Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

‘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.’

‘SAVONAROLA’ BROWN

I like to remember that I was the first to call him so, for, though he always deprecated the nickname, in his heart he was pleased by it, I know, and encouraged to go on.

Quite apart from its significance, he had reason to welcome it. He had been unfortunate at the font. His parents, at the time of his birth, lived in Ladbroke Crescent, XV. They must have been an extraordinarily unimaginative couple, for they could think of no better name for their child than Ladbroke. This was all very well for him till he went to school. But you can fancy the indignation and delight of us boys at finding among us a newcomer who, on his own confession, had been named after a Crescent. I don’t know how it is nowadays, but thirty-five years ago, certainly, schoolboys regarded the possession of ANY Christian name as rather unmanly. As we all had these encumbrances, we had to wreak our scorn on any one who was cumbered in a queer fashion. I myself, bearer of a Christian name adjudged eccentric though brief, had had much to put up with in my first term. Brown’s arrival, therefore, at the beginning of my second term, was a good thing for me, and I am afraid I was very prominent among his persecutors. Trafalgar Brown, Tottenham Court Brown, Bond Brown--what names did we little brutes NOT cull for him from the London Directory? Except how miserable we made his life, I do not remember much about him as he was at that time, and the only important part of the little else that I do recall is that already he showed a strong sense for literature. For the majority of us Carthusians, literature was bounded on the north by Whyte Melville, on the south by Hawley Smart, on the east by the former, and on the west by the latter. Little Brown used to read Harrison Ainsworth, Wilkie Collins, and other writers whom we, had we assayed them, would have dismissed as ‘deep.’ It has been said by Mr. Arthur Symons that ‘all art is a mode of escape.’ The art of letters did not, however, enable Brown to escape so far from us as he would have wished. In my third term he did not reappear among us. His parents had in some sort atoned. Unimaginative though they were, it seems they could understand a tale of woe laid before them circumstantially, and had engaged a private tutor for their boy. Fifteen years elapsed before I saw him again.

This was at the second night of some play. I was dramatic critic for the Saturday Review, and, weary of meeting the same lot of people over and over again at first nights, had recently sent a circular to the managers asking that I might have seats for second nights instead. I found that there existed as distinct and invariable a lot of second-nighters as of first-nighters. The second-nighters were less ‘showy’; but then, they came rather to see than to be seen, and there was an air, that I liked, of earnestness and hopefulness about them. I used to write a great deal about the future of the British drama, and they, for their part, used to think and talk a great deal about it. People who care about books and pictures find much to interest and please them in the present. It is only the students of the theatre who always fall back, or rather forward, on the future. Though second-nighters do come to see, they remain rather to hope and pray. I should have known anywhere, by the visionary look in his eyes, that Brown was a confirmed second-nighter.

What surprises me is that I knew he was Brown. It is true that he had not grown much in those fifteen years: his brow was still disproportionate to his body, and he looked young to have become ‘confirmed’ in any habit. But it is also true that not once in the past ten years, at any rate, had he flitted through my mind and poised on my conscience.

I hope that I and those other boys had long ago ceased from recurring to him in nightmares. Cordial though the hand was that I offered him, and highly civilised my whole demeanour, he seemed afraid that at any moment I might begin to dance around him, shooting out my lips at him and calling him Seven-Sisters Brown or something of that kind. It was only after constant meetings at second nights, and innumerable entr’acte talks about the future of the drama, that he began to trust me. In course of time we formed the habit of walking home together as far as Cumberland Place, at which point our ways diverged. I gathered that he was still living with his parents, but he did not tell me where, for they had not, as I learned by reference to the Red Book, moved from Ladbroke Crescent.

I found his company restful rather than inspiring. His days were spent in clerkship at one of the smaller Government Offices, his evenings--except when there was a second night--in reading and writing. He did not seem to know much, or to wish to know more, about life. Books and plays, first editions and second nights, were what he cared for. On matters of religion and ethics he was as little keen as he seemed to be on human character in the raw; so that (though I had already suspected him of writing, or meaning to write, a play) my eyebrows did rise when he told me he meant to write a play about Savonarola.

He made me understand, however, that it was rather the name than the man that had first attracted him. He said that the name was in itself a great incentive to blank-verse. He uttered it to me slowly, in a voice so much deeper than his usual voice, that I nearly laughed. For the actual bearer of the name he had no hero-worship, and said it was by a mere accident that he had chosen him as central figure. He had thought of writing a tragedy about Sardanapalus; but the volume of the “Encyclopedia Britannica” in which he was going to look up the main facts about Sardanapalus happened to open at Savonarola. Hence a sudden and complete peripety in the student’s mind. He told me he had read the Encyclopedia’s article carefully, and had dipped into one or two of the books there mentioned as authorities. He seemed almost to wish he hadn’t. ‘Facts get in one’s way so,’ he complained. ‘History is one thing, drama is another. Aristotle said drama was more philosophic than history because it showed us what men WOULD do, not just what they DID. I think that’s so true, don’t you? I want to show what Savonarola WOULD have done if--’ He paused.

‘If what?’

‘Well, that’s just the point. I haven’t settled that yet. When I’ve thought of a plot, I shall go straight ahead.’

