In the club window, on the following afternoon, Jones was airing copy.
"Capua must have been packed with yawns. It is the malediction of
mortals to want what they lack until they get it, when they want it no
more. Epicurus said that or, if he did not, Lucretius said it for him.
'Surgit amari aliquid.' But here I am running into quotations when the
only ones that interest anybody are those in the Street. Conditions here
are revolting. Nowhere at any time has there been a metropolis that so
stank to heaven. The papers drip with stocks and scandals and over
there, before the massed artillery, the troops are wheeling down to
death. But wheeling is perhaps poetic. The Marne was the last battle in
the grand style."
"I don't see what that has to do with Capua," said Verelst.
"Nor I," Jones replied. "But, come to think of it, there is a
connection. In Capua everybody yawned their heads off. In Flanders and
Champagne they are shot off. Life swings like a pendulum between boredom
and pain. When the world is not anaemic, it is delirious. If ever again
its pulse registers normal, sensible people will go back to Epicurus,
whose existence was one long lesson in mental tranquillity. By the Lord
Harry, the more I consider it, the more convinced I become that there is
nothing else worth having. Niente, nada, rien. Nothing whatever."
Verelst smiled. "In that case it is hardly worth while getting excited
over it." He raised the lapel of his coat. There were violets in it. He
took a whiff and added: "Has Lennox been here to-day?"
But Jones did not know.
Regretfully, Verelst continued: "He goes to Mineola to-morrow and soon
he will be over the top."
Jones lit a cigarette. "Assuming that he gets back, the women will be
mad about him. Some of them at any rate."
Verelst rolled an enquiring eye.
"Of course they will," Jones resumed. "Times have changed precious
little since Victor Hugo.
'Les belles out le gout des heros. Le sabreur
Effroyable, trainant apres lui tant d'horreur
Qu'il ferait reculer jusqu'a la sombre Hecate,
Charme la plus timide et la plus delicate.
Sur ce, battez tambours! Ce qui plait a la bouche
De la blonde aux yeux doux, c'est le baiser farouche.
La femme se fait faire avec joie un enfant,
Par l'homme qui tua, sinistre et triomphant.
Et c'est la volupte de toutes ces colombes
D'ouvrir leur lit a ceux qui font ouvrir les tombes.'
"What rhythm! What music! The score is Napoleonic but----"
"Hello!" Verelst interrupted. Before the window a car had passed. He was
looking at it. On the back seat was a man in a high hat and an overcoat.
"M. P.!" he exclaimed.
"What of it?" Jones asked.
Verelst removed his glasses and looked distrustfully at them. It was as
though he doubted their vision. Then, after a moment he said: "Last
night I heard he was dying."
"Which," Jones remarked, "is the aim, the object and the purpose of
life. But apparently he has not achieved it yet. Apparently also you are
a futurist. The Napoleonic score did not interest you."
Verelst, resuming his glasses, replied: "It would not interest Lennox,
if that is what you mean. He has been hit too hard."
Jones nodded. He knew all about it. It had even suggested a story, a
famous story; one that was told in Babylon and has been retold ever
since; the story of lovers vilely parted in the beginning and virtuously
united at the end. It is a highly original story, to which anybody can
give a fresh twist and Jones had planned to have the hero killed at the
front and the heroine marry the villain, but only to divorce the latter
before the hero--whose death had been falsely gazetted--limps in.
But Jones knew his trade. He knew that the reader always balks unless
the hero gets the heroine firsthand and he had thought of making the
villain an invalid. Yet at that too he knew the reader would balk. The
reader is so nice-minded!
Now, the plot recurring, he said to Verelst: "Your knowledge of women
has, I am sure, made you indulgent."
"Not in the least."
"But----"
"Look here," Verelst interrupted. "When I was young and consequently
very experienced, I was indulgent. But monsters change you. Last night I
dined with one."
"Enviable mortal!"
"You remember Abraham?" Verelst continued. "His name was Abraham--wasn't
it?--that benevolent old man in the Bible who made the sacrifice of
sacrificing an animal instead of his son? Well, last night it seemed to
me that there are women Abrahams, only less benevolent. The altar was
veiled, the knife was concealed, but the victim was there--a girl for
whom, at your age, I would have died, or offered to die, which amounts
to the same thing. What is more to the point, at your age, or no, for
you are much older than your conversation would lead one to believe, but
in my careless days I offered to die for her mother. I swore I could not
live without her. That is always a mistake. It is too flattering,
besides being untrue. Perhaps she so regarded it. In any event another
man fared better or worse. Afterward, time and again, he said to me:
'Peter, for God's sake, run away with her.' Am I boring you?"
