Some men can love only once-
A Casual Affair
by Somerset Maugham
Illustrations by Pruett Carter
I AM telling this story in the first person, though I am in no way connected with it because I do not want to pretend to the reader that I know more about it than I really do. The facts are as I state them, but the reasons for them I can only guess, and it may be that the reader will think me wrong. No one can know for certain.
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"He didn't want to be helped.
The opium had got him;
I think he just wanted to go to hell in his own way."
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I took a fancy to the Lows at once. The D. O. had an easy manner and a humorous way with him. Mrs. Low was an extremely nice little woman, plump, with dark eyes under fine eyebrows, not very pretty, but certainly attractive. She looked healthy and she had high spirits. They chaffed each other continually, and you were obliged to laugh with them.
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| "The women were crazy about Jack. You couldn't blame them. He was nice to them all, but it never went any further than that." continued on page 88 |
I think they were glad to see me, especially Mrs. Low, for with nothing much to do but keep an eye on the house and the children, she was thrown very much on her own resources. There were so few white people on the island that the social life was soon exhausted; and before I had been there twenty-four hours she pressed me to stay a week, a month or a year.
On the evening of my arrival they gave a dinner party to which the official population-the government surveyor, the doctor, the schoolmaster, the chief of constabulary-was invited, but the next evening the three of us dined by ourselves. At the dinner party the guests had brought their house boys to help, but that night we had been waited on by the Lows' one boy and my traveling servant. When they had brought in the coffee and left us to ourselves, Low and I lighted cheroots.
"You know, I've seen you before," said Mr Low.
"Where?" I asked
"In London. At a party. I heard someone point you out to somebody else. In Carlton House Terrace at Lady Kastellan's."
"Oh? When was that?"
"Last time we were home on leave. There were Russian dancers."
"I remember. About two or three years ago. Fancy you being there."
"That's exactly what we said to each other at the time," said Low, with his slow, engaging smile. "We'd never been at such a party in our lives."
"It was the party of the season," I said. "Did you enjoy it?"
"I hated it," said Mrs. Low. "Don't let's overlook the fact that you insisted on going, Bee," said Low. "I knew we'd be out of it among all those swells."
I remembered the party quite well now. The magnificent rooms in Carlton House Terrace had been decorated with great festoons of yellow roses, and at one end of the vast drawing-room a stage had been erected. Special costumes of the Regency period had been designed for the dancers, and a modern composer had written the music for the two charming ballets they danced.
It was hard to look at it all and not allow the vulgar thought to cross one's mind that the affair must have cost an enormous amount of money. Lady Kastellan was a beautiful woman and a great hostess, but I do not think anyone would have ascribed to her any vast amount of kindliness, and I could not help wondering why she had asked to such a grand party two obscure and unimportant persons from a distant colony.
"Had you known Lady Kastellan long?" I asked.
"We didn't know her at all. She sent us a card and we went because I wanted to see what she was like," confessed Mrs. Low.
"She's a very able woman," I said.
"I dare say she is. She hadn't an idea who we were when the butler announced us, but she remembered at once. 'Oh, yes,' she said, 'you're poor Jack's friends. Do go and find yourselves seats where you can see. You'll adore Lifar. He's too marvelous.' And then she turned to say how d'you do to the next people. But she gave me a look. She wondered how much I knew, and she saw at once that I knew everything."
"Don't talk such nonsense, darling," said Low. "How could she know all you think she did by just looking at you, and how could you tell what she was thinking?"
"It's true, I tell you. We said everything in that one look, and unless I'm very much mistaken I spoiled her party for her."
Low laughed and I smiled, for Mrs. Low spoke in a tone of triumphant vindictiveness.
"You are terribly indiscreet, Bee."
"Is she a great friend of yours?" Mrs. Low asked me.
"Hardly. I've met bel' here and there for fifteen ,sraey :];!.ve been to a good many- parties at her house.' She gives good parties, and she' always asks you to meet the people you want" to see."
"What d'you think of 'her?"
"She's by way of being a considerable figure in London. She's amusing to talk to. She's very beautiful. She does a lot for art and music. What do you think of her?"
