p>Ottercove opened one eye. “You are right, sweetie,” he said. “He is no +good: I’m the man for you.”</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I’m the man! I’m the man!’ This is from <i>Candida</i>,” chimed in de +Jones. “Let me quote, on my behalf, from the same work: ‘All the love in +the world is waiting to speak: but it is shy—shy—shy....’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Eva,” said Frank. “Eva....”</p> + +<p>“What?”</p> + +<p>“Eyes as blue as the Mediterranean....”</p> + +<p>“Now, Eva, you must choose,” said Ottercove,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_220">{220}</a></span> “between this decrepit +Genius of the Untried who claims he can push up the grass but is only +fit to push up the daisies; the dubious heir to a, if possible, more +dubious throne; and a half-demented peer. Now come on, my love, and +choose your prize. Spot the winner.”</p> + +<p>Eva smiled and played the ukulele dreamily. And the music seemed to say, +Why choose? when you are snug, at ease, sprawling in the depth of a +great car rushing softly by the edge of the blue sea.</p> + +<h2><a id="XXVII">XXVII.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Returned</span>, Eva vanished mysteriously and came back with a book and asked +them to write in her album.</p> + +<p>“All these your admirers, Eva?” Ottercove scanned the pages wearily. +“Hello what’s this?</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>O Eva, O Eva,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>I love you so mighty,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>I wish my pyjama was</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Next to your nighty.</i>’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>“Whoever wrote this, Eva?”</p> + +<p>“A little schoolboy in Ireland.”</p> + +<p>“Shame!”</p> + +<p>“He loved me.”</p> + +<p>“That’s something.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_221">{221}</a></span></p> + +<p>Frank the while was scanning the pages of <i>The Sunday Runner</i>, +Ottercove’s youngest and favourite offspring. “Rotten newspaper,” he +said, as if to himself, but loud enough for Ottercove to hear him. +“Nothing of me in it.”</p> + +<p>“I am taking you to-night to Maxime’s. And now,” said Lord Ottercove, +“I’ll jump into bed. Good-night to you.”</p> + +<p>And, to precipitate their going, he was already removing his tie and +collar.</p> + +<p>That night at Maxime’s Eva looked exquisite. She had not, Frank felt, +before now expanded her more expensive potentialities. Now she looked +like really expanding them. And Lord Ottercove looked very much like +encouraging her to expand them. She was a plant that suddenly flowered +when put in a vase of champagne. The competition for her on the part of +the three men developed into rapid fire. “Now then, Eva, why this +hesitation?” Ottercove demanded. “I am a man of brains. I am a man of +money. I am a man of love and a capacity to requite love once it is +lavished on me tit for tat. <i>Quid pro quo.</i>”</p> + +<p>“Do you love me, Rex?”</p> + +<p>He smote the table. “With all my heart.”</p> + +<p>“Truly?”</p> + +<p>“I swear by my love for my newspapers or may God strike me dead!”</p> + +<p>“And you, Ferdinand?”</p> + +<p>“Can you ask? What of my courage? Am I<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_222">{222}</a></span> not setting out all alone +against all his newspapers, with possibly the other newspaper lord at +the back of him—in fact, the whole of the more sinister Press of Great +Britain against me!”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove, gripping his knife and fork in his two fists—he was in +high spirits to-night—leaned back and laughed. There was in his gesture +all the self-confidence and abandon of men who had climbed to the top of +the ladder. On the top of the ladder one is apt to let oneself go. +(Which, by no means, applies to all ladders. One’s solicitude for one’s +fate on most ladders is never so keen as on the last rung. But—let us +be perfectly clear—it is a solicitude different in kind from that which +is experienced by people passing <i>under</i> a ladder.)</p> + +<p>“And you, Chris?” she asked. “Will you love me all your life?”</p> + +<p>“All my life and fifty years after.”</p> + +<p>“You might be Mr. Solberg, the Register of Copyrights at Washington,” +said Frank.</p> + +<p>“Isn’t Ferdinand beautiful?”</p> + +<p>“As beautiful as my nose.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove was getting cheerier and cheerier, and he danced less +steadily than he was wont to do. “Now, Chris, don’t you make love to +Eva. Hands off! you married men! You haven’t been divorced a month. I at +least am a bachelor and can marry her to-morrow if the fancy takes us. +Can’t I, Eva? I’ll stop that crater mission of yours if you don’t take +yourself away in time.” He looked at Eva.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_223">{223}</a></span> “I’ve got to blow him up a +bit from time to time, or he gets too cocky, you know.”</p> + +<p>“It’s me who will do it,” de Jones said.</p> + +<p>“Do what?”</p> + +<p>“Blow you all up.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove called the waiter and paid. While they were putting on +their coats and pushing through the door into the street, de Jones and +Frank lingering behind, Lord Ottercove jumped into the car after Eva, +slammed the door and drove off.</p> + +<h2><a id="XXVIII">XXVIII.</a><br><br> +THE REVELATION</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">“Well</span>,” said Lord de Jones, taking Frank by the arm and leading him into +a similar establishment almost next door, “if they are off, we shall +continue by ourselves.” And he ordered more champagne and more chicken. +The hour was far advanced into the morning and the last revellers were +leaving the premises. The band played on sulkily for the two new +visitors and looked appealingly at the waiters. “Look here, Dickin,” de +Jones said, rather thickly, “you’re a jolly good sort and I am awful +fond of you.”</p> + +<p>“I, too, I really am, very fond of you, more than I can say.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_224">{224}</a></span></p> + +<p>The wine had done its noble work: they lived in a world of mutual and +uncritical esteem.</p> + +<p>“By Jove, you’re a fine fellow, Dickin, that’s what you are! A fine +fellow. A <i>fine fellow</i>. And a damn good writer too!”</p> + +<p>Frank remembered through his dim but blissful state that de Jones could +never be persuaded to read a book of any sort, let alone Frank’s novels, +but now this fact did not detract, but rather added value to the +sincerity of the noble lord’s appreciation. And, when, with swelling +heart, Frank answered, “And I feel, de Jones, you’re first among +contemporary scientists!” he really felt it. As the waiter opened a new +bottle of champagne, Lord de Jones lapsed into reminiscence. “Why do I +love that girl? Traits of her mother? As a young man I did not care for +women, and they did not care for me. You see what I look like. A +Frenchwoman once described my appearance as ‘<i>ignoble</i>’! But that one +when I saw her first in Russia! Now, of course, she is nothing much to +look at. But at that time she was extraordinarily good looking—better +than her daughters. I was constrained by her husband and was half blind +to her suggestive looks. I wouldn’t listen. Till one day as I was +leaving her she fell before me on the floor. That somehow got hold of my +senses. Raymond dates back to that incident, I believe. The vision of +her prostrate on the floor haunted me always. It made me come back to +her.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_225">{225}</a></span> I always went back. And now’s she’s too old.... I am drunk or I +wouldn’t be telling you this.”</p> + +<p>He was silent a while. “Eva, Dickin,” he said. “He abducted her, but we +two can go on loving her more than <i>he</i> will ever understand....”</p> + +<p>Dickin’s eyes filled. “We love her,” he said. “We all love her. Perhaps +Ottercove too loves her. Why can’t we all love her and love one +another?”</p> + +<p>“Don’t I know my excellent uncle Lord O.! Have you seen him sign himself +‘O.’? A tremendous O. Nevertheless, the numerical symbol.”</p> + +<p>“You are hard on the baron.”</p> + +<p>“Am I? I like his boyishness, his prodigious vitality. He is a Hannibal +playing quoits with the world. Not, I regret to say, because he loves +the world, but because he loves playing quoits. But a rather lovable +<i>enfant terrible</i> all the same. He could have helped me. But he would +back out of it next day. He has no large plan of action; but he conceals +this very cleverly by dramatising every little situation on the spur of +the moment, improvising campaigns at the turn of an effective phrase, +and making you think that his least bit of whim is the component part of +a large premeditated whole.”</p> + +<p>“I know. A sort of second inspiration known to dramatists, more clever +but more freakish than the main idea.”</p> + +<p>“Exactly. But he has no main idea, unless it be a certain feeling for +caution, which, coupled with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_226">{226}</a></span> his second inspiration in which he is a +virtuoso, determines his success. He may turn into a great peacemaker +to-morrow, and the day after find himself uttering: ‘It is not peace I +have brought, but a sword,’ and side with the forces of war; and, in +turn, prove successful in each. I am bitter because I cannot get him to +help me in my mission without resorting to subterfuge, which maddens me. +This idiotic crop-growing scheme! He was quick enough to seize it for +his own journalistic ends without bothering to probe the scientific +aspect. If I could make him understand my real motive I might fire his +imagination for a day; but he would sleep on it (he always sleeps on all +important questions and telephones his decision in the morning), sleep +on it and ring me up at dawn: ‘Look here, Chris. It is a brilliant idea. +But I advise you against it. Why? It would not do you any good. Good-bye +to you,’ and hang up the receiver. ‘Do you no good.’ Not him, no! No +advertising possibilities. Actors and audience simultaneously reduced to +smithereens!</p> + +<p>“Why should we regret it? Schopenhauer could not understand how it was +that man, in the teeth of all this pain and hell of life, had not the +sense and pluck to end it. Wherever I look, in every moment there is +pain. The pain of memory, the pain of anxiety, the pain of sheer +dullness, the pain of regret. You cannot think either backward or +forward for ten minutes without a pang of pain.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_227">{227}</a></span> Then why should we be +sorry to quit it, to take ourselves away to where pain cannot reach us?</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>Who breathes must suffer and who thinks must mourn,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>And he alone is blest who ne’er was born.</i>’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>“It’s a poor life, Dickin. The more successful, the more multifarious +and sensitive, the more painful. We are, with our birth, caught in a +vice and cannot away. You don’t believe in the devil. But I do. The +brain is the devil. A malignant cancerous growth. It’s a mockery from +start to finish. We are simply made to chase after our own tail, and +Satan stands by and laughs: ‘Let us see whether they have sense and +pluck enough to end it.’ The mundane life is a blind avenue we have +strayed into while nobody was looking. We must get out. There is no +other course. We do not belong here. Do not the eyes of humans and +beasts alike tell you that we do not belong here? We must quit <i>en +masse</i>, get away.</p> + +<p>“The cruelty and pain of this world. The pain and cruelty. Donkeys and +mules goaded with a stick; the resigned suffering in their eyes. The +Arabs cut their donkeys and then prod the wound: ‘Go on, damn you.’ And, +in the same way, we are all goaded. On the raw, or we won’t move. Goaded +by desire, remorse, love, hope, despair.... Hourly, minute by minute.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_228">{228}</a></span></p> + +<p>“This is not an age that believes in the coming of a new Messiah. It +believes, foolishly, in what it can touch and see. What will you say, +Dickin, when I tell you that already as a youth I had intimations of a +mission, of being a—don’t laugh—a new Messiah, clad not in fine +raiment, nor born in a manger, but in the fashion of the age +scientifically equipped! Christ showed the way, but lacked the +mechanical means. He said this visible world had to be completely and +utterly destroyed: He waited for the miracle: but none came. Christ had +love, but no dynamite.</p> + +<p>“But not for ever will mankind be mocked. My friends, the hour of +deliverance is at hand. How is it?: ‘I am the Resurrection and the +Life.’ The Resurrection and the Life.” Suddenly his eyes were moist. He +wept.</p> + +<p>As they walked back it was light and the birds were twittering in the +square.</p> + +<h2><a id="XXIX">XXIX.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">When</span> Frank knocked at Eva’s door there was no answer. As he flung +himself into bed the sun already pressed itself through the curtain.</p> + +<p>The glowing earth swam in a silver sky. It swam and swam. And a shark +came out and followed it wanting to devour it. The poor earth had but +two fins and swam helplessly out of the reach of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_229">{229}</a></span> de Jones’s jaws. There +she was with all her cities and towns labouring to get away, panting +dreadfully; how hard he pushed her and how ineffectively. That was +because he was a passenger upon her and helpless as a man endeavouring +to accelerate the motion of a train. In his office on the top of the +roof, from the captain’s bridge, Ottercove shouted orders through a +megaphone: “Faster! faster! faster!” he cried. And the capitalists +whipped up the slaves and made them row faster. But a Trade Union strike +was just on and the miners and rowing men quitted their tools. And the +Prime Minister, as he urged the policemen to hearten them up with their +bayonet points, appealed to the galley slaves’ sense of duty and +patriotism and called on them “by a supreme effort, their loyalty and +solidarity in the cause of Humanity to save this planet, our Mother +Earth, the common heritage of all our race, from the treacherous jaws of +that monster,” while Ottercove from the bridge, whence there opened a +limitless view of the world, including Ludgate-hill and St. Paul’s, +shouted at them through the megaphone: “Faster, damn you! Still faster!” +Already de Jones’s huge lower jaw dropped and took water as he swam up +very close, and Frank’s heart stopped beating. The shark’s jaws opened +quite wide about to swallow the earth with London and Paris and Vienna +and all, and the men in the fields and the women and animals and the +suffering; and Ottercove from his bridge (pushing aside the Prime +Minister) encour<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_230">{230}</a></span>aged the rowing men with a long, big stick, as de +Jones’s sharp teeth fastened upon the green flanks of the earth—an +enormous stick like the trunk of a tree: Bang! bang! bang! The knocking +grew louder.</p> + +<p>Frank opened his eyes. “Come in,” he said.</p> + +<p>The door opened admitting Gilbert’s tremulous frame. “Sorry to waken +you, sir, but his lordship asks if you will take breakfast with him in +his bedroom.”</p> + +<p>He threw on his dressing-gown and followed the valet into his master’s +apartment, where he found the baron in bed, which was littered with +newspapers. “Well,” said Lord Ottercove genially, “I’ve got away with +the goods.” The balcony door was wide open. The blue Mediterranean +stretched out its paws and basked in the sun.</p> + +<p>De Jones came in, and at the same time Eva in her pink dressing-gown and +red-heeled slippers sidled in from the adjoining room. “Gilbert,” she +said, “please wrap these up for me.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, my lady.”</p> + +<p>“Let me introduce you to my wife,” said Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Your wife—?”</p> + +<p>“We went and got married last night,” she explained.</p> + +<p>“A brain wave,” said Ottercove. “I get such brain waves sometimes.”</p> + +<p>“A happy thought,” said Eva.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_231">{231}</a></span></p> + +<p>“The second inspiration,” de Jones looked at Frank.</p> + +<p>“Anyway I got the better of you two there,” said Ottercove uncertainly.</p> + +<p>“You did,” said Eva. “It never occurred to them to do it. And I am sure +I gave you plenty of opportunities, Ferdinand.” Her tone was meek and +propitiating. “So it’s not my fault.”</p> + +<p>“No, of course not. Still, it is a blow. One is never so keen on a thing +as when one has just lost it.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove smiled pleasantly. The assertion seemed to rehabilitate +his doubting judgment as to whether he had acted wisely overnight. “Of +course,” he said, “she’s a nice girl and wanted encouraging with +marriage to a man of brains and money who can do something with her. I +felt all along it would have been sheer waste throwing her away on +either of you. Casting pearls before swine, though I don’t, of course, +mean anything personal. Will you both lunch with us?”</p> + +<p>At lunch Lord Ottercove was subdued. All competition had suddenly ceased +with his acclaim as the winner; yet he did not look at all as though he +had won the Derby. He looked as he must have felt: as if he had rolled +head over heels in his best trousers and torn a hole in the seat, and +that instead of everyone laughing and clapping they merely said to him, +“Go and change.” In passing things during lunch and helping himself he +looked a little shame<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_232">{232}</a></span>-faced, and the three men were all glad when the +meal was over and they could go for a drive. Each wanted to be sure that +Eva took the ukulele with her to help them slide over the blank minutes. +Frank enjoyed riding about with Lord Ottercove in powerful motor-cars, +rapidly, rapidly, with a purposeful air, to no particular destination. +It was somehow, he felt, symbolical of Ottercove’s whole person. “Now, +Chris, shut up and let us hear what Dickin has to say.” And after +listening to Frank, “Now, Dickin, shut up. You’ve said enough. Chris, +let’s hear you.” Then: “Well, neither of you seem to have anything very +illuminating to say. I had better think it out myself.”</p> + +<p>“You’re a genius,” said Frank. “A genius of God-knows-what; but a +genius!”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” concurred de Jones, “there is no doubt at all about your +greatness; there may be some doubt about the quality of your greatness, +but no doubt about the greatness.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, when you are without your spectacles, Rex, you look a genius,” +said Eva. “But the moment you put them on you look like a doctor or a +harassed business man, or a clergyman who says, ‘How are we this +morning?’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“My heart,” said Lord Ottercove, “very jumpy to-day.”</p> + +<p>“I think it’s the stomach,” said Eva.</p> + +<p>“I think it’s the stomach,” said Ottercove gravely, but reassured.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_233">{233}</a></span></p> + +<p>“I think so,” said Frank. “Complete stoppage of the bowels.”</p> + +<p>“Better go back and telephone for the doctor,” said Eva.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove was touched if you chanced to ask about his health, and +now at Eva’s solicitude his eyes brimmed with tears. He took her hand +and stroked it. He was so moved by her attitude that he could not speak, +and only swallowed several times, and looked away. His health was not +too good. His boiler would suddenly demur in the midst of festivities +and pursue a mood of its own, and looking at the baron now as he +reclined hatless in the depth of the limousine, Dickin wondered if the +centre of his lordship’s mind was not—his expression suggested +it—superintending the issues fought within him.</p> + +<p>“No wonder,” Eva said, “your nose is red and shiny with all this +whizzing up and down in motor-cars and not a moment’s quietness.”</p> + +<p>He stroked her hand and went to sleep.</p> + +<p>Frank looked a long time at Eva, reproachfully, before he asked in a +whisper: “Why, why did you marry him? Why?”</p> + +<p>“I thought it would please Pilling.”</p> + +<p>“And I am forgotten! It didn’t take long.”</p> + +<p>“But you are married yourself.”</p> + +<p>“True. I’d forgotten.”</p> + +<p>“Rex telegraphed last night after we had got married for Mummy and Zita +and Pilling and Ray<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_234">{234}</a></span>mond and all to come out. ‘Let ’em all come out, the +whole bag o’ tricks of them!’ he said. And we were married by a +funny-looking parson; Rex had to pull him out of bed to marry us. He +gave him five minutes to slip into some clothes, and a hundred pounds of +money, and he married us in the sitting room without any trouble; said +it would be all right. I was so pleased it was definite. But Rex looked +puzzled and worried and talked to himself all the time, and when we were +back in the car he said he must have walked upstairs to the clergyman’s +flat in his sleep and wondered whether what he had just done could not +be undone perhaps by the Pope if he said he was a sleep-walker. But I +said the law was sacred and definite for better or worse. And when we +were all alone in the car and I began kissing him because he was my +husband and expected him to behave like a bridegroom, he was so scared +and looked through the window as though he wanted to jump out. And I +held him back and tried to calm him down, and he kept saying: ‘My God! +My God!’ And he asked me what had happened on the hill then? And I said, +‘Read Ferdinand’s serial.’ And he said, ‘Did it happen as in the +serial?’ I said, ‘Read the serial and never mind what happened.’ And so +he looked as though he’d gone and paid a huge price for something he’d +bought at a shop and then got home and found it was quite rotten.”</p> + +<p>“You may be his wife, Eva,” de Jones said, “but first and foremost you +are my secretary. And you<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_235">{235}</a></span> shall remain with me for the duration of my +mission.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I will do my best, Chris, to help you grow wheat.”</p> + +<p>He laughed. “They will believe anything—anything. But if ever you +conceive something really terrible, nobody will hinder you but they will +let you blow them up into smithereens with the sympathetic assistance of +the Ottercoves and such who will believe the first cock-and-bull story +that you choose to tell them.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove opened one eye and glared with it at de Jones, then +closed it.</p> + +<p>“Let us change the conversation,” Eva said.</p> + +<p>Pointing at a pillared villa, “I like that pillared thing,” Frank said. +“It asserts itself on the surrounding landscape. It’s a yea-saying to +life! None of your snivelling English houses looking like half-built +factories of red brick, hiding their faces as if ashamed of themselves.”</p> + +<p>“Buy it, Rex, just for the two of us,” said Eva.</p> + +<p>“I’ll buy it,” said the baron.</p> + +<p>They got out and bought it, and then motored back to Nice in time for +tea.</p> + +<p>After tea, de Jones took Frank by the arm and marched him up and down +the deserted, wind-swept Promenade des Anglais. “Why did he marry that +girl, Dickin? He had no notion of it when he left us at Maxime’s last +night. Just to be able to say to us in the morning: ‘I’ve got away with +the goods.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_236">{236}</a></span>’ For the love of the phrase. And mind you, he didn’t seduce +her—no fun in that, no advertisement! altogether too ordinary—but he +married her to do something more striking that may arouse comment. He +just felt that he owed it to himself and his brains and his money and +all to afford a real piece of folly.”</p> + +<p>“No, de Jones, it is we who are the fools for not having married her. +His second inspiration has not failed him. It never does. He has +enriched the rest of his life. Her sheer livingness is inexhaustible +and—I can see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice—you love her as I +do, more and more, to my dismay. All art is the translation of the +subjective into an object. Thus I prefer Eva to earnest women who can +talk of Pessimism and Buddhism but have no living and spontaneous form +themselves. When an object like Eva shows no visible sign of containing +a subject but appeals beyond all analysis, it may be taken that the +divine spirit has found in her a happy home. She is God’s art, perfect +like a flower.”</p> + +<p>“You are right, Dickin. The soul wants fresh food, just the same as the +body. And what some please to call the divided soul is the taste of a +spiritual epicure whose crime and curse is that he does not care for +preserved food. My excellent uncle Lord O. must always have everything +of the best.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, the memory of that first kiss! How she came into my arms, pliable +like a young plant. The hot sun, the menace of our end, and the longing +not<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_237">{237}</a></span> to die unmarried. De Jones, I can’t believe that I have lost her. +She will have all his houses and horses and servants to play with.”</p> + +<p>“But not all the King’s horses, not all the King’s men, can put +Humpty-Dumpty together again.”</p> + +<p>When in the evening Frank returned to his rooms, he found a gold watch +on his table. The watch was studded with large diamonds and inside was +the engraved inscription:</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>From Eva Ottercove</i><br></span> +<span class="i3"><i>With Love.</i>”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>When he entered the Ottercove’s suite and lingered in the drawing-room +he was startled by the animated conversation which reached him from the +adjoining bedroom. “Now don’t you think,” said a grieved, perhaps +somewhat sarcastic voice, unmistakably the baron’s, “you should have +taken me into your counsels instead of first disposing of the watch and +then sending the jeweller to me for the money?”</p> + +<p>“But you haven’t seen it!” the baroness rejoined impatiently. “It’s not +at all expensive for what it is; it’s all in diamonds. What’s the use of +your saying anything when you haven’t <i>seen</i> it?”</p> + +<p>“Just so. Don’t you think I should have seen it, in view of your youth +and inexperience, instead of laying yourself out to be swindled?”</p> + +<p>“It’s nothing to you even to be swindled, so why make any bones about +it?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_238">{238}</a></span></p> + +<p>This seemed to disarm the other for a space. “Why do you do these +things?” he then asked sadly.</p> + +<p>“I wanted to please him.”</p> + +<p>“But you could have waited a little, or asked.”</p> + +<p>“You are an awful old miser,” she said, “and I am sorry I ever married +you.”</p> + +<p>“I see that I shall have to engage a governess to go about with you and +chaperone you for a bit.”</p> + +<p>“You are a walking mountain of impudence!” said the baroness, “and I +don’t know what God was about when he made you!”</p> + +<h2><a id="XXX">XXX.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Eva’s</span> comment was not lost on Lord Ottercove. When next morning they +drove to the Beau-Site in Cannes, Lord Ottercove wore a more becoming +pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.</p> + +<p>“Just gone and settled their affairs,” he said, coming out on to the +sunny terrace, where Eva’s relatives awaited him against the background +of an ornamental garden and tennis courts on which rich Americans and +English exercised their limbs all day.</p> + +<p>“Very charming and touching,” said Mrs. Kerr. “But you should not have +put yourself out, Lord Ottercove. Raymond would have settled my bill, I +am sure. He is his mother’s boy.”</p> + +<p>“Mummy, you are too silly for words!” Zita flared up. “Where does +Raymond get his money?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_239">{239}</a></span></p> + +<p>“From Eleonor of course.”</p> + +<p>“And Eleonor?”</p> + +<p>“From her uncle.”</p> + +<p>“Well?”</p> + +<p>“But I give it all to Chris.”</p> + +<p>“Mummy is so stupid. She always draws wrong conclusions from everything. +There she goes about with that ‘Please trample on me’ look, smoking +cigarettes all day, agreeing with everybody. She takes Italian lessons +at five shillings an hour, and in order to make up for it gives golfing +lessons at five shillings an hour, and then takes her pupils out to tea, +and spends ten shillings; or has her portrait done in the café; always +invites everybody, stands drinks and cigarettes all round, pays for +everybody; speaks to everybody in the restaurants—Italians, Germans, +Scandinavians.”</p> + +<p>“She is a white woman,” muttered Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“You know what I’ll tell you, Lord Ottercove! I am disappointed in +Fyodor Ferdinandovitch. I knew nothing—nothing about it, till I read it +in <i>Pale Primroses</i>. Naturally I asked the girls, and it all came out.”</p> + +<p>“I know.”</p> + +<p>“But both! <i>Both!</i>”</p> + +<p>“He didn’t wish to leave either out, for fear of offending the other, I +guess.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Kerr,” said Frank, “I appeal to your idealism and good sense. In +the severity of your indig<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_240">{240}</a></span>nation, you did not sufficiently allow for +the circumstances in which, if I may put it thus, the drama was played. +Picture the scene. All around us, an epic panorama, and I alone with two +girls ... lovely girls ... the mountain spring ... certain death—and +Shakespeare’s immortal lines—</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>O Proserpina!</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>For the flowers now that frighted thou let’st fall</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>From Dis’s waggon! daffodils,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>That come before the swallow dares, and take</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>That die unmarried, ere they can behold</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>The flower-de-luce being one! Oh! these I lack</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>To strew him o’er, and o’er.</i>’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">“These loyal girls!” He placed a hand on either sister’s shoulder, and +drew them to him. “These splendid girls!”</p> + +<p>“Whom you have dishonoured!”</p> + +<p>“Tut-tut, Mummy!” said Zita. “You mustn’t blurt these things out! Morty +will murder Frank if he knows.”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “I have made an<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_241">{241}</a></span> honest woman of one of +them at any rate—sorry, can’t do it to both.”</p> + +<p>“I do not understand you, Lord Ottercove.”</p> + +<p>“I have made an honest woman of Eva.”</p> + +<p>“Explain it to me, please. I don’t understand.”</p> + +<p>“I have married her.”</p> + +<p>There was a pause. Mrs. Kerr looked round at them all, and satisfied +herself that the statement was a bona-fide one.</p> + +<p>“Well—I am very pleased. I must say that you have chosen well and +wisely. She will make a good wife to you. I congratulate you both.”</p> + +<p>“I hope, Mrs. Kerr,” Frank said, “that your grudge against me is over. I +trust that you will rejoice in your daughter’s happiness, and will ever +remember that the assignation of unworthy motives never helps but +weakens an argument.”</p> + +<p>“Dickin talks rot, but always with conviction. He would make a good +lawyer,” said Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Yes, or a great priest,” said Frank, obviously pleased with himself. “I +like to practise my oratorical gift.”</p> + +<p>“Now let’s make a night of it!” proposed Mrs. Kerr.