Chapter I: A Romance in Old Brandy

I

Talking of dogs, no one will deny that dogs make the best, the dearest, and the most faithful companions in the world. No one will deny that even very small dogs have very large hearts. No one will deny that human beings are as but dirt beside dogs, even very small dogs. No one will deny that all dogs, large or small, are more acceptable to the Lord than foxes, rats or Dagoes. That is, if the Lord is a gentleman. No one can deny that. No one, anyhow, dares deny that. Let us be quite candid. A man who does not glory in the companionship of dogs is no fit mate for any woman. That is what Valerest said. A woman who glories in nothing else but the companionship of a dratted little beast with two unblinking black eyes is certainly no fit mate for any man. That is what Valentine thought.

Valentine and Valerest were sat at dinner. Valerest was the name of Valentine’s wife, and she was a nice girl. A pretty maid waited on them. Valentine and Valerest were silent. The pretty maid left them.

Valerest said: “Any man who does not like dogs is no fit mate for a woman.”

Valentine thought as above.

“I really don’t see,” said Valerest bitterly, “why you are so sulky this evening.”

Sulky! Ye gods and little fishes, to be moved by a profound and sorrowful anger--and to be called ‘sulky’! O God of words and phrases, O Arbiter of tempers and distempers, to sit in silent dignity and resignation--and to be called ‘sulky’! Verily, what a petty thing one word can make of martyrdom! Wherefore Valentine raised his voice and said: “I am not sulky.”

“Well,” said Valerest, “you needn’t shout.”

Valentine said: “I never shout.”

A situation was thus created. The pretty maid came in with the sweet in the middle of it. Valentine and Valerest were silent. Mr. Tuppy was not. Mr. Tuppy said “Yap!” Mr. Tuppy lay on a mouldy old cushion, and the mouldy old cushion lay on a chair, and the chair was beside Valerest. Dear Mr. Tuppy, sweet Mr. Tuppy! Tuppy was a Chinaman, Tuppy was a dog.

“The pretty darling, the mother’s tiny tot!” sighed Valerest. “And does he want his dinner then, the mother’s rabbit?”

“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.

“Isn’t he a darling!” cried Valerest.

“Charming,” said Valentine.

“Well,” said Valerest, “you aren’t very gay to-night, I do think!”

It could be asked, need Valerest have said that? Again, it could be asked, need Valerest have said that brightly? Valentine, at that moment, appeared to be engaged in spearing a boiled cherry, which formed part of a fruit-salad. It would not appear, therefore, that Valentine was engaged on anything very important. Indeed, there will not be wanting those to say that Valentine’s attention might well have been diverted to something more “worth while” (an American phrase meaning money) than even the most notable fruit-salad. They will be wrong. For there is a time in everyone’s life when even the most homely fruit-salad, even one unspiced with Kirsch or liqueur, can be of such moment that everything else must, for that time, go by the board. Therefore it must at once be apparent to even the most impatient reader that _The Romance in Old Brandy_ must be delayed for at least another paragraph while impartial enquiry is made into the fruit-salad of Valentine Vernon Chambers.

Ever since he was so high Valentine would always eat a fruit-salad according to certain laws of precedence. Not for worlds would he have admitted it, but that is how it was. He liked the chunks of pineapple best, so he kept the chunks of pineapple to the last. Strawberries he liked next best, if they weren’t too sloppy, so they came one but last. As for grapes in a fruit salad, they are slippery and sour, and Valentine thought it was no fit place for them. After strawberries, he was partial to cherries. While first of all he would demolish the inevitable bits of banana. Cream he never took with a fruit-salad.

It will therefore be seen that, as he was then only at the beginning of the cherry stratum, the fruit-salad future of Valentine Vernon Chambers was one of exceptional promise. But it was not to be. Even as Valerest spoke, brightly, he couldn’t help but cast one furtive look at the chunks of pineapple. Nor were the strawberries sloppy. But queer depths were moving in him that evening. From the chunks of pineapple he looked across the table at his wife, and Valerest saw that his blue eyes were dark, and she was afraid, but did she look afraid? Valerest, Oh, Valerest!

