Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (61 page)

A
good
many
years
before,
it
appeared,
young
de
Frasne
had
come to
ask
his
advice.
The
young
fellow
had
involved
himself
in
a
terrible mess,
yet
without
having
done
anything
wrong
actually.
Appearances were
hopelessly
against
him.
In
a
tragic
mood,
the
youngster
expected, wanted,
tragic
advice,
and
Mantravers
took
up
his
case
with
his
usual intense
sympathy.
He
felt,
that
is,
exactly
what
young
de
Frasne
felt. "Some
chaps,"
he
had
suggested,
"placed
as
you
are,
might,
of
course, rank
honour
higher
than
life
.
.
."
Young
de
Frasne
went,
white. "You
mean
.
.
.
?"
he
asked
grimly.
"There's
always
the
emergency exit,
isn't
there?"
Mantravers
mentioned,
lending
himself
fully
to
the other's
theatrical
state
of
mind.
It
never
occurred
to
him,
he
swore, that
the
stricken
youngster
would
take
his
advice
seriously.
"I
really thought,"
he
now
told
me
in
his
flat,
"that
he'd
go
home
feeling
himself
a
stage
hero—then
think
out
another
way.
He
would
come
back in
the
morning.
But
he
did
not
come
back
next
moming,
nor
any other
morning."

Mantravers,
forgetting
all
about
the
interview
to
which
he
had not
attached
much
importance,
went
to
India
that
same
week.
He never
heard
till
he
came
back
to
England
a
year
later,
and
then
he only
heard
it
casually,
that
the
young
fellow
had
put
a
bullet
in
his brain.
The
lad
had
passed
from
his
memory.
He
forgot
even
what lie
looked
like.
It
gave
him
a
horrid
turn,
he
assured
me,
when
he learned
the
truth,
"for
in
a
way,
you
see,"
he
explained,
"I
felt responsible.

"That
was
some
years
ago,"
he
was
saying,
my
attention
not
yet wholly
caught,
"twenty
or
possibly
twenty-five,
and,
as
I've
told
you, I'd
forgotten
even
what
he
looked
like.
My
memory
for
faces
is si
locking.
Last
year
in
Dinard
I
talked
and
smoked,
gambled
too, with
a
delightful
fellow
whose
face
I
remembered,
but
whose
name, and
where
we
had
met,
escaped
me
utterly,
a
fellow
who
knew
me well
too.
He
turned
out
to
be
the
Italian
barber
in
Regent
Street who
cuts
my
hair
.
.
."

"Yes,
yes,"
I
put
in,
making
a
show
of
interest,
"but
I'm
rather like
that,
too."

He
stared
at
me
a
moment.
"Maybe,"
he
countered
briefly.
"But a
week
ago,"
he
went
on,
his
face
paler
but
his
eyes
oddly
bright, "the
same
sort
of
thing
happened
to
me
again—at
a
party—and
it turned
out
to
be
the
last
person
in
the
world
I
expected."

I
had
not
been
listening
properly,
my
thoughts
still
running
on
the war
and
what
was
coming,
but
the
way
he
said
this
gave
me
a
jolt for
some
reason.
I
felt
a
crawling
again
at
the
roots
of
my
hair.
I
asked what
he
meant
exactly.