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove did not reply. Lord Ottercove hated to act on other +people’s suggestions and as a rule “advised them against it,” and if +pressed for his reasons, produced arguments so cynically free from +plausibility that he seemed himself amused by their bewildering effect +on his opponent. If he ap<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_242">{242}</a></span>proved of a suggestion, he said nothing; then, +a few moments later, made it himself.</p> + +<p>“I am taking you out to-night, all of you,” he said.</p> + +<p>Pilling took Frank by the arm and marched him ahead, while the others +followed behind at a distance.</p> + +<p>“Glad you done it,” he said. “I thought it was me. My conscience sort of +worried me. It’s a dirty thing to do. Glad you done it.”</p> + +<p>“Damn it all, Pilling! It was a hill. Spring! Sunshine! You know those +lines from Shakespeare?</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>O Proserpina,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>For the flowers now that frighted—</i>’<span class="lftspc">”</span><br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>“Shut up, Dickin!”</p> + +<p>“You don’t realise the situation. We thought it was the end for us.”</p> + +<p>“I realise. <i>Force majeure.</i> That white-washes it a bit. Otherwise, you +know, I doubt whether you would be eligible for the best clubs.”</p> + +<p>“Still, I am disappointed in Ferdinand Fyodorovitch,” said Mrs. Kerr, +coming up from behind.</p> + +<p>“I appeal to your idealism,” said Frank automatically. “As I said, the +sun, the mountain spring—and those immortal lines—‘<i>O +Proserpina!...</i>’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>They would not let him go on. Strange: the moment he began to quote +those lovely lines, they would look sullen and angry, and ask him to +“shut up.” It<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_243">{243}</a></span> seemed as if they regarded his appeals to Shakespeare as +in bad taste; till he would lose his temper. “It would really seem that +my great crime consisted in getting saved!”</p> + +<p>Eleonor, after some consultation with Raymond, came up to her uncle and +took him aside. “It’s all very well,” she said, “Chris having adopted +Raymond. But suppose Chris marries again and has a child of his own?”</p> + +<p>“Then we must get him married at once.”</p> + +<p>“Married! That is just what we are anxious to prevent, for fear it might +result in a male child.”</p> + +<p>“Married, of course, to somebody who is beyond hope of begetting +children,” said Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“But who?”</p> + +<p>“To his old love, of course—Mrs. Kerr.”</p> + +<p>“But how do you know she can’t have a child?”</p> + +<p>“Her doctor told me in confidence.”</p> + +<p>“But he will refuse!”</p> + +<p>“We must bring pressure to bear on him.”</p> + +<p>“How?”</p> + +<p>“Chris is ruined, and he’s used to spending money. He knows I won’t give +him a penny, and, in fact, he won’t have it from me. He likes to feel +independent towards me. But of course, it’s only natural that Raymond, +married to my niece who draws on my account to an unlimited extent, +can’t help, good and loving son that he is, helping his mother. And +Chris, married to her, will be all right.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_244">{244}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Raymond and I want to marry next week in Paris,” said Eleonor.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove’s lips moved almost silently. “Why not marry here? I know +a chap—a parson—most obliging. Pulled him out of bed the other night +to marry us. Read the marriage ceremony unruffled.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, most obliging,” Eva concurred.</p> + +<p>“And you, Chris? And you, Mrs. Kerr?”</p> + +<p>“What’s that?”</p> + +<p>“Why don’t you get married?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know that it’s very safe to attach me to her with the tape of a +spent passion.”</p> + +<p>“Look here, I’ve got hold of a fellow—a pastor of some obscure +denomination. Very accommodating. He will remarry you all. What d’you +think of it?”</p> + +<p>“I am very glad, Chris, to be of use. You are a genius—”</p> + +<p>“Of the untried,” said Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“A real genius in science. And I want to help you in your discoveries. +Yes, I do. Take the case of the Curies.”</p> + +<p>“You mean Monsieur and Madame Curie?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I do. You will instruct me in your science and we will make new +discoveries together, you and I, Christopher!”</p> + +<p>“Help us!” Turning to Frank, he whispered: “They think they have got the +better of me there.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_245">{245}</a></span> But the boot is on the other foot! What do I care +whether I am blown up—single or married?”</p> + +<p>“So in the end, all are satisfied,” said Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Except my poor ancestors,” murmured de Jones.</p> + +<p>“Who are dead.”</p> + +<p>“Who are dead.”</p> + +<p>Pilling seemed pleased and impressed. “Lord Ottercove,” he remarked, as +if out of the baron’s hearing, but loud enough for the baron to hear, +“is a man of wide sympathies.”</p> + +<p>“He is a live wire,” from de Jones.</p> + +<p>That night, dashing off to Monte Carlo, where Lord Ottercove was +entertaining them, Pilling was seen to step into the baron’s car, who +not only did not seem to resent this intrusion, but actually welcomed +him with a smile. “I have, as you say, wide sympathies. When I see a man +struggling to get out of the water, I can’t resist helping him. It is my +nature,” he was heard to say, stepping out of the car.</p> + +<p>And, stepping again into the car with Pilling close on his heels, on the +way back to Nice, he was heard to say: “I have an interest in a number +of hotels which brings me in—er—about—er—three hundred thousand +pounds a year, and I’ll finance you in your undertaking,” and slam the +door behind him.</p> + +<p>Next day, Mrs. Kerr, who always liked to show off herself and hers, +called her new husband into the bathroom while John was shaving. “Look, +look!” she said. “What a big sponge John has!” But<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_246">{246}</a></span> Christopher looked +as though he wished the sponge had been smaller, and the dowry larger.</p> + +<p>The same day Frank picked up, in the lounge of the hotel, a newspaper, +which informed him:</p> + +<p>“Among the new arrivals at the Hotel Mauresco are Lord and Lady +Ottercove, Viscount and Viscountess de Jones, Mr. Frank Dickin, the +novelist, and the Honourable and Mrs. Raymond Mosquito.”</p> + +<h2><a id="XXXI">XXXI.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Since</span> the wedding had taken place in Nice, the bride and bridegroom felt +that they had to “get away” for their honeymoon, and elected a voyage by +yacht. “I have got away with the goods,” said Lord Ottercove, “and I +must get away with them.”</p> + +<p>“I must leave at once,” said de Jones.</p> + +<p>“I agree,” from Ottercove.</p> + +<p>But as de Jones would not part with his secretary, and the new Lady de +Jones would not part with her husband, they all left together, Frank as +a supernumerary.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, as a result of his marriage to Mrs. Kerr, Lord de Jones found +delight in concentrating on his missionary work, dictating for hours and +hours to Eva, who complained of “her poor brains.” He dictated to her, +and made her read aloud her shorthand, and every time it seemed to him a +mystery and a miracle. He did not really believe anyone<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_247">{247}</a></span> capable of +deciphering those puzzled and bewildered little signs they made.</p> + +<p>He was beautifully in love with her, and every word she typed seemed to +him a romance. He scanned the typescript, and suddenly perceived a +letter she had erased with her own darling fingers so as to insert the +right one: his heart filled with tears.</p> + +<p>Frank conceived it his duty to warn her. “Be careful of him. This +dictating is all very well, but it’s not the end of the business. It’s +unwholesome to be alone with that man. He can—he can—”</p> + +<p>“He can do nothing.”</p> + +<p>“He can seduce you.”</p> + +<p>“You have.”</p> + +<p>“True. I’d forgotten.”</p> + +<p>She looked at him quizzically.</p> + +<p>“You don’t know that Chris—yes, I might as well say it plainly—well, +you know as well as I do about Chris and your mother.”</p> + +<p>“They are married.”</p> + +<p>“Now they are. They haven’t before. Raymond is a living indictment of +their relations.”</p> + +<p>“Yes—Raymond—he somehow never cared for his father. But I don’t mind +Chris loving me, because he is a friend of Mummy’s.”</p> + +<p>“I have nothing further to say.”</p> + +<p>“Thank goodness for that!”</p> + +<p>But he would return at once with more to say.</p> + +<p>“You shouldn’t make yourself so cheap, Eva!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_248">{248}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Why shouldn’t I? He is so lonely, and never had a nice girl to love +him.”</p> + +<p>“Eva!”</p> + +<p>“It gives him so much pleasure, and it’s so little trouble to me.”</p> + +<p>“You leave my girl wife alone!” said Ottercove, coming upon Chris and +Eva suddenly in the seclusion of the Captain’s bridge. “Why don’t you +leave the girl alone?”</p> + +<p>De Jones blinked at him. “There is a divinity,” he said, “that shapes +our ends, rough-hew them as we may.”</p> + +<p>“You’ve got your wife, Chris. What do you want with mine?”</p> + +<p>“She reminds me of her mother,” said de Jones.</p> + +<p>“Ha! Not so bad!”</p> + +<p>“She’s more like her mother was than her mother is.”</p> + +<p>“But I’ve got away with the goods!” He strolled up and down several +times, and then stopped, peering at the horizon. “Oh, my heart!”</p> + +<p>“I think it’s the stomach,” said Chris.</p> + +<p>“Yes, I think it’s the stomach,” said Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Poor darling!” from Eva.</p> + +<p>At that, tears came to his eyes, and he turned away to hide his +emotion.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_249">{249}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="XXXII">XXXII.</a></h2> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Fliesse, fliesse, lieber Fluss!</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Nimmer werd’ ich froh;</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>So verrauschte Scherz und Kuss</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Und die Treue so.</i><br></span> +<span class="i9"><i>Goethe.</i><br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Everything went wrong with Frank; he could succeed in nothing. He had no +luck in anything—but he won steadily at ping-pong. He was rapidly +losing his hair. But on that score he was optimistic. As his hair fell +out more and more, he lost neither courage nor faith, but interpreted +this as a process preparatory to new growth. The new hair which was to +make its appearance must, he argued, have room; and the old hair was +making room for it—with alacrity. When, after a time, it had entirely +disappeared, he judged that now at last the field was clear for a fresh +crop. And, as if to compensate him for his premature bereavement on the +top, dispassionate nature started a particularly bristling, pushful +growth out of his nostrils. Even so, his faith in the value of human +striving had not deserted him. All other remedies having failed, he +determined to grow hair by sheer strength of will. And he was +succeeding—succeeding....</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove devoted more and more time to reading. He had always been +a great reader, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_250">{250}</a></span> now, since his marriage to Eva, he spent all the +day with her reading a book to himself. He had always been bored, but +now, married to her, he seemed more bored than ever before.</p> + +<p>The haze and hurry, the dreamy unreality of modern life. Frank was +bewildered rather than bored with it. He was thrown like flotsam into +the stream and was swept along. But he would step out—and life would be +timeless. He could not tell how passionately he craved to step out of +life in time, while he was with de Jones, Mrs. Kerr, and Ottercove.</p> + +<p>The scrambling on the part of the three men for the favours of Eva, as +the yacht made its way towards Rome, was too much for Frank, and he left +them at Genoa, travelling north by rail.</p> + +<p>And now, as he looked back, the bleak hours he once spent with Eva +seemed coloured beads wetted in light and translucent with a meaning. +The actual giving at the time was crude and like a pain. The remembrance +of it, as it grew more distant, was as the faint perfume of roses, a +romance far off. Dead, perhaps, we see these things completely. He +remembered how in that first kiss she had pressed herself, a pliant +plant, against him, and closed her eyes, as if to shut in the vision: +there was something in her movement half instinctive which thrilled him +in one so young; half naïve, as though she had only read of it in books +and now, for the first time, was tasting love, and staging it, in actual +life! He re<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_251">{251}</a></span>membered how at his dentist’s one day, they had sat together +side by side on the narrow sofa in the waiting-room, and as the +attendant turned his back on them, he had touched her thigh and knee +(oh, thigh! oh, knee!), and at once when they were out, and in the taxi, +she had kissed him on his dentisted mouth. He remembered too, how she +had written to him once about a Cambridge “student,” alleged to have +given her circumstantial proof of his, Ferdinand’s, unfaithfulness, and +when he wrote to her demanding that she substantiate the charge, and +challenged her to identify the Cambridge “student,” her writing back: +“Let us drop the subject, as the matter is muddling.” Or how, after +saying to him: “You must absolutely send me roses for my birthday +to-morrow, Ferdinand!” she telegraphed next day: “Please don’t send +flowers;” and the basket of flowers he sent her in gallant disregard of +her wire crossed her letter to him containing a bill for £5 for a +costume she could not resist acquiring, and which she lent forthwith to +a friend who did not come back with it. At the time he resented this +overture. Now, in retrospect, it moved him: did it not show a touching +solicitude not to lead him into needless expense in the face of an +already existing bill—when she might so easily have asked for both! He +now thought of her feelings when one day he had spoken to her like a +boor, and barely tried to conceal his tedium in her presence. He +remembered the moistened look in her eye, the curve of her brow,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_252">{252}</a></span> the +twitch of her lashes. And these metaphors of love stirred and racked his +soul.</p> + +<p>In Milan, cold, sparse, and unfriendly, where at nightfall woeful +figures dotted the wide, deserted, wind-swept streets, his heart, grown +tender through memory, constricted in sombre anguish. “Poor women!” he +thought.</p> + +<p>Getting into the Vienna express at midnight, into a coupé in which the +blinds were drawn and the passengers asleep, his mood darkened and +deepened. A siren at his side, opening her eyes at his intrusion, +resumed a desultory conversation with another, a pale coughing girl, +with whom she was travelling north where “trade” was deemed to be +better. “On arrival,” she flustered, “I must buy myself some new hair, +and then you will wait for me downstairs while I go up and see Francesca +about giving us a room.” The girl close to him addressed him in Italian. +“I do not speak Italian,” Frank said. “Do you speak English?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she said, articulating deliberately: “we have no b-hananas; we +have no b-hananas to—day.”</p> + +<p>Was that all she knew of English? No, there were other words she knew. +“Love”—“kiss”—“cheque-book.” Did he have a cheque-book? Englishmen, +she said, always had a cheque-book. It was, she thought, their +distinguishing characteristic. Where were they going? To Budapest—where +they had once lived with their parents. “At the time when we were still +honest,” she added.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_253">{253}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Fallen women! Lost women! Poor lost women!”</p> + +<p>“In this world we are all lost men and women,” echoed a voice in him to +the shattering rhythm of the train.</p> + +<p>All lost men and women. Lost. Some more luxuriously lost than others, +but all, all lost. Lost and damned. No escape!</p> + +<p>He closed his eyes. Lost, lost, lost ... lost, lost, lost....</p> + +<p>A long, wide, endless road stretched before him. He is walking down that +road, the road to Purgatory. What is the crowd outside that house? He +stops and watches. They are carrying out an open coffin with a young +girl in it. The old harpies in the crowd shake their heads. “She took +her life.” “What, took her life?” “She has been betrayed by a young +good-for-nothing.” “No, she died in childbirth.”</p> + +<p>“Let me! Let me!” He rushes to her. “I was the first to cause her fall. +Oh, wait! Don’t close the lid! O, Eva! Dearest heart. She died for love +... like Fräulein Else.”</p> + +<p>He sheds hot tears as he kneels on her cold tomb which hides her and her +young white purity. But as he rises and leaves the cemetery, she follows +silently behind him to the gate, where, sensing something, he turns +round. “Eva!”</p> + +<p>“I don’t want to be buried. I am yours,” she says,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_254">{254}</a></span> coming to him in her +long white shroud. “Take me away with you.”</p> + +<p>They kiss. He is forgiven....</p> + +<p>“What’s this?” He opens his eyes, heavy with tears.</p> + +<p>“Verona. A stop of forty minutes,” imparts his vis-à-vis, “and there is +a cold buffet.”</p> + +<p>Another dream, another life!</p> + +<h2><a id="XXXIII">XXXIII.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">He</span> found himself, largely against his intention, writing long letters to +Eva. But Eva never wrote—only cabled. He had cables from Stockholm and +Moscow, Pekin and Buenos Ayres. It was not until they were nearing home +that Frank had a letter from her. Christopher de Jones, she wrote, was +madly in love with her. “<i>He said he wanted me to be his entirely and +everlastingly, if you know what I mean. I let him have his way because +he says he is quite serious about blowing up the world, and I think if +he had a little baby of his own, shurely he wouldn’t do such a thing. +But Rex does not agree with me. I told him all the truth about +Christopher and he says he is going to divorce me. I am furious, and He +is Furious. Never mind Darling, if I flirt with him he won’t divorce +me.</i>”</p> + +<p>Frank planned to stay abroad for a long time to come. He would not +return to England, perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_255">{255}</a></span> for years. One morning, however, he received +advice from Victoria Station that his cloak-room expenses in respect of +a trunk he had forwarded to his address in London, and which could not +be opened by the Custom officials as he had not sent them the key, were +piling up in geometrical progression, rising hourly, minute by minute. +The news shocked him out of his resolution to stay away from England. +Hiring a special motor, he rushed headlong to the station and caught the +express train to Boulogne, only to learn, on his arrival at Victoria, +that his cloak-room expenses amounted to seventeen shillings and +ninepence. He felt as a man, who, arriving breathless at the station, +finds that the train is not due for another half-hour. He was that kind +of man—the business side of life was a perpetual nightmare to him. +Having arrived in England, he made up his mind to stay there. A month +later, he recorded in his journal:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>There is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon. The +magnetic O. usurps more and more of my interest. Late at night we +dash into the country, spending the night at his resplendent +country house, and rush back to town in the morning. Feverish +activity. Articles are written, printed, and forgotten; to-day’s +paper lights to-morrow’s fire. It goes on—dances and +entertainments; the dinners and drinks of to-day are washed away +into the ocean to-morrow. ‘To-morrow and to-morrow, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_256">{256}</a></span> to-morrow, +creeps in this petty pace from day to day, till the last syllable +of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way +to dusty death,’ O, if only this were all to end, change soon, this +vexatious, unavailing life in time! Don’t make it long, O Lord!</i></p> + +<p>“<i>Yesterday I visited Bourne Abbey (Ottercove’s country house) with +O. and Eva. As we went upstairs I sniffed the air; there seemed to +be a queer musty smell. I asked O. what it was. ‘I am sorry, +Dickin,’ he said. ‘I am very sorry that there should be a smell.’ +Eva seemed quite at home; no trace of self-consciousness—a perfect +hostess.</i></p> + +<p>“<i>Last week Christopher de Jones came to me. The electric light had +failed, and his face looked worn and secretive by candle light, +like a monk’s. The lines round his mouth had deepened, too. We +talked of the end of the world; his voice and general attitude were +apocalyptic. He ended by making a confession. ‘You know why I +always come here. It is because you know her. I come to you so as +to talk of her. You love her. And I—I—I—‘</i></p> + +<p>“<i>I should welcome the change foreshadowed in the Apocalypse. For +time is a cheat, and life a snare. It is the curse of life in time +that it can only give us one thing at a time, while a latent memory +of Eden in us longs for all things all the time; ‘and nothing’ says +Shakespeare, (meaning not-being) ‘brings me all things.’ +‘Abwarten,’ (abide, or perhaps better: mark time) was Goethe’s +motto in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_257">{257}</a></span> wisdom of old age. But while conscious of the mirage +of love and freedom (for here again, while all the world seems open +to you, you must needs trail a narrow path, zigzag it as you will), +I have not the strength of will to forego their piecemeal +felicities with their fickle promise of what life was before the +fall. And so it is that though I expect nothing from life (and thus +have agreeable surprises), I shall live it (as one would say of +reading an unpromising manuscript) with interest, till we are +changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last +trump.</i></p> + +<p>“<i>And, aye, there is hope! Lord de Jones has bought a penny trumpet +and threatens to shatter us all into dust. Well, we shall see. Or, +rather, we shall not see. Cease seeing. I wonder which....</i>”</p></div> + +<h2><a id="XXXIV">XXXIV.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Lord de Jones</span> put down the newspaper, and closed his eyes. After the +reading of a newspaper, particularly a Sunday newspaper, he generally +experienced an acute feeling of nausea, as though he had eaten a fruit +salad of the very worst kind. And indeed there was enough in it to-day +to disconcert a sensitive reader. There was the “Dog Election” in +England; the Fundamentalist-Evolutionist feud in America growing into +what looked very like a civil war; and a European embroglio likely to +develop<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_258">{258}</a></span> into a new world war overnight. Yet in all three cases the +initial cause of contention had been so slight that but for the gravity +of the consequences he would have dismissed it all as unreal.</p> + +<p>The “Dog Election” which had shaken the country in the second half of +April had its origin, he recalled, in Frank Dickin’s, on a previous +evening, as he was hurrying to keep an appointment with Lord Ottercove, +slipping on the pavement and, in his indignation, recommending to his +host the wholesale extermination of the breed of dogs. Lord Ottercove, +who had made a note of it at the time, caused it to be described in his +newspapers as a public nuisance which the government should put a speedy +end to, and when, a week later, a prominent member of Parliament slipped +and broke his leg, Lord Ottercove’s newspapers rose <i>en masse</i> against +dogs. In a hundred years’ time, one of his papers affirmed, historians +would note with horror that in the first half of the twentieth century +dogs were allowed complete license of behaviour in the public +thoroughfares. An altogether unexpected outburst of support from +readers, thousands of whom had apparently been storing up for many years +a somewhat unmanly resentment against the dog race, emboldened Lord +Ottercove to push the matter to extremities. DOGS MUST GO—his posters +cried in unison. Now the Prime Minister, a man of inconspicuous +curiosity, and an overwhelming sense of right and wrong, read these +articles. A country squire, who had been per<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_259">{259}</a></span>suaded to shoulder the +burden of government much against his inclination, he was a confirmed +dog lover. The thought of exterminating our dumb and loyal friends was +repugnant to him. But his conscience told him that pavements erected +with the taxpayers’ money were being abused by caninity; accidents were +accumulating, deaths might ensue any day. The dogs were in the wrong; +yes, the dogs must go. It was his duty to carry out the policy however +unpopular, if he thought it a matter of duty that the policy should be +carried out. And he was a man of duty. “Exterminate the dog breed!” +became the slogan and policy (though largely against the advice of the +older statesmen) of the Conservative Party. The Liberal Party, it would +seem, had only been waiting for that. Assisted and advised by Lord +Ottercove, they made “The Preservation and Protection of Our Friend the +Dog” the chief item of their party programme. “Joe,” (as he was called +by his intimates) the Liberal leader, temperamentally repelled by dogs, +had been photographed sitting in a basket chair, a grave-eyed poodle +with his front legs across the Liberal leader’s knees. “The heart of +England is sound,” they said, stealing the Tory touch, “so long as she +remains a dog-loving Nation.” And again: “Do away with the dogs: and the +country will assuredly go with them!”</p> + +<p>“Where will it go?” from a heckler (put there by the Liberal candidate +himself).</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_260">{260}</a></span></p> + +<p>“To the dogs, sir!” blandly and crushingly.</p> + +<p>Loud laughter.</p> + +<p>The Labour Party unfortunately split itself over the issue. The more +responsible section sympathised with the socialising efforts of the +Conservative Prime Minister; the other half resented the adoption on the +part of the reactionaries of what by the look and sound of it should +have been a Socialist programme, and they were helped by the lovers of +whippets and rabbit coursing and the gamblers who flocked to the dog +races. The controversy grew in passion; something not unlike a civil war +loomed behind this sinister antagonism; a St. Bartholomew Night +threatened from day to day, a pogrom with extensive dog massacres having +been organised by the more energetic Die-hard section of the Tory Party +who did not believe in half measures, distrusted the Prime Minister’s +tendency to conciliation and compromise and were anxious to check his +retreat and by forcing his hand oblige him to take a firm stand. Till +<i>The Nation</i>, commenting in a leading article upon the situation that +had arisen over the “Right of Dog” question, pointed out with +characteristic pertinence and good sense that in the heat of passion the +main issue had been overlooked, as usual, namely, whether there was not +a possibility of doing away with the indubitable nuisance caused by dogs +who are wrongly granted the freedom of the pavement, without necessarily +doing away with the dogs themselves. <i>The New States<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_261">{261}</a></span>man</i> and <i>The +Spectator</i> raised the same question in their individual voice. But +nobody cared to listen to them. The Conservative Government resigned on +a vote of confidence, and in the General Election which ensued the +Liberals carried everything before them.</p> + +<p>In America, Lord de Jones read, there was a growing feud between +Fundamentalists and Evolutionists. An Evolutionist had declared that he +was ready to appear at a Fundamentalist meeting and “dare” God to smite +him dead. An ardent Fundamentalist disciple, believing that he was +serving his cause, connected the steel platform on which the +Evolutionist was speaking by a wire with the main electric current of +the premises, thereby electrocuting the Evolutionist in the very act of +his challenge. Details, however, leaked out by and by, resulting in what +threatened to become a religious war between the two faiths hardly to be +paralleled since the Wars of the Crusades, if then. The Fundamentalist +declared at his trial that in so far as God Himself had put the idea +into his head, it was the hand of God that had struck down the +blasphemer; and in his summing-up the judge directed the jury to +determine just how far it was God and how far devilry. The jury were +reluctant to pass a verdict of “guilty” against so almighty a being, and +Counsel at a subsequent trial conceded so much to the scientific bias of +the day as to declare that the electrocution of the Evolutionist was in +the nature<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_262">{262}</a></span> of a miracle intended to create and sustain faith, elevating +an otherwise unimportant mechanical trick into the realms of the +supernatural. The Fundamentalist was acquitted; and in the ensuing riots +directed by outraged Free Thinkers and Revolutionaries against the +headquarters of the Fundamentalists in Massachusetts, the responsible +leaders of the faith, though admitting the uncalled-for action and +excessive zeal of their feather-brained disciple who, while wishing to +assist their cause, had unwittingly damaged it, yet claimed that a +little trick like that could not implicate the essential wisdom of their +faith nor undermine the foundations of Fundamentalism.</p> + +<p>All over the world, Lord de Jones knew, and particularly in England, the +struggle between capital and labour grew more bitter and, as time went +on, threatened to develop into a general revolution; to side-track which +the respective Governments agreed to have a war. A <i>casus belli</i> was +looked for; and was found. A Russian Tsarist “Government” living in +exile in Paris had published its claims on Eastern Prussia which once +upon a time was Slav; inasmuch as Petrograd (though this they were +reluctant to admit) had once been Finnish soil, and was now being +claimed by a Fascist Government in Helsingfors whose motto was “A +Greater Finland!” Germany, while admitting the justice of the Finnish +claims, disputed those of Russia; and Russia, while disputing the +Finnish claim to Petrograd, insisted on<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_263">{263}</a></span> its own to Eastern Prussia. The +new war was broadly (and amicably) conceived on these lines, and the +British Government, declaring that it could not countenance another war +in Europe, plunged into it—so as to stop it.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove hailed the prospect of war (in lieu of revolution) with +mixed feelings of journalistic felicity and human discomfiture. As the +probability—and later the unavoidability—of war became more certain, +the humane resistance in him yielded to the <i>force majeure</i> of patriotic +excitement, and he wrote himself the leading article, heading it: “The +Nation Demands—.” And the nation, reading it at breakfast next morning, +felt that, yes, it was in them to demand, and they demanded and would +not sheathe the sword until they had fought to utter exhaustion. And +young men from the public schools were already training in bayonet drill +on the lawns of Kensington Gardens under sergeants whose dictum, oft +repeated, was that the war was to be won by saluting by numbers. Grey +haired City men were forming fours everywhere, and, as a relaxation from +it, forming two deep. Once again there was “A Cause.”