There, however, I could resign my role of entertainer in favour of the professionals on the stage. I sat back in my corner of the box and gave myself up to my harassing concerns. Young ladies warbled, comic acrobats squirted siphons at each other and kicked each other in the stomach, jugglers threw plates and brass balls with dizzying skill, the famous dancers gyrated pyrotechnically, the house applauded with delight, Agatha laughed and chuckled and clapped her hands and I remained silent, unnoticed and unnoticing in my reflective corner, longing for the foolery to end. Where was Lola? Why had she forsaken me? What remedy, in the fiend's name, was there for this heart torture within me? The most excruciating agonies of the little pain inside were child's play to this. I bit my lips so as not to groan aloud and contorted my features into the semblance of a smile.

During a momentary interval there came a knock at the box door. I said, "Come in!" The door opened, and there, to my utter amazement, stood Dale Kynnersley—Dale, sleek, alert, smiling, attired in the very latest nicety of evening dress affected by contemporary youth—Dale such as I knew and loved but six months ago.

He came forward to Agatha, who was little less astounded than myself.

"How d'ye do, Lady Durrell? I'm in the stalls with Harry Essendale. I tried to catch your eye, but couldn't. So I thought I'd come up." He turned to me with frank outstretched hand, "How do, Simon?"

I grasped his hand and murmured something unintelligible. The thing was so extraordinary, so unexpected that my wits went wandering. Dale carried off the situation lightly. It was he who was the man of the world, and I the unresourceful stumbler.

"He's looking ripping, isn't he, Lady Durrell? I met old Oldfield the other day, and he was raving about your case. The thing has never been done before. Says they're going mad over your chap in Paris—they've given him medals and wreaths and decorations till he goes about like a prize bull at a fair. By Jove, it's good to see you again."

"You might have taken an earlier opportunity," Agatha remarked with some acidity.

"So I might," retorted Dale blandly; "but when a man's a born ass it takes him some time to cultivate sense! I've been wanting to see you for a long time, Simon—and to-night I just couldn't resist it. You don't want to kick me out?"

"Heaven forbid," said I, somewhat brokenly, for the welcome sight of his face and the sound of his voice aroused emotions which even now I do not care to analyse. "It was generous of you to come up."

He coloured. "Rot!" said he, in his breezy way. "Hallo! The curtain's going up. What's the next item? Oh, those fool dogs!"

"I adore performing dogs!" said Agatha, looking toward the stage.

He turned to me. "Do you?"

The last thing on earth I desired to behold at that moment was a performing animal. My sensitiveness led me to suspect a quizzical look in Dale's eye. Fortunately, he did not wait for my answer, but went on in a boyish attempt to appease Agatha.

"I don't despise them, you know, Lady Durrell, but I've seen them twice before. They're really rather good. There's a football match at the end which is quite exciting."

"Oh, the beauties!" cried Agatha over her shoulder as the dogs trotted on the stage. I nodded an acknowledgment of the remark, and she plunged into rapt contemplation of the act. Dale and I stood at the back of the box. Suddenly he whispered:

"Come out into the corridor. I've something to say to you."

"Certainly," said I, and followed him out of the box.

He thrust his hands into his pockets and looked at me with the defiant and you-be-damned air of the young Briton who was about to commit a gracious action. I knew what he was going to say. I could tell by his manner. I dreaded it, and yet I loved him for it.

"Why say anything, my dear boy?" I asked. "You want to be friends with me again, and God knows I want to be friends again with you. Why talk?"

"I've got to get if off my chest," said he, in his so familiar vernacular. "I want to tell you that I've been every end of a silly ass and I want you to forgive me."

I vow I have never felt so miserably guilty towards any human being as I did at that moment. I have never felt such a smug-faced hypocrite. It was a humiliating position. I had inflicted on him a most grievous wrong, and here he was pleading for forgiveness. I could not pronounce the words of pardon. He misinterpreted my silence.

"I know I've behaved rottenly to you since you've been back, but the first step's always so difficult. You mustn't bear a grudge against me."

"My dear boy!" I cried, my hand on his shoulder, touched to the heart by his simple generosity, "don't let us talk of grudges and forgiveness. All I want to know is whether you're contented?"

"Contented?" he cried. "I should just think I am. I'm the happiest ass that doesn't eat thistles!"

"Explain yourself, my dear Dale," said I, relapsing into my old manner.

"I'm going to marry Maisie Ellerton."

I took him by the arm and dragged him inside the box.

"Agatha," said I, "leave those confounded dogs for a moment and attend to serious matters. This young man has not come up to see either of us, but to obtain our congratulations. He's going to marry Maisie Ellerton."

"Tell me all about it," said Agatha intensely interested.

A load of responsibility rolled off my shoulders like Christian's pack. I looked at the dog football match with the interest of a Sheffield puddler at a Cup-tie, and clapped my hands.

An hour or so later after we had seen Agatha home, and Dale had incidentally chucked Lord Essendale (the phrase is his own), we were sitting over whisky and soda and cigars in my Victoria Street flat. The ingenuousness of youth had insisted on this prolongation of our meeting. He had a thousand things to tell me. They chiefly consisted in a reiteration of the statement that he had been a rampant and unimagined silly ass, and that Maisie, who knew the whole lunatic story, was a brick, and a million times too good for him. When he entered my humble lodging he looked round in a bewildered manner.

"Why on earth are you living in this mouse-trap?"

"Agatha calls it a pill-box. I call it a bird-cage. I live here, my dear boy, because it is the utmost I can afford."

"Rot! I've been your private secretary and know what your income is."

I sighed heavily. I shall have to get a leaflet printed setting out the causes that led to my change of fortune. Then I can hand it to such of my friends as manifest surprise.

Indeed, I had grown so used to the story of my lamentable pursuit of the eumoirous that I rattled it off mechanically after the manner of the sturdy beggar telling his mendacious tale of undeserved misfortune. To Dale, however, it was fresh. He listened to it open-eyed. When I had concluded, he brought his hand down on the arm of the chair.

"By Jove, you're splendid! I always said you were. Just splendid!"

He gulped down half a tumbler of whisky and soda to hide his feelings.

"And you've been doing all this while I've been making a howling fool of myself! Look here, Simon, you were right all along the line—from the very first when you tackled me about Lola. Do you remember?"

"Why refer to it?" I asked.

"I must!" he burst in quickly. "I've been longing to put myself square with you. By the way, where is Lola?"

"I don't know," said I with grim truthfulness.

"Don't know? Has she vanished?"

"Yes," said I.

"That's the end of it, I suppose. Poor Lola! She was an awfully good sort you know!" said Dale, "and I won't deny I was hit. That's when I came such a cropper. But I realise now how right you were. I was just caught by the senses, nothing else; and when she wrote to say it was all off between us my vanity suffered—suffered damnably, old chap. I lost the election through it. Didn't attend to business. That brought me to my senses. Then Essendale took me away yachting, and I had a quiet time to think; and after that I somehow took to seeing more of Maisie. You know how things happen. And I'm jolly grateful to you, old chap. You've saved me from God knows what complications! After all, good sort as Lola is, it's rot for a man to go outside his own class, isn't it?"

"It depends upon the man—and also the woman," said I, beginning to derive peculiar torture from the conversation.

Dale shook his wise head. "It never comes off," said he. After a pause he laughed aloud. "Don't you remember the lecture you gave me? My word, you did talk! You produced a string of ghastly instances where the experiment had failed. Let me see, who was there, Paget, Merridew, Bullen. Ha! Ha! No, I'm well out of it, old chap—thanks to you."

"If any good has come of this sorry business," said I gravely, "I'm only too grateful to Providence."

He caught the seriousness of my tone.

"I didn't want to touch on that side of it," he said awkwardly. "I know what an infernal time you had! It must have been Gehenna. I realise now that it was on my account, and so I can never do enough to show my gratitude."

He finished his glass of whisky and walked about the tiny room.

"What has always licked me," he said at length, "is why she never told me she was married. It's so curious, for she was as straight as they make them. It's devilish odd!"

"Yes," I assented wearily, for every word of this talk was a new pain. "Devilish odd!"

"I suppose it's a question of class again."

"Or sex," said I.

"What has sex to do with being straight?"

"Everything," said I.

"Rot!" said Dale.

I sighed. "I wish your dialectical vocabulary were not so limited."

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

"Still the same old Simon. It does my heart good to hear you. May I have another whisky?"

I took advantage of this break to change the conversation. He had told me nothing of his own affairs save that he was engaged to Maisie Ellerton.

"Heavens!" cried he. "Isn't that enough?"

"An engagement isn't an occupation."

"Isn't it, by Jove?" He laughed boyishly. "I manage, however, to squeeze in a bit of work now and then. The mater has always got plenty on hand for me, and I do things for Raggles. He has been awfully decent. The first time I met him or any of the chiefs after the election I was in a blue funk. But no one seemed to blame me; they all said they were sorry; and now Raggles is looking out for a constituency for me to nurse for the next General Election. Then things will hum, I promise you!"

He waved his cigar with the air of a young paladin about to conquer the world. In spite of my own depression, I could not help smiling with gladness at the sight of him. With his extravagantly cut waistcoat, his elaborately exquisite white tie, his perfectly fitting evening clothes, with his supple ease of body, his charming manner, the preposterous fellow made as gallant a show as any ruffling blade in powder and red-heeled shoes. He had acquired, too, an extra touch of manhood since I had seen him last. I felt proud of him, conscious that to the making of him I had to some small degree contributed.

