Dale's occupation, like Othello's, being gone, as far as I am concerned,
Lady Kynnersley has despatched him to Berlin, on her own business,
connected, I think, with the International Aid Society. He is to stay
there for a fortnight.
How he proposes to bear the separation from the object of his flame I
have not inquired; but if forcible objurgations in the vulgar tongue
have any inner significance, I gather that Lady Kynnersley has not
employed an enthusiastic agent.
Being thus free to pursue my eumoirous schemes without his intervention,
for you cannot talk to a lady for her soul's good when her adorer is
gaping at you, I have taken the opportunity to see something of Lola
Brandt.
I find I have seen a good deal of her; and it seems not improbable that
I shall see considerably more. Deuce take the woman!
On the first afternoon of Dale's absence I paid her my promised visit.
It was a dull day, and the room, lit chiefly by the firelight,
happily did not reveal its nerve-racking tastelessness. Lola Brandt,
supple-limbed and lazy-voiced, talked to me from the cushioned depths of
her chair.
We lightly touched on Dale's trip to Berlin. She would miss him
terribly. It was so kind of me to come and cheer her lonely hour.
Politeness forbade my saying that I had come to do nothing of the sort.
To my vague expression of courtesy she responded by asking me with a
laugh how I liked Mr. Anastasius Papadopoulos.
I replied that I considered it urbane on his part to invite me to see
his cats perform.
“If you were to hurt one of his cats he'd murder you,” she informed me.
“He always carries a long, sharp knife concealed somewhere about him on
purpose.”
“What a fierce little gentleman,” I remarked.
“He looks on me as one of his cats, too,” she said with a low laugh,
“and considers himself my protector. Once in Buda-Pesth he and I were
driving about. I was doing some shopping. As I was getting into the cab
a man insulted me, on account, I suppose, of my German name. Anastasius
sprang at him like a wild beast, and I had to drag him off bodily and
lift him back into the cab. I'm pretty strong, you know. It must have
been a funny sight.” She turned to me quickly. “Do you think it wrong of
me to laugh?”
“Why shouldn't you laugh at the absurd?”
“Because in devotion like that there seems to be something solemn
and frightening. If I told him to kill his cats, he would do it. If I
ordered him to commit Hari-Kari on the hearthrug, he would whip out his
knife and obey me. When you have a human soul at your mercy like that,
it's a kind of sacrilege to laugh at it. It makes you feel--oh, I can't
express myself. Look, it doesn't make tears come into your eyes exactly,
it makes them come into your heart.”
We continued the subject, divagating as we went, and had a nice little
sentimental conversation. There are depths of human feeling I should
never have suspected in this lazy panther of a woman, and although she
openly avows having no more education than a tinker's dog, she can talk
with considerable force and vividness of expression.
Indeed, when one comes to think of it, a tinker's dog has a fine
education if he be naturally a shrewd animal and takes advantage of his
opportunities; and a fine education, too, of its kind was that of
the vagabond Lola, who on her way from Dublin to Yokohama had more
profitably employed her time than Lady Kynnersley supposed. She had
seen much of the civilised places of the earth in her wanderings from
engagement to engagement, and had been an acute observer of men and
things.
We exchanged travel pictures and reminiscences. I found myself floating
with her through moonlit Venice, while she chanted with startling
exactness the cry of the gondoliers. To my confusion be it spoken, I
forgot all about Dale Kynnersley and my mission. The lazy voice and
rich personality fascinated me. When I rose to go I found I had spent a
couple of hours in her company. She took me round the room and showed me
some of her treasures.
“This is very old. I think it is fifteenth century,” she said, picking
up an Italian ivory.
It was. I expressed my admiration. Then maliciously I pointed to a
horrible little Tyrolean chalet and said:
“That, too, is very pretty.”
“It isn't. And you know it.”
She is a most disconcerting creature. I accepted the rebuke meekly. What
else could I do?
“Why, then, do you have it here?”
