Part 10

Frank was grateful to Lord Ottercove for the privilege of seeing him in all his multifarious attitudes from every angle and aspect: in his beautifully fitting tailcoats (there were several of them in the office and in every one of his several town and country houses); in his silk pyjamas; in the heroic act of jumping out of bed; sitting on the edge of it in pensive mood with his bare feet dangling meditatively; in dishabille; in dressing-gown and _en pantoufles_; or shaving in his vest and pants: in all attitudes and from all aspects Lord Ottercove, Frank could but remark, was unequivocally, indubitably great. It seemed as if Lord Ottercove in his unfailing thoughtfulness provided him with these opportunities to study him at all hours and in all attitudes. If Frank had not, as yet, had the opportunity of studying his lordship _au naturel_, it was because such study, both for descriptive purposes in a work of fiction and as a practical opportunity, was, he willingly recognised, in advance of current customs and usages.

“Well, how are you?” said Lord Ottercove. “How are your sales?”

In the first week of January, and having run through some twenty issues of one of Ottercove’s newspapers, _Pale Primroses_ by Frank Septimus Dickin appeared, in a pale jacket liberally sprinkled with flowers of the title, on the bookstalls; yet enjoyed but a melancholy sale which, with rumours of a new European imbroglio, dropped like the jaw of a man astonished. “Completely and utterly stopped,” said Frank.

“Look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “you should get married.”

“Gladly. But who will marry me with my sales stopped? My publisher’s wife’s great aunt died the other day, and he said to me over the telephone: ‘I think it only right to close down the office for a week to commemorate our respect for the dead woman.’”

Lord Ottercove thought deeply, and said:

“You should get married.”

“To whom?”

“I’ll introduce you. A peach of a girl. Beautiful. A wonderful face. I can look at it for hours at a stretch without getting bored. The trouble with her is that she’s got ... too much money.”

“But will she marry me?”

“She would if I gave you ... gave you _The Evening Ensign_.”

There was a pause. “It’s a pity,” said Frank, “that I don’t know her.”

“I will introduce you.”

“When?”

“Come and dine with me to-morrow night at my house.”

XVIII.

THE COTTAGE

Not unnaturally, cottagers are apt to dream of palaces, while it is well known that princes eat their hearts out for being denied the joy of dwelling in a cottage. “The Cottage,” situated in a shrubby garden high up in the Finchley-road, was Lord Ottercove’s unofficial home, and whither he retired whenever he felt like swinging a loose leg. Owning a great house in the West End of London, and several castles and country houses, he preferred to dwell in the seclusion of “The Cottage” in the Finchley-road. The ground floor had but two rooms: a dining and a sitting room, and here at the after-theatre hour he was that night dispensing supper to a bevy of chorus girls escorted by a number of young lords.

Lord Ottercove was a success. Whatever he touched, flowered: whatever he left, withered--and died of its own rottenness. He stood in the doorway now, in his exquisite tailcoat, one hand thrust in his trouser-pocket, indolently tapping his heel and looking on with that intelligent bright look which seemed to say: “I have long since reached my goal in life without much effort: what could I possibly do next?”

“Come in, Freddie, come in, now don’t be shy!” he cried to a young actor hesitating on the threshold. “My love, my sweetheart, my honeysuckle, how are you?”--to a bevy of beauties, as they sidled in, twitching their nude shoulders.

“Freezing, darling Rex,” they twittered.

“Rita,” to a leading lady, “do you love me?”

“You are Christ to me!”

And then, panting slightly (by the end of the night Frank loved her panting, and by the end of the month he hated it), in sauntered a, Frank perceived, very strikingly good-looking girl in red, and by his host’s eager look and introduction: “This is Mr. Dickin. Miss Cynthia Wellington,” Frank understood that she indeed must be his proffered prize.

If so, she didn’t seem to appreciate her mission. She was certainly beautiful and, as Ottercove had said, her face could be beheld for hours at a stretch, with cumulative pleasure. She had been seated at Frank’s side and she was mildly interested in what he could contrive to tell her. But supper over, and the host having taken her aside for a few moments, she came back another woman, and Frank found he had no difficulty now in keeping her at his side. The other guests, numbering a princess of the blood, a starving Russian diplomat, exquisitely arrayed, and the cream of the West End Theatreland, sustained a strenuously “Bohemian” conversation of unmeaning levity till it was late enough for all to go without pronouncing the party a failure. Lord Ottercove’s attitude--Frank read the question in his look--was:

“Amusing dogs--or are they not amusing? Have you been used to something more amusing?”

