Chapter VIII (4)

In a few minutes he was lost in a labyrinth of back streets and laughing hysterically to himself. He had two shillings and eightpence on him. He spent fourpence of this on whisky, and then another fourpence just before the pubs. closed. He struggled vainly to formulate some definite plan of campaign. The only point that seemed terribly clear to him was that he must get away. He knew Mrs. Melland only too well. She would spare no trouble in hunting him down. She would exact the uttermost farthing. It meant gaol and ruin. The obvious impediment to getting away was that he had no money and no friends. He had not sufficient strength of character to face a tramp life. He had lived too long in the society of the pampered Pekinese. He loved comfort.

Out of the simmering tumult of his soul grew a very definite passion--the passion of hate. He developed a vast, bitter, scorching hatred for the person who had caused this ghastly climax to his unfortunate career--Old Fags. He went over the whole incidents of the day again, rapidly recalling every phase of Old Fags’s conversation and manner. What a blind fool he was not to have seen through the filthy old swine’s game! But what had he done with the dogs? Sold the lot for a pound, perhaps! The idea made Meads shiver. He slouched through the streets harbouring his pariah-like lust.

* * * * *

We will not attempt to record the psychologic changes that harassed the soul of Mr. Meads during the next two days and nights, the ugly passions that stirred him and beat their wings against the night, the tentative intuitions urging toward some vague new start, the various compromises he made with himself, his weakness and inconsistency that found him bereft of any quality other than the sombre shadow of some ill-conceived revenge. We will only note that on the evening of the day we mention he turned up at Bolingbroke Buildings. His face was haggard and drawn, his eyes blood-shot and his clothes tattered and muddy. His appearance and demeanour was unfortunately not so alien to the general character of Bolingbroke Buildings as to attract any particular attention, and he slunk like a wolf through the dreary passages and watched the people come and go.

It was at about a quarter to ten when he was going along a passage in Block “F” that he suddenly saw Minnie Birdle come out of one door and go into another. His small eyes glittered and he went on tip-toe. He waited till Minnie was quite silent in her room and then he went stealthily to Room 475. He tried the handle and it gave. He opened the door and peered in. There was a cheap tin lamp guttering on a box that dimly revealed a room of repulsive wretchedness. The furniture seemed mostly to consist of bottles and rags. But in one corner on a mattress he beheld the grinning face of his enemy--Old Fags. Meads shut the door silently and stood with his back to it.

“Oh!” he said. “So here we are at last, old bird, eh!”

This move was apparently a supremely successful dramatic coup, for Old Fags lay still, paralyzed with fear, no doubt.

“So this is our little ’ome, eh?” he continued, “where we bring little dogs and sell ’em. What have you got to say, you old----”

The groom’s face blazed into a sudden accumulated fury. He thrust his chin forward and let forth a volley of frightful and blasting oaths. But Old Fags didn’t answer; his shiny face seemed to be intensely amused with this outburst.

“We got to settle our little account, old bird, see?” and the suppressed fury of his voice denoted some physical climax. “Why the hell don’t you answer?” he suddenly shrieked, and springing forward he lashed Old Fags across the cheek.

And then a terrible horror came over him. The cheek he had struck was as cold as marble and the head fell a little impotently to one side. Trembling, as though struck with an ague, the groom picked up the guttering lamp and held it close to the face of Old Fags. It was set in an impenetrable repose, the significance of which even the groom could not misunderstand. The features were calm and childlike, lit by a half smile of splendid tolerance that seemed to have over-ridden the temporary buffets of a queer world. Meads had no idea how long he stood there gazing horror-struck at the face of his enemy. He only knew that he was presently conscious that Minnie Birdle was standing by his side and as he looked at her, her gaze was fixed on Old Fags and a tear was trickling down either cheek.

“’E’s dead,” she said. “Old Fags is dead. ’E died this morning of noomonyer.”

She said this quite simply as though it was a statement that explained the wonder of her presence. She did not look at Meads or seem aware of him. He watched the flickering light from the lamp illumining the underside of her chin and nostrils and her quivering brows.

“’E’s dead,” she said again, and the statement seemed to come as an edict of dismissal as though love and hatred and revenge had no place in these fundamental things. Meads looked from her to the tousled head leaning slightly to one side of the mattress and he felt himself in the presence of forces he could not comprehend. He put the lamp back quietly on the box and tip-toed from the room.

Out once more in the night, his breath came quickly and a certain buoyancy drove him on. He dared not contemplate the terror of that threshold upon which he had almost trodden. He only knew that out of the surging mælstrom of irresolution some fate had gripped him. He walked with a certain elasticity in the direction of Millwall. There would be doss-houses and docks there and many a good ship that glided forth to strange lands, carrying human freight of whom few questions would be asked, for the ship wanted them to ease her way through the regenerating seas....

