Part 13

Now for Lord Vest, so much has been written of the early beginnings of that powerful and ill-fated nobleman that it would be impertinent, at this hour, to give more than a broad outline of his life. Mr. Justinian Pant was an Australian gentleman of great fortune who had in the past decade been raised to a baronetcy (Sir Justinian Pant, Bart.), a barony (Lord Pant of Warboys, in the county of Huntingdonshire), a viscounty (Viscount Pant of Warboys), an earldom (the Earl of Cowden, in the county of Sussex) and a marquisate (the Marquess of Vest, in the county of Cornwall) for services to the State. The bulletin announcing his last ennoblement had been welcomed by all England with every appearance of pleasure and gratification: that is, if one can judge by the newspapers of the day: as, of course, one can. The mere fact that the barony of Warboys, the earldom of Cowden, and the marquisate of Vest, were welcomed far otherwise by the newspapers of Australia gave the envious grounds for saying that the newspapers of England were prejudiced in the great man’s favour for the reason that he owned most of them: which is tantamount to saying that the glorious press of England is not free, an insinuation that one cannot deign to answer but with a dignified silence.

Of the early activities in Australia of Justinian Pant little of a definite nature is known. The Australian papers, at the time of Mr. Pant’s first elevation to the peerage, were rife with information on the subject, but the voice of envy is ever loud; and one, an Adelaide society journal, was so far lacking in the respect due to the mother-country as to belittle the English peerage by saying that the lord in question would no doubt make a very good lord, as lords go, but only so long as he did not go back to Australia, where there was a warrant out for his arrest on a charge of petty larceny while employed as a bell-boy in a First-Class Family Hotel in Melbourne.

The tale of this man’s venture on London may entertain the curious and inspire the ambitious, for it tells how one evening fifteen years ago Justinian Pant stood in Piccadilly Circus, wondering what he would do next. Starvation was indicated, for in his pocket there was only one penny. And he was about to send up a prayer to God for guidance when he was distracted by falling into conversation with an old native of the Circus, from whom he was amazed to learn that the old man had expected his coming and had been awaiting him for some time with impatience.

Mr. Pant was not yet a master of men and could therefore afford to show surprise, which he did after the Colonial manner by swearing through his nose and whistling between his teeth. Whereupon the ancient man confessed to being a soothsayer and told how it had been revealed to him in a dream that a young man with a face similar in every detail to the face of Mr. Pant, which was of a somewhat unusual shape, would one night come into Piccadilly Circus from Australia and give him, the soothsayer, the sum of one pound in cash, and how from that moment the Australian would rise with remarkable velocity to be the greatest Force in England.

Justinian Pant was not unwilling to be a Force, and asked eagerly for more precise information as to the steps to be taken: adding that he had only one penny on him, but would be pleased to owe the old gentleman the small sum of nineteen shillings and eleven pence.

“Buy an evening paper and look at the advertisements,” said the ancient man, for he earned his living by the sale of evening papers. And whilst the Australian reluctantly exchanged his last penny for an evening paper, the old soothsayer spat into the gutter and said harshly:

“Justinian Pant, you will be a Force. You will be a Napoleon. You will be a lord. You will make wars, unmake Parliaments, shuffle Cabinets and reshuffle Cabinets. You will be the first person in the world to discover how to make the maximum amount of money out of the execution of a murderer. You will give away your dearest friends on all occasions of possible profit, while standing by them through thick and thin when nothing is to be gained by standing anywhere else. You will be as a thorn in the sides of upright men, and as a bastinado upon the behinds of those who are down. You will be successful in all things; and honours shall shower upon you like gold on a commercial traveller selling beer by the yard. You will marry a lady of quality, and be an honourary member of the most exclusive night-clubs. You will love your wife, after your fashion. You will be jealous of her, after your fashion. And you will forget to pay me the sum of nineteen shillings and eleven pence which you owe me. For that reason, as also because all things must have an end, whether it is the might of Empires or the beneficial effects of alcohol--even, Justinian Pant, as the first news of your high destiny comes to you in Piccadilly Circus, so the first knell of your awful doom will be cried by a bird of wise omen that will perch on the left wing of the Eros on the fountain over yonder. So it is written. I have spoken.” And the ancient man disappeared among the crowds by the Underground Station, leaving Justinian Pant to gape at a copy of the evening paper of the night before last.