The dogs were not amusing.

He kept Frank and Cynthia back till all the other guests had gone, and then told the butler to wake up his chauffeur, and despatched them home in the winged chariot.

Frank had not been long in the car with her when he discovered that Cynthia was physically desirable. As the chariot, taking a good, long run down the Finchley-road, suddenly took wing and Cynthia panted, he grasped her hand as if to reassure her, and having grasped her hand (good old Ottercove to provide him with this opportunity) he did not let go again. When Cynthia panted again, it was a different kind of panting.

The view that all women are alike seemed to Frank, as a piece of thinking, to err on the inadequate side. They were indeed all different. But in one particular all women were alike, and that was in their uniform desire to be different; and in their cheap fear of seeming cheap. Seized by the idea of making her his wife and eager to anticipate the marriage ceremony, he was prepared to hear her say that no doubt he thought her just like any other woman and replied that, on the contrary, she seemed to him peculiarly, uniquely different from them all; after which assurance she behaved like all the other women, and then said:

“Now, I wonder what you’ll think of me after that.”

He had not thought anything of her to begin with and did not think any the worse of her now.

“Now, darling,” he said, “we simply must get married.”

The winged chariot and his thoughts, descending from the air at a slope, touched ground at the same time. The car ran forward. His thoughts ran on. “The day after to-morrow.”

“I suppose we might,” Cynthia said quietly. “Are you rich enough?”

The darling! She was really sweet! Didn’t want to hurt his feelings, evidently, and let him think he was the breadwinner. Evidently a girl of sensibility. Welcome. Very welcome. Thinks, no doubt, he may resent her money, and keeps quiet about it. Sensible girl. Good girl. Beautiful girl. Nice to look at. Voluptuous. In every way adequate. Are you rich enough, indeed! He had ten pounds in his breast-pocket; and beyond that he may yet have something in his trouser-pocket. He didn’t know how much. But probably a shilling piece. And perhaps more.

“You needn’t chaff about it. I’ve more than you think, darling. Ottercove has promised me, in case of marriage with you, _The Evening Ensign_ as a wedding present.”

At that she sat up. “Very nice.”

Before the car pulled up at her door, she said:

“Come and have tea with me to-morrow.”

“I will have tea with you to-morrow--Sunday,--and marry you on Monday.”

He gave Lord Ottercove’s flying chauffeur ten pounds and undressing for bed emptied his trouser-pocket of the shilling.

XIX.

Out of the shilling he purchased next day a ticket on the metropolitan railway and rang at the bell of Cynthia’s door; in Half-Moon-street. When the door yielded under his vehement onslaught he strode like a fighting-cock past the door porter, for he was burning with love. But the door porter, an elderly man, called him back and said:

“Kindly wipe your feet, sir, on that mat outside: this is an expensive carpet and belongs to the first floor people.”

“But isn’t Miss Wellington on the first floor?”

“No, sir, she lives in the attic.”

He crawled upstairs, up innumerable flights of stairs, and the higher he climbed the lower his spirits descended. Strange, he reflected, that a girl whose trouble Ottercove had said was too much money should live in an attic. But there it was! Millionaires had fancies and did for pleasure what other folks were paid to do. Wasn’t the late Emperor of All the Russia’s favourite recreation chopping wood in the palace yard?

A maid responded to his summons and he stepped into a neatly-appointed apartment. He had scarcely had time to smile at Cynthia, when the maid announced:

“Mr. Mortimer Pilling.”

And the delicate room held the strong, wiry man with the crisp, curly black hair. “’Pon my word! Dickin, of all people! Had no idea you knew him, Cynthia. You never let on.”

“How could I? I only know him since last night.”

“Oh, really?” Pilling looked enquiringly at Frank.

“It seems as if I had known you all my life and even earlier in a pre-terrestrial existence. But, in point of fact, we only met last night. Where was it? Ah, yes, at Ottercove’s, wasn’t it?” said Frank.

“A man,” said Pilling, “I always wished to meet. A most delightful man, by all accounts, and one who could be useful to me in a thousand ways and particularly in a little enterprise I have in mind.”

