If there was one thing that Frank Hickson prided herself on more than on being a match for any man it was that she was a gentlewoman, and her reply was perfect in its combination of majesty and graciousness.
"We've all enjoyed having you here, Lena," she said. "It's been a real treat."
But when she turned away from the departing train she heaved such a vast sigh of relief that the platform shook beneath her. She flung back her massive shoulders and strode home to the villa.
"Ouf!" she roared at intervals. "Ouf!"
She changed into her one-piece bathing-suit, put on her espadrilles and a man's dressing-gown (no nonsense about it) and went to Eden Roc. There was still time for a bathe before luncheon. She passed through the Monkey House, looking about her to say good morning to anyone she knew, for she felt on a sudden at peace with mankind, and then stopped dead still. She could not believe her eyes. Beatrice was sitting at one of the tables, by herself; she wore the pyjamas she had bought at Molyneux's a day or two before, she had a string of pearls round her neck, and Frank's quick eyes saw that she had just had her hair waved; her cheeks, her eyes, her lips were made up. Fat, nay vast, as she was, none could deny that she wan an extremely handsome woman. But what was she doing? With the slouching gait of the Neanderthal man which was Frank's characteristic walk she went up to Beatrice. In her black bathing-dress Frank looked like the huge cetacean which the Japanese catch in the Torres Straits and which the vulgar call a sea-cow.
"Beatrice, what are you doing?" she cried in her deep voice.
It was like the roll of thunder in the distant mountains. Beatrice looked at her coolly.
"Eating," she answered.
"Damn it, I can see you're eating."
In front of Beatrice was a plate of croissants and a plate of butter, a pot of strawberry jam, coffee and a jug of cream. Beatrice was spreading butter thick on the delicious hot bread, covering this with jam, and then pouring the thick cream over all.
"You'll kill yourself," said Frank.
"I don't care," mumbled Beatrice with her mouth full.
"You'll put on pounds and pounds."
"Go to hell!"
She actually laughed in Frank's face. My God, how good those croissants smelt!
"I'm disappointed in you, Beatrice. I thought you had more character."
"It's your fault. That blasted woman. You would have her down. For a fortnight I've watched her gorge like a hog. It's more than flesh and blood can stand. I'm going to have one square meal if I bust."
The tears welled up to Frank's eyes. Suddenly she felt very weak and womanly. She would have liked a strong man to take her on his knee and pet her and cuddle her and call her little baby names. Speechless she sank down on a chair by Beatrice's side. A waiter came up. With a pathetic gesture she waved towards the coffee and croissants.
"I'll have the same," she sighed.
She listlessly reached out her hand to take a roll, but Beatrice snatched away the plate.
"No, you don't," she said. "You wait till you get your own."
Frank called her a name which ladies seldom apply to one another in affection. In a moment the waiter brought her croissants, butter, jam and coffee.
"Where's the cream, you fool?" she roared like a lioness at bay.
She began to eat. She ate gluttonously. The place was beginning to fill up with bathers coming to enjoy a cocktail or two after having done their duty by the sun and the sea. Presently Arrow strolled along with Prince Roccamare. She had on a beautiful silk wrap which she held tightly round her with one hand in order to look as slim as possible and she bore her head high so that he should not see her double chin. She was laughing gaily. She felt like a girl. He had just told her (in Italian) that her eyes made the blue of the Mediterranean look like pea-soup. He left her to go into the men's room to brush his sleek black hair and they arranged to meet in five minutes for a drink. Arrow walked on to the woman's room to put a little more rouge on her cheeks and a little more red on her lips. On her way she caught sight of Frank and Beatrice. She stopped. She could hardly believe her eyes.
"My God!" she cried. "You beasts. You hogs." She seized a chair. "Waiter."
Her appointment went clean out of her head. In the twinkling of an eye the waiter was at her side.
"Bring me what these ladies are having," she ordered.
Frank lifted her great heavy head from her plate. "Bring me some pate de foie gras," she boomed.
"Frank!" cried Beatrice.
"Shut up!"
"All right. I'll have some too."
The coffee was brought and the hot rolls and cream and the pate de foie gras and they set to. They spread the cream on the pate and they ate it. They devoured great spoonfuls of jam. They crunched the delicious crisp bread voluptuously. What was love to Arrow then? Let the Prince keep his palace in Rome and his castle in the Appennines. They did not speak. What they were about was much too serious. They ate with solemn, ecstatic fervour.
"I haven't eaten potatoes for twenty-five years," said Frank in a far-off brooding tone.
"Waiter," cried Beatrice, "bring fried potatoes for three."
"Tres bien, Madame."
The potatoes were brought. Not all the perfumes of Arabia smelt so sweet. They ate them with their fingers.
"Bring me a dry Martini," said Arrow.
"You can't have a dry Martini in the middle of a meal, Arrow," said Frank.
"Can't I? You wait and see."
"All right then. Bring me a double dry Martini," said Frank.
"Bring three double dry Martinis," said Beatrice.
They were brought and drunk at a gulp. The women looked at one another and sighed. The misunderstanding of the last fortnight dissolved and the sincere affection each had for the other welled up again in their hearts. They could hardly believe that they had ever contemplated the possibility of severing a friendship that had brought them so much solid satisfaction. They finished the potatoes.
"I wonder if they've got any chocolate eclairs," said Beatrice.
"Of course they have."
And of course they had. Frank thrust one whole into her huge mouth, swallowed it and seized another, but before she ate it she looked at the other two and plunged a vindictive dagger into the heart of the monstrous Lena.
"You can say what you like, but the truth is she played a damned rotten game of bridge, really."
"Lousy," agreed Arrow.
But Beatrice suddenly thought she would like a meringue.
The Alien Corn
I had known the Blands a long time before I discovered that they had any connexion with Ferdy Rabenstein. Ferdy must have been nearly fifty when I first knew him and at the time of which I write he was well over seventy. He had altered little. His hair, coarse but abundant and curly, was white, but he had kept his figure and held himself as gallantly as ever. It was not hard to believe that in youth he had been as beautiful as people said. He had still his fine Semitic profile and the lustrous black eyes that had caused havoc in so many a Gentile breast. He was very tall, lean, with an oval face and a clear skin. He wore his clothes very well and in evening dress, even now, he was one of the handsomest men I had ever seen. He wore then large black pearls in his shirt-front and platinum and sapphire rings on his fingers. Perhaps he was rather flashy, but you felt it was so much in character that it would have ill become him to be anything else.
'After all, I am an Oriental,' he said. 'I can carry a certain barbaric magnificence.'
I have often thought that Ferdy Rabenstein would make an admirable subject for a biography. He was not a great man, but within the limits he set himself he made of his life a work of art. It was a masterpiece in little, like a Persian miniature, and" derived its interest from its perfection. Unfortunately the materials are scanty. They would consist of letters that may very well have been destroyed and the recollection of people who are old now and will soon be dead. His memory is extraordinary, but he would never write his memoirs, for he looks upon his past as a source of purely private entertainment; and he is a man of the most perfect discretion. Nor do I know anyone who could do justice of the subject but Max Beerbohm. There is no one else in this hard world of today who can look upon the trivial with such tender sympathy and wring such a delicate pathos from futility. I wonder that Max, who must have known Ferdy much better than I, and long before, was never tempted to exercise his exquisite fancy on such a theme. He was born for Max to write about. And who should have illustrated the elegant book that I see in my mind's eye but Aubrey Beardsley? Thus would have been erected a monument of triple brass and the ephemera imprisoned to succeeding ages in the amber's translucency.