"You must come out and lunch with Maisie and me one day this week," said he. "She would love to see you."

"Wait till you're married," said I, "and then we'll consider it. At present Maisie is under the social dominion of her parents."

"Well—what of it?"

"Just that," said I.

Then the truth dawned on him. He grew excited and said it was damnable. He wasn't going to stand by and see people believe a lot of scandalous lies about me. He had no idea people had given me the cold shoulder. He would jolly well (such were his words) take a something (I forget the adjective) megaphone and trumpet about society what a splendid fellow I was.

"I'll tell everybody the whole silly-ass story about myself from beginning to end," he declared.

I checked him. "You're very generous, my dear boy," said I, "but you'll do me a favour by letting folks believe what they like." And then I explained, as delicately as I could, how his sudden championship could be of little advantage to me, and might do him considerable harm.

In his impetuous manner he cut short my carefully-expressed argument.

"Rubbish! Heaps of people I know are already convinced that I was keeping Lola Brandt and that you took her from me in the ordinary vulgar way—"

"Yes, yes," I interrupted, shrinking. "That's why I order you, in God's name, to leave the whole thing alone."

"But confound it, man! I've come out of it all right, why shouldn't you? Even supposing Lola was a loose woman—"

I threw up my hand. "Stop!"

He looked disconcerted for a moment.

"We know she isn't, but for the sake of argument—"

"Don't argue," said I. "Let us drop it."

"But hang it all!" he shouted in desperation. "Can't I do something! Can't I go and kick somebody?"

I lost my self-control. I rose and put both my hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eyes.

"You can kick anybody you please whom you hear breathe a word against the honour and purity of Madame Lola Brandt."

Then I walked away, knowing I had betrayed myself, and tried to light a cigar with fingers that shook. There was a pause. Dale stood with his back to the fireplace, one foot on the fender. The cigar took some lighting. The pause grew irksome.

"My regard for Madame Brandt," said I at last, "is such that I don't wish to discuss her with any one." I looked at Dale and met his keen eyes fixed on me. The faintest shadow of a smile played about his mouth.

"Very well," said he dryly, "we won't discuss her. But all the same, my dear Simon, I can't help being interested in her; and as you're obviously the same, it seems rather curious that you don't know where she is."

"Do you doubt me?" I asked, somewhat staggered by his tone.

"Good Heaven's, no! But if she has disappeared, I'm convinced that something has happened which I know nothing of. Of course, it's none of my business."

There was a new and startling note of assurance in his voice. Certainly he had developed during the past few months. What I had done, Heaven only knows. Misfortune, which is supposed to be formative of character, seemed to have turned mine into pie. How can I otherwise account for my not checking the lunatic impulse that prompted my next words.

"Well, something has happened," said I, "and if we're to be friends, you had better know it. Two days ago, for the first time, I told Madame Brandt that I loved her. This very afternoon I went to get her answer to my question—would she marry me?—and I found that she had disappeared without leaving any address behind her. So whenever you hear her name mentioned you can just tell everybody that she's the one woman in the whole wide world I want to marry."

"Poor old Simon," said Dale. "Poor old chap."

"That's exactly how things stand."

"Lord, who would have thought it?"

"How I've borne with you talking about her all this evening the devil only knows," I cried. "You've driven me half crazy."

"You should have told me to shut up."

"I did."

"Poor old Simon. I'm so sorry—but I had no idea you had fallen in love with her."

"Fallen in love!" said I, losing my head. "She's the only woman on God's earth I've ever cared for. I want her as I've wanted nothing in the universe before."

"And you've come to care for her as much as that?" he said sympathetically. "Poor old Simon."

"Why the devil shouldn't I?" I shouted, nettled by his "poor old Simons."

"Lola Brandt is hardly of your class," said Dale.

I broke out furiously. "Damn class! I've had enough of it. I'm going to take my life into my own hands and do what I like with it. I'm going to choose my mate without any reference to society. I've cut myself adrift from society. It can go hang. Lola Brandt is a woman worth any man's loving. She is a woman in a million. You know nothing whatever about her."

The last words were scarcely out of my mouth when an echo from the distance came and, as it were, banged at my ears. Dale himself had shrieked them at me in exactly the same tone with reference to the same woman. I stopped short and looked at him for a moment rather stupidly. Then the imp of humour, who for some time had deserted me, flew to my side and tickled my brain. I broke into a chuckle, somewhat hysterical I must admit, and then, throwing myself into an arm-chair, gave way to uncontrollable laughter.

The scare of the unexpected rose in Dale's eyes.

"Why, what on earth is the matter?"

"Can't you see?" I cried, as far as the paroxysms of my mirth would let me. "Can't you see how exquisitely ludicrous the whole thing has been from beginning to end? Don't you realise that you and I are playing the same scene as we played months ago in my library, with the only difference that we have changed roles? I'm the raving, infatuated youth, and you're the grave and reverend mentor. Don't you see? Don't you see?"

"I can't see anything to laugh at," said Dale sturdily.

And he couldn't. There are thousands of bright, flame-like human beings constituted like that. Life spreads out before them one of its most side-splitting, topsy-turvy farces and they see in it nothing to laugh at.

To Dale the affair had been as serious and lacking in the fantastic as the measles. He had got over the disease and now was exceedingly sorry to perceive that I had caught it in my turn.

"It isn't funny a bit," he continued. "It's quite natural. I see it all now. You cut me out from the very first. You didn't mean to—you never thought of it. But what chance had I against you? I was a young ass and you were a brilliant man of the world. I bear you no grudge. You played the game in that way. Then things happened—and at last you've fallen in love with her—and now just at the critical moment she has gone off into space. It must be devilish painful for you, if you ask me."

"Oh, Dale," said I, shaking my head, "the only fitting end to the farce would be if you wandered over Europe to find and bring her back to me."

"I don't know about that," said he, "because I'm engaged, and that, as I said, gives me occupation; but if I can do anything practicable, my dear old Simon, you've only got to send for me."

He pulled out his watch.

"My hat!" he exclaimed. "It's past two o'clock."



CHAPTER XXII

I am a personage apart from humanity. I vary from the kindly ways of man. A curse is on me.

Surely no man has fought harder than I have done to convince himself of the deadly seriousness of existence; and surely before the feet of no man has Destiny cast such stumbling-blocks to faith. I might be an ancient dweller in the Thebaid struggling towards dreams of celestial habitations, and confronted only by grotesque visions of hell. No matter what I do, I'm baffled. I look upon sorrow and say, "Lo, this is tragedy!" and hey, presto! a trick of lightning turns it into farce. I cry aloud, in perfervid zeal, "Life is real, life is earnest, and the apotheosis of the fantastic is not its goal," and immediately a grinning irony comes to give the lie to my credo.

Or is it that, by inscrutable decree of the Almighty Powers, I am undergoing punishment for an old unregenerate point of view, being doomed to wear my detested motley for all eternity, to stretch out my hand for ever to grasp realities and find I can do nought but beat the air with my bladder; to listen with strained ear perpetually expectant of the music of the spheres, and catch nothing but the mocking jingle of the bells on my fool's cap?

I don't know. I give it up.

Such were my thoughts on the morning after my interview with Dale, when I had read a long, long letter from Lola, which she had despatched from Paris.

The letter lies before me now, many pages in a curious, half-formed foreign hand. Many would think it an ill-written letter—for there are faults of spelling and faults of grammar—but even now, as I look on those faults, the tears come into my eyes. Oh, how exquisitely, pathetically, monumentally, sublimely foolish! She had little or nothing to do with it, poor dear; it was only the Arch-Jester again, leading her blindly away, so as once more to leave me high and dry on the Hill of Derision.

". . . My dear, you must forgive me! My heart is breaking, but I know I'm doing right. There is nothing for it but to go out of your life for ever. It terrifies me to think of it, but it's the only way. I know you think you love me, dear; but you can't, you can't really love a woman so far beneath you, and I would sooner never see you again than marry you and wake up one day and find that you hated and scorned me. . . ."

Can you wonder that I shook my fist at Heaven and danced with rage?

". . . Miss Eleanor Faversham called on me just a few minutes after you left me that afternoon. We had a long, long talk. Simon, dear, you must marry her. You loved her once, for you were engaged, and only broke it off because you thought you were going to die; and she loves you, Simon, and she is a lady with all the refinement and education that I could never have. She is of your class, dear, and understands you, and can help you on, whereas I could only drag you down. I am not fit to black her boots. . . ."

And so forth, and so forth, in the most heartrending strain of insensate self-sacrifice and heroic self-abasement. The vainest and most heartless dog of a man stands abashed and helpless before such things in a woman.

She had not seen or written to me because she would not have her resolution weakened. After the great wrench, succeeding things were easier. She had taken Anastasius's cats and proposed to work them in the music-halls abroad and send the proceeds to be administered for the little man's comfort at the Maison de Sante. As both her name and the Papadopoulos troupe of cats were well known in the "variety" world, it would be a simple matter to obtain engagements. She had already opened negotiations for a short season somewhere abroad. I was not to be anxious about her. She would have plenty of occupation.

