Part 5

V: THE LUCK OF CAPTAIN FORTUNE

Now it happened that one night, not long ago, Shelmerdene, having nothing better to do, rang me up and, complaining thus and thus, suggested that I should do the manly thing and dine with her. It was such a rare happening that I remember it all vividly. I remember I adopted an offended attitude, asking her if she thought I was the kind of man who was so lacking in dinner engagements that I could be rung up to take a lady out to dinner at the last moment. I asked her who she thought I was. I asked her to dine at the Ritz. But then, after a certain amount of talk this way and that way, we decided that we would be frightfully gay, and so we went to dine at the Ambassadors.

Of course, you know the Ambassadors. Every one knows the Ambassadors. Every one has passed through its mean but patrician-looking entrance in Bond Street, just between a jeweller’s and a fishmonger’s. It is, of course, a Night-Club, though there is nothing to prevent you going there in the afternoon if you feel that way. It is an exclusive Night-Club. Outside it are posted tall men in brilliant uniforms adorned with medals, and these men have the eyes of hawks, for it is their business to sift out the low and vulgar from the fashionable crowds that perpetually strive for admittance; they are the best sifters of their kind; and on any night of the week you will see at the Ambassadors all the quality and only the quality, toying with their food and calling each other by their Christian names.

The tables are elegantly arranged around the walls, deep sofas and divans are luxuriously set about them, while the centre is left unchallenged to the shimmering parquet floor. Of course all parquet floors shimmer, but none shimmers like this at the Ambassadors. One dines. One sups. Tommy Tittlebat’s Saxophone Six plays. The quality dance. The more Tommy Tittlebat’s Saxophone Six plays the more the quality dance, which is only reasonable. They jump up to dance at the exact moment when their food is put upon the table, and they cease dancing only when their food has become so cold that they have to hold lighted matches under the plates to warm them up. This causes much laughter.

As evening melts exquisitely into night, the quality enter the Ambassadors in their hundreds, all calling each other and the waiters by their Christian names. Some bring well-dressed nobodies with them, some bring Jews, some bring titled what-nots from the provinces or from Labrador: so that by midnight the parquet floor is so crowded that you cannot see the parquet. Then it is great fun to dance.

The game is played like this. As soon as a man and woman, sitting at their table, see a clear square foot of parquet floor they instantly leap on same, and, passionately embracing each other thereon, make movements of their eyebrows, hips, and feet in time to Tommy Tittlebat’s Saxophone Six. That is called dancing. They stay on their square foot of shimmering parquet floor until they get shoved off it by a beefier couple, whereupon the two gentlemen compliment each other in an elegant way--as is the way with persons of _ton_--or they call each other names (not Christian names)--as is also the way with persons of _ton_--until one or other of them is thrown out. That is called enjoying yourself, and you have to pay to do it. I paid, on the night I am telling you about. But not even Tommy Tittlebat’s Saxophone Six could drown the charm of Shelmerdene. Dear Shelmerdene....

At the table next to us sat a solitary gentleman. Obviously, we thought, he is waiting for some one, and obviously that some one has let him down. I am not much of a connoisseur as to men’s looks, but Shelmerdene knows about these things, and she said he was handsome. He was, even as he sat, noticeably tall; of strong and manly appearance; and, though swarthy in countenance, so essentially English-looking that it was with a disagreeable shock that, towards midnight, we noticed that his dark eyes were wet with tears. There is, as a rule, a scarcity of six-foot men weeping over supper at the Ambassadors.

“Drunk,” I suggested harshly, but Shelmerdene is a kind woman and she said that he looked like a man haunted by a great calamity.

“That’s all very well,” I said, “but one doesn’t cry about things.” Whereupon Shelmerdene looked at me, those wide and wise and witty eyes looked full at me--men have drowned themselves in Shelmerdene’s eyes--and I saw laughter at all men playing in their dusky-blue depths; and I had to confess to those kind, mocking eyes, that I, Ralph Wyndham Trevor, had also wept, that I had sobbed like a child, and that a woman had seen me at it--the woman who had caused it.

