by Sax Rohmer
War, pestilence and vast geographical upheavals alike were manifestations of spiritual conflict physically reflected. Some of the German philosophers had perceived this dimly, but as one born in blindness fails to comprehend light, their vision was no more than hereditary memory of another pit of doom which had engulfed them. Those who spoke of casting down the spirit of Prussian militarism used metaphor veiling a truth profound as that which underlies the Holy Trinity, and which is symbolised by the Sphinx. As vultures swooped to carrion, as harlots flocked to Babylon, so had the unredeemed souls of the universe descended upon Germany....
Thus his concept of evil was universal, and to those who sought to fix “responsibility” for the war upon this one or that he raised a protesting hand. No man made the Deluge.
By subtle means, insidious as the breath of nard, corruption of primeval sin was spread from race to race. By like means it must be combated, Truth must be disguised if it should penetrate to enemy darkness. A naked truth is rarely acceptable, or, as Don expressed it, “Truth does not strip well.” Paul discussed this aspect of the matter with Don and Thessaly one day. “We are all children,” he said. “If it were not for such picturesque people as Henry VIII and Charles II we should forget our history for lack of landmarks. Carefully selected words are the writer’s landmarks, and in remembering them one remembers the passage which they decorated. I can conjure up at will the entire philosophy of Buddha as epitomised in the Light of Asia by contemplation of such a landmark; Arnold’s expression for a sheep, ‘woolly mother.’ There are other words and phrases which the art of their users in the same way has magically endowed: ‘Totem’ is one of these. It is for me a Pharos instantly opening up the fairway to a great man’s philosophy. ‘Damascus,’ too, has such properties, and the phrase ‘cherry blossom in Japan’ bears me upon a magical carpet to a certain street in Yokohama and there unveils to me all the secrets of Japanese mysticism.”
“I quite see your point,” Don replied. “In the same way I have never ceased to regret that I was not born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. The possession of such a euphonious birthplace would have coloured all my life.”
“But like the Scotsman you would have revered your home from a distance,” said Thessaly. “I agree with you that it would have been an ideal birthplace if you had left it at so tender an age that you failed to recall its physical peculiarities. It is the same with women. In order that one should retain nothing but fairy memories of a woman — memories of some poetic name, of the perfume of roses, of beauty glimpsed through gossamer — it is important that one should not have lived with her. Herein lies the lasting glamour of the woman we have never possessed.”
II
The world had been discussing Paul Mario’s New Gospel as enunciated in The Gates for three weeks or more. On a bright morning when sunbeams filtered through the dust which partially curtained the windows of Guilder’s, and painted golden squares and rectangles upon the floor, Flamby stood where the light touched her elfin hair into torch-like flame, removing a very smart studio smock preparatory to departing to Regali’s for lunch. There was no one else in the small painting-room, except a wondrous-hued parrakeet upon a perch, from which he contemplated his portrait in oils, head knowingly tilted to one side, with solemn disapproval for Flamby had painted his bill too red and he knew it, apparently.
“Bad,” he remarked. “Damn bad.”
He belonged to Crozier, the artist famed for “sun-soaked flesh,” and Crozier’s pupils were all too familiar with this formula. It was so often upon Crozier’s lips that Lorenzo the Magnificent (the parrakeet) had acquired it perfectly.
“Quite right, Lorenzo,” said Flamby, throwing her smock on to a stool. “It’s blasted bad.”
“Damn bad,” corrected Lorenzo. “No guts.”
“I don’t agree with you there, Lorenzo. It’s your nose that I hate.”
“No sun!” screamed Lorenzo, excitedly. “The bloodsome thing never saw the sun!”
“Oh, please behave, Lorenzo, or I shall not share my sugar ration with you any more.”
“Sugar?” inquired Lorenzo, head on one side again.
Flamby held up a lump of sugar upon her small pink palm, and a silence of contentment immediately descended upon Lorenzo, only broken by the sound of munching. Flamby was just going out to wash the paint from her hands, for she always contrived to get nearly as much upon her fingers as upon the canvas, when a cheery voice cried: “Ha! caught you. Thought I might be too late.”
