Michael Arlen

“ Maximilian, I have waited to love you as I love you now, ever since I married you four years ago. But you would never let me. Be honest, sweet—would you ever let me love you? You were always the world's spoiled darling, the brilliant and dashing and wealthy Duke of Mall—and I your American wife! Darling, what a lot of trouble you give those who love you! ”

“ For the sake of your own beauty, Leonora, may I beg you to leave your nose, much as I admire it, out of my supposed infidelities?”
The Duchess remarked that she could quite well understand why women pursued him with their welcome attentions. He was very rich. He was very handsome. He was charming.
The Duke thanked her.
“But,” said the Duchess.
“Quite,” said the Duke. “Oh, quite!”
“But,” 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.” ”

“ And when they grow up and marry, they use the sharpest pieces of those broken dreams to beat their husbands with. Oh, I know! Every husband in the world is held responsible for the accidents that befall the dreams of his wife's girlhood! Oh, I know! I've been, Miss Lamb dear, most utterly married.”
“I'm growing afraid of you, Duke. You've a cruel wise tongue!”
“Ava, I wouldn't have you think I'm abusing your sister to you. But she certainly was born to be a good man's wife, and she's certainly never let me forget why she has failed to live up to the promise of her birth.” ”

“ Ha-ha!”
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace.”
“Oomberoofem, Tupper! But never mind. I feel very gay this evening. I have just had an idea. Now, Tupper, let me hear no more of this high-handed talk about turning your back on Nice.”
“But, Your Grace, we are making for Naples!”
“Your obsession for Naples seems to me singularly out of place on a windy evening. And I think you might consider me a little, even though I am on my own yacht. I detest, I deplore Naples. This sea, moreover, is decidedly too moderate for me. Put back to Nice, Captain Tupper. I am for Paris.” ”

“ I have liked so many women, Ava, but loved not one except your sister and her I loved as a child might love a daisy until she sees a rose. But even a fool may come to know the depths of his folly, and I who know so much of desire, dearly beloved, know that I have never loved until this moment. ”

“ But in our generation we have progressed so far in the liberal arts that, should a man of letters or science so mask himself with the impertinence of fashion as to be remarked at Ascot with a lady of quality and a waistcoat which, with the most deplorable lack of faith in the dignity of letters, has been cut to fit his person, he shall at once be convicted by all really intelligent people of a lack of feeling for all that is genuine in art and literature. We may well ask, is that reasonable, is that just? But let us, instead of grumbling, proceed. The Duke of Mall waits on our pleasure. ”

“ And the young Duke smiled a happy smile. “You have brought me this wire at just the right moment. I can't, Martin, thank you enough. Meanwhile, old friend, go back and pack. Everything! We are for Mall tonight. Paris is no place for an Englishman to die in. For pity's sake, Martin, don't look so gaga—but go!”
Miss Lamb's maid did not attempt to conceal her surprise at the Duke's quick reappearance at the door of the suite; but the young man's face was so strangely set that she had not the heart to deny him sight of her mistress. ”

“ But she said: “No, no! One can always dance—there are so many men with whom one can only dance, for what have they to talk about? Duke, I did love your legend of the christening of Paris! Did you make it up?”
Now, these words had chanced to cast a gloom about the young Duke, and he had said: “But there is another legend, a more private legend. It tells, Ava Lamb, of the house of Mall, how the golden cock on the weathervane of St. James' tower shall crow thrice at the birth of the greatest of the dukes of Mall. ”

“ Still you wont speak? Ava, I did not think you so ungenerous when in my vanity I first fell under your gentle enchantment. Dear, your silence is destroying all of me but my love. Wont you give me even so much as a queen will give a beggar, that had he been another man in another world he might have kissed her hand?”
Now twilight had lit all the tapers of the night, and in the deep silence the maid whispered to his ear: “Your Grace, she is asleep.”
THE DUKE told his chauffeur outside Miss Lamb's hotel that he would not need him again that evening—he would walk. ”

“ But why, as Ava Lamb sensibly protested, why on earth should there be, or need there be, or could there be, since Leonora and she had been twins as punctually to the minute as was possible? A nearer view, however, discovered a deal of difference between the sisters in those small gestures of voice, habits of expression, capacity for attention and the like which, so the Duke warmly said, contribute far more than actual looks to mark the difference between one-woman and another. ”

“ Amp had both great wealth and that which is even more conducive than great wealth to success in society, that entire lack of breeding and abundance of skin which will not take no for an answer, but leaps at yes as an offer of intimate friendship, by the time the great Duke arrived in Paris, she was on the crest of the wave and thought nothing of entertaining six minor royalties at the same time in her mansion off the Champs Elysées. ”