'I think she's a fool," said Mrs. Low, with cheerful but decided frankness.
"That settles her," I said.
"Tell him, Arthur."
Low hesitated a moment.
"I don't know that I ought to." "If you don't, I shall."
"Bee's got her knife into her, all right," he smiled. "It was rather a bad business, really. It was before we went home last time. I was D. O. in Selangor, and one day they came and told me that a white man was dead in a small town a couple of hours up the river. I didn't know there was a white man living there. I thought I'd better go and see about it, so I got in the launch and went up.
"I made inquiries when I got there. The police didn't know anything about him except that he'd been living there for a couple of years with a Chinese woman in the bazaar. It was a picturesque bazaar-tall houses on each side, with a board walk in between; the whole place was built on piles on the river bank, and there were awnings above to keep out the sun. I took a couple of policemen with me and they led me to the house. They sold brass ware in the shop; the rooms above were let out.
"The master of the shop took me up two flights of dark, rickety stairs, and called out when we got to the top. The door was opened by a middle-aged Chinese woman and I saw that her face was all bloated with weeping. She didn't say anything, but made way for us to pass.
"It wasn't much more than a cubbyhole under the roof; there was a small window that looked on the street but the awning that stretched across it dimmed the light. There wasn't any furniture except a deal table and a kitchen chair with a broken back. On a mat against the wall a dead man was lying.
"The first thing I did was to have the window opened. The room was so frowsty that I retched, and the strongest smell was the smell of opium. There was a small oil lamp on the table and a long needle, and of course I knew what they were there for. The pipe had been hidden.
"The dead man lay on his back with nothing on but a sarong and a dirty singlet. He bad long brown hair, going gray, and a short beard. He was a white man, all right. I examined him as best I could. I had to judge whether death was due to natural causes. There were no signs of violence. He was nothing but skin and bone. It looked to me as though he might very likely have died of starvation.
"I asked the man of the shop and the woman a number of questions. The policemen corroborated their statements. It appeared that the man coughed a great deal and brought up blood now and then, and his appearance suggested that he might very well have had tuberculosis. The Chinaman said he'd been a confirmed opium smoker. It all seemed pretty obvious. Fortunately, cases of that sort are rare, but they're not unheard of-the white man who goes under and gradually sinks to the last stage of degradation. It appeared that the Chinese woman had been fond of him. She'd kept him on her own miserable earnings for the last two years.
"I gave the necessary instructions. Of course I wanted to know who he was. I supposed he'd been a clerk in some English firm or an assistant in an English store at Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. I asked the Chinese woman if he'd left any effects. She went to a shabby suitcase that lay in a corner, opened it and showed me a square parcel wrapped in an old newspaper. I had a look at the suitcase. It contained nothing of any value. I took the parcel away."
Low's cheroot had gone out and he relighted it from one of the candles on the table.
"I opened it. Inside was another wrapping and on this, in neat writing: 'To the District Officer,' me as it happened, and then the words: 'Please deliver personally to the Viscountess Kastellan, 53 Carlton House Terrace, London, S.W: That was a bit of a surprise. Of course I had to examine the contents. I cut the string, and the first thing I found was a gold-and-platinum cigaret case.
"I was mystified. From all I'd heard, the pair of them, the dead man and the Chinese woman, had scarcely enough to eat and the cigaret case looked as if it had cost a packet. Besides the cigaret case there was nothing but a bundle of letters. They were in the same neat writing of the directions and were signed with the initial J. There were thirty or forty of them.
"I couldn't read them all then, but a rapid glance showed me that they were a man's love letters to a woman. I sent for the Chinese woman to ask her the name of the dead man. Either she didn't know or wouldn't tell me. I gave orders that he should be buried and got back into the launch to go home. I told Bee."
He gave her his engaging little smile.
"I had to be rather firm with Arthur," she said. "At first he wouldn't let me read the letters, but of course I wasn't going to put up with any nonsense like that."
"It was none of our business."
"You had to find out the name if you could."
"And where exactly did you come in?"
"Oh, don't be so silly," she laughed. "I should have gone mad if you hadn't let me read them."
"And did you find out his name?" I asked.
"No."
"Was there no address?"
