“And my heart sank when I read in the paper, fully three months after the flight, that Johann Herz had been arrested in Naples. It was by the merest chance; all his precautions had been carefully thought out, and it seemed as if Fortune alone had been against him. He was brought to England, tried, convicted, and sentenced to seven years penal servitude.”
Augustus Breton sank back in his chair and sighed.
“But how is this connected with your port?” I asked, at length.
“There was a sale at Graveney Hall of the baron’s effects,” answered our host, “and sadly I went to it. The curious had assembled in numbers, wishing to see where the notorious criminal had lived, but the bidding was bad. We were all very much ashamed of ourselves, and I noticed that those who had profited most by the German’s splendid hospitality were most bitter in their denunciation of his character. They all said that they had never liked him, and had always thought there was something shady about him. I watched the scene with a certain melancholy, hardly attending to the bidding, when suddenly, by chance, I heard the auctioneer put up a small quantity of port. This must be the celebrated wine of which the Baron had given me six bottles at the beginning of our acquaintance. I thought I would buy it as a memento of my friend. I bid, and in a minute the wine was mine.”
“But why have you kept it so long?”
“Ah, my friend, I hadn’t the heart to drink it while the possessor of so delicate a palate was living on convict fare in Portland Prison. It would have been really in very bad taste. So I waited till his sentence had expired. I found out that to-day the convict was to be released, and I asked you all to come here so that the port might be solemnly drunk. Gentlemen, I ask you to drink to the health of Herr Johann Herz.”
COUSIN AMY
Amy is the daughter of my grandmother’s nephew by marriage.
I cannot imagine that she is any relative of mine; but she insists that we are cousins, and we call one another by our Christian names. Her idea of the connection is that she should treat me with all the unpleasant frankness of a close relation, while on my side there should be the extreme politeness, the flattering attentiveness, of a distant acquaintance. This was all very well when I was eighteen and Cousin Amy twenty-six; but now I am five and thirty, and Cousin Amy has ceased to count her birthdays. She does not realise that this makes all the difference in the world; and I have never been able to find the exact words in which to frame so delicate a statement. Cousin Amy lives in the country, and I was much surprised to meet her face to face in Piccadilly. She shook me warmly by the hand.
“How nice to see you after all these ages! We must have a talk, mustn’t we?”
I replied that it would be very agreeable.
“Well, I’m only here for twenty-four hours,” she pursued. “Are you doing anything this evening?”
“No, I’m not,” I replied with alacrity.
I thought it would be pleasant to dine for once in a way at Cousin Amy’s expense. In years gone by she had been apt to presume too far on the privilege (which her sex has never shown any wish to dispute with mine) of paying the bill.
“That’s capital!” she said. “Then you can take me out to dinner.”
“The prospect fills me with enthusiasm,” I retorted icily.
“You know I’ve become a food reformer?”
“This is nuts,” I murmured softly to myself, considering that the fruit in question was reported to be not only nutritious, but cheap. I went on with more earnestness: “And where does one eat reformed food?”
“Oh! anywhere,” she answered airily. “I’m not a faddist, you know. Now I’m going to tell you something extraordinary: I’ve never dined at the Ritz.”
There was a pause, during which you might have heard a pin drop in Piccadilly. But Amy broke it gaily.
“Well, I’ll meet you there at eight, shall I? And don’t order anything beforehand, since I eat next to nothing, you know.”
This, at any rate, was consoling, for I had been saving up my money in order to spend a week in Paris and improve my mind. Amy tripped lightly away; and I, finding I had but a couple of pounds in my pocket, thought it would be wise in case of emergency to change a cheque.
When we sat down in the evening, Cousin Amy put her gloves on the table and looked round with a happy smile. “I know we’re going to have a charming dinner,” she said.
The waiter handed me the menu; but Cousin Amy is a practical woman.
“Now, you’d far better let me order my own dinner,” she said. “I only want a snack; and you see, as I can’t eat dead beasts, I’d better choose what I can eat.”
