Fate Cannot Harm Me (10 page)

Basil paused for breath, as well he might, and lit a cigarette.

“What do you think of my grand idea?” he said. “You may be as enthusiastic as you like. Shall we sit down and type it off red-hot this very morning?”

But Monty had finished his drink, and was inexorable. Besides, he resented a conversation in which he was allowed to take hardly any part.

“Very ingenious,” he replied without enthusiasm. “Now what about that article on the poets of the Second Empire? Have you really got it well started or not?”

Basil spread his hands apart with a gesture of despair.

“Monty, you drive me to desperation. I confer on you the inestimable honour of being the first human being to learn of one of the great discoveries of the age. You listen to this world-shaking idea, guzzling beer the while, and all you can think of at the end is a trumpery article on French poets. Where's your imagination, man, where's your imagination? Well, I must humour you, I suppose. Anyhow we've had a delightful conversation. I always like chatting with my friends.”

“With!” exclaimed Monty, but the interruption was unheeded.

“I'll go and dig out that article and see just how far I have got with it. I think it's somewhere in the library. Wait half a minute.”

He raised himself from his chair and strolled out of the room. What a characteristic exhibition, thought Monty to himself. Yes, that was the right word—Basil was an exhibitionist. Amusing enough provided you let him have his head, and clever of course. But rather a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower, or was it a chamois
leaping from rock to rock? Yes, the chamois was the better picture. You saw him just where he liked to be, showing up against the skyline, but he never stayed long enough in one place. What a curse these
dilettanti
were—especially to themselves. Basil would never carry out any real solid piece of work. Robin, now, was different; he was clever too, but then he was dogged as well, and never stopped half way. His
Pertinacity
might turn out to be a real achievement. Idly Monty began to compare the two men. Undoubtedly he liked Robin the better; he was angular and difficult at times of course, and sometimes—well—to put it bluntly he jarred on you, but still he'd got a sort of sincerity; you knew where you were with him, and, he wouldn't be a bad chap to have on your side if things weren't going too well. And Basil? Awfully good company, so long as you were in the vein yourself. His was the type of mind that you could play with, but he was an exhibitionist—always posing just a little, and always pushing for the middle of the stage. What would he be like in a tight corner? Not much good, probably, he was too much wedded to success.

Then why in so many ways was the society of Basil more agreeable and very much easier than that of Robin? Gravely Monty considered the problem, for it pleased him to analyse character. Perhaps Basil was more of his set than the other; they had more friends in common, they talked the same language in the same way. Perhaps that was what the public school tradition really meant—a kind of common background, which made human intercourse easy. But wasn't it more than that? Couldn't he analyse it a little more deeply? Yes—that was it! Robin talked about serious things in a serious way, and about trivial things in a careless way, and Basil did just the opposite. He would discuss things of grave importance with a lightness bordering on flippancy, with a studied unconcern. On the other hand, he would invest small talk with the seriousness of a
Socratic dialogue; he would converse about some triviality, some airy fancy of the mind, as though it was his only interest. Was that another manifestation of the public school spirit, or just a convention of Society? Certainly it was true. Basil and his friends would never let themselves go in matters about which they felt deeply, or in matters of real import. Those they treated either with studied reticence, or elaborate unconcern, or even a sort of bantering flippancy. But the little things of life—what immense, what fantastic interest they brought to them! Why, only two nights ago he had heard Basil discoursing for half an hour in a manner which recalled the better speeches of a nineteenth-century statesman on the propriety of wearing a white waistcoat with a dinner jacket. And very informative and very amusing he had been—and very serious too. Well, anyhow, if that was a convention of polite Society, it had its uses. It did oil the wheels of personal intercourse. Nothing was easier than the society of Basil. Yet how the man did like to pose! That article on the French poets for instance. Monty felt absolutely certain that it was at least three parts written, and well written too, yet Basil must needs give him the impression that he'd hardly thought of it, in order to be able to give a dazzling, and quite unnecessary, display of brilliance in dashing it off, apparently, at the last moment. After all Robin
was
the better man of the two, and …

Monty's musings were interrupted by the return of his host, carrying a couple of sheets of typescript in his hand.

“It's as I thought, I've only jotted down a few stray, but no doubt precious, thoughts.
N'importe
. I'll write it to-day or to-morrow. I sometimes think a
tour de force
of that kind, written straight off, reads better than anything else.”

“Liar,” thought Monty. “Righto, I'll tell my old man that he may expect Paraday-Royne on the French poets sometime this week.”

He got up to go, but as he did so, the door opened, and Cynthia Hetherington stood, smiling, on the threshold. Yes, Cynthia Hetherington, and it was she who was the lady of the photographs.

Monty paused in his story and filled my glass. “I forget if you knew Cynthia,” he asked. “Had she come out before you left England?”

For a moment this shock of hearing Cynthia's name, thus suddenly plunged into Monty's tale had overcome me. Not for a moment had I associated her with the lady of the photographs, nor thought of her as playing a part in the drama. And for a moment, too, an icy feeling of despair had gripped me. Cynthia was the cause of the jealousy of Paraday-Royne and Hedley; did that mean one or other had won her and married her? Was my whole edifice of hope in fragments before me? But almost instantaneously came the certainty of security. Lady Dennison had not written, and I trusted her; Monty had said that neither Paraday-Royne nor Hedley would be seen in London, and said too that this story would have a happy ending. That wouldn't, couldn't, fit in if one or other had married Cynthia. I breathed again, like a man coming up from deep water, and forced myself to answer in a voice of unconcern
.

