Part 12

“Do you claim the imperial throne?”

“I do not consider the present moment propitious for the making of any definite statement bearing on this thorny and delicate question, which, moreover, may easily be misinterpreted. I follow the development of the political situation in Russia with equanimity, firm in the belief that when the time for expressing their choice is at hand the people of Russia will not fail in their wisdom, loyalty and courage.”

In all his public utterances Frank displayed unfailing moderation and restraint in reference to the situation that had spun itself into a web around him, and when a Russian Grand Duke in the Kiss-Lick Club heckled him in the vestibule and even hit him on the ear with an immaculately folded umbrella and otherwise tried to make himself disagreeable to him, with a view to consummating the quarrel in assassination, Frank did not lose his head, but tried to avoid him so as not to be involved too early in the Russian imbroglio. When a reporter interviewed him on the regrettable incident in the Kiss-Lick Club, Frank said:

“I feel--and I say it earnestly--that we who love Russia should know how to merge our petty differences in a common devotion to a holy cause, and, awaiting the grand moment, remember the magnitude of our responsibilities and the dignity imposed by a great and noble heritage.”

The restraint and moderation of his utterances won him a following among the anglicised Russian emigrés in London, who, suspicious of the qualities of their own race, had learnt to admire British parliamentary language as reported in the newspapers. But in proportion to his success as a pretender, he became increasingly aware of being watched by Chesham House, of being followed on his daily strolls by individuals who looked suspiciously like agents of the Tcheka. He applied, on the advice of friends, to Scotland Yard, and two plain-clothed policemen were assigned to accompany him on his walks and protect him from (a) those zealous puritans who wanted to destroy him so as to put an end to what they understood from certain references to the quality of his books to be his propagation of foul literature; (b) rival claimants to the throne of Russia; and (c) the Bolshevist agents of the Tcheka who resented his imperialism. His fame reached its apotheosis when the Soviet Foreign Minister, in reply to the now hackneyed British accusation of their spreading Bolshevist propaganda in the British Empire, cited Mr. Dickin in the Soviet note to Downing-street as an active instance of the fostering of an imperialistic movement by the British and their intervention in the domestic politics of Russia, and the British Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons disclaimed, while deprecating Mr. Dickin’s activities, responsibility for his acts and dissociated what he described to be the private views of a novelist from the considered policy of the Foreign Office. By that time Frank had sold over one hundred and twenty thousand copies of _Pale Primroses_, alias _The Diary of a Naked Man_; to say nothing of American rights, film rights, dramatic rights, translation rights, and second, third, and fourth British Empire (excluding Canada) serial rights. The resulting publicity procured him a lucrative commission for a series of articles in an American magazine, a lost relative, and three offers of marriage.

XXIV.

NICE

The day after the christening of the Kerr-de Jones baby, Frank, having received a telegram from Ottercove inviting him to come to Nice, went abroad. His wife was grazing somewhere--he didn’t know where.

He didn’t bother about Cynthia. He didn’t see why he should bother about her. He could have divorced her, or she could have divorced him, but he didn’t see why he should go to the bother of divorcing her. He simply didn’t bother about her. And, moreover, she didn’t bother about him.

Mrs. Kerr, he recalled, had been conspicuous at the christening of the Honourable Richard Mosquito, and Pilling had been loud in extolling, some felt rather indiscreetly, the Kerr strain in the baby. Raymond, hastily adopted by de Jones, officiated in the absence of his father at the side of Eleonor. He looked very red and hot and embarrassed at the arrival of his little son-brother and resented Pilling’s _faux pas_, who, conscious of his blunder, and anxious to agree that the baby was the image of de Jones, added inadvertently: “But of course! The image of his grandfather,” while Mr. Kerr walked about sardonically, as if saying: “This is my revenge.”

“Can’t stand that man Pilling,” Raymond said bitterly.

“I, on the contrary,” rejoined his mother, “find him a very charming, intellectual young man.”

“Why doesn’t he marry Zita?”

“My dear, he can’t. He is already married.”

“Then why doesn’t he leave her to marry another?”

