“A little over a year ago,” said Mr. Fall, “I met the lady who is bound
up in the situation on which I need your advice. I met her in an
ordinary way, at a ball; and saw nothing unusual in the meeting until
the evening of the following day, when I found to my surprise that
throughout the day she had been inhabiting that part of a man’s mental
economy which is called the ‘back-of-his-mind.’ On bringing her to the
front I discovered that I was in love with her; and on ringing her up
was delighted to hear that she was agreeably disposed to seeing me at
her flat, at about five o’clock any afternoon. That was a year ago, and
that is as far as I have got.”
“You mean, she has so far refused to marry you?” I asked.
“I have not asked her, Mr. Trevor. That is the point--I cannot ask her.
With such as she, as you can understand, the words love and marriage are
synonymous--and both, to her in particular, are offensive. I am her
friend. I do not want to be, but I am.
“She is a lady of birth, of deep principles and affections, which, I
believe, it is the custom of the day to find wanting in women of
fashion; and I find that, at the end of a year, I respect the dignity of
her mind as much as I admire that of her carriage, her principles as
much as her features, which are of the kind known as classical, though
indeed I find in them every quality of romance. We were speaking, a
moment ago, of ladies to whom a rich man is, if in no other way,
financially agreeable. With this lady, that would suffice me: I would
think myself well-rewarded to be allowed to marry her on any terms; but
I would dare to offer her anything but the most trifling
bric-à-brac--for not she to accept expensive presents--as little as I
would dare to offer her my hand. I cannot even mention marriage to her,
because of the damn silly thing which stands between us. Have some
brandy.
“Her husband had died some twelve months before I met this lady, in
Rome, where he was on political business, of a sudden chill. At that
time I was also in Rome; and though I had never met his wife, or even
knew he was married, I had had a fairly long acquaintance with him,
which had begun in the early days of the war in Paris, where he was
stationed as a military officer of some consequence. I remember while I
was there he won the D.S.O. for service at the front--telephone service,
I gathered.
“He died of his chill within twenty-four hours, and my business took me
from Rome before his wife could arrive. I leave you to imagine the
tragedy of her arrival in a city where, only a few years before, she had
spent the happiest weeks of her life, her honeymoon, to look upon the
still face of one who had left her two weeks before in the full vigour
of youth and health. She has described it to me, not as a whole but in
those disjointed pieces with which a sensitive mind can make a figure of
tragedy vivid to a sympathetic listener, and I can see the thing so
clearly that I feel it as a personal loss....”
“And so,” Mr. Fall added grimly, “it is. It seems that, on the night I
met her at the ball, she had discovered my acquaintance with her dead
husband; and it was that fact which had made her so agreeably disposed
to allowing me to call on her, for hers was that kind of breeding--rare,
I am given to understand, in these days--which is not usually
approachable by a slight acquaintance on the telephone. I am quite
assured, in spite of her very courteous assertions to the contrary, that
we would never have become friends but for my having known her husband;
and I, of course, was at first only too pleased to have chanced on a
link which gave her a certain degree of pleasure in my person and
company--for both, I have since discovered, were at first devoid of any
other interest for her. Very early in our friendship I found that she
had loved her husband as few men are fortunate enough to be loved; and
in this love had been contained a respect which I can only describe as
religious. It was not the qualities of his mind, which were gentlemanly
but scarcely above the commonplace, but those of his heart, which had
held such a high place in her love; and which, now that he was dead,
reigned in her mind to the exclusion--I speak literally, Lord
Tarlyon--of every other interest and affection. She had not loved him
enough, she said. She ought, she insisted, to have recognised more
deeply his regard for and constancy to her; and she ought certainly to
have insisted on accompanying him to Rome when, perhaps, under her care,
he might not have caught that fatal chill. She persuaded herself that
she had neglected one whose every thought, whose whole life, was bound
up in hers, a great gentleman whose fidelity to her, one of four
daughters of an impoverished house, had merited the most utter devotion;
and whose memory she couldn’t but hold in the highest esteem, to the
exclusion of every petty circumstance which might invade the life of a
woman who was still young and, perhaps, not unattractive. Have some
brandy.
