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Simon the Jester

Chapter XIX

Agatha proved herself the good soul I had represented her to be.

"Certainly, dear," she said when I came the following morning with my request. "You can have my boudoir all to yourselves."

"I am grateful," said I, "and for the first time I forgive you for calling it by that abominable name."

It was an old quarrel between us. Every lover of language picks out certain words in common use that he hates with an unreasoning ferocity.

"I'll change it's title if you like," she said meekly.

"If you do, my dear Agatha, my gratitude will be eternal."

"I remember a certain superior person, when Tom and I were engaged, calling mother's boudoir -- the only quiet place in the house -- the osculatorium."

She laughed with the air of a small bird who after long waiting had at last got even with a hawk. But I did not even smile. For the only time in our lives I considered that Agatha had committed a breach of good taste. I said rather stiffly:

"It is not going to be a lovers' meeting, my dear."

She flushed. "It was silly of me. But why shouldn't it be a lovers' meeting?" she added audaciously. "If nothing had happened, you two would have been married by this time -- "

"Not till June."

"Oh, yes, you would. I should have seen about that -- a ridiculously long engagement. Anyhow, it was only your illness that broke it off. You were told you were going to die. You did the only honourable and sensible thing -- both of you. Now you're in splendid health again -- "

"Stop, stop!" I interrupted. "You seem to be entirely oblivious of the circumstances -- "

"I'm oblivious of no circumstances. Neither is Eleanor. And if she still cares for you she won't care twopence for the circumstances. I know I wouldn't."

And to cut off my reply she clapped the receiver of the telephone to her ear and called up Eleanor, with whom she proceeded to arrange a date for the interview. Presently she screwed her head round.

"She says she can come at four this afternoon. Will that suit you?"

"Perfectly," said I.

When she replaced the receiver I stepped behind her and put my hands on her shoulders.

"'The mother of mischief,'" I quoted, "'is no bigger than a midge's wing,' and the grandmother is the match-making microbe that lurks in every woman's system."

She caught one of my hands and looked up into my face.

"You're not cross with me, Simon?"

Her tone was that of the old Agatha. I laughed, remembering the policeman's salute of the previous night, and noted this recovery of my ascendancy as another indication of the general improvement in the attitude of London.

"Of course not, Tom Tit," said I, calling her by her nursery name. "But I absolutely forbid your thinking of playing Fairy Godmother."

"You can forbid my playing," she laughed, "and I can obey you. But you can't prevent my thinking. Thought is free."

"Sometimes, my dear," I retorted, "it is better chained up."

With this rebuke I left her. No doubt, she considered a renewal of my engagement with Eleanor Faversham a romantic solution of difficulties. I could only regard it as preposterous, and as I walked back to Victoria Street I convinced myself that Eleanor's frank offer of friendship proved that such an idea never entered her head. I took vehement pains to convince myself Spring had come; like the year, I had awakened from my lethargy. I viewed life through new eyes; I felt it with a new heart. Such vehement pains I was not capable of taking yesterday.

"It has never entered her head!" I declared conclusively.

And yet, as we sat together a few hours later in Agatha's little room a doubt began to creep into the corners of my mind. In her strong way she had brushed away the scandal that hung around my name. She did not believe a word of it. I told her of my loss of fortune. My lunacy rather raised than lowered me in her esteem. How then was I personally different from the man she had engaged herself to marry six months before? I remembered our parting. I remembered her letters. Her presence here was proof of her unchanging regard. But was it something more? Was there a hope throbbing beneath that calm sweet surface to which I did not respond? For it often happens that the more direct a woman is, the more in her feminine heart is she elusive.

Clean-built, clean-hearted, clean-eyed, of that clean complexion which suggests the open air, Eleanor impressed you with a sense of bodily and mental wholesomeness. Her taste in dress ran in the direction of plain tailor-made gowns (I am told, by the way, that these can be fairly expensive), and shrank instinctively from the frills and fripperies to which daughters of Eve are notoriously addicted. She spoke in a clear voice which some called hard, though I never found it so; she carried herself proudly. Chaste in thought, frank in deed, she was a perfect specimen of the highly bred, purely English type of woman who, looking at facts squarely in the face, accepts them as facts and does not allow her imagination to dally in any atmosphere wherein they may be invested. To this type a vow is irrefragable. Loyalty is inherent in her like her blood. She never changes. What feminine inconsistencies she had at fifteen she retains at five-and- twenty, and preserves to add to the charms of her old age. She is the exemplary wife, the great-hearted mother of children. She has sent her sons in thousands to fight her country's battles overseas. Those things which lie in the outer temper of her soul she gives lavishly. That which is hidden in her inner shrine has to be wrested from her by the one hand she loves. Was mine that hand?

It will be perceived that I was beginning to take life seriously.

Eleanor must have also perceived something of the sort; for during our talk she said irrelevantly:

"You've changed!"

"In what way?" I asked.

"I don't know. You're not the same as you were. I seem to know you better in some ways, and yet I seem to know you less. Why is it?"

I said, "No one can go through the Valley of the Grotesque as I have done without suffering some change."

"I don't see why you should call it 'the Valley of the Grotesque.'"

I smiled at her instinctive rejection of the fanciful.

"Don't you? Call it the Valley of the Shadow, if you like. But don't you think the attendant circumstances were rather mediaeval, gargoyley, Orcagnesque? Don't you think the whole passage lacked the dignity which one associates with the Valley of the Shadow of Death?"

"You mean the murder?" she said with a faint shiver.

"That," said I, "might be termed the central feature. Just look at things as they happened. I am condemned to death. I try to face it like a man and a gentleman. I make my arrangements. I give up what I can call mine no longer. I think I will devote the rest of my days to performing such acts of helpfulness and charity as would be impossible for a sound man with a long life before him to undertake. I do it in a half-jesting spirit, refusing to take death seriously. I pledge myself to an act of helpfulness which I regard at first as merely an incident in my career of beneficence. I am gradually caught in the tangle of a drama which at times develops into sheer burlesque, and before I can realise what is going to happen, it turns into ghastly tragedy. I am overwhelmed in grotesque disaster -- it is the only word. Instead of creating happiness all around me, I have played havoc with human lives. I stand on the brink and look back and see that it is all one gigantic devil-jest at my expense. I thank God I am going to die. I do die -- for practical purposes. I come back to life and -- here I am. Can I be quite the same person I was a year ago?"

She reflected for a few moments. Then she said:

"No. You can't be -- quite the same. A man of your nature would either have his satirical view of life hardened into bitter cynicism or he would be softened by suffering and face things with new and nobler ideals. He would either still regard life as a jest -- but instead of its being an odd, merry jest it would be a grim, meaningless, hideous one; or he would see that it wasn't a jest at all, but a full, wonderful, big reality. I've expressed myself badly, but you see what I mean."

"And what do you think has happened?" I asked.

"I think you have changed for the better."

I smiled inwardly. It sounded rather dull. I said with a smile:

"You never liked my cap and bells, Eleanor."

"No!" she replied emphatically. "What's the use of mockery? See where it led you."

I rose, half-laughing at her earnestness, half-ashamed of myself, and took a couple of turns across the room.

"You're right," I cried. "It led me to perdition. You might make an allegory out of my career and entitle it 'The Mocker's Progress.'" I paused for a second or two, and then said suddenly, "Why did you from the first refuse to believe what everybody else does -- before I had the chance of looking you in the eyes?"

She averted her face. "You forget that I had had the chance of searching deep beneath the mocker."

I cannot, in reverence to her, set down what she said she found there. I stood humbled and rebuked, as a man must do when the best in him is laid out before his sight by a good woman.

A maidservant brought in tea, set the table, and departed, Eleanor drew off her gloves and my glance fell on her right hand.

"It's good of you to wear my ring to-day," I said.

"To-day?" she echoed, with the tiniest touch of injury in her voice. "Do you think I put it on to just please you to-day?"

"It would have been gracious of you to do so," said I.

"It wouldn't," she declared. "It would have been mawkish and sentimental. When we parted I told you to do what you liked with the ring. Do you remember? You put it on this finger" -- she waved her right hand -- "and there it has stayed ever since."

I caught the hand and touched it lightly with my lips. She coloured faintly.

"Two lumps of sugar and no milk, I think that's right?" She handed me the tea-cup.

"It's like you not to have forgotten."

"I'm a practical person," she replied with a laugh.

Presently she said, "Tell me more about your illness -- or rather your recovery. I know nothing except that you had a successful operation which all the London surgeons said was impossible. Who nursed you?"

"I had a trained nurse," said I.

"Wasn't Madame Brandt with you?"

"Yes," said I. "She was very good to me. In fact, I think I owe her my life."

Hitherto the delicacy of the situation had caused me to refer to Lola no more than was necessary, and in my narrative I had purposely left her vague.

"That's a great debt," said Eleanor.

"It is, indeed."

"You're not the man to leave such a debt unpaid?"

"I try to repay it by giving Madame Brandt my devoted friendship."

Her eyes never wavered as they held mine.

"That's one of the things I wanted to know. Tell me something about her."

I felt some surprise, as Eleanor was of a nature too proud for curiosity.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because she interests me intensely. Is she young?"

"About thirty-two."

"Good-looking?"

"She is a woman of remarkable personality."

"Describe her."

I tried, stumbled, and halted. The effort evoked in my mind a picture of Lola lithe, seductive, exotic, with gold flecks in her dusky, melting eyes, with strong shapely arms that had as yet only held me motherwise, with her pantherine suggestion of tremendous strength in languorous repose, with her lazy gestures and parted lips showing the wonderful white even teeth, with all her fascination and charm -- a picture of Lola such as I had not seen since my emergence from the Valley -- a picture of Lola, generous, tender, wistful, strong, yielding, fragrant, lovable, desirable, amorous -- a picture of Lola which I could not put before this other woman equally brave and straight, who looked at me composedly out of her calm, blue eyes.

My description resolved itself into a loutish catalogue.

"It is not painful to you to talk of her, Simon?"

"Not at all. There are not many great-hearted women going about. It is my privilege to know two."

"Am I the other?"

"Who else?"

"I'm glad you have the courage to class Madame Brandt and myself together."

"Why?" I asked.

"It proves beyond a doubt that you are honest with me. Now tell me about a few externals -- things that don't matter -- but help one to form an impression. Is she educated?"

"From books, no; from observation, yes."

"Her manners?"

"Observation had educated them."

"Accent?"

"She is sufficiently polyglot to have none."

"She dresses and talks and behaves generally like a lady?"

"She does," said I.

"In what way then does she differ from the women of our class?"

"She is less schooled, less reticent, franker, more natural. What is on her tongue to say, she says."

"Temper?"

"I have never heard her say an angry word to or of a human creature. She has queer delicacies of feeling. For instance -- -- "

I told her of Anastasius Papadopoulos's tawdry, gimcrack presents which Lola has suffered to remain in her drawing-room so as not to hurt the poor little wretch.

"That's very touching. Where does she live?"

"She has a flat in Cadogan Gardens."

"Is she in London now?"

"Yes."

"I should like very much to know her," she said calmly.

I vow and declare again that the more straightforward and open-eyed, the less subtle, temperamental, and neurotic are women, the more are they baffling. I had wondered for some time whither the catechism tended, and now, with a sudden jerk, it stopped short at this most unexpected terminus. It was startling. I rose and mechanically placed my empty tea-cup on the tray by her side.

"The wish, my dear Eleanor," said I, quite formally, "does great credit to your heart."

There was a short pause, marking an automatic close of the subject. Deeply as I admired both women, I shrank from the idea of their meeting. It seemed curiously indelicate, in view both of my former engagement to Eleanor and of Lola's frank avowal of her feelings towards me before what I shall always regard as my death. It is true that we had never alluded to it since my resurrection; but what of that? Lola's feelings, I was sure, remained unaltered. It also flashed on me that, with all the goodwill in the world, Eleanor would not understand Lola. An interview would develop into a duel. I pictured it for a second, and my sudden fierce partisanship for Lola staggered me. Decidedly an acquaintance between these two was preposterous.

The silence was definite enough to mark a period, but not long enough to cause embarrassment. Eleanor commented on my present employment. I must find it good to get back to politics.

"I find it to the contrary," said I, with a laugh. "My convictions, always lukewarm, are now stone-cold. I don't say that the principles of the party are wrong. But they're wrong for me, which is all- important. If they are not right for me, what care I how right they be? And as I don't believe in those of the other side, I'm going to give up politics altogether."

"What will you do?"

"I don't know. I honestly don't. But I have an insistent premonition that I shall soon find myself doing something utterly idiotic, which to me will be the most real thing in life."

I had indeed awakened that morning with an exhilarating thrill of anticipation, comparable to that of the mountain climber who knows not what panorama of glory may be disclosed to his eyes when he reaches the summit. I had whistled in my bath -- a most unusual thing.

"Are you going to turn Socialist?"

"Qui lo sa/? I'm willing to turn anything alive and honest. It doesn't matter what a man professes so long as he professes it with all the faith of all his soul."

I broke into a laugh, for the echo of my words rang comic in my ears.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked.

"Don't you think it funny to hear me talk like a two-penny Carlyle?"

"Not a bit," she said seriously.

"I can't undertake to talk like that always," I said warningly.

"I thought you said you were going to be serious."

"So I am -- but platitudinous -- Heaven forbid!"

The little clock on the mantelpiece struck six. Eleanor rose in alarm.

"How the time has flown! I must be getting back. Well?"

Our eyes met. "Well?" said I.

"Are we ever to meet again?"

"It's for you to say."

"No," she said. And then very distinctly, very deliberately, "It's for you."

I understood. She made the offer simply, nobly, unreservedly. My heart was filled with great gratitude. She was so true, so loyal, so thorough. Why could I not take her at her word? I murmured:

"I'll remember what you say."

She put out her hand. "Good-bye!"

"Good-bye and God bless you!" I said.

I accompanied her to the front door, hailed a passing cab, and waited till she had driven off. Was there ever a sweeter, grander, more loyal woman? The three little words had changed the current of my being.

I returned to take leave of Agatha. I found her in the drawing-room reading a novel. She twisted her head sideways and regarded me with a bird-like air of curiosity.

"Eleanor gone?"

Her tone jarred on me. I nodded and dropped into a chair.

"Interview passed off satisfactorily?"

"We were quite comfortable, thank you. The only drawback was the tea. Why a woman in your position can't give people China tea instead of that Ceylon syrup will be a mystery to me to my dying day."

She rose in her wrath and shook me.

"You're the most aggravating wretch on earth!"

"My dear Tom-Tit," said I gravely. "Remember the moral tale of Bluebeard."

"Look here, Simon" -- she planted herself in front of me -- "I'm not a bit inquisitive. I don't in the least want to know what passed between you and Eleanor. But what I would give my ears to understand is how you can go through a two hours' conversation with the girl you were engaged to -- a conversation which must have affected the lives of both of you -- and then come up to me and talk drivel about China tea and Bluebeard."

"Once on a time, my dear," said I, "I flattered myself on being an artist in life. I am humbler now and acknowledge myself a wretched bungling amateur. But I still recognise the value of chiaroscuro."

"You're hopeless," said Agatha, somewhat crossly. "You get more flippant and cynical every day."

Chapter XX

I went home to my solitary dinner, and afterwards took down a volume of Emerson and tried to read. I thought the cool and spacious philosopher might allay a certain fever in my blood. But he did nothing of the kind. He wrote for cool and spacious people like himself; not for corpses like me revivified suddenly with an overcharge of vital force. I pitched him -- how much more truly companionable is a book than its author! -- I pitched him across the room, and thrusting my hands in my pockets and stretching out my legs, stared in a certain wonder at myself.

I, Simon de Gex, was in love; and, horribile dictu! in love with two women at once. It was Oriental, Mormonic, New Century, what you will; but there it was. I am ashamed to avow that if, at that moment, both women had appeared before me and said "Marry us," I should have -- well, reflected seriously on the proposal. I had passed through curious enough experiences, Heaven knows, already; but none so baffling as this. The two women came alternately and knocked at my heart, and whispered in my ear their irrefutable claims to my love. I listened throbbingly to each, and to each I said, "I love you."

I was in an extraordinary psychological predicament. Lola had remarked, "You are not quite alive even yet." I had come to complete life too suddenly. This was the result. I got up and paced the bird- cage, which the house-agents termed a reception-room, and wondered whether I were going mad. It was not as if one woman represented the flesh and the other the spirit. Then I might have seen the way to a decision. But both had the large nature that comprises all. I could not exalt one in any way to the abasement of the other. All my inherited traditions, prejudices, predilections, all my training ranged me on the side of Eleanor. I was clamouring for the real. Was she not the incarnation of the real? Her very directness piqued me to a perverse and delicious obliquity. And I knew, as I knew when I parted from her months before, that it was only for me to awaken things that lay virginally dormant. On the other hand stood Lola, with her magnetic seduction, her rich atmosphere, her great wide simplicity of heart, holding out arms into which I longed to throw myself.

It was monstrous, abnormal. I hated the abominable indelicacy of weighing one against the other, as I had hated the idea of their meeting.

I paced my bird-cage until it shrank to the size of a rat-trap. Then I clapped on my hat and fled down into the streets. I jumped into the first cab I saw and bade the driver take me to Barbara's Building. Campion suddenly occurred to me as the best antidote to the poison that had entered my blood.

I found him alone, clearing from the table the remains of supper. In spite of his soul's hospitable instincts, he stared at me.

"Why, what the -- -- ?"

"Yes, I know. You're surprised to see me bursting in on you like a wild animal. I'm not going to do it every night, but this evening I claim a bit of our old friendship."

"Claim it all, my dear de Gex!" he said cordially. "What can I do for you?"

It was characteristic of Campion to put his question in that form. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have asked what was the matter with me. But Campion, who all his life had given, wanted to know what he could co.

"Tell me fairy tales of Lambeth and idylls of the Waterloo Bridge Road. Or light your pipe and talk to me of Barbara."

He folded up the tablecloth and put it in the sideboard drawer.

"If it's elegant distraction you want," said he, "I can do better than that." He planted himself in front of me. "Would you like to do a night's real work?"

"Certainly," said I.

"A gentleman of my acquaintance named Judd is in the ramping stage of delirium tremens. He requires a couple of men to hold him down so as to prevent him from getting out of bed and smashing his furniture and his wife and things. I was going to relieve one of the fellows there now, so that he can get a few hours' sleep, and if you like to come and relieve the other, you'll be doing a good action. But I warn you it won't be funny."

"I'm in the mood for anything," I said.

"You'll come?"

"Of course."

"That's splendid!" he shouted. "I hardly thought you were in earnest. Wait till I telephone for some medicine to be sent up from the dispensary. I promised to take it round with me."

He telephoned instructions, and presently a porter brought in the medicine. Campion explained that it had been prescribed by the doctor attached to the institution who was attending the case.

"You must come and see the working of our surgery and dispensary!" he cried enthusiastically. "We charge those who can afford a sixpence for visit and medicine. Those who can't are provided, after inquiry, with coupons. We don't want to encourage the well-to-do to get their medical advice gratis, or we wouldn't be able to cope with the really poor. We pay the doctor a fixed salary, and the fees go to the general fund of the Building, so it doesn't matter a hang to him whether a patient pays or not."

"You must be proud of all this, Campion?" I said.

"In a way," he replied, lighting his pipe; "but it's mainly a question of money -- my poor old father's money which he worked for, not I."

I reminded him that other sons had been known to put their poor old father's money to baser uses.

"I suppose Barbara is more useful to the community that steam yachts or racing stables; but there, you see, I hate yachting because I'm always sea-sick, and I scarcely know which end of a horse you put the bridle on. Every man to his job. This is mine. I like it."

"I wonder whether holding down people suffering from delirium tremens is my job," said I. "If so, I'm afraid I shan't like it."

"If it's really your job," replied Campion, "you will. You must. You can't help it. God made man so."

It was only an hour or two later when, for the first time in my life, I came into practical touch with human misery, that I recognised the truth of Campion's perfervid optimism. No one could like our task that night in its outer essence. For a time it revolted me. The atmosphere of the close, dirty room, bedroom, kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room, bathroom, laundry -- all in one, the home of man, wife and two children, caught me by the throat. It was sour. The physical contact with the flesh of the unclean, gibbering, shivering, maniacal brute on the foul bed was unutterably repugnant to me. Now and again, during intervals of comparative calm, I was forced to put my head out of the window to breathe the air of the street. Even that was tainted, for a fried-fish shop across the way and a public-house next door billowed forth their nauseating odours. After a while access to the window was denied me. A mattress and some rude coverings were stretched beneath it -- the children's bed -- on which we persuaded the helpless, dreary wife to lie down and try to rest. A neighbour had taken in the children for the night. The wife was a skinny, grey-faced, lined woman of six-and- twenty. In her attitude of hopeless incompetence she shed around her an atmosphere of unspeakable depression. Although I could not get to the window, I was glad when she lay down and spared me the sight of her moving fecklessly about the room or weeping huddled up on a broken-backed wooden chair and looking more like a half-animated dish- clout than a woman.

The poor wretch on the bed was a journeyman tailor who, when sober, could earn fair wages. The cry of the wife, before Campion awed her into comparative silence, was a monotonous upbraiding of her husband for bringing them down to this poverty. It seemed impossible to touch her intelligence and make her understand that no words from her or any one could reach his consciousness. His violence, his screams, his threats, the horrors of his fear left her unmoved. We were there to guard her from physical danger, and that to her was all that mattered.

In the course of an hour or so the nausea left me. I felt braced by the grimness of the thing, and during the paroxysms I had no time to think of anything but the mechanical work in hand. It was all that Campion and I, both fairly able-bodied men, could do to keep the puny little tailor in his bed. Horrible shapes menaced him from which he fought madly to escape. He writhed and shrieked with terror. Once he caught my hand in his teeth and bit it, and Campion had some difficulty in relaxing the wretch's jaw. Between the paroxysms Campion and I sat on the bed watching him, scarcely exchanging a word. The wife, poor creature, whimpered on her mattress. It was not a pleasant vigil. It lasted till the grey dawn crept in, pitilessly intensifying the squalor of the room, and until the dawn was broadening into daylight. Then two of Campion's men from Barbara's Building arrived to relieve us. Before we went, however, the neighbour who had taken charge of the children came in to help the slatternly wife light a fire and make some tea. I have enjoyed few things more than the warm, bitter stuff which I drank out of the broken mug in that strange and depressing company.

I went out into the street with racked head and nerves and muscles. Campion kept his cloth cap in his hand, allowing the morning wind to ruffle his shaggy black hair, and drew a long breath.

"I think the worst is over now. As soon as he can be moved, I'll get him down to the annexe at Broadstairs. The sea air will pull him round."

"Isn't it rather hopeless?" I asked.

He turned on me. "Nothing's hopeless. If you once start the hopeless game down here you'd better distribute cyanide of potassium instead of coals and groceries. I've made up my mind to get that man decent again, and, by George, I'm going to do it! Fancy those two weaklings producing healthy offspring. But they have. Two of the most intelligent kids in the district. If you hold up your hands and say it's awful to contemplate their upbringing you're speaking the blatant truth. It's the contemplation that's awful. But why contemplate when you can do something?"

I admitted the justice of the remark. He went on.

"Look at yourself now. If you had gone in with me last night and just stared at the poor devil howling with D.T. in that filthy place, you'd have come out sick and said it was awful. Instead of that, you buckled to and worked and threw off everything save our common humanity, and have got interested in the Judds in spite of yourself. You'll go and see them again and do what you can for them, won't you?"

I was not in a merry mood, but I laughed. Campion had read the intention that had vaguely formulated itself in the back of my mind.

"Of course I will," I said.

We walked on a few steps down the still silent, disheartening street without speaking. Then he tugged his beard, half-halted, and glanced at me quickly.

"See here," said he, "the more sensible people I can get in to help us the better. Would you like me to hand you over the Judd family en bloc/?"

This was startling to the amateur philanthropist. But it is the way of all professionals to regard their own business as of absorbing interest to the outside world. The stockbroking mind cannot conceive a sane man indifferent to the fluctuations of the money market, and to the professional cricketer the wide earth revolves around a wicket. How in the world could I be fairy godfather to the Judd family? Campion took my competence for granted.