“They live together--just the same as if they were married. That is a common custom nowadays among the more intellectual classes. Already in my youth it was accepted. You even find it in Turgenev and Dostoevski.”

In parting on the kerb, Frank overheard Mrs. Kerr thanking her son. “Chris can give me nothing now. And if he could, he would give it all to Eva.”

“Eleonor,” said Raymond, “has no banking account of her own. But she has a cheque book and draws on her uncle’s account to an unlimited extent.”

“A very nice, well-read, original young woman, and I am very fond of her,” was Mrs. Kerr’s reply.

Smiling thus over these insistent memories of yesterday, Frank pulled open the blinds in the morning: the blue train was touching the south coast of France.

Nice. The most beautiful thing about Nice is its name, full of a delicious springtide fragrance. Apart from the name, it may be questioned, Frank thought, whether there was anything else particularly beautiful about the town, that somewhat hard and heartless courtesan de luxe organised for the sale of dubious pleasure.

Already from the window of your carriage you behold the long train bending like a serpent as it races up the coast carrying dutifully its load of passengers who had dribbled from the four corners of the world, congregating towards Paris, rushed in the night through northern wet and wind and bleakness, to turn the corner at Marseilles at daybreak, and now gaily down the sunny Côte d’Azur, past all the pink and cream and white of basking villas, towards Nice.

In another three hours, Frank reflected, he would see Eva, and the benignant luxury of the scenery illustrated his anticipation. The train curved amid the rocky hills and flowery valleys, past the rose-white garden villas perched above the blue, blue sea--all swiftly whirling by.

Nice.

“His lordship is lunching in the restaurant and asks you to come in, sir.”

Entering the huge dining-room, Frank instantly perceived Lord Ottercove’s steel-grey eye peering at him in its essential hardness, but softened as it were by an air of bonhomie. There was about the baron’s face something at once fine and comic, stern and pantaloonish, Jehovahian and George Robian. His glinting eyes blazed with a righteous blue fire, while his tilted nose protruded a naïve, peeping curiosity about human affairs, and his noble brow frowned olympically. When he closed one eye at you to glint with double force with the other, he looked a satyr. At one side of him was Eva, gay and spring-like in appearance; on the other, Lord de Jones, more shark-like than ever. No one could look less a peer than de Jones.

“Why won’t you take off your coat and come and have lunch?” said Ottercove, genially. The three of them looked as though they had been revelling considerably.

“You do all look washed out,” said Frank.

“We’ve decided to make a halt here before going on to Rome,” said Ottercove. “I must recuperate my forces before I tackle Mussolini over the craters.”

“Do you expect any serious opposition?”

“Yuh,” said Ottercove. “I guess they’ll want heavy compensation. The Vesuvius alone, they argue, is a steady source of revenue, attracting hordes of tourists.”

“But he must see the international side of it if he has any good will in him.”

“The good will among men,” said the baron, “is a moral support physically precarious for individual man to lean on. But all the better for us. We are in no hurry since the General Election is again delayed. We must give the illusion of warring, of desperately battling with evil and sinister forces and win the battle of David and Goliath.”

“Well, you certainly look exhausted.”

“Don’t look at Chris,” said Eva. (So she already called him ‘Chris’!) “He is always dirty looking, he can’t help it. I mean he’s clean, but dirty-looking. There are such people. And there are others, who are dirty and always look quite clean.”

“You wise little girl, Eva,” said Ottercove tenderly.

“Lord Ottercove, have you read Ferdinand’s novel?” she asked.

“I’ve read it twice.”

“H’m.--I must read it again,” she said.

After lunch, Lord Ottercove took them up to his suite. On the table in the drawing-room copies of his newspapers were spread out invitingly. “I can’t,” said Frank, fingering _The Evening Ensign_, “behold this newspaper without an inward pang.”

Lord Ottercove frowned. He did not like to be reminded of it. Instead, and in pursuance of a certain association of ideas, he asked,

“What have you done to Cynthia?”

“Alas! Alack!” said Frank, who, in the absence of his host’s material interest in their marriage, did not see himself compelled to satisfy the baron’s idle curiosity.