“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.

“There, there!” said Valerest, and she kissed Mr. Tuppy, and Mr. Tuppy loved it.

“By Heaven, that dog!” snapped Valentine.

Valerest said: “That’s it! Vent your bad-temper on poor little Mr. Tuppy!”

Valentine looked at Valerest.

“I see,” said Valentine quietly. Very quietly. “Oh, I see!”

And worse. Much worse. Very quietly.

“I suppose you think,” said Valerest, “that because I’m your wife you can say anything you like to me. You’re wrong.”

“I think,” said Valentine, “that because you’re my wife you ought to behave like my wife. And I’m right.”

And then he left the room. And then he left the house. And then the house was very still.

Valerest, sitting very straight in her chair, heard the front-door slam. She listened. Through the open window behind her came the sound of manly footsteps marching away down South Street. She listened. Away the footsteps marched, away. Then a taxi screamed, and the incident of the manly footsteps was closed forever.

“Well, that’s that!” said Valerest.

“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.

“Mother’s rabbit!” said Valerest absently.

“Mr. Tuppy,” said Valerest suddenly, “this can’t go on. You know, this can’t go on.”

“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.

“I’m not a chattel,” said Valerest. “To be used just as a man likes. I will not be a chattel.”

The pretty maid came in.

Valerest said: “Come along, Mr. Tuppy. I’ve got a headache. Bed.”

II

Valentine walked. When he had been walking for some time he realised that he was achieving the impossible in combining an excess of motive power with a minimum of progress, for he found himself walking in a direction exactly opposed to that in which his destination lay. He corrected this, and presently stood before a house in Cadogan Gardens. The houses in Cadogan Gardens wear a gentle and sorrowful air, and Valentine grew more depressed than ever.

Now, years before, his guardian had said: “There may come a time, Valentine, when something happens to you about which you will think it impossible that anyone can advise you. But you may be wrong in thinking that. Try me then, if you care to.”

Valentine’s parents had died when he was very young, in one of those marvellously complete accidents arranged by any competent story-teller when he simply must deprive a child at one blow of a mother’s love and a father’s care. Valentine’s parents, however, had in some measure protested against their simultaneous fate, and Valentine’s mother had lived long enough after the accident to appoint Mr. Lapwing her boy’s sole guardian. Mr. Lapwing was the senior partner of the city firm of Lapwing & Lancelot, merchants. And as, quite apart from his regard for Valentine’s parents, he was wealthy, a widower, and childless, it can readily be understood that he eagerly accepted the trust. Although when it is said that he accepted the trust it is not to be implied that Mr. Lapwing tried to take a “father’s place” with the boy. Mr. Lapwing, like so many childless men, knew all about his place with any boy. He was without one theory as to education, but acted merely on a vague idea that the relations between parents and children, whether it was the Victorian one of shaming the joy out of children or the Georgian one of encouraging the joy into vulgarity, had gotten the world into more trouble than anything in history since the fall of Lucifer from Paradise.

On this evening, twenty-four years after he had first entered the house in Cadogan Gardens, Valentine stood quite a while before the door and wondered how he was to put It. It, you understand, was very difficult to put. A disagreement between a man and his wife remains indissolubly a disagreement between a man and his wife, and only a man or his wife may solve It. Indeed, Valentine had already solved It. He detested compromise. A divorce was, undoubtedly, indicated. Undoubtedly. So undoubtedly, indeed, that Valentine would not have dreamed of putting It to Mr. Lapwing at all had he not thought himself bound in honour to ask his guardian’s advice “when something happens to you about which you will think it impossible that anyone can advise you.”

III

Mr. Lapwing was cracking a nut. He said gloomily:

“Hullo, Valentine! Did you ring up to say you were coming round? I didn’t get the message.”

“I came,” said Valentine, “on an impulse.”

Mr. Lapwing said: “I see. Well, sit down, sit down! I don’t want you towering over me while I am trying to digest my food. Or is it one of those impulses you have to stand up to?”

