The Leithen Stories (44 page)

In the drawing-room I found my hostess skimming the weekly press and drew up a chair beside her. Mollie Nantley and I count cousinship, though the relation is slightly more remote, and she has long been my very good friend. She laid down her paper and prepared to talk.

‘I was so glad to see Colonel Milburne again. He looks so well too. But, Ned dear, you ought to get him to go about more, for he's really a little old-maidish. He was scared to death by Corrie Arabin.'

‘Well, isn't she rather – shall we say disconcerting? More by token, who is she?'

‘Poor little Corrie! She's the only child of a rather horrible man who died last year – Shelley Arabin. Did you never hear of him? He married a sort of cousin of mine and treated her shamefully. Corrie had the most miserable upbringing – somewhere in Greece, you know, and in Rome and Paris, and at the worst kind of girls' school where they teach the children to be snobs and powder their noses and go to confession. The school wouldn't have mattered, for the Arabins are Romans, and Corrie couldn't be a snob if she tried, but her home life would have ruined St Theresa. She was in London last summer with the Ertzbergers, and I was rather unhappy about her living among cosmopolitan Jew
rastaquouères
, so I am trying to do what I can for her this winter. Fortunately she
has taken madly to hunting and she goes most beautifully. She has never had a chance, poor child. You must be kind to her, Ned.'

I said that I was not in the habit of being brutal to young women, but that she was not likely to want my kindness. ‘She seems to be a success in her way. These boys follow her like sheep.'

‘Oh, she has had one kind of success, but not the best kind. She casts an extraordinary spell over young men, and does not care a straw for one of them. I might be nervous about Hugo, but I'm not in the least, for she is utterly sexless – more like a wild boy. It is no good trying to improve her manners, for she is quite unconscious of them. I don't think there is an atom of harm in her, and she has delightful things about her – she is charming to Pam and Dolly, and they adore her, and she is simply the most honest creature ever born. She must get it from her mother, for Shelley was an infamous liar.'

Mollie's comely face, with her glorious golden-red hair slightly greying at the temples, had a look of compassionate motherliness. With all her vagueness, she is one of the shrewdest women of my acquaintance, and I have a deep respect for her judgement. If she let her adored Pam and Dolly make friends of Miss Arabin, Miss Arabin must be something more than the cabaret girl of my first impression.

‘But I'm not happy about her,' Mollie went on. ‘I can't see her future. She ought to marry, and the odds are terribly against her marrying the right man. Boys flock after her, but the really nice men – like Colonel Milburne – fly from her like the plague. They don't understand that her bad form is not our bad form, but simply foreignness … And she's so terribly strong-minded. I know that she hates everything connected with her early life, and yet she insists on going back to that Greek place. Her father left her quite well off, I believe – Tom says so and he has looked into her affairs – and she ought to settle down here and acclimatise herself. All her superficial oddities would soon drop off, for she is so clever she could make herself whatever she wanted. It is what she wants, too, for she loves England and English ways. But there is a touch of “daftness” about her, a kind of freakishness which I can never understand. I suppose it is the Arabin blood.'

Mollie sighed.

‘I try to be tolerant about youth,' she added, ‘but I
sometimes long to box its ears. Besides, there is the difficulty about the others. I am quite sure of Corrie up to a point, but I can't be responsible for the young men. George Cheviot shows every inclination to make a fool of himself about her, and what am I to say to his mother? Really, having Corrie in the house is like domesticating a destroying angel.'

‘You're the kindest of women,' I said, ‘but I think you've taken on a job too hard for you. You can't mix oil and wine. You'll never fit Miss Arabin into your world. She belongs to a different one.'

‘I wonder what it is?'

A few hours ago I should have said it was the world of cabarets and Riviera hotels and Ertzbergers. After what you have told me I'm not so sure. But anyhow it's not our world.'

