Part 6

“One day I borrowed a sum of money from him. He, poor boy, was so absorbed in his happiness that he scarcely noticed the third zero which, having seen how readily he had already attached two, I persuaded him to add to the primary numeral on the cheque. Whereupon, with his full permission, and a thousand pounds of his money, I prepared to make myself agreeable to his _fiancée_.

“He trusted me implicitly, that boy. And who,” Mr. Maturin asked dreamily of the middle distance, “who will tell the tale of the ramifications and subtleties and intrigues of the next few weeks, how I used every art on that beautiful girl, how she came to believe in my love for her--and maybe I believed in it myself--how she came to look wearily on the honest but plain features of her _fiancé_, how she came to suffer his inarticulate periods with a doubtful smile; and how finally--though he had long since ceased to whistle the _Spring Song_--she broke her engagement to him, and had certainly become my wife but that I was at about that time expelled from the Brigade and was never, until quite lately, a marrying man. That is all; and, I think,” said Beau Maturin softly, looking round at the chair which had until a moment ago been occupied by the figure of Joan de Gramercy, “quite enough.”

Sir Guy was silent: his thin long hands clasped nervously together on the surface of the writing-table, he stared fixedly at a point on the carpet. Mrs. de Gramercy was silent. Mr. Maturin examined, for quite a while, the points of his shoes. At last he murmured: “Well....”

Sir Guy said, as though to himself: “That was a very dreadful story.”

“Wasn’t it!” Mr. Maturin agreed gravely. “Well, good-night, Mrs. de Gramercy. Good-night, Sir Guy.” And he strode towards the distant shadows by the door.

“A moment!” the old gentleman seemed to awake. “Mr. Maturin, my daughter-in-law and I have to thank you. Good-bye.”

The tall shadow by the door, as though on the impulse of a sudden memory, seemed to touch the outside of his breast-pocket. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “I will, if you don’t mind, keep this bank-note. Your house owes it to me. Good-bye, good de Gramercys!”

Through the silence of the house the two heard the steps of Beau Maturin on the flags of the hall, the closing of the front-door, the faint echo of his passage down the square. Sir Guy was staring bemused at the still, distant figure of his daughter-in-law.

“What did he say, Eleanour? that our house owed him that money? What on earth did the man mean?”

“What he said,” the shadow whispered, and then it laughed, and old Sir Guy jumped from his chair with the queer shock of that laugh.

“Eleanour!”

As she came towards him he took her hands in his and looked intently down at her. Her eyes were very, very tired. She said: “I am very tired. I will go to bed now.”

Old Sir Guy held her hands very tenderly. “But what is on your mind, Eleanour? Why did you laugh in that dreadful way?”

She opened those tired eyes very wide. “Oh, surely, dear, I am allowed that--to laugh at your having called Beau Maturin the ace of cads!”

Old Sir Guy said sternly: “Yes, you are tired, Eleanour. You are not yourself.”

“Poor old gentleman!” she tenderly, bitterly, smiled up at him. “Poor old gentleman! Dear, like all your generation you have been wrong about everything in ours, but everything! Oh, you have been so wrong about what was good and what was rotten in young people! Wrong about your son, about me, about Beau Maturin----”

Sir Guy snapped with savage impatience: “You will kindly explain, Eleanour, what all this fantastic nonsense is about.”

“Of course,” she said thoughtfully, “there was a certain amount of excuse for your son Basil. I made it rather easy for him. You see, dear, Capel Maturin lied. As usual, you might say. Well, yes. He just told the story the wrong way round. You know, I was once engaged to be married to Mr. Maturin. And he introduced me to his best friend, Basil de Gramercy. Oh, dear, why did you give your son such a very small allowance? Whereas to be able to seduce his best friend’s _fiancée_ he needed money. But Capel Maturin had done very well on the Derby that year, and Basil easily managed to borrow a thousand from him, for no one, let’s face it, could ever call Beau Maturin mean with money. And one day Mr. Maturin, who used to whistle the _Spring Song_ to himself because he and I both loved it, suddenly found that I preferred Basil’s prospects to his good looks. I don’t suppose you can even yet realise, dear, the exquisite revenge that Mr. Maturin has had of me and of your house to-night. He intended, obviously, to marry my daughter: how, you might say, could I have borne that? But I tell you I could have borne it infinitely better than the memory of this night. Here I have sat, a faded woman, while Capel Maturin, fresher and more handsome in bankruptcy than ever I have been in success, having won my daughter’s love, killed it out of pity for you--Oh, not for me!--with a tale which, however he had told it, does me very little honour. And, for pity’s sake, for your sake, he spared you your son. I should not have told you now; I have done wrong, but I had to. Even the old, dear, cannot be allowed to be wrong about everything _all_ the time! But don’t look so sad! Why do you, why should you, look so sad? After all, the de Gramercys have had everything they ever wanted from me and my daughter--and the ace of cads certainly hasn’t! Good-night, dear.”