She turned, and there in the doorway stood Don. Less than three months had elapsed since his last leave and Flamby was intensely surprised to see him. She came forward with outstretched hands. “Oh, Don,” she cried. “How lovely! However did you manage it?”
An exquisite blush stained her cheeks, and her eyes lighted up happily. Glad surprises made her blush, and she was very sincerely glad as well as surprised to see Don. She had not even heard him approach. She had been wondering what Devonshire was like, for Paul was in Devonshire. Now as Don took both her hands and smiled in the old joyous way she thought that he looked ill, almost cadaverous, in spite of the tan which clung to his skin.
“Craft, Flamby, guile and the subtlety of the serpent. The best men get the worst leave.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Flamby, watching him in sudden anxiety. “You have been ill. Oh, don’t think you can pretend to me; I can see you have.”
“Bad,” remarked Lorenzo in cordial agreement. He had finished the sugar. “Damn bad.”
“What!” cried Don— “have you got old Crozier’s Lorenzo down here? Hullo! let us see how you have ‘percepted’ him.” He crossed to the easel, surveying Flamby’s painting critically. “Does Hammett still talk about ‘percepting the subject’ and ‘emerging the high-lights’ and ‘profunding the shadows’?”
“He does. You’re mean not to tell me.”
“What do you want me to tell you, Flamby? — that the drawing is magnificent and the painting brilliant except for the treatment of the bill, which is too brilliant.” He turned and met her reproachful gaze. “Perhaps I am mean, Flamby, to frighten you by not replying to your question, but really I am quite fit. I have had a touch of trench-fever or something, not enough to result in being sent home to hospital, and have now got a few days’ sick-leave to pull round after a course of weak gruel.”
“That’s very unusual, isn’t it?”
“What, Flamby?”
“To get home leave after treatment at a base hospital? I mean they might as well have sent you home in the first place.”
Don stared at her long and seriously. “Flamby,” he said, “you have been flirting with junior subalterns. No one above the rank of a second-lieutenant ever knew so much about King’s Regulations.”
“Own up, then.”
Don continued the serious stare. “Flamby,” he said, “your father would have been proud of you. You are a very clever girl. If art fails there is always the Bar. I am not advising you to take to drink; I refer to the law. Listen, Flamby, I was wrong to try to deceive you as well as the others. Besides, it is not necessary. You are unusual. I stopped a stray piece of shrapnel a fortnight after I went back and was sent to a hospital in Burton-on-Trent. The M.O.’s have a positive genius for sending men to spots remote from their homes and kindreds — appalling sentence. In this case it was a blessing in disguise. By some muddle or another my name was omitted from the casualty list, or rather it was printed as ‘Norton,’ and never corrected publicly. I accepted the kindness of the gods. Imagine my relief. I had pictured sisters and cousins and the dear old Aunt dragging themselves to Burton-on-Trent — and I am the only beer drinker in the family. I know you won’t betray my gruesome secret, Flamby.”
Flamby’s eyes were so misty that she averted her face. “Oh, Don,” she said unsteadily, “and I wrote to you only three days ago and thought you were safe.”
Don unbuttoned the left breast-pocket of his tunic and flourished a letter triumphantly. “Young Conroy
has been forwarding all my mail,” he explained, “and I have addressed my letters from nowhere in particular and sent them to him to be posted! Now, what about the guile and subtlety of the serpent! Let us take counsel with the great Severus Regali. I am allowed a little clear soup and an omelette, now.”