As I went to bed I heard the jigging of dance music from the library, and even in so large a house as Wirlesdon its echoes seemed to pursue me as I dropped into sleep. The result was that I had remarkable dreams, in which Miss Arabin, dressed in the spangles of a circus performer and riding a piebald horse, insisted on my piloting her with the Mivern, while the Master and Vernon looked on in stony disapproval.

The next morning was frosty and clear, and I came down to breakfast to find my hostess alone in the dining-room.

‘Corrie behaved disgracefully last night,' I was informed. ‘She started some silly rag with George Cheviot and made hay of Mr Harcus's bedroom. Tom had to get up and read the Riot Act in the small hours. I have been to her room and found her asleep, but as soon as she wakes I am going to talk to her very seriously. It is more than bad manners, it is an offence against hospitality.'

I went to church with Tom and his daughters, and when we returned we found Miss Arabin breakfasting before the hall fire on grapes and coffee, with the usual young men in attendance. If she had been given a lecture by her hostess, there was no sign of it in her face. She looked amazingly brilliant – all in brown, with a jumper of brown arabesque and long amber ear-rings. A russet silk glove clothed the hand in which she held her cigarette.

Vernon came over to luncheon and sat next to Mollie, while at the other end of the table I was placed between Miss Arabin and Lady Altrincham. The girl scarcely threw a word to me, being occupied in discussing quite intelligently with Hugo
Brune the international position of Turkey. I could not avoid overhearing some of their talk, and I realised that when she chose she could behave like a civilised being. It might be that Mollie's morning discourse had borne fruit. Her voice was delightful to listen to, with its full clear tones and delicate modulations. And then, after her habit, her attention wandered, and Hugo's platitudes fell on unheeding ears. She was staring at a picture of a Jacobean Nantley on the wall, and presently her eyes moved up the table and rested on Vernon.

She spoke to me at last.

‘Who is the man next to Mollie – the man who came to tea last night? You know him, don't you?'

I told her his name.

‘A soldier?' she asked.

‘Has been. Does nothing at present. He has a place in Westmorland.'

‘You are friends?'

‘The closest.' There was something about the girl's brusqueness which made me want to answer in monosyllables. Then she suddenly took my breath away.

‘He is unhappy,' she said. ‘He looks as if he had lost his way.'

She turned to Hugo, and, with an urbanity which I had thought impossible, apologised for her inattention and took up the conversation at the point at which she had dropped it.

Her words made me keep my eyes on Vernon. Unhappy! There was little sign of it in his lean smiling face, with the tanned cheeks and steady eyes. Mollie was clearly delighted with him; perhaps her maternal heart had marked him down for Dolly. Lost his way? On the contrary he seemed at complete ease with the world. Was this strange girl a sorceress to discover what was hidden deep in only two men's minds? I had a sense that Vernon and Miss Arabin, with nothing on earth in common, had yet a certain affinity. Each had a strain of romance in them – romance and the unpredictable.

Vernon had motored over to Wirlesdon and proposed to walk back, so I accompanied him for part of the road. I was glad of a chance for a talk, for I was miserably conscious that we were slipping away from each other. I didn't see how I could help it, for I was immersed in practical affairs, while he would persist in living for a dream. Before the war I had been half under the spell of that dream, but four years' campaigning had given me a distaste for the fantastic and set my feet very
solidly on the rock of facts. Our two circles of comprehension, which used to intersect, had now become self-contained.

I asked him what he was doing with himself, and he said hunting and shooting and dabbling in books. He was writing something – I think about primitive Greek religion, in consequence of some notions he had picked up during his service in the Aegean.

‘Seriously, old fellow,' I said, ‘isn't it time you settled down to business? You are twenty-five, you have first-class brains, and you are quite fit now. I can't have you turning into a
flâneur
.'

‘There is no fear of that,' he replied rather coldly. ‘I am eager for work, but I haven't found it yet. My training isn't finished. I must wait till after next April.'

‘But what is going to happen after that?'

‘I don't know. I must see what happens
then
.'