</p> + +<p>When, to forget the war, Lord de Jones turned in to a music hall +matinée, a comedian was singing:</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>I joined the Army yesterday,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>So the Army of to-day</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>’S all right;</i><br></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_264">{264}</a></span></div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">and a stoutish prima donna replied in mezzo soprano:</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>I didn’t like you, John,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Before you joined the Army, John;</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>I like you now</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>You’ve got your khaki on!</i>”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">and displayed her fat legs in a whirl.</p> + +<h2><a id="XXXV">XXXV.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">One</span> afternoon in early spring, when the streets of London resounded with +bugles and drums calling the manhood of Britain to rise in arms in +defense of Russia’s menaced right to Petrograd and Germany’s ownership +of Eastern Prussia, a dark curled, hazel-eyed girl rang the bell of +Stonedge House and asked for Lady Ottercove, who a moment later greeted +the visitor with astonished delight.</p> + +<p>“Baby!” she exclaimed and threw her arms around her neck. She dragged +Baby by the hand into the drawing-room, and from the drawing-room into +the second drawing-room, and from the second drawing-room into the +ball-room, and then up to her beautiful bedroom; and in all the rooms +Baby displayed astonishment and rapture. “I have another house,” Eva +said, “in the country, and Rex has another small house in town where we +go when we<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_265">{265}</a></span> wish to be alone with nobody to bother us, and I have a +villa near Nice and a Rolls and lots of servants and everything, and +more money than I know what to do with.”</p> + +<p>“Not really!”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes! And Rex is very pleased with me, he says, and very proud.”</p> + +<p>And indeed, every one of Lord Ottercove’s friends could testify that Eva +proved an admirable hostess. She seemed to carry out her duties with +ease and without self-consciousness; she had learnt the essentials of +the game by hearsay; and there was something so fresh, naïve, +spontaneous about her nature that men found her irresistible. And women +she did not bother about.</p> + +<p>“Aren’t you terribly, <i>terribly</i> happy?” Baby asked.</p> + +<p>Eva suddenly looked a little grave and sad. “Can you,” she said, “keep a +secret?”</p> + +<p>Baby said she could.</p> + +<p>“If you can,” said Eva, “I will do something for you.”</p> + +<p>“Really? What?”</p> + +<p>“Save your life.”</p> + +<p>“No?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. I will tell you if you promise never, <i>never</i> to say a word of it +to anyone. It’s about Christopher de Jones. All these years he has been +wanting to blow up the earth with all the people, etcetera,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_266">{266}</a></span> on it, and +when we were in Greece and he descended into a deep, deep crater which +he said was the deepest crater of them all, going right down into the +bowels of the earth, he said to me that he had only to disintegrate one +single atom in it to blow up all the earth with all the people on it +into smithereens. But I said that this was very, very wicked of him, so +he said that suffering humanity had suffered long enough and that if he +blew it up it would no longer suffer pain, and so on, but that as he +loved me more than anything else on earth he wished to spend the last +few hours with me, holding hands, etcetera, and one day he came to me +all radiant in the face and happy, and said he’d done it. ‘Done what?’ I +said. ‘Disintegerated the atom,’ he said, and that we were all doomed +and done for. ‘But, Chris,’ I said, ‘how could you have done such a +thing!’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You needn’t worry; it’s all quite +respectable, and there is no noise or explosion. I have only +disintegrated the atom, and now all matter, the whole of the world is +slowly disintegrating, too, peeling away into nothing. Soon nothing will +be left of our planet.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>But oh, Chris!’ I said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>It’s all right,’ he said. ‘There is no pain, no suffering, no +inconvenience or discomfort. People just soften, disintegrate atom by +atom, turn into whiffs of steam, a sort of mist, and vanish like smoke +up the chimney. All is over in a few seconds.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_267">{267}</a></span></p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Chris,’ I said, ‘I don’t understand.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>It’s—how shall I say?—as if people ate themselves up,’ he said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>But they can’t quite, Chris. There’ll be crumbs left after them.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>No, crumbs and all.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>But the mouth will be left, Chris; when the mouth has eaten everything +there will still be the mouth left to eat.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>And the mouth will eat it,’ he said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I see. Chris, I want to tell you something,’ I said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>What?’ he said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I am going to have a baby,’ I said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Oh!’ he said. ‘Whose baby?’</p> + +<p>“How could I know? But I looked soft and tender, as if it might be his. +‘Chris,’ I said, ‘Can you not save yourself and your baby—and me too, +perhaps?’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I would do anything,’ he said, ‘to save you and the baby, but I’ve +laddered the world. You know what happens when you’ve laddered a silk +stocking.’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>You’ve got to buy a new pair,’ I said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Exactly,’ he said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Can’t you buy a ... a new world?’ I said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I’ll have to see if I can mend the old one,’ he said.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Can’t you?’</p> + +<p>“He said he didn’t know. He said he would have<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_268">{268}</a></span> to look into it, think +about it. He might be able, he said, to isolate a bit of earth +somewhere—a mountain-top or something, where we three could be saved.</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Yes, yes!’ I said. ‘We three and all our friends. Just a little +house-party!’</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>No house-parties, by God!’ he said. ‘Just you and I and the baby—you +and I and the baby.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>Eva paused. Baby looked at her long and sadly, modestly, too, as if +reluctant to press her own claims to survival.</p> + +<p>“But if you keep quiet about it,” said Eva, “I will tell you where to go +to. You will just hide in the cellar or somewhere, lie low for a day or +two, and then creep out when I tell you to. I will make it all right +with Chris.”</p> + +<p>For a long while the two cousins chattered together of matters +irrelevant to the coming apocalypse; but presently they were back in the +future. “And Rex, and Ferdinand, and one or two others,” said Eva. “I +will manage it so that Chris doesn’t know.’</p> + +<p>“And your mother, and Zita, and Pilling, I suppose?”</p> + +<p>“No, no! We mustn’t have a crowd. You see, there will be very little to +eat on the top of a hill. But we’ll have a good time all the same.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_269">{269}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="XXXVI">XXXVI.</a><br><br> +THE LAST SUPPER</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Thursday</span> was the opening night of the <i>New Babylon</i>, Pilling’s new night +club. The butler had been announcing arrivals:</p> + +<p>“Lord and Lady de Jones.</p> + +<p>“The Honourable Raymond and Mrs. Mosquito.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Frank Dickin.”</p> + +<p>Then, flinging open the doors, the butler made a last belated +appearance: “Mr. Kerr, m’lord.”</p> + +<p>“Now this is very, very nice. Come right in, Mr. Kerr!” from Lord +Ottercove.</p> + +<p>At the long table presided over by Ottercove, Frank found himself seated +by the side of his own wife. After the long absence, she seemed +beautiful and enchanting, and her presence, new yet familiar, broke the +crust of ice in his heart and released rivers of rapture; and outside it +was spring, full of desires, and here was she, his lovely mate....</p> + +<p>And yet? And yet? Looked at objectively, enquired into dispassionately, +was marriage a solution of one’s terrestrial difficulties? Be honest +now, he said to himself. One wife was both too much and not enough. +Fifty wives, renewable like water in a swimming pool, would be better. +He would sit there then, all lust gone, among them, a man of action +turned philosopher, and pass his hand dis<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_270">{270}</a></span>passionately over this or that +wife’s hair, seeking solace in intellectual intercourse with some other +man who agreed that life was wanting! “What?” He was roused from his +reverie, and, not hearing the question, replied: “Rather!”</p> + +<p>Indisputably, Cynthia was enchanting, and even Lord Ottercove singled +her out after dinner. “Are you the prettiest girl in London, Cynthia?” +He kissed her thoroughly on the mouth.</p> + +<p>“No, Rex, no!”</p> + +<p>An actress, jealous of Cynthia’s success, flung her champagne over her. +Cynthia, shocked beyond words, and followed by all her admirers, retired +to another room, where she was presently joined by the actress, who +lavished profuse apologies on her: “I am so frightfully sorry, darling!”</p> + +<p>“It’s quite all right, darling.”</p> + +<p>And all the women who hated each other, called one another thus: +“darling.”</p> + +<p>It was, to all appearance, a brilliant party. Vernon Sprott was +there—Vernon Sprott, the foreman of British fiction, whose novel +entitled <i>The New Babylon Hotel & Restaurant</i> had provided the +designation of Pilling’s night club, in consideration of which Mr. +Sprott received a royalty on the gross profits of the New Babylon Club +of 0.0000002 per cent. free of income tax and payable to him after +deduction of a commission of ten per cent. by Mr. Sprott’s Literary +Agent. And both he and his literary agent (who was there) could not take +their<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_271">{271}</a></span> eyes off Cynthia, by common consent the special, the most +distinctive ornament of the evening. She looked a little pale, +dream-like, ravishing, romantic; and as she danced her eyes seemed to +say: “Do you remember?” and Frank could scarcely wait for the end of the +party to elope with his wife, to carry her away ... away.... She said +what Juliet had said before her: that it was too sudden!</p> + +<p>Only Christopher de Jones seemed glum. He sat and watched how Eva danced +with an intent young man whose cleverness was in his feet; danced +confidentially, <i>giving</i> him her pliable young body, every movement of +which seemed to say: “I am thine, thine....” For such is the melody of +the dance. He could see, it seemed to him, through all the souls of the +men and women, guests, musicians, waiters, and divine what the +headwaiter, the orchestra men, each individual thought to himself: how +each only suffered. Another little while, he thought, and it would all +be over....</p> + +<h2><a id="XXXVII">XXXVII.</a><br><br> +A PAIR OF BARE LEGS</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Baby</span>, who had been sent out by her cousin to ascertain the local +conditions in the Austrian Alps, having only reported, after a lapse of +two weeks, that dogs were not allowed in the public parks of Innsbruck<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_272">{272}</a></span> +and that persons doing damage to the flower beds would be prosecuted, +Frank, the next candidate scheduled by Eva for salvation, was despatched +in Baby’s wake.</p> + +<p>He found her at the top of a mountain towering above the Inn valley, +playing chess with a handsome young bank clerk from Vienna, on his +annual holiday in the Tyrol. Neither knew a word of the other’s +language, and made love with the aid of a dictionary. He found the words +and passed her the dictionary. Love. Bliss. Desire. She read the English +equivalent and purred. It was exquisite.</p> + +<p>Frank deemed the <i>pension</i> and the hill in every way an adequate <i>pied à +terre</i>, worthy of preservation and, so far as he could judge, eminently +suitable for isolation from the atomic disintegration about to overtake +the world; and he gave Eva all the available information as to victuals, +trains, etc, warning her, among other things, not to pull the +communication cord while the train was in motion unless there was +genuine need for it; and even gave the Italian of it: “<i>Tirare +lamaniglia solo in caso di pericolo. Ogni abuso verrà punito!</i>”</p> + +<p>The Pension Kogl stood alone on the mountain-top, and gazing down from +his balcony in the morning Frank saw an old Habsburg Schloss stretched +out beneath him, which looked like the Regent Palace Hotel, London. +Breakfast, perhaps, was a little on the short side, and on the +bedside-table on which it was laid there was a little tablecloth with +the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_273">{273}</a></span> words: “<i>Wenig aber von Herzen</i>” embroidered in red Gothic letters. +Below, under Frank’s windows, the proprietress’ husband, the Wirt, +looking very like Gogol’s Taras Boulba, paced the yard in a skull cap as +early as five-thirty. He was a bad sleeper, and thus was essentially +fitted to see to it that the sleepy servant girls did not oversleep +themselves. He was up and on the look-out for defaulters, like a +sergeant-major waiting in the barrack yard. In a bungalow annex across +lived an old apoplectic little baron who, early each morning, about the +time of mine host’s appearance, popped out his head through the window, +whereon the ensuing conversation could be overheard:</p> + +<p>“Good morning, Herr Baron! Have you slept well? The weather—well, I +think—or at least, it seems to me—that the sky might clear up, in +which case it is possible—I say, it is <i>possible</i>—possible that we may +have good weather to-day. Yes, yes, I am hopeful, Herr Baron.”</p> + +<p>Herr Kogl stood close to the Baron’s window and spat on the ground. The +Herr Baron, out of a feeling of fellowship, spat out of the window: +“Kh-kh-kh—Kh-hhrrr—Khhh!” they spat.</p> + +<p>“Hey! Where you off to!” the host would suddenly yell to the young farm +hand, who was setting out for town in the milk cart.</p> + +<p>“To town.”</p> + +<p>“Off you go at once!” he would shout after him angrily. “Hurry up! +You’ve overslept yourself<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_274">{274}</a></span> again, you lazy bounder! Off you go, young +scoundrel, you!—-- Youth,” he would add tenderly, turning back to the +Baron.</p> + +<p>Thus till nine o’clock in the morning he would stroll up and down the +yard, his hands behind his back, and then serve himself his first +Schnaps.</p> + +<p>Herr Kogl’s distinction was that he was supposed to have a particularly +strong will. Frau Kogl’s mother, who had bought the present <i>pension</i> on +her Alsacian savings, had had just such a man in view for her daughter, +whom she did not consult in the matter, though once, in an unusually +tender and communicative mood, she did ask her: “What sort of a man +would you like for a husband, Anny?” Anny had lowered her lashes and +said: “With a strong will.” Herr Kogl was chosen without hesitation as +the sort of man with a strong will who would take care of his wife’s +property; and now, living up to his reputation, he would bawl at her +from time to time: “Hey, there! Anna!—I have called: ‘<i>Anna</i>!’<span class="lftspc">”</span>—and +she obeyed.</p> + +<p>Their son, who had a smooth voice, quiet manners, and a cast in one of +his eyes, knew on which side his bread was buttered, and though a little +fearful of his father, clung to his moneyed mother, and disdained his +Pa’s assumed authority, who, to bear out his own reputation, bawled at +him occasionally: “Hey, there! Herbert! I said: ‘<i>Herbert</i>!’<span class="lftspc">”</span> when his +son half turned a reluctant ear to him. Frau Kogl herself had moods when +she liked to assert<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_275">{275}</a></span> her authority; but they were intermittent and +brief. She could never decide anything. Her mother was right in choosing +for her a husband who bawled at her. Frau Kogl had no illusions about +his utility, and secretly thought him a vagabond. But she needed someone +to bawl at her. When he bawled, his authority in her eyes was restored; +and she loved him.</p> + +<p>The briskness in the air of an early mountain spring morning! Old +forgotten feelings flooded his heart. As Frank went down the stairs, he +passed the bare-legged scullery maid who was washing the steps. He +looked round, and she smiled. And when later in the morning she helped +carry up his large trunk, he could not take away his gaze from those +healthy white legs.</p> + +<p>“Good morning, Herr Dickin,” the host greeted him. “I am hoping that if +the clouds disperse—I am hoping, I say, that if they disperse, we may +be having—we may be having, I say—having fine weather to—day. But I +regret to say it is Saint Peter”—he pointed to the skies—“who is in +charge of the winds, and our petition—our petition, I say, must be +addressed to him up there in the heavens, oh yes.”</p> + +<p>Dickin laughed amiably, and on passing the bar he heard Frau Kogl +upbraiding her husband:</p> + +<p>“You shouldn’t tell such silly jokes to the foreign guests; they will +think you’re quite silly.”</p> + +<p>“It may be a silly joke,” Herr Kogl agreed, “or<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_276">{276}</a></span> it may not be a silly +joke, but he laughs; so anything seems good enough for him.”</p> + +<p>“Why, no, he is a clever man, a poet,” retorted Frau Kogl.</p> + +<p>“I am a poet myself,” answered Herr Kogl.</p> + +<p>“You’re a fat dotty old man, that’s what you are,” said Frau Kogl. “What +have you done with the glasses? Don’t stand there like that....”</p> + +<p>“Shut up, will you!” he bawled, and banged his fist on the counter.</p> + +<p>She quailed before the man with the strong will.</p> + +<p>From his balcony, Frank could see the scullery girl swish with her bare +legs through the wet grass, and come back with a basket full of fruit. +He cut across to meet her. He had a terrible longing to speak to her, +but he could not find words to say to her. Because she was desirable, +though her face was objectionable, she seemed to him (as women do seem +when they are desirable) to be endowed with a critical and sensitive +intelligence which might resent a clumsy overture, or an approach that +was not plausible. And so he walked towards her with a casual and +indifferent air. But when she smiled at him his shyness left him +suddenly and he asked her what the joke was.</p> + +<p>“Ach, to-day,” she said, “I must laugh, because I look so funny in these +boots.” How ugly her face was! And yet how desirable that body!</p> + +<p>Herr Kogl, at the door, found words to say to him. Herr Kogl always +found words to say to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_277">{277}</a></span> everybody. It was his only occupation. When he +wasn’t either eating or drinking, he stood in the yard and exchanged +remarks with visitors and casual passers-by. No one had ever seen him +take a drop of wine in public, and he affected to disdain it, though he +had blood-shot, oily eyes which betrayed him. “Wine? Why, there’s +nothing in it,” he would say. “I—never—have—any.” But every time he +went down into the cellar to fill the decanter, he first filled himself +and then the decanter.</p> + +<p>Now he stood in the doorway, red and obese, and addressed a small, +fluffy old dog of a nondescript breed and an incredible filthiness. +“Rags has been and had a puppy—a little ragamuffin like herself, what! +Rags, you bad thing! Rags, you dirty tyke! Rags, you immoral old bitch! +For shame! I shouldn’t have thought it of you, at your age!” And he dug +his crooked forefinger into Dickin’s chest, as he was wont to do when +emphasising a point; especially in moments of hilarious recollection, as +when, for instance, he might say: “Oh <i>that</i> thing! Well, of course!” At +such moments he would dig even a little lower than the ribs, because the +joke addressed itself to a more central part of you—the abdominal part, +wherein all jokes are seated; or so at least we must suppose, because +when men laugh too heartily they protect and support these, their +boilers, from bursting.</p> + +<p>Again, as he stood there, Frank caught a glimpse of the scullery maid’s +bare legs, as she went out to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_278">{278}</a></span> hang out some linen. “What are you +smiling for?” he asked, overtaking her, Herr Kogl now having turned in.</p> + +<p>“Ach! Herr Dickin,” she said, “when you speak to me I must always laugh. +I don’t know why.”</p> + +<p>He looked round. There was no one about. “When do you finish your work?”</p> + +<p>“I go to bed at half-past ten.”</p> + +<p>“Won’t you come and see me before going to bed?”</p> + +<p>“Where?” she asked.</p> + +<p>“In my room.”</p> + +<p>“What shall I do in your room?”</p> + +<p>His blood coursed feverishly through his veins; his brain was on fire at +the thought of what they could not do in his room. “Keep me company,” he +said.</p> + +<p>She nodded assent and went in with the dry linen. Returning, he ran into +Herr Kogl, who came out of the cellar with the decanter, licking and +smacking his thick ruby lips. “Herr Kogl, will you have a glass of wine +with me?”</p> + +<p>Herr Kogl shook his head slowly, closing his eyes. +“I—never—have—wine. I—consider—that—there—is—nothing—in—it. +Oh, yes.” His diction was distinct, correct, precise, deliberate, and +slow.</p> + +<p>“Well, you are certainly setting an edifying example to your boy, aren’t +you, Herr Kogl?”</p> + +<p>“My boy,” said Herr Kogl, “is all right.”</p> + +<p>With a mystic, an unearthly, look Herr Kogl re<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_279">{279}</a></span>tired to the safe behind +the counter, and came back with a large sheet of parchment in his big +shaking red hands. “His college certificate,” he said, turning away to +hide his emotion and to give the visitor the opportunity of ascertaining +for himself the high standard of Herbert’s scholastic achievements:</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Calligraphy—proficient;<br></span> +<span class="i0">Arithmetic—good;<br></span> +<span class="i0">Cooking—very satisfactory;<br></span> +<span class="i0">Slaughtering—praiseworthy;<br></span> +<span class="i0">Waiting at table—very good;<br></span> +<span class="i0">Deportment—excellent;<br></span> +<span class="i0">General conduct—excellent.<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>“Eminently satisfactory,” said Dickin, returning the document.</p> + +<p>“He is at the Hotel and Restaurant Institute in Vienna,” the father said +proudly, “and I afford him practical opportunities for perfecting his +studies when he is here for his summer vacation by allowing him to wait +at table. Of course, under my supervision,” he added.</p> + +<p>“You ought to be very proud of him.”</p> + +<p>“Proud? Why?”</p> + +<p>“Of course you ought to be! You <i>are</i> proud!”</p> + +<p>“Well, of course—proud—why not? You wouldn’t think, would you, eh? A +Tyrolese poodle like he, now would you?... attain such distinction<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_280">{280}</a></span> in +Vienna itself!...” And two large beads stood in Herr Kogl’s jaundiced +blood-shot eyes.</p> + +<p>At lunch, in the large panelled room looking out on the old archducal +Schloss beneath, steeped in the foliage of its enormous and forsaken +park, Frank found himself seated facing a Lutheran pastor from Germany, +who had large sad eyes, a quiet, melancholy voice, and helped himself +without cease to the <i>Kalter Aufschnitt</i>. He thought the world was all +right, the Church all right, and nothing wanted changing. Among the +guests was a Russian Grand Duke who turned out to be the cousin of +Frank’s one-time opponent who had hit him on the ear with an umbrella at +the Kiss-Lick Club. The Grand Duke’s cousin was killed in a motor smash +in Poland. His own brother was assassinated elsewhere. An uncle died in +mysterious circumstances. It seemed, of the old guard, there remained +only Frank and he, and over a decanter of Tyrolese wine consumed +together, they relinquished their claim to the throne of Russia in each +other’s favour.</p> + +<p>“Ah! you are a writer!” the Grand Duke exclaimed happily. “You write in +English? Ah, well! I’ve my own theories about English literature. I am +obstinate in the belief that in the portrayal of Dorian Gray, Oscar +Wilde did not mean to depict his own personality, so to speak.”</p> + +<p>Frank sounded the Grand Duke as to his further opinions. Wordsworth? No, +he hadn’t heard of Wordsworth. Keats?—No: who was he? No, he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_281">{281}</a></span> preferred +the moderns. There was one modern writer—German, he believed—who +amused him. Bernhard Schau.... Oh, he was British? How interesting! He +had bought quite a number of his works in Berlin, and enjoyed dipping +into them—he liked him for the wit salted with cynicism. Did his +Highness read any other English authors? The Grand Duke considered for a +moment, wrinkling his brow.—Of course—Byron! Who did not love that +stupendous genius, the greatest the world has yet produced? <i>Childe +Harold</i>.... Ah! The Grand Duke thought he himself was a little like +that—like Byron and Lermontov—romantic, rebellious, seeking something +(he made a gesture to the heavens)—dissatisfied with his +surroundings—that’s it, and seeking a meaning in life. Yes, he was a +lover of literature—though he preferred sport—riding and hunting, +drinking, too, he was not averse to. He considered, as if struck by a +sudden idea. “Have a drink,” he said.</p> + +<p>They passed into the lounge, into which Herr Kogl burst periodically, to +explain the working of the electric stove, which could be switched on at +will but must not be, he cautioned, switched off without a preliminary +intimation to Herbert, in charge of the electric supply station, because +a sudden superfluity of electricity sent the dynamo into commotion. Here +Frank perceived a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman looking like a gipsy. +“Frau König!” he exclaimed. “By heaven! this is unexpected!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_282">{282}</a></span></p> + +<p>Frau König, on the other hand, did not appear to regard this meeting as +unexpected, but at once proceeded to recount her life at the point at +which his knowledge of it had been interrupted. “My fiancé, alas, has +failed again in his examinations at the University, and that has put us +back for another couple of years and deferred our hope of establishing +the knitting factory. He says the Paris professors have been prejudiced +against him on account of his Russian nationality and vented on him +their bitterness over the Russian State Bonds they had acquired and lost +in the Revolution, and agreed to plough him.” And she introduced him to +Frau Professor Koch who occupied the room next to his own and owned a +dachshund, on whose account she felt concerned and diffident, for, “He +has inflammation of the lungs,” she said, “and his cough is terrible.”</p> + +<p>It rained. By the electric stove, Baby played chess with the bank clerk, +whose holiday was up and who that night was going back to Vienna. During +lunch, when Baby had anxiously eyed him, he had talked to the table at +large, explaining how the new divorce law was operating in Vienna—he +talked of divorce, while she wanted to be united to him for the rest of +existence! She had better, now that time was getting short, try and talk +to him—difficult though it was—in French. What had she better say to +him? How draw him? How tell him? She thought hard.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_283">{283}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Do you ski in Austria with a horse?” she asked at last.</p> + +<p>He did not understand.</p> + +<p>The rain poured down straightly and beautifully, shooting through those +myriad trees on the mountain sides. The bank clerk saw in Frank his +natural successor, and hated him. The company constrained him.</p> + +<p>But a quarter of an hour before he was driven down to the station in the +little red car, they ran away hand in hand into the Schloss park, and +came back dripping with wet. She stood at the window and waved to him +shyly: “Good-bye,” as the little red motor buzzed off.</p> + +<p>Good-bye! Good-bye!</p> + +<p>How grey, how monotonous mountain scenery looked in the rain! “Well, +Baby, how do you like this place?” Frank asked.</p> + +<p>She loved it, she said, but complained that there were fleas in her bed. +Frau Kogl, to whom the complaint was made, said that it was +“ausgeschlossen”—quite out of the question. “Das gibt es nicht”—it +isn’t done. But the “boots” with the green apron was philosophical. +Fleas—well, what about it? They existed. There were fleas in the +carpet—fleas everywhere—between bedclothes—in a word, in nature. +Fleas, he implied, were in the scheme of things. God had so ordained it. +The “boots’<span class="lftspc">”</span> attitude, like that of the modern philosophers’, was one of +acceptance; he accepted all evil and all good<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_284">{284}</a></span> in life with equal grace. +Herr Kogl ordered him to go to the chemist and buy a preparation +notoriously fatal to fleas, and the “boots” came back carefully carrying +a small bottle, in whose efficacy he did not believe.</p> + +<p>At dinner, Frank found himself seated among a group of German tourists. +Herr Nikulitsch, despite his Czech name, was a German—corpulent, +spectacled, with a large, square, short-cropped blond head; in fact so +typical a German that had he had the luck to be in England between the +years 1914 to 1918, he would have been arrested without provocation. His +wife had eyes which were so queerly adjusted that when she talked to you +she seemed to be looking at someone else. Frank was faced by this cow of +a woman who could only understand the German point of view about the +war; and two Scottish old maids who could only understand the British +point of view about the war; neither of whom could understand each +other. The Scottish old maids complained derisively about the <i>Kalter +Aufschnitt</i>: “The idea of giving you cheese without biscuits! Ha!” They +shook their heads and smiled malignantly. They marvelled at these +foreigners! The more they saw of them, the more they marvelled!</p> + +<p>“The Germans,” said Frau Nikulitsch, “are good people. We are good +people at heart. Any one of good will will admit that we are good +people. But the French are a nation of sadists.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_285">{285}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the Frau Pastor, “we are a thoroughly good people, devoid of +all guile. We haven’t an ungracious thought.”