Part 7

“Why,” she cried, “your eyes are wet!”

“I know,” said the lean young man fiercely. “And I don’t give a damn. For the love of God, am I such a fool that I wouldn’t be crying for the happiness of knowing you are in the world!”

“Well,” said Miss Wych, “I shall probably be crying myself at any moment. But first of all I must tell you a story.”

“Won’t you marry me instead?” pleaded the young stranger.

“I will tell you a story,” said Miss Wych gravely, and she began at once.

IV

“I was born,” said Miss Wych, “in a small town in the north of England which would have been the ugliest town in the world if there hadn’t been uglier ones all round it. My mother died when I was quite young, and when I was nineteen my father died; but I did not mind being alone half so much as you might think, because I was very ambitious. So, with the few pounds my father had left, I came to London to try my fortune on the stage. I had an aunt who was once an actress in Birmingham, and that was why I thought first of all of the stage. And people said I was pretty.

“In that ugly town there was a boy who loved me. His name was George and he was a clerk in an auctioneer’s office, but he wanted to be a farmer. When my father died George asked me to marry him, but I said I couldn’t do that and explained about my ambitions and how I would first of all like to have a try at being _something_ in the world. You see, it isn’t only grown-ups who have dreams. Besides, George was poor, and however would we live if we did get married?

“He came to see me soon after I had settled in London. I told him I was studying acting at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, and also I told him that I loved him. Of course, I wouldn’t have told him that if he hadn’t asked me. But I thought I did. I was only nineteen and a bit, and he was so strong and serious, and as fair as you are dark, and when he was almost too serious to speak the tip of his nose would quiver in a lovely funny way.

“That was the last time I saw George, but this evening I am to see him again. You see, that was on the first of May five years ago, and George and I swore a great oath. George said he was off to America to make his fortune, but that in five years to the day he would be waiting for me at the Savoy Hotel at eight o’clock to give me dinner and hear me say that I would marry him. We chose a grand place like the Savoy Hotel because of course George would have made his fortune by then. George added that he had no ambitions for himself, he wouldn’t mind being just a farmer, but that he would work for me. I said that was a very good idea, for men should be ambitious and imperious, marching into history with clear heads and brave thoughts and clean eyes.

“I said I would keep myself free for him. I promised him that just as he was going away, and you should have seen how happy his eyes were and how the tip of his nose quivered! And now I have to see him in a few minutes’ time, and what shall I say to him?

“I was a failure on the stage. I am a failure even as a girl in a shop. I am a failure in everything but my dreams. My childish ambitions have withered, and you would think I had learnt such a lesson that I wouldn’t have any more, but now I have the largest ambition in the world. I would like very much to be happy. That is why I have been wondering all to-day and for how many days what I would say to George this evening. You see, I wasn’t really in love with him even when I made my promise, I knew that in my heart even then. My promise was just one of those important-looking flowers that are wrung out of the soil of pity. And my business in life from now onwards, dear stranger, will be to keep that hidden from my husband. But of course I will get used to disenchantment, just like everyone else, and the time will come when I will wonder at myself for talking to you like this, and the time will come when I, like everyone else, will die with the sick heart of one who has never fulfilled herself. And now I must go, for it is close on eight o’clock.”

“Of course,” said the lean young man thoughtfully, “he might, for some reason we can’t tell, not keep his appointment. And then----”

“And then, and then, and then!” sang Miss Wych, but she added gravely: “But oh, he will! George is a good man and a determined man. Failure or success, he will be there.”

The fires burnt low in the west. They walked towards the gates of the Park. Miss Wych counted four stars in the sky.

“Love,” said the lean young man, “knows every emotion but that of patience. Mayn’t I come with you, Pamela Wych? Mayn’t we go together to this George man? Could he do anything but release you?”

“That wouldn’t be fair,” said Miss Wych. “That wouldn’t be fair at all. Oh, yes, George would release me. But life is not so easy as that. It’s all very nice and easy to talk and dream, but aren’t there duties too? I will go to George and tell him I am ready to marry him. I _must_ do that. But maybe he won’t want to marry me. And then----”

The clock at the Park Gates stood at ten minutes to eight o’clock; and on this strange enchanted evening, said Miss Wych, she would indulge in the extravagance of a taxicab. The lean young man stood by the door and said good-bye, and he said also: “If that George man isn’t there, I shall know. Or if that George man isn’t worthy of your loyalty, I shall know. And I will come to you again.”