“Yes. I knew her in 1932, and very charming she was”
.

“Charming's no word for Cynthia. Why, all the painters in the world and all the poets too couldn't have pictured her and done her justice; but I'll go on with the tale”

Cynthia stood framed in the doorway, and smiled her greetings to the two men. She might have served as a model for triumphant youth.

“Good morning, Monty, good morning, Basil. What are you doing here, Monty, and Basil, dear, what are you
doing in a dressing-gown at eleven o'clock on a heavenly day like this? And are you going to play golf with me this afternoon, and where shall we play, and where and when shall we lunch? Oh, and do let's have some lobster, it's so good now—and
not
at your club—I hate the ladies' side at a man's club. And you've not said a word about my dress, Basil dear, and I know you always notice those things. What do you think of it?”

A smile of delighted welcome had lit up Basil's face as Cynthia came in—now he tried to reply.

“One question at a time,
chérie
, one question at a time. First, and most important of course, your dress is so pretty as to be almost worthy of you, but not quite. Lunch of course, and lots of lobster, and just wherever you will. Golf by all means; we'll go to Walton Heath. I'd promised to play with Robin Hedley, but I'll 'phone and put him off.”

“Oh, no, you mustn't do that. Why should poor Robin lose his game? Besides, you know I like him. We'll have a foursome instead. Monty, why don't you come and play with us? I never see anything of you now.”

“Sorry, Cynthia, I only wish I could. But I'm reporting a match at Lord's—I'm due there by twelve, too. You'll have to find some one more lucky, or less hardworking.”

“Yes, much better let me put Robin off,” said Basil. “I'll give you a half, and present you with a new club if you beat me.”

“Which I certainly should, Basil, as you well know. No. I'm not to be bribed, and I won't have poor Robin chucked like that. You must ring up Pamela Grey, or one of the Montresors or someone like that and bring her along. It's no good being the best-known ladies' man in London if you can't find the right girl to make up a foursome.”

“Right,” said Basil, who was clearly not too well pleased. “I'll get some one, or other, and we'll lunch at
the Berkeley about half past one. But anyhow you'll play with me against the other two?”

Cynthia smiled and relented. “Of course I will—and if you play very nicely you can take me somewhere to dine and dance this evening. I've nothing arranged for to-night. Au revoir. I've promised to go to a private view of Linkley's and then I've got to change, and be at the Berkeley by lunch-time. I must rush. You'll have to drive us down very fast, Basil, or we shan't have time to get round.”

She kissed her hand to Monty, and was gone as swiftly as she had come.

“What about the French poets to-night?” said Monty dryly. Basil did not trouble to answer; his thoughts were elsewhere.

“What a ruddy fool I was to mention Robin at all. I did it without thinking. I ought simply to have scratched him after she'd gone. Now I've got to comb London to get some wretched girl to spoil our game for us. Anyhow, I'll get some one who's not too good. It'll annoy Robin to get well beaten—and do him good too.” He reached out his hand for the telephone.

“Well, I must trot along,” said Monty. “Send that article when it's ready.”

He nodded good-bye, and strolled out into the sunshine. His thoughts as he turned down Knightsbridge were not entirely pleasing. The “Basil, dear,” with which Cynthia had addressed his host had jarred on him. Men, he considered, who were on terms of intimacy with some one so wholly adorable as Cynthia ought not to have that indefinable, disturbing streak. And there was a lack of generosity in Basil's attitude to his literary rival which offended Monty's instincts of sportsmanship. Literary rival—or rival in a more serious sense? The two photographs obtruded themselves upon his mental vision. Yes, undoubtedly there was real rivalry there—whether the protagonists were conscious of it or not. With a sour
little smile Monty began to estimate the odds. “Five to two Pertinacity, two to one Sweet Basil, evens the field,” he murmured to himself. “Which reminds me that I've not had a bet to-day.” He plunged into a post office and after a little anxious thought wired to his bookmaker. Whistling a taxi, with the consciousness of work well done he told the driver to take him along to Lord's.

“But small regard has human pain,
And wounded men unheeded fall;
A sick man's suffering ne'er was known
To hurt a healthy man at all.”

That May morning left on Monty's mind an indelible impression. It seemed to him as though he had been plunged suddenly into the middle of a drama; the characters had been presented to him with a clarity and suddenness which reminded him of a film. It was a well-worn theme, this triangle of persons, but none the less dramatic for that, and the fact that he knew them all gave the situation a poignancy which was always lacking for him in the vicarious interest of the stage or screen. He had only to close his eyes to see the photograph again; but sometimes it smiled at him from Hedley's mantelpiece, sometimes it flashed its challenge from Paraday-Royne's piano. Always it roused in him a disturbing sense of youth and life and fascination. Especially, and almost constantly, he thought of it when
Pertinacity
appeared in the autumn of 1933.