# Seven Men/Hilary Maltby

HILARY MALTBY AND STEPHEN BRAXTON
People still go on comparing Thackeray and Dickens, quite cheerfully. But the fashion of comparing Maltby and Braxton went out so long ago as 1795. No, I am wrong. But anything that happened in the bland old days before the war does seem to be a hundred more years ago than actually it is. The year I mean is the one in whose spring-time we all went bicycling (O thrill!) in Battersea Park, and ladies wore sleeves that billowed enormously out from their shoulders, and Lord Rosebery was Prime Minister.
In that Park, in that spring-time, in that sea of sleeves, there was almost as much talk about the respective merits of Braxton and Maltby as there was about those of Rudge and Humber. For the benefit of my younger readers, and perhaps, so feeble is human memory, for the benefit of their elders too, let me state that Rudge and Humber were rival makers of bicycles, that Hilary Maltby was the author of ‘Ariel in Mayfair,’ and Stephen Braxton of ‘A Faun on the Cotswolds.’
‘Which do you think is REALLY the best--“Ariel” or “A Faun”?’ Ladies were always asking one that question. ‘Oh, well, you know, the two are so different. It’s really very hard to compare them.’ One was always giving that answer. One was not very brilliant perhaps.
The vogue of the two novels lasted throughout the summer. As both were ‘firstlings,’ and Great Britain had therefore nothing else of Braxton’s or Maltby’s to fall back on, the horizon was much scanned for what Maltby, and what Braxton, would give us next. In the autumn Braxton gave us his secondling. It was an instantaneous failure. No more was he compared with Maltby. In the spring of ‘96 came Maltby’s secondling. Its failure was instantaneous. Maltby might once more have been compared with Braxton. But Braxton was now forgotten. So was Maltby.
This was not kind. This was not just. Maltby’s first novel, and Braxton’s, had brought delight into many thousands of homes. People should have paused to say of Braxton “Perhaps his third novel will be better than his second,” and to say as much for Maltby. I blame people for having given no sign of wanting a third from either; and I blame them with the more zest because neither ‘A Faun on the Cotswolds’ nor ‘Ariel in Mayfair’ was a merely popular book: each, I maintain, was a good book. I don’t go so far as to say that the one had ‘more of natural magic, more of British woodland glamour, more of the sheer joy of life in it than anything since “As You Like It,”’ though Higsby went so far as this in the Daily Chronicle; nor can I allow the claim made for the other by Grigsby in the Globe that ‘for pungency of satire there has been nothing like it since Swift laid down his pen, and for sheer sweetness and tenderness of feeling--ex forti dulcedo--nothing to be mentioned in the same breath with it since the lute fell from the tired hand of Theocritus.’ These were foolish exaggerations. But one must not condemn a thing because it has been over-praised. Maltby’s ‘Ariel’ was a delicate, brilliant work; and Braxton’s ‘Faun,’ crude though it was in many ways, had yet a genuine power and beauty. This is not a mere impression remembered from early youth. It is the reasoned and seasoned judgment of middle age. Both books have been out of print for many years; but I secured a second-hand copy of each not long ago, and found them well worth reading again.
From the time of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the outbreak of the war, current literature did not suffer from any lack of fauns. But when Braxton’s first book appeared fauns had still an air of novelty about them. We had not yet tired of them and their hoofs and their slanting eyes and their way of coming suddenly out of woods to wean quiet English villages from respectability. We did tire later. But Braxton’s faun, even now, seems to me an admirable specimen of his class--wild and weird, earthy, goat-like, almost convincing. And I find myself convinced altogether by Braxton’s rustics. I admit that I do not know much about rustics, except from novels. But I plead that the little I do know about them by personal observation does not confirm much of what the many novelists have taught me. I plead also that Braxton may well have been right about the rustics of Gloucestershire because he was (as so many interviewers recorded of him in his brief heyday) the son of a yeoman farmer at Far Oakridge, and his boyhood had been divided between that village and the Grammar School at Stroud. Not long ago I happened to be staying in the neighbourhood, and came across several villagers who might, I assure you, have stepped straight out of Braxton’s pages. For that matter, Braxton himself, whom I met often in the spring of ‘95, might have stepped straight out of his own pages.
I am guilty of having wished he would step straight back into them. He was a very surly fellow, very rugged and gruff. He was the antithesis of pleasant little Maltby. I used to think that perhaps he would have been less unamiable if success had come to him earlier. He was thirty years old when his book was published, and had had a very hard time since coming to London at the age of sixteen. Little Maltby was a year older, and so had waited a year longer; but then, he had waited under a comfortable roof at Twickenham, emerging into the metropolis for no grimmer purpose than to sit and watch the fashionable riders and walkers in Rotten Row, and then going home to write a little, or to play lawn-tennis with the young ladies of Twickenham. He had been the only child of his parents (neither of whom, alas, survived to take pleasure in their darling’s sudden fame). He had now migrated from Twickenham and taken rooms in Ryder Street. Had he ever shared with Braxton the bread of adversity--but no, I think he would in any case have been pleasant. And conversely I cannot imagine that Braxton would in any case have been so.
No one seeing the two rivals together, no one meeting them at Mr. Hookworth’s famous luncheon parties in the Authors’ Club, or at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale’s not less famous garden parties in Greville Place, would have supposed off-hand that the pair had a single point in common. Dapper little Maltby--blond, bland, diminutive Maltby, with his monocle and his gardenia; big black Braxton, with his lanky hair and his square blue jaw and his square sallow forehead. Canary and crow. Maltby had a perpetual chirrup of amusing small-talk. Braxton was usually silent, but very well worth listening to whenever he did croak. He had distinction, I admit it; the distinction of one who steadfastly refuses to adapt himself to surroundings. He stood out. He awed Mr. Hookworth. Ladies were always asking one another, rather intently, what they thought of him. One could imagine that Mr. Foster-Dugdale, had he come home from the City to attend the garden parties, might have regarded him as one from whom Mrs. Foster-Dugdale should be shielded. But the casual observer of Braxton and Maltby at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale’s or elsewhere was wrong in supposing that the two were totally unlike. He overlooked one simple and obvious point. This was that he had met them both at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale’s or elsewhere. Wherever they were invited, there certainly, there punctually, they would be. They were both of them gluttons for the fruits and signs of their success.
Interviewers and photographers had as little reason as had hostesses to complain of two men so earnestly and assiduously ‘on the make’ as Maltby and Braxton. Maltby, for all his sparkle, was earnest; Braxton, for all his arrogance, assiduous.
‘A Faun on the Cotswolds’ had no more eager eulogist than the author of ‘Ariel in Mayfair.’ When any one praised his work, Maltby would lightly disparage it in comparison with Braxton’s--‘Ah, if I could write like THAT!’ Maltby won golden opinions in this way. Braxton, on the other hand, would let slip no opportunity for sneering at Maltby’s work--‘gimcrack,’ as he called it. This was not good for Maltby. Different men, different methods.
‘The Rape of the Lock’ was ‘gimcrack,’ if you care to call it so; but it was a delicate, brilliant work; and so, I repeat, was Maltby’s ‘Ariel.’ Absurd to compare Maltby with Pope? I am not so sure. I have read ‘Ariel,’ but have never read ‘The Rape of the Lock.’ Braxton’s opprobrious term for ‘Ariel’ may not, however, have been due to jealousy alone. Braxton had imagination, and his rival did not soar above fancy. But the point is that Maltby’s fancifulness went far and well. In telling how Ariel re-embodied himself from thin air, leased a small house in Chesterfield Street, was presented at a Levee, played the part of good fairy in a matter of true love not running smooth, and worked meanwhile all manner of amusing changes among the aristocracy before he vanished again, Maltby showed a very pretty range of ingenuity. In one respect, his work was a more surprising achievement than Braxton’s. For whereas Braxton had been born and bred among his rustics, Maltby knew his aristocrats only through Thackeray, through the photographs and paragraphs in the newspapers, and through those passionate excursions of his to Rotten Row. Yet I found his aristocrats as convincing as Braxton’s rustics. It is true that I may have been convinced wrongly. That is a point which I could settle only by experience. I shift my ground, claiming for Maltby’s aristocrats just this: that they pleased me very much.
