XXXIII.

He found himself, largely against his intention, writing long letters to Eva. But Eva never wrote--only cabled. He had cables from Stockholm and Moscow, Pekin and Buenos Ayres. It was not until they were nearing home that Frank had a letter from her. Christopher de Jones, she wrote, was madly in love with her. “_He said he wanted me to be his entirely and everlastingly, if you know what I mean. I let him have his way because he says he is quite serious about blowing up the world, and I think if he had a little baby of his own, shurely he wouldn’t do such a thing. But Rex does not agree with me. I told him all the truth about Christopher and he says he is going to divorce me. I am furious, and He is Furious. Never mind Darling, if I flirt with him he won’t divorce me._”

Frank planned to stay abroad for a long time to come. He would not return to England, perhaps for years. One morning, however, he received advice from Victoria Station that his cloak-room expenses in respect of a trunk he had forwarded to his address in London, and which could not be opened by the Custom officials as he had not sent them the key, were piling up in geometrical progression, rising hourly, minute by minute. The news shocked him out of his resolution to stay away from England. Hiring a special motor, he rushed headlong to the station and caught the express train to Boulogne, only to learn, on his arrival at Victoria, that his cloak-room expenses amounted to seventeen shillings and ninepence. He felt as a man, who, arriving breathless at the station, finds that the train is not due for another half-hour. He was that kind of man--the business side of life was a perpetual nightmare to him. Having arrived in England, he made up his mind to stay there. A month later, he recorded in his journal:

“_There is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon. The magnetic O. usurps more and more of my interest. Late at night we dash into the country, spending the night at his resplendent country house, and rush back to town in the morning. Feverish activity. Articles are written, printed, and forgotten; to-day’s paper lights to-morrow’s fire. It goes on--dances and entertainments; the dinners and drinks of to-day are washed away into the ocean to-morrow. ‘To-morrow and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, till the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death,’ O, if only this were all to end, change soon, this vexatious, unavailing life in time! Don’t make it long, O Lord!_

“_Yesterday I visited Bourne Abbey (Ottercove’s country house) with O. and Eva. As we went upstairs I sniffed the air; there seemed to be a queer musty smell. I asked O. what it was. ‘I am sorry, Dickin,’ he said. ‘I am very sorry that there should be a smell.’ Eva seemed quite at home; no trace of self-consciousness--a perfect hostess._

“_Last week Christopher de Jones came to me. The electric light had failed, and his face looked worn and secretive by candle light, like a monk’s. The lines round his mouth had deepened, too. We talked of the end of the world; his voice and general attitude were apocalyptic. He ended by making a confession. ‘You know why I always come here. It is because you know her. I come to you so as to talk of her. You love her. And I--I--I--‘_

“_I should welcome the change foreshadowed in the Apocalypse. For time is a cheat, and life a snare. It is the curse of life in time that it can only give us one thing at a time, while a latent memory of Eden in us longs for all things all the time; ‘and nothing’ says Shakespeare, (meaning not-being) ‘brings me all things.’ ‘Abwarten,’ (abide, or perhaps better: mark time) was Goethe’s motto in the wisdom of old age. But while conscious of the mirage of love and freedom (for here again, while all the world seems open to you, you must needs trail a narrow path, zigzag it as you will), I have not the strength of will to forego their piecemeal felicities with their fickle promise of what life was before the fall. And so it is that though I expect nothing from life (and thus have agreeable surprises), I shall live it (as one would say of reading an unpromising manuscript) with interest, till we are changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump._

“_And, aye, there is hope! Lord de Jones has bought a penny trumpet and threatens to shatter us all into dust. Well, we shall see. Or, rather, we shall not see. Cease seeing. I wonder which...._”