William Somerset Maugham
   
                            A Casual Affair


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OCR: Несененко Алексей, апрель 2003

   
   I am telling this story in the first person, though I am in no way 
connected with it, because I do not want to pretend to the reader that 
I know more about it than I really do. The facts are as I state them, 
but the reasons for them I can only guess, and it may be that when the 
reader has read them he will think me wrong. No one can know for 
certain. But if you are interested in human nature there are few 
things more diverting than to consider the motives that have resulted 
in certain actions. It was only by chance that I heard anything of the 
unhappy circumstances at all. I was spending two or three days on an 
island on the north coast of Borneo, and the District Officer had very 
kindly offered to put me up. I had been roughing it for some time and 
I was glad enough to have a rest. The island had been at one time a 
place of some consequence, with a Governor of its own, but was so no 
longer; and now there was nothing much to be seen of its former 
importance except the imposing stone house in which the Governor had 
once lived and which now the District Officer, grumblingly because of 
its unnecessary size, inhabited. But it was a comfortable house to 
stay in, with an immense drawing-room, a dining-room large enough to 
seat forty people, and lofty, spacious bedrooms. It was shabby, 
because the government at Singapore very wisely spent as little money 
on it as possible; but I rather liked this, and the heavy official 
furniture
   gave it a sort of dull stateliness that was amusing. The garden was 
too large for the District Officer to keep up and it was a wild tangle 
of tropical vegetation. His name was Arthur Low; he was a quiet, 
smallish man in the later thirties, married, with two young children. 
The Lows had not tried to make themselves at home in this great place, 
but camped there, like refugees from a stricken area, and looked 
forward to the time when they would be moved to some other post where 
they could settle down in surroundings more familiar to them.
   I took a fancy to them at once. The D. 0. had an easy manner and a 
humorous way with him. I am sure he performed his various duties 
admirably, but he did everything he could to avoid the official 
demeanour. He was slangy of speech and pleasantly caustic. It was 
charming to see him play with the two children. It was quite obvious 
that he had found marriage a very satisfactory state. Mrs Low was an 
extremely nice little woman, plump, with dark eyes under fine 
eyebrows, not very pretty, but certainly attractive. She looked 
healthy and she had high spirits. They chaffed one another continually 
and each one seemed to look upon the other as immensely comic. Their 
jokes were neither very good nor very new, but they thought them so 
killing that you were obliged to laugh with them.
   I think they were glad to see me, especially Mrs Low, for with 
nothing much to do but keep an eye on the house and the children, she 
was thrown very much on her own resources. There were so few white 
people on the Island that the social life was soon exhausted; and 
before I had been there twenty-four hours she pressed me to stay a 
week, a month, or a year. On the evening of my arrival they gave a 
dinner-party to which the official population, the government 
surveyor, the doctor, the schoolmaster, the chief of constabulary, 
were invited, but on the following evening the three of us dined by 
ourselves. At the dinner-party the guests had brought their house-boys 
to help, but that night we were waited on by the Lows' one boy and my 
travelling servant. They brought in the coffee and left us to 
ourselves. Low and I lit cheroots.
   "You know that I've seen you before," said Mrs Low.
   "Where? "I asked.
   "In London. At a party. I heard someone point you out to somebody 
else. In Carlton House Terrace at Lady Kastellan's."
   "Oh? When was that?"
   "Last time we were home on leave. There were Russian dancers. "
   "I remember. About two or three years ago. Fancy you being there!"
   "That's exactly what we said to one another at the time," said Low, 
with a slow, engaging smile. "We'd never been at such a party in our 
lives."
   "It made a great splash, you know," I said. "It was the party of 
the season. Did you enjoy it? "
   "I hated every minute of it," said Mrs Low.
   "Don't let's overlook the fact that you insisted on going, Bee," 
said Low. "I knew we'd be out of it among all those swells. My dress 
clothes were the same I'd had at Cambridge and they'd never been muck 
of a fit."
   "I bought a frock specially at Peter Robinson's. It looked lovely 
in the shop. I wished I hadn't wasted so much money when I got there; 
I never felt so dowdy in my life."
   "Well, it didn't much matter. We weren't introduced to anybody. "
   I remembered the party quite well. The magnificent rooms in Carlton 
House Terrace had been decorated with great festoons of yellow roses 
and at one end of the vast drawing-room a stage had been erected. 
Special costumes of the Regency period had been designed for the 
dancers and a modern composer had written the music for the two 
charming ballets they danced. It was hard to look at it all and not 
allow the vulgar thought to cross one's mind that the affair must have 
cost an enormous amount of money. Lady Kastellan was a beautiful woman 
and a great hostess, but I do not think anyone would have ascribed to 
her any vast amount of kindliness, she knew too many people to care 
much for any one in particular, and I couldn't help wondering why she 
had asked to such a grand party two obscure and quite unimportant 
little persons from a distant colony. "Had you known Lady Kastellan 
long? " I asked. "We didn't know her at all. She sent us a card and we 
went because I wanted to see what she was like," said Mrs Low. "She's 
a very able woman", I said.