Nor did the contents of the days that followed put an end to his astonishment; for as it was written, so it happened, even to the lady of quality for a wife, whom Lord Vest loved violently. Young Mr. Dunn appears, however, to have been an afterthought in the nobleman’s destiny. How much rather young Mr. Dunn had remained forever unthought of! But it is written that every cloud is full of rain and it is no use crying into spilled milk when you have a handkerchief.

III

The silence was unnerving the young private secretary; and he was trying, with the utmost care, to peel a nut before he realised that one does not and cannot peel a nut. The second butler was vulgar enough to wink at him again. The second butler was a low fellow who had been at Eton with Mr. Dunn and despised Mr. Dunn for not having gone up in the world.

At last Lady Vest made to rise from the table, and spoke for the first time since she had sat down.

“I will leave you,” said she, “to your coffee.”

“You will stay,” said my lord, “exactly where you are.” And he smiled in an unpleasant way all his own which showed his false teeth, and at sight of which the menials at once left the room. Another long and heavy silence fell, so that Mr. Dunn cursed the day he was born. Outside, night had fallen.

“I am to gather,” said Lord Vest, with a smile, to his wife, “that this Dunn person is your lover?”

The young private secretary put down his unpeeled nut. He was afraid, but was he not a gentleman? Mr. Dunn was a cadet of a noble but impoverished house, and it was not in vain that he had spent nine years at Eton and Oxford to no other end than to know the difference between a cad and a gentleman.

“Look here, sir,” said Mr. Dunn, “that’s a bit much. I mean, it’s going too far. I’ll stand a good deal and all that, but I will not stand for a lady being insulted before my face. You will receive my resignation in the morning, Lord Vest. In the meanwhile, I’m off.”

Mr. Dunn was undeniably furious. The Napoleon of the Press was not, however, without a sense of humour: so, at least, his papers would now and then confess rather shyly, hinting that the manly laughter of Lord Vest must come as a solace to God for the press of His business elsewhere that compelled Him to give Lord Vest the vice-royalty of this earth. He laughed now. He laughed alone.

“Gently, Mr. Dunn, gently!” he laughed, and his voice was of a courteous balance surprising in one of his rugged appearance: nor had he any trace of that accent which by ordinary adorns the speech of our Australian cousins. “That you will be leaving my employment more or less at once,” he continued playfully, “is, I am afraid, self-evident. And that you will find any other employment in England in the course of, I hope, a long life, is exceedingly improbable, for I shall make it my business, Mr. Dunn, to have you hounded out of the country; and I have, I need scarcely remind you, more experience of hounding people out of countries than perhaps any other man in England. But I don’t think, Mr. Dunn, that I can allow you to leave this house for another half-an-hour or so. For I have something to say to you.” And Lord Vest smiled at Mr. Dunn. He was a much bigger man than Mr. Dunn, and he was between Mr. Dunn and the door.

It was at that moment that my lady raised her voice. She wore always a sad, brave dignity, always she was a quiet lady; but in her voice now, as her eyes rested very calmly on the sneering face of her husband, the very landscape of England might have been quivering. She did not conceal from his lordship that the reason for this quivering was a profound distaste for his person, manners and conversation.

“I did not think,” said she, “that any man could say so base a thing on such flimsy provocation. The fact that in spite of your childish prejudice against dancing (which I sincerely hope is not shared by all the natives of Australia) Mr. Dunn has been kind enough to dance with me----”

“You call that dancing?” smiled my lord. “Oh, do you! I may seem very uncivilised, Pamela, but to me it seemed more like making love. Am I right, Mr. Dunn?”

“You are not,” said Mr. Dunn with a dignity which would have surprised his mother. “Any man who sneers as you are sneering at the moment, Lord Vest, must be in the wrong about everything. You cannot be in the right, sir, with a poisonous voice like that. I am Lady Vest’s very humble admirer and, I hope, friend----”

“Friendship, Mr. Dunn, can wear strange shapes. Friendship, my dear Mr. Dunn, can be the outward label of infidelity. Am I right, Pamela?”

