Chapter VII: The Cavalier of the Streets

I

It would not have occurred to you that Mrs. Avalon was a discontented woman. It would not even have occurred to you that she could be, for what had she not? She was, of course, the wife of John Avalon, K.C. But she was more than that, she was Fay Avalon. Now of the lovely, the gracious Fay Avalon, what shall be said that has not already been said? She was a figure of the world, and in it most centrally situated. She had not pushed, but she was _there_. More, she was a figure of legend, remote and courteous. Every one knew about her, but of nothing against her, and this was so because she was a lady who never by any means sought any publicity but that which the love and respect of her wide acquaintance spread for her. She was, in fact, a darling. It was the fashion to speak well of Fay Avalon, and it is only shallow people who say that all fashions are shallow because they change. There is nothing in the world that does not change, and if fashions change oftener than most that is because--well, it is difficult to say exactly why that is, and anyway that is not the place for it.

Now why are people like sheep? But perhaps it would be better to ask: “Why, in nearly all novels and conversations, is there one law for the rich and another for the poor?” For in nearly all novels and conversations there is a sort of asinine implication that among the rich, the social, there is no real friendship, but that real friendship exists only among the poor. For years and years and years England has been living under a tyranny, a silly tyranny: it is called the middle-class, and it is belauded by all because nearly all belong to it. Now if a writer writes of the middle-class he is said to have a sense of the Reality of Life, but if he writes of the poor wretches who continue to eke out a miserable existence on their capital in Mayfair, it is said of him that he is writing of people who do not matter, people who are not worth writing about, people among whom none of the real emotions exist, and so on. The patricians never protest, for a gentleman is one who can take abuse properly, the same, of course, applying to a lady. But the others, the Backbone of England! Oh, what a Backbone that is, and how swiftly it becomes a jawbone when it is scratched by a well-aimed bit of contumely! But what does all that matter, particularly when we were talking of Fay Avalon, and how charming she was. She had many real friends, and these confided much in her, but in them she did not confide. Fay Avalon was not capable of telling even the least of her troubles to any one, for she was shy. Beneath her polish, her wit, her grave courtesy--a rare enchantment, that--her supreme ability as a hostess at whose table enemies were notably changed to friends, she was as shy as a girl. Never, never, in all her brilliant life, and it really was a very brilliant life, had she been able to exclude the idea that she might very easily bore people, that, in fact, she was not nearly so clever and amusing as other people. That is why she never confided: she only seemed to....

One of the many secrets that Fay Avalon hid within herself was that she was romantic, deeply. She had always been romantic. John Avalon, K.C., had never been romantic, and never knew anything of his wife’s trouble. He loved his wife jealously, but being a great K.C. is, of course, a very tiring way of life, and so he spent most of his time with her in sleeping.

Romance came into the life of Fay Avalon at a time when she would sometimes say: “I am older than most women.” She was thirty-eight years old, and so she was sorry for herself, and then romance came. It was Prince Nicholas Pavlovitch Shuvarov who brought it. He was, of course, a refugee from Bolshevy, and it was said that before the Revolution his people had owned half of Petrograd, as was only natural, for there are countless Russians of the old order in London and Paris whose people once owned halves of Petrograd, not to speak of the Grand Dukes who made such a mess of all of it. But Prince N. P. Shuvarov was charming, and he was an artist. You knew that because people went about saying he was charming and an artist. You were asked to respect him because he earned his living, and of course you did what you were asked, although you were not aware of any particular esteem instantly alight in the eyes of those to whom you volunteered the information that you worked in the City. But life is different for Russians, they look so tragic, even when drunk, and so one went on respecting old Shuvarov for earning his living. He did this amazing feat by going about doing ghastly drawings of his friends Lady This and Lady That, which he somehow sold to the illustrated journals of the week, where they appeared in all sorts of colours under headings like “The Third of Five Lovely Sisters” or “Popular Daughter of a Great American,” and boldly signed “Shuvarov.”

