The Lion and the Unicorn
R >>
Richard Harding Davis >> The Lion and the Unicorn
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional OCR software
donated by Caere Corporation.
THE LION AND THE UNICORN
by RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
IN MEMORY OF MANY HOT DAYS AND SOME HOT CORNERS
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
LT.-COL. ARTHUR H. LEE, R.A.
British Military Attache with the United States Army
Contents
THE LION AND THE UNICORN
ON THE FEVER SHIP
THE MAN WITH ONE TALENT
THE VAGRANT
THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
THE LION AND THE UNICORN
Prentiss had a long lease on the house, and because it stood in
Jermyn Street the upper floors were, as a matter of course,
turned into lodgings for single gentlemen; and because Prentiss
was a Florist to the Queen, he placed a lion and unicorn over his
flowershop, just in front of the middle window on the first
floor. By stretching a little, each of them could see into the
window just beyond him, and could hear all that was said inside;
and such things as they saw and heard during the reign of Captain
Carrington, who moved in at the same time they did! By day the
table in the centre of the room was covered with maps, and the
Captain sat with a box of pins, with different-colored flags
wrapped around them, and amused himself by sticking them in the
maps and measuring the spaces in between, swearing meanwhile to
himself. It was a selfish amusement, but it appeared to be the
Captain's only intellectual pursuit, for at night, the maps were
rolled up, and a green cloth was spread across the table, and
there was much company and popping of soda-bottles, and little
heaps of gold and silver were moved this way and that across the
cloth. The smoke drifted out of the open windows, and the
laughter of the Captain's guests rang out loudly in the empty
street, so that the policeman halted and raised his eyes
reprovingly to the lighted windows, and cabmen drew up beneath
them and lay in wait, dozing on their folded arms, for the
Captain's guests to depart. The Lion and the Unicorn were rather
ashamed of the scandal of it, and they were glad when, one day,
the Captain went away with his tin boxes and gun-cases piled high
on a four-wheeler.
Prentiss stood on the sidewalk and said: "I wish you good luck,
sir." And the Captain said: "I'm coming back a Major,
Prentiss." But he never came back. And one day--the Lion
remembered the day very well, for on that same day the
newsboys ran up and down Jermyn Street shouting out the news of
"a 'orrible disaster" to the British arms. It was then that a
young lady came to the door in a hansom, and Prentiss went out to
meet her and led her upstairs. They heard him unlock the
Captain's door and say, "This is his room, miss," and after he
had gone they watched her standing quite still by the centre
table. She stood there for a very long time looking slowly about
her, and then she took a photograph of the Captain from the frame
on the mantel and slipped it into her pocket, and when she went
out again her veil was down, and she was crying. She must have
given Prentiss as much as a sovereign, for he called her "Your
ladyship," which he never did under a sovereign.
And she drove off, and they never saw her again either, nor could
they hear the address she gave the cabman. But it was somewhere
up St. John's Wood way.
After that the rooms were empty for some months, and the Lion and
the Unicorn were forced to amuse themselves with the beautiful
ladies and smart-looking men who came to Prentiss to buy
flowers and "buttonholes," and the little round baskets of
strawberries, and even the peaches at three shillings each, which
looked so tempting as they lay in the window, wrapped up in
cotton-wool, like jewels of great price.
Then Philip Carroll, the American gentleman, came, and they heard
Prentiss telling him that those rooms had always let for five
guineas a week, which they knew was not true; but they also knew
that in the economy of nations there must always be a higher
price for the rich American, or else why was he given that
strange accent, except to betray him into the hands of the London
shopkeeper, and the London cabby?
The American walked to the window toward the west, which was the
window nearest the Lion, and looked out into the graveyard of St.
James's Church, that stretched between their street and
Piccadilly.
"You're lucky in having a bit of green to look out on," he said
to Prentiss. "I'll take these rooms--at five guineas. That's
more than they're worth, you know, but as I know it, too, your
conscience needn't trouble you."
Then his eyes fell on the Lion, and he nodded to him gravely.
"How do you do?" he said. "I'm coming to live with you for a
little time. I have read about you and your friends over there.
It is a hazard of new fortunes with me, your Majesty, so be kind
to me, and if I win, I will put a new coat of paint on your
shield and gild you all over again."
Prentiss smiled obsequiously at the American's pleasantry, but
the new lodger only stared at him.
"He seemed a social gentleman," said the Unicorn, that night,
when the Lion and he were talking it over. "Now the Captain, the
whole time he was here, never gave us so much as a look. This
one says he has read of us."
