Part 8

Lord Ottercove pressed the bell button.

“Stop that banking arrangement Mr. Dickin has with me,” he said as Mrs. Hannibal entered the room.

Frank gasped.

Mrs. Hannibal made a shorthand note of it and retired.

“It’s on my lips,” said Lord Ottercove. “I know the opera well. Lord! now what is the name?” He pulled out his watch and looked up at Frank.

“I know I am late. An evening of misadventures culminating” (he was going to say “in your stopping my principal source of income,” but pulled up in time) “in my nearly breaking my neck as I stepped on to some slippery nastiness on the pavement.” His sense of social injustice provoked by Lord Ottercove’s action, who, after depriving him of the principal means to a comfortable existence, remained lying on the sofa calmly stroking his pekingese, vented itself through a side outlet. “Confound these dogs and their owners! They should be made to respect the integrity of pavements. Pavements were made for men, not for dogs. But in this country it’s all topsy-turvy. If I were the Prime Minister of England I should exterminate the breed.”

Lord Ottercove suddenly jumped off the sofa and, without a word, went over to the octangular table in the middle of the room and made a note. Then, rising, “I will act on your suggestion,” he said.

“What? exterminate the breed of dogs?”

“Not I. The Prime Minister.”

“Hardly a popular task you are giving him?”

“Give him just enough rope to hang himself on,” said Lord Ottercove. He rang the bell, ordered a journalist to write an obituary article on a world-famous novelist about to be operated upon for appendicitis, and instructed a reporter to spend all night outside the house of a man remanded on bail on the chance of his committing suicide; then leaned back and said: “As you are too late for dinner I am taking you to-night to sup at the Kiss-Lick Club.”

“Are you really?”

Lord Ottercove began taking off his boots. Frank watched him, and was moved. There is something moving in seeing a great newspaper magnate and owner of several score million pounds removing his boots like any other citizen of the Western portion of the British Empire. One cannot assist at such a spectacle without an inward feeling that this should not be so. It should not be so, when a somebody-and-nobody in the Eastern part of the same empire has his sandals removed for him by servile wives or servants. And yet, resent it as you may, there was something fine, unquestionably right and noble, in seeing Lord Ottercove remove his boots, in a quick, breezy manner as though he thought this the most natural thing in the world.

And he did more than remove his boots. He disappeared into the bathroom and returned from there in his vest and pants--just as any other man might do--and yet still looking the part, still the unchallenged proprietor and director of the _Daily Runner_. He slipped into pumps and a boiled shirt prepared for him by his valet Gilbert, into the black braided trousers, tacked on the stiff white collar--so tortuous a task for most men--quite effortlessly, and presently was tying his white bow-tie. And now he emerged in an exquisite tailcoat, spruce and tight like a glove.

In the historic lift they descended to the ground and stepped into the great motor, Mimi, the decadent and undogly pekingese, with them. A crowd of _Daily Runner_ hands had gathered at the corner of the building, and Lord Ottercove touched his hat with his forefinger on the chance of their having saluted him. “They’re awfully disappointed, I guess, that I am not emerging from that office with a woman.” The huge propellered car ran swiftly and imperiously down the deserted Fleet Street and, suddenly, spread out wings in front and behind and left the ground, clearing the roofs of Fleet-street houses, flying Piccadilly-ward. Frank gasped with surprise.

“You didn’t expect that, now did you?” said Lord Ottercove.

“I did not.”

“This is, in fact, the first model of a ‘Winged Chariot’ to reach this country. But I guess I won’t be long the only one to have a chariot.”

“Winged chariots!” mused Frank. “If, in addition, we could have winged love, a winged life, I would not refuse eternity at that.”

“If you had the refusal of it!” grunted Lord Ottercove, from the depth of the car, hatless as usual.

“You talk like a publisher,” Frank laughed; and presently asked: “Do you believe in immortality, Lord Ottercove?”

“Not a bit of it!”

“As Lord Balfour once said, ‘If there is no life after this, then life is a miserable joke. And whose joke?’”

“When did he say that and to whom?”

“He is reported by Lady Oxford to have said it to her.”

Lord Ottercove took out a pocket-book and pencil and made a note in it. For a while he looked pensive.

“You are thinking--?” Frank said.

“Of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s opera. What the hell is the name?”

“After love, music is the best thing in the world.”

“Love,” said Lord Ottercove, “is an inconvenience.”

“You mean sexual love?”

