The Red Book Magazine/Volume 44/Number 2/Salute Mr. Lancelot

by Michael Arlen

Illustration: “Hell!” said Valentine quietly. And worse. Much worse! And then he left the room.

 

WHEN “These Charming People” appeared, readers chorused: “Who is Michael Arlen?” And now that he's got readers all excited again with his lively novel “The Green Hat,” even more are asking the same question. Well, Michael Arlen is an Anglo-Armenian, who hovers around London, Deauville, Paris and Venice. He lives, breathes and has his being with “smart” folk. And he writes about 'em in a fashion all his own. Here is the first of his new group of stories.

Salute

Mr. Lancelot

By
Michael Arlen

MY friend Valentine Chambers and his young wife lived in a very small house, in fact in the only small house, in Charles Street, which is an agreeable street leading at the one end into Berkeley Square and at the other, up a narrow incline, to the Red Lion Inn. But that is by the way. What is not by the way is that on a certain evening not long ago—thus the tale begins—Valentine and Valerest were seated at dinner in their very small house. Valerest was the name of Valentine's wife, and she was a darling. A pretty maid waited on them. They had no manservant, for Valerest said it looked so silly to entertain a butler in such a very small house, and Valentine said it looked even sillier when you couldn't afford it; and they were both right.

There they sat, you understand, over dinner. And they were silent. That is the tale, as you can see at a glance. Some tales are like that, plain and obvious: wherein the attention of the reader must be engaged by the wit, the dash, the brilliance, of the narrator, rather than by the matter of the tale. This, for instance, is a tale about children. Valentine and Valerest were-silent! Oh, why? Oh, dear! Oh, well!

It was Valerest's fault, the whole thing. That must have been why, as the pretty maid left them to themselves, she said bitterly: “I really don't see why you are so sulky this evening.”

Sulky! To be moved by a profound, sorrowful anger—and to be called sulky! What a petty thing one word can make of martyrdom! But Valentine did not say that. Instead, he made a muttering noise from which, only to the most attentive ears, emerged the four words:-“I-am-not sulky.”

A situation was thus created. Nor did the situation lessen with the silence, whereas the silence decidedly deepened with the situation. Such, the attentive reader must shrewdly suspect, could be no ordinary silence. It was not, but rather, one of those silences that have been coming to a head through months of back-chat, one of those silences that, once embarked on, you couldn't play the fool with. So what did Valerest do? Nothing. But what did Valerest say?

“Well,” said Valerest brightly, “sour rugged features are arranged in a very convincing disguise of gayety, I must say.” That is what Valerest said—brightly.

At that moment Valentine appeared to be engaged in spearing a boiled cherry, which formed part of a fruit salad. It would not appear, therefore, that, were the fruit salad never so notable, Valentine was engaged on anything very important. Indeed, there will be those to say that Valentine's attention might well have been diverted to something more “worth-while” (an American phrase meaning money) than even the most notable fruit salad. They will, however, be wrong. There is a time in everyone's life when a fruit salad can be of such moment that everything else must, for that time, go by the board: nor need a fruit salad be steeped in rum, kirsch or liqueur to acquire such urgency in the eyes of a sensitive man.

The above digression goes to prove nothing if not that the tale must be held up for at least another paragraph while inquiry is made into the fruit salad of Valentine Chambers.

Not for worlds would he have admitted it, but ever since he was so high, Valentine would always eat a fruit salad according to certain laws of precedence. He liked the chunks of pineapple best; so he kept the chunks of pineapple till the last. Strawberries he liked next best, if they weren't too sloppy; so they came one but last. As for grapes in a fruit salad, Valentine thought it was no fit place for them, and ignored them. After strawberries, he was partial to cherries. And first of all he would demolish the inevitable bits of banana.

It will therefore be seen that, as Valentine was then only at the beginning of the cherry stratum, his fruit salad future was one of exceptional promise. But it was not to be. Even as Valerest spoke,—brightly—he couldn't help but cast one furtive look at the chunks of pineapple. Nor were the strawberries sloppy. But queer depths were moving in him that evening, and Valerest had goaded him beyond the limit. From the chunks of pineapple he looked across the table at his wife, and Valerest saw that his blue eyes were dark, and she was afraid, and maybe she giggled. Valerest, oh, Valerest!