"You may not understand exactly what I mean, my dear Campion," said I; "but I attribute the most unholy disasters of my life to a ghastly attempt of mine to play Deputy Providence."

"But who's asking you to play Deputy Providence?" he shouted. "It's the very last idiot thing I want done. I want you to do certain definite practical work for that family under the experienced direction of the authorities at Barbara's Building. There, do you understand now?"

"Very well, I'll do anything you like."

Thus it befell that I undertook to look after the moral, material, and spiritual welfare of the family of an alcoholic tailor by the name of Judd who dwelt in a vile slum in South Lambeth. My head was full of the prospect when I awoke at noon, for I had gone exhausted to sleep as soon as I reached home. If goodwill, backed by the experience of Barbara's Building, could do aught towards the alleviation of human misery, I determined that it should be done. And there was much misery to be alleviated in the Judd family. I had no clear notion of the means whereby I was to accomplish this; but I knew that it would be a philanthropic pursuit far different from my previous eumoirous wanderings abut London when, with a mind conscious of well-doing, I distributed embarrassing five-pound notes to the poor and needy.

I had known -- what comfortable, well-fed gentleman does not? -- that within easy walking distance of his London home thousands of human beings live like the beasts that perish; but never before had I spent an intimate night in one of the foul dens where the living and perishing take place. The awful pity of it entered my soul.

So deeply was I impressed with the responsibility of what I had undertaken, so grimly was I haunted by the sight of the pallid, howling travesty of a man and the squeezed-out, whimpering woman, that the memory of the conflicting emotions that had driven me to Campion the night before returned to me with a shock.

"It strikes me," I murmured, as I shaved, "that I am living very intensely indeed. Here am I in love with two women at once, and almost hysterically enthusiastic over a delirious tailor." Then I cut my cheek and murmured no more, until the operation was concluded.

I had arranged to accompany Lola that afternoon to the Zoological Gardens. This was a favourite resort of hers. She was on intimate terms with keepers and animals, and her curious magnetism allowed her to play such tricks with lions and tigers and other ferocious beasts as made my blood run cold. As for the bears, they greeted her approach with shrieking demonstrations of affection. On such occasions I felt the same curious physical antipathy as I did when she had dominated Anastasius's ill-conditioned cat. She seemed to enter another sphere of being in which neither I nor anything human had a place.

With some such dim thoughts in my head, I reached her door in Cadogan Gardens. The sight of her electric brougham that stood waiting switched my thoughts into another groove, but one running oddly parallel. Electric broughams also carried her out of my sphere. I had humbly performed the journey thither in an omnibus.

She received me in her big, expansive way.

"Lord! How good it is to see you. I was getting the -- I was going to say 'the blind hump' -- but you don't like it. I was going to turn crazy and bite the furniture."

"Why?" I asked with masculine directness.

"I've been trying to educate myself -- to read poetry. Look here" -- she caught a small brown-covered octavo volume from the table. "I can't make head or tail of it. It proved to me that it was no use. If I couldn't understand poetry, I couldn't understand anything. It was no good trying to educate myself. I gave it up. And then I got what you don't like me to call the hump."

"You dear Lola!" I cried, laughing. "I don't believe any one has ever made head or tail out of 'Sordello.' There once was a man who said there were only two intelligible lines in the poem -- the first and the last -- and that both were lies. 'Who will, may hear Sordello's story told,' and 'Who would, has heard Sordello's story told.' Don't worry about not understanding it."

"Don't you?"

"Not a bit," said I.

"That's a comfort," she said, with a generous sigh of relief. "How well you're looking!" she cried suddenly. "You're a different man. What have you been doing to yourself?"

"I've grown quite alive."

"Good! Delightful! So am I. Quite alive now, thank you."

She looked it, in spite of the black outdoor costume. But there was a dash of white at her throat and some white lilies of the valley in her bosom, and a white feather in her great black hat poised with a Gainsborough swagger on the mass of her bronze hair.

"It's the spring," she added.

"Yes," said I, "it's the spring."

She approached me and brushed a few specks of dust from my shoulder.

"You want a new suit of clothes, Simon."

"Dear me!" said I, glancing hastily over the blue serge suit in which I had lounged at Mustapha Superieur. "I suppose I do."

It occurred to me that my wardrobe generally needed replenishing. I had been unaccustomed to think of these things, the excellent Rogers and his predecessors having done most of the thinking for me.

"I'll go to Poole's at once," said I.

And then it struck me, to my whimsical dismay, that in the present precarious state of my finances, especially in view of my decision to abandon political journalism in favour of I knew not what occupation, I could not afford to order clothes largely from a fashionable tailor.

"I shouldn't have mentioned it," said Lola apologetically, "but you're always so spick and span."

"And now I'm getting shabby!"

I threw back my head and laughed at the new and comical conception of Simon de Gex down at heel.

"Oh, not shabby!" echoed Lola.

"Yes, my dear. The days of purple and fine linen are vorbei. You'll have to put up with me in a threadbare coat and frayed cuffs and ragged hems to my trousers."

Lola declared that I was talking rubbish.

"Not quite such rubbish as you may think, my dear. Shall you mind?"

"It would break my heart. But why do you talk so? You can't be -- as poor -- as that?"

Her face manifested such tragic concern that I laughed. Besides, the idea of personal poverty amused me. When I gave up my political work I should only have what I had saved from my wreck -- some two hundred a year -- to support me until I should find some other means of livelihood. It was enough to keep me from starvation, and the little economies I had begun to practise afforded me enjoyment. On the other hand, how folks regulated their balance-sheets so as to live on two hundred a year I had but a dim notion. In the course of our walk from Barbara's Building to the Judds the night before I had asked Campion. He had laughed somewhat grimly.

"I don't know. I don't run an asylum for spendthrift plutocrats; but if you want to see how people live and bring up large families on fifteen shillings a week, I can show you heaps of examples."

This I felt would, in itself, be knowledge of the deepest interest; but it would in no way aid me to solve my own economic difficulty. I was always being brought up suddenly against the problem in some form or another, and, as I say, it caused me considerable amusement.

"I shall go on happily enough," said I, reassuringly. "In the meantime let us go and see the lions and tigers."

We started. The electric brougham glided along comfortably through the sunlit streets. A feeling of physical and spiritual content stole over me. Our hands met and lingered a long time in a sympathetic clasp. Whatever fortune held in store for me here at least I had an inalienable possession. For some time we said nothing, and when our eyes met she smiled. I think she had never felt my heart so near to hers. At last we broke the silence and talked of ordinary things. I told her of my vigil overnight and my undertaking to look after the Judds. She listened with great interest. When I had finished my tale, she said almost passionately:

"Oh, I wish I could do something like that!"

"You?"

"Why not? I came from those people. My grandfather swept the cages in Jamrach's down by the docks. He died of drink. He used to live in one horrible, squalid room near by. I remember my father taking me to see him when I was a little girl -- we ourselves weren't very much better off at that time. I've been through it," she shivered. "I know what that awful poverty is. Sometimes it seems immoral of me to live luxuriously as I do now without doing a hand's turn to help."

"Chacun a son metier, my dear," said I. "There's no need to reproach yourself."

"But I think it might be my metier," she replied earnestly, "if only I could learn it."

"Why haven't you tried, then?"

"I've been lazy and the opportunity hasn't come my way."

"I'll introduce you to Campion," I said, "and doubtless he'll be able to find something for you to do. He has made a science of the matter. I'll take you down to see him."

"Will you?"

"Certainly," said I. There was a pause. Then an idea struck me. "I wonder, my dear Lola, whether you could apply that curious power you have over savage animals to the taming of the more brutal of humans."

"I wonder," she said thoughtfully.

"I should like to see you seize a drunken costermonger in the act of jumping on his wife by the scruff of the neck, and reduce him to such pulp that he sat up on his tail and begged."

"Oh, Simon!" she exclaimed reproachfully. "I quite thought you were serious."

"So I am, my dear," I returned quickly, "as serious as I can be."

She laughed. "Do you remember the first day you came to see me? You said that I could train any human bear to dance to whatever tune I pleased. I wonder if the same thought was at the back of your head."

"It wasn't. It was a bad and villainous thought. I came under the impression that you were a dangerous seductress."

"And I'm not?"

Oh, that spring day, that delicious tingle in the air, that laughing impertinence of the budding trees in the park through which we were then driving, that enveloping sense of fragrance and the nearness and the dearness of her! Oh, that overcharge of vitality! I leaned my head to hers so that my lips nearly touched her ear. My voice shook.

"You're a seductress and a witch and a sorcerer and an enchantress."

The blood rose to her dark face. She half closed her eyes.

"What else am I?" she murmured.

But, alas! I had not time to answer, for the brougham stopped at the gates of the Zoological Gardens. We both awakened from our foolishness. My hand was on the door-handle when she checked me.

"What's the good of a mind if you can't change it? I don't feel in a mood for wild beasts to-day, and I know you don't care to see me fooling about with them. I would much rather sit quiet and talk to you."

With a woman who wants to sacrifice herself there is no disputing. Besides, I had no desire to dispute. I acquiesced. We agreed to continue our drive.

"We'll go round by Hampstead Heath," she said to the chauffeur. As soon as we were in motion again, she drew ever so little nearer and said, in her lowest, richest notes, and with a coquetry that was bewildering on account of its frankness:

"What were we talking of before we pulled up?"

"I don't know what we were talking of," I said, "but we seem to have trodden on the fringe of a fairy-tale."

"Can't we tread on it again?" She laughed happily.

"You have only to cast the spell of your witchery over me again."

She drew yet a little nearer and whispered: "I'm trying to do it as hard as I can."

An adorable softness came into her eyes, and her hand instinctively closed round mine in its boneless clasp. The long pent-up longing of the woman vibrated from her in waves that shook me to my soul. My senses swam. Her face quivered glorious before me in a black world. Her lips were parted. Careless of all the eyes in all the houses in the Avenue Road, St. John's Wood, and in the head of a telegraph boy whom I only noticed afterwards, I kissed her on the lips.

All the fulness and strength of life danced through my veins.

"I told you I was quite alive!" I said with idiotic exultation.

She closed her eyes and leaned back. "Why did you do that?" she murmured.

"Because I love you," said I. "It has come at last."

Where we drove I have no recollection. Presumably an impression of green rolling plain with soft uplands in the distance signified that we passed along Hampstead Heath; the side thoroughfare with villa residences on either side may have been Kilburn High Road; the flourishing, busy, noisy suburb may have been Kilburn: the street leading thence to the Marble Arch may have been Maida Vale. To me they were paths in Dreamland. We spoke but little and what we did say was in the simple, commonplace language which all men use in the big crises of life.

There was no doubt now of my choice. I loved her. Love had come to me at last. That was all I knew at that hour and all I cared to know.

Lola was the first to awake from Dreamland. She shivered. I asked whether she felt cold.

"No. I can't believe that you love me. I can't. I can't."

I smiled in a masterful way. "I can soon show you that I do."

She shook her head. "I'm afraid, Simon, I'm afraid."

"What of?"

"Myself."

"Why?"

"I can't tell you. I can't explain. I don't know how to. I've been wrong -- horribly wrong. I'm ashamed."

She gripped her hands together and looked down at them. I bent forward so as to see her face, which was full of pain.

"But, dearest of all women," I cried, "what in the world have you to be ashamed of?"

She paused, moistened her lips with her tongue, and then broke out:

"I'll tell you. A decent lady like your Eleanor Faversham wouldn't tell. But I can't keep these things in. Didn't you begin by saying I was a seductress? No, no, let me talk. Didn't you say I could make a man do what I wanted? Well, I wanted you to kiss me. And now you've done it, you think you love me; but you don't, you can't."

"You're talking the wickedest nonsense that ever proceeded out of the lips of a loving woman," I said aghast. "I repeat in the most solemn way that I love you with all my heart."

"In common decency you couldn't say otherwise."

Again I saw the futility of disputation. I put my hand on hers.

"Time will show, dear. At any rate, we have had our hour of fairyland."

"I wish we hadn't," she said. "Don't you see it was only my sorcery, as you call it, that took us there? I meant us to go."

At last we reached Cadogan Gardens. I descended and handed her out, and we entered the hall of the mansions. The porter stood with the lift-door open.

"I'm coming up to knock all this foolishness out of your head."

"No, don't, please, for Heaven's sake!" she whispered imploringly. "I must be alone -- to think it all out. It's only because I love you so. And don't come to see me for a day or two -- say two days. This is Wednesday. Come on Friday. You think it over as well. And if it's really true -- I'll know then -- when you come. Good-bye, dear. Make Gray drive you wherever you want to go."

She wrung my hand, turned and entered the lift. The gates swung to and she mounted out of sight. I went slowly back to the brougham, and gave the chauffeur the address of my eyrie. He touched his hat. I got in and we drove off. And then, for the first time, it struck me that an about-to-be-shabby gentleman with a beggarly two hundred a year, ought not, in spite of his quarterings, to be contemplating marriage with a wealthy woman who kept an electric brougham. The thought hit me like a stone in the midriff.

What on earth was to be done? My pride rose up like the deux ex machina in the melodrama and forbade the banns. To live on Lola's money -- the idea was intolerable. Equally intolerable was the idea of earning an income by means against the honesty of which my soul clamoured aloud.

"Good God!" I cried. "Is life, now I've got to it, nothing but an infinite series of dilemmas? No sooner am I off one than I'm on another. No sooner do I find that Lola and not Eleanor Faversham is the woman sent down by Heaven to be my mate than I realise the same old dilemma -- Lola on one horn and Eleanor replaced on the other by Pride and Honour and all sorts of capital-lettered considerations. Life is the very Deuce," said I, with a wry appreciation of the subtlety of language.

Why did Lola say: "Your Eleanor Faversham?"

I had enough to think over for the rest of the evening. But I slept peacefully. Light loves had come and gone in the days past; but now for the first time love that was not light had come into my life.

Simon the Jester

Chapter XVII

The other day, while looking through a limbo of a drawer wherein have been cast from time to time a medley of maimed, half-soiled, abortive things, too unfitted for the paradise of publication, and too good (so my vanity will have it) for the damnation of the waste-paper basket, I came across, at the very bottom, the manuscript of the preceding autobiographical narrative, the last words of which I wrote at Mustapha Superieur three years ago. At first I carried it about with me, not caring to destroy it and not knowing what in the world to do with it until, with the malice of inanimate things, the dirty dog's- eared bundle took to haunting me, turning up continually in inconvenient places and ever insistently demanding a new depository. At last I began to look on it with loathing; and one day in a fit of inspiration, creating the limbo aforesaid, I hurled the manuscript, as I thought, into everlasting oblivion. I had no desire to carry on the record of my life any further, and there, in limbo, it has remained for three years. But the other day I took it out for reference; and now as I am holiday-making in a certain little backwater of the world, where it is raining in a most unholiday fashion, it occurs to me that, as everything has happened to me which is likely to happen (Heaven knows I want no more excursions and alarums in my life's drama), I may as well bring the narrative up to date. I therefore take up the thread, so far as I can, from where I left off.

Lola, having nothing to do in Algiers, which had grown hateful to us both, accompanied me to London. As, however, the weather was rough, and she was a very bad sailor, I saw little of her on the voyage. For my own part, I enjoyed the stormy days, the howling winds and the infuriated waves dashing impotently over the steamer. They filled me with a sense of conflict and of amusement. It is always good to see man triumphing over the murderous forces of nature. It puts one in conceit with one's kind.

At Waterloo I handed Lola over to her maid, who had come to meet her, and, leaving Rogers in charge of my luggage, I drove homeward in a cab.

It was only as I was crossing Waterloo Bridge and saw the dark mass of the Houses of Parliament looming on the other side of the river, and the light in the tower which showed that the House was sitting, that I began to realise my situation. As exiles in desert lands yearn for green fields, so yearned I for those green benches. In vain I represented to myself how often I had yawned on them, how often I had cursed my folly in sitting on them and listening to empty babble when I might have been dining cosily, or talking to a pretty woman or listening to a comic opera, or performing some other useful and soul- satisfying action of the kind; in vain I told myself what a monument of futility was that building; I longed to be in it and of it once again. And when I realised that I yearned for the impossible, my heart was like a stone. For, indeed, I, Simon de Gex, with London once a toy to my hand, was coming into it now a penniless adventurer to seek my fortune.

The cab turned into the Strand, which greeted me as affably as a pandemonium. Motor omnibuses whizzed at me, cabs rattled and jeered at me, private motors and carriages passed me by in sleek contempt; policemen regarded me scornfully as, with uplifted hand regulating the traffic, they held me up; pavements full of people surged along ostentatiously showing that they did not care a brass farthing for me; the thousands of lights with their million reflections, from shop fronts, restaurants, theatres, and illuminated signs glared pitilessly at me. A harsh roar of derision filled the air, like the bass to the treble of the newsboys who yelled in my face. I was wearing a fur- lined coat -- just the thing a penniless adventurer would wear. I had a valet attending to my luggage -- just the sort of thing a penniless adventurer would have. I was driving to the Albany -- just the sort of place where a penniless adventurer would live. And London knew all this -- and scoffed at me in stony heartlessness. The only object that gave me the slightest sympathy was Nelson on top of his column. He seemed to say, "After all, you can't feel such a fool and so much out in the cold as I do up here."

At Piccadilly Circus I found the same atmosphere of hostility. My cab was blocked in the theatre-going tide, and in neighbouring vehicles I had glimpses of fair faces above soft wraps and the profiles of moustached young men in white ties. They assumed an aggravating air of ownership of the blazing thoroughfare, the only gay and joyous spot in London. I, too, had owned it once, but now I felt an alien; and the whole spirit of Piccadilly Circus rammed the sentiment home -- I was an alien and an undesirable alien. I felt even more lost and friendless as I entered the long, cold arcade (known as the Ropewalk) of the Albany.

I found my sister Agatha waiting for me in the library. I had telegraphed to her from Southampton. She was expensively dressed in grey silk, and wore the family diamonds. We exchanged the family kiss and the usual incoherent greetings of our race. She expressed her delight at my restoration to health and gave me satisfactory tidings of Tom Durrell, her husband, of the children, and of our sister Jane. Then she shook her head at me, and made me feel like a naughty little boy. This I resented. Being the head of the family, I had always encouraged the deferential attitude which my sisters, dear right- minded things, had naturally assumed from babyhood.

"Oh, Simon, what a time you've given us!"

She had never spoken to me like this in her life.

"That's nothing, my dear Agatha," said I just a bit tartly, "to the time I've given myself. I'm sorry for you, but I think you ought to be a little sorry for me."

"I am. More sorry than I can say. Oh, Simon, how could you?"

"How could I what?" I cried, unwontedly regardless of the refinements of language.

"Mix yourself up in this dreadful affair?"

"My dear girl," said I, "if you had got mixed up in a railway collision, I shouldn't ask you how you managed to do it. I should be sorry for you and feel your arms and legs and inquire whether you had sustained any internal injuries."

She is a pretty, spare woman with a bird-like face and soft brown hair just turning grey; and as good-hearted a little creature as ever adored five healthy children and an elderly baronet with disastrous views on scientific farming.

"Dear old boy," she said in milder accents, "I didn't mean to be unkind. I want to be good to you and help you, so much so that I asked Bingley" -- Bingley is my housekeeper -- "whether I could stay to dinner."

"That's good of you -- but this magnificence -- -- ?"

"I'm going on later to the Foreign Office reception."

"Then you do still mingle with the great and gorgeous?" I said.

"What do you mean? Why shouldn't I?"

I laughed, suspecting rightly that my sisters' social position had not been greatly imperilled by the profligacy of their scandal-bespattered brother.

"What are people saying about me?" I asked suddenly.

She made a helpless gesture. "Can't you guess? You have told us the facts, and, of course, we believe you; we have done our best to spread abroad the correct version -- but you know what people are. If they're told they oughtn't to believe the worst, they're disappointed and still go on believing it so as to comfort themselves."

"You cynical little wretch!" said I.

"But it's true," she urged. "And, after all, even if they were well disposed, the correct version makes considerable demands on their faith. Even Letty Farfax -- "

"I know! I know!" said I. "Letty Farfax is typical. She would love to be on the side of the angels, but as she wouldn't meet the best people there, she ranges herself with the other party."

Presently we dined, and during the meal, when the servants happened to be out of the room, we continued, snippet-wise, the inconclusive conversation. Like a good sister Agatha had come to cheer a lonely and much abused man; like a daughter of Eve she had also come to find out as much as she possibly could.

"I think I must tell you something which you ought to know," she said. "It's all over the town that you stole the lady from Dale Kynnersley."

"If I did," said I, "it was at his mother's earnest entreaty. You can tell folks that. You can also tell them Madame Brandt is not the kind of woman to be stolen by one man from another. She is a thoroughly virtuous, good, and noble woman, and there's not a creature living who wouldn't be honoured by her friendship."

As I made this announcement with an impetuosity which reminded me (with a twinge of remorse) of poor Dale's dithyrambics, Agatha shot at me a quick glance of apprehension.

"But, my dear Simon, she used to act in a circus with a horse!"

"I fail to see," said I, growing angry, "how the horse could have imbued her with depravity, and I'm given to understand that the tone of the circus is not quite what it used to be in the days of the Empress Theodora."

A ripple passed over Agatha's bare shoulders, which I knew to be a suppressed shrug.

"I suppose men and women look at these things differently," she remarked, and from the stiffness of her tone I divined that the idea of moral qualities lurking in the nature of Lola Brandt occasioned her considerable displeasure.

"I hope -- -- " She paused. There was another ripple. "No. I had better not say it. It's none of my business, after all."

"I don't think it is, my dear," said I.

Rogers bringing in the cutlets ended the snippet of talk.

It was not the cheeriest of dinners. I took advantage of the next interval of quiet to inquire after Dale. I learned that the poor boy had almost collapsed after the election and was now yachting with young Lord Essendale somewhere about the Hebrides. Agatha had not seen him, but Lady Kynnersley had called on her one day in a distracted frame of mind, bitterly reproaching me for the unhappiness of her son. I should never have suspected that such fierce maternal love could burn beneath Lady Kynnersley's granite exterior. She accused me of treachery towards Dale and, most illogically, of dishonourable conduct towards herself.

"She said things about you," said Agatha, "for which, even if they were true, I couldn't forgive her. So that's an end of that friendship. Indeed, it has been very difficult, Simon," she continued, "to keep up with our common friends. It has placed us in the most painful and delicate position. And now you're back, I'm afraid it will be worse."

Thus under all Agatha's affection there ran the general hostility of London. Guilty or not, I had offended her in her most deeply rooted susceptibilities, and as yet she only knew half the imbroglio in which I was enmeshed. Over coffee, however, she began to take a more optimistic view of affairs.

"After all, you'll be able to live it down," she said with a cheerful air of patronage. "People soon forget. Before the year is out you'll be going about just as usual, and at the General Election you'll find a seat somewhere."

I informed her that I had given up politics. What then, she asked, would I do for an occupation?

"Work for my living," I replied.

"Work?" She arched her eyebrows, as if it were the most extraordinary thing a man could do. "What kind of work?"

"Road-sweeping or tax-collecting or envelope-addressing."

She selected a cigarette from the silver box in front of her, and did not reply until she had lit it and inhaled a puff or two.

"I wish you wouldn't be so flippant, Simon."

From this remark I inferred that I still was in the criminal dock before this lady Chief Justice. I smiled at the airs the little woman gave herself now that I was no longer the impeccable and irreproachable dictator of the family. Mine was the experience of every fallen tyrant since the world began.

"My dear Agatha, I've had enough shocks during the last few weeks to knock the flippancy out of a Congregational minister. In November I was condemned to die within six months. The sentence was final and absolute. I thought I would do the kind of good one can't do with a lifetime in front of one, and I wasted all my substance in riotous giving. In the elegant phraseology of high society I am stone-broke. As my training has not fitted me to earn my living in high-falutin ways, I must earn it in some humble capacity. Therefore, if you see me call at your house for the water rate, you'll understand that I am driven to that expedient by necessity and not by degradation."