“Mr. Dunn,” said Lady Vest with flushed cheeks, “you will be doing me a very great favour by overlooking my husband’s behaviour this evening. Justinian,” she turned to her husband with a high look, “I knew I was married to a megalomaniac. But I did not realise I was married to a madman. I insist on retiring now; and would advise Mr. Dunn to do the same.”

“And I,” shouted Lord Vest, “insist on your staying where you are; and would advise Mr. Dunn to do the same. Do you understand? And you, my good young man?”

Mr. Dunn could not help but pretend to understand, while awaiting developments. He was dismayed by the violence of dislike on the nobleman’s colonial face as he turned it to his wife, the gentle lady, a picture of outraged innocence, of appalled decorum, her great blue eyes swept with astonished distaste, her sweet sad face white with sudden fear. For my Lord Vest was not smiling now.

Mr. Dunn revealed at the enquiry which later sat on these affairs that it was at that moment he first realised that his lordship was mad. But his madness, said Mr. Dunn, wore so sane, so coherent a habit, that a chap couldn’t but mistrust his fleeting, if well-grounded, suspicion; and even in the very second of his dashing frantically past Lord Vest to the door, which the second butler, being conveniently situated nearby in a curved position, held closed for him on the outside while he made his escape from the house, you couldn’t be certain, said Mr. Dunn, whether the nobleman’s roar of baffled rage was not more than that of one cheated of the entertainment of a repulsive jest than that of a chap mortified to the point of lunacy. For his employer, said Mr. Dunn warmly, was ever a gentleman with a partiality for making jests of a kind which, Mr. Dunn indignantly supposed, might be considered laughter-provoking on the Australian veldt, bush, or prairie, but were certainly not the thing in England.

The plain truth of the matter is, as you can see when shorn of Mr. Dunn’s naïve observations, that Mr. Dunn turned tail and fled. In the graphic words of Lord Tarlyon, who was among the Commission of Peers who sat to enquire into the Vest affair, Mr. Dunn, awaiting his opportunity with an eagerness worthy of a braver purpose, jumped up from his chair like a scalded cat and, muttering something about a dog, ran out of that house like a bat out of hell.

IV

He was, however, no sooner out of the house, the lofty stone hall of which had always impressed Mr. Dunn’s fanciful eye as being like a “holocaust”--by which he meant “mausoleum,” for Mr. Dunn had received the education proper to an English gentleman, and one can’t know everything--when he was sensible of a peculiar, unhomely feeling within his person; which he was not long in recognising as the prickings of his conscience, a disorder by which he was seldom assailed, for Mr. Dunn was a good young man.

His thoughts, never profound but frequently vivid, quickly passed beyond his control. He thought of the lady on whom he had brought such cruel discomfiture. He saw her again as she sat at the table, her great blue eyes swept with astonished distaste, her sweet sad face white with sudden fear, whilst her husband sneered at her exquisite breeding as though all the seven devils were dancing on his poisoned antipodean tongue.

“And all, dear God,” frantically thought Mr. Dunn, “about absolutely nothing!”

For let us at once state frankly, and once and for all, that there was absolutely nothing between Mr. Dunn and Lady Vest. Mr. Dunn was a man of honour. While the Lady Vest was a lady of noble birth and fastidious habits, to whom the idea of the smallest infidelity must necessarily be repellent to a degree far beyond the soiled understanding of those society novelists who write sensationally about the state of inconstancy prevalent among people of condition.

Among her high-minded habits, however, Lady Vest had always included, until her marriage to Lord Vest, the inoffensive distraction of dancing, at which she was notably graceful. But Lord Vest had revealed, on the very night of his marriage, the fact that he could not dance; had excused his disgusting reticence on that point until it was too late for her to change her mind on the ground of his love for her; which was so great, he had protested, that he did not know what he would do should he ever discover her dancing with any man; adding that in the frenzy of such a discovery he would not care to take long odds against the probability of his strangling her; so dark were the obsessions that clouded the Australian nobleman’s mind.

