Part 11

As time went on, the press-notices became more involved and informative. “_Mr. Dickin’s mother_,” read a notice, “_which may not be generally known, was a governess at the Imperial Russian Court who became the Czar’s mistress and later that of Lenin, and his fame reposes on these two tragic pillars of Czardom and Communism_.”

* * * * *

A further cutting, from a Liverpool paper, read:

“_Illegitimate Son of Rasputin and Lenin. Mr. Dickin’s mother, whose son’s novel, ‘Pale Primroses’_ (Sender: 7s. 6d.) _we reviewed in this column last week, was among the victims at the seizure of the Winter Palace, where she had been housed by her friend Kerensky during his all too abortive régime, after being for years the governess of the heir to the throne and an intimate friend of the Emperor--a mere puppet, as will be recalled, in the hands of the sinister Rasputin; and it was her fate, with the surrender of the Woman’s Battalion which defended the Palace, to fall into the unregenerate hands of Lenin. Mr. Dickin’s parentage, on his own admission, like that of many a great poet born in time of stress, may be said to be in jeopardy and, we feel, will lead many a scholar of the future into that fascinating country and furnish him with matter for research._”

A Dundee paper reprinted this identically, up to the words “_Woman’s Battalion_,” after which it had added: “_of which she was the leader_.”

* * * * *

“Well,” said Frank. “We seem to have had a good run for our money!”

“If it helps to sell the book,” said Cynthia.

“Bound to do! And now that we are comfortably settled in our own abode, don’t you think, darling, that we ought to give a party?”

“Whom could we ask?”

“I mean return hospitality to Ottercove before he goes abroad.”

“But he is so difficult about food.”

“I know. Always gets poisoned. It’s uncanny the way some people have a gift for getting poisoned in the most innocuous circumstances. I can’t conceive of getting poisoned short of going to an apothecary’s and asking for a bottle of poison. But Ottercove can’t swallow an egg without dropping his napkin on the floor and groaning: ‘Poisoned!’”

“But what does he eat?”

“We might write to his butler and find out.”

“Well, if you like write to the butler,” she said warily.

“I don’t remember his name.”

“What does that matter?”

“It doesn’t, of course.” He sat down to Cynthia’s (now his) writing-table and began to write to the butler, reading aloud to his wife as he did so, feeling that, in matrimony, a man cedes one half of his thoughts to his mate:

“‘My Dear Friend--’”

“You don’t address a butler as My Dear Friend. Frank! Really!”

“It does rather sound like addressing a Salvation Army meeting.”

“You simply write: to Mr. So-and-So.”

“Every day of my life with you, Cynthia, I am learning something!”

And he wrote: “_To Mr.----, Butler to Lord Ottercove: Conceiving the idea of entertaining your lord at dinner, I appeal to you in all sincerity and friendship to supply me with a list of his lordship’s favourite dishes._”

“Leave out ‘appeal in all sincerity and friendship.’”

“All right. ‘Request in all earnestness.’”

“No, leave that out, too.”

Her intellect was not, Frank perceived, penetrating. She always meant what she said and thought that others did so too.

“Then we might ask ... whom?”

“Whom?”

“The Foreign Secretary. The difficulty is how begin my letter to him.--‘Signor, I would esteem it a privilege--’”

“Frank! Really! Don’t you know that only foreigners, I mean Italians, are addressed ‘Signor?’”

“I thought the Foreign Secretary was a foreigner.”

“Frank! Really! Don’t you know any better?”

“But why then is he called the _Foreign_ Secretary?”

“Because he has to deal with foreigners--with other foreign secretaries!”

“Ah--!--that’s why!... But are they _too_ called foreign because they deal with foreigners?”

“Of course.”

“A world, I see, populated by foreigners.”

“Foreign to us. We foreign to them.”

“Every day of my life with you I learn something!”

A reply came next day from the butler of Lord Ottercove.

“_Sir_,” he wrote, “_My lord is fond of cold chicken, ham, plaice, salmon, a mutton chop (well done) with mashed potatoes, curry and rice, roast beef (hot), and strawberries. His lordship’s favourite drink is whisky.--Your obedient servant, T. Wilkins._

“_P.S.--Taking the liberty to show your kind letter to his lordship, my lord desires me to say that he would prefer a hard boiled egg._”

* * * * *

At half past seven Lord Ottercove’s winged chariot came to a halt, grandly yet sensitively, at their door in Half-Moon-street and, not bothering to wipe his feet, Lord Ottercove climbed up the expensive carpet and the remaining seven flights to their comfortable attic flat, panting dreadfully.

