Part 12

“All went well until they came to the christening of the city, when it transpired that no one had the faintest idea what name to call it. Here was a to-do! Nameless they could not leave so great a city, yet what name would embrace all these marvels of architecture, how could they call so fair a city by any such commonplace kind of label as Rome, Jerusalem or Wapping? Therefore the young prince fell weeping with mortification for that his city must remain nameless just because it was the fairest city in the world, when an ancient man rose up in the assembly and said: ‘This here is not the fairest city in the world. But the magic city of Is in the land of Brittany has got it so beat that this looks like a slum beside it. I have spoken.’ Not that he ever had a chance to again, even though it presently was proved that not the fairest city in the world could be fairer than Is in Brittany, and so the prince made the best of a bad job and called his city the Equal to Is, which is Par-Is, which is Paris. Shall we dance?”

But she said: “No, no! They are playing an old-fashioned fox-trot. Besides, one can always dance; there are so many men with whom one can only dance, for what have they to talk about? Duke, I did love your legend of the christening of Paris! Did you make it up?”

Now these words had chanced to cast a gloom about the young Duke, and he had said: “But there is another legend, a more private legend. It tells, sister, of the house of Mall, how the golden cock on the weather-vane of St. James’s tower shall crow thrice at the birth of the greatest of the Dukes of Mall. And, although I say it who shouldn’t, this very miracle attended the birth of him who now stands beside you. And the legend further tells that when the golden cock on St. James’s tower again crows thrice the greatest of the Dukes of Mall shall die. Ava, to-night I find myself in fear of my fate. That which is written shall come to pass, and no man may defy the passage of his destiny--but to-night, Ava, I am troubled with a foreboding that the second crowing of that beastly cock is not far distant from this dear moment.”

Very sweetly she had tried to soothe his foreboding, but it was heavy in him and he had not listened, saying: “I’ve never but once before been vexed with this depression, and that was on the night of the day I fell in love with Leonora Lamb.”

“Let us dance,” she had said shyly, but they had not danced very enjoyably owing to the number of the students of hospitality who were generously supporting Mrs. Omroy Pont on so memorable an occasion.

And thus it was on the first night between Miss Ava Lamb and the young Duke of Mall.

VI

Now the Duke had turned his yacht from Naples merely to amuse himself (that is to say, to annoy his wife); but is it not a fact, as _The Morning Post_ lately asked in reference to our treating with the Soviet Republic, that it is dangerous to play with fire? So it happened that the Duke had not been gay of his new enchantment for long before all others palled on him, and he awoke one morning to recognise that he could not, try as he would, do without the one enchantment that was called Ava Lamb. Those American sisters, first the one and then the other, were fated, it appeared, to ravish his imagination to the exclusion of the whole race of womankind. And he had all the more leisure in which to contemplate his dilemma insomuch as Miss Lamb, pleading the importunity of friends, would sometimes not see him for days at a time.

In the meanwhile the Duchess, in London, was preparing to petition the Courts to release her from her unfortunate marriage; and after the usual correspondence had passed between the lawyers of both parties, and the usual evidence collected, the majesty of the law pronounced the usual decree and everyone said the usual things.

Impatiently the Duke in Paris awaited the wire which would tell him that he was no longer the husband of Leonora Mall; and when it came he delayed only long enough to instruct his valet to telephone his London florists to send the ex-Duchess a basket of flowers before calling on Miss Ava Lamb at her hotel.

However, she was not at home. The Duke protested. Even so, she was not at home. The Duke felt rebuked for not having conformed to the decencies of divorce so far as to wait twenty-four hours; and in all humility he returned the next day.

However, she was not at home. The Duke pleaded. Even so, she was not at home; for, her maid said, she was resting before the ardours of the night journey to Cherbourg, whence she would embark for New York. The Duke scarce awaited the end of the astounding news. Miss Lamb was lying down. Calm and cold, she said:

“What does this mean, Duke? How dare you force yourself on me like this?”