“It's a present from Anastasius,” she said. “Every time he comes to
see me he brings what he calls an _'offrande'_. All these things”--she
indicated, with a comprehensive sweep of the arm, the Union Jack
cushion, the little men mounting ladders inside bottles, the hen sitting
on her nest, and the other trumpery gimcracks--“all these things are
presents from Anastasius. It would hurt him not to see them here when he
calls.”
“You might have a separate cabinet,” I suggested.
“A chamber of horrors?” she laughed. “No. It gives him more pleasure to
see them as they are--and a poor little freak doesn't get much out of
life.”
She sighed, and picking up “A Present from Margate” kind of mug,
fingered it very tenderly.
I went away feeling angry. Was the woman bewitching me? And I felt
angrier still when I met Lady Kynnersley at dinner that evening. Luckily
I had only a few words with her. Had I done anything yet with regard to
Dale and the unmentionable woman? If I had told her that I had spent
a most agreeable afternoon with the enchantress, she would not have
enjoyed her evening. Like General Trochu of the Siege of Paris fame, I
said in my most mysterious manner, “I have my plan,” and sent her into
dinner comforted.
But I had no plan. My next interview with Madame Brandt brought me no
further. We have established telephonic communications. Through the
medium of this diabolical engine of loquacity and indiscretion, I was
prevailed on to accompany her to a rehearsal of Anastasius's cats.
Rogers, with a face as imperturbable as if he was announcing the visit
of an archbishop, informed me at the appointed hour that Madame Brandt's
brougham was at the door. I went down and found the brougham open, as
the day was fine, and Lola Brandt, smiling under a gigantic hat with an
amazing black feather, and looking as handsome as you please.
We were blocked for a few minutes at the mouth of the courtyard, and
I had the pleasure of all Piccadilly that passed staring at us in
admiration. Lola Brandt liked it; but I didn't, especially when I
recognised one of the starers as the eldest Drascombe-Prynne boy whose
people in Paris are receiving Eleanor Faversham under their protection.
A nice reputation I shall be acquiring. My companion was in gay mood.
Now, as it is no part of dealing unto oneself a happy life and portion
to damp a fellow creature's spirits, I responded with commendable
gaiety.
I own that the drive to Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos's cattery in
Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell, was distinctly enjoyable. I forgot all
about the little pain inside and the Fury with the abhorred shears, and
talked a vast amount of nonsense which the lady was pleased to regard
as wit, for she laughed wholeheartedly, showing her strong white, even
teeth. But why was I going?
Was it because she had requested me through the telephone to give
unimagined happiness to a poor little freak who would be as proud as
Punch to exhibit his cats to an English Member of Parliament? Was it
in order to further my designs--Machiavellian towards the lady, but
eumoirous towards Dale? Or was it simply for my own good pleasure?
Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos, resplendently raimented, with the
shiniest of silk hats and a flower in the buttonhole of his frock-coat,
received us at the door of a small house, the first-floor windows of
which announced the tenancy of a maker of gymnastic appliances; and
having kissed Madame Brandt's hand with awful solemnity and bowed deeply
to me, he preceded us down the passage, out into the yard, and into a
ramshackle studio at the end, where his cats had their being.
There were fourteen of them, curled up in large cages standing against
the walls. The place was lit by a skylight and warmed by a stove.
The floor, like a stage, was fitted up with miniature acrobatic
paraphernalia and properties. There were little five-barred gates, and
trapezes, and tight-ropes, and spring-boards, and a trestle-table, all
the metal work gleaming like silver. A heavy, uncouth German lad, whom
the professor introduced as his pupil and assistant, Quast, was in
attendance. Mr. Papadopoulos polyglotically acknowledged the honour I
had conferred upon him. He is very like the late Emperor of the French;
but his forehead is bulgier.
With a theatrical gesture and the remark that I should see, he opened
some cages and released half a dozen cats--a Persian, a white Angora,
and four commonplace tabbies, who all sprang on to the table with
military precision. Madame Brand began to caress them. I, wishing to
show interest in the troupe, prepared to do the same; but the dwarf
scurried up with a screech from the other end of the room.