And in the cold hours of the early dawn Minnie Birdle lay awake listening to the rhythmic breathing of her child. And she thought of that strange old man less terrible now in his mask of death than when she had first known him. No one to-morrow would follow to his pauper’s grave, and yet at one time--who knows? She dared not speculate upon the tangled skein of this difficult life that had brought him to this. She only knew that somehow from it she had drawn a certain vibrant force that made her build a monster resolution. Her child! She would be strong, she would throw her frail body between it and the shafts of an unthinking world. She leant across it, listening intensely, then kissed the delicate down upon its skull, crooning with animal satisfaction at the smell of its warm soft flesh.

THE ANGEL OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

In reconstructing the sombre story which gathered round the professional association of those two clever men, James Wray and Francis Vallery, it is necessary to know a little of their early life and up-bringing. I am indebted very considerably to my friend, Timothy Rallish, for the light of his somewhat sardonic perceptions upon the character of Wray. They were at Marlborough together, and afterward at Oxford, although at different colleges; Timothy at Oriel, and Wray--as one would naturally expect--at Balliol.

“I used to like him,” said Timothy. “I suppose I was the only chap who did. They hated him at Marlborough; he was so confoundedly pious. Up at Oxford it was not so bad. There are always such a lot of precious people at Balliol; it doesn’t stand out so. He was an idealist, without a conscience, if you know what I mean. He set up impossible standards, never attempted to live up to them, or to observe whether any one else attempted to. His contempt for his fellow-creatures was almost abnormal. I think the whole attitude in some queer way came out of his music-madness. Music was the absorbing passion of his life, and even for the best of that he never appeared to have a very great opinion. I believe he thought that Bach’s compositions were not too bad, and for Beethoven he sometimes indulged in mild patronage. Schumann bored him, so did Wagner, and for Chopin’s ‘sentimental tripe’ he had no use.”

“I am talking now of Wray between the age of seventeen and twenty-three--the age when one’s critical faculties are relentless, when one knows every darned thing, don’t you know. I can’t tell why I liked Wray. He did not--and never has--liked me. Perhaps there was something about the profundity of his discontent which appealed to me--his restlessness and detachment. I like people who are dissatisfied. But there was more than that about him: he was a spiritual wanton. I believe he would have sacrificed a city full of babies to perfect one musical phrase. You see, there was no reason at all why he should have gone up to Oxford. He was only interested in music, which has never been properly taught there. I think he liked to compose tone-poems in the society of rich men’s sons who were only interested in sports and rag-time. The contact satisfied some cynical kink in his own nature. It was certainly nothing to do with the mediævalism of Oxford, which only bored him. O Lord! The things which bored Jimmy Wray when he was twenty-three!”

“At that time,” I asked, “do you know anything of his standard of accomplishments?”

“Very little,” replied Timothy. “Of course I know nothing about music myself, but people who did know something used to differ considerably about Wray. I got the general impression that he was talented in a nebulous kind of way; that he had ideas but that they were too involved; that he could create atmosphere but that he couldn’t construct. He was a very pretty boy at that time, with a thin æsthetic face, dark reflective eyes and two pink spots in the centre of each cheek. He had got out of all sport on the ground that he had a weak heart. It is certainly true that his father--who made a small fortune out of accordion-pleated skirts--died at an early age from heart disease. His mother was a gentle negative kind of woman, who lived at Bournemouth, knitted things for people, and distributed prizes at Girls’ Friendly Societies. He also had two sisters, one, I believe, dabbled in Christian Science, the other married a sanitary inspector. They played no great part in Wray’s life, neither did any of them, or any relative or ancestor, as far as I can find out, supply any note to account for the peculiarly individual precocity of James himself. Afterward, when he became famous, the whole family was almost shocked.”

This conversation with Timothy impressed itself on my memory very vividly, for it occurred just after I had had an interview with Wray’s mother. At that time the study and analysis of suppressions and complexes had not reached the degree of fashionable absurdity which it has at the present day, but neurosis has always been a popular complaint amongst those people unlucky enough to be able to afford to indulge in it. As an ordinary, rather over-worked local practitioner, I can only give my opinion that neurosis only exists amongst that small minority of people who do not have to fight for existence.

It appears to me that this instinct of fighting for existence is born in every man or woman. When circumstances rob them of it they are apt to raise some artificial standard and fight for that, for fight they must. We have not reached the millennium. During my thirty-three years’ experience in the medical profession I have never yet met the case of a man or a woman who worked hard for a living being neurotic, unless his or her constitution was already undermined by neurotic parentage. You may say that an artificial standard is as good a thing to fight for as a real standard, and so it may be. A man who fights for some spiritual cause is certainly as justified as a man who fights to earn bread and wine. It is all a question of equipoise. But a man who in Timothy’s terms would “sacrifice a city full of babies to perfect one musical phrase” is in my opinion a lunatic.

But I am perfectly willing to admit that I may be wrong. For all I know the whole social fabric may be changing its face values. We can only act according to our lights. When Wray’s mother came and spoke to me about him I knew nothing about the man. He was thirty-one then. I can see her now, that gentle old lady, with silver curls and pleading eyes, extremely confiding and rather outraged. Such things didn’t happen at Bournemouth. But, dear her, Jimmy had only been to Bournemouth once, and he refused to go again because--the trams didn’t run on Sundays and it took him two hours to walk out of the town! Was ever such a ridiculous excuse offered! He was a dear boy, a lovable, clever--oh, brilliantly clever!--boy, but quite incomprehensible, and with such awful moods. Then with great solemn shaking curls, bobbing above the stiff corsets, worse than that--a terrible temper ... cruel, vindictive, he might do anything in such moods. She regarded me alertly. I think she thought I might prescribe some pills--they do that in Bournemouth--one to be taken night and morning, will cure asthma, sluggish liver or homicidal mania.

