“We shall have to stop the night at Brindisi,” I was saying. “Then we can get the Lloyd Trestino in the morning. What a lot you’re smoking!”
We had just returned from a tea and cocktail party. George was standing at the looking glass gazing at himself in his new clothes.
“You know, he has made this suit rather well, Ernest. It’s about the only thing I learned at home—smoking, I mean. I used to go up to the saddle room with Byng.”
“You haven’t told me what you thought of the party.”
“Ernest, why are all your friends being so sweet to me? Is it just because I’m going to be a duke?”
“I expect that makes a difference with some of them—Julia for instance. She said you looked so fugitive.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t like Julia much. No, I mean Peter and that funny Mr. Oliphant.”
“I think they like you.”
“How odd!” He looked at himself in the glass again. “D’you know, I’ll tell you something I’ve been thinking all these last few days. I don’t believe I really am mad at all. It’s only at home I feel so different from everyone else. Of course I don’t know much . . . I’ve been thinking, d’you think it can be grandfather and the aunts who are mad, all the time?”
“They’re certainly getting old.”
“No, mad. I can remember some awfully dotty things they’ve done at one time or another. Last summer Aunt Gertrude swore there was a swarm of bees under her bed and had all the gardeners up with smoke and things. She refused to get out of bed until the bees were gone—and there weren’t any there. And then there was the time grandfather made a wreath of strawberry leaves and danced round the garden singing ‘Cook’s son, Dook’s son, son of a belted earl.’ It didn’t strike me at the time, but that was an odd thing to do, wasn’t it? Anyway, I shan’t see them again for months and months. Oh, Ernest, it’s too wonderful. You don’t think the sleeves are too tight, do you? Are people black in Athens?”
“Not coal black—mostly Jews and undergraduates.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, Peter’s an undergraduate. I was one until a few weeks ago.”
“I say, do you think people will take me for an undergraduate?”
IV
It seems to me sometimes that Nature, like a lazy author, will round off abruptly into a short story what she obviously intended to be the opening of a novel.
Two letters arrived for me by the post next morning. One was from my bank returning the Duke’s cheque for £150 marked “Payment Stopped”; the other from a firm of solicitors enjoining me that they, or rather one of them, would call upon me that morning in connection with the Duke of Vanburgh’s business. I took them in to George.
All he said was: “I had a sort of feeling that this was all too good to last.”
The lawyer duly arrived. He seemed displeased that neither of us was dressed. He intimated that he wished to speak to me alone.
His Grace, he said, had altered his plans for his grandson. He no longer wished him to go abroad. Of course, between ourselves we had to admit that the boy was not quite sane . . . very sad . . . these old families . . . putting me in such a difficult position in case anything happened. . . . His Grace had talked it over with Lady Emily and Lady Gertrude. . . . It really was too dangerous an experiment . . . besides, they had especially kept the boy shut away because they did not want the world to know . . . discredit on a great name . . . and, of course, if he went about, people were bound to talk. It was not strictly his business to discuss the wisdom of his client’s decision, but, again between ourselves, he had been very much surprised that his Grace had ever considered letting the boy leave home. . . . Later perhaps, but not yet . . . he would always need watching. And of course there was a good deal of money coming to him. Strictly between ourselves, his Grace was a great deal better off than people supposed . . . town property . . . death duties . . . keeping up Stayle . . . and so on.
He was instructed to pay the expenses incurred up to date and to give me three months’ salary . . . most generous of his Grace, no legal obligation. . . . As to the clothes . . . we really seemed rather to have exceeded his Grace’s instructions. Still, no doubt all the things that had not been specially made could be returned to the shops. He would give instructions about that . . . he was himself to take Lord Stayle back to his grandfather.
And an hour later they left.
“It’s been a marvellous four days,” said George; and then: “Anyway, I shall be twenty-one in three years and I shall have my mother’s money then. I think it’s rather a shame sending back those ties though. Don’t you think I could keep one or two?”
Five minutes later Julia rang up to ask us to luncheon.
THE MANAGER OF
“THE KREMLIN”
This story was told me in Paris very early in the morning by the manager of a famous night club, and I am fairly certain that it is true.
I shall not tell you the real name of the manager or of his club, because it is not the sort of advertisement he would like, but I will call them, instead, Boris and “The Kremlin.”
“The Kremlin” occupies a position of its own.
Your hat and coat are taken at the door by a perfectly genuine Cossack of ferocious appearance; he wears riding boots and spurs, and the parts of his face that are not hidden by beard are cut and scarred like that of a pre-war German student.
The interior is hung with rugs and red, woven stuff to represent a tent. There is a very good tsigain band playing gipsy music, and a very good jazz-band which plays when people want to dance.
The waiters are chosen for their height. They wear magnificent Russian liveries, and carry round flaming skewers on which are spitted onions between rounds of meat. Most of them are ex-officers of the Imperial Guard.
