CHAPTER V
I wish I had not called on Lola Brandt. She disturbs me to the point
of nightmare. In a fit of dream paralysis last night I fancied myself
stalked by a panther, which in the act of springing turned into Lola
Brandt. What she would have done I know not, for I awoke; but I have a
haunting sensation that she was about to devour me. Now, a woman who
would devour a sleeping Member of Parliament is not a fit consort for
a youth about to enter on a political career.
The woman worries me. I find myself speculating on her character while
I ought to be minding my affairs; and this I do on her own account,
without any reference to my undertaking to rescue Dale from her
clutches. Her obvious attributes are lazy good nature and swift
intuition, which are as contrary as her tastes in tobacco and tea; but
beyond the obvious lurks a mysterious animal power which repels and
attracts. Were not her expressions rather melancholy than sensuous,
rather benevolent than cruel, one might take her as a model for Queen
Berenice or the estimable lady monarchs who yielded themselves
adorably to a gentleman's kisses in the evening and saw to it that his
head was nicely chopped off in the morning. I can quite understand
Dale's infatuation. She may be as worthless as you please, but she is
by no means the vulgar syren I was led to expect. I wish she were. My
task would be easier. Why hasn't he fallen in love with one of the
chorus whom his congeners take out to supper? He is an aggravating
fellow.
I have declined to discuss her merits or demerits with him. I could
scarcely do that with dignity, said I; a remark which seemed to
impress him with a sense of my honesty. I asked what were his
intentions regarding her. I discovered that they were still
indefinite. In his exalted moments he talked of marriage.
"But what has become of her husband?" I inquired, drawing a bow at a
venture.
"I suppose he's dead," said Dale.
"But suppose he isn't?"
He informed me in his young magnificence that Lola and himself would
be above foolish moral conventions.
"Indeed?" said I.
"Don't pretend to be a Puritan," said he.
"I don't pretend to like the idea, anyhow," I remarked.
He shrugged his shoulders. It was not the time for a lecture on
morality.
"How do you know that the lady returns your passion?" I asked,
watching him narrowly.
He grew red. "Is that a fair question?"
"Yes," said I. "You invited me to call on her and judge the affair for
myself. I'm doing it. How far have things gone up to now?"
He flashed round on me. Did I mean to insinuate that there was
anything wrong? There wasn't. How could I dream of such a thing? He
was vastly indignant.
"Well, my dear boy," said I, "you've just this minute been scoffing at
foolish moral conventions. If you want to know my opinion," I
continued, after a pause, "it is this--she doesn't care a scrap for
you."
Of course I was talking nonsense.
I did not condescend to argue. Neither did I dwell upon the fact that
her affection had not reached the point of informing him whether she
had a husband, and if so, whether he was alive or dead. This gives me
an idea. Suppose I can prove to him beyond a shadow of doubt that the
lady, although flattered by the devotion of a handsome young fellow of
birth and breeding, does not, as I remarked, care a scrap for him.
Suppose I exhibit her to him in the arms, figuratively speaking, of
her husband (providing one is lurking in some back-alley of the
world), Mr. Anastasius Papadopoulos, a curate, or a champion wrestler.
He would do desperate things for a month or two; but then he would
wake up sane one fine morning and seek out Maisie Ellerton in a
salutary state of penitence. I wish I knew a curate who combined a
passion for bears and a yearning for ladylike tea-parties. I would
take him forthwith to Cadogan Gardens. Lola Brandt and himself would
have tastes in common and would fall in love with each other on the
spot.
Of course there is the other time-honoured plan which I have not yet
tried--to arm myself with diplomacy, call on Madame Brandt, and,
working on her feelings, persuade her in the name of the boy's mother
and sweetheart to make a noble sacrifice in the good, old-fashioned
way. But this seems such an unhumourous proceeding. If I am to achieve
eumoiriety I may as well do it with some distinction.
"Who doth Time gallop withal?" asks Orlando.
"With a thief to the gallows," says Rosalind. It is true. The days
have an uncanny way of racing by. I see my little allotted span of
life shrinking visibly, like the /peau de chagrin/. I must bestir
myself, or my last day will come before I have accomplished anything.
