- Illustration: “”Leonora cried: “The very birds are appalled to see chivalry so low in a man that he will take his lady's adieu lying down.”
Duke of Ladies
THE structure, economy and polity of our time do not incline the meek and lowly to a deep reverence for persons of breeding; nor is the patronage of princes and the favor of lords solicited to any noticeable degree by the poets and scientists of the day. The most superficial survey of history will discover that the condescension of a gentleman of the haut ton was once regarded as almost an essential of a poet's success; while the craftsman, was he ever so cunning and exquisite, must rely for his bread and his fame on the caprice of the young men of the mode, who were, it is to be presumed, not the less generous because they were invariably in debt, and had not the less good taste because they were nearly always drunk. But in our generation we have progressed so far in the liberal arts that, should a man of letters or science so mask himself with the impertinence of fashion as to be remarked at Ascot with a lady of quality and a waistcoat which, with the most deplorable lack of faith in the dignity of letters, has been cut to fit his person, he shall at once be convicted by all really intelligent people of a lack of feeling for all that is genuine in art and literature. We may well ask, is that reasonable, is that just? But let us, instead of grumbling, proceed. The Duke of Mall waits on our pleasure.
In the face of the illiberal attitude lightly touched on above the popular interest in the progress of the Duke of Mall is the more surprising; and to that patrician's familiars and dependents it has for long been a source of gratification to observe how the esteem in which he is held by the people of England is rivaled only by the interest shown in the table-manners of the most famous pugilists and the respect extended to the horsemanship of the most beloved prince in Christendom. A journalist of note has recently written:
“Of dukes, earls, viscounts and barons England now suffers of a surfeit; and we do humbly entreat His Majesty to confer no more patents of nobility for a while, begging him, if he must elevate the deserving and placate the wealthy, to confer on them nothing higher than the simple dignity of a knighthood or the gentle responsibility of the Order of the British Empire. We are appalled, when we survey the spacious lands of Britain, by the meanness of talent paraded by our aristocracy and the economy of endeavor achieved by our landed gentry. There is, however, one rare compensation; and we can but thank God for His mercy to us of the conservative sort in that He. appears to have afflicted us with this rabble of privilege only that we should the more deeply appreciate the vigor, the ability, the fearlessness and the charm of the seventeenth Duke of Mall. We are aware of the present vogue of gossip in the journalism of the day, and that no estimate of a great man's career is now considered entertaining without the vulgar spice of inquiry into his private life. We can lend the small authority of our columns only to the opposite view: while as for those inventions of rumor which, with that violence of low breeding cultivated by radical journals, seek to establish grounds on which the Duchess may petition for a divorce from her husband, we must emphatically protest that nothing that can be said against the private life of the great Duke can detract one iota from the love and esteem which his gallantry in war, his ardor in combating the socialist menace and his incomparable agility on the polo field, have won for him in the hearts of the people of these islands.
“Nor was his greatness unheralded, his birth without omen: amateurs of ancientry the world over will know the legend of the Dukedom of Mall, how it was prophesied by a sibyl of the Restoration that on the birth of the greatest of that house, the golden cock on the weathervane of St. James' tower would crow thrice, and on his death it would also crow thrice. Only those most steeped in the modern vice of skepticism will disbelieve the unanimous evidence of every club servant in St. James' Street that this miracle attended the birth of the seventeenth Duke; while we commonplace lovers of England's might and enemies of the socialist tyranny can only pray that the second manifestation of that miracle be averted for the longest span of God's mercy to the most gallant of His creatures.”
The present writer, however, must, in addressing his reader from a somewhat lower plane, protest that history demands a fair field and no favor. Moreover, these are troubled times for the plain man; and there can be no such adequate protection for the man in the street as a working knowledge of the more important phenomena of our time, such as horse-racing, football, bolshevism, a reasonable caution when crossing the streets, the habits of the house-fly and the domestic economy of dukes.
There follow, then, some sidelights on the recent life of the young Duke of Mall and his splendid lady. Than these two, history will say, there never was a more comely pair: for such is the unknowable wisdom of God, that exact opposites will discover the sweetest harmony. Not, of course, that because the Duke was fair it is implied that the Duchess was swarthy: the differences referred to are those of breeding and nationality, for the lady was an American out of Chicago, in the State of Illinois. But to attempt to describe her were to challenge contempt and defy the limitations set by the gods upon human speech. Let it suffice that she was beautiful—the quality of her color comparable only to that of a garden in tempered sunlight, the texture of her complexion the envy of silkworms; and the splendor of her hair has been described by a master-artist as a cap of beaten gold and autumn leaves. As for the lady's eyes, who shall describe them? Shall a phrase attempt where a thousand photographs have failed? It is not to be expected.
- Illustration: The Duke whispered: “Do not talk of stars, Ava. The stars make me think of all that is impossible.”
The Duke, then, was tender of this lady: he wooed her, was mocked; he pleaded, was provoked; he stormed, was dismissed; he entreated, was accepted: and from the American journals of that day it will be seen that the State of Illinois was not less lavish than London in her celebration of the wedding in the Chapel Royal of the young Duke of Mall and the lovely Miss Leonora Lamb. ...
That, however, was some time ago. Now, alas, not the most kindly observer of society can but have remarked that the recent life of the young Duke and his Duchess has been as conspicuous for its private dolor as for its public splendor. There have been rumors; there has been chatter. This has been said, and that, and the other. But it is the austere part of the historian to deal only in facts. The facts are, roughly speaking, as follows.
