I dawdled over my work in Paris. It was very agreeable in the springtime, with the chestnuts in the Champs Elysées in bloom and the light in the streets so gay. There was pleasure in the air, a light transitory pleasure, sensual without grossness, that made your step more springy and your intelligence more alert. I was happy in the various company of my friends and, my heart filled with amiable memories of the past, I regained in spirit at least something of the glow of youth. I thought I should be a fool to allow work to interfere with a delight in the passing moment that I might never enjoy again so fully.
Isabel, Gray, Larry and I went for excursions to places of interest within convenient distance. We went to Chantilly and Versailles, to St. Germain and Fontainebleau. Where-ever we went, we lunched well and copiously. Gray ate largely to satisfy his enormous frame and was apt to drink a little too much. His health, whether owing to Larry's treatment or merely to the course of time, was certainly improved. He ceased to have racking headaches and his eyes were losing the look of bewilderment that when first I saw him on coming to Paris had been so distressing. He did not talk much except now and then to tell a long-winded story, but laughed with great loud guffaws at the nonsense Isabel and I talked. He enjoyed himself. Though not amusing, he was so good-humoured and so easily pleased that it was impossible not to like him. He was the kind of man with whom one would have hesitated to pass a lonely evening, but with whom one might cheerfully have looked forward to spending six months.
His love for Isabel was a delight to see; he adored her beauty and thought her the most brilliant, fascinating creature in the world; and his devotion, his doglike devotion to Larry was touching. Larry appeared to enjoy himself too; I had a notion that he looked upon this time as a holiday that he was taking from whatever projects he had in mind and was serenely making the most of it. He didn't talk very much either, but it didn't matter, his company was sufficient conversation; he was so easy, so pleasantly cheerful that you didn't ask more of him than what he gave, and I well knew that if the days we spent together were so happy it was due to his being with us. Though he never said a brilliant or a witty thing, we should have been dull without him.
It was on the return from one of these jaunts that I witnessed a scene that somewhat startled me. We had been to Chartres and were on our way back to Paris. Gray was driving and Larry was sitting beside him; Isabel and I were at the back. We were tired after the long day. Larry sat with his arm stretched out along the top of the front seat. His shirt-cuff was pulled back by his position and displayed his slim, strong wrist and the lower part of his brown arm lightly covered with fine hairs. The sun shone goldenly upon them. Something in Isabel's immobility attracted my attention, and I glanced at her. She was so still you might have thought her hypnotized. Her breath was hurried. Her eyes were fixed on the sinewy wrist with its little golden hairs and on that long, delicate, but powerful hand, and I have never seen on a human countenance such a hungry concupiscence as I saw then on hers. It was a mask of lust. I should never have believed that her beautiful features could assume an expression of such un-bridled sensuality. It was animal rather than human. The beauty was stripped from her face; the look upon it made her hideous and frightening. It horribly suggested the bitch in heat and I felt rather sick. She was unconscious of my presence; she was conscious of nothing but the hand, lying along the rim so negligently, that filled her with frantic desire. Then as it were a spasm twitched across her face, she gave a shudder and shutting her eyes sank into the comer of the car.
"Give me a cigarette," she said in a voice I hardly recognized, it was so raucous.
I got one out of my case and lit it for her. She smoked it greedily. For the rest of the drive she looked out of the window and never said a word.
When we arrived at their house Gray asked Larry to drive me back to my hotel and then take the car to the garage. Larry got into the driver's seat and I sat myself beside him. As they crossed the pavement Isabel took Gray's arm and, snuggling up to him, gave him a look which I could not see, but whose sense I could divine. I guessed that he would have a passionate bedfellow that night, but would never know to what prickings of conscience he owed her ardour.
June was approaching its end and I had to get back to the Riviera. Friends of Elliott's, who were going to America, had lent the Maturins their villa at Dinard and they were going there with the children as soon as their school closed. Larry was staying in Paris to work, but was buying himself a second-hand Citroen and had promised to spend a few days with them in August. On my last night in Paris I asked the three of them to dine with me. It was on that night that we met Sophie Macdonald.
Isabel had conceived the desire to make a tour of the tough joints, and because I had some acquaintance with them she asked me to be their guide. I did not much like the notion, because in places of that sort in Paris they are apt to make their disapproval of sightseers from another world unpleasantly obvious. But Isabel insisted. I warned her that it would be very boring and begged her to dress plainly. We dined late, went to the Folies-Bergères for an hour and then set out. I took them first to a cellar near Notre Dame frequented by gangsters and their molls where I knew the proprietor, and he made room for us at a long table at which were sitting some very disreputable-people, but I ordered wine for all of them and we drank one another's healths. It was hot, smoky and dirty. Then I took them to the Sphynxs where women, naked under their smart, tawdry evening dresses, their breasts, nipples and all, exposed, sit in a row on two benches opposite one another and when the band strikes up dance together listlessly with their eyes on the lookout for the men who sit round the dance hall at marble-topped tables. We ordered a bottle of warm champagne. Some of the women gave Isabel the eye as they passed us and I wondered if she knew what it meant.
Then we went on to the Rue de Lappe. It is a dingy, narrow street and even as you enter it you get the impression of sordid lust. We went into a café, there was the usual young man, pale and dissipated, playing the piano, while another man, old and tired, scraped away on a fiddle, and a third made discordant noises on a saxophone. The place was packed and it looked as though there wasn't a vacant table, but the patron, seeing that we were customers with money to spend, unceremoniously turned a couple out, making them take seats at a table already occupied, and settled us down. The two persons who were hustled away did not take it well, and they made remarks about us that were far from complimentary. A lot of people were dancing, sailors with the red pompon on their hats, men mostly with their caps on and handkerchiefs round their necks, women of mature age and young girls, painted to the eyes, bareheaded, in short skirts and coloured blouses. Men danced with podgy boys with made-up eyes; gaunt, hard-featured women danced with fat women with dyed hair; men danced with women. There was a frowst of smoke and liquor and of sweating bodies. The music went on interminably and that unsavoury mob proceeded round the room, the sweat shining on their faces, with a solemn intensity in which there was something horrible. There were a few big men of brutal aspect, but for the most part they were puny and ill-nourished. I watched the three who were playing. They might have been robots, so mechanical was their performances, and I asked myself if it was possible that at one time, when they were setting out, they had thought they might be musicians whom people would come from far to hear and to applaud. Even to play the violin badly you must take lessons and practise: did that fiddler go to all that trouble just to play fox trots till the small hours of the morning in that stinking squalor? The music stopped and the pianist wiped his face with a dirty handkerchief. The dancers slouched or sidled or squirmed back to their tables. Suddenly we heard an American voice.
"For Christ's sake."
A woman got up from one of the tables across the room. The man she was with tried to stop her, but she pushed him aside and staggered across the floor. She was very drunk. She came up to our table and stood in front of us, swaying a little and grinning stupidly. She seemed to find the sight of us vastly amusing. I glanced at my companions. Isabel was staring at her blankly, Gray had a sullen frown on his face and Larry gazed as though he couldn't believe his eyes.
"Hello," she said.
"Sophie," said Isabel.
"Who the hell did you think it was?" she gurgled. She grabbed the waiter who was passing. "Vincent, fetch me a chair."
"Fetch one yourself," he said, snatching himself away.
"Salaud," she cried, spitting at him.
"T'en fais pas, Sophie," said a big fat fellow with a great head of greasy hair, who was sitting next to us in his shirt-sleeves. "Here's a chair."
"Fancy meeting you all like this," she said, still swaying.
"Hello, Larry. Hello, Gray." She sank into the chair which the man who had spoken placed behind her. "Let's all have a drink. Patron," she screamed.
I had noticed that the proprietor had his eye on us and now he came up.
"You know these people, Sophie?" he asked, addressing her in the familiar second person singular.
"Ta gueule" she laughed drunkenly. "They're my childhood friends. I'm buying a bottle of champagne for them. And don't you bring us any urine de cheval. Bring us something one can swallow without vomiting."
"You're drunk, my poor Sophie," he said.
"To hell with you."
He went off, glad enough to sell a bottle of champagne—we for safety's sake had been drinking brandy and soda—and Sophie stared at me dully for a moment.
"Who's your friend, Isabel?"
Isabel told her my name.
"Oh? I remember, you came to Chicago once. Bit of a stuffed shirt, aren't you?"
"Maybe," I smiled.
I had no recollection of her, but that was not surprising, since I had not been to Chicago for more than ten years and had met a great many people then and a great many since.
She was quite tall and, when standing, looked taller still, for she was very thin. She wore a bright green silk blouse, but it was crumpled and spotted, and a short black skirt. Her hair, cut short and loosely curled, but tousled, was brightly hennaed. She was outrageously made up, her cheeks rouged to the eyes, and her eyelids, upper and lower, heavily blued; her eyebrows and eyelashes were thick with mascara and her mouth scarlet with lipstick. Her hands, with their painted nails, were dirty. She looked more of a slut than any woman there and I had a suspicion that she was not only drunk but doped. But one couldn't deny that there was a certain vicious attractiveness about her; she held her head with an arrogant tilt and her make-up accentuated the startling greenness of her eyes. Sodden with drink as she was, she had a bold-faced shamelessness that I could well imagine appealed to all that was base in men. She embraced us in a sardonic smile.
"I can't say you seem so terribly pleased to see me," she said.
"I heard you were in Paris,' said Isabel lamely, a chilly smile on her face.
"You might have called me. I'm in the phone-book."
"We haven't been here very long."
Gray came to the rescue.
"Are you having a good time over here, Sophie?"
"Fine. You went bust, Gray, didn't you?"
His face flushed a deeper red.
"Yes."
"Tough on you. I guess it's pretty grim in Chicago right now.
Lucky for me I got out when I did. For Christ's sake why doesn't that bastard bring us something to drink?"
"He's just coming," I said, seeing the waiter threading his way through the tables with glasses and wine on a tray.
My remark drew her attention to me.
"My loving in-laws kicked me out of Chicago. Said I was gumming up their f—— reputations." She giggled savagely. "I'm a remittance man."
The champagne came and was poured out. With a shaking hand she raised a glass to her lips.
"To hell with stuffed shirts," she said. She emptied the glass and glanced at Larry. "You don't seem to have much to say for yourself, Larry."
He had been looking at her with an impassive face. He had not taken his eyes off her since she had appeared. He smiled amiably.
"I'm not a very talkative guy."
The music struck up again and a man came over to us. He was a tallish fellow and well built, with a great hooked nose, a mat of shining black hair and great sensual lips. He looked like an evil Savonarola. Like most of the men there he wore no collar and his tight-fitting coat was closely buttoned to give him a waist.
"Come on, Sophie. We're going to dance."
"Go away. I'm busy. Can't you see I'm with friends?"
"J'm en fous de tes amis. To hell with your friends. You're dancing."
He took hold of her arm but she snatched it away.
"Fous-moi la paix, espèce de con," she cried, with sudden violence.
"Merde."
"Mange."
Gray did not understand what they were saying, but I saw that Isabel, with that strange knowledge of obscenity that the most virtuous women seem to possess, understood perfectly and her face went hard with a frown of disgust. The man raised his arm with his hand open, the horny hand of a workman, and was about to slap her, when Gray half raised himself from his chair.
"Allaiz vous ong," he shouted, with his execrable accent.
The man stopped and threw Gray a furious glance.
"Take care. Coco," said Sophie, with a bitter laugh.
'He'll lay you out cold."
