Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton

People still go on comparing Thackeray and Dickens, quite cheerfully.
But the fashion of comparing Maltby and Braxton went out so long ago
as 1795. No, I am wrong. But anything that happened in the bland old
days before the war does seem to be a hundred more years ago than
actually it is. The year I mean is the one in whose spring-time we
all went bicycling (O thrill!) in Battersea Park, and ladies wore
sleeves that billowed enormously out from their shoulders, and Lord
Rosebery was Prime Minister.

In that Park, in that spring-time, in that sea of sleeves, there was
almost as much talk about the respective merits of Braxton and Maltby
as there was about those of Rudge and Humber. For the benefit of my
younger readers, and perhaps, so feeble is human memory, for the
benefit of their elders too, let me state that Rudge and Humber were
rival makers of bicycles, that Hilary Maltby was the author of `Ariel
in Mayfair,' and Stephen Braxton of `A Faun on the Cotswolds.'

`Which do you think is REALLY the best--"Ariel" or "A Faun"?' Ladies
were always asking one that question. `Oh, well, you know, the two
are so different. It's really very hard to compare them.' One was
always giving that answer. One was not very brilliant perhaps.

The vogue of the two novels lasted throughout the summer. As both
were `firstlings,' and Great Britain had therefore nothing else of
Braxton's or Maltby's to fall back on, the horizon was much scanned
for what Maltby, and what Braxton, would give us next. In the autumn
Braxton gave us his secondling. It was an instantaneous failure. No
more was he compared with Maltby. In the spring of '96 came Maltby's
secondling. Its failure was instantaneous. Maltby might once more
have been compared with Braxton. But Braxton was now forgotten. So
was Maltby.

This was not kind. This was not just. Maltby's first novel, and
Braxton's, had brought delight into many thousands of homes. People
should have paused to say of Braxton "Perhaps his third novel will be
better than his second," and to say as much for Maltby. I blame
people for having given no sign of wanting a third from either; and I
blame them with the more zest because neither `A Faun on the
Cotswolds' nor `Ariel in Mayfair' was a merely popular book: each, I
maintain, was a good book. I don't go so far as to say that the one
had `more of natural magic, more of British woodland glamour, more of
the sheer joy of life in it than anything since "As You Like It,"'
though Higsby went so far as this in the Daily Chronicle; nor can I
allow the claim made for the other by Grigsby in the Globe that `for
pungency of satire there has been nothing like it since Swift laid
down his pen, and for sheer sweetness and tenderness of feeling--ex
forti dulcedo--nothing to be mentioned in the same breath with it
since the lute fell from the tired hand of Theocritus.' These were
foolish exaggerations. But one must not condemn a thing because it
has been over-praised. Maltby's `Ariel' was a delicate, brilliant
work; and Braxton's `Faun,' crude though it was in many ways, had yet
a genuine power and beauty. This is not a mere impression remembered
from early youth. It is the reasoned and seasoned judgment of middle
age. Both books have been out of print for many years; but I secured
a second-hand copy of each not long ago, and found them well worth
reading again.

From the time of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the outbreak of the war,
current literature did not suffer from any lack of fauns. But when
Braxton's first book appeared fauns had still an air of novelty about
them. We had not yet tired of them and their hoofs and their slanting
eyes and their way of coming suddenly out of woods to wean quiet
English villages from respectability. We did tire later. But
Braxton's faun, even now, seems to me an admirable specimen of his
class--wild and weird, earthy, goat-like, almost convincing. And I
find myself convinced altogether by Braxton's rustics. I admit that I
do not know much about rustics, except from novels. But I plead that
the little I do know about them by personal observation does not
confirm much of what the many novelists have taught me. I plead also
that Braxton may well have been right about the rustics of
Gloucestershire because he was (as so many interviewers recorded of
him in his brief heyday) the son of a yeoman farmer at Far Oakridge,
and his boyhood had been divided between that village and the Grammar
School at Stroud. Not long ago I happened to be staying in the
neighbourhood, and came across several villagers who might, I assure
you, have stepped straight out of Braxton's pages. For that matter,
Braxton himself, whom I met often in the spring of '95, might have
stepped straight out of his own pages.

I am guilty of having wished he would step straight back into them.
He was a very surly fellow, very rugged and gruff. He was the
antithesis of pleasant little Maltby. I used to think that perhaps he
would have been less unamiable if success had come to him earlier. He
was thirty years old when his book was published, and had had a very
hard time since coming to London at the age of sixteen. Little Maltby
was a year older, and so had waited a year longer; but then, he had
waited under a comfortable roof at Twickenham, emerging into the
metropolis for no grimmer purpose than to sit and watch the
fashionable riders and walkers in Rotten Row, and then going home to
write a little, or to play lawn-tennis with the young ladies of
Twickenham. He had been the only child of his parents (neither of
whom, alas, survived to take pleasure in their darling's sudden fame).
He had now migrated from Twickenham and taken rooms in Ryder Street.
Had he ever shared with Braxton the bread of adversity--but no, I
think he would in any case have been pleasant. And conversely I
cannot imagine that Braxton would in any case have been so.

No one seeing the two rivals together, no one meeting them at Mr.
Hookworth's famous luncheon parties in the Authors' Club, or at Mrs.
Foster-Dugdale's not less famous garden parties in Greville Place,
would have supposed off-hand that the pair had a single point in
common. Dapper little Maltby--blond, bland, diminutive Maltby, with
his monocle and his gardenia; big black Braxton, with his lanky hair
and his square blue jaw and his square sallow forehead. Canary and
crow. Maltby had a perpetual chirrup of amusing small-talk. Braxton
was usually silent, but very well worth listening to whenever he did
croak. He had distinction, I admit it; the distinction of one who
steadfastly refuses to adapt himself to surroundings. He stood out.
He awed Mr. Hookworth. Ladies were always asking one another, rather
intently, what they thought of him. One could imagine that Mr.
Foster-Dugdale, had he come home from the City to attend the garden
parties, might have regarded him as one from whom Mrs. Foster-Dugdale
should be shielded. But the casual observer of Braxton and Maltby at
Mrs. Foster-Dugdale's or elsewhere was wrong in supposing that the two
were totally unlike. He overlooked one simple and obvious point.
This was that he had met them both at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale's or
elsewhere. Wherever they were invited, there certainly, there
punctually, they would be. They were both of them gluttons for the
fruits and signs of their success.

Interviewers and photographers had as little reason as had hostesses
to complain of two men so earnestly and assiduously `on the make' as
Maltby and Braxton. Maltby, for all his sparkle, was earnest;
Braxton, for all his arrogance, assiduous.

`A Faun on the Cotswolds' had no more eager eulogist than the author
of `Ariel in Mayfair.' When any one praised his work, Maltby would
lightly disparage it in comparison with Braxton's--`Ah, if I could
write like THAT!' Maltby won golden opinions in this way. Braxton,
on the other hand, would let slip no opportunity for sneering at
Maltby's work--`gimcrack,' as he called it. This was not good for
Maltby. Different men, different methods.

`The Rape of the Lock' was `gimcrack,' if you care to call it so; but
it was a delicate, brilliant work; and so, I repeat, was Maltby's
`Ariel.' Absurd to compare Maltby with Pope? I am not so sure. I
have read `Ariel,' but have never read `The Rape of the Lock.'
Braxton's opprobrious term for `Ariel' may not, however, have been due
to jealousy alone. Braxton had imagination, and his rival did not
soar above fancy. But the point is that Maltby's fancifulness went
far and well. In telling how Ariel re-embodied himself from thin air,
leased a small house in Chesterfield Street, was presented at a Levee,
played the part of good fairy in a matter of true love not running
smooth, and worked meanwhile all manner of amusing changes among the
aristocracy before he vanished again, Maltby showed a very pretty
range of ingenuity. In one respect, his work was a more surprising
achievement than Braxton's. For whereas Braxton had been born and
bred among his rustics, Maltby knew his aristocrats only through
Thackeray, through the photographs and paragraphs in the newspapers,
and through those passionate excursions of his to Rotten Row. Yet I
found his aristocrats as convincing as Braxton's rustics. It is true
that I may have been convinced wrongly. That is a point which I could
settle only by experience. I shift my ground, claiming for Maltby's
aristocrats just this: that they pleased me very much.