South of the lands of the old troubadours, between the heights of the southern Alps and the languor of the Mediterranean, lies the pretty town of Cannes. The year we tell of was in its first youth The flower and chivalry of England and America were promenading in the sunlight of the pretty town or commenting at their ease on the brilliant tourneys of tennis and polo. Here and there about the links the sun lit up the brilliant Fair Isle sweaters of Greeks and Argentines where they were playing a friendly match for the empire of the world. The mimosa was at its full glory of fresh-powdered gold From the gardens of white villas could be heard the laughter of children and millionaires. Great automobiles loitered between the Casino and the Carlton Hotel, while youth in swift Bugatti or Bentley challenged time to a race around the fringe of the bay. The waters of the bay slept profoundly in the full kiss of the afternoon sun, and on them, even as a daisy on a spacious lawn, rode a fair white yacht. From its stern hung a cluster of golden cherries, for such was the pretty nautical device of the young Duke of Mall.
It will readily be granted by the most fastidious that the scene was set for enchantment. The sea slept under the sun, the sun upon the mountains, the chauffeurs at their driving-wheels, the croupiers in the Casino, the diplomats at a conference, the demimondaines at their posts. Yet in the yacht raged a storm: the Duke of Mall was having a row with his wife.
It was, incredibly enough, not the first: it looked, incredibly enough, to be the last. At the moment of our intrusion the young Duke, in point of fact, was saying:
“By God, Leonora, I am sick and tired of it!”
- Illustration: The Duke risked her displeasure. “I have dared all on one throw. Ava, I love you.”
That small, lovely head, those deep, remote eyes! She was not more than twenty-four, the Duchess of Mall, yet with what proud calm and disdain she could at one glance enwrap her husband! It didn't, however, always come off, for sometimes he would be too sleepy to notice, and sometimes too busy disdaining her, which on occasions he could do very handsomely.
She repeated ever so softly: “You say you are sick and tired of 'it.' 'It,' my well-beloved? Am I, by 'it,' to understand that you mean me?”
The Duke pointed his indifference with the application of a match to a rough surface and the application of the match to a cigar. “You may,” said he, “understand what you like. I said what I said.”
Shall I,” she put gently, “tell you all that I understand by what you said?”
The Duke waved a hand skyward, and he smiled, and he yawned, and he said: “Am I God, to stop you talking! But maybe it is not necessary for me to add that I wish I were, if only for that purpose.”
The Duchess said: “However, I will not be provoked. It is too hot. I will content myself merely with remarking that in considered opinion the ancient Dukedom of Mall at present graces one with the manners of a boor and the habits of a stableboy.”
“Leonora, you go too far!”
Oh,” she sighed from her heart, “had I, before marrying you, gone even a little farther, how much more comfortably I had fared! Let us, after all, face the facts.”
For as long as it takes to say a forbidden word of one syllable, the young Duke's lean features wore the air of a battlefield: thereon anger fought with apathy, but was, by the grace of God and a public-school education, repulsed. Yet his lady, was she at all disturbed, did any spark of bitterness point her low light voice, any trace of jealousy mar her urbanity? She was all calm and sympathy as she observed:
“Not, mind you, that I can blame the pretty dolls whom you encourage to pursue you under my very nose!”
The Duke remarked that she had a very beautiful nose, a very small nose.
The Duchess thanked him.
“But,” said the Duke, “by the number of things which you accuse me of doing under it, anyone would think it cast as long a shadow as Lord Nelson's column. For the sake of your own beauty, Leonora, may I beg you to leave your nose, much as I admire it, out of my supposed infidelities?”
The Duchess remarked that she could quite well understand why women pursued him with their welcome attentions. He was very rich. He was very handsome. He was charming.
The Duke thanked her.
“But,” said the Duchess.
“Quite,” said the Duke. “Oh, quite!”
“But,” said the Duchess, “the beauty that you most admire in any woman is the beauty of her not being a woman you already know; the only charm of which you never are tired is the charm of novelty.”
“One likes a change,” yawned the Duke. “If that's what you are talking about!”
“It is,” said the Duchess.
“Well, don't let me hinder you,” said the Duke.
“Listen,” said the Duchess.
“Certainly,” said the Duke. “But should I interrupt, you must forgive me, for I may talk in my sleep.”
“Oh, I know! I have made quite a collection of names like Dolly and Lucy and Maudie. Now, I want to tell you,” pursued the Duchess, “that you are a most extraordinary man. In public, for instance, you are all that is charming; and many who know of our private disagreements can't but think the fault is mine, since in public you are so very right, so fine, and seem never for a moment deficient in the manners, graces and consideration proper to a great gentleman.”
The Duke expressed a hope that she would put that down in writing so that he could send it as a reference to any lady, or ladies, to whom he might be paying his suit, or suits
“But,” said the Duchess, “when we come to examine you in the home, what a different picture we find! Your manners are monstrous, your graces those of a spoiled schoolboy; your consideration for your wife is such that, far from concealing from me your preference for the company of low women, you will actually bring them on board this yacht and make love to them under my very—”
The Duke, he yawned.
“In,” snapped the Duchess, “my company And now,” she added calmly, “I will say good-by.”
“But you mustn't say it all alone,” said the Duke solicitously. “I can say good-by too. For instance, good-by.”
“Captain Tupper!” the Duchess called.
“Captain Tupper,” the Duchess said, “I am going ashore. You will please see to it at once. I think my maid has packed. Thank you.”
THE DUKE opened his eyes. They were cold blue eyes, very cold blue eyes: that was when he was sleepy.