Aristocrats, when they are presented solely through a novelist’s sense of beauty, do not satisfy us. They may be as beautiful as all that, but, for fear of thinking ourselves snobbish, we won’t believe it. We do believe it, however, and revel in it, when the novelist saves his face and ours by a pervading irony in the treatment of what he loves. The irony must, mark you, be pervading and obvious. Disraeli’s great ladies and lords won’t do, for his irony was but latent in his homage, and thus the reader feels himself called on to worship and in duty bound to scoff. All’s well, though, when the homage is latent in the irony. Thackeray, inviting us to laugh and frown over the follies of Mayfair, enables us to reel with him in a secret orgy of veneration for those fools.
Maltby, too, in his measure, enabled us to reel thus. That is mainly why, before the end of April, his publisher was in a position to state that ‘the Seventh Large Impression of “Ariel in Mayfair” is almost exhausted.’ Let it be put to our credit, however, that at the same moment Braxton’s publisher had ‘the honour to inform the public that an Eighth Large Impression of “A Faun on the Cotswolds” is in instant preparation.’
Indeed, it seemed impossible for either author to outvie the other in success and glory. Week in, week out, you saw cancelled either’s every momentary advantage. A neck-and-neck race. As thus:--Maltby appears as a Celebrity At Home in the World (Tuesday). Ha! No, Vanity Fair (Wednesday) has a perfect presentment of Braxton by ‘Spy.’ Neck-and-neck! No, Vanity Fair says ‘the subject of next week’s cartoon will be Mr. Hilary Maltby.’ Maltby wins! No, next week Braxton’s in the World.
Throughout May I kept, as it were, my eyes glued to my field-glasses. On the first Monday in June I saw that which drew from me a hoarse ejaculation.
Let me explain that always on Monday mornings at this time of year, when I opened my daily paper, I looked with respectful interest to see what bevy of the great world had been entertained since Saturday at Keeb Hall. The list was always august and inspiring. Statecraft and Diplomacy were well threaded there with mere Lineage and mere Beauty, with Royalty sometimes, with mere Wealth never, with privileged Genius now and then. A noble composition always. It was said that the Duke of Hertfordshire cared for nothing but his collection of birds’ eggs, and that the collections of guests at Keeb were formed entirely by his young Duchess. It was said that he had climbed trees in every corner of every continent. The Duchess’ hobby was easier. She sat aloft and beckoned desirable specimens up.
The list published on that first Monday in June began ordinarily enough, began with the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador and the Portuguese Minister. Then came the Duke and Duchess of Mull, followed by four lesser Peers (two of them Proconsuls, however) with their Peeresses, three Peers without their Peeresses, four Peeresses without their Peers, and a dozen bearers of courtesy-titles with or without their wives or husbands. The rear was brought up by ‘Mr. A. J. Balfour, Mr. Henry Chaplin, and Mr. Hilary Maltby.’
Youth tends to look at the darker side of things. I confess that my first thought was for Braxton.
I forgave and forgot his faults of manner. Youth is generous. It does not criticise a strong man stricken.
And anon, so habituated was I to the parity of those two strivers, I conceived that there might be some mistake. Daily newspapers are printed in a hurry. Might not ‘Henry Chaplin’ be a typographical error for ‘Stephen Braxton’? I went out and bought another newspaper. But Mr. Chaplin’s name was in that too.
‘Patience!’ I said to myself. ‘Braxton crouches only to spring. He will be at Keeb Hall on Saturday next.’
My mind was free now to dwell with pleasure on Maltby’s great achievement. I thought of writing to congratulate him, but feared this might be in bad taste. I did, however, write asking him to lunch with me. He did not answer my letter. I was, therefore, all the more sorry, next Monday, at not finding ‘and Mr. Stephen Braxton’ in Keeb’s week-end catalogue.
A few days later I met Mr. Hookworth. He mentioned that Stephen Braxton had left town. ‘He has taken,’ said Hookworth, ‘a delightful bungalow on the east coast. He has gone there to WORK.’ He added that he had a great liking for Braxton--‘a man utterly UNSPOILT.’ I inferred that he, too, had written to Maltby and received no answer.
That butterfly did not, however, appear to be hovering from flower to flower in the parterres of rank and fashion. In the daily lists of guests at dinners, receptions, dances, balls, the name of Maltby figured never. Maltby had not caught on.
Presently I heard that he, too, had left town. I gathered that he had gone quite early in June--quite soon after Keeb. Nobody seemed to know where he was. My own theory was that he had taken a delightful bungalow on the west coast, to balance Braxton. Anyhow, the parity of the two strivers was now somewhat re-established.
In point of fact, the disparity had been less than I supposed. While Maltby was at Keeb, there Braxton was also--in a sense.... It was a strange story. I did not hear it at the time. Nobody did. I heard it seventeen years later. I heard it in Lucca.
Little Lucca I found so enchanting that, though I had only a day or two to spare, I stayed there a whole month. I formed the habit of walking, every morning, round that high-pitched path which girdles Lucca, that wide and tree-shaded path from which one looks down over the city wall at the fertile plains beneath Lucca. There were never many people there; but the few who did come came daily, so that I grew to like seeing them and took a mild personal interest in them.
One of them was an old lady in a wheeled chair. She was not less than seventy years old, and might or might not have once been beautiful. Her chair was slowly propelled by an Italian woman. She herself was obviously Italian. Not so, however, the little gentleman who walked assiduously beside her. Him I guessed to be English. He was a very stout little gentleman, with gleaming spectacles and a full blond beard, and he seemed to radiate cheerfulness. I thought at first that he might be the old lady’s resident physician; but no, there was something subtly un-professional about him: I became sure that his constancy was gratuitous, and his radiance real. And one day, I know not how, there dawned on me a suspicion that he was--who?--some one I had known--some writer--what’s-his-name--something with an M--Maltby--Hilary Maltby of the long-ago!
At sight of him on the morrow this suspicion hardened almost to certainty. I wished I could meet him alone and ask him if I were not right, and what he had been doing all these years, and why he had left England. He was always with the old lady. It was only on my last day in Lucca that my chance came.
I had just lunched, and was seated on a comfortable bench outside my hotel, with a cup of coffee on the table before me, gazing across the faded old sunny piazza and wondering what to do with my last afternoon. It was then that I espied yonder the back of the putative Maltby. I hastened forth to him. He was buying some pink roses, a great bunch of them, from a market-woman under an umbrella. He looked very blank, he flushed greatly, when I ventured to accost him. He admitted that his name was Hilary Maltby. I told him my own name, and by degrees he remembered me. He apologised for his confusion. He explained that he had not talked English, had not talked to an Englishman, ‘for--oh, hundreds of years.’ He said that he had, in the course of his long residence in Lucca, seen two or three people whom he had known in England, but that none of them had recognised him. He accepted (but as though he were embarking on the oddest adventure in the world) my invitation that he should come and sit down and take coffee with me. He laughed with pleasure and surprise at finding that he could still speak his native tongue quite fluently and idiomatically. ‘I know absolutely nothing,’ he said, ‘about England nowadays--except from stray references to it in the Corriere della Sera; nor did he show the faintest desire that I should enlighten him. ‘England,’ he mused, ‘--how it all comes back to me!’
‘But not you to it?’
‘Ah, no indeed,’ he said gravely, looking at the roses which he had laid carefully on the marble table. ‘I am the happiest of men.’
He sipped his coffee, and stared out across the piazza, out beyond it into the past.
‘I am the happiest of men,’ he repeated. I plied him with the spur of silence.
‘And I owe it all to having once yielded to a bad impulse. Absurd, the threads our destinies hang on!’
