OLD MAN'S BEARD

by H. R. Wakefield

  Marianna then decided to get a new Stand-By. Stand-By Number Two was of a very different type to his predecessor. He was a novelist of some repute, considerable talent and inconsiderable sales. Happily he possessed means of his own. He was forty-six, a bachelor, tall, thin, rather grizzled, kind, gentle, but for his job rather too limited in interests. Till he met Marianna he had led a life of cultured conventionality. A novel a year, a few short stories, a month at Cap Martin, some fishing in Scotland, many male acquaintances, a few faithful female friends. These last he regarded so platonically that he could only with difficulty distinguish in his mind one from the other. He dined with them regularly, spare, terribly au courant spinsters, of uncertain age, arguable charms and unplumbed possibilities — unplumbed at any rate so far as he was concerned. He regarded himself modestly as an A1 risk against any serious feminine entanglement, a man of the world, a man of honour, a man of recognised intellectual consequence — and then he met Marianna! He met her after a lecture he delivered at the American Women’s Club on ‘The Technique of Modern Fiction’. She came cooing up to him at the end of it, looking dazzling and uttering five and ten cent. appreciation, Lion-hunter’s guff. A moment later he found himself accepting an invitation to luncheon next Thursday, and as he did so he felt the first faint stirring of that degrading obsession which was destined to harry him into premature senility. He was — had he known it — already a C3 risk.

  Between then and the lunch date he canvassed his acquaintances regarding his hostess. Something urgent and disingenuous in his demeanour caused them to regard him with pity and consternation — an epitaphal pity, a post-mortem consternation. One, a discarded Casual, informed him with vivacity. He told the novelist that if he liked consuming vast quantities of iced water in the hope that it would eventually be transformed into Veuve Clicquot he ought to have been born in Cana of Galilee; if it amused him to lunch in private rooms with the Curate’s Aunt masquerading as Circe, let him carry on; if it occurred to him as fun to experience all the extra expenditure entailed by furtive sin without any of its darling compensations, let him step right in; and finally, after warning him that in his opinion Oliver Junior had been produced parthenogenetically, he promised to lend him La femme et le pantin. So that when the fatal Thursday came, Mr Rupert Shanklin (author of Sextet, An Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, etc.) had been sufficiently warned and should have shown himself of sterner stuff. As it was he never even squared up but capitulated with shameful celerity, and never even bargained to retain his sword. His sensations were entirely new to him, and he realised to his horror that he was capable of knowing the same erotic agonies as the heroes of Best Sellers. Up to a point his reactions to close contact with Marianna were identical with those felt by all her more intelligent victims. He knew her for an ass in ten minutes, but that face, that body, that devastating vitality, the glowing animal excitement she aroused! Deplorable! When he got back to his flat, booked to lunch with her three days later at ‘A little place I’m crazy about,’ he cursed himself in his despair, for he knew at last the overwhelming power of a gentlewoman’s frame — even a damn-fool gentlewoman’s, over a gentleman’s — even a cultured, fastidious, middle-aged gentleman’s mind and peace of mind — a discovery which had he made it earlier would have had a very beneficial effect on his sales.

  So it began and so it went on for two years and a half. How its sham furtiveness shook and yet exhilarated him. How he winced at being addressed as ‘Snuffkins’, and how he cherished the appellation. How his better self protested against his employment of the endearment ‘Sweetheart’, and with what fiendish and gloating bliss his worser nature triumphed. Had he experienced these trials some years later he might have compared himself to one of those infatuate hounds who pursue a piece of mechanism inadequately disguised as a hare round stadiums, their cynical quarry disappearing at the moment of triumph, leaving the panting competitors sniffing dejectedly at its burrow. Marianna was his ‘Tin Pussy’, and whenever an ironic hand ‘slipped him’ he had to gallop on in vain pursuit. Yet he knew he would have no peaceful hour till he — till he — let him confess to it — possessed her. Oh, how well he knew that this was a shamelessly degrading goal for a man of culture and refinement in his forty-seventh year to set before himself; this coarse, physical union with a being intellectually on a level with a half-awakened bird. He used to lie in bed in the morning miserably rehearsing her failings, her kittenish blather, her half-witted ‘Don’t you think’s, her snobbery, her frigid flirtatiousness, her! her!! her!!! But it was the apparent hopelessness of success rather than his degrading ambition which afflicted him. And with what unblushing fervour he would rush to the telephone at its first siren tinkle. Whole sides of his character hitherto entirely unsuspected revealed themselves; sides far better buried ten fathoms deep, but which had leaped leering from their graves and refused to be re-interred. He felt himself sinking for the third time.

