Punctilious Parbold

by Michael Arlen

 

Punctilious Parbold

The Author of “The Broken Nose” and “The Dancer of
Paris” Joins a Whimsical Gentleman in a Search for Romance

By Michael Arlen

THE history of Mr. Parbold before this tale finds him is not very interesting. There is no record of any one until this date having found either the history or anything else about Mr. Parbold at all interesting. Mr. Parbold was quite aware of that, but he did not see how it could be otherwise, for he was not a vain man.

Mr. Parbold, though he would earnestly deprecate the necessity, calls for some instruction. Meet Mr. Parbold. He is a small, thin man with a round face, eager blue eyes, and a gray affair which is easily recognizable as a mustache by the local fauna surrounding it.

During the summer Mr. Parbold carried an overcoat over one arm and in one hand an umbrella, which was folded with ambition rather than accuracy. During the winter he wore the overcoat, but the umbrella was no further advanced toward that symmetrical elegance which has made umbrellas what they are.

Mr. Parbold was a childless widower; and though to be a childless widower is generally considered to be a lonely way of fife by students of that kind of thing, Mr. Parbold was not sensibly depressed by his lonely state.

Mr. Parbold was interested in many things, but the things he was most interested in were types. He found types by looking about him. “Always keep your eyes open,” was Mr. Parbold's motto, and it is not at all a bad motto, really: although it may place a man who has followed it too carefully in a position wherein one of his eyes must automatically close in sharp reaction to a harder substance.

Having dined at his boarding-house near Russell Square, he would walk out into the streets and pass the evening in agreeable contemplation. Mr. Parbold loved London, the byways and highways of London, but particularly he loved the byway's. They thrilled him. But it was upon a highway that Mr. Parbold entered Society.

THERE are, as is well known, many approved ways of entering Society, the chief being: frontward, backward, sideways, purse first. Mr. Parbold entered Society backward, one night as he was trotting across the Haymarket and looking about him. If he had been looking behind him he would never have entered Society, for he would have seen the large motor-car, the right-side mudguard of which caught him sharply in the small of his back. Mr. Parbold bit the dust.

“Hey, there!” said the chauffeur angrily. “Messin' abaht all over the road!” said the chauffeur angrily.

“You knock me down!” panted Mr. Parbold from the road. And then only did he become aware of a tall and beautiful young lady, who had descended from the motor-car and was helping him to rise.

“Oh, I am sorry!” whispered the tall and beautiful young lady.

She was the most beautiful creature Mr. Parbold had ever seen, had ever dreamt of. She was so tall, and her expression was so kind and grave! Her voice was so low, like the rustle of hidden water! And over her evening dress she wore a fur coat which seemed to Mr. Parbold to dance with silver lights, and on her uncovered hair the great arc lamp above spilled something that was more glorious than gold,

“I'm quite all right, really!” panted Mr. Parbold.

“Nonsense!” said the lady with the golden head. “You must be hurt, after that bang!”

“No, really!” protested Mr. Parbold. “I assure you——”

“'E's all right, my lady,” said the chauffeur; and he looked with contempt at Mr. Parbold, who blinked back at him. “Arentchew? And 'ere's your umbrella!” And he gave Mr. Parbold his umbrella, as a man might give another a rotten banana.

“I never heard such a thing!” vividly cried the tall lady: but her cry was like to the whisper of a mortal woman, “Hebblethwaite, how dare you suggest that this gentleman is not hurt!”

“Well, my lady, 'e said himself——”

“That was very sweet of him, to pretend! In future, Hebblethwaite, you will oblige me by keeping your mudguards more to yourself.” She turned on Mr. Parbold with a very grave smile. “Mr.—er——”

“Parbold,” he supplied.

“Mr. Parbold, you must come home with me and rest a little while. I insist. I am rather good at insisting. Please!”

Mr. Parbold blinked at her, tried to catch and remember forever the lilt of her sad sweetness, and found himself beside her in the dark tonneau of the car. It was a very smooth car.

“I do so hate running over people!” miserably said the lips of the hair that was more glorious than gold.

“But I assure you,” panted Mr. Parbold, “I'm not hurt at all. Really I'm not!”

The fur coat which shone with silver lights touched his protesting hand.

“Mr. Parbold,” said she of the low, low voice, “it is a very long time since I came upon such a sweet little man as you. So please don't ever say again that you were not hurt by my car. It is a reflection on my car, Mr. Parbold——”

“I assure you,” panted Mr. Parbold, “that I didn't mean——”

“That is all over now,” the lady forgave him graciously. “Ah, here we are!”