   "I dare say she is. She hadn't an idea who we were when the butler 
man announced us, but she remembered at once. 'Oh, yes' she said, 
'you're poor Jack's friends. Do go and find yourselves seats where you 
can see. You'll adore Lifar, he's too marvellous.' And then she turned 
to say how d'you do to the next people. But she gave me a look. She 
wondered how much I knew and she saw at once that I knew everything."
   "Don't talk such nonsense, darling," said Low. "How could She know 
all you think She did by just looking at you, and how could you tell 
what she was thinking."
   "It's true, 1 tell you, We said everything in that one look, and 
unless I'm very much mistaken I spoilt her party for her."
   Low laughed and I smiled, for Mrs Low spoke in a tone of triumphant 
vindictiveness.
   "You are terribly indiscreet, Bee."
   "Is she a great Mend of yours? " Mrs Low asked me.
   "Hardly. I've met her here and there for fifteen years. I've been 
to a good many parties at her house. She gives very good parties and 
she always asks you to meet the people you want to see."
   "What d'you think of her?"
   "She's by way of being a considerable figure in London. She's 
amusing to talk to and she's nice to look at. She does a lot for art 
and music. What do you think of her? "
   "I think she's a bitch," said Mrs Low, with cheerful but decided 
frankness.
   "That settles her;" I said.
   "Tell him, Arthur."
   Low hesitated for a moment.
   "I don't know that I ought to."
   "If you don't I shall."
   "Bee's got her knife into her all right," he smiled. "It was rather 
a bad business really."
   He made a perfect smoke-ring and watched it with absorption.
   "Go on, Arthur," said Mrs Low.
   "Oh, well. It was before we went home last time. I was D. O. in 
Selangor and one day they came and told me that a white man was dead 
in a small town a couple of hours up the river. I didn't know there 
was a white man living there. I thought I'd better go and see about 
it, so I got in the launch and went up. I made inquiries when I got 
there. The police didn't know anything about him except that he'd been 
living there for a couple of years with a Chinese woman in the bazaar. 
It was rather a picturesque bazaar, tall houses on each side, with a 
board walkin between, built on piles on the river-bank, and there were 
awnings above to keep out the sun. I took a couple of policemen with 
me and they led me to the house. They sold brass-ware in the shop 
below and the rooms above were let out. The master of the shop took me 
up two flights of dark, rickety stairs, foul with every kind of 
Chinese stench, and called out when we got to the top. The door was 
opened by a middle-aged Chinese woman and I saw that her face was all 
bloated with weeping. She didn't say anything, but made way for us to 
pass. It wasn't much more than a cubby-hole under the roof; there was 
a small window that looked on the street, but the awning that 
stretched across it dimmed the light. There wasn't any furniture 
except a deal table and a kitchen chair with a broken back. On a mat 
against the wall a dead man was lying. The first thing I did was to 
have the window opened. The room was so frowsty that I retched, and 
the strongest smell was the smell of opium. There was a small oil-lamp 
on the table and a long needle, and of course I knew what they were 
there for. The pipe had been hidden. The dead man lay on his back with 
nothing on but a sarong and a dirty singlet. He had long brown hair, 
going grey, and a short beard. He was a white man all right. I 
examined him as best I could. I had to judge whether death was due to 
natural causes. There were no signs of violence. He was nothing but 
skin and bone. It looked to me as though he might very likely have 
died of starvation. I asked the man of the shop and the woman a number 
of questions. The policeman corroborated their statements. It appeared 
that the man coughed a great deal and brought up blood now and then, 
and his appearance suggested that he might very well have had T. B. 
The Chinaman said he'd been a confirmed opium smoker. It all seemed 
pretty obvious. Fortunately, cases of that sort are rare, but they're 
not unheard of - the white man who goes under and gradually sinks to 
the last stage of degradation. It appeared that the Chinese woman had 
been fond of him. She'd kept him on her own miserable earnings for the 
last two years. I gave the necessary instructions. Of course I wanted 
to know who he was. I supposed he'd been a clerk in some English firm 
or an assistant in an English store at Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. I 
asked the Chinese woman if he'd left many effects. Considering the 
destitution in which they'd lived it seemed a rather absurd question, 
but she went to a shabby suitcase that lay in a corner, opened it, and 
showed me a square parcel about the size of two novels put together 
wrapped in an old newspaper. I had a look at the suitcase. It 
contained nothing of any value. I took the parcel."
   Low's cheroot had gone out and he leaned over to relight it from 
one of the candles on the table.
   "I opened it. Inside was another wrapping, and on this, in a neat, 
well-educated writing: To the District Officer, me as it happened, and 
then the words: please deliver personally to the Viscountess 
Kastellan, 53 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW. That was a bit of a 
surprise. Of course I had to examine the contents. I cut the string 
arid the first thing I found was a gold and platinum cigarette-case. 