  It was having a shocking effect on his writing. He knew that because the sales of his last two books had jumped remarkably.

  ‘Mr Shanklin seems to have become more human, less aloofly ascetic in his outlook on humanity, most surprisingly here and there a little raffish,’ said the Times Literary Supplement.

  ‘A little raffish!’ he groaned aloud as he sneaked off to the Restaurant Verdi. On one such occasion the taximan looked round half-way down Piccadilly thinking he had heard his fare denouncing him. But it was simply that Mr Shanklin, overwhelmed by his finer self, had exclaimed, ‘What have I done to deserve this!’ his tortured soul momentarily a prey to cliché.

  Marianna, for her part, dimly realised that Stand-By Number Two was a cut above any of her other Chambre Priveé Chums. She had felt that from the moment he had stood up, nervously clearing his throat and rustling a page of notes, to deliver his lecture, and though not one word of the scholarly pronouncement which followed had been intelligible to her, she was vaguely stirred by his personality and carefully regulated voice and forthwith marked him down. And she had found it sharply intriguing to tame so distinguished a literary personality. She became prouder of this conquest than of any of its predecessors, for he alone of them, she felt, realised she had a very good mind, and whenever he published a new book she left a number of copies lying about the house in unmissable places, and she alluded to it with as much coy pride as if she had written it herself.

  ‘I suppose you’re in it?’ asked Mrs Ludlow, an enigmatic widow of great physical allurement and one of her best friends.

  ‘Peut-être, chérie,’ replied Marianna slyly.

  The passing of Oliver, like that of his illustrious namesake, was accompanied by a mighty tempest. In fact, this formidable blow was indirectly responsible for it, because his car crashed into a fallen tree between Walton Heath and Banstead Downs late one afternoon when he was returning from a game of golf.

  Marianna registered an almost unnatural calm or phlegm when the dire tidings were broken to her, but, like a diffident dramatist whose opinion of the merits of his play soars with each curtain demanded, so was she instructed in the true pathos of her position by the shower of letters of condolence she received. And finally, when the terms of the will were conveyed to her, and she learnt she had inherited everything by that formidable document, she knelt down and thanked whatever gods were appropriate to such an occasion that she had been so privileged as to be the relict of so right-minded and financially perspicacious a Briton.

  Gradually out of the mist of her tears emerged a version of Oliver most flattering to his memory. How he must have adored her! How unconditionally he had provided for her! At that reflection Marianna’s eyes became less humid and narrowed a little. A widow — a lovely young widow — black suited her — with £40,000 a year; how men — those moulded, imploring, boring — when they came too close — creatures, peers, tennis champions and tutti quanti — she would learn some more Italian — would hound her and how she’d hound them back. Memories of Tickville came thronging — a Moment of Moments! Her eyes
were bright and dry.

  Mr Shanklin’s reactions to the tragedy were more simple and spontaneous. Fate had most fistily and unexpectedly forced him to face the question: ‘Did he want to marry Marianna?’ How he despised her and how he longed for her! He made a melancholy attempt to break up that longing into its component parts, but the result was not flattering to him. It was, he decided miserably, a mingling of crude physical desire, its voltage raised by perpetual frustration, and a delayed burst of procreative instinct rather more creditable. His natural fictional gifts, his flair for the delicate analysis of character, particularly his own, convinced him that once these mingled low and less low desires were satisfied he would regard life with Marianna as a Life Sentence — temporarily at any rate. Ah, there was the rub or snag! for might not this degrading and urgent animalism recur with fiercer force! The image of Marianna drenched his harassed eyes. Poignant memories of her darling scent pervaded his twitching nostrils, and all he could think of was how soon would she be, as it were, out of quarantine and free to flay him once again. He must ring up and find out.