Mr. Parbold had not an intimate acquaintance with the squares of Mayfair but he knew Berkeley Square when he saw it. The car had pulled up before a very large, ancient house, a palace of a house, the sort of house wherein great men must have died and gracious women lived.

THE heavily studded door of the house was opened to the tall lady and Mr. Parbold. A butler with a shining red face stood within. Mr. Parbold loathed him on sight, but he did not appear to notice Mr. Parbold.

“Any message, Hurst?”

“Nothing, my lady,” said the butler: and he seemed to enjoy saying it, and Mr. Parbold loathed him.

The tall lady looked very thoughtful and miserable, and Mr. Parbold almost dared to be sorry for her. But he was so shy, he could not speak, could not think. My lady! Of course he had met a “my lady” or two before—they are all over the place nowadays—but the “my ladys” he had met had been the wives of knights.

Mr. Parbold was quite certain that this tall lady with the grave, beautiful face was much more than the wife of a knight. She was probably the wife of an earl or a marquis. Mr. Parbold was no snob, but he was human. And she looked at him in such a kind, friendly way!

She said to the butler:

“Hurst, open one of whichever his Lordship considers to be his best champagne, and——”

“Please——” began Mr. Parbold,

The large red face of the butler shone on him and silenced him.

“His Lordship,” said the butler, “has directed that no wines, spirits, liqueurs or ales shall be extracted from the wine cellar during his Lordship's absence.”

“Nonsense!” cried the lady.

And Mr. Parbold gasped, for the lady's face was like the face of a dove which has just heard a dreadful thing.

“Those, my lady, were his Lordship's very words,” said the butler: and Mr. Parbold loathed him. “His Lordship further substantiated his orders by taking with him the keys of the wine cellar.”

“Oh, this is too much!” pleaded the tall lady: and she looked down at Mr. Parbold with sad eyes.

“There is some ginger beer in the pantry, my lady,” said the butler.

“I assure you,” panted Mr. Parbold, “that I'd prefer ginger beer to champagne. Any day. Really.”

The lady seemed to stare long at him, with blue eyes dark with grief.

“Haven't I already said,” she murmured, “that you were a sweet little man? And now that I have seen the program, I know that you are. . . . Hurst, bring the ginger beer into the drawing-room, with an appropriate number of glares and some digestive biscuits. Or”—she swiftly turned to Mr. Parbold—“perhaps, after your accident, you would prefer something more substan——”

“I love digestive biscuits!” hastily pleaded Mr. Parbold.

The wide, dim drawing-room into which the tall lady led him was lit by shaded lights in precious vases, colored, curling vases on tall stands; and the calm light therefrom fell like a caress on the old golds and ancient velvets, the chairs and shining tables of quality. And the restless comfort of his feet Mr. Parbold knew himself to be standing on an Aubusson carpet. Things you only see in museums! And his shoes were dirty. . . .

“Do sit down, Mr. Parbold,” begged the lady: and Mr. Parbold sat dowm on the nearest chair, and tried not to think of the golden shadows that the calm light chased across the lady's curling hair. She was very tired, he saw, and he was dreadfully afraid of being a nuisance. And he did not know what to say!

She sat in a chair that had a high oaken back; and light from a vase of chyroprase on a tall golden stand made a halo of graciousness about her. And the chinchilla coat fell in careless folds about her; she wore it as though it might be any sort of coat, which is of course the proper way to wear a chinchilla coat.

THE ginger beer and digestive biscuits came, and Mr. Parbold was glad of a chance to do something. He fussed about.

“Mr. Parbold!” call the lady softly.

“Eh-yes?”

“You see, I am very lonely to-night, Mr. Parbold. And I was very lonely last night, and also the night before that. That makes three lonely nights, doesn't it?”

“But I don't understand!” stammered Mr. Parbold. “Lonely! You!”

“Yes, you nice man—me! But before that I was not lonely. Far from it, Mr. Parbold. And that is why I feel my loneliness so much, you see. But do have some more ginger beer.”

“Eh—thank you.” And Mr. Parbold drank deeply, not knowing what else to do.

“You see,” the lady explained, “my husband left me three days ago——”

“Left you!” cried Mr. Parbold.

“Yes, he left me,” repeated the lady, and was silent awhile. And her eyes seemed to Mr. Parbold to be gazing into a beautiful garden strewn with dead flowers. At last, she spoke again.

