Book 1 - Chapter 5. A Sentimental Episode

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_ BOOK ONE CHAPTER V. A SENTIMENTAL EPISODE

Kendricks was waiting below in the taxicab, leaning back in the corner with his feet upon the opposite seat, and smoking his very disreputable pipe with an air of serene content.

"Sorry to have turned you out into the street like this," Julien remarked.

"Thank you," Kendricks replied, "under the circumstances I preferred the street."

Julien hesitated for a moment and glanced at his watch.

"There is one more call that I must pay, David," he said. "You won't mind, will you? We've plenty of time."

"Mind? Of course not," Kendricks answered, stretching himself out in the cab. "Do what you please with me, only leave an hour or an hour and a half for dinner. I am the best-tempered person in the world so long as no one interferes with my regular meal hours."

"It's just a little farewell call," Julien explained, "that I want to pay. I've told the man where to go."

Kendricks nodded silently. He knew all about that little call, but if he felt any sympathy he was careful not to show it. They drew up in a few minutes before a large and solemn-looking house at the corner of Hamilton Place.

"Don't hurry," Kendricks advised, stretching himself out once more in the cab. "I'll smoke another pipe and thank heaven we are not in New York! You wait an hour there and take your choice of paying the fare or buying the taxicab!"

Julien ascended the steps and rang the bell at the door of the house. It was immediately opened by a manservant, who recognized him with a bow and a smile, for which, somehow or other, he felt thankful.

"Is Lady Anne in, Robert?" he inquired.

The man stood on one side.

"Please to walk in, Sir Julien," he invited. "Lady Anne is with some young people in the drawing-room. Will you go in there to them, or would you prefer that I announce you?"

"Is there any one in the waiting-room?" Julien asked.

"No one at present, sir."

"Let me go in there, then. I want to speak to Lady Anne alone for a moment. You might let her know that I am here."

"Certainly, sir."

Julien walked restlessly up and down the small, uncomfortable apartment, the room which he had always hated. There were illustrated papers arranged in a row upon a leather-topped table, two stiff horsehair easychairs, and various views of Clonarty, the country seat of the Duke of Clonarty, around the walls. Presently he heard the laughter in the drawing-room cease. There was a short silence, then the sound of footsteps across the hall and the abrupt opening of the door of the room in which he was waiting. Julien looked up quickly. It was, after all, what he had expected! A somewhat vivacious-looking little lady in a muslin gown and elaborate hat held out both her hands to him. In the darkened light of the room she might very well have passed for a younger and less serious edition of her own daughter.

"My dear Julien!" she exclaimed, in a tone which was manifestly sympathetic. "This is terrible news we are hearing about you. But what an odd time you have chosen to come and tell us all about it!"

"I have not come to tell you all about it, Duchess," Julien assured her. "The newspapers will tell you everything that is worth knowing. They are so much better informed."

"The newspapers sometimes exaggerate," she objected.

"In my case," he replied, "I do not think that exaggeration is possible. Everything has happened to me that could possibly happen to any one in my unfortunate position."

"You mean that these stories are all true, then?"

"Every one of them. I really don't suppose that I ought to show my face here at all. I have simply come to say good-bye. There is just a single word that I want to say to Anne."

"Tell me, Julien," she demanded, "you really did write that letter to Mrs. Carraby?"

"I did."

"And she gave it to her husband?"

"Yes!"

For once the Duchess was perfectly and delightfully natural.

"That woman," she declared, "is a detestable cat! Mind, Julien," she added, "I don't mean by that that you were not hideously and entirely to blame. I can't feel that you deserve a single grain of sympathy. All the same, a woman who can do a thing like that should not be tolerated."

Julien smiled grimly. He was perfectly well aware that at that moment Mrs. Carraby was passing from the list of the Duchess's acquaintances. It was all so inconsequent.

"Can I have that one word with Anne?" he begged.

The Duchess looked doubtful.

"Why?"

"I am going abroad to-night. I should like to say good-bye to her."

"Isn't it a little foolish?" she asked. "I don't mean your going abroad--that, I suppose, is almost necessary--but why do you want to see Anne? I can give her all the proper messages."

Julien laughed bitterly.

"There are some things," he said, "which can scarcely be altogether ignored. It may have escaped your memory that Anne was to have been my wife."

"Not at all," the Duchess replied. "The only thing I do not understand is why, as any such arrangement is of course now ridiculous, you should want to see her again. What can you possibly have to say to her?" "An affair of sentiment," he explained. "I have a fancy to say good-bye."