* * * * * *
Don and Flamby arrived late at Regali’s and were compelled to wait for a time in the little inner room. There were many familiar faces around the tables. Chauvin was there with Madame Rilette, the human geranium, and Hammett; Wildrake, editor of the Quartre d’Arts revue and the Baronne G., Paris’s smartest and most up-to-date lady novelist. The Baronne had been married four times. Her latest hobby was libel actions. Archibald Forester, renowned as an explorer of the psychic borderland, and wearing green tabs and a crown upon his shoulder-strap, discussed matters Alpine with an Italian artillery officer. On the whole the atmosphere was distinctly Savage that day. Flamby accepted a cigarette from Don and sat for awhile, pensive. With a jade-green velvet tam-o’-shanter to set off the coppery high-lights of her hair she was a picture worthy of the admiration which was discernible in Don’s eyes. Presently she said, “I found you out a long time ago.”
“Found me out?”
“Yes, found you out. I don’t know to this day how much I really receive from the War Office, because Mr. Nevin won’t tell me. He just muddles me up with a lot of figures — —”
“You have seen him, then?”
“Of course I have seen him. But one thing I do know. I owe you over a hundred pounds, and I am going to pay it!”
“But, Flamby,” said Don, a startled expression appearing upon his face, “you don’t owe it to me at all. You are wrong.”
Flamby studied him carefully for awhile. “I am going to send it to Mr. Nevin — I have told him so — and he can settle the matter.” She laid her hand on Don’s sleeve. “Don’t think me silly, or an ungrateful little beast,” she said, “but I can’t talk about it any more; it makes me want to cry. Did you know that Chauvin got me a commission from the War Office propaganda people to do pictures of horses and mules and things?”
“Yes,” replied Don, guiltily. But to his great relief Flamby did not accuse him of being concerned in the matter.
“I felt a rotten little slacker,” explained Flamby; “I wrote and told you so. Did you get the letter?”
“Of course. Surely I replied?”
“I don’t remember if you did, but I told Chauvin and he recommended my work to them and they said I could do twelve drawings. They accepted the first three I did, but rejected the fourth, which both Hammett and Chauvin thought the best.”
“Probably it was. That was why they rejected it. But about this money — —”
“Please,” pleaded Flamby.
Don looked into her eyes and was silenced. He suppressed a sigh. “Have you seen Paul lately?” he asked.
“No. He is away. His book frightens me.”
“Frightens you,” said Don, staring curiously. “In what way?”
“I don’t know that I can explain. I feel afraid for him.”
“For Paul?”
“Yes.”
“Because he has seen the truth?”
Flamby hesitated. “It must be awful for a doctor who has specialised in some dreadful disease to find — —”
“That he suffers from it? This is a common thing with specialists.” Don spoke almost heedlessly, but had no sooner spoken than he became aware of the peculiar significance of his words. He sat staring silently at Flamby. Before he had time for further speech Regali attended in person to announce that places were vacant at one of the tables. This table Don and Flamby shared with a lady wearing her hair dressed in imitation of a yellow dahlia, and with a prominent colourist who was devoting his life to dissipating the popular delusion about trees being green. He was gradually educating the world to comprehend that trees were not green but blue. He had a very long nose and ate French mustard with his macaroni. The conversation became cubical and coloured.
“I maintain,” said the colourist, who was fiercely cynical, as might have been anticipated of one who consumed such large quantities of mustard, “that humanity is akin to the worm. The myth of Psyche and the idea that we possess souls arose simply out of the contemplation of colour by some primitive sensitive. Very delicately coloured young girls were responsible for the legend, but humanity in the bulk is colourless and therefore soulless. Large public gatherings fill me with intense personal disgust. From Nelson’s point of view, a popular demonstration in Trafalgar Square must unpleasantly resemble a box of bait.”
“Clearly you have never loved,” said Don. “One day some misguided woman may marry you. You will awaken to the discovery that she is different from common humanity.”
“Nearly every man considers his own wife to be different from other women — until the third or fourth, day of the honeymoon.”
He was incorrigible; French mustard had embittered his life. “Some men are even more gross than women,” he declared thoughtfully. “Cubically they are stronger, but their colouring is less delicate.”
His yellow-haired companion watched him with limpid faithful brown eyes, hanging upon his words as upon the pronouncements of a Cumaean oracle. Having concluded his luncheon with a piece of cheese liberally coated in mustard he rose, shaking his head sadly.