Naturally I had to elaborate this succinct statement before my sister could understand its full significance. Then dismay overwhelmed her. Surely something could be done. The fortunes of Jane and herself were at my disposal to set me on my feet again. We were brother and sisters; what was theirs was mine; they couldn't see me starve. I thanked her for her affection -- the dear creatures would unhesitatingly have let me play ducks and drakes with their money, but I explained that though poor, I was still proud and prized the independence of the tax-collector above the position of the pensioner of Love's bounty.

"Tom must get you something to do," she declared.

"Tom must do nothing of the kind. Let me say that once and for all," I returned peremptorily. "I've made my position clear to you, because you're my sister and you ought to be spared any further misinterpretation of my actions. But to have you dear people intriguing after billets for me would be intolerable."

"But what are you going to do/?" she cried, wringing her hands.

"I'm going for my first omnibus ride to-morrow," said I heroically.

Upon which assertion Rogers entered announcing that her ladyship's carriage had arrived. A while later I accompanied her downstairs and along the arcade.

"I shall be so miserable, thinking of you, poor old boy," she said affectionately, as she bade me good-bye.

"Don't, I am going to enjoy myself for the first time in my life."

These were "prave 'orts," but I felt doleful enough when I re-entered the chambers where I had lived in uncomplaining luxury for fourteen years.

"There's no help for it," I murmured. "I must get rid of the remainder of my lease, sell my books and pictures and other more or less expensive household goods, dismiss Rogers and Bingley, and go and live on thirty shillings a week in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. I think," I continued, regarding myself in the Queen Anne mirror over the mantelpiece, "I think that it will better harmonise with my fallen fortunes if I refrain from waxing the ends of my moustache. There ought to be a modest droop about the moustache of a tax-collector."

The next morning I gave my servants a months' notice. Rogers, who had been with me for many years, behaved in the correctest manner. He neither offered to lend me his modest savings nor to work for me for no wages. He expressed his deep regret at leaving my service and his confidence that I would give him a good character. Bingley wept after the way of women. There was also a shadowy housemaidy young person in a cap who used to make meteoric appearances and whom I left to the diplomacy of Bingley. These dismal rites performed, I put my chambers into the hands of a house agent and interviewed a firm of auctioneers with reference to the sale. It was all exceedingly unpleasant. The agent was so anxious to let my chambers, the auctioneer so delighted at the chance of selling my effects, that I felt myself forthwith turned neck and crop out of doors. It was a bright morning in early spring, with a satirical touch of hope in the air. London, no longer to be my London, maintained its hostile attitude to me. If any one had prophesied that I should be a stranger in Piccadilly, I should have laughed aloud. Yet I was.

Walking moodily up Saint James's street I met the omniscient and expansive Renniker. He gave me a curt nod and a "How d'ye do?" and passed on. I felt savagely disposed to slash his jaunty silk hat off with my walking-stick. A few months before he would have rushed effusively into my arms and bedaubed me with miscellaneous inaccuracies of information. At first I was furiously indignant. Then I laughed, and swinging my stick, nearly wreaked my vengeance on a harmless elderly gentleman.

It was my first experience of social ostracism. Although I curled a contumelious lip, I smarted under the indignity. It was all very well to say proudly "io son' io"; but io used to be a person of some importance who was not cavalierly "how d'ye do'd" by creatures like Renniker. This and the chance encounters of the next few weeks gave me furiously to think. I knew that in one respect my sister Agatha was right. These good folks who shied now at the stains of murder with which my reputation was soiled would in time get used to them and eventually forget them altogether. But I reflected that I should not forget, and I determined that I should not be admitted on sufferance, as at first I should have to be admitted, into any man's club or any woman's drawing-room.

One day Colonel Ellerton, Maisie Ellerton's father, called on me. He used to be my very good friend; we sat on the same side of the House and voted together on innumerable occasions in perfect sympathy and common lack of conviction. He was cordial enough, congratulated me on my marvellous restoration to health, deplored my absence from Parliamentary life, and then began to talk confusedly of Russia. It took a little perspicacity to see that something was weighing on the good man's mind; something he had come to say and for his honest life could not get out. His plight became more pitiable as the interview proceeded, and when he rose to go, he grew as red as a turkey-cock and began to sputter. I went to his rescue.

"It's very kind of you to have come to see me, Ellerton," I said, "but if I don't call yet awhile to pay my respects to your wife, I hope you'll understand, and not attribute it to discourtesy."

I have never seen relief so clearly depicted on a human countenance. He drew a long breath and instinctively passed his handkerchief over his forehead. Then he grasped my hand.

"My dear fellow," he cried, "of course we'll understand. It was a shocking affair -- terrible for you. My wife and I were quite bowled over by it."

I did not attempt to clear myself. What was the use? Every man denies these things as a matter of course, and as a matter of course nobody believes him.

Once I ran across Elphin Montgomery, a mysterious personage behind many musical comedy enterprises. He is jewelled all over like a first- class Hindoo idol, and is treated as a god in fashionable restaurants, where he entertains riff-raff at sumptuous banquets. I had some slight acquaintance with the fellow, but he greeted me as though I were a long lost intimate -- his heavy sensual face swagged in smiles -- and invited me to a supper party. I declined with courtesy and walked away in fury. He would not have presumed to ask me to meet his riff-raff before I became disgustingly and I suppose to some minds, fascinatingly, notorious. But now I was hail-fellow-well-met with him, a bird of his own feather, a rogue of his own kidney, to whom he threw open the gates of his bediamonded and befrilled Alsatia. A pestilential fellow! As if I would mortgage my birthright for such a mess of pottage.

So I stiffened and bade Society high and low go packing. I would neither seek mine own people, nor allow myself to be sought by Elphin Montgomery's. I enwrapped myself in a fine garment of defiance. My sister Jane, who was harder and more worldly-minded than Agatha, would have had me don a helmet of brass and a breastplate of rhinoceros hide and force my way through reluctant portals; but Agatha agreed with me, clinging, however, to the hope that time would not only reconcile Society to me, but would also reconcile me to Society.

"If the hope comforts you, my dear Agatha," said I, "by all means cherish it. In the meantime, allow me to observe that the character of Ishmael is eminently suited to the profession of tax-collecting."

During these early days of my return the one person with whom I had no argument was Lola. She soothed where others scratched, and stimulated where others goaded. The intimacy of my convalescence continued. At first I acquainted her, as far as was reasonably necessary, with my change of fortune, and accepted her offer to find me less expensive quarters. The devoted woman personally inspected every flat in London, with that insistence of which masculine patience is incapable, and eventually decided on a tiny bachelor suite somewhere in the clouds over a block of flats in Victoria Street where the service is included in the rent. Into this I moved with such of my furniture as I withdrew from the auctioneer's hammer, and there I prepared to stay until necessity should drive me to the Bloomsbury boarding-house. I thought I would graduate my descent. Before I moved, however, she came to the Albany for the first and only time to see the splendour I was about to quit. In a modest way it was splendour. My chambers were really a large double flat to the tasteful furnishing of which I had devoted the thought and interest of many years. She went with me through the rooms. The dining-room was all Chippendale, each piece a long-coveted and hunted treasure; the library old oak; the drawing-room a comfortable and cunning medley. There were bits of old china, pieces of tapestry, some rare prints, my choice collection of mezzotints, a picture or two of value -- one a Lancret, a very dear possession. And there were my books -- once I had a passion for rare bindings. Every thing had to me a personal significance, and I hated the idea of surrender more than I dared to confess even to myself. But I said to Lola:

"Vanity of vanities! All things expensive are vanity!"

Her eyes glistened and she slipped her arm through mine and patted the back of my hand.

"If you talk like that I shall cry and make a fool of myself," she said in a broken manner.

It is not so much the thing that is done or the thing that is said that matters, but the way of doing or saying it. In the commonplace pat on the hand, in the break in the commonplace words there was something that went straight to my heart. I squeezed her arm and whispered:

"Thank you, dear."

This sympathy so sure and yet so delicately conveyed was mine for the trouble of mounting the stairs that led to her drawing-room in Cadogan Gardens. She seemed to be watching my heart the whole time, so that without my asking, without my knowledge even, she could touch each sore spot as it appeared, with the healing finger. For herself she made no claims, and because she did not in any way declare herself to be unhappy, I, after the manner of men, took her happiness for granted. For lives there a man who does not believe that an uncomplaining woman has nothing to complain of? It is his masculine prerogative of density. Besides, does not he himself when hurt bellow like a bull? Why, he argues, should not wounded woman do the same? So, when I wanted companionship, I used to sit in the familiar room and make Adolphus, the Chow dog, shoulder arms with the poker, and gossip restfully with Lola, who sprawled in her old languorous, loose-limbed way among the cushions of her easy chair. Gradually my habitual reserve melted from me, and at last I gave her my whole confidence, telling her of my disastrous pursuit of eumoiriety, of Eleanor Faversham, of the attitude of Society, in fact, of most of what I have set down in the preceding pages. She was greatly interested in everything, especially in Eleanor Faversham. She wanted to know the colour of her eyes and hair and how she dressed. Women are odd creatures.

The weeks passed.

Besides ministering to my dilapidated spirit, Lola found occupation in looking after the cattery of Anastasius Papadopoulos, which the little man had left in the charge of his pupil and assistant, Quast. This Quast apparently was a faithful, stolid, but unintelligent and incapable German who had remained loyally at his post until Lola found him there in a state of semi-starvation. The sum of money with which Anastasius had provided him had been eked out to the last farthing. The cats were in a pitiable condition. Quast, in despair, was trying to make up his dull mind whether to sell them or eat them. Lola with superb feminine disregard of legal rights, annexed the whole cattery, maintained Quast in his position of pupil and assistant and informed the landlord that she would be responsible for the rent. Then she set to work to bring the cats into their proper condition of sleekness, and, that done, to put them through a systematic course of training. They had been thoroughly demoralised, she declared, under Quast's maladministration, and had almost degenerated into the unhistrionic pussies of domestic life. As for Hephaestus, the great ferocious tom, he was more like an insane tiger than a cat. He flew at the gate over which he used to jump, and clawed and bit it to matchwood, and after spitting in fury at the blazing hoop, sprang at the unhappy Quast as if he had been the contriver of the indignities to which he was being subjected. These tales of feline backsliding I used to hear from Lola, and when I asked her why she devoted her energies to the unproductive education of the uninspiring animals, she would shrug her shoulders and regard me with a Giaconda smile.

"In the first place it amuses me. You seem to forget I'm a dompteuse, a tamer of beasts; it's my profession, I was trained to it. It's the only thing I can do, and it's good to feel that I haven't lost my power. It's odd, but I feel a different woman when I'm impressing my will on these wretched cats. You must come one of these days and see a performance, when I've got them ship-shape. They'll astonish you. And then," she would add, "I can write to Anastasius and tell him how his beloved cats are getting on."

Well, it was an interest in her life which, Heaven knows, was not crowded with exciting incidents. Now that I can look back on these things with a philosophic eye, I can imagine no drearier existence than that of a friendless, unoccupied woman in a flat in Cadogan Gardens. At that time, I did not realise this as completely as I might have done. Because her old surgeon friend, Sir Joshua Oldfield, now and then took her out to dinner, I considered she was leading a cheerful if not a merry life. I smiled indulgently at Lola's devotion to the cats and congratulated her on having found another means whereby to beguile the tedium vitae which is the arch-enemy of content.

"I wish I could find such a means myself," said I.

I not only had the wish, but the imperative need to so do. To stand like Ajax defying the lightning is magnificent, but as a continuous avocation it is wearisome and unprofitable, especially if carried on in a tiny bachelor suite, an eyrie of a place, at the top of a block of flats in Victoria Street. Indeed, if I did not add soon to the meagre remains of my fortune, I should not be able to afford the luxury of the bachelor suite. Conscious of this, I left the lightning alone, after a last denunciatory shake of the fist, and descended into the busy ways of men to look for work.

Thus I entered on the second stage of my career -- that of a soldier of Fortune. At first I was doubtful as to what path to glory and bread- and-butter I could carve out for myself. Hitherto I had been Fortune's darling instead of her mercenary, and she had most politely carved out my paths for me, until she had played her jade's trick and left me in the ditch. Now things were different. I stood alone, ironical, ambitionless, still questioning the utility of human effort, yet determined to play the game of life to its bitter end. What could I do?

It is true that I had been called to the Bar in my tentative youth, while I drafted documents for my betters to pull to pieces and rewrite at the Foreign Office; but I had never seen a brief, and my memories of Gaius, Justinian, Williams's "Real Property," and Austin's "Jurisprudence," were as nebulous as those of the Differential Calculus over whose facetiae I had pondered during my schooldays. The law was as closed to me as medicine. I had no profession. I therefore drifted into the one pursuit for which my training had qualified me, namely, political journalism. I had written much, in my amateur way, during my ten years' membership of Parliament; why, I hardly know -- not because I needed money, not because I had thoughts which I burned to express, and certainly not through vain desire of notoriety. Perhaps the motive was twofold, an ingrained Puckish delight in the incongruous -- it seemed incongruous for an airy epicurean like myself to spend stodgy hours writing stodgier articles on Pauper Lunacy and Poor Law Administration -- and the same inherited sense of gentlemanly obligation to do something for one's king and country as made my ancestors, whether they liked it or not, clothe themselves in uncomfortable iron garments and go about fighting other gentlemen similarly clad, to their own great personal danger. At any rate, it complemented my work at St. Stephen's, and doubtless contributed to a reputation in the House which I did not gain through my oratory. I could therefore bring to editors the stock-in-trade of a fairly accurate knowledge of current political issues, an appreciation of personalities, and a philosophical subrident estimate of the bubbles that are for ever rising on the political surface. I found Finch of The Universal Review, James of The Weekly, and one or two others more than willing to give me employment. I put my pen also at the disposal of Raggles. It was as uplifting and about as mechanical as tax-collecting; but it involved less physical exertion and less unpleasant contact with my fellow creatures. I could also keep the ends of my moustache waxed, which was a great consolation.

My sister Agatha commended my courage and energy, and Lola read my articles with a glowing enthusiasm, which compensated for lack of exact understanding; but I was not proud of my position. It is one thing to stand at the top of a marble staircase and in a debonair, jesting fashion to fling insincere convictions to a recipient world. It is another to sell the same worthless commodity for money. I began, to my curious discomfort, to suspect that life had a meaning after all.

Chapter XVIII

One day I had walked from Cadogan Gardens with a gadfly phrase of Lola's tormenting my ears:

"You're not quite alive even yet."

I had spent most of the day over a weekly article for James's high- toned periodical, using the same old shibboleths, proclaiming Gilead to be the one place for balm, juggling with the same old sophistries, and proving that Pope must have been out of his mind when he declared that an honest man was the noblest work of God, seeing that nobler than the most honest man was the disingenuous government held up to eulogy; and I had gone tired, dispirited, out of conceit with myself to Lola for tea and consolation. I had not been the merriest company. I had spoken gloomily of the cosmos, and when Adolphus the Chow dog had walked down the room in his hind legs, I had railed at the futility of canine effort. To Lola, who had put forth all her artillery of artless and harmless coquetry in voice and gesture, in order to lure my thoughts into pleasanter ways, I exhibited the querulous grumpiness of a spoiled village octogenarian. We discussed the weather, which was worth discussing, for the spring, after long tarrying, had come. It was early May. Lola laughed.

"The spring has got into my blood."

"It hasn't got into mine," I declared. "It never will. I wonder what the deuce is the matter with me."

Then Lola had said, "My dear Simon, I know. You're not quite alive even yet."

I walked homewards pestered by the phrase. What did she mean by it? I stopped at the island round the clock-tower by Victoria Station and bought a couple of newspapers. There, in the centre of the whirlpool where swam dizzily omnibuses, luggage-laden cabs, whirling motors, feverish, train-seeking humans, dirty newsboys, I stood absently saying to myself, "You're not quite alive even yet."

A hand gripped my arm and a cheery voice said "Hallo!" I started and recognised Rex Campion. I also said "Hallo!" and shook hands with him. We had not met since the days when, having heard of my Monte Cristo lavishness, he had called at the Albany and had beguiled me into giving a thousand pounds to his beloved "Barbara's Building," the prodigious philanthropic institution which he had founded in the slums of South Lambeth. In spite of my dead and dazed state of being I was pleased to see his saturnine black-bearded face, and to hear his big voice. He was one of those men who always talked like a megaphone. The porticoes of Victoria Station re-echoed with his salutations. I greeted him less vociferously, but with equal cordiality.

"You're looking very fit. I head that you had gone through a miraculous operation. How are you?"

"Perfectly well," said I, "but I've been told that I'm not quite alive even yet."

He looked anxious. "Remains of trouble?"

"Not a vestige," I laughed.

"That's all right," he said breezily. "Now come along and hear Milligan speak."

It did not occur to him that I might have work, worries, or engagements, or that the evening's entertainment which he offered me might be the last thing I should appreciate. His head, for the moment, was full of Milligan, and it seemed to him only natural that the head of all humanity should be full of Milligan too. I made a wry face.

"That son of thunder?"

Milligan was a demagogue who had twice unsuccessfully attempted to get into Parliament in the Labour interest.

"Have you ever heard him?"

"Heaven forbid!" said I in my pride.

"Then come. He's speaking in the Hall of the Lambeth Biblical Society."

I was tempted, as I wanted company. In spite of my high resolve to out-Ishmael Ishmael, I could not kill a highly developed gregarious instinct. I also wanted a text for an article. But I wanted my dinner still more. Campion condemned the idea of dinner.

"You can have a cold supper," he roared, "like the rest of us."

I yielded. Campion dragged me helpless to a tram at the top of Vauxhall Bridge Road.

"It will do Your Mightiness good to mingle with the proletariat," he grinned.

I did not tell him that I had been mingling with it in this manner for some time past or that I repudiated the suggestion of its benign influence. I entered the tram meekly. As soon as we were seated, he began:

"I bet you won't guess what I've done with your thousand pounds. I'll give you a million guesses."

As I am a poor conjecturer, I put on a blank expression and shook my head. He waited for an instant, and then shouted with an air of triumph:

"I've founded a prize, my boy -- a stroke of genius. I've called it by your name. 'The de Gex Prize for Housewives.' I didn't bother you about it as I knew you were in a world of worry. But just think of it. An annual prize of thirty pounds -- practically the interest -- for housewives!"

His eyes flashed in his enthusiasm; he brought his heavy hand down on my knee.

"Well?" I asked, not electrified by this announcement.

"Don't you see?" he exclaimed. "I throw the competition open to the women in the district, with certain qualifications, you know -- I look after all that. They enter their names by a given date and then they start fair. The woman who keeps her home tidiest and her children cleanest collars the prize. Isn't it splendid?"

I agreed. "How many competitors?"

"Forty-three. And there they are working away, sweeping their floors and putting up clean curtains and scrubbing their children's noses till they shine like rubies and making their homes like little Dutch pictures. You see, thirty pounds is a devil of a lot of money for poor people. As one mother of a large family said to me, 'With that one could bury them all quite beautiful.'"

"You're a wonderful fellow," said I, somewhat enviously.

He gave an awkward laugh and tugged at his beard.

"I've only happened to find my job, and am doing it as well as I can," he said. "'Tisn't very much, after all. Sometimes one gets discouraged; people are such ungrateful pigs, but now and again one does help a lame dog over a stile which bucks one up, you know. Why don't you come down and have a look at us one of these days? You've been promising to do so for years."

"I will," said I with sudden interest.

"You can have a peep at one or two of the competing homes. We pop into them unexpectedly at all hours. That's a part of the game. We've a complicated system of marks which I'll show you. Of course, no woman knows how she's getting on, otherwise many would lose heart."

"How do the men like this disconcerting ubiquity of soap and water?"

"They love it!" he cried. "They're keen on the prize too. Some think they'll grab the lot and have the devil's own drunk when the year's up. But I'll look after that. Besides, when a chap has been living in the pride of cleanliness for a year he'll get into the way of it and be less likely to make a beast of himself. Anyway, I hope for the best. My God, de Gex, if I didn't hope and hope and hope," he cried earnestly, "I don't know how I should get through anything without hope and a faith in the ultimate good of things."

"The same inconvincible optimist?" said I.

"Yes. Thank heaven. And you?"

I paused. There came a self-revelatory flash. "At the present moment," I said, "I'm a perfectly convincible vacuist."

We left the tram and the main thoroughfare, and turned into frowsy streets, peopled with frowsy men and women and raucous with the bickering play of frowsy children. It was still daylight. Over London the spring had fluttered its golden pinions, and I knew that in more blessed quarters -- in the great parks, in Piccadilly, in Old Palace Yard, half a mile away -- its fragrance lingered, quickening blood already quickened by hope, and making happier hearts already happy. But here the ray of spring had never penetrated either that day or the days of former springs; so there was no lingering fragrance. Here no one heeded the aspects of the changing year save when suffocated by sweltering heat, or frozen in the bitter cold, or drenched by the pouring rain. Otherwise in these gray, frowsy streets spring, summer, autumn, winter were all the same to the grey, frowsy people. It is true that youth laughed -- pale, animal boys, and pale, flat-chested girls. But it laughed chiefly at inane obscenity.

One of these days, when phonography is as practicable as photography, some one will make accurate records in these frowsy streets, and then, after the manner of the elegant writers of Bucolics and Pastorals, publish such a series of Urbanics and Pavimentals, phonographic dialogues between the Colins and Dulcibellas of the pavement and the gutter as will freeze up Hell with horror.

An anemic, flirtatious group passed us, the girls in front, the boys behind.

"Good God, Campion, what can you do?" I asked.

"Pay them, old chap," he returned quickly.

"What's the good of that?"

"Good? Oh, I see!" He laughed, with a touch of scorn. "It's a question of definition. When you see a fellow creature suffering and it shocks your refined susceptibilities and you say 'poor devil' and pass on, you think you have pitied him. But you haven't. You think pity's a passive virtue. It isn't. If you really pity anybody, you go mad to help him -- you don't stand by with tears of sensibility running down your cheeks. You stretch out your hand, because you've damn well got to. If he won't take it, or wipes you over the head, that's his look- out. You can't work miracles. But once in a way he does take it, and then -- well, you work like hell to pull him through. And if you do, what bigger thing is there in the world than the salvation of a human soul?"

"It's worth living for," said I.

"It's worth doing any confounded old thing for," he declared.

I envied Campion as I had envied no man before. He was alive in heart and soul and brain; I was not quite alive even yet. But I felt better for meeting him. I told him so. He tugged his beard again and laughed.

"I am a happy old crank. Perhaps that's the reason."

At the door of the hall of the Lambeth Ethical Society he stopped short and turned on me; his jaw dropped and he regarded me in dismay.

"I'm the flightiest and feather-headedest ass that ever brayed," he informed me. "I just remember I sent Miss Faversham a ticket for this meeting about a fortnight ago. I had clean forgotten it, though something uncomfortable has been tickling the back of my head all the time. I'm miserably sorry."

I hastened to reassure him. "Miss Faversham and I are still good friends. I don't think she'll mind my nodding to her from the other side of the room." Indeed, she had written me one or two letters since my recovery perfect in tact and sympathy, and had put her loyal friendship at my service.

"Even if we meet," I smiled, "nothing tragic will happen."

He expressed his relief.

"But what," I asked, "is Miss Faversham doing in this galley?"

"I suppose she is displaying an intelligent interest in modern thought," he said, with boyish delight at the chance I had offered him.

"Touche," said I, with a bow, and we entered the hall.

It was crowded. The audience consisted of the better class of artisans, tradesmen, and foremen in factories: there was a sprinkling of black-coated clerks and unskilled labouring men. A few women's hats sprouted here and there among the men's heads like weeds in a desert. There were women, too, in proportionately greater numbers, on the platform at the end of the hall, and among them I was quick to notice Eleanor Faversham. As Campion disliked platforms and high places in synagogues, we sat on one of the benches near the door. He explained it was also out of consideration for me.

"If Milligan is too strong for your proud, aristocratic stomach," he whispered, "you can cut and run without attracting attention."