Aristocrats, when they are presented solely through a novelist's sense
of beauty, do not satisfy us. They may be as beautiful as all that,
but, for fear of thinking ourselves snobbish, we won't believe it. We
do believe it, however, and revel in it, when the novelist saves his
face and ours by a pervading irony in the treatment of what he loves.
The irony must, mark you, be pervading and obvious. Disraeli's great
ladies and lords won't do, for his irony was but latent in his homage,
and thus the reader feels himself called on to worship and in duty
bound to scoff. All's well, though, when the homage is latent in the
irony. Thackeray, inviting us to laugh and frown over the follies of
Mayfair, enables us to reel with him in a secret orgy of veneration
for those fools.

Maltby, too, in his measure, enabled us to reel thus. That is mainly
why, before the end of April, his publisher was in a position to state
that `the Seventh Large Impression of "Ariel in Mayfair" is almost
exhausted.' Let it be put to our credit, however, that at the same
moment Braxton's publisher had `the honour to inform the public that
an Eighth Large Impression of "A Faun on the Cotswolds" is in instant
preparation.'

Indeed, it seemed impossible for either author to outvie the other in
success and glory. Week in, week out, you saw cancelled either's
every momentary advantage. A neck-and-neck race. As thus:--Maltby
appears as a Celebrity At Home in the World (Tuesday). Ha! No,
Vanity Fair (Wednesday) has a perfect presentment of Braxton by `Spy.'
Neck-and-neck! No, Vanity Fair says `the subject of next week's
cartoon will be Mr. Hilary Maltby.' Maltby wins! No, next week
Braxton's in the World.

Throughout May I kept, as it were, my eyes glued to my field-glasses.
On the first Monday in June I saw that which drew from me a hoarse
ejaculation.

Let me explain that always on Monday mornings at this time of year,
when I opened my daily paper, I looked with respectful interest to see
what bevy of the great world had been entertained since Saturday at
Keeb Hall. The list was always august and inspiring. Statecraft and
Diplomacy were well threaded there with mere Lineage and mere Beauty,
with Royalty sometimes, with mere Wealth never, with privileged Genius
now and then. A noble composition always. It was said that the Duke
of Hertfordshire cared for nothing but his collection of birds' eggs,
and that the collections of guests at Keeb were formed entirely by his
young Duchess. It was said that he had climbed trees in every corner
of every continent. The Duchess' hobby was easier. She sat aloft and
beckoned desirable specimens up.

The list published on that first Monday in June began ordinarily
enough, began with the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador and the Portuguese
Minister. Then came the Duke and Duchess of Mull, followed by four
lesser Peers (two of them Proconsuls, however) with their Peeresses,
three Peers without their Peeresses, four Peeresses without their
Peers, and a dozen bearers of courtesy-titles with or without their
wives or husbands. The rear was brought up by `Mr. A. J. Balfour, Mr.
Henry Chaplin, and Mr. Hilary Maltby.'

Youth tends to look at the darker side of things. I confess that my
first thought was for Braxton.

I forgave and forgot his faults of manner. Youth is generous. It
does not criticise a strong man stricken.

And anon, so habituated was I to the parity of those two strivers, I
conceived that there might be some mistake. Daily newspapers are
printed in a hurry. Might not `Henry Chaplin' be a typographical
error for `Stephen Braxton'? I went out and bought another newspaper.
But Mr. Chaplin's name was in that too.

`Patience!' I said to myself. `Braxton crouches only to spring. He
will be at Keeb Hall on Saturday next.'

My mind was free now to dwell with pleasure on Maltby's great
achievement. I thought of writing to congratulate him, but feared
this might be in bad taste. I did, however, write asking him to lunch
with me. He did not answer my letter. I was, therefore, all the more
sorry, next Monday, at not finding `and Mr. Stephen Braxton' in Keeb's
week-end catalogue.

A few days later I met Mr. Hookworth. He mentioned that Stephen
Braxton had left town. `He has taken,' said Hookworth, `a delightful
bungalow on the east coast. He has gone there to WORK.' He added
that he had a great liking for Braxton--`a man utterly UNSPOILT.' I
inferred that he, too, had written to Maltby and received no answer.

That butterfly did not, however, appear to be hovering from flower to
flower in the parterres of rank and fashion. In the daily lists of
guests at dinners, receptions, dances, balls, the name of Maltby
figured never. Maltby had not caught on.

Presently I heard that he, too, had left town. I gathered that he had
gone quite early in June--quite soon after Keeb. Nobody seemed to
know where he was. My own theory was that he had taken a delightful
bungalow on the west coast, to balance Braxton. Anyhow, the parity of
the two strivers was now somewhat re-established.

In point of fact, the disparity had been less than I supposed. While
Maltby was at Keeb, there Braxton was also--in a sense.... It was a
strange story. I did not hear it at the time. Nobody did. I heard
it seventeen years later. I heard it in Lucca.

Little Lucca I found so enchanting that, though I had only a day or
two to spare, I stayed there a whole month. I formed the habit of
walking, every morning, round that high-pitched path which girdles
Lucca, that wide and tree-shaded path from which one looks down over
the city wall at the fertile plains beneath Lucca. There were never
many people there; but the few who did come came daily, so that I grew
to like seeing them and took a mild personal interest in them.

One of them was an old lady in a wheeled chair. She was not less than
seventy years old, and might or might not have once been beautiful.
Her chair was slowly propelled by an Italian woman. She herself was
obviously Italian. Not so, however, the little gentleman who walked
assiduously beside her. Him I guessed to be English. He was a very
stout little gentleman, with gleaming spectacles and a full blond
beard, and he seemed to radiate cheerfulness. I thought at first that
he might be the old lady's resident physician; but no, there was
something subtly un-professional about him: I became sure that his
constancy was gratuitous, and his radiance real. And one day, I know
not how, there dawned on me a suspicion that he was--who?--some one I
had known--some writer--what's-his-name--something with an M--Maltby--
Hilary Maltby of the long-ago!

At sight of him on the morrow this suspicion hardened almost to
certainty. I wished I could meet him alone and ask him if I were not
right, and what he had been doing all these years, and why he had left
England. He was always with the old lady. It was only on my last day
in Lucca that my chance came.

I had just lunched, and was seated on a comfortable bench outside my
hotel, with a cup of coffee on the table before me, gazing across the
faded old sunny piazza and wondering what to do with my last
afternoon. It was then that I espied yonder the back of the putative
Maltby. I hastened forth to him. He was buying some pink roses, a
great bunch of them, from a market-woman under an umbrella. He looked
very blank, he flushed greatly, when I ventured to accost him. He
admitted that his name was Hilary Maltby. I told him my own name, and
by degrees he remembered me. He apologised for his confusion. He
explained that he had not talked English, had not talked to an
Englishman, `for--oh, hundreds of years.' He said that he had, in the
course of his long residence in Lucca, seen two or three people whom
he had known in England, but that none of them had recognised him. He
accepted (but as though he were embarking on the oddest adventure in
the world) my invitation that he should come and sit down and take
coffee with me. He laughed with pleasure and surprise at finding that
he could still speak his native tongue quite fluently and
idiomatically. `I know absolutely nothing,' he said, `about England
nowadays--except from stray references to it in the Corriere della
Sera; nor did he show the faintest desire that I should enlighten him.
`England,' he mused, `--how it all comes back to me!'

`But not you to it?'

`Ah, no indeed,' he said gravely, looking at the roses which he had
laid carefully on the marble table. `I am the happiest of men.'

He sipped his coffee, and stared out across the piazza, out beyond it
into the past.

`I am the happiest of men,' he repeated. I plied him with the spur of
silence.

`And I owe it all to having once yielded to a bad impulse. Absurd,
the threads our destinies hang on!'

Again I plied him with that spur. As it seemed not to prick him, I
repeated the words he had last spoken. `For instance?' I added.