Learning from Frank that he had put up at another hotel and would not move over to this for fear of being ruined, “Stay with me two or three weeks,” said Lord Ottercove. “You don’t know what pleasure it gives me.” His words were so warm and inviting. “Gilbert,” he said softly, “go and see if there are any more rooms on this floor.”

“Yes, m’lord.”

Gilbert returned to say that there was the choice of an imperial and an ordinary suite. Which of the two did his lordship wish him to reserve for Mr. Dickin?

“Mr. Dickin will see and choose for himself,” said Lord Ottercove. “And now I will jump into bed. I will see the three of you, I hope, at dinner and take you to the Opera at Monte Carlo.”

“Agreed!”

XXV.

When, dressed, that night he joined them in Ottercove’s private drawing-room, Frank was amazed by the new, modern aspect of Eva. How was it that he had never been so struck with her before? What ease! what grace! withal what beauty!

They dined at the Negresco in Nice and then hurried at a dangerous speed in a hired Rolls-Royce to Monte Carlo, and again in Ottercove’s box, alone with three men, Eva’s charm was conspicuous, as on the stage the melancholy chime of Kremlin bells determined the slow but steady ruin of a conscience-stricken man.

On the way back to Nice, they were pensive. _Boris Godounov_ had made a deep impression on the baron, who never missed a performance. “Fine man Moussorgski!” he muttered. “A great and wonderful genius! To have written that!” He paused. “If he were alive to-day, I would have made him a duke, or editor-in-chief of all my newspapers.”

“Or given him _The Evening Ensign_ as a wedding present,” added Frank.

Lord Ottercove closed one eye and glared at Frank with the other, and then closed it too and went to sleep in the depth of the car.

In the night, Frank could not sleep for jealousy. Why was she so intimate with de Jones and Ottercove? Why?

At three, he crept to her door and knocked gently.

She opened the door.

He went in.

“Darling!” he said.

“Darling!” she answered, and came into his arms.

“I am wretched,” he said, covering his face with his hands.

“Darling,” she watched him tenderly, “you are getting very thin. Your corner tooth is losing colour.” She looked at that thin individual with scanty hair and thought, without pressing the thought home to her: “Is that thing the thing on which I spent all my beautiful love?... Never mind, such as he is he is mine.”

“It is tragic,” Frank said, “to grow ugly without ever having been beautiful.”

She gave him a long kiss. And they were silent, and the silence seemed pregnant with memories. “Do you remember?” it seemed to say.

And for him there was fear and foreboding of loss in that kiss. He held her breathless and exulted in the thought that her naked heart beat against his.

She looked into his eyes. “Do with me what you like.”

How could he have ever parted with her? How could he ever part with her?

XXVI.

All next day they spent with Ottercove. Lord Ottercove habitually put up at Nice, with the sole purpose, it would seem, of dining at Monte Carlo. He came to the Riviera to relax after the strenuous social life of London. And his relaxation, by the force of habit, took the form of whizzing up and down the curved and much frequented road of the Côte d’Azur to lunch at Cannes, to dine at Mentone, or hurrying off to play golf, hurrying to get into bed and sleep hurriedly, to be wakened by Gilbert to dress and hurry along to dine at Rapallo. After a month of such relaxation, he would hurry back to London to rush from house to house (mysteriously preceded by Mrs. Hannibal and his telephone operator) and write hurried articles and print newspapers, and the news boys were already hurrying out of the building carrying batches of them and selling them at a run. Lord Ottercove privately claimed that since his descent on London he had “gingered up” the public life of Great Britain. His success was evidenced by his peerage; which is no guarantee of anything more than success.

His own personality and the effect it produced on his time and surroundings interested and stimulated him beyond all else. An American reporter in Nice had referred in the local Press to Lord Ottercove’s having the head of a musician, and he instantly sent out Gilbert to buy an album with the portraits of all the notable composers, and left it in his private drawing-room, and his friends (who had read the notice) said: “Rex, that chap Beethoven has your head to a t.” And another said, “Rex, upon my word you have mistaken your profession and we enjoin you, ere too late, to turn musical. Then, in a couple of years’ time, they will be saying: ‘Ottercove.... Who the hell is Ottercove?’--‘Oh, the man who wrote the Symphony in B flat.’”