‘Vernon,' I cried, ‘we are old friends and I am going to speak bluntly. You really must face up to facts. What is going to happen next April? What can happen? Put it at its highest. You may pass through some strange mental experience. I can't conceive what it may be, but suppose the last door does open and you see something strange and beautiful or even terrible – I don't know what. It will all happen inside your mind. It will round off the recurring experiences you have had from childhood, but it can't do anything more.'

‘It will do much more,' he said. ‘It will be the crisis of my life … Why have you become so sceptical, Ned? You used to think as I do about it.'

‘It will only be a crisis if you make it so, and it's too risky. Supposing on the other hand that nothing happens. You will have keyed your whole being up to an expectation which fails. You will be derelict, cut clean from your moorings. It's too risky, I tell you.'

He shook his head. ‘We have fallen out of understanding each other. Your second alternative is impossible. I know it in my bones. Something will happen – must happen – and then I shall know what I have to do with my life. It will be the pistol-shot for the start.'

‘But, my dear old man, think of the hazard. You are staking everything on a wild chance. Heaven knows, I'm not unsympathetic. I believe in you – I believe in a way in the reality of the dream. But life is a prosaic thing, and if you are to have marvels
in it you should take them in your stride. I want to see you with some sort of policy for the future, and letting the last stage of your dream drop in naturally into a strategic plan. You can't at twenty-five sit waiting on a revelation. You must shape your own course, and take the revelation when it comes. If you don't, you'll find yourself derelict. Damn it, you're far too good to be a waif.'

He smiled a little sadly. ‘We're pretty far apart now, I'm afraid. Can't you see that the thing is too big a part of me to be treated as a side-show? It's what I've been sent into the world for. I'm waiting for my marching orders.'

‘Then you're waiting for a miracle,' I said testily.

‘True. I am waiting for a miracle,' he replied. ‘We needn't argue about it, Ned, for miracles are outside argument. In less than six months I will know. Till then I am content to live by faith.'

After leaving him, I walked back to the house in an uncomfortable frame of mind. I realised that the affection between us was as deep as ever, but I had a guilty sense of having left him in the lurch. He was alone now, whereas once I had been with him, and I hated to think of his loneliness.

As I crossed the bridge between the lakes I met Miss Arabin sauntering bareheaded in the autumn sunlight. I would have passed on, with a curt greeting, for I was in no mood to talk trivialities to a girl I disliked, but to my surprise she stopped and turned with me up the long grassy aisle which led to the gardens.

‘I came out to meet you,' she said. ‘I want to talk to you.'

My response cannot have been encouraging, but she took no notice of that.

‘You're a lawyer, aren't you?' she went on. ‘Mollie says you are very clever. You look clever.'

I dare say I grinned. I was being comprehensively patronised.

‘Well, I want you to help me. I have some tiresome legal complications to disentangle, and my solicitor is a sheep. I mean to sack him.'

I explained the etiquette of my profession.

‘Oh, then you can tell him what to do. You'll understand his silly talk, which I don't. You make him obey you.'

‘My dear young lady,' I said, ‘I cannot undertake private business. You see I'm in the employ of the Government.'

‘Don't be afraid, I can pay you all right.' The words were too naïve to be insulting.

I said nothing, and she darted before me and looked me in the face.

‘You mean that you won't help me?' she asked.

‘I mean that I'm not allowed,' I replied.

Without another word she swung round and disappeared up a side glade. As she vanished among the beech-trees, a figure as russet as the drift of leaves, I thought I had never seen anything more quick and slender, and I fervently hoped that I should never see her again.

IN THAT HOPE I was mistaken. A fortnight later the Treasury Solicitor sent me the papers in one of those intricate international cases which were the debris of the war. It was a claim by a resident abroad, who had not lost his British nationality, for compensation for some oppressive act of one of the transient Greek Governments. I left the thing to my ‘devil', and just skimmed his note before the necessary conference with the plaintiff's solicitors. To my surprise I saw that it had to do with the island of Plakos and the name of Arabin.