Again I plied him with that spur. As it seemed not to prick him, I repeated the words he had last spoken. ‘For instance?’ I added.
‘Take,’ he said, ‘a certain evening in the spring of ‘95. If, on that evening, the Duchess of Hertfordshire had had a bad cold; or if she had decided that it WOULDN’T be rather interesting to go on to that party--that Annual Soiree, I think it was--of the Inkwomen’s Club; or again--to go a step further back--if she hadn’t ever written that one little poem, and if it HADN’T been printed in “The Gentlewoman,” and if the Inkwomen’s committee HADN’T instantly and unanimously elected her an Honorary Vice-President because of that one little poem; or if--well, if a million-and-one utterly irrelevant things hadn’t happened, don’t-you-know, I shouldn’t be here.... I might be THERE,’ he smiled, with a vague gesture indicating England.
‘Suppose,’ he went on, ‘I hadn’t been invited to that Annual Soiree; or suppose that other fellow,--
‘Braxton?’ I suggested. I had remembered Braxton at the moment of recognising Maltby.
‘Suppose HE hadn’t been asked.... But of course we both were. It happened that I was the first to be presented to the Duchess.... It was a great moment. I hoped I should keep my head. She wore a tiara. I had often seen women in tiaras, at the Opera. But I had never talked to a woman in a tiara. Tiaras were symbols to me. Eyes are just a human feature. I fixed mine on the Duchess’s. I kept my head by not looking at hers. I behaved as one human being to another. She seemed very intelligent. We got on very well. Presently she asked whether I should think her VERY bold if she said how PERFECTLY divine she thought my book. I said something about doing my best, and asked with animation whether she had read “A Faun on the Cotswolds.” She had. She said it was TOO wonderful, she said it was TOO great. If she hadn’t been a Duchess, I might have thought her slightly hysterical. Her innate good-sense quickly reasserted itself. She used her great power. With a wave of her magic wand she turned into a fact the glittering possibility that had haunted me. She asked me down to Keeb.
‘She seemed very pleased that I would come. Was I, by any chance, free on Saturday week? She hoped there would be some amusing people to meet me. Could I come by the 3.30? It was only an hour-and-a-quarter from Victoria. On Saturday there were always compartments reserved for people coming to Keeb by the 3.30. She hoped I would bring my bicycle with me. She hoped I wouldn’t find it very dull. She hoped I wouldn’t forget to come. She said how lovely it must be to spend one’s life among clever people. She supposed I knew everybody here to-night. She asked me to tell her who everybody was. She asked who was the tall, dark man, over there. I told her it was Stephen Braxton. She said they had promised to introduce her to him. She added that he looked rather wonderful. “Oh, he is, very,” I assured her. She turned to me with a sudden appeal: “DO you think, if I took my courage in both hands and asked him, he’d care to come to Keeb?”
‘I hesitated. It would be easy to say that Satan answered FOR me; easy but untrue; it was I that babbled: “Well--as a matter of fact--since you ask me--if I were you--really I think you’d better not. He’s very odd in some ways. He has an extraordinary hatred of sleeping out of London. He has the real Gloucestershire LOVE of London. At the same time, he’s very shy; and if you asked him he wouldn’t very well know how to refuse. I think it would be KINDER not to ask him.”
‘At that moment, Mrs. Wilpham--the President--loomed up to us, bringing Braxton. He bore himself well. Rough dignity with a touch of mellowness. I daresay you never saw him smile. He smiled gravely down at the Duchess, while she talked in her pretty little quick humble way. He made a great impression.
‘What I had done was not merely base: it was very dangerous. I was in terror that she might rally him on his devotion to London. I didn’t dare to move away. I was immensely relieved when at length she said she must be going.
‘Braxton seemed loth to relax his grip on her hand at parting. I feared she wouldn’t escape without uttering that invitation. But all was well.... In saying good night to me, she added in a murmur, “Don’t forget Keeb--Saturday week--the 3.30.” Merely an exquisite murmur. But Braxton heard it. I knew, by the diabolical look he gave me, that Braxton had heard it.... If he hadn’t, I shouldn’t be here.
‘Was I a prey to remorse? Well, in the days between that Soiree and that Saturday, remorse often claimed me, but rapture wouldn’t give me up. Arcady, Olympus, the right people, at last! I hadn’t realised how good my book was--not till it got me this guerdon; not till I got it this huge advertisement. I foresaw how pleased my publisher would be. In some great houses, I knew, it was possible to stay without any one knowing you had been there. But the Duchess of Hertfordshire hid her light under no bushel. Exclusive she was, but not of publicity. Next to Windsor Castle, Keeb Hall was the most advertised house in all England.
‘Meanwhile, I had plenty to do. I rather thought of engaging a valet, but decided that this wasn’t necessary. On the other hand, I felt a need for three new summer suits, and a new evening suit, and some new white waistcoats. Also a smoking suit. And had any man ever stayed at Keeb without a dressing-case? Hitherto I had been content with a pair of wooden brushes, and so forth. I was afraid these would appal the footman who unpacked my things. I ordered, for his sake, a large dressing-case, with my initials engraved throughout it. It looked compromisingly new when it came to me from the shop. I had to kick it industriously, and throw it about and scratch it, so as to avert possible suspicion. The tailor did not send my things home till the Friday evening. I had to sit up late, wearing the new suits in rotation.
‘Next day, at Victoria, I saw strolling on the platform many people, male and female, who looked as if they were going to Keeb--tall, cool, ornate people who hadn’t packed their own things and had reached Victoria in broughams. I was ornate, but not tall nor cool. My porter was rather off-hand in his manner as he wheeled my things along to the 3.30. I asked severely if there were any compartments reserved for people going to stay with the Duke of Hertfordshire. This worked an instant change in him. Having set me in one of those shrines, he seemed almost loth to accept a tip. A snob, I am afraid.
‘A selection of the tall, the cool, the ornate, the intimately acquainted with one another, soon filled the compartment. There I was, and I think they felt they ought to try to bring me into the conversation. As they were all talking about a cotillion of the previous night, I shouldn’t have been able to shine. I gazed out of the window, with middle-class aloofness. Presently the talk drifted on to the topic of bicycles. But by this time it was too late for me to come in.
‘I gazed at the squalid outskirts of London as they flew by. I doubted, as I listened to my fellow-passengers, whether I should be able to shine at Keeb. I rather wished I were going to spend the week-end at one of those little houses with back-gardens beneath the railway-line. I was filled with fears.
‘For shame! thought I. Was I nobody? Was the author of “Ariel in Mayfair” nobody?
‘I reminded myself how glad Braxton would be if he knew of my faint-heartedness. I thought of Braxton sitting, at this moment, in his room in Clifford’s Inn and glowering with envy of his hated rival in the 3.30. And after all, how enviable I was! My spirits rose. I would acquit myself well....
‘I much admired the scene at the little railway station where we alighted. It was like a fete by Lancret. I knew from the talk of my fellow-passengers that some people had been going down by an earlier train, and that others were coming by a later. But the 3.30 had brought a full score of us. Us! That was the final touch of beauty.
‘Outside there were two broughams, a landau, dog-carts, a phaeton, a wagonette, I know not what. But almost everybody, it seemed, was going to bicycle. Lady Rodfitten said SHE was going to bicycle. Year after year, I had seen that famous Countess riding or driving in the Park. I had been told at fourth hand that she had a masculine intellect and could make and unmake Ministries. She was nearly sixty now, a trifle dyed and stout and weather-beaten, but still tremendously handsome, and hard as nails. One would not have said she had grown older, but merely that she belonged now to a rather later period of the Roman Empire. I had never dreamed of a time when one roof would shelter Lady Rodfitten and me. Somehow, she struck my imagination more than any of these others--more than Count Deym, more than Mr. Balfour, more than the lovely Lady Thisbe Crowborough.
‘I might have had a ducal vehicle all to myself, and should have liked that; but it seemed more correct that I should use my bicycle. On the other hand, I didn’t want to ride with all these people--a stranger in their midst. I lingered around the luggage till they were off, and then followed at a long distance.
