"You should have told me to shut up."
"I did."
"Poor old Simon. I"m so sorry--but I had no idea you had fallen in love with her."
"Fallen in love!" said I, losing my head. "She"s the only woman on G.o.d"s earth I"ve ever cared for. I want her as I"ve wanted nothing in the universe before."
"And you"ve come to care for her as much as that?" he said sympathetically. "Poor old Simon."
"Why the devil shouldn"t I?" I shouted, nettled by his "poor old Simons."
"Lola Brandt is hardly of your cla.s.s," said Dale.
I broke out furiously. "d.a.m.n cla.s.s! I"ve had enough of it. I"m going to take my life into my own hands and do what I like with it. I"m going to choose my mate without any reference to society. I"ve cut myself adrift from society. It can go hang. Lola Brandt is a woman worth any man"s loving. She is a woman in a million. You know nothing whatever about her."
The last words were scarcely out of my mouth when an echo from the distance came and, as it were, banged at my ears. Dale himself had shrieked them at me in exactly the same tone with reference to the same woman. I stopped short and looked at him for a moment rather stupidly.
Then the imp of humour, who for some time had deserted me, flew to my side and tickled my brain. I broke into a chuckle, somewhat hysterical I must admit, and then, throwing myself into an arm-chair, gave way to uncontrollable laughter.
The scare of the unexpected rose in Dale"s eyes.
"Why, what on earth is the matter?"
"Can"t you see?" I cried, as far as the paroxysms of my mirth would let me. "Can"t you see how exquisitely ludicrous the whole thing has been from beginning to end? Don"t you realise that you and I are playing the same scene as we played months ago in my library, with the only difference that we have changed roles? I"m the raving, infatuated youth, and you"re the grave and reverend mentor. Don"t you see? Don"t you see?"
"I can"t see anything to laugh at," said Dale st.u.r.dily.
And he couldn"t. There are thousands of bright, flame-like human beings const.i.tuted like that. Life spreads out before them one of its most side-splitting, topsy-turvy farces and they see in it nothing to laugh at.
To Dale the affair had been as serious and lacking in the fantastic as the measles. He had got over the disease and now was exceedingly sorry to perceive that I had caught it in my turn.
"It isn"t funny a bit," he continued. "It"s quite natural. I see it all now. You cut me out from the very first. You didn"t mean to--you never thought of it. But what chance had I against you? I was a young a.s.s and you were a brilliant man of the world. I bear you no grudge. You played the game in that way. Then things happened--and at last you"ve fallen in love with her--and now just at the critical moment she has gone off into s.p.a.ce. It must be devilish painful for you, if you ask me."
"Oh, Dale," said I, shaking my head, "the only fitting end to the farce would be if you wandered over Europe to find and bring her back to me."
"I don"t know about that," said he, "because I"m engaged, and that, as I said, gives me occupation; but if I can do anything practicable, my dear old Simon, you"ve only got to send for me."
He pulled out his watch.
"My hat!" he exclaimed. "It"s past two o"clock."
CHAPTER XXII
I am a personage apart from humanity. I vary from the kindly ways of man. A curse is on me.
Surely no man has fought harder than I have done to convince himself of the deadly seriousness of existence; and surely before the feet of no man has Destiny cast such stumbling-blocks to faith. I might be an ancient dweller in the Thebaid struggling towards dreams of celestial habitations, and confronted only by grotesque visions of h.e.l.l. No matter what I do, I"m baffled. I look upon sorrow and say, "Lo, this is tragedy!" and hey, presto! a trick of lightning turns it into farce. I cry aloud, in perfervid zeal, "Life is real, life is earnest, and the apotheosis of the fantastic is not its goal," and immediately a grinning irony comes to give the lie to my credo.
Or is it that, by inscrutable decree of the Almighty Powers, I am undergoing punishment for an old unregenerate point of view, being doomed to wear my detested motley for all eternity, to stretch out my hand for ever to grasp realities and find I can do nought but beat the air with my bladder; to listen with strained ear perpetually expectant of the music of the spheres, and catch nothing but the mocking jingle of the bells on my fool"s cap?
I don"t know. I give it up.
Such were my thoughts on the morning after my interview with Dale, when I had read a long, long letter from Lola, which she had despatched from Paris.