  Marianna had been thinking of him quite often. His letter of sympathy had been far the most aptly phrased of all she had received. She had been strongly tempted to show it to her friends, but of course it was too sacred. It would have settled Mr Shanklin’s doubts if he had known that he had been the gauge by which Marianna had tested the question of remarriage. She liked him better than any man in the world, he was the only man she could imagine living intimately with, but she felt no inclination to make the experiment. No more marrying for love, she decided. She had the money, she’d get the title — nothing less than a Marchioness if possible.

  When Mr Shanklin rang up to find out how soon they could lunch together, she reminded him in a rather shocked voice that it was only three weeks since the funeral and it must be a long time before she resumed her old life even in a subdued sort; that he must dismiss the Restaurant Verdi and that kind of thing from his mind for a very, very long time.

  That same evening Marianna was sitting in the writing-room with the door open when she thought she saw someone pass into what had been Oliver’s study across the passage. Putting down the Elinor Glyn novel which had been ‘arresting’ her, she advanced to investigate, and what she saw made even her robust limbs tremble. For it was Oliver! And he was bending over his cigar cabinet of beautifully blended woods in the act of selecting a Corona. After a moment he turned round, the costly weed between his lips, and walked towards her. He gave her the slightest, most casual glance as he passed her, then went into the hall, chose a felt hat from the stand and passed through the front door.

  Marianna went to the dining-room and poured out a full tumbler of the first alcoholic beverage she could find — it was crême de menthe — and took a steadying gulp. ‘A ghost!’ She didn’t believe in such things! Oliver’s ghost! A Cigar-smoking, Felt-hat wearing Ghost! Why hadn’t he taken any notice of her? Where had he gone? She couldn’t stay in the house another minute! Where should she go? A thin but insistent whisper tinkled, ‘Mildred’. (Mildred was Mrs Ludlow.) She’d see if she was in. She’d ring up. Yes, she was and would be glad to see her. Oh dear, what a terrible shock it had been!

  In ten minutes she was sitting beside Mildred in the sumptuous flat which everyone rather wondered how she could afford. ‘I’m so glad you came, dear Marianna,’ she said. ‘I expect you’re feeling terribly lonely in that great house. However, I don’t suppose that poor Oliver’s bed will be empty for ever.’

  ‘Naturally I’m not thinking of such things yet,’ replied Marianna. ‘And I know I shall never find anyone as generous, faithful and good as Oliver.’

  ‘Of course not, dear,’ agreed Mildred.

  It was at that moment that the most magical of all lanterns, that which projects images of the Departed on to the screen of consciousness, projected Oliver’s on to Marianna’s. There he was walking coolly in without his hat but puffing vigorously at the Corona — Corona — Corona. An emotion stronger than fear seized Marianna. What was he doing in Mildred’s flat? That lady remarked, ‘How intent you look, darling; what’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Marianna sharply. ‘I was just thinking of something I wanted to ask you. But first of all tell me what you’ve been doing lately.’ To the ensuing monologue she paid no attention whatever, she gave it all to Oliver. He had gone up to and sat down at the writing-desk. Whereupon he proceeded to take a spectral chequebook from his spectral pocket and write in it with a spectral Waterman. He then got up again, went out and, as the drawing-room door was open, she could see him cross the passage and enter Mildred’s bedroom. Marianna ruffled like a douched parrot, then recovered herself and pretended to listen to Mildred’s account of the recent follies and frailties of her best friends, a topic which always composed the larger half of her conversation. Five minutes passed and then Oliver reappeared. He was wearing some robustly toned pyjamas and a pair of furry bedroom slippers. He came over to where they were sitting, then stooping down kissed the back of Mildred’s neck, letting the cheque flutter down to her lap. And then the unknown operator of that most magical of all lanterns switched off its beam.