When I jotted down the above not very original memorandum I had passed
a perfectly uneumoirous week among my friends and social
acquaintances. I had stood godfather to my sister Agatha's fifth
child, taking upon myself obligations which I shall never be able to
perform; I had dined amusingly at my sister Jane's; I had shot
pheasants at Farfax Glenn's place in Hampshire; and I had paid a long-
promised charming country-house visit to old Lady Blackadder.
When I came back to town, however, I consulted my calendar with some
anxiety, and set out to clear my path.
I have now practically withdrawn from political life. Letters have
passed; complimentary and sympathetic gentlemen have interviewed me
and tried to weaken my decision. The great Raggles has even called,
and dangled the seals of office before my eyes. I said they were very
pretty. He thought he had tempted me.
"Hang on as long as you can, for the sake of the Party."
I spoke playfully of the Party (a man in my position, with one eye on
Time and the other on Eternity, develops an acute sense of values) and
Raggles held up horrified hands. To Raggles the Party is the Alpha and
Omega of things human and divine. It is the guiding principle of the
Cosmos. I could have spoken disrespectfully of the British Empire, of
which he has a confused notion; I could have dismissed the Trinity, on
which his ideas are vaguer, with an airy jest; in the expression of my
views concerning the Creator, whom he believes to be under the Party's
protection, I could have out-Pained Tom Paine, out-Taxiled Leo Taxil,
and he would not have winced. But to blaspheme against the Party was
the sin for which there was no redemption.
"I always thought you a serious politician!" he gasped.
"Good God!" I cried. "In my public utterances have I been as dull as
that? Ill-health or no, it is time for me to quit the stage."
He laughed politely, because he conjectured I was speaking humourously
--he is astute in some things--and begged me to explain.
I replied that I did not regard mustard poultices as panaceas, the
/vox populi/ as the /Vox Dei/, or the policy of the other side as the
machinations of the Devil; that politics was all a game of guess-work
and muddle and compromise at the best; that, at the worst, as during a
General Election, it was as ignoble a pastime as the wit of man had
devised. To take it seriously would be the course of a fanatic, a man
devoid of the sense of proportion. Were such a man, I asked, fitted to
govern the country?
He did not stop to argue, but went away leaving me the conviction that
he thanked his stars on the Government's providential escape from so
maniacal a minister. I hope I did not treat him with any discourtesy;
but, oh! it was good to speak the truth after all the dismal lies I
have been forced to tell at the bidding of Raggle's Party. Now that I
am no longer bound by the rules of the game, it is good to feel a
free, honest man.
Never again shall I stretch forth my arms and thunder invectives
against well-meaning people with whom in my heart I secretly
sympathise. Never again shall I plead passionately for principles
which a horrible instinct tells me are fundamentally futile. Never
again shall I attempt to make mountains out of mole-hills or bricks
without straw or sunbeams out of cucumbers.
I shall conduct no more inquiries into pauper lunacy, thank Heaven!
And as for the public engagements which Dale Kynnersley made for me
during my Thebaid existence on Murglebed-on-Sea, the deuce can take
them all--I am free.
I only await the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, for which
quaint post under the Crown I applied, to cease to be a Member of
Parliament. And yet, in spite of all my fine and superior talk, I am
glad I am giving up in the recess. I should not like to be out of my
seat were the House in session.
I should hate to think of all the fascinating excitement over nothing
going on in the lobbies without me, while I am still hale and hearty.
When Parliament meets in February I shall either be comfortably dead
or so uncomfortably alive that I shall not care.
/Ce que c'est que de nous!/ I wonder how far Simon de Gex and I are
deceiving each other?
There is no deception about my old friend Latimer, who called on me a
day or two ago. He is on the Stock Exchange, and, muddle-headed
creature that he is, has been "bearing" the wrong things. They have
gone up sky-high. Settling-day is drawing near, and how to pay for the
shares he is bound to deliver he has not the faintest notion.
He stamped up and down the room, called down curses on the prying
fools who came across the unexpected streak of copper in the failing
mine, drew heart-rending pictures of his wife and family singing hymns
in the street, and asked me for a drink of prussic acid. I rang the
bell and ordered Rogers to give him a brandy and soda.
