“THERE are no ladies,” Captain Rames said indignantly, as he took his seat in Mr. Benoliel’s dining-room.
His neighbor, a florid and handsome man, a little past the prime of life, glanced at the name on the visiting-card which marked Captain Rames’s place, and smiled sympathetically.
“I can quite understand,” he returned with a pleasant pomposity, “that to a sailor who has been three years in the Antarctic the deficiency is a very lamentable business. But there are some elements of consolation. Amongst the twelve men seated at this round table of mahogany, you will hardly see one who has not made some stir in the world. Upon your right, for instance, you will see Mr. Winthrop, that long and sallow person. He is a political resident in one of the native States of Rajputana, and his work, in six volumes, on the Indian bangle, is, I believe, supposed to be the last word upon the subject. A little nearer to you you will see a youth, though he is not so young as he looks. He is M. Poileaux, and the only aviator who has not yet fallen into the sea. When he does, he will come here no more. I myself am a surgeon whose name, I believe, is not unknown.”
And with a large white hand the famous Sir James Burrell discreetly pointed out others of note to his companion.
Captain Rames glanced indifferently round the table. A few of the twelve were in black coats, and amongst those few was Mr. Benoliel. It was the night of a court ball, and most of the guests were in some uniform or another, or shone in the gold of the privy councillor.
“They are, no doubt, men of vast importance,” replied Captain Rames bluntly. “But leaving you out of account, Sir James, I could dispense with the lot of them. When I dine in Grosvenor Square, in June, I do ask that there should be a petticoat on one side of me, at all events.”
The surgeon laughed good-humoredly. He studied his neighbor with a quick observing eye. Captain Rames was of the middle height with a squareness of build, which his gold epaulets exaggerated at this moment, and he was square, too, of face. His hair was thick and curved over from the side, parting in a dark turbulent comb, his forehead was broad, his eyes keen and very steady. Vigor rather than refinement was the mark of him; he had more character than intellect, more capacity than knowledge; thus Sir James Burrell defined him.
“I have played the comforter,” he said, “at so many bedsides that I should feel my vanity touched if I failed to console you,” he returned. “Let me bring to your attention the menu. I am confident that it will appeal to you.”
“Yes, that’s all right,” Rames admitted, as he leaned forward and glanced at the card. “But why should it particularly appeal to me?”
Sir James Burrell shrugged his shoulders.
“My profession brings me into touch with interesting people. I take my pleasure in observing them. And I have always noticed that the men who cheerfully endure the greatest hardships are also the first to demand the best of the luxuries, when they are within reach.”
“Well, it’s true,” said Captain Rames. “I can make a shift with pemmican, but I honestly like a good dinner. It’s the contrast, I suppose.”
Sir James shook his head.
“It goes deeper than that,” said he. “Your pale saints are no doubt profitable to the painters of glass windows, but I doubt if the world owes so very much to them. The great things are really done by the people who have a good deal of the animal in them; and animals like good dinners.”
Captain Rames was mollified, and his face took on a jovial look.
“I am animal enough,” he said, “to purr when my back is scratched.”
But Sir James Burrell was mounted on a hobby and hardly heeded the interruption.
“I could quote historical instances, but I need go no further than this room. Do you see the man sitting next to our host, and upon his right?”
Captain Rames saw a small thin man in the dress of a privy councillor, a man with a peaked, fleshless face, in which a pair of small eyes twinkled alertly. A scanty crop of gray hair covered the back of his skull, and left markedly visible the height and the narrowness of his forehead. Captain Rames leaned forward with a new interest.
“Yes, and I recognize his face,” he said. “Surely that is Henry Smale.”
“Exactly,” returned Sir James. “He is in the cabinet, and, quite apart from politics, he is, upon scientific grounds, a man of great distinction.”
“But, surely, he disproves your theory. He looks an ascetic.”
“And is nothing of the kind,” interrupted Sir James. “I admit that his look of asceticism has been a great asset to him in his career. But the public has quite misjudged him. He is a voluptuary, with the face of a monk—the most useful combination for public life in this country which you could possibly imagine. If he dines alone at his club, he will not dine under a guinea; and he has the animal weaknesses up to the brim of him. For instance, he is as jealous as a dog. Filch from him the smallest of his prerogatives, and he will turn upon you bitterly. Yet he has done great things, and initiated bold policies. Why? Because he has enough of the animal in him to do great things.” And upon that Sir James broke off.