He smiled indulgently. He went down the steps (forgetting the existence of the lift), whistling to himself and wondering ... really if ... and _if really_ ... how nice.

In the car, since the question had been jarringly dropped as it seemed to him, he turned to Eva.

“Eva, do you think,” he said from his reclining, hatless attitude in the depth of the great car, “I look like a composer?”

“You look like an angel, Rex,” she said.

“Thank you, darling.”

“You’re not as beautiful as Ferdinand,” she added, “but you are very clever.”

“Thank you, darling, thank you, dear, that’s comforting.”

So she already called him Rex. Frank was astonished at the rapidity of progress possible to women; and even a little jealous.

“Chris,” said Ottercove, “how is your work getting on? Is it true I hear you mean to blow us all up?”

“If I didn’t others would. Ideas like these never come singly. There must be at least half-a-dozen men now harbouring this amiable idea.”

Lord Ottercove glanced at Frank and Eva. “I told you he was a lunatic.”

“It’s you who are lunatics. Any one could do and talk about doing it, for no one would believe him, everyone would think he was a lunatic.” De Jones looked away, detached.

“Let us change the conversation,” Eva said.

They were hurrying in the direction of Cagnes--a destination which at all times that it is mentioned is accompanied by a sort of footnote that it is a place other than, and therefore not to be confused with, Cannes. “You speak French,” said Ottercove. “Tell him to go to Cagnes. Cagnes, not Cannes.”

Frank took up the telephone tube and said to the chauffeur: “Cagnes.”

“Cagnes,” repeated Lord Ottercove. “Not Cannes.”

“Cagnes,” said Frank into the tube. “Not Cannes.”

“I understand perfectly,” said the chauffeur.

It seemed that the distinction was more familiar than generally supposed. Still, the similarity was unfortunate, and many a passenger for Cagnes must have found himself, unwittingly, in Cannes and, perhaps, with profounder astonishment and reluctance, many a passenger for Cannes must have discovered himself, with inward qualms and bitter questionings, in Cagnes. But there it was, and even Ottercove could not change this state of things.

They alighted on the green hillside by the sea, and Ottercove, perennially the host, opened the basket with the eatables. “Damn!” he said. “That jackass Gilbert has forgotten the glasses.” Inwardly they all cursed Gilbert. “You speak French,” said Ottercove to Frank, “Go and ask that peasant woman on the top of that hill to lend us a few glasses. Here--” He held out a batch of notes.

“I’ve got some money.”

“Here, give her this.”

The old peasant woman who was sitting on the ground beside her donkey could produce but two doubtful looking glasses, and Frank thrust the batch of bank notes--some four hundred francs in all--into her hand.

“But, monsieur!” she cried bewildered. “All this for a couple of glasses! No, no....”

They washed the glasses in champagne, drinking what was left of it and eating delectable sandwiches delicately prepared by a luxurious hotel. Then Lord Ottercove took his Bible out of his side-pocket and began to read:

“‘And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

“‘And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

“‘And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

“‘And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

“‘And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

“‘For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?’”

He shut the book, and for a while there was silence. De Jones took off his glasses and wiped them pensively with his handkerchief; then quoted softly:

“‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’”

Frank waved away the flies. “If I were God I would consign all flies to the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. For don’t tell me that they know not what they do!”

Eva looked at him reproachfully. “You are so stupid, darling. You wave and shout at the flies.”

“But they do go away when I shout.”

“It’s not because you shout, but because you wave that they go away.”

“H’m, that’s possible. I never thought of that. I admit I am impractical.”

The secret of a successful picnic, in view of its invariable discomfort, is that it should be as short as possible. They--all of them towny people--discovered this very soon and rose as if by mutual consent.