“You must meet him, Mortimer,” said Cynthia, while the bell rang at the front door.

There was a sigh of exhaustion in the hall, and when Cynthia came back she was followed by a new guest.

“Mr. Mortimer Pilling. Lord Ottercove.”

Lord Ottercove gave Pilling one searching, long look with his penetrating grey eye and shook hands. Mortimer Pilling looked as though his day had arrived. But Lord Ottercove turned to Frank: “Well, how did you enjoy yourself last night?”

“By all accounts,” said Pilling, following Lord Ottercove round the room, “he enjoyed himself very much. Ha! ha! ha!”

“It was dull,” said Ottercove to Frank and not looking at Pilling.

“You need Mrs. Kerr,” said Pilling, looking from Frank to Ottercove, “to brighten up a party. You remember, Dickin, our tea-party together last month?”

“Yes,” said Frank, “I remember.”

Lord Ottercove sat down heavily in a big chair and never once looked up at Pilling. Never did Frank Dickin see him so impressive. The Grand Duke of Fleet Street had surreptitiously climbed up eight flights of steps (he who said he suffered from his heart) and now sat still in a great armchair and wouldn’t look at Pilling. Never, Frank reflected, is a great man more a great man than in a low-ceilinged attic, at the side of a Pilling. For, but for the Pillings, no one might know that Lord Ottercove was a great man.

“How are de Jones and Eva?” Frank enquired.

“Very well,” said Ottercove.

“I am very fond of Eva,” put in Pilling.

“Nearly done with Paris and going on to Rome. I am off myself to join them at Nice at the end of the month. Will you come with me?”

“Well,” said Frank, looking anxiously at Cynthia, who returned a look which he interpreted as a sign not to reveal to Ottercove the secret of their forthcoming wedding.

“Have you seen the papers?” Lord Ottercove asked, confining his enquiry to Frank and Cynthia, while Pilling quickly said: “About the General Election?”

“How old Joe’s already shouting,” Ottercove continued, oblivious of Pilling’s question, “about the bursting granaries that would be ours if we back the Liberals to put an end to international bickerings and jealousies and push on with the Lord de Jones scheme. And his Hackney speech! Lord Ottercove assumed the pose of a public speaker. ‘And we shall ask, by what right, whether human or divine, some men’s tummies digest more bread and butter in one hour of their sleep than you, O Toiling Masses, can earn by the sweat of your brow in a week?’

“‘’Ear, ‘ear! Good old Joe!’

“But he silences them with a gesture; his hand again shoots out: ‘_And we shall ask_’--Grand fellow!”

“A great orator,” exclaimed Pilling.

Lord Ottercove’s eyes dimmed. “Joe,” he said, “is a giant.”

“He is,” said Pilling, looking from Lord Ottercove to Frank.

Lord Ottercove did not look at him. “And the news that de Jones has been received with acclamation by the Paris mob. Good sign that. Cheaper bread for the common people! And old Joe knows how to give it the right ring. Grand fellow! We will beat the Conservatives at the poll this time, you’ll see. It’ll do them good to be beaten.”

“Why?”

“Conservatism is a subversive habit to conserve what was won by the Liberals of the past. If Conservatism is to live to-morrow, let Liberals have their way to-day.” He rose and, turning to Frank, said:

“Come and see me to-morrow at five.”

Frank looked significantly at Cynthia. “Can’t at five:--six.”

Pilling left soon after Lord Ottercove.

Frank and Cynthia left a considerable time after Pilling.

XX.

When Frank called on Lord Ottercove at six o’clock on Monday, Lord Ottercove was standing at a window in his office, gazing pensively at the dissolving outlines of St. Paul’s gradually devoured by the dusk. Lord Ottercove’s pose reminded Frank of Napoleon looking at burning Moscow, and of Kerenski, in imitation of Napoleon, gazing from a window in the Winter Palace at the burning theatre “Bouffe”, and Frank felt that the situation called for a fitting and pregnant remark on the man of action by the man of letters: “A man of letters puts into letters what he cannot put into action.” But Lord Ottercove, who, having soared above mean human endeavour and now only pondered upon it, considered himself a man of meditation, and did not look pleased.

“I was thinking,” he said, “of youth and the glory of struggle. How I envy you young men. The future belongs to you.”