_“Ne touchez pas--ne touchez pas!”_
I refrained, somewhat wonderingly, from touching. Madame Brandt
explained.
“He thinks you would spoil the magnetic influence. It is a superstition
of his.”
“But you are touching.”
“He believes I have his magnetism--whatever that may be,” she said, with
a smile. “Would you like to see an experiment? Anastasius!”
“Carissima.”
“Is that the untamed Persian you were telling me of?” she asked,
pointing to a cage from which a ferocious gigantic animal more like a
woolly tiger than a tom-cat looked out with expressionless yellow eyes.
“Will you let Mr. de Gex try to make friends with it?”
“Your will is law, meine Konigin,” replied Professor Papadopoulos,
bowing low. “But Hephaestus is as fierce as the flames of hell.”
“See what he'll do,” laughed Lola Brandt.
I approached the cage with an ingratiating, “Puss, puss!” and a hideous
growl welcomed me. I ventured my hand towards the bars. The beast
bristled in demoniac wrath, spat with malignant venom, and shot out its
claws. If I had touched it my hand would have been torn to shreds. I
have never seen a more malevolent, fierce, spiteful, ill-conditioned
brute in my life. My feelings being somewhat hurt, and my nerves a bit
shaken, I retreated hastily.
“Now look,” said Lola Brandt.
With absolute fearlessness she went up to the cage, opened it, took
the unresisting thing out by the scruff of its neck, held it up like a
door-mat, and put it on her shoulder, where it forthwith began to purr
like any harmless necessary cat and rub its head against her cheek. She
put it on the floor; it arched its back and circling sideways rubbed
itself against her skirts.
She sat down, and taking the brute by its forepaws made it stand on its
hind legs. She pulled it on to her lap and it curled round lazily. Then
she hoisted it on to her shoulder again, and, rising, crossed the room
and bowed to the level of the cage, when the beast leaped in purring
thunderously in high good humour. Mr. Papadopoulos sang out in
breathless delight:
“If I am the King of Cats, you, Carissima, are the Queen. Nay, more, you
are the Goddess!”
Lola Brandt laughed. I did not. It was uncanny. It seemed as if some
mysterious freemasonic affinity existed between her and the evil beast.
During her drive hither she had entered my own atmosphere. She had
been the handsome, unconventional woman of the world. Now she seemed as
remote from me as the witches in “Macbeth.”
If I had seen her dashing Paris hat rise up into a point and her
umbrella turn into a broomstick, and herself into one of the buxom
carlines of “Tam O'Shanter,” I should not have been surprised. The feats
of the mild pussies which the dwarf began forthwith to exhibit provoked
in me but a polite counterfeit of enthusiasm. Lola Brandt had discounted
my interest. Even his performance with the ferocious Persian lacked the
diabolical certainty of Lola's handling. He locked all the other cats up
and enticed it out of the cage with a piece of fish. He guided it with
a small whip, as it jumped over gates and through blazing hoops, and he
stood tense and concentrated, like a lion-tamer.
The act over, the cat turned and snarled and only jumped into its cage
after a smart flick of the whip. The dwarf did not touch it once with
his hands. I applauded, however, and complimented him. He laid his hand
on his heart and bent forward in humility.
“Ah, monsieur, I am but a neophyte where Madame is an expert. I know the
superficial nature of cats. Now and then without vainglory I can say I
know their hearts; but Madame penetrates to and holds commune with their
souls. And a cat's soul, monsieur, is a wonderful thing. Once it was
divine--in ancient Egypt. Doubtless monsieur has heard of Pasht? Holy
men spent their lives in approaching the cat-soul. Madame was born to
the privilege. Pasht watches over her.”
“Pasht,” I said politely in French, in reply to this clotted nonsense,
“was a great divinity. And for yourself, who knows but what you may have
been in a previous incarnation the keeper of the Sacred Cats in some
Egyptian temple.”
“I was,” he said, with staggering earnestness. “At Memphis.”
“One of these days,” I returned, with equal solemnity, “I hope for the
privilege of hearing some of your reminiscences. They would no doubt be
interesting.”