“You see, Mr. Parbold, we quarreled. We had just returned from our honeymoon, and we had never quarreled before, and so we did not know how to quarrel and we made an awful mess of it. Do you know how to quarrel, Mr. Parbold?”

Mr. Parbold remembered the lady who had made him a widower.

“I have a rather broad experience of being quarreled with,” he said.

But the lady seemed not to be listening.

“The worst of it is,” she said fretfully, “that I haven't the faintest idea what we quarreled about! You see, we got so excited about it that what we were quarreling about got quite overladen with the things we were saying to each other. I'm quite sure that he hasn't the faintest idea now what we quarreled about, and as I haven't either, it makes things rather awkward, doesn't it? Because, you see, Mr. Parbold, we don't know who is to forgive who and whom is to be forgiven by who. Oh, bother these who's and whom's!”

“But surely!” protested Mr. Parbold. “Why don't you both forgive each other?”

“But I don't know where he is!” cried the lady miserably; and Mr. Parbold was silent before the great blue eyes that were shining with tears. The poor lady!

“You see, Mr. Parbold, he has just disappeared off the face of the earth, as far as I know! I have tried to find him, just to settle this forgiving business, but no one knows where he is! As he is a peer I thought he might hae taken a room at the House of Lords—peers do go there, don't they, Mr. Parbold? Naturally they must go somewhere. But they told me at the reception office that they hadn't seen him for ages and that they didn't have bedrooms anyway, as the benches were considered so agreeable for sleeping on; and so then I didn't know what to do! After all, Mr. Parbold, if a peer isn't at the House of Lords where can he be, unless it's the divorce court or the bankruptcy court? And I know he isn't at either of th places because he was always very careful about details. Oh, I am so miserable!”

Mr. Parbold tried to make sympathetic noises, but finally lapsed into silence. He could not understand how beauty so kind and grave could be in such a pass.

“Fancy her husband leaving her!” thought Mr. Parbold. “Her! Oh, youth is so kind in happiness, so cruel in misunderstanding! Oh, the cruelties of kind people are the worst cruelties of all!”

And a clock broke the silence of the dim room with twelve cameo notes.

“I say!” said Mr. Parbold, jumping to his feet. “Kept you up all this time!”

The tall lady looked at him thoughtfully.

“Mr. Parbold, I am more grateful to you than I can say. You are the sort of a man a woman can talk to about other men, and that means you are the rarest kind of man in the world. Dear Mr. Parbold, you are the sort of man that women dream about in lonely moments.”

Mr. Parbold flushed. Dear Heaven, there were women who could speak to men like this! Gracious women. And he had lived fifty years and had not known it until this moment.

And the lady stood and shook Mr. Parbold's hand.

“Of course,” she said, “you will allow the car to see you to your door.”

“Really, I assure you!” panted Mr. Parbold. “Love walking——”

“Nonsense!” said the lady.

And then he remembered something which the quality of his new golden friend had driven out of his mind, and he also remembered that he was very tired, and he protested no more.

“Good-by, sweet man!” whispered the tall lady; and then Mr. Parbold understood how men could come to kill themselves for women, and he did the most amazing thing he had ever done in his life: he jerked his head down and kissed the lady's hand.

And, grabbing up his belongings, he trotted out of the room. . . .

“Good-by, good-by, sweet man!” called the low, low voice.

“Good-by, my lady,” panted Mr. Parbold, and pulled open the front door.

OUTSIDE, at the head of the broad steps, he stood and breathed deeply. For that night there had happened to Mr. Parbold the most beautiful thing that can happen to any man in this imperfect world. He had been trusted by a woman. . . .

The dark, long, low shape of the car was by the curb. A man, a tall shape of a man, stood beside the car, talking to the chauffeur, who was at the driving wheel. As Mr. Parbold closed the door of the house behind him, the tall shape of the man walked quickly away.

“Eh!” said Mr. Parbold to the chauffeur. “Her Ladyship has asked me to ask you to drive me home.”

“Ho!” said the chauffeur nastily.

Mr. Parbold blinked at him with a new force, and drew himself up. He really hadn't very much to draw up.

“You just do as you're told!” said Mr. Parbold.

“Ho, will I!” said the chauffeur.

But Mr. Parbold disdained to debate the matter further, and, giving him his address, plunged into the dark tonneau of the car.