“Hell!” said Valentine quietly—very quietly. “Oh, hell!”

And worse. Much worse!

And then he left the room. And then he left the house. And then the house was very still.

Valerest, sitting very straight in her chair, heard the front door slam She listened. Through the open window behind her came the sound of manly footsteps marching away down Charles Street. She listened. Away the footsteps marched, away Then a taxi-brake screamed, and the incident of the manly footsteps was closed forever.

She pretended it was a good riddance and plunged into Valentine's fruit salad as well as her own; but it nearly choked her. That, anyhow, was how she explained the state of her eyes when the pretty maid reëntered.

Illustration: Mr. Lancelot said sharply: “Here, that brandy is too good to swim in. If you want to get drunk, I'll ring for whisky.

“This pineapple,” said Valerest haughtily, “is bitter.”

The pretty maid said: “Yes, madam.” But the way she said “Yes, madam,” impelled Valerest to say lamely: “Well, try it yourself, then.”

Thus, in the end, it was the pretty maid who inherited Valentine's chunks of pineapple. Life, as Mr. Winston Churchill said to the little boy at Wembley who pushed him off his seat on the roundabouts, is full of queer developments.

THE while, Valentine was walking. But when he had been walking for some time, he realized that he was achieving the impossible in combining an excess of motive power with an economy of progress, for he found himself walking in a direction exactly opposed to that in which his destination lay. A taxi, however, that narrowly avoided mangling his thoughtful person, caused in him a reaction against walking, which is inaccurately said to clear the head; and presently he stood before a house in Cadogan Gardens. The houses in Cadogan Gardens wear a gentle but dolorous air, and Valentine grew more depressed than ever.

Now, years before, his guardian had said: “There may come a time, Valentine, when something happens to you about which you will think it impossible for anyone to advise you. But you may be wrong in thinking that. Try me then, if you care to.”

Valentine's parents had died when he was very young, in one of those marvelously complete accidents arranged by any competent story-teller when he simply must at one blow deprive a child of a mother's love and a father's care. Valentine's parents had, however, protested against their fate, and had died at two blows—at least, his mother had lived long enough after the accident to appoint Mr. Lancelot her boy's sole guardian and executor.

As Mr. Lancelot, quite apart from his regard for Valentine's parents, was wealthy, a widower and childless, it can readily be understood that he eagerly accepted the trust, although when it is said that “he accepted the trust” it is not to be implied that he was in any way tiresome about his guardianship or tried to take a “father's place” with the boy. Mr. Lancelot, like so many child-less men, knew all about his place with any boy; his theory was that a man and a boy should be reasonable men the one with the other; and his conviction was that the ordinary damfool relation between parents and children had gotten the world into more trouble than anything else in history since the apple misunderstanding. Exception can, however, be taken to that generalization of Mr. Lancelot's on the ground that we are all of us miserable sinners.

On this evening, twenty-four years after he had first entered the gentle but dolorous-looking house in Cadogan Gardens, Valentine stood quite a while before the door and wondered how he was to put It. It, you understand, was very difficult to put. A disagreement between a man and his wife remains indissolubly a disagreement between a man and his wife, and only a man or his wife may solve the same. Indeed, Valentine had already solved It. He detested compromise. A divorce was, undoubtedly, indicated. Undoubtedly! So undoubtedly, indeed, that Valentine would not have dreamed of putting It to Mr. Lancelot at all, had he not thought himself bound in honor to ask his guardian's advice “when something happens to you about which you will think it impossible for anyone to advise you.”

MR. LANCELOT was cracking a nut. He said gloomily: “Hullo, Valentine! Did you ring up to say you were coming round? I didn't get the message.”

“I came,” said Valentine, “on an Impulse.”

Mr. Lancelot said: “I see. Well, sit down, sit down! I don't want you towering over me while I am trying to digest my food. Or is it one of those dratted Impulses you have to stand up to?”

Valentine. said: “If you really want to know, I don't care if I never sit down again. But I will, if only to show how well you've brought me up.”

“Now, I don't want any cheek,” said Mr. Lancelot somberly.