The man took in Gray's great height and weight and strength. He shrugged his shoulders sullenly and, throwing a filthy word at us, slunk off. Sophie giggled drunkenly. The rest of us were silent. I refilled her glass.
"You living in Paris, Larry?" she asked after she had drained it.
"For the present."
It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him. We went on talking for a few minutes in a dreary, embarrassed way. Then Sophie pushed back her chair.
"If I don't go back to my boy friend he'll be as mad as hell. He's a sulky brute, but Christ, he's a good screw."
She staggered to her feet. "So long, folks. Come again, I'm here every night."
She pushed her way through the dancers and we lost sight of her in the crowd. I almost laughed at the icy scorn on Isabel's classic features. None of us said a word.
"This is a foul place," said Isabel suddenly. "Let's go."
I paid for our drinks and for Sophie's champagne and we trooped out. The crowd was on the dance floor and we got out without remark. It was after two, and to my mind time to go to bed, but Gray said he was hungry, so I suggested that we should go to Graf's in Montmartre and get something to eat. We were silent as we drove up. I sat beside Gray to direct him. We reached the garish restaurant. There were still people sitting on the terrace. We went in and ordered bacon and eggs and beer. Isabel, outwardly at least, had regained her composure. She congratulated me, somewhat ironically perhaps, on my acquaintance with the more disreputable parts of Paris.
"You asked for it," I said.
"I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. I've had a grand evening."
"Hell," said Gray. "It stank. And Sophie."
Isabel shrugged an indifferent shoulder.
"D'you remember her at all?" she asked me. "She sat next to you the first night you came to dinner with us. She hadn't got that awful red hair then. Its natural colour is dingy beige."
I threw my mind back. I had a recollection of a very young girl with blue eyes that were almost green and an attractive tilt to her head. Not pretty, but fresh and ingenuous, with a mixture of shyness and pertness that I found amusing.
"Of course I remember. I liked her name. I had an aunt called Sophie."
"She married a boy called Bob Macdonald."
"Nice fellow," said Gray.
"He was one of the best-looking boys I ever saw. I never understood what he saw in her. She married just after I did. Her parents were divorced and her mother married a Standard Oil man in China. She lived with her father's people at Marvin and we used to see a lot of her then, but after she married she dropped out of our crowd somehow. Bob Macdonald was a lawyer, but he wasn't making much money, and they had a walk-up apartment on the North Side. But it wasn't that. They didn't want to see anybody. I never saw two people so crazy about one another. Even after they'd been married two or three years and had a baby they'd go to the pictures and he'd sit with his arm round her waist and she with her head on his shoulder just like lovers. They were quite a joke in Chicago."
Larry listened to what Isabel said, but made no comment. His face was inscrutable.
"What happened then?" I asked.
"One night they were driving back to Chicago in a little open car of theirs, and they had the baby with them. They always had to take the baby along because they hadn't any help, Sophie did everything herself, and, anyway, they worshipped it. And a bunch of drunks in a great sedan driving at eighty miles an hour crashed into them head on. Bob and the baby were killed outright, but Sophie only had concussion and a rib or two broken. They kept it from her as long as they could that Bob and the baby were dead, but at last they had to tell her. They say it was awful. She nearly went crazy. She shrieked the place down. They had to watch her night and day and once she nearly succeeded in jumping out of the window. Of course we did all we could, but she seemed to hate us. After she came out of the hospital they put her in a sanatorium and she was there for months."
"Poor thing."
"When they let her go she started to drink, and when she was drunk she'd go to bed with anyone who asked her. It was terrible for her in-laws. They're very nice quiet people and they hated the scandal. At first we all tried to help her, but it was impossible; if you asked her to dine she'd arrive plastered and she was quite likely to pass out before the evening was over. Then she got in with a rotten crowd and we had to drop her. She was arrested once for driving a car when she was drunk. She was with a dago she'd picked up in a speak-easy and it turned out that he was wanted by the cops."
"But had she money?" I asked.
"There was Bob's insurance; the people who owned the car that smashed into them were insured and she got something from them. But it didn't last long. She spent it like a drunken sailor and in two years she was broke. Her grandmother wouldn't have her back at Marvin. Then her in-laws said they'd make her an allowance if she'd go and live abroad. I suppose that's what she's living on now."
"The wheel comes full circle," I remarked. "There was a time when the black sheep of the family was sent from my country to America; now apparently he's sent from your country to Europe."
"I can't help feeling sorry for her," said Gray.
"Can't you?" said Isabel coolly. "I can. Of course it was a shock and no one could have sympathized with Sophie more than I did. We'd known one another always. But a normal person recovers from a thing like that. If she went to pieces it's because there was a rotten streak in her. She was naturally unbalanced; even her love for Bob was exaggerated. If she'd had character she'd have been able to make something of life."
"If pots and pans . . . Aren't you very hard, Isabel?" I murmured.
"I don't think so. I have common sense and I see no reason to be sentimental about Sophie. God knows, no one could be more devoted to Gray and the babes than I am, and if they were killed in a motor accident I should go out of my mind, but sooner or later I'd pull myself together. Isn't that what you'd wish me to do. Gray, or would you prefer me to get blind every night and go to bed with every apache in Paris?"
Gray then came as near to making a humorous remark as I ever heard him.
"Of course I'd prefer you to hurl yourself on my funeral pyre in a new Molyneux dress, but as that's not done any more, I guess the best thing you could do would be to take to bridge. And I'd like you to remember not to go an original no-trump on less than three and a half to four quick tricks."
It was not the occasion for me to point out to Isabel that her love for her husband and her children, though sincere enough, was scarcely passionate. Perhaps she read the thought that was passing through my mind, for she addressed me somewhat truculently.
"What have you got to say?"
"I'm like Gray, I'm sorry tor the girl."
"She's not a girl, she's thirty."
"I suppose it was the end of the world for her when her husband and her baby were killed. I suppose she didn't care what became of her and flung herself into the horrible degradation of drink and promiscuous copulation to get even with life that had treated her so cruelly. She'd lived in heaven and when she lost it she couldn't put up with the common earth of common men, but in despair plunged headlong into hell. I can imagine that if she couldn't drink the nectar of the gods any more she thought she might as well drink bathroom gin."
"That's the sort of thing you say in novels. It's nonsense and you know it's nonsense. Sophie wallows in the gutter because she likes it. Other women have lost their husbands and children. It wasn't that that made her evil. Evil doesn't spring from good. The evil was there always. When that motor accident broke her defences it set her free to be herself. Don't waste your pity on her; she's now what at heart she always was."
All this time Larry had remained silent. He seemed to be in a brown study and I thought he hardly heard what we were saying. Isabel's words were followed by a brief silence. He began to speak, but in a strange, toneless voice, as though not to us, but to himself; his eyes seemed to look into the dim distance of past time.
"I remember her when she was fourteen with her long hair brushed back off her forehead and a black bow at the back, with her freckled, serious face. She was a modest, high-minded, idealistic child. She read everything she could get hold of and we used to talk about books."
"When?" asked Isabel, with a slight frown.
"Oh, when you were out being social with your mother. I used to go up to her grandfather's and we'd sit under a great elm they had there and read to one another. She loved poetry and wrote quite a lot herself."
"Plenty of girls do that at that age. It's pretty poor stuff."
"Of course it's a long time ago and I dare say I wasn't a very good judge."
"You couldn't have been more than sixteen yourself."
"Of course it was imitative. There was a lot of Robert Frost in it. But I have a notion it was rather remarkable for so young a girl. She had a delicate ear and a sense of rhythm. She had a feeling for the sounds and scents of the country, the first softness of spring in the air and the smell of the parched earth after rain."
"I never knew she wrote poetry," said Isabel.
"She kept it a secret, she was afraid you'd all laugh at her. She was very shy."
"She's not that now."
"When I came back from the war she was almost grown-up. She'd read a lot about the condition of the working classes and she'd seen something of it for herself in Chicago. She'd got on to Carl Sandburg and was writing savagely in free verse about the misery of the poor and the exploitation of the working classes. I dare say it was rather commonplace, but it was sincere and it had pity in it and aspiration. At that time she wanted to become a social worker. It was moving, her desire for sacrifice. I think she was capable of a great deal. She wasn't silly or mawkish, but she gave one the impression of a lovely purity and a strange loftiness of soul. We saw a lot of one another that year."
I could see that Isabel listened to him with growing exasperation. Larry had no notion that he was driving a dagger in her heart and with his every detached word twisting it in the wound. But when she spoke it was with a smile on her lips.
"How did she come to choose you for her confidant?"
Larry looked at her with his trustful eyes.
"I don't know. She was a poor girl among all of you who had plenty of dough, and I didn't belong. I was there just because Uncle Bob practised at Marvin. I suppose she felt that gave us something in common."
Larry had no relations. Most of us have at least cousins whom we may hardly know, but who at least give us a sense that we are part of the human family. Larry's father had been an only son, his mother an only daughter; his grandfather on one side, the Quaker, had been lost at sea when a young man and his grandfather on the other side had neither brother nor sister. No one could be more alone in the world than Larry.
"Did it ever occur to you that Sophie was in love with you?" asked Isabel.
"Never," he smiled.
"Well, she was."
"When he came back from the war as a wounded hero half the girls in Chicago had a crush on Larry," said Gray in his bluff way.
"This was more than a crush. She worshipped you, my poor Larry. D'you mean to say you didn't know it?"
"I certainly didn't and I don't believe it."
"I suppose you thought she was too high-minded."
"I can still see that skinny little girl with the bow in her hair and her serious face whose voice trembled with tears when she read that ode of Keats's because it was so beautiful. I wonder where she is now."
Isabel gave a very slight start and threw him a suspicious enquiring glance.
"It's getting frightfully late and I'm so tired I don't know what to do. Let's go."
On the following evening I took the Blue train to the Riviera and two or three days later went over to Antibes to see Elliott and give him news of Paris. He looked far from well. The cure at Montecatini had not done him the good he expected, and his subsequent wanderings had exhausted him. He found a baptismal font in Venice and then went on to Florence to buy the triptych he had been negotiating for. Anxious to see these objects duly placed, he went down to the Pontine Marshes and put up at a miserable inn where the heat had been hard to bear. His precious purchases were a long time on the way, but determined not to leave till he had accomplished his purpose, he stayed on. He was delighted with the effect when at last everything was in order, and he showed me with pride the photographs he had taken. The church, though small, had dignity, and the restrained richness of the interior was proof of Elliott's good taste.
"I saw an early Christian sarcophagus in Rome that took my fancy and I deliberated a long time about buying it, but in the end I thought better of it."
"What on earth did you want with an early Christian sarcophagus, Elliott?"
"To put myself in it, my dear fellow. It was of a very good design and I thought it would balance the font on the other side of the entrance, but those early Christians were stumpy little fellows and I shouldn't have fitted in. I wasn't going to lie there till the Last Trump with my knees doubled up to my chin like a foetus. Most uncomfortable."
I laughed, but Elliott was serious.
"I had a better idea. I've made all arrangements, with some difficulty, but that was to be expected, to be buried in front of the altar at the foot of the chancel steps, so that when the poor peasants of the Pontine Marshes come up to take the Sacrament they'll clump over my bones with their heavy shoes. Rather chic, don't you think? Just a plain stone slab with my name on it and a couple of dates. Si monumentum quaeris, circumspice. If you seek his monument, look around, you know."
"I do know enough Latin to understand a hackneyed quotation, Elliott," I said tartly.
"I beg your pardon, my dear fellow. I'm so accustomed to the crass ignorance of the upper classes, I forgot for the moment that I was talking to an author."