“Captain Tupper,” said he, “Her Grace will take the fastest cutter to Monte Carlo to catch the Blue Train to Calais. We, in the cool of the evening, will make for Naples. Thank you.”
The Duke closed his eyes again. The Duchess stared as though into the heart of the still blue bay, and who shall say what it was that she saw in those deep blue places, whether she saw the towers of her love torn down by the winds of man's ruins of her marriage washed in the infinite sea of man's inconstancy? Her eyes darkened, and presently she said, bemused: “I am going now. Adieu, Duke Maximilian.”
“Leonora,” he said, “I wish you all happiness and content.”
“Content!” And she laughed.
“Good-by, Leonora.”
She said: “Max, we were very happy once. So happy—once upon a time!”
He:
“Out upon it, I have loved
Three whole days together!
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fine weather.”
She: “Oh, I can match you Rochester against Sir John Suckling!
“Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts and broken vows;
If I by miracle can be
This livelong minute true to thee,
'Tis all that Heaven allows.”
He sighed: “How I loved you, Leonora! As I had never loved anyone before, as I will never love anyone again!”
“How I loved you, Maximilian! But now!”
“Ah, there's an end to all things! Wise men say that, Leonora.”
“Except to regret. I say that, Maximilian.” And she said gravely: “A legal separation is a silly quibble. And you might want to marry again. Or I might.”
“Might, Leonora? But you will, must, can't help but! With your beauty, youth, wealth.”
“Thank you. I have often noticed that one's friends like one best as one is leaving them. Then shall I divorce you, Max?”
“If you would be so kind. My lawyers are Messrs. Sleep & Sluis. They will arrange the matter with yours in the usual way.”
“Remember, dear, that your king will not receive a divorced duke at court.”
“You depress me. I shall, however, continue to ask him to shoot on my moors.”
His eyes were closed, else he had seen the sudden smile that touched her small grave face, touched it and was going, going, lurked a little in the depths of her eyes like a very small bird in the ferns of love-in-the-mist, and was gone. She said softly: “You are such a baby, Max!”
Seamen passed by, bearing a great leather trunk to the side. And a black cloud rose up from Africa and hid the sun.
“And because,” said the lips of the sad-merry eyes, “you are such a baby, I don't put it beyond you to make love to my sister if you should meet her. And as she has always been jealous of me, she would enjoy nothing so much as your making love to her. Promise not to, Max, please, oh please! She has just come over to Paris, so I read this morning in the New York Herald. Max, promise not to make a fool of me to my own sister!”
“Pretty, is she?”
“But she's my twin!”
“Ah, me! Oh, dear!”
She said softly: “Good-by, Duke Maximilian. Our lives go different ways. I do wish you success, happiness, health. Adieu.”
As he lay with closed eyes, his fingers found her hand and carried it to his lips. His farewell was no less and no more than that.
She looked back from the side.
“Courtesy, Maximilian?”
The cry of a sea-bird mocked the silence.
“Chivalry, Maximilian?”
And even the sea-bird feared to mock again, and Leonora Mall cried: “I will forgive you all things but your farewell, Duke Maximilian. The very birds are appalled to see chivalry so low in a man that he will take his lady's adieu lying down. Dear, I knew you to be vain, but not so ungenerous. You can forgive yourself for being tired of me, but you cannot forgive me for being tired of you. You poor vain idol of girlish dreams, good-by.”
Her maid, hatted and veiled for traveling, whispered to her ear:
“Your Grace, he is asleep.”
IT is a sorry business to inquire into what men think when we are every day only too uncomfortably confronted with what they do. Moreover the science of psychology—for that is what we are talking about—is as yet but a demoiseile among the sciences; and that writer carries the least conviction who tries to wind his tale about her immature coils. Therefore we will not inquire into the young Duke's thoughts, but merely relate his actions; we will leave his psychology to the fishes of the tideless sea, while we let him confront us with all his vanity.
The Duchess had said with pardonable bitterness that there was an end to all things except to regret, and so the time came when the Duke awoke. Now the winds of the sea were playing about him; the sun was certainly not where he had left it; and the angle of his deck-chair was peculiar. The world was very dark. And he looked upon the sea and found it odd, and he looked upon the land and did not find it at all
“Ho!” said the Duke. “Where is the land, the land of France? Captain Tupper!” he called.
“Captain Tupper,” he said, “what have you done with France? I do not see it anywhere. Our French allies will be exceedingly annoyed when they hear we have mislaid them. And do my eyes deceive me, or is that a wave making for us over there?”
“It is blowing moderate from the southeast, Your Grace.”
“Moderate, upon my word! I have always said there is too much moderation and compromise in modern life. Moderation sickens me, Tupper. Ho, I see some land over there!”
“We have just left Nice behind, Your Grace.”
“I sincerely hope, Tupper, that you are not among those who affect to despise Nice. Queen Victoria was very partial to Nice. It may not be Deauville or Blackpool, Captain Tupper, but Nice can still offer attractions of a homely sort.”
“But I understood, Your Grace, that—”
“The understanding of men is not what it was. But proceed.”
“—our direction was Naples.”
“Naples? Good God, Naples! And look, there's another wave making straight for us! Hang on, Tupper. I'll see you are all right. You sailors aren't what you were in the days when whisky was whisky, and you had a port in every—”
“A wife in every port is the correct form of the libel, Your Grace.”
“But hang it, I call this, don't you, a damned rough sea?”
“Just a roll, Your Grace.”
“But it makes one feel the butter, Tupper! Ha-ha!”
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace.”
“Oomberoofem, Tupper! But never mind. I feel very gay this evening. I have just had an idea. Now, Tupper, let me hear no more of this high-handed talk about turning your back on Nice.”