Milligan had evidently just began his discourse. I had not listened to him for five minutes when I found myself caught in the grip which he was famous for fastening on his audience. With his subject -- Nationalisation of the Land -- and his arguments I had been perfectly familiar for years. As a boy I had read Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" with the superciliousness of the young believer in the divine right of Britain's landed gentry, and before the Eton Debating Society I had demolished the whole theory to my own and every one else's satisfaction. Later, as a practical politician, I had kept myself abreast of the Socialist movement. I did not need Mr. John Milligan, whom my lingering flippancy had called a son of thunder, to teach me the elements of the matter. But at this peculiar crisis of my life I felt that, in a queer, unknown way, Milligan had a message for me. It was uncanny. I sat and listened to the exposition of Utopia with the rapt intensity of any cheesemonger's assistant there before whose captured spirit floated the vision of days to come when the land should so flow with milk and money that golden cheeses would be like buttercups for the plucking. It was not the man's gospel that fascinated me nor his illuminated prophecy of the millennium that produced the vibrations in my soul, but the surging passion of his faith, the tempest of his enthusiasm. I had enough experience of public speaking to distinguish between the theatrical and the genuine in oratory. Here was no tub-thumping soothsayer, but an inspired zealot. He lived his impassioned creed in every fibre of his frame and faculties. He was Titanic, this rough miner, in his unconquerable hope, divine in his yearning love of humanity.

When he ended there was a dead silence for a second, and then a roar of applause from the pale, earnest, city-stamped faces. A lump rose in my throat. Campion clutched my knee. A light burned in his eyes.

"Well? What about Boanerges?"

"Only one thing," said I, "I wish I were as alive as that man."

A negligible person proposed a vote of thanks to Milligan, after which the hall began to empty. Campion, caught by a group of his proletariat friends, signalled to me to wait for him. And as I waited I saw Eleanor Faversham come slowly from the platform down the central gangway. Her eyes fixed themselves on me at once -- for standing there alone I must have been a conspicuous figure, an intruder from the gorgeous West -- and with a little start of pleasure she hurried her pace. I made my way past the chattering loiterers in my row, and met her. We shook hands.

"Well? Saul among the prophets? Who would have thought of seeing you here!"

I waved my hand towards Campion. "We have the same sponsor." She glanced at him for a swift instant and then at me.

"Did you like it?"

"Have you seen Niagara?"

"Yes."

"Did you like it?"

"I'm so glad," she cried. "I thought perhaps -- -- " she broke off. "Why haven't you tried to see me?"

"There are certain conventions."

"I know," she said. "They're idiotic."

"There's also Mrs. Faversham," said I.

"Mother is the dearest thing in life," she replied, "but Mrs. Faversham is a convention." She came nearer to me, in order to allow a freer passage down the gangway and also in order to be out of earshot of an elderly woman who was obviously accompanying her. "Simon, I've been a good friend to you. I believe in you. Nothing will shake my convictions. You couldn't look into my eyes like that if -- well -- you know."

"I couldn't," said I.

"Then why can't two honourable, loyal people meet? We only need meet once. But I want to tell you things I can't write -- things I can't say here. I also want to hear of things. I think I've got a kind of claim -- haven't I?"

"I've told you, Eleanor. My letters -- "

"Letters are rubbish!" she declared with a laugh. "Where can we meet?"

"Agatha is a good soul," said I.

"Well, fix it up by telephone to-morrow."

"Alas!" said I; "I don't run to telephones in my eagle's nest on Himalaya Mansions."

She knitted her brows. "That's not the last address you wrote from."

"No," I replied, smiling at this glimpse of the matter-of-fact Eleanor. "It was a joke."

"You're incorrigible!" she said rebukingly.

"I don't joke so well in rags as in silken motley," I returned with a smile, "but I do my best."

She disdained a retort. "We'll arrange, anyhow, with Agatha."

Campion, escaping from his friends, came up and chatted for a minute. Then he saw Eleanor and her companion to their carriage.

"Now," said he a moment later, "come to Barbara and have some supper. You won't mind if Jenkins joins us?"

"Who's Jenkins?" I asked.

"Jenkins is an intelligent gas-fitter of Sociological tastes. He classes Herbert Spencer, Benjamin Kidd, and Lombroso as light literature. He also helps us with our young criminals. I should like you to meet him."

"I should be delighted," I said.

So Jenkins was summoned from a little knot a few yards off and duly presented. Whereupon we proceeded to Campion's plain but comfortably furnished quarters in Barbara's Building, where he entertained us till nearly midnight with cold beef and cheese and strenuous conversation.

As I walked across Westminster Bridge on my homeward way it seemed as if London had grown less hostile. Big Ben chimed twelve and there was a distinct Dick Whittington touch about the music. The light on the tower no longer mocked me. As I passed by the gates of Palace Yard, a policeman on duty recognised me and saluted. I strode on with a springier tread and noticed that the next policeman who did not know me, still regarded me with an air of benevolence. A pale moon shone in the heavens and gave me shyly to understand that she was as much my moon as any one else's. As I turned into Victoria Street, omnibuses passed me with a lurch of friendliness. The ban was lifted. I danced (figuratively) along the pavement.

What it portended I did not realise. I was conscious of nothing but a spiritual exhilaration comparable only with the physical exhilaration I experienced in the garden at Algiers when my bodily health had been finally established. As the body then felt the need of expressing itself in violent action -- in leaping and running (an impulse which I firmly subdued), so now did my spirit crave some sort of expression in violent emotion. I was in a mood for enraptured converse with an archangel.

Looking back, I see that Campion's friendly "Hallo" had awakened me from a world of shadows and set me among realities; the impact of Milligan's vehement personality had changed the conditions of my life from static to dynamic; and that a Providence which is not always as ironical as it pleases us to assert had sent Eleanor Faversham's graciousness to mitigate the severity of the shock. I see how just was Lola's diagnosis. "You're not quite alive even yet." I had been going about in a state of suspended spiritual animation.

My recovery dated from that evening.

Simon the Jester

Chapter XV

Of what happened immediately afterwards I have but a confused memory. I remember that Lola and I both fell on our knees beside the stabbed man, and I remember his horrible staring eyes and open mouth. I remember that, though she was white and shaky, she neither shrieked, went into hysterics, nor fainted. I remember rushing down to the manager; I remember running with him breathlessly through obscure passages of the hotel in search of a doctor who was attending a sick member of the staff. I remember the rush back, the doctor bending over the body, which Lola had partially unclothed, and saying:

"He is dead. The blade has gone straight through his heart."

And I have in my mind the unforgettable and awful picture of Anastasius Papadopoulos disregarded in a corner of the room, with his absurd silk hat on -- some reflex impulse had caused him to pick it up and put it on his head -- sitting on the floor amid a welter of documents relating to the death of the horse Sultan, one of which he was eagerly perusing.

After this my memory is clear. It was only the first awful shock and horror of the thing that dazed me.

The man was dead, said the doctor. He must lie until the police arrived and drew up the proces-verbal. The manager went to telephone to the police, and while he was gone I told the doctor what had occurred. Anastasius took no notice of us. Lola, holding her nerves under iron control, stood bolt upright looking alternately at the doctor and myself as we spoke. But she did not utter a word. Presently the manager returned. The alarm had not been given in the hotel. No one knew anything about the occurrence. Lola went into her bedroom and came back with a sheet. The manager took it from her and threw it over the dead man. The doctor stood by Anastasius. The end of a strip of sunlight by the window just caught the dwarf in his corner.

"Get up," said the doctor.

Anastasius, without raising his eyes from his papers, waved him away.

"I am busy. I am engaged on important papers of identification. He had a white star on his forehead, and his tail was over a metre long."

Lola approached him.

"Anastasius," she said gently. He looked up with a radiant smile. "Put away those papers." Like a child he obeyed and scrambled to his feet. Then, seeing the unfamiliar face of the doctor for the first time, he executed one of his politest and most elaborate bows. The doctor after looking at him intently for a while, turned to me.

"Mad. Utterly mad. Apparently he has no consciousness of what he has done."

He lured him to the sofa and sat beside him and began to talk in a low tone of the contents of the papers. Anastasius replied cheerfully, proud at being noticed by the stranger. The papers referred to a precious secret, a gigantic combination, which he had spent years in maturing. I shivered at the sound of his voice, and turned to Lola.

"This is no place for you. Go into your bedroom till you are wanted."

I held the door open for her. She put her hands up to her face and reeled, and I thought she would have fallen; but she roused herself.

"I don't want to break down -- not yet. I shall if I'm left alone -- come and sit with me, for God's sake."

"Very well," said I.

She passed me and I followed; but at the door I turned and glanced round the cheerful, sunny room. There, against the background of blue sky and tree tops framed by the window, sat Anastasius Papadopoulos, swinging his little legs and talking bombastically to the tanned and grizzled doctor, and opposite stood the correctly attired hotel manager in the attitude in which he habitually surveyed the lay-out of the table d'hote, keeping watch beside the white-covered shape on the floor. I was glad to shut the sight from my eyes. We waited silently in the bedroom, Lola sitting on the bed and hiding her face in the pillows, and I standing by the window and looking out at the smiling mockery of the fair earth. An agonising spasm of pain -- a momento mori/ -- shot through me and passed away. I thanked God that a few weeks would see the end of me. I had always enjoyed the comedy of life. It had been to me a thing of infinite jest. But this stupid, meaningless tragedy was carrying the joke too far. My fastidiousness revolted at its vulgarity. I no longer wished to inhabit a world where such jests were possible. . . . I had never seen a man die before. I was surprised at the swiftness and the ugliness of it. . . . I suddenly realised that I was smoking a cigarette, which I was quite unconscious of having lit. I threw it away. A minute afterwards I felt that if I did not smoke I should go crazy. So I lit another. . . . The ghastly silliness of the murder! . . . Colonel Bunnion's loud laugh rose from the terrace below, jarring horribly on my ears. A long green praying mantis that had apparently mounted on the bougainvillea against the hotel wall appeared in meditative stateliness on the window-sill. I picked the insect up absent-mindedly, and began to play with it. Lola's voice from the bed startled me and caused me to drop the mantis. She spoke hoarsely.

"Tell me -- what are they going to do with him?"

I turned round. She had raised a crushed face from the pillows, and looked at me haggardly. I noticed a carafe of brandy and a siphon by the bedside. I mixed her a strong dose, and, before replying, made her drink it.

"They'll place him under restraint, that's all. He's not responsible for his actions."

"He did that once before -- I told you -- but without the knife -- I wish I could cry -- I can't -- You don't think it heartless of me -- but my brain is on fire -- I shall always see it -- I wish to God I had never asked him to come -- Why did I? My God, why did I? -- It was my fault -- I wanted to see him -- to judge for myself how much of the old Andre was left -- there was good in him once -- I thought I might possibly help him -- There was nothing for me to do in the world -- Without you any kind of old hell was good enough -- That's why I sent for him -- When he came, after a bit, I was afraid, and sent for you -- -- "

"Afraid of what?" I asked.

"He asked me at once what money I had -- Then there seemed to be no doubt in his mind that I would join him -- We spoke of you -- the friend who could advise me -- He never said -- what he said afterwards -- I thought it kind of him to consent to see you -- I rang the bell and sent the chasseur for you. I supposed Anastasius had gone home -- I never thought of him. The poor little man was sweet to me, just like a dog -- a silent, sympathetic dog -- I spoke to him as I would to something that wouldn't understand -- all sorts of foolish things -- Now and then a woman has to empty her heart" -- she shivered -- her hands before her face.

"It's my fault, it's my fault."

"These things are no one's fault," I said gently. But just as I was beginning to console her with what thumb-marked scraps of platitude I could collect -- the only philosophy after all, such is the futility of systems, adequate to the deep issues of life -- the door opened and the manager announced that the police had arrived.

We went through the ordeal of the proces-verbal. Anastasius, confronted with his victim, had no memory of what had occurred. He shrieked and shrank and hid his face in Lola's dress. When he was forced to speak he declared that the dead man was not Captain Vauvenarde. Captain Vauvenarde was at the Cercle Africain. He, himself, was seeking him. He would take the gendarmes there, and they could arrest the Captain for the murder of Sultan of which his papers contained indubitable proofs. Eventually the poor little wretch was led away in custody, proud and smiling, entirely convinced that he was leading his captors to the arrest of Captain Vauvenarde. On the threshold he turned and bowed to us so low that the brim of his silk hat touched the floor. Then Lola's nerve gave way and she broke into a passion of awful weeping.

The commissaire de police secured the long thin knife (how the dwarf had managed to conceal it on his small person was a mystery) and the bundle of documents, and accompanied me to my room to see whether he had left anything there to serve as a piece de conviction . We found only the crumpled picture of the horse Sultan neatly pinned against my bedroom wall, and on the floor a ribbon tied like a garter with a little bell opposite the bow. On it was written "Santa Bianca," and I knew it was the collar of the beloved cat which he must have been carrying about him for a talisman. The commissaire took this also.

If you desire to know the details of the judicial proceedings connected with the murder of Andre Marie-Joseph Vauvenarde, ex-Captain in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and the trial of Anastasius Papadopoulos, I must refer you to the Algerian, Parisian, and London Press. There you will find an eagerly picturesque account of the whole miserable affair. Now, not only am I unable to compete with descriptive verbatim reporters on their own ground, but also a consecutive statement, either bald or graphic, of the tedious horrors Lola Brandt and I had to undergo, would be foreign to the purpose of these notes, however far from their original purpose an ironical destiny has caused them to wander. You know nearly all that is necessary for you to know, so that when I am dead you may not judge me too harshly. The remainder I can summarise in a few words. At any rate, I have told the truth, often more naively than one would have thought possible for a man who prided himself as much as I did on his epicurean sophistication.

These have been days, as I say, of tedious horror. There have been endless examinations, reconstructions of the crime, exposures in daring publicity of the private lives of the protagonists of the lunatic drama. The French judges and advocates have accepted the account given by Lola and myself of our mutual relations with a certain mocking credulity. The Press hasn't accepted it at all. It took as a matter of course the view held by the none too noble victim. At first, seeing Lola shrug her shoulders with supreme indifference as to her own reputation, I cared but little for these insinuations. I wrote such letters to my sisters and to Dale as I felt sure would be believed, and let the long-eared, gaping world go hang. Besides, I had other things to think of. Physical pain is insistent, and I have suffered damnable torture. The pettiness of the legal inquiry has been also a maddening irritation. Nothing has been too minute for the attention of the French judiciary. It seemed as though the whole of the evil gang of the Cercle Africain were called as witnesses. They testified as to Captain Vauvenarde's part proprietorship of the hell -- as to wrong practices that occurred there -- as to the crazy conduct of both Anastasius and myself on the occasion of my insane visit. Officers of the Chasseurs d'Afrique were compelled further to blacken the character of the dead man -- he had been a notorious plucker of pigeons during most of his military career, and when at last he was caught red-handed palming the king at ecarte, he was forced to resign his commission. Arabs came from the slums with appalling stories. Even the stolid Saupiquet, dragged from Toulon, gave evidence as to the five-franc bribe and the debt of fifteen sous, and identified the horse Sultan by the crumpled photograph. Lola and I have been racked day after day with questions -- some, indeed, prompted by the suspicion that Vauvenarde might have met his death directly by our hand instead of that of Anastasius. It was the Procureur-general who said: "It can be argued that you would benefit by the decease of the defunct." I replied that we could not benefit in any way. My sole object was to effect a reconciliation between husband and wife. "Will you explain why you gave yourself that trouble?" I never have smiled so grimly as I did then. How could I explain my precious pursuit of the eumoirous to a French Procureur-general? How could I put before him the point of view of a semi-disembodied spirit? I replied with lame lack of originality that my actions proceeded from disinterested friendship. "You are a pure altruist then?" said he. "Very pure," said I. . . . It was only the facts of the scabbard of the knife having been found attached to the dwarf's person beneath his clothes, and of certain rambling menaces occurring in his Sultan papers that saved us from the indignity of being arrested and put into the dock. . . .

During all this time I remained at the hotel at Mustapha Superieur. Lola moved to a suite of rooms in another hotel a little way down the hill. I saw her daily. At first she shrank from publicity and refused to go out, save in a closed carriage to the town when her presence was necessary at the inquiries. But after a time I persuaded her to brave the stare of the curious and stroll with me among the eucalyptus woods above. We cut ourselves off from other human companionship and felt like two lost souls wandering alone through mist. She conducted herself with grave and simple dignity. . . . Once or twice she visited Anastasius in prison. She found him humanely treated and not despondent. He thought they had arrested him for the poisoning of the horse, and laughed at their foolishness. As they refused to return him his dossier, he occupied himself in reconstructing it, and wrote pages and pages of incoherence to prove the guilt of Captain Vauvenarde. He was hopelessly mad. . . . The bond of pain bound me very close to Lola.

"What are you going to do with your life?" I asked her one day.

"So long as I have you as a friend, it doesn't greatly matter."

"You forget," I said, "that you can't have me much longer."

"Are you going to leave me? It's not because I have dragged you through all this dirt and horror. Another woman might say that of another man -- but not I of you. Why are you going to leave me? I want so little -- only to see you now and then -- to keep the heart in me."

"Can't you realise, that what I said in London is true?"

"No. I can't. It's unbelievable. You can't believe it yourself. If you did, how could you go on behaving like anybody else -- like me for instance?"

"What would you do if you were condemned to die?"

She shuddered. "I should go mad with fear -- I -- -- " She broke off and remained for some moments reflective, with knitted brow. Then she lifted her head proudly. "No, I shouldn't. I should face it like you. Only cowards are afraid. It's best to show things that you don't care a hang for them."

"Keep that sublime je m'en fich'isme up when I'm dead and buried," said I, "and you'll pull through your life all right. The only thing you must avoid is the pursuit of eumoiriety."

"What on earth is that?" she asked.

"The last devastating vanity," said I.

And so it is.

"When you are gone," she said bravely, "I shall remember how strong and true you were. It will make me strong too."

I acquiesced silently in her proposition. In this age of flippancy and scepticism, if a human soul proclaims sincerely its faith in the divinity of a rabbit, in God's name don't disturb it. It is something whereto to refer his aspirations, his resolves; it is a court of arbitration, at the lowest, for his spiritual disputes; and the rabbit will be as effective an oracle as any other. For are not all religions but the strivings of the spirit towards crystallisation at some point outside the environment of passions and appetites which is the flesh, so that it can work untrammelled: and are not all gods but the accidental forms, conditioned by circumstance, which this crystallisation takes? All gods in their anthropo-, helio-, thero-, or what-not-morphic forms are false; but, on the other hand, all gods in their spiritual essence are true. So I do not deprecate my prospective unique position in Lola Brandt's hagiology. It was better for her soul that I should occupy it. Even if I were about to live my normal life out, like any other hearty human, marry and beget children, I doubt whether I should attempt to shake my wife's faith in my heroical qualities.

This was but a fragment of one among countless talks. Some were lighter in tone, others darker, the mood of man being much like a child's balloon which rises or falls as the strata of air are more rarefied or more dense. Perhaps during the time of strain, the atmosphere was more often rarefied, and our conversation had the day's depressing incidents for its topics. We rarely spoke of the dead man. He was scarcely a subject for panegyric, and it was useless to dwell on the memory of his degradation. I think we only once talked of him deeply and at any length, and that was on the day of the funeral. His brother, a manufacturer at Clermont-Ferrand, and a widowed aunt, apparently his only two surviving relatives, arrived in Algiers just in time to attend the ceremony. They had seen the report of the murder in the newspapers and had started forthwith. The brother, during an interview with Lola, said bitter things to her, reproaching her with the man's downfall, and cast on her the responsibility of his death.

"He spoke," she said, "as if I had suggested the murder and practically put the knife into the poor crazy little fellow's hand."

The Vauvenardes must have been an amiable family.

"Before I came," she said a little while later, "I still had some tenderness for him -- a woman has for the only man that has been -- really -- in her life. I wish I could feel it now. I wish I could feel some respect even. But I can't. If I could, it would lessen the horror that has got hold of me to my bones."

It was a torture to her generous soul that she could not grieve for him. She could only shudder at the tragedy. In her heart she grieved more for Anastasius Papadopoulos, and in so doing she was, in her feminine way, self-accusative of callous lack of human feeling. It was my attempt to bring her to a more rational state of mind that caused us to review the dead man's career, and recapitulate the unpleasing incidents of the last interview.

Of Captain Vauvenarde, no more. He has gone whither I am going. That his soul may rest in peace is my earnest prayer. But I do not wish to meet him.

Lola went tearless and strong through the horrible ordeal of the judicial proceedings. She said I gave her courage. Perhaps, unconsciously, I did. It was only when the end came that she broke down, although she knew exactly what the end would be. And I, too, felt a lump in my throat when they sentenced Anastasius Papadopoulos to the asylum, and I saw him for the last time, the living parody of Napoleon III, frock-coated and yellow-gloved, the precious, newly written dossier in his hand, as he disappeared with a mournful smile from the court, after bowing low to the judge and to us, without having understood the significance of anything that had happened.

In the carriage that took us home she wept and sobbed bitterly.

"I loved him so. He was the only creature on earth that loved me. He loved me as only a dog can love -- or an angel."

I let her cry. What could I say or do?

These have been weeks of tedious horror and pain. With the exception of Colonel Bunnion, I have kept myself aloof from my fellow creatures in the hotel, even taking my meals in my own rooms, not wishing to be stared at as the hero of the scandal that convulsed the place. And with regard to Colonel Bunnion shall I be accused of cynicism if I say that I admitted him -- not to my confidence -- but to my company, because I know that it delighted the honest but boring fellow to prove to himself that he could rise above British prejudice and exhibit tact in dealing with a man in a delicate position? For, mark you, all the world -- even those nearest and dearest to me as I soon discovered -- believed that the wife of the man who was murdered before my eyes was my mistress. Colonel Bunnion was kind, and he meant to be kind. He was a gentleman for all his wearisomeness, and his kindness was such as I could accept. But I know what I say about him is true. Ye gods! Haven't I felt myself the same swelling pride in my broadmindedness? When a man is going on my journey he does not palter with truth.

Though I held myself aloof, as I say, from practically all my fellow creatures here, I have not been cut off from the outside world. My sisters, like this French court in Algiers, have accepted my statement with polite incredulity. Their letters have been full of love, half- veiled reproach, anxiety as to their social position, and an insane desire to come and take care of me. This I have forbidden them to do. The pain they would have inflicted on themselves, dear souls, would have far outweighed the comfort I might have gained from their ministrations. Then I have had piteous letters from Dale.

". . . Your telegram reassured me, though I was puzzled. Now I get a letter from Lola, telling me it's all off -- that she never loved me -- that she valued my youth and my friendship, but that it is best for us not to meet again. What is the meaning of it, Simon? For Heaven's sake tell me. I can't think of anything else. I can't sleep. I am going off my head. . . ."

Again. ". . . This awful newspaper report and your letter of explanation -- I have them side by side. Forgive me, Simon. I don't know what to believe, where to turn. . . . I have looked up to you as the best and straightest man I know. You must be. Yet why have you done this? Why didn't you tell me she was married? Why didn't she tell me? I can't write properly, my head is all on a buzz. The beastly papers say you were living with her in Algiers -- but you weren't, were you? It would be too horrible. In fact, you say you weren't. But, all the same, you have stolen her from me. It wasn't like you. . . . And this awful murder. My God! you don't know what it all means to me. It's breaking my heart. . . ."

And Lady Kynnersley wrote -- with what object I scarcely know. The situation was far beyond the poor lady's by-laws and regulations for the upbringing of families and the conduct of life. The elemental mother in her battled on the side of her only son -- foolishly, irrationally, unkindly. Her exordium was as correct as could be. The tragedy shocked her, the scandal grieved her, the innuendoes of the Press she refused to believe; she sympathised with me deeply. But then she turned from me to Dale, and feminine unreason took possession of her pen. She bitterly reproached herself for having spoken to me of Madame Brandt. Had she known how passionate and real was this attachment, she would never have interfered. The boy was broken- hearted. He accused me of having stolen her from him -- his own words. He took little interest in his electioneering campaign, spoke badly, unconvincingly; spent hours in alternate fits of listlessness and anger. She feared for her darling's health and reason. She made an appeal to me who professed to love him -- if it were honourably possible, would I bring Madame Brandt back to him? She was willing now to accept Dale's estimate of her worth. Could I, at the least, prevail on Madame Brandt to give him some hope -- of what she did not know -- but some hope that would save him from ruining his career and "doing something desperate"?