“You speak French,” said Ottercove to Frank. “Go and take these glasses back to the old woman on the hill and tell her she can have all the sandwiches and fruit and champagne--”

“Bottles,” qualified de Jones.

“Bottles--all we’ve left, in fact.”

Frank did as he was bid.

They stepped into the hired Rolls-Royce, and as they drove away, this time in the direction of Cannes, on the hill-side, by the side of an old donkey, stood an old wrinkled woman who looked in their direction till they were lost to sight.

In the depth of the car, three men and a girl leaned back as far as it is possible for three men and a girl to do so in a car. Lord Ottercove was dozing, Eva gently playing the ukulele.

“I didn’t know you played the ukulele,” Frank remarked.

“There are things, Ferdinand, you do not know,” she said.

Ottercove opened one eye. “You are right, sweetie,” he said. “He is no good: I’m the man for you.”

“‘I’m the man! I’m the man!’ This is from _Candida_,” chimed in de Jones. “Let me quote, on my behalf, from the same work: ‘All the love in the world is waiting to speak: but it is shy--shy--shy....’”

“Eva,” said Frank. “Eva....”

“What?”

“Eyes as blue as the Mediterranean....”

“Now, Eva, you must choose,” said Ottercove, “between this decrepit Genius of the Untried who claims he can push up the grass but is only fit to push up the daisies; the dubious heir to a, if possible, more dubious throne; and a half-demented peer. Now come on, my love, and choose your prize. Spot the winner.”

Eva smiled and played the ukulele dreamily. And the music seemed to say, Why choose? when you are snug, at ease, sprawling in the depth of a great car rushing softly by the edge of the blue sea.

XXVII.

Returned, Eva vanished mysteriously and came back with a book and asked them to write in her album.

“All these your admirers, Eva?” Ottercove scanned the pages wearily. “Hello what’s this?

“‘_O Eva, O Eva,_ _I love you so mighty,_ _I wish my pyjama was_ _Next to your nighty._’

“Whoever wrote this, Eva?”

“A little schoolboy in Ireland.”

“Shame!”

“He loved me.”

“That’s something.”

Frank the while was scanning the pages of _The Sunday Runner_, Ottercove’s youngest and favourite offspring. “Rotten newspaper,” he said, as if to himself, but loud enough for Ottercove to hear him. “Nothing of me in it.”

“I am taking you to-night to Maxime’s. And now,” said Lord Ottercove, “I’ll jump into bed. Good-night to you.”

And, to precipitate their going, he was already removing his tie and collar.

That night at Maxime’s Eva looked exquisite. She had not, Frank felt, before now expanded her more expensive potentialities. Now she looked like really expanding them. And Lord Ottercove looked very much like encouraging her to expand them. She was a plant that suddenly flowered when put in a vase of champagne. The competition for her on the part of the three men developed into rapid fire. “Now then, Eva, why this hesitation?” Ottercove demanded. “I am a man of brains. I am a man of money. I am a man of love and a capacity to requite love once it is lavished on me tit for tat. _Quid pro quo._”

“Do you love me, Rex?”

He smote the table. “With all my heart.”

“Truly?”

“I swear by my love for my newspapers or may God strike me dead!”

“And you, Ferdinand?”

“Can you ask? What of my courage? Am I not setting out all alone against all his newspapers, with possibly the other newspaper lord at the back of him--in fact, the whole of the more sinister Press of Great Britain against me!”

Lord Ottercove, gripping his knife and fork in his two fists--he was in high spirits to-night--leaned back and laughed. There was in his gesture all the self-confidence and abandon of men who had climbed to the top of the ladder. On the top of the ladder one is apt to let oneself go. (Which, by no means, applies to all ladders. One’s solicitude for one’s fate on most ladders is never so keen as on the last rung. But--let us be perfectly clear--it is a solicitude different in kind from that which is experienced by people passing _under_ a ladder.)

“And you, Chris?” she asked. “Will you love me all your life?”

“All my life and fifty years after.”

“You might be Mr. Solberg, the Register of Copyrights at Washington,” said Frank.

“Isn’t Ferdinand beautiful?”

“As beautiful as my nose.”