The two men walked the length of the bar and presented themselves before the little company who were eagerly awaiting them. There was Lydia, Domiloff’s wife, a beautiful woman of supreme elegance, with sombre, passionate eyes, silent usually, with little gaiety of manner but with subtle charm of speech and expression. By her side was Lucille, Princesse de Hochepierre de Martelle, who, notwithstanding the magnificence of her title, was a daughter of one of the industrial multi-millionaires of a far Western state in America. Her husband, Prince Léon de Hochepierre de Martelle, pallid of complexion, flaxen-haired, dressed with almost indecorous and flamboyant perfection, chubby-cheeked but languid, lounged in the background, a curious contrast to his attractive wife—petite, with hair the colour of red gold, deep-set soft eyes of an indescribable shade, the shade of falling leaves—a Watteau-like figure in her grace of movement and expression. With them were Phyllis Mallory, the international lawn-tennis player, athletic, good-natured but a little noisy, and Dolly Parker, witty, elegant and reckless, good-looking in a well-bred restrained sort of way, but approaching the forties and, as the Princess used to say in one of her spiteful moments, desperately unmarried. They all welcomed Lord Henry effusively. He was given the place of honour at the round table. The Prince called for caviar sandwiches and Louis brought over a trayful of champagne cocktails. The Princess, who was seated by Lord Henry’s side, devoted herself to the new arrival.
“You must come to my dinner on Saturday night,” she told him. “I am so glad that you arrived in time. You will meet all your old friends.”
Lord Henry was not enthusiastic. He took, perhaps, advantage of his long acquaintance with his would-be hostess.
“My dear Lucille,” he protested, “don’t ask me. You know how badly I always behave at large dinner parties. There are very few people who are good-natured enough still to invite me, and even then I seldom go. I cannot sit still long enough and apart from that, when I dine I like to choose my own dishes.”
“You are the rudest and greediest man I ever knew,” she told him severely.
“It is not rudeness,” he assured her. “It is sincerity. I suppose you will have your own way with me. If you insist I shall probably come, but, in a general way, why should I accept invitations to gala dinners, which I detest? Dine with me alone, dear Lucille, any night you like—anywhere—preferably when Léon is away,” he added, raising his voice a little.
“You—with your reputation!” she exclaimed in horror. “Dine alone with you, with all the world looking on! My dear Henry! Besides, Léon would not permit it.”
“You needn’t dine with my reputation,” he told her. “I’ll leave that behind, if you like.”
“You are incorrigible! You will have to come to my dinner, though. I am getting tired of the old gang. Dolly was right when she said yesterday that life was too intensive here.”
“There’s a new face for you and an extraordinarily pretty one,” he remarked, leaning forward in his place. “American, too, by the cut of her clothes. She’s sitting in that corner alone.”
The Princess glanced towards Joan Haskell, who had just come in and was seated in a distant corner. She made a little moue.
“I am never overkeen on meeting any of my country-people,” she admitted coolly. “They know too much of one’s antecedents. Tell me, who is the man in the yachting cap who has just come in? He’s talking to Foxley Brent at the other end of the room.”
Lord Henry glanced in the direction she indicated and waved his hand cheerfully to the newcomer.
“By Jove, it’s Julian Townleyes,” he confided. “I heard he was cruising about one of those dangerous Spanish places—Barcelona, I think it was—in a converted barge or something.”
“He looks interesting!”
“He’s the man for your dinner party,” Lord Henry continued. “Used to dine out five nights a week in London, and enjoyed it.”
“Is he anybody in particular?” the Princess, who was a terrible little snob, enquired.
“I always tell you you should give up your flat in Paris and your country house at Les Landes and settle down in London,” he reminded her severely. “You would get to know who we all are, then. Townleyes is the seventh Baronet, has been a notable figure in the Foreign Office, and if he had not got into some slight diplomatic trouble—I don’t remember what it was, but he had to suffer for someone else’s mistake—he would have been a Cabinet Minister before now.”