Frank took him at once into the dining room. “Since there is no cook on the premises, Cynthia is attending to the egg. And a great big fine egg it is too; you will see for yourself.”

“Fine,” said Lord Ottercove.

“Cynthia, bring forth the golden egg!”

Cynthia came in, with a plate in her hands.

“There,” cried Frank, “there you have it. There it is! A real egg....”

“Great ... grand ...” said Lord Ottercove.

“Sit down. There’s no one else to wait for. We invited the Foreign Secretary. But he couldn’t come. Either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Anyway, didn’t. Tuck in, Lord Ottercove.”

“Great ...” said Lord Ottercove, eating. “Grand....”

“And a drop of port,” said Frank, “to gulp it down with.”

“Grand fellow....”

“The meal’s finished!” peremptorily.

“Yes, I must be off. I am speaking at the House of Lords to-night.” The guest rose. “Grand fellow!” to Frank. “Well, darling,” to Cynthia, “happy? eh?”

“Quite, Rex,” she said, doubtfully. And paused, as if to say, in the confidential way a woman has with a man worth confiding in: “Rex, dear, what about _The Evening Ensign_?” But Lord Ottercove, who was endowed with extraordinary powers of divination into human motive, accelerated his steps downstairs. His conscience, owing to the hospitality partaken of, or, perhaps, because of its lamentable inadequacy and the implications therefrom arising, pricked him on the third step down, and he turned his head to say to Frank:

“Look here, I’ll take another article from you.”

But Frank’s gestures, to the unspeakable annoyance of his wife, had now become quite Eastern in their obsequiousness. “Good, my lord,” he bowed. “Kind, my lord.”

Cynthia stood on the doorstep, while Frank went out into the road and stroked the car. The chauffeur and Gilbert had both jumped out and were assisting their master into its soft and spacious confines. Frank stood at the door of the winged chariot, smug and nimble with its wings tucked under its shining sides, and commented aloud:

“Tuck in his lordship’s feet. Look after him well, Gilbert.”

“Yessir.”

Lord Ottercove was pleased. The source of human pleasure is a hidden well: for one reason or another Lord Ottercove looked pleased. “Great!... Grand!...” he kept muttering.

“Evenberry, faithful steward,” Frank was addressing the chauffeur, “drive his lordship carefully. Avoid sharp corners. Keep well within the speed limit.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now then, Gilbert, I rely on you.”

“Yessir.”

“Good master you have. Take good care of him.”

“Yessir.”

“Good man, Gilbert,” said Lord Ottercove benignantly, as to a horse. “Good man. Good servant.”

“Gilbert, enter into the joy of your lord....”

Cynthia stood, shivering a little, on the doorstep.

As the car moved off, Lord Ottercove, as always, hatless, waved an indulgent hand. “Good-bye, sweetie!”

“Good-bye, Rex.”

The car, owing to the lack of space, did not take wing but prosaically turned the corner.

“If your hospitality is scant,” said Frank, “nothing like enlarging on your guest’s preserves.” He ran into the house, kicking the cat on the way, and wiping his shoes on the mat, to spare the first-floor people’s carpet, climbed upstairs.

* * * * *

“A joke’s a joke,” said his lordship to himself, since there was no one else to say it to, “but a fellow can’t make a decent speech on an empty stomach.” He took up the telephone tube and said to the chauffeur:

“Call in at the Kiss-Lick Club.”

XXII.

“Well, how are your sales?” cried Lord Ottercove as Frank crossed the threshold--a dangerous step, perhaps symbolical--into his office.

“Low--still low. Seven copies a day.”

“Low average,” agreed the newspaper baron.

“I know why it doesn’t sell.”

“Why?”

“It’s a poor novel. That’s why. Poor stuff.”

“Dam’ poor stuff,” agreed Lord Ottercove. “That’s why I am interested in it.”

The author looked up at him in surprise.

“Any fool can sell a good novel. But it takes genius to sell a poor book. That’s why I like pushing it.”

“That is why I come to see you, hoping you may succeed in pushing it.”

“When I like a fellow,” the baron said in loud, robust tones, his light-grey eyes glinting jovially, “there is nothing that I wouldn’t do for him! You saw the boy who was in my office when you came in? You know who he is?”

“Who?”

“The business-manager of all my newspapers.”