And another letter from Dale:

". . . I can't work at this election. For God's sake, give her back to me. Then I won't care. What is Parliament to me without her? And the election is as good as lost already. The other side has made as much as possible of the scandal. . . ."

The only letters that have not been misery to read have come from Eleanor Faversham. There was one passage which made me thank God that He had created such women as Eleanor --

"Don't fret over the newspaper lies, dear. Those who love you -- and why shouldn't I love you still? -- know the honourable gentleman that you are. Write to me if it would ease your heart and tell me just what you feel you can. Now and always you have my utter sympathy and understanding."

And this is the woman of whose thousand virtues I dared to speak in flippant jest.

Heaven forgive me.

After receiving Lady Kynnersley's appeal, I went to Lola. It was just before the case came on at the Cour d'Assises. She had finished luncheon in her private room and was sitting over her coffee. I joined her. She wore the black blouse and skirt with which I have not yet been able to grow familiar, as it robbed her of the peculiar fascinating quality which I have tried to suggest by the word pantherine. Coffee over, we moved to the window which opened on a little back garden -- the room was on the ground floor -- in which grew prickly pear and mimosa, and newly flowering heliotrope. I don't know why I should mention this, except that some scenes impress themselves, for no particular reason, on the memory, while others associated with more important incidents fade into vagueness. I picked a bunch of heliotrope which she pinned at her bosom.

"Lola," I said, "I want to speak to you seriously."

She smiled wanly: "Do we ever speak otherwise these dreadful days?"

"It's about Dale. Read this," said I, and I handed her Lady Kynnersley's letter. She read it through and returned it to me.

"Well?"

"I asked you a week or two ago what you were going to do with your life," I said. "Does that letter offer you any suggestion?"

"I'm to give him some hope -- what hope can I give him?"

"You're a free woman -- free to marry. For the boy's sake the mother will consent. When she knows you as well as we know you she will -- "

"She will -- what? Love me?"

"She's a woman not given to loving -- except, in unexpected bursts, her offspring. But she will respect you."

She stood for a few moments silent, her arm resting against the window jamb and her head on her arm. She remained there so long that at last I rose and, looking at her face, saw that her eyes were full of tears. She dashed them away with the back of her hand, gave me a swift look, and went and sat in the shadow of the room. An action of this kind on the part of a woman signifies a desire for solitude. I lit a cigarette and went into the garden.

It was a sorry business. I saw as clearly as Lola that Lady Kynnersley desired to purchase Dale's immediate happiness at any price, and that the future might bring bitter repentance. But I offered no advice. I have finished playing at Deputy Providence. A madman letting off fireworks in a gunpowder factory plays a less dangerous game.

Presently she joined me and ran her arm through mine.

"I'll write to Dale this afternoon," she said. "Don't let us talk of it any more now. You are tired out. It's time for you to go and lie down. I'll walk with you up the hill."

It has come to this, that I must lie down for some hours during the day lest I should fall to pieces.

"I suppose I'll have to," I laughed. "What a thing it is to have the wits of a man and the strength of a baby."

She pressed my arm and said in her low caressing voice which I had not heard for many weeks: "I shouldn't be so proud of those man's wits, if I were you."

I knew she said it playfully with reference to masculine non- perception of the feminine; but I chose to take it broadly.

"My dear Lola," said I, "it has been borne in upon me that I am the most witless fool that the unwisdom of generations of English country squires has ever succeeded in producing."

"Don't talk rot," she said, with foolishness in her eyes.

She accompanied me bareheaded in the sunshine to the gate of my hotel.

"Come and dine with me, if you're well enough," she said as we parted.

I assented, and when the evening came I went. Did I not say that we were like two lost souls wandering alone in the mist?

It was only when I rose to bid her good-night that she referred to Dale.

"I wrote to him this afternoon," she announced curtly.

"You said you would do so."

"Would you like to know what I told him?"

She put her hands behind her back and stood facing me, somewhat defiantly, in all her magnificence. I smiled. Women, much as they scoff at the blindness of our sex, are often transparent.

"It's your firm determination to tell me," said I. "Well?"

She advanced a step nearer to me, and looked me straight in the eyes defiantly.

"I told him that I loved you with all my heart and all my soul. I told him that you didn't know it; that you didn't care a brass curse for me; that you had acted as you thought best for the happiness of himself and me. I told him that while you lived I could not think of another man. I told him that if you could face Death with a smile on your face, he might very well show the same courage and not chuck things right and left just because a common woman wouldn't marry him or live with him and spoil his career. There! That's what I told him. What do you think?"

"Heaven knows what effect it will have," said I, wearily, for I was very, very tired. "But why, my poor Lola, have you wasted your love on a shadow like me?"

She answered after the foolish way of women.

I have not heard from either Dale or Lady Kynnersley. A day or two ago, in reply to a telegram to Raggles, I learned that Dale had lost the election.

This, then, is the end of my apologia pro vita mea, which I began with so resonant a flourish of vainglory. I have said all that there is to be said. Nothing more has happened or is likely to happen until they put me under the earth. Oh, yes, I was forgetting. In spite of my Monte Cristo munificence, poor Latimer has been hammered on the Stock Exchange. Poor Lucy and the kids!

I shall have, I think, just enough strength left to reach Mentone -- this place is intolerable now -- and there I shall put myself under the care of a capable physician who, with his abominable drugs, will doubtless begin the cheerful work of inducing the mental decay which I suppose must precede physical dissolution.

I must confess that I am disappointed with the manner of my exit. I had imagined it quite different. I had beheld myself turning with a smile and a jest for one last view of the faces over which I, in my eumoirous career, had cast the largesse of happiness, and the vanishing with a gallant carelessness through the dusky portals. Instead of that, here am I sneaking out of life by the back door, covering my eyes for very shame. And glad? Oh, God, how glad I am to slink out of it!

I have indeed accomplished the thing which I set out to do. I have severed a boy from the object of his passion. What an achievement for the crowning glory of a lifetime! And at what a cost: one fellow- creature's life and another's reason. On me lies the responsibility. Vauvenarde, it is true, did not adorn this grey world, but he drew the breath of life, and, through my jesting agency, it was cut off. Anastasius Papadopoulos, had he not come under my malign influence would have lived out his industrious, happy and dream-filled days. Lesser, but still great price, too, has been paid. Jealous hatred, misery and failure for the being I care most for in the world, the shame of a sordid scandal to those that hold me dear, the hopeless love and speedy mourning of a woman not without greatness.

I have tried to make a Tom Fool of Destiny -- and Destiny has proved itself to be the superior jester of the two, and has made a grim and bedraggled Tom Fool of me.

. . . I must end this. I have just fallen in a faint on the floor, and Rogers has revived me with some drops Hunnington had given me in view of such a contingency.

These are the last words I shall write. Life is too transcendentally humorous for a man not to take it seriously. Compared with it, Death is but a shallow jest.

Chapter XVI

It is many weeks since I wrote those words which I thought were to be my last. I read them over now, and laugh aloud. Life is more devilishly humorous than I in my most nightmare dreams ever imagined. Instead of dying at Mentone as I proposed, I am here, at Mustapha Superieur, still living. And let me tell you the master joke of the Arch-Jester.

I am going to live.

I am not going to die. I am going to live. I am quite well.

Think of it. Is it farcical, comical, tragical, or what?

This is how it has befallen. The last thing I remember of the old conditions was Rogers packing my things, and a sudden, awful, excruciating agony. I lost consciousness, remained for days in a bemused, stupefied state, which I felt convinced was death, and found particularly pleasant. At last I woke to a sense of bodily constriction and discomfort, and to the queer realisation that what I had taken for the Garden of Prosperpine was my own bedroom, and that the pale lady whom I had so confidently assumed was she who, crowned with calm leaves, "gathers all things mortal with cold, immortal hands" was no other than a blue-and-white-vested hospital nurse.

"What the -- -- " I began.

"Chut!" she said, flitting noiselessly to my side. "You mustn't talk." And then she poured something down my throat. I lay back, wondering what it all meant. Presently a grizzled and tanned man, wearing a narrow black tie, came into the room. His face seemed oddly familiar. The nurse whispered to him. He came up to the bed, and asked me in French how I felt.

"I don't know at all," said I.

He laughed. "That's a good sign. Let me see how you are getting on." He stuck a thermometer in my mouth and held my pulse. These formalities completed, he turned up the bedclothes and did something with my body. Only then did I realise that I was tightly bandaged. My impressions grew clearer, and when he raised his face I recognised the doctor who had sat on the sofa with Anastasius Papadopoulos.

"Nothing could be better," said he. "Keep quiet, and all will be well."

"Will you kindly explain?" I asked.

"You've had an operation. Also a narrow escape."

I smiled at him pityingly. "What is the good of taking all this trouble? Why are you wasting your time?"

He looked at me uncomprehendingly for a moment, and then he laughed as the light came to him.

"Oh, I understand! Yes. Your English doctors had told you you were going to die. That an operation would be fatal -- so your good friend Madame Brandt informed us -- but we -- nous autres Francais/ -- are more enterprising. Kill or cure. We performed the operation -- we didn't kill you -- and here you are -- cured."

My heart sickened with a horrible foreboding. A clamminess, such as others feel at the approach of death, spread over my brow and neck.

"Good God!" I cried, "you are not trying to tell me that I'm going to live?"

"Why, of course I am!" he exclaimed, brutally delighted. "If nothing else kills you, you'll live to be a hundred."

"Oh, damn!" said I. "Oh, damn! Oh, damn!" and the tears of physical weakness poured down my cheeks.

"Ce sont des droles de gens, les Anglais!" I heard him whisper to the nurse before he left the room.

Belonging to a queer folk or not, I found the prospect more and more dismally appalling according as my mind regained its clarity. It was the most overwhelming, piteous disappointment I have ever experienced in my life. I cursed in my whimpering, invalid fashion.

"But don't you want to get well?" asked the wide-eyed nurse.

"Certainly not! I thought I was dead, and I was very happy. I've been tricked and cheated and fooled," and I dashed my fist against the counterpane.

"If you go on in this way," said the nurse, "you will commit suicide."

"I don't care!" I cried -- and then, they tell me, fainted. My temperature also ran up, and I became lightheaded again. It was not until the next day that I recovered my sanity. This time Lola was in the room with the nurse, and after a while the latter left us together. Even Lola could not understand my paralysing dismay.

"But think of it, my dear friend," she argued, "just think of it. You are saved -- saved by a miracle. The doctor says you will be stronger than you have ever been before."

"All the more dreadful will it be," said I. "I had finished with life. I had got through with it. I don't want a second lifetime. One is quite enough for any sane human being. Why on earth couldn't they have let me die?"

Lola passed her cool hand over my forehead.

"You mustn't talk like that -- Simon," she said, in her deepest and most caressing voice, using my name somewhat hesitatingly, for the first time. "You mustn't. A miracle really has been performed. You've been raised from the dead -- like the man in the Gospel -- -- "

"Yes," said I petulantly, "Lazarus. And does the Gospel tell us what Lazarus really thought of the unwarrantable interference with his plans? Of course he had to be polite -- "

"Oh, don't!" cried, Lola, shocked. In a queer unenlightened way, she was a religious woman.

"I'm sorry," said I, feeling ashamed of myself.

"If you knew how I have prayed God to make you well," she said. "If I could have died for you, I would -- gladly -- gladly -- -- "

"But I wanted to die, my dear Lola," I insisted, with the egotism of the sick. "I object to this resuscitation. I say it is monstrous that I should have to start a second lifetime at my age. It's all very well when you begin at the age of half a minute -- but when you begin at eight-and-thirty years -- -- "

"You have all the wisdom of eight-and-thirty years to start with."

"There is only one thing more disastrous to a man than the wisdom of thirty-eight years," I declared with mulish inconvincibility, "and that is the wisdom he may accumulate after that age."

She sighed and abandoned the argument. "We are going to make you well in spite of yourself," she said.

They, namely, the doctor, the nurse, and Lola, have done their best, and they have succeeded. But their task has been a hard one. The patient's will to live is always a great factor in his recovery. My disgust at having to live has impeded my convalescence, and I fully believe that it is only Lola's tears and the doctor's frenzied appeals to me not to destroy the one chance of his life of establishing a brilliant professional reputation that have made me consent to face existence again.

As for the doctor, he was pathetically insistent.

"But you must get well!" he gesticulated. "I am going to publish it, your operation. It will make my fortune. I shall at last be able to leave this hole of an Algiers and go to Paris! You don't know what I've done for you! I've performed an operation on you that has never been performed successfully before. I thought it had been done, but I found out afterwards my English confreres were right. It hasn't. I've worked a miracle in surgery, and by my publication will make you as the subject of it famous for ever. And here you are trying to die and ruin everything. I ask you -- have you no human feelings left?"

At the conclusion of these lectures I would sigh and laugh, and stretch out a thin hand. He shook it always with a humorous grumpiness which did me more good than the prospect of acquiring fame in the annals of the Ecole de Medicine.

Here am I, however, cured. I have thrown away the stick with which I first began to limp about the garden, and I discourage Lola and Rogers in their efforts to treat me as an invalid. Like the doctor, I have been longing to escape from "this hole of an Algiers" and its painful associations, and, when I was able to leave my room, it occurred to me that the sooner I regained my strength the sooner should I be able to do so. Since then my recovery has been rapid. The doctor is delighted, and slaps me on the back, and points me out to Lola and the manager and the concierge and the hoary old sinner of an Arab who displays his daggers, and trays, and embroideries on the terrace, as a living wonder. I believe he would like to put me in a cage and carry me about with him in Paris on exhibition. But he is reluctantly prepared to part with me, and has consented to my return in a few days' time, to England, by the North German Lloyd steamer. He has ordered the sea voyage as a finishing touch to my cure. Good, deluded man, he thinks that it is his fortuitous science that has dragged me out of the Valley of the Shadow and set me in the Garden of Life. Good, deluded man! He does not realise that he has been merely the tool of the Arch- Jester. He has no notion of the sardonic joke his knife was chosen to perpetrate. That naked we should come into the world, and naked we should go out is a time-honoured pleasantry which, as far as the latter part of it is concerned, I did my conscientious best to further; but that we should come into it again naked at the age of eight-and-thirty is a piece of irony too grim for contemplation. Yet am I bound to contemplate it. It grins me in the face. Figuratively, I am naked.

Partly by my own act, and partly with the help of Destiny (the greater jester than I) I have stripped myself of all these garments of life which not only enabled me to strut peacock-fashion in the pleasant places of the world, but also sheltered me from its inclemencies.

I had wealth -- not a Rothschild or Vanderbilt fortune but enough to assure me ease and luxury. I have stripped myself of it. I have but a beggarly sum remaining at my bankers. Practically I am a pauper.

I had political position. I surrendered it as airily as I had achieved it; so airily, indeed, that I doubt whether I could regain it even had I the ambition. For it was a game that I played, sometimes fascinating, sometimes repugnant to my fastidious sense of honourable dealing, for which I shall never recapture the mood. Mood depends on conditions, and conditions, as I am trying to show, are changed.

I had social position. I did not deceive myself as to its value in the cosmic scheme, but it was one of the pleasant things to which I was born, just as I was born to good food and wines and unpatched boots and the morning hot water brought into my bedroom. I liked it. I suspect that it has fled into eternity with the spirit of Captain Vauvenarde. The penniless hero of an amazing scandal is not usually made an idol of by the exclusive aristocracy of Great Britain.

I had a sweet and loyal woman about to marry me. I put Eleanor Faversham for ever out of my life.

I had the devotion and hero-worship of a lad whom I thought to train in the paths of honour, love and happiness. In his eyes I suppose I am an unconscionable villain.

I have stripped myself of everything; and all because the medical faculty of my country sentenced me to death. I really think the Royal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians ought to pay me an indemnity.

And not only have I stripped myself of everything, but I have incurred an incalculable debt. I owe a woman the infinite debt of her love which I cannot repay. She sheds it on me hourly with a lavishness which scares me. But for her tireless devotion, the doctor tells me, I should not have lived. But for her selfish forbearance, sympathy, and compassion I should have gone as crazy as Anastasius Papadopoulos. Yet the burden of my debt lies iceberg cold on my heart. Now that we are as intimate as man and woman who are still only friends can be, she has lost the magnetic attraction, that subtle mystery of the woman -- half goddess, half panther -- which fascinated me in spite of myself, and made me jealous of poor young Dale. Now that I can see things in some perspective, I confess that, had I not been under sentence of death, and, therefore, profoundly convinced that I was immune from all such weaknesses of the flesh, I should have realised the temptation of languorous voice and sinuous limbs, of the frank radiation of the animal enchanted as it was by elusive gleams of the spiritual, of the Laisdom -- in a word, of all the sexual damnability of a woman which, as Francois Villon points out, set Sardanapalus to spin among the women, David to forget the fear of God, Herod to slay the Baptist, and made Samson lose his sight. Whether I should have yielded to or resisted the temptation is another matter. Honestly speaking, I think I should have resisted.

You see, I should still have been engaged to Eleanor Faversham. . . . But now this somewhat unholy influence is gone from her. She has lifted me in her strong arms as a mother would lift a brat of ten. She has patiently suffered my whimsies as if I had been a sick girl. She has become to me the mere great mothering creature on whom I have depended for custard and the removal of crumbs and creases from under my body, and for support to my tottering footsteps. The glamour has gone from before my eyes. I no longer see her invested in her queer splendour. . . .

My invalid peevishness, too, has accentuated my sensitiveness to shades of refinement. There is about Lola a bluffness, a hardihood of speech, a contempt for the polite word and the pretty conventional turning of a phrase, a lack of reticence in the expression of ideas and feelings, which jar, in spite of my gratitude, on my unstrung nerves. Her ignorance, too, of a thousand things, a knowledge of which is the birthright of such women as Eleanor Faversham, causes conversational excursions to end in innumerable blind alleys. I know that she would give her soul to learn. This she has told me in so many words, and when, in a delicate way, I try to teach her, she listens humbly, pathetically, fixing me with her great, gold-flecked eyes, behind which a deep sadness burns wistfully. Sometimes when I glance up from my book, I see that her eyes, instead of being bent on hers have been resting long on my face, and they say as clearly as articulate speech: "Teach me, love me, use me, do what you will with me. I am yours, your chattel, your thing, till the end of time."

I lie awake at night and wonder what I shall do with my naked life sheltered only by the garment of this woman's love, which I have accepted and cannot repay. I groan aloud when I reflect on the irremediable mess, hash, bungle I have made of things. Did ever sick man wake up to such a hopeless welter? Can you be surprised that I regarded it with dismay? Of course, there is a simple way out of it, and into the shadowy world which I contemplated so long, at first with mocking indifference and then with eager longing. A gentleman called Cato once took it, with considerable aplomb. The means are to my hand. In my drawer lies the revolver with which the excellent Colonel Bunnion (long since departed from Mustapha Superieur) armed me against the banditti of Algiers, and which I forgot to return to him. I could empty one or more of the six chambers into my person and that would be the end. But I don't think history records the suicide of any humorist, however dismal. He knows too well the tricks of the Arch- Jester's game. Very likely I should merely blow away half my head, and Destiny would give my good doctor another chance of achieving immortal fame by glueing it on again. No, I cannot think seriously of suicide by violent means. Of course, I might follow the example of one Antonios Polemon, a later Greek sophist, who suffered so dreadfully from gout that he buried himself alive in the tomb of his ancestors and starved to death. We have a family vault in Highgate Cemetery, of which I possess the key. . . . No, I should be bored and cold, and the coffins would get on my nerves; and besides, there is something suggestive of smug villadom in the idea of going to die at Highgate.

Lola came up as I was scribbling this on my knees in the garden.

"What are you writing there?"

"I am recasting Hamlet's soliloquy," I replied, "and I feel all the better for it."

"Here is your egg and brandy."

I swallowed it and handed her back the glass.

"I feel all the better for that, too."

As I sat in the shade of the little stone summer-house within the Greek portico, she lingered in the blazing sunshine, a figure all glorious health and supple curves, and the stray brown hairs above the brown mass gleamed with the gold of a Giotto aureole. She stood, a duskily glowing, radiant emblem of life against the background of spring greenery and rioting convolvulus. I drew a full breath and looked at her as if magnetised. I had the very oddest sensation. She seemed, in Shakespearean phrase, to rain influence upon me. As if she read the stirrings of my blood, she smiled and said:

"After all, confess, isn't it good to be alive?"

A thrill of physical well-being swept through me. I leaped to my feet.

"You witch!" I cried. "What are you doing to me?"

"I?" She retreated a step, with a laugh.

"Yes, you. You are casting a spell on me, so that I may eat my words."

"I don't know what you are talking about, but you haven't answered my question. It is good to be alive."

"Well, it is," I assented, losing all sense of consistency.

She flourished the egg-and-brandy glass. "I'm so glad. Now I know you are really well, and will face life as you faced death, like the brave man that you are."

I cried to her to hold. I had not intended to go as far as that. I confronted death with a smile; I meet life with the wriest of wry faces. She would have none of my arguments.

"No matter how damnable it is -- it's splendid to be alive, just to feel that you can fight, just to feel that you don't care a damn for any old thing that can happen, because you're strong and brave. I do want you to get back all that you've lost, all that you've lost through me, and you'll do it. I know that you'll do it. You'll just go out and smash up the silly old world and bring it to your feet. You will, Simon, won't you? I know you will."

She quivered like an optimistic Cassandra.

"My dear Lola," said I.

I was touched. I took her hand and raised it to my lips, whereat she flushed like a girl.

"Did you come here to tell me all this?"

"No," she replied simply. "It came all of a sudden, as I was standing here. I've often wanted to say it. I'm glad I have."

She threw back her head and regarded me a moment with a strange, proud smile; then turned and walked slowly away, her head brushing the long scarlet clusters of the pepper trees.

Simon the Jester

Chapter XIII

You could have knocked me down with a feather. It is a trite metaphor, I know; but it is none the less excellent. I repeat, therefore, unblushingly -- you could have knocked me down with a feather. I gasped. The little man wiped his eyes. He was the tearfullest adult I have ever met, and I once knew an Italian prima donna with a temperament.

"Captain Vauvenarde? The man with the shoebrush hair and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck? Are you sure?"

The dwarf nodded. "I set out from England to find him. I swore to the carissima signora that I would do so. I have done it," he added, with a faint return of his self-confidence.

"Well, I'm damned!" said I, in my native tongue.

I don't often use strong language; but the occasion warranted it. I was flabbergasted, bewildered, out-raged, humiliated, delighted, incredulous, and generally turned topsy-turvy. In conversation one has no time for so minute an analysis of one's feelings. I therefore summed them up in the only word. Captain Vauvenarde! The wild goose of my absurd chase! Found by this Flibbertigibbet of a fellow, while I, Simon de Gex, erstwhile M.P., was fooling about War Offices and regiments! It was grotesque. It was monstrous. It ought not to have been allowed. And yet it saved me a vast amount of trouble.

"I'm damned!" said I.

Anastasius had just enough English to understand. I suppose, such is mortal unregeneracy, that it is the most widely understood word in the universe.

"And I," said he, "am eternally beaten. I am trampled under foot and shall never be able to hold up my head again."

Whereupon he renewed his lamentations. For some time I listened patiently, and from his disconnected remarks I gathered that he had gone to the Cercle Africain in view of his gigantic combinations, but that the demon of gambling taking possession of him had almost driven them from his mind. Eventually he had lost control of his nerves, a cloud had spread over his brain, and he had committed the unspeakable blunder which led to disaster.

"To think that I should have tracked him down -- for this!" he exclaimed tragically.

"What beats me," I cried, "is how the deuce you managed to track him down. Your magnificent intellect, I suppose" -- I spoke gently and not in open sarcasm -- "enabled you to get on the trail."