"Yes, there was, and a very unexpected one. Most of the letters were written on Foreign Office paper."
"That was strange."
"I didn't quite know what to do. I had half a mind to write to the Viscountess Kastellan and explain the circumstances, but I didn't know what trouble I might be starting; the directions were to deliver the parcel to her personally, so I wrapped everything up again and put it in the safe. We were going home in the spring and I thought the best thing was to leave everything till then. The letters were rather compromising."
"To put it mildly," giggled Mrs. Low. "The truth is, they gave the whole show away."
"I don't think we need go into that," said Low.
A slight altercation ensued; but I think on his part it was more for form's sake, since he must have known that his desire to preserve an official discretion stood small chance against his wife's determination to tell me everything. She had a down on Lady Kastellan; her sympathies were entirely with the man.
Low did his best to tone down her rash assertions. He corrected her exaggerations. He told her that, letting her imagination run away with her, she had read into the letters more than was there. She would have none of it. They had evidently made a deep impression on her, and from her vivid account I gained a fairly coherent impression of them. It was plain for one thing that they were very moving.
The story emerged clearly enough. The writer, the mysterious J., presumably a clerk in the Foreign Office, had fallen madly in love with Lady Kastellan and she with him. They had become lovers, and the early letters were passionately lyrical They were happy. They expected their love to last forever.
Then came the catastrophe. How it came or why one could only guess. Lord Kastellan learned the truth. He did not merely suspect his wife's infidelity, he had proofs. There had been a fearful scene between them. She had left him and gone to her father's, and he had announced his intention of divorcing her.
The letters changed in character. J. evidently wrote at once asking to see Lady Kastellan, but she begged him not to come. Her father insisted that they should not meet. The young man's letters were distressed at her unhappiness and dismayed by the trouble into which they had got, but at the same time it was plain that he was relieved that the crisis had come. Nothing mattered except that they loved each other. He said he hated Kastellan. Let him bring his action. The sooner they could get married, the better.
Of course the correspondence was one-sided. There were no letters from her, and one had to guess from his replies what she said in them. She was obviously frightened out of her wits and nothing that he could say helped. Of course he would have to leave the Foreign Office. He assured her that this meant nothing to him. He could get a job somewhere, in the colonies. He was sure he could make her happy. Naturally there would be a scandal, but it would be forgotten, and away from England people would not bother. He besought her to have courage.
Then it looked as though she had written somewhat peevishly. She hated being divorced. She did not want to leave London for some God-forsaken place on the other side of nowhere.
He answered unhappily. He said he would do anything she wanted. He implored her not to love him less, and he was tortured by the thought that this disaster had changed her feelings for him. She had reproached him for having brought it on her, and he took all the blame on himself.
Then it looked as though a ray of hope shone on her. Mysterious pressure was being brought on Kastellan; there was a chance that something might be arranged. Whatever she wrote made J., the unknown J., desperate. His letter was almost incoherent. He begged her again to see him; he repeated that she meant everything in the world to him; he asked her to bolt with him to Paris.
Then it seemed that for some days she did not write to him. He was in an agony. The blow fell. She must have written to say that if he would resign from the Foreign Office and leave England, her husband would take her back. His answer was broken-hearted.
"He never saw through her for a moment," said Mrs. Low.
"What was there to see through?" I asked.
"Don't you know what she wrote him?" Mrs. Low said. "I do."
"Don't be such an ass, Bee. You can't possibly know."
"Ass yourself. Of course I do. She put it up to him. She threw herself on his mercy. She dragged in her father and mother. She brought in her children; I bet that was the first thought she'd given them since they were born. She knew he loved her so much that he was willing to do everything in the world for her, even lose her. She knew he was prepared to make the sacrifice of his love, his life, his career, everything, for her sake -and she let him make it. She let the offer come from him. She let him persuade her to accept it."
I listened to Mrs. Low with attention. She was a woman and she felt instinctively how a woman in those circumstances would deal with the matter.
That was the last letter in the bundle.