"Now," said I, "talk sense. How much can you raise?"
He went into figures and showed me that, although he stretched his
credit to the utmost, there were still ten thousand pounds to be
provided.
"It's utter smash and ruin," he groaned. "And all my accursed folly. I
thought I was going to make a fortune. But I'm done for now." Latimer
is usually a pink, prosperous-looking man. Now he was white and
flabby, a piteous spectacle. "You are executor under my will," he
continued. "Heaven knows I've nothing to leave. But you'll see things
straight for me, if anything happens? You will look after Lucy and the
kids, won't you?"
I was on the point of undertaking to do so, in the event of the
continuance of his craving for prussic acid, when I reflected upon my
own approaching bow and farewell to the world where Lucy and the kids
would still be wandering. I am always being brought up against this
final fireproof curtain. Suddenly a thought came which caused me to
exult exceedingly.
"Ten thousand pounds, my dear Latimer," said I, "would save you from
being hammered on the Stock Exchange and from seeking a suicide's
grave. It would also enable you to maintain Lucy and the kids in your
luxurious house at Hampstead, and to take them as usual to Dieppe next
summer. Am I not right?"
He begged me not to make a jest of his miseries. It was like asking a
starving beggar whether a dinner at the Carlton wouldn't set him up
again.
"Would ten thousand set you up?" I persisted.
"Yes. But I might as well try to raise ten million."
"Not so," I cried, slapping him on the shoulder. "I myself will lend
you the money."
He leaped to his feet and stared at me wildly in the face. He could
not have been more electrified if he had seen me suddenly adorned with
wings and shining raiment. I experienced a thrill of eumoiriety more
exquisite than I had dreamed of imagining.
"You?"
"Why not?"
"You don't understand. I can give you no security whatsoever."
"I don't want security and I don't want interest," I exclaimed,
feeling more magnanimous than I had a right to be, seeing that the
interest would be of no use to me on the other side of the Styx. "Pay
me back when and how you like. Come round with me to my bankers and
I'll settle the matter at once."
He put out his hands; I thought he was about to fall at my feet; he
laughed in a silly way and, groping after brandy and soda, poured half
the contents of the brandy decanter on to the tray. I took him in a
cab, a stupefied man, to the bank, and when he left me at the door
with my draft in his pocket, there were tears in his eyes. He wrung my
hand and murmured something incoherent about Lucy.
"For Heaven's sake, don't tell her anything about it," I entreated. "I
love Lucy dearly, as you know; but I don't want to have her weeping on
my door-mat."
I walked back to my rooms with a springing step. So happy was I that I
should have liked to dance down Piccadilly. If the Faculty had not
made their pronouncement, I could have no more turned poor Latimer's
earth from hell to heaven than I could have changed St. Paul's
Cathedral into a bumblebee. The mere possibility of lending him the
money would not have occurred to me.
A man of modest fortune does not go about playing Monte Cristo. He
gives away a few guineas in charity; but he keeps the bulk of his
fortune to himself. The death sentence, I vow, has compensations. It
enables a man to play Monte Cristo or any other avatar of Providence
with impunity, and to-day I have discovered it to be the most
fascinating game in the world.
When Latimer recovers his equilibrium and regards the transaction in
the dry light of reason, he will diagnose a sure symptom of
megalomania, and will pity me in his heart for a poor devil.
I have seen Eleanor Faversham, and she has released me from my
engagement with such grace, dignity, and sweet womanliness that I
wonder how I could have railed at her thousand virtues.
"It's honourable of you to give me this opportunity of breaking it
off, Simon," she said, "but I care enough for you to be willing to
take my chance of illness."
"You do care for me?" I asked.
She raised astonished eyes. "If I didn't, do you suppose I should have
engaged myself to you? If I married you I should swear to cherish you
in sickness and in health. Why won't you let me?"
I was in a difficulty. To say that I was in ill-health and about to
resign my seat in Parliament and a slave to doctor's orders was one
thing; it was another to tell her brutally that I had received my
death warrant. She would have taken it much more to heart than I do.