He brightened at the compliment. "Yes, that was it. Listen. I came to Algiers, the last place he was heard of. I go to the cafes. I listen like a detective to conversation. I creep behind soldiers talking. I find out nothing. I ask at the shops. They think I am crazy, but Anastasius Papadopoulos has a brain larger than theirs. I go to my old friend the secretary of the theatre, where I have exhibited the marvellous performance of my cats. I say to him, 'When have you a date for me?' He says, 'Next year.' I make a note of it. We talk. He knows all Algiers. I say to him, 'What has become of Captain Vauvenarde of the Chasseurs d'Afrique?' I say it carelessly as if the Captain were an old friend of mine. The secretary laughs. 'Haven't you heard? The Captain was chased from the regiment -- -- '"

"The deuce he was!" I interjected.

"On account of something," said Anastasius. "The secretary could not tell what. Perhaps he cheated at cards. The officers said so.

"'Where is he now?' I ask. 'Why, in Algiers. He is the most famous gambler in the town. He is every night at the Cercle Africain, and some people believe that it belongs to him.' My friend the secretary asks me why I am so anxious to discover Captain Vauvenarde. I do not betray my secret. When I do not wish to talk I close my lips, and they are sealed like the tomb. I am the model of discretion. You, Monsieur, with the high-bred delicacy of the English statesman, have not questioned me about my combination. I appreciate it. But, if you had, though it broke my heart, I should not have answered."

"I am not going to pry into your schemes," I said, "but there are one or two things I must understand. How do you know the banker was Captain Vauvenarde?"

"I saw him several times in Marseilles with the carissima signora ."

"Then how was it he did not recognise you to-night?"

"I was then but an acquaintance of Madame; not her intimate friend, counsellor, champion, as I am now. I did not have the honour of being presented to Captain Vauvenarde. I went to-night to make sure of my man, to play the first card in my gigantic combination -- but, alas! But no!" He rose and thumped his little chest. "I feel my courage coming back. My will is stiffening into iron. When the carissima signora arrives in Algiers she will find she has a champion!"

"How do you know she is coming to Algiers?" I asked startled.

"As soon as I learned that Captain Vauvenarde was here," he replied proudly, "I sent her a telegram. 'Husband found; come at once.' I know she is coming, for she has not answered."

An idea occurred to me. "Did you sign your name and address on the telegram?"

He approached me confidentially as I sat, and wagged a cunning finger.

"In matters of life and death, never give your name and address."

As Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos was himself again, and as I began to sneeze -- for the night was chilly -- I rose and suggested that we might adjourn this conference till the morrow. He acquiesced, saying that all was not lost and that he still had time to mature his combinations. We crossed the road, and I hailed a cab standing by the Cafe d'Alger. I offered Anastasius to drive him to his hotel, but he declined politely. We shook hands.

"Monsieur," said he, "I have to make my heartfelt apologies for having caused you so painful, so useless, and so expensive an evening. As for the last aspect I will repay you."

"You will do no such thing, Professor," said I. "My evening has, on the contrary, been particularly useful and instructive. I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

And I drove off homewards, glad to be in my own company.

Here was an imbroglio! The missing husband found and, like most missing husbands, found to be entirely undesirable. And Lola, obviously imagining her summons to be from me, was at that moment speeding hither as fast as the Marechal Bugeaud could carry her. If I had discovered Captain Vauvenarde instead of Anastasius I would have anathematised him as the most meddlesome, crazy little marplot that ever looked like Napoleon the Third. But as the credit of the discovery belonged to him and not to me, I could only anathematise myself for my dilettanteism in the capacity of a private inquiry agent.

I went to bed and slept badly. The ludicrous scenes of the evening danced before my eyes; the smoke-filled, sordid room, the ignoble faces round the table, the foolish hullaballoo, the collapse of Anastasius, my melodramatic intervention, and the ironical courtesy of the fleshy Captain Vauvenarde. Also, in the small hours of the night, Anastasius's gigantic combinations assumed a less trivial aspect. What lunatic scheme was being hatched behind that dome-like brow? His object in taking me to the club was obvious. He could not have got in save under my protection. But what he had reckoned upon doing when he got there Heaven and Anastasius Papadopoulos only knew. I was also worried by the confounded little pain inside.

On the following afternoon I went down to meet the steamer from Marseilles. I more than expected to find the dwarf on the quay, but to my relief he was not there. I had purposely kept my knowledge of Lola's movements a secret from him, as I desired as far as possible to conduct affairs without his crazy intervention. I was not sorry, too, that he had not availed himself of my proposal to visit me that morning and continue our conversation of the night before. The grotesque as a decoration of life is valuable; as the main feature it gets on your nerves.

I stood on the sloping stone jetty among the crowd of Arab porters and Europeans and watched the vessel waddle in. Lola and I, catching sight of each other at the same time, waved handkerchiefs in an imbecile manner, and when the vessel came alongside, and during the tedious process of mooring, we regarded each other with photographic smiles. She was wearing a squirrel coat and a toque of the same fur, and she looked more like a splendid wild animal than ever. Something inside me -- not the little pain -- but what must have been my heart, throbbed suddenly at her beauty, and the throb was followed by a sudden sense of shock at the realisation of my keen pleasure at the sight of her. A wistful radiance shone in her face as she came down the gangway.

"Oh, how kind, how good, how splendid of you to meet me!" she cried as our hands clasped. "I was dreading, dreading, dreading that it might be some one else."

"And yet you came straight through," said I, still holding her hand -- or, rather, allowing hers to encircle mine in the familiar grip.

"Didn't you command me to do so?"

I could not explain matters to her then and there among the hustle of passengers and the bustle of porters. Besides, Rogers, who had come down with the hotel omnibus, was at my side touching his hat.

"I have ordered you a room and a private sitting-room with a balcony facing the sea. Put yourself in charge of me and your luggage in charge of Rogers and dismiss all thoughts of worry from your mind."

"You are so restful," she laughed as we moved off.

Then she scanned my face and said falteringly. "How thin and worn you look! Are you worse?"

"If you ask me such questions," said I, "I'll leave you with the luggage in charge of Rogers. I am in resplendent health."

She murmured that she wished she could believe me, and took my arm as we walked down the jetty to the waiting cab.

"It's good to hear your voice again," I said. "It's a lazy voice and fits in with the lazy South." I pointed to the burnous-enveloped Arabs sleeping on the parapet. "It's out of place in Cadogan Gardens."

She laughed her low, rippling laugh. It was music very pleasant to hear after the somewhat shrill cachinnation of the Misses Bostock of South Shields. I was so pleased that I gave half a franc to a pestilential Arab shoeblack.

"That was nice of you," she said.

"It was the act of an imbecile," I retorted. "I have now rendered it impossible for me to enter the town again. How is Dale?"

She started. "He's well. Busy with his election. I saw him the day before I left. I didn't tell him I was coming to Algiers. I wrote from Paris."

"Telling him the reason?"

She faced me and met my eyes and said shortly: "No."

"Oh!" said I.

This brought us to the cab. We entered and drove away. Then leaning back and looking straight in front of her, she grasped my wrist and said:

"Now, my dear friend, tell me all and get it over."

"My dear Madame Brandt -- " I began.

She interrupted me. "For goodness' sake don't call me that. It makes a cold shiver run down my back. I'm either Lola to you or nothing."

"Then, my dear Lola," said I, "the first thing I must tell you is that I did not send for you."

"What do you mean? The telegram?"

"It was sent by Anastasius Papadopoulos."

"Anastasius?" She bent forward and looked at me. "What is he doing here?"

"Heaven knows!" said I. "But what he has done has been to find Captain Vauvenarde. I am glad he has done that, but I am deeply sorry he sent you the telegram."

"Sorry? Why?"

"Because there was no reason for your coming," I said with unwonted gravity. "It would have been better if you had stayed in London, and it will be best if you take the boat back again to-morrow."

She remained silent for a while. Then she said in a low voice:

"He won't have me?"

"He hasn't been asked," I said. "He will, as far as I can command the situation, never be asked."

On that I had fully determined; and, when she inquired the reason, I told her.

"I proposed that you should reunite yourself with an honourable though somewhat misguided gentleman. I've had the reverse of pleasure in meeting Captain Vauvenarde, and I regret to say, though he is still misguided, he can scarcely be termed honourable. The term 'gentleman' has still to be accurately defined."

She made a writhing movement of impatience.

"Tell me straight out what he's doing in Algiers. You're trying to make things easy for me. It's the way of your class. It isn't the way of mine. I'm used to brutality. I like it better. Why did he leave the army and why is he in Algiers?"

"If you prefer the direct method, my dear Lola," said I -- and the name came quite trippingly on my tongue -- "I'll employ it. Your husband has apparently been kicked out of the army and is now running a gambling- hell."

She took the blow bravely; but it turned her face haggard like a paroxysm of physical pain. After a few moments' silence, she said:

"It must have been awful for him. He was a proud man."

"He is changed," I replied gently. "Pride is too hampering a quality for a knight of industry to keep in his equipment."

"Tell me how you met him," she said.

I rapidly sketched the whole absurd history, from my encounter with Anastasius Papadopoulos in Marseilles to my parting with him on the previous night. I softened down, as much as I could, the fleshiness of Captain Vauvenarde and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck, but I portrayed the villainous physiognomies of his associates very neatly. I concluded by repeating my assertion that our project had proved itself to be abortive.

"He must be pretty miserable," said Lola.

"Devil a bit," said I.

She did not answer, but settled herself more comfortably in the carriage and relapsed into mournful silence. I, having said my say, lit a cigarette. Save for the clanging past of an upward or downward tram, the creeping drive up the hill through the long winding street was very quiet; and as we mounted higher and left the shops behind, the only sounds that broke the afternoon stillness were the driver's raucous admonition to his horses and the wind in the trees by the wayside. At different points the turns of the road brought to view the panorama of the town below and the calm sweep of the bay.

"Exquisite, isn't it?" I said at last, with an indicative wave of the hand.

"What's the good of anything being exquisite when you feel mouldy?"

"It may help to charm away the mouldiness. Beauty is eternal and mouldiness only temporal. The sun will go on shining and the sea will go on changing colour long after our pains and joys have vanished from the world. Nature is pitilessly indifferent to human emotion."

"If so," she said, her intuition finding the weakness of my slipshod argument, "how can it touch human mouldiness?"

"I don't know," said I. "The poets will tell you. All you have to do is to lie on the breast of the Great Mother and your heartache will go from you. I've never tried it myself, as I've never been afflicted with heartache."

"Is that true?" she asked, womanlike catching at the personal.

I smiled and nodded.

"I'm glad on your account," she said sincerely. "It's the very devil of an ache. I've always had it."

"Poor Lola," said I, prompted by my acquired instinct of eumoiriety. "I wish I could cure you."

"You?" She gave a short little laugh and then turned her head away.

"I had a very comfortable crossing," she remarked a moment later.

I gave her into the keeping of the manager of the hotel and did not see her again until she came down somewhat late for dinner. I met her in the vestibule. She wore a closely fitting brown dress, which in colour matched the bronze of her hair and in shape showed off her lithe and generous figure.

I thought it my duty to cheer her by a well-deserved compliment.

"Are you aware," I said, with a low bow, "that you're a remarkably handsome woman?"

A perfectly unnecessary light came into her eyes and a superfluous flush to her cheeks. "If I'm at least that to you, I'm happy," she said.

"You're that to the dullest vision. Follow the maitre d'hotel ," said I, as we entered the salle a manger, "and I'll walk behind in reflected glory."

We made an effective entrance. I declare there was a perceptible rattle of soup-spoons laid down by the retired Colonels and maiden ladies as we passed by. Colonel Bunnion returned my nod of greeting in the most distracted fashion and gazed at Lola with the frank admiration of British Cavalry. I felt foolishly proud and exhilarated, and gave her at my table the seat commanding a view of the room. I then ordered a bottle of champagne, which I am forbidden to touch.

"It isn't often that I have the pleasure of dining with you," I said by way of apology.

"This is the very first time," she said.

"And it's not going to be the last," I declared.

"I thought you were going to ship me back to Marseilles to-morrow."

She laughed lazily, meeting my eyes. I smiled.

"It would be inhuman. I allow you a few day's rest."

Indeed, now she was here I had a curious desire to keep her. I regarded the failure of my eumoirous little plans with more than satisfaction. I had done my best. I had found (through the dwarf's agency) Captain Vauvenarde. I had satisfied myself that he was an outrageous person, thoroughly disqualified from becoming Lola's husband, and there was an end of the matter. Meanwhile Fate (again through the agency of Anastasius) had brought her many hundreds of miles away from Dale and had moreover brought her to me. I was delighted. I patted Destiny on the back, and drank his health in excellent Pommery. Lola did not know in the least what I meant, but she smiled amiably and drank the toast. It was quite a merry dinner. Lola threw herself into my mood and jested as if she had never heard of an undesirable husband who had been kicked out of the French Army. We talked of many things. I described in fuller detail my adventure with Anastasius and Saupiquet, and we laughed over the debt of fifteen sous and the elaborate receipt.

"Anastasius," she said, "is childish in many ways -- the doctors have a name for it."

"Arrested development."

"That's it; but he is absolutely cracked on one point -- the poisoning of my horse Sultan. He has reams of paper which he calls the dossier of the crime. You never saw such a collection of rubbish in your life. I cried over it. And he is so proud of it, poor wee mite." She laughed suddenly. "I should love to have seen you hobnobbing with him and Saupiquet."

"Why?"

"You're so aristocratic-looking," she did me the embarrassing honour to explain in her direct fashion. "You're my idea of an English duke."

"My dear Lola," I replied, "you're quite wrong. The ordinary English duke is a stout, middle-aged gentleman with a beard, and he generally wears thick knickerbockers and shocking bad hats."

"Do you know any?"

"Two or three," I admitted.

"And duchesses, too?"

I again pleaded guilty. In these democratic days, if one is engaged in public and social affairs one can't help running up against them. It is their fault, not mine.

"Do tell me about them," said Lola, with her elbows on the table.

I told her.

"And are earls and countesses just the same?" she asked with a disappointed air.

"Just the same, only worse. They're so ordinary you can't pick them out from common misters and missuses."

Saying this I rose, for we had finished our dessert, and proposed coffee in the lounge. There we found Colonel Bunnion at so wilful a loose end that I could not find it in my heart to refuse him an introduction to Lola. He manifested his delight by lifting the skirt of his dinner-jacket with his hands and rising on his spurs like a bantam cock. I left her to him for a moment and went over to say a civil word to the Misses Bostock of South Shields. I regret to say I noticed a certain frigidity in their demeanour. The well-conducted man in South Shields does not go out one night with a revolver tucked away in the pocket of his dress-suit, and turn up the next evening with a striking-looking lady with bronze hair. Such goings-on are seen on the stage in South Shields in melodrama, and they are the goings-on of the villain. In the eyes of the gentle ladies my reputation was gone. I was trying to rehabilitate myself when the chasseur brought me a telegram. I asked permission to open it, and stepped aside.

The words of the telegram were like a ringing box on the ears.

Not "Dale," mark you, as he has signed himself ever since I knew him in Eton collars, but "Kynnersley." Why has Lola joined you? Why have you run off with Lola? What's the reason of this treacherous abduction? Account for yourself immediately. Stand and deliver. I stood there gaping at the words like an idiot, my blood tingling at the implied accusation. The peremptoriness of it! The impudence of the boy! The wild extravagance of the idea! And yet, while my head was reeling with one buffet a memory arose and gave me another on the other side. I remembered the preposterous attitude in which Dale had found us when he rushed from Berlin into Lola's drawing-room.

I took the confounded telegram into a remote corner of the lounge, like a dog with a bone, and growled over it for a time until the humour of the situation turned the growl into a chuckle. Even had I been in sound health and strength, the idea of running off with Lola would have been absurd. But for me, in my present eumoirous disposition of mind; for me, a half-disembodied spirit who had cast all vain and disturbing human emotions into the mud of Murglebed-on- Sea; for me who had a spirit's calm disregard for the petty passions and interests of mankind and walked through the world with no other object than healing a few human woes; for me who already saw death on the other side of the river and found serious occupation in exchanging airy badinage with him; for me with an abominable little pain inside inexorably eating my life out and wasting me away literally and perceptibly like a shadow and twisting me up half a dozen times a day in excruciating agony; for me, in this delectable condition of soul and this deplorable condition of body, to think of running hundreds of miles from home with -- to say the least of it -- so inconvenient a creature as a big, bronze-haired woman, the idea was inexpressibly and weirdly comic.

I stepped into the drawing-room close by and drew up a telegram to Dale.

Then I joined Lola and Colonel Bunnion. She was lying back in her laziest and most pantherine attitude, and she looked up at me as I approached with eyes full of velvet softness. For the life of me I could not help feeling glad that they were turned on me and not on Dale Kynnersley.

Almost immediately the elder Miss Bostock came up to claim the Colonel for bridge. He rose reluctantly.

"I suppose it's no use asking you to make a fourth, Mr. de Gex?" she asked, after the subacid manner of her kind.

"I'm afraid not," I replied sweetly. Whereupon she rescued the Colonel from the syren and left me alone with her. I lit a cigarette and sat by her side. As she did not stir or speak I asked whether she was tired.

"Not very. I'm thinking. Do you know you've taught me an awful lot?"

"I? What can I have taught you?"

"The way people like yourself look at things. I'm treating Dale abominably. I didn't realise it before."

Now why on earth did she bring Dale in just at that moment.

"Indeed?" said I.

She nodded her head and said in her languorous voice:

"He's over head and ears in love with me and thinks I care for him. I don't. I don't care a brass button for him. I'm a bad influence in his life, and the sooner I take myself out of it the better. Don't you think so?"

"You know my opinions," I said.

"If I had followed your advice at first," she continued, "we needn't have had all this commotion. And yet I'm not sorry."

"What do you propose to do?" I asked.

"Before deciding, I shall see my husband."

"You shall do no such thing."

She smiled. "I shall."

I protested. Captain Vauvenarde had put himself outside the pale. He was not fit to associate with decent women. What object could she have in meeting him?

"I want to judge for myself," she replied.

"Judge what? Surely not whether he is eligible as a husband!"

"Yes," she said.

"But, my dear Lola," I cried, "the notion is as crazy as any of Anastasius Papadopoulos's. Of course, as soon as he learns that you're a rich woman, he'll want to live with you, and use your money for his gaming-hell."

"I am going to meet him," she said quietly.

"I forbid it."

"You're too late, dear friend. I wrote him a letter before dinner and sent it to the Cercle Africain by special messenger. I also wrote to Anastasius. I asked them both to see me to-morrow morning. That's why I've been so gay this evening."

At the sight of my blank face she laughed, and with one of her movements rose from her chair. I rose too.

"Are you angry with me?"

"I thought I had walked out of a nightmare," I said. "I find I'm still in it."

"But don't be angry with me. It was the only way."

"The only way to, or out of, what?" I asked, bewildered.

"Never mind."

She looked at me with a singular expression in her slumbrous eyes. It was sad, wistful, soothing, and gave me the idea of a noble woman making a senseless sacrifice.

"There is no earthly reason to do this on account of Dale," I protested.

"Dale has nothing to do with it."

"Then who has?"

"Anastasius Papadopoulos," she said with undisguised irony.

"I beg your pardon," I said rather stiffly, "for appearing to force your confidence. But as I first put the idea of joining your husband into your head and have enjoyed your confidence in the matter hitherto, I thought I might claim certain privileges."

As she had done before, she laid her hands on my shoulders -- we were alone in the alcove -- and looked me in the eyes.

"Don't make me cry. I'm very near it. And I'm tired to-night, and I'm going to have a hellish time to-morrow. And I want you to do me a favour."

"What is that?"

"When I'm seeing my husband, I'd like to know that you were within call -- in case I wanted you. One never knows what may happen. You will come won't you, if I send for you?"

"I'm always at your service," I said.

She released my shoulders and grasped my hand.

"Good-night," she said, abruptly, and rushed swiftly out of the room, leaving me wondering more than I had ever wondered in my life at the inscrutable ways of women.

Chapter XIV

I am glad I devoted last night and the past hour this morning to bringing up to date this trivial record, for I have a premonition that the time is rapidly approaching when I shall no longer have the strength of will or body to continue it. The little pain has increased in intensity and frequency the last few days, and though I try to delude myself into the belief that otherwise I am as strong as ever, I know in my heart that I am daily growing weaker, daily losing vitality. I shall soon have to call in a doctor to give me some temporary relief, and doubtless he will put me to bed, feed me on slops, cut off alcohol, forbid noise and excitement, and keep me in a drugged, stupefied condition until I fall asleep, to wake up in the Garden of Prosperpine. Death is nothing; it is the dying that is such a nuisance. It is going through so much for so little. It is as bad as the campaign before a parliamentary election. It offends one's sense of proportion. In a well-regulated universe there would be no tedious process of decay, either before or after death. You would go about your daily avocation unconcerned and unwarned, and then at the moment appointed by an inscrutable Providence for your dissolution -- phew! -- and your clothes would remain standing for a surprised second, and then fall down in a heap without a particle of you inside them. If we have to die, why doesn't Providence employ this simple and sensible method? It would save such a lot of trouble. It would be so clean, so painless, so picturesque. It would add to the interest of our walks abroad. Fancy a stout, important policeman vanishing from his uniform -- the helmet falling over the collar, the tunic doubling in at the belt, the knees giving way, and the unheard, merry laughter of the disenuniformed spirit winging its way truncheonless into the Empyrean.

But if you think you are going to get any fun out of dying in the present inconvenient manner, you are mistaken. Believe one who is trying.

I will remain on my feet, however, as long as my will holds out. In this way I may continue to be of service to my fellow creatures, and procure for myself a happy lot or portion. Even this morning I have been able to feel the throb of eumoiriety. A piteous letter came from Latimer, and a substantial cheque lies on my table ready to be posted. I wonder how much I have left? So long as it is enough to pay my doctor's bills and funeral expenses, what does it matter?

The last line of the above was written on December 21st. It is now January 30th, and I am still alive and able to write. I wish I weren't. But I will set down as plainly as I can what has happened in the interval.

I had just written the last word, seated at my hotel window in the sunshine, and enjoying, in spite of my uncheerful thoughts, the scents that rose from the garden, when I heard a knock at my door. At my invitation to enter, Anastasius Papadopoulos trotted into the room in a great state of excitement carrying the familiar bunch of papers. He put his hat on the floor, pitched the papers into the hat, and ran up to me.

"My dear sir, don't get up, I implore you. And I won't sit down. I have just seen the ever beautiful and beloved lady."

I turned my chair away from the table, and faced him as he stood blowing kisses with one little hand, while the other lay on his heart. In a flash he struck a new gesture; he folded his arms and scowled.

"I was with her. She was opening her inmost heart to me. She knows I am her champion. A servant came up announcing Monsieur Vauvenarde. She dismissed me. I have come to my patron and friend, the English statesman. Her husband is with her now."

I smiled. "Madame Brandt told me that she had asked for an interview."

"And you allow it? You allow her to contaminate her beautiful presence with the sight of that traitor, that cheat at cards, that murderer, that devil? Ah, but I will not have it! I am her champion. I will save her. I will save you. I will take you both away to Egypt, and surround you with my beautiful cats, and fan you with peacock's feathers."

This was sheer crackedness of brain. For the first time I feared for the little man. When people begin to talk that way they are not allowed to go about loose. He went on talking and the three languages he used in his jargon got clotted to the point of unintelligibility. He spoke very fast and, as far as I could understand, poured abuse on the head of Captain Vauvenarde, and continued to declare himself Lola's champion and my devoted friend. He stamped up and down the room in his tightly buttoned frock-coat from the breastpocket of which peeped the fingers of his yellow dogskin gloves. At last he stopped, and drawing a chair near the window perched on it with a little hop like a child. He held out his hand.

"Do you believe I am your friend?"

"I am sure of it, my dear Professor."

"Then I'll betray a sacred confidence. The carissima signora loves you. You didn't know it. But she loves you."

I stared for a moment at the dwarf as if he had been a reasonable being. Something seemed to click inside my head, like a clogged cog- wheel that had suddenly freed itself, and my mind went whirling away straight through the past few weeks. I tried to smile, and I said:

"You are quite mistaken."

