II

On the surface, and a good deal below the surface, there was nothing

at all to be said for Antony. I had often wondered what thoughts about

himself must pass through his mind in solitary moments when he viewed

his life (for he was not so insensitive but that that necessity could

never have come upon him)--just thirty-six years of life, which

had four years before that night finally ended its reckless social

passage in the utter loss of everything a man holds essential to the

self-respect with which he must face the world! Not, however, that

any loss could ever intimidate Antony into facing the world with any

other manner but that with which some imp had plagued his birth: a

blend of blustering indifference, dangerous humours, and a ripe and

racy geniality. But even so there must be some moments of terrible

reckonings in his soul, I always thought, when he realises his folly

in so spoiling the good life his could have been and had looked to be;

when, console himself with his "bad luck" as he may, he reaches a point

of self-knowledge that tells him, with his own brutality, how there is

a degree of failure that simply cannot be condoned by "bad luck."

I had known Antony for so long that my view of him in his manhood

was always brightened to his advantage by my school-day memories of

him; those of a gay and careless companion, with sufficient head but

little inclination for work: ever more rowdy and reckless than his

companions, a good sportsman and a good man at most games, and very

popular among those whom his fancy had not led him to treat as enemies.

It was maturity (or whatever queer development took its place in him)

that went to Antony's head, so that he began to run amok as soon as

he left Sandhurst; something seemed to grow up in him that spiced his

old faults with new outrage, and quite hid what good there was in him.

His, I then found to my astonishment, was the most makeshift mechanism

that God ever put into a man--for I had never dreamt of such complex

weaknesses in my Antony of old! Who would have thought that this man,

inches more than six straight feet of him, with his good looks, his

loud and easy geniality, and a certain aptitude of mind that expressed

itself in an understanding laugh where your clever man would have been

puzzled--who would have thought that this man who laughed with the

laugh of the middle ages was so shoddily made that his every organ and

moral attribute were as though held in place by oddments of string? For

never was there a man so consistently and appallingly weak to do battle

with himself, to compel himself to a sanity of living and a balance of

thought: a weak man, in that wretched word's most wretched and active

sense.

But the key to him lay just further than that weakness: that he

would have suffered, and indeed did, any torture rather than reveal

it--the indetermination and moral cowardice of those, without

exaggeration, giant fibres. This, I grew to realise, was the secret

of the contradiction that was Antony--this pose of strength where he

himself knew he was weak: the most penalising pose that ever bolstered

a man's vanity the more completely to wreck him. For the world might

have allowed Antony a certain length of forgiveness if he could have

been brought to reveal himself as he actually was, if he could only

have bowed his head and revealed the hesitancies of his nature, and his

contrition; if he could even for just once have foregone the childish

vanities of bluster and bravado with which he thought to carry through

every escapade. He thought to outwit punishment, but instead he did the

most difficult thing of all, he outwitted sympathy....

And since eventually such a pose as his must make indecency a fact

where it had once only been vaguely suggested, so Antony actually

became, in the course of time, the rogue and outsider that his

crooked vanity had once made him parade as a pose. For, be you ever

so arrogant, nature has been proved to have its laws for men as

well as for beasts, laws not astral but severely human, that never

cease to confound alchemists of every kind to their own hurt; and it

is obvious that a man may not play the fool with his soul without

covering it with the verdigris of his own folly--that sourness of heart

and crookedness that stole gradually on poor Antony, so that in his

thirties he was, to stretch a likeness, like a Hyde to the Jekyll of

his schooldays.

The advantages of a commission in the Brigade, of a name sufficient

to ensure a reasonable amount of credit and consideration, those

details which can so warm the cockles of even a philosophic heart

on a dull afternoon, and a little more than the usual pittance that

falls to the younger brothers of pukka baronets, warranted, surely,

a very fair prospect. And yet, in a few years' time, he had finally

convinced people beyond a shadow of doubt of what they had so far only

disliked to guess, of his complete failure to be either an officer or a

gentleman.

No man could be more noticeable in appearance than Antony, nor more

adequately fulfil the name by which he was often known, Red Antony;

for he was very tall and stoutly built, rather foppishly dressed, and

as consistently ginger as any man could well be--moustaches, eyebrows

that no brushing could tame into regularity, hair which waved back from

his forehead in a most attractive ginger but ordered profusion; and a

complexion appropriately coloured, and always so clear and fresh as to

seem to give the lie to the certain dissipation of the night before. A

very fine looking man, Red Antony, if you liked that kind of looks; but

so noticeable that his own appearance, no doubt, took a hand against

him, labelling his escapades with its prominence so that once pointed

out he was never forgotten; and men and women could cross the street in

good time to avoid the difficulty of acknowledging or of cutting him.

It was an accumulation of escapades, many of which had been overlooked

but for his manner of braving them, that had led to his final

extinction--which was long seen in coming. A thousand little and

unpleasant things were known and more than whispered about him. He

was a man of red-hot tempers, which there was no restraint in him to

keep within bounds; his weren't the rages that burnt inwardly and grew

in brooding, but in their sudden heat must burn outwardly, devouring

everything with no care nor heed for even primitive restraint. (There

have been times when I've been rather afraid of Antony myself.) And

so, from his great height of stature and violence, he had outrageously

insulted men in return for a fancied slight. He had committed follies,

when drunk, which his companions had hurriedly disavowed. He had,

as if by rote, done the one thing a man may still not do and remain

this side of Styx, despite all that we hear of the present laxity of

etiquette--had been unable to pay his gambling debts, and then paid

them with worthless cheques. He had been the centre of innumerable

brawls in which, if ever a woman's name was concerned, it was never

to Antony's credit; had been twice a corespondent and not once a

husband--an apparent failure to act upon his obligations which does no

man any good; and from the second (the first had too obviously been

the result of carelessness) he had emerged in so discreditable a light

that, on top of all his past follies, Antony Poole was no longer a name

to be mentioned in any ordinary English company.