“No, love. Sexual love is a nuisance.”

Waiters were falling prostrate before Lord Ottercove at the Kiss-Lick Club and (in a manner of exaggeration) were committing hari-kari before him. But he gathered them round him and said: “Can any of you tell me the name of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s famous opera?”

They couldn’t.

He called the head waiter: who couldn’t. He called the manager; the director and his sleeping partner; they summoned the bandmaster, who returned to his band and conferred with the musicians and came back, shrugging his shoulders. Lord Ottercove looked sad and perplexed. “There is no solution,” he said at last, “but to get hold of Rimsky-Korsakoff in Leningrad or Moscow.”

“He is dead,” said Frank.

“Really!” Lord Ottercove shook his head. “ ... betrayed again ...” he muttered. He ate gloomily for a time, and watching him Frank wondered how even the rich in this world could not evade the anguish of thwarted longings! The two men ate in silence. When the meal was drawing to its close, Lord Ottercove looked up at Frank. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will telegraph the name to you to-morrow morning.”

“You are very kind,” said Frank. “You cannot imagine how that relieves me.”

“Now this,” said Lord Ottercove more cheerily, “is instructive for you to see as a novelist. A real Michael Arlen atmosphere!”

“Ah!”

Frank did not tell Ottercove that he had already been to the Kiss-Lick with Eva a few nights before. He perceived that Ottercove liked to astonish him, and so he adopted the attitude of a newly-fledged chicken and to everything that was pointed out to him he said: “Ah!”

“Do you see that young man over there sitting at the side of my niece?” said the host. “Now it is my turn to continue your serial. That is Raymond Kerr.”

“Raymond Kerr!”

“Raymond Kerr.”

“Raymond Kerr! Her favourite boy? The one she used always to talk of. ‘Raymond has my eyes.’ Raymond this. Raymond that.”

“There is only one Raymond. And there is Chris de Jones.”

“I know him.”

“But you don’t know that the two are related.”

“How related?”

“Quite spontaneously. Chris is his dad--his ‘Papa.’”

“It never occurred to me! Yet, of course. There is a sort of resemblance.”

“A very marked resemblance.”

“Though Raymond is good-looking.”

“His mother’s boy.”

“And de Jones looks saintly but hideous.”

“He looks the part. A man with a mission. An ominous mission. Wait and he will tell you that he is the new Messiah. He came out with it once under chloroform; said his mission was to blow us all up.”

“I think,” said Frank, “that it is quite conceivable that the end of the world might come about in some such casual way. A fanatic like that.... Suppose he blows up the earth instead of increasing the crop?”

“I wish he did,” said Ottercove.

“Is he mad?”

“Mad as a hatter! But a genius.”

“Of the untried,” said Frank.

Lord Ottercove looked at him first circumspectly, then quizzically.

“Hullo, hullo, Mr. Kerr!”

“How do you do, Lord Ottercove.”

“This is Mr. Dickin, the novelist, you know him?”

Mr. Kerr, an extremely foolish-looking man, fixed a suspicious pair of eyes on Frank. “How do you do?”

“And you are happy on your farm in Ireland?”

Mr. Kerr took Lord Ottercove by the arm to where Lady de Jones and Raymond were sitting amorously together, and said in a significant undertone:

“This is my revenge.”

Then, as significantly, he walked away.

Lord Ottercove took Frank Dickin by the arm and led him towards Eleonor and Raymond Kerr. “This,” he observed, “is really getting to be more and more of a Michael Arlen atmosphere, of great help to you as a novelist, I daresay.--Well, Eleonor, how are you? Hullo, Raymond. Enjoying your fame as a prospective co-respondent, what? Some men win battles and get fame; others write lyrics; others, again, well--do as you do. This is Mr. Dickin, the novelist. You know my niece? Kerr, do you know Mr. Dickin? You don’t? But he knows all about you. You will see that he does as soon as you read his serial. Eleonor, how is your divorce getting on?”

“I expect it will be all right, Uncle Rex, but the difficulty is you never know just when it will be over, and with the baby coming....” She looked at Dickin fearlessly. She was a modern woman.

“Yes,” said her uncle, “you cannot time these things.”

“The divorce?”

“I mean the baby.”

“The baby is a deliberate protest on my part against Chris’s deserting me for Raymond’s mother.”

“Quite. I appreciate your motive. But you should have timed him for a little later. As it is, the baby will land between two stools. And as for Chris, he is at present more interested in Raymond’s sister than Raymond’s mother.”