The proposal seemed eminently reasonable.
Amy cast her eyes down the menu. “At all events, we can start with some hors d’oeuvres,” she said. “Oh! and how delicious! There’s potage bisque.”
I had observed in my glance at the bill-of-fare that this was the most expensive soup on the list; but Cousin Amy never noticed these things. I wondered acidly how she had reached the quite mature age which I positively knew was hers without acquiring the elements of common decency. I ordered the hors d’oeuvres and the potage bisque.
“What fish, sir?” said the waiter.
Cousin Amy frowned at the menu. “It seems very extraordinary that you have no salmon,” she said, in the arrogant way in which women generally address their inferiors. “It must be in season.”
“Well, we have some, madam, but we haven’t put it on the card. This is the first we’ve had.”
“There!” said Cousin Amy in triumph. “You see, you can always get things if you ask for them.”
I shuddered to think of the price I should have to pay for salmon which had only come on the London market that morning. I made up my mind that I should have to choose a cheaper hotel in Paris than the one upon which I had fixed. I pointed out to Amy that no woman who respected herself could eat a red fish after a red soup.
“Yes, I know that. I do feel rather a barbarian; but I must eat salmon, as it’s full of proteids.”
“But surely,” I protested, “you told me that you never ate horrible dead beasts.”
Amy opened her eyes wide. “Oh! that only applies to warmblooded creatures; otherwise I couldn’t have eaten the soup.”
“It’s lucky there’s not whale on the menu,” I murmured, as I meekly ordered the salmon.
I was beginning to think that one did oneself rather well on reformed food.
The hors d’oeuvres were set on the table; and Amy, explaining that she had to eat what she could, emptied the entire contents of three dishes on her plate. I thought they looked rather nice myself, but I hadn’t the face to ask the waiter for more.
Then another waiter brought me a list of wines. This was my opportunity, and I seized it like a man. Cousin Amy was certainly growing uncommonly stout; and it is well known that obesity is best treated by abstention from liquid for two hours after the repast.
“As a food reformer, I take it that you only have a cup of coffee after eating,” I said. “I shall have a whisky-and-soda.”
“How did you get such a ridiculous idea into your head?” she answered briskly. “On the contrary, my doctor has ordered me to drink wine. You see, I have to keep myself up.”
“Ah! what will you have?” I said gloomily.
“Oh! I don’t really mind, so long as it’s very dry.”
I looked at Cousin Amy. “Do you remember the story of the man who was taking a pretty American out to dinner? He asked her what she would drink. T guess I’ll have champagne,’ she said. ‘Guess again,’ he answered.”
“What a sell!” cried Amy, laughing merrily.
I have read somewhere that women have a greater delicacy of perception than men. I certainly never knew any one slower than Cousin Amy to take a hint.
She watched me turn over the pages. “If you really have no preference,” she said, “I think I would like Veuve Cliquot. I always feel that we women ought to stand together.”
It appea
red that Cousin Amy was a suffragist as well as a food reformer; and after I had ordered the champagne which accorded with her principles, she favoured me with her views on the cause. Amy thoroughly enjoyed the potage bisque, and she positively gloated over the salmon. The obsequious waiter came for further orders.
“Now you see what an economical person I am to have to dinner,” said Amy. “Any one else would ask for entrées and roasts and all kinds of abominations like that. But I only want a couple of vegetables, and I’ve done.”
“I remember your saying you only wanted a snack.”
She turned to the waiter. She thinks it is so nice to get on friendly terms with a waiter. She likes him to take an intelligent interest in her food.
“Now I’ll tell you what I want: you know those great big asparagus, as large round as your arm? Well, I want some of them.”
“Very good, madam,” said he.
“It’s so lucky I came up to town just when things I really like are in season,” she reflected. “In the country we shall have to wait another three months for asparagus and green peas. You will order some peas, won’t you?”
“Certainly, if you think you can eat them,” I said politely.