He was everywhere, in a quiet and pleasant way. Sometimes he was at Fay Avalon’s, but only sometimes at Fay Avalon’s. Superior people who had read Dostoeffsky called him Nicholas Pavlovitch, which is of course the proper way to address a Russian gentleman; while others just called him Shove-off, though not as though they meant it, for every one liked him. Women found him attractive. These Russians, they said, are so Sombre. Mrs. Mountjenkins said he had Magnetism. “One can feel it,” she said, “when he comes into a room.” Lady Carnal said he was charming and so _sound_.

In Prince Nicholas Pavlovitch Shuvarov, then, Mrs. Avalon found romance. No breath of scandal had even been breathed against her, and no such breath was breathed now. Her purity and her lovely aloofness were landmarks of London society in the second decade of this century. Colonel Repington, you will remember, remarked them in particular. During the period of the war alone he sat beside her thirty-eight times for luncheon, twenty-eight times for dinner, not to speak of the innumerable times when he said “Good-evening” to her in such a way that she not only heard him but answered him. He reports a conversation in which Fay Avalon was distinctly heard to say to the Home Secretary that she detested all secret vices like drugs and love, especially middle-aged love.

“One should live in public,” said Mrs. Avalon. “It is the private life that has ruined so many great lives and rotted so many good brains.”

“Quite,” said the Home Secretary. “Quite.” But in a few days he had to resign owing to liver trouble--so it was said--and Mrs. Avalon fell in love with Prince N. P. Shuvarov. Her one lapse, you understand. All her life she had longed for this one thing, romance; and at last it had come, in the sombre eyes of a stranger.

Mrs. Avalon did not know much about that Kind of Thing--the “private life”--but she knew a good deal about her friends, and that was a good deal more than she intended they should know about her. She organised her life to suit her love. It sounds beastly, that, but then you do not know Fay Avalon and I do, and that is why I know that nothing she did could ever be so beastly as if any one else did it, for she was a darling. As for Prince Shuvarov, he was Russian all the way and could organise nothing. She adored that....

II

Never, never, did they go anywhere, together: neither to the play, nor to a restaurant, nor to a ball; and only very seldom was he at her house, a guest among many. But every afternoon Fay Avalon would steal to her lover’s studio in a quiet street in Hampstead. Not, of course, in her car, but in a taxi.

And what a relief it was, to enter the dim, bare silence of that studio! The clatter of the voices of the luncheon-party she had just left faded instantly from her mind, a lovely mist came in between the unquiet delight of her heart and the usual labours of her life. She rested on a divan in a corner of that secret studio, while Shuvarov would pace about in his feverish way. It was a very bare studio, but it would not have remained so bare if she had had her way. Though, indeed, Fay Avalon, she who had so despised “the private life,” would have been shocked, she simply could not have helped being shocked, if he had not impatiently dismissed her offer to make of the studio a pavilion worthy of Babylonian lovers. “I make just enough money not to starve,” said Shuvarov. “And that is enough for any man.”

They were, of course, quite often unhappy, for Russians are like that. There were scenes, introspective and bitter, there were accusations, quarrels, reconciliations. It was some time before Mrs. Avalon realised that it is in the Slav Temperament to make violent scenes about nothing and then to yield adorably to passionate reconciliations. It was rather wearing for the nerves, she protested. “You have lived smoothly for too long,” he retorted in a harsh moment. “You have known no wretchedness, Fay, because you have _felt_ nothing! God, you Englishwomen! In Russia our women _live_, they _feel_....”

But Fay Avalon only sighed at that, certain that no woman anywhere could feel so much as she ... and she was a little afraid for herself, the way this thing she had not known before, this thing called love, had taken hold of her.

One day their privacy suffered a shock. Mrs. Avalon had just left the studio, in the evening, and had turned the corner into a more frequented street in search for a taxi, when a tall, shabby young man confronted her. He stood before her so that she could not pass, and his face mocked her, a lean face made very sinister by his nose, perhaps a fine nose once but now broken so that it inclined noticeably to one side. He examined her with a sneer in his eyes. She did not at first know it for a sneer, for no man had ever sneered at Fay Avalon before. He swept off his hat, a sardonic gesture, and he replaced it. It was a soft, dirty, dilapidated hat of the rakish sort, such as has been worn by every pirate that has ever been heard of.