“If!” sighed Miss Wych. “If! If the world was a garden, and we were butterflies! If the world was a garden, and God was kind to lovers! Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!”

V

There is an eminent school of thought which insists that there is no such thing in this world as chance. Therefore we may take it that ever since the beginning of creation there was appointed one small wind to lurk nearby the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square for the purpose of blowing an empty paper-bag under a horse’s nose.

The horse belonged to a van, and it was probably bored with the van. It gave a kick at the paper-bag. It missed the paper-bag. “Woa!” cried the driver of the van. That got on the horse’s nerves, and it bolted.

Two men cried: “Ho! Woa! Oi!” An old man selling newspapers by the steps of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields said. “No ’orse can’t bolt far with an ’eavy van.” The driver of the van cried: “----!” An orange-and-banana merchant leapt for his life from the horse’s hooves, and his oranges and bananas fell as manna upon Trafalgar Square, and many little children ran together and gave praise. A large handsome limousine was coming at a good pace up the slope from the Strand. It had to swerve to avoid running over the orange-and-banana merchant. As it swerved it crashed into the side of an ancient taxicab that was bustling round the corner. The ancient taxicab overturned. There was a scream of smashing glass, and the two wheels of the taxicab revolved plaintively in the air.

“Bewty!” said the old man selling newspapers, for he was a connoisseur of accidents. The limousine had stopped. The horse was walking on quite calmly now. A little boy picked up the paper-bag, blew into it, and made a noise. A lot of people came to look at the taxicab.

“Stand back, there! Stand back!” cried a young policeman.

The driver of the taxicab crawled from underneath the wreck. There was blood on his face, and he was so ugly that he looked like several sorts of animals at once. He stared at the chauffeur of the limousine.

“Wotcherdothatfor?” he asked bitterly.

“Come on now, lend a hand!” said the young policeman sternly.

A tall, fair, serious-looking young man had alighted quickly from the limousine, and with him a young lady in a chinchilla coat.

“My, there’s a girl underneath!” she sobbed in a faint American accent.

“There was!” said the taxi-driver bitterly.

“Good God, she’s pinned there!” cried the tall, fair young man.

“George, and on our honeymoon!” sobbed the young lady in the chinchilla coat.

“Come on now, give us room!” said the policeman sharply. “Now then, sir, just help me lift this wheel off the young lady.”

It was the lean young man who was helping the policeman. He had followed Miss Wych. As the tall fair young man and his young wife in the chinchilla coat pressed forward through the crowd, the lean young man looked up at him, and his face was very stern. The tall fair young man looked back with bewildered, wretched eyes.

“Don’t say she’s dead!” he whispered.

“Now, sir,” said the young policeman, “I’ll keep this up while you bring her through sharp as you like. Now!”

The lithe young body was broken and still. The crowd pressed round.

“She’s dead orl right!” said the orange-and-banana merchant.

The last flames of sunset over Admiralty Arch lit the peering faces, and they looked as impersonal as gargoyles. Some took off their hats.

“Oh, she’s dead!” sobbed the young lady in the chinchilla coat.

“Such a pretty young lady!” said the taxi-driver bitterly, wiping the blood from his face.

The lean young man and the young policeman knelt beside the still, broken body and tried to find life where no life was. The orange-and-banana merchant took off his hat. The policeman’s helmet fell to the ground and rolled a little way down towards the Strand. The tall fair young man held his silk hat in his hand. The lean young man looked up at him through a blinding mist of tears and stammered: “Aren’t you sorry, aren’t you sorry?”

“George,” sobbed the young lady in the chinchilla coat, “why is he looking at you like that?”

“Blessed if I know!” stammered the tall fair young man.

“By gum, look at the cop!” said the orange-and-banana merchant.

The lean young man darted a look at the policeman kneeling beside him, and he saw that the policeman wept, and he saw that the tip of the policeman’s nose was quivering.