The Duchess shook her head.

"Those sort of things don't belong to us," she declared. "You ought to know better, my dear Julien. I can see no possible object in it. I will give her any message you like, and so far as she is concerned I can assure you that she has not the slightest ill-feeling. She is really quite angelic about it."

"Duchess," Julien said steadily, "I came here expecting that these would be your views. You are Anne's mother and of course you are in authority, but when two people of our age are engaged to marry one another, they pass just a little beyond the sphere of their parents' influence. Anne and I have been in that position. Don't think for a moment that I wish to dispute your authority when I say that I intend to see her before I leave."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Ah! my dear Julien," she murmured, "if you had only been as firm with that foolish woman. Still, if you have really made up your mind, I am sure I don't want to be disagreeable. Perhaps it would be just as well to get the thing over."

She touched the bell.

"Ask Lady Anne to step this way," she told the servant.

The man withdrew and the door was closed again. The Duchess showed no signs of being about to take her leave.

"This matter has already, I presume, been fully discussed between you and Anne?" Julien remarked. "It will not be necessary for you even to give her a parting word of advice?"

"You amusing person!" she laughed. "There are no words of advice of mine needed in a case like this. To tell you the truth, Julien, although I always liked you, as you know, I hated your engagement to Anne. You were a very charming young man to have about the house and I was always pleased to see my girls flirt with you, but as a son-in-law I ranked you from the first amongst the undesirables. Your income, so far as I know, is a little less than nothing at all, and politics, as you are discovering to-day, are a precarious form of livelihood. Anne hasn't a copper and never will have. She ought to marry a rich man, and I intend now that she shall. Here she is. Now do get this stupid affair over quickly."

The door was opened and Lady Anne came in. She was taller than her mother, of more serious aspect, and her hair was a shade darker. There was something of the same expression about the eyes. She came straight over to Julien and gave him both her hands.

"My dear Julien," she exclaimed, "this is shocking! Run away, if you please, mother. I must see Julien for a moment alone."

The Duchess left the room. They both waited until the door was closed. Then she turned and faced him.

"I suppose it's all true?" she asked.

"Every word of it, Anne," he answered. "Please don't misunderstand the reason of my coming. I am absolutely a ruined man and I absolutely deserve everything that has come to me. But there was one thing I wanted to say to you before I went."

"There was also one thing," she remarked, looking at him intently, "which I intended to ask you, provided you gave me the opportunity."

"It is about Mrs. Carraby," he said firmly.

"So was my question," she murmured.

"The friendship between Mrs. Carraby and myself," Julien continued, "has been patent to every one for a great many years. I knew her long before I did you. It began, in fact, when we were little more than children. It finished--to-day. There is only one thing I want to say to you about it, and that is this. Our friendship was of that sort which is fairly well recognized and even approved of by the world in which we live. It contained, of course, certain elements of flirtation--I am not denying that. There was never at any time, however, anything in that friendship which made it an error even of taste on my part to ask you to become my wife."

She took his face between her hands and deliberately kissed him.

"That's just what I wanted to know, Julien," she declared. "Now shake hands, be off, and do the best you can for yourself. I wish you the best of luck, the very best. That's all we can say to one another, isn't it?"

"Quite all," he admitted.

"You are a dear, good fellow," she went on, "and I have been quite fond of you, although I think that I bored you now and then. I should have made you an excellent wife, perhaps a better one than I shall the next man who comes along. Don't stay any longer, there's a dear, because although I never pretended to have much heart, this sort of thing does upset one, you know, and I want to look my best to-night. Write me sometimes, if you will. I'd love to hear that you'd found some interest in life to help you gather up the threads. And here--this is for luck."

She took a little turquoise pin from her waistband and stuck it in his black tie. Then, before he could stop her, she touched the bell with one hand and gave him the other.

"Please kiss my fingers, Julien, and tell me I've behaved nicely."

He looked steadily into her eyes and then away out of the window, across the square. It was such a natural ending, this. It was foolish that his heart should shake, even for a second. And yet there had been one occasion--at Clonarty--when she had lain very close to him in his arms, and the moonlight had been falling through the pine trees in little dappled places around them, and the wind had been making faint music among the swinging boughs--for these few moments, at any rate, the other things had shone in her face. Were they illusions really, those moments of agitation, he wondered--simply one long, sensuous period passing like breath from a looking-glass and leaving nothing behind? He looked into her face. There was no sign there. Then he dropped the fingers which he had been holding. Women were wonderful!