</p> + +<p>Baby listened politely. It was not what she had read in <i>The Daily +Mail</i>. “Tricking Huns. Once a German, always a German. Blond beasts,” +were phrases that occurred to her. Frank was talking to the Frau Pastor +now, and because he wanted to be sympathetic, and to show off his own +broadmindedness and the tolerant, liberal spirit of his countrymen, he +told her, with a smile (as if making light of it) that our own royalty +was mostly German; and he felt that it was strange that she thought +nothing of it, a little churlish of her even—it was as though she made +light of his kindness and that of his countrymen who bore this alien +taint with good grace. The Frau Pastor seemed to think England was +rather lucky.</p> + +<p>And why, she asked, was England supporting the Russian claim to Eastern +Prussia, and simultaneously supporting the Finnish claim to Northern +Russia?</p> + +<p>It was, said Frank, in pursuance of an ideal to keep alive the feeble +flame of patriotism in the face of a growing international revolution. +Men were losing interest in their countries, so you had to tread on +their toes to keep up their national pride.</p> + +<p>“And the English,” said the Frau Pastor (living up to the ideal), +“behaved worst of all in the last war.”</p> + +<p>Frank thought of showing her a 1920 copy of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_286">{286}</a></span> <i>The Daily Mail</i> +(Continental edition), in which was set forth what Poincaré thought of +the German evasion of the Allied (just) demand for reparations. The +extremity of the shock brought him back to sanity. When he listened to +one German after another who told him that if Germany had been arming it +was because the Entente Cordiale was stifling them by a tightening ring +of alliances (to whom he had said that if the Entente Cordiale <i>was</i> +stifling them by a tightening ring of alliances it was because Germany +had been arming), who were convinced that we had started the war as we +were convinced that they had provoked it, the thought struck him: “Of +course they must be convinced. When A is roused to a pitch where he will +do B in, and face the risk of being done in by B in the doing, he is +sincere in believing B to be in the wrong. This is the shady side of +faith. Frank looked to the Pastor to display some soothing impartiality, +and gave him a lead. “All nations are very much alike and equally unjust +to foreigners,” Frank said. But to all such overtures the pastor, who +thought the world was all right, the Church all right, and nothing +wanted changing, replied: “We Germans are well known to be +over-indulgent to foreigners. Germany is too idealistic a people.”</p> + +<p>“Patriotism,” said Frank, “is like wine—a good thing when you haven’t +had too much of it.”</p> + +<p>“You don’t understand,” said the Frau Pastor. “Only a German can +understand what we feel about<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_287">{287}</a></span> these things, only a German who has gone +through what we have gone through and who knows what we know.”</p> + +<p>There is a limit to an intelligent man’s enjoyment of the irony of being +regarded as an imbecile by fools. And it is soon reached. A new war was +starting before the discords of the old have had time to resolve +themselves, and, identifying a nation of sixty million people with the +two who had displeased him, Frank felt that they deserved it and hoped +that they would be beaten!</p> + +<p>“And what ridiculous names these foreigners have!” remarked one of the +Scottish old maids, when the Germans had left the table. “That Viennese +lady opposite—Frau von Endte! I don’t know much German, but I know that +much: that Ente means duck! It’s as if she called herself: ‘Mrs. de +Ducke’!”</p> + +<p>Frank strolled away into the hills. The night was calm and benignant; +the stars whispered; and all this rocky waste listened, moonlit and +silent, to God. At every corner, a crucifix. Green lights and blue +lights and red lights illumining the twisted naked body of Christ, with +red blood flowing from the wounds. Yet curiously enough, Christ’s +message had not been understood, he thought, and looking back at the +bloody centuries which followed on the crucifixion and at Christ’s +tortured body, so shamelessly paraded, it occurred to Frank that +Christians generally may have got hold of the wrong end of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_288">{288}</a></span> stick +from the beginning, inferring that it was blood-letting that He meant +and advocated to us. On consideration, Frank thought the world was well +ripe for destruction.</p> + +<p>Above and beyond, what peace! All desire abated, in the soft ablution of +the moon. O Lust, where is thy sting, and Satiety thy victory?</p> + +<p>A figure in the dark. “Hello, is that you? Oh, Frau König! All my +homages.”</p> + +<p>Frau König, with a preoccupied air, took him down the mountain track +into the thicket, the while saying: “I don’t deny. I don’t deny how hard +it is for a woman who had contracted certain habits in marriage suddenly +to find herself without a man. Well, here I am. Here I am, I say! Here I +am; you may have what you wish. But my condition”—she touched his +wrist—“is that you are to take me out into society.”</p> + +<p>“I do not wish it. I mean I do not wish what you wish me to wish. You +make me feel good, Frau König, and that’s the truth.”</p> + +<p>“I do not understand you. I have gone as far as I can.”</p> + +<p>“That’s the truth. Do not go further.”</p> + +<p>“But—”</p> + +<p>How could he explain? How could he tell her that where unattractive +women were concerned he was a prude and a puritan? For all sexual +morality, if we examine it more closely, is founded on aversion. It +pleased him to recall to her an ideal of woman<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_289">{289}</a></span>hood which she was in no +mood to follow; of reticence and chastity, which he counselled her to +practise. “Not in abandon, but in restraint and self-discipline, Frau +König,” he said, leading her out of the thicket into the open road, +“lies the hope of a sane and healthy mankind.”</p> + +<p>“If,” she said, “my fiancé does not come soon, I shall go mad.”</p> + +<p>As they turned into the <i>pension</i> courtyard, they passed the apoplectic +Baron’s bungalow, who peeped through the window and, though it was +evening, wished them: “Good morning.” The Baron’s knowledge of English +must have been very slight, because every time Frank passed him in the +morning, the Baron touched his cap and said: “Good evening.” In the big +barn, an automatic barrel organ played excruciating music, and Herr Kogl +explained that it had been a first-class barrel organ till the +Italians—a nation, as all knew, of organ grinders—spoilt it during +their occupation of the town in the war by over-taxing its musical +capacity.</p> + +<p>“How very inconsiderate!”</p> + +<p>Several couples were dancing. Herbert, removing his waistcoat, danced in +his braces and shirt sleeves with Lina, the bare-legged scullery maid, +at a considerably accelerated pace, as if to show them all what he could +do. “Our Herbert,” Herr Kogl, pointed with his chin towards him, “once +he starts dancing, outstrips them all.” Frank stood and watched till it +would be time for Lina to go up to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_290">{290}</a></span> bed. Heavens of ecstasy, oceans of +rapture awaited him. The Kogls sat there as always: Herr Kogl; Herr +Spatz, a fat, rough man of the same proportions as the host himself; the +policeman; the policeman’s wife, who was a waitress; and drank wine. The +policeman’s little boy slipped in and out between their legs and ran +about all day long, and they christened him “Quicksilver.” Herr Kogl +alone did not drink. The cook, a bewildered-looking old woman, who was +never seen about during the week, drank, after good takings, on a Sunday +night with Frau Kogl. Herr Kogl watched them drink, but refused to +participate. His maudlin eyes were fixed on the dog to whom he would +talk for hours at a stretch: “Rags, you wretch! Rags, you immoral little +bitch!”</p> + +<p>“Nice old doggie, what?” Frau Kogl would remark.</p> + +<p>Herr Kogl would shake his head. “It’s not a dog—kein Hund, sondern ein +Skandal!”</p> + +<p>The dog was very old, toothless, and refused all food but chocolate. The +Frau Wachmann, the policeman’s wife, a young shrew, shouted and cursed +at her husband, a shy middle-aged upright man, because he would not go +to bed immediately, but preferred to play cards with the others of a +Sunday evening. Herr Spatz thundered forth as he played: “Two aces! +Bang! Ha-a-a!—Queen of Clubs! Bang! Bang!” with his fist, so that all +the glasses on the table jingled nervously.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_291">{291}</a></span> He had once spent nine +months in Turkey, and he looked, with his clean-shaven head and his +mouthful of glittering white teeth himself like a Turk, and behaved like +one, or at least, as you would imagine “The Turk” to behave in his more +lustful moments. Frau Kogl, drunk, attempted to sing, but it came out +very badly and dismally and she stopped, ashamed of herself.</p> + +<p>“To hell with Czecho-Slovakia!” Herr Spatz was saying to a relative who, +thanks to the Treaty of Versailles, has become Czecho-Slovakian and now +said he was proud of the great country. “Great country!” roared Herr +Spatz. “I’ve lived nine months in Turkey: who can talk Czecho-Slovakian +there? Answer me that!”</p> + +<p>“Who will drive the van to town to-morrow morning, that is what I wish +to know?” Herr Kogl interjected.</p> + +<p>“Willy.”</p> + +<p>“Hm!—Hm!” distrustfully from Herr Kogl.</p> + +<p>“Why?” from Herr Spatz, whose son Willy happened to be.</p> + +<p>Herr Kogl looked on the ground. “Willy! Willy is not Herbert, that’s +why!”</p> + +<p>At long last the clock on the Schloss tower struck half-past ten, and +Herr Kogl was locking up. Frank paced his room up and down; every moment +the door might open and Lina come in, and then—.</p> + +<p>From time to time, unable to stand the suspense, he would go out and +wait for her in the corridor.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_292">{292}</a></span> Simultaneously, the door opposite would +open, and the Pastor and Frau Pastor peep out, again and again, as if to +put out their boots: but surely, Frank thought, they could not have so +many boots to put out. Then, as he stood in the corridor, the adjacent +door opened, and the Frau Professor peeped out to ask if her dachshund’s +coughing had not, perchance, disturbed his sleep. “He has acute +inflammation of the lungs,” she said, “and I am very anxious to know +what the specialist will say to-morrow morning.”</p> + +<p>“I am very sorry,” Frank said, “for you both.” And while he stood there +assuring Frau Professor Koch of his complete sympathy, and the Frau +Pastor peeped out of her room to put out another pair of boots, the +bare-legged Lina slipped into his room.</p> + +<p>He forgot everything, looked at her intently, grasped her eagerly, +savagely, asked: “Yes?”</p> + +<p>“Why?” she parried.</p> + +<p>“Because.”</p> + +<p>“Because what?”</p> + +<p>“Because—because we’re young, and because life isn’t for ever.”</p> + +<p>She bent down her look and was silent.</p> + +<p>“Yes?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>She had said it so quietly and convincingly that his soul was devastated +by certitude. He was as certain of his reward as one is certain of money +placed to the credit of one’s current account, once receipt of it has +been acknowledged by the bank. It would<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_293">{293}</a></span> take place all right. It was +indeed as though it had already taken place; and she seemed to him like +some tedious acquaintance; he asked her tedious questions, and asking +them, had not the patience to concentrate upon her tedious replies. “Are +both your parents alive?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, both my parents are alive.”</p> + +<p>“Have you any brothers or sisters?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, two sisters and one brother.”</p> + +<p>From outside came the sound of tears and choking. “I suppose,” said +Frank, “that is the policeman’s wife, by the sound of it.”</p> + +<p>“No, it’s he—the policeman.”</p> + +<p>“What! Sobbing like that? Why?”</p> + +<p>“She curses him dreadfully: that’s why. It’s the same every Sunday night +because she wants him to go to bed at once, whereas he, poor chap, wants +to sit out with the others and play cards. He’s an upright, decent, +quiet man; it’s a shame the life she leads him!”</p> + +<p>It did not interest him. The wind that bellied out his sails had +suddenly ceased, and his soul flopped down like a flag on a flagstaff. +He, she, and the world, seemed as flat as a pancake—as flat and as +unprofitable.</p> + +<p>“You—you—you!” she gasped. In this “you” was all her being, her +illusory love, her reunion with him, the dissolution, the loss of her +“I” in his “you.” But he thought he had squeezed her leg and said: “I +beg your pardon? Did you say anything?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_294">{294}</a></span></p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>“That’s all right, then.”</p> + +<p>She had begun to look forward, and he went to sleep at once. She waited +awhile, scanning his face with hatred. Then shook him by the shoulder. +“You <i>ninny</i>!” Then dressed herself and went out.</p> + +<p>She was gone. Presently he sat up on the edge of the bed, his naked feet +dangling down like a pendulum. He was drunk. It was significant that he +was both spiritually and physically drunk at the same time, and he had +just sufficient reason left him to comprehend and thoroughly appreciate +the humour of this interesting coincidence.</p> + +<p>Next morning he was woken by the conversation in the yard below his +window. “You were born in eighteen sixty-four, Herr Baron; I was born in +eighteen sixty-six. I take it that I am two years younger than +you—yes!”</p> + +<p>“Kh-kh-khrr-rrr-khrrr!”</p> + +<p>“Kh-kh-kh-khr-khrrr!”</p> + +<p>“The Herr Baron complains to me that he is damned and done for, +mattering as he is all over. But I say, <i>aber wo</i>! Herr Baron: what does +it matter if you matter in a world of matter: it is all matter—spirit, +flesh, and all! Oh, yes!”</p> + +<p>The Baron now was telling Herr Kogl of a brother who lived in Vienna and +was professor of modern languages at Vienna University; and Herr Kogl at +once retorted: “My son lives in Bizirk IX and has to go to his studies +in Bizirk V.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_295">{295}</a></span></p> + +<p>“What does he do?”</p> + +<p>“Studies at the Institute.”</p> + +<p>“What institute?”</p> + +<p>“The Hotel and Restaurant Institute. Why, Herbert can do +anything!—Drive a car—stick a pig—wait at table. Wonderful boy! +This—all this—is to be his. Ah! he will go a long way, our Herbert +will, he will, when he finishes his studies at the Institute. And I +intend to send him abroad for a year or two to pick up foreign +languages, so that he secures all the benefit that we old folks can +afford to give him.”</p> + +<p>“Of course. Why not?” said the Baron, “if you have the money to give +him.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, no!” exclaimed Herr Kogl. “He must earn the money himself. I don’t +believe in extravagance, Herr Baron. ‘No,’ I tell Herbert: ‘you go +abroad to France and England and serve your time there in the big hotels +and earn every penny yourself as a waiter.’ That’s the way to bring them +up—youth,” he added tenderly.</p> + +<p>He looked at Frau Kogl, who was coming down the steps towards him. Here +was this woman with all her money and property; he came along and made +it his, and gave her a son and made it his son’s: more than ever his +own. “I was telling the Herr Baron,” he said, “how when Herbert finishes +his studies at the Institute and has been abroad in France and England +he will on coming back devote himself to the development of the +<i>pension</i> and alpine<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_296">{296}</a></span> tourism generally by making use of the ties and +influence he has established in France and England. Oh, yes!”</p> + +<p>“That’s all right,” said the old woman, “but what are we to do about +Herr Dickin? All the ladies are leaving. I don’t know what to do. He +will have to go, that’s all.”</p> + +<p>“He—is a—good—man,” Herr Kogl replied.</p> + +<p>“What are we to do?”</p> + +<p>Herr Kogl did not reply.</p> + +<p>“Come on!” she cried. “Don’t stand there like a—”</p> + +<p>“Shut up, will you!” he shouted formidably, and banged his fist on the +table.</p> + +<p>She quailed before the man with the strong will.</p> + +<p>“I never bother; it is none of my business,” Frau Kogl began as Frank +came downstairs. “I attend to my own job, and what with the prices of +everything going up, I’ve got my work cut out. Meat, as you know, has +gone up 20 per cent., vegetables too. Fish is not to be had. To me it is +all the same, you understand; I never bother about what other people +do.” Her hands shot out awkwardly. In that gesture was all her weary +dissatisfaction with people who make bother. “I don’t mind what you do +upstairs. But I can’t lose all my clients, you understand. The season is +a slack one, and where will I get other guests? Meat, as I say, has gone +up; vegetables gone up. Fish is not to be had in the neighbourhood, and +they are all complaining now<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_297">{297}</a></span> about you. But what can I do?” She shot +out her hands. She must have acquired these gestures in the French +convent in Alsace where she had been put by her mother.</p> + +<p>And indeed there was trouble ahead. Lina’s entry had been observed. The +Frau Pastor had communicated it to the Frau Doktor Wirt, and the Frau +Doktor Wirt, with the confirmation of the Frau Professor Koch, to the +Frau Direktor Bödingen and Frau Nikulitsch, and the Frau Direktor +Bödingen to the Frau Oberst von Kaisar, who complained to Frau von +Endte. A commotion had been caused. Frank was suspect. Two elderly +German women locked their doors at his approach and accused him of +having tried to force his way into their bedrooms. When all complained +and armed themselves against her, Frau Kogl could not decide. She +scratched her head pensively. “Yes,” she said, “Yes, I don’t know what +to do.” She looked old and ill with worry; even her housemaid’s knee had +taken a turn for the worse. “I am afraid we must ask you to go.”</p> + +<p>“With regret,” added Herr Kogl.</p> + +<p>As for Lina, Herr Kogl made short shift of her. He merely bawled at her: +“Out you go, you slut!”</p> + +<p>“If,” Frank reflected, “I can’t be anything better, let me at least be a +hero.”</p> + +<p>The little red car was prepared for him, and he got Lina to make a +bundle of her things and get inside with him. It was a desultory morning +and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_298">{298}</a></span> rain fell perfunctorily. “You ugly young thing!” he thought, +surveying her from his seat in the corner, as the car turned out of the +courtyard past the Baron’s bungalow (who peeped out of his window and, +touching his cap, said: “Good evening!”), “What the deuce am I to do +with you now?”</p> + +<p>“What sort of wage did you get?” he asked aloud.</p> + +<p>She told him; and, on taking thought, he decided to run her down to his +old friend Frau von Kestner; who afterwards wrote to him:</p> + +<p>“I have ordered her to put on a longer skirt and wear stockings. She was +embarrassing the postman each time he called with letters, as well as +the policeman in the square. Now, I need hardly say, nobody takes any +notice of her, because she really is not one little bit pretty.”</p> + +<h2><a id="XXXVIII">XXXVIII</a><br><br> +TOD UND GENESUNG</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> tall lighted building, the abode of <i>The Daily</i>, <i>The Sunday</i>, <i>The +Monday</i>, <i>The Evening</i>, <i>The Midday</i>, <i>The Pictorial</i> and <i>The +Illustrated Runner</i>, loomed in the fog. Lord de Jones looked up from the +pavement at the large lighted windows over the roof, behind which, he +knew, the big spider sat in the midst of his web; and Lord de Jones, +entering, by appointment, did indeed feel as a fly might feel if it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_299">{299}</a></span> had +an appointment with a great big spider who had expressed in unmistakable +terms the wish to devour it. He went up in the historical lift and, +arrived at the top, was ushered into the presence of Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Now where is that crop?” asked Lord Ottercove, without greeting the +visitor.</p> + +<p>“Under the sod, I expect,” retorted de Jones.</p> + +<p>“This mission of yours has cost me thousands in sealing wax alone, to +enable you to seal up all the craters. Stationers have made fortunes out +of me! And there is not a blade of grass anywhere; in fact, the +termination of our mission has synchronised with an unprecedented famine +in Russia. And, damn them, they’re blaming me for it!”</p> + +<p>“There is always a famine in Russia at one time or another through +causes, as is invariably urged, not connected with the political faith +of the government of the day.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove ignored this retort. “The Foreign Secretary is ringing me +up all day long, and I refuse to see him; refuse to see him, Chris, for, +quite frankly, I wouldn’t know what to say to him. All that sealing +wax—and nothing to show for it. Shame!”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove walked over to the sideboard and poured himself some +Perrier water into a glass. “And there’s that other fellow,” he said, +drinking.</p> + +<p>“I know, the Prime Minister.”</p> + +<p>“Yes. Joe’s shouting himself hoarse about the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_300">{300}</a></span> bursting granaries, the +wheat springing up all over the globe—increased crop—the end of +international jealousies—the economic solution of national rivalries! +And you with all your untried genius cannot raise a blade of grass +anywhere to substantiate his speeches. He has to rely on the dog stunt +entirely, which, I frankly tell you so—is not good enough. It’s not +good enough, Chris. Read this.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove handed him a copy of <i>The Evening Ensign</i> containing the +report of Lord Evesham’s speech at the Carlton Club, the burden of which +was that the election in which the Conservatives were defeated had been +fought on an unreal issue, against the advice of the experienced members +of the party.</p> + +<p>“An unreal issue, he says!” exclaimed Lord Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“No more unreal than Gladstone’s Turk.”</p> + +<p>“An unreal issue! They’ve realised it at last and have decided to leave +the dog stunt out of their party programme, and they are already winning +all the by-elections, and we’ve not a friend anywhere except among +sealing-wax manufacturers.”</p> + +<p>“I’m sorry to hear it, Rex.”</p> + +<p>“Now, I believe in Joe. He is my friend, and if a man is my friend I’ll +stick to him through thick and thin. But he must have increased crop if +he is to go on shouting about it, and he’s shouted about it so much that +he can’t go back on it now. You promised us two blades of grass to every +one. Where are<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_301">{301}</a></span> they? Where <i>are</i> they, I ask?” He looked at his visitor +with the unrestrained ill-humour of a man who, being completely +accustomed to things going well with him, suddenly discovers that they +are going badly. “You make my papers look ridiculous.”</p> + +<p>“I’m sorry. I will make amends—look into the matter—enquire. It may be +that the sealing wax is defective. I promise to do what I can, Rex.”</p> + +<p>“Promises! To hell with promises! It’s meat we want. Meat, not +promises!”</p> + +<p>“True, we want meat. But all we can give you is cat’s meat. Indeed, that +is all you have ever had in the past.”</p> + +<p>“Enough of your cynicism, Chris.”</p> + +<p>“Now let me tell you, Rex, that I don’t care two tuppenny damns about +your crop. What I care about is the world. And that is no more.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove rose and leaned heavily first on one leg, then on the +other. “It’s still there, Chris,” he said.</p> + +<p>“Only for a week. I’ve disintegrated the atom.”</p> + +<p>“Well?”</p> + +<p>“Which means that all other atoms, at first slowly, then faster and +faster, will follow suit, till not a rack is left behind.”</p> + +<p>“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the +great globe itself?”</p> + +<p>“Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial +pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_302">{302}</a></span>—”</p> + +<p>“I know: as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a +sleep.” He turned away and bit his lip. “Chris, I am vexed: bear with my +weakness; my first-class brain is troubled. Be not disturbed with my +infirmity. If you will be pleased, retire to that sofa and there repose: +a turn or two I’ll walk, to still my beating mind.”</p> + +<p>“I wish you peace.”</p> + +<p>When he came back Lord Ottercove’s face looked eager with hope. “I don’t +believe you, Chris. You say you’ve done it?”</p> + +<p>“A week ago. In Greece.”</p> + +<p>“My Athens correspondent is silent about the matter.”</p> + +<p>“Inevitably. He has disintegrated.”</p> + +<p>“There is no sign of panic anywhere.”</p> + +<p>“There is no panic because there is no way to communicate panic. No +sound, no sight: a whole area vanishes invisibly, ceases to be there.”</p> + +<p>“But what of the people in the adjoining area? Why don’t they +communicate or run away?”</p> + +<p>“The people next to those just vanished, vanish next. They do not know +that anything has vanished till they themselves vanish.”</p> + +<p>“I see. It’s a knowledge which is vouchsafed you at vanishing point, so +to speak.”</p> + +<p>“Exactly.”</p> + +<p>“But they must know if they find that a familiar house or square has +vanished.”</p> + +<p>“No: if it is not where they expect to find it, they<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_303">{303}</a></span> naturally suppose +that they are in error: that what they are looking for is probably round +the other corner.”</p> + +<p>“H’m, I see.”</p> + +<p>There was a pause.</p> + +<p>“Well, what have you to say, Rex?”</p> + +<p>“Chris: I advise you against it.”</p> + +<p>“Too late, too late! The world is fast unravelling, like a laddered silk +stocking.”</p> + +<p>“Shame! And quite a new world, barely 200,000,000 years old. It will do +you no good, Chris.”</p> + +<p>“If an employee of yours, Rex, came to ask you for a rise, I verily +believe you would not say No, but: ‘I advise you against your suggesting +the idea to me.’ And should he ask for a reason, you’d say: ‘I don’t +think it would do you any good.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“I don’t think this will. I don’t think it will do any of us any good. +Disintegrate. Ha! What an idea!”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“Well, look here, Chris, do you think it’s considerate? Do you think +it’s altogether kind?”</p> + +<p>“It’s the very milk of human kindness to spare us all the horrors of +this new war. You, Rex, must see this, for you are good at heart.”</p> + +<p>“Yes. I want, Chris, to do good. There is no greater pleasure in the +world than doing good. If you destroy the world, I wouldn’t be able to +go on doing good, now would I?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_304">{304}</a></span></p> + +<p>“That, I admit, is hard on you.”</p> + +<p>“It’s hard on us both, Chris. I wouldn’t be able to <i>do</i> good, and you +wouldn’t be able to <i>make</i> good. You would remain for ever a Genius of +the Untried.”</p> + +<p>“What! now that I <i>have</i> tried and succeeded?”</p> + +<p>“I follow your argument. But believe me, Chris, it’s defective. To +destroy the world is not what I might call constructive work. I am +rather tempted, if you follow my line of thought, to relegate it to the +category of the destructive. It’s negative, Chris. That’s the word: +negative.”</p> + +<p>“Negative? Why, it’s positively destroying itself with a vengeance, +bolting away into nothing, overjoyed at the chance of release, bubbling +over with sheer <i>joie de vivre</i>!”</p> + +<p>“H’m.”</p> + +<p>“And can you wonder? For millions of years the atom has been kept in +harness. Round himself and round others like him, he was made to jump +without cease or sense, as if to bite off his own tail. He hasn’t known +a holiday since the world began. And what was it all for? To convince +crass fools that matter was solid!”</p> + +<p>“Since you came in this evening, Chris, everything seems less solid.”</p> + +<p>“Glad you are beginning to see light. I am looking forward to the time, +which is not distant, when what now serves, inadequately, to distinguish +the outward form of Baron Ottercove, will be converted<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_305">{305}</a></span> into the purest +radiation. All matter, Rex, is a disease. It <i>is</i> ‘matter.’ When pools +stagnate, or tissues decay, life springs to the surface, a pestilential +vermin. It’s a hitch somewhere in the atomic mechanism of the universe, +a clotting of the blood, an imperfect interplay of atoms in the cosmic +body which creates this fretting disease we call life. In the healthy +regions of the universe the atoms change their make-up millions of times +in a second and so are for ever dissociated and incapable of association +and cannot degenerate into a condition in which decay breeds life. +Unscientific people or unimaginative scientists would say that what I +have done is to ‘explode’ the atom. Nonsense! Even ‘disintegrated’ is +hardly the word for it, for it is apt to mislead us on a vital point. +What I’ve done is no more than what a watchmaker might do to a clock +which has got clogged and is losing time: I’ve speeded up its electrons +to the pitch at which the degenerated matter we call life regenerates +itself into radiation and, for us, ceases to be. A mere question of +revolution.”</p> + +<p>“Revolution!” cried Lord Ottercove. “I thought as much. You’ve let him +loose, the atom! Relinquished your hold on him, when your betters were +on the point of harnessing him to do all the world’s labour.” Lord +Ottercove suddenly jumped to his feet, a flush of anger suffusing his +cheeks. “Stop him, man!” he yelled. “Stop him, quick!”</p> + +<p>“Can’t catch him now.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_306">{306}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Run!” Lord Ottercove ran and opened the door.</p> + +<p>“You’d need a greyhound to catch him: he has galloped off into +not-being.”</p> + +<p>“What’s that?”</p> + +<p>“Death.”</p> + +<p>“Sheer idleness!” said Lord Ottercove. “At a time when servants are +scarce; when the human labourer has downed tools; when inertia like some +horrible disease has laid low the human race; when all our hope was in +the atom, you’ve released him, let him go to whirl senselessly in the +void!”</p> + +<p>“Far from it. There they have to dash round like fury to maintain a high +standard of death. For the moment they slacken their speed, sickness +sets in and life.”</p> + +<p>“That,” said Lord Ottercove, “might frighten the bird-livered neurotics +who are sick of life. I am sick with the healthy fear of death. I am all +for keeping the atom in his place. All this talk of Beyond, a Future +Life for the Atom—tell this to Dr. Conan Doyle or to Sir Oliver Lodge, +don’t tell it to me! Sheer sabotage! Allow one atom to strike, and all +the rest will follow suit. It’s not fair to the public. Next thing +they’ll want the dole. The country, Chris—I mean the world—will not +stand for it.”</p> + +<p>“It’s not work, Rex, but unhealthy conditions of work that the atoms +object to in life. Over there they work harder and quicker, yet freely +and joy<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_307">{307}</a></span>fully, that we may all remain in the balmed and blessed state of +death.”</p> + +<p>“I see. The struggle for non-existence.”</p> + +<p>“Exactly.”