The announcement would have been a shock. It would have kept the poor
girl awake of nights. She would have been for ever seeing the hand of
Death at my throat. Every time we met she would have noted on my face,
in my gait, infallible signs of my approaching end. I had not the
right to inflict such intolerable pain on one so near and dear to me.
Besides, I am vain enough to want to walk forth somewhat gallantly
into eternity; and while I yet live I particularly desire that folks
should not regard me as half-dead. I defy you to treat a man who is
only going to live twenty weeks in the same pleasant fashion as you
would a man who has the run of life before him.
There is always an instinctive shrinking from decay. I should think
that corpses must feel their position acutely.
It was entirely for Eleanor's sake that I refrained from taking her
into my confidence. To her question I replied that I had not the right
to tie her for life to a helpless valetudinarian. "Besides," said I,
"as my health grows worse my jokes will deteriorate, until I am
reduced to grinning through a horse-collar at the doctor. And you
couldn't stand that, could you?"
She upbraided me gently for treating everything as a jest.
"It isn't that you want to get rid of me, Simon?" she asked tearfully,
but with an attempt at a smile.
I took both hands and looked into her eyes--they are brave, truthful
eyes--and through my heart shot a great pain. Till that moment I had
not realised what I was giving up. The pleasant paths of the world--I
could leave them behind with a shrug. Political ambition, power, I
could justly estimate their value and could let them pass into other
hands without regret. But here was the true, staunch woman, great of
heart and wise, a helper and a comrade, and, if I chose to throw off
the jester and become the lover in real earnest and sweep my hand
across the hidden chords, all that a woman can become towards the man
she loves. I realised this.
I realised that if she did not love me passionately now it was only
because I, in my foolishness, had willed it otherwise. For the first
time I longed to have her as my own; for the first time I rebelled. I
looked at her hungeringly until her cheeks grew red and her eyelids
fluttered. I had a wild impulse to throw my arms around her, and kiss
her as I had never kissed her before and bid her forget all that I had
said that day. Her faltering eyes told me that they read my longing. I
was about to yield when the little devil of a pain inside made itself
sharply felt and my madness went from me. I fetched a thing half-way
between a sigh and a groan, and dropped her hands.
"Need I answer your question?" I asked.
She turned her head aside and whispered "No."
Presently she said, "I am glad I came back from Sicily. I shouldn't
have liked you to write this to me. I shouldn't have understood."
"Do you now?"
"I think so." She looked at me frankly. "Until just now I was never
quite certain whether you really cared for me."
"I never cared for you so much as I do now, when I have to lose you."
"And you must lose me?"
"A man in my condition would be a scoundrel if he married a woman."
"Then it is very, very serious--your illness?"
"Yes," said I, "very serious. I must give you your freedom whether you
want it or not."
She passed one hand over the other on her knee, looking at the
engagement ring. Then she took it off and presented it to me, lying in
the palm of her right hand.
"Do what you like with it," she said very softly.
I took the ring and slipped it on one of the right-hand fingers.
"It would comfort me to think that you are wearing it," said I.
Then her mother came into the room and Eleanor went out. I am thankful
to say that Mrs. Faversham who is a woman only guided by sentiment
when it leads to a worldly advantage, applauded the step I had taken.
As a sprightly Member of Parliament, with an assured political and
social position, I had been a most desirable son-in-law. As an obscure
invalid, coughing and spitting from a bath-chair at Bournemouth (she
took it for granted that I was in the last stage of consumption), I
did not take the lady's fancy.
"My dear Simon," replied my lost mother-in-law, "you have behaved
irreproachably. Eleanor will feel it for some time no doubt; but she
is young and will soon get over it. I'll send her to the Drascombe-
Prynnes in Paris. And as for yourself, your terrible misfortune will
be as much as you can bear. You mustn't increase it by any worries on
her behalf. In that way I'll do my utmost to help you."
"You are kindness itself, Mrs. Faversham," said I.
I bowed over the delighted lady's hand and went away, deeply moved by
her charity and maternal devotion.
But perhaps in her hardness lies truth. I have never touched Eleanor's
heart. No romance had preceded or accompanied our engagement. The
deepest, truest incident in it has been our parting.