He scored.
"But what I wanted to say to you was this," he continued, "I've left proper instructions in my will, but I want you to see they're carried out. I will not be buried on the Riviera among a lot of retired colonels and middle-class French people."
"Of course I'll do what you wish, Elliott, but I don't think we need plan for anything like that for many years to come."
"I'm getting on, you know, and to tell you the truth I shan't be sorry to go. What are those lines of Landor's?I've warmed both hands . . ."
Though I have a bad verbal memory, the poem is very short and I was able to repeat it.
"I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart."
"That's it," he said.
I could not but reflect that it was only by a violent stretch of the imagination that Elliott could fit the epigram to himself.
"It expresses my sentiments exactly," he said, however.
"The only thing I could add to it is that I've always moved in the best society in Europe."
"It would be difficult to squeeze that into a quatrain."
"Society is dead. At one time I had hopes that America would take the place of Europe and create an aristocracy that the hoi polloi would respect, but the depression has destroyed any chance of that. My poor country is becoming hopelessly middle-class. You wouldn't believe it, my dear fellow, but last time I was in America a taxi driver addressed me as brother."
But though the Riviera, still shaken by the crash of '29, was not what it had been, Elliott continued to give parties and go to parties. He had never frequented Jews, making an exception only for the family of Rothschild, but the grandest parties were being given now by members of the chosen race, and when there was a party Elliott could not bear not to go to it. He wandered through these gatherings, graciously shaking the hand of one or kissing that of another, but with a kind of forlorn detachment like an exiled royalty who felt a trifle embarrassed to find himself in such company. The exiled royalties, however, had the time of their lives and to meet a film star seemed the height of their ambitions. Nor had Elliott ever looked with approval on the modern practice of treating members of the theatrical profession as persons whom you met socially; but a retired actress had built herself a sumptuous residence in his immediate neighbourhood and kept open house. Cabinet ministers, dukes, great ladies stayed with her for weeks on end. Elliott became a constant visitor.
"Of course it's a very mixed crowd," he told me, "but one doesn't have to talk to people one doesn't want to. She's a compatriot of mine and I feel I ought to help her out. It must be a relief to her house guests to find someone who can talk their own language."
Sometimes he was obviously so far from well that I asked him why he didn't take things more easily.
"My dear fellow, at my age one can't afford to fall out. You don't think that I've moved in the highest circles for nearly fifty years without realizing that if you're not seen everywhere you're forgotten."
I wondered if he realized what a lamentable confession he was then making. I had not the heart to laugh at Elliott any more; he seemed to me a profoundly pathetic object Society was what he lived for, a party was the breath of his nostrils, not to be asked to one was an affront, to be alone was a mortification; and, an old man now, he was desperately afraid.
So the summer passed. Elliott spent it scurrying from one end of the Riviera to the other, lunching in Cannes, dining in Monte Carlo and exercising all his ingenuity to fit in a tea party here and a cocktail party there; and however tired he felt, taking pains to be affable, chatty and amusing. He was full of gossip and you could trust him to know the details of the latest scandal before anyone but the parties immediately concerned. He would have stared at you with frank amazement had you suggested to him that his existence was futile. He would have thought you distressingly plebeian.
The autumn came and Elliott decided to go to Paris for a while, partly to see how Isabel, Gray and the children were getting on, and partly to make what he called acte de présence in the capital. Then he meant to go to London to order some new clothes and incidentally to look up some old friends. My own plan was to go straight to London, but he asked me to drive up with him to Paris, and since that is an agreeable thing to do I consented and, having done so, saw no reason why I should not spend at least a few days in Paris myself. We made the journey by easy stages, stopping at places where the food was good; Elliott had something the matter with his kidneys and drank nothing but Vichy, but always insisted on choosing my half-bottle of wine for me and, too good-natured to grudge me a pleasure he could not share, got a genuine satisfaction out of my enjoyment of a fine vintage. He was so generous that I had difficulty in persuading him to let me pay my share of the expenses. Though I grew a little tired of his stories of the great whom he had known in the past I liked the trip. Much of the country we drove through, just touched with the beginning of its autumn beauty, was very lovely. Having lunched at Fontainebleau, we did not arrive in Paris till afternoon. Elliott dropped me at my modest, old-fashioned hotel and went round the comer to the Ritz.
We had warned Isabel of our arriving, so I was not surprised to find a note from her awaiting me, but I was surprised at its contents.
"Come round the moment you get in. Something terrible has happened. Don't bring Uncle Elliott. For God's sake come as soon as you can."
I am not less curious than anyone else, but I had to have a wash and put on a clean shirt; then I took a taxi and went round to the apartment in the Rue St. Guillaume. I was shown into the drawing-room. Isabel sprang to her feet.
"Where have you been all this time? I've been waiting for hours."
It was five o'clock and, before I could answer, the butler brought in the tea-things. Isabel, her hands clenched, watched him with impatience. I couldn't imagine what was the matter.
"I've only just arrived. We dawdled over lunch at Fontainebleau."
"God, how slow he is. Maddening!" said Isabel.
The man placed the salver with the teapot and the sugar basin and the cups on the table and with what really was exasperating deliberation arranged around it plates of bread and butter, cakes and cookies. He went out and closed the door behind him.
"Larry's going to marry Sophie Macdonald."
"Who's she?"
"Don't be so stupid," cried Isabel, her eyes flashing with anger. "That drunken slut we met at that filthy cafe you took us to. God knows why you took us to a place like that. Gray was disgusted."
"Oh, you mean your Chicago friend?" I said, ignoring her unjust reproach. "How d'you know?"
"How should I know? He came and told me himself yesterday afternoon. I've been frantic ever since."
"Supposing you sat down, gave me a cup of tea and told me all about it."
"Help yourself."
She sat behind the tea-table and watched me irritably while I poured myself out a cup. I made myself comfortable on a small sofa by the fireplace.
"We haven't seen so much of him lately, since we came back from Dinard, I mean; he came up there for a few days, but wouldn't stay with us, he stayed at a hotel. He used to come down to the beach and play with the children. They're crazy about him. We played golf at St. Briac. Gray asked him one day if he'd seen Sophie again.
" 'Yes, I've seen her several times,' he said.
"'Why?' I asked.
" 'She's an old friend,’ he said.
" 'If I were you I wouldn't waste my time on her,' I said.
"Then he smiled. You know how he smiles, as though he thought what you'd said funny, though it isn't funny at all.
" 'But you're not me,' he said.
"I shrugged my shoulders and changed the conversation. I never gave the matter another thought. You can imagine my horror when he came here and told me they were going to be married.
" 'You can't, Larry,' I said. 'You can't.'
" 'I'm going to,' he said as calmly as if he said he was going to have a second helping of potatoes. 'And I want you to be very nice to her, Isabel.'
" 'That's asking too much, I said. 'You're crazy. She's bad, bad, bad.'"
"What makes you think that?" I interrupted.
Isabel looked at me with flashing eyes.
"She's soused from morning till night. She goes to bed with every tough who asks her."
"That doesn't mean she's bad. Quite a number of highly respected citizens get drunk and have a liking for rough trade. They're bad habits, like biting one's nails, but I don't know that they're worse than that. I call a person bad who lies and cheats and is unkind."
"If you're going to take her part I'll kill you."
"How did Larry meet her again?"
"He found her address in the phone-book. He went to see her. She was sick, and no wonder, with the life she leads. He got a doctor and had someone in to look after her. That's how it started. He says she's given up drink; the damned fool thinks she's cured."
"Have you forgotten what Larry did for Gray? He's cured him, hasn't he?"
"That's different. Gray wanted to be cured. She doesn't."
"How d'you know?"
"Because I know women. When a woman goes to pieces like that she's done for; she can never get back. If Sophie's what she is, it's because she was like that always. D'you think she'll stick to Larry? Of course not. Sooner or later she'll break out. It's in her blood. It's a brute she wants, that's what excites her, and it's a brute she'll go after. She'll lead Larry a hell of a life."
"I think that's very probable, but I don't know what you can do about it. He's going into this with his eyes open."
"I can do nothing about it, but you can."
"I?"
"Larry likes you and he listens to what you say. You're the only person who has any influence over him. You know the world. Go to him and tell him that he can't make such a fool of himself. Tell him that it'll ruin him."
"He'll only tell me that it's no business of mine and he'll be quite right."
"But you like him, at least you're interested in him, you can't sit by and let him make a hopeless mess of his life."
"Gray's his oldest and most intimate friend. I don't think it'll do any good, but I should have thought Gray was the best person to speak to him."
"Oh, Gray," she said impatiently.
"You know it may not turn out so badly as you think. I've known two or three fellows, one in Spain and two in the East, who married whores and they made them very good wives. They were grateful to their husbands, for the security they gave them, I mean, and they of course knew what pleases a man."
"You make me tired. D'you think I sacrificed myself to let Larry fall into the hands of a raging nymphomaniac?"
"How did you sacrifice yourself?"
"I gave Larry up for the one and only reason that I didn't want to stand in his way."
"Come off it, Isabel. You gave him up for a square-cut diamond and a sable coat."
The words were hardly out of my mouth when a plate of bread and butter came flying at my head. By sheer luck I caught the plate, but the bread and butter was scattered on the floor. I got up and put the plate back on the table.
"Your uncle Elliott wouldn't have thanked you if you'd broken one of his Crown Derby plates. They were made for the third Duke of Dorset and they're almost priceless."
"Pick up the bread and butter," she snapped.
"Pick it up yourself," I said, seating myself again on the sofa.
She got up and, fuming, picked up the scattered pieces.
"And you call yourself an English gentleman," she exclaimed, savagely.
"No, that's a thing I've never done in all my life."
"Get the hell out of here. I never want to see you again. I hate the sight of you."
"I'm sorry for that, because the sight of you always gives me pleasure. Have you ever been told that your nose is exactly like that of the Psyche in the museum of Naples, and that's the loveliest representation of virginal beauty that ever existed. You've got exquisite legs, so long and shapely, and I never cease to be surprised at them, because they were thick and lumpy when you were a girl, I can't imagine how've you managed it."
"An iron will and the grace of God," she said angrily.
"But of course your hands are your most fascinating feature. They're so slim and so elegant."
"I was under the impression you thought them too big."
"Not for your height and build. I'm always amazed at the infinite grace with which you use them. Whether by nature or by art you never make a gesture without impart-ing beauty to it. They're like flowers sometimes and sometimes like birds on the wing. They're more expressive than any words you can say. They're like the hands of El Greco's portraits; in fact, when I look at them I'm inclined to believe Elliott's highly improbable story of your having an ancestor who was a Spanish grandee."
She looked up crossly.
"What are you talking about? That's the first I've heard of it."
I told her about the Count de Lauria and Queen Mary's maid of honour from whose issue in the female line Elliott traced his descent. Meanwhile Isabel contemplated her long fingers and her manicured painted nails with complacency.
"One must be descended from someone," she said.
Then with a tiny chuckle, giving me a mischievous look in which no trace of rancour remained, she added: "You lousy bastard."
So easy is it to make a woman see reason if you only tell her the truth.
"There are moments when I don't positively dislike you," said Isabel.
She came and sat on the sofa beside me and, slipping her arm through mine, leant over to kiss me. I withdrew my cheek.
"I will not have my face smeared with lipstick," I said.
"If you want to kiss me, kiss me on the lips, which is what merciful Providence intended them for."
She giggled and, her hand turning my head towards her, with her lips pressed a thin layer of paint on mine. The sensation was far from unpleasant.