`Take,' he said, `a certain evening in the spring of '95. If, on that
evening, the Duchess of Hertfordshire had had a bad cold; or if she
had decided that it WOULDN'T be rather interesting to go on to that
party--that Annual Soiree, I think it was--of the Inkwomen's Club; or
again--to go a step further back--if she hadn't ever written that one
little poem, and if it HADN'T been printed in "The Gentlewoman," and
if the Inkwomen's committee HADN'T instantly and unanimously elected
her an Honorary Vice-President because of that one little poem; or if-
-well, if a million-and-one utterly irrelevant things hadn't happened,
don't-you-know, I shouldn't be here.... I might be THERE,' he smiled,
with a vague gesture indicating England.

`Suppose,' he went on, `I hadn't been invited to that Annual Soiree;
or suppose that other fellow,--

`Braxton?' I suggested. I had remembered Braxton at the moment of
recognising Maltby.

`Suppose HE hadn't been asked.... But of course we both were. It
happened that I was the first to be presented to the Duchess.... It
was a great moment. I hoped I should keep my head. She wore a tiara.
I had often seen women in tiaras, at the Opera. But I had never
talked to a woman in a tiara. Tiaras were symbols to me. Eyes are
just a human feature. I fixed mine on the Duchess's. I kept my head
by not looking at hers. I behaved as one human being to another. She
seemed very intelligent. We got on very well. Presently she asked
whether I should think her VERY bold if she said how PERFECTLY divine
she thought my book. I said something about doing my best, and asked
with animation whether she had read "A Faun on the Cotswolds." She
had. She said it was TOO wonderful, she said it was TOO great. If
she hadn't been a Duchess, I might have thought her slightly
hysterical. Her innate good-sense quickly reasserted itself. She
used her great power. With a wave of her magic wand she turned into a
fact the glittering possibility that had haunted me. She asked me
down to Keeb.

`She seemed very pleased that I would come. Was I, by any chance,
free on Saturday week? She hoped there would be some amusing people
to meet me. Could I come by the 3.30? It was only an hour-and-a-
quarter from Victoria. On Saturday there were always compartments
reserved for people coming to Keeb by the 3.30. She hoped I would
bring my bicycle with me. She hoped I wouldn't find it very dull.
She hoped I wouldn't forget to come. She said how lovely it must be
to spend one's life among clever people. She supposed I knew
everybody here to-night. She asked me to tell her who everybody was.
She asked who was the tall, dark man, over there. I told her it was
Stephen Braxton. She said they had promised to introduce her to him.
She added that he looked rather wonderful. "Oh, he is, very," I
assured her. She turned to me with a sudden appeal: "DO you think, if
I took my courage in both hands and asked him, he'd care to come to
Keeb?"

`I hesitated. It would be easy to say that Satan answered FOR me;
easy but untrue; it was I that babbled: "Well--as a matter of fact--
since you ask me--if I were you--really I think you'd better not.
He's very odd in some ways. He has an extraordinary hatred of
sleeping out of London. He has the real Gloucestershire LOVE of
London. At the same time, he's very shy; and if you asked him he
wouldn't very well know how to refuse. I think it would be KINDER not
to ask him."

`At that moment, Mrs. Wilpham--the President--loomed up to us,
bringing Braxton. He bore himself well. Rough dignity with a touch
of mellowness. I daresay you never saw him smile. He smiled gravely
down at the Duchess, while she talked in her pretty little quick
humble way. He made a great impression.

`What I had done was not merely base: it was very dangerous. I was in
terror that she might rally him on his devotion to London. I didn't
dare to move away. I was immensely relieved when at length she said
she must be going.

`Braxton seemed loth to relax his grip on her hand at parting. I
feared she wouldn't escape without uttering that invitation. But all
was well.... In saying good night to me, she added in a murmur,
"Don't forget Keeb--Saturday week--the 3.30." Merely an exquisite
murmur. But Braxton heard it. I knew, by the diabolical look he gave
me, that Braxton had heard it.... If he hadn't, I shouldn't be here.

`Was I a prey to remorse? Well, in the days between that Soiree and
that Saturday, remorse often claimed me, but rapture wouldn't give me
up. Arcady, Olympus, the right people, at last! I hadn't realised
how good my book was--not till it got me this guerdon; not till I got
it this huge advertisement. I foresaw how pleased my publisher would
be. In some great houses, I knew, it was possible to stay without any
one knowing you had been there. But the Duchess of Hertfordshire hid
her light under no bushel. Exclusive she was, but not of publicity.
Next to Windsor Castle, Keeb Hall was the most advertised house in all
England.

`Meanwhile, I had plenty to do. I rather thought of engaging a valet,
but decided that this wasn't necessary. On the other hand, I felt a
need for three new summer suits, and a new evening suit, and some new
white waistcoats. Also a smoking suit. And had any man ever stayed
at Keeb without a dressing-case? Hitherto I had been content with a
pair of wooden brushes, and so forth. I was afraid these would appal
the footman who unpacked my things. I ordered, for his sake, a large
dressing-case, with my initials engraved throughout it. It looked
compromisingly new when it came to me from the shop. I had to kick it
industriously, and throw it about and scratch it, so as to avert
possible suspicion. The tailor did not send my things home till the
Friday evening. I had to sit up late, wearing the new suits in
rotation.

`Next day, at Victoria, I saw strolling on the platform many people,
male and female, who looked as if they were going to Keeb--tall, cool,
ornate people who hadn't packed their own things and had reached
Victoria in broughams. I was ornate, but not tall nor cool. My
porter was rather off-hand in his manner as he wheeled my things along
to the 3.30. I asked severely if there were any compartments reserved
for people going to stay with the Duke of Hertfordshire. This worked
an instant change in him. Having set me in one of those shrines, he
seemed almost loth to accept a tip. A snob, I am afraid.

`A selection of the tall, the cool, the ornate, the intimately
acquainted with one another, soon filled the compartment. There I
was, and I think they felt they ought to try to bring me into the
conversation. As they were all talking about a cotillion of the
previous night, I shouldn't have been able to shine. I gazed out of
the window, with middle-class aloofness. Presently the talk drifted
on to the topic of bicycles. But by this time it was too late for me
to come in.

`I gazed at the squalid outskirts of London as they flew by. I
doubted, as I listened to my fellow-passengers, whether I should be
able to shine at Keeb. I rather wished I were going to spend the
week-end at one of those little houses with back-gardens beneath the
railway-line. I was filled with fears.

`For shame! thought I. Was I nobody? Was the author of "Ariel in
Mayfair" nobody?

`I reminded myself how glad Braxton would be if he knew of my faint-
heartedness. I thought of Braxton sitting, at this moment, in his
room in Clifford's Inn and glowering with envy of his hated rival in
the 3.30. And after all, how enviable I was! My spirits rose. I
would acquit myself well....

`I much admired the scene at the little railway station where we
alighted. It was like a fete by Lancret. I knew from the talk of my
fellow-passengers that some people had been going down by an earlier
train, and that others were coming by a later. But the 3.30 had
brought a full score of us. Us! That was the final touch of beauty.

`Outside there were two broughams, a landau, dog-carts, a phaeton, a
wagonette, I know not what. But almost everybody, it seemed, was
going to bicycle. Lady Rodfitten said SHE was going to bicycle. Year
after year, I had seen that famous Countess riding or driving in the
Park. I had been told at fourth hand that she had a masculine
intellect and could make and unmake Ministries. She was nearly sixty
now, a trifle dyed and stout and weather-beaten, but still
tremendously handsome, and hard as nails. One would not have said she
had grown older, but merely that she belonged now to a rather later
period of the Roman Empire. I had never dreamed of a time when one
roof would shelter Lady Rodfitten and me. Somehow, she struck my
imagination more than any of these others--more than Count Deym, more
than Mr. Balfour, more than the lovely Lady Thisbe Crowborough.

`I might have had a ducal vehicle all to myself, and should have liked
that; but it seemed more correct that I should use my bicycle. On the
other hand, I didn't want to ride with all these people--a stranger in
their midst. I lingered around the luggage till they were off, and
then followed at a long distance.