I was astonished. I had known Lady Kastellan for a good many years, but our acquaintance was casual. I knew her husband even less. He was immersed in politics; he was undersecretary at the Home Office at the time of the great do to which the Lows and I had been invited; and I never saw him except in his own house. . Lady Kastellan had the reputation of being a great beauty; she was tall, and her figure was good in a massive way. She had a beautiful skin. Her blue eyes were large, set rather wide apart, and her face was broad. It gave her a slightly cowlike look. She had pretty, pale brown hair and she held herself superbly. She was a woman of great self-possession, and it amazed me to learn that she had ever surrendered to such passion as the letters suggested. I should have thought her incapable of indiscretion.
SEARCHING MY memory, I seemed to remember hearing years before that the Kastellans were not getting on very well, but I had never heard any details and whenever I had seen them it looked as though they were on good terms with each other. Kastellan was a big, red-faced fellow with sleek black hair, jovial and loud-voiced, but with little shrewd eyes that watched and noted. He was industrious, an effective speaker, but a trifle pompous. He was inclined to be patronizing with people of less consequence than himself.
I could well believe that when he discovered that his wife was having an affair with a junior clerk in the Foreign Office there was a devil of a row. For all I knew, Kastellan was in love with his wife and he may have felt a natural jealousy. But he was a proud man, deficient in humor. He feared ridicule. The role of the deceived husband is difficult to play with dignity. I do not suppose he wanted a scandal; it might well have jeopardized his political future.
It may be that Lady Kastellan's advisers threatened to defend the case, and the prospect of washing much dirty linen in public horrified him. The solution to forgive and take his wife back if her lover were eliminated may have seemed the best to adopt. I suppose Lady Kastellan promised everything she was asked.
She must have had a bad fright. I did not take such a severe view of her conduct as Mrs. Low. She was very young; she was not more than thirty-five now. Who could tell by what accident she had become J.'s mistress? I suspect that love caught her unawares, and that she was in the middle of an affair almost before she knew what she was about.
There is no means of knowing how Kastellan discovered what was going on, but the fact that Lady Kastellan kept J.'s letters shows that she was too much in love to be prudent. Arthur Low had mentioned that it was strange to find in the dead man's possession his letters and not hers; but that seemed to me easily explainable. At the time of the catastrophe they had been given back to him and hers had been taken away. He had very naturally kept them. Reading them again, he could relive the love that meant everything in the world to him.
I didn't suppose that Lady Kastellan, devoured by passion, could ever have considered what would happen if she were found out. When the blow came, it is not strange that she was scared out of her wits. She may not have had more to do with her children than most women who live the sort of life she lived, but for all that she may not have wanted to lose them.
I did not even know whether she had ever cared for her husband, but from what I knew of her I guessed that she was not indifferent to his name and wealth. The future must have looked pretty grim. She was losing everything: the grand house in Carlton House Terrace, position, security. It may not have been heroic when she yielded to the entreaties of her family, but it was comprehensible.
While I was thinking all this, Arthur Low went on with his story.
"I didn't quite know how to set about getting in touch with Lady Kastellan," he said. "It was awkward not knowing the chap's name. However, when we got home I wrote to her. I explained who I was and said that I'd been asked to give her some letters and a cigaret case by a man who'd recently died in my district. I said I'd been asked to deliver them to her in person.
"She made an appointment for me to come to Carlton House Terrace at twelve one morning. When I rang the bell the door was opened by a butler. I said I had an appointment with Lady Kastellan. I was led upstairs to an enormous drawing-room.
" 'I'll tell her ladyship you're here, sir,' the butler said.
"He left me and I sat on the edge of a chair and looked round. There were huge portraits on the walls, and there was a lot of Oriental china, and gilded consoles and mirrors. It was all terribly grand and it made me feel shabby and insignificant. The butler came in again and ushered me into another room, not so large as the drawing-room, but very grand.
"A lady was standing at the end of it by the fireplace. She looked at me as I came in and bowed slightly. She didn't ask me to sit down. 'I understand you have some things that you wish to deliver to me personally,' she said. 'It's very good of you to bother.'
"She didn't smile. She seemed perfectly self-possessed, but I had a notion that she was sizing me up. To tell you the truth, it put my back up a little.
" 'Please don't mention it,' I said rather stiffly. 'It's all in a day's work.'