Until the recent engagement of Mr. Dunn as his lordship’s private secretary Lady Vest had not so much as wavered from the letter of her promise to her husband, that she would dance nevermore. But chancing one afternoon on Mr. Dunn in the neighbourhood of Bond Street, and Mr. Dunn happening to say that he was partial to dancing, Lady Vest had, as though in a flash, realised the narrow tyranny of her husband’s prohibition, and had acceded to Mr. Dunn’s request that she should take a turn with him round the floor of a neighbouring dance-club.

The path of temptation is sweet to tread, and the air about it is fragrant with the lovely scents of forbidden flowers. Never once did Lady Vest and Mr. Dunn waver from the exercise of those formalities that are bred in the bone of the county families of England and come as naturally to the meanest cadet of the landed gentry as writing good plays to a dramatic critic: she was ever Lady Vest to him, he Mr. Dunn to her; but insensibly they fell into the habit of dancing a while every afternoon (except, of course, on Sundays), and had come to no harm whatsoever, but had rather gained in the way of exercise, had it not been for the fact that the monstrous suspicions of my lord were never at rest.

For, to their indignant amazement, Lord Vest had informed them just before dinner on the night we tell of that he had for some time past been having his lady watched by detectives; that he was fully informed of their goings-on; and was now awaiting dinner with some impatience, for after dinner he was prepared, he said, to be very interested to hear what steps they, his lady and Mr. Dunn, were going to take about it.

And it was at that moment before dinner that Mr. Dunn had first decided that he, for his part, would prefer to take steps of a purely material nature, and those in a direction opposite from any that Lord Vest might be treading at that moment. Nor was he in any way weakened in his decision when Lord Vest, whilst pressing on Mr. Dunn a second cocktail--so that, said my lord, Mr. Dunn should have no excuse for not enjoying a dinner that promised to be very entertaining in the way of table-talk, in which Mr. Dunn as a rule excelled--related how he had that afternoon suborned the saxophone player in the orchestra of the dance-club into allowing him, his lordship, to take the man’s place; and therefore had had, whilst emitting to the best of his ability those screams and noises that are expected of a saxophone player, an unrivalled opportunity of judging whether his lady and Mr. Dunn were proficient in those offensive irregularities of the legs, hips, and teeth which, said my lord crudely, were dignified with the name of dancing.

Mr. Dunn had then sworn at his luck, which never had been but rotten; for on this afternoon of all he had taken the liberty to introduce Lady Vest to certain movements recently imported from the Americas; and he had no doubt but that the instruction of those quite delightful and original movements might have appeared, to one playing the saxophone in a hostile frame of mind, compromising to a degree.

Such thoughts as these, before and during dinner, had confirmed Mr. Dunn in his decision to take the steps already referred to at the earliest possible moment. Nor can we really blame the poor young gentleman: the occasion was decidedly domestic: Mr. Dunn was in a cruelly false position: and the degraded mentality of his lordship was never less amenable to polite argument than on that fateful night.

Yet, now that he had taken them, now that he stood beneath the trees on the other side of Carlton House Terrace and stared at the great house from which he had but a moment before fled like a poltroon, he discovered within himself a profound repugnance for his, Mr. Dunn’s, person. The picture of the gentle lady, on whom his innocent partiality for the latest movements in dancing had brought this discomfiture, preyed on his mind; the wrath of his lordship must by now, thought Mr. Dunn, have been confined within reasonable limits; and, with set face and determined mind, he was again approaching the house when its great doors were flung open and the second butler, with a look of agonised fear on his low face, was hurled forth by Lord Vest into the night. Mr. Dunn fled.

V

Nor did he abate his pace so much as to take breath until he was some distance up that stretch of Regent Street which sweeps nobly upwards to meet Piccadilly Circus at a point marked by the imperious façade of the new Criterion Restaurant; and he was in the very act of passing a handkerchief over his deranged forehead when from behind him he was startled to hear a low cry:

“Mr. Dunn! Mr. Dunn!”

“Good God!” said he, swinging about. “And thank God! For at least you are safe!”

For there by his elbow, prettily panting for breath, was my lady; and never did she look to a manly eye so fragile and gentle, for she was enwrapped in the fairy elegance of a cloak of white ermine.

“Oh,” she sighed softly, “and I did so want to dance once again! Just once again!”