“I cannot have the baby landing between two stools. Chris must acknowledge the baby as his son. It’s bad enough that Raymond has been tricked by him out of his heritage, and, as Raymond’s son, the baby is a de Jones by blood, and ought to have the name, too. Mr. Dickin, you are a psychologist. Don’t you think I am right?”

“You are quite right, Lady de Jones.”

“I see your point,” said her uncle. “Chris may deny the paternity of the baby: but he cannot deny its grandparentage. So he might as well not deny anything. And Raymond will not press his parental claims.”

“No. You see, he feels that thus he will be getting something of his own back, if not for himself, at least for his son.”

“If it is a son.”

“I hope it is.”

“Oh, here is Chris. We’ll speak to him about it. Hullo, Chris.”

“Hello, Rex.”

“Now look here, Chris. Eleonor wants to marry Raymond. I don’t mind. But--” (his lips moved silently) “she’s used to a great name; she’ll feel chilly, naked, don’t you know, as plain Mrs. Raymond Kerr.”

“I’m very sorry. But what can I do? I’d gladly sell him my name. But I know of no means to do so.”

“No--no, it’s all very simple. It’s all perfectly simple. You adopt Raymond as your son and heir. When you die he will be Viscount de Jones, and while you still potter about he’ll be--what will he be?”

“The Honourable Raymond Mosquito.”

“Well, that’s better than nothing. Here, Eleonor, I propose that”--his lips moved silently--“Chris adopts Raymond straightaway. Then the baby’ll be born a de Jones, and no need for Chris to adopt the baby. Kills two birds with one stone.”

Raymond seemed very pleased.

“But the baby’s nearly due.”

“Oh, well, in that case, Chris, you’ll have to acknowledge it as your own child, for, you know, it won’t fit into its proper time.”

“I don’t mind,” said Chris.

“What will he be?”

“Depends on what you call him.”

“What will you call him, Eleonor?”

“If it’s a boy, I’ll call him Robert.”

“The Honourable Robert Mosquito.”

“Now that’s all right. All perfectly in order. When can you do it?”

“What?”

“Adopt Raymond.”

“Not till after the divorce, of course.”

“Why, Chris?”

“I can’t adopt my co-respondent, can I?”

“But what nonsense, Chris!” cried Eleonor. “Raymond doesn’t come into the divorce at all. It’s his mother who is the co-respondent, or whatever the name happens to be.”

“I thought it was Raymond’s sister,” said Lord Ottercove.

“It was the mother at the time we started the proceedings, and let us stick to her or we shall never get divorced,” said Eleonor irritably. “You have no memory, Chris. You forget you are taking the blame on yourself.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Still,” Lord Ottercove observed, “I doubt the wisdom of adopting Raymond till after the divorce. It might prejudice the case. The difference, as I envisage the situation, is whether Raymond is to be Chris’s elder or younger son, and if the baby is to be born before Raymond is adopted, Raymond will be the younger brother of the baby.”

“What! the younger brother of his own son!” Eleonor exclaimed. “I understand nothing.”

“That’s right. The baby’ll be the elder brother of his own father. And why not?” said her uncle.

“I’d rather,” she said, “he was what he is: the son of his father and mother.”

“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “it’s all very simple. It’s all perfectly simple. All you have to do is to adopt the baby. And he will be Raymond’s son again--The Honourable Robert Mosquito.”

“No, he won’t,” said de Jones.

“What will he be, Chris?”

“Master Robert Mosquito.”

“Well, all this will right itself,” said Lord Ottercove, “the moment Chris dies.”

They all looked at de Jones expectantly.

“But, of course, the baby may turn out to be a girl,” he said.

“Quite conceivably she may.”

On the way home, in the taxi, Frank once more reviewed the matrimonial situation revealed before him at the Kiss-Lick Club and found that he could not improve on the harmony of Ottercove’s solution.

At the club he found a telegram from Eva, despatched from Dublin:

“_Wire money at once. Love. Eva._”

XV.

He was wakened at his club by an attendant who brought in his morning mail and a telegram. The telegram ran:

“_The name of Rimsky Korsakoff’s opera is quote Sadko unquote. Ottercove._”

So it was!

It was a “reply paid” telegram, and Frank scribbled back:--

“_Congratulations. Much relieved. Unspeakably happy. Dickin._”

Among the morning mail was a letter from Eva, bearing an Irish post mark.

