Courts of Idleness

by Dornford Yates

  “Yes,” said Fairie. “Please don’t add that the world’s very small.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” laughed his companion. “But why?”

  “Well, I’ve heard it said seven times in the last four days, and it annoys me. In the first place, it’s a platitude; secondly, it is a grossly inaccurate statement. The world is, unlike your feet, extremely large.”

  “If you travel, you must put up with these things.”

  “I could put up with your feet for ever.”

  “Thank you, but I meant—”

  “I know you did,” said Bill. “Anyway, there are compensations. You’re one of them. And now, may I have the honour of driving you back to the hotel? I see that Orlando, who drove me down, is disengaged and ready for anything.”

  “Thank you very much,” said the girl. “And we’ll take the dog, too. One of the gardeners up there is a friend of mine. If I ask him, I think he’ll give him a home.”

  “If you ask him,” said Fairie.

  They were just swinging out of the sunlit places when the spectacle of a large store, crowded with wicker chairs of all sorts and descriptions, made Fairie remember the words of The White Hope. He cried to Orlando to stop, and turned to the girl.

  “My dear,” he said, “it’s up to me to buy four chairs.”

  “For yourself and the children?”

  “Got it in one,” said Bill. “May I have—”

  “The honour, etc., of my assistance? You may. You’re very polite this morning, aren’t you?”

  “Always the same, believe me. Never a cross word.”

  “I thought you knew it was impossible to deceive me.”

  Fairie regarded her amusedly. Then:

  “I wish you’d take off your hat,” he said. “I want to see your hair.”

  The chairs were really quite inexpensive. For six or seven shillings you could purchase a very throne of luxury. After testing the resiliency of several seats, Fairie came to the conclusion that, so far as he was concerned, the choice lay between two triumphs of wickerwork.

  “Hadn’t you better have that one?” said my lady, her voice trembling with laughter.

  The chair she was indicating with a rosy forefinger, had a socket to take a tumbler by the side of its right arm.

  Fairie shook his head.

  “Attractive,” he said, “but useless. Like all confirmed drunkards, I soak in secret.”

  He was on the point of ordering three others, similar to the one he had selected, when a miniature chair, in every respect like the others, but fashioned to fit a child, caught his eye. The girl’s words flashed across his mind. “For yourself and the children,” she had said. Quickly he turned to the man who was serving him.

  “Have you two others like this?” – pointing to the miniature chair.

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “I’ll have three, then. Send them up with the big one this afternoon.”

  “Oh,” said the girl, and fell into long laughter.

  At Fairie’s dictation the man wrote the four names on luggage labels, and, to avoid all possibility of mistake, Bill tied his own label on to the big chair with his own hand. Then he paid for his purchases and cheerfully followed my lady out of the shop. The proprietor saw them to the door and watched their departure with every manifestation of respect. As the car disappeared, he sighed. A man of business, if not of humour, he could hardly have been expected to acquaint Fairie with the fact that, some thirty minutes before, two ladies and a gentleman had stopped at his emporium and chosen three large chairs and one baby one, giving the same four names and ordering them to be sent to the Bristol Hotel. The baby chair to be labelled “W Fairie.”

  At seven o’clock that evening four large chairs stood in a row on the cobbled drive, close to the main entrance to the hotel. The Brokes and Betty saw them, as they came in to dress. They had all been at the Casino.

  Their annoyance to notice that the chairs were all of the same size was intense. They were theirs, too; the labels showed that.

  Disappointedly they passed into the hotel.

  Five minutes later Fairie appeared in the company of the King’s Counsel.

  “Are these your chairs?” said the latter.

  “They’re not the ones I paid for,” said Bill uneasily. Then he examined the labels.

  “Well?” said the man of law.

  Fairie sighed.

  “Your prayers,” he said, “are desired for the fool who sent these chairs. He has not long to live.”

  They had nearly finished dinner, when: “I see the chairs have come,” said Fairie carelessly.