I said I supposed he intended his tragedy rather for the study than for the stage. This seemed to hurt him. I told him that what I meant was that managers always shied at anything without ‘a strong feminine interest.’ This seemed to worry him. I advised him not to think about managers. He promised that he would think only about Savonarola.

I know now that this promise was not exactly kept by him; and he may have felt slightly awkward when, some weeks later, he told me he had begun the play. ‘I’ve hit on an initial idea,’ he said, ‘and that’s enough to start with. I gave up my notion of inventing a plot in advance. I thought it would be a mistake. I don’t want puppets on wires. I want Savonarola to work out his destiny in his own way. Now that I have the initial idea, what I’ve got to do is to make Savonarola LIVE. I hope I shall be able to do this. Once he’s alive, I shan’t interfere with him. I shall just watch him. Won’t it be interesting? He isn’t alive yet. But there’s plenty of time. You see, he doesn’t come on at the rise of the curtain. A Friar and a Sacristan come on and talk about him. By the time they’ve finished, perhaps he’ll be alive. But they won’t have finished yet. Not that they’re going to say very much. But I write slowly.’

I remember the mild thrill I had when, one evening, he took me aside and said in an undertone, ‘Savonarola has come on. Alive!’ For me the MS. hereinafter printed has an interest that for you it cannot have, so a-bristle am I with memories of the meetings I had with its author throughout the nine years he took over it. He never saw me without reporting progress, or lack of progress. Just what was going on, or standing still, he did not divulge. After the entry of Savonarola, he never told me what characters were appearing. ‘All sorts of people appear,’ he would say rather helplessly. ‘They insist. I can’t prevent them.’ I used to say it must be great fun to be a creative artist; but at this he always shook his head: ‘I don’t create. THEY do. Savonarola especially, of course. I just look on and record. I never know what’s going to happen next.’ He had the advantage of me in knowing at any rate what had happened last. But whenever I pled for a glimpse he would again shake his head:

‘The thing MUST be judged as a whole. Wait till I’ve come to the end of the Fifth Act.’

So impatient did I become that, as the years went by, I used rather to resent his presence at second nights. I felt he ought to be at his desk. His, I used to tell him, was the only drama whose future ought to concern him now. And in point of fact he had, I think, lost the true spirit of the second-nighter, and came rather to be seen than to see. He liked the knowledge that here and there in the auditorium, when he entered it, some one would be saying ‘Who is that?’ and receiving the answer ‘Oh, don’t you know? That’s “Savonarola” Brown.’ This sort of thing, however, did not make him cease to be the modest, unaffected fellow I had known. He always listened to the advice I used to offer him, though inwardly he must have chafed at it. Myself a fidgety and uninspired person, unable to begin a piece of writing before I know just how it shall end, I had always been afraid that sooner or later Brown would take some turning that led nowhither--would lose himself and come to grief. This fear crept into my gladness when, one evening in the spring of 1909, he told me he had finished the Fourth Act. Would he win out safely through the Fifth?

He himself was looking rather glum; and, as we walked away from the theatre, I said to him, ‘I suppose you feel rather like Thackeray when he’d “killed the Colonel”: you’ve got to kill the Monk.’

‘Not quite that,’ he answered. ‘But of course he’ll die very soon now. A couple of years or so. And it does seem rather sad. It’s not merely that he’s so full of life. He has been becoming much more HUMAN lately. At first I only respected him. Now I have a real affection for him.’

This was an interesting glimpse at last, but I turned from it to my besetting fear.

‘Haven’t you,’ I asked, ‘any notion of HOW he is to die?’

Brown shook his head.

‘But in a tragedy,’ I insisted, ‘the catastrophe MUST be led up to, step by step. My dear Brown, the end of the hero MUST be logical and rational.’

‘I don’t see that,’ he said, as we crossed Piccadilly Circus. ‘In actual life it isn’t so. What is there to prevent a motor-omnibus from knocking me over and killing me at this moment?’

At that moment, by what has always seemed to me the strangest of coincidences, and just the sort of thing that playwrights ought to avoid, a motor-omnibus knocked Brown over and killed him.

He had, as I afterwards learned, made a will in which he appointed me his literary executor. Thus passed into my hands the unfinished play by whose name he had become known to so many people.

I hate to say that I was disappointed in it, but I had better confess quite frankly that, on the whole, I was. Had Brown written it quickly and read it to me soon after our first talk about it, it might in some ways have exceeded my hopes. But he had become for me, by reason of that quiet and unhasting devotion to his work while the years came and went, a sort of hero; and the very mystery involving just what he was about had addicted me to those ideas of magnificence which the unknown is said always to foster.

Even so, however, I am not blind to the great merits of the play as it stands. It is well that the writer of poetic drama should be a dramatist and a poet. Here is a play that abounds in striking situations, and I have searched it vainly for one line that does not scan. What I nowhere feel is that I have not elsewhere been thrilled or lulled by the same kind of thing. I do not go so far as to say that Brown inherited his parents’ deplorable lack of imagination. But I do wish he had been less sensitive than he was to impressions, or else had seen and read fewer poetic dramas ancient and modern. Remembering that visionary look in his eyes, remembering that he was as displeased as I by the work of all living playwrights, and as dissatisfied with the great efforts of the Elizabethans, I wonder that he was not more immune from influences.