“_I am sending you_,” she wrote, “_all my beautiful love, and please send me some money as quick as ever you can. Will tell you reason for it afterwards. Am leaving with de Jones for Paris and Rome etc. end of next week. If you really wish to see me alone we could meet at Holyhead as I am afraid to come to London on account of Daddy and his people who are stuffy and churchy old birds and would get suspicious, darling, if I stayed away too long with you, don’t you see, and if you came to Holyhead I could pretend, you see, I only went to see Aunt Jane etc. in Dublin, don’t you see. Can’t write any more as Postman is outside and screeching for my letter--‘Country Post!’ Accept all my Beautiful Love etc. Also I have a little cat and I have called Him Ferdinand. And don’t forget to meet me Tuesday midnight on the landing stage at Holyhead and arrange everything for our Honeymoon._

_Eva._”

Frank, who hated the idea of arriving empty-handed but, since the sudden stoppage of the Ottercove source did not dispose of the necessary sums, shrank at the thought of Eva’s extravagance. By a happy chance he heard of a draper and milliner in the Edgeware Road who was selling out her business and he went and bought up most of her remaining stock, thinking Eva would be glad to have it. The box he brought with him to Holyhead comprised a corset, eight pairs of crisp calico knickers, a number of strong cotton stockings, a skirt, and a couple of hats. He left the box containing these treasures in the room at the hotel and went out to the pier to meet the boat which, at midnight, a lighted shell out of the dark, suddenly swam up towards him; and on board, waving to him, already stood Eva.

She alighted with a portmanteau, and the boat train took them back into Holyhead Town. “I thought something was sure to happen, and you wouldn’t come,” he said.

“All the village boys,” she said, “came to see me off at the station. ‘Ah!’ they said: ‘Here’s Miss Kerr going off to London!’”

“Did they now?”

“They did.”

“I’ve brought you a present,” he said.

“Where is it?” she asked quickly.

“It’s in the room at the hotel.”

“Is it a ring?”

“No, it’s not a ring.”

“Is it--I mean--jewelry?”

“No--it’s clothes.”

“Clothes?”

“Clothes.”

“I thought you’d like to have them,” he said, opening the box at the hotel.

She took out the things one by one and laid them out on the bed. “H’m! H’m!” she said. “Of course, darling, they’re old, very old.”

“Never been worn,” Frank said, a little stiffly.

“I don’t mean that. I mean old-fashioned. Those two hats, for instance. Nobody wears such hats nowadays.”

“I am sure you’d look very well in them.”

“It’s the fashion when Mummy was a young girl or even earlier.”

“Still,” he said, “they look strong. I don’t see why you shouldn’t wear them.”

“And these stockings--cotton, you know.”

“They look very neat and strong,” he said.

“These knickers”--she held them out--“calico--they scratch.”

“Well,” he said, a little ruffled, “I only wished to please you.”

“I know. But--”

“This bodice,” he said. “I am sure it’s very nice.”

“No one wears corsets now, darling.”

“Well,” he said, evidently hurt, “I am sure I haven’t bought it for myself, and if you don’t want to wear it--”

He went away and lay sulking on his bed. “Gratitude!” he thought. “For all his trouble and expense....”

“I’ll wear them,” she said, coming up to him tenderly. “You know I’d do anything to please you, darling. Let us have no more quarrelling about these clothes, darling; they aren’t worth it.”

“Oh, aren’t they?” he said, rolling over and turning his back to her.

But she came up to him, tenderly, sauntered up to him, lovingly, on tip toe, and overtook him on the other side. “You look funny,” she said.

“Funny?”

“Kind of puzzled.”

“I’ve poured some beer into a glass containing peroxide of hydrogen.” He stood up and looked at her: “Most unusual beer.”

“Your skin, darling.”

“Yes.”

“Against my skin.”

“Is that,” he asked, “why they say that love is only skin deep?”

“Never mind what they say.”

“I don’t mind,” he said, and drew her passionately to himself.

“I like,” she said, “when you begin suddenly to breathe like that--like a steam engine.” A strange look of prepared abandonment came onto her face as she drew herself up to him and closed her eyes.

“Eva, you looked like that then ... on that hill.”

They were awed, breathless. Standing behind her, he clasped her with his sinewy arms, his hands like travelling flames. She threw her head back as his mouth pressed into the warm hollow of her shoulder, burnt her through and through.... He lifted her and carried her, with a simulation of ease, across the room. “There.... And the village boys in Ireland all mad on you. And Ferdinand has all this--and this--and this--all to himself.”

