Michael Arlen

“ She: “Oh, but I can match you one vulgar Restoration gallant against another!
“‘Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts and broken vows;
If I by miracle can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
’Tis all that Heaven allows.’”
He sighed: “How I loved you, Leonora! As I had never loved anyone before, as I will never love anyone again!”
“How I loved you, Maximilian! But now!” And she said: “A legal separation is a silly quibble. Besides, you might want to marry again. Or I might.”
“Might, Leonora? But you will, must, can’t help but! With your beauty, youth, wealth.” ”

“ She walked in the broken shadows of the Park railings. A young man on a black horse cantered by, looking as though he had bought the world for tuppence and wanted his money back. Now and then an omnibus rolled by, rolled on, and on, and on, the red-and-white monster born of man’s divine gift for making his life intolerable. A young lady with a bright red hat in a little silver car tore by like a jewel in a hurry. Huge limousines sped, sped swiftly by, like shining insects whispering to Miss Wych of a grander world than the world of Miss Wych. ”

“ Paris, Paris! Oh, isn’t that a lovely name for a town built by men to have!”
And as, over his coffee the next morning, the young Duke reflected on yesternight, he found himself enchanted by a gay memory. Oh, to be enchanted again, to be thrilled, to be exalted—and all, honest to God, by companionship! What fun there was in life when women didn’t grow so confoundedly familiar with one’s habits. To be with Ava Lamb was to renew all the joy he’d once had of loving his wife, to renew it and to increase it, for wasn’t he now older and wiser, wasn’t he now wise enough to appreciate enchantment? ”

“ You will love your wife, after your fashion. You will be jealous of her, after your fashion. And you will forget to pay me the sum of nineteen shillings and eleven pence which you owe me. For that reason, as also because all things must have an end, whether it is the might of Empires or the beneficial effects of alcohol—even, Justinian Pant, as the first news of your high destiny comes to you in Piccadilly Circus, so the first knell of your awful doom will be cried by a bird of wise omen that will perch on the left wing of the Eros on the fountain over yonder. ”

“ Look, Charles! Isn’t it beautiful! Charles, let’s walk and walk and walk!”
“Just look at those asses behind!” cried Julian Raphael, shouting with laughter. But now the people at the head of St. James’s Street were very faint, the clear golden air of the sun triumphant was falling between Sir Charles’s eyes and the people grouped round the prostrate figure that looked oddly like a dingy travesty of himself.
“If they only knew,” said Manana gravely, “that living is worth while just because one has to die! Come on, Charles, let’s walk!” ”

“ They would come suddenly, out of the night of ordinary marriage, they would come like angels with silent wings. And Lamoir would be the voice of the angel with silent wings, and Lamoir in those rarest moments would be the very body and soul of love. But Hugh couldn’t woo those moments.{269} Perhaps no man ever can. It may be, Hugh said, that there’s a frontier to any woman’s love for any man, and beyond that frontier is the unknowable darkness and unknowable light, and from that secret place can leap a passion that no man in the world is worthy to woo. It just comes or it doesn’t come. ”

“ Valerest said: “Any man who does not like dogs is no fit mate for a woman.”
Valentine thought as above.{37}
“I really don’t see,” said Valerest bitterly, “why you are so sulky this evening.”
Sulky! Ye gods and little fishes, to be moved by a profound and sorrowful anger—and to be called ‘sulky’! O God of words and phrases, O Arbiter of tempers and distempers, to sit in silent dignity and resignation—and to be called ‘sulky’! Verily, what a petty thing one word can make of martyrdom! Wherefore Valentine raised his voice and said: “I am not sulky.”
“Well,” said Valerest, “you needn’t shout.” ”