“Good-evening, Mrs. Avalon,” said the shabby young man.

“I am afraid ...” doubtfully began Fay Avalon.

“Not at all!” said the shabby young man. He smiled graciously.

“It is my misfortune,” he said, “that we have not been introduced. I have not been going about very much in society lately, because of one thing and another. And I called you by your name merely to show you that I know who you are. I also know where you have been. I can’t, of course, say that I know exactly what you have been doing, but I can’t help thinking that your husband would have no doubt about it. Husbands are like that, madam. Juries are also like that. I wonder, Mrs. Avalon, if you will think me very boorish if I, well, insist on your lending me fifty pounds?”

The young man was very shabbily dressed, but he was so very unpleasant, so entirely and symmetrically unpleasant, that, she thought, he must once have been a gentleman. She stared at him, and she shivered a little. Perhaps, she thought, this is the first man I have ever met who has simply no desire to please me. Perhaps most men are only possible because they desire to please women. This one is unaffectedly foul....

“You are blackmailing me, then?” she asked him: and her voice did not tremble more than ever so little.

“Yes,” said the shabby young man. “And I am doing it as unpleasantly as I know how. I am sure, Mrs. Avalon, that you had rather I was unpleasant than that I made love, like the greasy blackmailers one meets in books. And, anyhow, I could not possibly compete with Prince Nicholas Pavlovitch Shuvarov. These foreigners, I am told, have the technique....”

She stared at him with unbelieving eyes. Could there be men such as this, so foul! To what awful depths of bitterness must this revolting man have sunk, that he could so wantonly and cruelly insult a stranger!

“I realise you dislike me very much,” said the young man with the broken nose. “But, even so, I should prefer that that matter of the fifty pounds should engage your attention more or less immediately.”

Mrs. Avalon shivered a little.

“Don’t, please, speak any more!” she breathed at last. “You seem to know so much that I am sure you know the address of my house. The telephone-book will, however, provide you with any details that may have escaped your attention. If you will call at noon to-morrow you will be given an envelope at the door. May I pass now, please?”

“Why, of course!” said he, and stood aside.

But somehow she did not pass immediately. She stared into his face with very wide, childish eyes, and there was a queer sort of hurt smile crucified in their depths.

“I have never been spoken to like this before,” she said. “Who are you?”

“I am the cavalier of the streets, madam,” said the tall shabby man with the broken nose. She stared at him very thoughtfully.

“And is that a good thing to be?”

The cavalier of the streets smiled curiously.

“I had thought, Mrs. Avalon, that it was I who was detaining you....”

“You see,” said Mrs. Avalon gently, “you are the vilest man I have ever met. You are probably the vilest man in the world, and so I am curious. You will have your fifty pounds. Or would you not prefer a hundred?”

But the ice of Fay Avalon did not freeze the cavalier of the streets.

“I do not accept presents from ladies,” he said. “Fifty is business, but the extra fifty is an insult to a gentleman.” He smiled right into her face. “You may pass, Mrs. Avalon.”

“You are a gentleman? You were, perhaps, you mean?”

“A gentleman,” said the shabby young man, “is a man who is never _unintentionally_ rude to any one. I am a gentleman.”

He stood aside, and swept off his dilapidated hat. She took one step, two, three....

“I do hope,” she murmured swiftly, “that I will never see you again.”

The lean, weathered face with the fantastic nose mocked her. Fay Avalon had never been mocked before.

“Didn’t I tell you,” he said, “that I was the cavalier of the streets? I am alone, the solitary supporter of chivalry and all manner of outdoor manliness. Thus, it will be very difficult to resist the pleasure of seeing you again, Mrs. Avalon, for you are, without a doubt, a darling. But I will try to resist it, really I will....”

“Please,” said Mrs. Avalon, and went swiftly.