That was four years before that night I met him on Piccadilly, when he

was thirty-two. He still continued for two years in England, Heaven

alone knew why! No one sought him, he was seldom seen--except by me,

and later, another. His elder brother, Roger, had not spoken to him for

years.

It was about a year before he finally left England that I began to see

Antony in his best light; and pretty closely since, in the precarious

condition of his affairs and reputation, it was mostly in my flat

that he could enjoy that company which presented him in this new and

improved light. He was in love, and he was making love: furtively and

hopelessly as to manner, for what girl would dream of marrying him! And

who ever stood more firmly upon his honour than he who has been proved

to have none?... But in his heart there was hope, I am sure there was

hope in his heart, else Antony would not have been Antony.

A queer man. For all his appalling rudeness and brutality on a

thousand occasions, he could be so very courteous and simple when he

was moved to it; could turn a tale, rather candidly it's true, but

very amusingly, and had altogether a very diverting way with him in

company that didn't offend his absurd feelings or ruffle his dangerous

vanity--though even then he couldn't help a, well, cunning satire that

might more profitably, for him, have bit into paper.

It is in recalling this time that I feel most uncomfortable, because of

the ridiculous position in which my own weakness placed me. During the

previous few months I had fallen into the habit of wanting to see Iris

Portairley every day--or rather, she had graciously allowed me fall

into that habit. And that, indeed, was the only encouragement I had

from her, the pleasure which she showed that she had from my company;

so that, if we had not happened to meet for some days over lunch or

dinner at the same table, she very often managed by some contrivance,

say of a tame chaperon, to come to see me of an afternoon. Deliciously

often though she managed her contrivances, I was always surprised

to see her, who had so many more amusing things to do! And with the

carelessness of a man ten years my junior I accepted the pleasure of

her company without inquiring of myself whither I was being led. The

truth was that it depressed me to think of what might come of it, for

the back of my mind could never be entirely rid of an ugly high wall at

the far end of my meadow....

And yet I chartered ill luck to my suit, or pretence of a suit, by

aiding and abetting Red Antony in his quite impossible and absurd

pretensions! Though, in justice to the man, he must have realised

clearly how very impossible they were.

The excuse for the anomaly was in the queer sympathy (and a very

conscious one) that Antony always had the power to raise in me; and

particularly at that time, when he was so definitely an outcast, forced

to solitary meals in the grill-rooms of those _maîtres d'hôtel_ who

still gallantly pretended to believe in his signature at the foot of a

bill. I simply couldn't bring myself just then, whether for my own or

Iris's good, to deprive him of the solace he found in her occasional

company at my flat, generally at some odd hour between three to

seven--more often nearer seven, for Antony allowed that I could shake

a cocktail very prettily. And though, from a tentative beginning (if

that word could ever be applicable to Antony) it became a bare-faced

intrusion on my privacy, even so I hadn't the heart to forbid, or

definitely to discourage, the apparent coincidence of his visits with

hers; "apparent," for Antony at this time never said a word of his

admiration, nor gave any other hint of gratitude for my complaisance

than in an added pressure of my hand as he left. Antony was a noisy

man, but never by any chance did he make a noise about anything one

really wanted to hear.

It was a very uncomfortable business--for me, I mean. And, as I had let

it go on, quite impossible to cut short; since nothing less drastic

than an order for ejection, if even that, would have penetrated the

thick skin that Antony could so conveniently wear when he chose--and

with no better result than a "misunderstanding" with Iris who, thanks

largely to me, had come to have certain views about Antony which

materially differed from the world's, and even stronger views about

deserting one's friends when they were "down and out." There's no

end to difficulties when a woman takes her standpoint on the highest

pinnacles of the code that men have arranged between themselves for

their own convenience and woman's confusion.

I could only console myself with the ungenerous thought that if my

own position with Iris, of "dear Ronnie" and the like, was hopeless,

how much more hopeless was Red Antony's, the poor braggart who would

now be invisible, be he ever so tall and boisterous, to even the most

tarnished of her acquaintance. So let the man have his run, since he

could never have his way!...

How he had ever met her at all, in fact, I never clearly found out,

and had never the effrontery to ask; probably towards the end of his

swift downward passage to those underground grill-rooms (oh, those

grill-rooms of broken hearts and broken reputations!) just after Iris

had come out. Be that as it may, Iris had known him scarcely but by

reputation--about which, since it was glamoured by the disapproval of

every one who had ever bored her, she had often asked me; so that,

when one day they had happened at the same second at my door, she knew

a little more than hearsay about him; and was quick to see the poor

man's wretched plight, was quick to encourage his longing to talk to

some one decent; giving intimacy with that generous hand that makes

gentle women so much more dangerous than vampires, searching for what

sweetness there lay in him so wisely and deftly as to leave him unaware

of the homage he paid her, so that she could appreciate it at its

fullest; and so that, after a few weeks, she grew genuinely fond of the

wreck--and one day made me openly swear at my folly by suddenly saying:

"I suppose there must be many people who think they have met Napoleons,

only to find in the end that they are Antonys--and how very much nicer!"