So passed the rich pageantry of Gaveston’s second term, and once again he was speeding through the sun-washed river-meadows towards the vast smoky antre of Paddington. While the train curved grandly through beautiful Maidenhead, he took out his pocket-book, a slim wallet of polished eftskin which the Contadina da Chiesa had given him, with her coronet set in sapphires in one corner, as an Eastertide gift. He unfolded a letter on thick mauve notepaper.
Villa des Grues,
Route des Rastaquouères,
Monico.
Valentine’s Day.
Gav dear,—I feel my health coming back to me. The doctor is a Frenchman. Don’t you find beards rather attractive? Becky Stein is in the next villa and we’ve been seeing such a lot of your friend Belijah and the Dick-Worthies—you remember them in the old days, don’t you, Wertheim they were then? Son Altesse is also in residence. I love this place, except for the pigeon-shooting. What a terrible radical you must think I am!
Love from your poor old
Mother.
Spi is a perfect companion and does so want to meet you, he says. He’s so grateful to you, you know. Why not come and join us. I saw the Princess de Levi-Malthusi in the Rooms. She was in ermine and did you know she was dear Joey Rosenbaum’s first wife? We have a lot in common. I forget when Cambridge breaks up? Excuse blots, dear.
Gav folded up the letter meditatively. How familiar its Ambre perfume was to him! All the dear memories of childhood were delicately impregnated with its haunting scent, and from his snug first-class carriage now thundering through Hayes he was borne on the magic drugget of its subtle associations to Aix and Montreux and Harrogate and Nauheim and—but scarce a spa of Western Europe that had not once been his boytime’s playground.
But the vacation? A certain weariness crept over his usually flamboyant imagination as he pondered its possibilities. The Riviera? No: he hated all that chromatic monotony: the sky was blue and so was the sea, and the trees were simply green. And then there was all that cruel publicity of press photographers. Decidedly he must find some less unvariegated paesaggio, a land with waters of chrysoprase and topaz trees and, hanging dome-like over all, a firmament of purest jargoon. And through the enchanted pathways of his mind flitted vividly a processional of marvellous cities—Modane and Vallorbe and Hendaye, Domodossola, Bobadilla the beautiful, which no traveller in fair Iberia can leave unvisited, and Poggibonsi with its very name drenched in dear romance.…
Paddington! And the blue-and-gold Renault awaiting him.…
He passed a quiet evening in the Albany (Uncle Wilkie had slipped over to Ostend for the spring races) and next morning found him out and about in Jermyn Street, still undecided, but toying gracefully with a beautiful idea.
“Do you know Calypso’s isle, Prospero’s principality?” he asked the favoured hairdresser to whom he entrusted himself for daily face-massage. “One lies there, you know, on banks of moly, and eats, in lieu of the lotus, the ’khàsscheesh of blank oblivion and the snowy powder of the χοχαινὴ.”
“Yes, m’sieur,” said the barber absently.
“Good,” said Gav. “My favourite emperor and my favourite novelist both elected it as a dwelling-place.”
“I read much of Victor Hugo myself, sir,” said the barber, removing a steaming towel.
“No, no. I meant Capri, not Herm.”
“Quite, m’sieur,” said the barber, applying another.
Pleased with the incident, Gav tipped the fellow with characteristic bravura, and commenced his daily emplettes, as he did not hesitate to call them. That morning saw him in all the most exclusive shops in Town. Perfume he bought in Victoria Street and jewels in the busy Strand; the choice of some new hats kept him for a while in Holborn, but soon he was browsing among the bookshops of Villiers Street. At Owen’s (lest he decide upon Afric adventures) he ordered tropical silks, and (against his wooing the icy mountains of Greenland) he chose marvellous furs at Moss Bros. Extenuate at long last with so much purchasing, he refreshed himself with a light luncheon at one of his clubs, the Times Book, and then taxied to his favourite Turkish Bath, situated, like his barber, in Jermyn Street.
And here, in the equatorial mists of this sumptuous haunt, chance was to decide for him where and how the vacation was to be spent.
For while reclining in the innermost sudatorium, as with a flash of his scholarly and sophisticated wit, he called it, he began, naturally enough, to fashion and recite aloud a poem inspired by his extraordinary Oriental surroundings. Full of the mysterious fascination of the immemorial East, the words fell true and rounded from his lips, like far-off bells sounding in intricate cadence.
He paused at that plaintive drop in the rhythm of this first ghazel, when suddenly a flute-like voice whispered through the steam.
“Omar reincarnate!” he heard in tones of passionate admiration.
Gav was silent.
“But let that voice resume,” said the delighted interruptor. And just then the veiling vapour lifted a little, and Gaveston was able to introduce himself to his hitherto invisible auditor.
“I’m Gaveston ffoulis, of Wallace.”