III

The next afternoon Mrs. Avalon had promised to appear at a charity _matinée_ in a playful duologue between Cleopatra and a hearty gentleman alleged to be Mark Antony’s valet; and as she had never gone to the trouble of acquiring a reputation as unreliable--in fact, Fay Avalon was born with “careless habits of accuracy”--and though she was feeling less like Cleopatra than she had ever felt in her life, it was only after she had done her duty by the charity _matinée_ that she set out for the quiet street in Hampstead.

She gave Nicholas Pavlovitch only the bald outline of the beastly happening. Blackmailer, money. He blushed furiously. Often she had seen him blush, but never as now. He was like a child who had just been smacked and knows he has not deserved it. He couldn’t, he said, bear the indecency, the shame, of it ... that, through loving him, she should have to endure this awful thing. There was only one thing to do. She must “cut him out,” that’s all! And how funnily tragic that slang sounded in his twisted Russian pronunciation.

She laughed at that. Not much, but just enough. “We do not,” she said, “take our tragedies so tragically. But scratch a Russian and you find a baby....” She kissed him.

“It is easier than that,” she explained. “You must move, dear. For weeks you have been complaining of the lighting in this studio--and now you have every excuse for taking steps about leaving it. Long steps are preferable, Nicholas. From Hampstead to Chelsea, in fact....”

Shove-off took steps at once, and these lead him to a little studio in a little street off the King’s Road, Chelsea. It was a little street like another, with a pillar-box at one end and the noise of busses at the other. Near the pillar-box was a lamp-post. And one autumn evening, as Mrs. Avalon walked from her lover’s studio into Cheyne Walk, she saw a man leaning against the lamp-post, and under a soft dilapidated hat she saw the shape of a lean face and a broken nose. He was motionless, indifferent, and he was not looking at her but at the wind that blew the leaves about the little street. Her heart jumped, and then was as still as a cut flower.

“So!” she whispered bitterly. “Blackmailers are like history, then!”

The vile person made the courteous gesture.

“Mr. Beerbohm has it,” the vile person said gravely, “that it is not history that repeats itself but historians who repeat one another. A charming writer, don’t you think?”

“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Avalon very miserably, “I thought you were vile! But I am disappointed in you. I actually thought you would leave me alone. You are even viler than I thought, you who call yourself the cavalier of the streets!”

“Perhaps,” murmured the shabby young man. “Perhaps. It seems always to have been my fate to find out the indecencies of decent people, and so, of course, decent people do not take a very liberal view of me. You find me this evening, Mrs. Avalon, in a conversational vein.”

There was a ghastly sort of subtlety in his neglect to mention why he was there, a thin, rakish hawk by the lamp-post. Impotent, she loathed him. And she passed him resolutely, with a very proud face, one step, two, three.... And then his voice fell harshly on her back:

“You are the kind of woman men dream about in lonely moments. My life is made of lonely moments, and I think this is the loneliest of all. Go away quickly, Fay Avalon!”

Bewilderment wheeled her round.

“_What_ did you say?” she cried.

But he stood as when she had first seen him, the silhouette of a hawk with a broken nose, and he stared not at her but at the wind that blew the leaves about the little street.

“It is not worth repeating,” he said sharply into the middle air. “But to what I said, I added, ‘Go very quickly,’ and I meant it--for your sake. This is a lonely place, Mrs. Avalon, and the cavalier of the streets is as nearly an outlaw as any one outside a cinema. It is a long time since I kissed a lady, and the only thing that restrains me from doing it now is the fact that I have never in my life kissed any one who did not wish to be kissed by me. So you had better go quickly, Fay Avalon.”

She went, as swiftly as a shadow.

IV

Mrs. Avalon, after her first horrid experience, had had the forethought to keep in her jewel-safe a roll of Bank of England notes. That evening, having sent her maid from the room, she counted out five notes from the roll. She smiled wryly.... “And so,” she thought, “this is hell. And Fay Avalon is well in it, she is in a very ghastly hell.” Very slowly, very absently, she recounted the five ten-pound notes. They were clean and crisp and delicious, marvellously above the funny stuff that passes for money in France and America. They were symbols of a spacious England, of splendid adventures and gallant merchantmen, they were symbols of all the luxuries of _race_ and manners, dead now except in the hearts of a few shy people. A Bank of England note is the cleanest expression money has ever acquired, it is more than money, it decorates money. Only one of the five notes that passed through Mrs. Avalon’s fingers bore even a sign that other human hands had ever touched it, and that was but a little splash as of red ink on its back.

