This was food for wonder, inasmuch as Mr Palliser-Yeates had a reputation for a more than youthful energy and, although forty-five years of age, was still accustomed to do startling things on the Chamonix aiguilles. He was head of an eminent banking firm and something of an authority on the aberrations of post-war finance.
A gleam of sympathy came into Leithen’s eyes.
‘How does it take you?’ he asked.
‘I’ve lost zest. Everything seems more or less dust and ashes. When you suddenly wake up and find that you’ve come to regard your respectable colleagues as so many fidgety old women and the job you’ve given your life to as an infernal squabble about trifles – why, you begin to wonder what’s going to happen.’
‘I suppose a holiday ought to happen.’
‘The last thing I want. That’s my complaint. I have no desire to do anything, work or play, and yet I’m not tired – only bored.’
Leithen’s sympathy had become interest.
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
The other hesitated. ‘Yes,’ he said at length. ‘I saw old Acton Croke this afternoon. He was no earthly use. He advised me to go to Moscow and fix up a trade agreement. He thought that might make me content with my present lot.’
‘He told me to steal a horse.’
Mr Palliser-Yeates stared in extreme surprise. ‘You! Do you feel the same way? Have you been to Croke?’
‘Three hours ago. I thought he talked good sense. He said I must get into a rougher life so as to appreciate the blessings of the life that I’m fed up with. Probably he is right, but you can’t take that sort of step in cold blood.’
Mr Palliser-Yeates assented. The fact of having found an associate in misfortune seemed to enliven slightly, very slightly, the spirits of both. From the adjoining table came, like an echo from a happier world, the ringing voice and hearty laughter of youth. Leithen jerked his head towards them.
‘I would give a good deal for Archie’s gusto,’ he said. ‘My sound right leg, for example. Or, if I couldn’t I’d like Charles Lamancha’s insatiable ambition. If you want as much as he wants, you don’t suffer from tedium.’
Palliser-Yeates looked at the gentleman in question, the tall dark one of the two diners. ‘I’m not so sure. Perhaps he has got too much too easily. He has come on uncommon quick, you know, and, if you do that, there’s apt to arrive a moment when you flag.’
Lord Lamancha – the title had no connection with Don Quixote and Spain, but was the name of a shieling in a Border glen which had been the home six centuries ago of the ancient house of Merkland – was an object of interest to many of his countrymen. The Marquis of Liddesdale, his father, was a hale old man who might reasonably be expected to live for another ten years and so prevent his son’s career being compromised by a premature removal to the House of Lords. He had a safe seat for a London division, was a member of the Cabinet, and had a high reputation for the matter-of-fact oratory which has replaced the pre-war grandiloquence. People trusted him, because, in spite of his hidalgo-ish appearance, he was believed to have that combination of candour and intelligence which England desires in her public men. Also he was popular, for his record in the war and the rumour of a youth spent in adventurous travel touched the imagination of the ordinary citizen. At the moment he was being talked of for a great Imperial post which was soon to become vacant, and there was gossip, in the alternative, of a Ministerial readjustment which would make him the pivot of a controversial Government. It was a remarkable position for a man to have won in his early forties, who had entered public life with every disadvantage of birth.
‘I suppose he’s happy,’ said Leithen. ‘But I’ve always held that there was a chance of Charles kicking over the traces. I doubt if his ambition is an organic part of him and not stuck on with pins. There’s a fundamental daftness in all Merklands. I remember him at school.’
The two men finished their meal and retired to the smoking-room, where they drank their coffee abstractedly. Each was thinking about the other, and wondering what light the other’s case could shed on his own. The speculation gave each a faint glimmer of comfort.
Presently the voice of Sir Archibald Roylance was heard, and that ebullient young man flung himself down on a sofa beside Leithen, while Lord Lamancha selected a cigar. Sir Archie settled his game leg to his satisfaction, and filled an ancient pipe.
‘Heavy weather,’ he announced. ‘I’ve been tryin’ to cheer up old Charles and it’s been like castin’ a fly against a thirty-mile gale. I can’t make out what’s come over him. Here’s a deservin’ lad like me struggling at the foot of the ladder and not cast down, and there’s Charles high up on the top rungs as glum as an owl and declarin’ that the whole thing’s foolishness. Shockin’ spectacle for youth.’
Lamancha, who had found an arm-chair beside Palliser-Yeates, looked at the others and smiled wryly.
‘Is that true, Charles?’ Leithen asked. ‘Are you also feeling hipped? Because John and I have just been confessing to each other that we’re more fed up with everything in this gay world than we’ve ever been before in our useful lives.’
Lamancha nodded. ‘I don’t know what has come over me. I couldn’t face the House to-night, so I telephoned to Archie to come and cheer me. I suppose I’m stale, but it’s a new kind of staleness, for I’m perfectly fit in body, and I can’t honestly say I feel weary in mind. It’s simply that the light has gone out of the landscape. Nothing has any savour.’
The three men had been at school together, they had been contemporaries at the University, and close friends ever since. They had no secrets from each other. Leithen, into whose face and voice had come a remote hint of interest, gave a sketch of his own mood, and the diagnosis of the eminent consultant. Archie Roylance stared blankly from one to the other, as if some new thing had broken in upon his simple philosophy of life.
‘You fellows beat me,’ he cried. ‘Here you are, every one of you a swell of sorts, with everything to make you cheerful, and you’re grousin’ like a labour battalion! You should be jolly well ashamed of yourselves. It’s fairly temptin’ Providence. What you want is some hard exercise. Go and sweat ten hours a day on a steep hill, and you’ll get rid of these notions.’
‘My dear Archie,’ said Leithen, ‘your prescription is too crude. I used to be fond enough of sport, but I wouldn’t stir a foot to catch a sixty-pound salmon or kill a fourteen pointer. I don’t want to. I see no fun in it. I’m blasé. It’s too easy.’
‘Well, I’m dashed! You’re the worst spoiled chap I ever heard of, and a nice example to democracy.’ Archie spoke as if his gods had been blasphemed.
‘Democracy, anyhow, is a good example to us. I know now why workmen strike sometimes and can’t give any reason. We’re on strike – against our privileges.’
Archie was not listening. ‘Too easy, you say?’ he repeated. ‘I call that pretty fair conceit. I’ve seen you miss birds often enough, old fellow.’
‘Nevertheless, it seems to me too easy. Everything has become too easy, both work and play.’
‘You can screw up the difficulty, you know. Try shootin’ with a twenty bore, or fishin’ for salmon with a nine-foot rod and a dry-fly cast.’
‘I don’t want to kill anything,’ said Palliser-Yeates. ‘I don’t see the fun of it.’
Archie was truly shocked. Then a light of reminiscence came into his eye. ‘You remind me of poor old Jim Tarras,’ he said thoughtfully.
There were no inquiries about Jim Tarras, so Archie volunteered further news.
‘You remember Jim?