". . . I am not sending you any address, for I don't want you to know where I am, dear. I shan't write to you again unless I scribble things and tear them up without posting. This is final. When a woman makes such a break she must do it once and for all. Oh, Simon, when you kissed me two days ago you thought you loved me; but I know what the senses are and how they deceive people, and I had only just caught your senses on that spring afternoon, and I made you do it, for I had been aching, aching for months for a word of love from you, and when it came I was ashamed. But I should have been weak and shut my eyes to everything if Miss Faversham had not come to me like God's good angel. . . ."

At the fourth reading of the letter I stopped short at these words. God's good angel, indeed! Could anything have been more calculated to put a man into a frenzy? I seized my hat and stick and went in search of the nearest public telephone office. In less than ten minutes I had arranged an immediate interview with Eleanor Faversham at my sister Agatha's, and in less than half an hour I was pacing up and down Agatha's sitting-room waiting for her. God's good angel! The sound of the words made me choke with wrath. There are times when angelic interference in human destinies is entirely unwarrantable. I stamped and I fumed, and I composed a speech in which I told Eleanor exactly what I thought of angels.

As I had to wait a considerable time, however, before Eleanor appeared, the raging violence of my wrath abated, and when she did enter the room smiling and fresh, with the spring in her clear eyes and a flush on her cheek, I just said: "How d'ye do, Eleanor?" in the most commonplace way, and offered her a chair.

"I've come, you see. You were rather peremptory, so I thought it must be a matter of great importance."

"It is," said I. "You went to see Madame Brandt."

"I did," she replied, looking at me steadily, "and I have tried to write to you, but it is more difficult than I thought."

"Well," said I, "it's no use writing now, for you've managed to drive her out of the country."

She half rose in her chair and regarded me with wide-blue eyes.

"I've driven her out of the country?"

"Yes; with her maid and her belongings and Anastasius Papadopoulos's troupe of performing cats, and Anastasius Papadopoulos's late pupil and assistant Quast. She has given up her comfortable home in London and now proposes to be a wanderer among the music-halls of Europe."

"But that's not my fault! Indeed, it isn't."

"She says in a letter I received this morning bearing no address, that if you hadn't come to her like God's good angel, she would have remained in London."

Eleanor looked bewildered. "I thought I had made it perfectly clear to her."

"Made what clear?"

She blushed a furious red. "Can't you guess? You must be as stupid as she is. And, of course, you're wildly angry with me. Aren't you?"

"I certainly wish you hadn't gone to see her."

"Was it merely to tell me this that you ordered me to come here?" she asked, with a touch of anger in her voice, for however much like God's good angels young women may be, they generally have a spirit of their own.

I felt I had been wanting in tact; also that I had put myself—through an impetuosity foreign to what I had thought to be my character—in a foolish position. If I replied affirmatively to her question, she would have served me perfectly right by tossing her head in the air and marching indignantly out of the room. I temporised.

"In order to understand the extraordinary consequences of your interview, I should like to have some idea of what took place. I know, my dear Eleanor," I continued as gently as I could, "I know that you went to see her out of the very great kindness of your heart—"

"No, I didn't."

I made a little gesture in lieu of reply. There was a span of silence. Eleanor played with the silky ears of Agatha's little Yorkshire terrier which had somehow strayed into the room and taken possession of her lap.

"Don't you see, Simon?" she said at last, half tearfully, without taking her eyes off the dog, "don't you see that by accusing me in this way you make it almost impossible for me to speak? And I was going to be so loyal to you."

A tear fell down her cheek on to the dog's back, and convicted me of unmitigated brutality.

"What else could you be but loyal?" I murmured. "Your attitude all through has shone it."

She flashed her hand angrily over her eyes, and looked at me. "And I wanted to be loyal to the end. If you had waited and she had waited, you would have seen. As soon as I could have conveyed it to you decently, I should have shown you——Ah!" She broke off, put the Yorkshire terrier on the sofa beside her, and rose with an impatient gesture. "You want to know why I called on Lola Brandt? I felt I had to know for myself what kind of woman she was. She was the woman between us—you and me. You don't suppose I ceased to care for you just because what we thought was a fatal illness broke off our engagement! I did care for you. I cared for you—in a way; I say 'in a way'—I'll tell you why later on. When we met here the last time do you think I was not moved? I knew your altered position would not allow you to suggest a renewal of the engagement so I offered you the opportunity. Do you remember? But I could not tell whether you still cared for me or whether you cared for the other woman. So I had to go and see her. I couldn't bear to think that you might feel in honour bound to take me at my word and be caring all the time for some one else. I went to see her, and then I realised that I didn't count. Don't ask why. Women know these things. And I found that she loved you with a warmth and richness I'm incapable of. I felt I had stepped into something big and splendid, as if I had been a caterpillar walking into the heart of a red rose. I felt prim and small and petty. Until then I had never known what love meant, and I didn't feel it; I couldn't feel it. I couldn't give you a millionth part of what that woman does. And I knew that having lived in that atmosphere, you couldn't possibly be content with me. If you had waited, I should have found some means of telling you so. That's what I meant by saying I was loyal to you. And I thought I had made it clear to her. It seems I didn't. It isn't my fault."

"My dear," said I, when she had come to the end of this astonishing avowal, and stood looking at me somewhat defiantly and twisting her fingers nervously in front of her, "I don't know what in the world to say to you."

"You can tell me, at least, that my instinct was right."

"Which one? A woman has so many."

"That you love Lola Brandt."

I lifted my arms in a helpless gesture and let them drop to my sides.

"One is not one's own master in these things."

"Then you do?"

"Yes," said I in a low voice.

Eleanor drew a long breath, turned and sat down again on the sofa.

"And she knows it?"

"I have told her so."

"Then why in the world has she run away?"

"Because you two wonderful and divinely foolish people have been too big for each other. While you were impressed by one quality in her she was equally impressed by another in you. She departed, burning her ships, so as to go entirely out of my life for the simple reason, as she herself expresses it, that she was not fit to black your boots. So," said I, taking her left hand in mine and patting it gently, "between you two dear, divine angel fools, I fall to the ground."

A while later, just before we parted, she said in her frank way:

"I know many people would say I've behaved with shocking impropriety—immodestly and all that. You don't, do you? I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things. Perhaps I've gone too straight this time—but you'll forgive me?"

I smiled and squeezed her hand. "My dear," said I, "Lola Brandt was right. You are God's good angel."

I went away in a chastened mood, no longer wrathful, for what could woman do more for mortal man than what Eleanor Faversham had attempted? She had gone to see whether she should stand against her rival, and with a superb generosity, unprecedented in her sex, she had withdrawn. The magnanimity of it overwhelmed me. I walked along the street exalting her to viewless pinnacles of high-heartedness. And then, suddenly, the Devil whispered in my ear that execrated word "eumoiriety." It poisoned the rest of the day. It confirmed my conviction of the ironical designs of Destiny. Destiny, not content with making me a victim of the accursed principle in my own person, had used these two dear women as its instruments in dealing me fresh humiliation. Where would it end? Where could I turn to escape such an enemy? If I had been alone in green fields instead of Sloane Square, I should have clapped my hands to my head and prayed God not to drive me crazy. I should have cried wild vows to the winds and shaken my fist at the sky and rolled upon the grass and made a genteel idiot of myself. Nature would have understood. Men do these things in time of stress, and I was in great stress. I loved a woman for the first time in my life—and I was a man nearly forty. I wanted her with every quivering nerve in me. And she was gone. Lost in the vast expanse of Europe with a parcel of performing cats. Gone out of my life loving me as I loved her, all on account of this Hell-invented principle. Ye gods! If the fierce, pure, deep, abiding love of a man for a woman is not a reality, what in this world of shadows is anything but vapour? I grasped it tight, hugged it to my bosom—and now she was gone, and in my ears rang the derisive laughter of the enemy.

Where would it end? What would happen next? Nothing was too outrageously, maniacally impossible. I walked up Sloane Street, a street for which impeccable respectability, security of life and person, comfortable, modern, twentieth-century, prosperous smugness has no superior in all the smug cities of the earth, and I was prepared to encounter with a smile of recognition anything that the whirling brains of Bedlam had ever conceived. Why should not this little lady tripping along with gold chain-bag and anxious, shopping knit of the brow, throw her arms round my neck and salute me as her long-lost brother? Why should not the patient horses in that omnibus suddenly turn into griffins and begin to snort fire from their nostrils? Why should not that policeman, who, on his beat, was approaching me with the heavy, measured tread, suddenly arrest me for complicity in the Pazzi Conspiracy or the Rye House Plot? Why should not the whole of the decorous street suddenly change into the inconsequence of an Empire ballet? Why should not the heavens fall down and universal chaos envelop all?

The only possible reason I can think of now is that the Almighty Powers did not consider it worth while to go to quite so much trouble on my account.

This, however, gives you some idea of my state of mind. But though it lasted for a considerable time, I would not have you believe that I fostered it unduly. Indeed, I repudiated it with some disgust. I took it out, examined it, and finding it preposterous, set to work to modify it into harmony with the circumstances of my every-day life. Even the most sorely tried of men cannot walk abroad shedding his exasperation around like pestilence. If he does, he is put into a lunatic asylum.