On the way back Lola thanked me for pretending to take the little man
seriously, and not laughing at him.
“If I hadn't,” said I, “he would have stuck his knife into me.”
She shook her head. “You did it naturally. I was watching you. It is
because you are a generous-hearted gentleman.”
Said I: “If you talk like that I'll get out and walk.”
And, indeed, what right had she to characterise the moral condition
of my heart? I asked her. She laughed her low, lazy laugh, but made no
reply. Presently she said:
“Why didn't you like my making friends with the cat?”
“How do you know I didn't like it?” I asked.
“I felt it.”
“You mustn't feel things like that,” I remarked. “It isn't good for
you.”
She insisted on my telling her. I explained as well as I could. She
touched the sleeve of my coat with her gloved hand.
“I'm glad, because it shows you take an interest in me. And I wanted
to let you see that I could do something besides loll about in
a drawing-room and smoke cigarettes. It's all I can do. But it's
something.” She said it with the humility of the Jongleur de Notre Dame
in Anatole Frances's story.
In Eaton Square, where I had a luncheon engagement, she dropped me, and
drove off smiling, evidently well pleased with herself. My hostess was
standing by the window when I was shown into the drawing-room. I noted
the faintest possible little malicious twinkle in her eye.
During the afternoon I had a telephonic message from my doctor, who
asked me why I had neglected him for a fortnight and urged me to go to
Harley Street at once. To humour him I went the next morning. Hunnington
is a bluff, hearty fellow who feeds himself into pink floridity so as to
give confidence to his patients. In answer to his renewed inquiry as to
my neglect, I remarked that a man condemned to be hanged doesn't seek
interviews with the judge in order to learn how the rope is getting on.
I conveyed to him politely, although he is an old friend, that I desired
to forget his well-fed existence. In his chatty way he requested me not
to be an ass, and proceeded to put to me the usual silly questions.
Remembering the result of my last visit, I made him happy by answering
them gloomily; whereupon he seized his opportunity and ordered me out
of England for the winter. I must go to a warm climate--Egypt, South
Africa, Madeira--I could take my choice. I flatly refused to obey. I had
my duties in London. He was so unsympathetic as to damn my duties. My
duty was to live as long as possible, and my wintering in London would
probably curtail my short life by two months. Then I turned on him
and explained the charitable disingenuousness of my replies to
his questions. He refused to believe me, and we parted with mutual
recriminations. I sent him next day, however, a brace of pheasants, a
present from Farfax Glenn. After all, he is one of God's creatures.
The next time I called on Lola Brandt I went with the fixed
determination to make some progress in my mission. I vowed that I would
not be seduced by trumpery conversation about Yokohama or allow my mind
to be distracted by absurd adventures among cats. I would clothe myself
in the armour of eumoiriety, and, with the sword of duty in my hand,
would go forth to battle with the enchantress. All said and done, what
was she but a bold-faced, strapping woman without an idea in her head
save the enslavement of an impressionable boy several years her junior?
It was preposterous that I, Simon de Gex, who had beguiled and fooled an
electorate of thirty thousand hard-headed men into choosing me for their
representative in Parliament, should not be a match for Lola Brandt.
As for her complicated feminine personality, her intuitiveness, her
magnetism, her fascination, all the qualities in fact which my poetical
fancy had assigned to her, they had no existence in reality. She was
the most commonplace person I had ever encountered, and I had been but a
sentimental lunatic.
In this truly admirable frame of mind I entered her drawing-room. She
threw down the penny novel she was reading, and with a little cry of joy
sprang forward to greet me.
“I'm so glad you've come. I was getting the blind hump!”
Did I not say she was commonplace? I hate this synonym for boredom.
It may be elegant in the mouth of a duchess and pathetic in that of an
oyster-wench, but it falls vulgarly from intermediate lips.
“What has given it to you?” I asked.
“My poor little ouistiti is dead. It is this abominable climate.”
I murmured condolences. I could not exhibit unreasonable grief at the
demise of a sick monkey which I had never seen.
