Verelst tugged at his moustache. "Tell me this. Is she to marry him?"
In affected surprise, she started. "How you do jump at conclusions."
Angrily he nodded. "I appear to have jumped at the correct one."
But his anger had gained her. She faced him. "Heavens and earth! What have you against him? What have you all against him? My eyes are as good as any one"s. I can"t see it."
"You might feel it then."
"Feel what?"
Verelst tugged again at his moustache. He had never heard of elementals and, if he had heard, he would not have believed in them. He knew nothing of aurae--which photography has captured. He was very old fogy.
But he knew an honest man when he saw one and a gentleman before he opened his mouth.
"Feel what?" Mrs. Austen repeated.
Verelst, thrashing about, could not get it, but he said: "I can"t describe it, but it"s something. His father had it. He----"
"His father is at death"s door."
"Ah! Is he? Well, I"m sorry for that. M. P. used to be no better than the law allows--and the law is very lenient."
"You were too."
"I daresay. But M. P. has got over it. Without boasting, I think I have also. But that is neither here nor there. In the old days, I have seen people shrink from him."
"Nonsense! Precious little shrinking I ever did."
"Timidity was never one of your many virtues."
"Don"t be coa.r.s.e, Peter, and if possible don"t be stupid. If you know anything against Monty, say it I may find it in his favour."
Impatiently Verelst motioned. "Decent men avoid him."
"And you!" Mrs. Austen retorted. "What do you call yourself? You are always civil to him."
Verelst showed his teeth. "One of the few things life has taught me is to be civil to everybody."
"Except to me. Now do sit down and make yourself uncomfortable. You have made me uncomfortable enough. Any one might think you a country parson."
But Verelst, scowling at the dial which the legs of the nymph upheld, removed his gla.s.ses. "I am going." He moved to the door, stopped, half turned, motioned again. "Tell Margaret I would rather see her in her coffin."
Angrily she started. "I"ll tell her nothing of the kind."
It was his back that she addressed. She saw him go, saw too her anger go with him. The outer door had not closed before the tune of which he had spoken was dispersing it.
But was it a tune? It seemed something far rarer. In it was a whisper of waters, the lap of waves, the m.u.f.fled voice of a river, which, winding from hill to sea, was pierced by a note very high, very clear, entirely limpid, a note that had in it the gaiety of a sunbeam, a note that mounted in loops of light, expanding as it mounted, until, bursting into jets of fire, it drew from the stream"s deepest depths the sonority and glare of its riches.
The ripple of it ran down the spine of this woman, who at heart was a Hun and to whom the harmonies disclosed, not the mythical gleam of the Rheingold, but the real radiance of the Paliser wealth.
At the glow of it she rubbed her hands.
XXIII
In the club window, on the following afternoon, Jones was airing copy.
"Capua must have been packed with yawns. It is the malediction of mortals to want what they lack until they get it, when they want it no more. Epicurus said that or, if he did not, Lucretius said it for him.
"Surgit amari aliquid." But here I am running into quotations when the only ones that interest anybody are those in the Street. Conditions here are revolting. Nowhere at any time has there been a metropolis that so stank to heaven. The papers drip with stocks and scandals and over there, before the ma.s.sed artillery, the troops are wheeling down to death. But wheeling is perhaps poetic. The Marne was the last battle in the grand style."
"I don"t see what that has to do with Capua," said Verelst.
"Nor I," Jones replied. "But, come to think of it, there is a connection. In Capua everybody yawned their heads off. In Flanders and Champagne they are shot off. Life swings like a pendulum between boredom and pain. When the world is not anaemic, it is delirious. If ever again its pulse registers normal, sensible people will go back to Epicurus, whose existence was one long lesson in mental tranquillity. By the Lord Harry, the more I consider it, the more convinced I become that there is nothing else worth having. Niente, nada, rien. Nothing whatever."
Verelst smiled. "In that case it is hardly worth while getting excited over it." He raised the lapel of his coat. There were violets in it. He took a whiff and added: "Has Lennox been here to-day?"
But Jones did not know.
Regretfully, Verelst continued: "He goes to Mineola to-morrow and soon he will be over the top."
Jones lit a cigarette. "a.s.suming that he gets back, the women will be mad about him. Some of them at any rate."
Verelst rolled an enquiring eye.
"Of course they will," Jones resumed. "Times have changed precious little since Victor Hugo.
"Les belles out le gout des heros. Le sabreur Effroyable, trainant apres lui tant d"horreur Qu"il ferait reculer jusqu"a la sombre Hecate, Charme la plus timide et la plus delicate.
Sur ce, battez tambours! Ce qui plait a la bouche De la blonde aux yeux doux, c"est le baiser farouche.
La femme se fait faire avec joie un enfant, Par l"homme qui tua, sinistre et triomphant.
Et c"est la volupte de toutes ces colombes D"ouvrir leur lit a ceux qui font ouvrir les tombes."
"What rhythm! What music! The score is Napoleonic but----"
"h.e.l.lo!" Verelst interrupted. Before the window a car had pa.s.sed. He was looking at it. On the back seat was a man in a high hat and an overcoat.
"M. P.!" he exclaimed.
"What of it?" Jones asked.
Verelst removed his gla.s.ses and looked distrustfully at them. It was as though he doubted their vision. Then, after a moment he said: "Last night I heard he was dying."
"Which," Jones remarked, "is the aim, the object and the purpose of life. But apparently he has not achieved it yet. Apparently also you are a futurist. The Napoleonic score did not interest you."
Verelst, resuming his gla.s.ses, replied: "It would not interest Lennox, if that is what you mean. He has been hit too hard."
Jones nodded. He knew all about it. It had even suggested a story, a famous story; one that was told in Babylon and has been retold ever since; the story of lovers vilely parted in the beginning and virtuously united at the end. It is a highly original story, to which anybody can give a fresh twist and Jones had planned to have the hero killed at the front and the heroine marry the villain, but only to divorce the latter before the hero--whose death had been falsely gazetted--limps in.