In an obscure but not unclean street towards the northern fringe of Soho
there is to be found by the seeker after experience a restaurant, where
gentlemen in Mr. Wagstaffe’s predicament may dine very passably; and,
on having inscribed the bill with their temporarily worthless
signatures, pay on some happier day. Very seldom, indeed, had the
cavalier of the streets actually fallen to this pass; these were his
most unfortunate days; and not even a bottle of the Rhine wine for which
M. Stutz was famous--for such was the name of the polite and amiable
_patron_ of the Mont Agel Restaurant--was, on this evening, able to
support him in the sardonic optimism with which he had always parried
the most cruel thrusts of a vagabond destiny.
Than the year 1922 there has never been a more dolorous year for
gentlemen of enterprise, as instance the luckless experiences of Mr.
Gerald Lee Bevan and Mr. Bottomley; and though the cavalier of the
streets was not only a gentleman of enterprise but also of imagination,
even he could not imagine money where money was not. Whereat he was
depressed.
But money, though naturally of the first importance in an adventurous
life, was not the immediate cause of Mr. Wagstaffe’s depression as he
dallied with a morsel of caviare and a piece of toast _Melba_. A face
haunted his memory. A lovely face it was, mature and gracious and
remote--ah, from him how remote! This face (and with it grey eyes,
witty and understanding eyes) had happened to him in the course of a
most unfortunate episode some months ago. He would never see her
again--or, rather, she would never see him. She would look through him,
the cavalier of the streets who had blackmailed her and then repented of
his sin because of the beauty of her face and the bravery of her voice.
But he would certainly see her, as an outcast in a wilderness may,
through the leaves and tree-trunks of his prison, just glimpse a
brilliant figure in a noble pageant; for the face that haunted him was
of the world, and, in these days of many illustrated journals, had
acquired an international reputation as one of the five leading faces of
Europe. Thus, it had come to pass that the cavalier of the streets,
meshed in a hopeless admiration, nowadays found little pleasure in his
way of life; nor did the pursuit and beguiling of Mugs, which had been
his source of income and entertainment ever since he had acquired a
taste for it at the University of Oxford, any longer divert him. The
face of his lady love, ever haunting his memory, deprived him of his
wonted pleasure in living dangerously. Whereat he was depressed.
“I must leave England,” he thought. “I must go to some foreign city and
lead a quite different life. But to leave England requires money; and to
lead a quite different life also requires money.” He came to a sudden
decision; made the gesture of payment upon the bill, and, thanking the
courtly M. Stutz, left the restaurant, and walked swiftly westwards
through the twilight of the streets.