richards looked carefully over the table with the eye of the well-trained manservant. he retouched a bowl of lilac that offended against his slavish idea of symmetry and then put a screen across the dying fire.
it was the end of may and the night was warm, but as carey image was to be one of the guests that evening, richards had seen to it that the room was well heated. for carey image had just come back from five years’ sojourn on the frontier of india, and richards was afraid that the rigours of the eastern climate—particularly trying to a man in the fifties—might strike a chill into his sunbaked body. he was thinking about him as he placed the screen, for richards had been in the currey family for many years, and he remembered well the genial little man, generous with his pourboires and “full of pleasant remarks”—the expression was richards’ own, communicated to his wife, the cook—who had been godfather to the owner of the rooms thirty-two years ago, and had, on the occasion of the christening, optimistically prophesied that the baby would grow into a remarkable man.
richards had heard the remark, and he now recalled it[4] as he drew the curtains. was not carey image’s prophecy coming true? he had been the first in the field, if one may use that expression of a prophet, but others now began to endorse his opinion.
“wonderful how he knew,” muttered richards to himself, “for babies is that alike, all pink and squally.”
then by a natural sequence of thought richards glanced at a large photograph of his master in wig and gown which reposed on a table, and which had been taken at the request of his mother, who lamented afterwards that it made him look too severe and old. a remarkable man? no, the title was not yet earned; for no man is remarkable until he is forty and has buried the prophet, his godfather. still, gilbert currey was well on the way to success, and that very week had seen him take a big stride forward. had not his success in the driver case made the eyes of the legal profession and a good many of the public turn towards him? richards was old-fashioned enough to take a pride in the fortunes of his master.
a slight noise through the curtains which shut off the dining-room from the room in the front portion of the flat caused the butler to turn. one of the guests had arrived early. he must apologize for his master’s non-appearance. gilbert currey was still dressing; he generally rushed home from his chambers at the last moment.
“ah!” said a well-remembered voice, “it is the faithful richards. how do you do, richards, and how have the years treated you?”
carey image smiled genially, and richards, as to an old family friend, permitted himself an answering smile.
“i hope i see you well, sir.”
“tolerably, richards. my bones creak a little.... ouf! was it always the custom to make the rooms so hot?”
richards, crestfallen, explained. “i will open the window wider.”
[5]
“yes, do. but it was thoughtful of you, richards, very thoughtful. it seems that everyone looks on me now as a salamander.... so you are here with my godson in his flat. how is that?”
“well, sir, when mr. gilbert came to live in town, my mistress was anxious that i should look after him, so my wife and i came up here.”
“ah! let me see. your wife made delicious omelettes. i remember them well. so you came here to give him, as it were, all the comforts of home. lucky young dog. i am confident of a good dinner now, for i was a little doubtful, richards, as i dressed. gilbert is not an epicure, or at least he was not five years ago. he eats—well, he eats, and that’s all there is to it. i have come to the age when i dine. and i remember your wife’s cooking. will you tell her so?”
the compliment pleased richards and afterwards the cook, as it was meant to. image had been born with the knack of saying the graceful thing in the right place, and his memory was wonderful. this trick had made many friends for him.
“i will tell my master you are here.”
“no, no, don’t hurry him. a party of five, eh? to celebrate his birthday and his latest success at the bar? he is going to be a remarkable man.”
“i was just remembering what you said, sir, when you came in.”
image smiled, and taking off his glasses, carefully polished them. “ah! he was so sturdy and he shut his little mouth so firmly—a great deal in the set of the mouth even at the early age, richards—and he knew what he wanted so decidedly that i felt there was a career before him. he commenced to orate loudly in church, and i understand the same oration—more intelligible and persuasive—won this much talked-of driver case. don’t hurry him on my account. i have not yet become accustomed to the taxi-cabs. distances by rickshaws and[6] distances by four-wheelers i know, but taxi-cabs—i find myself hurrying along like the witch on her broomstick.”
richards quietly withdrew, and image surveyed the rooms through his glasses, which made his near-sighted brown eyes so extraordinarily brilliant and piercing. he nodded in old acquaintanceship to several pieces of furniture and a few pictures, for gilbert’s mother had robbed wynnstay manor for her son’s furnishing. on either side of the fireplace were two new portraits which had been painted since image had been away. one represented a woman, with delicate colouring and well-chiselled features. the calm blue eyes were shallow as pools of water in the sun, and there were no full curves to the lips or any indication of deep emotion or temperament. a well-preserved woman—gilbert’s mother. on the other side was a companion picture, sir john currey, bart., m.p. no weakness there, rather a dominating nature, an iron will, a certain ruthlessness in the lines of the heavy jaw, a certain coldness in the direct glancing eyes.