“But, Your Grace, we are making for Naples!”
“Your obsession for Naples seems to me singularly out of place on a windy evening. And I think you might consider me a little, even though I am on my own yacht. I detest, I deplore Naples. This sea, moreover, is decidedly too moderate for me. Put back to Nice, Captain Tupper. I am for Paris.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
“We will see, Tupper, we will see. Whether it will be good or bad, I can't tell, but it's sure to be uncommonly amusing. To Paris!”
STUDENTS of sociology have of recent years made great strides in their analysis and alleviation of the conditions prevailing among the poor, but is it not a fact that, as a notorious daily paper lately asked, the study of those conditions appears to attract the interest of only the lighter sort of society people and the pens of only the most ambitious novelists? And that the benefits of this study, at least to novelists, are not mean, was proved beyond all doubt only the other day, when perhaps the wealthiest of contemporary writers increased his fortune by writing a tale about a miser in a slum. No one, on the other hand, will deny that the achievements of sociologists among the poor, are as nothing compared with those of students of hospitality who, poor and unrewarded though they are, have of late years done yoeman work in alleviating the conditions prevailing among the rich in Mayfair. It is to the generous spade-work of men such as these that American hostesses in Europe owe the betterment of their lot, and it is by the support of their merciful hands that ladies burdened with great wealth are prevented from sinking down in the rarefied atmosphere to which they have been called.
But mere students of hospitality had not been strong enough to support the ailing burden of Mrs. Amp when that lady had first come over from America at the call of certain voices that had advised her that her mission lay in European society. It had needed graduates of that brotherhood, lean with endeavor in ballrooms and browned with the suns of the Riviera, to prevent that ample lady from succumbing to the exhaustion of carrying her wealth through the halls of her houses in London and Paris among guests who had failed to catch her name on being introduced. But the Good Samaritans had worked unceasingly on her behalf, and since Mrs. Amp had both great wealth and that which is even more conducive than great wealth to success in society, that entire lack of breeding and abundance of skin which will not take no for an answer, but leaps at yes as an offer of intimate friendship, by the time the great Duke arrived in Paris, she was on the crest of the wave and thought nothing of entertaining six minor royalties at the same time in her mansion off the Champs Elysées.
The morning after the Duke's arrival in Paris there was this notice in the Continental Daily Mail: “The Duke of Mall has arrived at his residence in the Avenue du Bois, and will spend the spring in Paris.” And presently the good Mrs. Amp was on the telephone, first here, then there and finally to the Duke himself, saying: “My dear Duke, how do you do, how do you do? I am so glad you are in Paris just now; Paris is so charming in the spring. You mustn't fail to see the tulips in the Tuileries; they are as beautiful as débutantes. Dear Duke, I am throwing a party tomorrow night, and you must come, you really must come. Now, don't say you wont come, because I can't bear that, and really I must say, my dear Duke, that your unfortunate inability to accept any of my invitations so far has seemed almost marked, whereas—”
“I am afraid—” began the Duke, who had no intention whatever of going anywhere near one of Mrs. Amp's parties, for she bored him.
“But you mustn't be afraid!” screamed Mrs. Amp. “Now, my dear Duke, I want you particularly to come to this party, because there is some one who wants to meet you, some one very lovely. Positively, I am not pulling your leg—”
“Really this is too much!” the Duke muttered, coldly saying out aloud: “Dear Mrs Amp, you do me great honor, but I am afraid that an extremely previous and decidedly prior engagement—”
“It is Miss Ava Lamb who wants to meet you, my dear Duke. She has just come to Paris. Dinner is at nine Thank you, thank you. It will be such fun. You will not have to talk unless you want to, and and you may go to sleep just when you like, as I have engaged Mr. Cherry-Marvel to conduct the conversation over dinner. At nine, then, my dear Duke.”
THE DUKE, as he fairly acknowledged to himself the morning after Mrs. Amp's party, had been diverted beyond all expectation by his meeting with Miss Lamb; and she, candor compelled him to admit, hadn't seemed any less sensible than he to the pleasant quality of their relation. A beautiful girl, a sensible girl, with a lively interest in the passing moment and a delicious capacity for deriving pleasure from the twists in conversation which came natural to the Duke but were become, it has to be confessed, a shade familiar to his friends. She hadn't, he reflected over his morning coffee, said anything throughout the evening that didn't interest and entertain—had, since she had come to Europe for the first time but the other day, amused him vastly with her impressions, which weren't by any means all favorable, since Miss Lamb confessed to a taste for simplicity very agreeable to the Duke, who was also wealthy.
All this made very pretty thinking for the Duke over his morning coffee, but had he consulted his memory more carefully, it might have emerged that Miss Lamb had listened with pretty attention the while he had talked, the matter of his talk seldom being so abstract in nature that she couldn't entirely grasp it by just looking at him.
What of course had immediately struck him, as it struck everyone who knew the Duchess, was the amazing resemblance between the sisters—since the fact that twins are very frequently as alike as two peas never does seem to prepare people for the likeness between the twins they actually meet. Now, between Miss Lamb and the Duchess of Mall there wasn't, you dared swear, so much as a shadow of difference in grace of line and symmetry of feature. But why, as Ava Lamb sensibly protested, why on earth should there be, or need there be, or could there be, since Leonora and she had been twins as punctually to the minute as was possible? A nearer view, however, discovered a deal of difference between the sisters in those small gestures of voice, habits of expression, capacity for attention and the like which, so the Duke warmly said, contribute far more than actual looks to mark the difference between one-woman and another. Nor were they less dissimilar in coloring, for whereas both the Duchess and Miss Lamb had those small white faces and immense blue eyes generally affected by American ladies for the conquest of Europe, the Duchess' hair was of a rich and various auburn shaded here to the deep lights of Renaissance bronze and there to the glow of Byzantine amber—the Duchess' hair was, in fact, fair to fairish, while Miss Lamb's was as near black as is proper in anyone with blue eyes who is without either Irish or Castilian blood.