`The sun had gone behind clouds. But I rode slowly, so as to be sure
not to arrive hot. I passed, not without a thrill, through the
massive open gates into the Duke's park. A massive man with a cockade
saluted me--hearteningly--from the door of the lodge. The park seemed
endless. I came, at length, to a long straight avenue of elms that
were almost blatantly immemorial. At the end of it was--well, I felt
like a gnat going to stay in a public building.

`If there had been turnstiles--IN and OUT--and a shilling to pay, I
should have felt easier as I passed into that hall--that Palladio-
Gargantuan hall. Some one, some butler or groom-of-the-chamber,
murmured that her Grace was in the garden. I passed out through the
great opposite doorway on to a wide spectacular terrace with lawns
beyond. Tea was on the nearest of these lawns. In the central group
of people--some standing, others sitting--I espied the Duchess. She
sat pouring out tea, a deft and animated little figure. I advanced
firmly down the steps from the terrace, feeling that all would be well
so soon as I had reported myself to the Duchess.

`But I had a staggering surprise on my way to her. I espied in one of
the smaller groups--whom d'you think? Braxton.

`I had no time to wonder how he had got there--time merely to grasp
the black fact that he WAS there.

`The Duchess seemed really pleased to see me. She said it was TOO
splendid of me to come. "You know Mr. Maltby?" she asked Lady
Rodfitten, who exclaimed "Not Mr. HILARY Maltby?" with a vigorous
grace that was overwhelming. Lady Rodfitten declared she was the
greatest of my admirers; and I could well believe that in whatever she
did she excelled all competitors. On the other hand, I found it hard
to believe she was afraid of me. Yet I had her word for it that she
was.

`Her womanly charm gave place now to her masculine grip. She
eulogised me in the language of a seasoned reviewer on the staff of a
long-established journal--wordy perhaps, but sound. I revered and
loved her. I wished I could give her my undivided attention. But,
whilst I sat there, teacup, in hand, between her and the Duchess, part
of my brain was fearfully concerned with that glimpse I had had of
Braxton. It didn't so much matter that he was here to halve my
triumph. But suppose he knew what I had told the Duchess! And
suppose he had--no, surely if he HAD shown me up in all my meanness
she wouldn't have received me so very cordially. I wondered where she
could have met him since that evening of the Inkwomen. I heard Lady
Rodfitten concluding her review of "Ariel" with two or three sentences
that might have been framed specially to give the publisher an easy
"quote." And then I heard myself asking mechanically whether she had
read "A Faun on the Cotswolds." The Duchess heard me too. She turned
from talking to other people and said "I did like Mr. Braxton so VERY
much."

`"Yes," I threw out with a sickly smile, "I'm so glad you asked him to
come."

`"But I didn't ask him. I didn't DARE."

`"But--but--surely he wouldn't be--be HERE if--" We stared at each
other blankly. "Here?" she echoed, glancing at the scattered little
groups of people on the lawn. I glanced too. I was much embarrassed.
I explained that I had seen Braxton "standing just over there" when I
arrived, and had supposed he was one of the people who came by the
earlier train. "Well," she said with a slightly irritated laugh, "you
must have mistaken some one else for him." She dropped the subject,
talked to other people, and presently moved away.

`Surely, thought I, she didn't suspect me of trying to make fun of
her? On the other hand, surely she hadn't conspired with Braxton to
make a fool of ME? And yet, how could Braxton be here without an
invitation, and without her knowledge? My brain whirled. One thing
only was clear. I could NOT have mistaken anybody for Braxton. There
Braxton had stood--Stephen Braxton, in that old pepper-and-salt suit
of his, with his red tie all askew, and without a hat--his hair
hanging over his forehead. All this I had seen sharp and clean-cut.
There he had stood, just beside one of the women who travelled down in
the same compartment as I; a very pretty woman in a pale blue dress; a
tall woman--but I had noticed how small she looked beside Braxton.
This woman was now walking to and fro, yonder, with M. de Soveral. I
had seen Braxton beside her as clearly as I now saw M. de Soveral.

`Lady Rodfitten was talking about India to a recent Viceroy. She
seemed to have as firm a grip of India as of "Ariel." I sat
forgotten. I wanted to arise and wander off--in a vague search for
Braxton. But I feared this might look as if I were angry at being
ignored. Presently Lady Rodfitten herself arose, to have what she
called her "annual look round." She bade me come too, and strode off
between me and the recent Viceroy, noting improvements that had been
made in the grounds, suggesting improvements that might be made,
indicating improvements that MUST be made. She was great on
landscape-gardening. The recent Viceroy was less great on it, but
great enough. I don't say I walked forgotten: the eminent woman
constantly asked my opinion; but my opinion, though of course it
always coincided with hers, sounded quite worthless, somehow. I
longed to shine. I could only bother about Braxton.

`Lady Rodfitten's voice sounded over-strong for the stillness of
evening. The shadows lengthened. My spirits sank lower and lower,
with the sun. I was a naturally cheerful person, but always, towards
sunset, I had a vague sense of melancholy: I seemed always to have
grown weaker; morbid misgivings would come to me. On this particular
evening there was one such misgiving that crept in and out of me again
and again...a very horrible misgiving as to the NATURE of what I had
seen.

`Well, dressing for dinner is a great tonic. Especially if one
shaves. My spirits rose as I lathered my face. I smiled to my
reflection in the mirror. The afterglow of the sun came through the
window behind the dressing-table, but I had switched on all the
lights. My new silver-topped bottles and things made a fine array.
To-night _I_ was going to shine, too. I felt I might yet be the life
and soul of the party. Anyway, my new evening suit was without a
fault. And meanwhile this new razor was perfect. Having shaved
"down," I lathered myself again and proceeded to shave "up." It was
then that I uttered a sharp sound and swung round on my heel.

`No one was there. Yet this I knew: Stephen Braxton had just looked
over my shoulder. I had seen the reflection of his face beside mine--
craned forward to the mirror. I had met his eyes.

`He had been with me. This I knew.

`I turned to look again at that mirror. One of my cheeks was all
covered with blood. I stanched it with a towel. Three long cuts
where the razor had slipped and skipped. I plunged the towel into
cold water and held it to my cheek. The bleeding went on--alarmingly.
I rang the bell. No one came. I vowed I wouldn't bleed to death for
Braxton. I rang again. At last a very tall powdered footman
appeared--more reproachful-looking than sympathetic, as though I
hadn't ordered that dressing-case specially on his behalf. He said he
thought one of the housemaids would have some sticking-plaster. He
was very sorry he was needed downstairs, but he would tell one of the
housemaids. I continued to dab and to curse. The blood flowed less.
I showed great spirit. I vowed Braxton should not prevent me from
going down to dinner.

`But--a pretty sight I was when I did go down. Pale but determined,
with three long strips of black sticking-plaster forming a sort of Z
on my left cheek. Mr. Hilary Maltby at Keeb. Literature's
Ambassador.

`I don't know how late I was. Dinner was in full swing. Some servant
piloted me to my place. I sat down unobserved. The woman on either
side of me was talking to her other neighbour. I was near the
Duchess' end of the table. Soup was served to me--that dark-red soup
that you pour cream into--Bortsch. I felt it would steady me. I
raised the first spoonful to my lips, and--my hand gave a sudden jerk.

`I was aware of two separate horrors--a horror that had been, a horror
that was. Braxton had vanished. Not for more than an instant had he
stood scowling at me from behind the opposite diners. Not for more
than the fraction of an instant. But he had left his mark on me. I
gazed down with a frozen stare at my shirtfront, at my white
waistcoat, both dark with Bortsch. I rubbed them with a napkin. I
made them worse.

`I looked at my glass of champagne. I raised it carefully and drained
it at one draught. It nerved me. But behind that shirtfront was a
broken heart.

