by Sax Rohmer
Don dived into the capacious pocket of his trench-coat and brought forth a large envelope marked “On His Majesty’s Service. Strictly Confidential.” From the envelope he took a water-colour drawing representing a pair of long-legged ungainly colts standing snuggled up to their mother under a wild briar hedge. He handed the drawing to Chauvin, and Chauvin, adjusting a pair of huge horn-rimmed spectacles upon his nose, examined it critically. All three watched him in silence. Presently he removed the spectacles and laid the drawing down on the table. He held out his hand to Don.
“Bring her along early,” he said. “Good night.” He returned to the human geranium.
Don replaced the drawing in the official envelope, smiling happily. “Old Chauvin is not exactly chatty,” he remarked; “but he knows.”
“I should say that he was a man of very extraordinary talent,” said Thessaly, “even if I were unacquainted with his work. His choice of a companion alone marks him as no ordinary mortal.”
Don laughed outright, fitting the envelope into his pocket again. “The lady is a Parisienne,” he replied, “and very entertaining company.”
“Parisiennes make delightful companions for any man,” declared Thessaly, “and good wives for one who is fond of adventure. She is studying you with keen interest, Mario.”
“She probably regards me as an embodiment of mediaeval turpitude. People persist in confusing novelists with their creations.”
“Quite so. Yet because de Quincey was an opium-fiend, Poe a drunkard and Oscar Wilde a pervert, it does not follow that every clever writer is unfit for decent society. Even if he were, his popularity would not suffer. Few things help a man’s public reputation so much as his private vices. Don’t you think you could cultivate hashish, Mario? Sherlock Holmes’ weakness for cocaine has endeared him to the hearts of two generations.”
“I shall endeavour to dispense with it, Thessaly. Excepting a liking for honey which almost amounts to a passion, my private life is exemplary.”
“Honey? Most peculiar. Don’t let Bassett know or he will paragraph the fact. Honey to my way of thinking is a much overrated commodity which survives merely because of its biblical reputation and its poetic life-history. It is only one’s imagination which lends to it the fragrance of flowers. Personally I prefer treacle. Is Chauvin’s attachment to the French lady of a Platonic nature, Captain Courtier?”
“I cannot say. He is quite capable of marrying her.”
“Probably he knows his own mind,” Paul murmured absently.
“Quite probably; but does he know hers?” asked Thessaly. “I always think this so important in London although it may not matter in Paris. Some infatuations are like rare orchids. A certain youth of Cnidus fell in love with a statue of Aphrodite, and my secretary, Caspar, has fallen in love with Gaby Deslys. Apollonius of Tyana cured the Cnidian youth, but what hope is there for Caspar? My nightly prayer is that he may find the courage to shave his side-whiskers and renounce the passionate life — a second Plato burning his poems.”
* * * * * *
Paul became absorbed in contemplation of the unique turmoil about him. The excitement created by his entrance had somewhat subsided and the various groups in the café had resumed their respective characteristics. The place was seething with potential things; the pressure of force might be felt. At a centre table a party of musicians talked excitedly, one of them, a pale young man with feline eyes, shouting hoarsely and continuously. Well-known painters were there, illustrating the fact that many a successful artist patronises a cheap tailor. There was a large blonde woman who smoked incessantly as she walked from table to table. She seemed to have an extensive circle of acquaintances. And there was a small dark girl with eyes feverishly bright who watched her; and whenever the glances of the twain met, the big woman glared and the small one sneered and showed her white teeth. A little fat man with a large fat notebook sat near the door apparently engaged in compiling a history of some kind and paying no attention whatever to a tall thin man who persistently interrupted him by ordering refreshments. The little fat man absently emptied glass after glass; his powers of absorption were remarkable.
There were models with pale faces and short fabulous hair surrounding a celebrated figure-painter who was said to have seven wives named after the days of the week, and there were soldiers who looked like poets and artists who looked like soldiers. A sculptor who had discovered the secret of making ugliness out of beauty and selling it, was deep in conversation with an author of shocking mysteries whose fame rested largely upon his creation of the word “beetlesque” and the appearance of a certain blue-faced ourang-outang in every story which he published.