If a man cannot immediately assuage the hunger of his heart, he must meet starvation with a smiling face. In the meantime, he has to eat so as to satisfy the hunger of his body, to clothe himself with a certain discrimination, to attend to polite commerce with his fellow man and to put to some fair use the hours of his day. I did not doubt but that by means of intelligent inquiry which I determined to pursue in every possible direction I should sooner or later obtain news of Lola. A lady with a troupe of performing cats could not for long remain in obscurity. True, I might have gone in gallant quest of her; but I had had enough of such fool adventures. I bided my time, consulted with Dale, who took up the work of a private detective agency with his usual zeal, writing letters to every crony who languished in the exile of foreign embassies, and corresponding (unknown to Lady Kynnersley) with the agencies of the International Aid Society, did what I could on my own account, and turned my attention seriously to the regeneration of the Judds.

As the affairs of one drunken tailor's family could not afford me complete occupation for my leisure hours, I began to find myself insensibly drawn by Campion's unreflecting enthusiasm into all kinds of small duties connected with Barbara's Building. Before I could realise that I had consented, I discovered myself in charge of an evening class of villainous-looking and uncleanly youths who assembled in one of the lecture-rooms to listen to my recollections of the history of England. I was to continue the course begun by a young Oxford man, who, for some reason or other, had migrated from Barbara's Building to Toynbee Hall.

"I've never done any schoolmastering in my life. Suppose," said I, with vivid recollections of my school days, "suppose they rag me?"

"They won't," said Campion, who had come to introduce me to the class.

And they did not. I found these five and twenty youthful members of the proletariat the most attentive, respectable, and intelligent audience that ever listened to a lecture. Gradually I came to perceive that they were not as villainous-looking and uncleanly as at first sight I had imagined. A great many of them took notes. When I came to the end of my dissertation on Henry VIII, I went among them, as I discovered the custom to be, and chatted, answering questions, explaining difficulties, and advising as to a course of reading. The atmosphere of trust and friendliness compensated for the lack of material sweetness. Here were young men pathetically eager to learn, grateful for every crumb of information that came from my lips. They reminded me of nothing more than the ragged class of scholars around a teacher in a mediaeval university. Some had vague dreams of eventually presenting themselves for examinations, the Science and Art Department, the College of Preceptors, the Matriculation of the University of London. Others longed for education for its own sake, or rather as a means of raising themselves in the social scale. Others, bitten by the crude Socialism of their class, had been persuaded to learn something of past movements of mankind so as to obtain some basis for their opinions. All were in deadly earnest. The magnetic attraction between teacher and taught established itself. After one or two lectures, I looked forward to the next with excited interest.

Other things Campion off-handedly put into my charge. I went on tours of inspection round the houses of his competing housewives. I acted as his deputy at the police court when ladies and gentlemen with a good record at Barbara's got into trouble with the constabulary. I investigated cases for the charity of the institution. In quite a short time I realised with a gasp that I had become part of the machinery of Barbara's Building, and was remorselessly and helplessly whirled hither and thither with the rest of the force of the driving wheel which was Rex Campion.

The amazing, the astounding, the utterly incredible thing about the whole matter was that I not only liked it, but plunged into it heart and soul as I had never plunged into work before. I discovered sympathies that had hitherto lain undreamed of within me. In my electioneering days I had, it is true, foregathered with the sons of toil. I had shaken the horny hands of men and the soap-suddy hands of women. I had flattered them and cajoled them and shown myself mighty affable, as a sensible and aspiring Parliamentary candidate should do; but the way to their hearts I had never found, I had never dreamed of seeking. And now it seemed as if the great gift had been bestowed on me—and I examined it with a new and almost tremulous delight.

Also, for the first time in all my life, I had taken pain to be the companion of my soul. All my efforts to find Lola were fruitless. I became acquainted with the heartache, the longing for the unattainable, the agony of spirit. The only anodyne was a forgetfulness of self, the only compensation a glimmer of a hope and the shadow of a smile in the grey and leaden lives around me.



On Whit Monday evening I was walking along the Thames Embankment on my way home from Waterloo Station, wet through, tired out, disappointed, and looking forward to the dry, soft raiment, the warm, cosy room, the excellent dinner that awaited me in my flat. I—with several others—had been helping Campion with his annual outing of factory girls and young hooligans. The weather, which had been perfect on Saturday, Sunday, and when we had started, a gay and astonishing army, at seven o'clock, had broken before ten. It had rained, dully miserable, insistently all day long. The happy day in the New Forest had been a damp and dismal fiasco. I was returning home, thinking I might walk off an incipient chill, as depressed as no one but the baffled philanthropist can be, when I perceived a tattered and dejected man sitting on a bench, a clothes-basket between his feet, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and sobbing as if his heart would break. As the spectacle of a grown-up man crying bitterly in a public thoroughfare was somewhat remarkable, I paused, and then in order to see whether his distress was genuine, and also not to arouse his suspicions, I threw myself in an exhausted manner on the bench beside him. He continued to sob. At last I said, raising my voice:

"You seem to be pretty miserable. What's wrong?"

He turned bleared, yet honest-looking eyes upon me.

"The whole blasted show!" said he. "There's nothing right in it, s'welp me Gawd."

I gave a modified assent to the proposition and drew my coat-collar over my eyes. "Being wet through doesn't make it any better," said I.

"Who would ha' thought it would come down as it has to-day? Tell me that. It's enough to make a man cut his throat!"

I was somewhat surprised. "You're not in such a great distress just because it has been a rainy day!"

"Ain't I just!" he exclaimed. "It's been and gone and ruined me, this day has. Look 'ere, guv'nor, I'll tell you all about it. I've been out of work, see? I was in 'orspital for three months and I couldn't get nothing regular to do when I come out. I'm a packer by trade. I did odd jobs, see, and the wife she earned a little, too, and we managed to keep things going and to scrape together five shillings, that's three months' savings, against Whitsun Bank Holiday. And as the weather was so fine, I laid it all out in paper windmills to sell to the kids on 'Amstead 'Eath. And I started out this morning with the basket full of them all so fine and pretty, and no sooner do I get on the 'Eath than the rain comes down and wipes out the whole blooming lot, before I could sell one. Look 'ere!"

He drew a bedraggled sheet of newspaper from the clothes-basket and displayed a piteous sodden welter of sticks and gaudy pulp. At the sight of it he broke down again and sobbed like a child.

"And there's not a bite in the 'ouse, nor not likely to be for days; and I daren't go home and face the missus and the kids—and I wish I was dead."

I had already seen many pitiful tragedies during my brief experience with Campion; but the peculiar pitifulness of this one wrung my heart. It taught me as nothing had done before how desperately humble are the aspirations of the poor. I thought of the cosy comfort that awaited me in my own home; the despair that awaited him in his.

I put my hand in my pocket.

"You seem to be a good chap," said I.

He shrugged his shoulders. The consciousness of applauded virtue offered no consolation. I drew out a couple of half-crowns and threw them into the basket.

"For the missus and the kids," said I.

He picked them out of the welter, and holding them in his hand, looked at me stupidly.

"Can you afford it, guv'nor?"

At first I thought this remark was some kind of ill-conditioned sarcasm; but suddenly I realised that dripping wet and covered with mud from head to foot, with a shapeless, old, green, Homburg hat drooping forlornly about my ears, I did not fulfil his conception of the benevolent millionaire. I laughed, and rose from the bench.

"Yes. Quite well. Better luck next time."

I nodded a good-bye, and walked away. After a minute, he came running after me.

"'Ere," said he, "I ain't thanked yer. Gawd knows how I'm going to do it. I can't! But, 'ere—would you mind if I chucked a lot of the stuff into the river and told the missus I had sold it, and just got back my money? She's proud, she is, and has never accepted a penny in charity in her life. It's only because it would be better for 'er."

He looked at me with such earnest appeal that I saw that the saving of his wife's pride was a serious matter.

"Of course," said I, "and here's a few ha'pence to add to it, so as to give colour to the story."

He saw that I understood. "Thank you kindly, sir," said he.

"Tell me," said I, "do you love your wife?"

He gaped at me for a moment; obviously the question had never been put to him either by himself or anybody else. Then, seeing that my interest was genuine, he spat and scratched his head.

"We've been together twenty years," he said, in a low voice, emotion struggling with self-consciousness, "and I've 'ad nothing agin her all that time. She's a bloomin' wonder, I tell you straight."

I held out my hand. "At any rate, you've got what I haven't," said I. "A woman who loves you to welcome you home."

And I went away, longing, longing for Lola's arms and the deep love in her voice.

Now that I come to view my actions in some sort of perspective, it seems to me that it was the underlying poignancy of this trumpery incident—a poignancy which, nevertheless, bit deep into my soul, that finally determined the current of my life.

A short while afterwards, Campion, who for some time past had found the organisation of Barbara's Building had far outgrown his individual power of control, came to me with a proposal that I should undertake the management of the institution under his general directorship. As he knew of my financial affairs and of my praiseworthy but futile efforts to live on two hundred a year, he offered me another two hundred by way of salary and quarters in the Building. I accepted, moved the salvage of my belongings from Victoria Street to Lambeth, and settled down to the work for which a mirth-loving Providence had destined me from my cradle.

When I told Agatha, she nearly fainted.



CHAPTER XXIII

No sooner had I moved into Barbara's Building and was preparing to begin my salaried duties than I received news which sent me off post haste to Berlin. And just as it was not I but Anastasius Papadopoulos who discovered Captain Vauvenarde, so, in this case, it was Dale who discovered Lola.

He burst in upon me one day, flourishing a large visiting-card, which he flung down on the table before my eyes.