“ The clock at the Park Gates stood at ten minutes to eight o’clock; and on this strange enchanted evening, said Miss Wych, she would indulge in the extravagance of a taxicab. The lean young man stood by the door and said good-bye, and he said also: “If that George man isn’t there, I shall know. Or if that George man isn’t worthy of your loyalty, I shall know. And I will come to you again.”
“If!” sighed Miss Wych. “If! If the world was a garden, and we were butterflies! If the world was a garden, and God was kind to lovers! ”

“ Armenians are rather difficult, my dear Captain Charity, but she is charming. And this is Shelmerdene, who has no surname because she has no surname, but who is becoming the heroine of all the ladies in all the suburbs because a misguided young man once put her into a book. Ah, and Fay! My dear Captain Charity, this is Lady Fay Paradise, the most beautiful woman in England. She never eats with her meals and never uses the same lover twice. Do you, darling? Whereas here is Lady Amelia Peep, who is as yet unmarried but she writes poetry about birds and her father wants to be made a Duke. ”

“ All the people in the world who are not madly in love, Miss Wych dear, are in some degree insane, for it is insane not to have a proper perspective of life, and a proper perspective of life is to be quite certain that the world is well lost for the love of one person. It is insane to work from grubby birth{106} to grubby death with never an attempt to chain a star, with never a raid on enchantment, with never a try to kiss a fairy or to live in a dream. Dear, only dreams make life real, all of life that is not touched and troubled by our dreams is not real, does not exist. ”

“ Dear God, the lies we can tell ourselves! If I held her by force from going back to Julian Raphael it would not have been so much for her own good as for mine. I hated her going, I wanted her. But she must do as she thought right. Everyone must always, in spite of everything. I’m glad I’ve never married, Hilary, I would have made a mess of it just by always seeing my wife’s point of view.
I saw Manana downstairs to the door. It was raining the deuce, and the difference between twilight and night was about the same as that between a man of colour and a nigger. ”

“ I must inform you, Sir Guy, that when I was born a sunflower looked over a wall in Elm Park Gardens. All the gardeners in the neighbourhood were astounded. No sunflower has ever before looked over a wall in Elm Park Gardens. It could only have meant that I would love—one day. And the day has come, I love.”
Sir Guy said: “You blaspheming poseur!”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Maturin, “for speaking the truth about myself. People are not used to hearing others speak the truth about themselves. It shall not occur again.” ”

“ For, as the man Talbot made an end to his craven whispering, Guy de Travest was seen to be rising in his chair, his eyes as though frozen to some point of the room, his forehead, glistening with those clean drops of sweat that add to the charm of officers of the Household Cavalry and distinguish them from those genteel persons who “perspire.” However....
“The deuce!” whispered de Travest. “Oh, the deuce! Look!”
“Oh!” screamed the Lady Amelia Peep, and, screaming, fainted. ”

“ And, said Dwight-Rankin, even as the door was seen to close, it was also seen how all colour was instantly ravished from Lady Surplice’s face and how she sat in her chair still and cold. But even in death, said Dwight-Rankin, a smile of such happiness lit her face that her many friends, who never could think of her departure from among them but with the deepest regret, found solace in the certainty of the good lady’s contentment in the other 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. ”

“ You do not believe I love you, you do not believe I know how to love, you think me the shallow, vain braggart that I have shown to you in the guise of myself until this moment. But I love you, Ava, more than life. I love you, Ava, with all the youthful love I had for your sister increased a thousandfold by the knowledge I now have of myself: for it is by loving that men come to know themselves, and it is by knowing themselves in all humility that men can love with the depths of their hearts. Ava, I do love you terribly! ”

“ The Duke thanked her.
“However,” said the Duchess.
“Ah, that’s not too good,” sighed the Duke. “I knew there was a catch somewhere.”
“However,” said the Duchess, “the beauty that you most admire in any woman is the beauty of her not being a woman you already know: the only charm of which you never are tired is the charm of novelty.”
“One likes a change,” sighed the Duke. ”