Paul’s immediate neighbours on the right-hand side were two earnest young brushmen, one wearing military uniform, and the other a rational check suit designed with much firmness. They shared a common pencil and drank black coffee, demonstrating their ideas in line upon the marble table-top. They evidently thought with Mr. Nevinson, that man invented circles but the Lord created cubes. Beyond them was a lady of title who aspired to the mantle of George Sand. In the absence of an Alfred de Musset she had fled from her husband with a handsome actor of romantic rôles whom later she had left for an ugly violinist with a beautiful technique. She was sipping pomegranate juice in the company of her publisher and glancing under her lashes at a ferocious-looking ballad writer who had just seated himself behind the next table from whence he directed a malevolent glare upon no one in particular.
“His gentle work deserves a kinder master,” said Thessaly, observing Paul watching the melody-maker. “I have noticed, Mario, that although there are few pressmen present, there are a number of publicists. Our progress is merely in terminology after all. The writers who matter may readily be recognised by their complacent air; the others, who have not yet succeeded in mattering, by their hungry look. They have missed a course in the banquet of life. They have failed to grasp the fact that our artificial civilisation has made a mystery of marriage, which, veil by veil, it is the duty of the successful novelist to disclose. If I were a novelist I should seek my characters in the Divorce Court; if I were a painter I should study those superstitions which have grown up around human nudity so that the very word ‘naked’ has become invested with a covert significance and must very shortly be obsolete. I contemplate opening a new Pythagorean Institute for instruction of the artistic young. Above the portal I shall cause to be inscribed the following profound thought: ‘Art does not pay; portrait and figure painting do.’”
“Some portrait painters are artists,” said Don.
“I agree: Velasquez for instance; and consider the treatment of the velvet draperies in Collier’s Pomps and Vanities so widely popularised by its reproduction in the Telephone Directory.” He turned to Paul. “I have noted no fewer than six novelists, Mario, engaged in outlining to admirers projected masterpieces dealing with the war from a psychological aspect. Think of the disappointments. Excepting the creators of omniscient detectives and exotic criminals (who form a class apart, self-contained, opulent and immune from the stress of life) every writer dies with his greatest work unwritten. We are beginning to bore one another. Let us proceed to Murray’s and contemplate bare backs.”
IX
One evening early in the following week Flamby and Mrs. Chumley stood upon a platform of Victoria Station looking after a train from which protruded a forest of waving hands. Somewhere amongst them was the hand of Don, but because of that uncomfortable mistiness which troubled her sight at times, Flamby was quite unable to distinguish anything clearly. “Damn the German pigs,” she said under her breath.
“Did I hear you swearing, dear?” asked Mrs. Chumley tearfully. “So many girls seem to be able to swear nowadays. No doubt they find it a great relief.”
“I am so sorry,” said Flamby breathlessly. “I had really made up my mind never to swear again and never to say things in Latin or quote Shakespeare; but it’s very hard for me.”
“It must be, dear.
Quite agree. I once tried to make up my mind never to give money to blind beggars again. It was in Cairo, and I found that so many of them were not really blind at all. Do you know, dear, it was not a bit of good. I found myself doing it when I wasn’t thinking. I tried going out without money and then all the blind men followed me about the streets. It was most awkward. The poor things couldn’t understand why I had changed, of course.”
“You had not changed, Mrs. Chumley. You never could change,” said Flamby, squeezing the old lady’s arm as they made their way out of the station. “You will always be generous, but I hope I shall not always swear on the slightest provocation.”
“I hope you won’t, dear, if you think it would be as well.”