" 'Have you got the things with you?' she asked.
"I didn't answer, but I opened the dispatch case I'd brought with me and took out the letters. I handed them to her. She accepted them without a word. She gave them a glance. She was very much made up, but I swear she went white underneath. The expression of her face didn't change, but her hands trembled. Then she pulled herself together. ,,,
" 'Oh, I'm so sorry,' she said. 'Won't you sit down?'
"I took a chair. For a moment she didn't seem to know quite what to do. She held the letters in her hand. I, knowing what they were, wondered what she felt. She didn't give much away. There was a desk beside the chimney piece, and she opened a drawer and put them in. When she sat down, I handed her the cigaret case. I'd had it in my pocket.
" 'I was asked to give you this, too,' I said.
"She took it and looked at it. For a moment she didn't speak, and I waited. 'Did you know Jack well?' she asked suddenly.
" 'I didn't know him at all,' I answered. 'I never saw him until after his death.'
" 'I had no idea he was dead till I got your note,' she said. 'I'd lost sight of him for a long time. Of course he was a very old friend of mine.'
"I wondered if she thought I hadn't read the letters, or if she'd forgotten what sort of letters they were. If the sight of them had given her a shock she had got over it by now. She spoke al- most casually.
" 'What did he die of, in point of fact?' she asked.
" 'Tuberculosis, opium and starvation,' I answered.
" 'How dreadful,' she said.
"But she said it quite conventionally. Whatever she felt, she wasn't going to let me see. She was as cool as a cucumber, but I fancied she was watching me and wondering how much I knew.
"'How did you happen to get hold of these things?' she asked me.
" 'I took possession of his effects after his death,' I explained. 'They were done up in a parcel and I was directed to give them to you.'
" 'Was there any need to undo the parcel?'
"I wish I could tell you what frigid insolence she managed to get into the question. It made me go white. I answered rather stiffly that I thought it my duty to find out, if I could, who the dead man was. I should have liked to be able to communicate with his relations.
" 'I see,' she said.
"She looked at me as though that were the end of the interview and she expected me to get up and take myself off. But I didn't. I thought I'd like to get a bit of my own back. I told her how I'd found him. I described the whole thing and I told her how there'd been no one at the end to take pity on him but a Chinese woman. Suddenly the door was opened. A big, middle-aged man came in and stopped when he saw me.
" 'I beg your pardon,' he said. 'I didn't know you were busy.'
" 'Come in,' she said, and when he had approached: 'This is Mr. Low. My husband.'
"Lord Kastellan gave me a nod. 'I just wanted to ask you-' he began, and then he stopped. His eyes had caught the cigaret case that was still resting on Lady Kastellan's open hand. She gave him a smile. She was quite amazingly mistress of herself.
" 'Mr. Low comes from the Federated Malay States. Poor Jack Almond's dead and he's left me his cigaret case.'
" 'Really?' said Lord Kastellan. 'When did he die?' "'About six months ago,' I said. "Lady Kastellan got up. 'Well, I won't keep you any longer. Thank you so much for carrying out Jack's request.'
"I shook hands with them both and Lady Kastellan rang a bell. 'Are you staying in London?' she asked, as I' was going. 'I wonder if you'd like to come to a little party I'm giving next week.'
" 'I have my wife with me,' I said.
" 'Oh, how nice! I'll send you a card.'
"A COUPLE of minutes later I found myself in the street. I was glad to be alone. I'd had a bad shock. As soon as Lady Kastellan mentioned the name, I remembered. It was Jack Almond, the wretched bum I'd found dead in the Chinese house -dead of starvation. I'd known him quite well. It never struck me for a moment that it was he. Why, I'd dined and played cards with him, and we'd played tennis together. It was awful to think of him dying near me and me never knowing. He must have known he only had to send me a message and I'd have done something."
I could understand that it was a shock to Arthur Low to discover who the dead wastrel had been, for it was a shock to me, too. Oddly enough, I also had known him. Not intimately, but as a man I met at parties and now and then at a house in the country where we were both passing the week-end.
