Simon the Jester

CHAPTER XXI

“The Lord will find a way out of the dilemma,” said I confidently to myself as I neared Cadogan Gardens two days after the revelatory drive. “Lola is in love with me and I am in love with Lola, and there is nothing to keep us apart but my pride over a matter of a few ha'-pence.” I felt peculiarly jaunty. I had just posted to Finch the last of the articles I had agreed to write for his reactionary review, and only a couple of articles for another journal remained to be written in order to complete my literary engagements. Soon I should be out of the House of Bondage in which I had been a slave, at first willingly and now rebelliously, from my cradle. The great wide world with its infinite opportunities for development received my liberated spirit. I had broken the shackles of caste. I had thrown off the perfumed garments of epicureanism, the vesture of my servitude. My emotions, once stifled in the enervating atmosphere, now awake fresh and strong in the free air. I was elemental—the man wanting the woman; and I was happy because I knew I was going to get her. Such must be the state of being of a dragonfly on a sunny day. And—shall I confess it?—I had obeyed the dragon-fly's instinct and attired myself in the most resplendent raiment in my wardrobe. My morning coat was still irreproachable, my patent leather boots still gleamed, and having had some business in Piccadilly I had stepped into my hatter's and emerged with my silk hat newly ironed. I positively strutted along the pavement.

For two days I had not seen her or heard from her or written to her. I had scrupulously respected her wishes, foolish though they were. Now I was on my way to convince her that my love was not a moment's surge of the blood on a spring afternoon. I would take her into my arms at once, after the way of men, and she, after the way of women, would yield adorably. I had no doubt of it. I tasted in anticipation the bliss of that first embrace as if I had never kissed a woman in my life. And, indeed, what woman had I kissed with the passion that now ran through my veins? In that embrace all the ghosts of the past women would be laid for ever and a big and lusty future would make glorious beginning. “By Heaven,” I cried, almost articulately, “with the splendour of the world at my command why should I not write plays, novels, poems, rhapsodies, so as to tell the blind, groping, loveless people what it is like?

“Take me up to Madame Brandt!” said I to the lift-porter. “Madame Brandt is not in town, sir,” said the man.

I looked at him open-mouthed. “Not in town?”

“I think she has gone abroad, sir. She left with a lot of luggage yesterday, and her maid, and now the flat is shut up.”

“Impossible!” I cried aghast.

The porter smiled. “I can only tell you what has happened, sir.”

“Where has she gone to?”

“I couldn't say, sir.”

“Her letters? Has she left no address to which they are to be forwarded?”

“Not with me, sir.”

“Did she say when she was coming back?”

“No, sir. But she dismissed her cook with a month's wages, so it seems as though she was gone for a good spell.”

“What time yesterday did she leave?”

“After lunch. The cabman was to drive her to Victoria—London, Chatham and Dover Railway.”

“That looks like the 2.20 to Paris,” said I.

But the lift-porter knew nothing of this. He had given me all the information in his power. I thanked him and went out into the sunshine a blinking, dazed, bewildered and piteously crushed man.

She had gone, without drum or trumpet, maid and baggage and all, having dismissed her cook and shut up the flat. It was incredible. I wandered aimlessly about Chelsea trying to make up my mind what to do. Should I go to Paris and bring her back by main force? But how did I know that she had gone to Paris? And if she was there how could I discover her address? Suddenly an idea struck me. She would not have left Quast and the cattery in the same unceremonious fashion to get on as best they might. She would have given Quast money and directions. At any rate, he would know more than the lift-porter of the mansions. I decided to go to him forthwith.

By means of trains and omnibuses I arrived at the house in the little street off Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell, where the maker of gymnastic appliances had his being. I knocked at the door. A grubby man appeared. I inquired for Quast.

Quast had left that morning in a van, taking his cages of cats with him. He had gone abroad and was never coming back again, not if he knew it, said the grubby man. The cats were poison and Quast was a low-down foreigner, and it would cost him a year's rent to put the place in order again. Whereupon he slammed the door in my face and left me disconsolate on the doorstep.

