Anthony Lyveden Part 1

Anthony Lyveden.

by Dornford Yates.

CHAPTER I

THE WAY OF A MAN

Major Anthony Lyveden, D.S.O., was waiting.

For the second time in three minutes he glanced anxiously at his wrist and then thrust his hand impatiently into a pocket. When you have worn a wrist.w.a.tch constantly for nearly six years, Time alone can accustom you to its absence. And at the present moment Major Lyveden's watch was being fitted with a new strap. The p.a.w.nbroker to whom he had sold it that morning for twenty-two s.h.i.+llings was no fool.

The ex-officer walked slowly on, glancing into the windows of shops.

He wanted to know the time badly. Amid the s.h.i.+fting press of foot-pa.s.sengers a little white dog stuck to his heels resolutely. The sudden sight of a clock-maker's on the opposite side of the thoroughfare proved magnetic. Pausing on the kerb to pick up the Sealyham, Lyveden crossed the street without more ado....

Twenty-one minutes past three.

Slowly he put down the terrier and turned eastward. It was clear that he was expecting something or somebody.

It was a hot June day, and out of the welter of din and rumble the cool plash of falling water came to his straining ears refres.h.i.+ngly. At once he considered the dog and, thankful for the distraction, stepped beneath the portico of a provision store and indicated the marble basin with a gesture of invitation.

"Have a drink, old chap," he said kindly. "Look. Nice cool water for Patch." And, with that, he stooped and dabbled his fingers in the pool.

Thus encouraged the little white dog advanced and lapped gratefully....

"Derby Result! Derby Result!"

The hoa.r.s.e cry rang out above the metallic roar of the traffic.

Lyveden caught his breath sharply and then stepped out of the shelter of the portico on to the crowded pavement. He was able to buy a paper almost immediately.

Eagerly he turned it about, to read the blurred words....

For a moment he stood staring, oblivious of all the world. Then he folded the sheet carefully, whistled to Patch, and strode off westward with the step of a man who has a certain objective. At any rate, the suspense was over.

A later edition of an evening paper showed Major Anthony Lyveden that the horse which was carrying all that he had in the world had lost his race by a head.

By rights Anthony should have been born about the seventh of March. A hunting accident to his father, however, ushered him into the middle of the coldest January ever remembered, and that with such scant ceremony that his lady mother only survived her husband by six and a half hours.

When debts, funeral and testamentary expenses had been deducted from his father's bank balance, the sum of twenty-three pounds nine s.h.i.+llings was all that was left, and this, with the threat of royalties from one or two books, represented the baby's fortune. Jonathan Roach, bachelor, had risen to the occasion and taken his sister's child.

Beyond remembering that he did handsomely by his nephew, bred him as became his family, sent him to Harrow and Oxford, and procured him a commission in the Royal Regiment of Artillery before most of the boy's compeers had posted their applications to the War Office, with the living Jonathan Roach we are no further concerned.

The old gentleman's will shall speak for itself and the man who made it.

_THIS IS THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT of me, Jonathan Roach, of 75 Princes Gardens, in the County of London, Esquire. I give, devise, and bequeath all my real and personal estate of every description unto my nephew Anthony Lyveden absolutely, provided that and so soon as my said nephew shall receive the honour of Knighthood or some higher dignity...._

Anthony received the news while the guns, which he was temporarily commanding, were hammering at the gates of Gaza. He read the letter carefully twice. Then he stuffed it into a cross-pocket and straightway burst into song. That the air he selected was a music-hall ditty was typical of the man.

Curiously enough, it was the same number that he was whistling under his breath as he strode into Hyde Park this June afternoon.

Patch, who had never been out of London, thought the world of the Parks. After the barren pavements, for him the great greenswards made up a Land of Promise more than fulfilled. The magic carpet of the gra.s.s, stuffed with a million scents, was his Elysium. A bookworm made free of the Bodleian could not have been more exultant. The many trees, too, were more accessible, and there were other dogs to frolic with, and traffic, apparently, was not allowed.

When he had walked well into the Park, Lyveden made for a solitary chair and sat himself down in the sun. For a while he remained wrapped in meditation, abstractedly watching the terrier stray to and fro, nosing the adjacent turf with the a.s.siduity of a fond connoisseur.