“Why envy us, since the present belongs to you? The future is but a deferred present.”

“All the good the present is to us is that it helps us to forget that we have no future.”

“Mankind has not yet learnt,” said Frank, “to live in and for each moment. That is the meaning of life. And that is why I have just gone and got married: as a most effective means of living in the present.”

“Got married?” said Lord Ottercove, knitting his brows. “To whom?”

“To Cynthia Wellington!”

Lord Ottercove walked up and down several times. “Incredible,” he said. “It amazes me. Why, she’ll be the ruin of you. An extravagant girl like that, and you have no money.”

“But she has, hasn’t she?”

“Too much! Too damned much, one might think by the way she goes about it. That’s the trouble with her. Tends to give the impression of having what she hasn’t got.”

“But you said so.”

“Ironically. You should study the inflection when I speak; it is all-important. As important as punctuation. Ever heard of King Charles?”

“Yes.”

“‘_King Charles walked and talked_ _Half an hour after his head was cut off_.’

That doesn’t seem to make sense.”

“No. How could a man walk and talk half an hour after his head was cut off?”

“Precisely. Even King Charles couldn’t do it. But put a full stop after ‘talked’ and it makes perfect sense. You may have heard of treaties being wrecked through a comma out of place. And what punctuation is for the written speech, intonation is for the spoken language. You should have listened for it.”

“I have heard of treaties wrecked by faulty punctuation,” Frank said bitterly; “but this is my first experience of two human lives ruined by an ambiguous intonation.”

“Obviously you married under a misapprehension. But she! I am surprised she didn’t know any better. I am rather concerned about the matter. I knew her mother well. What was she thinking? Marrying a man like you without a farthing to bless himself with!”

“I told her you would give me _The Evening Ensign_ as a wedding present.”

Lord Ottercove frowned.

“You said so.”

“I cannot,” said Lord Ottercove, “give you _The Evening Ensign_ as a wedding present. It is my principal evening paper. It has the best tone of all the evening papers; it is read by the _élite_, the cream of the nation. But look here, I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you.”

Frank looked up at him hopefully.

“I’ll take an article from you. I’ll pay you”--he blew hard while considering the sum--“£20 for it. You know, when I like a fellow there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for him! I am like that--can’t help myself. My staff consider me wildly extravagant.”

“Is there any valid objection to paying me more?”

“Well, look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “you must make a name for yourself, and I will pay you more.”

“All very well, but how? How?”

“Well, we must bring your personality before the public. I am sure that if your personality is brought before the public the public will begin to get curious about your personality and begin to want to buy your books.”

Frank meditated for a minute. “There is nothing in my life of any interest to anybody, except perhaps that I was born at the time my father was First Secretary at our Embassy in St. Petersburg and--”

“Well, that’s interesting enough. Couldn’t you develop the situation?”

“How? Perhaps suggest that the Tsar eloped with my mother?”

“Of course. That would immediately reflect on your paternity and bring into question your legitimacy.”

“A marked resemblance to the late Emperor--what?”

“Certainly. It will make them talk.” He took up the receiver. “Send up Miss Sherwood to me, will you. I want her to write up a story about Mr. Dickin, who is in my office.”

Frank learnt that “stories” was the journalistic term for articles; whereas real stories--he suggested writing a short story for Lord Ottercove for £100--were called “articles.”

“All right,” said Lord Ottercove. “Write it to-night and let me have your article by six o’clock to-morrow morning. I will read it in bed before breakfast.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms to the ceiling. “Oh God, I’m bored to hell,” he said, and yawned voluptuously.

“Now, Miss Sherwood, you know Mr. Dickin, the famous novelist. Don’t say you haven’t read his books. That would sound uneducated. Now I want you to write a story about him that would reach the wider public which lives in ignorance of him only because they haven’t heard of him. I am convinced that he has a great future before him, a future of fame and felicity. He has already taken the first step towards it: he has gone and got married to-day. But I feel that the public wants to know personal details about him. There is, in the first place, his birth, under mysterious circumstances, in Russia. His mother was an intimate of the Imperial family. It is delicate ground we are treading upon here, but I know you are a clever woman and I have every confidence in your address and discretion. Your treatment of my niece’s divorce case confirms my opinion. You could begin by giving a pen-portrait of the late Tsar by projecting, so to speak, onto the screen of your story salient points of the amorous life of the late Emperor. Go to the British Museum and see if you find something, or look through the works of William Le Queux. I remember reading something about spies in Russia or somewhere--sure to be something about Rasputin or somebody. Well, here is Dickin’s mother....” Lord Ottercove’s tone grew inaudible; he took her across to the blue sofa. His robust lips moved silently. “You understand ...” Dickin heard, “ ... more than the lad cares to admit....”