Fair, tall, intent, the Duke further dared her displeasure by raising her unwilling hand to his lips. Twilight filled the room. Outside, the motors raced across the Place Vendôme. The Duke said:

“I have dared everything on this one throw. Ava, I love you.”

Miss Lamb said to her maid, “Go,” and she went.

The Duke smiled unsteadily, saying: “Well? Ava, what have you to say?”

Where she lay on her couch in the dusk, her face was like a pale white flower. But he could not see her eyes, because they were closed. The dress she wore was black. The hand that lay outstretched on her black dress was as soft as a temptation, and he said: “I have a ring for that hand that has not its peer in the world. I love you. Ava, will you marry me?”

He could not see her eyes, because they were closed. But still the dusk lacked the courage to steal the red from her mouth, and the Duke saw that her mouth was parted in a queer sad smile.

“Why do you smile?” he whispered, and he said unsteadily: “I know why. You do not believe I love you, you do not believe I know how to love, you think me the shallow, vain braggart that I have shown to you in the guise of myself until this moment. But I love you, Ava, more than life. I love you, Ava, with all the youthful love I had for your sister increased a thousandfold by the knowledge I now have of myself: for it is by loving that men come to know themselves, and it is by knowing themselves in all humility that men can love with the depths of their hearts. Ava, I do love you terribly! Won’t you speak, won’t you say one word, do you disdain my love so utterly as that? Yet I can’t blame you, for I have spent my life in proving that my love is despicable. I have been proud, pitiless, impious. I am soiled. But, Ava, even a fool may come to know the depths of his folly; and I who know so much of desire, dearly beloved, know that I have never loved until this moment. Still you won’t speak? Ava, I did not think you so ungenerous when in my vanity I first fell under your gentle enchantment. Dear, your silence is destroying all of me but my love. Won’t you give me even so much as a queen will give a beggar, that, had he been another man in another world, he might have kissed her hand?”

Now night had extinguished all but the last tapers of twilight, and in the dark silence the maid whispered to his ear: “Your Grace, she is asleep.”

VII

The Duke told his chauffeur outside Miss Lamb’s hotel that he would not need him again that evening, he would walk. But he had not walked above a dozen yards across the Place Vendôme, regardless of his direction, regardless of the traffic, when the breathless voice of his valet detained him. Stormily the Duke swung about.

“This telegram,” the valet panted, “came the minute after you had left this afternoon. I feared, your Grace, it might be important, and took the liberty to follow you.”

The Duke’s face paled as he read. The telegram was from the hall-porter of his club in St. James’s Street. The valet, an old servant, was concerned at his master’s pale looks: but he was even more concerned at the sudden smile that twisted them.

“I hope I did right, your Grace.”

“Quite right, Martin.” And suddenly the young Duke smiled a happy smile. “You have brought me this wire at just the right moment. I can’t, Martin, thank you enough. Meanwhile, old friend, go back and pack. Everything. We are for Mall to-night. Paris is no place for an Englishman to die in. For pity’s sake, Martin, don’t look so _gaga_--but go!”

Miss Lamb’s maid did not attempt to conceal her surprise at the Duke’s quick reappearance at the door of the suite. But the young man’s face was so strangely set that she had not the heart to deny him sight of her mistress.

“I’ll be,” she sighed, “dismissed!”

The Duke smiled, and maybe he never was so handsome nor so gay as at that moment.

The maid said: “My mistress still sleeps. It is when she is happy that she sleeps.”

“Happy? Does it make a woman happy, then, to see a man destroyed by love?”

“It is more comfortable, your Grace, to be loved than to love. But I know nothing of my mistress’s heart. I came to her service only the other day. Yes, she is asleep. And the room is dark.”

The Duke said: “Good! This is indeed my lucky day.”

“I leave you, your Grace. And if I am dismissed?”

“I count you as my friend. I do not forget my friends. Leave me now.”

