Hugo got that job, and in 1919 he came back to England, very bronzed and lean and gay. But the gaiety did not last very long.
Now Hugo, in the days of his first youth, had been consumed by an ambition to be regarded as the kind of man to whom no chaste woman should be allowed to speak. But nothing ever came of that, he never even succeeded in persuading a chaste woman to cut him; wherefore in the course of time he came to think of himself as a poor harmless idiot who was liked by every one and loved by none. “Dear Hugo,” people said. That was all right in its way, said Hugo, but he was not so young as he had been and it got, he said, on his nerves a bit....
Soon after he had returned from the Near East, and when the gaiety had worn off, he discovered a pressing desire to Settle Down. And he cast a keen eye round and about the fair land of Britain, and behold! he saw Miss Shirley St. George—and, still worse, got it into his head that she had seen him. Immediately, he fell in love with Miss Shirley St. George. He had, of course, no money: she had no money. He proposed to her: she refused him. He begged: she laughed. “Dear Hugo,” she said.
II
Now Miss Shirley St. George was little sister to George Tarlyon, whom I think I’ve told you about.
One morning Hugo arose from his bed in the chambers, which he could not afford, and directed the valet, whom he could not afford, to send this telephone message: “Major Cypress desires to see Lord Tarlyon at his club at once.”
“Lord Tarlyon,” came the answer, “will see Major Cypress at Lord Tarlyon’s club at Lord Tarlyon’s convenience, and desires Major Cypress to stand at attention when speaking to him.”
There are many clubs in Saint James’s Street, but there is one in particular, towards the northern part, much referred to by biographers of persons of ton of more elegant times. Thither, that morning at a reasonable hour, went Major Cypress, very thoughtfully. Tarlyon was there. Tarlyon was always there, at a reasonable hour.
“Bronx or Martini, Hugo?”
“Sherry, thanks.”