  “Yes,” said his wife. “Aren’t you grateful to us for—”

  “What d’you mean?” said Fairie. “If it hadn’t been for my providence—”

  “Yours?” cried Fay. “Why, you forgot all about them.”

  Fairie put down his glass and looked at her.

  “If selecting, ordering, and paying for no less than four slumber-suggesting—”

  “But we ordered them, too,” said Robin.

  “Then those are yours outside,” said Fairie.

  “We – er – thought, perhaps, they were yours,” stammered Robin.

  “No,” said Fairie. “Mine were different. I mean—”

  “So were ours,” said Betty. “Those aren’t the chairs we ordered.”

  For a moment they stared at one another. Then:

  “Come along,” said her husband. “We’re about the last, as usual. We can thrash this out on the verandah.”

  With one consent they rose and passed out of the room, threading their way between the tables in single file.

  In what was, perhaps, the most prominent place upon the great verandah stood four baby chairs, conspicuously and respectively labelled “Mrs Fairie,” “Miss Broke,” “R Broke,” and “W Fairie.” Immediately opposite them, his back to the balustrade, lolled the King’s Counsel, beaming over a long cigar and patently contemplating the ridiculous quartette with immense gratification. In the shadow of a tall pillar the lady of the mongrel was shaking with suppressed merriment. The dictates of good taste forbade steady and undisguised observation on the part of the other visitors, but there was on all sides an air of expectation and ‘awaiting results,’ and as the Brokes and the Fairies, all unsuspecting, emerged from the lounge, the interested smiles broadened and here and there the conversation died down. Discerning the long form of the lawyer twenty odd paces away, Betty, naturally enough, started towards him, and, that nothing might be wanting to fill their cup of confusion to the full – “Anyway,” Fay was saying, “we may as well have the chairs put here, even if—”

  A stifled cry from Betty made her look up, and the sentence died on her lips. She caught at her brother’s arm.

  “What’s the matter?” said Robin. “Good heavens!”

  The last to perceive the chairs was Fairie. For an instant his face lighted. The ones he had ordered, after all! The next moment he saw there were four. He recoiled literally.

  With an elaborate wave of his cigar, The White Hope indicated the row, the smile of smiles upon his legal face.

  “The seats of the mighty,” he drawled. “Won’t you sit down?”

  Their sense of humour asserting itself, Betty and Fay began to laugh helplessly. Bill pulled himself together.

  “I prefer to stand,” he said simply. “Besides, I never take the chair.”

  “It is a mistake to confine yourself to biscuits,” observed the lawyer. “Believe me, you would more than fill the position.”

  “The truth is,” said Fairie, “I’m afraid it would cramp my style.”

  4: Love Thirty

  “I hope you’re not awfully good,” said Miss Fettering, “because I’m—”

  “But we are,” said Fairie. “Our moral rectitude is almost staggering. When I tell you that our record includes four highest awards—”

  “Oh, I know. I guessed that from your haloes. I meant, good at tennis.”

  “I s
ee,” said Fairie. “Of course, that’s rather different. All the same, no champion has beaten me yet.”

  “Perhaps that’s because you’ve never played one.”

  “Possibly. But a cousin of mine used to live at Wimbledon. For the others – Broke plays too much with the wood, while my wife’s game is beneath contempt.”

  Miss Fettering threw back her head and laughed merrily.

  “What’s he saying about me?”

  Robin Broke, walking ahead with Betty, flung the question over his shoulder.

  “It’s all right, brother,” Fairie assured him. “I was only describing that wonderful racket shot of yours from the back line. The one that always finds the court, if the net’s not too high.”

  His cousin sighed. Then:

  “I feel in form today,” he said. “Does your Accident policy cover you out of England?”

  Light-heartedly the four were making their way down through the garden, voices and the rustle of the two skirts alone marking their progress. There was no sound of footsteps, their rubber soles meeting the polished paths in silence. Fay Broke had insisted that she must write letters, a habit she had formed as a girl at school, and one of which the others, counting it vicious, had vainly endeavoured to break her time and again.