The only other person with whom I knew Lola to be on friendly terms was Sir Joshua Oldfield. I entered the first public telephone office I came to and rang him up. He had not seen Lola for a week, and had heard nothing from her relating to her sudden departure. I went sadly home to my bird-cage in Victoria Street, feeling that now at last the abomination of desolation had overspread my life.

Why had she gone? What was the meaning of it? Why not a line of explanation? And the simultaneous disappearance of Quast and the cats—what did that betoken? Had she been summoned, for any reason, to the Maison de Sante, where Anastasius Papadopoulos was incarcerated? If so, why this secrecy? Why should Lola of all people side with Destiny and make a greater Tom Fool of me than ever? This could be no other than the final jest.

I do not care to remember what I did and said in the privacy of my little room. There are things a man locks away even from himself.

I was in the midst of my misery when the bell of my tiny flat rang. I opened the door and found my sister Agatha smiling on the threshold.

“Hallo!” said I, gazing at her stupidly.

“You're not effusive in your welcome, my dear Simon,” she remarked. “Won't you ask me to come in?”

“By all means,” said I. “Come in!”

She entered and looked round my little sitting-room. “What a pill-box in the sky! I had no idea it was as tiny as this. I think I shall call you Saint Simon Stylites.”

I was in no mood for Agatha. I bowed ironically and inquired to what I owed the honour of the visit.

“I want you to do me a favour—a great favour. I'm dying to see the new dances at the Palace Theatre. They say they dance on everything except their feet. I've got a box. Tom promised to take me. Now he finds he can't. I've telephoned all over the place for something uncompromising in or out of trousers to accompany me and I can't get hold of anybody. So I've come to you.”

“I'm vastly flattered!” said I.

She dismissed my sarcasm with bird-like impatience.

“Don't be silly. If I had thought you would like it, I should have come to you first. I didn't want to bore you. But I did think you would pull me out of a hole.”

“What's a hole?” I asked.

“I've paid for a box and I can't go by myself. How can I? Do take me, there's a dear.”

“I'm afraid I'm too dull for haunts of merriment,” said I.

She regarded me reproachfully.

“It isn't often I ask you to put yourself out for me. The last time was when I asked you to be the baby's godfather. And a pretty godfather you've been. I bet you anything you don't remember the name.”

“I do,” said I.

“What's it then?”

“It's—it's——” I snapped my fingers. The brat's name had for the moment gone out of my distracted head. She broke into a laugh and ran her arm through mine.

“Dorcas.”

“Yes, of course—Dorcas. I was going to say so.”

“Then you were going to say wrong, for it's Dorothy. Now you must come—for the sake of penance.”

“I'll do anything you please!” I cried in desperation, “so long as you'll not talk to me of my own affairs and will let me sit as glum as ever I choose.”

Then for the first time she manifested some interest in my mood. She put her head to one side and scanned my face narrowly.

“What's the matter, Simon?”

“I've absorbed too much life the last few days,” said I, “and now I've got indigestion.”

“I'm sorry, dear old boy, whatever it is,” she said affectionately. “Come round and dine at 7.30, and I promise not to worry you.”

What could I do? I accepted. The alternative to procuring Agatha an evening's amusement was pacing up and down my bird-cage and beating my wings (figuratively) and perhaps my head (literally) against the bars.

“It's awfully sweet of you,” said Agatha. “Now I'll rush home and dress.”

I accompanied her down the lift to the front door, and attended her to her carriage.

“I'll do you a good turn some day, dear,” she said as she drove off.

I rather flatter myself that Agatha had no reason to complain of my dulness at dinner. In my converse with her I was faced by various alternatives. I might lay bare my heart, tell her of my love for Lola and my bewildered despair at her desertion; this I knew she would no more understand than if I had proclaimed a mad passion for a young lady who had waited on me at a tea-shop, or for a cassowary at the Zoo; even the best and most affectionate of sisters have their sympathetic limitations. I might have maintained a mysterious and Byronic gloom; this would have been sheer bad manners. I might have attributed my lack of spontaneous gaiety to toothache or stomach-ache; this would have aroused sisterly and matronly sympathies, and I should have had the devil's own job to escape from the house unpoisoned by the nostrums that lurk in the medicine chest of every well-conducted family. Agatha, I knew, had a peculiarly Borgiaesque equipment. Lastly, there was the worldly device, which I adopted, of dissimulating the furnace of my affliction beneath a smiling exterior. Agatha, therefore, found me an entertaining guest and drove me to the Palace Theatre in high good humour.