"Do you recognise that?"

It was the familiar professional card of the unhappy Anastasius.

"Yes."

"Do you see the last line?"

I read "London Agents: Messrs. Conto and Blag, 172 Maiden Lane, W.C." I looked up. "Well?" I asked.

"It has done the trick," said he triumphantly. "What fools we were not to have thought of it before. I was rooting out a drawer of papers and came across the card. You remember he handed us one all round the first day we met him. I put it away—I'm rather a methodical devil with papers, as you know. When I found it, I danced a hornpipe all round the room and went straight off to Conto and Blag. I made certain she would work through them, as they were accustomed to shop the cats, and I found I was right. They knew all about her. Wouldn't give her address, but told me that she was appearing this week at the Winter Garten at Berlin. Why that pudding-headed quagga, Bevan, at the Embassy, hasn't kept his eyes open for me, as he promised," he went on a while later, "I don't know! I can understand Eugen Pattenhausen, the owl-eyed coot who runs the International Aid Society, not doing a hand's turn to aid anybody—but Bevan! For Heaven's sake, while you're there call at the Embassy and kick him."

"You forget, my dear boy," said I, with a laugh, for his news had made me light-hearted, "you forget that I have entered upon a life of self-denial, and one of the luxuries I must deny myself is that of kicking attaches."

"I've a good mind to go with you and do it myself. But it'll keep. Do you know, it's rather quaint, isn't it?" he said, after a pause, as if struck by a luminous idea—"It's rather quaint that it should be I who am playing the little tin god on wheels for you two, and saying 'Bless you, my children.'"

"I thought the humour of the situation couldn't fail to strike you at last."

"Yes," said he, knitting his brows into an air of dark reflection "it is funny. Devilish funny!"

I dismissed him with grateful words, and in a flutter of excitement went in search of Campion, whom I was lucky to find in the building.

"I'm sorry to ask for leave of absence," said I, "before I've actually taken up my appointment; but I must do so. I am summoned at once to Berlin on important business."

Campion gave willing consent. "How long will you be away?"

"That depends," said I, with a smile which I meant to be enigmatic, but assuredly must have been fatuous, "upon my powers of persuasion."

I had bright thoughts of going to Berlin and back in a meteoric flash, bringing Lola with me on my return journey, to marry her out of hand as soon as we reached London. Cats and Winter Gartens concerned me but little, and of trifles like contracts I took no account.

"If you're there any time," said Campion, tugging thoughtfully at his black beard, "you might look into what the Germans are doing with regard to Female Rescue Work. You might pick up a practical tip or two for use down here."

What a thing it is to be a man of one idea! I gave him an evasive answer and rushed away to make the necessary preparations for my journey. I was absurdly, boyishly happy. No doubt as to my success crossed my mind. It was to be my final and triumphant adventure. Unless the High Powers stove a hole in the steamer or sent another railway train to collide with mine, the non-attainment of my object seemed impossible. I had but to go, to be seen, to conquer.

I arrived safely in Berlin at half-past seven in the evening, and drove to a modest hotel in the Kaiserstrasse, where I had engaged a room. My first inquiry was for a letter from Lola. To my disappointment nothing awaited me. I had telegraphed to her at the Winter Garten the day before, and I had written as well. A horrible surmise began to dance before me. Suppose Messrs. Conto and Blag had given Dale erroneous information! I grew sick and faint at the thought. What laughter there would be in Olympus over my fool journey! In great agitation I clamoured for a programme of the Winter Garten entertainment. The hotel clerk put it into my trembling hands. There was no mention of Madame Lola Brandt, but to my unspeakable comfort I saw the announcement:

"Professorin Anastasius Papadopoulos und ihre wunderbaren Katzen."

Lola was working the cats under the little man's name. That was why she had baffled the inquiries instituted by Dale and myself and had not received my telegram. I scribbled a hasty note in which I told her of my arrival, my love, and my impatience; that I proposed to witness the performance that evening, and to meet her immediately afterwards at the stage-door. This, addressed to the Professorin Anastasius Papadopoulos, I despatched by special messenger to the Winter Garten. After a hasty toilet and a more hurried meal, I went out, and, too impatient to walk, I hailed a droschky, and drove through the wide, cheery streets of Berlin. It was a balmy June evening. The pavements were thronged. Through the vast open fronts of the cafes one saw agglutinated masses of people just cleft here and there by white-jacketed waiters darting to and fro with high-poised trays of beer and coffee. Save these and the folks in theatres all Berlin was in the streets, taking the air. A sense of gaiety pervaded the place, organised and recognised, as though it were as much part of a Berliner's duty to himself, the Fatherland, and the Almighty to be gay when the labours of the day are over as to be serious during business hours. He goes through it with a grave face and enjoys himself prodigiously. Your Latin when he fills the street with jest and laughter obeys the ebullience of his temperament; your Teuton always seems to be conscientiously obeying a book of regulations.

I soon arrived at the Winter Garten and secured a stall near the stage. The vast building was packed with a smoking and perspiring multitude. In shape it was like a long tunnel or a long, narrow railway station, an impression intensified by a monotonous barrel roof. This was, however, painted blue and decorated with myriads of golden stars. Along one side ran a gallery where those who liked to watch the performance and eat a six-course dinner at the same time could do so in elaborate comfort. In the centre of the opposite side was the stage, and below it, grouped in a semi-circle, the orchestra. Beneath the starry roof hung long wisps of smoke clouds.

The performance had only just begun and Lola's turn was seventh on the list. I reflected that greater deliberation in my movements would have suited the maturity of my years, besides enabling me to eat a more digestible dinner. I had come with the unreasoning impatience of a boy, fully conscious that I was too early, yet desperately anxious not to be too late. I laughed at myself indulgently and patted the boy in me on the head. Meanwhile, I gave myself up with mild interest to the entertainment provided. It was the same as that at any music-hall, winter garden, or variety theatre the world over. The same brawny gentlemen in tights made human pyramids out of themselves and played football with the little boys and minced with their aggravating steps down to the footlights; the same red-nosed clown tried to emulate his dashing companion on the horizontal bars, pulling himself up, to the eternal delight of the audience, by the seat of his baggy breeches, and hanging his hat on the smooth steel upright; the same massive lady with the deep chest sang sentimental ballads; the same China-man produced warrens of rabbits and flocks of pigeons from impossible receptacles; the same half-dozen scantily clad damsels sang the same inane chorus in the same flat baby voices and danced the same old dance. Mankind in the bulk is very young; it is very easily amused and, like a child, clamours for the oft-repeated tale.

The curtain went down on the last turn before Lola's. I felt a curious suspense, and half wished that I had not come to see the performance. I shrank from finding her a million miles away from me, a new, remote creature, impersonal as those who had already appeared on the stage. Mingled with this was a fear lest she might not please this vast audience. Failure, I felt, would be as humiliating to me as to her. Agatha, I remembered, confessed to the same feeling with regard to myself when I made my first speech in the House of Commons. But then I had an incontrovertible array of facts and arguments, drawn up by an infallible secretary and welded into cunning verbiage by myself, which I learned off by heart. And the House, as I knew it would, had been half asleep. I couldn't fail. But Lola had to please three thousand wide-awake Berlin citizens, who had paid their money for entertainment, with no other equipment than her own personality and the tricks of a set of wretched irresponsible cats.

The orchestra struck up the act music. The curtains parted, and revealed the brightly polished miniature gymnasium I had seen at Anastasius's cattery; the row of pussies at the back, each on a velvet stand, some white, some tabby, some long-furred, some short-furred, all sitting with their forepaws doubled demurely under their chests, wagging their tails comically, and blinking with feline indifference at the footlights; a cage in a corner in which I descried the ferocious wild tomcat; and, busily putting the last touches to the guy ropes, the pupil and assistant Quast, neatly attired in a close fitting bottle-green uniform with brass buttons. Almost immediately Lola appeared, in a shimmering gold evening gown, and with a necklet of barbaric gold round her neck. I had never seen her so magnificently, so commandingly beautiful. I was conscious of a ripple of admiration running through the huge assembly—and it was a queer sensation, half pride, half angry jealousy. My immediate neighbors were emphatic in their praise. Applause greeted her. She smiled acknowledgments and, flicking the little toy whip which she carried in her hand, she began the act. First of all, the cats jumped from their stands, right-turned like a military line, and walked in procession round the stage. At a halt and a signal each pussy put its front paws on its front neighbour and the march began again. Then Lola did something with voice and whip, and each cat dropped on its paws, and as if by magic there appeared a space between every animal.

At a further word the last cat jumped over the one in front and over the one in front of that and so on until, having cleared the first cat, it leaped on to its stand where it began to lick itself placidly. Meanwhile, the penultimate cat had begun the same evolution, and then the ante-penultimate cat, until all the cats had cleared the front one and had taken their positions on their stands. The last cat, left alone, looked round, yawned in the face of the audience, and, turning tail, regained its stand with the air of unutterable boredom. The audience, delighted, applauded vehemently. I raised my hands as I clapped them, trying vainly and foolishly to catch Lola's eye.