I remarked obligingly that I would see the young man. But how was that to be done? He lived in Chelsea, a terrible, irreligious suburb of London, inhabited by artists and others ... quite irresponsible people. Besides, he was so exclusive, so apt to be rude, even violent and abusive. He detested strangers. He was altogether so unlike his dear papa, who treated everyone even his _work-people_ as though they were equals! And then came the terrible crux of the story. It appeared that on Jimmy Wray’s solitary visit to Bournemouth he had murdered a cat. Not, mark you, an ordinary stray, vagabond cat, but his mother’s cat, his mother’s own darling Pee-Wee. The cat, it appeared, had annoyed him for several nights when he was sitting up late, trying to compose. He had warned his mother that something would have to be done. He had appeared haggard and distraught in the mornings. But Mrs. Wray had not taken the matter very seriously. Such a trivial affair! Dear Pee-Wee! He was often like that. He made funny noises in the night.... There were several cats in the neighbouring houses, doubtless friends of Pee-Wee’s. And then one night the appalling thing happened. Jimmy got up about one o’clock. He went out and picked up a piece of plank. He beat the cat to a pulp! He had never been to Bournemouth since. What can you suggest, Doctor Parsons?

I am quite sure that I should have suggested nothing, done nothing, had I not soon after come in touch with Timothy Rallish, who reported upon Wray in the manner I have stated. I was amused to hear Timothy say that he didn’t know why he liked Wray. I knew the reason. It was because Timothy couldn’t help liking every one. He was that kind of boy--rather short and stocky, with ingenuous blue eyes which sparkled at you through enormous gold-rimmed glasses. He found life absorbing. He had scrambled through Oxford, accomplishing nothing of note beyond making himself popular. His people were poor, and on coming down from Oxford he had plunged into the vagaries of journalism.

He was full of enthusiasms, and was always doing the donkey-work for some quack. He had a genius for compiling and card-indexing. He edited and subedited various treatises and anthologies. I remember that he once wrote a book with the impressive title, “Concentrate,” for a South African pseudo-medical gentleman, who lived in Westminster and charged three guineas a visit for the treatment of concentration. Timothy wrote every word of the book, but when it was published the author was announced as Mr. Hambro MacManus, and this red-haired South African Scot who arranged his rooms in such a theatrical way in Ashley Gardens, and made mysterious passes and grunts over the back of people’s heads, claimed the credit for it, and also the royalties. Timothy thought the whole episode extremely amusing.

“I never mind paying for experience,” he said. “Poor old Mac! He was quite wrong in most of his theories, but somehow I liked him.”

When I told Timothy about my interview with Mrs. Wray he was wildly enthusiastic at the idea of my visiting Jimmy Wray when I next went to London.

“It’s no good going to him as a medical man, or letting him know that his mother sent you. You must just meet him socially. He is just possible on occasions. I could easily work it for you. I could introduce you when you are up in town. You could meet him casually at the Albatross Club or the Café Royale. I should love to know what you think of him.”

The whole matter passed out of my mind till five months later when I had occasion to visit London for a few days in connection with the idea of purchasing a half-practice from an old medical friend of mine in West Kensington.

Timothy immediately looked me up and reminded me about Wray. His method was characteristic. He came into my bedroom at the little hotel at Paddington, and, striking a sentimental attitude, began humming a well-known popular song. When I asked him what his particular ailment was he laughed and said:

“Don’t you know that tune?”

“I’ve heard it, I believe.”

“That’s ‘The Sheen of thy Golden Tresses,’ the most popular song of the day, words by Francis Vallery, music by James Wray. How are the mighty fallen!”

I met Wray that same evening at the Albatross Club. Either Timothy’s estimate of him was distorted, or he had altered considerably, or else we had struck him on a good night. He was quite charming to me. His dress was certainly a little affected, but he was still very good looking, and he had a quiet sense of fun, and was prepared to listen and to be entertained. I observed that he was appreciably more friendly to me than he was to Timothy. He had a curious high, rather squeaky voice as though it had never cracked, and a laugh that corresponded. I could understand that this characteristic of him might easily get on one’s nerves after a time. But on the whole I could find little to criticize about the man or his behaviour. He even invited me to visit him in his rooms at Chelsea. And there two nights later I met the great Francis Vallery.

In looking back after all these years, and trying to analyze the character of James Wray, it is impossible to do so without associating it with that of Francis Vallery. Their lives and characters dove-tailed and reacted upon one another in a bewildering degree. Physically, they were a strange contrast. Vallery was a heavy, masterful-looking man, with a wide loose mouth, sloping forehead, and cynical, watchful eyes. He was normally taciturn, unresponsive, and curiously brusque in his manners. By comparison Wray seemed slim, debonair, almost unsubstantial. I do not think they really liked each other from the first. On that evening when I saw them together in the Chelsea flat, I could tell by the expression of Vallery’s face that Wray’s high reedy voice and laughter irritated him. I also came to the conclusion before the evening was over that Vallery had a beast of a temper.