"And why not?" growled the Lion. "I hope Prentiss heard what he
said of our needing a new layer of gilt. It's disgraceful. You
can see that Lion over Scarlett's, the butcher, as far as Regent
Street, and Scarlett is only one of Salisbury's creations. He
received his Letters-Patent only two years back. We date from
Palmerston."
The lodger came up the street just at that moment, and stopped
and looked up at the Lion and the Unicorn from the sidewalk,
before he opened the door with his night-key. They heard him
enter the room and feel on the mantel for his pipe, and a moment
later he appeared at the Lion's window and leaned on the sill,
looking down into the street below and blowing whiffs of smoke up
into the warm night-air.
It was a night in June, and the pavements were dry under foot and
the streets were filled with well-dressed people, going home from
the play, and with groups of men in black and white, making their
way to supper at the clubs. Hansoms of inky-black, with shining
lamps inside and out, dashed noiselessly past on mysterious
errands, chasing close on each other's heels on a mad race, each
to its separate goal. From the cross streets rose the noises of
early night, the rumble of the 'buses, the creaking of their
brakes, as they unlocked, the cries of the "extras," and the
merging of thousands of human voices in a dull murmur. The great
world of London was closing its shutters for the night, and
putting out the lights; and the new lodger from across the sea
listened to it with his heart beating quickly, and laughed to
stifle the touch of fear and homesickness that rose in him.
"I have seen a great play to-night," he said to the Lion, "nobly
played by great players. What will they care for my poor wares?
I see that I have been over-bold. But we cannot go back now--not
yet."
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and nodded "good-night" to
the great world beyond his window. "What fortunes lie with ye,
ye lights of London town?" he quoted, smiling. And they heard
him close the door of his bedroom, and lock it for the night.
The next morning he bought many geraniums from Prentiss and
placed them along the broad cornice that stretched across the
front of the house over the shop window. The flowers made a band
of scarlet on either side of the Lion as brilliant as a Tommy's
jacket.
"I am trying to propitiate the British Lion by placing flowers
before his altar," the American said that morning to a
visitor.
"The British public you mean," said the visitor; "they are each
likely to tear you to pieces."
"Yes, I have heard that the pit on the first night of a bad play
is something awful," hazarded the American.
"Wait and see," said the visitor.
"Thank you," said the American, meekly.
Every one who came to the first floor front talked about a play.
It seemed to be something of great moment to the American. It
was only a bundle of leaves printed in red and black inks and
bound in brown paper covers. There were two of them, and the
American called them by different names: one was his comedy and
one was his tragedy.
"They are both likely to be tragedies," the Lion heard one of the
visitors say to another, as they drove away together. "Our young
friend takes it too seriously."
The American spent most of his time by his desk at the window
writing on little blue pads and tearing up what he wrote, or in
reading over one of the plays to himself in a loud voice. In
time the number of his visitors increased, and to some of these
he would read his play; and after they had left him he was
either depressed and silent or excited and jubilant. The Lion
could always tell when he was happy because then he would go to
the side table and pour himself out a drink and say, "Here's to
me," but when he was depressed he would stand holding the glass
in his hand, and finally pour the liquor back into the bottle
again and say, "What's the use of that?"
After he had been in London a month he wrote less and was more
frequently abroad, sallying forth in beautiful raiment, and
coming home by daylight.
And he gave suppers too, but they were less noisy than the
Captain's had been, and the women who came to them were much more
beautiful, and their voices when they spoke were sweet and low.
Sometimes one of the women sang, and the men sat in silence while
the people in the street below stopped to listen, and would say,
"Why, that is So-and-So singing," and the Lion and the Unicorn
wondered how they could know who it was when they could not see
her.
The lodger's visitors came to see him at all hours. They
seemed to regard his rooms as a club, where they could always
come for a bite to eat or to write notes; and others treated it
like a lawyer's office and asked advice on all manner of strange
subjects. Sometimes the visitor wanted to know whether the
American thought she ought to take Lœ10 a week and go on tour, or
stay in town and try to live on Lœ8; or whether she should paint
landscapes that would not sell, or racehorses that would; or
whether Reggie really loved her and whether she really loved
Reggie; or whether the new part in the piece at the Court was
better than the old part at Terry's, and wasn't she getting too
old to play "ingenues" anyway.
The lodger seemed to be a general adviser, and smoked and
listened with grave consideration, and the Unicorn thought his
judgment was most sympathetic and sensible.