Mr Mower, of the reputable firm of Mower & Lidderdale, was not unlike a sheep in appearance – a Leicester ewe for choice. He had a large pale high-boned face, rimless spectacles, a crop of nice fleecy white-hair, and the bedside manner of the good family solicitor. My hasty study of the papers showed me that the oppressive acts were not denied, but that the title of the plaintiff was questioned.

‘This is a matter of domestic law,' I said – ‘the
lex loci rei sitœ
. If the title to the land is disputed, it is a case for the Greek courts.'

‘We have reason to believe that the defence is not seriously put forward, for the title is beyond dispute, and we are at a loss to understand the attitude of the Greek Government. The documents are all in our possession, and we took Mr Blakeney's advice on them. His opinion is among the papers left with you – and you will see that he has no doubt on the matter.'

Mr Blakeney certainly had not, as I saw from his opinion, nor had my ‘devil'. The latter characterised the defence as ‘monstrous'. It seemed to be based on an arbitrary act of the old Greek National Assembly of 1830. My note said that the title was complete in every respect, and that the attempt to question it seemed to be a species of insanity. A name caught my attention.

‘What is Koré?' I asked.

‘It is Miss Arabin's Christian name. Greek, I presume,' said Mr Mower, very much in the tone in which Mr Pecksniff observed, ‘Pagan, I regret to say.'

I read the note again, and Blakeney's opinion. Blakeney was an authority from whom I was not disposed to differ, and the facts seemed too patent for argument. As I turned over the papers I saw the name of another solicitor on them.

‘You have not always acted for the Arabin family?' I asked.

‘Only within the last few months. Derwents were the family solicitors, but Miss Arabin was dissatisfied with them and withdrew her business. Curiously enough, they advised that the claim of the Greek Government was good, and should not be opposed.'

‘What!' I exclaimed. Derwents are one of the best firms in England, and the senior partner, Sebastian Derwent, was my oldest client. He was not only a sound lawyer, but a good scholar and a good fellow. What on earth had induced him to give such paradoxical advice?

I told Mr Mower that the matter seemed plain enough, but that for my own satisfaction I proposed to give further consideration to the papers. I took them home with me that evening, and the more I studied them the less I could understand Derwent's action. The thing seemed a bluff so impudent as to be beyond argument. The abstract of title was explicit enough, and Blakeney, who had had the original documents, was emphatic on the point. But the firm of Derwents was not in the habit of acting without good cause … I found myself becoming interested in the affair. Plakos was still a disquieting memory, and the outrageous girl at Wirlesdon was of a piece with its strangeness.

A day or two later I was dining at the Athenaeum before going down to the House, and I saw Sebastian Derwent eating a solitary meal at an adjacent table. I moved over beside him, and after some casual conversation I ventured to sound him on the subject. With another man it might have been a delicate task, but we were old and confidential friends.

I told him I had had the Plakos case before me. ‘You used to act for the Arabins?' I said.

He nodded, and a slight embarrassment entered his manner. ‘My father and grandfather too before me. The firm had a difficult time with old Tom Arabin. He had a habit of coming down to the office with a horsewhip, and on one occasion my
grandfather was compelled to wrest it from him, break it over his knee and pitch it into the fire.'

‘I can imagine easier clients. But I am puzzled about that preposterous Greek claim. I can't think how it came to be raised, for it is sheer bluff.'

He reddened a little and crumbled his bread.

‘I advised Miss Arabin not to dispute it,' he said.

‘I know, and I can't imagine why. You advised her to sit down under a piece of infamous extortion.'

‘I advised her to settle it.'

‘But how can you settle a dispute when all the rights are on one side? Do you maintain that there was any law or equity in the Greek case?'

He hesitated for a second. ‘No,' he said, ‘the claim was bad in law. But its acceptance would have had certain advantages for Miss Arabin.'