“But what happened? The man is mad!” cried Mr. Dunn. “Did you soothe him, Lady Vest? Did he see the absurdity of his suspicions, did he apologise for his behaviour?”

But it was as though the lady was not heeding his words. As they made to walk on up Regent Street she smiled absently into his concerned face and sighed: “And, oh, I did so want to dance with you just once again! But just imagine my indiscretion, running after you like this! and all because of my overpowering desire to dance with you once again. It will not occur again, I promise you, Mr. Dunn. But, oh, just to do those new movements of the Blues once again!”

“Dear Lady Vest,” said Mr. Dunn sincerely, “there is nothing I would enjoy more. Besides, it will soothe us. See, here we are at the doors of the Criterion, where, I am told, one may dance with comfort and propriety. But won’t you tell me first about the issue of Lord Vest’s temper? He was very angry? And you soothed him?”

“Oh, yes, yes! I soothed him, indeed. Look, Mr. Dunn! Oh, look! There is an owl perched on the fountain yonder, on the left wing of Eros! Just fancy, Mr. Dunn, an owl! Did you ever hear of such a thing!”

“Holy smoke, you’re right!” said Mr. Dunn. “An owl, or I’m a Dutchman! There’s never been an owl there before, that I’ll swear.”

“See,” cried Lady Vest with a strange exaltation, “see, it is staring at us! Mr. Dunn, do you know what that owl, a bird of wise omen, means? Can you imagine, Mr. Dunn! It means the doom of my lord. And what a doom!”

“Holy smoke!” said Mr. Dunn, starting back from her. “Lady Vest, you haven’t--you haven’t kil----”

“Listen, Mr. Dunn!” And she held him by the arm, looking into his eyes with sweet, sad dignity, whilst all about them passed the gay crowds that love to throng Piccadilly Circus, and the electric advertisements lit the scene with a festive glamour; nor ever did the owl stir from its station on the fountain.

“Listen, Mr. Dunn! When you had made your escape, my husband revealed the true state of his mind by drawing a revolver. He was mad. I did not know what to do. I screamed, and on the second butler’s rushing into the room without knocking on the door the poor fellow was hurled from the house. But in the meanwhile I had managed to grab hold of the revolver. What could I do, Mr. Dunn? I ask you, what could I do?”

“Holy smoke!” said Mr. Dunn. “I don’t know. But----”

“The madman advanced on me. His face livid, his eyes mad, and his hands arranged before him in such a way as to leave one no room to doubt that his immediate intention was to strangle me. I threatened to fire. Can you, can anyone, blame me? Was I wrong, may one not defend one’s life?”

“Holy smoke!” said Mr. Dunn. “Certainly. But----”

“My threat to fire did not discommode his mad approach. I kept on making it. But did he stop?”

“Did he?” gasped Mr. Dunn.

“Mr. Dunn, he did not. I fired.”

“You didn’t!” said Mr. Dunn.

“I did,” said my lady.

“But holy smoke!” cried Mr. Dunn. “You killed him!”

“No,” she whispered sadly. “I missed. Mr. Dunn, he killed me.”

And it was at that moment, even as the phantom of the unfortunate lady faded before his eyes and Mr. Dunn let out an appalling yell, that the owl on the fountain hooted thrice with marvellous dolour and fled, to be lost almost on the instant among the lofty shadows of the Regent’s Palace Hotel.

Amateurs of history and students of privilege should note that additional point is lent to this already interesting chronicle by the fact that the late Lord Vest was the first Australian marquess to be hanged by the neck in the year of grace 1924. A vast concourse attended outside the prison gates on the morning of the execution, some of whom were photographed by pressmen in the act of gnashing their teeth, which is to be explained by the fact that they had brought their breakfast with them in the form of sandwiches. The executioners were Lovelace, Lovibond and Lazarus. The drop given was sixteen feet. The criminal died unrepentant, thus denying his soul the grace of salvation and directing it with terrible velocity and unerring aim to the fires of eternal damnation, where he will no doubt continue to burn miserably as a warning for all time to gentlemen who will not dance with their wives.

VIII: THE GENTLEMAN FROM AMERICA

I