There, however, I could resign my role of entertainer in favour of the professionals on the stage. I sat back in my corner of the box and gave myself up to my harassing concerns. Young ladies warbled, comic acrobats squirted siphons at each other and kicked each other in the stomach, jugglers threw plates and brass balls with dizzying skill, the famous dancers gyrated pyrotechnically, the house applauded with delight, Agatha laughed and chuckled and clapped her hands and I remained silent, unnoticed and unnoticing in my reflective corner, longing for the foolery to end. Where was Lola? Why had she forsaken me? What remedy, in the fiend's name, was there for this heart torture within me? The most excruciating agonies of the little pain inside were child's play to this. I bit my lips so as not to groan aloud and contorted my features into the semblance of a smile.

During a momentary interval there came a knock at the box door. I said, “Come in!” The door opened, and there, to my utter amazement, stood Dale Kynnersley—Dale, sleek, alert, smiling, attired in the very latest nicety of evening dress affected by contemporary youth—Dale such as I knew and loved but six months ago.

He came forward to Agatha, who was little less astounded than myself.

“How d'ye do, Lady Durrell? I'm in the stalls with Harry Essendale. I tried to catch your eye, but couldn't. So I thought I'd come up.” He turned to me with frank outstretched hand, “How do, Simon?”

I grasped his hand and murmured something unintelligible. The thing was so extraordinary, so unexpected that my wits went wandering. Dale carried off the situation lightly. It was he who was the man of the world, and I the unresourceful stumbler.

“He's looking ripping, isn't he, Lady Durrell? I met old Oldfield the other day, and he was raving about your case. The thing has never been done before. Says they're going mad over your chap in Paris—they've given him medals and wreaths and decorations till he goes about like a prize bull at a fair. By Jove, it's good to see you again.”

“You might have taken an earlier opportunity,” Agatha remarked with some acidity.

“So I might,” retorted Dale blandly; “but when a man's a born ass it takes him some time to cultivate sense! I've been wanting to see you for a long time, Simon—and to-night I just couldn't resist it. You don't want to kick me out?”

“Heaven forbid,” said I, somewhat brokenly, for the welcome sight of his face and the sound of his voice aroused emotions which even now I do not care to analyse. “It was generous of you to come up.”

He coloured. “Rot!” said he, in his breezy way. “Hallo! The curtain's going up. What's the next item? Oh, those fool dogs!”

“I adore performing dogs!” said Agatha, looking toward the stage.

He turned to me. “Do you?”

The last thing on earth I desired to behold at that moment was a performing animal. My sensitiveness led me to suspect a quizzical look in Dale's eye. Fortunately, he did not wait for my answer, but went on in a boyish attempt to appease Agatha.

“I don't despise them, you know, Lady Durrell, but I've seen them twice before. They're really rather good. There's a football match at the end which is quite exciting.”

“Oh, the beauties!” cried Agatha over her shoulder as the dogs trotted on the stage. I nodded an acknowledgment of the remark, and she plunged into rapt contemplation of the act. Dale and I stood at the back of the box. Suddenly he whispered:

“Come out into the corridor. I've something to say to you.”

“Certainly,” said I, and followed him out of the box.

He thrust his hands into his pockets and looked at me with the defiant and you-be-damned air of the young Briton who was about to commit a gracious action. I knew what he was going to say. I could tell by his manner. I dreaded it, and yet I loved him for it.

“Why say anything, my dear boy?” I asked. “You want to be friends with me again, and God knows I want to be friends again with you. Why talk?”

“I've got to get if off my chest,” said he, in his so familiar vernacular. “I want to tell you that I've been every end of a silly ass and I want you to forgive me.”