“I'm also out of books,” she said, after having paid her tribute to the
memory of the departed. “I have been forced to ask the servants to lend
me something to read. Have you ever tried this sort of thing? You ought
to. It tells you what goes on in high society.”
I was sure it didn't. Not a duchess in its pages talked about having a
blind hump. I said gravely:
“I will ask you to lend it to me. Since Dale has been away I've had no
one to make out my library list.”
“Do turn Adolphus out of that chair and sit down,” she said, sinking
into her accustomed seat. Adolphus was the Chow dog before mentioned,
an accomplished animal who could mount guard with the poker and stand on
his head, and had been pleased to favour me with his friendship.
“I miss Dale greatly,” said I.
“I suppose you do. You are very fond of him?”
“Very,” said I. “By the by, how did you first come across Dale?”
She threw me a swift glance and smiled.
“Oh, in the most respectable way. I was dining at the Carlton with Sir
Joshua Oldfield, the famous surgeon, you know. He performed a silly
little operation on me last year, and since then we've been great
friends. Dale and some sort of baby boy were dining there, too, and
afterwards, in the lounge, Sir Joshua introduced them to me. Dale asked
me if he could call. I said 'Yes.' Perhaps I was wrong. Anyhow, _voila_!
Do you know Sir Joshua?”
“I sat next to him once at a public dinner. He's a friend of the
Kynnersleys. A genial old soul.”
“He's a dear!” said Lola.
“Do you know many of Dale's friends?” I asked.
“Hardly any,” she replied. “It's rather lonesome.” Then she broke into a
laugh.
“I was so terrified at meeting you the first time. Dale can talk of no
one else. He makes a kind of god of you. I felt I was going to hate you
like the devil. I expected quite a different person.”
The diplomatist listens to much and says little.
“Indeed,” I remarked.
She nodded. “I thought you would be a big beefy man with a red face, you
know. He gave me the idea somehow by calling you a 'splendid chap.' You
see, I couldn't think of a 'splendid chap' with a white face and a waxed
moustache and your way of talking.”
“I am sorry,” said I, “not to come up to your idea of the heroic.”
“But you do!” she cried, with one of her supple twists of the body. “It
was I that was stupid. And I don't hate you at all. You can see that I
don't. I didn't even hate you when you came as an enemy.”
“Ah!” said I. “What made you think that? We agreed to argue it out, if
you remember.”
She drew out of a case beside her one of her unspeakable cigarettes. “Do
you suppose,” she said, lighting it, and pausing to inhale the first
two or three puffs of smoke, “do you suppose that a woman who has lived
among wild beasts hasn't got instinct?”
I drew my chair nearer to the fire. She was beginning to be uncanny
again.
“I expected you were going to be horrified at the dreadful creature your
friend had taken up with. Oh, yes, I know in the eyes of your class
I'm a dreadful creature. I'm like a cat in many ways. I'm suspicious
of strangers, especially strangers of your class, and I sniff and sniff
until I feel it's all right. After the first few minutes I felt you were
all right. You're true and honourable, like Dale, aren't you?”
Like a panther making a sudden spring, she sat bolt upright in her chair
as she launched this challenge at me. Now, it is disconcerting to a man
to have a woman leap at his throat and ask him whether he is true and
honourable, especially when his attitude towards her approaches the
Machiavellian.
I could only murmur modestly that I hoped I could claim these
qualifications.
“And you don't think me a dreadful woman?”
“So far from it, Madame Brandt,” I replied, “that I think you a
remarkable one.”
“I wonder if I am,” she said, sinking back among her cushions. “I should
like to be for Dale's sake. I suppose you know I care a great deal for
Dale?”
“I have taken the liberty of guessing it,” said I. “And since you have
done me the honour of taking me so far into your confidence,” I added,
playing what I considered to be my master-card, “may I venture to ask
whether you have contemplated”--I paused--“marriage?”
Her brow grew dark, as she looked involuntarily at her bare left hand.
“I have got a husband already,” she replied.