`The woman on my left was Lady Thisbe Crowborough. I don't know who
was the woman on my right. She was the first to turn and see me. I
thought it best to say something about my shirtfront at once. I said
it to her sideways, without showing my left cheek. Her handsome eyes
rested on the splashes. She said, after a moment's thought, that they
looked "rather gay." She said she thought the eternal black and white
of men's evening clothes was "so very dreary." She did her best....
Lady Thisbe Crowborough did her best, too, I suppose; but breeding
isn't proof against all possible shocks: she visibly started at sight
of me and my Z. I explained that I had cut myself shaving. I said,
with an attempt at lightness, that shy men ought always to cut
themselves shaving: it made such a good conversational opening. "But
surely," she said after a pause, "you don't cut yourself on purpose?"
She was an abysmal fool. I didn't think so at the time. She was Lady
Thisbe Crowborough. This fact hallowed her. That we didn't get on at
all well was a misfortune for which I blamed only myself and my
repulsive appearance and--the unforgettable horror that distracted me.
Nor did I blame Lady Thisbe for turning rather soon to the man on her
other side.

`The woman on my right was talking to the man on HER other side; so
that I was left a prey to secret memory and dread. I wasn't
wondering, wasn't attempting to explain; I was merely remembering--and
dreading. And--how odd one is!--on the top-layer of my consciousness
I hated to be seen talking to no one. Mr. Maltby at Keeb. I caught
the Duchess' eye once or twice, and she nodded encouragingly, as who
should say "You do look rather awful, and you do seem rather out of
it, but I don't for a moment regret having asked you to come."
Presently I had another chance of talking. I heard myself talk. My
feverish anxiety to please rather touched ME. But I noticed that the
eyes of my listener wandered. And yet I was sorry when the ladies
went away. I had a sense of greater exposure. Men who hadn't seen me
saw me now. The Duke, as he came round to the Duchess' end of the
table, must have wondered who I was. But he shyly offered me his hand
as he passed, and said it was so good of me to come. I had thought of
slipping away to put on another shirt and waistcoat, but had decided
that this would make me the more ridiculous. I sat drinking port--
poison to me after champagne, but a lulling poison--and listened to
noblemen with unstained shirtfronts talking about the Australian
cricket match....

`Is Rubicon Bezique still played in England? There was a mania for it
at that time. The floor of Keeb's Palladio-Gargantuan hall was dotted
with innumerable little tables. I didn't know how to play. My
hostess told me I must "come and amuse the dear old Duke and Duchess
of Mull," and led me to a remote sofa on which an old gentleman had
just sat down beside an old lady. They looked at me with a dim kind
interest. My hostess had set me and left me on a small gilt chair in
front of them. Before going she had conveyed to them loudly--one of
them was very deaf--that I was "the famous writer." It was a long
time before they understood that I was not a political writer. The
Duke asked me, after a troubled pause, whether I had known "old Mr.
Abraham Hayward." The Duchess said I was too young to have known Mr.
Hayward, and asked if I knew her "clever friend Mr. Mallock." I said
I had just been reading Mr. Mallock's new novel. I heard myself
shouting a confused precis of the plot. The place where we were
sitting was near the foot of the great marble staircase. I said how
beautiful the staircase was. The Duchess of Mull said she had never
cared very much for that staircase. The Duke, after a pause, said he
had "often heard old Mr. Abraham Hayward hold a whole dinner table."
There were long and frequent pauses--between which I heard myself
talking loudly, frantically, sinking lower and lower in the esteem of
my small audience. I felt like a man drowning under the eyes of an
elderly couple who sit on the bank regretting that they can offer NO
assistance. Presently the Duke looked at his watch and said to the
Duchess that it was "time to be thinking of bed."

`They rose, as it were from the bank, and left me, so to speak, under
water. I watched them as they passed slowly out of sight up the
marble staircase which I had mispraised. I turned and surveyed the
brilliant, silent scene presented by the card-players.

`I wondered what old Mr. Abraham Hayward would have done in my place.
Would he have just darted in among those tables and "held" them? I
presumed that he would not have stolen silently away, quickly and
cravenly away, up the marble staircase--as _I_ did.

`I don't know which was the greater, the relief or the humiliation of
finding myself in my bedroom. Perhaps the humiliation was the
greater. There, on a chair, was my grand new smoking-suit, laid out
for me--what a mockery! Once I had foreseen myself wearing it in the
smoking-room at a late hour--the centre of a group of eminent men
entranced by the brilliancy of my conversation. And now--! I was
nothing but a small, dull, soup-stained, sticking-plastered, nerve-
racked recluse. Nerves, yes. I assured myself that I had not seen--
what I had seemed to see. All very odd, of course, and very
unpleasant, but easily explained. Nerves. Excitement of coming to
Keeb too much for me. A good night's rest: that was all I needed.
To-morrow I should laugh at myself.

`I wondered that I wasn't tired physically. There my grand new silk
pyjamas were, yet I felt no desire to go to bed...none while it was
still possible for me to go. The little writing-table at the foot of
my bed seemed to invite me. I had brought with me in my portmanteau a
sheaf of letters, letters that I had purposely left unanswered in
order that I might answer them on KEEB HALL note-paper. These the
footman had neatly laid beside the blotting-pad on that little
writing-table at the foot of the bed. I regretted that the notepaper
stacked there had no ducal coronet on it. What matter? The address
sufficed. If I hadn't yet made a good impression on the people who
were staying here, I could at any rate make one on the people who
weren't. I sat down. I set to work. I wrote a prodigious number of
fluent and graceful notes.

`Some of these were to strangers who wanted my autograph. I was
always delighted to send my autograph, and never perfunctory in the
manner of sending it.... "Dear Madam," I remember writing to somebody
that night, "were it not that you make your request for it so
charmingly, I should hesitate to send you that which rarity alone can
render valuable.--Yours truly, Hilary Maltby." I remember reading
this over and wondering whether the word "render" looked rather
commercial. It was in the act of wondering thus that I raised my eyes
from the note-paper and saw, through the bars of the brass bedstead,
the naked sole of a large human foot--saw beyond it the calf of a
great leg; a nightshirt; and the face of Stephen Braxton. I did not
move.

`I thought of making a dash for the door, dashing out into the
corridor, shouting at the top of my voice for help. I sat quite
still.

`What kept me to my chair was the fear that if I tried to reach the
door Braxton would spring off the bed to intercept me. If I sat quite
still perhaps he wouldn't move. I felt that if he moved I should
collapse utterly.

`I watched him, and he watched me. He lay there with his body half-
raised, one elbow propped on the pillow, his jaw sunk on his breast;
and from under his black brows he watched me steadily.

`No question of mere nerves now. That hope was gone. No mere optical
delusion, this abiding presence. Here Braxton was. He and I were
together in the bright, silent room. How long would he be content to
watch me?

`Eleven nights ago he had given me one horrible look. It was this
look that I had to meet, in infinite prolongation, now, not daring to
shift my eyes. He lay as motionless as I sat. I did not hear him
breathing, but I knew, by the rise and fall of his chest under his
nightshirt, that he was breathing heavily. Suddenly I started to my
feet. For he had moved. He had raised one hand slowly. He was
stroking his chin. And as he did so, and as he watched me, his mouth
gradually slackened to a grin. It was worse, it was more malign, this
grin, than the scowl that remained with it; and its immediate effect
on me was an impulse that was as hard to resist as it was hateful.
The window was open. It was nearer to me than the door. I could have
reached it in time....

`Well, I live to tell the tale. I stood my ground. And there dawned
on me now a new fact in regard to my companion. I had all the while
been conscious of something abnormal in his attitude--a lack of ease
in his gross possessiveness. I saw now the reason for this effect.
The pillow on which his elbow rested was still uniformly puffed and
convex; like a pillow untouched. His elbow rested but on the very
surface of it, not changing the shape of it at all. His body made not
the least furrow along the bed.... He had no weight.

`I knew that if I leaned forward and thrust my hand between those
brass rails, to clutch his foot, I should clutch--nothing. He wasn't
tangible. He was realistic. He wasn't real. He was opaque. He
wasn't solid.

`Odd as it may seem to you, these certainties took the edge off my
horror. During that walk with Lady Rodfitten, I had been appalled by
the doubt that haunted me. But now the very confirmation of that
doubt gave me a sort of courage: I could cope better with anything to-
night than with actual Braxton. And the measure of the relief I felt
is that I sat down again on my chair.