As you can imagine I was mystified. From all I'd heard the pair of 
them, the dead man and the Chinese woman, had scarcely enough to eat, 
and the cigarette-case looked as if it had cost a packet. Besides the 
cigarette-case there was nothing but a bundle of letters. There were 
no envelopes. They were in the same neat writing as the directions and 
they were signed with the initial J. There were forty or fifty of 
them. 1 couldn't read them all there, but a rapid glance showed me 
that they were a man's love letters to a woman. 1 sent for the Chinese 
woman to ask her the name of the dead man. Either she didn't know or 
wouldn't tell me, I gave orders that he should be buried and got back 
into the launch to go home. I told Bee."
   He gave her his sweet little smile.
   "I had to be rather firm with Arthur," she said. "At first he 
wouldn't let me read the letters, but of course I wasn't going to put 
up with any nonsense like that."
   "It was none of our business."
   "You had to find out the name if you could."
   "And where exactly did you come in? "
   "Oh, don't be so silly," she laughed. "I should have gone mad if 
you hadn' t let me read them."
   "And did you find out his name? " I asked.
   "No."
   "Was there no address?"
   "Yes, there was, and a very unexpected one. Most of the letters 
were written on Foreign Office paper."
   "That was funny."
   "I didn't quite know what to do. I had half a mind to write to the 
Viscountess Kastellan and explain the circumstances, but I didn't know 
what trouble I might be starting; the directions were to deliver the 
parcel to her personally, so I wrapped everything up again and put it 
in the safe. We were going home on leave in the spring and I thought 
the best thing was to leave everything over till then. The letters 
were by way of being rather compromising. "
   "To put it mildly," giggled Mrs Low. "The truth is they gave the 
whole show away."
   "I don't think we need go into that," said Low.
   A slight altercation ensued; but I think on his part it was more 
for form's sake, since he must have known that his desire to preserve 
an official discretion stood small chance against his wife's 
determination to tell me everything. She had a down on Lady Kastellan 
and didn't care what she said about her. Her sympathies were with the 
man. Low did his best to tone down her rash assertions. He corrected 
her exaggerations. He told her that she'd let her imagination run away 
with her and had read into the letters more than was there. She would 
have done it. They'd evidently made a deep impression on her, and from 
her vivid account and Low's interruptions I gained a fairly coherent 
impression of them. It was plain for one thing that they were very 
moving.
   "I can't tell you how it revolted me, the way Bee gloated over 
them," said Low;
   "They were the most wonderful letters I've ever read. You never 
wrote letters like that to me,"
   "What a damned fool you would have thought me if I had," he 
grinned.
   She gave him a charming, affectionate smile.
   "I suppose I should, and yet, God knows I was crazy about you, and 
I'm damned if I know why."
   The story emerged clearly enough. The writer, the mysterious J., 
presumably a clerk in the Foreign Office, had fallen in love with Lady 
Kastellan and she with him. They had become lovers and the early 
letters were passionately lyrical. They were happy. They expected 
their love to last for ever. He wrote to her
   immediately after he had left her and told her how much he adored 
her and how much she meant to him. She was never for a moment absent 
from his thoughts. It looked as though her infatuation was equal to 
his, for in one letter he justified himself because she had reproached 
him for not coming to some place where he knew she would be. He told 
her what agony it had been to him that a sudden job had prevented him 
from being with her when he' d so eagerly looked forward to it.
   Then came the catastrophe. How it came or why one could only guess. 
Lord Kastellan learnt the truth. He not merely suspected his wife's 
infidelity, he had proofs of it. There was a fearful scene between 
tliem, she left him and went to her father's. Lord Kastellan announced 
his intention of divorcing her. The letters changed in character. J. 
wrote at once asking to see Lady Kastellan, but she begged him not to 
come. Her father insisted that they shouldn't meet. J. was distressed 
at her unhappiness and dismayed by the trouble he had brought upon 
her, and he was deeply sympathetic because of what she was enduring at 
home, for her father and mother were furious; but at the same time it 
was plain that he was relieved that the crisis had come. Nothing 
mattered except that they loved one another. He said he hated 
Kastellan. Let him bring his action. The sooner they could get married 
the better. The correspondence was one-sided, there were no letters 
from her, and one had to guess from his replies what she said in them. 
She was obviously frightened out of her wits and nothing that he could 
say helped. Of course he would have to leave the Foreign Office. He 
assured her that this meant nothing to him. He could get a job 
somewhere, in the colonies, where he would earn much more money. He 
was sure he could make her happy. Naturally there would be a scandal, 
but it would be forgotten, and away from England people would not 
bother. He besought her to have courage.