But a few minutes before he had left that room in a storm of rage. Now, a great peace was on him. He let the minutes pass by, standing there in the soft darkness, a man condemned to death. His life behind him lay like a soiled wilderness through which smirked and pirouetted an unclean travesty of himself. The gates of death looked to him clean and beautiful. He did not wish his life had been otherwise: he regretted not a minute of waste, not one inconstancy, not one folly: he regretted not a strand that had gone to the making of the mad silly tapestry of his life, he was glad that all had been as it had been so that he could now be as he was, a man who understood himself and could die with a heart cleansed of folly and sacred to love.

To the windows of the quiet dark room rose the chatter of the lounging traffic of the Place Vendôme. The Duke listened, and smiled. Brown eyes and scarlet lips, blue eyes and scarlet lips, black hair and golden hair and tawny hair, lazy smile and merry smile and greedy smile and bored smile, little breathless laughs, little meaningless laughs and sharp cries of pleasure, dresses of Chanel, Patou, Vionnet, Molyneux--round and round the Place Vendôme they went, like automata on a bejewelled merry-go-round. And the Duke saw himself sitting in motor-cars first beside one and then beside another, talking, talking, whispering, sighing, yawning....

As the minutes passed his sight began to distinguish the objects in the room. On a table some roses were fainting in a bowl. He made obeisance and kissed a rose, for kissing a rose will clean a man’s lips. Then he knelt beside the still figure on the couch and he kissed her mouth.

“Oh!” she cried, and she cried: “You thief!”

He said: “Your voice is so cold that ice would seem like fire beside it. But I don’t care.” And again he kissed her mouth. Then he said: “Your lips are burning. That is very odd. Your voice is very cold, but your lips are burning. Now why is that?”

“For shame,” she whispered. “They are burning for shame that you are so little of a man.”

He laughed, his lips by her ear. “Beloved, do you think I would die without kissing your lips? Honestly, beloved, could you expect it?”

In the darkness he could just see the pale mask of her face and the shining, savage pools of her eyes, and he kissed first one and then the other. She was very still.

“Die?” she whispered.

He would have laughed again, but he fancied that maybe too much laughter would not become his situation, would appear like bravado. But he would have liked to show her he was happy, and why he was happy. A vain man, he had realised that he was contemptible: therefore it was good to die. Loving as he had never loved before, he was unloved: therefore it was good to die.

He told her how he had been warned that the cock on St. James’s tower had crowed thrice that dawn. And then he was amazed, for as he made to rise he could not. He cried out his wonder.

She said: “Be still!”

He cried out his despair.

She whispered: “Be still!”

Her arm was tight about his shoulder, and that was why his happiness had left him like a startled bird. He sobbed: “Child, for pity’s sake! It’s too late now. Let me die in peace. To have died without your love was blessedly easy. A moment ago I was happy.”

“Die! You!” And, as she mocked him thus, the cold irony of the English tongue tore aside the veil of the American accent, and when the Duke stared into her eyes he had leapt up and run away for shame but that her arm was still tight about his shoulder.

“You, Leonora, you! And so you have revenged yourself!”

She whispered: “Be still!”

And as he made to tear himself away, she said: “Yes, I wanted to be revenged. I wanted you to fall in love with me. I wanted you to look a fool.”

“Then you must be very content, Leonora! Let me go now.”

“Let you go?” she cried. “Let you _go_! But are you mad!”

“Oh, God,” he said pitifully, “what is this new mockery!”

“You see,” she sighed, “I’ve gone and fallen in love with you again! That rather takes the edge off my joke, doesn’t it? Oh, dear! Maximilian, I have waited to love you as I love you now ever since I married you four years ago. But you never would let me. Be honest, sweet--would you ever let me love you? You were always the world’s spoilt darling, the brilliant and dashing and wealthy Duke of Mall--and I your American wife! Darling, what a lot of trouble you give those who love you! I have had to go through all the bother of divorcing you to make you love me, and now I suppose I must go through all the bother of marrying you again because you’ve made me love you----”

“Oh, but listen!” he made to protest.