`More than once there came to me a wild hope that the thing might be
an optical delusion, after all. Then would I shut my eyes tightly,
shaking my head sharply; but, when I looked again, there the presence
was, of course. It--he--not actual Braxton but, roughly speaking,
Braxton--had come to stay. I was conscious of intense fatigue, taut
and alert though every particle of me was; so that I became, in the
course of that ghastly night, conscious of a great envy also. For
some time before the dawn came in through the window, Braxton's eyes
had been closed; little by little now his head drooped sideways, then
fell on his forearm and rested there. He was asleep.

`Cut off from sleep, I had a great longing for smoke. I had
cigarettes on me, I had matches on me. But I didn't dare to strike a
match. The sound might have waked Braxton up. In slumber he was less
terrible, though perhaps more odious. I wasn't so much afraid now as
indignant. "It's intolerable," I sat saying to myself, "utterly
intolerable!"

`I had to bear it, nevertheless. I was aware that I had, in some
degree, brought it on myself. If I hadn't interfered and lied, actual
Braxton would have been here at Keeb, and I at this moment sleeping
soundly. But this was no excuse for Braxton. Braxton didn't know
what I had done. He was merely envious of me. And--wanly I puzzled
it out in the dawn--by very force of the envy, hatred, and malice in
him he had projected hither into my presence this simulacrum of
himself. I had known that he would be thinking of me. I had known
that the thought of me at Keeb Hall would be of the last bitterness to
his most sacred feelings. But--I had reckoned without the passionate
force and intensity of the man's nature.

`If by this same strength and intensity he had merely projected
himself as an invisible guest under the Duchess' roof--if his feat had
been wholly, as perhaps it was in part, a feat of mere wistfulness and
longing--then I should have felt really sorry for him; and my
conscience would have soundly rated me in his behalf. But no; if the
wretched creature HAD been invisible to me, I shouldn't have thought
of Braxton at all--except with gladness that he wasn't here. That he
was visible to me, and to me alone, wasn't any sign of proper remorse
within me. It was but the gauge of his incredible ill-will.

`Well, it seemed to me that he was avenged--with a vengeance. There I
sat, hot-browed from sleeplessness, cold in the feet, stiff in the
legs, cowed and indignant all through--sat there in the broadening
daylight, and in that new evening suit of mine with the Braxtonised
shirtfront and waistcoat that by day were more than ever loathsome.
Literature's Ambassador at Keeb.... I rose gingerly from my chair,
and caught sight of my face, of my Braxtonised cheek, in the mirror.
I heard the twittering of birds in distant trees. I saw through my
window the elaborate landscape of the Duke's grounds, all soft in the
grey bloom of early morning. I think I was nearer to tears than I had
ever been since I was a child. But the weakness passed. I turned
towards the personage on my bed, and, summoning all such power as was
in me, WILLED him to be gone. My effort was not without result--an
inadequate result. Braxton turned in his sleep.

`I resumed my seat, and...and...sat up staring and blinking, at a tall
man with red hair. "I must have fallen asleep," I said. "Yessir," he
replied; and his toneless voice touched in me one or two springs of
memory: I was at Keeb; this was the footman who looked after me. But-
-why wasn't I in bed? Had I--no, surely it had been no nightmare.
Surely I had SEEN Braxton on that white bed.

`The footman was impassively putting away my smoking-suit. I was too
dazed to wonder what he thought of me. Nor did I attempt to stifle a
cry when, a moment later, turning in my chair, I beheld Braxton
leaning moodily against the mantelpiece. "Are you unwellsir?" asked
the footman. "No," I said faintly, "I'm quite well."--"Yessir. Will
you wear the blue suit or the grey?"--"The grey."--"Yessir."--It
seemed almost incredible that HE didn't see Braxton; HE didn't appear
to me one whit more solid than the night-shirted brute who stood
against the mantelpiece and watched him lay out my things.--"Shall I
let your bath-water run nowsir?"--"Please, yes."--"Your bathroom's the
second door to the left sir."--He went out with my bath-towel and
sponge, leaving me alone with Braxton.

`I rose to my feet, mustering once more all the strength that was in
me. Hoping against hope, with set teeth and clenched hands, I faced
him, thrust forth my will at him, with everything but words commanded
him to vanish--to cease to be.

`Suddenly, utterly, he vanished. And you can imagine the truly
exquisite sense of triumph that thrilled me and continued to thrill me
till I went into the bathroom and found him in my bath.

`Quivering with rage, I returned to my bedroom. "Intolerable," I
heard myself repeating like a parrot that knew no other word. A bath
was just what I had needed. Could I have lain for a long time basking
in very hot water, and then have sponged myself with cold water, I
should have emerged calm and brave; comparatively so, at any rate. I
should have looked less ghastly, and have had less of a headache, and
something of an appetite, when I went down to breakfast. Also, I
shouldn't have been the very first guest to appear on the scene.
There were five or six round tables, instead of last night's long
table. At the further end of the room the butler and two other
servants were lighting the little lamps under the hot dishes. I
didn't like to make myself ridiculous by running away. On the other
hand, was it right for me to begin breakfast all by myself at one of
these round tables? I supposed it was. But I dreaded to be found
eating, alone in that vast room, by the first downcomer. I sat
dallying with dry toast and watching the door. It occurred to me that
Braxton might occur at any moment. Should I be able to ignore him?

`Some man and wife--a very handsome couple--were the first to appear.
They nodded and said "good morning" when they noticed me on their way
to the hot dishes. I rose--uncomfortably, guiltily--and sat down
again. I rose again when the wife drifted to my table, followed by
the husband with two steaming plates. She asked me if it wasn't a
heavenly morning, and I replied with nervous enthusiasm that it was.
She then ate kedgeree in silence. "You just finishing, what?" the
husband asked, looking at my plate. "Oh, no--no--only just
beginning," I assured him, and helped myself to butter. He then ate
kedgeree in silence. He looked like some splendid bull, and she like
some splendid cow, grazing. I envied them their eupeptic calm. I
surmised that ten thousand Braxtons would not have prevented THEM from
sleeping soundly by night and grazing steadily by day. Perhaps their
stolidity infected me a little. Or perhaps what braced me was the
great quantity of strong tea that I consumed. Anyhow I had begun to
feel that if Braxton came in now I shouldn't blench nor falter.

`Well, I wasn't put to the test. Plenty of people drifted in, but
Braxton wasn't one of them. Lady Rodfitten--no, she didn't drift, she
marched, in; and presently, at an adjacent table, she was drawing a
comparison, in clarion tones, between Jean and Edouard de Reszke. It
seemed to me that her own voice had much in common with Edouard's.
Even more was it akin to a military band. I found myself beating time
to it with my foot. Decidedly, my spirits had risen. I was in a mood
to face and outface anything. When I rose from the table and made my
way to the door, I walked with something of a swing--to the tune of
Lady Rodfitten.

`My buoyancy didn't last long, though. There was no swing in my walk
when, a little later, I passed out on to the spectacular terrace. I
had seen my enemy again, and had beaten a furious retreat. No doubt I
should see him yet again soon--here, perhaps, on this terrace. Two of
the guests were bicycling slowly up and down the long paven expanse,
both of them smiling with pride in the new delicious form of
locomotion. There was a great array of bicycles propped neatly along
the balustrade. I recognised my own among them. I wondered whether
Braxton had projected from Clifford's Inn an image of his own bicycle.
He may have done so; but I've no evidence that he did. I myself was
bicycling when next I saw him; but he, I remember, was on foot.

`This was a few minutes later. I was bicycling with dear Lady
Rodfitten. She seemed really to like me. She had come out and
accosted me heartily on the terrace, asking me, because of my
sticking-plaster, with whom I had fought a duel since yesterday. I
did not tell her with whom, and she had already branched off on the
subject of duelling in general. She regretted the extinction of
duelling in England, and gave cogent reasons for her regret. Then she
asked me what my next book was to be. I confided that I was writing a
sort of sequel--"Ariel Returns to Mayfair." She shook her head, said
with her usual soundness that sequels were very dangerous things, and
asked me to tell her "briefly" the lines along which I was working. I
did so. She pointed out two or three weak points in my scheme. She
said she could judge better if I would let her see my manuscript. She
asked me to come and lunch with her next Friday--"just our two
selves"--at Rodfitten House, and to bring my manuscript with me. Need
I say that I walked on air?