“That boy?”

“That boy. He’s seventeen. You heard our business conversation?”

“It was like machine-gun fire.”

“That’s how I do my business!” said Lord Ottercove. “That boy, the business-manager of all my newspapers, was a page, what they call a bell boy out there, at the Metropole in San Francisco four months ago. He took my luggage up, switched on the light, drew the curtains, unstrapped my suitcase, took out the slippers. I had forgotten Gilbert on the road, and this solicitude and efficiency in the bell boy touched me to the heart. ‘Good boy,’ I said. ‘Good heart. Kind soul.’

“‘I have a reason for it, sir,’ he said.

“‘What reason?’

“‘I want a job from you.’

“‘Well, look here,’ I said, ‘you come to England one of these days, into my office, and I will give you a job.’

“He came a month after, worked his passage, you know, and found his way into my office. ‘I’ve come for that job, sir.’

“‘Well, look here,’ I said, ‘I want a business-manager who can manage all the business of all my newspapers. Can you manage it? If you can’t manage it I will make you a lift boy.’

“‘I’ll manage it,’ he said. And, by George, he does! You’ve heard our conversation?”

“Like rapid fire.”

“That’s how I do my business!”

“You don’t let them climb up?”

“No. I put a good boy up. And if he isn’t any good I pull him down.”

“I’d like to get as much out of you as that bell boy.”

“And why not? I am a man of money, and I am bored to hell, and your rotten book amuses me.”

“Quite. But you’ve a personality so charming and magnetic and you like to talk about yourself and you do it so engagingly that as a rule one forgets about one’s ulterior motives and becomes disinterested!”

“Well, look here,” said Lord Ottercove, “we must do something about that book of yours. We’ll have to advertise it. As a rotten book. The rottenest book of the century. What do you say to that?”

“Might take on.”

“Sure to do!”

The success of this strategem, however, proved social rather than financial. A few nights later, Lord Ottercove, after talking to Frank of himself till midnight, suddenly rose and said: “I am taking you to-night to a ball.”

“Are you really! Had I better ring up Cynthia and ask her to come along too?”

“Oh, no! You’ll be bored to death with her. She’s all right for love and that sort of thing. But never take her out with you. She used to bore me stiff before she married you. Now let us go.”

As the chariot was turning into a side lane, the baron suddenly leaned over to his companion. “I must tell you before the chariot comes to a stop, for it may interest you as a novelist, that where I am taking you now is Society. Not quite the real society, but the lighter Mayfair Michael Arlen sort, somewhat polluted with actors and such. Bohemian and the like, and chorus girls. I am doing this to help you with atmosphere and local colour--invaluable for you, as a recorder of contemporary customs, to get first-hand and red hot.”

“You are too kind.”

They had scarcely had their coats removed from them when the hostess appeared at the door and quickly whispered something to Lord Ottercove who, acting on the hint, said to Frank in a hushed undertone: “Whiz like mad across the hall!”

Frank did as he was bid, and, rejoining him in the drawing-room, “You see,” Lord Ottercove explained, “we tried to get you safely past Lady Kennan and Mrs. Ashton who, having heard of your being acclaimed the author of the rottenest novel of the century, had come out into the hall to snap you up on your arrival. It’s the sort of rare distinction that they are all out to secure for their _salons_. There are three great literary hostesses in London: Lady Kennan, Mrs. Ashton, and Lady Isabel Croft, where you are to-night. The three hostesses tend to frequent one another’s parties and they stand out in the hall to snatch away a literary novelty before the hostess has had time to warn and welcome him, and your being acclaimed the rottenest author of our time was something quite unusual; they are all mad to have you. Now go and talk to them.”

Lord Ottercove was borne away by a couple of hearty men, while Lady Isabel, a tall, excited woman, came up to Frank and welcomed him effusively. “I’ve put the two there off the scent, said you hadn’t arrived yet, so they are waiting in the hall. I am so glad you’ve come. Rex rang me up this afternoon. ‘Shall I bring you a literary prodigy, a man who’s written the rottenest book of our time and century?’ ‘Actually _the_ rottenest? Oh, do, Rex darling, do!’ I said, ‘and see that he isn’t kidnapped at the door.’ But you’ve escaped their claws beautifully. That was a gallant dash across the hall. Now come and have something to eat; you deserve it.” And she pressed champagne and caviare sandwiches upon him, and then led him into another room full of over-powdered, over-painted, over-talkative women here and there dotted by a white-black figure of a man, and she made him sit beside her on the floor very uncomfortably so that he was afraid that his shirt front having blown out, would next blow open and the studs fly out on to the parquet. And she introduced him to an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer: “Johnny, this is Mr. Dickin, who wrote the rottenest novel of our time.”

The ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer beamed with delight and shaking Frank, who had jumped up from the floor, heartily by the hand, said: “Have you written the rottenest book of our time? Excellent! Haw! haw! haw!”

“Come,” said the hostess, “I’ll introduce you to my daughters. I have two lovely daughters. They’ve heard all about you and are thrilled at the idea of meeting you. Pamela, this is Mr. Dickin.”

Pamela was blonde and serious and interested in literature. “Now are you _the_ rottenest novelist?” she asked. “Because this afternoon I met a man who said that he was even more rotten than you.”

“I cannot believe it,” said Frank.

“Now what do you want to do?” asked the hostess. “Do you want to eat or drink or smoke or dance or--?”

“Dance.”

“Pamela, take him upstairs and dance with him.”

Pamela took him upstairs into the music-room and on the way thither introduced him to people sitting out on the steps.

“This is Eleonor de Jones.”

“Oh, but we know him!” Eleonor exclaimed.

“Mr. Dickin. Mr. Raymond Mosquito.”

“Have you written the rottenest novel?” Eleonor asked.

“I must have done.”

“How splendid!” And she wrung from him before she let him go the promise to attend her baby’s christening.

“Raymond’s been adopted, then?” he asked Pamela while they danced upstairs.

“Yes. They will be married very soon now. Have you seen the baby?”

“A boy?”

“A boy. The image of Raymond. Isn’t he beautiful?”

“He has Eva’s eyes. His sister’s,” Frank added as Pamela did not seem to know who he was speaking of. While he danced on with Pamela, who was blonde, Maisy, her younger sister, even more blonde, talked to him all the time, while dancing with another. “Who are you?” she kept asking him, and he would not tell.

As he was going, she held him back by the hand. “Don’t go,” she said. “Oh, don’t go. I’ve found out who you are,” she looked into his eyes long and intently. “It couldn’t be better!”

XXIII.

THE PRETENDER

In matrimony, Frank and Cynthia both proved themselves to be inveterate individualists; they would be untrue to each other several times every day, so that when, exhausted and full of champagne, they returned to their flat in the morning, they could but stare and feebly giggle at each other. Thus far their partnership was a success.

Frank, whose mind began to run on the rails of publicity, which he discovered to be an unparallelled art, sometimes, when her condition made it possible, discoursed on it before his wife. “There are,” he would say, striding about in his dressing-gown out of which he rarely emerged before dusk, “no end of ways of advertising oneself.”

“For example?” she questioned.

“For example, thanking prominent people extravagantly in the press for the least little thing they may have done for you. It’s a graceful and lucrative self-advertisement. If, for example, the Duke of Bamboo should happen to nod to you on a dark day, having mistaken you for someone else, write to _The Times_ that you have been unspeakably touched by the kind and thoughtful attitude of his Royal Highness to yourself and your works. Next day other newspapers, with the befuddled inaccuracy of the daily press, will comment on the incident under some such head lines: ‘Novelist Discovered and Helped by the Duke of Bamboo. His Royal Highness as Reader and Critic.’ Furthermore, the Duke, seeing it, might feel really flattered and demand to see the actual book, and, old and of infirm memory, might think that it’s some other book that he has seen before and--who knows?--may create a sensation by what must be, for Royalty, an unprecedented reference to a printed volume. If he but sneezes over it, all other British subjects will follow suit. And you are made.”

But his sales, despite all his philosophy, fell below his least sanguine expectations. He complained bitterly to Lord Ottercove, who indulged in some detached speculation. “You must shed,” he said, “your old personality, and assume a new individuality. I am convinced that if the public hears you have shed your old personality they will get curious about your new individuality and will begin to want to read your books.”

“I think,” said Frank, “that if I shed my clothes with my personality, they would be more curious still.”

“You would make a real impression on the public.”

“You seriously mean it?”

“They would see you were serious. The public doesn’t like to be trifled with. As a serious artist you must be prepared to suffer for your art.”

“Have I not suffered enough!”

“I will get some one to interview you on your attitude.”

“What attitude?”

“Towards nudeness. Mrs. Prologue would be the right woman for you, I daresay.” He looked at Dickin as if measuring his stature, and took up the receiver. “Send Mrs. Prologue up to me.”