The butler was standing at the elbow of Captain Rames, with a jug of champagne in one hand and a decanter of red wine in the other. He bent down and offered Captain Rames his choice. Sir James Burrell intervened.
“By the way,” he said, “have you any wish to stand particularly well with your host?”
“I am now beginning to think that I have,” replied Captain Rames.
“Then I should choose his Burgundy. He has his fancies, like the rest of us, and to prefer his Nuits-St.-George to champagne is one way to his esteem.”
Captain Rames took the hint, and, as he raised his glass to his lips, Mr. Benoliel smiled to him across the table.
“I will ask your opinion upon that wine, Captain Rames,” he said, and so turned again to Henry Smale.
“You see, he noticed at once,” said Sir James.
Captain Rames had noticed something too. At the mention of his name, Henry Smale had looked up with interest. He was even now obviously asking a question of Mr. Benoliel about him. Rames began to take more careful stock of his host. Mr. Benoliel was a tall, high-shouldered man, with a dark thin face in which delicacy seemed to predominate over strength. His hair was black, and a little black moustache drew a pencil line along his upper lip. His fingers were long and extraordinarily restless. It was difficult to make a guess at his age. A first glance would put him in the forties. But when Mr. Benoliel showed his eyes—which was not always, for he had a trick of looking out between lids half-closed—it seemed that he must have lived for centuries; so much of fatigue and so much of patience were suddenly revealed.
“I wonder why he asked me to dine here,” said Harry Rames.
“You were certain to dine here,” replied Sir James.
“I met him but the once by the purest accident.”
“You were certain to meet him,” said Sir James. “All famous people meet him. All famous people dine here once. But he is not really a snob. For, quite a number of them are never invited twice.”
“He can be a good friend?”
“Of that I cannot speak,” said Sir James.
The courses followed one after the other, and Harry Rames found his eyes continually wandering back across the silver and bright flowers to the exotic figure of his host. He took his share in the conversation about him, but a movement of Mr. Benoliel would check him in his speech or cause him to listen with an absent ear. He watched the play of his delicate fingers upon the table-cloth, the continual restlessness of his body. Mr. Benoliel was of his race; there was in his aspect a queer mixture of the financier and the dilettante, the shrewd business man and the sensuous apprecitator of art. There was a touch, too, of the feminine in him.
“I told you that you would not be bored,” said Sir James Burrell toward the end of the dinner. “You are not the first man who has fallen under the spell of Mr. Benoliel.”
Harry Rames laughed.
“I am under no spell, I assure you,” he said frankly. “I was wondering whether he was likely to be of use to me.”
“It is very likely,” returned Sir James. “He has been of use to many. He plays at omniscience. To anticipate a wish before it is expressed, to serve an ambition before it has been revealed—that is one of our host’s little vanities. He may have asked you here with no other object than to gratify it.”
Harry Rames glanced quickly at his companion.
“Is that so?” he asked eagerly. Then his face fell. “But I am not even a friend of his.”
“I do not think that matters,” said the surgeon. “He likes to pose as Providence, and the posture will be more dramatic if it is assumed toward an acquaintance rather than a friend.”
“He is a sham, then,” said Rames bluntly.
“By no means,” Sir James replied suavely. “Let us say, rather, that he is an artist.”
Captain Rames turned with a furrowed brow to his companion.
“I am no great hand at subtleties,” he said. “Will you tell me what you know of Mr. Benoliel? I am a beginner in the world, and he may be of importance to me.”