“And I,” said the other, “am Vivian Cosmo, St. Mary’s.”
Gaveston was thrilled.
“Is that the face that launched a thousand boats,” he quoted.
And the other made response with an answering thrill.
“And burnt the hopeless town of Ilium.”
It was an introduction, Gav felt, worthy of brother poets, and the friendship thus romantically born of vapour and song was not slow to mature. That same evening Lord Vivian Cosmo took him to dinner in the George Augustus Sala room at Kettner’s.
“Here,” he said, “linger the last enchantments of the yellow ages.” Gaveston relished to the full the fascination of the famous peer.
“Take an olive,” murmured Vivian, putting away his tiny gold-mounted lip-salve, “and tell me how our Alma Mater is standing the ravages of this twentieth century.”
Gaveston took one, and told him. He had by now gathered that his new friend had already gone down some not inconsiderable time. Lord Vivian hardly looked so youthful as he had in that uncertain vaporous light underneath Jermyn Street, but still—the bortsch was excellent, and the skilful host had ordered a cuve of champagne, Veuve Amiot of course.
“Leave your langouste,” he went on, “and describe your friends.”
Gaveston left it, and described them. The escaloppes d’agneau gave place to some épitaphes d’andouilles which justified their name.
“Taste your sorbet,” said Vivian. They were on terms of Christian names by now. “And give me your thoughts on women.”
Gaveston tasted it, and gave them. Seldom, he thought, had anyone found him quite so interesting.
“Have another liqueur, Gavvy, and let me take you to Paris.”
Gavvy had it, and let him.
“We ought to have flown across,” said Lord Vivian a trifle petulantly, as he closed the door of their state-room on the Calais packet.
“I like the Channel,” said Gaveston. “I should hardly believe I were abroad unless I first had that faint emetic odour of engine oil on the boat.”
“Delightful phantast!” laughed the peer. “But you’d be beautiful beyond even my dreams, Gav, suspended in the air betwixt the two most wonderful cities of the world. Not Gaveston, but Ganymede!”
The brilliant pair exchanged their fascinating ripostes throughout the journey. As soon as the white perfidious cliffs above Dover faded from their sight, they naturally fell into the French tongue. Both of course were perfect scholars in that languorous language: Vivian in fact was a past master of idiom: and both preferred when in la belle France (as they wittily called it) to be taken for natives of that vivacious and volatile country.
“Est-ce que vous avez Français sang?” asked Lord Vivian when he first realized how remarkable his young friend’s accent was.
“Qui sait?” Gav had replied enigmatically.
And so, what with esprit and persiflage, conte and shrug, it did not seem long ere the ambient vault of the Gare de Lyons had overarched their arrival with its Rhadamanthine gloom.
And then followed a passionate sequence of sleepless nights and sleepy days, while they visited all that there was of wicked and unvisited in the Ville Lumière, from multitudinous Montmartre to the quaint Quartier Latin, from Batignolles to Passy, from Nord to Sud. Where no other English had ever dared to penetrate, Vivian and Gaveston were often seen. The Comédie Française and the Folies Bergères grew to know them well, and thence they would pass from café to café and bouillon to bouillon, savouring a wild succession of the most Parisian of apéritifs—Dubonnet and Byrrh, Maggi and Thermogene, and in the very darkest of the cabarets of Montparnasse “les deux Anglais” became a familiar patchword.[15]
[15] A blot on Mr. Budd’s MS. here makes it doubtful whether this should not read “watchword,” “catchword,” or even “patchwork.” (Lit. Exec.)
But so hectic a life could hardly last. Although they ate their meals in the chicest restaurants, and their hotel was the largest and most replete with les conforts home in all the Gay City, Gaveston found himself beset with ennui. He felt very surely that a chapter in his life was drawing to a close; new interests would soon be clamorous for treatment. Besides, what had originally enchanted him in his companion now began to fray his nerves. It was distressing to find that Lord Vivian’s only idea of conversation was to ask questions. At last he felt driven to force a scene.
“Dans la longue course,” complained Gav one morning over their chocolat, “la luxure devient fatiguante.”
Lord Vivian looked at him not without anxiety, and turned the talk on to other lines.
“Vous manquez vos âgés amis à Oxford?” he asked.
“Possiblement,” Gaveston’s voice was cutting.
“Quel est votre chef ami à Oxford?”
“Réellement, je ne connais pas.”
“S’il vous plaît, dites à moi,” Lord Vivian implored.
“Vous me faites fatigué. Vous êtes trop curieux.”
The nobleman was touched to the quick.
“Je pensais que vous me trouviez très plaisant,” he said.
“Non à tout,” was Gaveston’s answer. He was horribly bored, and could not restrain himself from telling his host so. “Vous me forez terriblement.” And so they parted.
But Gaveston soon recovered his mastery of English.