THE astute conspiracy had tumbled to ruins, the keystone, Félise, being knocked out. It was no longer a family affair. Fortinbras listened to the young man’s statement of his case with professional detachment. His practised wit questioned. Martin replied until he had laid bare his candid and intoxicated soul. At last Fortinbras, with a wave of his plump hand, and with his benevolent smile, said:— “Let us now adjourn from labour to refreshment. I will give myself a luxury I have not enjoyed for many a year. I will entertain a guest. You shall lunch with me. When our spirits are fortified and our judgments mellowed by generous food, we shall adjourn from refreshment to labour. Sometimes you can put a five-franc piece into the slot and pull out an opinion. Sometimes you can’t. Let us go to another table.”
They lunched. Fortinbras talked of men and things and books. He played the perfect host until the first cigarette had been smoked. Then he lay back in the upholstered seat against the wall and looked into vacancy, his face a mask. Martin, sitting by his side, dared not disturb him. He felt like one in the awe-inspiring presence of an oracle. Presently the oracle stirred, shifted his position and resumed human semblance, the smile reappearing in his eyes and at the corners of his pursy mouth.
“My dear Martin,” said he, one elbow on the table and the hand caressing his white hair, “I have now fully considered the question, and see distinctly your path to happiness. As my good old friend Montaigne says—an author I once advised you to cultivate——”
“I’ve done so,” said Martin.
Fortinbras beamed. “There is none richer in humanity. In his words, I say ‘The wisdom of my instruction consists in liberty and naked truth,’ I take the human soul as it is and seek to strip it free from shackles and disguises. I strip yours from the shackles of gross material welfare and the travesty of content. I see it ardent in the pursuit, perhaps of the unattainable, but at any rate in the pursuit of splendour, which is a splendid thing for the soul. Liberty and naked truth are the only watchwords. Sell out some of your capital, equip yourself in lordly raiment, go to Egypt and give your soul a chance.”
“I needn’t tell you,” said Martin, after a pause, “that I was hoping you would give me this advice. It seems all crazy. But still——” he lit a cigarette, which during Fortinbras’s discourse he had been holding in his fingers. “Well—there it is. I don’t seem to care a hang what happens to me afterwards.”
“From my professional point of view,” said Fortinbras, “that is an ideal state of mind.”
“All the same, I can’t help feeling a brute. What the devil can I say to Bigourdin?”
“You can leave that to me,” replied Fortinbras. “He is aware that you are a client of mine and not only honour me with your confidence, but are willing to be guided by my counsel. If you will accept my society, I will accompany you to the Land of the Pharaohs——”
“What?” cried Martin, taken aback. “You? Good God! Of course,” he added, after recovery, “I should love you to come.”
“As I was saying,” Fortinbras continued, “I will accompany you, take upon my shoulders your responsibilities with regard to Bigourdin, and, for my own private satisfaction, realise the dream of my life which is to go up to the Sphinx and say, ‘Now, my dear creature, confidentially as between Augur and Augur, what the deuce is it all about?’?”
Later, when Martin had accustomed himself to the amazing proposal, they discussed ways and means.
“You,” said Fortinbras, “in order to drink the deep draughts essential to your evolution, must peacock it with the best. You must dwell in palaces and drive in chariots. I, on the other hand, journeying as a philosopher, need but a palm-tree’s shade, a handful of dates and a cup of water. I shall therefore not be of your revellings. But I shall always be near at hand, a sort of private djinn, always at your distinguished service.”
“It’s most delightful and generous of you to put it that way,” laughed Martin, “but for the life of me I can’t see why you should do it.”
Fortinbras replied simply: “I’m a very weary man, my dear boy, and my heart needs a holiday. That is why I grasp this opportunity of going into the sunshine. As to my offer of counsel, that is a matter which it would be futile to discuss.”
His last words were flavoured with mystery. As far as Martin was concerned, Fortinbras was free to go whithersoever he pleased. But why this solicitude as to his welfare, this self-made Slave of the Lamp obligation? Soon he gave up the riddle. Too many exciting thoughts swept his brain.
Until it was written, the letter to Bigourdin weighed on his mind. The problem confronting him was to explain his refusal without reference to Lucilla. To Fortinbras, keeper of his conscience, he could avow his splendid lunacy and be understood. To Bigourdin his English reserve forbade his writing himself down an ass and saying: “The greasy waiter cannot accept partnership with you, as he must follow to the ends of the earth the radiant lady to whom he handed the mutton cutlets.” The more he tried the less could he do it. He sat up all night over the letter. It contained all the heart of him that was left for the H?tel des Grottes and Brant?me and Périgord; but—well—he had arranged to abide by Fortinbras’s decision. Fortinbras had advised him to see more of the world before definitely settling his life. With a disingenuousness which stabbed his conscience, he threw the responsibility on Fortinbras. Fortinbras was carrying him to Egypt on an attempt to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. Bigourdin knew the utter faith he had in Fortinbras. He sent his affectionate regards to everybody—and to Félise. It was the most dreadful, heart-tearing letter he had ever had to write.