At a tap of her whip a white angora and a sleek tabby jumped from the stands and took up their positions one at each end of a miniature tight-rope. Lola stuck a tiny Japanese umbrella in the collar of each and sent them forth on their perilous journey. When they met in the middle, they spat and caterwauled and argued spitefully. The audience shrieked. Then by a miracle the cats cleared each other and pursued their sedate and cautious ways to their respective ends of the rope. The next act was a team of a dozen rats drawing a tiled chariot driven by a stolid coal-black cat with green, expressionless eyes, down an aisle formed by the other cats who sat in solemn contemplation on their tails. There was no doubt of Lola's success. The tricks were as marvellous in themselves as their execution was flawless. During the applause I noticed her eagerly scanning the sea of faces. Her eyes seemed to be turned in my direction. I waved my handkerchief, and instinct told me that at last she recognised the point of pink and the flutter of white as me.

Then the stage was cleared of the gentle cats and the wire cage containing Hephaestus was pushed forward by Quast. He showed off the ferocious beast's quality by making it dash itself against the wires, arch its huge back, and shoot out venomous claws. Lola commanded him by sign to open the cage. He approached in simulated terror, Hephaestus uttering blood-curdling howls, and every time he touched the handle of the door Hephaestus sprang at him like a tiger with the tomcat's hateful hiss. At last, amid the laughter of the audience (for this was prearranged business), Quast suddenly refused to obey his mistress any more, and went and sat on the floor in the corner of the stage. Then Lola, with a glance of contempt at him for his poltroonery and a glance of confidence at the audience, opened the cage door and dragged the gigantic and malevolent brute out by the scruff of its neck and held it up like a rabbit, as she had done in Anastasius's cattery.

Suddenly her iron grip seemed to relax; she made one or two ineffectual efforts to retain it and the brute dropped to the ground. She looked at it for a second disconcerted as if she had lost her nerve, and then, in a horrible flash, the beast sprang at her face. She uttered piercing screams. The blood spurted from the ghastly claws. Quick as lightning Quast leapt forward and dragged it off. Lola clapped both hands to her eyes, and reeled and tottered to the wings, where I saw a man's two arms receive her. The last thing I saw was Quast kneeling on the beast on the floor mastering him by some professional clutch. Then there rang out a sharp whistle and the curtain went down with a run.

I rose, sick with horror, barely conscious of the gasping excitement that prevailed around me, and blindly groped my path through the crowded rows of folk towards the door. I had only proceeded half-way when a sudden silence made me turn, and I saw a man addressing the audience from the stage. Apparently it was the manager. He regretted to have to inform the audience that Madame Papadopoulos would not be able to conclude her most interesting performance that evening as she had unfortunately received injuries of a very grave nature. Then he signalled to the orchestra, who crashed into a loud and vulgar march with clanging brass and thundering drum. It sounded so cynically and hideously inhuman that I trampled recklessly over people in my mad rush to the exit.

I found the stage-door, where a knot of the performers were assembled, talking of the horrible accident. I pushed my way shiveringly through them, and tried to rush into the building, but was checked by a burly porter. I explained incoherently in my rusty German. I came for news of Madame Papadopoulos. I was her Verlobter I declared, with a gush of inspiration. Whether he believed that I was her affianced I know not, but he bade me wait, and disappeared with my card. I became at once the object of the curiosity of the loungers. I heard them whispering together as they pointed me out and pitying me. The cat had torn her face away said one woman. I put my hands over my ears so as not to hear. Presently the porter returned with a stout person in authority, who drew me into the stage-doorkeeper's box.

"You are a friend of Frau Papadopoulos?"

"Friend!" I cried. "She is to be my wife. I am in a state of horror and despair. Tell me what has happened."

Seeing my condition, he laid aside his official manner and became human. It was a dreadful accident, said he. The beast had apparently got its claws in near her eyes; but what were her exact injuries he could not tell, as her face was all over blood and she had fainted with the pain. The doctor was with her. He had telephoned for an ambulance. I was to be quite certain that she would receive every possible attention. He would give my card to the doctor. Meanwhile I was quite at liberty to remain in the box till the ambulance came. I thanked him.

"In the meantime," said I, "if you can let me have a word with Fraulein Dawkins, her maid, should she be in the theatre, or Quast her attendant, I should be grateful."

He promised and withdrew. The doorkeeper gave me a wooden chair, and there I sat for an unconscionable time, faint and dizzy with suspense. The chance words I had heard in the crowd, the manager's remark about the claws, the memory of the savage spring at the beloved face made me feel sick. Every now and then, as some doors leading to the stage swung open, I could hear the orchestra and the laughter and applause of the audience. Both Dawkins and Quast visited me. The former was in a helpless state of tears and hand-wringing. As she knew no word of German she could understand nothing that the doctors or others said. Madame was unconscious. Her head was tightly bandaged. That was all the definite information she had.

"Did Madame know I was in front to-night?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, sir! I think she had a letter from you. She was so pleased, poor dear Madame. She told me that you would see the best performance she had ever given."

Whereupon she broke down and was useless for further examination. Then Quast came. He could not understand how the accident had occurred. Hephaestus had never before tried to attack her. She had absolute mastery over him, and he usually behaved with her as gently as any of the other cats. With himself it was quite different. He was accustomed to Hephaestus springing at him; but then he beat him hard with a great stick until he was so sore that he could neither stand up nor lie down.

"I have always implored Madame to carry something heavier than that silly little whip, and now it's all over. She will never be able to control him again. Hephaestus will have to be killed, and I will be desolate. Ach, what a misfortune!"

He began to weep.

"Good God!" I cried; "you don't mean to say that you're sorry for the brute?"

"One can't help being fond of him. We have been for five years inseparable companions!"

I had no sympathy to fling away on him at that moment.

"How do you account for his spring at Madame to-night? That's all I want to know."

"She must have been thinking of something else when she grabbed him. For she missed her grip. Then he fell and was frightened, and she must have lost her nerve. Hephaestus knew it, and sprang. That is always the case when wild animals turn. All accidents happen like that."

His words filled me with a new and sickening dread.

"She must have been thinking of something else." Of what else but of my presence there? That stupid, selfish wave of the handkerchief! I sat gnawing my hands and cursing myself.

The ambulance arrived. Men hurried past my box. I waited again in agony of mind. At last the porter came and cleared the passage and doorway of loungers, and I heard the tread of footsteps and gruff directions. The manager and a man in a frock-coat and black tie, whom I recognised as the doctor, came down the passage, followed by two great men carrying between them a stretcher covered by a sheet on which lay all that I loved in life. Dawkins followed, weeping, and then came several theatre folk. I went outside and saw the stretcher put into the ambulance-van, and then I made myself known to the doctor.

"She has received very great injuries—chiefly the right cheek and eye. So much so that she needs an oculist's care at once. I have telephoned to Dr. Steinholz, of No. 4, Thiergarten, one of our ablest oculists, to receive her now into his clinique. If you care to do so, you are welcome to accompany me."

I drove through the gay, flaring streets of Berlin like a man in a phantasmagoria of horror.



CHAPTER XXIV

The first time they allowed me to see her was after many days of nerve-racking anxiety. I had indeed called at the clinique two or three times a day for news, and I had written short letters of comfort and received weirdly-spelt messages taken down from Lola's dictation by a nurse with an imperfect knowledge of English. These kept the heart in me; for the doctor's reports were invariably grave—possible loss of sight in the injured eye and permanent disfigurement their most hopeful prognostications. I lived, too, in a nervous agony of remorse. For whatever happened I held myself responsible. At first they thought her life was in danger. I passed nightmare days. Then the alarming symptoms subsided, and it was a question of the saving of the eye and the decent healing of the cheek torn deep by the claws of the accursed brute. When Quast informed me of its summary execution I felt the primitive savage arise in me, and I upbraided Quast for not having invited me to gloat over its expiring throes. How the days passed I know not. I wandered about the streets, looking into the windows of the great shops, buying flowers and fruit for Lola in eccentric quantities. Or sitting in beerhouses reading the financial pages of a German paper held upside down. I could not return to London. Still less could I investigate the German philanthropic methods of rescuing fallen women. I wrote to Campion a brief account of what had happened and besought him to set a deputy to work on the regeneration of the Judds.

At last they brought me to where Lola lay, in a darkened room, with her head tightly bandaged. A dark mass spread over the pillow which I knew was her glorious hair. I could scarcely see the unbandaged half of her face. She still suffered acute pain, and I was warned that my visit could only be of brief duration, and that nothing but the simplest matters could be discussed. I sat down on a chair by the left side of the bed. Her wonderful nervous hand clung round mine as we talked.

The first thing she said to me, in a weak voice, like the faint echo of her deep tones, was:

"I'm going to lose all my good looks, Simon, and you won't care to look at me any more."

She said it so simply, so tenderly, without a hint of reproach in it, that I almost shouted out my horrible remorse; but I remembered my injunctions and refrained. I strove to comfort her, telling her mythical tales of surgical reassurances. She shook her head sadly.

"It was like you to stay in Berlin, Simon," she said, after a while. "Although they wouldn't let me see you, yet I knew you were within call. You can't conceive what a comfort it has been."

"How could I leave you, dear," said I, "with the thought of you throbbing in my head night and day?"

"How did you find me?"

"Through Conto and Blag. I tried all other means, you may be sure. But now I've found you I shan't let you go again."

This was not the time for elaborate explanations. She asked for none. When one is very ill one takes the most unlikely happenings as commonplace occurrences. It seemed enough to her that I was by her side. We talked of her nurses, who were kind; of the skill of Dr. Steinholz, who brought into his clinique the rigid discipline of a man-of-war.

