What is it, then, about Ean Fabos that turns all eyes upon him in whatever company he may be? Some, for sure, hope to borrow money of him. So much my great heart for humanity must admit. They hope to borrow money from him and to save him from others who would do likewise. ’Tis their way of friendship. But, mark ye, there are many more, strangers to him, enemies because of the favour he enjoys, and these are on their knees with the rest. What is it, then? I’ll tell you in a word. ’Tis that great power of what they call personal magnetism, a power that we can give no right name to, but must admit whenever we find it. Ean Fabos has it beyond any man I have known. Let him say three words at a table, and the whole room is listening. Let him hold his tongue and the people are looking at him. You cannot pass it by. It grips you with both hands, draws you forward, compels you to give best. And that’s why men gather about my friend Dr. Ean Fabos, as they would about the fine gentlemen of old Greece could they come back to this London of ours. They have no will of their own while he is among them.

Now, this is the very man whom I saw dancing twice (at five shillings a time, though naturally the money would be nothing to him, while much to poor souls who have had their pictures flung into the mud by the sorry Sassenachs who sit at Burlington House), dancing twice, I say, with a black-haired shepherdess in a red cloak; not one that I myself, who have a fine eye for the sex, would have been lavishing my immortal wit upon; but just a merry bit of laughing goods that you can sample in any ball-room. When he surrendered her to her father, a stately old gentleman, stiff as a poker in the back, and one who reminded me of my dead friend General von Moltke, of Prussia—when he did this, I say, and I asked him who she might be, he answered me with the frankness of a boy:

“Timothy McShanus,” says he, “she’s the daughter of General Fordibras, whose ancestor went to America with the Marquis de Lafayette. That is the beginning and end of my knowledge. Lead me forth to the cellar, for I would quench my thirst. Not since I was the stroke of the great Leander boat at Henley did there drop from my brow such honest beads of sweat. Man alive, I would not go through it again for the crown ruby of Jetsapore.”

“Your friend Lafayette was known to my grandfather,” says I, leading him straight to the buffet, “though I do not remember to have met him. As for the labour that ye speak of, I would ask you why you do it if ye have no stomach for it. To dance or not to dance—shall that be the question? Not for such men as we, Dr. Fabos; not 

 Prev. P 8/193 next