"Now you've done that, perhaps you'll tell me what it is you want."
"Advice."
"I’m quite willing to give you that, but I don't think for a moment you'll take it. There's only one thing you can do and that is to make the best of a bad job."
Flaring up again, she snatched her arm away and, getting up, flung herself into a chair on the other side of the fireplace.
“I’m not going to sit by and let Larry ruin himself. I'll stick at nothing to prevent him from marrying that slut."
"You won't succeed. You see, he's enthralled by one of the most powerful emotions that can beset the human breast."
"You don't mean to say you think he's in love with her?"
"No. That would be trifling in comparison."
"Well?"
"Have you ever read the New Testament?"
"I suppose so."
"D'you remember how Jesus was led into the wilderness and fasted forty days? Then, when he was a-hungered, the devil came to him and said: If thou be the son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But Jesus resisted the temptation. Then the devil set him on a pinnacle of the temple and said to him: If thou be the son of God, cast thyself down. For angels had charge of him and would bear him up. But again Jesus resisted. Then the devil took him into a high mountain and showed him the kingdoms of the world and said that he would give them to him if he would fall down and worship him. But Jesus said: Get thee hence, Satan. That's the end of the story according to the good simple Matthew. But it wasn't. The devil was sly and he came to Jesus once more and said: If thou wilt accept shame and disgrace, scourging, a crown of thorns and death on the cross, thou shalt save the human race, for greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Jesus fell. The devil laughed till his sides ached, for he knew the evil men would commit in the name of their redeemer."
Isabel looked at me indignantly.
"Where on earth did you get that?"
"Nowhere. I've invented it on the spur of the moment."
"I think it's idiotic and blasphemous."
"I only wanted to suggest to you that self-confidence is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling. It whirls its victim to destruction in the highest affirmation of his personality. The object doesn't matter; it may be worth while or it may be worthless. No wine is so intoxicating, no love so shattering, no vice so compelling. When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? At best he can only sacrifice his only begotten son."
"Oh, Christ, how you bore me," said Isabel.
I paid no attention.
"How can you suppose that common sense or prudence will have any effect on Larry when he's in the grip of a passion like that? You don't know what he's been seeking all these years. I don't know either, I only suspect. All these years of labour, all these experiences he garnered weigh nothing in the balance now they're set against his desire—oh, it's more than a desire, his urgent, clamorous need to save the soul of a wanton woman whom he'd known as an innocent child. I think you're right, I think he's undertaking a hopeless job; with his acute sensibility he'll suffer the tortures of the damned; his life's work, whatever it may be, will remain undone. The ignoble Paris killed Achilles by shooting an arrow in his heel. Larry lacks just that touch of ruthlessness that even the saint must have to win his halo."
"I love him," said Isabel. "God knows, I ask nothing of him. I expect nothing. No one could love anyone more unselfishly than I love him. He's going to be so unhappy."
She began to cry and, thinking it would do her good, I let her be. I diverted myself idly with the idea that had sprung so unexpectedly into my mind. I played with it. I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocrisy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing pleasures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due. Presently Isabel took a handkerchief from her bag and a mirror and, looking at herself, carefully wiped the corner of her eyes.
"Damned sympathetic, aren't you?" she snapped.
I looked at her pensively, but did not answer. She powdered her face and painted her lips.
"You said just now you suspected what he's been after all these years. What did you mean?"
"I can only guess, you know, and I may be quite wrong. I think he's been seeking for a philosophy, or maybe a religion, and a rule of life that'll satisfy both his head and his heart."
Isabel considered this for a moment. She sighed.
"Don't you think it's very strange that a country boy from Marvin, Illinois, should have a notion like that?"
"No stranger than that Luther Burbank who was bom on a farm in Massachusetts should have produced a seed-less orange or that Henry Ford who was born on a farm in Michigan should have invented a Tin Lizzie."
"But those are practical things. That's in the American tradition."
I laughed.
"Can anything in the world be more practical than to learn how to live to best advantage?"
Isabel gave a gesture of lassitude.
"You don't want to lose Larry altogether, do you?"
She shook her head.
"You know how loyal he is: if you won't have anything to do with his wife he won't have anything to do with you. If you've got any sense you'll make friends with Sophie. You'll forget the past and be as nice to her as you can be when you like. She's going to be married and I suppose she's buying some clothes. Why don't you offer to go shopping with her? I think she'd jump at it."
Isabel listened to me with narrowed eyes. She seemed intent upon what I was saying. For a moment she pondered, but I could not guess what was passing through her mind. Then she surprised me.
"Will you ask her to lunch? It would be rather awkward for me after what I said to Larry yesterday."
"Will you behave if I do?"
"Like an angel of light," she answered with her most engaging smile.
"I'll fix it up right away."
There was a phone in the room. I soon found Sophie's number, and after the usual delay which those who use the French telephone learn to put up with patiently, I got her. I mentioned my name.
"I've just arrived in Paris," I said, "and heard that you and Larry are going to be married. I want to congratulate you. I hope you'll be very happy." I smothered a cry as Isabel, who was standing by me, gave the soft of my arm a vicious pinch. "I'm only here for a very short time and I wonder if you and Larry will come and lunch with me the day after tomorrow at the Ritz. I'm asking Gray and Isabel and Elliott Templeton."
"I'll ask Larry. He's here now." There was a pause.
"Yes, we shall be glad to."
I fixed an hour, made a civil remark, and replaced the receiver on its stand. I caught an expression in Isabel's eyes that caused me some misgiving.
"What are you thinking?" I asked her. "I don't quite like the look of you."
"I'm sorry; I thought that was the one thing about me you did like."
"You haven't got some nefarious scheme that you're hatching, Isabel?"
She opened her eyes very wide.
"I promise you I haven't. As a matter of fact I'm terribly curious to see what Sophie looks like now Larry has reformed her. AH I hope is that she won't come to the Ritz with a mask of paint on her face."
My little party did not go too badly. Gray and Isabel arrived first; Larry and Sophie Macdonald five minutes later. Isabel and Sophie kissed each other warmly and Isabel and Gray congratulated her on her engagement. I caught the appraising sweep of the eyes with which Isabel took in Sophie's appearance. I was shocked at it. When I saw her in that dive in the Rue de Lappe, outrageously painted, with hennaed hair, in the bright green coat, though she looked outrageous and was very drunk, there was something provocative and even basely alluring in her; but now she looked drab and, though certainly a year or two younger than Isabel, much older. She still had that gallant tilt of her head, but now, I don't know why, it was pathetic. She was letting her hair go back to its natural colour and it had the slatternly look that hair has when it has been dyed and left to grow. Except for a streak of red on her lips she had no make-up on. Her skin was rough and it had an unhealthy pallor. I remembered how vividly green her eyes had looked, but now they were pale and grey. She wore a red dress, obviously brand-new, with hat, shoes and bag to match; I don't pretend to know anything about women's clothes, but I had a feeling that it was fussy and too elaborate for the occasion. On her breast was a piece of showy artificial jewellery such as you buy in the Rue de Rivoli. Beside Isabel, in black silk, with a string of cultured pearls round her neck and in a very smart hat, she look cheap and dowdy.
I ordered cocktails, but Larry and Sophie refused them. Then Elliott arrived. His progress through the vast foyer was, however, impeded by the hands he had to shake and the hands he had to kiss as he saw one person after the other whom he knew. He behaved as though the Ritz were his private house and he were assuring his guests of his pleasure that they had been able to accept his invitation. He had been told nothing about Sophie except that she had lost her husband and child in a motor accident and was now going to marry Larry. When at last he reached us he congratulated them both with the elaborate graciousness of which he was a master. We went in to the dining-room and since we were four men and two women I placed Isabel and Sophie opposite one another at the round table, with Sophie between Gray and myself; but the table was small enough for the conversation to be general. I had already ordered the luncheon and the wine waiter came along with the wine card.
"You don't know anything about wine, my dear fellow," said Elliott. "Give me the wine card, Albert." He turned over the pages. "I drink nothing but Vichy myself, but I can't bear to see people drink wine that isn't perfect."
He and Albert, the wine waiter, were old friends and after an animated discussing they decided on the wine I should give my guests. Then he turned to Sophie.
"And where are you going for your honeymoon, my dear?"
He glanced at her dress and an almost imperceptible raising of his eyebrows showed me that he had formed an unfavourable opinion of it.
"We're going to Greece."
"I've been trying to get there for ten years,” said Larry, "but somehow I've never been able to manage it."
"It ought to be lovely at this time of year," said Isabel, with a show of enthusiasm.
She remembered, as I remembered, that that was where Larry proposed to take her when he wanted her to marry him. It seemed to be an idée fixe with Larry to go to Greece on a honeymoon.
The conversation flowed none too easily and I should have found it a difficult row to hoe if it hadn't been for Isabel. She was on her best behaviour. Whenever silence seemed to threaten us and I racked my brain for something fresh to talk about, she broke in with facile chatter. I was grateful to her. Sophie hardly spoke except when she was spoken to and then it seemed an effort to her. The spirit had gone out of her. You would have said that something had died in her and I asked myself if Larry wasn't putting her to a strain greater than she could support. If as I suspected she had doped as well as drunk, the sudden deprivation must have worn her nerves to a frazzle. Sometimes I intercepted a look between them. In his I saw tenderness and encouragement, but in hers an appeal that was pathetic. It may be that Gray with his sweetness of disposition instinctively felt what I thought I saw, for he began to tell her how Larry had cured him of the headaches that had incapacitated him and went on to say how much he had depended on him and how much he owed him.
"Now I'm fit as a flea," he continued. "As soon as ever I can get a job I'm going back to work. I've got several irons in the fire and I'm hoping to land something before long. Gosh, it'll be good to be back home again."
Gray meant well, but what he had said was perhaps not very tactful if, as I supposed, Larry to cure Sophie of her aggravated alcoholism had used with her the same method of suggestion—for that to my mind was what it was—that had been successful with Gray.
"You never have headaches now, Gray?" asked Elliott.
"I haven't had one for three months and if I think one's coming on I take hold of my charm and I'm all right."
He fished out of his pocket the ancient coin Larry had given him. "I wouldn't sell it for a million dollars."
We finished luncheon and coffee was served. The wine waiter came up and asked whether we wanted liqueurs. We all refused except Gray, who said he would have a brandy. When the bottle was brought Elliott insisted on looking at it.
"Yes, I can recommend it. That'll do you no harm."
"A little glass for Monsieur?" asked the waiter.
"Alas, it's forbidden me."
Elliott told him at some length that he was having trouble with his kidneys and that his doctor would not allow him to drink alcohol.
"A tear of zubrovka could do Monsieur no harm. It's well known to be very good for the kidneys. We have just received a consignment from Poland."
"Is that true? It's hard to get nowadays. Let me have a look at a bottle."
The wine waiter, a portly, dignified creature with a long silver chain round his neck, went away to fetch it, and Elliott explained that it was the Polish form of vodka but in every way superior.
"We used to drink it at the Radziwills when I stayed with them for the shooting. You should have seen those Polish princes putting it away; I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that they'd drink it by the tumbler without turning a hair. Good blood, of course; aristocrats to the tips of their fingers. Sophie, you must try it, and you too, Isabel. It's an experience no one can afford to miss."
The wine waiter brought the bottle. Larry, Sophie and I refused to be tempted, but Isabel said she would like to try it. I was surprised, for habitually she drank very little and she had had two cocktails and two or three glasses of wine. The waiter poured out a glass of pale green liquid and Isabel sniffed it.