For nine long months the ex-officer had sought employment, indoor or outdoor, congenial or uncongenial. The quest was vain. Once he had broached the matter haltingly to an influential acquaintance. The latter's reception of his distress had been so startlingly obnoxious that he would have died rather than repeat the venture. Then Smith of Dale's, Old Bond Street--Smith, who had cut his hair since he was a boy, and was his fast friend--had told him of Blue Moon.

There is more racing chatter to be heard at the great hairdressers'

than almost anywhere else outside a race-course. Some of it is worth hearing, most of it is valueless. The difficulty, as elsewhere, is to sift the wheat from the chaff.

According to Smith, Blue Moon was being kept extremely quiet.

Certainly the horse was little mentioned. Lyveden had never heard his name. And thirty-three to one was a long price....

Lyveden p.r.i.c.ked up his ears, and Smith became frightened. He was genuinely attached to his young customer, and knew that he was in low water. He begged him not to be rash....

After some careful calculations, which he made upon a sheet of club note-paper, Lyveden came to the conclusion that thirty-three birds in the bush were better than one in the hand. Reckoning a bird at one hundred pounds and Lyveden's available a.s.sets at the same number of guineas, who is to say he was wrong?

At twenty minutes to five on the eve of the Derby, Lyveden handed a protesting Smith one hundred and one pounds, to be invested on Blue Moon--"to win only." The odd note was to bring Smith his reward.

A big bookmaker whom Smith was shaving as usual, at a quarter-past six, accepted the commission, pocketed the notes with a sigh, and gave the master-barber forty to one.

Four thousand pounds--in the bush.

That his thirty-three nebulous birds had become forty before they took flight, Anthony never knew. A man whose sole a.s.sets are a Sealyham, a very few clothes, and twenty-two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence, does not, as a rule, go to Dale's.

"Young fellow, come here."

Patch came gaily, and Lyveden set him upon his knee.

"Listen," he said. "Once upon a time there was a fool, who came back from the War. It was extremely foolish, but then, you see, Patch, he was a fool. Well, after a while he began to feel very lonely. He'd no relations, and what friends he'd had in the old days had disappeared.

So he got him a dog--this fool, a little white sc.r.a.p of a dog with a black patch." The terrier recognized his name and made a dab at the firm chin. "Steady! Well, yes--you're right. It was a great move.

For the little white dog was really a fairy prince in disguise--such a pretty disguise--and straightway led the fool into Paradise. Indeed, they were so happy together, the fool and the dog, that, though no work came along, nothing mattered. You see, it was a fool's paradise. That was natural. The result was that one day the fool lifted up his eyes, and there was a great big finger-post, pointing the way they were going. And it said WAY OUT. The dog couldn't read, so it didn't worry him; but the fool could, and fear smote upon his heart. In fact, he got desperate, poor fool. Of course, if he'd had any sense, he'd 've walked slower than ever or even tried to turn round. Instead of that, he ran. Think of it, Patch. _Ran_." The emotion of his speech was infectious, and the terrier began to pant. "Was there ever quite such a fool? And before they knew where they were, the two were without the gates. And there"--the voice became strained, and Lyveden hesitated--"there were ... two paths ... going different ways. And by each path was a notice-board. And one said NO DOGS ALLOWED. And the other said NO FOOLS ALLOWED. And there were only the two paths. Patch ... going different ways...."

The approach of a peripatetic tax-collector brought the allegory to an end.

Anthony paid for his occupation of the chair in silence, and the collector plodded off at a tangent in the direction of his next quarry.

This appearing to be an old lady, he presently altered his course.

With a caution bred of experience, he would approach her from behind.

A convenient clock struck four, and Lyveden rose to his feet....

Two hours later he descended the area steps of a mansion in Lancaster Gate.

The change in his appearance was quite remarkable. The grey suit, soft hat, golf collar and brown shoes, which he had worn in the afternoon, had been put off. In their stead Lyveden was wearing a bowler hat, black boots, a single collar, which stood up uncomfortably all the way round his neck, and a dark blue suit. The latter was clean and had been carefully brushed, but it was manifestly old. Besides, it was obvious that the man who made them had meant the trousers to be worn turned up. Their owner's present disregard of such intention argued his humble respectability.

Arrived at the foot of the steps, Anthony thrust a relieving finger between his throat and the collar for the last time, raised his eyes to heaven, and rang the bell.