I vow I have never felt so miserably guilty towards any human being as I did at that moment. I have never felt such a smug-faced hypocrite. It was a humiliating position. I had inflicted on him a most grievous wrong, and here he was pleading for forgiveness. I could not pronounce the words of pardon. He misinterpreted my silence.

“I know I've behaved rottenly to you since you've been back, but the first step's always so difficult. You mustn't bear a grudge against me.”

“My dear boy!” I cried, my hand on his shoulder, touched to the heart by his simple generosity, “don't let us talk of grudges and forgiveness. All I want to know is whether you're contented?”

“Contented?” he cried. “I should just think I am. I'm the happiest ass that doesn't eat thistles!”

“Explain yourself, my dear Dale,” said I, relapsing into my old manner.

“I'm going to marry Maisie Ellerton.”

I took him by the arm and dragged him inside the box.

“Agatha,” said I, “leave those confounded dogs for a moment and attend to serious matters. This young man has not come up to see either of us, but to obtain our congratulations. He's going to marry Maisie Ellerton.”

“Tell me all about it,” said Agatha intensely interested.

A load of responsibility rolled off my shoulders like Christian's pack. I looked at the dog football match with the interest of a Sheffield puddler at a Cup-tie, and clapped my hands.

An hour or so later after we had seen Agatha home, and Dale had incidentally chucked Lord Essendale (the phrase is his own), we were sitting over whisky and soda and cigars in my Victoria Street flat. The ingenuousness of youth had insisted on this prolongation of our meeting. He had a thousand things to tell me. They chiefly consisted in a reiteration of the statement that he had been a rampant and unimagined silly ass, and that Maisie, who knew the whole lunatic story, was a brick, and a million times too good for him. When he entered my humble lodging he looked round in a bewildered manner.

“Why on earth are you living in this mouse-trap?”

“Agatha calls it a pill-box. I call it a bird-cage. I live here, my dear boy, because it is the utmost I can afford.”

“Rot! I've been your private secretary and know what your income is.”

I sighed heavily. I shall have to get a leaflet printed setting out the causes that led to my change of fortune. Then I can hand it to such of my friends as manifest surprise.

Indeed, I had grown so used to the story of my lamentable pursuit of the eumoirous that I rattled it off mechanically after the manner of the sturdy beggar telling his mendacious tale of undeserved misfortune. To Dale, however, it was fresh. He listened to it open-eyed. When I had concluded, he brought his hand down on the arm of the chair.

“By Jove, you're splendid! I always said you were. Just splendid!”

He gulped down half a tumbler of whisky and soda to hide his feelings.

“And you've been doing all this while I've been making a howling fool of myself! Look here, Simon, you were right all along the line—from the very first when you tackled me about Lola. Do you remember?”

“Why refer to it?” I asked.

“I must!” he burst in quickly. “I've been longing to put myself square with you. By the way, where is Lola?”

“I don't know,” said I with grim truthfulness.

“Don't know? Has she vanished?”

“Yes,” said I.

“That's the end of it, I suppose. Poor Lola! She was an awfully good sort you know!” said Dale, “and I won't deny I was hit. That's when I came such a cropper. But I realise now how right you were. I was just caught by the senses, nothing else; and when she wrote to say it was all off between us my vanity suffered—suffered damnably, old chap. I lost the election through it. Didn't attend to business. That brought me to my senses. Then Essendale took me away yachting, and I had a quiet time to think; and after that I somehow took to seeing more of Maisie. You know how things happen. And I'm jolly grateful to you, old chap. You've saved me from God knows what complications! After all, good sort as Lola is, it's rot for a man to go outside his own class, isn't it?”

“It depends upon the man—and also the woman,” said I, beginning to derive peculiar torture from the conversation.

Dale shook his wise head. “It never comes off,” said he. After a pause he laughed aloud. “Don't you remember the lecture you gave me? My word, you did talk! You produced a string of ghastly instances where the experiment had failed. Let me see, who was there, Paget, Merridew, Bullen. Ha! Ha! No, I'm well out of it, old chap—thanks to you.”

“If any good has come of this sorry business,” said I gravely, “I'm only too grateful to Providence.”