III: WHERE THE PIGEONS GO TO DIE

I

Now it is as much as their jobs are worth for the authorities responsible for the amenities of the town not to employ a man on the clear understanding that every once in a while he climbs to the very top of Lord Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square to cleanse away such refuse as might have collected about the immortal sailor’s feet. And it is to the good man who undertakes this perilous task that we owe a piece of information which cannot fail to interest gentles and simples. He tells how he never but finds numerous pigeons lying dead about the feet of our sailor hero. Sometimes there will be not more than a score or so, sometimes there may be close on an hundred, and he relates on oath how he once removed, in a bag which he takes up with him for that purpose, the bodies of pigeons to the number of one-hundred-and-thirty-four: among which, he tells with awe, there was the corpse of a pretty white dove.

That was on the evening of the first of May of the year of grace 1924, and the reason why the good man tells with awe of the dove among the pigeons is because it was on that very evening that he was vexed by a strange phenomenon. The facts may interest the curious.

The prodigious number of the dead pigeons had kept him at his task much later than usual; and as he picked up the dove he chanced to look up at Lord Nelson, who stood at that moment in the light and shadow of the sun as it set beyond Admiralty Arch, and the good man fancied that the stern face of my Lord Nelson frowned.

Unseemly though it is to doubt any man’s word, the sceptical sort may be permitted to question whether the fellow was at that moment seeing straight, and whether it was not the fanciful light of twilight that had set him thinking that Lord Nelson had indulged in a passing frown.

But to more kindly folk the good man’s fancy will not present such marvellous features when they know that it was on the evening of that first of May that Miss Pamela Wych came upon an event beneath Lord Nelson’s eyes that completely changed the course of her whole life.

II

The clear cool eyes of Miss Wych were clouded that spring evening. Miss Wych was thinking. All about her the London of Oxford Street marched and screamed and hooted, but Miss Wych walked unheeding, alone as a tulip in a wild garden. The London of Oxford Street was like a soiled silk handkerchief waving frantically to the evening sun but the genius of thought draped the young lithe figure with a rare calm dignity. Now Miss Wych was nearly always calm, for such was her nature. But she was not always dignified, for dignity comes very rarely to youth, dignity is a gentle blossom that grows with the years, and when dignity comes to youth it comes always unconsciously, it is fleeting, frail, sad. We are not speaking of the dignity of anger, but of the dignity of sorrow. Miss Wych was sad that evening.

All that day, whilst she was at her allotted tasks in the millinery department of Messrs. Come & Go, Miss Wych had been saying to herself: “I must think. I will think this evening. One doesn’t think nearly enough. I will think a lot this evening. I will walk home, thinking. I do hope it keeps fine.”

That is what Miss Wych had thought, for she was very conscientious in the fulfilment of her duties in the millinery department, and she always did her best not to intrude her private concerns into her service of Messrs. Come & Go. Not that either Mr. Come or Mr. Go could possibly have noticed it if she had, since her service was but an atom among the service of one thousand and five hundred _employées_; for Messrs. Come & Go’s was advertised as the largest store in London, and why should anyone doubt the verity of such beautiful advertisements as those of Messrs. Come & Go, which tell unceasingly of the divers bargains that can be bought for next to nothing by Mr. Everyman and Mrs. Everywoman merely by entering within and being smiled at affectionately by either Mr. Come or Mr. Go in person, and all delivered at Mr. Everyman’s door within twenty-four hours in plain motors. Anyone can see by their advertisements that Mr. Come and Mr. Go have got all other men beat on philanthropy, and how they manage to live at all is very puzzling, but no doubt they have private incomes of their own and don’t rely on making any money out of their store.