‘The sun had gone behind clouds. But I rode slowly, so as to be sure not to arrive hot. I passed, not without a thrill, through the massive open gates into the Duke’s park. A massive man with a cockade saluted me--hearteningly--from the door of the lodge. The park seemed endless. I came, at length, to a long straight avenue of elms that were almost blatantly immemorial. At the end of it was--well, I felt like a gnat going to stay in a public building.
‘If there had been turnstiles--IN and OUT--and a shilling to pay, I should have felt easier as I passed into that hall--that Palladio-Gargantuan hall. Some one, some butler or groom-of-the-chamber, murmured that her Grace was in the garden. I passed out through the great opposite doorway on to a wide spectacular terrace with lawns beyond. Tea was on the nearest of these lawns. In the central group of people--some standing, others sitting--I espied the Duchess. She sat pouring out tea, a deft and animated little figure. I advanced firmly down the steps from the terrace, feeling that all would be well so soon as I had reported myself to the Duchess.
‘But I had a staggering surprise on my way to her. I espied in one of the smaller groups--whom d’you think? Braxton.
‘I had no time to wonder how he had got there--time merely to grasp the black fact that he WAS there.
‘The Duchess seemed really pleased to see me. She said it was TOO splendid of me to come. “You know Mr. Maltby?” she asked Lady Rodfitten, who exclaimed “Not Mr. HILARY Maltby?” with a vigorous grace that was overwhelming. Lady Rodfitten declared she was the greatest of my admirers; and I could well believe that in whatever she did she excelled all competitors. On the other hand, I found it hard to believe she was afraid of me. Yet I had her word for it that she was.
‘Her womanly charm gave place now to her masculine grip. She eulogised me in the language of a seasoned reviewer on the staff of a long-established journal--wordy perhaps, but sound. I revered and loved her. I wished I could give her my undivided attention. But, whilst I sat there, teacup, in hand, between her and the Duchess, part of my brain was fearfully concerned with that glimpse I had had of Braxton. It didn’t so much matter that he was here to halve my triumph. But suppose he knew what I had told the Duchess! And suppose he had--no, surely if he HAD shown me up in all my meanness she wouldn’t have received me so very cordially. I wondered where she could have met him since that evening of the Inkwomen. I heard Lady Rodfitten concluding her review of “Ariel” with two or three sentences that might have been framed specially to give the publisher an easy “quote.” And then I heard myself asking mechanically whether she had read “A Faun on the Cotswolds.” The Duchess heard me too. She turned from talking to other people and said “I did like Mr. Braxton so VERY much.”
‘“Yes,” I threw out with a sickly smile, “I’m so glad you asked him to come.”
‘“But I didn’t ask him. I didn’t DARE.”
‘“But--but--surely he wouldn’t be--be HERE if--” We stared at each other blankly. “Here?” she echoed, glancing at the scattered little groups of people on the lawn. I glanced too. I was much embarrassed. I explained that I had seen Braxton “standing just over there” when I arrived, and had supposed he was one of the people who came by the earlier train. “Well,” she said with a slightly irritated laugh, “you must have mistaken some one else for him.” She dropped the subject, talked to other people, and presently moved away.
‘Surely, thought I, she didn’t suspect me of trying to make fun of her? On the other hand, surely she hadn’t conspired with Braxton to make a fool of ME? And yet, how could Braxton be here without an invitation, and without her knowledge? My brain whirled. One thing only was clear. I could NOT have mistaken anybody for Braxton. There Braxton had stood--Stephen Braxton, in that old pepper-and-salt suit of his, with his red tie all askew, and without a hat--his hair hanging over his forehead. All this I had seen sharp and clean-cut. There he had stood, just beside one of the women who travelled down in the same compartment as I; a very pretty woman in a pale blue dress; a tall woman--but I had noticed how small she looked beside Braxton. This woman was now walking to and fro, yonder, with M. de Soveral. I had seen Braxton beside her as clearly as I now saw M. de Soveral.
‘Lady Rodfitten was talking about India to a recent Viceroy. She seemed to have as firm a grip of India as of “Ariel.” I sat forgotten. I wanted to arise and wander off--in a vague search for Braxton. But I feared this might look as if I were angry at being ignored. Presently Lady Rodfitten herself arose, to have what she called her “annual look round.” She bade me come too, and strode off between me and the recent Viceroy, noting improvements that had been made in the grounds, suggesting improvements that might be made, indicating improvements that MUST be made. She was great on landscape-gardening. The recent Viceroy was less great on it, but great enough. I don’t say I walked forgotten: the eminent woman constantly asked my opinion; but my opinion, though of course it always coincided with hers, sounded quite worthless, somehow. I longed to shine. I could only bother about Braxton.
‘Lady Rodfitten’s voice sounded over-strong for the stillness of evening. The shadows lengthened. My spirits sank lower and lower, with the sun. I was a naturally cheerful person, but always, towards sunset, I had a vague sense of melancholy: I seemed always to have grown weaker; morbid misgivings would come to me. On this particular evening there was one such misgiving that crept in and out of me again and again... a very horrible misgiving as to the NATURE of what I had seen.
‘Well, dressing for dinner is a great tonic. Especially if one shaves. My spirits rose as I lathered my face. I smiled to my reflection in the mirror. The afterglow of the sun came through the window behind the dressing-table, but I had switched on all the lights. My new silver-topped bottles and things made a fine array. To-night _I_ was going to shine, too. I felt I might yet be the life and soul of the party. Anyway, my new evening suit was without a fault. And meanwhile this new razor was perfect. Having shaved “down,” I lathered myself again and proceeded to shave “up.” It was then that I uttered a sharp sound and swung round on my heel.
‘No one was there. Yet this I knew: Stephen Braxton had just looked over my shoulder. I had seen the reflection of his face beside mine--craned forward to the mirror. I had met his eyes.
‘He had been with me. This I knew.
‘I turned to look again at that mirror. One of my cheeks was all covered with blood. I stanched it with a towel. Three long cuts where the razor had slipped and skipped. I plunged the towel into cold water and held it to my cheek. The bleeding went on--alarmingly. I rang the bell. No one came. I vowed I wouldn’t bleed to death for Braxton. I rang again. At last a very tall powdered footman appeared--more reproachful-looking than sympathetic, as though I hadn’t ordered that dressing-case specially on his behalf. He said he thought one of the housemaids would have some sticking-plaster. He was very sorry he was needed downstairs, but he would tell one of the housemaids. I continued to dab and to curse. The blood flowed less. I showed great spirit. I vowed Braxton should not prevent me from going down to dinner.
‘But--a pretty sight I was when I did go down. Pale but determined, with three long strips of black sticking-plaster forming a sort of Z on my left cheek. Mr. Hilary Maltby at Keeb. Literature’s Ambassador.
‘I don’t know how late I was. Dinner was in full swing. Some servant piloted me to my place. I sat down unobserved. The woman on either side of me was talking to her other neighbour. I was near the Duchess’ end of the table. Soup was served to me--that dark-red soup that you pour cream into--Bortsch. I felt it would steady me. I raised the first spoonful to my lips, and--my hand gave a sudden jerk.
‘I was aware of two separate horrors--a horror that had been, a horror that was. Braxton had vanished. Not for more than an instant had he stood scowling at me from behind the opposite diners. Not for more than the fraction of an instant. But he had left his mark on me. I gazed down with a frozen stare at my shirtfront, at my white waistcoat, both dark with Bortsch. I rubbed them with a napkin. I made them worse.
‘I looked at my glass of champagne. I raised it carefully and drained it at one draught. It nerved me. But behind that shirtfront was a broken heart.