"Oh, no," he replied, wagging his Napoleonic head. "Anastasius Papadopoulos is never mistaken. She told me so herself. She wept. She put her beautiful arms round my neck and sobbed on my shoulder."

I found myself reproving him gently. "You should not have told me this, my dear Professor. Such confidences are locked up in the heart of un galant homme, and are not revealed even to his dearest friend."

But my voice sounded hollow in my own ears, and what he said for the next few minutes I do not remember. The little man had told the truth to me, and Lola had told the truth to him. The realisation of it paralysed me. Why had I been such a fool as not to see it for myself? Memories of a hundred indications came tumbling one after another into my head -- the forgotten glove, the glances, the changes of mood, the tears when she learned of my illness, the mysterious words, the abrupt little "You?" of yesterday. The woman was in love, deeply in love, in love with all the fervour of her big nature. And I had stood by and wondered what she meant by this and by that -- things that would have been obvious to a coalheaver. I thought of Dale and I felt miserably guilty, horribly ashamed. How could I expect him to believe me when I told him that I had not wittingly stolen her affections from him. And her affections? Bon Dieu! What on earth could I do with them? What is the use of a woman's love to a dead man? And did I want it even for the tiny remainder of life?

Anastasius, perceiving that I paid but scant attention to his conversation, wriggled off his chair and stood before me with folded arms.

"You adore each other with a great passion," he said. "She is my Madonna, and you are my friend and benefactor. I will be your protection and defence. I will never let her go away with that infamous, gambling and murdering scoundrel. My gigantic combinations have matured. I bless your union."

He lifted his little arms in benediction. The situation was cruelly comical. For a moment I hated the mournful-visaged, posturing monkey, and had a wild desire to throw him out of the window and have done with him. I rose and, towering over him, was about to lecture him severely on his impertinent interference, when the sight of his scared face made me turn away with a laugh. What would be the use of reproaching him? He would only sit down on the floor and weep. So I paced the room, while he followed me with his eyes like an uncertain spaniel.

"Look here, Professor," said I at last. "Now that you've found Captain Vauvenarde, brought Madame Brandt and him together, and told me that she is in love with me, don't you think you've done enough? Don't you think your cats need your attention? Something terrible may be happening to them. I dreamed last night," I added with desperate mendacity, "that they were turned into woolly lambs."

"Monsieur," said the dwarf loftily, "my duty is here. And I care not whether my cats are turned into the angels of Paradise."

I groaned. "You are wasting a great deal of money over this affair," I urged.

"What is money to my gigantic combinations?"

"Tell me," I cried with considerable impatience. "What are your confounded combinations?"

He began to tremble violently. "I would rather die," said he, "than betray my secret."

"It's all some silly nonsense about that wretched horse!" I exclaimed.

He covered his ears with his hands. "Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Don't utter it!"

In another moment he was cowering on his knees before me.

"You, of all men, mustn't blaspheme. You whom I love like my master. You whom the divine lady loves. I can't bear it!" He continued to gibber unintelligibly.

He was stark mad. There was no question of it. For a moment I stood irresolute. Then I lifted him to his feet and patted his head soothingly.

"Never mind," said I. "I was wrong. It was a beautiful horse. There never was such a horse in the world. If I had a picture of him I would hang it up on the wall over my bed."

"Would you?" he cried joyfully. "Then I will give you one."

He trotted over to the bundle of papers that reposed in his hat on the floor, searched through them, and to my dismay handed me a faded, unmounted, and rather torn and crumpled photograph of the wonderful horse.

"There!" said he.

"I could not rob you of it," I protested.

"It will be my joy to know that you have it -- that it is hanging over your bed. See -- have you a pin? I myself will fix it for you."

While he was searching my table for pins the chasseur of the hotel came with a message from Madame Brandt. Would Monsieur come at once to Madame in her private room?

"I'll come now," I said. "Professor, you must excuse me."

"Don't mention it. I shall occupy myself in hanging the picture in the most artistic way possible."

So I left him, his mind apparently concentrated on the childish task of pinning the photograph of the ridiculous horse on my bedroom wall, and went with the most complicated feelings downstairs and through the corridors to Lola's apartments.

She rose to meet me as I entered.

"It's very kind of you to come," she said in her fluent but Britannic French. "May I present my husband, Monsieur Vauvenarde."

Monsieur Vauvenarde and I exchanged bows. I noticed at once that he wore the Frenchman's costume when he pays a visite de ceremonie , frock-coat and gloves, and that a silk hat lay on the table. I was glad that he paid her this mark of respect.

"I have had the pleasure of meeting you before, Monsieur," said he, "in circumstances somewhat different."

"I remember perfectly," said I.

"And your charming but inexperienced little friend -- is he well?"

"He is at present decorating my room with photographs of Madame's late horse, Sultan," said I.

He was startled, and gave me a quick, sharp look. I did not notice it at the time, but I remembered it later. Then he broke into an indulgent laugh.

"The poor animal!" He turned to Lola. "How jealous I used to be of him! And how quickly the time flies. But give yourself the trouble of seating yourself, Monsieur."

He motioned me to a chair and sat down. He was a man of polished manner and had a pleasant voice. I guessed that in the days when he paid court to Lola, he had been handsome in his dark Norman way, and possessed considerable fascination. Evil living and sordid passions had coarsened his features, produced bagginess under the eyes and a shiftiness of glance. Idleness and an inverted habit of life were responsible for the nascent paunch and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck. He suggested the revivified corpse of a fine gentleman that had been unnaturally swollen. I had disliked him at the Cercle Africain; now I detested him heartily. The idea of Lola entering the vitiated atmosphere of his life was inexpressibly repugnant to me.

Contrary to her habit, Lola sat bolt upright on the stamped-velvet suite, the palms of her hands pressing the seat on either side of her. She caught the shade of disgust that swept over my face, and gave me a quick glance that pleaded for toleration. Her eyes, though bright, were sunken, like those of a woman who has not slept.

"Monsieur," said Vauvenarde, "my wife informs me that to your disinterested friendship is due this most charming reconciliation."

"Reconciliation?" I echoed. "It was quickly effected."

"Mon Dieu," he said. "I have always longed for the comforts of a home. My wife has grown tired of a migratory existence. She comes to find me. I hasten to meet her. There is nothing to keep us apart. The reconciliation was a matter of a few seconds. I wish to express my gratitude to you, and, therefore, I ask you to accept my most cordial thanks."

"It has always been a pleasure to me," said I very frigidly, "to place my services at the disposal of Madame Brandt."

"Vauvenarde, Monsieur," he corrected with a smile.

"And is Madame Vauvenarde equally satisfied with the -- reconciliation?" I asked.

"I think Monsieur Vauvenarde is somewhat premature," said Lola, with a trembling lip. "There were conditions -- "

"A mere question of protocol." He waved an airy hand.

"I don't know what that is," said Lola. "There are conditions I must fix, and I thought the advice of my friend, Monsieur de Gex -- "

"Precisely, my dear Lola," he interrupted. "The principle is affirmed. We are reconciled. I proceed logically. The first thing I do is to thank Monsieur de Gex -- you have a French name, Monsieur, and you pronounce it English fashion, which is somewhat embarrassing -- But no matter. The next thing is the protocol. We have no possibility of calling a family council, and therefore, I acceded with pleasure to the intervention of Monsieur. It is kind of him to burden himself with our unimportant affairs."

The irony of his tone belied the suave correctitude of his words. I detested him more and more. More and more did I realise that the dying eumoirist is capable of petty human passions. My vanity was being sacrified. Here was a woman passionately in love with me proposing to throw herself into another man's arms -- it made not a scrap of difference, in the circumstances, that the man was her husband -- and into the arms of such a man! Having known me to decline -- etcetera, etcetera! How could she face it? And why was she doing it? To save herself from me, or me from herself? She knew perfectly well that the little pain inside would precious soon settle that question. Why was she doing it? I should have thought that the first glance at the puffy reprobate would have been enough to show her the folly of her idea. However, it was comforting to learn that she had not surrendered at once.

"If I am to have the privilege, Monsieur," said I, "of acting as a family council, perhaps you may forgive my hinting at some of the conditions that doubtless are in Madame's mind."

"Proceed, Monsieur," said he.

"I want to know where I am," said Lola in English. "He took everything for granted from the first."

"Are you willing to go back to him?" I asked also in English.

She met my gaze steadily, and I saw a woman's needless pain at the back of her eyes. She moistened her lips with her tongue, and said:

"Under conditions."

"Monsieur," said I in French, turning to Vauvenarde, "forgive us for speaking our language."

"Perfectly," said he, and he smiled meaningly and banteringly at us both.

"In the first place, Monsieur, you are aware that Madame has a little fortune, which does not detract from the charm you have always found in her. It was left her by her father, who, as you know, tamed lions and directed a menagerie. I would propose that Madame appointed trustees to administer this little fortune."

"There is no necessity, Monsieur," he said. "By the law of France it is hers to do what she likes with."

"Precisely," I rejoined. "Trustees would prevent her from doing what she liked with it. Madame has indeed a head for affairs, but she also has a woman's heart, which sometimes interferes with a woman's head in the most disastrous manner."

"Article No. 1 of the protocol. Allez toujours, Monsieur."

I went on, feeling happier. "The next article treats of a little matter which I understand has been the cause of differences in the past between Madame and yourself. Madame, although she has not entered the arena for some time, has not finally abandoned it." I smiled at the look of surprise on Lola's face. "An artist is always an artist, Monsieur. She is willing, however, to renounce it for ever, if you, on your side, will make quite a small sacrifice."

"Name it, Monsieur."

"You have a little passion for baccarat -- -- "

"Surely, Monsieur," said he blandly, "my wife would not expect me to give up what is the mere recreation of every clubman."

"As a recreation pure and simple -- she would not insist too much, but -- -- " I shrugged my shoulders. I flatter myself on being able to do it with perfect French expressiveness. I caught, to my satisfaction, an angry gleam in his eye.

"Do you mean to say, Monsieur, that I play for more than recreation?"

"How dare I say anything, Monsieur. But Madame is prejudiced against the Cercle Africain. For a bachelor there is little to be said against it -- but for a married man -- you seize the point?" said I.

"Bien, Monsieur," he said, swallowing his wrath. "And Article 3?"

"Since you have left the army -- would it not be better to engage in some profession -- unless your private fortune dispenses you from the necessity."

He said nothing but: "Article 4?"

"It would give Madame comfort to live out of Algiers."

"Moi aussi," he replied rather unexpectedly. "We have the whole of France to choose from."

"Would not Madame be happier if she lived out of France, also? She has always longed for a social position."

"Eh, bien/? I can give her one in France."

"Are you quite sure?" I asked, looking him in the eyes.

"Monsieur," said he, rising and giving his moustache a swashbuckler twist upward, "what are you daring to insinuate?"

I leaned back in my chair and fingered the waxed ends of mine.

"Nothing, Monsieur; I ask a simple question, which you surely can have no difficulty in answering."

"Your questions are the height of indiscretion," he cried angrily.

"In that case, before we carry this interview further, the Family Council and Madame would do well to have a private consultation."

"Monsieur," he cried, completely losing his temper. "I forbid you to use that tone to me. You are making a mock of me. You are insulting me. I bore with you long enough to see how much further your insolence would dare to go. I'm not to have a hand in the administration of my wife's money? I'm to forsake a plentiful means of livelihood? I'm to become a commercial traveller? I'm to expatriate myself? I'm to explain, too, the reasons why I left the army? I would not condescend. Least of all to you."

"May I ask why, Monsieur?"

"Tonnerre de Dieu!" He stamped his foot. "Do you take me for a fool? Here I am -- I came at my wife's request, ready to take her back as my wife, ready to condone everything -- yes, Monsieur, as a man of the world -- you think I have no eyes, no understanding -- ready to take her off your hands -- "

I leaped to my feet.

"Monsieur!" I thundered.

Lola gave a cry and rushed forward. I pushed her aside, and glared at him. I was in a furious rage. We glared at each other eye to eye. I pointed to the door.

"Monsieur, sortez!"

I went to it and flung it wide. Anastasius Papadopoulos trotted into the room.

His entrance was so queer, so unexpected, so anti-climatic, that for the moment the three of us were thrown off our emotional balance.

"I have heard all, I have heard all," shrieked the little man. "I know you for what you are. I am the champion of the carissima signora and the protector of the English statesman. You are a traitor and murderer -- "

Vauvenarde lifted his hand in a threatening gesture.

"Hold your tongue, you little abortion!" he shouted.

But Anastasius went on screaming and flourishing his bundle of papers.

"Ask him if he remembers the horse Sultan; ask him if he remembers the horse Sultan!"

Lola took him by the shoulders.

"Anastasius, you must go away from here -- to please me. It's my orders."

But he shook himself free, and the silk hat which he had not removed fell off in the quick struggle.

"Ask him if he remembers Saupiquet," he screamed, and then banged the door.

A malevolent devil put a sudden idea into my head and prompted speech.

"Do you remember Saupiquet?" I asked ironically.

"Monsieur, meddle with your own affairs and let me pass. You shall hear from me."

The dwarf planted himself before the door.

"You shall not pass till you have answered me. Do you remember Saupiquet? Do you remember the five francs you gave to Saupiquet to let you into Sultan's stable? Ah! Ha! Ha! You wince. You grow pale. Do you remember the ball of poison you put down Sultan's throat?"

Lola started forward with flaming eyes and anguished face.

"You -- you?" she gasped. "You were so ignoble as to do that?"

"The accursed brute!" shouted Vauvenarde. "Yes, I did it. I wish I had burned out his entrails."

Anastasius sprang at him like a tiger cat. I had a quick vision of the dwarf clinging in the air against the other's bulky form, one hand at his throat, and then of an incredibly swift flash of steel. The dwarf dropped off and rolled backwards, revealing something black sticking out of Vauvenarde's frock-coat -- for the second I could not realise what it was. Then Vauvenarde, with a ghastly face, reeled sideways and collapsed in a heap on the ground.

Simon the Jester

Chapter XI

When I began this autobiographical sketch of the last few weeks of my existence, I had conceived, as I have already said, the notion of making it chiefly a guide to conduct for my young disciple, Dale Kynnersley. Not only was it to explain to him clearly the motives which led to my taking any particular line of action with regard to his affairs, and so enable me to escape whatever blame he might, through misunderstanding, be disposed to cast on me, but also to elevate his mind, stimulate his ambitions, and improve his morals. It was to be a Manual of Eumoiriety. It was to be sweetened with philosophic reflections and adorned with allusions to the lives of the great masters of their destiny who have passed away. It was to have been a pretty little work after the manner of Montaigne, with the exception that it ran of its own accord into narrative form. But I am afraid Lola Brandt has interposed herself between me and my design. She had brought me down from the serene philosophic plane where I could think and observe human happenings and analyse them and present them in their true aspect to my young friend. She has set me down in the thick of events -- and not events such as the smiling philosopher is in the habit of dealing with, but lunatic, fantastic occurrences with which no system of philosophy invented by man is capable of grappling. I can just keep my head, that is all, and note down what happens more or less day by day, so that when the doings of dwarfs and captains, and horse-tamers and youthful Members of Parliament concern me no more, Dale Kynnersley can have a bald but veracious statement of fact. And as I have before mentioned, he loves facts, just as a bear loves honey.

I passed a quiet day or two in my hotel garden, among the sweet-peas, and the roses, and the geraniums. There were little shady summer- houses where one could sit and dream, and watch the blue sky and the palms and the feathery pepper trees drooping with their coral berries, and the golden orange-trees and the wisteria and the great gorgeous splash of purple bougainvillea above the Moorish arches of the hotel. There were mild little walks in the eucalyptus woods behind, where one went through acanthus and wild absinthe, and here and there as the path wound, the great blue bay came into view, and far away the snow- capped peaks of the Atlas. There were warmth and sunshine, and the unexciting prattle of the retired Colonels and maiden ladies. There was a hotel library filled with archaic fiction. I took out Ainsworth's "Tower of London," and passed a happy morning in the sun renewing the thrills of my childhood. I began to forget the outer world in my enchanted garden, like a knight in the Forest of Broceliande.

Then came the letter from Tlemcen. The Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs d'Afrique had received my honoured communication but regretted to say that he, together with all the officers of the regiment, had severed their connection with Captain Vauvenarde, and that they were ignorant of his present address.

This was absurd. A man does not resign from his regiment and within a year or two disappear like a ghost from the ken of every one of his brother officers. I read the letter again. Did the severance of connection mean the casting out of a black sheep from their midst? I came to the conclusion that it did. They had washed their hands of Captain Vauvenarde, and desired to hear nothing of him in the future.

So I awoke from my lethargy, and springing up sent not for my shield and spear, but for an "Indicateur des Chemins de Fer." I would go to Tlemcen and get to the bottom of it. I searched the time-table and found two trains, one starting from Algiers at nine-forty at night and getting into Tlemcen at noon next day, and one leaving at six-fifty in the morning and arriving at half-past ten at night. I groaned aloud. The dealing unto oneself a happy life and portion did not include abominable train journeys like these. I was trying to decide whether I should travel all night or all day when the Arab chasseur of the hotel brought me a telegram. I opened it. It ran:

"Starting for Algiers. Meet me. -- LOLA."

It was despatched that morning from Victoria Station. I gazed at it stupidly. Why in the world was Lola Brandt coming to join me in Algiers? If she had wanted to do her husband hunting on her own account, why had she put me to the inconvenience of my journey? Her action could not have been determined by my letter about Anastasius Papadopoulos, as a short calculation proved that it could not have reached her. I wandered round and round the garden paths vainly seeking for the motive. Was it escape from Dale? Had she, womanlike, taken the step which she was so anxious to avoid -- and in order to avoid taking which all this bother had arisen -- and given the boy his dismissal? If so, why had she not gone to Paris or St. Petersburg or Terra del Fuego? Why Algiers? Dale abandoned outright, the necessity for finding her husband had disappeared. Perhaps she was coming to request me, on that account, to give up the search. But why travel across seas and continents when a telegram or a letter would have sufficed? She was coming at any rate; and as she gave no date I presumed that she would travel straight through and arrive in about forty-eight hours. This reflection caused a gleam of sunshine to traverse my gloom. I was not physically capable of performing the journey to Tlemcen and back before her arrival. I could, therefore, dream among the roses of the garden for another couple of days. And when she came, perhaps she would like to go to Tlemcen herself and try the effect of her woman's fascinations on the Lieutenant-Colonel and officers of the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs d'Afrique.

In any case, her sudden departure argued well for Dale's liberation. If the rupture had occurred I was quite contented. That is what I had wished to accomplish. It only remained now to return to London, while breath yet stayed in my body, and lead him diplomatically to the feet of Maisie Ellerton. Then I would have ended my eumoirous task, and my last happy words would be a paternal benediction. But all the same, I had set forth to find this confounded captain and did not want to be hindered. The sportsman's instinct which, in my robust youth, had led me to crawl miles on my belly over wet heather in order to get a shot at a stag, I found, somewhat to my alarm, was urging me on this chase after Captain Vauvenarde. He was my quarry. I resented interference. Deer-stalking then, and man-stalking now, I wanted no petticoats in the party. I worked myself up into an absurd state of irritability. Why was she coming to spoil the sport? I had arranged to track her husband down, reason with him, work on his feelings, telegraph for his wife, and in an affecting interview throw them into each other's arms. Now, goodness knows what would happen. Certainly not my beautifully conceived coup de theatre.

"And she has the impertinence," I cried in my wrath, "to sign herself 'Lola'! As if I ever called her, or could ever be in a position to call her 'Lola'! I should like to know," I exclaimed, hurling the "Indicateur des Chemins de Fer" on to the seat of a summer-house, built after the manner of a little Greek temple, "I should like to know what the deuce she means by it!"

"Hallo! Hallo! What the devil's the matter?" cried a voice; and I found I had disturbed from his slumbers an unnoticed Colonel of British Cavalry.

"A thousand pardons!" said I. "I thought I was alone, and gave vent to the feelings of the moment."

Colonel Bunnion stretched himself and joined me.

"That's the worst of this place," he said. "It's so liverish. One lolls about and sleeps all day long, and one's liver gets like a Strasburg goose's and plays Old Harry with one's temper. Why one should come here when there are pheasants to be shot in England, I don't know."

"Neither your liver nor your temper seem to be much affected, Colonel," said I, "for you've been violently awakened from a sweet sleep and are in a most amiable frame of mind."

He laughed, suggested exercise, the Briton's panacea for all ills, and took me for a walk. When we returned at dusk, and after I had had tea before the fire (for December evenings in Algiers are chilly) in one of the pretty Moorish alcoves of the lounge, my good humour was restored. I viewed our pursuit of Captain Vauvenarde in its right aspect -- that of a veritable Snark-Hunt of which I was the Bellman -- and the name "Lola" curled itself round my heart with the same grateful sensation of comfort as the warm China tea. After all, it was only as Lola that I thought of her. The name fitted her personality, which Brandt did not. Out of "Brandt" I defy you to get any curvilinear suggestion. I reflected dreamily that it would be pleasant to walk with her among the roses in the sunshine and to drink tea with her in dusky Moorish alcoves. I also thought, with an enjoyable spice of malice, of what the retired Colonels and elderly maiden ladies would have to say about Lola when she arrived. They should have a gorgeous time.

So light-hearted did I become that, the next evening, while I was dressing for dinner, I did not frown when the chasseur brought me up the huge trilingual visiting-card of Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos.

"Show the gentleman up," said I.

Rogers handed me my black tie and began to gather together discarded garments so as to make the room tidy for the visitor. It was a comfortable bed-sitting-room, with the bed in an alcove and a tiny dressing-room attached. A wood fire burned on the hearth on each side of which was an armchair. Presently there came a knock at the door. Rogers opened it and admitted Papadopoulos, who forthwith began to execute his usual manoeuvres of salutation. Rogers stood staring and open-mouthed at the apparition. It took all his professional training in imperturbability to enable him to make a decent exit. This increased my good humour. I grasped the dwarf's hand.

"My dear Professor, I am delighted to see you. Pray excuse my receiving you in this unceremonious fashion, and sit down by the fire."

I hastily completed my toilette by stuffing my watch, letter-case, loose change and handkerchief into my pockets, and took a seat opposite him.

"It is I," said he politely, "who must apologise for this untimely call. I have wanted to pay my respects to you since I arrived in Algiers, but till now I have had no opportunity."

"Allow me," said I, "to disembarrass you of your hat."

I took the high-crowned, flat-brimmed thing which he was nursing somewhat nervously on his knees, and put it on the table. He murmured that I was "Sehr aimable."

"And the charming Monsieur Saupiquet, how is he?" I asked.

He drew out his gilt-embossed pocket-book, and from it extracted an envelope.

"This," said he, handing it to me, "is the receipt. I have to thank you again for regulating the debt, as it has enabled me to transact with Monsieur Saupiquet the business on which I summoned him from Toulon. He is the most obstinate, pig-headed camel that ever lived, and I believe he has returned to Toulon in the best of health. No, thank you," he added, refusing my offer of cigarettes, "I don't smoke. It disturbs the perfect adjustment of my nerves, and so imperils my gigantic combinations. It is also distasteful to my cats."

"You must miss them greatly," said I.

He sighed -- then his face lit up with inspiration.

"Ah, signor! What would one not sacrifice for an idea, for duty, for honour, for the happiness of those we love?"

"Those are sentiments, Monsieur Papadopoulos," I remarked, "which do you infinite credit."

"And, therefore, I express them, sir," he replied, "to show you what manner of man I am." He paused for a moment; then bending forward, his hands on his little knees -- he was sitting far back in the chair and his legs were dangling like a child's -- he regarded me intently.

"Would you be equally chivalrous for the sake of an idea?"

I replied that I hoped I should conduct myself en galant homme in any circumstances.

"I knew it," he cried. "My intuition is never wrong. An English statesman is as fearless as Agamemnon, and as wise as Nestor. Have you your evening free?"

"Yes," I replied wonderingly.