“I need scarcely tell you, who are men of the world, that a lady so
devoted, so consistent, is rare, and must undoubtedly possess qualities
of mind and heart deserving a man’s highest respect. Perhaps, however, I
carried this respect business too far when, at that beginning, and in
the natural flow of conversation about some one whose memory was so
admirably dear to her, I helped to feed her illusion about her husband;
but I was aware only of the present moment, and wished--and who, being
human, would not?--to make myself agreeable enough for her to wish to
see me again. For my success in that little intrigue I am now being
sufficiently punished. In me, Mr. Trevor, and you, Lord Tarlyon, you may
see at the present moment a man undergoing heavy punishment for the
pettiest of all crimes, the crime of thoughtless kindness. I am now
suffering for my lies, for I told more lies about that dead husband than
you could believe possible in a man whose imagination has hitherto been
considered financial rather than fanciful. I had, you understand, been
so deeply impressed by her belief in the love and fidelity of her dead
husband, had been so moved by the naïve illusions of a lady who,
passing her life among a generation avid for the details of other
people’s infidelities, prized constancy above all things, that I had let
myself go. It seemed, don’t you see, the decent thing to do; and I, not
being well versed in the rules concerning these matters, did it very
thoroughly. Anyway, I could at best only have kept my mouth shut, for
one breath of a hint adverse to that treasured memory would have snapped
the slender cord of our friendship. But I need not, in trying to anchor
her interest in me, have gone so far as I did: I need not, just for the
pleasure of seeing the tender light in her eyes, have rashly struck out
on my own and invented magnificent Parisian situations in which her
husband’s constancy to her had been as a shining light among the crude
passions let loose by war among even the most decent of temporarily
celibate men. I need not have depicted him as a man whose purity and
asceticism were such as to astonish his friends--myself, who was but
human, among them--and as one whom the fascinations of the most lovely
women left untouched, except for a sad smile which I had frequently seen
to come on his face, as at the thought of some one inexpressibly dear to
him. Have some brandy.
“The man is dead; and I wouldn’t have you think me so wanting in
decency as to speak harshly of a dead man. But the fact remains that
that man must have been one of the world’s biggest liars, a liar of
inconceivable genius and magnitude, a liar beside whom Ananias would
have been a saint, Cagliostro a child, and Barry Lyndon a novice. As for
Casanova, I simply hate to think how small he would have felt beside
that dear, dead, faithful husband. I have told you how, throughout the
time I knew him, I was not even aware that he was married; but there was
not only nothing in his conversation, but there was less than nothing in
his behaviour, to indicate that he had a wife in England for whose
company he was passionately longing. I may say that I have never yet met
a man who gave the appearance of passionately longing for his own wife
less. I had nothing against him, mind you; he was a charming bachelor, a
gay companion, and, if you will permit a small vulgarity, could resist a
pretty woman about as much as a mouse can resist a cheese. He was
certainly a shining light among the crude passions let loose by war; in
fact, he shone magnificently; and a patriotic element in me was, in a
dim kind of way, only too pleased to see him at it, for Frenchmen are
nowadays so uppish about their talents at _le Sport_, what with one
thing and another, that it was pleasant to see an Englishman teaching
them a thing or two about the one which, with boxing, they are most
cocksure about. By the way, Lord Tarlyon, I wonder if you will agree
with me when I suggest that this modern fashion among Englishwomen of
decrying Englishmen as lovers in comparison to foreigners is not only
getting very tedious but is, so I heard in a discussion on the matter
with a student of my acquaintance, entirely without foundation in fact?”
“Our friend Trevor,” said Tarlyon, with a sombre nod, “has been actively
engaged in propaganda to that effect for some time: and with, I am told,
no small measure of success.”