She put them in an envelope, wrote “To C. O. S.” across it, and privily instructed the butler that he give it into the hands of the person who had already called once before and who _might_ call again towards noon the following morning.

“The gentleman called, madam,” said Smith the next morning, when she came in from a walk for luncheon.

“The gentleman, Smith?”

“He had that manner, madam.”

“There will be ten for luncheon, not eight, Smith.”

“Major Cypress and Mr. Trevor rang up to inquire if you expected them to luncheon, madam. They seemed, I think, disappointed that you did not.”

“They rang up together?”

“Such was my impression, madam. They said that there must be some mistake about your not expecting them to luncheon as they had not been asked to luncheon anywhere else. On asking my opinion as to whether, if they called at about half-past one, you would or would not ask them to stay, I ventured to say, madam, that it was very probable. I gather that that will make twelve for luncheon, madam.”

Mrs. Avalon smiled. “Very good, Smith.”

“The gentleman who called left this letter, madam.”

“Put it down over there. That will do, Smith, thank you.”

When she was alone she gingerly touched the letter. It was not addressed. The expression on her face was as though she was breathing the air of a pest-house.

“I see,” said the note, “that you think me even viler than I am. That is what I intended. By giving me money when I did not ask for it, you have made the profession of blackmailer an impossible one for a man of sensibility. Good-bye.”

V

She did not tell Nicholas Pavlovitch of this second encounter. It would, she thought, be only disturbing him for nothing, for she was quite convinced that she had now seen the last of the cavalier of the streets. She couldn’t help having a little private conceit about it. After all, not every woman would have managed that foul man so--certainly not those notoriously managing women who know how to deal with men. “Oh, dear!” she thought, “I am clever, I really am!” Even this man, so brutally undesirous to please, had been charmed back into the loathsome shades whence he had so horridly come--so impressed had he been by her original way of being blackmailed that he had been appalled into respectful invisibility. She had, after all, allowed herself to be blackmailed charmingly, she had been as charming as any woman being blackmailed could possibly be.

It was because of such thoughts that, eleven evenings later, she was so particularly angry: for the lamp-light near the pillar-box fell on the figure of the cavalier of the streets, the careless, rakish figure at his disgusting post. By the beating of her heart, she knew him yards and yards away. Still she stood for one long moment, to quiet her heart, and then, intolerantly, she swept on. She was humiliated in a most private conceit. She was angrier than she had ever been in her life.

Swiftly she pressed on, to pass him with inexpressible contempt; but the pavement was narrow, and wide the sweep of the bad man’s hat.

“Forgive me,” said he. “I had not intended to worry you again, but----”

“You do not _worry_ me,” said a lady to an insect.

“In that case,” said the cavalier of the streets, “I may spare you my apologies, which, I assure you, are quite dangerously insincere. I had intended not to sin against you again. But, this very afternoon, something has happened, something really rather awkward. I do not often lose money at poker, Mrs. Avalon--in fact, I make a point of not losing money at poker, in so far, of course, as a man of honour may make a point about a hazard. But, whether it was the memory of your beauty, for I may not ever forget it, that came between me and my skill, or whether--Oh, what does it matter why it was, since the fact remains that I have lost money, and must pay what I owe or forfeit my honour....”

“Your _honour_!” she gasped. “Oh, _commedia, commedia_!”

“I could wish I was as privileged as you to take a comical view of it. It is only a small debt, however. A matter of twenty pounds. I have still ten left of the fifty you so kindly lent to me the other day--I wonder, Mrs. Avalon, I wonder if you could by any chance help me with the rest? I should be so grateful.”

So she had been right about him, after all! He would not have come again, in the ordinary way. She looked into his eyes, and they were as the eyes of other men. The cavalier of the streets was without his sneer.

