Fate Cannot Harm Me Page 6

  Hedley flushed faintly and looked a trifle embarrassed. “Damn you, Monty—you know too much about everybody. I don’t pretend to like this Society racket—I think I rather despise it—but a writer must consider his public. Agents and reviews and all that do a great deal, but not half as much as gossip. If you want to sell your stuff you must be talked about, and talked about by the right people. Laurels wither just as quickly in London as they used to do in Paris; you’ve got to be seen and discussed all the time or you get forgotten. So, though I’m pretty feeble at small talk, and though I hate all the pretence and snobbery, I do go about a good bit. But one day …”—He paused and a touch of bitterness came into his voice—“Yes, one day, when I’m a big enough man, I’ll cut loose and say what I think about the whole pack of these Society idlers,”

  Monty grinned, and his eyes strayed towards the invitations and the photograph on the mantelpiece.

  “Every one sneers at Society, and every one, or almost every one, is prepared to give his ears to move in it,” he remarked platitudinously. “I shall look forward to your grand show-up of all its frivolities. Meantime you seem to be spoiling the Egyptians pretty successfully. If you go to half those functions you won’t have time for much else.”

  Robin Hedley looked more serious, and he spoke with the obvious intention that his words should carry conviction.

  “But I don’t go to half of them, nor yet a quarter. Look here, Monty, I don’t know why I confide in you, except that every one does. Don’t go away with a false idea about me. I’ve always put my work first, and I do now more than ever. If I go to a party, quite candidly, it’s because I think that it’ll help to boost my work. If I dine out and go to a couple of dances you can be pretty sure that I’ve done six or seven hours work earlier in the day; if I spend the afternoon playing tennis or golf—well, I put in my morning first, and get down to work again after dinner. Luckily I’m methodical, and I do know how to concentrate.”

  Monty nodded. “I don’t think any one ever questioned that,” he said drily. “And what about the golf and tennis—handicaps shrinking every month?”

  “Well, I like winning, and it pays in life to do things well. Yes, I play better than I did at both of them.”

  Monty stirred uneasily. Games formed a large part of his life, and the thought that they should be played as part of a programme of self-advancement or as an advertisement offended him. But he refrained from comment.

  “Played much with Basil Paraday-Royne lately?” he hazarded.

  Robin Hedley’s face clouded over again, and he knocked out the ashes of his pipe with unnecessary vigour.

  “Oh, a good deal,” he replied. “I always have, you know, and it’s become a sort of habit. But I’m not too keen on it. Since I began to beat him he’s always ringing up at the last minute to say that he’s got two other fellows and wants to change our single into a foursome. And somehow he always contrives to get the better partner. I enjoy beating him, and I don’t like playing with him. He doesn’t seem to realize that application and steadiness are just as important as brilliance. If I’d got his natural skill at games, I’d be a champion, but he wastes it all. And the—oh, dash it all—I do hate being patronized.”

  The truth was out, thought Monty to himself, but, talkative though he was, he knew when to refrain from comment, and he had no wish to mix himself in what he felt to be a potential quarrel. So he switched the conversation back to safer topics.

  “And what’s the big work just now—another novel?” His host nodded. “Yes, and I really think it’s something miles beyond anything I’ve done before. Monty, I’m sick of the superficial stuff, and the fine words, and all that. This time I’ve really tried to write a book that’s true, and that goes right down to the things that matter. Something that is solid and that will count in literature.” He hesitated, and then continued. “Something that Paraday-Royne and all his fine friends with all their grace and skill and charm and virtuosity could never do; something that will make that elegant gentleman realize that we compete in different classes.”

  Monty got up rather hastily. The last thing which he could endure was to hear one of his friends criticising another, and, though he had no special liking for either of these two, he regarded them both as “friends.”

  “I must push on,” he said. “What’s the great work going to be called?”

  “Pertinacity” said Robin Hedley, picking up his pen.