Boris, the manager, is quite a young man; he is 6 ft. 5 1/2 in. in height. He wears a Russian silk blouse, loose trousers and top boots, and goes from table to table seeing that everything is all right.
From two in the morning until dawn “The Kremlin” is invariably full, and the American visitors, looking wistfully at their bills, often remark that Boris must be “making a good thing out of it.” So he is.
Fashions change very quickly in Montmartre, but if his present popularity lasts for another season, he talks of retiring to a villa on the Riviera.
One Saturday night, or rather a Sunday morning, Boris did me the honour of coming to sit at my table and take a glass of wine with me. It was then that Boris told his story.
His father was a general, and when the war broke out Boris was a cadet at the military academy.
He was too young to fight, and was forced to watch, from behind the lines, the collapse of the Imperial Government.
Then came the confused period when the Great War was over, and various scattered remnants of the royalist army, with half-hearted support from their former allies, were engaged in a losing fight against the Bolshevists.
Boris was eighteen years old. His father had been killed and his mother had already escaped to America.
The military academy was being closed down, and with several of his fellow cadets Boris decided to join the last royalist army which, under Kolchak, was holding the Bolshevists at bay in Siberia.
It was a very odd kind of army. There were dismounted cavalry and sailors who had left their ships, officers whose regiments had mutinied, frontier garrisons and aides-de-camp, veterans of the Russo-Japanese war, and boys like Boris who were seeing action for the first time.
Besides these, there were units from the Allied Powers, who seemed to have been sent there by their capricious Governments and forgotten; there was a corps of British engineers and some French artillery; there were also liaison officers and military attachés to the General Headquarters Staff.
Among the latter was a French cavalry officer a few years older than Boris. To most educated Russians before the war French was as familiar as their own language.
Boris and the French
attaché became close friends. They used to smoke together and talk of Moscow and Paris before the war.
As the weeks passed it became clear that Kolchak’s campaign could end in nothing but disaster.
Eventually a council of officers decided that the only course open was to break through to the east coast and attempt to escape to Europe.
A force had to be left behind to cover the retreat, and Boris and his French friend found themselves detailed to remain with this rearguard. In the action which followed, the small covering force was completely routed.
Alone among the officers Boris and his friend escaped with their lives, but their condition was almost desperate.
Their baggage was lost and they found themselves isolated in a waste land, patrolled by enemy troops and inhabited by savage Asiatic tribesmen.
Left to himself, the Frenchman’s chances of escape were negligible, but a certain prestige still attached to the uniform of a Russian officer in the outlying villages.
Boris lent him his military overcoat to cover his uniform, and together they struggled through the snow, begging their way to the frontier.
Eventually they arrived in Japanese territory. Here all Russians were suspect, and it devolved on the Frenchman to get them safe conduct to the nearest French Consulate.
Boris’s chief aim now was to join his mother in America. His friend had to return to report himself in Paris, so here they parted.
They took an affectionate farewell, promising to see each other again when their various affairs were settled. But each in his heart doubted whether chance would ever bring them together again.
Two years elapsed, and then one day in spring a poorly-dressed young Russian found himself in Paris, with three hundred francs in his pocket and all his worldly possessions in a kitbag.
He was very different from the debonair Boris who had left the military academy for Kolchak’s army. America had proved to be something very different from the Land of Opportunity he had imagined.
His mother sold the jewels and a few personal possessions she had been able to bring away with her, and had started a small dressmaking business.
There seemed no chance of permanent employment for Boris, so after two or three months of casual jobs he worked his passage to England.
During the months that followed, Boris obtained temporary employment as a waiter, a chauffeur, a professional dancing-partner, a dock-labourer, and he came very near to starvation.
Finally, he came across an old friend of his father’s, a former first secretary in the diplomatic corps, who was now working as a hairdresser.
This friend advised him to try Paris, where a large Russian colony had already formed, and gave him his fare.
It was thus that one morning, as the buds were just beginning to break in the Champs Elysées and the couturiers were exhibiting their Spring fashions, Boris found himself, ill-dressed and friendless, in another strange city.
His total capital was the equivalent of about thirty shillings; and so, being uncertain of what was to become of him, he decided to have luncheon.
An Englishman finding himself in this predicament would no doubt have made careful calculations.
He would have decided what was the longest time that his money would last him, and would have methodically kept within his budget while he started again “looking for a job.”
But as Boris stood working out this depressing sum, something seemed suddenly to snap in his head.
With the utmost privation he could hardly hope to subsist for more than two or three weeks.
At the end of that time he would be in exactly the same position, a fortnight older, with all his money spent and no nearer a job.
Why not now as well as in a fortnight’s time? He was in Paris, about which he had read and heard so much. He made up his mind to have one good meal and leave the rest to chance.
He had often heard his father speak of a restaurant called Larne. He had no idea where it was, so he took a taxi.