   Then it looked as though she had written somewhat peevishly. She 
hated being divorced, Kastellan refused to take the blame on himself 
and be made respondent, she did not want to leave London, it was her 
whole life, and bury herself in some Godforsaken place on the other 
side of nowhere. He answered unhappily. He said he would do anything 
she wanted. He implored her not to love him less and he was tortured 
by the thought that this disaster had changed her feelings for him. 
She reproached him for the mess they had got into; he did not try to 
defend himself; he was prepared to admit that he alone was to blame. 
Then it appeared that pressure was being brought to bear on Kastellan 
from some high quarter and there was even yet a chance that something 
might he arranged. Whatever she wrote made J., the unknown J., 
desperate. His letter was almost incoherent. He begged her again to 
see him, he implored her to have strength, he repeated that she meant 
everything in the world to him, he was frightened that she would let 
people influence her, he asked her to burn her boats behind her and 
bolt with him to Paris. He was frantic. Then it seemed that for some 
days she did not write to him. He could not understand. He did not 
know if she was receiving his letters. He was in an agony. The blow 
fell. She must have written to say that if he would resign from the 
Foreign Office and leave England her husband was prepared to take her 
back. His answer was broken-hearted.
   "He never saw through her for a moment," said Mrs Low.
   "What was there to see through? " I asked.
   "Don't you know what she wrote to him? I do."
   "Don't be such an ass, Bee. You can't possibly know."
   "Ass yourself. Of course I do. She put it up to him. She threw 
herself on his mercy. She dragged in her father and mother. She 
brought in her children; I bet that was the first thought she'd given 
them since they were born. She knew that he loved her so much that he 
was willing to do everything in the world for her, even lose her. She 
knew that he was prepared to accept the sacrifice of his love, his 
life, his career, everything for her sake, and she let him make it. 
She let the offer come from him. She let him persuade her to accept 
it."
   I listened to Mrs Low with a smile but with attention. She was a 
woman and she felt instinctively how a woman in those circumstances 
would act. She thought it hateful, but she felt in her bones that in 
just that way would she herself have acted. Of course it was pure 
invention, with nothing but J.'s letter as a foundation, but I had an 
impression that it was very likely.
   That was the last letter in the bundle.
   I was astonished. I had known Lady Kastellan for a good many years, 
but only casually; and I knew her husband even less. He was immersed 
in politics, he was Under-Secretary at the Home Office at the time of 
the great do to which the Lows and I had been invited; and I never saw 
him but in his own house. Lady Kastellan had the reputation of being a 
beauty; she was tall and her figure was good in a massive way. She had 
a lovely skin. Her blue eyes were large, set rather wide apart and her 
face was broad. It gave her a slightly cow-like look. She had pretty 
pale brown hair and she held herself superbly. She was a woman of 
great self-possession, and it amazed me to learn that she had ever 
surrendered to such passion as the letters suggested. She was 
ambitious and there was no doubt that she was very useful to Kastellan 
in his political life. I should have thought her incapable of 
indiscretion. Searching my memory I seemed to remember hearing years 
before that the Kastellans were not getting on very well, but I had 
never heard any details, and whenever I saw them it looked as though 
they were on very good terms with one another, Kastellan was a big, 
red-faced fellow with sleek black hair, jovial and loud-voiced, but 
with little shrewd eyes that watched and noted. He was industrious, 
and effective speaker, but a trifle pompous. He was a little too 
conscious of his own importance. He did not let you forget that he had 
rank and wealth. He was inclined to be patronizing with people of less 
consequence than himself.
   I could well believe that when he discovered that his wife was 
having an affair with a junior clerk in the Foreign Office there was a 
devil of a row. Lady Kastellan's father had been for many years 
permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs and it would have been 
more than usually embarrassing for his daughter to be divorced on 
account of one of his subordinates. For all I knew Kastellan was in 
love with his wife and he may have been teased by a very natural 
jealousy. But he was a proud man, deficient in humour. He feared 
ridicule. The role of the deceived husband is difficult to play with 
dignity. I do not suppose he wanted a scandal that might well 
jeopardize his political future. It may be that Lady Kastellan's 
advisers threatened to defend the case and the prospect of washing 
dirty linen in public horrified him. It is likely enough that pressure 
was brought to bear on him and the solution to forgive and take his 
wife back if her lover were definitely eliminated may have seemed the 
best to adopt. I have no doubt Lady Kastellan promised everything she 
was asked.
   She must have had a bad fright. I didn't take such a severe view of 
her conduct as Mrs Low. She was very young; she was not more than 
thirty-five now. Who could tell by what accident she had become J. 's 
mistress? 1 suspect that love had caught her unawares and that she was 
in the middle of an affair almost before she knew what she was about. 