IN the course of the ball that inevitably followed Mrs. Amp's dinner-party, the Duke had had further opportunity of judging the differences between his wife and her beautiful sister. And presently he had thought it only fair to tell Miss Lamb that he and her sister had decided, for each their sakes, to break their marriage, and he had thought it only fair to himself to add a sigh to his confession, a sigh which he explained, after a silence quite beautifully bridged by an understanding look from her, as being forced from him by the fact that there was no pleasing some women.
“You mustn't for a moment think,” he'd added wretchedly, “that I am trying to enlist your sympathy against your own sister, but—”
“Please!” Miss Lamb had protested quite unhappily to that! And here was another, and the sweetest difference of all between the sisters, for Miss Lamb's was the prettiest American accent, whereas the Duchess had long since and all too completely achieved the cold and ironic monotony of the mother-tongue. To be with Ava Lamb, the Duke had gratefully reflected at that moment, was to look on all the beauty of his wife in atmospheric conditions undisturbed by his wife's sarcastic habit of mind. Miss Lamb hadn't a touch of that irony and sophistication which is so often mistaken by American ladies for European culture; she was perfectly that rarest of all visitors to a bored continent, a fresh and simple American lady.
And “Please!” was all she had said about her sister! But to the Duke that one word had meant so much, forced as it had been so unhappily from her lips, as if half to shield her sister against the consequences of her folly, half to prevent him from seeing how deeply she disapproved of that sister, and wholly and sweetly to stay his tongue from exploring further into that misguided sister's character—it had meant so much that he had been content to wait quite in silence on her understanding even before she'd ever so quietly added: “Oh, I understand.”
“But do you, do you!” he'd cried emphatically, and she had let silence present him anew with her deep sense of under standing. She had a delicious talent for silence.
“MY dear,”"—it had just slipped out of him, quite naturally, quite wonderfully,—“if only other women were like you! To understand, I mean, just to understand!”
“And men?” Miss Lamb had dropped the two words with perceptible unwillingness, yet with just a touch of defiance, as who should say that she too, on so rare an occasion, must for once say what was in her mind.
“Men?” the Duke had smiled. He couldn't somehow think of this tall, gentle girl as a woman of the same age as his wife. She verily quite charmed him. Once or twice, indeed, he couldn't help but pity Leonora Mall for the way she had let life so quickly polish her freshness into the worldliness which he, for one, found so unsympathetic in women.
“Men, Miss Lamb? And what, if you'll forgive me, do you know of men?”
“Enough, surely, surely!”
“But that sounds quite threatening! Have you then hunted men in jungles and caught them and dissected them?”
“But wouldn't I, surely, have been married by now if I knew nothing of men?”
“Oh, well caught! But, Miss Lamb, you haven't married probably just because, like all rare people, you're—well, fastidious!”
“Oh, I don't know! Maybe. Fastidious is a long word, Duke, and I seem to have been waiting a long time, so maybe you're right. But I don't know.”
“May I say, then, that you've been very wise? So much wiser than many quite sensible men, so much wiser than many beautiful women. I mean, to wait.”
“But aren't we all,” she pleaded, “always waiting!”
“Some of us, unfortunately,” the Duke said grimly, “haven't. I, Miss Lamb, didn't wait long enough.”
“But are you so sure, Duke?” She was pleading with him. They were alone. The music and the dance passed behind them They were alone. He met her eyes humbly “Are you so sure you've waited long enough—I mean, my friend, for time to bring the best out of some one you love?”
“But,” he cried wretchedly, “I don't love her! That's just, don't you see, the awful mistake and pity of it all! It's not that Leonora and I have quarreled, but that we've each just found ourselves out.”
Miss Lamb sighed: “Oh, dear! And why? Way back home I've wondered, you know, about many things. All this sadness in life! It hurts, you know, to hear this. It hurts me—for you both. Poor, poor Leonora!”
THE DUKE said very earnestly: “Look here, don't for a moment think that I'm being cruel or anything like that. Believe me, your sister loves me no more than she has driven me into loving her. Honest to God, Miss Lamb.”
“You say that! But I know her, Duke. My own sister! Go to her now, and you will see. My friend, I am telling you to go to Leonora now, and you will find her crying for her lost love.”
“She left me cruelly, completely. I had done nothing. She left me, as a matter of fact, while I was asleep. She took herself from my yacht as though—look here, as though I were a plague! You call that caring, Miss Lamb? I'd rather be hated in hell than cared for on earth after that fashion. But let us talk of something else. Of you!'
“Oh, me! Just a tourist in Europe!”
“Of your heart, then, in America! You left it there? Now confess!”
“Dear, no! I wouldn't have my heart jumped by man or god, not I!”
“Bravo, bravo!”
“So my heart's with me here and now, I thank you.”
“What, you feel it beating!”
“Perhaps—a little.”
“Oh!”
“At being in Paris, Duke.”
“I deserved the snub. Go on, please.”
“My friend,” she said softly, “the history of my life is the history of my dreams. When I was a girl, I had—oh, such dreams!”