“You must present him,” Lucille insisted.
Her neighbour held up his hand and the man in the yachting cap, who had just arrived from the port, picked up his cocktail glass from the counter and came across to them. Lord Henry rose to his feet and exchanged greetings.
“Townleyes,” he said, “the Princess has asked me to present you. Sir Julian Townleyes—the Princess de Hochepierre de Martelle.”
Townleyes bowed over Lucille’s extended fingers in the best Continental fashion. He murmured a few words suitable to the occasion.
“The Princess,” her sponsor went on, “is the uncrowned Queen of Monte Carlo, as you would know, my dear fellow, if you visited us a little oftener. Whatever she bids us to do, we do—cheerfully if possible—if not, we still do it. I believe that she is going to ask you to dine.”
“Princess,” Townleyes replied, “I should hate to be considered a rebel at your court, but Lord Henry is being a little unfair to me. He knows that I very seldom dine out and that I am just taking an ex-sailorman’s holiday down in these parts.”
“Nevertheless,” she begged, liking him the more as she realized the smooth charm of his voice, “you will come to my party?”
“You have added a very dull guest to your gathering, Princess, but I will come, of course.”
She smiled with an air of relief. At the moment, she scarcely realized how anxious she had been for him to accept her invitation. Townleyes had a gift of attraction which was quite unanalyzable.
“We are a small party—only about twenty,” she confided. “There are nine other men and I promise you that every one of them is a duller person than you seem to me. At half-past nine on Saturday night at the Sporting Club.”
“I shall be very disappointing,” he warned her.
“Finish your cocktail and have another,” she invited, “or rather don’t finish it. It has lost its chill.”
She signed to the barman who was passing at the moment.
“Bring Sir Julian another cocktail, the same as he is drinking,” she directed. “Lord Henry, too, myself, and heavens!—all this time with you two fascinating people I have forgotten to present my husband. Léon!”
The Prince, who had been talking vociferously to the crowd at the next table, moved back at his wife’s injunction.
“This is Sir Julian Townleyes, Léon,” she said. “My husband—Prince de Hochepierre de Martelle. Sir Julian dines with us on Saturday night.”
“Delighted,” her husband murmured. “I watched you bring your boat in an hour ago, Sir Julian. I put you down as a sailor rather than a politician.”
“I started life in the Navy,” Townleyes explained, “and yachting on a small scale has always been my favourite hobby. You must come down and have a look at my boat, if you are interested.”
“It would give me great pleasure,” the Prince declared. “I myself am fond of the sea. Tell me,” he went on, leaning forward in his chair, “who is the very attractive young lady in the corner?”
The Princess raised her lorgnette. Lord Henry glanced admiringly at his late travelling companion. Townleyes screwed in his eyeglass for a moment, then dropped it quickly.
“I have never seen her before in my life,” he said in his calm, pleasant tone. “I agree with you, though, that she is attractive.”
“She is from my country, without a doubt,” the Princess said. “She wears her clothes with too much chic for an English girl and too little for a French demoiselle.”
“Fortunately,” Lord Henry remarked, “Mollinet rather looks upon me
as one of the male chaperons of the place when there are new arrivals. I shall make myself known to the young lady at the first opportunity.”
“Rascal!” the Princess murmured. “I shall tell her of your reputation.”
“Tell her the truth, dear Lucille,” he replied amiably, “and I shall be content. You might put in a word of warning about that scoundrel of a husband of yours.”
The Princess laughed softly. She took her cocktail from the salver which was being extended to her.
“On second thought,” she decided, “I shall not say a word to her about either of you. I have an idea—”
“Share it with me, beloved,” her husband begged.
“Well, I have an idea that you are neither of you exactly what that young lady is looking for.”