She must always have been a cold, self-possessed woman, but it is just 
with people like that that nature at times plays strange tricks. I am 
prepared to believe that she lost her head completely. There is no 
means of knowing how Kastellan discovered what was going on, but the 
fact that she kept her lover's letters shows that she was too much in 
love to be prudent. Arthur Low had mentioned that it was strange to 
find in the dead man's possession his letters and not hers; but that 
seemed to me easily explainable. At the time of the catastrophe they 
were doubtless given back to him in exchange for hers. He very 
naturally kept them. Reading them again he could relive the love that 
meant everything in the world to him.
   I didn't suppose that Lady Kastellan, devoured by passion, could 
ever have considered what would happen if she were found out. When the 
blow fell it is not strange that she was scared out of her wits. She 
may not have had more to do with her children than most women who live 
the sort of life she lived, but she may for all that not have wanted 
to lose them. I did not even know whether she had ever cared for her 
husband, but from what I knew of her I guessed that she was not 
indifferent to his name and wealth. The future must have looked pretty 
grim. She was losing everything, the grand house in Carlton House 
Terrace, the position, the security; her father could give her no 
money and her lover had still to find a job. It may not have been 
heroic that she should yield to the entreaties of her family, but it 
was comprehensible.
   While I was thinking all this Arthur Low went on with his story.
   "I didn't quite know how to set about getting in touch with Lady 
Kastellan," he said. "It was awkward not knowing the chap's name. 
However, when we got home I wrote to her. I explained who I was and 
said that I'd been asked to give her some letters, and a gold and 
platinum cigarette-case by a man who'd recently died in my district. I 
said I'd been asked to deliver them to her in person. I thought 
perhaps she wouldn't answer at all or else communicate with me through 
a solicitor. But she answered all right. She made an appointment for 
me to come to Garlton House Terrace at twelve one morning. Of course 
it was stupid of me, but when finally I stood on the doorstep and rang 
the bell I was quite nervous. The door was opened by a butler. I said 
I'had an appointment with Lady Kastellan. A footman took my hat and 
coat. I was led upstairs to an enormous drawing-room.
   " Til tell her ladyship you're here, sir,' the butler said.
   "He left me and I sat on the edge of a chair and looked round. 
There were huge pictures on the walls, portraits you know, I don't 
know who they were by, Reynolds I should think and Romney, and there 
was a lot of Oriental china, and gilded consoles and mirrors. It was 
all terribly grand and it made me feel very shabby and insignificant. 
My suit smelt of camphor and it was baggy at the knees. My tie felt a 
bit loud. The butler came in again and asked me to go with him. He 
opened another door from the one I' d come in by and I found myself in 
a further room, not so large as the drawing-room, but large all the 
same and
   very grand too. A lady was standing by the fireplace. She looked at 
me as I came in and bowed slightly. I felt frightfully awkward as I 
walked along the whole length of the room and I was afraid of 
stumbling over the furniture. I can only hope I didn't look such a 
fool as I felt. She didn't ask me to sit down.
   " 'I understand you have some things that you wish to deliver to me 
personally,' she said. 'It's very good of you to bother.'
   "She didn't smile. She seemed perfectly self-possessed, but I had a 
notion that she was sizing me up. To tell you the truth it put my back 
up. I didn't much fancy being treated as if I were a chauffeur 
applying for a situation.
   " 'Please don't mention it,' I said, rather stiffly. 'It's all in 
the day's work.'
   " 'Have you got the things with you?' she asked.
   "I didn't answer, but I opened the dispatch-case I'd brought with 
me and took out the letters. I handed them to her. She accepted them 
without a word. She gave them a glance. She was very much made up, but 
I swear she went white underneath. The expression of her face didn't 
change. I looked at her hands. They were trembling a little. Then she 
seemed to pull herself together.
   " 'Oh, I'm so sorry,' she said. 'Won't you sit down?'
   "I took a chair. For a moment she didn't seem to know quite what to 
do. She held the letters in her hand. I, knowing what they were, 
wondered what she felt. She didn't give much away. There was a desk 
beside the chimney-piece and she opened a drawer and put them in. Then 
she sat down opposite me and asked me to have a cigarette. I handed 
her the cigarette-case. I'd had it in my breast pocket.
   " 'I was asked to give you this too,' I said.
   "She took it and looked at it. For a moment she didn't speak and I 
waited. I didn't quite know if I ought to get up and go.
   " 'Did you know Jack well?' she asked suddenly.
   " 'I didn't know him at all,' I answered. 'I never saw him until 
after his death.'
   " 'I had no idea he was dead till I got your notes', she said. ' I' 
d lost sight of him for a long time. Of course he was a very old 
friend of mine.'
   "I wondered if she thought I hadn't read the letters or if she'd 
forgotten what sort of letters they were. If the sight of them had 
given her a shock she had quite got over it by then. She spoke almost 
casually.
   " 'What did he die of in point of fact?' she asked.
   " 'Tuberculosis, opium, and starvation,' I answered.
   " 'How dreadful,' she said.