Of all the beautiful ladies who came to call on the lodger the
one the Unicorn liked the best was the one who wanted to know
whether she loved Reggie and whether Reggie loved her. She
discussed this so interestingly while she consumed tea and
thin slices of bread that the Unicorn almost lost his balance in
leaning forward to listen. Her name was Marion Cavendish and it
was written over many photographs which stood in silver frames in
the lodger's rooms. She used to make the tea herself, while the
lodger sat and smoked; and she had a fascinating way of doubling
the thin slices of bread into long strips and nibbling at them
like a mouse at a piece of cheese. She had wonderful little
teeth and Cupid's-bow lips, and she had a fashion of lifting her
veil only high enough for one to see the two Cupid-bow lips.
When she did that the American used to laugh, at nothing
apparently, and say, "Oh, I guess Reggie loves you well enough."
"But do I love Reggie?" she would ask sadly, with her tea-cup
held poised in air.
" I am sure I hope not," the lodger would reply, and she
would put down the veil quickly, as one would drop a curtain over
a beautiful picture, and rise with great dignity and say, "if you
talk like that I shall not come again."
She was sure that if she could only get some work to do her
head would be filledwith more important matters than whether
Reggie loved her or not.
"But the managers seem inclined to cut their cavendish very fine
just at present," she said. "If I don't get a part soon," she
announced, "I shall ask Mitchell to put me down on the list for
recitations at evening parties."
"That seems a desperate revenge," said the American; "and
besides, I don't want you to get a part, because some one might
be idiotic enough to take my comedy, and if he should, you must
play Nancy."
"I would not ask for any salary if I could play Nancy," Miss
Cavendish answered.
They spoke of a great many things, but their talk always ended by
her saying that there must be some one with sufficient sense to
see that his play was a great play, and by his saying that none
but she must play Nancy.
The Lion preferred the tall girl with masses and folds of brown
hair, who came from America to paint miniatures of the British
aristocracy. Her name was Helen Cabot, and he liked her because
she was so brave and fearless, and so determined to be
independent of every one, even of the lodger--especially of
the lodger, who it appeared had known her very well at home. The
lodger, they gathered, did not wish her to be independent of him
and the two Americans had many arguments and disputes about it,
but she always said, "It does no good, Philip; it only hurts us
both when you talk so. I care for nothing, and for no one but my
art, and, poor as it is, it means everything to me, and you do
not, and, of course, the man I am to marry, must." Then Carroll
would talk, walking up and down, and looking very fierce and
determined, and telling her how he loved her in such a way that
it made her look even more proud and beautiful. And she would
say more gently, "It is very fine to think that any one can care
for like that, and very helpful. But unless I cared in the same
way it would be wicked of me to marry you, and besides--" She
would add very quickly to prevent his speaking again--" I don't
want to marry you or anybody, and I never shall. I want to be
free and to succeed in my work, just as you want to succeed in
your work. So please never speak of this again." When she
went away the lodger used to sit smoking in the big arm-chair and
beat the arms with his hands, and he would pace up and down the
room while his work would lie untouched and his engagements pass
forgotten.
Summer came and London was deserted, dull, and dusty, but the
lodger stayed on in Jermyn Street. Helen Cabot had departed on a
round of visits to country houses in Scotland, where, as she
wrote him, she was painting miniatures of her hosts and studying
the game of golf. Miss Cavendish divided her days between the
river and one of the West End theatres. She was playing a small
part in a farce-comedy.
One day she came up from Cookham earlier than usual, looking very
beautiful in a white boating frock and a straw hat with a Leander
ribbon. Her hands and arms were hard with dragging a punting
pole and she was sunburnt and happy, and hungry for tea.
"Why don't you come down to Cookham and get out of this heat?"
Miss Cavendish asked. "You need it; you look ill."
"I'd like to, but I can't," said Carroll. "The fact is, I paid
in advance for these rooms, and if I lived anywhere else I'd be
losing five guineas a week on them."
Miss Cavendish regarded him severely. She had never quite
mastered his American humor.
"But five guineas--why that's nothing to you," she said.
Something in the lodger's face made her pause. "You don't
mean----"
"Yes, I do," said the lodger, smiling. "You see, I started in to
lay siege to London without sufficient ammunition. London is a
large town, and it didn't fall as quickly as I thought it would.
So I am economizing. Mr. Lockhart's Coffee Rooms and I are no
longer strangers."
Miss Cavendish put down her cup of tea untasted and leaned toward
him
"Are you in earnest?" she asked. "For how long?"
"Oh, for the last month," replied the lodger; "they are not at
all bad--clean and wholesome and all that."
"But the suppers you gave us, and this," she cried, suddenly,
waving her hands over the pretty tea-things, "and the cake
and muffins?"
"My friends, at least," said Carroll, "need not go to
Lockhart's."
"And the Savoy?" asked Miss Cavendish, mournfully shaking her
head.