  Marianna got up, her eyes blazing, her fists clenched, her body quivering.

  ‘Mildred,’ she said shrilly, ‘the question I wanted to ask you is, “How well did you know Oliver?” ’

  Mildred was the best liar in London, but she couldn’t face those dreadful eyes. Her mouth opened, but a faint rustle between a gasp and sigh was all that emerged. Then her eyes dropped; at the same time the nearest approach to a blush which had visited her face since she had reached the age of puberty lightly coloured it. But it was only after Marianna had slapped it with both hands with all her might that it took on a really warm tint.

  Ten minutes later Marianna took up the receiver in her boudoir, and asked for a number in Mayfair. ‘Is that you, Rupert? I’ve changed my mind. I’ll lunch with you at the Verdi tomorrow at one. Book number eight. Good-night, dear.’

  And then she went upstairs and gave all her mourning to her maid, save for five pairs of Ebony Satin Pyjamas which certainly appeared quite as appropriate an epilogue to Wedding Tables as to Funeral Bak’d Meats, and three gowns which certainly were more indicative of the genius of M. Paquin than of the pangs of bereavement.

  Then she made a tour of the house, collecting the many photographs of Oliver and the one or two of Mildred it contained. Then she returned to her boudoir and flung them one by one into the fire. Her face was impassive, but she clenched and unclenched her left hand. When the holocaust was accomplished she stared into the flames, her upper lip twitching. Then she went to bed.

  Henri, the Head Waiter of the Restaurant Verdi, had a far lower opinion of Marianna than she suspected. This was the sort of establishment where tipping was naturally lavish. Ten per cent. was considered a Doric-Semitic recompense for favours received. But the gentlemen, the divers and apparently flush gentlemen who had entertained Marianna in number eight seemed scandalously unaware of this fact. On one occasion a Spanish Grandee had contributed a five-franc note, several other apparently super-tax Latins had proffered sums varying from one and ninepence to half-a-crown. The Honourable James Renton had invariably been unworthy of his line, while even Mr Shanklin, who looked a nice, generous novelist, stuck to the lamentable ten per cent. Henri wished heartily that Marianna would choose another rendezvous. It was, therefore, with a gesture of no enthusiasm that he booked number eight for Mr Shanklin the morning after these mysterious events. At a quarter-past four when the bell rang, a signal for the bill, he placed it on the table without any presentiment of sudden wealth. He noticed that Madam looked flushed and defiant and that her host seemed to have just conceived a remarkably telling plot. And then the latter slipped something within the folded reckoning and passed with Madam from the room. Henri took up the paper, and then his eyes began to bulge, for inside it was that charming token a ten-pound note (and the amount of the bill was �
�3 11s. 6½d.)!

  The Red Hand

  THE POSTMAN’S KNOCK sounded just as the famous writer of ghost stories was drinking his coffee after dinner. There was only one letter for him, and he recognised by the writing on the envelope that it came from his literary agent. It was a handwriting he had learnt to love, for it was also to be found on the fat cheques which came in such envelopes. He opened it and found it did contain a cheque — not quite so fat as usual — and a letter. The first he put in his note-case and then turned to the letter.

  ‘Dear Mr Rhode,

  ‘I enclose a cheque for your American royalties which I hope you will find satisfactory. Now I have not forgotten that you gave me strict instructions not to approach you ever again with offers for psychic stories on account of doctor’s orders, but I have summoned up my courage to disobey you because of the very flattering proposal just made to me by the International people. They want a 4000-word story from you for their Christmas numbers — the International Magazine in America and Brett’s over here, of course. They will pay you £400 for first serial rights, and I thought this such a lavish offer that I felt it my duty to pass it on to you. I hope you will forgive me. They want copy by August 1st, if you accept.