“Girls, Miss Lamb dear, do! And when they grow up and marry, they use the sharpest pieces of those broken dreams to beat their husbands with. Oh, I know! Every husband in the world is held responsible for the accidents that befall the dreams of his wife's girlhood! Oh, I know! I've been, Miss Lamb dear, most utterly married.”
“I'm growing afraid of you, Duke. You've a cruel wise tongue!”
“Ava, I wouldn't have you think I'm abusing your sister to you. But she certainly was born to be a good man's wife, and she's certainly never let me forget why she has failed to live up to the promise of her birth.”
“But my dreams weren't at all of knights, cavaliers, heroes! You bet, no! My dreams were just of Paris, this lovely merciless Paris!”
The music and the dance lay in the halls behind them; they were alone on the formal terrace high above the marvelous sweep of the Champs Elysées. Far down on the left, the fountains of the Place de la Concorde hung in the blue air like slim curved reeds of crystal. In the courtyard below them a cypress tree stood dark and still; the concierge's wife talked in whispers to her lover. From the road, men looked up at the lighted windows with pale astonished faces. Far up on the right, served by long processions of lights from all the corners of the world, the Arc de Triomphe stood high against the pale spring night. Most massive of monuments, built high to the god of war upon the blood of a hundred battlefields, upon the bones of uncountable men and horses, upon the anguish of ravished countries—the miraculous art of men to worship their own misery has raised the monument to the vulgar conqueror Napoleon to be as a dark proud jewel on the brow of the most beautiful of cities. And Ava cried: “Look, the stars are framed in the arch! Oh, look! And so the arch is like a gate into the kingdom of the stars!”
And the Duke whispered: “Don't talk of the stars, Ava Lamb! The stars make me think of all that is impossible.”
And up and down the broad avenue between the trees prowled the beasts of the cosmopolitan night, these with two great yellow eyes, those with one small red eye closely searching the ground. And in the middle distance the Seine shone like a black sword, and the horrible gilt creatures that adorn the Bridge of Alexander III were raised by the pale mercy of the night to the dignity of fallen archangels driving chariots to the sky. And a yellow moon lifted an eyelash up from the beau quartier about the Place Victor Hugo, and Miss Lamb said:
“There's beauty, isn't there, in the very name of Paris—even when it's said in an American accent!”
“But, sister-in-law, I love your accent!”
“My, how you laugh at me! But—Paris, Paris! Oh, isn't that a lovely name for a town built by men to have!”
AS, over his coffee the next morning, the young Duke reflected on yesternight, he found himself enchanted by a gay memory. Oh, to be enchanted again, to be thrilled, to be exalted—and all, honest to God, by companionship! What fun there was in life when women didn't grow so damned familiar! And to be with Ava Lamb, he reflected gratefully, was to renew all the joy he'd once had of loving his wife, to renew to and to increase it, for wasn't he now older and wiser, wasn't he now wise enough really to appreciate enchantment? Why, oh why wasn't his wife like this girl, why, since they were both alike in so much, hadn't Leonora a little of Ava's warm attention and quick understanding! And again the Duke, in solace for self-pity, cast back to yesternight, how he had warmed to the beautiful stranger's love of Paris and had told her the tale of how Paris had come to be called Paris, and the way of that was this:
“In the old days, Ava, if I may call you Ava, when the world was small and the animals enormous, they tell how a young conqueror came out of the dark lands, and with fire and sword he came into the smiling land of France. Of course it was not called France then, but you know what I mean. Now, that was a great and noble prince, and it was his custom to rest himself after the tumult of battle with the worship of beauty, which is not at all the fashion among princes nowadays, as is evident by the number of times they will visit the same revue or musical comedy, while they never go near good music, good painting, good literature or good drama. And so our prince, when he had killed as many natives of the conquered country as the honor of war demands, chained the rest with iron chains and put them to the building of a mighty city by the river Seine. And when at last the city was builded, it was far and away the fairest city in the world, as all who saw it instantly admitted under torture, for the young prince hated argument. Thus all went well until they came to the christening of the city, when it transpired that no one had the faintest idea what name to call it. Here was a to-do! Nameless they could not leave so great a city, yet what name would embrace all these marvels of architecture, how could they call so fair a city by any such commonplace kind of label as Rome, Jerusalem or Wapping? Therefore the young prince fell weeping with mortification for that his city must remain nameless just because it was the fairest city in the world, when an ancient man rose up in the assembly and said: 'This here is not the fairest city in the world. The magic city of Is in the land of Brittany has got it beat by a long chalk. I have spoken.' He never had a chance to again, yet presently it was proved that not the fairest city in the world could be fairer than Is in Brittany; and so the prince made the best of a bad job and called his city the Equal to Is, which is Par-Is, which is Paris. Shall we dance?”
But she said: “No, no! One can always dance—there are so many men with whom one can only dance, for what have they to talk about? Duke, I did love your legend of the christening of Paris! Did you make it up?”
Now, these words had chanced to cast a gloom about the young Duke, and he had said: “But there is another legend, a more private legend. It tells, Ava Lamb, of the house of Mall, how the golden cock on the weathervane of St. James' tower shall crow thrice at the birth of the greatest of the dukes of Mall. And although I say it who shouldn't, this very miracle attended the birth of him who now stands beside you. And the legend further tells that when the golden cock on St. James' tower crows thrice, the greatest of the dukes of Mall shall die. Ava, tonight I find myself in fear of my fate. That which is written shall come to pass, and no man may defy the passage of his destiny—but tonight, Ava, I am troubled and I am depressed with a foreboding that the second crowing of that beastly cock is not far distant from this sweet moment.”