</p> + +<p>“You are, I take it, a sort of Official Receiver winding up the affairs +of the visible world.”</p> + +<p>“No, a doctor who has released the circulation of the world which these +many centuries have clogged at our end: and the patient is speedily +recovering. When you and I and other sufferers cease to be, it will mean +that the patient is once again in the pink of condition. By healing one +atom I have healed the wound of the world.”</p> + +<p>“Who are the wound?”</p> + +<p>“All that which feels.”</p> + +<p>“I feel the coming death, feel it deeply and painfully, Chris.”</p> + +<p>“You must not feel: you must dry up.”</p> + +<p>“Dry up yourself!” said Ottercove, ruffled.</p> + +<p>“We’re mere boils and pimples, Rex, who feel the hurt. When I have +nursed the universe back to death, none of us shall feel any more.” De +Jones was muttering something.</p> + +<p>“What’s that?” asked Ottercove.</p> + +<p>“Just words. A German title has suggested itself to me as a caption for +what I mean—‘<i>Tod und Genesung</i>’ which, in our rotten tongue, might be +translated into ‘Death and Recovery.’ Shakespeare says:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_308">{308}</a></span></p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>My long sickness</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Of health and living now begins to mend,</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And nothing brings me all things.</i>’<span class="lftspc">”</span><br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>“Come, Chris. Don’t make us all look asses in the eyes of your Maker.”</p> + +<p>“Asses?”</p> + +<p>“Asses.”</p> + +<p>“I’m going,” said de Jones, “not to my Maker—no: he is an usurper—but +to my Unmaker! He is the true God.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove sat down dejectedly and stretched out his legs by the +electric radiator. “The world,” he began, “is a heritage which has been +committed into our keeping. It was not, I take it, put there to be +unmade at will. It is not ours, Chris, to dispose of.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, isn’t it?”</p> + +<p>“It isn’t, Chris.”</p> + +<p>“Whose is it, then?”</p> + +<p>“Well, a considerable portion of it, measured in terms of property and +money, happens to be mine.”</p> + +<p>“Ah!”</p> + +<p>“You smile at my alleged materialism. Unnecessarily, Chris! For it is +only in the banks and company offices that this wealth—and it is +much—is recorded in my name. I hold it as it were in custody for ... +Providence (call it the Deity, Fate, Destiny, the Supreme Being, or the +First Cause). We are but the stewards, the servants, as in the Parable<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_309">{309}</a></span> +of the Talents, from whom account of stewardship will be exacted by the +Master. I have increased my five talents by ... I can’t tell you how +much. As for you, Chris, you’ve absconded with the one talent entrusted +to you. Which is worse than in the parable. You wonder at my prosperity. +It’s faith, Chris, faith. Faith in money. ‘For unto every one that hath +shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not +shall be taken away even that which he hath.’ Wish I was a preacher, +like my father. I’d be the Archbishop of Canterbury now. For I like the +sound of my own voice. The first condition of good preaching, Chris.” +Lord Ottercove sat still, wrapped in thought.</p> + +<p>Then he roused himself from his reverie. “Chris,” he said, “how much do +you want for it?”</p> + +<p>“What for?”</p> + +<p>“The visible world. I will buy it from you at your own price.”</p> + +<p>“Do you care for it so much?”</p> + +<p>“Not a damn!”</p> + +<p>“What do you want it for?”</p> + +<p>“For my friend Vernon Sprott. Like Gautier, he is one for whom the +visible world exists. I take it that you could ensure its existence.”</p> + +<p>“I might. I don’t know.”</p> + +<p>“How, Chris?”</p> + +<p>“By reversing the process. By crippling the mechanism of the atom and +reducing the electronic<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_310">{310}</a></span> revolutions to a condition of slow decay in +which alone life for us is possible.”</p> + +<p>“Name your price.”</p> + +<p>De Jones considered. “It will be,” he said in the tone of a solicitor +calculating costs, “including all dues and charges, eighty million +pounds sterling. Guineas, I mean.”</p> + +<p>“Nothing doing. Good-bye to you.”</p> + +<p>Lord de Jones turned round on the threshold. “What will you do about it, +Rex?”</p> + +<p>“Have you arrested.”</p> + +<p>“On what charge? There is no law against introducing the Kingdom of God +into this country.”</p> + +<p>“Sedition. Instigation of atoms to mutiny. Under Dora.”</p> + +<p>“But why, Rex? Tell me why.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove was a long time in replying.</p> + +<p>“I will not have humanity let down,” he said at last.</p> + +<p>“You and your humanity!” Anger had made de Jones inarticulate. “Running +your secretaries off their feet. Putting the fear of God into your +butlers. That last man you had has taken to drink, and is now in the +last stage of <i>delirium tremens</i>. Gilbert has developed the St. Vitus’ +dance, waiting on you and your follies. What respect have you ever shown +to the atom? When you look at a man you make all the atoms in him jump +the wrong way. Then about this war. You’ve gone right back on your +pacific scheme. Oh, these business brains! Oh,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_311">{311}</a></span> these strong, silent +men! Curse and damn your breed!”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove had walked over to the sideboard and was pouring himself +some Perrier water into a glass. “When you have done, please tell me,” +he said, drinking.</p> + +<p>De Jones was foaming at the mouth. “You and your confrère across the +road—newspaper proprietors! Bags of money! That’s all you are!”</p> + +<p>“And you’re an empty bag of money!”</p> + +<p>“Give the public what it wants. That’s your line—the line of least +resistance. But to write regeneratively is beyond your scope.”</p> + +<p>“Regenerative degenerates!” bawled Ottercove. He bawled so loud that +Gilbert came in to ask if his lordship wanted anything.</p> + +<p>“Nothing from you.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, m’lord.”</p> + +<p>“Leave us alone.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, m’lord.” Gilbert’s eyes danced. His face twitched. His hands +trembled.</p> + +<p>“Get out! I mean both of you. I’ve had enough of you all! Twitching +drivelling imbeciles! Atom mongers! Flea trainers!” Lord Ottercove +seized one of the eight chairs placed round the octangular table and +flung it at Viscount de Jones. When the Editor of <i>The Evening Ensign</i> +came in a moment later, Lord Ottercove flung the second chair at him. +Outside his door a queue of secretaries, marshalled by Mrs. Hannibal and +each nervously scanning at<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_312">{312}</a></span> her file of papers, awaited the Chief’s +summons. Time was when Mrs. Hannibal alone centralised all Lord +Ottercove’s activities. The traffick proved too much for a single +channel, and was accordingly decentralised, carried by a dozen streams. +A dozen secretarial maidens were always in attendance in the ante-room, +waiting for the signal to appear before the Chief, who shouted from his +chair: “Forward, Miss Davis!” and hurried her: “Come on, come on!” And +Miss Davis reported in a flutter: “We purchased 16 bottles of +Apollinaris, of which you drank 3; that leaves us 13.”</p> + +<p>“Carry them forward. Forward, Miss Badmington!”</p> + +<p>“The franc account shows a balance of 7 francs which I have changed into +pounds at the rate of 126 francs to the pound, making a total of 1s. +3d.”</p> + +<p>“Forward, Miss Harrison!” And so forth.</p> + +<p>And now as they appeared in the doorway, Lord Ottercove flung a chair at +them, and they retired in disorder. This left him with five chairs, +including the one he was sitting on. He flung the fourth chair at a +literary aspirant whose dream was to contribute humorous articles to +<i>The Daily Runner</i>, and the fifth chair at a lady who wished to sell him +tickets for a charity concert in the Albert Hall, and, having flung the +sixth and the seventh chair at some nondescripts who peeped through the +door to see what was happening, he remained seated in the eighth and +only chair in the room. Mrs. Hannibal came in with a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_313">{313}</a></span> fearless smile on +her face, the practised smile of a lion trainer whose first rule is to +show no fear of the lion for fear of encouraging the lion to behave in a +manner compatible with his nature.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove looked at her affectionately. “Do you admire my +moderation?”</p> + +<p>She admired him, and this physical symbolism of his political power, and +the sincerity of his self-expression, and his freedom from sham +convention.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove seized the receiver—Mrs. Hannibal thought, to speak to +Scotland Yard. She was wrong. Lord Ottercove was telephoning to his +editors. Here was real news! The end of all things: something not to be +missed.</p> + +<p>News, he thought, such as Lord Northcliffe would have appreciated at its +true value! There was no jealousy in Lord Ottercove. He admired Lord +Northcliffe, and though secretly he thought he himself had no peers +among living newspaper proprietors, he suffered from an inferiority +complex in the presence of Lord Beaverbrook. And so he was glad of the +exclusive news. In the beginning there was the Word. And in the end, +too. He was proud that it befell to <i>The Daily Runner</i> to write the +Omega. “I, Baron Ottercove of Ottercove, hereby announce the end of the +world.”</p> + +<p>His principal editor, he was informed, was dining out. “As ever! Just +like him!” he muttered. “Dining, while the paper—not to say the +world—can go to hell.” For some minutes he sat alone in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_314">{314}</a></span> his vast roof +office, full of a strange wonder at the imminence of the fate which +confronted mankind. At last, he had to believe it. He sat very still, +while below the printing presses, with accustomed celerity, manufactured +the tidings. Then a sudden foreboding overcame him. It was not so much +that he feared the end for himself and his race: it was the uncertainty +of it that gnawed at his nerves. The uncertainty of when and under what +circumstances he might disintegrate. He stood by the enormous window +with a wide view of London roofs, including that of St. Paul’s, and +sadness filled his soul. An indescribable sorrow for all mankind +descended upon him. But as the minutes passed, the need for action +braced his nerves. Hatless he stepped into the lift, and passing the +solitary commissionaire, dashed into the busy streets.</p> + +<h2><a id="XXXIX">XXXIX.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Where</span> he went, he did not know. He walked on and on, his straggling hair +blown by the wind, and feeling a little like King Lear on the heath, +till, cutting across the Park to the Marble Arch, several open-air +meetings beckoned to him as a sign and a portent.</p> + +<p>Two hostile meetings, of Free Thinkers and devout Christians, were held +side by side, the speakers abusing each other at intervals, as though, +Lord<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_315">{315}</a></span> Ottercove thought, God and the Day were not in sight! The +Christian protagonist, pointing at the blackboard on which a hen and an +egg had been sketched by him, questioned his audience: “They talk of +science, but what do they know? Can any of them tell me—can any of you +here tell me who came first? The hen or the egg? Did the hen first make +the egg, or did the egg first make the hen? Now, then, can any one here +tell me, I ask ye? Can any of the science students tell me? Ye can’t. +Well, <i>I</i> can tell yer!—God made them both!” And he looked round +triumphantly.</p> + +<p>“They tell us—these Christian fellows,” shouted the Free Thinker, “that +Adam and Eve was sent to hell because Eve ‘ad eaten an apple. Now here +is an apple.” He held up an apple for all to see. “Now, Ladies and +Gentlemen, I ask ye: What is there in an apple? ‘Ere! <i>And yet they tell +us</i>—the Bible tells us—that Adam and Eve was sent to ‘ell ‘cause Eve’d +eaten an apple! Now I ask ye, Ladies and Gentlemen, can ye believe such +a silly thing?”</p> + +<p>“Free Thinkers!” shouted the Christian protagonist, pointing derisively +at his antagonist not five yards away. “Free Thinkers!—Free <i>Stinkers</i> +I call them!”</p> + +<p>“Because they’d eaten an apple. Now here! Just look at it. Look at it! +What is there, I ask, in an apple? And yet they tell us—”</p> + +<p>Suddenly the urge to impart to this large gaping audience the momentous +message came over Otter<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_316">{316}</a></span>cove. It was the end of the visible world. In a +few hours, perhaps in a few moments—at most in a week—they would have +to face the Judgment. It was for him to break the news. What consolation +had he to offer them? Call on their national pride in facing disaster +calmly and stoically? Recall the serene joys of eternity? Dwell on the +ultimate mercy of God? Or prophesy that there will be much weeping and +gnashing of teeth.</p> + +<p>Biblical language came readily to his lips: Lord Ottercove, though few +knew it, was the greatest living authority on biblical texts. He knew +the Bible from cover to cover and backwards: indeed, he could, at a +pinch, recite it by heart under an anesthetic.</p> + +<p>“What does it profit a man,” he began in a loud robust voice, the crowds +gathering round him, “if he gain the whole world (he paused as if to +prolong the tension of the ‘poser’; then added quietly:) and lose his +own soul? And why should it sadden a man if he lose the whole world +(Lord Ottercove paused), never having gained it?” He had the pleasurable +sensation of discovering (alas, as the world was about to let him down) +that he had the gift of a preacher and prophet, a gift that could hold +and sway multitudes. “Before I came here,” he went on, “I sat in the dim +light of my study and I dreamed and meditated by the fire; and there +came one of the seven angels, and he carried me away in the spirit to a +great and high mountain, and showed me that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_317">{317}</a></span> great city, the holy +Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: +and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even”—Lord Ottercove +stopped as if seeking the <i>mot juste</i>—“like a jasper stone,” he said, +“clear as crystal.”</p> + +<p>The audience was writhing with excitement, but he stopped them with a +movement of his hand, leaning forward over the stand and speaking almost +in a whisper: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first +heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”</p> + +<p>Once indeed he was taken aback by an interpellation: “Why the dickens +didn’t you stop the man, man?” yelled a dingy figure from the crowd, +when he had spoken of the adventist-scientist.</p> + +<p>“He wouldn’t stop!” returned Lord Ottercove. There was indeed no sort of +good in stopping him, he hastened to add. Did they not know that an +invention or discovery was at no time the monopoly of a single brain? +What use indeed having this scientist arrested when his successor, whose +hiding-place they could not know, was waiting to spring the mine?</p> + +<p>But suddenly as he spoke a sort of mental cramp seized upon his brain, +and he could not bring himself to utter another word. The harder he +tried, the more did thought and words elude him. He stood gazing at them +with what seemed to him an inane smile, but so magnetic, so masterful +was his personality to the people around him that they stood<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_318">{318}</a></span> +fascinated, with their eyes glued on him, while he gazed back at them, +in silence. Three minutes elapsed.</p> + +<p>“Come on!” shouted a man from the crowd.</p> + +<p>“Sir,” Lord Ottercove turned to him, “will you be good enough to allow +me to complete my prayer?”</p> + +<p>At which the interlocutor relapsed into the obscurity whence he had +emerged.</p> + +<p>“Ladies and gentlemen!” said Lord Ottercove: “I thank you for your kind +attention.”</p> + +<p>As he walked home, posters of his own newspapers informed him of the +imminent dissolution of our planet. He groaned as he saw them. How bad! +How unimaginative! Posters depressed him. Never a day, never an hour but +that they would trot out some fresh disaster. A train derailed, liners +colliding in the Channel, a steamer run aground in the fog, a bus +toppled over, an airman lost in the Atlantic. Disaster, disaster, +disaster! “Disaster mongers!” he called them. How the public must be +getting sick of it. Never good news. He’d have to change all that. And +suddenly, he remembered that he could not change it: disaster mongers +had for ever triumphed.</p> + +<p>At a street corner he bought a newspaper. “End of the World” meetings, +he read, were being held in various parts of London. People began to +close their shops, and the excitement increased to such an extent that +later troops were called out, and large<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_319">{319}</a></span> forces of police appeared at +the street corners, and the approach to Downing-street was barricaded, +the Prime Minister having refused to receive deputations who, resenting +his wait-and-see policy, were eager to compel him to do something <i>and +do it now</i>. Riots broke out in the east end of London, led by persons of +an irreligious disposition desiring to have a last good run for their +money, and men and women were committing suicide and going insane. There +was a vast crowd in Trafalgar Square. The Bishop of London, it seemed, +was addressing it. “Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee....” Voices, +out of time and tune, soared to the skies. A score of elderly virgins, +earnest, spectacled ladies in white, sang with transport, invoking +speedy transportation to the Seat of Judgment to be first among the +Brides of the Lamb. “A scramble,” thought Ottercove. “A queue before a +first-night. Wish I could be sure of my dramatic critic. Bright lad, +Allan Scoffer, might manage to get in.”</p> + +<p>The Brides’ white stood out luminously against the drab crowd. “What a +chance to make a corner in muslin,” Ottercove thought to himself, “to +meet the sure demand for Ascension robes!” The untimeliness of such an +enterprise, in the face of timelessness, which would rob him of the +fruits, damped his speculative ardour. He had long since lost interest +in making money, though the habit persisted into middle life, and +whenever now he sold a yacht or a Venetian palace or a country house in +Scotland,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_320">{320}</a></span> he would pride himself on a minimum profit of £5, as a +private reassurance that his old cunning had not left him. He was like a +veteran golfer who suddenly, during a quiet walk in the country, borrows +a club to show his friends the stuff he is made of. “Not lost the knack +yet,” they say tonelessly.</p> + +<p>He walked all the way home to Stonedge House and, unnoticed by his +servants, sauntered sombrely into his ground-floor sitting-room. His +mood was sombre. He stood at the wide French windows and looked out at +the darkling park which stretched before him, melting away into the +mist, stood there, a little weary and disenchanted. So this was the end. +Good! He felt sorry for the world, and for himself, and for the race +robbed of the promise of fulfilment. The imminent end of human life and, +with it, of his career on earth, threw him back upon a reminiscent mood. +He saw himself a boy way back in Ottercove, bright-eyed, eager, wide +awake, the visible world a glittering prize, a pear waiting to be +plucked. Well, he had plucked it. It had proved, however, more than he +really cared to chew; his appetite had waned as he partook of it. He had +had his fill; and, perhaps—he had always kept an open mind about these +things, had always been awake to other worldly possibilities—perhaps +there was room for his versatile talents beyond. He had always been +keen, modest, ready to learn the rules of the game—any game—to +appreciate the change in the nature of things, and always successful. +Those oft<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_321">{321}</a></span>-quoted words with which his father once adorned his dreary +sermons, words whose beauty had arrested his attention, now stood before +him, cavernous with meaning: “We shall not all sleep: but we shall all +be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.”</p> + +<p>Probably. His father—a curious man. No pliability of mind. No +disinterested curiosity. Only a rigid belief in heaven and hell. Wrong! +Life was pliable, generous and miraculous to a degree we could not even +guess; it opened out suddenly, wondrously, as a flower overnight. To-day +a caterpillar—to-morrow a butterfly. But we, dull, sodden ruffians +ruminating over our existence, like cows chewing the cud, could not +imagine a heaven other than of grass and water—greener grass and +clearer water. Fools!</p> + +<p>He paced up and down. A series of articles on the nature of immortality, +for <i>The Sunday Runner</i>, commended themselves to his mind. A fitting +counter-blast to the precocious spiritualism exploited by a rival group +of newspapers. He would write them himself. It was wonderful how his +mind was opening out, like a bed of flowers, all looking, straining to +the sun. Intuitive orientation. Knew where the sun was, in fact had +always had a place in it. And God was just there, too, behind the sun. +He felt that he would get on well with God, owing to his reasonableness, +modesty, and readiness for trans<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_322">{322}</a></span>figuration at short notice. He would +not ask questions, but watch every movement of God’s brow and anticipate +His every mood.</p> + +<p>Ah, well! he had faith. He would go on believing in a personal +immortality till, with a poker, from behind, Providence would knock him +dead.... A sinister afterthought; he brushed it aside. He stretched out +his hands to the unseen: “I am reasonable. Will not the reasonable from +beyond the grave claim me?” Half forgotten feelings flooded his heart. +He remembered his arrival in England back from his New Zealand tour, as +the train rolled noisily over the bridge into the great metropolis, the +witness of his crowning triumphs. He remembered a thrush outside his +bedroom window way back in Ottercove in early boyhood. The trees seemed +to stand still, as if waiting for something. These feelings, eternal +essences of things, were they to be wasted? These anticipations, were +they not to be fulfilled? They were pledges of something that was to be, +had always been, existed now, as if round the corner but somehow out of +reach. The quickness with which people disposed of dead bodies, the +rapidity with which they resigned themselves to their loss, suggested +that, at bottom, they thought it was all right. It was all right. <i>How</i> +all right, he could not say, but all right it was.</p> + +<p>“Time for bed.” He stretched out his arms to the ceiling and yawned. “I +am,” he said aloud,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_323">{323}</a></span> “such as I am, and what I am—neither more nor +less—for the universe to chew and digest and assign to the requisite +uses.”</p> + +<h2><a id="XL">XL.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Lord de Jones</span> had been in a hurry to cross over to the Continent, for +there was no means at all of knowing how much of it had disintegrated to +date. The uncertainty of the whole business appalled him. The +stationmaster at Victoria might not be able to cummunicate with the +<i>chef de la gare du Nord</i>. Yet he had no means of knowing whether this +was because Paris-Nord (or, for that matter, Paris) had disintegrated, +or whether it was because the number was engaged.</p> + +<p>There was of course an aeroplane service for abroad, but people still +clung to the <i>terra firma</i>, Lord de Jones thought, without good cause. +Moreover, they were travelling with luggage—a good deal of luggage. It +was indeed difficult to know how much luggage to take with one—Eva +could not take enough—to last one to the end of one’s days in time. The +sight of passengers reclining in the easy luxury of the Pullmans, +looking trim and hard, appalled him. They would not come back, he mused. +Never come back from this last journey into space whither they were +travelling <i>de luxe</i>, over viaducts, away, away, urbane materialists +melting into air....</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_324">{324}</a></span></p> + +<p>And on the French side, against all the easy felicity of the language, +the sinuous tones of the restaurant-car attendant who sang out as he +squeezed himself along the swaying corridors: “<i>Prière de prendre place +pour le premier déjeuner!</i>” contrasting favourably with the brisk “First +luncheon!” of the British dining-car attendant, the incorrigible +insularity of the English passengers who said they wanted to shut out, +if possible, French passengers from the coupé (forgetting that they were +travelling across France in a French train), stood out a black and +reeking ghost of shame which made him think the world was doomed because +it lacked all manners. In the night the train stood still, emitting long +sighs at intervals; and his heart beat loud within him with foreboding.</p> + +<p>Images passed through his mind, of a life <i>à la</i> Jean Jacques Rousseau, +in which he must rely on his dexterity of arm and on nature’s bounty. A +hardened hunter he is, building her a hut. Eva with only furs from furry +animals which he had hunted down for her to hide her nudeness. Primeval +love and lust. Long days of bliss. But what is this? The roar of a lion. +Bother! He must get up and see about it. He had been dozing, and opening +his eyes, she was there indeed, not in the wilderness as yet, but facing +him in the coupé, and smiling at him.</p> + +<p>But what if it fail him? She, the child,—no more than she could +understand how, having undone one atom, he had automatically undone the +world,—had<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_325">{325}</a></span> not the remotest comprehension of how he could now isolate +a specific portion of it from destruction. Yet when he had, to +illustrate the process, said to her that all he had to do was to +vaccinate the hill they had selected as their future world, she said: +“Of course! How silly of me not to think of it myself!”</p> + +<p>But even if it fail, then death. And what was death? A change of +outlook. He remembered once crossing a wide river somewhere, and as he +landed on the other side, straying into a bathing place where lots of +naked people sat about on benches in the garden and on chairs in the +adjoining restaurant, smoking, eating, chatting, listening to music—but +with nothing on them. It was uncanny. And he thought that landing on the +other side of death must be as strange: for everything seemed different, +yet everything the same.</p> + +<p>Dusk fell as the train raced across Austria, and sheaves of corn in the +vast whirling fields looked like humans stealing away one by one in the +twilight. “Escaping,” he thought.</p> + +<p>And, waking in the morning suddenly, they saw the mountains.</p> + +<p>In the station square at Innsbruck, a fat German who looked like a pig +waved his whip at his dog and threatened it: “<i>Ach, du Schweinhund!</i>”</p> + +<p>“Disgraceful!” said Eva, and as she passed him she gave him an icy look +over her slim shoulder. It was a beautiful day in June. They hired a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_326">{326}</a></span> +victoria and drove, at first through the old mellow town with its +cloistered streets, domes, turrets, and pinnacles; then by the side of +the river, angry and turbulent. A faint hazy summer afternoon was +drawing to its close, and as, at sundown, they came to a hanging bridge +chained between rocks and the foaming green river rushing angrily under +the horse’s hoofs, Christopher’s eyes filled with tears: the beauty of +it all was more than he could bear.</p> + +<p>And when, at the Pension Kogl, they came out on to their balconies, they +were stunned with rapture by the view which opened out on to the +mountain scenery. Below was the river, the passionate Inn, and the +bridges, the funicular slowly climbing the mountain slope, and all +around were pine trees, birches, roses, villas hidden in lanes lined +with foliage; and at night when they walked by the river, where lanterns +shone forth from between secretive trees, it was as if a wonderful +secret, long dreamt and forgotten, awaited one round the corner.</p> + +<h2><a id="XLI">XLI.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">That</span> night Lord Ottercove slept at The Cottage, and the following night +he spent in the country. It was not till he had got into bed on the +third night and turned over on his left side that he was aware of the +sound of rustling paper in his pyjama coat pocket, which, on inspection, +proved to be a letter, a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_327">{327}</a></span> <i>billet doux</i> from his Eva. She was, she +wrote, with Christopher de Jones, who, as Rex probably knew, had gone +off his chump and had disintegrated the world, which was unravelling +rapidly of its own accord (“like a piece of crochet-work,” she wrote, +“if you know what I mean, whose first stitch he has undone,”) and she +had with difficulty persuaded him to isolate the top of a hill, which he +said he could do by vaccinating it, so to speak, against the spreading +corruption, to save her and himself, and she was now secretly indicating +the exact location of that hill in the Austrian Alps whither he, Rex, +should fly at once. He must not, however, bring anyone with him, as +there would be very little to eat. “<i>I told Him I’d like to have you +saved, but He won’t hear of it. I am furious. I told him all the Truth +that I have written to you. And He is Furious. Never mind, darling, if I +flirt with him perhaps He will not kill you. Your loving wife</i></p> + +<p class="r"> +<i>Eva.</i>”<br> +</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove never weighed or reflected: he knew. Light came to him +without intermediaries, direct from the Holy Ghost. He must save himself +<i>and Vernon Sprott</i>. Vernon Sprott was, since the death of a late Prime +Minister, his oldest friend, and friendship was to Ottercove a pure and +sacred thing. In other departments of life he had displayed a versatile +ability, but in friendship he was a genius. No coldness, lack of +response, animosity, or<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_328">{328}</a></span> even treachery could dull his friendship. If he +once liked a man, nothing that that man might do to him would stop his +liking him. Equally, he would stop at nothing if he could render even +the smallest service to a friend. Lord Ottercove was said to have made +the war in order to oblige a friend whose special gifts, he thought, +would find their happiest expression in a war cabinet. His tenderness in +the cause of friendship knew no bounds. And so, entering hatless into +his chariot, he muttered the address of Mr. Vernon Sprott.</p> + +<p>But when, his heart thumping within him, he dragged himself up to +Vernon’s study at the top of his house in Berkeley-square, Vernon Sprott +was writing a novel. Vernon Sprott was invariably writing a novel. That +was, according to the more esoteric critics, the special trouble with +him. And the special trouble to-night was that Vernon Sprott would not +stop writing the novel, hoping to finish, print, sell it, and retire on +the proceeds before the world came to its final dissolution. Lord +Ottercove beheld the broad industrious back of his friend, who made a +slave of himself to keep afloat a large yacht, and said: “Vernon, you’re +a writer of talent: but a merchant of genius.”