CHAPTER III
Table of Contents
THE dinner party given by the Princess a few nights later was, as usual, gay and amusing. Townleyes, who was seated on her left, seemed delighted to find as his neighbour on the other side Lydia Domiloff, who entertained him readily with all the gossip of the place. It was not until after the first course had been removed that the Princess was able to engage his attention.
“Tell me,” she begged, “about your adventures in that intriguing-looking yacht of yours. Did you bring it all the way from England?”
“All the way. For the size of the boat we have quite powerful engines.”
“And you were your own navigator, Léon tells me.”
“I have my certificate,” he confided. “Yachting on a small scale has always been my chief recreation.”
“And the name of your boat is the Silver Shadow. Hadn’t you a little trouble somewhere down the coast—was it at Marseilles?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I had a little trouble. It was my own fault. I took on board at Barcelona a refugee who had been thrown out of his own country and who was hanging about there in danger of his life.”
“And after playing the Good Samaritan,” she observed, “you apparently shot him.”
“Not without reason,” Townleyes assured her calmly. “The man tried to rob me and scuttle the boat. I saw no reason why I should risk a life which is of some value to myself in an uneven fight with a desperado, so I took the advantage of having a revolver in my pocket. The—er—Court at Marseilles, where we put in afterwards, sympathized with me.”
“So do I,” she agreed. “I like to hear of a man who acts quickly in his own self-defence. I was just interested in the affair because I had read about it. My French is not very good so I take the Éclaireur de Nice and read about some of these terrible things that go on around us. You know, Sir Julian, no one has the faintest idea what a country of dramas this really is, unless they read the Éclaireur de Nice. You learn of happenings there which never seem to get into the other papers.”
“Your tastes lead you into the sensational byways of life, Princess,” he murmured.
“How clever of you to find that out! Yes, I like life served up with all its side dishes—perhaps that’s because I am American.”
He drew his chair a trifle nearer to hers. The floating shawl of a dancer as she passed had touched his cheek.
“The trouble of it is,” he observed, “that so many of these seasonings are simply the exaggerations of the journalist. If we could only be sure that they were true, the life of a police agent in this part of the world might seem to be a very exciting one.”
“But isn’t it?” she asked. “Look at Monsieur Bernard over at that table with his fat wife and his two dowdy daughters. Did you ever see a more, to all appearances, typically bourgeois quartette? Yet Bernard could make your hair curl with his reminiscences if he were allowed to write them, which he is not in this country.”
“Who is he?” Townleyes enquired.
“He is the under Chef de la Sûreté in Nice,” she confided. “You see him in those ill-fitting clothes and paternal aspect and you will see him dancing presently with one of those lumpy daughters, and you are just as likely as not before the evening is over to see him tapped on the shoulder by one of the officials and hurried off to Nice—a murder or something of that sort! Those things happen to him often.”
“An interesting fellow, I should think,” Townleyes observed carelessly. “All I can say about it, with due respect to his profession, is that he doesn’t look the part.”
“Why is Nice such a centre of crime, I wonder?” Lydia Domiloff speculated.
“Because it is the danger spot of France, as Barcelona was of Spain,” Lord Henry declared, leaning across the table. “There are more Red Flaggers there to the kilometre than there are anywhere else in the country.”
“It is a rotten world,” Oscar Dring, the great Scandinavian agitator, pronounced from the other side of Lydia Domiloff. “To plan for war is barbarous. To hope for peace is imbecile. To find a quiet corner where one can settle down, read philosophy and try to give the world a little food for real and serious thought is becoming an impossibility. The world whose byways we tread is corrupt, poisonous with intrigue and fanaticism.”
Lord Henry rose to his feet.
“Meanwhile we must live,” he ventured with the air of one a little bored with the conversation, “and it is our duty to enjoy ourselves in order that we can pass on the spirit of enjoyment to others. May we dance, Princess, and will you honour me?”