“Don’t shake your head like that,” Don implored him. “I can hear your brains rattling.”
But smileless, the cynic departed, and Flamby looked after him without regret. “If he painted as much as he talked,” she said, “he would have to hire a railway station to show his pictures.”
“Yes, or the offices of the Food Controller. His conversation is intensely interesting, but it doesn’t mean anything. I have always suspected him of keeping coal in his bath.”
Orlando James came in, standing just by the doorway, one hand resting upon his hip whilst he gnawed the nails of the other with his fine white teeth. He wore the colours of a regiment with which he had served for a time, and a silver badge on the right lapel of his tweed jacket. Presently, perceiving Flamby, he advanced to the table at which she was seated with Don. He had all the arrogance of acknowledged superiority. “Hullo, kid,” he said, dropping into the chair vacated by the cynical one. “How do, Courtier. You look a bit cheap — been gassed?”
“No,” replied Don; “merely a stiff neck due to sleeping with my head above the parapet.”
James stared dully, continuing to bite his nails. “When are you going back?”
“As soon as my batman wires me that the weather has improved.”
“Have you finished lunch? Let’s split a bottle of wine before you go.”
“No bottle of wine for me,” said Flamby, “unless you want the police in. One glass of wine and you’d be ashamed to know me.” She was uncomfortably conscious of a certain tension which the presence of James had created. “Isn’t it time we started?” she asked, turning to Don. “Mrs. Chumley will be expecting us.”
“Ah!” cried Don gratefully, glancing at his watch. “Of course she will. Where is the waiter?”
* * * * * *
“You don’t like James, do you?” said Flamby, as the car approached The Hostel.
“No. Vanity in a man is ridiculous, and I always endeavour to avoid ridiculous people. James is a clever painter, but a very stupid fellow. Seeing him to-day reminds me of something I had meant to ask you, Flamby. Just before I last came on leave you wrote at Paul’s request to enquire if I considered it wise that you should go about with James and we discussed the point whilst I was home. You remember, no doubt?”
Flamby nodded. Her expression was very pensive. “Then I wrote and asked if you minded my seeing him occasionally for a special purpose, and you wrote back that you had every confidence in my discretion, which pleased me very much. Now I suppose you want to know what the special purpose was?”
“Not unless you wish to tell me, Flamby.”
“I do wish to te
ll you,” said Flamby slowly. “That was why I suggested coming here, because I knew all the time of course that Mrs. Chumley was away.”
They entered The Hostel, deserted as it usually was at that hour of the day, passing into the courtyard, which already was gay with the flowers of early spring. The window-boxes, too, and vases within open casements splashed patches of colour upon the old-world canvas, the yellow and purple of crocus and daffodil, modest star-blue of forget-me-nots and the varied tints of sweet hyacinth. Flamby’s tiny house, which Mrs. Chumley called “the squirrel’s nest,” was fragrant with roses, for Flamby’s taste in flowers was extravagant, and she regularly exhausted the stocks of the local florist. A huge basket of white roses stood upon a side-table, a card attached. Flamby glanced at the card. “James again,” she said. “He’s some use in the world after all.” She composedly filled a jug with water and placed the flowers in it until she should have time to arrange them.
“Is Chauvin expecting you this afternoon?” asked Don.
“No, not to-day. I love Chauvin, but I don’t think I shall be able to stay on with him if I am to finish the other eight designs for the War Office people in time. Please light your pipe. Would you like a drink? I’ve got all sorts of things to drink.”
“No, thank you, Flamby. We can go out to tea presently.”
“No, let’s have tea here. I have some gorgeous cakes I got at Fullers’ this morning.”
“Right. Better still. I will help.”
Flamby tossed her tam-o’-shanter on to a chair, slapped the pockets of Don’s tunic in quest of his cigarette-case, found it, took out and lighted a cigarette, and then curled herself up in a corner of the settee, hugging her knees. “Paul thinks I’m fast,” she said.