Once an argumentative young student made a remark contradicting a statement of Vallery’s, and I saw the latter’s eyes blaze with anger and saliva ooze to the corners of his large mouth. He said nothing, however. When we were leaving, the man in the hall handed him his overcoat the wrong way round. Vallery snatched it angrily from his grasp and growled. I knew that Wray was also capable of murdering a cat in a fit of passion, so I said to myself that the happy association which produced “The Sheen of thy Golden Tresses” was not very likely to last.

And then comes the strange aspect of the case. The association between Wray and Vallery lasted for twenty-seven years, and became a by-word amongst English-speaking peoples.

In justice to the memory of them both I would like to hasten to add that they never again did anything quite so bad as “The Sheen of thy Golden Tresses.” This song was a little difficult to account for. It was in a way their meeting ground, the plank from which they sprang. It was quite understandable Vallery writing the words, but quite incomprehensible Wray composing the music. It is not known and never will be known by what method or means Vallery influenced Wray to suddenly forsake his precious muse and write this appalling song. For a man who up to that time had considered Chopin “sentimental tripe” to turn suddenly round and write this ballad, which was devoid of any subtlety or distinction, is one of those things one can only state and leave to the imagination of the reader to account for. Vallery had certainly written a good deal of sentimental prose tripe at that time, but nothing quite so bad as that. I think they were both a little ashamed of the song, and never mentioned it. It was nearly a year before anything else sprang from their united efforts, and then was produced the musical play, “The Oasis.”

“The Oasis” was a great success and ran at the Lyric for over a year. It was an astonishingly clever work, notable for its complete unity. The words appeared to inspire the music; the music was a vivid expression of the words. You could not think of one without the other. If Vallery’s libretto appeared ingenious and suggestive of melody, Wray’s music had a literary and whimsical flavour of its own which helped the context enormously. It appeared as though from two extreme poles both men had gone half way to meet the other. Vallery had had little education. He was the son of an unsuccessful bookmaker from Nottingham.

Up to that time he had been known as a writer of jingles and sporting articles, but in “The Oasis” he displayed a considerable ingenuity of construction and a really mordant sense of fun. Wray came halfway down from his pinnacle of involved and atmospheric experiment to write simple melodic airs. It was rather amusing to observe in this work, and in others that followed, how he cunningly employed some of the lesser known themes of the despised Schumann and Chopin, adapted them, elaborated them and converted them into “songs of the day!”

Timothy and I, and some of the others who knew them both, were naturally intrigued to see how the personal side of the association worked. Timothy offered to bet me five pounds that they would quarrel and separate within six months. It certainly seemed remarkable that they did not. It may have been a fortunate factor that two men working together on these lines do not necessarily work in the same room. Vallery brought Wray the libretto, and probably discussed it a little. He was profoundly ignorant of the technical side of music. Wray wrote the music and the lyrics; his partner was clever enough to see that these were good and there was little for him to criticize. They may have discussed joins, and turns and intervals, but there were no great points of cleavage over which they would be likely to fall foul.

During the succeeding five years, four Wray-Vallery productions were staged in London and New York, and companies went on the road with them. By that time they had established their reputation as a unique combination. They were beginning to make money and to be big people in the theatrical world. And Timothy and I were still awaiting the great quarrel. I had by that time joined my friend Doctor Brill in West Kensington, so that I was able to indulge occasionally in the society of Timothy’s friends and to visit the theatre. The Wray-Vallery plays were a constant delight to me. I really believe that Timothy was more interested in the men than in their plays. But then he was like that. He would come and report to me the latest scandal concerning them, and indeed their behaviour was always open to criticism of some sort.

One evening Vallery was arrested for assaulting the head waiter at the Amalfi restaurant because he moved his walking-stick from the corner of the room to an umbrella-stand. He escaped with a fine and a little gentle bantering from the Press. The more successful he became the more overbearing became his manners. He hardly troubled to speak to anyone, unless it was a pretty woman, or someone to whom it paid him to be polite. Upon Wray the effect was almost as disastrous, although it touched him in a different way. His manners in some ways improved, that is to say, he was more sociable and amenable. On the other hand he became more shallow and insincere, more of a _poseur_.

He adopted the garb of the eccentric genius. He was wildly extravagant, and took parties of girls to the Café Royale, and to an ornate bungalow he had hired at Maidenhead. He became less self-opinionated, but it was done as though opinion--no one’s opinion--was of any consequence. It was as though he had lost something and the knowledge of it made him desperate. It was a known fact that during those early years of their association Wray and Vallery sometimes quarrelled, but the quarrel never reached an open rupture. Once Wray appeared in my consulting-room. He was looking haggard and ill. When I asked him the trouble he said:

“I’m not sleeping, Parsons.”