“Exactly,” said Shelmerdene. “For the more virile a man is, the braver and the more adventurous a man is, the more likely he is to weep before a woman and generally make a fool of himself. Fetch me that handsome man, Ralph. Men in love are not generally very reticent, especially Englishmen in love. The reticence of Englishmen is as much an illusion as the good manners of Frenchmen. I am curious. Fetch me that handsome man, Ralph.”

I leant over to the table beside us. The tall, dark young man turned moist, absent-minded eyes upon me.

“Sir,” I said, “forgive this unpardonable intrusion. But my companion and I have observed your solitude, no doubt temporary, and would be delighted if you would join us in a glass of wine.”

“You are very kind,” said the tall, dark young man.

He refused, with a courtly gesture, to take my seat on the sofa beside Shelmerdene, but sat on a chair opposite us. I filled him a glass of champagne.

“Sir,” said he, “your health. And yours, madam.”

But still the tears did not leave those dark, tragic eyes, they smouldered darkly in them. He looked infinitely wretched, though he bravely tried to smile as he addressed Shelmerdene:

“You must not think me unamiable if I do not ask you to dance, but I am not, to-night, in my happiest vein. You must forgive me....”

He looked so very miserable that I was about to say something sympathetic when Shelmerdene kicked me under the table. She murmured something gentle across the table....

“You are so kind and sympathetic,” whispered the handsome stranger, “that I will tell you a story. You are sure it won’t bore you?”

We said we were quite sure, and I filled him a glass of champagne.

“Sir,” said he, “your health. And yours, madam.”

“My story,” he addressed us, “concerns a man and a woman. The man loved the woman. I call her a woman because all words are vain, and to call her a goddess were but to lay myself under the charge of affectation. But if I were to tell you her name, which of course I cannot do, except to say that it rhymes with custard, you would instantly agree with the most abandoned epithets for her beauty; for she is one of the best loved ladies in the land, by reason of her high birth, her peerless carriage, and her amazing loveliness. I tell you, she has no rival in the present, nor can history tell us of her like. If the Lady Circe had had golden hair, which I much doubt, perhaps she may have been a tithe as lovely. It is, as you know, said of the Lady Circe that she turned men into swine, but this lady turns swine into men, and what could be more agreeable than that? It was ever her innocent delight to improve the men she met; and, with such beauty, was there anything she could not do with men? Her beauty appals the epithet. She is divinely tall, gold is but brass beside the sheen of her hair, and white samite is grey beside her complexion. She is without doubt the loveliest woman in England--which, of course, also includes America, for all lovely American women live in England even though they may die in Paris.

“The man met this lady and instantly loved her. Now his was no casual passion. She was young, but the war had already widowed her; and she seemed not unaware of, nor entirely repelled by, her new suitor’s passion, for from her many suitors she chose him as her constant companion. Thus, rumour very soon came to link their names; and rumour, generally so malignant, was then kind enough to find something harmonious in the alliance of that pair. For he was a man of unusual height, of a good name, a distinguished military record, and looks which some have thought handsome while none have denied to be very properly suited to the requirements of an English gentleman.

“She did not, at first, wholly accept him. But no day passed that they did not meet; and, as day exquisitely strung itself to day so that each was another pearl on the necklace of an Olympian goddess, she seemed, by sudden gestures, by sudden impulses, to be growing to love him--she the loveliest lady in the world! And he was happy--Oh, God, he was happy!”

The handsome stranger fell silent, and I thought he was about to break down. I filled him a glass of champagne.

“Sir,” said he, “your health. And yours, madam.”

“I have told you,” he went on, “of her amazing beauty, the golden-white beauty of the world’s last aristocracy. But, as though that were not enough, she was ambitious; she was a lady of parts, and she increasingly sought the company of those with whom she could discuss, deeply and seriously, the current problems of this vexed time. She was, you understand, tremendously interested in improving people; and politically she was, of course, a Die-Hard; for, as the daughter of a great house, her earliest experience in literature was _The Morning Toast_, to which she had remained faithful even when she grew up, with that tenacity peculiar to all readers of that remarkable journal. And so, when the franchise was extended to women, she, even before Lady Astor, raised the standard of rampant womanhood; and the world was given the rare sensation of seeing, and the House of Commons the rare privilege of welcoming, among its foremost legislators, the loveliest lady in the land, or any land. Words cannot describe the effect she made as she stood, indisputably the first of the twelve other ladies who had won their right of entrance into the Lower House, in all her glorious height and golden beauty among the dolorous decorations of that crypt which the glamour of centuries had raised to the majesty of Britain’s greatest institution.