“Cheek!” said Valentine, and he laughed, and the way he laughed caused Mr. Lancelot to look sharply up at him. “Cheek! If you knew as much about cheek as I do, sir, you would think I was talking like a courtier.”

“Oh, sit down, sit down!” said Mr. Lancelot.

Mr. Lancelot was at the end of his dinner, when he would sit awhile at the table and stare with conscious absent-mindedness into space, after the manner of any English gentleman who is partial to a drop of old brandy after his meals. Mr. Lancelot's was an Old-World palate, and he enjoyed above all things a drop of old brandy.

The dining-room was large, austere, dim. From where Valentine sat at the oval polished table, in the light of the four candles which played in shadows about his guardian's thin, lined face, the severe appointments of the room were as though seen through a dark mist. Mr. Lancelot was not only a connoisseur of polite stimulants, but was known to many dealers as a formidable collector of Meryon's etchings: and the somber fancies of the young Frenchman's genius peered faintly at Valentine from the dim walls, as if they might be old mocking friends uncertain of recognition.

Mr. Lancelot said gloomily: “Port, Valentine? Or would you prefer sherry?”

“Brandy,” said Valentine.

“Drat the boy!” said Mr. Lancelot. “Turner! Where are you, man? Oh, here you are. Give the boy some brandy.”

Turner, a vague, ancient shape in the dimness of the room, emerged from the dimness and to the dimness returned. Turner was very old. Mr. Lancelot said: “Go away, Turner. We don't want you. The brandy, Valentine, is at your right elbow.”

“Thank you,” said Valentine.

“May I point out, however, that brandy is taken more comfortably from a glass than from the polished surface on which you are spilling it? Thank you.”

“Depends,” said Valentine, “on the brandy.”

Mr. Lancelot said sharply: “That is very fine brandy.”

Valentine said: “Good!”

VALENTINE at last made an end to the muttering noises with which he had tried to put before his guardian the state of acute disagreement that existed between himself and Valerest. Mr. Lancelot finished his brandy, rose from the table, and thoughtfully took a turn or two about the room.

“Well?” said Valentine.

Mr. Lancelot said: “I can tell you a much better story than that.”

Valentine flushed. “I didn't tell you about this, sir, so that you should make a guy of me.”

Mr. Lancelot said gloomily: “Keep your hair on. When I said that I could tell you a much better story than. yours, I meant that my story is complete, whereas yours, you will agree, is as yet far from complete.”

Valentine muttered something about his being quite complete enough for him, but Mr. Lancelot by way of reply only said sharply: “Here, no more of that brandy! That brandy is too good you swim in. But if you want to get drunk, I'll ring for some whisky.”

“I don't want to get drunk,” snapped Valentine.

“Good boy!” said Mr. Lancelot vaguely, and continued pacing up and down the dim, long room, the while Valentine sat still and thought of his past life and found it rotten.

Suddenly Mr. Lancelot said, in that irritatingly exact way of his which was never quite exact: “You, Valentine, are twenty-nine years old. Valerest is twenty-two—”

“Four,” said Valentine.

“Well, try not to interrupt. And you have been married just over three years. You, Valentine, want a child. Valerest does not want a child just yet. Your argument is a sound one—that if parents wait too long before their children are born, by the time the children grow up, the parents will be too old to share any of their interests and pleasures—”

“That's right,” said Valentine sourly. “Valerest and I will a pair of old dodderers by the time they're of age.”

“Exactly,” agreed Mr. Lancelot.” “A very sound argument. Whereas Valerest—”

Valentine snapped: “She doesn't even trouble to argue. She just sits and grins!”

“Exactly. She is much too deeply in the wrong to argue. And I dare say that the way you put your arguments gives her plenty to grin about.”

Valentine said: “My God, I try to be reasonable!”

“Listen,” said Mr. Lancelot in his tired way; and then he told Valentine that he had been married twice.

Valentine was amazed. He had not known that.

Mr. Lancelot said: “I was very young when I married my first wife—even younger than you, although I knew a good brandy from a bad one. And I was very much in love—as, if you will not think an old man too ridiculous, I am still. Of course, she is dead now.”