“I certainly won’t!” she cried. “I must say, though, that you’ve made love to me divinely these last few months, and the real Ava would have fallen for you, I’m sure, if she hadn’t been in California all this while. I dyed my hair a little, but the only real difference between me and your wife was that I listened to you while you talked about yourself. Darling,” said she, “kiss me, else how shall I know that we are engaged to be married?”

He said desperately: “Leonora, what are you saying! Do you forget that I am to die?”

“Not you, not you! You may be divorced for the time being, poor Maximilian, but you’re not nearly dead yet. I sent that wire myself this morning from Victoria Station--to mark the fact that the Duke of Mall is dead! Long live the Duke of Mall!”

“Leonora, I can’t bear this happiness!”

“But you must learn to put up with it, sweet!”

“Leonora, how divine it is to be in love! I love you, Leonora!”

“My, how this British guy mocks a poor American girl!”

“But, Leonora, I adore you!”

“Words, words, words! Whereas, sweet, a little action would not come amiss. You might for instance, kiss me. Max, how I’ve longed to be kissed by you these last few months! Max darling, please kiss me at once! I assure you it is quite usual between engaged couples.”

NOTE: _The legend of the Dukedom of Mall may not find a full measure of credence owing to the fact_ (_only recently pointed out to the author_) _that the weather-vane on the tower of St. James’s Palace is adorned, not by a golden cock, but by a golden arrow. But have we not been warned in letters of gold, that shall last so long as mankind lasts, not to put our faith in the word of Princes? The author does in all humility venture to suggest that the same must undoubtedly apply also to the word of Dukes._

VII: THE REVOLTING DOOM OF A GENTLEMAN WHO WOULD NOT DANCE WITH HIS WIFE

I

There is a tale that is told in London, and maybe it is told also in the _salons_ of New York and upon the Boulevards of Paris, how one night a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square and how that song was of a doubtful character calculated to provoke disorder in households brought up in the fear of God. Needless to say, there are not wanting those who will have it that no nightingale could have done such a thing; nor has the meanness of envy ever been so clearly shown as by those who have suborned certain bird-fanciers into declaring that the nightingale is a bird notably averse from singing in squares and that the legend should therefore be deleted from the folk-tales of Mayfair. But, however that may be, the song of the nightingale is far from being the burden of this tale, which has to do in a general way with a plague of owls, in a particular way with one owl, and in a most particular way with the revolting doom of a gentleman who would not dance with his wife. Many will hold, in extenuation of his disagreeable attitude, that he could not dance. But could he not have taken a lesson or two?

Now of the many and divers people who saw the owls in flight we need mention only policemen, statesmen, ’bus-drivers, noblemen, Colonials and hawkers, to be convinced of the truth of what they one and all say, how in the gloom of a certain summer’s twilight not long ago there flew a plague of owls across Trafalgar Square towards the polite heights of Hampstead Heath. Maybe no one would have remarked them, for the strange cries and hootings with which they adorned their flight were not discordant with the noises of the town, had not the pigeons that play about Lord Nelson’s monument fled before them with affrighted coos; and in such an extremity of terror were the timid creatures that very few were ever seen in those parts again, which is a sad thing to relate.

Nor can any man speak with any certainty as to the exact number of the owls, for the twilight was deep and the phenomenon sudden; but one and all need no encouragement to vouch for their prodigious multitude: while the fact that they appeared to be flying from the direction of Whitehall at the impulse of a peculiar indignation has given rise among the lower people to a superstition of the sort that is perhaps pardonable in those who have not had the benefits of a public-school education. These simples declare that the owls, for long peacefully asleep within the gloomy recesses unrecognisable to the feathered intelligence as the austere House of Lords, had been startled from their rest by the activities of the new Labour Government as revealed in that patrician place by the agile incendiarism of my Lords Haldane and Parmoor, and had in one body fled forth to seek a land wherein a Conservative Government would afford them the lulling qualities necessary for their rest.