I advised the usual remedies, recommended a complete rest and change, but as I watched the restless movements of his features I realized how inadequate is the authority of a medical man. We may sometimes make a shrewd guess at the basic cause of a disaster, but no medicine or advice will cure a megalomaniac. Just as he was about to go he turned to me and with one of his quick appealing looks he gasped:

“I hate that man, Vallery!”

So you see the old faith in the fetish does not die. What did Wray expect me to do? Possibly he would have been better advised to have gone to a priest. That is, if he could have found a really nice impressive priest, any one would have done, if they had only had sufficient strength of character to change Wray. I thought of his rather futile old mother and I felt sorry for him. I said what I could. I tried to persuade him to give up his association with Vallery. I pointed out that his health was more important than his material success. It wasn’t that, he tried to explain, not just the material success. He had quite a decent private income (inherited from his father in the accordion-pleated line). Then what was it? Wray was quite incoherent. He went off late in the evening, and I noticed after he had gone that he had left the prescription I had given him on the table in the hall!

On discussing the matter afterward with Timothy I said:

“What is it that keeps these men together?”

And for all it may be worth I will quote just what Timothy replied. For Timothy at that time had just married a charming girl, a former typist to a dental surgeon in Kilburn, and he was becoming something of a philosopher. This is what Timothy said:

“It is the angel of accomplishment, old man. When people are working, doing things together, especially if they are doing them in the face of difficulties, there is always some queer genie which presides over their affections. Comrades in battle, however opposed they may be temperamentally.... Chaps who row in the same boat, play in the same team at cricket or football, or are up against things together. The angel of accomplishment presides over their fate. It’s afterward, or when they lose that united sense of conflict, that the trouble sometimes comes.”

In the light of what followed I found Timothy’s remarks interesting. It was during the production of their sixth success, “The Apple-pie Bed,” that the biggest cloud that had so far gathered over the Wray-Vallery combination made its appearance. And, as one might expect, it came in the form of a woman. Lydia Looe played the part of the _ingènue_, Myra, in “The Apple-pie Bed.” She was a pretty girl, not quite so ingenuous as she appeared on the stage, but in any case too good for either James Wray or Francis Vallery, who were both approaching a rather dilapidated middle-age. How their rivalry over the charms of this new discovery never reached a crisis is a mystery to me. I spent a Sunday evening at Wray’s flat when all concerned were present, and the look of venom that passed between the two men at the slightest success of either upon the lady’s favour was positively frightening. The competition lasted eight months and Vallery appeared to be winning.

“If the matter is really settled,” I thought, “I shall dread to pick up my newspaper.”

Let me add that all this time the two men were working on a new play, “The Island in Arabia.” Timothy said he had seen the figure of Wray all muffled up, hanging about outside Vallery’s house in Knightsbridge late at night “looking like an apache.” The crash was surely about to come, but in July the Gordian knot was severed by Lydia Looe running away with the business manager of a jam and pickle factory. “The Island in Arabia” was produced the following month and became one of the biggest successes of the series. We all hoped that the episode of Lydia Looe would tend to reconcile the two men, and so apparently it did. But the following year Vallery publicly accused Wray of swindling him. There was a fearful dispute between principals and their lawyers and the matter came into court. I forget the details of the case but it principally concerned the royalties on the songs published separately from the score. I know that Wray lost the case and that it cost him thousands of pounds.

He went on the continent and married a wealthy Hungarian widow, and we all believed that England had seen the last of him. But as though not to be outdone in this, Vallery also married. His marriage was about as disastrous an affair as ever disgraced the records of a divorce court. It lasted eighteen months, and when Mrs. Vallery was eventually persuaded to appeal to the courts she had a most pitiable story to disclose. Not only had she no difficulty in proving Vallery’s guilt of faithlessness, but she recorded a distressing series of cruelties. He had struck her on innumerable occasions. He had thrashed her with a belt, locked her in a cupboard, thrown her out into the garden on a wet night, and many times threatened her with a revolver.

A few months after the divorce, news came that Wray’s wife had died suddenly under rather mysterious circumstances, in Buda-Pesth. He returned to London, and three years after this law case Wray and Vallery were again at work together on a play which was called, “Wine, Woman, and Mr. Binns.” It was one of the most amusing, most lyrical plays seen in London for a decade, and ran for four hundred and fifty odd nights. The Wray-Vallery combination then seemed to make a most surprising spurt. They both settled down and worked hard. Wray’s experience in Hungary, whatever it had been, quieted him. He became less eccentric, less depraved, in his appetites. On the other hand, he was rapidly becoming more self-centred, shrewd, and commercial. He appeared to be obsessed with the idea of making a huge fortune. Vallery was also not without ambitions in this direction. And between them they undoubtedly succeeded in grinding the commercial axe to good purpose.

There is no question but that the series of plays that they composed during this latter phase were artistically inferior to the earlier ones, but on the other hand their sureness of touch was more apparent. To use a hackneyed phrase they knew just what the public wanted and how to give it to them.

At that time Timothy and I had quite lost touch with them. Timothy was the proud father of three girls. He had written several successful novels and stories, and was a reader to an eminent firm of publishers. I myself had a son and daughter and an increasing practice. We met frequently and indulged in little social distractions, but we felt no great desire to seek further the companionship of these two notorieties.