  Among women the writing of letters is something akin to intemperance. Some go about it privily, in the seclusion of their apartment, and the silence of night. Others, more shameless, openly succumb to temptation, and, making no secret of the failing, indulge it brazenly. For such, temporarily, company and its calls may go by the board. When the fit is upon them, considerations of time and place weigh with them not at all. There and then the epistolary lust must be gratified at any price. After some hours they arise from the debauch dazedly, overdone, fatigued for the rest of the day. Reaction is bound to set in. The after effects must be slept off.

  Fay, then, being engaged with her correspondence, Miss Fettering, Fairie’s acquaintance and cousin of Dorothy Lair, had readily consented to make up the four. The girl seemed frankly glad of her new-found friends. Except for a ‘companion,’ who only appeared at meals, she was staying alone in the hotel.

  They play much tennis in the island of Rih, and most of the courts are situate amid surroundings of great beauty. That for which the four were making was no exception to the rule.

  Sunk deep in the heart of a fair flower-garden, a smooth, white-lined sheet of asphalt stretched evenly from side to side, its spruce net dividing it half-way. The low grey walls that fenced the place about – netting like a faint gauze rising above them – were hung with living arras, ragged, maybe, but in fresh, gorgeous colouring beyond measure rich. Full thirty feet the flaming orange of a bignonia rioted over the stonework, scrambling to meet and mingle with the deep magenta of a mighty bougainvillea, whose blossoms stand for Royalty among the flowers of Rih. Far on the other side showed the pale purple of wisteria, looking like some soft silken drapery fallen from a goddess’ tiring-room, which, floating slowly downward, had come to rest elegantly over a corner of the tennis court – tattered a little, for, as it fell, odd boughs of over-leaning trees seemed to have caught its edges. Little wonder that the delicate fabric could not bear the strain, but tore and ripped noiselessly as it settled down, leaving dainty trails to swing and droop gracefully from the branches above. A little of the court was shadowed by the tall trees standing about it, but for the most part it lay open to the hot sun.

  Not much of a place for tennis, you will be saying. Perhaps. It would not do at Wimbledon. But then there are times when the game of tennis, like that of Life, need not be taken too seriously, when we can forgive the loss of a dropping ball against an improper background for the sake of the rare loveliness of which that same background is so irregularly made up.

  “Of course,” said Bill Fairie, “there are courts and courts. This is one of the latter.”

  “It makes me think of Omar Khayyám,” said Betty dreamily.

  “Yes,” said Robin. “‘They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamsh´yd gloried and drank deep.’ The very place. Only they’re wrong about the lion.” He turned to Miss Fettering. “Jamsh´yd used to glory over by that side line, you know.”

  “Not really?”

  Broke nodded.

  “A brass plate is to be let in there this autumn. Not that they want anything to remember him by, for the nets on this court are always tight. Here,” he added suddenly, “when you’ve quite finished with my racket…”

  Fairie stopped whirling it to scrutinize the gut. It might have been tauter, certainly. After a moment:

  “You must forgive me,” he said. “I thought it was a landing-net.”

  “You needn’t swank,” said Robin, pointing to the scarf about his cousin’s waist. “You’re not the only member of the Cyclists’ Touring Club.”

  “Wrong again,” said Bill. “These are the colours of the Post Office Telephone Subscribers Protection Society. Arms: A conversation couped, between an oath imbrued issuant, az. and a blasted trunk charged on the nail, or. Crest: A line engaged proper. Motto: Fair Exchange is No Robbery.”

  He stopped. Miss Fettering was laughing helplessly. With difficulty stifling a desire to join in her merriment, Betty and Broke exchanged significant glances.

  “Thinks he’s back at the Poplar Empire,” said Broke. “Let’s pretend not to notice it.”

  A slim brown boy, perhaps eleven years old, slid shyly out of the bushes and stepped down on to the asphalt. Barefoot, he stood leaning against the creepered wall, one finger to his white teeth. For an instant he looked at the four, making ready to play; then he dropped his dark eyes, smiling a little. It was his naïve way of offering his services.