Valentine was scarcely listening. He had still to get over his surprise that his guardian had been married twice. There are, you understand, some men who look as though they simply could not have been married twice: they look as though one marriage would be, or had been, a very considerable feat for them. Mr. Lancelot was very definitely like that: he looked, if you like, a widower, but decidedly not like a widower multiplied by two.

Illustration: Valentine said violently: “I love you, dearest.” Valerest whispered: “Oh, Valentine, I rather love you, too.”

Mr. Lancelot was saying, from a dim, distant corner of the room: “In those days I was a very serious young man. I took love and marriage very seriously. And when we had been married a couple of years, I discovered in myself a vehement desire to be a father—a natural enough desire in a very serious young man. My wife, however, was younger than I: she loved life, the life of the country and the town, of the day and of the night, of games and dances. You see what I mean?”

Valentine snapped: “Don't I! Just like Valerest.”

“Exactly. At first,” said Mr. Lancelot, and his face as he slowly paced up and down the dim room would every now and then be quite lost in the shadows, “at first, I indulged her. To tell you the truth, I was very proud of her service at tennis, her handicap at golf. But there are limits.”

“There are,” said Valentine. “Valerest is already in training for Wimbledon next year, and I hope a tennis ball gets up and chokes her. And she's got to six at golf. Pretty good for a kid who looks as though she hadn't enough muscle to pull a bunch of cold asparagus through a moldy saxophone. But that's right about there being limits. There are limits! And I've reached them.”

“Exactly,” agreed Mr. Lancelot's dim voice from the distance of the room. “I had reached them too, Valentine. And, I am afraid, I grew to be rather unpleasant in the home—as you probably are with Valerest. One's manner, you know, isn't sometimes the less unpleasant for being in the right.”

Valentine said: “I don't know about pleasant or unpleasant. But a fellow must stick to his guns.”

“Ah, those guns! How many lives those guns have destroyed! Well, Valentine, I too stuck to my guns. Like you, I thought they were good guns. My young wife and I grew to disagree quite violently about her preference for being out-and-about to rearing my children, until one day, after a more than usually fierce and childish argument, she left my house—this house, Valentine—and never came back.”

From the dim distance Mr. Lancelot was looking thoughtfully at Valentine. But Valentine's eyes were engaged elsewhere: he was seeing a picture of Valerest stamping out of his house, never to return. It was, Valentine saw, quite conceivable. He could see it happening. It was just the sort of thing Valerest might do—stamp out of the house and never come back. And the picture grew clearer before Valentine's eyes, and he remained silent for a time, staring the picture out.

“Well,” he said at last, “that's the sort of thing that happens. It's got to happen.”

Mr. Lancelot said: “Exactly.” His face was in the shadow. Valentine, fiddling with a cigarette, still staring at the picture in his mind, went on:

“I mean, it's inevitable, isn't it? A man can't go on forever living in the same house with a woman who laughs at the—the—well, you know what I mean—at the most sacred things in him. The crash has simply got to come. Got to, that's all.”

Mr. Lancelot said gloomily: “Of course, there's love.”

Valentine thought profoundly about that. There was an immense silence.

“No,” snapped Valentine. “That's just where you are wrong, sir. There was love. Certainly. But they kill it. They just kill love. I mean, I know what I'm talking about. I've thought about this a lot lately. Valerest has just gone out of her way to kill my love.”

Mr. Lancelot said dimly: “So I see. And, mind you, I am inclined to agree with you. It is quite true that some women just kill love.”

“Mugs!” snapped Valentine. “That's what they are—mugs. There's something to be said for that ghastly tag: 'Take them young, treat them rough and tell them nothing.'”

Mr. Lancelot went on: “Exactly. In the same way, I put my first wife out of my mind. I stuck firmly to those guns we have already referred to. A year or so went by. Then her parents approached me and suggested that we should come to some agreement, either to live together once more or to arrange a divorce on the usual lines. They were good people. Their argument was that we were both too young to go on wasting our lives in this shilly-shally way.

“By this time, of course, the matter of my quarrel with my wife had faded into nothing: there remained the enormous fact that we had quarreled, and the tremendous fact that, since neither of us had tried to make the quarrel up, our love must obviously be dead.