Sweetly she had tried to soothe his foreboding, but it was heavy in him and he had not listened, saying: “I've never but once before been vexed with this depression, and that was on the night of the day I fell in love with Leonora Lamb.”
“Let us dance,” she had said shyly, but they had not danced very enjoyably, owing to the number of the students of hospitality who were generously supporting Mrs. Amp on so memorable an occasion.
And thus it was on the first night between Miss Lamb and the young Duke of Mall. And on other nights it was also thus, though unkind observers said it was thus and thus, which was scandal and should be discredited as such.
NOW, the Duke had turned his yacht from Naples merely to amuse himself (that is to say, to annoy his wife), but is it not a fact, as a Conservative Member lately asked in reference to our treating with the Soviet republic, that it is dangerous to play with fire? And the Duke had not been gay of his new enchantment for long before all others palled on him, and he awoke one morning to recognize that he could not, try as he would, do without the one enchantment that was called Ava Lamb. Those American sisters, first the one and then the other, were fated, it appeared, to ravish his imagination to the exclusion of the whole race of womankind. And he had all the more leisure in which to contemplate his dilemma inasmuch as Miss Lamb, pleading the importunity of friends, would sometimes not see him for days at a time.
In the meanwhile the Duchess, in London, was preparing to petition the courts to release her from her unfortunate marriage; and after the usual correspondence had passed lawyers of both parties, and the usual evidence collected, the majesty of the law pronounced the usual decree and everyone said the usual things.
Impatiently the Duke in Paris awaited the wire which would tell him that he was no longer the husband of Leonora Mall; and when it came, he delayed only long enough to instruct his valet to telephone his London florists to send the ex-Duchess a basket of flowers before calling on Miss Lamb at her hotel. However, she was not at home. The Duke protested. Even so, she was not at home. The Duke felt rebuked for not having conformed to the decencies of divorce so far as to wait twenty-four hours, and in all humility he returned the next day. However, she was not at home. The Duke pleaded. Even so, she was not at home; for, her maid said, she was resting before the ardors of the night journey to Cherbourg, whence she would embark for New York. The Duke scarcely waited to hear the astounding news. Miss Lamb was lying down. Calm and cold, she said:
“What does this mean, Duke? How dare you force yourself on me like this?”
Fair, tall, intent, the Duke further dared her displeasure by raising her unwilling hand to his lips. Twilight filled the room. Outside, the motors raced across the Place Vendôme. The Duke said:
“I have dared everything on this one throw. Ava, I love you.”
Miss Lamb said to her maid, “Go,” and she went.
The Duke smiled unsteadily. He said: “Well? Ava, what have you to say?”
Where she lay on her couch, her face was like a white flower in the dusky light. But he could not see her eyes, because they were closed. The dress she wore was black, and the hand that lay outstretched on her black dress was as white as youth's dreams, and he said: “I have a ring for that hand that has not its peer in the world.”
He could not see her eyes, because they were closed; but still the twilight lacked courage to steal the red from her mouth, and the Duke saw that her lips were parted in a queer sad smile.
“Why do you smile?” he asked; and he said unsteadily: “I know why. You do not believe I love you; you do not believe I know how to love; you think me the shallow, vain braggart that I have shown to you in the guise of myself until this moment. But I love you, Ava, more than life, more than honor itself. I love you, Ava, with all the youthful love I had for your sister increased a thousand times by the knowledge I now have of myself: for it by loving that men come to know themselves, and it is by knowing themselves in all humility that men can love with the depths of their hearts. Ava, I do love you terribly! Wont you speak, wont you say one word—do you disdain my love so utterly as that? Yet I can't blame you, for I've spent my life in proving that my love is despicable. I have liked so many women, Ava, but loved not one except your sister and her I loved as a child might love a daisy until she sees a rose. But even a fool may come to know the depths of his folly, and I who know so much of desire, dearly beloved, know that I have never loved until this moment. Still you wont speak? Ava, I did not think you so ungenerous when in my vanity I first fell under your gentle enchantment. Dear, your silence is destroying all of me but my love. Wont you give me even so much as a queen will give a beggar, that had he been another man in another world he might have kissed her hand?”
Now twilight had lit all the tapers of the night, and in the deep silence the maid whispered to his ear: “Your Grace, she is asleep.”
THE DUKE told his chauffeur outside Miss Lamb's hotel that he would not need him again that evening—he would walk. But he had not walked above a dozen yards across the Place Vendôme, regardless of his direction, regardless of the traffic, when the breathless voice of his valet detained him. Stormily the Duke swung about: yet was he always a man who, was he in never such a devilish temper, could not permit himself to show any but a polite face to his servants—which is perhaps the only mark of a gentleman that your cad cannot ape.
“This telegram,” the valet panted, “came the minute after you had left this afternoon. I feared, Your Grace, it might be important, and took the liberty to follow you.”
The Duke's face paled as he read. The telegram was from the hall-porter of his club in St. James' Street. The valet, an old servant, was concerned at his master's pale looks; but he was even more concerned at the sudden smile that twisted them.
“I hope I did right, Your Grace.”
“Quite right, Martin.” And the young Duke smiled a happy smile. “You have brought me this wire at just the right moment. I can't, Martin, thank you enough. Meanwhile, old friend, go back and pack. Everything! We are for Mall tonight. Paris is no place for an Englishman to die in. For pity's sake, Martin, don't look so gaga—but go!”
Miss Lamb's maid did not attempt to conceal her surprise at the Duke's quick reappearance at the door of the suite; but the young man's face was so strangely set that she had not the heart to deny him sight of her mistress.