</p> + +<p>Vernon Sprott turned round on his chair. “You, Rex,” he said, looking at +him with critical thoughtfulness, “who have cut such a figure in the +visible world, why don’t you now turn your mind to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_329">{329}</a></span> invisible +mystery of things and solve, say, the Riddle of the Universe?”</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove pondered silently awhile. “I cannot solve it,” he said.</p> + +<p>Mr. Vernon Sprott turned back to his desk.</p> + +<p>Lord Ottercove looked at his friend with grave significance. He loved +Vernon Sprott. All the music, all the poetry in the world was not so +strong nor yet so pure as this devotion of the younger for the elder +friend, and when he spoke of him his voice grew tender and tears came to +his eyes. “Vernon!” he said at last. “I am going to save your life! For, +you know, there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we +may. My chariot is at the door and” (looking at his watch) “we must +fly.”</p> + +<p>“Let me put the last stroke to my novel.”</p> + +<p>“I advise you against it.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“Vernon: it would do you no good.”</p> + +<p>“But I must. No first-class artist—”</p> + +<p>“Vernon: we must fly.”</p> + +<p>Vernon Sprott, smoking a long fat cigar, followed Lord Ottercove +critically into the chariot which, cutting sharply round the corner, +took wing, and clearing the roofs of the Berkeley-square houses, soared +into the sky. Lord Ottercove and Mr. Vernon Sprott beheld for the last +time the great city of London which, viewed from this imposing height, +looked as though it had been inadvertently dropped out of the back of a +cart. An architectural effect<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_330">{330}</a></span> that, though it was not premeditated, +could hardly be called happy, thought Mr. Sprott. However. He puffed at +his cigar. “Your secretary and telephone operator gone ahead, I expect?”</p> + +<p>“Yuh. Can’t get on without them.”</p> + +<p>They were now flying right into the dawn.</p> + +<h2><a id="XLII">XLII.</a><br><br> +CASTOR AND POLLUX</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Herr Kogl</span> was in charge of the telephone and telegrams. He would come up +and say to you with oracular pride: +“A—telegram—is—on—the—way—to—you.” He articulated slowly, as if +appreciating the necessity of talking distinctly to foreigners.</p> + +<p>“How do you know?” Lord de Jones asked him.</p> + +<p>“I know,” said Herr Kogl, turning to go. But he came back at once and +explained:</p> + +<p>“They—have—telephoned—from—the—post—office—to—say—so.”</p> + +<p>The telegram arrived an hour later. De Jones opened it and read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>Lord Ottercove and Mr. Vernon Sprott arriving by chariot this +evening. Reserve first class accommodation.</i></p> + +<p class="r"> +<i>Hannibal.</i>”<br> +</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_331">{331}</a></span></p> + +<p>In the afternoon while everybody was at tea—“<i>Jause</i>,” in the +vernacular—Mrs. Hannibal and the telephone operator arrived in an +aeroplane and installed themselves with the efficiency and celerity of a +quartermaster. Mrs. Hannibal occupied the little reception room; the +telephone operator, a graduate of the Royal College of Science, +commandeered the telephone. Then, there being nothing for them to do +till evening, they strolled down the hill into town to inspect the +sights.</p> + +<p>And Baby?</p> + +<p>She was not at the gate, nor at the bandstand, nor in the by-ways of the +park. Since his demise from the Pension Kogl, Frank lived in town, often +meeting Baby when she came down to Innsbruck. And here she was, as fresh +as May, beckoning to him from across the flower-bespangled field. That +laughing, slanting look in her eyes stirred something in his frame as +though a bird had suddenly flown into him. He was joy, his body the +cage. Soon joy would fly out; and he fretted and flurried trying to lock +the door of the cage, losing his happiness in the anxiety of losing it. +That piquant blend of childish innocence on her face with a suggestion +of ripening womanhood about her form, so irresistible to men, was no +less irresistible to Frank. They took the funicular up the mountain +slope and continued the acclivious ascent by foot, stopping now and then +to look down at the town in the valley, when he would feel her lovely +weight against him. They wound their<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_332">{332}</a></span> way up the Schillerweg and stopped +at a Gasthaus in the precincts of the Pension Kogl and had coffee and +cakes amidst the beer and wine drinking peasants with goat beards like +shaving brushes stuck in their coloured hats, and the women in Tyrolese +peasant dress taken in tightly at the waist and showing off their +figures to advantage, and sat still and looked down into the green folds +of the valley and up at the jagged summits of naked rock. She gave him a +look that came straight from the soul. Her eyes were as if they had just +been sad, had understood all, and now chose to see only the heavenly, +sunny side of your being. And looking at her eyes, you, too, felt but +the sunny side of yourself, and wanted to dance and prance in the +sunshine that emanated from those eyes. Fowls, chickens, strutted all +over the place, jumped on the chairs. The little serving maid, +bare-legged, would call them: “Chuck-chuck-chuck!”</p> + +<p>They were screened from sight by a tree. He put his hand on her arm. Her +look moistened. The sun, as if making a last effort, shone with a tragic +brightness; then, unable to sustain the effort, diminished its light. +The bare-legged maid had gone in. They kissed. When she came out she +wore a pair of brown stockings: and they stopped kissing.</p> + +<p>“Hello, hello!”</p> + +<p>They turned round and saw Eva and Christopher de Jones. “Wherever have +you been?” Eva turned<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_333">{333}</a></span> on to her cousin. “We’ve been looking for you +everywhere. Chris is anxious to begin.”</p> + +<p>“There isn’t any time to waste. It’s coming our way now, spreading +fast,” de Jones confirmed.</p> + +<p>“Like creeping paralysis,” said Eva, “and Chris is going to vaccinate +this hill.” Then, turning to Frank: “Let me see! Have you any hair +left?” He quickly removed his hat. “Oh, lots and lots!” she exclaimed.</p> + +<p>“It’s about the only thing I have.”</p> + +<p>“It’s time I did it,” said de Jones. “Herr Kogl, can you oblige me with +a little gasoline?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes. We’ll see if we can get any,” said Herr Kogl politely. +“Kindly follow me to the garage, and we shall see if we are lucky.”</p> + +<p>Then in another tone: “Hey there! Herbert! Any gasoline! Any gasoline, I +said! Come on and get about it, quick! I’m waiting. I said: <i>waiting</i>!”</p> + +<p>Christopher de Jones returned with a mysterious air. “I have timed,” he +said, “the explosion for 5:15.”</p> + +<p>“What explosion is this?” Frank said with enquiring charm.</p> + +<p>“Oh, perfectly harmless in itself. But it will frighten away all the +rest, and leave this mountain top for our little party.”</p> + +<p>“Is this discrimination not perhaps a little heartless?”</p> + +<p>“Surplus, surplus. One must always get rid of the surplus.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_334">{334}</a></span></p> + +<p>He took out his watch and held it in his palm. Three minutes elapsed.</p> + +<p>There was a mild crash. Then several faces were thrust enquiringly out +of the windows of the Pension Kogl. Next, the word “earthquake” passed +from mouth to mouth, and a thin stream of visitors trickled down the +narrow mountain path into Innsbruck which stretched below them, sunning +itself in the valley. Herr Kogl, Frau Kogl, the policeman and the Frau +Policeman with her quicksilver of a little boy, the apoplectic Baron, +and some others, made light of Lord de Jones’s warning and refused to +budge.</p> + +<p>They stood with Frank and Eva and Baby and de Jones in a group on the +terrace and watched the other visitors trot down the hill: the Grand +Duke, the Frau Professor with the dachshund, the Herr Pastor, the Frau +Pastor, Herr and Frau Nikulitsch, the two Scottish old maids, Herr +Spatz, Frau Spatz, and their son Willy, the Frau Doktor Wirt, the Frau +Direktor Bödingen, the Frau Oberst von Kaisar, and Frau von Endte. There +lived among others in the annexe of the Pension Kogl an +effeminate-looking young artist from Vienna who was kept by a poor, pale +consumptive German girl who paid for him and cooked his meals, whereas +he, tired of her love, powdered his face and, adjusting his tie before +the mirror, went to town every day to distract himself with her money. +On the fatal day he, adjusting his tie, went to town and did not come +back. And she,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_335">{335}</a></span> going down the hill to the grocer’s to get him his +supper, did likewise.</p> + +<p>Frank remembered this afterwards. Now he stood between Eva and de Jones +and watched his erstwhile enemies from the <i>pension</i> go down, never to +return. It was a warm Sunday afternoon. Far away, a train whistled and +then coiled below, like a serpent, on its long journey to Vienna. It +will not reach Vienna, Frank thought, not in eternity! All the peasants, +save for one old man, had already vanished down the hill. He drank his +big mug to the bottom, smacking his lips. Having paid for the beer and +lighted his pipe, he rose, and at once there came the sounds of his +jolly accordion, as, with twinkling eye, he strode to his own happy tune +out of the courtyard. Fresh and alert, he went down the road making his +own music, till his long curved pipe, and his knapsack, and the plume in +his hat ducked by the hill, and only the jolly tune spoke of his fresh +onward strides.</p> + +<p>The sun had long ago set behind the hills. It was very still: the empty +spell which hangs over the world before twilight.</p> + +<p>“And what’s that?” Baby exclaimed, pointing to an approaching dot in the +sky. Eva peered at the clouds. An airplane was speeding towards them.</p> + +<p>“It’s the chariot,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“It’s Rex! It’s Rex!” she cried. “Hurrah! it’s Rex!”</p> + +<p>They could see them now with the naked eye,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_336">{336}</a></span> Lord Ottercove and Mr. +Vernon Sprott, seated side by side, puffing at their cigars.</p> + +<p>One moment it seemed as if Lord Ottercove’s winged chariot would land +safely and gracefully in the courtyard of the Pension Kogl. The next, it +looked as though it would do no such thing.</p> + +<p>The two occupants of the chariot suddenly looked at each other. They +were both, in their different ways, strong men, and said nothing. They +were, they knew it, subject to immediate dissolution. And there was +method in it. First, Mr. Vernon Sprott began to disintegrate (his +eighty-five volumes of fiction and <i>belles-lettres</i> in the British +Museum having already preceded him). Mr. Sprott realised with his usual +imperturbable objectivity that he, who had always been one for whom the +visible world existed, was on the point of no longer existing for the +visible world. Now Lord Ottercove also began to get diffuse. He was not +aware of any pain or discomfort: he only felt that he was becoming less +and less homogeneous. This master of a million voices yielded inaudibly +to extinction, his last conscious feeling, one of sorrow not of anger, +being a profound regret that Lord de Jones had not remained a Genius of +the Untried. Soon their fabric melted into air, into thin air. Their +insubstantial pageant faded and left no rack behind.</p> + +<p>But in the growing twilight the tips of their cigars, fiery particles +immune from dissolution, two<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_337">{337}</a></span> beacons of light, two golden stars in the +sky, twin brothers, Castor and Pollux, shone for ever and ever.</p> + +<h2><a id="XLIII">XLIII.</a><br><br> +THE COCK CROWS TWICE</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">There</span> was no sound at all, and nothing to see: something that had +hitherto been ceased to be, like a dream on waking. Nothing crashed, +nothing fell: no mist, not a whiff of steam. No gossamer. Things rolled +up into nothing, as if they had vanished up their own sleeves.... The +world around seemed to be burning, silently, quickly, invisibly.</p> + +<p>They stood round and watched intently. Would the vaccination prove +adequate in neutralizing the creeping disease? Or would it overtake +their little hill, reach them and consume them all? By the answer to +this question Christopher de Jones will stand or fall. If he succeed, +how will they reward him? Foolish associations intrude their minds. +“Payment by results.” How long, how long! Will this ever end? Has it +ended? Are they dead, and, in a sense, as good as before? “Come, now,” +said Christopher impatiently.</p> + +<p>Gradually the hill detached itself, and as Baby and Herbert ran down the +slope hand in hand to ascertain if they were clear of the contamination, +floated away into space.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_338">{338}</a></span></p> + +<p>“A clean piece of work, what?” said de Jones, looking round at everybody +for approbation. “We’re clear of the old earth.”</p> + +<p>They all looked admiringly at the wizard.</p> + +<p>“We’ve peeled right off the rotten crust of the world; the old planet’s +gone off to die by itself.”</p> + +<p>“The whole of her fabric vanished by now?” asked Frank.</p> + +<p>“Well, there may still be a piece of Asia left as we are talking. But it +need concern us no longer.”</p> + +<p>“I should hate to think, Chris,” Eva said, “that you have not quite +killed the earth and that she is suffering.”</p> + +<p>“A matter of a day or so, that’s all. The wound is mortal.”</p> + +<p>They stared away into space. “Look out!” he cried. “We are floating +away. No need for alarm. Merely changing our bearings in the firmament. +The stars are looking at us inquisitively; that is because we are +newcomers.”</p> + +<p>They could not recognise their Chris, their gloomy, silent Chris. He was +gay, excited, communicative; like a Cook’s tourists’ guide. “Hold on!” +he cried presently. “We seem to be getting away somewhere, I don’t quite +know where.”</p> + +<p>Away, away, away! To the sun, Frank thought, to be consumed in its +light!</p> + +<p>The movement increased in velocity. It seemed they were falling. +Falling, falling, still falling; but falling upwards, not downwards. +With indrawn<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_339">{339}</a></span> breath they awaited the final impact which was to shatter +them into space. Now, with a crash, they would fall on the moon.</p> + +<p>Trembling, Eva came into Frank’s arms. He held her close that he might +drink her breath, commit her kiss into the keeping of his soul, forever +lost in hers. For his identity, as it dissolved in the encroaching dusk, +clung to his own self’s dream in her soul mirrored. Was it the end? Shut +in that vision! Now, Doom, devour them!... “Ever, and again, and +forever, thine.”</p> + +<p>Yet the minutes passed and no blow came. When they had stood tensely and +motionlessly for what seemed to them a decade, the velocity of their +fall decreased perceptibly, and they came to a halt. The sky gradually +cleared, and the sun flickered through the clouds. It looked as though +it might be over.</p> + +<p>Lord de Jones looked as nonplussed as the others. “Apparently,” said he, +“the law of gravity is no object to God.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” Frank agreed, releasing Eva from his protective grasp, “we are +saved—if unscientifically saved.”</p> + +<p>“God has shown,” remarked Herr Kogl, “that whatever else He may be, He +is no doctrinaire.”</p> + +<p>“Apparently,” replied de Jones, still looking worried, “our knowledge of +astronomy is incomplete—if this sort of thing can happen.”</p> + +<p>“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, etcetera,” said +Frank.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_340">{340}</a></span></p> + +<p>Herr Kogl looked at Frau Kogl. They smiled faintly at each other. They +were pale, yet happy. But where was Herbert?</p> + +<p>“Never mind Herbert. Where was Baby?” The question flashed through Eva’s +mind.</p> + +<p>Steps were taken accordingly to satisfy the curiosity on both sides. +Herbert and Baby had, it was remembered, run down the slope hand in hand +to ascertain whether the hill was clear of the dissolving earth, before +the hill had shot, like a bolt, into space; and neither Herbert nor Baby +could be traced any more. Lord de Jones advanced an interesting and +plausible theory that Herbert and Baby, having thoughtlessly overstepped +the line of demarcation, had rendered themselves subject to the chemical +laws operating outside the area he had thoughtfully isolated by means of +vaccination, and thus had shared the fate of all matter. While they were +discussing the sensational disappearance of two of their number who +should have been saved, the ground beneath them gave a jerk and then +began to revolve, at first slowly, then faster and faster.</p> + +<p>“Hold tight!” cried de Jones. The new globe was whirling with incredible +rapidity on its own axis and, what was even more distressing, round the +sun; which made it doubly difficult to keep one’s feet. They were, thank +God, for the most part of them, Londoners, accustomed to roughing it on +the tops of omnibuses, and this sort of thing held no real peril for +them. But twenty Austrian citizens, moun<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_341">{341}</a></span>tain folk who had lived away +from urban surroundings, failed to keep their poise and were hurled into +infinity to ascertain, but never to report, whether Einsteinian infinity +was indeed finite (even though some of the victims had no scientific +bias at all).</p> + +<p>But all things come to an end sooner or later, as was remarked by some +keen observer. Gradually the revolutions slowed down and then almost +subsided: and there they were—behold! the new Jerusalem descending out +of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto +a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. And +they saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the +first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.</p> + +<p>“By God, John, you’re right!” Frank exclaimed: “as right as sixpence!”</p> + +<p>“That was a narrow escape,” said Herr Kogl.</p> + +<p>Lord de Jones sat down on the ground and stretched out his limbs and +yawned. “Ha!” he laughed.</p> + +<p>“What is the joke, if I may ask?” Frank smiled enquiringly.</p> + +<p>“Fifty years ago,” said de Jones, “when the laws of science were +absolute, this would have been impossible. But in this age of +Relativity, nothing, thank God, is absolutely impossible!”</p> + +<p>“Relatively speaking,” said Frank.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_342">{342}</a></span></p> + +<p>“I have always put God above mathematics,” said Herr Kogl.</p> + +<p>“Either nature lacked science,” Frank said, “or God knew a lot more. Our +experience is decidedly novel and interesting.”</p> + +<p>“As a matter of fact,” rejoined Lord de Jones, “it all happened +according to plan. Just as I thought. Nothing surprises me.”</p> + +<p>He <i>hadn’t</i> thought so. He was like a captain who in a storm mislaid his +chart and instruments and, when the storm was over, pretended to take +his bearings and said that they tallied with his intended course.</p> + +<p>They were miraculously saved; and there was still a world. But what a +world! A rounded mountain top, peeled away and revolving very slowly by +itself round the old sun.</p> + +<p>And there, as before, stood the Pension Kogl. Nothing seemed to have +happened to it; all the windows were whole. Here was the garden, the +courtyard, the stables; and there the fields with the cows and sheep and +horses grazing imperturbably as before. Was it a dream? Where was it? +When was it?</p> + +<p>And here was Herr Kogl standing on the doorstep puffing at his pipe; and +there was Frau Kogl, agitated, throwing out her hands, probably saying, +Frank thought, “I don’t know what to do!” to the policeman who was +mystified, though not disagreeably, by the disappearance of the young +shrew who<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_343">{343}</a></span> had been his wife. And in her agitation Frau Kogl seemed to +be forgetting her own grief.</p> + +<p>“The matter is simple,” de Jones was explaining. “When our new little +planet began to whirl like a merry-go-round, the Frau Policeman, having +failed to clutch at a solid object, or clutching an object that was not +solid (possibly her husband), was hurled like a stone outside the now +negligible gravitation zone of this little earth of ours, and was +attracted by the superior gravitation of the moon.”</p> + +<p>“For one who has always whined for the moon,” said Herr Kogl, “the +transference must have its attraction.”</p> + +<p>“The bump,” retorted de Jones, “will have been fatal. But that is +neither here nor there. All I ask you to note is that her death was due +to natural causes.”</p> + +<p>“Lucid, admirable,” said Frank, “and entirely convincing!”</p> + +<p>The apoplectic old Baron came up to say that he had just stumbled over +the body of little Hans, the policeman’s boy, and the company, sobered +by recent apocalyptic events, slowly made for the spot. De Jones again +assumed the initiative.</p> + +<p>“Observe,” he said, “an interesting phenomenon. The boy, too small and +not used to transit either by omnibus or the Metropolitan Railways, had +not developed the instinct of a strap-hanger, and if his ancestors had +indeed ever had this instinct, it had been atrophied in him through long +disuse. And<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_344">{344}</a></span> thus he failed to clutch instinctively at the small bush +that might have saved him, and was hurled instead into space. But being +light in body he was not hurled far enough to reach the gravitation zone +of the moon, but remained within the gravitation halo of this little +planet whose power of attraction, as you are aware, is so weak that when +we raise our legs in walking we have some difficulty in touching ground +again. We might be penny balloons on the day after their purchase when, +no longer able to rise in the air, they do the next best thing. And so, +observe, this infant’s fall was not heavy: it did not maim or deform +him: only knocked the life out of him. All in the natural order of +phenomena.”</p> + +<p>“Most interesting and instructive,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>“Poor child,” said Eva. “Poor Baby! Poor Herbert! I wish now, +Christopher, you had never begun it.”</p> + +<p>“You can’t have,” retorted Christopher, “a worldwide cataclysm like this +without a victim here and there, which is all in the day’s work.”</p> + +<p>“The number of your victims,” interjected Frank, “is in the +neighbourhood of 1,600,000,000.”</p> + +<p>“What!” Frau Kogl was appalled. “That is not allowed! <i>Das gibt es +nicht!</i> Herr Wachmann!” she called out to the policeman, “will you have +this gentleman arrested. He is the biggest murderer that ever lived!”</p> + +<p>The policeman, a tin sword trailing at his side, looked from one to the +other with an irresolute air.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_345">{345}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Come, come!” said Lord de Jones, patting him on the shoulder, “this is +no longer your old Austria.”</p> + +<p>“Now don’t be a funk,” Frau Kogl egged him on, “assert your authority, +show what you can do.”</p> + +<p>“I am the only policeman in the world, a poor, lonely man. How can I +arrest anybody?”</p> + +<p>“Come, come, don’t you bother them,” Herr Kogl intervened. “What is done +is done and cannot be undone.”</p> + +<p>But she would not listen to him. And even when he bawled at her she did +not quail, this time, before the man with the strong will; and he turned +into the house with a shrug. “Women,” he said tenderly.</p> + +<p>“You’re a fine policeman and no mistake,” Frau Kogl jeered, till even +Lord de Jones himself felt sorry for the man.</p> + +<p>“Leave the poor man alone, can’t you?” he said. “What has he done to +you?”</p> + +<p>“It’s not what he, but what you’ve done, sir. Killed Herbert, killed +everybody. Everybody, everybody ... absolutely everybody one can think +of. And now with this funk of a policeman there will be no justice, no +authority left in the world; no one to bring you to book!”</p> + +<p>“That will do, Frau Kogl.”</p> + +<p>“No, it <i>won’t</i> do, sir. This is <i>my</i> pension, bought on my mother’s +hard savings she made in Alsace-Lorraine from where we spring, and as an +Alsacian I am too proud to tolerate the presence of the murderer of the +human race in my house.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_346">{346}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Stop!” cried de Jones. “Don’t try my patience too far, woman! My nerves +are on edge. I’ve had a very exceptional day. Do you know what you are +saying? This is the New Jerusalem that you see, the home of pacifism. +None of your Alsace-Lorraine now, I beg of you.”</p> + +<p>“I came from there—”</p> + +<p>“And you’ll go that way, if you are not careful.”</p> + +<p>“All this is mine.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, is it? Let heaven be my judge.” He snatched the sword from the +policeman and struck her on the head.</p> + +<p>She collapsed in a heap.</p> + +<p>The policeman walked away into the hills with a look which implied: “I +haven’t seen it.”</p> + +<p>Lord de Jones lit his pipe. Frank and Eva stood by, aghast. De Jones +looked at them with a propitiating smile. “I have slain,” he said, +removing his pipe, “this dragon of contention, this symbol of war and +nationalism, I hope, for ever.”</p> + +<p>“Cain!”</p> + +<p>A cock crowed twice.</p> + +<p>He started; then relaxed again. If the cock crowed twice to remind him +that he had betrayed his ideal at least once, he was nevertheless mighty +glad to know that there was a cock on the premises. He hoped there were +hens, too.</p> + +<p>“I have released,” he said, “the spirit imprisoned in a foul house.”</p> + +<p>“You’re blaspheming.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_347">{347}</a></span></p> + +<p>“It had to be done.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, had it?”</p> + +<p>“A hard thing, I admit, for a pacifist. But we must not sentimentalise +if we are to survive; we must fight the peace as we fought the war!” +There was silence.</p> + +<p>“Even the cock is too sick with you to crow again,” said Frank.</p> + +<p>The light sank: there was a long drop of rain, then another. It began to +hail. The three of them turned in and stood at the window blurred with +rain. The old woman’s body lay out in the wet. Neither the hail nor rain +could waken her. The earth was wrapped in a wet mist. And the Spirit of +God moved upon the face of the waters.</p> + +<p>And Lord de Jones said, “Let there be light”: and there was no light. So +he switched on the electric light: and he saw that it was quite good.</p> + +<p>“You blooming fool, Christopher! You’ve upset all the seasons!” cried +Eva. “You’ve made a mess of the weather! It’s neither day nor night, but +heaven knows what! It should be summer now, and it is winter.”</p> + +<p>“O Wind! If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”</p> + +<p>He sank into a chair and picked up a periodical, a copy of <i>The New +Statesman</i>, the last number. The very last! Eva opened the <i>Illustrated +London News</i> full of pictures of the <i>concours hippique</i> at the Olympia, +and Frank strolled over to the piano and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_348">{348}</a></span> tried his hand at the +<i>Symphony of the New World</i>, when Herr Kogl came in from the +dining-room.</p> + +<p>“Bad weather, Herr Kogl, what?”</p> + +<p>“Das ist kein Wetter, sondern ein Skandal,” and he adjusted the electric +stove. “Everyone can switch it out—I mean switch it on—whenever he +likes, but you must on no account switch it out without telling +Herbert....” He stopped, blubbered; then continued with a catch in his +voice: “because I mean then you release so much current that the dynamo +goes off like mad and may go phut, and then anything may happen. Though +I don’t care what happens now that Herbert....” He gulped and turned +away to the window. “What’s that?”</p> + +<p>Next, he was in the courtyard by her side. He stood still, petrified. +“Anna!” he said. “Anna!”</p> + +<p>Lord de Jones rose with <i>The New Statesman</i> still in his hand, and went +upstairs, “To spare his feelings,” he said. “Though I wish these people +would realise that a certain modicum of suffering is unavoidable even in +this New Jerusalem. However, we don’t want scenes.”</p> + +<p>Herr Kogl placed the body on chairs in the dining-room and came back +into the lounge. Eva eyed him compassionately. “What will you do to +him?”</p> + +<p>“Nothing,” he said, “nothing. It is between him and his God, and I can +do nothing.” Tears streamed down his cheeks. “There are laws, delicately +adjusted spiritual laws. We must not meddle, must not touch God’s +scales. If I did, what would hap<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_349">{349}</a></span>pen? ‘Leave off!’ God would say. ‘Away +with your clumsy hands, you bull in a china shop! By taking the law into +your own hands you have upset the delicate adjustment of my spiritual +world. You have disturbed the balance, disarranged the symmetry. Now, +instead of letting him, who has wrongfully taken, put it back by his own +exertion of soul, I must let him off lest I upset the scales of my world +by the wrong you have heaped on him. And who will square the original +sin? It falls back on the whole of mankind, don’t you see, young +feller-me-lad?’ That’s how God would speak to me if, in my great +ignorance, I presumed to take things into my own foolish hands.”</p> + +<p>For a minute they said nothing, but looked out of doors, where the rain +had stopped, at the dripping trees flooded with light.</p> + +<p>“And she was a clever woman,” he said; “she knew languages. Brought up +in a convent on the border of France....” His face puckered: he sobbed.</p> + +<p>When the others had gone, he stood alone in the doorway, gazed at the +clouds and listened to the pines in the wind. He looked with despair for +the night to cover his grief: and it was perpetual day.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_350">{350}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="XLIV">XLIV.</a><br><br> +FINNEGAN! BEGIN AGAIN!</h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Lord de Jones</span>, having, he deemed, ended his work, took a hot bath, +sitting in which he reflected that while it had taken God six days to +make the world, it took him only one day to unmake it. Yet he felt he +also needed a rest. It was 6 a.m. when he dragged himself up to his +room, dropped on his bed and fell asleep. He dreamt that he had been +given a lot of work which he resented because he was tired, having gone +to bed as late as 6 a.m. All night he dreamt that he had gone to bed at +6 a.m., and when he woke at noon he felt more tired than when he had +gone to bed at 6 a.m.</p> + +<p>Rising, he put on his trousers and fastened on his braces and, not +troubling to put on a coat, went out on to the balcony to look at the +world: and he saw that it was good. The earth was certainly small, but +there was a cosiness, an intimacy about it now which it lacked when it +boasted five continents. It was dear to him because it was the work of +his own hands—in his private opinion, a masterpiece. It had been for +him to make it as small as he deemed fit, and he had deemed its present +size—which was ten miles in diameter—entirely appropriate.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_351">{351}</a></span></p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>In small proportions we just beauty see;</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>And in short measures life may perfect be</i>,”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">he carolled hoarsely. “Yes, Ben Jonson would have understood me!”