Pamfret, mentally disturbed as he was, found a great deal of amusement in the rules of the Committee on Courtship, while he found that the Committee on Domesticity had made the family a farce and the home a tomb. The Committee on Sleep — but Pamfret could go no further. He was completely exhausted. His head fell forward till his chin rested on his breast. Awakening with a start, he undressed and went to bed.
He dreamed of Peace, Peace with the body of an angel and a horrible grinning skull for a head. Through rivers and valleys, over steep hills and deep bogs and marshes this frightful thing pursued him, until at last he saw before him in the middle of a desert, the beautiful Hall of Peace. With a final burst of strength he reached the portal, and entering the marble vault, approached the altar and knelt before it. The ebony angel on the pedestal put together the pieces of the broken sword of the warrior, and raised it to strike. Pamfret raised his arm to ward off the blow; and just as the sword was descending with the speed of lightning, he awoke.
Someone was knocking on the door of his room. Pamfret, still shaking with the fear of his dream, called out, “Who is it?”
“In the name of the International Peace Congress and the Committee on Sleep, I ask that this door be opened,” came a voice.
“What the devil have I done now?” thought Pamfret. “Disturbed the peace of my bedcovers, I suppose.”
“In the name of the International Peace—” began the voice again.
“Oh, shut up!” said Pamfret under his breath, and crossed to the door and opened it. “What do you want?” he demanded.
The intruder eyed Pamfret serenely. He was dressed in white from head to foot, with a silver shield bearing the symbol of the angel and warrior on his breast. On his cap in gold letters was the word “Peace.”
“What do you want?” Pamfret repeated.
“You were talking in your sleep,” answered the Man in White. “Violation of Rule 34. Come.”
“Come where?” asked Pamfret.
“You are pretending.” But noting the blank look on Pamfret’s face, he added, “To the Hospital for Talkers and Snorers.”
“My God!” exclaimed Pamfret, and burst out laughing. “You don’t mean to say that—”
“Ignorance is no excuse,” the Man in White interrupted.
“But I have to dress.”
“Well, I’ll wait outside. You have five minutes.”
Pamfret walked over to the chair by the window and sat down. He would have liked to have had time to think it all over, this grotesque, mad world that seemed to have lost its senses since he had left it sixty years before. As the scenes and events of the day passed through his mind he knew not whether to laugh or cry. Of course it was all very ludicrous, but—
“Time is up,” called the Man in White through the door.
Pamfret crossed over to the closet where his coat was hanging and took from the inside pocket a small vial filled with a green liquid. Then he lay down on the bed and drank the liquid to the last drop. “Satan knew what he was about, after all,” he murmured, and closed his eyes.
When the Man in White entered, the room was empty.
A Companion of Fortune
Arthur Churchill-Brown, attaché at the British Legation in Rome, leaned back in his chair till it rested against the rim of his desk, and squinted disagreeably at an open letter which he held in his hand. This attitude of Arthur’s toward his desk was nothing unusual. According to his unformed but practical philosophy, desks were made exactly for that purpose. He found a mild but never failing interest in the almost constant stream of visitors who passed down the narrow hall at the rear; and he thoroughly abhorred the necessity of giving any attention whatever to the papers and documents which were occasionally laid behind him on his desk by the silent-footed attendant, whose back, as he noiselessly returned to the inner rooms of the secretary and the ambassador, seemed to Arthur to suggest an almost intolerable insolence. Someday, he felt sure, he would throw something at it.
On this particular morning the expression of bored annoyance which had come to be Arthur’s official countenance had deepened to one of positive displeasure. “What the deuce do they all come here for, anyway?” he growled. “Good Lord! And they all go the same route. It’s enough to kill a man.” He felt behind him on the desk for a packet of cigarettes, lit one and, puffing furiously, reread the offending letter. It ran as follows:
My Dear Son:
I have time for only a line, but I must get this off at once. Miss Carlisle, a very wealthy American lady, and her companion are leaving tonight for Rome. I met her last month at Strathmore, and she has been staying with me for a day or two in town. I have promised for you to open some doors for her in Rome, and she will probably call very shortly after you get this. Don’t haul her out to Udini’s or any of the other places across the river.
Hastily,
P.S. — I’ll send you a check on the twentieth.
Arthur sighed, wheeled his chair around and began to wade through the pile of papers that had accumulated during his absence the day before. “She knows very well,” he grumbled, “that I’m too busy to run all over the blooming town like a footman.” Which was very true. Since his promotion — he regarded the term as pure sarcasm — to the Home Desk, he had been forced to spend at least an hour of each day in real work. To a young diplomat who had spent a full year in learning the delicate and subtle methods by which one may remain comfortably balanced between the Black and the White, this was indeed irksome. It necessitated a complete readjustment. More than once the picturesque inventions of a stranded beachcomber, sent down from Naples by an overworked but still credulous consul, had violently disturbed the nice balance of Arthur’s social position in the Eternal City, where the most alluring and entrancing eyes have a disconcerting way of looking in two directions at once.
“Miss Carlisle,” continued Arthur, still speaking aloud, and emphasizing the title. “Of course, she’s an old maid. Probably forty, possibly fifty, and certainly plain. She’ll want to do the whole blooming round. If anybody had asked me but—”
He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant, who approached his desk and stood waiting for him to speak.
“Well?” said Arthur, without looking up.
“A lady, sir.”
Arthur’s worst fears were confirmed. As he advanced to meet Miss Carlisle he swore, under his breath. Just in the height of the season, to waste a week on this! She could not be described better than in Arthur’s own words: probably forty, possibly fifty, and certainly plain. Lanky, angular, and yet somehow graceful, she advanced to meet the young diplomat with outstretched hand and a somewhat pleasing smile. Arthur extended his own hand, then stood still, staring with rude frankness over Miss Carlisle’s left shoulder.
“That,” said the very wealthy American lady, “is just what I expected. I’ve grown used to it in the past three weeks. Miss Moulton,” turning to the young woman who had been the object of Arthur’s surprised gaze, “this is Mr. Churchill-Brown. Miss Moulton is my companion,” she explained.
“Oh!” said the young man. Then, after a moment’s silence, “O... Oh!” he repeated.
At which foolish remark no one would be surprised who had ever had the good fortune to see Miss Moulton. She was the exact antithesis of Miss Carlisle; and added to the charm of her youth and beauty and loveliness was a certain indefinable air of disdain that chained the young man to the floor and left him speechless. While Miss Carlisle chattered amiably, something about having found him absent when they called the day before, and did he get her card, and wasn’t Rome a wonderful place, and weren’t the hotels the worst in the world, Arthur gazed openly at the companion, who finally found it necessary to turn away and begin an inspection of a portrait of the Duke of Wellington hanging nearby.