As for Gerald, Hilary had last known him as a “dark diabolical schoolboy” with a disturbing capacity for threatening silences and an immense--“a corroding, almost,” Hilary said--admiration for Iris. But not long after Barty March’s death--every one had loved _that_ drunkard!--he had quite lost sight of Gerald. Guy de Travest had been Gerald’s colonel in the Grenadiers for some time during the war, but he never spoke but once of Gerald as a soldier--“young hell-fire idiot”--and never went near him while he lived above me in Shepherd’s Market. “Reminds me,” Guy said, “too much of Barty left standing too long with the cork out.” And that was more or less what Hilary said, too. One must say this for the warriors of caste and conduct: they seldom try to improve any man. This chapter has been called The Cavalier of Low Creatures because it is about Gerald, and therefore it is a short chapter, for what on earth is there to say about Gerald? It isn’t at all a good description of him, but it is intended, if you please, more as a flourish, a naïve gesture. For you simply can’t let Gerald stand without a flourish, without a something, anything. Besides, I liked him, and would like to do him a bit of good. He was, _sans_ gesture, a zero with a scowl and a hat--and a hat. Certainly, he once wrote a novel, but who does not once write a novel? I liked Gerald, but I would not give him a line if he wasn’t essential; and that is just what he is, essential, for these things simply couldn’t have happened without Gerald. He hated his sister, he had not seen her for ten years, yet it turned out that he was the most important factor in her life. And, decidedly, her love for him was one of the most important factors in _her_ life. I wonder if he knows. But he too, even he, grew up in the end. I can hear him now, through the twilight of East Chapel Street, his shoulder against the saloon-door of the inn. “Give her my love,” he said. But you will hear him. II Sometimes I would see Gerald in the Café Royal. I would be dining, with Hilary maybe, and in the distance, cut as with a sharp knife in the tapestry of smoke and grubby faces, would be Gerald, darkly alone, a glass of whisky on the marble-top before him. One wouldn’t attempt to join him, for it made Gerald shy, desperate, if any one sat with him while drinking. He hated being “messed about,” did Gerald; and if you joined him he would presently mutter something about an appointment (Gerald with an appointment!), leave his drink unfinished and go and order one somewhere else; and as I understood he hadn’t much money I did not like to drive him to that. Maybe, though, he was less shy with me than with any one. “I like you,” he once said--oh, darkly!