Authors: Winifred Holtby
That was in the summer of 1914. The outbreak of war
came just in time to save Basil from the
humiliation of his
father's request to Lord Herringdale that he should overlook all earlier indiscretions and continue to pay his son's bills at
Oxford. Basil was able to step into the post of private secre
tary to
old Lord Farndale, vacated by a more commonplace
and robust young man who had joined the army.
There, until 1916, he remained, but the catastrophes of inter
national war made civilized living impossible, and the in
convenience of Philistine disapproval outweighed the horror of military discipline. In 1916 Basil responded to the Call of
King and Country.
He looked delightful in uniform. The crudity of army life
distressed him, but he was fortunate enough to be sent as a
cadet to Balliol and to find in war-time Oxford several con
genial companions. When he was finally gazetted as a
second lieutenant, his fastidious charm, his delicacy, and his
taste were uncorrupted. Then he was sent to France.
Nobody ever knew exactly in what degree the war affected
Basil. It was presumably a nightmare which on awakening
he was unable to describe. In 1918 he appeared at a hospital
in Carlton House Terrace with a shattered elbow. He spent
the subsequent two years in tedious alternations between the
operating theatre and convalescent homes. In 1920 he left
the army with a stiff arm, a disillusioned though still charm
ing manner, and the pension proper to second lieutenants suffering from partial disablement.
He returned for a time to the Rectory in Devonshire, and
lay on soft but badly tended lawns or on the faded Morris
chintzes of his mother's sofas. He read; he smoked cigar
ettes; he composed epigrams which he felt too fatigued to
utter. But the boredom of country life, the inadequacy of
the hot-water supply, and the monotony of his mother's
catering drove him back to London.
'But what are you going to do, my dear boy?' asked the
Rector.
'Well,
man cher papa.'
Basil smiled his charming melan
choly smile. 'What can a fellow do?'
There were, it appeared, a number of things that a fellow
could, and did, do. Basil's acquaintances enlightened him
as to the possibilities of employment in London. He could sell cars on commission, or trade in first editions, or advise newly created peeresses about the decoration of their coun
try seats, or write occasional reviews for the
Epicurean.
But
the
Epicurean
survived only six issues after its first appear
ance; the cars betrayed inexpert salesmanship, and the peeresses had their own preposterous notions about interior decoration.
An optimistic young gentleman called Wing Stretton,
whom Basil had met in hospital, formed a syndicate at
Monte Carlo for playing roulette according to a co-opera
tive system, which he thought infallible. Once, in an expansive mood, he asked Basil to come out as secretary to the
Syndicate. Basil remembered his offer when, in 1923, he had
his final interview with Lord Herringdale.
'I like you. Damn it, I like you,' declared that much-tried
nobleman. 'But what with the country going to the dogs
and the Government taxing us out of house and home, I can
do no more for you, young man. Why don't you emigrate?
Emigration. That's the stuff for you younger men. Go
abroad. Start afresh. This old country's overcrowded.
Take my advice.'
Basil took his advice. 'Emigration,' he read in a copy of
the
Spectator
which lay on his father's study table, 'gives opportunities for the display of that courage, initiative, pluck
and common sense, which have made the English what they
are.'
'Quite,'said Basil. He emigrated. He joined Wing Stret
ton at Monte Carlo.
Under the soothing influence of the Casino ritual, so elab
orate, so unfaltering, and so meaningless, the memory of the brutal outrage of the war's disorder faded from Basil's mind.
Listening to the monotonous whirring of the wheels, the soft
melancholy cries of the croupiers performing the eternal ceremony of their unchanging Mass, he began to forget the
harsh, shattering explosion of the shells. In that enchanted
palace, where life is so remote from all other reality, he lost
his sense of the imminent menace of death.
'It had to be Catholicism or roulette,' he observed later,
'and on the whole, I found roulette more satisfying.'
But in spite of the consolations of roulette, he had his
troubles. He suffered from recurrent pain in his wounded
arm. He was troubled by a dry, tedious cough. His increas
ing lassitude arose as much from general ill-health and
weariness as from natural indolence of temperament. He
was lonely. Too fastidious to love promiscuously, he was too
poor to love expensively, and in Monte Carlo he had found
no third alternative. His colleagues on the syndicate were
business acquaintances with whom he had little in common
except the desire to make a living.
In spite of his apparent detachment and urbanity, Basil
knew hours when he lay on the
chaise longue
beside his bed
room window, watching the changeful blue and green of the unruffled bay and acknowledging to himself that he was ill and lonely, that his youth was passing without satisfaction,
and that the malignity of providence could not be endured
much longer.
