Read Fate Cannot Harm Me for Free Online Page A

simply and well.”

    â€œNow weigh right in, old friend, and tell me the whole history, omitting of course the immense scientific importance of your expedition, in which I have the profoundest disbelief.” That had been his command, and I had responded. But I didn’t talk long about the Antarctic, for it was not that that filled my mind. He guessed, almost before I had told him, that my need was to pick up the threads of my old life.
    â€œGood Lord, yes, how you must want to get into touch again,” he exclaimed. “Well, there’s no sort of difficulty about that. I’ll spread the word round that you’re home again, and in a week you’ll be starring as the returned explorer in all the drawing-rooms in London.”
    â€œYes, but there’s something before that. I must know something about all that’s happened whilst I’ve been away. I really haven’t the slightest idea who’s alive and who’s dead, or who’s married or engaged or divorced. I shall drop the most frightful bricks.”
    Monty chuckled. “Oh, I’ll put that right. I rather fancy myself as a social historian. To-night you must dine with me; we’ll have our own private celebration of your return. And, by Jove, I’ll make it a celebration that you’ll remember. You’ll come, won’t you?”
    â€œI’d love to; what time’s the meal?”
    â€œMeal, by God, the man talks about a meal,” he exclaimed with pretended horror. “My dear old Anthony, I’m ashamed of you. Don’t you know that I regard myself as the best judge, weight for age, of foodor wine in the whole of London? I tell you this is an occasion, and we’re going to have a great dinner. A meal’s just what you take to keep the old body going, and a banquet—well, that means over-fed aldermen and tons of turtle—and an orgy means too many people and a head in the morning. What you’ve accepted is an invitation to the best dinner that London can produce. Dash it all, man, you must have lived on sardines and ship’s biscuits and salt pork and every kind of tinned horror for the last two years. Now you’re going to eat a dinner. At times a chop and a pint of beer go down well enough, but there are occasions—and this is one of them—when it’s a duty to exhaust every artifice which civilization can suggest to construct a dinner as good as a dinner can be. Trust to me; I feel already the artist within me at work. I’ll construct a dinner that you’ll remember all your life. We’ll go to the Trufflers; there’s the best cook in London there, and I more or less control the cellar myself. You know it?”
    â€œYes, it’s that club just off St. James’s, isn’t it? I dined there once or twice, I think.”
    â€œThat’s right. It’s almost the smallest club in London, but in some ways the best; it exists for eating and drinking and for nothing else. We’ll make it eight o’clock. I’ll trot round this morning and plan my gastronomic campaign. We won’t waste to-night any of the gifts that the good God has showered on us.”
    I smiled at his enthusiasm. “Well, I shall enjoy it anyhow. I haven’t dressed for dinner since 1932.”
    â€œWe shall both enjoy it. For once in a way we’ll be really greedy. But no running after strange gods in the meantime. Do you remember old Stanwood?”
    â€œYes, I think so. An oldish, thin man, sour as vinegar.”
    â€œThat’s the chap, one of those lean hungry-looking beggars who always enjoy their food. Greedy as hell, but dyspeptic too. Well, I once wanted to get himinterested in a paper we were launching and I asked him to dinner. A lot of trouble I took to order a meal—damn, I mean a dinner—that would put him in the best of humours. Just by chance I came into the club at teatime, and he was drinking a cup of tea and