“All for you,” she said.

In the morning he woke up to a mood of warning and sat up. “Ottercove--”

“Yes, darling?”

“Has stopped all my money.”

“He hasn’t!” she cried. And also sat up.

“He has.”

“I wouldn’t have wired to you for money had I known, darling, of Ottercove’s action. He is a walking mountain of impudence!”

“But you needed it all the same for your journey.”

“No, it wasn’t the journey. It was for Charity.”

“Charity?”

“You see, I was asked to go about getting subscriptions for a life-boat saving fund or something and got all sorts of people to put down their names, but neglected to collect the money from them. About £20 in all. So I thought it would be simpler to wire you for it, don’t you see.”

“I see.”

“Couldn’t remember their addresses.”

“So you had no money for the journey?”

“A French lady called Thérèse Lapin, who lives in Dublin, gave me money to go to London with.”

“Whatever for?”

“On a tour of inspection. She has a daughter in London and Madame Lapin has heard in a round-about way that her daughter is living with a married man. So she wants me to take some eggs and butter to her daughter and report to her on my way back whether the daughter lives with a married man or whether she is straight and the rumour has been spread through malice.”

“So you want to go to London?”

“Darling, I must, for I wouldn’t know what to do with the eggs and butter. They’re in the portmanteau.”

The sun now looked into the room, and Eva, sitting up in bed, delicately sipped her chocolate. “And all the time while I was away in Ireland I talked about you to my little cousin Baby, and I said, every time there was a noise outside, that it must be you arriving, and Baby ran out to look and there was no one there. And on Sunday mornings I would say to her: ‘Now if you come to church with me you will see him, for he is surely there, sitting in his pew.’ And, together, we’d tear off to church, talking all the way of your sitting there already, and Baby’s cheeks--she is only twelve, you know--glowing with excitement. ‘Now,’ I’d say to her, ‘you are going to see him.’ And we would both get so excited that I’d forget myself that I was only teasing her.”

“What is your cousin Baby like? Is she nice?”

“She’s like me, only her hair isn’t a bit curly, but quite straight, and she has brown eyes instead of violet ones.”

In the afternoon they sat not far from the sea, and Frank was beginning to snooze. Eva had got him to buy picture postcards and stamps and, sitting beside him, scribbled innumerable postcards.

“To whom all this, Eva?”

“Village friends.”

“Let me see.” Nearly all recipients were men, addressed as “Esquires.” One was a “Mr.” “Hello,” he said, “why is this one a ‘Mr.’ while all the others are ‘Esquires’?”

“Oh,” she said, “it’s good enough for him.”

“It isn’t fair, you know; it’s vulgar to discriminate in these things.”

“But if I write ‘Esquire’ to him he’ll go round showing it to all the people in the village, and Daddy might find out I am in Holyhead with you. You don’t know the frightful danger I am in. I must be so very careful, darling, on account of Daddy and his people in Ireland, who are very strict on morals and things. It is a village, and everything, you know, goes round like wild fire. And I only told them I was going down to Dublin to see Aunt Jane and would be back the same day.”

“What awful busybodies!”

“And on board there was a register for anyone who cared to sign his name in it. And I couldn’t help myself, you know, and I signed my name: Miss Eva Kerr. Destination: London, viâ Holyhead.”

“Whatever did you do that for?”

“I couldn’t help myself, darling. Because the register is reprinted in all the local Irish newspapers, you see, and I thought it would be so nice to have all the old fogeys in the village, don’t you see, read it in their evening papers: ‘Ah,’ they’d say: ‘Here is Miss Eva Kerr off to London viâ Holyhead.’ Rather nice, you know, if you know what I mean.”

“Well, here we are in Holyhead. And aren’t we pleased! Or what is your idea of perfect bliss?”

“I like to eat chocolates and as I eat them to think of you, Ferdinand.”

“‘But I feel,’ said Byron,--‘and I feel it bitterly--that a man should not consume his life at the side and on the bosom of a woman, and a stranger; that even the recompense, and it is much, is not enough, and that this Cicisbean existence is to be condemned.’”

“What’s the matter?”

“Don’t know. Don’t feel very well. But you are a nurse; you ought to be able to tell me what is the matter.”

Eva looked very enigmatic. “H’m.... Yes, yes.”

And then, hard up for an answer, she kissed him. She kissed him again and again and, it seemed, would not stop.