</p> + +<p>“Or,” Frank rejoined, stepping out on to his balcony, “as Goethe said, +‘In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister’.”</p> + +<p>“Very true, very true.”</p> + +<p>“But not too true to be good. One should have watched you. One should +have known that somebody like you, with more science than sense, must +attempt this sort of thing sooner or later.”</p> + +<p>“You supply your own answer. Someone, if not me then another, would have +done the same thing. No idea, not one so obvious, ever comes to one mind +alone. Thousands must have cherished it. Not for ever was mankind to be +mocked.”</p> + +<p>“And poor Rex,” said Eva, joining them on the balcony. “A few seconds, +and he would have been with us last night.”</p> + +<p>“And Vernon Sprott.”</p> + +<p>“And Vernon Sprott.”</p> + +<p>“Yes—I can picture Rex with us! He would have called for Mrs. Hannibal, +and there wouldn’t have been a Mrs. Hannibal. He would want to print +newspapers, and there would be nothing to print newspapers with or on. +He is better where he is.”</p> + +<p>“Poor Rex. I <i>did</i> want him to be saved,” said Eva. She was in a loose +dressing-gown. It had be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_352">{352}</a></span>come more and more evident that she was +expecting a baby—“of the old world,” said Christopher de Jones +regretfully.</p> + +<p>“I know. He was a great lad. We shall never see the like of him again.”</p> + +<p>“There was,” said Frank, “nothing ‘tinny’ or snobbish about him. He was +a great, warm-hearted creature, sensitive, knowing, not rancorous, kind +and unspoilt. What energy, what enthusiasm, what mobility of mind! And +withal what magnanimity! He was, I think, the most magnanimous man I +have ever met. If he caught you red-handed, plotting against his life +and fortune, and you politely put away your pistol or poison with the +words: ‘So sorry, Rex,’ he’d tell you: ‘Say no more about it! If it’s +money you want, why the hell don’t you say so?’ and, so as not to hurt +your feelings by simply giving you a batch of Bank of England notes, he +would appoint you Editor-in-chief of all his newspapers.”</p> + +<p>“And then worry the life out of you, till you resigned your job of your +own accord.”</p> + +<p>“He was the big drum in the jazz band of our civilisation, in which I +was the ukulele. But he was a rare friend, and, characteristically, he +died trying to save his friend’s life. There was at least nothing +jazz-like in that.”</p> + +<p>All Ottercove’s sympathetic qualities, unnoticed when he was alive, now +stood out and called for notice. They stood up as a mute reproach to +them and called up images of callous and ungrateful<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_353">{353}</a></span> thoughts about a +man now mute, felled in the fullness of his strength, prematurely +disintegrated. He felt sore, badly hit by the loss. He was fond, he knew +it now, of Ottercove. Never again would he behold the glint of those +eyes. Never hear that robust voice....</p> + +<p>“But why have been so half-hearted? Why not have finished off +everything?” He looked grievously at Chris.</p> + +<p>“That the race may survive.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Must</i> it survive?”</p> + +<p>“Of course.”</p> + +<p>“Why ‘of course’?”</p> + +<p>“To honour my name and my memory.”</p> + +<p>“What a name! What a memory!”</p> + +<p>“We must recuperate, start afresh. My descendants will breed and +multiply, expand, develop trade, build fleets of aeroplanes, and shops +and factories. Ultimately we shall hope to open a new Bank of England.”</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>There was a little man</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>And his name was Finnegan;</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>He grew whiskers on his chin again.</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>The wind did blow and blew them in again,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Poor old Patsy Finnegan.</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Finnegan!</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Begin again!</i>”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>“And we shall. As Goethe said, ‘Aller Anfang ist schwer.’ Glorious life! +Glorious beginning!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_354">{354}</a></span></p> + +<p>“But what is there, you fool, to begin from?”</p> + +<p>“Don’t call me fool.”</p> + +<p>“What is there that the race, if indeed it survive, can learn from? +Where is there a picture, a book, a gramaphone record to pass on to +those who shall follow us? Nothing. Not even an <i>Outline of History</i>!”</p> + +<p>“Wells? Ha!”</p> + +<p>“We could do with Wells here. The earnest, regenerative Wells. Where is +he now?”</p> + +<p>“Wells?” De Jones adjusted his telescope and peered at the clouds. “I am +looking if that be him over there.”</p> + +<p>“Let me look.” Frank looked and saw what looked like Mr. Wells floating, +it seemed, only a few yards away, a compact, self-contained little +figure, apparently immune from dissolution. “I think,” Frank said, still +peering, “I can see Winston’s hat.”</p> + +<p>“I might have saved Shaw.”</p> + +<p>They strained into the skies at a few dissociated splinters which may +have been fragments of George Bernard Shaw.</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>I stand in no awe</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Of George Bernard Shaw</i>,”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">de Jones quoted.</p> + +<p>“The attitude of the press and the reading public towards Shaw has been +one protracted joke.”</p> + +<p>“How so?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_355">{355}</a></span></p> + +<p>“You see, when Shaw began he was not taken seriously but was treated as +a joke. It was not till recently that he succeeded in being regarded as +a serious artist.”</p> + +<p>“But where is the joke?”</p> + +<p>“That is the joke.”</p> + +<p>“And do you see that blot on the clear sky?”</p> + +<p>“Let me look. Yes, I see.”</p> + +<p>“That is Lord Birkenhead.”</p> + +<p>“You are forgiven.”</p> + +<p>“I am touched by your recognition. You were rather chary of it last +night.”</p> + +<p>“Well, you must admit, de Jones, that, near as you have come, you have +not quite brought it off.”</p> + +<p>“I suppose, like Jesus and Napoleon and Lenin, I will be deemed a +failure.”</p> + +<p>“A splendid failure.”</p> + +<p>“Not brought it off, as you say.”</p> + +<p>“Not quite.”</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>Well, well! Nor I nor any man that but man is</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>With being nothing.</i>”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The cook, who was never seen about in the week, and thus was not missed +in the upheaval, came up to say that breakfast was served; and they all +repaired downstairs, Eva placing Herr Kogl on her right (because he was +old and had suffered), and de Jones, though he was a peer of England, on +her left. De Jones did not like it. He had scattered his title<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_356">{356}</a></span> about, +but now he would take himself in hand. He would take care to leave his +full history to his descendants, so that they should all know who their +ancestor was. It occurred to him that possibly Adam himself was, had we +been privileged to enquire more closely into his record, the ninth earl +of something or other. “I dare say,” he said aloud, “it will tickle them +no end to know that their founder was of the English aristocracy.”</p> + +<p>“I am not sure,” said Frank, “whether I should not contest your +sovereignty. The last of the Romanovs having disintegrated (and even the +last before so doing having relinquished his claim in my favour), I am +by all accounts the Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, Czar of +Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland.”</p> + +<p>“With no heir to the throne,” said de Jones.</p> + +<p>“That depends on my Queen Consort, who in the case of my death and no +issue would succeed to the throne as Eva the Second.”</p> + +<p>“Eva is my consort, already by the fact that she is bearing me a child.”</p> + +<p>“My child?”</p> + +<p>“Eva, whose child?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know.”</p> + +<p>“Strange not to know.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t you see, Chris, we must have children, little boys and girls, so +that they may marry again and carry on the race.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_357">{357}</a></span></p> + +<p>“What! their own half-sisters! Eva, I am shocked.”</p> + +<p>“Beggars can’t be choosers.”</p> + +<p>“Well, so long as they are good de Jones stock. Say what you like, +there’s something in having blue blood. I’m a believer in old families.”</p> + +<p>“My mother,” Dickin proffered shyly, “was an Adams.”</p> + +<p>“Adams and Eva!”</p> + +<p>“And we must hand down such knowledge as we possess, do you hear, de +Jones? We must put it down on paper—all we know and remember. There is +Mrs. Hannibal’s typewriter. Though we have no printing press, we can +make carbon copies. When I was at Cambridge—”</p> + +<p>“Were you at Cambridge?”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“It’s a rare thing.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“It’s no more.”</p> + +<p>“When I was at Cambridge I made a point of recording all I knew. Do you +know any algebra?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know any algebra. Leave me alone.”</p> + +<p>“But poetry? Has anyone got any poetry? My God! There is no poetry.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, darling, there is poetry.”</p> + +<p>“Give it here. Let me have it, quick. Where is it?”</p> + +<p>“I have some. Here, in my album.”</p> + +<p>“Give it to me. God! Not real poetry?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_358">{358}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Yes, darling, very nice poetry. There in the middle. There.”</p> + +<p>“Thanks.</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>O Eva, O Eva,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>I love you so mighty,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>I wish my pyjama was</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Next to your nighty.</i>’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">Thanks.”</p> + +<p>“You can copy it out on the typewriter, darling, for all the boy and +girl lovers after our time. I suppose they will be able to read +English.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Chris. English, he laid down, was to be the only language of +the new world, to perpetuate the traditions of the English-speaking +world. On the other hand, to show his complete lack of racial prejudice, +the daring unconventionality of his mind, he confessed, with a smile, +that though he preferred to stick to the criminal law of England, in +civic matters he was in favour of the Code Napoléon. He looked upon +himself as holding the new world under a mandate from the British +Empire; in fact he was himself in lineal descent from the Stuarts. He +was in reality the trustee of the British Crown. “Gentlemen,” he said: +“The King!”</p> + +<p>“The King!”</p> + +<p>The Baron and Herr Kogl, both of them confirmed anglophiles, did not +protest.</p> + +<p>After breakfast, they carried the body of Frau Kogl into the wood and +buried her among the trees<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_359">{359}</a></span> and flowers. De Jones, who presided, said a +few unsentimental words over the open grave, the burden of which was +that to understand everything was to forgive everything. After that he +marched Herr Kogl away, the while enquiring in detail as to the number +and condition of the cattle, the orchard, the poultry farm, the +vegetable garden, and even the household utensils. “I shall require from +you,” he said, “a regular account of these.” And when later he inspected +the cattle, he said: “I am anxious at all cost to prevent the outbreak +of the foot-and-mouth disease. I shall hold you personally responsible.”</p> + +<p>Herr Kogl, wondering sorrowfully what his poor Anna would have said to +the noble lord’s attitude to her own property, took it all in with good +grace. His reputed strong will availed him but little, but his good +sense a great deal; and when on returning home he addressed Lord de +Jones as “<i>Il Duce</i>,” Lord de Jones appointed Herr Kogl Chief Intendant +and Quartermaster-General with the acting rank of Minister of the +Interior.</p> + +<p>While <i>Il Duce</i> and his Quartermaster were discussing economy, Frank +Dickin, after being appointed Poet Laureate of the New World, strolled +away in search of inspiration. A thought struck him. He ambled on and, +when he was well out of sight, dashed across to the archducal Schloss +and hoisted his striped shirt, for want of a flag, according to the +rules of the old world. And according to the rules of the old world, he +looked about for some<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_360">{360}</a></span>thing with which to defend the newly acquired +possession, and felt that in so doing he was also performing an act of +loyalty to the old world so ignominiously done in overnight. He waited +for Lord de Jones to attack him with bombs and shrapnel and machine +guns. And he reflected that if Lord de Jones did not attack him with +bombs and machine guns, it was because Lord de Jones had no bombs and +machine guns to attack him with.</p> + +<p>It was odd, this feeling of proprietorship, in the face of all this +dissolution. And yet he told himself again and again that this castle +with the stately staircase, those long rows of red-gold rooms succeeding +one another as in a picture gallery, the quadrangle and the park and the +surrounding moat, the drawbridge and the water falling down the steep of +the enshrouding hills, and not a soul around—was his and his alone. And +when Eva visited him there that morning, he showed her round till she +felt faint.</p> + +<p>“Talking of castles,” she said, lying down on the archducal sofa, “look: +is it not sweet?”</p> + +<p>And she displayed her garters with a castle worked in silk and bearing +the inscription on the castle gate: “For one only.”</p> + +<p>“Chris gave me this on leaving London.” She moved about the room and +fingered his things. “What’s this bottle, Ferdinand?”</p> + +<p>“The beautiful crop you see on my head I owe to the regular use of this +lotion, reinforced by sheer strength of will.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_361">{361}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Where will you get a new bottle when this is used up?”</p> + +<p>“Not in this world. It’s a French make of pre-Dissolution days, with an +excellent translation of the instructions for use. Read the label.”</p> + +<p>“I see. ‘This very energical and excitative lotion for the hair whose it +favours the growth and gives to the hair, sweetness strength. Mode of +use: with a little sponge, washing plentifully the head during a week. +Afterwards thrice in a week.’ Quite amusing.” She put it back. “You have +fine hair now.”</p> + +<p>“It’s the only thing I have left. And it wasn’t there before.”</p> + +<p>It seemed a shame that this fine crop of hair should survive in the +teeth of a dissolving world. Survive? How survive?</p> + +<p>“We had better go back to the <i>pension</i> for lunch now,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he agreed sourly. “That is the annoying thing about large houses. +All this luxury, and not a cook on the premises. What good owning a +castle with a hundred and seventy rooms, and no servants? Spend all my +days mopping the floors. Saw an automatic mopper in Tottenham Court Road +the other day. Ought to have secured one. Lacked vision. Lacked faith.”</p> + +<p>It would not always be so. He saw in the future unborn Dickins living in +these lofty halls. A brilliant party. Bare-armed women. And his portrait +looking down at them from the wall. His great<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_362">{362}</a></span> granddaughter eloping +with a de Jones youth. Romeo and Juliet. Family feud. Capulets and +Montagues. Noble families. Hundred per cent. pre-Dissolution. Dreams, +dreams, dreams....</p> + +<p>The prospect of there being nothing to eat at first upset them all so +much that they lost their appetite. But when they ascertained that there +was a great deal to eat, they were so delighted that they began to drink +heavily. While they were at lunch, the cook came in to say that she had +just come upon Frau König in the cellar, where she had evidently hidden +herself since yesterday’s sham earthquake and bore signs of being of +unsound mind.</p> + +<p>“Bring her forth,” commanded de Jones.</p> + +<p>Frau König, disshevelled, and looking more than ever like a gipsy, was +led into the room, whereupon Lord de Jones addressed her courteously but +firmly. “Your appearance,” he said, “is both timely and opportune and, +in the sociological sense, clearly an asset. The world has reached a +stage at which immediate repopulation has become of paramount +importance. We lack women, though we do not lack men. We have but two +women and five men. I do not count the cook as a woman because she is +clearly beyond the age of reproduction. The men, on the other hand, are +all (I do not exempt even the older gentlemen, such as the Herr Baron +and Herr Kogl) rare examples of virility coupled with a high sense of +public duty.”</p> + +<p>“Unfortunately,” said Frau König, “my fiancé in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_363">{363}</a></span> Paris, having again +failed in his examinations at the University, it has set us back two +years with our knitting factory. Otherwise—”</p> + +<p>“Frau König, it’s not knitting factories I am talking of, though we +could do with one here at a later stage, when we have reproduced an +adequate number of mill hands, which is the task we have in hand. And +you have no right to shirk the call.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t understand. My fiancé is still in Paris—”</p> + +<p>“Don’t understand? Am I not making myself clear? Frau König, I cannot +presume to know your opinion of our late educational system, and I know +that in a purely scholastic sense it perhaps ranked below that of the +late Continent. But we were taught at our English public schools +something which was called ‘playing the game.’ Now is this, if I may ask +you, ‘playing the game?’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“But I desire nothing better. If my fiancé were here, of course. I’m +quite ill waiting for him all these years, living on hope deferred.”</p> + +<p>“Your fiancé! Your fiancé! What do I care for a fiancé who exists but in +your memory?” De Jones grasped her by the wrist. “Frau König,” he said, +“there is no room for thoughts of self. It’s a question of repopulating +this planet at the shortest possible notice. Are you (I will not say +patriotic, for patriotism, as such, has lost all meaning): are you +mundic?”</p> + +<p>“I am not averse,” said Frau König. “In marriage one contracts certain +habits.... But,” she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_364">{364}</a></span> added, “my condition is that you take me out into +society.”</p> + +<p>“But, good heavens!” Eva cried. “Her offspring will be as mad as +hatters!”</p> + +<p>“Which may add a touch of genius to those who will follow. We have come +near enough to the Kingdom of God but have not quite tumbled to it. +They, with a touch of genius, may go one further and clear up the mess +after themselves, and themselves as well.”</p> + +<p>“Better let me do what I can.”</p> + +<p>“Now Eva, don’t be jealous. You can’t, Lilith, do it all yourself. You +will kill yourself.”</p> + +<p>“I am willing to do my bit.”</p> + +<p>“There must be no slacking, no half-heartedness,” cried de Jones. “Here +we start anew!”</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>There was a little man,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>And his name was Finnegan;</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>He grew whiskers on his chin again.</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>The wind did blow and blew them in again,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Poor old Patsy Finnegan.</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Finnegan!</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Begin again!</i>”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>“A message of courage and hope,” said de Jones. “Our new mundic anthem.” +De Jones had changed; he was “another man,” as they say. He was like an +artist who had just finished a picture, or a scholar who had completed a +treatise. This his work had been the making of him. He was lighthearted, +posi<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_365">{365}</a></span>tively gay. Only the wrinkles round his mouth had deepened still +more.</p> + +<p>“Art thou man or devil?” Eva asked.</p> + +<p>But he cried, jumping to his feet with a glass in his hand: “Now all +together, please:</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>There was a little man,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>And his name was Finnegan</i>....’<span class="lftspc">”</span><br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The Baron and Herr Kogl, unable to contribute to the singing, since the +Baron’s knowledge of English was confined to saying good-morning in the +evening, and Herr Kogl’s was nil, yet contrived to join in the chorus at +the end, and shouted lustily with the others:</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>Finnegan!</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Begin again!</i>”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<h2><a id="XLV">XLV.</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">In</span> due course, that is exactly in the course of time prescribed by +nature, and unaffected by changed meteorological conditions, Eva gave +birth to a son, who, though both Frank Dickin and Christopher de Jones +were anxious to claim his paternity, proved to be, on inspection, +without the remotest shadow of a doubt, the second Baron Ottercove of +Ottercove. And all day long he laughed to himself.</p> + +<p>“That’s all right,” said de Jones, on being admitted. “But let him not +expect too much of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_366">{366}</a></span> new world. For we came crying hither: thou +know’st the first time we smell the air we waul and cry.”</p> + +<p>“Alack! alack the day!”</p> + +<p>“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this (small) stage of +fools.”</p> + +<p>“What shall we call him?” asked his overjoyed mother. And many nice +names were suggested.</p> + +<p>“Rex Alexander,” by Eva herself, in undying memory of his illustrious +father.</p> + +<p>“Christopher,” by Lord de Jones, in honour of himself and Christopher +Columbus, the explorer, and Christopher Morley, the American critic.</p> + +<p>“Ferdinand,” by Ferdinand, and in honour of Ferdinand, “Ex-King of +Greece,” he explained when Lord de Jones frowned on him.</p> + +<p>“Call him Adam,” suggested Herr Kogl. “For he is the first-born of this +new earth.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes, Adam,” said Eva.</p> + +<p>And he was called Adam. In honour of the late Miss Adams (which was +Frank’s mother’s maiden name), as Frank liked to think fondly but on +insufficient evidence.</p> + +<p>Eva had become very competent. The Pension Kogl was transferred into a +day and night nursery; the kitchen was used for drying the second Baron +Ottercove’s garments; and when the men argued as to whether their world +could survive, she invariably cut short the discussion by saying, What +mattered<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_367">{367}</a></span> the world? It was the survival of baby that mattered.</p> + +<p>“I wish,” she said, “Pilling could have seen my baby.”</p> + +<p>“Damn Pilling! Didn’t you think of your mother when you were making your +selection for your Noah’s ark?”</p> + +<p>“Well, darling, I thought she wouldn’t be alone in all this. She would +have all the other people with her. And Mummy always loved crowds.”</p> + +<p>Chris looked away, ashamed. “It was no use,” he said at last. “It was a +hopeless, incurable race. A perverted mentality. Nothing to be done with +them. Even the best of them were beyond salvation. Take my aunt. An +amiable old lady, yet cruel in her very kindness. During the last war, +like most old ladies, she had been vehemently, almost indecently, +anti-German. After the war, travelling about in Italy and being the +really nice old English lady that she was, she confessed to a feeling of +shame at the snarling attitude of <i>The Continental Daily Mail</i>, while so +many titled Germans were about. What she most quickly recovered was her +interest in the imperial family of Germany, and she confessed a +heart-felt sympathy for the ex-Kaiser. ‘Rather a fascinating man,’ she +said, ‘and after all, he was the grandson of our own dear Queen +Victoria, so we shouldn’t be too hard on him.’ The dear old lady! I can +see her now as she walked beside me, stopping every few paces to recover +her breath, but pretend<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_368">{368}</a></span>ing she was doing so to bring home a point in +our conversation: ‘Now isn’t that remarkable!’ or else to examine a +bicycle propped up in front of a shop: ‘What an unusual bicycle!’ or to +read a poster: ‘Have you seen this?’ She was a good woman, and the very +stuff our race was made of. You might have thought that it would have +profited by its mistakes and devised a working social order. But (as +Goethe said about politics) men would not learn, and God did not seem to +want it.”</p> + +<p>“That is so, but if anything you have made things worse.”</p> + +<p>“Hardly worse,” said de Jones. “I have in my pocket a newspaper +fragment. Let me read it aloud so that you may realise what you have +been saved from. Here it is. It is entitled ‘Royal Month of February,’ +and it goes on: ‘<i>Many famous hostesses have already come to town, and +during the next few days will make the final preparations for their +participation in the stately pageant in the House of Lords when the King +opens Parliament in state to-morrow week. New Court gowns will be tried +on in Mayfair, St. James’s, and Belgravia, and priceless family jewels +will be brought from the strong-rooms of historic banks.</i>’</p> + +<p>“Almighty God!</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>Among the weddings within the next week or two will be that of Major +the Hon. Maurice Duff Glayton and Lady Ursula Blaming at St. Margaret’s, +Westminster. The Marquis of Lillings<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_369">{369}</a></span>worth’s two charming daughters will +be among the bridesmaids. Both bride and bridegroom are well known in +the yachting world of Cowes.</i>’</p> + +<p>“Almighty God!</p> + +<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>The Marquis and Marchioness of Epping spent the week-end in town in +Curzon-street. Lord and Lady Castle have come from Kent, Lady Walden de +Munford from Paris, the Dowager Duchess of Hawke from Ireland, and the +American Ambassador from the United States. Countess Buxham and her +daughter are back again in Eaton-place.</i>’</p> + +<p>“God Almighty!” He wiped his brow with his handkerchief, and as he +walked away he stopped every few paces and said:</p> + +<p>“God Almighty! God Almighty!”</p> + +<h2><a id="XLVI">XLVI.</a></h2> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p><i>Elle avait appris dans sa jeunesse à caresser les phrases, au long +col sinueux et démesuré, de Chopin, si libres, si flexibles, si +tactiles, qui commencent par chercher et essayer leur place en +dehors et bien loin de la direction de leur départ, bien loin du +point où on avait pu espérer qu’atteindrait leur attouchement, et +qui ne se jouent dans cet écart de fantaisie que pour revenir plus +délibérément, d’un retour plus prémédité,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_370">{370}</a></span> avec plus de précision, +comme sur un cristal qui résonnerait jusqu’ à faire crier, vous +frapper au coeur.</i></p> + +<p class="r"> +<i>Proust.</i><br> +</p></div> + +<p>He returned to his Schloss park, went down the gravel path into the +hidden nooks where the waters dashing down from steep heights broke +their fall in cool spray. All was as still and wild and pure as on the +first day. So Adam must have brooded, too, in the cool and quiet of +Eden.</p> + +<p>He walked on. And suddenly he came upon her in the pine wood.</p> + +<p>“My pale primrose.”</p> + +<p>“No, no, not here.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, here and now. To make sure that you bear me a child.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, you and Chris, and everybody.”</p> + +<p>He was overwhelmed with tremulous anxiety that he might lose her, his +one, his only woman. To hold her, for a moment, if only for a moment, +was to hold all—eternity in a moment. There was Eva, and no other +woman; and she included all the beauty and the passion in the world. +“Oh, my Eva! My <i>dear</i> love!” He thought of all the loving lost and gone +for ever: of moonlight meetings, heartthrobs, lingering farewells, by +waterfalls, in drifting gondolas, and sunlit glades, and cloistered +streets, and heaths, and lanes, and bridges: the water rushes, the +heart<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_371">{371}</a></span> throbs loud; he tried to collect it all and impress it on these +lips, these taut, supple fingers, these heaving young breasts.</p> + +<p>And they took of the fruit thereof, and did eat: and they heard the +voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.</p> + +<p>“It’s you, only you now. When I hold you, Eva, I hold the world.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, darling, what is left of it.”</p> + +<p>“No distraction left.” He clutched his chin savagely. “I can’t have +them!” he cried. “Can’t have them!”</p> + +<p>“Who?”</p> + +<p>“All those other women.”</p> + +<p>“What’s to be done, darling?”</p> + +<p>“I can’t have them! Oh, aren’t I glad!”</p> + +<p>“No regrets?”</p> + +<p>“None! Eva,” he murmured, “my little Eva.”</p> + +<p>“And do you remember,” she said, “how we were lost on the hill?”</p> + +<p>“I remember.”</p> + +<p>“And how the storm came on, and how you held me, and how it rained and +we ran to hide under the rock?”</p> + +<p>“And you remember Count Kolberg?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, that soppy-face! And how when he asked us out to dinner he sent in +a long bill next day, charging up to Mummy our share of the meal, giving +all the details:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_372">{372}</a></span></p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">3 rolls<br></span> +<span class="i0">3 soups<br></span> +<span class="i0">3 cutlets<br></span> +<span class="i0">3 salads<br></span> +<span class="i0">potatoes—3 portions<br></span> +<span class="i0">2 lemonades<br></span> +<span class="i0">1 beer<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">and so on. And that night he took us to the “München” he ordered +champagne. But when it came to paying, he had no money and began to cry. +And Mummy said to him very kindly: ‘But why, if you <i>knew</i> you hadn’t +any money, did you order champagne?’ ‘Because all the others did,’ he +said.”</p> + +<p>“And what happened?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, the waiter boxed his ears for him and kicked him out and called him +names. It was very disagreeable for us.”</p> + +<p>“How did he take it?”</p> + +<p>“Not very badly. Sort of half playfully. ‘You don’t know what I was +going through in my inner soul,’ he said, when we were out of doors. +‘Ach! Ai, ai, ai! Ai, ai, ai!’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Then it was we who were lost. Now it is the world. The poor world, with +no lovers in it any more, save you and me. It seems we must love for the +lot. Justify love. We shall not fail. We shall not fail.”</p> + +<p>She looked wistful.</p> + +<p>“Eva ... honey love....”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“I am unworthy. But God in His infinite love has brought all this about +that we may come together again, you and I, Eva.