“It is an opportune idea,” she assented. “We can make the world no better, can we, by sitting and gloating over her sad condition? There in the corner is the girl I envy,” she added as they glided into the throng. “She is young, she is beautiful, she is, I imagine, unburdened with over-much intelligence. She sits alone watching the dancing and obviously hoping that someone will find an excuse to present himself. For the moment she is thinking of nothing else. Will heaven send her a partner for this delightful waltz?”
“Heaven has given me one, anyhow,” he declared.
“Heaven is always kinder to you than you deserve,” she told him. “You go through life without a care—without an effort.”
“What would you have me do? Join one of the foreign legions of lost causes?”
“There are many causes not yet lost which are worth supporting.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am never serious,” she assured him. “You ought to know that. I choose for my associates the most frivolous people I can find, and look what happens! That strange man, Oscar Dring, forced himself upon me to-night when we were assembling for dinner in the foyer. Do you know what he had the impertinence to tell me?”
“Dring would say anything to anybody. Fortunately no one ever listens to him.”
“He told me,” the Princess went on, “just before we came in, that Monte Carlo had become the European centre of international intrigue and that I had several well-known international spies amongst my guests to-night!”
“Oscar Dring has one serious fault for a man who is really a brilliant thinker,” her partner commented. “He does enjoy pulling your leg sometimes.”
The Princess, in a diaphanous costume which even a French couturière had regarded with mingled admiration and doubt, laughed quietly.
“I am showing as much of my leg as any woman in this room,” she confided, “but I should hate to have it pulled by Mr. Dring. You think then that I need not put black crosses against the names of any of my guests?”
“I am sure of it,” he answered. “We are all too much occupied in ourselves and in our affairs. Espionage, with all its risks, was never a paying game. Every novelist whose works we have devoured has assured us of that. Fellows like Dring are simply scaremongers—wild asses braying in the wilderness.”
Oscar Dring was dancing with Phyllis Mallory. She was rather afraid of her partner with his almost patriarchal beard, his flashing eyes, his upright presence, so upright that he seemed to be continually pushing her away from him.
“All this talk—talk—talk—” he muttered. “It is maddening!”
“Why?”
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“Can you not divine,” he went on, “that there is trouble coming over all the world? You can read it in the faces of the people. It is the logical outcome of all this cynical indifference on the part of the world’s rulers towards the suffering proletariat.”
“I should think we are as safe here as anywhere against anything in the nature of a revolution,” Phyllis Mallory observed hopefully.
“We are safe nowhere,” was the angry retort. “Science has conquered geography.”
“What an unpleasant thought,” she said, wondering how soon she could escape from this man with his fierce awkward movements and cascades of bitter speech.
“And therefore you reject it,” he replied quickly. “That is so always. Dig your head into the ground at the first signs of danger, close your eyes if anything ugly comes along! Let me tell you this,” he continued, breaking into what was almost a run but keeping time so perfectly that she was forced to follow. “Last year I worked ten hours a day. I wrote a hundred and fifty thousand words. I addressed the world in three languages, of all three of which I am a perfect master. I stretched out my right hand and I pointed to the writing on the wall. What do you think I earned?”
“I have not the faintest idea,” she confessed.
“Four hundred pounds,” he told her furiously. “Not enough to starve on. And why? Because not even with my name there would anyone read. I might as well lay down my pen forever. I have no audience. The ears of the world are stuffed with cotton wool. They will tear it out only to listen to the music of the machine guns!”
“Why do you work so hard,” she asked, “to make people believe unpleasant things?”
He stopped in the middle of the floor but he had instinct enough to keep that slight swaying to the music which would enable him to start again whenever he liked.
“Why do it?” he repeated. “Your question possesses common sense. Sometimes I ask myself that. All I can say is that I dream of myself sometimes as a prophet and that the words which come to me I must speak. I find no pleasure in writing. I give none to those who read me. Come—I find you not unintelligent. Listen and I will tell you something. It is the secret of my life.”
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