Meanwhile, Fortinbras, betraying, for the first time in his life, professional secrecy, revealed the whole matter to Bigourdin in an illuminating document. And Bigourdin, reading it, and comparing it with Martin’s letter, said “Bigre!” and “Sacrebleu!” and “Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!” and all sorts of other things. At first he frowned incredulously. But on every re-perusal of the letter the frown grew fainter, until, after the fifth, the placid smile of faith overspread his broad countenance. But Félise, who was only told that Martin was not returning but had gone to Egypt with her father, grew white and thin-lipped, and hated the day she had met Lucilla Merriton and all the days she had spent with Lucilla Merriton, and, in a passion of tears, heaped together everything that Lucilla Merriton had ever given her, gowns and furs and underlinen and trinkets, in a big trunk which she stowed away in an attic. And the plongeur from the Café de l’Univers was appointed waiter in Martin’s stead and strutted about proudly in Martin’s cast-off raiment. He was perhaps the most care-free person in the H?tel des Grottes.
Martin went on a flying visit to London, and, on the advice of Fortinbras, put up at the Savoy.
“Accustom yourself to lordliness,” the latter had counselled. “You can’t conquer Egypt with the self-effacing humility of the servitor. By rubbing shoulders with the wealthy, you will acquire that suspicion of arrogance—the whiff of garlic in the salad—in which your present demeanour is so sadly lacking. You will also learn by observation the correct wear in socks and ties, and otherwise steep yourself in the study of indispensable vanities.”
Martin studied conscientiously, and when he had satisfactorily arranged his financial affairs, including the opening of a banking account with Messrs. Thomas Cook & Son, visited tailors and haberdashers and hatters and bootmakers, ordering all the things he had seen worn by the opulent youth of the Savoy Hotel. If he had stolen the money to pay for them, or if he had intended to depart with them without paying, he could not have experienced a more terrifying joy. Like a woman clothes-starved for years, who has been given the run of London shops, Martin ran sartorially mad. He saw suitings, hosiery, shoes, with Lucilla’s eye. He bought himself a tie-pin, a thing which he had never possessed nor dreamed of possessing in his life before; and, observing that an exquisite young Lothario upon whom he resolved to model himself did not appear with the same tie-pin on two consecutive days, he went out and bought another. Modesty and instinctive breeding saved him from making himself a harlequin.
In the midst of these preoccupations, he called, by arrangement, on Corinna. She was living with another girl on the fifth floor of a liftless block of flats in Wandsworth. The living room held two fairly comfortably. Three sat at somewhat close quarters. So when Martin arrived, the third, Corinna’s mate, after a perfunctory introduction, disappeared into a sort of cupboard that served her as a bedroom.
Corinna looked thin and ill and drawn, and her blouse gaped at the back, and her fair hair exhibited the ropiness of neglect. The furniture of the room was of elementary flimsiness. Loose newspapers, pamphlets, handbills, made it as untidy as Corinna’s hair. As soon as they were alone, Martin glanced from her to her surroundings and then back again to her.
“My dear Corinna,” said he, putting hat, stick and gloves on a bamboo table, “what on earth are you doing with yourself?”
She looked at him defiantly, with a touch of haggardness.
“I am devoting myself to the Cause.”
Martin wrinkled a puzzled brow. “What cause?”
“For a woman there is only one,” said Corinna.
“Oh!” said Martin. “May I sit down?”
“Please do.”
She poked a tiny fire in a diminutive tiled grate, while he selected the most solid of the bamboo chairs. She sat on a stool on the hearthrug.
“I suppose you’re anti-suffrage like any other bigoted reactionary,” she said.
Martin replied truly: “I haven’t worried about it one way or the other.”
She turned on him swiftly. “Then you’re worse than a downright opponent. It’s just the contemptuous apathy of men like you that drive us mad.”
She entered upon a long and nervous tirade, trotting out the old arguments, using the stock phrases, parroting a hundred platform speeches. And all the time, though appearing to attack, she was on the defensive, defiant, desperate. Martin regarded her with a shocked expression. Her thin blonde beauty was being pinched into shrewishness.
“But, my dear Corinna,” said he. “I’ve come to see you, as an old friend. I just want to know how you’re getting on. What’s the good of a political argument between us two? You ............