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_373">{373}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Darling,” she said, “I don’t believe it!”</p> + +<p>“Nor do I, for that matter,” he said, pressing her to him, “and I +scarcely think that this was an end pursued by de Jones.”</p> + +<p>“The last thing that he intended.”</p> + +<p>The sun subsided towards evening, and suddenly the landscape shone forth +with a crystalline clearness, as though you had adjusted your binoculars +to the required focus. Before them stretched a plain. No more horizons.</p> + +<p>They stood up and walked on, lifting themselves from the ground with one +foot and coming down in a leisurely curve with the other, as horses in a +slow-motion picture clearing a fence.</p> + +<p>“The gravitation,” he sniffed, “is ludicrously weak.”</p> + +<p>“It’s only a small planet, darling,” she said, “and hasn’t much +strength.”</p> + +<p>“We walk as on air.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t mind it, darling. And we’re in no great hurry.”</p> + +<p>The sun came out again, and, as they climbed up the steep ridge to the +pine wood, shone through the trees with a dazzling whiteness such as +only acetyline lamps can produce. On the edge of the wood they halted; +below was a lake surrounded by firs: a little lake, like a plum dipped +in water. Sky, firs, hills, water, all was blue, each just a shade +darker; all blue and motionless, as if still waiting for something. They +stood still, their hearts thumping; till the sun<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_374">{374}</a></span> sank and the first +silver stars twinkled feebly in the sky.</p> + +<p>“And don’t you miss your dear Rex?”</p> + +<p>“He was so strange and peculiar.”</p> + +<p>“Yet I never met anyone who did not like him. It was his eagerness which +fascinated one. I once arrived during a very agitated conversation +between him and Vernon Sprott, who was pained by the alterations made by +Ottercove in his last article, when Ottercove defended himself with +spirit. ‘What’s the good of being a newspaper proprietor,’ he said, ‘if +you can’t butt in occasionally?’ There was a rare dash about him. It was +a joy to dine with him; all the waiting service congregated round his +table in the restaurants. Dinner over, he would step into the lift, a +panting waiter stepping in with him to present the bill, which Ottercove +would sign without looking. ‘Don’t they ever swindle you?’ I once asked +him. He looked at me earnestly. ‘Dickin: I expect them to swindle me.’ +This was great, if you like. But he would come out with better things, +too. Once, in failing to please him with my definition of him I +suggested that my definition was not flattering enough, and he said: +‘Not a bit. If I only listened to flatteries, it wouldn’t do my +character any good, now would it? I wouldn’t develop, would I?’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“The darling,” said Eva. “The little pet.”</p> + +<p>“What made him greater than most men of action was that there was, side +by side with his sense of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_375">{375}</a></span> his own abilities, an essential humility in +him. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for one who +had started literally with nothing, and rose to a share in the control, +and an enlightened control, of the destiny of a great empire, himself +surrounded on every side by awe-struck relatives and bowing sycophants, +to grow bumptious and megalomaniacal, intolerant and overbearing. Not a +sign of it in Ottercove! Instead, an enquiring charm, a readiness to +listen and learn even from youths. The same bright-eyed mischievous +boyishness at forty as at twenty, a touching eagerness to do worthwhile +things, ever the man of the world equal to every situation, and yet, a +sort of wayward kindness, an engaging modesty which left him unaware of +what it was in him that made up his charm. And withal a public +fearlessness, the sure touch of a genius in everything he did. I doubt +if he was ever told his worth. We did not tell him. And now it is too +late.”</p> + +<p>He paused before he spoke again. “For us who can remember him he is +gentle, human, and kind. But to those who will follow us he will be just +a star god, together with Sprott-Pollux, the two gods of material +success! What I say is, if not Ottercove, then the cigar of Ottercove! +May it shine for ever and ever.”</p> + +<p>They kneeled down and bowed low, touching the earth with their brow. And +in that attitude of holy prostration they remained a long time.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_376">{376}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Look,” he said, lifting his face from the ground and sitting back on +his heels, “there they are, Castor and Pollux, looking down on us +through the clouds.” Eva, who, like a small girl in church, had followed +all Frank’s movements through her spread fingers while prostrate in +prayer, uncouched as yet in the new ritual, now also sat back on her +heels and looked up at the stars. “Pollux once wrote something about +somebody with the High Hand.”</p> + +<p>“Yes. There he stands with raised hand; you feel as if the whole of the +Five Towns were gazing down on us with quiet, benignant reproach. And +next him is Castor. Even in life Castor never used more than one eye at +a time: he closed one and put it all into the other. What an eye! All +the fire of Zeus was in that eye; it could pierce through stone walls. +He sees everything we do. There, read that look now. He seems to say: +‘You have disintegrated my thousand reporters: yet from here I see +everything and report it all direct to my God.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“Good God!” Eva turned to him, alarmed. “Then he has seen how you have +loved me a minute ago.”</p> + +<p>“Castor was a reasonable being. His morality was pragmatic and rational. +Look again at that eye of his. What does it say? Not ‘go and sin no +more,’ but ‘sin and sin again till you have brought the population of +the earth back to pre-dissolution standard.’ Rex, you see, was always a +man who believed in giving you another chance.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_377">{377}</a></span></p> + +<p>Eva looked thoughtful.</p> + +<p>“The curse of Eve is upon you, my girl!”</p> + +<p>“What is that, darling?”</p> + +<p>“I haven’t got my Bible here—and I fear we haven’t a copy of it in this +world—but I believe it is something to do with bringing forth children +in pain and labour.”</p> + +<p>“It is a pity,” she said, “that we haven’t brought with us any +labour-saving devices.”</p> + +<p>“Lacked foresight, lacked vision.”</p> + +<p>“And you, darling, will have to work in the sweat of your brow.”</p> + +<p>“Not I! My motto is: ‘Give us peace in our time, O Lord, and <i>après nous +le déluge</i>.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“They may do it yet. They may come to it yet. We must not lose faith.”</p> + +<p>“No, we must not! We must not lose faith in the sense of mankind to wipe +out mankind. But must wait, must be patient. That this idea may occur to +one among millions of men, we must breed millions of men, till there +emerges out of these masses the new Messiah, not a half-hearted devil +like de Jones who has let himself be tempted by this blue-eyed woman +Eva, but a man who will at last administer the <i>coup de grâce</i>. And so, +<i>allons, enfants de la patrie</i>! Breed, breed, breed!”</p> + +<p>“There’s only Frau König and me,” sighed Eva. “The cook does not count.”</p> + +<p>“Cook or no cook, we shall have to bring down the age of consent, or +else to precipitate the age of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_378">{378}</a></span> puberty, to twelve. In twelve years nine +months from to-day you and Frau König (for I have commended her to the +bereaved policeman) will be able, all being well, to give birth to +sixteen children, a total of thirty-two, of which two will come of age +that day. Some of the children may die, and the Baron’s may prove +apoplectic. But the general outlook, if not rosy, yet enables me to look +into the future with confidence.”</p> + +<p>He sat down, and was lost in reverie. He saw the population of their +little planet rising annually, in geometrical progression, till it was +black with people, like a dish with cranberries, people packed like +sardines: working in mills, the din of machines, roaring furnaces: +producing, producing, producing roaring furnaces: producing, +producing—a sight fit to delight the eyes of the gods. And Sunday +always spent in devotion, kneeling (for lack of other gods) before +Castor and Pollux, while a priest in flowing robes held forth on the +dignity, the nobility of hard work, winding up his oration with the new +mundic anthem, and from a million throttles came one long roar:</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>Finnegan!</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Begin again!</i>”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">What a religion!</p> + +<p>With a start, he detached himself from his reverie. “The stars are +getting more golden,” he said, rising, “and the sky is a dark deep +blue.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_379">{379}</a></span></p> + +<p>“And, darling, look at them, I mean the stars. We can see them +everywhere, underneath as well as on top.”</p> + +<p>“That is quite natural. The earth is a tiny ball and we can walk round +it like flies.”</p> + +<p>“But Castor and Pollux are on top.”</p> + +<p>“Always were top dogs even in life.”</p> + +<p>“See, darling, Castor and Pollux are now pure gold.”</p> + +<p>“Not unnaturally, either. Look at that wood, secretive, leering. Hush! +Hark!”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“Listen:</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<i>‘Die Rehlein beten zur Nacht:</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>“Hab Acht!”</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Halb neun, halb zehn, halb elf, elf, zwölf.</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Die Rehlein beten zur Nacht,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Sie falten die kleine Zehlein,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Die Rehlein.</i>’<span class="lftspc">”</span><br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>“Sweet. What makes you think in German?”</p> + +<p>“I quote in the language of the country.”</p> + +<p>“Which country?”</p> + +<p>“Technically this is a piece of old Austria.”</p> + +<p>“M’m! It makes you think. A piece of old Austria. But Australia gone, +America gone, India, Russia, Paris, London, Vienna—all gone!”</p> + +<p>“To kingdom come. Didn’t Christ always warn us that it was at hand?”</p> + +<p>“Nobody took any notice of Him, darling.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_380">{380}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Till too late. But we shall muddle through. It is an English +characteristic, to give the old country its due. Not because we are +muddle-headed, but because no other race is clear-headed enough to +perceive how muddled they are, except the Russians, who, having +perceived the muddled nature of all life, have identified themselves +with it for good.”</p> + +<p>“There is the moon.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, there she is.”</p> + +<p>The moon swam out in all the fulness of her glory.</p> + +<p>“Oh, do you remember that passage in <i>Hermann und Dorothea</i>, as they go +homeward by night, as we are doing now? How goes it?—</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>Herrlich glänzte der Mond, der volle, vom Himmel herunter;</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Nacht war’s, völlig bedeckt das letzte Schimmern der Sonne.</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Und so lagen vor ihnen in Massen gegen einander</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Lichter, hell wie der Tag, und Schatten dunkeler Nächte.</i>’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">My memory is the only repository of poetry that we have with us. And +nature, or what is left of it, the only promise of heaven. Look at those +rocks,” he pointed. “What serene dispassionate peace! They are death. +They brood, but not darkly. They are pressing upon us: you and I have to +bear their intolerable weight! The clouds sail above them, barely +touching them, toppling over. They teach us<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_381">{381}</a></span> that life is not what we do +or think: that life is elsewhere, barely touching us, as those clouds.”</p> + +<p>Somebody, probably Frau König, began to play Chopin, and the rippling +waterfall of sound, marvellous and enchanting, filtered through the air; +the strains pressed into the night and asked questions.</p> + +<p>“O God of Love! How that woman plays. Her madness, resentment, then a +cowed, shuddering awe, and overflowing tears of tenderness. They have +summoned, you see, those other creatures, visitants from a world, +certainly not ours. ‘Perhaps,’ says Proust, ‘we shall lose them, perhaps +they will be obliterated, if we return to nothing in the dust. Perhaps +it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is +without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that these +phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our +dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages +these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in +their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, and perhaps +even less certain.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>“It dawns.”</p> + +<p>“It dawns. Home, darling, and to bed.”</p> + +<p>They began the descent, as the sky grew threadbare, the moon paled, and +a small peevish sun looked out, sleepy, red-eyed. Then a shaft of light +licked a fugitive cloud. A cock cleared his throat in the yard below. +The rich odour of mown grass and the rays on the ricks of straw bid them +live. They<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_382">{382}</a></span> blessed their fate, and that neither of them was to be +hanged at dawn, that they had sufficient to eat and could go home and +sleep in clean sheets upon feather beds.</p> + +<h2><a id="XLVII">XLVII.</a><br><br> +IT IS FINISHED</h2> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Chor. Es ist vorbei.</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Mephistopheles. Vorbei! ein dummes</i><br></span> +<span class="i3"><i>Wort. Warum vorbei?</i><br></span> +<span class="i5"><i>Faust. Teil II. Akt V.</i><br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Six</span> weeks it rained without cease. Dark clouds ran on, as if there was +still a scheme in the universe, even though this chip of a dead planet +was discarded; dark, brooding, they ran, on and on. Never had they known +such weather, except possibly in London.</p> + +<p>They were sarcastic at the expense of Lord de Jones, who told them they +had grown immodest in their expectations; that even in the New Jerusalem +it was not always sunshine.</p> + +<p>But lo! a shaft of sunlight. The wet valley glittered with gaiety; it +spread to the hills, then the whole vault of heaven broke out into +spontaneous sunlight. Soon they all cried out for mercy. Mercy! how hot! +The sun pressed on, pressed on, pressed on.</p> + +<p>It was—though the seasons played pranks—a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_383">{383}</a></span> midsummer’s day, and a +Sunday, so warm and radiant that they brought out the table and chairs +on to the terrace and lunched in the sight of the sun and the rocks. The +cook, responding to the mood, expressed her personality in an exquisite +meal of pre-Dissolution magnificence; and when Herr Kogl had filled +their glasses, Lord de Jones rose and proposed the health of the King. +The two ladies having retired, the five men addressed themselves to the +usual business of imparting bawdy jokes, and Herr Kogl related how when +he was in Wien and was told to buy a female fish he had ignorantly asked +for a virgin fish. “In Wien!” exclaimed the fishmonger, his eyes dilated +with wonder. “It’s not to be had.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, Wien! When as a youth I was doing my military service we had to +march through Wien, all along the Ring. There is no capital like Wien! +Not that I’ve seen other capitals.”</p> + +<p>Capitals! It seemed a shame that they should have gone, capitals more +magnificent than Vienna. But Herr Kogl, liberal on other topics, said +that Vienna beat them all. Wien! Wien! His son Herbert had been to +Wien—to the Hotel and Restaurant Institute. He had been getting on so +well—when the blow came. It seemed a shame. Herr Kogl went into the +house and came out with his son’s certificate in his big shaking red +hands. “Here it is. His college certificate.” He passed it reverently to +Lord de Jones, and while the other read it, turned away his face. Two +large beads rolled down<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_384">{384}</a></span> his cheeks. Lord de Jones put on his glasses +and read:</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Calligraphy—proficient;</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Arithmetic—good;</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Cooking—very satisfactory;</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Slaughtering—praiseworthy;</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Waiting at table—very good;</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Deportment—excellent;</i><br></span> +<span class="i0"><i>General conduct—excellent.</i><br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Herr Kogl turned round after an interval; hot tears streamed down his +cheeks, as Lord de Jones handed him back the certificate. They all +waited for Lord de Jones to say something. His mouth opened.</p> + +<p>“Shall we join the ladies in the drawing-room?” he said.</p> + +<p>But before they did so, Eva had come out with little Adam in her arms +and sat on the <i>pension</i> steps, the second Baron Ottercove, a toothless +radiance illuminating his whole countenance, on her lap. Herr Kogl sat +by and tickled the baby’s nose with a feather. “Our only ray of +sunshine, our little hope....” And he would look into these eyes basking +in the sunshine with wonderment and tenderness, and think and think. “As +for you, Rags,” he turned to the dog at his feet, “the outlook for +caninity is black. Black.”</p> + +<p>“I wish the Frau Professor’s dachshund were<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_385">{385}</a></span> saved,” remarked Lord de +Jones. “The canine race would have had a new start.”</p> + +<p>“But the dachshund was no good, darling; he had weak lungs.”</p> + +<p>“Still, beggars can’t be choosers, as you said yourself, Eva.”</p> + +<p>“And our Rags too is no good. Rags, you old bitch, you’re no good, are +you? No good! Poor old bitch! Poor old bitch!” Two large beads stood in +Herr Kogl’s eyes.</p> + +<p>And indeed, Rags was not much good to found a new canine race. She was +blind and deaf with old age and lay in a corner all day. Only when you +bent down to her and shouted very loudly in her ear: “Scho-ko-lade!” she +would turn over and twitch feebly with her forelegs, in reminiscent +pleasure.</p> + +<p>There were no more dogs. The Prime Minister had been vindicated.</p> + +<p>“There was,” said Eva dreamily, “a little tea-shop just off +Jermyn-street, where you could get delicious ices.”</p> + +<p>“Yes. The original sin was when man wrapped himself up in the visible +world. The ultimate sin was when he shed it.”</p> + +<p>“It may appear so to any one who has not been strong enough to shed his +vices. But, for my part, I have given up smoking,” said de Jones, “for +complete lack of tobacco.”</p> + +<p>“How weak! Strength of will would lie in going<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_386">{386}</a></span> on, in persisting in the +face of unsurmountable difficulties.”</p> + +<p>“But though I have nothing to reproach myself with,” continued de Jones, +oblivious of Frank’s interruption, “I too have my memories of the old +world, and in particular do I remember the Allied Victory march through +Paris after the Great War as the troops passed under the Arc de +Triomphe, ablaze with glory! A powerful emotion for a pacifist.”</p> + +<p>Soldiers. Images drifted before Christopher. He saw ranks and ranks of +them. Soldiers in scarlet uniforms. Bayonets glistening in the sun. +<i>His</i> soldiers, armed to the teeth, equipped with the latest weapons of +war. Glorious manhood! Only waiting for the word of command to set off +for the enemy. He saw other soldiers ready on the turrets of Frank’s +castle. His own lion-hearted warriors storming the castle, falling into +the moat. He looked at Frank and wished that the jolly game were already +beginning. “Ah!” he moved restively.</p> + +<p>“What is it, darling?” from Eva.</p> + +<p>“One day, Dickin,” he rubbed his hands anticipatingly, “yours and mine +will measure their strength in battle. Wish I were alive to see the +day!”</p> + +<p>The Baron held up his glass: “<i>Der Tag!</i>”</p> + +<p>De Jones sat pensive. “It seems to me, as I sit here, a sedentary, +useless man, that I can hear across the years the distant neighing of +chargers, the sharpening of flints by the camp fire. Dangerous life!<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_387">{387}</a></span> +Glorious struggle! Give me Kipling or D. H. Lawrence. They’d understand +this. My men advancing valiantly and capturing the forts of yon castle.”</p> + +<p>“Nor, when they have captured it, let them rest. It is, remember, only a +milestone on their road to further achievement. Let them go on capturing +other castles, on and on, till they have had enough.” Frank’s look grew +reminiscent. “When I was a private in the last war, there was a good +deal of stealing—‘pinching,’ they called it, going on amongst the +troopers. What more natural and proper, you’d think, in a community of +roughnecks. ‘But, nay!’ says the Idealist in Man: ‘We stick bayonet +blades into other men in the name of an Idea. Pinching from your comrade +is subversive of ultimate efficiency in the business of stabbing your +neighbour. It deflects attention, sows suspicion, where there should be +love of one’s own and hatred of others. The ideal is to eliminate +dishonesty and to create a high standard of honour and mutual confidence +among the troops so that they may devote their undivided attention to +murdering the soldiers of another army (with an equally high moral +standard).’ That is the aim. That is patriotism—serving the flag.”</p> + +<p>“I agree,” said de Jones. “We must not arm for aggression, but for +defence alone. The best way to ensure peace is to be armed to the +teeth.”</p> + +<p>“I see.”</p> + +<p>“The meek,” said Herr Kogl, “shall inherit the earth.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_388">{388}</a></span></p> + +<p>“None of that here, Herr Kogl,” protested de Jones. “Maudlin mysticism! +Quite the proper note to strike in a <i>fin de siècle</i> mood and period. +But we’re a new Finnegan-begin-again civilisation, up-and-doing, +straining every nerve that the race may survive. No room for mooners. +It’s men of action we want.”</p> + +<p>“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”</p> + +<p>“Quite.”</p> + +<p>“Peace within, love of those nearest to you, no desires, no regrets, +only love, steady, translucent love of all living beings: what bliss +could equal it? It fills your soul with peace, as beams of sun at +eventide. A peace”—Herr Kogl’s eyes filled with tears—“that passeth +all understanding. ‘Come unto me,’ He said, ‘all ye who labour and are +heavy-laden, and I will give you rest: for My yoke is easy and My burden +light.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> + +<p>Frank jumped to his feet. “Give me riches, give me women, each day a new +one (unless I ask twice for the same one), give me food, wine—and I +shall give no thought to the things of this world. But to renounce, to +settle down when there is nothing ... nothing....” He could not speak. +He walked up and down.</p> + +<p>Eva looked at de Jones very earnestly. “You should never have done it,” +she said.</p> + +<p>But Herr Kogl smiled happily. “What does it matter? What does it +matter,” he asked, “how we<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_389">{389}</a></span> step over into eternity? We are shaken off +this realm of matter one way or another.”</p> + +<p>“Herr Kogl is a mystic—while there is wine in the cellar.” De Jones +looked slyly at him. “We’ve found you out!”</p> + +<p>“Now I am dependent on spirits for my good temper—I might just as well +make a clean breast of it. But not always will I be so dependent. What +matter old age and darkness? My watch,” he said, “it still registers the +revolutions of our little planet. Here it is. Its dial is +phosphorescent. Now its face is dull and complacent; but take it into +utter darkness and its face will illumine. So shall our souls, now bleak +and obscure, illumine in the utter darkness of death.”</p> + +<p>Herr Kogl looked at his friends. They did not hear angels; they felt not +the utter glory of God. Only the baby smiled unendingly at God’s world, +smiled away all fear and concern into ripples of light.</p> + +<p>“But not a thing!” cried Frank. “Where is there a book of poems, a +scroll of music? Frau König,” he turned to her earnestly, “you must +teach Adam music when he grows up. You must teach him, Frau König, you +must! Think: if this too goes....”</p> + +<p>He jumped to his feet. “But not a Shakespeare, not a Goethe, not a +Raphael, not a Tristan....”</p> + +<p>He wailed aloud. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” He writhed on the damp ground. “Oh! Oh! +Oh!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_390">{390}</a></span></p> + +<p>Eva looked on mournfully. “The world—the poor world!”</p> + +<p>“It’s had a long run for its money,” muttered de Jones.</p> + +<p>“And I never told it that I cared for it.”</p> + +<p>“After life’s fitful fever it sleeps well.”</p> + +<p>The cook came in to say that she had prepared an egg dish for supper as +she feared that the cows had caught the foot-and-mouth disease, and that +they had better keep the sheep for wool, Frau König having told her of +her projected plans for a knitting factory.</p> + +<p>At this they all sat back, open-mouthed. The Baron shook his head. “This +intensifies the problem of survival,” he said gravely. But Lord de Jones +jumped to his feet, his hand raised in challenge.</p> + +<p>“Are—we—down-hearted?” he cried.</p> + +<p>“No-o-o!” The echo of the cry resounded from the rocks. Frank was +conspicuous by his silence.</p> + +<p>“But how will Adam do now without milk?” Eva looked much concerned.</p> + +<p>“He will have,” said de Jones, “to fall back on the milk of human +kindness. Frau König,” he turned to her, “it will hence be incumbent on +you to generate it. May your happiness consist therein! I will, on my +part, endeavour to reproduce synthetic milk—or synthetic cows. +Whichever comes easier. So tails up! keep smiling! and all the rest of +it. Now all together, please<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_391">{391}</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">‘</span><i>There was a little man,</i><br></span> +<span class="i1"><i>And his name was Finnegan.</i>’<span class="lftspc">”</span><br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>They joined in the anthem.</p> + +<p>“We shall survive!” finished de Jones. “See if we don’t! And little Adam +will not be the last nor the least to survive.”</p> + +<p>Eva embraced him tighter. “Oh, he must, oh, he must! for the sake of ... +love.”</p> + +<p>“ ... of everything that’s been.” Dear, dear earth! It was gone; +suddenly, while nobody was looking. Even now Frank could not realise it. +Slowly and doggedly man had been working, planning and thinking, +cautiously, step by step, climbing the steep rocky path, the circle of +light spreading before him larger and wider as he advanced to a +knowledge of nature, a forefeeling of God. Against heavy odds, divided +against itself, mankind had struggled heroically; it had built temples +and palaces, steamers and bridges and airplanes, mansions traversing the +oceans and mansions traversing the air. A little more, and man would +have conquered himself. But a morbid little mind had stolen the fire of +Zeus and put back the clock. Egypt and India, Greece, Rome—had they +laboured in vain? Had Europe created fortuitously? This is the end, he +thought. And he mourned it terribly, mourned all those millions who had +once loved, suffered, and died. Of course there had been misery, +tribulations, hate, lies, sordid hours, and moments of pain.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_392">{392}</a></span> But there +had been other moments. He remembered how fourteen of his friends had +volunteered to be bled to save his mother’s life. He wept at the thought +of it. He remembered other hours. Holiday crowds. Gaily clad women. The +briskness of mornings, the lassitude of nights. Dew on the roses. The +chivalry of reconciliation, of respect, the dignity of moments....</p> + +<p>And they had all died, died....</p> + +<p>The sun set behind the hill and left the valley cold and unfriendly; +only the tips of rocks still gleamed in the sun. Dark clouds, looking +like furrows, ran on without cease; cold, bleak and unmeaning, they ran, +on and on. A bird chirruped plaintively from a branch. Herr Kogl looked +up.</p> + +<p>“Bird, forlorn bird, you are surprised at the doom which has befallen +our beautiful earth. You grieve, and I grieve with you. The oceans are +finished—turned to air. These clouds, running furrows, will still be +passing, the sky will unveil its blue face and cover itself as before: +but there will be no one to notice it. Not a soul!”</p> + +<p>The baby smiled his dimpled, rippling smile, old, wise, and all-knowing. +What did he smile at? Where did it come from? the smile of life winding +through dark tunnels into light? Herr Kogl held out his finger, at which +Adam at once grabbed lustily. Was it for this that millions fought and +toiled and thought and felt? Was it for this that men went out “over the +top,” hung on barbed wires,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_393">{393}</a></span> bled on the cross? “Little humanity,” he +thought, “is this all that is left of thy deeds and high hopes? Little +humanity....” His face puckered. He turned away to the clouds chasing in +the unmeaning, unmerciful vault; and wept.</p> + +<p class="fint">THE END</p> +<hr> + +<p class="cb">EVA’S APPLES</p> + +<p><i>Some Critical Comment</i>:</p> + +<p><i>Eva’s Apples</i> is that literary potpourri of wit and manners, satire and +fantasy and humor and even at moments poetry, which is so easy to do but +so difficult to do right. Like Max Beerbohm, Huxley at his best, and +Jean Girardoux, Mr. Gerhardi does it right.</p> + +<p class="r"> +<i>The New York Times</i><br> +</p> + +<p>Probably the best recommendation of the book is that it is very hard to +put down.... To be interesting is surely to be in a state of grace, and +<i>Eva’s Apples</i> is interesting.</p> + +<p class="r"> +<i>Heywood Broun<br> +The Book of the Month Club News</i><br> +</p> + +<p>A novelist of genius ... wild and brilliant originality.</p> + +<p class="r"> +<i>Arnold Bennett</i><br> +</p> + +<p>Extremely clever and wildly nutty.</p> + +<p class="r"> +<i>Isabel M. Patterson</i><br> +</p> + +<p>Brilliant and farcical ... heady and deceptive, like absinthe.</p> + +<p class="r"> +<i>The London Spectator</i><br> +</p> + +<p>Amusing, brilliant and quite, quite mad.</p> + +<p class="r"> +<i>Herald Tribune</i><br> +</p> + +<div class="trans"><p><a id="transcrib"></a></p> +<p>Typographical error corrected by the etext transcriber:</p> + +<p class="nind">domestc politics=> domestic politics {pg 205}</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="full"> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77377 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/77377-h/images/cover.jpg b/77377-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e4659ba --- /dev/null +++ b/77377-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c72794 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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