“She died,” stammered the lean young man, “while keeping her promise to you. But you had failed her.”

“I’ve failed at everything in every country,” said the young policeman. “And now I’ll probably get the sack from this job too for crying on my beat.”

“’Ere, give ’im back ’is ’elmet,” said the taxi-driver bitterly. “A cop without a ’elmet don’t look natchral.”

“And who’s goin’ to give me back my oranges and bananas?” said the orange-and-banana merchant. “Isn’t there no justice in this world, that’s wot I want to know?”

IV: THE BATTLE OF BERKELEY SQUARE

One morning not long ago a gentleman was engaged in killing worms in the gardens of Berkeley Square when it was forced on his attention that he had a pain. The pain, which was offensive, was on his left side, but thinking at first that it was no more than a temporary stitch brought about by the unwonted exercise, he dismissed it from his mind as a pain unworthy of the notice of an officer and a gentleman and went on killing worms according to the directions on the tin.

This was a large tin; and, held at an angle in the gentleman’s right hand, a white powder issued therefrom and covered the blades of grass, whilst with his left hand he manœuvred a syringe in such a way that a brownish liquid was sprayed upon the ground.

An entirely new and nasty smell was thus brought into the world; nor did there appear to be any such good reason for it as is generally brought forward on behalf of a novel smell, such as industry, agriculture, the culinary necessities of certain foods or the general progress of civilisation. Mean, however, though our gentleman’s physical position was, for he needs must bend low to the end that not a blade of grass might escape his eagle eye, mentally he took his stand on a lofty ideal; and, dismissing the stares of passers-by as unworthy of the notice of an officer and a gentleman, continued to misbehave according to the directions on the tin.

The chemist who had sold him the tin and the syringe had sworn a pharmaceutical oath to the effect that, on sprinkling the grass with the powder and spraying it with the lotion, not a worm in Mayfair but would instantly arise from the bowels of the earth and die. Nor was the chemist’s prophecy in vain; for the powdering and spraying had not been going on for long, when behold! a multitude of worms arose and passed away peacefully. So great, indeed, was the massacre that a Turkish gentleman who was passing by stood at attention during a five minutes’ silence, but that is quite by the way and has nothing to do with George Tarlyon’s pain, which was growing more offensive with every moment. Thinking, however, that it could be no more than an attack of lumbago, and therefore dismissing it from his mind as a pain unworthy of the notice of an officer and a gentleman, he went on killing worms because he wanted to stand well with a pretty girl he had met the night before at a party who had said she was a Socialist and that there were too many worms in Mayfair.

Major Cypress now enters the story, and the fact that this is a true story makes it so much the more regrettable that therein the Major is presented in a tedious, not to say a repellent, light. Poor Hugo. About a year before these happenings he had entered upon matrimony with Tarlyon’s little sister Shirley, and he loved her true, even as she loved him. We will now talk a while of Hugo and Shirley.

Shirley was a darling and Hugo had no money above that which he earned, which was nothing, and that is why they lived in a garage in the Mews behind Berkeley Square, had breakfast late, went out for dinner and on to supper. Not that the garage wasn’t delightful. The garage was charming. Shirley herself had supervised the architects, builders, decorators and plumbers, and by the time rooms had been added, kitchens hollowed out, bathrooms punched in--by the time, in fact, the garage had been converted into a house, it had cost Hugo more money at rates of interest current in Jermyn Street than the lease of a fine modern residence in Berkeley Square. Poor Hugo.

Every morning at about this hour he would emerge from the garage into the Mews, pat his tie straight in the gleaming flanks of the automobiles that were being washed to the accompaniment of song and rushing water, pass the time of day with a chauffeur or two, and walk into Berkeley Square where, in the pursuit of his profession, he would loiter grimly by the railings of the gardens until the clocks struck twelve. The word “profession” in connection with Major Cypress doubtless needs some explanation. Hugo’s profession was the most ancient in the world bar none, that of an inheritor: he was waiting for his father to die. This was a cause of great distress to his mother, as it must be to everyone who likes Hugo. But, as Mistress Moll Flanders says, I am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought not to be.