"Would you care to devote it to a perilous adventure? Not so perilous, for I" -- he thumped his chest -- "will be there. But still molto gefahrlich."

His black eyes held mine in burning intensity. So as to hide a smile I lit a cigarette. I know not what little imp in motley possessed me that evening. He seemed to hit me over the head with his bladder, and counsel me to play the fool like himself, for once in my life before I died. I could almost hear him speaking.

"Surely a crazy dwarf out of a nightmare is more entertaining company than decayed Colonels of British Cavalry."

I blew two or three puffs of my cigarette, and met my guest's eager gaze.

"I shall be happy to put myself at your disposal," said I. "May I ask, without indiscretion -- ?"

"No, no," he interrupted, "don't ask. Secrecy is part of the gigantic combination. En galant homme, I require of you -- confidence."

With an irresistible touch of mockery I said: "Professor Papadopoulos, I will be happy to follow you blindfold to the lair of whatever fire- breathing dragon you may want me to help you destroy."

He rose and grasped his hat and made me a profound bow.

"You will not find me wanting in courage, Monsieur. There is another small favour I would ask of you. Will you bring some of your visiting- cards?"

"With pleasure," said I.

At that moment the gong clanged loudly through the hotel.

"It is your dinner-hour," said the dwarf. "I depart. Our rendezvous -- "

"Let us have no rendezvous, my dear Professor," I interposed. "What more simple than that you should do me the pleasure of dining with me here? We can thus fortify ourselves with food and drink for our adventure, and we can start on it comfortably together whenever it seems good to you."

The little man put his head on one side and looked at me in an odd way.

"Do you mean," he asked in a softened voice, "that you ask me to dine with you in the midst of your aristocratic compatriots?"

"Why, evidently," said I, baffled. "It's only an ordinary table d'hote dinner."

To my astonishment, tears actually spurted out of the eyes of the amazing little creature. He took my hand and before I knew what he was going to do with it he had touched it with his lips.

"My dear Professor!" I cried in dismay.

He put up a pudgy hand, and said with great dignity:

"I cannot dine with you, Monsieur de Gex. But I thank you from my heart for your generous kindness. I shall never forget it to my dying day."

"But -- -- "

He would listen to no protests. "If you will do me the honour of coming at nine o'clock to the Cafe de Bordeaux, at the corner of the Place du Gouvernement, I shall be there. Auf wiedersehen, Monsieur, and a thousand thanks. I beg you as a favour not to accompany me. I couldn't bear it."

And, drawing a great white handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and disappeared like a flash through the door which I held open for him.

I went down to dinner in a chastened mood. The little man had not shown me before the pathetic side of the freak's life. By asking him to dinner as if he were normal I had earned his eternal gratitude. And yet, with a smile, which I trust the Recording Angel when he makes up my final balance-sheet of good and evil will not ascribe to an unfeeling heart, I could not help formulating the hope that his gratitude would not be shown by presents of China fowls sitting on eggs, Tyrolese chalets and bottles with ladders and little men inside them. I did not feel within me the wide charity of Lola Brandt; and I could not repress a smile, as I ate my solitary meal, at the perils of the adventure to which I was invited. I had no doubt that it bore the same relation to danger as Monsieur Saupiquet's sevenpence-halfpenny bore to a serious debt.

Colonel Bunnion, a genial little red-faced man, with bulgy eyes and a moustache too big for his body, who sat, also solitary, at the next table to mine, suddenly began to utter words which I discovered were addressed to me.

"Most amazing thing happened to me as I was coming down to dinner. Just got out of the corridor to the foot of the stairs, when down rushed something about three foot nothing in a devil of a top-hat and butted me full in the pit of the stomach, and bounded off like a football. When I picked it up I found it was a man -- give you my word -- it was a man. About so high. Gave me quite a turn."

"That," said I, with a smile, "was my friend Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos."

"A friend of yours?"

"He had just been calling on me."

"Then I wish you'd entreat him not to go downstairs like a six-inch shell. I'll have a bruise to-morrow where the crown of his hat caught me as big as a soup-plate."

I offered the cheerily indignant warrior apologies for my friend's parabolic method of descent, and suggested Elliman's Embrocation.

"The most extraordinary part of it," he interrupted, "was that when I picked him up he was weeping like anything. What was he crying about?"

"He is a sensitive creature," said I, "and he doesn't come upon the pit of the stomach of a Colonel of British Cavalry every day in the week."

He sniffed uncertainly at the remark for a second or two and then broke into a laugh and asked me to play bridge after dinner. On the two preceding evenings he and I had attempted to cheer, in this manner, the desolation of a couple of the elderly maiden ladies. But I may say, parenthetically, that as he played bridge as if he were leading a cavalry charge according to a text-book on tactics, and as I play card games in a soft, mental twilight, and as the two ladies were very keen bridge players indeed, I had great doubts as to the success of our attempts.

"I'm sorry," said I, "but I'm going down into the town to-night."

"Theatre? If so, I'll go with you."

The gallant gentleman was always at a loose end. Unless he could persuade another human being to do something with him -- no matter what -- he would joyfully have played cat's cradle with me by the hour -- he sat in awful boredom meditating on his liver.

"I'm not going to the theatre," I said, "and I wish I could ask you to accompany me on my adventure."

The Colonel raised his eyebrows. I laughed.

"I'm not going to twang guitars under balconies."

The Colonel reddened and swore he had never thought of such a thing. He was a perjured villain; but I did not tell him so.

"In what my adventure will consist I can't say," I remarked.

"If you're going to fool about Algiers at night you'd better carry a revolver."

I told him I did not possess such deadly weapons. He offered to lend me one. The two Misses Bostock from South Shields, who sat at the table within earshot and had been following our conversation, manifested signs of excited interest.

"I shall be quite protected," said I, "by the dynamic qualities of your acquaintance, Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos, with whom I have promised to spend the evening."

"You had better have the revolver," said the Colonel. And so bent was he on the point, that after dinner he came to me in the lounge and laid a loaded six-shooter beside my coffee-cup. The younger Miss Bostock grew pale. It looked an ugly, cumbrous, devastating weapon.

"But, my dear Colonel," I protested, "it's against the law to carry fire-arms."

"Law -- what law?"

"Why the law of France," said I.

This staggered him. The fact of there being decent laws in foreign parts has staggered many an honest Briton. He counselled a damnation of the law, and finally, in order to humour him, I allowed him to thrust the uncomfortable thing into my hip-pocket.

"Colonel," said I, when I took leave of him an hour later, "I have armed myself out of pure altruism. I shan't be able to sit down in peace and comfort for the rest of the evening. Should I accidentally do so, my blood will be on your head."

Chapter XII

The tram that passes the hotel gates took me into the town and dropped me at the Place du Gouvernement. With its strange fusion of East and West, its great white-domed mosque flanked by the tall minaret contrasting with its formal French colonnaded facades, its groupings of majestic white-robed forms and commonplace figures in caps and hard felt hats; the mystery of its palm trees, and the crudity of its flaring electric lights, it gave an impression of unreality, of a modern contractor's idea of Fairyland, where anything grotesque might assume an air of normality. The moon shone full in the heavens, and as I crossed the Place I saw the equestrian statue of the Duke of Orleans silhouetted against the mosque. The port, to the east, was quiet at this hour, and the shipping lay dreamily in the moonlight. Far away one could see the dim outlines of the Kabyle Mountains, and the vague melting of sea and sky into a near horizon. The undefinable smell of the East was in the air.

The Cafe de Bordeaux, which forms an angle of the Place, blazed in front of me. A few hardy souls, a Zouave or two, an Arab, a bored Englishman and his wife, and some French inhabitants were sitting outside in the chilliness. I entered. The cafe was filled with a nondescript crowd, and the rattle of dominoes rose above the hum of talk. In a corner near the door I discovered the top of a silk hat projecting above a widely opened newspaper grasped by two pudgy hands, and I recognised the Professor.

"Monsieur," said he, when I had taken a seat at his table, "if the unknown terrors which you are going to confront dismay you, I beg that you will not consider yourself bound to me."

"My dear Professor," I replied, "a brave man tastes of death but once."

He was much delighted at the sentiment, which he took to be original.

"I shall quote it," said he, "whenever my honour or my courage is called into question. It is not often that a man has the temerity to do so. Can I have the honour of offering you a whisky and soda?"

"Have we time?" I asked.

"We have time," he said, solemnly consulting his watch. "Things will ripen."

"Then," said I, "I shall have much pleasure in drinking to their maturity."

While we were drinking our whisky and soda he talked volubly of many things -- his travels, his cats, his own incredible importance in the cosmos. And as he sat there vapouring about the pathetically insignificant he looked more like Napoleon III than ever. His eyes had the same mournful depths, his features the same stamp of fatality. Each man has his gigantic combinations -- perhaps equally important in the eyes of the High Gods. I was filled with an immense pity for Napoleon III.

Of the object of the adventure he said nothing. As secrecy seemed to be a vital element in his fifteen-cent scheme, I showed no embarrassing curiosity. Indeed, I felt but little, though I was certain that the adventure was connected with the world-cracking revelations of Monsieur Saupiquet, and was undertaken in the interest of his beloved lady, Lola Brandt. But it was like playing at pirates with a child, and my pity for Napoleon gave place to my pity for my valiant but childish little friend.

At last he looked again at his watch.

"The hour his struck. Let us proceed."

Instinctively I summoned the waiter, and drew a coin from my pocket; and when the grown-up person and the small boy hobnob together the former pays. But Anastasius, with a swift look of protest, anticipated my intention. I was his guest for the evening. I yielded apologetically, the score was paid, and we went forth into the moonlight.

He led me across the Place du Gouvernement and struck straight up the hill past the Cathedral, and, turning, plunged into a network of narrow streets, where the poor of all races lived together in amity and evil odours. Shops chiefly occupied the ground floors; some were the ordinary humble shops of Europeans; others were caves lit by a smoky lamp, where Arabs lounged and smoked around the tailors or cobblers squatting at their work; others were Jewish, with Hebrew inscriptions. There were dark Arab cafes, noisy Italian wine-shops, butchers' stalls; children of all ages played and screamed about the precipitous cobble-paved streets; and the shrill cries of Jewish women, sitting at their doors, rose in rebuke of husband or offspring. Not many lights appeared through the shuttered windows of the dark, high houses. Overhead, between two facades, one saw a strip of paleness which one knew was the moonlit sky. Conversation with my companion being difficult -- the top of his silk hat just reached my elbow -- I strode along in silence, Anastasius trotting by my side. Many jeers and jests were flung at us as we passed, whereat he scowled terribly; but no one molested us. I am inclined to think that Anastasius attributed this to fear of his fierce demeanour. If so, he was happy, as were the simple souls who flouted; and this reflection kept my mind serene.

Presently we turned into a wide and less poverty-stricken street, which I felt sure we could have reached by a less tortuous and malodorous path. A few yards down we came to a dark porte cochere . The dwarf halted, crossed, so as to read the number by the gas lamp, and joining me, said:

"It is here. Have you your visiting-cards ready?"

I nodded. We proceeded down the dark entry till we came to a slovenly, ill-kept glass box lit by a small gas jet, whence emerged a slovenly, ill-kept man. This was the concierge. Anastasius addressed a remark to him which I did not catch.

"Au fond de la cour, troisieme a gauche," said the concierge.

As yet there seemed to be nothing peculiarly perilous about the adventure. We crossed the cobble-paved courtyard and mounted an evil- smelling stone staircase, blackened here and there by the occasional gas jets. On the third landing we halted. Anastasius put up his hand and gripped mine.

"Two strong men together," said he, "need fear nothing."

I confess my only fear was lest the confounded revolver which swung insecurely in my hip-pocket might go off of its own accord. I did not mention this to my companion. He raised his hat, wiped his brow, and rang the bell.

The door opened about six inches, and a man's dark-moustachioed face appeared.

"Vous desirez, Messieurs/?"

As I had not the remotest idea what we desired, I let Anastasius be spokesman.

"Here is an English milord," said Anastasius boldly, "who would like to be admitted for the evening to the privileges of the Club."

"Enter, gentlemen," said the man, who appeared to be the porter.

We found ourselves in a small vestibule. In front of us was a large door, on the right a small one, both closed. At a table by the large door sat a dirty, out-of-elbows raven of a man reading a newspaper. The latter looked up and addressed me.

"You wish to enter the Club, Monsieur?"

I had no particular longing to do so, but I politely answered that such was my desire.

"If you will give your visiting-card, I will submit it to the Secretariat."

I produced my card; Anastasius thrust a pencil into my hand.

"Write my name on it, too."

I obeyed. The raven sent the porter with the card into the room on the right, and resumed the perusal of his soiled newspaper. I looked at Anastasius. The little man was quivering with excitement. The porter returned after a few minutes with a couple of pink oval cards which he handed to each of us. I glanced at mine. On it was inscribed: Cercle Africain d'Alger. Carte de Member Honoraire. Une soiree. And then there was a line for the honorary member's signature. The raven man dipped a pen in the ink-pot in front of him and handed it to me.

"Will you sign, Messieurs?"

We executed this formality; he retained the cards, and opening the great door, said:

"Entrez, Messieurs!"

The door closed behind us. It was simply a tripot, or gambling-den. And all this solemn farce of Secretariats and cartes d'entree to obtain admission! It is curious how the bureaucratic instinct is ingrained in the French character.

It was a large, ill-ventilated room, blue with cigarette and cigar smoke. Some thirty men were sitting or standing around a baccarat table in the centre, and two or three groups hung around ecarte tables in the corners. A personage who looked like a slightly more prosperous brother of the raven outside and wore a dinner-jacket, promenaded the room with the air of one in authority. He scrutinised us carefully from a distance; then advanced and greeted us politely.

"You have chosen an excellent evening," said he. "There are a great many people, and the banks are large."

He bowed and passed on. A dingy waiter took our hats and coats and hung them up. Anastasius plucked me by the sleeve.

"If you don't mind staking a little for the sake of appearances, I shall be grateful."

I whispered: "Can you tell me now, my dear Professor, for what reason you have brought me to this gaming-hell?"

He looked up at me out of his mournful eyes and murmured, " Patienza, lieber Herr." Then spying a vacant place behind the chairs at the baccarat table, he darted thither, and I followed in his wake. There must have been about a couple of hundred louis in the bank, which was held by a dissipated, middle-aged man who, having once been handsome in a fleshy way, had run to fat. His black hair, cropped short, stood up like a shoebrush, and when he leaned back in his chair a roll of flesh rose above his collar. I disliked the fellow for his unhealthiness, and for the hard mockery in his puffy eyes. The company seemed fairly homogeneous in its raffishness, though here and there appeared a thin, aristocratic face, with grey moustache and pointed beard, and the homely anxious visage of a small tradesman. But in bulk it looked an ugly, seedy crowd, with unwashed bodies and unclean souls. I noticed an Italian or two, and a villainous Englishman with a face like that of a dilapidated horse. A glance at the table plastered with silver and gold showed me that they were playing with a five- franc minimum.

Anastasius drew a handful of louis from his pocket and staked one. I staked a five-franc piece. The cards were dealt, the banker exposed a nine, the highest number, and the croupier's flat spoon swept the table. A murmur arose. The banker was having the luck of Satan.

"He always protects me, the good fellow," laughed the banker, who had overheard the remark.

Again we staked, again the hands were dealt. Our tableau or end of the table won, the other lost. The croupier threw the coins in payment. I let my double stake lie, and so did Anastasius. At the next coup we lost again. The banker stuffed his winnings into his pocket and declared a suite. The bank was put up at auction, and was eventually knocked down to the same personage for fifty louis. The horse-headed Englishman cried "banco," which means that he would play the banker for the whole amount. The hands were dealt, the Englishman lost, and the game started afresh with a hundred louis in the bank. The proceedings began to bore me. Even if my experience of life had not suggested that scrupulous fairness and honour were not the guiding principles of such an assemblage, I should have taken little interest in the game. I am a great believer in the wholesomeness of compounding for sins you are inclined to by damning those you have no mind to. It aids the nice balance of life. And gambling is one of the sins I delight to damn. The rapid getting of money has never appealed to me, who have always had sufficient for my moderately epicurean needs, and least of all did it appeal to me now when I was on the brink of my journey to the land where French gold and bank notes were not in currency. I repeat, therefore, that I was bored.

"If the perils of the adventure don't begin soon, my dear Professor," I whispered, "I shall go to sleep standing."

Again he asked for patience and staked a hundred-franc note. At that moment the man sitting at the table in front of him rose, and the dwarf slipped swiftly into his seat. He won his hundred francs and made the same stake again. It was obvious that the little man did not damn gambling. It was a sin to which he appeared peculiarly inclined. The true inwardness of the perilous adventure began to dawn on me. He had come here to make the money wherewith he could further his gigantic combinations. All this mystery was part of his childish cunning. I hardly knew whether to box the little creature's ears, to box my own, or to laugh. I compromised with a smile on the last alternative, and baccarat being a dreary game to watch, I strolled off to the nearest ecarte table, and, to justify my presence in the room, backed one of the players.

Presently my attention was called to the baccarat table by a noise as of some dispute, and turning, I saw the gentleman in the dinner-jacket hurrying to what appeared to be the storm centre, the place where Anastasius was sitting. Suspecting some minor peril, I left the ecarte players, and joined the gentleman in the dinner-jacket. It seemed that the hand, which is played in rotation by those seated at each tableau or half-table, had come round for the first time to Anastasius, and objection had been taken to his playing it, on the score of his physical appearance. The dwarf was protesting vehemently. He had played baccarat in all the clubs of Europe, and had never received such treatment. It was infamous, it was insulting. The malcontents of the punt paid little heed to his remonstrances. They resented the entrusting of their fortunes to one whose chin barely rose above the level of the table. The banker lit a cigarette and sat back in his chair with a smile of mockery. His attitude brought up the superfluous flesh about his chin and the roll of fat at the back of his neck. With his moustache en croc, and his shoebrush hair, I have rarely beheld a more sensual-looking desperado.

"But gentlemen," said he, "I see no objection whatever to Monsieur playing the hand."

"Naturally," retorted a voice, "since it would be to your advantage."

The raven in the dinner-jacket commanded silence.

"Gentlemen, I decide that, according to the rules of the game, Monsieur is entitled to play the hand."

"Bravo!" exclaimed one or two of my friend's supporters.

"C'est idiot!" growled the malcontents.

"Messieurs, faites vos jeux!" cried the croupier.

The stakes were laid, the banker looked around, estimating the comparative values of the two tableaux. Anastasius had backed his hand with a pile of louis. To encourage him, and to conciliate the hostile punt, I threw down a hundred-franc note.

"Les jeux sont faits? Rien ne va plus."

The banker dealt, two cards to each tableau, two to himself. Anastasius, trembling with nervous excitement, stretched out a palsied little fist towards the cards. He drew them towards him, face downwards, peeped at them in the most approved manner, and in a husky voice called for an extra card.

The card dealt face upwards was a five. The banker turned up his own cards, a two and a four, making a point of six. Naturally he stood, Anastasius did nothing.

"Show your cards -- show your cards!" cried several voices.

He turned over the two cards originally dealt to him. They were a king and a nine, making the natural nine, the highest point, and he had actually asked for another card. It was the unforgivable sin. The five that had been dealt to him brought his point to four. There was a roar of indignation. Men with violent faces rose and cursed him, and shook their fists at him. Others clamoured that the coup was ineffective. They were not going to be at the mercy of an idiot who knew nothing of the game. The hand must be dealt over again.

"Jamais de la vie!" shouted the banker.

"Le coup est bon!" cried the raven in authority, and the croupier's spoon hovered over the tableau. But the horse-headed Englishman clutched the two louis he had staked. He was damned, and a great many other things, if he would lose his money that way. The raven in the dinner-jacket darted round, and bending over him, caught him by the wrist. Two or three others grabbed their stakes, and swore they would not pay. The banker rose and went to the rescue of his gains. There was screaming and shouting and struggling and riot indescribable. Those round about us went on cursing Anastasius, who sat quite still, with quivering lips, as helpless as a rabbit. The raven tore his way through the throng around the Englishman and came up to me excited and dishevelled.

"It is all your fault, Monsieur," he shrieked, "for introducing into the club a half-witted creature like that."

"Yes, it's your fault," cried a low-browed, ugly fellow looking like a butcher in uneasy circumstances who stood next to me. Suddenly the avalanche of indignation fell upon my head. Angry, ugly men crowded round me and began to curse me instead of the dwarf. Cries arose. The adventure began, indeed, to grow idiotically perilous. I had never been thrown out of doors in my life. I objected strongly to the idea. It might possibly hurt my body, and would certainly offend my dignity. I felt that I could not make my exit through the portals of life with the urbanity on which I had counted, if, as a preparatory step, I had been thrown out of a gambling-hell. There were only two things to be done. Either I must whip out my ridiculous revolver and do some free shooting, or I must make an appeal to the lower feelings of the assembly. I chose the latter alternative. With a sudden movement I slipped through the angry and gesticulating crowd, and leaped on a chair by one of the deserted ecarte tables. Then I raised a commanding arm, and, in my best election-meeting voice, I cried:

"Messieurs!"

The unexpectedness of the manoeuvre caused instant silence.

"As my friend and myself," I said, "are the cause of this unpleasant confusion, I shall be most happy to pay the banker the losses of the tableau."

And I drew out and brandished my pocket-book, in which, by a special grace of Providence, there happened to be a considerable sum of money.

Murmurs of approbation arose. Then the Englishman sang out:

"But what about the money we would have won, if that little fool had played the game properly?"

The remark was received with cheers.

"That amount, too," said I, "I shall be happy to disburse."

There was nothing more to be said, as everybody, banker and punt, were satisfied. The raven in the dinner-jacket came up and informed me that my proposal solved the difficulty. I besought him to make out the bill for my little entertainment as quickly as possible. Then I dismounted from my chair and beckoned to the dwarf, still sitting white and piteous, to join me. He obeyed like a frightened child who had been naughty. All his swagger and braggadocio were gone. His bosom heaved with suppressed sobs. He sat down on the chair I had vacated and buried his face on the ecarte table. We remained thus aloof from the crowd who were intent on the calculation at the baccarat table. At last the raven in the dinner-jacket arrived with a note of the amount. It was two thousand three hundred francs. I gave him the notes, and, taking Anastasius by the arm, led him to the door, where the waiter stood with our hats and coats. Before we could reach it, however, the banker, who had risen from his seat, crossed the room and addressed me.

"Monsieur," said he, with an air of high-bred courtesy, "I infinitely regret this unpleasant affair and I thank you for your perfect magnanimity."

I did not suggest that with equal magnanimity he might refund the forty-six pounds that had found its way from my pocket to his, but I bowed with stiff politeness, and made my exit with as much dignity as the attachment to my heels of the crestfallen Anastasius would permit.

Outside I constituted myself the guide, and took the first turning downhill, knowing that it would lead to the civilised centre of the town. The dwarf's roundabout route was characteristic of his tortuous mind. We walked along for some time without saying anything. I could not find it in my heart to reproach the little man for the expensiveness (nearly a hundred pounds) of his perilous adventure, and he seemed too dazed with shame and humiliation to speak. At last, when we reached, as I anticipated, the Square de la Republique, I patted him on the shoulder.

"Cheer up, my dear Professor," said I. "We both are acquainted with nobler things than the ins and outs of gaming-hells."

He reeled to a bench under the palm trees, and bursting into tears, gave vent to his misery in the most incoherent language ever uttered by man. I sat beside him and vainly attempted consolation.

"Ah, how mad I am! Ah, how contemptible! I dare not face my beautiful cats again. I dare not see the light of the sun. I have betrayed my trust. Accursed be the cards. I, who had my gigantic combination. It is all gone. Beautiful lady, forgive me. Generous-hearted friend, forgive me. I am the most miserable of God's creatures."

"It is an accident that might happen to any one," I said gently. "You were nervous. You looked at the cards, you mistook the nine for a ten, in which case you were right to call for another card."

"It is not that," he wailed. "It is the spoiling of my combination, on which I have wasted sleepless nights. A curse on my mad folly. Do you know who the banker was?"

"No," said I.

"He was Captain Vauvenarde, the husband of Madame Brandt."