"He wouldn't even let me have your flowers," she said. "And even if he had I shouldn't have been able to see them in this dark hole."

She questioned me as to my doings. I told her of my move to Barbara's Building.

"And I'm keeping you from all that splendid work," she said weakly. "You must go back at once, Simon. I shall get along nicely now, and I shall be happy now that I've seen you again."

I kissed her fingers. "You have to learn a lesson, my dear, which will do you an enormous amount of good."

"What is that?"

"The glorious duty of selfishness."

Then the minute hand of the clock marked the end of the interview, and the nurse appeared on the click and turned me out.

After that I saw her daily; gradually our interviews lengthened, and as she recovered strength our talks wandered from the little incidents and interests of the sick-room to the general topics of our lives. I told her of all that had happened to me since her flight. And I told her that I wanted her and her only of all women.

"Why—oh, why, did you do such a foolish thing?" I asked.

"I did it for your good."

"My dear, have you ever heard the story of the tender-hearted elephant? No? It was told in a wonderful book published years ago and called 'The Fables of George Washington AEsop.' This is it. There was once an elephant who accidentally trod on the mother of a brood of newly-hatched chickens. Her tender heart filled with remorse for what she had done, and, overflowing with pity for the fluffy orphans, she wept bitterly, and addressed them thus: 'Poor little motherless things, doomed to face the rough world without a parent's care, I myself will be a mother to you.' Whereupon, gathering them under her with maternal fondness, she sat down on the whole brood."

The unbandaged half of her face lit up with a wan smile. "Did I do that?"

"I didn't conceive it possible that you could love me except for the outside things."

"You might have waited and seen," said I in mild reproof.

She sighed. "You'll never understand. Do you remember my saying once that you reminded me of an English Duke?"

"Yes."

"You made fun of me; but you must have known what I meant. You see, Simon, you didn't seem to care a hang for me in that way—until quite lately. You were goodness and kindness itself, and I felt that you would stick by me as a friend through thick and thin; but I had given up hoping for anything else. And I knew there was some one only waiting for you, a real refined lady. So when you kissed me, I didn't dare believe it. And I had made you kiss me. I told you so, and I was as ashamed as if I had suddenly turned into a loose woman. And when Miss Faversham came, I knew it would be best for you to marry her, for all the flattering things she said to me, I knew—"

"My dear," I interrupted, "you didn't know at all. I loved you ever since I saw you first lying like a wonderful panther in your chair at Cadogan Gardens. You wove yourself into all my thoughts and around all my actions. One of these days I'll show you a kind of diary I used to keep, and you'll see how I abused you behind your back."

Her face—or the dear half of it that was visible—fell. "Oh, why?"

"For making me turn aside from the nice little smooth path to the grave which I had marked out for myself. I regarded myself as a genteel semi-corpse, and didn't want to be disturbed."

"And I disturbed you?"

"Until I danced with fury and called down on your dear head maledictions which for fulness and snap would have made a mediaeval Pope squirm with envy."

She pressed my hand. "You are making fun again. I thought you were serious."

"I am. I'm telling you exactly what happened. Then, when I was rapidly approaching the other world, it didn't matter. At last I died and came to life again; but it took me a long time to come really to life. I was like a tree in spring which has one bud which obstinately refuses to burst into blossom. At last it did burst, and all the love that had been working in my heart came to my lips; and, incidentally, my dear, to yours."

This was at the early stages of her recovery, when one could only speak of gentle things. She told me of her simple Odyssey—a period of waiting in Paris, an engagement at Vienna and Budapest, and then Berlin. Her agents had booked a week in Dresden, and a fortnight in Homburg, and she would have to pay the forfeit for breach of contract.

"I'm sorry for Anastasius's sake," she said. "The poor little mite wrote me rapturous letters when he heard I was out with the cats. He gave me a long special message for each, which I was to whisper in its ear."

Poor little Anastasius Papadopoulos! She showed me his letters, written in a great round, flourishing, sanguine hand. He seemed to be happy enough at the Maison de Sante. He had formed, he said, a school for the cats of the establishment, for which the authorities were very grateful, and he heralded the completion of his gigantic combinations with regard to the discovery of the assassin of the horse Sultan. Lola and I never spoke of him without pain; for in spite of his crazy and bombastic oddities, he had qualities that were lovable.

"And now," said Lola, "I must tell him that Hephaestus has been killed and the rest are again idling under the care of the faithful Quast. It seemed a pity to kill the poor beast."

"I wish to Heaven," said I, "that he had been strangled at birth."

"You never liked him." She smiled wanly. "But he is scarcely to be blamed. I grew unaccountably nervous and lost control. All savage animals are like that." And, seeing that I was about to protest vehemently, she smiled again. "Remember, I'm a lion-tamer's daughter, and brought up from childhood to regard these things as part of the show. There must always come a second's failure of concentration. Lots of tamers meet their deaths sooner or later for the same reason—just a sudden loss of magnetism. The beast gets frightened and springs."

Exactly what Quast had told me. Exactly what I myself had divined at the sickening moment. I bowed my head and laid the back of her cool hand against it, and groaned out my remorse. If I had not been there! If I had not distracted her attention! She would not listen to my self-reproach. It had nothing to do with me. She had simply missed her grip and lost her head. She forbade me to mention the subject again. The misery of thinking that I held myself to blame was unbearable. I said no more, realising the acute distress of her generous soul, but in my heart I made a deep vow of reparation.

It was, however, with no such chivalrous feelings, but out of the simple longing to fulfil my life that I asked her definitely, for the first time, to marry me as soon as she could get about the world again. I put before her with what delicacy I could that if she had foolish ideas of my being above her in station, she was above me in worldly fortune, and thus we both had to make some sacrifices to our pride. I said that my work was found—that our lives could be regulated as she wished.

She listened, without saying a word, until I had finished. Then she took my hand.

"I'm grateful," she said, "and I'm proud. And I know that I love you beyond all things on earth. But I won't give you an answer till I'm up and about on my feet again."

"Why?" I insisted.

"Don't ask. And don't mention the matter again. You must be good to me, because I'm ill, and do what I say."

She smiled and fondled my hand, and cajoled a reluctant promise from me.

Then came days in which, for no obvious reason, Lola received me with anxious frightened diffidence, and spoke with constraint. The cheerfulness which she had hitherto exhibited gave place to dull depression. She urged me continually to leave Berlin, where, as she said, I was wasting my time, and return to my work in London.

"I shall be all right, Simon, perfectly all right, and as soon as I can travel, I'll come straight to London."

"I'm not going to let you slip through my fingers again," I would say laughingly.

"But I promise you, I'll swear to you I'll come back! Only I can't bear to think of you idling around a woman's sick-bed, when you have such glorious things to do at home. That's a man's work, Simon. This isn't."

"But it is a man's work," I would declare, "to devote himself to the woman he loves and not to leave her helpless, a stranger in a strange land."

"I wish you would go, Simon. I do wish you would go!" she would say wearily. "It's the only favour I've ever asked you in my life."

Man-like, I looked within myself to find the reason for these earnest requests. In casting off my jester's suit had I also divested myself of the power to be a decently interesting companion? Had I become merely a dull, tactless, egotistical bore? Was I, in simple, naked, horrid fact, getting on an invalid's delicate nerves? I was scared of the new picture of myself thus presented. I became self-conscious and made particular efforts to bring a little gaiety into our talk; but though she smiled with her lips, the cloud, whatever it was, hung heavily on her mind, and at the first opportunity she came back to the ceaseless argument.

In despair I took her nurse into my confidence.

"She is right," said the nurse. "You are doing her more harm than good. You had better go away and write to her daily from London."

"But why—but why?" I clamoured. "Can't you give me any reason?"

The nurse glanced at me with a touch of feminine scorn.

"The bandages will soon be removed."

"Well?" said I.

"The sight of one eye may be gone."

"I know," said I. "She is reconciled to it. She has the courage and resignation of a saint."

"She has also the very common and natural fears of a woman."

"For Heaven's sake," I cried, "tell me plainly what you mean."

"We don't quite know what disfigurement will result," said the nurse bluntly. "It is certain to be very great, and the dread of your seeing her is making her ill and retarding her recovery. So if you have any regard for her, pack up your things and go away."

"But," I remonstrated, "I'm bound to see her sooner or later."

The nurse lost patience. "Ach! Can't you get it into your head that it is essential it should be later, when she is strong enough to stand the strain and has realised the worst and made her little preparations?"

I accepted the rebuke meekly. The situation, when explained, was comprehensible to the meanest masculine intelligence.

"I will go," said I.

When I announced this determination to Lola she breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"I shall be so much happier," she said.

Then she raised both her arms and drew my head down until our lips met. "Dear," she whispered, still holding me, "if I hadn't run away from you before I should run away now; but it would be silly to do it twice. So I'll come to London as soon as the doctor will let me. But if you find you don't and can't possibly love me I shan't feel hurt with you. I've had some months, I know, of your love, and that will last me all my life; and I know that whatever happens you'll be my very dear and devoted friend."

"I shall be your lover always!" I swore.

