A DEPLORABLE INCIDENT
It was with a feeling akin to despair that I saw Coverdale follow the others up the stairs. In the first place my own position was invidious. But there was nothing to be done. It was beyond question that Fitz must have a tried man like Coverdale at his elbow, whilst also it was necessary that a person with some pretensions to responsibility should take charge of the lady who was safely outside in the electric brougham. Yet, uppermost in my thoughts, was a more insistent care. The affair had taken a very ugly turn. Fitz had shown himself to be a man who did not stick at trifles, whilst von Arlenberg, unless his manner belied him, was cast in a similar mould. It was therefore with some uneasiness that I went to offer my services to her Royal Highness. That distinguished personage was seated greatly at her ease, yet with a slight frown upon her somewhat imperious countenance.
"Where is Nefil?" said she.
"I have to tell you, ma'am," said I, "that Mr. Fitzwaren is—er—discussing certain important matters with his Excellency, and that if it is agreeable to you he desires me to accompany you to your hotel."
"What are the matters?" Her gaze in its directness seemed to pass right through me.
"There are—er—certain details that have to be adjusted."
"Well, I hope Nefil will be able to shoot straight."
Whether I was more taken aback by the cynicism of the remark or by its sagacity, it would be fruitless to inquire. But to this pious hope I had nothing to add; and I stood feeling decidedly uncomfortable at the door of the car. There was no room in front by the side of the chauffeur, and I had received no invitation to take a seat within.
The pause was awkward, but somehow there seemed to be no help for it.
"Well?" said the lady, not without a suspicion of acerbity.
Even that I could not take for an invitation to get in. I stood acutely conscious that my embarrassment told against me.
"Aha, les Anglais!" The malice was not too genial. "Would you haf me open the door?"
I told the chauffeur to drive to the Savoy, and took the proffered seat by the side of the Crown Princess of Illyria.
The discovery has no claim to be original, but in order to find out what a woman really is, one should sit with her alone and tête-à-tête. The opportunity for frankness is not likely to be neglected upon either side, since a display of that engaging quality upon the one part seems automatically to evoke it on the other.
No sooner was I seated by the side of Mrs. Fitz than I felt more at ease. She was so sentient, so responsive; a creature who, beneath the trenchant reserve of her manner, was alive in every nerve.
She patted my knees with her fan.
"Aha, les Anglais!" In the light of the lamps, I thought her eyes were like stars. "So brave, so honest and so bête—I love them all!"
The spell of her presence seemed to overpower me.
"My brave Nefil will kill him, will he not?"
"I fear," said I, "that one of them will not see to-morrow."
"Indeed, yes; it cannot be otherwise."
Her calmness amazed me. And yet there was nothing callous or unnatural in it. Perhaps it might be described as the outward expression of an imperial nature. At least that was the impression that I gained. When her servants drew their swords in her cause they must not look for a prick in the arm. Let them prepare to stake their lives and to yield them gladly. I shivered slightly; it was barbarous that a woman could thus offer the father of her children to the gods, yet it was sublime.
All too soon we arrived at the restaurant where Fitz had ordered supper for seven. The place was filling up rapidly after the theatres. We sat on a sofa in the foyer to wait for our party; I with an acute anxiety and a sense of foreboding that held me tongue-tied; my companion with a detachment of mind that in the circumstances seemed almost inhuman. For her sake a man was being done to death; one whom she loved, or one whom her father honoured. But whatever Fate's decree, her nature was schooled to the point of submission.
Seated by my side in the foyer, she subjected the throng of returning playgoers to a frankly humorous and malicious scrutiny. These English who were so bête amused her vastly. The clothes they wore, the airs they gave themselves, the things they did and the things they refrained from doing, not a detail escaped that audaciously frank, that alertly curious intelligence.
"Your women are not as you, you fine, big English good dogs," she said, bestowing another indulgent pat upon my knees. "Les Anglaises, how prim and pinched they are, what dresses they wear, and how they do walk! But I adore vos jolis hommes: was ever such distinction, such charm, such stupidity! Mon père shall have an English regiment. I will raise it myself, and be its colonel."
Her laughter was deep and rich and full of malice. Even I, stupid and stricken with fear as I was, was yet sufficiently indiscreet to attempt to seize the opportunity.
"It will be the easiest thing in the world, ma'am. Have you not raised it already?"
Another indulgent pat was my reward.
"Très bon enfant! Quel esprit! You shall sit by my side when we eat."
Her ridicule had a velvet sheath, but even an Englishman, who felt as miserably ineffectual as did I, was susceptible of the thrust.