‘The woman on my left was Lady Thisbe Crowborough. I don’t know who was the woman on my right. She was the first to turn and see me. I thought it best to say something about my shirtfront at once. I said it to her sideways, without showing my left cheek. Her handsome eyes rested on the splashes. She said, after a moment’s thought, that they looked “rather gay.” She said she thought the eternal black and white of men’s evening clothes was “so very dreary.” She did her best.... Lady Thisbe Crowborough did her best, too, I suppose; but breeding isn’t proof against all possible shocks: she visibly started at sight of me and my Z. I explained that I had cut myself shaving. I said, with an attempt at lightness, that shy men ought always to cut themselves shaving: it made such a good conversational opening. “But surely,” she said after a pause, “you don’t cut yourself on purpose?” She was an abysmal fool. I didn’t think so at the time. She was Lady Thisbe Crowborough. This fact hallowed her. That we didn’t get on at all well was a misfortune for which I blamed only myself and my repulsive appearance and--the unforgettable horror that distracted me. Nor did I blame Lady Thisbe for turning rather soon to the man on her other side.
‘The woman on my right was talking to the man on HER other side; so that I was left a prey to secret memory and dread. I wasn’t wondering, wasn’t attempting to explain; I was merely remembering--and dreading. And--how odd one is!--on the top-layer of my consciousness I hated to be seen talking to no one. Mr. Maltby at Keeb. I caught the Duchess’ eye once or twice, and she nodded encouragingly, as who should say “You do look rather awful, and you do seem rather out of it, but I don’t for a moment regret having asked you to come.” Presently I had another chance of talking. I heard myself talk. My feverish anxiety to please rather touched ME. But I noticed that the eyes of my listener wandered. And yet I was sorry when the ladies went away. I had a sense of greater exposure. Men who hadn’t seen me saw me now. The Duke, as he came round to the Duchess’ end of the table, must have wondered who I was. But he shyly offered me his hand as he passed, and said it was so good of me to come. I had thought of slipping away to put on another shirt and waistcoat, but had decided that this would make me the more ridiculous. I sat drinking port--poison to me after champagne, but a lulling poison--and listened to noblemen with unstained shirtfronts talking about the Australian cricket match....
‘Is Rubicon Bezique still played in England? There was a mania for it at that time. The floor of Keeb’s Palladio-Gargantuan hall was dotted with innumerable little tables. I didn’t know how to play. My hostess told me I must “come and amuse the dear old Duke and Duchess of Mull,” and led me to a remote sofa on which an old gentleman had just sat down beside an old lady. They looked at me with a dim kind interest. My hostess had set me and left me on a small gilt chair in front of them. Before going she had conveyed to them loudly--one of them was very deaf--that I was “the famous writer.” It was a long time before they understood that I was not a political writer. The Duke asked me, after a troubled pause, whether I had known “old Mr. Abraham Hayward.” The Duchess said I was too young to have known Mr. Hayward, and asked if I knew her “clever friend Mr. Mallock.” I said I had just been reading Mr. Mallock’s new novel. I heard myself shouting a confused precis of the plot. The place where we were sitting was near the foot of the great marble staircase. I said how beautiful the staircase was. The Duchess of Mull said she had never cared very much for that staircase. The Duke, after a pause, said he had “often heard old Mr. Abraham Hayward hold a whole dinner table.”
There were long and frequent pauses--between which I heard myself talking loudly, frantically, sinking lower and lower in the esteem of my small audience. I felt like a man drowning under the eyes of an elderly couple who sit on the bank regretting that they can offer NO assistance. Presently the Duke looked at his watch and said to the Duchess that it was “time to be thinking of bed.”
‘They rose, as it were from the bank, and left me, so to speak, under water. I watched them as they passed slowly out of sight up the marble staircase which I had mispraised. I turned and surveyed the brilliant, silent scene presented by the card-players.
‘I wondered what old Mr. Abraham Hayward would have done in my place. Would he have just darted in among those tables and “held” them? I presumed that he would not have stolen silently away, quickly and cravenly away, up the marble staircase--as _I_ did.
‘I don’t know which was the greater, the relief or the humiliation of finding myself in my bedroom. Perhaps the humiliation was the greater. There, on a chair, was my grand new smoking-suit, laid out for me--what a mockery! Once I had foreseen myself wearing it in the smoking-room at a late hour--the centre of a group of eminent men entranced by the brilliancy of my conversation. And now--! I was nothing but a small, dull, soup-stained, sticking-plastered, nerve-racked recluse. Nerves, yes. I assured myself that I had not seen--what I had seemed to see. All very odd, of course, and very unpleasant, but easily explained. Nerves. Excitement of coming to Keeb too much for me. A good night’s rest: that was all I needed. To-morrow I should laugh at myself.
‘I wondered that I wasn’t tired physically. There my grand new silk pyjamas were, yet I felt no desire to go to bed... none while it was still possible for me to go. The little writing-table at the foot of my bed seemed to invite me. I had brought with me in my portmanteau a sheaf of letters, letters that I had purposely left unanswered in order that I might answer them on KEEB HALL note-paper. These the footman had neatly laid beside the blotting-pad on that little writing-table at the foot of the bed. I regretted that the notepaper stacked there had no ducal coronet on it. What matter? The address sufficed. If I hadn’t yet made a good impression on the people who were staying here, I could at any rate make one on the people who weren’t. I sat down. I set to work. I wrote a prodigious number of fluent and graceful notes.
‘Some of these were to strangers who wanted my autograph. I was always delighted to send my autograph, and never perfunctory in the manner of sending it.... “Dear Madam,” I remember writing to somebody that night, “were it not that you make your request for it so charmingly, I should hesitate to send you that which rarity alone can render valuable.--Yours truly, Hilary Maltby.” I remember reading this over and wondering whether the word “render” looked rather commercial. It was in the act of wondering thus that I raised my eyes from the note-paper and saw, through the bars of the brass bedstead, the naked sole of a large human foot--saw beyond it the calf of a great leg; a nightshirt; and the face of Stephen Braxton. I did not move.
‘I thought of making a dash for the door, dashing out into the corridor, shouting at the top of my voice for help. I sat quite still.
‘What kept me to my chair was the fear that if I tried to reach the door Braxton would spring off the bed to intercept me. If I sat quite still perhaps he wouldn’t move. I felt that if he moved I should collapse utterly.
‘I watched him, and he watched me. He lay there with his body half-raised, one elbow propped on the pillow, his jaw sunk on his breast; and from under his black brows he watched me steadily.
‘No question of mere nerves now. That hope was gone. No mere optical delusion, this abiding presence. Here Braxton was. He and I were together in the bright, silent room. How long would he be content to watch me?
‘Eleven nights ago he had given me one horrible look. It was this look that I had to meet, in infinite prolongation, now, not daring to shift my eyes. He lay as motionless as I sat. I did not hear him breathing, but I knew, by the rise and fall of his chest under his nightshirt, that he was breathing heavily. Suddenly I started to my feet. For he had moved. He had raised one hand slowly. He was stroking his chin. And as he did so, and as he watched me, his mouth gradually slackened to a grin. It was worse, it was more malign, this grin, than the scowl that remained with it; and its immediate effect on me was an impulse that was as hard to resist as it was hateful. The window was open. It was nearer to me than the door. I could have reached it in time....
‘Well, I live to tell the tale. I stood my ground. And there dawned on me now a new fact in regard to my companion. I had all the while been conscious of something abnormal in his attitude--a lack of ease in his gross possessiveness. I saw now the reason for this effect. The pillow on which his elbow rested was still uniformly puffed and convex; like a pillow untouched. His elbow rested but on the very surface of it, not changing the shape of it at all. His body made not the least furrow along the bed.... He had no weight.
‘I knew that if I leaned forward and thrust my hand between those brass rails, to clutch his foot, I should clutch--nothing. He wasn’t tangible. He was realistic. He wasn’t real. He was opaque. He wasn’t solid.
‘Odd as it may seem to you, these certainties took the edge off my horror. During that walk with Lady Rodfitten, I had been appalled by the doubt that haunted me. But now the very confirmation of that doubt gave me a sort of courage: I could cope better with anything to-night than with actual Braxton. And the measure of the relief I felt is that I sat down again on my chair.