`"And now," she said strenuously, "let us take a turn on our
bicycles." By this time there were a dozen riders on the terrace, all
of them smiling with pride and rapture. We mounted and rode along
together. The terrace ran round two sides of the house, and before we
came to the end of it these words had provisionally marshalled
themselves in my mind:

TO
ELEANOR
COUNTESS OF RODFITTEN
THIS BOOK WHICH OWES ALL
TO HER WISE COUNSEL
AND UNWEARYING SUPERVISION
IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
BY HER FRIEND
THE AUTHOR

`Smiled to masonically by the passing bicyclists, and smiling
masonically to them in return, I began to feel that the rest of my
visit would run smooth, if only--

`"Let's go a little faster. Let's race!" said Lady Rodfitten; and we
did so--"just our two selves." I was on the side nearer to the
balustrade, and it was on that side that Braxton suddenly appeared
from nowhere, solid-looking as a rock, his arms akimbo, less than
three yards ahead of me, so that I swerved involuntarily, sharply,
striking broadside the front wheel of Lady Rodfitten and collapsing
with her, and with a crash of machinery, to the ground.

`I wasn't hurt. She had broken my fall. I wished I was dead. She
was furious. She sat speechiess with fury. A crowd had quickiy
collected--just as in the case of a street accident. She accused me
now to the crowd. She said I had done it on purpose. She said such
terrible things of me that I think the crowd's sympathy must have
veered towards me. She was assisted to her feet. I tried to be one
of the assistants. "Don't let him come near me!" she thundered. I
caught sight of Braxton on the fringe of the crowd, grinning at me.
"It was all HIS fault," I madly cried, pointing at him. Everybody
looked at Mr. Balfour, just behind whom Braxton was standing. There
was a general murmur of surprise, in which I have no doubt Mr. Balfour
joined. He gave a charming, blank, deprecating smile. "I mean--I
can't explain what I mean," I groaned. Lady Rodfitten moved away,
refusing support, limping terribly, towards the house. The crowd
followed her, solicitous. I stood helplessly, desperately, where I
was.

`I stood an outlaw, a speck on the now empty terrace. Mechanically I
picked up my straw hat, and wheeled the two bent bicycles to the
balustrade. I suppose Mr. Balfour has a charming nature. For he
presently came out again--on purpose, I am sure, to alleviate my
misery. He told me that Lady Rodfitten had suffered no harm. He took
me for a stroll up and down the terrace, talking thoughtfully and
enchantingly about things in general. Then, having done his deed of
mercy, this Good Samaritan went back into the house. My eyes followed
him with gratitude; but I was still bleeding from wounds beyond his
skill. I escaped down into the gardens. I wanted to see no one.
Still more did I want to be seen by no one. I dreaded in every nerve
of me my reappearance among those people. I walked ever faster and
faster, to stifle thought; but in vain. Why hadn't I simply ridden
THROUGH Braxton? I was aware of being now in the park, among great
trees and undulations of wild green ground. But Nature did not
achieve the task that Mr. Balfour had attempted; and my anguish was
unassuaged.

`I paused to lean against a tree in the huge avenue that led to the
huge hateful house. I leaned wondering whether the thought of re-
entering that house were the more hateful because I should have to
face my fellow-guests or because I should probably have to face
Braxton. A church bell began ringing somewhere. And anon I was aware
of another sound--a twitter of voices. A consignment of hatted and
parasoled ladies was coming fast adown the avenue. My first impulse
was to dodge behind my tree. But I feared that I had been observed;
so that what was left to me of self-respect compelled me to meet these
ladies.

`The Duchess was among them. I had seen her from afar at breakfast,
but not since. She carried a prayer-book, which she waved to me as I
approached. I was a disastrous guest, but still a guest, and nothing
could have been prettier than her smile. "Most of my men this week,"
she said, "are Pagans, and all the others have dispatch-boxes to go
through--except the dear old Duke of Mull, who's a member of the Free
Kirk. You're Pagan, of course?"

`I said--and indeed it was a heart-cry--that I should like very much
to come to church. "If I shan't be in the way," I rather abjectly
added. It didn't strike me that Braxton would try to intercept me. I
don't know why, but it never occurred to me, as I walked briskly along
beside the Duchess, that I should meet him so far from the house. The
church was in a corner of the park, and the way to it was by a side
path that branched off from the end of the avenue. A little way
along, casting its shadow across the path, was a large oak. It was
from behind this tree, when we came to it, that Braxton sprang
suddenly forth and tripped me up with his foot.

`Absurd to be tripped up by the mere semblance of a foot? But
remember, I was walking quickly, and the whole thing happened in a
flash of time. It was inevitable that I should throw out my hands and
come down headlong--just as though the obstacle had been as real as it
looked. Down I came on palms and knee-caps, and up I scrambled, very
much hurt and shaken and apologetic. "POOR Mr. Maltby! REALLY--!"
the Duchess wailed for me in this latest of my mishaps. Some other
lady chased my straw hat, which had bowled far ahead. Two others
helped to brush me. They were all very kind, with a quaver of mirth
in their concern for me. I looked furtively around for Braxton, but
he was gone. The palms of my hands were abraded with gravel. The
Duchess said I must on no account come to church NOW. I was utterly
determined to reach that sanctuary. I marched firmly on with the
Duchess. Come what might on the way, I wasn't going to be left out
here. I was utterly bent on winning at least one respite.

`Well, I reached the little church without further molestation. To be
there seemed almost too good to be true. The organ, just as we
entered, sounded its first notes. The ladies rustled into the front
pew. I, being the one male of the party, sat at the end of the pew,
beside the Duchess. I couldn't help feeling that my position was a
proud one. But I had gone through too much to take instant pleasure
in it, and was beset by thoughts of what new horror might await me on
the way back to the house. I hoped the Service would not be brief.
The swelling and dwindling strains of the "voluntary" on the small
organ were strangely soothing. I turned to give an almost feudal
glance to the simple villagers in the pews behind, and saw a sight
that cowed my soul.

`Braxton was coming up the aisle. He came slowly, casting a tourist's
eye at the stained-glass windows on either side. Walking heavily, yet
with no sound of boots on the pavement, he reached our pew. There,
towering and glowering, he halted, as though demanding that we should
make room for him. A moment later he edged sullenly into the pew.
Instinctively I had sat tight back, drawing my knees aside, in a
shudder of revulsion against contact. But Braxton did not push past
me. What he did was to sit slowly and fully down on me.

`No, not down ON me. Down THROUGH me--and around me. What befell me
was not mere ghastly contact with the intangible. It was inclusion,
envelopment, eclipse. What Braxton sat down on was not I, but the
seat of the pew; and what he sat back against was not my face and
chest, but the back of the pew. I didn't realise this at the moment.
All I knew was a sudden black blotting-out of all things; an infinite
and impenetrable darkness. I dimly conjectured that I was dead. What
was wrong with me, in point of fact, was that my eyes, with the rest
of me, were inside Braxton. You remember what a great hulking fellow
Braxton was. I calculate that as we sat there my eyes were just
beneath the roof of his mouth. Horrible!

`Out of the unfathomable depths of that pitch darkness, I could yet
hear the "voluntary" swelling and dwindling, just as before. It was
by this I knew now that I wasn't dead. And I suppose I must have
craned my head forward, for I had a sudden glimpse of things--a close
quick downward glimpse of a pepper-and-salt waistcoat and of two great
hairy hands clasped across it. Then darkness again. Either I had
drawn back my head, or Braxton had thrust his forward; I don't know
which. "Are you all right?" the Duchess' voice whispered, and no
doubt my face was ashen. "Quite," whispered my voice. But this
pathetic monosyllable was the last gasp of the social instinct in me.
Suddenly, as the "voluntary" swelled to its close, there was a great
sharp shuffling noise. The congregation had risen to its feet, at the
entry of choir and vicar. Braxton had risen, leaving me in daylight.
I beheld his towering back. The Duchess, beside him, glanced round at
me. But I could not, dared not, stand up into that presented back,
into that great waiting darkness. I did but clutch my hat from
beneath the seat and hurry distraught down the aisle, out through the
porch, into the open air.