  Chapter V

  “One touch of ill-nature marks—or several touches of ill-nature mark the whole world kin.”

  SAMUEL BUTLER

  From Ebury Street to Wilton Crescent Monty walked. It did not cross his mind to hail a taxi—partly because the morning was one of sunshine, partly because it was an article of his creed always to walk when he was alone. It would have seemed to him a waste of opportunity not to have stretched his legs that day, not to have seized an opportunity, however slight, of exercise.

  Listening to him I, too, saw him walking that May morning, for his walk expressed, clear for all to see, his character and his beliefs. Jaunty it was not. Odious word, redolent of the second-rate, of hats at impossible angles and clothes vulgarly insisting upon their smartness, word of pert familiarity and cocksureness, word native of pier and promenade, of music-hall and palais de danse. And not quite springy either. The ageing acrobat, descending in swift parabola from horizontal bar or trapeze can yet contrive to ape the springiness of his better years as he skips across the circus floor to receive the plaudits of the crowd—an artificial movement, and there was nothing artificial about Monty. Nor did he move with the mannered sinuous grace of the ball-room, nor yet with the feline certitude of the panther (was there not, as he himself had once put it, always something “Dago” about the movements of the cat tribe?—And Monty’s walk was pre-eminently Anglo-Saxon). No—if description must be positive rather than negative, and if words must here usurp the place of the plastic arts, his walk was that of the games-player, of the modern athlete. Watching him one forgot the commonplace, ridiculous clothes of the town-dweller, and saw instead bodies moving in the harmonious discord of athletic endeavour. In his walk were football grounds and wing three-quarters speeding along the touch-line; and cricket grounds under summer suns, with the slips poised over after over in tense immobility waiting to pounce, and the off-side field just and only just moving, yet ready at an instant to leap into flashing life as the shot is played; and golf-courses in the spring, when the natural seaside turf lifts the feet and the white ball winks its cheerful morning greeting; and the swimmer in the river or the buoyant sea, cutting clean through green water and white spray. All that was in Monty’s walk. Beautiful! Yes, to the understanding it was beautiful. Shall I ever forget sitting at a cricket match beside a learned man—a man, if I must particularize, whose knowledge of Greek vases had won for him a reputation beyond the confines of Europe and over the far-flung universities of America—and how one of England’s greatest batsmen jumped out in the manner of thirty years ago, and how the ball raced along the green turf at lightning speed past extra-cover to the boundary. “Beautiful,” I cried in involuntary admiration. And then turned to apologize for my use of a much-misused word. And how that great and learned man gravely reproved me—not for my exclamation but for my apology. “No, no,” said he, “beautiful is the right word, and you do well to use it. Here, as with my vases, is true œsthetic beauty” And so taught me a lesson which I have not forgotten.

  Between Ebury Street and Wilton Crescent that day Monty’s mind was not fixed on cricket or golf, or even on horses, though usually he thought much about them. Instead he reflected uneasily on what he had just heard and seen. The girl of the photograph was known to him, though he had never previously associated her in his mind with Robin Hedley. It had been a surprise to see her picture there on the mantelpiece, but still more a surprise—even a shock—to hear the note of irritation and bitterness in Robin’s voice when he had spoken of Basil. Like everyone else in London, Mon
ty had long regarded those two as inseparables—they were David and Jonathan, Damon and Pythias; they visited the same houses, they played the same games, they followed the same profession; to mention Basil was to recall Robin to the mind; to meet Robin was to assume that Basil could not be far away. And their friendship had apparently, until now, been untroubled by jealousy or quarrels. The one had always spoken with brotherly and generous appreciation of the other’s work; a cynic might have thought them something too much of a mutual admiration society. Yet something had most clearly occurred to strain and mar their long-established friendship. Thoughtfully Monty considered the case, considering in his mind first Robin and then Basil.