   "But she said it quite conventionally. Whatever she felt she wasn't 
going to let me see. She was as cool as a cucumber, but I fancied, 
though it may have been only my fancy, that she was watching me, with 
all her wits about her, and wondering how much I knew. I think she'd 
have given a good deal to be certain of that.
   How did you happen to get hold of these things?' she asked me.
   " 'I took possession of his effects after his death,' I explained. 
'They were done up in a parcel and I was directed to give them to 
you.'
   " 'Was there any need to undo the parcel?'
   "I wish I could tell you what frigid insolence she managed to get 
intro the question. It made me go white and I hadn't any make-up on to 
hide it. I answered that I thought it my duty to
   find out if I could who the dead man was. I should have liked to be 
able to communicate with his relations.
   " 'I see,' she said.
   "She looked at me as though that were the end of the interview and 
she expected me to get up and take myself off. But I didn't. I thought 
I'd like to get a bit of my own back.
   I told her how I'd been sent for and how I'd found him. I described 
the whole thing and I told her how, as far as I knew, there'd been no 
one at the end to take pity on him but a Chinese woman. Suddenly the 
door was opened and we both looked round. A big, middle-aged man came 
in and stopped when he saw me.
   " ' I beg your pardon,' he said,' I didn't know you were busy.'
   " 'Come in,' she said, and when he had approached, 'This is Mr Low. 
My husband.'
   "Lord Kastellan gave me a nod.
   " 'I just wanted to ask you,' he began, and then he stopped.
   "His eyes had caught the cigarette-case that was still resting on 
Lady Kastellan's open hand. I don't know if she saw the look of 
inquiry in his eyes. She gave him a friendly little smile. She was 
quite amazingly mistress of herself.
   " 'Mr Low comes from the Federated Malay States. Poor Jack Almond's 
dead and he's left me his cigarette-case.'
   " 'Really?' said Lord Kastellan. 'When did he die?'
   " 'About six months ago,' I said.
   "Lady Kastellan got up.
   " 'Well, I won't keep you any longer. I dare say you're busy. Thank 
you so much for carrying out Jack's request.'
   " 'Things are pretty bad just now in the F. M. S. if all I hear is 
true,' said Lord Kastellan.
   "I shook hands with them both and Lady Kastellan rang a bell.
   " 'Are you staying in London?' she asked, as I was going. 'I wonder 
if you'd like to come to a little party I'm giving next week.'
   " 'I have my wife with me,' I said.
   " 'Oh, how very nice. I'll send you a card.'
   "A couple of minutes later I found myself in the street. I was glad 
to be alone. I'd had a bad shock. As soon as Lady Kastellan mentioned 
the name I remembered. It was Jack Almond, the wretched bum I' d found 
dead in the Chinese house, dead of starvation. I'd known him quite 
well. It never struck me for a moment that it was he. Why, I'd dined 
and played cards with him, and we'd played tennis together. It was 
awful to think of him dying quite near me and me never knowing. He 
must have known he only had to send me a message and I'd have done 
something. I made my way into St James's Park and sat down. I wanted 
to have a good think."
   I could understand that it was a shock to Arthur Low to discover 
who the dead wastrel had been, for it was a shock to me too. Oddly 
enough I also had known him. Not intimately, but as a man I met at 
parties and now and then at a house in the country where we were both 
passing the weekend. Except that it was years since I had even thought 
of him it would have been stupid of me not to put two and two 
together. With his name there flashed back into my memory all my 
recollections of him. So that was why he had suddenly thrown up a 
career he liked so much! At that time, it was just after the war, I 
happened to know several people in the Foreign Office; Jack Almond was 
thought the cleverest of all the young men attached to it, and the 
highest posts the Diplomatic Service had to offer were within his 
reach. Of course it meant waiting. But it did seem absurd for him to 
fling away his chances in order to go into business in the Far East. 
His friends did all they could to dissuade him. He said he had had 
losses and found it impossible to live on his salary. One would have 
thought he could scrape along till things grew better. I remembered 
very well what he looked like. He was tall and well-made, a trifle 
dressy, but he was young enough to carry off his faultless clothes 
with a dash, with dark brown hair, very neat and sleek, blue eyes with 
very long lashes, and a fresh brilliant colour. He looked the picture 
of health. He was amusing, gay, and quickwitted. I never knew anyone 
who had more charm. It is a dangerous quality and those who have it 
trade on it. Often they think it enough to get them through life 
without any further effort. It is well to be on one's guard against 
it. But with Jack Almond it was the expression of a sweet and generous 
nature. He delighted because he was delightful. He was entirely 
without conceit. He had a gift for languages, he spoke French and 
German without a trace of accent, and his manners were admirable. You 
felt that when the time came he would play the part of an ambassador 
to a foreign power in the grand style. No one could fail to like him. 