Valentine said: “If you really want to know, I don’t care if I never sit down again. But I will, if only to show how well you’ve brought me up.”

“Now I don’t want any cheek,” said Mr. Lapwing.

“Cheek!” said Valentine, and he laughed, and the way he laughed caused Mr. Lapwing to look sharply up at him.

“Cheek!” said Valentine. “If you knew as much about cheek as I do, sir, you would think I was talking like a courtier.”

“Oh, sit down, sit down!” said Mr. Lapwing.

Now a gentleman called Mr. Lapwing can neither need nor merit any further description. Mr. Lapwing looked in no way different from the way that a Mr. Lapwing should look. Thin, tiresome, bald, boring, gouty, gloomy. We see him for the first time at that end of his dinner when he would sit a while at the table and stare with conscious absent-mindedness into space, after the manner of any English gentleman who is not averse from a drop of old brandy after his meals. Mr. Lapwing’s was an old-world palate, and he enjoyed above all things a drop of old brandy.

The dining-room of the house in Cadogan Gardens was large, austere, dim. From where Valentine sat at the oval polished table, in the light of the four candles which played in shadows about his guardian’s thin lined face, the severe appointments of the room were as though seen through a dark mist. Mr. Lapwing was not only a connoisseur of polite stimulants but was known to many dealers as a formidable collector of Meryon’s etchings; and the sombre fancies of the young Frenchman’s genius peered at Valentine from the dim walls, as they might be old mocking friends uncertain of recognition.

Mr. Lapwing said gloomily: “Port, Valentine? Or Sherry?”

“Brandy,” said Valentine.

“Drat the boy!” said Mr. Lapwing. “Fountain! Where are you, man? Oh, there you are! Give the boy some brandy.”

Mr. Lapwing was old enough, but Fountain was older. From the dimness he emerged, to the dimness returned. Fountain was very old. Mr. Lapwing said: “Go away, Fountain. We don’t want you. The brandy, Valentine, is at your elbow.”

“Thank you,” said Valentine.

“The difference between beer and brandy,” said Mr. Lapwing gloomily, “is that it is not unusual to pour out a full glass of beer, but it is damned unusual to take more than a drop of brandy at one time.”

“Depends,” said Valentine, “on the brandy.”

Mr. Lapwing said sharply: “That is very fine brandy.”

“Good!” said Valentine.

IV

Valentine at last made an end to the muttering noises with which he had tried to put before his guardian the state of acute disagreement that existed between himself and Valerest. Mr. Lapwing finished his brandy, rose from the table, and thoughtfully took a turn or two about the room.

“Well?” said Valentine.

“I,” said Mr. Lapwing absently, “can tell you a much better story than that. Any day.”

Valentine flushed. “I didn’t tell you about this, sir, so that you should make a guy of me.”

Mr. Lapwing said gloomily: “Keep your hair on. When I said that I could tell you a much better story than yours, I meant, naturally, that my story is complete, whereas yours, you will agree, is as yet far from complete.”

Valentine muttered something about his being quite complete enough for him, but all Mr. Lapwing said sharply was: “Here, no more of that brandy! That brandy is too good to swim in. But if you want to get drunk, I will ring for some whisky.”

“I don’t want to get drunk,” snapped Valentine.

“Good boy!” said Mr. Lapwing vaguely, and continued pacing up and down the dim, long room, while Valentine sat still and thought of his past life and found it rotten.

Suddenly Mr. Lapwing said, in that irritatingly exact way of his which was never quite exact: “You, Valentine, are twenty-nine years old. Valerest is twenty-two----”

“Four,” said Valentine.

“Very well. And you have been married just over three years----”

“Nearly five,” sighed Valentine.

“Very well. You, Valentine, want a child. Valerest, however, does not want a child just yet. Your argument is a sound one: that if parents wait too long before their children are born, by the time the children grow up the parents will be too old to share any of their interests and pleasures----”

“That’s right,” said Valentine sourly. “Valerest and I will be a pair of old dodderers by the time they’re of age.”

“Exactly. A very sound argument. Whereas Valerest----”

Valentine snapped: “She doesn’t even trouble to argue. She just sits and grins!”