"Oh, what a lovely smell."
"Hasn't it?" cried Elliott. "That's the herbs they put in it; it's they that give it its delicate taste. Just to keep you company I'll have a drop. It can't hurt me for once."
"It tastes divine,' said Isabel. "It's like mother's milk. I've never tasted anything so good."
Elliott raised his glass to his lips.
"Oh, how it brings back the old days! You people who never stayed with the Radziwills don't know what living is. That was the grand style. Feudal, you know. You might have thought yourself back in the Middle Ages. You were met at the station by a carriage with six horses and postilions. And at dinner a footman in livery behind every person."
He went on to describe the magnificence and luxury of the establishment and the brilliance of the parties; and the suspicion, doubtless unworthy, occurred to me that the whole thing was a put-up job between Elliott and the wine waiter to give Elliott an opportunity to discourse upon the grandeur of this princely family and the host of Polish aristocrats he hobnobbed with in their castle. There was no stopping him.
"Another glass, Isabel?"
"Oh, I daren't. But it is heavenly. I'm so glad to know about it; Gray, we must get some."
"I'll have some sent round to the apartment."
"Oh, Uncle Elliott, would you?" cried Isabel enthusiastically. "You are so kind to us. You must try it. Gray; it smells of freshly mown hay and spring flowers, of thyme and lavender, and it's soft on the palate and so comfortable, it's like listening to music by moonlight."
It was unlike Isabel to gush inordinately and I wondered if she was a trifle tight. The party broke up. I shook hands with Sophie.
"When are you going to be married?" I asked her.
"The week after next. I hope you'll come to the wedding."
"I'm afraid I shan't be in Paris. I'm leaving for London tomorrow."
While I was saying good-bye to the rest of my guests Isabel took Sophie aside and talked to her for a minute, then turned to Gray.
"Oh, Gray, I'm not coming home just yet. There's a dress show at Molyneux's and I'm taking Sophie to it. She ought to see the new models."
"I'd love to," said Sophie.
We parted. I took Suzanne Rouvier out to dinner that night and next morning started for England.
Elliott arrived at Claridge's a fortnight later and shortly afterwards I dropped in to see him. He had ordered himself several suits of clothes and at what I thought excessive length told me in detail what he had chosen and why. When at last I could get a word in I asked him how the wedding had gone off.
"It didn't go off," he answered grimly.
"What do. you mean?"
"Three days before it was to take place Sophie disappeared. Larry hunted everywhere for her."
"What an extraordinary thing! Did they have a row?"
"No. Far from it. Everything had been arranged. I was going to give her away. They were taking the Orient Express immediately after the wedding. If you ask me, I think Larry's well out of it."
I guessed that Isabel had told Elliott everything.
"What exactly happened?" I asked.
"Well, you remember that day we lunched at the Ritz with you. Isabel took her to Molyneux's. D'you remember the dress Sophie wore? Deplorable. Did you notice the shoulders? That's how you tell if a dress is well made, by the way it fits over the shoulders. Of course, poor girl, she couldn't afford Molyneux's prices, and Isabel, you know how generous she is, and after all they've known one another since they were children, Isabel offered to give her a dress so that at least she'd have something decent to be married in. Naturally she jumped at it. Well, to cut a long story short, Isabel asked her to come to the apartment one day at three so that they could go together for the final fitting. Sophie came all right, but unfortunately Isabel had to take one of the children to the dentist's and didn't get in till after four and by that time Sophie had gone. Isabel thought she'd got tired of waiting and had gone on to Molyneux's, so she went there at once, but she hadn't come. At last she gave her up and went home again. They were all going to dine together and Larry came along at dinner-time and the first thing she asked him was where Sophie was.
"He couldn't understand it and he rang up her apartment, but there was no reply, so he said he'd go down there. They held dinner up as long as they could, but neither of them turned up and so they had dinner by themselves. Of course you know what Sophie's life was before you ran into her in the Rue de Lappe; that was a most unfortunate idea of yours to take them down there. Well, Larry spent all night going around her old haunts, but couldn't find her anywhere. He went to the apartment time after time, but the concierge said she hadn't been in. He spent three days hunting for her. She'd just vanished. Then on the fourth day he went to the apartment again and the concierge told him she'd been in and packed a bag and gone away in a taxi."
"Was Larry awfully upset?"
"I didn't see him. Isabel tells me he was rather."
"She didn't write or anything?"
"Nothing."
I thought it over.
"What do you make of it?" I said.
"My dear fellow, exactly what you make of it. She couldn't stick it out; she went on the booze again."
That was obvious, but for all that it was strange. I couldn't see why she had chosen just that moment to skip.
"How is Isabel taking it?"
"Of course she's sorry, but she's a sensible girl and she told me she always thought it would be a disaster if Larry married a woman like that."
"And Larry?"
"Isabel's been very kind to him. She says that what makes it difficult is that he won't discuss it. He'll be all right, you know; Isabel says he was never in love with Sophie. He was only marrying her out of a sort of misguided chivalry."
I could see Isabel putting a brave face on a turn of events that was certainly causing her a great deal of satisfaction. I well knew that next time I saw her she would not fail to point out to me that she had known all along what would happen. But it was nearly a year before I saw her again and though by that time I could have told her something about Sophie that would have set her thinking, the circumstances were such that I had no inclination to. I stayed in London till nearly Christmas and then, wanting to get home, went straight down to the Riviera without stopping in Paris. I set to work on a novel and for the next few months lived in retirement. I saw Elliott now and then. It was obvious that his health was failing, and it pained me that he persisted notwithstanding in leading a social life. He was vexed with me because I would not drive thirty miles to go to the constant parties he continued to give. He thought it very conceited of me to prefer to sit at home and work.
"It's an unusually brilliant season, my dear fellow," he told me. "It's a crime to shut yourself up in your house and miss everything that's going on. And why you had to choose a part of the Riviera to live in that's completely out of fashion I shan't be able to understand if I live to be a hundred."
Poor nice silly Elliott; it was very clear that he would live to no such age.
By June I had finished the rough draft of my novel and thought I deserved a holiday, so, packing a bag, I got on the cutter from which in summer we used to bathe in the Baie des Fosses and set sail along the coast towards Marseilles. There was only a fitful breeze and for the most part we chugged along with the motor auxiliary. We spent a night in the harbour at Cannes, another at Sainte Maxime, and a third at Sanary. Then we got to Toulon. That is a port I have always had an affection for. The ships of the French fleet give it an air at once romantic and companionable, and I am never tired of wandering about its old streets. I can linger for hours on the quay, watching the sailors on shore leave strolling about in pairs or with their girls, and the civilians who saunter back and forth as though they had nothing in the world to do but enjoy the pleasant sunshine. Because of all these ships and the ferry-boats that take the bustling crowd to various points of the vast harbour, Toulon gives you the effect of a terminal to which all the ways of the wide world con-verge; and as you sit in a cafe, your eyes a little dazzled by the brightness of sea and sky, your fancy takes golden journeys to the uttermost parts of the earth. You land in a longboat on a coral beach, fringed with coconut palms, in the Pacific; you step off the gangway on to the dock at Rangoon and get into a rickshaw; you watch from the upper deck the noisy, gesticulating crowd of Negroes as your ship is made fast to the pier at Port au Prince.
We got in latish in the morning and towards the middle of the afternoon i landed and walked along the quay, looking at the shops, at the people who passed me and at the people sitting under the awning in the cafes. Suddenly I saw Sophie and at the same moment she saw me. She smiled and said hello. I stopped and shook hands with her. She was by herself at a small table with an empty glass before her.
"Sit down and have a drink," she said.
"You have one with me," I replied, taking a chair.
She wore the striped blue-and-white jersey of the French sailor, a pair of bright red slacks and sandals through which protruded the painted nails of her big toes. She wore no hat, and her hair, cut very short and curled, was of so pale a gold that it was almost silver. She was as heavily made up as when we had run across her at the Rue de Lappe. She had had a drink or two as I judged from the saucers on the table, but she was sober. She did not seem displeased to see me.
"How are all the folks in Paris?" she asked.
"I think they're all right. I haven't seen any of them since that day we all lunched together at the Ritz."
She blew a great cloud of smoke from her nostrils and began to laugh.
"I didn't marry Larry after all."
"I know. Why not?"
"Darling, when it came to the point I couldn't see myself being Mary Magdalen to his Jesus Christ. No, sir."
"What made you change your mind at the last moment?"
She looked at me mockingly. With that audacious tilt of the head, with her small breasts and narrow flanks, in that get-up, she looked like a vicious boy; but I must admit that she was much more attractive than in the red dress, with its dismal air of provincial smartness, in which I had last seen her. Face and neck were deeply burnt by the sun, and though the brownness of her skin made the rouge on her cheeks and the black of her eyebrows more aggressive, the effect in its vulgar way was not without lure.
"Would you like me to tell you?"
I nodded. The waiter brought the beer I had ordered for myself and the brandy and seltzer for her. She lit a caporal from one she had just finished.
"I hadn't had a drink for three months. I hadn't had a smoke." She saw my faint look of surprise and laughed. "I don't mean cigarettes. Opium. I felt awful. You know, sometimes when I was alone I'd shriek the place down; I'd say, ' I can't go through with it, I can't go through with it.' It wasn't so bad when I was with Larry, but when he wasn't there it was hell."
I was looking at her and when she mentioned opium I scanned her more sharply; I noticed the pin-point pupils that showed she was smoking it now. Her eyes were startlingly green.
"Isabel was giving me my wedding dress. I wonder what's happened to it now. It was a peach. We'd arranged that I should pick her up and we'd go to Molyneux's together. I will say this for Isabel, what she doesn't know about clothes isn't worth knowing. When I got to the apartment their man said she'd had to take Joan to the dentist's and had left a message that she'd be in directly. I went into the living-room. The coffee things were still on the table and I asked the man if I could nave a cup. Coffee was the only thing that kept me going. He said he'd bring me some and took the empty cups and the coffee-pot away. He left a bottle on the tray. I looked at it, and it was that Polish stuff you'd all talked about at the Ritz."
"Zubrovka. I remember Elliott saying he'd send Isabel some."
"You'd all raved about how good it smelt and I was curious. I took out the cork and had a sniff. You were quite right; it smelt damned good. I lit a cigarette and in a few minutes the man came in with the coffee. That was good too. They talk a lot about French coffee, they can have it; give me American coffee. That's the only thing I miss here. But Isabel's coffee wasn't bad, I was feeling lousy, and after I'd had a cup I felt better. I looked at that bottle standing there. It was a terrible temptation, but I said, 'To hell with it, I won't think of it,' and I lit another cigarette. I thought Isabel would be in any minute, but she didn't come; I got frightfully nervous; I hate being kept waiting and there was nothing to read in the room. I started walking about and looking at the pictures, but I kept on seeing that damned bottle. Then I thought I’d just pour out a glass and look at it. It had such a pretty colour."
"Pale green."
"That's right. It's funny, its colour is just like its smell. It's like that green you sometimes sec in the heart of a white rose. I had to see if it tasted like that, I thought just a taste couldn't hurt me; I only meant to take a sip and then I heard a sound, I thought it was Isabel coming in and I swallowed the glassful because I didn't want her to catch me. But it wasn't Isabel after all. Gosh, it made me feel good, I hadn't felt like that since I'd gone on the wagon. 1 really began to feel alive again. If Isabel had come in then I suppose I'd be married to Larry now. I wonder how it would have turned out."
"And she didn't come in?"