With his name there flashed back into my memory all my recollections of him. So that was why he had suddenly thrown up a career he liked so much! At that time -it was just after the war -I happened to know several persons in the Foreign Office; Jack Almond was thought the cleverest of all the young men attached to it, and the highest posts the Diplomatic Service had to offer were within his reach. Of course it meant waiting. But it did seem absurd for him to fling away his chances in order to enter commercial life in the Far East. His friends did all they could to dissuade him. He said he had had losses and found it impossible to live on his salary.
I remembered very well what he looked like. He was tall and well-made, with dark brown hair, wavy and shining; he had blue eyes with very long lashes, and a fresh color. He was amusing, gay and quick-witted. I never knew anyone who had more charm. It is a dangerous quality and those who have it trade on it. Often they think it is enough to get them through life without any further effort. It is well to be on one's guard against it. But with Jack Almond it was the expression of a charming, generous nature. Everyone liked him. It was not strange that Lady Kastellan should have fallen madly in love with him.
My fancy ran away with me. What is there more moving than young love? The walks together in one of the parks in the warm evenings of early summer; the enchantment of the secret they shared when they exchanged glances across a dinner table, and the passionate encounters, hurried and dangerous, but worth a thousand risks, when at some clandestine meeting place they could give themselves to the fulfillment of their desire. They drank the milk of Paradise.
How frightful that the end of it all should have been so tragic!
"How did you know him?" I asked Low.
"He was with Dexter and Farmilow. You know, the shipping people. He had a good job. He'd brought letters to the governor and people like that. I was in Singapore at the time. I think I met him first at the club. He was damned good at games and all that sort of thing. You couldn't help liking him."
"Did he drink or what?"
"No." Arthur Low was emphatic. "He was one of the best. The women were crazy about him. You couldn't blame them. He was nice to them all, but it never went any further than that. A story got about that he was engaged to some girl in England. He was one of the most decent fellows I've ever met."
I turned to Mrs. Low. "Did you know him?" I asked.
"ONLY JUST. When Arthur and I were married we went to Perak. He was sweet; I remember that. He had the longest eyelashes I've ever seen on a man."
"He was out quite a long time without going home. Five years, I think. He'd won golden opinions. We knew about his having been in the F. O. and all that, but he never put on any frills."
"I think what took me," Mrs Low interposed, "was that he was so tremendously alive.
"He had a wonderful send-off when he sailed. I happened to be in Singapore at the time. There was quite a crowd to see him off. He was only going for six months. I think everybody looked forward to his coming back. It would have been better for him if he never had."
"Why, what happened then?"
"I don't know exactly. I'd been moved again. He was a good chap, but he was never an intimate friend of ours, and when we went North I forgot about him. But one day at the club I heard a couple of fellows talking. Walton and Kenning. Walton had just come up from Singapore. There'd been a big polo match.
" 'Did Almond play?' asked Kenning.
" 'You bet your life he didn't,' said Walton. 'They kicked him out of the team last season.'
" 'What are you talking about?' I said.
" 'Don't you know?' said Walton. 'He's gone 'all to pot, poor devil.'
" 'How?' I asked. I was amazed. "'Oh, drink.'
"'They say he dopes, too,' said Kenning. "'Yes, I've heard that,' said Walton. 'He won't last long at that rate. Opium, isn't it?'
" 'If he doesn't look out he'll lose his job,' said Kenning.
"I couldn't make it out," Low went on. "He was the last man I should ever have expected to go that way. Walton had traveled out with him on the same ship when Jack came back from leave. Walton said a curious thing about him. He said it looked as if the life had gone out of him. You couldn't help noticing it because he'd always had such high spirits. There'd been an idea that he was engaged to some girl in England, and on the ship they jumped to the conclusion that she'd thrown him over."
"That's what I said when Arthur told me," said Mrs. Low. "After all, five years is "a long time to leave a girl."
"Anyhow, they thought he'd get over it when he got back to work. But he didn't, unfortunately. He went from bad to worse. A lot of people liked him and they did all they could to persuade him to pull himself together. But there was nothing doing. He just told them to mind their own business. He was snappy and rude; it was funny because he'd always been so nice to everybody. Walton said you could hardly believe it was the same man. Government House dropped him, and a lot of others followed suit.