“Exactly. She is much too deeply in the wrong to argue. When nations are too deeply in the wrong to argue they call on God and go to war. When women are too deeply in the wrong to argue they sit and grin. And I daresay that the way you put your arguments gives Valerest plenty to sit and grin about.”

“My God,” said Valentine, “don’t I try to be reasonable!”

“Listen,” said Mr. Lapwing, and then he told Valentine that he had been married twice. Valentine was amazed. He had not known that.

Mr. Lapwing said: “I was very young when I married my first wife. Even younger than you, although even then I knew a good brandy from a poor one. And I was very much in love. As, if you will not think an old man too ridiculous, I am still. Of course, she is dead now.”

Valentine was listening with only half a mind. He had still to get over his surprise that his guardian had been married twice. There are some men who look as though they simply could not have been married twice. They look as though one marriage would be, or had been, a very considerable feat for them. Mr. Lapwing looked decidedly like that: he looked, if you like, a widower: but decidedly not like a widower multiplied by two----

Mr. Lapwing was saying, from a dim, distant corner of the room: “In those days I was a very serious young man. I took love and marriage very seriously. And when we had been married a couple of years I discovered in myself a vehement desire to be a father: a natural enough desire in a very serious young man. My wife, however, was younger than I: she loved life, the life of the country and the town, of the day and of the night, of games and dances. You see what I mean?”

Valentine snapped: “Don’t I! Just like Valerest.”

“Exactly. At first,” said Mr. Lapwing, and his face as he slowly paced up and down the dim room would every now and then be quite lost in the shadows. “At first, I indulged her. To tell you the truth, I was very proud of her service at tennis, her handicap at golf. But there are limits.”

“There are,” said Valentine. “Valerest is already in training for Wimbledon next year, and I hope a tennis-ball gets up and shingles her eyelashes. And she’s got to 6 at golf. Pretty good for a kid who looks as though she hadn’t enough muscle to play a fast game of ludo. But that’s right about there being limits. There _are_ limits! And I’ve reached them.”

“Exactly,” agreed Mr. Lapwing’s dim voice from the distance of the room. “I had reached them too, Valentine. And, I am afraid, I grew to be rather unpleasant in the home--as you, no doubt, are with Valerest. One’s manner, you know, isn’t sometimes the less unpleasant for being in the right.”

Valentine said: “I don’t know about pleasant or unpleasant. But a fellow must stick to his guns.”

“Guns?” said Mr. Lapwing vaguely. “Were we talking of guns?”

“I merely said, sir, that one must stick to one’s guns.”

“Of course, yes! Decidedly one must stick to one’s guns. Very proper. Well, Valentine, I too stuck to my guns. Like you, I thought they were good guns. My young wife and I grew to disagree quite violently about her preference for being out-and-about to rearing my children: until one day, after a more than usually fierce and childish argument, she left my house--this house, Valentine--and never came back.”

From the shadowy distance Mr. Lapwing was looking thoughtfully at Valentine. But Valentine’s eyes were engaged elsewhere: he was seeing a picture of Valerest stamping out of his house, never to come back. It was, Valentine saw, quite conceivable. He could see it happening. It was just the sort of thing Valerest might do, stamp out of the house and never come back. And the picture grew clearer before Valentine’s eyes, and he stared the picture out.

“Well,” he said at last, “that’s the sort of thing that happens. It’s got to happen.”

Mr. Lapwing said: “Exactly.” His face was in the shadow. Valentine, fiddling with a cigarette, still staring at the picture in his mind, went on:

“I mean, it’s inevitable, isn’t it? A man can’t go on forever living in the same house with a woman who laughs at the--the--well, you know what I mean--at the most sacred things in him. And she’s got a dog.”

“I know,” said Mr. Lapwing. “Mr. Tuppy. Nice little dog.”

“Bloody little dog!” snapped Valentine. “Look here, sir, when things have got to the state they have with Valerest and me the crash has got to come. Just got to, that’s all.”

Mr. Lapwing said gloomily: “Of course, there’s love.”

