The next afternoon Mrs. Avalon had promised to appear at a charity
_matinée_ in a playful duologue between Cleopatra and a hearty gentleman
alleged to be Mark Antony’s valet; and as she had never gone to the
trouble of acquiring a reputation as unreliable--in fact, Fay Avalon was
born with “careless habits of accuracy”--and though she was feeling less
like Cleopatra than she had ever felt in her life, it was only after she
had done her duty by the charity _matinée_ that she set out for the
quiet street in Hampstead.
She gave Nicholas Pavlovitch only the bald outline of the beastly
happening. Blackmailer, money. He blushed furiously. Often she had seen
him blush, but never as now. He was like a child who had just been
smacked and knows he has not deserved it. He couldn’t, he said, bear the
indecency, the shame, of it ... that, through loving him, she should
have to endure this awful thing. There was only one thing to do. She
must “cut him out,” that’s all! And how funnily tragic that slang
sounded in his twisted Russian pronunciation.
She laughed at that. Not much, but just enough. “We do not,” she said,
“take our tragedies so tragically. But scratch a Russian and you find a
baby....” She kissed him.
“It is easier than that,” she explained. “You must move, dear. For weeks
you have been complaining of the lighting in this studio--and now you
have every excuse for taking steps about leaving it. Long steps are
preferable, Nicholas. From Hampstead to Chelsea, in fact....”
Shove-off took steps at once, and these lead him to a little studio in a
little street off the King’s Road, Chelsea. It was a little street like
another, with a pillar-box at one end and the noise of busses at the
other. Near the pillar-box was a lamp-post. And one autumn evening, as
Mrs. Avalon walked from her lover’s studio into Cheyne Walk, she saw a
man leaning against the lamp-post, and under a soft dilapidated hat she
saw the shape of a lean face and a broken nose. He was motionless,
indifferent, and he was not looking at her but at the wind that blew
the leaves about the little street. Her heart jumped, and then was as
still as a cut flower.
“So!” she whispered bitterly. “Blackmailers are like history, then!”
The vile person made the courteous gesture.
“Mr. Beerbohm has it,” the vile person said gravely, “that it is not
history that repeats itself but historians who repeat one another. A
charming writer, don’t you think?”
“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Avalon very miserably, “I thought you were vile!
But I am disappointed in you. I actually thought you would leave me
alone. You are even viler than I thought, you who call yourself the
cavalier of the streets!”
“Perhaps,” murmured the shabby young man. “Perhaps. It seems always to
have been my fate to find out the indecencies of decent people, and so,
of course, decent people do not take a very liberal view of me. You find
me this evening, Mrs. Avalon, in a conversational vein.”
There was a ghastly sort of subtlety in his neglect to mention why he
was there, a thin, rakish hawk by the lamp-post. Impotent, she loathed
him. And she passed him resolutely, with a very proud face, one step,
two, three.... And then his voice fell harshly on her back:
“You are the kind of woman men dream about in lonely moments. My life is
made of lonely moments, and I think this is the loneliest of all. Go
away quickly, Fay Avalon!”
Bewilderment wheeled her round.
“_What_ did you say?” she cried.
But he stood as when she had first seen him, the silhouette of a hawk
with a broken nose, and he stared not at her but at the wind that blew
the leaves about the little street.
“It is not worth repeating,” he said sharply into the middle air. “But
to what I said, I added, ‘Go very quickly,’ and I meant it--for your
sake. This is a lonely place, Mrs. Avalon, and the cavalier of the
streets is as nearly an outlaw as any one outside a cinema. It is a long
time since I kissed a lady, and the only thing that restrains me from
doing it now is the fact that I have never in my life kissed any one who
did not wish to be kissed by me. So you had better go quickly, Fay
Avalon.”
She went, as swiftly as a shadow.