“But she won’t expect me to--” Frank blushed. “She won’t I hope--”

“No, no, of course not. What the hell do you think my office is? A house of convenience? It is enough if she reports it.”

“But how will she know?”

“Well, you’ve got to tackle her yourself.”

“Mrs. Prologue, m’lord,” announced the page.

“Show her in.--This, Mrs. Prologue, is Mr. Dickin, the novelist. No, not Dickens. He is ... how shall I say?... morbid, perverse, threatens to go about--well--you are a married woman, Mrs. Prologue, and I needn’t paraphrase these things for you--naked, in a word. It’s--how shall I say?--it’s--”

“A complex,” helped out Mrs. Prologue.

“That’s right. A complex.”

He was afraid that this spectacled and earnest-looking lady might “dare” him; but she was quiet and sensible and did not insist. “Is it”--she fixed a pair of competent eyes upon him--“your conviction that we should--”

“He, not we,” corrected her employer.

“That you should go about ... in that state?”

“It’s more--it’s a belief--a sort of religion,” said Frank.

“I see. _Nacktkultur_. I’ve been reading a story recently by Paul Morand who very amusingly deals with a club up in Norway devoted to the practising of these theories--”

“That’s right! That’s right! You’ve hit on it, Mrs. Prologue. You’ll be able to write a story about Mr. Dickin. You may say, in fact, that he has, while performing the cult of this _Kultur_ or what, been surprised by a visit from ... we’ll have to think of some name ... to the roof of his house where he performs it. I leave him to you.”

Frank returned to Half-Moon-street, which Cynthia, by the way, it occurred to him, had deserted some days ago, in more buoyant spirits. He did not resent her disappearance. A man who had failed to provide his horse with a stable, the stable with a manger, the manger with fodder, would indeed be unjust and unreasonable to object to his horse’s grazing outside in the field. And in this harsh and difficult world Frank was not unreasonable. He watched, contentedly, her grazing on the greenest, most flourishing fields of London, Paris, and New York. He walked about in the flat, inspecting the shelves in the kitchen containing things in tins bought with her money; and in applying them to their uses drew on his common sense and such powers of divination as he possessed; and reflected that man’s needs were few, and woman’s less. He even attempted, with a certain misgiving, to boil himself an egg on the “Primus” stove, unable to foretell under what circumstances it might explode. How sweet it was to exist alone and owe nothing to anybody!

The post brought him a batch of press-notices. “The author of ‘Pale Primroses,’”read a cutting, “(who, it will be remembered, turned up naked at a recent literary gathering) is greatly in vogue and is, in fact, quite the lion of the moment.”

Also he seemed to be getting more and more homage from Liverpool, whereas the city of Glasgow appeared to despise him and he conceived in his heart a warm sympathy for Liverpool, and a shy hostility towards Glasgow took shape in his mind. (But when, a month later, he had occasion to arrive in Liverpool he was ignored; whereas at Glasgow straight away he hit it off with a Scotch lassie and they stepped it to jazz music and she was more than kissed by him forthwith.) And a different notion of the relative hospitality of Liverpool and Glasgow now formed itself in his receptive mind.

Mrs. Prologue’s article bore fruit. A week later he was able to inform the Baron of Ottercove that his sales were enormous. “Enormous!”

“Good!” said the baron, thinking. “Change the title to ‘The Diary of a Naked Man.’”

“There is nothing naked in it.”

“Tell them that there will be in Part II.”

“But I’m not writing a Part II. It’s complete.”

“I guess you’ll have to,” said Lord Ottercove.

“What else? Perhaps also change my name?” Frank’s tone was ironic.

“Your name?” Lord Ottercove reflected. “Your Christian name.”

“My Christian name?”

“Couldn’t you call yourself Charles?”

“I could call myself Jesus if necessary.”

“No, not Jesus. Charles. It goes well with your surname.”

“Well, I might, of course. It might help.”

“Bound to do! I start for Nice to-morrow. But telegraph to me twice a day how you are selling. Good-bye to you. And mind the step!”

With a little training one could move, Frank felt, about the modern world with ease and felicity and face with equanimity the deadliest of situations. He would find himself making ambiguous statements to reporters who interviewed him relative to his parentage.

“Are you the son of the late Nicholas II?”

“I do not propose at this juncture of events to say anything which might render the position of certain parties and persons involved more difficult than it is already.”