He caught the seriousness of my tone.

“I didn't want to touch on that side of it,” he said awkwardly. “I know what an infernal time you had! It must have been Gehenna. I realise now that it was on my account, and so I can never do enough to show my gratitude.”

He finished his glass of whisky and walked about the tiny room.

“What has always licked me,” he said at length, “is why she never told me she was married. It's so curious, for she was as straight as they make them. It's devilish odd!”

“Yes,” I assented wearily, for every word of this talk was a new pain. “Devilish odd!”

“I suppose it's a question of class again.”

“Or sex,” said I.

“What has sex to do with being straight?”

“Everything,” said I.

“Rot!” said Dale.

I sighed. “I wish your dialectical vocabulary were not so limited.”

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

“Still the same old Simon. It does my heart good to hear you. May I have another whisky?”

I took advantage of this break to change the conversation. He had told me nothing of his own affairs save that he was engaged to Maisie Ellerton.

“Heavens!” cried he. “Isn't that enough?”

“An engagement isn't an occupation.”

“Isn't it, by Jove?” He laughed boyishly. “I manage, however, to squeeze in a bit of work now and then. The mater has always got plenty on hand for me, and I do things for Raggles. He has been awfully decent. The first time I met him or any of the chiefs after the election I was in a blue funk. But no one seemed to blame me; they all said they were sorry; and now Raggles is looking out for a constituency for me to nurse for the next General Election. Then things will hum, I promise you!”

He waved his cigar with the air of a young paladin about to conquer the world. In spite of my own depression, I could not help smiling with gladness at the sight of him. With his extravagantly cut waistcoat, his elaborately exquisite white tie, his perfectly fitting evening clothes, with his supple ease of body, his charming manner, the preposterous fellow made as gallant a show as any ruffling blade in powder and red-heeled shoes. He had acquired, too, an extra touch of manhood since I had seen him last. I felt proud of him, conscious that to the making of him I had to some small degree contributed.

“You must come out and lunch with Maisie and me one day this week,” said he. “She would love to see you.”

“Wait till you're married,” said I, “and then we'll consider it. At present Maisie is under the social dominion of her parents.”

“Well—what of it?”

“Just that,” said I.

Then the truth dawned on him. He grew excited and said it was damnable. He wasn't going to stand by and see people believe a lot of scandalous lies about me. He had no idea people had given me the cold shoulder. He would jolly well (such were his words) take a something (I forget the adjective) megaphone and trumpet about society what a splendid fellow I was.

“I'll tell everybody the whole silly-ass story about myself from beginning to end,” he declared.

I checked him. “You're very generous, my dear boy,” said I, “but you'll do me a favour by letting folks believe what they like.” And then I explained, as delicately as I could, how his sudden championship could be of little advantage to me, and might do him considerable harm.

In his impetuous manner he cut short my carefully-expressed argument.

“Rubbish! Heaps of people I know are already convinced that I was keeping Lola Brandt and that you took her from me in the ordinary vulgar way—”

“Yes, yes,” I interrupted, shrinking. “That's why I order you, in God's name, to leave the whole thing alone.”

“But confound it, man! I've come out of it all right, why shouldn't you? Even supposing Lola was a loose woman—”

I threw up my hand. “Stop!”

He looked disconcerted for a moment.

“We know she isn't, but for the sake of argument—”

“Don't argue,” said I. “Let us drop it.”

“But hang it all!” he shouted in desperation. “Can't I do something! Can't I go and kick somebody?”

I lost my self-control. I rose and put both my hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eyes.

“You can kick anybody you please whom you hear breathe a word against the honour and purity of Madame Lola Brandt.”

Then I walked away, knowing I had betrayed myself, and tried to light a cigar with fingers that shook. There was a pause. Dale stood with his back to the fireplace, one foot on the fender. The cigar took some lighting. The pause grew irksome.

“My regard for Madame Brandt,” said I at last, “is such that I don't wish to discuss her with any one.” I looked at Dale and met his keen eyes fixed on me. The faintest shadow of a smile played about his mouth.

