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I showed great spirit. I vowed Braxton should not prevent me from going down to dinner. 'But a pretty sight I was when I did go down. Pale but determined, with three long strips of black sticking-plaster forming a sort of Z on my left cheek. Mr. Hilary Maltby at Keeb. Literature's Ambassador. 'I don't know how late I was. Dinner was in full swing. Some servant piloted me to my place.
For this, he had been rewarded by Pixley, his precinct committee-man, who allowed him to carry pink torches in three night processions. "You keeb oud politigs," said Bertha, earnestly, one evening. "My uncle, Louie Gratz, he iss got a neighbour-lady; her man gone in politigs. Aftervorts he git it! He iss in der bennidenshierry two years. You know why?"
I was aware that I had, in some degree, brought it on myself. If I hadn't interfered and lied, actual Braxton would have been here at Keeb, and I at this moment sleeping soundly. But this was no excuse for Braxton. Braxton didn't know what I had done. He was merely envious of me.
Anyhow, the parity of the two strivers was now somewhat re-established. In point of fact, the disparity had been less than I supposed. While Maltby was at Keeb, there Braxton was also in a sense.... It was a strange story. I did not hear it at the time. Nobody did. I heard it seventeen years later. I heard it in Lucca.
Will you bromise, blease, to keeb it secret, what I'm goin' to tell you?" "Yes, rather! Fire away," said the Emîr. "Well, sir, I know of a blace where gold is found more blenty than the oranges in that garden we now come from." "You don't? You're joking!" The Emîr stared at him. "I do, sir. You know, there's lots of country neffer been exblored away there to the south and east, behind the Jordan.
Maltby paused in his narrative. 'Well, well, he said, 'I don't want you to think I overrate the ordeal of my visit to Keeb. A man of stronger nerve than mine, and of greater resourcefulness, might have coped successfully with Braxton from first to last might have stayed on till Monday, making a very favourable impression on every one all the while.
On the other hand, I felt a need for three new summer suits, and a new evening suit, and some new white waistcoats. Also a smoking suit. And had any man ever stayed at Keeb without a dressing-case? Hitherto I had been content with a pair of wooden brushes, and so forth. I was afraid these would appal the footman who unpacked my things.
And wanly I puzzled it out in the dawn by very force of the envy, hatred, and malice in him he had projected hither into my presence this simulacrum of himself. I had known that he would be thinking of me. I had known that the thought of me at Keeb Hall would be of the last bitterness to his most sacred feelings. But I had reckoned without the passionate force and intensity of the man's nature.
'Next day, at Victoria, I saw strolling on the platform many people, male and female, who looked as if they were going to Keeb tall, cool, ornate people who hadn't packed their own things and had reached Victoria in broughams. I was ornate, but not tall nor cool. My porter was rather off-hand in his manner as he wheeled my things along to the 3.30.
I wrote a few lines to the Duchess that night; but I wrote amidst the preparations for my departure from England: I crossed the Channel next morning. Throughout that Sunday afternoon with Braxton at the Keeb railway station, pacing the desolate platform with him, waiting in the desolating waiting-room with him, I was numb to regrets, and was thinking of nothing but the 4.3.
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