`Whither? To what goal? I didn't reason. I merely fled--like
Orestes; fled like an automaton along the path we had come by. And
was followed? Yes, yes. Glancing back across my shoulder, I saw that
brute some twenty yards behind me, gaining on me. I broke into a
sharper run. A few sickening moments later, he was beside me,
scowling down into my face.

`I swerved, dodged, doubled on my tracks, but he was always at me.
Now and again, for lack of breath, I halted, and he halted with me.
And then, when I had got my wind, I would start running again, in the
insane hope of escaping him. We came, by what twisting and turning
course I know not, to the great avenue, and as I stood there in an
agony of panting I had a dazed vision of the distant Hall. Really I
had quite forgotten I was staying at the Duke of Hertfordshire's. But
Braxton hadn't forgotten. He planted himself in front of me. He
stood between me and the house.

`Faint though I was, I could almost have laughed. Good heavens! was
THAT all he wanted: that I shouldn't go back there? Did he suppose I
wanted to go back there--with HIM? Was I the Duke's prisoner on
parole? What was there to prevent me from just walking off to the
railway station? I turned to do so.

`He accompanied me on my way. I thought that when once I had passed
through the lodge gates he might vanish, satisfied. But no, he didn't
vanish. It was as though he suspected that if he let me out of his
sight I should sneak back to the house. He arrived with me, this
quiet companion of mine, at the little railway station. Evidently he
meant to see me off. I learned from an elderly and solitary porter
that the next train to London was the 4.3.

`Well, Braxton saw me off by the 4.3. I reflected, as I stepped up
into an empty compartment, that it wasn't yet twenty-four hours ago
since I, or some one like me, had alighted at that station.

`The guard blew his whistle; the engine shrieked, and the train jolted
forward and away; but I did not lean out of the window to see the last
of my attentive friend.

`Really not twenty-four hours ago? Not twenty-four years?'

Maltby paused in his narrative. `Well, well,' he said, `I don't want
you to think I overrate the ordeal of my visit to Keeb. A man of
stronger nerve than mine, and of greater resourcefulness, might have
coped successfully with Braxton from first to last--might have stayed
on till Monday, making a very favourable impression on every one all
the while. Even as it was, even after my manifold failures and sudden
flight, I don't say my position was impossible. I only say it seemed
so to me. A man less sensitive than I, and less vain, might have
cheered up after writing a letter of apology to his hostess, and have
resumed his normal existence as though nothing very terrible had
happened, after all. I wrote a few lines to the Duchess that night;
but I wrote amidst the preparations for my departure from England: I
crossed the Channel next morning. Throughout that Sunday afternoon
with Braxton at the Keeb railway station, pacing the desolate platform
with him, waiting in the desolating waiting-room with him, I was numb
to regrets, and was thinking of nothing but the 4.3. On the way to
Victoria my brain worked and my soul wilted. Every incident in my
stay at Keeb stood out clear to me; a dreadful, a hideous pattern. I
had done for myself, so far as THOSE people were concerned. And now
that I had sampled THEM, what cared I for others? "Too low for a
hawk, too high for a buzzard." That homely old saying seemed to sum
me up. And suppose I COULD still take pleasure in the company of my
own old upper-middle class, how would that class regard me now?
Gossip percolates. Little by little, I was sure, the story of my Keeb
fiasco would leak down into the drawing-room of Mrs. Foster-Dugdale.
I felt I could never hold up my head in any company where anything of
that story was known. Are you quite sure you never heard anything?'

I assured Maltby that all I had known was the great bare fact of his
having stayed at Keeb Hall.

`It's curious,' he reflected. `It's a fine illustration of the
loyalty of those people to one another. I suppose there was a general
agreement for the Duchess' sake that nothing should be said about her
queer guest. But even if I had dared hope to be so efficiently hushed
up, I couldn't have not fled. I wanted to forget. I wanted to leap
into some void, far away from all reminders. I leapt straight from
Ryder Street into Vaule-la-Rochette, a place of which I had once heard
that it was the least frequented seaside-resort in Europe. I leapt
leaving no address--leapt telling my landlord that if a suit-case and
a portmanteau arrived for me he could regard them, them and their
contents, as his own for ever. I daresay the Duchess wrote me a kind
little letter, forcing herself to express a vague hope that I would
come again "some other time." I daresay Lady Rodfitten did NOT write
reminding me of my promise to lunch on Friday and bring "Ariel Returns
to Mayfair" with me. I left that manuscript at Ryder Street; in my
bedroom grate; a shuffle of ashes. Not that I'd yet given up all
thought of writing. But I certainly wasn't going to write now about
the two things I most needed to forget. I wasn't going to write about
the British aristocracy, nor about any kind of supernatural
presence.... I did write a novel--my last--while I was at Vaule.
"Mr. and Mrs. Robinson." Did you ever come across a copy of it?

I nodded gravely.

`Ah; I wasn't sure,' said Maltby, `whether it was ever published. A
dreary affair, wasn't it? I knew a great deal about suburban life.
But--well, I suppose one can't really understand what one doesn't
love, and one can't make good fun without real understanding.
Besides, what chance of virtue is there for a book written merely to
distract the author's mind? I had hoped to be healed by sea and
sunshine and solitude. These things were useless. The labour of "Mr.
and Mrs. Robinson" did help, a little. When I had finished it, I
thought I might as well send it off to my publisher. He had given me
a large sum of money, down, after "Ariel," for my next book--so large
that I was rather loth to disgorge. In the note I sent with the
manuscript, I gave no address, and asked that the proofs should be
read in the office. I didn't care whether the thing were published or
not. I knew it would be a dead failure if it were. What mattered one
more drop in the foaming cup of my humiliation? I knew Braxton would
grin and gloat. I didn't mind even that.'

`Oh, well,' I said, `Braxton was in no mood for grinning and gloating.
"The Drones" had already appeared.'

Maltby had never heard of `The Drones'--which I myself had remembered
only in the course of his disclosures. I explained to him that it was
Braxton's second novel, and was by way of being a savage indictment of
the British aristocracy; that it was written in the worst possible
taste, but was so very dull that it fell utterly flat; that Braxton
had forthwith taken, with all of what Maltby had called `the
passionate force and intensity of his nature,' to drink, and had
presently gone under and not re-emerged.

Maltby gave signs of genuine, though not deep, emotion, and cited two
or three of the finest passages from `A Faun on the Cotswolds.' He
even expressed a conviction that `The Drones' must have been
misjudged. He said he blamed himself more than ever for yielding to
that bad impulse at that Soiree.

`And yet,' he mused, `and yet, honestly, I can't find it in my heart
to regret that I did yield. I can only wish that all had turned out
as well, in the end, for Braxton as for me. I wish he could have won
out, as I did, into a great and lasting felicity. For about a year
after I had finished "Mr. and Mrs. Robinson" I wandered from place to
place, trying to kill memory, shunning all places frequented by the
English. At last I found myself in Lucca. Here, if anywhere, I
thought, might a bruised and tormented spirit find gradual peace. I
determined to move out of my hotel into some permanent lodging. Not
for felicity, not for any complete restoration of self-respect, was I
hoping; only for peace. A "mezzano" conducted me to a noble and
ancient house, of which, he told me, the owner was anxious to let the
first floor. It was in much disrepair, but even so seemed to me very
cheap. According to the simple Luccan standard, I am rich. I took
that first floor for a year, had it repaired, and engaged two
servants. My "padrona" inhabited the ground floor. From time to time
she allowed me to visit her there. She was the Contessa Adriano-
Rizzoli, the last of her line. She is the Contessa Adriano-Rizzoli-
Maltby. We have been married fifteen years.'

Maltby looked at his watch. He rose and took tenderly from the table
his great bunch of roses. `She is a lineal descendant,' he said, `of
the Emperor Hadrian.'

_________
-THE END-
Max Beerbohm's short story: Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton

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