‘More than once there came to me a wild hope that the thing might be an optical delusion, after all. Then would I shut my eyes tightly, shaking my head sharply; but, when I looked again, there the presence was, of course. It--he--not actual Braxton but, roughly speaking, Braxton--had come to stay. I was conscious of intense fatigue, taut and alert though every particle of me was; so that I became, in the course of that ghastly night, conscious of a great envy also. For some time before the dawn came in through the window, Braxton’s eyes had been closed; little by little now his head drooped sideways, then fell on his forearm and rested there. He was asleep.
‘Cut off from sleep, I had a great longing for smoke. I had cigarettes on me, I had matches on me. But I didn’t dare to strike a match. The sound might have waked Braxton up. In slumber he was less terrible, though perhaps more odious. I wasn’t so much afraid now as indignant. “It’s intolerable,” I sat saying to myself, “utterly intolerable!”
‘I had to bear it, nevertheless. I was aware that I had, in some degree, brought it on myself. If I hadn’t interfered and lied, actual Braxton would have been here at Keeb, and I at this moment sleeping soundly. But this was no excuse for Braxton. Braxton didn’t know what I had done. He was merely envious of me. And--wanly I puzzled it out in the dawn--by very force of the envy, hatred, and malice in him he had projected hither into my presence this simulacrum of himself. I had known that he would be thinking of me. I had known that the thought of me at Keeb Hall would be of the last bitterness to his most sacred feelings. But--I had reckoned without the passionate force and intensity of the man’s nature.
‘If by this same strength and intensity he had merely projected himself as an invisible guest under the Duchess’ roof--if his feat had been wholly, as perhaps it was in part, a feat of mere wistfulness and longing--then I should have felt really sorry for him; and my conscience would have soundly rated me in his behalf. But no; if the wretched creature HAD been invisible to me, I shouldn’t have thought of Braxton at all--except with gladness that he wasn’t here. That he was visible to me, and to me alone, wasn’t any sign of proper remorse within me. It was but the gauge of his incredible ill-will.
‘Well, it seemed to me that he was avenged--with a vengeance. There I sat, hot-browed from sleeplessness, cold in the feet, stiff in the legs, cowed and indignant all through--sat there in the broadening daylight, and in that new evening suit of mine with the Braxtonised shirtfront and waistcoat that by day were more than ever loathsome. Literature’s Ambassador at Keeb.... I rose gingerly from my chair, and caught sight of my face, of my Braxtonised cheek, in the mirror. I heard the twittering of birds in distant trees. I saw through my window the elaborate landscape of the Duke’s grounds, all soft in the grey bloom of early morning. I think I was nearer to tears than I had ever been since I was a child. But the weakness passed. I turned towards the personage on my bed, and, summoning all such power as was in me, WILLED him to be gone. My effort was not without result--an inadequate result. Braxton turned in his sleep.
‘I resumed my seat, and... and... sat up staring and blinking, at a tall man with red hair. “I must have fallen asleep,” I said. “Yessir,” he replied; and his toneless voice touched in me one or two springs of memory: I was at Keeb; this was the footman who looked after me. But--why wasn’t I in bed? Had I--no, surely it had been no nightmare. Surely I had SEEN Braxton on that white bed.
‘The footman was impassively putting away my smoking-suit. I was too dazed to wonder what he thought of me. Nor did I attempt to stifle a cry when, a moment later, turning in my chair, I beheld Braxton leaning moodily against the mantelpiece. “Are you unwell sir?” asked the footman. “No,” I said faintly, “I’m quite well.”--“Yessir. Will you wear the blue suit or the grey?”--“The grey.”--“Yessir.”--It seemed almost incredible that HE didn’t see Braxton; HE didn’t appear to me one whit more solid than the night-shirted brute who stood against the mantelpiece and watched him lay out my things.--“Shall I let your bath-water run now sir?”--“Please, yes.”--“Your bathroom’s the second door to the left sir.”--He went out with my bath-towel and sponge, leaving me alone with Braxton.
‘I rose to my feet, mustering once more all the strength that was in me. Hoping against hope, with set teeth and clenched hands, I faced him, thrust forth my will at him, with everything but words commanded him to vanish--to cease to be.
‘Suddenly, utterly, he vanished. And you can imagine the truly exquisite sense of triumph that thrilled me and continued to thrill me till I went into the bathroom and found him in my bath.
‘Quivering with rage, I returned to my bedroom. “Intolerable,” I heard myself repeating like a parrot that knew no other word. A bath was just what I had needed. Could I have lain for a long time basking in very hot water, and then have sponged myself with cold water, I should have emerged calm and brave; comparatively so, at any rate. I should have looked less ghastly, and have had less of a headache, and something of an appetite, when I went down to breakfast. Also, I shouldn’t have been the very first guest to appear on the scene. There were five or six round tables, instead of last night’s long table. At the further end of the room the butler and two other servants were lighting the little lamps under the hot dishes. I didn’t like to make myself ridiculous by running away. On the other hand, was it right for me to begin breakfast all by myself at one of these round tables? I supposed it was. But I dreaded to be found eating, alone in that vast room, by the first downcomer. I sat dallying with dry toast and watching the door. It occurred to me that Braxton might occur at any moment. Should I be able to ignore him?
‘Some man and wife--a very handsome couple--were the first to appear. They nodded and said “good morning” when they noticed me on their way to the hot dishes. I rose--uncomfortably, guiltily--and sat down again. I rose again when the wife drifted to my table, followed by the husband with two steaming plates. She asked me if it wasn’t a heavenly morning, and I replied with nervous enthusiasm that it was. She then ate kedgeree in silence. “You just finishing, what?” the husband asked, looking at my plate. “Oh, no--no--only just beginning,” I assured him, and helped myself to butter. He then ate kedgeree in silence. He looked like some splendid bull, and she like some splendid cow, grazing. I envied them their eupeptic calm. I surmised that ten thousand Braxtons would not have prevented THEM from sleeping soundly by night and grazing steadily by day. Perhaps their stolidity infected me a little. Or perhaps what braced me was the great quantity of strong tea that I consumed. Anyhow I had begun to feel that if Braxton came in now I shouldn’t blench nor falter.
‘Well, I wasn’t put to the test. Plenty of people drifted in, but Braxton wasn’t one of them. Lady Rodfitten--no, she didn’t drift, she marched, in; and presently, at an adjacent table, she was drawing a comparison, in clarion tones, between Jean and Edouard de Reszke. It seemed to me that her own voice had much in common with Edouard’s. Even more was it akin to a military band. I found myself beating time to it with my foot. Decidedly, my spirits had risen. I was in a mood to face and outface anything. When I rose from the table and made my way to the door, I walked with something of a swing--to the tune of Lady Rodfitten.
‘My buoyancy didn’t last long, though. There was no swing in my walk when, a little later, I passed out on to the spectacular terrace. I had seen my enemy again, and had beaten a furious retreat. No doubt I should see him yet again soon--here, perhaps, on this terrace. Two of the guests were bicycling slowly up and down the long paven expanse, both of them smiling with pride in the new delicious form of locomotion. There was a great array of bicycles propped neatly along the balustrade. I recognised my own among them. I wondered whether Braxton had projected from Clifford’s Inn an image of his own bicycle. He may have done so; but I’ve no evidence that he did. I myself was bicycling when next I saw him; but he, I remember, was on foot.
‘This was a few minutes later. I was bicycling with dear Lady Rodfitten. She seemed really to like me. She had come out and accosted me heartily on the terrace, asking me, because of my sticking-plaster, with whom I had fought a duel since yesterday. I did not tell her with whom, and she had already branched off on the subject of duelling in general. She regretted the extinction of duelling in England, and gave cogent reasons for her regret. Then she asked me what my next book was to be. I confided that I was writing a sort of sequel--“Ariel Returns to Mayfair.” She shook her head, said with her usual soundness that sequels were very dangerous things, and asked me to tell her “briefly” the lines along which I was working. I did so. She pointed out two or three weak points in my scheme. She said she could judge better if I would let her see my manuscript. She asked me to come and lunch with her next Friday--“just our two selves”--at Rodfitten House, and to bring my manuscript with me. Need I say that I walked on air?