“Ah! now you see what a difference it makes to eat in a rational manner. I can eat anything, my dear boy — anything!”
“I’m quite willing to believe it,” I retorted.
She looked at me and smiled broadly.
“But I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself on my account. I’m not narrow-minded, and if you want some flesh I have no objection to your having it.”
A pile of asparagus and a great many green peas were set before us, and I knew they were worth their weight in gold.
I began to feel more than doubtful about my trip to Paris.
“It’s very kind of you,” I answered; “but I seldom have more than a steak for dinner; and after devouring the meal you’ve ordered I shall feel like a boa-constrictor.”
“You see, one has to get the proper amount of proteids in,” Amy replied calmly, as she ate the giant asparagus.
I ate one or two myself, but I was no match for Amy. I no longer wondered that she was growing stout; and I thought that if anybody did marry her, he should be warned in time that to feed a food reformer is no joking matter.
When there was one long monster left on the dish, she seized it deliberately.
“I must eat that one,” she said. “It means a handsome husband and five thousand a year.”
“He’ll want it,” I replied.
“I thought I should only spoil my dinner if I had tea,” she murmured reflectively.
“That was very considerate of you,” I answered.
She leaned back with a sigh and looked at me.
“How pleased I am to have caught you before you went to Paris!”
“I very much doubt whether I shall be able to afford to go,” I said.
Cousin Amy is an optimist.
“After all, there’s no place like home,” she answered cheerily. “If you go to Paris you’ll probably get typhoid, and you’ll certainly spend much more money than you can afford.”
Cousin Amy has often besought me to be economical. She takes a cousinly interest in my finances.
At last she finished the peas; and I felt that I could eat nothing more for a week. Amy was in high spirits.
“Now a little sweet and a little dessert, and I’m done.”
I began to admire Amy. I should have liked to introduce the fat boy of Peckham to her.
“Poires à la Melba,” she ordered, with one glance at the menu.
With unerring instinct she had hit upon the specialty of the house. I decided definitely not to go to Paris after all.
“Delicious, aren’t they?” she said.
We reached the dessert, and I became weak and silly when she said she had not had strawberries and cream that year. Neither had many other people. Strawberries and cream were brought, mixed together in a huge bowl, and for a fixed sum — a rather large sum, it seemed to me — you could eat as many as you liked.
It was some consolation to me that Amy certainly had her money’s worth. When she had done, she leaned back.
“After all one misses a great deal if one is a food reformer; but one has the consciousness that one is advancing a good cause. And besides, in Lent one has the advantage of killing two birds with one stone.”
We had coffee, and I discovered that Amy had a fine taste in liqueur brandy. She told me her doctor wouldn’t let her drink it unless it was very old. When the bill came — I congratulated myself on the fact that Amy had only wanted a snack, for if she had been really hungry I don’t know what I should have done.
When we parted, she shook hands with me. “I have enjoyed myself,” she said. “I’m so sorry I’m not staying in town longer, but you must come and lunch with me to-morrow. My system is chop for chop you know.”
This was new in Cousin Amy, and I put the change down to the advance of years, which have a soft logic of their own.
“I shall be delighted!” I answered promptly. “Where shall we go?”
She looked at me with the utmost effrontery.
“What do you say to the Eustace Miles Restaurant? I should so much like to show you what a vegetarian restaurant is really like.”
I have no presence of mind in emergencies, and I accepted Cousin Amy’s invitation. But as I wandered away in the rain (I really couldn’t afford a hansom) a sadder, poorer, wiser, and much overeaten man, I murmured to myself:
“She may call it chop for chop, if she likes. I call it carrot soup for potage bisque.”