  “Aha,” said Fairie, “a gatherer of balls errant. A seeker of lost spheres. Almost an astronomer. ’Tis well. Consider yourself engaged, my lad. The play, I may say, will he fast, possibly furious. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “How shall we play?” said Betty. “I think Miss Fettering and you’d better take on Robin and me.”

  “Every time, m’dear,” replied her husband. “And now – Hullo!” He stopped to wave with his racket in the direction of a large size in German Jews, who had strolled on to the court, and was standing apparently wrapped in proud contemplation of his own faculty of perspiration. “To one side, O Israel. What’s the German for ‘Get out or get under’?”

  “Try achtung,” said Miss Fettering.

  Bill tried it with some success. With a grunt the trespasser retired ponderously. A moment later the game had begun.

  By the time that Fay Broke had written her letters it was getting on for noon. She strolled down into the garden, but the others had apparently had their fill of tennis, for they were nowhere to be seen. The court itself was occupied by two people. One was a lady visitor, who might well have been taken for thirty-five, had she not been behaving as if she were fifteen; the other, a young man, who, because he had struck a bad opponent, seemed to think himself rather good, but was endeavouring politely to look as if he were having the game of his life. It occurred to Fay that, allowing for his Oxford manner, it was a rather creditable attempt. On a long stone seat four players waited amusedly for the conclusion of the set.

  Thoughtfully Fay strolled back to the hotel. Inquiry at the office showed that the Fairies had sent for a taxi, and, with the Fettering girl and Robin, had gone down town; so she fetched a novel and once more descended into the garden. Five minutes later she was lying easily in somebody else’s chair – her own was up on the verandah – on a tiny retired terrace, little more than a ledge set upon the edge of the cliff. It was so hidden that you might pass the path that led to it – and no further – a score of times, nor even dream that, if you followed it, your curiosity would be so well repaid.

  The novel was not very interesting, but the air was warm and gentle, while the sea was making a lazy noise a long way below. Moreover, remember, Fay had been writing letters. On the whole, it would have been
almost surprising if she had not fallen asleep.

  A quarter of an hour later she opened her eyes. The first thing they rested upon was a good-looking man of about thirty summers, clean-shaven and very brown, clad in a plain white flannel suit. His grey hat lay on the curving seat beside him, and there was an unlighted cigarette between his lips. He sat with an arm on the parapet, gazing over the sea. The next second he turned to look at her.

  “She’s awake,” he said, with an easy smile, that came into his strong face so naturally that Fay found herself wondering if he could ever look hard or cold-hearted. “And now” – for a moment he hesitated – “excuse me, but you don’t happen to be my sister, do you?”

  For a moment Fay stared at him. Then:

  “Not that I know of,” she said.

  The man regarded her with an air of amused disappointment. Then:

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I suppose you’re quite sure about it.”

  “Absolutely. But I oughtn’t to have to tell you that, ought I? Don’t you know your own sister when you see her?”

  Her companion shook his head.

  “That’s the trouble,” he said. “I know she’s in Rih, and staying at ‘The Bristol,’ but that’s all, I’ve been looking for her ever since I landed, nearly an hour ago. I made sure you were her,” he added musingly, “directly I saw you. To tell you the truth, I very nearly kissed you, I felt so certain about it.”

  “Did you though?”

  “Fact,” said the other coolly. “Only it seemed a shame to wake you. That’s why I didn’t strike a match. May I smoke, please?”

  “I don’t suppose the manager will mind.”

  “I don’t care if he does. Do you?”

  “It doesn’t matter about me,” said Fay. “I’m going.”

  With that she picked up her novel.

  The other was on his feet in an instant.

  “Don’t dream of moving,” he said. “For one thing, you look so lovely like that. Besides, I’m just going to leave you, only I’d rather like to explain first. That is if you’ll let me.”

  Fay regarded him steadily. Then she laid down the book.