“They’re getting a bit too thick,” was Timothy’s comment after reading the details of Vallery’s divorce. Nevertheless we still followed their careers with considerable interest, and there often came to us stories of their violent differences, of scenes at rehearsals, ugly threats, and recriminations. On one occasion Wray wanted to have the whole of their interests put in the hands of a well-known agent, but Vallery objected. The dispute went on for months and as usual Vallery had his way. It is said that they wrote “The Girl at Sea” when they were not on speaking terms, and all the score and libretto were passed backward and forward through a lawyer. Still they went on from success to success. Together they wrote some twenty odd variably successful plays. In one new year’s honour list we found the name of James Wray, the eminent composer, under the knighthoods. The forces which control the distribution of honours are as mysterious as the forces which control the stars, and rather more inexplicable. How Sir James Wray managed to obtain his title over the heads of many distinguished artists it is impossible to say. These things are usually accepted with a smile and a shrug, and a man’s rivals are not often perturbed by them.

But in the case of Vallery the affair reacted disastrously. He was furious. He took the whole thing as a royal affront to himself. If Sir James Wray why not Sir Francis Vallery? It is said that the powers that be have a prejudice against people who have shown up badly in the divorce court. This was true, but on the other hand was Wray’s private life above reproach?

His colleague’s title broke Vallery up, and it certainly did no good to Wray. They were both now prematurely old men, worn out, and embittered. They never wrote another play together.

* * * * *

Nestling in a hollow among the gentler slopes of the Pyrenees is a little village called Cambo-les-Bains. No harsh winds ever come to Cambo. Even in the few months of winter the air is soft and tender. In February the hedges are aglow with primroses and violets. In March rhododendrons and magnolias raise their insolent heads. Thither Rostand, the famous French poet, laid out a dreamy garden on the proceeds of the success which was to come to “Chanticler.” Alas, poor Chanticler! Some things survive more readily in a sturdier clime. Thither come people whose lungs are not quite the thing--“just for a month or two, old boy.” And they lie there in camp beds out in the open under the trees ... waiting. It is a good place to die.

Thither one day came Francis Vallery, old and broken in health. He took the ground floor of the Miramar Hotel, with his own valet, and cook and secretary. And thither one day--strangely enough--came Sir James Wray. It seems curious that after a life’s enmity they should have been drawn together in the end. It was Vallery who invited Wray. It appears to me less remarkable that Vallery should have invited Wray, than that Wray should have accepted. Vallery was completely friendless. The vicious associations of his youth were snapped. People of interest had deserted him. Friends had betrayed him. Wray--no, Wray was not his friend, but in any case they had worked together. They knew each other’s frailties. There were a thousand things they could talk about, discuss ... memories. Ah! perhaps the old inspiration might once more spring forth--just one more play. It was seven years now since the curtain had rung down on “The Picador.”

But why did Wray go to Cambo? He had friends of a sort, society people, artists. He was still a figure at dinner parties, first nights. _His_ lungs were still all right. His hatred of Vallery was not assuaged. Perhaps he went because he feared him. All through their association he had been under the spell of the stronger party. At every great crisis he knew he had given way. Vallery had him under his thumb from the first. Wray had sworn never to write again, “not a phrase, not a bar.” And yet one day he took the train from Biarritz and drove up to the little village in the hills, and there he stayed for seven months.

For the account of the tragic _dénouement_ of this visit Timothy and I are indebted to an American gentleman named Scobie. Scobie had been to Cambo to visit his sister, who was herself suffering from pulmonary trouble.

On his way back through London he had dined at Timothy’s one evening at Chelsea, and I was the only other guest. Mr. Scobie was a lean-faced New Englander, with small keen gray eyes beneath shaggy brows. He had long thin hands, the first fingers of which he had the habit of shaking at us alternately as he spoke. He was not anxious to talk about the Wray-Vallery affair. He said he would rather forget all about it, but as Timothy had inveigled him there with the express purpose of pumping in the matter, we were cruel enough to insist. Mr. Scobie had certainly had enough of it. He had had to give evidence in a French court through an interpreter, and he had no great opinion either of French courts, their dilatory methods, or their sanitary arrangements. You see, he was the sole witness of the actual tragedy.

It appeared that his sister’s suite of rooms was in the Hotel Miramar annex. From her balcony he had a complete view of the South Veranda, where Vallery spent most of the day. He had spoken to Vallery once or twice, but finding that he was a “bear with a sore neck” he desisted and devoted his attention to other hotel guests.

Then he explained: “The other old boy with the squeaky voice turned up.”

“Sir James Wray?”

“Sure. I didn’t take much stock of him at first, I used to hear him piping away below, and the other occasionally barking back an answer which I couldn’t hear.

“But at last that voice began to get on my nerves. You see I could hear just what he said, but I couldn’t hear the reply. It was like listening to a man on the ’phone. My! it was a voice. I was almost on the point of wanting to call out to him to quit. But you know how it is. If you listen to anyone you kind of can’t help wanting to hear what they are going to say next.”