“a capital portrait, my old friend,” apostrophized image. “i wonder if gilbert will——”
“now, carey, talking to the devil?” broke in a voice on his meditations, a full, very masculine voice, that filled the room. it made image’s voice seem effeminate and thin. “my old nurse used to say when she found me muttering to myself that i was telling the devil too much of my mind.”
“my dear fellow, how glad i am to see you again. it’s a silly habit of mine. i and myself, we often talk to one another.... let’s have a good look at you.... a bit heavier——”
“yes,” said gilbert laughing ruefully, “i am putting on flesh. don’t get enough exercise. you haven’t changed, carey.”
“ah! i have definitely come to the shrivelled stage. i was looking at your father’s portrait. capital! when you laugh you are not so like, but your face in repose—very[7] like. i am glad to hear of your success, my boy. johnson marks was in court yesterday, and he told me your speech was truly remarkable for a young man, and you know how many young barristers he has heard. you must have been very pleased at the successful issue of the trial.”
“yes, i confess i was. i wanted to pull the thing off. i made up my mind to get him acquitted.”
as he said it, the determined set of his mouth was old beyond his years and reminded image very powerfully of his father. then gilbert smiled and clapped image on the back, and the impression of egoistic ruthlessness was dissipated. when gilbert currey smiled he had considerable charm. women would have let him know this if he had found time to court them.
richards’ voice was heard at the door. “mr. iverson.”
“hallo, old chap, flushed with victory, eh? lord! what a lot of swotting you must have done over that case. your knowledge of eastern poisons knocked me silly. you’re a nut, you are.”
no one could have mistaken jack iverson for anything else but a service man. as a matter of fact, he was in the blues, and exceptionally good-looking, with that rare distinction in a man—a wonderful clear, healthy skin. his eyes a curious jadelike green with the bluish clear whites that one usually sees only in the eyes of a small child, jack iverson was one of the handsomest and richest young men that lounged about mayfair.
image did not know jack iverson, but he knew the next guest, an old friend, dr. fritz neeburg, and he had heard of the last arrival, gilbert’s particular friend and college chum, colin paton.
the impression paton made on the casual observer was that of a well-groomed reserved man of a very english type, and one of the best. there was nothing at all arresting in his appearance; he had regular features, smooth hair, well-cared-for hands, and a general air of wellbeing.[8] he was three years older than gilbert, though they had been at oxford together, but he had been delicate in his early manhood, and had spent several years in desultory travel. paton’s movements were all quietly deliberate; they might have belonged to a man of fifty equally well as to a man of thirty. he did not give the impression of forceful energy, as did his friend. quite unlike in character and tastes, they were yet excellent friends, and though gilbert would have been at a loss to describe or analyse paton—he had no interest in psychology, apart from its bearing on his legal work—paton had long ago realized the possibilities and the limitations of his host.
they sat down to dinner in a pleasant intimate circle of yellow light. richards’ wife had a passion for flowers—she would spend hours standing in front of the beautiful florists’ displays in the west end, when she took her constitutionals—so gilbert’s rooms and table were always tastefully decorated. this evening, heavy-headed, fragrant jonquils, rather sick and drooping with their own sweetness, nodded from some exquisite venetian glass, while bunched violets in silver bowls added to the spring-like effect. image was quick to notice the flowers.
“the english flowers! you must have spent ten years in the tropics to appreciate them. one gets so satiated with gorgeousness and overpowering perfume, just as one gets tired of the burning sun and the eternal blue sky. but the english flowers one never tires of. there is such a wonderful simplicity and purity about them. they refresh and cleanse one. in the east there are flowers that are positively wicked, one almost starts back from their viciousness. but the english flowers are perfect.