“ I have had no food, for what money I have is in that house, together with the formula for the green carnation; but nothing, not death by exposure nor death by starvation, would induce me to return to the house in Golders Green while it is haunted by that foul presence. Is she a homicidal lunatic or a phantom from hell? I do not know, I am too tired to care. I have told you two gentlemen my story because you seem kind and capable, and I can only pray that I have not wearied you overmuch. ”

“ But it made such a thundering good story that I was near believing it myself. All in a good cause, Fountain: to teach that boy a thing or two. One likes to see children happy, Fountain. And his mother won’t mind, not she. A good sensible woman she was, if on the plain side. And, d’you remember, Fountain, she always wanted a drop of romance in her life? Well, she’s got it now, poor dear. But her son will appreciate it for her, won’t he? And just give me another drop of that brandy, will you? That’s very fine brandy, that is.”
“The bottle,” said Fountain bitterly, “is empty, sir.” ”

“ A coward, and she may not despise him, for girls are not necessarily fools and brave men can make uncommonly dull lovers. A card-sharper, and she may excuse him, for does not God Himself play with loaded dice? But verily, I say unto you, prove that man guilty of a deep disloyalty and at that moment her love will be as distant as your youth, Sir Guy, and as dead as mine; for disloyalty is the only bedfellow love will certainly reject. Will you call your daughter in, Mrs. de Gramercy, and I will tell her a story? Perhaps it will interest you, too.”
“Call her, Eleanour,” said old Sir Guy. ”

“ I think it very silly in a man to go generalising about women, but if I were to start generalising I might say that most abstract conversations between men end nowhere, but you have a feeling that at least something interesting has passed, while with a woman an abstract conversation ends nowhere and you have a feeling that she has only been talking about whatever it was just out of politeness.
I remember that what struck me most about Lamoir at that time was how happy she was, happy and feeling safe in her happiness. That puzzled me then, for I knew she loved Hugh. ”

“ You have too, Hilary. I shouldn’t wonder if that’s not another reason why women find men like us dull. But some of us must be, God knows, in this world. And it was against all law and order that young Mr. Julian Raphael—imagine any man actually using a name like that!—should be loose in the world. Crook was too simple a word for Mr. Raphael. And he was worse for being so devilish handsome. One imagined him with women—with this poor soul of a Manana. Of course, Venice and Napier and the other people at their potty old club knew nothing about either of them. ”

“ His flimsy overcoat flung wide open and ever wider in paroxysms of outraged elegance by the crass wind, and showing an expanse of white shirt-front of that criss-cross piqué kind which is one of the happiest discoveries of this century, and his silk hat rammed over his right eyebrow as though to dare a tornado to embarrass it, he strode up from Hyde Park Corner at a pace which, while not actually leisurely, seemed to be the outward manifestation of an entire absence of interest in time, place, destination, man, God and the devil. ”

“ A shadow walked across the pretty town of Cannes and drove the youth from painted faces.
“And because,” said the young Duchess wistfully, “you are such a baby, I don’t put it beyond you to make love to my sister if you should meet her. She has always been jealous of me, so she would enjoy nothing so much as your making love to her. Promise not to, Max, please, oh, please! She has just come over to Paris, so I read this morning in The New York Herald. Max, promise not to make a fool of me to my own sister!”
“She’s pretty?”
“Pretty? Are words so scarce, sir, that you must use a copper coin? ”

“ Sir Guy said with savage calm: “Come, come, Eleanour, not so dramatic! You will make the man shy. Mr. Maturin,” Sir Guy went on with a perceptible effort, “I cannot stop the girl from marrying, as you know. She came of age to-day, and from to-day has her own fortune. But, man, is there no way in which we can appeal to your—your generosity! I pay you the compliment of thinking that you are not intending to marry Joan primarily for her money. ”

“ Lapwing said: “I was very young when I married my first wife. Even younger than you, although even then I knew a good brandy from a poor 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 listening with only half a mind. He had still to get over his surprise that his guardian had been married twice. There are 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. ”