“I referred her parents to her, saying I would do as she wished. She sent them back to me, saying she was quite indifferent. A divorce was then arranged by our lawyers; and I was divorced for failing to return to my wife on her petition for restitution of conjugal rights. The usual rubbish.

“To be brief, it was not long before I married again. But now I was older, wiser. I had tasted passion; I had loved—to find that love was yet another among the damnable vanities that are perishable.

“Valentine, I married my second wife with an eye to the mother of my children. I married sensibly. As you know, I have a considerable property; and I continued to desire, above all things, an heir to my name and a companion for my middle years. That I have a companion now in you—and in Valerest—is due to the infinite grace of God: that I have not an heir to carry on my name is due to my own folly.

“My second wife was of that 'mother' type of woman whom it is the fashion of our day to belittle as 'matronly,' but from whose good blood and fine quality is forged all that is best in great peoples. The difference between my affection for her and my passion for my first wife is not to be described in words: yet when she died in giving birth to a dead child, you will easily understand how I was grieved almost beyond endurance—not only at the shattering of my hopes, but at the loss of a gracious lady and a dear companion.

“I was at a South Coast resort the summer after my wife's death. One morning on the sands I struck up a great friendship with a jolly little boy of three, while his nurse was gossiping with some of her friends. Our friendship grew with each fine morning; and the nurse learned to appreciate my approach as a relief for a time from her duties.

“You will already have seen, Valentine, the direction of my tale: the irony of my life must already be clear to you: nor can you have failed to see the pit of vain hopes that sometimes awaits those who 'stick to their guns.' To be brief, as my young friend and I sat talking one morning, or as he talked and I played with handfuls of sand, thinking how gladly I had called him my son, he leaped up with a scream of joy, and presented me to his father and mother.

“My first wife had grown into a calm and beautiful woman. Yet even her poise could not quite withstand the surprise of our sudden meeting; and it was her husband who broke the tension, and won my deepest regard forever, by taking my hand. From that moment, Valentine, began for me, and I think for them both, and certainly for the boy, as rare and sweet a friendship as, I dare to say, is possible in this world.

“People like ourselves, Valentine, must, for decency, conform to certain laws of conduct. The love that my first wife and I rediscovered for each other was not, within our secret hearts, in our power to control; yet it did not need even a word or a sign from either of us to tell the other that our love must never, no matter in what solitudes we might meet, be expressed. Her husband was a good man, and had always understood that our divorce had not been due to any uncleanliness or cruelty, but to what is called, I think, incompatibility of temperament. So until she died, soon after, the three of us were devoted friends and constant companions.

“And that,” said Mr. Lancelot from the shadows, “is all my story. More or less!”

VALENTINE sat very still. Mr. Lancelot paced up and down. Silence walked with him.

Valentine muttered: “I'm sorry. It's a dreadful story. My God, yes. May I have some more brandy, please?”

“It's not,” snapped Mr. Lancelot, “a dreadful story. It is a beautiful story. Yes, certainly.”

Valentine said: “Well, call it beautiful if you like. But I should hate it to happen to me.”

“There are,” said Mr. Lancelot, “consolations.”

Mr. Lancelot paced up and down.

“Consolations,” repeated Mr. Lancelot.

Valentine said: “Oh, certainly. I suppose there always are consolations. All the same, I should hate to be done out of my son like that; for that's what it comes to.”

Mr. Lancelot was in a distant corner of the room, his face a shadow among shadows. He said: “Exactly. That is why, Valentine Chambers, I said there were consolations. My wife's second husband was Lawrence Chambers.”

Valentine said: “Oh!” Mr. Lancelot touched him on the shoulder. Valentine said: “Good Lord! I might have been your son!”

“You might,” said Mr. Lancelot. “But it has come to almost the same thing in the end, hasn't it? Except, perhaps, that I have not a father's right to advise you.”

Valentine said violently: “By God, sir, you've got every right in the world to advise me. Considering what you've done for me all my life!”

“Then,” said Mr. Lancelot, “don't be an ass.”