"No, she didn't. I was furious with her. Who did she think she was, keeping me waiting like that? And then I saw that the liqueur glass was full again; I suppose I must have poured it out without thinking, but, believe it or not, I didn't know I had. It seemed silly to pour it back again, so I drank it. There's no denying it, it was delicious. I felt a different woman; I felt like laughing and I hadn't felt like that for three months. D'you remember that old cissie saying he'd seen fellas in Poland drink it by the tumbler without turning a hair? Well, I thought I could take what any Polish son of a bitch could take and you may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, so I emptied the dregs of my coffee in the fireplace and filled the cup to the brim. Talk of mother's milk—my arse. Then I don't quite know what happened, but I don't believe there was much left in the bottle by the time I was through. Then I thought I'd get out before Isabel came in. She nearly caught me. Just as I got out of the front door I heard Joanie's voice. I ran up the stairs and waited till they were safely in the apartment and then I dashed down and got into a taxi. I told the driver to drive like hell and when he asked where to I burst out laughing in his face. I felt like a million dollars."
"Did you go back to your apartment?" I asked, though I knew she hadn't.
"What sort of a damn fool d'you take me for? I knew Larry would come and look for me. I didn't dare go to any of the places I used to go to, so I went to Hakim's. I knew Larry'd never find me there. Besides, I wanted a smoke."
"What's Hakim's?"
"Hakim's. Hakim's an Algerian and he can always get you opium if you've got the dough to pay for it. He was quite a friend of mine. He'll get you anything you want, a boy, a man, a woman or a nigger. He always has half a dozen Algerians on tap. I spent three days there. I don't know how many men I didn't have." She began to giggle.
"All shapes, sizes and colours. I made up for lost time all right. But you know, I was scared. I didn't feel safe in Paris, I was afraid Larry'd find me, besides I hadn't got any money left, those bastards you have to pay them to go to bed with you, so I got out, I went back to the apartment and gave the concierge a hundred francs and told her if anyone came and asked for me to say I'd gone away.
I packed my things and that night I took the train to Toulon. I didn't feel really safe till I got here."
"And have you been here ever since?"
"You betcha, and I'm going to stay here. You can get all the opium you want, the sailors bring it back from the East, and it's good stuff, not that muck they sell you in Paris. I've got a room at the hotel. You know, the Commerce et la Marine. When you go in there at night the corridors just reek of it." She sniffed voluptuously.
"Sweet and acrid, and you know they're smoking in their rooms, and it gives you a nice homey feeling. And they don't mind who you take in with you. They come and thump at your door at five in the morning to get the sailors up to go back to their ships, so you don't have to worry about that." And then, without transition: "I saw a book of yours in the store just along the quay; if I'd known I was going to see you I'd have bought it and got you to sign it."
When passing the bookshop I had stopped to look in the window and had noticed among other new books the translation of a novel of mine that had recently appeared.
"I don't suppose it would have amused you much," I said.
"I don't know why it shouldn't. I can read, you know."
"And you can write too, I believe."
She gave me a rapid glance and began to laugh.
"Yeah, I used to write poetry when I was a kid. I guess it was pretty terrible, but I thought it fine. I suppose Larry told you." She hesitated for a moment. "Life's hell anyway, but if there is any fun to be got out of it, you're only a god-damn fool if you don't get it." She threw back her head defiantly. "If I buy that book will you write in it?"
"I'm leaving tomorrow. If you really want it, I'll get you a copy and leave it at your hotel."
"That'd be swell."
Just then a naval launch came up to the quay and a crowd of sailors tumbled out of it. Sophie embraced them with a glance.
"That'll be my boy friend." She waved her arm at someone. "You can stand him a drink and then you better scram. He's a Corsican and as jealous as our old friend Jehovah."
A young man came up to us, hesitated when he saw me, but on a beckoning gesture came up to our table. He was tall, swarthy, clean-shaven, with splendid dark eyes, an aquiline nose and raven black, wavy hair. He did not look more than twenty. Sophie introduced me as an American friend of her childhood.
"Dumb but beautiful," she said to me.
"You like 'em tough, don't you?"
"The tougher the better."
"One of these days you'll get your throat cut."
"I wouldn't be surprised," she grinned. "Good riddance to bad rubbish."
"One's going to speak French, isn't one?" the sailor said sharply.
Sophie turned upon him a smile in which there was a trace of mockery. She spoke a fluent and slangy French, with a strong American accent, but this gave the vulgar and obscene colloquialisms that she commonly used a comic tang, so that you could not help but laugh.
"I was telling him that you were beautiful, but to spare your modesty f was saying it in English." She addressed me. "And he's strong. He has the muscles of a boxer. Feel them."
The sailor's sullenness was dispelled by the flattery and with a complacent smile he flexed his arm so that the biceps stood out.
"Feel it," he said. "Go on, feel it."
I did so and expressed a proper admiration. We chatted for a few minutes. I paid for the drinks and got up.
"I must be going."
"It's nice to have seen you. Don't forget the book."
"I won’t."
I shook hands with them both and strolled off. On my way I stopped at the bookshop, bought the novel and wrote Sophie's name and my own. Then, because it suddenly occurred to me and I could think of nothing else, I wrote the first line of Ronsard's lovely little poem which is in all the anthologies:
"Mignonne, allons voir si la rose. . . ."
I left it at the hotel. It is on the quay and I have often stayed there because when you are awakened at dawn by the clarion that calls the men on night leave back to duty the sun rising mistily over the smooth water of the harbour invests the wraithlike ships with a shrouded loveliness. Next day we sailed for Cassis, where I wanted to buy some wine, and then to Marseilles to take up a new sail that we had ordered. A week later I got home.
I found a message from Joseph, Elliott's manservant, to tell me that Elliott was ill in bed and would be glad to see me, so next day I drove over to Antibes. Joseph, before taking me up to see his master, told me that Elliott had had an attack of uraemia and that his doctor took a grave view of his condition. He had come through it and was getting better, but his kidneys were diseased and it was impossible that he should ever completely recover. Joseph had been with Elliott for forty years and was devoted to him, but though his manner was regretful it was impossible not to notice the inner satisfaction with which, like so many members of his class, catastrophe in the house filled him.
"Ce pauvre monsieur," he sighed. "Evidently he had his manias but at bottom he was good. Sooner or later one must die."
He spoke already as though Elliott were at his last gasp.
"I’m sure he's provided for you, Joseph," I said grimly.
"One must hope it," he said mournfully.
I was surprised when he ushered me into the bedroom to find Elliott very spry. He was pale and looked old, but was in good spirits. He was shaved and his hair was neatly brushed. He wore pale blue silk pyjamas, on the pocket of which were embroidered his initials surmounted by his count's crown. These, much larger and again with the crown, were heavily embroidered on the turned-down sheet.
I asked him how he felt.
"Perfectly well," he said cheerfully. "It's only a temporary indisposition. I shall be up and about again in a few days. I've got the Grand Duke Dimitri lunching with me on Saturday, and I've told my doctor he must put me to rights by then at all costs."
I spent half an hour with him, and on my way out asked Joseph to let me know if Elliott had a relapse. I was astonished a week later when I went to lunch with one of my neighbours to find him there. Dressed for a party, he looked like death.
"You oughtn't to be out, Elliott," I told him.
"Oh, what nonsense, my dear fellow. Frieda is expecting the Princess Mafalda. I've known the Italian royal family for years, ever since poor Louisa was en poste at Rome, and I couldn't let poor Frieda down."
I did not know whether to admire his indomitable spirit or to lament that at his age, stricken with mortal illness, he should still retain his passion for society. You would never have thought he was a sick man. Like a dying actor when he has the grease paint on his face and steps on the stage, who forgets for the time being his aches and pains, Elliott played his part of the polished courtier with his accustomed assurance. He was infinitely amiable, flatteringly attentive to the proper people and amusing with that malicious irony at which he was an adept. I think I had never seen him display his social gift to greater advantage. When the Royal Highness had departed (and the grace with which Elliott bowed, managing to combine respect for her exalted rank with an old man's admiration for a comely woman, was a sight to see) I was not surprised to hear our hostess tell him that he had been the life and soul of the party.
A few days later he was in bed again and his doctor forbade him to leave his room. Elliott was exasperated.
"It's too bad this should happen just now. It's a particularly brilliant season."
He reeled off a long list of persons of importance who were spending the summer on the Riviera.
I went to see him every three or four days. Sometimes he was in bed, but sometimes he lay on a chaise longue in a gorgeous dressing-gown. He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of them, for I do not remember that I ever saw him in the same one twice. On one of these occasions, it was the beginning of August by now, I found Elliott unusually quiet. Joseph had told me when he let me into the house that he seemed a little better so I was surprised that he was so listless. I tried to amuse him with such gossip of the coast as I had picked up, but he was plainly uninterested. There was a slight frown between his eyes, and a sullenness in his expression that was unusual with him.
"Are you going to Edna Novemali's party?" he asked me suddenly.
"No, of course not."
"Has she asked you?"
"She's asked everybody on the Riviera."
The Princess Novemali was an American of immense wealth who had married a Roman prince, but not an ordinary prince such as go for two a penny in Italy, but the head of a great family and the descendant of a condottière who had carved out a principality for himself in the sixteenth century. She was a woman of sixty, a widow, and since the Fascist regime demanded too large a slice of her American income to suit her, she had left Italy and built herself, on a fine estate behind Cannes, a Florentine villa. She had brought marble from Italy with which to line the walls of her great reception rooms and imported painters to paint the ceilings. Her pictures, her bronzes were uncommonly fine and even Elliott, though he didn't like Italian furniture, was obliged to admit that hers was magnificent. The gardens were lovely and the swimming-pool must have cost a small fortune. She entertained largely and you never sat down less than twenty at table. She had arranged to give a fancy-dress party on the night of the August full moon, and although it was still three weeks ahead nothing else was being talked of on the Riviera. There were to be fireworks and she was bringing down a coloured orchestra from Paris. The exiled royalties were telling one another with envious admiration that it would cost her more than they had to live on for a year.
"It's princely," they said.
"It's crazy," they said.
"it's in bad taste," they said.
"What are you going to wear?" Elliott asked me.
"But I told you, Elliott, I'm not going. You don't think I'm going to dress myself up in fancy dress at my time of life."
"She hasn't asked me," he said hoarsely.
He looked at me with haggard eyes.
"Oh, she will," I said coolly. "I dare say all the invitations haven't gone out yet."
"She's not going to ask me." His voice broke. "It's a deliberate insult."
"Oh, Elliott, I can't believe that. I'm sure it's an over-sight."
"I'm not a man that people overlook."
"Anyhow, you wouldn't have been well enough to go."
"Of course I should. The best party of the season! If I were on my deathbed I'd get up for it. I've got the costume of my ancestor, the Count de Lauria, to wear."
I did not quite know what to say and so remained silent.
"Paul Barton was in to see me just before you came," Elliott said suddenly.
I cannot expect the reader to remember who this was, since I had to look back myself to see what name I had given him. Paul Barton was the young American whom Elliott had introduced into London society and who had aroused his hatred by dropping him when he no longer had any use for him. He had been somewhat in the public eye of late, first because he had adopted British nationality and then because he had married the daughter of a newspaper magnate who had been raised to the peerage. With this influence behind him and with his own adroitness it was evident that he would go far. Elliott was very bitter.
"Whenever I wake up in the night and hear a mouse scratching away in the wainscoat I say, 'That's Paul Barton climbing.' Believe me, my dear fellow, he'll end up in the House of Lords. Thank God, I shan't be alive to see it."