All doctors are agreed that waiting has a lowering effect on the mind, but this morning Major Cypress looked, as has been stated, even more depressed than usual. And long he leant against the railings watching his brother-in-law’s extraordinary behaviour before opening his lips: when, a noise of a friendly nature being created, he waited patiently for an answer, which he did not get. He then tried to attract Tarlyon’s attention by making a noise like money, but in vain.

“George,” he shouted at last, “may I ask why you are behaving in that peculiar way?”

“You may,” snapped Tarlyon, and, approaching him with a look of absent-minded savagery, cast a little of the powder over his breeches, squirted him with the syringe, and continued with his labours. Poor Hugo.

“George,” said Major Cypress, disregarding the man’s rudeness, “I am depressed this morning. Guess why.”

“Hugo,” said Tarlyon bitterly, “I would be depressed every morning if I were you. Now please go away at once. These worms aren’t rising half so well since you came. And I have a pain in my left side.”

“A pain, George? I thought you looked sick, but I didn’t like to say anything. What sort of a pain?”

“A hell of a pain,” said Tarlyon. “It gets me when I breathe.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Hugo. “I too have a pain. And it gets me when I eat, drink, breathe and sleep. George, my pain is in my heart.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” snapped Tarlyon, “and I hope it gives you such a swelling in the feet that you can’t follow me about like a moneylender after a dud cheque.”

“George, I am not, and never was, a moneylender. I am, by the grace of God, a money-lendee. But to return to your pain, I shouldn’t wonder if you had pneumonia. You have been very liable to pneumonia ever since you took that bath on Armistice Day. And merely from the way your face has all fallen in I should say pneumonia, quite apart from the fact that your breath is coming in painful gasps.”

Tarlyon threw down the worm-killers and joined his friend. “I believe you’re right, Hugo. It hurts me to breathe. I must have pneumonia. What treatment would you advise?”

“Pyjamas,” said Hugo. “Nice, new, amusing pyjamas. You will be in bed at least six weeks with the violent form of pneumonia you’ve got, and it will be a comfort to you to think of your new pyjamas.”

“Suppose I die,” Tarlyon muttered.

“I am supposing it, George. The pyjamas will then, I hope, revert to me.”

Together they strode up the narrow defile of Berkeley Street towards Piccadilly, two men of grave mien and martial address; and, although it was a bitter December morning, neither wore an overcoat, which is a polity of dress calculated to reveal, by the very action of a lounge-suit on the eye on a bitter morning, the hardy frame of ships that pass in the night and the iron constitution of publicans, wine-bibbers, chaps, guys, ginks, bloods, bucks and _beaux_. Nevertheless, such was the stress of the distemper within him that George Almeric St. George Tarlyon threw away his cigarette with a gesture of distaste and said: “Hugo, I am in pain. It gets me when I breathe.”

“Try not to breathe,” said Hugo. “In the meanwhile I will tell you why I am depressed. My wife----”

“Hugo, I am very hot. I do believe I am sweating!”

“You look awful, George. You have probably a very high temperature. Presently you will break out into a rash owing to the unclean state of your blood brought about by your low habits. You can’t breakfast all your life off a gin-and-bitters and two green olives and hope to get away with it. I was telling you, George, that I am depressed because my wife is presenting me with an heir.”

“It’s just cussedness, Hugo. I shouldn’t take any notice. Women are always the same, forever letting one in for some extravagance. Just take no notice, Hugo.”

“George, you don’t understand! She is in terrible pain, and I can’t bear it, old friend, I simply can’t bear it.”

“I’m sorry, Hugo, really I am. Poor little Shirley. But I am feeling very ill myself. Call me an ambulance, Hugo.”

“Pyjamas first, my honey. Ah, here we are! Ho there, Mr. Sleep! Ho there, Mr. Sluis! Shop!”