The chauffeur seemed to have lost his partiality for speed since his contact with Mr. Parbold in the Haymarket. Had he not been told to keep his mudguards more to himself in future? He drove his car round the broad sweep of Berkeley Square as though the very idea of speed pained him. Taxis bustled by. And Mr. Parbold thrust his head out of the window.

“My idea,” he snapped, “was to get to Bloomsbury to sleep, not for breakfast.”

“Ho, was it!” growled the chauffeur.

And then, as Mr. Parbold leant back in the elegant interior of the car, something dark and long jumped on to the footboard, flung open the door, and had Mr. Parbold by the throat.

The car stopped in Davies Street, just by Claridge's. The chauffeur twisted his head round and enjoyed himself.

“You little rat!” snarled the something dark and long.

Mr. Parbold gurgled and kicked frantically.

“So she likes you, does she! She sits up with you till all hours, does she! You nasty little rat!” And the young man, for it was a young man, screwed Mr. Parbold's head from side to side. But suddenly Mr. Parbold jerked himself free.

“Likes me!” he panted. “You're mad. Mad!”

“Of course I'm mad!” whispered the young man, and struck Mr. Parbold on the ear. Mr. Parbold hit back vindictively, but without apparent effect. “Of course I'm mad! Can you give me any good reason why I shouldn't be mad, you inadequate piece of kitchen furniture, you bit of cast-off flannelette from a bankrupt bargain sale, you— Oh, my God, and she can spend hours with you, while I'm——”

“You're not—” gasped Mr. Parbold.

“My name is Limehouse,” snarled the young man.

“The Earl of Limehouse!”

“Good God!” cried the young man. “What's the good of being a snob when one can't even keep one's wife!”

“But you can!” gasped Mr. Parbold. “She wants you——”

“But you!”

“I'm only an—eh—accident!”

“Liar! Why, my chauffeur told me——”

“He's a liar,” snapped Mr. Parbold. “And you, Lord Limehouse, are a cad—to have had your wife watched!”

The young man's hands felt for Mr. Parbold's throat, but only grasped his tie. He pulled Mr. Parbold's tie hard.

“Look here,” he said fiercely. “I didn't have my wife watched. I merely happened to be passing the house, to catch a glimpse of the scene of my past happiness, when the chauffeur happened to mention that a little rat of a man had pretended to be run over by the car in the Haymarket and had then persuaded my wife to take him home, where he had spent hours in a room alone with her——”

“She was telling me about you!” cried Mr. Parbold. And a great gaiety overspread him. “Oh, dear! You are an ass, Lord Limehouse!”

“What!”

“Good Lord!” said Mr. Parbold. “Go back to your wife at once! It's perfectly ridiculous, all this wife-leaving business—and such a wife! She loves you. Lord Limehouse! And she begs your forgiveness——”

“But it's I who must beg her forgiveness!” cried the young man.

“Well, you can fight that out between you,” sighed Mr. Parbold. “Now be a good boy and go straight home. Lord Limehouse. Your lady awaits you.”

And the young man started up to the window and made a great shout to the chauffeur: “Home, home! Like lightning!”

THEN swiftly went the car, and the young man leant back and sighed. Round the broad curve of Berkeley Square swept the car, and stopped. Mr. Parbold said:

“Eh—thank you. Lord Limehouse. I think I will walk home from here.”

The young man, with his hand on the door, looked deeply into Mr. Parbold's face.

“Look here,” he said. “I'm very grateful to you. I am indeed.”

“I assure you!” said Mr. Parbold. “Be grateful to beauty, youth, God. Good night, Lord Limehouse.”

The young man stepped out of the car and ran up the broad steps. He turned to Mr. Parbold on the pavement.

“Look here,” he said fiercely. “You wait a moment. Please wait a moment.”

Mr. Parbold waited several moments. He did not want to, but neither did he want to seem discourteous.

Berkeley Square was as still as a crypt. The chauffeur looked at Mr. Parbold.

“I say!” said Mr. Parbold. “You will get the sack to-morrow.”

“Ho, will I!” said the chauffeur. “And who cares if I do! Silly haristocrats!”

The door behind them opened, and a man and a woman stood in the doorway. Mr. Parbold blinked at them, and was very shy. The two figures seemed to him like delicious sentinels at the gates of a clean, gracious life.

“Nice man,” called the low, low voice, “will you come and dine with us to-morrow night? Please!”

“Look here,” said the young man. “You must, you know!”

“Thank you, thank you,” panted Mr. Parbold.

Another of Michael Arlen's modem fairy-tales for grown-ups next month—in April Everybody's.