"What did he want?" I asked, for I knew as well as Elliott that this young man did nothing for nothing.
"I’ll tell you what he wanted," said Elliott, snarling.
"He wanted to borrow my Count de Lauria costume."
"Nerve!"
"Don't you see what it means? It means he knew Edna hadn't asked me and wasn't going to ask me. She put him up to it. The old bitch. She'd never have got anywhere without me. I gave parties for her. I introduced her to everyone she knows. She sleeps with her chauffeur; you knew that of course. Disgusting! He sat there and told me that she's having the whole garden illuminated and there are going to be fireworks. I love fireworks. And he told me that Edna was being pestered by people who were asking for invitations, but she had turned them all down because she wanted the party to be really brilliant. He spoke as though there were no question of my being invited."
"And are you lending him the costume?"
"I'd see him dead and in hell first. I'm going to be buried in it." Elliott, sitting up in bed, rocked to and fro like a woman distraught. "Oh, it's so unkind," he said. "I hate them, I hate them all. They were glad enough to make a fuss of me when I could entertain them, but now I'm old and sick they have no use for me. Not ten people have called to inquire since I've been laid up, and all this week only one miserable bunch of flowers. I've done everything for them. They've eaten my food and drunk my wine. I've run their errands for them. I've made their parties for them. I've turned myself inside out to do them favours. And what have I got out of it? Nothing, nothing, nothing. There's not one of them who cares if I live or die. Oh, it's so cruel." He began to cry. Great heavy tears trickled down his withered cheeks. "I wish to God I'd never left America."
It was lamentable to see that old man, with the grave yawning in front of him, weep like a child because he hadn't been asked to a party: shocking and at the same time almost intolerably pathetic.
"Never mind, Elliott," I said, "it may rain on the night of the party. That'll bitch it."
He caught at my words like the drowning man we've all heard about at a straw. He began to giggle through his tears.
"I've never thought of that. I'll pray to God for rain as I've never prayed before. You're quite right; that'll bitch it."
I managed to divert his frivolous mind into another channel and left him, if not cheerful, at least composed. But I was not willing to let the matter rest, so on getting home I called up Edna Novemali and, saying I had to come to Cannes next day, asked if I could lunch with her. She sent a message that she'd be pleased but there'd be no party. Nevertheless when I arrived I found ten people there besides herself. She was not a bad sort, generous and hospitable, and her only grave fault was her malicious tongue. She could not help saying beastly things about even her intimate friends, but she did this because she was a stupid woman and knew no other way to make herself interesting. Since her slanders were repeated she was often not on speaking terms with the objects of her venom, but she gave good parties and most of them found it convenient after a while to forgive her. I did not want to expose Elliott to the humiliation of asking her to invite him to her big do, so waited to see how the land lay. She was excited about it and the conversation at luncheon was concerned with nothing else.
"Elliott will be delighted to have an opportunity to wear his Philip the Second costume," I said as casually as I could.
"I haven't asked him," she said.
"Why not?" I replied, with an air of surprise.
"Why should I? He doesn't count socially any more.
He's a bore and a snob and a scandalmonger."
Since these accusations could with equal truth be brought against her, I thought this a bit thick. She was a fool.
"Besides." she added, "I want Paul to wear Elliott's costume. He'll look simply divine in it."
I said nothing more, but determined by hook or by crook to get poor Elliott the invitation he hankered after. After luncheon Edna took her friends out into the garden. That gave me the chance I was looking for. On one occasion I had stayed in the house for a few days and knew its arrangement. I guessed that there would still be a number of invitation cards left over and that they would be in the secretary's room. I whipped along there, meaning to slip one in my pocket, write Elliott's name on it and post it. I knew he was much too ill to go, but it would mean a great deal to him to receive it. I was taken aback when I opened the door to find Edna's secretary at her desk. I had expected her to be still at lunch. She was a middle-aged Scotch woman, called Miss Keith, with sandy hair, a freckled face, pince-nez and an air of determined virginity. I collected myself.
"The Princess is taking the crowd around the garden, so I thought I'd come in and smoke a cigarette with you."
"You're welcome."
Miss Keith spoke with a Scotch burr and when she indulged in the dry humour which she reserved for her favourites she so broadened it as to make her remarks extremely amusing, but when you were overcome with laughter she looked at you with pained surprise as though she thought you daft to see anything funny in what she said.
"I suppose this party is giving you a hell of a lot of work. Miss Keith," I said.
"I don't know whether I'm standing on my head or on my heels."
Knowing I could trust her, I went straight to the point, "Why hasn't the old girl asked Mr. Templeton?"
Miss Keith permitted a smile to cross her grim features.
"You know what she is. She's got a down on him. She crossed his name out on the list herself."
"He's dying, you know. He'll never leave his bed again. He's awfully hurt at being left out."
"If he wanted to keep in with the Princess he'd have been wiser not to tell everyone that she goes to bed with her chauffeur. And him with a wife and three children."
"And does she?"
Miss Keith looked at me over her pince-nez.
"I've been a secretary for twenty-one years, my dear sir, and I've made it a rule to believe all my employers as pure as the driven snow. I'll admit that when one of my ladies found herself three months gone in the family way when his lordship had been shooting lions in Africa for six, my faith was sorely tried, but she took a little trip to Paris, a very expensive little trip it was too, and all was well. Her ladyship and I shared a deep sigh of relief."
"Miss Keith, I didn't come here to smoke a cigarette with you, I came to snitch an invitation card and send it to Mr. Templeton myself."
"That would have been a very unscrupulous thing to do."
"Granted. Be a good sport. Miss Keith. Give me a card. He won't come and it'll make the poor old man happy. You've got nothing against him, have you?"
"No, he's always been very civil to me. He's a gentleman, I will say that for him, and that's more than you can say for most of the people who come here and fill their fat bellies at the Princess's expense."
All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dependents are very susceptible to slights and, when they are not treated as they think they should be, will by well-directed shafts, constantly repeated, poison the minds of their patrons against those who have provoked their animosity. It is well to keep in with them. This Elliott knew better than anybody and he had always a friendly word and a cordial smile for the poor relation, the old maidservant or the trusted secretary. I was sure he had often exchanged pleasant badinage with Miss Keith and at Christmas had not forgotten to send her a box of chocolates, a vanity case or a handbag.
"Come on, Miss Keith, have a heart."
Miss Keith fixed her pince-nez more firmly on her prominent nose.
"I am sure you wish me to do nothing disloyal to my employer, Mr. Maugham, besides which the old cow would fire me if she found out I’d disobeyed her. The cards are on the desk in their envelopes. I am going to look out of the window, partly to stretch my legs which are cramped from sitting too long in one position and also to observe the beauty of the prospect. What happens when my back is turned neither God nor man can hold me responsible for."
When Miss Keith resumed her seat the invitation was in my pocket.
"It's been nice to see you, Miss Keith," I said, holding out my hand. "What are you wearing at the fancy-dress party?"
"I am a minister's daughter, my dear sir," she replied. "I leave such foolishness to the upper classes. When I have seen that the representatives of the Herald and the Mail get a good supper and a bottle of our second-best champagne, my duties will be terminated and I shall retire to the privacy of my bed-chamber with a detective story."
A couple of days later, when I went to see Elliott, I found him beaming.
"Look," he said, "I've had my invitation. It came this morning."
He took the card out from under his pillow and showed it to me.
"It's what I told you," I said. "You see, your name begins with a T. The secretary has evidently only just reached you."
"I haven't answered yet. I'll do it tomorrow."
I had a moment's fright at that.
"Would you like me to answer it for you? I could post it when I leave you."
"No, why should you? I'm quite capable of answering invitations myself."
Fortunately, I thought, the envelope would be opened by Miss Keith and she would have the sense to suppress it. Elliott rang the bell.
"I want to show you my costume."
"You're not thinking of going, Elliott?"
"Of course I am. I haven't worn it since the Beaumonts' ball."
Joseph answered the bell and Elliott told him to bring the costume. It was in a large flat box, wrapped in tissue paper. There were long white silk hose, padded trunks of cloth of gold slashed with white satin, a doublet to match, a cloak, a ruff to wear round the neck, a flat velvet cap and a long gold chain from which hung the order of the Golden Fleece. I recognized it as a copy of the gorgeous dress worn by Philip the Second in Titian's portrait at the Prado, and when Elliott told me it was exactly the costume the Count de Lauria had worn at the wedding of the King of Spain with the Queen of England I could not but think that he was giving rein to his imagination. On the following morning while I was having breakfast I was called to the telephone. It was Joseph to tell me that Elliott had had another attack during the night and the doctor, hurriedly summoned, doubted whether he would last through the day. I sent for the car and drove over to Antibes. I found Elliott unconscious. He had resolutely refused to have a nurse, but I found one there, sent for by the doctor from the English hospital between Nice and Beaulieu, and was glad to see her. I went out and telegraphed to Isabel. She and Gray were spending the summer with the children at the inexpensive seaside resort of La Baule. It was a long journey and I was afraid they would not get to Antibes in time. Except for her two brothers, whom he had not seen for years, she was Elliott's only living relative.
But the will to live was strong in him, or it may be that the doctor's medicaments were effective, for during the course of the day he rallied. Though shattered, he put on a bold front and amused himself by asking the nurse indecent questions about her sex life. I stayed with him most of the afternoon and next day, on going to see him again, found him, though very weak, sufficiently cheerful. The nurse would only let me stay with him a short time. I was worried at not having received an answer to my telegram. Not knowing Isabel's address at La Baule I had sent it to Paris and feared that the concierge had delayed to forward it. It was not till two days later that I got a reply to say that they were starting at once. As ill luck would have it. Gray and Isabel were on a motor trip in Brittany and had only just had my wire. I looked up the trains and saw that they could not arrive for at least thirty-six hours.
Early next morning Joseph called me again to tell me that Elliott had had a very bad night and was asking for me. I hurried over. When I arrived Joseph took me aside.
"Monsieur will excuse me if I speak to him on a delicate subject," he said to me. "I am of course a freethinker and believe all religion is nothing but a conspiracy of the priests to gain control over the people, but Monsieur knows what women are. My wife and the chambermaid insist that the poor gentleman should receive the last sacraments and evidently the time is growing short." He looked at me in rather a shamefaced way. "And the fact remains, one never knows, perhaps it is better, if one's got to die, to regularize one's situation with the Church."
I understood him perfectly. However freely they mock, most Frenchmen, when the end comes, prefer to make their peace with the faith that is part of their blood and bones.
"Do you want me to suggest it to him?"
"If Monsieur would have the goodness."
It was not a job I much fancied, but after all Elliott had been for many years a devout Catholic, and it was fitting that he should conform to the obligations of his faith. I went up to his room. He was lying on his back, shrivelled and wan, but perfectly conscious. I asked the nurse to leave us alone.
"I'm afraid you're very ill, Elliott," I said. "I was wondering, I was wondering if you wouldn't like to see a priest?"
He looked at me for a minute without answering.
"D'you mean to say I'm going to die?"
"Oh, I hope not. But it's just as well to be on the safe side."
"I understand."
He was silent. It is a terrible moment when you have to tell someone what I had just told Elliott. I could not look at him. I clenched my teeth because I was afraid I was going to cry. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, facing him, with my arm outstretched for support.
He patted my hand.
"Don't be upset, my dear fellow. Noblesse oblige, you know."
I laughed hysterically.
"You ridiculous creature, Elliott."
"That's better. Now call up the bishop and say that I wish to make my confession and receive Extreme Unction. I would be grateful if he'd send the Abbé Charles. He's a friend of mine."