It was no strange that Lady Kastellan should have fallen madly in love 
with him. My fancy ran away with me. What is there more moving than 
young love? The walks together of that handsome pair in one of the 
parks in the warm evenings of early summer, the dances they went to 
where he held her in his arms, the enchantment of the secret they 
shared when they exchanged glances across a dinner-table, and the 
passionate encounters, hurried and dangerous, but worth a thousand 
risks, when at some clandestine meeting-place they could give 
themselves to the fulfilment of their desire. They drank the milk of 
Paradise.
   How frightful that the end of it all should have been so tragic!
   "How did you know him." I now asked Low.
   "He was with Dexter and Farmilow. You know, the shipping people. He 
had quite a good job. He'd brought letters to the Governor and people 
like that. I was in Singapore at the time. I think I met him first at 
the club. He was damned good at games and all that sort of thing. 
Played polo. He was a fine tennis-player. You couldn't help liking 
him."
   " Did he drink, or what ? "
   "No." Arthur Low was quite emphatic. "He was one of the best. The 
women were crazy about him, and you couldn't blame them. He was one of 
the most decent fellows I've ever met."
   I turned to Mrs Low.
   " Did you know him? "
   "Only just. When Arthur and I were married we went to Per-ak. He 
was sweet, I remember that. He had the longest eyelashes I've ever 
seen on a man."
   "He was out quite a long time without going home. Five years, I 
think. I don't want to use hackneyed phrases, but the fact is I can't 
say it in any other way, he'd won golden opinions. There were a 
certain number of fellows who'd been rather sick at his being shoved 
into a damned good job by influence, but they couldn't deny that he'd 
made good. We knew about his having been in the F. 0. and all that, 
but he never put on any frills."
   "I think what took me," Mrs Low interrupted, "was that he was so 
tremendously alive. It bucked you up just to talk to him."
   "He had a wonderful send-off when he sailed. I happened to have run 
up to Singapore for a couple of days and I went to the dinner at the 
Europe the night before. We all got rather tight. It was a grand lark. 
There was quite a crowd to see him off. He was only going for six 
months. I think everybody looked forward to his coming back. It would 
have been better for him if he never had."
   "Why, what happened then?"
   "I don't know exactly. I'd been moved again, and I was right away 
north."
   How exasperating! It is really much easier to invent a story out of 
your own head than to tell one about real people, of whom you not only 
must guess the motives, but whose behaviour even at crucial moments 
you are ignorant of.
   " He was a very good chap, but he was never an intimate friend of 
ours, you know how cliquey Singapore is, and he moved in rather more 
exalted circles than we did; when we went north I forgot about him. 
But one day at the club I heard a couple of fellows talking. Wolton 
and Kenning. Walton had just come up from Singapore. There'd been a 
big polo match.
   " * Did Almond play?' asked Kenning.
   " 'You bet your life he didn't,' said Walton. 'They kicked him out 
of the team last season.'
   "I interrupted.
   " 'What are you talking about?' I said.
   " 'Don't you know?' said Walton. 'He's gone all to pot, poor 
devil.'
   "'How?'I asked.
   " 'Drink.'
   " 'They say he dopes too,' said Kenning.
   " 'Yes, I've heard that,' said Walton. 'He won't last long at that 
rate. Opium, isn't it?'
   " ' If he doesn' t look out he' 11 lose his job,' said Kenning.
   "I couldn't make it out," Low went on. "He was the last man I 
should ever have expected to go that way. He was so typically English 
and he was a gentleman and all that. It appeared that Walton had 
travelled out with him on the same ship when Jack came hack from 
leave. He joined the ship at Marseilles. He was rather low, but there 
was nothing funny about that; a lot of people don't feel any too good 
when they're leaving home and have to get back to the mill. He drank a 
good deal. Fellows do that sometimes too. But Walton said rather a 
curious thing about him. He said it looked as if the life had gone out 
of him. You couldn't help noticing it because he'd always had such 
high spirits. There'd been a general sort of idea that he was engaged 
to some girl in England and on the ship they jumped to the conclusion 
that she' d thrown him over."
   "That's what I said when Arthur told me," said Mrs Low. "After all, 
five years is a long time to leave a girl."
   "Anyhow they thought he'd get over it when he got back to work. But 
he didn' t, unfortunately. He went from bad to worse. A lot of people 
liked him and they did all they could to persuade him to pull himself 
together. But there was nothing doing. He just told them to mind their 
own business. He was snappy and rude, which was funny because he'd 
always been so nice to everybody. Walton said you could hardly believe 
it was the same man. Government House dropped him and a lot of others 
followed suit. Lady Ormonde, the Governor's wife, was a snob, she knew 
he was well-connected and all that, and she wouldn't have given him 
the cold shoulder unless, things had got pretty bad. He was a nice 
chap, Jack Almond, it seemed a pity that he should make such a mess of 
things. I was sorry, you know, but
   of course it didn't impair my appetite or disturb my night's sleep. 
