"What are you looking at?"
"There must be something radically wrong with you, Dale," I murmured sympathetically. "It is part of the religion of your generation to wear socks to match your tie. To-day your tie is wine-coloured and your socks are green----"
"Good Lord," he cried, "so they are! I dressed myself anyhow this morning."
"What"s wrong with you?"
He threw his cigarette impatiently into the fire.
"Every infernal thing that can possibly be. Everything"s rotten--but I"ve not come here to talk about myself."
"Why not?"
"It isn"t the game. I"m here on your business, which is ever so much more important than mine. Where are this morning"s letters?"
I pointed to an unopened heap on a writing-table at the end of the room.
He crossed and sat down before them. Presently he turned sharply.
"You haven"t looked through the envelopes. Here is one from Sicily."
I took the letter from him, and sighed to myself as I read it. Eleanor was miserable. The Sicilians were dirty. The Duomo of Palermo did not come up to her expectations. The Mobray-Robertsons, with whom she travelled, quarrelled with their food. They had never even heard of Theocritus. She had a cold in her head, and was utterly at a loss to explain my att.i.tude. Therefore she was coming back to London.
I wish I could find her a nice tame husband who had heard of Theocritus.
It would be such a good thing for everybody, husband included. For, I repeat, Eleanor is a young woman of fine character, and the man to whom she gives her heart will be a fortunate fellow.
While I was reading the letter and meditating on it, with my back to the fire, Dale plunged into the morning"s correspondence with an air of enjoyment. That is the astonishing thing about him. He loves work.
The more I give him to do the better he likes it. His cronies, who in raiment, manners, and tastes differ from him no more than a row of pins differs from a stray brother, regard a writing-chair as a mediaeval instrument of torture, and faint at the sight of ink. They will put themselves to all kinds of physical and pecuniary inconvenience in order to avoid regular employment. They are the tramps of the fashionable world. But in vain do they sing to Dale of the joys of silk-hatted and patent-leather-booted vagabondage and deride his habits of industry; Dale turns a deaf ear to them and urges on his strenuous career. Rogers, coming in to clear away the breakfast things, was despatched by my young friend to fetch a portfolio from the hall. It contained, he informed me, the unanswered letters of the past fortnight with which he had found himself unqualified to deal. He grasped the whole bundle of correspondence, and invited me to follow him to the library and start on a solid morning"s work. I obeyed meekly. He sat down at the big table, arranged the pile in front of him, took a pencil from the tray, and began:
"This is from Finch, of the _Universal Review_."
I put my hand on his shoulder.
"Tell him, my boy, that it"s against my custom to breakfast at afternoon tea, and that I hope his wife is well."
At his look of bewilderment I broke into a laugh.
"He wants me to write a dull article for his stupid paper, doesn"t he?"
"Yes, on Poor Law Administration."
"I"m not going to do it. I"m not going to do anything these people ask me. Say "No, no, no, no," to everybody."
"In Heaven"s name, Simon," he cried, laying down his pencil, "what has come over you?"
"Old age," said I.
He uttered his usual interjection, and added that I was only thirty-seven.
"Age is a relative thing," I remarked. "Babes of five have been known to die of senile decay, and I have seen irresponsible striplings of seventy."
"I really think Eleanor Faversham had better come back from Sicily."
I tapped the letter still in my hand. "She"s coming."
"I"m jolly glad to hear it. It"s all my silly fault that she went away.
I thought she was getting on your nerves. But you want pulling together.
That confounded place you"ve been to has utterly upset you."
"On the contrary," said I, "it has steadied and amplified my conception of sublunary affairs. It has shown me that motley is much more profitable wear than the edged toga of the senator--"
"Oh, for G.o.d"s sake, dry up," cried young England, "and tell me what answers I"m to give these people!"
He seemed so earnest about it that I humoured him; and my correspondents seemed so earnest that I humoured them. But it was a grim jest. Most of the matters with which I had to deal appeared so trivial. Only here and there did I find a chance for eumoiriety. The Wymington Hospital applied for their annual donation.
"You generally give a tenner," said Dale.
"This time I"ll give them a couple of hundred," said I.
Dale earmarked the amount wonderingly; but when I ordered him to send five pounds apiece to the authors of various begging letters he argued vehemently and quoted the Charity Organisation Society.
"They"re frauds, all of them," he maintained.
"They"re poor necessitous devils, at any rate," said I, "and they want the money more than I do."
This was a truth whose significance Dale was far from realising. Of what value, indeed, is money to me? There is none to whom I can usefully bequeath my little fortune, my sisters having each married rich men. I shall not need even Charon"s obolus when I am dead, for we have ceased to believe in him--which is a pity, as the trip across the Styx must have been picturesque. Why, then, should I not deal myself a happy lot and portion by squandering my money benevolently during my lifetime?
It behooves me, however, to walk warily in this as in other matters, for if my actions too closely resemble those of a lunatic at large, trustees may be appointed to administer my affairs, which would frustrate my plans entirely.
When my part in the morning"s work was over, I informed my secretary that I would go out and take the air till lunch-time.
"If you"ve nothing better to do," said he, "you might run round to Eccleston Square and see my mother."
"For any particular reason?"
"She wants to see you. Home for inebriate parrots or something. Gave me a message for you this morning."
"I"ll wait," said I, "on Lady Kynnersley with pleasure."
I went out and walked down the restful covered way of the Albany to the Piccadilly entrance, and began my taking of the air. It was a soft November day, full of blue mist, and invested with a dying grace by a pale sunshine struggling through thin, grey rain-cloud. It was a faded lady of a day--a lady of waxen cheeks, attired in pearl-grey and old lace, her dim eyes illumined by a last smile. It gave an air of unreality to the perspective of tall buildings, and treated with indulgent irony the pa.s.sing show of humans--on foot, on omnibuses, in cabs and motors--turning them into shadow shapes tending no whither.
I laughed to myself. They all fancied themselves so real. They all had schemes in their heads, as if they were going to live a thousand years.
I walked westwards past the great clubs, moralising as I went, and feeling the reaction from the excitement of Murglebed-on-Sea. I looked up at one of my own clubs, a comfortable resting-place, and it struck me as possessing more attractions than the family vault in Highgate Cemetery. An acquaintance at the window waved his hand at me. I thought him a lucky beggar to have that window to stand by when the street will be flooded with summer sunshine and the trees in the green Park opposite wave in their verdant bravery. A little further a radiant being, all chiffons and millinery, on her way to Bond Street for more millinery and chiffons, smiled at me and put forth a delicately-gloved hand.
"Oh, Mr. de Gex, you"re the very man I was longing to see!"
"How simply are some human aspirations satisfied!" said I.
"Farfax"--that"s her husband, Farfax Glenn, a Member on my side of the House--"Farfax and I are making plans already for the Easter recess. We are going to motor to Athens, and you must come with us. You can tell us all about everything as we pa.s.s by."
I looked grave. "Easter is late next year."