knowledge that she had secured a job from which no man in the world would have the right to oust her.
III
THE HON. CLIVE TORBY
He was now the only son of old Lord Dronda; his elder brother had been killed at Mons early in the war. He had been aware of his good looks ever since he was a week old. Tom, the elder brother, had been fat and plain; everyone had told him so. He did not mind now, being dead. Clive was the happiest fellow possible, even though he had lost an arm late in '17. He had not minded that. It was his left arm, and he could already do almost everything quite well without it; women liked him all the better for having lost it. He had always been perfectly satisfied with himself, his looks, his home, his relations—everything. His critics said that he was completely selfish, and had horrible manners or no manners at all, but it was difficult to underline his happy unconscious young innocence so heavily. Certainly if, in the days before the war, you stayed with his people, you found his indifference to your personal needs rather galling—but "Tom looked after all that," although Tom often did not because he was absent-minded by nature and fond of fishing. The fact is that poor Lady Dronda was to blame. She had educated her children very badly, being so fond of them and so proud of them that she gave in to them on every opportunity. She was known amongst her friends as "Poor Lady Dronda" because, being a sentimentalist and rather stupid, life was perpetually disappointing her. People never came up to her expectations, so she put all her future into the hands of her sons, who, it seemed, might in the end also prove disappointing. The favourite word on her lips was, "Now tell me the truth. The one thing I want to hear from my friends is the truth." However, the truth was exactly what she never did get, because it upset her so seriously and made her so angry with the person who gave it her. Tom being dead, she transformed him into an angel, and told sympathetic acquaintances so often that she never spoke of him that his name was rarely off her lips. Nevertheless she was able to devote a great deal of her time to Clive, who was now "All Her Life."
The results of this were two: first, that Clive, although retaining all his original simple charm, was more sure than ever before that he was perfect; secondly, that he found his mother tiresome and, having been brought up to think of nobody but himself, was naturally as little at home as possible.
He took up his abode at Hortons, finding a little flat, No. 11, on the second floor, that suited him exactly. Into it he put his "few sticks of things," and the result was a charming confusion of soda-water syphons and silver photograph frames.
He very happily throughout the whole of 1918 resided there, receiving innumerable young women to meals of different kinds, throwing the rooms open to all his male acquaintances, and generally turning night into day—with the caution that he must not annoy Mr. Nix, the manager, for whom he had the very greatest respect. The odd thing was that with all his conceit and bad manners, he was something of a hero. He had received both the M.C. and the D.S.O., and was as good an officer as the Guards could boast. This sounds conventional and in the good old Ouida tradition, but his heroism lay rather in the fact that he had positively loathed the war. He hated the dirt, the blood, the confusion, the losing of friends, what he called "the general Hell." No one was more amusing and amiable during his stay out there, and, to be Ouidaesque again for a moment, he was adored by his men.
Nevertheless it was perhaps the happiest moment of his life when he knew he was to lose his arm. "No more going back to jolly old France for me, old bean," he wrote to a friend. "Now I'm going to enjoy myself."
That was his rooted determination. He had not gone through all that and been maimed for life for nothing. He was going to enjoy himself. Yes, after the war he would show them. …
He showed them mainly at present by dancing all hours of the day and night. He had danced before the war like any other human being, and had faithfully attended at Murray's and the Four Hundred and the other places. But he did not know that he had very greatly enjoyed it; he had gone in the main because Miss Poppy Darling, who had just then caught his attention, commanded him to do so. Now it was quite another matter—he went simply for the dance itself. He was not by nature a very introspective young man, and he did not think of himself as strange or odd or indeed as anything definite at all; but it was perhaps a little strange that he, who had been so carefully brought up by his fond mother, should surrender to a passion for tom-toms and tin kettles more completely than he had ever surrendered to any woman. He did not care with whom it was that he danced; a man would have done as well. The point was that, when those harsh and jarring noises began to beat and battle through the air, his body should move and gyrate in sympathy just as at that very moment perhaps, somewhere in Central Africa, a grim and glistening savage was turning monotonously beneath the glories of a full moon. He danced all night and most of the day, with the result that he had very little time for anything else. Lady Dronda complained that he never wrote to her. "Dear Mother," he replied on a postcard, "jolly busy. Ever so much to do. See you soon."
Young men and young women came to luncheon and dinner. He was happy and merry with them all. Even Fanny, the portress downstairs, adored him. His smile was irresistible.
The strangest fact of all, perhaps, was that the war had really taught him nothing. He had for three years been face to face with Reality, stared into her eyes, studied her features, seeing her for quite the first time.
And his vision of her had made no difference to him at all. He came back into this false world to find it just exactly as he had left it. Reality slipped away from him, and it was as though she had never been. He was as sure as he had been four years before that the world was made only for him and his—and not so much for his as for him. Had you asked he would not have told you, because he was an Englishman and didn't think it decent to boast—but you would have seen it in his eyes that he really did believe that he was vastly superior to more than three-quarters of the rest of humanity—and this although he had gone to Eton and had received therefore no education, although he knew no foreign language, knew nothing about the literature of his own or any other country, was trained for no business and no profession, and could only spell with a good deal of hit-and-miss result.
Moreover, when you faced him and thought of these things, you yourself were not sure whether, after all, he were not right. He was so handsome, so self-confident, so fearless, so touching with his youth and his armless sleeve, that you could not but wonder whether the world, after all, was not made for such as he. The old world perhaps—but the new one? …
Meanwhile Clive danced.
He flung himself into such an atmosphere of dancing that he seemed to dance all his relations and acquaintances into it with him. He could not believe that everyone was not spending the time in dancing. Albert Edward, whose official name was Banks, assured him that he had no time for dancing.
"No time!" said Clive, greatly concerned. "Poor devil! I don't know how you get along."
Albert Edward, who approved of the Hon. Clive because of his pluck, his birth, his good looks, and his generosity, only smiled.
"Got to earn my living, sir," he said.
"Really, must you?" Clive was concerned. "Well, it's a damned shame after all you've done over there."
"Someone's got to work still, I suppose, sir," said Albert Edward; "and it's my belief that it's them that works hardest now will reap the 'arvest soonest—that's my belief."
"Really!" said Clive in politely interested tone. "Well, Banks, if you want to know my idea, it is that it's about time that some of us enjoyed ourselves—after all we've been through. Let the old un's who've stayed at home do the work."
"Yes,