"Do write," she begged, as she walked into the hall with him. "Dear me, what a strange-looking person you have with you in the taxicab!"

"He is a friend," Julien said quietly, "a journalist. I might say the same of the young man who is watching us from the drawing-room, Anne! Who is he?"

She made a little face at him and whispered in his ear.

"Semitic, as you see, and positively appalling. He is entirely mother's choice. He arrived ten minutes after the evening papers were out, but somehow or other I don't fancy that we shall make anything of him. It's young Harbord, you know."

Julien made his effort. He touched her fingers once more in conventional fashion. He leaned towards her earnestly.

"My dear Anne," he said, "that young man has an income of at least a hundred thousand a year. Have you ever considered what a wonderful thing it is to possess an income like that? You could surround yourself with it like a halo. You could eat it, wear it, and breathe it every second of your life. You could even use it as a means of escaping as often as possible from the somewhat inevitable but highly objectionable adjunct who seems now to be peering at us through the door. Be a wise girl, Anne. An income like that doesn't depend upon discretions or indiscretions. Besides, as a matter of fact, I really do not think that that young man knows what it is to be indiscreet. Remember, I am quite serious. A hundred thousand a year should lift any man beyond the pale of criticism."

"Yes!" the girl replied, looking at him as he walked down the steps. "I shall remember. Good-bye!"

"We are getting on," Julien declared lightly, as he took his place in the taxicab. "Really, it is astonishing how much a man can get through in a day if he sets his mind to it. Is there any place where we could get a drink, do you think, Kendricks? I have just passed through a trying and affecting interview. I have said farewell to the lady who was to have been my wife. That sort of thing upsets one."

"You are behaving, my dear Julien," Kendricks admitted, "like a man of sense. In a moment or two we shall pass Very's, on our way to the restaurant where I am going to entertain you at dinner. It will probably be such a dinner as you have never eaten before in your life! You will not need an _aperitif_. I am not sure, indeed, that it is not tempting providence and inviting indigestion to offer you a mixed vermouth here. However, come along. One experience more or less in such a day will not disturb you."

They entered the cafe and sat down at a small, marble-topped table. Julien lit a cigarette and Kendricks affected not to notice that the hand which held the match was shaking. A crowd of people, mostly foreigners, were sitting about the place. Julien, as he sipped his vermouth, noticed a familiar face nearly opposite him--a young, somewhat sandy-complexioned man, quietly dressed, insignificant, and yet with some sort of personality.

"I wonder who that fellow is?" he remarked. "I seem to know his face."

Kendricks looked incuriously across the room.

"One knows every one by sight in London," he said. "The fellow is probably a clerk in some office where you have been, or a salesman behind the counter at one of the shops you patronize. It's odd sometimes how a face will pursue you like that. That's a pretty little girl with whom he's shaking hands."

Julien watched the two idly for a moment. The man had risen to greet his newly-arrived companion, who was chattering to him in fluent French. All the time Julien was aware that now and then the former's eyes strayed over towards him. It was odd that, notwithstanding his somewhat disturbed state of mind, he was conscious of a distinct curiosity as to this young man's identity.

"Come along," Kendricks suggested. "We shan't get a table at all at the place where I am going to take you to dine, unless we are punctual."

They finished their vermouth and left the cafe. Kendricks knocked out the ashes from his pipe and leaned a little forward in the taxicab.

"We go now," he continued, "into a foreign land--foreign, at least, to you, my young Exquisite--the land of journalists, of foreigners, of hairdressers and anarchists, and cutthroats of every description. Nevertheless, we shall dine well, and if you will only drink enough of the chianti which I shall order, I can promise you a nap on your way to Dover. You look as though you could do with it."

Julien suddenly remembered that his eyes were hot, and almost simultaneously he felt the weight that was dragging down his heart. He laughed desperately.

"I'll eat your dinner, David," he promised, "and I'll do justice to your chianti. From what you tell me about our expedition, I should imagine that we are going into the land to which I shall soon belong."

"It's a wonderful country," Kendricks muttered, looking out of the window. "It may not be flowing exactly with milk and honey, but its sinews are supple and its blood is red. For absolute vitality, I'd back the Cafe l'Athenee against the Carlton any day. Here we are." _

Read next: Book 1: Chapter 6. At The Cafe L'athenee

Read previous: Book 1: Chapter 4. A Bunch Of Violets

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