* * * * * *
Number twenty-three at The Hostel now was converted into a miniature suite de luxe. Flamby’s instinctive good taste had enabled her to arrange her new possessions and her old to the best possible advantage. The cost of those purely useful articles which had not been purchased under the guidance of Don, as compared with such delightful things as cushions and gowns, surprised her very much indeed, but the ingenious Don had secured a quantity of cutlery, linen and other household necessities from an acquaintance “in the wholesale trade,” thus saving Flamby more than half the usual cost. Once committed to an emprise, Don’s resource was limitless.
Flamby switched on the centre light of her little domain, fitted with a charming shade of Japanese silk, and removing her coat (purchased locally at a price which she had considered preposterous) she stood gazing vacantly into the little square mirror above the mantelpiece behind the china clock. It reflected the figure of a slim girl wearing a blue serge skirt, a blue jersey coat and a grey velour hat — a very pretty girl indeed, her colour heightened by the humid night air.
How swiftly her life had moved in that one short week. She stared at her reflection with a sudden interest, seeking for signs of age. Eight days ago she had possessed no friend in all the world; now, friends seemed to have sprung up around her miraculously, and all at the bidding of Don. From such lonely despondence as she had never known he had lifted her into a new and brighter world. She had seen the studio of the great Claude Chauvin; she was actually going to work there on three days of every week. On the other three she was to attend the art school. The crowning wonder of it all lay in the fact that Chauvin proposed to pay her a salary. Her father had taught her to expect nothing but rebuffs, although he had assured her that some day she would make a reputation as an animal painter. She recognised that Don was the magician whose transmuting wand had surrounded her with the gold of good fellowship. He had forgotten nothing.
* * * * * *
One day they had lunched at Regali’s, that esoteric Italian restaurant wherein disciples of all the Arts congregate to pay tribute to good cooking and modest bills.
Don, who seemed to know everybody, presented the great Severus Regali himself, a vast man ponderously moustached and endowed with a mighty voice and the fierce bearing of a Bellino; a figure in bravura with the heart of a child. He bowed low before Flamby, one huge hirsute hand pressed to his bosom.
“Ragout Regali is on to-day,” he said; no more — but those words constituted an initiation, admitting Flamby to the Epicurean circle.
Of Severus Regali and his famous ragout a story was told, and this was the story as related by Don: No other chef in Europe (Regali had formerly been chef to a Personage) could make a like ragout, and Regali jealously retained the secret of the preparation, which he only served to privileged guests. To him came M. Sapin, the great artist responsible for the menus of a certain peer far-famed as the foremost living disciple of Lucullus. A banquet extraordinary was shortly to take place, and M. Sapin, the mastermind, came to beg of Regali the recipe for his ragout. Wrapped in a fur-lined coat, the immortal Sapin descended from his car (for his salary was that of a Cabinet Minister). Hollow-cheeked, sallow, and having death in his eyes, he begged this favour of his modest rival.
“It shall never be prepared by my hand again, Regali,” he said. “My physician gives me but one month of life.”
“What!” cried Regali. “It is then a dying request?”
“It is indeed,” was the mournful reply. “For this great affair I have sought inspiration from all the classic authorities. I have considered the dormice served with honey and poppy-seed and the grape-fed beccafico dressed with garum piperatum, which, according to Petronius, were served at Trimalchio’s banquet. But neither of these rare dishes can compare with Ragout Regali.” Regali bowed. “Therefore, I beg of you, grant me permission to prepare that supreme triumph of our beautiful art, and in honour of the guest of the evening, to present it for the first and, alas! the last time as ‘Ragout Prince Leopold!’”
Regali consented, and that night after closing-time a strange scene was enacted. Outside the restaurant stood the luxurious car of M. Sapin, and downstairs in the kitchen, behind double-locked doors, the two chefs made Ragout Regali, M. Sapin noting the method of preparation with those pathetic dying eyes. But at the great banquet following the appearance of “Ragout Prince Leopold,” M. Sapin was summoned to the dining-room and toasted by the epicures there gathered. This was his final triumph. He died a few weeks later. But of such dream stuff was the wonder-dish to whose mystery Regali had admitted Flamby with the words “Ragout Regali is on to-day.”