“It was at this time that the man I have referred to came into her life; and it chanced for her to be a fortunate occasion, for without him her political career had been a barren thing. She could not make up a speech. Memorise and speak a speech she could, so amazingly well that the populace cried out with wonder at one so gifted with brains and elocution as well as with beauty--but she could not make up a speech. The brains in her speeches, which were rapidly winning for her a foremost position among the Die-Hards, were not hers. Her friend wrote her speeches for her. He did them gladly, happy and honoured to be of use to her. He ‘helped’ her with her speeches, so that she seemed not to be aware that his was every idea, every phrase, every epigram, everything--and that was his greatest pleasure, his subtle ‘helping’ her to a place of honour and esteem for something besides her beauty. Himself, though a gentleman, was not a Die-Hard: he was a man of ideas. He had a brain like Clapham Junction, going this way and that way and every way at the same time; and he could, no doubt, have made a great political name for himself, but he was by nature a soldier and by temperament adventurous, so that it pleased him infinitely more to ‘help’ the lady of his dreams to political fame rather than to bid for it in his own person.

“But another soldier came into her life--the most fearless soldier of our time, it has been said. But whether it was that he was the most fearless or the luckiest, we cannot tell. He himself insists on his luck. ‘I cannot lose,’ he is reported to have often said, sometimes unhappily. Whatever he touched became a jewel in his hand: whatever he ventured, he won. A name never expressed a man more perfectly--Victor Fortune! Captain Fortune, V.C., D.S.O., M.C., etc....

“He saw her first from the Strangers’ Gallery in the Lower House. He was, of course, familiar with her beauty--how often had he not seen portraits of her in the fashionable journals of the day!--but her face had hitherto failed to attract him, because of a certain coldness, a certain vapidity, which only his fastidious taste has chosen to discover in it. But those were photographs--now, from his obscure seat in the Gallery, Captain Fortune looked down upon the fairest figure the mind of man could conceive.

“It was the afternoon set apart for the discussion on Fabric Gloves, and the loveliest woman of our time excelled herself in her speech: or, rather, her friend had excelled himself. Captain Fortune, gazing down upon that tall and golden figure, a light in that dark pit of legislation, was enthralled and--yes, appalled by her beauty and her wit. It had needed only her wit, her culture, to add that vivacity to her perfect features which would enslave Captain Fortune’s fastidious heart--Victor Fortune, who never ventured but he won! He met the lady that night, at Lady Savoury’s ball in aid of the Bus-Conductors’ Orphanage.

“Three weeks later her old friend, her ‘helper,’ was stunned to read in _The Morning Toast_ of the engagement of the lady to Captain Fortune, V.C., D.S.O., M.C., etc. He was stunned; then, frantically, he rushed to her house. She was not yet fully dressed, she received him with pretty confusion. She was very sorry about it all, she said. She was frightfully sorry, she said. But she had fallen in love. Victor Fortune was so fine, so magnificent--and it needed but her love and care to help him combat his few weaknesses, which might be counted human in other men but were unworthy and degrading in such a man as Victor Fortune.

“And so he went away, her friend, never to return. He never has returned. He never will return, for thus it is written. And Captain Fortune, who never ventured but he won, married his lady, the lady of his dreams....”

What could we say? We could only say that we were very sorry, frightfully sorry, but his lovely lady had already told him that and it did not seem to have soothed him. Tears smouldered in those dark eyes, and I thought he was going to break down. I filled him a glass of champagne.

“Sir,” said he, “your health. And yours, madam.”