The serious historian, however, is concerned only with facts. The plague of owls fled no one knows whither, although superstition points to Italy. But this much is known, that whilst crossing the brilliant centre of Piccadilly Circus one among them swooped down from the twilight and perched on the left wing of the figure of Eros:[A] which, presented to the nation by one of the Earls of Shaftesbury, adorns the head of the charming fountain where old women will sell pretty flowers to anyone who will buy, roses in summer and roses in winter, roses by day and roses by night, or maybe a bunch of violets for a young lady, a gardenia for a gentleman of the mode.

[A] Almost immediately after the publication of this tale in a magazine, the figure of Eros was removed from Piccadilly Circus. It has been generally supposed that, to effect this removal, pressure was brought to bear on the London County Council by gentlemen-who-will-not-dance-with-their-wives, whose name, alas, is legion.

Now why that one owl separated itself from its fellows for no other apparent reason than to perch on the left wing of Lord Shaftesbury’s Eros has hitherto been a mystery to the man in the street, who was at the time present in considerable numbers reading _The Evening News_ and discussing the probable circulation the next morning of _The Daily Mail_. The owl rested on its perch most silently: nor did it once give the least sign of any perturbation at the din of the marching hosts of Piccadilly Circus, and this for the space of one hour and eighteen minutes: when it hooted thrice with marvellous dolour and fled, to be lost almost on the instant among the lofty shadows of the Regent’s Palace Hotel.

It has to be told that the cry of the owl on the fountain served three purposes, which the historian can best arrange in ascending degrees of abomination with the help of the letters a, b and c: (a) it struck such terror into the vitals of an inoffensive young gentleman of the name of Dunn that he has never been the same man since; (b) it was the death-knell of a gentle and beautiful lady; and (c) the herald of approaching doom to a lord. May they rest in peace, for we are all of us miserable sinners and only very few of us are allowed to get away with it.

II

In the dining-room of a great house in Carlton House Terrace three persons sat at meat. They made, against the spacious simplicities of great wealth and good taste, an austere picture in black and white. Reading from left to right they were my lord the Marquess of Vest, his delightful lady, and Mr. Dunn, private secretary to my lord.

They made a silent company. Lord Vest was never of a very talkative habit: my lady was always very gentle, and did her best to please him on all occasions: while Mr. Dunn’s duties did not embrace speaking unless he was spoken to.

Eight candles in tall candlesticks of ancient silver played their timid light upon the polished surface of the wide table; and in the calm air of the summer evening the flames of the candles were so still that a fanciful eye might have charged them with the beauty of flowers of twilight. Young Mr. Dunn’s was a fanciful eye, but to him they appeared to be as poppies of the night; for the poppy is an evil flower.

The curtains were not drawn across the windows, that Lord Vest might lose nothing of the sweet evening air, which he always held to be good for him until it gave him a cold in the head. Over his employer’s shoulder Mr. Dunn could see the lights of the Mall glowing against the dark tapestry of St. James’s Park. To the left, twilight draped the Horse Guards and the great buildings of Government, whence, had Mr. Dunn only known, the owls were at that moment fleeing on their ominous business. To the right, night fought with day for the honour of shrouding the palace of the King of England, who is also Emperor of India and Protector of the Faith, which some people nowadays seem inclined to forget. Great automobiles would every now and then pass to and fro between the noble trees that delight those who have the leisure to walk about the avenue of the Mall.

Mr. Dunn would have found it, at that moment, very agreeable to be walking about the avenue of the Mall. Mr. Dunn would, in point of fact, have parted with money to exchange places with the meanest walker in London; for the situation of private secretary to a lord is not always what the well-informed call a sinecure. Mr. Dunn was just thinking how nice it would be to have a sinecure, whatever it might be, when the second butler winked at him. The second butler thought the whole affair very funny, and the silence very funny indeed. The second butler thought he knew everything. Mr. Dunn made a mental note to the effect that he must not forget, immediately after dinner, to tell the second butler that he was an ass. That is if he, Mr. Dunn, was alive.