The Abbé Charles was the bishop's vicar general whom I have had occasion to mention before. I went downstairs and telephoned. I spoke to the bishop himself.
"Is it urgent?" he asked.
"Very."
"I will attend to it at once."
The doctor arrived and I told him what I had done. He went up with the nurse to see Elliott and I waited on the ground floor in the dining-room. It is only twenty minutes' drive from Nice to Antibes and little more than half an hour later a black sedan drew up at the door. Joseph came to me.
"C'est Monseigneur en personne, Monsieur," he said in a flurry. "It's the bishop himself."
I went out to receive him. He was not as usual accompanied by his vicar general, but, why I did not know, by a young abbé who bore a casket that contained, I supposed, the utensils needed to administer the sacrament. The chauffeur followed with a shabby black valise. The bishop shook hands with me and presented his companion.
"How is our poor friend?"
"I'm afraid he's very ill, Monseigneur."
"Will you be so obliging as to show us into a room where we can enrobe."
"The dining-room is here, Monseigneur, and the drawing-room is on the next floor."
"The dining-room will do very well."
I ushered him in. Joseph and I waited in the hall. Presently the door opened and the bishop came out, followed by the abbé holding in both hands the chalice surmounted by a little platter on which lay the consecrated wafer. They were covered by a cambric napkin so fine that it was transparent. I had never seen the bishop but at a dinner or luncheon party, and a very good trencher-man he was, who enjoyed his food and a glass of good wine, telling funny and sometimes ribald stories with verve. He had struck me then as a sturdy, thickset man of no more than average height. Now, in surplice and stole, he looked not only tall, but stately. His red face, puckered as a rule with malicious yet kindly laughter, was grave. There was in his appearance nothing left of the cavalry officer he had once been; he looked, what indeed he was, a great dignitary of the Church. I was hardly surprised to see Joseph cross himself. The bishop inclined his head in a slight bow.
"Conduct me to the sick man," he said.
I made way for him to ascend the stairs before me, but he bade me precede him. We went up in a solemn silence. I entered Elliott's room.
"The bishop has come himself, Elliott."
Elliott struggled to raise himself to a sitting position.
"Monseigneur, this is an honour I did not venture to expect."
"Do not move, my friend." The bishop turned to the nurse and me. "Leave us." And then to the abbé: "I will call you when I am ready."
The abbé glanced around and I guessed that he was looking for a place to set down the chalice. I pushed aside the tortoise-shell-backed brushes on the dressing-table. The nurse went downstairs and I led the abbé into the adjoin-ing room which Elliott used as a study. The windows were open to the blue sky and he went over and stood by one of them. I sat down. A race of Stars was in progress and their sails gleamed dazzling white against the azure. A big schooner with a black hull, her red sails spread, was beating up against the breeze towards the harbour. I recognized her for a lobster boat, bringing a catch from Sardinia to supply the gala dinners at the casinos with a fish course. Through the closed door I could hear the muffled murmur of voices. Elliott was making his confession. I badly wanted a cigarette, but feared the abbé would be shocked if I lit one. He stood motionless, looking out, a slender young man, and his thick waving black hair, his fine dark eyes, his olive skin revealed his Italian origin. There was the quick fire of the South in his aspect and I asked myself what urgent faith, what burning desire had caused him to abandon the joys of life, the pleasures of his age and the satisfaction of his senses, to devote himself to the service of God.
Suddenly the voices in the next room were still and I looked at the door. It was opened and the bishop appeared.
"Venez," he said to the priest.
I was left alone. I heard the bishop's voice once more and I knew he was saying the prayers that the Church has ordained should be said for the dying. Then there was another silence and I knew that Elliott was partaking of the body and the blood of Christ. From I know not what feeling, inherited, I suppose, from far-away ancestors, though not a Catholic I can never attend Mass without a sense of tremulous awe when the little tinkle of the servitor's bell informs me of the Elevation of the Host; and now, similarly, I shivered as though a cold wind ran through me, 1 shivered with fear and wonder. The door was opened once more.
"You may come in," said the bishop.
I entered. The abbé was spreading the cambric napkin over the cup and the little gilt plate on which the consecrated wafer had lain. Elliott's eyes shone.
"Conduct Monsejgneur to his car," he said.
We descended the stairs. Joseph and the maids were waiting in the hall. The maids were crying. There were three of them and one after the other they came forward and, dropping to their knees, kissed the bishop's ring. He blessed them with two fingers. Joseph's wife nudged him and he advanced, fell to his knees too and kissed the ring.
The bishop faintly smiled.
"You are a freethinker, my son?"
I could see Joseph making an effort over himself.
"Yes, Monseigneur."
"Do not let it trouble you. You have been a good and faithful servant to your master. God will overlook the errors of your understanding."
I went out into the street with him and opened the door of his car. He gave me a bow and as he stepped in smiled indulgently.
"Our poor friend is very low. His defects were of the surface; he was generous of heart and kindly towards his fellow men."
Thinking that Elliott might want to be alone after the ceremony in which he had taken part, I went up to the drawing-room and began to read, but no sooner had I settled myself than the nurse came in to tell me that he wanted to see me, I climbed the flight of stairs to his room. Whether owing to a shot that the doctor had given him to help him to support the ordeal before him or whether from the excitement of it, he was calmly cheerful and his eyes were bright.
"A great honour, my dear fellow," he said. "I shall enter the kingdom of heaven with a letter of introduction from a prince of the Church. I fancy that all doors will be open to me."
"I'm afraid you'll find the company very mixed," I smiled.
"Don't you believe it, my dear fellow. We know from Holy Writ that there arc class distinctions in heaven just as there are on earth. There are seraphim and cherubim, archangels and angels. I have always moved in the best society in Europe and I have no doubt that I shall move in the best society in heaven. Our Lord has said: The House of my Father hath many mansions. It would be highly unsuitable to lodge the hoi polloi in a way to which they're entirely unaccustomed."
I suspected that Elliott saw the celestial habitations in the guise of the chateaux of a Baron de Rothschild with eighteenth-century panelling on the walls, Buhl tables, marquetry cabinets and Louis Quinze suites covered with their original petit-point.
"Believe me, my dear fellow," he went on after a pause, "there'll be none of this damned equality in heaven."
He dropped off quite suddenly into a doze. I sat down with a book. He slept off and on. At one o'clock the nurse came in to tell me that Joseph had luncheon ready for me.
Joseph was subdued.
"Fancy Monseigneur the Bishop coming himself. It is a great honour he has done our poor gentleman. You saw me kiss his ring?"
"I did."
"It's not a thing I would have done of myself! I did it to satisfy my poor wife."
I spent the afternoon in Elliott's room. In the course of it a telegram came from Isabel to say that she and Gray would arrive by the Blue Train next morning. I could hardly hope they would be in time. The doctor came. He shook his head. Towards sunset Elliott awoke and was able to take a little nourishment. It seemed to give him a momentary strength. He beckoned to me and I went up to the bed. His voice was very weak.
"I haven't answered Edna's invitation."
"Oh, don't bother about that now, Elliott."
"Why not? I've always been a man of the world; there's no reason why I should forget my manners as I'm leaving it. Where is the card?"
It was on the chimney piece and I put it in his hand, but I doubt whether he could see it.
"You'll find a pad of writing paper in my study. If you'll get it I'll dictate my answer."
I went into the next room and came back with writing materials. I sat down by the side of his bed.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes."
His eyes were closed, but there was a mischievous smile on his lips and I wondered what was coming.
"Mr. Elliott Templeton regrets that he cannot accept Princess Novemali's kind invitation owing to a previous engagement with his Blessed Lord."
He gave a faint, ghostly chuckle. His face was of a strange blue-white, ghastly to behold, and he exhaled the nauseating stench peculiar to his disease. Poor Elliott who had loved to spray himself with the perfumes of Chanel and Molyneux. He was still holding the purloined invitation card and, thinking it incommoded him, I tried to take it out of his hand, but he tightened his grip on it. I was startled to hear him speak quite loudly.
"The old bitch," he said.
These were the last words he spoke. He sank into a coma. The nurse had been up with him all the previous night and looked very tired, so I sent her to bed, promising to call her if necessary, and said I would sit up. There was indeed nothing to do. I lit a shaded lamp and read till my eyes ached and then, turning it off, I sat in darkness. The night was warm and the windows wide open. At regular intervals the flash of the lighthouse swept the room with a passing glimmer. The moon, which when full would look upon the vacuous, noisy gaiety of Edna Novemali's fancy-dress party, set, and in the sky, a deep, deep blue, the countless stars shone with their terrifying brilliance. I think I may have dropped off into a light sleep, but my senses were still awake, and I was suddenly startled into intense consciousness by a hurried, angry sound, the most awe-inspiring sound that anyone can hear, the death rattle. I went over to the bed and by the gleam of the lighthouse felt Elliott's pulse. He was dead. I lit the lamp by his bed-side and looked at him. His jaw had fallen. His eyes were open and before dosing them I stared into them for a minute. I was moved and I think a few tears trickled down my cheeks. An old, kind friend. It made me sad to think how silly, useless and trivial his life had been. It mattered very little now that he had gone to so many parties and had hobnobbed with all those princes, dukes and counts. They had forgotten him already.
I saw no reason to wake the exhausted nurse, so I returned to my chair by the window. I was asleep when she came in at seven. I left her to do whatever she thought fit and had breakfast, then I went to the station to meet Gray and Isabel. I told them that Elliott was dead and since there was no room for them in his house asked them to stay with me, but they preferred to go to an hotel. I went back to my own house to have a bath, shave and change.
In the course of the morning Gray called me to say that Joseph had given them a letter addressed to me that Elliott had entrusted to him. Since it might contain something for my eyes alone I said I would drive over at once, and so less than an hour later I once more entered the house. The letter, marked on the envelope: To be delivered immediately after my death, contained instructions for his obsequies. I knew that he had set his heart on being buried in the church that he had built and I had already told Isabel. He wished to be embalmed and mentioned the name of the firm to which the commission should be given. "I have made enquiries," he continued, "and I am informed that they make a very good job of it. I trust you to see that it is not scamped. I desire to be dressed in the dress of my ancestor the Count de Lauria, with his sword by my side and the order of the Golden Fleece on my breast. I leave the choice of my coffin to you. It should be unpretentious but suitable to my position. In order to give no one unnecessary trouble I desire that Thomas Cook and Son should make all arrangements for the transportation of my remains and that one of their men should accompany the coffin to its final resting-place."
I remembered that Elliott had said he wanted to be buried in that fancy dress of his, but I had taken it for a passing whim and hadn't thought he meant it seriously. Joseph was insistent that his wishes be carried out and there seemed no reason why they should not be. The body was duly embalmed and then I went with Joseph to dress it in those absurd clothes. It was a gruesome business. We slipped his long legs into the white silk hose and pulled the cloth-of-gold trunks over them. It was a job to get his arms through the sleeves of the doublet. We fixed the great starched ruff and draped the satin cape over his shoulders. Finally we placed the flat velvet cap on his head and the collar of the Golden Fleece round his neck. The embalmer had rouged his cheeks and reddened his lips. Elliott, the costume too large now for his emaciated frame, looked like a chorus man in an early opera of Verdi's. The sad Don Quixote of a worthless purpose. When the undertaker's men had put him in the coffin I laid the property sword down the length of his body, between his legs, with his hands on the pommel as I have seen the sword laid on the sculptured tomb of a Crusader.
Gray and Isabel went to Italy to attend the funeral.
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