She shook her head and released me. A great pity welled up in my heart, for I know now why she had forbidden me to speak of marriage, and in some dim way I got to the depth of her woman's nature. I realised, as far as a man can, how the sudden blasting of a woman's beauty must revolutionise not only her own attitude towards the world, but her conception of the world's attitude towards her. Only a few weeks before she had gone about proudly conscious of her superb magnificence. It was the triumphant weapon in her woman's armoury, to use when she so chose. It had illuminated a man's journey (I knew and felt it now) through the Valley of the Shadow. It had held his senses captive. It had brought him to her feet. It was a charm that she could always offer to his eyes. It was her glory and her pride to enhance it for his delectation. Her beauty was herself. That gone, she had nothing but a worthless soul to offer, and what woman would dream of offering a man her soul if she had no casket in which to enshrine it? If I had presented this other aspect of the case to Lola, she would have cried out, with perfect sincerity:

"My soul! You get things like mine anywhere for twopence a dozen."

It was the blasting of her beauty that was the infinite matter. All that I loved would be gone. She would have nothing left to give. The splendour of the day had ceased, and now was coming the long, long, dreary night, to meet which with dignity she was nerving her brave heart.

The tears were not far from my eyes when I said again softly:

"Your lover always, dear."

"Make no promises," she said, "except one."

"And that is?"

"That you will write me often until I come home."

"Every day."

So we parted, and I returned to London and to my duties at Barbara's Building. I wrote daily, and her dictated answers gave me knowledge of her progress. To my immense relief, I heard that the oculist's skill had saved her eyesight; but it could not obliterate the traces of the cruel claws.

The days, although fuller with work and interests, appeared long until she came. I saw but little of the outside world. Dale, my sister Agatha, Sir Joshua Oldfield, and Campion were the only friends I met. Dale was ingenuously sympathetic when he head of the calamity.

"What's going to happen?" he asked, after he had exhausted his vocabulary of abuse on cats, Providence and Anastasius Papadopoulos. "What's the poor dear going to do?"

"If I am going to have any voice in the matter," said I, "she is going to marry me."

He wrung me by the hand enthusiastically and declared that I was the splendidest fellow that ever lived. Then he sighed.

"I am going about like a sheep without a leader. For Heaven's sake, come back into politics. Form a hilarious little party of your own—anything—so long as you're back and take me with you."

"Come to Barbara's Building," said I.

But he made a wry face, and said that he did not think Maisie would like it. I laughed and put my hand on his shoulder.

"My son, you have a leader already, and she has already tied a blue riband round your woolly neck, and she is pulling you wherever she wants to go. And it's all to the infinite advantage of your eternal soul."

Whereupon he grinned and departed to the sheepfold.

At last Lola came. She begged me not to meet her at the station, but to go round after dinner to Cadogan Gardens.

Dawkins opened the door for me and showed me into the familiar drawing-room. The long summer day was nearing its end, and only a dim twilight came through the open windows. Lola was standing rigid on the hearthrug, her hand shielding the whole of the right side of her face. With the free hand she checked my impetuous advance.

"Stop and look!" she said, and then dropped the shielding hand, and stood before me with twitching lips and death in her eyes. I saw in a flash the devastation that had been wrought; but, thank God, I pierced beneath it to the anguish in her heart. The pity—the awful, poignant pity—of it smote me. Everything that was man in me surged towards her. What she saw in my eyes I know not; but in hers dawned a sudden wonder. There was no recoil of shock, such as she had steeled herself to encounter. I sprang forward and clasped her in my arms. Her stiffened frame gradually relaxed and our lips met, and in that kiss all fears and doubts were dissolved for ever.

Some hours later she said: "If you are blind enough to care for a maimed thing like me, I can't help it. I shall never understand it to my dying day," she added with a long sigh.

"And you will marry me?"

"I suppose I've got to," she replied. And with the old pantherine twist of her body she slid from her easy-chair to the ground and buried her face on my knees.



And that is the end of my story. We were quietly married three weeks afterwards. Agatha, wishing to humour a maniac for whom she retained an unreasonable affection, came to the wedding and treated Lola as only a sweet lady could. But my doings passed her understanding. As for Jane, my other sister, she cast me from her. People who did these things, she maintained, must bear the consequences. I bore them bravely. It is only now that my name is beginning to be noised abroad as that of one who speaks with some knowledge on certain social questions that Jane holds out the olive branch of fraternal peace. After a brief honeymoon Lola insisted on joining me in Barbara's Building. A set of rooms next to mine was vacant, and Campion, who welcomed a new worker, had the two sets thrown into what house-agents term a commodious flat. She is now Lady Superior of the Institution. The title is Campion's, and for some odd feminine reason Lola is delighted with it.

Yes, this is the end of the story which I began (it seems in a previous incarnation) at Murglebed-on-Sea.

The maiming of Lola's beauty has been the last jest which the Arch-Jester has practised on me. I fancy he thought that this final scurvy trick would wipe Simon de Gex for ever out of the ranks of his rivals. But I flatter myself that, having snapped my fingers in his face, the last laugh has been on my side. He has withdrawn discomfited from the conflict and left me master of the ground. Love conquers all, even the Arch-Jester.

There are some who still point to me as one who has deliberately ruined a brilliant career, who pity me as one who has gone under, who speak with shrugged shoulders and uplifted eyebrows at my unfortunate marriage and my obscure and cranky occupation. The world, they say, was at my feet. So it was. But what the pitying critics lack the grace to understand is that better than to have it under one's feet is to have it, or that of it which matters, at one's heart.

I sit in this tiny hotel by the sea and reflect that it is over three years since I awoke from death and assumed a new avatar. And since my marriage, what have been the happenings?

Dale has just been elected for the Fensham Division of Westmoreland, and he has already begun the line of sturdy young Kynnersleys, of which I had eumoirous dreams long ago. Quast and the cats have passed into alien hands. Anastasius Papadopoulos is dead. He died three months ago of angina pectoris, and Lola was with him at the end. Eleanor Faversham has married a Colonial bishop. Campion, too, has married—and married the last woman in the world to whom one would have thought of mating him—a frivolous butterfly of a creature who drags him to dinner-parties and Ascot and suppers at the Savoy, and holds Barbara's Building and all it connotes in vixenish detestation. He roars out the agony of his philanthropic spirit to Lola and myself, who administer consolation and the cold mutton that he loves. The story of his marriage is a little lunatic drama all to itself and I will tell it some day. But now I can only rough-sketch the facts. He works when he can at the beloved creation of his life and fortune; but the brain that would be inadequate to the self-protecting needs of a ferret controls the action of this masterful enthusiast, and his one awful despair in life is to touch a heart that might beat in the bosom of a vicious and calculating haddock. I only mention this to explain how it has come to pass that Lola and I are now all-powerful in Barbara's Building. It has become the child of our adoption and we love it with a deep and almost fanatic affection. Before Lola my influence and personality fade into nothingness. She is the power, the terror, the adoration of Lambeth. If she chose she could control the Parliamentary vote of the borough. Her great, direct, large-hearted personality carries all before it. And with it there is something of the uncanny. A feat of hers in the early days is by way of becoming legendary.

A woman, on the books of the Building, was about to bring a hopeless human fragment into a grey world. Lola went to see what aid the Building could provide. In front of the door lounged the husband, a hulking porter in a Bermondsey factory. Glowering at his feet lay a vicious mongrel dog—bull-terrier, Irish-terrier, mastiff—so did Lola with her trained eye distinguish the strains. When she asked for his wife in travail the chivalrous gentleman took his pipe from his mouth, spat, and after the manner of his kind referred to the disfigurement of her face in terms impossible to transcribe. She paid no attention.

"I'm coming upstairs to see your wife."

"If you pass that door, s'welp me Gawd, I'll set the dog on yer."

She paused. He urged the dog, who bristled and growled and showed his teeth. Lola picked the animal up, as she would have picked up a sofa cushion, and threw him across the street. She went to where he had fallen, ordered him to his feet, and the dog licked her hand. She came back with a laugh.

"I'll do the same to you if you don't let me in!"

She pushed the hulking brute aside. He resisted and laid hands on her. By some extraordinary tamer's art of which she had in vain tried to explain to me the secret, and with no apparent effort, she glided away from him and sent him cowering and subdued some feet beyond the lintel of the door. The street, which was watching, went into a roar of laughter and applause. Lola mounted the stairs and attended to the business in hand. When she came down the man was still standing at the threshold smoking an obfusticated pipe. He blinked at her as if she had been a human dynamo.

"Come round to Barbara's Building at six o'clock and tell me how she is."

He came on the stroke of six.

The fame of Lola spread through the borough, and now she can walk feared, honoured, unmolested by night or by day through the streets of horror and crime, which neither I nor any other man—no matter how courageous—dare enter at certain hours without the magical protection of a policeman.

Sunshine has come at last, both into this little backwater of the world by the sea and into my own life, and it is time I should end this futile record.

Yesterday as we lay on the sands, watching the waves idly lap the shore, Lola brought herself nearer to me with a rhythmic movement as no other creature form of woman is capable of, and looked into my eyes. And she whispered something to me which led to an infinite murmuring of foolish things. I put my arms round her and kissed her on the lips and on her cheek—whether the beautiful or the maimed I knew not—and she sank into a long, long silence. At last she said:

"What are you thinking of?"

I said, "I'm thinking that not a single human being on the face of the earth has a sense of humour."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Simply this," said I, "that what has occurred billions of billions of millions of times on the earth we are now regarding as the only thing that ever happened."

"Well," said Lola, "so it is—for us—the only thing that ever happened."

And the astounding woman was right.

THE END