§2
One evening about ten o'clock, after a dull and disappointing
day, Basil stood on one of the small rounded
balconies that lean from the windows of the Salles Privees
and overhang the Casino gardens. It was the hottest week
in the summer of 1923. The season was unfashionable, the room half empty. All but two tables in the room behind him wore their draping petticoats, while in the Kitchen the whirring of wheels, the jangle of voices, and the stifling atmo
sphere of scent and humanity, had grown intolerable. The
System was doing badly. Basil's distaste for his colleagues
had increased with the rising temperature of the summer.
He was in debt again; his head ached; neuralgic pains
throbbed through his wounded elbow. He laid his arms
along the stone balustrade and stared into the night.
Beyond and below him lay the warm, perfumed darkness of Monte Carlo, the lighted town seeming no
more than an inverted mirror of the star-sprinkled sky. A motor-boat shot like a shooting star across the bay.
A shooting star shot like a motor-boat across the sky. Far down below in the Casino garden a shaft of light
from a half-shuttered window struck a pink-flowering oleander.
'I wonder,' thought Basil, 'whether there is any truth in
the legend that those who shoot themselves in the Casino gardens are immediately set upon by swift attendants, who
pad their pockets with notes for a thousand francs, so that the distracted relatives of the victim may not attribute his
suicide to a gambler's losses. I wonder if it is true,' his weary
mind continued, 'that if one throws oneself down from this balcony, death rushes up straight and sure from the ground
and kills one in mid-air. Indeed, seeing that earth and sky
appear so very similar, might a man not fall down to heaven,
and even rise to hell?' He smiled, thinking how his father
would fasten upon a similar fantasy, and elaborate it in a
whimsical sermon to puzzle the yeomanry of Devon.
'I wouldn't do it if I were you,' a strange voice startled
him. 'For one thing, it can't be done. They grab you before
you've got one leg over the balustrade. And to go on with,
it doesn't really work.'
It was a woman's voice, rich, warm, irregular. Basil
turned slowly, and bowed towards the shadows, but he could
see no more than the gleam of one pale arm and the denser blackness of a dark dress against the night. He sighed. Too well he knew the ritual of encounters on a shadowed bal
cony. He could play as prettily as any other man the game
of flattery and evasion. He appreciated the ceremonial niceties of flirtation. But to-night he was tired.
'I am deeply flattered by your solicitude,' he said, 'but I
assure you that it was misplaced. Had the world held no
other consolation, your unseen presence . . .'
She laughed, so merry, surprising and frank a laugh that it completely disconcerted him.
'Come, come,' she cried. 'You hadn't the least idea that I
was sitting here. And you know perfectly well that I didn't
really think you were going to jump off the balcony. I spoke
to you because I was bored. I've lost my shirt already to
day, so I can't play any more. I only bring down so much money with me to the rooms, and when that's gone, I just
sit. But to-night it's too early to go home to bed, and none
of my friends are here. So . . .'
To excuse himself from further effort, Basil invited the
lady into the bar to have a cocktail. She rose with alacrity
and stepped before him into the lighted room. He knew
then that he had often seen her at the tables, for she was unmistakable, a large magnificently built brunette, with warm brown colouring and mobile eye-brows. Basil, who understood such things, guessed that she wore her gown low, painted her face, and tinted her fingernails merely because
to do otherwise would have seemed an affectation. She fol
lowed exaggerated fashions because she was natural and sensible. As she went, she turned once and smiled at Basil
over her shoulder, without coquetry, but with experienced
and friendly understanding.
They drank cocktails together at the bar. They talked
about Cannes, and roulette, and the heat. Basil drove her back to her hotel, a non-committal place in the Boulevard
des Moulins. She told him that her name was Gloria
Calmier, that she was the widow of a French officer, and
that she adored bathing. They met the next day at the Casino, and the next, and the next.
§3
Their frequent encounters suggested to the Syndicate that
Basil was attracted by Madame Calmier. Wing Stretton
told everyone that St. Denis was having an affair with a rich French widow, but when he attempted to tease Basil accordi
ng to the accepted convention of their circle, he was sur
prised by the ferocity of his secretary's repudiation.
'That woman?' cried Basil. 'Heavens! I can't escape her.
I go to the Casino and she is there. I go to the Hotel de
Paris and she is there. I go down to the beach and she is
there, arising from the waves like a slightly over-ripened
Aphrodite. If I take the wings of the morning and fly to the
uttermost parts of the earth, she will be there also, dying to tell me a perfectly
screaming
limerick about a young lady
called Hilda who had an affair with a builder.'
He mimicked with such observant malice Madame Cal
mier's deep, laughing voice that Wing Stretton accepted his derision as
bona fide
evidence of his untroubled heart, and
left him alone to avoid his own entanglements.