Another morning they went to Guilder’s, the art school of which Don had said, “They teach you everything except how to sell your pictures,” and Flamby made the acquaintance of Hammett, famous as a painter of dogs, velvet and lace, under whom she was to work. The school surprised her. It was so extremely untidy, and the big windows were so very dirty. Busts and plaster casts, canvas-stretchers, easels, stools and stacks of sketches littered the first, or “antique” room, and they were all mantled in dust. There was no one in the “life” room at the time of Flamby’s visit, except an old Italian, who was a model, but who looked like an organ-grinder. The suspended lamps, with their huge ugly shades, had an ominous appearance by daylight, and Flamby found herself considering the unfinished drawings and paintings which were visible about the large bleak room, and trying to conjure up thought-forms of the students who had executed them. Later she learned that there were a number of smaller painting-rooms right and left, above and below, but the dirtiest room of all was that in which lumps of clay lay casually about on tables and rests and on the floor, where embryonic things perched upon tripods, like antediluvian birds and saurians, and where the daughters of Praxiteles and sons of Phidias pursued their claggy but fascinating studies under a sculptor who possessed the inestimable gift of teaching more than he knew himself. It was all very unromantic. Strange how ugliness is the mother of beauty, and the sacred fairy-winged scarab of Art comes forth from dirt.
* * * * * *
One day Paul came to The Hostel. Flamby was engaged in hanging pictures when she heard his voice in the courtyard below. She was standing on a chair, but her heart began to beat so ridiculously that she was compelled to sit down. She swore with a fluency and resource worthy of her father, then in feverish haste attempted to strip off her overall and wash her hands and adjust her unruly hair at one and the same time. She ceased her frantic efforts as suddenly as she had begun them, drying her hands and tousling her hair fiercely. What did she care? Let him find her looking like a freak; it did not matter. “You are a little ass,” she told herself bitterly; “a silly little donkey! Have you no brains? He doesn’t care how you look. You should not care what he thinks about you. Why don’t you get in a panic when Don comes alone? You were as red as a tomato half a minute ago; now you are as white as a ghost. You poor contemptible little idiot!”
She snatched up the hammer which she had dropped and resumed the task of attaching a picture fastener to the wall; but as she passed the mirror above the fireplace she raised her disengaged hand and pulled a curl into place. She banged a little brass nail so hard that it bounced out of the plaster and fell upon the flo
or. Paul and Don were at the door and the bell was ringing. Flamby achieved composure, and hammer in hand she went to admit her visitors.
One swift glance she ventured, and in Paul’s eyes she read that which none could have deduced from his manner. The shameful phantom which had pursued her so long had not been illusory; the photographs taken by Sir Jacques had survived him. Paul had seen them. Momentarily she almost hated him, and she found a savage and painful satisfaction in the discovery that there was something in his nature less than godlike. It should be easy to forget a man capable of believing that of her which Paul believed. She longed to hide herself from his sight. But almost with his first word of charming greeting came the old joy of hearing him speak, the old foolish sense of inferiority, of helpless gladness. Flamby even ceased to resist it, but she noted that Don was more silent than usual; and once in his grey eyes she detected a look almost of sadness. In the very charm of Paul’s unchanged manner there lay a sting, for if he had cared he could not have believed that which Flamby was convinced he did believe and have dismissed the matter thus. But, of course, he did not care.
“Why should he care?” she asked aloud, when again she found herself alone. “He is just sorry that I am not a good girl. Dad saved the life of his dearest friend, and therefore he considers it his duty to be kind to me. But that is all.”
In vain Flamby sought to reason with her unreasonable heart. What did she desire? — that Paul should love her? A hot flush crept all over her body. That his wife should die? Oh! what a coldly merciless thing was logic! Flamby at this point discovered that she had been weeping for quite a long time. She was very sorry for herself indeed; and recognising this in turn she began to laugh, perhaps rather hysterically. She was laughing when Mrs. Chumley came to look for her, nor could she stop.