“What sort of things did he talk about?”

“Most every kind of dither, like old men will--the colour of a girl’s frock in some show put across when he was a young man; the best place to buy over-shoes; the retail price of whisky. He was a pretty good hand at whisky, too. He arrived with two cases. The other man sat watching him. I didn’t like them. I tried to get my sister moved, but the hotel was full. I was away in Paris during the fall and didn’t return for some months. I got back to Cambo three days before--the thing happened.”

I don’t think Mrs. Timothy took the interest in this incident that we did. In any case she made some excuse about packing up Christmas presents for the children, and left the room.

Mr. Scobie, Timothy and I, drew our chairs up round the fire.

“How did you find things when you got back, Mr. Scobie?”

“Identically the same, sir. There were those two old boys still on the veranda below, sitting some way apart, squeaky voice with the whisky bottle in front of him letting on about the difference between merino and linsey-woolsey, or the rise in home rails, or the name of the girl who used to sell programmes at some God-forsaken theatre. There was the other man, kind of vague in the background, growling ‘yes’ and ‘no’ or be damned if he knew or cared. It was November and the weather was heavy and overcast for those parts. It’s a dandy place, except for the sick people.”

“What happened on the actual day?”

“It all grew out of the same thing, if you’ll believe me. It was early in the afternoon. I’d been out for a stroll. When I got to my sister’s room, I heard squeaky voice going strong. The other man was asking him where some place was hard by. Yes, sir, I recollect exactly now how the thing came through. Squeaky voice said: ‘You remember the villa next to Madam Ponsolle’s épicerie establishment. There’s a flower-pot in the window about the size of a stone ginger-beer bottle--well, it’s just opposite.’ This seemed to satisfy the big man, except that he growled: ‘Oh, it’s there, is it?’ Then he added rather savagely: ‘I know the place you mean. I noticed the flower-pot myself but it’s a good three times the size of a stone ginger-beer bottle.’

“Then, believe me, the trouble began. It beats me why the argument got them like that. Squeaky voice began to scream that he had taken particular note of the flower-pot at the time, and he’d swear it wasn’t an inch higher than an ordinary stone ginger-beer bottle. And each time he said that the bear got angrier and growled: ‘It’s three times the size.’ The argument raged for an hour. Squeaky voice pointed out that the other was every kind of walleyed, bone-headed thruster, and the bear rolled about the veranda shaking his fist and using language that would have made a Milwaukee bartender hand in his checks. The exhibition tired me and I went in.

“I think they slackened up, too, after a bit. Somewhere away in the big rooms a meal was cooked. The night came on quick and the moon broke through the clouds. After dinner I’m darned if I didn’t hear them going it again hammer and tongs. ‘I’m a judge of size,’ Squeaky was saying. ‘There isn’t an inch to it.’ ‘It’s damn nearly four times the size,’ roared the other, who you see had raised his figures. I was near to getting the hotel management on to quelling the disturbance, but it slackened off. At least, I thought it had. About ten o’clock I went to my room, which was right at the corner. I went on to the balcony to take a last breather, and then I saw the whole darn thing happen----”

“Have a little whisky, Mr. Scobie,” said Timothy.

“I will, sir, thank you. It seemed dead still. I thought they had gone in. But suddenly I saw Wray--that’s the man’s name, sure, Wray--he was crouching in the corner of the veranda just beneath me, and he had a bottle in his hand. I thought at first it was a last carouse, then by the light of the moon I noticed he was holding it by the neck and the bottle was empty. His thin voice came up to me like a husky wail: ‘Blast you, it is just the exact size.’ I could just see the shadowy form of the other man lying back near the window at the end. He was mumbling: ‘Five times as big!’

“Wray went toward him like a cat. I called out, and I think the effect of my cry was to get the big man alert to trouble. He was on his legs by the time Wray reached him. I saw the bottle swing in the air. Then they came to grips. Gosh! I’ve seen men fight, but--tables and chairs and glasses were scattered and broken. I heard the bottle break, but one of them was still holding it by the neck. Up and down the veranda they rolled and fought and bit. Just like madmen. Then there was a scream. A man and a woman rushed out. I went below. The big man Vallery was lying in a heap--dead--his throat cut from ear to ear. Wray was writhing by his side. He died the next morning: he died blaspheming. Like a gump I gave out that I’d seen the whole thing and they nailed me for the inquest. Those French courts of justice--ugh! I wanted to forget the whole blamed thing--wipe it out of my memory. But there I was nailed, made to go over and over it again. I never thought it possible to see such scarlet hate and passion--just savage beasts they were--and all over the size of a flower-pot.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rallish, just a finger.”

The fire glowed in the warm security of the little room and snow was drifting against the windows. In the drawing-room across the passage Mrs. Timothy was running her hands over the keys of a piano. Timothy smiled wistfully.

“Neither Wray nor Vallery ever liked me,” he remarked apparently irrelevantly. Then by way of explanation: “I’m going to have my revenge upon them. It isn’t often that a writer of fiction has things like that left at his door----”

Mr. Scobie nodded, and shook his long first finger at him.