Miss Wych had never so much as set eyes on her great employers, but she would wonder a great deal about them, and she would wonder particularly about the great men’s youth. Now Miss Wych admired success above all things. Those clear cool eyes looked at life, this teeming chaotic life in which she was an atom of service, and as she looked at life a prince in shining armour of gold and sapphire stepped forth from the boiling ranks, brave with triumph, flaming with youth, indeed a very prince of princes. And the name of this prince was Success. That is how Miss Wych thought of success, like a glorious lover. She loved success, like a glorious lover. And once upon a time she had tried to win him for herself, Miss Wych had once tried her fortune on the stage, but unfortunately the glorious lover had looked very coldly on her, for, as the producer had said: “Miss Wych is a nice girl but a bum actress.”

The gentle circumstance of evening transmuted the trumpeting and soiled machines on the road into shining caravans, but never a glance at these wonders did Miss Wych give. Of the passers-by, one and all hurrying to the assault of tubes and omnibuses, maybe one here and there forfeited his place through looking twice at Miss Wych. Miss Wych was a very pretty girl. Her eyes were grey. Her nose would have looked absurd on anyone’s else face, because it was so small. Her face was as white as the moon.

Since she had made up her mind to walk to her boarding-house in South Kensington she did not join the people waiting for omnibuses at the corner of Marble Arch and Park Lane. They who had been in such haste a moment before now waited so quietly, so uneagerly, as though they didn’t care whether they were going home or not. The stillness of Park Lane seemed to Miss Wych very refreshing after the din of the panting hosts of Oxford Street. She walked in the broken shadows of the Park railings. A young man on a black horse cantered by, looking as though he had bought the world for tuppence and wanted his money back. Now and then an omnibus rolled by, rolled on, and on, and on, the red-and-white monster born of man’s divine gift for making his life intolerable. A young lady with a bright red hat in a little silver car tore by like a jewel in a hurry. Huge limousines sped, sped swiftly by, like shining insects whispering to Miss Wych of a grander world than the world of Miss Wych. The people in Hyde Park walked slowly to and fro listening to each other. When the sun lit their faces they looked brown and gold and copper-red, but otherwise they looked tired. Through the railings the sun fell in bars of gold about her feet and kissed the dark hair that waved over her ears, so that the dark hair shone in a way that was a wonder to behold. Miss Wych, of course, was always wishing that her hair was fair, but she was quite wrong about that. The thoughts of Miss Wych as she walked roughly: “The sun is sinking, if it only knew it, into Kensington Gardens. The sun is sinking, if it only knew it, into Kensington Gardens. The sun is....”

And a voice at her shoulder said:

“Excuse me! Please excuse me. I say, you _must_ excuse me!”

Miss Wych thought: “And such things can happen in sunlight! O our Father, why _won’t_ You watch Your world more carefully!”

III

Miss Wych walked on, in the broken shadows of the Park railings. And her eyes were turned to the sun, which did not know it was sinking into Kensington Gardens, for what else was there to look at? Then a bird flew across Park Lane and sat on a window-sill, and Miss Wych looked at that.

“Please,” said the voice at her shoulder. “You see, Miss Wych, I must. For I can’t bear it any more, honestly. Don’t be beastly to me, please!”

Miss Wych thought: “This is a fine thing, being spoken to by strange men! I suppose I look common or flashy or something, else he wouldn’t dare. What shall I do, oh, what shall I do? What do women do?”

“Look here,” said the voice at her shoulder, “I can’t keep this up any longer. I’m no good at speaking to people I don’t know. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” said Miss Wych.

“Oh, you’ve spoken!” cried the voice at her shoulder.

Miss Wych thought: “Oh, oh, damn!”

Miss Wych said: “This is very extraordinary behaviour. Please go away.”

Miss Wych had intended to say that icily, but in point of fact she said it very shyly. There was a girl who worked with her in the millinery department of Messrs. Come & Go who said: “When I don’t like a boy I just give him the Once-Over and he’s Off.” Miss Wych envied that girl. But she called up her courage and tried to give the stranger the Once-Over. The stranger, however, did not go Off. The stranger was a lean young man with deep dark eyes that seemed to whirl with the trouble that was in him.