It is difficult for the average Briton, acutely conscious that he is enduring the patronage of a superior, to be easy, graceful and natural in his bearing; to say the appropriate things in the appropriate way, and to carry off the situation lightly. Every moment that I sat by the side of her Royal Highness in the centre of the public gaze, I felt my position to be growing more invidious. The pose of my companion seemed to become more Olympian; while if I ventured a half-hearted riposte or a timid pleasantry, I suffered for it; or if I remained silent and respectful—and that after all is the only course to take in the presence of our betters—I furnished an additional example of the heaviness of my countrymen.
I came to the conclusion that the less I said the better it would fare with my over-sensitive dignity, but even the utterance of an occasional monosyllable did not save me.
"When I hear the big dogs growl, the English masteefs, I say to myself, 'Ah, the dear fellows, how excellently they speak the language!'"
Unless one springs from the Chosen Race, it takes more than three generations to produce a courtier. I felt myself to be growing stiffer and generally more infelicitous in my demeanour. And then, as if to complete my overthrow, there entered the foyer a supper-party, whose appearance on the scene I could only regard with horror.
Who has not felt that among the astral bodies there is a malign power, a kind of Court Dramatist, who arranges sinister coincidences and mischievous surprises for us humble denizens below, in order to divert the privileged onlookers sitting in heaven? The supper-party which came into our midst, which looked as though it had been to see "The Importance of Being Earnest," and had been shocked by its reprehensible levity, consisted of Dumbarton, our illustrious neighbour, "dear Evelyn" high of coiffure and robed in pink satin, the august Mrs. Catesby, and the highly respectable George, with one or two others of minor importance as far as this narrative is concerned, although in other spheres not prone to yield pride of place to anybody.
It was clear from the rigid, slow and undeviating manner in which the ducal party walked past our sofa, that we were discovered. Mrs. Catesby, in particular, gazed down her nose with really awful solemnity; George, the highly respectable, wearing his Quarter Sessions expression; Dumbarton, looking like a Royal Duke painted in oils; and "dear Evelyn," his pink-robed spouse, a really admirable picture of what can be achieved in the way of high-bred hauteur. I can only say that, speaking for myself, I addressed a humble prayer to heaven that the floor might open and let me through.
A chill of apprehension settled upon me. I sat very close, not daring to move an eyelid.
Alas! as the procession filed past, there arose a note of derision; a clear, resonant, bell-like note.
"Ach, pink! Pink in dis climate and wis dat complexion!"
Even the chef de reception was compelled to follow the example of Mrs. Catesby of looking down his nose with really awful solemnity.
The sweat sprang to my miserable forehead. I never have a nightmare now without I dream of pink satin. The ducal party passed beyond our ken, leaving me shattered utterly and more than ever at the mercy of my companion. However, to my relief, the "Stormy Petrel" began to betray a care in regard to her husband. It began to seem that the aim of his adversary had been the straighter.
Fitz was certainly a desperate fellow, and my intercourse with the lady whom he had prevailed upon to share his name rendered that aspect of his character the more clear. What enormous grit the man must have to abduct such a lioness and to attempt to keep house with her upon a basis of equality. But had he met his overthrow at last? Had he tempted fate once too often? The hands of the clock were creeping on towards midnight.
"Nefil has missed his aim." The voice of the Princess trembled.
Almost immediately, however, this was proved to be not the case. There were further arrivals in the foyer; five men entered together, and the first of these was Fitz.
It may have been the fault of my overwrought fancy, but it seemed to me that each of the five was looking excited and pale. My companion rose to receive them. "It is well," she said. "It is well." She turned to Fitz, who looked ghastly, and extended her hand with a gesture that I can only compare to that of Medusa. Fitz bore the hand to his lips.
"What happened?" I said to Coverdale in a hoarse whisper.
"Don't ask!" he said, half turning away.
"Do you mean——" I said; but the sentence died in my throat.
The invasion of the supper-room was a pretty grave ordeal to have to face. The stress of that day, woven of the very tissue of excitement, had told upon me; and again I was in the grip of a nameless fear. Instead of following in the train of Mrs. Fitz into the glare of a too notorious publicity, I wanted to run away and hide myself.
The room was crowded with people who were there to see and to be seen. We had to make our way past a number of tables to one reserved for us at the far end of the room. In the middle of our progress, like a lion in the gate, was the ducal party toying elegantly with quails and champagne.
Each member of her Royal Highness's bodyguard, including the indomitable O'Mulligan, was looking downcast and unhappy and far from his best. But the lady herself, in bearing and in manner, made no secret of her status. She was the Heiress-Apparent to Europe's oldest monarchy condescending to eat in the midst of barbarians.