‘“And now,” she said strenuously, “let us take a turn on our bicycles.”
By this time there were a dozen riders on the terrace, all of them smiling with pride and rapture. We mounted and rode along together. The terrace ran round two sides of the house, and before we came to the end of it these words had provisionally marshalled themselves in my mind:
TO ELEANOR COUNTESS OF RODFITTEN THIS BOOK WHICH OWES ALL TO HER WISE COUNSEL AND UNWEARYING SUPERVISION IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED BY HER FRIEND THE AUTHOR
‘Smiled to masonically by the passing bicyclists, and smiling masonically to them in return, I began to feel that the rest of my visit would run smooth, if only--
‘“Let’s go a little faster. Let’s race!” said Lady Rodfitten; and we did so--“just our two selves.” I was on the side nearer to the balustrade, and it was on that side that Braxton suddenly appeared from nowhere, solid-looking as a rock, his arms akimbo, less than three yards ahead of me, so that I swerved involuntarily, sharply, striking broadside the front wheel of Lady Rodfitten and collapsing with her, and with a crash of machinery, to the ground.
‘I wasn’t hurt. She had broken my fall. I wished I was dead. She was furious. She sat speechless with fury. A crowd had quickly collected--just as in the case of a street accident. She accused me now to the crowd. She said I had done it on purpose. She said such terrible things of me that I think the crowd’s sympathy must have veered towards me. She was assisted to her feet. I tried to be one of the assistants. “Don’t let him come near me!” she thundered. I caught sight of Braxton on the fringe of the crowd, grinning at me. “It was all HIS fault,”
I madly cried, pointing at him. Everybody looked at Mr. Balfour, just behind whom Braxton was standing. There was a general murmur of surprise, in which I have no doubt Mr. Balfour joined. He gave a charming, blank, deprecating smile. “I mean--I can’t explain what I mean,” I groaned. Lady Rodfitten moved away, refusing support, limping terribly, towards the house. The crowd followed her, solicitous. I stood helplessly, desperately, where I was.
‘I stood an outlaw, a speck on the now empty terrace. Mechanically I picked up my straw hat, and wheeled the two bent bicycles to the balustrade. I suppose Mr. Balfour has a charming nature. For he presently came out again--on purpose, I am sure, to alleviate my misery. He told me that Lady Rodfitten had suffered no harm. He took me for a stroll up and down the terrace, talking thoughtfully and enchantingly about things in general. Then, having done his deed of mercy, this Good Samaritan went back into the house. My eyes followed him with gratitude; but I was still bleeding from wounds beyond his skill. I escaped down into the gardens. I wanted to see no one. Still more did I want to be seen by no one. I dreaded in every nerve of me my reappearance among those people. I walked ever faster and faster, to stifle thought; but in vain. Why hadn’t I simply ridden THROUGH Braxton? I was aware of being now in the park, among great trees and undulations of wild green ground. But Nature did not achieve the task that Mr. Balfour had attempted; and my anguish was unassuaged.
‘I paused to lean against a tree in the huge avenue that led to the huge hateful house. I leaned wondering whether the thought of re-entering that house were the more hateful because I should have to face my fellow-guests or because I should probably have to face Braxton. A church bell began ringing somewhere. And anon I was aware of another sound--a twitter of voices. A consignment of hatted and parasoled ladies was coming fast adown the avenue. My first impulse was to dodge behind my tree. But I feared that I had been observed; so that what was left to me of self-respect compelled me to meet these ladies.
‘The Duchess was among them. I had seen her from afar at breakfast, but not since. She carried a prayer-book, which she waved to me as I approached. I was a disastrous guest, but still a guest, and nothing could have been prettier than her smile. “Most of my men this week,” she said, “are Pagans, and all the others have dispatch-boxes to go through--except the dear old Duke of Mull, who’s a member of the Free Kirk. You’re Pagan, of course?”
‘I said--and indeed it was a heart-cry--that I should like very much to come to church. “If I shan’t be in the way,” I rather abjectly added. It didn’t strike me that Braxton would try to intercept me. I don’t know why, but it never occurred to me, as I walked briskly along beside the Duchess, that I should meet him so far from the house. The church was in a corner of the park, and the way to it was by a side path that branched off from the end of the avenue. A little way along, casting its shadow across the path, was a large oak. It was from behind this tree, when we came to it, that Braxton sprang suddenly forth and tripped me up with his foot.
‘Absurd to be tripped up by the mere semblance of a foot? But remember, I was walking quickly, and the whole thing happened in a flash of time. It was inevitable that I should throw out my hands and come down headlong--just as though the obstacle had been as real as it looked. Down I came on palms and knee-caps, and up I scrambled, very much hurt and shaken and apologetic. “POOR Mr. Maltby! REALLY--!” the Duchess wailed for me in this latest of my mishaps. Some other lady chased my straw hat, which had bowled far ahead. Two others helped to brush me. They were all very kind, with a quaver of mirth in their concern for me. I looked furtively around for Braxton, but he was gone. The palms of my hands were abraded with gravel. The Duchess said I must on no account come to church NOW. I was utterly determined to reach that sanctuary. I marched firmly on with the Duchess. Come what might on the way, I wasn’t going to be left out here. I was utterly bent on winning at least one respite.
‘Well, I reached the little church without further molestation. To be there seemed almost too good to be true. The organ, just as we entered, sounded its first notes. The ladies rustled into the front pew. I, being the one male of the party, sat at the end of the pew, beside the Duchess. I couldn’t help feeling that my position was a proud one. But I had gone through too much to take instant pleasure in it, and was beset by thoughts of what new horror might await me on the way back to the house. I hoped the Service would not be brief. The swelling and dwindling strains of the “voluntary” on the small organ were strangely soothing. I turned to give an almost feudal glance to the simple villagers in the pews behind, and saw a sight that cowed my soul.
‘Braxton was coming up the aisle. He came slowly, casting a tourist’s eye at the stained-glass windows on either side. Walking heavily, yet with no sound of boots on the pavement, he reached our pew. There, towering and glowering, he halted, as though demanding that we should make room for him. A moment later he edged sullenly into the pew. Instinctively I had sat tight back, drawing my knees aside, in a shudder of revulsion against contact. But Braxton did not push past me. What he did was to sit slowly and fully down on me.
‘No, not down ON me. Down THROUGH me--and around me. What befell me was not mere ghastly contact with the intangible. It was inclusion, envelopment, eclipse. What Braxton sat down on was not I, but the seat of the pew; and what he sat back against was not my face and chest, but the back of the pew. I didn’t realise this at the moment. All I knew was a sudden black blotting-out of all things; an infinite and impenetrable darkness. I dimly conjectured that I was dead. What was wrong with me, in point of fact, was that my eyes, with the rest of me, were inside Braxton. You remember what a great hulking fellow Braxton was. I calculate that as we sat there my eyes were just beneath the roof of his mouth. Horrible!
‘Out of the unfathomable depths of that pitch darkness, I could yet hear the “voluntary” swelling and dwindling, just as before. It was by this I knew now that I wasn’t dead. And I suppose I must have craned my head forward, for I had a sudden glimpse of things--a close quick downward glimpse of a pepper-and-salt waistcoat and of two great hairy hands clasped across it. Then darkness again. Either I had drawn back my head, or Braxton had thrust his forward; I don’t know which. “Are you all right?” the Duchess’ voice whispered, and no doubt my face was ashen. “Quite,” whispered my voice. But this pathetic monosyllable was the last gasp of the social instinct in me. Suddenly, as the “voluntary” swelled to its close, there was a great sharp shuffling noise. The congregation had risen to its feet, at the entry of choir and vicar. Braxton had risen, leaving me in daylight. I beheld his towering back. The Duchess, beside him, glanced round at me. But I could not, dared not, stand up into that presented back, into that great waiting darkness. I did but clutch my hat from beneath the seat and hurry distraught down the aisle, out through the porch, into the open air.