  The Hon. Basil Paraday-Royne had been born with the largest of large silver spoons in his mouth. Indeed, the expression hardly did justice to his good fortune. The spoon was, at the least, gold. He was brilliant, he was successful, he was happy, he was rich, he was good-looking, he was popular. What gift had been omitted? He was the younger son of Lord Royne, whose barony dated from the days of the Younger Pitt; it had been bestowed, as Basil was wont to explain in moments of expansion, in return for a shameless application of wealth for electoral purposes. In the twentieth century, therefore, it was old enough to be respectable, and carried with it none of the responsibilities which attach to a tradition of service to the State. No Royne had ever distinguished himself in any way whatever, and none had ever departed from the accepted canons of behaviour suitable to his rank and position. None, that is, until Basil’s father, who, to the amazement of his friends, had married a French comtesse. He had been acting, in accordance with the wholly irrational habit of the time, as an unpaid attaché at the Embassy in Paris, a position for which he was in all ways except one entirely unfitted; there he had met and fallen in love with Elaine de Jauvecour who, astonishingly, had also fallen in love with him. She was beautiful, young and talented. In the overwhelmingly British and Victorian atmosphere of Royne Park her spirit had withered. She had died ten years later, already a little faded, a little querulous, but still, when she wished, a dazzling and gifted woman. Unlike his two elder brothers Basil took after his mother, not only in appearance but also in intelligence. His career at Eton had been brilliant, for he did all things easily and many things with grace and distinction. Though he was neither laborious nor consistently energetic, he was ambitious, and had contrived to win more intellectual distinctions than usually fell to the lot of an Oppidan; he was a fine, though rather flashy, athlete, had played in the eleven at Lord’s, and had been a figure of some importance in the Eton world. Perhaps his foreign blood made him somewhat precocious; in any case, he declined to follow his brothers to Oxford, and plunged at once into the world of Society, of travel and literature and sport. That he was successful in them all stood to reason. His first book, a slight but witty account of a journey to Kashmir, had been enthusiastically received and praised beyond its deserts. Since then he had written half a dozen books, on widely different subjects—all graceful, well written, often cynical, never very profound. He had travelled widely, and amused himself in the society of half a dozen capitals. Probably few men of his age were better known or more envied. And yet, as Monty, who didn’t really like him, had once said, there was “a streak,” yes, undoubtedly, a streak. Exactly to define that streak was beyond Monty’s powers—he was conscious of it, as of something vaguely, indefinably disturbing. Possibly it was the consciousness of success too easily won which engendered a disguised but irritating pride and just the faintest tinge of patronage; possibly only something un-English, exotic, faintly precious, which prevented complete sympathy between him and his contemporaries. Anyhow—a streak. Sir Smedley Patteringham3 had once sourly remarked that no one so universally popular as Basil had been known in Society in his day, and that no one had so few friends.

  Monty smiled to himself as he recalled the remark. It was true enough to wound, and exaggerated enough to pass as a mot rather than a criticism. He rang the bell of Basil’s house in Wilton Crescent.

  “Morning, Freeman, is Mr. Paraday-Royne in?”

  “Yes, sir, he’s in the dining-room. Will you go in?” Monty tapped on the dining-room door and walked in.

  “Entrez! avanti! herein!—how goes it, Monty?” Basil was seated at breakfast, dressed in an oriental dressing-gown of flowered silk. Newspapers were littered on the table, but he was not reading them, for his attention was given to a bundle of press-cuttings which lay beside his plate.

  “Not so dusty. And you? How’s the book going?” Basil’s last book, a volume of essays, had been published a fortnight before, and Monty had already observed the press-cuttings.

  “Not badly—in fact rather better than I expected; the reviews are pretty good too. But—dash it all—look at this.” A petulant frown had gathered suddenly on Basil’s face, and he pushed one of the cuttings across the table to Monty with a gesture of irritation.