As I expected. Ladies like Lola Brandt always have husbands unfit for
publication; and as the latter seem to make it a point of honour never
to die, widowed Lolas are as rare as blackberries in spring.
“Forgive my rudeness,” I said, “but you wear no wedding ring.”
“I threw it into the sea.”
“Ah!” said I.
“Do you want to hear about him?” she asked suddenly. “If we are to be
friends, perhaps you had better know. Somehow I don't like talking to
Dale about it. Do you mind putting some coals on the fire?”
I busied myself with the coal-scuttle, lit a cigarette, and settled down
to hear the story. If it had not been told in the twilight hour by a
woman with a caressing, enveloping voice like Lola Brandt's I should
have yawned myself out of the house.
It was a dismal, ordinary story. Her husband was a gentleman, a Captain
Vauvenarde in the French Army. He had fallen in love with her when she
had first taken Marseilles captive with the prodigiosities of her
horse Sultan. His proposals of manifold unsanctified delights met
with unqualified rejection by the respectable and not too passionately
infatuated Lola. When he nerved himself to the supreme sacrifice of
offering marriage she accepted.
She had dreams of social advancement, yearned to be one of the white
faces of the audience in the front rows. The civil ceremony having been
performed, he pleaded with her for a few weeks' secrecy on account of
his family. The weeks grew into months, during which, for the sake of
a livelihood, she fulfilled her professional engagements in many other
towns. At last, when she returned to Marseilles, it became apparent that
Captain Vauvenarde had no intention whatever of acknowledging her openly
as his wife. Hence many tears. Moreover, he had little beyond his pay
and his gambling debts, instead of the comfortable little fortune that
would have assured her social position. Now, officers in the French
Army who marry ladies with performing horses are not usually guided by
reason; and Captain Vauvenarde seems to have been the most unreasonable
being in the world. It was beneath the dignity of Captain Vauvenarde's
wife to make a horse do tricks in public, and it was beneath Captain
Vauvenarde's dignity to give her his name before the world. She must
neither be Lola Brandt nor Madame Vauvenarde. She must give up her
fairly lucrative profession and live in semi-detached obscurity up a
little back street on an allowance of twopence-halfpenny a week and be
happy and cheerful and devoted. Lola refused. Hence more tears.
There were scenes of frantic jealousy, not on account of any human
being, but on account of the horse. If she loved him as much as she
loved that abominable quadruped whose artificial airs and graces made
him sick every time he looked at it, she would accede to his desire.
Besides, he had the husband's right--a powerful privilege in France. She
pointed out that he could only exercise it by declaring her to be his
wife. Relations were strained. They led separate lives. From Marseilles
she went to Genoa, whither he followed her. Eventually he went away in a
temper and never came back. She had not heard from him since, and where
he was at the present moment she had not the faintest idea.
“So you went cheerfully on with your profession?” I remarked.
“I returned to Marseilles, and there I lost my horse Sultan. Then my
father died and left me pretty well off, and I hadn't the heart to train
another animal. So here I am. Ah!”
With one of her lithe movements she rose to her feet, and, flinging out
her arms in a wide gesture, began to walk about the room, stopping here
and there to turn on the light and draw the flaring chintz curtains. I
rose, too, so as to aid her. Suddenly as we met, by the window, she laid
both her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face earnestly and
imploringly, and her lips quivered. I wondered apprehensively what she
was going to do next.
“For God's sake, be my friend and help me!”
The cry, in her rich, low notes, seemed to come from the depths of the
woman's nature. It caused some absurd and unnecessary chord within me to
vibrate.
For the first time I realised that her strong, handsome face could look
nobly and pathetically beautiful. Her eyes swam in an adorable moisture
and grew very human and appealing. In a second all my self-denying
ordinances were forgotten. The witch had me in her power again.
“My dear Madame Brandt,” said I, “how can I do it?”
“Don't take Dale from me. I've lived alone, alone, alone all these
years, and I couldn't bear it.”
“Do you care for him so very much?”
She withdrew her hands and moved slightly. “Who else in the wide world
have I to care for?”
