Part 27 (2/2)

The proprietor approached with profoundest apology in his att.i.tude.

M'sieu would pardon him, but the noise of the gla.s.s ... it was annoying ... another M'sieu had made complaint....

”Eh?...” cried Marsden. ”Oh, that! Certainly! It can be put to a much better purpose.”

He refilled the gla.s.s.

The liquor had begun to tell on him. A quarter of the quant.i.ty would have made a clean-living man incapably drunk, but it had only made Marsden's eyes bright. He gave a sarcastic laugh.

”And is that all?” he asked.

Romarin replied shortly that that was all.

”You've missed out the R.A., and the D.C.L.”

”Then let me add that I'm a Doctor of Civil Law and a full Member of the Royal Academy,” said Romarin, almost at the end of his patience. ”And now, since you don't think much of it, may I hear your own account?”

”Oh, by all means. I don't know, however, that--” he broke off to throw a glance at a woman who had just entered the restaurant--a divesting glance that caused Romarin to redden to his crown and drop his eyes. ”I was going to say that you may think as little of my history as I do of yours.

Supple woman that; when the rather scraggy blonde does take it into her head to be a devil she's the worst kind there is....”

Without apology Romarin looked at his watch.

”All right,” said Marsden, smiling, ”for what _I've_ got out of life, then. But I warn you, it's entirely discreditable.”

Romarin did not doubt it.

”But it's mine, and I boast of it. I've done--barring receiving honours and degrees--everything--everything! If there's anything I haven't done, tell me and lend me a sovereign, and I'll go and do it.”

”You haven't told the story.”

”That's so. Here goes then ... Well, you know, unless you've forgotten, how I began....”

Fruit and nutsh.e.l.ls and nutcrackers lay on the table between them, and at the end of it, s.h.i.+elded from draughts by the menu cards, the coffee apparatus simmered over its elusive blue flame. Romarin was taking the rind from a pear with a table-knife, and Marsden had declined port in favour of a small golden liqueur of brandy. Every seat in the restaurant was now occupied, and the proprietor himself had brought his finest cigarettes and cigars. The waiter poured out the coffee, and departed with the apparatus in one hand and his napkin in the other.

Marsden was already well into his tale...

The frightful unction with which he told it appalled Romarin. It was as he had said--there was nothing he had not done and did not exult in with a sickening exultation. It had, indeed, ended in diabetes. In the pitiful hunting down of sensation to the last inch he had been fiendishly ingenious and utterly unimaginative. His unholy curiosity had spared nothing, his unnatural appet.i.te had known no truth. It was grinning sin.

The details of it simply cannot be told....

And his vanity in it all was prodigious. Romarin was pale as he listened.

What! In order that _this_ malignant growth in Society's breast should be able to say ”I know,” had sanct.i.ties been profaned, sweet conventions a.s.sailed, purity blackened, soundness infected, and all that was bright and of the day been sunk in the quagmire that this creature of the night had called--yes, stilled called--by the gentle name of Romance? Yes, so it had been. Not only had men and women suffered dishonour, but manhood and womanhood and the clean inst.i.tutions by which alone the creature was suffered to exist had been brought to shame. And what was he to look at when it was all done?...

”Romance--Beauty--the Beauty of things as they are!” he croaked.

If faces in the restaurant were now turned to Romarin, it was the horror on Romarin's own face that drew them. He drew out his handkerchief and mopped his brow.

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