“Of course,” he whispered, “she has never been able to make a speech since. How could she? Without her old friend she is just a lovely woman, a lovely woman whose life centres round her care for Captain Fortune. And her old friend has gone out of her life, he who loved her and still loves her, never to return, never....”

He rose from his chair and looked miserably down on us. Bravely, he tried to smile.

“I am so, so sorry,” murmured Shelmerdene.

And silently we watched his tall figure carving a passage through the quality to the doorway. A broken man is a more miserable thing than a broken toy, and we were sad....

The agreeable and polished M. Risotto, prince of _maîtres d’hôtel_, chanced by our table.

“Who,” asked Shelmerdene, “was that tall gentleman who has just left us?”

“That, madam,” said the agreeable and polished M. Risotto, “is Captain Fortune, the most gallant gentleman in England....”

VI: THE ANCIENT SIN

I

George Tarylon and I were engaged to stay the week-end with Aubrey Carlyle at Malmanor Hall, which is four hours by car from Hyde Park Corner, though that, of course, rather depends on the kind of car. George Tarlyon’s--as that Armenian fellow had noticed--was a good car, long and low, a chap’s car, and we had run four-fifths of our distance very well: we had flashed through a town, whose name is of no interest, and had plunged into the peculiar wood of Carmion, which shrouds the southern border of the domain of Malmanor. We were therefore on the last lap, and the fact that this lay through Carmion Wood lent a certain interest to it; for although Tarlyon and I had very often stayed with Aubrey Carlyle at Malmanor, we had never, somehow, really penetrated into Carmion. I don’t know why, but it just hadn’t happened; and George Tarlyon was now running his car along the broad sweep of its central and only road because of a vague idea that it was a short cut as compared to the main road. It was a rotten idea, that of George Tarlyon’s.

One of the many silly legends about Carmion Wood is that only foreigners may hear the singing of the birds therein, while for Englishmen there is no sound but the rustling of the leaves and the sighing of the boughs. How that sort of nonsense ever gets hold of a countryside, I don’t know. And the fact that, as George Tarlyon rushed the car along the twilight road--for although it was a bright summer’s day, the leaves are very thick on Carmion trees--we could hear no birds singing was, without a doubt, simply because they were singing somewhere else that afternoon. “Obviously,” I said to Tarlyon, who had suggested that had I had a Spanish mother I could now be enjoying the sweet trilling of rooks and the back-chat of blackbirds, “obviously they can’t always be singing in one place.”

“Listen,” said George Tarlyon, and when you listened it really was rather curious, the silence of Carmion Wood. “Quiet we call silence, the merest word of all,” some one has written, Poe, I think; but that word applied very fully to Carmion, it was so silent! If only there had been a wind, just to give the leaves a little fun! But there wasn’t a breath; it was a close day in August, and the wood was a crypt, that’s what it was. I said so to Tarlyon, but all he said was that he was hungry. Later on he grunted: “You and your crypts!”

“It’s a pity,” I said reasonably, “that the sun doesn’t get a bit further into this place....”

“Dolorous is the word for it,” murmured Tarlyon; and he was quite right, amazingly right. “Dolorous” was certainly the word for it.

“Open your cut-out, man!” I said at last, for that car was really too well-bred. And with a twist of his foot he opened the cut-out. What a cut-out! But it did make things seem more homely.

II

The car rushed on.... The straight road under the thick tapestry of leaves would take us directly to the parkland of Malmanor; through the opening at the end, for Carmion Wood ends sharply, we could see in the far distance, lying in the hollow of the county like an ancient pink jewel in a green bowl, the vast Elizabethan pile of Malmanor Hall.

The car rushed on....

“Bang!” said the car, but Tarlyon said worse than that as he pulled up.

“This,” I said, as we looked at the flattened back tyre, “this comes of taking short cuts.”

The matter with Tarlyon was that he had had no luncheon and was hungry. Now George Tarlyon is my greatest friend, but this I had against him, that he swore too much. Like many other men, decent men, he swore too much and too often. I can say “damn” with any man, I have said “bloody,” and will again when it is organic to the occasion, but what humorous writers in the magazines call scientific swearing does not amuse me. I do not wish to seem superior, but it just does not amuse me. In the Middle Ages men swore mightily on the names of the Trinity and the Saints, but then they believed mightily in the Trinity and the Saints. Now men swear and curse on the names of everything and believe in nothing. It is the habit of the modern world; it is the habit of being in a hurry; it is the habit of unholiness. And it had grown on my friend, George Almeric St. George Tarlyon, who was otherwise a reasonable sort of man.