This was very pathetic, but I had the sense to remark that compromising
the boy's future was not the best way of showing her devotion.
“Oh, how could I do that?” she asked. “I can't marry him. And if I do
what I've never done before for any man--become his mistress--who need
know? I could stay in the background.”
“You seem to forget, dear lady,” said I, “that Captain Vauvenarde is
probably alive.”
“But I tell you I've lost sight of him altogether.”
“Are you quite so sure,” I asked, regaining my sanity by degrees, “that
Captain Vauvenarde has lost sight of you?”
She turned quickly. “What do you mean?”
“You have given him no chance as yet of recovering his freedom.”
She passed her hand over her face, and sat down on the sofa. “Do you
mean--divorce?”
“It's an ugly word, dear Madame Brandt,” said I, as gently as I could,
“but you and I are strong people and needn't fear uttering it. Don't
you think such a scandal would ruin Dale at the very beginning of his
career?”
There was a short silence. I was glad to see she was feminine enough to
twist and tear her handkerchief.
“What am I to do?” she asked at last. “I can't live this awful lonely
life much longer. Sometimes I get the creeps.”
I might have given her the sound advice to find healthy occupation
in training crocodiles to sit up and beg; but an idea which advanced
thinkers might classify as more suburban was beginning to take shape in
my mind.
“Has it occurred to you,” I said, “that now you have assumed the
qualifications imposed by Captain Vauvenarde for bearing his name?”
“I don't understand.”
“You no longer perform in public. He would have no possible grievance
against you.”
“Are you suggesting that I should go back to my husband?” she gasped.
“I am,” said I, feeling mighty diplomatic.
She looked straight in front of her, with parted lips, fingering her
handkerchief and evidently pondering the entirely new suggestion. I
thought it best to let her ponder. As a general rule, people will do
anything in the world rather than think; so, when one sees a human
being wrapped in thought, one ought to regard wilful disturbance of the
process as sacrilege. I lit a cigarette and wandered about the room.
Eventually I came to a standstill before the Venus of Milo. But while
I was admiring its calm, mysterious beauty, the development of a former
idea took the shape of an inspiration which made my heart sing. Fate had
put into my hands the chance of complete eumoiriety.
If I could effect a reconciliation between Lola Brandt and her husband,
Dale would be cured almost automatically of his infatuation, and
I should be the Deputy Providence bringing happiness to six human
beings--Lola Brandt, Captain Vauvenarde, Lady Kynnersley, Maisie
Ellerton, Dale, and Mr. Anastasius Papadopoulos, who could not fail to
be delighted at the happiness of his goddess.
There also might burst joyously on the earth a brood of gleeful little
Vauvenardes and merry little Kynnersleys, who might regard Simon de Gex
as their mythical progenitor. It might add to the gaiety of regiments
and the edification of parliaments. Acts should be judged, thought
I, not according to their trivial essence, but by the light of their
far-reaching consequences.
Lola Brandt broke the silence. She did not look at me. She said:
“I can't help feeling that you're my friend.”
“I am,” I cried, in the exultation of my promotion to the role of Deputy
Providence. “I am indeed. And a most devoted one.”
“Will you let me think over what you've said for a day or two--and then
come for an answer?”
“Willingly,” said I.
“And you won't----?”
“What?”
“No. I know you won't.”
“Tell Dale?” I said, guessing. “No, of course not.”
She rose and put out both her hands to me in a very noble gesture. I
took them and kissed one of them.
She looked at me with parted lips.
“You are the best man I have ever met,” she said.
At the moment of her saying it I believed it; such conviction is induced
by the utterances of this singular woman. But when I got outside the
drawing-room door my natural modesty revolted. I slapped my thigh
impatiently with what I thought were my gloves. They made so little
sound that I found there was only one. I had left the other inside. I
entered and found Lola Brandt in front of the fire holding my glove in
her hand. She started in some confusion.
“Is this yours?” she asked.
Now whose could it have been but mine? The ridiculous question worried
me, off and on, all the evening.