He entered the restaurant and sat down in one of the red-plush seats, while the waiters eyed his clothes with suspicion.
He looked about him in an unembarrassed way. It was quieter and less showy in appearance than the big restaurants he had passed in New York and London, but a glance at the menu told him that it was not a place where poor people often went.
Then he began ordering his luncheon, and the waiter’s manner quickly changed as he realized that this eccentrically dressed customer did not need any advice about choosing his food and wine.
He ate fresh caviare and ortolansan porto and crepes suzettes; he drank a bottle of vintage claret and a glass of very old fine champagne, and he examined several boxes of cigars before he found one in perfect condition.
When he had finished, he asked for his bill. It was 260 francs. He gave the waiter a tip of 26 francs and 4 francs to the man at the door who had taken his hat and kitbag. His taxi had cost 7 francs.
Half a minute later he stood on the kerb with exactly 3 francs in the world. But it had been a magnificent lunch, and he did not regret it.
As he stood there, meditating what he could do, his arm was suddenly taken from behind, and turning he saw a smartly dressed Frenchman, who had evidently just left the restaurant. It was his friend the military attaché.
“I was sitting at the table behind you,” he said. “You never noticed me, you were so intent on your food.”
“It is probably my last meal for some time,” Boris explained, and his friend laughed at what he took to be a joke.
They walked up the street together, talking rapidly. The Frenchman described how he had left the army when his time of service was up, and was now a director of a prosperous motor business.
“And you, too,” he said. “I am delighted to see that you also have been doing well.”
“Doing well? At the moment I have exactly three francs in the world.”
“My dear fellow, people with three francs in the world do not eat caviare at Larne.”
Then for the first time he noticed Boris’s frayed clothes. He had only known him in a war-worn uniform and it had seemed natural at first to find him dressed as he was.
Now he realized that these were not the clothes which prosperous young men usually wear.
“My dear friend,” he said, “forgive me for laughing. I didn’t realize. . . . Come and dine with me this evening at my flat, and we will talk about what is to be done.”
“And so,” concluded Boris, “I became the manager of ‘The Kremlin.’ If I had not gone to Larne that day it is about certain we should never have met!
“My friend said that I might have a part in his motor business, but that he thought anyone who could spend his last 300 francs on one meal was ordained by God to keep a restaurant.
“So it has been. He financed me. I collected some of my old friends to work with us. Now, you see, I am comparatively a rich man.”
The last visitors had paid their bill and risen, rather unsteadily, to go. Boris rose, too, to bow them out. The daylight shone into the room as they lifted the curtain to go out.
Suddenly, in the new light, all the decorations looked bogus and tawdry; the waiters hurried away to change their sham liveries. Boris understood what I was feeling.
“I know,” he said. “It is not Russian. It is not anything even to own a popular night club when one has lost one’s country.”
LOVE IN THE SLUMP
I
The marriage of Tom Watch and Angela Trench-Troubridge was, perhaps, as unimportant an event as has occurred within living memory. No feature was lacking in the previous histories of the two young people, in their engagement, or their wedding, that could make them completely typical of all that was most unremarkable in modern social conditions. The evening paper recorded:
“This has been a busy week at St. Margaret’s. The third fashionable wedding of the week took place there this afternoon, between Mr. Tom Watch and Miss Angela Trench-Troubridge. Mr. Watch, who, like so many you
ng men nowadays, works in the city, is the second son of the late Hon. Wilfrid Watch of Holyborne House, Shaftesbury; the bride’s father, Colonel Trench-Troubridge, is well known as a sportsman, and has stood several times for Parliament in the Conservative interest. Mr. Watch’s brother, Captain Peter Watch of the Coldstream Guards, acted as best man. The bride wore a veil of old Brussels lace lent by her grandmother. In accordance with the new fashion for taking holidays in Britain, the bride and bridegroom are spending a patriotic honeymoon in the West of England.”
And when that has been said there is really very little that need be added.
Angela was twenty-five, pretty, good-natured, lively, intelligent and popular—just the sort of girl, in fact, who, for some mysterious cause deep-rooted in Anglo-Saxon psychology, finds it most difficult to get satisfactorily married. During the last seven years she had done everything which it is customary for girls of her sort to do. In London she had danced on an average four evenings a week, for the first three years at private houses, for the last four at restaurants and night clubs; in the country she had been slightly patronizing to the neighbours and had taken parties to the hunt ball which she hoped would shock them; she had worked in a slum and a hat shop, had published a novel, been bridesmaid eleven times and godmother once; been in love, unsuitably, twice; had sold her photograph for fifty guineas to the advertising department of a firm of beauty specialists; had got into trouble when her name was mentioned in gossip columns; had acted in five or six charity matinées and two pageants, had canvassed for the Conservative candidate at two General Elections, and, like every girl in the British Isles, was unhappy at home.