Valentine saw Valerest's mocking eyes, heard Valerest's mocking laugh. He muttered: “But, look here, Valerest will just think I've given—”

“She will grow,” said Mr. Lancelot. He was tired. “And, Valentine, she has more right to be an ass than you have. Remember that. They put up with a lot of pain, women; and there's no real reason why they shouldn't have some fun first.”

THIS is a very short chapter. It deals with a man and his wife in a bedroom. Exception can, life being what it is, be taken to the possibilities of such a situation. That is why this is a very short chapter.

The state of Valentine's mind as he ascended the stairway of the small house in Charles Street is best described by the word “pale.” He felt pale. What made him feel pale was terror, just common-or-garden terror. It was, you understand, past one o'clock in the morning; he had thundered out of the house at about half-past eight: and the house was now as still as a cemetery. The conclusion, to Valentine, was obvious: the house was as still as a cemetery of love. He saw Valerest waiting, waiting, waiting for him to return; he heard the clock striking ten, eleven, midnight; then he saw Valerest flush with a profound temper, hastily pack a few things, and—stamp out of the house, never to return!

Within the bedroom all was dark, silent—very dark, very silent. Valentine stood just within the doorway, listening very intently. He could not hear Valerest breathing. There was no Valerest to hear.

“Oh, God!” said Valentine.

“Oh, damn!” piped Valerest from the darkness. “What do you want to wake me for?”

“Valerest, thank heavens you're here! I got such a shock.”

“Here? Shock?” In the light, Valerest stared up at him with sleepy bewilderment. Her curly hair was all over the place. Valentine made it worse by running his fingers through it.

“Valentine,” she said severely, “what are you talking about? Why shouldn't I be here? Why did you get a shock?”

Valentine said violently: “I love you, Valerest.”

It was a long way for Valerest's arm to go to reach Valentine's face as he stood above the bed; but it did, and it pulled, and she whispered: “Come here, Valentine. Oh, Valentine, I rather love you, too.”

Now, there are writers who would think nothing of ending this chapter with a row of dots, viz: .... The author of this work, however, while yielding to no one in his admiration of a dexterous use of dots, does not think that they can be considered, as dots, to be a fit expression of the possibilities of love. Indeed, he goes so far as to think that the use of dots in love is common, that their inevitable use by writers when they have come to the stuff of their stories has become a public nuisance, and that the practice should be discouraged as dishonest, since what it really comes to is selling a dud to readers just when they are expecting something to happen. It is much better, after all, to say nothing. The author of this work, for instance, says nothing at all about Valentine and Valerest after Valerest had told Valentine that she rather loved him. He just leaves them. It is, after all, the decent thing to do. And it is, after all, Mr. Lancelot who has the old brandy.

AS Valentine left the house in Cadogan Gardens, Turner entered in on Mr. Lancelot. Very old was Turner. He drooped across the room.

“Shall I shut up now, sir?”

Mr. Lancelot said: “Yes, do. But just give me a drop of that brandy first, will you. That's very fine brandy, that is.”

“Yes sir.”

“How long have you been with me, Turner?”

“Been with you, sir?” Turner stared at his master in bewilderment. Very old, Turner was. “Why, I was with your father, sir! I've known you ever since you was born.”

“Ah! But did you ever know, Turner, that I had been married twice? And that my first wife, Turner, had divorced me?”

Turner lost patience. He was very old; the hour was very late. He said severely: “I never seen you like this before, sir. Not all these years. I don't know what you are talking about, that I don't. You married twice! Once was enough for you, sir, if you will permit an old man the liberty. And you divorced! I never heard of such a thing! I'd like to see the woman fit to divorce a Lancelot, that I would! I never heard of such a thing.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Lancelot. “Well, have it your own way, Turner. But it made such a thundering good story that I was near believing it myself. All in a good cause, Turner: to teach that boy a thing or two. Like to see children happy, Turner. And his mother wont mind, not she. A good, sensible woman, she was, if on the plain side. And, d'you remember, Turner, she always wanted a drop of romance in her life: well, she's got it now, poor dear. And just give me another drop of that brandy, will you. That's very fine brandy, that is.”

“The bottle,” said Turner bitterly, “is empty.”

“Drat that boy!” said Mr. Lancelot.