Valentine thought profoundly about that.

“No!” snapped Valentine. “That’s just where you are wrong, sir. There _was_ love. Certainly. But they kill it. They just kill love. I mean, I know what I’m talking about. Some of these young women treat love as though it was a naughty little boy who should be made to stand in a corner except as a great treat once in six weeks. I’ve thought about this a lot lately. Valerest has just gone out of her way to kill my love.”

“Sex,” said Mr. Lapwing thoughtfully.

“Sex?” said Valentine.

“Sex,” said Mr. Lapwing dimly. “Sex becomes very important when a man is--er--deprived of it. When he is--er--not deprived of it he becomes used to it, and it ceases to have any--er--importance at all. Women don’t like that. Women----”

“Damn women!” snapped Valentine.

“Women,” said Mr. Lapwing, “can be very tiresome. Wives can be intolerable. I have been married twice. England and America are strewn with good men suffering from their wives’ virtues. It is damnable. When a woman is faithful to her husband she generally manages to take it out of him in some other way. The mere fact that she is faithful makes her think that she has a right to be, well, disagreeable. The faithful wife also considers that she has a right to indulge in disloyal moods----”

“Disloyal moods!” said Valentine thoughtfully. “That’s good.”

“Fidelity,” said Mr. Lapwing, “can cause the devil of a lot of trouble in the home, unless it is well managed. Fidelity needs just as much good management as infidelity. I am telling you this,” said Mr. Lapwing, “because I think fidelity is beautiful and I hate to see it made a mess of. I draw from my own life, from my first marriage. I stuck firmly to those guns which you so aggressively brought into the conversation. A year or so went by. Then her parents approached me and suggested that we should come to some agreement, either to live together again or to arrange a divorce on the usual lines. They were good people. Their argument was that we were both too young to go on wasting our lives in this shilly-shally way.

“By this time, of course, the matter of my quarrel with my wife had faded into nothing. There remained only the enormous fact that we _had_ quarrelled and that, since neither of us had tried to make the quarrel up, our love must obviously be dead.

“I referred her parents to her, saying I would do as she wished. She sent them back to me, saying she was quite indifferent. A divorce was then arranged by our lawyers; and I was divorced for failing to return to my wife on her petition for restitution of conjugal rights. The usual rubbish.

“To be brief, it was not long before I married again. But now I was older, wiser. I had tasted passion, I had loved: to find that passion was yet another among the confounded vanities that are perishable.

“Valentine, I married my second wife with an eye to the mother of my children. I married sensibly. I have, as you know, a considerable property; and I continued to desire, above all things, an heir to my name and a companion for my middle years. That I have a companion now in you--and in Valerest--is due to the infinite grace of God: that I have not an heir to carry on my name is due to my own folly.

“My second wife was of that type of woman whom it is the fashion of our day to belittle as ‘matronly,’ but from whose good blood and fine quality is forged all that is best in great peoples. The difference between my affection for her and my passion for my first wife is not to be described in words: yet when she died in giving birth to a dead child you will easily understand how I was grieved almost beyond endurance--not only at the shattering of my hopes, but at the loss of a gracious lady and a dear companion.

“I was at a South Coast resort the summer after my second wife’s death. One morning on the sands I struck up a great friendship with a jolly little boy of three, while his nurse was gossiping with some of her friends. Our friendship grew with each fine morning; and the nurse learnt to appreciate my approach as a relief for a time from her duties.

“You will already have seen, Valentine, the direction of my tale: the irony of my life must already be clear to you: nor can you have failed to see the pit of vain hopes that sometimes awaits those who stick to their guns. As my young friend and I sat talking one morning, or rather as he talked and I played with handfuls of sand thinking how gladly I had called him my son, he leapt up with a cry of joy; and presented me to his father and mother.

“My first wife had grown into a calm, beautiful woman. Yet even her poise could not quite withstand the surprise of our sudden meeting after so many years; and it was her husband who broke the tension, and won my deepest regard forever, by taking my hand. From that moment, Valentine, began for me, and I think for them both, and certainly for the boy, as rare and sweet a friendship as, I dare to say, is possible in this world.