The letter lies before me now, many pages in a curious, half-formed foreign hand. Many would think it an ill-written letter--for there are faults of spelling and faults of grammar--but even now, as I look on those faults, the tears come into my eyes. Oh, how exquisitely, pathetically, monumentally, sublimely foolish! She had little or nothing to do with it, poor dear; it was only the Arch-Jester again, leading her blindly away, so as once more to leave me high and dry on the Hill of Derision.
"... My dear, you must forgive me! My heart is breaking, but I know I"m doing right. There is nothing for it but to go out of your life for ever. It terrifies me to think of it, but it"s the only way. I know you think you love me, dear; but you can"t, you can"t _really_ love a woman so far beneath you, and I would sooner never see you again than marry you and wake up one day and find that you hated and scorned me... ."
Can you wonder that I shook my fist at Heaven and danced with rage?
"... Miss Eleanor Faversham called on me just a few minutes after you left me that afternoon. We had a long, long talk. Simon, dear, you must marry her. You loved her once, for you were engaged, and only broke it off because you thought you were going to die; and she loves you, Simon, and she is a lady with all the refinement and education that I could never have. She is of your cla.s.s, dear, and understands you, and can help you on, whereas I could only drag you down. I am not fit to black her boots... ."
And so forth, and so forth, in the most heartrending strain of insensate self-sacrifice and heroic self-abas.e.m.e.nt. The vainest and most heartless dog of a man stands abashed and helpless before such things in a woman.
She had not seen or written to me because she would not have her resolution weakened. After the great wrench, succeeding things were easier. She had taken Anastasius"s cats and proposed to work them in the music-halls abroad and send the proceeds to be administered for the little man"s comfort at the Maison de Sante. As both her name and the Papadopoulos troupe of cats were well known in the "variety" world, it would be a simple matter to obtain engagements. She had already opened negotiations for a short season somewhere abroad. I was not to be anxious about her. She would have plenty of occupation.
"... I am not sending you any address, for I don"t want you to know where I am, dear. I shan"t write to you again unless I scribble things and tear them up without posting. This is final. When a woman makes such a break she must do it once and for all. Oh, Simon, when you kissed me two days ago you thought you loved me; but I know what the senses are and how they deceive people, and I had only just caught your senses on that spring afternoon, and I made you do it, for I had been aching, aching for months for a word of love from you, and when it came I was ashamed. But I should have been weak and shut my eyes to everything if Miss Faversham had not come to me like G.o.d"s good angel... ."
At the fourth reading of the letter I stopped short at these words.
G.o.d"s good angel, indeed! Could anything have been more calculated to put a man into a frenzy? I seized my hat and stick and went in search of the nearest public telephone office. In less than ten minutes I had arranged an immediate interview with Eleanor Faversham at my sister Agatha"s, and in less than half an hour I was pacing up and down Agatha"s sitting-room waiting for her. G.o.d"s good angel! The sound of the words made me choke with wrath. There are times when angelic interference in human destinies is entirely unwarrantable. I stamped and I fumed, and I composed a speech in which I told Eleanor exactly what I thought of angels.
As I had to wait a considerable time, however, before Eleanor appeared, the raging violence of my wrath abated, and when she did enter the room smiling and fresh, with the spring in her clear eyes and a flush on her cheek, I just said: "How d"ye do, Eleanor?" in the most commonplace way, and offered her a chair.
"I"ve come, you see. You were rather peremptory, so I thought it must be a matter of great importance."
"It is," said I. "You went to see Madame Brandt."
"I did," she replied, looking at me steadily, "and I have tried to write to you, but it is more difficult than I thought."
"Well," said I, "it"s no use writing now, for you"ve managed to drive her out of the country."
She half rose in her chair and regarded me with wide-blue eyes.
"I"ve driven her out of the country?"
"Yes; with her maid and her belongings and Anastasius Papadopoulos"s troupe of performing cats, and Anastasius Papadopoulos"s late pupil and a.s.sistant Quast. She has given up her comfortable home in London and now proposes to be a wanderer among the music-halls of Europe."
"But that"s not my fault! Indeed, it isn"t."
"She says in a letter I received this morning bearing no address, that if you hadn"t come to her like G.o.d"s good angel, she would have remained in London."
Eleanor looked bewildered. "I thought I had made it perfectly clear to her."
"Made what clear?"