“Yes,” she said gravely. “A debt of honour--surely you must pay a debt of honour, O cavalier of the streets! It is very commendable in you to want to.”

“It is merely good sense, madam. Like all matters of honour. If one does not pay, one does not get paid.”

Her fingers were playing within her bag. They ceased.

“I’m so afraid,” she murmured, “that I have only a few shillings....”

“Pity!” whispered the shabby young man; and he smiled curiously, as might a man whose horse has been beaten by a short head.

“I will go home,” said Fay Avalon, “and get you the money.”

“You will do nothing of the sort, Mrs. Avalon. Ridiculous to put you to that trouble for a mere ten pounds. Besides, it might cause comment if I showed myself at your door again.”

“My butler thought you charming,” she told him gravely.

“Therein he discerned your influence over me, Mrs. Avalon. No, I have a better idea! Go back to Prince Shuvarov and ask him to----”

“But he is so poor!”

“Heavens, those insufferable drawings of his must sometimes fetch some money! Try, please. It is only fair, after all, that he should contribute a little towards my support----”

“Your debt of honour, surely!”

“I am rebuked. A man’s honour would be very adequately preserved by you, Mrs. Avalon. But please do as I suggest. I will abide by the weight of Shuvarov’s pocket.”

With a quick gesture, she left him. She found Shuvarov preparing to shave, for when he was dining out he always shaved twice, like all proper men. She did not give him time to voice his surprise at her re-entrance.

“That wretch is here again,” she explained swiftly. “I know you are poor, dear, but have you just a few pounds you could lend me? Ten, for instance?”

Shuvarov began furiously, his cheeks mantling. “That man....” He waved his shaving-brush.

“Never mind that now, dear. Have you or haven’t you the money? Please, Nicholas?” She was always gentle with him. He was such a child.

Nicholas Pavlovitch shrugged his shoulders, and banged down the shaving-brush.

“You are encouraging him,” he said fatalistically. “Lucky I sold a drawing for just that amount to-day. Lucky for that man, I mean.” He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and gave her a banknote.

“Bless you, Nicholas!” she cried softly, and was going, when the light fell on the banknote in her hand so that there was visible on it a little splash as of red ink....

Slowly, she looked up at Prince Nicholas Pavlovitch Shuvarov. Her lips did not move, but he understood, and his thin, handsome face went as white as a soiled handkerchief.

The cavalier of the streets saw her face as she approached. She flung the note at him, so that it fell from his jacket to his feet. She passed him. But fingers swiftly clutched her arm, so that it hurt.

“That,” he said harshly, “will teach a lovely lady to love scum. I intended that it should. He and I arranged the _coup_, ages ago. But when I saw you the first time, in Hampstead, I sickened. That is why I was so beastly, that you should hate me as much as I hated myself. _Le coup est nul_, I told Shuvarov after that. Since then your face has haunted me. So I did this--to cure you of your silly infatuation for a man who would eat into your life like a foul little worm into a lovely fruit. God, how you could ever have liked that lousy, half-baked, professional Russian! I saw him to-day, and saw that he still had the note with the red mark on it--this!” And he ground his heel on the note on the pavement. Tighter he held her arm, and he scowled into her face. She thought of the wet-white she would have to use on her arm to hide the bruises of his fingers.

“You’re hurting me!” she cried.

“I know. I have sinned against you,” he said, “but you have done worse. You have sinned against yourself. Now go, and sin no more. And you’d better go damn quick else you’ll be very late for dinner and the old K.C. will get cross.”

“_You_ to talk of sin!” she cried, and laughed.

“Naturally, Fay Avalon. For only Satan can rebuke sin with authority.”

“Oh, pouf!” she laughed. “You are sentimental then!”

“Hell!” snapped the cavalier of the streets. “I am in love!” And as he swept off his dilapidated hat she could not help a thought that a plume would wave more becomingly from that particular hat than from any other hat she knew or would ever know. Romance....

“Oh, dear!” sighed Mrs. Avalon. “Good-bye.” But the cavalier was already only a distant shadow in the street.