‘Whither? To what goal? I didn’t reason. I merely fled--like Orestes; fled like an automaton along the path we had come by. And was followed? Yes, yes. Glancing back across my shoulder, I saw that brute some twenty yards behind me, gaining on me. I broke into a sharper run. A few sickening moments later, he was beside me, scowling down into my face.
‘I swerved, dodged, doubled on my tracks, but he was always at me. Now and again, for lack of breath, I halted, and he halted with me. And then, when I had got my wind, I would start running again, in the insane hope of escaping him. We came, by what twisting and turning course I know not, to the great avenue, and as I stood there in an agony of panting I had a dazed vision of the distant Hall. Really I had quite forgotten I was staying at the Duke of Hertfordshire’s. But Braxton hadn’t forgotten. He planted himself in front of me. He stood between me and the house.
‘Faint though I was, I could almost have laughed. Good heavens! was THAT all he wanted: that I shouldn’t go back there? Did he suppose I wanted to go back there--with HIM? Was I the Duke’s prisoner on parole? What was there to prevent me from just walking off to the railway station? I turned to do so.
‘He accompanied me on my way. I thought that when once I had passed through the lodge gates he might vanish, satisfied. But no, he didn’t vanish. It was as though he suspected that if he let me out of his sight I should sneak back to the house. He arrived with me, this quiet companion of mine, at the little railway station. Evidently he meant to see me off. I learned from an elderly and solitary porter that the next train to London was the 4.3.
‘Well, Braxton saw me off by the 4.3. I reflected, as I stepped up into an empty compartment, that it wasn’t yet twenty-four hours ago since I, or some one like me, had alighted at that station.
‘The guard blew his whistle; the engine shrieked, and the train jolted forward and away; but I did not lean out of the window to see the last of my attentive friend.
‘Really not twenty-four hours ago? Not twenty-four years?’
Maltby paused in his narrative. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘I don’t want you to think I overrate the ordeal of my visit to Keeb. A man of stronger nerve than mine, and of greater resourcefulness, might have coped successfully with Braxton from first to last--might have stayed on till Monday, making a very favourable impression on every one all the while. Even as it was, even after my manifold failures and sudden flight, I don’t say my position was impossible. I only say it seemed so to me. A man less sensitive than I, and less vain, might have cheered up after writing a letter of apology to his hostess, and have resumed his normal existence as though nothing very terrible had happened, after all. I wrote a few lines to the Duchess that night; but I wrote amidst the preparations for my departure from England: I crossed the Channel next morning. Throughout that Sunday afternoon with Braxton at the Keeb railway station, pacing the desolate platform with him, waiting in the desolating waiting-room with him, I was numb to regrets, and was thinking of nothing but the 4.3. On the way to Victoria my brain worked and my soul wilted. Every incident in my stay at Keeb stood out clear to me; a dreadful, a hideous pattern. I had done for myself, so far as THOSE people were concerned. And now that I had sampled THEM, what cared I for others? “Too low for a hawk, too high for a buzzard.” That homely old saying seemed to sum me up. And suppose I COULD still take pleasure in the company of my own old upper-middle class, how would that class regard me now? Gossip percolates. Little by little, I was sure, the story of my Keeb fiasco would leak down into the drawing-room of Mrs. Foster-Dugdale. I felt I could never hold up my head in any company where anything of that story was known. Are you quite sure you never heard anything?’
I assured Maltby that all I had known was the great bare fact of his having stayed at Keeb Hall.
‘It’s curious,’ he reflected. ‘It’s a fine illustration of the loyalty of those people to one another. I suppose there was a general agreement for the Duchess’ sake that nothing should be said about her queer guest. But even if I had dared hope to be so efficiently hushed up, I couldn’t have not fled. I wanted to forget. I wanted to leap into some void, far away from all reminders. I leapt straight from Ryder Street into Vaule-la-Rochette, a place of which I had once heard that it was the least frequented seaside-resort in Europe. I leapt leaving no address--leapt telling my landlord that if a suit-case and a portmanteau arrived for me he could regard them, them and their contents, as his own for ever. I daresay the Duchess wrote me a kind little letter, forcing herself to express a vague hope that I would come again “some other time.” I daresay Lady Rodfitten did NOT write reminding me of my promise to lunch on Friday and bring “Ariel Returns to Mayfair” with me. I left that manuscript at Ryder Street; in my bedroom grate; a shuffle of ashes. Not that I’d yet given up all thought of writing. But I certainly wasn’t going to write now about the two things I most needed to forget. I wasn’t going to write about the British aristocracy, nor about any kind of supernatural presence.... I did write a novel--my last--while I was at Vaule. “Mr. and Mrs. Robinson.” Did you ever come across a copy of it?
I nodded gravely.
‘Ah; I wasn’t sure,’ said Maltby, ‘whether it was ever published. A dreary affair, wasn’t it? I knew a great deal about suburban life. But--well, I suppose one can’t really understand what one doesn’t love, and one can’t make good fun without real understanding. Besides, what chance of virtue is there for a book written merely to distract the author’s mind? I had hoped to be healed by sea and sunshine and solitude. These things were useless. The labour of “Mr. and Mrs. Robinson” did help, a little. When I had finished it, I thought I might as well send it off to my publisher. He had given me a large sum of money, down, after “Ariel,” for my next book--so large that I was rather loth to disgorge. In the note I sent with the manuscript, I gave no address, and asked that the proofs should be read in the office. I didn’t care whether the thing were published or not. I knew it would be a dead failure if it were. What mattered one more drop in the foaming cup of my humiliation? I knew Braxton would grin and gloat. I didn’t mind even that.’
‘Oh, well,’ I said, ‘Braxton was in no mood for grinning and gloating. “The Drones” had already appeared.’
Maltby had never heard of ‘The Drones’--which I myself had remembered only in the course of his disclosures. I explained to him that it was Braxton’s second novel, and was by way of being a savage indictment of the British aristocracy; that it was written in the worst possible taste, but was so very dull that it fell utterly flat; that Braxton had forthwith taken, with all of what Maltby had called ‘the passionate force and intensity of his nature,’ to drink, and had presently gone under and not re-emerged.
Maltby gave signs of genuine, though not deep, emotion, and cited two or three of the finest passages from ‘A Faun on the Cotswolds.’ He even expressed a conviction that ‘The Drones’ must have been misjudged. He said he blamed himself more than ever for yielding to that bad impulse at that Soiree.
‘And yet,’ he mused, ‘and yet, honestly, I can’t find it in my heart to regret that I did yield. I can only wish that all had turned out as well, in the end, for Braxton as for me. I wish he could have won out, as I did, into a great and lasting felicity. For about a year after I had finished “Mr. and Mrs. Robinson” I wandered from place to place, trying to kill memory, shunning all places frequented by the English. At last I found myself in Lucca. Here, if anywhere, I thought, might a bruised and tormented spirit find gradual peace. I determined to move out of my hotel into some permanent lodging. Not for felicity, not for any complete restoration of self-respect, was I hoping; only for peace. A “mezzano” conducted me to a noble and ancient house, of which, he told me, the owner was anxious to let the first floor. It was in much disrepair, but even so seemed to me very cheap. According to the simple Luccan standard, I am rich. I took that first floor for a year, had it repaired, and engaged two servants. My “padrona” inhabited the ground floor. From time to time she allowed me to visit her there. She was the Contessa Adriano-Rizzoli, the last of her line. She is the Contessa Adriano-Rizzoli-Maltby. We have been married fifteen years.’
Maltby looked at his watch. He rose and took tenderly from the table his great bunch of roses. ‘She is a lineal descendant,’ he said, ‘of the Emperor Hadrian.’