“I am sincerely glad to hear that, Mr. Trevor; for it is by the
accumulation of such small cancerous growths, perhaps scarcely
significant in themselves but considerable in their rolling together,
that the heart of an Empire is affected and its body grows rotten. The
Dominion of Canada looks to you gentlemen of England to combat such
insidious errors, which may seem harmless enough as part of the merry
prattle of young ladies, but are, I am persuaded, detrimental to our
particular civilisation. However....” Mr. Fall waved aside our
particular civilisation for the time being, and lit another cigar. He
continued:
“The fever which proved fatal to this amorous gentleman in Rome was
caused by exposure to the treacherous chill of that city in the early
hours of the morning when, I am told, even a strong man’s vitality is at
its lowest; and the contrast between a warm place and the cold streets
towards a hotel is sometimes more than the human constitution will bear.
It has been my part to have had to sit and listen to his praises by the
hour, and at his name I have had to endure seeing tears spring to the
eyes of a noble and beautiful lady. With her I have stood by his grave,
and on it I have emptied the contents of Solomon’s windows. I have sat
close beside her, and longed to touch her hand, to kiss her hair, to
express even the surface of my passion--I have known that, perhaps, in
happier circumstances, she might not have pushed away my hand nor denied
my kiss--and I have also known that she would not allow herself for one
second to deviate from the path she had set herself, the path of
self-sacrifice to the memory of a man who, I knew, had never spent a
moment of his life in thinking about her. Have some brandy.
“It may seem strange to you, Lord Tarlyon, and to you, Mr. Trevor, that
I should confide in you with so little restraint. But, as I told you in
throwing myself upon your kind attention, I lack the breeding which
could alone give me an instinctive direction in such a matter. I need
guidance, Lord Tarlyon. I am in a damnable case; and in the last few
weeks I have been seeking refuge from a position which becomes more
insupportable every moment--and the more so, you understand, because I
can see I am not altogether distasteful to the lady--in wondering
whether, in some recess in the code of honour, there is no decent way
out of this damnable lie. That in particular is why, Lord Tarlyon, I was
so anxious to see you, and to put the matter before you. Is there, for a
man of honour, no way out of a mess like this? Is it utterly impossible
for me to shatter her illusions about her late--her extremely late, in
his nightly habits--husband? Is there nothing I can do but look sulky
every time the man’s name is mentioned? But I have tried that, and I am
afraid she takes it as the expression of a sympathy too deep for words.
What can I do, Lord Tarlyon? Or perhaps you, Mr. Trevor, can suggest
some way out? Have some brandy.”
A silence fell on us a while. At last I said:
“I’m afraid, Mr. Fall, as you have honoured me by asking for my advice,
that there seems to be nothing you _can_ do but what you have already
done--to wait. Maybe sometime ... she ... well, you know what I mean.” I
hope he did, for I was by no means sure....
“And you, Lord Tarlyon?”
“Well,” said George, very thoughtfully, with his eyes somewhere on the
table, “as you ask me, I must say that your behaviour throughout seems
to me to have been irreproachable, and I respect you enormously for it.
I can’t say fairer than that. But,” and he looked across at Mr. Fall;
and he smiled at him a grave smile, “neither can I for the life of me
see how you can break away from the position you are in. It seems
beastly--but, since you’ve asked my advice, I can only suggest that you
must just wait. You can’t, as you have said, shatter the illusion--you
can’t, as a man of honour. A cad, of course, would long ago have stepped
into the breach and away with the body--I mean, booty. Your brandy is
marvellous, Mr. Fall. But, as I was saying, I can’t for the life of me
see that you can do anything but just wait and look sulky whenever you
get the chance....”
“You will forgive my boring you?” Mr. Fall put to us sincerely.
“It would be too cold-blooded of us to say we have been entertained,” I
began----
“But,” said Tarlyon, “we have certainly not been bored. And I only wish
we could have been of some use----”
“I just wanted cor-rob-or-ation,” Mr. Fall murmured softly, sadly. “Have
some brandy.”