A few months later I happened to be in Singapore myself, and when I 
went to the club I asked about him. He'd lost his job all right, it 
appeared that he often didn't go to the office for two or three days 
at a time; and I was told that someone had made him manager of a 
rubber estate in Sumatra in the hope that away from the temptations of 
Singapore he might pull himself together. You see, everyone had liked 
him much, they couldn't bear the thought of his going under without 
some sort of a struggle. But it was no good. The opium had got him. He 
didn't keep the job in Sumatra long and he was back again in 
Singapore. I heard afterwards that you would hardly have recognized 
him. He'd always been so spruce and smart; he was shabby and unwashed 
and wild-eyed. A number of fellows at the club got together and 
arranged something. They felt they had to give him one more chance and 
they sent him out to Sarawak. But it wasn't any use. The fact is, I 
think, he didn't want to be helped. I think he just wanted to go to 
hell in his own way and be as quick as he could about it. Then he 
disappeared; someone said he'd gone home; anyhow he was forgotten. You 
know how people drop out in the F. M. S. I suppose that's why when I 
found a dead man in a sarong, with a beard, lying in a little smelly 
room in a Chinese house thirty miles from anywhere, it never occurred 
to me for a moment that it might be Jack Almond. I hadn't heard his 
name for years."
   "Just think what he must have gone through in that time," said Mrs 
Low, and her eyes were bright with tears, for she had a good and 
tender heart.
   "The whole thing's inexplicable," said Low.
   "Why? "I asked.
   "Well, if he was going to pieces, why didn't he do it when he first 
came out? His first five years he was all right. One of the best. If 
this affair of his had broken him you'd have expected him to break 
when it was all fresh. All that time he was as gay as a bird. You'd 
have said he hadn't a care in the world. From all I heard it was a 
different man who came back from leave."
   "Something happened during those six months in London," said Mrs 
Low. "That's obvious."
   "We shall never know," sighed Low.
   "But we can guess," I smiled. "That's where the novelist comes in. 
Shall I tell you what I think happened?"
   "Fire away."
   "Well, I think that during those first five years he was buoyed up 
by the sacrifice he'd made. He had a chivalrous soul. He had given up 
everything that made life worth living to him to save the woman he 
loved better than anything in the world. I think he had an exaltation 
of spirit that never left him. He loved her still, with all his heart; 
most of us fall in and out of love; some men can only love once, and I 
think he was one of them. And in a strange way he was happy because 
he'd been able to sacrifice his happiness for the sake of someone who 
was worthy of the sacrifice. I think she was always in his thoughts. 
Then he went home. I think he loved her as much as ever and I don't 
suppose he ever doubted that her love was as strong and enduring as 
his. I don't know what he expected. He may have thought she'd see it 
was no good fighting her inclination any more and would run away with 
him. It may have been that he'd have been satisfied to realize that 
she loved him still. It was inevitable that they should meet; they 
lived in the same world. He saw that she didn't care a row of pins for 
him any longer. He saw that the passion-
   ate girl had become a prudent, experienced woman of the world, he 
saw that she'd never loved him as he thought she loved him, and he may 
have suspected that she'd lured him coldly into making the sacrifice 
that was to save her. He saw her at parties, self-possessed and 
triumphant. He knew that the lovely qualities he'd ascribed to her 
were of his own imagining and she was just an ordinary woman who had 
been carried away by a momentary infatuation and having got over it 
had returned to her true life. A great name, wealth, social 
distinction, worldly success: those were the things that mattered to 
her. He'd sacrificed everything, his friends, his familiar 
surroundings, his profession, his usefulness in the world, all that 
gives value to existence - for nothing. He'd been cheated, and it 
broke him. Your friend Walton said the true thing, you noticed it 
yourself, he said it looked as if the life had gone out of him. It 
had. After that he didn't care any more, and perhaps the worst thing 
was that even with it all, though he knew Lady Kastellan for what she 
was, he loved her still. I know nothing more shattering than to love 
with all your heart, than not to be able however hard you try to break 
yourself of it, someone who you know is worthless. Perhaps that is why 
he took to opium. To forget and to remember."
   It was a long speech I had made, and now I stopped.
   "All that's only fancy," said Low.
   "I know it is," I answered, "but it seems to fit the 
circumstances."
   "There must have been a weak strain in him. Otherwise he could have 
fought and conquered."
   "Perhaps. Perhaps there is always a certain weakness attached to 
such great charm as he possessed. Perhaps few people love as 
wholeheartedly and as devotedly as he loved. Perhaps he didn't want to 
fight and conquer. I can't bring myself to blame him."
   I didn't add, because I was afraid they would think it cynical, 
that maybe if only Jack .Almond hadn't had those wonderfully long 
eyelashes he might now have been alive and well, minister to some 
foreign power and on the high road to the Embassy in Paris.
   "Let's go into the drawing-room," said Mrs Low. "The boy wants to 
clear the table."
   And that was the end of Jack Almond.