“I'll be,” she sighed, “dismissed!”
The Duke smiled, and maybe he never was so handsome nor so gay as at that moment.
The maid said: “My mistress still sleeps. It is when she is happy that she sleeps.”
“Happy? Does it make a woman happy, then, to see a man destroyed by love?”
“It is more comfortable, Your Grace, to be loved than to love. But I know nothing of my mistress' heart. I came to her service only the other day. Yes, she is asleep. And the room is dark.”
The Duke said: “Good. This is indeed my lucky day.”
“I leave you, Your Grace. And if I am dismissed?”
“I count you as my friend. I do not forget my friends. Leave me now.”
BUT a few minutes before, he had left that room in a storm of rage. Now a great peace was on him. He let the minutes pass by, standing there in the soft darkness, a man condemned to death. His life behind him lay like a soiled wilderness through which smirked and pirouetted an unclean travesty of himself; and the gates of death looked to him clean and beautiful. He did not wish his life had been otherwise; he regretted not a minute of waste, not one inconstancy, not one folly; he regretted not a strand that had gone to the making of the mad tapestry of his life, but was glad that all had been as it had been, so that he could now be as he was, a man who understood himself and could die with a heart cleaned of folly and sacred to love.
To the windows of the quiet dark room rose the chatter of the lounging traffic of the Place Vendôme. The Duke listened, and he smiled. Brown eyes and scarlet lips, blue eyes and scarlet lips, black hair and golden hair and tawny hair, lazy smile and merry smile and greedy smile and bored smile, dresses of Chanel, Patou, Vionnet, Molyneux—round and round the Place Vendôme they went, like automata on a bejeweled merry-go-round, and the Duke saw himself sitting in motorcars first beside one and then beside another, talking, talking, whispering, sighing, yawning. .... As the minutes passed, his sight began to distinguish the objects in the room. On a table was a bowl of roses. He made obeisance and kissed a rose, for kissing a rose in a dark room will clean a man's lips. Then he knelt beside the still figure on the couch and he kissed her mouth.
“Oh!” she cried. “You thief!”
He said: “Your voice is so cold that ice would seem like fire beside it. But I don't care.” And again he kissed her mouth. Then he said: “Your lips are burning. That is very odd. Your voice is very cold, but your lips are burning. Now, why is that?”
“For shame!” she whispered. “They are burning for shame that you are so little of a man.”
He laughed, his lips by her ear. “Beloved,” he laughed, “do you think I would die without kissing your lips? Honestly, beloved, could you expect it?”
In the dimness he could just see the white mask of her face; and because her eyes were like dark flowers in the darkness, he kissed first one and then the other. She was very still.
“Die?”
He would have laughed again, but he fancied that maybe too much laughter would not become his situation, would appear like bravado. But he would have liked to show her he was happy, and why he was happy. A vain man, he had realized he was contemptible: therefore it was good to die. Loving as he had never loved before, he was unloved: therefore it was good to die.
HE told her how he had been warned that the cock on St. James' tower had crowed thrice that dawn. And then he was amazed, for as he made to rise, he could not. He cried out his wonder. She said: “Be still!” He cried out his despair. She whispered: “Be still!” Her arm was light about his shoulder, and that was why his happiness had left him like a startled bird, and he sobbed: “Child, for pity's sake! It's too late now. Let me die in peace. To have died without your love was blessedly easy. A moment ago I was happy.”
“Die! You! Love! You! Happy! You!” She mocked him and mocked him, and the cold irony of the English tongue tore aside the veil of the American accent, and when the Duke stared into her eyes, he'd have leaped up and run away for shame, but that her arm was still tight about his shoulder.
“You, Leonora, you! And so you have revenged yourself!”
She whispered: “Be still!” And as he made to tear himself away she said: “Yes, I wanted to be revenged. I wanted you to fall in love with me. I wanted you to look a fool.”
“Then you must be very content, Leonora. Let me go now.”
She cried: “Let you go? Let you go! But are you mad!”
“Oh, God,” he said pitifully, “what is this new mockery!”
“You see,” she sighed, “I've gone and fallen in love with you again. That rather takes the edge off my joke, doesn't it? Oh, dear! Maximilian, I have waited to love you as I love you now, ever since I married you four years ago. But you would never let me. Be honest, sweet—would you ever let me love you? You were always the world's spoiled darling, the brilliant and dashing and wealthy Duke of Mall—and I your American wife! Darling, what a lot of trouble you give those who love you! I have had to go through all the bother of divorcing you to make you love me, and now I suppose I must go through all the bother of marrying you again because you've made me love you—”
“But—” he made to protest.
“Oh, but to you, my Maximilian! There aren't any but's now between you and me, are there? I must say, though, that you've made love to me divinely these last few months, and the real Ava would have fallen in love with you, I'm sure, if she hadn't been in California all this while. I dyed my hair a little, Duke Maximilian, but my only real disguise was to listen to you while you talked about yourself. Darling, kiss me, else how shall I know that we are engaged to be married?”
He said desperately: “Leonora, what are you saying! You forget that I am to die!”
“Not you!” she sighed. “Not you! You may be divorced for the time being, poor Maximilian, but you're not nearly dead yet. I sent that wire myself this morning from Victoria Station—to mark the fact that the Duke of Mall is dead! Long live the Duke of Mall!”
“Leonora, I can't bear this happiness!”
“You must learn to put up with it, sweet. And now, after all this talk of dukes and duchesses, it may seem to you a trivial thing to kiss a mere woman, but I assure you, Max, that it is quite usual in the circumstances.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1956, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 67 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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