To put on the spare tyre was only the work of a few minutes; and again the car rushed on ... and from behind us came a cry. I looked back, and there, twenty yards behind us, stood and screamed a woman by the roadway.

Tarlyon was really remarkably fluent as he reversed. He was hungry, you see.

“We must have dropped something,” I suggested.

We drew abreast of the gesticulating woman on the coarse grass by the road. She was just a slip of an aged woman, and her hair was made of bits of grey string, and her eyes leapt hysterically out of a little, lined face. “Come, come!” she was screaming. “Come, come quick!” She smelt old, that woman.

The car had scarcely stopped abreast of her when she turned and scampered away along a little lane between the tall, still trees. It was extraordinary, the way she ran, that little old woman! “Come, come quick!”

Well, there was nothing to do but to follow.

“The girl’s mad,” snarled Tarlyon, as he strode after the little old woman. But striding was no use, it was a running job, and it was a hot day.

It was an untidy, tangled path up which she was leading us--and how quickly she ran, that little old woman, stumbling over her uncertain feet and frantic gestures, while we ploughed on behind her through the lush of the wood in August. It was an amazingly hot day; the Press for the last week or so had been full of surprise and congratulation as to the amazingly hot days we were having, and we had now an unrivalled opportunity of testing the veracity of the Press, but we would much rather have forgone it. At that moment, following that little old woman up that tangled path in Carmion Wood, George Tarlyon and I were probably the wettest men in England outside of a swimming-bath.

“What the devil is it all about?” muttered Tarlyon, and was not soothed by my suggesting that I thought it was all part of his idea of a short cut to Malmanor--while the little old woman still screamed at us to come quick, quick.

“Quick, quick....” And at her heels we burst out on to a clearing in the wood. The sun lay on that clearing like a carpet of gold.

III

Tarlyon and I stopped dead, and stared. We stared hard. But the little old woman, still screaming to us to follow, ran on ahead to the house. Yes, there was a house in that clearing, a little farmhouse. And the sun lay on it like a carpet of gold: that is how I saw it....

“Not our business,” muttered Tarlyon, and I heartily agreed that it wasn’t. We stood where we were, with our eyes glued on what we saw; and George Tarlyon dug his hands deep in his pockets. George Tarlyon always dug his hands deep in his pockets when he wanted frightfully to take them out.

A man was thrashing his son. I cannot explain why, but we were somehow quite certain that the thing the man was thrashing was flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood. He was a huge man, with a mane of grey hair and a long grey beard, and he had on a bright red shirt. If I close my eyes now I can see the blood-red of that huge bearded man’s shirt, I can see the curve of his great shoulders and the muscles that stood out like lumps of rubber on his half-bare arm as he beat his son with a stout stick. And I can see his little old wife trying to stay his hand, begging, praying, moaning. We heard her moaning, like an old, old bird in pain. And at that Tarlyon started forward a step....

“Steady there!” cried Tarlyon sharply. “Steady, Beaver!” The cry cut across the sunlit place, the clear cry that has lit for England the darkest corners of the world, and the huge man in the red shirt stayed his cudgel and looked at us. But the little old woman still moaned, and it was quite dreadful to hear that in the summer silence. Ten yards separated us from that domestic scene, but they were yards of bright sunlight, and we could see every line on that patriarch’s face. For he was a patriarch. He was the most magnificent man I have ever seen; and Tarlyon and I, not small men, felt withered under his straight look. We stood rooted.

“Friends,” said the old man, and his was the voice of authority, “you must leave me in peace to drive the sin out of this my son. His mother is a woman, and will pardon everything in those she loves, but you are men and know the one sin that is unpardonable by all men. Go your ways in peace, and fear not to put your own houses in order....”