For by this time the two gentlemen had arrived within the establishment of Messrs. Sleep and Sluis, gents’ shirt-makers, which is situate where the Piccadilly Arcade swoops falcon-like into Jermyn Street to be as a temptation to mugs in search of a manicure. Mr. Sleep was a small man with a round face who was a tie-specialist and Mr. Sluis was a small man with a long face who was a shirt-specialist, while both were accomplished students of masculine _lingerie_ in every branch and could, moreover, as was told in the adventure of the Princess Baba, build a white waistcoat about a waist in a way that was a wonder to the eye. By Royal Appointment, and rightly.

“My lord,” said Mr. Sleep, stepping forward two paces and standing smartly at ease, “what can we do for you this morning? These new ties,” said he, “have just this moment come in. They are delicious.”

“Mr. Sleep,” said Lord Tarlyon, “you know very well that I detest new ties. I can think of nothing more common than wearing a new tie. Observe my tie, Mr. Sleep. I have worn it six years. Observe its rugged grandeur. Where is Mr. Sluis this morning?”

“My lord,” said Mr. Sluis, stepping forward three paces and bowing smartly from his self-made waist, “what sort of pyjamas do you fancy?”

“What varieties have you this morning, Mr. Sluis?”

“We have many, my lord. Pyjamas can be used for various purposes.”

“You shock me, Mr. Sluis. I am not, however, going to Venice just yet. I merely want some pneumonia pyjamas.”

“In _crêpe-de-chine_, my lord?”

“Your innuendoes are amazing, Mr. Sluis! Far from being that kind of man, I have always adhered to the iron principle of once an adult always an adult. The very manhood of England is being sapped by these vicious luxuries, as one glance at my friend Major Cypress will show. Away with these _crêpe-de-chine_ pyjama suitings! And I take this opportunity, Mr. Sleep, of crying woe and woe to the pretty and the effeminate of our sex, for their lack of manly sins shall surely find them out and the odour of their overdrafts shall descend to hell. For my own pyjamas, a homely quality of antiseptic silk will do very well. I will have half-a-dozen suits in black silk.”

“I say, George,” said Hugo, “black is very lowering. Mr. Sluis, make them a lovely pale blue with a dash of maroon. They revert to me, you see.”

“Black, Mr. Sluis. I fight Death with his own weapons. Send these pyjamas at once, and put them down to my account.”

“Certainly, my lord. You will have them at once.”

“Gentlemen,” said Lord Tarlyon, “I have had forty years’ experience of owing money and never yet met with such simple faith as yours. I am touched. Let me assure you that my executors will repay your courtesy, if only in kind. Good-day, Mr. Sleep, and you, Mr. Sluis. Don’t, by the way, send these pyjamas to my house, as the bailiffs are in, which is why I went out in the dewy dawn and caught this pneumonia. Send them to Major Cypress’s.”

“But you can’t have pneumonia in my place!” cried Hugo. “If you should die it will depress my wife, and that,” said he indignantly, “will have an effect on my unborn heir’s character.”

“He will be lucky, Hugo, if he has a character at all, from what I know of you. Mr. Sleep, and you, Mr. Sluis, you might telephone to some doctors to come round instantly to Major Cypress’s garage, as there will shortly be a nice new pneumonia of two cylinders on view there. Hugo, call me a taxi at once. I cannot have pneumonia all over Jermyn Street.”

“I don’t care where you have it,” said Hugo bitterly, “so long as you don’t let the last agonies of your lingering death disturb my wife. Here’s an idea, George! Why don’t you go and have pneumonia at Fitzmaurice Savile’s place near by?”

But Tarlyon was not without a keen sense of what was proper to a stainless gentleman: he put generosity, when he thought of it, above all things: and protested now that he could not very well seek Fitzmaurice Savile’s hospitality as Fitzmaurice Savile owed him money and would think that he, Tarlyon, was taking it out of him in pneumonia.

“Well, lend me a fiver, then,” said Hugo desperately, but he hadn’t a hope. However, he need have had no fear for his wife’s comfort, for never was a sick man quieter than the last of the Tarlyon’s, the way he lay with closed eyes among the damp dark clouds of fever, the way he would smile now and then as at a joke someone was whispering to him from a far distance, so that the nurse said to the doctor: “I never saw a man appear to enjoy pneumonia so. You would think,” said she, “that he was hungry for death. He is not fighting it at all, doctor. Are you sure he will not die?”