Then Ralph Loyalty said a wicked word. “D’you mean to say that I’ve been shamming dead in a damned uncomfortable position for the last two hours for nothing?” he bawled at her. “Here have I been for months and months throwing you at each other’s heads and neither of you with the pluck to show your hand!” And he cursed the name of Hugo Carr for the name of a fool and a coward. She was going to faint. He controlled himself a little. He appealed to her. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, you see, Joan. I knew how you’d loved me for years, and I couldn’t bear to hurt you, but I’d have given anything to let you see I wanted my freedom to marry someone else. And when I saw that you liked being with Hugo I thought there might be a chance of your liking him instead of me, and so I did my best to throw you together. But Hugo always was a coward—and as I couldn’t bear going on as we were for another night I arranged this thing to-night, thinking that if anything would make Hugo show his hand or would throw you into Hugo’s arms, this would.” And again he said a wicked word. “I didn’t want to hurt you, you see, Joan, and so I thought this would be the best way—and now the silly ass has gone and left us stranded....”
That was the night the nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. A nightingale has never sung in Berkeley Square before, and may never sing there again, but if it does it will probably mean something.
III: THE HUNTER AFTER WILD BEASTS
I
OUT of his loneliness, Aubrey Carlyle told me this story one night: not at Malmanor Park, where, with his sister Esther as hostess, he has entertained us all so often, for he said that he could not have told me this story at Malmanor, but in the library of his house in London.
Aubrey Carlyle, who is a man of middle years, had never told this story to any one before, and I can only think he told it to me because I had been a great friend to his wife Gloria. I have not seen Gloria Carlyle for three years, though I have very often wished to, for she is a lady of uncommon quality and was a very loyal friend. Of her George Tarlyon once said that she was a gentleman among women; “And that is a very rare thing,” added Shelmerdene, “for the only advantage most women have over men is in the fact that they are not gentlemen.” But that is as it may be.
The last I heard of Gloria Carlyle was that she had settled in Italy and was living in a villa near Florence. And I saw a vision of Gloria in a very white villa among the myrtle and magnolia and waxen camellias of that country, and walking in lanes where green lizards moved swiftly up grey stone walls—dear Gloria of the tiger-tawny hair and the funny crooked smile like a naughty fairy’s. She was a very sweet and thoughtful woman, and her voice never, never intruded, it was like a hidden stream, quite delicious....
Aubrey Carlyle told me that I could tell or write this story as I wished, saying that it might better the knowledge of men about their womenfolk; “for there are too many men,” he said, “who do not know their jobs as regards their women. And I have learnt mine too late.”
My friend Aubrey is a man of an aloof and almost haughty demeanour, which may have perhaps induced that rather abrupt manner that has repelled many people from him; for though a certain aloofness was thought very proper to the looks of an English gentleman of a past time, it is now held to be quite out of place among the corrupt genialities of the democratic state. A tall, dark-looking man he was, and elegant in a tweedy sort of way. Rich always, he had never been a wastrel, and London bored him to distraction—or “to distinction,” as an American out of Texas once said. A Tory landlord of Liberal sympathies, he was always a model administrator of his properties; and chief among these we, their friends, counted Gloria, for she seemed—how can one suggest these shades of understanding?—more particularly and peculiarly his wife than are the wives of less fortunate men. It is said of the Carlyles that they have always been bad to their women and that there has been no charge on the female estate for more than two hundred years; but Aubrey and Gloria were a charming couple. It was always quite evident that she loved him—tall Gloria of the tiger-tawny hair and the funny crooked smile like a naughty fairy’s; while it was equally evident—to those few, of course, who could look beneath the aloof surface of the man—that he treasured her enormously. And then, one day, she left him; and she never came back.
Now Aubrey despised what he called the “trumpery parlour-tricks” of the countryside. He was not civilised enough, he said. The elegant pastime of killing a pretty fowl of the air without any risk to yourself, or of chasing a scared fox across a county—though that was better, for you at least risked a broken collar-bone—did not amuse him very much. He was a hunter after wild beasts. And because you may not kill wild beasts in England, for they walk on two legs and stern laws protect them, the other four continents knew Aubrey Carlyle for many months in the year. And because Gloria was not a hunter after wild beasts she stayed in England, and was much with us in London, and we sometimes with her at Malmanor. But she was an amazingly still woman.