"Enormously."
"Well, he was very gentlemanly about it. Without making a fuss at home,
he went away and died in a hospital. She was very grateful to him for
that. But her gratitude waned when she came in for his money. It was
adequate but not opulent, the result being that she tried to train her
daughter for the great matrimonial steeplechase. Just here the plot
thickens. Recently the filly shied, took the bit in her teeth
and--hurrah, boys!--she was off on her own, until her mother jockied her
up to a hurdle that she could not take and the filly came a cropper. But
her mother was still one too many for her. She had her up in a jiffy and
now she is heading her straight for the sweepstakes."
"Excuse me," Jones with affected meekness put in. "I assume that the
sacrificial victim and the filly are one and the same."
"Your perspicacity does you much credit."
Jones laughed. "I have my little talents. But you! The wizardry with
which you mix metaphors is beautiful. You produce a dinner-table and
transform it into an altar which instantly becomes a racecourse. That is
what I call genius. But to an every-day sort of chap like me, would you
mind being less cryptic?"
"Can you keep a secret?"
"Yes."
"So can I."
Again Jones laughed. "Not in my neighbourhood. You were talking of
Lennox and drifted from him into the Bible. Your thoughts of the one
recalled studies of the other and at once you had Abraham's daughter
downed on the racecourse. Well, she won't be."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because it is my business to see things before they occur. Miss
Austen----"
"I never mentioned her," Verelst heatedly exclaimed. "You have no right
to----"
"I admit it. But because of Lennox the whole matter has preoccupied me
and quite as much, I daresay, as it has distressed you."
"I don't see at all what you have to do with it."
"Perhaps not. But preoccupation may lead to crystal-gazing. Now I will
wager a red pippin that I can tell what you said at the steeplechase to
the steeplestakes. You asked after his father."
Verelst stared. A man of the world and, as such, at his ease in any
circumstances, none the less he was startled. "How in God's name did you
get that?"
"It is very simple. Five minutes ago his father sailed by. You made a
remark about him. The remark suggested a train of thought which landed
you at the racecourse where you saw, or intimated that you saw, the
steeplestakes. But what visible sweepstakes are there except M. P.'s
son? You and M. P. are friends. It is only natural that you should ask
about him."
Verelst turned uneasily. "I don't yet see how you got it. The only thing
I said is that I heard he was dying."
"And five minutes ago you exclaimed at his resurrection. There is a
discrepancy there that is very suggestive."
"It is none of my making then."
"It is none the less suggestive. The death-bed was invented."
"M. P. may have recovered."
"Yes, men of his age make a practice of jumping into their death-bed and
then jumping out. It is good for them. It keeps them in training."
"Oh, rubbish!" Verelst resentfully exclaimed.
"No," Jones pursued. "The story was invented and the invention had a
reason. If you like, you may ask what it is."
"You seem to be very good at invention yourself. I shall ask nothing of
the kind."
"But you would like to know and I will tell you. It was invented to
delay a possible announcement. It could have had no other object."
"I said nothing of any announcement," Verelst angrily protested. "What
announcement are you talking about?"
"The heading of the filly for the sweepstakes. The expression--very
graphic by the way--is your own."
"Graphic or not I wish you would drop it. Besides----"
"Besides what?"
"Why, confound it, admitting the engagement, which I ought not to admit
for it is not out yet, why should he play for delay?"
"Ha!" exclaimed Jones, whom the spectacle of Paliser and Cassy sailing
up the Riverside had supplied with an impression or two. "I thought I
would interest you. He played for delay because he feared that if it
were known, a pitcher of ice-water might come dashing over it."
"Why do you say that?" asked Verelst, eager and anxious enough for a
spoke--if spoke there could be--to shove in a certain lady's wheels.
"Given the man and the deduction is easy."
The spoke was receding. Verelst, swallowing his disappointment,
retorted: "Incoherence is easy too."
"Well, you are right there," Jones, lighting another cigarette, replied.
"But there is nothing incoherent in the fact that fear is magnetic. What
we dread, we attract. If our winning young friend fears the pitcher, the
pitcher will probably land on him. That is the reason why, to vary your
various metaphors, I declared that there would be no downing on the
racecourse. On the contrary and look here. I will wager you not one
pippin or two pippins, I will go so far as to lay a whole basket that
Miss Austen becomes Mrs. Lennox."