"A dream of the past," said Carroll, waving his pipe through the
smoke. "Gatti's? Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity,
the Chancellor's, where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef
of Old England, from Chicago, and potatoes for ninepence--a pot
of bitter twopence-halfpenny, and a penny for the waiter. It's
most amusing on the whole. I am learning a little about London,
and some things about myself. They are both most interesting
subjects."
"Well, I don't like it," Miss Cavendish declared helplessly.
"When I think of those suppers and the flowers, I feel--I feel
like a robber."
"Don't," begged Carroll. "I am really the most happy of men--
that is, as the chap says in the play, I would be if I wasn't so
damned miserable. But I owe no man a penny and I have assets--I
have Lœ80 to last me through the winter and two marvellous
plays; and I love, next to yourself, the most wonderful woman God
ever made. That's enough."
"But I thought you made such a lot of money by writing?" asked
Miss Cavendish.
"I do--that is, I could," answered Carroll, "if I wrote the
things that sell; but I keep on writing plays that won't."
"And such plays!" exclaimed Marion, warmly; "and to think that
they are going begging." She continued indignantly, "I can't
imagine what the managers do want."
"I know what they don't want," said the American. Miss Cavendish
drummed impatiently on the tea-tray.
"I wish you wouldn't be so abject about it," she said. "If I
were a man I'd make them take those plays."
"How?" asked the American; "with a gun?"
"Well, I'd keep at it until they read them," declared Marion.
"I'd sit on their front steps all night and I'd follow them in
cabs, and I'd lie in wait for them at the stage-door. I'd just
make them take them."
Carroll sighed and stared at the ceiling. "I guess I'll give up
and go home," he said.
"Oh, yes, do, run away before you are beaten," said Miss
Cavendish, scornfully. "Why, you can't go now. Everybody will
be back in town soon, and there are a lot of new plays coming on,
and some of them are sure to be failures, and that's our chance.
You rush in with your piece and somebody may take it sooner than
close the theatre."
"I'm thinking of closing the theatre myself," said Carroll.
"What's the use of my hanging on here?" he exclaimed. "It
distresses Helen to know I am in London, feeling about her as I
do--and the Lord only knows how it distresses me. And, maybe, if
I went away," he said, consciously, "she might miss me. She
might see the difference."
Miss Cavendish held herself erect and pressed her lips together
with a severe smile. "If Helen Cabot doesn't see the difference
between you and the other men she knows now," she said, "I doubt
if she ever will. Besides--" she continued, and then hesitated.
"Well, go on," urged Carroll.
"Well, I was only going to say," she explained, "that leaving the
girl alone never did the man any good unless he left her alone
willingly. If she's sure he still cares, it's just the same to
her where he is. He might as well stay on in London as go to
South Africa. It won't help him any. The difference comes when
she finds he has stopped caring. Why, look at Reggie. He tried
that. He went away for ever so long, but he kept writing me from
wherever he went, so that he was perfectly miserable--and I went
on enjoying myself. Then when he came back, he tried going about
with his old friends again. He used to come to the theatre with
them--oh, with such nice girls--but he always stood in the back
of the box and yawned and scowled--so I knew. And, anyway, he'd
always spoil it all by leaving them and waiting at the stage
entrance for me. But one day he got tired of the way I treated
him and went off on a bicycle tour with Lady Hacksher's girls and
some men from his regiment, and he was gone three weeks and never
sent me even a line; and I got so scared; I couldn't sleep, and
I stood it for three days more, and then I wired him to come
back or I'd jump off London Bridge; and he came back that very
night from Edinburgh on the express, and I was so glad to see him
that I got confused, and in the general excitement I promised to
marry him, so that's how it was with us."
"Yes," said the American, without enthusiasm; "but then I still
care, and Helen knows I care."
"Doesn't she ever fancy that you might care for some one else?
You have a lot of friends, you know."
"Yes, but she knows they are just that--friends," said the
American.
Miss Cavendish stood up to go, and arranged her veil before the
mirror above the fireplace.
"I come here very often to tea," she said.
"It's very kind of you," said Carroll. He was at the open
window, looking down into the street for a cab.
"Well, no one knows I am engaged to Reggie," continued Miss
Cavendish, "except you and Reggie, and he isn't so sure. SHE
doesn't know it."
"Well?" said Carroll.
Miss Cavendish smiled a mischievous kindly smile at him from the
mirror.
"Well?" she repeated, mockingly. Carroll stared at her and
laughed. After a pause he said: "It's like a plot in a comedy.
But I'm afraid I'm too serious for play-acting."