"He was a nice chap, Jack Almond; it seemed a pity that he should make such a mess of things. I was sorry, you know, but of course it didn't impair my appetite or disturb my night's sleep. A few months later I happened to be in Singapore myself, and when I went to the club I asked about him. He'd lost his job, all right; it appeared that he often didn't go to the office for two or three days at a time; and I was told that someone had made him manager of a rubber estate in Sumatra in the hope that away from the temptations of Singapore he might pull himself together. But it was no good. The opium had got him.
"He didn't keep the job in Sumatra long, and he was back again in Singapore. I heard afterwards that you would hardly have recognized him. He'd always been so spruce and smart; now he was shabby and unwashed and wild-eyed. A number of fellows at the club got together and arranged something. They felt they had to give him one more chance, and they sent him out to Sarawak. But it wasn't any use. The fact is, I think, he didn't want to be helped. I think he just wanted to go to hell in his own way, as quickly as he could.
"His best friends, discouraged, gave it up. No one saw him any more. He was forgotten. You know how people drop out in the F.M.S. I suppose that's why when I found a dead man in a sarong, with a beard, lying in a smelly room in a Chinese house thirty miles from anywhere, it never occurred to me for a moment that it might be Jack Almond." "Just think what he must have gone through in that time," said Mrs. Low, and her eyes were bright with tears.
"The whole thing's inexplicable," said Low.
"Why?" I asked.
"Well, if he was going to pieces, why didn't he do it when he first came out? His first five years he was all right. One of the best. If this affair of his had broken him, you'd have expected him to break when it was fresh. All that time he was as gay as a bird. From all I heard, it was a different man who came back from leave."
"Something happened during those six months in London," said Mrs. Low. "That's obvious."
"We shall never know," sighed Low.
"But we can guess," I smiled. "That's where the novelist comes in. Shall I tell you what I think happened?"
"Fire away."
"WELL, I THINK that during those first five years he was buoyed up by the sacrifice he'd made. He had a chivalrous soul. He had given up everything that to him made life worth living to save the woman he loved better than anything in the world. I think he had an exaltation of spirit that never left him. He loved her still, with all his heart; and in a strange way he was happy because he'd been able to sacrifice his happiness for the sake of someone who was worthy of the sacrifice.
"Then he went home. I think he loved her as much as ever, and I don't suppose he ever doubted that her love was as strong and enduring as his. I don't know what he expected. He may have thought she'd run away with him. It may have been that he'd have been satisfied to realize that she loved him still.
"It was inevitable that they should meet; they lived in the same world. He saw that she didn't care a row of pins for him any longer. He saw that she'd never loved him as he thought she loved him, and he may have suspected that she'd lured him coldly into making the sacrifice which was to save her. He knew that the lovely qualities he'd ascribed to her were due to his own imagination and she was just an ordinary woman who had been carried away by a momentary infatuation, and having got over it, had returned to her true life. A great name, wealth, social distinction, worldly success: these were the things that mattered to her.
"He'd sacrificed everything -his friends, his familiar surroundings, his profession, his usefulness in the world, success, all that gives value to existence -for nothing. He'd been cheated, and it broke him. After that he didn't care any more, and perhaps the worst thing was that even with it all, though he knew Lady Kastellan for what she was, he loved her still. Perhaps that is why he took to opium. To forget and to remember."
It was a long speech I had made, and now I stopped.
"All that's only fancy," said Low.
"I know it is," I answered, "but it seems to tit the circumstances."
"There must have been a weak strain in him. Otherwise he could have fought and conquered."
"Perhaps. Perhaps there is always a certain weakness attached to such incredible charm as he possessed. Perhaps few people love as whole-heartedly and as devotedly as he loved. Perhaps he didn't want to fight and conquer. I can't bring myself to blame him."
I did not add, because I was afraid they would think it cynical, that maybe if only Jack Almond had not had those incredibly long eyelashes he might now have been alive and well, minister to some foreign power and on the highroad to the Embassy in Paris.
"Let's go into the drawing-room," said Mrs. Low. "The boy wants to clear the table."
And that was the end of Jack Almond.
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