I suppose I looked dumbfounded. ‘It's a long story,' he said, ‘and I'm not sure that I have the right to tell it to you.'

‘Let us leave it at that, then. Of course it's no business of mine.' I did not want to embarrass an old friend.

But he seemed disinclined to leave it. ‘You think I have acted unprofessionally?' he ventured.

‘God forbid! I know you too well, and I don't want to poke my nose into private affairs.'

‘I can tell you this much. Miss Arabin is in a position of extreme difficulty. She is alone in the world without a near relation. She is very young and not quite the person to manage a troublesome estate.'

‘But surely that is no reason why she should surrender her patrimony to a bogus demand?'

‘It would not have been exactly surrender. I advised her not to submit but to settle. Full compensation would have been paid if she had given up Plakos.'

‘Oh, come now,' I cried. ‘Who ever heard of voluntary compensation being paid by a little stony-broke Government in Eastern Europe?'

‘It would have been arranged,' he said. ‘Miss Arabin had friends – a friend – who had great influence. The compensation was privately settled and it was on a generous scale. Miss Arabin has fortunately other sources of income than Plakos: indeed I do not think she draws any serious revenue from the island. She would have received a sum of money in payment,
the interest on which would have added substantially to her income.'

‘But I still don't see the motive. If the lady is not worried about money, why should her friends be so anxious to increase her income?'

Mr Derwent shook his head. ‘Money is not the motive. The fact is that Plakos is a troublesome property. The Arabin family have never been popular, and the inhabitants are turbulent and barely civilised. The thing is weighing on her mind. It is not the sort of possession for a young girl.'

‘I see. In order to rid Miss Arabin of a
damnosa hœreditas
you entered into a friendly conspiracy. I gather that she saw through it.'

He nodded. ‘She is very quick-witted, and was furious at the questioning of her title. That was my mistake. I underrated her intelligence. I should have had the thing more ingeniously framed. I can assure you that my last interview with her was very painful. I was forced to admit the thinness of the Greek claim, and after that I had a taste of Tom Arabin's temper. She is an extraordinary child, but there is wonderful quality in her, wonderful courage. I confess I am thankful as a lawyer to be rid of her affairs, but as a friend of the family I cannot help being anxious … She is so terribly alone in the world.'

‘That is a queer story,' I said. ‘Of course you behaved as I should have expected, but I fancy that paternal kindliness is thrown away on that young woman. I met her a few weeks ago in a country house, and she struck me as peculiarly able to look after herself. One last question. Who is the friend who is so all-powerful at Athens?'

‘That I fear I am not at liberty to tell you,' was the answer.

This tale whetted my curiosity. From old Folliot I had learned something of the record of the Arabins, and I had my own impression of Plakos as clear as a cameo. Now I had further details in my picture. Koré Arabin (odd name! I remembered from my distant schooldays that Koré was Greek for a ‘maiden' – it had nothing to do with Corisande of the circus) was the mistress of that sinister island and that brooding house of a people who detested her race. There was danger in the place, danger so great that some friend unknown was prepared to pay a large price to get her out of it, and had involved in the plot the most decorous solicitor in England. Who was this friend? I wanted to meet him and to hear more of
Plakos, for I realised that he and not Derwent was the authority.

Speculation as to his identity occupied a good deal of my leisure, till suddenly I remembered what Lady Nantley had told me. Miss Arabin had been living in London with the Ertzbergers before she came to Wirlesdon. The friend could only be Theodore Ertzberger. He had endless Greek connections, was one of the chief supporters of Venizelos, and it was through his house that the new Greek loan was to be issued. I had met him, of course, and my recollection was of a small bright-eyed man with a peaked grey beard and the self-contained manner of the high financier. I had liked him and found nothing of the
rastaquouère
in him to which Mollie objected. His wife was another matter. She was a large flamboyant Belgian Jewess, a determined social climber and a great patron of art and music, who ran a salon and whose portraits were to be found in every exhibition of the young school of painters. It was borne in on me that my curiosity would not be satisfied till I had had a talk with Ertzberger.