Sir James Burrell smiled. He was in his element. To supply a character much as some author of the seventeenth century might have done, was a foible which continually tempted him. He was not always successful. Paradox allured him into difficulties, cheap epigrams at times blazed before him, and would not be quiet until he had uttered them. But often he managed to hit off, with some happiness, at all events, the externals of the person whom he described. He drank his wine now slowly and set down his glass. Then, twisting the delicate stem with the finger-tips of his large and handsome hand, he began:
“He is a Jew, of course, and an Oriental. But from what quarter of the Orient, who shall say? You may give him any birthplace, from the Levant to Casa Blanca, and no one will contradict you. Some hold him to be a charlatan, as you are inclined to do. But he is an accepted personage, not blown into notice and out of it by the favor of a season, but a permanency. How he became so, I cannot tell you. He is very busy all day, although when the darkness comes it would be difficult to point to any one thing which he has done. He is always at the top table at public dinners, and very near to the chairman. But he never proposes a toast or responds to one. If he writes a letter to the Times, it appears in leaded type. If you want secret information on any subject, he can get it for you. If you want help, he will find the man who can give it. He is a power in the city. He is a power in politics, and the motor-cars of prime-ministers stand at his door at ten o’clock in the morning. Yet he was never in the House, and has never made a speech on any platform. It is believed by many that he might achieve greatness if he chose. But he never chooses. He has the air at a discussion of being able to say the last word on any subject, but he does not say it. He seems, indeed, to stand high in the world on a pedestal which has no legs to it. That is how I describe him. For the rest, he is rich, and I have never heard him utter an opinion which was not derived from others or altogether banal. But, listen! He is going to speak to us.”
“However, I can recommend the old brandy,” was all that Mr. Benoliel had at that moment to say.
“There, what did I tell you!” said Sir James, triumphant at the success of his diagnosis.
“Well, if his talk is banal his brandy isn’t, God bless him,” said Captain Rames. “But I interrupted you.”
“He has been guilty of one weakness,” Sir James resumed. “He married into an old family of great poverty and the marriage lasted for six months. His wife lives handsomely in Eton Square—But I see that I am going to lose you, for our host is beckoning to you.”
Captain Rames obeyed the summons with alacrity and walked round the table.
“I see that you are going on to Buckingham Palace,” said Mr. Benoliel. “So I thought that I would interrupt your conversation with Sir James Burrell. For I want to introduce you to Mr. Smale.”
Mr. Smale held out his hand. At a sign from Benoliel, the butler brought up a chair and placed it between Smale and his host.
“Sit down,” said Benoliel, and Captain Rames obeyed.
“Benoliel tells me,” said Smale, “that you are thinking of Parliament.”
Captain Rames was startled. He could not remember that in his one brief conversation with his host he had even mentioned his ambition.
“I inferred it from a casual word or two you let drop,” said Benoliel with a smile.
“Well, it’s true,” said Rames. “I should like to stand on your side very much, Mr. Smale, if I could find a seat to contest.”
Henry Smale nodded.
“That, no doubt, could be arranged. You would be a strong candidate. You bring a reputation and some breath of romance to favor you. But—” and he pursed up his lips as if in doubt and looked at Captain Rames with a searching eye. Rames was disconcerted. He had been back in England for some six months, and during those six months he had been much sought after. At this period of his life, doubts of him had been rarely expressed behind his back, and never to his face. Young ladies whom he did not know had clamored for his autograph, young ladies whom he did know had approached him with a winning humility; established beauty had smiled at him; established fame had welcomed him as an equal. The calm scrutiny of Henry Smale was a displeasing splash of cold water.
“Of course,” he said, with a diffidence which he did not feel, “I might be a failure.”
And Henry Smale replied promptly:
“That’s just it. You might be a failure. Meanwhile you are a great success, and have the chance of standing quite alone in your career. For what you set out to do is not yet done. You leave the laurel for another to snatch.”
“That is quite true, Mr. Smale,” Harry Rames replied. “But I have considered it. I am not yielding to an impulse. I have counted the risk!”
He spoke with a nice adjustment of firmness and modesty. Henry Smale rose from his chair.
“Very well,” he said. “Will you come down to the House at four o’clock to-morrow afternoon? I will introduce you to Hanley, the chief whip.”
Captain Rames flushed with pleasure.
“Thank you, I shall be delighted,” he cried, rising in his turn; and as the two men shook hands, Mr. Benoliel said gently:
“I was thinking of Ludsey. It has no candidate on your side, Smale.”
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