  With the practised eye of the journalist Monty skimmed through the first paragraph—“cultured and incisive writing”—“a real flair for description”—“brilliant aperçus.” Everything seemed to be in order. He passed on to the second paragraph. “In reading these essays we are reminded of the volume recently published by Robin Hedley. The work of both authors is characterized by a command of language and of expression rare among modern authors, and though perhaps the book under review is inferior in thought and less profound, it is at least the equal of its predecessor in grace and charm. Readers of Robin Hedley’s last book will remember …” Monty smiled and skipped the next half-column; it appeared to be, in the main, a eulogy of Robin’s last few publications, with occasional references to Basil’s essays.

  “Well?”

  Monty attempted to be tactful. “He does you pretty well,” he remarked, “and contrives to give Robin a handsome leg-up at the same time. That’s all right.”

  “It isn’t all right. This Johnny’s reviewing my book, and three-quarters of the review is Robin Hedley. Besides, hang it all, I invented the fellow. Who’d have heard of Robin if I hadn’t pushed his stuff, and introduced him to half London? And anyhow he’s no real sense of style.”

  Monty smiled involuntarily, and Basil caught his eye as he did so. He was clever enough to realize that he was creating a poor impression, and in a moment he had changed his note.

  “What children we writers are, my dear Monty. How petty our little jealousies, but how quickly they pass! Of course I’m delighted that Robin should be praised—you know I really can claim some credit for his work. I was just the least bit piqued for the moment because I wanted to read nothing but praise of my own poor offspring. And the kidneys were just a suspicion undercooked this morning. I never bear the minor trials of life too well, you know.”

  He laughed, almost but not quite spontaneously, and made an expressive gesture with his shapely and rather too well manicured hands.

  “But why this early visit, Monty? You’ve not come just to hear how my book goes, nor yet, I fear, just to give me pleasure. If I were a detective I should have guessed by now. I should have said ‘Monty is in love, and needs a confidant,’ or ‘Monty has committed a crime, and must be concealed in Wilton Crescent,’ or ‘Monty has lost his memory, and needs to be told who he is and where he comes from.’ Yet, intelligent though I am, I detect no signs of love or crime or even mental decay. What then can Monty want?”

  “First of all a drink.”

  “Barbarian. This is breakfast time, this is crack of dawn, this is”

  “On the contrary it is nearer eleven than ten, and the world’s workers have been active since God knows when. A Lager, I think, or a Pilsener—with a goodish lump of ice.”

  Basil rose from his chair, and touched the bell.

  “If I must pander to your gross appetite, then let it be upstairs. I won’t insult the remains of my chaste breakfast with the sight of your loathesome beer. Ah, Freeman, some Lager upstairs, please, and some ice—and perhaps a couple of glasses. Come on, Monty—you’re always corru
pting me in some way or other.”

  The room on the first floor to which Basil led his guest was one which Monty knew well; large, L-shaped, and panelled in modern oak, it combined opulence with taste. The pieces of furniture were few, but all were good, perhaps a little too good for daily use, the books were beautifully, perhaps a little too sumptuously, bound, the pictures were not numerous but of superlative merit. There were two Watteaus, all sunshine and delicacy and fragrance, a Degas of which Basil was inordinately proud, and, over the mantelpiece, a picture which Monty preferred to all the rest—a Van de Cappelle of sailing vessels in port at sundown—a masterpiece of quiet and fastidious competence. There were more flowers than are usual in a bachelor’s room, and a grand piano stood at one end of the smaller wing of the room. As Monty’s eyes strayed towards this he emitted an involuntary whistle of astonishment. For on it, in a large silver frame, stood the same photograph which had already surprised him by its presence on Robin Hedley’s mantelpiece. The same girl, and again in the place of honour. So that was how the land lay! The jealousy of the two friends was not entirely an affair of literary competition; obviously it was more personal and therefore more dramatic than that.

  Basil had heard the partly suppressed whistle without observing the cause.