“People like ourselves, Valentine, must, for decency, conform to certain laws of conduct. The love that my first wife and I rediscovered for each other was not, within our secret hearts, in our power to control: yet it did not need even a word or a sign from either of us to tell the other that our love must never, no matter in what solitudes we might meet, be expressed. Her husband was a good man, and had always understood that our divorce had not been due to any uncleanliness or cruelty but to what is called, I think, incompatibility of temperament. So that until she died soon after, the three of us were devoted friends and constant companions.

“And that,” said Mr. Lapwing from the shadows, “is all my story. More or less.”

Valentine sat very still. Mr. Lapwing paced up and down. Silence walked with him.

Valentine muttered. “I’m sorry. It’s a dreadful story. Good Lord, yes! May I have some more brandy, please?”

“It’s not,” snapped Mr. Lapwing, “a dreadful story. It is a beautiful story. Help yourself.”

“Well,” said Valentine, “call it beautiful if you like. It’s your story. But I should hate it to happen to me.”

“There are,” said Mr. Lapwing, “consolations.”

Mr. Lapwing paced up and down.

“Consolations,” said Mr. Lapwing.

Valentine said: “Oh, certainly. I suppose there always are consolations. All the same, I should hate to be done out of my son like that. For that’s what it comes to.”

Mr. Lapwing was in a distant corner of the room, his face a shadow among shadows. He said: “Exactly. That is why, Valentine Chambers, I said there are consolations. My wife’s second husband was Lawrence Chambers.”

Valentine said: “Oh!”

Mr. Lapwing touched him on the shoulder.

Valentine said: “Good Lord, I might have been your son!”

“You might,” said Mr. Lapwing. “Easily. But it has come to almost the same thing in the end, hasn’t it? Except, perhaps, that I have not a father’s right to advise you.”

Valentine said violently: “You’ve got every right in the world to advise me! Considering what you’ve done for me all my life!”

“Then,” said Mr. Lapwing, “don’t be an ass.”

Valentine saw Valerest’s mocking eyes, heard Valerest’s mocking laugh, and about his mind walked Mr. Tuppy with his old, unsmiling eyes. He muttered: “But, look here, Valerest will just think I’ve given in!”

“So you have,” said Mr. Lapwing.

“Well, then,” said Valentine bitterly, “it will all----”

“She’ll grow,” said Mr. Lapwing. He was tired. “And, Valentine, she has got more right to be an ass than you have. Remember that. There’s no use being sentimental about it, but they put up with a lot of pain, women. Remember that. And----”

“But look here,” said Valentine, “if I----”

“Oh, go and make love to the girl!” snapped Mr. Lapwing. “And forget that a clergyman ever told you that she must obey you.”

V

The state of Valentine’s mind as he ascended the stairway of his house is best described by the word “pale.” He felt pale. What made him feel pale was terror. It was past one o’clock in the morning. He had thundered out of the house at about half-past-eight. And the house was now as still as a cemetery. The conclusion, to Valentine, was obvious: the house was as still as a cemetery of love. He saw Valerest waiting, waiting, waiting for him to return: he heard the clock striking ten, eleven, midnight: he saw Valerest flush with a profound temper, hastily pack a few things and--stamp out of the house, never to come back!

Within the bedroom all was dark, silent. Very dark it was, very silent. Valentine stood just within the doorway, listening very intently. He could not hear Valerest breathing. There was no Valerest to hear.

“Oh, God!” cried Valentine.

“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.

“Oh, dear!” sighed Valerest from the darkness. “What do you want to go and wake me for when I have to be out riding at eight o’clock!”

Valentine said: “Valerest, thank Heaven you are here! I got such a shock.”

“Here?” said Valerest. “Shock?”

Valentine switched on the lamp by the bed. It was Valerest’s bed. Valentine’s bed was in the dressing-room. That is called hygiene. Our grandfathers never knew about that.