“ The Duke waved a hand skyward, and he smiled, and he yawned, and he said: “Am I God, to stop you talking! But maybe it is not necessary for me to add that I wish I were, if only for that purpose.”
The Duchess said: “However, I will not be provoked. It is too hot. I will content myself merely with remarking that in considered opinion the ancient Dukedom of Mall at present graces one with the manners of a boor and the habits of a stableboy.”
“Leonora, you go too far!” ”

“ Now, I want to tell you,” pursued the Duchess, “that you are a most extraordinary man. In public, for instance, you are all that is charming; and many who know of our private disagreements can't but think the fault is mine, since in public you are so very right, so fine, and seem never for a moment deficient in the manners, graces and consideration proper to a great gentleman.” ”

“ The Duke smiled, and maybe he never was so handsome nor so gay as at that moment.
The maid said: “My mistress still sleeps. It is when she is happy that she sleeps.”
“Happy? Does it make a woman happy, then, to see a man destroyed by love?”
“It is more comfortable, Your Grace, to be loved than to love. ”

“ And he looked upon the sea and found it odd, and he looked upon the land and did not find it at all
“Ho!” said the Duke. “Where is the land, the land of France? Captain Tupper!” he called.
“Captain Tupper,” he said, “what have you done with France? I do not see it anywhere. Our French allies will be exceedingly annoyed when they hear we have mislaid them. And do my eyes deceive me, or is that a wave making for us over there?”
“It is blowing moderate from the southeast, Your Grace.”
“Moderate, upon my word! I have always said there is too much moderation and compromise in modern life. ”

“ No one, on the other hand, will deny that the achievements of sociologists among the poor, are as nothing compared with those of students of hospitality who, poor and unrewarded though they are, have of late years done yoeman work in alleviating the conditions prevailing among the rich in Mayfair. It is to the generous spade-work of men such as these that American hostesses in Europe owe the betterment of their lot, and it is by the support of their merciful hands that ladies burdened with great wealth are prevented from sinking down in the rarefied atmosphere to which they have been called. ”

“ And even the sea-bird feared to mock again, and Leonora Mall cried: “I will forgive you all things but your farewell, Duke Maximilian. The very birds are appalled to see chivalry so low in a man that he will take his lady's adieu lying down. ”

“ Therefore the young prince fell weeping with mortification for that his city must remain nameless just because it was the fairest city in the world, when an ancient man rose up in the assembly and said: 'This here is not the fairest city in the world. The magic city of Is in the land of Brittany has got it beat by a long chalk. I have spoken.' He never had a chance to again, yet presently it was proved that not the fairest city in the world could be fairer than Is in Brittany; and so the prince made the best of a bad job and called his city the Equal to Is, which is Par-Is, which is Paris. ”

“ Her maid, hatted and veiled for traveling, whispered to her ear:
“Your Grace, he is asleep.”
IT is a sorry business to inquire into what men think when we are every day only too uncomfortably confronted with what they do. Moreover the science of psychology—for that is what we are talking about—is as yet but a demoiseile among the sciences; and that writer carries the least conviction who tries to wind his tale about her immature coils. Therefore we will not inquire into the young Duke's thoughts, but merely relate his actions ”

“ The most superficial survey of history will discover that the condescension of a gentleman of the haut ton was once regarded as almost an essential of a poet's success; while the craftsman, was he ever so cunning and exquisite, must rely for his bread and his fame on the caprice of the young men of the mode, who were, it is to be presumed, not the less generous because they were invariably in debt, and had not the less good taste because they were nearly always drunk. ”

“ We are aware of the present vogue of gossip in the journalism of the day, and that no estimate of a great man's career is now considered entertaining without the vulgar spice of inquiry into his private life. ”

“ But it is the austere part of the historian to deal only in facts. The facts are, roughly speaking, as follows.
South of the lands of the old troubadours, between the heights of the southern Alps and the languor of the Mediterranean, lies the pretty town of Cannes. The year we tell of was in its first youth The flower and chivalry of England and America were promenading in the sunlight of the pretty town or commenting at their ease on the brilliant tourneys of tennis and polo. ”

“ Moreover, these are troubled times for the plain man; and there can be no such adequate protection for the man in the street as a working knowledge of the more important phenomena of our time, such as horse-racing, football, bolshevism, a reasonable caution when crossing the streets, the habits of the house-fly and the domestic economy of dukes. ”

“ And that the benefits of this study, at least to novelists, are not mean, was proved beyond all doubt only the other day, when perhaps the wealthiest of contemporary writers increased his fortune by writing a tale about a miser in a slum. ”