“Very well,” said he dryly, “we won't discuss her. But all the same, my dear Simon, I can't help being interested in her; and as you're obviously the same, it seems rather curious that you don't know where she is.”

“Do you doubt me?” I asked, somewhat staggered by his tone.

“Good Heaven's, no! But if she has disappeared, I'm convinced that something has happened which I know nothing of. Of course, it's none of my business.”

There was a new and startling note of assurance in his voice. Certainly he had developed during the past few months. What I had done, Heaven only knows. Misfortune, which is supposed to be formative of character, seemed to have turned mine into pie. How can I otherwise account for my not checking the lunatic impulse that prompted my next words.

“Well, something has happened,” said I, “and if we're to be friends, you had better know it. Two days ago, for the first time, I told Madame Brandt that I loved her. This very afternoon I went to get her answer to my question—would she marry me?—and I found that she had disappeared without leaving any address behind her. So whenever you hear her name mentioned you can just tell everybody that she's the one woman in the whole wide world I want to marry.”

“Poor old Simon,” said Dale. “Poor old chap.”

“That's exactly how things stand.”

“Lord, who would have thought it?”

“How I've borne with you talking about her all this evening the devil only knows,” I cried. “You've driven me half crazy.”

“You should have told me to shut up.”

“I did.”

“Poor old Simon. I'm so sorry—but I had no idea you had fallen in love with her.”

“Fallen in love!” said I, losing my head. “She's the only woman on God's earth I've ever cared for. I want her as I've wanted nothing in the universe before.”

“And you've come to care for her as much as that?” he said sympathetically. “Poor old Simon.”

“Why the devil shouldn't I?” I shouted, nettled by his “poor old Simons.”

“Lola Brandt is hardly of your class,” said Dale.

I broke out furiously. “Damn class! I've had enough of it. I'm going to take my life into my own hands and do what I like with it. I'm going to choose my mate without any reference to society. I've cut myself adrift from society. It can go hang. Lola Brandt is a woman worth any man's loving. She is a woman in a million. You know nothing whatever about her.”

The last words were scarcely out of my mouth when an echo from the distance came and, as it were, banged at my ears. Dale himself had shrieked them at me in exactly the same tone with reference to the same woman. I stopped short and looked at him for a moment rather stupidly. Then the imp of humour, who for some time had deserted me, flew to my side and tickled my brain. I broke into a chuckle, somewhat hysterical I must admit, and then, throwing myself into an arm-chair, gave way to uncontrollable laughter.

The scare of the unexpected rose in Dale's eyes.

“Why, what on earth is the matter?”

“Can't you see?” I cried, as far as the paroxysms of my mirth would let me. “Can't you see how exquisitely ludicrous the whole thing has been from beginning to end? Don't you realise that you and I are playing the same scene as we played months ago in my library, with the only difference that we have changed roles? I'm the raving, infatuated youth, and you're the grave and reverend mentor. Don't you see? Don't you see?”

“I can't see anything to laugh at,” said Dale sturdily.

And he couldn't. There are thousands of bright, flame-like human beings constituted like that. Life spreads out before them one of its most side-splitting, topsy-turvy farces and they see in it nothing to laugh at.

To Dale the affair had been as serious and lacking in the fantastic as the measles. He had got over the disease and now was exceedingly sorry to perceive that I had caught it in my turn.

“It isn't funny a bit,” he continued. “It's quite natural. I see it all now. You cut me out from the very first. You didn't mean to—you never thought of it. But what chance had I against you? I was a young ass and you were a brilliant man of the world. I bear you no grudge. You played the game in that way. Then things happened—and at last you've fallen in love with her—and now just at the critical moment she has gone off into space. It must be devilish painful for you, if you ask me.”

“Oh, Dale,” said I, shaking my head, “the only fitting end to the farce would be if you wandered over Europe to find and bring her back to me.”

“I don't know about that,” said he, “because I'm engaged, and that, as I said, gives me occupation; but if I can do anything practicable, my dear old Simon, you've only got to send for me.”

He pulled out his watch.

“My hat!” he exclaimed. “It's past two o'clock.”