Valerest stared up at him with sleepy bewilderment. Her curly hair was all over the place. Valentine made it worse by running his hands through it. Valerest said severely:

“Valentine, what are you talking about? Why shouldn’t I be here? And where have you been all this time? Why do you look so pale? Have you been drinking? Why did you get a shock?”

Valentine said violently: “I love you, Valerest.”

“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.

Valerest laid the tips of her fingers on his eyes, and she passed the tips of her fingers over his lips, and she said: “But I _hate_ you!”

“You just wait!” said Valentine.

Valerest pulled at his ears with her fingers and defended her attitude with irresistible logic. She cried: “I don’t want to love anyone! I don’t want to love anyone! I don’t want to love anyone! I want to be free!” And she bit his ear.

Now there are writers who would think nothing of ending this chapter with a row of dots, _viz_: ... The author of this work, however, while yielding to no one in his admiration of a dexterous use of dots, cannot but think that the increasing use of dots to express the possibilities of love has become a public nuisance, and that the practice should be discouraged by literary-subscribers as dishonest, since what it really comes to is selling a dud to readers just when they are expecting something to happen. There are undoubtedly occasions, as when a writer is plumbing the bestial abysses of illicit love, when a judicious sprinkling of dots must be held to be proper, in the interests of decency and restraint. Yet even then it is to be deplored that the exploitation of dots so readily lends itself to the artfulness of suggestion. And the author of this work, which is written throughout under the government of marital virtue, cannot think that it is his part to hold his pen while he asks himself whether he shall dot or not dot. Has mankind, he asks himself, lived through all these æons of time only to find now that it cannot serve the decencies without the artificial aid of dots? Must, then, our dumb friends be neglected, while we needs must resort to these bloodless dots? For dogs are infinitely superior to dots as a means of describing the indescribable. The writer is, of course, referring particularly to Mr. Tuppy. Poor Mr. Tuppy.

“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy. “Yap, yap, yap, yap!”

“What are you doing to Mr. Tuppy?” cried Valerest.

“Nothing,” said Valentine. “Only putting him out of the room.”

“You’ve kicked him, you beast!” wailed Valerest.

“Only once, sweet,” said Valentine; “for luck.”

“I hate you!” she cried.

“I love you!” he whispered.

“Darling!” she sighed. “But remember I have to be out and riding at eight.”

“This is no time to talk of dogs and horses!” cried Valentine, and Valerest was so surprised at such blasphemy that--Oh, well, dots.

VI

As Valentine left the house in Cadogan Gardens Fountain entered the dining-room. Fountain was very old. He had been kept up very late. He was tired. He drooped across the room.

“Shall I shut up now, sir?”

Mr. Lapwing said: “Yes, do. But just give me a drop of that brandy first, will you?”

“Yes, sir. The candles are burning low, sir. Shall I remove the shades?”

“Fountain!”

“Sir?”

“How long have you been with me?”

Fountain stared at his master. Very old, Fountain was. “Why, sir, I was with your father! I’ve known you ever since you was born--as you know as well as I do, sir, if I may say so.”

“Ah! But did you ever know, Fountain, that I had been married twice? And that my first wife had divorced me?”

Fountain lost patience. He said severely: “I never seen you like this before, sir. Not all these years. I don’t know what you are talking about, that I don’t. You married twice! Once was enough for you, sir, if you will permit an old man the liberty. And you divorced! I never heard of such a thing! I’d like to see the woman fit to divorce a Lapwing, that I would! I never heard of such a thing.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Lapwing. “Well, have it your own way, Fountain. But it made such a thundering good story that I was near believing it myself. All in a good cause, Fountain: to teach that boy a thing or two. One likes to see children happy, Fountain. And his mother won’t mind, not she. A good sensible woman she was, if on the plain side. And, d’you remember, Fountain, she always wanted a drop of romance in her life? Well, she’s got it now, poor dear. But her son will appreciate it for her, won’t he? And just give me another drop of that brandy, will you? That’s very fine brandy, that is.”

“The bottle,” said Fountain bitterly, “is empty, sir.”

“Drat that boy!” said Mr. Lapwing. “Comes here looking for romance and laps up all my brandy!”