Lady Amysfort arranged the meeting at a Sunday luncheon when Madame Ertzberger was mercifully stricken with influenza.

Except for the hostess, it was a man's party, and afterwards she manoeuvred that Ertzberger and I should be left alone in a corner of the big drawing-room.

I did not waste time beating about the bush, for I judged from his face that this man would appreciate plain dealing. There was something simple and fine about his small regular features and the steady regard of his dark eyes.

‘I am glad to have this chance of a talk with you,' I said. ‘I have lately been consulted about Plakos and Miss Arabin's claim against the Greek Government. Also a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Arabin. The whole business interests me strongly – not as a lawyer but as a human being. You see, just before the war I happened to visit Plakos and I can't quite get the place out of my head. You are a friend of hers, and I should like to know something more about the island. I gather that it's not the most comfortable kind of estate.'

He looked me straight in the face. ‘I think you know Mr Sebastian Derwent,' he said.

‘I do. And he gave me a hint of Miss Arabin's difficulties and
the solution proposed. His conduct may not have been strictly professional, but it was extraordinarily kind. But let me make it quite clear that he never mentioned your name, or gave me any sort of clue to it. I guessed that you were the friend, because I knew that Miss Arabin had been staying in your house.'

‘You guessed rightly. It is not a thing that I naturally want made public, but I am not in the least ashamed of the part I played. I welcome the opportunity of discussing it with you. It is a curious thing, but Miss Arabin has already spoken of you to me.'

‘She asked me to advise her, and I'm afraid was rather annoyed when I told her that I couldn't take private practice.'

‘But she has not given up the notion. She never gives up any notion. She has somehow acquired a strong belief in your wisdom.'

‘I am obliged to her, but I am not in a position to help.'

He laid his hand on my arm. ‘Do not refuse her,' he said earnestly. ‘Believe me, no woman ever stood in more desperate need of friends.'

His seriousness impressed me. ‘She has a loyal one in you, at any rate. And she seems to be popular and to have a retinue of young men.'

He looked at me sharply. ‘You think she is a light-headed girl, devoted to pleasure – rather second-rate pleasure – a little ill-bred perhaps. But you are wrong, Sir Edward. Here in England she is a butterfly – dancing till all hours, a madcap in town and in the hunting-field, a bewitcher of foolish boys. Oh, bad form I grant you – the worst of bad form. But that is because she comes here for an anodyne. She is feverishly gay because she is trying to forget – trying not to remember that there is tragedy waiting behind her.'

‘Where?' I asked.

‘In the island of Plakos.'

Tragedy – that was the word he used. It had an incongruous sound to me, sitting in a warm London drawing-room after an excellent luncheon, with the sound of chatter and light laughter coming from the group around my hostess. But he had meant it – his grave voice and burdened face showed it – and the four walls seemed to fade into another picture – a twilight by a spring sea, and under a shadowy house two men with uplifted hands and hate and fear in their eyes.

‘If you will do me the honour to listen,' Ertzberger was
speaking, ‘I should like to tell you more about Miss Arabin's case.'

‘Have you known her long?' I asked. A sudden disinclination had come over me to go further in this affair. I felt dimly that if I became the recipient of confidences I might find myself involved in some distasteful course of action.

‘Since she was a child, I had dealings with her father – business dealings – he was no friend of mine – but there was a time when I often visited Plakos. I can claim that I have known Miss Arabin for nearly fifteen years.'

‘Her father was a bit of a blackguard?'

‘None of the words we use glibly to describe evil are quite adequate to Shelley Arabin. The man was rotten to the very core. His father – I remember him too – was unscrupulous and violent, but he had a heart. And he had a kind of burning courage. Shelley was as hard and cold as a stone, and he was also a coward. But he had genius – a genius for wickedness. He was beyond all comparison the worst man I have ever known.'