“You see,” he said, “it’s like this, Miss Wych. I had to meet you somehow. But how? I did not know what to do. And so I did this. Miss Wych dear, will you forgive me?”

Miss Wych thought: “There are times when one must placate the devil. This must be one of those times.”

Then Miss Wych discovered a most extraordinary thing. She discovered that she was looking deep into the stranger’s dark eyes. She flushed as red as a tennis-court.

“This is terrible,” she said bitterly. “Terrible! How dare you speak to me! Please go away at once.”

“I can’t,” said the young stranger. “I would if I could. But I just can’t. I’m sorry.”

Miss Wych thought: “He says he’s _sorry_, the beast!”

“You are mad,” said Miss Wych indifferently. The sun walked in fire and glory, but the world was dark, the world was dark, and bold bad men walked the streets for to be offensive to maids. The young stranger, for instance, did not go away. He said desperately:

“If you will give me just one look you will see that I don’t mean to offend you.”

“That may be so,” said Miss Wych bitterly, “but you do.”

“You only think I do,” protested the lean young man. “That’s all it is, really.”

Then Miss Wych discovered a most extraordinary thing. She discovered that she was walking slowly, slowly. Instantly she walked on quickly.

The lean young man sighed: “Oh, dear!”

Miss Wych said breathlessly: “I don’t even know your name! And how you have got to know mine I really can’t imagine! But you don’t look wicked. Please don’t go on being nasty! Please! Won’t you go away now?”

“Pamela Wych,” the young stranger whispered, “Pamela Wych, Pamela Wych, Pamela Wych, how the devil was I to meet you except by daring this? Further, you are my fate, and what sort of a man would I be if I were to leave my fate in the very second of finding it?”

Miss Wych thought: “This is getting serious.”

“That is all very well,” she said reasonably, “talking about fate and big things like that. But when you take it as just behaviour you can see as well as I do that it is all wrong. Sir, there are things one can’t do, and this is one of them, and so you must please go away at once.”

“That is the one thing I can’t do,” said the young stranger desperately. “You see, although you won’t show me your face I can see the tip of your ear peeping out from your hair, and it is as red as a rose.”

Miss Wych thought: “This can’t go on. How would it be if I called a policeman?”

“It is red,” said the profile of Miss Wych, “for shame that a man can so insult his manhood.”

“Oh, I do wish people wouldn’t talk like those small leaders in _The Daily Mail_!” cried the voice at her shoulder. “I’m not insulting my manhood. I am living up to it for the first time in my life.”

Miss Wych said fiercely: “Go away, go away, go away!”

“Dear,” said the young stranger, “listen to me. You must listen to me. I am not playing.”

Miss Wych thought: “Our Father which art in Heaven----”

They were in the Park. How they had come to be in the Park Miss Wych could not imagine. Over Kensington Gardens the sun was marching to eternity with a cohort of clouds and colours.

“No,” said the lean young man, “I am certainly not playing. Miss Wych dear, this is not a ‘pick-up’----”

“It’s piracy!” said Miss Wych contemptuously.

“That’s right,” said the lean young man with the eyes of trouble.

“You say you aren’t playing,” Miss Wych bitterly complained, “but you are upsetting me very much. A little chivalry, sir, would help you to see how terrified I am.”

“I am terrified, too,” said the young stranger, “of this happiness. It can’t possibly last, can it? It’s too enormous.”

Miss Wych thought: “He’s gone mad!”

“I really don’t know why you ask me,” she panted spitefully, “whether it can last or not. How should I know? And it’s perfectly absurd, what we are doing. It is perfectly absurd. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, and that’s that. Anyone would think we were babies!”

“But that’s just what I am! For,” said the young stranger, “I am exactly one week old.”

Miss Wych thought: “And he talks like it!”

Miss Wych said: “Really! How interesting.”

“I am one week old,” the stranger said, “because it was exactly a week ago that I first saw you. And you needn’t laugh!”

“I’m not laughing,” said Miss Wych.

