Part 12 (1/2)

Captain Rames saw a small thin man in the dress of a privy councillor, a man with a peaked, fleshless face, in which a pair of small eyes twinkled alertly. A scanty crop of gray hair covered the back of his skull, and left markedly visible the height and the narrowness of his forehead. Captain Rames leaned forward with a new interest.

”Yes, and I recognize his face,” he said. ”Surely that is Henry Smale.”

”Exactly,” returned Sir James. ”He is in the cabinet, and, quite apart from politics, he is, upon scientific grounds, a man of great distinction.”

”But, surely, he disproves your theory. He looks an ascetic.”

”And is nothing of the kind,” interrupted Sir James. ”I admit that his look of asceticism has been a great a.s.set to him in his career. But the public has quite misjudged him. He is a voluptuary, with the face of a monk--the most useful combination for public life in this country which you could possibly imagine. If he dines alone at his club, he will not dine under a guinea; and he has the animal weaknesses up to the brim of him. For instance, he is as jealous as a dog. Filch from him the smallest of his prerogatives, and he will turn upon you bitterly. Yet he has done great things, and initiated bold policies.

Why? Because he has enough of the animal in him to do great things.”

And upon that Sir James broke off.

The butler was standing at the elbow of Captain Rames, with a jug of champagne in one hand and a decanter of red wine in the other. He bent down and offered Captain Rames his choice. Sir James Burrell intervened.

”By the way,” he said, ”have you any wish to stand particularly well with your host?”

”I am now beginning to think that I have,” replied Captain Rames.

”Then I should choose his Burgundy. He has his fancies, like the rest of us, and to prefer his Nuits-St.-George to champagne is one way to his esteem.”

Captain Rames took the hint, and, as he raised his gla.s.s to his lips, Mr. Benoliel smiled to him across the table.

”I will ask your opinion upon that wine, Captain Rames,” he said, and so turned again to Henry Smale.

”You see, he noticed at once,” said Sir James.

Captain Rames had noticed something too. At the mention of his name, Henry Smale had looked up with interest. He was even now obviously asking a question of Mr. Benoliel about him. Rames began to take more careful stock of his host. Mr. Benoliel was a tall, high-shouldered man, with a dark thin face in which delicacy seemed to predominate over strength. His hair was black, and a little black moustache drew a pencil line along his upper lip. His fingers were long and extraordinarily restless. It was difficult to make a guess at his age.

A first glance would put him in the forties. But when Mr. Benoliel showed his eyes--which was not always, for he had a trick of looking out between lids half-closed--it seemed that he must have lived for centuries; so much of fatigue and so much of patience were suddenly revealed.

”I wonder why he asked me to dine here,” said Harry Rames.

”You were certain to dine here,” replied Sir James.

”I met him but the once by the purest accident.”

”You were certain to meet him,” said Sir James. ”All famous people meet him. All famous people dine here once. But he is not really a sn.o.b. For, quite a number of them are never invited twice.”

”He can be a good friend?”

”Of that I cannot speak,” said Sir James.

The courses followed one after the other, and Harry Rames found his eyes continually wandering back across the silver and bright flowers to the exotic figure of his host. He took his share in the conversation about him, but a movement of Mr. Benoliel would check him in his speech or cause him to listen with an absent ear. He watched the play of his delicate fingers upon the table-cloth, the continual restlessness of his body. Mr. Benoliel was of his race; there was in his aspect a queer mixture of the financier and the dilettante, the shrewd business man and the sensuous apprecitator of art. There was a touch, too, of the feminine in him.

”I told you that you would not be bored,” said Sir James Burrell toward the end of the dinner. ”You are not the first man who has fallen under the spell of Mr. Benoliel.”

Harry Rames laughed.

”I am under no spell, I a.s.sure you,” he said frankly. ”I was wondering whether he was likely to be of use to me.”

”It is very likely,” returned Sir James. ”He has been of use to many.

He plays at omniscience. To antic.i.p.ate a wish before it is expressed, to serve an ambition before it has been revealed--that is one of our host's little vanities. He may have asked you here with no other object than to gratify it.”