That evening the Duke of Ormskirk sat alone in his lodgings. His Grace
was very splendid in black-and-gold, wearing his two stars of the Garter
and the Thistle, for there was that night a ball at Lady Sandwich's, and
Royalty was to embellish it. In consequence, Ormskirk meant to show his
plump face there for a quarter of an hour; and the rooms would be too
hot (he peevishly reflected), and the light would tire his eyes, and
Laventhrope would button-hole him again about that appointment for
Laventhrope's son, and the King would give vent to some especially
fat-witted jest, and Ormskirk would apishly grin and applaud. And afterward
he would come home with a headache, and ghostly fiddles would vex him all
night long with their thin incessancy.
"Accordingly," the Duke decided, "I shall not stir a step until eleven
o'clock. The King, in the ultimate, is only a tipsy, ignorant old German
debauchee, and I have half a mind to tell him so. Meantime, he can wait."
The Duke sat down to consider this curious lassitude, this indefinite
vexation, which had possessed him.
"For I appear to have taken a sudden dislike to the universe. It is
probably my liver.
"In any event, I have come now to the end of my resources. For some
twenty-five years it has amused me to make a great man of John Bulmer. Now
that is done, and, like the Moorish fellow in the play, 'my occupation's
gone.' I am at the very top of the ladder, and I find it the dreariest
place in the world. There is nothing left to scheme for, and, besides, I am
tired.
"The tiniest nerve in my body, the innermost cell of my brain, is tired
to-night.
"I wonder if getting married will divert me? I doubt it. Of course I ought
to marry, but then it must be rather terrible to have a woman loitering
around you for the rest of your life. She will probably expect me to talk
to her; she will probably come into my rooms and sit there whenever the
inclination prompts her,--in a sentence, she will probably worry me to
death. Eh well!--that die is cast!
"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil.' And what's her
name?--Oh, yes, Claire. That is a very silly name, and I suppose she is a
vixenish little idiot. However, the alliance is a sensible one. De Puysange
has had it in mind for some six months, I think, but certainly I did not
think he knew of my affair with Marian. Well, but he affects omniscience,
he delights in every small chicane. He is rather droll. Yesterday he knew
from the start that I was leading up to a proposal for his sister,--and yet
there we sat, two solemn fools, and played our tedious comedy to a finish.
_Eh bien!_ as he says, it is necessary to keep one's hand in.
"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil'--Alison was not
headstrong."
Ormskirk rose suddenly and approached an open window. It was a starless
sight, temperately cool, with no air stirring. Below was a garden of some
sort, and a flat roof which would be that of the stables, and beyond,
abrupt as a painted scene, a black wall of houses stood against a
steel-colored, vacant sky, reaching precisely to the middle of the vista.
Only a solitary poplar, to the rear of the garden, qualified this sombre
monotony of right angles. Ormskirk saw the world as an ugly mechanical
drawing, fashioned for utility, meticulously outlined with a ruler. Yet
there was a scent of growing things to nudge the senses.
"No, Alison was different. And Alison has been dead near twenty years.
And God help me! I no longer regret even Alison. I should have been more
truthful in talking with poor Harry Heleigh. But, as always, the temptation
to be picturesque was irresistible. Besides, the truth is humiliating.
"The real tragedy of life is to learn that it is not really tragic. To
learn that the world is gross, that it lacks nobility, that to considerate
persons it must be in effect quite unimportant,--here are commonplaces,
sweepings from the tub of the immaturest cynic. But to learn that you
yourself were thoughtfully constructed in harmony with the world you were
to live in, that you yourself are incapable of any great passion--eh, this
is an athletic blow to human vanity. Well! I acknowledge it. My love for
Alison Pleydell was the one sincere thing in my life. And it is dead. I do
not think of her once a month. I do not regret her except when I am tipsy
or bored or listening to music, and wish to fancy myself the picturesque
victim of a flint-hearted world. Which is a romantic lie; I move like a
man of card-board in a card-board world. Certain faculties and tastes and
mannerisms I undoubtedly possess, but if I have any personality at all,
I am not aware of it; I am a mechanism that eats and sleeps and clumsily
perambulates a ball that spins around a larger ball that revolves about
another, and so on, _ad infinitum_. Some day the mechanism will be broken.
Or it will slowly wear out, perhaps. And then it will go to the dust-heap.
And that will be the end of the great Duke of Ormskirk.
"John Bulmer did not think so. It is true that John Bulmer was a
magnanimous fool,--Upon the other hand, John Bulmer would never have stared
out of an ugly window at an uglier landscape and have talked yet uglier
nonsense to it. He would have been off post-haste after the young person
who is 'beautiful as an angel and headstrong as a devil.' And afterward he
would have been very happy or else very miserable. I begin to think that
John Bulmer was more sensible than the great Duke of Ormskirk. I would--I
would that he were still alive."
His Grace slapped one palm against his thigh with unwonted vigor. "Behold,
what I am longing for! I am longing for John Bulmer."
Presently he sounded the gong upon his desk. And presently he said: "My
adorable Pawsey, the great Duke of Ormskirk is now going to pay his
respects to George Guelph, King of Britain, France, and Ireland, defender
of the faith. Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg, and supreme head of the
Anglican and Hibernian Church. And to-morrow Mr. John Bulmer will set forth
upon a little journey into Poictesme. You will obligingly pack a valise.
No, I shall not require you,--for John Bulmer was entirely capable of
dressing and shaving himself. So kindly go to the devil, Pawsey, and stop
staring at me."
Later in the evening Pawsey, a thought mellowed by the ale of Dover,
deplored with tears the instability of a nation whose pilots were addicted
to tippling.
"Drunk as David's sow!" said Pawsey, "and 'im in the hactual presence of
'is Sacred Majesty!"