They were sitting on two chairs in the Park. How they had come to be sitting on two chairs in the Park Miss Wych could not imagine. The sun was red in the face with trying to get to Australia through Kensington Gardens.

The young stranger said: “Now!”

His eyes were deep and dark and shy, and Miss Wych thought: “He is one of those unhappy young men. There are a lot of them about. He is probably used to burning people with those eyes of his. But he won’t burn me.”

The lean young man was saying: “Miss Wych, may I tell you something most important? I love you.”

“That is what you say,” said Miss Wych, and was surprised at herself, for she had intended to say something quite different.

“Love,” said Miss Wych severely, “is a shy word. It should not be thrown about just anyhow. That’s quite apart from it’s being cheek.”

The lean young man’s eyes burnt angrily, and he said: “I have been in hell for a week, and you talk to me of cheek!”

“Well, it _is_ cheek,” said Miss Wych sulkily.

Now because the young stranger’s deep dark eyes were whirling with the trouble that was in him Miss Wych suddenly thought to close hers tight, for she did not want to let herself be sorry for him. She thought: “If this is what they call Romance--well, oh, dear, give me a nice bus ride in a hurricane! It would be much less uncomfortable.”

“One day,” the voice was saying, “I happened to go with a friend into that shop where you work, and I saw you, and my life fell down like a tin soldier with a broken leg. That was a week ago, and since then I haven’t picked it up, I haven’t known what to do. I have often heard that a man can go mad with love, but I did not know before that a man could go sane with love. All the people in the world who are not madly in love, Miss Wych dear, are in some degree insane, for it is insane not to have a proper perspective of life, and a proper perspective of life is to be quite certain that the world is well lost for the love of one person. It is insane to work from grubby birth to grubby death with never an attempt to chain a star, with never a raid on enchantment, with never a try to kiss a fairy or to live in a dream. Dear, only dreams make life real, all of life that is not touched and troubled by our dreams is not real, does not exist. I could not have lived until now if I had not dreamed that one day I would meet you. I have worked, I have been what is called successful, but always I was under the spell of a miracle that was to happen, and when I saw you I knew that miracle had happened. I just wanted to tell you that. I believe in miracles and magic and my love for you. That is my testament. And if it is cheek to say I love you, then cheek must be as beautiful a thing as chastity. And now I am going away, for your eyes are closed, and that must be because my talk of love bores you. I have tried the impossible, just to be certain that nothing is impossible until one has tried it. And I have learnt another thing: I know now that when I am not looking at you I shall be blind, when I am not listening to you I shall be deaf, and always I shall find no delight in the world but in thoughts of you. And now I will go away.”

Miss Wych opened her eyes and said: “Don’t go away.” That is all she said, but it was quite enough for the lean young man, who caught his breath and threw down his hat and pinched himself. Now all the colours in the world and in the heavens had met over Kensington Gardens in a conference to discuss ways and means for putting the sun to sleep, and a few of them came quickly and lit Miss Wych’s face as she said:

“There is something very silly about me. It has landed me into a lot of trouble in my time. I always believe what people say. I believe in fairies. I believe in God. I believe that moonlight has a lovely smell. I believe in men.”

“Please believe in me!” said the lean young man.

“But why shouldn’t I!” cried Miss Wych with wide eyes. “What a funny world this is, isn’t it? We always believe people straight away when they say beastly things to us, but we don’t if they say lovely things----”

“We will change all that!” the young stranger whispered.

All this while the world was standing quite still as a special treat for the sylphs and spirits, so that they could dart about the sky and never lose their way back to the friends who had stayed at home. It was curious, Miss Wych thought, how she could feel the silence of the world. It was as though the wings of a darting bird brushed her cheek, scented her thoughts, sang in her heart. It was as though the world was still with reverence. Before her very eyes a fairy tripped over a blade of grass, and Miss Wych thought: “I must be dreaming.”

“Talking of cheek,” said the lean young man.

“Yes?” said Miss Wych.

“Look here,” said the lean young man, and you could have blown his voice away with a breath, “if I have the cheek to ask you to marry me, will you have the cheek to say yes?”

He had a stick with an ivory top that was as yellow and cracked with age as an old charwoman’s face. She looked at it for a long time, and then she looked at him.