“i saw your lights burning at two o’clock this morning,” observed neeburg; “were you celebrating your victory, gilbert?”
“no. i was working.”
[9]
“don’t overwork, old man. don’t urge the willing steed too fast and furious. i think we are all inclined to do that nowadays. faster and faster physical and mental locomotion seems the order of the day.”
“and that’s how you rake in the guineas, neeburg. you shouldn’t grumble. but i’m as strong as a horse. work doesn’t hurt me. thank god, i inherited a good constitution from my father.”
“my dear fellow, the strongest horse, if you overwork him, will sometimes go lame. you’ve been working very hard the last couple of years. keep things in their proper proportions—that’s the secret of life and happiness—proportion!”
“ah!” said image briskly, “that’s very true, fritz, only we usually learn that secret when it’s too late and everything is out of proportion.”
“proportion!” said the host quickly. “how can you keep a sense of proportion nowadays? look at me. when you start in the legal profession the proportion is on the wrong side. you have nothing to do except to wear out the leather chairs at your chambers. get a move on and a few eyes directed to you, and you are very soon swamped with work. and if a man doesn’t work for all he is worth with a singleness of aim and ambition between twenty-five and forty, he will never arrive. you have to keep your nose to the grindstone or success will pass you by. it’s all very well for doctors to talk of moderation and a sense of proportion, but how can you be moderate? life is immoderate nowadays.”
“you mean that a man’s ambitions and wants are immoderate,” returned neeburg.
jack iverson, who was quite frankly out of the conversation, tried to contribute his quota. “i say, what’s the good of spending all the days of your youth swotting?” he said in his rather rich, lazy voice. “the game isn’t worth the candle.”
gilbert went on a trifle impatiently. “the thing to[10] do nowadays is to specialize. make up your mind what you can do best, and what you want, and hang on like a bulldog till you get it.”
“a bit of a gamble if you only stake on worldly success,” said paton quietly.
image nodded emphatically, and looked curiously from one young man to the other.
“it isn’t such a gamble. i believe most firmly that you can ensure success provided that you have certain abilities and a fair constitution. you hear a lot of people blaming fate for their non-success in life. how many of them have really striven whole-heartedly to get what they want? the road to success is a sort of obstacle race, and you can’t afford, while you are surmounting the obstacles, to either look to the right or the left or even behind you, to see who is possibly going to overtake you. success isn’t a chance; it’s a certainty if you concentrate.” gilbert had a very decisive manner, which was worth its weight in gold to him in the courts.
for a moment there was silence as he ceased speaking.
“yes, but my dear boy,” said image at length, “what is success?”
“making money, i suppose,” said jack iverson, watching richards refill his glass. he was glad that he did not do any of these strenuous things. he had a secret awe and lazy admiration of gilbert.
“no,” said his host, “you generally make money if you are successful—it follows as the night the day—but i should say that very few of the world’s successful men have worked for the sake of money.”
“well, how do you define it? notoriety, fame, the applause of undiscriminating men who shout with the crowd, paragraphs in the halfpenny papers side-by-side with an account of the latest high kick of a popular actress, a long obituary notice to be followed by a badly-written book of biography by one of the family which nobody reads—is that worth struggling for?” paton put the[11] question quietly, his voice a trifle colourless after gilbert’s.
“you are not ambitious,” retorted gilbert. “you never were. you have always let other fellows walk over you, chaps with half your brains. you dream your time away.”
“no, excuse me, i don’t dream. i hate excessively to hear myself classed with those vague, an?mic brains that wander like will-o’-the-wisps over the world. you think i wasted my time at oxford because i did not take any degree. i don’t. i taught myself how to think. i refused to cram my brains with facts most of which would be of little use to me in after-life, or to my neighbour. i tried to leave a little room for the imagination. oxford appealed to my imagination, and i think i have brought something away from her that will be a precious possession all my life. you came away with an enormous capacity for assimilating knowledge, with a well-trained memory and a habit of pigeonholing everything and everybody. most useful to you in your profession, my dear fellow, but it did not appeal to me as worth working for.”