"Yes, it is serious," said Miss Cavendish. She seated herself
again and regarded the American thoughtfully. "You are too good
a man to be treated the way that girl is treating you, and no one
knows it better than she does. She'll change in time, but just
now she thinks she wants to be independent. She's in love with
this picture-painting idea, and with the people she meets. It's
all new to her--the fuss they make over her and the titles, and
the way she is asked about. We know she can't paint. We know
they only give her commissions because she's so young and pretty,
and American. She amuses them, that's all. Well, that cannot
last; she'll find it out. She's too clever a girl, and she is
too fine a girl to be content with that long. Then--then she'll
come back to you. She feels now that she has both you and the
others, and she's making you wait: so wait and be cheerful.
She's worth waiting for; she's young, that's all. She'll see the
difference in time. But, in the meanwhile, it would hurry
matters a bit if she thought she had to choose between the new
friends and you."
"She could still keep her friends, and marry me," said Carroll;
"I have told her that a hundred times. She could still paint
miniatures and marry me. But she won't marry me."
"She won't marry you because she knows she can whenever she wants
to;" cried Marion. "Can't you see that? But if she thought you
were going to marry some one else now?"
"She would be the first to congratulate me," said Carroll. He
rose and walked to the fireplace, where he leaned with his arm on
the mantel. There was a photograph of Helen Cabot near his hand,
and he turned this toward him and stood for some time staring at
it. "My dear Marion," he said at last, "I've known Helen ever
since she was as young as that. Every year I've loved her more,
and found new things in her to care for; now I love her more
than any other man ever loved any other woman."
Miss Cavendish shook her head sympathetically.
"Yes, I know," she said; "that's the way Reggie loves me, too."
Carroll went on as though he had not heard her.
"There's a bench in St. James's Park," he said, "where we used to
sit when she first came here, when she didn't know so many
people. We used to go there in the morning and throw penny buns
to the ducks. That's been my amusement this summer since you've
all been away--sitting on that bench, feeding penny buns to the
silly ducks--especially the black one, the one she used to like
best. And I make pilgrimages to all the other places we ever
visited together, and try to pretend she is with me. And I
support the crossing sweeper at Lansdowne Passage because she
once said she felt sorry for him. I do all the other absurd
things that a man in love tortures himself by doing. But to what
end? She knows how I care, and yet she won't see why we
can't go on being friends as we once were. What's the use of it
all? "
"She is young, I tell you," repeated Miss Cavendish, "and she's
too sure of you. You've told her you care; now try making her
think you don't care."
Carroll shook his head impatiently.
"I will not stoop to such tricks and pretence, Marion," he cried
impatiently. "All I have is my love for her; if I have to cheat
and to trap her into caring, the whole thing would be degraded."
Miss Cavendish shrugged her shoulders and walked to the door.
"Such amateurs!" she exclaimed, and banged the door after her.
Carroll never quite knew how he had come to make a confidante of
Miss Cavendish. Helen and he had met her when they first arrived
in London, and as she had acted for a season in the United
States, she adopted the two Americans--and told Helen where to go
for boots and hats, and advised Carroll about placing his plays.
Helen soon made other friends, and deserted the artists, with
whom her work had first thrown her. She seemed to prefer the
society of the people who bought her paintings, and who
admired and made much of the painter. As she was very beautiful
and at an age when she enjoyed everything in life keenly and
eagerly, to give her pleasure was in itself a distinct
pleasure; and the worldly tired people she met were considering
their own entertainment quite as much as hers when they asked her
to their dinners and dances, or to spend a week with them in the
country. In her way, she was as independent as was Carroll in
his, and as she was not in love, as he was, her life was not
narrowed down to but one ideal. But she was not so young as to
consider herself infallible, and she had one excellent friend on
whom she was dependent for advice and to whose directions she
submitted implicitly. This was Lady Gower, the only person to
whom Helen had spoken of Carroll and of his great feeling for
her. Lady Gower, immediately after her marriage, had been a
conspicuous and brilliant figure in that set in London which
works eighteen hours a day to keep itself amused, but after the
death of her husband she had disappeared into the country as
completely as though she had entered a convent, and after
several years had then re-entered the world as a professional
philanthropist. Her name was now associated entirely with
Women's Leagues, with committees that presented petitions to
Parliament, and with public meetings, at which she spoke with
marvellous ease and effect. Her old friends said she had taken
up this new pose as an outlet for her nervous energies, and as an
effort to forget the man who alone had made life serious to her.
Others knew her as an earnest woman, acting honestly for what she
thought was right. Her success, all admitted, was due to her
knowledge of the world and to her sense of humor, which taught
her with whom to use her wealth and position, and when to demand
what she wanted solely on the ground that the cause was just.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9