“I see your point, sir. Provided you leave me out, the goods are yours. Here’s another small side issue might be useful to you. It wasn’t a flower-pot at all. I verified the fact the next day. It was a child’s red stockinette cap. Just think of it. They only had to stroll ten minutes up the village street. They could have taken a ruler, bet each other drinks, laughed the thing off. ’Stead of that they thought it more amusing to fight with broken whisky bottles. What do you think of it?”

We sat there staring at the fire. Timothy was sucking at an empty pipe.

“I can see the explanation,” he said at last.

“I should be entertained to hear it, sir.”

“You see,” said Timothy slowly, “the angel of accomplishment had deserted them.”

THE MATCH

It is all so incredibly long ago that you must not ask me to remember the scores. In fact, even of the result I am a little dubious. I only know that it was just on such a day as this that we were all mooning round Bunty Cartwright’s garden after breakfast, smoking, and watching the great bumblebees hanging heavily on the flowers. Along the flagged pathway to the house were standard rose-trees, the blossoms and perfume of which excited one pleasantly. It was jolly to be in flannels and to feel the sun on one’s skin, for the day promised to be hot.

For years it had been a tradition for dear old Bunty to ask us all down for the week. There were usually eight or nine of us, and we made up our team with the doctor and his son and one or two other odds and ends of chaps in the neighbourhood. I know that on this day he had secured the services of Dawkin, a very fast bowler from a town near by, for Celminster, the team we were to play, were reputed to be a very hot lot.

As we stood there laughing and talking, Bunty and Tony Peebles were sitting within the stone porch, I remember, trying to finish a game of chess started the previous evening; there was the crunch of wheels on the road, and the brake arrived, accompanied by the doctor’s son, a thin slip of a boy on a bicycle.

Then there was the usual bustle of putting up cricket-bags and going back for things one had forgotten, and the inevitable “chipping” of “Togs,” a boy whose real name I have forgotten, but who was always last in everything, even in the order of going in. It must have been fully half an hour before we made a start, and then the doctor hadn’t arrived. However, he came up at the last minute, his jolly red face beaming and perspiring. Some of the chaps cycled, and soon left us behind, but I think we were seven on the brake. It was good to be high up and to feel the wind blowing gently on our faces from the sea. We passed villages of amazing beauty nestling in the hollows of the downs, and rumbled on our way to the accompaniment of lowing sheep and the doctor’s rich, burring voice talking of cricket, and the song of the lark overhead that sang in praise of this day of festival.

It was good to laugh and talk and watch the white road stretching far ahead, then dipping behind a stretch of woodland. It was good to feel the thrill of excited anticipation as we approached the outskirts of Celminster. What sort of ground would it be? What were their bowlers like? Who would come off for us?

It was good to see the grinning, friendly faces of the villagers and then to descend from the brake, to nod to our opponents in that curiously self-conscious way we have as a race, and then eagerly to survey the field. And is there in the whole of England a more beautiful place than the Celminster cricket ground?

On one side is a clump of buildings dominated by the straggling yards and outhouses belonging to the “Bull” inn. On the farther side is a fence, and just beyond a stream bordered by young willows. At right angles to the inn is a thick cluster of elms--a small wood, in fact--while on the fourth side a low, gray stone wall separates the field from the road. Across the road may be seen the spire of a church, the fabric hidden by the trees, and away beyond sweeping contours of the downs.

In the corner of the field is a rough pavilion faced with half-timber, and a white flagstaff with the colours of the Celminster Cricket Club fluttering at its summit.

Members of the Celminster Club were practising in little knots about the field, and a crowd of small boys were sitting on a long wooden bench, shouting indescribably, and some were playing mock games with sticks and rubber balls. A few aged inhabitants looked at us with lazy interest and touched their hats.

A little man with a square chin and an auburn moustache came out and grinned at us and asked for Mr. Cartwright. We discovered that he was the local wheelwright and the Celminster captain. He showed us our room in the pavilion and called Bunty “sir.” Of course, Bunty lost the toss. He always did during that week, and this led to considerably more “chipping,” and we turned out to field.

No one who has never experienced it can ever appreciate the tense joy of a cricketer when he comes out to begin a match. The gaiety of the morning, when the light is at its best and all one’s senses are alert; the sense of being among splendid deeds that are yet unborn; and then the jolly red ball! How we love to clutch it with a sort of romantic exultation and toss it to one another! For it is upon _it_ that the story of the day will turn. It is the scarlet symbol of our well-ordered adventure, as yet untouched and virginal, and yet strangely pregnant of unaccomplished actions. What story will it have to tell when the day is done? Who will drop catches with it? Who destroy its virgin loveliness with a fearful drive against the stone wall?

As I have stated, it happened all so long ago that I cannot clearly remember many of the details of that match, but curiously enough I remember the first over that Dawkin sent down very vividly.

A very tall man came in to bat. The first ball he played straight back to the bowler; the second was a “yorker” and just missed his wicket; the third he drove hard to mid-off and Bunty stopped it; the fourth he stopped with his pads; the fifth he played back to the bowler again; and the sixth knocked his leg clean out of the ground.