It was clear that the ducal party was fully determined to take an extreme course. By the animation of its conversation and its assiduous regard for quails and champagne, it evidently hoped to make the fact quite plain that our privacy would be respected if only we had the decency to extend a like indulgence to theirs.
Alas! in certain kinds of warfare there are no sanctities.
"Ach, pink!" said Mrs. Fitz, in that voice which had such a terrible quality of penetration. "Can any one tell me why pink——?"
The nervous fancy of a married man, a father of a family, and a county member, seemed to detect a titter from the adjoining tables. Coverdale pressed forward sombrely. Her Royal Highness, instinct with a ruthless and humorous disdain, went forward too. Fitz, however, lingered a moment, and touched his distinguished neighbour upon the shoulder with incredible Napoleonic heartiness.
"Hullo, Duke!" he said.
"How are you, Fitzwaren?" said the great man, in a voice that seemed to come out of his shoes.
"Never mind the Missus!" said the Man of Destiny, with a comic half-cock of the left eye at the patrician aspect of her Grace. "It's only her fun."
The man's effrontery, his cynicism, his absence of taste, were staggering. But what a sublime courage the fellow had. On he sauntered, with his hands buried in his pockets, in the wake of Coverdale and her Royal Highness. Brasset and I, walking delicately, were crowding upon his heels, when what can only be described as a peremptory and insistent hiss recalled us to the danger zone.
"Reggie! Odo Arbuthnot!"
We proffered a forlorn salute to the most august of her sex.
"Beg pardon, Mrs. Catesby, didn't see you, y'know."
Brasset's apologetic feebleness was in singular and painful contrast to the epic breadth of the inconceivable Fitz.
"Don't dare to offer me a word, either of you," said the Great Lady, in a whisper of Homeric truculence. "You are committing the act of social suicide. When I think of your mother, Reggie, and of your wife and daughter, Odo Arbuthnot, I——but I will say nothing. But it is social suicide for all of you, including that fatuous police constable."
The flesh cannot endure more than a given amount of suffering, although the measure of its capacity is so terrible. But whatever it was, I was already past it.
"Pink is certainly a trying colour," I whispered.
"Dear Evelyn will never forgive it. Have none of you a sense of decency? It is madness!"
I agreed that it was, and retreated limply to the next table but two.
Our supper party should have been a dismal function, but somehow it was not. It was only reasonable to assume that some fell occurrence had taken place at the Embassy, but whatever its nature was, its witnesses began to pull themselves together under the magnetic influence of Mrs. Fitz. Her imperious gaiety, if it did not wholly banish Coverdale's abysmal gloom, did much to make it less. As for the other members of the party, conscience-stricken and uneasy at heart as they were, it was impossible not to respond to her power.
Even the Master of the Crackanthorpe, whose sense of humour is of a decidedly primitive order, indulged in a loud guffaw at one of her pungent remarks.
"Restrain yourself, my dear fellow, for heaven's sake!" I admonished him. "Dumbarton is already looking like doom. Your presence here has already cost the poultry fund fifty pounds, see if it hasn't. If he hears you laugh in that way he will close his covers and stick up wire."
"Don't care what he does!" said the Master of the Crackanthorpe, with an unnatural brightness in his eyes.
The siren had indeed a terrible power. The imperious glance, the distended nostril, the mobile lips, the skin of gleaming olive, the whole figure vivid with the entrancing charm of sex and the romance of ages—who were we, les hommes moyens sensuels, that we should have the strength of soul to resist it all? Nature had fashioned a sorceress; and when she takes the trouble to do that, she bestows, as a rule, a consciousness of power upon her chosen instrument, and the determination to wield it ruthlessly. We drained our glasses and basked in her smiles.
Our laughter waxed higher; our joy in her presence the more unguarded. I retained discretion enough to be aware that no detail of our conduct was lost upon the august party two tables away. Every guffaw of which we were guilty would be used against us. What had happened to the impeccable tradition of reticence and right thinking that men of known probity should yield with this publicity to the blandishments of a queen of the sawdust?
It was a desperately unlucky position; but we were committed to it irrevocably. Nothing now could save our good name among our neighbours. Yet that half-hour after midnight was crowded and glorious. Who were we, weak-willed mediocrities, that we should resist the moment? After the passes we had braved in the service of one so splendid and so ill-starred, after the long-drawn suspense we had endured, could we be insensible to the gay music, half-affectionate, half-insolent, of our names upon her lips?
Coverdale sat by the right of the sorceress, I by the left—responsible men—yet even with the Gorgon's eye of the Great Lady upon us, we were fain to publish to the world that we were neither less nor more than the bond-slaves of the circus rider from Vienna.