“you have no ambition to be labelled ‘successful’?” said image, who had been watching paton as he spoke with his brilliant dark eyes. he found something that he liked in paton, something which he vaguely missed in gilbert and had always missed in his father before him.
“i don’t care for what is usually called success. of course, many people say that because they know they won’t set the world on fire; and in spite of what gilbert says, there are people who will never, with any amount of concentration, arrive; but, honestly, i don’t much care what my fellow-creatures think of me from the point of view of worldly success—i care very much otherwise; and i refuse to try and narrow myself down within the cramped little borders of success. i want room to develop, and i don’t want to be forced through the world’s mill and come out in a certain pattern.”
“and gilbert doesn’t care a pin what people think of[12] him ‘otherwise,’ but very much from the world’s stand-point, that’s the difference between you,” said neeburg, helping himself to a quail en cocotte. “now, i wonder which makes for happiness?”
“oh, hold on!” cried gilbert, laughing. “i like people all right. i protest, neeburg.”
neeburg smiled and shook his head. “individuals are not really necessary to you,” persisted neeburg.
“i won’t be made out a hard and miserable materialist just because i am honest enough to say i am ambitious.”
“my dear boy, there are many like you,” said neeburg; “and ambition is by no means a bad thing. but with you the game is the thing. you are the type of man who lives and dies in harness. men and women are pawns in the game of life to you. once i thought as you do, but i was checked in time. and i found it wasn’t worth while. bay-leaves may be bitter.”
“well,” said image; “to every man his own meat and his own poison. i’ve met a good many famous men in my time, and i can’t recall that any of them seemed to be particularly happy. to be great is to be lonely.... how delicious these strawberries are!... i think i’d rather be one of the common herd. the big man looks over the heads of others in a crowd, but he misses a lot of friendly glances and intimate whispers. i even like some of the jolly, familiar nudges one gets. no one would dare to nudge a great man.”
the others laughed, and richards came in with the coffee.
“that reminds me of something that was said to me yesterday,” said neeburg, “by an anglo-indian just come home. was no end of a pot in india with absolute control over a big province. he was lamenting that it was horrible to find himself obliged to use buses and sit next to—just anybody!”
“he doesn’t appreciate the nudges,” laughed gilbert.
[13]
“he’s forgotten how jolly they are,” retorted image, with a twinkle. “that’s just what i complain of.”
jack iverson, who had been vainly trying to follow “those brainy fellows,” broke in with a commonplace. “well, i hate the people you see in buses and tubes. they think they are as good as you, and they always seem in such a beastly hurry to get somewhere. and, all the time, i suppose most of ’em don’t do anything in particular.”
“no, they only earn their livings,” said neeburg drily.
“well, i’m glad i don’t have to,” said iverson, lighting his cigar. “i’d rather have money than brains. i say, i’ve got to rush off soon, gilbert. claudia insisted that i must go to lady laud’s dance at the ‘ritz.’ rotten fag, bunny-hugging and gaby-gliding.”
“is your sister going too?” asked gilbert quickly.
“claudia? yes. i suppose you got an invitation?”
“yes, but i had forgotten all about it.”
“dancing is a beastly bore. i’m fed up with it,” continued iverson complacently, his striking good looks in obvious contrast to his commonplace mind. “i’d rather play bridge any day, wouldn’t you?”
“well, i don’t dislike dancing, only i can’t afford the time. if i go to a dance i always stay too late. and i certainly should if i danced with your sister.”
“not half a bad dancer, is she? she goes on at me for being too lackadaisical. she says she likes a partner who feels the music. but how can you feel the chocolate soldier every night, and what are you to feel? quite imposs. i can’t understand all these delicate sort of feelings. they were playing ‘the rosary’ the other night at supper, and the girl with me put on such a die-away air that i thought she felt sick. she was awfully annoyed with me for offering her some brandy.”
there was a general laugh as the men moved away from the table. the noise of the traffic outside was like a huge buzzing bee; the fresh air, holding a subtle promise of[14] spring, came in through the open casement windows.
iverson was the first to break up the party. “claudia will go for me if i don’t get there in decent time.”
fritz neeburg went with him. he never kept late hours, for the hand of the surgeon must be steady and there must be no overnight fogs in his brain. presently carey image paton and their host, were alone together.