THE HAPPY COUPLE (1908 VERSION)
Miss Ley, the most delightful of old maids, having no engagements on hand, took a cottage on the river for the fortnight round Whitsuntide. The weather promised to be fine, and she had found a secluded spot in which she could enjoy the beauties of early summer to her heart’s content. She was a woman who loved cities, but it pleased her at times to bury herself in the country, where, apart from men, she could collect herself and set her ideas in order. She was exhausted after a winter in London, and looked forward with pleasure to the peacefulness of the Valley of the Thames. With more books than she could possibly read in six months there was no chance of dulness, and the roses in the cottage garden offered all the companionship she needed. But her interest in her fellow-creatures was overwhelming, and she made the discovery in a day or two, not without satisfaction, that her neighbours in the next cottage were worthy of study. She had no wish to know them, since it amused her far more to divine what sort of folk they were from their appearance, and she did not want to be bothered with the trivialities of social intercourse. But they were plainly as disinclined as herself to strike up the acquaintance which was almost indicated by the fact that they lived constantly in one another’s sight and met half a dozen times a day; and Miss Ley’s mind, momentarily perturbed by the fear of an attempt upon her privacy, regained its usual serenity. She set herself to weave fancies about them. Miss Ley was not inquisitive and preferred to draw her imaginary portraits without the aid of disturbing information, and the details gathered by her maid were sufficiently scanty to leave scope for any amount of invention. The neighbours were a Mr and Mrs. Craig, persons apparently of some means, who had taken the cottage for the whole summer. It was evident that the man had no calling, for he spent all day at home. Miss Ley surmised that they had not been long married; they had a baby which was little more than a year old; and this surprised her, since both were middle-aged.
Craig was a handsome man, with a red, honest face, a grey moustache, and thin grey hair. He held himself well, and there was a bluff heartiness about him which suggested that he might be a retired soldier. His wife was a woman hard of visage, tall, and of a masculine appearance, with unattractive fair hair, a large nose, a large mouth, and a weather-beaten skin. She was not only plain, but grim. Her clothes were pretty, flimsy, and graceful. But they sat oddly upon her, for they would bette
r have befitted a girl of eighteen; and Mrs. Craig was certainly forty. Miss Ley noticed that they were the work of an excellent dressmaker.
But though her appearance was unprepossessing and her manner hard, Miss Ley was curiously drawn towards her by the affection which she lavished upon her husband and her child. From her verandah Miss Ley could see the pair constantly walking up and down the lawn of their garden, arm in arm; they did not talk, but it was because they were happy to be together; and it was touching to observe the submissiveness with which the dour, unsympathetic woman treated her good-natured husband. She seemed to take a pleasure in doing his bidding. She looked for occasions to prove that she was his willing slave. And because they were no longer young, their mutual devotion seemed all the more charming. It was a pretty sight to observe Mrs. Craig brush an invisible speck of dust off the man’s coat, and Miss Ley was convinced that she purposely made holes in his socks in order to have the pleasure of darning them. To watch this matrimonial felicity made the old maid more contented with herself and with the world in general. She christened the couple forthwith Edwin and Angelina.
But the most agreeable thing of all was to watch them with their baby. A nurse took it out every morning in a perambulator, but before this father and mother spent an ecstatic quarter of an hour in teaching it to walk. They stood a few yards apart and urged the child to flounder from one to the other, and each time it tumbled into the parental arms it was lifted up and rapturously embraced. And when finally it was tucked up in the smart little cart, they hung over it with charming baby talk, and watched it out of sight as though they could not bear to let it go. Miss Ley had never seen a pair so devoted to one another, and so enchanted with their offspring.
She made up a little story about them. She was certain that they had fallen in love with one another years before — perhaps twenty years — when Angelina, a young girl then, had the fresh grace of her teens, and Edwin was a brave youth setting out joyously on the journey of life. And since the gods habitually ignore practical matters, it was evident that they had not a penny between them. To marry at once was impossible, but they had courage, hope, and confidence. The young man made up his mind to go out to the Colonies, make his fortune, and return to marry the girl who had patiently waited. It could not take him more than two or three years, and what is that when one is twenty and the whole of life is before one?
Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated) Page 284