“It’s a fine story,” nodded Miss Sherwood.

Lord Ottercove looked radiant. “Creating illusions,” he murmured, “in a world of appearances. The essential function of the journalist. Mrs. Hannibal,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “have that hung up as my motto all over the building.”

Mrs. Hannibal, making a shorthand note of it, retired to execute his instructions.

“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, stretching his hands to heaven, but restraining a yawn.

Miss Sherwood and Frank understood that the _séance_ was at an end.

After the door had closed on them, Lord Ottercove vented his yawn, looked at his watch, and jumped up.

XXI.

“On the banks of the river Neva stands the city of St. Petersburg, in the Empire of Russia.”

Thus, illustrated by a picture of the Fortress of Peter and Paul, _The Sunday Runner_ started off Miss Sherwood’s article. Frank read it out aloud in bed to his wife as they woke up on Sunday in her (now their) attic flat in Half-Moon-street. “It is not perhaps generally known that Mr. Frank Septimus Dickin, the novelist, was born in Petrograd--or as he prefers to call it, St. Petersburg--at the time his father was Naval Attaché to our Embassy. This austerely beautiful city has changed its name twice since its inception by Peter the Great, who christened it in the Swedish idiom after himself. The late war changed the idiom, while maintaining the name, and the revolution changed the name to that of Lenin, while preserving the Russian idiom. In truth, a romantic city. (A corner picture showed the Winter Palace and the Quay.) Here Peter once walked. Here the last tragic emperor dwelt in fear and misgiving, while Lenin stormed the citadel by word of mouth and word of print--the capital which was to bear his name! Mr. Dickin, who loves this granite city of private palaces, built by Peter and sung by the great poet Pushkin and haunted by the spirit of Rasputin, claims to be connected with it by ties of blood of the Romanov strain. It is a romantic story which, perhaps, some day he will give us in full; the love of the last and most tragic of Romanovs for the novelist’s beautiful mother. There are things in life that are hurt by indelicate scrutiny, things which shrink before the too-eager curiosity of the sensational mind, when the biographer must withdraw or stand aside and linger in reverence.”

Ensconced in a single bed with his wife, Frank felt more like an adjunct than a husband, and the reading of the article he thought might rehabilitate his dwindling prestige with Cynthia. If he had no money, he had at least, it seemed, imperial blood. When, on discovering his financial infecundity, she had said: “What are we to do?” he had replied: “Don’t you bother. Live on as you’ve been doing and take no notice of me.” Hence the single bed. She was just to go on sleeping in it as before and take no notice of his presence in it.

Their married life was enriched by a stream of press-cuttings which trickled in with every post. Miss Sherwood’s article was reprinted by some of the provincial newspapers, and Frank’s Press-Cutting Agency had no difficulty in supplying him with paragraphs of a biographical interest.

“_Imperial Claim_,” was the heading in an American journal. “_We understand that among the claimants to the dubious throne of Russia is a young English novelist, Mr. Dickin, who claims the paternity of the Czar and a connection with the capital way back to Peter the Great._”

Another cutting, headed, “_Descendant of the Tsars_,” read:

“_Mr. Dickin’s family has sprung from a branch of Peter the Great, and Mr. Dickin himself, as is perhaps not generally known, is the son of the Emperor Nicholas II by a morganatic marriage--the last of the Romanovs, whose reign has been brought to destruction by the Rasputin régime and consummated by Lenin._”

A new cutting read:

“_Claiming to be the son of Rasputin, Mr. Dickin’s connection with the Russian Court goes back, through his mother, to Peter the Great and indeed earlier, to the first Romanov, in whose time a relative of Mrs. Dickin was Mayor of Moscow. Mr. Dickin thus is well immersed in Russian atmosphere. He is also the author of ‘Pale Primroses’_ (Sender: 7s. 6d.)”

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